Better Than Friday - 53 (Patreon)

Good afternoon ya'll, I'm currently working on a review of How to Read and Why by Bloom while simultaneously reading Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow, Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury, and Stephen King's The Stand. 

I have discovered my limit as to how many books I can read at once. 

1.This recently arrived in the mail

This was sent to me the other day by NYRB, it comes out on the 18th.

Eighteen strange, whimsical, and philosophical tales by the Russian master of the weird, all now in English for the very first time.

When Comrade Punt does not wake up one Moscow morning--he has died--his pants dash off to work without him. The ambitious pants soon have their own office and secretary. So begins the first of eighteen superb examples of Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky's philosophical and phantasmagorical stories. Where the stories included in two earlier NYRB collections (Memories of the Future and Autobiography of a Corpse) are denser and darker, the creations in Unwitting Street are on the lighter side: an ancient goblet brimful of self-replenishing wine drives its owner into the drink; a hypnotist's attempt to turn a fly into an elephant backfires; a philosopher's free-floating thought struggles against being "enlettered" in type and entombed in a book; the soul of a politician turned chess master winds up in one of his pawns; an unsentimental parrot journeys from prewar Austria to Soviet Russia.

- from Amazon

Also, for those like myself who may have trouble, here's how to pronounce his name. 

2. Anthony, a patron clued me in to these nifty retro radios 

Apparently even the Queen had one. 

3. Meh, I'll Watch It To See Robert Pattinson Eat a Spider 

I reviewed 'The Devil All The Time' years back, and enjoyed it. 

Not sure how the Netflix adaptation will be, but I certainly recommend the book for those into Southern Gothic fiction. 

4. Photoreal Faces of Roman Emperors 

In a timely discovery, I just came across this. 

Look at Elagabalus - 3rd row second from right - HA!

5. I Was A Teenage Werewolf 

I mentioned 'The Cramps' in 'The Devil All the Time' Review. 

The Cramps were one of the greatest moments in rock history. 

Sleazy 1950's horror trash meets punk attitude and blues riffs fronted by the iconic married couple, the unparalleled Poison Ivy on guitar, and the lizardy slithering legend that is Lux Interior. 

The bar next door closed because of Covid, very sad.

They were having a sale of the stuff inside, and I found this head which I briefly entertained making a recurring character on the show with opinions vehemently opposed to mine, then thought better of it. 

Nonetheless, he'll be making frequent cameos.