Incendiary Lit

They’re kind of hard to find, in my past searching, but here someone has RAM, As in Real Video, or audio, or whatever. But it’s permanent. So everyone with a harddrive worth its weight in… I don’t know, flax, should be able to hold a fair amount of media, and these classic SNL clips are always great for the dwindling hours of a small gathering, or a late night of ‘editing’ which has consisted more of finding ways not to edit than to edit, despite its ‘fun’. Anyone with ready access to the internet knows what I’m talking about. Anyway, MrT300 has a bunch of these classic clips, of Nick Burns, Celebrity Jeopardy, The Ladies Man, The Ambiguously Gay Duo, SNL commercials and more. So have fun, watch Turd Ferguson, or consider “Below Me” and laugh and laugh without worrying about searching for the clips. Go here.

Yeah, we’re a) poor, b) college students with an overload of classes c) food servers (which adds to the poor factor, and subtracts from time to go to movies) so we haven’t been able to go out to the movies much recently. But we did finally go to see Ironman, which was actually really good. Robert Downey Jr.’s a damn good actor, I gotta say. For more proof of this, anyone who hasn’t seen Kiss Kiss Bang Bang should immediately put it on their Netflix/Blockbuster queue. (Val Kilmer as Gay Perry, the badass gay PI who always has a comeback, is just amazing) But yeah, one thing I really appreciated about Ironman was that it made you laugh without dumbing itself down, or cutting in on the big explosions and near-death experiences. But remember, this IS a comic book movie, so suspension of disbelief in some aspects is necessary. But unless you’re a tool, that shouldn’t be a problem, since movies are really only distractions from your own life, so loosen up and don’t overthink everything. Laugh when something tickles the back of your throat a little bit and you can feel the air in your lungs just begging to chuckle out. Hold your breath when he’s freefalling without power. Spend a couple hours outside of the world you’re familiar with. I understand that would much better apply to a movie like Pan’s Labyrinth or Mirrormask, but this is a un movie that everyone should be able to just loosen up and enjoy. Based on the 93% fresh rating the movie’s got over at RottenTomatoes.com, I assume most people are.

I hope so. I’ve get a lot on my plate, including Campbell McGrath’s narrative prose poem book Seven Notebooks, Jim Krusoe’s Iceland, and Jose Saramago’s Blindness. I read his book The Cave a little while back and it was really really good, the formatting was a little difficult at first (no quotations or line breaks for exchanges of dialog) but you get used to it fairly quickly. Everyone else has their lists right? How else are you planning on spending your long, lackadaisical summers? You know, besides work, enjoying the sun and eating and breathing and whatnot. You should definitely have a back up plan. Go to Amazon now and poke around. They actually can get you pretty good suggestions. I also recommend Denise Duhamel’s Star Spangled Banner, an accessible, and very entertaining/good book of poetry. You won’t regret it.

This is one of my favorite MST3K episodes, Season 3, Episode 3: Pod People. The movie may not be as bad as Manos: Hands of Fate, but it’s pretty awful, and was originally filmed in French I believe, which is why the lips don’t sync up at times. You know how most tv shows catch you up for the first five minutes of the show? The theme song catches you up like a good 80’s theme song, and you’re ready to go. Check out the whole episode in these further videos. Isn’t it cool how many shows and movies you can watch online? I think so, at least.
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We found a clip of it miraculously still online, and figured anyone who missed it airing live should get a chance to enjoy this funny skit. So kick your feet up, get mellow, and enjoy the next 4 minutes and 20 seconds.

We just saw it again and laughed, so we figured we’d repost it. Thank you Jay Leno, and, is it true soon Conan’s going to claim your spot? Late Night with Conan O’Brien will now be Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, which is exciting, I was worried about the little guy, especially after he made Taxi. I mean, Living Single was one thing, but Queen Latifah needs to work on the cellulite not the celluloid. That’s really mean, I didn’t mean that. But really, don’t act anymore. Maybe make another gangsta rap album. I’d probably buy it for nostalgia’s sake alone. But yes, Jimmy Fallon’s returning to a similar “Weekend Update” style role, and good, he’s good at that. Besides, my favorite Johnny Carson moments were him laughing. Few people realize how much another person’s enjoyment adds to their own… especially when it doesn’t feel fake. But Conan hasn’t officially been announced to be taking over for Leno yet, despite speculation. OK, this is way too much TV news for this site, but come on, it concerns Conan O’Brien, so it concerns us all. Conan, please take over for Jay Leno. I may actually watch some of the interviews again. OK, that’s all. Oh, this whole bit was because the image was originally on Late Night With Jay Leno. Indeed.

