Friday Five: 5 Best Things Caleb Ross has read recently

(There's a blowtorch!)

Caleb Ross has been on a wild blog tour for the past month or so and he graciously stops by Deckfight to share the 5 best things he has read recently.

Caleb is the author of the recently released story collection, Charactered Pieces (from OW Press). For the past month he's been doing an online tour called The Blog Orgy Tour, where he offers guest posts at various blogs, revealing along the way things he'd rather have kept to himself. See his tour page for all the stops, both past and forthcoming.

Yesterday he was at Lit Drift and next week he's at 3AM Magazine all week long.

1. Yes, that’s a speed limit sign that reads 9. This sign hangs in a parking garage in Clayton, Missouri (a St. Louis suburb). I understand the need for low speed when exiting a parking garage, but the refusal to round this number to 10 forces me to fathom the circumstances that lead to such a specific number. Crying parent: “Is she going to live, doctor?” Doctor: “If the car was going just one mile-per-hour less, yes, but…”

2. This one is a bit selfish, but truly, it’s one of the best things I’ve read recently. From a review at Present Magazine of my fiction chapbook, Charactered Pieces:

He crafts stories that are powerful, accessible, and unsettling enough to draw the reader in with curiosity about how these lives will play out, prompting the imagination to extend the implications long after the final word has been read.

To affect someone long after the book is closed; that’s my dream as a writer.

3. This sign angered me. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to exit a gas station parking lot in a Boeing 747? Quite difficult.

4. I’ve been on a Jose Saramago trip for the last month or so. I’m upset that it took me so long to discover this wonderful author. From his novel, The Double, I read this passage today, which, me being a language-geek, struck a particular chord:

There was a time when there were so few words that we did not even have enough to express something as simple as This is my mouth, or That is your mouth, still less ask, Why are our mouths touching. It doesn’t occur to people nowadays that a lot of work was involved in creating those words, it was necessary, in the first place, to realize that there was a need for them, which may, who knows, have been the most difficult thing of all, then to reach a consensus on the significance, of their immediate effects, and finally, a task that will never fully be completed, to imagine the consequences that might ensue, in the medium and long term, for these effects and from these words.

5. This quote from Jay Schaefer, an editor-at-large at Workman Publishers in New York City: “Publishers desperately seeking insanely great debut novelists.”

He says this like it’s news, like he’s announcing this amazing new business model that will save publishing. Answer me this: has there ever been a time when publishers weren’t looking for “insanely great debut novelists”? Try harder, Big Time Publishing. Try harder.

More after the jump...

review: The Book of Basketball by Bill Simmons

The Book of Basketball
By Bill Simmons
ESPN, 2009

Like Gilbert Arenas' gunhandling and sharpshooting ways, ESPN writer Bill Simmons’ new Book of Basketball is a polarizing force. Sports types love him and hate him, all the while turning that interest into fat checks that other sportswriters can only imagine as heaven.

There's no stretch to suggest that Bill Simmons is perhaps the most successful Internet writer ever, his words appearing on screen long before they ever inhabited a place in a magazine. He started on some AOL sports site, gained a loyal following for essentially being one of the few relevant sports columnists to young males, daring to talk about Swingers and Vince Vaughn alongside the Boston Red Sox while others could only discuss moral turpitude and the modern athlete.

Everything Simmons did seems like no big deal now, but I guess it was and somehow he has become the most successful sportswriter in America, even though he stays at his house most of the time, never sits in a press box and has season tickets to the historically worst professional sports team.


It would be annoying for Simmons to beat his uniqueness over our heads, and he doesn’t do that in this book, but his manner seems quite irreverent for a hardcover book and basketball. All his sexual jokes are unusual in this form, where on the Internet it doesn’t seem bad at all, maybe just tame. But to talk frankly about strippers in relationship to Jason Kidd is not really funny, just kind of odd, as I can’t believe this guy is married sometimes, his frankness embarrasses me as if I'm a 7th grader reading Madame Bovary.

There exists a running count of Boogie Nights jokes, and the number dials high, and so a fictional movie about a porn star is his grand allusion, his literary cred running high. But no one came to Simmons for his literary cred, but precisely because he dared to make those comparisons in the first place. So though Boogie Nights is beat like a dead horse, that becomes the point--to beat a dead horse as many times as possible.

