Archives : all posts by Dan

Landlady - "Coupon Cutters"

Kevin at his life-drawing class. 10am on Saturdays, but every day is Saturday when you're retired. He stands in cargo shorts, his blue shirt tails hanging dearly onto the lip of the elastic band, stretched out from his wine belly. He looks down his nose through his reading glasses at his work. Charcoal swirls, mostly, in the vague shape of the model, a shapely woman, Goldie, who models as often as she can. Which is too often for Kevin. He looks around, sighs, and continues his swirls. He is more interested in Trevor, the 6'10" house painter who has his easel extended to maximum and still has to stoop. He's like a Jacques Tati drawing. Kevin wants to draw Ida, the little Jewish lady, probably the mother of many, working out stress, she goes through pages and pages, drawing furiously and fast. He'd rather have the teacher, Theresa, model for them. She has the edges of a woman who has abstained more than partaken. Probably typical for a life-drawing teacher, thought Kevin, expert at observing, incapable of experiencing. But this pent-up restraint probably makes her crazy in bed, he thought. That silver hair, let out of that hippie bun, she'd be a bony joy. Time for a smoke. His arousal was always relentless this time of the morning, has been since he was a teenager, sometimes you just need to walk away, look at the sun, breathe something else. While he watched a car inch forward and back out of the parking lot, he thought about drawing anything but life. Consistency, travel, gumption, draw that stuff. Draw a field of gravity, an unspoken thought, a natural bridge. [Buy Keeping To Yourself]

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So, Dad Drives won the contest! Thank you all so much for your support, you were really invaluable in making it happen. As promised, we'll get to work on more episodes.

(collage by the incredible Beth Hoeckel, thanks to Bryce for finding out!)

A. David MacKinnon - "The Past is a Foreign Country"

Carolyn, Edmund's first wife, is a secret eater. M&Ms behind the Kashi, skittles between the couch pillows, chips in the desk. Garry, her border-guard boyfriend, has had a long day, lies watching Guy Fieri in the basement. Her father, Kevin the poet, is in the kitchen washing the salad bowl, listening to a podcast. Evelyn, the daughter she had with Edmund, is doing sit-ups in her room, in expensive workout clothes. "I'm taking Melon out!" Carolyn half-shouts up the stairs and to the house. Melon is the Bull-mix dog with eyes like a bad facelift. She ducks into the night, warm March and too-heavy coat. Melon pulls and stretches the leash and Carolyn thinks about the neighbours. Gay. Christmas guilt. Rich. That shouting match. Never see them. She jogs across the street and wonders how many cars it would take to make the road as thin as paper, if you pick up a bit of the road when you walk on it. Melon goes on a lawn. Carolyn bags, gags, and hurries on her way. She gets to the Coffee Time, order already made in her head. She pretends to look out at a car, trying falsely to remember. "Uhh..two sour creams and a honey custard, I think," she knows. The donutier, like ringing through condoms or pornography, simply does the job without hint of expression. On the walk home she can feel the sugar like crystals in her blood, now able to think again about her family and the day. I hope Garry doesn't frost his tips. [Buy]

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Last chance to help Dad Drives, contest ends Thursday. I need about 2K more views to really clinch this thing, so share it as wide as you can. Thanks!

Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band - "Candle Mambo"
Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band - "Owed T'Alex"

Edmund and May at the cabin in March. Cold crust, with thin cold must, the air is special, preserved inside that porous house all winter like finding an unopened Christmas gift. Air whose time has passed. They arrived at five and started cooking right away, hungrily sweatered and the gas stove warms the house. As Edmund seared the scallops, May went to put on some music. For as long as he'd known it, the cabin had only ever had four records: Tapestry, Loaded, ZoSo, and Trout Mask Replica. "Is this it?" she said in that way that reminded Edmund how little she still knew about him. It was easy to talk to May, she was soft with eyes that listened wide, and she made it easy to forget that she hadn't taken any of the million tiny steps towards easy knowledge of someone else. The way you reveal yourself to people in separate layered moments, yes these are my DVDs, most of my clothes are gifts, I'll lend you this book it reminds me of you, and clock the reaction each time, file it away amidst the rest. Carolyn liked the records, she had said "They fit any mood you could ever have," Alison laughed, "That's cute," possibly meaning his parents, who had acquired the records and never bothered to add to them, as it was originally their cabin. Jen didn't even notice, Edmund had to point it out. And now May, simply put on "Going to California" and they danced like silly hippies, their hands in the air, their bodies gravity-stricken, like happy droopy skeletons. The cabin had no electricity, so they danced in the light of oil lamps and from the fireplace, and the way the flames made the whole cabin flicker, it gave everything a fragile quality, like it could all go out any second.

