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: 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☆⚑

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☆⚑

Short-a-Day: Don DeLillo's "Hammer and Sickle" by Aaron Riccio

Originally published in Harper's Magazine, December 2010. Personal enjoyment rating (out of 100): x.I'd like to give Harper's and DeLilo the benefit of the doubt and say that this story wa…

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 3:23am on January 1, 2011☆⚑

Ringing in the New Year by Aaron Riccio

Just a reminder (and an invitation) to everyone out there: I'm going to be in Times Square tonight, working as a moderator for the livestream and blog coverage of all the New Year's festivit…

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 12:41pm on December 31, 2010☆⚑

Short-a-Day: Steven Millhauser's "Getting Closer" by Aaron Riccio

Originally published in The New Yorker, Jan. 3, 2011. Personal enjoyment rating (out of 100): 95.But now, as he stands at the end of waiting, something is wrong.... If he goes into the…

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 12:33pm on December 31, 2010☆⚑

Short-a-Day: George Saunders's "Escape from Spiderhead" by Aaron Riccio

Originally published in The New Yorker, Dec. 20, 2010. Personal enjoyment rating (out of 100): 69.What makes us human? What makes us tick? This is the sort of unanswerable philosophica…

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 4:34am on December 30, 2010☆⚑

Short-a-Day: Nuruddin Farah's "YoungThing" by Aaron Riccio

Originally published in The New Yorker, Dec. 13, 2010. Personal enjoyment rating (out of 100): 29.Brilliant opening line: "A Yankee cap- and Ray-Ban-wearing boy of indeterminate age ge…

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 8:16am on December 29, 2010☆⚑

Short-a-Day: Jim Gavin's "Costello" by Aaron Riccio

Originally published in The New Yorker, Dec. 6, 2010. Personal enjoyment rating (out of 100): 73.MACROSomewhere along the line, someone convinced fiction editors -- particularly those …

SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 1:13am on December 28, 2010☆⚑