Getting Stoned

Tingle Alley has discovered the documentary Stone Reader and has fallen in love. I completely understand. I loved the movie so much, I bought the four disk special edition (I don't know if it's still available.)
The movie, in short, is about a guy who reads a terrific book, The Stones of Summer, and finds that the author hasn't written anything since. The documentarian goes out in search of the writer and along the way discusses books and writing with everyone he meets.
Some people have complained about the research and some scenes that were obviously set up. But, as CAAF points out, that sort of misses the point. The movie is not really about the search for this missing author, it's about the love of reading. It's a chance for Mark Moskowitz (the documentarian) to talk with people like editor Robert Gottlieb and critic Leslie Fielder as well as little known authors who talk about the pains of writing.
CAAF actually wrote to Moskowitz and asked him about The Lost Book Club, which plans to find more books that are out of print or need some attention.
Rake's Progress also discusses the movies and quotes from Roger Ebert's review.
Then there's the book list. During the film, many, many books are mentioned and thanks to somebody named "dedicated transcriber" we have nearly all of them. Transcriber put the list together on the Stone Reader discussion board, but I'll do the service of printing it here:

William Wordsworth, Tintern Abbey
James Joyce, Poems
John Seelye, The Kid & Beautiful Machine
Dr. Seuss, The Cat in the Hat
Lord Byron, Collected Works
Howard Mosher, Northern Borders (coming of age story set in Vermont)
John Frederick, The Darkened Sky
Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook (& introduction to the 1972 10th anniversary edition)
R.A. Lafferty, Fourth Mansions (SF)
Vladimir Nabokov, Invitation to a Beheading
John Barth, The Floating Opera (Leslie Fiedler’s favorite modern American 1st novel)
William Kotzwinkle, The Fan Man
Crocket Johnson, Harold and the Purple Crayon
Ben Hogan’s Power Golf
Claire Bee’s Chip Hilton series
Dan Guenther, China Wind
John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces
Ross Lockridge, Raintree County
Thomas Hegan, Mr. Roberts
Siri Hustvedt, The Blindfold
William Manchester, The Last Lion
Ferol Egan, Fremont
A. Yehoshua, Five Seasons
Janet Hobhouse, The Furies
Christopher Isherwood, Berlin Stories
Peter Taylor, A Summons to Memphis
Virginia Woolf, A Voyage Out
James Lord, Picasso and Dora
Franklin W. Dixon’s Hardy Boys books
Colin Wilson
Mark Twain Puddinhead Wilson, Huckleberry Finn, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
Madeline L’Engle, A Wrinkle in Time
Ernest Hemingway, Old Man and the Sea
Henry Roth, Call It Sleep
Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
J.D. Salinger, Catcher in the Rye
Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind
Edgar Allen Poe
James T. Farrell, Studs Lonigan
Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
W.G. Sebald, The Emigrants
Harry Mulisch, The Assault
Emily Bronte
Kay Redfield Jamison, Touched by Fire (nonfiction book on artistic temperament)
William Cotter Murray, Michael Joe
John Legget, Ross and Tom
Tony Tanner, City of Words
Frank Conroy, Stop-time, Body and Soul, Midair
Alfred Kazin, On Native Grounds
Leslie Fiedler, Love and Death in the American Novel, The Stranger in Shakespeare, Waiting for the End
Tony Tanner, City of Words
Alfred Kazin, On Native Grounds
Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
Saul Bellow, The Adventures of Augie March
F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender Is the Night
Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle, Mother Night
Wright Morris, The Territory Ahead, My Uncle Dudley
John A. Williams, The Man Who Cried I Am
Cynthia Ozick, Myth and Metaphor
Philip Roth, Goodbye Columbus
Stephen King, Carrie
Herman Melville, Moby-Dick
Lewis Mumford
Jack Kerouac, On the Road
Richard Yates
Robert Coover
William Thackeray, Vanity Fair
Sherwood Anderson, Winesburg, Ohio
Mario Puzo
William Gaddis, The Recognitions
Connie Willis, Lincoln's Dreams, The Doomsday Book
Joseph McElroy, Ancient Paraphase
Marcus Goodrich, Delilah
Herman Melville, Moby Dick
F.O. Mathiessen, American Renaissance
John Seelye, The True Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Alain Robbe-Grillet, Jealousy
Alberto Moravia
Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting & Testaments Betrayed
Joseph Skvorecky, The Engineer of Human Souls
Knut Hamsun
John LeCarre
James Ellroy
Anne Rice
Anne Tyler
Thomas Pynchon, V.
Maura Stanton, Molly Companion
Laura Cunningham, Sleeping Arrangements
Franz Lidz, Unstrung Heroes
Alan Furst
Raymond Chandler
Donald Barthelme, Sixty Stories
James Jones, The Thin Red Line, The Merry Month of May
Norman Mailer, The Naked and the Dead
Joseph Heller, Catch-22, Something Happened, Good as Gold
Chaim Potok, The Chosen
Thomas Pynchon, V.
Robert C.S. Downs, The Fifth Season
Bruce Dobler
Kurt Vonnegut, Palm Sunday
Gail Godwin
John Irving
John Casey
Jane Barnes Casey
Andre Dubus
Tom McHale
Jonathan Penner
Jose Donoso
Nelson Algren
Terry Southern, Red Dirt Marijuana
Vladimir Nabokov
John Dos Passos
Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
Frank Conroy, Stop-time, Midair, Body and Soul
William Faulkner, Soldier’s Pay, Sartoris
Vance Bourjaily
Emily Dickinson
D.H. Lawrence, Apocalypse
Willa Cather
Ed Gorman, Harlequin
James Webb, Fields of Fire
Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano
Dan Simmons, Hyperion tetraology
Casanova, History of My Life
James Joyce, Dubliners
The Complete James Fennimore Cooper
Flannery O'Connor
The Bible
Arthur Conan Doyle, The Complete Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
Mark Twain, Autobiography
Shakespeare, Measure for Measure
Gibbon, Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire
Geoffrey Chaucer
Frederick Exley, A Fan’s Notes
Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie
Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer
Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, Islands in the Stream (my favorite EH)
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
Thomas Wolfe
William Wharton, Dad
John Marquand, Point of No Return (great lost book of the 40s)
Hamilton Basso, The View from Pompey’s Head
J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter (all)
Bernard Malamud, Dubin’s Lives
Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Devils

Sidenote: I can't tell you how happy I am to see R.A. Lafferty on that list. He's a great fantasy/science fiction writer who should be better known. Other writers have often sung his praises. I haven't read Fourth Mansions. I would recommend his short story collections, like Nine Hundred Grandmothers.

Obviously, those aren't all lost books. But they are all discussed in the movie.
If you do enjoy the movie, definitely try to get your hands on the multiple disc version DVD. Some of the extras are great and aren't directly related to the film. For instance, there's an old episode of Firing Line that features an interview with Leslie Fielder. After watching him in the film (where he's old and craggy), it's a revelation to see him young and inspired. Kind of funny how he refers to things like comic books and science fiction as "pornography" though (and he's in favor of them!). He also mentions science fiction books like The Iron Dream by Norman Spinrad. There's also a nice short documentary on Henry Roth.
MadInkBeard has a different take on the DVD. He points out some of the bad points of the film, most of which I agree with, I just don't think they make it a bad film. (For instance, I'm not annoyed by the long shots of sky and pool skimming, and as both Rake's Progress and CAAF point out, one of the best parts of the movie is Moskowitz rambling about Joseph Heller as scenes of a carnival go by.) However, I do agree with his last statement:

10. All that, and I still don't have the desire to pick up the novel, which Barnes & Noble re-released in the wake of the film.

The Stones of Summer appears to be a Faulkner-esque coming of age story. It's huge. It's the kind of book that you either struggle through and fall in love with, or simply struggle with. Again, while I'm sure Moskowitz wants you to read the book, I don't think this is the ultimate goal of the movie. The movie is trying to express the love of books and reading and how that affects a person. And that's why I love it.

Great comic strip

Fleep is a pretty wild online comic. It's about a guy who goes into a phone booth, blacks out and wakes up to find it is surrounded by concrete. In his pocket, he has a Simbian to Russian dictionary, a note written in Simbian, several coins and 20 feet of dental floss. From that point on, the strip (which originally ran in a newspaper) shows how the main character tries to figure out where he is and why. For a while, not much happens in the strip, but it really pays off toward the end.
The strip was created by Jason Shiga. Time.com has a profile of his work here. Shiga also has a Live Journal account, which appears to be inactive.

