When Elvis died Podcast halloween bonus: Dagon by H.P. Lovecraft

Surprise--one more quick story for Halloween week!  Dagon is an early Lovecraft story, where he's feelling out the Cthulhu Mythos, but hasn't quite articulated it out yet.  It's also a nice companion piece to last week's "The Temple".  Both are last testaments of dying men, and both have WWI naval combat as the central plot device, and both rely on the ocean and it's mysteries for their crowning horror.

It also has some of the great literary tics that Lovecraft would become known for--particularly the suicide note feverishly scrawled and cut off in the last sentance.  This has been parodied many times, but perhaps not so well as Patton Oswalt's Onion AV Club review of KFC's Famous Bowl.

Have a great Halloween!

Enclosure

When Elvis Died Podcast #12: The Temple by H.P. Lovecraft

Happy Halloween!  It's that time of year again, and continuing my tradition of revelling in H.P. Lovecraft's fantastical and horrific worlds every time October 31st rolls around, I've decided to read his short story "The Temple" this year.  It's a great story, full of mystery and claustrophobic terror, not to mention WWI era sea combat for all you history buffs out there. 

If you want to revisit them, you can listen to my previous entries The Colour Out of Space and The Horror at Red Hook by clicking the titles. 

As with last year, music is provided by those legendary purveyors of post-rock, Slint from their 1991 album Spiderland. 

Enjoy everyone!

The Temple by H.P. Lovecraft

When Elvis Died Podcast #11: Quentin's Quick History of Christmas

Merry Christmas all! Today I present--Quentin's Quick History of Christmas. This podcast is a bit different from my usual fare, and it's longer, but hopefully entertaining. 

A few shownotes: 

All of this information comes from Steve Nissenbaum's amazing, Pulitzer nominated "The Battle for Christmas", one of the best pieces of social and cultural history I have ever read. 

Much of the music came from the various recordings of Nowell Sing We Clear, whose records you can buy at Golden Hind Music. 

I've also included clips from A Charlie Brown Christmas, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Family Ties, Twas the Night Before Christmas by Rankin/Bass, and:

Carl Dellinger's recitation of the Cherryville Shooter's Chant

Elton John's recitation of "A Visit from St. Nickolas"

and the following Clips from Archive.org:

A Few Christmas Songs

Christmas Melody

The When Elvis Died Podcast #11: Quentin's Quick History of Christmas

When Elvis Died Podcast #9: The Horror at Red Hook, Pt. 3

Here we are at the conclusion of the Horror at Red Hook, by H.P. Lovecraft.  Thanks for sticking with me, and for your great comments. 

Thanks Mark Hammersteiner!
Happy Halloween!

When Elvis Died Podcast #9: The Horror at Red Hook Pt.3 .mp3

When Elvis Died Podcast #8: The Horror at Red Hook Pt. 2

So here we are at part two of my reading of The Horror at Red Hook by H.P. Lovecraft.  You can find Part 1 here, and you can also listen to last year's Lovecraft halloween podcast, where I read the Colour out of Space. 

In this weeks introduction, I quote from an undated letter where Lovecraft describes how he found an incantation that figures into the Horror at Red Hook.  I found that letter in a great collection called The Annotated H.P. Lovecraft

It's a collection of some of Lovecraft's stories, with the obscure and mythological terms annotated.  The annotations are written by S.T. Joshi, who I mentioned in last weeks introduction, and who is perhaps the greatest living scholar of Lovecraft's life and writings.  It's a great collection and well worth picking up. 

Music this week is, once again, all from Slint's majestically great and creepy album Spiderland. 

When Elvis Died Podcast #8: The Horror at Red Hook Pt. 2