Reportedly, the 0.74 regular readers of this blog have evinced something akin to concern (though mild, fleeting curiosity has reputedly renounced its kinship after that ugly Easter dinner two years ago) as to be whereabouts and attendant well-being over the past several months. (For further reading, please refer to "whuts w/ u, man? :(" from The Collected Instant Messages of William Ham, Vol. I, 2 pp., 2004.) I can now break my self-imposed silence of several weeks to assure you that, apart from the simultaneous supernova-like collapse of several romantic assignations, the surreal performance review at my now-former retail job that climaxed with a hearty round of mutual biting, and the sudden change in temprament in my six-year-old son whereby his affections for me have come to be expressed in a manner reminiscent of Joe Don Baker in Walking Tall, all of which has necessitated an unannounced fleeing of the state that can be likened to a combination of the Kindertransport, the Underground Railroad, and Dick Clark's 1966 Caravan of Stars (minus the sociopolitical underpinnings of the first two and sharing only the bass player from Paul Revere and the Raiders with the latter), everything has been just fine.

As I write this, I am about to embark on the final, unshaved leg of my journey, sitting on the tarmac at MacGuffin International Airport in a known desert town and tourist mecca I can only, for legal reasons, refer to as "Vos Legos, Nongrata." (My attorney hasn't been well for some time.) For the past nine hours of my layover, I have gorged myself with the sumptuous repast of Vos Legos' cultural institutions, of which its world-famous Longest Off-Duty Taxi Queue In the World was merely the beginning.

For those whose experience with Vos Legos is restricted to the poetic paeans of the bards of the city (Presley, Eszterhas, Urich), the tone and character of that Shining City on a Flat, Low-Altitude Hill Comprised Solely of Sand have undergone more changes than my son can shake an enormous piece of oak at. It's no legally-actionable mistake that it's been hand-picked by the current administration as the location for the new Library of Congress, In-Flight Magazine Division (scheduled to open in the spring of 2007 and to burn down mysteriously in late August, 2009), as Vos Legos has become the epicenter of a new sophistication that makes the quotidian look utterly plebeian and vice-versa. The twice-daily show currently playing at the Stardirt, The Defenestration of Prague - NUDE!, has elevated the level of area entertainment single-handedly, if the way the gentlemen in the matinee audience were showing their appreciation is any indication. Forthcoming events, such as Siegfried and Freud: On Sequins and Their Relation to the Subconscious, The Trojan She-Males, or Helen IS Troy, and Bubbles McKagan and Some Artfully-Utilized Grapes Explain the Treaty of Versailles, are sure to to take Vos Legos' newfound commitment to the fine arts and find a safe place for it where the cat can't knock it over.

And even the other two activities synonymous with Vos Legos have undergone a major makeover. Wait here while I look up what they are.

Oh, yes.

On the surface, nothing has changed: slot machines still dot every inch of the landscape, blackjack dealers still wield more influence than most politicians, and the Great Chain of Being is still governed by the spin of the roulette wheel. (Just don't put all the chips of civilization on Red 23 this time, goddammit.) But gambling has taken a new turn in the last few years; while money remains the currency of choice in many of your more traditional wagering dens, a new breed of casino has been proliferating along the Vos Legos Strop. At the Gilded Collander, located in the palatial utility closet of the RKO Grand Motor Court, high rollers come from all corners of the world (editor's note: being round, the world does not have any actual corners) to lay down their sense of personal well-being to the whims of Lady Luck. During my brief stay, I witnessed an elderly couple from Montana parlay their mild fear of young minorities into a full-blown paranoia of Hispanic street gangs rampaging through their retirement community in just twenty minutes at the craps table. A wide-belted Texan of my brief acquaintance squandered all his self-esteem and sent a young podiatrist's assistant from Queens home with his family fortune in blustery bonhomie in a high-stakes game of Fish in the VIP Room. And to witness the desperation in the face of an out-of-his-element emigre from Switzerland, which was then confiscated by the floor manager, is to stare into the face of the abyss, or at least of a foreigner with his worry lines freshly stripped off by a casino employee.

There's more, of course - the story of my side trip to Nongrata's world-famous Quick Draw Ranch, where high-priced courtesans cater to the whims of extremely premature ejaculators by timing their faked orgasms to when you're still halfway down the walkway, deserves to be told as soon as I come up with a name that'll look good in quotes to avoid embarrassment - but it will have to wait for now. I'm being told to get the hell off the tarmac and into a plane and, frankly, I'd better split this town as soon as possible. I got a little carried away back at the Collander, and now I owe the mob a sizable debt of gratitude.

Mistah Crass, he dead.

Looks like, in my efforts to reclaim the blog name on the top of the page by changing my template, I have succeeded in destroying all my links and erased all previously-stated comments. Sorry, folks - Phil Nugent's comment from today was quite a funny one, too.

Well, hey, in lieu of compelling new content, howzabout a bittersweet outlay of evidence in re: how prolific I used to be? It seems that my ex-employers at Lollipop magazine were kind enough to construct a page containing links to most of the features I, my rock-crit pseudonym, my pseudonym's nonexistent 14-year-old brother, my pseudonym's pseudonym (and, in the case of the haiku reviews, my pseud's pseud's pseud), composed for the mag during my last two years of quasi-gainful employment there. And shock/horrors, not a whole lot of it sucks outright. Some of it's even pretty good. There are some embarrassments as well, but I'm not telling you which ones I think they are. And I do find it most interesting that I composed a piece filled with the purest self-loathing and anguish during what comes to mind now as my peak-to-date of productivity and creativity. Anyway, poke at these aged entrails if it suits you.

Okay, I'm back, sort of. Probably not best to give too many details about the elapsed time 'twixt posts (not when prying eyes are smiling) - suffice to say, the kidney stones that attacked me a week and a half ago served as light entertainment by comparison to everything else. (When your cheeriest recent moment involves you lying supine, pharmed-out to the max on Percocet just enough to reduce the burning pain in your side to Zippo-strength, and ruminating on what a great band name "Renal Colic" would be, well, that's just nutty.) But fear not, gentle reader - any further entries in this slowly-rolling web log will be free of self-pity, corked whine and primal screech. The byword here - hell, the very mandate - is now and shall forever hereafter remain simple, unadulterated, capital-F lowercase u-n Fun.

Which we'll get to soon. I'm ten minutes late for my daily self-flagellation and psychological auto-abuse appointment, then it's an hour of lacrymose wailing before work. I'm a busy man.

Exhausted. Wrung out. Depressed/despairing. Finished. Giving up. You kids enjoy yourselves.

I THINK I KNOW WHERE WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS' GHOST LIVES THESE DAYS (LANGUAGE IS A VIRUS, INDEED...):

Actual text of an e-mail received by me this morning:

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SHIT FROM AN OLD NOTEBOOK (3):

(Don't know when this was written, for what purpose it was intended, or indeed why I'm retyping it here. Enjoy.)

Scene: restaurant. X & Y in mid-conversation; food has just been served.

