Stanky old wizard eyes

This clip is the best explanation of my vision problem that I've seen.

Wu-Tang Somerset Maugham

File this under Amazon mishaps. I stumbled upon this Amazon page for W. Somerset Maugham which describes him as "the third studio album by the American hip hop group Wu-Tang Clan, released November 21, 2000 on Loud/Columbia Records."

Screenshot in case they fix it:

Harry Potter via Raymond Carver

Last night I was asked to read a two-minute "fan fiction" piece. Here it is:

Populus Mechanicus

Early that day the weather turned and the snow was melting into dirty water. Streaks of it ran down from the giant ogre-high window that faced the back of Hogwarts. Centaurs slushed by on the street outside, where it was getting dark. But it was getting dark on the inside too.

Voldemort was in the bedroom pushing dark robes into a suitcase when Harry came to the door.

I’m glad you’re leaving! I’m glad you’re leaving! Harry said. Do you hear?

Voldemort kept on putting his things into the suitcase.

Son of a bitch! I’m so glad you’re leaving! Harry began to cry. You can’t even look me in the face, can you?

Existentialist Goose

Another Animals in Midlife Crises from John and me.

Battleship the board game: the sci-fi film

I saw the first Battleship (the film!) trailer and it is predictably awful. It reminded me though that I had the idea to make an awful Battleship adaptation over two years ago!

Some Possible Sequels to Classic Novels

2 Naked 2 Dead
2 Savage 2 Detective
2 Moby 2 Dick
2 Wise 2 Blood
2 Pale 2 Fire
2 Wuthering 2 High
2 Crime 2 Punishment
2 Huck 2 Finn
2 Grape 2 Wrath
Nausea 2: Electric Boogaloo

The final countdown

New Animals in Midlife Crises strip up at The Rumpus. It is about lionesses and likely one of the final strips we do, at least for a while. So... check it out!

Summer Bummer Specials

Menu at a local taco joint. My friend's menu said Summer Special so this wasn't intentional.

So Google+, in a massive design flaw, has deleted every single photo I've ever uploaded to this blog. If you were curious about the many empty white squares now filling up this blog, there you go.

Will add some back slowly...

Boring personal reading habits 2k11 (halfway point edition)

A list of all the books that I've completed so far in 2k11. I've already read more books in the first half of 2011 than I read in all of 2010 (which was a real down year for me in this regard). However, I have to admit that much of my total comes from speeding through a lot of graphic novels and comic books during a two or three week period in June. This was research for a comic series John Woods and I will be working on soon.

These are only the books that I've finished. There are many others that I've started (2666, The Hundred Brothers, NOON 2011, etc.) that I will hopefully complete before the year is out. I've only re-read one book so far this year (the Carver). Favorites so far:

Taking Care by Joy Williams, Wilson by Daniel Clowes and Hunger by Knut Hamsun.

Full list:

1. Wilson – Daniel Clowes
2. The Death of Doctor Island – Gene Wolfe
3. What We Talk About When We Talk About Love – Raymond Carver*
4. The Mezzanine – Nicholson Baker
5. Great Expectations – Kathy Acker
6. The Clouds Above – Jordan Crane
7. Hunger – Knut Hamsun
8. Werewolves of Montpellier – Jason
9. The Shadow over Innsmouth – H. P. Lovecraft
10. Illustrated Three-Line Novels – Joanna Neborsky
11. Baby Leg – Brian Evenson
12. The Late American Novel – Jeff Martin and C. Max McGee
13. The Baltimore Atrocities – John Dermot Woods (manuscript draft)
14. Stories V! – Scott McClanahan
15. Visitation – Jenny Erpenbeck
16. Us – Michael Kimball
17. The Sisters Brothers – Patrick deWitt
18. Antwerp – Roberto Bolano
19. 1963 – Alan Moore
20. Supreme: The Story of the Year – Alan Moore
21. Supreme: The Return – Alan Moore
22. The Killing Joke – Alan Moore
23. Ultimate Fantastic Four HC Vol. 1 
24. Ultimate Fantastic Four HC Vol. 2 
25. Ultimate Fantastic Four HC Vol. 3 
26. Ultimate Fantastic Four HC Vol. 4
27. Ultimate Fantastic Four HC Vol. 5
28. Love and Rockets New Stories No. 3 – The Hernandez Brothers
29. Understanding Comics – Scott McCloud
30. World War Hulk
31. Ultimate Iron Man – Orson Scott Card
32. Silver Surfer: Parable – Moebius and Stan Lee
33. Bottomless Belly Button – Dash Shaw
34. Taking Care – Joy Williams

Take a dip

I'm happy to say that I have a new dialogue story up at Hobart this month, Little Girls by the Side of the Pool by Lincoln Michel. Here is how it starts:

“Did you see what Suzy did when her father tossed her into the air?”

