time to put on the serious face

the only way that makes it bearable: with each other

My review of Bill Clegg's memoir, Ninety Days, is up at PopMatters. Addiction memoirs are kinda played out, this one's worth it. Dude can write. About crack. Also, PopMatters is the shizz.

COMMON AFFLICTIONS EASILY CURED BY MEDICINAL MARIJUANA

1.      Asthma
2.      Glaucoma
3.      Neuropathy
4.      Ennui
5.      Writer’s block

6.      Too much extra cash
7.      Cancer
8.      Trust in politicians
9.      Aversion to Cheez Whiz
10.     Alcoholism
11.     Dating
12.     Arthritis
13.     An inability to appreciate Bowie’s Berlin Trilogy
14.     Hangovers
15.     Depression
16.     Apathy toward cute animal pictures
17.     Meaningful friendships
18.     Forgetting to eat Haagen-Dazs and watch The Return of the King extended version
19.     Seizures
20.     War
21.     Racism
22.     Nausea from chemotherapy
23.     Disbelief in ancient aliens
24.     Cataracts
25.    Erections

26.    Talking

27.    Writing

28.    Stupid people

DO NITRATES WEEP FOR SOGGY BURRITOS?

I scarfed the promise of a latterday whatever. The blue tumor was a Michelin-starred disaster (we trust in cancer as a bull market that’s not ready for sneaker parties). Lapsed Caucasian: stop being such a shaman with “gluten’s for pussies and Chipotle promotes infant rape.” But, really, why so blue? "Insecticide forest. Insecticide for us."

El Jefe: The Journey to Freedom, or, A Severely Misplaced Cause for Rat Empathy?

As I watched El Jefe shiver sadly before scurrying out from his perch under the beer pong table and into the cold rain, I panged at realizing that I’d misjudged the rat. For months he’d been the nutria-sized antagonist to our basement apartment, terrorizing the back patio with his sheer girth and gull-sounding battle cries. A full eight to 10 inches longer than the biggest members of his numerous brethren who call the garbage area in front of our building home, his first appearance conspicuously coincided with the death of Mr. Jigglesworth, the one-eared, half-tailed cat who had called the patio home for years and who had shown no signs of relinquishing his domain. My roommates found his mangled corpse under the makeshift metal table  in January, and immediately an inquiry was raised. Had Jiggles been the victim of an improbable rat-on-feline hate crime? Or had we simply not noticed him until long after the normal decay had set in?

One thing was certain: El Jefe’s reign had begun. Scouring every inch of the 40-by-15-foot space, perched on the wicker chairs and neglected garden boxes, scaling the chain-link fence separating our building from the adjacent ones, brazenly peeking in our back door, the rat’s presence was constant, though not yet terrifying. Then the casualties started piling up. A succession of smaller rodent remains, both mice and lesser rats, appearing daily, their necks bitten clean through, their tiny palms raised skyward in last desperate acts of supplication. El Jefe enforced his doctrine of isolationism with an iron paw.

Our collective unease culminated during a recent beer pong tourney slash barbecue honoring the equinox in which the rat came out of nowhere and ran across the crowded patio in a Full Metal Jacket maneuver that ended in the trampling of the flip-flopped feet of my roommate’s significant other or maybe some rando. Regardless, war was declared. The superintendent was alerted, industrial traps were set, mice corpses kept piling up and El Jefe remained fearless.

Then came that plaintive shiver that changed everything. Are any of us – the super, me, the giant rat – really that dissimilar? We’ve all made journeys, sacrificed much. I’ve forsaken sunlight and hours of human interaction to work as a copy editor and sometime writer in a drab basement apartment in a decent neighborhood. The super left his family and his as-yet-to-be-determined Spanish-speaking island to pursue his dream of cleaning toilets and turning on the hot water every morning so Amelia in 1B can soak her calloused bunions. And El Jefe made his undoubtedly Quixotic pilgrimage through a maze of basement traps (and the doors connecting the boiler room to the super’s office to the back of the building that the super and his cronies invariably leave ajar) in search of, what, solitude, a patio of one’s own, escape from a mating gone awry, shame from defeat at the claws of another alpha rat? Does it really matter?

We are all searchers, cut from the same ilk. And even President Monroe, recent history’s most famous proponent of isolation (minus Kim Jong and Fidel), once admitted, “Our country may be likened to a new house. We lack many things, but we possess the most precious of all – liberty!” There are always small prices to pay for this liberty. I must suffer the daily rude awakenings by roommates who work 8-to-6, ugh, jobs so that I can afford an apartment where my afternoons are undisturbed. The super must live with the shame of continually forgetting to fix the broken door in my room and the rust emanating from various points in our ceiling. And Amelia must deal with the nappiest feet this side of sub-Saharan Africa. To deny El Jefe his freedom, a freedom for which he has killed, would be a cruel hypocrisy. So scurry on, badass rat, fight the good fight, do not go gentle into that crevice behind the garbage chute!