X: ...Oh, for crying out loud... Waitress! Waitress!

W: Is everything okay?

X wordlessly gestures towards plate.

W looks, shakes her head - she has no idea what he's gesturing about.

X raises his eyebrows emphatically, gestures again.

W: I'm afraid I don't...

X: Look at my plate. You remember my order, don't you?

W: Yes, of course. T-bone steak, medium well, garlic mashed, zucchini circles, medium coke, light ice, hold the parsley. The Saturday special.

X: Mm-hmm. Now look at my plate.

W (scrutinizing it for a second): Is it dirty, or...?

X: No, not the actual plate! What's wrong with the order?

W: I don't... I have other tables, you know.

X: The entree. What's the matter with the entree?

W: It's cooked the way you like it, isn't it?

X: Jesus god, yes! You don't see what the problem is? You really don't see it?

W: No, I'm afraid I don't.

X: The bone is not shaped like a T.

Pause.

W: Um, what?

X: It's a T-bone steak, right? That's what was listed on the menu, that's what I ordered - but that's not what I got.

W: So... the bone is the wrong shape?

X: Goddamn it, yes! That doesn't look the slightest bit like a T, does it? I mean, this is a decent restaurant most of the time - you earned those two stars honestly - but this, this is no good.

W (slowly, with mounting disbelief): Because the bone isn't shaped like a T.

X: Grrr! Yes! I come in here, I order a T-bone, I want a T-bone! I didn't see an "L-bone" listed on the menu! I'm a strong believer in truth in advertising and I know when I've been scammed. I order a T-bone, and that's the letter of the friggin' alphabet I want my bone to be shaped like! You might be able to pass off an "L-bone" or an "S-bone" to the rubes, but I'm local, baby! Lived here all my life! And in spite of the poor educational system in this country, I can read quite fluently. And I'm not reading "T-bone" right here!

Y: You know, from where I'm sitting, it almost looks like a cursive "T." You know, a little more flowing...

X: A cursive T? What am I, French? I don't want any pretentious calligraphy on my goddamned plate! I want a decent, angular, all-American T. Now take this back and bring me what I ordered! Now!

W (sarcastically, even for a waitress): Yes, sir!

X (calling after her): And make sure it's a capital T! I don't want any lowercase bones at these prices!

CRYPTIC UTTERANCE OF THE WEEK:

I don't think I'll be able to hear the Cocteau Twins the same way again.

BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU ASK FOR, YOU THREE:

Bad days, bad days. Block'd like I've never been block'd b'fore (as bad as it gets - ideas in mind, no ability to flesh 'em out). One 'ticular assignment, months late, hanging over my head like the shiv of Damo Cleese (John's Japanese half-brother). Grouchy, hateful, envious, jealous of those around me able to perform without breaking a sweat. Stagnating. Atrophying. Need help. Should I just drop the delusion? Give up the ghost? Get on with my life (such as it is)? Leave it to the actual talents? Goddammit. Goddammit. Goddammit.

The good thing about the brand-new repressive media environment? John Waters stands a chance of being gloriously, deliriously offensive again. Seems that his new movie, A Dirty Shame, has been slapped with the MPAA's scarlet letters, dash and number, and God love 'im, he must be proud. I'm hoping this presages the best of all possible scenarios - a) it gets released uncut (and I think it'd be an utter insult if New Line Cinema, the people who helped build his towering edifice of cine-trash in the first place by distributing Pink Flamingos, choked at this juncture) and b) it's the proper (heh) combination of filth and production values the faithful have been waiting for through all of his sorely disappointing output since the nineties. And it may well be - Mink Stole seems to think so. And you can't tell me that this image of goofy ingenue Selma Blair doesn't look, um, promising:



Here's to hoping our man comes through for us on this one - a refreshingly foul gust of giddy bad taste is exactly what this country needs.

CHOOSE ONE BADLY PUNFUL TITLE FOR THIS ENTRY: 1) TINNITUS I'M GONNA ROCK YOU TINNITUS; 2) NEW ADVANCES IN BURMATOLOGY; 3a) MILLER'S HIGH LIFE; 3b) THIS AIN'T MILLER LITE, BUD; 3c) MILLER'S GENUINE CR -- OW! STOP HITTING ME! OWWWWW!:

Roger Miller, Mission of Burma's guitarist/chief songwriter and bottle washer, begins a week-long online diary in Slate. Check it out.

Practically nothing else in the world (macro- or micro-) is going the way it should these days, which is what makes it so heartening to see so many of my personal musical heroes of yore returning to the fray after years out of commission and defying natural law by resolutely refusing to suck. It's not an isolated condition, either - band after band after band, mostly from the artier spasms of the punk movement, adjusting their guitar straps to accommodate their increased waist sizes and somehow spewing out stuff that stands proudly (when even unembarrassingly will do) next to their vintage material.

Burma, then.

The surprising reunions keep on coming - the surviving members of proto-post-punk legends Rocket From The Tombs reunited last year for a well-received tour and the studio album they never got a chance to record in the mid-seventies, Wire (on their third go-round) delivered two EPs and a full-length containing the fastest, most aggressive music they've ever produced, the famously contentious Pixies managed to bury the hatchet somewhere other than each others' foreheads for an open-ended return jaunt, and even the Buzzcocks (a decade into their second wind), the Mekons (who never broke up in the first place) and the Fall (who never did either, though their members keep falling out faster than their lead singer's teeth) surprised even the faithful with their strongest albums in ages over the last year or so. But it's Burma's unlikely rejuvenation that has me by far the most tickled, mostly because it seems almost as big a surprise to the Missionaries themselves as it does to their fans. But then, everything about them was unlikely from the word go - a dense, abrasive and challenging band with a deep pocket of tunes you could shake your fist and drunkenly bellow along with; a completely original sound coming out of a scene (Boston) where gimmicks and stylistic retreads are the order of the day, every day; a rock group without ego clashes, substance abuse problems of note (one of them drifted briefly into alcoholism, realized it, cleaned himself up and carried on) or the merest strain of arrogant posturing, neither rock star (no big surprise, as they never were) nor cult hero (which they most definitely were, though they evidently didn't even realize it until they read the chapter about them in Michael Azerrad's eighties-indie overview Our Band Could Be Your Life); a group that broke up simply to save their guitarist's ears (wisdom the Who have never known). Integrity? Unfeigned modesty? Basic regular-joe likability? MoB's got it in spades, hearts and clubs. There's just no way these mugs should be able to survive in the rock 'n' roll ecosystem, much less pick up where they left off over twenty years ago with faculties intact, and yet they've done it - a trio of fiftyish family/career men getting together for an impromptu jam session in the avant-garage and casually recapturing the vitality they had as kids.

Burma, now.

