Sophomore Slump: Patton Oswalt's "Silver Screen Fiend"

I like the idea of Patton Oswalt.

He can be funny and snide and smart.

It is just that sometimes he may try too hard. I think that is the case here. He like movies and he went and watched a lot of movies. But the book tries to put a narrative arc and significance to some of the movies just where it doesn’t fit. I liked his previous book, but that seemed to have more form and structure in an organic manner.

Not to say that this book does not have its good parts that made me laugh. It does. It just felt less necessary than his other book and his stand up.

He is self-aware though, and I can respect that. He writes of a time he was opening for Louie CK, when he was younger and “My ideas were simpler and less startling than I cared to admit, so I masked that with a lot of unnecessarily ornate vocabulary an dense cultural references” (134). Maybe he’s still there. Heck, this book isn’t all about movies then, I guess.

And then, after all that, it’s too short! It is only 220 pages with larger font and margin, and that’s padded out with 40 pages of the movies he saw during the time period he’s talking about.  I was let down in the end, but only because it didn’t meet my high expectations.

Sick of It All: Yours Truly Ten Years On

There was another album released recently, with this title. They are very different works.

For my money, though, this is the best Sick of It All Album,

It has nothing to do with the fact that this was the album that they were out touring to support when I first saw them live. They were touring with the Dropkick Murphys, at the time one of my favorite bands. They stole the show from Dropkick. I was in the pit and did the wall of death and was too worn out to really pay attention to the Murphy’s set.

I bought the shirt at the merch table and went and bough the album and listened to it a bunch. I started buying the other albums, but this was the best one. It was more melodic, and better produced than some of the earlier records – a black mark for some fans, but it worked for me.

                I don’t know what happened, but music slipped out of my life for a while, until I started learning how to play bass and guitar a couple of years ago. It was even later when I heard that Sick of It All was back on tour with a new album. The new album is good, but I wanted to relive my past. Sadly, I have no idea what happened with my old version of this album, so I had to buy it again. It had been ten years or so, and I remembered the words and the breakdowns. From start to finish, it still holds up, with some great songs that make you want to punch the floor. Except for that last track, it just doesn’t fit.

Phillip K. Dick's Ubik: What a Ride. Read. Repeat.

Here's the thing about Phillip K. Dick.

He was the guy that everyone else was ripping off for their stuff to seem original. But for whatever reason he was never mainstream. But he made sci-fi craziness so that he could be mediated through hacks and made safe.

So, when reading Ubik, don't think of the bad predecessors that had more money and recognition than Dick. Ignore all the matrices that exist.

Buy the ticket, take the ride.