Mark Twain Sez...

“New Year's Day… now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual.”

Happy New Year, my friends. The nicest thing about 2006 was the three of you.

{gc}

A Very Vegas Christmas

In case you're wondering what you've missed out on, you can view the fabulous time had by yours truly on the Flickr page of my personal photographer. Wish you were here, friends.

Crepapelle (there is a little fork in us all)

Italians are pigs
c'e una forchetta
in everyone

women like carving
naked yellow onions
with butter knives

tear drops on table
lo spirito santo
tied up and scored

saffron threads muffle
all salt cured and waiting
wild boar mouth

al crepuscolo
scamorza on the hearth
thinner than skin

una vecchia
piccolo coltello
slippery tongue

without the madonna
la zuppa di pane
cannot be made

tu ha bisogna
di tutto il cuore
to break good bread

come se dice
where would one find baked goods
in this city?

lacrime christi
in bocca al lupo
your hand in mine

beer, bier, ber before liquer...(a vegas sendoff)

delerium tremins yes
me leffe please the
belgian blonde one
golden chouffe triple
fermented abbey bless
you tiny teeny martini
ginny dirty tootsie
roll milky vanillin
vodka jewels jews olive
juice top martini talks
girty ditty shelf
best bottom sex
ever clear image
of motel 6 sink or chair or
goat cheese crunchy
water salad with straw?
body size bigger is
gay? or was it super 8?
is better walking
jealousy subjects
of night talks water?
platform moves home
is so far away here it is
so hot sleeping in all
my emperors clothing
his hand me down tie

Hey lady, did you pay for the skull mug?

Otto's Shrunken Head, NYC, December 8, 2006

Writers Love to Talk About Themselves!

Upcoming Reading

Erica Hunt and Akilah Oliver at the belladonna* Reading Series

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

Dixon Place
258 Bowery
Second Floor

belladonna* is a reading series and small press that promotes the work of women writers who are adventurous, experimental, politically involved, multi-form, multicultural, multi-gendered, impossible to define, delicious to talk about, unpredictable, dangerous with language.

When, in Brooklyn, a tree is stunted

When, in Brooklyn, a tree is stunted,

get down on your knees and massage its roots.

Sing Gregorian Chants. Recite Keats to it.

Don’t pull on its limbs or they may break you.

Don’t reach for its hand for it may be dead.

Pardon Me While I Open This Vent...

So yesterday morning, I was on stand-by (because I'm a flake and missed the registration date by two days) to take the GRE Subject Test in English Literature. I decided to apply to the doctoral program at the CUNY Graduate Center for the Fall of '07 because a) several professors here at City and the Grad Center told me I should and offered to write letters of rec, b) I figured out a topic I could write a dissertation about that wouldn't drive me to despair and c) why the hell not?

Anyway, it turns out there are three of us there on stand-by and only two tests. One of these people was Columbia Boy, who had been standing since 6:30 AM out in the cold in front of George Washington High School (the test site). The other was Cool, Funky Girl, who had a high-wattage smile and offered all the other GRE test takers extra pencils and clutched a dogeared copy of the Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry to her chest like a talisman.

At first, it appeared that there were three stand-by tests, but this was due to the general imcompetence and confusion of the test-givers. It wasn't discovered that one of the people with an actual appointment was indeed there until I had taken off my jacket, bubbled in all my info on the scantron, and was waiting patiently to crack open the test booklet.

So when it was clear that one of we three stand-bys would have to bow out, I took the bullet. As I got up in front of a classroom full of people, each thankful that they were not the nice guy with the freshly opened chest wound, I wanted to shout out something ridiculous and carefree like "So long, suckers!" Instead, I glanced at Columbia Boy and said "Ahhhhh, I didn't want to be a real professor anyway. I'm still banking on being a famous poet."

To which Columbia Boy said (instead of "Thanks" or "Good luck!" or simply laughing) "Me too!" Which made me want to drive my sharpened number two pencil into his eye. Fuck you, Columbia Boy: You'll still be paying off your $90,000 degree while I'm bedding all the worshipful, geeky girls who come up to me after my brilliant poetry readings across this great land of ours.

Well, not really.

So I guess that was a mitzvah, a good deed--at least, that's what I keep telling myself (instead of Columbia Boy, I should think about what a generous, inspiring professor Cool, Funky Girl will one day become). I know, I know--I can always take it in April and simply apply to the Grad Center for the Fall of 2008. But that's not going to happen. Part of the appeal of this path was a seamless transition from finishing my MFA at City into the Grad Center (and the all the lovely continuance of financial aid that implies). To wait a whole year, and be that much further into my forties (My forties!), before launching on another five years of higher edumacation? Feh.

