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Llewellynn Jewitt, F.S.A., & c.–“The Mermaid of Legend and Art” (The Art Journal, New Series, Vol. 6, 1880)

November 25, 2011 by Paul Debraski

SOUNDTRACK: THE FLAMING LIPS: AUSTIN CITY LIMITS FESTIVAL 2010 (on Palladia TV 2011).

It must be tough to take a festival like Austin City Limits and truncate it into 2 hours.  It must also be tough to be a pretty much headling band like The Flaming Lips and to be playing in the middle of the day when your cool stage stuff is probably less impressive (but good for them for going all out!).

Some fun things to see during their set: the camera mounted on Wayne Coyne’s microphone (huge close-ups of his face); the guns that shoot streamers, Cliph the drummer makes the sample sound effects that you need to make during the songs, tons of back up dancers (who I believe are fans that won a contest or something), the amazing multi-instrumental skills of Steven Drozd.

This broadcast only showed two Lips songs (criminally underrepresented, but I understand).  They played “I Can be a Frog” which is a wonderful audience participation song even if it’s nowhere near their best song. 

And “She Don’t Use Jelly” which I understand as it was their hit and the crowd (and even the band) always seem into it, but that song is like twenty years old and they didn’t play any other bands’ old singles.   I won’t complain to hear that song, but there are just so many good ones to choose from that it seems silly to play that one.

[READ: November 6, 2011] “The Mermaid of Legend and Art”

A while back I read a few old articles that I got from JSTOR, the online archiving resource.  This month, I received some links to three new old articles that are available on JSTOR.  So, since it’s the holiday weekend, I thought it would be fun to mention them now.

I wrote the review of this article before I realized that I had only read part 3 of 3.  There were some clues (like the start mentioning “the first few lines of my opening chapter”), but since the link I was given went here, I assumed that the other chapters were not available (until I saw the tiny footnote that said this was continued from pg 172).

So, I’m including my original post at the bottom for history’s sake, but I’m going to write the revised review here.

I don’t quite understand why this article was broken up into three sections.  This is especially egregious because of the figures included in the articles.  They do not really correspond to the sections where they are written about.  So, for instance he mentions Figure 13 on the last page of the article when we are already up to Figure 36 (and Figure 13 is fifty-some pages away).  For most of the other figures, he always seems to be a few pages behind, as if they needed to put the pictures throughout the article rather than where they are mentioned–it was bad enough having it in three sections (in my print puts) but imagine having to flip back thirty some pages to see what the hell he’s talking about!  Of course, this was 1880, they had more free time.

So, anyhow, the beginning of this article talks about the history of the mermaid in folk tales and the Bible.  Evidently Brahma visited Menu (Aka Noah) in the guise of a fish–which is how he was able to build the ark.  There is also a lengthy discussion about the importance of fish in the Old Testament.  In addition to the whole IXTHUS thing, fish were a very useful form of currency.  So it is nor surprise that they used representations of fish and sea creatures in ancient Rome and Greece. Continue Reading »

Posted in 19th Century, Austin City Limits, Bible, Essays, Fears, Gods, History, Llewellynn Jewitt, Mermaids, Religion, The Art Journal, The Flaming Lips | Leave a Comment »

D.B.S. Maxwell–“Beer Cans: A Guide for the Archaeologist” (Historical Archaeology, Vol 27, No. 1 1993)

November 24, 2011 by Paul Debraski

SOUNDTRACK: AUSTIN CITY LIMITS FESTIVAL 2010 (on Palladia TV 2011).

Recently Palladia broadcast some highlights from the Austin City Limits Festival in 2010.  The bands they showed were Phish, The Flaming Lips, Vampire Weekend, Muse, LCD Soundsystem, Sonic Youth, Spoon and Slightly Stoopid.

There were so many good bands at this festival (why is Richard Thompson in such small print?) that I won’t really complain about the inclusion of Slightly Stoopid and LCD Soundsystem on this best of (but they could have included Band of Horses, Yeasayer, Broken Bells, Gogol Bordello (the list goes on!).  (I’d never heard of Slightly Stoopid and although I like LCD Soundsystem, live they were less than stellar).  Although I am glad they didn’t include the Eagles, thank you very much.