Memic Monday: Books on my shelf

Today is meme day at Weirdwriter! Or at least, that's all can find to blog about. I found this one at David Fiore's Motime Like the Present; he got it from Rick Geerling at Eat More People. Here's the relevant quote:

So every writer - hell, almost every person - has that bookshelf. That one. The one where all the favorites and good picks and really cool looking books go. Mine is right on top of my desk. I got out of bed this morning, looked over at it, and thought...well, what better way to get some insight into a person? We're always doing favorite movie lists and favorite CD lists, but no one ever just talks about what they've got lining The Bookshelf. I'm going to jump out into the pool a bit and do mine and we'll see where it goes from there. Remember - no cheating and grabbing the cool books that aren't on your shelf, no saying you have books on there that you don't...it's okay if you haven't rearranged it in a while and have some crap on it. I do. That's just how it goes.

Well, I don't have The Bookshelf, but I have one shelf at home that I always look at wistfully. So I'll list those:
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen by Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill (Alan Moore, I love him.)
The Adventures of Lucius Leffing by Joseph Payne Brennan (Brennan is a Connecticut native and one of the last major writers for Weird Tales. He wrote some great short stories. I haven't read all of this yet, but it doesn't seem to be his best work.)
City of Saints & Madmen by Jeff Vandermeer (the hardcover edition from Prime)(There's lots of Vandermeer on this shelf. This was the first one of his books I read and I fell in love with it. You should read Vandermeer, now!)
Leviathan 3 edited by Jeff Vandermeer and Forrest Aguirre
The Golden Dawn Scrapbook by R.A. Gilbert (Always interested in occult groups, but haven't read this yet.)
Rebels, Pretenders & Impostors by Clive Cheesman and Jonathan Williams (I have no idea where I got this, but the subject matter (false kings and such) is fascinating.)
Little Big by John Crowley (Another Connecticut resident. I'm going to read this soon. I've heard too many good things about this book over the years.)
The Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric and Discredited Diseases edited by Jeff Vandermeer and Mark Roberts
The Third Level by Jack Finney (You can read my comments on it here.)
The Boulevard of Broken Dreams by Kim Deitch (Excellent graphic novel on the early days of animation through the eyes of a fictional artist.)
The Annotated Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle, annotated by Roy Pilot and Alvin Rodin (Dinosaurs! Adventure! How could I not love this. I still haven't read this edition though.)
Cities edited by Peter Crowther (British edition) (Novellas from four great writers: China Mieville, Michael Moorcock, Geoff Ryman and Paul di Filippo. di Filippo's story, "A Year in the Linear City" is my favorite so far, although Mieville's "The Tain" is also very good. Haven't read the other two.)
Tales of the Uncanny and Supernatural by Algernon Blackwood (A classic horror writer and this book was a lucky find at a used bookstore.)
The Heart of the Affair by Graham Greene (I had heard people like Maud Newton say so many good things about this book, I have to pick it up. I loved it and I've been buying more of Greene's stuff ever since.)
Lullaby by Chuck Palahniuk (Not much to say about this. I loved Fight Club, so when I heard about him doing a horror novel, I had to have it.)
Fun with Your New Head by Thomas Disch (Disch is a master. I've only read a couple of the stories here though.)
Dinner at Deviant's Palace by Tim Powers (I enjoyed Powers' On Stranger Tides, so when I saw this at a used book store, I grabbed it up. Still haven't read it though.)
Out of the Flames by Lawrence and Nancy Goldstone (An excellent book on the life of heretic and writer Michael Servetus and how his book, though to have been burned, turns up across the centuries.)
White Apples by Jonathan Carroll (Carroll's awesome. What more need you know?)
Sinai Tapestry by Edward Whittemore (Found thanks to Jeff Vandermeer's constant recommendations. Powerful story. I need to pick up the other parts of the Jerusalem Quartet soon.)
The Serenity Prayer by Elisabeth Sifton (Got this at a book sale at work. Far better than I ever expected. It's a memoir about the life of Reinhold Niebuhr and how he came to write the serenity prayer and what its meaning is, written by his daughter.)
The House on the Borderland and other Mysterious Places by William Hope Hodgson
The Boats of the 'Glen Carig' and other Nautical Adventures by William Hope Hodgson (Hodgson is a great weird writer. Most people know of him through the novel "House on the Borderland." His stuff is great and these collections from Night Shade Books are truly beautiful. I've already got the next one on order.)
Venniss Underground by Jeff Vandermeer (Night Shade Books edition)
Koko by Peter Straub (I've always wanted to read Straub. I tried reading "The Floating Dragon" but couldn't get into it. I picked this up at a used book store and hope I'll like it better.)
The Savage Tales of Solomon Kane by Robert E. Howard (Just bought this the other day. I grew up on Conan and I've been reading Howard ever since. These new collections of Howard's work from Del Rey are really good.)
and two that really shouldn't be here:
Guide to the Unexplained by Joel Levy
Monster by John Michael Greer
Also on the same shelf, but not books: an incense stand, a Godzilla Bandai action figure, a box of thumb tacks, "Surfing with the Alien" by Joe Satriani tape and the remains of a light fixture.
Only about half of these have been read. So what does this all tell you about me?

Movie meme

Here's the latest meme, found at Scribbling Woman. I think I did pretty well on it:

Instructions: bold the titles you've seen and add three to the end of the list (from mamamusings, Chuck, and Culture Cat).

