Evidently I just can’t get enough of Slowdive covers. Here’s the now defunct (or on hiatus) Center of the Sun doing a crunchy, guitar-drenched cover of “Machine Gun.”
They also did a cover of Mazzy Star’s “Fade Into You.” Obviously this is a band on my wavelength…
By now you should have figured out that book collectors are insane. If not, what I paid for the following item should convince you:
Lovecraft, H. P. Envelope Addressed to Robert Barlow, with Lovecraft’s return address on the back, in Lovecraft’s own handwriting. Postmarked December 4, 1931.
Barlow was a longtime correspondent of Lovecraft’s. The envelope itself bears the return address for another Lovecraft associate, bookseller George W. Kirk, a fellow member of the “Kalem Club,” a group of close friends from the time he lived in New York City from 1924-1927.
Bought for $328 off eBay.
Pretty much all books Lovecraft signed in his lifetime, as well as letters, postcards, etc., have commas in the price. This struck me as a way I could afford a Lovecraft signature.
Now I just need those James Tiptree, Jr. and Thomas Pynchon signatures…
Silvania is Peruvian duo currently resident in Spain (and not a manufacturer of inferior lightbulbs). “Trilce” is from the “floaty, spacy” branch of Shoegaze.
I hope you like religious statuary…
Though this happened last year, with the Olympics starting it’s newly relevant again: Canadian curler gets two year ban for steroids.
Still waiting for that chess steroid scandal…
A double-dose of restaurant relocation news I don’t think has been reported anywhere else:
Prima Pizza Pasta has relocated from its location at Parmer and McNeil to a new location at Anderson Mill and 620 as of February 1st. (The news is so new they haven’t updated their website yet.)
Taking the old Prima space on Parmer (as well as their phone number) is a new restaurant called Mi Pizza, which seems to focus on custom-designed 11 inch pizzas cooked in 5 minutes for $6.99.
(News in route to The Logbook of the Saturday Dining Conspiracy.)
I recently got a packet on my doorstop that included a small square flyer that read “If you or someone you love has been damaged by psychiatric treatment…Please call the CITIZENS COMMISSION ON HUMAN RIGHTS”. Plus a number to call.
For the edification of those who received such a flyer and who were previously unaware of “Citizens Commission on Human Rights,” you should know that they are a font group for the Church of Scientology.
Personally I think most psychiatric theory (as opposed to neurochemistry) is little better than pseudoscience, but if you have been damaged by psychiatric treatment, you’d probably be a lot better off contacting the state Attorney General than inviting Scientology into your lives…
Chicago-based Airiel’s newest EP, Kid Games, features some truly beautiful work. including “Funereals,” which has an ethereal wall-of-sound that reminds me of Popol Vu’s soundtrack to Aquirre: The Wrath of God.
So the trailer for Terry Gilliam’s forthcoming Zero Theorem is out:
It’s the science fiction dead end job loser virtual reality physics dating sim you’ve been waiting for!
Could be epic, or an epic train wreck…
Not a lot of news on the personal blogging front, so I’ll put down last night’s dream. which was interesting not only for multiple dreamed disasters, but also because I remembered long stretches and multiple scenes of it.
First I dreamed my family and I were all living in a spacious glass-walled condo (we never lived in any type of condo), when three assault helicopters surrounded the building. Since they were flying at exactly our level, we came to the conclusion they were spying on us and closed all the drapes/blinds. We also worried they were eavesdropping on us, or had tapped our (landline) phones, so we went out for Chinese food.
At the Chinese restaurant, we hadn’t even been seated when I noticed a tornado off in the distance, shouted to alert the restaurant of this fact, then made my way to an inner corner to duck and cover. I remember that corner seemed unused and trash-strewn. (I dream semi-regularly about tornadoes, though thankfully I’ve never seen one in person.)
Later I was walking toward downtown Austin, when I looked up and saw debris floating in the air, and realized a large bomb had gone off. Troops were coming in on one of those large street overpasses Austin doesn’t have, and I quickly turned and walked the other direction for fear of being blamed for the bomb. (I put this down to watching videos of the situation in Ukraine.)
Next I was in a building and realized that the political elites had all left earth for another planet, that the infrastructure on this one was starting to fail, and two women were there for vaguely menacing reasons, trying to get me to go somewhere. I tried to convince them that the situation was a great reason to have sex, but they weren’t buying it. I also remember speaking at a meeting/rally on the problem, where I was trying to work the word “sabotage” into the description of the problem, so I could then introduce the Beastie Boys and get them to play that.
Finally, I remember driving up to a beach house in my uncle’s car, driving into the garage, then through a second space, an finally into a third space that opened out into three separate parking spaces lobes, each on a sort of upward slope. I remember thinking it was a lot of space for a garage, and worrying since his car had no reverse. But once inside it was some sort of townhouse and wasn’t on the beach, where I was waiting with other people for friends to show up. Then I had the usual “I’m naked” moment, but I wasn’t sure whether it was time yet to go out to my car and get my clothes.
Then I woke up
Here again is Austin’s own The Asteroid Shop with a live version of their song “Dandelion.” Imagine a cross between Mazzy Star and The National.
The guitar sound is fine, but they would be helped by having a female co-singer to harmonize with. They could really use a Hope Sandoval…