Edgar Allan Poe

It had been a long time since I'd read any Edgar Allan Poe, but a recent cleaning adventure in my apartment turned up an old Scholastic edition of ten mysteries by that crazy old man. When I flipped through the book, I recalled some of the cool illustrations that accompanied "The Tell-Tale Heart" in a big reader we were issued in middle or high school. It must have been high school, tenth grade, as that was the year we covered American lit. Anyway, I read "The Tell-Tale Heart" before bed the other night and it really gave me the creeps. It's really interesting to read something so bizarre with such horrific imagery and know that it was published in 1843. Yesterday, I re-read "The Pit and the Pendulum" and found it, perhaps, more disturbing than "Heart," as it really plays on overwhelming the senses with all sorts of unpleasantness.

One January, I'd like to be in Baltimore to see the Poe Toaster as he delivers a bottle of cognac and three roses to Poe's grave on the author's birthday.

Round Two: On some other shit

Back in the old days, people either forgot that pants had pockets or sewing pockets into pants had not yet been thought of because everyone was trying to jam a bunch of gadgets onto wrist watches. Pep Streebeck, Tom Hanks' character in 1987's sadly underrated film Dragnet, sports a Casio wrist watch with a small, color television screen. I really thought that Pep was cool, and that the watch was so badass. Obviously, I wanted one, but I, unfortunately, had to settle for a less awesome, less expensive Casio calculator watch, which were all the rage in my elementary school. 1990s Dick Tracy didn't do much to slow the roll on cramming more shit into wrist watches, as the titular character runs around with a watch that does all kinds of mess. People continue to make ridiculous wrist watches I just discovered via a google search. Why? No one knows, particularly when Tiger Electronics won the space race to make the best gizmo one could ever strap to one's arm years ago.

The Tiger handheld games were simple and kinda fun. You couldn't switch cartridges or play them in the dark, and were sometimes hard to play with too much light. But they didn't kill batteries too fast and did the trick on a long car ride. Taking the winning formula of their simple handheld games and turning them into something kids could have on their wrist all the time was a stroke of genius.

I didn't own any of these wrist watch games, though, I'm sure I wanted them when I saw them advertised. But I wouldn't have understood the value of the thing then, as a stupid little kid. Sure, it would have been fun to have one to play in class or on the bus, but it wouldn't have been nearly as fun or useful as it now could be. I can just imagine how pleasant meetings at work could be, leaning way back in my chair, tapping the little red buttons, making a squiggly little Batman leap and throw boomerangs at tiny digital bad guys.

Look At It

Here are some cool things to check out.

1) An interview with Amy Hempel from 2006 in The Atlantic. I really like the term "miniaturist" for her work.

2) I saw this short film a few years ago called Delusions in Modern Primitivism that I found really interesting and couldn't find on google until just the other day. I flipped to the movie a little ways in and didn't realize it was a mockumentary. I've got it coming from Netflix soon, and I'm looking forward to watching it again. A clip from the movie is available here.

3) The other day I came across an article in The New Yorker that I found both fascinating and depressing. It's about a guy--Cameron Todd Willingham--who was executed in Texas some years ago for supposedly being responsible for killing his kids by setting fire to his home. Prior to Willingham's execution, an investigation by one of the pre-eminent minds in arson cases--Dr. Gerald Hurst--brought up many questions about how the initial investigation had been conducted and the conclusions that were ultimately made by police. However, Hurst's work was ignored and Willingham was wrongly put to death.

4) Studs Terkel's Hard Times is a fascinating oral history of the Great Depression that is certainly relevant to our current financial problems. I haven't had a chance to listen to the recordings available via the above link, but I found the book very interesting.

5) If you haven't ever listened to Bonnie "Prince" Billy (aka Will Oldham), do yourself a favor and pick up the album "I See a Darkness." It's a sparse and haunting record with some of the most honest and lovely lyrics. Even the snooty and pompous critics at Pitchfork gave it a 10/10.

Minor Place

Back home after a night at the bars--another night
spent in the same places I always go in the same
minor place I've been in these last few years--I
take a beer from the fridge and sit on my stoop
watching the traffic lights on the corner blink back
and forth at one another. Red. Yellow. Red. Yellow.

I say this is a nothing place, too small for me, but it's
nights like these where I think that maybe this city is too
big. Even small cities demand aspirations and I don't
have a lot of those. I want to be able to fall asleep
every night and I want to wake up feeling OK, and only
one stop light towns accept wishes as minor as those.

On my stoop, staring up at a spider in a dingy web
tucked into the corner of the entryway, I decide that
when I move away I will go to the moon or to Montana.
I say out loud, "Mooooontana," and I know that I'm drunk
and I know that tomorrow will be another day that I won't
remember because nothing will happen.