01. Trainspotting
02. Shrek
03. M
04. Dogma
05. Strictly Ballroom
06. The Princess Bride
07. Love Actually
08. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Rings
09. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
10. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
11. Reservoir Dogs
12. Desperado
13. Swordfish
14. Kill Bill Vol. 1
15. Donnie Darko
16. Spirited Away
17. Better Than Sex
18. Sleepy Hollow
19. Pirates of the Caribbean
20. The Eye
21. Requiem for a Dream
22. Dawn of the Dead (The original).
23. The Pillow Book
24. The Italian Job [Seen the new one, but not the old Michael Caine one. This thing doesn't specify.]
25. The Goonies
26. Baseketball
27. The Spice Girls Movie (Spice World)
28. Army of Darkness
29. The Color Purple
30. The Safety of Objects
31. Can’t Hardly Wait
32. Mystic Pizza
33. Finding Nemo
34. Monsters Inc.
35. Circle of Friends
36. Mary Poppins
37. The Bourne Identity (both!)
38. Forrest Gump
39. A Clockwork Orange
40. Kindergarten Cop
41. On The Line
42. My Big Fat Greek Wedding
43. Final Destination
44. Sorority Boys
45. Urban Legend
46. Cheaper by the Dozen The original.
47. Fierce Creatures
48. Dude, Where’s My Car
49. Ladyhawke
50. Ghostbusters
51. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
52. Back to the Future
53. An Affair To Remember
54. Somewhere In Time
55. North By Northwest
56. Moulin Rouge
57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
58. The Wizard of Oz
59. Zoolander
60. A Walk to Remember
61. Chicago
62. Vanilla Sky
63. The Sweetest Thing
64. Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead
65. The Nightmare Before Christmas
66. Chasing Amy
67. Edward Scissorhands
68. Adventures of Priscilla: Queen of the Desert
69. Muriel’s Wedding
70. Croupier
71. Blade Runner
72. Cruel Intentions
73. Ocean’s Eleven [I've seen the original. Again they don't specify new or old.]
74. Magnolia
75. Fight Club
76. Beauty and The Beast
77. Much Ado About Nothing
78. Dirty Dancing
79. Gladiator
80. Ever After
81. Braveheart
82. What Lies Beneath
83. Regarding Henry
84. The Dark Crystal
85. Star Wars
86. The Birds
87. Beaches
88. Cujo
89. Maid In Manhattan
90. Labyrinth
91. Thoroughly Modern Millie
92. His Girl Friday
93. Chocolat
94. Independence Day
95. Singing in the Rain
96. Big Fish
97. The Thomas Crown Affair [Again, new old? I've seen the new one.]
98. The Matrix
99. Stargate
100. A Hard Day’s Night
101. About A Boy
102. Jurassic Park
103. Life of Brian
104. Dune
105. Help!
106. Grease
107. Newsies
108. Gone With The Wind
109. School of Rock
110. TOMMY
111. Yellow Submarine
112. From Hell
113. Benny & Joon
114. Amelie
115. Bridget Jones’ Diary
116. Monty Python and the Holy Grail
117. Heavenly Creatures
118. All About Eve
119. The Outsiders
120. Airplane!
121. The Sorcerer
122. The Crying Game
123. Hedwig and the Angry Inch
124. Slap Her, She’s French
125. Amadeus
126. Tommy Boy
127. Aladdin
128. How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days
129. Snatch
130. American History X
131. Jack and Sarah
132. Monkey Bone
133. Rocky Horror Picture Show
134. Kate and Leopold
135. Interview with the Vampire
136. Underworld
137. Truly, Madly, Deeply
138. Tank Girl
139. Boondock Saints
140. Blow Dry
141. Titanic
142. Good Morning Vietnam
143. Save the Last Dance
144. Lost in Translation
145. Willow
146. Legend
147. Van Helsing
148. Troy
149. Nine Girls and a Ghost
150. A Knight’s Tale
151. Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey
152. Beetlejuice
153. E.T.
154. Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone
155. Spaceballs
156. Young Frankenstein
157. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
158. American President
159. Bad Boys
160. Pecker
161. Pink Floyd: The Wall
161. X-Men
162. Sidewalks of New York
163. The Children of Dune [Isn't this a TV movie? Does that count?]
164. Beyond Borders
165. Life Is Beautiful
166. Good Will Hunting
167. Run Lola Run
168. Blazing saddles
169. Caligula
170. The Transporter
171. Better Off Dead
172. The Abyss
173. Almost Famous
174. The Red Violin
175. Contact
176. Stand and Deliver
177. Clueless
178. William Shakespeare’s Romeo+Juliet
179. Dangerous Liaisons
180. I Am Sam
181. The Usual Suspects
182. U-571
183. Capricorn One
184. The Little Shop of Horrors (the one with Jack Nicholson) [I've seen both versions.]
185. Die Hard
186. The Flamingo Kid
187. Night of the Comet
188. Point Break
189. Chatterbox
190. Secretary
191. Breakfast at Tiffany’s
192. American Beauty
193. Pulp Fiction
194. What About Bob
195. Roger and Me
196. Fahrenheit 9/11
197. Bowling for Columbine
198. The Professional (aka Leon)
199. The Fifth Element
200. La Femme Nikita
201. Heathers
202. Bull Durham
203. The Scorpion King
204. The Thin Blue Line
205. Do the Right Thing
206. Lady From Shanghai
207. Natural Born Killers
208. Funeral in Berlin
209. Decline of the American Empire
210. Citizen Kane
211. Casablanca
212. Night of the Hunter

"And maybe marlon brando
Will be there by the fire
We'll sit and talk of hollywood
And the good things there for hire
And the astrodome and the first tepee
Marlon brando, pocahontas and me
Marlon brando, pocahontas and me
Pocahontas."
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Marlon Brando dies

Marlon Brando has died at 80. The man made a lot of great films over the years. And once in a blue moon, he could make a bad film more enjoyable. His bizarre take on Dr. Moreau in the 1996 "Island of Dr. Moreau" was the only good thing in it. He most often took the serious roles, but he had a sense of humor. Check out "The Freshman," his take on his former character is perfect. Might be time to rent some flicks this holiday weekend.

Girl: What're you rebelling against, Johnny?
Johnny: Whaddya got?

The Mumpsimus interviews Alan DeNiro

The Mumpsimus interviews Alan DeNiro. It's the second interview that Matthew Cheney has done and it's excellent. They have a good discussion on zines, poetry and "difficult" fiction. Lots of good stuff. Cheney has also said he's looking to talk with M. Rickert. The interviews are great, Matthew, keep 'em coming!

Salon runs "Perfect Circle" excerpts

Salon is printing excerpts from Sean Stewart's "Perfect Circle" starting today. I don't know anything about the book, although it comes from a well respected small press publisher and at least one other person has recommended it. Here's the first paragraph:

I woke up sweaty and shaking. Tense. I had been dreaming about ghost roads again. This one was leaving an apartment complex swimming pool, and there was a little girl walking down it. She was looking back over her shoulder at me, eyes solemn behind a cheap kid's snorkeling mask, and wearing pool flippers; slow dreamy duck-steps, a trail of wet inhuman footprints disappearing into the dim black and white houses, the humming silence.

Living dead presidents

The influence of zombies on American politics has been revealed.

Dream machine at a store near you

A new device in Japan can help you control your dreams.

Placed near the bedside, the dream-maker emits a special white light, relaxing music and a fragrance to help the person nod off.
Several hours later, it plays back the recorded word prompts, timed to coincide with the part of the sleep cycle when dreams most often occur. It then helps coax the sleeper gently out of sleep with more light and music so that the dreams are not forgotten.
The device, which will sell for $136 in Japan starting late August, targets sleep-deprived businessmen, a company official said.

Of course, there have been other types of dream machines available for years. Results may differ however.

Hello middle ages!

The FDA has approved leeches to be sold as "medical devices."

For many people, leaches conjure up the image of Humphrey Bogart removing the bloodsuckers from his legs in African Queen, but FDA reports that leeches can help heal skin grafts by removing blood pooled under the graft and restore blood circulation in blocked veins by removing pooled blood.
Indeed the use of leeches to draw blood goes back thousands of years. They were widely used as an alternative treatment to bloodletting and amputation for several thousand years. Leeches reached their height of medicinal use in the mid-1800s.

By the way, isn't the "African Queen" a rather old reference to use? I love the movie, but the first thing that comes to my mind when leeches are mentioned is the scene in "Stand By Me." Generation gap?

Snakehead is here to stay.
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"Zen" and the art of reviewing

This Salon article about "Zen Arcade" pisses me off. I have no problem with people praising the Husker Du album, it is great. But this article is a little much. There's a lot of pointless noise and stretched out nonsense in the album. I'm sure it marks a particularly important moment in hardcore music, but 20 years later, it can be a little boring to listen to. It does have its classic moments (I'm not sure Husker Du wrote a better song than "Turn on the News"), but the reviewer should ease off on the hyperbole.
Also there's this:

This is the album Nirvana and Pearl Jam only wish they could have made: intelligent, clamorous, and hashing out more torment and passion in four sides than all the grungers and headbangers since -- all without a hint of heavy-metal pretension.

Why is it that everytime someone wants to praise something as a classic, they have to shoot down the latecomers? Nirvana made two great albums, both of which I think are better than "Zen Arcade." (I'm not going to defend Pearl Jam, let their fans do that.)
And then, what's this about "heavy metal pretension"? As if there is no pretension in a double album that goes on about spiritual seeking and includes a song called "Hare Krishna." Believe me, "Zen Arcade" has pretensions all its own.
Can somebody please write an appraisal of "Zen Arcade" that's realistic and doesn't take cheap shots at later bands or heavy metal? I would appreciate it.

Here's the latest image of Godzilla from "Godzilla: Final Wars." The picture is courtesy of Monster Zero. 

Jeff VanderMeer and The Mumpsimus

Matthew Cheney of The Mumpsimus has done an interview with Jeff VanderMeer for SF Site. Definitely worth checking out.

NPR : Too hip for its own good

According to NPR's Ombudsman their music reviews are too hip. I'll wait for you to stop laughing.
Alright. The ombudsman claims that the reviews are incomprehensible and he uses these quotes to illustrate his point:

A review of the band Wilco on All Things Considered on June 21:

These extended explorations and others, like the five minutes of abrasive dental-drill feedback drone near the end of the disc, give Wilco's music an entirely new dimension. The guitar isn't here to make things pretty. Tweedy uses savage, wild lunges to punctuate the verses and sometimes to inject a little danger into otherwise lovely songs.

Yeah, "dental-drill feedback," that must be really hard to understand. Maybe it should have been edited to "shrill, piercing noise."