Their new album (and only their second official full-length studio release, as every reviewer is obliged to mention), ONoffON, is simply every bit as good as it should be - hearing that guitar sound again, that particular melodic bass, those intently pummeling drums, those tape loops and treatments that suck the whole thing up and spurt it back out in new and exciting combinations every time, even those songs ("Dirt," "Hunt Again" and "Playland") that cried out in demo form for a proper studio treatment that never came until now, all of this is purely and deeply satisfying. And while I almost never get personally involved with even the greatest of my song-slinging heroes (they'll only break your heart, kiddo), I feel something whipping up the stagnant leavings of my ashtray heart when I listen to this that can only be described as happiness. And not merely for myself, either, perhaps not even mainly so. I feel happy that Miller has found the fortitude and bravery to put his battered ears to the test again beneath those firing-range earpieces. I feel happy that Peter Prescott is getting a little well-deserved attention after so long playing in excellent combos (this one, Volcano Suns, Kustomized, the Peer Group) that hardly anybody west of Route 128 gave a shit about. I'm even happy for newbie Bob Weston (filling the sound-manipulating shoes of the absent Martin Swope) that he got the chance to muck about with the noise made by his heroes. But above all, I'm happy for Clint Conley - the guy who wrote the biggest "hits" in the Burmese catalogue ("Academy Fight Song," "That's When I Reach For My Revolver," "That's How I Escaped My Certain Fate") surprised and saddened all three dozen of us by being the only MoBster to walk away from the life after the initial split, settling down to a life as a local-TV producer, seemingly never to write another indelible hook again. Now he's apparently making up for lost time bigtime, writing and performing for two bands (the other being Consonant, whose two albums play like a cleaner version of his signature sound and are highly recommended) while still keeping the day job. This is the best kind of success story - a return to form on their terms, with no particular aspirations beyond making music they can be proud of and an agreement to set it aside without regrets or recriminations the moment it ceases to be fun. May the Burmese flag continue to wave for exactly as long as it wants.

NOT PARTICULARLY FUNNY, NO, BUT IT FILLS THE SPACE:

So, how's everybody gonna be spending their Nueve de Mayo? A random sampling of passers-by:

FNORD HYUCKMAN, Cutislaxa, WV - For the first consecutive year, I will be officiating at the annual Neuve de Mayo Pond Fire, where citizens from yards around come and toss their spare flaming rags into the kerosene-coated waters of Condyloma Pond and others come along and stare at it.

YUNIS VARON, Floating Harbor, MN - Binge drinking Clamato juice. Just like every night, I know. But today it's for the troops.

PICK NEIMANN, Nystagmus Gorge, VT - Celebrating the twelfth anniversary of the weekend after my uncle Ellis Van Creveld invented Fauxfu, the world's very second man-made synthetic tofu substitute. Celebrating it the only way we know how. Which always seems to involve sodomy for some reason.

HOLT ORAM, Kernicterus Falls, FL - Same as the day before, I suppose: tirelessly lobbying on behalf of The Constrained Free Speech Amendment. I believe you should be able to say anything you want so long as you say it within a very specific set of verbal strictures. What am I talking about? Two words: two words.

PAPILLON LEFEVRE, Otopalato, GA - Taunting Lutherans.

SCHWARTZ JAMPEL, Iganephopathy Township, CO - It'd be redundant to do anything specific to Nueve de Mayo here in Polyposis County, seeing as it falls smack dab in the middle of our annual "Beat 'Em Literate!" week, where we encourage young folks and the slow-moving to appreciate fine literature by hitting them repeatedly with large leather-bound volumes of Proust. And whenever anybody recoils, traumatized, from the sight of a book thereafter, we remind them that that's more or less how that dude Swann reacted when he ate that cookie. Kind of. It changes every year - I won't give away what we have planned for 2005, but it does involve the Penguin Classics edition of Ulysses and an acetylene torch.

GALLOWAY MOWAT, Ruvalcaba, TX - Playing Russian roulette, only with quoits.

Haven't done this in a while - for my own delectation and your mild irritation, here are the 50 latest adds to the Radium Crass playlist:

1. David Grubbs - "Pullover"
2. Bad Brains - "Attitude"
3. Onion Radio News - "Islamic Fundamentalists Condemn Casual Day"
4. John Fahey - "The Assassination Of Stephan Grossman"
5. The New Pornographers - "The Laws Have Changed"
6. Onion Radio News - "The Long Awaited Baby Boomer Die Off Begins Soon"
7. Sukia - "Me! I Disconnect From You"
8. Bill Hicks - "You Suck"
9. Man Ray - "Interview (1963)"
10. Screaming Trees - "You Know Where It's At"
11. Bill Hicks - "This Is Comedy Hell"
12. Flux Of Pink Indians - "Tube Disaster (first demo)"
13. Young Marble Giants - "Credit In The Straight World"
14. Three O'Clock (Salvation Army) - "She Turns To Flowers"
15. Bill Hicks - "You Will Be The First To Leave"
16. Prefab Sprout - "The Ice Maiden"
17. Stan Ridgway / Stewart Copeland - "Don't Box Me In"
18. Franz Ferdinand - "Van Tango"
19. Tindersticks - "Let's Pretend"
20. Hüsker Dü - "Ticket To Ride"
21. Fall - "Like To Blow (Peel Session)"
22. Soft Boys - "Give Me A Spanner, Ralph"
23. National Lampoon - "Light Your Faith"
24. Buzzcocks - "Sixteen"
25. David Cross - Even Though I Am in the Closet, That Won't Prevent Me from Getting Cheap Laughs at the Expense of Homosexuals!"
26. Natonal Lampoon - "Public Disservice Message: Zip Codes"
27. Richard Hell - "That's All I Know (Right Now)"
28. William S. Burroughs - Ah Pook Is Here: Introducing John Stanley Hart. He Entered The Bar With The Best Intentions"
29. Love - "You I'll Be Following"
30. Cleopatra Wong - "Hearts Will Be Falling"
31. Wire - "Blessed State" (Third Day version)
32. Lounge Lizards - "Harlem Nocturne"
33. SF Seals - "Bold Letters"
34. Tango Argentinos - "Un Chien Andalou (1928)"
35. Blue Humans - "Under Power"
36. Felt - "Jewel Sky"
37. Eric Matthews - "Forging Plastic Pain"
38. Ben Watt & Robert Wyatt - "Another Conversation With Myself"
39. Albert Ayler - "Holy Family"
40. Dos - "Little Doll"
41. Iggy And The Stooges - "Rant #1 (Michigan Palace 10/6/73)"
42. On! Air! Library! - "Feb."
43. The Who - "Great Shakes"
44. The Fall - "Marquis Cha-Cha"
45. from Ni Kantu in Esperanto - "Funga Kanto"
46. The Gist - "Fretting Away"
47. Weekend - "Carnival Headache"
48. Marshall Crenshaw - "Blues Is King"
49. Dion McGregor - "Don't Break the Mailman"
50. Game Theory - "Last Day That We're Young"

The usual, in other words.

Ah, that's better.

First things first: you are aware, aren't you, that Series Two of The Office is out on DVD Stateside? Good. Now go buy it. And here's a chat with the Gervais himself in this week's Onion AV Club.

