Mozipedia: The Encyclopedia of Morrissey

'There's more to life than books you know, but not much more,' the gorgeously sinuous voice of Morrissey once sang. Well, it's possible for Morrissey to be wrong once in his life, for he never cracked open Simon Goddard's Mozipedia: The Encyclopedia of Morrissey and the Smiths (Plume Books, 2010).

Not your regular 'aardvark to zebra' type of encyclopedia, the Mozipedia is a special kind of reference book: the kind devoted to everything Morrissey and the Smiths. Simon Goddard is the acclaimed author of The Smiths: Songs That Saved Your Life, a book that dissects every single Smiths track and analyzes it from every conceivable angle: from creation and critical reception, to song meaning, and beyond. It is a book that succeeds in piecing together each individual pop masterpiece to demonstrate how they fit into the Smiths' glorious oeuvre, cementing them as one of the most influential rock groups from the past century. It's truly a spectacular essential for Smiths extremists. Songs That Saved Your Life is still the most comprehensive and best Smiths reference book on the market, but, until now, there was no similar study of the art and influence of Morrissey's long solo career. In his Mozipedia, Goddard smartly re-hashes every single Smiths track from a broader perspective which does not render his earlier effort obsolete. You will want to buy the revised second edition of Songs That Saved Your Life, with invaluable input from the Smiths' guitarist Johnny Marr, to go along with your Mozipedia.

Mozipedia is a treasure chest of Moziana and Smiths arcana, from earliest interviews (and pre-dating Morrissey's musical fame whilst he was still an aspiring music and film writer making a name for himself as a strange spectre in the local Manchester scene) through the latest news available prior to publication. Goddard's information is culled directly from primary sources including written, audio, and video interviews, as well as personal interviews that he conducted with everyone who has been in Morrissey's own circle, except for the man himself. Besides entries for every single song ever recorded (and a few that probably weren't), Goddard has entries for every person, place, or thing that has had an influence on Morrissey's life, including musical collaborators and musicians through favorite writers, books, actors, films, haunts, and other obsessions that might help the reader understand how the mind of this brilliant man came to be. As far as this reviewer can say, no stone remains unturned. What results is the single greatest book on the topic of Morrissey that has been published so far (until the long-promised publication of Morrissey's memoirs that he has been teasing fans with for over a decade). While not totally unbiased (clearly Goddard is a devout disciple -- would you want to read a 500+ page book about him by someone who isn't?), it is a factual and enviable feat that all Morrissey fans should have on their book shelves. It's an enlightening look into the life of a public enigma, only whetting one's appetite to know this strange creature even more intimately. Whether you're interested in his thirty years' contribution to great music, how the legacy of Morrissey and the Smiths fit into modern culture, or understanding one of the most outspoken yet impenetrable  personas of the past quarter decade, Mozipedia is an essential reference point. He is, after all, the last truly important British person you will ever know.

Here are few samples of some of the most mind-blowing morsels of Morrissey revelations:

- At least in one interview, Morrissey referred to himself as 'Mogsy'. Surprisingly, his personal nickname hasn't caught on amongst his fans.
- Morrissey likes lower-browed television than one would expect. He rambles about his favorite soap opera (Coronation Street), and some of his frequently listed favorites from the 1980s were Cagney and Lacy and The Golden Girls!
- Truculent? There was a full explanation of the rather confusing royalties court case between the Smiths' drummer, Evil Mike Joyce v. Morrissey and Marr, which finally cleared up the complicated mess that has coated most of Morrissey's lyrics ever since with a thick layer of spite. Just call Mozipedia 'Morrissey's 1996 Court Case For Dummies'. Did you know that Morrissey sought an appeal to the obviously unfair and biased verdict? He approached Tony Blair for help (he wasn't), and, more surprisingly, he contacted the Queen (I'm assuming he means Queen Elizabeth II rather than one of his various friends), whom he later described as 'quite nice.'

