COMING SOON TO A SUBWAY PLATFORM OR THE SIDE OF A BUS NEAR YOU:

• Crime is the disease. He is the prescribed course of antibiotics.
  
• He borrowed twenty bucks last month - and now it's payback time.
  
• You will believe a man can eat a fifteen-pound bag of meal.
  
• Sometimes love has the strangest odor.
  
• That isn't a hat.
  
• He puts the "homey" in "homeopathic surgeon!"
  
• Be perturbed. Be mildly perturbed.
  
• See it again, in focus this time.
  

it's all in lowercase, so you know it must be art:

woke up this morning with light entertainment in my eyes. warm outside, but freezing in the overground walk-in closet bunker i call home - i can see my breath, so i pantomime smoking for half an hour until i start pantomiming bronchial spasms, then i stop. stretched. arms covered in printer's ink and pulp - that tabloid duvet and samizdat pillowcase don't provide much comfort anymore, and besides, i find myself with an almost uncontrollable urge to pee or to run in a big wheel or to eat a breakfast consisting solely of pellets. and i'm all out of pellets. the water's been turned off again, so i can't wash, and if i leave the house, i just know those cheap assholes from the dyslexic school pull my shirt up and try getting yesterday's headlines from my neck and torso. so i think i'll stay in bed today. if the phone weren't on the other side of the room and broken, i'd call up the arts council and ask for another grant - i could call this "sloth #14." but i won't bother. keep it on spec. the critics will think more of me for it.

See? Back already. And the show-offishness must go on (I had something to post regarding an excerpt from Martin Amis' new novel, Yellow Dog, but the Guardian site has taken it down for some obscure reason, so it can wait): Sundays are the days for live-ish broadcasts on This Is Radium Crass, particularly my weekly series designed to showcase some of the not-so-old radio stuff I've gathered over the years, The Gold-Plated Age of Radio. Today (Sunday, despite what the post-date says), I'm presenting episodes from a couple of recent-ish British wireless comedy faves, The Mary Whitehouse Experience and Knowing Me, Knowing You (starring Steve Coogan - best known if at all in the States for playing Factory Records honcho Tony Wilson in 24 Hour Party People - as his most famous creation, the fatuous and clueless chat-show host Alan Partridge). The broadcast kicks off at 3 PM EDT (with repeats throughout the day likely) if you're interested (see link to your left). Please, someone be interested...

Is anybody still paying any attention? If so, apologies for not doing my part to clog up the pipes with insignificant minutiae for a full month. What can I say? I had a splendidly satirical mock travelogue based on my recent travels to the west coast set to go, only to return home and have my personal life cave in completely almost immediately upon touching down. Now the usual squirmy little attempts at wit that I fling around like a sporadically-constipated ape hardly seem worth it. And I loathe whining self-pity (wine-pitted self-loathing, on the other hand...), so I'm not about to add a "how many bitter tears I wept today" counter to this little corner of the net, or otherwise yak up the miserable confessionals in a pseudo-public forum like this. Writing my way out of this seems, at times, like an attractive option, but the words ain't really coming at the moment. (That said, pecking out this little excuse note is beginning to spark the smallest of flames right now - don't be surprised to see something more substantial here relatively soon, as I'm nothing if not completely self-contradictory.)

Anyway, this is just a public notice of apology to everyone who's expecting something from me, whether it be discs, dubs, books, reviews, critiques, phone calls or e-mails. Or blog entries. Gimme a little time, folks.

As promised... jadees and lentilmen, I give you The High Hat.

I'm just so damn prideful and honorable of this project - a great bunch of (mostly) unknown writing/drawring talents working almost reflexively at the top of their game. I'd provide you with links to the best articles, but damn it, they're all great; just start at the top and work your way down. You will not be sorry. (Okay, for self-indulgence's sake, my major contribution to the inaugural ish is right here. I'm proud of it, but in no wise is it the best thing in the issue.) Cheers and roebuck to everyone who contributed, especially my buds Hayden, Lee and Herb, who really did the majority of the heavy lifting. 'Specially Lee, whose design work was incredible.

Check it out, gang - hope you like it.

Why no posts in a while, you ask? Oh, you haven't been asking? You're just wondering who I am and why I'm sleeping on your lawn? Fair enough - but, other than work, family, self-flagellation and snacks, I've been putting the finishing touches (or, more accurately, standing around smoking while the real talents involved have been putting the finishing touches) on an exciting new project, the details of which shall be made manifest shortly. Stay tuned.

