Summery, Hot Und Sweaty

I've been playing around with my new D-SLR, a toy for boys and girls. Thank you, thank you to L., Monsieur Crosby, and cats Edgy and Obi.




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The schedule for this year's Central Park Summerstage has been announced, and boy is it a doozy. Aside from the likes of Sonny Rollins and Sharon Jones and her Dapkings taking to the stage to play freak-out jazz and nu-soul, there will also be a reading from Junot Diaz. What's great is that most of these concerts are free of charge.

Now, I don't know about y'all, but I know where I'm going to be on Saturday, August 16 from 3pm to 8pm. That's right--I'll be front row, center to see three of my favorite bands on a single bill: BLACK DICE, BATTLES, and GANG GANG DANCE. How sick is that? Also, did I mention that this is a free concert?

Man, you have to love New York for stuff like this.

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Drown

Junot Diaz has been awarded the 2008 Pulitzer Prize in fiction for his first novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, a rich, funny, and full work that examines the Dominican immigrant experience and the ways in which the past refuses to release its hold on those who insist on living in the present.

Diaz, who arrived in the United States as a young child without knowing a word of English, is the second Latino to win the prize; the first such author was CCNY alum Oscar Hijuelos, who won for his sex- and drink-riddled novel, The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, published in 1990. (This book would later be adapted into a film and, uh, a Broadway musical.)

While I do not know Mr. Diaz personally, I still feel quite proud that, in a country which insists its Latino immigrants are little more than border-jumping thugs, he has been able to reach this level of professional success.

The winners in poetry:

Robert Hass, for Time and Materials
Philip Schultz, for Failure

Congratulaciones, Junot, y mucha suerte!

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