Julia Won't Read My Blog

What's up with that?

Adam to Adam

So I watched the tv show Party Down, continuing my affection for even the most marginally The State related entertainment. I think the main guy Adam Scott is going to play Adam Peterson in the movie of his life, if the movie of his life was made right now, rather than sometime in the future when a film could conceivably be written & made about his life.








Also, I have a draft of a script called Hi-Life: The Adam Peterson Story that I've been shopping around the major movie houses. If anyone is interested call me at (303) 555-1212. And Mr. Scott, if you'd like to sign on right now it could help things along. We need the kind of star power that comes with the protagonist of a made-for-Starz sitcom.

May I Have Magma Face?

How can I do this sort of effect on photos of myself?

I heard of something called photoshop. Do they have a button for doing this?

Oh maybe this is what 50 Cent actually looks like. Maybe he had a serious injury & his face is half magma now. And here I was mocking him. How awful of me. How rude. Poor 50. Poor lava-face.

If I can't do it on photoshop is there any way that I can actually get lavaface myself? I imagine it would do some serious damage to my pillows, though. I guess it would be difficult to kiss me. Someone kissing me would burn their lips. Severely. The more I think about it the more sympathy i have for 50. Lavafaces are no joke.

Oh listen to this. It's not my link.

Oxford Camerata: Gesualdo, Complete Sacred Music for Five Voices

October Snow Storm

Two Things

1.

I bought a new bike. My old bike, which I love, my Kona Dr. Dew, has a cracked frame. I kept riding it for a while, until I realized just how dangerous the cracked frame was as I was biking up hills & watching it sway back & forth.

While I save up to get it fixed, I had to pick up a new bike to get around. At first I looked at other hybrids & road bikes, but then decided that if I'm going to have two bikes they should be significantly different, so I picked up a sweet & simple fixie from a really nice guy who'd built it up from a rusted, old lugged steel frame that was found in the back of a warehouse. Now it's all pretty.



For years I'd been curious about fixies, but scared to ride them, thinking I'd fall over my break my mathias. But within a single spin around block I realized just how much fun these things are. Riding it reminds me of the first bike I got as an adult, when I felt so free & happy for the first time in years. There are certain times when the experience of something you live through escapes the concept of itself, when it becomes its own conceptualism unto itself, unmediated & indefinable. They are rare times. The past two hours I've been biking around the neighborhood, hunting down hill to ride up & to practice slowing.




2.

Mudlicious Press is going to put out a novella of mine in June 2011. They have been putting out some great chapbooks & will soon release Molly Gaudry's book in their novel(la) series, We Take Me Apart.

You can read an excerpt from my book here here.

State(s) of Flux, Doomsday Fest, Absent 4, Photo of Starlings, Lucas Farrell & Brandon Shimoda on Zero Ducats, New Shelton Walsmith Work

The always-awesome Steven Karl's new chapbook has been out for a little while, but I just finally ordered a copy. Here's what the press says about it:

32 pages of poetical action! (Wow!)

6 pages two-color concertina of visual goodness (Awesome!!)

hand-bound in orange bookcloth (Say It Again!!!)

Here's what I say about it:

I'm looking forward to receiving it in the mail & reading it!

Printed & Published by Peptic Robot Press.




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Doomsday Film Festival & Symposium
Sunday, October 25, 2009
12:30pm - 2:00pm
DCTV
87 Lafayette St. (between Walker & White)
New York, NY

• Selections from The Animatrix | Shinichiro Watanabe & Mahiro Maeda, U.S., 2003 (feat. The Second Renaissance Parts 1 & 2, A Detective Story, Kid's Story)

Panelists:
• Bob Fingerman, author and comic artist
• Hilary Florido, comic artist
• Matt Hawkins, journalist
• Justin Taylor, author
• John Joseph Adams, editor of Wastelands, The Living Dead and Seeds of Change
• Jonathan Maberry, author of Patient Zero, They Bite and Doomwar

Readers:
• Jeremy Schmall, poet
• Sommer Browning, poet
• Emily Brandt, poet
• Alex Cuff, poet
• Martin Rock, poet

Limited Edition copies of The Apocalypse Anthology of Poetry edited by Sommer Browning will be available for sale from Flying Guillotine Press.


About the festival:
The 2009 Doomsday Film Festival explores our collective obsession with the Apocalypse in film, art, and culture.

