Major riffage! The boys from Killing Floor are here to kick your ass right outta town, or maybe they'll just pants you in front of the club and steal your date. And you'll like it, you sicko.
Graphonaute, visual effects-maker and sciences student
18 year-old French science student Hugo Germain (aka. Graphonaute) loves motion design and creates mesmerizing and wacky visual experiences in his spare time.
Here is a reel showcasing a bunch of them. Enjoy!
If you'd like to see more, click here. My favorites are the gifs.
The horror! The horror! Matt Kish's Illustrated Heart of Darkness
In Hyperallergenic, Kish explained that he illustrated Conrad's Heart of Darkness using mostly yellow and green markers -- spring-y colors -- because “it was folly to think that terrible things happen only in the dark.” Eesh.
So that you can compare the happily-colored illustrations with the novel, here are some unsettling quotes from Heart of Darkness pared with Kish's art:
“Even extreme grief may ultimately vent itself in violence--but more generally takes the form of apathy.”
“We live as we dream -- alone."
"It echoed loudly within him because he was hollow at the core.”
Ermph.
Now that I'm aesthetically-frazzled from the psychological horror ("it was written I should be loyal to the nightmare of my choice”), it's time for me to pet my black-and-white kitty and read some funny Tweets. That is, after I check out more of Matt Kish's art and stuff. Doo doo doo.
The Rise and Fall of Paramount Records - Revenant Records' Steampunk wunkderkammer
This 1920's steampunk-Victrola-looking velvet-upholstered oak cabinet briefcase thingy houses some amazing stuff that apparently tells the story of the rise and fall of Paramount Records.
The "quarter-sawn oak" cabinet of wonder includes these items:
- Hardcover coffee-table-type art book
- Soft cover "field manual"
- Laser-etched white birch folio of LPs containing 6 deluxe golf-leaf-labeled vinyl records
- Forged-metal USB drive with 800 songs
Whoa.
This (and I quote) "omnibus of words, images and music, housed in a limited-edition, hand-sculpted cabinet-of-wonder" is really oddball-posh-imaginative and I vow to open each gold-leaf-laser-etched item wearing white gloves and monocle.
I am off to find more coolness at Revenant Records' website. See you there.
The Train Soundtrack
My original intention was to post one song from this soundtrack, but I like 'em all! Sweet artwork, too. Bollywood soundtracks usually clock in under a half hour, so you're not really in for a huge commitment here. Highlights include all Asha's songs (of course). Classic example of RD Burman's early-70s B-Funk, which was all the rage circa 2007.
Lee Dorsey - Ride Your Pony
Get your morning started with something totally stoopid! Here's an inconsequential little ditty from Lee Dorsey. It ain't Ginuwine, but it still grooves. I came to this party for the occasional goose-honkin' sax and the cut-rate gunshot FX. Sadly, the washboard promised in the photo doesn't make an appearance.
Blind Chow @BlindChow - hilarious tweets
Because I have been laughing by myself reading tweets for, um, an hour or so, I thought I'd share some of the hilarity of one funny Twitter-er I particularly liked. Thx @BlindChow, your tweets are the tits.
Clara Nunes - Tristeza Pé No Chão
Legendary Samba diva Clara Nunes fills this crowd-pleaser with all the indicators you'd want from a peak-era Carnaval jam (probably because she helped define that sound). There's something about this type of heavily-panned stereo mixing that gets me going as well.
Sarah Nowrocki - untitled comic published in Kilgore quarterly #4
Found this comic in Kilgore Books' quarterly comic and took iPhone photos of it so I could share it here. I'm digging how this comic layers worry/sadness/death/irritation/the-sometimes-pointlessness-of-NPR-and-pig-assholes into 12 small panels and one sad, yet relatively normal moment (that is, if you live somewhere lots of deer also live). This comic is literally short and sweet.
One note: for those of you with squinty-computer-eye-syndrome, I've dictated the word parts in the text boxes below the pages.
