Spine & Crown

Wave Poetry Festival

2011-11-01T23:19:00.000-07:00

I'll be discussing Rilke translations and reading some of my own at this year's Wave Poetry Festival, Friday, Nov. 4th, 11:30am.

As promised over on our Facebook page, I include here a couple of the translations I've been working on. They're from Das Buch der Bilder - The Book of Images.

Hope to see you at the festival!

Evening

Evening slowly changes its garments,
held for it by a border of ancient trees;
you watch: the lands separate from you,
one traveling skyward, and one that falls;

and leave you, belonging fully to neither,
not quite so dark as the house in silence
not so securely invoking the eternal
as that which will rise a star each night-

and leave to you (unspeakably to untangle)
your life, fearful and gigantic and ripening,
so that, now cramped and now comprehending,
it alternates in you between stone and star.

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The Song of the Idiot

They don't hinder me. They let me pass.
They say nothing could happen.
How good.
Nothing could happen. Everything springs from
and circles round the Holy Ghost,
round that specific Ghost (you know) -,
how good.

No, one really must not believe
there is any danger in it.
There is of course the blood.
The blood is the worst. The blood is tough.
Sometimes I think I can't go on -.
(How good.)

Oh what a lovely ball that is;
red and round like an everywhere.
Good, that you made it.
Perhaps it comes when one calls?

How strangely everything behaves,
pushed together, swimming apart:
friendly, a little indistinct.
How good.

Sale upon a sea of bargains, matey!!!

2011-02-04T18:13:00.000-08:00

In preparation for our big move (one whole block for a man, one giant decrease in shelf space), we're ditching our non-internet stock at 50% off! Don't wait for deeper discounts, sahib! We'll just buy a crowbar and wedge the unsold stuff into our storage unit and trot it out at an unspecified future date for 0% off!

Free at last!

2011-01-25T15:26:00.000-08:00

Wow. It's actually happening. Are we freaked out and overjoyed simultaneously? Yes. Yes, we are. And emotionally vulnerable. Please don't attack us or attempt seduction.

Why is this so? The piper came for his payment, we paid, and thank god almighty, we are free at last! We'll be leaving our digs at 413 E. Pine St. as of mid-February. In truth, our last day open for business will be the 11th.

Then we pick up just where we left off- come March 1st - sharing space with Wall of Sound, one block down the street at 315 E. Pine! It's a win-win for all you culture-lovers!

Shall we dance?

2010-01-31T17:47:00.000-08:00

Spine and Crown is continuing a vigorous virtual life over on Facebook. This is of no assistance to those without Facebook accounts, so we will try to have something new here occasionally... but you might wish to try the Facebook thing. It doesn't bite. Often.

2009-11-25T00:10:00.000-08:00

December 4th, people. It's a Friday. From 6pm to 9pm, you may partake of mulled wine and snacks. The quality of both will improve the more the wine flows. Fourth anniversary party. We'll be happy to see you there.

August is INSANE!

2009-08-09T17:27:00.000-07:00

It seems like everyone is flipping out all around us! All that heat must have baked some brain pans, judging by the ample evidence! Wailing! Gnashing of teeth! Sweat! Hominy and fatback! Some people are leaving, some are moving across town, and some have just slipped beneath the waves! Old Nicodemus will be pleased about that!

There must be something in the water. Other than traces of antibiotics and prescription anti-depressants (are there any other kind?) Or maybe that would do it? Anyone got a degree in forensic toxicology? Vincent Gallo, chin model and auteur, once wrote, "If you're feeling froggy... jump!" But which direction, Vinnie? Which direction?

Oh, for an ounce of stability! Nobody's even sure of what they want anymore! We know a guy who until recently would never settle for anything less than a hardcover first edition of every book he bought. Now he's lucky to afford a handful of loose pages from a tenth edition wrapped in limp biscuit dough! Does he even want that? Who knows? But there he goes with his biscuit dough! Find an oven, buddy!

What prospect for love in such a climate? What prospect for respect? And what respect for prospects? Most importantly, what prospect for profits? Our triple-A rating was recently downgraded by the Brazilian government! The indignity!

You know that thing that surfers do? When they race along a wave that's crashing over them? They call that "shooting the hoop," or "draping the barrel," or something like that. Well, it's a perfect moment when it happens and can make up for an entire day of shitty surfing. So, for all you S&C-lovers out there who are surfing like shit, we're wishing you a perfect moment. It's not much, but it's not like we can live your lives FOR you! So, shoot your hoop already! Drape that barrel! Wax your thigh! Cartwheels! Cartwheels! Cartwheels!

Hurry up, September!

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This week:

All items mentioned below are first come, first serve. If you want something, let us know post-haste (because they're also for sale on the interweb)! All new items sell for cover price, used items as marked. Sadly, trade credit cannot be used for new items.

Our books are always searchable via ABEbooks.

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Écrits: A Selection, Jacques Lacan
(Hardcover, first edition in English)

Another French giant:

"Lacan was an active intellectual of the inter-war period; he associated with André Breton and Georges Bataille, Salvador Dalí and Pablo Picasso. He attended the mouvement Psyché founded by Maryse Choisy. He published in the Surrealist journal Minotaure and attended the first, public reading of Ulysses."

He also made a baby with Bataille's wife when old Georges wasn't looking. Naughty Jacques!

($110)

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A Guide to Western Historical Scripts from Antiquity to 1600, Michelle P. Brown
(Paperback)

People have been writing funny for millions of years. It didn't start with this newsletter, though you'd be forgiven for thinking so!

You're curious. What kind of funny writings happened before you were born? Well, curiosity is natural. What's unnatural is to ignore that curiosity and deny yourself the ownership of a fine and funny book.

Oh, and the doctor called. Says you're going to need surgery on that palimpsest. Don't worry. It's outpatient.

($23) [Sold]

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The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, Yukio Mishima
(Paperback, first paperback edition)

This guy wrote 12 novels by the time he was 33 and stuck a knife in his own guts when he was 45. Twelve years after he had written his twelfth novel. Spooky.

($15) [Sold]

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Wallace Berman: Retrospective, Fellows of Contemporary Art
(Paperback, out of print)

A 13th century Kabbalistic work called the Sefer ha-Temunah claims that this world is beset by evils because one of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet is imperfect (or perhaps missing altogether). As each age defines the meanings of words anew, the imperfections grow. This really has nothing to do with Wallace Berman, except that he painted Hebrew letters obsessively in his work. Was he trying to fix the universe?

($45) [Sold]

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The Heavenly Tree Grows Upward: Selected Works by Harry Smith, Philip Taaffe, and Fred Tomaselli
(Paperback, out of print)

From Kabbalah to alchemy by way of King Kong Kitchie Kitchie Ki Me Oh. Harry Smith (b. Portland, OR, 1923 - filmmaker, painter, mystic, nutjob) will probably always be remembered best as an archivist. His Anthology of American Folk Music is a portrait that captures the ridiculous vitality and sheer lunacy of days gone by. If there was a world we could choose to live in, it would be that one. Thank you, Harry!

($50) [Sold]

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Find an oven, buddy!

-----

Everything's turning into a pile of shit.

Except this.

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Wipeout!

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# of weeks since Spine and Crown inception: 196

# of weeks since inception that no mention of Spine and Crown has appeared in the print edition of The Stranger: 196

Vita Brevis

2009-08-02T14:15:00.000-07:00

All you Latins know what we mean! And that vita just keeps getting more brevis, the longer you go on! In ancient times, a long-lived man was just assumed to be a coward, for surely he had been in the rear with the gear when the battle came. Or maybe back home, diddling the wives of the suckers out fighting some king's war. Either way, that old mo-fo just wasn't someone you wanted hanging around.

That's why the Japanese used to drag their geriatrics up the side of a mountain and abandon them! Well, there might have been other reasons, but if we were in charge of Japan back then, that would have been our reasoning!

Much better to die on the point of a spear, spitting in the eye of your enemy, who you are killing also, but with a mace-like device which delivers such an explosive blow, his face literally explodes like a ball of raw bacon that's exploding, and really, his eye is the only thing left for you to aim spit at. Then you finish dying, your side wins the battle, and your king gets rich.

But now, we're all so CYNICAL, we think we can only find meaning in personal goals. Dying in battle is, like, for people who DON'T have an associates degree!

YOU don't want to submerge your unique personality! Let's face it: Your ring tone is da bizness! YOU want to go to beauty school to learn how to do nails like THAT! YOU want your own garden with healthy organic vegetables to nourish YOUR body! YOU want to ride in that BMW, even if you have to kiss the driver "down there"!

Well, mission ACCOMPLISHED, señor selfish! But what of your impoverished king? You're all going to live to be old, but with no GLORY! Whose head will be your exploding bacon ball?

Think of it like this: One god = one king = one channel on tv.

That's the old days. That's the glory, the ecstasy of St. Teresa, Kilimanjaro rising like a lepress above the Serengeti!

Today we've got a landfill of -isms, 2500 gods (and that's only counting versions of the christian one), and sebenty zentrillion live television streams. And where are we? Living in reality so poorly executed, it might have been designed by an ant colony dosed with devil weed!

Here at Spine and Crown Industries, however, a solution has been devised. Take back your purity of heart! Find your unity of vision! Make us rich!

That's right! Drink OUR kool-aid! We will lead; you will fight! As our army masses, we will search wikipedia, combing through to find weak nations to topple! The South Pacific is looking likely! You know you want it!

One spine to find them!

One crown to bring them and in the darkness bind them!

ONE SHOP TO RULE THEM ALL!

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This week:

All items mentioned below are first come, first serve. If you want something, let us know post-haste (because they're also for sale on the interweb)! All new items sell for cover price, used items as marked. Sadly, trade credit cannot be used for new items.

Our books are always searchable via ABEbooks.

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Tao Te Ching, Aleister Crowley, trans.
(Paperback, out of print)

Let the Great Beast ride you up one side and tao the other!

Sorry! Couldn't help it!

This is the Aleister "devil-sex-man" Crowley version of the Tao! He didn't know any Chinese, so he just winged it! But he did walk across China in his youth and the lessons he absorbed from the asian soil were transmitted directly into his pen, later to blast through your actual mental cortexes! But only if you buy this book! Beasts gotta eat!

($15) [Sold]

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The Incal: The Epic Conspiracy, Alexandro Jodorowsky and Moebius
(Paperback, out of print)

Ooooh! Is that old "Holy Mountain" Jodorowsky? Writing a comic book? With art by Moebius? Why, it's chocolate and peanut butter all over again!

Jodorowsky became one of our favorite people when we read this interview:

"This is why I like so much the plastic man of the "Fantastic Four" in Marvel Comics. What's his name? He is married to the Invisible Girl. Plastic man and Invisible Woman can be great pornography. Plastic man fucking the girl and then he make his penis very, very, very thin and put inside her vein, and the penis can go, and go, and go from her vein to her heart. He can ejaculate in the center of his woman's heart. Fantastic! Fantastic!"

($45)

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Loser: The Real Seattle Music Story (2nd edition, updated), Clark Humphrey
(Paperback, out of print)

True story of "The Grunge," a near-mythical dance hall sensation which began right here in Seattle's own saloons and brothels! All those Skid Road types would pour out at closing time, half-poisoned by cheap wood alcohol and Jamaican Ginger Extract, and roll around in the muddy streets, panting and crazed. In 1901, their tortured groans and howls were captured on wax cylinder, which - mistakenly played back at the wrong speed - became the first bona fide hit for Edison "Gold Moulded" Records! Ah! The good old days!

