WFMU's Beware of the Blog

Differently Cognitive

I don’t read a lot of fiction, because usually I find it upsetting. An author sets up some characters and gets you all interested in them, and then makes terrible things happen to them. I told that to a guy I worked with, and he pointed out that bad things happen to people in non-fiction books, too. “But those are real people, they’re not invented specifically to make you care about them,” I said. I don’t think he understood the distinction, but it makes a difference to me.

Anyway, in the last few years I have found a little sub-genre of fiction that I enjoy: novels written as if by people with neurological disorders. First was Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem (Doubleday, 1999). This is the story of Lionel Essrog, an orphan with Tourette’s syndrome who tries to solve the murder of Frank Minna, his employer, mentor, and friend. I liked the experience of seeing the Brooklyn I knew though Lionel’s eyes. The depiction of Tourette’s felt accurate, and didn’t seem as if it were just a gimmick or even just a metaphor. The writing was excellent, and the story was satisfying. (I still smile at the memory of the two old dons, Brickface and Stucco.) I discussed Motherless Brooklyn on my WFMU book club show on August 14 and 21, 2002—which seems incredible, since it was so long ago. One caller explained the name Essrog to me, and I’ve always wondered if that was Jonathan Lethem himself, but I’ve never found out. (Update 4/3: It wasn't Lethem, it was Listener Bruce! That's good to know, after all this time.)

Poetry Corner With Vinnie P

"I have sought to enlist the harmony of metrical language, the ethereal combinations of the fancy, the rapid and subtle transitions of human passion, all those elements which essentially compose a Poem, in the cause of a liberal and comprehensive morality..."       - Shelly

With romance in mind and in the air, let us break bread, pour some wine, and listen to some readings of Percy Bysshe Shelly, as performed by Vincent Price on the Caedmon lp TC 1059, Poems of Shelly.

Here is the front cover, and a bonus picture of Vinnie P, for  this St. Valentine's Day evening.

The MP3's :   Music, When Soft Voices Die      

With a Guitar, To Jane      Hymn to an Intellectual Beauty

I just had to...

Someone's done the math, wikipedia listing...
http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Cat-Toast_Device

Weird World, Part Three: 90 Day Jane Comments

Comments from an entry on 90 Day Jane (note 2: site no longer exists, ), a blog with the tagline "I'm Going to Kill Myself in 90 Days."

You should put out too, because its not going to matter if you get pregnant or get aids.

You will be dead before either really matter anyway.

I was wondering if i could get an interview with you for my college newspaper, it would definitely leave us both annonymous but i would be extremely interested in getting a one on one chat with you.

roses are red violets are blue I want fuck you with a rake

Instead of blowing your brains out with a shotgun, blow your brains out with a Super Soaker loaded with gasoline as you hold a match in your mouth.

I am a cannibal living in the Steglitz region of Berlin. I want to know if you would like to join me on your day of 'no more'.

POST NUMBER 32 WHOOO!

I don't think there's anything seriously wrong with Jane...Who knows - I'm not Frasier Crane.

Why are you wating so long? Just kill yourself now. BTW, halo 3 was eazy EVEN ON LEGENDARY!

Everytime a laundry detergent or toiletpaper commercial comes on TV, I'm moved to transports of rage. Who are THEY to tell US what to do?

I think you should do it by cutting off your ugly head with a chainsaw.

I hope you get hit by a bus tomorrow, you attention seeking whore :)

Superglue your hands to your head (You'll understand later)

I live in Germany (as mentioned) and according to OUR law it is not a crime, nor an offence to give verbal help to someone who want to commmit a suicide if you don't assist the process...However, I need to go for 60 mins but I will be back.

Did you hear about the guy who died on youtube? Everybody's sad about that.

Viewers Digest

Incredibly, everything you see in this image can be found in the kitchen. Photographer Carl Warner has painstakingly incorporated all kinds of food into a series of still lifes.

 

 

 

 

He says his 'Foodscapes' were partly inspired by healthy eating campaigns. But they have not persuaded his own children to step up to the recommended five-a-day allowance.

The Forest of Dean or the Forest of Greens? The road is paved with cumin, bread mountain off in the distance, peas hang from broccoli trees and cauliflower clouds adorn the heavens.

Tips On Rationalizing Your Internet Porn Addiction

We’re all pretty vicious and disgusting and it’s good to try to better ourselves.  You can try to eliminate vice through strict discipline, by trying to completely wipe bad thoughts from your mind.  This works a lot of the time but sometimes it backfires, since the forbidden vice becomes much more delicious.  You know, like how your fifteen-year-old daughter wouldn’t have gotten pregnant if you didn’t send her to catholic school.

