The zine's always a good read at the sandwich shop, but this time around, I wasn't just enjoying flipping through it. My buddy Mike had just emailed me about notebooks and my thoughts on them, and had suggested I make my own notebooks, including an idea about building in a longer/wider fold-out style of page, to accommodate some of my special needs, so I already had ideas about manipulating paper bouncing around my head, and I ended up reading it as much for "Hey, I should make one of these, too" ideas as for "Let's see what's going on in this writer's world today". (Which latter moment is a little ungenerous, and I feel bad about that and will try to fix it.)
Anyway, here's a way to take an 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper and turn it into a seven-page zine with a front cover.
Start with a piece of 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper in landscape orientation. Fold it in half lengthwise, with the fold at the top.
(Folded lengthwise, with the fold at the top.)
Fold it in half again, down the middle, with the fold away from you.
(Folded in half down the middle, with the fold away from you.)
Fold each half, left side and right side, in half down the middle, away from you (fold pointing toward you). From the top, this will now look like a capital W—or, anyway, it should. Flatten everything out, so you're looking at it in portrait, with two folds to the left, one to the right. Now you're seeing the cover!
(Cover and first two pages.)
You have eight panels to work with, and can put whatever you can fit in there on them, but there's one caveat: as the page is laid out unfolded, half the panels will have to be upside-down. Schematically, it looks like so.
(Diagram of the basic layout.)
It seems to me like it makes more sense to start with page one, rather than the cover. But I can see this being a matter of preference.
Once you're done, it will read like the above. Very fun, very cool, very simple!
Well, I knew this would happen. When you say something as controversial as I did yesterday—"the Sharpie®|Pen. implement is pretty okay for writing things with" was merely the felt tip of my offensive offensive—you're going to have to expect pushback. And pushback I have from Pen Internet and elsewhere received.
Occasional contributor and life partner Pierre Idiot Trudeau, perhaps predictably, mounted the fiercest assault on my position.
I'm confused as to how these Sharpie Pens are different from the Sharpie fine and Ultra Fine markers. Is there a ball or different ink release system? I know that you've used those others I've mentioned, so I'm curious as to what makes it different/more pleasing.
Later, a pervert calling him-or-herself "Unknown"* continued the savage pile-on.
*Likely fucking story, friendo.
I have a bunch of conflicting emotions about pens. My trusty Micron is great for small missives, but if I truly want to make a statement I have a Sharpie in a holster. I tried the double tip dueling fine point/regular Sharpie, but hardly used the fine point. Turns out, I only use the Sharpie for making signs or responding to analog social media. There are a number of other instruments in my pen-theon which I will leave until another entry on which to elaborate.
"Pen-theon" is pretty good, though, so kudos for that. To address these wild accusations: I did not explicitly compare the Sharpie®|Pen. to the more common Sharpie "permanent" marker, for two reasons. First, I am a MarksALot man**, and brand loyalties are important***. Second, I mostly write on paper, and people who use Sharpie markers to write on paper make me uncomfortable (nervous, irritable). I have tried this, under the occasional influence of one disreputable brute or another, from time to time, and the overwhelming experience is one of bleed-through, of paper more ruined by ink than (ad-)dressed by it. The hand feel of a Sharpie marker is also completely vile: chub-stubby and slick—no, thank you!!
**No, I'm not. ***No, they aren't.
Recently I uncovered a smallish cache of the small-tip Sharpie markers, and attempted to deploy them to label presents. Stolen from work a job ago, they had all gone dry, nestled patiently in my art silo. The metaphor is, of course, clear.
The tip question posed by Pierre Idiot Trudeau is easy enough to answer. The Sharpie®|Pen. boasts a standard protrusive cylinder felt-tip, no ball to be found, basically the same format as the Micron art pen. The Sharpie marker, of the small-tipped variety, does, I believe, incorporate a ball encased by a plastic cone (among its other failings)****, whereas the more common "fine point" marker is a thick, slab-like cone of felt.
(Note here the tip propaganda of the manufacturer, included so that we may better understand not what to think, but what we are wanted to think, by those who are not our friends.)
****I can't verify this, because I took all the ones I had and threw them in the fucking garbage, where I assume they remain, sucking shit. I took a long look at Sharpie dot com, and could not find the sort of pen I am remembering. After additional research, I have come to believe that I may have been remembering not a Sharpie, but an Expo Vis-à-Vis dry erase marker of some sort, or a Sharpie equivalent. I fail to see how this minor error in identifying the tool I was using could in any way invalidate anything I have said about the experience of using the tool. :(
(I don't even like looking at these hateful objects.)
Perhaps more important than the tip is what comes out of it. Standard Sharpie marker ink is, as I have hinted, not my favorite thing to apply to paper (except for wrapping paper, a task that comes up not very frequently, as I am an ingenerous clod), but the Sharpie®|Pen. issues forth something that, as the container indicates, "won't bleed through paper", which is cool. Using science, I have determined that the Sharpie marker and Sharpie®|Pen. do in fact have different inks: as the image below indicates, Sharpie markers can write on glass, whereas the Sharpie®|Pen. cannot, to its credit.
(Science!)
So. To recap, always a good thing to do with your pen:
Tip differences: Sharpie®|Pen., a pleasing cylinder of felt jutting from a metal tube, like a tiny Chrysler building; Sharpie marker, a galumphing, turgid pile
Ink differences: Sharpie®|Pen., a kind, gentle fluid optimized for gracing, indeed grazing, paper, whence good adults write; Sharpie marker, a harsh substance perfect for those who wish to "make their mark" on arbitrary surfaces (childishly)
Of course, Pierre Idiot nor his campaign were finished.
