Tangled Rope

I began watercolor painting this month. It’s a testament to my procrastination, really, since Jame had bought me the paint tubes and brushes nearly 10 years ago. I found it all, unused, in a closet last month as I was compelled to transform the study into a new bedroom for the forthcoming child. I couldn’t bear to throw them out.

Anyway, I’m trying to do at least three studies a week. A few are worth posting, though nearly every one has been completed by abandonment, and resulted in a lengthy list of things I should do differently next time.

This living hand, now warm and capable
Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold
And in the icy silence of the tomb,
So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights
That thou wouldst wish thine own heart dry of blood
So in my veins red life might stream again,
And thou be conscience-calmed--see here it is--
I hold it towards you.

I encountered this bright and brief poem this afternoon, courtesy of Chris‘s recent lightening of his library:

Risk

by Robin Becker

The kildeer nested on the ground--
seconds from the horses' hooves
and the graceful arcs of the canter.
Each time we rounded the turn, she stood
over her speckled eggs (I could
see them from my horse's back)
and made a display
of her fierce white feathers.
How I admired her! Audacious
before the iron shoes!

The NYT featured an interesting op-ed by poet and critic David Orr on the restrictions of copyright law and the well-known fogginess of Fair Use when quoting poetry (“When Quoting Verse, One Must Be Terse”, Sept 8, 2011). Orr rightly points out that the unofficial standard used by poetry critics is often to include the entire text of a poem; however, legally speaking, this practice oversteps Fair Use.
“As things stand, poets and critics are at the mercy of an incoherent system,” Orr writes. As we in higher ed are too well aware, one could easily replace “critic” with teacher.

Personally, I have no shame about having shared entire poems here, on this blog–in part this is because one can hardly talk about a poem without having access to the poem, but also because I believe that poets, along with many other classes of artists, benefit from open sharing of their work.

Episode 7 of The SciFiPunkRockabillySurfHorror Half-Hour for DS106 Radio:

Episode 7: Reanimate? Annihilate!

1. Zombina & The Skeletones – Evil Science
2. The Creepshow – Grave Diggers
3. Nekromantix – Luni Lab
4. Frankenstein “It’s alive!”
5. Plan 9 – Manmade Monster
6. BALZAC – Frankenstein’s Walk
7. 12 Step Rebels – The Ballad Of Frankenstein’s Monster
8. Cobra Skulls – Dead Inside
9. The Koffin Kats – Graveyard Tree 2
10. Groovie Ghoulies – Daughter Of Frankenstein
11. The Apers – Reanimate My Heart
12. Famous Monsters – Blood of Frankenstein
13. Groovie Ghoulies – 99 Lives

It’s been a long time since I’ve had time, let alone will, to sit and draft a poem. Let’s credit this one to intolerable psychic pressure and leave it at that. Thankfully, only that part of the poem is true.

Eve of the Empty Apocalypse

We've turned away from the sun;
In the East, the Rocky Mountains loom,
their tallest painted purest white.
They say these, too, will shake apart
or crumble down to dust.

I leave, driving east,
hoping to slip between the mountains
before the lunar oracle proclaims their doom,
instructs their snowy crowns to haunt the valley.
And if I'm never seen again,
oh well,
I'll any some day break in their abyss,
so why not now? And seal our final argument,
which conjured Christ and Sartre,
Camus, Prince, my father, and the Buddha.
And yet I kept Everett's Schrodinger's secret safe,
galvanized|encouraged by my squinting son,
who's blue eyed smile says, "Bye-bye,"
to prophecy that I'll return
with certainty so perfect that it quakes
the ancient church across the street.
I feel its stone walls leaning,
I bear its weight, but
no meaning,
and burn what scion faith I can't refute.

Notes

Two things I know I don’t like: the imprecision/abstraction of the final line, and the fact that “Eve” is only implicitly in the poem.

