Snob

Roxy

When I heard that Apple Records were digitally releasing a 59-track album of various 1963 bootlegs by The Beatles, I thought “huh, sounds like a cash grab.” Then when I heard that the album is only being released so that it will extend copyrights on the tracks within for another few decades, I thought “huh, sounds dumb.” And when I learned just now that the release was only available on iTunes for a few hours early this morning before being removed from the store, I thought “now that’s obnoxious.” There is no longer anywhere you can buy the release. If you missed it, too bad.

Sure, it’s mainly tracks that have been floating around Beatles bootlegs for ages, but supposedly in slightly better quality. More insulting is the fact that the entire release was masterminded solely for benefit of the royalty owners rather than music fans. These are tracks for which Apple Records seems to have no plans for a legitimate release (hence the delay until it was absolutely “necessary”), and yet they want to effectively ensure that you won’t hear them in decent quality for at least another twenty years. Thanks guys.

I have to say my jaw dropped in disbelief when I read, from The Telegraph, “Without this little manoeuvre, a flood of cheap, sub-standard Beatles albums would have soon started appearing, with profits going to any enterprising salesman who could think of a catchy way to market the freely accessible songs.” Too bad! That’s capitalism, baby, and if you don’t like it, don’t release your music. In the EU, you have 50 (now 70) years to make your money on the music and then it belongs to the people. Can you name a single example of a work of art, in any medium, that has had its brand image sullied by entrance into the public domain? The vast majority of artwork predates the copyright system completely, and we still worship the Mona Lisa and Starry Night. But because of lobbyists and copyright warriors, no books entered the public domain in the US in 2013.

So the chances are that you missed out on “Beatles Bootleg Recordings 1963” and the record industry keeps milking old product and giving the finger to the fans. In fifteen years from now, when copyright extensions mean it will still cost you a fortune to put a Beatles song in your movie, if you’re allowed to at all, don’t say I didn’t warn you. Then again, maybe the remaining Fab Four really do need the money, Paul seems to be low on shirts.

h/t: Consequence of Sound, The Telegraph, NY Times | Image: TheBeatles.com

Cine de Barrio está en el punto de mira por el Consejo Audiovisual de Andalucía. La presidenta de este organismo, Emelina Fernández, considera que la contextualización de las películas en el programa que presenta Concha Velasco no justifica la emisión en horario infantil de cintas que banalizan o hacen apología de la violencia de género.

Y es que el veterano programa de La 1 de Televisión Española emitió la película El taxi de los conflictos, dirigida por Antonio Ozores y  José Luis Sáenz de Heredia en 1969 y protagonizada por actores de la talla de Juanjo Menéndez, Carmen Sevilla, Massiel o Marisol. En este filme, rodado en 1969, un hombre le recomienda a otro que dé palizas a su esposa.

Eran otros tiempos, con otros lenguajes, pero, para el Consejo Audiovisual de Andalucía, “RTVE debe evitar la emisión durante la franja horaria de menores de contenidos que puedan socavar el enorme esfuerzo que está haciendo la sociedad para combatir la violencia de género y transmitir a los menores el valor de la igualdad”.

Ante la polémica suscitada en torno a este caso, desde el Consejo Audiovisual de Andalucía se insiste en que “estos problemas se resolverían revisando y adecuando el Código de Autorregulación sobre Contenidos Televisivos e Infancia, suscrito en 2004, para adecuarlo a los valores y principios que propugna la legislación aprobada con posterioridad y la propia sociedad”.

El CAA considera que las series o películas susceptibles de fomentar modelos de conductas sexistas entre menores de edad o que presentan de manera acrítica la violencia de género “deben calificarse para mayores de 18 años y ser emitidos durante la franja dedicada exclusivamente al público adulto, entre las 10 de la noche y las 6 de la mañana”, sentencia el organismo.

Y ADEMÁS…

¿Cómo debería ser la TVE que necesitamos en el futuro?

Así fue el regreso de Concha Velasco a ‘Cine de Barrio’

• El albergue de Xoán XXIII amplía los días seguidos de estancia de siete a diez

Shutterstock

1. I guess that’s not that bad?

Truthfully… 3 times a month.

2. This is what I suspected, and I am DYING.

Sadly we are in a pattern of about 4 to 5 times a year. Been together 3.5 yrs. Pregnancies and babies have killed our sex life.

3. Reasonable.

Varies wildly. Some months we’re both so busy that bedtime is sleepytime.

Other times we’re like teenagers, constantly trying to find somewhere to sneak off to for sexytime.

Like all things, there are highs and lows, ebbs and flows.

4. Also what I suspected.

Marriage doesn’t ruin sex. Kids do.

5. IDK.

Married 5 years. Lived together 4 before that. Have sex once a week.

6. Bleak.

Married 18 years. Now divorced. No kids.

Year 1 —- 10-20 times a week.

Year 2 – 3 —- 10 times a month.

Years 3 – 5 —- 5 times a month.

Years 5 – 10 —- 2 times a month.

Years 10 – 15 —- 1 time every month or so.

Years 15 – 18 —- Pity sex twice a year.

I left her because I got tired of her general selfishness in and out of the bedroom. I wanted her everyday until the last day.

7. Hmmmm.

6 years married, 2 kids and a third on the way. Actual intercourse: 3-4 times a week when she’s not pregnant. During pregnancy (like right now), 1-2 times a week. She makes sure I’m taken care of, though, even though her sex drive is decreased right now.

8. Yup.

No kids- married young
Year one: 8 times a week
Year two: 5 times a week
Year three: 3 times a week
Year four: once a week
Year five: 3 times a month
Year six: twice a month
And to be clear, my labido is exactly the same it was 6 years ago, so this decline is very stressful to the relationship.

9. Just one year in…

Married 1 year. Twice a month.

10. Badass.

I’m 27 and my wife is 31 and we have three children. Our 10th anniversary is next month. We do it everyday. Rarely it slips to every other night if we’re busy, but never a longer gap then that.

One time she was mad and we didn’t do it or about 13 days. I thought that was the worst, but reading these comments makes me think I am one of the luckiest husbands out there.

11. Passable.

At least once on the weekends and about 2 times during the week on average. It really just depends how tired we are during the week when we get home. Some weeks we don’t have any. I’ve been married 8 years.

12. Okay.

Been married 18 years, no kids I’m 49, he’s 63–about once a week.

13. Damn.

Married 4 years, 12 times a week. Still groin strong!

14. Oh god.

Married 8 years, 1 kid (7 years old). We have sex once every 2 months on average.

I gave up trying to initiate things a couple years ago. Can only get shut down so many times in a row before it gets old.

Honestly, my mistake was thinking that it is possible to make an unhappy person happy. Now I’d give anything to have a happy person I could make happier.

15. Holy shit. What?

Once every 5 days on average or I turn into a whiny little cry baby and there’s no living with me.

16. Jesus.

Whenever she’s ovulating. nothing more, nothing less.

17. Me too bro…

Like once or twice a month if I’m lucky. Used to be like 2-3 times a day, I miss being a teenager…

En esta temporada de fiestas y reuniones, tenemos mayor oportunidad de conocer a nuevas personas. Pero te imaginas que alguien te de su tarjeta de presentación y sea un pedazo de… ¿carne? Pues a la compañía MeatCards no le parece tan mala idea; ellos venden tarjetas de presentación hechas con carne seca.

La idea la tuvo Chris Thompson, a quién se le ocurrió crear un modelo de negocio al juntar carne seca con un grabado en láser. La información del titular de la tarjeta es “quemada” utilizando un láser de CO2 de 150 watts.

Obviamente el proceso para elaborar estas peculiares tarjetas de presentación es algo difícil. La carne seca tiene hoyos y protuberancias, además se puede romper fácilmente. Su elaboración es mucho más complicada que una impresión con tinta sobre un papel, por lo que solo cuatro tarjetas, de 5 × 10 cm, te pueden salir en 25 dólares americanos aproximadamente. En su página de internet puedes encontrar un video donde muestran como funciona el grabado con láser.

La compañía recomienda no comerse las tarjetas, ya que los estándares de higiene no se pueden mantener durante todo el proceso de elaboración. El creador asegura que sus tarjetas tienen una vida útil de un año antes de que se descompongan.

Lo que sí es seguro es que, con estas tarjetas causaras una gran impresión y difícilmente te olvidaran las personas a las que se las entregues. Se me hacen unas tarjetas ideales para un carnicero o para un verdadero amante de la carne.

Más info | MeatCards
Vía | The Washington Post
Imágenes | Meatcards Prototyping by tikaro

En Directo al Paladar México | Etiqueta de botella de vino, hecha con vino
En Directo al Paladar México | El helado que brilla en la oscuridad

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La noticia Para los carnívoros, tarjetas de presentación hechas con carne seca fue publicada originalmente en Directo al Paladar México por Sweet Cannela.

Nadal en Sar

Listening to young straight men give me advice about where to find intelligent single women in a big city has taught me one thing — they have no fucking idea where to look. It almost, almost makes me worry about the future.

Being one of them, a single man of drinking age, this same question remains a major preoccupying thought in my mind most of the time:

Where should I go tonight that attractive women might be? 

I try not to think about if too often lest it become an obsession. But whenever I hear other men speak up about finding women, I listen. One day, I spoke with a dude who describes himself as a sex addict. He described looking for women in a whole different way. So I asked him where he goes to meet cool single women.

He told me he goes online.

He mentioned sites like Adultfriendfinder.com. According to him, going online is like sticking his pleasure-stick in a digital glory hole. He only needs an hour, his smartphone, a reliable internet connection, and he’ll find sex. He said he wasn’t sure if the woman would be single.

Curiosity piqued, I asked to interview the sex addict. He graciously agreed. He was as candid as a deathbed confession. (to protect his identity, we’ll call him… the letter H)

Zaron: What sites do you use?  

H: …Um, Fling.com, AirG.com, Plentyoffish.com, Adultfriendfinder.com

Z: How do they work? 

H: They suck you in by – okay, like you’re on a different site, and then they throw one of those pop-up ads at you. It says you can join for free or whatever. Stupid me, I think cool and I join for free, y’know. And then, next thing you know, people started hitting me up. But in order to see them, you had to pay. That’s 39.99. After I paid that, I created a profile with a name and a picture – I don’t use my real name. Once the profile is set, I start looking for women. I start hitting them up. Like I’ll leave a message- Hey, you look cute – or whatever. You wanna chat? Or if I think they look raunchy like party girls then I’ll just straight up hit ‘em up, like- You wanna party? I got party favors, y’know.