WE'LL RETURN TO OUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED BLOG AFTER THIS WORD FROM OUR SPONSOR:

"Hi, this is Bob 'Pushing Up the Daisies at Long Last' Hope inviting you to tune in to my new special, 92 Years of Laughter, 8 Years of Mostly Sitting Around and Drooling, and Several Hours and Counting of Not Being a Burden to Society Anymore! Join me and my guests Bing Crosby, George Burns, the Ritz Brothers, Jerry Colonna, Shemp Howard, Cantinflas, Jon-Erik Hexum, Scatman Crothers, Fatty Arbuckle, Lucretia Borgia, the lovely if slightly waterlogged Carol Wayne, Josef Stalin, and the 1972 Israeli Olympic Team as I bring you all the hilarity and entertainment you've come to expect from me! That's starting tonight and continuing indefinitely on NBC - the Newly Buried Celebrities network! Hey, Bing, is Heaven always this hot and filled with so many cries of mortal anguish? It's like the set of With Six You Get Eggroll! Well, at least I'm performing for the troops again - there's my old friend Billy Calley! How are you, Lieutenant? Why are they pulling your intestines out like that? Looking to prove you have guts? Heh, heh, yeah, I've got a million of 'em, well, 807, actually, but who's counting?..."

RANTLET ABOUT SOMETHING NOBODY ELSE SURELY CARES ABOUT, BUT HEY, ISN'T SELF-INDULGENCE THE COIN OF THE REALM IN BLOGVILLE JUST AS MUCH AS LENGTHY, DEFENSIVE POST TITLES IS IN MY NEIGHBORHOOD THEREIN?:

Apparently, writing the header for this post has winded me. Gimme a few days' sleep and I'll get back to you.

SEMI-AUTOMATIC WRITING EXERCISE #1:

(One draft, no stops for smoke breaks. A few minutes with the creative speedbag to get my chops in order. Any lack of coherence and/or cohesion is therefore neatly excused for once. Cool, eh?)

Apologize? Admit culpability? No way, mister. No way. Everyone knows that whatever caused those kids to do what they did, as often as they did, to as many elderly women, invalids and traffic cones as they did, is the result of faulty upbringing, too much fluoride in the water, or a missed bracket somewhere deep in their genetic code, not the little movies and products my insignificant little multinational conglomerate puts out. I don't know how many more times I have to say it - it's just entertainment. It has no effect on people's behavior. Sure, the clerical error at the ad agency that changed Zap Cola's slogan from "Zap Cola: It's Like a Party in a Can" to "Zap Cola: Say You Love Satan" was unfortunate, but those cans that turned up at the site of all those ritual killings in the Midwest can be, at worst, considered a misguided attempt at freelance product placement. You don't see your kids, uh, hanging out with androids just because they saw that space movie, right? So why all this fuss over Dude, Where's My Carbine? And no, those high schoolers in Montana, Nebraska, Maryland, Arkansas, Guam and Puerto Rico weren't quoting the movie when they slaughtered all those underclassmen with those weapons that coincidentally were constructed out of the same wine-cooler-bottle and peat moss mixture that Seann William Scott devised in the film - "Dude, I totally ventilated his torso with this easy-to-construct makeshift weapon!" has been in the zeitgeist for years now. We're just holding up a mirror to society. Don't blame me if you're not "hip." And now we're gonna get upset because the latest teen idol has a tattoo? And don't give me that "the swastika is a hate symbol" garbage - what obscure fact are you gonna dig up next? I mean, c'mon, give our kids some credit - or maybe I should say your kids since I don't have any, not anymore. They can read, at least almost a third of them can, and you know they pay attention to the strongly-worded disclaimer we run in every other episode of Stoliclicious Vodka-Flavored Bubblegum presents Cripplewhackers! "It looks fun, and it is, but don't try this at or anywhere in the immediate vicinity of your home." I think that makes things abundantly clear - certainly our lawyers think so. All I'm saying is that, when you point your finger at someone, you have three fingers pointing back at you, and a thumb looking off to one side, hoping not to get involved or something. Examine your own consciences (that is what they're called, right?) - maybe you spoke sternly to your children a couple of times, or denied them a second helping of cake for dessert, or encouraged them to study. Children are sensitive to these things, so naturally these things are bound to turn back on you. Maybe you should think about your inadequacies as parents, teachers, neighbors and pedestrians a little bit before laying all the blame on Captain Wacky's Whites-Only Funhouse. Or Carbo-Crank 72-Hour Energy Drink. Or the Micro-Glock. I mean, my company produced a Jesus biopic last year, and you don't see kids running around, nailing Jews to trees, do you? Aside from those three in Wisconsin, I mean.

