And your SOUL!

Sex with the dead could cost you five years (DDN)

Tony Burrows

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dLXVw_JNg8

I know nothing about this guy (other than he was in Edison Lighthouse) or this song, but it is stellar, the freakin' countermelody stabs are sick...and his Lego-person coiffure defies ridicule. The real deal.

But then again, who am I?

I mean, if Andy Partridge, a genius, just doesn't fucking feel like it, what business is it of mine? I mean, how many critically acclaimed albums do I have (c and p Bob Pollard)?

Well, none, really, and yet we're getting together weekly to spring a new rock unit on the willing!

Song titles include: "You'll Like Tonight Then" and "My Viceroy" so it should be typical closet-case mega-pop. As you like it!

Hoping to have a show in May, will let more go (such as name of project) as available.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIjiela6ep8

Dukes redux

Pitchfork had an item that Andy Partridge was going to re-release the two Dukes of Stratospher records from the 80s. For the uninformed, this was an alter-ego project where the Swindon Three (plus Colin's brother) did their damnedest to out-psych the 60s acts they loved and for the most part succeeded:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMGcaDYSrMM

What's lame, of course, is the fact this is being done in lieu of any NEW XTC-or-related product. Promises of "bonus" material (what is there, besides the fairly execrable "Can of Human Beans?") will end up being more milking the ever-shrinking oldster fanbase with demos, just watch. "Hey! A demo of 'Little Lighthouse!' They'll buy that!"

I believed AP in 1989 when he told Rolling Stone that he was on a songwriter's high and writing zillions of songs or whatever, after which there were Nonsuch (okay) and then seven years of silence until Apple Venus LPs. And yes, all the Fuzzy Warbles stuff. But I expected more, because I really did cherish so much of the band's recorded output.

I believed you, Andy Partridge!! [hot tears, storming off!]

There will be more of this

BALTIMORE — Police said a 58-year-old man stabbed his teenage son after he
refused to take off his hat at church earlier in the day. The father and his
19-year-old son got into an argument on Sunday afternoon. That's when police
said the father went to a car, got a knife and stabbed his son in the left
buttock and fled.
The son was taken to University of Maryland Medical Center
for treatment. The father's name was withheld pending his arrest.

I like the "and fled." "I'm gonna stab that little so-and-so in the glute and scram!"

Where is the father right now, do you think? Feeling remorseful or somewhere, in a safe house of like-minded citizenry, safely hidden for taking a firm stand against hats in church?

I went to a funeral home Sunday afternoon (o.d.) and a bunch of the kids (many of whom reeked of reefer) were wearing their "good" fitted caps. It was all very "It's So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday" by Boyz II Men, but not in a good way. It's 2009, for God's sake.

Things really ARE rough all over

I thought my life was a cesspool because on Sunday I saw a grown man (a doctor, I think, and if not, a doctor type) in a black ball cap with a We Can't Dance-era Genesis logo on it (and a friend, who saw said sad chapeau from the back, said it indeed had little silhouettes of the three Genesis guys or something) and he was, of course, not rocking this lid in anything close to an ironic tribute-to-Patrick Bateman way. So, ruminating on this, I was sent an email from a correspondent in a "whole nother" part of the country, who said the following had happened to him, in his workplace, a famous hospital/research facility you've heard of:

The Who just came on this crap radio station in the lab and some girl yells
out…


"C.S.I."

So, it may indeed be time, like in the sense of one of those books like How the Irish Saved Civilization, to start gathering a sort of knowledge menagerie that future peoples may find interesting. Curios and stuff from that need to survive this vulgar age (Collected Stories of Ring Lardner, Aladdin Sane, Godfather II, or Clueless maybe).

