Reading Next Saturday

Come shake off those election hangover blues/joys at the KGB Bar this Saturday, where I will be reading along with several other writers as part of a flash fiction night.

Afterwards we can all eat some Pommes Frites!

Boring personal reading habits ahead....

On New Year's eve I made a resolution to read 50 books in 2008 and, after lagging behind for most of the summer but soaring back in Autumn's third quarter, I have just completed my 50th. Now I don't have to read anything for the rest of the year! No, but this might be the first New Year's resolution I've actually completed (full disclosure: There was also a half-hearted 100 film component which I'm way behind on.) My only rule was that the book had to be finished in 2008, but had to be read from front to back. This allowed me to finish up a bunch of collections and half-read novels I had lying around, but not count anything I didn't completely finish (thus leaving them as half-read things to finish up next year....aka the circle of life)

In chronological order:

1) The Aspern Papers – Henry James
2) How the Water Feels to the Fishes – Dave Eggers
3) Hard to Admit and Harder to Escape – Sarah Manguso
4) The Bloody Chamber – Angela Carter
5) The Art of the Possible – Kenneth Koch
6) Crying of Lot 49 – Thomas Pynchon
7) American Psycho – Bret Easton Ellis
8) Erasure – Percival Everett
9) Chronicle of a Death Foretold – Marquez
10) Venus Drive – Sam Lipsyte
11) Minor Robberies – Deb Olin Unferth
12) A Fan’s Notes – Frederick Exley
13) Captain Maximus – Barry Hannah
14) The Angle of Yaw – Ben Lerner
15) The Voice at 3:00 AM – Charles Simic
16) All the Pretty Horses – Cormac McCarthy
17) Chord of Light – Zbigniew Herbert
18) Stars of the New Curfew – Ben Okri
19) Wittgenstein’s Nephew – Thomas Bernhard
20) Men and Cartoons – Jonathan Lethem
21) Ant Farm – Simon Rich
22) 60 Poems – Charles Simic
23) In Persuasion Nation – George Saunders
24) Paradise – Donald Barthelme
25) Partial List of People to Bleach – Gary Lutz
26) McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern #24
27) The Nimrod Flipout – Etgar Keret
28) The Elements of Style – Strunk and White
29) The World Doesn’t End – Charles Simic
30) I Killed Adolf Hitler – Jason
31) Rock Springs – Richard Ford
32) What I’d Say to the Martians – Jack Handey
33) The Wavering Knife – Brian Evenson
34) Ghost Town – Robert Coover
35) Housekeeping – Marilynne Robinson
36) Knightfall - Dixon et al
37) i hate to see that evening sun go down – William Gay
38) Home Land – Sam Lipsyte
39) Ultramarine – Raymond Carver
40) The 13 Clocks – James Thurber
41) Flash Fiction Forward – ed. James Thomas & Robert Shapard
42) The Drowned River – Thomas Lux
43) Flash Fiction – ed. James Thomas et al
44) My Custom Van – Michael Ian Black
45) I Pass Like Knight – Jonathan Ames
46) Eternal Enemies – Adam Zagajewski
47) Der Struwwelmaakies – Tony Millionare
48) Emergence – Steven Johnson
49) The Dog of the Marriage – Amy Hempel
50) Coming Through Slaughter – Michael Ondaatje

That's 18 story collections, 14 novels, 8 poetry collections, 5 comics/graphic novels, 3 humor collections and 2 non-fiction books.

I'll leave further analysis (favorite books, etc.) till the end of the year.

Go forth and read!

Please check out the new fiction section at Guernica magazine edited by Ben Marcus.

In particular, two good friends of mine have pieces up:

* She Is, Because by Rozalia Jovanovic

* Regards from Mozambique by Dyannah Byington

Enjoy!

I will always be Tom Brady to Todd Zuniga

A big thank you to everyone who came out to Opium's Literary Death Match last night, especially Mark Asch at The L Magazine for asking me to fill in and Todd Zungia at Opium for allowing me to and for hosting such a fun and wacky event.

For those of you who missed it, I won my first (the reading) round, but lost in the face-off laser tag duel against Dennis DiClaudio. Specifically the final blindfolded round. I'm not saying he cheated, but is it possible he had a remote radio feed implanted in his ear allowing a team of laser tag specialists to direct him around the stage? Just saying.

Last minute reading

Hey everyone! Through a series of semi-probable events, I am going to be reading at Opium Magazine's Literary Death Match tomorrow (that's Tuesday night).

7PM at The Kitchen, 512 W. 19th St.

These death matches are supposed to be pretty fun and all the cool kids are there. (You're a cool kid aren't you? [Then prove it!])

Apparently there is a round of reading then the two favorites move on to a feat of strength... so if you want to see me fall on my ass trying to do pull-ups or something come on out.

(NOTE: There is a 7 dollar charge... but you get a free copy of Opium in the deal)


Here is the official blurb:


New York City

Prepare for NYC?s biggest Literary Death Match of the year, as Opium teams up with The Kitchen to create a spectacle like none other.


An epic lineup will feature three of NYC?s best reading series and LA?s finest. Katherine Taylor (Vermin Reading in LA), Thomas Hopkins [Now Lincoln Michel] (L Magazine?s Annual Literary Upstart), Dennis DiClaudio (Guerrilla Lit) and Thaddeus Rutkowski (Poetry v.
Comedy) will be judged by the New Yorker?s Ben Greenman, videogum.com?s Gabriel Delahaye and funnylady Jodi Bullock.


Avoid the line and pre-order your ticket now!


When: October 14, 7 p.m. (doors at 6:30)

Where: The Kitchen, 512 W. 19th St.

Cost: $7 (admission, plus Opium7:7)

Result: Ridiculousness and gunfire!

Afterparty: The Park, 118 10th Ave.

Before B-Day

- James Wood on Republican "verbage."

