THEATER: Standards of Decency 3: 300 Vaginas Before Breakfast by Aaron Riccio

I'll bet you three hundred people click the link to this review before breakfast, whether they're looking for vaginas, breakfast, or both, the final choice being the pornographic Meal of Cha…

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 1:34am on June 3, 2011☆⚑

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

Originally published in The New Yorker, June 6, 2011. Personal enjoyment rating (out of 100): 7."I unbuttoned the skirt and stepped out of it, still staring at the book. Something had happen…

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 1:59am on June 2, 2011☆⚑

Short-a-Day: Kate Walbert's "M&M World" by Aaron Riccio

Originally published in The New Yorker, May 30, 2011. Personal enjoyment rating (out of 100): 30."The city erupts, oozes, overflows; everyone is outdoors, walking quickly or standing on the …

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 12:51am on June 1, 2011☆⚑

Short-a-Day: Ron Rash's "The Trusty" by Aaron Riccio

Originally published in The New Yorker, May 16, 2011. Personal enjoyment rating (out of 100): 83.The only problem with Rash's story is that it's a bit too reliable: from the moment we learn …

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 1:16am on May 31, 2011☆⚑

Short-a-Day: Ludmilla Petrushevskaya's "Medea" by Aaron Riccio

Originally published in Harper's, May 2011. Personal satisfaction rating (out of 100): 45. [Translated from the Russian by Keith Gessen and Anna Summers]"This is an awful story and it began …

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 1:06am on May 30, 2011☆⚑

Short-a-Day: Stephen King's "Herman Wouk Is Still Alive" by Aaron Riccio

Originally published in The Atlantic, May 2011. Personal enjoyment rating (out of 100): 96.Given that he's known best for his heavily plotted horror novels, and not for his characters, it's …

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 12:30am on May 29, 2011☆⚑

Short-a-Day: Mory Morris's "The Cross Word" by Aaron Riccio

Originally published in The Atlantic, May 2011. Personal enjoyment rating (out of 100): -1 (i.e., offensive).Not to sound like a snob, but once you start doing the upper-tier crosswords of T…

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 5:56pm on May 28, 2011☆⚑

Short-a-Day: Michael Ondaatje's "The Cat's Table" by Aaron Riccio

Originally published in The New Yorker. Personal enjoyment rating (out of 100): 65.Either I'm getting better at identifying excerpts passing as short stories or The New Yorker is getting les…

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 1:58am on May 27, 2011☆⚑

Short-a-Day: Donald Antrim's "He Knew" by Aaron Riccio

Originally published in The New Yorker, May 9, 2011. Personal enjoyment rating (out of 100): 13. "At the booth, he counted out pills, his anti-depressants and her anti-anxieties--he c…

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 1:35am on May 26, 2011☆⚑

Short-a-Day: Sam Lipsyte's "Deniers" by Aaron Riccio

Originally published in The New Yorker, May 2, 2011. Personal enjoyment rating (out of 100): 80.A surprising, spry story about survivors: then and now. Mandy's father, a Holocaust survivor, …

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 1:22am on May 25, 2011☆⚑

Short-a-Day: Thomas McGuane's "The Good Samaritan" by Aaron Riccio

Originally published in The New Yorker, April 25, 2011. Personal enjoyment rating (out of 100): 90.What makes someone good? Barney, a temporary ranch-hand hired by an accidentally injured Sz…

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 1:28am on May 10, 2011☆⚑

THEATER: The School for Lies by Aaron Riccio

The School for Lies, according to playwright David Ives (who is freely and triumphantly riffing off of Moliere's masterpiece, The Misanthrope), is just another way of describing polite socie…

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 5:29am on May 2, 2011☆⚑

Short-a-Day: Ludmilla Petrushevskaya's "A Withered Branch" by Aaron Riccio

Originally published in The New Yorker, April 18, 2011. Personal enjoyment rating (out of 100): 22.[Translated from the Russian by Anna Summers.] "I met my twin soul at dawn on a narrow stre…

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 12:57am on April 30, 2011☆⚑

Short-a-Day: Keith Ridgway's "Goo Book" by Aaron Riccio

 Originally published in The New Yorker, April 11, 2011. Personal enjoyment rating (out of 100): 52.Not the good book, mind you, that much is clear from the opening line -- "It was fuck…

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 2:18pm on April 29, 2011☆⚑

PALE SPRING: When You Were Inside Them They Ceased To Be Clouds (§1 - §9) by Aaron Riccio

[The first in a series of posts that I'll be making for the blog-through of David Foster Wallace's The Pale King, all of which can be found, in the future, at Pale Spring.]If we are what we …

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 6:59pm on April 27, 2011☆⚑

THEATER: The Book of Mormon by Aaron Riccio

Lo, and it was true that Matt Stone, Trey Parker, and Robert Lopez fill the book and lyrics of The Book of Mormon with references to fucking magical frogs (as opposed to virgin babies), fuck…

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 5:24pm on April 27, 2011☆⚑

Short-a-Day: Ramona Ausubel's "Atria" by Aaron Riccio

Originally published in The New Yorker, April 4., 2011. Personal enjoyment rating (out of 100): 38.What's the line -- if there is one -- between humans and beasts? High-school sophomore Haze…

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 1:48pm on April 27, 2011☆⚑

THEATER: "Lover. Muse. Mockingbird. Whore." by Aaron Riccio

Photos/Corey Tatarczuk Company XIV's latest, a so-called "meditation" on the desultory women in Charles Bukowski's life, is a carefully culled selection of the poet's work, each piece select…

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 4:23pm on April 26, 2011☆⚑

Short-a-Day: Lore Segal's "The Ice Worm" by Aaron Riccio

Originally published in Harper's, May 2011. Personal enjoyment rating (out of 100): 81.A small story, no doubt, but far from a slight one. If Segal had written merely of Maggie's "small ice-…

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 3:19pm on April 26, 2011☆⚑

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☆⚑