January 7, 2022 by Paul Debraski
SOUNDTRACK: Right-wing lies about the Insurrection (2021).
[READ: November 2021] Small Blows Against Encroaching Totalitarianisms: Volume Two
Two years into the previous administration, McSweeney’s published two small books which railed against everything the Criminal in Chief stood for and had done.
Reading these books in 2021 after he had been soundly trounced in the election and with the possibility of jail time (for any of multitude of the illegal things that he did) is somewhat calming. I think if I had read this in 2018 it would have been thoroughly dispiriting. Because even though these essays provide hope, they are just full of recounting of the horrors that that [fill in the blank] and his crew of reprobates did.
It has been a year since the brainwashed masses tries to overthrow our government. And still nothing has happened. Our country is broken. These essays don’t really fix it, but it’s nice to know you’re not alone in thinking this way. Continue Reading »
Posted in #ITMFA, #RESIST, Anti-war, Antiracism, Chen Chen, David Alexander, donald tRUMP, Feminism, Hillary Jordan, James Carroll, Jane Wong, Jaswinder Bolina, Jay Cantor, Jonathan Lethem, Joshua Ferris, Kaveh Akbar, Kids Say the Darndest Things, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Lewis Hyde, McSweeney's, Nalini Jones, Poetry, Poets, Politicians, Porochista Khakpour, Racism, Riane Konc, Richard Howard, Samuel G. Freedman, Sarah Gerard, Scott Turow, Sexism, Sexual Assault, Shane McCrae, Sloane Crosley, Vu Tran | Leave a Comment »
January 6, 2022 by Paul Debraski
SOUNDTRACK: The sounds of trump supporters violating our National Buildings in a failed Insurrection plot (2021).
[READ: December 2021] Small Blows Against Encroaching Totalitarianisms: Volume One
One year ago trump and his lackeys tried to overthrow the government. Thankfully they failed. But one year later not enough people have been punished.
Two years into the previous administration, McSweeney’s published two small books which railed against everything the Criminal in Chief stood for and had done.
Reading these books in 2021 after he had been soundly trounced in the election and with the possibility of jail time (for any of multitude of the illegal things that he did) is somewhat calming. I think if I have read this in 2018 it would have been thoroughly dispiriting. Because even though these essays provide hope, they are just full of recounting of the horrors that that [fill in the blank] and his crew of reprobates did.
Not even including the attempted insurrection and overthrow of our country.
It has been a year since the brainwashed masses tries to overthrow our government. And still nothing has happened. Our country is broken. These essays don’t really fix it, but it’s nice to know you’re not alone in thinking this way. Continue Reading »
Posted in Anti-war, Antiracism, Bill McKibben, CAConrad, Dodie Bellamy, Feminism, George Orwell, Harmony Holiday, Jim Shepard, Kao Kalia Yang, Karen Joy Fowler, Kevin Boyle, Lev Grossman, LGBTQ, Liars, Martin Seay, Matthew Zapruder, Melissa Chadburn, Mitra Jouhari, Owen King, Poetry, Poets, Racism, Raquel Salas Rivera, Rick Moody, Sally Wen Mao, Sex, Sexism, Sexual Assault, Steve Erickson, Terence Hayes, Tom Bissell, Tracy O'Neill, Violence, Yahia Lababidi | Leave a Comment »
January 5, 2022 by Paul Debraski
SOUNDTRACK: hiatus
[READ: December 31, 2021] You Can’t Be Serious
S. and I were wrapping presents for Christmas this year and put on A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas (which I thought was new and didn’t realize was ten years old). I had said something about thinking Kal Penn was really cool and respecting his decision to work for the White House.
And lo and behold but there was this book in my Christmas pile.
Kal Penn, Jersey represent!, has led a fascinating life. And he seems like a very cool (but not scoring you weed on the weekend kinda cool) guy.
Kal starts his book by saying that in kindergarten, the fastest, dumbest boy in his class called him the n-word. He didn’t know what it meant, but he knew it was bad from the way the kids reacted.
A traumatic way to start a book and a school. But things got better from there. He recalls not paying much attention in school and also class trips to Old Sturbridge Village–that’s over three hours away! His class went there–multiple times? He loved the acting that went on there.
He talks about getting picked on for being a nerd. But also about being grateful for living in a diverse New Jersey town–he went to a lot of mitzvahs. His story of being on a boat for someone’s mitzvah is pretty funny. And yet, he also talks about a hate group called Dotbusters based in Jersey City (I am so shocked to hear about this) who harassed assaulted and even killed Indian people. His aunt lived there and his grandmother visited her there. Continue Reading »
Posted in A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas, Autobiographies, Barack Obama, Funny (ha ha), House M.D., India, John Cho, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Kal Penn, LGBTQ, M.K. Gandhi, Memoirs, Michele Obama, Mira Nair, Mississippi Masala, NASCAR, Racism, Sunnyside, The Namesake, Van Wilder | Leave a Comment »
January 4, 2022 by Paul Debraski
SOUNDTRACK: hiatus
[READ: January 10, 2021] Gravepyres School for the Recently Deceased
I found this book at work and was instantly intrigued by many things. The title Gravepyres sounded unusual to me. It also seemed like a children’s book (which it is). Plus, it had a stamp that said “For sale only within the territories of India, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.” Which I found pretty fascinating.
