Total Dick-Head Is Five Years Old Today! (now with links)

You read that right, compadres! TDH is five years old today. In a few more years perhaps the blog will be mature enough to get over the dick jokes, but anyhoo, it's been a fairly unqualified success.

Seriously, the coolest thing about the endeavor was being a part of the PKD scene and meeting so many cool people. Mr Hand over at Philip K Dick and Religion has become a great friend, and Patrick Clark and the Otaku folks are super-cool. Erik Davis and Lord Running Clam... I promised myself I wouldn't cry. It's also nice to see PhilipKDickFans.com up and running again. And Frolix-8 has consistently churned out awesome PKD content for ages. And now we have a festival page. Now we're on Facebook too, please 'like' us so we can look big time. It's nice to see more Dick on the Internet.

It's been a big five years for PKD too:

Published by Library of America
Briefly the subject of two dueling bio-pics
Back-handed compliments by The New Yorker
High Profile Profiles in LA Times, NY Times, Time Magazine, Newsweek...you name it
Cinematic adaptations including Next and Adjustment Bureau
A good adaptation of Radio Free Albemuth and talk of a Gondry-helmed Ubik
Publishing of 975 pages of Exegesis writings
(I was going to link all of these, but you're so good with The Google, you do it)

So it's been a fun time. For some reason I feel like the wave has crested, like the publishing of The Exegesis was Dick's high-water mark in pop-culture - actually I think it was a little before that. Maybe I'm wrong, and when Ubik comes out they'll fire up the Philip K Dick Article Generating Machine and churn out "Troubled Misfit Druggie Wondered What Was Real (And He Predicted Robots!)" articles by the dozen.

So, you probably want some links:

Miguel Conner has posted a cool interview with John Simon, director of Radio Free Albemuth (which we'll all have watched some day) over at Aeon Byte Gnostic Radio. Check it out.

There's short preview trailer that's been released in anticipation of the Full Trailer for the Total Recall remake:



It's got a dodgy chair - generally considered to be the kiss of death in PKD adaptations - those and hats.

Erik Davis, Ted Hand, and I will be presenting at this year's Esotericism Conference in sunny Davis, California on Friday, July 20. You can learn more here.

Forget Paul Giamatti as PKD, reader Mike Winder found this pic to convince all of us in the PKD group on Facebook that Jeff Bridges is PKD:

It Was 30 Years Ago Today

Pictured: reader Jonathan Yates' Palmer Eldritch tattoo. Cool, huh?

The Intertubez are abuzz with the 30th anniversary of PKD's death, which is today, March 2. NPR's show To the Best of Our Knowledge has produced an absolutely spectacular hour-long show about PKD, featuring Umberto Rossi, Anne Dick, Jonathan Lethem, and your humble blogger (I talk about PKD and Hollywood at about the 31:00 mark).

Make sure to listen to the show here.

PhilipKDickFans is running a cool story about the anniversary and many are sharing their own whereabouts 30 years ago (me, I was ten, and I had just determined that my "We Sold Our Soul for Rock and Roll" t-shirt with skeletons playing a concert in a graveyard was not appropriate to wear to church functions, and I was still at least 9 years away from reading my first Philip K Dick book). Share your 1982 circumstances in the comments section!

Happy 82nd Birthday PKD!

Our favorite author would be 82 today. Kind of bittersweet, but I think we can all admit that Phil would never have lived to be 82, and if he had, a quick look at any number of today's news stories would probably kill him where he stood.

Happy Birthday Phil! - Updated!

For his 81st birthday, Google apparently named their new iPhone competitor after some of Dick's most memorable androids - and his kids aren't happy....

Read the Wired Gadget Lab article here.

