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The Death of Bunny Munro by Nick Cave (audiobook)
02.16.2010
01:26 am
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I’m not someone who tends to read much fiction. Ever. As in never. I read a novel once every… fifteen years. I prefer documentaries to narrative films as well. I need to devour information—lots of it—and fiction just doesn’t offer me the sustenance I require. I’m not saying novels are bad things, they just aren’t for sir.

Recently I started listening to audiobooks in the car during my daily commute in Los Angeles. I especially enjoyed the audio version of SuperFreakonomics read by Stephen J. Dubner because 1) it’s a wonderful, thought provoking book, a genre unto itself even and 2) Dubner’s delivery is incredibly engaging as he reads his and Steven Levitt’s well-constructed prose. He really knows how to hit his script perfectly and charmingly animates the book’s clever ideas. Listening to an author read their own words, especially when the writing style is somewhat idiosyncratic, is for me a real pleasure.

Post-SuperFreakonomics, I had no immediate plans for my drive-time entertainment, but this problem was solved by the audiobook of Nick Cave’s novel, The Death of Bunny Munro arriving in the post, thoughtfully sent to me by Iain Forsythe, co-producer (along with Jane Pollard) of the set. The novel is read by the author over 7 CDs, accompanied by a moody (and effective) score by Cave and Warren Ellis. There is also a DVD.

For a guy who claims to hate fiction, it took me all of about ten minutes to become completely engrossed in The Death of Bunny Munro. Admittedly, I’m quite well-disposed towards Nick Cave to begin with, and come to think of it, one of the last novels I did read was his And The Ass Saw the Angel. But I had no expectations, and not much foreknowledge of what the new book was about. I think this was a good thing, but I doubt that anything I write here will spoil anything for anyone.
 
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The Death of Bunny Munro is one of the most profane novels ever written. It makes Celine or Henry Miller seem timid in comparison. The title character, an immoral, middle-aged, door to door beauty products salesman and unrelenting lothario, drives his wife to suicide as the book opens. Upon finding her corpse, the first thought that pops into Bunny’s head is that her tits looked nice. Bunny, a character devoid of any redeeming qualities, scoops up his sweet nine-year old son and goes on a road trip to Hell. It’s all downhill from there as we witness his flailing flameout.

Read in Cave’s distinctive mellow bellow, his prose comes richly to life. Cave is a performer as much as he is a writer, of course, and his performance of his own novel is remarkable. The musical soundtrack, which at first I thought “slight,” is a grower and I came to love it. My interest never flagged for a second of its nearly eight hour running time. It’s really well-produced, with some sort of spatial 3-D recording technique that makes Cave’s voice feel like it’s in the center of your skull, and inventive sound effects.

What occurred to me as I enjoyed the audiobook of The Death of Bunny Munro so very much was the notion that the plain old book version is a lesser experience when compared to the audiobook. When an audiobook is done this well, inevitably the text-only version will come to be seen as the script of the audiobook. Of course not every author is a performer the caliber of the great Nick Cave, but as the audiobook form matures, why would the consumer choose to forgo the music and intimate storyteller aspect of authors reading their own work?

A word about the packaging: The UK version is a beautiful object, with the top photograph, taken by Polly Borland printed on a waxy, sturdy box that feels like a luxury item. The American version sucks. The idiot who chose to go with the packaging they used for the US version should get an award for shitty design (or else fired). The British version you would keep and display on your shelf even if you had no intention of devoting another 8 hours of your life to it for a repeat listen, the US version you’d just pass on to someone when you’re done like it’s disposable.

Nick Cave on his monstrous, funny Bunny Munro (Los Angeles Times)
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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02.16.2010
01:26 am
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Discussion
Andy Warhol’s TV
12.28.2009
09:59 pm
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When I was growing up, I could read the Village Voice in the local library and fancied myself “up” on what was going on in New York, at the age of 14, even though I had never been anywhere even close to the island of Manhattan. Having said that, if I wasn’t exactly an expert on New York City per se, I was at least an expert on each and every issue of the Village Voice. (And you can tell a lot about a city from its alt weekly, let’s just say. Reading between the lines = very easy with the Village Voice. True now, and true then.)
 