I’m trying to get actual set lists of these airings (they mentioned the song titles during the show but I didn’t write them down).

This was a 2-hour broadcast and it was really good.  If they re-air the episode, it’s worth watching.  The quality of the broadcast is excellent (even if the HD format does take up way too much space on a TiVo).

[READ: November 6, 2011] “Beer Cans: A Guide for the Archaeologist”

A while back I read a few old articles that I got from JSTOR, the online archiving resource.  This month, I received some links to three new old articles that are available on JSTOR.  So, since it’s the holiday weekend, I thought it would be fun to mention them now.

And to start of the holidays, I present you with this–a loving history of the beer can (for archaeologists).

This is a fairly fascinating look at the development of the beer can from 1935 to the present.  The selling point of the article is that archeologists could use beer cans to date the timeframe of an excavation.  I agree with this; however, since they only date back to 1935, I’m not entirely convinced of its long-term usefulness.

The problem with the article is that page two shows a chronological timeline.  This in itself is not a problem (although it is odd that it goes from present to 1935 instead of chronologically forward); the problem is that the article itself more or less sates exactly the same thing as the timeline.  For although this article is 20 pages long, there are tons of photos and very little in the way of text beyond what was in that (very thorough) time line.

Nevertheless, you can see the morphing of beer cans from ones that you had to pop open with a can opener to ones that finally had self opening cans.  See the switch from tin to aluminum, and even learn why the tops of cans are a little narrower than the sides (called a neck-in chime, it evidently saves a lot of money). Continue Reading »

Posted in Austin City Limits, Band of Horses, Beer, Broken Bells, D.B.S. Maxwell, Essays, Gogol Bordello, Historical Archaeology, History, LCD Soundsystem, Muse, Scholarship, Sonic Youth, Spoon, The Flaming Lips, Vampire Weekend, Yeasayer | Leave a Comment »

Sam Lipsyte–“The Climber Room” (New Yorker, November 21, 2011)

November 23, 2011 by Paul Debraski

SOUNDTRACK: GRINDERMAN-Grinderman 2 (2010).

The first Grinderman album was a sleazy delight.  And this Grinderman is much of the same sleazy heavy rock, although it’s slightly different.  It opens with “Mickey Mouse and the Goodbye Man” which lets you know that Grinderman are still dirty and sleazy.  The song just rocks.  Screaming blistering rock.

Now, fans of old Nick Cave and The Birthday Party know that Nick is no stranger to noise and dissonance.  Some of these songs harken back to those days–the music (on”Worm Tamer” is crazy–feedback squalls and trippy organ) and yet they never veer into chaos.  They are tightly controlled but with wonderfully loose edges.   It also features the wonderful lyrics: “My baby calls me the Loch Ness Monster–two big humps and then I’m gone”).  “Heathen Child” is a loud, raucous, blasphemous treat, one of the best on the disc.

“When My Baby Comes” slows things down a bit and actually veers terribly close to Bad Seeds territory (which isn’t a bad thing by any means, but Grinderman is supposed to be an escape from that, right?).  The song loudens up, though and a really cool slippery bass propels it for the rest of its 7 minute length.  “What I Know” is like a slow prose poem, but it is followed up by the blast that is “Evil!” a wonderfully brash 3-minute blast of noise rock.  The chanting backing vocals are wonderfully evil.  “Kitchenette” ups the sleaze factor nicely.

“Palaces of Montezuma” is another mellow song–also very Bad Seeds like.  It seems like it would be long (like it would keep building), but it’s only 3:30.   “Bellringer Blues” ends the disc with some cool backwards guitar and more chanted vocals (definitely the signature sound of Grinderman).  It ends this awesome disc on a very high note.