I have specific pen/marker/highlighter needs/opinions based mostly around the paper that's getting written on. I petitioned my boss - unsuccessfully - to allow us to buy the one step up paper that we used to buy because it "feels better to write on". This was met mostly with eyerolls, but a bit of sympathy from the very same people.
Indeed! Sadly under-recognized, except by the attractive geniuses who read this post, is the vast truth that: The Paper ... Makes the Pen. The barrel matters regardless of surface, but the pen's contents and tip are wildly at the mercy of whatever you're planning to rub them on! This is one reason an ultimate pen, much like an ultimate morality, can likely never be discovered. As for your boss, I recommend collective action and concerted activity. Be unwavering in your demands, unstinting in your efforts, and unquenched in your desire for total victory (read: slightly better office supplies). You might try framing it as a workplace safety issue, if you can. "Paper cuts are causing paper cuts" is a slogan I can hardly imagine meeting with anything but immediate boss capitulation.
Now, if you want to talk highlighters, this here is the gold standard. Smear Guard ®
Took a quick look at the last time I talked about pens, my mind aglow with whirling, transient nodes of thought careening through a cosmic vapor of invention, and had a discomfiting, disconnected moment. I could scarcely recognize the child I was, tho' the child ever is father to the man, nor credit the opinions he expressed.
Particularly alien I found the conclusion, in which 2017 Fat plumped for reaching in the main for the Pilot (Precise) V5. This bears essentially no relation to current practice, preference, or predilection. The (r)evolution has I think more to do with what I'm writing on than what I'm writing with.
(I found this pen in the bag of scissors / tape / pens / etc. I maintain for Xmas-present-wrapping operations. Man, I sure chewed on this one a lot.)
I've been working, with a kind of dogged, halting persistence, to refine my notebook approach, spurred by conditions both material (I have roughly a dozen Field Notes notebooks on hand) and ideological (I love those Field Notes notebooks, and the uniformity of writing things in identical containers drives a certain urge towards tweaking my approach to their filling, until I feel optimized, plus I have watched more than one video about bullet journaling). Details on all that to come. But with a striving towards consistency and perfection must come a desire for sameness—in this case, yoked to an/the ever-present lust for novelty, viz., I saw a new-to-me kind of pen when I was in a stressful situation and (therefore) in need of easeful consumption—and thus came into my life the stirring adequacy of the spartanly named Sharpie®|Pen., whose chubby, softish barrel is bleh at best, but inoffensive, and whose tip and ink please nigh-invariably.
(You may be able to see that the tip is slightly bent, because I dropped it point-down onto a hard floor, almost immediately after starting to use it. This is vaguely reminiscent of using a pencil, and I kind of like it.)
Not as stable a platform as the light carbine of the Le Pen nor the fully functional Batmobile of the Micron ~Art Pen~, it hits much the same marks, but with waterproof ink and a less intimidating mien. I tried to use it exclusively in my most recent notebook, and except for the day I forgot it at work and had to press back into service one of my absolute favorite (green) Le Pens, I succeeded. Pleasing consistency!
That notebook (was) finished last night; the next follows. After a painstaking review of my Pen Situation and my Evolving Habits, I have decided to retire the Sharpie®|Pen. for the duration of that notebook (48 pages, usually around as many days), for reasons I will describe just as soon as they are clear to me.
(These are fine-tipped, 0.8 mm. I wonder what the Ultra Fine experience is like??)
It is a truth universally acknowledged that the internet has been a net bad for humanity. By allowing glib, superficial access to largely decontextualized facts, it's created a vast army of people—mostly men—who, perniciously, believe both that there's nothing they don't understand and that understanding things requires no more than a cursory googling and quick skimming of somewhere under four web—usually just Wikipedia—pages. (There's also the brain-poisoning feedback loop wherein the most casual expressions of approval somehow displace and outweigh any/all other potential inputs, eventually, out of sheer volume, replacing the real world entirely. But that's a matter for another time.) But I cannot deny the few archipelagos of what I can only call Good Internet which remain. Mostly they're singular. What characterizes Good Internet is usually that it is and does One Thing. It expresses one sensibility, maybe, or, more reliably, it treats (of) only one topic. Good examples of Good Internet would include:
I'm sure we'll eventually cover all of these individually. But right now I want to talk about Pen Internet.
Pen Internet is good. Here are some examples, some people taking an interest in something and working to communicate that interest to whoever might be listening.
Pen reviews written and drawn in the pen being reviewed
That was fun. Now I want to talk about pens. Mostly I want to talk about good pens. What can I say? Pen Internet is intoxicating, also inspiring.
Most of what I write personally (rather than professionally), I write by hand before typing it up in vim. Some years back, I learned, by watching Tinzeroes, that everything works better when I put everything into one notebook that is always carried with me and close to hand. That way, I always know where everything is. I never have to wonder where to put something. And different pieces can, just by brute juxtaposition, connect in unexpected ways. Writing in a notebook implies needing a pen—so:
I have a lot of Moleskine type notebooks. An underreported feature of those notebooks how poorly their paper takes so many kinds of ink. The right-hand pages have a slicker coating than the left; a lot of pens skip on the right, bleed on the left. Displeasing. Also I like to write a lot of postcards, which tend to have a coating that smears basically all inks...
