Some shows you just don’t want to have happen yet because you want the fliers to stay on the telephone poles longer. So it is with the latest photocopy touting The Modern Madcaps, who got a friend (known only as “Harvey”) to draw all the band’s members as big-eyed cartoon characters.

“I know, it’s only a flier and it should be like an album cover,” quoth MM drummer “Katnip.” To which bassist Audrey hopefully adds, “Maybe it will be.” Alas, the other half the band, purposefully sluggish guitarist Tommy and speed-rapping vocalitst Moe, are due to graduate—from high school!—next month, leaving the band’s future in doubt.

Post-Modern Madcaps, perhaps?

“We’re working on something. We’re obsessed with keeping something together,” Katnip klaims.

He’s making a joke—we once described the band, not altogether positively, as “obsessed and overwhelming.” One set had them pasting polka dots all over the Bullfinch stage, then doing an entire set of songs about dots. Another time, their “money set” had them spilling bucketfuls of play money out into the audience.

But we’d be the last to want them to burn out altogether. Their cartoon energy is more needed than ever in our currently oh-so-serious scene. Hold onto that poster art, pals.

Kat and Aud, by the way, won’t tip as to whether this Friday’s show at Hamilton’s will have an aesthetic concept, or what it might be. Also unverified—whether this could be the Modern Madcap’s final set ever. We’d ask Tommy and Moe, but they’re not talking to us anymore.

Less decorous gigs in the offing: Dollaire’s has a dance party with Hot Stuff and Spirit of ’76 and Magic Master, with Black Cat doing an early set in the back lounge for the really old class-reunion cretins. Sounds like a crowded line-up for a dance party, no? But we’re told that Spirit of ’76 and Magic Master are basically the same band, only one’s got a disco set and the other does Motown.

At the Bullfinch: Call it solo indie pop if you wish, but some of the old-timers in town it will seem awfully like old-school acoustic folk. Short sets by Captain Flower, Pirana, Tiger Boy, Jack Q. Frost and ringleader Royal Roy…. Wednesday, Hamilton’s may not have realized they booked a hardcore show, but they kind of did, starring The Sad Sacks and featuring up-and-coming cuththroats Boy’s Ranch and Stumbo. It’s a basement show gone bigtime…

Before that Sad Stumbo Rancho round-up, have dinner across the street at the Blazing Scarab Asian restaurant, where The Ghostly Trio are trying to start a midweek houseband jazz tradition. Don’t know ‘em? Oh, but you do—Stand-up bassist “Stretch” Fusso is from the same Fusso family that gave us The Wendys, pianist “Fats” spent time in Scare School, and percussionist Lazo is still one of The Uncles….

“Diet Riot”

“Prize Rise”

“Kick Shtick”

“Polite Invite”

“Bowl Toll”

“Snack Attack”

“Door Flaw”

“Drive Jive”

“Tower of Power”

“Goldy Oldies”

“Pet Set”

“Hobby Lobby”

“Tame Game”

“Slide Guide”

“Grid Kid”

“Vain Swain”

“Sounds Silly to Me”

and

“Soaps Get in Your Ears”

Actually…

A band with actual talent, a band we can actually believe in, has ascended the national pop charts. Such unexplained phenomena calls for a bout of excessive drinking at the Finch. In our revelry, we decide that there’s only one explanation: someone has juiced the stats.

We know that the talent exists in our humble burg to engineer such an upset. Breaking into a database and tweaking a few 0s and 1s comes as easily to some of this college town’s scenesters as does drumming one’s fingers to Tide’s “Freshness” riff.

Why, just over  there at the next barstool is Persil Gel, well-known bassist, indie music enthusiast, ace engineering student and suspected hacker. Could he have pulled off this magnificent heist of public adulation for a band that actually matters?

