Quote For the Day

"Not to say that there can't be true stories in pulps, but most true stories don't have good endings. Pulps need great endings. Mr. Gibson's tale doesn't have a good ending. In fact, it has no ending. The problem with the Tale of the Sweet Flower War is that Mr. Gibson ends it just when it's about to turn into pulp."

Gibson felt his blood rising. "I can't believe you're going to lecture me on what makes great pulp. I am pulp."

"You're not pulp. The Shadow is pulp. Doc Savage is pulp. In fact, I will tell you what makes pulp. Of course there's blood, cruelty, fear, mystery, vengeance, heroes and villains. That's just a good foundation. To make true pulp, really great stomach-churning, white-knuckle, turn-your-hair-white pulp, you have to fill it with a pack of outright lies. Secret identities and disguises." Dent began ticking off the items on his fingers to emphasize the point he was making. "The Yellow Peril. Super-weapons. Global schemes. Hideous deaths. Cliff-hanging escapes. These are the packs of lies you won't find in any slick or glossy or literary hard-cover bestseller. Horrors from the grave. Lost lands. Overwhelming odds. Impossible heroics. Unflagging courage."

---

From The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril by Paul Malmont, wherein the authors of The Shadow and Doc Savage have to solve the mysterious murder of H.P. Lovecraft while L. Ron Hubbard tags along and annoys them. So yeah, I'm already in the tank for this book.

The Man of Bronze & His Fabulous Five

I've posted links to this slideshow elsewhere, but I figured I'd share it here as well, just for kicks. It's my collection of Doc Savage paperbacks. Check them out:



I love Doc Savage. I'm not even sure why, but there's just something awesome about that dude that captivates me. He's a mixture of brains, brawn and bizarre. He's concentrated rad. Doc, along with his pulp hero brethren, are the bridge between stuff like H.G. Welles' sci-fi, Bram Sroker's horror and Arthur Conan Doyles' mysteries and the brightly-colored superheroes that would eventually put them out of business. (For some great meta-commentary on this, pick up Warren Ellis' fantastic Planetary series, which has recently wrapped up and is totally mega-cool. Also, for a look at an attempt to revitalize this type of hero, check out the cult classic The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, which fills me with the same sense of excitement and giddiness when I think about it. Additionally, Philip Jose Farmer's Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life - a fictional biography - is a really great, fun ride. It's the start of his Wold Newton Universe, which manages to tie all of these strains of fantastic fiction together into a cohesive whole.)

And those covers! These books are worth the price I pay for them for the stories those covers conjure. Land of Always-Night? He Could Stop the World? Quest of the Spider? Daaaang. That's some heavy-duty stuff there. Plus the O.C.D. completist inside of me sees those numbers on the covers and wonders, "Can I get them all? I bet I can." I even made a chart in the back of my pocket notebook of which ones I have and which ones I need. I know, I know; I'm nuts. I have a sickness.

I lucked out and found a used bookstore here in Vegas who had a cache of these and wiped them out over the last month or so, worried the whole time that somebody would get to them first because, you know, there's a market our there for decades-old pulp paperbacks? Man, I'm crazy. Hopefully this score should sate my appetite for the next little bit, but uh, if you stumble on any of them while you're out and about (they're usually racked with Sci-Fi, authored by Kenneth Robeson), well, let me know.

Anyway, that's Doc Savage and why I think he's cool.

Aw Yeah

Here's a jam for your day. It's Otis Redding protege Arthur Conley performing his smash hit "Sweet Soul Music," wherein he does a pretty thorough run-down of who's-who in soul. Just a great track, infused with even more energy in this live version. That's the Stax band/Booker T & the MG's backing him up. Ignore the crawl at the bottom of the screen and listen to these dudes roll.



The title is also shared with this book that I'm 3/4ths of the way through. It's a great look at the Atlantic/Stax/Goldwax/etc. period. Recommended if you want to put the era in context.

Keeping Afloat

There's plenty of dumb stuff to talk about.But let's not talk about that. Let's talk about cool stuff. You know, stuff that makes you want to tell other people about. This is the kind of stuff I want to talk about. So, here goes: Cool Stuff I Want To Share With You, My Friends On the Internet:

*****
B O O K S

I've been reading Haruki Murakami's Hardboiled Wonderland And the End of the World and man, this is the business right here. It's one of those books, like Cat's Cradle or The Crying of Lot 49 or VALIS or Pattern Recognition or Seaguy, where I feel like it was written just for me to read. Which I know is totally narcissistic, but still.

It's the story of a Calcutec - a human computer - who is processing some very sensitive information for a secretive, possibly insane scientist. And it's also about a guy who lived in a strange city (which may or may not be the physical representation of the Calcutec's mind) who reads the dreams from the skulls of unicorns. So yeah, this is right up my alley.

I also checked out Betrayal, the first of the Legacy of the Force book series. Yes, that's a Star Wars book. And yes, I know this is not a good thing, that this will only end in shame and disappointment. Don't judge me.

*****
M U S I C

Man, there's been some good music this year. I'm thinking about my "Best Of" mixes* for 2009 and there are a few albums I know will make the cut for sure. Monster Head Room by Ganglians, the Flaming Lips' Embryonic, Isnalds' Vapours and the album pictured at the left, the Dirty Projectors' Bitte Orca.

