Category: REVIEWS

Pipi Band and Po-keu Song

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Yay! Lime got me a few of the CDs I asked her to order for me. Among them, 불가능한작전 by 삐삐밴드 (Pipi Band). Often referred to as “punk,” I find them more a kind of mixture of freakiness, electronic, and rock. Apparently they spat onto a camera or the ground or something while they were on TV once, and people thought they were bizarre and rude as a result. They’re not really around anymore, but that CD was still available. Bizarre stuff, moreoso if you’ve had the lyrics explained. As I have had, though I may sit down and try …

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Woman Got Pipes

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I am probably the absolutely worst person to be introducing Lime to Aretha Franklin, since I really only know a couple of her songs, but when I got home tonight, for some reason, a little chunk of the backing vocals on “Respect” had suddenly bloomed into an earworm, and I couldn’t get it out of my head. I think the word “respect” summoned it up, but in any case, it’s the bit in some versions where the backing singers start chanting “Sockittomesockittome…” [Sock it to me, but really fast] over and over. In my head it comes at a major …

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Watched/Read/Listened: July 16th to August 13th

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First off, I’m writing this in pieces, as I complete each book, so that my comments about each aren’t based on hazy recollections of a month past or more. BOOKS: Blameless in Abaddon by James Morrow I’ve been a fan of James Morrow’s writing for years now, since I read, by chance, his novel Only Begotten Daughter back in my undergrad days. Since then, I’ve read Bible Stories for Adults, This is the Way the World Ends, and Towing Jehovah, the latter of which is the book to which Blameless in Abaddon is the sequel. Morrow’s made a name for …

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A Day of…

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A day of worthy things: Go read Tina Connolly’s Growing Days, which is a poem up at Strange Horizons Go check out The Grand Narrative, which is the best new(ish) blog about Korea that I’ve seen in ages. Were I not so full-steam-ahead on the writing-SF thing, this is the blog and the kind of self-directed study I’d be embarking on. I even found a great book recommendation or two on there. Equally worthy, but less fun, I now know full well I need to cut back on my writing production as all the sitting is once again having the …

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Wanna Turn on a Wind Musician?

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Checking out The Bis Key Chronicles, a saxophonist’s blog, I ran across this post about  a Bb bass sax that this guy is having built for him. I followed on to the homepage of the instrument maker who’s building it for him, custom with a low-A key, Benedikt Eppelsheim Wind Instruments, Munich, and, well, this is what I’d call porn for wind musicians.  There are clips so you can hear what the instruments sound like, too. I don’t know… the Bb Tubax seems a little TOO extreme for me, but I’m suddenly thinking I might prefer a Bb bass sax …

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Go Read… (Classmates Plug)

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Go check out Ben Burgis’s pre-Clarion West story “Three Perspectives on the Role of the Anarchists in the Zombie Apocalypse” (ahem) over at Afterburn SF. (It has Ben’s fingerprints all over it.) Then go read Meghan Sinoff’s award-winning “Shift,” currently online at Asimov’s. Both tales are worth your while. Just a year ago — was it really so long ago? — I was in Seattle, hanging out with these people, drinking sangria and, Ben, what was that drink you bought me when I was reading “Lester Young” at the pub? Just a year ago, I was waking up with itchy …

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Read & Watched & Listened

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This list spans June and the first half of July 2007. READ: Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs.Fascinating, disturbing, and surprising. It has the usual disclaimers from locals, but what I found unusual and particularly inspiring was her continuous reminders of the kind of horrific objectification that was forced on female slaves in America, on the downright moral and sexual depravity of white masters. What was striking was that she spoke less in abstract terms, instead slamming home her point with specific examples from her life, which were enough to turn my stomach. She wrote …

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Charles on Translation

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Charles at Liminality has some interesting things to say about translation. Personally, while I have to respect anyone who translates a whole book,  or even a whole short story, I’ve come across some in Korea that are just clinkers, and I’ve discovered at least one translator who is consistently poor, or at least, I haven’t liked any of the things I’d read that were translated by him. Lime and I looked through the list in the back of one of my books, which is from a pretty ubiquitous line of translated Korean short stories — The Portable Library of Korean …

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Threes

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My netfriend and fellow writer Stephanie recently wrote: I recently read in a book that stories and life happen in three acts: wake up, do some work, go to bed; you’re born, you live, you die; etc. This is what my life has been feeling like lately, like I’m just going through the motions… I really hear her. I’ve been there before myself. It’s funny… the three stages or “acts” in the drama of my life tend to be: 1. Really believe in (or wish to believe in) some model of the world: an ideology, a system, an explanation for …

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