Where the hell is he?

Quote of the day:

"GOD IS NOWHERE
GOD IS NOW HERE
GOD IS NOWHERE
GOD IS NOW HERE."

(Douglas Coupland - Hey Nostradamus!)

run tonto run

Couple of undeservedly unknown bands that I’d like to put on a pedestal this week.

Los Plantronics
(from Norway)

I don’t remember how I got track of this surf’n’rolling band in the first place, but once I heard samples from their albums I immediately hooked up with their promotional department and ordered the debut CD “Mariachi Death Surf”, 7”EP and t-shirt (picture). Got ‘em today (with some bonus merchandise) and I’m thrilled, so fucking thrilled that I had to uncork a bottle of wine and put a little money aside to order the rest of their albums some fine day.
Usually, instrumental music, or surf music as they say, is shiny happy crap and thus bores me to death, but Los Plantronics is surf music without the water maybe, it’s sing-a-long shit even though there’s hardly any vocals and it’s seriously heavy, mescal-driven Tijuana rock’n’roll with bullets and arrows crisscrossing the sky. Leave all the davieallens and dickdales of the world working on their tans and keep an eye on this Norwegian band.


Trouble Bound Gospel
(from Finland)

Their new release I got a few days ago, been listening to it intensively ever since and it’s already one of the highlights this year. “Down The Rabbit Hole” is one absolutely amazing rock’n’roll album with brilliantly executed package: an old-style gatefold sleeve and the vinyl weighing 180 grams (forget them goddamn flabby frisbees). The music, it’s inhaled and unfiltered rock’n’roll tingling with blues from alleyways and swings from booze-ridden debaucheries. Damned scorching good, like snorting vodka.
And they’re a bunch of good lads, too.

take it easy

Quote of the day:

"Too often we lose sight of life's simple pleasures. Remember, when someone annoys you it takes 42 muscles in your face to frown. But it only takes 4 muscles to extend your arm and bitch-slap the motherfucker upside the head."

(Elmore Leonard - Mr. Paradise)

comedy is tragedy that happens to other people

mi casa su casa

250 versions of "House Of The Rising Sun." Have fun.

Soup of blood and corn, shit and sperm and peanuts

There are maybe four authors whose new books I hunt down as soon as possible; Kinky Friedman, Irvine Welsh, George Pelecanos and Chuck Palahniuk.


Bought Chuck Palahniuk’s Haunted today, it was rather expensive a purchase, but I try to make do without food the next two days. Haunted is a collection of stories or, as said by the author himself, a novel of stories. And the word is, that while doing a promotional tour for this book, them book signings and readings, Chuck Palahniuk made people faint by reading excerpts from his text. No hype this, it’s been witnessed by several people at many places – there even was a mention of a total of 68 people passing out while attending to the Chuck Palahniuk readings, probably untrue and what-have-you urban legends, but still. I guess if you are an impressive speaker, which Palahniuk no doubt is, you can make a pretty bewildering an effect, but I believe in this case there’s a little more to it than his gift of speech.
He read his short story called “Guts”.
It’s not a new story, an abridged version of it was already in one his novels, but, naturally, it's more effective as its own little entity. I don’t spoil all the fun here, but let’s just say that it’s a pretty disgusting story and a well-grounded initiator for people to turn stomachs or pass out on their heels. And the worst part is that it’s based on a true course of events.
You could assume that anyone can write gory stuff – what you need are the proper ingredients; blood, sperm, guts, brain matter, a gun or two, more blood, fucking much more hot sticky blood, death, dying, misery, sadomasochism and Satanism, right? Put the words together, think of a situation – put the gun in a mouth, pull the motherfucking trigger, blow the head clean off, etc. How hard is it? How gore is that?
But no. I think there are only two authors worth a mention who can write this kind of twisted fiction - and, hey, definitely not only in-your-face shit-gore stuff, but brilliantly nasty piece of literature - and they are Chuck Palahniuk and Bret Easton Ellis (I don't know why I'm leaving out Irvine Welsh, particularly his books Filth and Porno, somewhat different genre I guess). And Palahniuk makes Bret Easton Ellis’ books look like lullabies. Mind you, I like B.E. Ellis, read all his books, fucking loved Glamorama, but for one, Chuck Palahniuk is a better writer, technically he’s a better writer, methinks, and his prose is more insidious, creepier and darker. And the humour – and you gotta take it as humour otherwise you are an institutionalised fuck – is blacker, probably blacker you can ever imagine, seriously black. And the prose is trying its hardest to fuck up with your mind. Reading Ellis’ text you can clearly see the fiction and react accordingly, but in Palahniuk’s case you can feel it but don't know how to react. He leaves just enough leeway for your own imagination to play around and then – BANG – he writes something that could be possible to happen, but something that wasn’t really there within the boundaries of your imagination.

