Friday Frankenstein Post

This is a monster post. Not big. More small, but assembled and sewn together. I guess. I have no Friday Five, but I do have a Commute Home Playlist, with some weird co-inky-dinks, and I've thrown in some BookPeeping from the MTA. It'll all come together, I believe.

My commute started out with a joke as I got on the elevator. "Three attorneys and an HR guy walk into an elevator..." Send me a punchline.

As I exited Seven Penn Plaza, I tapped my shuffle button and got one of the more apropos starting out songs:

"Take the Long Way Home" by Supertramp.


"Spoonman" by Soundgarden


At this point I was on the subway platform at 34th Street, under Greeley Square, where I decided to do some BookPeeping. I started with this:


The Mosquito Coast by Paul Theroux.

I was trying to sneak a peak at another book when a fancy-schmancy new N train rolled in. It was packed. From there to 59th Street in Brooklyn, I saw no other books, just newspapers. Sorry. But this played on the BilliPod:

"Chapter A" by Christian Bok, from Eunoia, on June 2, 2002. Listen: "Chapter A (mp3)". Bok is a language poet, and his series called Eunoia is available to listen to/download free on an amazing avant-garde poetry site called UBUWEB. "Chapter A" is the first section of a poetry sequence which consist solely of words that have the vowel "A". Subsequent chapters feature other vowel sounds. I know, I know, most folks aren't that into poetry, but you ought to check this out, it's pretty cool. "Chapter A" runs about 18 minutes, but if you visit the UBU page here, you could listen to other chapters.

On a side note, here's a short piece, ten minutes or so, from the Poetry Foundation's weekly podcast, during which they discuss the UBUWEB site. Go explore. I mentioned this in my post last January here. The site has audio from Guillaume Apollinaire, Allen Ginsberg, Max Ernst and Frank Zappa, among others. Incredible.

"You Can't Lose What You Ain't Never Had" by Muddy Waters

"Take it Easy Trailer Park" by Kinky Friedman

on the 59th Street Platform, I caught this book:


The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It by Michael E. Gerber

Just as "Shadow on the Sun" by Audioslave hit the earbuds.

On the R train to 95th Street, the Audioslave ended and then this kicked in:

The theme from "Sanford and Son". No kidding.

So I pulled out my own book from the library, an awesome book called


The Show I'll Never Forget: 50 Writers Relive Their Most Memorable Concertgoing Experience
edited by Sean Manning.

I picked up where I left off, chapter 6, Rebecca Brown's recounting of The Beatles show at Plaza del Toros in Madrid, on July 2, 1965 and this came on, seriously,

"Farewell to Miami" by the Fab Four themselves, which is WQAM radio clip of an interview the boys did as they got ready to leave Miami on February 21, 1964. This track was from a bootleg I got from one of my fave music blogs, jefitoblog. The post is here, although the links are inactive.

When that coincidence was done blowing my mind, I wrapped up the playlist with

"Thirteen" by Big Star

"No Matter What" by Def Leppard, a cover of the song by Badfinger.
Listen to the Badfinger original here (mp3), courtesy of I am Fuel, You are Friends.

"Broke Down Engine" by Bob Dylan, which you can listen to here.

and

"Kiss Off" by the Violent Femmes. Listen: "Kiss Off" (Live 1984)" mp3, courtesy of Jefitoblog.