($30)

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Songs They Never Play on the Radio: Nico: The Last Bohemian, James Young
(Paperback, out of print)

The lemon that Lou Reed made into lemonade - but, oh, she was so much more than that. There was a darkness in her soul, a tragedy writ willowy and blonde. Now that you're gone, we'll never make love, Nico, but I'll always wish that you wished that we had.

($40)

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The Key and Silence in Court, Patricia Wentworth
(Paperback, out of print)

Known for popularizing the plight of Women in Terror, Wentworth stipulated in her contract that the covers of her books should pull no punches. Some of the women lean left, some lean right. But they are all in terror. Through her efforts, many women were calmed, but the painters of paperback covers were afterward left with fewer and fewer models who could portray the correct emotion. The art has never recovered.

($12, $40 [Sold])

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What is the 4th Dimension?

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Everything's turning into a pile of shit.

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Dog Helps Woman Lick Brain Injury

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# of weeks since Spine and Crown inception: 195

# of weeks since inception that no mention of Spine and Crown has appeared in the print edition of The Stranger: 195

That's MISTER Jibber Jabber to YOU!

2009-07-19T23:59:00.000-07:00

A lot of great conversations happen here at Spine and Crown.

You may not have been a part of one, but that says more about you than us, because we're usually jabbering like the Chipmunks (all three) at 78 rpm. And it's grand. If it weren't for all the eccentric and fractured mother-lovers on Capitol Hill, this thing wouldn't be worth doing!

Something that distinguishes all the verbal lather around here from a lot of the communication available to the modern hairless ape is that it happens face to face. Certain Eastern traditions maintain a firm "back to back" theory of communication, and there is even the Kazakh custom known as the "buttock communion," but we don't subscribe to such notions. No, we like it up front and personal. We don't hold with this FriendFace or TwitterBook or whatever. We're not even sure why those things exist. Maybe we'd feel differently if we'd ever been "poked." Or, dare we dream, "super-poked!"

And there we've hit upon the crux of the problem. You can super-poke away, all ye so inclined, but the humanzee needs the presence of another humanzee to accomplish anything that's worth a hill of beans in this goddamn crazy world!

Solitude is great for fortresses, but for every Einstein you hand us, we'll hand you back a Rowan and Martin! No? A Horkheimer and Adorno? Never heard of them, eh? Hmmm. This is harder than we thought. A Lee and Kirby! A Gilbert and Sullivan! A Brecht and Weill! A Taylor and Millis!

Take that, isolates! Show us parts, and we'll show you a whole that is greater than their sum! The law of conservation of matter and energy means nothing to us!

But we've digressed.

Hang out in a public place, like say, a book shop, for instance. Listen to those people jibber jabber! They just can't get enough of it. They're making the magic glue that sticks civilization together!

Sure, they can do the same thing into their wireless tricorders, but then it's only jibber, for the jabber is happening on the other end, far out of view. Unless you're near the person on the other end, in which case you have jabber with no jibber.

But those people in the book shop, those lucky ones who look into the face of another and see that their meaning is understood, (without emoticons!)... It is they who receive the invaluable treasure that is validation.

Validation! The only meaningful gift one human can give another! You are valid! You're opinions don't induce immediate barking laughter! And they matter! YOU matter!

(All examples of validation presented above are understood to be purely hypothetical, and not actual reactions to your implausible, half-baked theories or 3/4 cracked personalities. Our lawyers made us say that!)

Blessed, blessed physical proximity! You can't beat it with a stick, and you can't beat anything with a stick without it! All that body language, all those micro-expressions! No validation through TweetFace! No validation via Nokia! Only tepid bath water!

Shit on the modern age! Don your home-tanned leather leggings and bang a drum! Ned Ludd, revive! Captain Swing, do your thing! Cell towers were made for toppling, and you! You were made for getting naked and hooting and hollering en masse in a lusty chorus, nude, out of doors, naked! Throw the bluetooth on the fire! Join the uni-mind of thrashing primate interaction! Let the ages roll!

Then buy a book from us (so we can stay in business), go home, lock the door so no one can bother you, and read it alone.

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This week:

All items mentioned below are first come, first serve. If you want something, let us know post-haste (because they're also for sale on the interweb)! All new items sell for cover price, used items as marked. Sadly, trade credit cannot be used for new items.

Our books are always searchable via ABEbooks.

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Jack Kirby's Fourth World Omnibus, Vol. 2, Jack "King" Kirby
(Hardcover)

Legend has it that Jack Kirby was so besieged by ideas, he resorted to scribbling them on little scraps that ended up covering his work space like snow. He once put his cigar down in the ashtray and lit a pile of ideas on fire. He was inconsolable. Explaining things to his wife Roz, he estimated that he might have reduced upwards of 50 new story concepts to ashes. Roz shrugged and put things in perspective. "So you've lost an afternoon's work. Get over it!" Nowhere is the comic world's most generative imagination harder at work than in these Fourth World volumes. Top notch!

($25) [Sold]

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Essays Ancient and Modern, T.S. Eliot
(Hardcover, first edition)

Such a high level of erudition, it ALMOST occludes our memory of Eliot's unsavory death; electrical cord wrapped around neck and genitals, left hanging in a Bangkok hotel wardrobe like a stained tuxedo jacket. Almost, Tom! Almost!

($70)

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Gnosticism: Beliefs and Practices, John Glyndwr Harris
(Paperback, out of print)

So the archons, see, are like angels. But nasty angels who hate us. Why? Because we were created in god's image, and they weren't. Meanwhile, god turned his back on creation. These days, the archons call the tune and make us dance the lambada of misery.

A world ruled by nasty angels who hate us. Why does Gnosticism seem like a religion for our times?

($22)

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Mysterium Coniunctionis, C.G. Jung
(Paperback)

In the caves under his vast estate at Bollingen, Carl Jung used his view-o-tron to spy on the past. He watched alchemists turn lead into, well, lead. But they had a rip-roaring time doing it! And Jung watched them encode their lore in dark tomes, which, when fed through his decoder ring, became veritable doorways into the unconscious mind! O mighty view-o-tron! Mighty, mighty view-o-tron!

And thank christ he finally took an interest in alchemy! It was a welcome change from his constant watching, rewinding, and masturbating to the moment of his own conception. Dirty old wig-picker!

($15) [Sold]

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Tertium Organum: A Key to the Enigmas of the World, P.D. Ouspensky
(Hardcover, third American edition, authorized and revised)

Poo-poo! Wee-wee! Brother-sister incest! Mouse-skin eyebrows! Yah!

Had to get all that out, because we've got to sneak in another serious review. We were prepared to go to town on this guy and his Gurdjieff/Blavatsky/Theosophy hoo-hah! But now, after looking into it a little, we're not sure if we want to sell this book at all. We're sick of being stuck in this three dimensional horse-shit! If we can just get these old brains up to the 4th dimension, maybe we can be disappointed by a whole new dimension's horse-shit. Bring it on, P.D. Ouspensky!

P.S. - We'll still sell it. We're hungry and our belly hurts.

($12) [Sold]

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!!!!!This week, we're giving all our love to Goldman Sachs!!!!!

!!!!!HANG IN THERE GUYS!!!!!

Matt Taibbi's controversial Goldman takedown!

What economy?

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Everything's turning into a pile of shit.

Except this.

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# of weeks since Spine and Crown inception: 193

# of weeks since inception that no mention of Spine and Crown has appeared in the print edition of The Stranger: 193

The Wisdom of Crowds

2009-07-03T19:15:00.001-07:00

A common refrain on the internet these days is the importance of crowd-think. That is, that there are patterns to be distilled out of the collective decisions of large groups. And there probably are, if you can be bothered to be enough of a code-stroker to extract those patterns. For our part, crowds seem to have the same amount of wisdom as the average individual, minus about 100%. Or maybe as much as a large pile of sausage casings, we're not sure. Another word for crowd, after all, is mob. Can we get a "Hell yeah!" for the wisdom of mobs?

Despite this, we'd like to do something different this week... We'd like to hijack the wisdom of our own personal mob to solve a problem that's been nibbling at us. No tricks! It's an actual problem, a mental exercise that defeats our feeble think-muscles. Maybe you will conquer it and can crow to us of your victory.

Here it is: This whole thing is like a game show. You've got three curtains. Behind one is a shiny new glittering something or other. Behind the other two is a kick in the pants! You have to pick a curtain and hope for the best.

After you pick your curtain, the host decides to make things interesting. He pulls back one of the curtains to reeveeeaaallll... a kick in the pants!

So now you've got two curtains left. The host offers to let you switch to the other unopened curtain or stick with your original choice. And here's the core of the problem: Do you have a better chance of winning the shiny something by switching or by sticking?

You started with a 1 in 3 chance of being right. Now that one of the wrong choices has been revealed and eliminated, you've got a 1 in 2 chance, right? That's a 50/50 proposition, a coin toss. Why should you switch?

Because, according to the stupid book we got this problem from, switching gives you a 2/3 chance of being right. The authors explain it thusly: "Since by the time it comes to sticking or switching, the big prize must be behind one of the two remaining doors, there must be a 2 in 3 chance that the prize is behind the other door (i.e., a 2 in 3 chance your first guess was wrong)."

Wha? Huh? "There MUST be?" How MUST there be? The authors offer a variation to help illustrate the right choice (switching). Imagine, they say, the same set up with 1000 curtains; 999 of which hide kicks in the pants. The host reveals 998 of them to be booby prizes, and you're left with two curtains.

Switching, they say, gives you a 999/1000 chance of being right - and this is true- and it's pretty certain that you'll win with odds like that. However, this explanation pretends that your original choice doesn't count as a choice. That is, with 998 of 1000 decisions already made, adding one more decision (whether it be your original or a new choice) comes to 999. So you've got a 999/1000 chance of winning, no matter which one you choose. You're stuck with 50/50.

Marilyn vos Savant, smartest person who ever lived, says this is wrong. The the authors of the stupid book say this is wrong. Do YOU say this is wrong? Can you explain it in plain english? We're tempted to offer a prize, like some trade credit, but it all hinges on your being able to explain it, not your ability to understand it yourself, so that makes winning a little hazy. After all, we can just claim absolute ignorance (not much of a stretch), and we're off the hook. But do your best, and we'll work something out.

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This week:

All items mentioned below are first come, first serve. If you want something, let us know post-haste (because they're also for sale on the interweb)! All new items sell for cover price, used items as marked. Sadly, trade credit cannot be used for new items.

Our books are always searchable via ABEbooks.

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Aesthetic Theory, Theodor Adorno
(Paperback)

More of an absolutist than he would ever have admitted, Adorno's critiques of Enlightenment ideals rendered the entire mass bath water and admitted of no baby. However, having this book on your shelf will certainly make you more attractive to graduate-degree-seeking potential sexual conquests, so it's kind of a trade-off.

($19) [Sold]

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Scientific Self-Defence, W.E. Fairbairn
(Paperback, out of print)

Dapper '20s gents knocking the bejeezus out of one another. If the previous book shines a lust-light in the eyes of eurostyle glasses-wearing, ivory-tower-dwelling hotties, then this one will land you all kinds of booty among those who are impressed by a good wrist-fracturing or swift knee-capping. Get out there and make some poor sap yelp like a caned puppy! There's a reason the human body has all those pain-receptors - so you can get lucky!

