Saturday Night is the Loneliest Night of the Week

The Spring 2008 issue of The One Three Eight is now live (more or less).

Send "Get Well" wishes to my dear Myella, who is stuck in the hospital tonight instead of hosting a fabulous dinner on Roosevelt Island! (Insert very sad face here)

{gc}

kitty pitties

yes, i'm a dorky new-mom, i'll own it. but do note my stealthy silence a la national geographic. (ummm, but you can stop watching once they run into the closet: they don't come out.)

Pop Matters

The fine folks at Fence--following the model that Radiohead used last year for In Rainbows--have announced that they are accepting subscriptions to be paid at whatever price level that readers decide is appropriate. I might just have to drop a shiny gold $1 coin for this one...

http://www.fenceportal.org/support/

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My brother, Steve, did really well in his interview at Hunter College, and has been accepted into the MFA program at the school. Congratulations, Steve!

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I was listening last night to the 25th anniversary edition of Michael Jackson's landmark Thriller album (released in 1982 on Epic), and was taken by how fresh the songs sounded despite the massive changes in pop music since Quincy Jones set the tracks to tape. And did anyone remember the 3-4-5 listing of "Thriller," "Beat It," and "Billie Jean"? Seriously, you just can't fuck with that shit.

Sick, sick, sick.

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Anti-pop Consortium, once disbanded, has reformed. Hurrah! for underground, progressive, weird, and simply strange hip-hop. Their video for "Ghostlawns," taken from Arrhythmia, is the GMC Video of the Day.

[ d | r ]

Threefer Thursday

1) Two of my poems, "Sea-Change" and "Ghazal (Not Guzzle)" will appear in the Fall 2008 issue of Big City Lit.

2) Did I mention that I saw the Mountain Goats at Webster Hall last week? I saw the Mountain Goats at Webster Hall last week. They played my favorite song. What more can you ask?

3) Richard Widmark passed away at age 93. Lead in the obit? His star-making role as the sadistic killer Tommy Udo in Kiss of Death (1947), memorably alluded to in Don DeLillo's White Noise. In case you've never seen it, he ties Victor Mature's mother to her wheelchair with a drapery cord, and then pushes her down a flight of stairs while he giggles fiendishly. Highly recommended (the movie, not pushing helpless old ladies down flights of stairs).

{gc}

March Madness

We come to love this newness that repeats itself
like a virus. Just remember, do not kill the golden goose.

How the Romans Celebrated:
XCIX Bottles of Wine on the Wall, XCIX Bottles of Wine,
And if one of those bottles should happen to fall,
XCVIII bottles of wine on the wall...
And the ditty never ends for the ancients did not use the number "zero".

Tonight, the moon is a giant golden egg, or a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup I licked all the chocolate off of.

Emily and I once entered an egg-toss competition at Gold Key Lake. She was annoyed at me for underthrowing her. We lost in the final round when I overthrew her and it cracked on her forehead.

Hideki Matsui may be replaced as my new favorite baseball player by Japanese-Iranian Yu Darvish, a 6-foot-5 whirling dervish known as baseball's rebellious 'Elvis'.

"There is still enough left to live by. Only help her to know...she is more than this dress on the ironing board, helpless before the iron."

Sprung Rhythm & Blues

Latest evidence of my wanderings can be found over on Flickr in The Ides of March.

There was something on NPR the other morning about some guy who has written a verse novel about werewolves in Los Angeles. I turned it off in disgust, I'm not sure why.

I was walking through Sheridan Square yesterday on my way to see Last Year in Marienbad at Film Forum when I saw the first harbinger of spring: the street festival. I did not, however, buy cheap socks or enjoy $1 Thai food.

Remember the advice of Jolie Holland, friends:

Springtime, springtime can kill you
Just like it did poor me
Don't you see we're all hurt the same way
So get out, get out of your house.

{gc}

Happy Easter, Bunnies!

Ain't That the Truth, Sister

Recognize the Poison of My Heart

I was going to write about The Kills' latest album, Midnight Boom, until I read that Portishead, a band which, along with the likes of Tricky and Massive Attack popularized a sub-genre of electronic music known as trip-hop, had released the video for "Machine Gun," their new single (released in advance of their forthcoming record, Third--their first full-length recording in ten years). The song, propelled by Geoff Barrow's flurry of sixteenth notes played on and distorted through a drum machine (lending the track something of an industrial feel), is slightly different than what one might expect to hear from this group, even though Beth Gibbon's strangely inviting voice is still quite present.

Third is out on April 29 via Mercury.

[dr]

alien sightings

Happy St. Patrick's Day

Two Poems by Linh Dinh

Caption

Before photography, people didn't exist.
Blow it up, I'm in the doctored details

In this picture, and this one, I'm in
Each photo, in the cool blur, in the

Brown cloud, my tiny head redrawn,
My splayed limbs cropped. I hammed.

I'm telling you, I've slept many times
With near celebrities. True, I'm lying

Face down, here, in the mud, my pants
stained with too much clarity. My bones

May dissolve in a toxic tub, but long
As this photo shall last, I won't fade.

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Not Quite Symmetry

Broke, I'd like to borrow your lower half,
Wear it for a day, to make some coins. I'd

Love to enter you, snug, but not through
The usual channel. You can invade me,

Feel my convexity, as I'm ventilated
By your absence, there, in the crotch.

My eyes shaded by your eyelids, I'll
Conform to your nose's architecture,

Breathe this life through your nostrils.

--as published in the March 2008 issue of The Brooklyn Rail

MFA! MFA! MFA!

Anywhere But Here (2007); acetate, wood, wheels, rope, spray paint.

My brother, Steve, has applied for enrollment in the MFA in Painting program at Hunter College. He's passed through the first round of the screening process; his formal interview with the art department is today. Please wish him luck!