Update: I've been thinking about this. The article I've linked above is overly snarky (the article's comments are beyond the pale and suggest nothing less than the death of civility, if not civilization itself), and I certainly don't want this blog to become that kind of cesspool. There's a few ways of looking at this: first, it's weird that Google licensed the name 'Droid' from Lucas' Porkduction Company. Why on earth do you have to license a name? I can understand if they wanted to call it the Google Pepsi Phone, but if you're going to 'license' some variation on the word 'android,' shouldn't some very old Greek guy get the money? Additionally, I would agree with Isa that there is a significant reference to Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? with the name Nexus-One. It's kind of a clever gimmick: we know a Nexus-6 is indistinguishable from a human being and in many ways may surpass us. By using the title Nexus-One, Google is suggesting they are on track to make a piece of technology with capabilities superior to us in only five models! But references like this (and this) weave an author into the fabric of a society, not that Philip K Dick's work needs any help being relevant to our times. In my opinion, these references are compliments not commodities, but I'm a idealist, an impoverished one with no words to license at all.

At the end of the Wired article their charticle bot writes:

"For those seeking some Dickian fun, go back to our original post about the Google Nexus and spot the PKD reference we dropped in."

Which, I guess, refers to this line which isn't exactly PKD's line:

"Or the Nexus could be a light that burns twice as bright as all the existing confusion of Android handsets combined..."

Happy 80th Birthday PKD!

Is it morbid to celebrate the birthday of a dead person? 80 years ago, Philip K Dick was born at noon, on a cold Chicago day. Twenty minutes later his twin sister Jane was born. We celebrate the birthdays of the dead when, in retrospect, it seems those days yielded something extraordinary.

I think our world is profoundly better for having Philip K Dick in it, and I know my life is immeasurably richer for having discovered his work. It makes me a little sad to wonder what he could have done had he lived longer.

Whatever, y'all are bringin' me down.

As I skeptic I believe in none of this but Erik Davis thought it'd be a good idea to get a star chart for PKD. We know he was born at noon, in Chicago, on December 16, 1928. What say you cosmic oracle, alabe.com?:

Name: Philip K Dick
December 16 1928
12:00 PM Time Zone is CST
Chicago, IL

Rising Sign is in 25 Degrees Pisces
Very sensitive to your surroundings, other people's feelings become your feelings. Try to avoid negative people because your tendency to empathize with them will make you negative also. An idealist, you must believe in something beyond your normal everyday existence. A dreamer, you like to escape to a world of your own creation. As such, you are known for the vividness of your imagination and should try to share your inner visions with others. Very self-sacrificial by nature, beware of others becoming overly dependent on you or vice versa. Allow yourself to live for yourself once in a while -- you deserve it. Don't be so envious of those who are more aggressive than you -- your gentle charity and true humility are indeed wonderful gifts. on the tenth house cusp (MIDHEAVEN).

Sun is in 24 Degrees Sagittarius.
Very fun-loving, spirited and energetic, you have a huge reservoir of physical energy within you that needs to be released. As such, exercise or sports are very important to you. Quite gregarious, you enjoy being with other people, but you tend to avoid emotionally restrictive or intimate relationships. Constantly curious about the broader issues of life, you may at times be quite careless and sloppy about details -- you tend to leap to conclusions before all the facts are in. An avid reader, you are totally enthusiastic about any given subject should it interest you. You are known for being idealistic, generous, sociable, cheerful and very positive!

Moon is in 14 Degrees Aquarius.
Very freedom-oriented, you must always be able to do what you wish, no matter what. You become stubborn and recalcitrant when others try to force you into a mold. You are a true democrat -- you are not a follower, but you enjoy being with those who are like-minded. You appreciate emotional self-control -- you practice it yourself and you look for it in others. You solve problems, including emotional ones, with your brains and intellect, not your feelings. Try to be tolerant of those who have powerful and obvious emotional responses -- not everyone is as objective, cool, dispassionate and detached as you are.

Mercury is in 23 Degrees Sagittarius.
Your mind is very curious and inquisitive, always seeking information on a wide variety of topics. The broader the subject matter (philosophy, science, religion, metaphysics), the more it will appeal to you. You prefer to deal with abstractions -- the small but important details associated with any subject tend to slip your grasp. You are known for being blunt, honest and truthful.

