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Category Archives: Literary
Operation Occupation: me and my big mouth
Since I am officially the last to speak at the morning story meetings, you'd think I'd learn from the more experienced reporters. Particularly, you'd think I'd learn when to STFU.
We go around the table. Mike, what is your story pitch today? Mike pitches a story. A. Story. Cheryl, what is yours? Cheryl pitches a story. A. Story. Well, actually Cheryl is ambitious or something, and Cheryl pitches two. And Lorraine, what is your story pitch today? And at that point the caffeine hits my mouth if not my brain and I throw out three or four ideas and only really stop because the EIC is enthusiastically jumping on one of my ideas and explaining how it fits in perfectly with something he wants for the paper. So now, not only do I have the story that was supposed to be done yesterday to finish up, but I also have to write up the one I interviewed the fellow for yesterday, in between the office and the Shebeen Club; both of those were approved on Monday morning, but now, because of said bigmouthitis, I also now have three more perfectly good story ideas I'm expected to write up in the next, say, 18 hours.
And, of course, here I am blogging about it rather than writing them up.
The Shebeen Club: Edgar Allan Poe’s 170th Wedding Anniversary Afterparty notes
Mentioned at tonight’s Shebeen Club:
re: Gabriel Byrne has the sexiest voice in the known universe
re: Project Runway
re: Homer’s Odyssey
re: Narnia Raps from NYC, LA, CAM
re: Narnia Rap from Ramadi
re: The Shoeblog of the Manolo
re: Go Fug Yourself on Lindsay Lohan and Sharon Stone at the Oscars
re: Edgar Allan Poe’s Wedding and sorry-ass life (note that when you google “Edgar Allan Poe’s Wedding” our announcement is #1! My hit-whoredom is momentarily satisfied)
re: Christopher Walken is So Fucking Cool
and is even more fucking cool as the Archangel Gabriel in The Prophesy
re: Cthulhu sits out an election: the voters’ loss
re: cowbell
Books brought:
As door prizes:
I Shudder at Your Touch gothic horror erotica
I Shudder Again more of that old gothic horror erotica. Same old same old.
Black Thorn, White Rose erotic retellings of fairy tales, although if you’d read the original French ones you wouldn’t need retellings, baby!
As references:
The Castle of Otranto, by Hugh Walpole. the first Gothic Novella (at least the first one not in German). Gets so caught up in the atmospheric effects of the flapping of raven’s wings in the graveyard and the eerie forboding of shadows in the candlelight that nothing actually ever happens. Like a great-looking date that can’t talk, a restaurant where the vibe is perfect and the food awful. Its chief virtue is that it’s just barely over 100 pages.
The House on the Borderland, by William Hope Hodgson, essentially the first supernatural horror novel in English, The Castle of Otranto being religious rather than supernatural in overtone and this divorcing the horror of the beings from their evil…ie they’re creepy, they’re deadly, but they’re not neccessarily from hell. Far better than TCOO anyway, and a quicker read.
The Gormenghast Trilogy by Mervyn Peake. Great books, I’m sure, if I could ever get through them. Like chewing through a glacier made of Turkish Delight. Historically important, great works of art, exquisitely overwraught, and virtually indigestible. A beach read…if you’re headed to Gitmo.
The Loved Dead and Other Revisions (and other works) by HP
Lovecraft. Cthulhu mythos stuff was discussed, EAP envy (which Lovecraft had in spades)…and the fact that this book contains the single most vivid and compelling tale of necrophilia I’ve ever encountered, and that’s saying something. No, I didn’t read it out over dinner.
Damn, forgot to tell my tale of the old boyfriend of mine who heard about how I was such a fan of “Lovecraft books” and asked to borrow them. A week later he returned them, with a puzzled expression. I asked if he hadn’t liked them and he replied: I thought they were gonna be how-to’s.
A Warning to the Curious by MR James. I put forth my theory that ghost stories are definitively English, while Gothic supernatural horror is particularly American…it was not well-received. Fools! again I say Fools! Ia! Shub Ni-ohfugedaboudit.
The Secret History, by Donna Tartt. I state unequivocally that this, combined with A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, are the two novels which define my generation; this is not good news to anyone who’s read both books. I test my theory that I can recite the first line…The snow was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of our situation. I get about 70% right.
The New Gothic which includes such authors as Jeannette Winterston, whom we all agree is a genius. I quote her: Why have we submitted to a society which makes imagination a privilege when to each of us it comes as a birthright? Unfortunately, the book also includes Joyce Carol Oates, who is obviously paid by the word…and we descend into the crude, embittered remarks of literati who are not paid by the word at JCO’s rates.
Music for this evening:
Lou Reed: The Raven, his rock opera based on Poe
Closed on Account of Rabies, articulating a theory that Poe died not of alcoholism but of rabies. The album is produced by the Genius Hal Willner and featuring Christopher Walken, Gabriel Byrne, Marianne Faithfull, Iggy Pop, Deborah Harry, and Diamanda Galas reading Poe’s works
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds: Murder Ballads, which is a collection of songs about murder, either from the point of view of the victim or the point of view of the perpetrator. This plays while we are eating. Bon appetit!
Diamanda Galas: Defixiones/Will and Testament; you either love her or you don’t even recognize it’s music. I, personally, loved the part where she synched up the throbs in her screams with the flashing of the strobes, but that’s just me.
And the menu was: a glass of wine (amontillado was unfortunately not Irish enough for the Shebeen) and The Tell-Tale Artichoke Heart Pasta. Now aren’t you sorry you missed it?
Operation Occupation
A friend of mine is a crime reporter. One day he covered the story of a woman giving birth in a stairwell, ran into another woman giving birth, then later that same day saw two boys drown in the river. As he walked into the newsroom to write it up, somebody said, “Hey Jeremy, how’s your day going?”
He said, “So far, I broke even.”
I’m having that kind of day. My story for the paper got bounced back as too markety (which I worried about) but I’m in the top 30 WordPress blogs today. Since I’m on an internship I’m getting paid exactly the same for blogging as for reporting, so I have mixed smug/anxious feelings about this.
Narnia Rap Update: Lazy Ramadi
The Middle East response to the Midwest response "Lazy Muncie", to the West Coast response "Lazy Monday" to SNL's "Lazy Sunday". And don't forget Cambridge! And, I suppose, to the Chi-town response to all of the above, " Wicked Wednesday." PLEASE VISIT: Here or Wounded Soldiers and make a donation.
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