This means a popular option doesn't work well for me, so, so sorry G-2, but you don't really make the cut. Other reasons: (1) I have had spills annihilate things I have written with this gel ink (making it bad for mail); (2) the rubber thing (a) is condescending and (b) gets loose on the shaft, which is distracting, or gets gummy, which is disgusting. Linewise, 05 is a little bit too thin (scratchy on soft or thick paper); 07 is a little bit too thick (makes it hard to write as small as I like to). Poor experience on coated paper, ill-advised hand feels, ubiquitous, cheap, allows fidgety clicking, adequate weight for debate spinning: 6/10; acceptable fallback option. Often have one to hand to loan out or write a check with.
Le Pen felt tip. Dirt cheap. Colorful! Beautifully designed, remarkably comfortable. Ink not at all waterproof. Too light to be debate-spun. Make a delightful scratch sound when used. Last a surprisingly long time, often given to me by my girlfriend. Can't write a check with it. 8/10; excellent option to be deployed in virtually any circumstance.
Those weird ones Noodles likes. Widely considered the gold standard for people who don't fetishize writing really really small. Good for writing checks with. Wonderful pens, but somehow don't work for me. Too fat, with too thick a line, maybe. Maybe just a vibe thing. 5.5/10; make me feel guilty, like I don't like chocolate or something.
"Artist pens." Magnificent writing experience, can be a little too cushy. Easily lost or stolen. Hyper fucking expensive. Can intimidate by giving writer the sense that the ink is too permanent for anything but a good thought well expressed, and can therefore inhibit getting things down on paper, which is the only important/useful thing about schlepping a fucking notebook around.
But what did you expect? When you pull Excalibur from the stone, you gain power, but you also inherit mad responsibility. 7/10; can't really be spun, no good for the checkbook, fairly good for postcards, other mail.
Papermate El Cheapos. Blobby ink, but last forever. Spin well with a cap on the butt. Acceptable choice, unless you have the option of:
Bic Crystal. Platonic ideal of the ball-point pen. Perfect design: looks good, looks potent, but accessible; fits the hand, accommodates any style. Ink is decent, and can be laid down on essentially anything: paper, denim, skin, walls, seats, Converse Chuck Taylor All-Stars. As Robert Heinlein once said, "I feel the way about a Springfield that I do about a Gooney Bird; some pieces of machinery are ultimate perfection of their sort, the only possible improvement is a radical change in design." (Glory Road, p. 58) That's how I feel about the Bic Crystal. Also a good example of William Gibson's dictum "the street finds its own uses for things", in that the hexagonal barrel is the perfect size to stick into a cassette tape for manual fast-forwarding. Perfect for the checkbook, ideal for postcards and envelopes, superb for debate spinning. 9/10; as close to perfect as this world can offer.
Pilot V5. Can be debate-spun, but for whatever reason, I never do so. Not great for check carbons; perfect for envelopes, rarely bleeds; mixed bag for postcards, often smears. Beautiful thin line. Can write pretty small with it. Barrel the right size for my slim paws. Lined up like this, it's not wildly impressive. But...
Years ago—12 or more—I had many special needs. I rode my bike everywhere, with a 12-mile round trip to work, regardless of Portland weather, and I didn't spend a lot of time at home outside of sleeping and (rarely) bathing. This all meant: I needed to carry layers, for rain, for stench and a hat to keep the sun out of my eyes and rain off of my glasses; I needed to carry entertainment (reading material [Moorcockpaperback?], music, my beloved pink handheld, maybe a DS, one or another notebook); I needed to carry bike locks; I needed enough storage space to pick up a sudden Gundamor Stikfa, or wedge in a thrifted Dreamcast; I needed somewhere to tuck my travel mug; at the end of my idiot nights, I often needed a six-pack of tallboys and a Totino's party pizza.
I had two bags at that point. One, my college LL Bean Turbo Transit backpack, big enough that I once lived out of it, travelling, for six weeks, magnificently ugly, but not strong against rain, and not convenient for getting into / out of without taking it off. Two, an early model Timbuk2 messenger bag, modified by its previous owner to use a length of seat belt material as its strap—a bag I adored, but found too big for some summer nights.
Thus it was that Tinzeroes and I betook ourselves to the local surplus store, where I first encountered an item listed as an "Israeli Paratrooper Bag". My first reaction: "Wow, evidently Israel's paratroopers need to do a lot of paperwork, because this bag is like 80% pen slots." My second reaction: "I really like this bag's look, feel, size."
Besotted with notions of kit-bashing and customization, and at a surplus store, I bought a couple strips of hook and loop fastener, a big buckle, and a length of wide, thick strapping. Once home, I grabbed a case of dental floss, my sewing kit, my pocket knife, and an X-acto blade from my model-building set.
I added the hook and loop to close the bag's flap more easily, and replaced the shoulder strap, sewing in as much strength as I could with floss. I added an attachment loop for a blinky bike light, and heat-sealed the straps where I'd cut them with my pocket knife, held over the stove's burner. The X-acto knife cut out one of the two main compartment's dividers, freeing up space and lightening the bag a bit (but I think it was mostly just doing something for the sake of doping something).
Even for summer use, it was never quite big enough. With anything at all in it, it was a little too full for much more than a six-pack, and even the most wadded-up hoody would more or less fill it. And since I hadn't tested where to put the velcro, if the bag was too full, I couldn't close it. Rainy season ruled the bag out entirely for outdoor use: the thick canvas wasn't waterproof, or even really colorfast.
But I loved it. The experience of customizing it had only taken an evening, but had bonded me to it as securely as the shoulder strap was bonded to the bag's side wall.
