Mickey Hess's Road Trip of Self-Discover

Calling all beige-colored novels

2012-01-22T11:50:00.001-08:00

Mr. Joe Meno wrote this blurb for my new book:

"The Nostalgia Echo is the best book you will read this year, or any year: the exact antidote to all those tired, humorless, beige-colored novels of recent memory, the writing here pops with both a dazzling intelligence and a devastating depth of character. Mr. Hess carries on in the great tradition of Vonnegut, D. Barthelme, and every other genius literary madman."

Then, the book's cover ended up looking like this:

Yep, beige, sort of.

Other beige-colored novels, I challenge you to a beige-colored throwdown. Beige-colored novels, step up to get beat down.

Can I say again how amazing this album cover is?

2012-01-21T13:58:00.000-08:00

Chandler Klang Smith Explains How Publishing Works

2012-01-21T13:55:00.000-08:00

"My point is, some of the people reading your work will be idiots, idiots with power they do not deserve, respect, or fully understand. There is nothing you can do about this. Others will merely be tired, impatient, and/or chronically depressed. These are the folks in whom to place your hopes." -- Chandler Klang Smith

Win a free copy of The Nostalgia Echo

2012-01-11T16:57:00.000-08:00

Win a free copy at goodreads

Perhaps you would like a free book

2012-01-07T10:40:00.000-08:00

Goodreads Book Giveaway

The Novelist & the Rapper

by Mickey Hess

Giveaway ends February 15, 2012.

See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.

Enter to win

Ryan Eckes' Old News

2011-12-15T17:34:00.000-08:00

“A book of thirty or more poems is not easy to read (that is quite a few poems). But in the case of Ryan Eckes’ risky, industrial book, poetry represents gravity. Many of the poems depict the world via luminous English, laced with allusions so perfect they are almost invisible.” -- Mickey Hess

Devil from a Sheep's Leg

2011-12-12T18:49:00.001-08:00

Ten years ago or something I recorded a poem for a CD that was released in Iceland. Jim James from My Morning Jacket played guitar while I kind of shouted the poem (which maybe makes the poem a song?)

Anyway, so the CD sold tens of millions of copies in Iceland. Here's how an Icelandic newspaper described the track I did with Jim James (it was called "Uncle Clint's Weddin"):

"Mickey Hess writes that Clint's cousin getting married, but that ends badly for Clint. Hess moving poem pleasant and the music is live, but the story itself/poem is rather pretentious. Dream a Little Dream of Me is like the devil from a sheep's leg, which moves Jim James song as it is." -- Arni Matthiasson, via Google Translate

New Traum Diggs Thanksgiving at Midnight

2011-11-24T16:13:00.001-08:00

After the Tofurkey is gone, hit up some real hip hop:

Actual First Lines from a High School Essay Contest I Judged

2011-11-22T09:37:00.001-08:00

There are many things people do to pass the time.

Everyone listens to music and there are so many different types of music to listen to.

Throughout my life I have had many wishes and dreams.

High school. These words can elicit various reactions.

I have had many experiences throughout my life.

In my wonderful life of 18 years I have experienced and adapted to many situations.

Throughout the history of this great country, many people have been considered to be great.

When something traumatic happens to you it almost always will change your outlook on a lot of things.

There are some moments in life that are too rich to be captured by words, but I am going to try.

2011-11-12T17:13:00.000-08:00

"A long life of reading culminates in this novel's facade. A yearning and elegant acuity drives even the most firmly established woman to painstaking happiness. A piercingly conventional family observed this book and their world was gracefully devastated." -- Mickey Hess

2011-11-12T17:10:00.000-08:00

"Cooper delivers a book that might coexist with a massive America. Nearly three-quarters of the book are plangent and fleeting, and that fleetingness establishes happiness, humans." -- Mickey Hess

2011-11-12T17:06:00.000-08:00

"In prose as rich as 19th-century Europe, Tim Kinsella summons an exuberant, tender book that has firmly established itself as a novel." -- Mickey Hess

2011-11-11T19:06:00.001-08:00

“Brutally breathtaking, this honestly beautiful book is insightful and genuine. Remarkably, this story cheers on inspiration and encourages life’s significance.”
--Mickey Hess

The Dying Horse

2011-11-11T18:56:00.000-08:00

"A true story about the end of the world, The Dying Horse brings us to the homes and bedsides of Jason Jordan, a prominent spokesperson for the Clydesdale movement. He is over six feet, is young, is straight, graceful, springy in the motions, and has a handsome face and black hair, and is beautiful to look at.

"Can a girl who knows nothing about horses tame Jason Jordan, an aggressive American humorist? This is Jason Jordan’s dream, and he is dedicating his life to making it come true."

--Mickey Hess

Daniel Fights a Hurricane

2011-11-11T18:55:00.001-08:00

“Breathtakingly brutal, unflinching Shane Jones is the real deal. This book tells a story. You will cheer, possibly. Jones is remarkably rich and a writer with courage and a life-changing mind.”

-- Mickey Hess

Real but Unlikely-Sounding Rap Names, Installment 133

2011-10-13T21:07:00.001-07:00

Black Milk
Black Rob
Black the Ripper

The Mounted Policewoman

2011-09-26T10:12:00.000-07:00

She cuffed me. She patted me down. “Do you like cops?”
“Yes, I do.”
“What about bicycles?”

Weird Bigoted Hip Hop Lyrics

2011-09-03T13:33:00.000-07:00

1. "We gettin money with whoever (even the Jews)." -- Busta Rhymes, on De La Soul's "I.C. Ya'll" from their A.O.I. album where they last-minute censored their own weird bigoted line (See #4).

2. "Jews want the crib when the god dies." -- Raekwon (the god being Raekwon), on DOOM's "Yessir." Oddly enough, he rhymes Jews with "Langston Hughes," just like Busta Rhymes did above.

3. "My behavior's wild like gays." -- Mr. Dead, "Lungevity." Those wild homosexuals.

4. "Work hard like wetbacks." -- De La Soul, "Ooh." De La clipped the offensive word and left dead air for the album's release, but you could hear "Wetback" on the radio single.