The first couple of listens gave me a mild sense of vertigo, but once this album hooked itself into my earholes, it hasn't let go. It's dizzying indie mutant blue-eyed R&B. Highly recommended.

*****
T V . O N . D V D

Been watching a lot of The Prisoner, which really doesn't need me to tell it it's awesome, but man, it's awesome. I seriously can't believe something this nutty and flat-out subversive ever made it on the air. It's really weird stuff and totally worth your time if you haven't seen it yet. Sure, there's gonna be the AMC remake, but I have a feeling it'll be too neat, too linear, not fever-dream enough to really capture the vibe of the original. I would be happy to be proven wrong, though.

We've also just watched the second (and final?) series of Flight of the Conchords. Dude, that show ... it's great. The "Prime Minister" episode with Art Garfunkel? Genius.

*****
C O M I C S

Just read the first volume of the Vertigo series Air. It's really good, intriguing stuff. The art's sort of rough in parts, but the story's solid and, hey, it's a Vertigo book; the art is *always* crappy in Vertigo books. Except for The Losers, but even that sort of fell apart once jock left. But anyway, Air. It's about a flight attendant who's afraid of heights. And, uh, teleportation, forgotten countries and secret societies. And Quetzalcoatl.

There's a fair comparison with Lost in that it's a big, weird thing wrapped in a somewhat standard package, so yeah, I'm on board. I was a little worried about it getting canceled before it really got enough story out of the way, but again, it's a Vertigo book. They published Lucifer for like, ever and it was never in the Top 20 or anything, so hopefully, it's safe for a while.

I'm also loving the heck out of Batman & Robin. But then again, I'm totally retarded for Grant Morrison so maybe I'm a bit biased, but it's dang good dayglo superhero comicbookery.

And now I ask all y'all comic nerds out there: what else is really good right now. And if any of you say Blackest Night, I will throat-punch you. You have been warned.

*****
T E L E V I S I O N

NBC's really got Thursday night locked down, right? Dang, that is one satisfying night of comedy. I mean, I'm sad as hell that Kath & Kim is gone (I think I was literally the only person in America who thought that show was good, but oh well), but from Community to Parks & Recreation to The Office and finally 30 Rock, it's a string of really great television.

And yeah, you can argue that The Office has jumped the shark and it hasn't been the same since Jim and Pam got together and blahblahblah, but let's be honest, The Office has always been just pretty good. I mean, I think a lot of people were just surprised that it worked, what with being based on the much funnier and impossible to replicate British version. So when like, the wedding episode sort of fell apart at the end or that episode after that one where Jim and Pam were on their honeymoon and it sort of just wandered around for a half hour, I don't get all worked up because it's not like it hasn't had a good run, you know? And even if it's not perfect, it's still way funnier than something like Three and A Half Men.

But yeah, I'm loving Community's (it's like Stripes: the College Years, isn't it?) and Parks & Rec's getting better every week and 30 Rock ... oh, 30 Rock, you had me at "chuckle hut."

And yeah, I like Glee. Why? Why does this show work? I don't know, but it does. And okay, let me just say this and hope one of the producer's is reading: The more Jane Lynch, the better the episode. That's just science. And you can't argue with science.

*****
M O V I E S

If you're looking for a good indie adventure/comedy, go and Redbox The Brothers Bloom. It's not perfect, but it's a fun little film, well-acted, well-written, well-directed. It's sort of like if Wes Anderson directed a con man movie written by the guy who wrote Harold & Maude, if that makes any sense. See it. I mean, it's Mark Ruffalo, Adrien Brody and Rachael Weisz. What more do you need to know?

*****

And that's what's getting me all lathered up these days, pop-culture-wise. How about you?


* How about those? Are they worth it? Should I do it the same way this year, with a Top Ten Favorites and an Honorable Mentions? Let me know.

Dance, Monkey, Dance

So, I'm really trying to not be all "So, I haven't posted in a week," and then explain why in tedious detail. You don't care about all that, right? You just want to be entertained. You just need something to pop up on your internets that will make your day a little brighter. You just want the monkey to dance. "Dance, monkey! DANCE!" you cry from the audience, your voices shrill and raspy, your breath tasting of aluminum and defeat.

And I dance. Oh, how I dance. I shred the spotlight like wet crepe paper, my dervish all a'whirl and my lucidity fading as I break on through like Jim Morrison or Grant Morrison or Toni Morrison or Morris the Cat from those 9 Lives commercials. I dance in a trance in my corduroy pants to music that makes no sense and in any case, it's not audible. Not to earth-people, at least. We have crossed the threshold between reality, fantasy and New Jersey. Where we're going we don't need roads. Only blog posts. Posts of sturdy bloggage with which we will build the log cabin of dreams in the territory of fantasy in the township of unreality, off the coast of make-believe where imaginary dolphins play.

So yeah, let's do this thing. Let's blog. Let us get our blog on like the star-crossed mamma-jammas we are and always will be, forever and ever. Let's get our blog on:

* We watched Fishing With John over the last couple of nights. It's brilliant. You can read about it here and you can catch most, if not all, of the episodes on the YouTubes. I highly recommend the Tom Waits and Willem Dafoe episodes. Also, I am now John Lurie's (the John of the title) Facebook friend. So basically, I'm more famous that you.

