7.19.05

What a sad little journal I've been running here. Just look at that puny sentence on my last entry. It looks so impoverished it could be a runway model. I have a good excuse, however: moving. Boxes boxes boxes and the evil that is Verizon. Before today I had to use dial-up, which is like watching a turtle climb out of a tar pit. But the days are brighter now and running smoothly. A few more boxes to go, a few more shelves to put together, and a band called Clap Your Hands Say Yeah to bless my ears with their self-titled album. Check out their catchy song "In This Home On Ice."

Lisa and I will be (interviewed?) on Pinky's Paperhaus on July 26th. We'll talk about writing and spin some tunes, which you'll be able to hear on Kill Radio. Yes, I've been practicing my DJ voice. It's a cross between Tiny Tim and Barry White.

So we drove up to San Francisco last week for the last leg of The Apple's Bruise tour (here are some photos). Well, the second to the last leg. Lisa will be reading with Denise Duhamel twice here in Southern California at the end of this month. Swing by if you can.

Did you know you could buy replicas at Aaron Brothers for a fairly decent price? I did. I purchased a "Renoir" and then painted over it with text from Jesus' Son.

 

7.4.05

If it weren't for books, we'd be done unpacking.

 

6.14.05

The free CD that accompanied The Believer's music issue from last year spent many-o-minutes in my CD player. The disc had an eclectic mix of indie rock and folk music: TV on the Radio, M. Ward, The Walkmen, Iron & Wine, Death Cab for Cutie, The Mountain Goats. So naturally, my ears were wiggling with anticipation for this year's music issue, which does not disappoint. The 17-track CD is nothing but cover songs...Spoon does a delicious version of Yo La Tengo’s “Decora,” John Darnielle picks up the tempo on The Silver Jews' “Pet Politics,” and The Shins make “We Will Become Silhouettes” by the Postal Service sound like it was their song from the beginning. There's not one throw away in this compilation, but my favorite track has to be Vetiver's rendition of “Be Kind to Me” by Michael Hurley with all its glorious hootin', footstompin' and and sing-a-longin'. Oh yeah, there's also plenty of good reading to do within the pages of The Believer, especially Patton Oswalt's conversation with Aimee Mann.

The White Stripes have a new record out. It's good, but not as good as their last three efforts. It's growing on me, though. Wish I could muster up some more excitement. Hey, at least it's not derivative or flat out god awful.

Lisa and I went to New York and Chicago for The Apple's Bruise Tour. Here are some photos from the Big Apple. I would've included some pics of Chicago, but it was too hot and muggy to mill around the city. The kind of weather that makes you feel like a mollusk and want to stay inside your air-conditioned hotel room.

We bought a house. We move in on the 28th of this month and there's a hundred things to do between now and then. #83 on the list: Buy a mailbox. So the mailman has somewhere to put my rejection slips like the three waiting for me when we returned from our trip.

 

5.31.05

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X XXXX XXXX XXXXXXXX XXXXXX XXXXXXXX XXXXX XXXXXXX XXXXXXXXX XXX Face the Truth XXXXXXX X X XX XXXX XXXXXXX XXXXXXX XXXXXX XXX

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5.14.05

The latest Agni has a superb poem by Steve Gehrke about Robert Mapplethorpe that you can read online. I was also struck by Kyle Thompson's meditation on the snail: "They who walk painful on grains of salt / and pucker on windshields, believe in them / for they carry the swirl of gospel on their backs. // Maprooms of hurricanes, word of the tidal floor, / tiny shells wandering for years, like knuckles / in search for their fist." Other highlights include Rebecca Hoog's "Self-Portrait as Porcupine," Kate Northrop's "The Neighbor," and this poem by some dude who enjoys startling fainting goats when he's not teaching or writing.

After 14 submissions and eight years of trying, it finally happened.

From the Charles Simic interview in the new Paris Review: "Even when I'm stretched out in my coffin they may find me tinkering with some poem. Even published poems I won't leave alone. I very rarely get it right in one go. Mostly I revise endlessly. I don't keep old drafts, but I imagine in some cases they must number in the hundreds."