[and while I'm at it - and pardon me if you are fortunate enough to not know of this sick phenom - but where DO those awful, surely Watterson-vexing "Calvin pissing on ____" stickers COME FROM? More over, how do I get one so I can have Calvin pissing on text that reads "PEOPLE WHO HAVE THOSE AWFUL CALVIN STICKERS"? ]

No, no - THIS is why you're fat

Gearing up to garden/farm/have chickens in a one bedroom apartment, I'm reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver, where she and her family try to eat seasonally on their semi-inherited patch o' land in Virginia (the fact that she's written #1 bestsellers and is an wimmen's icon with quite a following buying her books probably makes this sort of farming more easy, but I digress) - but anyway, there are all sorts of facts herein that are freaking me out, not the least of which is the fact that you are breathing HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP right now. Shit's in everything! Well, maybe in a Jack D. Ripper sense I exaggerate, but only slightly. Then, all settled in to a nice account of how broccoli can survive late snow or whatever, BK et famille (who co-authored) hit you upside the head with nice thoughts like:

* concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) in the US produce 6X the volume of, ahem, fecal matter, as ALL OF THE HUMANS ON EARTH. Or, as you drive to Chik-Fil-A, try not to think of the fact that a six by eight foot room can "house" 1152 chickens! Ouch!,

* the average vegetable in the supermarket has travelled 1200 miles,

* six companies control 98% of seed sales,

etc etc - all of which is presented not in a really "tut-tut" sort of way, but more like "we can't believe this either!" Plus there is a thing about how the family had to tell the youngest daughter not to kiss chickens on the mouth, which is not a cruel adjuration but just good sense.

All of which is a long way of saying I'm giving up soda for Lent.

As soon as I say this, Cheerwine will add Ohio to its distribution list. Damn and blast!

The Love Language

Stumbled across these guys and gals and they are pretty tough. Kinda like a less baritone-y Magnetic Fields maybe, with the sort of songs one may think have been heard before, but then they go off in different weird directions. From Carrboro, NC or somewhere similar, somewhere where THEY can get Cheerwine (grrr!). Plus: recorded too hot (maybe?); haven't put my finger on it, but there's a weird sort-of muffledness that is somehow oddly endearing. Know nothing about them, but then I don't need to know. I normally hate anything that smacks of some sort of old-timey authenticity (see every post ever for elucidation), but these kids are okay by me.

http://www.myspace.com/thelovelanguage

I also like how the cover looks like some shoe-gazey 4AD wannabe thing from fall 1991.

Top ten of year, so far, says me. Another thing to put on a shrink-wrap:

"Top ten of the year...so far!" - some putz, Putzville.

Henry - worst comic strip ever

For those who are too young to remember, here is an example:

Yes, Henry seems to have no mouth. His skull seems to come a sort of ossified baby's buttocks where a jaw should be (paging Freud!). Doesn't speak at all.

And get a load of old Don Trachte's wikipedia bio (there was one? yes!):

Donald Trachte (May
21, 1915–May 4, 2005) was an American cartoonist.
He graduated from Madison, Wisconsin's Central High School,
attended the University
of Wisconsin-Madison and later served in World War II as a
lieutenant. He started working on comics in 1932 as an assistant of Carl Thomas
Anderson and worked on the Sunday version of the Henry comics from
Anderson's death in 1948 until 1993. (John Liney worked on the
daily comics.) A recent discovery reveals that Trachte created a near-perfect
replica of Breaking Home Ties,
by Norman Rockwell.

So, wait - this poor bastard drew the Sunday version only of the worst comic strip in history for 45 years and the only noteworthy fact from his life that could be scraped up was that he did a Rockwell knockoff? That hardly makes him Han Van Meegeren (http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2008/10/27/081027crbo_books_schjeldahl)!

Wow, and here I thought I was depressed before.

Yet more JU stuff

Yes, he's still gone. Still shocked, really. Last week, when my wife had a cold, I half-dreamed that the wheezing next to me came from a giant Shillingtonian schnozzola laying there, just a giant JU beak...well, no, I didn't really.

Anyway, Jill Krementz (widow of KV, doncha know) took pics of Updike at various times over the last two hundred years and there is a collection of same here:

http://newyorksocialdiary.com/node/193849

And, really, they are worth a peek, even to detractors...for reasons like: how to look good in a sack-suit even when Sgt Pepper's is already out; the Beard; hey, look! John Cheever!; what Martha actually looks like (fetching!), and a gander at those infamous Maple[strikethrough] Updike kids.*

This sorta killed me, though...is there any way that this:

isn't a joke tribute to this?**:

Other than, this being Updike, he's in the midst of making a vulgar gesture toward a wayward housewife just out of frame...