($18) [Sold]

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Inventory, Michel Butor
(Hardcover, out of print)

Another of the elite and rigorous French literary giants we keep trotting out. Not well-known to English-speaking audiences, but hey, when you've got tonight's Deadliest Warrior pitting an Apache brave against the entire Taliban, well, it looks like old Butor's gonna have to suck the sour baguette of obscurity a while longer.

($15)

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Women Pirates and the Politics of the Jolly Roger, Ulrike Klausmann, et al.
(Paperback, out of print)

Just, you know, gettin' on with it - slittin' throats, hoardin' capital, wenchin', groggin', reefin' the bloody topsail and keepin' the scurvy away with a lime a day. But in a girly way.

($32)

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The Complete Dirty Laundry Comics, Robert Crumb, Aline Kominsky-Crumb, and Sophie Crumb
(Paperback)

The book is kind it's own reward, so can we just forget about it for a second and bitch about people who refer to Robert Crumb exclusively as "R. Crumb"? The original title of this book was Bob and Aline's Dirty Laundry, for chrissakes! If one more person comes in and asks for R. Crumb, mistakenly thinking this puts them inside some hazily-defined circle of hipness, we will personally tattoo his full name inside their eyelids with one of Bob's cast-off Grumbacher pens!

($11)

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Mexican Fireworks!

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Everything's turning into a pile of shit.

Except this:

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The Wire ate our lunch!

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# of weeks since Spine and Crown inception: 192

# of weeks since inception that no mention of Spine and Crown has appeared in the print edition of The Stranger: 192

Sale!!!!!!!!!!!

2009-06-27T17:08:00.000-07:00

Beginning June 28th and lasting through July 4th, everything in the shop is 30% off! We're not going out of business (yet!), but we'd like to take a big bite out of all the books people are trying to sell us. At the moment, we're turning away far too many people, so it's time to raise some capital! Come take away our best stock at prices so low, it'll make us weep!

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Sweet land of liberty, wherefore art thou?

Wouldn't it be great to be from a country that was so ridiculously awesome and full of win that you woke with fire in your belly every morning, knowing that you were in the best place on Earth, perhaps the most just, honorable, and beautifully varied spot in the entire universe? Not a country in the middle of an epic fail. Not a country that's a thinly veiled oligarchy calling itself a democracy. Not a country that coins 'net slang like, "full of win," and "epic fail."

What would such a country look like? Well, for our part, we'd ask for a big bump in the functional literacy rate. According to an NEA report, nearly 60% of Americans don't read a single book in a year's time. And most of the people who do? They ain't readin' Heidegger.

While we're at it, we might rewrite some laws so corporations have FEWER rights than actual living people instead of more. Just sayin'. Surely, we all have our wish list...

People used to feel good about our country, back in dinosaur times. Well, they felt better about it, anyway. But that was probably mostly thanks to ignorance. Thanks, ignorance! You make us feel better!

Maybe WE'RE the evil ones, trying to promote culture and knowledge and all that pansy-fied nonsense! Ignorance is like a great big sumo-suit keeping reality at a constant safe distance from your tender flesh! It's kevlar for reality-bullets! Persistent, durable, ubiquitous - If we could figure out how to fry it up and eat it, we'd be in business!

Looks like it's hard to know who's evil, or what to do in a situation like this. Are greedy CEOs evil? Or are the share-holders who demand constantly expanding profits from the CEOs the evil ones? Because those share-holders are mostly regular people. Ugh. Complexity make Bizarro's head hurt!

There IS another way to feel better about things, no ignorance required. Be a psychopath. Those are people who exhibit chronic immoral and antisocial behavior. We're used to thinking of psychopathic people as killers or rapists, but as the late, lamented Kurt Vonnegut pointed out, it's a pretty good description of the people running the show these days. There's more than one way to kill or rape, after all.

It also makes sense that such people would end up in positions of power. When facing a choice with heavy moral or ethical implications, their options are limited only by imagination and inclination, whereas a sane person's conscience will narrow his/her choices sharply. You won't pull the trigger, but they will! These crazy fuckers will DRINK YOUR MILKSHAKE!

There's a perfect July 4th poem by Vonnegut, from a super-rare chapbook of his, The Twelfth of Never. If you had a copy of that, you wouldn't need to be a psychopath to get rich!

Happily, crappily
we roll along.
Happily, crappily
we sing our song.
U-S-A! U-S-A!
Germans to the left of us!
Commies to the right!
Blast 'em all! Blast 'em all!
Blast them!
Good night!
Napalm in the morning
Napalm at night
Napalm from Harvard
Good night!
Good night!
Good night!

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This week:

All items mentioned below are first come, first serve. If you want something, let us know post-haste (because they're also for sale on the interweb)! All new items sell for cover price, used items as marked. Sadly, trade credit cannot be used for new items.

Our books are always searchable via ABEbooks.

-----

The Great Red Dragon, or The Master Key to Popery, Anthony Gavin
(Paperback; facsimile of 1854 edition)

This book is anti-Catholic. Our shop and its ownership are not nor should ever be construed to be anti-Catholic or against popish idolatry in any way. In fact, we here all wish we could place our noses inside the pope's own nose and thus breathe the holiest of holy airs on their way to respirate the holiest lungs chosen by god hisself (and several dudes in crazy purple robes with golden croziers chanting in a dead language.) Amen!

($20)

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Mr. Arashi's Amazing Freak Show, Suehiro Maruo
(Paperback, out of print)

This is a book for perverts. And by perverts, we mean anyone interested in the dark heart of the human race. And that's all of us, right? So get ready for your dose of puppy-squashing! We'll throw in a little cunnilingus and eyeball-lingus for spice and call it a deal! Finally, we get what all those kiddies dig about them Japanese comix!

($60) [Sold]

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Blast 2: War Number, Wyndham Lewis, ed.
(Paperback)

This book is printed by Black Sparrow Press. It's cover is made of very nice paper. Ezra Pound is inside, as is T.S. Eliot, and Ford Maddox Ford. Modernism had to be born someplace. This is its steaming placenta.

($10) [Sold]

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Martell's Simplified Ju Jutsu Offence and Defense, Jules Martell
(Stapled pamphlet, 1942)

This book will teach you to kick ass. It has lethal moves and is very violent. It also contains disparaging remarks directed toward Nazis and Japanese people. But it has another side, too. A side not so scarred by early childhood abuse and neglect. This other side of Simplified Ju Jutsu just needs love... and you will give it, or get your ass whupped good!

($50)

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Yeti Researcher, Vol. 24, No. 8, Joshuah Bearman, ed.
(Paperback)

This book was part of McSweeney's no. 17, and is a clever-clogs send-up of academic journals. Not that academic journals don't merit parody, but we wish this was real.

($5)

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Flesh-eating robots!

-----

Everything's turning into a pile of shit.

Except this.

It's available at Wall of Sound!

-----

Downhill Sumo!

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# of weeks since Spine and Crown inception: 190

# of weeks since inception that no mention of Spine and Crown has appeared in the print edition of The Stranger: 190

He Hit Me

2009-06-20T18:16:00.000-07:00

We had started this week's newsletter, wondering aimlessly about the nature of decision-making. Hot stuff, for sure. But it IS intriguing because there's so much mystery surrounding it. No one, not scientist nor mystic, can accurately describe or predict our decisions - least of all, ourselves! But our decisions can be manipulated. Plenty of research shows this. The existence of the advertising industry shows this. And one of the people who has explored this manipulation time and again, with great success, is Adam Curtis.

Curtis is a BBC documentarian, but that gives the wrong impression. Like saying Spine and Crown is a place where capital and commodities are exchanged. There's something very artistic, fascinating, and hypnotic about what he does. He's responsible for The Century of the Self, an examination of how Freudian ideas have, through advertising, made us all into selfish dicks. But he's best known for The Power of Nightmares, which investigated the deeply intertwined development of radical Islam and Neo-conservatism.

He's far more qualified than we are to talk about how outside forces shunt us this way and that- and he's got a new film, It Felt Like a Kiss.

We'll let The Guardian's Charlie Brooker take it from here:

So what's it about? In a roundabout way, it's about you. But it's also about the golden age of pop, when the US rose to supreme power. It encompasses everything from Rock Hudson, Lou Reed, Saddam Hussein, a chimp and Lee Harvey Oswald. It's a heady brew.

"I think it's a fascinating period," says Curtis.

"I wanted to do a film about what it actually felt like to live through that time ... Where you could see the roots of the uncertainties we feel today, the things they did out on the dark fringes of the world that they didn't really notice at the time, which would then come back to haunt us."

It's a common theme in Curtis's work: he's not interested in conspiracy theories, but rather with the unforeseen consequences of ideas throughout history, and their impact on a deeply personal level. "The way power works in the world is: they tell you stories that make sense of the world. That's what America did after the second world war. It told you wonderful dreamlike stories about the world ... And at that same time, you were encouraged to rise up and 'become an individual', which also made the whole idea of America attractive to the rest of the world. But then this very individualism began to corrode it. The uncertainties began in people's minds. Uncertainty about 'what is the point of being an individual?'"

"The politics of our time are deeply embedded in this idea of individualism," he continues, "which is far wider than Westminster, consumerism or anything like that. It's how you feel. People think, 'Oh, if it's within me it must be true.' But it's not the be-all and end-all. It's not an absolute. It's a way of feeling and thinking which is a product of a particular time and power. The notion that you only achieve your true self if your desires, your dreams, are satisfied ... It's a political idea. That's the central dynamic of our life."

Because you're worth it? He nods. "Because you're worth it."

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This week:

All items mentioned below are first come, first serve. If you want something, let us know post-haste (because they're also for sale on the interweb)! All new items sell for cover price, used items as marked. Sadly, trade credit cannot be used for new items.

Our books are always searchable via ABEbooks.

-----

We ran out of time on the descriptions this week and let our unrestrained Id write up these tomes while we slept!

-----

Sock Monkeys (200 out of 1,863), Arne Svenson and Ron Warren
(Paperback)

they eat sock bananas and other sock monkeys. mouths full of stuffing, they nightly cry sock tears and curse their monstrous maker.

($10) [Sold]

-----

Grindhouse: The Forbidden World of "Adults Only" Cinema, Eddie Muller and Daniel Faris, eds.
(Paperback, out of print)

dirty pictures. dirty moving pictures.

chase them.

catch them.

dirty dirty.

($15) [Sold]

-----

The Starry Wisdom: A Tribute to H.P. Lovecraft, D.M. Mitchell, ed.
(Paperback, out of print)

lesser talents offer tribute to a greater talent. W.S. Burroughs; Alan Moore; Grant Morrison; J.G. Ballard.

($20) [Sold]

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Ten Years of Italian Progress, Italian State Tourist Department.
(Stapled pamphlet, 1933)

fascists run the trains on time and produce purty pamphlets. but no one's fooled, mr. mussolini. you are the bad man.

($10)

-----

Psychedelic Prayers, Timothy Leary.
(Paperback, out of print)

each page better be soaked in blotter acid, at that price.

($35)

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Skyspace poetry!

-----

Everything's turning into a pile of shit.

Except this.