Here’s an excerpt of Chuck Palahniuk interview, unfortunately I cannot mention the source because initially I just copied it for my own collection and forgot where it was from:

Question: What's the strangest confession you've heard?
CP: [Laughs.] This is one of my favorites. I was in London last summer, and a guy came up at one of the readings, beforehand, and he said, "I loved what you wrote [in Fight Club] about doing stuff to celebrities' food, because I work at a five-star restaurant, and we do stuff to celebrities' food all the time." That's no surprise to me, because all my friends have stories. And I go, "Who? Tell me somebody," and he says, "I can't, it's a five-star restaurant." I refused to sign his book until he would tell me one person. And he gets really quiet, and then he says, "Margaret Thatcher has eaten my sperm." I was just stunned. It must have been the look on my face, but he got this little smile, and he goes, "At least five times." That is a story that—my God, you can make a whole room full of people put down their forks when you tell that story.

Burn Phoenix Burn

Some useless tidbit of an information that I ran into today.
According to Old Spice, the hottest/sweatiest cities in the U.S. in 2005:

1. Phoenix
2. Las Vegas
3. Tucson, Arizona
4. Miami
5. Corpus Christi, Texas
.
.
.
95. Seattle
96. Rochester, N.Y.
97. Portland, Maine
98. Green Bay, Wisconsin
99. Colorado Springs, Colorado
100. San Francisco

gypsy a no-no

Quote of the day:

”Couldn’t she see how ridiculous she looked, like some gypsy wanna-be? He checked out his own reflection in the little mirror framed with seashells hanging over sink. No gypsy there: a fuckin’ animal, but with a brain, as the ponytail showed.”

(Peter Abrahams – Crying Wolf)

heidache

Quote of the day:

“A ride eyewis helps, cuts oot aw the fuckin tension in the heid. Aye, whin ye shoot yir duff it’s like gittin yir fuckin brain massaged. Ah cannae understand aw they cunts thit say, ‘No the now, ah’ve goat a heidache,’ like in they fuckin films n that. See, tae me, that’s whin ye need a fuckin ride. If every cunt had a ride whin they hud a heidache, thir widnae be as much fucking trouble in the world."

(Irvine Welsh – Porno)