* My new goal in life is to find this book and feast up on it's secret knowledge. Judging just by the cover, I can safely say that that could be the raddest book ever written.

* I'm reading Volume 2 of the Jack Kirby Fourth World Omnibus collections, and I will continue to tout the genius of Jack Kirby. Seriously,there is some mind-bendingly radical stuff in those pages.

* The new Franz Ferdinand and M. Ward albums are pretty excellent.

* Did you download Dave's mix yet? No? Why not? You really should. Also, why didn't you make a mix last month? I, like David Bowie, am very disappointed in you.

* Make sure to watch out for chimpanzees. Seriously, this is terrifying.

* I've been listening to a lot of This American Life while I'm work-work-workin' and I must say, that is a fine radio program. Although I must confess that am now 82% whiter than I was before I started on my rigorous TAL regiment. So be careful.

* I'm also back on the All Songs Considered podcast and have been sampling the Sound Opinions podcast as well. Again, it will make you significantly whiter, but you're risk-takers. I can see it in your eyes.

* Let's see, what else? Oh yeah, I read some good books: John Hodgman's The Areas Of My Expertise and Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers. I also picked up a collection of H.P. Lovecraft's stories, but have been too scared to crack it's spine. It's hard to unwind while reading tales of cosmic horror, y'know?

* Lost is kicking some major butt, innit? I'm super stoked for tonight's episode, where Ben and Jack have to team up with Magnum, P.I. to help break Matlock out of prison after he was falsely accused of murdering one of the Golden Girls (the sexy one) by Jessica Fletcher and the Simon with a mustache from Simon & Simon. It's totally gonna rule.

Aaaand that's it for now. Leave yr love in the comments.

Lisa Librarian

I've already gone on & on about Cleveland's libraries, but I'm gonna keep going. I stopped in at the city and county libraries tonight (I know, I'm crazy, but it's fun) and left with a bunch more stuff than I planned on. Here's the books I left with:



Books • From L to R:

All Star Batman & Robin, the Boy Wonder, vol. 1 - Total car crash curiosity here, folks. I just want to see how mangled the bodies are because I'm a sick sick sick human being. Reading anything Frank Miller wrote after the first volume of Sin City is like eating a Double Whopper: I know I'll regret it, but still I must ingest it.

Tales From the Farm - Eddie Argos of Art Brut wrote a very favorable piece about this in his Pow! To the People column a while back, so that's good enough for me.

Have You Seen... - I had no idea this book was going to be this gigantic when I put it on hold. It's flippin' massive, innit? you could kill an intruder with it, if you can lift it over your head, that is. And if you can, you'll get a certificate signed by President Bush and Arnold Schwarzenegger because you passed the Presidential Physical Fitness exam. Also, I think you get to be the next King Of England. Lucky!

Bone, Vol. 8: Treasure Hunters - The latest Scholastic Graphix reprint of the classic indie comics series. In color! It's sort of like Lord Of the Rings, only cuter. Recommended, especially if you have kids.

Limits Of Power - Saw the author talking about this book on Bill Moyer's Now on PBS. Yeah, I just name-dropped PBS on all y'all. I'm like all cultured and whatnot.

Phoenix, vol. 2: the Future - I just read the first volume of this series and, well, it's manga. And I'm not a huge manga guy. I've read and enjoyed like three manga series: Yousuba&!, Planetes and Akira. But this is a multi-generational tale about life and mortality and all that stuff, told by a guy who just knows how to work the medium of the comic book like a champion (Astro Boy creator Osamu Tezuka). It's a little weird, but still, the scope and playfulness of the series have me sticking with it at least through this volume. We'll see how it goes from there.



Movies • From L to R:

Paycheck - I just really loved this Philip K. Dick story when I read it and thought it would make a pretty excellent movie. I'm sure this is not a pretty excellent movie, but it's worth a look, right? John Woo, Uma, B.Aff and Aaron Eckhart in a sci-fi action film? Yeah, I'll watch it.

Solaris - Soderberg and Clooney doing brainy sci-fi. I'll bite.

Melinda & Melinda - So I can cross it off my list of "Woody Allen Movies I Have Yet To See." I'm sure it's a travesty, but I don't care. I love Woody Allen. Even bad Woody Allen is better than 90% of anything else.

Straw Dogs - Which I thought was Marathon Man when I picked it up, but this is 70's Dustin Hoffman being directed by king of violence, Sam Peckinpah, so no worries.

Masked & Anonymous - Written and directed by Bob Dylan. Starring Jeff Bridges, Luke Wilson and John Goodman. Um, written and directed by Bob Dylan? So yeah, I'm pretty much curious at the very least.

1408 - Any movie is made better by the inclusion of a Cusack. That's just a law of the universe, people.

There Will Be Blood - Any movie with Daniel Day Lewis is bound to be a good time. The guy is just flat-out hilarious.

*******

So, what did you get the last time you were at the library? Do share...

Fishing For Kilgore Trout

As long as I'm reposting content, I may as well repost this, which I StumbleUpon-ed. It appears in Palm Sunday, a collection of essays and miscellany from Kurt Vonnegut, AKA: My Favorite Writer Ever. As I am thinking of embarking on a piece of fiction of some sort, it was nice to run across this while tripping across the Internet. Let me know what you think:

*******

How to Write With Style
by Kurt Vonnegut

Newspaper reporters and technical writers are trained to reveal almost nothing about themselves in their writings. This makes them freaks in the world of writers, since almost all of the other ink-stained wretches in that world reveal a lot about themselves to readers. We call these revelations, accidental and intentional, elements of style.