-----

Fakir!

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# of weeks since Spine and Crown inception: 189

# of weeks since inception that no mention of Spine and Crown has appeared in the print edition of The Stranger: 189

T-R-O-U-B-L-E !

2009-06-13T19:34:00.000-07:00

Every week, barring illness or indolence, we send another of these half-cracked cosmic thwaps out into the aether. Our letter soup bubbles up through your branch of the inter-tubes and, shockingly, some of you read it. Some of you even choose to comment on it. Anything we write that contains a trace of optimistism garners a big response. The rest is largely ignored, though it's inarguably truer and more clear-eyed.

Do that math.

Slow at math? So are we!

But what we think it adds up to is T-R-O-U-B-L-E! What is this obsession with happy endings? It's rough out there, we know. Boy howdy, do we know! And it's tempting to grasp at any straw of hope that's offered... But, honestly, this here is about the shortest and thinnest goddamn straw anyone ever grasped at!

Speaking personally, all of our comforts are stocked on the freezer aisle. We KNOW that Lassie is never coming home. Just like we know that if it was possible to levy a duty on breathing, we'd all be coughing up aspiration tax! And we know that all prospects for survival, over a sufficiently long span of time, fall to zero.

But amongst this unpleasantness remains the possibility of GLORY!!!! If not survival, then thrival! And legendary exploits leading to immortal mythical myths and legends of thrival! "Aye, now there was a bookshop!!!" they shout in the halls of Valhalla! And we're not even gone yet! Dead vikings are notoriously inept with verb tense. But we echo the sentiment!

Perhaps you do too, poor, doomed Spine and Crown customer. Come. Come revel in your transitory, ephemeral nowness! If you fall in battle tomorrow, will you be able to say you read enough? When the crone Fate, Atropos, severs the thread of your life, will you have helped us make enough of our mortgage payments? No, we think not. Come. Shop. Thrive!!!

-----

There was a secret hidden in last week's description of an Edmund Husserl book. A prize was offered to the first respondent, simply for noticing the offer of a prize. No one claimed the reward. And we will never reveal what it was. You snooze, you lose! We suggest reading this week's newsletter v-e-r-y carefully.

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This week:

All items mentioned below are first come, first serve. If you want something, let us know post-haste (because they're also for sale on the interweb)! All new items sell for cover price, used items as marked. Sadly, trade credit cannot be used for new items.

Our books are always searchable via ABEbooks.

-----

Hot, Sweet and Blue, Jack Baird.
(Paperback original, out of print)

She was tall and leggy with cloudy black hair, and she sang from inside her, the way Johnny blew his horn. They looked at each other and they never looked away.

But they reckoned without the fact that Lily was a Negro, and the time would come when the music had to stop...

This copy is as fresh as if it just walked off the drugstore spinner-rack, circa 1956.

A beauty!

($40)

-----

Artifact, Richard Hell.
(Paperback, out of print)

Sprung full-grown from the thighs of Francesco Clemente and Raymond Foye, Hanuman Books (48 titles, collect them all!) was an art/publishing project for the ages!

These ghouls, masquerading as publishers, would descend upon recently deceased authors and employ a ghastly machine, which they called a "metempsychosatron," to dissect their very brains, messily extracting unpublished, and in some cases, yet undreamt of, manuscripts from the stiffening wordsmiths.

When Richard Hell (Television, Voidoids) approached them volunteering to be their first live subject, Clemente and Foye balked, but only momentarily. Hell was left a twitching husk, but we have this book to remember him by! Clemente and Foye have returned to the pit which spawned them.

($60)

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The Incompleat Pogo, Walt Kelly.
(Paperback, out of print)

Seriously. Is Pogo the best American newspaper comic ever? Without it, no Calvin and Hobbes. Without it, no Bone. Without it, no movable type, cotton fiber, or sourdough bread! What was the world thinking, allowing this stuff to go out of print? Fantagraphics has some reprints scheduled, but they're years late, and Gary Groth told us a few months ago that the legal hassles delaying the whole project were unpredictable. Get these 1960s collections while we still have 'em!

($7) [Sold]

also available:

Potluck Pogo ($5) [Sold]
Pogo Sunday Parade ($9) [Sold]
Uncle Pogo So-So Stories ($3 - kind of falling apart, sadly) [Sold]

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Batman: Year 100, Paul Pope.
(Paperback)

A stylish, hip, libertarian Batman.

Huh?

Pope sez: "He's someone with the body of David Beckham, the brain of Nikola Tesla, and the wealth of Howard Hughes, who is pretending to be Nosferatu."

It's pretty good Batman.

($10) [Sold]

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Selected Letters of Stéphane Mallarmé, Rosemary Lloyd, ed.
(Hardcover)

Devotee of Baudelaire, friend to Yeats, Rilke, and Verlaine.

to Léo d'Orfer, 27 June 1884

It's a real punch, momentarily blinding, that abrupt demand of yours: "Define Poetry." Bruised, I stutter:

Poetry is the expression, in human language restored to its essential rhythm, of the mysterious meaning of the aspects of existence: in this way it confers authenticity on our time on earth and constitutes the only spiritual task there is.

Farewell, but you owe me an apology.

-Mallarmé

($15) [Sold]

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Joshua Beckman at Open Books, June 16th

Joshua is a fine, fine poet- and an engaging, generous spirit, as well! It can only profit you to attend, and could potentially cause your limbs to wither should you choose not to!

-----

Everything's turning into a pile of shit.

Especially this.

-----

Goat tower!

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# of weeks since Spine and Crown inception: 188

# of weeks since inception that no mention of Spine and Crown has appeared in the print edition of The Stranger: 188

Bipolar much?

2009-06-07T18:59:00.000-07:00

"You are not required to complete the work, but neither are you allowed to desist from it."

That is a great, great quote from the Talmud. The followers of Jewish use that book as one of their holy books of most primary importance. It is very revered. Just so you know, we're down with the Jewish and their holy books. There were apparently a lot of wise old Jewish guys back in the day. It's great that even way back then, they had such knowledge and wisdom.

But let's look closer at what they said. There is work, apparently. And there must be a lot of it, because people are thinking about desisting. People can be so lazy! But they can also work hard. They might burn the midnight oil and a candle at both ends. And what the wise Jewish old guys were telling us is that it's ok to want to desist. Lay down and rest. Now wake up, lazybones!

There is a lot of work to be done. Who knows what it is? The wise Jewish old guys didn't say. But look around. It won't take long to notice: There's work everywhere! Just living is work. If you didn't do any work at all and just laid down on the ground... well, all kinds of things would start to cart little pieces of you off and the sun would bake you and eventually only a stain on the sidewalk would show where you stopped working!

If you're like us, you want to complete things. It's nice to see things all tied up. That's why the TV show Lost is a torture from the devil. But back in the old Jewish day, they knew already that all the lives of all the people made up something big. And all the lives of all the people and all the work they did and all the babies they made and raised made something bigger. Something that might go on for a long, long time. So long, that they wouldn't see the end of it. Lo and behold, they were right! And it's still going. And we won't see the end of it. Well, most likely, we won't see the end of it.

And there are no people on the moon. Not any more, anyway. And there are not people on Mars, Pluto, Donald, or Mickey, either. As far as we can tell, there are not people on the stars, either. Unless they're hiding. That makes it sort of a big deal to be a part of this thing that's so big but still so much smaller than everything that is not this thing.

If you work, some people will work against you. That's frustrating! Even if you just try to live and do that kind of minimal work, some people will try to work against that, too! People! What are you going to do? Work harder! Work and build things and vacuum the rug! Work with your hands and get dirt under your nails. Read blogs and buy books, too! But wash those mitts first, farmhands! We don't take no filthy yokels here at Spine and Crown! No shoes, no shirt, no service!

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This week:

All items mentioned below are first come, first serve. If you want something, let us know post-haste (because they're also for sale on the interweb)! All new items sell for cover price, used items as marked. Sadly, trade credit cannot be used for new items.

Our books are always searchable via ABEbooks.

-----

The Sixth Man, Jess Stearn.
(Paperback, out of print)

"One out of every six men in America is a homosexual. This is the report of one of the most frightening surveys conducted since the Kinsey books."

The Kinsey books were frightening? Should have read Richard von Krafft-Ebing. Anyhow, people in 1962 had a lot more to worry about than homosexuals... Did they know Kennedy had less than two years left? Did they know that the Yankees would win the pennant? Did they know they only had twenty years until Cabbage Patch Kids? Stupid 1962 hicks.

($4) [Sold]

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The Golden Man, Philip K. Dick.
(Book club hardcover, out of print)

Intro, notes, and afterword by Dick. Sweet book club only package. Jacket's a little messy, but not one you see every day. See... you thought we were going to say, "not a Dick you see every day," but that kind of humor is beneath us. The guy was a talented writer with a very unfortunate last name. Do you think he asked to be named Dick? Show a little sensitivity! Maybe you'd like us to make fun of you! Internet-wits! Cyber-butts! Doesn't feel very good, does it?

($25)

-----

Sex Marchers, Jefferson Poland and Sam Sloan, eds.
(Hardcover, out of print)

Chapter titles:

"Picketing for Sex"
"What is Sexual Freedom?"
"Multiple Love"
"Support Your Local Pornographer"
"The Defenders of Skinny-Dipping"
"A Square Rally for Oral Sex"
and the ever popular
"Inside an Orgy"

The Sixties feel like a long, long time ago.

($25)

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Shorter Works, Edmund Husserl.
(Paperback)

Husserl stated that logic has three strata, each further away from consciousness and psychology than those that precede it.

* The first stratum is what Husserl called a "morphology of meanings" concerning a priori ways to relate judgments to make them meaningful. In this stratum we elaborate a "pure grammar" or a logical syntax, and he would call its rules "laws to prevent non-sense", which would be similar to what logic calls today "formation rules". Mathematics, as logic's ontological correlate, also has a similar stratum, a "morphology of formal-ontological categories".

* The second stratum would be called by Husserl "logic of consequence" or the "logic of non-contradiction" which explores all possible forms of true judgments. He includes here syllogistic classic logic, propositional logic and that of predicates. This is a semantic stratum, and the rules of this stratum would be the "laws to avoid counter-sense" or "laws to prevent contradiction". They are very similar to today's logic "transformation rules". Mathematics also has a similar stratum which is based among others on pure theory of pluralities, and a pure theory of numbers. They provide a science of the conditions of possibility of any theory whatsoever. Husserl also talked about what he called "logic of truth" which consists of the formal laws of possible truth and its modalities, and precedes the third logical third stratum.

* The third stratum is metalogical, what he called a "theory of all possible forms of theories." It explores all possible theories in an a priori fashion, rather than the possibility of theory in general. If you have read this far, you win a prize. The first person to send us an email will claim it. We could establish theories of possible relations between pure forms of theories, investigate these logical relations and the deductions from such general connection. The logician is free to see the extension of this deductive, theoretical sphere of pure logic.

($35) [Sold]

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Waiting for Godot, Samuel Beckett.
(Hardcover, dual language)

Waiting for Godot? Wait no more! He's here! In a nice, shiny hardcover! And what a Godot he is! Worth the wait, for sure! Extra silky super fragrant Godot! What?! Mr. Godot didn't arrive? It's a disaster! Hand me that belt! (Makes a noose; tests the strength of a tree branch.) What kind of tree is this? (Messenger arrives from Godot.) Says he'll be here tomorrow! Come back then!

