That Eerie Song

I found the title of that beautiful, eerie and haunting song that plays at the start of Winter's Bone movie. It's called Missouri Waltz. This version is A Capella and sung by Marideth Sisco. Now the setting and the interpret are important to the crazy atmosphere, but the song is pretty haunting in nature. Here's an interpretation made accompanied with acoustic guitar, sung by the timeless voice of Johnny Cash. It's not as eerie, but it has very strong character.

Hope you're having a great Saturday everyone!

Book Review : Jim Thompson - The Getaway (1959)

Country: USA

Genre: Noir

Pages: 185

THE GETAWAY was the Jim Thompson book I wanted to read. Somehow, it was the Jim Thompson I expected to find on the pages. A writer with balls, who offered something I couldn't get anywhere else. That's pretty much what I got there. THE GETAWAY is a very peculiar crime novel, who despite offering a very common plot (a bank robbery), does it with such style and originality that it leaves you slack jawed and wanting for more. It's the quintessential bank robbery novel. It's subtly detailed and plot driven and the characters are so well defined that they add another layer to a story strong enough already. THE GETAWAY could've worked with bland characters, but in the universe of Jim Thopmson, those doesn't exist. It's a very short, but very demanding novel that will require every bit of your attention, but will reward you properly by giving you a mind-warping plot to disassemble. It's really, really good.

The protagonist of THE GETAWAY is Carter "Doc" McCoy. He's a professional con, born and raised with criminal intents. He planned this crazy heist with his wife Carol and a very important man named Benyon. It's a dangerous job, but Doc is the smartass type and plans everything, up to the tiniest detail. But nothing ever goes the way you planned it to, when criminal behavior is involved. The people around Doc are a lot more volatile than he is. His partner for the heist Rudy is a psychopath and his wife Carol is far from being the pillar that he is. She's a vulnerable creature in a world where preying on the weak is normal and encouraged. So the complete responsibility of this heist lies on Doc's shoulders and throughout the novel, you have the strange feeling that he's the only one who's really hoping the heist goes smoothly.

Reading THE GETAWAY feels like riding in a finely tuned sports car. There's subtle engineering and a coat of polish on top of it, but it's driven by raw power. And you gotta give it to Jim Thompson. He wrote the freakin' thing in 1959 and as of today it stands out in a genre that can get incredibly repetitive, the bank robber crime novel. You know the deal, a crew decides to pull a job on a bank, they get greedy and turn against each other and everybody dies or gets locked up for their troubles. But there's none of that in THE GETAWAY. Well, a little, but it doesn't go down the easy route. What's so great about this novel (I think) is that you can't separate the crazy plot from Doc's crazy, super-organized, control freak personality and yet it's written in the third person. That's quite the feat, it feels like Doc wrote the novel himself.

It's very short, barely over a hundred and eighty pages, but there's no way THE GETAWAY could have been longer. It's too complicated and layered. If he would have wanted to, I'm sure Jim Thompson could have transformed this into a three hundred pages novel, he had enough material for it, but it would have turned out to be too confusing. Jim Thompson wrote one of the best bank heist novel by discussing everything that comes around the act itself. Issues of greed, trust and well, love. The complex bound in between Doc and Carol is one of the most gripping aspects of THE GETAWAY. If you like crime fiction or just a straight up good book (and happen to have a stomach for crime stuff), it's a crazy good summer read. It's not going to take you places you've never been before, but it's going to give you a different perspective. An alternative approach on genre fiction. Highly enjoyable, fast paced and lives up to Jim Thompson's reputation of being the grittiest sonuvabitch.

Movie Review : Lemmy (2010)

Country:


USA

Recognizable Faces:


Lemmy
Phil Campbell
Mikkey Dee
Alice Cooper
Jarvis Cocker
C.C Deville
Lars Fredericksen
Dave Grohl
Henry Rollins
And a lot more rock stars...

Directed By:


Greg Olliver
Wes Orshoski

Ian Fraser "Lemmy" Kilmister is a rocker. Or maybe rock n' roll god would be a better way to describe him. That means he doesn't take an acoustic guitar often, he doesn't sing to imaginary girlfriends and never gets all blue for no fucking reason. Lemmy is a hard rockin', hard livin', uncompromising motherfucker. He has been drinking, taking drugs, partying and playing the meanest rock n' roll music in the business for about thirty years now. Motorhead has transcended time as a landmark unit of badass rock, thanks to their stylish frontman. His strength and perseverance made him the cult icon that he is today. LEMMY isn't anything but a huge fucking love letter to the man. That doesn't bother me at all, because there aren't much people in the world more deserve of a love letter than Lemmy. 

It's a documentary that is loosely following the chronological development of Lemmy's life, but it's often cut by interviews with a plethora of rockers that are more than happy to explain how the music of Motorhead and the presence of Lemmy around them influences their lives. That's the weird things about LEMMY, it's not very intimate. Greg Olliver and Wes Orshoski are obviously doing a great job at trying to be, because they interviewed his son (who knew Lemmy had a freakin' son?), but not much people actually KNOW the guy. That's part of the Lemmy mythology I guess. He's not the one to talk a lot, he doesn't share his dreams and aspirations, he just does stuff. He's got very little appetite for a romanced vision of life, because he's too busy rocking out every night or getting drunk. Lemmy embodies many things, but he is the avatar of complete freedom, and that must rank pretty high as a reason why people love him. He lives on the road, rocks out every night and does pretty much whatever the hell he wants.

Another reason why you should give LEMMY a viewing is to watch how rock stars handle themselves when they have to talk about somebody else's body of work. Henry Rollins was equal to himself. Generous and smooth talking. But the man is a reputable music enthusiast. Dave Grohl, also comes around as a genuinely nice guy and seeing him discussing Little Richards with Lemmy is amazing. Among those who didn't pass the authenticity test is Billy Bob Thornton, who looked like a sorry asshole who tried to hug the camera and boost his music career and Metallica. What the fuck is wrong with Metallica? Those guys would look like fake assholes, even if their lives depended on it. Among the interviewed rock stars, they took by far the most camera time and even set up a guest appearance for Lemmy on a show. I couldn't get rid of the impression that it was all about them, how "simple" and "rockin'" they tried to be, by showing disproportionate amounts of love to Lemmy. The man took it all in though. he went to their show, did his thing and left. Because that's how Lemmy is.

You're not going to get out of LEMMY with a transcended perspective of documentary cinema. You're not supposed to. If you're as big of a Motorhead fan as I am, or if you're just curious about that funny looking old man with the moles on the cheek, you should watch it. While it butts against Lemmy's personality a few times, it's a touching portrait of a man who gave everything he had to what he did and marked his field of work forever. Rock n' Roll that is. Now, I can say I understand a bit more the kingly status of Lemmy in the music community and the secret of his apparent youth (no, he doesn't look like a man in his sixties at all). He worked, rocked and lived harder than any other musician I know. He truly built something that will get him remembered for decades and decades after he passes away.

SCORE: 81%

Pat Condell On The Norway Massacre

I debated with myself for about an hour about posting this video, to finally ask myself: "Ben, where are your balls? Where have they been hiding lately?" Dead End Follies got some success this year, but it's not like I've been running the New York Times or anything. Of course, Pat Condell is a very controversial figure and posting his videos doesn't necessarily means I endorse all of his ideas.* But I think he has a point and that video kinda resonates well with the article I posted yesterday. Plus, I have to admire the drive and the engagement behind those simple and efficient videos. Condell looks like your average British suburbanite but he sure doesn't talk like one. Calling somebody "your enemy" on the YouTubes is a pretty loaded thing to do. I can only get behind somebody willing to offend himself and take a stand about this horror, rather than brushing it off, as long as it doesn't affect the price of his property. It's only three minutes, give him a try.