“No, I was looking at Jimmy.”

“She screamed. She screamed like a little piglet right until she hit the water.”

“My father is really good at tossing me into the water.”

“Yes, my father can toss me so high that I get afraid I'll never come down.”

“My father once threw me like ten feet out of the water and I did two cartwheels in the air before splashing.”

“My father once tossed me so high into the air that I was at eye level with the top of a tall tree and in that tree was a bird and that bird unfurled its wings and looked at me in a loving way, like a sister.”

The Joy Williams Commute

My new commute lasts exactly two Joy Williams stories no matter which combination of trains I take.

Animals in Midlife Crises (dot com)

Animals in Midlife Crises, the comic strip by John Dermot Woods and me that is published regularly on The Rumpus has a second home now at animalsinmidlifecrises.com. The only difference is that the comic runs vertically on The Rumpus and horizontally at Animals in Midlife Crises. You can read one or both sites based on your orientation preference.

Escaped Furries Beaten and Tranquilized in Chinese Zoo Uprising

Facing a shortage of exotic animals for the ever-growing zoo-industrial complex, the Chinese government has begun caging humans in amusing anthropomorphic costumes. The costume seams are held together with a form of bamboo-derived industrial glue to prevent wardrobe malfunctions. However, these caged and costumed attractions, being slightly more intelligent than the animals they play, have begun figuring out how to escape their cages. Two such incidents involving a "tiger" and an "orangutan" occurred recently in the Sichuan province to the great disturbance of the children and women present. Luckily, the escaped faux-animals were quickly subdued and returned to their enclosures before they could do physical harm to any of the zoo-going public who had, after all, paid their admission in full.

Explosive

The new issue of Tin House is here and looks fantastic, as usual. It includes new fiction from Gary Lutz and Jodi Angel, interviews with Ann Patchett and Jean-Philippe Toussaint, and more. It also includes, I'm very happy to say, an essay by me on Herbert Read's enigmatic only novel The Green Child. My essay isn't included online, so you'll have to check out the print issue if you want to read it.

Coming Straight Outta Kansas

Beecher's Magazine, put out by the University of Kansas and edited by the fantastic Chloé Cooper Jones, has just released their first issue. I'm very pleased to say that Beecher's One includes two short stories of mine as well as work by great writers like Joshua Cohen, Rozalia Jovanovic, Yelena Akhtiorskaya, James Yeh, Alec Niedenthal and John Dermot Woods. You can check it out here.

Sunday Style!

We took a break last week at Animals in Midlife Crises, but this week we are back with a full-color Sunday style strip. Click on the hermit crab above to read it.

Greatest moment in American cinema?

- Harpo's tattoo barks at Groucho in Duck Soup

--

Harold Bloom once composed a short list of what he called the twentieth-century American Sublime. It included Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, the story of Byron the light bulb in Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow, songs by Bud Powell and Charlie Parker, and, amongst a few others, the war scene that concludes Duck Soup.

I've always loved how Bloom is willing to pick very narrow and specific passages or segments of longer works in this list. Increasingly I find that art grabs me in these little moments. This is not always true, of course. A work like Blood Meridian overpowers with its totality. But often it is brief bits of brilliance in a work that I return to again and again. (At our old Gigantic blog, we explained our magazine's aesthetic in such fragments... although here I see I broke even Blood Meridian down and singled out Judge Holden's dialogue.)

But back to Duck Soup and The Marx Brothers. The war segment is indeed sublime, but my favorite moment is even briefer and even more surreal. From 0:33 to 0:47 in the following clip:

GIGANTIC GIGANTIC GIGANTIC

Gigantic print issue #3 is hot off the presses and here just in time for the big Gigantic launch party on Friday.

Party will take place at 285 Kent in Williamsburg and go all night long. We've got rad readers, an indie arcade installation from Babycastles, music from NewVillager, cheap booze, and late night DJing by Frank Gilbert Lyon II, James Yeh, and Me.

You should really come!

"Hopefully you aren't in the hospital with a horrible brain injury from biking"

"Hopefully you aren't in the hospital with a horrible brain injury from biking."

- voicemail from my mother