There are few things in contemporary pop culture that elicit my fight-or-flight instincts more acutely than My Little Pony and dubstep. Yet Jason Kottke's thorough followup to a New York Times correction—which had misnamed a particular Pony character—magnified my worst grade-school fears by combining the two. Apparently, there exists this horrifying, fist-pumping subgenre called "dubtrot," i.e. My Little Pony dubstep remixes. The sadomasochist in me just had to investigate further.

My Little Pony—specifically My Little Pony: The Movie—tarnished my childhood. The trouble began with an absolutely frightening film poster, depicting this purple ooze monster called The Smooze attacking the Ponies' Dream Castle. Stay with me here. Though I was young, I distinctly remember being coerced into the theater by my sister. Visions of surly, singing ooze consumed my dreams that night. By age 10, I was readingFangoria.

I rewatched My Little Pony: The Movie to see if it carried the same shock value as it had two decades' prior. A: no. The Ponies—with names like Lickety-Split or Shady, denoted by the ice-cream cone or sunglass tattoos on their respective asses—hurl rainbows (though not unicorn poop) at the evil ooze, saving their kingdom. Hell, Danny DeVito gets lead credit, voicing the Grundle King (choice quote: "I try not ta mention it too often! Witches! Smooze! It was terribuhl!"). Granted, De Laurentiis Entertainment Group distributed Maximum Overdrive and Blue Velvet the same year. And that sequence when the witches are rowing a pantaloons-propelled skiff over waves of Smooze, singing "Nothing Can Stop the Smooze" to a barbershop-style chorus…that's still creepily upbeat.

Speaking of creepily upbeat, let's talk "dubtrot." Kottke mentions "Rainbowstep," which I guess is a good primer for newbies. It's a Youtube clip, a blessing and curse to the post-MTV generation, as we get strobey visuals with the seismic beats and chirpy Pony dialogue. "Cuz Dubstep with Rainbows is 20% Cooler!!! XD" writes uploader—and purported My Little Pony fanboy "brony"—ZestyArt, crediting the track (or its inspiration/style?) to Skrillex, dubstep's macho-ass posterboy. Now me, I'm in crooner/producer James Blake's camp, thanks in no small part to my NYC muse's insistence. One might "dub" Blake's enveloping atmospherics as post-dubstep, but if he calls out Skrillex's antics "without naming him," then I'm taking Blake's side.  

Frat boys killed big beat, so it's no shocker those same meatheads took to Skrillex's inelegant steroidal “brostep” like Flutter Ponies to glitter. I can't credit Skrillex for dubtrot's saccharine ear-trauma (he'd sooner produceKorn's new album), and I love me some bass, like Richie Hawtin's classically ferocious live sets, replete with viscera-rearranging throbs and mind-splintering breaks.

Still, Hawtin throwing some credibility at Skrillex's Mickey Mouse beats makes me a bit vexed. The former screamo kid ain't even good enough for the bronies.

Image: DubTrot's SoundCloud avatar

Every year, I read James Joyce’s “The Dead” on the first night of snowfall. I’m not Christian, so the sense of Christmas tradition never resonated for me, but the swirling motifs of snow and wind echo with each winter, the black-ink letterforms intertwined with the white and falling flakes I see outside my windows as I read.

Last year, I came across John Huston’s film version of The Dead. I’d heard about it years before in the Wall Street Journal, which claimed that the film achieves the near-impossible: it “shows what [film] can do to enhance the enjoyment of a great literary work.” Since so much in Joyce's writing hinges on his perfect construction of sentences and phrases, I wanted to see how film would increase my appreciation.

For the larger part of the story, Joyce’s prose hews closely to realism, and it was a simple pleasure to watch the characters enact the same words and motions on the screen, from pouring drinks to dancing with each other. As I watched at home, my brother the classical pianist-turned-keyboardist overheard Mary Jane’s piano performance, “full of runs and difficult passages,” and remarked that whoever was playing was unusually good. The whole thing seemed to be a perfectly executed and emotionally fulfilling period drama, carefully steeped in political discussions and subtle allusions to Irish cities and struggles.

The true genius of Joyce’s story, however, is in his gradual shift from realism to carefully tempered stream of consciousness, as the protagonist Gabriel realizes that he may have never loved his wife—or, for that matter, anyone else—nearly as much as his wife and a young, now-dead man namedMichael Furey once loved each other many years before:

So she had had that romance in her life: a man had died for her sake. It hardly pained him now to think how poor a part he, her husband, had played in her life ... He had never felt like that himself towards any woman, but he knew that such a feeling must be love.