Links:
Meet Simon Goddard at Married to the Moz

Miscellanea

TELEVISION
- Discovery Channel's Auction Kings returns next Wednesday, April 25 at 10:00 PM EST. Great show.
- Discovery cancelled Cash Cab. Bad channel. I am in mourning.
- It's that time of year again. TVLand's 10th Anniversary Awards Show will air on -- where else? -- TVLand on Sunday, April 29 at 9 PM EST. Look forward to seeing all your favorites, including reunions of Laverne And Shirley and One Day At A Time, as well as appearances by Pee-Wee Herman and Aretha Franklin. Murphy Brown and In Living Color will be honored. No word on whether Dan Quayle will be presenting the cast of Murphy Brown with their award. This year's host is Kelly Ripa, despite the fact that she lacks a sort of... je ne sais Reege.
- One of my few cable obsessions, Syfy's Hollywood Treasure, returns May 22 (Morrissey's birthday) with a look at Sean Astin's Lord of the Rings memorabilia collection! I can't WAIT until this show starts up again. [via the show's official Facebook page]
- Can you believe it's officially been 25 years since the Simpsons first appeared as a short on the Tracy Ullman show? I wasn't an instant fan, but it sure is hard to remember a time before the Simpsons. Sadly, no one is celebrating any such anniversaries for Herman's Head.
- A new documentary, Plastic Galaxy: The Story of Star Wars Toys, is about, arguably, the best part of the Star Wars universe: THE TOYS! I'm going to watch the newly released trailer with my two favorite fellas, Bib Fortuna and Squidhead. And perhaps Salacious Crumb. I wonder if director Brian Stillman can track down my beloved (and missing) Return of the Jedi cup with the chocolate milk stain.

MUSIC
- Morrissey's official Facebook page announced a handful of US tour dates coming up (two in Hawaii and his birthday, May 22, in San Diego)! Will he next turn his lovely head to the east? I say yes. He says no, but he might change his mind.
- Blur is celebrating 21 years since the release of their debut album, Leisure, with an incredible box set and expanded remastered albums. It's a 21 disc box set with all seven of their albums receiving the expanded two-disc treatment. Plus four discs of exclusive rarities (claiming 3 1/2 hours of 'unreleased' material). Plus three DVDs (claiming over 2 hours of 'unreleased' footage) with two live shows and an exclusive disc of video rarities. Plus a collectible 7" of a very early (Seymour-era) live track. Plus a deluxe hard-bound book with new interviews, extensive liner notes, and unseen photos. There's no way that such an incredible sounding bit of loot won't boast an equally incredible price tag [note: £158?! YIKES. NO WAY.]. It's worth noting that the remastered two-disc albums will be available separately and will also be available on vinyl. Apparently, you can pre-order through Blur's official site or Amazon.co.uk. If only they would throw in every single b-side plus the various EPs like Bustin' + Dronin'.. AND the new post-reunion tracks (that were mostly for the independent Record Store Day), as well as the live albums that stemmed from their recent reunion concerts. Despite the completeness of the Blur box set, I figure if I refused to shell out the big bucks for The Smiths' comparable box set, (which, to be fair, had none of the earth-shattering rarities), I won't do it for Blur.
- Since Pulp's 2011 live reunion of the classic Different Class-era line-up [Jarvis Cocker, Russell Senior, Steve Mackey, Candida Doyle, Mark Weber, and Nick Banks], they have continued to headline some major festivals and concerts. Recently they made it to America, most tragically for two sold-out shows at New York's Radio City Music Hall. They also headlined Coachella (along with those crazy kids from Madness)! Last week, Pulp made their first appearance on American television in fourteen years on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon (they performed 'Common People' and one other song that is exclusively on Jimmy Fallon's website). The performance was fantastic, though it was soured somewhat by the lack of Russell Senior (note that two people had to take his place). I don't know if that means that he didn't make it to America with the rest of the group. Here's a clip of Pulp making their American televison debut in 1995 on David Letterman. By the time I saw this performance, I had heard Pulp but didn't have any of their albums. I was immediately hooked and bought the album by the end of the month. They've been a favorite ever since!

LITERATURE
- J.K. Rowling recently announced she will be publishing her first adult novel, The Casual Vacancy in September.
- J.K. Rowling will also be publishing an official Harry Potter encyclopedia.
- Noir scholar Robert Polito has compiled five novels by the cult Philadelphia noir writer David Goodis. Five Noir Novels of the 1940s & 50s received a rave review by the Philadelphia Inquirer. A panel discussion on David Goodis appeared to be the highlight of this year's abbreviated Philadelphia Book Festival.

