5 books I read recently & loved: Robert Ford, Trent Adkins, Lawrence Warren, ed. THING, sasha hawkins For disobeying, Thomas Moore I Ruined Your Life, Francis Whorrall-Campbell THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT HAVE BEEN DOWNLOADED, Paul Cunningham Sociocide at the 24/7

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‘“She Knows Who She Is,” read the tagline of the first issue of THING magazine. It was November 1989, two months after ACT UP movement members had chained themselves inside the New York Stock Exchange to protest the inflated pricing of the AIDS medication, AZT, when writer and DJ Robert T. Ford—alongside Trent Adkins and Lawrence Warren— published the inaugural edition. Featuring quippy columns, editorial features, and fiction, the aim of THING was simple yet revolutionary: to document LGBTQ+ and nightlife culture in Chicago.

‘Two years earlier, Ford had aspired to embrace an emergent intersectional counterculture with his 1987 magazine project Think Ink as the turbulent second half of the 20th century accelerated from the Black Power and Black Arts Movements, producing a broader chosen community bonded by the excesses of an integrationist post-soul aesthetic. Developed at the end of a second Great Migration of African Americans from Southeastern rural states to Northern industrial cities like Chicago—and the accompanying “white flight” to the suburbs—Think Ink and THING were a means of establishing roots for African Americans living in these newly individualist urban environments that offered more access to creative culture. Common terminology and cultural slang would be defined and contextualized in both Think Ink and THING by Trent Adkins, in a column called the “Tee Glossary,” which archived the language of Chicago nightlife in conjunction with need-to-know countercultural figures in music, fashion, and art.

‘Throughout Think Ink’s run, Ford drew from his job at Rose Records, featuring artists from the house music scene with “best of” lists, reviews, and a music column edited by Andre Halmon called “Real Estate.” THING’s second issue, Whose House Is It Anyway? surveyed the rise of house music from queer underground Chicago and New York club spaces and led with a cover image of Little Richard, alluding to the singer as being an early Black, queer music industry icon.

‘In his article, “Acid Soup,” Chris Nazuka, of the acid house trio Symbols and Instruments, reminisced about his first time tripping on LSD while dancing at Muzic Box, noting, “This music is only about the intoxication, the trip is the destination.” In another article, THING interviewed the deep house DJ Riley Evans about the Chicago nightlife scene and his complex infusion of gospel and classical music tropes into house. “Music shouldn’t just be the same thing over and over and not really say much of anything; it should take the person somewhere,” Evans declared, recounting his personal fascination with longform songs like “Love in C Minor” by Cerrone, a 15-minute disco suite with a salacious voiceover intro depicting a group of friends making eyes with a man across a bar. As many dance musicians and friends of Evans fell victim to the AIDS epidemic, he described feeling a heightened sense of community amongst all of the loss. Terry Martin, a frequent contributor to THING, started Crossfade, a music magazine at the intersection between music and gay culture, in 1992, and asked Ford to co-publish it. “Long before it was labeled, house music began to evolve to meet the demands being made on dance floors in Chicago,” Martin wrote about “Chicago’s House History” in Crossfade’s November issue. “So, just to set the record ‘straight,’ it was from the cradle of the Black urban gay experience that house music was born.”’ — DeForrest Brown, Jr.

 

House of Thing
Primary Information @ Instagram
THING, the revolutionary magazine that chronicled the birth of Chicago’s queer, Black club culture
THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF THING
Buy ‘THING’

 

Robert Ford, Trent Adkins, Lawrence Warren, ed. THING
Primary Information

‘Started in 1989 by designer and writer Robert Ford, THING magazine was the voice of the Queer Black music and art scene in the early 1990s. Ford and his editors were part of the burgeoning House music scene, which originated in Chicago’s Queer underground, and some of the top DJs and musicians from that time were featured in the magazine, including Frankie Knuckles, Gemini, Larry Heard, Rupaul, and Deee-Lite. THING published ten issues from 1989-1993, before it was cut short by Ford’s death from AIDS-related illness. All ten issues of THING are collected and published here for the first time.

