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July 2008
The Archives
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07.31.08Dege Legg’s Slide RulesMy old friend David Fox alerted me to this fellow.
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07.30.08Tales From The CryptThat master of the Freudian gothic, Patrick McGrath, will be appearing at the Kilkenny Festival on Wednesday, August 13. A full length interview is in the works, but for now we’re proud to present Patrick’s top five gothic tales of all time, lodged with the Revelatorium while he was in Dublin the other week to promote his new novel Trauma. 1. Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte (1847) “Last month I re-read Wuthering Heights and was once again overwhelmed by the magnificence that is Heathcliff. There’s the moment where Cathy has just died, and he goes down to the sexton of the ...
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07.29.08The Man Who Kicked Death In The Balls‘Play It All Night Long’, ‘Lawyers Guns & Money’, ‘Accidentally Like A Martyr’, ‘The French Inhaler’, ‘Roland The Headless Thompson Gunner’, ‘Excitable Boy’, ‘Boom Boom Mancini’, ‘Reconsider Me’. ‘Splendid Isolation’, ‘Life’ll Kill Ya’, ‘Keep Me In Your Heart’. Sardonic, ironic and melancholic, Warren Zevon was the Hunter S of the LA singer-songwriter set. A person could learn more about literature and the human condition from WZ’s lyrics and liner notes than an entire stack of New Yorkers. It’s a bitter indictment of the awards show circuit that one of America’s greatest songwriters had to die of lung cancer before they’d give ...
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07.28.08The Art of War“War produces very surrealist effects. The bus on top of a block of flats after a bombing raid, or a five-storey building collapses and we can see all the individual homes, the furniture still in place.” – JG Ballard. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E55vUH_Ppb0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opdlYl0Fq8M&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7yH7IHiN68&feature=related
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07.25.08Creature ComfortsToday’s dispatch from Little Miss Mondo… http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creature_Features
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07.24.08Roche MotelPlaywright, novelist and master storyteller Billy Roche rang the Revelatorium red phone to tell us he’ll be reading from his revised, reissued and exquisitely designed hardback edition of Tumbling Down (Tassel Publications) at the Mill Theatre, Dundrum on Saturday (26th), and at the Winding Stair Bookshop near the Ha’penny Bridge, Thursday August 7th at 6.30. Donning his best step-right-up stovepipe, Billy told us: “Don’t forget we've the festive day here in Wexford next Saturday (26th) behind the Market gates in the Bullring, beginning at 10 o’ clock in the morning. Stalls featuring bookshops and what-not and Bui Bolg and a ...
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07.23.08War StoriesStandard Operating Procedure – A War Story Philip Gourevitch and Errol Morris (Picador) If George Steiner once referred to the Nazi death camps as the Bluebeard’s castles of the 20th Century, then Abu Ghraib is the De Sadean dungeon of the 21st. Standard Operating Procedure, written by Paris Review editor and New Yorker writer Gourevitch, drawing on interviews conducted by The Fog Of War director Morris, is nothing less than a horror story, the tale of how the Bush administration instructed the US military to bypass the Geneva Convention by classing inmates as ‘security detainees’ rather than POWs; of how incompetence caused snags ...
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07.22.08I Had A Dream, JoeTucked up in bed after dark, the assembled Revelatorium bookworms have been lately bewitched by Joe Hill’s wonderful collection of short stories 20th Century Ghosts, originally published in 2005 by PS Publishing, reissued last autumn by Gollancz. Mr Hill is a master of what they call ‘slipstream’ – speculative and weird tales freighted with the emotional resonance and character depth of mainstream fiction (y’know, the kind that wins prizes and doesn’t get ghetto-ised as ‘genre’). His Locke & Key comics sell out as fast as IDW Publishing can get them on the stands. Anyway, 20th Century Ghosts is one of the most ...
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07.21.08Shakey All OverVertigo comics’ graphic novel adaptation of Neil Young’s Greendale album is due for publication this autumn. The song cycle has also been adapted for the stage by Katherine Owens. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/20/theater/20sella.html Here’s our review from 2003. A couple of days after concluding his European tour in Cork, Neil was on the Charlie Rose show to promote the new Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young tour documentary film CSNY: Déjà Vu. It’s a remarkable interview.
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07.18.08Chantey TownHal Willner’s Sea Chanteys extravaganza, featuring Lou Reed, Gavin Friday, Shane MacGowan, Tim Robbins, David Thomas and a host of others, happens tonight in Dublin’s Grand Canal Square. Here’s a quick refresher: Various Artists Rogue's Gallery – Pirate Ballads, Sea Songs & Chanteys (Anti) Interested parties will know the back story by now. Pirates Of The Caribbean director Gore Verbinski and Johnny Depp – a serious connoisseur of gypsy music, lest he be accused of actorly dilettantism – both got deeper into seafaring lore than is either sane or sanitary, and vowed to put together a record of maritime airs. Enter polymath ...