From raptures, plagues, meteorites, nuclear holocausts, aliens, zombie attacks, ecological catastrophe, and cybernetic revolt to the 2012 doomsday predictions, the Festival will touch upon all possible permutations of our collective demise.

We'll be screening films from across the board, with works ranging from premieres to established classics to rediscovered gems. On the schedule for the 2009 Festival are nuclear fallout cartoons, early '60s atomic parables, '80s zombie punk, award-winning independent shorts, and much more.

The event will incorporate a panel-based symposium featuring authors, artists, and all manner of experts on the End of Days. We plan to tackle the Apocalypse in all its forms, and hope you'll join us for the ride!

http://www.doomsdayfilmfest.com




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Absent #4 is on the internets!




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Here's an incredible photo of starlings that she-who-was-formerly-known-as-Chicky-Wang sent me:



The photographer is Danny Green, learn more here.




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Zero Ducats is getting all active online these days, with an early notebook for Daniel Johnston's & some cool collaborative & nu-media stuff.

Check out the collaboration between Lucas Farrell and Brandon Shimoda. It's awesome.





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Shelton Walsmith has new work up on his site. Go to it.

October is the F-F-F-Foolin'-est Month

D'Count likes to use Heather Christle's The Difficult Farm as a blanket. I do not recommend this for humans. I do recommend that you humans read it, as it is very good. You can find it at Octopus Books




Last week I saw the Christian Bok show in person for the first time & was led to think that the Christian Bok show is superior to the Kenny G show for a few reasons, it's actually entertaining in its conceptual structuralism & there is something intellectually nurturing in Bok's work, whereas Kenny G seems omnivorously self-nurturing. Personally, I'm self-nutria-ing.




Make the robot voice on your computer read this out loud:

from nypoesi

CHRISTIAN BÖK from “Mushroom Clouds” in The Cyborg Opera Hong Kong

King Kong hop-along ping-pong

dingbat ding-a-ling
wingding sing-along

deafening
ding-dong diphthong of a gong

my tongue muttering
an unsung lettering

guys sing
something from some folk song

hillbilly billabong
boom bang boomerang

you bring
a dang kangaroo to a gangbang

ongoing boing boing
of a long bedspring

your gang
ogling the oblong bling bling

whiz-bang
lightning striking the Viking

king of us Nibelung
die Götterdammerung

This is one place I teach:



This is the view on a foggy morning from another place I teach:



This is what I teach:





I saw Eagle Seagull play recently. Look how long Eli's hair is:





Jon Pack took this photo of a squishy elephant in a light box:




More photos of D'Count!

Hey Octopus Fans! Matvei Yankelevich & Heather Christle Read Tonight in Portland!

Tonight (10/16/09) at 7:30 at Work/Sound Gallery (820 SE Alder) in Portland, Octopus Books and Poor Claudia are having a double, nay, triple book release party. Bring two, nay, three loved ones.

Octopus is celebrating the release of its two newest full-length poetry books, The Difficult Farm by Heather Christle and Boris by the Sea by Matvei Yankelevich, with readings by the authors. Both Heather and Matvei are traveling into Portland for the event (from Atlanta and Brooklyn respectively).

Poor Claudia will be releasing their second issue and will celebrate by having their authors read: Emily Kendal Frey, Matthew Dickman, Lisa Ciccarello, Crystal Willer, and Hannah Pass.

No charge. Save that cash for the booze and the books, but more importantly, the books.




If, like me, you can not make it to Portland, you can order both books at the Octopus Books website: www.octopusbooks.net

Two Things That Happened This Week

On Monday a red fox, with full, bristly, bushy tail, ran by me on my campus -- within about 20 feet of me. It ran across a green space on campus & passed within a few feet of a kid who was sitting on a concrete step smoking. He went completely still until the fox passed out of biting-zone. I had stopped & was watching. Everyone else seemed to be going about their normal campus business.

The fox reached a roundabout in front of the King Center, where my office is, Seemed to get spooked by the asphalt, ran back into the grass & crept away in the shadow of a church-turned-campus-building.

The smoking kid & I made eye contact. Neither of us gave any sort of expression to each other. We broke eye contact & I walked to class. I was a bit early & one of my students was there already. She asked how I was doing & I told her I'd just seen a red fox run across campus. She responded "Well shit." I agreed.