Venus is in 05 Degrees Aquarius.
You are a friendly and outgoing individual, but close relationships are difficult for you to maintain due to your fear that they will cause you to lose your freedom. You attract friends and associates who are exciting, different and sometimes a bit odd. You are popular with others and enjoy working within a group toward group goals.

Mars is in 01 Degrees Cancer.
Your moods are very important to your overall well-being. You are confident and self-assertive when you are feeling upbeat, and you are retiring, irritable and grumpy when you get depressed about anything. Very sensitive, you wear your heart on your sleeve. You are easily angered whenever you think someone has slighted you. It is best for you to show your anger immediately and let it all out, rather than to try to hold it in or to hold grudges for a long time. You're extremely loyal and defensive of your family, neighborhood, community and culture.

Jupiter is in 00 Degrees Taurus.
Growth only occurs for you after you have found a stable lifestyle and a dependable, protective and secure environment. You are at your best when those around you provide you with a great deal of affection and support. When you feel insecure or threatened, you tend to become possessive and grasping and self- indulgent. You are an inveterate collector with an expensive preference for all the good things that life has to offer.

Saturn is in 21 Degrees Sagittarius.
Basically quite conservative, you respect traditional authority figures and are very thankful and supportive of the laws and institutions which govern your life. You learn and accept new ideas only after having very thoroughly examined them. Ideals and abstract concepts are important to you only if they can be used in some practical fashion. You are so practical and so orderly that you have natural skills in planning, administrating and organizing.

Uranus is in 03 Degrees Aries.
For you, as well as for the rest of your peers, the issue of personal freedom is not just an abstract issue that can be discussed and then forgotten. You feel very deeply the loss or threat of loss of your ability to remain unrestricted and independent. And you will react vigorously and vociferously to defend your right of self-expression, no matter what the cost.

Neptune is in 01 Degrees Virgo.
You, and your entire generation, idealize work, duty and responsibility. You tend to be very fearful of anything that would force you out of the protective shell of your everyday routines. You place a high premium on personal pride in productivity and craftsmanship. But in your search for perfection in minor details, you sometimes lose track of the overall purpose of life.

Pluto is in 17 Degrees Cancer.
For your entire generation, this is a period of profound global changes, especially in the nature and shape of family structures. In one such period, in the Twentieth Century, major calamities such as depression and world war accelerated the replacement of the old village-oriented extended family by modern cosmopolitan living.

N. Node is in 00 Degrees Gemini.
You will consciously seek out many different contacts with others throughout your life. Many of these will be of very short duration, not necessarily because you're fickle, but just because you always seem to be more excited by the prospect of meeting someone new rather than prolonging your present relationships. At any rate, you will learn something new from almost everyone you come across -- intellectual stimulation is what you crave from others. You will be well known to neighbors and relatives, partly due to your curiosity about what they're doing -- you delight in keeping up-to-date about the latest news (and gossip).

Somebody's Got a Birthday Coming Up!

Next Tuesday December 16th would have been Philip K Dick's 80th birthday. To celebrate this I have been invited back on the radio for a two-hour tribute to our favorite sci-fi surrealist this Friday December 12 11:59pm -2am on Pirate Cat Radio 87.9 FM in the Bay Area.

The show's called Psionic Dehiscence and I'll be playing some interviews with PKD - old ones - not from beyond the grave, some John Dowland, hopefully the VALIS opera (if you have a copy of this please email me), some Sonic Youth, Flaming Lips, and other strange rock 'n rollers influenced by PKD. I even hope to have some interviews with some of PKD's friends and family (no names just yet). Maybe even some of PKD's old radio plays will find their way on the show. I promise lots of rarities, so fire up your satellite recorders, or load the transmission into your data player for later rebroadcast, but don't miss the satellite firing.

Update: The podcast is available for download here.

Thanks to Yuri G and The Stranger for making this happen.

Happy Birthday PKD!

Today (Sunday December 16) would have been Philip K Dick's 79th birthday.

It boggles the mind to imagine what he could have accomplished in another 25 years; he's really been getting around lately - especially for a dead guy.

Thanks for the ride PKD.