“Of course,” he smiles when first approached for a confession. Later, when the accusation is amiably repeated (we are on our fourth rum and ginger ale by now), he’s asked why he wouldn’t send his own band, Pure X, up the charts instead of an act from outside the city limits? “Too obvious,” at first he smirks. Then, “that’s your shtick anyway.”

It takes us a moment to get our head around the phrase “shtick anyway,” due to the inebriation. Then, when we get it, we feign umbrage. Then, six g-and-rs to the wind, we feel it for real. How dare…?! Who does…?! Why, we…!!

We believed we stood accused of patriotism for personal gain, of impure passion, of compromised community-fueled fandom. We’ll restate again, for the congressional record, that we love this town. We love the sounds of this town. We’re sorry we caused a disturbance. (We left of our own accord, in case you’ve heard from anyone that Q had to eject us.)

The meteoric rise of one of our favorite misunderstood national bands was shorter-lived than our hangover—a hallucination, probably. We have apologized to all concerned for our fervor.

It’s in the clear, sober, light of day now that we consider this burning question: Why do we get so excited about this stuff? For a moment it seemed that our team was winning, and we went wild. We jested about how this couldn’t possibly happen in the real world, and when a decent person bought into our joke and twisted it a little too hard, we went bonkers.

We love this town. We love its sounds. We love the folks who love the music we love. We love those who translate it into the language of far-off lands, or who journey perilously to bring our immortal poetry to the ears of other, less fortunate cultures.

What we can’t do, clearly, is take a joke. We’ll be working on that. Meanwhile, if anyone wants to jigger the chart standing of Zanella a few notches upward, we’d be happy to buy you a drink.

Coming clean about upcoming gigs: Ecos accosts the Finch, shattering the day of rest with Soap Nuts opening…. College jams with Planet Ultra and Squeaky Green at Hamilton’s just before the students all hightail it for home… A daft (or will it be deft?) set by The Drefts begins a banquet at Gamble’s, the restaurant next door to Dollaire’s, where the band will play Tuesday. Is there a closet or a parking space where they can store their equipment in the meantime so they don’t have to lug it home to their overstuffed Dreft studio pad?…

Seven or so years ago I was on the fundraising committee at my kids’ nursery school and offered to ask some of my musical friends to play at the annual Scholastic Book Fair there. Mabel and Sally have long since graduated from pre-K, and I’m still booking the Book Fair. Because it’s a gas.

This year’s event, Saturday, Dec. 4 from 10 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.,  is one of the most diverse, jam-packed and original line-ups ever. Without further ado:

10:00-10:30 a.m.: Jonny Rodgers (tuned drinking glasses, tape loops, guitar and vocals. Jonny is of course the guitarist from Mighty Purple, whose neo-classical solo material has taken him in fresh new directions.)
10:30-11:00 a.m.: Wayfarers (traditional folk group doing children’s songs)
11:00 a.m. to 11:30 p.m.: Toddler Tunes (guitar tunes for kids, played by the inimitable Robert Messore)
11:30 a.m.-noon.: Mangold-Heisers (family act featuring world folk music, homemade instruments and even clog dancing)
Noon-1 p.m.: Puppets! Betty Baisden performs a full-length Roxi Foxx show (like the ones she does regularly at the Peabody Museum and elsewhere), plus there’s an added Chinese puppetry performance.

1:00-1:30 p.m.: Bill Collins, fresh from winning a “Giant Steps” trophy from the Arts Council of Greater New Haven at its annual arts awards ceremony this week, is making his UCNS Book Fair debut with a conceptual concert of songs in many styles, all inspired by the P.D. Eastman classic Go Dog Go. Bill is best known locally for his rockabilly stylings with The Swaggerts and The Big Bad Johns, his Irish pub songs and his extraordinary contemporary union rally songs.