These revelations tell us as readers what sort of person it is with whom we are spending time. Does the writer sound ignorant or informed, stupid or bright, crooked or honest, humorless or playful? And on and on.

Why should you examine your writing style with the idea of improving it? Do so as a mark of respect for your readers, whatever you're writing. If you scribble your thoughts any which way, your readers will surely feel that you care nothing about them. They will mark you down as an egomaniac or a chowderhead - or, worse, they will stop reading you.

The most damning revelation you can make about yourself is that you do not know what is interesting and what is not. Don't you yourself like or dislike writers mainly for what they choose to show you or make you think about? Did you ever admire an emptyheaded writer for his or her mastery of the language? No.

So your own winning style must begin with ideas in your head.

1. Find a subject you care about

Find a subject you care about and which you in your heart feel others should care about. It is this genuine caring, and not your games with language, which will be the most compelling and seductive element in your style.

I am not urging you to write a novel, by the way - although I would not be sorry if you wrote one, provided you genuinely cared about something. A petition to the mayor about a pothole in front of your house or a love letter to the girl next door will do.

2. Do not ramble, though

I won't ramble on about that.

3. Keep it simple

As for your use of language: Remember that two great masters of language, William Shakespeare and James Joyce, wrote sentences which were almost childlike when their subjects were most profound. "To be or not to be?" asks Shakespeare's Hamlet. The longest word is three letters long. Joyce, when he was frisky, could put together a sentence as intricate and as glittering as a necklace for Cleopatra, but my favorite sentence in his short story "Eveline" is this one: "She was tired." At that point in the story, no other words could break the heart of a reader as those three words do.

Simplicity of language is not only reputable, but perhaps even sacred. The Bible opens with a sentence well within the writing skills of a lively fourteen-year-old: "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth."

4. Have guts to cut

It may be that you, too, are capable of making necklaces for Cleopatra, so to speak. But your eloquence should be the servant of the ideas in your head. Your rule might be this: If a sentence, no matter how excellent, does not illuminate your subject in some new and useful way, scratch it out.

5. Sound like yourself

The writing style which is most natural for you is bound to echo the speech you heard when a child. English was Conrad's third language, and much that seems piquant in his use of English was no doubt colored by his first language, which was Polish. And lucky indeed is the writer who has grown up in Ireland, for the English spoken there is so amusing and musical. I myself grew up in Indianapolis, where common speech sounds like a band saw cutting galvanized tin, and employs a vocabulary as unornamental as a monkey wrench.

In some of the more remote hollows of Appalachia, children still grow up hearing songs and locutions of Elizabethan times. Yes, and many Americans grow up hearing a language other than English, or an English dialect a majority of Americans cannot understand.

All these varieties of speech are beautiful, just as the varieties of butterflies are beautiful. No matter what your first language, you should treasure it all your life. If it happens to not be standard English, and if it shows itself when your write standard English, the result is usually delightful, like a very pretty girl with one eye that is green and one that is blue.

I myself find that I trust my own writing most, and others seem to trust it most, too, when I sound most like a person from Indianapolis, which is what I am. What alternatives do I have? The one most vehemently recommended by teachers has no doubt been pressed on you, as well: to write like cultivated Englishmen of a century or more ago.

6. Say what you mean

I used to be exasperated by such teachers, but am no more. I understand now that all those antique essays and stories with which I was to compare my own work were not magnificent for their datedness or foreignness, but for saying precisely what their authors meant them to say. My teachers wished me to write accurately, always selecting the most effective words, and relating the words to one another unambiguously, rigidly, like parts of a machine. The teachers did not want to turn me into an Englishman after all. They hoped that I would become understandable - and therefore understood. And there went my dream of doing with words what Pablo Picasso did with paint or what any number of jazz idols did with music. If I broke all the rules of punctuation, had words mean whatever I wanted them to mean, and strung them together higgledy-piggledy, I would simply not be understood. So you, too, had better avoid Picasso-style or jazz-style writing, if you have something worth saying and wish to be understood.

Readers want our pages to look very much like pages they have seen before. Why? This is because they themselves have a tough job to do, and they need all the help they can get from us.

7. Pity the readers

They have to identify thousands of little marks on paper, and make sense of them immediately. They have to read, an art so difficult that most people don't really master it even after having studied it all through grade school and high school - twelve long years.

So this discussion must finally acknowledge that our stylistic options as writers are neither numerous nor glamorous, since our readers are bound to be such imperfect artists. Our audience requires us to be sympathetic and patient readers, ever willing to simplify and clarify - whereas we would rather soar high above the crowd, singing like nightingales.

That is the bad news. The good news is that we Americans are governed under a unique Constitution, which allows us to write whatever we please without fear of punishment. So the most meaningful aspect of our styles, which is what we choose to write about, is utterly unlimited.

8. For really detailed advice

For a discussion of literary style in a narrower sense, in a more technical sense, I recommend to your attention The Elements of Style, by William Strunk, Jr. and E.B. White. E.B. White is, of course, one of the most admirable literary stylists this country has so far produced.