M-G-M: Hollywood's Greatest Backlot

California is known for its full range of geographical terrains inching up from dry desert heat and dangerously curving into palatial Pacific coasts, dense redwood forests, paradisal fields of flowers and orchards, and capped with snowy mountains. It seems quite fitting that this cinematic Shangri-la should be as ostentatious as the reputation of its southern hotspot, Hollywood. After all, one needn't leave Culver City to travel to the furthest reaches of the earth and from yesteryear to the glimmer of a far distant tomorrow. It is on the vast real estate called backlots where the reality of movie magic was truly invented, and no other movie studio encapsulated the true grandeur of Hollywood's potential as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Once boasting more stars than there are in the heavens, M-G-M's unrivaled star power was only outdone by its awe-inspiring backlot. While M-G-M's collection of backlots have officially followed the great movie moguls to their own demise, they are legends that the few survivors of the studio system continue to describe in astonishment.

M-G-M: Hollywood's Greatest Backlot (Santa Monica Press, 2011) is the best guidebook for a place that no longer exists. Writers Steven Bingen, Stephen X. Sylvester, and Michael Troyan take the reader on the ultimate tour of the ultimate backlot. This is a virtual tour of a Hollywood that no longer exists, and, some could argue, never did. It was on these unassuming backlots populated with mere facades of main streets, foreign villages, jungles, and cityscapes that the biggest M-G-M hits were born. As much as seeing the naked lots (or the multitude of photos showing the same lots being thinly veiled and dressed up for all manner of movie scenes) shatters the illusion of movie magic, it creates a whole other admiration -- a wonderment of how these dressed-down plots of muddy dilapidation could pass for Paris, Tarzan's jungle, and Main Street USA. The most striking aspect of the book is how lovingly and exquisitely detailed it is. The research compiled in the book is incredible, and it is filled with meticulous maps, photographs, and original documentation, as well as background information from the people who worked and walked the backlots themselves. The writers provide an unmatched glimpse behind the facades of each filming site and detail some of the movie magic that was made in each location from the lots' original formation to their ultimate dismantling. The writers manage to nestle the biography of this greatest backlot into a concise contextual history of the rise and fall of Hollywood's much ballyhooed studio system, so the reader can grasp the importance of M-G-M as a business model rather than merely an artistic one.

The book is as much an elegy to the end of an era as it is a celebration of what made movies great in the golden age. There is a lot of information regarding the collapse of the system and the razing of old Hollywood for a new generation of filmmakers. Sadly, the extensive locations that brought the elusive sparkle of movies to life became themselves faded relics. The book ends with the physical razing and liquidating of M-G-M's backlot and assets, the death knell for a Hollywood that can now only be read about or seen in old pictures. We have the writers of this book to thank for unearthing and preserving what little information remains of what was indeed Hollywood's greatest backlot. This is a must-read for all cinemaphiles and for those who want to understand the inner workings of a Hollywood studio at the height of its greatness.

Links:
M-G-M: Hollywood's Greatest Backlot - 'A lavish illustrated history of Hollywood's greatest movie studio' (official website)
Information about the book at Santa Monica Press

Happy Haul-idays from Chronicle Books!

Welcome to my second annual Chronicle Books Happy Haul-idays submission post (last year, I actually posted from my other blog, Curly Wurly)! Chronicle Books (my favorite publisher!) has upped the ante this year. This year's winner will score $500 worth of books handpicked from the publisher's vast catalogue. What's even more exciting is one of the triumphant blog's readers (who comments on their submission post) will receive a matching set of the winner's handpicked selections. And, Chronicle Books has decided to be even more generous this year! They will also donate $500 worth of books to a charity of the winner's choice. So, without further ado, here is my official submission post to Chronicle Book's Happy Haul-idays contest. If you're interested in winning my picks, please comment on this post. [NOTE: Obviously, your winning these books depend upon my winning the contest.] If you know anyone who might like my selection, feel free to link them to this post. (If you entered this contest, too, and think I might be interested in your list of books, let me know!) Finally, if you have a blog and want to enter the contest for yourself, simply click on this link and follow the simple directions. [All submissions and entries must be received by December 2, 2011. Read the official rules! Good luck!]

The Encyclopedia of Guilty Pleasures

The Encyclopedia of Guilty Pleasures: 1,001 Things You Hate To Love by Sam Stall, Lou Harry, and Julia Spalding (Quirk Books, 2004) is the most opinionated and infuriating pop culture encyclopedia I've ever read.

The book is meant to be a satirical compendium of bad taste which plumbs the depths of trash culture and regurgitates the curiously popular bits. I found the writers' descriptions of the skewered subjects to be shallow and misguided and the writing style to be unnecessarily scathing.

Whatever Happened To Pudding Pops?