A review of the band The Magnetic Fields from All Things Considered on June 9:

The songs themselves are the draw. They're disciplined little gems of composition, poison-pen letters set in the first person and caustic, coffee-shop observations propelled by not particularly heroic desires. The best of them tell about being deluded in love or not being able to let go of an old flame. And even under Merritt's dour storm clouds, they gleam.

I'm completely mystified on this one. What is hard to understand here? Maybe "coffee-shop observations propelled by not particularly heroic desires" is a little silly, but it sure isn't hard to understand.

A review of an album by Morrissey on All Things Considered on June 4:

Morrissey has always seemed to be a walking paradox, both playful and morose, ambiguously asexual, political but hopelessly self-involved, which is why You Are the Quarry is still a classic Morrissey album. Songs like "All the Lazy Dykes" and "The World Is Full of Crashing Bores" serve up such themes in spades. But his usual inclination towards detachment ends there. And the new Morrissey, the older Morrissey, the wiser Morrissey, the Morrissey of this moment is unafraid to show a more personal side, venting his soul with songs like "Irish Blood, English Heart" about his withering sense of nationalism and, of course, the starkly brave and confessional accusation of Christianity entitled "I Have Forgiven Jesus."

Again what am I missing here? I'm not saying I agree with any of these reviews, but what is so hard to understand? After reading "the starkly brave and confessional accusation of Christianity" I know exactly what the song, called "I Have Forgiven Jesus" for godsakes, is about and know I don't care. Isn't that what the review should tell me?
All right, maybe some of this language is in rock-crit-ese, but none of it was inscrutable.
So what does our NPR ombudsman give as the alternative?

Ulaby's interview with Timbaland was about how he found inspiration in the Tolkien novels, The Lord of the Rings. It seemed an unusual combination, but Ulaby made Timbaland more comprehensible and his music more accessible.

This was good cultural journalism: It introduced me to an artist I didn't know. It told me why he is important and why he is an artist. I may not run out to buy his CD, but at least I can make an informed choice.

Well good. But he's not comparing same to same here. He's comparing record reviews to an interview with an artist. An interview can go more in depth on what an artist hopes to achieve and why he uses the sounds he does. A review takes what's in front of the reviewer and describes why he or she thinks it's good or bad. It's not an introduction, it's advice.
Sounds like he's upset that rock music isn't reviewed the way classical music is. In classicial music, you can say "this E note coming in during this cluster of notes brings a feeling of" blah blah blah. Nobody in rock cares about E notes or C notes or notes at all. How would a classical person describe five minutes of dental-drill feedback? He wouldn't. It may hit a certain note, but that would miss the point.
It's funny, because I always thought NPR reviews overexplained rock music. Maybe NPR should just leave out the rock reviews and go back to classical. A younger crowd isn't listening to NPR for their record reviews anyway.

UPDATE: I am always so pleased when smart people agree with me. Terry Teachout and Greg Sandow have written blog entries that take issue with the ombudsman's critique as well. Sandow also makes a good point about the whole situation:

That said, there's still a problem. How are music reviewers supposed to talk, when even things they say in simple language seem -- at least to some people -- to come from another planet? If they stop to explain the most basic concepts ("Wilco's latest album may seem to be full of horrible noise, but there's a reason for that"), they'll sound ridiculous to the many people who do know the music. ("The Beethoven symphony that the Philharmonic played last night is very long, but that's how classical pieces are.") One thing this shows is that music, in spite of all the sentimental talk about it, is anything but a universal language. Instead, it seems to divide us -- to mark subcultural boundaries -- far more than it unites us.

Fictionalized animation history

Terry Teachout notes how Who Framed Roger Rabbit made him look back at animated films and consider why they might be important. That entry got me thinking about Kim Deitch's "The Boulevard of Broken Dreams," which is a graphic novel about the early days of animation and how some of the animators were crushed in the process. It's very good and I think Teachout (and just about everyone else) would enjoy it. I learned about the book after Jeffrey Ford did an interview with Deitch at Fantastic Metropolis.

More books on music

There's a whole new set of those 33 1/3 books coming out, including Elvis Costello's Armed Forces by Franklin Bruno, the Replacements' Let It Be by Colin Meloy, and The Beatles' Let It Be by Steve Matteo, as well as a bunch more.
I had mixed reviews for the first two I read, but it's an interesting enough idea that I may pick up some of the new ones if I see them at the bookstore.

Jeffrey Ford in Locus

Jeffrey Ford will be the lead interview in the next issue of Locus. LocusOnline sometimes does interview excerpts, so keep a watch out. (It's a great site anyway; they keep up with the latest genre fiction news.) I'll be rushing out to my bookstore next week to find the magazine on the shelves. Meanwhile, The Mumpsimus has put together a few hot links to Ford interviews while you're waiting for the issue. (Also a previous entry of my own includes many Ford things to tide you over. And I'm still looking for anyone who might be interested in a free hardcover copy of The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque.)

Excellent new blog: Tingle Alley

Tingle Alley is a new blog by a Maud Newton guest blogger. It's terrific. It's already made it to my everyday check list. Today she has outdone herself. She responds forcefully to a New York Times Book Review essay. The second entry is a look at the questions an apprentice writer must face.

I write this to help me remember it. Because for the past year I’ve suffered more doubt and insecurity than ever before about my writing. Enough unhappiness that it’s seemed worthwhile to ask myself, “Why not just stop?” Why have what amounts to basically a glorified hobby (no one pays me to write fiction) that makes you so miserable? And guilty. And hunch-backed. Why not just be happy with the good husband and the satisfactory job in plumbing supplies, and with friends and family and trying to be a good person in the world? Why not just read the books other people write? Why not choose to be content?
It occurs to me that there are two kinds of misery you can encounter as a writer: The misery of apprenticeship — basically, the frustrations and humiliations involved in learning how to do your craft well — and the misery of why bother with it at all.

Check out Tingle Alley, there's lots of good stuff there.

Godzilla tramples New York

In August, the Film Forum in New York will host two weeks of Godzilla films (scroll down). The festival includes Gojira, Destroy All Monsters, Mothra, Godzilla Mothra Mechagodzilla: Tokyo S.O.S. and many more. I have to find a way to get to these.

Sweeney Todd coming to a theater near you

Apparently Sam Mendes, the director of American Beauty and Road to Perdition, will be directing a movie version of the musical Sweeney Todd that is scheduled for release in 2005. I didn't think much of American Beauty, but it was well directed. I love the Stephen Sondheim musical, I only hope Mendes does a good job.

The Sound of Shatner

Ben Folds is working on a major new William Shatner release that will include the likes of Henry Rollins, Aimee Mann, Joe Jackson and a song written by Nick Hornby.

"It is a great record and it is really worth going out and doing some shows in major cities," Folds told Billboard.com. "(Shatner) is not a musician at all -- he's not rapping or singing -- but he is still part of the music. I've never heard a record quite like it."

A true classic in the making. I can't wait to see the tour. (Thanks to Charles for the heads up.)

Annoying ad

I noticed when I went to IMDB, the most annoying ad in the world came up. Every time I found a new movie, these two giant metal arms would appear on the screen and shake my browser for 10 seconds or so. It would be followed by an ad for I, Robot (I refuse to link to it, both because of the ad and because it looks like it will be a travesty.) Why do advertisers do this? Don't they know it just annoys the hell out of us? There should be some reforms in Internet advertising. It's not getting them anywhere.

Original Godzilla soundtrack

La-La Land Records will be releasing a 50th anniversary version of the Godzilla (Gojira 1954) soundtrack. This company seems to be pretty good. They've got soundtracks of Hollywood movies like the Punisher and the Butterfly Effect and TV shows like the new Battlestar Galactica and Saint Sinner. According to Henshin! Online:

The CD will contain Akira Ifukube's orchestral soundtrack, sound effects, and a 16-page booklet featuring liner notes and production stills. The CD cover will feature exclusive artwork for this 50th Anniversary release. The CD will have a retail price of $15.98. Source: Toho Kingdom

Cult members found guilty

That crazy cult leader and murderer and his accomplices were found guilty. Sentencing will be on June 24.

