Archive for the 'Cool' Category

What you’ve got, boy

Published on June 7, 2010 in Cool, P.O.H.D. and Reviews. Closed

This coffee shop is playing Wherein The Beatles Rip Off Motown So Hard and Still You Love It. The early stuff, man.

Dika Lam has a kind review of AM/PM up at The Nervous Breakdown. I read it while sitting in the chair I sat in to write some of the stories in the book while staring at the car dealership across the street. The car dealership has a fake gabled terrace with a fake widow’s walk and I still wonder what kind of person owns that thing.

I feel like this every day

I feel like Ringo every day

The LitDrift contest is over: congratulations to Grahame Turner on the occasion of your victory. The other highlight happened when someone named Carrie referred to me as the President of Hot Dogs. The POHD finally gets some cred. Carrie, you are the President of My Heart. Drop me a line and I will send you a copy of the book with love.

Questions Asked While Listening to Your Love is My Drug: The lyric is “My steeze is gonna be affected / if I keep it up like a lovesick crackhead.” However. Doesn’t it make more sense to say crack-sick crackhead? A lovesick crackhead might be easily distracted by other things, including but not limited to feelings of agitation, depression, extreme fatigue, anxiety, angry outbursts, and thoughts of the substance itself. The illness associated with a craving for the drug seems to have more of a one-to-one connection. “I’m sick for you like I’m sick for crack cocaine.” Now that has a nice direct feel.

Days & days

Published on May 20, 2010 in Cool. 2 Comments

My story “Thoughts While Strolling” is in good company at Alice Blue Review with Brian Evenson, Michael Kimball, and more.

Check out the Wigleaf Top 50, the list I devour slowly every year. I’m happy to see some stories I recognize and love on there, like Stephen Graham Jones’s “Modern Love” and Sean Lovelace’s “To Be Happy.” Honored that two of my stories made it to the shortlist. If you’re looking for places to read and love and send your own stories, the journals on the top 50 are a good start.

Last night I read at the Badgerdog fundraiser, opening for Sarah Bird, who read/narrated a fantastic flamenco-backed piece from her book Flamenco Academy. Our local beauty queen came wearing her sash. She seemed sweet and bought books. The art-supporting community came out strong and donated generously to support writing programs in the Austin area. I developed strong positive opinions about flamenco and olive tapenade.

If you’re in Austin and looking for something to do tonight, come see The Encyclopedia Show. It is going to be a good’un.

If you’re stressed out, watch a video about baby sloths.

Annie

Published on May 17, 2010 in Cool and Pictures. Closed

I tried to watch Annie but it kept weirding me out.

Weather: cool

Published on March 23, 2010 in AM/PM, Cool, Reviews and team discovery. 3 Comments

Life is one extended game of Oregon Trail and we have full power to choose the members of our traveling party. I’m glad to have someone in my wagon who can eradicate the viruses from my computer after I’ve downloaded too much Madonna. Our hearts are light, our machines clean. Onward!

On Saturday I was a lucky duck to have three smart and talented ladies in my Dzanc Day workshop. We sat around the fireplace in Mary Sledd‘s lovely new studio and drank mimosas and talked about dialogue and openings and working through the block. Thanks to Brittany, Lesley, and Sarah for being wonderful and showing me your work. Thanks also to Dzanc for putting it together across the country.

SXSW happened. I was happy happy to make it down south to see Trespassers William play music so beautiful it put me into a trance. The woman sitting next to me on the couch was under the same spell. She kept saying “Yes” real quiet.

Zach and Ally visited from Chicago, Autumn from NYC. Good finds this year included The Middle East, Free Energy, Lisse, and Givers. I was happy to see The Low Anthem shine in a smaller venue. The Gary rocked their brunch show. Ally and I watched a guitar girl while we sat on chairs like old ladies. Mary and I walked through a dark neighborhood until we found a stage set up in someone’s backyard, accordions and violins backing pretty singers for a crowd of 75 or so.

Tyson’s Whiskey Rebellion was excellent. I had the honor of reading with Tyson as well as Bill Cotter, James Hannaham, Stephen Elliott. Feeling kind of overwhelmed just thinking about it. A band of young men called The Shake played and some homeless ladies jumped over a wall. It was a fine week in total! Back to work in the morning.

You should read Kyle Minor’s story The Truth and All Its Ugly, for it is heartache in paragraph form. Beautiful work.

And lastly: a kind review of AM/PM over at Broken Pencil. Thanks very much to Jack Cena for the consideration.

This post is about the performance not the politics

Published on March 9, 2010 in Cool, David Foster Wallace and Readings. Closed

The Ransom Center got David Foster Wallace’s archives. They’ll be up in August or so. Field trip down the street. (via)

Last night was cool. I read from AM/PM a little. It started pouring rain on half the crowd after I started one page but stopped twenty seconds later. I also read an oldie, as requested by the gentleman what escorted me. (Texas Tip: Dance with who brung ya.)

The reading also featured an open mic, with ACC students and faculty reading short pieces. One of the best open mics I’ve seen, actual. Took me back to Maggie Evans’s shows in San Marcos when I was most excited about poetry.