THE FIFTY GREATEST SONGS EVER RECORDED (OR, IN SOME TIME ZONES, MERELY THE FIFTY LATEST ADDS TO THE RADIUM CRASS PLAYLIST):

1. Momus - "A Dull Documentary"
2. Fastbacks - "K Street"
3. The Ex - "Shooting-Party"
4. Cocteau Twins - "Aloysius"
5. Pernice Brothers - "Blinded by the Stars"
6. Keiji Haino and Peter Brotzmann - "Untitled 07"
7. L.A.M.F. - "Yggdrasil"
8. Onion Radio News - "The Chevy Chase Show Celebrates Another Blockbuster Season In An Alternate Universe"
9. Butthole Surfers - "Hey ('82 Demo)"
10. Subway - "Smokey Pokey World"
11. Bongwater - "Why Are We Sleeping?"
12. mike watt - "For e's Cousin's Baby's Baptism"
13. Nomeansno - "Stop It"
14. Young Marble Giants - "Posed By Model (Peel Session 1980)"
15. Beach Boys - "The Warmth Of The Sun"
16. The Fall - "Last Commands of Xralothep Via MES"
17. Richard Hell And The Voidoids - "New Pleasure"
18. Lucy Hamilton / Lydia Lunch - "How Men Die in Their Sleep"
19. The Colourfield - "Take"
20. Richard Pryor - "Acid"
21. Pere Ubu - "Caligari's Mirror"
22. 14 Iced Bears - "Come Get Me"
23. No Neck Blues Band - "Second Columbus Pt. 1"
24. The Cardigans - "Daddy's Car"
25. SNL (original cast) - "Shimmer"
26. Chills - "A Message to Pretty"
27. Gang of Four - "I Found That Essence Rare (Peel Session)"
28. Iggy & The Stooges - "Radio Ad"
29. All Natural Lemon And Lime Flavors - "When Things Come Falling"
30. Robert Forster - "Look Out (Here Comes Tomorrow)"
31. The New Pornographers - "The End Of Medicine"
32. Ossman & Proctor - "Tirebiter's Brew Pubs"
33. William S. Burroughs - "Present Time Exercises"
34. David Sylvian - "Late Night Shopping"
35. Woody Allen - "Kidnapped"
36. Ludus - "Breaking the Rules"
37. Thinking Fellers Union Local 282 - "The Streets Vibrated With Traffic And Power Tools"
38. The Negro Problem - "The Teardrop Explodes"
39. Ken Nordine - "Ecru"
40. Lenny Bruce - "Commercials"
41. Prolapse - "Autocade"
42. The Fall - "Just Step S'ways"
43. Throwing Muses - "Fish"
44. Caesars - "Let's Go Parking Baby"
45. The Postal Service - "This Place is a Prison"
46. The Rapture - "Olio"
47. The Scruffs - "I'm a Failure"
48. Saccharine Trust - "A Lasting Thought For A Dying Cell"
49. Broadcast - "Before We Begin"
50. Daedelus - "Experience"

THOUGHTS ON THAT ENDLESSLY OVER-BROADCAST SERIES OF COMMERCIALS FOR "THE NEW TNN":

1) All right, who the fuck slipped Stan Lee the Viagra? Let me make this perfectly clear - the only place I wanna see a stiff old man is in the drawer at the morgue. (Uh, let me rephrase that...)

2) Speaking of Stripperella, I can't quite get over the following passage about the Pamela Anderson-Lee-Rock-Rooney-Onassis-voiced animated series from Entertainment Weekly a couple weeks ago:

With lie-detecting breasts and glass-cutting nipples, Stripperella puts the squeeze on supervillains like Queen Clitoris, a cyberterrorist who's ''not to be rubbed the wrong way.'' (Admits Anderson, ''There couldn't be any more innuendos in a half hour.'')

Now, dictionary.com defines "innuendo" as "(a)n indirect or subtle... implication in expression; an insinuation." Which means that she considers the above quip clever. In fact, maybe she doesn't even get it (Pammie's own clitoris having been replaced by a specially-treated hunk of gluten several years ago). I'd volunteer to explain it to her but I'm too busy highlighting my copy of The Gilded Speedo: A "Son of the Beach" Concordance. Still and all, I'm mildly curious about the show, but I ain't watching it for two reasons: it can't be interesting for very long (lie-detecting breasts? F. Lee Bailey has those already) and she who provides the voice for the, ahem, titular heroine is such a plastic-encased disease farm that I'm afraid that merely standing at the mic has infected this cartoon with sickle-cel anemia.

3) Memo to Kelsey Grammer, aka Gary the Rat: we've forgiven you the cocaine abuse, the alcoholism, the car wrecks, the adultery and the allegations of pedophilia, but man, you gotta know that there are some things that just can't be excused.