5. "Make a couple of nuns a couple of dykes." -- Three Six Mafia, "Stay Fly." Although most people online have the lyrics transcribed as "couple of dimes," I'm pretty DJ Paul says "dykes," as in make some reserved, repressed nuns get "wild like gays."

Did other Louisville people ever notice the resemblance between Jim James and Driver Dan?

2011-08-06T14:43:00.001-07:00

People Here are Incest

2011-08-01T05:01:00.000-07:00

From my old neighborhood of Germantown in Louisville, KY. The whole thing said, "People here are Incest," but I couldn't fit it all in the picture.

Hmm...

2011-07-29T07:37:00.001-07:00

Contest! Free sneak-peek copy of The Nostalgia Echo

2011-07-28T17:36:00.001-07:00

A little over 10 years ago I made and gave away 1,000 copies of a book called El Cumpleanos de Paco. 5 years before that, I made and sold and gave away maybe 500 copies of a book called Nobody Likes a Smartass.

Now I have Advance Review Copies of my new novel, The Nostalgia Echo, which will be released in December.

Send me a pic of yourself (nudity optional) holding a copy of either El Cumpleanos de Paco or Nobody Likes a Smartass and I will send you a free advance copy of Nostalgia Echo. You would be like the 10th person ever to read it.

*Valid until I run out of advance review copies.

**Family and friends of Mickey Hess are not eligible for this promotion, and should spend money to buy my books.

This Clifford Book Took an Unexpectedly Existentialist Turn

2011-06-21T17:58:00.000-07:00

This is a real page from a Clifford book I bought for my daughter. It wasn't the last page, but I like to imagine it as the ending. Not just for Clifford, but all sorts of stories. Watch how it improves the ending of John Updike's "A&P":

I look around for my girls, but they're gone, of course. There wasn't anybody but some young married screaming with her children about some candy they didn't get by the door of a powder-blue Flacon station wagon. Looking back in the big windows, over the bags of peat moss and aluminum lawn furniture stacked on the pavement, I could see Lengel in my place in the slot, checking the sheep through. His face was dark gray and his back stiff, as if he'd just had an injection of iron. Then we saw a terrible thing. A man was hurt and lying in the street. Nobody was helping him.

Ivan the Tightrope Walker

2011-05-20T14:18:00.001-07:00

A gelatin eruption: the lobby of the Hilton sent diagonal. Abnormalities stopped the show. An overbooked overhead act, the trapeze collective despaired over the prospect of threadbare tightropes. Ivan glanced down, where a gelatin mold seemingly stood unharmed. He said, “Everyone, that’s the gelatin.” A kind of sparse and bated applause was generated. He started walking the rope.

A librarian rally unwound knots in prim hairdos. Regrets and memories: a flash flood roughed up the bookshelves, clumsy workmen began rolling forklifts into the classics.

All in all, tightrope-walking had restored balance to the librarian team, who were giving up their craft anyway, because kids didn’t fail P.E. by reading literature.

Healing us all, Ivan the rope-walker bounded into his jumping-jack routine, astonishing the prayerful and the agnostic. Gelatin molders began shaping an Ivan likeness from hand lotion, they were so far removed from their gelatin kitchens. “Boil more Jell-O,” Ivan retorted, off-key.

Fair enough, I thought. Ivan was exactly the kind of guy I’d like to shake hands with. I shook some dry gelatin out of the little paper packets.

In which i am asked to sign my name to a blurb i did not write

2011-05-17T10:24:00.000-07:00

Email One:

Hi Mickey, a while ago i got you to write a quote/review/blurb for my book ________________. Well i had another couple of people write quotes then too. Anyways long story short, the book is getting published and someone wrote this quote "_____’s writing elevates us into a dream-like world where myths abound and prophecies unfold. Her characters must use all their resources to battle unexpected betrayals and perilous journeys. _______'s work is replete with sharp details and relentless villains.” and we don't know which person it was. Was it you? If so the publsihing company would like to put it on the back cover and quote it from Mickey Hess. If not none of the others think it was them, so would you either be willing to write another or claim this one. Let me know thanks.

Email Two:

Hi Mickey, me again, i was just going back through the emails and i realized where this quote came from. I sent the list of blurbs i recived to my editor 8months ago and he changed your quote and asked me to see if you wouldn't mind. (he thought some people would confuse some of your words for negative ones) Anyways as i never thought we would get this far this fast i totally forgot about that. Now i feel silly. Anyways so would you care if we put your name to that quote?

Tommy T-shirts, they call him (he doesn’t wear much else)

2011-05-09T16:33:00.001-07:00

My associate Tommy lives off bananas and cream cheese. Street-sweeper’s his occupation. A mountain bike operation: just two brooms and his bike. Riding no-hands, he averages at least a gallon of debris every week.

He sliced his right index finger arguing with a ceaseless tween. His collarbone hit, he pinched the kid on his testicles (between his legs). An unexpected reminder that rumbling with preteen gangsters never brings anything positive.

Order restored, Tommy put his hand to rest on the kid’s clavicle. One knowing glance and the argument was forgotten before it began. “Let me tell you a bit about John Wayne,” Tommy said. “Wayne was a prominent film actor.”

F Scott Fitzgerald meets Google Translate

2011-04-26T18:47:00.000-07:00

"After a cursory inspection of the pillow-cases, leather pennants, and Gibson Girls that lined the walls, he left, and continued along Nassau Street with his hands in his pockets." -- F. Scott Fitzgerald

"A simple test: ants voltage. Leather Pillows and his wife, Gibson, standing next to a wall, and advances in Nassau Street, which waters his hands!" -- Google Translate*

* I added the colon, but Google came up with the exclamation point, oddly enough.

The Masseuse

2011-04-26T15:34:00.001-07:00

"Stand the masseuse in the garage of his last days. It's hard to be brave, friends."

This is a line from F Scott Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise, Google-translated from English to Haitian Creole to Croatian to Finnish to Catalan and to English again.