* and just remembered mid-afternoon to add a mention of the average, generic 1979-ness of their kitchen (fridge magnets!), etc!

** oh! Jpeg is labeled JU + Warhol so I'm not crazy after all.

Freud oddness

Freud smoked 20 cigars a day and developed an oral cancer that resulted in thirty operation and necessitated the wearing of a sort of early prosthetic jaw he referred to as the Monster.

So sometimes a cigar is not just a cigar but really a ticket to an oral prosthesis called the Monster.

Watches

And really, now: short of shooting someone in the face with a shotgun at close range, is there really any more significant way to show disrespect for one's fellow man than by not wearing a watch?

We have some vendors at work who show up near-daily, and one always comes in and, as he signs in, says "Uh...what time is it?" and then cranes his neck around to seek out the clock on the wall.

Don't EVEN start with me about cell-phones-as-clocks, either. "Well, I can tell time with my phone..." BULLSHIT!

How in the hell does one even arrive on time someplace without a watch? How does one ascertain exactly what time that heavy gust of wind blew through without wearing a watch to bed? Do we, as a species, care so little about others that we think it really doesn't matter that another person is left waiting aimlessly somewhere for us to pick them up, say [and maybe without something to read, which is, of course, inexcusable on the pickup-ee's part, but it nevertheless happens all the time], all because we're too stupid to wear a watch, which, I hasten to add, come in a variety of nice shapes and designs that can really add some snap to a persona???

For god's sake!

Shirley Jackson

Love this cover! No, not saying I love this cover, I'm telling you to!

Reading Haunting of Hill House, among other things, and was happy to find a passage wherein an adult laments missing the sensation of being bored in the summer, listless summer afternoons, that sort of stuff. Was happy to find this because I think of it a lot. When was the last time I was bored? Who has the time to be bored? The young, I suppose.

Also, from Wikipedia, this is good:

Jackson's husband, Stanley Edgar Hyman,
wrote in his introduction to a posthumous anthology of her short stories that
"she consistently refused to be interviewed, to explain or promote her work in
any fashion, or to take public stands and be the pundit of the Sunday
supplements." That she thought it meant something, and something subversive,
moreover, she revealed in her response to the Union of South
Africa's banning of "The Lottery": "She felt," Hyman says, "that they at
least understood."

I need that collegtion [sic] above.

Save our city! or don't

While I'm being all Margaret Bourke-White ish, I will continue my photo-journey through all of our lives today (?). Actually, my cell phone pics are a fairly exacting portrayal of what life was actually like during The Time of Decline.

Like many of us, I live in a city that is dying/has died. Houses are vacant, every story on the local news is a drug murder or crime, the last industry has all but dried up. Good-hearted bands of citizenry have little civic meetings where some nice ideas are posited, such as using some of the vacant lots around for community vegetable gardens, as restaurants like to tout local produce, etc. Okay. But we stand at a convergence of urban decline/civic inefficacy/severe recession from which there just might not be a renaissance/springtime.

Last Saturday I saw some sketchy dudes in a beat-up conveyance selling roses for Valentine's Day. Their propped-up sign read, in a gluehead 4th grader's scrawl:

VALENTINE
TIME FLOWERS
HERE

And then it was that I realized just how far it all is out of all of our hands. The earth needs a rest. This city, this world...it may be time for a cold, bright light to come, scouring it all clean.

And then: rest. Rest.

Cock o' the block

Yeah, so, earlier today the dudes who come in a van to change out the office-rug doohickeys came in and one says "You guys know you have a rooster out on the sidewalk?"

!!!

Sure enough, here was a rooster to be reckoned with! That's actually him, pictured here.

We tried to catch him in a cardboard box so my gentleman farmer boss could take him home to the farm, but he was a wily cuss and when last seen was sitting across the road at the edge of the woods, ready to take up a feral pig lifestyle, darting at hikers from the underbrush, etc.

Fatal regret: when first apprised of this befeathered visitor, I wasn't quite expecting it, as one wouldn't be, I suppose. But I wish I had thought to say "Who?? You mean Skip?"