4) Ren & Stimpy's back? And only ten years after its sell-by date? Awesome! And I'm sure they're just warming up, too - Fish Police: The Next Generation, anyone?

5) This has been the week of uttering phrases I never thought I'd say, and to "I saw the greatest Adam Sandler movie the other night" I'd like to add another: You know, Spike Lee might have had a point there. In fact, if I were Tom Kenny, Grant McLennan, The Singing Nun or anyone else with the letters "T," "N" and "N" in their name, I'd consider getting on the horn with my attorneys post-haste. Whether they have lie-detecting breasts or not.

(All Pamela Anderson jokes in the preceding post have been made possible by a generous grant from the National Overendowment of the Tarts.)

Has it really been over a week since I last dribbled any mental sputum on this e-blotter? With no end to the various unfinished threads I've strung out there in sight? I've been one messed-up fuckface for a long, long time, that's all I can say. (I hate all you accomplishing bastards, I do.) And worse, the only thing I've found the slightest bit interesting or enough to raise me even the slightest bit out of my torporous stupor is that Finding Nemo toy my boy got with his Happy Meal (I feel a new McD's lawsuit coming on - I ate three of 'em and they didn't work). I just never thought I'd see the day when you'd press the button on top of a fast food restaurant kid's toy and hear Albert Brooks' voice coming out. (For the purposes of this post, I'm ignoring the Modern Romance Overreaction Figures ["Quaaludes and Rolodex not included"] briefly marketed by the short-lived Burger Czar chain in '81.)

That's all I've got. Must get in my two hours of shambling and muttering in before work. Excuse me...

Answers to MATCH THE PAY-PER-VIEW PORN MOVIE WITH THE ON-SCREEN SYNOPSIS!:

Um, I forget.

MATCH THE PAY-PER-VIEW PORN MOVIE WITH THE ON-SCREEN SYNOPSIS!

A) Passport to Prague 2
B) Spring Fever
C) In Bed With Amy Lynn Baxter
D) Chica Boom 15
E) Nick Grande: The Aztec Dagger
F) My Baby Got Back 26
G) 69 Degrees of Penetration
H) Blue Jean Blondes 2
I) The Devinn Lane Show 7: Attack of the Divas
J) Afro-Centric in the Amazon 8


1) Shapely women test their sexual limits.
2) A sexy woman tries to find a good man.
3) Tempting women offer their services.
4) Sexpots use their charm to entertain men.
5) Young beauties enjoy passionate lovemaking.
6) Young starlets give in to sexual temptations.
7) A woman finds numerous lovers to please.
8) Vixens take off their clothes in order to please.
9) Lovely women fulfill their cravings.
10) Sizzling women find passion with men.

Answers tomorrow.

THE OTHER SIDE OF THE "WIND":

A Mighty Wind, to my surprise, turned up at the local podunk googolplex this past week, drifting alone among the six theatres showing Matrix Reloaded, the four showing X2, the three superimposing Matrix Reloaded and X2 over each other, and the converted supply closet just off the concession stand still showing The Master of Disguise. ("It's still finding its audience," the manager insisted with a tremor in his voice, before throwing his hand over his mouth and fleeing to a dark corner.) For those not in the know or not entirely certain where the know is, in fact, located, this is the third "mockumentary" helmed by Christopher Guest (an actor/comedian with an impressive 30+ year resume but probably best known as the sweetly idiotic lead guitarist of the fictional heavy metal band whose amps go to eleven) and improvised by a large-ish ensemble from an outline devised by Guest and Eugene Levy (an actor/comedian with a similarly impressive 30+ year resume but probably best known as the father so understanding that he wasn't particularly disturbed to walk in on his teenage son fornicating with pastry). And like their previous pair, Wind focuses its satirical sights on an odd but recognizable portion of the American subculture - Waiting for Guffman (1997) dealt with Midwestern civic pride and community theater, Best in Show (2000) with the competitive world of canine enthusiasts, and this one comes almost full circle to the music-biz lampoonery of the most celebrated of all mockumentaries, This Is Spinal Tap (1984) [co-starring and co-created by Guest; directed by Rob Reiner] with its look at a gaggle of quaintly irrelevant sixties music veterans - only this time, instead of the slackened spandex of aging heavy metallurgists, it's the moth-eaten crewnecks of the once-mighty folk scene that provides the fabric for Guest and Levy's comic tapestry. Now, I don't get out to the movies much these days; financial, time and familial constraints have mostly conspired to make it so, though I'd be lying if I were to claim that the thin gruel ladled out by the dream factory (the stuff that makes it to the area cinemas in particular) was terribly appetizing to me in the first place. (This opens me up to accusations of snobbery, I know, in much the same way that my taste in music inspires snorts of derision on the part of certain parties of my acquaintance - rather than digress myself into a defensive cul-de-sac, I'll say only that I've been pleasantly surprised by some aspects of some of the mainstream pics I've seen recently [the darker, black-comic aspects of Spielberg's Minority Report, Ralph Fiennes rendering his serial killer the most sympathetic character in Red Dragon, etc.], even if the films in question wind up retreating into predictability and false emotionalism by the end, and that most independent films are just as bereft of imagination and innovation as their higher-priced brethren.) That said, it's fair to say that the arrival of this picture qualified as something akin to An Event.