Another note: I highly recommend you buy the very well-curated Kilgore quarterly for only three measly dollaz. To do so, go here.
Panel 1: I think I'll tell him that I can't go through another surgery. I guess the medicine is helping, but I just can't keep doing this. He's my second opinion but maybe I need a third.
"Today on this American Life, a story about calamari. Are restaurants serving pig assholes..."
Panel 2: "disguised as the delicious Italian delicacy? I'm your host Ira Glass ... "
Panel 4: "Hello! Can I help you boys?"
"I, I, oh God. She just came outta nowhere."
"Shit, man. She's hurt real bad. We need to help her."
Panel 5: "We don't have any tools with us."
"I'll get my knife."
Panel 9: "I'm so sorry"
Panel 10: "Let's put her under this tree."
Panel 12: "Assholes are very similar to calamari in taste and," Click.
IT WILL ALL HURT – Part 1 – by Farel Dalrymple
Part 1 of 5 (and counting) of Farel Dalrymple's It Will All Hurt is a dreamlike flow of "weird, sad, silly, and sketchy, fantasy adventure ... with magic and science-fiction and some fighting action." It's kinda like Nemo in Slumberland. But, without the waking up at the end of each comic. And for weird, sad, silly adults instead of weird, sad, silly children.
To read the comic, go to Study Group Comics's site where they have it posted. From there you can also buy the panels and pages. Happy comic rabbit-hole-ing.
mfa vs nyc, you forgot the internet
Chad Harbach of N+1 curated a book of essays called MFA vs NYC that lays out the scene as-it-stands for NYC publishing editors, agents, writers, and satellite bookish NYC others. Kudos for all of the essays in MFA vs. NYC.
Particularly job well done on Harbach’s introductory essay. His comments on the status quo of NYC houses and MFA university programs not only ring true, but sting. It sucks that NYC editors have become like Hollywood executives searching for blockbusters and the university MFA program environments have become like writer’s camp: safe havens for writers of all shades of talent.
My problem with MFA vs NYC, is that, well, these essays forgot something rather, um, large as it relates to the culture of American fiction.
The Internet, people. You forgot the Internet.
Okay, okay, I’ll admit: Darryl Lorenzo Wellington did write an essay about his participation in the reality-TV-esque Amazon Breakthrough Novel contest. But, that essay was basically an authorial confession for having played a part in the contest, not a true study on how Amazon’s publishing model affects American fiction. Also, Harbach of course mentioned that: “technology sends the New York publishing world into spasms of perpetual anxiety.” But, that’s not what I’m talking about.
I’m talking about the fact that NYC and MFA programs are dual cultures for fiction, yes, but they are dual cultures running right alongside and outside of and on top of and mixed in with a third culture – the Internet – which in its wild-west-shoot-em-up-new-frontier way is fostering and promoting and creating and commenting-on and editing and disseminating and publishing fiction in new and weird and fantastic ways that have never been done before. Good fiction! Terrible fiction! Weird fiction! Mediocre fiction!
The Internet is not only a culture of fiction, but a force for fiction. A force that is running us all down like a freight train. It’s scary and loud and attracts vagrants and weirdos and might run off the rails, but, hey! It’s taking us to the new frontier!
In light of this, I disagree with many, many statements in the essay “MFA vs NYC,” and the sensibility of the collection of essays in MFA vs NYC as a whole.
In particular: I disagree with the sentiment stated throughout that MFA university programs are the only other realistic avenues to which would-be NYC writers, editors, and agents could flock. This is just not the case anymore. The Internet has become a thing of wide-open-possibilities -- giving writers, editors, and agents oodles of opportunities to make money from writing and publishing fiction.
And even if the Internet doesn’t bestow a pile of money onto an enterprising writer, editor, agent, etc., these talented fiction-ites (if they love it enough) will do this work for free. They will come home from their full-time jobs and, despite their exhaustion, will still find the time to write. Because if they really love and need to write it will chase them like Faulkner’s demon, propel them into the gray light of the morning to their notebook or their iMac to hammer out a few more words. Because they need it more than they need sleep, wine, food, company, money. The fact that these writers who do this obsessive work have the gift of the Internet as publisher.