What QT SHOULD do, sez me

I dunno, that preview of Inglourious [sic] Bastards with Brad Pitt looks pretty crappy, right? Scalping Nazis? Brad Pitt with Hemingway mustache?

I didn't really think Death Proof was all that great. I liked the shaggy dog joke nature of the ending...but the dialogue, for which Tarantino has always been so revered, was listless. Hot chicks driving around looking to buy some pot? Okay. So what?

So now the ten years in the making IB is coming and the lifeless grey preview is the best they can offer. Harvey Weinstein must be biting his nails.

It would be funny, I think, if Tarantino would do his normal rambling verbal acrobatics, only in the 1940's time frame...something like "No, no - I'm telling you, Glenn Miller was queer" or two guys sitting in a fox hole debating whether they would rather have relations with Olivia DeHavilland or Judy Garland. "Man, that scene when DeHavilland comes down the stairs in the nightie after blowing that Yankee c-cksucker's head off had me blasting rocket sauce around my WPA camp bunkhouse like I was Werner Von Braun at Robert Goddard's birthplace."

You know?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pel3GE97evA

Richie!

Like you, I often sit around pondering what might have happened to second-tier Warhol "superstars."

The other day, for instance, I suddenly thought: "Now, wait just a goddam minute! Brigid Berlin is always getting written up in VF and the like, or talking about her various relapses to Interview or whatever! What about her boi sister Richie? Where the hell's she at [sic]?"

A quick spin across the webs (and, yes, the Internet IS becoming useful, FINALLY) turned up this nice li'l time waster: http://www.warholstars.org/ . Check up on all your faves!

As for Richie (at right, below), she's not only alive but actually rather stunning, if fairly orange:

Um, shit yes!

Clientele (fave LP of 2007, doncha know) web site sez:

Meanwhile we’ve been tracking our new, as-yet-untitled LP at Bark Studios with
Brian O’Shaughnessy; it’s nearly finished and early signs are that it will
be the best thing we’ve ever done. Stay tuned for more news as it
comes in.

Yay! A fall Clientele LP (and just the words are swoon-worthy) would put a tin hat on it! A great year for music, for reals! And given that we're all at the very tail-end of humanity, quel way to go out!


Also:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3GOVzy6Tzs (fan vid)
lyrics to above:
In those days there was a kind of feeling of pushing out of the front door, into the pale exhaust fume park by Broadwater pond where the grubby road eventually leads to Enfield. Turkish supermarkets after chicken restaurants after spare parts shop, everything in my life felt like it was coming to a mysterious close. I could hardly walk to the end of the street without feeling there was no way to go except back. The dates I had that summer count to nothing, my job was a dead end and the rent check was killing me a little more each month. It seemed unlikely that anything could hold much longer. The only question left to ask was what would happen after everything familiar collapsed, but for now the sun was stretched between me and that moment. It was ferociously hot and the air quality became so bad that by the evening the noise of nearby trains stuttered in and fits and starts, distorted through the shifting air. As I lay in my room I can hear my neighbors discussing the World Cup and opening beers in their gardens on the other side someone was singing an Arabic prayer through the thin wall. I had no money for the pub so I decided to go for a walk. I found myself wandering aimlessly to the west past the terrace of chicken and kebab shops and long dreads near the tube station. I crossed the street and headed into virgin territory, I had never been this way before grubby Dutch houses alternative with square 60s offices and the white pavements angulated with cracks and litter. I walked in wall because there was nothing else for me to do and by the breeze the light began to fade. The mouth of an avenue led me to the verge of a long greasy A road that rose up in the far distance with symmetrical terraces falling steeply down and up again from a distant railway station. There were 4 benches to my right interspersed with those strange bushes that grow in the area. These blossoms are so pale yellow they seem translucent, almost spectral , and suddenly tired, I sat down. I held my head in my hands, feeling like shit but a sudden breeze escaped from the terraces and for a moment I lost my thoughts and its unexpected glooms. I looked up and I realized I was sitting in a photograph. I remember clearly this photograph was taken by my mother in 1982 outside our front garden in Hampshire, it was slightly underexposed I was still sitting in the bench but the colors and the plains of the road and the horizon had become the photo but I looked hard and I could see the lines of the window ledge in the original photograph were now composed by a tree branch and the silhouetted edge of a grass barge, the sheens the flash on the window was replicated by gunfire smoke drifting infinitessimally slowly from behind the fence my sisters face had been dimly visible behind the window and yes there were pale stars far off to the west that traced out the lines of a toddlers eyes and mouth. When I look back at this there?s nothing to grasp, no starting point, I was inside an underexposed photo from 1982 but I was also sitting on a bench in Haringey, strangest of all was the feeling of 1982ness, dizzy, illogical as if none of the intervening disasters and wrong turns had happened yet. I felt guilty and inconsolably sad. I felt the instinctive tug back, to school; the memory of shopping malls, cooking, driving in my mothers car, all gone, gone forever. I just sat there for awhile, I was so tired that I didn?t bother trying to work out what was going on. I was happy just to sit in the photo while it was lasted which wasn?t long anyway. The light faded, the wind caught the smoke, the stars dimmed under the glare of the streetlamps. I got up and walked away from the spot of little benches and an oncoming of Garish kids. Our bus was rumbling to my rescue down that hill with a great big Via Alexandra Palace on its front and I realized I did want a drink after all.