Pop Culture Encyclopedias

X-TINCTION RATING: Revised and revived.

Revised and revived by Gael Fashingbauer Cooper and Brian Bellmont's new book Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops?: The Lost Toys, Tastes & Trends of the '70s & '80s (Perigee Books, 2011).

My bookcase dips in the middle under the weight of my pop culture library. From the massive, all-inclusive ABBA To Zoom to the pocket-sized Guilty Pleasures and bridging the gap between the anecdotal, countercultural RetroHell [1970s-1980s] from the writers of the Ben Is Dead zine to the pseudo-intellectual snooze that is alt.culture [1990s], you would think that another paean to pop cultural memories would be as necessary as a new Planet of the Apes movie.

Totally Tubular '80s Toys

Totally Tubular '80s Toys by toy expert Mark Bellomo (Krause Publications, 2010) is, so far, the most complete 1980s toy bible on the market. When I spotted this hefty hardcover on a display rack and viewed a few sample pages, I knew that this was the 1980s toy book that I had been searching for. The 1980s is a decade known for some of the greatest cartoon/figure tie-ins and some of the most creative toys ever made. As well, children of the 1980s were lucky to experience the last decade where toys were designed to spark creativity and imagination rather than passively entertain them whilst relying on flashing lights and electronic noises.

Amy Sedaris: Our Googly Eyed Guru

Comedienne Amy Sedaris may be best known for her warped, after school special-inspired series, Strangers With Candy; her off-the-wall David Letterman appearances; and her scene stealing cameos in many popular tv shows and movies. She has also trademarked her special brand of deranged home arts and crafts tutorials in her two best-sellers, I Like You: Hospitality Under The Influence (Grand Central Publishing, 2006) and its 2010 follow-up, Simple Times: Crafts For Poor People (Grand Central Publishing). I've long admired her unapologetic wackiness and have continued to champion her first book, I Like You: Hospitality Under The Influence. As a close friend and confidante, I encouraged her to write another book, and I think I can single-handedly take credit for the fact that she took me up on that challenge (incidentally, looking back on the letter I wrote her, my ideas included an etiquette book and a style/beauty guide, both of which I am hoping to see as future publications).

New Releases! (TV and Sedaris edition)

As an avid Arrested Development fanatic, I'm always delighted to discover prospects of the former cast being utilized in ways that could possibly result in series that aren't instantly cancelled. Running Wilde is Mitch Hurwitz's latest try at a comedy for Fox, who have not been kind to Arrested Development alums in the past. The show features the combined talents of Will Arnett and David Cross, best remembered as Gob and Tobias, respectively. Here's more information about the new show. I've read mixed reviews for the first episode, but that shouldn't dissuade fans from watching! Tune into Fox on Tuesday, September 21 (9:30 PM EST -- check your local listings). Even more promising is the UK-based comedy, The Increasingly Poor Decisions Of Todd Margaret, which also stars Cross and Arnett. I've watched a few clips on YouTube, and the Independent Film Channel will be showing the series starting on Friday, October 1 (10:00 PM). IFC has also been airing the new Kids In The Hall series, which has been so-so; the fourth IT Crowd; and Freaks And Geeks, which has been every bit as wonderful as I remembered!

As a side note, both The Big Bang Theory (CBS) and 30 Rock (NBC) will have their season premieres on Thursday, September 23, though, apparently, not at the same time.

On to the book news! Fans of the quirky Sedaris clan will be doubly pleased to hear that there will be two new Sedaris books in the next two months.

Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk: A Modest Bestiary, the latest edition to humorist David Sedaris' repertoire, will be available in stores on September 28, 2010. It will be a short collection of animal fables. When I saw him live in 2008, he debuted an oddball story about birds, which ended up being the only story that I didn't enjoy that evening. Since it was my least favorite, I was disappointed when he said that he was working on a collection of other animal stories. And, well, here it is. It can be pre-ordered now, and he will be doing another tour. Seeing him live is an incomparable experience.

Two years ago, I sent Amy Sedaris a note in which I begged her for a sequel to her delightfully demented, I Like You: Hospitality Under The Influence, which is one of my favorite books (Fans of my other blog, Curly Wurly, should have a copy of this book). She has finally followed my suggestion! Amy's second book, Simple Times: Crafts For Poor People, will be released on November 2, 2010. Here's a sneak peak inside. I am so excited about this book. Amy will also be embarking on a short tour. She will be appearing at the Free Library of Philadelphia on November 5. The show is sold out.