I originally had “Schrodinger” instead of “Everett”, which has a better poetic ring to it, and is probably less obscure, but I couldn’t tolerate the knowledge that Schrodinger didn’t necessarily endorse literal conclusions from his famous thought experiment. If I can be corrected here, I’d be thrilled to change it back.

Episode 6 of The SciFiPunkRockabillySurfHorror Half-Hour for DS106 Radio flaps heavy on the rockabilly/psychobilly side of the alley.

Scheduling seems sketchy, so I can’t say when this might play, but here’s the set list anyway:

Episode 6: Sucks on the Beach

1. Batmobile – Bat Dream
2. The Coffinshakers – Dracula Has Risen From The Grave
3. Vampire Beach Babes – Gothic Surf-A-Rama
4. Groovie Ghoulies – Do The Bat
5. “The X-Files” – We Got Em
6. Zombina & The Skeletones – Dracula Blood
7. Thee Flatliners – Vampires
8. Blitzkid – Nosferatu
9. “Dracula” – He Opened a Vein
10. Devils Brigade – Vampire Girl
11. The Misfits – Vampira
12. Docteur Legume et Les Surfwerks – Vixen Vampira
13. “The Vampire Lovers” – Beware
14. Zombie Ghost Train – Step into My Coffin
15. Rezurex – Vampira Calling
16. Tiger Army – Santa Carla Twilight

A lot of these selections were obvious, though a few were tough. For instance, I had a hard time settling on a Thee Flatliners track from the Vampires EP–I favored “Dracula’s Descendants” but ended up choosing “Vampires” because of its distinct Castlevania sound. Blitzkid is not a band I’d normally favor for this show, but, man, this track “Nosferatu” is crazy! Tiger Army finishes with a slower, introspective track — a little more subtle than the rest of the psychobilly songs in this set.

Another episode of The SciFiPunkRockabillySurfHorror Half-Hour for DS106 Radio.

Episode 5: The Invaders

Synopsis: Dragonmen and Devilgirls invade the Earth, using our own rock n’ roll against us!

1. Pixies – The Happening
2. Groovie Ghoulies – 50000 Spaceships (Watching Over Me)
3. Mad Sin – U.F.O.
4. “The Invaders” – David Vincent, Mental Case
5. Frank Black – Bad, Wicked World
6. Zodiac Killers – UFO Invasion
7. The Lillingtons – Target Earth
8. Man or Astroman? – Invasion Of The Dragonmen
9. Ramones – Zero Zero UFO
10. “Devil Girl from Mars” – Much As We Expected
11. The Misfits – I Turned Into a Martian
12. Man or Astroman? – Evil Plans of Planet Spectra
13. The Heartaches – Rock N Roll UFO
14. “Space Ghost” – Energy Ray
15. Docteur Legume et les Surfwerks – Raumpatrouille Surf
16. Zombina and the Skeletones – End of the World
17. Teenage Bottlerocket – Forbidden Planet

Special thanks to Bradley Trinnaman for introducing me to some great, new psychbilly and horror punk this week–plenty of material, now, for the next several episodes. Coming up: vampires, ghosts, evil laboratories, and more zombie love.

Not sure if/when this will play on DS106 Radio, but here’s the next episode of The SciFiPunkRockabillySurfHorror Half-Hour.

Episode 4: Monster Attack!

Synopsis: Sharks in the surf! Primates from prehistory! Monsters by the megaton! Hippies without heads!