And yes, Jessica was one of them. She said she didn’t mean to geek out too much, but when we hit the ‘ten minutes til midnight’ mark (when the trailer was to be posted on the website) she was clearly chomping at the bit. So we were there, at 11:59, when the little countdown clock went to blank, and then nothing. But eventually, we found it on IGN. The trailer looks very much like what we saw at WonderCon back in February, but the movie looks cool, very dramatic, and come on, it’s the X-Files. Mulder and Scully too, not Dogget and Reyes, if anyone was still watching (I wasn’t, but Jessica was) at the end of the show and knows who they were.

People write them as writing exercises, as little trials of their poetic ability before they return to their free verse (with, or without jigging lines and tumors of whitespace) and write their poems. I’ve been reading around in a couple dozen literary journals (scratch that, few dozen) and have seen more formal poetry than I expected. A good number of sonnets (here’s a refresher on the sonnet’s rules). I know some of you out there make a habit of writing formal poetry, in fact I’ve been turning to it fairly frequently lately in a chase after content matching form. I’ve got a paradelle on the backburner about two brothers in different stages of “Why are you hitting yourself?” amidst some fairly dire circumstances… which is all about the repetition having not only a purpose, but a need. Some poems almost need a specific form. Why? Well, in the rough blob of a first draft (despite how polished you feel your first drafts are, revision is important too.), sometimes there will be an echo of a form. Perhaps a curious repetition or the poem will be 14 lines with an accidental slant rhyme in three places already. You might see the vague form of a sestina, villanelle, sonnet, rondeau… and then there is an aesthetic goal. And to reach that goal you have to weight every line, every foot, syllable, for its importance (looking that close at any poem is a good idea) in order to meet that self-set goal, to reorder a scene, rephrase, to stretch your mind for the best result. And, you know, sometimes the poem just doesn’t fit a form. But sometimes it does, and the only thing that will come from attempting to adapt a free verse piece into a formal poem is that you will know your poem inside and out, and will have a very good head start on the next draft of your poem. So try it yourself:

The Cremation of Shelley
by Lawrence Raab

August 15, 1822

All around was scenery–
the ocean and its islands, watchtowers
along the coast, mountains
glittering like marble. Trelawny imagined
the spirit of his friend soaring above him.

And he thought, We’re no better
than a pack of dogs
dragging him back into the light.
Three white wands
marked the place where he’d been buried,

lime thrown over him, the yellow sand
shovelled in. And now
they had to dig him out. Who could speak?
Even Byron was silent.
When they heard the hollow sound

of iron on bone, Byron asked
if Trelawny would save the skull for him,
but remembering that he had formerly
used one as a drinking-cup, I was determined
Shelley’s should not be so profaned.

After the fire was lit they poured
wine over the body, causing the flames
to glisten and quiver. Then the corpse
fell open, and the heart
was laid bare. Byron turned away,

walked back to the beach,
swam out to his boat. Leigh Hunt
stayed inside his carriage. Everything
turned to ash, but what surprised us all
was that the heart remained entire.

The poet’s heart! Of course
it should resist the tire.
But why? As fitting that it burn,
if brighter than the rest.
Trelawny reached in and snatched it out.

No one saw him do it,
though his hand was badly hurt.
Every detail, he would write,
of the life of a man of genius
is interesting. But no more

about the heart–how much
he wanted it. I collected
the human ashes and placed them in a box.
Buried in Rome
with the appropriate ceremonies.

–
I really liked this poem from his awesome book The Probable World (under $1 used at amazon), and kept trying to remember where I knew the story from, years after first reading it. Then I kept mixing it up with Galway Kinnell’s wonderful poem “Shelley” which deals with Shelley’s life detached a bit from his work.