‘As House music thrived, THING captured the multidisciplinary nature of the scene, opening its pages to a wide range of subjects: poetry and gossip, fiction and art, interviews and polemics. The HIV/AIDS crisis loomed large in its contents, particularly in the personal reflections and vital treatment resources that it published. An essay by poet Essex Hemphill was published alongside the gossip columnist Michael Musto and Rupaul dished wisdom alongside a diary from the March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay, and Bi Equal Rights and Liberation. Joan Jett Blakk’s revolutionary presidential campaign is contained in these pages, as are some of the most underground, influential literary voices of the time, such as Dennis Cooper, Vaginal Davis, Gary Indiana, Marlon Riggs, David Wojnarowicz, and even David Sedaris.

‘THING was very much in dialogue with the club kids in New York and other Queer publishing ventures, but in many ways, it fostered an entirely unique perspective—one with more serious ambitions. In a moment when the gay community was besieged by the HIV/AIDS crisis and a wantonly cruel government, the influence and significance of this cheaply-produced newsprint magazine vastly exceeded its humble means, presenting a beautiful portrait of the ball and club culture that existed in Chicago with deep intellectual reflections. THING was a publication by and for its community and understood the fleetingness of its moment. To reencounter this work today, is to reinstate the Black voices who were so central to the history of HIV/AIDS activism and Queer and club culture, but which were often sidelined by white Queer discourse. In many ways, THING offered a blueprint for the fundamental role a magazine plays in bringing together a community, its tagline summing up the bold stakes of this important venture: “She Knows Who She Is.”

‘The magazine included contributions from Trent D. Adkins, Joey Arias, Aaron Avant Garde, Ed Bailey, Freddie Bain, Basscut, Belasco, Joan Jett Blakk, Simone Bouyer, Lady Bunny, Bunny & Pussy, Derrick Carter, Fire Chick, Chicklet, Stephanie Coleman, Bill Coleman, Lee Collins, Gregory Conerly, Mark Contratto, Dennis Cooper, Dorian Corey, Ed Crosby, The Darva, Vaginal Davis, Deee-Lite, Tor Dettwiler, Riley Evans, Evil, The Fabulous Pop Tarts, Mark Farina, Larry Flick, Robert Ford, Scott Free, David Gandy, Gemini, Gabriel Gomez, Roy Gonsalves, Chuck Gonzales, Tony Greene, André Halmon, Lyle Ashton Harris, Larry Heard, Essex Hemphill, Kathryn Hixson, Sterling Houston, Ishmael Houston-Jones, Gary Indiana, Candy J, Jamoo, Jazzmun, Gant Johnson, Owen Keehnen, Lady Miss Kier, Spencer Kincy, Iris Kit, Erin Krystle, Steve LaFreniere, Larvetta Larvon, Marc Loveless, Lypsinka, Malone, Marjorie Marginal, Terry A. Martin, Rodney McCoy Jr., Alan Miller, Bobby Miller, Michael Musto, Ultra Naté, Willi Ninja, Scott “Spunk” O’Hara, DeAundra Peek, Earl Pleasure, Marlon Riggs, Robert Rodi, Todd Roulette, RuPaul, Chantay Savage, David Sedaris, Rosser Shymanski, Larry Tee, Voice Farm, Lawrence D. Warren, Martha Wash, LeRoy Whitfield, Stephen Winter, David Wojnarowicz, and Hector Xtravaganza.’

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Can you introduce yourself, in a way that you would choose?

For sure! I’m 22-year-old girl from Laveen, Arizona with a life-long love of police procedurals, Roddy Piper, and describing myself with lists.

Why are you a poet/writer/artist?