Now, I realize that just about every pop-cult-savvy hepstah has weighed in - repeatedly, tiringly, indefatigably, adverb-stringingly - about The Office, and I'm certainly as guilty as any in that respect (but isn't it better for the world that touching an imaginary tie and biting your lower lip has replaced "D'oh!" in certain circles? Quieter, at least?), but I've got a few things I'd like to get off my chest before my breastplate cracks and that'll be that (except for when the Christmas specials finally air on BBC America - that'll be the end of it, oi promise):

1. In every interview I've read or heard with Gervais, not to mention his public appearances (and particularly his Golden Globe acceptance speeches), he has unfailingly come off as extraordinarily grounded and level-headed - smart enough to know when to stop milking the Brent cow, tickled but not overly impressed with his success, pleasingly self-effacing, etc. - and yet a lot of people, mostly Brits, have been turning up on various comedy-oriented message boards referring to him using terms like "annoying, arrogant twat" and suchlike. This is not an uncommon occurence, of course - some folks tend to bristle at success and cultural ubiquity, usually out of jealousy or the standard allergic reaction to media oversaturation. But I wonder if something else might not be in play in (getting on) Ricky's case. Whether it was intended or not, the character of David Brent is not merely a good example of the "bad boss," a standard-enough archetype that's shown up in enough comedies to be unremarkable by itself (discounting the fresh levels of ill-hidden vulnerability that he's added to the template), but also the most biting characterization to date of none other than the Comedy Geek himself, the guy that somehow believes that his love of genius laughsmiths alone somehow confers their brilliance onto him. People who keep slipping references to their favorite bits into conversation as if memorizing tiny joke-memes and spewing them out without the crutches of context, timing or originality puts them in league with their heroes. People like - well, people like those of us who worship The Office. What a brilliant stroke - to create a character who reflects worse upon his fans the more devout they become. Could those who sneer at Gervais really be casting aspersions on their own reflections? (Answer at end of post.)

2. While we're on the subject, I need to vent a minor annoyance and follow it with a mild confession. Recently, it was revealed that more adults in the UK recognized the words of David Brent than those of Shakespeare. Pretty sad, you might think - indicative of the short attention span of our media-saturated culture, the overweening lack of literacy, etc. etc. etc. But here's the bigger problem as I see it: he said no such thing! In fact, the misshapen pearls of Brentian wisdom that have been circulating on the 'Net, like on this page, have never surfaced on a single goddamned episode of The Office! Not one! And yet they continue to get quoted in most every piece written on the show these days, article after article after article. After reading a few of these, I was about to rise up in righteous indignation about the laziness and irresponsibility of modern journalists, can't they do research, where are the fact checkers and haven't we learned anything from Stephen Glass and Jayson Blair... then I remembered: I did the exact same stupid thing when I first praised the show more than a year ago. I had done like a lot of people had done and had let the Internet, more specifially the Office quote page at the Internet Movie Database, do my research for me. Now, in my defense, the show was still in its first rotation on BBC America at the time, so I figured the misattributed quote was going to turn up on a then-unseen future episode, and, of all the false Brent quotes, I at least chose the one he was most likely to say. Oh, and nobody gives a shit about anything I say on my blog. That too. That doesn't mitigate my error, I realize. But at least I confessed to it, and if you don't like it, you can, as David Brent would say, "stifle yourself, Meathead."

3. That's put me in a fiesty, daring mood, so let me go on the record with what may be the most controversial statement I'll ever make. Steel yourself, people. I'll give you a line break to prepare.

The American version of The Office may not turn out all that bad.

I know, I know, making a claim like that is tantamount to wearing a "Nader in '04" button to the Democratic Convention, but dammit, I'm going to turn against the tide even if I get crabs up my nose (not the first time that would've happened, but I digress...). Yes, we have a long and unpleasant history of taking decent foreign product and ineptly translating it into Yankese ("Bea Arthur as Basil Fawlty! It can't miss!") and yes, the not-bad Britcom Coupling was turned into a quite-bad US version by the same network responsible for this reduxing just last year, but delusional optimism springs eternal. First off, the guy behind the Stateside remake is Greg Daniels, a man partly responsible for some of the finest comedy on commercial TV over the last fifteen-plus years (King of the Hill, The Simpsons, and what was arguably the true golden age of Saturday Night Live), a man who knows his funny and how to squeeze just the right amount of sap-free poignance out of it. Second, they cast Steve Carell (late of The Daily Show) in the Brent-surrogate role, a truly inspired and oh-so-apropos bit of casting. And third... well, I can't think of a third just now. They seem to be taking a lot more care in transferring it to these shores than they usually do in cases like this, and they're allegedly consulting quite a bit with Gervais and Stephen Merchant in the development process, so, yes, this may indeed wind up a non-disaster, in spite of what absolutely everyone else in the world is saying. If I'm right, well, remember where you heard it first. If I'm wrong, then you're all free to tell me to "sit on it." Just like David Brent would.

(Answer: yes.)

I DON'T KNOW MUCH ABOUT ART OR WHAT I LIKE OR WHAT THE HELL THIS IS, BUT IT'S EASIER THAN WRITING SOMETHING:



(What should we call this? "Mark E. Smith & Nicks" [with a tip of the topknot to the lovely Barbara Manning] seems obvious; what about "Sisters of the Mark E. Moon?" "Belladonn-ah?" "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around, You Maladjusted Little Monkey, You?" "Has Anyone Ever Written 'Elastic Man' For You?" "Fleetwood Manc?" Alternate suggestions more than welcome via the comments link below [in other words, make it look like someone reads this drivel]...)

The winner of the "Count-The-Number-Of-Times-The-Word-'Classic'-Appears-In-Yesterday's-Entry" contest will be announced once we get a reasonable estimate from the inexpensive accounting firm of Cutpricetapwaterhouse.

I've recently been informed that the whole purpose of blogs, beyond the obvious one of hanging your misfortunes, misspellings and malapropisms out for your fellow man to chortle derisively at, is to provide links to things that might conceivably be more interesting than anything you have to offer. And my legal representatives at Shyster-in-the-Box have notified me that I'm way under my quota for the fiscal year. So, here's a few:

Mr. Mike Meets Mr. Bill: In my constant search for bits and pieces pertaining to one of my comedy-writing heroes, Michael O'Donoghue (a man perhaps as well-known for the stuff he wrote that never got produced as for the stuff that did), I happened upon his unbroadcast 1991 pilot for Fox, TV (or, more accurately, about half of it). Sad to say, it's not top-drawer O'Donoghue - as with much of the material he produced in the final years of his life, it's largely lashed together from old material left moldering in his file cabinet, and many of the gags here are rather creaky ("Decapitated" coffee? I'd weep if it weren't for the long steel needles sticking out of my eyes). But I got a kick out of the "Koma" and "Brain Gobblers" bits, the Rutger Hauer scene is a small classic, and there's so little prime O'D accessible in any medium at the moment that I'll take the goods where I can get 'em, even in diluted form.* (Here's a page that gathers together most of the available O'D on the 'Net - some true classics and some, y'know, not-quite-as-true not-nearly-as-classics.) One of the most interesting aspects of TV is that it served as a reunion of sorts of two of the original SNL's most notable black-comic scribes, as the pilot was directed by Walter Williams, the guy responsible for The Mr. Bill Show - if you're a fan of the much-abused hunk of Play-Doh, then you should check out the site from whence this comes, featuring loads of classic material, and not just Señor Guillermo-related either - among others, there's a video he did for the dB's and one of my favorite commercial parodies from SNL's Golden Age. (Windows Media Player required to view all of the above.)