Sarah Palin, alas, talks the difficulty. She may claim, as she did in last Thursday’s Vice-Presidential debate, that “Americans are cravin’ that straight talk,” but they are sure not going to get it from the Governor—not with her peculiar habit of speaking only half a sentence and then moving on to another for spoliation, that strange, ghostly drifting through the haziest phrases, as if she were cruelly condemned to search endlessly for her linguistic home: “I do take issue with some of the principle there with that redistribution of wealth principle that seems to be espoused by you.”

- Annie DeWitt starts a new lit blog.

- Someone punched the CEO of Lehman Bros?

- New Achewood.

Something new

I'm launching a new blog tonight: Three Line Punditry.

Why? Because I spend too much time reading about politics I might as well do something with it. I do not want to crowd this blog (which is supposed to be focus on my literary thingies) with political talk.

The blog with post links to news items and sum them up in a brief and hopefully poetic and/or humorous way.

Unlike this blog, Three Line Punditry will be updated on a very regular basis. Several times a day.

A sample:

* Sarah Palin, the 44-year-old second-year governor of Alaska, claimed dinosaurs and man walked the earth together 6,000 years ago, which is 65 million years less than scientists claim.

My inspiration comes from a book I've been reading, Novels in Three Lines by Felix Feneon. Apparently in Europe very short summaries of random news events (kind of like a police blotter) are common. Feneon wrote some for awhile, but made them very beautiful, funny and sad.

Well that and Fark/The Onion/Daily Show type headlines which I sometimes write.

Anyways, this is just for fun but if you enjoy it please feel free to bookmark.

Dainty Jowls

- The Guardian has a section of essays on "how to write."(via BookNinja)

Robert Harris on writing novels had some good advice.

Remember that most writing is done in the subconscious ("the boys in the basement," as Stephen King calls his unseen helpers) and that inspiration is only a posh word for ideas. Pace yourself, get some recreation, avoid tiring yourself out. Cut your manuscript ruthlessly but never throw anything away: it's amazing how often a discarded scene or description, which wouldn't fit in one place, will work perfectly later. Resist the temptation to show off your research (one of Tom Stoppard's maxims is, Just because it's true doesn't mean it's interesting).

- Retired Army Colonel says Mccain, in claiming Obama confused tactics and strategy, confused the terms tactics and strategy.

- The Morning News has a collection of Sarah Palin jokes (via Yellow Redneck Blues):

Q: How do you tell the difference between a child in a third-world country and abstinence-only sex education?

A: One works.

Q: How is Sarah Palin like a rabid dog?

A: Both could have used a decent vet.

Ho hum.

Merci

Thanks to everyone who came out to Lit Crawl NYC last night and saw me read. Twas fun.

R.I.P. D.F.W.

I just learned that writer David Foster Wallace passed away tonight. I did not know David Foster Wallace personally and have nothing special to say, but I do believe he was one of the few writers whose voice truly mattered. His insights into our modern situation and his ability to explain large concepts in accessible (and typically hilarious) terms was utterly unique. Whether describing the transcendent joy of watching Roger Federer play tennis or detailing the absurd hell-hole that is a vacation cruise ship, his writing was always essential. Losing his voice is a loss for all of us.

- An interview with Charlie Rose (starts around 23 minutes in)

- 2005 Kenyon Commencement Address

Rubbing the bull

Check out Rozalia Jovanovic's piece on luck up on the Esquire book blog, Today You Will Put On Blue Egyptian Stockings.

Save the date

September 27th at Common Ground I will be giving a reading with several other authors as part of a massive drunken literary bout of craziness that will span downtown Manhattan. More details to come.

The Waffle House lady's inquiry

I'm not sure I can answer it, but here is Part II of my New Year's resolution to read 50 books. I realize that for a wannabe writer like myself this isn't an especially crazy goal. Many of my friends probably read twice that amount. But I'm a slow reader so what can you do?


17) Chord of Light – Zbigniew Herbert
18) Stars of the New Curfew – Ben Okri
19) Wittgenstein’s Nephew – Thomas Bernhard
20) Men and Cartoons – Jonathan Lethem
21) Ant Farm – Simon Rich
22) 60 Poems – Charles Simic
23) In Persuasion Nation – George Saunders
24) Paradise – Donald Barthelme
25) Partial List of People to Bleach – Gary Lutz
26) McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern #24
27) The Nimrod Flipout – Etgar Keret
28) The Elements of Style – Strunk and White
29) The World Doesn’t End – Charles Simic
30) I Killed Adolf Hitler – Jason

31) Rock Springs – Richard Ford
32) What I’d Say to the Martians – Jack Handey
33) The Wavering Knife – Brian Evenson
34) Ghost Town – Robert Coover

I enjoyed almost all of the above and won't bother bad-mouthing books here. I did read a stretch of sub-par books from authors I love (Herbert's first poetry collection doesn't stand up to his later work, Bernhard's Wittgenstein’s Nephew felt like a clumsy handling of themes he would develop fully in other works, In Persuasion Nation has several of my favorite Saunders stories, but also several half-baked ones).

As for my favorites, both Jack Handey's What I’d Say to the Martians and Simon Rich's Ant Farm humor collections were fantastic, especially standing out in an era of bland humor writing (Handey and Rich are the only good Shouts & Murmurs authors left going in my humble opinion).

Robert Coover's Ghost Town was a fantastic, twisted, hilarious and inspiring read. Charles Simic's The World Doesn't End was a re-read, but still remains one of my favorite poetry books of all time. Lastly, Rock Springs by Richard Ford was pretty much everything I was told it would be from numerous friends.

Alright, 16 books left to go and about 16 weeks left in the year. I'm currently in the middle of several books (by Roberto Bolano, William Gay, David Foster Wallace and others) so things are looking good for the first New Year's Resolution I'm actually trying to keep.

Ungarbled headline

- On The Sound of Young America Podcast, Tony Millionaire (one of my absolute favs) discusses how he made a living asking random people if he could draw their house for 25 bucks.

- Common Errors in English. This is a simple yet fantastic website that lists common, uh, errors in English. Example:

YOU’VE GOT ANOTHER THING COMING

Here’s a case in which eagerness to avoid error leads to error. The original expression is the last part of a deliberately ungrammatical joke: “If that’s what you think, you’ve got another think coming.”