I love writing, and I’m also deeply untalented at anything else. My whole life has been me running from writing even though people kept telling me to write, because school tells you it’s some antiquated profession for, like, syphilitic, British noblemen and 50s well-to-do-alcoholic types. In college, once I decided the final frontier, astronomy, was absolutely not for me, I really began to focus on my writing. A calling is a calling. Me + writing, truly a match made in a Calvinist, pre-destined, ran-from heaven.

Let’s talk a little bit about the role of poetics and creative community in social and political activism, so present in our daily lives as we face the often sobering, sometimes dangerous realities of the Capitalocene. How does your process, practice, or work otherwise interface with these conditions? I’d be curious to hear some of your thoughts on the challenges we face in speaking and publishing across lines of race, age, ability, class, privilege, social/cultural background, gender, sexuality (and other identifiers) within the community as well as creating and maintaining safe spaces, vs. the dangers of remaining and producing in isolated “silos” and/or disciplinary and/or institutional bounds?

It’s hard, because mainstream publishers aren’t going to take the chance on minority voices, often for fear of their pocketbooks getting lightened, but at the same time progress is confrontation. If only people like myself read my book, I’ve affirmed their beliefs and their sense of community but I’ve made no real progress. And as someone who’s grown up in Arizona, which has a population of, like, 4 other Black people, I know how that sense of community and belonging is important to the writing process, or even just existing sanely. Progress isn’t only forward motion.

You need like-minded voices to sort of give you the push to put your work and yourself out there, into the hands of people that would otherwise not be into your work. But community is not everything. Way back when, my family was a part of Black Wall Street, which was a small community in Tulsa, OK where Black people started businesses and commerce amongst themselves. They bothered no one, they needed no one, but in 1921 a race riot decimates the community. Those that lived, fled. Even in isolation, it’s too much for those that wish you ill based on constructs out of your control to let you live. To live and thrive is a direct counterargument to supremacy, and those who believe in that can’t handle a challenge. Community is comforting, but as long as hate’s hanging around outside, you’re never safe. The push against sexism, racism, xenophobia, homophobia, everything else needs to be constant, because the second we let up, we’ll be burned to the ground.

 

sasha hawkings @ goodreads
[DE-CON-STRUC] BATESIAN PREY OF THE AMERICAN SOUTHWEST
DREAM IN FORM AND FUNCTION
Buy ‘For disobeying’
Calamari Press

 

sasha hawkins For disobeying
Calamari Press

‘For disobeying is a metafictive take on the power dynamics of sexuality and the roles we as humans are expected to play, the directives we’re expected to obey, in seeking approval. By focusing a candid yet critical lens on Marlon Brando and other notable men, the author flips the script on gender, age, race, inheritance, and societal status, luridly exposing the mechanisms by which trauma and mental illness destroy and reinvent the concept of self. By inhabiting Brando’s body, the author replicates the dysphoria of abuse, cathartically acting out not only through the perspective of a lover and idol, but a father figure, a person of status, someone that has proudly given you a chance at a life, but at the same time resentful of the parts of themselves they see in you that they incestuously want back. We compassionately experience both sides of the sexual violence—recepient/victim and giver/aggressor—and through this bipolar method-acting we can cope and understand the bodies/roles given to us at birth, bodies that seek approval from figures other than their own.’ — Calamari

‘Whatever I say about For disobeying will fall short of its scope, its genius, its arrested particulars. Sasha Hawkins is an unusual writer in every imaginable respect: form, style, voice, approach, subject, and the sheer force of her imagination. This full-length debut is a kind of counterhistory to classic film, a phenomenology of cinematic speech, and the voices it summons are uncannily alive, ferociously tender, searing in every shadowy rendering that Hawkins unveils under her unflinching eye. Sex, tears, laughter, madness, regret, and ecstasy—it’s all here in a perfected ventriloquy of excess.’ — Joshua Marie Wilkinson

‘For Disobeying is somehow completely original yet literarily aced to bits and very, very exciting.’ — Dennis Cooper

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‘I’ve been trying to work out how to write about how I wrote my recent book that just came out. I’m not totally sure I know and I’m comfortable with that. I’m almost sure that I don’t know. I gave up trying to have a rationale for writing a long time ago. I realised that I don’t need to have one – actually, I usually feel like I actively shouldn’t have one.