* (Aside to the executors of the O'Donoghue estate - if you're ever looking for someone to compile an anthology of the great man's best work, or just someone you can lock in a room with his files for a week, color me available.)

Lost in the Grooves: A page previewing the book I contributed to is now up, and holy cowshit! Just look at the people I'm gonna be sharing shelf-space with! I mean, Hayden Childs?!? Who'da thunk it!?!

More later...

JESUS SELLS!

(FORTHCOMING SPINOFFS FROM THE HIT [and whip and scourge and torment and nail to a giant T-square] MOVIE OF THE YEAR):

Hey Judas - Distraught over his betrayal of our Lord and Savior (Jason Biggs), Judas (Donnie Wahlberg) attempts to hang himself, but is saved at the last moment by a rip in the space-time continuum (Michael Richards) that thrusts him two millennia into the future, where his brooding good looks and incessant self-loathing put him on the fast track to rock stardom faster than you can say "ridiculous plot contrivance." Before the end of the second reel, Iscariot and the Stick are the hottest young act on the Sunset Strip, despite the fact that he keeps reporting his bandmates to the authorities and none of his groupies will kiss him. It all comes to a head (Christopher Reeve) when, on the verge of signing a major contract, the band plays an industry showcase and an irate audience member cries out "Dylan!" Will Judas wind up embracing musical stardom or resign himself to his bleak destiny in order to save mankind? We'll let you know when all the preview audience comment cards come back.

Freaky Good Friday - Have you ever wondered what would happen if a tear in the fabric of reality caused Jesus and his mother Mary to magically switch places for a day? (If you have, you're guilty of copyright infringement and must surrender to the MPAA within thirty days.) Why is the Son of Man so bent on doing the dishes at the Last Supper? And why does the mother of the Son of Man keep laying hands on all the locals in an attempt to cure their mild colds? Just a few of the wacky mishaps and mixups that ensue in this brutal, unsparing, heartwarming comedy for the entire family. Before the day's out, Mary begins to understand the breadth and depth of her offspring's sacrifice, Jesus gets how tough it is to be a single mother, and we get to see a woman get the crap beat out of her for an hour straight without feminist groups picketing the theatre! Great ending, too - "Boy, Jesus, this certainly has been a trying day for both of us." "Don't worry, Mom, there's a three-day weekend coming up!"

Pilates of the Caribbean - Take one exhausted Roman prefect, add a nutty ripple in the stream of spatial and temporal relativity, mix with a gaggle of scantily-clad modern-day teens on Spring Break in Jamaica ready to teach him the meaning of "Roman fingers" (good thing he washed his hands first!), and what do you get?... You're right, not very much at all, really. But give us a break - our option on the title runs out in six months and we had to come up with something.

(Editor's Note: the forthcoming titles in the straight-to-video Old Testament Softcore series, including Begettin' Some!, Deuteronjeremy, and Go Down, Moses, were not available for review at press time. Thank Christ.)

Y'know, in my foolishness, lack of focus, and general malaise, I do believe I neglected to hep the two or three of you who don't know already to the fact that issue #3 of The High Hat is out. My major contribution to the issue is here - it's nothing special, I don't think, especially compared with some of the stellar performances turned in by our regular caste (no need for links; just start at the top and work your way down - you shan't be disappointed). Oh, and then there's, um, this. Um. Ah. Hmf.

Even the slightest bit curious as to what's playing on This Is Radium Crass this very second? No? Well, here it is anyway (to paraphrase Lorne Michaels, "Information is always acceptable in lieu of ideas")...



More actual commentary coming soon. Honest. Maybe.

Liner notes for my contribution to a round-robin mix-disc exchange some of my online buddies (including many of the bloggers linked at left) are participating in (track-by-track instructions included):

SOUNDTRACK TO AN IMAGINARY MOCKUMENTARY SHOT WITH A MALFUNCTIONING HAND-HELD CAMERA AND A CONDENSER MIC IN AN UNNUMBERED ROOM AT THE ZANESVILLE, OHIO BEST WESTERN (PART 2)

If you were making a soundtrack for your life so far – this song would have to be on it.

1. "A Bad Debt Follows You" - The Go-Betweens

Not debt as in money (though there's that, too), but a constant reminder of all that so many have loaned, granted and bequeathed me in terms of forbearance, support and common generosity, coupled with the knowledge that I could scarce hope to make proper reparations. That's not really what the song's about, though. No matter. It's a great opener.

A song from one of the CDs currently in your 1) car stereo 2) portable CD player 3) stereo (No MP3 or iPod players, just 'cause)

2. "Confidence" - Scritti Politti

The first step on this severe post-punk combo's passage into a lover-boy pop band with one subtly-mascara'd eye toward the politics of romance and the romance of politics.

A song from the first album, cassette, or CD (whichever was first or the oldest that you still have access to) that you purchased for yourself.

A two-parter here:

3. "Farewell to John Denver" - Monty Python

It should surprise no one who knows me that the first long-playing elpee I bought with my own money (don't recall how I earned it - I vaguely recall getting thirty fifty-cent pieces for betraying one of my fourth-grade classmates to the recess monitor. Did I spend study hall watching him get nailed to the jungle gym? Oh, hazy memories...) was a Monty Python record - the then-new Contractual Obligation Album (1980), to be exact. I actually heard this track (or most of it, at least) a few weeks before I purchased it - one of the local AM stations had done a brief news piece on how the subject of the parody in question was, for some odd reason, displeased with being garroted in effigy on a comedy record, sued the perpetrators, and successfully got the offending piece removed from the record (though, strangely, only in England). To illustrate his point, the DJ played the track, bleeping out one of the words so that the "Annie's Song" travesty played as "You (beeeeeep) on my pillow..." You can imagine what my fertile eleven-year-old brain thought was behind the mask(ing), and upon bringing the album home, I ran straight to the rec-room stereo, laid the stylus right on the track, turned the volume down (to protect my younger siblings from whatever foulness was sure to emanate from the speakers), listened - and got thoroughly confused. Hunh? I found my mother and told her how silly the people at KJR were, bleeping out a totally innocent word like "came." She asked for the context. I gave it to her. Once she let me back out of my room, I was old enough to buy my first CD...

