brainsplotch

One perk of my job at the library is that I'm able to see many new items well before they enter circulation and, if I want, can place holds on them then and there. With the recent deaths of Shelley Duvall and Donald Sutherland, the library has been ordering more of the movies they starred it, two of which are ones I had never seen until the last few days: Brewster McCloud (Duvall) and The Day of the Locust (Sutherland). Brewster McCloud was released in 1970 and is director Robert Altman's next movie after his first true classic, M*A*S*H, which was also released in 1970. Brewster McCloud is an outlandish, somewhat anti-establishment black comedy about a young man named Brewster McCloud (played by Bud Cort, one year before his breakthrough in the classic Harold & Maude ). Brewster lives--or rather, squats--in a fallout shelter in the inner bowels of the Houston Astrodome. (In one of the movie's many funny gags, Brewster continually dodges an inept, pith helmet-wearing ...

  In my previous post (about R.E.M.'s Reckoning ), I mentioned that my college freshman roommate Tim had an Eraserhead poster on the wall when I arrived in our dorm room. I likely projected my somewhat negative--or at best, ambivalent-- view of Tim onto the movie. I assumed it was some hipster bullshit that I didn't want anything to do with. And despite that fact I enjoyed some other David Lynch creations, I never saw Eraserhead . The sight of the video/DVD cover was the same as the poster Tim had on the wall and immediately irritated me. As the years have gone by, though, I have had Eraserhead in my mental "need to watch before I die just to see what the fuss is about" checklist, and now after a few serendipitous--or maybe simply coincidental--events I have finally seen Eraserhead. A few days ago, I noticed that one of my favorite movie podcasts, Blank Check with Griffin & David , had dropped an episode about Eraserhead . That immediately made me think of the R...

In my latest sporadically published posts about 1984 albums, I tackle R.E.M.'s second album, Reckoning . This is yet another album I discovered after the fact. It was that hallowed autumn of 1986 that I have mentioned at least a few times in this blog. I had already heard "Fall on Me" that summer and quickly went out and bought a cassette of Lifes Rich Pageant at the Camelot Music in Saginaw's Fashion Square Mall. A month or so later, I arrived at Michigan State and quickly learned that, compared to several other kids, I was an R.E.M. newbie. I was "tripled" in my dorm room at MSU, which means I had two  other roommates. (We were assured by the university that as we settled into the school year, the "triple" would revert to a "double." Of course, I couldn't help but worry who would be the odd man out). Anyway, one of my roommates was a guy named Tim F. Tim was cool. Tim was the first to arrive and already had posters of the movie Era...

The above quote, and title for this post, is a direct quote from Donna Tartt, lifted from The Borris House Festival of Writing & Idea's podcast episode "Donna Tartt and Rick Stroud." The episode was posted on April 3, 2020 but I just listened to it today. Upon finally finishing The Secret History last night, I spent the entire day seeking out and listening to every podcast episode I could find devoted to the book. The second I heard Donna Tartt describe The Secret History as being "...really a fantasia about university," I thought it the most succinct and perfect description of the book. I've heard reviewers and commentators describe the book as either magical realism, a figment of the narrator's imagination, the product of an unreliable narrator (but mostly true), or on the rare occasion a story to be taken at face value. One definition of the word "fantasia" is "a work of art or literature that expresses the author's imaginatio...

Picking up where I left off... Dale Crover took the stage, but I don't think I even noticed he was up there until he began strumming his acoustic guitar. I was shocked at how few punters (I'm just gonna borrow that Britishism) were in the performance area, so I wasted no time in moving to the front. Crover is an unassuming guy. He could easily be mistaken for one's friendly neighborhood record store clerk or oil change technician, but as soon as he starts performing, it's clear he is an intense and talented musician. That said, he has an easy rapport with the audience, asking us if we enjoyed his Detroit/Michigan music-centric pre-show DJ set (which featured the disparate likes of Ted Nugent and Question Mark & the Mysterians to name a few). The crowd approved enthusiastically. He played about a half dozen songs, reminding us that he had a solo album coming out in October, and at about 2/3 of the way through his set, assuring us that he'd play a few more songs a...