Still on an Elsinore kick...

To supplement the concert on Sunday I've been listening to Ryan Groff/Elsinore non-stop. This includes trolling Youtube for videos and being extremely disappointed that Timid Maggie Mae was never filmed. The above is "How To Fight Loneliness" a cover of Wilco. It is excellent.

Side note: I searched "landlocked by cash crops" and my site is first. Out of four. I'm not sure if this is saying anything. Its a tiny bit exciting.

Facebook Etiquette Video

People should be required to watch this before they join facebook.

Third (and Final) Impressions: Perfect Fifths

The senryu section wasn't that bad. All in all, the rest of the book went all right. Pleasurably. Except:

There's a graphic shower scene. One that feels like it belongs more in the fan-fic of Jessica and Marcus than in one of the actual books. I was blushing. And I'm not a school girl.

Its more like my complaint about the third person and senryus: the other books weren't like this. And Jessica Darling said that writing about sex made her feel kinda skeezy, so details were few.

This is the world I had settled into. I was not prepared for a masturbatory scene in a shower. Where he "rubs the shaft of his cock" while lathering with liquid soap. Its not like I don't read sex scenes frequently in books; I just wasn't ready for this one. Despite the fact that its one of the 10 Things You Need To Know About Perfect Fifths. The warning "Four Words: Marcus Flutie shower scene" were not enough.

I did like how Marcus did acknowledge Jessica's judginess. This wasn't something I had noticed when I first read Sloppy Firsts or Second Helpings. But she started to wear on me. Its a little like the character in Curtis Sittenfeld's Prep: she holds herself apart from everyone, judging everyone, and playing herself as the victim.

And now what, Megan McCafferty? This is what you're known for. Are you going to create a new character? Write other books?

No longer landlocked by cash crops? No problem?

There was a point in my life in which I'd be at an Elsinore concert once a month or so. It's been ten months since my last one.

Towards the end of the concert, I asked if they were going to play "Timid Maggie Mae" which is one of my favorite songs of theirs.

Their response? "Who are you?"

Fair enough. They claim they haven't played that song in two years, when I know for a fact I heard it at the concert in the park last June. Instead, I get the above song dedicated to me: Landlocked. The song I (among others) dumped into an Elsinore playlist three weeks ago. The song that choked me up on the way to the metro:

"People in the Midwest
Have giant hearts inside their chest
Landlocked by cash crops"

Surrounded by tall buildings and honking cars, I am no longer in the Midwest, no longer landlocked by soybeans or corn. No longer able to go to Elsinore concerts once a month or so.

I am a tiny bit homesick. Going to the concert felt a tiny bit like coming home. Apparently the bar (The Velvet Lounge) smells like Recycled Records in Springfield, IL.

It was a great concert. Too bad it was a Sunday night, and Easter Sunday as well.

The below video is just hilarious. Just fantastic. Kristen, you should watch it.



And, OH MY GOD Ryan Groff (lead singer) looks so young in this:

First Impressions and Second Impressions: Perfect Fifths

It had become a ritual for this week, even though I had been told that all the fiction totes had been gone through and no, no Perfect Fifths. I know to disregard this, so on Thursday, I saw they were listed in our computer. Three copies.

And by Saturday, they were shelved. I pulled one off the shelf for myself.

It is a slight book. Not that the others were big and fat, but they were substantial. This combined with the knowledge that 70-some pages are dialogue and then there is about a thousand senryus, well, there just isn't much story left, is there? Worryingly slight as a book. As a conclusion, its slim.

It sat behind me throughout work. I couldn't bear to read it at work. That isn't what it deserves. Plus, I was still finishing Bliss by Lauren Myracle (plus the downer ending).

I read a few pages on the bus home, and then this morning. I am through the third person portion, and through all the dialogue. Much better than the third and fourth books. Maybe the problem in those was Marcus was too far away? But I am most skeptical of this poetry, mostly because I am invested in prose. I do not write poetry. I am bad at understanding poetry. Why oh why would someone change their writing style for the fifth (and final) installment of a series?

Writers Note: I was originally going to write this post last night, sans the parts that I'd read, because I hadn't read them yet. So this is two posts that had been planned in my head: first impressions in the bookstore, then impressions midway through.