Savage Night--Jim Thompson
The Killer Inside Me--Jim Thompson
Jim Thompson was an author of mean, hard-boiled crime novels, many of which were eventually adapted for the big screen. Savage Night and The Killer Inside Me
are two of his more famous efforts. The former is about a very short
hit man assigned to knock-off a Mob associate. The latter is about a
small town Texas sheriff who murders people in his spare time. Both
were exciting and fun to read, but neither of them had good endings.
Both books fell apart in the last few pages. The endings might've been
impressive and shocking when they were originally published in the
early 50s, but they both seemed kind of laughable to me.
When I'm Old and Other Stories--Gabrielle Bell
I
read a borrowed copy of Gabrielle Bell's first collection of comics
back in the spring. I liked it enough then that I decided to get my
own copy. I got it for my birthday and promptly reread it. I think my
favorite story is "Graveyard Shift", which features a giant waitress
who stomps around the streets of San Francisco eating hipsters.
Night Shift--Stephen King
The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon--Stephen King
I read The Shining
as a teenager, but didn't bother to read any more Stephen King until
McSweeney's published his brilliant novella, "A Very Tight Place", in Issue #27. That story got me interested in the author again. I read The Stand,
but decided soon after finishing the 1,000+ page book that my time
would be better spent if I switched over to King's shorter works. Night Shift
was Stephen King's first collection of short stories, so I decided to
start there. I was very impressed. With the exception of a
ridiculously stupid story called "The Lawnmower Man", all of the
stories in Night Shift were worth reading. My favorites were "Jerusalem's Lot", "The Ledge", and "Children of the Corn".
I got the pop-up version of The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon just because I thought it was fun to see a paper version of the pitcher peek out from behind a bush in the section called "Sixth Inning". The book was a good, quick read and featured some very impressive, complicated pop-ups. The story was edited down from King's original 200+ pages, but there was enough left to spook me a tiny bit. If I ever see a cheap copy of the original book, I'll probably buy it.
A Canticle For Leibowitz--Walter M. Miller
I
was really enjoying this post-apocalyptic classic until the main
character got shot in the head with an arrow and eaten by hillbilly
mutants about a third of the way through. I must say I was very
surprised by this unexpected plot twist. I found out a couple pages
later that A Canticle For Leibowitz is actually a collection of
three interrelated novellas. I had just reached the end of the first
when the surprise attack and devouring took place. Once I figured out
what I was reading (three novellas vs. a novel), I was able to put the
shock behind me and complete the other two sections of the story.
Overall, A Canticle For Leibowitz was a good, thought-provoking book and one I'm glad I took the time to read. I got bogged down in places with all the Latin passages and religious mumble-jumble, but I guess that's to be expected in a book about monks. Despite the boring religious parts, I think A Canticle For Leibowitz is the only science fiction classic I've read that actually lives up to its reputation. Pardon me, but Robert Heinlein can suck it.
CURRENTLY READING:
Nightmares & Dreamscapes--Stephen King
Stone's Fall--Iain Pears
Have you ever looked over on the left where my collections are? That's where I keep track of the books I've purchased and read. They've got this thing called the Amazon Conduit that allows me to easily add the cover art of the books into the collections. I've been using this feature for over two years and it's one of my favorite things about Vox. Unfortunately, the Amazon Conduit broke a couple weeks ago. I've been waiting for the fix, but it's slow going. Instead of whining about it or ditching Vox, I have decided to scan the covers of my books and add them to the collections that way. I won't stop documenting my reading habits just because Vox can't get their shit together.
Here are my new books and their covers:
- My friends gave me Pride and Prejudice and Zombies as a belated birthday present. I've never actually read any Jane Austen books due to the fact that they look incredibly dull. Maybe some zombies thrown in will make it worth my time.
- Denis Johnson is one of my top two or three authors, and I was lucky to find his latest release at Half Price Books a couple days ago. I've read all his novels, novellas, short stories, plays, and poems. I expect Nobody Move will be another quality effort.
- The same day I found the Johnson, I found a used copy of Hans Fallada's Every Man Dies Alone.
It's a novel about the German resistance to the Nazis in WWII. Fallada
wrote the 500 page book
(in code) while in a Nazi insane asylumover the course of 24 days. He was addicted to morphine at the time and died a few weeks later.
- The last book is Stephen King's second short story collection, Skeleton Crew. I've recently been enjoying the author's shorter works. A story before bed livens up my dreams.
