001: Absurdism in pirate temp work and daytime TV, Nico for Fellini, etc.
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☠️ Book: Temporary by Hilary Leichter (2020, Coffee House Press)
Temporary is the first book I bought during quarantine, though I had long been feverishly anticipating it.
The main character is a temp worker who is sent off to increasingly bizarre gigs; one is on a pirate ship, another is delivering pamphlets door-to-door, with very strict guidelines, on behalf of a witch. It sounds quirky, and it is, but it’s also SO MUCH MORE. I’ve never read something that skewers late capitalism this skillfully without feeling extremely political while also being breathlessly funny in the most demented way.
I fucking devoured it and have been evangelizing about it to anyone who will listen ever since.
“Her cobbler had made her a pair of shoes for the job. They sparkled like a skyline, but my mother’s feet were useless all the same. The shoes she filled were constantly switching in size. Just imagine what that does to your feet.”
Where: Bookshop.org or your local independent bookstore. If you need help finding one, email me. I would love to help you!
Our hero and assorted complementary reading.
📺 Music: Jacqueline Humbert and David Rosenboom – Daytime Viewing (2013, Unseen Worlds)
This is a strange and beautiful album by performance artist-set designer Jacqueline Humbert and composer-neurofeedback pioneer David Rosenboom. I don’t remember how I came across it, but the line drawings on the cover’s striking pink background instantly set my heart ablaze.
The sonic stuff is even better: avant-classical performance art with synthesizers inspired by the existential loneliness of daytime television drama, originally released on private cassette in 1982.
Clifford Allen describes it for Tiny Mix Tapes: “Daytime Viewing is a song cycle consisting of six pieces; based on the absurdist theatricality of television soap operas as well as commercialism and family, Humbert’s voice and Rosenboom’s synthesizers are joined in places by the percussion of William Winant to create a landscape that is both lush and spry. Humbert’s soothingly rich, almost mechanized vocals set the stage for the record’s characters in a literal sense, earnest and necessarily removed. Rosenboom’s Buchla synthesizer is responsive and undulates with Humbert’s voice, taking flight where lyrics are absent.”
Where: I picked mine up on Bandcamp.
🇮🇹 Viewing Material: Nico's entrance in La Dolce Vita
I haven’t seen Fellini’s super famous 1960 film, though I suppose I should. Someone shared this in a Velvet Underground group I’m in and now I’m sharing it here because I love Nico but didn’t know she was in this – better yet, playing herself. If you put the music in this clip through an oscillating razor, it would fit right in on her delightfully inaccessible, underrated 1968 album The Marble Index.
Marcello Mastroianni and Nico on set
🕵️ Podcast: The Missing Cryptoqueen
This series is about Dr. Ruja Ignatova, a Bulgarian woman who created a fake cryptocurrency called OneCoin to disguise a very real Ponzi scheme. She disappeared in 2017 and her whereabouts remain unknown.
Some of the production is on the cheesy side, but two things color the story: plenty of interviews with folks who were scammed or otherwise involved and compelling digressions like one interviewee’s offhand remark about pyramid schemes tearing apart the Balkan country of Albania in the '90s. I even learned a little bit about cryptocurrency in a manner that didn't feel way over my head.
At one point they attend a OneCoin-sponsored beauty pageant in Romania that brought to mind the Party Down episode "Celebrate Ricky Sargulesh." It was weird and awesome, in the "besides the fact that this is all a scam" way.
The show is produced by BBC Sounds, so come for the accents and stay for the totally fucking bonkers story.
Where: Find it online here.
Is this type of preview a cultural relic yet?
🐕 Article: Catherine O’Hara and Eugene Levy Answer Every Question We Have About Best in Show
I’m going with a fun one for the first round. We finally watched Christopher Guest’s Best In Show (2000) for the first time after Fred Willard died this year. Given both their chemistry and the subject matter, Catherine O’Hara and Eugene Levy’s memories of the film make for a pretty delectable oral history.
Eugene, you co-wrote Best in Show with Christopher Guest. Why skewer dog shows?
EL: Well, it was Chris’s idea. I thought it was a really interesting idea. I always had a problem with the end of the movie, with the third act, because I would say, “It’s a funny premise. What are we going to do at the end of the dog show, though? How do we make a dog show funny? It’s gotta be a legitimate dog show.” Unlike Waiting for Guffman, where we wrote the show and we could make that show funny, a dog show’s gotta be a legitimate dog show. And it wasn’t until Chris suggested, “What if Fred Willard was the color commentator for the dog show?” That opened the door for me. I said “Okay, got it, say no more. That’s brilliant, that’s great.” So the dog show itself was as legitimate as we could make it, and Fred was the secret ingredient. He just went crazy, he was so funny. He was the saving grace during the show.
On Winky’s real name being Brillo:
That’s so cute!CO: The owners of our dog were not really seriously into the game. It was perfect! Brillo-Winky had the right kind of plucky energy to be our characters’ dog, because his actual owners/parents/whatever they consider themselves were loose and cool about it. They didn’t take it too seriously. So he was the perfect dog for us.
Where: Vulture
✊🏿 Rest In Power, Chadwick Boseman
🎷 Thing To Do: Stream Molly Jones & Angel Bat Dawid Live 8/31
Last-minute addition, but you missed it!
Saxophonist-electronic musician-composer Molly Jones and clarinetist-keyboardist-composer Angel Bat Dawid performed as a duo for The Quarantine Concerts, a venture from Chicago’s Experimental Sound Studio.
You probably know Angel from her potent, vibrant, Afrofuturist spiritual jazz album The Oracle, while Molly is one of several insanely talented folks making exciting and unconventional jazz and electronic music in the Detroit-Chicago nexus. Her precision, skill, and willingness to walk down unexpected paths are just a few reasons I chose to write about her in the Detroit Metro Times 2018 edition of Bands To Watch. Dig her album microliths, with its swinging moments alongside the collapsing space of the septet's free improv.
You made it to the very end! Here is one last thing for you. It is nice.
If you have anything at all to say, about anything you’ve seen here today, something you might like to see in the future, or simply a hello, send it here: anagavrilovska@gmail.com.