Friday, January 30, 2009

Since All These Doors Are Closing Somebody Better Start Opening Some Windows

The final Silver Jews show is tomorrow, in an underground natural amphitheater known as The Volcano Room:



It should be streaming live on WSM around 3:00 p.m. CST.

UPDATE (slam goes another door): Never mind.

"Guys, sorry to say I negotiated out of the WSM part out of the deal."
--DCB

The following day, Mercury (finally!) goes direct. It's been giving a lot of people extra trouble this time, I've noticed.

Maybe now some windows shall de-ice and un-stick and rattle open.

Schwartz Bookshops to Close



After 82 years, Harry W. Schwartz Bookshops will be closing on March 31, 2009.

Schwartz was Milwaukee's independent chain, and it's sad to see it disappear. Just last month we heard that Heinemann's -- where I held my first and only job as a waitress, for about 3 months at age 16 -- would close, and now this.

Schwartz on Oakland Ave. in Milwaukee (above) was my first job after college, and the store on Downer used to have a lovely little poetry alcove; they got rid of it in recent years, but I owe that alcove my first glimpse into a contemporary poetry world that excited me -- it's where I first bought books by Matthea Harvey, Olena Kalytiak Davis, and Brenda Shaughnessy.

The silver lining: the Downer location will become the Boswell Book Company.

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Red Corvette Bundle Deal!

Click on over to The Old Corduroy Airforce to preorder
Inside A Red Corvette by Becca Klaver
Borrowed House by Brooklyn Copeland
Boring Meadows by Colin Bassett
as a bundle for $15 (S&H included).

A few hit singles can be found here.

I should be getting my author copies soon and will post pics!

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Charlotte Bronte's Dollhouse

for sale, along with Wordsworth's desk chair and a piece of lace that Oliver Cromwell tore from an altar (those were the days):

Method Edie

Barrymore took a year and a half to prepare for the role, even going into total seclusion for several months to live as Edie. "I promised the director [Mark Sucsy] I would," she explains. "I didn't use email. I didn't read a newspaper. I didn't talk to a friend. I didn't watch television. I didn't make a phone call. I didn't do anything. I used an old typewriter. I read her journals. I listened to her music. That's all I did. Nothing modern."
Thanks to Hanna for being so aghast that I'd never seen Grey Gardens that I had to immediately move it to the top of my queue. What was I thinking?

Monday, January 26, 2009

My Favorite News Story

Overcoming partisan divisions, the Senate on Monday night unanimously voted to delay the digital television transition until June 12
I'm still not ready. I hear I'm in the 6% minority. (Ooh, I never get to press the percent key. I guess I like it that way.)

But thanks for the coupon, Froski! I just need to drag myself to Big Bright 'n' Blue, a.k.a. Best Buy. (Do you stress the "Best" or the "Buy"? I stress the "Buy" but in L.A. I remember most people stressed the "Best.")

Really I'm just testing the system, like it's Y2K and I'm calling its bluff. I'm calling your bluff, Digital TV conversion. I'm not sure why I'm calling your bluff, but with this breaking news announcement, I feel like I'm winning.

On Chicago Tonight right now:

Rebecca asks, "With many people discarding their analog TVs after the switch to digital, will Chicago or any suburban towns offer a recycling program?"

Sunday, January 25, 2009

Thursday, January 22, 2009

Starting Today

Starting Today: poems for the first 100 days
edited by Arielle Greenberg & Rachel Zucker

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

By Request of St. Gyros, Who Gets Whatever He Wants Today


Protective Immediacy


You're always suspicious
that you may not be doing
what you think you're doing.
Cigarette a letter to oneself
(again)
she writes "paw or paw"
on the large canvas &
never "sold out" their fetishization
of autonomy-- the volcidestrians
are wiping the Natl. Capital Area
with fuckin candy rainbows
You're always suspicious
that you may not be doing
what you think you're doing.


--Rod Smith, 1998

Monday, January 19, 2009

Collective Snicker from Youth of America

Ah, schadenfreude:
US Vice President Dick Cheney pulled a muscle in his back while moving boxes and will be in a wheelchair for Tuesday's historic inauguration of incoming president Barack Obama, the White House said.

Hoa Nguyen's Hecate Lochia

I'm really excited for this:


Hot Whiskey has posted a few (terrific!) sample poems, including this one (click for clearer text):



Funniest poet since O'Hara? Bold statement, but I'm goin' ahead. (You heard him in "Hard to be born / live variously," no? Nguyen's "and have a job" addition feels wry. Quite!)

Sunday, January 18, 2009

It's Not Just Me, Right?

Are all poets wary of & half in love with
narrative?

For the Phobic

like me:

How to survive a plane crash.

Saturday, January 17, 2009

Neologasm: Urban Dictionary Word of the Day

January 17: neologasm

the pleasurable feeling from having coined a new word. Combination of neologism and orgasm.

Friday, January 16, 2009

What To Watch



"The Informer"

Kim Basinger, Mickey Rourke, Winona Ryder, Billy Bob Thornton, and a script based on a bunch of Bret Easton Ellis stories.
Asked last week whether he missed any of it — the heat, the flash, the coke-blurred frenzy of Los Angeles past — [Ellis] shuddered. “Oh, no,” he said, and appeared to mean it. “I don’t miss it at all.” -- NYT
If you want to watch something really awesomely trashy and 80s, try Less Than Zero.

In case you can't read the tag line: "It only looks like the good life." Hahahahhaa

It's worth it just for Robert Downey Jr. as Julian and James Spader as Rip.

That's right: Rip.