1:30-2 p.m.: The Acoustic Sparrows (original and classic roots duo). James Velvet and Johhny Memphis are the toast of the New Haven Cityseed farmers’ market circuit. Their musical collaborations go back decades, to the New Haven Radiators. James, of course, is the co-host of WPLR’s Local Bands Show, a great singer-songwriter and the former leader of Cafe Nine legends The Mocking Birds.
2-2:30 p.m.: Dean Falcone, Chris Arnott (pop fun with guitar and ukulele). Dean is the guitarist and co-leader of the Shellye Valauskas Experience. His local band legacy includes The Excerpts, Dean & the Dragsters and 100 Faces. Christopher Arnott is the proprietor of this website, longtime writer for the New Haven Advocate and leisuretime ukulele maniac.

See? Cool line-up?!

The event is a benefit for United Community Nursery School, a downtown institution for over four decades. So there’s a small admission fee. The Book Fair also features a Scholastic Book Fair with hundreds of books, a bake sale, kids’ activities and other stuff.
The United Communited Nursery School Book Fair is Dec. 4 from 10-2:30 p.m. at the school itself, inside the Parish House of United Church on the Green, 323 Temple Street. (The parish house is NOT the church itself—it’s a block away, at the corner of Temple and Wall streets.) There’s parking in the lot behind the building, and in the lot across the street from the front of the building, plus there are meters all along Temple Street.

Be there, and be a kid again.

Rock Enroll!

First, a couple of academic annotations: Zanella (formerly Prunella) has an accent over the second “a” in the band’s name, something we can’t figure out how to do on this keyboard. It’s important to Zanell-ehh anyhow; after getting denied the rights to their previous name in a nearly legal throwdown with a band in Canada, they’re not taking any chances, and are also considering an umlaut over the “e.”

Shantung, along with Red Stammel, who oversees the Bullfinch BandFinder series, took offense with our astonishment that the band, which has been around for years, would be part of what has been advertised as a “New Band Nite.” You can find a detailed Letter to the Editor printed about this in another Note-able publication, but their argument essentially boils down to “they’re new to SOMEBODY.” Oh, and they have a new bassist. Who doesn’t? …

Perhaps you can tell it’s a slow news day. Time, then, to dig our teeth into one of those ongoing local-band stories that never ends: the “Rock Course of Study” at Occlusal Community College.

We have heard four of the supposedly umpteen bands which have emerged from this program: The Pathogens, Space Maintainer, TMJ and Midline. Of these, only The Pathogens seem destined for anything other than Thursday College Nite gigs at Hamilton’s. They have two songs already that would make for a great, timeless, seven-inch. But we suspect that the quality of these tunes—the monster ballad “Maxilla” and the exhilaratingly sickening screed “Cross Contamination”—has nothing to do with book learning or with the lectures of Prof. Caries and Crown, who oversee the program. Nah, it’s all about the studio. In case you’re wondering, completing the “Rock Course of Study” gets you no course credit, no degree, not even a certificate which might get you a job sweeping up a real studio. But it does—for a fee they can’t honestly call “tuition”—gets you access to a rehearsal room and equipment which, while not exactly state of the art, is at least as functional as any other affordable studio in town. Oh, plus you get to sit in class while Prof. Caries plays you old Diagnosis records, while Crown explains such terms as “debanding” (i.e. going solo) and Bruxism (the 1970s Franco-German electronic philosophy that governs the records of Mathieu Plier and his followers, which include Bite Stick and Eztraoral). Seriously, they’re on the quizzes.

We’re not opposed to modern music infecting college curricula, but this program seems antithetical to a business-minded community college program. Why even have the classes? Why not just pay for the studio time?

We ran our learning-by-doing theory by The Pathogens’ Arch Form, who says we might have a point. “I missed a lot of the classes—I know the history, and the tests are mostly multiple-choice facts. But I never missed a studio session. At night, they let you stay until the custodians [that is, the OCC janitorial staff, not the band) come to lock up.” Form (ne Farmaglia) tries to break the class payments down into an hourly figure for me, then laughs and says maybe he should’ve taken a math class at OCC instead. But he adds “Don’t diss Crown & Caries. They’re cool. A lot of that equipment is their personal stuff. This is how they want to do things, it’s fine by me. I learned a lot.”