($12) [Sold]

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extraordinary art by Erica Sherman
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David Lynch's Interview Project

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Everything's turning into a pile of shit.

Except this.

-----

Witch Bottle Found in London

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# of weeks since Spine and Crown inception: 187

# of weeks since inception that no mention of Spine and Crown has appeared in the print edition of The Stranger: 187

Books suck

2009-05-30T16:43:00.000-07:00

Why are bookshops always going out of business? Don't worry. This is going to be the short version. Because books suck. You're waiting for us to qualify that statement, but we mean it. Like the fat tick under the puppy's ear. Books suck.

They're parasitic. They inspire fierce protective instincts in those who have been bitten by them and fierce indifference in those who have not. And the faithful are intensely devoted. So much so that we give over huge chunks of our free time and money- and in the case of the most unlucky (those who seek to make a living from the things)- every drop of our soul juice. Somehow convinced of the greatness pent up in these lumps of rotting wood mush, we sign away our very soul juice. In other words, books make you stupid.

We risk our livelihood, our capital, our very future on these dead, dead objects- objects which require fully-developed human minds (rarest commodity in the universe?) to reclaim even the tiniest amount of the effort that went into making the fucking things. Does that sound like sanity?

Bookshops are always going out of business because the basic concept is flawed. Trying to sell a product that mocks you if you haven't read it, demands all your concentration if you try, and provides dubious rewards if consumed... yeah, that's smart.

It's like trying to sell a diet pill shaped like Marilyn Monroe that may make you fatter, may make you thinner, but definitely will give you the runs. Or something like that. Or maybe it's like selling a teddy bear that stabs you with hidden knives when you try to cuddle it. A stabby bear. Except not even as cool as a stabby bear.

Einstein read a lot of books. Look where that got him. Dead. Just like he would have been anyway. Oh. And his brain is in, like, 55,000 slices at Princeton. Learn from the example.

Porn. Porn is much better. You'll still end up dead, but, wow, books vs. porn? Are you kidding? Bambi vs. Godzilla? And have you played Super Halo Mario Gear? How can we compete with Super Halo Mario Gear? So screw books. They suck. Goddamn low-profit-margin pieces of crap!

Now get your asses down here and buy an armload, because stupid loves company. And if you don't we'll be both stupid and broke.

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This week:

All items mentioned below are first come, first serve. If you want something, let us know post-haste (because they're also for sale on the interweb)! All new items sell for cover price, used items as marked. Sadly, trade credit cannot be used for new items.

Our books are always searchable via ABEbooks.

-----

Loading Mercury with a Pitchfork, Richard Brautigan.
(Paperback, out of print)

His third book of poetry. Brautigan would go on to write six more. His collected works totaled more than twenty volumes of short stories, novels, novellas, poems, and miscellaneous prose. At the age of 49, he stopped writing entirely to concentrate on film direction, winning the Jury Prize at Cannes in 1989 with his masterpiece, "Two Crows, Out of Sequence." Compared variously to Terrence Malick, Andrei Tarkovsky, and Yasujiro Ozu, his films are credited with reshaping the landscape of American cinema. He died in 2006, at the age of... Oh, sorry, that's the Richard Brautigan of Earth 12-D. The Richard Brautigan of THIS reality shot himself in the head in 1984. He was not a well man. Sorry for any confusion. "Two Crows" is magnificent, if you're ever on Earth 12-D.

($12) [Sold]

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Squeeze Play, Paul Benjamin (Paul Auster).
(Paperback, out of print)

Paul Auster's first novel, written pseudonymously. He now no longer acknowledges the book and when asked to sign it at readings reacts violently. Legend has it, he attacked one fan with a dose of deep ennui laden with overtones of inadequacy and intimations of his own mortality. It wasn't pretty.

($20)

-----

Dust Covers: The Collected Sandman Covers, 1989-1997,
Dave McKean and Neil Gaiman.
(Hardcover, out of print)

In every newsletter, there's usually at least one book we describe seriously (or as seriously as we are able), often because we deeply admire the work contained therein. This is not such a book. And not because Mr. McKean lacks talent. He is, in fact, a sickly, deliriously talented painter. However, he uses photoshop as a crutch at virtually every opportunity, and this is unforgivable. So he is not deeply admired round these parts. But this IS our serious review.

($45)

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Home Tanning Leather & Small Fur Skins, F.P. Veitch, et al.
(Stapled pamphlet, out of print)

Ever stroked a little bunny rabbit's soft, soft fur? Ever wished you could take that experience home with you but didn't know how?

($7)

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Japanese Homes and their Surroundings, Edward S. Morse.
(Paperback)

Reprint of the 1886 edition. There is no chapter on chairs. Tables, check. Beds, check. Porches, hearths, cushions. Check, check, check. Hello! Japanese people! There are chairs!

($9.50) [Sold]

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Worm Therapy

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Gummi Bear Surgery

-----

Everything's turning into a pile of shit.

Except this.

-----

Bambi vs. Godzilla

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# of weeks since Spine and Crown inception: 186

# of weeks since inception that no mention of Spine and Crown has appeared in the print edition of The Stranger: 186

What does anthropology tell us?

2009-05-23T17:30:00.000-07:00

Not much that we'd care to hear, unfortunately. Jared Diamond, in his erotic thriller Guns, Germs, and Steel, contends that the natural state of the humanzee is small group communal living within well-defined territory, with a lot of roving, hunting, and gathering thrown in. That's how we lived prior to agriculture, sowing and reaping requiring, as it does, staying put. These mobile groups top out at about 100 members. Everyone else, the whole world of everyone elses, is an enemy. This according to Diamond, but accepted broadly.

Think about that for a minute. Everyone in your tribe is ok, even that bastard in the hut under the baobab tree, the one who's always picking his nose and flicking it in your direction. They're all ok because you know their faces and have since birth. The immutable laws of the group don't allow you to be at odds with another member of the group. So you know who your friends are. On the other side of the coin, you instantly know who your enemy is, too. It's anyyone whose face you don't recognize.

You might imagine stand-offs in the forest, one hairy, heavy-browed nitwit hooting and shaking a sharp stick at another hairy, heavy-browed nitwit, an unknowing trespasser. Two nitwits, the same in almost all respects, but pushed to extremes simply because they've never seen each other before. One chases the other until he crosses some imaginary line, and it's all over. Sound and fury, signifying nothing. You might imagine it that way, but you'd be wrong.

You'd be wrong because homo sapiens (otherwise known as "the ape that weeps," aka You and Me) has existed in pretty much its present state for about 150,000 years, give or take. And we only started farming about 10,000 years ago. Meaning that we've spent 93.3% of the existence of our species ready to attack strangers on sight. So that one nitwit who's trespassing? That's You. And the other one? That's Me. And I'm not hooting and shaking my stick. I'm trying to shove it through your throat.

This is generally accepted, capital "A" Anthropology. The tribes of Papua New Guinea, some of the last (mostly) unmolested humans on the planet, still roll that way.

This is pretty bleak. And fairly unwelcome news. If we're to keep our cherished illusions about brotherhood and sisterhood and the whole world joining hands to start, say, a love train, for instance- then we're not trying to hear that shit.

But the payoff for having your spirits dragged through the gutter draws nigh, o faithful reader. How about this: When was the last time you tried to gouge out the eyes of an unknown innocent? Have you recently had a set-to with a gang of roughs who claimed you were on their turf? Probably not. And why?

You can call it a social contract, if you like. Golden rule. Human decency. Belief in human rights. Ethics. Morals. What it boils down to is that we've made more progress toward being humane to each other in the last 6.7% of our species' existence than we did in the entire preceding 93.3%. And that's pretty goddamn amazing. It is a feat that has no equal in the history of all known life.

So the next time you're thinking they should just nuke the entire Middle East and start from scratch, or that everything's turning into a pile of shit, just remember that we haven't had a lot of practice being good to one another, relatively speaking. But not even the world's most cynical curmudgeon could deny that we've changed, most would say for the better.

Maybe we've plateaued. Maybe we'll regress. We might just progress. One way or another, as bad as it is, we've never been this nice to each other before. It may be a wintery kind of sunlight for May, but it's all you're getting out of us. We're going away to strangle our optimism now- you may wish to withdraw. Back next week, properly dismal.

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This week:

All items mentioned below are first come, first serve. If you want something, let us know post-haste (because they're also for sale on the interweb)! All new items sell for cover price, used items as marked. Sadly, trade credit cannot be used for new items.

Our books are always searchable via ABEbooks.

-----

Maakies, Tony Millionaire.
(Paperback, first edition of author's first book, signed)

Belching. Farting. Suicide. Drinking. Vomiting. Sailing ships and alligator-faced Frenchmen. Wachtel is the new Acme. That goddamn little boat bobbing around! No jokes here: It's a work of genius.

($75) [Sold]

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The Man Without Qualities, Robert Musil.
(Paperback, two volumes)

"That one is not famous is only natural: that one has not enough readers to live is a shame!" - Robert Musil

Considered one of the great Modernist novelists today, in his lifetime, Musil could find no audience. Only eight people attended his funeral. This massive novel, his masterwork, was unfinished at the time of his death. Only Musil's working draft survived, which he had written on a grain of rice with very tiny brushes. Nearly boiled as an accompaniment to a dish of gyoza, the book was rescued, translated, and printed in an edition that decimated a forest the size of Brazil. The gyoza were never consumed; have grown cold and unsavory.

($25) [Sold]

-----

Behind the Pink Curtain, Jasper Sharp.
(Hardcover, limited edition)

Exploring Japan's notorious "Pink Films," a soft-core sub-genre not well-known outside Japan. The truly astounding thing is that all these films were made by ONE MAN. Written, produced, acted, the whole shebang. He was equally fetching in pink and blue, and no one ever suspected.

($150)

-----

Kramers Ergot no. 5, Sammy Harkham, ed.
(Paperback, out of print)

If Art Spiegelman was a twenty-something right now, the version of Raw he would be publishing would be called Kramers Ergot. So cutting edge, it was irrelevant three seconds before the ink hit the paper, then got super relevant again five minute later. Now it towers like a statue of Anubis over the great cities of the West, commanding their doom.

($50) [Sold]

-----

Tissue Cleansing Through Bowel Management, Bernard Jensen.
(Paperback)

A classic in the field of bowel management. Includes a color photo section, and we'll let you guess what that might be about. The kind of book your crazy uncle gives you on your fourteenth birthday, along with the words, "You're a man now, Gary." We're not sure who Gary is.

($6) [Sold]

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How fast do we rot?

-----

Everything's turning into a pile of shit.

Except this:

Dust to Digital is perhaps the finest re-issue label going these days. They produced the fantabulous Victrola Favorites, and they've knocked the ball out of the park once again with Take Me to the Water!

Get it now at Wall of Sound!

Take Me to the Water from Dust-to-Digital on Vimeo.

-----

BBC Radiophonic Workshop:

Experimental Tribute from Chris Carter on Vimeo.

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# of weeks since Spine and Crown inception: 185

# of weeks since inception that no mention of Spine and Crown has appeared in the print edition of The Stranger: 185

Stupefaction: Yes!

2009-05-09T14:34:00.001-07:00

We all know it's more fun to get blitzed than to get books.

