Short-a-Day: David Foster Wallace's "Luckily the Account Representative Knew CPR" by Aaron Riccio

From Girl With Curious Hair (1989). Personal enjoyment rating (out of 100): 91.[The Pale King will be released in 17 days. I'll be re-reading Wallace's short stories until then.] Though many…

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 1:25pm on March 29, 2011☆⚑

Short-a-Day: David Foster Wallace's "Little Expressionless Animals" by Aaron Riccio

From Girl With Curious Hair (1989). Personal enjoyment rating (out of 100): 97.[In honor of David Foster Wallace's pending, posthumous novel, The Pale King, I'll be spending the weeks until …

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 5:20pm on March 28, 2011☆⚑

THEATER: The Inexplicable Redemption of Agent G by Aaron Riccio

Photo/Jim BaldassareThere is nothing inexplicable about The Inexplicable Redemption of Agent G: for those who have been following the growth of the Vampire Cowboys Theatre Company, this is m…

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 3:05am on March 28, 2011☆⚑

Short-a-Day: Alice Munro's "Pride" by Aaron Riccio

Originally published in Harper's, April 2011. Personal enjoyment rating (out of 100): 70.In a town "where nothing is forgotten (any town, that is, any town is a place like that)," our hareli…

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 2:03pm on March 26, 2011☆⚑

Short-a-Day: Daniel Mason's "The Miraculous Discovery of Psammetichus I" by Aaron Riccio

Originally published in Harper's, March 2011. Personal enjoyment rating (out of 100): 92.In each issue of The New Yorker, there's a one-page section called "Shouts & Murmurs," in which a…

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 1:36pm on March 25, 2011☆⚑

Short-a-Day: Ben Marcus's "Rollingwood" by Aaron Riccio

Originally published in The New Yorker, Mar. 21, 2011. Personal enjoyment rating (out of 100): 51.It must suck to be the one guy in the room who actually cares. The story opens with  "I…

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 11:15pm on March 24, 2011☆⚑

Short-a-Day: Haruki Murakami's "U.F.O. In Kushiro" by Aaron Riccio

Originally published in The New Yorker, Mar. 19, 2001. Personal enjoyment rating (out of 100): 8.[Translated, from the Japanese, by Jay Rubin.] A bit of an opportunistic reprint, here, by Th…

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 4:45pm on March 23, 2011☆⚑

Short-a-Day: Saïd Sayafiezadeh's "Paranoia" by Aaron Riccio

Originally published in The New Yorker, Feb. 28, 2011. Personal enjoyment rating (out of 100): 93.  "Why aren't you eating?" he asked."I saw a fly land on it," I admitted.With irritatio…

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 2:03pm on March 20, 2011☆⚑

THEATER: Kin by Aaron Riccio

We first meet Anna (Kristen Bush) as she, a stony and/or stoic adjunct, is being dumped by an older professor, Simon (Matthew Rauch), who we will never see again. That's fine: in the next hu…

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 5:45pm on March 19, 2011☆⚑

THEATER: Cactus Flower by Aaron Riccio

Stephanie Dickinson (Lois Robbins) is a prickly nurse, which is to be expected: for years she's been reduced to nothing more than a potted fixture beside her boss, Dr. Julian Winston (Maxwel…

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 11:45pm on March 10, 2011☆⚑

Short-a-Day: Robert Coover's "Going For A Beer" by Aaron Riccio

Originally published in The New Yorker, March 14th, 2011. Personal enjoyment rating (out of 100): 53.Coover, he of the experimental concept stories. Here's a life, told through the vague and…

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 3:08am on March 9, 2011☆⚑

THEATER: Feeder: A Love Story by Aaron Riccio

Photo/Jill SteinbergJesse (Jennifer Conley Darling) lies there in a hospital bed, sipping lime water through a straw. In flashbacks, her husband Noel (Pierre Marc-Diennet) enters through the…

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 5:47pm on March 8, 2011☆⚑

Short-a-Day: Mary Gaitskill's "The Other Place" by Aaron Riccio

Originally published in The New Yorker, Feb. 14 & 21, 2011. Personal enjoyment rating (out of 100): 11.I never thought of killing Jenna. I didn't think about killing anyone I actually kn…