4. "Red Guitar" - David Sylvian

...which was Brilliant Trees by the ex-Japan lead singer, a replacement for the cassette of same made by the coolest guy in school for me (I had to give him the blank tape, natch - had to keep me in my place, don'tcha know) a year or two previous. I remember being curiously disappointed that the CD didn't replicate the skips and jumps caused by his accidentally bumping the turntable and decided to leave on the tape anyway. Because, as I said, he was cool.

A song without a word in its title. (i.e. numbers or acronyms)

5. "N.I.T.A." - Young Marble Giants

The most plaintive moment from one of the great post-punk albums. 'Nuff said (especially considering you were probably still reading the notes for track 3 when this was playing).

A song from the year you were born (we’ll take written, recorded, or released)

6. "Ruby" - Silver Apples

Nineteen sixty-nine, okay. Woodstock. Armstrong. Easy Rider. Manson. Altamont. "Peace with honor." The Alaska pipeline. Steffi Graf is born. What better way to encapsulate such a tumultuous year than a weird love song by a couple of electronics freaks with the second-best use of a banjo in the entire decade?

A song with the name of someone in this music swap in it (doesn’t have to be in the title)

7. "Andy in Ten Years" - Game Theory

In tribute to (but not really about) Andy Axel. One of the comparatively normal-sounding pop songs dotting the gloriously fecked-oop soundscape of Lolita Nation, one of the greatest albums ever made. Okay, maybe that's a slight exaggeration. One of the two best double-albums made in the late 1980s with the word "Nation" in the title.

A song in a language other than English.

8. "Qu'Est-Ce Que Tu Veux" - Kahimi Karie

Not only is in French, but it's French as sung by a Japanese woman in her mid-twenties who sounds creepily like a twelve-year-old, like I guess most Japanese women in their mid-twenties do, especially when they're singing in French.

A song with a city or state/province name (countries don’t count).

9. "Daddy Don't Live in That New York City No More" - Steely Dan

So many to choose from, but I thought this Becker/Fagen obscurity would do the trick dandily. (By "obscurity," of course, I mean "one of the three or four songs that never show up on the tri-annual Steely Dan best-ofs that always have the ugliest cover art this side of a copy of Cellulite Fanciers Monthly." )

Say you're planning a multi-day road trip, this song could go on every mix you make for the trip.

10. "Dot Dash" - Wire

Uncommonly propulsive and rousing, a chorus that'd make a great drunken pub sing-along (if said pub was the same place the Young Semioticians Club meets every Thursday), a punk song with a pop structure and just enough intellectual vigor - could this be the perfect song?

A song by a local artist.

11. "White Elephant" - Volcano Suns

Again, far too many fine exemplars of the Bosstown Sound to dismiss, but I'm giving it up here for this great ode to kitsch from one of the best Mission of Burma spin-off bands. It could also fit snugly into the next category, but instead...

A song with a color in the title (bonus points for pink, negative points for raspberry beret)

12. "Pink Frost" - the Chills

...I'm plumping for the greatest song ever written about accidentally killing your significant other in your sleep.

It’s 5am, your alarm is going off, this song would still make you smile.

13. "Jeepster" - T. Rex

This one did, in fact, raise a smile when the clock radio blasted it one fine morning. Something about the ascending guitar/strings interplay in the chorus makes such a sweet, cushiony segue from REM sleep to semi-consciousness. Best pronunciation of "Jaguar" ever, to boot.

Either a cover you thought was an original or an original you thought was a cover (identify in case we may not know which & if a cover, identify the original artist)

14. "Singing to the Sunshine" - Cardinal

I've never heard the original (by some '60s snerds called Mortimer), but I seriously doubt it's anywhere near as gorgeous as the harmonies Richard Davies and Eric Matthews pull off here. Even if Thee Slayer Hippy didn't play drums on this particular track.

A song that is about a specific movie or book or at least mentions a specific movie or book. (identify which one if it is not mentioned by name)

15. "The Seventh Seal" - Scott Walker

I like this one so much better than the song Julian Cope did about Interiors.

WILDCARD

16. "Leo Ryan (Our Pharoah's Slave)" - the Lilys

Pure pop overload - there's gotta be five or six songs' worth of hooks in this seven-minute meisterwerk, a high point of Kurt Heasley's fleeting dalliance with sixties-styled songcraft. (Can't shake the suspicion that this is a paean to his coke dealer, but I'll let that slide.)

A song that has reached number one on a Billboard chart (state which chart and when).

17. "I Wish" - Stevie Wonder

Numero uno on the pop charts, January, 1977. A reminder that Steverino Wonderferishical was once a flat-out funkified genius before he settled into turning out songs in the key of suck. (Yeah, that's a little mean, but don't worry, he'll never see it.)

It’s a little bit country/it’s a little bit rock and roll – this song doesn’t fit a category as far as you’re concerned.

18. "This Magnificent Bird Will Rise" - Deerhoof

Chaos coheres. Yowza.

I hate the artist, but I love the song.

19. "Breaking the Girl" - Red Hot Chili Peppers

I don't despise these guys the way I once did, but boy oh boy, around the time BloodSugarSexMagik slithered out, I was fit to take these mugging funk-heads by the tube socks and fling them into the abyss. But this song, even more than the somewhat over-favored "Under the Bridge," was at least enough to make me hope the abyss didn't have too many jagged rocks sticking out of the sides on the way down.

Wha? If anyone can tell me what this song is about, give me a call.

20. "Sons of Temperance" - the Fall

Any number of Mark E. Smith mumblings could have gone in this space, true, but this one gets me wondering - is he referring to the offspring of the unloved dog breeder's hideous replica he "sang" about in "Impression of J. Temperance" two whole decades previous? Or is he atoning for the drunken stupor he'd sloshed into the few years before and getting all Carrie Nation on our ass? As usual, it hardly matters, not with that killer fuzz-riff and committed vocal performance (sounds like he's rushing to get the words out before his false teeth fall to the studio floor again).

Guilty Pleasure or I am embarrassed that I like it song.

21. "With Your Love" - Jefferson Starship

Yeah, you can just go to Hell, too. Like most of the folks participating in this exchange, I don't have much truck with the notion of a "guilty pleasure" - I likes what I likes and I make no apologies for it - but I must admit this one comes close. What can I say? I have a soft spot in some extremity or other for the sappy love songs Marty Balin contributed to the Airplane and its more galactic offspring, and this one nails me right in the reverberating twinge-center of the gut, the one that only got much use when I was in love or the acid was about to kick in. And please, let's give the man his props for having the good sense and presence of mind a) not to sleep with Grace Slick, unlike the rest of the band and b) to bail out well before somebody got it in their pointed little shrunken heads to pen that municipal-construction anthem of theirs.