Z: When you say party favors, do most women know what you mean?

H: Some don’t understand the term “party favors.“ They think I’ll pay ‘em. And some know I mean drugs… and alcohol or whatever.

Z: Are women more straightforward than you would’ve imagined?

H: Well, nothing surprises me really, because women are just as scandalous as men. They’re just more discreet, that’s all.

Z: How often do you hook-up the same day you first contact someone?

H: Sometimes, it’ll be that day. Or maybe a week later. Or like, during that week. But mostly right away. They’ll give me their phone number. And we’ll talk for a couple minutes and we’ll take it from there.

Z: What do they ask you during these phone calls?

H: So where do you live? Send me a picture of your shit. You know, stuff like that.

Z: And so, you send her a picture of your shit?

H: Yeah, I’ll send her one.

Z: Do you keep pictures of your shit ready to send, or do you like to take a fresh dick-pic? 

H: No, I delete them. Because sometimes when you get pulled over by the cops, they’ll look through your phone.

Z: So you send a new dick-pic every time? What are the secrets to a good dick pic?

H: Close-up. Get a good angle. From sideways. Make sure it’s hard, y’know. [laughs] Shit like that.

Z: Can you walk me through how it works, how you meet a woman for sex?

H: Like there was the one time with this chick in Passages. She was in a rehab. And I guess, I made her relapse.

Z: But you didn’t know she was in rehab? 

H: Here, I have it. (pulls out his cellphone) I’ll tell you exactly. It keeps everything.

Z: The site keeps a record of all your contact?

H: This is her, right here. That’s her profile page. Oh yeah, she used like some kind of code. (selects the stream of messages). So the first thing I sent was - You wanna party? I got party favors. She says - I like party favors. I said - Okay then. Give me a call so we can talk about it. Yes? She said - I would like to go on a ski vacation. And so I said - Get high with me and you can be wherever you want. She said - I really prefer the snow. I guess that was her code word for coke. Y’know, for blow. I said - Powder snow. I can get you that. So then we didn’t talk until the next day. She said - Hi, Raoul. I’d like to invite you for lunch. And my roommate would like to meet a really good-looking friend. She’s gorgeous. You can also choose dinner if you like, my treat. So she invited me to that place Geoff’s in Malibu, or whatever.

Z: Geoffrey’s On the Bay? Nice place.

H: Yeah. So I said - Sounds nice. How do I get info about where and when? I gave her my number. We just kept talking back and forth. She gave me her email. And then she called me one night and wanted me to get some blow and come get them. I couldn’t get it at that time, she said - Okay, nevermind. But then she called me a day later.

Z: This place, Passages, it’s that clinic in Malibu where celebrities go for rehab, right?

H: Yeah. So the next day she calls me and says - How about that lunch? You wanna come on down? I wanna invite you to lunch. And I said - Okay, cool. And she said - Bring me a bottle of vodka. I said - All right. So I ended up going to Geoffrey’s. I meet her at the restaurant. She’s like – “Hey, what’s up? Nice to meet you, finally.” We’re talking. She has some wine. The next thing you know there’s somebody there. He comes over to talk to her, and he’s saying – “You know we’re gonna have to terminate you. We have to terminate you. You’re here drinking.” There’s two of them and they say – “We’re gonna have to bring you your stuff.” They have this whole big conversation. Next thing you know, I find out that I was her ride for her escape plan. She wanted to leave the program because she wanted to go get high and fuck. So she pays for lunch. We go out. We run some errands. I help her run her errands. Then I get a room. Next thing you know, I’m fucking her.

Z: From the point when the folks from Passages came to collect her, until the point you started fucking – How long was that?

H: It was two hours from meeting her. We started talking and she said – “Oewh! I like your attitude! Oh man, I like the way you think. You’re a real good guy.” And she was like – “Do you have a condom?” I was like – “Yeah, because, we’re gonna fuck.” I guess she was buzzing. We went to the hotel and we started fucking. And she was a good fuck, too.  She was really good. A whole bunch of stuff happened to her when I left. But that’s not my fault. She’s actually texting me again now. And she still wants to get blow. And I don’t know, maybe I’ll get it for her, maybe not. I’m trying to stay clean now.

Z: Do you consider yourself a romantic? 

H: …In some areas. Yes. I like to please women. I do. I’m very sexually active. I like to please woman, y’know. But when I start doing drugs and shit, I get on one. And then I wanna get on these websites. That’s like my thing.

Z: Would you consider yourself a sex addict? 

H: At some times… yes. I’ll say, usually. Well, only when there are drugs involved. Yeah, I’m a sex addict.

Z: What are your drugs of choice?

H: Methamphetamine. Very bad.

Z: So if you do some crystal, then you’re gonna definitely be looking to fuck?

H: Yeah, I’m fucking. But also… I mean, it just kills time, you know. Like I get addicted to it and I go through these cycles.

Z: Do you cycle quickly? Is it a matter of weeks, months-

H: If I stay clean, it all depends. When I stay clean, I don’t pay attention to it, too much. But if I’m using, I’m going through a long cycle. Like right now, it’s been a month since the last time I’ve done this. So right now, I’m pretty much done.

Z: You’re done doing-

H: …The websites. For now. Because I met someone I really like… She’s from the program. She’s in N.A. And y’know, I wanna see where that goes. She’s really, really pretty so…

Z: And you’re honest with her about your past?

H: Yeah, I’m honest. I’m honest to a certain degree. Like she doesn’t know about this. And I don’t think I need to tell her if I cut it all out, y’know. Because she was doing her thing, I was doing my thing… And now, that’s all in the past.

Z: Do you get tested regularly?

H: Oh, I do that like every three months. And I use protection.

Z: Do women care if use condoms? Do they care if you’ve been tested recently?

H: Majority of them use condoms. Some of them ask. “Do you wanna use a condom?” And I figure if they ask, then I think I should put one on. Y’know what I mean? Because, nobody gives you a choice… And if they do, something is wrong. You should always use protection at all times. Maybe… not for blowjobs. But I do get tested for HIV and all those other STDs because in case I do want to be with somebody or I end up being with somebody, I don’t wanna give them anything. Y’know what I mean?

Z: Is there anything similar about the women who respond to you?

H: I get all different types of girls. It’s like — I saw this on this TV show - King of the Hill. And Boomhauer is showing the little kid how to pick up chicks. He takes him to a  woman’s clothing store, or something like that. And I don’t know what he whispered to the girls but some of them were slapping him, most of them were slapping him, but one of them gives him her number. …I don’t care how many girls slap me. As long as I get that one number. Then it’s a success. That’s the same thing on these websites. If ten women tell you to go fuck yourself and one says- Well, let’s meet up. Then you’ve made it.

Z: And can you tell from pictures which ones are more likely to sleep with you?

H: We’ll go to one person. Here, we’ll pick a slutty one. See, how the women will show pictures of their tits and their ass? And they just want a relationship with a good-looking guy? Come on. (pulls up a woman’s profile on his phone) Like this one… Twenty-four, woman seeking man. Montebello. She lives in Montebello. And she’s online now.

Z: She has pictures. And she’s bent over – Is that a dining room table?

H: She’s showing you her crack. Y’know what I mean? So what am I supposed to think? You think she’s looking for a relationship? [laughs]

Z: Does this change your view of other women, the ones who are not on these websites?

H: Well, for me, I don’t judge a woman because she’s sexually active. I don’t consider her a ho, or a slut, just because she’s trying to get her needs met. She’s just like me. She’s just a regular person like I am. So, I don’t judge them. I just try to have a good time. And If I can have a good time with her and we can continue- fine. If it’s just a one-night thing – fine. But I don’t think she’s a slut or she’s dirty — or anything like that because she’s doing what she’s doing to get hers, y’know. I respect a woman who does this for free rather than go charge a man a hundred to five hundred dollars. I respect this one more than that one, because she’s doing what she wants to do, y’know.

Z: How do these relationships end once you’ve had your fun?

H: Usually, I don’t call them anymore. If they call me, I just don’t pick it up.

Z: You never tell them anything?

H: Nah. No, I don’t. Unless, I get on one, then I’ll call back again and see if she’ll still let me in. If not, then I’ll just move on.

Z: What fantasies do women want you to satisfy?

H: The majority… like threesomes. Two guys and her.

Z: Do you find women looking for bondage, S&M, and things from the kinkier side?

H: I don’t really fuck around with that. [laughs] I’m not down for that. Maybe if the moment was there and she said, “Fucking choke me,” or something like that then I would, but I’ve never really found a woman like that.

Z: Have you ever had a woman freak out, before, during or after you had sex?

H: No.

Z: Do you think any of these women you meet are married or in relationships?

H: I don’t think so.

Z: -You think they’re all single?

H: …For the most part.

Z: -What’s the age range of women you’ve met for sex?

H: I’ve had women from nineteen all the way up to about forty-four. And I’m forty-one. With the nineteen year-olds, they’re good. It’s just because they’re young. Y’know what I mean? They’re very active.

Z: How much sexual activity can you manage in a day?

H: What’s funny is – I can’t fuck the same girl three times. But I can fuck three different girls in the same day. Soon as I fuck one girl, I’m usually just kinda done, y’know. And I just want to move on to the next one. Try something different. Y’know what I mean? Try to fuck as many different ones as I can.

Z: What would you tell someone who wants to start cruising these sites for sex?

H: I think that if you’re gonna do this – be yourself, be honest, and go for what you’re looking for, don’t settle for less. I mean, if you can work whatever girl you want, just enjoy yourself, have good clean fun and then just take it for what it’s worth. Y’know? Don’t go psycho on her. Don’t disrespect her… because we’re all human beings. Just have fun with it. 

Aínda que moitas palabras rematadas en -illo e -illa se incluíron no vocabulario do galego, a meirande parte delas son castelanismos que podemos substituír con formas propias. Eis o caso de descansillo, que significa zona plana na que remata un tramo de escaleiras. Para substituír o termo incorrecto podemos empregar varias opcións.

A forma máis “familiar” podería ser descanso. A opción de eliminar o diminutivo castelán xa se usa noutros casos, por exemplo en cigarrillo-cigarro.

