Play me:
Gil Scott Heron - The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

this LINK! will expire in 30 days

Heather Martin told me that she, Blake, and David are working on a website for the Gypsy House Reading Series, where they plan on hosting the audio from all of their readings. When they get that up and running, I promise to post a link so you can listen to Ruth Ellen and Pedro as well.

Thanks, Heather!

DoOrDIY061610

1. a text (“Under such an agreement, play proceeds, and a faintly flawed ennui comes to be.”)

2. a song (“Disneyland is a perfect model of all entangled orders of simulacra”)

3. a short film (“They said there was no maker. They said we were the maker.”)

The entire event seemed preconceived: The staging appeared blocked; the camera angles locked in; the Hollywood happy-ending scripted as if drawn up on a lunch napkin at Spago. Even more telling is that all involved had so much to gain: Kanye re-upped his bad-boy bona fides; Taylor got boosted into the pop-star stratosphere; Beyoncé cemented her status as the #1 one-name überdiva. Of course the increasingly irrelevant music biz profited most of all.

Set piece or not, what’s truly disturbing about this third-rate melodrama is how the roles played by its three principals conjure those familiar old racist paradigms: 1) Angry black man; 2) innocent white ingenue (menaced by angry black man); 3) benevolent black mama (who cuts the black man down to size, reassuring the white power structure).

The detestable irony in all this is the unwitting involvement of President Obama, whose “jackass” comment only served to legitimize these standard-issue racial stereotypes. Is it any surprise that his off-the-record utterance was leaked? How better to cut our African-American-in-Chief down to size.

The whole thing was a trap. The extent to which we as a collective culture lock-stepped so willingly into its steel teeth suggests that that there are still many more miles to cover in the backwoods of the American soul before coming home for some steaming post-racial porridge.

Being Purple
Sad musical about the decline and paranoia of rock star Prince

Dictionary of Water
Elegantly maddening wordplay exercise featuring a script including only nouns beginning with the letter “w”

Doubt by Two
True-crime mystery focusing on the deliberations of two holdout jurors in the second trial of Leslie Van Houten

Key and Cue
The fictitious biography of the Clue board game’s Colonel Mustard

Molly’s Other Bloom
Lesbian punk coming-out picture that dares to concentrate on anal sex

Puff
The Magic Dragon gets throat cancer

Untitled (Flannery)
Lupus, peacocks, and blue-chip fame—how she did it and why it will last

“‘And rest in peace, William Inge (22), why did you have to do it? Jean Rhys (23), Jane Bowles (24), Witold Gombrowicz (25), I miss you too. Flannery O’Connor (26), you’re the tops.’ Anybody who wrote of being so obsessed with collecting chickens that she actually made clothes for them is A-OK with me. She may be famous for later raising peacocks but I’ll always imagine her dreaming up Wise Blood (27) as she stitched away on evening gowns for her darling little birdies.”
          —John Waters, The Obsessions of, “Puff Piece (101 Things I Love),” p. 59

Water, Still
John Waters’s third autobiography told from beyond the grave

“I’d better get home beause I’m thirsty, and drinking water is too personal to do anywhere but in th eprivacy of your own kitchen.”
          —John Waters, The Obsessions of, “Puff Piece (101 Things I Love),” p. 65

When Dickinson Shut Her Eyes
The story of Michael Cunningham’s surprise bestseller

When the How and the What are the Same
Italian retitling of third sequel to The Hulk

You are the Weather
Recruiting film for the revival of ’60s hippie terrorist group

         

on WFMU’s Beware of the Blog. Where I also found this:

along with the following sentence:

As Deke and others have pointed out, there seems to be a strong connection between the otherworldly sounds made by hillbilly eefers and the practitioners of the art of human beatboxing. Perhaps Wayno put it best when he wrote that this connection might just represent “a neat switch on the typical appropriation of black styles by white artists.”