 

5.1.05

In Me Own Words: The Autobiography of Bigfoot by Graham Roumieu might be the funniest thing ever published. Okay, that might be a little over top, but you might feel the same way after reading this illustrated...comic book? Children's book for adults? I don't know what to call it. Whatever it is, it had me in hysterics. Here's a taste: "I AM not chewbacca. me think chewbacca jerk. He no can act. He ride Bigfoot coat tails. He think he cool, but he not. He phoney loser with no class. He all messed up on crack me think. People think me chewbacca sometimes. No! Me have job. Bad wookie. Bad." A few poems are also included in Me Own Words. This one's called "Stop, Smell Rose": "Where you go / Man on road? / Why you run / when me want to talk? / You manners bad / so me learn you good / Tear off legs / So no more run." Is that genius or what?

If someone told me at the beginning of this year that both Beck and some twenty-eight-year-old gal from Sri Lanka would put out records in March, that one would be more colorful, more suited to spin at a party, that one would thread more video game sound effects than the other, would be the better record, I would've said, "Since I don't have access to a time machine, I'm not privy to know the answer, but my money is on Beck." And I would've been wrong. M.I.A. (aka Maya Arulpragasam), a native-born Sri Lankan now living in London, doesn't hold anything back in her debut album Arular—handclaps, steel drums, chants, keyboards, synthesizers, tape loops, echos, bongos, the aforementioned video game sound effects, bird calls, static, xylophones, you name it. Somehow it all comes together to make beautiful, shimmering, electronic sense. Click here to watch the video for "Galang." The sing-a-long chorus at the end is burrowed in my brain.

Other albums worth mentioning: The Mountain Goats' The Sunset Tree, Langhorne Slim's When the Sun's Gone Down, Love As Laughter's Laughter's Fifth (check out their catchy song "Dirty Lives"), and Okkervil River's Black Sheep Boy. I need five headphones and more ears. Also, you can now stream the new Spoon CD, which won't hit the record stores for another 10 days.

I had no idea the award ceremony for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize was going to be so fancy, so much like the Oscars. We had such a hoot it didn't matter that Lisa's name wasn't called for the First-Fiction Award. Russell Banks' name wasn't called that evening either, nor was Marilynne Robinson's or Ann Patchett's. We got to mill around the most extravagant party afterwards. Ice sculptures with typewriters inside them. There was shrimp, roasted lamb, a chocolate fondue fountain like something out of Willie Wonka. They even had carpaccio, which I tried after a few cups of wine. (If I don't have salmonella now, does that mean I'm out of the woods?) Richard Howard was there, Carol Muske-Dukes, Arianna Huffington, Dana Gioia. If I thought about who was around me too much, I'd feel really small.

What else? Ah yes, Alex Lemon—he and his girlfriend Ariane visited us for three days, painted the town red, then chartreuse, threw some glitter on it, then dumped buckets of perfume all over Second Street. Things will never be the same.

Here are a few photos from the Los Angeles Times Book Prize party and a couple of Alex.

 

4.20.05

It's the Crab Orchard Award Series in Poetry. I'm over the moon in my tinfoil spaceship. I already have a blurb from Bob: "If these poems were stew, well, then, you know, that would be weird and kind of wet."

I'm going to get a crab tattoo like this guy, but much bigger.

 

4.14.05

This is going to be brief and full of tangents. Hey, look at that birdie over there. Fans of Devendra Banhart should check out their labelmates Akron/Family, whose beautifully strange self-titled record just came out. I like artichokes. The new Field has two stunning poems by Marianne Boruch ("When a single shoe / appears in the street, think / of the scramble. Someone lifted, carried off, / someone running, someone that / distraught, that drunk or / indifferent, that something.") The word on the street is true: I'm allergic to barley. I can't drink beer like David Berman drinks beer or Britt Daniel drinks beer. I won a book contest but I can't say which until the 20th. Hint: it's one of these.

 

Previous Journal Entries
1/15/05 - 4/4/05
9/28/04 - 1/1/05
8/17/04 - 9/15/04
5/2/04 - 7/31/04
1/30/04 - 4/15/04
10/17/03 - 1/15/04
7/2/03 - 9/30/03
4/21/03 - 6/15/03
1/7/03 - 4/18/03
9/24/02 - 12/24/02