And so you might take another approach: glut yourself completely with vice until you’re so disgustingly full that you puke it all up.  I wouldn’t advise this method if you’re trying to get off heroin but it might work for, say, popping pimples.  And if it doesn’t work its still ok since you had a good excuse to load your trunk with Mexican fireworks and blow past the border patrol on your way to burning man spring break style.

I imagine Michael Joseph Phillips had something like fireworks in mind as he wrote Superbeuts, a wonderful collection of short poems about one of your favorite vices, checking out hot girls.

Alice

Goddess N.Y.C doll,
36” x 24” x 34” dynamite,
Supreme poetess !

Beut

Rosed golden lace-ace,
Action-sucker d’ Hammond’s bistros,
Space age tit fucker !

Empress

Flower powered queen,
Hot hip hit op-pop-mod doll -
T R A N S F I G U R A T I O N !!!!!!!

Alice’s a moderate one, somewhere between the “hot street fuck” and the “commendable queen”.  But even at his most wholesome Phillips lacks fidelity; his pop art haikus momentarily deify the girl in the grocery store, the film professor, the runway model, the 15 year old teeny bopper, roller-skate-queen and even the imagined “powderpuffed rockette” with equal devotion.

The Greatest Story Ever Told

I was thrilled to receive two copies of Ulrich Haarburste’s Novel of Roy Orbison in Clingfilm in my mail at the station a couple of weeks ago. Although there wasn’t any return address on the package, or note inside, I suspect it was sent by Mr. Michael Horatio Kelly, who is a close personal friend of Herr Haarburste. Mr. Kelly is himself a writer, and was a guest on the book-club show I did a few years ago.

Because Mr. Kelly is in England, I asked Station Manager Ken if it would be okay to phone him from the studio and do a live interview, and because Mr. Kelly is in England, Station Manager Ken said no. So naturally I decided to email my questions to Mr. Kelly, and take Mr. Kelly’s emailed replies, and perform the interview on-air by reading my questions and having Jack Dinsmore, the scary disembodied ventriloquist’s dummy head, read Mr. Kelly’s answers. So I did that for a bit until I got tired about a third of the way through, and then Sluggo took over reading Mr. Kelly’s answers, and meanwhile Mr. Kelly was in England, furiously typing “I had nothing to do with this!” on his Web site.

I think it was my finest moment as a WFMU DJ.

When the station put together the “Great Moments in WFMU History” trading card set, I proposed my interview with Mr. Kelly as a Great Moment. Maybe it was too hard to explain on a trading card, though, or maybe they were concerned that the sight of Jack Dinsmore’s disembodied head would be too shocking for the more sensitive Listeners, because they went with the story of me and Kenny G’s penis, which Sluggo didn’t know about until he finally saw the cards last month and now Kenny G had better stay in Switzerland if he knows what’s good for him.

Anyway, I believe it’s because of my longstanding interest in Mr. Kelly’s work that I was the lucky recipient of Herr Haarburste’s book, and I have just finished reading it, and here’s where the review starts:
Ulrich Haarburste’s Novel of Roy Orbison in Clingfilm is the greatest novel of the 21st Century (so far). It begins with five short stories about wrapping Roy Orbison in clingfilm (a.k.a. plastic wrap in the US), and just when you’re thinking, “Well, these are amusing, but no one could possibly stretch this premise any further,” Herr Haarbuste launches into a novella that is a true tour de force. Not since Tristram Shandy has an author so skillfully—and amusingly—maintained such a shaggy-dog premise. The complex, self-reflexive repetition and reconfiguration of certain elements is reminiscent of a Bach fugue.

When I read Ian McEwan’s Atonement, I felt like there was no sense in anyone ever writing a novel again. I’m glad to say I was wrong. The world would be a poorer place without Ulrich Haarburste’s Novel of Roy Orbison in Clingfilm.

The book concludes with three more short stories written in ostensible German. In the way that Spanglish relates to Spanish, so the language in these stories relates to German; I guess they’re in Deutschlish. But they’re just as funny as anything else in the book. Das besitzensuchenzugenmachenubergruppenschnurpenplastische indeed.

