Chocolate Makes You Happy

First thing, I got a story coming out in the next issue of Neon, which makes me excited. This is the first piece of fiction I've actually managed to sell, (only have had poems before), so it's good to know somebody digs it. I'm slowly getting past the learning curve of finding out which places to submit to. It took a while to stumble on the right home for this piece, although most of the rejections I got were personal and pretty human about the reasons it didn't work for the publication. Hopefully this is the start of many goods to come. Keeps the motivation high.

Second thing: Lo. Holy shit. This is a movie that is severely under-talked about. Mind-eatingly innovative, but very simple at the same time. It is a textbook example of the way a low budget can really make an awesome story even better, in the same way that lo-fi recording is sometimes beneficial to the atmosphere of a certain style of music. I think it is also a testament to how meta-fiction can live on in new, surprising forms. Some of the awesome things this movie includes are:

- Main exposition told via a demon rock band, singing a corny pop song

- Monsters from hell using the phrase, "You kids crack my shit up," and making it work.

- A married couple in hell, bickering about who gets tortured worse

- Stage plays within stage plays

Getting in depth about it any more would give away the things that make it great, so all I can say is, SEE IT. If you have netflix, stream it. It is not a typical horror/supernatural movie, it's something else. And it straddles the line between humor/terrifying with serious expertise. I hope more comes out from the same people.

Third - The band Xiu Xiu's new album "Dear God, I Hate Myself," is brilliant. For a while I was skeptical about Xiu Xiu, I had the feeling that they more or less were just trying to be weird for weird's sake, e.g., trying to ride the coattails of Beefheart. But damn, this album is something, and feels more polished than some of the other stuff I've heard by them. Here's the best way I can describe it: It takes the 'feel good' essence of today's party/dance music and replaces it with a hysterical sense of human misery. I have a full review of it coming out at 20 Watts in a couple days. Listen to this:

Maybe I am reading too much into these guys, but I think it's pretty awesome. I guess the bottom line is, I'm glad that someone is doing what they're doing musically.

Otherwise, winter is wintery. Gonna go read some more classic hebrew fiction now.