Even more so because this is a children’s fantasy book about being dead and the kind of “life” that you can have “there.” I thought it might be quite different than an American book.
The book opens on Jose who has just died. He has no idea that he just died and as he is trying to get his bearings, he is greeted by a small, bossy girl named Mishi. She brings him to Gravepyres School for the Recently Deceased. She tours him around the place, scolds him for his poor clothing (she provides him with a tunic) and tells him to get ready for classes..
Of course there is school when you are dead! There is mathamythics. Where the seemingly simple question 6+4= is not what one expects. None of the students answered until finally one of them said four hundred and sixteen. Jose chuckled, but the teacher said “Good, excellent.” Other seemingly correct answers were ninety seven and a half, eight thousand, fifty two, even twelve. But when Jose said the answer is ten, Professor Styx said Oh dear. not quite. The rest of the classes made the same amount of sense.
Like Scare Studies from Madam Morte and Seeing from Dr Chiplunker (who wore the most outrageous spectacles he had ever seen). Can you See the pencil in front of you? Look closely. Look at it for an hour. Jose decided it was the most boring class he had ever heard of. Continue Reading »
Posted in Adventure, Anita Roy, Boredom, Children's Books, Corporate skewering, Death, Fears, India, Set at School, Supernatural, Vultures | Leave a Comment »
January 3, 2022 by Paul Debraski
SOUNDTRACK: hiatus
[READ: December 20, 2021] Weird Accordion to Al [Vanity Edtion]
This book came to my work and I said, Hey I have this! And then I said, but my cover is orange. What gives?
And then I saw that Rabin, inspired by Al’s Ill-Advised Vanity tour expanded this book. Or actually, since there is very little information about these books, perhaps he wrote them at the same time and released a shorter and longer version. But why would he do that?
The first 366 pages are the same but, (and here’s the thing that messed with my head) they are not exactly the same. Now, I didn’t read the same text in both books and compare them (that would be really insane). But I did flip through the book comparing paragraph and chapter breaks. The text appears to be the same in both books. BUT, the paragraphs are not! For reasons that I don’t understand, in book 1 some pages end with paragraph F, but in book 2, with the same exact text, the page now ends with paragraph E. Like the spacing of a period threw off all of the justification (Users of Word will know what I’m talking about).
So I’m assuming that both books are the same.
And then the new stuff was added to Book 2 (or taken out of Book 1, whatever).
Starting on page 368 we move on to Other Stuff. Continue Reading »
Posted in "Weird Al" Yankovic, Batman, Comedy Bang Bang!, Film & TV, Food, Funny (ha ha), Nathan Rabin, Nostalgia, Pee Wee's Playhouse, Reggie Watts, Seinfeld, Smarty Pants, The Compleat Al, The Weird Al Show, UHF | Leave a Comment »
January 2, 2022 by Paul Debraski
SOUNDTRACK: hiatus
[READ: December 20, 2021] Weird Accordion to Al
After writing the “Weird Al” biography, with “Weird Al” himself, Nathan Rabin dug even deeper into his “Weird Al” fandom to write a detailed account of, as the subtitle says, “Every ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic Album Analyzed in Obsessive Detail.”
“Weird Al” wrote the (short) introduction and then Nathan drops the needle on “Weird Al” Yankovic, Al’s 1983 debut album.
Nathan goes into varying degrees of detail on each of the songs. Nathan was a rabid “Weird Al” fan from when he was a little kid. And when he talks about how much he loves Al, you can see his deep abiding appreciation for everything Al has done.
Some songs get a paragraph, nut most get a page or so. He usually talks about how much he likes (or loves) the song (and occasionally dislikes). There’s nostalgia in the older songs and jokes and observations about contemporary things as well (Rabin’s politics poke through once in a while. Good thing he’s a smart guy.
Because he did the Al biography with Al, he presumably got a lot of insight into the man and his work. So although sometimes his insights seem like maybe he’s reading too much into a goofy parody, perhaps he’s on to things. Maybe Al’s depth is deeper than rhyming Sharona with Bologna. Which is not in any way to diminish Al’s intelligence. He’s obviously very smart, especially as his later songs indicate.