The only way to get your own copy of Ulrich Haarburste’s Novel of Roy Orbison in Clingfilm is to order it direct from Troubador Publishing Ltd. in England. Oh, calm down—it’s no harder than ordering something from Amazon, and it’s a lot easier than ordering Yi Soon Shin DVDs from Korea. You can’t order Ulrich Haarburste’s Novel of Roy Orbison in Clingfilm from Amazon anyway, because Herr Haarburste had to publish it himself. The idea that this brilliant work of real genius was turned down by publishers is like Van Gogh never selling a painting during his lifetime. Someday anybody who’s left after the big Global Climate Change will find it hard to believe that people in our time did not shower Herr Haarburste with the prizes, accolades, and key to the city of Dusseldorf he so richly deserves.
Thanks for reading my blog post this time, and may God Bless.
And I'm not kidding about that book, either. I mean it.

                               

WFMU Lunch Minutes for February 7, 2007

Today, WFMU's lunch-chat was ruled by one all-powerful topic: FANTASY LUNCH CAMP.  After much debate and a slew of celebrity rejections (Josef Mengele and Michael J. Fox each received a pink slip), it was decided upon by all in attendance that the Ultimate Lunchtable Conversation Crew would consist of the following members:

• Richard Belzer
• Eileen Brennan
• Eric Bogosian
• Dee Snyder
• Rachael Ray, that useless little tart

I imagine all of these people would have much to say, yet nothing to say to each other.  Magic!!! 

Today's participating nomination committee was: Wendy the Cheese Lady, Mike Lupica, Megan Murphy, Liz Berg, Nick The Bard, Bill Zurat, and yours truly. You'd think we'd've been happy to just talk to each other.

Your task: share with us your Fantasy Lunch Camp, or provide dialog for the one we've chosen.

Pompel & Pilt (Videos and MP3s)

The Norwegian TV-show "Pompel & Pilt" was both loved and hated in its home country due to the surreal, amoral personalities  of its characters. After the series was broadcast in 1969, 1973, 1976, 1979 and 1985, the show was banned by NRK (Norwegian National Broadcasting) as it was deemed too dangerous for children. After this a huge cult-following grew, demanding to get "Pompel og Pilt" back on television and today the characters are considered one of the greatest pop-cultural icons in Norwegian television-history.  Watch the first episode (YouTube) The dialog is fairly simple. The two main characters are always looking for something that needs mending, as most stuff in their world is either bizarre, or just malfunctioning in a spectacular way. Be also aware of Gorgon, the janitor, a scary guy, that creeps everybody out with his obsessive-compulsive disorder, spouting out words that rhymes with "reparere [to mend/repair]" - such as "to subliminalise", "regressitate" etc ad nauseum.

Moffedille (upper left corner) is a fantasy animal from the show. The moffedille vaguely resembles a porcupine, eats keys, and communicates through howling sounds and cartoon-style balloons.

The series consists of five episodes, of which the moffedille appears in episodes 2 and 3. It is introduced as the protagonists, the repairmen Pompel and Pilt, sit down on it in the belief that it is a tuft of grass, a misconception that is gradually cleared up as the moffedille starts moving. The moffedille then asks for a key (by uttering a talking-bubble containing a drawing of a key). Pilt, who has earlier found a key, shows it to the moffedille, which immediately grabs it and eats it. It then leaves. This concludes the appearance of the moffedille in episode 2. Moffedille excerpt (.mov/4mb)

Beatrice - The Story of a Dog

I spend a lot of time out on my fire escape, taking in all the surroundings and looking at all the people in my neighborhood. It's a way for me to relax. My fire escape is the equivalent to a front porch for most people. If I had a rocker I would sit on it and rock back and forth, waving at everyone as they passed by five stories below. My years of hanging out there on sunny, good-weather days has earned me many friends and acquaintances on my block. But there is one acquaintance in particular that has always left me with a sense of unease; Beatrice. Beatrice the white toy poodle...

Dracula: Terror in the Snow!!!

Just in time for Halloween and the upcoming ski season, here is the blood-chilling tale of Dracula:  Terror in the Snow! (mp3, 21MB)

As in my previous posts about The Man-Thing and The Curse of the Werewolf, this mp3 comes from the "Power Records Monster Series" put out by the Marvel Comics Group in 1974.  The idea was for the "action to come alive" as you listened to the record and followed along in the accompanying comic book.   

This story certainly does come alive... or rather, it comes UNDEAD!!!!!!!!!  Enjoy!!!!

Mollie Thompson - Heralding the Dawn

Mollie Thompson was just an ordinary British Housewife... until one day in the 1960s she was contacted by benevolent Venusians. (Thanks Martin)

Updtate; MP3's removal requested  - sorry...

See comments for more info on Mollie

On a related front: If all stories were written If all stories were written like science fiction stories. (Thanks Johan)

The Man Thing: Night of the Laughing Dead!!!!