More on this educational development later…

At the Bullfinch Wednesday, by coincidence, is another OCC-trained band, Acid Etch, with Scaler and Christian rockers Curing Light. … Hamilton’s is dark Tuesday due to bad taste. … This just in: The Consultations’ “Twirl On” got three spins in a row on a commercial radio station in Spain, and is getting college radio play throughout Europe. We’ll investigate, and report soon …

We broke out the Christmas CDs this morning. Mabel laid them out carefully so they covered an entire table, then sorted them into stacks of the most important. Here’s today’s top ten. Expect the seasonal tone to become more sentimental as the holiday draws nearly.

1. The Chipmunks: Christmas with the Chipmunks (the 1950s/60s version of Alvin et al.) and A Very Merry Chipmuck (from 1994, and more in debt to the Chuck Jones chipmunk treatment).

2. The Rat Pack: Christmas with The Rat Pack, Dean Martin: Making Spirits Bright and A Jolly Christmas from Frank Sinatra.

3. The Fleshtones: Stocking Stuffer.

4. Ella Fitgerald’s Christmas.

5. The Macaroons: Let’s Go Coconuts.

6. Vince Guaraldi Trio: A Charlie Brown Christmas.

7. The Archies Christmas Album featuring Betty & Veronica.

(Local-band, soul/R&B and other Christmas music lists forthcoming. Just getting started here; the tree lighting on New Haven Green was just last night.)

Curious place, the Bullfinch. For instance, who runs it?

Hamilton’s, we all know, is on the third generation of its hallowed titular family: Edie’s the current figurehead, running the restaurant end weekdays. Dollaires (yes, we really do know how to spell it, it’s just more meaningful for us this way) is largely controlled by the booking agency which relies on it as a geographically perfect venue for touring bands migrating through the state on the way to larger cities.

But the Bullfinch? Technically, it’s owned by a faceless consortium of low-level investors who generally cede control of day-to-day operations to a paid manager. Said manager, the fabled Yuri Theotokoski, is pretty hands-off himself, bound more to the back room than to any action at the bar or stage. Most patrons wouldn’t even recognize him as a regular, and would only know his name because it’s emblazoned on the liquor-license “proprietor” plaque on the Finch’s front door.

So who does propel the Bullfinch? Surely, there’s no end of entertaining personalities happy to bask in the club’s limelight whenever the house mic is plugged in. But these are largely (and we know we’ll get heat for this) king-for-a-night types who host their own events or lead their own housebands. Much as we love and respect Open-MIc Merck, he’d be the first to say that he’s AT the Bullfinch, not OF it.

So who’s the foundation, the wallpaper, the thread, our metaphor of choice to represent the alchemical spirit and soul of this invaluable amped-up, tuned-in watering hole we call home?

Our candidate is Q, the humble barback. He seems to log more hours in the place than anyone, from lugging the beer deliveries down to the basement in the mornings to locking the doors at closing time.

He doesn’t book the bands—anyone who waits around to catch Yuri’s attention will be penciled in on the grid. But from what we can tell, Q provides essential quality control in that process, gleaming the sched for double-boookings or too-frequent appearances. When some out-of-town touring act gets a last-minute opening slot at the Finch (and thus are able to afford a meal or even a motel room en route to the nearest metropolis), that’s usually Q’s doing. Some of these acts turned out to be sensational. At least a couple have repaid the kindness by returning to the Finch when they’d made it big. That includes, as we all know, one certain superstar band in particular (a national act too big for our local-motive mouth to speak aloud in the context of this column) which has continued to sneak into the Finch amid its sold-out stadium tours, under such made-up-for-the-occasion monikers as Shower of Gold, Leda’s Swan and White Bull. For such divine favors you can credit the unassuming Q.