But in my hometown, one thing I couldn’t experience, even vicariously, was the insane cable access world of Manhattan Cable, now known as the Manhattan Neighborhood Network.I’d read about shows like Ugly George, where a fat asshole in a silver-lame jumpsuit carried a video-camera (the huge old fashioned kind with the outboard decks) around New York and asked women to take their clothes off for him. Many did. Many more told him to fuck off and die. There was also Glenn O’Brien’s TV Party, which I longed to see, it was so glamorous sounding, there was Al Goldstein’s racy Midnight Blue, but most intriguing of all for me, living in Wheeling, WV where nothing ever happened, were Andy Warhol’s cable access programs. I loved the idea that anyone who wanted to have their own TV show could do so and saw myself having one myself one day (and I did, The Infinity Factory talkshow, which was on for over 2 years opposite ER!)
 
A great website I just discovered called Zamboni has files of a few of the Warhol programs for streaming and download. Other shows are knocking around out there, too. Many famous faces here including Halston, Pee-wee Herman, Debbie Harry and John Waters.
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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12.28.2009
09:59 pm
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Discussion
4chan: Lost in the Filth Simulacrum
12.09.2009
04:30 pm
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A long article I just wrote about the bizarre, hallucinatory, sickening, purgatory, Bardo-like experience of browsing 4chan has just been published on R. U. Sirius’s h+ Magazine blog. Check it out!

In the last decade, we’ve seen the increasing acceleration of information (a la Terence McKenna and Moore’s law) heralded as the key to new business development, though it has, in fact, so ruined our attention spans that it is almost impossible for modern man to get any kind of productive work done. We’re too lost in the datastream, too focused on taking in new information to complete a task that takes more than a few minutes, at best. I think a direct correlation can be made, for instance, between the rise of social media and the fall of the economy. The kaleidoscope of the Internet is more endless, more distracting and more mutating than even the most potent psychedelic drugs could have ever prepared us for. And 4chan is the ultimate, final trip.

If the mainstream Internet-using world has driven itself to distraction and insanity with social networking, the denizens of the Chans have upped the ante past all conceivable boundaries, like switching from a light alcohol problem to crushing and injecting Oxycontin. This is the place where all senses are deadened, where the mind cannot function because it is trapped in its own overstimulation. This, I am sure, is where media theorists from Marshall McLuhan to Neil Postman to Douglas Rushkoff assured us that the inherently liberating force of information technology was leading us. And though I am sure they knew that the filth and fury would follow, I’m not sure they ever expected it to look quite like… this.

My own 4chan addiction crept up slowly. Once a casual user of gateway drugs like icanhascheezburger.com, ytmnd.com and Encyclopedia Dramatica, I followed a link to the black hole itself one day and—sucked past its event horizon—have since been unable to escape. Stuck there now, I am clicking back and forth from this article to peruse the halls of 4chan’s /x/ forum, afraid that I might have missed the latest spew from the Internet’s collective maw. It is the car crash that cannot be looked away from. Ever.

(h+: Lost in the Filth Simulacrum)

Posted by Jason Louv
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12.09.2009
04:30 pm
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Discussion
Jobriath: Rock’s Fairy Godmother
12.09.2009
01:04 am
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If you’ve never heard of Jobriath Boone, don’t worry, you’re not alone. Obscure even by “rock snob” standards, Jobriath was the first really openly gay rock star. David Bowie and Lou Reed flirted with bisexuality, nail polish and make-up, of course, but Jobriath was in his own words, “a true fairy.” He wasn’t just “out of the closet” he was out like a police siren with the volume turned up to eleven!

I’ve been a Jobriath freak for about 20 years, dating back to when I stumbled upon his first second LP at a New York City flea market. “What is THIS?” was my initial reaction to the cover, obviously influenced by the artwork for David Bowie’s “Diamond Dogs.” [I’m wrong about this, see comments]. Clearly from the image on the cover, Jobriath was a 70s glitter rock wannabe. Make that perhaps a “neverwas,” for aside from a massive advertising campaign that saw his image on 250 New York buses and a 40 foot high poster in Times Square, two solid LPs (recorded with the likes of Led Zeppelin’s John Paul Jones and Peter Frampton) and a memorable Midnight Special performance, Jobriath was a massive flop at the time.

