"Never Forgottonia"

The butterfly butterflew the coop!

Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
District 9
Starship Troopers
Nurse With Wound, Alice the Goon
Vincent Gallo, When
Tom McCarthy, C
Michael J. Trinklein, Lost States: True Stories of Texlahoma, Transylvania, and Other States That Never Made it

You wanna know what's long? Anna Karenina is long. I'm reading the free Project Gutenberg version of it on my phone as a whelp-I'm-on-the-couch/bus/central lockup-I-might-as-well-read-something book and the way they do it there is that it downloads in chunks, like as you go. It keeps a running percentage (I'm at 8%, where a train backs over a station porter, severing the poor bastard in twain, just as Anna arrives in Moscow. Women have a way of doing that in this book.) but there is no heft of pages that lets me really know how I'm doing.

I'd totally forgotten how much I love Vincent Gallo's When album. That Vincent Gallo. He has trip-hop cred (should such a thing be possible), having performed in SAMO with Jean-Michel Basquiat at the Mudd Club back when everything was converging, and really, @vincent_gallo is my favorite celebrity. He acts so scintillatingly outrageous and weird that he comes around to charm from the other end.


"My Beautiful White Dog" and "Honey Bunny"

Nurse With Wound defies context.


"(I Don't Want To Have) Easy Listening Nightmares"

We made a pass at the bookstore after dining in the same Five Guys franchise as was Peter Berg, former Chicago Hope doctor and director of Friday Night Lights. He's here making a movie based on the game Battleship (sorta) featuring Liam Neeson and Rhianna. They are set to film part of it in the blues bar down the street. I know none of that makes sense, but it's true. Joe Jonas was recently spied canoodling with his ladyfriend, who has a bit part in the thing, at a terrible old-lady restaurant chain. We get minor sightings like this all the time; our town looks movie-generic and there are awesome tax incentives at play.

So anyway, let me wipe the stars from my eyes to tell you I tried to read a part of Tom McCarthy's C and I felt like its prose was a logic puzzle; the kind that takes one longer to figure out than it is fun to figure out, but Lost States was a light wonder. It's about long forgotten and abandoned subdivisions of our nation. Its prose is airport magazine breezy, full of cheap jokes and somewhat unsound in it's purview; the West Florida Republic was included and that was not a temporary state or a secession but it's own country for 90 days.




BUT, it spoke of Forgottonia, a mildly successful secession gesture in the western potbelly of Illinois in the 70's born of a lack of highways in the region. It's not the most glorious cause for revolution but I lived there right at the navel of that potbelly while it was going on and I've never heard a peep of this before. C'mon! I'm ready to get a "Never Forgottonia" tattoo: a fist gripping a torn strip of I-72, the proposed Chicago-Kansas City conduit that only cuts throughout corn between Hannibal and Champaign, A million squealy teens can watch my tax dollars (or something) bring a Jonas Brother to my adopted home's worst sandwich place forever henceforth on the Internet and yet Forgottonia is forgotten-onia? There is a Facebook group at least.




I'm annoyed that I've never heard of Forgottonia, it being a so-so tale notwithstanding, mostly because it kills me when there are good stories right there on the ground. I've always enjoyed a good dungeon master who gets me through the maze and now want to be that dungeon master for others. I believe this is the OG classic D&D starter module I started with. The one with the keep; if memory serves, the fancy sword in the keep master's closet is cursed. I told Maya about the different kind of dice in D&D: 4-sided, 6-sided, 8, 10, 12, and 20-sided and she thought that sounded cool, and today she declared herself to be into sci-fi and fantasy, so ok. I could draw parallels among metamorphosis and science fiction and mythology and directors and Battleship and being cut in twain but I've led us both far enough astray by now. (Rolls d6) OK. To your south a cave opening leads to two tunnels about 10 meters in, one leading east, one west. Which do you choose?

hot chrysalis action

Check out this hot chrysalis action!

Wire, Pink Flag
Art Brut, Bang Bang Rock & Roll

I took the day off to work on other things, which says a lot about the gerbil-meet-wheel mechanics of my self-image, but it's fall break and the campus library is relatively mine. I even considered sneaking up into my office to work in secret but that would be the saddest secret possible.

For a minute, I lamented the quality of this phone cam in that the details of the metamorphosis happening on this day of miracles and wonder were obscured, but then metamorphosis is always a little obscured. If change was observable in real time even FoxNews would have to acquiesce to the factiness of evolution and science. As my ever astute wife said this morning: you don't believe science. You believe things that are mythologies or conjectures or most importantly, you believe the things you tell yourself in order to turn the world and align the channels of thought into the roads you desire. So I'm OK with this camera and its blurry take on the facts. It knows what it knows to its capacity to know it. At least its not trying to tell me otherwise just because it can't make a precise picture for me.