Gas bubbles, death rays and other junk

Couldn’t find anything that I was hoping for from a library today, so not wanting to come back home empty-handed I picked up a book from this one author, Nelson Demille. Thus far I’ve avoided his novels because the flashy covers and titles always – to me, at least - have seemed to indicate somewhere in the direction of fantasy literature, you know, pirates and mermaids, things like that. (However, after visiting the website I was proven wrong). Thus, I’ve never read one single book from him.
The reason I took “Night Fall” is that it’s based on factual evidence, on the big hush-hush what happened to Boeing 747 (Flight TWA 800) off Long Island on its way to Paris from Kennedy Airport with 230 passengers and crew onboard in July 17, 1996.
Don’t see myself as a conspiracy theory –enthusiast, but true stories with conspiring elements grab my attention especially if the case has been in the limelight for several years, more so in the post-9/11.
Probably didn’t say it right a few lines before, about the big hush-hush what happened to the plane, the fucking thing exploded that’s what happened (and killed everyone onboard). But – after reading this book for some rough 100 pages now and especially after zigzagging through lots and lots of websites regarding the accident – it seems that there are seven conflicting theories of what might have taken place.
The official statement is that the fuel tank simply exploded, possibly triggered by a short circuit, touching off the fuel vapours, but the more popular belief (and the first conflicting theory) is that it was blown up from the sky with a missile.
In fact, 80 % of the (U.S.) population believes that it was a missile strike; either a sea-to-air missile launched from submarine or the so-called MANPADS (Man-Portable Air Defence Systems) launched from boat or ground. Gotta mention here that I had fun learning about different missiles like, for instance, state-of-the-art kinetic missiles otherwise known as Combat Kinetic Energy Missiles or CKEM (I also read about the dual locking systems of The Steyr Tactical Elite sniper rifles, but let's not get into that right here right now).
Other theories – ah, bear with me, some of them are right there at the X-files alley – are; 1) friendly fire/military fire (from the nearby sea and air training exercises), 2) some sort of electromagnetic pulse (caused by the U.S. military exercises), 3) meteorite or some other junk fell down from the space (what are the odds on that?), 4) methane gas bubbles – this one is pretty interesting, it’s about invisible gas that rises up from the ocean floor and possibly ignite in the air, 5) plasma death ray (from Brookhaven National Laboratory) even though it should still be under development, and 6) the cargo door of the 747 blew before the explosion and started the chain of events. I haven’t made up my mind yet, but the book truly has grabbed my attention, and it’s not only the story that keeps me on my toes, I kinda like Demille’s storytelling too.

For nothing

And oh yeah, next time when going to pre-exams, bring along a proper pencil, or two, or three, or the fuck many, and a sharpener, the real kind, like they have in them schools, and not the kind of pocket knife that couldn't cut a cunt hair. And read and pay attention to instructions. End of story.

La Noche Diablo

Got three new CD’s. Sweden’s Grand Magus’ absolutely gripping “Wolf’s Return” and two albums from the killers in Texas themselves, Ghoultown; “Tales From The Dead West” and “Give ‘em More Rope”.
Well now, the Grand Magus CD is something of a masterpiece. Ever since I downloaded the opener, great as hell “Kingslayer”, I knew that once I have the money, I’d buy the entire album. I liked their previous albums, quite a lot in fact, but “Wolf’s Return” is the real fucking deal. I’m glad they got rid off the sludge and dust from their stoner/doom approach that were the major fucking deal in the past releases, this new more aggressive, more song-oriented style suits them the fuck lot better.
Ghoultown travels somewhere in the region of horror style mariachi music with a dose of spaghetti punk, whatever. It’s not really that kind of music that I’m constantly following, as a matter of fact sometimes I don’t give a rat’s fuck about any of them horror punk bands, but this band, they are pretty good.

p.s. a book worth a mention. Nicholas Hobbes’ “Essential Militaria”, it deals in war, pretty insightful little book, lots of facts, curiosities, kinda like if you have a book about food and it has all the recipes and neat instructions how to cook. Stripped to bare essentials, “Essential Militaria” is like it, just that it’s area of expertise is warfare.

The absinth rider

Life is sometimes something else than drinking, you know. Once again, I sat for some 6 hours straight at home and read for the preliminary exams. Until I decided to go out for some breath of fresh air. So I took my bike, I drove down to a liquor store and bought a bottle of red wine, one with a screw cap so I could easily drink it while driving the bike. I don’t remember the name of the wine, the bottle probably gone but the cap lays somewhere in the ditch alongside the route I took, so you can still go and find it.

Jesus fucking christ

If possible, never again drink a whole bottle of Unicum.

Das ist ein Unicum!

I got some extra cash. My fridge is alarmingly empty and I truly am running out of toilet paper, soap, shampoo, toothpaste and washing powder. But what the hell. Say hello to Mr. Zwack.

