This is a charming interview of Maurice Sendak, author of Where The Wild Things Are. I am always a big fan of creative people talking about being creative and their process and struggles. Check this out. It is really great.
Posts published in December 2011
I guess this barroom argument can be put to rest.
Info summarized from wikipedia.
Orcas: between 6 and 8 meters long, weighing in excess of 6 tons (male); between 3 and 5 meters long, weighing between 3 and 4 tons.
Great white sharks: between 4 and 6 meters long, weighing between 0.75 and 1.25 tons.
The orcas have a decent weight advantage if not a real length advantage. But we’re talking about a god damned great white shark here, not some idiot school of herring.
My favorite part of the video is that the orcas just rip the shark’s liver out and let the rest sink. Like a giant, “Fuck you, enormous predatory fish! Mammals for life!”
Question:
I’ve been friendly with a woman for 13 years. I know her better than anyone, though there’s a 17-year age difference. I fell in love with her several years ago, but waited until last year to tell her. Unfortunately, we’re still just friends. I want to express my love again. Do I have a shot with her?
Define “friendly”. Are you two enjoying each other’s company and sitting in separate bathtubs in the woods fantasizing that once your erection medication kicks in that you will be able to engage in hideous physical congress? Are you walking along a tropical beach and gazing into the sunset as you make plans to have a family and spend the rest of your pathetic lives together? Or are you carving your names into each other’s flesh and sacrificing goats to the dark lord in moonlit rituals as snow falls in sizzling pops onto the roaring bonfire which shall consume the goat once its heart has been cut free from its chest?
If your answer is anything but the third choice, I do not care about you. Nothing you will ever do will make this woman “love” you. There are many things you did not tell me about your relationship—if she is a lesbian, if you are divorced, if she is much too attractive for you (highly likely), what your job is like, if you share interests, if she is fat, if you are fat, if she is resoundingly pathetic as you (definitely)—but none of that matters. The truth is there is no chance in the fires of Hell with this woman. The only shot you have with her is at the end of a double-barreled shotgun aimed directly at the roof of your mouth.
Because the snow is falling and the call of the raven is soothing my soul, I will let you in on a little secret. I have known the pleasure of companionship with someone much younger than myself. Her name was Helga and she was 13 years old (I was 27 at the time), approximately the same difference as you and your friend, who, by the way, in all likelihood hates your miserable guts. Helga and I had a relationship for about 8 months. I would pick her up from her primary school on my scooter and we would smoke meth in the basement of an abandoned building and she was fellate me while we listened to Burzum tapes. It was a good time. But then her parents found out about the disparity in our ages and sent her off to boarding school in Copenhagen. I have never seen her since. That was three weeks ago. But am I sad? Of course not. Sadness is weak. Only rage is real.
What am I trying to tell you with that little example? I do not know. But, the point is that you are to blame for your own misery and that this woman hates you and you should run screaming away from her and spend the remainder of your sad life alone.
Castrate yourself.
Soundtrack: Burzum’s Det som engang var
Also posted at:
Ok, so the title is actually “Rock & Roll Santa,” but listen to it and tell me she’s not saying a word that sounds quite a lot like that damn dish the Chinese use to fry up your lo mein.
You all know who Jan Terri is. We’ve all seen the atrocious “Losing You”. It has scarred us all. Now, prepare to be furthered scarred by “Wock & Woll Santa”. This song and video should have been throw to the wolves at the moment of birth, but this is the internet and nothing ever dies. In fact, the internet is Christ resurrecting the Lazarus of bad memories; you think something is dead and gone forever, and then it rises back up horrible and fresh and shameful.
Thanks, internet. You make my life wonderful and terrible.
I heard Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds’ Murder Ballads the first time maybe a year and a half ago. I was in a telecine session with Ben over at Smoke & Mirrors and he put it on. One of the advantages of a telecine session is that you don’t need to hear audio from the cut, so you can listen to whatever the hell you want. I’ve discovered a load of new music that way over the years, and this record is a prime example of that.
When he put it on, I immediately perked up and was all, “What the hell is this?!” and he told me that it was Nick Cave’s Murder Ballads. “Murder Ballads?!” I said. “Murder Ballads,” he said. “I LOVE murder ballads,” I said.
“Where The Wild Roses Grow”
[flv]https://www.theblacklaser.net/blog/wp-content/video/wildroses.flv[/flv]
And, really, what good, red-blooded son of a bitch doesn’t enjoy a murder ballad? I can only take so many love songs before I want to get sick. But dish me up a plate of songs about murder and you’ve got my attention the whole time. And we’re not talking your typical heavy metal, horror movie murder stories. No, we’re talking about salt-of-the-earth, regular folk kind of murders. The best kind.
Wikipedia describes the murder ballad thusly.
Murder ballads are a sub-genre of the traditional ballad form, the lyrics of which form a narrative describing the events of a murder, often including the lead-up and/or aftermath. Traditional ballads are independent from broadsheet ballads insofar as the typical broadsheet form does not use the same formulas or structures and is rooted in a literate society: traditional ballads flourished within non-literate groups within society.
Pretty dry for something so juicy.
