Richard Behrens

The Truth Is Over There, May 5 2003

When I first watched the X-Files' Sixth Season episodes on their original air dates, I had developed a love hate relationship with the show. A fellow fan and friend of mine used to call me up at the very end of each episode to commiserate and watch the coming attractions together. We'd usually say, "Well, that one really blew!" and "Why don't they just hang it all up." We joked that every episode should start with the Fonz from Happy Days jumping a shark tank.

But now, a few years later, watching all the episodes in Season 6 within a few days like one long strange 22 hour movie, I'm starting to like this collection of short spooky tales and tight little supernatural crime dramas. I… Read more

Breakthrough in Tangiers, April 12 2001

There has been much written about Naked Lunch, so much that the basic facts can be stated from memory: written in Tangiers while the author was addicted to heroin, edited by Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, sold to Olympia Press in Paris and Grove Press in New York, made the author famous and ranked him with Henry Miller and the Marquis de Sade, suffered obscenity trials that ended literary censorship in America, filmed as a movie by David Cronenberg almost twenty five years after publication. And don't forget that Steely Dan got their name from this novel but they claim they never read it.

That is the story of its life: few people have actually gotten through the whole book. It reads… Read more

Making Flippy Floppy, April 12 2001

When I saw the Heads play in 1983, David Byrne came out during the second act in the big white suit, the one three times as large as the white suit he wore in the first act and which wiggled about his body like a flippy floppy clothing of Selfhood. I had never seen it before, nor had I heard about it. It was a shock and it was one of the funniest moments of my life. I was pleased a year later to see this concert film documenting a great tour, a great band, a great collection of tunes and the Big White Suit which Byrne would forever on be identified with. Of course, the joke grew dim over the years and the Big White Suit became another icon of rock history, like the Beatles Sgt. Pepper… Read more