Yeah well Summer is just around the corner so there’s other things to do. Important things.Things of great significance, and huge bigness too. Things I use as a smokescreen to cover up the fact that I still can’t think of anything much worth writing. We did the Sinisthra gig a few weeks ago and were pleasantly surprised of the turnout. I will write more about this shortly. After the gig I spent a week dying of flu but survived in the end, only to wake up last night to a shattering toothache. That was a novel experience, something I haven’t had the displeasure to experience since the golden days of childhood and something I’m not looking forward to experiencing ever again if I can help it. Today I’ve been taking very strong painkillers at an interval of six hours, barely keeping the throbbing pain under control, and tomorrow morning a dentist gets to shove all kinds of equipment into my mouth and do what a dentist is put on Earth to do. After that I will give an offering to the gods of dental care and probably also floss a bit more often, if I can be bothered to.

Here’s a video of Ray McCooney (of “Little Britain”) doing his thing. Why, some might ask, and rightly so. Maybe because it puts the thoughts of aching teeth aside for a moment.

Oh yes, and I’ve enabled the “comments” option of this blog. Why, some might again ask, and again, quite rightly so. Maybe now I’m curious to find out if anyone has anything decent to say, since I don’t.

RECENT EXPOSURE TO WRITTEN WORD:
”The Graveyard Book” by Neil Gaiman. Bit of a bummer, this one; the first Neil Gaiman novel I didn’t absolutely love to bits. I know it’s for ”young adults”, a category where a heavy metal drummer pushing forty finds it increasingly hard to fit himself snugly into, but so were ”Stardust” and ”Coraline”, both of which I had no trouble enjoying when they were published. Of course, I wasn’t this close to 40 back then. Then again, I still found myself regarding ”Coraline” as utterly brilliant and a modern day equivalent to ”Alice In Wonderland” when I reread it a while back. So maybe ”The Graveyard Book” just isn’t up there among Gaiman’s best novels. The basic idea is very intriguing, of a toddler raised up in a graveyard by ghosts of people buried there, and there are moments when the story seems to find its’ wings and really take off the ground, but as a whole it just somehow fails to deliver and live up to the (impossibly high) standards set by his previous novels. The chapters just follow one another, some stronger and some weaker (the one about The Ghoulgate was really substandard in my opinion), without really adding up and forming a proper story.

A disappointing, lukewarm collection of short stories centered around the same subject, and to make things even more frustrating, it comes in several different forms to choose from. Of course it’s next to impossible to make a satisfying choice in a situation like this and the safest way would be to buy every version available. I didn’t do that, I chose the version illustrated by Chris Riddell instead of the version illustrated by Dave McKean and have suffered from second thoughts and endless what-if’s ever since. It painfully brings to mind the black day when Tori Amos released her ”Strange Little Girls”-album with four different covers to ”choose” from and I stood, paralyzed yet still somehow trembling as well, in a record store for what seemed like hours, weighing my options and pondering on the horrible unfairness of it all, knowing I could never decide what version to pick.

“Practical Demonkeeping” by Christopher Moore. This was far better than I expected it to be. I hesitantly picked it up from a second hand book shop, only because I had to pick something in exchange for the books I brought in. A perfectly decent-looking cover (see picture) is ruined by a red blot where a Carl Hiaasen states that the author is “a very sick man”, forcing me to instantly loathe this mr. Hiaasen and everything he represents, whatever that might be. The back cover pours more salt into the wound with further zaniness of “warning: contains discarded body parts”, but once I got over the appalling first impression and started reading, the novel turned out to be pretty good actually. The story races on at considerable speed, introducing character after character, most of whom are reasonably interesting and well sketched, and some of whom even manage to stay alive for the whole duration of the story. There’s a demon called Catch who likes to feed on people and an unwilling demonkeeper who accidentally summoned Catch up and can’t stop the demon from slaughtering people. He seeks to rid himself of Catch but so far hasn’t succeeded. This is Moore’s debut novel so I might have to check out some of his other books, at some point. The one about the early years of Jesus Christ I wrote about in this blog sometime last year was pretty good too.


RECENT EXPOSURE TO RECORDED MUSIC:
I bought the new Tori Amos cd ”Abnormally Attracted To Sin” a few days ago but haven’t listened to it at all. I might go out and buy the new Amorphis cd, too, any day now, and not listen to it at all, either. Although I’m probably entitled to a free copy due to my involvement with the lyrics of the album. Maybe it’s easier to just go and buy it instead of making phonecalls and arranging to go somewhere specific to get a free cd. I’m pretty sure it will hit number one in the Finnish charts anyway but I kind of like the thought of helping it go there in my own little way by buying my own copy.

The reason for buying but not listening to other albums is Tori Amos’ previous album ”American Doll Posse”. I pretty much neglected it at the time of its’ release, partly because it felt like too much to take in with a total of 23 songs, and partly because I hadn’t been very impressed with her previous several albums. ”Scarlet’s Walk” had its’ moments, and ”Beekeeper” mostly didn’t. I was starting to think that maybe the new things Tori released failed to move me like her older albums used to. I was starting to think that maybe our paths didn’t cross anymore, and that maybe her idea of good music wasn’t the same as my idea of good music anymore. Maybe me and Tori’s music had grown apart.

But I was wrong. I recently rediscovered ”American Doll Posse” and have intently listened to it for the past few weeks, looking for weaker songs and finding none. It’s a wonderful collection of classy compositions that cover a wide range of styles and emotions, and always retain the high quality that was evident all the way from her first album to ”From The Choirgirl Hotel” but in my opinion has been faltering since then. All is redeemed here, and now I’m a bit hesitant to put on the brand new album. What if it’s a disappointment? I think I’ll let it lie for a while still and continue to be entranced by ”American Doll Posse”.

Here’s a video for the utterly lovely ”Bouncing Off Clouds”.