Due to strange existential circumstances, only Shows #110 and #113 have been released when I fully intended a four-show bundle all at once. Show #111 is coming tonight. Show #112 is coming in a few days. To download Show #113 (featuring LBC nominee Mark Binelli and Jessica Stockton) in the interim period, use this link. Thank you for your patience.
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Condition of Mr. Segundo: Rattled by interlopers.
Author: Tao Lin
Subjects Discussed: Murakami meets Less Than Zero, the violent impulses of animals, Elijah Wood, Gmail chat as muse, Instant Messenger, one-sentence poetry, figuring out things and calming down, Ann Beattie, Tao Lin’s Wikipedia entry, organic vegan food, the moral and existential nature of fiction, shit-eating grins, cutting-edgeness, Domino’s Pizza, writing in literary journals, Melville House, writing a Nerve story, mangling grammar, feeling interminable, Monica Lewinsky, posting email publicly, privacy, Jason Fortuny, Salman Rushdie, the girls suspended over The Vagina Monologues, and fun.
EXCERPT FROM SHOW:
Correspondent: I note that the stories in Bed are surprisingly realistic. There aren’t much in the way of dolphins or bears or the like. So what caused these bears and dolphins to kind of enter into the equation? Did you find them to be a friendly presence to draw upon?
Tao Lin: Well, after I finished the novel in a realistic fashion, I kept on working on it. And I just felt bored by it. I thought it needed something exciting. So I just went through. Whenever there’s a bored part where I felt bored, I deleted something and added the animals.
Correspondent: Now these dolphins are rather murderous. They actually go after Elijah Wood and company. What accounts for these violent impulses of these animals then?
Tao Lin: I just thought it was fun to write having a dolphin murder Elijah Wood.
Correspondent: But this is Elijah Wood we’re talking about. Has Elijah Wood ever done anything to you personally?
Tao Lin: No, he hasn’t. But did you think I was mean against him? That I was mean against him or that it was just playful?
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Chipper Jones pops the ball. It looks like it’s going to be your garden-variety line drive. But Tulowitzki’s on it, rushing to second base before you can comprehend that he’s about to make the thirteenth unassisted triple play in baseball history. It’s that great leap of the arms to Edgar Renteria that gets me, flying forward like the dangling entrails of a muskrat punctured by an interstate semi. A balletic burst, the flicker of tendrils, just to get that improvised third out. It all goes down in a blink. It’s an Aristotlean plot structure unfolding in seconds. Renteria knows it. He stops in his tracks and Tulowitzki is simply too fast, too ambitious, too in the moment to not seize the nanosecond.
Years later, there’s little in the way of vocal improvement (in fact, there is a marked decline), and there’s a troubling reliance upon stage presence of dancers.
At the same show, you can look no further than this guy for lessons on how to sign and perform at the old Wembley Stadium.