* I sure shit disagree about his idea on multiculturalism

Via Cynical-C

Compendium Of Cool

It's the end of July and all of you are busy doing something else than reading blogs. It's cool, I understand. It's a bit demoralizing though, so instead of pining, let me tell you about various cool things happening right now on the web. I'm getting slowly reacquainted with my Playstation these days and SAINTS ROW: THE THIRD is helping me being excited about something coming up. In this amazing trailer you can witness how over-the-top and adrenaline pumping the new game is. No need for character development in video games, it's the only medium where rhythm and badassness will suffice. 

Talking about badassness and character development, many cool books are coming up, starting next week. Southern Gods by John Hornor Jacobs, Crimes In Southern Indiana by Frank Bill and Hell And Gone by Duane Swierczynski are three you want to look out for. But make sure to read the first part of the trilogy Fun And Games, which I am right now (and it's pretty darn good). My good man Greg Z. from The New Dork Review Of Books has written a great post about loving fiction, but not being about to WRITE it, which prompted huge violin solos in the comments section (that was to be expected, I guess). I haven't found a way to answer without putting my foot in my mouth yet, but I'm working on it. It's going to involve talking about Breaking Bad I'm sure, but meanwhile, read it and tell me what you think. I think Greg had the balls and the humility to speak about something that's in every reader.

Writer/Blogger/Friend Heath Lowrance has started a very interesting project over at Psycho Noir. A nine parts essay on the history of hardboiled/noir. Needless to say, I'm learning a lot. Heath's been reading crime fiction for a lot longer than I did. Which, reminds me. Did you know legendary noir writer Lawrence Block was on friggin' Twitter? You should drop by and say "hi" to him. The man is awesome. He lives up to the reputation his books created for him. Talking of Tweeting cool cats, Chuck Wendig has shared with us his suggestions to put some glamor back into writing. I've been a fan of his place, Terrible Minds, for a while now and I can get behind anybody who suggests that Terry Pratchett should take a dump in Dan Brown's mailbox. By the way, Chuck has a new eBook about writing out. It's called 250 Things You Should Know About Writing. It's coming from a well traveled veteran you should trust.

The short story season is starting again. Since the blog traffic is most likely to be bad for another month, I'm gonna concentrate on this and start writing in my downtime at work again. Since I've been working in the middle of a landing strip for about a year now, I'll need killer music to keep me in the zone. I got me some Mötörhead, Anthrax and some badass Sia to help me rock out and write some badass stories. Hopefully, some turn out to be good enough for the Fall publication. Stay tuned.

On Anders Behring Breivik & Insanity

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines insanity as follows:

1. A deranged state of the mind usually occurring as a specific disorder (I.E Schizophrenia)

2. Such unsoundness of mind or lack of understanding as prevents one from having the mental capacity required by law to enter into a particular relationship, status, or transaction or as removes one from criminal or civil responsibility.

3. a. Extreme folly or unreasonableness

    b. Something utterly foolish or unreasonable

What Anders Behring Breivik did was crazy, sure. Nothing reasonable can justify the death of seventy-six* young people. You can qualify him of lone nut assassin, of insane, or having a few bolts loose, but I don't think the man is insane. I think Breivik is able to think rationally and to explain his actions in a court of law. That's fucking scary. That's hard to accept, but I think that's the truth and that is why we call him "insane". It's a symptom of that wall that we have inside our mind, that we refuse to look over. Calling Anders Behring Breivik insane is a symptom of our limitation as human beings. He is a criminal, a public danger, a monster even. But he is not insane. I don't know about you, but it scares the wits out of me. 

His massacre was perpetrated against people who preached open mindedness and multiculturalism. The Norwegian Labor Party was facilitating Muslim immigration to Norway. Why did they deserve to die in Anders Breivik's mind? The fear of difference? The belief that white Christians are a superior race? Isn't that insanity to believe this? No. It's human nature to think you're special, different and even superior. Some branches of Judaism believe that they're "the chosen people". The American Born Again Christians are "One Nation Under God". Breivik just believes in something different. 

Taking arms are trying to inspire a revolution, isn't that insanity? One can argue that the nutty part of Breivik was to believe that people would actually share his political point of view and overthrow the government. There is a racist underworld in Europe, often associated with black metal bands. Musician Varg Vikhernes** has been imprisoned for sixteen years for the murder of a popular figure in extreme music has grown into a poster boy for national socialism behind bars. He has written essays behind bars*** and has grown a cult following. There are people who shared Breivik's thoughts in Norway and most likely, his actions meant to inspire them to revolt.

In America, we had Ted Kaczynski and Timothy McVeight. This type of violence resonates through time and history. When I learned about the massacre of Olso and Utoya, I took a long, hard look at myself in the mirror and asked these questions: "What am I not seeing? What am I refusing to see?". Unfortunately, I don't have an answer. I wish I did. The only think I know, is that Anders Behring Breivik is not insane. He is a criminal, he blatantly disregarded the laws that binds us together as a society. He is an advocate of chaos and I completely disagree with his action and I think his beliefs are beyond ridiculous. Wearing a djellabah and praying in a different language doesn't make you inferior to me. But Breivik isn't insane. He walked down into the deep dark regions of the human mind. The kind of place you can't know or think anything about unless you are there. And once you hit that bottom, there's no going back. I hate to admit this, because it's an admission of my limitation and my powerlessness, but I can only hope they lock him up forever and throw away the key.

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anders_Behring_Breivik

** http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varg_Vikernes

*** http://feastofhateandfear.com/archives/vargs.html

Folklore Heroes - Anaal Nathrakh

It's Anaal, not Anal Nathrakh

At some point in your life, I'm sure your parents defended you to listen to a certain rock band. For people who grew up in the seventies, maybe it was KISS or BLACK SABBATH or MARYLIN MANSON, if you're a bit younger. For the more extremes, your folks hid your CANNIBAL CORPSE and DIMMU BORGIR records. They were wrong, of course. Those bands never wanted to attack anything but your gullibility and your innocence, with an imagery that went right beyond young underdeveloped capacity to understand. When Marylin sung about Satan, you understood Satan and not "the avatar of rebellion, freedom and individuality". That's shit you figure out when you're older. But still, your folks were wrong. The tall doll with make-up and fuck me boots were not the one they should have feared.

ANAAL NATHRAKH don't wear make-up or profane garments. No upside down crosses or explicit violence towards the little baby Jesus. Yet, they make the music of everybody who support these ideology with theatrical antics sound like clownish shit. They are the band your parents should have feared. These two very presentable young men are hell bent on one thing. Audio apocalypse. They have produced what is probably the most violent music ever recorded. The vibrations alone can make your mood darker and corrupt your mind with aggressive thoughts. How bad can it be, right? Click here. I'm warning you though. Lower the volume a little and get ready for the biggest audio assault of your existence. Even then, nothing can totally prepare you for what you're about to hear. You might even tell yourself "but it's not even music, it's just noise". That's the worst part for your pure and fragile eardrums. You might have to listen to it several times to hear the musical patterns. Because I assure you, this is a song.

But who are those insane, strapping young lads? They names are Irrumator and V.I.T.R.I.O.L, but they don't mind if you call them Mick and Dave. They are two British dudes with a long history in extreme music. They founded Anaal Nathrakh in 1998 as a raw black metal project. But their name only has to do with the genre. It's supposed to be from the movie EXCALIBUR. It's the first two words from Merlin's magic spell. When you listen to it, force is to admit it sounds about right. They quickly got bored with a genre that was plagued with poseurs and dogmas. So they created their own style, midway in between vicious grindcore and industrial black metal. In 2001, they released an album called THE CODEX NECRO, that is the epitomy of sonic hatred and features a scary fucking cover art. They accomplished what everybody in black metal wishes to do. Back in everybody against the wall with something new and terrifying and ask "what now?" They pushed extreme metal forward.