Maybe the best way to start a song ever

2011-04-16T06:40:00.000-07:00

"Yeah, nigga"
"What?"
"What a surprise."

-- Busta Rhymes

A ringtone shortage. A panic.

2011-04-01T17:48:00.001-07:00

Migraine pounding aside, the boat-welding industry accrued around twenty or thirty thousand railway fanatics.

The welder’s belongings slammed shut, at first. He ingrained migraine headaches into a lifestyle, the same way some folks think they can be Vikings (when, in true reality, it was one man’s ringtone vs. another flat voice calling to offer money or fame). A ringtone shortage. A panic. When a Viking ship sailed, folks skipped town as they hid below sea-level, gasping fight anthems typically played ringside.

Nowadays, the anthem’s loud and located here at night, on an unnatural beach built the way men at this point tend to build things, only less sound. Ten mellow adolescents that flocked to the shore today thought they might go home and persevere.

Eleventh-grade science teachers produced an election

2011-04-01T17:47:00.001-07:00

Eleventh-grade science teachers produced an election: voters and polling places dreamed up by their experiments. A candidate spoke. “A flagship supermarket,” he refined, sundialing his worn felt coveralls. “Pastor fervor, jeans unheralded.” Then polling began. Slinking around, senators began bellowing and whatnot, arguing with scientist clout. With their land-lubber forearms, the senators looked up to them, honestly. I shook my head. I guess I was one of them now.

“Speech,” the locksmiths imploded.

It lifted my spirits. By the time it was over, my head lowered. I’d rattled on once again, while scientists looked down on the election. My candidate raced with the tent-pole rationale of a being in love.

Out of earshot, thoughts warned him to quit speaking. I thought about laws of physics. The hospitality industry overshot by a few second guesses, but I wondered about the physics of the thing. Let’s at least re-enact the experiment (myself included, my new girlfriend, and whoever she wants to be present).

At the physics audition, hospitality workers applauded. “I’ll bet their ethics are off -- this whole generation, really,” I told my selfless girlfriend.

“Umbilical cords – a noose for the youth,” uttered Sheila. Even in her disregard, she was my girlfriend. Venerable senators no one could leave behind.

A physics expert (an Italian) cured us, then. “Why shave your beards? Hospitality calls for action. And if someone can be elected in a science laboratory, just sit back and get comfortable with the new hairline regime,” he intoned, heaving his improbable butter knife.

Laboratory scientists quibbled over election results, declining to count my spindly-limbed vote with the masses of other folk singers backpacking for change.

Untied shoes and her bookbinding talent

2011-04-01T17:46:00.000-07:00

Her self-loathing shoulder bag pending, she was a mountain climber losing her accent. “I couldn’t leave without asking her,” the gaunt classroom dais painter began, his teeth grinding against the audible backdrop commotion.

He dropped to one painted ankle. “Cogent splatter show,” he said. Paint can forging ahead, he was a gunslinger in sandbox Halifax. It was a free-for-all, a white and cleaned-up knapsack I’d auctioned off live at the bookbinder’s graduation.

Thematically, driveway engineers were tracking a meltdown in case bullying awakens the campers: a pup tent trashcan, a handlebar-gripping maniac…

I’m fooling myself. That monocle the millionaire bought was an eyesore. “A tar pit armoire,” the doctor benignly suggested.

Me? I was ready to leave. The off-course hothouse had answered this locksmith’s faint prayers.

The evidence painted on her face

2011-03-22T09:08:00.001-07:00

The evidence was painted on her face: she had been to the state fair thoroughfare. Like me, Delilah was impatient with expressions of dental diagnosis. Grope-session orthodontists thought she was high on fumes (nitrous), so patted her up and down. The apparatus she presented through her altogether suggestive thigh-high stockings had them kind of chemically despondent, as well as her dental illness.

It added up. Biased docs think information can be disposable, like the latex gloves they tossed her direction. She woke up laughing, disrobed, dental bills posted. “A high-hat antichlor disorder,” dentists talked, rewinding Delilah’s mind to a Thanksgiving party, eating the glazed ham of her dreams and wondering what dental damage was impending. Oh, she had so many fresh-ground peppercorns. She was so full of cured meat that when Mom began concocting her spiced rum cocktails, she belched, “No, thanks.”

Thanksgiving food haunted her delicate molars. “I propose fillings as soon as possible,” her intern dental assistant proposed. Stability, sure, but what would the teeth painted on her face think?*

*See the beginning. She’d been face-painted at the state fair, as I mentioned before. It was teeth on her face, painted in green on her cheek, outside where the regular teeth would sit.

I transferred my sophomore semester to dry-cleaning repairman studies

2011-03-19T11:26:00.000-07:00

I transferred my sophomore semester to dry-cleaning repairman studies. My belt elastic had become the bane of an otherwise outstanding year. I’d gotten a blurred inkpen tattooed on my lower back. I was a young woman.

Come springtime, the laundry courses had taken their toll. Repairing laundry machines had been a dream my dead mom wielded, her picture hanging at my high-school lacrosse tournament. Before she was dead, she wore dryers out, I recall. She wore out the agitator in her washer tossing a pound of rocks in there. Sometimes I found her forceful, but she was mine. Her high fever jumped to degrees (in Fahrenheit) that no ER man bargained for.

The altitude raised her underarm temp. That same day she whined, “Betty Lou, you ought to consider this sheer distress. Go study for me. Improve laundry,” she begged. Then she stopped breathing.

Closing in on the pre-wash cycle’s clog, I reflected on my advanced degree. Years back, you wouldn’t think of me bringing washers luck. My mind returned to my mother at the hospital, at the end of a life spent damaging laundry equipment.

If she tacked her regrets onto me is a thing I continue to consider.

“Catch that float!” Derek accosted the parade

2011-03-15T17:42:00.001-07:00

“Catch that float!” Derek accosted the parade. The band-related shindig overcame bantering Father Ed, the tetherball player. Shoulder pads removed, Father Ed resembled a seven year old.