1. Man or Astroman? – Mystery Science Theater 3000 Love Theme
2. The Lillingtons – Caveman
3. Groovie Ghoulies – Blood Beach
4. Beach Girls and the Monster – Making Hey Hey
5. Daikaiju – Sharkakhan
6. The Aquabats – The Shark Fighter!
7. Horrorpops – HorrorBeach Pt. II
8. The Dead Milkmen – The Thing That Only Eats Hippies
9. Groovie Ghoulies – The Lizard King
10. Famous Monsters – Monsters Over Tokyo!
11. The Creepshow – Run For Your Life
12. Man or Astroman? – Gargantua’s Last Stand
13. Zombina & The Skeletones – Teenage Caveman Beat Gargantua
14. Groovie Ghoulies – The King Kong Stomp

I lived out a bit of a childhood dream by creating set lists for a music show on DS106 online radio station, as masterminded by Jim Groom, Grant Potter, et al. Frankly, I could run a different kind of set night after night, week after week, from industrial to electropop, from post-punk to classical, but decided to focus on a peculiar theme that I’ve enjoyed for a number of years, the exotic, bizarre, obscure, and often silly sci-fi/horror themed music put out by a small group of punk rock, surf rock, and rockabilly/psychobilly bands. And so we have the SciFiPunkRockabillySurfHorror Half-Hour.

Since the songs themselves tend to be highly narrative, it was easy to put them together in a way that created something approximating a narrative arc. I sometimes traded variety to showcase my favorite bands repeatedly, yet am proud to have been pretty stubborn about excluding songs/bands if they didn’t fit the plotline.

Here are the set lists for the first three episodes, along with a synopsis of the storyline I had in mind:

Episode 1: Young Zombie Vampires in Love

Synopsis: Young (vampire) love is threatened when an asteroid on a cataclysmic collision course with Earth is preceded by radioactivated zombies.

1. Me First and the Gimme Gimmes – Science Fiction Double Feature
2. Man or Astroman? – Planet Collision
3. The Epoxies – Radiation
4. Groovie Ghoulies – Deviltown
5. The Lillingtons – Zombies
6. The Soviettes – Paranoia Cha Cha Cha!
7. Koffin Kats – Graveyard Tree
8. Groovie Ghoulies – Vampire Girl
9. The Creep Show – Zombies Ate Her Brain
10. The Incredible Staggers – Zombies of Love
11. The Dead Milkmen – Lucky
12. – La Fin Absolue du Monde
13. The Riverdales – Countdown
14. The Phenomenauts – Infinite Frontier

Episode 2: Crossed in Space

Synopsis: The vampire-turned-zombie lovers escape a doomed Earth, but will romance survive capture by the alien cyborgs who are following in the asteroid’s path?

1. Shonen Knife – Riding on the Rocket
2. Batmobile – Rock This Planet
3. Man or Astroman? – Cyborg Control
4. Damon Alexander and the Ten Cent Rentals – Robot Monster
5. The Lillingtons – I Saw the Apeman on the Moon
6. Dr Who – You Will Become Like Us
7. Zombina and the Skeletones – Love Droid
8. Devil Girl from Mars – Johnny
9. The Phenomenauts – Cyborg
10. The Dollyrots – Because I’m Awesome
11. Docteur Legume et Les Surfwerks – La Femme Electrique
12. Teenage Bottlerocket – Lost in Space
13. Stereophonic Space Sound Unlimited – Birdman

Episode 3: Eternal Return

Synopsis: Our vampire-turned-zombie-turned-cyborg hero returns to a scorched Earth. Tormented by memories of his lost love, he flees to his homeland of Transylvania.

1. Teen Idols – Midnight Picture Show
2. The Lillingtons – Black Hole in my Mind
3. Ramones – Pet Sematary
4. Batmobile – Transylvanian Express
5. Frank Black – The Black Rider #1
6. Docteur Legume et Les Surfwerks – Bienvenue a la Maison Meduse
7. Teenage Bottlerocket – They Came from the Shadows
8. The Horrorpops – Hitchcock Starlet
9. The Sonics – The Witch
10. Groovie Ghoulies – Wolf Girl
11. The Phenomenauts – Make a Circuit with Me
12. Groovie Ghoulies – Til Death Do Us Party

Episodes 4 & 5 are both planned, and will showcase Nekromantix, Zombina and the Skeletones, Famous Monsters, Daikaiju, The Pixies, and more.