No, no. Don't argue. We know you'd like to put a good face on things, what with our choice of vocation and everything. That's sweet. You're sweet. Have we told you lately that we love you? Well, we do. But don't cue up the Barry White just yet. The sad truth is that we love booze more than you, and it's come to our attention that you love booze more than us.

And that's fine, really it is. 'Twas ever thus. However, we've got our weedy tentacles stretched to all parts of the neighborhood, and word comes back that the local bars are doin' fine! Our flying monkey corps includes employees at half a dozen area gin joints... the data keeps trickling in, but the pattern is clear: Bars seem to be recession-proof!

We find this disturbing for two reasons:

1) Bar patrons don't seem to know the end is nigh! Or, more likely, they do... and are trying to float their brain in a pool of booze as quickly as possible! But there are certainly cheaper ways to drown the bitter misery of being a thinking, feeling human organism than $10 double shots of Makers' Mark. Which leads us to conclude that:

2) If people have enough money to not mind being hosed on their way to inebriation, then they goddamn well have enough money to buy a book! Come on people! You're necking that swill as fast as biology allows, and it's only going emerge again, under pressure, from one end or the other in short order! What have you gained by the experience?

And this causes us to ask, as it should also cause you to ask: "Why do people stupefy themselves?" Or rather, since the reasons for that are myriad and often manifest, "Why is stupefaction preferred to almost every other distraction ever devised?" Now THAT is a real poser. There are some mighty fine distractions out there...

Sure, sure. We hear you. Drinking's a social thing (unless it isn't). You pay a hefty markup at a bar, but look- there are all your pals! And ooohh la la! The saucy ladies! And the sexy mans! No saucy ladies or sexy mans back in your lonely hovel with your value-sized jug of corn squeezins, no siree!

But if you thought it was all about friends and sexual liasons (often with soon to be ex-friends), then you thought wrong! Ok, actually you didn't. It IS all about those things. The id unleashed. The orderlies knocked unconscious and the inmates running the asylum. Glorious Dionysian frenzy! A slap and a tickle and a hug and a cuddle and watch out stomach, here it comes!!! Phew. Got carried away there!

If you've followed this river of thought as it empties into the Sea of Conclusion, you'll already know what we've decided. Until book shops can offer you, at the very least, a dose of Thuderbird and a grimly stained mattress to writhe upon, we don't stand a chance.

So we've already instituted some changes. If you stroll by the old Spine and Crown and spot a sign on the door that says, " Back in 10 Minutes," don't be fooled. The upstairs is just rented out, that's all. Maybe we're simply getting coffee- but maybe we're getting PAID. How else are we going to afford a pitcher when it's our round?

-----

Maybe we downplayed the Yelp thing a little too much last week. Writing a review for us will potentially be a great help. People who know nothing of Seattle read things like Yelp before coming to town. We want them to know we're cooking gooses down here at S&C, and they can get theirs cooked just like everybody else. We're also hauling ashes, so if you'd like to get your ashes hauled, speak up! We may even turn your damper down!

Spine and Crown on Yelp

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This week:

All items mentioned below are first come, first serve. If you want something, let us know post-haste (because they're also for sale on the interweb)! All new items sell for cover price, used items as marked. Sadly, trade credit cannot be used for new items.

Our books are always searchable via ABEbooks.

-----

Why Do Men Stupefy Themselves?, Leo Tolstoy.
(Paperback, out of print)

Isn't this what we were just talking about? What are the chances that some Russian dude would rush out a book on the same topic? Great minds, right? Hey, if Tolstoy wants to bite our material, who are we to complain? We'll take it as a complement, Leo! Backatcha!

($20) [Sold]

-----

Child of God, Cormac McCarthy.
(Paperback, first PB edition)

In our continuing quest to feature a Cormac McCarthy item each and every week, we offer the first paperback edition of Child of God, McCarthy's third novel. It's the story of Lester Ballard, necrophile, arsonist, and murderer. If we could have thought of a fancy word for cave-dweller, we'd have added that as well. Supposedly based on real stuff that happened back in Great Depression I. Not to be confused with Great Depression II.

($60)

-----

How to Get a Teen-Age Boy & What to Do With Him When You Get Him, Ellen Peck.
(Mass market paperback, first printing)

Another one of those "title says it all" books. This one's for the ladies, because the next one is definitely for the fellows. And yes, that is Cheryl Tiegs on the cover.

($25)

-----

The Imp, No. 4: Historietas Perversas, Daniel K. Raeburn.
(Magazine/Journal)

Prison rape, eyeballs gouged out with fingers, and a guy being beaten to death with stiletto heels. That's all in here, along with a full exploration of the industry. See, south of the border, they've got a thriving comics business that makes las telenovelas look tame. Sexist, shameless, and gloriously incomprehensible. Well, unless you read Spanish. But don't bother learning another language; we're pretty sure that one-handed reading is universal.

($35) [Sold]

-----

Who Wants a Cheap Rhinoceros?, Uncle Shelby (Shel Silverstein).
(Hardcover, first edition)

We all do, but Craigslist is fresh out. This copy is from 1964, before they started putting Silverstein's name on the cover. It's a little beat and lacking the dust jacket, but copies with jacket are extremely scarce. About as scarce as cheap rhinoceri. Sniff, sniff...

($25)

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Mysterious Roar from Faraway Space Detected

-----

Everything's turning into a pile of shit.

Except this.

-----

This IS a species worth saving!

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# of weeks since Spine and Crown inception: 183

# of weeks since inception that no mention of Spine and Crown has appeared in the print edition of The Stranger: 183

sempre crolla ma non cade

2009-05-02T12:34:00.000-07:00

Another week of life's rich pageant here on Mud Ball 1, and what have we got to show for it?

Have the heavens rained golden manna into our upturned mouths? Have they legalized "it"? Have people all over the world joined hands and started a love train? They have not.

And why do people refuse to start this love train? Why are we inflicted with these ever-grudging heavens? What is "it," and where can we buy some? Good questions all, but sadly, this is just a stupid bookshop newsletter, not an all-expenses-paid trip to Answerstan.

Off the cuff? Bomb the sky. Just bomb it. It's too damn bright today anyway. Then criminalize NOT having "it". See how they like them apples. Finally, burn all trains, love or otherwise. Burn them! Then rip up the tracks! And burn the tracks! Crack the earth with fire because there is... no... LOVE TRAIN!!!

But that's just off the cuff.

Coming up with real answers takes consideration, introspection, and time. It takes a looooong view, which we don't favor on Mud Ball 1. Some people are trying to change that- to which we say, "Good luck!" But you may want to check them out, anyway.

Long Now Foundation, meet Spine and Crown blog audience!

Founded by Stewart Brand and Brian Eno (yes, that Brian Peter George St. John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno), the foundation seeks to encourage long-term thinking in all aspects of life. One of their projects is to engineer and build a clock that, once wound, won't need tending by human hands for 10,000 years. Absolutely bonkers!

Authors Michael Chabon and Neal Stephenson are allies. Chabon wrote a great piece about the clock, called "The Omega Glory." You may download the pdf here (Clicking the link will download a pdf file onto your computer. Do not be alarmed!):

The Omega Glory

-----

Another question which seemingly has no answer is, "How do you keep a bookshop running in these spectacularly panic and pandemic-ridden times?" One helpful fellow suggested renaming the shop Swine and Crown. What a card! Really, there is just no end to some people's creativity! Taken under advisement, buddy!

But what recourse if rebranding fails? Maybe we'll just swallow hard, be brave, and beg all of you to help promote us on Yelp. It's probably pointless, but you could make it fun, if you tried really hard. You think writing newsletters is a trip to the race track? It ain't! Big us up, you lazy apes!

But maybe you don't know about Yelp. They're one of these website things that's filled with people's opinions about local businesses. We're told that people actually read it and actually, sometimes, believe what is said there. You have to register with them to post something, but you're welcome to give them false information if you don't like them knowing about you. Anyway, here's our page on Yelp. If you have something to contribute, that would be grand!

We used to have 10 reviews, but two were taken down. Written by Mark and Ula, they not only praised the shop, but also managed to use filthy language, put down all other bookshops in Seattle, and advocate excessive drug use. We're not saying you should use their example as a template, but... you could do worse.

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This week:

All items mentioned below are first come, first serve. If you want something, let us know post-haste (because they're also for sale on the interweb)! All new items sell for cover price, used items as marked. Sadly, trade credit cannot be used for new items.

Our books are always searchable via ABEbooks.

-----

Brought to Light, Alan "Watchmen" Moore and Bill Sienkiewicz.
(Paperback, out of print)

Whacked out in every sense of the term. Imagine a non-fiction graphic novel about CIA drug-smuggling narrated by a coke-snorting talking eagle, and you're getting there. Aimed right at the black hearts of the miserable bastards who wrecked this country. So successful were they at rooting out the bad apples, the twenty intervening years have been filled with peace, light, and good governance. Thanks, boys!

This is the only major work of Moore's high period that's out of print... so maybe they stepped on somebody's toes, after all. ($65) [Sold]

-----

Cities of the Plain, Cormac McCarthy.
(Hardcover, first edition)

Border Trilogy, round three. First edition, so that's great. But, you say, this is the most common of McCarthy's firsts- it was remainder table fodder ten years ago. What's it doing in the newsletter? To which we respond: Oh yeah? Well, why didn't you buy it then? 'Cos it goes for twenty bucks now, smarty pants. Oh, and this a review copy, with publisher's slip laid in- and there ain't too many of those around. Only one online at the moment, going for $150. That's a ludicrous price, we all agree, but we'll be dipped in the Rio Grande if $50 don't sound about right.

-----

Everything is Illuminated, Jonathan Safran Foer.
(Hardcover, second printing)

Everything is Pretentious. "I spleen her." "He dubs me." "She licks my chops for it." Horse shit. Cynical, self-satisfied trash. Maybe it improves after the first page, but who can be bothered? You wanted off the cuff; you get off the cuff. It is signed by the author. ($45)

-----

The Collected Later Poems, William Carlos Williams.
(Hardcover, first edition)

This is your chaser. Following the above overblown crap, you are rewarded with the sublimely minimal:

The Great Figure

Among the rain
and lights
I saw the figure 5
in gold
on a red
firetruck
moving
tense
unheeded
to gong clangs
siren howls
and wheels rumbling
through the dark city.

Painter Charles Demuth was sufficiently fired up by the above to paint his famous "I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold," about as harmonious a communion as exists between poem and image.

So, WCW. Nothing to sneeze at.

($40)

-----

Star Wars: A Pop-Up Book, Wayne Douglas Barlowe.
(Hardcover, second printing)

It's 1978. You're in Wal-Mart. You need a pop up book. Are you gonna reach for Cookie Monster, or are you gonna reach for Star Wars? Is there really a decision to be made here? The only thing really in question is, "Why isn't the entire store made of Star Wars shit?" "Why isn't this Star-Wars-Mart?" The desire for Star Wars branded merchandise is a flame burning fiercely within... It still scorches you today, 31 years later. Feed it. Feed the flame. Hey, most of the pop-ups still work!

($15) [Sold]

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Top 10 Grimoires of all time:

Collect them all!

-----

Everything's turning into a pile of shit.

Except this.

-----

The Official Spine and Crown Art Exhibition:

Machines that Almost Fall Over from Michael Kontopoulos on Vimeo.

