Summer Reading

I'll be chilling out in the dunes of Lake Michigan this weekend, but while I'm away you can print and use this coupon to get 30% off a paperback at any Borders or Waldenbooks store. Just a little treat for both of my loyal readers. You're welcome.

Suds, Soliloquies, Stones, and Summer

All right, so I watched a documentary about obscure and bizarre artwork a little while ago. For a change of pace, tonight's documentary was about an obscure and bizarre book called The Stones of Summer, published in 1972 by someone named Dow Mossman, who subsequently dropped off the face of the earth. The filmmaker remembered reading the book, found it mesmerizing, and wondered why the author never published anything else. The documentary, entitled "Stone Reader," is mainly about his quest to find Mossman, and the way he goes about it and the people he meets along the way are quite fascinating. In fact, when he finally tracks down Mossman, it is rather anticlimactic.

Of course, I don't know if the book itself is any good. After the film was released, Barnes & Noble agreed to bring it back into print, and I can remember seeing a huge stack of copies in my local B&N a few years ago and wondering what the hell it was. As it didn't sound so good to me then, I suspect I would not really care for it. The reviews on Amazon seem to be split between love it/hate it.

Anyway, the documentary was a little slow, but interesting. I'd recommend it for anyone curious about how novels get written and published -- and how sometimes in the process writers can be destroyed.

Revenge of Stupid Beer News

It's been a while since the last Stupid Beer News, so here goes...

The Free Press recently did a roundup of people getting busted for DUIs. A sample:

CANTON
2:20 a.m. May 12, Ford and Lotz: A woman is stopped for speeding in a 2002 Ford Taurus. She says she had a few beers after work. Half of a 12-pack of Bud Light is behind the driver's seat. Several empties are behind the passenger seat, and a half-full bottle is between the passenger seat and center console. She blows 0.12%. On the way to the police department, she says she has to urinate. At the station, she says, "Never mind. I just peed in your car. I couldn't hold it."

In other SBN, Hoosiers in South Bend won't be able to buy cheap crappy beer at baseball games any more, on account of them getting too unruly. The Hoosiers, that is.

But lovers of crap beer can take some comfort in the fact that some analysts see a price war looming between Bud, Miller, and Coors, purveyors of fine crap.

Meanwhile, some dude in Wisconsin -- which by some accounts consumes the most beer per capita of any state -- has invented a tap that pours faster and with less foam than traditional taps. Fills a glass in two seconds? Dude, why wait any longer than you have to to begin drinking?

And finally, the group Audioslave is suing Miller for using them in an ad without permission. They should also sue Miller for making shitty beer. Then again, I suppose they would not win that one. Class action, anyone?

(Thanks to Verd and DataWhat for the links.)

Ann Arbor Photos of the Week

Because it's been a couple weeks since I posted the last one of these, here's two this week of some fierce lions, one in the South U. area and the other on Packard St.

Yo, Invade My Space

So, like, I created a profile on this MySpace.com thing. Why? Because I was bored.

Beam Him Up, God

James Doohan AKA "Scotty" of Star Trek fame bought the farm today. I always thought his accent was genuine, but then I'm a gullible dope.

In related news, Gerry Thomas, inventor of the crappy TV dinners many dorks no doubt consumed while watching Star Trek, also bought it today, but he's probably going to hell for helping usher in the era of fast food.

Entering the Realms of the Unreal

I recently watched Jessica Yu's documentary about "outsider artist" Henry Darger, entitled "In the Realms of the Unreal."

Darger is a rather sad and enigmatic figure. Orphaned at an early age, he was sent to a juvenile institution for the feeble-minded (i.e., crazy), escaping after a number of years and returning to Chicago, where he lived alone his whole life while working as a janitor at a Catholic hospital. He had few, if any, friends, no family, and little interaction with most other human beings. When he died, in 1973 at the age of 81, his landlord discovered, among other things, a 15,000-page novel and 300 color paintings (see below) illustrating it that Darger had apparently been secretly working on for decades.



The novel, entitled "The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinnian War Storm, as caused by the Child Slave Rebellion," is so long (and bizarre) no one has been able to read it all the way through. But the paintings illustrating it, despite their existence being unknown during Darger's lifetime, now sell for tens of thousands of dollars. Darger, of course, died in a poorhouse. Irony.

Anyway, the documentary was all right, even if I'd have preferred a more straightforward approach, but I have to note that the DVD had probably the absolutely worst audio transfer I've ever heard. I mean, truly awful. If you like weird subject matter, though, I'd still recommend checking this out.

There are also plenty of Darger web sites out there, too.

September Moving Still Can Make Me Feel That Way

It looks like S&S headquarters will be moving from 3rd to North Ashley St. at the end of the summer. At which point I'll have a cool deck and a yard in which to waste my life blogging and surfing the Internet -- at least while it stays warm. I can't wait. Having an apartment bigger than a closet is definitely underrated. Maybe I should start thinking about a housewarming party...

Hunka Hunka Burnin' Stuff

Looking for something to do this weekend? Why not stop by Depot Town in Ypsilanti for the 2005 Michigan ElvisFest? Don't tell me you're too cool for it; I don't believe you.

Ann Arbor Photo of the Week

This must be where all the Goth chicks in Ann Arbor hang out.

(Note: You probably have to have been to, or at least heard of, Leland City Club in Detroit to get this lame joke.)

What Becomes of the Broken-Hearted?

Pain sometimes has a way of making a person turn philosophical. You wonder why certain people enter your life, profoundly alter it, and just as mysteriously are taken away again. If you believe in God, you wonder if you are being punished and, if so, what for. (You know there are many answers to that, but you want to understand what specifically singled you out over so many others.) You know intellectually that plenty of other people suffer pain and loss equal to or even far greater than yours and overcome it -- but you still doubt your own ability to recover. You ask questions about fate and the nature of love and the vagaries of the human condition. You torture yourself with every If Only scenario your fever-mad imagination can devise. And if you are of a certain type, you require alcoholic sedation to allow sleep to come at its appointed time and, if you are fortunate, to suppress any dreams that threaten to continue the torment.

Most of all, you ask "Why?" over and over again and realize there is no answer.