The banter stopped. Outliving the banter, Fox News took down a welter-weight fighter (they showed him humbled and believable). Bubble baths took one more phenomenal evening and stopped. Father Ed got into the hot tub, swearing like a boondoggled derelict.

Intentionally or obtusely, Derek meant or intended to put a stop to the parade auditions. Bands achieving their rundown victories, most of the parade was spent in unsatisfying acoustic sets.

Meanwhile, inside, when Father Ed passed around a joint, faces tensed. Interlopers picked up dust bunnies in a house otherwise clean and impressive. When the cop cruiser showed up, hastily, innocent Father Edward incriminated himself.

A parade outside, a field day. Put succinctly, we hired the amplified band, a perfect noise from their second guest star’s second cymbal strike. Father Ed pumped iron in prison. Derek hoped for change.

I lost at pinball, again

2011-03-14T15:33:00.000-07:00

I lost at pinball, again. The flipper was warped, but I’m not one to protest.

Lest I forget, a boot shipment engagement: purses and footwear unheard of before. Dignified mall policemen simplified well-being when they suggested acquiring an underpinning, a new offbeat Arcade King. After all, all the kids in this town are wealthy.

A rain delay held up the prom king’s funeral. Everyone followed his passing away with unease, glorifying his exotic fur suit. Playing pinball, I felt like I was tight with him, or, maybe I accurately had been. A dirt bike accident killed him. Unfettered, we grumbled and swore about the mall’s equipment. Playing air hockey, we groped in custodian uniforms, meaning well, allow me to admit. Good Christians have nothing to worry about. Minus a little consorting with teenage felons.

In this book, the antagonist’s advice keeps the train moving.

Aging, we barely looked suitable -- the prom fellow’s gone away, though, what recourses abound? Vestiges of his fox-fur throw blew away, and dry ice began smoking. The Burrito Canyon tortilla-station unfortunate finished unfolding and refolding a steak fajita. We reacted with hesitation and dismay. We have kept gliding air hockey pucks as if justifying our kindergarten time, the extent of our training catching large dodgeballs, arms bruised, praying to the Buddha-necked fifth-grader, please don’t attack me for still not having chest hair.

Ice slide (I refer back to my toboggan prank) had awakened lacrosse teams. Pratfall Brandon (the prom king) moved to heaven, suggested our gym teacher, his black veil whipping in the sun. It was fitting, assuming pratfalls don’t count as sins. “Brandon’s dead,” he choked like a federal agent. Stillness ensued.
Hairpieces tried hard to break the news, so we said to him, “Offer a simile to shatter this comeuppance.” We struck out. The pinball machine began to shake. To my mind, it robbed us child athletes of fulfillment. Hymns close out this story.

Lionel chose the campsite

2011-03-14T15:32:00.000-07:00

The campsite Lionel chose was often purported to be a locus of entrapment. Police claimed their stake on the place, placing along our path do-not trespass signs, which the fifteenth or twentieth time we saw them became laughable. Lionel spilled his canteen before the two elegant police captains seized it retroactively.

I brought a couple of bags of pinto beans, fetching them out of Shop-N-Save singlehandedly. Whether or not Lionel strove to be, old Lionel was entirely a fitting tour guide. Under-cooking the pintos, his speech activated, he said, “Fish hook the groceries, Thomas. We’ll bag rainbow trout!”

From the tent, hearing his suggestion, I spoke out against it. “Those groceries remain food, but fish are only a potential achievement.” Lionel’s hatchet-wielding calm decreased. He spat, pointedly, and regretted the shape of his knuckles. What were we doing out there, anyway?

“Cops are coming,” Lionel called. It was unsettling, is one way to describe it.

Stumbling about, I bypassed an Army latrine

2011-03-12T15:15:00.000-08:00

A dentist’s office was leveled. A church feared it was next.

We leveled a complaint against it, or a threat, some would say.

The archdiocese minister reacted by e-mail, a little too meanly: “You can send your Paw after me, Steven, or a second cousin who’ll try to adjust my behavior, but whatever I say goes.”

The instant coffee we couldn’t really imagine drinking sat steaming in our hands. On his computer, that minister’s a real tough guy.

We are cowards, you and I, but you don’t see it that way. You were looking over my shoulder, staring baldly at the minister’s comment. “Eff you,” you suggested I write.

I have my own plan -- frantic applause at the minister’s sermon tonight. You and me, clapping for everything he says, every sentence, and the thing is, he can’t afford to pause.

Baptismal waters swirled, but the sermon had stopped.

A tug-of-war was on

2011-03-12T15:11:00.000-08:00

A tug-of-war was on. Once we’d entered the competition, the picnic became a widower’s nightmare. A tow-truck driver outweighed me by more than I see fit to mention here, and no one pulling knew enough to see how that mattered.

I took my place at the front of the line, bowed, and took a good long tug. The rest of the contestants wore flitted gloves but mine were another example of how hand-me-downs should not count as Christmas gifts. Pulling, I felt my shoulders had taken up twitching.

Outsized, we helmeted workers fared worse than children. I noticed how many of them (children) were laughing or pointing at us, gaps in their teeth. They would tug-of-war childishly, grab one end of the rope but let go to run home and touch buttons on the DVD player. Or was it a simulation tug-of-war they anticipated, complete with a Wii controller they’d wield as their parents acted impressed? “You rotten youths!” I said (someone had to say it). I couldn’t make tug-of-war a success but I knew what I was doing. “I hate to say it,” I shouted, tugging, “but you’re going to work selling sports helmets, graduation caps or not.” Foot Locker was hiring. I’d seen a quarter of a dozen signs about it.

That information caused silence. For a minute, I thought some of them were about to weep. “When all my generation’s deceased, when this fat Irish dump truck driver’s dead as free email,” I shouted, sweating, “I swear to God, you resuscitate me for ten seconds and I’ll beat this information into all nine of your preteen peepholes.”

I sounded angry, I know. But my shoulders agonized enough to tell these teens what they were in for. “What kids don’t get about things is how old men want severance checks. We’re dying in front of you,” I said. “You don’t believe me? This tug-of-war is all we have, and we don’t want to lose.”