I went down to see Three Dog Night at the Taste of Blue Ash on Friday night. It took me 47 minutes to find a parking space. Even then I had to run a half mile to make it to the Blue Ash Towne Square on time. Of course, once I got there, I realized I'd left my wallet in the car. I was not able to taste the tastes of Blue Ash. Oh well, at least I got a great seat to see the show. Except that I didn't. The park was packed and every single person except me had brought one of those gigantic lawnchairs with the cup holders on the side. Those things take up about eight square feet each. I ended up standing behind a stupid van with advertisements painted on the side. I was grumpy and hungry.
But then the music started and the grumpiness and the hunger sort of dissipated. Three Dog Night have been around for forty years and the version touring these days features most of the original members. Their voices were rough in places, but the music sounded good and it was fun to hear the hits. They didn't play "Eli's Coming", but the band played just about all their other famous songs. They played for 75 minutes. It was enjoyable.
Except there was one song that wasn't enjoyable. There was one song that was awful. There was one song that was so bad that I wanted to stick my red ink pen in my ears and pop my eardrums. Three Dog Night murdered the hell out of "Mama Told Me Not to Come". For some unknown reason, they felt the need to update it for the 21st century. Even more confusing, their 21st century update featured references to KC & the Sunshine Band, Ricky Martin, and something called "Poop Dog". It was, hands-down, the worst individual song performance I've ever witnessed in my entire concert-going career. (I've seen Hank Williams Jr., so that's really saying something.) Making it even worse is the fact that the song was written by Randy Newman, one of the greatest songwriters of the last fifty years. He's a true genius and Three Dog Night should be ashamed of themselves for desecrating one of his songs. Oh my god, it was bad.
As always, here's the setlist:
Setlist: The Family of Man/One Man Band/Black & White/Never Been to Spain/Shambala/Out in the Country/Easy to Be Hard/An Old Fashioned Love Song/You Can Leave Your Hat On/One/It Ain't Easy/Heart of Blues/Liar/Sure as I'm Sittin' Here/Mama Told Me Not to Come/Celebrate/Joy to the World
[NOTE: For you locals out there, Kansas will be playing the Taste of Blue Ash on Saturday night. I'm tempted to go just to see how they fill up their set after they've played "Dust in the Wind" and "Carry On Wayward Son". As far as I know, they only have those two songs.]
I was rummaging through Ikea's as-is department recently when I found a discontinued kitchen cabinet unit called the Perfekt Fagerland Plate Shelf. When combined with the rest of the Perfekt series, it's supposed to form the ideal kitchen environment for me and my beautiful blond children. It's supposed to hold our dinner plates in an attractive and easily accessible vertical manner. Of course, I don't have any beautiful blond children. In fact, I only own four dinner plates. The Perfekt is useless to me. Or is it?
I pulled out one of those free Ikea tapes and started measuring the cabinet's dimensions. 11 3/4" deep? Hmm, I have something about that size. I bought the heavily discounted cabinet and took it home. I put it together as instructed, added two long pieces of duct tape to what should've been the top (to keep the dowels from sliding out), and turned it upside down. Then I stuck all my records in it. I'm quite happy with it. There's even a little shelf at the top for my 45s.
I have decided to write a play to answer the age-old question: How many Target employees does it take to sell a Pearl Jam single? Here we go:
ACT ONE/SCENE ONE
M-----l
is in Target buying deodorant when he finds an interesting item over in
the music
section. It's a white vinyl 7" of the new Pearl Jam single, "The
Fixer/Supersonic". He doesn't really want it, but he decides to buy it
because he hasn't bought vinyl in a big box store since 1985 when he
purchased Duran Duran's "The Wild Boys" at a K-Mart in Florida. But
anyway, he takes the record up to the check-out counter and hands it to
the girl working the register.
Lee'aira: (Holding up the record with a slightly confused look on her face) What is this? Did you find this here?
M-----l: Yes. See, it's got a Target price sticker on it. It's $5.99.
Lee'aira: It doesn't have a code, though. I'm not sure how to ring this up. Let me get my manager.
(Lee'aira gestures over to her manager, Mandy. Mandy walks to the register to find out what's going on. Lee'aira hands her the record.)
Mandy: Hmm, there's no code on this. Let me call back and see what's going on here.
(Mandy takes a walkie-talkie from her belt and calls the music department. While doing this, she comes very close to dumping the record out of its sleeve.)
Mandy: Yes, I need to get the price code for Pearl Jam's "The Fixer". It appears to be some sort of CD or DVD.
M-----l: (Interrupting the walkie-talkie conversation) That's actually a record.
(Right about now, the conversation catches the attention of a third employee, Sean. He sees Mandy holding the Pearl Jam record and walks over to the register. He might have a crush on Lee'aira, but we don't really have enough information to make that determination.)
