Short-a-Day: Ernst Weiss's "The Rat Ship" by Aaron Riccio

Originally published in A Public Space, No. 5, 2007. Personal enjoyment rating (out of 100): 63.[Part of a longer novel, Georg Letham (1931); translated from the German by Joel Rotenburg.]Un…

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 2:50pm on January 13, 2011☆⚑

Short-a-Day: Valery Bryusov's "The Republic of the Southern Cross" by Aaron Riccio

Republished (from Russia, 1905) in A Public Space, No. 4, 2007. Personal enjoyment rating (out of 100): 83.[Part of the FOCUS: Antarctica series.] An entertaining, newspaper-like account of …

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 11:07pm on January 12, 2011☆⚑

THEATER: Blood from a Stone by Aaron Riccio

Photo/Monique CarboniApparently director Scott Elliott and the New Group take their idioms very seriously: as the title of Tommy Nohilly's Blood from a Stone suggests, they have taken a flin…

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 7:23pm on January 12, 2011☆⚑

THEATER: Kim Noble Will Die by Aaron Riccio

Whether or not it's true that Kim Noble is suicidal, has been in and out of psychiatric care, and was almost banned from entering the US with his one-man show Kim Noble Will Die because of t…

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 5:39pm on January 12, 2011☆⚑

Short-a-Day: Owen Marshall's "The Frozen Continents" by Aaron Riccio

Originally published in A Public Space, No. 4, 2007. Personal enjoyment rating (out of 100): 1.[Part of the FOCUS: Antarctica series.] I found it an odd sensation at first; standing waist de…

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 11:44pm on January 11, 2011☆⚑

Short-a-Day: Helen Schulman's "I Am Seventy-Five" by Aaron Riccio

Originally published in A Public Space, No. 4, 2007. Personal enjoyment rating (out of 100): 96.So much for discovering the joys of homoeroticism today. She was alive and alone with a mess t…

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 5:52pm on January 10, 2011☆⚑

THEATER: Hello Hi There by Aaron Riccio

[Part of the COIL Festival]Actors have nothing to fear from Annie Dorsen's "ipad-de-deus," Hello Hi There, which has two laptop-based chatter bots attempting to talk about the famous 1971 …

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 9:44pm on January 9, 2011☆⚑

Short-a-Day: William T. Vollman's "Too Late" by Aaron Riccio

Originally published in A Public Space, No. 4, 2007. Personal enjoyment rating (out of 100): 1.You never know what you're going to get with Vollman, but it's probably going to be overwritten…

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 9:44pm on January 9, 2011☆⚑

THEATER: Your brother. Remember? by Aaron Riccio

Photo/Nancy Geeroms"Manipulation is acting in a nutshell," says Zachary Oberzan, speaking as John Claude van Damme, reciting the words of his brother Gator Oberzan, but Your brother. Remem…

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 11:49pm on January 8, 2011☆⚑

Short-a-Day: Jim Shepard's "Courtesy for Beginners" by Aaron Riccio

Originally published in A Public Space, No. 4, 2007. Personal enjoyment rating (out of 100): 80.Even though his story's set toward the start of the Vietnam War, Shepard so accurately describ…

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 1:00am on January 8, 2011☆⚑

THEATER: Vice Versa by Aaron Riccio

Photo/Julian Oppenheim[Part of the Under the Radar Festival]In "Bull," the second novella of Will Self's 1993 book, "Cock and Bull," a large, homosexual, heavyset young man wakes up to find …

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 11:47pm on January 7, 2011☆⚑

THEATER: Diciembre by Aaron Riccio

Photo/Valentina Newman[Part of the Under the Radar Festival]Considering how absurdly arbitrary the reasons for getting into a war usually are in the first place, it makes sense that Guillerm…

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 5:56pm on January 7, 2011☆⚑

THEATER: Ameriville by Aaron Riccio

Photo/Saddi Khali[Part of the Under the Radar Festival]"You have to know how other people live," posits Universes, the company behind Ameriville, shortly before they launch into a freewheeli…

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 5:12pm on January 7, 2011☆⚑

TV: Lights Out by Aaron Riccio

Is the new boxing drama from FX a knockout or a stretched-out derivative of The Fighter and Rocky Balboa? Could be both, might be neither; find out more by reading my review for Slant Magazi…

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 3:14pm on January 7, 2011☆⚑

THEATER: Bonanza by Aaron Riccio

Photo/BerlinBerlin[Part of the Under the Radar Festival]Even though the town of Bonanza, Colorado, has only seven full-time residents, it's a little naive of company Berlin (Bart Baele, Yves…

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 3:09pm on January 7, 2011☆⚑

Short-a-Day: Jack Livings's "The Heir" by Aaron Riccio

Originally published in A Public Space, No. 4. Personal enjoyment rating (out of 100): 18.Being both a cultural tale about the division between the Chinese and the Uyghurs and a generational…

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 1:52am on January 7, 2011☆⚑

THEATER: A Small Fire by Aaron Riccio

When we first meet Emily Bridges (Michele Pawk) at the opening of A Small Fire, she's the ball-busting commander of her construction site, joking around with her tough-looking foreman Billy …

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 12:44pm on January 6, 2011☆⚑

Short-a-Day: Louise Erdrich's "The Years of My Birth" by Aaron Riccio

Originally published in The New Yorker, Jan. 10, 2011. Personal enjoyment rating (out of 100): 72.An original series of images -- a fifty-year-old's recollection of her deformed birth as a s…

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 12:53am on January 6, 2011☆⚑

THEATER: Phobophilia by Aaron Riccio

Photo/2boys.tv[Part of the Under the Radar Festival]Your blindfold is taken off, revealing a man in a suit, standing on a box. He wears a cloth over his head, his arms are held out in Guanta…

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 11:24pm on January 5, 2011☆⚑

TV: Californication by Aaron Riccio

Junk television at its most indulgent: just be glad the women are hot and that creator Tom Kapinos has an ear for witty dialogue and a sense for farce, and then go along for the ride. Read t…

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 7:26pm on January 5, 2011☆⚑

Short-a-Day: Leslie Jamison's "Quiet Men" by Aaron Riccio

Originally published in A Public Space 03, Winter 2007. Personal enjoyment rating (out of 100): 82.We sat like grade-schoolers, barely touching. Neither one of us spoke. I pointed out the co…

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 2:09am on January 5, 2011☆⚑

metaDRAMA: Best Theater of 2010 by Aaron Riccio

It's great when critics agree that a show is terrific, as with The Aliens, Clybourne Park, and In the Footprint, but it's perhaps better when critics disagree, as with The Little Foxes, Lear…

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 1:20pm on January 4, 2011☆⚑

Short-a-Day: Jonathan Lethem's "The Night They First Played Monster Eyes" by Aaron Riccio

Originally published in A Public Space 03, Winter 2007. Personal enjoyment rating (out of 100): 82.In the same issue that brought us a story hidden in what is essentially the pure descriptio…

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 11:21am on January 4, 2011☆⚑

Short-a-Day: Jose de Pierola's "In the Belly of the Night" by Aaron Riccio

Originally published in A Public Space 03, Winter 2007. Personal enjoyment rating (out of 100): 68.[Part of the FOCUS: Peru series.]The only thing missing from this story, about a Peruvian…

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 2:07pm on January 3, 2011☆⚑

Short-a-Day: Mark Slouka's "The Hare's Mask" by Aaron Riccio

Originally published in Harper's Magazine, January 2010. Personal enjoyment rating (out of 100): 25.I'm going to call this story "specifically generic," for while Slouka adds plenty of det…

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 9:24pm on January 2, 2011☆⚑