And he’s young! Still in his 20s, anyway. He’s been hanging around the club since he was a toddler, we’re told—grew up in the neighborhood—and has worked there since he came of drinking age. (Not that he drinks.)

Some have said Q has secret, simmering musical projects of his own. If that’s true, Q’s humility must be superhumanly high (or his self-esteem extremely low), since the Bullfinch stage is the most open and undaunting in town.

If he’s got artistic aspirations, we’d love to hear about them, but our advocacy of Q as the hard-working heart of the Bullfinch is not based on that sort of ambition. We know he’s got taste, we know he’s got style, and we know he’s the only one at the Bullfinch who ever dares to clean the bathrooms. Makes him godly in our eyes.

Our devotion is, at this point, one-sided. As they say in journo circles, Q “would not consent to be interviewed for this article.” That just means he shrugged, didn’t understand why we’d want to make any sort of deal over him, and went back to work. We realize that this story, singing praises of a guy who doesn’t mind them unsung, may limit our communications with him even further. Maybe we’ll just have to pray to him quietly over here for a while.

Enough about the Finch, which—for all our unremitting praise—is closed tonight AND tomorrow for private parties. Here’s what’s up elsewhere:  Reach Out and Semester Abroad bring their tireless, endless world jams to Dollaire’s on doomsday, or Tuesday, whichever comes first… Hamilton’s has The Sandwich Hams tonight and—we can’t make this stuff up—Stinky Leftovers tomorrow. The undercard includes Bar-S, White Egret (which, to save you some trouble, is a new local band that has nothing to do with White Bull and Leda’s Swan as referenced above) and a short acoustic set by the Allen Brothers tonight, then Sadia, Morrell & Co. and Guy’s Real all tomorrow….

Plan your weekend stroll now: Art Books Bibles, Custom Framing and the sanctimoniously self-descriptive known simply Gospel Music will all be playing at stops along A Walk In Truth, the charity walkathon which winds around the downtown parks Sunday, starting at 1 pm at town center common. We mention it now so you won’t be surprised when you run into any of these bands at clubs this week and they hit you up for contributions. These three acts boast some 22 members amongst them, so you can’t escape. And with them all playing, who’ll be left to walk the trail?…

Of Thee I Sing

By Barack Obama. Knopf Books for Young Readers, 2010.  40 pages. $17.99

When I was a kid, President Kennedy’s Profiles in Courage was inescapable—but though it seemed family-friendly, it wasn’t for kids. Inspirational, sure, and community-spirited in that innocuous football-game cheer kind of way, but also militaristically creepy and too struggle-heavy. And, of course, boring to read.

Barack Obama’s a savvier popular writer. Having done well with his inspirational books for grown-ups, he now moves smoothly into the children’s charts, targeting an audience he knows well from being a parent.

Of Thee I Sing is brilliantly structured and marketed. It’s titled in a personal way, as “A Letter to My Daughters.” It begins and ends with pictures of the Obama family’s pet dog. That tone, and the complementary colorful cheeriness of Loren Long’s illustrations in general, sets a gentle, comfortably down-to-earth context for book’s stirring examples of grand American heroism.

The briefly told stories of Helen Keller, Neil Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Albert Einstein, Cesar Chavez et al. (yeah, it’s quite a range) are introduced with affirmations about how special Barack’s (and by extension, everybody’s) children are. My own daughters took to it immediately.

A lot of people have expressed disappointment with Barack Obama’s pace in fixing every last thing that’s wrong with this country. Whenever it’s appropriate to look back at his legacy as a leader—and hopefully that time will be at least six years, not two years, from now—I think I’ll be remembering this positivist, uplifting, culturally astute and unassumingly education picture book as one of his quiet triumphs.