Constantly I hear reports from the front lines of newspapers and blogs that the novel is ailing, is dying, is dead. But moments like this convince me otherwise, when I am able to so fully enter another person’s consciousness that, unlike with theater or film or any other form of art, I am able to forget myself and imagine another world.

I wanted to write about how I could (mis)read James Joyce’s “The Dead” through John Huston’s The Dead. But when the short story’s eye moves gently and surely from Gabriel’s actions to his thoughts to his pure emotions, it’s a joy to read. As I came to the end, hearing those same wordsflattened to a voice-over monologue, even when set against the natural beauty of Ireland in snow, stripped the epiphany of its power to completely immerse and change the reader. Whereas the movie indeed enhanced my enjoyment of the story on the whole, the last five minutes pulled me back to the words on the page, not on the screen. The movie is a masterpiece in its execution, but the novella by virtue of its form surpassed its cinematic imitation.

I was a passive viewer, but I decided to become an active reader again. I turned back to the book in my hand, and admired the way my sensations interlaced with Gabriel's own: "His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead."

Image: imdb.com

Reading through Flavorwire’s recent list of The 25 Greatest Epigraphs in Literature, and being generally in the habit of stealing, I got to thinking: where else might epigraphs be of use? Traditionally, they help establish the tone of a book or introduce the reader to its main ideas. And aren’t there countless inaugural moments in any given day, the brief beginnings of some larger task, that could benefit from a quick, pithy introduction?

So I took a couple of my favorite epigraphs from Flavorwire’s list and came up with some unexpected places I’d like to find them.

”When we are not sure, we are alive.” —Graham Greene
(from Reality Hunger by David Shields)

I’m inclined to start tagging this one everywhere I go. Imagine finding this quote stamped on your baby’s diaper. Or on that unopened bottle of pig’s feet you that keeps staring at you from the depths of the fridge. What about on a subway map? Or on the entrance to the subway, replacing those uninspiring indications of Uptown/Downtown? How could strategically placing this quote around town not inspire adventure?

“Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.” —G.K. Chesterson
(from Coraline by Neil Gaiman)

I want this on my next tube of toothpaste. Anything hygienic or related to sanitation. Is my new fantasy to have Mr. Clean whisper this in my ear as I scour the bathtub? Maybe it is. Maybe I have a problem with cleaning products. It’s still a good idea.

”No one knows how to love anybody’s trouble.” —Frank Stanford
(from Look! Look! Feathers by Mike Young)

Picture this written above the entrance to your favorite bar. The whole “everybody knows your name” Cheers vibe is so 1987. And while young drinkers might get nostalgic because Cheers was was the only option in your parents' cable-free househould, the drinking scene has gone way more toward an honest acceptance of degradation and defeat. Plus, if this is posted out front, the bouncers can do whatever they want to you.

“We fill pre-existing forms and when we fill them we change them and are changed.” —Frank Bidart, “Borges and I”
(from The Pale King by David Foster Wallace)

This might be so totally obvious, but...ice cube trays! How delightful would it be to sip highballs full of Borges-inscribed ice cubes and then dance around with Buddhist-like glee! Interacting with the universe! And science! Because of the whole liquid-into-solid situation!

“Behind every great fortune there is a crime.” —Balzac
(from The Godfather by Mario Puzo)

Okay. This one I can’t really justify in any way other than to tell you I feel it in my gut. Peanut Butter. Maybe it’s something about the lush extravagance in peanut butter, its silky delight and its decadent linger in the mouth. But really, how do you feel when you sneak into the fridge at night and spoon some up? Like a criminal.

Image: supertouchart.com

When I was young, I had a vendetta against the word “or.” “It makes you sound undecided,” I told a friend, after reading her high school English papers. “Use ‘and.’ ‘But’ also works.” It wasn’t that I disliked the word per se; I just thought that conjunctions didn’t need to be used so much.

Four years later, one of my professors called me out on my predilection for closing lists without conjunctions. “You’re fond of asyndeton,” and she typed the word. She recited Aristotle’s thoughts on the technique in hisPoetics, and gently suggested that asyndeton was perhaps most successful if used sparingly. Churchill’s oratory aside, she was absolutely right. So I told myself to leave the conjunctions in, although I did keep a safe distance from “or.”

Then I read Ben Lerner’s Leaving the Atocha Station. Nominally the story of a young poet living in Spain on a fellowship, the novel rests on uncertainty and consciousness rather than any particular plot. Reading of the narrator's struggles to understand and respond to the Spanish spoken around him, I noticed how he used “or” as a way to juggle many possible meanings: "She described the death of her father when she was a little girl, or how the death of her father turns her into a little girl whenever she thinks of it..."

