Contests
Win Robert Lopez’s Part of the World
In one of my favorite books last year, Robert Lopez’s Kamby Bolongo Mean River, a man is locked in a room with a telephone and a bed. He spends a lot of time answering phone calls from strangers, and a lot of time drawing stick men and masturbating, and rummaging through his brain contents of growing up in a place called Injury, Alaska.
The book’s title comes out of the narrator’s remembrance of his brother repeating the phrase from the TV miniseries Roots. The phrase, along with other odd small ideas, indented moments, phrases looped, present themselves so seared on the narrator’s head it is as if he’s not in this single tiny room at all. If you’ve ever wanted a perfect book to teach or observe voice as character, setting, etc., Rob is the one, both here in Kamby, and in his first book Part of the World. Few maintain such control line by line of what, where, and when while managing to keep you hypnotized in tone.
Rob has offered to give away a few copies of a rare purple-covered edition of Part of the World, never before available. To enter, just comment here with a memory of your own childhood related to some looming repetition of phrase or sound or image from TV or film.
Three winners will be selected late Thursday night.
Tags: kamby bolongo mean river, part of the world, robert lopez
when i was a very young child i was obsessed with the number 4 and then a bit later i was obsessed with the numbers 4 and 16 and then a while later but still as a child i was obsessed with the numbers 4 and 16 and 64
i also tended to be “very confused” or “weirded out” when it was “dark” during the day due to inclement weather, as if somehow “time was different” or something
but this is in no way connected to TV or film
When I was just starting to walk and talk there was that Wendy’s commercial with the old lady saying “Where’s the beef?” and apparently I latched onto that and would tend to call out the question to strangers and family friends and my mother, multiple times a day. To this day I’m not sure where the beef is.
doesn’t embed…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZshZp-cxKg
yes.
In the first grade, my brother and I wanted to watch Happy Days, a show I’d never seen before. My mother said okay, as long as we took a nap. I was 6, my brother 5. He took the nap, I didn’t. When it was time for bed, I was so insanely jealous, I snuck out of my bedroom and listened from the hallway. (It was the episode where Fonzi jumps over the chicken shack at Al’s with his motorcycle.) Because my impressions were based solely on what I could hear, I gathered that Happy Days took place on a farm, and Richie, Ralph, and Potsie were all plowhands, and Fonzi some daredevil with a dirt bike.
I would recorded episodes of The Dinosaurs on VHS to save for future viewing. I mostly watched them at bed time. Sometimes I unknowingly recorded the same episode twice. I liked the baby. “Not the momma.” He would say. I think he was only referred to as the baby. I had a toy of him I got in a happy meal I think.
My little brother and I lived off of TV quotes – I don’t know if I would call anything “looming,” they were usually incredibly dumb – but I think all of our conversations between 1996-8 involved either a sportscenter catch phrase or an all that (or kenan and kel) sketch.
To my dying day I will not drink orange soda without saying “who loves orange soda?” And I often go through the whole thing (Kel loves orange soda. . .) to the either confusion or annoyance of whoever I’m with.
From age 3 to 7 whenever my parents took me to the beach, I would sing “Under the Sea” from the Little Mermaid, but I didn’t know the words very well so I just sang “Unda da sea” in a Jamaican accent, over and over and over. I am worried that I will begin to sing this in my head now whenever I go to the beach from now on. Now gimme that book!
i was haunted by the repetition of images. stuck somewhere out of reach of conciousness, called upon only within the confines of the frequent night terrors i experienced between the ages of 10 and 12. there were two incidents that i knew could root the terror in my mind, and despite my awareness of this, the two images were part of a cultural vocabulary that i had an unlimited interest in.
