Actors Who Have Played William S. Burroughs
Peter Weller in Naked Lunch (1991)
Dennis Hopper in The Source (1999)
Kiefer Sutherland in Beat (2000)
Viggo Mortenson in On The Road (2012)
Ben Foster in Kill Your Darlings (2013)
Saturday, June 24, 2017
J.G. Ballard Playlist
J.G. Ballard Playlist
1. Hawkwind - High Rise
2. The Fall - Industrial Estate
3. The Buggles - Vermilion Sands
4. Madonna - Drowned World/Substitute
5. Gary Numan - Down In The Park
6. Joy Division - Atrocity Exhibition
2. The Fall - Industrial Estate
3. The Buggles - Vermilion Sands
4. Madonna - Drowned World/Substitute
5. Gary Numan - Down In The Park
6. Joy Division - Atrocity Exhibition
The Great Pumpkin Incident
The Great Pumpkin Incident
A few years back, right before I was supposed to have spinal surgery, I was reaching under the television for the cat when the LED pumpkin that was perched precariously atop fell and cracked my noggin. Ended up with a black eye. The bone underneath still feels weird to this day.
That Sinking Feeling
Sinkholes Around The World
There are two basic types of sinkholes: (1) A cover-subsidance sinkhole and (2) a cover-collapse sinkhole.
Most are naturally occurring, but humans can contribute.
Harwood Hole - Abel Tasman National Park, New Zealand. 183 m deep.
The Devil's Hole sinkhole near Hawthorne, Florida.
Teiq Sinkhole - Oman, Jordan. One of the largest sinkholes in the world by volume - 90 million cubic meters. 250 m deep.
Blue Hole - Dahab, Egypt. 130 m deep on the edge of the Red Sea. Free diving attempts often prove fatal.
Bahmah Sinkhole in Oman, Jordan.
A helicopter hovers over a sinkhole that's 120-feet wide and 180-feet deep in a gypsum stack at IMC-Agrico's New Wales plant, southwest of Mulberry, Fla., on June 29, 1994. (Scott Wheeler/Reuters)
The Great Blue Hole is a giant submarine sinkhole off the coast of Belize.
Friday, June 23, 2017
Character Breakdown & Vocabulary from PKD's "The Crack In Space"
Character Breakdown & Vocabulary from PKD's "The Crack In Space"
Dateline - 2080
Lurton D. Sands jr. - Famous Org Trans Surgeon, getting divorced from...
Myra - Abort Consultant
Cally Vale - Lurton Sands' mistress
Tito Cravelli - Private Investigator hired by Myra to dig up dirt on her husband
Darius Pethel - Owns Pethel Jiffi Scuttler Sales & Service
Stu Hadley - His salesman
Rick Erickson - Repairman for Pethel Jiffi Scuttler Sales & Service
James Briskin - Republican Liberal candidate for president. Black.
Salisbury Heim - His campaign manager
Patricia Briskin - His wife
Phil Danville - His speech writer
Bruno Mini - Failed Terraformer
Frank Woodbine - Famous space explorer
William Schwartz - State's Rights Conservative Democrat incumbent
Verne Engel - runs CLEAN (like the TEA Party)
Thisbe Olt - Golden Door Moments of Bliss Satellite
George Walt - 2 headed proprieter on the Satellite
VOCABULARY
Newsclown - A person who delivers specially selected light news.
Tuesday, June 20, 2017
Kilgore Trout Short Stories
Breakfast of Champions Trailer 1999
- 2BR02B
- "Asleep at the Switch"
- The Barring-gaffner of Bagnialto, or This Year's Masterpiece
- The Big Board
- "The Dancing Fool"
- The First District Court of Thank-You
- Gilgongo!
- The Gospel from Outer Space
- The Gutless Wonder
- "Hail to the Chief"
- "How You Doin?"
- Maniacs in the Fourth Dimension
- Now It Can Be Told
- Oh Say Can You Smell?
- The Pan-Galactic Memory Bank
- "Pan-Galactic Straw-Boss"
- Pan-Galactic Three-Day Pass
- Plague on Wheels
- The Planet Gobblers
- The Smart Bunny
- The Son of Jimmy Valentine
- "This Means You"
- Venus on the Half-Shell
Intro to PKD 101
Intro to PKD 101
Philip Kindred Dick - Kindred was his mother's maiden name
Born December 16, 1928 in Chicago and died in 1982
Born December 16, 1928 in Chicago and died in 1982
He lived most of his life in Berkeley, California
He suffered from asthma, paroxysmal tachycardia and bouts of eczema
Had a twin sister named Jane Charlotte that died not long after birth
His 1965 novel "Dr. Bloodmoney" has a character that lives inside another character and communicates telepathically.
When he was a child he had an imaginary playmate named "Jane".
Dr. George Engel coined the term "Twinning" referring to the deep connection twins have, and the particular trauma of losing a twin sibling.
The Hugo Award is named after Hugo Gernsback - a publisher of SF pulp magazines.
He is considered a "Soft SF" writer - more concerned with challenging the cognitive construct by which we order our lives, versus "Hard SF" which is more technical in nature.
A PKD protagonist is one who saves the world through empathic awareness of its suffering and perceptive insight into its ultimate irreality.
Films
1. Blade Runner (1982)
2. Total Recall
3. Impostor
4. Paycheck
5. A Scanner Darkly
6. The Minority Report
7. The Adjustment Bureau
Edgar Allen Poe - Proto SF?
"The Case of M. Valdemar"
"The Mystification"
PKD had a series of visions between Feb-March 1974. He referred to those as "2-3-74".
