hey, we all give off light now

Tuesday night over the pool.

The Records, Smashes, Crashes, and Near Misses
Raspberries, Fresh
Love & Rockets, Express and Seventh Dream of Teenage Heaven
Roddy Doyle, "The Hens" from the forthcoming McSweeney's 38 via the McSweeney's app
The Red Bulletin, (iPad magazine)
Valencia (iPad magazine)
Kevin Brockmeier, The Illumination
Wilco, "I Might" from their website
Crocodiles, Sleep Forever
The Jesus and Mary Chain, Honey's Dead
The Cure, 4:13 Dream

• Reading: Day bleeds into night into day again with this playlist, the light pouring out of each little laceration like in The Illumination. I'm just into it; I like how he demonstrates how easily we would work into our routine something as shocking like hey, we all give off light now. Weird... Roddy Doyle's story in the forthcoming McSweeney's (available on their app) is a hoot. Is he always like that? I've never read him but am pre-immersing myself in Modern Irish for a trip this Christmas and thought he might be the one to turn to.
  
  
• Publishing: And speaking of reading, the Red Bulletin is trash; exquisite, enthralling trash. Essentially an iPad eMagazine aCronym/a giant Red Bull ad. It is also a hoot. It is the shallow-men's-magazine-you-leaf-through-at-the-barber-shop of the future! And it's free, which I mean, it is a giant Red Bull ad, so there is the spiritual cost...
  
  Valencia magazine, a breezy lifestyler for Santa Clarita, CA, uses a similar engine with lower production cost/values uses the same engine I think as the Red Bulletin to rather interesting effect. Local magazines of America, including some I write for, you might want to look into something like this. If you are interested enough to download further, they do some interesting and simple things with rich media and I like how the ads all have a pull-down thingie for social media access. Social media hooks should be accessible but hidden away, like cleaning supplies or extra toilet paper; we all know you have them now - no need to leave them on the counter. I dunno; I'm embroiled in a web design project and right now every time I see a little white bird in a rounded square, I want to yell Pull! and have the site chuck it like skeet into the air so I can blow it to bits with a shotgun. Maybe Guns & Ammo has a cool appAzine with that feature.
  
  
• Writing: In this week's Record Crate for 225, I discuss Joe Adaranga, Gillian Welch, Flatbed Honeymoon and bid sweet ol' Teddy's Juke Joint a happy 33rd birthday!  In this month's Country Roads, I dig into the introduction of  molecular gastronomy and modernist cuisine in Baton Rouge's  culinary playing field and talk about my buddy Richard's great YouTube videos about the early days of swamp pop. Here's one:
  
  
  
• Eating: My wife's beef stroganoff is peerless but when we ate up the noodles and I spooned some onto a piece of oatmeal bread, it rode the shit-on-a-shingle magic carpet all the way up to heaven.
  
  
• Listening: How come y'all never told me about Crocodiles? I mean, a squillion PR people did but they tell me about everything. But from y'all? Nothing. I'm here to tell you: Crocodiles is right on.
  
  
  Crocodiles, "Groove is in the Heart"/"California Girls"
  
  Man, I loved Love & Rockets. One week in 1987 I saw L&R (then my favorite band) with Janes Addiction (then and now my least favorite band) opening at Tipitina's on a Wednesday night and then U2 (then former favorite band but still liked them) in all their Rattle & Hum glory on Thursday, Thanksgiving no less. Still one of the best concert weeks ever.        
  
  Whoever it was that slipped a drum machine (or drums that sounded like them) into the Jesus & Mary Chain's junk supply should be roundly beaten every November with a worn out copy of Psychocandy. Why not just kill the band rather than give the band the tools to kill themselves? But then, that's how drugs kinda work, I guess.