Posted on by mwhybark

What We Did Is Public

Incredibly, word has belatedly reached me of the wrap on a Darby Crash biopic, which will apparently lead to a Germs reunion tour. Don Bolles, later of Nirvana and in between his Germs time and that with Kurt, was the original drummer for 45 Grave, who also recently were slated for a revenant tour, but have apparently dropped out.

Bolles stayed with me for several days in my freshman dorm room circa 1984 when he was separated from his 45 Grave bandmates. He was reunited with his cadaverous colleagues shortly before my floor’s residential advisor approached me about the discarded needles that had unexpectedly begun to appear in the men’s restroom facilities. Despite this, I recall my week with Don fondly, as he slept a great deal and embellished my copy of “GI” in black marker before autographing it in behalf of the long-departed Darby.

Posted on by mwhybark

Wilson

August Wilson died today, say the wires. Wilson lived in my neighborhood for most of the time that I have, I think. He was a familiar face in the local coffeeshops, most recently Victrola. My recollection is that he wrote much of his work while sitting in these cafes. He always had a yellow legal pad with him, at any rate.

It’s interesting that in the Boston.com link above, Mr. Wilson refers to the death of one Gunars Berzins:

He looks around, as if expecting someone to arrive. “Man, where is Gunars?” he asks rhetorically. His friend Gunars Berzins, a self-described “crazy Latvian,” died a few days ago at age 74, and Wilson will be attending his memorial service in the afternoon. “He was nutty as a fruitcake, and he was the first person to say he was crazy,” Wilson recalls. “He might come down the street singing an aria. `My cat is God! Hitler! Goering! You Bush-whacker!” The arms flail. The eyes twinkle. “`And you! You are the best playwright in the neighborhood!'” Wilson laughs. “Man, I really miss him.”

That has got to be the local character I only ever knew as General Scheisskopf, an older man who often wore absurd neo-military getups and constantly ranted and raved about anything and everything. I hadn’t really realized that he was gone, but I haven’t seen him lately, and now Wilson’s gone too.

Posted on by mwhybark

Ejaculation

You know, it’s a beautiful thing when a news editor pitches a news item to a publication’s senior editor and the senior editor’s response to the pitch is “Holy crap!”

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Dhalgren redux

Editor B sends along a link to this essay on Delany’s Dhalgren and New Orleans by Bishda Bannerjee at reason.com.

As Americans struggled to grasp what was unfolding in New Orleans, the word “unimaginable” recurred frequently—even though the catastrophe had been imagined, and envisioned, many times. Thirty years ago, science fiction writer Samuel Delany wrote, in high detail, about the unfolding of racially-charged violence, rape, and looting in “Bellona,” a major American city struck by an unspecified catastrophe and ignored by the National Guard.

Delany’s Dhalgren focuses on a group of people who choose to remain in Bellona despite—and partly, because of—its dystopian qualities (including lack of water and sanitation). This surreal work of science fiction seemed especially apt last week, as fires raged and stories of racism, rape, looting, and murder proliferated…

As I recall, Bellona is explicitly situated in the Southeast in the novel, although the context provided by Delany’s autobiography makes it clear that he was actually writing a dream-version of his hometown, New York City, in which only those persons who interact with his main character remain in the city – the athorila invention here was to remove the teeming masses of city life and leave only the personal incidents, allowing his character the freedom of the anonymous drift the metropolis permits.

UPDATE: B. has also posted a roundup of NOLA-X bloggers.

Posted on by mwhybark

Wrong number

As expected, today’s Apple fooraw generated a big yawn from me. Another iPod! Imagine that! Whoop-de-doo!

And a phone with iTunes but no other Apple-designed user-interface features, except, I guess, the ability to synch contacts with Outlook. Which, one supposes, bemuses the Mac-owning folks out there that have been using Address Book over Outlook lo, these many years. The most interesting thing about this announcement is the fact that Apple bent enough to let Cingular advertise iTunes with the Cingular font in that orange box:

Itunes Mobile Images Indexitunescingular20050907-1

Which, I suppose, lends credence to the rumors that the phones release was delayed because Apple was fighting with the labels about licensing and pricing – Cingular would be in a better negotiating position regarding branding issues the longer Apple had to delay launching, I would think.

Ah, what do I know?