De todos os xeitos, existen formas máis “tradicionais” que conviría fomentar. Así podemos empregar relanzo, forma metafórica que lle aplica ao descanso entre escadas un termo que tamén define o tramo dun río onde a corrente se fai máis lenta ou o espazo ao redor dun camiño que cambia de socato de sentido.

A única palabra específica para esa peza arquitectónica en galego é escaleirón. “En cada escaleirón a comunidade puxo un extintor”.

Cando falemos da zona plana na que desemboca o tramo de escaleiras exteriores que levan ao sobrado dunha casa, poderemos falar de patín ou patamal. É bo resucitar estes termos da casa tradicional que moita xente só usa para falar da casa vella dos avós; para a nova que fixeron os pais xa prefiren terraza.

Daven Hiskey and the other authors of the blog of Today I Found Out are proud to present The Wise Book of Whys. The book answers 100 fascinating questions in detail; things you'll be glad to know -or give as a gift! Today Neatorama is happy to present a timely excerpt from The Wise Book of Whys.

This tradition is mostly thanks to Guy Lombardo and the Royal Canadian Band. While their work is largely unknown to those born in the last few decades, the band has sold over 300 million records to date. Guy Lombardo himself has three stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and he was once the “Dick Clark” of New Years before Clark and his “New Year’s Rockin’ Eve,” attempting to appeal to younger audiences, started supplanting “Mr. New Year’s Eve,” Guy Lombardo.

It was in 1929 that Guy Lombardo and his band took the stage at the Roosevelt Hotel in New York City on New Year’s Eve. Their performance that night was being broadcast on the radio, before midnight Eastern-time on CBS, then after on NBC radio.

At midnight, as a transition between the broadcasts, the song they chose to play was an old Scottish folk song Lombardo had first heard from Scottish immigrants in Ontario. The song was Auld Lang Syne.

Previous to this, there are several documented instances of others singing this song on New Year’s Eve, going all the way back to the mid-nineteenth century, but it wasn’t anywhere close to the staple it would soon be after Lombardo’s performance.

The next year, and every year thereafter, all the way to 1976, with Lombardo dying at the age of 75 in 1977, they played it at midnight on New Year’s Eve, at first broadcast out on the radio and later on TV. Thanks to “Mr. New Year’s Eve” and his band, it’s still tradition to this day.

(YouTube link)

Bonus Fact:

It is often said that the song, Auld Lang Syne, was written by famed eighteenth century poet/songwriter, “Scotland’s Favorite Son” -Robert Burns. However, Burns never claimed to have written the song -in fact, quite the opposite. When he submitted it to the Scots Musical Museum, he included a note stating: “The following song, an old song, of the olden times, and which has never been in print, nor even in manuscript until I took it down from an old man's singing, is enough to recommend any air.”

The song was first published in 1788, and later a slightly modified version was published in Thomson’s Select Songs of Scotland in 1799, three years after Burns’ death.

The title, roughly translated to modern English, literally means “old long since,” but more figuratively means, “Times Gone By” or “Times Long Past.” It is simply a song about remembering old friends and the times spent with them. Burns set the lyrics to a traditional Scottish ditty called Can Ye Labour Lea.

The Wise Book of Whys is available at Amazon in print and Kindle editions and at Barnes and Noble for the Nook, and you can even get an audio version.

And visit Dave and his crew at Today I Found Out!

Los ultras del Celtic cantando Viva la Quinta Brigada en un partido de Champions contra la Juve. La canción de los brigadistas irlandeses que vinieron a luchar contra el fascismo, aunque no eran la Quinta Brigada sino la Quince.

Ten years before I saw the light of morning
A comradeship of heroes was laid
From every corner of the world came sailing
The Fifteen International Brigade.

They came to stand beside the Spanish people
To try and stem the rising fascist tide
Franco's allies were the powerful and wealthy
Frank Ryan's men came from the other side.

Even the olives were bleeding
As the battle for Madrid it thundered on
Truth and love against the force of evil
Brotherhood against the fascist clan.

Chorus:
Viva la Quinta Brigada,
No Pasaran, the pledge that made them fight
Adelante was the cry around the hillside
Let us all remember them tonight.

Bob Hilliard was a Church of Ireland pastor
From Killarney across the Pyrenees he came
From Derry came a brave young Christian Brother
And side by side they fought and died in Spain.

Tommy Woods age seventeen died in Cordoba
With Na Fianna he learned to hold his gun
From Dublin to the Villa del Rio
He fought and died beneath the Spanish sun.

(Chorus)

Many Irishmen heard the call of Franco
Joined Hitler and Mussolini too
Propaganda from the pulpit and newspapers
Helped O'Duffy to enlist his crew.

The call came from Maynooth, "support the facists"
The men of cloth had failed yet again
When the Bishops blessed the Blueshirts in Dun Laoghaire
As they sailed beneath the swastika to Spain.

(Chorus)

This song is a tribute to Frank Ryan
Kit Conway and Dinny Coady too
Peter Daly, Charlie Regan and Hugh Bonar
Though many died I can but name a few.

Danny Boyle, Blaser-Brown and Charlie Donnelly
Liam Tumilson and Jim Straney from the Falls
Jack Nalty, Tommy Patton and Frank Conroy
Jim Foley, Tony Fox and Dick O'Neill.
(Chorus repeated)

(Gracias a Baena por la pista)

Can you figure out the movie titles from these math equations (or math illustrations, which is a better term, I guess)? At Spiked Math, there are more of these graphics plus an interactive movie math quiz, because so many of their readers responded with their own movie riddles. Oh, they don't give you the answers, but check the comments because other people figured them out, often with more than one movie title that works. I got three of them right off, but the rest made my head hurt.  -via Geeks Are Sexy

A new, free game from Cards Against Humanity’s “12 Days of Holiday Bullshit.”

Download it for free here.

Max Temkin via DoobyBrain

A turducken is a chicken stuffed inside a duck stuffed inside a turkey. A Cthurkey is an octopus stuffed inside a turkey and garnished with crab legs and bacon. The dish is named in honor of our Lord Cthulhu whose dreadful reign will hopefully begin soon.

Rusty Eulberg, a database administrator in Lubbock, Texas, invented it. His wife is a fan of H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos, so he made this uniquely terrifying dish for her. You can see more photos here.

The next year, Mr. Eulberg and his wife made a Cthicken with a chicken and squid. Next year, he may offer a Cthulu-themed dinner with a deep fried Cthurkey.

-via Kotaku

How much do you know about Nature’s round mounds of wonder?

Here’s an alphabetical appreciation of the brilliance of Nature we call breasts.

1. Annette Funicellos

According to Research … Nipples Are Like a Clitoris on Each Breast

You know it and I know it, scientists loves sex. Recent studies discovered nipple stimulation activates the same sensory cortex areas of the brain as clitoral and vaginal stimulation. Apparently, nipples are wired to the same part of the brain as the genitals. Which means they exist for pleasure as much as for parenting.

This helps explain why, for a majority of women, nipple stimulation leads to far greater arousal; and for a small percentage of women, they’re able to reach full orgasms from nipple stimulation alone.

Any enjoyable time a partner caresses, fondles, or tongue-tickles a woman’s nipples, she experiences a flush of oxytocin rush through her brain. It’s the “bonding” chemical you’ve no doubt heard mentioned. Thanks to oxytocin, not only does nipple stimulation encourage orgasms, it also increases feelings of attachment to a partner. Nipples are magical little love buttons.

2. Bikini Stuffers

Bet You Cash Money Your Left Breast is Bigger

A constant source of adolescent anxiety seems to be the question – Is one of my breasts bigger/smaller than the other?

Short answer – Yes.

Long answer – It doesn’t matter.

For the vast majority of women one breast is up to a half cup bigger/smaller than the other.

60% of the time the larger boob is the left breast.

3. Casaba Melons

Cars Are Older Tech Than Bras

There were similar designs in ancient times, but the bra, as we know it, turns 100 in 2014.

The word “brassiere” was first used in Vogue magazine in 1907.

But it wasn’t until 1914 that Mary Phelps-Jacob patented the first design for a bra. Her model was a pair of handkerchiefs sewn together with baby ribbons. And boom-chica-boom, a bra was born.

In the ‘20s, Ida Rosenthal and her husband, William, invented the modern sizing system of cups used for their Maidenform bras.

Then in 1948, Frederick Mellinger, the famous name behind Frederick’s of Hollywood, gave the world the push-up bra. And with that stroke of brilliance, breasts found their moment in the spotlight and never looked back.

4. Du Monde Au Balcon

Don’t Worry About Breastfeeding …But Cigarettes Will Make Your Breasts Saggy

Far too many women forgo breastfeeding afraid it might damage the girls. Science is here to help. Studies show breastfeeding doesn’t cause boobs to sag.

However, University of Kentucky researchers found smoking certainly does. It’s due to how smoking degrades elastin, a protein that helps give breasts their lift.

Obviously, gravity drags down on everything. Every breast eventually heads south for the equator. Go ahead and blame gravity, smoking and the relentless march of time, but boobs don’t sag because of a baby.

5. Empress and the Queen

Each and Every Breast is Badass

The primary product of breasts, other than aesthetic and sexual pleasure, is breast milk.

Did you know proteins in breast milk can kick the ass of HIV and Conjunctivitis?

It’s called Tenascin-C, which looks/sounds so much like Tenacious D that the first time I read it I laughed out loud for most of the rest of the article. I’m silly. But this protein, Tenascin-C, or TNC, is no joke.

Researchers at Duke Human Vaccine Institute found that Tenascin-C, a central component of the “extra-cellular matrix,” plays a critical function in wound healing and cell/tissue repair. Exactly what critical function it plays, remains a mystery.

Like so much of the science on breast milk, you’ll find not enough is known about how TNC works exactly. Clearly, it’s a field in need of funding. So far, this much is known, TNC has antiviral properties and germ-fighting capabilities. It’s also shown to have an HIV-inhibiting effect.

Research suggests this explains why breastfeeding babies born to HIV-infected mothers often do not become infected. It seems, TNC, this rather unknown protein in breast milk, somehow kicks HIV’s ass and protects the babies.

On a more anecdotal level of science, there are all sorts of reports of mothers squirting breast milk in the eyes of their children infected with conjunctivitis, aka, Pink Eye. Usually, after two days, the infection cleared up.