Why am I posting this, O coterie? Well, I'm feeling slightly low about the whole thing and wanted to share and my proper blog isn't the place for this sort of venting. That I'm low at all is funny, seeing as how I never really wanted to do it in the first place (that is, naturally, until I was prevented from doing it by Cruella DeFate).

But it's okay, right? There's still that whole famous poet thing. Ha. Ha ha.

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

Let us close this week with the work of photojournalist James Nachtwey, whose images testify not only to the terrors of greed and war, but to a man's dedication to the truth. Like any artist worthy of the title, Nachtwey teaches us--through a medium that competes with the white noise of (mis)information, deceit, and the repetitive strain of everyday living--to look a bit closer at the world, to investigate and question all that we presume to know.

Have a good weekend, everyone. [DR]

Googlism

gregory crosby is a poet and writer
gregory crosby is the author of two chapbooks of poetry
gregory crosby is he or your son vegetarian / vegan? gregory crosby and my
gregory crosby is a freelance writer and editor

Sorry, Google doesn't know enough about laura modigiliani yet.

danny rivera is one of the most sensitive and refined singers of latin america
danny rivera is puerto rico's favorite singer
danny rivera is a sweet
danny rivera is back on the job
danny rivera is a ever

Sorry, Google doesn't know enough about reagan lothes yet.

I want to write
a poem

but find myself
without

my Olivetti &
a copy of

Martha Stewart's
Guide to Free-Range

Cattle.

for happy times click here

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QlHKv06gqA

Poem for a Birthday

(for a certain member of the coterie who just turned thirty)

Stack your plate with elegies,
fill your cup with hopium,
this is a night for ultimate poetry.

A coterie round-tables. A giant baby
suckles a thumb, fussy lines
on an etch-a-sketch, lift, erase.

Here is a cracked-out 60s stewardess
manqué. (I am ridiculous.) There are no
white Russians in Mexico.

On banquet table in latticed rectangle, a doctor
examines a kidney stone. A professor unbuttons
over-sized bread knives and sangria sweetens
in glass, slanted. (You’re not vanilla if you add
a little chocolate.) Eat-a! You’re too skinny!

Two Puerto Ricans on a river in Troy,
one man reconfigures faces.

A party favor etches cryptic. Hey tambourine man,
be Tom Petty with a Dylan delivery. Right ass cheeks
rhapsody in purple. (It takes two to make funky cold
wild thing.)

Barbie mouths Nirvana, knee-highed marquis
slams Metallica. Raise your collars, bad medicine
killed Janis Joplin and Koreans hate rap.

Couples with 80s hair meet in cafes, walk
in soft-focus fields. Your 30s are a great decade
up to 35. A train runs on another train’s track.

Aftermath

The problem with a night of karaoke is that the wrong songs get stuck in your head for days afterward. Please, please, please, Lionel Richie/Metallica/Song from "Grease," get OUT of my head!

50 Fun Things for Professors to Do on the First Day of Class

1. Wear a hood with one eyehole. Periodically make strange gurgling noises.

2. After confirming everyone's names on the roll, thank the class for attending "Advanced Astrodynamics 690" and mention that yesterday was the last day to drop.

3. After turning on the overhead projector, clutch your chest and scream "MY PACEMAKER!"

4. Wear a pointed Kaiser helmet and a monocle and carry a riding crop.

5. Gradually speak softer and softer and then suddenly point to a student and scream "YOU! WHAT DID I JUST SAY?"

6. Deliver your lecture through a hand puppet. If a student asks you a question directly, say in a high-pitched voice, "The Professor can't hear you, you'll have to ask *me*, Winky Willy".

7. If someone asks a question, walk silently over to their seat, hand them your piece of chalk, and ask, "Would YOU like to give the lecture, Mr. Smartypants?"

8. Pick out random students, ask them questions, and time their responses with a stop watch. Record their times in your grade book while muttering "tsk, tsk".

9. Ask students to call you "Tinkerbell" or "Surfin' Bird".

10. Stop in mid-lecture, frown for a moment, and then ask the class whether your butt looks fat.

11. Play "Kumbaya" on the banjo.

12. Show a video on medieval torture implements to your calculus class. Giggle throughout it.

13. Announce "you'll need this", and write the suicide prevention hotline number on the board.

14. Wear mirrored sunglasses and speak only in Turkish. Ignore all questions.

15. Start the lecture by dancing and lip-syncing to James Brown's "Sex Machine."

16. Ask occassional questions, but mutter "as if you gibbering simps would know" and move on before anyone can answer.

17. Ask the class to read Jenkins through Johnson of the local phone book by the next lecture. Vaguely imply that there will be a quiz.

18. Have one of your graduate students sprinkle flower petals ahead of you as you pace back and forth.

19. Address students as "worm".

20. Announce to students that their entire grades will be based on a single-question oral final exam. Imply that this could happen at any moment.