- What happened to this VP pick, Obama?

- A cool collection of WWI maps.

- The other day I opened Columbia's webpage to find a video by professor Lincoln Michell. Hey, I'm pretty good at this foreign policy stuff.

What happens with an only child?

I have a very short piece up at McSweeney's today. Check it out here: Notable Moments at the Home-School Prom.

Hey baby, is that a quote from Nietzsche on your lips?

- As my regular readers (wha??) know, I give out regular awards for the best/most absurd Google search that leads someone to my blog... I'm afraid I may have to discontinue it after the following gem:

youtube hannah montana very sexy stuff like kissing and guys with shrits off

The spelling of "shrits" seals it!

- Did you know Mike Mussina writes for McSweeney's?

- Who are you voting for this election? Newborn baby or Democratic kitty?

- Another blast from my past:

The first mistake occurs when
you say, I love you and I reply, oh,
I thought you were going to say you had an STD.

- My current favorite quote:

Everybody has about exactly enough courage to jaywalk or cheat a wife or a friend with a quote form Nietzsche on his lips

~Barry Hannah

Blast from my past

Hey, why not? Here is something I wrote a year or so ago.

In the event of an attack, always keep in mind most animals are as afraid of you as you are of them. If attacked by a wild animal, instead of running away, why not stand up for yourself for once in your life! At least if the animal is small and you think you can take him. If attacked by a larger animal, like a Grizzly bear, quickly curl into a non-threatening ball. Then tumble away to freedom (this only works on hills).

Shine down floppy ones

Well... my Hannah Montana headline is causing my hit count to soar. And I don't even know who she is... the WWE wrestler Billy Ray Cirus's adopted daughter or something?

Oh well.

- Tom Tomorrow teaches us how modern satire works.

- Ichiro has a potty mouth with a winning spirit.

- Here is a hilarious Esquire piece on Ikea by Mike Sacks.

- This has made the internet rounds, but it is still pretty funny: Rejected Michael Bay script for The Dark Knight.

GENERAL:
But which one of the internets do we hack?

BRUCE:
All of them.

Hasta Manana Hannah Montana

- I'm sure you've all seen the controversial Obama New Yorker cover. I don't have much of an opinion. It is a fine concept for satire, but not executed terribly well (the situation isn't quite absurd enough considering what some people truly do believe about Obama.)

However, I like Ruben Bolling's take on the issue.

- Mr. Bolling also has a new Super-Fun-Pax Comix out.

- Although someone apparently takes issue with it.

- Speaking of fake right-wing cartoons, no one does it better than The Onion.

- Speaking of politics, if you haven't checked it out FiveThirtyEight.com is really the best site out there for polling data and analysis.

- The most awesomely absurd movie trailer I've seen in quite awhile: Outlander.

- There are so many obvious jokes here, but I'll try to abstain: Playboy to do "Girls of Olive Garden" spread.

- Real life former Olympic sports. I guess the Olympics used to take a lot of cues from American Gladiators:

Swimming obstacle race (1900): Racers had to swim through the River Seine, climb up and down a pole, then go over and under several boats.

One-hand weightlifting (1896): Similar to the modern snatch event, but athletes were only allowed to use one hand.

Tug-of-war (1900-1920): Two teams of eight try to pull a rope six feet; if neither team reaches the mark after five minutes, the team that pulls the farthest wins.

Duelling pistol (1906): Shooters fired at mannequins wearing frock coats and bull's-eyes on their chests.

Getting back in the groove

Sorry for the absence. Here are some things:

- It isn't all that often that you get to see David Foster Wallace appear in a comic strip, but anything is possible on the internets.

- My good friend Grier aka King Vitamin has his new album up for online listening. Check it out.

- The bread bag twisty tie conspiracy is true!

- One extinction I'm pretty excited about: The banana.

- Being a bit of a slow reader and having a problem with starting collections and not finishing them, my new year's resolution was to read 50 books this year. They have to be read completely from front to back. I'm a tad behind, but here is what I got so far:

The Aspern Papers – Henry James
How the Water Feels to the Fishes – Dave Eggers
Hard to Admit and Harder to Escape – Sarah Manguso
The Bloody Chamber - Angela Carter
The Art of the Possible – Kenneth Koch
Crying of Lot 49 – Thomas Pynchon
American Psycho – Bret Easton Ellis
Erasure – Percival Everett
Chronicle of a Death Foretold – Marquez
Venus Drive – Sam Lipsyte
Minor Robberies – Deb Olin Unferth
A Fan’s Notes – Frederick Exley
Captain Maximus – Barry Hannah
The Angle of Yaw – Ben Lerner
The Voice at 3:00 AM – Charles Simic
All the Pretty Horses – Cormac McCarthy

Of these, my favorites were:

A Fan’s Notes – Frederick Exley (simply one of the best books I've ever read. The Great Gatsby meets Charles Bukowski... or something. Pick it up.)
The Bloody Chamber - Angela Carter (A few of these were sub-par, but most were excellent. Twisted retellings of popular fairy tales.)
Venus Drive – Sam Lipsyte (Killer stories.)

I also quite enjoyed the Deb Olin Unferth, Cormac McCarthy, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Charles Simic. Four authors I always admire.

- Lastly, the future of male contraception is part cyborg, part car door lock:

A surgeon inserts a silicon chip into the vas deferens. A key fob sends out RF waves, just like the key to your car. The silicon chip converts the RF into acoustic waves, which in turn induce movement in the material, allowing it to expand and seal the tube. Sending another pulse from the key fob lets the material contract allowing sperm to pass.

High on NOON

Friends, family and foes, NOON magazine will be having its annual reading slash party on the 14th of this very month.

The Mercantile Library
17 East 47th Street
April 14 at 6:30

with readings by
Clancy Martin
Dawn Raffel
Christine Schutt

Please RSVP with the Mercantile library if you would like to come... which you should.