Fictional character blogging

Gabe Chouinard is experimenting (again.) He's nearly completed a novel called "Dead Cities" and is planning to write a sequel starring a secondary character from the first. But he needs to work on the character. So he's created The Journal of Aristin Swift, in which his character will blog about his life.
Chouinard says:

I thought this might be an interesting opportunity to accomplish both a bridge work between the two novels and to explore the 'making of a character' in an interesting and innovative way. We've all read 'excerpts' from 'journals' in fantasy novels. So let's take it a step further, shall we?

DarkEcho blog has a new address

Here.

A Scanner Darkly report

Everyone else is linking to it, so why can't I. The Philip K. Dick Trust (members of Dick's family) visits the set of "A Scanner Darkly." I'm excited about this film because it appears to be a faithful adaptation of a Dick work (one I haven't read, by the way.) I'm depressed because it has Keanu Reeves in it. I'm hoping for the best though. It's illustrated in the same way "Waking Life" was done. It will be interesting to see that technique used for an actual plot. Hopefully it will make up for Reeves acting abilities.

Going to the prom

Slate is doing this odd story about proms. David Amsden, a writer in his mid-20s, is taking a 17-year-old girl to her prom -- in the name of reporting, of course. He uses the event to talk about our culture's obsession with young girls. It's actually very good and not nearly as prurient as it sounds. The second installment is here. I'm waiting for today's. Apparently some people have made enough complaints about the piece for Amsden to respond:

Nothing remotely taboo occurred during my night at the prom, which anyone can learn by reading the piece. It's strange, then, that the majority of you should be so thirsty for it to be a legitimate "confession of a pervert" type story, which, surely, everyone knows Slate would never publish. What's going on here?

I went to 3 proms when I was in high school (mine, my girlfriend's and a friend who needed a date). None of them were all that great. They're expensive and just seem to be an excuse to party afterward. I wonder if they're any better now that there are these big afterprom events where the school sets up an all night alcohol-free party? I doubt it.

Godzilla cartoon release

Three episodes from Godzilla: The Series is coming out on DVD in August. The cartoon series was based on the 1998 movie, but far exceeds it (which really wasn't that hard). The trilogy being released, called "Monster Wars," was pretty good as I remember. They basically rounded up all the monsters from the series and created an all out battle. Like "Destroy All Monsters," but without all the big names.

Cult, murders, nude models and more

Professor Hex has latched onto a wild story this time (well, he always does, but this one's particularly good.)I hesitate to describe it. There are too many details and they're all fascinating. The story includes brutal murders, a violent cult, a Playboy model, a good witch raising money for Armageddon, Elvin Bishop's family, rohypnol and a plot to take over the Mormons.

The culmination of [cult leader] Helzer's plan was to have been an operation codenamed "Brazil", in which he would send South American orphans to Salt Lake City to kill the 15 elders who run the Mormon church.
According to Godman's testimony, Helzer imagined he could blame the murders on the "government behind government" and take over the leadership of the world's 12 million Mormons himself.

Here's the latest on the case. It's horrifying, but you can't turn away.

JJA interviews Richard K. Morgan

The Slush God does an interview with Richard K. Morgan, author of Altered Carbon, Broken Angels and Market Forces. I read Altered Carbon and thought it was a great combination of noir detective stories and science fiction concepts. I have Broken Angels on the shelf, but wasn't really in the mood for another noir novel. Now I find out that's not exactly what it is:

In Broken Angels, the sequel to Altered Carbon, you radically change gears, from a brutal future-noir crime thriller to a brutal militaristic, alien archaeology tale. Likewise, Kovacs changes careers from detective to soldier of fortune/archaeologist. What has been the reaction to it thus far?
Morgan: By and large, the reaction's been good. I think there was always going to be an element who expected me to churn out a series of future detective stories until my toes curled up, and those guys I was always going to disappoint. But most readers seem to have gone with the change without a problem. Some like Altered Carbon more, some seem to think Broken Angels is better. And one guy in a bookshop told me they were both great but in entirely different ways, which of course is the result I was looking for!

So now maybe I'll read Broken Angels earlier than I expected.

Yahoo Mail is new and Web attacks are frustrating

So Yahoo! has updated its mail service. This is, of course, an attempt to fight off Google's new mail service.

Marcel Nienhuis, a senior analyst for the Radicati Group, a market research firm that focuses on online communications, said those worries are now probably moot. Yahoo's free service is probably enough for most people, while the premium service will appeal to hardcore Internet users, he said.
"This will negate the storage benefit of Google," Nienhuis said. "The Yahoo service is better than the Google service. Users are familiar with it, and many of them have their contacts there."
He also added that Yahoo's spam filter is better than Google's.

Well, that's all fine and dandy, but it seems now Yahoo mail doesn't work. Every time I try to do something, my computer can't find the page. It's really frustrating. And at a bad time, since I just started a Google mail account too. I like that Yahoo is updating their service, but can they please make sure it works right before unveiling it? I'm sure in a day or two these won't be problems.
UPDATE: Well, as Cybele pointed out in the comments, the slow down doesn't appear to be Yahoo's fault. There was an attack on major Web sites (including Yahoo) today. So I'll chalk it up to that. The mail seems to be working fine now.

Gi-ant movie

Fred Olen Ray is apparently working on a giant ant movie. Ray has made some truly awful B-movies over the years, but they are usually goofy fun. I'm not sure I'm looking forward to this movie, but I'll certainly check it out.

More on comic books

Scribbling woman says much the same that I did about comics and art but, you know, better and more interestingly.
Also, there is an excellent response at Rasputin's I Am Uninformed to this whole thing.

The Mumpsimus does interviews

As if The Mumpsimus wasn't a great enough blog already, Matthew Cheney has started interviewing people. He talks with K.J. Bishop about her novel The Etched City, her story "Maldoror Abroad" in Album Zutique and her writing process.

I don't think I have an impulse to tell stories so much as an impulse to spend time with characters. I always used to imagine things about my favourite characters from movies and books, and over time those characters would change in my mind, turning into people who were similar to the originals but different enough for me to think of them as separate. When I started writing, I discovered that the process of writing allowed me to get to know them much better than I could by just daydreaming. I also discovered that I liked writing in and of itself -- the pleasure of making things out of words, of finding the way to express something, to define some notion or feeling of mine that previously had been vague.

Also, while I'm talking about interviews, Maud Newton's latest "Fiction Writers on Writing" (previously "Making Book") is with Stephen Elliott.

Can comic books be art?

This review of the comics issue of McSweeney's has been upsetting some people around the world of blogging. In it, Martin Rowson takes aim at the urge to believe that comic books can be great art. He gets truly heated up by the end:

This [the McSweeney's issue] is yet another sally in that old, old struggle to get comics to be taken seriously and recognised by the adult world in general as "respectable".
Except that comics aren't and shouldn't be respectable. The closest they should come to the adult world is as a kind of foul-mouthed, filthy-minded and grubby adolescence, with adolescents of all ages duly sequestered in that teenage bedroom and, between bouts of what teenagers do, thumbing through thin, flimsy funnies instead of damaging their wrists trying to hold this latest over-weighty, overproduced whinge. Ware, after all, is rich and famous, and thanks to this book will doubtless be mobbed by the thousands and thousands of ageing retards for whom comics still float their boat. Which is fine, but I wish he and the rest of them would accept that, in the ecology of culture, comics flourish where they are for a reason, and so he should stop pushing against an open door into an empty room.

Linking to this, the Literary Saloon says:

but it's nice to see someone argue that all this talk that comics should be taken seriously has gone too far

The Return of the Reluctant comments further on this idea:

There have been too many insalubrious suggestions from the "comics as literature" crowd without justification or solid arguments. It's one thing to state it, but it comes across as a callow undergraduate announcing for the umpteenth time that God is dead. It's another thing to have someone like James Wood or Christopher Hitchens weighing in on the matter and offering a proper historical or critical perspective. Ergo, it's nice to see someone rock the boat (with admittedly too much gusto), if only to get the pro-comics crowd reconsidering their arguments.

Bookslut dismisses the whole thing out of hand:

Oh, Jesus fucking Christ. Someone is trying really hard to be controversial, aren't they? I got the link from The Literary Saloon, who seems to agree. A certain someone also insists I should have arguments to back up my claim that comics are literature. But this article doesn't make me want to defend my claim. It makes me roll my eyes and get along with my day, just as any other boneheaded statement meant to get people angry would. I can't be bothered to care. More 100 Bullets for me.