They made love in the living room that night, and watched the sun rise over the lake, which cracked with frozen shards. The morning seemed like the very first letter in the sentence of spring.

Led Zeppelin - "Going to California"

[Buy Beefheart's lost Bat Chain Puller] [Buy Led Zeppelin IV]

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DAD DRIVES

I've made the first episode of a potential new web series. It's for a contest which, if won, would fund the production of more episodes. The contest tracks views, likes, favourites, comments, all that stuff. So if you like it, social-media the hell out of it. It features myself and Mark Little, of Picnicface, which is a show on Canada's Comedy Network.

In September of 1988, Bobby McFerrin was no. 1 on the Billboard charts, André the Giant was at the very height of his career in the WWF, in a feud with the Hulkman himself, and Edmund was losing his virginity. Or rather, finally shaking it off. He was 16, and Thea Fielding had just turned 17, it happened on her birthday. She lay with her head uplifted like a doe, eyes like endless wells. Neither made hardly a sound.

In West Berlin, there were protests, violent, against the World Bank. Edmund's German lineage made the Wall a regular topic of dinner table discussion, over creamed potatoes and niblets. But he screwed for the first time unaware of the violence, the suffering, the sacrifice that people endure to express themselves. He had the closest thing in the world, another body attached to his, and he didn't say a word. If ever there were a chance to express oneself, surely this was it. But there was just breath, and looking, at and away, and irregular rhythm.

The summer olympics were happening in Korea. Greg Louganis hit his head on the diving board and bled into the pool. He was HIV positive at the time. Thea didn't notice as she bled upon the sheet, covered blue in stars. It can't survive in open water, the other swimmers weren't in any danger. Edmund apologized involuntarily, after it was over, and lay looking at the ceiling, finally hearing the clock again, snick snick snick.

Tom Scharpling - "John McCain Plays the Theremin" (during the 2008 election race)
Tom & Paul F. Tompkins - "vs. Michael K" (Michael K plays in The Cynics, and is a notoriously boring, long-winded caller)
Tom Scharpling - "Chestnut Mare"
Tom Scharpling - "Impressions"

I've posted about The Best Show on WFMU before, but it's the WFMU fundraiser again, the final Best Show drive show is tonight at 9, and I want to make sure it doesn't get missed. The Best Show on WFMU is one of my very favourite things in the world, and I will tell you why:

It is one of the most novel and successful comedy experiments I've ever encountered. It's a three-hour call-in radio show every week, and it's currently in its 12th straight year. That's ~1800 hours of broadcasting, which in itself is not novel or an experiment, those things comes from the way those hours are used. Stories that get completed or continued spanning years between their updates. Callers and guests that feed back on their previous appearances, recalling moments or even phrases from months prior. A caller who started appearing on the show when he was 10, who's now grown up, become angsty and angry and been banned dramatically and permanently. Crazies and assholes and beautiful, marvelous accidents. And at the center of it all is Tom Scharpling, who has evolved as well. The growing popularity of the show modifying his approach, his moralism and impatience for negativity have streamlined the show's trajectory even further. Just listen, and keep listening, and listen more. For the lonely, the confused, the intelligent or the silly, Best Show is an iceberg, that one can only ever experience the tip, so hopefully one of these four tips will make you want to explore the rest. And if you're already a fan, don't forget to support. Non-"podtrash" radio, chump-steamrolling WFMU needs your help, and the way I help them is through Best Show.