Too gay for mid-America in 1974? For sure, but that hasn’t stopped Jobriath’s Broadway showtunes meets glam rock oeuvre from being rediscovered by fresh ears this decade. Championed by Morrissey, Neil Tennant from the Pet Shop Boys and singer-actress Ann Magnuson (who once told me that I was “the only straight guy in the world who’s ever even HEARD of Jobriath” back in the early 90s), the tiny cult of Jobriath got a lot of new members when the CD complation Lonely Planet Boy was released in 2004. His life was also a major part of the inspiration for Todd Haynes’ Velvet Goldmine although few people realize that fact (the “Maxwell Demon” album covers are direct homages to the original Jobriath records). Admittedly, his music isn’t for everyone—some people just HATE it—but for those of you who embraced the once equally obscure Klaus Nomi, you’ll probably love Jobriath.
 


Rock of Ages on The Midnight Special

I’m Ready for my Close-Up an informative Jobriath article from MOJO.

Why You Should Like Jobriath

This article originally appeared at Boing Boing when I was guest blogging there

Posted by Richard Metzger
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12.09.2009
01:04 am
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Discussion
The Zabriskie Point Fallout (With Mel Brooks)
12.03.2009
03:22 pm
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A few weeks back, regarding Jacques Demy’s Model Shop, I wrote about my fascination with the great European directors crossing the Atlantic to reign in and make sense of ‘60s America.  Resigning himself to merely making a film called Made In U.S.A., Jean-Luc Godard resisted the impulse.  Michelangelo Antonioni, most spectacularly with Zabriskie Point, did not.
 
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As hatched by a team of writers that included Sam Shepard, and wife of Bernardo Bertolucci, Clare Peploe, the plot of Zabriskie Point wasn’t terribly complex.  Rebel Angelenos (my favorite kind!) Daria Halprin and Mark Frechette (who go, in the film, by their real names), hook up in the desert, have sex in the sand, then separate to meet their own explosive ends.

More complex, though, was the anger and confusion the film provoked at the time.  Typically gorgeous cinematography aside, cineasts looking for a worthy philosophical successor to Blow-Up were left disappointed by Zabriskie’s relatively unnuanced take on capitalism.  Hollywood watchers were appalled that Antonioni squandered so much time and money ($7 million in 1970 dollars) on something that, despite it’s notorious “desert orgy” sequence, managed to rake in barely a million hippie-box-office dollars.

Fortunately, 5 years later, Antonioni secured cinematic redemption with The Passenger.  Daria Halprin acted in only a handful of films, but went on to become, briefly, Mrs. Dennis Hopper.  After her marriage to Hopper fizzled, Halprin developed an interest in art therapy, and now, with her mother, runs Marin County’s Tampala Institute.

The future was far less kind to Mark Frechette.  You can read the Rolling Stone article about his “sorry life and death” here, but the shorthand goes like this:

He was the apparent victim of a bizarre accident in a recreation room at the Massachusetts Correctional Institution at Norfolk, where Frechette had been serving a six- to 15-year sentence for his participation in a 1973 Boston bank robbery.

Frechette’s body was discovered by a fellow inmate early on the morning of September 27th pinned beneath a 150-pound set of weights, the bar resting on his throat.  An autopsy revealed he had died of asphyxiation and the official explanation is that the weights slipped from his hands while he was trying to bench press them, killing him instantly.

What the above leaves out, though, is that prior to his incarceration, Frechette was living in a commune run by American cult leader Mel Lyman.  The entirety of Frechette’s Zabriskie earnings were tithed to Lyman’s “Family,” and it’s presumed that whatever money Frechette hoped to abscond with post-robbery would have wound up there as well.

Before all this, though, back when television talk show guests could still indulge in a cigarette, Halprin and Frechette found themselves—along with Mel Brooks and Rex Reed—on The Dick Cavett Show.

As you can watch below, Cavett had yet to see Zabriskie Point—and Frechette makes him pay for it.  In defending Lyman, Frechette also goes on to argue the fine line between “commune,” and “community.”

 
Trailer for Zabriskie Point: Where A Boy And A Girl Meet And Touch And Blow Their Minds!

Posted by Bradley Novicoff
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12.03.2009
03:22 pm
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Discussion
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