So a tempest in a teapot, but those are my favorite kind. I, for one, agree with Bookslut's dismissal of the article. Rowson is so nasty at the end there. My biggest problem with Rowson's article is the statement "Except that comics aren't and shouldn't be respectable." Is he trying to set himself up as some guardian of art? Is there any reason why comics shouldn't be accepted as having the potential to be art?
As for the more reasonable request that we comic fans should tell the world what the classics, the "Ulysses" or "Canterbury Tales" of the comic book world, are, I can name a few.
Here's a few comic books I believe are masterpieces (with links to Amazon so you can buy them and decide for yourself):
From Hell, Watchmen, Maus, Jim Woodring's Frank series, Sandman, Harvey Pekar comics, Through the Habitrails, Love & Rockets, Mr. Punch, A Contract With God, Jar of Fools.
Some of those are the books everybody mentions, some are personal to me, but I think they are all important in some way. And I haven't included some single issues of comics by people like Bernard Krigstein, Dan Clowes and David Mazzuchelli that are also beautiful, important art. For that matter, I haven't included any foreign works that also deserve notice.
Maybe people are going crazy for comics now because they are hot. And maybe some comic books are being overrated because of this. But I don't see how that makes any difference to whether comic books can be art.
I would like to see somebody make a cogent argument as to why comic books can't be art that isn't based on the fans ("foul-mouthed, filthy-minded and grubby adolescence") or particular bad examples (if you take a bad comic off a comic book store shelf at random, I can also walk into a book store and easily find a trashy novel just as bad.) Do people believe there is something inherently wrong with comics that keeps them from being art?
I just don't get it.
Anyway, I'm not the best person to make the argument, but I felt somebody should be sticking up for them.
Now that I've written all this, I notice that Rowson is an editorial cartoonist. (Maybe many of you know this?) Could this put a whole different spin on things? Here's an interview with him on politics, which inludes this paragraph:

But Rowson is not one of those who bangs on about the 'power of the cartoon' and its potential impact on political life. 'The fact that I do horrible drawings of politicians doesn't disempower them in any way at all - and what I can do is nothing compared to what they can do, because they have power over my destiny.'

Maybe he just hates himself (or thinks comic books are beneath editorial cartoons.) Whatever.

Richard Hell on Robert Quine

More on Robert Quine, this time Richard Hell talks about the guitarist and his final days.

Fox-deer thing and the credibility of photos

This guy took a photo of a mysterious creature in back yard. The creature looks like a cross between a fox and a deer, with a cat's tail. It's very strange.
It's funny how the digital age has completely taken away the credibility of photographs. As soon as I saw the picture, I said to myself "that's a photoshop!" I have no idea if it is, but how can anyone tell? I suppose if he has original negatives on film, rather than digital. Still. Cool looking photo anyway.
(Link found at Professor Hex.)

Acid, absinthe and upset tummies

I was searching Fortean Times today, hoping their H.P. Lovecraft article had made the Internet (it hasn't), but I find they have an interesting collection of articles on how acid, absinthe and upset stomachs inspired several writers: Thomas De Quincey, August Strindberg, Aldous Huxley and Lewis Carroll. Tied to that there is an article on the Grateful Dead if you are interested in that sort of thing.
The Lovecraft article, published in their latest issue, is very good. It's sure to point out that Lovecraft was a stout nonbeliever in the occult, but it still explores its influence on him and how others have brought his work into the occult. It's a good read. I'll try to remember to link to it when it's up on the Web site.

Giant monster designs

So the rest of the monster artwork for "Godzilla: Final Wars" has been released. Most of the monsters show little change from their '60s look. Gigan, with it's metal body and detailed hooks, and Manda, now green instead of red and with a sleeker head, seem the most changed. Hedorah looks like they've added a few gross details and Rodan looks sleeker. Otherwise, it's all very traditional. Have I mentioned how much I can't wait for this movie?
While I'm on about giant monsters, Retromedia released Return of the Giant Monsters backed with Magic Serpent. I don't have either movie and while Retromedia doesn't use the best prints, I like just having a copy of the films.

Read what I tell you! Buy Vandermeer's books!

You know, I keep trying to push authors I think are great to you readers, but I don't know how much you care. I fear that half of you have no interest and the other half are way ahead of me. No one has asked for that copy of "The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque" yet. Do I really have no readers interested in reading Jeff Ford?
Well, regardless if I'm putting you to sleep or making you skip a couple of entries a week, I'm going to continue promoting authors I enjoy.
One of my favorites is Jeff Vandermeer. Apparently, he has just completed work on his new book, "Shriek: An Afterword," which will be the latest book set in his city of Ambergris. If you're interested (and you should be!) check out his blog at vanderworld.blogspot.com and you'll be able to read excerpts from the book. His collection of short stories, "Secret Life", is available now. When I have some money available, that's going to be the next book I pick up.

Robert Quine 1942-2004

Guitarist Robert Quine, 61, has died, possibly of a heroin overdose. What a loss. The guy was an amazing guitar player. He made a name for himself with Richard Hell & the Voidoids and went on to revive Lou Reed's career with The Blue Mask. He played punk music, but he was a guitar god. His sound was distinctive and aggressive and he played like few before him (or after him for that matter). I was always excited to hear him on an album. This really is a tragedy. He had already done great work, but nothing would have stopped him from doing more if he had lived.
There are comments on his death here, here and people are talking about it on the I Love Music board. I'll add more as I find it.
Here's a bit on Quine from Victor Bockris' book "Transformer":

The purest of musicians with the highest of standards, Quine let his music speak for him. As soon as he played a single, inimitable note on his guitar, there was no question that Mr. Quine was in control. If an artist's work can be judged by how quickly it is recognized, then Bob Quine was on eof the all-time greats. By 1977, his playing was so inspired he had developed a cult following.

Bockris' book makes it clear that Quine not only aided Lou Reed on his album, but basically revived Reed's confidence in himself and set him back on the road to greatness.
Bockris also quotes New York Times music critic Robert Palmer:

Robert Quine's solos were like explosions of shredding metal and were over in thirty seconds or so.

And here is Lester Bangs on Quine:

Someday Quine will be recognized for the pivotal figure that he is on his instrument -- he is the first guitarist to take the breakthroughs of early Lou Reed and James Williamson and work through them to a new, individual vocabulary, driven into odd places by obsessive attention to "On the Corner"-era Miles Davis. Of course, I'm prejudiced, because he played on my record as well, but he is one of the few guitarists I know who can handle the supertechnology that is threatening to swallow players and instruments whole -- "You gotta hear this new box I got," is how he'll usually preface his latest discovery, "it creates the most offensive noise ..." -- without losing contact with his musical emotions in the process. Onstage he projects the cool remote stance learned from his jazz mentors -- shades, beard, expressionless face, bald head, old sportcoat -- but his solos always burn, the more so because there is always something constricted in them, pent up, waiting to be released.

UPDATE: Here's the New York Times obituary. Now they're saying it might have been suicide. Quine had been despondent over the loss of his wife in August. Also, Lou Reed has made a statement about Quine's death:

"Robert Quine was a magnificent guitar player -- an original and innovative tyro of the vintage beast," Reed said in a statement released to Billboard.com. "He was an extraordinary mixture of taste, intelligence and rock'n'roll abilities coupled with major technique and a scholar's memory for every decent guitar lick ever played under the musical son. He made tapes for me for which I am eternally grateful -- tapes of the juiciest parts of solos from players long gone. Quine was smarter than them all. And the proof is in the recordings, some of which happily are mine. If you can find more interesting sounds and musical clusters than Quine on 'Waves of Fear' (from Reed's 1982 album "The Blue Mask"), well, it's probably something else by Robert."

There's some comments and a few more details at Richard Hell's site.
And finally, here's an interview with Quine from 1997 that goes over his whole career and from the same site, here's a list of Quine's favorite music.

Lost cities and peoples

Professor Hex put together a good batch of links recently. Especially interesting was his post about the possible discovery of Atlantis and his supposition that maybe it's Tartessos instead. The Tartessos link is fascinating. Unlike Atlantis, there's a wealth of historical mentions of Tartessos and it seems to coincide with Biblical references to Tarshish.
In the Altantis article, meanwhile, there's a reference to the Sea People:

Dr Kuehne noticed that the war between Atlantis and the eastern Mediterranean described in Plato's writings closely resembled attacks on Egypt, Cyprus and the Levant during the 12th Century BC by mysterious raiders known as the Sea People.
As a result, he proposes that the Atlanteans and the Sea People were in fact one and the same.