PKD was very fond of elaboration, extrapolation, reinterpretation and outright putting people on.
PKD gave an interview to Rolling Stone in November 1974.
Works
1. Eye in the Sky 1957
2. Time Out of Joint 1959
3. Confessions of a Crap Artist 1959 (published 1975)
4. The Man in the High Castle 1962
5. Martian Time-Slip 1964
6. A Crack in Space 1964
7. Simulacra 1964
8. Dr. Bloodmoney 1965
9. The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch 1965
10. Ubik 1969
11. Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said 1974
12. A Scanner Darkly 1977
13. Valis 1981
14. Divine Invasions 1981
15. The Transmigration of Timothy Archer 1982
VOCABULARY
1. Ganymedean
2. Hermetic
http://gnosis.org/hermes.htm
3. Epigrammatic
3. Epigrammatic
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigram
4. Ratiocination
4. Ratiocination
6. Gnosticism
7. Logos
8. Demiurge
9. Satori
TERMS
1. Street of the Alchemists
http://www.prague.cz/golden-lane/
2. Psychopop
2. Psychopop
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popular_psychology
3. Speculative Imagination
3. Speculative Imagination
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speculative_fiction
4. Newsclown
4. Newsclown
see Fox "News"
5. Twinning
SF writers he mentions
1. Abe Merritt
2. K.W. Jeter
PKD was a fan of classical music. His Christmas wishlist of 78's included the following...
1. The "Turkish March" from Beethoven's Ruins of Athens
2. "Largo El Factotum" from Rossini's Barber of Seville
3. Wagner's Tannhauser Overture
Watership Down Playlist
1. Art Garfunkel - Bright Eyes
2. Paul McCartney - Band On the Run
3. ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail of The Dead - Prince With a Thousand Enemies
4. America - Watership Down
5. Bigwig - Best of Me
6. Ladytron - Ghosts
7. Vanessa Carlton - Rabbits On the Run (Album)
8. Common Market - Watership Down
Monday, June 19, 2017
Where have I heard that voice?
Where have I heard that voice?
So, I was working at the bookshop last night and we were hosting a big event for something called "Discovery Friday" - a more civilized version of Black Friday, and we had several authors (4-5 I think) at various points around the store. I heard one of them speak in a deep, rich baritone as I passed his station which was piled high with a beautiful book called "Finding Moosewood, Finding God". I though to myself, where have I heard that voice before? Then I remember a DVD that I have. I used to own this DVD in the original VHS format. I consider it an essential part of my Hemingway collection.
For those of you who don't know, A&E stands for Arts & Entertainment. This network used to have a wonderful program called "Biography", before it descended into reality television hell. This program was introduced by a man named Jack Perkins.
He was so well known at the time that he received one of our nation's highest honors - he was caricatured on SNL.
Anyway, when I realized who he was I was really excited and asked if he could autograph a copy of his book, which he gladly did.
I geek out over the strangest things. Oh, the Hemingway Biography was hosted by Marielle Hemingway, who also came to my bookshop.
That combined with the letter I received from A.E. Hotchner, who is also on the Hemingway Biography, is about as close as I'll ever get to the man himself.
Friday, June 16, 2017
The Milk Bar
The Milk Bar
I recall my first show at the Milk Bar on Adams Street in downtown Jacksonville
It was "The Mighty, Mighty Bosstones" and "The Pietasters"
my friend copped free tickets cuz he worked in promotions at Planet Radio 93.3
he told me to muss up my hair so they wouldn't think I was part of the establishment
the club was in the basement of an abandoned building and I stood in a line that snaked up and down the cracked sidewalk
the diversity harbored the fever of the dying American dream
there were goths and punks and bangers and lackeys and nerds and straights
accessorized by
nose rings, tattoos, chained wallets spiked bracelets, a rainbow of unnatural hair color shaved heads, reverse mohawks, Serial Killer and Porn Star t-shirts, Jinco's that dragged the ground, Dickeys, Doc Martins.
combat boots
Djarums puffing in teenage mouths upstart poets, future musicians Sinatra look-a-likes leather pants gays, lesbians, anarchists, communists guys in zoot suits, girls in flowered sun dresses
all at an average age of 25 or under
As we walked through the doorway the burly guard droned
"No Chains! No Dope! No Shit!"
over and over like a Hell's Angel macaw
I remember the smells clove cigarettes Boone's Farm M.D. 20/20 leather Cool Water Teen Spirit sweat body odor
sex
I slammed five malt beers in the green room before the mayhem started
the only illumination was a black light and a half dozen incense sticks burning brightly along the perimeter
I was drunk and writhed through the entanglement of flesh like a serpent
(I felt so alive)
the young ladies had transformed for the evening into "Riot grrrls"
wearing black lipstick and purple nail polish
(that resembled dried blood)
dressed in cupie doll t-shirts with "Bitch" or "Sex Kitten" iron-ons
when I fell in the mosh pit a skin head
(with an X'd out Nazi symbol on his grease monkey button up)
pulled me to my feet
The music was alive and jumped with arcs of electricity
white guys who had crossed reggae and punk to give birth to "Third Wave Ska"
When it came to the end I was breathless
the icy night air chilled my sweat drenched body and I couldn't help going on and on about the moment
Feeling that I was on the front lines of a scene that would blaze up
shine bright
then smolder out and be forgotten
As doomed as it was though it was our chance to gobble up life
and to bookmark those days to remember
when joy was electricity and we had the courage to absorb the raindrops in the lightning storm.
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