The Bookhouse Boys discussion
File Under: Misc.
Dave wrote: "Pretty sweet new Tom Waits video for "Hell Broke Luce" on YouTube. Directed by Matt Mahurin. Surreal imagery at its finest.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Fju9o..."
Cool! Thanks, Dave.
Btw, this may convince me to actually give Tom Waits a serious listen.
Okay, I'm listening to RAIN DOGS and may actually be liking it.
This is a revelation, by the way, as in the past I found Mr. Waits to border on the pretentious side of melodrama.
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Dave wrote: "I think Waits has far too keen a sense of humor and whimsy to be melodrama, but it can be difficult to detect on a casual listen. He's a pretty literary songwriter, too... lots of vivid and unusual..."After listening to Rain Dogs, I have to say that I must be at a different point in my life. Because his music was like nails on a chalkboard to me previously. Now, I'm asking myself, what took me so long.
I guess that's good?
Regardless, Waits' music, at least Rain Dogs, seems as if it would be a perfect companion to the B-classic, Carnival of Souls.
That's great to hear, Robert, I have a deep love for Waits and for Rain Dogs in particular. If you like that album, my guess is that you would also appreciate the newest one, Bad As Me, and the musical album The Black Rider.
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I don't have that one yet. I'll have to make it my next Waits purchase!
Not to sidetrack the Waits' conversation, though this is the miscellaneous thread so is that even possible? But I was just informed by the local gallery that I sold one of my paintings to a couple from Brooklyn, NY who happened to be visiting the area.I am tingling with excitement.
Yeah, me!
Sorry for the derailment. . .
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Jason wrote: "That's fantastic, Rob! Is there any way for us to see which painting you sold?"Sorry, 'bout that. Hopefully this link works;
http://flic.kr/p/5WFR9R
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Robert wrote: "Not to sidetrack the Waits' conversation, though this is the miscellaneous thread so is that even possible? But I was just informed by the local gallery that I sold one of my paintings to a couple..."Dude! Derailing be damned! That is great news. Congratulations!
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And I like your titles. It seems an afterthought for many visual artists to name their work (indeed, they are often called "Painting #47" and such), and I think it informs them in interesting ways.
Thanks to everyone for all the kind comments and responses. It is very much appreciated!Matt wrote: "Holy ^%#t! You're talented! How much you asking for "Dante's Bellow" and "It Is Easy"? Do you take plasma?"
All prices are negotiable, but I don't wish to sell myself short, not that there is anything wrong with your plasma, Matt. :)
Jason wrote: "I've seen some of your looser drawings before, Rob, but not your paintings. Great work.
And I like your titles. It seems an afterthought for many visual artists to name their work (indeed, the..."
I've been inspired to create a title by the process as much as the final piece. I do not have any preconceived title before a work, as I would find that almost counterintuitive to creating any painting. Of course, all and any experiences may vary from artist/painter to the next.
I feel I may have said too much perhaps.
Congratulations on the sale! I have to say that your stuff looks stunning.
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I can't imagine naming something (a painting, a story, a song, etc.) before you've made it.
Jeppe wrote: "Congratulations on the sale! I have to say that your stuff looks stunning."Co-sign. I too love "Dante's Bellow" and all the "neuro-mechanics" pieces, especially "What was once a hole..." Absolutely beautiful!
~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~
Swordfishtrombones.
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I named songs before I wrote them all the time. Naming it after the fact almost always insured that the title would uninspired. For me, the title often captured the tone and feeling I was going for and then I had something to work toward, but everybody's process is different and de gustibus non disputandum est.
Jim wrote: "Jeppe wrote: "Congratulations on the sale! I have to say that your stuff looks stunning."Co-sign. I too love "Dante's Bellow" and all the "neuro-mechanics" pieces, especially "What was once a ho..."
Jeppe wrote: "Congratulations on the sale! I have to say that your stuff looks stunning."
Aw shucks, fellas, you are too kind. Thank you.
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I'm currently watching Dead Alive (for the first time, don't judge me!) and I just saw a trailer for Stephen King's Tommyknockers. It looks like an awesome B-movie hoot: Jimmy Smits, Marg Helgenberger, cheesy special effects. Anyone here seen it? Is it any good?