You should realize, too, that no one would care how well or badly Mr. White expressed himself, if he did not have perfectly enchanting things to say.

In Sum:

1. Find a subject you care about

2. Do not ramble, though

3. Keep it simple

4. Have guts to cut

5. Sound like yourself

6. Say what you mean

7. Pity the readers

Quote For the Day

Read this on the train on my ride/walk home today. I love me some Harry Reid:

"Ever since the ascendancy of Ronald Reagan in 1980, it has been popular and easy for candidates to run against Washington and the very institutions they are seeking to lead. For these titans of public service, these profiles in courage, the more viciously you can tear our government down, the better. An entire generation of politicians had learned that cynical lesson so well that in 2000 we elected a President for whom this government-is-the-enemy notion was an article of faith. Well, during his presidency this simple-minded political credo has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Their logic has been circular: A) Government can't do anything right, so, B) elect us, and we'll prove it to you.

"This political strategy has been a disastrous success.

"The problem with this approach, of course, is that it attempts to obscure the fact that the American government is the greatest force for good in the history of mankind. No amount of cheap political demagoguery will change that fact. But when you so degrade the institutions of our government, you play a very dangerous game, because when you have the power of the presidency, you can make it thus. When you say, over and over, that government is the problem, it becomes the problem. So much so that when you are in charge of it, you don't know how to run it. And you have such contempt for its functions that you appoint partisan hacks to run lifesaving agencies, which is what President Bush did when he appointed Michael Brown to run FEMA, and Brown was then revealed as incompetent in the critical days after Hurricane Katrina wiped out much of the central Gulf Coast in late August 2005.

"I am as much a believer in the genius of the American free-enterprise system as anyone, but it was not the market that built the Interstate Highway System, sent a man to the moon, or conceived of Social Security, the greatest social program since the fishes and the loaves. It was not the market that saved the planet in two world wars or dammed mighty rivers to electrify Appalachia and the West. Those things, and so many others, were brought to you by the genius of the American government. And what is the American government but an expression of the will of the the American people? The Republicans sometimes talk about our government as if it's some kind of alien landing craft, come to impose an alien order. This, of course, is paranoid nonsense. It is this kind of thinking that ought to be considered alien. Because when we've got elected officials in Washington so blinded by ideology that they cannot abide the thought of government helping someone - like, for instance, insuring an uninsured child - then something is terribly wrong. And when at the same time you've got right-wing activists given carte blanche in the halls of power, such as Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform, whose favorite saying is that he wants to shrink the government to a sufficient size so that it might be drowned in a bathtub, then you've got a recipe for disaster. A recipe for a diminished America. You begin to do serious harm to the very idea of American greatness."

From The Good Fight: From Searchlight to Washington
By Harry Reid with Mark Warren
Pp. 66-68

Something For the Weekend

You may recall that I purchased Kung Fu: The Year Of the Tiger by Lee Chang recently. You know, the book described on the front cover as "The most thrilling, action-packed series ever published!" Yeah, that's it right there; to the left. See. Awesome, right? Well, it is. What? You don't believe me? Okay then, let me convince you by reading (or, uh, typing) a randomly selected passage from this, the pinnacle of Western (Eastern?) literature:

That's when Gus saw that there were three men in the cab!

And that's when Mace turned to him, and the surprised Yard foreman saw that he was staring at - a Chinese!

Gus couldn't say any more! He felt only a flash of intense pain in his throat and then fell into a choking blackness.

Mace had swung around and tomahawked him across the Adam's apple!

I know, I know, it's incredible. Good luck finding any other copies. I did a quick glance online for #2 (this one's labeled as #1 and they refer to it as a "series" on the cover, so there must be more, right? Please say"yes"!) but came up empty. In any case, I'll be posting quotes every now and then. Maybe you artistic guys and gals out there will submit some illustrations? Maybe?

Man Of Muscle Mystery

There's a bookstore near our office we refer to as "The Crazy @$$ Bookstore." It's a total, glorious mess. There's a desk in the middle of the store where the owner sits with his cats, barely visible over the piles of paperbacks and haggard hardbacks. Books literally crammed in there from floor to ceiling, with something inexplicably awesome just waiting to be discovered. (One of the better books we ran across in one of our lunch break breeze-throughs was titled I Love People, which is either some sort of sales handbook or a recipe book for cannibals. Not sure which.) I found a bunch of literary mini-magazines titled The Phillistine from the late 19th century there a while back. It's musty, disorganized and cramped.

It's basically an amazing place.

A month or so ago, we got the news that it was closing down. This was rough news to our office, as we regularly would go an peruse the shelves after lunch, scoring weird books on invertebrates and whatnot. The bookstore had fallen on hard times and as a small, eccentric bookstore in a town whose economy was already hurting, well, this prelude to a Recession we've been experiencing coupled with the shift of consumer focus to big chain retailers and the Internet proved too perfect of a storm for this tiny, weird store to weather. Sadness reigned.

There was a big "Going Out Of Business" sale last month at which time I found five (!) Doc Savage (!!) paperbacks (!!!), a 1960's Physics textbook and a copy of sci-fi short story collection titled, incredibly enough, Teenage Super Science Stories. It is as awesome as it sounds.

