David Lynch has died. If you run in the same media circles I do, this will come as no surprise to you. I won’t bore you with my waxing poetic about how important his work is to me (very) or how much I admire that he was able to do all the things he was (a lot) or how great of a loss this is to everyone who cares about art (huge).
No, I’ll take this moment to share one of my very favorite David Lynch moments, a moment which is directly responsible for the unironic addition of “get real” to my personal lexicon.
My kids are obsessed with Frozen and its sequel Frozen II. Mina will request “Elsha” the very first thing upon waking up in the morning or returning home from daycare or as soon as she’s finished throwing her unwanted blueberries on the floor at dinner. It is relentless.
So, as you might imagine, the music from the movies is a constant stowaway in my head. And as much as I think “Let It Go” is a banger of a karaoke song and that “Lost In the Woods” is a hilarious Peter Cetera riff, I am not always happy to have the snippets of the other songs I only partially know bouncing around my consciousness.
The particular song that inspired this post is from the second film. It’s called “Show Yourself”. It’s sung by Idina Menzel as Elsha and it’s very, very catchy. Beatrice especially loves this one. We have a bunch of videos of her belting it at the top of her lungs. It’s really quite endearing how strongly it sings to her little soul.
When Menzel sings the line “Show yourself!”, it resolves in a way that, in my mind, connects to Paul Simon’s iconic hit “Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard”. You know the song. We all know the song. Everyone knows the song. It’s been playing non-stop since its 1972 release.
The mental mash-up, the music portmanteau goes a little like “Show yourself! I don’t know where I’m going, I’m on my way, I’m taking me time but I don’t know where”. Try it. It’ll get stuck in your head, too.
All done?
Good.
As you can imagine, such a potent musical melange wouldn’t stay sequestered in my head. When I am doing chores around the house the music escapes, and that means that Sarah has to endure it, also.
“Oh, god, I hate Simon & Garfunkel!” she said to me.
“I mean, yeah, goodbye to Rosie! Queen of corona!” I said.
“Yuck! I hate that song. There’s only one Simon & Garfunkel song I like.” We started to search through Spotify to find the song she was thinking about, but without success.
Then I had a thought, “Maybe it’s just a Paul Simon song?”
Then we found it. “Yes! This one! I love this song!” she said.
“This song?! This is the song you love??”
And do you want to know what the super hot Paul Simon jam my wife absolutely loves is?
It’s this:
Wow. You think you know someone and then you learn that their favorite Paul Simon song is “You Can Call Me Al”.
Our good old, problematic boy HP Lovecraft is back on this episode of The Black Laser Reads. This time we’ll be reading “The Colour Out of Space” which was originally published in March, 1927.
It’s a bright, cheery story about a New England farmer slowly watching his home, his family, and the world around him slowly decay to ash and madness as he is utterly powerless to resist. It really sings to my own current existential dread due to my inability to care for my family. Very close to home! Very stressful! Except I don’t have a nightmare outer space meteorite to blame.
Enjoy.
The text for this episode came from Standard eBooks. If you are interested in reading “The Colour Out of Space” which is found in Short Fiction yourself, you can download a public domain e-book here.
Next time on The Black Laser Reads: something new to the public domain in 2025.
Happy Holidays, everyone! I hope you’re fortunate enough to spend these dark winter nights with people you love, no matter what you celebrate or don’t celebrate. It’s a time for chosen families, for friends, and for people who love the hell out of you no matter what.
So put your feet up, eat something delicious, and sing loudly.
The days are getting shorter, the clocks have been set back, and the weather is (finally) getting colder. Time for (more) horror stories! Also a little bit of literary horror escapism from the current real life political horrors unfolding on the national stage is welcome.
This time on The Black Laser Reads, we’re reading Ambrose Bierce’s 1893 science fiction story which is also sort of a proto-eldritch horror story. It’s good! And there are no problematic elements in it which is a blessing for a story from the nineteenth century. Good work, Ambrose Bierce.
You might recognize the author’s name from your high school American literature class when you read “An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge”, another science-fictiony, time-wimey sort of story from the 1890s. What can I say? Dude was ahead of the curve of genre fiction.
Enjoy the story.
The text for this episode came from Standard eBooks. If you are interested in reading “The Damned Thing” which is found in Can Such Things Be? yourself, you can download a public domain e-book here.
Next time on The Black Laser Reads: you’ll know when I do!
A recent trip up to the Hudson Valley inspired me to finally dig into my Washington Irving collections. I am familiar with the plots of “Rip Van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”, two of Irving’s most famous stories, but I’d never actually read either of them. There are so many things to read, and life is a finite resource. But you can’t go anywhere up in the Hudson Valley without seeing Rip Van Winkle this, Rip Van Winkle that, Rip Van Winkle whatever. Rip Van Winkle Realty. Rip Van Winkle Adventure Guides. Rip Van Winkle Brewing Company. You get it. That absolute in-your-faceness made the decision to start with this story an easy one. Also, it’s pretty short, so not a ton of work to get it done.
“Rip Van Winkle” is the story of a shiftless, good-natured dingus who lives in fear of his wife. Like, pure, white knuckle terror. And Irving does not hesitate to let us know how much she sucks the joy from Van Winkle’s life. Eventually he meets some ghosts, falls asleep for 20 years, wakes up, and learns that the Revolutionary War has happened. And that’s all super weird and disturbing for him! Then he learns that his wife is also dead so he is now free to live his life of aimless wandering and hanging out at the bar, and he is finally happy.
Seriously. That’s it.
Sorry for spoiling it, but the story is more than 200 years old. The moratorium on spoilers expired some time around the Gettysburg Address.
It’s quite dated both in form and attitude, but it’s still a pretty important piece of American short literature. For that reason, probably worth listening to me read it to you for the astonishing price of nothing at all.
Enjoy!
The text for this episode came from Standard eBooks. If you are interested in reading “Rip Van Winkle” which is found in The Sketch-book of Geoffry Crayon, Gent. yourself, you can download a public domain e-book here.
Next time on The Black Laser Reads: I have no idea! Let’s be surprised together.
We also got to celebrate Mina’s first birthday this March. She’s proving to be an incredibly pleasant little girl, all smiles and laughs with very little unprovoked freaking out. If she is melting down, something is wrong.
Fortunately, he birthday was free of freak outs. We were also dealing with lingering daycare plague, so we delayed her birthday party until the second half of April. This nice thing about tiny kids is that they have no idea what “time” or “dates” are, so making them wait to celebrate their birthdays until it makes most sense for everyone is totally fine. Parenting!
Hey all! It’s been pretty quiet here on the old Black Laser front for the last few months. And there’s a very good reason for that which I will get into in a later post. For now, let’s rewind the calendar dial way back to January 2024.
Penny and Bea turned three this year and we threw them an age-appropriate party. They had cake and ice cream and got presents. And that’s pretty much it. They had a great time. We took some photos. We made some memories. All in all, a successful third birthday for a couple of little girls.