‘I’ve always written. I can’t remember a time since I was able to write that I didn’t write or at least have the idea of writing in my head practically all of the time. There was a big gap after university, when I hated the idea of writing so much and had lost all love for it that I felt like I would never write again – but even within that – writing was in its absence, such a huge part of my thinking.

‘When I’m asked why I write or where any of it comes from, I never can give an answer that seems to please. The question itself seems to ask for a certain type of answer – I’m not sure what type of answer exactly – but when I say, “I don’t know”, it doesn’t feel like its answering sufficiently, even though it’s the most accurate.

‘I imagine two scenarios when I think about the process of writing. One is where I’m entering a fog. A fog has managed to form and engulf the entirety of a room. I walk into it – everything is obscured. I put my hands out to feel my way through. My fingers brush against something. I stop and raise my arms again, opening my palms and relaxing my fingers. I touch whatever it is that I’ve found. The fog is so intense that I’ve given up on seeing or trying to work out what’s in here. My hands move, rest against the bends and turns of the thing. I’m feeling the shape in the dark, trying to figure out what it’s meant to be, trying to work out what’s hidden inside this heavy fog. Trying to work out what my novel is and just letting myself realise it bit by bit, going over it with my hands until the shape becomes clearer.

‘The second scenario is that I somehow create a pile of mud. I have to start scraping the mud with my hands, throwing off wet chunks until I start to feel a more solid structure. I scrub and peel and pick at it with my fingers and nails until I’ve revealed the sculpture that was hidden in the mound of mud.

‘Neither of those are entirely accurate but I hope they at least gave some idea of the state of things. To reiterate again, when it comes to why I write – I just do not know.’ — Thomas Moore

 

In Conversation with Thomas Moore
All The Boys I Loved Would Leave…All These Boys Are Dead
INTERVIEW WITH THOMAS MOORE – ELIZABETH VICTORIA ALDRICH
“I want these pages to fall apart in your hands.”
Buy I RUINED YOUR LIFE

 

Thomas Moore I RUINED YOUR LIFE
Kiddiepunk Press

‘A series of haunted and tragic events are pieced back together in Thomas Moore’s first book of poems in 7 years. Told in shattered, three-lined verses, “I RUINED YOUR LIFE” explores guilt, mourning, regret and blame with a searingly precise economy of language.’ — Kiddiepunk

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Christopher Zeischegg & Thomas Moore in Conversation

 

 

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‘The origin of the ‘Kurt Cobain was trans’ rumour is unclear. There is a post on the r/Nirvana reddit thread from six years earlier by a member called ‘PositiveStonedCreep’ which attempts to find references to gender dysphoria in the 1993 album In Utero. While most people on twitter attach photos or videos of Kurt Cobain wearing women’s clothing during interviews and performances, ‘Kurt Cobain’s Transgender Ideas from In Utero’ performs a close reading of song lyrics and vocal arrangements to make its case.

‘Speaking in 2002 of the ‘archival turn’ in the humanities, visual resources documentarian Cheryl Simon identified ‘the emergence of an evidentiary aesthetic in the information age’. This line was subsequently quoted by Susan Stryker and Paisley Currah in their ‘General Editors’ Introduction’ to the November 2015 special issue of Transgender Studies Quarterly (‘Archives and Archiving’). Though they do not explicitly say it, visual proof appears as one of the central gatekeepers of the transgender archive.

‘But how do we actually know that someone is trans? Without medical transition, we don’t look or sound different from anyone else. Perhaps we can say that we read it in the ‘grammar’ of the person. Which is maybe a more academic way of saying, it’s just vibes.