How you got here

Top five google searches that brought someone to this blog in the last month:

5. fancy woodcuts
4. teething jewelry and blog
3. disease for patients
2. baby teether pictures. indian
1. snickers commercial song lyrics king lear

--

- Also, I have a short piece in the current issue of Quarter After Eight magazine (although they haven't put the new issue's information up online yet.)

Collecting Lincolns?

Yesterday someone tried to add me as a friend on Facebook. I didn't recognize the name but clicked on their page anyway. It was some random girl I didn't know and she only had a few friends. However, all of her friends had the first name "Lincoln."

!?

Have I been stalked by a Facebook Lincoln Collector?

I'm big in China....

Ever wonder what diligent post-Maoist Chinese students read when they want to study English?

Me!

Or at least I have a story in the above anthology published by Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press that I just received in the mall. This is honestly the coolest piece of mail I've gotten in forever. (The above book is basically the same as the following American published anthology except it also includes study questions. Yes, I have study questions, thank you very much)

---

- Also, in case it got buried amongst the DMX rantings, I have four poems up in the current issue of Night Train.

Salty, not stirred.

- First up I have for you not one, not two, not even three, but an entire four poems for your perusement (that word is trademarked.) They come courtesy of Night Train issue 8 volume I.

- I try to stay out of politics on this blog, but I must say I can't help myself at this whooper. Hillary Clinton claimed that when she landed in Bosnia as first lady she had to run from sniper fire (!!) for her life and didn't even get a greeting ceremony. The only problem is that Sinbad (yes, that baggy pants 90s comedian) who was with her (as was Chelsea and Sheryl Crow) didn't quite remember it that way, nor did anyone else involved.

Hillary stuck to her guns, but then someone dug up the news footage of the landing. No fire. No running. A big ceremony with the president and even a little girl reading poetry.

I hear Michael Bay might direct the Hillary version though.

- One more political thing. XXL magazine interviewed DMX recently. He is that rapper who likes to make dog woof noises on his songs. Apparently he doesn't keep up on politics too much.
(Note: He is married to someone named Tashera and has kids with names like Tocoma and Javon Micai)

Are you following the presidential race?
Not at all.

You’re not? You know there’s a Black guy running, Barack Obama and then there’s Hillary Clinton.
His name is Barack?!

Barack Obama, yeah.
Barack?!

Barack.
What the f**k is a Barack?! Barack Obama. Where he from, Africa?

Yeah, his dad is from Kenya.
Barack Obama?

Yeah.
What the f**k?! That ain’t no f**kin’ name, yo. That ain’t that nigga’s name. You can’t be serious. Barack Obama. Get the f**k outta here.

You’re telling me you haven’t heard about him before.
I ain’t really paying much attention.

I mean, it’s pretty big if a Black…
Wow, Barack! The nigga’s name is Barack. Barack? Nigga named Barack Obama. What the f**k, man?! Is he serious? That ain’t his f**kin’ name. Ima tell this nigga when I see him, “Stop that bullsh*t. Stop that bullsh*t” [laughs] “That ain’t your f**kin’ name.” Your momma ain’t name you no damn Barack.

So you’re not following the race. You can’t vote right?
Nope.

- This is currently my favorite thing in existence.

Woodcuts are back by indifferent demand

- Who is the better writer, Clinton or Obama? (Hint: It's Obama)

- The Morning News's Tournament of the Books bracket is out.

- You Have Time For This (Amazon link), a rad anthology that includes one of my stories, has a YouTube ad up with some very dramatic music.

- Finally, Tom The Dancing Bug explains the origin of Super Delegates.

Like Rip Van Winkle, this blog reawakes the same but with a beard

I had to resist posting for a bit so I didn't turn this blog into a series of rabid political rants. Things will be starting back up soon.

In the meantime, here is a There Will Be Blood / Kelis mash-up for your enjoyment.

:)

Election Time

Popping one in before the new year

Last lick of Lincoln lowdown ere the latest year lapses out of life:

Vol. XXVIII Number 1 of the Mid-American Review has come out. It features two short pieces of mine that were finalists (and Editors' Choices) for the 2007 Fineline competition. My old pal Rachel Pearson also has some work included. Check it out.

Next year we will be bigger, harder, faster and stronger.
Till then...

No, these random woodcuts don't have any special meaning

Two quick updates on me:

1) I forgot to post this before Wed, but last week my humor piece A Letter to New Members of the Gamma Eta Fraternity was posted on The Big Jewel (a great humor site). The piece is archived at the above link if you fancy a gander.

Every frat brother needs a seashell necklace, but not everyone can afford one. Try spray-painting a few conchiglie pasta shells white and threading them with an old shoelace for a neat alternative that won't strain your wallet!

2) My poem This will only hurt a bit was nominated by Night Train for a Pushcart. Here is their blog post announcing the various nominees. So a thank you to Night Train, that is very flattering!

Other random things:

- Ruben Bolling (Tom the Dancing Bug) illustrates what would happen if Cormac McCarthy wrote the screenplay for Toy Story.

- The NBCC is going to start monthly book recommendations.

- Maud Newton versus Gawker.

That's all folks (I wish I had an ASCII picture here of a pig blasting through your computer screen)

You Have Time For Me

- You Have Time For This, a flash fiction anthology that includes one of my own short pieces was published recently by Ooligan Press. Link goes to Amazon. The collection looks very slick and nice and features many cool, young and hip writers like Steven Almond and Deb Olin Unferth. Check it out.

Speaking of Deb Olin Unferth, someone animated one of her stories over at Salon.com.

- The Washington Post has an odd article on Boomer writers. Notice anything wrong with this quote:

"Vonnegut was the American Mark Twain. He even looked liked him.[...]" says J. Michael Lennon, the literary executor for Mailer,

Really? The American Mark Twain? You don't say.

Small update, but I promise there is more on the horizon, oh ye patient readers!

I ain't normally so behind on the internets

Well, I hate to say it but I've got nothing better to do than post internet fads from ages ago (or last week in internet life) for you people.

