Marcopocast: The Frank Marcopolos Podcast, with Frank Marcopolos

AMBITION. Where does it begin and where does it end? Have you ever had an experience that fueled your ambition for years to come? What was it and how did it end up? These themes and MORE in “The Moment of Victory,” a short story written by O. Henry and performed by Frank Marcopolos. Listen by clicking Play on the player above. From Wikipedia: William Sydney Porter (September 11, 1862 – June 5, 1910), known by his pen name O. Henry, was an American writer. O. Henry’s short stories are known for their wit, wordplay, warm characterization and clever twist endings. William Sidney Porter was born on September 11, 1862, in Greensboro, North Carolina. He changed the spelling of his middle name to Sydney in 1898. His parents were Dr. Algernon Sidney Porter (1825–88), a physician, and Mary Jane Virginia Swaim Porter (1833–65). They were married on April 20, 1858. When William was three, his mother died from tuberculosis, and he and his father moved into the home of his paternal grandmother. As a child, Porter was always reading, everything from classics to dime novels; his favorite works were Lane’s translation of One Thousand and One Nights, and Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy. Porter graduated from his aunt Evelina Maria Porter’s elementary school in 1876. He then enrolled at the Lindsey Street High School. His aunt continued to tutor him until he was fifteen. In 1879, he started working in his uncle’s drugstore and in 1881, at the age of nineteen, he was licensed as a pharmacist. At the drugstore, he also showed off his natural artistic talents by sketching the townsfolk.

In episode 8 of Saturday Show Podcast, Frank discusses how his love of the stories written by J.D. Salinger can be a hindrance upon his dating life. Especially after a couple of g(G?)lasses of wine. The player above uses Flash. Here is the link to the show on iTunes. * Music provided by Hoto of ccmixter.org.

Who was O. Henry? William Sydney Porter (September 11, 1862 – June 5, 1910), known by his pen name O. Henry, was an American writer. O. Henry’s short stories are known for their wit, wordplay, warm characterization and clever twist endings. Listen to THE CHURCH WITH THE OVERSHOT WHEEL, written by O. Henry, and performed by Frank Marcopolos. Click PLAY above.

Frank moves to Austin, Texas from South Brooklyn, New York. He takes YOU along for the ride on the road known as America. Listen in to this road trip adventure! (OK, so maybe it’s less of an adventure than a travelogue? A road trippish experience? Something of an anomaly? An aberration in the fabric of space-time? Something, surely.)

What can we learn about secret societies from the works of Joseph Conrad? Tune in to Saturday Show #5 to find out! SHOW NOTES: Joseph Conrad Wikipedia Page Freemasons

Show Notes: Music: “Waiting Forever” by Bill Hicks. When you purchase The Essential Collection (Amazon Affiliate Link), you get a code which allows you to download this song and 10 others from billhicks.com.

SHOW NOTES: The Great Konrath ALMOST HOME THE WHIRLIGIG

Back in my college days, I was often bored by my classwork, so I spent a lot of time hiding out in the stacks of the library, reading like a fiend. I first met Teddy (formally Theodore McArdle) there, hiding from my responsibilities, my student loan debt, myself. Precocious child Teddy was, for sure. But still, he had that other-worldly wisdom practically dripping from him, so there was no way I could ignore the boy. I didn't really know what to make of him. Some of the things he said—about getting out of the finite dimensions, about some crazy thing called Vedantism, about vomiting up the "apple"--seemed ridiculous, seemed like the make-believe world of a 10-year-old boy with an active, vivid, intellectual imagination. At first, in short, I wrote the damn kid off. But. Being in the library anyway, I decided to delve into all those things they had stacked on all those shelves. Books, magazines, newspapers. Found everything I could on Vedantism and other Eastern philosophies. I read all the Salinger stories I could find, even the uncollected ones. After all this extensive research, I came back to Teddy with a mind that had been grenade-blown wide open. With this new perspective, I could see that what he was saying was absolutely TRUE. It was NOT some fanciful fabrication of a hyper-intelligent kid. It was pure and beautiful truth. You know that whole thing Teddy says about... oh, wait. You've met Teddy, haven't you? Oh, no? Well, you probably should... [CLICK PLAY ON THE AUDIO PLAYER ABOVE. IT RUNS ON FLASH.] "A few years ago, I published an exceptionally Haunting, Memorable, unpleasantly controversial, and thoroughly unsuccessful short story about a "gifted" little boy aboard a transatlantic liner...." – Buddy Glass, J.D. Salinger’s (most obvious) alter-ego. There are a bunch of great essays on the web about Salinger's "exceptionally Haunting, Memorable, unpleasantly controversial, and thoroughly unsuccessful short story about a "gifted" little boy aboard a transatlantic liner," "Teddy." Such as: Orange Peels and Apple-Eaters: Buddhism in J.D. Salinger's Teddy by Tony Magagna Along This Road Goes No One: Salinger's "Teddy" and the Failure of Love by Anthony Kaufman Salinger's Teddy by Charles Deemer The Grass Before It Was Green by Leslie English What's Up With the Ending? on something called Shmoop.com Teddy McArdle - Character Analysis on Shmoop Professor Phillip Schultz in the Writers Studio's CraftClass on "Teddy" and Salinger (Audio) This being the case, I don't really want to re-hash anything that these other fine essays have already gotten into. I'll just reiterate for the uninitiated (and if you're one, shame on ya) that Teddy McArdle, the "gifted" little boy mentioned above, advocates a Vedantic view of the world which espouses an unemotional approach to life. He (and it) champions the abandonment of desire--sexual, financial, and material-- as a path to spiritual enlightenment. This is emphasized in the story by other characters' obsessions with name-brand things: Leicas, and Gladstones, and Eastern-seaboard regimental outfits, and Ivy League educations. Teddy believes that a focus on these things prevents a person from making spiritual progress (by meditation) which eventually allows the person to become one with God, whereby that person would then stop the cycle of reincarnation and spend eternity in perfect bliss. The main issue of contention about the story is its rather abrupt, controversial ending: What, exactly, happened? Did Teddy commit suicide? Did his kid sister push him into an empty pool? Did he push his sister into a full pool? Here's the exact concluding text [SPOILER ALERT - STOP READING NOW IF YOU DON'T WANT THE ENDING SPOILED FOR YOU!]: "At D Deck the forwardship stairway ended, and Nicholson stood for a moment, apparently at some loss for direction. However, he spotted someone who looked able to guide him. Halfway down the passageway,