Well, it's been a month now and the poor guy's still moving out. I'd imagine it will take him at least another one until he's finally all dug out. He's still selling stuff, so we went over after lunch this last week to see what could be seen. I scored a paperback of 1970's Flash Gordon newspaper strip reprints, a Dick And Jane-style writing handbook from the 50's and a copy of Kung Fu, Vol 1: Year Of the Tiger, by Lee Chang, who is apparently the most raddest person who ever walked the earth. ("The most thrilling, action-packed series ever published!" according to the cover, and believe me, it is. You will be hearing more about this. Stay tuned.)

I also bought found this picture, sitting lonely on top of a box of books. I had to bring it home with me. It looked so sad there, all discarded and forgotten and lost. Somebody obviously put a lot of work and love into it - this portrait of their hero - and it deserved a home. I know who it's supposed to be, it had the name carefully scrawled beneath it, but I realized that if I covered it up, it was reeeealy hard to tell who it was supposed to be. Can you guess? Take a look:



Winner gets a mounted color print mailed to them. Lemme know if I need to start giving hints. Good luck!

Quote For the Day

"But I could never see Brian running around like the Beatles in [A Hard Day's Night]. I didn't read the fanzines - Tiger Beat and that stuff. Rolling Stone was years away, so were Crawdaddy and Creem magazines. But I read the liner notes on the Beach Boys' albums and Brian always sounded very serious. Dennis had a hot rod and a motorcycle and even then I knew he was the one the girls went weak over. Carl was a pudgy guy, too gentle. Al looked like an extra on Route 66. Mike reminded me of a guy who could stand in for Eddie Haskell on Leave It to Beaver. And Brian - Brian was off somewhere writing songs, carrying the load."

- Jim Fusilli
Pet Sounds
33 1/3 Series.

Quote For the Day

"We'd lie to clubs and say we were a Top 40 band. It was rare if we got to play through the whole night. It incited people to want to get in fights with us. We'd go, 'Here's another song by Foghat, it's called "Mongoloid".'"

*******

Mark Mothersbaugh of Devo
from Babylon's Burning: From Punk To Grunge
by Clinton Heylin

My Brain Is Bigger Now Than It Was Then

The following is a list of things I learned this weekend, in no particular order:

1. Death Cab For Cutie frontman Ben Gibbard is a lot skinnier than I thought he was. And poor Chris Walla, dude is the ever-lovin' backbone of that group but nobody knows who he is. And BTW, the Death Cab set freaking rocked! I was seriously expecting a much more mellow affair, but they pretty much tore the roof off the Plain Dealer Pavilion. Candace has a pretty awesome picture here. It was a great night.

2. There are two white tent performing arts amphitheaters in the Flats. One is the Time Warner Amphitheater and it's on the east side of the Cuyahoga River, near Tower City. The other is the Plain Dealer Pavilion and it's on the west side of the river in the Flats proper. If you mix them up, you're screwed and will miss the opening act of the concert (sorry, Rogue Wave) you are attending and you will be more than a little irritated because you thought you knew where you were going but in fact, you did not. Because you are stupid and didn't Google Map it first.

Duh.

3. Barbecue pork sandwiches are delicious.

4. I love being a dad. I love my wife and I love my girls. They're the bestest ever.

5. There's a band that sounds so much like late 60's-early 70's Beach Boys that it is freaking spooky. Their debut album is this week's AOK!: The Explorers Club's Freedom Wind.

I'd love to label them all a bunch of unoriginal hacks, but they're too dang good and obviously reverential to the ghost of Brian Wilson to be dismissed. If you love the Beach Boys like I do (And you really should. Seriously, go find a copy of Wild Honey, Pet Sounds or Smile and prepare for a solid mind-blowing), go check them out. It's eerie. It's like seeing someone who looks like someone you know but you know it's not that person and you keep trying to tell yourself "Well, it can't be that person because the eyes are the wrong color but dang! They look exactly like that other person I know! This is so eerie!"

It's like that.

6. This whole blog phenomenon is really taking off. Seriously, folks, it's going to be HUGE! I predict that in five years, everyone in the whole world will have a blog. Everyone. And not just those Early Adopters John, Ben and Brandt. Ehv. Ree. Wun. Get on this fad now before it's not cool anymore.

7. Also going to be huge: Hypercolor shirts. You heard it here first.

8. And speaking of Early Adopters, I learned how to use the torrents this weekend. I am now the Torrent Master™. The Internets has no idea what is about to hit it.

9. That new Mike Myers movie looks really terrible, doesn't it? Like "I think that trailer gave me eye herpes," terrible.

10. Who watches the Tony awards? Seriously? Anybody wanna cop to it? I promise I won't make too much fun of you. I watched roughly 2.5 seconds of it as I was flipping through and it gave me gas. Me + Musicals = Not A Good Scene.

11. So, how awesome is Burn After Reading looking? Brad Pitt, John Malkovich, George Clooney, that creepy albino lady Tilda Swinton, Frances McDormand (of course), plus the always reliable J.K. Simmons and ... (wait for it) ... the dude who played Sledge Hammer!, quite possibly my favorite show on television, ever. There's a "red band" trailer (with some swearing - you have been warned!) here. Oh man, I so love the Coen brothers.