‘In the blog post ‘Is a Vibe the Same Thing as a Style?’, philosopher and music scholar Robin James argues that vibes are ‘alignments’ or ‘orientations’ that amplify and quieten the perceptual contents of different objects. This definition can be contrasted to ideas of ‘style’ which emerged in the early twentieth century. The art historian Heinrich Wölflinn wrote of style as an expression of the inherent character of an age or a person, a quality which can be isolated and deciphered through careful formal analysis. A vibe, however, has no such essentialist quality. It is not even a quality, but a method of perception dressed up as description. James approaches the current manifestation of ‘vibe’ as an overspill of Web 2.0 into the ‘real world’: ‘vibes are vernacular versions of the methods algorithms use to perceive the world. Vibes are how we perceive ourselves the way algorithms perceive us.’

‘Data analysis replaces formal analysis. Multiple inputs are swept and amalgamated, as the machine works through a process of aggregation. This cloud of information is subjectively selected, with the identifier of the vibe becoming the main determinant of its content. A vibe is a feeling an object has to us. If vibes are the result of a real-world algorithm, then instead of a mathematical equation, our subjectivity becomes the filter.

‘As with most trending internet-speak, the word vibe originates in Black music and youth culture. As Twitter user and sound studies doctoral student @AmbreLynae put it in a tweet from August 2021: ‘When Black people use the word “vibe” we usually talkin bout kickin back with our friends in a cool place. When [whites] use the word “vibe” they finna gentrify a community.’’ — Francis Whorrall-Campbell

 

Francis Whorrall-Campbell @ instagram
Francis Whorrall-Campbell @ Xxijra Hii
FW-C @ linktr.ee
A Fragment on Kurt Cobain’s Transgender Ideas from ‘In Utero’
Buy THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT HAVE BEEN DOWNLOADED

 

Francis Whorrall-Campbell THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT HAVE BEEN DOWNLOADED
Good Press

‘Francis Whorrall-Campbell’s THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT HAVE BEEN DOWNLOADED is a zine consisting of the first three instalments of a serialised novella-in-progress. Reprinted with a new addition, the zine presents the story so far, introducing us to the two protagonists – a trans influencer living in the year 2034, and a fictionalised version of Kurt Cobain in 1994 – as the pair travel in opposite directions across the USA, looking for the source the paranormal phenomena disrupting their lives. While Kurt searches for the origin of his ‘dysphoria’ in a sinkhole in Barbados (codenamed the ‘metabolic rift’), Edie is trying to find a cure for ‘twink death’: a real and fatal disease afflicting the cis gays and transmasculine population. These parallel narratives are interwoven with short non-fiction essays which provide context and further explanation for the book’s themes.’ — Good Press

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Trickster Figures: Sculpture and the Body

 

 

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‘In her essay “Language and Madness,” the Swedish poet Aase Berg probes a shift in language over time in how it has become less creative and more descriptive over the course of human history, eventually tongue-shrugging: “It’s too bad language had to be transformed into a market-economy power apparatus for pleasure-opposed morons.”

‘As much as we might hope a poet, of all professional roles, would be the natural torch bearer to blaze a trail above such sublunary, earthly desires of success within a myopic economy of USD, with the whirligig of prizes and fellowships and clans and collectives and residencies paid for in full, we typically are not as simon-pure as we might act. Not most of us anyway. “The whole literary scene is a pigpen, especially today.”

‘So says Artaud in “All Writing Is Garbage.” But it’s Paul Cunningham who has achieved in his poetry what Artaud theorized in his Theater of Cruelty, and “recover[ed] the notion of a kind of unique language half-way between gesture and thought.” The capitalist logic we live by doesn’t allow for such artistic poise: I’ve gotta get mine, you’ve gotta get yours, porcine teeth out. To sonically sound off on Berg, we’re all oink—no boink. The problem here, besides the blood everywhere, is that this seeps into the poetics of far too many of us as practitioners (I include myself in this slop, by the way): what sells? What’s hot right now? What can get me higher?