[READ: November 18, 2011] “The Climber Room”

I really enjoyed Lipsyte’s The Ask, so I ‘m delighted to see him with a new short story.   This one concerns a young (but no longer that young) woman named Tovah.  She has taken a job at a daycare center called Sweet Apple.  As the story opens, Tovah meets the other main character of the story, a man whose name she (hilariously) mishears as Randy Goat.  It turns out that Randy Gauthier is a rich man whose children have all gone to Sweet Apple and his new girl Dezzy is now enrolling.

Tovah isn’t trained for this job–she’s just there part time–and either despite or because of this, Dezzy takes to her immediately.  On a day that Tovah is not there and Dezzy fell off the Climbing Room (a jungle gym) she cried and cried for Tovah.   Mr Gauthier spies Tovah the next day and informs her that he has switched her schedule so that she will only be there when Dezzy is there.  Tovah is (understandably) freaked and a little pissed.  But when he tells her to Google him, she learns why he can have such sway over things.  Continue Reading »

Posted in Decadence, Funny (ha ha), Grinderman, New Yorker, Sam Lipsyte, Set at School, Short Story | Leave a Comment »

Junot Díaz–“Apocalypse: What Disasters Reveal” (Boston Review, May/June 2011)

November 22, 2011 by Paul Debraski

SOUNDTRACK: ULVER-Bergtatt (1994).

Ulver has some music in the soundtrack to Until the Light Takes Us and my friend Lar pointed me to a location where you could download a bunch of their music (this was before Spotify of course). 

So I grabbed a few of their albums expecting to hear some brutal death metal.  And I kind of did, but I also heard classical guitar, flute solos and chanting.   So this album’s full title is Bergtatt – Et eeventyr i 5 capitler (“Taken into the Mountain – An Adventure in 5 Chapters”) and it comes in at a whopping 35 minutes–not bad for an epic.

The opening track (“I Troldskog faren vild” (“Lost in the Forest of Trolls”)) is fascinating–a kind of chanting vocals over a quietly-mixed-in-the-background black metal.  The music is so quiet (and yet clearly black metal) that it almost comes across as ambient noise, especially over the multilayered chanting (I have no idea what language they are singing in).  It ends with a pretty acoustic guitar passage that segues into a very traditional sounding heavy metal section–with a catchy solo that takes us to the end.

“Soelen gaaer bag Aase need” (“The Sun Sets Behind Hills”) opens with, of course, a flute solo.  It’s a minute long and quite melancholy before blasting into the fastest of heavy black metal complete with growling vocals and nonstop pummeling.  But after a minute of that it’s back to the layered chanting like in the first song.  The song ends with a conflation of the two–the chanting metal with the growling black metal underneath.  It’s quite a sound.

Track three “Graablick blev hun vaer” (“Graablick Watches Her Closely”)opens with a lengthy acoustic guitar intro–not complicated, but quite pretty and unlike the poor recording quality of the metal, it seems to be recorded with high quality equipment.  After about 45 seconds that gives way to more black metal.  In a strange twist, the black metal section just fades out, replaced by more acoustic guitar and what seems like the end of the song.  But instead, there is a strange quiet section–not music, but sounds–like someone walking around in the cold forest with crunchy noises and little else.  For almost two minutes.  Until the black metal comes back with a vengeance.

Slow guitar with slow chanting opens track 4 “Een Stemme locker” (“A Voice Beckons”) (the shortest at only 4 minutes).  And the amazing thing is that it doesn’t change into something else.  It is a nice folk song.

The final song “Bergtatt – Ind i Fjeldkamrene” (“Bergtatt – Into the Mountain Chambers”) has a blistering opening followed by some of the most intricate acoustic guitars on the record.  It morphs into a very urgent-sounding black metal section which lasts about 5 minutes.   But just to keep us on our toes, the song (and the disc) end with more classic acoustic guitar.

There is a story here (allmusic says it is a Norse legend about maidens being abducted by denizens of the underworld) and that might help explain the music madness.  But as a musical composition it works quite well.  The chanting over the black metal is really effective and the acoustic instruments bring a nice sonic change from the pounding metal. 

This is not for everyone obviously, but the diversity makes this an interesting introduction into the black metal scene.  Baby steps. 