the first: my first obsession, that if i consider it in tangent with a number of other specific things can be considered the core of my entire set of interests today, was the x-files. i can’t quite remember if my interest in the paranormal came before or after i discovered the x-files, but i have to assume that it came before, as i can imagine no other reason as to why i would have had such intense interest in watching the show when i was only 7 years old (it’s worth noting that that was how old i was when the show premiered, and i indeed watched the show from its inception). a devoted fan until i entered jr. high (1998, the year the first movie came out, my obsession mostly died), i watched the show until mulder was no longer an active character (details of my devotion to mulder a story that is not utterly relevant) at which point i lost interest, the obsession dwindled. at the height of my obsession, 4th or 5th grade, the show was at the peak of its alien mythology arc (season 3 & 4). at some point in the third season, alex krycek–already revealed as a double agent and gone from the fbi–at the end of the cigarette smoking man’s patience ends up locked inside a grain silo with the remains of an alien space ship, and, unfortunately, the “alien oil.” the “oil” races up the space craft and into his body as he screams for his own escape while mulder & scully face the wrath of whatever government body is preventing them from sighting the craft themselves. the end of the episode closes with mark snow’s aggressive, shrieking, ascending drone as krycek continues to scream and flail alone, on top of the space craft, locked in a dark hanger. we see his eyes, and they are pitch black.
while my experience of watching the show affected me very little, reruns soon revealed that it was that precise moment which would launch the aforementioned night terrors, finding me suspending in half sleep wandering around my bed room, unable to clear my mind of anything but an abstract idea of numbers, a darkness, a numbness, and white static.
http://www.nicklea.com/krycek/images/cmblack.jpg
(not the exact image, but a nice approximation available via google image search: the noise of the videotaped image a nice contingency to the terror itself)
the second “incident” i could never identify the singular image of, but it was something during the tv edit of wes craven’s new nightmare that would also, without fail, inspire my night terrors.
having rewatched both years later i was slightly dismayed to discover that neither any longer held the trigger for my night time descent to the void.
when i was a very young child i was obsessed with the number 4 and then a bit later i was obsessed with the numbers 4 and 16 and then a while later but still as a child i was obsessed with the numbers 4 and 16 and 64
i also tended to be “very confused” or “weirded out” when it was “dark” during the day due to inclement weather, as if somehow “time was different” or something
but this is in no way connected to TV or film
When I was just starting to walk and talk there was that Wendy’s commercial with the old lady saying “Where’s the beef?” and apparently I latched onto that and would tend to call out the question to strangers and family friends and my mother, multiple times a day. To this day I’m not sure where the beef is.
doesn’t embed…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZshZp-cxKg
2DDT456
yes.
In the first grade, my brother and I wanted to watch Happy Days, a show I’d never seen before. My mother said okay, as long as we took a nap. I was 6, my brother 5. He took the nap, I didn’t. When it was time for bed, I was so insanely jealous, I snuck out of my bedroom and listened from the hallway. (It was the episode where Fonzi jumps over the chicken shack at Al’s with his motorcycle.) Because my impressions were based solely on what I could hear, I gathered that Happy Days took place on a farm, and Richie, Ralph, and Potsie were all plowhands, and Fonzi some daredevil with a dirt bike.
When I was still crawling, my parents wore out the tape in a Raffi cassette. One of the songs, as I had heard it, was about a person named Oatson Beanson Barelygroe. I didn’t realize until long after that the song was about the plants oats and beans and barley. I have long forgotten the melody, but sometimes when I walk I fall into the rhythm of Oatson Beatson Barleygroe like a chant.
There was also a song on that tape that scared the teething shit out of me – something about a giraffe named Joshua.
I would recorded episodes of The Dinosaurs on VHS to save for future viewing. I mostly watched them at bed time. Sometimes I unknowingly recorded the same episode twice. I liked the baby. “Not the momma.” He would say. I think he was only referred to as the baby. I had a toy of him I got in a happy meal I think.
My little brother and I lived off of TV quotes – I don’t know if I would call anything “looming,” they were usually incredibly dumb – but I think all of our conversations between 1996-8 involved either a sportscenter catch phrase or an all that (or kenan and kel) sketch.
To my dying day I will not drink orange soda without saying “who loves orange soda?” And I often go through the whole thing (Kel loves orange soda. . .) to the either confusion or annoyance of whoever I’m with.
