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 Personal enjoyment rating (out of 100): 92.As a fiction writer myself (specifically an unpublished fiction writer), I am RIGHT THER…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☆⚑

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☆⚑