Choice selections including Dan Rhodes

If you want to see this charming group, come along to The Physics Room , Christchurch on Thurs 27 March: "Lullatone - they are Shawn Seymour and Yoshimi Tomida. Based in Nagoya, they wrote the official Hello Kitty theme song and have been behind some of the most melodic post-pop electronic sounds to come forth in recent years."


The Guardian's take on the world's most powerful blogs

The Age's Noise pollution blog links to Nick Cave's nutty Victorian seance vids. Beautifully hammy acting.

Headline of the week? Missing penis a cause for Royal Opera blush.

Dan Rhodes - my favourite author, and still one of the most amusing author websites. I just looked at his literary recommendations and spookily he namechecks two of my other favourite books namely Misadventures by Sylvia Smith and The Restraint of Beasts by Magnus Mills. What is the common thread that links these authors? Humour, humanity, a sense of the ridiculous, dryness, ingenuity, idiosyncracy, beauty ...

I am please to see the return of my favourite Public Address blog Radiation from Fiona Rae. A good post to launch in with, and interesting comments as ever. She announces:

In other frakking fantastic news, Battlestar Galactica is back on air April 4. Advance publicity includes this frakking fantastic Last Supper. Six is Jesus!

Yay it is oyster season!!

And on the other side of the Tasman, Archibald Hitler fails to win Archibald Prize.

A nice piece o'spam I recently received, charmingly entitled "Reliable the man":

The kindest wishes to my new friend. I am 32 years. My name Tatiyana, I would like to get acquainted with you and to correspond, I want that all was reliable, that among us was not what secrets, and all we relations were on long. I am tired to be one, and to look only on bad, I wish to find and build relation with decent the man.
2008 has begun, and I wish in this suit to year the life. That the life washing has incorporated to strong spirit the man which always will be line a difficult minute, maintain me. My heart freely also burns with the desire to give all love to the man which deserves this. My letter is sent from agency, from an email of agency, and I ask on him to not answer. And to write only on my email.It for me will be easier. I shall wait for your letter and I hope that in the future we become the relatives each other.

Indeed, my heart freely burns too.

Charms

Recent web nuggets, literary and otherwise:

• Those nauseating Anchor Family ads are now on YouTube. Thanks for telling us Spare Room. Part of NZ culture.
  
• Dan Rhodes's top 10 short books - Was happy to see a list from my favourite writer appear on The Guardian. He is just so clever and appealing, check this out:
  "The Bride Wore Black by Cornell Woolrich" - His name makes him sound like a range of cardigans, but Cornell Woolrich was in fact a writer of highly-wrought suspense fiction, this one being a fine example. In his 1948 book Rendezvous In Black, the main character is called Johnny Marr, and at one point he has a fight with a man called Morrissey. A must-read for Smiths fans."
  Dan IS the man.
  
• Works like a charm- Jonathan Franzen's is a squeaky chair, Jane Smiley's a hot bath, Douglas Coupland's chocolate chips ... writers reveal what gets their creative juices flowing.
  
• Keats biopic should be Romantic, not romanticised - I'm worried that Jane Campion's Keats biopic will play up to the sickly stereotypes of the garret-dwelling poet.
  
• Race to Size Zero - yup they all want to be pins.
  
• Cole retains his British cool - had to search on Lloyd Cole after seeing him live at Al's Bar.
  
• How to make a good comeback - Tim de Lisle
  "The answer, my friend, isn't always blowing in the wind. Sometimes it's on another record. In 1984, the fey Glasgow-based indie guitar band Lloyd Cole and the Commotions released a song called Are You Ready to Be Heartbroken? Twenty-two years later, the fey Glasgow-based indie guitar band Camera Obscura have released a single called Lloyd, I'm Ready to Be Heartbroken. It hasn't made the charts, but it has been played 100,000 times on Camera Obscura's MySpace page. It's a suitable fate for Lloyd Cole, who couldn't write a song in his youth without mentioning one of his heroes ("read Norman Mailer/or get a new tailor"), and it's a fine song in its own right, with a chorus like an ice cream on a hot day."

Newest Petites:
"Dainty Biscuit" and "Care free tee", plus limited edition "Lavender Love"

My favourite author

Dan Rhodes

His books
Anthropology (my favourite book)
Don't Tell Me The Truth About Love
Timoleon Vieta Come Home

From his website (down at the moment):
The Little White Car by Danuta de Rhodes will be out in a new small format this summer. An inevitable summer-smash, this is must-read for all Rhodes fans for some reason or other.

Don't read English? There's no need to panic - Dan Rhodes' work is now available in 25 languages.

Dan's website, www.danrhodes.co.uk, is currently being renovated. Rhodes is reported to have over 15,000 items on his list of things he would rather do than regularly update a web site.