I recently acquired the latest Shins album, "Wincing the Night Away." In the liner notes, James Mercer (lead singer) lists all of the instruments that he plays on the record, and one of them is the "cat piano." I'd just like to note that before those hipster Shins printed "cat piano" in their liner notes, Maelstrom got their hands on the very same kind of hissing harpsichord of sorts.
So for a first of many archived Maelstrom articles, here is a letter from the editors that appeared in Maelstrom on February 28, 2006 in Volume 4, Issue 10. It addresses the issue of the infamous Dick Cheney gun disaster, our lack of coverage of the Dick Cheney gun disaster, Oscar hopefuls, and of course, the cat piano. Enjoy it:
The Things We Neglected to Tell You
By Co-Editors-In-Slackery Marissa DeSantis and Lea Lange
Dick Cheney shot a man. And we were eating rice cakes. Well, not literally. The rice cakes are a metaphor for “doing other things.” Like maybe doing laundry. Or maybe watching sitcoms on ABC Family. Or maybe eating Necco Wafers and spaghetti (not together—that’s disgusting.) The point is that we missed out on reporting and satirizing a majorly ridiculous news event. And now we’re really kicking ourselves.
We were so slow on commenting on Dick Cheney’s hunting mishap, that a radio parody called “Cheney’s got a gun” has already spent two weeks in Casey Kasem’s weekly Top 40. And we were so late on reporting the rise of this hit single up the charts, that we didn’t even realize that Casey Kasem is no longer the host of the Weekly Top 40.
By Co-Editors-In-Slackery Marissa DeSantis and Lea Lange
Dick Cheney shot a man. And we were eating rice cakes. Well, not literally. The rice cakes are a metaphor for “doing other things.” Like maybe doing laundry. Or maybe watching sitcoms on ABC Family. Or maybe eating Necco Wafers and spaghetti (not together—that’s disgusting.) The point is that we missed out on reporting and satirizing a majorly ridiculous news event. And now we’re really kicking ourselves.
We were so slow on commenting on Dick Cheney’s hunting mishap, that a radio parody called “Cheney’s got a gun” has already spent two weeks in Casey Kasem’s weekly Top 40. And we were so late on reporting the rise of this hit single up the charts, that we didn’t even realize that Casey Kasem is no longer the host of the Weekly Top 40.
We were such slackers that there is already a website club dedicated to “Deadeye Dick” in cyberspace at http://www.dickcheneygunclub.com/. The team of overachievers who made us eat crow have already stocked up on hot Cheney merchandise. We’re talking t-shirts, mugs, bumper stickers, dog sweaters, onesies, and canvas tote bags.
We also neglected to report on the invention of a “new” instrument. Of course, the cat piano was actually invented over 350 years ago by German scholar Athanasius Kircher, but it’s new to us because we’ve been slacking off hardcore. And we don’t think that the cat piano exists anymore which is really a shame because it looks like it would be an absolute delight to play.
Next time we’ll do better. We’ll bring you the news that really matters. Like hunting mishaps and turn-of-the-century instruments that inflict pain on innocent household pets.
To make up for our lack of timely topical humor, here are our Oscar predictions:
Heath Ledger shoots Jake Gyllenhaal in the face and then falls in love with Philip Seymour Hoffman’s beard. Then Reese Witherspoon gives an “unplugged” performance as June Carter-Cash…on a cat piano!
To make up for our lack of timely topical humor, here are our Oscar predictions:
Heath Ledger shoots Jake Gyllenhaal in the face and then falls in love with Philip Seymour Hoffman’s beard. Then Reese Witherspoon gives an “unplugged” performance as June Carter-Cash…on a cat piano!
A major chord = major pain!
Thanks for reading!
Marissa DeSantis
Editor-in-Chief, Maelstrom
No comments:
Post a Comment