That is not to say we can be friends; I’m keeping a respectful distance, not really trying to get hemorrhagic fever, plague, or renal syndrome. Not to mention the rat’s brief two-year lifespan (in which El Jefe will have been more productive than the super could ever hope to be in his wildest cerveza-induced dreams), much too brief to form any deep bond. That is, unless he develops more than a passing interest in the never-ending supply of Weight Watchers string cheese and Lucky Charms that I bestow upon the apartment, or he’s actually La Jefa and the killer instinct is really a maternal one – there will be rodent blood. Until then, do your thing my wayward, disease-ridden brother.

You love your children. It's your one redeeming quality. That and your cheekbones. (episode 1 review)

 

It's just indigestion...or is it?

http://www.vice.com/read/ny-tyrant-atticus-atticus

Picked up Atticus Lish’s collection of sketches, Life Is with People, and wow, wow. I’m into art but I don’t think I’ve ever purchased an “art book.” I hesitate to label People as an art book because to pigeon-hole something this insane and unique would be doing the fine peeps at Tyrant Books a sad disservice. The limited (500 copies) print run features pleasantly thick covers and heavy-stock lined composition paper, usually one drawing per page, occasionally more.

http://nytyrantbooks.com/atticus/

As the title suggests, there are lots of people. People stabbing, shitting, cross-dressing, fucking, praying, grinning, often with a few explanatory phrases thrown in for good measure. The style of illustration is what Shel Silverstein would have penned if he’d been imprisoned in the S&M dungeon of some creeper with a serious fecal fetish then let loose amidst the dregs of an outer-borough wasteland populated by psych-ward all stars and sluttily anthropomorphic lesser mammals. Which is to say, mind-blowing. Each of the images presents a self-contained situation – a man who has ripped his eyeballs out to avoid attending a Bat Mitzvah, unkempt anorexic banshees screaming for Tony Danza, a woman hanging from a sex swing and crapping on a dude’s face in what is described as “a fairy tale right out of the Village Voice," unapologetic Susan Sontag references – that can be disturbing, outrageous, ultraviolent or misogynistic, but always funny as shit. Seriously, I was reading People in a bar and kept laughing obnoxiously, at one point dribbling Pilsner from my nostrils. The J. Crew catalog couple seated next to me must have thought I had a few chromosomes loose and when I allowed them to peruse the book their suspicions were confirmed. 

The weird/amazing part is, I don’t really feel like I’m looking at visual art. Each image is more akin to a flash fiction – rough, subtle, twisting – that deserves to be absorbed for more than a casual moment. Which is why I recommend flipping through People slowly, taking a dozen or so drawings and then calling it a night. Or maybe not. I tore through the book in two extended sittings, the last one culminating in a 3am near nervous breakdown. I wanted to look at porn or hug someone, and probably both, in that order. Yet my sleep was surprisingly untroubled, devoid of the fucked up and too-vivid dreams that had been plaguing my head for weeks. And they haven’t returned. In purging his nightmares, Lish may have inadvertently helped me shirk off some of my own.

I can’t guarantee that Life Is with People will have the same affect on you. But I can guarantee you’ll love the book. And if you don’t, you’re a moron. 

http://www.vice.com/read/ny-tyrant-blake-butler

The book's mini-site is here. 

best drug albums

David Bowie – Low

Simple Kid – Simple Kid

Butthole Surfers – Locust Abortion Technician

Pink Floyd – A Saucerful of Secrets

Flaming Lips – Clouds Taste Metallic

Crystal Castles – Crystal Castles

Talking Heads – Speaking in Tongues

Bob Marley – Legend

Dr. Dre – The Chronic

New Radicals – Maybe You’ve Been Brainwashed Too

Pink Floyd – DSOTM

Human League - Dare

The Velvet Underground – The Velvet Underground

Weezer – Pinkerton

Jay-Z – Reasonable Doubt

Smashing Pumpkins - Gish

Ween – The Pod

Grateful Dead – Shakedown Street

Phish – Story of the Ghost

Pavement – Slanted and Enchanted

DMX – It’s Dark and Hell is Hot

Flaming Lips – everything recorded after 2009

Neon Indian – Psychic Chasms

Del Tha Funkee Homosapien – Deltron 3030

Hum – You’d Prefer an Astronaut

Big L – The Big Picture

Silver Jews – Starlite Walker

Pixies – Surfer Rosa

http://blogs.houstonpress.com/rocks/2012/02/ziggy_stardust.php

A series of chance sexual encounters provides him with an unlikely side career as a male prostitute

I review Ryan W. Bradley's Code for Failure at HTMLGIANT. Stop dicking around and get the book, it's really good.