Writing exercise: Find a good biography of a favorite writer. Or check wikipedia. There’s a ton of authors with interesting biographical information available. Write a poem about that interesting fact. Poems that teach the reader something interesting that they didn’t already know are always more resonant.

I know a lot of people had gotten used to the Firestarter challenges being posted everyday in the main posts, but they are still being updated every day over there in the column on the right (and also right here). Everything from formal exercises, word lists, scenarios, exercises inspired by poems. There’s over 200 exercises right there for you in that one page. So check it out. Try them out. Hopefully we’ll be able to renew the Firestarter Challenge, if we can get anyone interested in a one month contest maybe…

Well, tonight Jason Castro left American Idol, and you know, it ain’t so bad. Personally, he was my favorite of this year… that David Cook better win now. But I’ve never really liked the people who win American Idol anyway. Except Kelly Clarkson, which makes me feel like they made a mistake and actually gave someone with some uniqueness to them. Jessica forces me to watch, I swear. But I’m also glad Blake didn’t win last year. Could you imagine him singing that god-awful, ridiculously cliched song? No, he needs to beatbox and mix his shit up, make it unique. But, his record was wayyyy more poppy than it should’ve been. Anyway, back to Jason Castro. He isn’t typical American Idol material, which means I’d be more likely buy his CD. Seems more like a folksy Ben Harper, and that’s way more up my alley than Ruben Studdard or ArchuD2.

Mutsers and MHF edited together this Family Guy/Matrix trailer. Matches up really well, very funny. I’m a sucker for fake movie trailers though… how cliche of me.

It’s nice to see ones you remember, if, like me you watched The Simpsons for any period of time. I love the aliens.

Click here now. (audio file)

Kurt Vonnegut is sort of a religion to me, and if I didn’t have so much school to blame it on, I could very likely commit Hari Kari for not knowing about Armageddon in Retrospect, a collection of Kurt Vonnegut Jr.’s new and uncollected writings. Mark relates a few anecdotes from his introduction the posthumous book. Never has an egg metaphor been so sad. Learn a little bit about American literature, listen to this excerpt. Then buy his books and read them all (but don’t start with Galapagos. You need to work your way up to that tremendous, but very odd novel). I’m a huge fan of Bluebeard, Player Piano, and Cat’s Cradle, and Siren’s of Titan too, but I’d say read one of the other three I mentioned first. Plus, if you don’t care which edition you get, pretty much all of the books I listed can be found for about $1. So spend the ten dollars that would use to buy a burger (without tip) at Chili’s, and get three books that will make you laugh a minimum of ten times, as well as have interesting and imaginative plots. Do it. Go Vonnegut.

These are intense 3D sidewalk paintings. Remember, in all of these, it’s only paint on the sidewalk, not sidewalks completely dug up with entire cities, or hell underneath. Here is a blog post at impactlab.com with some really, really cool stuff, including a couple pictures showing perspective. One is over 40 feet long to achieve its 3D effect.

It’s called Levels.

For those that don’t know, Levels is a badass tool. Most real photoshop buffs are all about Curves, but I’ve always found Levels and then adjustment layers to be good enough for me. Basically what Levels controls is where it shows black, white and middle-grey of tonalities (light/darkness of a color). And you adjust where those points are. It’s easiest to see it.

How to find the Levels function: Control L is the shortcut, but in Photoshop, Levels is in the Adjust pull-down menu. In Photoshop Elements it’s in the Enhance tab (then adjust colors). But in both it’s Control L. Use the shortcut.

What it will look like:

Go into each individual color, which will usually be Red, Green and Blue, but hey, maybe you’re working in CYMK, who’m I to judge? In each color pull the slider to the first major rise in the little mountain range histogram. Some pictures will have radical spikes and large areas of nothing. Try not to more the bars more than, say 45 or 50 points unless you’re trying to get an ‘artistic’ look. But, again, every picture is different. Here’s where I put the ‘black’ of red tones in this picture:

Sometimes you’ll have to move both ends of the bar (black and white) in. Doing that, just adjusting the three layers’ white and black levels will radically improve the colors in your photos in less than a minute (once you’re used to it). If you’re spending more time, fiddle around with the grey levels. That’s the middle tone. The pure colors of red, green and blue. Moving that bar to the left darkens the ‘not dark, not light’ tone of that color, moving the bar right lightens them. This comes in handy when a flash doesn’t fire, as it won’t just blow out the background.