So where could they go from there? Believe it or not, they evolved. THE CODEX NECRO was only the seed of their music. It's still incredibly violent, but as they developed, they established a vision to their apocalypse. In 2004, they released an album called DOMINE NON ES DIGNUS, where they started inserting tortured melodies and clean, almost operatic vocals. DO NOT SPEAK is a good example. It all boiled up to 2009's masterpiece called IN THE CONSTELLATION OF THE BLACK WIDOW, which featured a killer cover art and different, more industrial oriented song structure. So, if you're looking for a boogeyman to scare your kids away from the devil (or turn them into extreme art forever), ANAAL NATHRAKH might just be the band you need. They will live forever as an urban legend and in the nightmare of well-meaning parents. They are soft-spoken, polite and they have found the the audio equivalent to hell on earth.

Red Hot Chilli Peppers - Suck My Kiss

This goes back to the foregone era where RHCP were actually writing TERRIFIC funk music and did a shitload of drugs. Then One Hot Minute flopped, they checked in to rehab and they decided to record one thousand variation on Under The Bridge in an attempt to sound more "mature". Fuck mature. Lemmy has been through a terrific career, singing about booze, women and hard luck and it's exactly why we love him. Once you mature up, you're not rock n' roll anymore. The new RHCP is a blatant attempt at having audio sex with young girls. Back in the days, Flea was actually performing in underwear and had his basslines by the balls. I got Suck My Kiss in my head since yesterday and I thought I'd share this great piece of funk music. The video also happens to be a great piece of old school rock and roll memorabilia. 

Red Hot Chilli Peppers - Suck My Kiss

And I'm sailiiiing....

Should of been, could of been
Would of been dead
If I didn't get the message
Goin' to my head
I am what I am
Most motherfuckers
Don't give a damn
Aw baby think you can
Be my girl, I'll be your man

Someone full of fun
Do me 'till I'm well done
Little Bo Peep
Cumin' from my stun gun
Beware take care
Most motherfuckers
Have a cold ass stare
Aw baby please be there
Suck my kiss cut me my share

Hit me you can't hurt me suck my kiss
Kiss me please pervert me stick with this (chorus)
Is she talking dirty
Give to me sweet sacred bliss
Your mouth was made to suck my kiss

Look at me can't you see
All I really want to be
Is free from a world
That hurts me
I need relief
Do you want me girl
To be your theif
Aw baby just for you
I'd steal anything that you want me to

K-i-s-s-i-n-g
Chicka chicka dee
Do me like a banshee
Low brow is how
Swimming in the sound
Of bow wow wow
Aw baby do me now
Do me here I do allow

(chorus)

(repeat 1st verse)

Spellbound (By The Devil) On A Sunday Evening

The Heavy MTL festival has been going on for what? Three, maybe four years now? I'm a fan of heavy metal, but I have always passed on the opportunity so far, because festivals all have the same problem. They charge a crazy amount of money for the entrance ticket and you have to sit through nine shitty bands to get to whoever you went to see play. Each year, they had decent bands on the line-up, but a lot of garbage also. Last year, they had Korn. Fucking KORN. I mean, last time I thought they were interesting, I was probably still a virgin. I didn't know they were allowed to make records anymore. 

Anyway, this year was different for a simple reason. Josie. Since she's that awesome person that works in a very important place, well she gets a lot of free shit as a form of corporate tribute. So she got me a pair of tickets for the Sunday, for me and my friend Maz. She doesn't care much about metal. The fantastic thing about having free tickets is to not feel guilty about missing some of the action. So we arrived at about five P.M, just in time for the last streak of the festival, for the most awesome bands. All-in-all, we saw six bands and here is my in-detail appreciation of what has been a thoroughly awesome evening.

Alexi Laiho is a tiny, tiny man

Children Of Bodom 

As we arrived, they were finishing their set. Bodom is one of these bands you cannot fully appreciate if you don't play guitar. Since neither Maz or I do play, we thought they kinda sucked. Long songs, difficult structures and a lot of guitar solos. They were cool in like 1998, when they started and Alexi Laiho was that crazy eighteen years old with the energy and angst of a power plant ran by sixteen years old goths, but they've been running for close to fifteen years now. Maybe I just don't understand their genius, but I think their shit's tired.

Devil worship is an old-school activity

Morbid Angel

Holy cow, blast from the past. I hadn't listen to Morbid Angel records for about ten years and there they were. Playing live in front of me. To my surprise, they added Destructhor (from that Norwegian band I can't pronounce the name of) to their line-up for rhythm guitar. What struck me was that his playing hand was full of disgusting rashes and scabs, like he had a skin disease or an bad allergy. Anyway, the old guys still got it. They played old successes like Rapture and Maze Of Torment and holy shit, their music aged well. Trey Azgatoth was in great shape and pulled his nifty guitar tricks that I didn't understand at all, but since they are so well inserted in the structure of his songs, I could appreciate. David Vincent was still dark and kingly on vocals, despite the afternoon wind that made smoke effects look a little silly.

I would have paid a ticket for them alone

Anthrax

I fucking LOVE Anthrax. But they have a weird history. They had a ten years run with Joey Belladonna on vocals and in 1992, they switched singers. I'm a kid of the John Bush years. To me, the real Anthrax, the best Anthrax there is, is with John Bush. That's an intense debate topic among the fans and it's never to be resolved, I think. Metal fans are too pig headed. I saw Anthrax live in 1998 with John Bush on vocals and I fell in love with the band. 

But surprise, surprise, they're back with Belladonna and Sunday, they played a complete set of the OLD stuff.  They fuckin' nailed it. Anthrax is a band with an absolutely INSANE energy level. They are twice my age and they could kick my ass in any cardio-vascular trial. Belladonna channeled the spirit of Ronnie James Dio on stage and went for a few crazy "Yeeeeeaaaahs" and "Waaaaaahs". There was no Potter's Field, no Room For One More and no What Doesn't Die. Nothing at all from the John Bush years. It felt a little political for a  performance, but once again, Anthrax made it worth your while.

Meh

Opeth

Pelt me with rocks if you like, but they didn't have their place in this festival. Opeth is better enjoyed in a controlled environment and they seemed to know it themselves. Akerfeldt's comments in between the songs were self-depreciating, stupid and sometimes borderline suicidal for their performance. Why the hell would you tell the audience that Kiss means "piss" in Swedish...when they are the fucking band headlining the show. They looked and sounded insecure and I took the opportunity to take a much needed bathroom and food break during their performence. Maz and I also secured good spots for the Motorhead show meanwhile. I mean, Opeth's a good band, but if you didn't come to see them in particular, they're going to fucking poop your evening.

I would have paid TWO tickets for them alone

Motorhead

I have seen Motorhead three times during the last eight years and I would probably pay good money to see them next week. It's safe to say they are one of my favorite, if not MY favorite band. I don't know how they do it. The hard-rockin', hard-living Brits just keep kicking my ass over and over again. Lemmy has two moles on his face now and looked a little old after the show (he was noticeably shaking when he removed his aviator shades), but he kept it all bottled in during the performance. The man is sixty-six fucking years old and still rocking like a king among men. 

What was great, was that they played a fifty minutes set, so they had a concentrated amount of goodies. Other than the immortal successes they played in the end (Overkill was a superb closer), they nailed Metropolis and In The Name Of Tragedy harder than usual. They also played two very good songs from their new album called Get Back In Line and I Know How To Die. I wonder why people love Lemmy so much. He sent people jolting up in the crowd from a simple point of the finger. Maybe it's because of what he represents. That if you love something, do it better, harder and more often than everybody else and your fans will follow you on bloody stumps through the snow. I'm sure once Lemmy dies, he will live forever as the spirit of rock n' roll. He'll be invoked in occult ceremonies and all. Next time you mess with the dark forces, hide your bottles.