On this edition of Saturday Show, I discuss the runaway phenomenon of FIFTY SHADES OF GREY, Joseph Conrad (HEART OF DARKNESS), and other moving literary topics. SHOW NOTES/LINKS: http://thesuburbanjungle.com http://dearauthor.com 50 Shades of Grey on Amazon.com Joseph_Conrad

Saturday Show #1 Show Notes: Department of Justice Case vs. Big 5 + Apple New York Times Criticizes the Case

The knowledge of how to build a nest in a bare tree, how to fly to the wintering place, how to perform the mating dance—all of this information is stored in the reservoirs of the bird’s instinctual brain. But human beings, sensing how much flexibility they might need in meeting new situations, decided to store this sort of knowledge outside the instinctual system; they stored it in stories. Stories then...amount to a reservoir where we keep new ways of responding that we can adopt when the conventional and current ways wear out. – Robert Bly On the tiny isle of Manhattan, there are 80 bazillion human beings prowling around trying to deal with each other, or so it seems. In response to this ant-hill madness, I had no other choice but to invent a game so clever, so sinister, and so flat-out-fun that not one of those 80 bazillion people would see it coming. Nor could they stop its eventual triumph over the minds of people everywhere. (Except people who hate fun, I guess.) Thus began the era of “The Urban Fun Run.” The glorious rules of “TUFR” are as follows. You walk along somewhere in the crowded city, and you suddenly and without warning break out into a run as fast and hard and far as you want, dodging street-walkers and mailboxes alike. To improve things, you can up the Danger Quotient by running across light-changing streets, dodging traffic, and trying to squeeze through precarious bio-traffic, such as slack-jawed tourists and fanged pit bulls. Pretty sweet, right? And yet, somehow, incredibly, it gets even better! TUFR was working (and does work) pretty well to increase the Fun Factor of a boring day in Gotham. But I knew I needed to come up with something better, something bigger. Something that could be sold to ESPN as the Next Big Thing in Sporting Hijinks. The idea factory that is my brain then came up with this golden nugget: The Urban Fun Run Olympiad! The Olympiad is essentially the same as The Urban Fun Run, but with the following differences. First, it’s a competition, with many participants. Second, each participant would wear a GPS-enabled bracelet, with a beeping alarm thingamajig on it. There would be three or four “runs” scheduled of various lengths in one day. The participants know in advance the order of the runs and the lengths, but they don’t know when they will start. So, as the day begins, you just start walking along anywhere in Manhattan, or any urban area. At some point, your bracelet beeps and this signals the beginning of the first race. You run as straight as possible until your bracelet beeps again, signaling the end of the race. You have no idea what place you finish in. Then you continue walking around, and doing whatever you want, except that you can not rest. The only “resting” allowed is buying food from street-cart vendors, if you want to. At some random moment, could be 5 minutes or 5 hours later, the bracelet goes off again, and the next race has begun. You run until the bracelet beeps, etc., etc. until all 4 races for the day are over. Finally, you go to some central location to find out how well you did. (Now that I’ve revealed this publicly, I’m sure ESPN will be calling me any minute now. Still waiting…. waiting…) Podcast Powered By Podbean Now, all of this running, all of this need for an escape of some kind comes from New York City’s disgusting overflow of people, buildings, pit bulls, garbage, rats, banksters, and everything else. The running events are just my completely natural reaction to it (ahem.) And it’s not just Manhattan. Want a snapshot of modern life in this beautiful country of ours? 82% of Americans live in urban areas according to 2008 estimates, as opposed to rural. (The worldwide urban rate is 50.5%.) More than 8 out of 10 of us are squashed into a metropolis, living one on top of another, commuting like canned anchovies on mass transit for hours every day. We’re all up in each other’s spaces,

To enjoy the podcast, click PLAY above, or download the MP3 file by right-clicking, and using Save Link As… To buy the entire novel as an e-book for Kindle ($2.99), click here. To buy the entire novel as an ebook in any other format, including EPUB for Nook, from Smashwords ($2.99), click here. Grab the RSS feed by clicking here.

As translated by Robert Bly. Additional, recommended resources for enhanced understanding of this fantastic tale: Iron John: A Book About Men by Robert Bly From Wild Man to King by Jim Moyers

"She looked at him and for a moment he was standing in that city where no one ever figured out how to put out that fire..." * PS..."Hortlak" is a Turkish noun meaning ghost, ghoul, or spook. *

"Eric was night, and Batu was day. The girl, Charley, was the moon. Every night, she drove past the All-Night in her long, noisy, green Chevy, a dog hanging out the passenger window. It wasn’t ever the same dog, although they all had the same blissful expression. They were doomed, but they didn’t know it." *