And yes, that was a photoshop tip on Incendiary Lit. So what? Everyone should know how to color correct their photos whether it’s for myspace, photobucket or a national photography contest. Good colors are integral to a good photo (or, at least good tones, which is really what Levels affects) so get rid of that flash cast white-blue tone, the lamp’s yellow. It’s that easy.

Have you heard the new Mosquito Tone? If you haven’t and you’re over the age of 25, your chances of hearing it ever are greatly diminished. Apparently, wacky teens in New York have been using the tone, which registers at 17Khz, because most adults aren’t able to hear it at all.  For the record, it was easily audible to both of us here at Incendiary Lit, as well as to the author of this post over at Saunderslog.com It’s pretty obnoxious, actually. Click here to test your hearing!

Guerilla Poetry is just like guerilla warfare or guerilla adrvertising (stickers and posters a street signs, walls etc.) only with poetry. Guerilla Poetics is one group that does this, and Incendiary Lit would like to be another, but we’d need your help! We’re planning on making little photo bookmarks mostly (so very short lined poems are ideal), taking them into all the bookstores and libraries we (and anyone who’d be willing to help, we’d send the  bookmarks to you and everything) can find and hiding them in popular books, as well as some more traditional flyers, to put around various college campuses, malls, maybe solicitor style under windshields with a christmas poem at christmas time. Who knows. We’d like to see/hear your ideas or poem suggestions (yours or others’) to zebulonhuset (a-t) yahoo (diz-zot) com(edy). Hopefully that’ll avoid spammers, or just comment here. Word. Any photographers or artists who’d be willing to help with graphics would be greatly appreciated as well.

Thank you Zach, for showing us Muxtape. For some reason it didn’t work at first, but it’s going now, and very nice. Basically you’re making a digital mixtape for anyone who clicks on your page. You upload 12 songs, and arrange them how you want, and you have your own mixtape which can be accessed anywhere. Make playlists for work from home, turn your high school mixtape memory into a digital reminiscence that ends with the girl’s uproarious laughter unseen this time, or just browse around the main page until you find a muxtape you like. There’re tons of them, and someone’s bound to like similar stuff. People change the songs on their muxtapes either never, or hourly, it depends on the person. So go to www.Muxtape.com and click around until you find a playlist with music you like, or start your own muxtape. Or, if you like the hip to the hop of the hip hop, check out the first muxtape I made at zebulon5.muxtape.com has hiphop stuff and popsiclesticks.muxtape.com that has a similar mix to what we have on the player here, only different, and often changing.

One note- You have to be logged into your account to play songs. Starting an account is ridiculously easy and fast, and you can start your own muxtape no matter how few songs you have to put on it right away.

“I’ve arrived to clean your pill drawer out,
and talk to birds like Kilgore Trout.” -Mac Lethal in Crazy from his album 11:11.

Also, later in the song:

“I can now invent my engine for the hard shelled truths
served in a barbell brute version of Marcel Proust…”

Mac Lethal’s been a favorite of mine for quite awhile, since I saw him on Sage Francis’ “Fuck Clear Channel” tour. Got Love Potion collection… which number I don’t remember. There was a lot of good songs on it. 11:11’s no different. Very odd lyrics at times, but he’s got a gift with the sonics for sure, and most of his songs you have to listen to a few times through (despite actually annunciating his words, unlike many rappers) to catch everything because he can be dense, and drop allusions to Run DMC and Ken Kesey within seconds of each other. I highly recommend 11:11, and if you can find a copy of”My Angel Veronica”, also, highly recommend it. That’s all for now.

I’m posting mine, but please, anyone writing a Poem a Day with Poetic Asides, the Writer’s Digest blog, or just on your own, please post into the comments, we’d love to read what everyone else is writing for this festive holiday month.