Here's some information on the Sea People.

Epic fantasy

At s1ngularity::front, Gabe Chouinard looks at epic fantasy and questions why he and so many book buyers love it when so much of it is mediocre.

What is missing from epic fantasy is PERSONALITY. Too much of it is homogenized, steralized, devoid of life. Without personality, epic fantasy is just a string of redundant novels telling a single story over and over again. We all know the tropes, we all know the Hero's Journey, we all know the way things will work out in the end. So it becomes a matter of style and idiosyncracy... and such traits are sorely ignored in most epic fantasy, which is why writers like Gene Wolfe and Stephen R. Donaldson stand out so prominently in the field. When the tale is familiar, it's the telling that matters.

Save the giant squid

Britain is fighting to stop deep sea trawling, which it believes is killing many underwater species, including the giant squid.

How I think

So I took the What Kind of Thinker Are You quiz at the BBC Web site. According to my results I am a:
logical-mathematical thinker
intrapersonal thinker
existentitial thinker.
It gives a little description of what each type of thinking means, people who were similar thinkers and jobs that best suit your thinking style. For instance, among the people who thought like me were: Graham Greene, Isaac Newton and Gandhi (actually, Gandhi fits into two of my categories.) Of course, all the jobs were different under each category.
It's an interesting quiz. See what you get.

How giant squid aid you

Scientist says the eyes of the giant squid may hold the key to solving visual impairment. The story includes a rather awful picture of a detached giant squid eye.

Couch potato world record

So this British guy spent 47 consecutive hours watching TV and broke a world record. As world records go, this doesn't seem all that impressive to me, I've practically done it myself. The only hard part is staying awake. Got to be careful what you watch, one episode of "Full House" and you're done.
(Link found at Return of the Reluctant.)

Amazon's new thing

So Amazon has started a new thing, called a Plog. Well, really it's not a new thing at all, just new for them. A Plog is a "personalized Web log," and as far as I can tell, it lists your recent purchases and Amazon recommendations. It looks like Amazon is the plogger, although it's attached to your account. It's kind of an interesting idea, I hope they do something with it.

Writers and their multiple personalities

This link looks at the work of August Highland, a man on the Internet who has created 80 different personas who have numerous literary Web zines and publish each other's fiction. These 80 different persona have also created numerous literary movements. You can start on his stuff here. Of course, most of his stuff seems to be words strung together in either a "Finnegan's Wake" or William Burroughs cut-up novel style.
The whole thing reminds me of Fernando Pessoa. Pessoa was a Portuguese poet who created four "heteronyms." Each of these created personality wrote poems in their own style. They would write articles about each others work and would be inspired or outraged by each other.
(Original link found at Bookslut.)

Godzilla and religion

The Revealer looks at Godzilla, exploring the religious ideas behind the Japanese cut of Godzilla and what it means. I don't like their contention that Serizawa was a suicide bomber. He's reluctant to use his weapon at all, unlike suicide bombers who are hoping to strike a blow against their enemies. He kills himself to keep the weapon secret. And I'm also not sure Godzilla is a metaphor for America. Nevertheless, it's a good article, check it out.

Giant mushroom in the Congo

An 18 inch high, 3 foot wide giant mushroom has appeared in the Congo and it's baffling scientists. All I know is you'd better not eat it.

Godzilla plus

Henshin!Online has a full round up of what we know about "Godzilla: Final Wars" now. Monster Zero has loads of stuff about the movie as well. All the talk about this movie has really got my giant monster movie engines revving. I watched two Gamera films last night and I'm planning on watching "Mothra" and "Atragon" in the next few days. Some day I'll have to write about why I like these films so much (although I'll have to figure it out for myself first.)

What is blogging, exactly?

Stephany Aulenback at Maud Newton's blog has a humorous reply to some of the rather silly articles that have appeared about blogging. She also brings up an interesting point:
The terms blogger, blogging, and blog are so overused they have become pretty much meaningless. They seem to indicate any individual (as opposed to a corporation) who posts anything – anything at all -- on any sort of webpage, with any regularity.
Is there a way, or should there be a way, to distinguish between people who use blogs for linking to news (boingboing, Bookslut, The Write Hemisphere), those writing about their lives (Tequila Mockingbird, Where is Raed? wKenShow), and those based around the lives of well known personalities (Neil Gaiman, Margaret Cho, Caitlin Kiernan)? And there are plenty of other blogs that don't fit into those categories. The Mumpsimus doesn't, and that's one of my favorite blogs.
A little while back, Terry Teachout at About Last Night wrote about what makes a blog. While a good starting place, I don't think he's entirely correct in his points. (One rule I think is just plain wrong: 3. Blogs without links aren’t blogs. Blogs without blogrolls aren’t blogs. Blogs without mailboxes aren’t blogs. Half of the blogs I mentioned above would be eliminated in that case.)
In general, I'm not all that concerned. But sometimes it's hard to talk about the differences of these various places. You start introducing somebody to blogs and they say something like, "Oh, you mean like Fark." Sort of. I have no idea if Fark is a blog or something else, really. It was certainly created before blogs were around, but it would be very hard to point out the difference between Fark and a blog. In that same category, gangster of love seems to fit into the blog world, but she doesn't use a blogging engine and she insists on being called a journal, not a blog.
Is blogging becoming too vast a word? Should we categorize things into blogs, journals, news feeds, etc.? I don't know. What are your thoughts?

What we talk about when we talk about Raymond Carver

Rake's Progress and Maud Newton mention that yesterday was Raymond Carver's birthday. Carver was one of my biggest influences back in college and I always enjoy rereading his stories, which now I'll probably do for the next few days. At both of those blogs, they gives links for learning more about Carver and what books to start with.

New Godzilla: Final Wars information

On the Japanese Godzilla: Final Wars Web site, there are lots of new things. One is a trailer made up of images from the movie, most spectacularly Godzilla standing in the center of a huge crater, the devastation of a city behind him. The Web site also includes a list of the 12 monsters who will be in the film. The design for the new Gigan has been revealed, and he looks very robotic now. You'll need Flash to see the Web site. Monster Zero, however, has put up images from the Web site. Apparently the movie will include an alien invasion. "Final Wars" looks to be totally old school Godzilla.

Ryuhei Kitamura

Here's an interview with Ryuhei Kitamura, the director of the upcoming "Godzilla: Final Wars" as well as his own films like "Versus" and "Azumi."
(Link found at Monster Zero.)

Jeffrey Ford: new fiction, a giveaway and a list of online stuff

Jeffrey Ford has a new story, "Rabbit Test" up at Fantastic Metropolis. After you're done reading it, you can check out what The Mumpsimus has to say about the piece. And you can discuss his fiction at the Night Shade Books message boards.
Ford has been my absolute favorite writer for the last several years. I was lucky enough to have won "The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque" in a Fantastic Metropolis contest a while back and since then I've been hooked on Ford's fiction. So I want to do the same for somebody else.
I've got second hardcover copy of "Mrs. Charbuque" that I would like to give to some person who is intrigued by Ford's fiction and wants to read more. If you want the book, e-mail me. The first person who does, and expresses a real interest in Ford's work, will get the book.
In the meantime, check out some of Ford's short fiction online:
The Empire of Ice Cream
Floating in Lindrethool
The Far Oasis
Malthusian's Zombie
The Shadow Year [excerpt]
The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque [excerpt]
Quiet Days in Purgatory
Horrors by Waters
Out of the Canyon
Exo-Skeleton Town
The Beyond [excerpt]
And here's some interviews:
Infinity Plus, BookSense, SF Site, Book Page, "Trampoline" promotional interview
Some nonfiction:
Distant Voices, about H. Rider Haggard
Ford interviews Kim Deitch
On "The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque"
Read and Appreciated 2003, 2002, 2001
A biography.

