Stalking the Antichrist in the final days

[sovay]

1. I have a copy of Monica Hughes' Devil on My Back (1984)! It is a small ex-library hardback from Liverpool Polytechnic. It arrived in the mail this afternoon: desperance sent it. I have never received a birthday present from the internet before. Thank you so much!

2. Cinderella Jump-Rope Rhymes. I am part of this upcoming chapbook, which evolved out of a livejournal post of cucumberseed's. Watch this space. The illustrations are going to be amazing. The words aren't bad, either.

3. In honor of the first season of Millennium (1996–1999), which lesser_celery and I finished last night, have a brief pre-apocalyptic mix.

Arcade Fire, "Black Mirror"

I know when the time is coming
All the words will lose their meaning

Robyn Hitchcock, "Judas Sings (Jesus & Me)"

This is the century of, 'I don't believe
In anything but what's up my sleeve—'
So what's up your sleeve?

Murder by Death, "Steam Rising"

There is steam rising from the belly of the beast
There is hell on earth, there are demons beneath the streets

Laura Veirs, "Chimney-Sweeping Man"

I try to make things better
I try to make things mine
I write a lot of letters
To pass the time

Sam Phillips, "Soul Eclipse"

You think I'm interesting
Like the apocalypse

The Mountain Goats, "Lovecraft in Brooklyn"

Woke up afraid of my own shadow
Like, genuinely afraid

Dirty Three and Nick Cave, "Time Jesum Transeuntum et Non Riverentum"

Now the stars they are all angled wrong
And the sun and the moon refuse to burn

PJ Harvey, "In the Dark Places"

And not one man has
And not one woman has
Revealed the secrets of this world

My Favorite, "The Suburbs Are Killing Us"

You did what you did because a pathetic mythology
Is better than no mythology at all

Tori Amos, "Sister Janet"

And all those up there are making it look so easy
With your perfect wings
A wing can cover all sorts of things

4. Has anyone ever set a production of Much Ado About Nothing in Depression-era America? I was reminded last Friday when fleurdelis28 and I went to the opening night of Opera Boston's Béatrice et Bénédict—the original play is so much a screwball comedy, not just in its verbal fireworks or its double-blind plot, but in the way it presents love as a high-wire act over the very real possibility of getting hurt (and sooner or later, everyone who takes the risk must take a spill), that it seems the obvious choice to stage it like Hollywood in the 1930's, but I've never seen anyone try. Some of the business with the eavesdropping and the hedges and the folding chair in Kenneth Branagh's film is close, but it's sort of nineteenth-century Italy in any case.

5. Are there any other artists who attract the same kind of conspiracy theories as Shakespeare? kenjari asked what it was about him; I had no idea, but I had to agree he seems to be the only one. At least, I've never heard of a Mozart authorship controversy.

Tonight: the Post-Meridian Radio Players' Big Broadcast of 1954. Given the last two years and music by sen_no_ongaku, I'm looking forward.