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Dead Alive is indeed bad-ass. I'm going to keep my eye on that director. I can see him doing big things someday.
Psst, kid, there's a thread for this: http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/5...
:)
Matt wrote: "Psst, kid, there's a thread for this: "Dammit! I thought I posted it there. Curse my poor attention and mis-clickery.
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I blame the pills.
Is Dead Alive the same film that's named Braindead outside of the US? If it is, it's awesome! I saw that one and Jackson's other two early flicks, Bad Taste and Meet the Feebles back before he was announced as the director of LotR, and I greatly enjoyed all three (yes, I was a twisted kid). Never seen either Tommyknockers or Dreamcatcher, but King adaptations usually leave a bad taste in my mouth.
Jeppe wrote: "Is Dead Alive the same film that's named Braindead outside of the US? If it is, it's awesome!Yes it is! I absolutely LOVED it. And you're not so weird: I saw The Frighteners and Meet The Feebles before Jackson was announced as LoTR director and was VERY excited by that news.
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The first Peter Jackson movie I saw, like many Americans my age I would imagine, was The Frighteners. At that point (and for years afterward) "Peter Jackson" meant nothing to me, though I did like the movie. Can't go wrong with R. Lee Ermey as a drill instructor, even a dead one.
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"Matt shepherds Dave and Jason through another blitzkrieg of topics both germane and random, including The Sixth Gun by Cullen Bunn and Brian Hurtt; saying goodbye to Joe Kubert, Gore Vidal, and Maeve Binchy; Dave's "Stick"; Kirkman can't write; Steve Gerber can; walking away from The Man Who Was Not With It by Herbert Gold; the Twain book is finally about Twain; Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression by Studs Terkel; not saying Garrison Keillor; Alexander Pope; confusing my philosophers; Uncle Silas is finally over; Matt's old time comics minute; Richard Brautigan's Revenge of the Lawn and others; mining artists for profit.
OUTRO: "On the Line" by The Radar Bros"
http://bookhouseboyspodcast.podomatic...
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http://dailydead.com/ryan-gosling-wil..."
Save that decision for after the film's release.
Matt wrote: "I might actually start stalking Ryan Gosling:http://dailydead.com/ryan-gosling-wil..."
It sounds promising!
***Warning: Total brain dump ahead.*** I spent two lengthy drives this weekend catching up on some Bookhouse Boys. I don't get to listen in real time because I spend very little time commuting, and my job is rarely one that permits me to listen to anything while I work - long car trips are pretty much the only time I get to listen to podcasts. Anyway, I don't know if Renee listens to the podcast, but this wife likes to because I hear my husband talk about things he never says to me. (Well, that and I'm a book nerd too, even though I tend to enjoy different books than you guys for the most part.) Sometimes I think Dave is such a quiet, contemplative person that he's afraid if he tells me his thoughts about what he's reading, he won't talk about it on the podcast because he'll have already said it out loud. :)Anyway. I am not all caught up; I still have a couple more to listen to, but TWICE while I was listening, my opinion of Middlemarch came up, and I wanted to speak up with my actual thoughts. I did not love it. I didn't hate it either. I "got" it - it's basically satirical realism, at times quite funny and at other times heartbreaking, describing and often mocking the fussy societal conventions of pastoral, provincial England in the early 1800s - and I appreciated the commentary. It was a pretty punkish, perhaps even feminist, attitude to have in the late 1800s (when the book was written), especially if you were a woman. If you haven't at least read the Wikipedia entry about George Eliot and what a radically different thinker she was for her times, you should - the novel makes a lot of sense in light of her personality, and it's easier to see the satire in it. It was mostly a slog for me, though. It's SO detailed, SO bogged down in exposition, that it's hard to keep going at times - likely this is just because it was published serially in newspapers of the day instead of published as a stand-alone book, as so much literature was at the time. If it were published as a novel today by a modern literary publishing house, it would have been much edited. I think at least 200 pages would have been cut down, if not more. I agree it picked up toward the end - the last 200 pages or so in particular - and I ended up glad I had read it. I liked it, I appreciated it, but I didn't love it. I gave it 4 of 5 stars.