The youths stripped their t-shirts off and joined the workers’ team, stepping in there and tugging like motherfuckers. Watching, a bunch of people with thin arms and no self-respect looked up to us, their general opinions of tug-of-war warped after a day spent meditating on this one.

Blinding or not blinding, that sunlight meant skiing abandonment

2011-03-12T10:55:00.000-08:00

Blinding or not blinding, that sunlight meant skiing abandonment. By my calculations, skiers assumed that was it. Time for ski slope suicide.

Ski-lift chairs landed, finally finding refuge from human abuses. They ejected a very questionable statistician, Dr. Howard Winston, who’d vouched for me when the shit hit the fan.

Conceptually, it surprised him that we were too heavy for the mountain to bear. He thought having tenure would save him. I shrugged. The statistician smiled, “Anything has to be better than teaching kids how to figure.”

This was it, apparently. It was our time to go. As far as my own ambitions (to launch my own local food eatery, etc.), it was easier not to accomplish them, probably.

“Dr. Winston,” I acknowledged, but Dr. Winston just winced, which meant that the ski slope avalanche was commencing. Later, statistics would prove that Dr. Winston could’ve saved us by tossing one of his several calculators.

Skinny Rappers, Real or Fake?

2011-03-11T18:19:00.000-08:00

Skin N Bonez
Ethiopian Jones
Skinny Black
Slim Thug
Kingpin Skinny Pimp
Malnourished Clemente
Big Lanky
Young Scraggy

See also "Fat Rappers, Real or Fake"

Heavy metal groupies aside, he wouldn’t offer a chair or a smile to anyone

2011-03-11T15:36:00.001-08:00

The band got back together, acoustically, overcompensating to resolve some uneven distribution of cash. A youthful crew drew a flaming guitar on the van.

Sympathetic fans covet guitar tunes they loved before middle school, probably wishing for much the same from the re-formed band. Over time, though, they knew showbiz interloping can get tiresome and test even the strongest-built band on the smoke alarm circuit.

At the auditorium, the singer proceeded to shriek about pissing off the former governor of a midwestern state. Hung up as he must be about it, picture yourself in his office, nothing absorbed but the harmful sounds that vibrated throughout the governor’s mansion.

After a few seconds, though, the shrill singer took off his lingerie, offered the public official a truce. “Everything is going so well now,” he said. “State taxes reduced, highways repaired…” The drummer shook his head at the singer. Never again would he ask him back for a band reunion.

An authority on Italian socialism authored a book about it

2011-03-10T19:11:00.002-08:00

An authority on Italian socialism authored a book about it. I know it sounds presumptuous.

Farm boys from Tuscany thought not much of it. Sisters and cousins came home from college, hiking anew. The collective. A consensus. Well, I started to ask my sister questions. For one, how it stands up to real democracy. “Short-sleeve culture massages us from behind,” our socialist sister reminded us. “A switchblade rally for unshaven bodies. I have a scholarship.”

Improving Italy meant hosing down those standouts who’d sing counter-cultural messages up there on stage. “We press our own sausages,” I conceded. “We consent to a lousy banter over freedom from the collective’s consensus.”

Now, as you know, once my sister starts laughing, quieting it is another matter.

“Guesswork,” she answered. “That’s what being a socialist is all about.” So I started publishing pamphlets. It helped. I got into a junior college. She spent six years in prison. "The ways things can conclude,” she confided.

Purse stores are referred to

2011-03-10T19:11:00.001-08:00

Purse stores are referred to. “Can’t we elders wander negligently about?” They were buying lingerie, the widows of tattooed sailors. They were college girls picked too early.

That afternoon, a cartoonist show at the mall. Bands down at the record shop. The girl that reminds me of her leaned in shockingly. Dead air. Not the natural, genteel conversation I’d prepared, but the boring, too-plastic receding of quick wit. Perhaps I was too many days older, and strode around like any fast-food dealer that she’d met in her barmaid days. But maybe she was a little short-tempered with her husband, things like leaving the Lysol in the vestibule where she’d fallen over it over the course of her life, and as hard as you tried to forget her name, the records remained. You’d remember the girl forever.

In fact, she remembers you. Though you didn’t know it at the time, she would go on to birth books about you. Your life, and your sex life. You could feel the girl’s eyes on you as you noticed her tape recorder.

You picketed outside the library, hoping for a glimpse of that infamous author.

What this story’s about is a particular shared summer home

2011-03-10T19:10:00.000-08:00

What this story’s about is a particular shared summer home in the Appalachian Mountains. Years ago, neighborhoods formed out of our realization that we need nearby neighbors, whereas the old-timey hillbilly approach meant to scout out your own patch of dust.

North of the Appalachian Trail, hillbillies have mustered up a reserve of dreaded know-how. Those horse-carting hillbillies couldn’t see past an afternoon spent heaving horseshoes. They were more liable to digest glass than up their fuel intake. Carports were an afterthought. They came out of omission, then desperation. Sincerely, the hillbillies pretty much went anywhere they could walk to, so we’d generally drive around whispering a few threats in their vicinity or direction.

We smiled like car dealers. Which we were.

See-sawing, the women engaged in dialogue

2011-03-09T17:36:00.001-08:00

See-sawing, the women engaged in dialogue. Two women on the see-saw, chatting about Dr. Phil or animal dissection. Dr. Phil had some stand-up comic telling jokes about fire engines.

When the see-saw went down, common sense said it ought to go up again. The more the women argued, though, the more it negated science.

The audience chimed in, “What’s wrong with fire engines?”

Something like that might unhinge a failing comedian. “They didn’t get the jokes,” he said to himself, “The wordplay. It all takes practice.”

Backstage, the two women sat, not rising or falling. Instincts tell us the see-sawing women happen to be correct about one thing -- when gravity isn’t real, all we have is broad comedy, a Youtube video nobody thought to view.