I'm so disappointed in Juan Williams, not because his political views are different from mine or even from how he started, or that he embraces stupid ignorances about Muslims or whoever and that he uses his station to express them; I know a lot of people who do that and think they are idiots in that regard but can accept them anyway; and I get that they think I am similarly politically an idiot when I say things like I wish Obama was more of a socialist and they accept me in cautious degrees. The part that disappoints me is how game-play-ey it all is. Juan Williams knew exactly what he was doing, and so did Fox and it was just gross. You can't just move toward the direction your heart calls of you anymore, your have to burn down your house and join the throngs that cheer the flames. Plus, I kinda liked Juan Williams. He seemed jaunty on Talk of the Nation and that jauntiness will be lost to the air. To me, his chrysalis is filled with shit and his new wings will be accordingly stained.

I'm bummed that this is what I want to talk about.

Early Wire is so good. Whittling sexy rock music down to the flintiness of fact, leaving just enough gristle on the bone to give us the part on which we all wanna gnaw.

Open your eyes,
think of a number,
don't get swept under
a number's a number


"Three Girl Rhumba"

I get that I mix up I and you and us a lot here, and that I do in general. I was thinking about how Art Brut refers to themselves as "Art Brut" on stage: "Ready, Art Brut?" and how I find it weirdly exciting.


"DC Comics and Chocolate Milkshakes"

It is not lost on me that I took the day off to do what I generally do anyway, and I accept that my self-image might just be a shadow that my real self casts when put into the light. I'm just glad when it comes out cool.

embodiment

My healthy lunch transformed me into an embodiment of "space physics." I look a little like I'm trapped in an Atari cartidge.

The Vaselines, Enter the Vaselines
Go-Kart Mozart, Instant Wig-Wam and Igloo Mixture
Menahan Street Band, Make the Road by Walking 
Otis Redding, Otis Blue/Otis Redding Sings Soul

Jangling along: A whole Vaselines collection is a bit too much sweetness in one dose, like eating a fourth cupcake at a birthday party, but any one or two or three songs is the sun parting the clouds. Perhaps Nirvana should have done nothing but Vaselines songs.

"Molly's Lips"

Campus is completely empty today for fall Break, like Night of the Comet/Pompeii empty.

That, or go-karts

The adventure that is getting home. 1) In my three years working here, she is the only person I've ever seen on the stage at the Greek Amphitheatre; 2) I love the little notch in the R on the box for the fire extinguisher outside the bathroom where she toweled off after the...  3) Sprinklers! We missed our bus because of this and had to wait 20 min or so, but just as well because the air-conditioning on LSU's transit system is set to "deep freeze."

Television, Adventure  
The dB's, Stands for Decibels 
Let's Active, Big Plans for Everybody  
Go-Kart Mozart, Tearing Up the Album Chart




I had Adventure on yesterday but today am listening.

I was out stumbling in the rain staring at your lips so red
You said, "'Blah, blah, blah" you got a pillow stuck in your head"
How could I argue with a mirror
She looked at me. Yes, I hear her.
When I see the glory, I ain't gotta worry
She said, "There's a halo on that truck, won't you please get it for me?"
I said, "Of course my little swan, if ever and ever you adore me."
She got mad. She said, "you're too steep."
She put on her boxing gloves and went to sleep -
When I see the glory
I ain't got no worries

C'mon, that is gorgeous in any format or language!

Tom Verlaine performing "Glory" on Spanish TV, 1984

Footage of this deep sea octupus, via Boing Boing, should accompany all jangle guitar solos. That, or go-karts.

Go-Kart Mozart (featuring Lawrence of my beloved Felt), "Listening to Marmalade"

I once greatly irritated Colin Hay

Generic Art Solutions perform and explain their performances Spill and The Raft, as seen at the "Deja Vu All Over Again" show at the New Orleans Museum of art. More info here. Yay performance art!

Media announcement: Dust off your whiskey drink' shirt in this week's Record Crate for 225 starring the Myrtles, Frontier Ruckus, Elsah, American Aquarium, Colour Revolt, Pine Leaf Boys and so on.

Belle & Sebastian, Write About Love
Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
Felt, The Pictorial Jackson Review 
Television, Adventure

I'm set to do an phone interview here in a minute and had to go get batteries for my trusty Olympus WS-100 digital voice recorder which was thankfully in the pencil cup on my desk where I thought it was. I thought I'd found an iPhone app that used some dodgy overseas service to record phone calls while I'm talking - basically it tells the other person the call is being recorded in a garbled English accented robot voice before calling - but I've found it works the three times I try it out before the interview and then cluges up for the real deal. I once greatly irritated Colin Hay of Men at Work as he sat at a California rest stop awaiting my getting my shit together.

When I interviewed Ian MacKaye from Fugazi, the first thing he asked was if I had my recorder situation straight. I'm guessing the three other interviewers to which he lent his time that morning did not, and you don't want to piss off the nicest guy in punk rock. I just came across that recording along with 35 others that I am archiving off. One day I'll figure out how to do this recording interview thing so I don't sound like Grimace from the McDonald commericals (also wearing purple today) on "tape".