One last thing to shake out of my brain - Matt, have you ever read Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife? It came to mind when you were discussing your disappointment in a nonfiction book about the two sisters who were mediums (can't remember the book title off-hand). This is not exactly the same thing, but it is a well-written nonfiction book about the supernatural, namely how scientists have tried to study the supernatural over the years even up to the present day. It's been my very favorite Mary Roach book of the 3 or 4 I've read.
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Thanks for listening, Jen. No, Renee has never heard an episode. I guilt her about it sometimes. She wouldn't know what a podcast is if we weren't married. She calls me at work sometimes and asks how to put a picture in an e-mail she's drafting or how to put a link in it. It's staggering, really.
EDIT: Just remembered that I read and really liked another book by her called Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, so I be checking this out sooner rather than later.
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Heather listened to the show occasionally, back when she still liked me. A family member or two have listened as well, though not my parents.
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Jason wrote: "Apologies, Jen, if we put any words in your mouth, or attributed any opinions to you that you did not possess."Oh gosh - no, that wasn't it at all. I could just tell that Dave didn't remember exactly what I thought about it when he was asked to report, probably because it's been a couple of years since I read it. He was right on about the overall gist; I just wanted to clarify the details :)
Matt wrote: "Just remembered that I read and really liked another book by her called Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, so I be checking this out sooner rather than later."
STIFF was the first of her books I read, and I also enjoyed that one. I've also read BONK, which is about the scientific study of sex. That one was less comfortable - there were parts when she described devices men and boys used to keep themselves from masturbating during our most puritanical historical periods that even made me squirm imagining the agony. And descriptions of trying to have sex in an MRI tube while scientists recorded it to try and understand what was happening...I'm glad I read it, but it was definitely the least comfortable book to read (which is funny - you'd think the one about death and cadavers would be). I think she's got a couple of others that I just haven't read yet, too - I like her writing style, her mix of humor and scientific journalism. But SPOOK remains my favorite of those I've read.
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Why not.
Matt wrote: ""Thanks for posting, Matt. Simply put, when the country is run by a Democrat, a larger swath of the populace prospers, as opposed to the Republicans, who only represent the opulent minority, and swear that if we just continue to lower the taxes on the wealthy, jobs will magically appear. We all know that demand creates jobs, not the wealthy paying less in taxes. You da Man!
where do I find the podcasts? Is there a link directly to the index...I'd like to hear the Dandelion Wine discussions...take me back to when Matt and I would contemplate infinity, Lovecraft and SNL all day long...and make killer zombie movies.
Sam wrote: "where do I find the podcasts? Is there a link directly to the index...I'd like to hear the Dandelion Wine discussions...take me back to when Matt and I would contemplate infinity, Lovecraft and SNL..."I hope I am not overstepping my boundaries, so I thought I would take the initiative and post this link; http://bookhouseboyspodcast.podomatic...
You can also subscribe to the podcast in the iTunes store. But, as a warning, once you begin you'll be hooked, like the proverbial zombie swinging in a meat locker! Ha!
Also, Vollkommen!
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Huh? Dude, you are an honorary Bookhouse Boy. You can't overtsep any bounds unless you stick your junk in the mashed potatoes!
Sam: HI!
Like Robert said, you can get 'em through iTunes or that link. Our really old stuff is here: http://archive.org/search.php?query=b... which is where last year's Halloween Lovecraft special resides. It's both our longest and most downloaded episode.
Sam 'circumvrented' (as GOB Bluth would say) normal channels and didn't introduce himself in the "Introduce Yourself" thread, but we've been buddies for, sheesh, 25 years now(?!). Welcome, Sam!
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...which had already been provided by Rob and Matt. That's what I get for using my phone to answer.
Oh, and minor note: the Halloween episode is actually on the Podomatic page as well, although you might have to click "next page" once or twice.
Thanks guys...will check 'em out. Speaking of your Lovecraft podcast, A cool AM radio show up there that sometimes gets deep on Lovecraft and the potential reality or return of Cthulu, etc. is Ground Zero Radio with Clyde Lewis 750 AM dial...check out his previous podcast with Diabolous Rex Church (April 16 2012), or the one where the guest talks about the people who've gone missing in West Coast forests (4/5/12). Freakin' creepy!
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Sounds awesome. Will definitely check it out.
The Bookhouse Boys
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Fju9o...