The size was too small (14" wide, 11" tall, main compartment 4" deep), but every force that constrains my overpacking is welcome. The material wasn't waterproof, but it didn't promote gross back sweat as badly as a plastic bag on longer summer rides. Plus, the canvas was strong without being stiff or rough, meaning that it didn't tear up things it came into contact with (sweaters, for example) or wear through where it creased, with the exception of this one spot, after substantially longer than a decade.
The organization options weren't incredibly robust, but the flat pocket at the back wall was always a good spot for a U-lock, and the front pouch pocket always seemed to accommodate more than I'd expect. And a big empty main compartment is a must no matter what your needs are.
I still have the bag! I throw it in a larger bag sometimes if I'm flying somewhere I expect to be walking around a lot. It's also good for those late-night "need beer" rides. Most of my special needs from circa 2004 are no longer, but a good bag is a good bag. This is a good bag.
The sound is dense, but not obviously and impressively complicated. That is, it is very coherent. It works because of its unity, not out of an accumulation of contrasting effects such as volume changes or syncopation. (48) Crawdaddy I 10, July-August 1967, The Byrds p. 48-50
Consider these: The Byrds, The Velvet Underground, The Mothers of Invention, Love. Not a random choice among them. Because they are all groups with their own great world systems. I mean each group has its own comprehensive way of doing things, of looking at and organizing them. Often all we can recognize are the final results—this or that song—and in (21) so doing, we forget that this or that implicates some comprehensive view behind it. Not that everybody has a great world system. Not everybody is a philosopher. But for those who do, it can determine such diverse matters as album covers1, wardrobe2, haircuts3, half-time banter4, appearance of the instruments5, group athletics6, etc.
[...]
But all of these [examples] are really instances of the taste for order. Even the nihilistic stuff. That certain longing they reveal is a longing for order. Actually it gets harder and harder to imagine something nihilistic. I mean, what would it be like?8 If you do songs about perversion, drugs and popular ideas about disorder, then you are summing up an alternative, that which you happen to find tasty. And tastes change. And then what you have found tasty may even become generally palatable. And then what? Rock's great world systems are sets of alternative arrangements—or at least visions—of the world. Idealized arrangements, according to the tastes of whoever made them. They are sort of perfect—because they don't matter. Irrelevancy can always set you free and guarantee your privacy. Despite the fact that rock is big business, why should anybody care about what goes on? Unless you were really smart you would have to toil at making it as important as something else: politics say. That people do care is, then, very nice. Simple altruism probably. But most who care are still on the outside. And those on the inside, the ones who make the rock, don't care enough. That audience of theirs is so young, (23) so impressionable, and yet they'll say anything at all. Simple irresponsibility probably. Or maybe they're just self-consciously irrelevant. Crawdaddy I 11, October 1967, Science Fiction p. 20-24
But suddenly that previously mentioned specter rears up. A really awesome monster, it comes on rushing like Diz-Busters7 with too much iron in its bloodstream and zero invisibility. Crawdaddy I 12, January 1968, Doors and Kinks p. 21-25, 36-38
Now, about Marcel Duchamp we've gotta say this (at this time 'cause it also bears): his ready-made looms large in the potentiality of objects. It's well known that this person's self-conscious placement of an ordinary urinal in the midst of a pretty fancy 20th century art show simultaneously created an extraordinary art historical urinal and added the artist's intention to the dimensions within which objects could be manipulated. But his use of this ready-made was questionable. The art show wasn't its rightful spot. It was out of place / out of phase. So Marcel Duchamp wound up a very nasty comedian, i.e. both funny and disturbing. Setting a pattern. And, in fact, it's only been recently that the presence of a ready-made (anyone at all, anywhere at all) has become blatantly hackneyed enough to prove not always hilarious, not always scary, but sometimes just potentially comforting. R. Meltzer's term "academic beauty," encompassing such truck as Steve Noonan, Tim Buckley, Simon and Garfunkle (sic), The Bee-Gees and Pearls Before Swine, implicates this newer style for the ready-made: the formal one of modular component. Ready-mades can be taken from anywhere and plugged in anywhere. Their neutrality is violated only by the intention of their manipulators (and this intention, of course, controls where they wind up). Something becomes a ready-made when your manipulative intention takes it from one context to another. When it is intentionally recontextualized. And when these new and old contexts are equivalent, then the ready-made could seem comfortable and comforting. (In phase.) Back to the academically beautiful, and we note that the ideal for this stuff's words is most of the poetry we had to learn in the 7th through 12th grades. Perhaps that explains its high dullness potential. [...] I mean, I mean that the academically beautiful is obvious clichés. (41) Crawdaddy I 13, February 1968, Van Dyke Parks p. 41-43
1. Album Covers
2. Wardrobe
3. Haircuts
4. Half-Time Banter
"I'd like to thank my friends here who gave me this little whip. It's really lovely, I'll keep it and cherish it forever."
5. Appearance of the Instruments
6. Group Athletics
7. Diz-Busters
This mysterious phrase graced a terrific song on the band's second album (and became the name of my first car, The Seventh Screaming Diz-Buster, a name I told at least one person [who promptly mocked the shit out of me]). There are a few extant theories about its meaning:
Albert has revealed that "diz" refers to the cleft of the penis, and that "duster's dust" refers to sperm. But the concept of diz-buster is left ambiguous. The definition of "something that can make one ejaculate" most plausibly applies to a reading that these seven diz-busters are evil, paranormal sex sirens, woman beings without a conscious [sic], the number seven bringing in a biblical element to the lyric as well. But this track could also be one of Sandy's biker songs, diz-buster referring to the result of a long, vibrating Harley ride (and then, mamas and old ladies often joke about the orgasmic qualities of a good ride). Indeed, many lines in the song could have one believe that the diz-buster is a bike (there is mention of cast iron, the mirror's face, rigid arms, routes, all suggesting this interpretation), especially in (Lucifer) light of the fact that females, female pronouns, or sexual ideas are never mentioned in the song.