[READ: November 4, 2011] “Apocalypse”

This is the final non-fiction essay of Junot Díaz that I could find online.  The other one comes from GQ and is called “Summer Love”, but there’s no access to it online. 

In this essay, Díaz looks at the impact of the earthquake that devastated Haiti now that it has been over a year.  Díaz was born in the Dominican Republic which has a long and very brutal history with the people of Haiti–they share a land mass after all.  But rather than looking only at Haiti and how it was devastated, Díaz takes this as an opportunity to see what the earthquake reveals about our country and the state of the world.

The essay is broken down into eight parts.  The first revisits what happened.  The second discusses the meanings of apocalypse, which sets up the “theme” of this essay.  The First: the actual end of the world (which for the thousands of people who died, the earthquake was); Second: the catastrophes that resemble the end of the world (given the destruction of Haiti and the devastation that still lingers, this is certainly applicable); Third: a disruptive event that provokes revelation.

Díaz is going to explore this third option to see what this earthquake reveals. 

What Díaz uncovers is that the earthquake was not so much a natural disaster as a social disaster–a disaster of our creating.  The tsunami that hit Asia in 2004 was a social disaster because the coral reefs that might have protected the coasts were decimated to encourage shipping.  Hurricane Katrina was also a social disaster–years of neglect, the Bush administration’s selling of the wetlands to developers and the decimation of the New Orleans Corp of Engineers budget by 80 percent all contributed to a situation where Katrina could be so devastating.

Then he talks looks at the history of Haiti.  I had known some of this story, but not as much as he provides here–the constant abuse of the citizens, the constant abuse of their finances (both from simple theft and from French and American planning that changed their economy).  There’s also the story of “Papa Doc” Duvalier.  Basically Haiti was a disaster waiting to happen. 

Díaz goes into great detail about the global economy and how it impacted the poor in Haiti and he shows that it doesn’t take a lot of extrapolation to see it reflected in the rest of the world as well.  With the constant rise in standards for the wealthy and the constant abuse that the poor take, it’s not hard to see that Haiti could easily happen here.  If not in our lifetime, then certainly in our childrens’.

But Díaz has hope.  Continue Reading »

Posted in Boston Review, Death, Decadence, Dominican Republic, End of the World, Environmentalism, Essays, GQ, History, Junot Díaz, Natural Disasters, Ulver, Until the Light Takes Us | Leave a Comment »

Eric Idle*–“Who Wrote Shakespeare” (New Yorker, November, 21, 2011)

November 21, 2011 by Paul Debraski

SOUNDTRACK: DAVE BIDINI-“The List” (2007).

This song appears as a bonus track on the Bidiniband album.  But I’ve been aware of it since 2007 when he played it on his solo tours.  It is essentially a list of 4 Canadians who are “killing us, killing us now.”  The list includes Tim Horton’s (purveyor of delicious donuts), Chad Krueger (from Nickelback), Zack Werner (a judge on Canadian Idol), and Stephen Harper (I shouldn’t have to tell you).

But the key to the song is the chorus: “where are the angry young ones….”  This song should become the unofficial song from Occupy Wall Street.  It would be very easy to modify.  Hey Dave, if you’re free you should head on down and serenade these angry young ones.

Here’s a great live version done in a record store in which he is close enough to have a casual chat about the very song he is singing in the middle of the song.

He also ends it a little differently than the original.  It’s catchy and easily adaptable.  Good on ya, Dave.

[READ: November 19, 2011] “Who Wrote Shakespeare?”

No one has traded off of his Monty Python fame as much as Eric Idle.  All of the other Pythons have moved on in one direction or another, but Eric keeps the torch alive (see Eric Idle Sings Monty Python and Spamalot).  He even has a little nod to MP in this essay with the asterisk next to his name which leads to (*Most likely Michael Palin, really).  This refusal to let go of Python has at least kept his wit sharp, as we see in this Shouts & Murmurs.

My main problem (as I’ve said before) with the Shouts & Murmurs is that they are usually too long.  But, as Python knew, keep it short and funny and you’ll succeed.  So this two-column piece never really flags in its simple premise.

