Notes for Thursday

A new Ghost is out...

Elsewhere, another mystery publication is assembling...

And I realized, posting about Bill's Keeler-Kelly extravaganza, that I've written about Trapped in the Closet, too—it's an article called "Guided by Voiceovers," in this month's Modern Painters, which I am pretty sure is on the stands now. (Alas, no updates on the ultraminimal website.) Will post the "lost chapterette" from my article soon...

A tip of the hat to Dizzyhead Michael at TONY! (I didn't realize Charles Bernstein had a blog...)

Now he's openin' the cabinet...

The latest Keeler News has another great Poundstone piece, in which he looks at the similarities between R. Kelly's Trapped in the Closet and HSK's webwork novels. A must-read, with a meditation on so-called "bad art" that I subscribe to (in a nutshell, it's easier for the hoi polloi to think about something like Trapped or The Man With the Magic Eardrums—not that the h.p. ever thinks about TMWTME!—as comically inept failures, rather than deliberately wild works of art in which the creators strived for—and attained!—very specific, peculiar effects).

A fun little chart also points out that Keeler died on January 22, 1967 in Chicago...the same month and city in which R. Kelly was born!

Alien art — JR/ML — Dear Diary

"This must be the longest verse anybody's ever written!"

Click to watch Team Dizzies Member Matt's fascinating interview with R. Kelly, on the genesis of Trapped in the Closet, a piece of musical/visual "alien" art.

"I definitely can't call it a song anymore—it's too long!"

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Jumping off the previous post on Jonathan Richman (and Lefty's note): What are the best Jonathan Richman/Modern Lovers albums? My list looks something like this:

1. Rockin' and Romance
2. The Modern Lovers
3. Jonathan Sings
4. Modern Lovers 'Live' ("My Little Kookenhaken"!)
5. Modern Lovers 88

After being very immersed in Richmania, I stopped keeping up c. I, Jonathan (1992!). Are there good latter-day JR/ML albums I should know about?

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Dear Diary:
The other day I listened to Marshall Crenshaw's first album and that same day, at the grocery store, I heard...a rebroadcast of an old Casey Kasem show (why would they be playing such a thing?) and right after "Eye of the Tiger" came "Someday, Some Way." [Insert boinggg sound.]

Like this song a lot — Trapped With Matt Singer — The Warwick in the High Castle — It takes a pillage

1. Vote for Gretta and her group Twin Thousands! (Give yourself a treat and listen to "Like You a Lot"—angelic Gretta vocals!)

2. Dizzies Team Member and IFC star Matt Singer introduces another episode of Trapped in the Closet—with R. Kelly himself!

3. Lede of the day:

The pop singer Dionne Warwick and the paranoid, drug-fueled science-fiction writer Philip K. Dick are not often mentioned in the same sentence or even the same chapter.

4. Cheekiest ending:

A replica of a Viking ship believed to have been built in 1042 sailed triumphantly into Dublin after retracing the 1,000-mile path of the fleets of Norsemen who invaded Ireland more than a millennium ago. Over six weeks, the 100-foot ship, which carried some decidedly un-Viking-like equipment — global positioning systems, radar, radio, satellite weather forecasts and life jackets — crossed the waters of northern Europe from Scandinavia, around Scotland and into the Irish Sea. Spectators cheered and the 65 sailors on board blew the horns as the ship drew into the harbor in Dublin, the site of a ninth-century Viking settlement. This time around, there was no pillaging. (AP)