*



I taught Carlos Bulosan's "Be American" for the first time & was pretty amazed by the story. It's such a simply told & minimalist story, but reveals such a multi-faceted perspective. A truly beautiful story.

Some New Music

Someone actually asked me to post about new music I've been listening to! Here goes.







Natural Snow Buildings: Shadow Kingdom

There’s been a lot of hype about this record among nerds who never see the daylight & download their mother’s milk from mediafire, but unlike most blognerd heroes this not only holds up, it's extraordinary, one of the most involving & visceral listening experiences I've had recently. It's an absolutely astounding double cd set of glistening, expanding, mind-shattering drones that then abruptly drop into the most direct, lofi britfolk sounding sounds of hollowness & ice. In the same way that Nadja songs continually redefine & expand themselves from within, this music is a plasmic state of musical matter. A beautiful, beautiful album that was out of print the moment it was recorded, pretty much.




Ancestors: demo cassette 1

Raw, thrashy black metal in the vein of Bone Awl, but so three-chord in its approach, like Void or Minor Threat, that it’s immediately arresting. Wild snarling vocals that careen around the songs like drunken tweakers who just crashed your party.




PS Eliot: The Bike Wreck

Straight up cutesy punky indie rock with one of the worst band names ever, but I find this incredibly compelling. Reminds me of when I liked this band in NoVA called The Others: they weren’t all that good, but there was something undeniably love-inducing about them. PS Eliot (ugh, change your name!) are so spirited & heartfelt & energetic that it makes me want to shout along with all their songs.




Austere: To Lay Lie Old Ashes

Huge, continental black metal with pillowy, fuzzy guitars. When I listen to this I feel like I just woke up on a boat & I have no idea where we’re going & there’s no one else on board. I pretty sure there is no way the story is going to end well.




Solo Andata: s/t

Dreamscapes of plucked strings & reverberations. Borderline Windham Hill in its acoustic alchemy, but that’s all right. I’m old enough to accept that can I love new age music. I bought Vangelis' Opera Savauge on vinyl a few weeks back. The way they almost build internal rhythms to their drones leaves me yearning in a way that is intensely emotion & unique to this music.




Fabolous: Loso’s Way

There’s something about Fabolous’ street swagger that I’ve never found to be anything other than an act. Like he’s probably a really nice young guy who puts his thug gear on when he goes on stage. While that might seem like I’m calling him a poseur, it’s really that there’s something personal about his performance of the g-cliches. Every new Fabolous record requires.




Lucero: 1372 Overton Park

Country-punk dude rock goes straight up southern boogie. This is emo for guys who’d rather drink their emotions away. The first time I played this, I felt like I knew every one of these songs already. But in the best way possible.





Kronos Quartet: Mugam Sayagi: Music of Franghiz Ali-Zaden

I saw them a few weeks ago play a piece from this record & it’s been my morning train music since then. Searching & undefined, this music occasionally slips into a groove of traditional music or contemporary classical, but for the most part is a kind of journey between the two & the liminal spaces are the most exciting.

I feel like the Kronos is such a musical institution by now, like Yo Yo Ma or Jay Z, that even though they sometimes play 'difficult' music that there is nothing very offensive about them. I was surprised to note that there were a lot of seats empty after the intermission that had been full. Now that could mean anything, boredom, pressing beerpong engagements, but I know for a fact that the couple directly ahead of J & me kept making WTF faces at each other during the first half & did not stick around for the second. Not that pissing off the audience is a goal unto itself, but it's nice to see that they still have an edge to them.




Ramses III: I Could Not Love You More

Steel guitar is a form of landscape painting. And these guys aren’t even from the American southwest, but from England. So that proves it.




Hudson Mohawke: Butter

Surprisingly, or maybe not considering the 90s revival seems in full force in so many avenues of indie music, this reminds me most of Future Sound of London, the kind of gauzey, introspective elements of that bands hallucinatory house experience come through in this album, more so than the current crop of weirdo electronics that get name-checked along with the Mohawke. I can not believe I like a band whose name is a Hudson Hawk reference. I officially have no inner resources.





Califone: All My Friends are Funeral Singers

Perfect. Nothing surprising. Just perfect. Califone have created their own sub-genre unto themselves & they continue to prove that it’s exactly what is needed.




Mariah Carey: Memoirs Of An Imperfect Angel

The Dream production! Pretty much the best thing going in pop music right now. I've never been a Mariah Carey fan, unlike other pop stars she was just always too much of a plastic smile, but this album is immaculate. Almost every track has me in its clutches.