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 4:29pm on March 7, 2011☆⚑

THEATER: Invasion! by Aaron Riccio

A famous tragedy once wondered, "What's in a name?", but it's doubtful that Shakespeare, a master of double-talk and other precise tricks of English, ever thought that question would come so…

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 7:06pm on March 2, 2011☆⚑

THEATER: The Hallway Trilogy (Part 1: Rose & Part 2: Paraffin) by Aaron Riccio

[Note: Due to an unfortunate circumstance, I was unable to see Part 3: Nursing, by today's opening. Given how unrelated the first two plays were, and how strongly negative my reaction to the…

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 9:34pm on February 24, 2011☆⚑

Short-a-Day: Steven Millhauser's "Catalogue of the Exhibition: The Art of Edmund Moorash (1810-1846)" by Aaron Riccio

Originally published in Little Kingdoms (1993). Personal enjoyment rating (out of 100): 83.There's a bit of Pale Fire in this, a story told through the gallery notes for the twenty-six portr…

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 3:59pm on February 23, 2011☆⚑

THEATER: God's Waiting Room by Aaron Riccio

The last thing an audience wants is to be told that they're entering limbo for the next seventy minutes, so it's a ballsy move on Ashlin Halfnight's part to have the characters in God's Wait…

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 1:23am on February 22, 2011☆⚑

Short-a-Day: Steven Millhauser's "The Princess, the Dwarf, and the Dungeon" by Aaron Riccio

Originally published in Little Kingdoms (1993). Personal enjoyment rating (out of 100): 76."Grapes swell on our slopes, deer graze in the grassy trench between our walls, and in the winding …

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 2:02am on February 21, 2011☆⚑

metaDRAMA: Music To My Ears by Aaron Riccio

"Hello Flux," reads a recent blog posting on the website of the Flux Theatre Ensemble. "I didn't know about your company or this show until I read the NY Times review. I noticed it because…

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 2:01am on February 20, 2011☆⚑

Short-a-Day: Tessa Hadley's "Honor" by Aaron Riccio

Originally published in The New Yorker, February 7, 2011. Personal enjoyment rating (out of 100): 23.I declare a war on storytelling terrorists like Hadley, you know, the sort of people who …

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 11:55pm on February 19, 2011☆⚑

Short-a-Day: Steven Millhauser's "The Little Kingdom of J. Franklin Payne" by Aaron Riccio

Originally published in Little Kingdoms, 1993. Personal enjoyment rating (out of 100): 92.The animated cartoon was nothing but the poetry of the impossible -- therein lay its exhilaration an…

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 2:07pm on February 15, 2011☆⚑

metaDRAMA: You Can't Swing Both Ways by Aaron Riccio

"Visually enchanting . . . dazzling" - New York Post"Bono and The Edge have contributed stellar songs. SPECTACULAR!" - New Jersey Star-Ledger  "Succeeds thunderously! I was riveted." - …

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 1:58am on February 13, 2011☆⚑

THEATER: Dog Act by Aaron Riccio

Photo/Isaiah TanenbaumAfter the apocalypse, long past our scavenging and regression to a Clockwork Orange-meets-Shakespeare argot ("In a mutant's anus, thou quark-witted son of a three-eyed …

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 6:58pm on February 11, 2011☆⚑

THEATER: The Drowsy Chaperone by Aaron Riccio

Photo/Bella MuccariRobert Martin (Eric Weaver) is marrying Janet Van De Graaff (Whitney Branan), and it's the task of his best man, George (Colin Pritchard, doing a great Roger Bart), and he…

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 7:15pm on February 10, 2011☆⚑

THEATER: Laws of Motion by Aaron Riccio

Photo/Michael Mahoney It's the unscheduled delay on the local train that convinces Christopher (Gregg Mozgala) to fake a sneeze, hoping to catch the eye of the pretty girl, Anna (Sara Buffam…

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 11:59pm on February 9, 2011☆⚑