nightmare sequence 3.04

IN THE LIVING room of my cottage, seated in front of the camcorder’s gaping black eye. Philippe is standing behind squinting Jean-Paul, holding cue cards, the writing on them big and Sharpie-black. Titus is standing behind me, holding the same sword I’ve used in hundreds of scenes. Alaska is in the far corner of the room, oblivious, playing with some old Ninja Turtles action figures I saved from my parents’ house. She’s got the Shredder toy in her tiny fist, stomping him down on a defeated pile of turtles and their wise mentor rat, Splinter, crushing them all. Shredder – the most badass ninja mutant killer of them all, the yin to the Turtles’ yang. For a second I want to tell her that this isn’t the way it’s supposed to work, that the Turtles and Splinter are supposed to combine forces and kick Shredder’s ass, to make things right. But the grunts of sheer joy coming out of Alaska’s mouth as she crushes the Turtles’ green plastic skulls one by one with Shredder’s iron-studded heel, because at this moment the carnage makes perfect sense. Jean-Paul presses the RECORD button. Lauren is sobbing in another room. ‘Action,’ Titus whispers. I repeat what’s on the cue cards: my real name and age, my real address and place of birth. ‘I am a wretched, squirming sinner,’ I say, ‘a true scum. I have found that my sin is truly an abomination and I seek forgiveness from the almighty –’ I hear the sword slide out of its sheath, the metallic hum. ‘Keep going,’ Titus whispers. ‘No,’ I say. I turn to look at Alaska. I hear Lauren’s sobs stifled by what might be a towel or a fist in the other room. This isn’t the way it’s supposed to happen, but is there ever a way it’s supposed to? ‘So that’s it?’ Titus asks. ‘That’s it,’ I say. ‘I had really hoped for more from you, Josh, but…OK.’ Yes, this will be it. No more games. Because a sudden warmth has enveloped me, a contentment I haven’t felt since childhood. My mother wrapping me in a thick wool sweater like she used to when I’d come home from sledding, worried that I might have a cold. I smell woodsmoke, my father’s strong forearms lifting logs into the biggest fire I’ve ever seen, then lifting me onto his shoulders to laugh and laugh as the blaze burns down to nothing. All this warmth is coming out of Alaska, an unbreakable cable stretching into the yellow cloud that surrounds me, blinding. I close my eyes, and wait for it. I hear the rush of the blade coming down and Lauren’s primal and beautiful scream and there’s no pain, only a brighter rush of yellow and the sudden string of words, as big and blinding as a five-million-watt high-high-definition billboard illuminated by five million moons reflected off the calm, mirror-like water of Long Island Sound: THIS WILL BE OVER BEFORE YOU KNOW IT.

one eye put out from a staple glancin' off a post

http://www.narrativemagazine.com/authors/harry-crews

A recent column in LitReactor reminded me about this dude Harry Crews, whose books I haven't read in a while and who is basically a Southern Gothic GG Allin, which is pretty fucking badass. Now I know "badass" gets thrown around way too often, and I'm guilty of it, too. Frat parties and longboarding through traffic, brah, are not badass activities. 99.9 percent of tattoos are not badass. Drinking Bud Light Platinums on a work night until you puke is not badass. Getting massively scarred in knife fights after the age of 70 is super badass. Read the column and do a quick Google search of Crews and you'll see what I mean. 

But gnarliness aside, the guy can write. And he gives great advice about writing. Anyone attempting to write fiction should at least heed the words of an OG who managed to give birth to seven amazing novels in eight years in the midst of a violent thirty-year blackout. Luckily someone was smart enough to recently film him dropping wisdom.

Some quotes:

"The amateur, or the coward, or the non-writer, will try to keep it and make it work because he doesn't want to have to throw it away and do all of that over again another way. The real artist, with no tear in his eye, and no sadness in his heart, puts the pages in the fire and does it again."

"All of fiction is about one of two things: love or the absence of love."

"Who could imagine her having the flu, or snot coming out of her nose, or her wiping her ass. Who could imagine that? Nobody, nobody. It's Beauty. It is what it is and it will be what it is forever, even though we know perfectly well it will not. That it will decay and die."

"Any piece of fiction that has a point to make is bad. It's gonna be bad. Because no one knows what the fucking point is."

"The Old Man and the Sea is not about fishing."

The entire thing:

And here's Crews jamming out some stories in the documentary Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus:

whispers groin the chord of every scar

Got a review of Sean Kilpatrick's fuckscapes in this month's elimae. Definitely my favorite new book of the year thus far. Plus this issue is full of ridiculous people writing ridiculous things. Highly recommended. Not my shit. But other people's good stuff.

a what's what of bullet-blast

Check out "Black Market," the February issue and the second helping of Short, Fast, and Deadly's new monthly incarnation. Buy the print issue, it looks nice. Some great people and great stories to ponder. I've got a review in it, but no one really reads those, right?