Which is that everyone knows that Ben Jonson really wrote all of Shakespeare.  Idle presents a list of all of the famous books that were really written by someone else.  For example, “Simone de Beauvoir wrote all of Balzac and a good deal of ‘Les Misérables,’ despite the fact that she was not born yet when she did so.”   And my favorite: “‘Moby Dick’ was written not by Herman Melville but by Hermann Melbrooks, who wrote most of it in Yiddish on the boat from Coney island.”  The joke about Henry James is very funny and too good to spoil. Continue Reading »

Posted in Bidiniband, Books about writers, Canadian Content, Canadian Music, Dave Bidini music, Eric Idle, Essays, Herman Melville, Monty Python's Flying Circus, New Yorker, William Shakespeare | 2 Comments »

TV Fall 2011

November 20, 2011 by Paul Debraski

I was planning to write this post early in the TV Season.  I found out that the TiVo website rather helpfully includes a page of all the premiere dates of shows, which in addition to telling us when shows started, has also turned out to be a good way to keep track of the shows that were cancelled already.  Our goal is basically to get every good show cancelled so that we can watch our poor Netflix DVDs (which now that we had to change our policy we have mercifully fewer discs that we are not watching).  Um, thanks for the hike Netflix?

Anyhow, it’s now  about seven weeks into the season and we’ve already lost a number of shows–some as quickly as two weeks in…which, really?  I mean why bother.  Surprisingly, none of the FOX shows were cancelled yet.  That’s probably because FOX didn’t pick anything cool or interesting enough for me to want to watch–that’s actually not true, they have some good new shows this season, but nothing like Arrested Development.

So, this time I’m breaking it down by day of the week (which is silly since we TiVo everything and watch it whenever).  And this time red shows are shows we have given up on and Green ones are ones that we’re still enjoying. Continue Reading »

Posted in 2 Broke Girls, Allen Gregory, American Horror Story, Archer, Arrested Development, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Chuck, Community, Flight of the Conchords, Free Agents, Gilmore Girls, Glee, Grimm, Hart of Dixie, How I Met Your Mother, How To Be a Gentleman, Kal Penn, Mike and Molly, Modern Family, Mr Show, New Girl, Once Upon a Time, Pan Am, Parenthood, Parks and Recreation, Project Runway, Ringer, Suburgatory, Terra Nova, The Big Bang Theory, The Office, The Simpsons, The Walking Dead, Tosh.0, TV 2011, Up All Night, Work of Art | 1 Comment »

Five Dials Number 21: Rock School (5 November, 2011)

November 19, 2011 by Paul Debraski

SOUNDTRACK: HELIUM-The Dirt of Luck (1995).

Mary Timony fronted Helium for a few years.  In that time she was recognized as something of a guitar wizard–not in her speed and flash, but in the weird sounds she conjured from the instrument.

She also had very peculiar musical sensibilities (these songs are quite odd) and a cool feminist attitude.  This album features the amazing song “Superball” (one of the best songs of the mid 90s–check out the video and watch the guitarist playing the strings with a screwdriver!  Man I miss the 90s) as well as a number of unpolished gems like “Medusa” and “Pat’s Trick” (the dual vocals are very cool and the dispassionate “oh oh oh” is very interesting, plus I love the lyric about “long-ass curly hair”).

Her singing style is often quite slacker-y, like in the opening of “Medusa”–she’s not always audible, and she often seems like a kind of buzzy sound more than a voice.   She sounds like she’s singing from very far away–seemingly powerful and yet quiet at the same time.

But combine that with the cool scratchy/noisy guitar sounds she gets and she’s pulling off a very cool combination (think Dino Jr without the hooks and killer solos).

Like “Baby’s Going Underground” features some crazy shoegazer guitar washes for most of its 6 minutes which really changes the pacing of the record.  There’s also the great “Skeleton,” a riff so cool that Sonic Youth used it for “Sunday.”