First up: Hip-hop lip-syncs to children's TV shows.

Best of the bunch is Crank that Soulja Boy mixed with Barney.


I'm not going to embed the following, because too many vids makes things messy, but also check out Soulja Boy Winnie the Pooh version, Spongebob's "This is Why I'm Hot" and the Teletubbies "Walk it Out."

- The Mastodon intro song for the ATHF movie is also worth a watch.

- Stephen Colbert had a NY Times Op-Ed piece recently that is pretty great.

Let me regurgitate: I know why you want me to run, and I hear your clamor. I share Americans’ nostalgia for an era when you not only could tell a man by the cut of his jib, but the jib industry hadn’t yet fled to Guangdong. And I don’t intend to tease you for weeks the way Newt Gingrich did, saying that if his supporters raised $30 million, he would run for president. I would run for 15 million. Cash.

- Did you ever know how much Carlos Santana can shred?

- Here's an article on the guy dubbing concert footage with horrible guitar work. The Metallica video is also good.

- Lastly, the lady Rozalia is blogging for KGB bar now.

More to come... at some point.

And lo! The Lord did look unto Adam and say unto him "make like a tree and leave!"

Hello everyone. It is time for my semi-regular Odd Search Awards. Since I got a nifty site meter I can view what google searches people used to get into this page. Here are the best ones from the last couple weeks:

Runner Ups:

"old movie" "penis" "drunk guy"
(Geez. This is like my entire DVD collection.)

aphorisms on ice
(A musical I would certainly pay to see)


hairy chested NFL players

onion teething

poems about teething

How Old is the young boy in Part I of Swann's Way

How far away from sea in the tundra Biome
(I wonder if he was looking for Biodome... I think the penis drunk guy search might have worked for this as well)

Medal Winners:

BRONZE:
nietzsche some people ideas fish pond fossil cabinet
(I can't tell if this guy had something really specific he was looking for or if he just typed in a random string of words and thought what the hell...)

SILVER:
free "magazine bin" -subscription -trial -recycle -Laden
(I feel kind of bad that this guy just wanted a free cool magazine but kept coming up with Al Qaeda newsletters and Environmentalist pamphlets.

GOLD: Bible text "make like a tree and leave"
(You sure that's a bible quote, buddy?)

------

- If you haven't heard Marc Ecko (yeah, the urban clothing designer) bought Barry Bond's record breaking ball. He is letting the public vote one what to do with it. Obviously you should go vote for branding it.

- 2007 World Chess Championship is going on right now. I'm rooting for Anand and he is currently tied for first. Follow up on the results here.

- That's it for now.

The book version was better than their first album

- A few days ago I had a little poem up at Juked, if you are interested. It is about ox-carts, summer jobs, the devouring of your enemies internal organs and aged wine.

- Ooligan Press has put up their announcement for "You Have Time For This," a flash fiction anthology that will include the first piece of fiction I ever had published. Looks very nice. Aimee Bender, Steve Almond and others will appear as well.

- The Onion has been amazingly consistent for so long now. Anyway, here is a great article: Pitchfork Gives Music a 6.8

CHICAGO—Music, a mode of creative expression consisting of sound and silence expressed through time, was given a 6.8 out of 10 rating in an review published Monday on Pitchfork Media, a well-known music-criticism website.

According to the review, authored by Pitchfork editor in chief Ryan Schreiber, the popular medium that predates the written word shows promise but nonetheless "leaves the listener wanting more."

- Lastly, while the US Open may have come to a close (you broke my heart Djokovic!), the Wold Chess Championship 2007 is starting up in only a few days. Get excited!

Mother, I am so far away from everything

I am going to be bear hunting in a frozen tundra across the sea for the next week, so don't bother calling or emailing me until I've returned with a furry, bloody hacked-off head in my arms.

In the meanwhile, here is a piece of mine up at Word Riot to bide your time.

Ta ta.

It's the summer of Thomas Bernhard (and yes, it has been a bit depressing )

No matter what he said, he always turned out to have said something libelous, but strictly speaking, you might say that everything he could say about this weird country, with its extremes of inhumanity and irresponsibility all on the increase as they were, could be considered a so-called libel...

~The Lime Works by Thomas Bernhard

- The Elegant Variation has an interesting post up on revisions and Fitzgerald.

- I enjoyed this week's New Yorker Shouts & Murmurs.

The Hawk and the Mouse

A clever mouse is sunning himself in Battery Park, when a hawk swoops down and seizes him in her talons. Whistling through the air, the mouse warns the hawk not to eat him. “Why shouldn’t I?” says the hawk. “Don’t you know,” says the mouse, “that mice are loaded with trans fats?” Alarmed, the hawk releases the mouse and flies away. Several days later, the hawk happens upon an old owl devouring a less fortunate mouse. “Stop!” cries the hawk. “Don’t you know those things are loaded with trans fats?” The owl stops eating and says, “What are you, an idiot?”

Moral: You just can’t argue with libertarians.

- Chris Onstad, creator of Achewood, is interviewed over at The Onion A.V. Club.

- Well, I just felt like it had been awhile since I got a post up. Some pieces of mine are forthcoming from Quarter After Eight, Word Riot and elsewhere. So check back soon... or something.

He is good at tossing and he is also good at holding

- The blogging is starting to heat up over at the Creative Writing MFA Handbook Blog. Get in on the action.

- Two stupid listmania lists I made on Amazon.com while I was bored. Books I Rip Off and the Top 10 Longest Books I've Read.

- Lastly, I have a new piece up at Juked... well a pretty old piece that is newly up at Juked, rather. A Link. It is called Seven Views of Abraham Lincoln's Death and here is a snippet:

Lincoln attending an important diner—
Suddenly his stoic face is bright red in panic:
A chicken bone lodged in his windpipe!
Booth seen fleeing out the back door

I don't blame you for grindin' and shinin'

Okay, last comment on this. My story "Whale Belly" appears in the second annual The L Magazine summer fiction issue. I must say I'm very pleased with the artwork they did for my story. Very rad. You can actually read the stories online(with artwork). Otherwise you can pick it up for free from an The L Magazine bin in the city.