(More later. Really. I mean it. I think.)

Don't bother with this, either.

Had a rough couple of weeks (details NOT forthcoming - what kind of a blog do you think I am?), which accounts for the lack of content here in that time. There's stuff to talk about - a now-ever-so-slightly-out-of-date take on A Mighty Wind being one subject - but I'm gonna need some time to get my act (however unnatural) together. But I owe you something ... Howzabout a transcript of the "best" rock "star" "interview" I ever "did," a truly frightening mid-afternoon phoner with Royal Trux' Jennifer Herrema, around the time they released the album Sweet Sixteen, an album about as appetizing and entertaining as its cover? The weirdest thing about this non-fab confab, though maybe it's not all that weird, considering, is that I spent a couple of months after its publication fearing some bizarre kind of junkie retribution for printing it, only to have it turn up, lovingly reprinted in its entirety, on their official web site. Anyway, here 'tis:

Jennifer, how's it going?
Uhhh... (pause) okay.

(Bravely) Uh, great. So, you consider Sweet Sixteen (Virgin) your most positive record to date. How so?
(pause, cough) More beats per second. (long pause)

Ah. Nothing in the lyrical attitude or anything?
Uhhh... yeah, it's just about...uhhh...the information. We've just got a better line on the information, where it's...uh...given out.

Sure, sure. Having heard your previous records, you seem to have grown out a little closer to the conventional rock thing. Is that fair to say?
Umm... you know, things change. (pause)

What in particular?
(pause) You know, I don't live in a shelter anymore, I live in my own house. I, ah... I get sick maybe once or twice a year now... I used to get the flu a lot and uh... (pause) we had to leave a lot of friends behind. (long pause)

(Starting to get worried now) So, what do you find are common misconceptions about Royal Trux?
Well, first, nobody seems to know the difference between my voice and Neil's. (long pause) And other than that, it's, uhhh... I'd say that the line between... consciously making decisions, affecting our surroundings, bound with allowing things to happen and being okay with that. I think that in the past, um... we've been commonly perceived as victims. (low, ominous) It's not true.

Have your compositional methods changed at all?
Um... not really that much, actually. (pause) You know... willful progressions. Willfully making ourselves (inaudible) future... crucial. But at the same time not letting ourselves, uh... you know. It's not strictly chemical, or... (pause)

Have you gotten much feedback on the album yet?
Uh, yeah... we've gotten feedback. Our record company really, really very much disliked this record. And our lawyer very much liked it, so... bit of a scandal. The, uhhh... I guess, you know, everybody I've spoken to... uh... has had... positive things to say. The things I read were, uh, sulky and like... it was inevitable that we'd leave some people behind. We've gotta shake 'em off.

What were the objections?
Um, too many notes, you know, and all sorts of political objections as well. We didn't exactly... um, feed... the machine by producing it ourselves and building our own studio. We met with a lot of hostility on that. There are people there... uh... that dig it, you know. And there are those that would not let it, uh... (pause) infiltrate.

Do you find life on the road at all debilitating?
Uh...(sigh)... yeah, I mean, it's, uh... I'd prefer to be left alone. I like to play, but in the end I'd prefer to be alone.

You have one more record to do for Virgin - what next?
Yeah, I mean, there's a lot... Neil's got a novel coming out, we've got a double album of outtakes and... out-of-print stuff coming out on Drag City this September, and, uh... (pause)

Neil wrote a novel, huh?
Yeah. (coughs) It's called Victory Chimp.

What's it about?
Uhhh...(pause) I don't know. (long, LONG pause)

Don't bother reading this.

RAISE HIGH THE SECURITY GATES, CARPENTERS:

(I'm not at all sure about the wisdom of posting what follows here. After all, both the piece and the thing it parodies are almost five years (or 1000 scandal-cycles) old. But what the hell, I happened upon it while searching through my monitor-side box of important papers in vain search of any papers that might be justly deemed "important," and I have to admit, it's not bad. I have an especially fond memory of writing one particular paragraph in a fever of giddy creativity that almost never comes my way these days and that left me feeling as if my cranium was indeed in danger of melting. Anyway, here it is. Hope you like it. And if you do, heck, maybe I'll finish it one of these days.)