Sean: (Proudly) That's called a 45.
Armed
with this new information, Mandy is able to get the code numbers from
her associate in the music department. She punches in the code and
rings up the Pearl Jam single. All three employees stand around as
M-----l pays with a gift card shaped like a cupcake.
END PLAY
I sometimes purchase fancy silkscreen posters from concerts I've attended. The way I look at it, buying a poster is less of a waste of money than buying a t-shirt that I'll probably drip popsicles on and then shrink in the wash. I used to keep my poster collection up on the wall in my little green room, but I took them all down when I moved the CDs out and turned that room into a combination dust bunny/plant sanctuary. I moved the CDs into the big blue room, but didn't bother to put my posters up in there. Instead, I stuck them all in the closet and forgot about them. That seemed like a waste, so I decided to take pictures and post them here.
I recently googled myself and discovered that there are quite a few people out there with my name. I consider this a personal affront, but I guess they have the right to exist. It's not like I can do anything about it. Grrrr.
Here's the gallery of impostors:
Damien Jurado was one of my favorite singers about eight or nine years ago. His albums Rehearsals for Departure (1999) and Ghost of David (2000) were particular favorites back then. "Letters and Drawings" remains one of my all-time favorite songs, but I stopped buying his records a few years back and sort of lost interest.
Well, I got an e-mail from Shake It Records last week announcing that Damien Jurado would be performing at the store a few hours before his headlining show at the Mad Hatter. The Mad Hatter is a stinky dive and I don't go there anymore, but a free performance at one of my favorite record stores sounded like a good idea. I drove on down.
I got a good spot over on the side. Damien sat down in a chair and proceeded to play eleven songs over the course of the next 40 minutes. I once flew to Boston and paid good money to hear Sparklehorse play a show just a couple songs longer than that. And Damien Jurado sounded much better than Mark Linkous did. His voice was clear and powerful and he got surprisingly good guitar sound out of the Shake It speaker system. I don't want to say I was blown away, but I was very impressed. He played "Ohio" (his second best song) and a few others I recognized. The rest of the set consisted of songs from the albums I skipped and a couple unreleased new songs. I liked everything. As always, here's the setlist:
Setlist: Abilene/What Were the Chances/"...hand that'll hold you..."/"I don't recall the last time we spoke."/Ohio/Last Rights/Sheets/"Right now's not the best time to fall to pieces."/Denton, TX/I Am Still Here/The Killer
You might think that after seeing a performance like that that I'd buy a bunch of Damien Jurado merchandise. You would be wrong. I'm definitely going to fill in the gaps in his discography, but today I bought two Futurama Kidrobots, a Flight of the Conchords 7", and a Nick Cave t-shirt. It's not as cool as it sounds, though. I got the Mom figurine which is the only dud in the Futurama line. The b-side on the FotC record is their worst song ever. And the Nick Cave t-shirt doesn't fit. I guess I should've bought Damien's records instead. Oh well.
I sometimes trick myself into believing otherwise, but I know deep down that nobody really cares what I think of the concerts I see, the music I buy, or the books I read. Most of my Vox posts get comments, but I seriously doubt they really interest any of you. I know you guys aren't sitting in your offices or homes wondering if M-----l bought any $2 CDs today. I'm okay with that; I write it down because I enjoy writing it down. I put it out there because I don't know what else to do with it.
But sometimes I think it would be fun if I could post something that people actually cared about. What do people on the internet like? I did some research and discovered that people like cats. Specifically, people like baby cats (sometimes called "kittens"). They also like morbidly obese cats (usually referred to as "fat cats").
So here you go, a video of the tiniest cat I've ever seen. If you stick around to the end, you'll see the largest cat lumber by. Enjoy.
If it weren't for a very negative review written up by Stephen Cramer (from Salem, OR), I would've owned 20 Greats From the Golden Decade of Power Pop a long time ago. Mr. Cramer wrote that the CD was made up of "re-records and poor live versions". When it comes to pop compilations, I'm really only interested in the original songs recorded by the original artists. I avoided the CD based solely upon that Amazon review.
But anyway, I was wandering around Half Price Books a couple days ago and saw a used copy of Power Pop for $5. I flipped it over to check out the tracklist. That's when I realized that Stephen Cramer had lied to me. Of the twenty songs present, none of them were rerecorded versions. They were all the original album or single versions from the 70s-early 80s. Yes, there was one live song present, but it was clearly labeled as such and the compilers were smart enough to put it at the end of the CD.