That's fuckin' Kiss after all

Kiss

I like Kiss, but I would've never PAID to see them. Especially the exorbitant prices they must ask for that extravaganza of a show they do. But for free? Fuck yeah I'd go see them live. I don't know them that much, but you know...this is fuckin' Kiss. Rock n' roll legends. Weird thing, they played quieter than Motorhead. I can understand that not everybody is into Lemmy's rib shaking routine, but isn't it a heavy metal faux-pas, not to play as loud as your opening act? I don't know, we were a bit further from the stage, but not THAT much and they amps installation looked epic. They had the fireworks, the pyrotechnics, the stage antics, the SASSY factor, but they didn't have the fucking SOUND.

The structure of the show was a little weird also. They played songs in chronological order. They started by playing three songs from the first album (no Strutter) and worked their way up from there. Seems unnecessarily cumbersome for me. Especially that they had those long showboating moments, including a solo war in between the new guitarist Tommy Thayer and  that drummer who didn't quite look like Peter Criss to me. I would've sprinkled more successes in between the songs, after all they had a spectacular career. We left about fifteen minutes before the end to catch the subway (the show was on an island, so subway would be fuckin' packed) and by that time, I had heard no Detroit Rock City and no I Was Made For Loving You. Entertaining show, but I was a little disappointed. 

Top Ten Tuesdays - Voluntary Hiatus

Yeah, this is not gonna happen for a few weeks. Maybe a few months. Nothing against Top Ten Tuesdays or The Broke And The Bookish in general, but I burned out. It's an amazing blog activity and I love to read it, but I don't feel I can be an interesting contributor for a while. Here's the reasoning behind that. You can only read a certain number of books every year. One, maybe two a week, depending on the time you make for books. Being asked to mount a thematic top ten every week is fun for a few months, but after a while you're starting to repeat yourself. I can urge you to read THE GREAT GATSBY or THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO* a thousand times, for a thousand different reasons, but only you can pick them up and discover them for the first time.

So I'm deliberately pulling myself from the Top Ten Tuesdays for a while. I want to read intensively and renew my pool of interesting recommendations. The Tuesdays have been such a powerful vehicle for the bookish word, I want to start giving better Top Tens than I have been doing during the last weeks. Maybe I can work this on a yearly schedule. Three months in the Winter and three months in the summer, something like that. It's going to be a pain for the traffic, because my top tens brought me close to a hundred visitors on publication days alone, but it's not the type of blogger I want to be**. So, see you next January, Broke And Bookish folks. Hopefully by then, I'll have a while new set of recommendations***.

* I'm gonna start to cap titles like this. Seems to be the industry standard.


** I'm so going to weave this in this week's topic anyway.


*** That said, nothing can prevent you from following my day to day activities here.

I'm Being A Badass Guest @ John Hornor Jacobs' Place

John Hornor Jacobs has a book out next week...you can order here

I wanted to talk about heavy metal today, but life has thrown me a curve ball. A very positive that is. The Bastardized Version is the blogging space of writer John Hornor Jacobs (who, by the way, was a guest on Ten Rules To Write Noir). Earlier this month, he launched a series of interviews called Why I'm Badass.Today, it's my turn to go up to the bat and you're the judge. You tell me, whether I am badass or I am a weakling kitten. Check out the piece and check out John's place at the same time. He had quite a few of these portraits and the man happens to have things to say. Heavy Metal talk to happen tomorrow.

Why I'm Badass

Book Review : Suzanne Collins - The Hunger Games (2008)

Country: USA

Genre: Young Adult/Dystopia

Pages: 374

Describing The Hunger Games is going to be harder than I thought. I would have destroyed it last Thursday, for insulting my intelligence, but I gave myself a few days to think. It's not a shit novel. I didn't hate it from start to finish. The characters weren't superficial and their problems weren't insipid. But yet, I felt angry when I finished it, like somebody had pissed in my Cornflakes. Then it hit me. It's always more difficult to accept when somebody disappoints you than when you're being alienated from the start. I started The Hunger Games with a vague, mostly unfounded prejudice against Young Adult fiction, then I got conquered by Suzanne Collins' writing after fifty something pages. But she fucked up on me. She took my trust and drove it into a brick wall.

Since I have learned about The Hunger Games and decided to read it because of the blogosphere reviews, I take for granted that you know the story. The nation of Panem was built from the ruins of North America and twelve districts live in fear of a central governing region called Capitol. Every year, the government take two kids (one boy, one girl) from each district and make them fight to death for entertainment purposes. It's also a way to affirm their dominance over the districts. Very Battle Royale, I know.  I'm not too sure how that is, but they're richer and all (anyway, this is a minor hitch). So Katniss Everdeen was not supposed to participate to The Hunger Games. Her little sister Primrose was chosen. But since Katniss is a genuinely nice person and a caregiver of nature, she volunteered to take her place. Oh yeah, there's also a male tribute from her district (district twelve that is), dude is named Peeta and she kind of likes him. But that's the least of her worries.

Here we go. Katniss Everdeen is a great character. She is a strong-willed, independent young girl and she supports her family by hunting in the woods with her friend Gale (who is, by the way, too awesome for the little page time he has). While she participates to The Hunger Games, you can see (and admire...at least I did) what she's made of. Put under the most difficult circumstances, she keeps her cool and most important, her humanity. She doesn't change into a merciless predator and kill her way out of the competition. No, her caregiver nature takes over and she takes on herself to team up with Rue, a little girl from district eleven who's been unlucky enough to have been chosen in this competition at twelve years old. The Hunger Games (at least for a while) is not about the gruesome kills, like its Japanese spiritual predecessor, it's about survival and keeping your humanity under extreme tension.

BUT....

Somewhere around page 240, Suzanne Collins decided to take her novel and poop on it.

So far, it was a decent novel that played by the rules. It had a dramatic arc and a pretty good one. But there was something missing. Katniss didn't have a boyfriend. Suzanne Collins couldn't wait until the games were done and get Katniss a badass hunter boyfriend (who was a logical fit for her ANYWAY) and she stopped being that nice person, so she could take care of that ball-and-chain of a co-tribute, Peeta, the bakery boy (isn't it ironic? A baker's son named Peeta?). I got nothing against the idea that a girl becomes purveyor for her boyfriend. But it's not sexually progressive or anything. I mean, if Katniss was a boy and Peeta was a girl, it would be a sexist novel. Peeta Mellarck (or whatever his name is) is the equivalent of that silly-love-interest-girl who's tied to the train tracks in Westerns.

What killed it is how serious Suzanne Collins takes this relationship. A lot more serious that any other elements of the book. There are lengthy scenes were Katniss and Peeta have locked themselves inside a cave and there's not a whole lot going on, except those two love birds, cuddling and hoping the other won't die. The worse part is that Collins first used romance as a very interesting elements. For the first two hundred pages, you didn't know if Peeta was sincere or full of shit. It was a political card. But awesomely enough Katniss has more pressing issues to deal with.

So, The Hunger Games is one of those stories that do a 180 degrees turn. One minute, you're reading something and the other, you're reading something else.  I was so angry by how corny, predictable and FORCED it ended that the first thing I did was to go on Wikipedia and read the spoilers, so I wouldn't have to read the next two books. I'm going to use it as an example in the future, about how you don't NEED romance in a friggin' book and that girl protagonists should free themselves from romance stories, which they are always associated with. You can't do a lot worse than leave the foundation of your very self to take care of an incapable, impotent and uninteresting character. Oh wait? You can leave your two main characters off the main developments of the story THEIR VERY LIVES DEPEND ON, because they're too busy kissing and all. I would have given The Hunger Games a positive review if it had a hundred less pages. Now it's impossible. I can't unread that last part. Fire away if you disagree.