(looking at this, there are some errors, which I'm too lazy to fix)

Well played, internet person somewhere!

Red Harvest

Have had a copy of Red Harvest laying around since about 1992, thinking I would get to it someday, and now, almost done, I think it's safe to say that it is a cornerstone of American writing. I mean - 1929! It could have been written a week ago, the tersely unnamed hero is such an unrelenting badass. And barring some of the colorful obsolete lingo ("what's the rumpus?" - Hello, Coens!), of course.

Plot: San Fran detective is hired by Last Honest Man in a gang-divided Montana mining town to come sort some things out, client is DOA when said op arrives, so op decides to take matters in his own hands and SORT THE PLACE THE FUCK OUT.

Hammett's way-concise (yet still detailed enough to create a picture of the place) prose is a slap in the face to such contemporaries as Fitzgerald, who, while amazing, could never, ever be so lean, lean, lean.

Here:

"Red Harvest is the first modern novel." - me, thirty seconds ago. They can put that on the back of a reissue with the ubercool cover above.

Coupla nice things

Pitchfork had this Doves video up and it really is stellar (the acting by the guy at the end is quite good as well):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WS9KDL4hy34




And I don't know what the hell this is about, except it's a tribute duo to PSB from the pop refuge of Sweden. Appears their first LP was all PSB covers (!) and they have been touched by the hand of Neil and Chris who deigned to give them this old castoff (cut from the musical "Closer to Heaven") to do with as they saw fit, and hey!, it's ace:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTnBYTkwen8

That they don't choose to send me tracks to record is, of course, BULLSHIT!

Cocteau twin

Was trying to get a handle on who Tim "$$$" Geithner looked like, or who his shifty-eyed mug reminded me of, particularly his odd brush cut:

(he is saying here: "Free cats will claw their way to the heart of recovery...")

Then I realized it was Jean Cocteau!:

So, um, yeah. I will refrain from an "I've seen it eight times!" "Just Before the War With the Eskimoes" reference. Oops!

Also, Gerry Rafferty of "Baker Street" fame was feared missing or something, according to hyperventilating NME posts...like, how would one know? Anyway, turns out he's fine in Tuscany. We should ALL be so fine.

But I'm not sure I buy it...I think he's actually pulled a Ripley and killed James Lipton and taken his place:

If an episode of Inside the Actor's Studio comes on and "Lipton" asks, say, Aaron Eckhart things like "But would not have In the Company of Men have been better with the Foo Fighters' version of 'Baker Street' on the soundtrack?," you'll know what's up.

Words fail, etc

Busy, busy, busy, after being sick and having a day off for President's day, so lots tomorrow.

Meanwhile:

Death defined

"A complete interruption of sensual relations." - Brillat-Savarin.