12. TV sure does suck this summer, doesn't it? Is there anything worth watching that isn't a repeat? And if you say American Gladiators I swear I will punch you in the throat as hard as humanly possible. That's right, I will punch you THROUGH THE INTERNET! It's my mutant power and it's more useful than you'd think.

13. Looks like I won't be bothering with M. Night Shammalammading-dong's The Happening. Poor guy. He's like the cool guy in high school who peaked way too early and you see him like ten years later at the grocery store or something and he's all bald and unkempt and smelly and just generally depressing but totally unaware that he's not cool anymore. Poor guy. I feel for him, really I do.

14. Cleveland had a pretty happening proto-punk scene in the 70's. I actually knew this but had forgotten until I was reading about teh US proto-punk scene in Clinton Heylin's (so far) excellent Babylon's Burning: From Punk To Grunge. I'd recommend his From the Velvets To the Voidoids: The Birth of American Punk Rock and Bootleg: The Secret History of the Other Recording Industry to any aspiring rock and roll history student. Seriously, if I could read about rock and roll for the rest of my life, I'd be happy. Is that weird?

15. Nobody loves Haiku Friday. This makes me sad. Please won't you love it? Please?

16. I love my dad. A lot. He probably can't beat up your dad, but he'd give it his best shot. Because that's how he rolls.

What did you learn this weekend? Please share with the class.

Like, uh, Stuff and Stuff...

* I had a pretty great Memorial Day weekend, all told. How was yours?

* Watched I'm Not There last night and loved it to bits. It's bold and messy and brilliant. The only story that I didn't cotton to was the more conventional biopic section starring Heath Ledger and Charlotte Gainsbourg, though even that was well put-together. I would love to watch two hours of the Billy the Kid/Riddle County/Basement Tapes story though. When the giraffe walks into the frame?! I gasped. Totally amazing. And Cate Blanchett, oh man, I loves her. It's a heckuva movie and highly recommended, though I would be interested what someone who isn't freaking named after the Man thought of it.

* I have nothing to read on the train tomorrow, as I finished up the second-to-last Invisibles trade I had tonight while Candace sewed. WTH?! What am I going to do?!

* We went out for our anniversary to La Dolce Vita in Cleveland's Little Italy over the weekend and had a lot of fun and delicious pasta. And this weird appetizer that Candace wanted to get but I didn't really like but it had prosciutto in it so I ate that. Prosciutto is yummy. Also got some pretty terrific cannolis at a bakery there. I love cannolis almost as much as I love my lady. And I love my lady like a lot.

* And I guess that's it. I know, exciting, right? Such is the life of a jet-setter like me...

This Could Get Ugly

This weekend I read my first 33 1/3 series book, Douglas Wolk's look at James Brown's Live at the Apollo.

I can see this easily becoming a problem.

In case you don't know what the 33 1/3 series is, it' sort of like the Criterion Collection only for music. The publisher seeks out writers and musicians to write something, anything on what they consider a seminal album. I just started Colin Meloy's Let It Be (the Replacements Let It Be, not either of the Beatles' Let It Be), a sweet memoir of growing up in Helena, Montana.

So let's do some math: music/writing about music + well-designed pocket-sized books + my partial completist OCD = can you see why this is problematic for someone like me? I mean, they couldn't have concocted a better plan to take my money. According to Wikipedia there's only 56 books in the series (so far!) and my Amazon wish list contains, oh, 45 of them. I have no clue who Throbbing Gristle is, but I sure do want to read the book on their 20 Jazz Funk Greats album. I've already put three more on hold at the library (one on Guided By Voices masterpiece Bee Thousand, another on Neutral Milk hotel's In the Aeroplane Over the Sea as well as Joe Pernice's novella inspired by the Smiths' Meat Is Murder). The Amazon trolling started this morning with the idea that I should just buy the first one (Dusty In Memphis) and take it from there. You should probably start coordinating the intervention now.

Dang! This is why I have never bought any old Doc Savage paperbacks (even though I really want to, like badly), because I know I'll want all of them. Like Pokemon. Oh man. I'm in trouble.

Anyway, if you're interested, the 33 1/3 series is pretty great, though totally addictive. You have been warned.

Some Things To Consider:

1. I was a lot better at the lists than I am at this letter thing. Maybe I should have written/shared letters like Patti did? I could have written a letter to Neil Armstrong or William Shatner. Is it too late to change? We'll see what next month's NaBloPoMo challenge is and see if I can get behind it.

2. Was that guy on the train seriously sneering at the fact that I was reading Colbert's I Am America (& So Can You!)? Do people not get the joke? To be fair, when I saw him interviewed by Bill O'Reilly, I had a hard time telling them apart.

3. I'm selling my CD collection. I still need to list about 100 of them on Amazon. I saved some: the Flaming Lips' 4-disc masterpiece Zaireeka, The Visible Man - remix album of David Byrne's Feelings album, my Pet Sounds Sessions box set, but it's been a lot easier than I thought it would be. I just don't want to hang on too long and then be that guy with a really awesome laserdisc collection that is, effectively, worthless.

5. You know what an excellent word is? "Colophon."

6. Tomorrow night's TV is going to rockrockrock. 9:00p - 9:30p: The Office. 9:30p - 10:00p: 30 Rock. 10:00p - 11:00p: Lost. Me = In Heaven.

