1000monkeys1typewriter
@gma
Fine.
Monday, October 20, 2008
Here are your goddamn fighting monkeys, people on Google. Now go home.
Posted byLouis Berceli at 12:39 PM 7 comments
Labels: blow me google, fighting, monkeys, monkeys fighting
Oh, hey.
Friday, October 10, 2008
I finished the novel, so forgive me if my posting slows a bit.
Posted byLouis Berceli at 9:57 AM 0 comments
Labels: novel
Online Treasures
Sunday, October 5, 2008
It isn't often that you find something truly worthy on the internet anymore. Humor has devolved into meta-jokes only funny to people who honestly care about such things. Fiction is lost in a sea of fan-fiction. Art is the stuff of Deviantart.
Every now and then, however, you find something like Spiny Norman. Spiny is a poster on Somethingawful, a massive forum that you've heard about. He's fairly well known on the forum for his ability to tell a good story. These are generally mundane, just episodes involving friends and drink, but recently he seems to have outdone himself.
His newest story is called "Let Me Tell You About my Buddy Stephenson". Not the snappiest title, I know, but give it a read and you won't regret it. His sense of scenery, his dialogue, it sounds like a cross between Neil Gaiman and an old storyteller sitting at a fire. Yes, I'm now unapologetically expressing my love of Gaiman. That's what Spiny has done to me.
If you aren't already a forum member, pardon the ads and trudge through a few pages of replies to read the story so far. You won't regret it.
Posted byLouis Berceli at 6:41 PM 0 comments
Labels: fiction, storytelling
Louis tries new music, vomits at train station
So, at the urging of an old friend, I decided to attend the Dan Deacon Baltimore Round Robin show in Boston. The concept seemed cool enough, eight stages that would play in constant rotation throughout the show, giving a constant sequence of bands with no break in between sets. Because I'm a cautious man, I invited Cam along and got good and liquored up before arriving. This ended up being both my salvation and downfall.
We staggered off the train and began shouting "Dan Deacon!" which acted as a sort of homing beacon for art students. They responded to our siren song and gave us rudimentary directions, none of which were of any help. These people clearly hadn't used their left brains in quite some while, and were useless as rudimentary pathfinding. We eventually decided to investigate a narrow road leading past a dumpster, on the grounds that art majors would likely lack the brute strength to properly mug us. We found an open door and heard the distant thump of a subwoofer, and at once we were there.
After buying tickets, we investigated the venue. Where I had imagined a concert hall, I found a college auditorium, smaller than most at my high school. Where I had imagined stages, I found folding tables. Where I had imagined instruments, I found goddamn laptops. Dismayed and a little angry, me and Cam stepped outside to slug back some more bourbon. We sat on some concrete stairs next to a herd of bikes until the time arrived, and we shuffled off to see the show.
Immediately, things began going wrong. We stood awkwardly in the middle of the room in a crowd of college kids. A group of people began to form a ring around the crowd, holding hands. They began to drone like ancient monks, hands held high, and then a bearded man in a t shirt began a discordant version of the national anthem. The audience booed his choice of song.
"I paid for this shit!" I roared. Cam laughed in my face, having only paid for the booze. The bands began to play, if you could call it that.
Imagine, if you will, a small group of people huddled around a laptop. Now imagine one of them pressing "play" and nodding as music begins.
Now imagine a crowd of people cheering wildly and dancing like their lives depended on it. Imagine me in the back, screaming abuse that is drowned in the room's terrible acoustics.
Eventually a man in green spandex climbed atop a speaker and cooed at the audience while dancing jig. Me and Cam, slowly realizing that the cooing would be considered a song unto itself, decided to beat a hasty retreat and save some of our dignity.
On the train ride home, my belly full of bourbon began to violently protest. Maybe it was the train's lurching stops or maybe it was my body trying to physically purge itself of the night's music, but when we reached our station I took three shaky steps onto the platform and let loose a torrent of vomit. We drove home in silence.
Posted byLouis Berceli at 12:32 PM 0 comments
Labels: Music, whorebaggery
Paul Newman is Dead
Saturday, September 27, 2008
He was a great man.
Posted byCameron Mulvey at 7:06 AM 0 comments
Labels: death
Classical Music
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Somewhere along the line, a decision was made to dismiss a huge portion of music. We decided to lump it under a derisive name, Classical, and leave it to the elderly white folks. Anything performed by an orchestra and not composed by Philip Glass is Classical, we decided, and I hope to hell a vote wasn’t taken. I hope this decision was made by one sinister individual, someone I can hit with sticks while reading aloud from a history book. There was Renaissance, Baroque, Classical and Romantic music. If you can call "8 Bit" a genre with a straight face, remembering a few more names can't be too hard.
Classical music is commonly considered to be the music of the wealthy. This is a lie. The wealthy are allowed, no, expected to be eccentric. If someone owns six houses, they’re expected to collect Beatles memorabilia or perhaps have a poster of Elvis hanging in an expensive frame in their living room. No, Classical music (and I continue to use the term reluctantly) is the music of the upper middle class, baby boomers who want to be cultured, to adopt the guise of the theoretical wealthy. The aristocracy and the plebians share the same musical taste while the strange orphans of culture cling to music that has become all their own.
Cultural implications of the music aside, it’s a shame we have relinquished so much music to the shadows of history. We, as humans, seek humanity in our musical gods. We have Jimi Hendrix, Elvis Presley, Jim Morrison, Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash. These are all well and good, all geniuses in their own right, but the past has mighty figures of its own to offer. Below are three talents, by no means the only talents, whose lives are as inspirational as their music.
Ludwig Van Beethoven, The Artist
It seems almost insulting to my readers to bring up Beethoven, since few composers are as widely recognized as he. He was the archetypical Tortured Artist, a man whose music reflected his mood swings. His deafness did not keep him from composing, and one could say it may even have augmented his music. His was a painful condition, one that left him in a near-constant state of torment. He was known for scrawling on the walls of his room and casting papers about in fits of rage.
Franz Liszt, The Repented Rake
Liszt was, to put it simply, the rock star of the Romantic movement. He was revered far and wide not only for his looks but for his nearly superhuman skills at the piano. He toured Europe, amassing a reputation as both a Don Juan and a virtuoso pianist, then without warning vanished into Rome to study religion and later took minor holy orders. In his later life he wrote experimental piano pieces that were nearly a century ahead of their time.
Charles Ives, The American
Ives was the archetypical American, a gruff, practical man who retched at the thought of being known exclusively as an artist. Once, when asked what he played, he replied “Shortstop.” Ives wrote brilliant, discordant music that most Americans simply weren’t ready for. When attending a concert of similar music, Ives witnessed the audience booing the composer. He stood up and shouted, “You goddamn sissy… When you hear strong masculine music like this, get up and use your ears like a man!”
Posted byLouis Berceli at 6:48 AM 1 comments
Louis' Divine Truths of the Horrible Morning Hour
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Don't tell people something is "So bad it's good." Just be honest and say "Everyone else says it's shit but I still like it."
Posted byLouis Berceli at 9:06 PM 0 comments
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