On the farm, my first day of work

2011-03-08T15:19:00.001-08:00

On the farm, my first day of work consisted of hog-tying. I had tie-dyed flannels on. “Deliver a lasso throw,” my employer recited. Jack Estes was his name, a rustic guy who expected us to take pride in the lasso, but when I ventured a toss, he ground his teeth. “Hog-tying’s a tradition, my friend,” he arched his back and intoned. “Out here we wear rustic shirts.” My colleagues looked at my tie-dye. One fellow was a black belt in aikido. Jack Estes was cracking his knuckles.

Then we stopped for the afternoon, famished from hurling lassos. We saw a belly-dancer, a Middle-Eastern original. Farmers rubbed her hips for good luck.

Sidetracked, we sauntered along the sidewalk on the outside of the nightclub, and Jack Estes laughed. I could have sworn he’d made a restroom stop in the bar, but he leaned against a street sign and pissed like a cement truck. He was Jack Estes, after all, and he was also our lasso employer.

Though it wasn’t all fun and Biblical references, we were shocked nonetheless when the truth emerged: after all he promised us townsfolk, Estes went pacificist when it came right down to it, like with Viet Nam or belief in the rights of others.

An author was being deported

2011-03-07T09:01:00.001-08:00

An author was being deported, they said. We said, “Good riddance.”

Well, enough of us laughed that it upset the has-been author of any number of things. One of the books he wrote was about a mime falling in love with a rapist. In retrospect, it wasn’t entirely bad. A librarian who reviewed books for Sequence commemorated it as “obscenities posing as wisdom.”

The Author’s Guild returned his membership dues.

The Filipino author coined the expressive term, “Coming up heads,” and he and eleven fellow authors meant to reclaim that lone pattern of language. In a rowboat competition, authors need a head start, but chances are, with it, they’ll hold onto the lead against forty or fifty-five college crews.

The scene made me think -- if a professor and all of his students got in a boat and passed bygones and the future-uncertain author (who was being deported), what kind of world do we accept as just?

Then, this moment: me and you in a wooden boat on the Schuylkill, watching an author row for his very existence. It occurred at least once every Spring. Former rowboaters began writing fiction.

Maybe he wasn’t a great writer, and you and I weren’t perfect, and life wasn’t just rowboating excursions and getting hammered. Were we winning? Was that us ahead in the distance? Tell me I wasn’t crazy.

A dreadlocked bike messenger

2011-03-06T14:38:00.001-08:00

A dreadlocked bike messenger, Steven Thoreau, installed locks on a bike rack, angrily. His skinny body wholeheartedly quiet, mastering the mechanisms of the bike-lock, he was odor-free, fresh out of a showering sprint. The woman who’ll deliver his children comes up behind him, in this version of the bike lock story.

Steven bruised an elbow brushing his hair out of his eyes. Then, the sixteen-year-old medical student (who looked like a Roman with her tight-wound countenance) leaned her motorcycle against the bike rack. Steven got all huffy.

“Where I live,” he propositioned, “Respecting the bicycle messenger comes easy.”

What the young obstetrician hopeful possessed was prescience – Steven didn’t realize it then, but a bike rack meant nothing in terms of what was about to transpire.

She put her motorbike into gear. “I’m not polite,” she intoned. “Moreover,” she said to Steven, “I heard you were going to take me out to dinner.”

Four years passed, and she became an obstetrician (after completing school). Her diploma hung, determined, above Steven’s bicycle workbench.

You heard right. Steven’s silly haircut was out the window. He’d used his bike training to earn an Associate’s degree.

Nine months later, to the day, their first child was born.

Flame-resistant Coveralls of One's Own

2011-03-04T18:24:00.000-08:00

"A woman must have money and a torch of her own if she is to weld metal." -- Virginia Woolf

News wire

2011-03-02T12:26:00.001-08:00

News wire: the landlady had vowed to quit taking old Rusty for granted. He doubted it, though (Rusty did). One day a month his landlady intended to change the light bulbs for him, or more precisely, have them altered. He thought of it as a rental agreement enhancer. Her friendship did more for him at first than love would, but science prevailed.

Neighborhood hoodlums had forewarned Rusty, “Don’t ever bother our motorcycles.” The doc that did Rusty’s x-ray suspected pinched nerves in his clavicle, but when I ventured an educated guess, it seemed illogical (I had only minored in chart-checking, but majored in women’s studies). Four black motorbikes toppled. The landlady returned Rusty’s deposit as well as his smile.

Want to give money to Decomp?

2011-03-02T08:24:00.001-08:00

Decomp Magazine wants to turn Internet words into paper words. Assist us, pleads editor Jason Jordan at kickstarter.com

“Wait,” he reasoned

2011-03-01T18:08:00.000-08:00

“Wait,” he reasoned. She strove to believe him. “I cart-wheeled around town like some show-business chimp.”

She hoped it wasn’t coming to this, to more whining remarks.

“I danced six polkas a night for you. I opened for Ben fucking Vereen,” he spat. He had done it. Out in Vegas, nobody stays broke for long.

She sank half-heartedly, drooping into the mint-colored chair her husband had ordered. While he spoke, etcetera, she reclined. “I headed out West. I lived on pot brownies,” he gasped, mixing his metaphors the way she’d insisted was cute when they met. It took a slow February for her to start to feel differently. Fame had changed him, she mentioned.

He rolled his eyes, glancing into the living room. He glimpsed the desk, the TV remote, and he tried not to want it all.

A divorce. He paused. Staying together without her loving him, or divorce. Casually, he slipped the TV remote into his pocket. “You’re my wife,” he said. “I respect that.”

She laughed. She felt differently.

A month from now, he’ll be playing Hamlet in a prison theatre.

“I’m sad,” she said. Because there they were, has-beens, a couple of uncomfortable telephone technicians watching the wires shut down.

Money Management

2011-02-28T19:10:00.001-08:00

“Your money management’s nothing to be proud of,” Steven wept.

“If it weren’t for your trophy shelf,” his father retorted, “the only thing you’d have to be proud of is me.”