7. Colin Meloy's (of the overly-literary, but still good, the Decemberists) former alt-country (!) band, Tarkio, is really dang good. I think that if I had heard them before the Decemberists, I'd have had an easier time getting into the, uh, Decemberists, if that makes sense. I used "the Decemberists" too many times in that last sentence. If you're curious, I included a track in May's BRRmix. Which leads me to...

8. I finished May's mix. You can preview the album art here. I'm seriously tempted to post it now, but won't no matter how much you clamor for it because that will make May feel that much longer. It's all about the anticipation, right, Jesse? Anyway, this month's mix is (obviously) titled Folk Star. Folky, strumm-y, rock-y, a little goofy? I like it. That's the important part, right? I mean, you get what you pay for, free-loaders!

9. There is nothing on TV on Wednesday nights. Nothing!!!

10. I want one of these. Maybe two. They are freaking adorable. Like a kitten riding a unicorn through a field of daisies while eating an ice cram cone made from pink fluffy clouds.

11. Why can't we have a meal where we just eat cake? Don't you think that would make everybody just a little happier? I'm pretty sure that there are no problems in life or the world that cannot be solved with the addition of cake. Or cheesy salsa. ¡Con queso!

12. I think this 33 1/3 book series is pretty cool. I just put Joe Pernice's Meat Is Murder, Colin Meloy's ("More Meloy?", you say? Oh, you betcha.) Let It Be (the Replacements one, not the Beatles one, though they're both excellent) and Douglas Wolk's Live At the Apollo on hold at the library. Wheee!

13. I'm excited for this show. The venue's right down by the Cuyahoga (good thing it's not spontaneously catching on fire anymore!) river on a summer evening. Should be really nice.

14. I'm not superstitious, but I really didn't want this list to end on number 13 so I'll just leave you with this little quiz: "Who would win in a fight and why: a pissed-off grizzly bear protecting her cubs or a pissed-off Iggy Pop protecting his heroin?" Please answer below.

The Year We Make Contact

I just found out that Arthur C. Clarke died. I'm sort of bummed. If you haven't read 2001, 2010, 2060 or 3001, you really should. They're totally bonkers. In a good way.

The Book I Read Was In Your Eyes

I like going to bookstores and libraries. I could, and have, spent hours browsing the spines and covers that live in either one. Why? Because I like judging books by their covers. Well, and their titles. I know my mother (and most likely yours, unless you don't have a mother because you were grown in a vat or something, in which case, good for you, I guess.) always warned against such practices, but she also told me my face would "stick like that," that my friends all wanted to jump off of bridges and that the Tooth Fairy was real. Moms lie. Sorry kids, but they do.

The fun of browsing for me is guessing what the book, given its title and cover, is about. Obviously, the visual component for me is a big factor, but a good title can spark a lot of imaginary stories just as well. The following are some made-up book titles for books/stories I will write (someday):

Mister Herman And His Magical Chocolate Pie

The Catcher's Mitt

Doom City

Margarine In the Sun

Loopy's Lament

Godzilla Was A Baller

Nobody Is Better Than Nobody

The Spilt-Milk-Maid

The Erotic Adventures Of Captain Kangaroo

1,000,000 + 1

Blowgun Drills

Underground Beatbox

Memoirs Of A Goofball

Afternoons Of Ping Pong and Death!

The Amazing Adventures Of AdventureBoy, etc.

Boogie Like You Mean It

Thirty-Second Century Wildman In Chains

Solace Solstice

The Sodapop Paradox

Our Parents' Horsefeathers

Kung Fu Hipster & the Ghosts Of Uncool

They Went To Space

Building A Castle (Notes From the Toothpick Wars)

The Plywood Brigade

and finally...

Burt Reynolds Toupee' Tried To Kill Me

Which would you read? Does anybody else do this? Is it just me?

Something To Think About

As bad as life can get, at least you're not this guy:

Or this guy:

Or this guy:

Oh, beloved internets, how did we survive without you for so long? I mean, where else can you get pictures like this? Books? I think not. Those librarians (or as I like to call them: "the Birkenstock Brain Police") and their high-falutin' ideals on what is and isn't "literature" would never let their precious Dewey Decimal System be sullied by a book on unfortunate facial hair, mullets and orange Elvis impersonators. Trust me on this one. I mean, I went to the trouble of making the book (well, okay I just stapled all my loose pages of yellowed print-outs, photocopies and scribbled, half-intelligible ramblings/rantings together between two pieces of construction paper with the title: At Least You're Not This Guy: Unfortunate Facial Hair, Mullets and Orange Elvises; Why America Is Greatest There Is - A Chronicle of Radness In the 21st Century. Also Includes Some Awesome Recipes. And An Exclusive Interview With the Ghost Of El Santo. By Dylan "Aw Hecks Yeah" Todd, Professional Breakdance Aficionado and Collector Of Lando Calrissian Action Figures), the least they can do is make it available to the public. I mean, come on! I pay my taxes! I eat my vegetables! I can eat 23 Oreos in one sitting! What are you uptight NPR-listening-to ninnies afraid of? A little truth? Is that too much for your sweater-vest-clad soul to digest? Huh!?

Fascists.

Quote For the Day

"If you really want to hurt your parents, and you don't have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts. I'm not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something"

Kurt Vonnegut
A Man Without A Country