She also has a way with haunting melodies as on the piano  instrumental “Comet #9” and on “All the X’s Have Wings” which sounds very medieval. I think of Timony as a guitarist and yet there is there are lots of keyboards on the album too–mystical keyboards that are fascinating and seem out of character with the guitars, but actually work quite well.   But the prettiest song is “Honeycomb.’  It’s a sweet song with a wonderful melody.  It is followed by the ender “Flower of the Apocalypse” a guitar-based instrumental that is mostly feedback but is also surprisingly melodic.

Helium had mild accolades back in the 90s.  They released a couple of albums and then Mary Timony went solo.  It’s nice to have her playing now with Wild Flag.

[READ: November 11, 2011] Five Dials Number 21

This is the first issue of Five Dials that I was ready to read when it was sent to me (I’ve been all caught up for a while now).  So that’s pretty exciting!

I was tempted to say that i enjoyed this issue more than other issues, but I have enjoyed most Five Dials issues equally.  But this one is definitely a favorite.

CRAIG TAYLOR–A Letter from the Editor: On Turning 21 and Thinking About Rock Stars and Greece.
The magazine introduction jokes about them now being legal to drink in the U.S. and also about now being old enough to run for M.P. in England.  He also tells us about their “new” section Our Town, which has vastly expanded in this issue.  He also explains that there are many rock stars on hand to give the magazine tutelage (authors that the rock stars enjoy) and three short stories.  He ends with a notice that they have gone to Greece where they are gathering material for Issue 22. Continue Reading »

Posted in Beirut, Book Reviews, Brendan Connell, Fantasy, Fears, Five Dials, Geoffrey Trease, Great Lake Swimmers, Heathecote Williams, Herman Hesse, History, J.K. Huysmans, Jonas Hassen Khemiri, Kid Koala, Kurt Vonnegut, Lionel Shriver, Lizzy Stewart, Los Campesinos!, Marriage Trouble, Moldy Peaches, Raymond Chandler, Rebecca Delgado, Roberto Bolaño, Shirley Jackson, Short Story, Virginia Woolf, W.G. Sebald, War, William S. Burroughs | Leave a Comment »

Jennifer L. Holm & Matthew Holm–Camp Babymouse [#6] (2007)

November 18, 2011 by Paul Debraski

SOUNDTRACK: “WEIRD AL” YANKOVIC-Alpocalypse (2011).

Weird Al’s new album seems, believe it or not, a bit more mature (within reason, obviously).  When I first started listening to Al, he appealed to the 8th grader in me.  And while his jokes are often still childish and silly, he brings a certain older perspective now (he’s like 52 right?).  So this album, again, is silly and funny, but actually deals more realistically with issues like love (again, within the confines of a parody song).

I was also thinking that Al has always been pretty PG, a bit violent, but always cartoonish.   But as pop songs get more PG-13 and even R, Al has had to adapt, whether on purpose or not.  I mean, in his medley he sings “Womanizer” and “Blame it on the Alcohol,” certainly not appropriate for 8th graders, and yet those original songs are, indeed, popular hits.

But enough seriousness.   On to the music.  “Perform this Way” a parody of Lady Gaga’s “Born this Way” is a weird parody in that it seems like a direct comment on the artist herself.  I guess “Smells Like Nirvana” was as well, but it’s one of the rare Weird Al songs that’s not really self-contained–or actually it is self-contained but the joke works better if you know the singer.  And if you don’t know Lady Gaga, this one is kind of flat (catchy as heck and quite funny though).  “CNR” is a great White Stripes style parody.  It gets funnier with each listen and the music is great.  And the idea of Charles Nelson Reilly doing any of these things is chuckle inducing.

“TMZ”  is the first of two internet based songs.  Which is funny in and of itself.  He makes fun of celebrities and the culture of celebrity.    “Skipper Dan” proved to be very funny for us as we had recently gone to Disneyworld and wondered if the boat tour guides got to improv any jokes (I gather they don’t).  “Polka Face” is one of Al’s great polka mash ups.  This one was really enjoyable even though I knew virtually none of the songs (which may be a first).  “Party in the CIA” is a parody of “Party in the USA” a song I don’t know at all.  Based on Al’s version I think the original seems really dull .

