Calypso + Muriel’s Treasure

I just donated a book to the Calypso library maintained by Irwin Chusid over at WFMU.

Every Wednesday he devotes the 3rd hour of his show to vintage Calypso. I’ve enjoyed reggae for a while but the richness and depth of the other music originating from the West Indies was a wonderful surprise for me.

A lot of Calypso involves improvised embellishments to a shared group of traditional tunes (whose authorship is hotly disputed), making them about news of the day, sexual conquests, and the inadequacy of other performers. It’s the jauntiest (and filthiest) trash-talking you’ll every hear.

The show is on sabbatical for the summer but Irwin is podcasting the early shows here.

Give the song “Zombie Jamboree (Back to Back, Belly to Belly)” a listen (2:33:36 into this show)….and pour yourself a zombie. Your life will instantly be better.

Prospect Park Concerts

Just had two nights in a row when I could meander down the road and see a legendary performer in concert, nearly for free. Last night was Richard Thompson, tonight was Ralph Stanley. Opportunities like that make it a little easier paying the rent every month.

This was my first Thompson performance. I was surprised at how peppy and upbeat he was in person when most of his songs end in gunshot deaths, car wrecks, or abandonment. Also I’ve never seen anyone play that much of a guitar without once slipping into wank territory.

A good portion of the set was from his new album Sweet Warrior. “Dad’s Gonna Kill Me” was the standout. It’s song written in army slang (“Dad” as in “Baghdad”), about a man trying to give a face and name to blind luck and his increasingly shitty odds of getting home in one piece.

Thompson played with such energy that he even sold me on one or two songs that felt kind of slight on the record (“Bad Monkey” and “Mr. Stupid”).

He did a few tracks from I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight + Shoot Out the Lights that were solidly rearranged with horns but sad without Linda’s voice. (Anyone know what a “Wall of Death” is? It’s some kind of Carny ride, I guess).

During the closer–a Chuck Berry-style rocker called “Tear-Stained Letter” that I’ve been singing for a solid 16-hours–he snapped a string, played around it, and would have kept going without missing a note but the dude with the backup guitar got the straps tangled.

Very memorable and impressive. I even forgot to mention the downpour that kept turning on and off like a faucet, so that’s a good show. He did a similar set in DC that you can find on NPR here (soon). The live broadcast wasn’t playing well with Firefox but it may have been my issues.

Ralph Stanley was worthwhile too. Unfortunately the opener was a little too similar in tone and I can only take so much banjo pickin’. I stuck around for “Oh Death” and was glad. For a man who’s so chummy with God, I have never heard a song that better captured the dread of being wormfood. Stanley the younger though seemed a little too aware of being smack in the middle of Gemorrah and was dropping too much Jesus and GDub for me to sit out the cold, damp any longer (hearing “Long Black Veil” drifting in the window and I’m feeling some regret about leaving).

Free Publicity

Patricia T. O’Conner, during her regular segment on WYNC‘s the Leonard Lopate Show, just took calls and held a discussion on the phrase “to hang fire.” Apparently it was recently used to describe the Senate Democrats actions on the immigration bill. O’Conner wasn’t sure of the phrase’s origin but she traced it as far back as Henry James.

A caller pointed out that it likely came from the days of powder and ball firearms, and described a situation where you’ve pulled the trigger but your powder hasn’t ignited. This could be a temporary state and you should keep your gun pointed in the right direction in case the powder goes off suddenly (this is not the same as a “flash in the pan” with means that your powder has burned away but has not propelled the ball out of the barrel).

In 19th century prose (and in James in particular) the phrase came to mean something like “to pause with intent” or to not say/do something because you want to wait until it will have the greatest effect.

To me this is a much sexier way to procrastinate. Books are piling up next to my desk but I’m “hanging fire”.

Hopefully this widely heard call-in will head off some of the blank stares I get when I tell people the name of my bookstore (this is on top of explaining that it’s a virtual bookstore, and yes those are zombies on my business card).

I guess I was hanging fire and never got around to absorbing the dictum that a business should have a simple, memorable name that describes what it does.

Restoring the Encyclopedia Britannica

I was lucky to find a copy of the 11th Edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica recently. I’ve wanted one for a while. The 11th was the first time the encyclopedia was issued all at one time and it contains entries by notable scholars including; Thomas DeQuincey, Bertrand Russell, Swinburne, John Muir, T. H. Huxley and many more. You can access the full text of the encyclopedia here, but I’m a book fetishist and need the real thing.

The leather on the small “Handy” bindings was in decent shape. Mostly intact but dry and in need of attention so I thought I would take some photos and describe the restoration process.

First gently wipe the dust from the boards and the edges of text block. You can use a soft cotton cloth, but I use a rubber sponge that works like a magnet on dust/mildew and doesn’t let anything back out. Be careful not to rub the dirt INTO the surface and it’s probably better to blow or use a soft brush to remove dust from the edge of the text block.


(If the leather itself is powdery, don’t try to wipe it all away. We’ll take care of that in a later step.)

Next inspect the edges of the boards, and the hinges and look for any largish pieces of flaking leather. Use a very small amount of paste, or book-binding adhesive, (paste is reversible and the more archival but takes longer to set) and stick these back down.


Now let the book dry for at least a few hours (overnight is better).

Next, to treat the powdery leather (also called “red rot”), use a product called Cellugel.


Cellugel is a “consolidant” and will prevent any further material loss and make the leather more supple. I recommend using this product with decent ventilation. I don’t think it’s toxic (and it drys/evaporates quickly) but the alcohol-like fumes can be a little overwhelming. Apply liberally and gently rub the product in. Make sure to get all of the visible leather, especially the edges which have taken the most stress.