But concentrating on those things is not the point of the book, in fact this discussion at NY Mag, made me think the whole book was about sex. When in fact, it’s about basketball. But not an encyclopedia of basketball, or a chronology of basketball, but more of an interesting paradigm to discuss basketball. Much of the book’s structure derives from actual conversations, claims Simmons, in the vein of one of his favorite buddy-Vegas movies apparently. So there’s a pyramid of the greatest 90 some odd players to have played the game of basketball, a riveting chapter on the debate of Chamberlain vs. Russell and a ranking of the most dominant teams best in the spirit of Keyser Soze (watch The Usual Suspects).

It is no surprise that the Boston Celtics have a significant role in this book, much because Simmons is a Boston native, raised on the Celtics and Larry Bird and the legend of Bill Russell. But even though Simmons cares deeply about the Celtics, his arguments in favor of them are well-reasoned and factually based, the only subjective part is how high to rank Rober Parrish over James Worthy or the proper place of Dennis Johnson in the pantheon of minor all-stars. This pyramid ranking of the greats is the meatiest of the book, though his meeting with Isaiah Thomas to discuss “the secret” is the crux of Simmons’ argument, boiling down to the fact that basketball is not about basketball, meaning that the me-first Chamberlain fails to the team-first Russell, that Jordan understood “the secret” after two years off playing baseball, that Kobe may not have grasped “the secret” until Shaq/Jackson troubles and rape accusations.

I actually liked the ending interview with Bill Walton better, where Walton frames it as players making "a choice" to be unselfish, rather than "the secret." But Simmons met Isaiah Thomas at a topless bar and he only met Walton in his house, so "the secret" it is.

But I generally support Simmons’ outlook on basketball. I enjoy Magic Johnson. I understand the greatness of Hakeen Olajuwon and how underrated Tim Duncan is. I don’t think John Stockton or Patrick Ewing were as bad as Simmons says. Now he is rightfully Kevin Durant’s greatest cheerleader.

Back over at NY Mag, they try to dissect “micro” vs. “macro” Simmons, meaning can you put up with Simmons’ style to understand his points? Many times, I can’t. As a frequent reader of his columns, I bypass all of his football columns, because I don’t enjoy whining about fantasy teams and Simmons has singlehandedly made me want to avoid ever watching Swingers or the aforementioned Boogie Nights—I get enough of those two cinematic masterpieces from the scraps and fragments I pull together from all of Simmons’ columns and books. His boyhood fantasies and trips to Vegas have proven proper canon fodder for quite awhile, he’s going to have to take a few more local trips through Hollywood or twist his writing into sassy parenting metaphors a la Neal Pollack to stick around much longer. In other words, even Vince Vaughan has grown up.

This edition of the Book of Basketball may be Simmons’ last stand with his most familiar metaphors. With the rise of Deadspin and more focus on differing approaches to basketball in general (read FreeDarko.com), Simmons is dangerously close to becoming the new old guard. But this book is a powerful defense. More after the jump...

Swing South: Paper Operator

Paper The Operator: "The Pendulum"

Oh man. Sometimes I get random stuff. Sometimes I open it, sometimes I don't. But oh man, I'm glad I opened Paper The Operator.

Stream their new album, Goodbye God, here.

Paper The Operator has all the vox up front, with a little spacey-melody backing up the singer/songwriter anxieties (listen to "Left Lucy") and then hopeful grunge turned quick shoegaze (listen to "Rock Dreams). Very simple, but excellent. I want to say the Paper The Operator is like The Rocket Summer for some reason, but I have no compunction to make fun of Paper The Operator.

Again, stream the new one here. Definitely will have to work a review.

Still a few GA/Carolina dates left, after the jump...


Jan 5, 2010 8:00P Wonderroot Atlanta, GA
Jan 6, 2010 9:00P Oasis Charleston, SC
Jan 7, 2010 8:00P New Brookland Tavern Columbia, SC
Jan 8, 2010 9:30P Tipsy Teapot Greenville, NC

More after the jump...

review: Capgun Coup - Maudlin

Capgun Coup

Maudlin

Team Love, 2009

Review by Andrew Jones

Capgun Coup: "Sitting on the Sidewalk"
Capgun Coup: "Bad Bands"


I vividly remember the fall day in 2005 when I purchased Tournament of Hearts, the third LP from the Constantines. I'd just graduated from college, was living back at home, and working a horrible job that sometimes required that I go 13 or so days without a day off. It was, in short, a bad time, but I remember reading about the Constantines one night around this time. The reviewer said they sounded kind of like Fugazi, which convinced me to buy the record. This description wasn't exactly fitting, but I digress. Anyway, I was out running errands on one of my rare days off of work, and I stopped at the record store first thing to pick up Tournament. I paid the guy for the album, went out to my car and started it up before unwrapping the CD and putting it in the player. The first measures of the opening track, “Draw Us Lines,” started up and I felt like this would be the song I would write if I could write songs. I didn't even put the car in gear while the song played on, just sat in the driver's seat and listened. When the song ended, I pushed the button to skip back to the beginning of the track, and merged into traffic feeling pretty good about things.

