According to her monthly Web Site column, Jeanette Winterson is creating a children’s show for the BBC.
Veronica Esposito on the role of research in Infinite Jest. Also see the comment section for some discussion from myself and others on the difference between the sort of notes Wallace and Borges created for their imaginary works.
Jacket Copy on John Barth’s The Floating Opera
Henry Jenkins on the role of fan fiction as critical commentary on texts.
The new issue of Open Letters is, as always, worth your time.
Quick Fix Magazine: April 2007
I am sorry I missed last month’s column. Graduate school is keeping me really busy…who would’ve thought! My time is broken down into the hour at this point. I have a desktop widget that loads my Sunbird calender so I can keep track of what I need to accomplish each day. I love playing with widgets; I have a bunch on my desktop. Right now this is the best way for me to keep my life in order. Technology has greatly assisted me. I have a very short attention span and can be quite unorganized at times; Sunbird and desktop widgets help counteract it. Maybe sometime soon I’ll write a full column about that.
This month’s column is a bit brief also. I am really busy these days between school, research, paper proposals, and planning for conferences. I think what I might do in the future is just plan a day to belt out the entire column at once. That might be easier for me to do.
Reviews
Lion Of Judah
Universal Peace
Youngblood Records
I have had mixed feelings about all of Lion Of Judah’s previous records. I enjoyed their performance in a live setting, but on record they just haven’t really been able to move me. A lot of people say LOJ sound like Burn, but I don’t hear it at all. I do hear a variety of influences: Early Fugazi, I Against I era Bad Brains, and honestly I keep thinking of the band Heroin while listening to this. This is pretty good I guess. A few songs drift into “too much rock” for me however. I don’t see myself wanting to listen to this record that much.
Ludicra
Fex Urbis Lex Orbis CD
Alternative Tentacles Records
I know very little about black metal, so I am not sure how to review this. Ludicra are on Alternative Tentacles (?!?) and remind me a lot of Cradle Of Filth, I guess. Like I said, I know very little about this stuff. I read online that a lot of this band’s lyrics are inspired by Les Miserables. That is pretty cool I guess. Check with Chris Alpino before buying.
The Good Book
Demo 2006
This band has apparently already broken up, but this demo fucking rages hard. The Jersey Shore pedigree here is impressive: members have spent time in bands as varied as Ensign, Full Speed Ahead, Human Remains, S.O.V., and Tear It Up. In fact 3/5 of Full Speed Ahead were in this band. The five songs on this CD sound a lot like a median between Tear It Up (where vocalist Dave Ackerman spent time in before this band) and Full Speed Ahead. Fast, right to the point, hardcore in the vein of Bl’ast!, Black Flag and other early eighties classics. Back in the days of Full Speed Ahead a song with a mosh part as hard as the one in No Encore would have had kids from the shore killing each other.
Scapegoat
S/T
Painkiller Records
When I first got this record a friend sent me a zip file of mp3s so I could listen to it in the car. While walking across campus down at Stockton one day after meeting with a former professor about graduate school stuff I toggled through my player and queued up Mind Eraser, Rupture, Crossed Out, and this new Scapegoat record. I didn’t really think about it; I just got in my truck and bolted back onto the parkway. On my way back into Manahawkin I looked down at my player because I thought the Crossed Out record was going on for a long time. Turned out the Scapegoat record had been playing for the past five minutes. Scapegoat play really authentic, obviously, sounding hardcore in the vein of Crossed Out, Rupture, DropDead, etc. How good is Painkiller Records? They just keep turning out more and more excellent records. Word on the street is a Dry Rot seven inch is next.
Please send stuff for review to the address at the end of this column. I am happy to review vinyl, CD, DVD, or book/fanzine as long as your band or label is not associated with the RIAA. Please send the “final product”-I will not review advanced versions or promotional material with DRM on it. I have little interest in promo sheets and reserve the right to ridicule them.
Check Out
- There is only a Spanish translation, as far as I know, so far, but if you like Harry Potter you need to check out The Decline Of The High Elves, a series of Harry Potter fanfics that being published by Random House. How cool is that? It is nice to see good fan fiction taken so seriously. I hope there will be a English translation soon.
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One of the great things about the web right now is the ability to watch streaming episodes on network websites. I have classes at night during the week so I miss most of the shows I watch. This morning, on their respective networks websites, I was able to catch up on the latest episodes of Bones, Friday Night Lights (the BEST show on television), and CSI. Sure, some of them are ad based, but if you miss an episode having to sit through a thirty second ad for car insurance sure beats waiting for a torrent to download or the show to air again.
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If any of you are in the Maryland area, I will be down that way in early May for the Electronic Literature Organization symposium at the University of Maryland. I will most likely be in town for only a day or two, but if anyone else is going please get in touch.
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Speaking of electronic literature, next month I should have a big announcement about a hypertext project I am working on. Stay tuned.
Finally, Top 10 For April
- Miles Davis-On The Corner
- The Avengers-We Are The One
- Cleanse The Bacteria Compilation + Bonuses
- John Coltrane-Ole
- Sleater Kinney-Call The Doctor
- Youth Of Today-We’re Not In This Alone
- The Mahavishnu Orchestra-Birds Of Fire
- Tragedy-Vengeance + 3
- Mountain-Climbing!
- Curtis Mayfield-Superfly Soundtrack
Contact Info
William P. Wend
289 Bulkhead Ave.
Manahawkin NJ 08050
william at wpwend dot com
www.wpwend.com
The Decline Of The High Elves
Via I-Anya, I recently found out about a series of Harry Potter fanfics that being published by Random House. How cool is that? It is nice to see good fan fiction taken so seriously. Sadly, The Decline Of The High Elves is only in Spanish, but I hope there will be a English translation soon. I really like this quote from the author, Francisca Solar, via a BBC article about the publication:
“When I read the fifth book, I was so disappointed - I’m a very critical reader, and I’m a huge fan, so the expectation of this fifth book was great,” Solar said.
“I took the principal characters and I did a story that is more rich than Rowling’s story, because you can have access to the thoughts and feelings of all of the characters.
“In the Harry Potter saga, you can only have access to Harry’s feelings and thoughts. That is a partial view of the Potter universe.”
Weekly Reader
The Reading Experience has another post about John Dewey up.
One of my favorite pieces of Transformers fan fiction is A Chance In A Million. Now that I think about it, it might have been the first one I ever read too when I got back into the fandom in 1997.
Veronica over at Conversational Reading finds War & Peace to be a bit of a disappointment. I started reading it back in high school but never finished it. Maybe I will pick that up again this summer.
It seems that I link to a Marjane Satrapi interview almost every week. This week’s interview is from Nerve:
I have to tell you something: I never felt as free as when I wrote Chicken with Plums. When I write about women, and obviously when I write about myself like in Persepolis people relate [the text] to me. In this book, the main character in is a man. I could hide behind him, yet in some ways, he is me. I can be very cynical, but I can also die of love.
Incoming Vermont senator Bernie Sanders is interviewed over at Mother Jones:
Third, I want to take a look at some of the good things that are being done around the rest of the world that are almost never discussed in the United States. How often is it discussed that the American people work the longest hours of any industrialized country in the world? The two-week paid vacation is almost a thing of the past; meanwhile in Europe you get four to six weeks vacation, and maternity leave with pay. We don’t know about these things. I want to take a look around the world and see what workers are receiving, and compare that to the United States — from an educational point of view.