All around the world breast milk has been reported used in healing ointments, rubs, salves and poultices for wounds.

Mother’s milk, ‘nuff said

6. Fun Bags

Follicularly Speaking, Lots of Women Have Nipple Hair

Hair patterns are rather consistent all over a person’s body. For some populations, known to be a bit more hirsute, this means nipple hair is rather common.

Some women tweeze, some trim, some laser, and some don’t give two fucks and leave ‘em.

The nipple hair is the same color as pubic hair or natural head hair color. And apparently, nipple hair is more common than uncommon.

7. God’s Greatest Creation

Genetics Suggest Breasts Developed For Babies …and For Sexual Partners

“I got one for each of ya!”

Breasts are beautiful to look at. Large, medium and small. Of course, a guy would say that. But I think we all agree. Some of their appeal has nothing to do with breastfeeding. Apparently, breasts developed for twin functions.

Mammary glands developed to feed infants by transmitting valuable proteins, hormones and brain-building fats. But the fatty tissue that gives breasts their shape, it does not affect milk production.

All those lovely curves and shadows, those eye-pleasing arcs of flesh are meant to be enjoyed visually. It’s Nature stoking us with more beauty.

One theory suggests as we began to walk upright we needed new sexual signals besides engorged genitals and swollen buttocks. Breasts swelled in response.

Another theory suggests a woman’s breasts signaled her age and fertility and functioned as an advertisement of her ability to produce a healthy child. Always an important investment with limited resources.

No matter what the reasoning, Evolution wired our brains around the idea of breasts, turning breasts into a great source of pleasure for everyone involved.

For example, straight adolescent boys as they mature sexually grow attracted to breasts. This we all know. When such an adolescent finally get alone with a girl, one who’s willing to get naked with him, when he nibbles, nuzzles and caresses the girl’s breasts, not only does that dude feel a rush of good feelings, the girl also and equally experiences sexual pleasure, but on top of that, she has that aforementioned crazy hit of oxytocin, which subtly uses the power of neurochemicals to make her feel more bonded to her partner. Genius!

8. Hakuna Ma-ta-tas

How Big Do You Think the Average Boob Is?

The statistically average breast, in America, is a 36 C.

An average breast weighs 1.1 lbs and contains 4-5% of the body’s total fat.

The most popular bra size in the UK is a 36D.

More than 50% of British women purchase D cup bras.

Italians have the smallest average breasts in Europe. They average a B cup.

Around the globe, B is the most common cup size.

9. Idaho Entertainment Center

In Spite of What Most Folks Guess, Bigger Isn’t Always Better When It Comes to Breasts

A study pairing Malaysian and English breast researchers (why does that sound like a joke?) showed 361 men a series of full-body photos of naked women. They asked the men to rate the women on their attractiveness.

Women with large breasts weren’t rated the highest. Not at all.

Top scores went to women with medium-sized breasts.

As with many things, there seems to be a Bell curve of taste. And the middle of the curve of appeal falls right in line with the average size. It’s basically a lot like pop music.

10. Jiggle Machines

Job #1: Breastfeeding … It’s Also Nature’s Original Weight-Loss Program

People say, “You’re still breast-feeding, that’s so generous.” Generous, no! It gives me boobs and it takes my thighs away! It’s sort of like natural liposuction. I’d carry on breast-feeding for the rest of my life if I could. – Helena Bonham Carter

According to available data, creating a day’s worth of breast milk burns/uses an average of 500 calories/day.

The milk produced contains nutrients pulled from the mother’s blood and bodily stores of fat and minerals such as calcium.

A mix of sugar, fat, protein and water, breast milk’s composition constantly changes depending on the nursing baby’s needs.

In a way, you could say, breast milk builds baby while it shrinks mommy. A little tit for tat, so to speak.

11. Knockers

King Kong of Boobs — the Guinness World’s Record for Biggest Breasts…

…belongs to Annie Hawkins’-Turner.

Each breast weighs 56 pounds – for a total of 112 pounds of boobs (yes, I did that math myself).

Wrapping a tape measure around her chest, over her nipples you’d come up with 70 inches as your measurement. That’s nearly six feet around in circumference.

And that’s 3 ½ feet of boobs coming at you!

Her bra size? 102 ZZZ

(I wonder if homeless people could use her old bras as shelter from the rain.)

12. Love Balloons

Low Self-Esteem Often Pushes Women to Get Breast Implants (That Are, Not Always, But Often, a Silicone Cry For Help)

Canadians researchers did a study on the suicide rate of women with breast implants.

They found women with implants had a 73% higher rate of suicide.

It was a 15-year study conducted at Laval University in Quebec. The results were published in the American Journal of Epidemiology. They concluded that women with low-self esteem, suffering from body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) were likely to get implants as well. Additionally, they were likely to suffer from depression.

In a related study, conducted at the Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia, researchers found that people with BDD, “typically do not benefit from cosmetic procedures.”

More than new boobs, some women clearly need help dealing with suffering related to a persistent mental condition that is darkening their days. (And I don’t mean patriarchy) They need help handling their depression.

Unfortunately, breast implants are far cheaper, and more readily available than local mental health outreach.

13. Mahatma Oh-My-Gandhis

Medical Reports Indicate Breast Implants Are Still the Most Popular Plastic Surgery

In America, 2 million women are sporting fakies.

Ahead of liposuction, rhinoplasty and tummy tucks, breast implants remain the top cosmetic surgery procedure, year in and year out.

90% of women who elect to get implants have already had children.

The average age of a woman when she gets her first implants is 34.

14. Num-Nums

Nipples Are Classified Into 4 Types

1. Normal
2. Flat
3. Inverted
4. Puffy

You would think they could come up with a better scale and not rely on any clumsy and insensitive notion of “normal.” That’s where we’re at still in medicine. So, you know, I have to use the terminology. My apologies.

Normal: these are nipples that, in a resting state, resemble a pencil eraser, slightly protruding. During periods of arousal or perhaps due to temperature changes, they might grow more prominent.

Flat: Like tiny pancakes of flesh, flat nipples lay against the breast just how it sounds. Like normal nipples, flat nipples grow and become prominent due to temperature changes or arousal.

Inverted: Softly folding in on themselves, inverted nipples are the opposite of normal nipples. Breastfeeding and cosmetic surgery can both draw out the nipple. As well, some folks use sex toys such as nipple clamps to raise the nipple from within its folds of flesh.

Puffy: Lastly, are the nipples that exhibit multiple levels of protrusion, and feature the areola always raised from the breast.

Statistics suggest between 28 – 35% of women have nipples that lay flat and don’t protrude.

And specifically, 10% have nipples that are labeled “inverted.”

To make sense of that math, to provide some perspective, I can say, I don’t think I’ve ever heard a single straight guy or lesbian gal I’ve known ever complain about their partner’s nipples. Ever. That’s a lot of nipples. I’m just sayin’.

And the “normal” tag is scientific laziness. In this case, it’s bullshit.

15. Oprah and Gayle

Organic Human Breast Milk Is Sold Online… Naturally, It’s Super-Expensive …

(And People Without Babies Also Buy It)

Of course, you can buy breast milk online. Perhaps you need some milk because you’re suffering from sore nipples, maybe you’re traveling and baby isn’t, or maybe you’re unable to breastfeed for any number of reasons.

You can find a wet nurse online and buy some of her breast milk. You may even like all the super cute-marketing relying on such saccharine sweet terms that indicate a mother’s breast milk is “fresh and fatty.”

And yes, of course, there are women who sell breast milk to men who clearly have no baby to feed. But, this is free market breast milk, baby! Name your price.

On websites like OnlyTheBreast.com, the prices average $1.50 an ounce.

From just a cursory scan of price trends, one quickly surmises that 99 cents is the what you’d call the “discount price.”

While $2 dollars/ounce seems to be the “premium price.”

A statistically average baby drinks 30 ounces of breast milk every day.

$60 bucks a day in breast milk? The stuff is an expensive habit.

You can purchase organic breast milk fresh-frozen by a young nursing mother (a Jewish mother, if you need to keep kosher) and have it shipped to you overnight. For obvious reasons, it’s a fast-growing market.

But think about it this way, at $2.00/ounce breast milk is worth more than the dirty ass oil Exxon’s furiously pumping.

A barrel of oil holds 5376 fluid ounces.

The price for a barrel of oil yesterday was: $96.60 (WTI crude oil)

That means an ounce of crude oil costs .0179 cents.

That’s a number so small it’s between one and two pennies.

Basically, crude oil costs a little less than two cents an ounce.

Breast milk costs two dollars/ounce. You do the math.

Clearly, breast milk is way more valuable, both for today and for building tomorrow.

16. Pride and Joy

Perchlorate Is Not a Normal Ingredient Found in Breast Milk 

Due to the nature of highly permeable membranous nature of breast tissue, they function like a canary in a coal mine.

Breasts store and aggregate the heavy chemicals a woman ingests from her environment.

One woman, a writer working on an article on breastfeeding, went into a lab to test her breast milk. She was stunned to find what came out of her nipples contained flame retardants, heavy chemicals like dioxin, a common environmental pollutant, and perchlorate, an ingredient necessary to produce flares, fireworks, rocket fuel and explosives.

After further research, the writer, Florence Williams, discovered American women often expressed breast milk with dangerously toxic chemical, and at levels 10 to 100 times higher than women anywhere else in the world. She wrote a tremendous book about what she discovered concerning breasts and dangers to them.

Regulators and researchers, the ones who determine and then test the allowable limits and rate the effects of dangerous chemicals on living things, those protectors of our general health, they don’t usually test the effect of industrial chemicals on mammary glands.

The regulators and researchers, our protectors, don’t seem too concerned with how highly toxic heavy chemicals affect the glands that produce breast milk.

Ain’t that some bullshit?

17. Quebec Face-warmers

Quiet Dirty Secret of the Fashion Industry, A Huge Source of Profit Is Bras/ Lingerie

According to the latest available numbers from 2012, in the United States, lingerie stores (just lingerie stores) sold 11.5 billion dollars worth of bras and lingerie. Eleven-five.

To give you a sense of scale, to find a comparable industry – you could point to guns.

Last year, Americans purchased 11.7 billion dollars worth of guns.

But I guess none of this should surprise you. Sex and violence, right?