Movie Review : Beastly (2011)

Country:


USA

Recognizable Faces:


Alex Pettyfer
Vanessa Hudgens
Mary Kate Olsen
Neil Patrick Harris

Directed By:


Daniel Barnz

Yeah, I watched that. I know. It's another one of those tribute movies I watched in a social situation. Actually, it's not true. About five minutes into it, I got up and turned on my laptop to get a little bit of writing done, but Beastly was so bad I couldn't stop watching it. I find it healthy to watch some garbage from time to time, it keeps your senses sharp and keeps you appreciative when a filmmaker/writer tries really hard to do something good. It's not the case here. Beastly is based on...you guessed it...the Young Adult Paranormal Romance novel of the same name by author Alex Flinn....who...doesn't seem...to know much about anything. And...holy shit...where do I start with this?

Kyle (Pettyfer) is an asshole. But everybody loves him because he's handsome, charismatic, rich and his father is a news broadcaster. The students of his school love him so much, they elected him president of...the student council I guess? Of course, Kyle is not "really" an asshole. He's been raised by an asshole father who he tries to live up to. Kid has daddy issues. One day, he pisses off a girl who happens to be a witch (M.K Olsen) and get changed into a "hideous monster", promised the blurb. Really, he loses his hair, gets a few impressive scars and some hippie looking tattoos of trees. The curse won't be broken until he gets a girl to tell him "I love you" and really mean it (I know, you've seen this one before) and to complicate things, Kyle's dad locks him up in an apartment with a black maid and a blind teacher. Then Kyle will start obsessing over Lindy (Hudgens), a girl he used to toy with, because she used to love him as Kyle and she's poor and simple and has her priorities right and all.

All right, everything's wrong about this movie. First...what's up with Vanessa Hudgens? She's a gifted actress who doesn't look like a plastic surgery simulacrum, she could make the average american male dream, but she's always doing those stupid teen movies. She doesn't look in control of her career at all. Pettyfer is a terrible actor and despite having some strong support from Neil Patrick Harris, he's still a bad actor, playing a bad script. I mean, Kyle is learning tolerance and open-mindedness with a blind man and a black woman...stereotype, anyone? And they're not only aesthetic choices, they act pretty damn stereotypical too. They both have "intangible wisdom" that was given to them by their condition of being blind...and black (yeah, I'm not kidding there). All that was missing from this sorry portrait, was a mother on pills and a German Shepherd.

There is no reason to watch Beastly, because you've watched it before. It's part Beauty And The Beast, part Princess And The Frog, with a pinch (a very tiny pinch) of Phantom Of The Opera, thrown in a blender with Young Adult sauce. There is nothing original, nothing subtle, nuanced or beautiful about it. It's all heavy-handed, black or white decision making that magically turns Kyle into a decent human being with an ugly face over a very short period of time. I mean, I'm pretty sure people are getting burned and disfigured...and if they were assholes, they're going to be worse after that. They're going to be more violent and grow desperate. Well not for Kyle. I didn't talk about the direction yet, because there's nothing to say about it. It's directed like any stupid teen movie has been during the last ten years, tightly wrapped, over-edited and kept short for the ADD-ridden target audience. I watched it, so you don't have to.

SCORE: 12%

Well Well...Guess Who's Being Published On August 10th?

That's right ladies and gentlemen, me. It's not something like a novel or a five thousand words in Harper's Magazine, but I'm getting some fiction published. The good folks over at Shotgun Honey thought my story "Full Moon" was decent enough to be their feature for August 10th. They specialize in short, punchy flashes about anything crime fiction related. Needless to say, I'm very happy about this. I have published sports and video game related articles for maybe ten years now, but never fiction. It's a first. The format that Shotgun Honey presents will allow me to test the water and to have something quick and efficient to present. "Full Moon" might be very short (clocks in right under seven hundred words), but I am confident in it.  It's a good example of what I can do when I get the words right. Since I'm going to be in vacation on August 10th, I might not be able to post here. So bookmark Shotgun Honey and don't forget!

"Full Moon", coming to Shotgun Honey on August 10th

Bob Marley - Three Little Birds

I don't know if the rest of North America is still "under the heat dome", but we sure as hell are in Montreal. It's not as bad as it was Thursday, but you still sweat doing nothing. What's to do during weather like that anyways? Open a beer, blast some Bob Marley as hard as you can and dance in your living room in underwear. Well, this is what I do. Three Little Birds might have played over two hundred times since that mind numbing heat wave has started. Along with Is This Love and Could You Be Loved, it's one of my favorite Bob Marley songs. This is perfect music to keep you sane and happy under crushing weather. Three Little Birds in particular makes it feel natural and enjoyable. Tricks your mind. Here it is for you.

Bob Marley - Three Little Birds

Don't worry about a thing,
'Cause every little thing gonna be all right.
Singin': "Don't worry about a thing,
'Cause every little thing gonna be all right!"

Rise up this mornin',
Smiled with the risin' sun,
Three little birds
Pitch by my doorstep
Singin' sweet songs
Of melodies pure and true,
Sayin', ("This is my message to you-ou-ou:")

Singin': "Don't worry 'bout a thing,
'Cause every little thing gonna be all right."
Singin': "Don't worry (don't worry) 'bout a thing,
'Cause every little thing gonna be all right!"
Rise up this mornin',
Smiled with the risin' sun,
Three little birds
Pitch by my doorstep
Singin' sweet songs
Of melodies pure and true,
Sayin', "This is my message to you-ou-ou:"

Singin': "Don't worry about a thing, worry about a thing, oh!
Every little thing gonna be all right. Don't worry!"
Singin': "Don't worry about a thing" - I won't worry!
"'Cause every little thing gonna be all right."

Singin': "Don't worry about a thing,
'Cause every little thing gonna be all right" - I won't worry!
Singin': "Don't worry about a thing,
'Cause every little thing gonna be all right."
Singin': "Don't worry about a thing, oh no!
'Cause every little thing gonna be all right!

Book Review : Levi Asher - Chiaroscuro: Assorted Literary Essays (2011)

Country: USA

Genre: Essays/Literary Criticism

Pages: 196 KB

You can buy Chiaroscuro here

Levi Asher is the man behind Literary Kicks, which is (to my knowledge) the longest lasting blog dedicated to literature. He's been running it since 1994. How many of you were even aware about the internet back then? This year, Levi has started publishing anthologies, which are revised and rewritten versions of his greatest hits. Interesting exercise, especially for somebody who's been blogging with such regularity, for so long. Chiaroscuro is the third anthology he published this year after Why Ayn Rand Is Wrong and The Cards I'm Playing: Poker And Postmodern Literature.To me, Chiaroscuro was the most intriguing because it proposes something that I haven't found very interesting for many years, literary criticism. Knowing Asher can get his point across and not bother with the Academic form, I thought maybe this could get me into criticism again.

Since the deconstructionists like Derrida, Foucault and Deleuze have judged it would be a good idea to talk about books, literary criticism has been staggering. Even the most dynamic critics like Slavoj Zizek and Fredric Jameson have struggled with the tidal wave of data the deconstructionists have given us to process. Seriously, has anybody without a PhD ever bothered going through Derrida's Of Grammatology? Personally, I've never passed page thirty. Levi Asher doesn't bother with that problematic and affirms his stance in his essay on T.S Eliot's Poem "The Love Song Of J. Alfred Prufrock":


"Prufrock" is an incredibly innovative and important poem, but that's not why I want to write about it. 