You can't be arrested for poor musical taste

Norway's Madrugada has probably written the best song this year; "Running Out Of Time" is found from their 4th album "The Deep End" (EMI Music Norway) and, ironically, I found the rest of the album kind of sluggish. Some other contenders for the best tune of 2005 at the moment are: Queens Of The Stone Age's "Little Slow Goodbye", Reverend Bizarre's "Slave Of Satan", Grand Magus' "Kingslayer" and Sentenced's "End Of The Road". More coming up. When this year is dead and gone, I probably have some favourite full-lenght albums to mention as well (right now, I have to remind myself of I.N.'s live CD, Reverend Bizarre's "Crush The Insects", Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds' B-sides & Rarities CD and Robert Plant And The Great Sensation's "Mighty Rearranger"). Musically, a good year this one, unlike 2004, which was fucking rubbish.

P.S. Remind myself to make notes of 2005's best novels (so far, Jeffery Deaver's "Garden Of Beasts and the Rob Ryan book which name escapes me just now) and movies (The Machinist). Besides The Machinist, one of the better movies I've seen lately is The Door In The Floor, directed by Tod Williams, the movie is based on John Irving's novel, and it stars Jeff Bridges and Kim Basinger. This is the second movie I've seen of Kim Basinger this year, the other one was Cellular (a very good candidate for this year's worst movie), and I'm glad she did The Door In The Floor, she however, when she deems necessary, is a good actress. Jeff Bridges is always fantastic. He's hosting one of the best websites as well.
I found the following Q&A from a Jeff Bridges -interview (taken from this site) rather funny:

Questioner: What was the most complicated shot for you in The Big Lebowski?

Bridges: Not the most complicated, but the most fun? It reminds me of something that happened in that sequence where I float through all those girls legs. Well that day was on the schedule as the dream sequence, and I thought it would be the Busby Berkeley where I dance down the steps, you know? That seemed cool, so I invited my wife and kids to come on set that day, cause they like to see us making the movies and all, y'know? But the Coens switched it and did the other imaginary sequence, and I thought oh god, what're my kids going to think when I turn over and I'm staring up these girls' dresses? So I didn't know it, but all the girls - the dancers got together and pulled this trick on me. As I float through there and turn and look up a dress, I see this big - well, tufts of hair coming out everywhere - and it's the same under the next girl's skirt. And they all seem to have - well, y'know? It turns out they'd put these big wigs under their leotards between their legs, hidden by their skirts, so only I would see it. And fortunately, Lloyd Catlett, my dear, beloved friend and stand-in whose been on my pictures ever since The Last Picture Show was in on it and had the good sense to tell my wife. So she was waiting to see the look on my face, and now everybody was in on it. It was really funny, but I couldn't laugh. But that's why I have that weird smile on my face in the picture. But the expression on my twelve year old daughter's face was just as weird. She didn't know what to make of it.

Coraxo

Preliminary exams coming up. Been nailed to books for a few hours this morning, in fact studied my eyes out the past couple of weeks. What a fucken bore. I hope I don't have to read sentences like this: 'To say that diachrony and synchrony are not in reality distinct dimensions is not to invalidate the idealization that makes them distinct, but only to set limits on its claims to absolute validity' (taken from H.G. Widdowson's Linguistics) never again. Thank heatens, I don't get distracted by loud noises or different substances. Right now I'm listening to Impaled Nazarene's live CD "Death Comes In 26 Carefully Selected Pieces", drinking coffee (black) and wine (red).
One of the books to read was, thankfully, a novel; J.M. Coetzee's "Disgrace." What I've seen all the literary enthusiasts have been all jazzed up about this award-winning South African author. I am not. At least, as far as this book is concerned (I'm reading it for the 3rd time), he's not that good really. Yea, some nice lyrical insights, in-depth prose whatever, decent even heartfelt (a dog dies in the end so you can sit the fuck down and weep) storytelling, but I got the feeling that sometimes Mr. Coetzee tried it a little bit too hard; take, for instance, this sentence: "His needs turn to be too quite light, after all, light and fleeting, like those of a butterfly". Crap. Plain and simple. Even if I believed that he knows something about butterflies' needs, that wouldn't be too interesting in the long run. Gladly, I don't need to read this book for any longer than a week and I can change to authors who really interest me. George Pelecanos has a new book out, so does Michael Connelly and I probably have missed a book or two by Chuck Palahniuk, James Lee Burke, Paul Auster, Jeffery Deaver, Don Delillo and Dennis Lehane.