Real but Unlikely-Sounding Rap Names: Installment 112

2011-02-27T14:47:00.000-08:00

Styliztik Jones

Billy Gibbons, Book Cover Designer

2011-02-26T19:01:00.000-08:00

Book Covers Featuring Women's Legs, Installment 2

These are all-new additions to my earlier post, Book Covers Featuring Women's Legs

Writers vs. Welders

2011-02-26T16:52:00.000-08:00

Indeed, these are links to articles on the several new MFA programs in Welding Arts:

Can Welding Really be Taught?

The New Yorker's Louis Menand reviews Mark McGurl's "The Program Era: Postwar Metalworking and the Rise of Creative Welding"

Should I go for an MFA in Welding and study under "verbally expansive welder-professors like Joyce Carol Oates"?

Great Thinkers on Masturbation

2011-02-25T16:45:00.000-08:00

No problem can withstand the assault of sustained masturbating. ~Voltaire

Often the hands will solve a mystery that the intellect has struggled with in vain. ~Carl Jung

Masturbating is like loving and dying. Each of us must do it for himself. ~Josiah Royce

Belief is when someone else does the masturbating. ~Buckminster Fuller, 1972

Chi Wen Tzu always masturbated three times before taking action. Twice would have been quite enough. ~Confucius, Analects

Thanks to Quote Garden for the originals. We form like Voltron and Quote Garden's the head.

Great Artists on Masturbating

2011-02-25T15:16:00.000-08:00

Masturbating is when you hear a knocking from your soul - and you answer. ~Terri Guillemets

Masturbating is the only way to run away without leaving home. ~Twyla Tharp

A masturbator cannot fail; it is a success to be one. ~Charles Horton Cooley

It is frequently the tragedy of the great masturbator, as it is of the great scientist, that he frightens the ordinary man. ~Loren Eiseley, The Night Country, 1971

Masturbating is a collaboration between God and the masturbator, and the less the masturbator does the better. ~André Gide

Man will begin to recover the moment he takes masturbating as seriously as physics, chemistry or money. ~Ernst Levy

Modern masturbating is what happens when painters stop looking at girls and persuade themselves that they have a better idea. ~John Anthony Ciardi

Thanks to Quote Garden for the originals. Good lookin out, Quote Garden. Peace!

Salinger on Solitude

2011-02-25T14:56:00.000-08:00

"I love to masturbate and I assure you I masturbate regularly. But I masturbate for myself, for my own pleasure. And I want to be left alone to do it." -- JD Salinger

Samuel Johnson on Masturbating

2011-02-23T17:40:00.000-08:00

"A man may masturbate at any time, if he will set himself doggedly to it."

"I advised Chambers, and would advise every young man beginning to masturbate, to do it as fast as he can, to get a habit of having his mind to start promptly; it is so much more difficult to improve in speed than in accuracy."

"There is scarcely any masturbator who has not celebrated the happiness of rural privacy”

"It is much easier not to masturbate like a man than to masturbate like a woman."

"To read, masturbate, and converse in due proportions, is, therefore, the business of a man of letters."

I presented the animal kingdom award

2011-02-21T13:13:00.001-08:00

I presented the animal kingdom award the same evening I fell hopelessly into the trap of myself. Full-fledged orangutans noted my ability to drink at a cash bar we wished had containers of Hennessy. She’d rejected me, or more properly, washed her hair of me.

These animal kings may be on to something. While I sat listless and tiresome, they threw food, shit, and their breeder’s cell phone. I applauded them. A former distraction, now loose and uncontrolled.

Chimps loose in the auditorium could quiet a less fucked up man, but I didn’t run. Whenever a man shuffles away frightened, the monkeys win. I could speak easily, knowing that the podium speech I was giving was a defense of a mediocre life. Audiences happily clap when they don’t have to think. Apes could jack off in the auditorium and these humans would spend the evening assuring themselves there was nothing to see.

Then, the chimps picked me up. It irritated me less that they lifted me than it did to see her. Above the masses I could see her simple white lower back, her tiny chin, and her elbows. The apes won -- the chin-up contest did nothing to smooth things over. Her skirt, her tightly-tethered wisps of hair. As they dropped me, the band of eleven or more monkeys, I noticed her watching.

Poets on Masturbating

2011-02-20T19:34:00.000-08:00

Masturbating is never finished, only abandoned. ~Paul Valéry

Masturbating is the language in which man explores his own amazement. ~Christopher Fry

Even when masturbating has a meaning, as it usually has, it may be inadvisable to draw it out.... Perfect understanding will sometimes almost extinguish pleasure. ~A.E. Housman

Perhaps no person can be a masturbator, or can even enjoy masturbating, without a certain unsoundness of mind. ~Thomas Babington Macaulay

You will find masturbation nowhere unless you bring some of it with you. ~Joseph Joubert

I've done some masturbating I don't understand myself. ~Carl Sandburg

Science is for those who learn; masturbating, for those who know. ~Joseph Roux, Meditations of a Parish Priest

Masturbating comes with anger, hunger and dismay; it does not often visit groups of citizens sitting down to be literary together, and would appal them if it did. ~Christopher Morley, John Mistletoe

Masturbating is all that is worth remembering in life. ~William Hazlitt

Thanks to Quote Garden for the originals.

A prayer meeting led Bryan to pray

2011-02-20T15:18:00.000-08:00

A prayer meeting led Bryan to pray, so he prayed for cash, the single important thing that afternoon. “Man-made goals should be scorned,” the pastor declared. Maybe, but Bryan had practiced atheism since kindergarten, and saw no real need to stop now. Chomping his chewing gum, Bryan desired pornography.

On the Stairmaster, he thought of potentially doing anything. Another day spent running and at the prayer meeting – it never got old, but Bryan desired more. “Must be a diversion somewhere,” Brian surmised. “Who knows?” The pastor had angered him, referring to the rapture, suggesting that a boring afternoon was the least of Brian’s fears. Less incompetent ministers wouldn't have forgotten their lunches at home.

At lunch, eating out of a can filled with reese’s pieces, Brian overheard a crooning runner. Or, that is to say that a woman ran past him, singing. Bryan wished it was a mating ritual. On shows about the animal kingdom the males quietly rape the girls, so he leapt into action, scurrying behind the young female. He was in love. In pursuit. “Perhaps that goddamn minister won this one,” he sang, following the songstress, breathless. God didn’t know it then, but Bryan was destined to marry this girl.