Charles Grant auction has begun

The auctions to benefit horror writer Charles Grant have begun. There's a lot of interesting stuff here, from signed Alice Cooper T-shirts to lots of horror novels signed and numbered, comic books and something called the rarest Stephen King item ever! Some of it is already pretty expensive, but there's some reasonable starting prices and it's all for a good cause, so check it out.

Author's new blog

Matthew Woodring Stover has a blog, studioMWS. Stover is the author of several books, the only one of which I've read is "Heroes Die," which was a combination of sword & sorcery mixed with science fiction. He has also written Star Wars tie-ins and is writing the Episode III novelization. There's not much on the blog yet, but he's only had it up a couple of days.

The fiction of the Mumpsimus

Matt Cheney, the terrific blogger at The Mumpsimus, has a story up at ideomancer called "Prague." The story is what I would expect having read his many reviews of speculative fiction stories. It's smart, short, beautiful and rewards re-reading. If you enjoy it, be sure to check out some of his other fiction at his personal Web site. Besides short stories, he's also written plays, screenplays, poetry and nonfiction.

Notebook love

moleskinerie is a blog about the Moleskine notebook and how great it is. I love the Moleskine, it's a got a great romantic look and at the same time is totally functional. The only problem is it's terribly expensive. For a tiny little notebook, you spend $10. It makes me afraid to write in them.
(Link found at scribbling woman.)

Stomp!

Couple of interesting Godzilla things:

Henshin!Online has translated a long interview between Godzilla director Masaki Tezuka and writer Wataru Mimura. Most of the interview is about the Japanese film industry from the 1970s on, but there's some interesting stuff about Godzilla too:
"MIMURA: But including my script, what do you think of the film?
TEZUKA: Reflecting on MEGAGUIRUS, what I wanted to do was to provide a scientific background to the story. I needed clear scientific reasons. It is impossible to create a Black Hole Gun, Godzilla himself is totally unrealistic, but I needed them for the story, therefore I thought providing scientific rationales were all the more important.
MIMURA: I see.
TEZUKA: So this I time [for GODZILLA AGAINST MECHAGODZILLA], my staff researched both robot computer technology and DNA engineering for Mechagodzilla. I paid so much attention to this part of the story.
MIMURA: So you think, even for a fantasy film, some amount of reality is necessary and the story should be based on the scientific fact. You cannot accept a totally unrealistic subject.
TEZUKA: No I can't. I think a scientific background contributes to maintain a steady storyline. Speaking of a steady storyline, if the capital had not been Osaka [in GXM] MECHAGODZILLA could have been a sequel to MEGAGUIRUS, as you said to me before. [laughs] Kiriko would have been in the new film. When you told me that I should have used Megaguirus again, I thought it was a good idea."
***
At DVDtalk they have a review of ADV's new "Destroy All Monters" release. It's a bare bones DVD of the movie with bad dubbing, no chapter stops and no extras. But it comes with the soundtrack.
The movie is quite enjoyable, but the poor print and many digital artifacts makes this movie a rental.

Mamatas on mainstream horror

Nick Mamatas dissects mainstream horror.
The mainstream of horror fiction of the past five years:
makes the following statements as regards class, gender, race, urbanization and pets:

...

creates a sense of identification by displaying the thoughts of the POV character in increasingly annoying italics

offers a protagonist demographically slightly better off, whiter, and more suburban than than stereotypical drug store/Wal-Mart (as opposed to bookstore) book buyers

...who consumes name-brand products, especially Pepsi

...and who, while looking in mirrors, contemplates either a recently-broken nose or a widening ass

Writing interview

So Maud Newton has started her series of interviews with writers about writing, called "Making Book." Her first interview is with Salah Abdoh, whose 1999 book "The Poet Game" stirred up interest after Sept. 11 because of its look at Islamic fundamentalist terrorists. Maud asks some good questions, and in at least one place, the question is more interesting than the answer. It's definitely worth checking out and I'm looking forward to see what she's got lined up in the future.

Hunting giant squid babies

The New Yorker writes about a giant squid hunter!
Steve O’Shea, a marine biologist from New Zealand, is one of the hunters—but his approach is radically different. He is not trying to find a mature giant squid; rather, he is scouring the ocean for a baby, called a paralarva, which he can grow in captivity. A paralarva is often the size of a cricket.
“Squid, you see, hatch thousands of babies,” O’Shea told me recently, when I called him at his office at the Earth and Oceanic Sciences Research Institute, at the Auckland University of Technology. “Most of these will get eaten up by larger predators, but during periods of spawning the sea should be filled with an absolutely fantastic amount of these miniature organisms. And, unlike the adults, they shouldn’t be able to dart away as easily.”

That annoying First Amendment technicality

This story is outrageous. Apparently, there is a New Mexico principal out there who is condemning students and teachers for producing articles critical of the government. He's destroyed poetry and tore down art from walls. Then he proudly read his own poetry during a ceremony in which a flag was raised and praised himself for his actions.
And it gets worse! He fires the teachers, won't rehire the art teachers and he won't release their records so the teachers can get new jobs. Is this man insane?
Here's another Web site about it:
A cloud of silence, censorship and fear hangs over the RRHS school district. A once-vibrant student literacy and critical-speaking/critical-thinking initiative has been crushed. In May, 2003, the RRHS Military Liaison and the Principal triumphantly raised a flag on school grounds and read out a poem telling critics of war policy to "shut your faces". Principal Gary Tripp told local press that this was "a high point" of his principalship.
You can donate to help the teacher fight Principal Gary Tripp.
I'm hoping this is a somewhat isolated incident. But there's been so much of this kind of crap going around, I begin to wonder.
Then there was this case a few months ago about an art school in San Francisco that freaked out when a student wrote a violent story.
I wonder, do Americans just not support free speech anymore? I mean, I know over the years many, many people never understood the concept. But it seems like this kind of censorship is more and more accepted. I hope not. I hope it's a couple of isolated incidents that will fall away in time.

Axl Rose v. Buckethead

I'm way, way behind on this, but apparently Axl Rose slagged Buckethead in a press release he wrote back at the end of March. Basically, he blames all his problems on the bucketed one:
During his tenure with the band Buckethead has been inconsistent and erratic in both his behavior and commitment - despite being under contract - creating uncertainty and confusion and making it virtually impossible to move forward with recording, rehearsals and live plans with confidence.
Later, he goes on to say that Buckethead was just in Guns N Roses to get a deal with Sanctuary Records.
Now, I'm not one to question the words of Axl, and certainly, Buckethead is a little on the odd side. I've even heard he needs a chicken coop in the studio to do his guitar solos.
But here's the thing, which of these two musicians has taken more than a decade to get an album? Which one has alienated most of his friends and fellow musicians? If you're not sure, let me point you to the discography of Axl and Buckethead. (For godsakes, Bucket has 2 albums out this year! And that's not counting the other band names he's appeared under.) I'm just saying is all.

Girly-man elf boy

At In Search of Pith, JeremyT reviews his weekend and gives a fun review of Troy:
The Trojans were pretty damn hampered by Paris. In the original text, you've got Aphrodite saving Paris's ass constantly, so you can have a little sympathy for him. In the movie, he's a philandering twit who deserves to have the shit kicked out of him. He's a coward, and he's played by that poncy stupid elf, which means every woman in the theatre coos at the very sight of him. I'm kind of hoping at this point he suffers some kind of debilitating injury and never acts again. I'm tired of listening to all the sub-30s women in the theatre have little orgasms when he pulls the string on a bow. There's some weird Freudian shit going on there or something.
And by the way, "Troy" has a tomato next to it on Rotten Tomatoes front page, yet it has a 59 percent rating, which means it should be a little green splatter. Why is that? Could it have anything to do with "Troy" being the feature sponsor today? No, I refuse to believe it.

New blog

John Joseph Adams, slush reader for Fantasy & Science Fiction magazine, has a blog called THE SLUSH GOD Speaketh... He's only got a few entries up so far, but he's already got star-studded posts about Harlan Ellison, Bruce Sterling and how he got the job at F&SF. It just reminds me that I have to update my blog roll soon.
(Link found at Write Hemisphere.)

Aleister Crowley in the Desert

Here's an excerpt about Aleister Crowley in the Desert from the book "The Place of Enchantment: British Occultism and the Culture of the Modern" by Alex Owen.
(Link found at wood s lot via scribbling woman.)