Bling Bling Clink Clink

Congratulations to Reagan and Benny from your GMC friends and family! Pass the Bombay Sapphire...

America: the beautiful, the bad and the ugly

The beauty of the suburbs is that you're not stuck without a place to say, buy condoms in an emergency and you can often see the stars. The bad thing about the suburbs is that you're stuck. The good thing about the car is that it enables us to travel far distances in order to say, have sex (and experience scenes such as the one in this famed Ruscha photo). The bad thing about the car, besides oil, is that it relegates us to our individual, private spheres (and makes us lazy and fat, thus creating the need for more roadside Waffle Houses--a vicious yet delicious cycle). Road trip anyone?

The Fall of Man

Like so many New Yorkers, I've been trying to make sense of the sex scandal in which Eliot Spitzer now finds himself, and which has left New York in something of a political limbo. At first, I reasoned that the scandal was about the widening gap between our private and public lives, as well as the puritanical view of sexuality so prevalent in this country. But then it occurred to me that I was being far too easy on the disgraced governor, and that the issue was much larger than the role conservative value systems play in our lives. What is actually important, I concluded, is that Mr. Spitzer, a politician who rose to power on a platform of integrity and a seeming desire to end corruption from Wall Street to Albany, abused his power and took advantage of the faith given by constituents--wrecking not just a promising political career, but also humiliating his family in the process. (His wife, Silda Spitzer, has appeared at both of the governor's press conferences this week; she was seen earlier today with heavy eyes; it was clear that she had been crying.)

I should say that I am surprised at these developments, but given the nature of the allegations and his take-no-prisoners approach to crime as attorney general, I should have seen it all along.

[d\r]

Of Mice and (Other Four-Legged Critters)

Dinosaur BBQ, the Grand Marquis Coterie's dining establishment of choice, was recently inspected by the NYC Department of Health, and subsequently received a number of stomach-churning citations, including, but not limited to, the following:

• Evidence of mice or live mice present in facility's food and/or non-food areas.

• Evidence of rats or live rats present in facility's food and/or non-food areas.

At eighteen violation points, the restaurant missed the threshold of twenty-eight points, which would have triggered an official "Notice of Violation." According to the Department of Health, "(t)he violation point total is above the average violation point total of 14, for all NYC restaurants on their most recent inspection."

So, who's up for some ribs?

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"Forty years of solitude would have been enough." - Jorge Luis Borges on Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude.

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The GMC Video of the Week is "Nasty Dan," by Johnny Cash. Featuring Oscar the Grouch, it is pretty much the best thing ever. Also, I'd like to think that the song is about me.

Thanks to GMC Category A member, Marquis de Modig, for this week's selection. High five!

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I'm totally rocking the unironic ironic moustache right now. Photograph evidence of said facial hair configuration is not forthcoming. My apologies to all interested parties.

[d/r]

Rejection Guidelines

Don't blame bad timing (the "it's not you" routine
is tired). Don't invite us to send you something
else or say please try again (a video game death).
Don't say I like these but somehow they’re just
not quite there yet (Will they ever be ready?) No,
don't thank us for thinking of you. After all,
you are too busy, too good for paper and words.
Smoke our poems instead—reduce, reuse them!
Roll them up, put your lips to them, turn them
into a high. Inhale our burning ink, fill the room
with your laughter and smoke, tap, tap
our fallen images on your ashtrays.

Mea Culpa, Mea Ultima Culpa

Anyone who has been in a bookstore within the last ten years has noticed the surge in popularity of the memoir: from The Liars' Club to Persepolis and Fun Home, readers have taken to stories of drug addiction, physical abuse, sexual identity, and alcoholism - just to name a few of the tantalizing topics covered by memoirists - to the point where publishers have no choice but to respond. The troubling issue for writers, it seems, is how to tap into the demand for this kind of work without having to twist the truth, without having to stretch the details of their personal histories. Unfortunately, as publicly discredited authors like James Frey have noticed (his pseudo-memoir A Million Little Pieces, originally offered to publishers as a work of fiction, achieved notoriety after parts of the book were revealed to have been embellished), it may not be possible for the truth, that irrepressible notion so in demand by us all, to fit within the pages of a non-fiction manuscript--especially if one wants to see that manuscript sold.

Now comes word that another recently published and praised memoir, Love and Consequences by Margaret P. Jones, is fabricated; its writer has been exposed as a fraud. Jones, the nom de plume of a certain Margaret Seltzer, writes the story of having grown up in a foster home in South-Central Los Angeles, sold drugs, and was part American Indian (no one cay say that Americans don't appreciate the exotic). It turns out, however, that Ms. Seltzer grew up under entirely different circumstances, and that the details as expressed in her work were nothing more than lies.

In the end, what are our responsibilities as writers, whether or not we choose to write non-fiction? Is there room for the "truth" in the memoir/autobiography? Should readers care if writers take artistic license for the sake of creating compelling stories? And why do readers keep returning to these books?

Links:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/04/books/04fake.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
http://www.slate.com/id/2134203/

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The GMC Video of the Week is "Ready for the Floor," by Hot Chip. The song, taken from the band's newly-released third album, Made in the Dark, is an absolute banger, replete with slinky, hip-shaking rhythms that are sure to make the kids dance with wanton abandon. The album itself features a handful tracks that can only be described as balladry at its beautiful best, especially when set in contrast to the bleeps and other percolating sounds that are heard on songs like "Hold On" and "Don't Dance."

Besides, how can you go wrong with a video that features the lead singer as the Joker?

http://www.hotchip.co.uk/site/

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Only twenty days and counting until Opening Day in Major League Baseball. I've got my MATTINGLY - #23 t-shirt all ready to go!

http://mlb.mlb.com/index.jsp

[D | R]