Strokes haters need not apply

Howler

America Give Up

Rough Trade, 2012

I really want to like America Give Up, the debut LP from Minneapolis’ Howler. Really, I do. The young quintet’s full-length is chock full of super-catchy garage rock and post-punk jams, impressively tight guitar licks, and a pleasant lo-fi distortion that conjures some of Guided By Voices’ more accessible numbers, or perhaps a faster-paced Pavement. The kind of stuff that demands to be played loud and often. Not surprisingly, the band’s 2011 EP, This One’s Different, was universally lauded, and NME went as far as to name Howler the third-best new band of that year. So what’s the problem?

NPR, in a feature on the band, noted several other groups that sounded like Howler, the first being labelmates The Strokes. The comparison couldn’t be more apt. The more I replayed America Give Up, the more it felt like I was listening to an early Strokes album, and not a particularly outstanding one. Most of the songs are inundated with the same hi-hat heavy, rapid and syncopated drum rhythms, predictable chord progressions, the slightly distorted and deeply intoned vocals we’ve all heard before. Tracks like “Pythagorean Fearem” and “Free Drunk” are dead ringers for Strokes demos that would have probably been relegated to B-sides in favor of something just a little more interesting. Lead singer Jordan Gatesmith (named one of the 50 Coolest People of 2011 by NME) sports a delivery that is, at its best, vaguely powerful if not a little understated. At its worst, he sounds like an even more forced faux-British mash-up of Julian Casablancas and Brandon Flowers on Vicodin, doling out relatively uncreative musings on teenage neuroticism: “I hate the way I talk / And I hate the way I write / Sometimes it's better to stay in bed / Sometimes it's better to stay out all night.” I guess what I’m getting at is the reason I liked The Strokes’ early work is because it felt so fresh and authentic; these were truly gritty New York cats whose innovative music was the inevitable and unstoppable byproduct of the streets in which they traveled. By so greatly emulating a band that is certainly a major influence, these five fresh-faced Midwestern lads are only diminishing the talent they clearly possess.

But I’m not dismissing the album as a total cheap knock-off. The best songs – and they are gems – are the ones that diverge the most from the formula. The seductively slow-moving “Too Much Blood” one-ups many of The Flaming Lips’ coolest, more darkly ethereal moments in the 90s. “Back Of Your Neck” is a raucous, falsetto-friendly surf-rock-meets-power-pop good time who’d undoubtedly be the popular kid at any party. No, the LP isn’t bad, and most fans of the indie persuasion will find it enjoyable, if not moderately addictive. But I’m more intrigued by what Howler does next, if the band can find its own voice and build on the big-time potential that surfaces only periodically on America. It’s a start boys, now let’s get to work!

life is a bug right now

Humor is so situational like if a waiter asks a customer and his date what they want to drink and they say "two Manhattans on the rocks!" and when he (the waiter) brings the drink ticket to the bar and says "two Manhattans on the rocks" and I say "Oooh, Manhattans on the rocks, that's my favorite drink!" the waiter, the bartender, and even the barback will inevitably bust out laughing or at least chuckle knowingly because they all know that a Manhattan (rye, sweet vermouth, Angostura bitters and garnished with a maraschino cherry) is a stirred drink that is always served up, never on the rocks, so we all know that this customer and his date are probably tourists from Cincinnati or somewhere who only ordered a "Manhattan on the rocks" because woo-hoo we're in Manhattan and it must be like, a specialty here; or, even worse, they aren't tourists and simply frequent bars that deign to sell their clientele Manhattans on the rocks, which clearly translates to "MAJORLY UNCOUTH POSER BAR" and reinforces the staff's superiority in the form of a communal laugh. It's funny right?

he’s lost the ability to process most physical sensations

Out of Touch by Brandon Tietz

Otherworld Publications

Pub date: December 2010

242 pages

**I wrote this like over a year ago and submitted it to a publication that will go nameless, who said they were going to publish it like a year ago but it looks like they forgot about me and when I emailed them they responded as if my name was the author’s. Weird. Oh well, I really liked this book and it’s worth reading about. And I’m cleaning out my Word documents and want to get rid of the file.

 One of the most prevalent – and frequently maligned – tropes of what can be loosely be called the current transgressive fiction movement is a character (often young, male, and upper class) whose frustration with the prevailing cultural hegemony, or simply his deep-seeded blasé nihilism, gives him the impetus to partake in unprovoked violence, deviant and usually misogynistic sexual acts and a variety of criminal activities, all for the sake of indulgent self-knowledge. More often than not, this morally vapid jaunt into the taboo is dismissed by many readers as offering little or no intrinsic value and providing, at best, vague social commentary or disposable shock entertainment.