Judge Joe Brown

Wednesday morning, I sliced my left index finger open with the serrated edge of a tape gun, blood squirted from affronted digit like the stump-squirts in a horror movie when someone is decapitated...blah, blah. The upshot was I was fine, but was made under the authority of my boss and an ER doc friend to go to das Urgent Cave and get a tetanus booster, one of which I had probably not had since initial dip/tet ca. summer 1969.


Sitting for a couple of hours in the confines of the mallish triage, I never expected to fall in love; but then, I had no idea the staff would have the mighty Judge Joe Brown on in the background.

When I was young, there was the People's Court and all that, and I saw, not more than a month ago, an article somewhere talking about how cheap series of Joe's ilk are big moneymakers because they cost next-to-nothing to produce. But from the lofty climes of a non-tv watcher it was astounding! So THAT's what it's like out there.


The four cases I saw were:

1) girl getting sued by former mother in law for stealing some "clock lamps"... lemme google real quick...

Yeah, similar to this one, but much shittier. At the end of listening to this verbal scrapping, that also involved the defendant's ex-boo, Judge Joe ruled for the defendent, basically telling the mother-in-law she was obnoxious and that the lamps were "trashy."






2.) This case was about a roommate dispute, two young "lovelies" who had met "in the AA program" who had a falling out over a guy they met there (!), causing the defendant to move out and leave alkie the first holding the bag on some bills. It was hot because they talked about "going bowling," which made me think that the old saw about "sober bowling" must be, to an extent, true? I forget who won this one, so I will just say winner: JUSTICE!





3.) By the time the second action-packed half-hour started, I was getting the idea that alcoholics must get into lots of small claims-style fandangos, because case three had two ladies who met in "an Alano club" also carpering over unpaid bills. This was hot because the landlord of the pair looked like Spanky MacFarland and the plaintiff was claiming to be 27 when she was obvs pushing 40. Judge Joe squinted like a cobra at Spanky and again invoked the term "obnoxious." He also wisely stated "Repeated abuse of alcohol can impair memory and judgement!" Tell 'em, Joe!



4.) Case 4...well, what can one say? How about one neighbor (male) suing his neighbor (female) for 100 bucks because her dog ate his kitten, but wait! - there is added animosity because girl neighbor's beau is male neighbor's ex-lover: "He's on the down low and you know it, girl." The nice, affable girl neighbor said "Well, he [points] smokes crack." I was torn about this whole case, because, you know, an actual kitten died so both of these parties involved in the case should be put to death...regardless, there was no proof that the dog did anything and Judge Joe, all King Solomon-like, said Goofy Cat Guy owed Neighbor Girl 1100 bucks for harassment. Maybe she can use the bucks to get more sweats with Fabulous on them in olde English printe [sic].



What else did I learn? Well, that Steve whatever-his-name-is, head security guy on Springer, has his own show...and that The Doctors is just as awful as one would imagine.



Also, semi-relatedly, if you get a tattoo on your neck, you will end up in court.



Bonus:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbVETXBUA_Y

Is this the future you expected?

When I was growing up, it was just after moon missions and such, so when National Geographic would say we were all going to live in orbiting space communities such as:


















Needless to say, this has yet to happen. In fact, the only thing I've noticed about this future we're cascading further into is that no one READS. Harumph!

At least it's not like this (yet)!:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0h4BNqDfnA

Toward a better inexpensive smoked salmon

Stimulus schmimulus! What this country has needed for some time now is a less-expensive package of smoked salmon!

I'm here with the good news, brethren: Trader Joe's has a four oz. package of coho that is truly my new grip (grip terminology c and p 2009 Gabe, with hat tip to hillbilly Sinclair rap kids). It's like 5 bucks! Maybe 3.99! I forget!

So - forget that 9.99 fancy stuff...buy some of this, have it on a bagel or some crusty bread with those caperberries that are just sitting in your fridge and/or a schmeer of fancy mustard.

And I'm NOT going to apologize for this.

Yet MORE insane Watchmen movie detritus!

Just crazy:

Nuh UH!

Gawker has this daft little item on Updike's funeral:

http://gawker.com/5150486/john-updike-sexual-adventurer

John Updike was once a philadandering 'sexual adventurer'?

No way!

The same guy who wrote Couples and a poem called "C-nts"?

Who queried vis-a-vis a neighbor "What color would her p-ssy be?"