‘Now Artaud’s way of saying it—to “recover the notion”— sounds very controlled and stringent, but the reality is more Cunninghammy than that. As he says it: “My hen coordinates gone awry.” The Surrealists, the Dadaists, the Futurists even, part of their program was to challenge and overturn logic, to fashion, as Paul Eluard puts it, “the poem… [into] a debacle of the intellect.” In Cunningham we certainly have a genuine swash debacle-r, which I mean in the archaic sense to flamboyantly swagger about or wield a sword. He’s cutting prices. He’s slashing into the deal of the century at a moment of literary decadence right around the century-mark of the Surrealists, and yeah, “the violent birds fly out when nu kultur opens its mouth,” as Cunningham writes it.’ — Henry Goldkamp

 

Paul Cunningham Site
Paul Cunningham @ Instagram
Paul Cunningham @ goodreads
Vi Khi Nao interviews Paul Cunningham
Buy ‘Sociocide at the 24/7’

 

Paul Cunningham Sociocide at the 24/7
New Michigan Press

‘Ferocious and unsparing, Paul Cunningham’s incomparable poetry is a carnivalesque, nightmare voyage through the dark wasteland that is twenty-first century America.’ — Jonathan Crary

‘In your fantasy, am I duck or dog? The world is ending, but not as fast as one might hope, so let’s kill time at the 7/11 forever. Let’s kill all the time. You bring your bloodlust and your Warhol wig, I’ll bring my copy of Paul Cunningham’s Sociocide at the 24/7, plus the ant-farm I’ve wired to my fear receptors. Here, hold this riveting glittery reliquary of our glitchy lateness, slick w/ambivalence. Btw I drank your smoothie of Gila monster venom, microplastics & adaptogens, so cold and so sweet.’ — Joyelle McSweeney

‘If our post-internet era is in a semiotic labyrinth, Sociocide at the 24/7 is like bringing a disco ball into a mirror maze. Fast, fun, and having its way entirely with the language of our culture: this is my kind of poetics. I really loved this book.’ — Ben Fama

‘Honestly, Paul Cunningham’s sociocidal masterpiece fulfilled my dream of being close to Mary Magdalene’s foot bone. That said, there is something here for everyone: skulls, encryption, landlord cemeteries, CYAO for pseudo-variants! Theologians, this book contains the only soundscape involving the BABE trinity. Pastors, you will witness the resurrection of figments from their encoffinated forms. Rentiers, your horrible landlords are accurately depicted and de-fanged in parentheses. Algorithms and necro-romantics will swoon for the situational hyperpigmentation. I felt simultaneously implicated and liberated by the presence of big data bodies in this sonically-extravagant simulation that slams wellness culture while replicating the hum of socially-mediated existence. We are not well! Long live poetry and Sociocode at the 24/7!”’ — Alina Stefanescu

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Creative Writing Series ft. Paul Cunningham