But what happens when a protagonist, possessed of those same taboo inclinations, unexpectedly finds himself physically unable to enjoy, or even engage in his favorite disturbing pastimes? How does he cope with, and derive new personal meaning from a new and profound numbness that is anything but comfortable? 28-year-old Kansas City native Brandon Tietz has the answer. His debut novel, Out of Touch, is a delightfully twisted and cunningly crafted über-noir literary thriller that not only pays homage to the movement’s older masters, but also signals the emergence of a brilliantly distinct, brutally funny, and culturally savvy new voice.

The book recounts a few months in the decadent, bleak, didactic and ultimately fascinating life of Aidin, a filthy-rich 24-year-old with a high school education and an insatiable proclivity for meaningless sex and pharmaceuticals. After a standard club night involving enough cocaine, roofies, and Viagra to make Charlie Sheen blush, he wakes up and discovers he’s lost the ability to process most physical sensations. He can’t feel his own skin, sex as a pleasure hobby has become strictly impossible, and the drugs and booze that fortified his manic, self-destructive nihilism and numbed the tremors of his inherent (and somewhat cliché) child-o’-wealth sadness, are utterly useless. Realizing that his heretofore gilded shitshow of a life is ostensibly finished, he enlists the professional help of Dr. Paradies, an unorthodox therapist who, in lieu of medication, provides Aidin with a detailed and seemingly arbitrary list of assignments to be completed that are meant, he thinks, to help him come to terms with his condition, to help him find a new purpose and new talents in a heretofore purposeless life, to pick some new hobbies, or…something. Because as he sets out to finish the list – items that range from mastering an Easy-Bake Oven to delivering strange packages to anonymous undercover agents – with the fervor of one of his past binges, he realizes that his is a tiny cog in a much larger, unnamed conspiracy machine that may be darker than anything he’s seen or felt, but one that might also offer him a chance at redemption for a lifetime of apathy and self-denial.

On a superficial level, and from a literary standpoint, Aidin is far from a revolutionary character. Upper class, white, the emotionally vacant That Guy drowning in a deluge of designer labels, slinging stacks of cash at the trendiest venues, whose mantra concludes that “when you really break it down, attraction is nothing more than a chemical response in your body. Lust locked in a tablet,” but who still attracts the rabid advances of every gold-digging floozy his eyes wander upon. The novel’s action presumably occurs in Kansas City, however, it’s a wealthy-suburb-slash-posh-downtown milieu that could just as easily be located in Southern California or Connecticut. Yet in spite, or perhaps because of his vapidly amorphous characteristics, Aidin is able to elicit a series of profound and tragicomic truths that transcend geography and socioeconomic status. As he begins checking off items on Dr. Paradies’ list, he not only discovers a particular set of skills – genius-level IQ, the ability to instantly learn and speak dozens of languages, the stamina to run 10 miles without feeling tired  – but also reflects with increasing clarity on the minutiae that has comprised his past. The drug-induced disconnect, the end of introspection and promises of commitment coupled with the ironically dehumanizing creep of communications technology. The deflating feeling that the newest generations coming of age have been abandoned by parents whose “me first” pursuits of youthful American immortality have left us not only environmentally and economically depleted, but also psychologically and emotionally sapped:

I’m not a product of my environment or my peers.

I’m a product of absence, and even though it kills me and the last of my young ideals to admit this…I just don’t think I believe in heroes anymore. Not in this world. In this life.

No one has powers.

Nobody is special.

Most of all, me.

Postmodernism isn’t fun anymore and it’s starting to sink in. The most unnerving moment appears in the midst of the book’s spiral into what at first seems like an outlandish terrorist thriller until Aidin casually remarks that “everyone wants to see through the tinted window, but no one ever tells you what it’s like to live behind it.” It is when we understand that nothing is too far fetched; we are all products of the panopticon, the Patriot Act, the whims of therapists and governments and pills, the sheep-herding, behind-the-scenes personality control tactics we all hear about, but about which no one seems to care. It is the moment when we realize that, unlike Aidin (and the seemingly impossible physical and intellectual development he’s experienced as a result of his resistance to the numbness) we might be the ones who are really out of touch. Tietz’s constant delving into black humor and his authoritative yet accessible pitch-perfect delivery do much to diffuse and lighten these ultimately hefty overtones.