By Artie Capshaw

He saw our face go all agog and swore us to secrecy mid-set. (Remember when he leapt into the crowd and stuck us in a bearhug? That’s when he yelped in our ear “Don’t tell a fucking soul until it’s over!” And then he said something which sounded like “Very good, Jeeves!” but we don’t think that’s what he actually said.

Dead Lewis’ dizzying set Wednesday at the Bullfinch was—now it can be told—not a collection of ‘70s & ‘80s punk obscurities, as was advertised. The songs were indeed wild and raucous and went down like a squatter-filled house on fire. There was clapping and shouting and hooting and hellacious laughter. Punk as fuck.

Just older, that’s all. They all came from an LP of WW2-era British Music Hall songs, collectively titled Lord Ermsworth and Others: Crime Wave at Blandings, recorded live at the Blandings Theatre, Ukridge, UK, in 1940.

How do we know? We’re the one who lent Dead the disc, which we found in the quarter bin at Super Talented Awesome Records.

But that’s all the credit we can take. Dead’s the one who dressed these old wheezes up in safety pins and mohawks and palmed them off as classic punk. No one was the wiser—in fact, this brilliant stunt made everyone there much stupider, and happier for it. While we were scribbling the set list down madly, the pogoing around us was delirious, nonstop.

Here’s what got heard:

1. “Hot Water” (originally recorded, without all those improvised “Fucks,” by Young Men in Spats, 1936).
2. “Joy in the Morning” (no saucier now than it was when Uncle Fred recorded it in 1939)
3. “Quick Service” (the Spats again, 1940. Everybody: “Paramount Ham! Paramount Ham!”)
4. “Fish Preferred” (dirtiest of the lot; Lord Ermsworth, date unknown. You might know the clean version of this song, “Summer Lightning,” which nearly became a standard in the 1930s until “Fish Preferred” spoiled its success.)
5. “The Girl in Blue” (another long-lost Lord Ermsworth bootleg)
6. “A Damsel in Distress” (unrecognizable from its hit 1940 version by Eggs, Beans and Crumpets)
7. “The Coming of Bill” (Say no more! Mr. Mulliner, 1928)
8. “Sam in the Suburbs” (from the 1936 musical Laughing Gas)
9. “Louder and Funnier” (Are we sure that one of those iconic ‘70s lesbian punk bands like Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen or Ice in the Bedroom or Bring on the Girls didn’t write this? Yeah, ’cause this penis-withering feminist rant first came out in 1927!)
10. “Three Men and a Maid” (aka “The Girl on the Boat.” Even louder and funnier than “Louder and Funnier.”)
11. “Sam the Sudden” (done in a whiny nasal drawl, just like the Mr. Mulliner original)
12. “If I Were You” (underclass consciousness, half a century before the gobspit revolution)
13. “The White Feather”, neatly segued into…
14. “Love Among the Chickens” (wouldn’t you like to know?), ending with another originally understated Lord Ermsworth hit:
15. “He Rather Enjoyed It.”

If you’re wondering how any local opening band could deliver a 15-song set at the Finch on a Wednesday, these monocle-friendly party tunes are all under three minutes to begin with. Thrust into a Bronx Cheer doubletime no-goddamn-guitar-solos format, most didn’t hit the minute-and-a-half mark, and “The Coming of Bill” took like 30 seconds.

You’d think that last number, “He Rather Enjoyed It,” would be kind of a give-away, and maybe Dead Lewis meant for it to be the set’s punchline. The song was covered by Monty Bodkin in 1972 on the glam-camp classic Pearls, Girls and Monty Bodkin, which is the kind of record that half the crowd at the Finch that night (most of them there for headliner Heavy Weather) would know by heart. But by that point all belief in the room has been long since suspended. The more absurd Dead’s intros became, the more furiously his band (who reportedly were as muchin the dark about the songs’ Music Hall origins as anyone in the room outside Dead and ours truly) thrashed and pounded, the more chaotic the scene became, the more this became one of those nights-of-a-lifetime that you just have to give up trying to explain.