[So tonight, from 9pm-midnight, stream the show at wfmu.org, and pledge +75$ to receive the prize pack, an always-incredible collection of original single-run comedy material. It will not disappoint, and it will never be available again after the funding drive. Last week, Tom broke all previous records by raising 100K in 3 hours, let's break 'em again.]

(image: Tom Scharpling and Best Show-regular Jon Wurster)

Sleigh Bells - "Crush"

Frank, 9, plays a candy game. They don't even call them video games anymore. He drives at blinding speeds, through tunnels and colours like drug trips. He dates three girls, two of whom aren't human, but anthropomorphic animals in onesies. He designs advertisements, for skateboards and fast food, and pays for his fake apartment with the cheques. He spraypaints at night (tag the tower!) and steals from the rich, sneaks through their windows and leaves the sun stains where the paintings used to be. He rips up sidewalks, he overturns cars, he is courageous, penetrant, spectacular. He rescues innocent hostages, from tied up attics and shipping containers, while getting texts from his best girl, a koala with tiny hands and a bowie knife. Frank has his first erection when playing the game, he gets a text: "I want to see you tonight." And he takes off, travelling the wifi cloud and boosted by the cell phone signal, into the polluted night sky, stained perpetually a deep beautiful dark blue.

[Buy from their site]

PS I Love You - "Starfield (CJLO session)"

May jogs. Breath cloud, cold wet nose like a dog. Jog the day through the shoes, pat it all out with footfalls. This winter like a 6-month Fall. The organ of the brain, behind the eyes, shakes like a white-knobbed sketching toy, emptied by the rhythm, grey slate resting state. May jogs. May works her job. May only rest, 1 or 0, only what happens is the set of things that happen. Puff. Puff. Puff.

[Great album FREE (+tip if you want)]

(photo, of a bathroom stall in Bristol, by Lesley Stoch)

Dirty Three - "Rising Below"

Edmund was at his father's apartment building, a building filled with many retired people and elderly couples that jog. Edmund's father Peter was a member, in fact a co-founder, of the Helping Hands committee, a service put in place to assist the families of those who pass away in the building. If someone dies and they have a small family, or in some cases an unsupportive family, Peter and four other men in the building have volunteered to help sort personal effects and clean up the unit. Edmund calls them the "Corpse Troopers", which Peter is somehow able to laugh about. On his visit today, Edmund was conscripted to help with a clean-up, that of Judith Martin's apartment, a little yellow-haired lady of 91 who owned three closets full of sundresses.

As they boxed and bagged tablecloths and stacked plates, both decorative and non, Edmund told Peter about his new girlfriend May. "She's great, she works for the province." He had been reticent to confess about seeing her, because he'd anticipated that special look in his father's eyes, that look of "here we go again". "Oh yeah?" said Peter, not looking up from the china trays and photo albums, "You talk to Jen recently?" Jen, Edmund's third wife, had been Peter's favourite. Probably because Jen's natural state was flirtatious and her magnetism was felt most acutely by those just outside her closeness. "Jen? Why do you ask?" Edmund thought about why they couldn't just destroy all this left over stuff. It would be so soothing, to rip a sundress in two, send death a real message: don't mess with me. "Oh, I don't know..." One of Peter's time-perfected fade-outs. Edmund considered not following up. "No, why?"

"I just think you should have fought for her. I thought she was the one."

Edmund was not usually one to rant. He hated ranting because whenever he watched someone do it there were dips and valleys of meaning and focus, where they lost the plot and tried to bring it back. A rant's never a planned thing, and that means it's almost definitely going to go wrong, if even for a second: "Fight for her? Dad, what are you talking about? Fight for her?! I fought everyone else in the world so she'd love me and that wasn't enough, I'm not gonna fight her too!"

Peter took a breath, panting almost as much as Edmund. "Well--"

"And don't give me this bullshit about the 'the one'! Fuck 'the one'! 'The one' is dead! There is only the many. It's taken me this long, forty years of seeking steadiness and pattern to realize that steady is a lie, it's not that it doesn't exist, it exists, it's just a lie. It's like smoking. It's only the transitions that keep things going. Rooms are over, Dad, it's all about doors now!" And he slammed the door to the apartment, with the 419 nailed to it, Judith Martin's 419. Or rather, no longer hers.

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