Bullets and bras sometimes feel like twin flagships of the American Dream.

18. Rib Cushions

Ridiculous As It May Seem, Breasts Love Weird Stuff Like… Cabbage Leaves?

Once again, due to the fact breast science isn’t a hotbed for funding, no one knows exactly why, but breasts love cabbage leaves. This is especially true of sore, engorged, chafed breasts. If your boobs are aching, try laying some cabbage leaves over the girls and let ‘em take a nap under that soft yet crisp blanket of veggie love. Like putting green beans on a burn, cabbage seems to heal sore boobs. It’s like catnip for your…

19. Sweater Kittens

Science Agrees… All Breasts Are Created Equal

Ready for this? Regardless of size, all breasts produce the same amount of milk.

But when they lacked an adequate and fresh supply, back before there was the internet and you could buy some hipster mama’s fresh-frozen spare milk, nursing mothers often turned to extreme lengths – such as putting their baby on the tit of a goat.

Suck on that, Junior. (sorry, that sounds gross).

Interestingly though, the breast milk flowed in both directions.

In Japan, women have been known to nurse bear cubs, and puppies.

In South America, women might nurse monkeys, or baby deer.

And in New Guinea, women were known to nurse a piglet.

If science had adequate funding, I think they’d agree with me on this…

Boobs have superpowers!

20. Thelma and Louise

Truth Is… Breast Milk Also Gets Babies High (…maybe)

Not only does breast milk provide sugar, protein, fats, hormones and things like immunoglobulin which helps a newborn develop an immune system; it also contains endocannabinoids, chemicals that are very similar to ones responsible for the psychoactive properties of marijuana.

Researchers suggest endocannabinoids in breast milk have a similar effect. They might be what makes babies so chill after some boob-time.

You’ll notice after a hit of the boob most babies go down for a nap. Apparently, Science is just sayin’. Your baby may be high. And that’s a good thing.

21. Upper Deck

Unusual As It May Sound, You Inherit Your Boobs From Your Mom… or Your Dad

Due to the nature of genetic variation, a woman inherits her breasts from either her mother or her father by way of the genes of his mother. When it comes to boobs, you stand an equal chance of inheriting the shape of breasts from either grandmother.

22. Van Dorens

Variety of Types of Breast Milk Shows Boobs Are Kinda Genius at Their Job

Throughout the course of breastfeeding, a nursing mother’s breasts make different milk for all the baby’s different needs.

In ways science still doesn’t fully understand, interaction between mother and nursing child affects the type of milk a mother’s breast produces.

It’s almost as if the nipples sense something from the baby’s saliva or mouth. But no one knows what the mechanism is.

Nursing mothers will also produce different milk depending on whether the baby is a boy or a girl. Breast milk for boys contains more fat and protein than milk produced for baby girls.

23. Wonder Twins

WTF?! Did You Know Boobs Can Kill A Man!

27-year-old Claire Smedley found her name plastered all over the tabloid headlines after she almost suffocated her boyfriend with her 40LL-sized boobs.

No word on how long her man was stuck buried breathless beneath all her mountains’ majesty, but apparently, the dude fell unconscious after being smothered by her enormous breasts, and yes, while they were having a good ol’ fashioned fuck. Luckily, she acted quickly to save him and the dude lived to tell the tale of nearly being killed by his girlfriend’s pair of 40-Double Ls.

24. X-Ray Vision Eye-Pleasers

X-cuse Me… I Noticed Your Breasts… It Seems You’re Wearing the Wrong Size Bra

My aunt sold bras. My mother was a professional breastfeeding advocate. In case you were wondering why a guy was so into the science of breasts, I’ve absorbed a lot of this just through a sort of educational osmosis.

Like, for instance, I know most women wear the wrong size bra.

Only reason I know that, I’ve seen my aunt point it out, over and over again, to women she knew or just met in a department store. And they always thanked her.

Statistics indicate, as many as 80% of women wear the wrong size bra.

Not only does it make a woman’s boobs look weird, more importantly, the wrong bra can negatively impact your health, causing back pain, indigestion and chronic headaches.

Get your girls somewhere comfortable to chill. Buy ‘em another bra to stand ‘em up for a night out. And get ‘em a soft one that feels like a cozy hammock. And at least one of those rigs with the tight embrace of a sports bra for doing cool shit.

A woman needs bras for all the possible moments and conditions of her life.

And while you’re at it, buy some bras in two sizes. It might help with the monthly size fluctuations. I’m just sayin’.

25. Yabbos  (variant: Major League Yabbos)

Your Breasts Make Men Dumber and Live Longer

Leave it to the Germans. A study by Dr. Kathryn Weatherby conducted in Deutschland, asked men to ogle women’s breasts. Researchers found the health benefits to the men were similar to 30-minutes of exercise. …Yes!

Staring at breasts was found to be as healthy for a man’s body as half-an-hour of working out.

The sight of breasts raises the heart rate, which gets blood churning and pumping, thus improving circulation, and reducing the risk of heart attack or stroke by half. That’s a serious health benefit.

I’m telling you, boobs are magic.

The good doctor said staring at boobs can extend a man’s life by 5 years.

Not to worry, I doubt men will start arguing that “staring at tits is good for my health.”

Wanna know why?

Despite the health benefits, staring at breasts also reduced men’s abilities to think clearly. Boobs make it more difficult for men to perform well on cognitive tests.

Basically, breasts make it harder for men to think but helps them live longer. Once again, Evolution really found that all-important sweet spot.

26. Zooey’s Deschanels

Zoo Is the Second Best Sightseeing Opportunity In Brooklyn…

The average American woman owns 9 bras.

And a woman doesn’t have to wear a single one of them whenever she’s in one of the states where it’s within a woman’s legal rights to move through the world totally topless.

These extremely enlightened states are: Hawaii, Ohio, New York and Texas(?).

I assume the only reason it’s legal in Texas has something to do with cheerleaders and college football parties.

But hey, like I said, I think we all agree…

Breasts Are Awesome! 

RocknRoll desde la Cripta. Seleccionamos algunos de nuestros pasajes instrumentales terroríficos favoritos, cartuchos de temática oscura, inquietante o escalofriante. Surf Terror en el Sótano con la participación de The Ghouls (Coffin nails), Essex (Cemetary stomp), Bert Weedon (Ghost train), Link Wray (The shadow knows), Laika and the Cosmonauts (Experiment in terror), Hawaii Samurai (Le masque du demon), The Tormentos (Il diavolo in corpo), The Surf Coasters (West ghost), The Surf Raiders (Unknown), The Bomboras (The hollow), Toquays (Ghost riders in the sky), Satan Pilgrims (Creature feature), Telekrimen (El circo del brujo), Messer Chups (Super megera), Ray Daytona and the Googoobombos (Even zombies cry), The Ghastly Ones (Shockmonster stomp), The Dragtones (Chupacabra) y The Apemen (Creature from the haunted sea).

Tras recordar con cariño a Daniel Luquero de DDT, dedicamos el programa a un necesario e interesantísimo documental sobre los orígenes del skate en España y sus pasos hacia la consolidación como movimiento cultural. Monopatín es un trabajo arqueológico que reivindica a los pioneros de este movimiento con imágenes maravillosas. Sus responsables directos Carlos Galan, Alfredo Prados y el director Pedro Temboury nos acompañan para intentar trasladar esas imágenes a la radio mientras disfrutamos de un playlist en donde suenan. DDT (Punkis millonarios), Jan and Dean (Sidewalk surfin), La Banda Trapera del Rio (Monopatín), Corizonas (The falcons sleep tonight), Surf Trio (Skater dater), Kirk and the Jerks (Only one way to do it), Circle Jerks (Wild in the streets), Agent Orange (Its all a blur) y Fidlar (Wake bake skate).

Dead Boys (CC).

El reciclado de algunas estrellas del punk neoyorquino de los setenta es tan sorprendente como la oleada musical que abanderaron. Walter Lure, el guitarrista de los Heartbreakers de Johnny Thunders, es agente de bolsa en Wall Street. Andy Shernoff, bajista y compositor de los Dictators, sumiller. Una vez estuve en casa de este último en Nueva York y medio salón era toda una enoteca. Recuerdo que abrió un par de blancos alemanes. Trasegando, le pregunté por los recuerdos de aquel año, el mítico 1977, y agitando el copón como el profesional del mundo del vino que es, dio un trago, saboreó el producto y dijo despacio: «En el CBGB´s, los Dead Boys empezando a tocar “Sonic Reducer”…». Volvía a paladear el vino. Silencio. Tatareaba el riff, cerraba los ojos…

Yo no sabría decir cuál fue el grupo más importante de aquella generación, ni el mayor hito de la legendaria agenda de conciertos de aquel club ese verano, pero sí que es cierto que «Sonic Reducer» es algo mayestático, cochambre mayestática, pero que detiene el tiempo. A día de hoy, nada ha envejecido en el sonido ni en la puesta en escena. El cantante, Stiv Bators, es un gusano. El guitarrista, Cheetah Chrome, un neandertal. Es sencillamente perfecto.

Ante la duda eterna adolescente de que quien no vive como piensa termina pensando como vive, ni los Dead Boys ni muchos de sus compañeros de generación tenían mucho que aportar, básicamente porque ellos enunciaban la máxima con el verbo morir. Ni siquiera querían tocar, lo suyo sobre el escenario era hacer no-música. Y nada de interpretar, parodiar. El resultado fue desigual, como en casi todas aquellas atropelladas carreras, pero único en su especie. Stiv era de sensibilidad pop y Cheetah quería rockear. Resolvieron el litigio con un punto en común: tocarlo todo muy alto, muy rápido, muy intenso. Que era también su filosofía de vida. Había que vivir con velocidad y muy ridículamente.

Al contrario que muchos de los primeros punks de los setenta, no eran artistas, venían de barrios y familias difíciles, por no ser no eran ni de Nueva York. Los Dead Boys venían de Cleveland. Allí Stiv Bators se introdujo en el circuito musical de la mano de Frank Secich, de Blue Ash, uno más de esos grupos bajo la etiqueta de power pop, que como Badfinger, Big Star o Raspberries no llegaron a arrasar en los setenta, pero que son recordados con verdadera devoción. En una deliciosa entrevista en Fantail hace un mes, Secich relató cómo fueron aquellos inicios y lo tocado del ala que estaba ya Stiv desde el primer día que se puso delante del público.

