Archives : all posts by Dan

~guest post by Roger Bainbridge~

Michael Nyman - "Franklyn"

I also remember the day I found dad in the backyard with a rifle. One of the houseboys was using a skeet launcher to fling the heads of some of the mannequins into the air for dad to shoot. Dad was crying, but that wasn't uncommon.

Dad had met mom at design school. She was beginning a study of ergonomics, he, dallying in ceramics. He told me that the first night they made love he had a dream that he was visiting his parents, my grandparents, and that their house was filled with snakes to which they seemed oblivious. They also refused to acknowledge his birthday, which it was in the dream and, oddly, is today. Though he had no serious quarrel with them in his waking life, the next day, the first thing he did was renounce them. Mom never asked him to do this.

And there he was, in his musty housecoat, his shot rate an admirable 7 for 9 considering how the tears blurred his vision. I was back at the estate because my sister Suze has told me the divorce was going poorly. Well, that and things on my end seemed as though they could benefit by some time away. And sure enough, the five days I had spent with him at that point were filled with silent walks and meals punctuated with heavy sighs. I tried to remember some advice he had given me in the past that might find repurposing here, but nothing came to me, which was frustrating because I always cherished the lessons he gave me.

I once asked mom why she dropped out of school and she mumbled something about how chairs just design themselves in the end. In any case, dad ended up following her to the west coast. On their first night in Pasadena, Dad dreamt he and mom were locked in a mall overnight and they entertained each other by putting on a fashion show, trying on all the clothes they'd never be able to afford, her looking gorgeous in the impossible dresses of his subconscious. When he woke, he told mom he was quitting ceramics. She never asked him to do this. Instead, he told her, he was going to design a mannequin based on her so that even if they spent their life in squalor, she'd be dressed in the highest fashions somewhere. The romance wasn't lost on her, but I think she felt the symbolism of the thing meant something else.

And so I finished my coffee and went inside to call Suze. The day's tally was 11 hits for 16 pulls.

[Buy]

Wrong Hole - "Got a Cold"

Panting, in pain, pining, and a painting. This is a garbage Saturday night fresco. Take leave of your senses. Leave them alone so they can recuperate from the abuse. Bruised vision, scarred hearing, battered touch and swollen smell. This, this, and this, are no way to live.

[painting by Jane Duncan]

Rod & The MSR Singers - "Beat of the Traps"

I am magnetic, my bed is magnetic. I am in the shower, spoiler. I am eating, with my eyes, face first. I am biking, breathing wind, surrounded by engines. I am passing, I am stealing, I am all arms. There is a map beneath my feet. It shows me, and I repeat, what I am already doing, and what is immediately done. Generations on repeat, all finding the same hills, at slightly different elevations.

[Buy The American Song-Poem Anthology]

[image from consumeconsume]

TEEN - "More Than I Ask For"

"I don't love you when it's raining," were the only words Edmund could find to say on the phone, the way you'd find a spider bite on your neck or a dead mouse beside the stairs, "And it always seems to be raining." He'd left May twenty-nine days ago, and now that her namesake month had arrived, it was hard not to think of her. Running at dawn, he imagined, undoubtedly; medicate the sadness just like the goodness. Her single breast held only by that sports bra, and not perfectly by his left hand in bed. How easy it was to be poetic about devastation, he thought while biting his nail, it did most of the work for you. He thought of their life like tsunami footage, cars and street lamps and things that once looked so permanent, so heavy, swept up and swirled like the dregs of a cereal bowl. She cried and told him he didn't know what he wanted. Which was like scolding a starving animal for eating whatever's in front of it.

[Buy The Way and Color]

[image by Marion Fayolle]

Jay McCarroll & Mark Little - "Space Riders"

Sean wrote a novel. It's incredible and I love it and you should all read it. It makes sense to promote a novel on here, because this is a site for fiction and truth and writing in words. What I do in the rest of my life doesn't translate as well to Said the Gramophone, which makes it weird when I promote it on here. Like, pass the shoehorn, I need to fit this post in. What I do in the rest of my life isn't written fiction, it doesn't have paragraphs and if it has pages you never see them. I make, apparently, and for now, something like television. But it takes up a huge portion of my mental and physical energy, so it only makes sense (for me, though perhaps not for you) that I would talk about it on here.

Yesterday, on CTV.ca in Canada and Hulu in the US, I launched my newest show, Space Riders: Division Earth. It's a Power Rangers-esque comedy that I made with Mark Little and features, among talents like Gerry Mendocino and Mark McKinney, the genius of Kayla Lorette. It's directed by one of my closest friends Jordan Canning, who was also my co-editor. I'm very proud of it, it's made with lots of love, and I hope you like it too. And if you do like it, don't be shy about sharing it around.

Twitter: @spaceriderstv
Facebook: SpaceRiders
and Bandcamp

Trailer below but FULL 13-episode SHOW at spaceriders.tv

Shane Carruth - "I Love to Be Alone"

Edmund is alone. Like, alone-alone. No contact with his exes, no contact with his children, the only people he's talked to all week have been handing him food over a counter, usually wrapped in foil. And he walks around at night, all night almost, because it feels more like he's in charge at that hour and maybe someone will beat him up and get his pulse going. Empty pockets, except for winter grit and pieces of pieces of pieces of receipts. Unshaven, he wonders how mustaches are supposed to raise money. The second-hand these days is undecided, like a metronome. Grudges like canker sores. Forgiveness like an ATM withdrawal, each one leaving him weaker than the last. Amazed at people actually able to go to work. Amazed they don't arrest you if you don't. He tried to write a letter at least a dozen times and every time "don't make it like a gravestone, you're making it sound like a gravestone." He itched his scalp like it was alive. Secret brain-fed cockroaches that live between the skull and that Bobby Fischer coif. At the bar, seemingly digging into his phone with one finger, as if uncovering the world's greatest goddamned mystery. There is only one opening, and that opening has closed.

[Buy]

Thee Oh Sees - "Penetrating Eye"

And this is stranger sex. Edmund walks into an apartment where the ceiling looks like a tent sagging in the rain, and the only decorations are nail holes and a thin flag. If "alone and awake at 4am drunk" had an apartment, this would be it. Something that smells like wet toast. Something that feels like a begging ritual. Something that sounds like tenderizing meat. And then waking up without having slept. "What are you doing here?" "I could ask you the same question." This was life without May. This was life with a May-shaped hole, gaping and yawning and black and endless. Outside, he wondered when the soonest appropriate time would be to get a beer.

[Pre-Order]

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Tomorrow is Record Store Day. There will be many amazing releases, from Sam Cooke to Devo and from Chvrches to Haim. But among my favourite will be a vinyl release of
Scharpling & Wurster's Rock, Rot, and Rule, the very first Best Show bit. Support your local record stores, and enjoy the treasures.