Rabin’s tone throughout the book is smart and snarky. He talks about the songs and the video (if there is one). He talks about the production quality (or lack thereof) on the first album. He references Dr. Demento (because the Dr is essential to Al’s career). He also references Don DeLillo’s White Noise and says things like “Al is in deconstructionist mode.” Continue Reading »
Posted in "Weird Al" Yankovic, Beastie Boys, Crosby Stills & Nash, CSN, Don DeLillo, Dr. Demento, Felipe Sobriero, Film & TV, Food, Frank Zappa, Funny (ha ha), George Harrison, Happy Birthday, James Brown, Jeopardy!, Johnny Dangerously, Jurassic Park, Language, Michael Jackson, Mick Jagger, Nathan Rabin, Nostalgia, Pac Man, Pixies, Ramones, Smarty Pants, Sting, The B-52's, The Beatles, The Police, Tonio K., UHF, Video Games, Wendy Carlos | Leave a Comment »
January 1, 2022 by Paul Debraski
This is kind of a downer post to start the year, but I’m going on the idea that the year can only get better.
2021 promised to be the year that concerts came back.
And they did, in a pretty big way. However, there were random shows that were cancelled or postponed. I’m not going to list every show that was postponed in 2021 (that list is way too long), but here’s a few shows that were supposed to happen once concerts came back but which for one reason or another didn’t.
Sometimes it was even because I had a better show to go to (or had tickets to the other one first).
Reschedulers seemed to enjoy placing all of the rescheduled shows in the same week for me. I wasn’t necessarily going to try to see all of these, but they caught my attention.
Continue Reading »
Posted in Cancelled, Concert, Coronavirus, Postponed | Leave a Comment »
December 31, 2021 by Paul Debraski
2021 promised to be the year that concerts came back.
And they did, in a pretty big way. However, there were random shows that were cancelled or postponed. And then, the year ended with a huge number of shows being cancelled, which had already leaked into 2022.
The terrible irony is that some shows that pushed back their dates from the Spring of 2021 to the Spring of 2022 might get pushed back again because of the omicron variant. I swear if that My Chemical Romance show gets pushed back again, the kids who want to see it will be out of school already.
As for me, I saw a lot of shows in the middle of the year and then kind of burnt out and blew off a bunch of shows. Now with shows getting cancelled again, I’m wondering how much I regret not going to the ones I skipped.
The only real regret I have is missing the Stars/Kevin Devine show at World Cafe Live. I’ve wanted to see Stars for a long time and they don’t tour all that often. This show happened to be on a day that we were hosting a small get together and while I probably could have made it to the show afterwards, it would have been really tight. So I just have to hope that Stars comes back around in 2022 (or 2023). Continue Reading »
Posted in Concert | Leave a Comment »
December 30, 2021 by Paul Debraski
[POSTPONED: December 29, 30, 31 2021 and January 1, 2022] Phish [moved to April 20, 21, 22 and 23, 2022]
So I got totally shut out for the New Year’s Eve lottery. The four of us would not go to see Phish. I knew that no one else in the family wanted to see them on the other nights, so I snagged a ticket for January 29 and 30 for myself.
Although after an exhausting run of shows at the end of November, I was rather burnt out and had every intention of selling these tickets. I felt like it would be good to stay home for a couple weeks.
I wasn’t going to try to make any money off of them (I’m a strictly cash or trade kind of guy). but I never got around to setting up the trade.
As it got closer I did consider that I might be willing to go to maybe one of the shows. But as Omicron got worse, I decided that nope, I’m skipping it.
So it was good that they rescheduled, because I still get to go. Although the shows are the week of S’s birthday, and that’s a pretty busy week, So we’ll see.
Posted in Coronavirus, New York City, Phish, Postponed, Quarantine | Leave a Comment »
December 29, 2021 by Paul Debraski
[POSTPONED: December 29, 30, 31 2021 and January 1, 2022] Phish [moved to April 20, 21, 22 and 23, 2022]
This year, since shows were back, I hoped that Phish would do another New Year’s run. And this year, my plan was simple: get four tickets for New Year’s Eve so my family could live out a bucket list of mine.
S. thought it would be fun. My kids don’t care about Phish at all and were indifferent to the idea. But I told them that regardless of their opinion of Phish, it would be a lot of fun, because Phish always does a great New Year’s Eve show. Plus, how fun would it be to be in New York City after midnight on New Year’s Day?
Well, I tried and I got totally shut out for the New Year’s Eve lottery. I got totally shut out on Ticketmaster a few days later as well. And that was fine, but I did still want to see them on this run.
So I snagged a ticket for January 29 and 30. Continue Reading »
Posted in Coronavirus, New York City, Phish, Postponed, Quarantine | Leave a Comment »
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SOUNDTRACK: Right-wing lies about the Insurrection (2021).
I Just Read About That... 