Joe sheds more light on his approach to this track's lyric. "I had a tendency where I would take a Sandy Pearlman lyric and shape it. Those guys would use a Sandy Pearlman or Richard Meltzer lyric just the way they wrote it. But I always felt that structure was important in music, the structure of the lyric. So I ended up changing around the lines, not changing any of the words per se, but changing the order of the lines, which I also definitely did in Astronomy. And same with 7 Screaming Diz-Busters. Like I say, I wrote pretty much most of the music on our organ, which was in the living room of the house we rented. I would just get up in the morning and start banging on the organ, and came up with that, while Donald and Albert added in sort of the jam section." (47-48)
[from] Martin Popoff, Blue Őyster Cult: Secrets Revealed!
8. Longing for Order, Imagining Nihilism
Sandy Pearlman told me that at the last [Black Sabbath show] he attended, nobody in the audience could even stand up, barely managed to applaud, and bodies were sprawled everywhere. [...] A graphic tragic survey of the littered battlefield of the contemporary concert, with pitiful panoramas of passed-out pukes and other alliterative gimmicks. (237)
[from] Lester Bangs, Mainlines, Blood Feasts, and Bad Taste, "Bring Your Mother to the Gas Chamber", p. 222-242
As promised, or maybe threatened, here is a comprehensive compendium collecting the collated correspondences between the I Don't Even Own a Television podcast and the works of Blue Öyster Cult. This document will be maintained, so please do check back often.
1—Pregnesia w/ Jeb Lund Coming soon! One issue with trying to cross-reference IDEOTVPOD and BŐC is that BŐC is kind of short on songs pertaining to romance-gone-wrong topics—and romance doesn't go much more wrong than in IDEOTVPOD's kickoff episode, Pregnesia. But I'm working on it.
2—Anthem w/ Dave Stattler For a book about the virtues of willing yourself to power, about selfishness raised to the level of moral imperative, no song is better than the leering, sneering ode to the 70s, This Ain't the Summer of Love.
3—The Dirt w/ Jackson O'Brien I mentioned earlier that BŐC's catalog doesn't give a person a lot of options when it comes to songs about love and romance. If it's time to talk about talking about being a rock star, however, nobody did it better (or funnier) than these guys. The weirdness and romantic power of people playing loud music in front of people was a fixation for this band and their songwriters, and maybe their best statement on the topic was 1977's robotic stomper, R.U. Ready to Rock.
Some of the band's best harmonies shine over a deliberately held-in-check riff and Eric Bloom gets to declaim about the stations of night, about living only to be born again, and those "countdown blues". None of it makes a whole lot of linear sense, but there's a lot of menace, making it a perfect fit for a hazy melange of overlapping, sometimes contradictory stories from some of the 80s/90s biggest, and most violent, rock stars.
6—Michelle Remembers w/ Poncho Martinez For Michelle Remembers, a harrowing tale of ritual satanic abuse and repressed memory, a harrowing Richard Meltzer lyric about horror and the failures of memory, a thing called Veins:
I open my eyes From a dreamless night With a sense of dread You could cut with a knife So I'm thinking that Maybe I killed somebody You never know—you never know when You might have killed somebody
8—Backwards Masking Unmasked w/ David Thorpe A book about satanic panic? Count me in! As long as I still get to listen to this rewritten and extended jam, all piano flourishes and choruses built to intimidate. If you're going to name a song after your band, and write yourself into a conspiracy theory about history, you might as well do it this well.
10—Ready Player One w/ Mike Sacco A book that's a pandering pastiche of popular culture has the benefit of being at least easy to sit through. No matter how bad it gets, at least you can think about things you actually used to like! So for the dumb quest story / awful artifact Ready Player One, I propose the little-known BŐC quest epic The Vigil, a multi-part ride that's every bit as enjoyable as the few good bits in RPO with the added bonus that it's definitely not trying to get an elbow into your ribs to remind you of something you used to like.
11—Left Behind w/ Leeman Kessler When the rapture comes and all the good people are harping it up in the infinite, I for one plan to be singing along loudly to this Patti Smith lyric about the aliens or UFOs or whoever the hell it was that "took my baby...took my baby away" Man do I like this song. Fire of Unknown Origin.
14—Chariots of the Gods w/ Centa Schumacher Chariots of the Gods posits that aliens did a lot for us poor humans. And noplace does BŐC handle that theme more interestingly and funly than in the concept record Imaginos and in that record's title track.
15—Stranger in a Strange Land w/ Adam Marler Stranger in a Strange Land is about a telepathic alien who founds a church and such, written by a pal and a confidante of L. Ron Hubbard, who founded a church based on aliens and telepathy in order to make a huge pile of money. Flaming Telepaths tells a parallel story—and tells you, again and again, that the joke's on you.
17—A Spell for Chameleon w/ Jesse Dangerously Piers Anthony's ode to despising a woman in multiple ways deserves nothing less than this Cars parody that was never supposed to make it onto record You're Not the One (I Was Looking For). The other joke about this song is that it was legendarily directed at the man who produced it, who understood roughly nothing about what BŐC was good at/for.