Use paper towels, and change frequently. Avoid getting any Cellugel on the endpapers or text block (protect the text with wax paper if you feel the need).

Again let the book dry (overnight if possible)

For the final step use a product called Renaissance Wax (a micro-crystalline wax). Buff the book like a ’59 Camaro and let dry.

Now repeat 34 times.

Field Report: Slim Pickings

Not much out there this weekend.


I picked up another Harry Potter 1st printing for an eventual eBay lot; a nice copy of the Miyazaki My Neighbor Totoro storybook with images from the film; an early Boni and Liveright Modern Library and a decent collection of high-grade Mad Magazines from the 60s and early 70s (including a Beatles cover, and issues with parodies of Star Wars, Rosemary’s Baby and Clockwork Orange).


Fun but not very easy to sell.

Today was the first day I used Craigslist and Google maps together to really map out my route. It kept the fruitless walking to a minimum but has anyone else noticed that stoop sales posted on Craigslist tend to be oversold? Most of my better finds were picked up on the way to a Craigslist sale.

My plan for next week is to print and piece together a complete neighborhood map, and then laminate it for use with a wipe-off marker. That would come in very handy indeed.

Movie Break: Severance

When I was in Montreal over Memorial Day weekend, I kept seeing a movie poster of a decapitated wage-slave, featuring the tagline “The Office meets Deliverance”. That was pretty much all I needed to hear, so I rallied my traveling companions to see it. Crushingly, the movie wasn’t set to open until the following Friday when we would already be back in the States.

When we got home I ordered the DVD from Amazon UK and it didn’t disappoint.

Severance is a British horror-comedy in the Shaun of the Dead tradition but, instead of zombies, it riffs on the current crop of torture/grande guignol films like Hostel and Saw.

In the film, the sales and marketing division of a weapons manufacturer has earned a team-building weekend at a “luxury” lodge in Eastern Europe. Turns out the lodge is the hiding place for some ugly, black-ops business and the employees end up whittled down by heavily-armed, revenge-driven psychotics who have a grudge against the company.

The actors get a lot of mileage out of the script’s management-speak jokes and workaday references to the War on Terror. The setting is well-realized: utilitarian cinder-block buildings and ominous, unlovely woods that are only there to camouflage the people watching you. And the scenes of violence/torture are genuinely disturbing. Perhaps because of this, the film keeps the slapstick to a minimum and the humor is more quiet and character-driven. Everyone is given at least one good scene to come out of type and get us to really like them before they are creatively slaughtered.

I haven’t seen most the films Severance is riffing on. I don’t find the torture movies all that interesting or scary and none of them are as disturbing or mind-bending as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (or a memo by Alberto Gonzalez) but Severance stands on its own and is a solid horror-comedy (with a better developed horror element than Shaun of the Dead). Worth a look if have an All-Region player or are patient for a US release.

Solutions for Modern Living

I found these elegant solutions for modern living in the “shopping” section (interesting products, briefly mentioned) of a batch of House Beautifuls from the 50s.

His and hers cigarette caddy with name plates:


A bird feeder made from a spiral of metal that holds a full ear of corn and allows for perching:


And a device to trepan a hard-boiled egg:


My house would certainly be beautified by these deluxe items.

More Wonderful/Horrible Things

The new issue of Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet (the ‘zine arm of Gavin Grant and Kelly Link’s bounteous Small Beer Press) contains an essay from me entitled “11 Wonderful/Horrible Things Found While Bookscouting”.

It was great fun picking and sequencing the list but, since a good rock album can only have 11 songs, there were some outtakes. Here are the bonus tracks.

12. A half-melted Barbie doll wrapped in a bed sheet.

13. An VF/NM copy of Robert Heinlein’s 6th Column. Signed and inscribed in the year of publication.

14. A three-ring binder of gay-porn obsessively indexed by endownment and ethnicity.

15. A 5-foot-square, outsider-architect blueprint of a Home for Elderly Women. Designed on a wagon wheel model, each spoke of the building was separated by a garden filled with flora and fauna from diverse climates. Each window on the plan was labeled with a peculiar combination of design styles (“Afgahni/Chinese” for instance) and the plan was very specific about bunk-beds for the fragile tennants.

16. A brown paper bag containing a homemade, 8mm sex movie, together with a mimeo’d copy of letter to a local judge offering this film as definitive proof that the letter-writer’s “reproductive reservoir was damaged while lifting an empty(?) box at his dish-washing job. He goes on to state that he “wants a nice little lawsuit with no one getting hurt or catching any diseases.”

How to Pack Books with a Fresh Direct Box, Part 2

Continued from “How to Pack Books with a Fresh Direct Box, Part 1“

After cutting off the four long flaps, cut the remainder of the box into two “manta-ray” shaped pieces:


Place your oversize / coffee-table book between the “wings”, lined-up with the bottom crease, then trim off the excess at the top (if you’re clumsy, mark the cardboard and remove the book before cutting):


Now fold the “tail” around the book and tape it on the reverse:


Lastly, flip over, fold the “wings” around the body and tape:


That’s it. Each box will do 6 books (4 trade size, 2 oversize). They’re even freshness dated! Now drop the book in a puffy or wrap it in B-flute and you’re done. Overkill…perhaps, but my method has been called “bomb-proof” by more than one customer (did I mention the kevlar wrap?).

If you don’t live in one of the urban centers served by Fresh Direct, move to one. But until then this method will work with any clean strong boxes and it fits well with the general recycling ethic of buying and selling used books.