Gareth – Page 513 – The Designer Monologues

April 6, 2007April 19, 2010

Friday Music

Sorry it’s a bit late today, kids — I’m up to my armpits with work — a major release coming later today.

Anyway:

I was a huge fan of Men at Work, and although I liked the quirky new-wave-y tracks written by Ron Strykert (the ones which never got any airplay), it’s really no secret that the heavy lifting in the songwriting department was done by frontman Colin Hay. Well, Hay is still touring, but doing mostly accoustic sets. Here is a great accoustic version of one of my favorites: Colin Hay – “Overkill.”

New song and new artist, brought to my attention by . More Neo-new-wave. I like it quite a bit: Shiny Toy Guns – “You Are The One.”

More with the new — this is an absolute earworm of a track. I’m warning you: once you’ve put it into your brain, it’s damn near impossible to shake loose. A brilliant dance track featuring, of all things, a children’s chorus: Justice – “D.A.N.C.E.”

More from the soundtrack to Velvet Goldmine, just because. Coincidentally, my favorite track by Brian Eno. Brian Eno – “Needle in the Camel’s Eye.”

Late-90s attitude-heavy hip-hop from DMX. Warning for those at work: The language in this track is definately not work-safe, and depending on your personal views on the so-called “N-word”, this might not be your thing. DMX – “Ruff Ryder’s Anthem.”

A while back, Jimmy Fallon did an SNL skit where he played Barry Gibb running a talk show. He and Justin Timberlake sang the theme of the talkshow, which was based on this song. The skit was funny, but it reminded me that I hadn’t heard this song much since the anti-disco backlash of the 1980s, and I really liked it. The Bee Gees – “Nights on Broadway.”

Lastly, another new track, from an electronica act from Santa Ana, California. These guys mix jazz and breakbeat into a swinging whole. Old meets new. Very cool: Free The Robots – “Jazzhole.”

There you go. Hope you like ’em. Now, back to the grind.

April 5, 2007

Grindhouse in Lawrence

I’m thinking of enhancing the true flashback grindhouse experience by seeing Grindhouse in the crap-tastic Southwind 12 here in Lawrence. Sure, there won’t be junkies shooting up in the back row, or hookers plying their trade, but hey, at least the seats will be cramped and the floor will be sticky!

There’s a matinee (I just typo’d that as “manitee”, which gave me a few laughs) at 1:20 on Saturday. I think that’s where I’ll be, if anyone else is interested.

April 2, 2007

Writers Who Can’t Read

I’ve started taking submissions for Thrilling Tales quarterly — our guidelines, which have been echoed in various places, clearly state:

Hero Pulp tales of up to 20,000 words. Query for longer material — we will consider standard-length pulp novels (60K words), but primarily as serialized fiction or stand-alone book releases. We want tales that are true to the spirit of the pulps — as such we prefer that they be set during the “pulp era” — the 1930s.

So far, I’ve been mailed about 20 submissions. All have included SASEs, cover letters, notes as to whether the manuscript is disposable, etc……

….and not a single fucking one of them is a hero pulp tale set in the 1930s.

Not a one. Not a SINGLE BLOODY ONE.

It’s so bad, it’s gotten to be a joke here — the_themiscyran hands me the day’s mail, saying “here’s more stuff from people who haven’t read the guidelines” — even before we’ve opened a single envelope.

That’s not even going into the people who have emailed submissions (against the guidelines), or emailed queries asking if we were interested in Cthulhu stories or Swords-and-sorcery (hell, at least those are from the pulps — but not hero pulps). One guy wanted to know if we published modern gothic vampire stories.

Jesus Fucking Christ.

So yeah — frustrating. On the plus side, though, completely outside of my work as a publisher — this experience is filling me with a lot more confidence about my future as a writer, given what the competition out there seems to be like…. :)