An Undead Friend of Mine

"Does life seem nasty, brutish, and short? Come on up to the house!"

In times of comfort, it sounds like Tom Waits's house, and the picture the imagination conjures is warm and grand.
When life does seem nasty, brutish, and short (was it Hobbes who said it first?), the house I actually do need to go to is Richard Bachman's, where we mix gasoline in with our whiskey, put snakes in our jambalaya, and the other way we feel about things, about life, about people, about women—you name it—the way people can't handle hearing about unless a paid comedian is talking about it onstage humorously comes out in our conversation over the kitchen table, which is made from the extruded teeth of our enemies.

It's Richard Bachman's house I went to last night, and, if I get enough work done in this day which is too short, I'll return to tonight. He's in the middle of telling me a good story. It's disgusting and unbelievable vivid and seems totally real, even though it's set sixteen years from now and they still use payphones. He calls it The Running Man.

We all run day to day to day. Always on the run. And you know what? It's never enough.

Things I Am a Fan of and Not a Fan of Lately.

Things I am a fan of lately:
Tiny Vipers. Two albums on subpop: Hands Across the Void, and Life on Earth
Old Frankenstein Movies
"The Wonderful Death of Dudley Stone," from Ray Bradbury's short story collection The October Country
Nick Cave & Warren Ellis's two-disc handsome release of soundtrack work and instrumental material from the vaults, White Lunar
Brown Clothes, such as my new boots, my new brown simple belt, and hand-me-down cashmere turtleneck sweater.
Walking through fall leaves
Apples
My folks' new coffeepot: The Moccamaster
Plaid
Dennis Doherty's new poem, "Epic"
Tuthilltown Distillery's Baby Bourbon Whiskey
Stephen King's Danse Macabre
Stephen King's old manuscript from 1982, "The Cannibals," easily downloadable as a pdf file right here
The cover of the new Stephen King book, Under the Dome
Franklin Evans, or, The Inebriate
Sheppard Lee
Edgar Allan Poe (who loved the aforementioned novel when it first came out and he reviewed it)
The Sound and The Fury
Jane Campion's new film about John Keats, or more properly, his girlfriend, Bright Star
The show that never should have ended, Joss Whedon's Firefly
T. Rex, getting into his earlier albums with the full name, likeUnicorn
The original 1963 film adaptation of The Haunting of Hill House, Robert Wise's The Haunting
A life with less argument and internet, and more contentment and reading
The typewriter I picked up at an old barn lately:



The black cat who has taken a shine to me and to her coat:

Zeugma.
My cat, Evie.
Noble Coffee Roasters' coffee. (I finally get it.)
And, as always, pumpkin spice lattes...


Things I am not a fan of lately:
The President getting a Nobel Peace Prize while the war in the Middle East continues. Horseshit.
Nick Cave's new novel (listening to his reading of it off my computer, with ambient and musical accompianement from himself and Warren Ellis)
Where the Wild Things Are, what Spike Jonze and Dave Eggers did with it.
Byronic Heroes.
Thom Yorke's The Eraser left-overs, being served cold three years later.
People who talk like they are on The Family Guy in graduate-level English courses
All the sensitive indie and not-so-indie musical chosen ones contributing to a soundtrack for the second Twilight movie.
Con men.
Sloppy road construction.
Interminable bridge projects in Rosendale.
Robin Furth, and all comic book adaptations and interpretations of Stephen King books.
Snow in October. Horseshit.
(I am blaming it on Bob Dylan for releasing an album of Christmas music in October.)
This fucking cough I cannot seem to get rid of.

I just can't handle it.

In case you haven't yet, and this somehow slipped by you, too: these are my twisted words.

From Earlier This Year

Here's a video from a reading I did at the end of March with some fellow graduate students, then teaching assistants. If you go to the English Blog for SUNY New Paltz, you can see excerpts from their readings, as well. Someone just reminded me of it the other day.

...to be born again

Sometimes albums lionized and untouchable in the rock/pop canon are overrated. This is not the case with Astral Weeks. I got it a few days ago and my life will never be the same. It is one of those albums that doesn't seem like much on first listen, but the more you listen to it and the more attention you give to it, the more you realize how amazing it is and the more it grafts onto your soul, becoming an inextricable part of it, until you realize you can't believe you ever lived without it.

It is simply like nothing else out there.

Think About It/Do Something About It

This is proof of three things: 1) John Lennon was a musical genius with a voice that can cut right to your guts 2) John Lennon and Yoko Ono were important to society, and 3) Yoko Ono was a lot better for John Lennon than the common ignorant asshole would have you believe. I don't like her singing voice any better than the next guy, but check out who John Lennon was, personally and psychologically, some time, and then get back to me about what a stifling bitch Yoko was.

This is one of my favorite Lennon songs, above most Beatles material.

Some Forms of Love are Eternal

Happy Birthday, Papa. We still miss you.

Carmine Bagarozzo
1919-1997