Whatcha reading?

[Kory]

Seinfeld continues to bring the spirit of the owner of a small businessman's consulting firm to comedy and it shows.

Ha! Wonderful analogy. I was never wowed by his stand-up pre-sitcom, but, man, the bits I've seen in the last decade or so are just dire.

It's never laugh-out-loud funny, but it can be sort of "oh yeah, I never thought of that but now that you mention it, it affects me every day."

[Dr. Medulla]

Seinfeld continues to bring the spirit of the owner of a small businessman's consulting firm to comedy and it shows.

Ha! Wonderful analogy. I was never wowed by his stand-up pre-sitcom, but, man, the bits I've seen in the last decade or so are just dire.

It's never laugh-out-loud funny, but it can be sort of "oh yeah, I never thought of that but now that you mention it, it affects me every day."

I now remember that I was given a copy of his book in the 90s that was just a collection of jokes. It was a humour desert.

[Dr. Medulla]

Finally finished that hideous book on rock n roll in Kennedy's America. I haven't actively loathed a book that much since Klosterman's waste of time on the 90s. Quick tip on how to make me hate you: Pick a topic that I'm interested in and that pursue it in the most lazy fucking way possible. Go do that to Iron Maiden, I don't care about them. How a guy could acknowledge segregation and fears of nuclear war yet still yammer on about innocence that was lost when Kennedy decided to use a convertible, it's beyond me. The book was a fucking undergrad paper and one that I'd allow into the B range only because of the research.

Up next for audiobooks:

Francis Fukuyama, Liberalism and its Discontents. The blurb says it's an analysis of the challenge to the dominant liberalism of the past several decades from left and right. I expect to enjoy this for the kvetching.

Tub book:

Anne Elizabeth Moore, Unmarketable. Been reading this for a few days. It deals with both punk demands for authenticity and integrity in our lives and the challenges of resisting corporate branding of our existence.

[Kory]

Tub book:

Anne Elizabeth Moore, Unmarketable. Been reading this for a few days. It deals with both punk demands for authenticity and integrity in our lives and the challenges of resisting corporate branding of our existence.

This seems interesting, I think about that stuff a lot.

[Dr. Medulla]

Tub book:

Anne Elizabeth Moore, Unmarketable. Been reading this for a few days. It deals with both punk demands for authenticity and integrity in our lives and the challenges of resisting corporate branding of our existence.

This seems interesting, I think about that stuff a lot.

So far, what I like about it is that it's primarily focused on critiquing those who pursue culture jamming. That is, shit's a whole lot tougher than we want to believe.

[Silent Majority]

149) The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing: Violate Them at Your Own Risk - Al Ries and Jack Trout. 1993. Audiobook. Overprepared for a marketing meeting with the guys in Germany who just wanted to shoot the breeze. Oh, well. The outdated advice here was the foundational text I was looking for as an 'in' and the cigar chomping references to new coke were charmingly quaint.

150) Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing - Matthew Perry. Audiobook. 2022. Perry is above all else a helpless addict and every addict's story is as similar as it is different. He is a lonely and beaten man, disgusted at having to live as himself. Years of meetings and therapy have sharpened the telling of his stories and we leave him with some hope.

151) Beeswing: Fairport, Folk Rock and Finding My Voice, 1967–75 - Richard Thompson. Paperback. 2021. Thompson writes prose the way he writes songs, with a charming self deprecation which doesn't undo the true emotion he's conveying. I loved this.

152) The Monster Club - R. Chetwynd-Hayes. Paperback. 1976. Some excellent short horror stories with a childish and stupid framing device. You know this has to have been retrofitted as a way to pull older material together in a single volume. This was adapted, somewhat, into an anthology film with Vincent Price and that movie has the same tonal issues writ much larger

[Dr. Medulla]

Tub book:

Jostein Gaarder, Maya. I've read this before, but no idea when or what I thought of it. I know it has something to do with a woman who looks eerily like the model for Goya's Maja paintings.

Bedtime:

Miki Berenyi, Fingers Crossed. I'm about halfway thru—Lush has just signed to 4AD where I'm at—and this is mostly heartbreaking stuff. She grew up regularly molested by her grandmother, a father of dubious maturity, a mother who leaves her to move to California with her asshole second husband. No surprise that MB engages in a lot of self-harm and self-sabotage. Reading it I want to give the girl she was a hug. But the writer she is now is self-deprecating and insightful. Hard not to root for her as the narrative unfurls.

Only about 20 mins left in the Fukuyama book. It's an okay accounting of how liberalism has come under attack from the left and right. To his credit, he does pin a lot of blame on the excesses and, in his view, unwise applications of neoliberalism. While he rejects most of the criticism of the left and right—his is a defence of liberalism and its institutions—he clearly regards the faux populists of the far right as more dangerous. That said, the book has some sloppy errors—putting McCarthyism in the 40s, calling Nixon's 1968 victory a landslide—that suggest he didn't have an editor or outside readers offering feedback. And he engages in the problematic binary of slicing the world as right or left, no centre. So Clinton and Blair get labeled figures of the left, which undercuts his credibility as an analyst.

[Kory]

150) Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing - Matthew Perry. Audiobook. 2022. Perry is above all else a helpless addict and every addict's story is as similar as it is different. He is a lonely and beaten man, disgusted at having to live as himself. Years of meetings and therapy have sharpened the telling of his stories and we leave him with some hope.