Then, Finn & Porter for Restaurant Week. Pecans caramelized and further crisped in the deep-fry. Seabass steamed over a bed of potato flavored with some manner of umami. A trio of brûlées in tiny cups. Fine company as well. Today I have a date with the gym. After coffee. Fifteen more minutes.

Thanks to John Herndon for inviting me to last night’s reading and to Sarah Wambold for making a note about it on the Austinist.

Next week, I’m opening the Whiskey Rebellion with Southpaw. In later excitement, I’m reading with Teleportal for Fusebox in April. And more good news, we got Michael Kimball and Christian TeBordo for Five Things in May.

This week, I’m watching a dog with a spinal injury who needs to be walked in a sling. On our last trip outside, we made friends with a half-paralyzed corgi. Its useless legs were strung up in a rolling cage. Everybody’s just happy to be here.

Owlet

Published on March 1, 2010 in Cool. Closed

I learned that DIAGRAM was selling their ten-year anthology in the form of a deck of cards and I bought it so fast that my credit card snapped back and hit me in the face. John D’Agata, Brian Evenson, Albert Goldbarth, Sean Lovelace, Ben Marcus, Derek White. The cardlash was worth it.

It is raining pleasantly. There’s another creature running around behind the wall. I feel like I’ve been awake for eight years.

An egg is nothing like a poem

Published on February 26, 2010 in Cats and Cool. Closed

I feel worse eating the pretty eggs from the farmer’s market. Those chickens in factory farms are de-beaked and so drugged up that they don’t even realize they’re laying eggs. Meanwhile, these little guys are the product of a chicken that was hugged by a child in Fredericksburg. Maybe that chicken started thinking something better would come of her eggs, like they’d hatch and become presidents or at least moderately successful in business.

My bedroom is now a cat-free zone. The bed is no longer a spot for all-day naps and Turk can’t make it to third base with the laundry rack anymore. The apartment is weird and small with one door closed and it makes me think about how much a familiar space becomes a part of you. Try moving a chair from one side of your room to the other. Things get weird.

Anyway, I’m sleeping with earplugs now because the cats scratch at the door all night, but I think this is an important part of Becoming a Functional Adult. My allergist, if I could afford an allergist, would be proud.

If you like poetry, you should check out Nick Courtright’s Elegy for the Builder’s Wife, online via Blue Hour Press. If you don’t like poetry, screw you, get out of here.

I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that.

I found a venue for my Dzanc Day workshop. Proceeds go to bring creative writing programs to kids in need. If you’re in the area and you’d like to eat nilla wafers and rap flash fiction with me for four hours, check it out.

Tonight I’m reading some Salinger at the Ransom Center along with ZZ Packer, Betsy Crane, AE Ward, Nick Flynn, and John Pipkin. I hope this one is as illuminating as the David Foster Wallace show. I’m into this reading-party thing.

Listen. At the end of the day, an omelet’s just an omelet.

turd turd turd, turd’s the word

Published on February 23, 2010 in Cool and Total Wreck. 1 Comment

You know you’re doing some high-brow writing when you have to right-click and add “turds” to the dictionary.

I hear that the last of the first-round Paper Egg cleanup might mean some-of-you get a second or third extra copy of AM/PM. Some kind folks are giving their spare copies to friends, which pleases me greatly. If you’ve read the book and liked it at any price, perhaps you could leave a review? I think that helps so let’s try it.

A wintry mix is coming down. My Texas self is pretty sure it’s about to turn into hail and my Arizona self ran downstairs in my socks to try and catch some of it in my hand. It appears to be some kind of not-beautiful clumped sleet-like substance. Turds of snow, if you will. My neighbor is taking a picture of it. I’ve got a real strong impulse to go to the store and buy hot dogs but I believe I will hold off: Texas drivers all simultaneously let go of their steering wheels and are currently letting God sort it out.

Ice-T is 52 years old today

Published on February 16, 2010 in Cool. Closed

Jetlag’s got me permascrewy. I go to bed at 8pm and I’m up writing way before dawn. I am a word-farmer. I should make a king cake for my girlfriends today, but I have a lot of words to write for work. “Maybe I can do it all.”

Yesterday and today I’ve been reading and learning about Tallulah Bankhead. There was once a time when being a bad-girl celebrity meant sitting around and thinking up scandalous quotes. A few of hers:

“My father warned me about men and booze, but he never mentioned a word about women and cocaine.”

“I’m not at my best when I start to moralize or philosophize. Logic is elusive, especially to one who so rarely uses it.”

“Here’s a rule I recommend: Never practice two vices at once.”

That Lohan girl should bring this ish back. YouTube turns up an episode of The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour featuring Ms. Bankhead. Apparently Lucille Ball didn’t much like sharing the stage and Tallulah was fairly smashed for the whole day of taping.

Someone found this blog searching for onion ‘expierience’ crying’.

Who is Bozo Texino?

Published on January 23, 2010 in Cool. 2 Comments

Thinking about Colossus of Roads today. I saw his tag twice on cars in Texas. Excited to learn that someone made a documentary about the secret hobo jungles.

Today’s a work day. My elbow is messed up from dancing last night. The Austin club scene involves a man in a white suit laying face-down in the street while a camera crew films him, drawing no crowd.