I relate this story of finding opening track bliss because it's similar to my recent experience with Capgun Coup's new record, Maudlin. I've often thought that it would be cool to make a mixed CD of the best opening tracks on albums, and if I ever do that, “Computer Screens and TVs” will certainly be on the playlist.



The song blows up from the start with lo-fi, fuzzed out vocals that sound like a teenager yelling at his parents before he storms off and slams the door to his room. The whole song is frantic, filled with angst for our technology saturated, televisual culture, and is as brief as a Tweet, clocking in at just over two minutes. His tongue is obviously planted firmly in cheek when singer/guitarist Sam ends the tune singing, “What a beautiful time to be born in.” I only put this album on my computer the other day, but the iTunes play count on this opening number has already gotten out of control.

It would be wrong to say that Capgun Coup is breaking totally new musical ground. The influence of 60s psychedelia is writ large on these songs, as are folk and punk. After listening to the album a few times through, I was struck by how appropriate the band's name is, as a coup with cap guns sounds to me like an overthrow of the established order that fails to foster a full blown change to the status quo.

In other words, the songs on Maudlin don't always sound new or unfamiliar, but there are vocal lines and guitar riffs scattered throughout that demonstrate the freshness of the band's sound.

The hard rocking instrumentation and rough yell-sing vocals of songs like “Bad Bands” and “Only the Times Are Changing”—two personal favorites—are nicely counterpointed by some of the album's acoustic tracks. “Now That I'm Home” is a wistful take on the pros and cons of being home versus those that come with life out on the road. It's a mostly upbeat track with brushes slapping out a beat on a snare as bells jingle along. Though the final line of the song—“I want to leave”—suggests which way the song's narrator is leaning, Sam's aloof delivery of these words weighs them down with doubt. It sounds like he might go, but that he doesn't care much either way.

As much as I like loud and aggressive rock music—and Capgun's take on how to make such music—I think my favorite track is the final one, “It Breaks No Heart of Mine,” a really beautiful banjo ballad. The vocals on the song are not as distorted as on other tracks, which makes them sound especially fragile and awkward, a sound that is well-matched to the brutally honest and wounded lyrics. It's a typical unrequited love ditty, but the vulnerability in the vocals suggest that the narrator is less Lloyd Dobbler in the yard with the boom box blasting “In Your Eyes,” but more the best guy friend of the girl with the boyfriend who has repeatedly rehearsed but never delivered his love speech.

I like that Maudlin starts on such an upbeat and manic note with “Computer Screens and TVs,” then ends so calmly with “It Breaks No Heart of Mine.” It's as though the band has taken listeners from thinking about the artificiality of modern life, to putting on a clinic on how to buck these current trends and wear your heart on your sleeve. With this in mind, much of what makes this album enjoyable is the depth of feeling in each of these songs. This band has strong feelings on things and they're not holding them back. Ultimately, Maudlin is proof that Capgun Coup has keen ears for the hooks of yore, while also possessing some unique ideas of their own, ones that will hopefully have the chance to be explored and developed by the band for some years to come.

More after the jump...

Lit Randomness Returns!

We're back on the other side of the decade. Here are a few interesting lit matters from the past few wks:

The Unlimited Story Deck gives you characters, you make the story. Play with friends and colleagues or use it as a last-minute solution to the class you forgot to prep for! Takes structuralism to a new level: At Jacket Copy.

Cornelius Vanderbilt (whom my alma mater is named for) knew how to fight: At NPR.

McNulty loves Chekhov & doesn't sound like he's from Baltimore at all: At Faster Times. Oh yeah, I got The Wire box set for Christmas.

"I Am a Writer" checklist: At HTML Giant.

Book ads: At Maud Newton

And...Lit Randomness will just appear on Mondays now in a rockin' expanded edition.

More after the jump...