Lerner discussed this in a BOMB interview: "Yes, “or” is an important word in the book, especially in those scenes where Adam Gordon can’t tell if he’s following the Spanish of an interlocutor, and so, instead of simply failing to understand, understands more than one possible meaning at a time ... Hearing a Spanish sentence as X_ or _Y allows him to keep his exchanges from becoming actual, to keep them in the realm of the virtual."

“Or” as a marker of uncertainty, yes—but Adam Gordon, the narrator, shifts the need for actuality and certainty onto his readers and listeners. The premise of the novel is that the narrator is constantly plagued by the need to feel authentic and transcendent; his intentional use of “or” forces other people to make that decision for him. He lets himself live in uncertainty.

Is “or” the conjunction for our time? Adam Gordon drowns in polysyndeton in the wake of the 2004 Madrid train bombings—an event many people grieved over as on 9/11. The words I remember from that time, though, were authoritative. On the radio, people reread Auden’s “September 1, 1939,” where Auden memorably uses “or” to oppose: “We must love one another or die.” The conjunction didn't seem uncertain at all, actually.

“Or” seems less definitive, less divisive now than it did in 2001 or 1939. Robyn Cresswell pinpoints a contemporary, perhaps more honest direction in his appreciation of Thomas Sayers Ellis’s “Or,”: “The poem begins, as I read it, by riffing on the either/or logic ... But it quickly ramifies into geography, history, poetics.” Perhaps “or” isn’t quite so terrible; maybe it’s as a way of conjoining many different coexisting possibilities, but without rejecting any of them or forcing us to choose.

Image credit: http://wandahamilton50.com

How to foster writing talent? Providing writers with a tax break could be a good start.

Especially considering that people aren't buying books to read them any more.

Maybe more people should publish their dream journals. Henry Miller and Anais Nin certainly approve.

Then again, some nightmares are too real to ever be forgotten, at least to Brian Williams.

Perhaps if Lana del Ray had gone anonymous, things would have turned out better for her.

Or... or... or... or...

Or maybe people should stop trying to ban books and take a minute to actually read them.

If they did, maybe we wouldn't run the risk of another blackout.

Image: s-perkins0912-dc.blogspot.com

A New York Times review of Would It Kill You To Stop Doing That?, a new book on manners by Henry Alford, got me thinking about how much of my social grace I’ve gleaned from works of fiction. Beyond the more obvious social dramas of Austen or Fitzgerald, books can provide useful advice on how to act in certain situations—and warn of the consequences when certain behaviors are found undesirable.

I figured, if James could look to literature to gain a little perspective on zoophiles, I could consult the bookshelf to learn how to behave. What follows is a brief guide to help you get started.

• All little children should be given Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. Sure, it’s a little violent, but unimaginable horror never killed an eight year-old. The lesson here is embodied in the boy: at the end of days, walking around starving, the little guy hardly ever complains (or talks, for that matter), and he's spectacularly polite and loving towards his father. Does your kid whine about not getting the candy cereal at the grocery store? Hand him or her a copy. Maybe read it at night before they go to bed. See what happens.
• Do you know any sexual deviants who just need to shut up about it already? Give them a copy of Mary Gaitskill’s Bad Behavior. One of the beauties of Gaitskill’s short stories is how remarkably calm everybody is about how messed up their sex is. As uncomfortable and sometimes harmful as her characters can be, Gaitskill narrates in a way that shuts down all the annoying, gossipy shock value and allows the perverts to be precisely what they are: just humans.
• Even though it was published way back in 1962, I think Another Country by James Baldwin should be handed out to every white, liberal-leaning heterosexual along with their organic oats and fair trade coffee. Have you ever referred to someone else’s partner as their "roommate"? Do you decorate with the aim of exhibiting your knowledge of cultural difference? Maybe you’re super well-intentioned but don’t understand what all the fuss is about. Mr. Baldwin can tell you.
• Is there anything worse than the plethora of man-children running around today? Guys in their twenties and thirties shirking the responsibilities of career, family, haircuts, bathing. Maybe it’s time for a good look at one of the prototypes of the modern man-child: Rabbit, Run by John Updike. The book should be read not to shore up men's juvenile mindsets, but to show them that their very special feelings of entrapment and angst are anything but new. Besides, until you can narrate your life at the level of Updike’s prose, your angst won’t even get you any attention.

But the best reason to pick up a book of fiction? It might not even be the wisdom between the covers, but that your chances of fucking up decrease if your nose is stuck in one.