Please follow the link to the original article. It is absolutely worth your time.

I need your help, and you are very helpful.

I recently wished for a pair of good headphones so that I could—by completely shifting gears from the visual to the aural—take more of a break from my school work. My wish was granted! And now I need your help. Your help is very important to me. And you are very helpful.

At least that’s what I’ve heard. People are always telling me how helpful you are. Yes they are.

If you had a nice pair of headphones, and wanted to listen to an album (yes, an album, from beginning to end), which album would you listen to, and why?

Please leave your suggestion(s) in the comments section.

Thanks for your help.

***

UPDATE (03.09.08—12:44 p.m.)
Here is a list I’ve made using the suggestions so far as well as my own collection. Please continue to make suggestions, and if you have comments on my choices so far, feel free to make those as well.

Andrew Bird—Weather Systems
The Beatles—Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
Beck—The Information
Bob Dylan—Blonde on Blonde
Bound Stems—Appreciation Night
CAN—Tago Mago
Duke Ellington—The Far East Suite
Duke Ellington & Coleman Hawkins—Duke Ellington meets Coleman Hawkins
The Flaming Lips—Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots
James Taylor Quartet—The Money Spyder
John Coltrane—Giant Steps
John Coltrane—A Love Supreme
Miles Davis—Bitches Brew
Miles Davis—Sketches Of Spain
Neutral Milk Hotel—In The Aeroplane Over The Sea
Os Mutantes—Os Mutantes
Peter Gabriel—Passion: Music For The Last Temptation Of Christ
Radiohead—In Rainbows
Radiohead—OK Computer
Ravi Shankar and Yehudi Menuhin—West Meets East
Sonic Youth—Rather Ripped
Sun Ra—The Futuristic Sounds Of
Terry Riley—In C
Thelonious Monk Quartet With John Coltrane—At Carnegie Hall
Yo La Tengo—The Sounds of the Sounds of Science

Chris & Andrea recently (& kindly) lent me a copy of Eunoia by Christian Bök. I hadn’t heard of the book before they handed it to me, but the author’s name sounded oddly familiar. It turns out I’m familiar with (some of) Bök’s recorded work (moreso than with his written work and) mostly because of the repeated use of Bök’s fantastic poem “Ubu Hubbub” by People Like Us in her brilliant podcast “Do or DIY” (playlists). Said podcast is also why, strangely or not, I had downloaded an mp3 of Bök reading (screaming) the poem just a couple weeks before Chris handed me Eunoia.
The book, so far, is better than awesome. Here’s a bit of explanation from the back of the book:

“Eunoia,” which means “beautiful thinking,” is the shortest English word to contain all five vowels. This book also contains them all, except that each one appears by itself in its own chapter.

Here’s a bit of further explanation from Chapter A (which is the only one I’ve read so far, more on that in a moment):

Hassan can ask that a barman at a bar tap a cask and draw a man a draft (half a dram, a glass): marc, grappa and armagnac, malt, arrack and schnapps. Gangs that act as crass as Harvard grads at a frat (Gamma Kappa Lambda) clack tankards and gawk at a gal, as a gal dabs at black mascara.

When I was figuring out why I was familiar with Bök’s name, I went back to the site where I downloaded “Ubu Hubbub,” and lo and behold! mp3s of Bök reading Eunoia in its entirety! So now I’m going to read the book by reading a chapter alone and then rereading it to Bök’s accompaniment.

[Chris, if you're reading this: Thank you again, and here's where things come full circle: If you go to Bök's audio page on ubuweb (see above links), you will notice that there is also a recording of him reading "Ursonate" by Kurt Schwitters.]

2. I moved in with my parents this weekend in an attempt to save some money. Here’s an mp3 called “Still Live with My Moms” by Thirstin Howl III to commemorate the move.

3. This weekend, I found out I’ve been accepted into DU’s creative writing program. They’ve also offered me a teaching fellowship. w00t!