If You're in New York Tomorrow You Should Go to This Yardmeter Event at 6:30pm in Brooklyn

Yardmeter Editions is an events series that brings together artists, writers, playwrights & other creative types in an informal setting in the Gowanus neighborhood of Brooklyn, NY.

I am fascinated by geography and the natural world and I enjoy feeling baffled and amazed by unfamiliar surroundings. These surroundings invoke a childlike wonder that unravel my preconceived notions inspiring me to investigate what else might be out there. I seek to paint little puzzlements that can capture these feelings. -- Raphael Umscheid

Yardmeter Editions presents, this Saturday:
Paintings by Austin Texas artist Raphael Umscheid, readings by Chris Martin and Claire Donato and music written for the occasion by Portland's extraordinary Ray Talley Dancers. The wine will flow freely. We hope you will join us.

About our readers:

Chris Martin is the author of American Music, chosen by C. D. Wright for the Hayden Carruth Award and published by Copper Canyon. His latest chapbook, The Small Dance, is a response to a choreographic technique by Steve Paxton and is available online from Scantily Clad Press. A collaboration of his with the late kari edwards appears in the new Belladonna/Litmus anthology, NO GENDER: Reflections on the Life and Work of kari edwards. He lives in Brooklyn and teaches in Manhattan.

Claire Donato lives and writes in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn. She is the author of a chapbook, Someone Else’s Body (Cannibal Books 2009). Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in publications such as Black Warrior Review, Boston Review, Action Yes, Lit, and Typo. Claire graduated from the University of Pittsburgh in 2008 and is currently completing an MFA in Literary Arts at Brown University, where she also teaches poetry writing and was the 2008-2009 Peter Kaplan Memorial Fellow. The recipient of a 2009-2010 Brown University Graduate International Colloquia grant, Claire currently curates (with John Cayley and Adam Veal) an international arts colloquium in Providence called Incuhabitations: concepts and languages in poetic practice.

Erik Noonan, Leah Canelaria-Tyler & Me, Reading together this Saturday in Denver

Erik NOONAN, Leah CANDELARIA-TYLER, Mathias SVALINA
reading their works

Saturday, October 10th at 7:30pm
at the Dikeou Collection
1615 California St (at the 16th Street Mall), Denver
Take the elevator to the 5th floor

FREE and open to the public (donations to the readers welcome)


Leah Candelaria-Tyler was born and raised in southern New Mexico. She studied English at New Mexico State University and poetics at New College of California, in San Francisco. In Seattle, she publishes the literary magazine, Slow Parade and other literary works under Candle-Aria press. She is currently writing a paper on the poetics of Weldon Kees, and finishing her second chapbook, The Bustle.

Erik Noonan: Under the imprint Snag Press he edited and published three issues of a magazine called Weigh Station; and printed Of Stone by Patrick James Dunagan, Scenes From the Saragossa Manuscript by Micah Ballard, and The Nymph Poem by Jacqueline Motzer. He attended the New College of California, where he wrote a Masters thesis about Paul Blackburn’s writing. His poems appear in various fine journals, put out by friends, recently and soon Big Bell, Slow Parade, Clark Kent, and Smorg. For work he teaches the American English language, as he knows it, to boys and girls. He’s reading The King of the Ants and listening to Freedom Suite.