Yesss, do you know how liberating it is to hear this for an ex-literature student? One of the many problems of literary criticism is that it's so entrenched in its form that nobody ends up saying anything, but "acknowledging the importance of one's work". Asher affirms his essayist stance, frees himself from any academic obligation and says something different. And different is the accurate word here.

His essay "Five Overrated Writers" is easily his most courageous and his most prone to controversy. I don't agree with everything he says in it myself, but I admire the balls it took to write it. Asher has very different reasons to think each of those writers are overrated. The most efficient criticism he poses is of Philip Roth, a writer who according to him (I also happen to agree) has been limiting himself and his vision to a narrow perspective of the world. Asher also made me smile for calling out William Vollman for his intentionally difficult style. It's something I've been struggling with also, especially that Vollman is so clear and accurate whenever he writes non-fiction. Asher also happens to dislike Cormac McCarthy for the same reasons I like him, but I'll leave you to discover them.

I'm not going to go in detail about each essays, but I'll tell you this. Asher varies his tone and his approach to every single one of them and that keeps the reading fun, informative and fluid. Great Chick-Lit of the 70's talks about books not much people will know, but Asher's nostalgic stance on them will give you a positive outlook on them right away. His description of his encounter with John Updike in the New York public library is very touching and yet it's not a complacent love letter to the writer. His Modernism Vs Postmodernism In Concrete essay is one of the toughest but it's still a very impressive effort in popularization. And that's what literary criticism needs. To loosen up a little.

Chiaroscuro counts twelve essays, they are fun to read and they are a good introduction to literary criticism. That alone, would make you curious. Even if you've been following Literary Kicks forever, the essays have been re-written and revised from the ground up. Chiaroscuro is a breathe of fresh air in literary criticism. They are short, clear and to-the-point essays about varied issues that can be very intellectual, but Levi Asher never loses his reader's common sense and it wraps his vision up nicely. If you happen to own a Kindle and feel curious. Give a chance you Chiaroscuro and you will love what you read.

Movie Review : The Enforcer (1976)

Country:


USA

Recognizable Faces:


Clint Eastwood
Tyne Daly

Directed By:


James Fargo

The Enforcer is the third movie in the amazing Dirty Harry series. You can split the franchise in two distinctive eras. The seventies and what came after. The Enforcer is the last film of the first era, who tried to produce some serious, hip and trendy cop movies. Those three movies happened to have aged to turn into the cutest piece of seventies memorabilia. Harry Callahan is a timeless badass, but his movies are filled with long, ridiculous chase scenes, music that one would identify with the pornographic industry and some thinking that clearly precedes the political correctness era. The Enforcer is dated, yes. But it's also a lot of fun and to me, the most politically charged movie of the series.

As usual, the movie opens with Callahan pulling an amazing stunt to rescue helpless San Francisco citizens held hostages and as usual he wrecks the shit out of the place they're held up and kill a lot of bad guys in the process. That angers his new boss (Branford Dillman), because the mayor thinks this is caveman mentality. These openings are somewhat of a running gag in the Dirty Harry series and this one is really good.  Harry is demoted to Personnel department, but not for too long. San Francisco being a "modern" and "liberal" city in California (that reads "for pussies" in Harry's language), they can only get in trouble when he's not there. And they do. As soon as they lock him in an office, a bunch of cracked up Viet-Nam veteran turned into aggressive and degenerate hippies declare war to San Francisco.

You gotta love Old Harry Callahan. He's a poster boy for conservatism. In The Enforcer, he deliberately turns in ridicule the modernity the city is trying to embrace. He makes some extremely crude jokes at a mayor office representative, who wants to enforce the use of women in the police forces and yet, he's not a bigot. They tag a female recruit on him and he treats her the same way he would treat any guy. There is an obvious sexual tension there (the director might not have been as cool as the character), but Harry denies it like a champ. The Enforcer is an intriguing piece of post-modern art. It takes a long, quizzical look on what is called "modernity" and "progress" and manages to look back on it like it was a faceless scourge that makes America disappear behind a bureaucratic system.

The main defaults of The Enforcer lie in some of the more mechanical choices, rather than in the storytelling. Some scenes are ungodly long compared to others and whenever Clint Eastwood is not on the screen, the other characters look faded and cardboardish. I know the point was to make Callahan the shining star of the show, but I don't think a more solid cast would've hurt Eastwood's aura. Most of the actors are grossly overplaying. It's almost to a point where you feel everybody thinks it's a stage play, except the main character who knows he's in a movie. It's something that can rub you the wrong way, but I thought it's an element that comes with the charm of its era. It's nothing that should be taken too seriously, but it's also a good reminder that there used to be people like Harry Callahan who genuinely cared about the others and didn't just apply the law like a drone. It's an innocent and naive take against the emerging bureaucracy and it makes the movie endearing beyond just the simple fact that Dirty Harry is killing a shitload of bad guys again.

SCORE: 83%

Read Me On Lynda Young's W.I.P It.

I love Lynda Young's place. Normally, I'm the one to be EXTREMELY critical of writing advice, but reading her short, insightful and oh-so-righteous writing prompts. They are the writing equivalent to Ronnie James Dio's songs. You read them and the only thing you want to do afterward is to grab a keyboard and wail: "Fuck yeah, let's get ready to raaaawk". And to me, that's what writing advice should do. Inspire you, instead of throwing rules and structure at you. It's in that spirit that I wrote my post, which is about trusting yourself and knowing whether something you wrote is working or not.

Read "Cultivating Your Inner Critic" here

George Carlin On Self-Esteem Movement

Here's one of my favorite bits from George Carlin, taken from his last show "It's Bad For Ya". I'm not a fan of the self-esteem movement. My parents weren't either and I will proudly continue the tradition with my hypothetical kids. My reasoning behind that is simple. I have never seen a child of the self-esteem movement be very successful. All the people willing to go the extra mile have a chip on their shoulder. I'm not saying low self-esteem should be a requirement in life, but I'm saying that a little doubt in your capacities never hurt. Anyway, I'm not going to make an essay on the subject. Not today at least. Sit comfortably and take eight minutes of your life to listen to what George Carlin has to say on the subject.

Literary Blog Hop, Part 21 - Books For Broken Souls

The Literary Blog Hop is a blogging activity brought you back the intellectual, fierce and sassy girls of The Blue Bookcase. If you've been missing out on them, it's not too late to check them out. This week, the discussion prompt of the hop is:

Discuss Bibliotherapy. Do you believe literature can be a viable form of therapy? Is literary writing more or less therapeutic than pop lit or nonfiction? 


I didn't know it had a name. To me, it's just something that is. Books ARE therapeutic. It's hard to explain this without the corny life-experience moment, so I'll try to be succinct*. True empathy is impossible. Your default settings as a human being is to think: "I am the center of the universe"**. Stop by and listen to conversations in a café sometime. Good chance it's going to sound like this.

"I did this, I have this, I know this, I'm good"

"Well, but I did this, I know that and I have more then you, I'm better"

And it goes on and on and on, into the night. If it doesn't make you feel lonely, well it should. You can't reach out to somebody without a little selflessness and if you show some, there's a good chance the only thing you'll be rewarded with is a lecture of your interlocutor, about how great (s)he is. So yeah, my experience is about alienation ***, but here's how I think a book can be therapeutic.

The only purpose of fiction is to be read. Therefore, it's never complete without a reader. Hence, you. Also, it's not successful unless it made something resonate inside the person holding the book. An author wrote it with the intention of sharing something that's been eating away at him/her for long and the reader is most likely looking for answers to something that's been eating away at him/her too. Consciously or not. Pulling yourself from society to spend time with an imaginary world is something you do when the real world doesn't quite satisfy you. So characters of fiction are, to me, a perfect intermediary in between two consciousnesses that need to talk. That's what makes literature so powerful and universal.