Yes, the prose is robust, yet uncompromising and economical; Tietz likes his sentences terse and biting, the verbal contradiction to the numbness with which his protagonist is consumed. Yet as impressive as the language remains throughout the book, it was also an initial source of concern for this reader. As an avid digester of Bret Easton Ellis and Chuck Palahniuk, I was immediately struck by Out of Touch’s similarity to the work of these transgressive rock stars, in both the book’s textual surface and thematically. The L.A.-esque club-kid nihilism, epically excessive and flippant drug use exacerbated in no small part by parental absence, and the young, hyper-sexual and physically flawless socialite-turned-terrorist, are crucial elements of Ellis’s Less Than Zero and Glamorama, respectively. Here we also find Palahniuk’s trademark coy flip-flopping from first to second person – “You’re not a numb-nutted freak; you’re ‘somatically deficient.’” – as well as an emphasis on mental instability and the steps the afflicted take – prescriptions, progressive therapists, group help sessions – to alleviate their real or imagined illnesses, à la Fight Club and Choke. There’s also the ubiquity of signal phrases (“Everyone is two people”, “…maybe I started something I shouldn’t have…”), short, often repeated sentences (frequently employed by both of the aforementioned authors in virtually all of their novels) whose meaning deepens with each jarring plot shift.

The similarities should come as no surprise. Ellis and Palahniuk are the first two names that Tietz credits in the acknowledgements that precede the text, and the author currently serves as a moderator at The Cult Writers Workshop, an online community located on Palahniuk’s Web site that caters to likeminded writers (and a forum to which he owes much of his early publishing success). That a novel is clearly so indebted to others begs a number of questions, the most obvious being, does it matter? Regardless of whether or not the reader is well-versed in the postmodern transgressive canon, is it enough to simply sift through two writers’ technique bins flea-market style, extracting the most compatible fabrics from each to sew a tapestry that, while remaining compelling and coherent, is still comprised of the already-done fragments of novels that have simply been rearranged? Fortunately the point is moot because the book is Tietz’s own, fueled by a unique and addictive voice, a fresh grasp of post-recession culture and a masterful sense of pace, of the relevatory arc. Aidin elicits an empathy that is lacking in the majority of Elllis’s characters. This isn’t to say that we should feel anything close to tear-jerking sympathy for a spoiled child of obscene wealth who often comes off as callow and misogynistic, but the desire to see him fight his disability and break out of his apathetic bubble after suffering the extremes of abandonment and manipulation at the hands of his parents is a driving force of the novel. And though the plot twists, the teasing of vital information that stokes the thrill ride, might be compared to Palahniuk, they are just as easily reminiscent of Chandler and Ellroy, with more than an inimitable touch of brimming Generation Y idiosyncrasy. Tietz’s transparency is noble, if unnecessary.

In one sense, the book’s final chapters seem a bit rushed, even though they do accurately encapsulate the constantly shifting conspiracy mindfuck that Aidin’s life has become. But this is one of only a very few minor plot-related gripes. Because the total package is a rare harrowing gem, equal parts trendy and cautionary, emotionally implosive and sensory deprived. Out of Touch is a fearless and audacious debut from a writer whose chops, poise and ear for detail make a strong opening argument for his candidacy as the next bearer of transgressive fiction’s chic, bloody torch.

Loose meats!

This is Stab Pyramid's postal brethren

Upon opening the package that contained my copy of Sean Kilpatrick’s fuckscapes (Blue Square Press, 2011), I discovered a much smaller nugget of unbridled poetical prose in a handbound black Moleskine-like cover, numbered _ of 42. Stab Pyramid by Sean Kilpatrick & Blake Butler is a treat, if you like treats that taste like “chocolate swastika-kissed anvils, seats grafted fat with toddler head all pushed from me” or “the paling below raked clit.” Grizzled domesticity championed by a father figure who delights in goring baby-skin and “sucking the pulp out of a picture of the glitched.” The mother only implores us to “stop acting like my pussy is an ambulance for the world.” And, yeah. This little fleshy gulp of sin and topical-brilliance-in-Tourettic-OCD-language-expulsions-slash-murders makes for an excellent prelude and tremor-smeared companion to the similarly themed fuckspaces, perhaps one of the fuckiest. As disjointed as they are freaky, these impure exaggerations ream me the burnt cornea treatment I’ll be unable to shake, even if I wanted to: “I slept in a newspaper wide enough to crown my wave and considered a microphone shitting sons from the knotted tunnel of a senator’s hysterectomy.” Thanks fellas.  

but I don't want brain damage

The Flaming Lips have always been a band that eschews conventionality and categorization. From the group’s quirky, acid-punk indie releases in the 80s to its transition from guitar-heavy alternafunk to sonically ambitious trippy studio syphonika in the 90s and 2000s, the vibe has remained as consistently unpredictable as it has stayed awesome. That the Lips are still, after three decades, putting out a steady stream of innovative work and touring relentlessly is not as noteworthy as the fact that they’ve put out more music in the last 12 months than anybody. That’s right, in terms of sheer hours of music (probably more than 35) they are the most prolific. This kind of output is ridiculous, but the way its been released is innovative on an insane level, even for a band that features duct-taped spaceships, human balloons, 20-foot-tall digital vaginas-slash-doors and three-feet-long synthetic hands as part of its standard stage act.