What to say, what to say...

- Mid-week this week my story "Whale Belly" will be available in various bins around the city that are stamped The L Magazine. Pick it up... or don't. I'm not gonna force you. $^&%, why are you even here?

- I'm going to be one of a panel of contributorsons over at The Creative Writing MFA Handbook Blog. My poorly thought out profile is here. I'm excited to be a part of this, because Tom Kealey's blog helped me a lot when I went through the application process last year.

- That's it.

Lincoln in the New Yorker.... kinda

Franklin Winslow points out to me that his and my names appear briefly in the New Yorker's GOAT (That's Goings on About Town, not the crappy LL Cool J album):

“LITERARY UPSTART”

Throughout the past two months, contestants in The L Magazine’s “American Idol”-like short-story-reading competition have presented their fiction before a panel of literary-world insiders. The three finalists—Franklin Winslow, Raphaela Weissman, and Lincoln Michel—face off on June 21, starting at 8:30. (The Baggot Inn, 82 W. 3rd St. No tickets necessary.)

Yep, there is your reminder. I'm reading this Thursday and if it is as fun this time as it was last time then it will be pretty fun.

"WE RUN NEW YORK!"

So... success was had! I was very flattered to be named the winner of the 3rd semi-final round in The L Magazine's Literary Upstart competition. I would also really like to thank all my friends who came out for the support and drunken fun times.

I read a story called "Whale Belly" and was described as the

Guy Whose Story Narrated By a Man Who Secretly Thinks His Pregnant Wife Is Gross and a Little Scary Had the Effect of Possibly Scaring the Female Contingent of Our Judging Panel off of Childbirth Forever.

I will be reading again in the final, along with my pal Franklin and someone yet to be named (or was probably named by his parents and has been named by the judges but whose said name has not been named to me as of yet), to see who gets "one fifth of your monthly rent" in prize money on Thursday June 21st.

No I am off to party at a club and or bar that is either called House, Home, Abode or Crash Pad... I can't remember.

When it rains, it pours

I wasn't informed my piece went up at Pindeldyboz until after I'd made my earlier post. But here you go, a short-short about childhood games and atomic spiders. Also, the poetry print issue of Pindeldyboz (which contains a poem of mine) is now available for sale.

Just to sum up this (suddenly) literary past couple of weeks for me:

- Three poems up at Night Train magazine.

- Prose-poem up at Juked.

- Short-short up at Pindeldyboz.

- Pindeldyboz Print Issue #7 available to buy with a poem of mine.

- Reading at the Baggot Inn for L Magazine.


Party time.

WHIRLWIND - An enemy is active

* For those wondering, the titles of my recent posts come from a book Alan Ziegler gave to me: Professor Latour's Gold Book of Dreams. This is one of those crazy pamphlets from the 60s that explains the true meaning behind every physical object that appears in your dream. A beggar asking your for a spare bagel means "special news about money" and a baseball flung at your head portends "popularity for you." Sadly I can't find this online, but if you ever see something similar at a yard sale, grab it up. The perfect thing to flip through when you are in a writing rut.

In other news:

* According to BBC News, fewer people finish Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire than Ulysses. I can't say this surprises me much. I've always found that the famously difficult books (In Search of Lost Time, War and Peace, etc.) are never quite as difficult to read as their reputation. On a page by page basis they can even be breezy. I think they get that reputation of being too difiicult to bother with because they are so long that people want an excuse not to read them.

I can sympathize. People who know me know that I am fanatical about finishing books I start....but I will admit there are two novels who have bested me (so far): David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest and Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow. My first major mistake was starting them both the same summer(!) and also in allowing myself to take a supposed break after reading book one of Gravity's Rainbow. Gravity's Rainbow has indeed been a difficult read, due mostly to its structure that consists of a constant series of non-demarcated prolepses and analepses (flashforwards and flashbacks). Infinite Jest, on the other hand, is very readable as well as extremely funny. However, its constant stream of (demarcated) flashforwards, flashbacks and flashsidewayses are stuffed to bursting with such a wide variety of characters and plot lines that you feel you can start and stop anytime. The story you are hooked on for ten pages will be cut off and then not returned to for a hundred pages for more. You aren't on a roller coaster ride you can't jump off of, but instead walking around a crazy amusement park and it doesn't matter what order you visit the tents. The chaos somehow inspires a leasiruly pace. This isn't the best attitude to take if you want to finish a 1000+ page beheamoth though.

* A fun lit tool to check out is LibraryThing's Unsuggester. Instead of giving you recommendations based on which books you like, it gives you books to avoid. So, we learn that if you enjoyed Thus Spoke Zarathrustra you probably will not like The Husband by Dean Koontz or Keeping Faith by Jodi Picoult. If you loved The Loser by Thomas Bernhard (a book I just finished yesterday) you probably should avoid The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells.

Well there you go kiddies, have some fun.

Been A While

I knoweth that thou loyal readers hath suffered through a drought of mine writing mana, but despair no more for I am about to unleash a veritable flood of poetries and fictionies upon the land!

Or at least I think so. Some of this stuff was accepted over a year ago and only now working its way into print. Anyway, I hadn't updated my lit situation in a bit so here you go. First up is Pindeldyboz book of poems which can be pre-ordered now and should be released this spring. Features hip literary peeps like Tao Lin, Kim Chinquee and Matthew Zapruder.

More news to come as it comes...

Even colder than Ice 9

R.I.P Kurt Vonnegut


- I'm probably the last lit blogger to get around to this, but here is another voice mourning the loss of Kurt Vonnegut. Although in certain snobby circles he is passed off as being a hack writer, I completely disagree. Vonnegut was (as many eulogies have pointed out) our lifetime's Mark Twain. He struck a brilliant and hard to achieve balance between social satire, interesting prose and formal innovation. Hip young writers are still ripping of his tricks to this day. My father was a big Vonnegut fan and always tried to get me to read Cat's Cradle when I was in high school. When I finally did, I loved it and it still remains my favorite Vonnegut book. If for some reason you have avoided his work because you think it is only for angsty teenage boys, I'd urge you to go pick up Cat's Cradle or Slaughterhouse Five today. Run!