Despite the fact that these prominent American writers wrote thoughtful and practical state-of-the-union essays about a specific set of NYC or MFA writers, the collection feels a little head-in-the-sand-ish considering the fact that the Internet and its fiercely chomping jaws has basically already destroyed the old guarde. Has freed them to maybe move to Cleveland (oh gawd no!) and say what they need to say. Forge their own path. Think outside the box. Create something new that speaks in the voice of their generation.
Adult Sexy Oompa Loompa Costume With Wig
Oompa Loompa doompa-dee-doo
I've got a sexy puzzle for you
What do you wear when you need to look hot?
What will show off all the curves that you've got?
Hiding your bod' is a crime and a shame
What do you ... arrrrgh ... unh!
THIS IS YOUR FAULT, MOTHER!!!!
YOU ARE THE ONE TO BLAME, DADDY!!!!!!
THIS IS NOT A "PHASE." IT IS MY LIFE. THESE PEOPLE UNDERSTAND ME.
WHEN I WAS HAVING A HARD TIME LAST YEAR, THEY WERE FUCKING THERE FOR ME.
JUST BECAUSE YOU FAILED AS A PARENT DOESN'T MEAN I HAVE TO BE MISERABLE MY WHOLE DAMN LIFE!
BTW, I'VE MET THIS GREAT GUY.
HE REALLY UNDERSTANDS ME.
SOMETIMES, WE LIKE TO SWITCH THINGS UP.
YOU KNOW, LIKE CRAZY ROLE PLAY SHIT.
HERE'S A NICE PICTURE OF HIM.
HE HAD A DIFFICULT CHILDHOOD.
BUT ANYWAY, I'M JUST WRITING THIS TO LET YOU KNOW I'VE COME TO ACCEPT WHO I TRULY AM.
THIS HAS BEEN REALLY HELPFUL AND THERAPEUTIC FOR ME. I LOVE YOU AND WANT YOU TO BE IN MY LIFE FOREVER.
XOXOXOXOXOXO,
JENNICA
777-9311 - The Time
WHAT TIME IS IT!? Unh!
It's the weekend, everyone! Sure, the rival band from Purple Rain gets all the credit for this funk-gasm, but you know this jam is 100% Prince. I could listen to the entire eight minutes over and over again.
And I do.
Over. And over. And over.
Sir Lord Baltimore - Hard Rain Fallin'
Sometimes you feel like a nut! Sometimes you feel like TWO nuts! Enjoy some proto-metal from the legendary Sir Lord Baltimore. Get weird to the primal guitar, the rippin' bass, and the demented bark / spastic skin-thumping of John Garner. Essential listening.
The Knowers - Helen Phillips
Staring at my computer and tearing up at work like an idiot. Damn this story about death and love and life. 12 minutes to read it; that's what the site said. I was just following directions.
kamehana0kala - grafitti artist
Grafitti artist, kamehana0kala (instagram handle) tags a mix of styles (Hawaiian tribal plus bold-color-scribbled street grafitti) onto watertowers, pillars, bunkers, wells, walls, tunnels crumbling in the midst of fecund Hawaiian jungle.
Can't get enough of these urban + tropical visual scapes loomed over by Oahu's humid, wild sky. Aloha nui loa.
To see more, go here.
Patrick Coleman - 2 Shorts, Hobart literary journal
I found Patrick Coleman's bewitching prose poem, "That Saying" in lit journal Hobart's "bonus materials" page.
À la Baudelaire, Coleman repeats sounds and symbols so the poem wraps and folds back onto itself.
The most prominent symbol is warm, brown whiskey that breathes 1) from the poem's speaker momentarily escaping the holiday party, 2) from the spirit of the grandmother hiding in the wet soil, 3) from the ancestors (glass in-hand) exclaiming slainte ("health!"), 4) again from the speaker listening to the family clink warmly in the next room as he remembers 5) "those who made him and their mothers, and some inkling of their lives" -- those who may have a "lineage and personal history of alcohol abuse," but nevertheless embody the slán ("health") of the speaker, his family, his grandmother's spirit in the peat bog, and of his Irish generations.