I wish I could find you an image of the cover of my movie-tie in version of the Less Than Zero paperback, but I think it's too old for the internet. It will remind you of card catalog drawers.

Yonic Tonic

Yonic architecture -- The Bean & beyond:

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

"The woman underneath the clothes and behind the skin remains a mystery to us and to herself"

Some heartbreakingly beautiful eulogies for the young feminist artist Emma Bee Bernstein can be found here. They affirm creativity, community, and feminism as they celebrate her life.

Monday, January 12, 2009

Get Me















THE COMBINATION OF FRESH SNOW COVER...
CONTINUED LIGHT SNOW OVERNIGHT...
AND STRONG GUSTY WINDS WILL LEAD TO BLIZZARD OR NEAR BLIZZARD CONDITIONS AND DANGEROUS TRAVEL CONDITIONS...
WITH WIDESPREAD VISIBILITIES OF ONE QUARTER OF A MILE OR LESS.
TRAVEL WILL BECOME EXTREMELY DANGEROUS AND MAY BECOME NEARLY IMPOSSIBLE LATE TONIGHT INTO EARLY TUESDAY MORNING.

Sunday, January 11, 2009

The Globes










Have you printed out your ballot?











Liveblogging, my favorite part of the show.

Also: those Tina Fey-hater usernames are real, but still stupid.


Friday, January 9, 2009

Prepare for a wild ride.


Coming February 2009 from Switchback Books.

Happy Impeachment (& Weird Poetry) Day!


Awww--there's nobody peachier than Blago.

*

"Blagojevich says his impeachment no surprise"
--AP


--Jenny Holzer

*

"He ended the news conference by quoting a [line] from 'Ulysses' by Lord Alfred Tennyson, ending with: 'To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.'"

Monday, January 5, 2009

Fitzy Fevah

Baz Luhrmann has bought the rights to The Great Gatsby!



Picture it! Cate Blanchett could play a well-written Daisy! (As opposed to love interest of Benjamin 'Boro' Button)














Baztastic.

Deborah Solomon Interviews Joan Rivers

I prefer the aging bohemian, Georgia O’Keeffe look. That’s more my look. Wrinkles are beautiful.
That’s great if you’re Georgia O’Keeffe and each painting is $5 million and they’re sitting at your feet. But if Georgia O’Keeffe were waiting at a bus stop, nobody wouldhave picked her up. Nobody would have pulled over and said, “Hey, baby, want a lift?”

Don’t you think most of us want to be loved for who we are, as opposed to some artificially enhanced version of ourselves?
That will never happen. Are you out of your mind?

Don’t you think you are lovable?
Let’s see how lovable I’d be if I wasn’t sitting in this penthouse.

[more] [less]

Friday, January 2, 2009

Logan Square Has A Cafe

My prayers have been answered.

I wanted you to be the first to know.

I thought it would finally happen the day before I left town, but A. and I were lucky enough to take the bus home today and spot New Wave Coffee. I pulled the cord right away, and we're now sipping a fine Metropolis light brew. Right now they say they're only "open-ish," but it looks like it's going to be pretty fresh pretty soon. [Yelp]

More developments:
[Cheetah Gym]
[Logan Square Kitchen]


View Larger Map

Force of Both

On New Year's Eve, Jeff took some text from my PROTECT PROTECT and MAN ON WIRE post and adapted it:



Ekphrasis Level 3?

If you click on the image and look closely you can see the coffee grounds and fresh cracked pepper he used to "break the fourth wall."

Icelandic Protest & A Portrait

from Slate:
Just as the Austurvöllur rally ends, a string of firecrackers shoots above the parliament house, bursting like small flares. People huddle to the scene, and as they do, a vandal in a cheap Santa suit and gremlin mask ('tis the season) runs up and dumps a sack of potatoes on the parliament-house steps. They bounce and roll. The Santa gremlin disappears. An army of photographers kneels, essaying the potato-on-the-ground art shot. Iceland has become a "potato country," a woman says by way of explanation, so poor its people can subsist solely on tubers. "And also the leaders are, like, stupid, like a potato."


In middle/high school one of our friends was from Iceland. Or, I think she was born in Wisconsin but her father kidnapped her and brought her to Iceland when she was young, and most of the rest of her youth was spent shuttling back and forth between Wisconsin and Iceland. In eighth grade she finally got the courage to pull her Icelandic clothes out of the closet, and they were amazing: bright and rich pinks and blues, stretchy and bold. She was always best dressed from then on but she also gave everything away: I still have some of those skirts in my closet, and I imagine I'll always have them. Her mother was Sri Lankan, and because she was so exotic-looking and because of Björk, we thought that's how people in Iceland looked. It turns out they look kind of like me. Sometimes she'd call me long-distance on a midsummer day and it would be the middle of the night there, but light out, and she'd be sitting by the edge of a pond, feeding the birds. She hung out at Björk parties, became a fashion model, and was once rated the best pizza maker in all of Iceland. We got the sense that it was much easier to become the best at whatever you did in Iceland, and this encouraged a fairytale sense of the place and person (NB potatoes above). None of us have seen her for years; the last time I "saw" her was through MySpace, where she was holding her newborn baby but clearly posing for a professional photographer.

Thursday, January 1, 2009

More Cig Lit

Mary Ferrari, from Angel Hair 5:


ETERNITY!

for Kenneth Koch

at the end of every cigarette that burns there is of course
a soft little bright light which means
hope!     eternity!     so you are not
killing yourself when you
smoke you are preparing for
heaven where the loving lavender
cigarette angels have soft ash wings
or for hell where a flaming cigarette forest makes
a marvelous explosion in which at least you are involved!