21. Turn off the lights, play a tape of crickets chirping, and begin singing spirituals.

22. Ask for a volunteer for a demonstration. Ask them to fill out a waiver as you put on a lead apron and light a blowtorch.

23. Point the overhead projector at the class. Demand each student's name, rank, and serial number.

24. Begin class by smashing the neck off a bottle of vodka, and announce that the lecture's over when the bottle's done.

25. Have a band waiting in the corner of the room. When anyone asks a question, have the band start playing and sing an Elvis song.

26. Every so often, freeze in mid sentence and stare off into space for several minutes. After a long, awkward silence, resume your sentence and proceed normally.

27. Wear a "virtual reality" helmet and strange gloves. When someone asks a question, turn in their direction and make throttling motions with your hands.

28. Mention in passing that you're wearing rubber underwear.

29. Growl constantly and address students as "matey".

30. Devote your math lecture to free verse about your favorite numbers and ask students to "sit back and groove".

31. Announce that last year's students have almost finished their class projects.

32. Inform your English class that they need to know Fortran and code all their essays. Deliver a lecture on output format statements.

33. Bring a small dog to class. Tell the class he's named "Boogers McGee" and is your "mascot". Whenever someone asks a question, walk over to the dog and ask it, "What'll be, McGee?"

34. Wear a feather boa and ask students to call you "Snuggles".

35. Tell your math students that they must do all their work in a base 11 number system. Use a complicated symbol you've named after yourself in place of the number10 and threaten to fail students who don't use it.

36. Claim to be a chicken. Squat, cluck, and produce eggs at irregular intervals.

37. Bring a CPR dummy to class and announce that it will be the teaching assistant for the semester. Assign it an office and office hours.

38. Have a grad student in a black beret pluck at a bass while you lecture.

39. Sprint from the room in a panic if you hear sirens outside.

40. Give an opening monologue. Take two minute "commercial breaks" every ten minutes.

41. Tell students that you'll fail them if they cheat on exams or "fake the funk".

42. Announce that you need to deliver two lectures that day, and deliver them in rapid-fire auctioneer style.

43. Pass out dental floss to students and devote the lecture to oral hygiene.

44. Announce that the entire 32-volume Encyclopedia Britannica will be required reading for your class. Assign a report on Volume 1, Aardvark through Armenia, for next class.

45. Ask students to list their favorite showtunes on a signup sheet. Criticize their choices and make notes in your grade book.

46. Sneeze on students in the front row and wipe your nose on your tie.

47. Warn students that they should bring a sack lunch to exams.

48. Refer frequently to students who died while taking your class.

49. Show up to lecture in a ventilated clean suit. Advise students to keep their distance for their own safety and mutter something about "that bug I picked up in the field".

50. Jog into class, rip the textbook in half, and scream, "Are you pumped? ARE YOU PUMPED? I CAN'T HEEEEEEAR YOU!"

Reprieve

The hero of this story is obsolete. This is an elegy for his clock. Reprise this song and leave me be, he said as he composed his letter of marque and we collected his dead pens.

A Day in the Life of a Mudskipper

"Maybe they are cute, but they are very strong little creatures! They get into fights with other Mudskippers over food, even though their strange mouth, skin, and gills combination give them about a 95% chance of catching prey”

The Writer Writes Down His Biography for the Sake of Posterity.

Danny Rivera lives in the Elmhurst neighborhood of Queens County, New York, where he has his choice of three separate, distinct Chinese restaurants, all of which serve such authentic Oriental cuisine as “fried chicken wings and French fries,” “fried plantains,” and his personal favorite, “hot language on a platter.”

Danny Rivera, who appears courtesy of his (illegal) immigrant parents, is a “writer” and part-time shoeshine boy. He is not working on a novel.

The following is a list of universities whose graduate creative writing programs have rejected Danny Rivera, an aspiring actor and doorbell repairman from New York City: New School University, Columbia University, Brooklyn College, New York University, Hunter College and, shockingly, City College of New York. That story I tell? It is a lie.

For his fifth grade class' production of the Broadway musical Oklahoma!, Danny Rivera was made to wear white tights. These tights most recently made an appearance during an impromptu performance of Big Black--Live!, held at the Chelsea Arms Motel (located on 33rd Street and 12th Avenue).

Danny Rivera was born, lives, and writes in New York City. His greatest achievement (and proudest moment) remains the at-bat in which he hit a searing inside-the-park home run in the first preseason game of 1994. Unfortunately, he has been hitless ever since.

Danny Rivera is from New York City, where the phrase “bitch better have my money” has a particular resonance, not unlike that of “I love you, but, really, what the hell is that stain?”