The following is excerpted from Jeannie Mullet's forthcoming memoir, Asleep on the Front Lawn of the World, to be published by Delaware School of Psychiatry Press in early 1999. Author's Note: The dialogue and all of the situations in this book have been reconstructed from memory to the best of my ability and under strict professional supervision. Since I was raised from my earliest days to be a vigilant, unimplicatable observer, I believe that if film footage, tape, or infra-red video existed documenting my life, or if such documentation hadn't all been destroyed in a series of unconnected and surely accidental fires over the last twenty-five years, it would bear a stunning similarity to what's reported here.

In the spring of my eighteenth year, I wrote a magazine article which proved to change my life forever. It appeared in the Veronica Lake Daily Newspaper on May 16, 1973. It was entitled "An 18-Year-Old Prodigy Considers Life, Society, Time, and Her Brobdignagian Struggle With Significance," and, although it was displaced by last-minute editorial jostling from the cover story of their Sunday supplement to the "Letters to the Editor" section, cut from 26,000 words to 150, and retitled "Local Girl Writes," it's fair to say that it was the most important article I've ever had published. In it I described coming of age in a time of social foment, prodigiously limned the details of the battle those of my generation were then waging with the encroaching forces of sociological malaise, and added a brief and pungent aside about my hometown's zoning laws, which was the only part that got printed. Even in that minuscule fragment, my discontent and world-weariness came shining out with crystalline clarity, not to mention the same finely-tuned wit and allegorical sensibility that inspired my creative writing professor at Rick's Community College to rave, "Shows some promise."

Yet this was only part of my story. I was born into the household of about two fiercely determined and ambitious parents, who had instilled in me from the first the desire to achieve great things, or at least to acquire great things and drive them across state lines if necessary. Before I had even learned to write, I was dictating poems, one-act plays, affidavits. My mother wrote down what I said and taught me how to make it better, strengthening my grammatical and expository skills using a variety of simple but extraordinarily effective methods which also helped me develop excellent penmanship in spite of the broken bones in my hands. Soon enough she gave me a typewriter, the act of giving alone demonstrating the stealth and breathtaking force of words as I caught it in my solar plexus. By 14, I had already been published in Young Girl magazine ("More Pictures of Davy, Please," reprinted in an annotated version in my forthcoming collection, Ruminations on God, Man, and Puppies), which led directly to a series of more ambitious pieces for the likes of The New Jerseyite, See and The National American, all of which were unanimously judged to be well ahead of their time (in fact, each of the editors of those periodicals sagely realized that my articles "[did] not fit the needs of [those] magazine[s] at [that] time" - and as of this writing, they remain so advanced), finally culminating in my Daily Newspaper opus. My mother, who had long encouraged me to "stay in [my] room and write, or whatever it is [I] do," to the point of keeping me padlocked inside for days on end to maintain and hone my compositional focus, was thrilled at my sudden success, though she was well enough aware of the dangers of unfettered praise on the creative ego to withhold her enthusiasm beyond a faux-dismissive wave of her hand, as if to say, Go. Don't rest on your laurels. Take it further. Get out of my kitchen. Actually, she vocalized that last part, but the implications (Create your own heat) were clear.

Predictably, the article caused quite a stir, and soon, letters were arriving on a daily basis in my mailbox. A well-known late-night talk-show sidekick proclaimed that I "may already have won" (through sheer talent and persistence, no doubt) millions of dollars, and enclosed the names of dozens of magazines that may be interested in my work, and encouraged me to choose as many as six of them, though he insisted that I was under no obligation to any of them. Invitations to join exclusive societies (a record and tape appreciation guild based in Columbia, a club for diners [those supping on the piquancies of our culture, unquestionably, though the exhortation was amusingly coy on that score]) were myriad, but it was one letter, secreted near the bottom of a stack of two I had received shortly after the article's publication, that rendered all others unimportant, a single typewritten page that has come to mean more to me than the dozens, nay hundreds, of fan letters, book offers, and cease-and-desist orders I have received in the years since. It was a personal letter from one of the greatest literary minds of our time, I.C. Seligman himself.

In truth, though I long considered him one of my literary heroes, I was perhaps the only 18-year-old in the country who hadn't read his classic paeans to youthful despair, The Receiver in the Wheat, Freda and Zippy, or Seymunki - A Book With That Title. In fact, I never read books at all because they give me sharp, throbbing headaches and then the bad people come out. But I knew well of him - his wild, prodigious talent so like my own, the legendary short stories he wrote at some point in the past for periodicals whose names escape me now, the fact that he lived in a house in some state with an "r" in it with his children if he had any. I had never in my wildest imaginings thought that such a genius would be interested in what I had to say, though I had put his name and address on the mailing list to receive my bi-weekly newsletter, Ecce Jeannie, just in case. There was no greater approbation for a young 18-year-old my age than to receive acknowledgement of my fresh, mercurial brilliance and insight from a man who probably wrote well like him.