En los sesenta, tuve la fortuna, o la mala suerte, de ser la primera persona en subir a Stiv a un escenario (…) Yo estaba al bajo y mi loco amigo Stiv a la voz y a la armónica, solo que no tenía armónica, pero ahuecaba sus manos y conseguía hacer sonidos de armónica que eran increíbles. Hicimos versiones de los Stones y de los Yardbirds y comenzamos bastante bien. Pero entonces Stiv sacó un bote de nata montada y empezó a agitarlo por la entrepierna. El público comenzó a enloquecer, así que se fue hasta el borde del escenario y disparó la nata sobre ellos. Después arrojó el pié de micro al aire, golpeándose en la cabeza y provocándose un corte profundo. El público se volvió loco, pero él estaba realmente herido. Después del concierto, tuve que llevarle al hospital para que le suturasen. Este fue el principio de la carrera de Stiv.

Su primer grupo después ese debut esplendoroso fue Mother Goose. Su objetivo: «cachondearse de los músicos de aquella época que pretendían tocar muy bien». Ya sabemos cómo es esto. En España te metes con la religión y te puede ir mal, pero si te burlas de los músicos virtuosos sus fans se defienden como vírgenes que ven entrar a un grupo de estibadores portuarios borrachos en su tetería de cabecera. No sé qué razones psicopatológicas conducen a estos extremos, pero entonces, en el apogeo de Pink Floyd, no era diferente.

En el Ruta 66 de septiembre de 1987 el propio Stiv enumeró todos los percances que cosecharon al inicio de su andadura: les echaron de treinta y seis clubs y quince fiestas de instituto de Ohio y Pennsylvania. En el grupo, un guitarrista iba pintado de verde con los ojos maquillados de rojo, el bajista iba de azul, el batería mitad de blanco y mitad de negro y Stiv de color plata con unos rockys, unas botas hasta las rodillas y un collar de perro con una cadena que le tenía atado a la batería. Los roadies, de paso, vestidos de nazis y listos para pegarse con cualquiera. Lo único que podía compararse a ese engendro por aquel entonces era Alice Cooper. No en vano, todas las influencias que citaban los Dead Boys venían de Detroit: MC5, Iggy and the Stooges…

Cuenta la leyenda que Stiv fue el tío del público que le entregó a Iggy la mantequilla de cacahuete en el famoso concierto del Cincinnati Pop Festival de 1970. Legs McNeil, editor de la revista Punk! en los setenta y uno de los primeros ídem de Nueva York, en su biblia sobre el punk Por favor, mátame dice que igual era mentira que fuera Stiv el que le diera el tarro de mantequilla a Iggy en aquella bendita actuación, pero que en caso de serlo «era una mentira fantástica». Las escenas de ese concierto con Iggy puesto de ácido tirando la mantequilla hacia arriba son el punto más bajo y el más alto al mismo tiempo que ha alcanzado la sociedad occidental. Para esto se ganaron dos guerras mundiales, señores.

Más adelante, Stiv se mudaría a Cleveland. Vivía en su coche, no tenía dinero para un apartamento. Pero pronto reunió a los Dead Boys con un método involuntario muy distinto al típico anuncio de una revista. A Jimmy Zero lo conoció intentando ligarse a su novia, se terminaron haciendo amigos después de que casi le parte la cara. Luego él y Jimmy intentaron ligar con otras dos tías y se dieron de hostias con sus novios, que a la sazón eran Johnny Blitz y Cheetah Chrome. De aquella somanta de palos surgió también una bonita amistad que terminó dando forma al grupo.

Antes de disolverse, Stiv cantó unas cuantas veces con nosotros. Dejó todo el equipo hecho una mierda y se meó en dos tías del público.

Al principio no se llamaron Dead Boys. Se vistieron de mujeres, como los New York Dolls y se denominaron Frankenstein para un bolo en la noche de Halloween. Los primeros pasos de este grupo también fueron prometedores. En palabras de Stiv:

En nuestro segundo concierto como Frankenstein, en Cleveland, Cheetah le partió los morros al cantante del grupo que teloneábamos. Luego nos peleamos con los gorilas del club y, al día siguiente, Blitz le prendió fuego al local, aunque nadie pudo probarlo. Pero después de aquello, nos fue imposible encontrar trabajo en Cleveland durante seis meses.

El mensajero de la buena nueva llegó en 1976 a Cleveland. Johnny Thunders con unos teloneros también ataviados putapénicamente como Frankenstein, aunque, ellos sí que consiguieron poco después llevárselo crudo, los Kiss. El caso es que Stiv hizo amistad con Thunders lo que le sirvió como carta de presentación en Nueva York. En Manhattan conoció a los Ramones, que le llevaron directamente a Hilly Kristal (el barbudo que presenta al grupo en el vídeo que tienen ahí arriba) para que pudieran apalabrar unos bolos en el CBGB´s. Ahí mismo, in situ, cuando le preguntaron cómo se llamaba el grupo, Stiv se inventó otro nombre sobre la marcha, Dead Boys. Cuenta el cantante que luego sus compañeros cuando vieron los anuncios del concierto en el periódico fliparon con ese nombre. ¿Qué nombre más guapo, quién serán? —Ah, mira, somos nosotros, había olvidado deciros…

Seguían viviendo en Cleveland y cada vez iban más a Nueva York a tocar en el CBGB´s. «Robaba un coche, alquilábamos un tráiler y chupábamos gasolina del depósito de otros coches, así es como viajábamos», contó Stiv. Hasta que forzosamente se tuvieron que quedar a vivir en Manhattan. No por los conciertos, sino porque les robaron el coche y no tenían dinero para volver. Por esas fechas surge un contrato con Sire y se prepara la grabación del primer disco.

Hasta entonces las vivencias del grupo se cuentan por locuras. Stiv cogió la costumbre de salirse al capó del coche cuando iban a 100 por hora y enseñar el culo. «Era su gran momento», contó su primer manager, James Sliman. Lo hizo frente a los Ramones, frente a Cheap Trick… y sobre el escenario las payasadas tampoco desmerecían la conducción temeraria. Stiv se cortaba el pecho con una botella rota, en una ocasión una camarera del CBGB’s le hizo una mamada. Este es uno de esos pasajes memorables de Por favor, mátame:

Genya Ravan: Fui yo quien instigó a Stiv a que le hicieran una mamada en el escenario (…) Creo que John Cale estaba por allí y estábamos bebiendo como cosacos. Los Dead Boys tenían la canción «Caugh you with the meat in your mouth». Le dije a la camarera, cuando toquen esta canción, súbete al escenario, arrodíllate, bájale la cremallera a Stiv y úntale la polla con nata (…) Los Dead Boys empezaron a tocar la canción y, como Stiv siempre se tocaba el paquete, la polla siempre estaba a punto de salírsele (…).

Bebe Bluell: No sé quién era la chica, porque solo la vi de espaldas, pero a Stiv le estaban haciendo una mamada allí mismo. Y luego se ahorcó. Pasó el cinturón por encima de la tubería de la calefacción y se colgó. Por supuesto, sobrevivió. Aquello no me gustó nada, y me fui, pero no podía dejar de pensar en Stiv (…) siento atracción por las ratas y las comadrejas. No sé cómo puede ser tan guapo, pero lo es.

Genya Ravan: La camarera no hizo correrse a Stiv, porque el tío tenía que cantar. Yo no quería que desafinase, y le dije a la chica que no llegara hasta el final. Pobre chico.

Esta Genya Ravan era una cantante y fue también la encargada de producir el primer disco, Young, Loud and Snotty. Hubo un pequeño problema. Ella y su familia judía habían huido de Polonia durante la II Guerra Mundial. Su padre había estado en un campo de concentración. Dice que recuerda cómo mordió la mano de su madre cuando se la tapaba para que no la oyeran los soldados mientras escapaban. Así que cuando el grupo entró al estudio se llevó una sorpresa. Iban cargados de esvásticas por todas partes. Les hizo quitárselas todas si querían trabajar con ella.

El nazismo fue un recurso estético bastante habitual en los primeros años del punk rock. Estaba Dee Dee Ramone, que había crecido en Alemania, su padre era soldado, y salía a jugar al campo buscando metralletas oxidadas, cascos, insignias y otros vestigios que por esas fechas había a montones en los alrededores de Berlín. Sentía fascinación por los restos de esas batallas. Y en otros casos, como el de Arturo Vega, el artista amigo de los Ramones que diseñó portadas y su celebérrimo logo multiventas ahora en el H&M, era una cuestión artística. Uno de sus cuadros más famosos eran unas cruces gamadas fosforitas.

Cuantas más esvásticas pintaba, más pensaba en ellas, y más potentes me parecían, y más artísticas. Los colores fluorescentes no parecen muy naturales, aunque existan en la naturaleza. (…) Y cuando mezclas el nazismo con los colores fluorescentes, la locura humana se incrementa todavía más. Siempre he pensado que la única manera de conquistar el mal es haciéndole el amor. Tienes que comprenderlo. Pero también me gusta la manera como la gente reacciona ante mis esvásticas. La gente alucina. Esos cuadros son como un detector de nazis. Si eres un nazi de armario, se nota enseguida, porque los que se ofenden son los que tienen algo que ocultar. Por eso esos cuadros son tan bonitos, te desenmascaran.

En el caso de los Dead Boys no era ni una cosa ni otra, sencillamente, se trataba de una gamberrada. Iban regalando medallas nazis a sus amigos para nombrarlos «Dead Boys honorarios», las llevaban en la guitarra, en la chupa. A Eileen Polk, una fotógrafa de las primeras punks de la ciudad, que solía salir de marcha con un látigo, la conocieron, se la llevaron a casa y le afeitaron una esvástica en el vello púbico. Pero la gracia del asunto pronto se convirtió en tragedia.

La grabación del primer disco duró dos días y medio en los Electric Ladyland. Era la primera experiencia de Genya Ravan en la mesa y el resultado fue un poco artificioso, no captaba la crudeza del sonido del grupo en directo y estaba lleno de efectos. De hecho, en 1988, se lanzaron otras mezclas, las del ingeniero Bob Clearmountain, llamadas Younger, Louder and Snottier (The Rough Mixes) con un sonido mucho más crudo y desagradable, más acorde al espíritu del grupo. Un espíritu que, por cierto, no cuajó en Inglatera. Allí fueron, contó Jaime Gonzalo en el Ruta, de la mano de los Damned, se los comieron en un show «devastador», pero como andaban en la misma línea que los Sex Pistols fueron considerados una mera imitación por los pinchaúvas de la prensa británica.

