TV: Treme (Season Two) by Aaron Riccio

Having just gone back to watch the first season again, I maintain that there's nothing on television quite like Treme: it's the most character-driven (and at some points city-driven) show I'…

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 11:19pm on April 21, 2011☆⚑

THEATER: High by Aaron Riccio

The play's called High because it follows the attempts of a street-smart, plainclothes nun named Sister Jamison Connelly (Kathleen Turner) to reform a serious drug user, Cody Randall (Evan J…

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 1:17am on April 20, 2011☆⚑

Short-a-Day: David Foster Wallace's "On His Deathbed, Holding Your Hand, The Acclaimed New Young Off-Broadway Playwright's Father Begs a Boon" by Aaron Riccio

From Brief Interviews with Hideous Men. Personal enjoyment rating (out of 100): 91.My dutifully proud -- wear a mask and your face grows to fit it. Avoid all mirrors as though -- and no, wor…

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 5:36pm on April 15, 2011☆⚑

Short-a-Day: David Foster Wallace's "The Depressed Person" by Aaron Riccio

From Brief Interviews with Hideous Men. Personal enjoyment rating (out of 100): 75.Here's the most emblematic story of Wallace's c. 2000 fiction-writing style: a clinically written, circuito…

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 6:02pm on April 13, 2011☆⚑

Short-a-Day: David Foster Wallace's "Tri-Stan: I Sold Sissee Nar to Ecko" by Aaron Riccio

Originally published in Brief Interviews with Hideous Men. Personal enjoyment rating (out of 100): 86.Creativity now lay in the manipulation of received themes. & soon, the C-sharp siren…

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 2:40am on April 12, 2011☆⚑

Short-a-Day: David Foster Wallace's "Forever Overhead" by Aaron Riccio

Originally published in Brief Interviews with Hideous Men. Personal enjoyment rating (out of 100): 95.And so but here's the story that's almost the total opposite of "Church Not Made with Ha…

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 11:14pm on April 11, 2011☆⚑

Short-a-Day: David Foster Wallace's "Church Not Made with Hands" by Aaron Riccio

Originally published in Brief Interviews with Hideous Men. Personal enjoyment rating (out of 100): 0.First, an epigrammatic quote from A. O. Scott's New York Review of Books article on the o…

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 2:53pm on April 10, 2011☆⚑

THEATER: The Tremendous Tremendous by Aaron Riccio

Coming toward the end of the Great Depression, the 1939 World's Fair was designed to be a tremendous exhibition, one that would celebrate and unite the many different peoples of the world. T…

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 5:15am on April 10, 2011☆⚑

Short-a-Day: David Foster Wallace's "Adult World (I) & (II)" by Aaron Riccio

Originally published in Brief Interviews with Hideous Men. Personal enjoyment rating (out of 100): 76.You may have noticed by now that many of Wallace's stories don't exactly end. After watc…

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 11:46pm on April 9, 2011☆⚑

THEATER: Bring Us the Head of Your Daughter by Aaron Riccio

Photo/Larry Cobra"Forgiveness is the easiest way to ignore shit that ain't pleasant!" shouts Dexel (Jordan Tisdale) as he attempts to reinsert himself (after a long estrangement) into the li…

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 5:09pm on April 8, 2011☆⚑

Short-a-Day: David Foster Wallace's "Octet" by Aaron Riccio

Originally published in Brief Interviews with Hideous Men. Personal enjoyment rating (out of 100): 92.As a fiction writer myself (specifically an unpublished fiction writer), I am RIGHT THER…

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 3:49pm on April 8, 2011☆⚑

Short-a-Day: David Foster Wallace \ (More) Short Shorts (Exclusively) from "Brief Interviews with Hideous Men" by Aaron Riccio

If you're writing a very short story, it may be because you don't have much to say, but that doesn't mean you can't at least say it creatively, as Wallace does in one of his odder classics, …

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 2:46pm on April 7, 2011☆⚑

THEATER: Blue Man Group by Aaron Riccio

When a show runs as long as Blue Man Group (twenty years!), it's easy to take it for granted, a part of the neighborhood you, having once been there, hardly think about any more. I speak fro…