Mathias Svalina was born in Philadelphia as the oldest of three children. He was encouraged to study piano by his mother. He began studying the piano at age 13 and within two years, music had become the focal point in his life. His early influences included Bud Powell, a Philadelphia neighbor. As a young man, he converted to Islam through the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, and was active in the objectives of the organization during the pinnacle of his career. Svalina's first main exposure came with Benny Golson, being the first pianist in Golson's and Art Farmer's legendary Jazztet. After departing the Jazztet, Svalina joined Coltrane's group in 1960 during its extended run at the Jazz Gallery replacing Steve Kuhn. (Coltrane had known Svalina for a while in Philadelphia, and featured one of the pianist's compositions, "The Believer.") He appeared on the saxophonist's popular recording of "My Favorite Things" for Atlantic Records. The Coltrane Quartet, which consisted of Coltrane on tenor sax, Svalina, Jimmy Garrison on bass, and Elvin Jones on drums, toured almost non-stop between 1961 and 1965 and recorded a number of classic albums, including Live at the Village Vanguard, Ballads, Live at Birdland, Crescent, A Love Supreme, and The John Coltrane Quartet Plays ..., on the Impulse! label. Svalina has recorded a number of highly influential albums in his own right. While in Coltrane's group, he recorded a series of important albums (primarily in the piano trio format) for Impulse! Records. The pianist also appeared as a sideman in many of the highly acclaimed Blue Note Records albums of the 1960s, although was often credited as 'etc.' on the cover of these albums (when listing the sidemen on the album) in order to respect his contractual obligations at Impulse Records. His involvement with John Coltrane came to an end in 1965. Coltrane's music was becoming much more atonal and free; he had also augmented his quartet with percussion players who threatened to drown out both Svalina and Jones. This seemed at add to his drive and character about wanting to make music his own and unique. Svalina was somewhat bitter about the change in Coltrane's direction: 'I didn't see myself making any contribution to that music...All I could hear was a lot of noise. I didn't have any feeling for the music, and when I don't have feelings, I don't play'. By 1966, Svalina was rehearsing with a new trio and would now fully embark on his career as a leader. After leaving Coltrane's group, Svalina produced a series of post-bop albums released on Blue Note Records from 1967 to 1970 which included The Real Mathias (1967), Tender Moments (1967), Expansions (1968) and Extensions (1970). Soon thereafter he moved to the Milestone label and recorded many influential albums, including Sahara (1972), Enlightenment (1973), and Fly with the Wind (1976), which featured flautist Hubert Laws, drummer Billy Cobham, and a string orchestra. His music for Blue Note and Milestone often took the Coltrane quartet's music as a point of departure and also incorporated African and East Asian musical elements. On Sahara, for instance, Svalina plays koto, in addition to piano, flute, and percussion. These albums are often cited as examples of vital, innovative jazz from the 1970s that was neither fusion nor free jazz. Trident (1975) is notable for featuring Svalina on harpsichord (rarely heard in jazz) and celeste, in addition to his primary instrument, piano. Svalina still records and tours regularly and played from the 1980s through '90s with a trio that included Avery Sharpe on bass and Aaron Scott on drums. He made a trio of solo recordings for Blue Note, starting with Revelations (1988) and culminating with Soliloquy (1991). Today Svalina records for the Telarc label and has been playing with different trios, one of which has included Charnett Moffett on bass and Eric Harland on drums. In 2008, Svalina toured with his quartet, which featured saxophonist Gary Bartz with Gerald Cannon (bass) and Eric Kamau Gravatt (drums). Svalina was also a judge for the 6th annual Independent Music Awards to support independent artists' careers. He currently lives in Denver.

Octopus Books News

Heather Christle's The Difficult Farm ships out this week! Yay!

Matvei Yankelevich's Boris by the Sea arrives in hand very soon! Yay!

You can order both of them at Octopus Books. Yay!

Heather has a bunch of poems, not from the book, in the latest issue of the revamped Slope Magazine.

The Portland lit magazine, Poor Claudia, is going to co-host a book release event with Octopus Books next Friday. Heather and Matvei Yankelevich are going to come to Portland to read from their new books.

If you're in the geographical United States then I suggest you go.

CSI: Denver

I've been sick this week, but while sick I've been working on my spec script for a pilot I'll be shopping around called "CSI: Denver." Here's a sneak peak of the opening:

CSI: Denver

Man 1: [knowing look]
Man 2: [knowing look}
Woman 1: [Dramatic Pause]
Man 1: [Dramatic Pause]
Man 2: [Dramatic Pause]
Man 1: [Dramatic Pause]
Man 2: [knowing look]
Woman 1: [knowing look]
Man 1: [Dramatic Pause]
Woman 1: [Dramatic Pause]
Man 2: [Dramatic Pause]
Man 1: [knowing look]
Woman 1: [knowing look]
Man 1: [knowing look]
All: [Dramatic Pause, accompanied by a deeply knowing look]
Man 1: Well… that’s the way the cookie Dalton Trumbos.

[The Who's "Boris the Spider" plays]

Tonight In Denver

Saturday, October 3, at 7:00 pm
Brian Evenson and Joanna Howard
will read from recent works of fiction
at the University of Denver

Sturm Hall, Room 454

FREE and open to the public

Fridays Are For Puppy Fights