Para el segundo LP, y precisamente por ese aludido «espíritu» del grupo, se los llevaron a Miami a grabar porque se veía que en Nueva York no iban a dar pie con bolo de los ciegos que se estaban pillando. Cheetah, por ejemplo, era íntimo de John Spacely, caballero que iba con un parche como el de Intereconomía porque un travesti le había sacado un ojo de un cadenazo, y que diez años después protagonizó el escalofriante documental de Lech Kowalski, Story of a Junkie, en el que hacía de cicerone por lo más oscuro y lúgubre del Nueva York ochentero. Sin embargo, en Florida no es que faltase alcohol precisamente y la grabación fue aún más lamentable que la primera. Y no solo por el desfase, también por el productor. Otra vez.

Felix Pappalardi había sido el bajista de Mountain. Aunque su grupo metiese en su día bastante ruido, según cuenta Cheetah, nunca entendió el concepto al que querían llegar los Dead Boys. El resultado es un disco bastante plano, falto de fuelle, con grandes canciones, pero sin punch. Lo más aprovechable fue lo que tomaron los Guns n´Roses, la última canción, «Ain’t it fun», para su Spaghetti Incident. Una canción de los tiempos en los que Cheetah Chrome estaba en Rocket from the tombs. Lo mejor de aquellos días, en cualquier caso, es que los Bee Gees estaban grabando al lado y se interesaron por «el nuevo sonido que llegaba de Nueva York». Hay una foto impagable de Stiv con Barry y Andy Gibb.

Pero el disco no molaba. Pappalardi iba a las sesiones drogado, con un traje estampado con flores de marihuana. Cheetah llamaba de madrugada llorando a James Williamson, el guitarrista del Raw Power de Iggy de los Stooges —un disco que también tuvo lo suyo con las mezclas iniciales de Bowie y las revisiones posteriores—, rogándole que fuera a salvar el disco. «¡Están destruyendo a los Dead Boys!», gemía.

Sin embargo, el grupo se bastaba a sí mismo para destruirse. Cuando Stiv Bators conoció a Iggy, que era su ídolo sagrado, quedaron para comer y se cayó de cara en su sopa del ciego que llevaba de Quaaludes. A Iggy y su novia les causó una impresión nefasta. Y hay que dar muy mala imagen en esta vida para perturbar al padrino del punk, que vivía de dar la peor imagen posible. Sobre el escenario, eso sí.

Aunque el grupo reventó por la violencia, no por la droga. Y la tontuna de las esvásticas pudo salirles muy cara. Michael Sticca (roadie de los Dead Boys y de Blondie) salió del CBGB’s con una chica. Fue a parar un taxi y quién sabe si por un malentendido o por qué, lo que se paró fue un coche lleno de puertorriqueños cabreados con sus gestos. A él le rodearon y una chica empezó a golpear a su amiga. Michael, acorralado, sacó su navaja y en cuanto se le acercó un tío lo suficiente, le metió una puñalada en el pecho y lo abrió en canal. Aprovechando la confusión del momento, salió de allí disparado. Había logrado huir.

Pero su amiga, que había escapado por otro lado, alertó a Johnny Blitz, el batería de los Dead Boys, de que estaban matando a Michael. Johnny fue directo a por los puertorriqueños blandiendo también su cuchillo. Michael, que se lo cruzó, le dijo que no, que los dejara en paz, que ya había acabado todo. Pero en cuanto estuvo cerca, los puertorriqueños le quitaron la navaja y le empezaron a apuñalar a él. El roadie se acercó corriendo detrás de él y entre la confusión rápidamente percibió que estaban acuchillando a un tío con una camiseta de Conan, a su amigo. «Le habían rajado desde la ingle hasta el cuello», dice textualmente en Por favor, mátame.

Michael huyó del lugar cagando leches y horas más tarde fue a la comisaría a denunciar que habían matado a su amigo. La policía le escuchó y le detuvo inmediatamente. Le metieron preso por apuñalar a Johnny. Él gritó que no, que ese era su amigo, y el agente contestó: «De acuerdo, tacharemos su nombre y pondremos el del otro tipo». Cáspita, era el puertorriqueño que había «abierto en canal» minutos antes. Mientras esto sucedía, Johnny se debatía entre la vida y la muerte.

Yo había visto cómo le apuñalaban en el pecho. Tenía cinco heridas alrededor del corazón. Resulta que cuando yo oí las sirenas de la policía y me metí en el taxi, los polis vieron a Johnny con todos los órganos fuera. Se supone que no tienen que moverte hasta que llegue la ambulancia, pero estaban tan turbados que lo recogieron del suelo, lo metieron en el asiento trasero del coche patrulla y se lo llevaron a Bellevue. Si hubiesen esperado a la ambulancia, Johnny estaría muerto. Los médicos se pusieron a trabajar inmediatamente, pero cuando el cirujano vio la esvástica de Johnny, se detuvo. El cirujano era judío. Un médico negro se acercó y dijo: «No podemos dejarle así, tío». El médico negro le operó durante ocho horas. Y le salvó la vida. El tío se enrolló.

Cuando vieron que iba a sobrevivir, decidieron parar el grupo y esperar a su compañero. Fue casi un año el tiempo que pasaron muertos de risa y eso resultó fatal para un grupo tan inclinado al ocio. Cheetah Chrome se volvió adicto a la heroína. Un año sin hacer nada fue demasiado para él. También por ese tiempo, Sire empieza a notar que más que punk, lo que lo petaba era el pop de la nueva ola. Les sugirieron un cambio de estilo, Cheetah no aceptó, dejó el grupo y siguió con su temita. De lo ocurrido entre el 78 y el 79, aunque fuesen los años crepusculares, la versión que ha dado Frank Secich a Fantail no es precisamente un mal recuerdo.

Fueron tiempos salvajes. Algunos momentos álgidos fueron con John Belushi uniéndose a nosotros en el escenario, a la batería, en el Whisky A Go-Go. Después se fue por la puerta siguiente a tocar con Muddy Waters. Muchas veces, Johnny Thunders subía y tocábamos «Pills». Joan Jett improvisó con nosotros en un par de ocasiones. Conocimos a Keith, Mick Jagger y Ron Wood en la fiesta de Keith. Fuimos de fiesta con John McEnroe, Vitas Gerulaitis y con Marianne Faithfull al Mudd Club en New York, para la fiesta del veintiséis cumpleaños de Bebe Buell. Pasamos el rato con la actriz Susan Sarandon en el Gramercy Park Hotel. Y hubo muchos otros momentos. Nunca sabías lo que te depararía cada noche.

De esta época data el directo We have come for your children, pero ya no hubo nada más de relevancia. El grupo estaba agotado de ver cómo a sus conciertos empezaban a ir hooligans con el único fin de darse de hostias entre ellos. Así que Stiv se cambió de costa y se fue a Los Ángeles. Tras una breve estancia en el frenopático que era ese año, 1980, la casa de Joan Jett, «un hervidero de junkies», dijo Stiv, se marchó a un hotel, se centró y pudo grabar sus temas en solitario. Una colección de canciones power pop, grabadas junto a Secich, Disconnected, que, para quien esto escribe, son lo mejor que ha hecho en su vida, sin desmerecer ni lo anterior ni lo posterior. Pero tanto este disco como las sesiones que fueron saliendo después en LA, LA (1994) y LA Confidential (2004), son crema.

Después llegaron los Lords of the New Church. Supergrupo de Stiv junto a Brian James y Dave Tregunna. Con ellos, tocando en España se cayó del escenario. No faltan historias impagables en su biografía, pero merecedoras de otro artículo aparte. Lo importante es que Stiv terminó pasando de ellos y se trasladó a París con su novia. Allí hizo múltiples planes, como un grupo con Dee Dee Ramone y Johnny Thunders, The Whores of Babylon, que se fue al traste por una pelea monumental por culpa de la heroína. Tanto Thunders como Dee Dee estaban muy enganchados a esas alturas del siglo. Días más tarde de esa bronca, un conductor borracho atropelló a Stiv y a su novia. Se fueron a su casa pensando que no les había pasado nada, Stiv se echó a dormir y nunca más se despertó. Tenía un coágulo en el cerebro.

Es curioso, porque después de todo lo que Stiv Bators y yo habíamos pasado juntos, la vez que dejó colgados a los Lords of the New Church, le dije: «Eres un cabrón. Nos has jodido bien al abandonar la gira. Vete a tu casa y muérete». La primera y única vez que le digo una cosa semejante, Stiv va y se muere, y no le vuelvo a ver más. (Michael Sticca)

_______________________________________________________________________________________

FUENTES:

Por favor, mátame, de Legs McNeil & Gillian McCain. Ed. Celeste

Ruta 66, n.º 21, septiembre 1987

Ruta 66, n.º 54, septiembre 1990

Justin Taylor is the author of Everything Here Is the Best Thing Ever and The Gospel of Anarchy. His next book, Flings, will be published in August 2014. Find him online at http://www.justindtaylor.net/. 

Tampa, by Alissa Nutting (Ecco)

Alissa Nutting’s debut novel inspired me to do two things I almost never do. First, I paid full price for the hardcover, despite knowing that I could probably have gotten the publisher to send me a free “review” copy. Why? Well, the right answer is that it’s important to support independent booksellers, and if you want people to buy your books you should buy other people’s—but those aren’t the real reason I bought Tampa. The real reason was that after reading the first five pages in a bookstore, I was hooked. Nutting’s novel is narrated by Celeste Price, a ridiculously attractive sexual predator who has taken a job as a junior high school teacher to gain access to adolescent boys. Celeste is conniving, vicious, amoral, and explicit in a way that would give her great progenitor, Lolita’s Humbert Humbert, a heart attack. Objectified to the verge of dehumanization by her own hotness, her predations are largely ignored by a hypersexualized and hypocritical world that only sees her in terms of its own desires. I finished the book the day after I bought it, which was when I did the second thing I almost never do and is not at all creepy: I went on Facebook, tracked Alissa down, and sent her a fan letter. It read: “Alissa, I just finished reading TAMPA, which I bought yesterday, and couldn't resist offering my admiration & cheers. It's so blistering and relentless and smart. I especially dug the stuff about Celeste's fear of aging; the cultural desire to have/be the Eternal Teenager. (When she thinks about offering beauty cream to Jack! Holy Christ!) The last lines were like a blast of freezing wind across the beach; just perfect. I could go on but I guess I shouldn't. So again: great job & congrats; may it go far and leave burning wreckage in its wake.” (If you’re wondering, she sent a nice note back and does not seem to be that scared of me.) 

