The Ketchup Conundrum

"Give a baby soup, and then soup with MSG (an amino-acid salt that is pure umami), and the baby will go back for the MSG soup every time, the same way a baby will always prefer water with sugar to water alone. Salt and sugar and umami are primal signals about the food we are eating--about how dense it is in calories, for example, or, in the case of umami, about the presence of proteins and amino acids. What Heinz had done was come up with a condiment that pushed all five of these primal buttons. The taste of Heinz's ketchup began at the tip of the tongue, where our receptors for sweet and salty first appear, moved along the sides, where sour notes seem the strongest, then hit the back of the tongue, for umami and bitter, in one long crescendo. How many things in the supermarket run the sensory spectrum like this?" 

from the new "Tolling Elves" (9 The Parade, Uppery Brockley Road, London SE4 1SX tevans@hotmail.com)(and pardon my reformatting)--

"Is It All Over My Face?" by Kevin Killian



is it all over the world, red
maples of Xanadu, cranberry, the simple
gift of Long Island, almost the way
Arthur Russell, Lou Harrison played on it
Allen Ginsberg all noble
Arthur Russell, Lou Harrison played on it
till sunset, spring, 1978, and far
away fingerprints for Kylie
on cat-tails
still finds a way to haunt me
always and forever

nutdrop days ending:
crabapple maradona,
caterpillars cross.
 

11 year old Aden noticed this--"a little foam"

"(Another thing that never happened: Bush never wiped the spittle off of the right corner of his mouth. If it distracted me--I actually care about what the candidates are saying--I don't see how it didn't distract the rest of the country.) "

download archivist Rick Prelinger's 90 minute Panorama Ephemera

"PANORAMA EPHEMERA focuses on familiar and mythical activities and images in America (1626-1978). Many creatures and substances that we hardly notice because we feel so used to them take center stage, including pigs, corn, water, telephones, fire, and rice. At first resembling a compilation, it soon reveals itself as a journey through the American landscape over time, and the story begins to emerge between the sequences.

The film consists of 64 self-contained film sequences ranging from 5 seconds to 4 minutes in length arranged into a narrative. Unlike many films made using archival footage, it's primarily a combination of sequences rather than a collage of individual shots." 

Andreas Wolkerstorfer > Pinhole Billy

(thanks gmtPlus9) 

Titles of Hardy Boys Books in Which the Villain Could Have Turned Out to Be George W. Bush

MobyLives is back

Interesting review of that Albert Ayler box

"I hope Ralph Reed is shocked to hear that, by wedding apocalyptic religion to a political agenda, Ayler and a handful of other black avant-gardists of the 1960s anticipated today's Christian right. The difference is that for Ayler, Jesus wasn't just Dr. Phil with stigmata, an imaginary friend with a never-ending stream of sage advice. The box tracks a hero's descent into madness. In real life, the story it tells ended with Ayler believing that the colorless birthmark that caused a patch of his goatee to grow white was the stain of Satan—and then his corpse being fished out of the East River."  

Canada's best TV show Da Vinci's Inquest returns to CBC tonight at 9 

poetry mugging

"The sequence of unfortunate events that yesterday befell the two men, ages 24 and 20, started when the two arranged to meet a man and woman who, they told detectives, had promised to take them to a "poetry reading" in Trenton, city police spokesman Sgt. Pedro Medina said. "

Ben Katchor: Picture Stories includes the little radio plays & c. 

Ichiro's Psychic Tie with Lefty O'Doul

"In 1934, O'Doul was the sole National Leaguer on an all-star team whose roster included future hall of famers Ruth, Manush, Lou Gehrig, Jimmie Foxx, Earl Averill, Charlie Gehringer and Lefty (Goofy) Gomez. Connie Mack was the skipper. The barnstormers stopped in Vancouver for a day on Oct. 18, 1934, before boarding the Empress of Japan bound for Yokohama. Although rain fell steadily, about 3,000 fans gathered at Athletic Park, a bandbox at the corner of Fifth and Hemlock, which is now an onramp for the Granville Street Bridge. The players clowned in the downpour, Gehrig patrolling first place while holding an umbrella. The game ended in a tie after a run-scoring double play involving two hot boxes. The stands were still filled with wet but happy fans. "Say, this Vancouver is some kind of ball town, isn't it?" O'Doul said after the game."
 

In 1965 there was a feature film version with Anthony Perkins and Edward Albert which is well worth checking out. A great theme song was written by Bacharach/David, sung by Gene Pitney, but not used despite being a good precis. As with "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" the song was a hit anyway. I've never come across the novel (Christopher??) or the comic book. 

Helen Eustis's novel The Fool Killer made into a TV play in 1956 with Malcolm Broderick, Audra Lindley and Lee Marvin--I wonder if Jack Spicer might have seen this? Being a fan of mystery novels, of which Eustis was one of 50's most sophisticated practitioners(The Horizontal Man), he might have read it too... 

The fable of how the fool-killer backed out of a contract

"A stifling Dust enveloped them. They Gasped and Sniffled. Some tried to alleviate their Sufferings by gulping down a Pink Beverage made of Drug-Store Acid, which fed the Fires of Thirst.

Thus they wove and interwove in the smoky Oven. The Whimper or the faltering Wail of Children, the quavering Sigh of overlaced Women, and the long-drawn Profanity of Men -- these were what the Fool-Killer heard as he looked upon the Suffering Throng.

"Is this a new Wrinkle on Dante's Inferno?" he asked of the Man on the Gate, who wore a green Badge marked "Marshal," and was taking Tickets.

"No, sir; this is a County Fair," was the reply."  

Barret Watten on Derrida

" Even dead, his writing is not simply the writing of one who would end up being dead; he would not have written if he had not lived. This matters in the crucial scene of the work's meaning: Derrida, like any writer, is going to be read differently now that he is dead, and yet he cannot be read as if that were the end of it. Living looks forward in the manner of the work in a particular way that is not delimited by anything such as a monument (of text, reputation, influence) that is left behind when the writer is finished. This is the freedom in which Derrida wrote in his present, and the freedom in which we may read him. "

<$Xvarenah$>

"There’s a show where newlyweds volunteer to have their home-to-be completely redecorated by a team of resourceful pro designers. The lovebirds return from their honeymoon for a big surprise. For, all they get to keep from their previous possessions for sure, is a single “protected item” each. Anything else is liable to be radically refashioned, given away, or simply fed to the woodchipper...

I see in this, as so many--if not all--of the so-called “reality shows”, whether by accident or design, the heavy hand of the totalitarian agenda at work. We are to accept without question the decree of the collectivity, as embodied in interchangeably telegenic “experts”, even in such matters as formerly were left to personal discretion: our vaunted “individuality”, however, being symbolized by one pitiful relict item--like the “flesh-strips” which guaranteed the humanness of the cyborgs in "Moderan".

Jamming With Miles on Isle of Wight new movie with full 38 minute set Miles Davis played there in 1970! 

They're hatin' it

"How noble of them to stoop to save the ignorant, helpless burger-munching poor from themselves. Has the Left really lowered its horizons so far that changing the world now means trying to prevent hard-up families from feeding their kids for 1 pound 99p a time (toy and indoor playground included)?"

useful if optimisitic guide to Growing catnip

"After the initial delight wears off, they usually leave the plants alone to grow strong and tall. "