(interview transpires)

The interview went great. I would rather talk to old minor country players and aspiring rappers before any rock ingenue. The former has stories and tells them.

The new Belle & Sebastian has grown on me greatly over the month, though I keep waiting for that "ohhh, I see what you're doing" moment re: crapola hook lines like make me dance/I want to surrender. Anna Karenina is good y'all, but not in the dull romantic classics way it is generally portrayed. How come nobody ever talks about how funny the Russians are? I am but two teacups into the samovar of Great Russian Literature Nobody Reads Unless They Have To and they are both whipsmart Falstaff frolics. Like I think I've said before, all my favorite mad bumblers like Ignacius Reilly and Arturo Bandini are apparently cut from this cloth. Who knew? Like my painter buddy Ed was saying to me yesterday afternoon about how his daughter carries her fresh, shiny knowledge after her first half-semester of college: There is so much I don't know, and it's all out there to know.

I do know Felt was great little band. The great little band. I'd love to interview Lawrence from Felt. Lawrence, if your reading this, holla.


"Don't Die on My Doorstep"

rare political outburst

Pre-fab geodesic home salesman model, from here via my lovely and e-resourceful wife. I wonder if the real thing came in a giant case as well.

I wish the conservatives of the world would focus on what is really destroying the world (the need to turn the world into money) and leave the homosexuals out of their crosshairs. I wish they were truly focused on personal freedom like they say instead of just clearing the way for the rich. I wish everyone wasn't so vehemently stupid and gullible about religion. I wish people were more interested in building a better system in which we can thrive. I wish the Libertarians would convince me that they are not fiscal elitists and racists. I wish the Democrats had a spine and a dream. I wish the world didn't look to us as a model for societal behavior and instead looked toward a yet unreached possibility that will let us all be the horrible monsters we are called to be while allowing others to be their own separate monster. I wish I could not listen to the radio around election time because it brings out the absolute worst in people and then radiates that striving-for-the-worst out to everyone involved including me. I wish I didn't hate a bunch of idiots in politics, idiotic and hate-able as they may be, because I feel that I am co-opting their hate and reflecting it uselessly back at them. I wish the world did not make me feel like a hate mirror sometimes.

OK, I feel better with this rare political outburst having passed. I'm wearing a purple shirt in solidarity with Spirit Day. I also happen to have a rotation of three work shirts that are green, light purple and dark purple, so the odds are I am in flagrant solidarity 2/3 of the time, but on those green days, trust that I love y'all's gay asses as well. Now all that has been said, can I get back to to talking about records and lunch and eavesdropping on students' phone calls, please?

Mr. Fantasy

Only known color photograph of the novelist, shot at his Yasnaya Polyana estate in 1908 by Prokudin-Gorskii, a pioneer of color photography. From Tolstoy's Wikipedia entry

Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
Robert Plant, Band of Joy
Colour Revolt, The Cradle
Malcolm Holcombe, Gamblin' House
Ramsay Midwood, Shootout at the OK Chinese Restaurant
Little Bob & the Lollipops, I Got Loaded
Traffic, Mr. Fantasy

I saw Malcolm Holcolmbe a few years back and he sat the whole show, bantering much about sitting on his couch in the "power spot" with remote in hand. He was astounding, finger on our every button, but man, look how good and weird he is when you take his chair away for bit. It is like he's stooped over, ducking from something. This song hits me like a 2x4 with "gonna see the Christmas lights."


"Goin' Downtown"

This thing about young Axl Rose from the Paris Review is luminous. A low-wattage luminosity, perhaps, but still light-shedding. I'd forgotten his real name is/was Bill Bailey. I've never seen Ramsay Midwood live but I love his music so.


"Monster Truck"

I've listened to "I Got Loaded" a zillion times - its the one song every Louisiana band does, be it Cajun, blues, Zydeco, funk, country, whatever - and I rarely get past Little Bob's version on this CD I have, but I let it roll and this song has me a little spellbound. It sounds almost unfinished, like a last layer of polish was neglected and is all the better for it.


"Life Can Be Lonely"

On my walk, I overheard two great phone conversations:

Young man in sunglasses: Hello. (Pause, then imaptiently) Freedom. (Hangs up)

and

Young woman: It's funny how you wanna stand there and lie to my face, lie to my face, and you're all "Let it slide, baby. Let it slide."

The first one: freedom was uttered like it was a code word, like I expected a building to explode with this utterance. On further thought, it was probably a roommate calling after forgetting the password to the wi-fi. The second, he wasn't in fact standing there she in fact was not going to let it slide, baby. I like how things repeat in her world, even the indiscretions and excuses. Kinda like in Anna Karenina which I'm reading for the first time.