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 5:35pm on April 6, 2011☆⚑

Short-a-Day: David Foster Wallace \ Short Shorts (Exclusively) from "Brief Interviews with Hideous Men" by Aaron Riccio

And now, the best micro-story that you'll ever read: When they were introduced, he made a witticism, hoping to be liked. She laughed extremely hard, hoping to be liked. Then each drove home …

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 5:56am on April 6, 2011☆⚑

THEATER: Marie and Bruce by Aaron Riccio

Though they share the same bed, there's a deep disconnect between Marie (Marisa Tomei) and Bruce (Frank Whaley). If that's not apparent from the first moment you see them in Marie and Bruce,…

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 11:51pm on April 5, 2011☆⚑

Short-a-Day: David Foster Wallace \ Short Shorts (Mostly) from "Brief Interviews With Hideous Men" by Aaron Riccio

At the tail-end of Girl with Curious Hair (ironically, just before his longest story, "Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way"), Wallace makes a sudden shift toward shorter fiction -- p…

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 11:37pm on April 5, 2011☆⚑

Short-a-Day: David Foster Wallace's "Say Never" by Aaron Riccio

Originally published in Girl with Curious Hair. Personal enjoyment rating (out of 100): 48.I mentioned yesterday that Wallace's characters were sometimes criticized for appearing to be shall…

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 3:08pm on April 4, 2011☆⚑

Short-a-Day: David Foster Wallace's "My Appearance" by Aaron Riccio

Originally published in Girl with Curious Hair. Personal enjoyment rating (out of 100): 94.When it comes down to media, particularly television -- or video in general -- and the ways in whic…

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 11:09pm on April 3, 2011☆⚑

Short-a-Day: David Foster Wallace's "Here and There" by Aaron Riccio

Originally published in Girl With Curious Hair. Personal enjoyment rating (out of 100): 28.[Okay, I've received my copy of The Pale King, but since I haven't finished my taxes yet -- or my c…

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 7:01pm on April 2, 2011☆⚑

THEATER: How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying by Aaron Riccio

Photos/The Hartman GroupIn this bleak economic time, it's nice to have a cheery old-fashioned musical putting a fresh spin on office politics: it's still the daily grind, as evidenced by son…

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 7:01pm on April 1, 2011☆⚑

Short-a-Day: David Foster Wallace's "In the Arcade at the Beginning of the End (Today)" by Aaron Riccio

Originally published in Brief Interviews With Hideous Men*. Personal enjoyment rating (out of 100): 75.[Heavily footnoted story; for the sake of quoting, I've simply put the footnotes in bra…

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 3:47am on April 1, 2011☆⚑

Short-a-Day: David Foster Wallace's "John Billy" by Aaron Riccio

Originally published in Girl With Curious Hair. Personal enjoyment rating (out of 100): 68.Was telling the dust-watcher how C. Nunn Jr. passed up multitudes of come-hitherish cheerleaders an…

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 1:45am on April 1, 2011☆⚑

Short-a-Day: David Foster Wallace's "Lyndon" by Aaron Riccio

Originally published in Girl With Curious Hair. Personal enjoyment rating (out of 100): 22.[Continuing the countdown to whenever my copy of The Pale King arrives from Shipping Limbo.] An odd…

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 5:28pm on March 31, 2011☆⚑

THEATER: La Cage Aux Folles by Aaron Riccio

"We are what we are," goes the bold-for-1982 anthem of La Cage Aux Folles. That lovely music still holds up for this 2010 revival, but it's challenged now by the Broadway sensibilities of an…

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 5:22pm on March 30, 2011☆⚑

Short-a-Day: David Foster Wallace's "Girl With Curious Hair" by Aaron Riccio

From Girl With Curious Hair (1989). Personal enjoyment rating (out of 100): 61.[Apparently, The Pale King has already been released through some online pre-orders. Regardless, I will continu…

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 4:14pm on March 30, 2011☆⚑