Paging Mr. Cock

5.12.08

3:43 pm

I just had to page a resident named Harry Johnson.

No shit.

So, in case you (person) haven't heard, 'pointless' is coming back to the world at large, jaws wide and dripping jaw water.

You should go, because it's real.

It's Thursday, Friday and Saturday (June 5th, 6th and 7th) at 8pm and Sunday the 8th at 3pm.

All at the Player's Theater on 115 MacDougal Street.

Take trans to the West 4th stop and it's around there.

Google it, you lazy bastards.

You can all 212-352-3101 or 866-811-4111 (toll free) for tickets.

Tickets are $18 at the door and $20 if you order them from those numbers.

I apologize for that but here's how this thing works...

'pointless' is one of five plays at this festival.

It's called the Shortened Attention Span Festival because each of the five shows are 20 minutes or less.

Get it?

Although, seriously, people with a REAL shortened attention span can hold onto something for, what? three minutes?

The good news is 'pointless' is a collection of about twenty one-minute vignettes, so it's designed specifically FOR people with actual shortened attention spans BY people with shortened attention spans.

It's was mostly written by me with help from Heather DuCharme who disappeared into the UK last time I heard, and there is one or two contributions from Will.

So, on top of being a Harvard X-Prize astronaut who's dating a chick named Lady, he is also a playwright.

He also saved Latin.

You should see it because, as Christina says, it's me...made slightly accessible.

So...yeah.

I'm sorry I'm not more...expansive today.

Feel like an old rug.

Whatever the case,old rug or new, it's going to be good.

We got some Fordham alums (Jessica Howell, Marco Formosa, Gia Frisillo and Sarah Bell) as well as some non-Fordham alums (Kevin Rockower and Colin Goldberg) so, whether or not you went to Fordham, there's something for everyone!

YAY!!!! 

Seriously though,these are some funny motherfuckers I got.

And you will laugh...until you die.

review of Nine Inch Nails' "The Slip"

I am going to skip over the huge but musically unrelated facts that a. this is the second major release from Trent Reznor in about as many months (yes, months, not years) (the first being the 36-track instrumental experiment 'Ghosts I-IV') and b. Reznor released this album solely on his web site, www.nin.com, for anyone and everyone to download completely free and just focus on the new album, 'The Slip'.

 

As a stand alone Nine Inch Nails album, 'The Slip' is solid, but as a sequel/aspect/coda to 2007's 'Year Zero', it's excellent.

The world of 'The Slip' could indeed be that which Reznor created for us a little over a year ago.

Many of the songs match in tone as well as subject matter and, at times, musicality.

"Letting You" is about fury at those who hold you down and pull your strings, but it is also about fury at yourself for letting these people do these things to you.

In "1,000,000", an excellent NIN album opener (and, hopefully, soon-to-be live staple), we see an individual so dulled, so numbed by his routines that the only way he can tell he's alive is to kill himself again and again.

 

There is also a distinct sci-fi feel to this album with such tracks as "Lights In The Sky" which may be a direct reference to The Presence (the huge, four-fingered hand whose appearance the sky seemed to indicate imminent destruction that was introduced on 'Year Zero'), "Corona Radiata", a 'Ghosts I-IV'-esque soundscape that is beautiful in its subtlety (except for Reznor's choice to include the stock sound effect of a cat yowling towards the end which COMPLETELY takes the listener out of it), "Demon Seed", a layered piece with some excellent drum programming lifted from "38 Ghosts" (a leftover from the 'Ghosts I-IV' sessions) that tells about a seed that is growing and changing the narrator and the album's intro track "999,999" with it's building, alien synth-pulse.

While including elements of 'Year Zero' makes 'The Slip' a bit esoteric, the straight up Nine Inch Nails radio track "Discipline" (part "The Hand That Feeds", part "Only") makes at least some of it accessible to the casual listener.

 

An interesting theory some people are batting around is that, based on the similar sound most of the tracks share, and their subject matter plus the first line spoken on this album (which might be "how did I slip into this?"), 'The Slip' is actually an album CREATED by the Nine Inch Nails OF 'Year Zero', the year 2022 in which the government, environment and society in general are in an apocalyptic state of emergency.

 

Whatever the case, like 'Year Zero', 'The Slip' is an album made richer by the context in which it's set.

Without that context though, the album isn't a complete success.

So you've got a choice:

Either head over to the homepage of 42 Entertainment, the company responsible for the four month ARG (alternate reality game) that set the stage for and accompanied the release of 'Year Zero', and spend an hour or so digging through the massive amount of story surrounding it or just turn up the volume on the four or five loud tracks and headbang like you're 16 again.

Either way, you'll have fun.