A vague January2011 promise of one song per month exploded into a constantly churning neo-psychedelic machine, as, starting in March, the Lips released, in monthly succession: the EP “Flaming Lips 2011: The Flaming Lips with Neon Indian”; the "Gummy Song Skull" EP, a seven pound skull made of gummy bear material with a gummy brain-slash-flashdrive; the EP "The Flaming Lips with Prefuse 73”; a live-in-studio recording of the band's 1999 album "The Soft Bulletin" on a flashdrive embedded in a marijuana-flavored brain inside a strawberry flavored gummy skull (as well as a best-of compilation entitled "Everyone You Know Someday Will Die" put together by drummer Kliph Scurlock); the "Gummy Song Fetus" EP, which consists of three songs on a flashdrive embedded in a bubblegum-flavored fetus made of gummy bear material; "The Flaming Lips with Lightning Bolt", a collaborative EP with experimental rock group Lightning Bolt; a six hour-long song entitled "6 Hour Song (Found a Star on the Ground” packaged with two other songs and released with a set of spinning discs with animations on them; a 24-hour song entitled "7 Skies H3" made available for purchase as a hard drive encased in an actual human skull; and a 12" EP collaboration with Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band.

Yes, they recorded a 24-hour song.  And novelty is great. Novelty is as American as Oklahoma. Gummy skulls and spinning discs are super rad. They are. But for those of us who would rather surf YouTube for free shit than purchase a $5,000 skull-slash-USB cable, we’re going to be more concerned with how the actual music sounds than how it’s packaged. And how does it sound? Is it even possible to succinctly and coherently analyze, in a single review, hour s of music made with several (vastly aesthetically different) collaborators over dozens of recording sessions in a variety of lengths and formats (live vs studio)? Yes it is, in four words: Mindfuckingly brutish yet sextacular. 

Actually it’s impossible, mostly because I’m lazy. But also because I don’t have time to imbibe all the shrooms necessary to listen to a 24, or even a 6-hour song in its entirety. I will say, though, for the casual listener who thinks “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots” is cute or who finds “She Don’t Use Jelly” catchy, this is a post-Embryonic Flaming Lips that is darker, much more experimental, mostly devoid of intelligible lyrics, and only completely accessible to those with a proclivity for consuming multiple narcotics within a short time frame, or simultaneously. This is music for those who would rather tackle Pynchon than James Patterson. A slightly less snobby way of saying that this is conceptual art. And seriously, I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that Lips’ music has sort of mimicked the trajectory of the world at large for the last dozen or so years. From the pre-dot-com triumphant fanfare of The Soft Bulletin, to At War With the Mystics’ cable-friendly garbage spewed at a time (2006) of cheaply made foreign goods and a deceptively surging economy, to Embryonic’s crunchingly dark experimental dirge in 2009, to the seizure-inducing, haunting, eardrum-molesting maelstrom that is 2011. As if to say, “Shit is getting crazy, kids, we know, we’ll be there to hold your hand and guide you through the sins of your past and the mango-colored bliss that your future can be, if you’ll only trust us.” Abstract art was born from social and political turmoil. We need a break from straight-lines and convention, the Drudge Report blinking on the Subway-ride Kindle. An escape to the rapidly deteriorating fuzzy zones in our headspace. We must defeat the robots (hint: they hate gummy skulls).

Below are links to some of the 2011 tunes that may not require hallucinogens to be enjoyed by the average young professional, and a couple for which you might want to light up:

1. "Gummy Skull #1: Drug Chart"

2. "Is David Bowie Dying??"

3. "What Is The Light? / The Observer"

4. "Heavy Star Moving"

5. "I'm Working at NASA on Acid" *cool video

6. "Evil Minds"

A constant stream of the 24-hour song is here.

welcome to the end times

Had a couple reviews come out last month -- J.A. Tyler's "A Shiny, Unused Heart" in The Brooklyn Rail and George Williams' "Gardens of Earthly Delights" in Prick of the Spindle. Both of these guys are in my top 8 books of 2011, so check 'em out, now. Actually, now that I mention it, I should just share my top 8 books of 2011. Why keep you anxiously salivating? And why 8? It was my number in baseball and water polo and I'm too lazy to think of 10. Boom. 