So, as to know if literary fiction is more therapeutic than pop lit or non-fiction, I'd be at loss to say. The best answer I can come up with is that everybody's different.To me, it definitively is. Crime fiction is very cathartic ****, but literary fiction is specifically written to deal with difficult human issues. When it's not, you cross the line of pretentiousness. A literary fiction book that deals with something purely aesthetic will become empty showboating with words. Even the greatest language acrobats like William Faulkner, discussed pressing issues such as racism, mental illness and rape. So there's no excuse not to, when you're a literary writer. 

So here it is, and please, please, please, other Literary Hop participants. I am interested in your opinion on the question, but I don't want to know about literature healed you. I am not going to read or comment entries about your own life, so please forgive me for this.

* I hate when other people do it, so I'll try to lead by the example. No matter how pertinent my life seems to me.

** I know I'm borrowing this, but I'm not going to name this writer again. I'll try to trick you into thinking I'm quite the thinker. (Oh I went there).

*** Promise, I won't go any further than that in life-experience stuff.

**** And also the genre fiction I find the closest to literary, when it's well done.

Arts - Technicality Vs Emotional Appeal

I grew up with heavy metal. It's a musical style that has a truth, a visceral aspect that is absent from any other music, except maybe for punk rock. My favorite bands were Pantera, Slayer, Iron Maiden and later Mötörhead (to tell the truth, I've seen them the first time at a Maiden concert). Metal binds people together, so I quickly found friends to share my passion with. Most of them evolving into being metal musicians themselves. Now, I'm not too sure when or how it happened, but one day I found myself in one of my friend's basement, listening to bands I didn't give two shits about. Technical and Progressive metal band, which were doing music for other musicians only. Bands like Cynic, Neuraxis or Dream Theater, who brought guitar wanking to a completely new level. Now, since I never learned to play guitar (or any other musical instruments), what does that make me? A philistine? A limited music lover? I mean, what's so bad about the guttural appeal of Vital Remains?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but a writing a heavily technique oriented song that only a musician can really appreciate, isn't it like writing an heavily dialogic and linguistically cunning story for the other asshole writers in the room to appreciate? I am ready to admit that music is mathematical. I don't remember which ancient philosopher said that, but he described music as numbers in time. The description makes sense to me, it's a very technical medium. But it's still an art medium. I thought it was supposed to elevate the soul? Is learning guitar that elevation? What does a tone deaf boy like me does then? Don't get me wrong, I can appreciate a good guitar solo, but there's a human behind the instrument and it's that person I am interested in. Sepultura's sped up cover of Mötörhead's Orgasmatron does a good job at finding a middle ground. A hypnotic, obsessing guitar riff, dark and sacrilegious lyrics about a pagan god, yet there's a solo at the emotional peak of the song. It's not overly complex, but it's aggressive and fits the general mood of the song. It means something other than technical prowess. In other words, it's a work of art.

The American band Sunn O))) is another (very different) example of what I mean. They are a purely technical band. Their very name is taken from an amps brand *. Their technical prowess isn't based on cramming the most notes in littlest time or to insert difficult solos in the structure of their songs. These guys are experimenting with the various atmospheres they can get out of their guitars. They are so popular today because they are pretty good at it. All they do is play the longest, most chaotic riffs and let them resonate for as long as they can, but that gave them an identity, a presence that makes them unique. Look at them play live and tell me if you've ever seen anything like this? They are sure not for every ears, but you can't look away. To me, they have perfectly meshed avant-garde art and technical prowess. There's music and there's boundaries. Experimenting outside the forms is sometimes away to pull things forward. The recently departed Seth Putnam has earned a place in music history by forming the least musical music band.**

To me, the writing equivalent of a six minutes guitar solo is a page long sentence with difficult punctuation. It's been done for a hundred years and it's never been  enjoyable to people who aren't capable of doing it themselves. Linguistic prowess is the technicality of writing. James Joyce and Marcel Proust were the Yngwie Malmsteen and Steve Vai of their medium. They could craft complicated, brilliant and researched stories and their emotional appeal is...just...none to me. It's a very sophisticated and elitist form of pleasure. Now take Hemingway, who is more of an early Kirk Hammett, he wrote short and catchy stuff with an occasional note of technical flare.Hemingway is often remembered for his raw power and his emotional appeal, rather than for his complex sentence structure.*** Where are we supposed to draw the line in between technicality and emotion?

There is a part of technique in compelling writing. That I know. You have to respect certain things if you want it to work. You have to have rhythm (don't mesh your ideas all together), and you need to have the necessary emotional distance with you characters to be willing to rewrite what needs rewriting. But technique is a structure thing. You can give the story the shape you want, but if you want it to be read, it has to be readable. It has to use a language that readers can understand. Because you write to be read. You write to reach out. If the only thing you want to communicate is your technical superiority, you might just be bored with your own medium. There, I said it. Art that conveys no emotion to the reader, viewer, listener is a failure.

* The origin is a little more complex than that. They are also named in reference to Earth, another band their are heavily inspired by. Sunn O))) revolves around Earth, they said. You see the genre.

** Not for every ears.

*** For any smartass who's tempted, I'm aware that Kirk Hammett wrote some long solos. They are well implemented in the structure of his songs, but it's not what I'm referring to. When you think Metallica, you hum the riffs from For Whom The Bell Tolls, Enter Sandman, Sad But True, Seek And Destroy or Welcome Home (Sanitarium). You don't remember the solos.

Serj Tankian - Empty Walls

There are two kinds of engaged artists. Those like Bono, who go to Africa for Louis Vuitton photo shoots and those like Serj Tankian who are not scared to actually talk about what hurts. Ironically enough, Tankian's bravado always seemed to hurt his status quite a bit. After the stunning success of System Of A Down's Toxicity, calling the follow up Steal This Album! make a lot of assholes in business suits frown. So did recording concept albums and focusing about the art and the message rather than the product. System Of A Down never really answered to public demand, but rather created one. In 2007, Tankian release his debut solo album Elect The Dead, which got some love from the fans but didn't received nearly enough. It's a great, courageous album and the first single Empty Walls is probably the best song ever written on war in Iraq. Here it is for you (with the superb video that comes along).

Serj Tankian - Empty Walls

Your empty walls...
Your empty walls...
Pretentious attention
Dismissive apprehension
Don't waste your time, on coffins today
When we decline, from the confines of our mind
Don't waste your time, on coffins today

Don't you see their bodies burning?
Desolate and full of yearning
Dying of anticipation
Choking from intoxication

Don't you see their bodies burning?
Desolate and full of yearning
Dying of anticipation
Choking from intoxication

I want you
To be
Left behind those empty walls
Taunt you
To see
From behind those empty walls

Those empty walls
When we decline, from the confines of our mind
Don't waste your time, on coffins today

Don't you see their bodies burning?
Desolate and full of yearning
Dying of anticipation
Choking from intoxication

Don't you see their bodies burning?
Desolate and full of yearning
Dying of anticipation
Choking from intoxication

I want you
To be
Left behind those empty walls
Taunt you
To see
From behind those empty walls
Want you to be
Left behind those empty walls
I taunt you
To see
From behind those empty walls

From behind those empty walls
From behind those empty walls
The walls
From behind those empty walls

I loved you
Yesterday, before
You killed my family.

Don't you see their bodies burning?
Desolate and full of yearning
Dying of anticipation
Choking from intoxication

Don't you see their bodies burning?
Desolate and full of yearning
Dying of anticipation
Choking from intoxication

I want you
To be
Left behind those empty walls
Taunt you
To see
From behind those empty walls
Want you to be, left behind those empty walls
Taunt you
To see
From behind those empty walls
From behind those empty walls
From behind those fucking walls
From behind those goddamn walls
Those walls...
Those walls...

