Sleep Slammed Against mp3s

A holiday weekend is coming up, and since I'm American, I have to write a list of target goals for said weekend. (Really, they make us do it--you have to submit your weekly target goals with your taxes, and now to the Department of Homeland Productivity.) So here are myne: 30 hours of sleep and ~5 hours of light therapy. But mostly sleep.

Why can't sleep come in a serum? A little vial that you drink, or a nose spray or a suppository--a supplement that gives you all the benefits of sleep without actual sleep. And no, I'm not talking about something to make you more awake or help you get to sleep. I'm talking about something that gives you the benefits of sleep--the cellular repair, the cementing of memories, the refreshment, the relief of dark circles.... It would be something you could take if you only got 4 hours of sleep--it would give you another 4-6. Or you could take it if you got 8 hours of sleep and just felt like having more. Presumably it could help some people stay up and (groan) work, but I think it would be more useful to people like me: the ones who, for whatever reason, can't get into bed before 1am but still have to get up in the morning. Imagine how amazing it would be if you could wake up, feel refreshed, keep going all day (maybe having a chemical cat nap or two), hit midnight, watch 2 episodes of Frasier, followed by 2 of The Golden Girls, crawl into bed around 3, wake up at 6, take your flask and start over again, never getting all crabby or dark-circley or comatose.... That's what I fantasize about these days. Not being rich or famous or a sex symbol or any of that, just getting more sleep. And not having to take public transportation. And being a rich, famous, well-dressed sexpot who has 5 Japanese cleaning ladies with ever-changing haircolors.

I hope you heard last night's Against ****: A Polemic show, because, I reiterate, it's a goodun. Go stream the mp3 while you can--it turns into a realaudio file heartbreakingly soon. Basturmatory as it may sound, I have to say that my ability to interpret text has improved drazmatically over the past couple years. I've listened to the show a bunch of times, and the number of cringeworthy, "I should have stressed that word," or "I need to round those phonemes" or "I need more control there" moments that I notice is well under the average. Yay! Again, here are the two excerpts I put online, one of which is the theme: excerpt (~7Mb) and theme (~2Mb?). Available for a limited time only!

And I have one more slonic gem for you. Last night I was feeling cheeky, caterwauling along with Jackie O, the Opera (mostly the spoken parts: "I'm taking the veil, she said, and retired... Jackie's been in retirement, licking her ...woooooounds... She's bigger than Mars... Drip, dress, drive and dance! Throw off your veil! ...the old Norma, Claudiata, Lucia--I said No, I'm sorry. I cannot DO routine! I need new productions! ...If you have to find a gesture; when you want to find how to ACT on stage, all you have to do is listen. If you take the trouble to listen with your soul and with your ears and I say soul and ears because the mind MUST work! But not too much...." Yeah, those last ones were the Maria Callas character. She ROCKS ...in that opera way)..... OK, another long parenthetical bit. I'm prone to that. So I was feeling cheeky and decided to record a teensy slam version of something my friend Mark Baratelli wrote, called I'm a Dead Palestinian Girl. Here's the origin of that: I saw the phrase in the Voice or somewhere and thought, Hey, that would make a great name for a band! So I mentioned that to Mark and he wrote a li'l bit from her. He sent me a quick draft and later recorded a full version of the song (I can't find it online at the moment). Anyway, last night I went to that old email and recorded my own li'l slam version (at least how I imagine slam) of it. Click the link below to listen (it's a small file, like 1.6Mb):

I'm a Dead Palestinian Girl, written by Mark Baratelli, slammed by Ed Shepp.

And that's the gzoop for now, gwinbeepsterlets.


Beep!
Ed Shepp

Blog CDs MP3s Radio Show Pix

Against Hair: An Experiment with Excerpts

Well, beeplets, it looks like The Ed Shepp Facial ExpHairiment has, regrettably, come to an end. A couple days ago I shaved off all that wonderful beard hair (which you see on the left) that it toook me all of 3 weeks to grow. Sigh. Why did I blitz it? There were a couple of reasons: 1) I thought that keeping a beard would be easier than shaving. Not so. It's harder, because once it's grown in (which takes only a few weeks, but it feels like longer), it grows zippity fast, and then you keep having to trim it. Every few days or so. If you don't, you look kinda ratty. More like Matisyahu than House. 2) A certain comment that I kept getting. Literally five different people told me, "You look like an ***** *****," or some variation thereof. These were not five people who all knew each other, who could have gotten together and agreed to tell me I looked like an ***** ***** with the beard. After a while, I couldn't look in the mirror without thinking "***** *****." That, combined with the usual January doldrums, was too much for the hair to bear. So I blitzed it. I might grow it again one of these days, but methinks I'll have to get one of those electric trimmers before doing that, sos I can keeps it manicureds.

In another blip, be sure to tune in to The Ed Shepp Radio Experiment Thursday, the 11th, because it's a goodun (6-7pm Eastern time, 91.1fm or wfmu.org). You know how I do my xmas cards on CD now? Well, this show is gonna be my valentine CD. Because I take text extensively from my favorite book, Against ****: A Polemic, a work I want peops to read. The prose is [mostly] pretty breezy and casual, so it makes for good audio. And since I so want you to listen to this one, I've actually put up (for a limited time) teaser excerpts: Here's one segment from the show and Here is the theme mix for this particular show, which is actually more than a remix, because the lead vox are different. So tune in, beepsters! It'll be a blast!

And one last burplet of news that I should have posted before, but forgot: My platial map, Where I Was When 9/11 Happened, won a platial award in the Best News/World Events Map category. Yay! Everyone go to the map and leave your mark.

And that's the gzoooples for now, gbeepsters. Need more? You can go visit my facebook and last.fm pages, which I just recently put up. Go ahead and add me whilst you're there.

Beep!
Ed Shepp

Blog CDs MP3s Radio Show Pix