We’re still shaking our head in disbelief a week later.

How does it feel to have been probably the only one at the Finch that night who was in on the joke? Try thunderstruck. We haven’t had a chance to speak to Dead Lewis yet about this—never one to hang at the bar after a set, he fled the room as the last distorted guitar note chimed, and we haven’t run into him since. (Early deadlines for this column haven’t helped. Happy holiday!).

Being able to appreciate the craftsmanship at work here, let alone the prankmanship, made us feel like one of those Elizabethan lit scholars in the castle on the hill—there’s fun in those footnotes and annotations. Seriously, somebody should be writing their thesis on the Musical Synchronicities of Disposable Pop Culture at Times of Great Despair in British History. Or maybe Dead should just do this set again in a European History classroom.

In any case, Young Men in Spats can really spit, Mr. Mulliner can sure mosh, Eggs Beans  Crumpets can crunch and Lord Ermsby is the Nazz.

And Dead Lewis? Dead Lewis is a genius.

Gig up!: A new venue! The splendiferous Spence, freelance booking agent extraordinaire, has more touring acts ringing him up than the Finch, Hamilton’s and even all those campus lounges can handle, so he’s rented the Deer Guild Hall on Waterland St. for an all-day six-band bill on Saturday, headlined by up-and-coming indie royalty The Prince & Betty and also featuring (all from hither and yon, none local) The Gold Bat, The Swoop!, The Pothunters, A Gentleman of Leisure and Something Fresh (formerly Spring Fever; if you ask us, both names suck) . Plus one local band to be announced; we’re hoping its Money in the Bank (they’re checking their calendars). We’re also hoping this show puts money in Spence’s account too so he can do this again soon.

When a country’s entire economy is threatened, it’s common to fret about what will become of that country’s best-known export. These are easy little stereotype games journalists play—“What?! Greece in financial turmoil?! What will happen to the olive industry?!” The stories write themselves.

Especially, it seems, when an endangered land’s most identifiable internationally consumed product is its literature.

Ireland had to beg the European Union for a bail-out this week. I’ve already run across several references as to how this could impact Ireland’s celebrated novelists. On BBC Radio 4’s Nov. 26 Front Row show, Kirsty Lang raised the issue while discussing a new anthology of Irish short stories with writer Anne Enright.

The hope appears to be that this fresh appearance on the world stage will cause bolts of inspiration to smack every blocked writer in Dublin and Limerick and foment untold reams of Nobel-quality prose… about what it’s like to be poor and downtrodden in Ireland.

Seriously. Do we not already have enough Irish novels about abject poverty? What challenge, other than the option of writing in the present or future tense for a change, are these authors likely to rise to?

***

While flipping through the Irish Times on my Kindle—gaining gossipy snippets of info like how that poor government minister who’d been instructed to emphatically and completely deny all the EU bailout rumors, hours before they were revealed as true, has been behaving since that professional embarrassment—I came across another absorbing Irish lit-life overlap:

Man kills his drunken father (who’s been terrorizing the family for years) with a shovel. Horrific, I know, but impossible to read about without thinking of one of the most important Irish fictions of all time, J.M. Synge’s comedy script The Playboy of the Western World. Journalists must be biting their lips, restraining themselves from making the obvious references lest they be accused of bad taste.

No such problem for the “Irish Biker’s Discussion Forum,” where nggnorm (IDed as a “MotoGP Legend” who rides a Suzuki RF600R”) starts a comment thread with this title: “Playboy of the Western World all over again.” Well, I’m glad somebody’s emboldened to say it.

This piece of classic literature, humorously inclined though it is, can handle the attention. Synge’s play premiered to riots and years of controversy because it dared suggest that patricide could be justifiable—socially acceptable, even. Now it’s a front page reality story, causing the same debates that have been held among theater audiences for a century now.