Read this and Coleman's other prose poem, "Sod, Stars" here.
Noah Van Sciver - Faces of Math
Noah Van Sciver's a cartoonist and comic book artist who's whipped up some sweet schtuff (check out Blammo) -- including this print sold at Kilgore books.
Maybe it's just me, but by the time I scan over these balding-headed, big-eared, freckled-faced every(wo)mans offering up their workaday boasts, my chest tightens a tad. Is that an onion you're holding? I feel feelings.
Interview with poet and novelist ron koertge
Poet and young-adult novelist Ron Koertge has written dozens of exceptional books of fiction and poetry that have won him lots of awards. His writing is funny and iconoclastic — snarky with a strong dose of pathos.
Yay, he also agreed to let me ask him some questions about writing and stuff. I particularly loved his comment about the "agony of the blank page." Onward ho, writer! Fill 'er up. Blank pages are for the birds.
What started you writing poetry?
I always wrote something, starting in high school. They were lamentable poems, usually about how misunderstood I was. When I went to the University of Illinois, though, I ran into guys who took writing seriously and talked about being writers. So, I hung around with them. In grad school I met the poet Gerald Locklin who was even then writing poems and submitting them to the — as they were called then — little magazines. He turned me on to them and some people our age (we were in our early 20's), and pretty soon writing and publishing were just some things I did regularly.
What sort of thing did you write about when you began?
Gerry led me to Edward Field and his poems about movies and life-in-New York charmed the pants off me. Clearly, I could write about anything and not just so-called serious things. Before there was the word "snarky" I was snarky and irreverent, a good way to be for the 60's. So, I published a lot for a couple of decades before tastes turned more introspective and language-conscious.
What was one of the most surprising elements about your life as a writer?
I'm still surprised I write for kids/teenagers. If I wanted to be a novelist, I imagined it would be for adults. Not adults to be. Someone years ago reminded me I was chronically immature so I should write for 16 year old boys. Turned out they were right.
If you had a soapbox topic about writing (something you're passionate about/something that bugs you), what would it be?
I think prose writers should read more poetry. Out loud. I read a lot of really infelicitous prose: the plot drives the story, the characters are riveting, but sometimes the sentences are so clunky. A discipline of reading poetry out loud would help that.
Is there anything else you would rather have done than write poetry and fiction?
I love the race track and might have enjoyed life-on-the-backstretch. It's a very interesting sub-culture. But, I think I would have also written about it.
What advice do you have for poets and/or fiction writers?
Write a lot and don't be afraid to write badly. Some of the pages I turn out are so embarrassing but my motto is this: what's the gift of this terrible poem? This cringeworthy page? This rough rough rough rough draft? There's always one.
Any other thoughts?
It's a pleasure to be able to write. I've never understood the so-called agony of the blank page. Just fill it up!
Ron Koertge's poetry collections include: the ghazal collection Indigo (2009), Fever (2006), and Making Love to Roget’s Wife (1997). His novels and novels-in-verse for young readers include Shakespeare Bats Cleanup (2006), The Brimstone Journals (2004), and Stoner & Spaz (2004).
Read more of (and about) Ron's poetry and prose at: ronkoertge.com. Or pick up his most recent book of poetry,The Ogre's Wife, and his most recent novel, Coaltown Jesus, published through Red Hen Press and Candlewick Press, respectively.
Douglas Hale - The Architect
Illustrator Douglas Hale creates neon, angular collage art from creative commons images that ready, aim, fire at the heart of the nouveau astrologist cum armchair historian hipster. (Which may or may not include me. One can never be so sure.)
Anywho, I'm getting one here for the wall above my taxidermied animal collection and my mid-mod chaise lounge. You should, too.