- NYT mourns
- Various writers mourn in the Guardian
- BBC mourns
- Salon mourns
etc.

Agglomeration of Aphorisms

I had to write a page of aphorisms today... not gonna post those, but might as well post some I enjoyed while thinking of ideas:

Art is a lie that makes us realize truth.
- Pablo Picasso

~

The sun is pure communism everywhere except in cities, where it's private property.
- Malcolm de Chazal

~

Franz Kafka:

It is enough that the arrows fit exactly in the wounds that they have made.


The True Way goes over a ropewhich is not stretched at any great height but just above the ground. It seems more designed to make people stumble than to be walked upon.


If it had been possible to build the Tower of Babel without ascending it, the work would have been permitted.

~

Friedrich Nietzsche:

Those who are slow to know suppose that slowness is the essence of knowledge.

We have no dreams at all or interesting ones. We should learn to be awake the same way- not at all or in an interesting manner

Opinions and fish.— Possessing opinions is like possessing fish, assuming one has a fishpond. One has to go fishing and needs some luck—then one has one's own fish, one's own opinions. I am speaking of live opinions, of live fish. Others are satisfied if they own a cabinet of fossils—and in their heads, "convictions."

The worst readers are those who behave like plundering troops: they take away a few things they can use, dirty and confound the remainder, and revile the whole.

~

It’s quite true what philosophy says, that life must be understood backwards. But one then forgets the other principle, that it must be lived forwards. A principle which, the more one thinks it through, precisely leads to the conclusion that life in time can never properly be understood, just because no moment can acquire the complete stillness needed to orient oneself backwards.
-Soren Kierkegaard

~

I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.
- Albert Einstein

~

A cynic is a person who knows the prize of everything and the value of nothing.
-Oscar Wilde

R.I.P. part 2

Today is also the anniversary of the death of Charles Bukowksi. Drink a 40 for Biggie and a shot of Whisky for Buk.

If I got to choose a coast I got to choose the east...

Today marks the 10th anniversary of the murder of Biggie Smalls.
RIP Big Poppa.

(more) quick thoughts on books I recently read

The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea - Yuko Mishima

This is more of a novella than a novel, and a novella I really dug. The book's opening and final chapters are pure awesomeness and the middle is good enough. The story centers around a young boy who peeps on his mom having sex and, with a group of friends, practices a form of "absolute dispassion" and "objectivity" that leads them to dissect neighborhood cats and curse fathers as the scum of the earth. This author eventually committed ritual suicide after trying and failing to get the Japanese army to over throw the government, although his secret lover failed during his attempts to behead Mishima and another militia member had to finish the job. Go figure.

Memoir of the Hawk - James Tate

In Memoir, Tate writes surreal, humorous and (mostly) irreverent prose poems. Tate is an author who is mostly miss for me, but whose hits hit hard enough to make me read him. For my taste, most of these prose poems are nice enough, but mostly pointless and often feel random for the sake of randomness. But there are some brilliant pieces as well and even the weak ones make for a fun read. While reading I marked fourteen that really struck me. 14 out of over 100... is that a good ratio for me with a poet? Probably. Here is a sample:

KINKY’S HEAD

“Would you like to have your head examined?”
I said to Kinky, who was holding his head. “Oh yes,”
he said, “I would like to know what’s wrong with
me.” Gloom was his life, despair was his only food.
I opened up his head. My God, it was dark in there,
and full of cobwebs with dead flies in them. “There
are no lights in here,” I said. “It looks like you
have had no visitors in years. And there’s not a
trace of an idea, just a rat gnawing on its tail
hoping to become a saint in some counterfeit hell.”
“I love that rat,” Kinky said. “He’s the last of
my monsters, old skin and bones.”

Spanking the Maid - Robert Coover

This was an excellent quick read. Coover has a ton of fun and shows brilliant lyrical skills in this comic novel. Hard to describe and I'm not going to bother. I said quick thoughts didn't I?

Swann's Way (Vol. I of In Search of Lost Times) - Marcel Proust (trans. Lydia Davis)
Recently I've been trying to work my way through some of the giant classics and Proust is obviously a necessity in that area. I was very surprised by this book. From all the noise, I'd expected Proust to be an almost impenetrable mess of a writer whose work was not fun to read and only French scholar's ever bothered with it. Instead it was a very nice and fun read. Proust's style takes a little getting used to, but it is nothing hard. The biggest surprise for me was how hilarious the novel got at times. I literally laughed out loud at at least three points, which is something I rarely do. The Davis edition is beautifully printed as well.

The Dead Fish Museum - Charles D'Ambrosio
Despite what the title might connote, the stories in the Fish Museum are pretty straight forward in both style and realism. They are, however, fantastic. Unlike most practitioners of this kind of short fiction, Ambrosio allows his stories to be messy and chaotic instead of neat little structures with cute epiphanies tagged to the end. A lot of darkness here. I dig it.


Anyway, I'm writing a Sci-Fi-Horror-Western right now. It could be cool, maybe.

iStalking pt. 2

Someone yesterday did a search for "iStalking" and I'm proud to say my blog is the first search result for that. Clap clap.

More good Google searches that led people here recently:

Rex Grossman Fanfiction (Grossman is the quarterback for the Chicago Bears. Fan fiction!?)
Fan Fiction Two Males Harry Potter (If they had only put "furry" in that search it would have been the ultimate creepy nerd search)
Ray Dragon Hairy Chest
Iowa Writers Workshop Scam "v'agra" drink
jewellery store similar with urbanoutfitter

Stupid YouTube

This was originally going to be a Kids in the Hall Monologue Video Tribute Post, yet YouTube has taken down almost all of my favorite Kids in the Hall monologues. Instead I'm just going to post some videos, but I will start with the two good KITH speeches that are left.