19—Voodoo Child w/ Eugene Violet Voodoo-themed graphic novel? Song written for a segment of Heavy Metal (the movie) that, unfortunately, couldn't be used, because the song did in like 5 minutes what it took the segment like 20 to convey. Oops. Vengeance (The Pact)
20—Necroscope w/ Chris Collision Screams, a Doors-lite spooky number, goes well with the first episode I was ever on, the Cold War James-Bond-with-psychic-powers-against-Soviet-vampires (yes, really) horror/thriller/whatever book, Necroscope.
21—The Eye of Argon w/ K. Thor Jensen Not 100% sure on this, but I feel basically okay assigning a personal fave tune, with lyrics from legendary British fantasy/SF writer Michael Moorcock, to the legendarily bad self-published Eye of Argon. I guess my position is that a tribute to Conan deserves a parody of Conan, so here's the great live version of Black Blade that introduced me to Moorcock.
22—Real Men Don't Eat Quiche w/ Centa Schumacher In the 70s, we evidently cared a lot about what Men did and did not do. Something that goes really well with panicking about what Men can and can not eat is ratcheting up the camp levels and getting all biker-gangy, but with voices raised in song, and singing, oh, singing, of the Golden Age of Leather.
23—Scar Tissue w/ Ben Firke Red Hot Chili Peppers are the worst band of all time; Anthony Kiedis is the worst lyricist of all time; without reading it, I assume this book is the worst book of all time. In "honor" of this, I present BŐC's weird parody of "becoming a rock star" songs, The Marshall Plan. Weirdest/best part of the parody is that it predated Juke Box Hero, Summer of '69, etc. I guess some parodies create the conditions of existence for the thing they will eventually be parodies of. I guess some bands who could really use a hit should maybe play it straight instead of mocking the entire enterprise they're involved with.
24—The Actuator: Fractured Earth w/ Alexander Hinman Not gonna lie: this episode made this book sound incredibly dumb, but more than a little fun. Which is about how I'd describe this song, one of the cheesiest (and more successful) attempts at rocking this band ever put together: Siege and Investiture of Baron Von Frankenstein's Castle at Weisseria. What can I say, maybe I just like bad Dio impressions...
25—On the Brink w/ Jeb Lund & Rocky Swift One wildly dumb fear-mongering piece of tripe from the 70s deserves another, so...a Jimmy Carter-loathing screed by anti-abortion fanatic and former Nixon toady Ben Stein gets matched with the 'bring-it-on' message BŐC semi-explicably sent to the Ayatollah, a fairly dull number called Divine Wind.
28—Pines The central premise of Pines is what if a bunch of dumb shit you once liked was tossed in a blender and served up to you, panderingly what if a dipshit with no personality wanted to try to escape a place—so the amazing parody We Gotta Get Out Of This Place is perfect, as the entire band channels their inner robot and singer Eric Bloom tries out the persona "evil singer of heavy rock who cannot convincingly convey the sentiment 'little girl, you're so young and pretty'". It's basically perfect.
29—Wild Animus w/ Tim Faust Wild Animus is an insane / inane depiction of one man's quest to get in touch with his version of the animal we all most hope lurks within us: a mighty, majestic...sheep. Blue Őyster Cult's Born to Be Wild is a slightly sad illustration of one band's quest to throw something into their set list that's guaranteed to get a pop from the crowd.
30—Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance Like most middle-aged men, BŐC and the author of Zen and blah blah blah who fucking cares have an evident fixation on motörcycles. On literally every level I prefer BŐC's Shadow of California to this "novel". Arguably a failed attempt at a multi-part epic, the song still works for me, including its weird lurches from more or less catchy rock parts to a truly disorienting time-signature lurch where the vocals are no longer tethered rhythmically to the music. Sure, everything on The Revölution by Night has some faddish and absurd-sounding drums, but the remainder of the production is appealing and the best songs, of which this is one, are all at least interesting, though not always as crafted as the band's best. Plus, the menace of the perspective, including "might makes right" and the great title, work beautifully for this particular Californian who finds no little darkness in the state.
Literally none of these things are true of the novel.
31—The Curse of Jezebel w/ Centa Schumacher Fallen Angel is about as close as I can come to appropriate about this Bible-based romance / fanfic that really only comes to life when it's discussing troop movements or something. I warned you earlier about this: BŐC isn't at their most robust when it comes to matters of lust. But I really like the vocal on this one, and would love to hear a version with the (admittedly delicious) keyboards and bass slightly lower and the guitars a little (a lot) louder. Similarly, I'd like to read a version of The Curse of Jezebel with about 230 pages removed.
32—Killing Floor Goin' Through the Motions is an actually pretty funny meta-song, co-written by the greatest meta-songwriter of all time, Mott the Hoople's Ian Hunter. Killing Floor is more an example of going through the motions without commenting on it—though I do think it's entirely possible that it was a deliberate act to write it in a fully half-assed fashion, this would have represented a husbanding of resources, not a commentary on genre mediocrity. Anyway, everything Ian Hunter does is worth attending to.
33—Candy Girl w/ Lemon BŐC may never have been better than when they were throwing their previous lead singer under the bus with the non-sequitur She's As Beautiful As a Foot, originally written to make him look like an asshole for singing something dumb. I would like to make the writer of Candy Girl look like an asshole for writing this dumb book.
34—Armada Sadly, the dull rehash of an earlier work (itself a dull rehash of other people's earlier works) Armada sparks thoughts in me mostly of one of my favorite songs by anybody, E.T.I.. Because...I dunno, both have aliens. But only one has scintillating harmonies and maybe Buck Dharma's most transcendent guitar solo and BŐC's most breakdancing-robots riff and rhythms ever. So: BŐC 1, Ernest Cline 0.