Bonus tracks:

TV theme song

22. "Give It to the Soft Boys" - Soft Boys

Okay, okay, it's not really a TV theme song, but back when Robyn Hitchcock was my Platonic ideal of a rock star (pop melodies, Pythonesque absurdism, and hair as unruly as mine), I used to fantasize about this number being the title song for a wacky TV series about the adventures of a nutty rock band. Could've been even better than The Monkees. ("Oh, no, Kimberley! We've gotta be at the princess's birthday party in twenty minutes so we don't lose our apartment but Robyn's got his head stuck in a giant prawn figurine at the Museum of Oversized Crustaceans!" "What, again? Quick, Morris, Andy - grab the oleomargarine, the jumbo spanner and the talking cormorant and come with me!") Hey, a boy can dream...

stump (the group) – any song that you think they may not have heard.

23. Ain't tellin'.

They're local, though, and friends (and one-time collaborators) of mine, and probably a bit ahead of their time - if "Fuck It (I Don't Want You Back)" could be a radio hit, then this one could too. The razor lobby'd probably have issued a fatwa on 'em, but them's the breaks.

Total time: 79:58

I'm staying away from el bloggerino 'til I've discharged some other writular obligations, but I do wanna give what the young dusky urban types call a "shout-out" to two of my personal faves, The Ludic Log and The Vitamin B Glandular Show, who are celebrating their second and first anniversaries respectively. (Come to think of it, it's been about a year since this one started, too. But, as both the frequency and urgency of entries herein have dwindled to a trickle, celebrating it would feel a little like having a birthday party for a jellied calf fetus. And believe me, that's not nearly as fun as it sounds.) Congratulations, Leonard and Elston - you shame and inspire me.

STOPGAP TIME!!!:

...and in other news, Marlon Jackson was chastised in passing today for flashing his love handles at a JV lacrosse game.

Say something encouraging, somebody.

Somebody, somewhere, send some good vibes or something my way. Marriage is a shambles, job sucks, car's dead, I hate living here, cash to fix any of the above (bar the first, which nothing can repair) is scarce and growing scarcer... this shit ain't funny anymore. The abyss looms. Help.

DOWNWARD-FACING 'DOG?' (1):

Got a hold of the new Martin Amis novel, Yellow Dog. Haven't finished it yet, so I'll forestall my comments until then, but reading it did bring to mind a piece I wrote (for the presumably disinterested readership of Lollipop magazine) a few years ago. As literary parody, it's probably lacking: in fact, it's probably one of the least successful things I've ever attempted (there have been worse, oh lawdy yes, but unlike most of those pieces, I had a very clear goal in mind and fell well short of the mark, owing to deadline pressure, general fatigue, and the toxins in my editor-in-chief's breath. Oh, and lack of talent, too; musn't forget that). Still, I have a strange affection for this Thalidomide babe o' mine, and I really need new content for this damned page, so here 'tis:

Vanity, Thy Name is Lucre

Editor's Note: The writer usually held responsible for this feature remains incapacitated with a number of purely literary ailments - a dermatologically rambling outbreak of Kerouacne, several drawn-out and convoluted Pynchon nerves, and a mock-epic bout of Tennyson elbow - therefore, the column will continue to be assigned to a panoply of guest writers until he either recovers or lapses into a delirium so entertaining that simply watching him try to work the keys of his Power VIC-20 with his earlobes will prove funnier than anything he's contributed to these pages in several years. This month's feature comes to us from Merkin Aimless, noted second-generation British satirical novelist and author of such best-lenders as The Lode of Auld Wanque and Spent Advances.

Writing short comic essays is, on the whole, difficult, isn't it. Isn't it. Words tremble out, don't they, thick with time-bloat and city-belch, scalloped with celestial seasonings, the pre-prandial paprika of night: the sky with its abscessed swells, its baked-on calculus, its periodontal table of the elements. One wouldn't blame the long-suffering essayist, would one, if he refused to assay the essay, to uproot his gingivitic muse in an attempt to straighten her orthodontal embrace (and they're always "her"s, aren't they. The muses, I mean. I think. I mean to say, I think, that I don't know. About the muses. I mean, they are, aren't they, always "her"s. Aren't they. Or aren't they).

I've been assigned a 1000-word comic essay. I have. If anyone were to ask me what I were doing, right now, at my award-winning word processor whereupon all my words are, after a fashion, processed, with the dolorous clouds of the London dusk as swollen and disproportionate as the cheques I receive from my British bullybag of a literary agent or the checks my American advance-attaché posts me in the post, this is what I'd say: I've been assigned a 1000-word comic essay. I have. On what subject, they did not specify. This is what they said (they did): "A comic essay. Yes. That would be the done thing to do." That sounds a bit awkward, doesn't it. Doesn't it. It does. But that is how Americans, that is how they talk. This I know because I've been to America, as everyone must. I've been to America, that land of nuke-lag and sack-hacks, of hard-ups and soft-ons, of pain-gloat and slip-ache... what was I writing about? Oh, yes, America. I've been there. I've heard how Americans talk. And Americans talk like that. As Americans must. And I know Americans, know Americans as only an outsider can. This is the thing: I am an outsider. Weaned on pub-grub and sick from ale-ail. I am not, you can tell, an American. Look at my pall-pallor, my sodden street-terror, my eructated erudition, my well-thumbed copy of the OED. Above all (above all), look at my teeth. Look at my teeth. The crumbled queue of decayed dentrifice, the rot-ridden rank of insipid incisors, the faux-feral file of unenamored enamel. Those... those are my teeth. My teeth. They are. These are teeth that have been to America.

Short comic essays, you may notice, have gone the way of the universe. They've gone that way because I just said they have. You remember. Three sentences ago. They've gone that way as the universe has: haemorraging astral hours without hope, without hope of space-clot or cosmo-stanch. The life, the life is bleeding out of it. And I'm the same way: I'm bleeding out of it. Could be the draught-draft, the glacial gust that wafts through the door, the d'or, of the pub where I spend my hours doing research for my latest novel, which itself has gone, not so much the way of the universe, more the way of America. Or my teeth. I can't tell: I'm bleeding out of it. Just like the universe. Except with italics. I go to the pub to seek, to seek, to seek the yeasty waft of pie-sloth and the inverted motor-smog of fag smoke, and also to listen for new low-life slang I can place in the scorched mouths of the dart-slags and bollock-bashers that form the supporting cast, the supporting caste, of my novels. "Don't cock me under, mate. Don't cock me under, right?" That's one I just heard. In the pub. At least I think that's what I heard: I can't be sure because I didn't dare (I didn't) bring my Oxford-educated second-generation novelist form too close to them to hear them right, lest I get a right nosing from them. That's another one, another bit of yob-slang I overheard: "Don't cock me under, mate, or I'll give you a right nosing, right?" Put that in the mouth of a quim-quaffing Cockney layabout, give him a dingy white van and a name like Kif or Biro or Shizz, and I've got a character. A walking metaphor to counterbalance the protagonist, who himself is a walking metaphor. Don't tell anyone (don't tell anyone), but he's me. He's me. A writer obsessed with the universe, America, and his teeth, except he's not me, or he seems not to be me, although I'll give him a name like Nigel Scribe or Denis Me, because I'll have him meet up (in the pub, I reckon. In the pub) with a recurring character called Merkin Aimless, who himself is a writer, and they can have conversations like this:

"So, you're a writer as well, are you?"

