Sometimes when I’m home alone I like to lie down on the
couch, pick up a book, put on a record, and turn on a game, and see who wins
the all out war for my attention. Here’s what happened last time:
“A Tan And Sandy
Silence” by John D. MacDonald
“A Tan And Sandy Silence” is the 13th of 21
paperbacks written by MacDonald featuring the Travis McGee character. I decided
to read all of them and am rather mirthlessly following through on that promise
to myself. I might just be in the middle of a bad run for MacDonald. Tough to
say.
Travis McGee is a “salvage consultant,” which means anti
con-man and unlicensed detective, and he lives on a house boat in Fort
Lauderdale. His gig is he formulaically pursues a series of deranged grifters,
fucks an array of unrealistically reasonable-seeming women who may or may not
die on him, nearly dies himself once a book, works himself into a state of
superhuman physical readiness which he uses to incapacitate at least one
hapless goon, drinks gin, eats steaks, frets through a series of obsolete 20th
century moral quandaries, and whines about civilization’s many encroachments
into his delicate sense of personal freedom.
I’ve been reading them because they’re tidily paced and take
place in warm climates and are cartoonishly masculine. All of which qualities
serve as a welcome escape from my long, slow, monotonous life in cold, dreary
Chicago, where I am currently tiptoeing ballslessly through the aftermath of breakdown-induced
sobriety.
This one is okay. The last one, “The Long Lavender Look” was
a gleeful return to form after “Dress Her In Indigo,” which was the most
nihilistic, disjointed, and preachy McGee I’ve so far put myself through. I
worry about the now dead MacDonald’s state of mind as his paperback hero rounds
out the 60’s and heads into the Watergate era. There’s a decent chance these
will veer into intolerable territory. He hasn’t even pontificated about Vietnam
yet. I know it’s coming. I don’t want that. I want a tall, scarred blond guy to
drive boats around in the sun and beat the shit out of some bad guys while saying
pithy little things and having an impossibly understanding girlfriend cook him
a side of beef. You know, escapism.
Right now McGee is interrogating a lady con artist who’s
been impersonating a dead friend of his. This is not a plot giveaway if you’ve
ever read on of these books. McGee is laying it on thick, acting pretty
sadistically. But it’s okay, these are bad guys. He gets like this every once
in a while with the bad guys.
Brainbombs “Obey”
“Obey” is the third album by
Swedish noise rock band Brainbombs, recently reissued in limited quantities on
the Armageddon Shop label. It is brutal and horrific and tastelessly excessive
and great, provided you can take graphic descriptions of murder, rape, child
abuse, and/or mutilation with a grain of salt.
The rule of thumb with this
band has been one riff per song, repeated into a pounding monotony that causes
a nearly transcendent amount of tension. I wouldn’t call it psychedelic, but listening
to the Brainbombs makes you different, and you see the world differently for a
little while after being spit out on the other side. It’s not entirely
pleasant, but it can be somewhat refreshing if you let it wash over you instead
of investigating it too closely.
Only a couple of elements
here prevent this album from being too awful for me to handle.
One is the goofiness of vocalist Peter Råberg’s Swedish accent.
It puts the arrhythmically grunted torture porn lyrics just far enough over the
top for them to seem more silly than threatening. You know, like Black Metal,
except listenable. Also the band’s recordings benefit from a lo-fi, low stress,
imprecise production that allows you to take a step back and assume they’re not
taking this too seriously. A well-produced, lushly arranged, finely detailed
and compressed and multitracked and overdubbed and digitally mastered for
optimal fidelity Brainbombs album would be truly frightening, given the content.
As is, it’s just some weird
Swedish guys with borderline unforgivably dark senses of humor. Maybe it’s a
cultural thing. I’d probably indulge in a few yuks about ritualistic torture if
I lived that close to the arctic circle, just to keep myself from snapping
completely. From a wryly comedic perspective, Obey dovetails pretty well with McGee’s melodramatically forlorn
musings about how living by a code is what makes a man a man.
Maryland vs. Alabama
in the Quarterfinals of the Men’s NIT Basketball Tournament
The sludgy, doleful
repetition of the Brainbombs one-riff-per-song maxim, especially combined with
the violent lyrics of “Die You Fuck,” merged well enough with the NIT for me to
put down McGee and watch a few minutes of play.
There are two clear best
Maryland players. One is small forward Dez Wells, a late transfer from Xavier
who was expelled from that Catholic institution in the wake of sexual assault
allegations which failed to motivate a grand jury toward an indictment. The
rose-colored glasses version of the guy’s private business I tell myself in
order to endure my own moral quandaries about rooting for this team is he was
the victim of post-Sandusky overzealousness, but he probably did something
extremely impolite at the very least. Student sections at opposing schools like
to chant “No Means No” at him when he shoots free throws. It pisses him off.
The other top Maryland player
is Alex Len, a 7’1” Ukrainian sophomore who’ll probably go top 5 in the
upcoming NBA Draft. He has that signature blend of grimness and goofiness
that’s unique to denizens of the former Eastern Bloc, who always look to me
like they’re moments away from either beheading somebody or gleefully dancing
to accordion music. Len displays nimble footwork and moves fluently for a
person his size, and he disappears for long stretches of the game and season
while Maryland’s shitty ball handlers fail to deliver him the ball. He is doomed
to set picks and then roll, ignored by his teammates, into oblivion.
The only other Maryland
player of note is Freshman Jake Layman, a tall white Massachusetts native with
range in the Laettner mold, who if Maryland had stayed n the ACC would likely
have developed into one of those college guys you absolutely hate for no
reason. Instead he’ll spend the next year in the Big Ten, where everybody will
just be glad he doesn’t play for Nebraska or Purdue or, God help us, Wisconsin,
where the platitudes-per-melanin ratio would be off the charts unbearable. Upon
Layman’s sinking a three pointer over a shorter defender, every announcer seems
to agree he will be a better player later, as if they are looking forward to
annoying everybody.
Alabama features the short
and fat but strangely nimble Trevor Releford, little brother of one of the guys
who plays for Kansas. He’s the sort of player that gets to the hoop with
regularity either despite or because of the fact that he seems like he shouldn’t
be able to. He’s like a chubby Chris Duhon.
The game is choppy and
dispirited, and Brainbombs are providing the lone source of tension, but it
matches well. The brutal samishness of the guitar onslaught becomes one with
Alabama’s lazy perimeter passing against the Maryland zone defense, and the
halting Swedish-tinged lyrical descriptions of psychosexual mayhem merge in
unison with a succession of not particularly urgent Alex Len dunks, Releford
drives, and shitty Maryland ball handler turnovers.
I feel about the same way
about reading the McGee novels at this point as Maryland probably feels about
winning games in the NIT. This is like something I love, and it’s still pretty
good, but I’m only doing it because I’m here and I might as well and if I
finish the task at hand I’ll feel good. If it bothers me all that much, I guess
I can put on some Brainbombs and be glad this is the worst dilemma I’m facing.