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# of weeks since Spine and Crown inception: 182

# of weeks since inception that no mention of Spine and Crown has appeared in the print edition of The Stranger: 182

Outages, some planned, some not

2009-04-25T13:33:00.001-07:00

Monday and part of Tuesday. Those were planned. But Thursday was illness. Highly distilled illness which Homeland is investigating. And so, there will be no actual newsletter this week, due to time constraints and a brain that still has too high a viral load.

On the bright side, vernal equinox be praised, we see evidence at last of Spring.

On the dark side, it's just one more Spring in a tremendous unbroken string of them, the overwhelming majority of which happened before we were born and the tremendously large remainder of which will happen after we die.

But don't let it get you down! Rather: Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, and all that! And if Robert Herrick don't do it for ya, how about good old Andrew Marvell?

"Let us roll all our strength, and all
Our sweetness, up into one ball;
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life."

That is to say, having come through terrible suffering, we're determined to win, win, win!

Get in our way, and we'll roll you up into a ball.

Back to normal next week.

-----

If you need something to read, or a rabbit-hole to fall down, then check out this.

Fine press books are where it's at, if you've got the bankroll. Follow the very last link in the article to see how deeply you're in trouble if you like this stuff. Thanks to Joseph for alerting us.

-----

Oh, and don't forget the art opening at Wall of Sound, Friday, May 1st. Very enticing stuff, obviously druggy, potentially subversive. Something else for Homeland to investigate.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

# of weeks since Spine and Crown inception: 181

# of weeks since inception that no mention of Spine and Crown has appeared in the print edition of The Stranger: 181

Zombies!

2009-04-18T14:12:00.000-07:00

Run for the hills, New Orleans!

What a way to kick off a newsletter!

-----

It's boring to harp on about the same old thing. So why are people always doing it? One theory goes that we're all closet sadists, and that the minute, grinding tortures we practice on one another satisfy us in some deviant way. If you're torturing someone, they must be in your power, after all. It feels good to have someone in your power. If you're Hitler! Well, here's some good advice for when you encounter someone stuck on repeat: walk away! Leave them hanging! Let them pester someone else!

Or rather, don't. Please don't. Stay. Because it's time for US to harp on about the same old thing. No, not the econopocalypse again. That's so last week. No, let's talk about books.

Mmmmm, books! Yes, books! You won't find deeper or more lasting satisfaction from any other class of inanimate object! A lot of thought was put into that last sentence, and we're going to stick by it. Even a visit to Toys in Babeland won't satisfy like a good book. Yes, we believe that. Honestly. So, come on down to Spine and Crown- and save a fortune on batteries!

But we're not really here to pester. In fact, since we discovered that the word "pester" comes from the Latin pastoria, meaning "rope to hobble an animal," we feel less inclined to use it. We're not here to hobble you! We'll settle for lightening your wallet!

Had we been the betting kind, we'd have bet the non-existent farm that "pester" was rooted in "pest." And yet, it's not! Language- how tortuous! And torturous!

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New this week:

All items mentioned below are first come, first serve. If you want something, let us know post-haste! All new items sell for cover price, used items as marked. Sadly, trade credit cannot be used for new items.

Our books are always searchable via ABEbooks.

-----

Doom Fox, Iceberg Slim.

This guy was a pimp. Really, really a pimp. He went to jail. For pimping. Or knifing someone, we're not sure. But then, in a grand revelation, at the final moment of a faux execution staged by his captors, he discovered the WORD. That's right, language. Like how we tie this all together? And he used language to explore human foibles, particularly among the tribes of pimps and hos.

Some of the Dostoyevsky bio we've been reading might have bled in there a little, but in essence, it's TRUE! And isn't essence what it's all about? ($7.50) [Sold]

Also available: Trick Baby: The Biography of a Con Man. ($6)

-----

Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass, Bruno Schulz. (Out of print)

Joking aside, this is brilliant work by an author and artist whose life was cut tragically short.

From his wikipedia entry:

[Schulz] was temporarily protected by Felix Landau, a Gestapo officer who admired his drawings. During the last weeks of his life, Schulz painted a mural in Landau's home in Drohobycz, in the style with which he is identified. Shortly after completing the work, Schulz was bringing home a loaf of bread when he was shot and killed by a German officer, Karl Günther, a rival of his protector (Landau had killed Günther's "personal Jew," a dentist). Over the years his mural was covered with paint and forgotten.

($20) [Sold]

-----

The Inner Lives of Minerals, Plants, and Animals, Manly P. Hall.

This guy was a 33° Mason. What he didn't know wasn't worth knowing.

Digital computing? Invented it.

Atlantis? Built it.

He's typing this right now!

($20)

-----

A Seal Flies By, R.H. Pearson.

"Not only for the amateur animal lover." Indeed.

We'll leave that where it lies. ($7.50) [Sold]

-----

Beyond Terror: The Films of Lucio Fulci, Stephen Thrower.

The author of this book- this is a true story, now- once told me that he had made a better book than Fulci deserved. Is this a devastating put-down? Or is it self-congratulation? Not for us to say- but it is a really pretty book! It's long out of print and a prime example of why FAB Press is fabulous!

Fulci directed the best zombie movie ever made: Zombie Flesh Eaters aka Zombi 2. That movie has an underwater sequence where a zombie fights a shark! An actual zombie fighting an actual shark! Do you know how long you have to hang out under water to get an encounter between these legendary predators on film?!?

He also directed The Beyond, perhaps the second best Zombie movie ever made. Which takes place iiiiinnnn.... wait for it..... New Orleans! Full circle! Hot damn! And all done with LANGUAGE! ($140)

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Free Music Archive:

Would you take a free Charles Manson album if they gave it to you?

-----

Everything's turning into a pile of shit.

Except this.

-----

These ants do not need males.

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# of weeks since Spine and Crown inception: 180

# of weeks since inception that no mention of Spine and Crown has appeared in the print edition of The Stranger: 180

The Little Shop that COULD

2009-04-09T17:32:00.000-07:00

So you've got, what? Two certainties in life?

We know what they are, thank you very much, Benjamin Franklin!

Let's add a third, shall we?

The Germans call it Änderung.

The French: Changement.

That's right - Change.

Taken to task yet again for the dismal tone of ye olde Spine and Crown newsletter, clearly it's high time for change. And given the crazy game of musical chairs going on socially and economically at the moment, nothing could be easier! This one is upbeat! This one knows no defeat! This newsletter loves the world as it is and wishes it to be no other way than the way that it is, save for the ways that no one wishes it was and numerous other caveats too numerous to mention.

These are great times! Lots of unthinkable things are becoming thinkable! What a gift! I mean, we couldn't think them before, and now we can! It's true that many of us are getting bumped out of our cushy chairs- some, even from chairs not cushy at all! No one wants to leave a comfortable rut, but maybe it will all work out for the best... Most of us will survive (more or less), right?

Without all those pesky distractions (working, shopping, counting money), maybe we'll have time to finish that album we've been working on. Or that novel. Or maybe start growing our own food. We bought chicken and pig seeds from Lowes just this past weekend! Last year, the raccoons got all our pigs, but check out our new electro-fied fence!

Take that, raccoons!

You get a refund; we get a DEFUND

It's sweet, that moment when you check your bank balance- and there it is. A deposit from IRS.GOV. You overpaid, and now it's blessed, blessed refund time. But when you own a small business, overpaying is rarely an option, so come tax time, there is only PAYING.

Hey, it's owed. No complaints on that front. Someone's got to pay for escalating the war in Afghanistan, right? But the timing's not too convenient, to say the least. Profits are slipping, dividends are shrinking, shareholders are grumbling- you get the picture. So, if you were waiting for the perfect moment to come on down and splurge a little, we're not saying it ain't welcome. That is, we ARE saying it IS welcome. You've got some work to do, beautiful children of the refund!

And not just at Spine and Crown! Why, along this stretch of E. Pine St. alone, we have:

Travelers (best chai in town)

Le Frock (draping your body with the finest of vintage cloths)

Wall of Sound (a better record shop than this town deserves - fighting a recession and downloaders, too!)

and

Bauhaus (fashion parade + stout coffee + neighborhood convergence point = win!)

These are all businesses owned by real people, not faceless corporations. They won't be around if people don't rally now!

Did you pick up that book at Half Price? THEY'RE A MOTHER-LOVIN' CHAIN!!!

Starbuck's latte? They're brewing it with shareholders' sweat these days!

Local and little is the new black. Don't love something that can't love you back.

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New this week:

All items mentioned below are first come, first serve. If you want something, let us know post-haste! All new items sell for cover price, used items as marked. Sadly, trade credit cannot be used for new items.

Our books are always searchable via ABEbooks.

-----

Bombshells: Glamour Girls of a Lifetime, Steve Sullivan.

Ten chapters, each on a different lovely lady. Cynthia Myers (from Russ Meyer's "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls"), Yvette Vickers ("Attack of the 50-Foot Woman" and "Attack of the Giant Leeches"), and Joy Harmon ("Cool Hand Luke" and "Village of the Giants") all feature. ($25)

-----

Who We Were: A Snapshot History of America, Michael Williams, et al.

Coffee table book of found amateur photos from ancient times to the 1970s. Showing a personal side to days gone by and presenting a virtual catalogue of ridiculously cool hats that no one wears anymore. This copy is signed by all three authors and includes an actual found photo and a DVD-ROM with found home-movies (a package that was a pre-publication offering from the publisher.) ($70)

-----

The Names of the Lost, Philip Levine.

A signed copy of the paperback of this out-of-print collection. Detroit poet, full of dignity, mortality, and beautiful words, sporting a pedigree that includes the mentorship of John Berryman, stints teaching at Iowa and NYU, and a Pulitzer. A personal favorite. ($25)

-----

Killing for Culture: An Illustrated History of Death Film from Mondo to Snuff (New, revised and updated edition), David Kerekes and David Slater.

The title kind of says it all. This book is a steaming tower of ick. I feel queasy looking at it, but can't take my eyes off it. If this book is for you... well, then it is, I guess. Please don't kill me!

($40) [Sold, thank christ]
-----

Slimetime: A Guide to Sleazy, Mindless Movie Entertainment, Steven Puchalski.

Hundreds of reviews, reproductions of posters, and essays on major genres (such as blaxploitation, biker films, and drug cinema.) If the titles "Invasion of the Blood Farmers," "Cannibal Hookers," or "The Black Gestapo" mean something to you (or pique your interest,) then get thee hither! Slimetime awaits! ($25)

-----

A Thing of Unspeakable Horror: The History of Hammer Films, Sinclair McKay.

Very nice import hardcover. Peter Cushing, heaving bosoms, Christopher Lee, heaving bosoms, "Plague of the Zombies," heaving bosoms, "Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires." You get the picture. ($25) [Sold]

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Soviet science: On the March!

-----

Everything's turning into a pile of shit. Except this.

-----

Everything's turning into a pile of shit. Especially this.

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# of weeks since Spine and Crown inception: 179

# of weeks since inception that no mention of Spine and Crown has appeared in the print edition of The Stranger: 179

Third time's the harm

2009-04-02T18:56:00.001-07:00

Another week, another missive from the home of the quality second-hand book. What level of quality (or possessing what qualities), we're not prepared to say. It's all in the eye of the beholder. So get on in and behold, already!