Continuing the comic love, and following up on last week's post, I present here for you now "The Man Thing:  Night of the Laughing Dead!" (17mb, mp3), another "Monster Series" Power Record ("The action comes alive as you read!") put out by the Marvel Comics Group in 1974.

Scientist Ted Sallis has been transformed into a slimy humanoid creature via a potent mix of chemicals and swamp water.  The Man-Thing lives in exile from humanity until a suicidal clown from a nearby travelling carnival ventures into the swamp.  What ensues is an absolutely FRIGHTENING tale of ghostly intrigue and creepy clown pathos.  Listen here -- if you dare!!!!! 

Gospel Blimp, and Other Christian Comics

What do Johnny Cash, nazis, jive-talking pimps, and blimps have in common? Not much, but they made great fodder for christian comic books back in the '70s. Below are four complete, great/awful Spire comic books in PDF format, download away, sinners.

Hello, I'm Johnny Cash - 1976 (8.5 MB, PDF)

Read about how June Carter and God helped Johnny dump that nasty pill habit and eventually film a gospel movie. And just for fun, check out this early video of a gum-smacking Johnny Cash performing "Folsom Prison Blues" back in 1959 (youtube, thanks Ken).

 

Gospel Blimp - 1974 (4 MB, PDF)

Upstanding christian Herm gets a brilliant idea for effectively spreading the gospel to his drinking, gambling neighbors: a blimp that drops bible verses. When blimps speak, people listen.

 

In The Hall of the Mountain King [MP3's]

(MP3s: 36 of them beyond the jump)

Peer Gynt (1867) by Henrik Ibsen marks the end of romantic nationalism in Norway. In 1874 Edvard Grieg was asked to compose music for the play (or rather, was given a lot of cash to ditch a less profitable project with Norwegian author Björnstierne Björnson). As Ibsen's play grew on him, he complained to his friend Frants Beyer; "It is an immensely difficult subject, and I've done something  to the Mountain King, that I myself find unable to listen to - it reeks of cow-dung, Norwegian-Norwegianess and absorbed in it's own Norwegianess! But I expect the irony to be pungent, especially when Peer, after the ordeal with the Mountain King utters against his will 'Both the dance and the playing was [cat scratchily] beautiful.'"

Alas, the irony did not seep through - and Grieg managed to get himself a huge audience and a nice reputation as a composer. Nonetheless, he refused to be present at the opening night in 1876, including the rehearsals, and he never bothered to have the music printed. Grieg was said to be a square (and even a pentahedron). He supposedly referred to a conductor as pig-face, and called a poor oboist a "fucking klutz." Even his own work got in his face, and on occasion, he referred to his lyrical pieces as "bugs and lice." He referred to his own composition Sangerhilsen as a "piece of shit!"

The 5th of October this year, New York found itself infected with trolls in Central Park. Actors and hordes of extras were flown in to play Peer Gynt for 3 days, with a budget of $1.3 million. Anne Midgette from the New York Times has a wonderful review on that occasion.

How many versions of this theme have been made, and how many more compositions have been "inspired" by it? I'll try to give you a few examples. Follow the jump for 36 downloadable MP3s:

The Curse of the Werewolf!!!!!

"THE MOON -- IT'S SO FULL -- SO BRIGHT -- AND -- I'M STARTING TO CHANGE AGAIN -- TURNING INTO -- AARRRHGNN!!!!"

An eighteen year old boy discovers that he has inherited the curse of lycanthropy!!!  How did it begin?  What does the evil vampire Dracula have to do with it?   Where will it all end??

Find out the answers here, by listening to this mp3 (20MB) of the 45 record which accompanied the 1974 Marvel Comics Group release "The Curse of the Werewolf" under its "Power Records" series which let "the action come alive" as you read.  What better way to get ready for Halloween than with a spoooooky tale such as this?  Enjoy!

I Hear You Got Religion: Flannery O'Connor

All I do these days is read Flannery O'Connor.  My girlfriend says I'm in love with her, which is completely ridiculous!  "How can I be in love with someone who's been dead for 42 years?" I chuck totally not defensively back at her, and that usually settles things. 

Flannery O'Connor was the gentle Southern Catholic lady who first blew your mind in high school when you were forced to read "A Good Man is Hard to Find". SPOILER!  It ends with a psycho killer named The Misfit blowing away a nice old granny, after already having killed her son, daughter-in-law, and 3 grandkids.  Mind you, The Misfit is her bringer of Grace.  Basically that is to say he's Christ.  Heavy, right?  Now multiply that by arson, wooden leg stealing, priest-killing, roofie-raping, baby-drowning, child suicide, racism & xenophobia, self-blinding, a malevolent sun, omniscient treelines, and Christ-in-a-lawn-jockey and you start to get a picture of a religious worldview that you, in your cozy Northern atheistic-protestant upbringing, thought only came in a microdot.  It's not the belief system that's such a shock, but the existential terror and sense of inevitability (and yes, grace) that permeate her work that knocks your lame ol' temple of the rational on its ass.