I spent hours, days, hours poring over every nuance of his deceptively simple missive to me, studded as it was with obscured memoranda from the hidden corridors of his soul so subtle that only someone as perceptive as myself (preferably me) could pick them up. The way, for example, that my name in his salutation appeared in a different typeface and was slightly off-kilter from the rest of the letter - we hadn't even met and already he's symbolically separating me from the pack! (And the impish wit for which he was so renowned came through in his playful misspelling of my name, a touch so obviously influenced by Joyce, whoever she is.) Beyond that, Seligman opened up to me in ways I suspected one could only do in the company of strangers with whom they'd already formed a life-long bond. "Thank you for your kind letter," it began (demonstrating not only a rare and wonderful gratitude, but also a unique view of literature; in referring to the 38-page, single-spaced article I had sent him as a "letter," he taught me that all works of art, no matter how finely wrought, are as personal and as individual as correspondence). "It is always a pleasure to hear from my readers." (Note the subtle tinge of erotic longing.) "I never knew I had so many fans in Veronica Lake." (Here, again, he deliberately misaligned the proper noun, tacitly acknowledging the off-the-beaten-path nature of my hometown and my deep-seated feelings of alienation in it. What sensitivity lies within that skewed pica font!) "Your comments regarding my work are greatly appreciated (spoken like a true gourmand at the smorgasbord of the heart, looking for that extra serving of the potato salad of the peregrine spirit), as are any questions you may have asked (ever-questing, insatiably inquisitive, yes, I.C., yes, I see!). Unfortunately (are we not all mere slaves to fickle Kismet?, I.C. seems to be saying), due to the overwhelming volume of mail I receive ("overwhelming volume" - I was convulsed for hours at the Rabelaisian wit of that), I am unable (a particularly tricky nut to crack here - it took me six weeks of uninterrupted cognition to decipher the buried anagram here as "Mabel, u an' I," a delightfully bold invitation to a menage a trois. Sadly, I was never to meet this Mabel, but no doubt she was a saucy harpy/muse whose skin-tight vinyl jodhpurs and skillful proficiency with ostrich-skin belt and corn-cob holders would have given us both many hours of fulsome carnal diversion and provided fodder for many of the world-weary female protagonists in novels alas unwritten) to draft a personal reply at this time (and such a smooth segue from the interpersonal to the geopolitical! That accursed war!). Again, I thank you for taking the time to write and I send you my very best wishes (I don't think you need be a Freudian to divine what he was alluding to here). Sincerely (meaning, I think, that he was being sincere), I.C. Seligman (signed in a beautifully-rendered imitation of a rubber stamp imprint, yet another sly comment on the forced permanency of identity. It, too, was slightly askew, but I'll forestall any further analysis of that as my skull has begun to overheat again)."

In a word, I was flabbergasted. In two words, I was quite flabbergasted. In six words, I (two paragraphs omitted for reasons of space) That such a man would take such a consuming interest in a young woman whom he had yet to meet, much less broach matters both physical and philosophical in such a familiar (if oblique) manner was a source of no small amazement to me (though not unprecedented - Ernie Kovacs used to send me some rather obscene psychic messages through my television when I was a young girl until I had that problem taken care of). I don't know what it was that so enthralled me - perhaps it was the voice of experience that rang out, wizened but booming and resonant, from his letter (I was hearing some sort of voice, at any rate). Perhaps it was my desire for a mentor, someone to look up to in place of the father I never had (or, more precisely, to avoid the confusion of choosing among the four men who had been named in separate lawsuits as my father). In any event, I was compelled to respond. I spent several days carefully composing my reply, but musical notation seemed somehow insufficient, so I wrote him a letter instead.

I held nothing back. I told I.C. Seligman of my life here in this small New England town that was later discovered to be a dead Hollywood starlet (which would explain the exorbitant property values). I live a simpler life than most people my age, I tell him. I ride my bike three miles every day and hope to eventually leave the house with it. I don't enjoy writing much. I like finger painting, as it's the only body part I can reproduce convincingly, and relax by building dollhouses, hiking the utilities without prior notification, and throwing Barbie and Skipper out on their skinny polyethylene backsides. I don't have many friends. I thanked him profusely for his warmth, honesty and wisdom, and swore to carry what he told me to the grave, my own if need be. I completed my response and called the UPS man to come and haul it away, not knowing, having laid myself out so vulnerably, if the great man would ever respond in kind.