From age 3 to 7 whenever my parents took me to the beach, I would sing “Under the Sea” from the Little Mermaid, but I didn’t know the words very well so I just sang “Unda da sea” in a Jamaican accent, over and over and over. I am worried that I will begin to sing this in my head now whenever I go to the beach from now on. Now gimme that book!
i was haunted by the repetition of images. stuck somewhere out of reach of conciousness, called upon only within the confines of the frequent night terrors i experienced between the ages of 10 and 12. there were two incidents that i knew could root the terror in my mind, and despite my awareness of this, the two images were part of a cultural vocabulary that i had an unlimited interest in.
the first: my first obsession, that if i consider it in tangent with a number of other specific things can be considered the core of my entire set of interests today, was the x-files. i can’t quite remember if my interest in the paranormal came before or after i discovered the x-files, but i have to assume that it came before, as i can imagine no other reason as to why i would have had such intense interest in watching the show when i was only 7 years old (it’s worth noting that that was how old i was when the show premiered, and i indeed watched the show from its inception). a devoted fan until i entered jr. high (1998, the year the first movie came out, my obsession mostly died), i watched the show until mulder was no longer an active character (details of my devotion to mulder a story that is not utterly relevant) at which point i lost interest, the obsession dwindled. at the height of my obsession, 4th or 5th grade, the show was at the peak of its alien mythology arc (season 3 & 4). at some point in the third season, alex krycek–already revealed as a double agent and gone from the fbi–at the end of the cigarette smoking man’s patience ends up locked inside a grain silo with the remains of an alien space ship, and, unfortunately, the “alien oil.” the “oil” races up the space craft and into his body as he screams for his own escape while mulder & scully face the wrath of whatever government body is preventing them from sighting the craft themselves. the end of the episode closes with mark snow’s aggressive, shrieking, ascending drone as krycek continues to scream and flail alone, on top of the space craft, locked in a dark hanger. we see his eyes, and they are pitch black.
while my experience of watching the show affected me very little, reruns soon revealed that it was that precise moment which would launch the aforementioned night terrors, finding me suspending in half sleep wandering around my bed room, unable to clear my mind of anything but an abstract idea of numbers, a darkness, a numbness, and white static.
http://www.nicklea.com/krycek/images/cmblack.jpg
(not the exact image, but a nice approximation available via google image search: the noise of the videotaped image a nice contingency to the terror itself)
the second “incident” i could never identify the singular image of, but it was something during the tv edit of wes craven’s new nightmare that would also, without fail, inspire my night terrors.
having rewatched both years later i was slightly dismayed to discover that neither any longer held the trigger for my night time descent to the void.
Mr. Fred McFeely Rogers kindly asked me, “Won’t you be my neighbor?” every Monday through Friday. We went to his make-believe land every day together.
Mr. Rogers and Mr. McFeely are two totally different people. Please tell me this is so. My sanity depends on it!
when i was a small child, say, five or six, i would listen to the frank sinatra song ‘three coins in a fountain’ on tape, over and over again, to the point of wearing the tape through. we also had several children’s records, but i was scared of them, including one of ‘play school’, which is an australian children’s show. it had a song about bears on it, that i thought would make bears come to life out of mud. it was not beautiful and embracing like the soft touch of ol’ blue eyes.
2DDT456
When I was still crawling, my parents wore out the tape in a Raffi cassette. One of the songs, as I had heard it, was about a person named Oatson Beanson Barelygroe. I didn’t realize until long after that the song was about the plants oats and beans and barley. I have long forgotten the melody, but sometimes when I walk I fall into the rhythm of Oatson Beatson Barleygroe like a chant.
There was also a song on that tape that scared the teething shit out of me – something about a giraffe named Joshua.
Mr. Fred McFeely Rogers kindly asked me, “Won’t you be my neighbor?” every Monday through Friday. We went to his make-believe land every day together.
Mr. Rogers and Mr. McFeely are two totally different people. Please tell me this is so. My sanity depends on it!
when i was a small child, say, five or six, i would listen to the frank sinatra song ‘three coins in a fountain’ on tape, over and over again, to the point of wearing the tape through. we also had several children’s records, but i was scared of them, including one of ‘play school’, which is an australian children’s show. it had a song about bears on it, that i thought would make bears come to life out of mud. it was not beautiful and embracing like the soft touch of ol’ blue eyes.