“Ringtone” is a Queen style parody which I like quite a bit although I particularly do not like the way they sing the word “ringtone.” The rest is spot on though–especially the solo.  “Another Tattoo” is great–Al is so good at doing R&B and rap songs–the voice, phrasings and echoic recordings are spot on.   And this song is really funny.  “If That Isn’t Love” is the song I was talking about in the beginning, about being more mature.  It’s kind of a follow up to “You Dont Love Me Anymore” in which he shows how much he loves this new girl, but it’s less over the top and yet still funny.  This example shows the joke but how it’s aimed at a more sophisticated 8th grader:

And when you’re telling me about your feelings I try not to yawn
And when we’re at parties I don’t talk about your spastic bladder

or

And I almost never pretend you’re someone else when I’m making out with you

Quite different from “Another One Rides the Bus.”

“Whatever You Like” is a parody of a song called “Whatever You Like” which I don’t know.  It has to be the first parody of a song with the same title.  That bothers me a little, although I have no idea what the original is about.  I do like this one quite a bit.  “Stop Forwarding That Crap to Me” is very funny and over the top.  It’s another email/spam joke but my favorite line is vaguely sophisticated and makes me laugh every time

And your two million loser friends all have my address now because you never figured out the way to bcc:

The fact that it works perfectly with the rhythm of the song, rhymes right on and is a surprisingly clever joke is just stellar.

I’ve saved “Craigslist” for last because I think it’s just great and I can’t imagine how the idea for this was generated.  How do you go from talking about Craigslist to thinking Jim Morrison?  I’m imagining a session in which someone was making a joke about a letter to Craigslist that they read in various voices and then did it ala Morrison and the whole thing just blossomed from there.  But heavens if the music isn’t spot on and the song is funny without being novelty-funny.  You could easily play it on classic rock radio (if you can find such a station) and Doors fans would like it.

This is one of the first Weird Al albums where I knew very few of the songs parodied.  I don’t follow pop music, so that makes sense, but it really shows how out of touch I am with culture.  I also read a review talking about how the jokes are kind of old (making fun of Craigslist is so 2005).  But Al puts out a record every three years and if the songs aren’t timely, the subjects can have more lasting appeal.  Al seems to know what has staying power, so even if it’s not current it’s still funny.

And the band, as always, sounds fantastic.  As does the recording quality–the Doors sounds like the Doors, The White Stripes sounds like The White Stripes.  It’s very well done.

[READ: November 11, 2011] Camp Babymouse

In this Babymouse book, she goes to summer camp.  And as the voice- over points out, what on earth would Babymouse be doing at camp?  She hates everything that you do at camp.

But she’s excited to go and has a fantasy of being a great scout!

Stories always make summer camp seem like hell.  And this one is no exception. It starts when Babymouse gets to her cabin and has to climb to the tippy-top bunk (a great fantasy sequence of King Kong comes in).

The “plot” of the story is that the campers are trying to win the most points for the week.  The winners get a prize and the losers have to wash dishes.  Typically, Babymouse causes some major catastrophes (a Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde sequence provides a good laugh as does a wonderful Moby Dick fantsy during the canoeing competition). Continue Reading »

Posted in "Weird Al" Yankovic, Cats, Children's Books, Cupcakes, Fears, Funny (ha ha), Graphic Novel, Jennifer L. Holm, Matthew Holm, Mice, Queen, Short Books, Summer, Summer Camp, The Doors, The White Stripes | Leave a Comment »

Ben Marcus–“The First Venom” (Harper’s, December 2011)

November 17, 2011 by Paul Debraski

SOUNDTRACK: WILD FLAG-World Cafe, November 10, 2011 (2011).

I’ve been really enjoying Wild Flag’s debut album.  Wild Flag consists of Carrie Brownstein and Janet Weiss of Sleater-Kinney, Rebecca Cole, who I don’t know but who has been in a few different indie bands, and Mary Timony from Helium.

This World Cafe episode is a brief interview (mostly with Carrie, although all four women are present), in which they talk about the origins of the band and what it’s like to play as a foursome. 