John Updike?

Blossom Dearie

Oh, man, Blossom Dearie died!

You know, of:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jeq5a8bBh8c

I wonder: somewhere, maybe Joyce Maynard's book or that May 1997 Esquire article on "Searching for Salinger", but, yes, somewhere, I read that Blossom Dearie was Salinger's favorite singer.

What if, Watchmen-style, someone is picking off people associated with Salinger???

I mean, Updike skewered Franny and Zooey pretty thoroughly (see Assorted Prose).

Indeed, a simple Google image search for Shirley Blaney, who interviewed Jerome for his last public utterances [well, except for a 1974 phoner with the NYT, but it plays into the Myth better to stick with this here other] to the high school paper in Cornish, NH, one gets just pages and pages of the same "terrifying" image:

Something's up.

The Godfather III diet!

If you are looking to lose weight quickly, and don't mind leaving your movie-watching cohorts gilded in egesta, watch The Godfather, Part III.

Watched all of Part II on Friday, like, all of part II in one sitting. So, still on a roll, and feeling charitable, Part III was slid into the player, despite memory and common sense crying out "No! Don't! You will trample on all that has gone before! Those first two? YOU WILL RENOUNCE THEM!," etc.

Let's see, let's go "live" and see how many things I can think of instantly, without trying, that I hated about this...

1. Poor Sofia's miscasting has been covered everywhere, but Christ [of whom more below] almighty. It's cruel.

2. It's supposed to be 1979, but everyone involved looks much more Armani than Robert Hall leisure suit/safari jacket-wear as was the norm and surely would have been among the crimeratti - expect, Coppola is probably trying to underscore how classy his creations are, being all hermetic about it, a la JD and la famille Glass.

3. who gives a shit about Anthony's OPERA career, for God's sake? And the climactic OPERA itself! Such an orgy of Catholic mumbo-jumbo I've scarcely seen outside my mother-in-law's house. Act 1: upstart has a beef with a landowner type, ends in knifeplay. Okay, opera-y so far. Act 2: the entire cast of Amadeus rolls in and stages a crucifixion and for about two seconds Jesus His Own Self appears coming semi-nude down some stairs!

WHAT?

Someone told FFC that he was "real good [sic] at doing those big climaxes with a bunch of stuff going on!" as evinced by Part 1, Part 2, Apocalypse Now, etc. Problem is you have to make the audience CARE ("the twins are dead!" NO!!!).

4. That George Lucas copped his idea for The Phantom Menace from this here epic: "Wait! Coppola came back from a million years off and made Part III about high finance and the Vatican and I can make a Star Wars movie about TARIFFS ON INTERGALACTIC TRADE ROUTES!" Interesting side note: the two times I've tried to watch Phantom Menace, I was foiled by a) extreme drunkenness abetted by watching a bootleg copy bought off the street in New York by a friend there, one of those pre-net things where someone smuggled a fucking camcorder into the theatre [a la that Seinfeld episode] and b.) extreme apathy (and partial drunkenness) wherein I couldn't sit still to watch it, even when I had only paid 1.50 to see it! But I digress.

5. Okay, then, I could go on and on with how this movie is a heartless, soulless exploitation on (the filmmaker's) greed, but it's getting late and my blood pressure will skyrocket if I don't stop thinking about this soon...but the whole ROMANTIC COMEDY PORTION OF OUR STORY WHERE MICHAEL GIVES KAY A TOUR AROUND SICILY AFTER PRETENDING TO BE A CHAUFFEUR AND TURNING AROUND AND, DOFFING DRIVER'S CAP, SAYING "BUON GIORNO!" ALL CHIPPER-LIKE, IS A TRAVESTY!!!

Gotta stop - wait! The last little tacked-on scene of Michael dying alone in Italy somewhere, after making the shift from brush-cut smoothie to a clone of his father, complete with longish hair and sullen "workman" clothes left over from the costume boxes of Reds...THAT sucked. Anthony's heart-felt "Why is this beautiful country so violent??" Yeah, I mean, why?? Oh, and sending Al Neri to kill the crooked, chainsmoking John Hurt-a-like bishop at the Vatican, so he just does, cos, y'know, there's no security or anything. Plus, they wouldn't cough up 5M for Duvall to show up as Tom Hagan, so FUCK THEM!