Dave Foley on Communism:



Bruce McCoulloch on working at a bank:



and some other stuff.

The Michael Showalter SHOWalter, episode 1:



Dana Carvey Show, Skinheads from Maine:



The State, Nazi War Criminals:



Michael Ian Black recites a poem:

iStalking

Allie recently convinced me to get Site Meter, which allows me to see the details of everyone who views this blog. The best part is seeing what brought people to the site, most often odd google searches. Here are the five best google searches that led people here, in order:

5. nanobiomechanics

4. what freud got wrong

3. TEETHING NUGGETS

2. the soccer player only dove once

1. how to blow things up with household objects

Nuggets

+ When The Misfit says "She would of been a good woman, if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life."

+ In Kafka's "The Judgement" when the father shouts that he does indeed know the friend in St. Petersburg and has been secretly communicating with him and then says "I've been representing him here on the spot!" Such a hilarious line.

+ Johnny Rotten screaming "We are ruled by none.... ever... EVER... EVER!!!" and then the awesome guitar riff drops. Say what you want about the Sex Pistols, but this is perhaps the most punk rock moment in the history of music.

+ Brian Eno singing "You've got to make a choice between the Paw Paw Negro Blowtorch and meeeeeeee." Although people look at you funny if you sing it to yourself.

+ The way Achewood characters speak. It is hard to explain, but the majority of the humor for me is in the quirky phrasing the characters use. Take when Teodor explains why the couch wanted to be shipped to china, it is the couches retirement:
Teodor: "Now, maybe if you learn Chinese just good enough, we can visit him someday!"
Phillipe: "Aw, why learn Chinese just to go bug a guy! Let's don't and say we did!"

+ Henry Fonda as Frank in Once Upon a Time in the West, the greatest western villain ever. Also, this exchange.
Morton: Not bad. Congratulations. Tell me, was it necessary that you kill all of them? I only told you to scare them.
Frank: People scare better when they're dying.

+ Sonic Youth's "Expressway to your skull"

+ Author Wells Tower's name, Wells Tower.

+ T-shirts with joke phrases on them are of course lame, but I approve of T-shirts with large font phrases like "WHAT THE HELL PEOPLE!?", "THAT'S WHAT'S UP," and the like.

+ Zoidberg: "Your music is bad, and you should feel bad!"

Quick thoughts on books I've read in the last few weeks under a descriptive title

Barry Hannah - Airships: I can always tell a great book by the fact I'm constantly thinking of bits I'd like to steal while reading. By that criteria, reading Airships was like being tossed in the APC store at night without any security around. Okay, bad analogy. Airships is a collection of stories about war, sex, airplanes and horses. The usual, but done with incredible style and energy. I find that far too much modern short fiction is so polished and calculated it comes out as a dulled diamond (or more often polished stone), but Hannah's work is full of the rough, gritty, loose writing that draws you in like possessed jungle vines and then you get attacked by a Panther or something. A few of the stories fall short and at least one didn't work at all for me, but I'll still give it a big ol' A+.

Elizabeth Hardwick - Sleepless Nights: In this "novel," Hardwick writes a series of highly autobiographical vignettes tied together by... well nothing except her voice. The prose is, for the most part, excellent and this is a great book to pick up and read for a few pages to get your juices flowing. However, reading all these mostly unrelated fragments together gets repetitive and leaves you wanting something a little more coherent. If its going to be this loose and thin, why not just make it a series of prose poems instead of a novel?

Flannery O'Connor - A Good Man is Hard to Find: O'Connor was a deeply Christian person, but her stories are so dark and twisted that they read like dark parodies of Christianity. I love it.



Cormac McCarthy - The Road: Blood Meridian is one of my favorite books and I was hoping to get a similar post-apocalyptic epic written in beautiful, mezmerizing, biblical prose. It is more the first and less the later. McCarthy dips into full on apocalyptic mode instead of just hinting at it, but his style has moved away from the amazing prose of the past. His new style is sparse and repetitive. The rain falls. The sky is grey. Ashes are everywhere in the grey sky and the falling rain which falls from the grey sky on the ashes. You get the idea. Although the prose is not nearly as captivating as Blood Meridian or other older McCarthy works, the new style works here to drill in the wasteland and the despair of the characters. This was a quick grim read and I'd recommend it. It does, however, have the worst Chip Kidd designed cover I've ever seen.

Philip Roth - The Facts: Philip Roth is undoubtedly one of the 20th centuries best authors. He is also a fairly interesting figure and much of his best work is highly autobiographical as such, it is inevitable that people are interested in the "truth" of his life and what really happened. Roth obliges here, mostly, giving us an account of his life (only up until the publication of Portnoy's Complaint though) that seems quite true, but written in a way that feels novelistic and as if Roth was writing in the voice of another character. Then he bookends the autobiography with his fictional counter part, Zuckerman, commenting on the text and pondering the nature of truth, autobiography, etc. The metafictional idea works to be both gimmicky and surprisingly enlightening. I enjoyed this, but I can't imagine it would be interesting to anyone who is not familiar with Portnoy's Complaint or his other autobiographical work.

Sigmund Freud - Leonardo Da Vinci and a Memory of His Childhood: Freud is one of the most important essayists of the modern age... but you wouldn't know it from this piece. Everything that Freud got wrong is on gross display here. Take, for example, how he spends fifty pages drawing wild conclusions about Leonardo's sexuality and parental relationships based on a German mistranslation of his diary (Freud's translation named the bird as a vulture, when it was a kite in Italian, and Freud draws huge amounts of meaning from the vulture's mythological role, etc.) What bothered me most was how much Freud tries to have it both ways. He claims psychoanalysis is a science, but then claims his theories aren't testable and many other interpretations are possible. Important historically, perhaps, but reads pretty silly today.

Rober Burton - The Anatomy of Melancholy: They don't write sprawling, comic, 1,000+ page inquiries into human nature that incorporate everything from science to myth to literature like they used to.