In response to several requests, the first torrent pack for The Bat Segundo Show is now available for your downloading pleasure at The Pirate Bay. Torrent Pack #1 contains the first twenty shows, including conversations with Jonathan Ames, Octavia Butler, T.C. Boyle, Bret Easton Ellis, Jennifer Weiner, and many more authors.
Future torrent packs will be made available soon!
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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If you hit the Litblog Co-Op site this morning, you may be wondering what happened to Shows #110-112. Well, have no fear. They haven’t disappeared. Mr. Segundo has recorded his intros, and they are in post-production as we speak. Alas, I’ve been too busy beating deadlines to finish them up. In the meantime, you can listen to Show #113, the first of three podcasts, produced in tandem with the LBC and Pinky’s Paperhaus. Carolyn talks with Jessica Stockton and I talk with Mark Binelli.
I am truly stunned, honored, and otherwise blushing big time because of Callie’s kind words and extremely creative approach to Segundo listening:
Part of this wedding prep involves working out a bit more than your average obsessive reader/writer usually has time for (read: none). So I’ve been rising each morning, turning on my iRiver (take that iPod) and listening to one Bat Segundo Podcast each day. This has had the lovely effect of me actually wanting to get out of bed early, wanting to jump on the treadmill. It is excellent to pair such drudgery with the words of my favorite writers. Also: While I had listened to several of the Bat’s ‘casts over the last year, it is only when you consume one (sometimes two) a day over the course of a week, that you really begin to get the wow factor of all the Bat has time to do. I mean, the intros alone are sort of other-worldly. So – my hats off to the Bat and his mysterious creator. I’m only one week in and I have more than 109 days of working out to do, so please, please: more podcasts soon?
And of course, congratulations and many happy years to the future Mr. & Mrs. Counterbalance!