Some people enjoyed the Walker Percy quote last week, some thought the whole thing was a little too downbeat. Too damn bad! Time we all did a little growing up. One day, we may actually be able to fit into our daddies' shirts! Or, as it says on the Spine and Crown gift certificate (and somewhere in the Good Book):

Inquire, I beg of you, of a former generation and ponder what their fathers have searched out. We are but of yesterday and do not know; Our days are a shadow on the earth.

That is to say, inquire at Spine and Crown! We'll help you ponder. If we'd all pondered on what our fathers had searched out, would we really have repealed the Glass-Steagall act? I think not!

And since I know we're all putting aside childish things, I'd like to dedicate this newsletter to the Emerald City Comicon, happening this weekend under our very noses! (Please note this week's use of exclamation points! Hey kids, comics!) They've got some pretty big names this year, among them Mike Mignola (Hellboy), Tim Sale (Batman, the tv show Heroes), and Seattle's very own Ed Brubaker (Criminal, Captain America, etc.)

I know you've always dreamed of giving Wil Wheaton a sloppy kiss in the Convention Center (no pun intended), so head on down (no pun intended!)

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New this week:

All items mentioned below are first come, first serve. If you want something, let me know post-haste! All new items sell for cover price, used items as marked. Sadly, trade credit cannot be used for new items.

Our books are always searchable via ABEbooks.

-----

The Book of Shrigley, David Shrigley. Fat art book replete with the scratchings of the British art world's enfant terrible. Actually, I'm sure they've got a new enfant terrible by now- and another one just now- oops, and another new one now. When will it all end?!?!?!? ($12.50) [Sold]

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Faeries, Brian Froud and Alan Lee. First edition (1979) of this classic of fantasy art. And let's face it, some of these naked pixies are, for lack of a better word, hawt! Those little elf ears really do it for some people, not naming names! ($20) [Sold]

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Powers: Who Killed Retro Girl?, Brian Bendis and Michael Oeming. In honor of Bendis (Portlander that he is), and the fact that he's going to be at the comicon, we offer the Graphitti Designs limited edition of the first Powers story arc. Only 750 were made of this lovely slipcased treasure. You could get it signed at the con, but, damn- it's signed by author and artist already! ($70)

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DC: The New Frontier, Absolute Edition, Darwin Cooke. Speaking of slipcased editions, the now out-of-print Absolute Edition of Darwin Cooke's masterwork takes the cake. It's heavy enough to be used as a murder weapon and so full of early 60s design-y goodness, it hurts! ($125)

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Jonny Double, Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso. Pure noir in this first collaboration by the team that's brought you 100 Bullets. Takes the down-on-his-luck-PI-gets-in-over-his-head thing and turns it on its head. Out-of-print. ($20) [Sold]

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Semmelweis, Louis-Ferdinand Celine (New) - The only edition in print in English of Celine's first work; a glorious object brought to you by London boutique publisher Atlas Press. We are the only shop in town with this book! ($20) [Sold]

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The Devil Wears Dada:

A big stack of Dada landed on us, including:

Women in Dada, The Dada Painters and Poets [Sold], Dada and Surrealism No. 16, The Dada Reader [Sold], The Dada Seminars, and Flight Out of Time: A Dada Diary by Hugo Ball [Sold].

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Anything that is too big to fail is too big to exist.

By the same author: The Baseline Scenario

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Everything's turning into a pile of shit.

Except this.

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Check out the gams on that dame!
or
The skin tickler slipped me a Lincoln, but it was sourdough.

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# of weeks since Spine and Crown inception: 178

# of weeks since inception that no mention of Spine and Crown has appeared in the print edition of The Stranger: 178

Spine and Crown, round two

2009-03-27T16:25:00.000-07:00

Wow. A week's not very long.

I can't believe I've got to write another one of these things already. Maybe I should go all Beckett minimal on this thing.

I can't write another.

I can't write another.

I'll write another.

... Or not. How about a little bit from the opening of Walker Percy's Love in the Ruins, instead?

"Now in these dread latter days of the old violent beloved U.S.A. and of the Christ-forgetting Christ-haunted death-dealing Western world I came to myself in a grove of young pines and the question came to me: has it happened at last?

Two more hours should tell the story. One way or the other. I sit against a young pine, broken out in hives and wait for the end of the world. The carbine lies across my lap.

Undoubtedly something is about to happen.

Or is it that something has stopped happening?

Is it that God has at last removed his blessing from the U.S.A. and what we feel now is just the clank of the old historical machinery, the sudden jerking ahead of the roller-coaster cars as the chain catches hold and carries us back into history with its ordinary catastrophes, carries us out and up toward the brink from that felicitous and privileged siding where even unbelievers admitted that if it was not God who blessed the U.S.A., then at least some great good luck had befallen us, and that now the blessing or the luck is over, the machinery clanks, the chain catches hold, and the cars jerk forward?"

That was written almost 40 years ago. People have been dreading this carnival ride for that long. Or maybe it's just that, if you predict doom often enough for long enough, you'll eventually be right.

The check is in the mail. The check is always in the mail.

And how are you feeling today?

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New this week:

All items mentioned below are first come, first serve. If you want something, let me know post-haste! All new items sell for cover price, used items as marked. Sadly, trade credit cannot be used for new items.

Our books are always searchable via ABEbooks.

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They will sell five minutes after I type this, but we have both Blood Meridian [Sold] and The Road by Cormac McCarthy just right now at this second.

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America, Jean Baudrillard ($12) [Sold]

The Ecstacy of Communication, Jean Baudrillard ($6) [Sold]

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The World Doesn't End, Charles Simic ($6.50)

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Collected Poems, Czeslaw Milosz (HC, First Edition - $15) [Sold]

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Semmelweis, Louis-Ferdinand Celine (New) - The only edition in print in English of Celine's first work; a beautiful object brought to you by London boutique publisher Atlas Press. ($20) [Sold]

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The Unknown Lorca, Federico Garcia Lorca - Also from Atlas Press. Part of their limited edition Printed Head series. A series of little-known short dramatic works from the celebrated poet. ($50)

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Annie Sprinkle's Post-Porn Modernist ($50) [Sold] - Out of print; a saucy book about a saucy lady.

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A big stack of Charles Bukowski, including:

Tales of Ordinary Madness ($7.50) [Sold]
Women ($10) [Sold]
War All the Time ($10) [Sold]
Burning in Water Drowning in Flame ($10) [Sold]
Mockingbird Wish Me Luck ($9) [Sold]
Love is a Dog from Hell ($10) [Sold]
and Post Office ($10) [Sold]

All except Tales are original Black Sparrow editions, not the crappy Ecco editions currently in print.

Also of interest is a hardcover first edition of Pulp ($175) - It's crisp and pretty, but lacks the original transparent acetate jacket.

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Pablo Neruda:

Residence on Earth ($8.50) [Sold]
Fully Empowered ($7) [Sold]
The Captain's Verses ($6.50) [Sold]
100 Love Sonnets ($7.50) [Sold]
Canto General ($10) [Sold]
Splendor and Death of Joaquin Murieta (a play - $15) [Sold]

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And of course we have copies of To Die No More (New - $30). "Violent", "beloved", "Christ-haunted", and "death-dealing" might also apply to this tome. Also, quiet, sober, and thoroughly beautiful. Three years in the making; Only 1000 were produced - and it's no exaggeration to say that unknown people in Hong Kong had their feelings hurt because of this book.

Keep up with the progress of Blind Pony Books.

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You have two options: revolt or sabotage.
Please note the date on this article.

-----

Everything's turning into a pile of shit. Except this.

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# of weeks since Spine and Crown inception: 177

# of weeks since inception that no mention of Spine and Crown has appeared in the print edition of The Stranger: 177

First in a series

2009-03-19T14:32:00.000-07:00

What we have here is a small gathering of friends. This newsletter is in beta; best to keep it small. So please excuse if later ones become more impersonal in tone. As I replace more of my meat with circuitry, it's inevitable. I'll try to keep it as brief as I am able, as this is just meant to be a crass promotional device. And, of course, a warm, safe place for all those lovely book-lovers out there. Love you!!!!!!

Two versions are going out by email: one without links first, then, after we've been unblocked by everyone, I'll send out the one with links. You can find the the new one each week on our blog (with pictures!)

All items mentioned below are first come, first serve. If you want something, let me know post-haste! All new items sell for cover price, used items as marked. Sadly, trade credit cannot be used for new items.

Our books are always searchable via ABEbooks.

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Things we have that are sold as used:

A ridiculous amount of Harlan Ellison, including: Memos from Purgatory, The Glass Teat, Angry Candy, Slippage (HC, First, Review Copy), Edgeworks vol. 4 and 5 (both HC), The Essential Ellison (in both HC and PB) and Dreams with Sharp Teeth [Sold]. Harlan is the crabby old guy who recently eternally pissed off Fantagraphics and has written some of the most acerbic and intelligent science fiction ever. Various prices, but none will break the bank.

A bunch of early 80s Dungeons and Dragons modules and old players' manuals. Ben saw them and did a little wee wee. No, we don't have the one with Cthulu creatures. Various prices, but ditto on the bank-breaking.

Marshall McLuhan:
The Gutenberg Galaxy, The Medium is the Massage, and Essential McLuhan [Sold]. Never more prophetic; never more relevant. All pretty cheap, too.

Dealer's Choice:
How to Cheat Your Friends at Cards by Penn Jillette ($6) [Sold] and Poker: A Guaranteed Income for Life by Frank R. Wallace ($40). Screw that 9 to 5 noise! Fame and fortune await!

Several issues each of Hop Up (hot rods) and Dice (custom motorcycles) magazines. True geekness over topics I have no knowledge of, but gosh, they're pretty. They call these people grease monkeys? I don't see any grease...

Hop Up @ $12 each
Dice @ $7 each

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Things we have that are sold as new:

Taking a moment to promote my own project: To Die No More

We have copies. Only 1000 were made. 70-odd were damaged in shipping. So, actually, even more limited. If you are part of our extremely narrow target demographic, this book will work its way under your skin, eventually becoming the only object you'd want to rescue from a house fire. Not hyperbole!

Keep up with our strangeness:

Blind Pony Books

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We also have offerings from Ouroboros Press - fine, fine occult and hermetic texts in beautiful hardcover editions. Check it out, and let us know if you need something.

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And another thing... You're a fool if you don't already own a copy of Victrola Favorites. No, really. But we can help. This thing was put together by the bearded guy who works at Wall of Sound and some other guy. It won, like a Grammy, or something - and the bearded guy got to kiss Herbie Hancock onstage, I think. I might not have that exactly right, but Victrola Favorites is phenomenal, and there is a hole in your life that is exactly VF-shaped. Fill it!

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Gary Panter:
Picturebox published a monumental tome dedicated to this freak of nature. Two volumes housed in a beautiful slipcase. A luxury item, yes? Please. We've got a copy of the limited edition (only 40 copies!) which comes with a signed and numbered lithograph pulled by the man himself! How's that for a $250 plate of truffles?

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This week:

Will Oldham released a sub-par album.
But, hey, he's given us the next ten years of "hip" NPR links, so that's something.

What have I been saying?

Everything's turning into a pile of shit. Except this.

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# of weeks since Spine and Crown inception: 176

# of weeks since inception that no mention of Spine and Crown has appeared in the print edition of The Stranger: 176