I need not have worried. Not two weeks later, but five, another letter arrived from Seligman. But for the fact that my name was even further off-kilter on the page and spelled with an ampersand this time, it was identical in every way to the first. The message was clear: the greatest truths are the simple ones and bear repeating; you should drop everything and come to Maizelike, New Hampshire to be with me immediately. I needed no further entreaty. I packed an overnight bag, jimmied the lock on my bedroom door, and set out on a journey of discovery that would ultimately prove tragic, revelatory, and very, very marketable.

WHY D'YA DO IT? NOTES ON RADIUM CRASS PLAYLIST ADDS (4):

(I'm gonna try and polish the rest of this off asap so's I can move on, and not make a sissy fuss about the 16 or so songs I've added since I started this - sometimes the only rock and roll I can relate to is the rock I endlessly roll up that goddamned hill of beans of mine...)

8. I'll cop to it - Throbbing Gristle was (is) a scam. Buncha pretentioid art-gits with a rare gift for making decadence and deviance seem kinda boring - heck, Genesis P-Orridge turned up in a recent issue of Musiq sporting a brand-new set of Richard Speck (no-)funbags and managed to look like Eddie Izzard imitating my Aunt Barbara, a vision that sounds at the very least diverting but was met by me with a yawn wide enough that my jaw became unhinged and I almost swallowed the cat. Artists? Sure, bullshit artists, albeit with a line of patter that all mod conmen would be happy to call their own; their third of the Burroughs/Gysin/Gristle issue of RE/Search way back in '81 was, when I first read it at age eighteen, an embarrassment of conceptual/philosphical riches (though the real embarrassment came when I tried re-reading it two years ago and discovered what an easy mark I was back then - I swear to God, if there'd been some bohemian death cult recruiters walking around Harvard Square in 1989, I'd've been dead from an arsenic latte long ago). And all this was quite exciting to me, especially since the only music of theirs I'd heard at the time was a two-minute fragment of something (to this day, I'm not sure what) heard through the weak signal of a far-off college radio station at the age of 13, which was so unlike anything I'd ever heard that I rushed to capture the last thirty seconds of it on tape just to prove I hadn't imagined it. (When I played it back, it didn't sound so weird to me at all, which should have told me something.) I was all fired up with intellectual-subversive adrenaline six months later, therefore, when an import copy of Throbbing Gristle's Greatest Hits (Entertainment Through Pain), draped in a nicely innocuous parody of a Martin Denny album sleeve, showed up at the mall record store. Took it home, quickly scanned the Claude Bessy liner notes and Cosey Fanny Tutti's gams, practically flung the thing onto my turntable, sat back and... was given one hell of an unpleasant education. Seems the media's sometimes not nearly as interesting as the message. Turns out that all the voluminous blather about "subversion" played itself out as banal drones and groans coaxed out of synths that its owners can barely play, occasionally subjected to wild, off-the-wall tricks like - ooh, watch out - running the tape backwards or fading a track out almost as soon as it begins, usually topped off with P-Orridge's vocals, which are usually so monotonous that to call them "deadpan" would be insult to both the dead and to pans. Granted, they happened into some pretty interesting cacophony sometimes and some similarly pretty interesting near-near-pop at others, and are one of the few electronic outfits to take the term "industrial music" seriously and literally (not so surprising, given that TG actually coined the phrase), as a lot of their recordings indeed resembled the dying throes of some broken-down factory. (And their pioneering work merely laid the groundwork for the excellent work they did after TG's initial split: the surprisingly vital run of singles [one of which even made it into a Volkswagen commercial] P-Orridge promulgated in Psychic TV, Peter "Sleazy" Christopherson's scary, multi-faceted, visionary work he whipped up both as leader of Coil and as an in-demand video auteur, and Chris and Cosey, um, did stuff too.) But the fact remains that much of their work only becomes explicable once it's explained at length, often great length, and while that's served to bolster some of their intentions w/r/t an audience's perception, media manipulation, etc., none of that means much when the music, the ostensible vehicle for these statements, winds up sounding so thin, dated and quaint.

So, why, you ask, did I include "Walkabout" on my playlist? Well, it is a radio station, after all, and three minutes of pleasant synth mumbles (yep, pleasant - I'm sure that's supposed to be some kind of statement in itself, but I haven't received the 56-page statement of intent yet) make for a nice leavening element between the usual yuks, jangles, plaints and shrieks. And besides, it's a handy reminder that Jim O'Rourke's starting to run out of Nicolas Roeg-inspired album titles.