The Science Delusion: Asking the Big Questions In a Culture of Easy Answers, by Curtis White (Melville House)

The only thing more irritating than an evangelical Christian is an evangelical atheist. In The Science Delusion, White assails and dismantles the ideological inconsistencies and hypocrisies of the Dennett-Dawkins-Hitchens set, but his greatest disgust is reserved for TED Talks, Richard Florida, Jonah Lehrer, and the broader cult of tech: “The ideology of science insists that… [w]e are like computers, or systems, and so is nature. Therefore, no one should be surprised if our lives are systematized” by our employers, our government, or the various corporations that tell us that our doing their market research and product placement for them is a thing called “social networking.” White’s model for resistance is the Romantic tradition: Schiller, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Byron, Mary and Percy Shelley, etc. The Romantics evinced a deep intellectual curiosity about science and the natural world, while still insisting on the primacy of the individual over the polity, the man over the machine. Though White’s tone can be hectoring and smug (which seems to be de rigeur for the genre... not that that makes it any less obnoxious), the book is short, rife with intriguing suggestions for further reading (Schiller’s Essays—who knew?), and, most importantly, will give you everything you need to piss off the people you’re trying to piss off.

The Magnolia Electric Co. 10th Anniversary Reissue, by Songs:Ohia (Secretly Canadian)

It’s hard to believe that Songs:Ohia’s seminal and still jaw-dropping record The Magnolia Electric Co. is ten years old. It’s harder still to believe—and a crying sin—that front man/mastermind Jason Molina did not live to see and celebrate the anniversary (he died in March). Listen: I’m not one of those people who thinks that song lyrics are poetry (the conflation is pernicious to both traditions, excusing lazy readers who get their “poetry” via Spotify, while at the same time devaluing the role of actual, you know, music in music), but that’s not to say that lyrics can’t be poetic—or a poet’s lines musical. And anyway, the real issue here isn’t whether I can justify this record’s inclusion on my list, but rather the fact that the record’s so fucking great this list wouldn’t be complete—or honest—without including it. Molina’s lyrics are rough-hewn and haunted by a set of images and ideas—ghosts, highways, hearts, lightning, the moon, to name a few—that make his records feel a bit like sestinas or pantoums, poetic forms built around recursive variation. The reissue comes with an hour’s worth of bonus material, including demos of the Magnolia songs,plus two tracks from the sessions that didn’t make the album: “Whip Poor Will”, which ended up on 2009’s Josephine, and “The Big Game Is Every Night”, which never ended up anywhere and finds Molina in full-blown Neil Young-circa-On The Beach mode. It’s heartbreaking that Jason Molina is gone, and the only consolation—if it is one—is that the body of work he left behind is like the soundtrack to heartbreak itself.

Even Though I Don't Miss You, and hey, why not, while we’re at it, Heavy-handed, by Chelsea Martin (respectively: Hobart, therumpus.net/)

I don’t remember exactly when Chelsea Martin started publishing Heavy-handed, or when I started reading it, but 2013 was the year I gradually realized that her comic was my favorite thing on The Rumpus. When I saw a small announcement from Hobart press that they had released a book of her poetry (prose? prose-poetry? whatever...), I immediately ordered a copy. Even Though I Don’t Miss You is a pocket-size paperback that clocks in at under a hundred pages. Martin’s a brooding minimalist who is great on relationships, the choreography of neurosis, and the feedback loop between selfishness and self-abnegation: “I momentarily forgot that you were not just an appendage to me and I said, ‘Do you want to make an OkCupid account?’ / You said, ‘What are you talking about?’ / I said something unintelligible while piecing together newly forming ideas such as the fact that you were a separate body from myself, that we were dating, that what I said was unprofessional, and that ‘unprofessional’ wasn’t the right word to use to describe my behavior, since this wasn’t a workplace…” 

Soul in Space, by Noelle Kocot (Wave Books)

Like letters from an intimate but mysterious and transient friend, a new Kocot volume appears every two or three years, always anticipated but never quite expected, and brimming with strange surprise. Kocot is a profound—and profoundly hermetic—elegist and mystic. Since the death of her husband in 2004, Kocot’s poetry has borne the scars off loss—personal as well as cosmic, though Kocot would likely reject the distinction—and has devoted itself largely to the work of mourning, in what has sometimes seemed to be a private language of ecstatic sorrow. It is only in her two most recent collections—2011’s The Bigger World, and now this new volume—that the vice-grip of grief has begun to loosen. The newer poems have embraced a (relative) transparency of image and idea, as well as a playfulness that gives me hope that Kocot’s long winter may be yielding, finally, to spring. “Enjoy yourself,” she writes in a poem called “After the Feeding”: “Encourage / The memory of restoration. Locusts / Ate us, and then they stopped in their / Colorful tracks.” 

Woke Up Lonely, by Fiona Maazel (Graywolf)

I reviewed Fiona Maazel’s second novel in Bookforum this past spring, and since then my estimation of the book has only grown. I’ll happily quote myself: “a deeply felt and wildly original novel that repays the attention it demands, and once read won’t be soon forgotten. There are sharp jokes on every page, luridly bad sex, and a passel of outrageous conceits—a secret wonderland in tunnels beneath Cincinnati, an airplane custom painted with the original cover art for Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle, a basement orgy—but unlike in [her also excellent first novel, Last Last Chance], here the darkness is inexorable, and will not be denied.”

Three Older Books I Got Around to Reading for the First Time this Year and Am Putting on This List Because I Loved Them, So There:

Open City, by Teju Cole (Random House, 2011)—I guess I thought that this book was like Sebald for hipsters, and so ignored it when it first came out. I finally picked it up over the summer and liked it so much I made two of my undergraduate classes read it, and the quality of the discussions it yielded—about character development, narrative withholding, the archeology of trauma, writing a city, and much more—made me grateful to Cole for writing it. If the hipsters liked it too, well bully for them.

Garcia: An American Life, by Blair Jackson (Penguin, 1999)—A sympathetic but thankfully not quite hagiographic account of the life of Jerry Garcia, with special attention to the development of his musical sensibility and his many side projects, i.e., the stuff that you don’t hear much about in band-biographies of the Grateful Dead. (Not that you asked, but my preferred Dead bio is Carol Brightman’s Sweet Chaos: The Grateful Dead’s American Adventure.) I was sorry to learn that Garcia’s longtime friend and collaborator John Kahn was a fellow heroin addict, and viewed as a bad influence by much of the Dead family (Vince Welnick apparently considered having Kahn killed!) but it was delightful to learn of Garcia’s later-life enthusiasm for scuba diving. He liked it, Jackson says, because he didn’t feel fat in the water, and looking at coral reefs reminded him of tripping.

Daniel Deronda, by George Eliot (William Blackwood and Sons, 1876)—The friend who gave this to me said it was a lot like Middlemarch, only much, much weirder. It’s a fat Victorian novel with all the usual class and marriage stuff, but complicated considerably by Eliot’s ethos—unique in 19th century English novels, or really, almost anywhere—in which fortunes are ambivalent blessings that create as many problems as they solve. The novel gets weirder still when it starts paying a fetishist’s loving attention to Jewish traditions and proto-Zionist politics, developing what might have been a minor subplot into a central theme. The result is screwy and amazing, something that feels both meticulously organized and radically unhinged. Put another way: my friend was absolutely right.

“Monsters of Modern Literature” trading cards by Lincoln Michel

OK, this isn’t a book either, but deal with it. Lincoln Michel is one of contemporary literary culture’s great natural resources. He writes fiction and essays (sometimes for VICE), draws comics, co-edits the literary magazine Gigantic (which has lately expanded into book publishing, with a literary sci-fi anthology called Gigantic Worlds due out in 2014), and—perhaps most impressively—has a genuinely funny internet presence that never makes you want to kill him or yourself. Last Halloween, Michel drew some fantastic “Monsters of Modern Literature” portraits for Vol. 1 Brooklyn: Cormac McCabre, Bone Didion, and my personal favorite, Haruki Murderkami (author of The Grind-up Bodies Chronicle). The series was so well received that this year Michel made some new ones (Tao Fin, Golem McCann) and put the whole collection out as a set of trading cards. You can get them on Etsy or at WORD Bookstore in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

The Best Book of the Year: Sam Lipsyte, The Fun Parts (FSG)

No hesitation here. No qualifiers or bet-hedging. No worries about overstating the case, or about the fact that I (obviously) didn’t read every book that came out this year, or about the fact that I know and like the guy. The Fun Parts was the best work of fiction by an American author to be published in 2013. The book is supersaturated with humor, depth, acuity, pain, a warped sense of grace, and the rolling thunder of Lipsyte’s matchless prose. A number of these stories first appeared in either The New Yorker or The Paris Review, but you should read them again now. There’s something about the gathering of their energies, the way they feed off and comment on and amplify one another—the recurring character in “The Climber Room” and “Deniers”; the acid fabulist explosions of “The Republic of Empathy” and “The Real-Ass Jumbo”, and I could go on but would end up reproducing the entire table of contents. If you’ve got time for one more book before 2013 is out, make it this one. And if not, well, there’s always next year.

O Apalpador, o gigante carvoeiro do Courel, já está a descer da montanha para, na tarde do sábado 21 , chegar até a nossa cidade e ver que as crianças compostelanas estám  bem.

Sairá às 18h de Santa Clara, para caminhar com a sua ruada de música e ajudantes a darem castanhas!

Se queredes vir vê-lo, este será o seu percurso:
Santa Clara, Sam Roque, Algália, Praça do Pam, Preguntoiro, Orfas, Praça do Toural, Rua do Vilar, Praça das Pratarias, Quintá, Conga, Preguntoiro, Algália, Santa Clara.