Folklore Heroes - Clint Eastwood

I'm trying something new here. In an effort to expand the pop culture side of Dead End Follies, I want to explore these special characters who have been made into common folk heroes and role models by society. They are even turned into villains sometimes. They appear on the T.V screens, movie screens, books, they might be real or fictional, but they somehow became a part of everyone of us. For the first edition, one of my favorite celebrities....

Clint Eastwood

Somewhere during the Reagan years, action heroes started fighting unknown foreign enemies, taking steroid and develop speech impediments. Buffed up killing machines were something new back then, reflecting the fears and paranoia of the era. In the sixties and seventies, action heroes were more modest. Charles Bronson was Paul Kersey, an engineer and Korean war veteran who decided to clean the mean streets of his city after a savage attack on his wife and daughter by nameless thugs. Steve McQueen was Frank Bullitt, a Hemingwayesque policeman who just wanted to do his goddamn job. Both kind of action heroes were products of their time. Bronson and McQueen fought criminality and Stallone and Schwarzenegger fought foreign invasions. Both reflected fears of their time.

The only action hero figure who kept being badass for his whole goddamn life is Clint Eastwood. Part of his charm is that he doesn't have the physique. Steve McQueen and Charles Bronson were not muscular, but they were athletic. Eastwood could have been your neighbor. You can count the number of scenes where he's shirtless in his movies, because there aren't many. He's not muscular. He built his badass reputation with two recurring roles he played from the mid-sixties to the early nineties. The Man With No Name, a stoic and trigger-happy cowboy in Sergio Leone's westerns and Inspector Harry Callahan, otherwise known as Dirty Harry. The professional wisecracks of Inspector Callahan have entertained generations of young men. Here are a few.

Callahan: MAXWELL!
(Maxwell shoots at him)
Callahan:You fuckin' fruit
(Destroys Maxwell with a rocket launcher)

Callahan:: Do you know the emergency phone number for San Francisco General? Well, why don't you call them right now and have them send down an ambulance. Tell them there's two sorry-looking assholes here with multiple contusions and various abrasions and broken bones.

Callahan:I know what you're thinking. "Did he fire six shots or only five?" Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement I kind of lost track myself. But being as this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clean off, you've got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk

Callahan: Here's a seven-point suppository, Captain.
Capt McKay: What did you say?
Callahan: I said stick it in your ass.

The films aged a little bit, but not Harry. He is his own man and looking to dish out justice the way he judged proper. He's a universal, timeless badass because he's a good guy (a very good guy) yet he doesn't bother with laws and protocol. What's important to him is to get the danger off the street as soon as possible. In a sense, he's the law we all wish to have and that some of us wish to be. He doesn't need an armor of muscle when he has his magnum and a shitload of grit.

Don't think Clint Eastwood is sitting on his laurels or lives in the past. He got older (fuck, he's a whopping eighty-one years old), but he took on himself to make his legend live on. He directed and starred as complete badass Bill Munny in Unforgiven and as geriatric badass Walter Kowalski in Gran Torino, a movie he kept afloat with his clever writing and minimalist tough guy schtick. Not to mention all the Oscars he nabbed from the director chair. Clint Eastwood is the image of the everyman being cool, badass and achieved. His name alone invokes images of self-assured manliness.

Top Ten Character Forming Books Teenagers Should Read

Top Ten Tuesdays is a blogging activity hosted by The Broke And The Bookish. I never thought I'd say this one day, but I'm old school. Time and adulthood beat the teenage angst out of me.  To me, teenagers could you more fear, discipline and responsibility in their diet. Learn what's productive and what's not. But I guess it comes with time and *AHEM* wisdom. A good grasp of your inner self leaves no place for drama, you know? So here are the ten books I'd give to teenagers to whip them into adulthood.

1-Chuck Palahniuk - Fight Club: Kind of a no-brainer. Accepting you're not special and taking responsibility for who you are and for the world you live in is an invigorating message. Palahniuk is a gifted messenger. His prose is lean, minimalist and packed with ideas.

2-Cormac McCarthy - No Country For Old Men: Beside the obvious lesson in funky grammar, there's a message here. Money's nice, but never chose it over human beings. Not that trouble of biblical proportions might ensue, but it will make the others chose money over you too.

3-Henry Rollins - Get In The Van: "America 101, right in the teeth" said Rollins. It's his story. The story of a young man who leaves the realm of his childhood and goes face to face with a society that is slowly drowning in its own paranoia. Great chronicle of the Reagan years and loss of innocence.

4-Anthony Neil Smith - The Billy Lafitte Saga: Be an asshole and you will start a shitstorm you won't be able to stop. No matter who you want to be, your actions dictate who you are to the others. The world has its own karmic laws. Stir enough shit and it will catch up to you.

5-Alan Moore - V For Vendetta: There is the law and there is what you believe in. You can chose to be an anonymous face in the crowd and be safe, or you can chose to stand for what you believe in and go down in a blaze of glory. Plus, it's a graphic novel so there are killer drawings.

6-Yukio Mishima - The Temple Of The Golden Pavillion: The pursuit of knowledge, beauty and other theoretical goals are no substitute for life itself. Humanity resides in balance. Finding that balance is the highest thing you can achieve, no matter how seductive your intellectual and emotional longing can be.

7-Daniel Woodrell - Winter's Bone:  Short, not a difficult read and it's a good representation of what family really is. It's something you can't escape and yet it's an untapped resource you keep overlooking. Because you can't escape it, you know?

8-Suzanne Collins - The Hunger Games: A shitty situation doesn't mean you have to turn into a shitty human being. The end doesn't justify the means. You might have to take difficult decisions, but your soul has no cost. I didn't finish reading the book yet and I can already tell you that much.

9-Philip K. Dick - Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?: Son, it's just a good read overall, but the point is this. It's not because a person is different that she's inferior. Humanity is a pretty damn arbitrary thing.

10-Chuck Klosterman - Fargo Rock City: Klosterman's obviously overdoing it for comedic (read commercial) purpose. But his whole body of work has a point. You have to keep a critical distance with what you learn in school and with the world you live in.

The Back Of My Mind....

"THE HUNGER GAMES isn't all that bad so far. Obviously not my demographic, but give me a strong female archetype and I'm ready to overlook a lot of things."

"There's a method to quickly identify people who suck. Call it a scientific breakthrough in first impressions. If the person starts talking about herself without being asked any questions, you better start formulating bathroom excuses in your mind."


"There are a few things that match reading Kurt Vonnegut. Watching Anderson Silva or Muhammad Ali fight, a movie from Jim Jarmusch or Terrence Malick. It's that thing he does better than everybody else. Being human that is."


"Writing has to have rhythm. If it doesn't, it better be short. Without rhythm, I get boring after a few chapters".


"That show on Spike TV, REPO GAMES is the stuff Stephen King could have written about twenty-five years ago. The financial failure of the average american, filmed for your entertainment".


"Comics and video games receive the cold shoulder from the arts community more often than not. Television is barely starting to get acceptance. I'm not sure why that is. Most kids get their worldly education from those. Me included. TV and video games taught me as much as academics did."


"Captain America looks awesome, but I'm going to puke if I have to watch another super hero movie. In 3D or in something gimmicky like that. Can they just stay on the page and in the mind of kids?"


"That Frank Bill guy is going to be good. I have yet to read him, but I know. There is a see-through honesty to him, that most people (hell, most writers) don't have. When people like that write crime fiction, it can't suck."


"About three weeks away from INFINITE JEST. Not sure what to think. It feels like being on the jumping board at the swimming pool".


"You get older and summer gets thinner and thinner. Life gets compacted in two weeks every year".