Stuff:
- Not that you need my opinion to believe this, but this season of Human Giant is going to be amazing. Carpet Monkey.
- Separately, Philip K. Dick was right: the final war of humans will be fought by automated robots. The earth will be covered in slag!
- Old newsstand. Pictured above.
- Stand-up went well, thank you to Andrew Wright for booking me and to the nice audience for supporting my “secret to Life: give up” set. Mike Dobbins was there, who I hadn’t seen since R Bar days. I recommend seeing his set if you haven’t yet.
I am performing stand-up tonight as part of this showcase. Maybe you could like come out and watch? The show is called “Low Profile” hosted by a bunch of silly people I am friends with. Details, arbitrarily boldfaced:
Low Profile (show), at Fat Baby (bar)
112 Rivington St near the corner of Essex
Time: 8PM, cost: 5 bucks
And a round-up of things:
- I drink coffee mostly for the chance to run out and buy it, which is to say: for the breaks. It’s like a smoke break for non-smokers. I also believe that if I had ever smoked a cigarette even once I would be the most hard-core chain smoker you knew. It’s life-changing observations like this that you will be able [...]
I’m reading PKD book number 11: Martian Time-Slip. I love them all, but it is just plain SILLY how every single one involves 1) the main character discovering that there is more than one reality, and it’s impossible to tell at any given time which is “real” and 2) some powerfully addictive, awkwardly named drug (Substance D, Chew-Z, JJ-180).
I joined Netflix. Love the recommendation system. I’m ready to be innundated by media!
Finished up a Channel 102 pilot with DeCoster, Rocco and Thunder. I’d say there’s an 80% chance of it making sense by the time we’re done.
I’ve given up looking for a great Content Management System for web sites. Instead, I’m looking for great web site-building TOOLS. My [...]
I’m on Philip K. Dick book number 7 — VALIS, published in 1980. In it, he talks about his experience seeing God (in a revelation in March 1974). I’ve long known that PKD believed he had seen God, and I’ve long never wanted to hear anything about it. Seeing God = religions zealot to me. Religious zealots tend to ramble, to be too serious and to sound kinda uncomfortably angry towards the people they’re ranting towards. No thanks. I’ll stick with time-travelling androids who get addicted to heroin and then discover that what they thought was 1959 is actually 2089.
Lo and behold, VALIS is maybe the best book of his I’ve read. It is hilarious, self-deprecating, really smart and moving. [...]
I think you can tell a lot about a writer’s style by what names he picks for his/her characters, things and places.
Philip K. Dick:
- Ragle Gumm
- The Reegs and The Lilistars
- Joe Chip
- Wilbur Mercer
- Substance D
- Horselover Fat
Jonathan Lethem
Go watch 100 awesome music videos on YouTube (via MonkeyBites) - a fun, well-annotated list. Watch them all compulsively! Boogie Down Productions blew my mind.
Kevin was very right-on in recommending Now Wait For Last Year as a good PKD book to read. I LOVE it! Might be my second favorite so far behind Ubik. I should know by now to not doubt Kevin’s recommendations. Kevin’s recommendations in the comic book field alone have turned me onto:
- Hellboy
- Christopher Priest’s Black Panther
- The Tick
- Paul Grist’s Kane and Daily Bugle
- Fables
- Lucifer
He knows his shit! Really, recommendations from your near and dear are the way to go. Here’s the songs that I have been introducted to via Hines Bro Brian in the last 15 years:
- Smells [...]
I want to apologize to my readers who came to this blog yesterday hoping for an update of how I’m doing plowing through my Philip K. Dick reading list. I can’t believe you all, to a man, restrained from sending an email about it. Here is that update now:
It’s going well.
Also, here’s a fun (if unfair) game to play with summarizing the plots of PKD books:
1) Ubik: After their leader is killed in an explosion, a group of anti-psychics discover that what they thought was reality is not as it seems!
2) A Scanner Darkly: After taking mammoth doses of the brain-destroying drug Substance D, an undercover narc discovers that he has been living a double life he can’t [...]
Ok, so I’m reading a bunch of Philip K. Dick books. Oh, because A Scanner Darkly is coming out, you say? Not at all. Then you say, oh because one of your favorite authors, Jonathan Lethem, likes Philip K. Dick? Not really, no.
It’s because I saw a top ten list of “best Philip K. Dick books.” And my robotic nature is compelled to complete most lists that I read as if they were assigned to me by my innermost DNA.
Other lists I have tried hard to “complete”:
- 20 Scariest Movies by Entertainment Weekly
- 100 best rock albums ever, by Rolling Stone (published in the spring of 1987, introduced me to Elvis Costello)
- AFI’s top 100 comedies (a terribly [...]
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