There are three songs and the band sounds tight and perfect.  In fact they sound so perfect I almost wondered if they were really playing live (but there’s one keyboard flub that proves that humans are involved).

It’s a great sample of the record, which is all great, and it’s a good chance to get caught up with these rocking women. 

[READ: November 15, 2011] “The First Venom”

This is an excerpt from Marcus’ forthcoming novel, The Flame Alphabet.   I’ve read a number of Marcus’ things in the past and I realized that most of his McSweeney’s pieces I do not like.  Some of the short stories in the New Yorker I have enjoyed, although usually not right away.  So, clearly Marcus and I don’t see eye to eye on fiction.

And that’s the case with this excerpt.  It’s hard for me to say I wouldn’t read a longer piece based just on an excerpt because who knows what else the rest of the book contains (this could be a small fraction of a much different story), but this excerpt absolutely didn’t make me want to read any more.

In the excerpt, a married couple is sickened by their daughter.  Literally.  All of the words that she says and whispers and scribbles wash a sickness over her parents.  They cringe and try to get away but she keeps talking and talking.

At first this seemed like a metaphorical sickness–who hasn’t grown tired of their kid’s incessant chatter, but it soon becomes clear that this is very real. Continue Reading »

Posted in Ben Marcus, Disease, Fears, Harper's, Helium, McSweeney's, New Yorker, Sleater-Kinney, Wild Flag, World Cafe Live | Leave a Comment »

Joyce Carol Oates–“The Good Samaritan” (Harper’s, December 2011)

November 16, 2011 by Paul Debraski

SOUNDTRACK: СУБИТО (Subito)-“Du Hast” (2011).

Субито (pronounced Subito) is from the Ukraine.  They’re a bunch of miners and they play music.  In addition to this cover, which is generating some meme buzz on the internet, they have a few other songs (and videos) of note.

This cover is notable in that the only real difference between this song and the original is the prominence of the button accordion.  The vocals are nearly identical (he’s got his German goth down perfectly), and the rest of the band plays quiet heavily (I love the triangle instruments!).  But the accordion changes the entire texture and tone of the song.   It’s still ominous (I mean, those vocals!) but the accordion adds an air of whimsy that undermines the menace and yet also somehow makes the rest of the song seem even more menacing.

Of course the video is quite silly which leads one to assume that they’re not taking their version too seriously and yet their playing is impeccable and their backing vocals are right on.

So, yes, I rather like this song, and I like being able to include the word Субито in my post.

[READ: November 10, 2011] “The Good Samaritan”

Joyce Carol Oates has a wonderful way of turning her stories into something dark.  Even if it starts out in a rather innocent light.

This story is set in 1981 on a train coming from Utica, NY.  The narrator, Sonia, finds a woman’s wallet stuffed into the seat of the car.  The story begins with Sonia thinking about the woman, wondering what she’s like, looking at the photos of herself and her family and sort of daydreaming what it would be like to be older and married.  It’s only after a brief reverie that she, a poor college student, checks the money to see what’s there.  (About $25).  She hopes that the woman is old enough to give her a reward, but assumes she is not.

Sonia is to be heading home to help her mother with her ailing grandmother, something she’s not looking forward to.  So she decides that she will return the wallet to the woman who, after all, lives only a few blocks from the station.

What is wonderful about this story is that this innocent setup masks the real story, which is never fully explored, but is hinted at enough to keep us all guessing.  When Sonia arrives at the house, the woman’s husband is home and he seems….surprised that Sonia has brought this wallet home.  She feels sympathy for him when he begins to explain that his wife ran off and must have dropped this wallet on this train while she was fleeing.  Sonia wants to help the man in some way.  He invites her inside and she thinks of all the things she could do for him–stupid things like make dinner or maybe even look at her things to see is she can help figure out where her wife went.  She suggests this last idea and he accepts. Continue Reading »

Posted in Субито, Fears, Harper's, Joyce Carol Oates, Marriage Trouble, Rammstein, Short Story, Threats | Leave a Comment »

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