All of O'Connor's work is imbued with her Catholic devotion, and mostly deals with the imponderabilities of grace, crises of faith, and an environment she called the "Christ-haunted South".  Writing primarily during the years 1947-1964, she was also heavily affected by the mid-century dilution and assimilation of the character of the South (and the rest of the country, for that matter).  And her work is bursting with the urgency and ironic bitterness of the artist who's told she's got X months to live; when she was 15, her father died of lupus.  By age 25, Flannery herself was diagnosed with the then-fatal blood disease.  At the time, she was enthusiastically pursuing a life in art, living and working at the fabled Yaddo estate in Saratoga Springs, and trying to publish her first novel "Wise Blood".  She was instead forced to move back home with Maw and about 40 peacocks, and wait 14 years for her death sentence to pass.  Check out "Good Country People" for a heartbreaking fictional telling of this story.

(Flip for more.)

MM's Heavy Rotation: Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of the Worlds

"No one would have believed, in the last years of the nineteenth century, that human affairs were being watched from the timeless worlds of space. No one could have dreamed that we were being scrutinized as someone with a microscope studies creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. Few men even considered the possibility of life on other planets. And yet, across the gulf of space, minds immeasurably superior to ours regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely, they drew their plans against us."  -- The Eve of the War. (mp3, 16mb)

H.P. Lovecraft: An Appreciation

{seven mp3s below the fold}

As a lad, my introduction to proper literature came via the works of Howard Phillips (H.P.) Lovecraft (b. 1890.)  I had been reading Marvel Comics since the late 1960s (initially they were read to me), and as the 60s became the 70s, the Marvel team reacted to the counter-culture explosion by pushing the fringes of comic book artistry.  Initially a fan of Spider-Man, I was dazzled by the newer, more obscure Marvel titles like Man-Thing, Howard the Duck, Werewolf By Night and Omega the Unknown, some of these created and penned by groundbreaking writer Steve Gerber, and sometimes featuring full pages of graphic text without images.  For Marvel, this was a revolution, and I excitedly rode the wave with them.

I remember being blown away by Marvel's rendering of the Lovecraft tale Pickman's Model (download pdf) in Tower of Shadows #9 - January 1971.  The story, with its shocking ending, was so typical of Lovecraft, leaving the reader white-faced and fearful of the unexplainable.  My mother, perhaps feeling that I was ready for "real" literature, and knowing my penchant for the macabre (already well-formed at age 7), passed down a collection of H.P. Lovecraft stories that had belonged to my grandfather.  Mom knew what she was doing, and I remain a fan to this day, seeking out the author's obscure writings, film adaptations etc.

The first Lovecraft story to make an enduring impression on me was The Outsider (download pdf); in fact, I still tear up a bit when I think of the tale's woeful conclusion.  Though couched in the milieu of horror/fantasy (as were the bulk of the author's popular works), The Outsider is a note-perfect metaphor for societal alienation (not unlike Herzog's The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser) that transcends genre.

Another great short story, one that has undoubtedly confounded musicians since its publication, is The Music of Erich Zann (download pdf).  Based on the "chaotic babel of sound" the author strains to describe, musical artistes from across the genre spectrum have tried to interpret the bizarre emanations of Lovecraft's enigmatic, haunted viol-player.  Personally, some of Phill Niblock's compositions, and occasionally the music of Art Zoyd, have struck me as appropriately Zann-esque.

Lovecraft's mightiest of literary muscles was his ability to eloquently and elaborately describe the essentially indescribable:  alternate dimensions, ancient beings, dream worlds and the minds of madmen.

Sing We Now Of Christmas

I'm standing at our bay window, curtain pulled aside, watching for my father’s truck. We can’t eat until he's at the table. Dinner is chicken with some vegetable. It smells good. I'm hungry. I usually am. My family hates me. There are five of us and not enough of anything to go around. My father is our sole support. My mother doesn't work. Feeding seven people is expensive. And I take more than my share. That's why they hate me. I try to be a good person, stay out of the way. I’m the youngest and shit rolls down hill and — why I should I care?

“Why should I care?
If I have to
cut my hair
I got to
move with the fashion
or be outcast.

"I know I should fight.
But my old man
is really all right
And I'm still living at home
even thought it won't last.”