Image: tylershields.com

“Lauren Greenfield's film The Queen of Versailles … has generated alawsuit in advance of its opening-night premiere. [The] plaintiff distinguished himself by not suing over the film, but over the online proliferation of the associated press release. Specifically, the complaint stems from the film's blurb contained in the announcement of the festival's selections. The festival press release describes the film as showing a journey of 'rags to riches to rags.' It's those last 'rags'...that have infuriated plaintiff David Siegel.”—IndieWire, 12 Jan, 2012, Park City, Utah

“What was really affecting was the tenderness and earnestness of the poor people, who, in spite of the taxes with which they are overwhelmed, were transported with joy at seeing us. When we went to walk in the Tuileries, there was so vast a crowd that we were three-quarters of an hour without being able to move either forward or backward. The dauphin and I gave repeated orders to the Guards not to beat any one, which had a very good effect. Such excellent order was kept the whole day that, in spite of the enormous crowd which followed us everywhere, not a person was hurt. When we returned from our walk we went up to an open terrace and stayed there half an hour. I cannot describe to you, my dear mamma, the transports of joy and affection which every one exhibited towards us. Before we withdrew we kissed our hands to the people, which gave them great pleasure. What a happy thing it is for persons in our rank to gain the love of a whole nation so cheaply.”—Marie Antoinette, Letter to Marie Terèse, 14 June, 1770, Versailles, France

“One time, we flew commercial for some reason, and one of the younger kids asked, 'Mommy, what are all these strangers doing on our plane?' They are used to traveling on our private jet.”—Jacqueline Siegel, interviewed by Jana Waring in Playground Magazine, 19 March, 2009, Isleworth, Florida

Let Me Recite What History Teaches (LMRWHT) is a weekly column that flashes the lavalamp, gaslight, candlelight, campfire, torch, sometimes even the starlight of the past on something that is happening now. The form of the column strives to recover what might be best about the “wide-eyed presentation of mere facts.” Each week you will find here some citational constellation, offered with astonishment and without comment, that can serve as an end in itself, or an occasion for further thought or writing. The title is taken from the last line of Gertrude Stein’s poem “If I Told Him (A Completed Portrait of Picasso)."

Image: Dezeen

Would-be roman-fleuve writers: don't equate quaffing as much coffee as Honoré de Balzac with prolific yields. For the father of the naturalist novel, regular 15-hour stints fueled by that blessed brew still weren't sufficient to finish his multi-volume magnum opus La Comédie humane. Though in Balzac's defense, he did complete some 91 works, like the charmingly titledL'envers de l'histoire contemporaine, aka The Seamy Side of History.

Hear caffeine's effects from Balzac himself: "Ideas quick-march into motion like battalions of a grand army to its legendary fighting ground, and the battle rages. Memories charge in, bright flags on high; the cavalry of metaphor deploys with a magnificent gallop; the artillery of logic rushes up with clattering wagons and cartridges ... the paper is spread with ink — for the nightly labor begins and ends with torrents of this black water, as a battle opens and concludes with black powder."

My pulse raced just reading that. Mind you, I grew up around Houston, TX, land of purple drank, at the psychoactive spectrum's extreme opposite end. I achieved some of my best writing as a freshman at the University of Texas, when a semester-spanning head cold meant daily draughts of Dimetapp. While I wasn't sippin' on some syzzurp beyond the prescribed dosage, the dextromethorphan did wonders for my Japanese Ghost Stories papers. I forewent speaking in class (thanks to dex's dissociative effects), but my ambrosial deciphering of selections from Kwaidan and Ugetsu prompted my predilection for J-Horror.

I was a ubiquitous presence at the 24-hour coffeehouse near campus. I didn't share Balzac's focused work ethic and caffeine tolerance, though I subsisted nights on "hammerheads"—the cafe's name for a pint glass of black coffee with two shots of espresso, like a nerve-rattling sake bomb—and secondhand smoke, while writing on Italian modernist cinema.

Now absinthe, that's an addiction I'd like to claim. Here in NYC, I frequented White Star, mixmaster Sasha Petraske's former brick-lined corridor down on Essex Street. I'd chase la fée verte while negotiating my art-critique notes. It was like my own Midnight in Paris, but what impressionable young romantics haven't imagined themselves within fin de siècle Paris?

I've never attended a gallery opening under the influence of absinthe. Though it's quite clear art and excessive booze don't well mix. Nor have I been bothered to procure my own absinthiana accoutrements to serve it at home (that spigot fountain, the Pontarlier reservoir glasses, the damn slotted spoons). I suppose a bottle of Kübler Superieure might suffice, but for me—an aficionado if not a total addict—the preparation ritual is as important as the enduring round-edged buzz.

Photo: composite image of Big Moe and Honoré de Balzac, culled from Wikipedia and Photo-chopped by the author