"Speaking of": The greatest transition ever? (aka your Weekend Table-Talk)

I. Jenny's mention of Munchman led to me e-mailing video-game expert Ed, who through a series of mental associations then unearthed the Mighty Mouth copyright infringement case:

This 1983 judgment of the District Court of Nebraska found the defendants liable for copyright and trademark infringement of three Midway coin-operated arcade games: “Pac-Man”, “Galaxian”, and “Rally-X.” Midway sold their games to regional distributors, who then sold them to operators, such as arcade owners. The defendants, who were previous operators of Midway games, purchased 10 “copy games” and 3 “conversion kits” and sold them to other retailers. They called the “Pac-Man” imitator “Mighty Mouth,” the Galaxian imitator “Galactic Invaders,” and did not bother to change the name of their copied “Rally-X” game.

(I like the laziness in that last line.)

II. Speaking of Dzyd Ed, here he is on Jerry Lewis's The Total Filmmaker.

III. Dept. of What Am I Talking About?: Yesterday I thundered/joshed—

“I've been on a mild anti-Doors/JM kick for the last, oh, 15 years or so—amazing that in seven short paragraphs, Klinkenborg can make me interested again.”

—and yet also posted at The Millions on Lewis Shiner's Glimpses, which includes some great sequences involving Jim Morrison! This blog is not to be trusted!

IV. Speaking of The Millions: Just noticed that Dzyd/Envelope Sarah's Millions picks went up right after mine: Bonfiglio's books (which for some odd reason I never cottoned to, I should try again) and on James Laughlin's memoir-dossier-thingie (which I've only longed for in bookstores), of which she writes, "It's a made thing, a crafted thing. It's a rescue from the tedium of what happened."

[V. Speaking of Psychic Envelopes/Sarah/"what happened": "Something Happened" and other PE originals are back up at the Myspace page, complete with an annoying "click" starting off two tracks...not part of the recording, but the work of some Myspace gremlin.]

VI. Speaking of Best Reads of the Year, Rivka (Dzyd status: unknown) at Granta feels the same way I do about James Lasdun's The Horned Man:

I’m trying to overcome the grade school favourite band instinct that makes me not want to let any but the truly ‘deserving’ know about James Lasdun’s 2002 novel, The Horned Man. (I feel I don't deserve to know about it, simply because I didn’t already know about it.) Lasdun’s prose is, well: dappled, counter, spare, original, strange. Narrated by an awkward expat literature professor, one who remains steadfastly unaware of being himself the origins of the very mystery bedevilling him, The Horned Man is the descendent of both Saint Augustine and Buster Keaton. It’s odd, unfathomably beautiful, very (very, very, very) funny, charismatic and a shade miraculous.

Saint Augustine and Buster Keaton—together in one sentence at last!

Moral sudoku

A wonderful Verlyn Klinkenborg musing in today's NYT:

It has been nearly 40 years since the rocker Jim Morrison died. But this week — the day after Morrison would have turned 65 — he appeared in The Times in two obituaries: his father’s and that of the owner of the Los Angeles club, Whisky A Go Go, where Morrison’s band, the Doors, got its big break....

This is the kind of thing I encourage some of my students to try:

I find myself wondering how Elmer Valentine would tell his story to himself, or what George Morrison might have said to his son’s employer.

Better yet, I imagine them meeting long before the famous son came along, perhaps during World War II when Valentine was an Army Air Forces mechanic and Morrison was a young naval ensign. How would the future have looked to them? Could either have imagined Jim Morrison’s arc?

I've been on a mild anti-Doors/JM kick for the last, oh, 15 years or so—amazing that in seven short paragraphs, Klinkenborg can make me interested again...

No one here

[I wrote this post for my supersecret class blog.]

I like the title of Miranda July's book of stories, which came out earlier this year...



...but something about it nagged at me.

Then today I suddenly remembered this bio (the title and image freaked me out when I was younger):