I read this too, I hope he's going to be alright. We aren't that far away from his most recent relapse. Was a little baffled at his Keanu Reeves callout though. I guess he associates him with River Phoenix because of Idaho and so it was the nearest comparison on hand?

[Kory]

Miki Berenyi, Fingers Crossed. I'm about halfway thru—Lush has just signed to 4AD where I'm at—and this is mostly heartbreaking stuff. She grew up regularly molested by her grandmother, a father of dubious maturity, a mother who leaves her to move to California with her asshole second husband. No surprise that MB engages in a lot of self-harm and self-sabotage. Reading it I want to give the girl she was a hug. But the writer she is now is self-deprecating and insightful. Hard not to root for her as the narrative unfurls.

I read this too, her childhood seemed like a nightmare, and being in Lush didn't seem much better in many ways.

[Dr. Medulla]

Miki Berenyi, Fingers Crossed. I'm about halfway thru—Lush has just signed to 4AD where I'm at—and this is mostly heartbreaking stuff. She grew up regularly molested by her grandmother, a father of dubious maturity, a mother who leaves her to move to California with her asshole second husband. No surprise that MB engages in a lot of self-harm and self-sabotage. Reading it I want to give the girl she was a hug. But the writer she is now is self-deprecating and insightful. Hard not to root for her as the narrative unfurls.

I read this too, her childhood seemed like a nightmare, and being in Lush didn't seem much better in many ways.

Finished reading it this afternoon. What a shocker to find out so many guys in bands are complete predatory assholes. Even, gasp, the RHCP!

[Kory]

Miki Berenyi, Fingers Crossed. I'm about halfway thru—Lush has just signed to 4AD where I'm at—and this is mostly heartbreaking stuff. She grew up regularly molested by her grandmother, a father of dubious maturity, a mother who leaves her to move to California with her asshole second husband. No surprise that MB engages in a lot of self-harm and self-sabotage. Reading it I want to give the girl she was a hug. But the writer she is now is self-deprecating and insightful. Hard not to root for her as the narrative unfurls.

I read this too, her childhood seemed like a nightmare, and being in Lush didn't seem much better in many ways.

Finished reading it this afternoon. What a shocker to find out so many guys in bands are complete predatory assholes. Even, gasp, the RHCP!

Yeah I was really frustrated reading those stories. Not that I didn't know it to be true before reading the book, but just from the sense that this stuff is not only tolerated, but pretty much encouraged. I don't get why people can't just leave each other alone.

[Dr. Medulla]

Miki Berenyi, Fingers Crossed. I'm about halfway thru—Lush has just signed to 4AD where I'm at—and this is mostly heartbreaking stuff. She grew up regularly molested by her grandmother, a father of dubious maturity, a mother who leaves her to move to California with her asshole second husband. No surprise that MB engages in a lot of self-harm and self-sabotage. Reading it I want to give the girl she was a hug. But the writer she is now is self-deprecating and insightful. Hard not to root for her as the narrative unfurls.

I read this too, her childhood seemed like a nightmare, and being in Lush didn't seem much better in many ways.

Finished reading it this afternoon. What a shocker to find out so many guys in bands are complete predatory assholes. Even, gasp, the RHCP!

Yeah I was really frustrated reading those stories. Not that I didn't know it to be true before reading the book, but just from the sense that this stuff is not only tolerated, but pretty much encouraged. I don't get why people can't just leave each other alone.

Worse, the laddism of Britpop that framed sexual abuse as edgy and cool. So women in the scene had to put up with it or not be cool.

[Silent Majority]

1) The Commodore – C.S. Forester. Audiobook. 1945. Two more of the 11 Hornblower books to go. I’m not quite trudging through these novels like a Napoleonic soldier returning from Alexander’s Russia, but it would have been good if I had picked up the Patrick O’Brian series like I’d intended to. The Star Trek-esque journey through the British navy has had a lot to enjoy and the rising through the ranks and accumulation of power has overlapped with my interests, but at this stage, I’m just not interested enough in the main character or his times to warrant the time invested. But to not finish this series? Impossible.

[Dr. Medulla]

Research readin'

Glenn Altschuler, All Shook Up. Looking for a 1950s period book for my rock class next year. Got a few to check out, but this seems the most straight-forward. Whether it's more than a basic narrative is the question.

Audio

Jeff Kosseff, The United States of Anonymous: How the First Amendment Shaped Online Speech. This is a legal history of speech and anonymity in the US, and I know a lot of the discussion is going past me, but it's a subject that intrigues, so I'm giving it a go.

Bedtime

Tom Perrotta, Tracy Flick Can't Win. Who didn't love Election? Maybe a sequel sucks, but I'll give it a go.

[Dr. Medulla]

Read this issue by issue when it came out, but now sitting down to read the whole thing at once. I think it has a claim to being one of the very best FF stories. Like the Spider-man Life Story series, it reimagines Marvel heroes aging in real time, and follows them decade by decade. In this version, the moment that the four are exposed to cosmic rays, Reed Richards has a vision of Galactus coming to destroy Earth and devotes the rest of his life to preparing for that moment. It's obsession that is heroic and self-destructive.