1. Look! Look! Feathers by Mike Young (Word Riot)

2. A Shiny, Unused Heart by J.A. Tyler (Black Coffee Press)

3. The Angel Esmeralda: Nine Stories by Don DeLillo (Scribner)

4. Gardens of Earthly Delight: Stories by George Williams (Raw Dog Screaming Press)

5. The Indefinite State of Imaginary Morals by Rae Bryant (Patasola Press)

6. Us by Michael Kimball (Tyrant Books)

7. The Blue Tower: Poems by Tomaz Salamun (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

8. Animals by Janey Smith (plain wrap press)

Also, I was going to announce to the five people that read this sporadic attempt at bloggery that I would be taking a more or less complete hiatus from posting for the next several months because of my involvement in two top-secret projects. However, one of them, a movie-related thing, has fallen through as those things tend to do. So my list of covert projects has been reduced to one, a kind of online literary monstrosity, a collaboration with novelist John Reed that is so totally sweet that the coolest hipsters are already checking it out before it exists. So needless to say, I will still be posting, probably with alarming frequency. I'm sorry. 2012 is the time to step one's proverbial game up (and to get pumped for Ridley Scott's ancient aliens-influenced Prometheus). Let's do it.

PETA Killed Jesus: Can't-Fail Holiday Playlist

Besides coma-inducing rum cider and horrific sweaters, the key to a successful holiday party is, of course, the music. A lazy host might simply throw on a David Hasselhoff or a Keith Sweat Christmas album and be done with it. But a pro understands the need for diversity -- classic rock, boy bands, the sentimental, the silly, the makeout-friendly. The best part is that you'll only need about 80 minutes of fresh holiday jams, because by that point your guests should be drooling eggnog like autistic snowmen and popping squats behind the tree. And if they aren't, you need to re-dose that cider ASAP. In no particular order, these following tunes will also help to unkill the buzz. You're welcome. (image from here.)

1. Mariah Carey / "All I Want For Christmas Is You"

This is not only one of the best things about December but also one of the catchiest songs ever recorded. This is why my girl Mariah was the unrivaled shit in the '90s. I don't care if you praise Allah, if the smoky intro and sleighbell-infused and joy-oozing beat doesn't at least make you smile, you're a horrible person and deserve only meaningless death and suffering for the rest of your Christmases and all the time. Any self-respecting playlist maker will play "All I Want" at least every four songs. 

2. The Flaming Lips / "Christmas At The Zoo"

This one's a little weird, like all The Flaming Lips' stuff, but it's endearing and pleasantly quirky, and who doesn't like rescuing animals in the name of Santa. Don't worry it's not an homage to PETA. After all, PETA killed Jesus. 

3. Bruce Springsteen / "Merry Christmas Baby"

This is the epitome of what I love about the Boss -- a testosterone-laced carol where everyone rocks out, gets laid, and feels nostalgic about it for years to come. I can envision myself getting into a bar fight with some knuckleheads in the Dirty Jerz while this song plays.


4. Peanuts Christmas / "Christmas Time Is Here"
This is better off played early in the evening before people get too drunk to feel genuine human emotions and only wants to blast "All I Want" on repeat.

5-6. Adam Sandler / "The Chanukah Song Parts 1 and 2"

I'm sorry my Hebrew friends, but you don't give me many party-friendly options. Barbra Streisand even sold you out and made a Christmas album. I think Matisyahu needs to take the initiative here, until then, we're left with...

7. James Taylor / "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas"

This is when you a) locate the mistletoe, and b) find that random cousin that someone brought that's been chugging your death cider because she doesn't know anyone, and who desperately wants to make a bad decision. Let James do the rest.

8. Paul McCartney & Wings / "Wonderful Christmas Time"

In order to fill the one-Beatle quota, it's either this or John Lennon's "Do They Know It's Christmas?" which is about poor people and AIDS and other sad junk. No thanks.Caring about things is what New Years resolutions are for.

9. Frank Sinatra / "Winter Wonderland"

"Your Christmas spirit doesn't scare me, I've chunks of Elves like you in my stool!" - Santa

10. Madonna / "Santa Baby"

This sounds like it's being sung by one of Chris Hansen's jailbait minions, but it's quite conducive to drunken grinding.

11. *NSYNC / "Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays"

Don't act like this doesn't get stuck in your head every time you hear it. And check out Gary Coleman as an elf in the video, RIP.

12. South Park / "Mr. Hankey The Christmas Poo"

Everyone might not be down with this timeless South Park treasure. But if you know people who don't like South Park, why are you inviting them to your holiday party?

13. Boyz II Men / "Let It Snow"

If James Taylor fails, this is your foolproof Plan B. Unless you're already passed out in your own puke under aforementioned mistletoe.

14. Snoop Dogg ft. Nate Dogg / "Twas The Night Before Christmas"

After Grandma's in bed and the snitches have gone home, that's when you break out your festive 40 oz and candy-cane flavored blunt wraps! And the next three songs.

15. Afroman / "Violent Night"

16. Tha Dogg Pound / "I Wish"

Segue to standard non-holiday fare, or put "All I Want For Christmas" on repeat. Either way, you won't remember it.