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. Heads up that tomorrow I’m going to be in a lab from early morning to evening doing the final color correction on ‘Room Temperature’, so the blog will be taking a one-day vacation. It and I will be back as usual on Saturday. ** _Black_Acrylic, Shelley Duvall was the ultimate a lot of things. Okay, ‘Peep Show’, imperative, thanks. Oh, the ‘Succession’ dude, yeah, TV royalty indeed, it seems. ** Misanthrope, Anything promising or more from the big manager? ** Steeqhen, Well, then I’ve at least seen a gif of ‘Sims’ then. Virgin no longer. Ace on the narratology exam outcome. Exeter … I assume there’s a university there or something? I know the name, and I’m thinking that might be why? If the consulate thing doesn’t work out, I’m in deep shit, so, yes, hopefully and thank you. ** jay, Hi. So much love for ‘Peep Show’ that I’m starting to feel rebellious, haha. Hm, maybe that Jin guy from BTS if his non-whiteness doesn’t disqualify him? I guess Shawn Mendes is more of a twunk? You’re probably right. I used to look a tumblr porn blogs, but I fell out of the habit and wondered if they might be an historic thing. Enjoy the work or post-work if you’re at that phase. ** James, Hi. I like the idea or fantasy that their fear decontextualises them and they become just scared somebodies, but I’m odd. 2 and 3/4 hours of morning left here, so far standard fare. Well, all of Blur are characters in ‘Guide’, but it’s true that one gets the lion’s share of attention. Silverchair makes a cameo too. I didn’t realise that writing smut qualifies as celebrating Kinktober. I thought you had to spend it in a sling or something. Good to know. Maybe you’re one of those people who gets longed for rather than longs. A friend of mine used to make a distinction between those get painted and those who paint. No, Sivan’s ex was with him while he was already super famous. You have two days to pack on more excitement, and I have two days to stare at my film, and I will compare notes with you imminently. ** Poecilia, Hi there. Oh, my goodness, thank you about ‘Frisk’. I’m tongue-tied, but my facial muscles are in the upright position. ** Jack Skelley, YeeeeEEEEEp!!!! ** Steve, God, Steve, that’s so stressful. I hope their doctor will … do whatever he can. So sorry you have to deal with that. ‘Palantir’s Scrying Mirror’ is a good name. I’m getting Incredible String Band vibes. ** Dominik, Hi!!! Aw, thanks, they’re kind of fun to make. I don’t know Destroy Rebuild Until God Shows (D.R.U.G.S.), and I’ll hit them up first. Thanks! Pavement is in my top five all time favorite bands, I think. And Elias is one my all-time favorite singers or at least he was until he started wanting to be Nick Cave. That’s funny, I had to search for love’s lyrics of yesterday, and now I don’t know if he was quoting Wanda Jackson, Cyndi Lauper, Les Deuxluxes, Mike Ness, or SQÜRL. I’m guessing SQÜRL? Instead of breaking up (Don’t throw our love away), Let’s do some kissing and making up (Don’t throw our love away), G. ** HaRpEr, Me neither. I think I only just kind of grimace. Okay, pointless, how university-like. I think I read Iris Murdoch, but I can’t remember what it was like. How did the one-on-one with your cool prof go? Riddles … in what sense? Like traditional riddles? You can’t just say whatever experimentation you’re doing is a riddle? Because it probably is, no? Weill’s amazing. ‘Mahagonny’ is amazing. I watched an interesting doc about Brel a while back. He’s great. Speaking of songs made contemporarily famous by Marc Almond, ‘What Makes a Man a Man’ is so great too. And I was so surprised that it was written by Charles Aznavour. I would never have imagined him making a song like that. Punch and Judy was, and maybe still be, famous in the US. When I was kid, my parents banned me from watching them because it was so dark and violent. ** Bill, Hey. Definitely worth a gander: Klahr. You’re almost off again? Me too, but not for about a week. Did the trailer work out to your satisfaction? ** Nicholas., Hi. Well, you know how Milk Duds can get wedged into your molars. That happened, and when I pried it out, it took part of my tooth with it. I assume the tooth was already cracked or something. Junior Mints have that same strangely delicious fake mint taste as Girl Scout Cookies do, if you’ve ever had their mint brand. Favorite season … I would say all of them except summer. I hate summer, or rather I hate hot weather. Maybe fall just because it’s the one that saves me from the summer. Yours? Wow rocks. Hard to beat wow. ** Uday, Well, there they are. I hope your today makes your yesterday feel like it happened a million years ago. ** Okay. Today I present, yes, 5 books I read lately that I liked a whole lot and would like to suggest you might like, and maybe even a whole lot, too. You have two days to look them over, and I will see you back here on Saturday.