"That I am. That... I am."

"What are you writing now, then?"

"I'm into short comic essays. Right up to here."

"Ah. Ah. What's your subject?"

"They're Americans. They didn't specify."

"That must make it difficult, then."

"Not really. Not, not really. I've found, from writing critically-acclaimed novels these many years, that once you find your voice and become recognized for it, that you can pretty much slather any sort of blather onto the page, so long as you give the vague impression of significance, cosmic metaphor and sociological commentary and the like, and get away with it."

"I see. See: I see."

"Add a little post-modernism, like casting an idealized version of yourself in it somewhere, and you'll be set. Lauded worldwide. Get steady income. Enough to pay for a new set of teeth. They don't even have to be funny."

"The teeth?"

"The essays."

"Sounds brilliant. But there's one more thing: one more thing to ask. What if you do all that and you still don't have enough to fill the space?"

"Simple - just use a lot of repetition.

"Yes, that's it.

"Just use a lot of repetition."

Cripes, I've been one slack motherblogga. Almost two months without a post. Let's try'n redress the balance...

LAST MOVIE WATCHED (THEATER): Lost in Translation.

Lots of ink has been spilt in the name of Sofia Coppola's sophomore directorial effort already (of the sort that translates into just enough buzz to slide it into the local googolplex for a two-week run attended by a sparse smattering of suburban cineastes and people who couldn't get in to The School of Rock), which would be enough to make me clam up no matter how much I liked the thing - a little hype is a dangerous thing; a lot of hype might lead to mass prolapse - but, screw it, sing it out, soap it on the windows and leave a flaming bag of praise on every doorstep, this is a fine, fine movie. The things that the film's detractors keep pointing trembling fingers at (the lack of an iron-clad, Syd Field-approved plot matrix, the repeated shots of Scarlett Johanssen's backside) work just beautifully for me (that long, languorous opening shot of Ms. J's glutes works symbolically, you see, both stripped down and restless, much like the two main characters... aw, who'm I kiddin'? Drool*).

But as adorable (cutest baby fat in the biz) and convincing as a young woman adrift as Scarlett is, it's Bill Murray's show all the way. Of course, we all knew that. If he doesn't steal the show, it's not worth pilfering. Murray's screen persona, the thing that's given him far more staying power than any SNL vet to adapt their schtick to a larger canvas, is a kind of focused non-committment. Few performers have ever put quite so much energy into looking like they were just dropped off at the set minutes before shooting; his cinematic CV is full of wry, (at least seemingly) improvised asides and deliveries of written lines that clearly signal to the audience, "Yeah, I know, I'm not buying any of this either." Which, of course, is nothing special in and of itself - most comic actors these days aren't really actors (and many ain't that comic, either), they're basically shpritzbots plunked in the middle of a moribund celluloid wasteland and expected to power the whole works by themselves. The persona's the thing, which leads to either a sputtering mania that sucks all the life out of its surroundings (Jim Carrey, Robin Williams) or a smirky, superior indifference that makes everything around them irrelevant (Chevy Chase) - after all, if they don't care to get involved in what's going on around them, why should we? But there was always more to Murray than that - never as offputting nor as chilly as his comedic lessers, he's mastered a sly and impressive balancing act, not just the ability to be in the scene and apart from it simultaneously, but also the means to use that disconnection to draw the viewer in, (often) being the exemplar of silliness while somehow convincing you that there's something in the silliness that matters. (His closest showbiz equivalent is David Letterman, a guy who shares much of the credit/blame with Murray for ushering in the Age of Irony but who, over time, has revealed himself as the only sincere fellow in the superficial miasma of late-night talk - his every exasperated aside and disbelieving glance into the camera shows a refreshing lack of patience for show-biz bullshit, and, when it counts, has thrown aside the nutty entertainer mask altogether to share a humanity and sensitivity with scarcely a trace of mawkishness [his return from a quadruple-bypass operation, his moving post-9/11 monologue, and the full hour he gave to his dying friend Warren Zevon being the most obvious examples].)

This quality, always there even in the worst movies he's done (he expended so much energy in Charlie's Angels trying to remain steadfastly above his surroundings while affecting a laid-back, casual air that somehow still broadcast to the faithful that he's absolutely miserable being there that he, the least hyperkinetic aspect of the movie, was absolutely exhausting to watch), has been recognized and utilized by some of our more inventive young directors - well, two of them, at least. Maybe three, pending proof of Michael Almereyda's age. Wes Anderson's Rushmore, of course, finally managed to convince certain people that Murray is indeed an actor rather than just a walking smirk (something that some of us already knew, dammit - he may have worked just a bit too hard in the live-TV-redemption scene at the end of the much-maligned [but pretty durned clever and funny, despite Richard Donner's sledgehammer direction] Scrooged, but watch carefully when they run it this holiday season and notice how skillfully he peels away the layers of nastiness in Frank Cross and, beneath the mania, clearly shows exactly how each one crusted over him in the first place), but, if anything, Coppola captures Murray's inner Emmett Kelly even better than Anderson did there (and definitely more than Anderson did in The Royal Tenenbaums, despite a couple of crackerjack deadpan line readings from Murray). Murray's of-it-but-somewhat-out-of-it demeanor suits a picture whose theme is dislocation (temporal, spatial, emotional, spiritual - it's all there). He's never quite fit his surroundings (slightly awkward height, stomach, face), but here it's ramped up - everything in Tokyo is just a little too dark/bright/loud/quiet/fast/slow, a place where even images of yourself look alien. (One of my favorite moments in the movie is when Murray's [unlikely, yeah, but in a world where Steven Seagal continues to get even straight-to-video-worthy roles instead of being shot in the head and dumped in a desert grave, I'm willing to suspend disbelief] American action star runs across one of his old pictures on the hotel TV, a perfect cobbled-together abstraction of his life's work in a few seconds: one shot of a younger Murray [looks like the "Samurai Hit Man" sketch from SNL], one shot of a grimacing chimp, one shot of a car crash.) In such an environment, you gravitate to anything even vaguely familiar you can find, bad news for a fading star still prone to being pestered by fans (a situation, other than the "fading" part, to which Murray can certainly relate), good news in that contact with your fellow aliens can sometimes produce surprise confidantes, even soulmates. Not that fiftysomething Murray and somethingteen-playing-twentysomething Johanssen get up to anything creepy or gross (though the food at that one restaurant...shudder), which is a big relief. What they get up to (even without the meaningful, charged-but-chaste touch they share on the hotel bed) is far more intimate than mere May-December porking anyway. (not finished yet. starting to wheeze. i'm trying, lord, i'm trying...)

* Query: She's 18 now, so it doesn't matter either way, but if a girl under the age of consent plays a character over the age of consent, is it okay to lust after that character?

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)