35—Slash Books about rock and roll and its attendant lifestyles are always a little tricky. Readers want prurient details and salacious gossip, but the standard rules of narrative still apply, and spending novel-length periods of time with the truly debauched is a wretched experience. Cities on Flame with Rock and Roll is also a little tricky, especially in this version: one of the band's signature numbers, this performance was taped immediately after they'd booted the song's architect, singer and drummer Al Bouchard. So it's still a great song, on some level, but the details feel wrong, and it's nowhere near the experience it could have been. Or was.
36—Airport Not much going on here: a book about an airport shut down in a blizzard, planes th their wings covered in ice and snow gets Wings Wetted Down, a song about...wings...wetted...down.
Actually I have no idea what this song is about. But it's got a good sound to it, you know?
37—Doom: Knee-Deep in the Dead w/ Poncho Martinez In Doom: Knee-Deep in the Dead, we read of a soldier shooting his way into and through hell. It's mostly ridiculous and only intermittently entertaining. In Hot Rails to Hell, we listen to a guy freak out about being on a scary New York City subway, which plausibly could have been rattletrapping its way to the netherworld, and it's thoroughly excellent. (Early BŐC was a fairly deliberate affair, and their first three albums are mainly concerned with sketching various depictions of hell. As a tactic for a band whose creative brief was explicitly "American Black Sabbath", it's pretty canny, and the results are mostly satisfying, and almost always interesting. This one is more satisfying than interesting, which is a good first approximation to a description of rock and roll itself.)
38—Flowers in the Attic w/ Centa Schumacher & Amanda Brand I still think Flowers in the Attic is more interesting than not, especially as a portrait of the female experience in America. Mirrors is kind of similar: an unintentionally mean picture of the same thing, from a different point of view.
A mirror is a negative space with a frame And a place for your face it reveals What the rest of us see It conceals What you'd like it to be
39—Shadow Moon w/ Tricia Ellis The repetitive and incomprehensible but rocking Teen Archer goes nicely with the repetitive and incomprehensible but infuriating Shadow Moon, perhaps the most ineptly crafted artifact IDEOTVPOD ever suffered through.
40—Kitchen Confidential Not much going on here. A book about a bunch of immature id-beasts chasing booze, drugs, and women gets a song called Hungry Boys. shrug Shit, man: you try doing this fifty times.
41—Condominium Not sure which song I want to use here. There are two obvious possibilities, based on how cynical I'm feeling about this book at any given time. Check back soon. I'll probably make a decision someday.
42—Casino Royale w/ Lauren Parker Arguably a reach, but the prototype version of James Bond we find in Casino Royale reminds me a lot of the dry run of classic BŐC banger "The Red and the Black" I'm on the Lamb but I Ain't No Sheep. The initial Bond is a sniffing, amoral middle manager with impossibly specific tastes and a distinct penchant for sadism; the debut "Red and Black" is a friendly shuffle that doesn't seem to have noticed it's about whips and pursuit. Both would be refined considerably by their creators.
43—The Alchemist Workshop of the Telescopes is one of my favorite songs that I don't understand at all. But it is definitely about alchemy, which makes it a good fit for The Alchemist. Bonus (maybe): the song is absolutely an early example of what would come to be called steampunk, and, as such, provides a nice pointer towards a version of same which doesn't aggressively blow.
44—Callahan's Crosstime Saloon A book about boring people saying boring things and inflicting their feelings semi-consensually on any/everybody in the vicinity? Sounds "naked, exposed, like live rock and roll" to me, which means it sounds like True Confessions.
46—The 50th Law w/ Centa Shumacher When it comes to this bizarre money grab by sociopathic Hollywood climber Robert "money is" Greene and New York rapper / entrepreneur Fifty Cent, there's only one song that fits, this off-kilter ode to alienation and suspicious acts. So please enjoy Cagey Cretins!
It's so lonely, baby, in the state of Maine!
47—Illusions An undercooked attempt at guru-ing like Illusions merits only the overblown (but, to me, delightful) Magna of Illusion, a tale of piracy and doom.
But, then, aren't they all tales of piracy and doom.
Last year around this time, I started to feel a major bite: I no longer had a working turntable, and that's not how I like to spin roll. I looked around a little bit, asked some friends, and decided to try the U-Turn Orbit. Big mistake.
The first day I had it, I sent the following email to my pals:
I took a flyer on a hipster turntable and there's some shit they did that makes it kinda frustrating:
no autoreturn, meaning I can't pass out to a record
switch between 33 & 45 by means of touching the belt, meaning a nacho enthusiast like me will inevitably fuck up the belt and platter with filth [Ed. Note: I didn't tell these guys that I am also really really ineptly frustratingly bad at changing between 33 & 45 and that when I try it, the belt invariably falls off a couple times before I can get everything lined up correctly]
needs a preamp (because I have a second-rate amp), and the one they sell can't be turned on and off, meaning an incredibly bright blue LED burning at my eyeballs, and meaning...uh, shit, I guess I got to unplug it when I go to bed??
dust cover isn't counterbalanced, so it is either down or up at a 90-degree
Keep an eye on that preamp. It figures in the next email I had to send about this turntable—this email, I sent to the manufacturer.
Hi --
I am extremely frustrated with your product. I bought it, used it maybe twice, and then put it on the shelf for a while, unplugging the preamp, because it has no power switch and I
didn't see why it should be sucking electricity all the time
didn't want to see the god damned LED all the time
thought it might overheat/burn out if I left it plugged in
I tried to use the turntable tonight, and the preamp is apparently dead. I tried plugging the AC adaptor into multiple different outlets to zero effect. The turntable itself appears to work as well as it ever did -- no auto-return, and the belt falls off all the god damned time, but the platter spins. Again: I am extremely frustrated. And disappointed. And angry.
