It's only been a week!
Finished Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson. It was an odd read for me, being so late to it. Our culture's pretty well steeped in biters (Matrix, mostly), and I used to play a lot of Shadowrun, which stole pretty much wholesale.
I have some complaints: It's not nearly as deep as it thinks it is; there are some pretty glaring plotholes; his philosophy is fair bit muddled; last thirty pages are a trudge. But it was a fun read, and I felt like I was suddenly getting a lot of references that prior I'd only vaguely placed. My next book from the library, Trapped In Russia, I might abandon. It's supposed to be a thrilling true story, but so far it's mostly the dull tale of someone being conscripted. I suppose that's a natural trade-off for being true—the dull bits did happen. But hey, I don't have to read 'em. The Flannery O'Connor book on top of the stack keeps looking more and more alluring.
Found some neat art while casting about for a story on Grafuck: Pomme Chan and Audrey Kawasaki.
Oh, and Jonmc from MeFi does a good job with some classic rockers and their comebacks over at Metachat. I especially dug the Mitch Ryder. I need to head over to Cousin's Vinyl to see if they have it.
3 comments:
Y'know, if we could ever find your Uncle Artie, he knows/knew Billy Levise Jr. pretty well. There was some incident I recall when he (Mitch/Billy) made some rawk star pronouncement, and Lili just zorro'd him with the perfect riposte. I wish I could remember it. At the time, I laughed til I cried, but I had spent the entire day at Lili's.
It's a shame that Lyzak seems to have disappeared.
My biggest beef with Ryder songs that I've heard is that they're just not recorded very well. Bob Seger seems to have done a better job on albums like Mongrel, which have a heavy Ryder influence (at least to my ears).
And while he tanked with his lounge bullshit, at least that Mitch never wrote Tuesdays With Maurie.
Yeah, Hamtramck (Ryder), and Manchester England (Wayne Fontana & the Minndbenders) seemed to be hotbeds for the white interpreters of hot race music.
I guess you could say s.e. Michigan with The Rationals, and Seeger(just 2 months younger than Ryder), and industrial England with Liverpool and Manchester as hubs.
The Rationals one officially recorded album doesn't show how great they were according to the 2 million Michiganians who were at their first show (so they tell me-I dunno I was 10 years old & in Chicago listening to the German hour live from the Hotel Allerton).
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