More tomorrow on this, probably. Still feel sick!

Messed up

SO messed up:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETQ0urHjSIk

2 U hatas

Hey! All you people who think you hate Lily Allen?

That's weak!

Her new record is just adorable. I expect an evisceration from Pitchfork, et al, but that is just because they feel they must sneer.

I would say to anyone who finds faults other than passing trivialities, does your fave songstress dollybird from, say, Stateside use the word "medieval" in song and put out records that have the good, effervescent bounce of prime ELO comboed with loveably just behind-the-times sequencing?

Thought not!

So, again, haters - SHUT IT!

Would my life have been different?

If I had had a Kid Flash costume, how would things have gone differently for me?

Actually, what's really great about this picture is the microphone and the "now, let me say for the record..." hand posturing.

Is Kid Flash a hot property now? I know I was rather shocked to learn that the Justice Society had gotten huge at some point...

Way to go, world!

We've managed to keep it together long enough without immolating the entire world for the single to be heard:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TI3bHzHBX5c

Now: steady on for the whole LP and the Watchmen movie, THEN all bets can be off!

Sweet, sweet viral goodness

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5WsciSNVS0&eurl=http://ragebox.com/dts/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=14850&start=256&feature=player_embedded

Some tee shirts I need:

1. Oh, snap! This is available on ebay. Ibiza-tastic! I've actually worn this back in the day; one of my friends had it and all of our preptastic crap just tended to float around the house, which looked like a tornado had hit an outlet mall (when outlet malls were still good). I also remember wearing this one time when I had almost long hair (!). Sort of a Begbie do. Not great, but the shirt is! *












2.) I need this shirt because in a 1986 Rolling Stone article about LA prep-school gangs (Fight for Freedom!) there was a picture of the murdered story-angle kid wearing one.






3. For Xmas 1986, a friend bought all the girls we knew in our clique these. Dischord-y! Probably were "6.00 POSTPAID," in trad Dischord shipping style.




Anyway, if I am to ease into middle age gracefully, I'm going to need these tees. PM me for addy!

Correction

On further listening to their single "Death," the UK band White Lies are not saying "this fing's got a hold on me" in an adorable Justin Hawkins-style stylee.

It's "this fear's got a hold on me."

Nick Eddy Relents regrets the error.

Newsweek - arbiters of hep threads

Latest Newsweek has an article on how American males are trying to exert a pre-Net masculinity by wearing "real" clothes, or pricey designer facsimiles thereof. First: this is new?

2nd: the main iilustration of said article has some bearded wonder looking like Serj Tankian, bedecked in a plaid shirt, cuffed jeans* and a coat like the one at left.

Like the one I finally disposed of after twelve years of incessant wear last November!

I bought mine in early 1996 at a vintage "shoppe" in our fair dying city. I remember paying 48 bucks for it. I also remember (I think it was President's Day) listening to a TDK100 in my car with Radiohead's The Bends on one side and I'm With Stupid by Aimee Mann on the other.**

I wore this sucker every winter from 1996 through last year...as fall was coming it was generally accepted that Ol' Red (no, I never called the coat this, but am doing so for purposes of this "item") was well and truly shot: lining was torn, inner sleeves were falling out, cuffs were moth-eaten and holey...buttons wouldn't stay buttoned. If you've ever seen an old piece of clothing (?) you can get an idea.

So, one day, out it went (no, I'm not going to say I let my now-wife [who cordially detested said garment] administer a ceremonial coup-de-grace to it before laying it in the trashcan - I'll spare you that).

Now, I'm wearing a mere months-old pea coat and generally looking like a sailor coming home in a 1970's Old Spice commercial.

And I'm happy.

But, still, I wonder: in being so far ahead of the curve on this "trend" and in turn abandoning it before it came to Newsweek's attention, what have I lost? Indeed, where are we ALL going?

* I was guilty of this on occasion ca 1988-90. However, it has been proven that since James Dean, only once has this look been copped to successfully:

** and again: eff that Memory Dude from Today.