“Stagger Lee”
Armed with a direction and something to look for, I left my telecine and sought out the album. This was, perhaps, March of last year, and I was, even then, still buying a lot of music on compact disc. Remember those? Unfortunately the album was long out of print and not readily available. So I did what any conscientious consumer of music would do; I pirated Nick Cave’s entire discography.
I am glad I did it too, because the album is amazing. Originally released in 1996, I completely missed it the first time around. I was 14 years old and did not have ears for anything that wasn’t metal. I remember I had a CD alarm clock then and was woken to Napalm Death’s Fear. Emptiness. Despair. every day for a year or so. Murder Ballads would have been lost on me at this point in my life even if I had heard it. Besides, who wants to listen to some crap record that has not only PJ Harvey but also Kylie Minogue on it?? (Read: I do.)
“Henry Lee”
[flv]https://www.theblacklaser.net/blog/wp-content/video/henrylee.flv[/flv]
I added this album to my “For the Phone” playlist on Spotify recently and it has provided a perfect companion for nighttime walks through the suddenly-below-freezing New York City streets. I wander around, looking at people, singing “I’m a bad motherfucker, don’t you know/And I’ll crawl over fifty good pussies just to get one fat boy’s asshole” from “Stagger Lee” to myself, and wonder what they would think to hear the music I am using to hide from them in plain sight.
Yesterday I was complaining about how the “singer” from The Man-Eating Tree can’t sing. And the truth is that Nick Cave does not have a good voice at all, but he’s in that same realm as Lou Reed or Tom Waits. That is, it doesn’t matter if he can’t sing, because that’s part of his schtick. His vocals would actually be worse if he had some dulcet singing voice. His coarseness complements his lyrical content, and that is what is important.
“The Curse of Millhaven”
Give the album a listen. And then listen again. It’s that good. Then listen again with headphones and pay attention the lyrics. If you generally like the recommendations I make here on The Black Laser, I promise you will like this.
If anyone out there really loves me, I think you know what to do.
Earlier this week, I took my friends Michael and Sabine to dinner at Allswell. Michael and Sabine got married a few months ago at city hall here in New York City, but they had an actual ceremony in California with friends and family and all that jazz yesterday. Unfortunately, due to budget and time constraints I was unable to attend. They did send me this lovely invitation, though.
Dinner was magnificent and we were graciously taken care of by the ever-lovely Sarah Shields. I had the pork skewer with cranberry beans and fennel, but I think we might have shared nearly every small plate on the menu. The octopus was killer, the ham and persimmon was amazing, and the mushroom toast was a piece of garlicky wonder. At the meal’s end, Sarah brought us both desserts. The chocolate pie with hazelnuts was semi-sweet (perfect) and perhaps one of the best desserts I’ve had in ages.
Enough about dinner. It was awesome. You should patronize the restaurant.
Afterward, we headed over to the Manhattan Inn for another drink because it’s a nice place and it was Tuesday night and what the hell, right? As it turns out, Tuesday night at Manhattan Inn is live piano karaoke. Who knew?! Anyone who knows me in meatspace even as a passing acquaintance knows that I am an inveterate karaoke fan. I think karaoke is incredibly fun and something not to be take seriously at all. It doesn’t matter if you’re good or on key or in time. What matters is if you are going for it. Get up there, kill it even if you can’t sing, and it is awesome.
But this time I didn’t really feel like singing. I sort of just wanted to chill with my friends and have a beer and relax. I enjoyed the hell out of the people who did go up. Live piano karaoke is intense because there’s no real cue to get you started. You really need to know the song.
I casually perused the list, which was incredibly short by karaoke standards, and saw that they had “Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots Pt 1” on there. The song is one I’ve often thought would be an amazing karaoke song but I have never actually see it on the list. But there it was. And I wasn’t going to sing karaoke.
The drinks flowed and the night got late and then Michael signed me up. Jerk. I was the last name called for the night and went up and sang Yoshimi and it was awesome. I was drunk enough that I could barely follow the dude playing piano and had to keep asking him where we were. All in all, a highly successful karaoke performance on my part. But at least I went for it.
I actually had no idea The Flaming Lips had made a video for this song before. It might be my favorite Flaming Lips song. You know what? It is definitely my favorite Flaming Lips song. I can’t think of another that I like more than this. “Do You Realize?” is a close second. I just love the whole album. It is so good.
And as such, in honor of Mike and Sabine and our live piano karaoke last Tuesday, here is the music video for “Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots Pt 1”. Enjoy.
This is the worst piece of shit I have heard in quite a long time. Listen to the dude’s voice. It’s terrible. Especially during the first verse. When he says “paint-e-e-ed” I want to shove a knife into his throat and cut out his vocal chords. Affected and terrible. He can barely sing, but he’s trying to do all these vocal somersaults which result in him tumbling awkwardly into the wall. The engineer has fixed his voice during the chorus enough that it is passable and then layered the shit out of it so you don’t notice how bad he is.
Apparently this band is spawned out of Sentenced, another Euro metal band I have no fucking love for. Fuck Sentenced and fuck The Man-Eating Tree. This band sucks and the video is boring.
Ok, I’ll make one exception. Sentenced’s “Excuse Me While I Kill Myself” is a damned catchy song.