What do you recommend I do? Will you make this right and at the very least replace the preamp for free? Please let me know.
yours, a person who really wanted to listen to some records tonight, and can't,
And here is the response I got.
Sorry to hear you are experiencing some difficulties. Please note that we are not the manufacturers of the ART brand DJ preamp. I also agree that the LED is irritating, although it is worth mentioning that it does consume very little power, so I wouldn't worry about (1) or (3) - most preamps are designed to be left on. If you ship us back the preamp we can take a look at it and will send you a replacement (pre-owned) if necessary. This is a courtesy, as we are not the manufacturers of this item. [Ed. Note: you sold me the item, dude.]
Alternatively, I imagine that this might be a power adapter issue. Can you try quickly using the Orbit's adapter to connect the preamp and see if that gives it power? If it's just the adapter we can send a new one.
The Orbit is a fully manual turntable so there is no auto-return. [Ed. Note: yes, this is what I'm complaining about.]
There is an auto-lift device called the Q UP that you can purchase and install if you would like similar functionality: http://www.amazon.com/Q-UP-QUP-Up-Tonearm/dp/B008OAMD26. [Ed. Note: sweet upsell. Exactly what a disappointed, frustrated customer is most interested in.]
Can you please describe the belt falling off - when exactly does it fall off (during play or installation)? This should not be happening and if you provide more information we would be happy to look into this for you.
I didn't get back to him, because I know when I've been blown off. U-Turn Audio never followed up, presumably because they know when they're not going to be able to upsell their way out of their "stupid, pretentious instance[s] of 'design' as a noun overwhelming the verb-process of designing something". They wanted to have something "minimal", so they sell a turntable that doesn't have autoreturn, or a dust cover that's functional, a turntable that makes you handle the stretchable, finger-oil sensitive drive belt every time you want to change the speed. And they back it up with the commitment to customer service that says "Hey, man, sure, the thing we sold you broke after a week of minimal use, but we didn't make it, so if you want it to be replaced...we'll send you a used one and act like we're doing you a favor while we do it." So fuck them; fuck U-Turn Audio. If you see a product by U-Turn Audio, do yourself a favor: do a U-Turn. Walk away and find something you will enjoy using, made by people who do not loathe you.
Further to our notes of the other week, it is incumbent upon us to note that our Reviewieran ways continue to spill out into the world, beyond the high walls of our beloved home and land. Yes, I continue to pound the Reviewiera drum, hollering away that SOME STUFF IS BETTER THAN SOME OTHER STUFF—this time, via a podcast, over at the I Don't Even Own a Television podcast.
Every two weeks, the ridiculously talented J. W. Friedman and I get together and riff on one or another really really crummy book. J. founded the podcast in early 2014, and it was on my radar from the first episode, a book from a romance-novel publishing house's action imprint, Harlequin Intrigue (!), an erotic (?) thriller (?) called Pregnesia (!). Episodes that stood out to me from that time:
Somewhere in the run of excellent episodes with excellent guests, I managed to con J. into letting me guest on an episode. (I think I told him something like "I'm local, I always prefer to yes-and somebody when they make a joke, and I'll show up with beer".) It went well—I sure had a good time—and BOY did we read a lousy book, Brian Lumley's Necroscope. A few episodes later, it seemed to make sense to J. to offer me a gig as co-host, which I accepted the hell right out of, and since then, we've been reading every garbage book we can get our minds around. It's been a lot of fun, and it's a terrifically good fit with everything we've always tried to do here, so if you like hour-long sojourns in the land of abysmal writing, please give I Don't Even Own a Television a shot!
One of the stories of Reviewiera is the story of Fat & Tinzeroes, collaborating. "Some stuff," we argue, "is better than some other stuff," and we commit to the promulgation of that claim in all available fora. We began with our legendary, not at all fictional, scam to get our college to pay for us to eat hamburger sandwiches with french fried potatoes garnish while watching movies like Black Dog and Knightriders review collective B3—Bad Food, Bad Movies, Bad People, demonstrating that bad movies are pretty much the best stuff we can think of. Following that, Giant Turtle Patrol kept our nights full and our skies free of monstrous incursion; Super! Hero! Shared! Housing! made sure that the people who are bad at being people were kept safely in giant houses together, far the hell away from the rest of us... And so on.
But! We forgot to mention here, in our homeland of Reviewiera, that we are RIGHT NOW THIS VERY MINUTE still, again working hard to ring out the message: "some stuff, damn it, really is better than some other stuff". In the new project, we devote ourselves to that stuff that is worse than 'most all other; that stuff is: work. Yes, Tinzeroes and I are, essentially, reviewing work, those activities we (all) do to facilitate living our real lives.
SPOILER: the reviews are coming in and they are NOT particularly favorable.
The project is called Like a Shit Sandwich, based on the classic dad-level aphorism:
Life is like a shit sandwich—the more bread you have, the less shit you have to eat.
It's an email newsletter, comes out three times a month, with words mostly by me and art all by Tinzeroes, a chosen-just-for-you HEAVY TUNE in each issue, along with an interesting quote about work, found by me. It's a lot of fun, it goes straight to your inbox, so you can read it at work without anybody being the wiser, and we'll never do a thing in the world with your email address, okay?
You can get a taste of the project here, and you can sign up to receive every issue here. Please enjoy!