I listened to the CHiPs theme song every night coming from the living room and smelled my father’s fried bologna sandwiches from the kitchen, while I fantasized doing my teacher, Mrs. Kabaeko, from my bunk bed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ci8Ga-gCqno
I had a copy of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom that I’d taped off HBO. Problem was that I’d used a two-hour tape, and I accidentally recorded the movie at the wrong speed (as if it were six hours long–lowest quality image and sound). The movie looked all washed out–everyone’s faces were soft, undefined, and motion was just smears of color–and the sound sounded like big blotches of fuzzed-out noise.
For whatever reason, I used to make myself sick by watching that guy get his heart ripped out during the sacrifice. He’s restrained, chanting, “Ohm numa shi vaiyay,” over and over again, helpless, and it just made me feel terrible. But also thrilled. The swelling chanting of the temple, the blurry image, the terrible sound–it all knotted something very real in my chest, my heart, I’d hold my heart as I’d watch, rewind, watch again.
OK. OK. OK. So I wiki’ed Mr. Rogers. Yes, I wiki’ed Mr. Rogers. Me. Wiki’ed. Mr. Rogers.
According to Fox News, Mr. Rogers is a demon-monster:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29lmR_357rA
I listened to the CHiPs theme song every night coming from the living room and smelled my father’s fried bologna sandwiches from the kitchen, while I fantasized doing my teacher, Mrs. Kabaeko, from my bunk bed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ci8Ga-gCqno
ey? is “like” now in the spam filter?
This guy needs to win.
the garbled wail of an embodied girl heard from the empty hallway leading to my bedroom. through this terror, i learned the epiphany of mortality. i was aged 7, i think.
I had a copy of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom that I’d taped off HBO. Problem was that I’d used a two-hour tape, and I accidentally recorded the movie at the wrong speed (as if it were six hours long–lowest quality image and sound). The movie looked all washed out–everyone’s faces were soft, undefined, and motion was just smears of color–and the sound sounded like big blotches of fuzzed-out noise.
For whatever reason, I used to make myself sick by watching that guy get his heart ripped out during the sacrifice. He’s restrained, chanting, “Ohm numa shi vaiyay,” over and over again, helpless, and it just made me feel terrible. But also thrilled. The swelling chanting of the temple, the blurry image, the terrible sound–it all knotted something very real in my chest, my heart, I’d hold my heart as I’d watch, rewind, watch again.
OK. OK. OK. So I wiki’ed Mr. Rogers. Yes, I wiki’ed Mr. Rogers. Me. Wiki’ed. Mr. Rogers.
According to Fox News, Mr. Rogers is a demon-monster:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29lmR_357rA
This guy needs to win.
the garbled wail of an embodied girl heard from the empty hallway leading to my bedroom. through this terror, i learned the epiphany of mortality. i was aged 7, i think.
it is late thursday night and i have to go to work early and instead i’m on htmlgiant and this winnar has not been announced
it is late thursday night and i have to go to work early and instead i’m on htmlgiant and this winnar has not been announced
My little brother when he was little hated in an insanely passionate way Phil Collins. It was easy and fun to “set him off”, which I did once during a long “fun for the whole family” car trip. (There is no such thing as “fun for the whole family, btw.) Every time we’d go over a seam in the freeway that caused the car to make a little rumble I said under my breathe “Phil Collins” (he was in his car seat, I was sitting next to him) and he would freak. My parents were not happy, particularly, but once my mom figured out the cause of his distress she actually thought it was funny.
I know this contest is over and I’m not trying to win or anything and it would be a stretch in any case to say that this is about TV or film. I just wanted to write it down and send it into the ether.
* family”
My little brother when he was little hated in an insanely passionate way Phil Collins. It was easy and fun to “set him off”, which I did once during a long “fun for the whole family” car trip. (There is no such thing as “fun for the whole family, btw.) Every time we’d go over a seam in the freeway that caused the car to make a little rumble I said under my breathe “Phil Collins” (he was in his car seat, I was sitting next to him) and he would freak. My parents were not happy, particularly, but once my mom figured out the cause of his distress she actually thought it was funny.
I know this contest is over and I’m not trying to win or anything and it would be a stretch in any case to say that this is about TV or film. I just wanted to write it down and send it into the ether.
* family”
[…] winners of the Robert Lopez Kamby Bolongo Mean River contest are: amelia, jim r, magicmike, moga, elizabeth, ryan mcdonald. Winners, please send your […]