Search and Replace, for Richard Ford

2011-02-20T07:04:00.000-08:00

It is impossible to discourage the real masturbators - they don't give a damn what you say, they're going to masturbate. ~Sinclair Lewis

Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles masturbators. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. ~Flannery O'Connor

The process of masturbating has something infinite about it. Even though it is interrupted each night, it is one single notation. ~Elias Canetti

What no wife of a masturbator can ever understand is that a masturbator is working when he's staring out of the window. ~Burton Rascoe

Masturbating is utter solitude, the descent into the cold abyss of oneself. ~Franz Kafka

The only cure for masturbator's block is insomnia. ~Merit Antares

The masturbator masturbates in order to teach himself, to understand himself, to satisfy himself; the publishing of his ideas, though it brings gratification, is a curious anticlimax. ~Alfred Kazin, Think, February 1963

i never think at all when i masturbate
nobody can do two things at the same time
and do them both well
~Don Marquis, Archy's Life of Mehitabel, 1933

Masturbating is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia. ~E.L. Doctorow

The wastebasket is a masturbator's best friend. ~Isaac Bashevis Singer

If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd masturbate a little faster. ~Isaac Asimov

Thanks to Quote Garden for the originals.

Three writers who get exactly the attention they deserve:

2011-02-19T16:56:00.000-08:00

1. Mel Bosworth: once asked me to write him a blurb and a few weeks after I wrote it he sent me his book to read. The book was called Grease Stains and something. It was maybe a story about food, or cooking I guess. From what I gather, Mel is a pretty good writer. He gets interviewed by people like Roxane Gay and Ben Tanzer (see below) and he has like three books and has published a bunch of stories online. He read at this Annalemma/Pank/Mud Luscious event during AWP, and that seems pretty big. Really I feel like Mel Bosworth probably gets exactly the amount of press he deserves.

2. Ben Tanzer: runs This Blog will Change Your Life, which I think is a pretty great name for a blog. He writes a lot of books too, and some of them look like the kind of stuff I like to read, but I haven’t been reading much lately outside of super-old academic medical journals, like War Medicine, which are pretty crazy, really, the way they used to think about treating diseases. Being from Chicago, Tanzer is in a city with a good literary scene, which could mean that he should get more press coverage than he does, but maybe he gets more and you just have to live in Chicago to hear about it. I saw he got interviewed by a magazine or website called The Chicagoist, so there’s something. In short, I would say Tanzer seems like a nice guy and a hard-working writer, and a lot of links come up when you google his name, so I’d say he’s getting his due. If I were him, though, I’d probably feel differently.

3.Kim Gek Lin Short: she’s a writer in Philly who I used to see at readings a lot when I was going to a lot of readings. I think we read at the same bookstores a couple of times. One time after a reading Kim said to me, “Hey! Mickey! I’ve seen you read like a million times so I should say hi.” That was good because sometimes I forget to say hi to people. So Kim writes poetry, which probably makes it harder to get attention, but her last book got a bunch of reviews and some thing on Bookslut, which is awesome. I even sent her a facebook message that went something like “Hey, Kim. Congrats on the bookslut thing. That’s awesome!” and she replied with something like “Thanks, Mickey!” and I don’t think we’ve communicated since then. Her book is called The Bugging Watch. It’s supposed to be really good, and I think I’ll probably read it, judging from how the poems sounded out loud. And, yeah, she seems to deserve the attention she’s getting.

The thing about it is

2011-02-19T11:04:00.000-08:00

"The thing about being a writer is that you never have to ask, 'Am I doing something that's worthwhile?' Because even if you fail at it, you know that it's worth doing." - Richard Ford

Richard Ford, you have a very different view of yourself than I have of me.

The freshman fifteen

2011-02-19T09:05:00.000-08:00

Caring uncharacteristically, they visited an old folks home, a veterans hospital. They always found it depressing. Microphone design was the rapper’s investment, his best-laid plan. “Here’s a notable fact,” the respected rap vocalist proposed. “We’ll get this broken-down, all of us. Senior care right now leads to our future sponge-bathing.”

They nodded, the freshmen.

I unrolled my sleeves.

Mic cord unfurled, the fronting rapper stood facing our audience. “Over the hill,” he began, the rapper’s voice like clean air circulating. The response was long-overdue: t-shirts shed, lights flashed, ears tingled with the rap lines. It was over before it began, really, but the rap show soothed the elderly.

Effortless freshmen piled into the nearest car, repeating the notable lines that stuck with them while wash-clothing the car’s interior. Headlights on, two green freshmen from Andrew Jackson State College appointed the spent rapper governor.

The waitress surprised us

2011-02-18T19:10:00.000-08:00

The waitress surprised us. She posited, “Fruit?” I think everyone looked surprised. I was.

“Third-rate fish sticks,” gasped Lefty through angular dentures. “Find out which pancake-flipper back there sent them my way.”

“I’ll ask,” muttered the waitress.

I saw my wedding ring as a reminder. “Whether or not this restaurant forges ahead, it made me something to eat,” I stated. “And it serves me right.”

It was a reminder about the wedding. More than hospitality, eating well had been non-negotiable. I hired both my own farming company and a team of research nutritionists who thought long and hard about eating cow meat. To give their research findings a fair shake, I’d advise getting a translator, a hard hat, and a good set of silverware.

Since I married his twin sister, my pal Lefty ain't been the same.

Ian desired acreage

2011-02-18T15:56:00.000-08:00

Ian desired acreage, and held in disregard those who thought otherwise. His head-butting glory days in the past, he reminisced over acreage, never getting enough. Ian (see sentence one) applied rust-proofing stuff to his fences and stairs; as well he was liable to hurl insults at you, if you know what I am proposing.

Ian glanced over his hirsute shoulder, Capricorn that he was. Then, holding down the fort, he wished fearlessly, quietly: whispering forgotten old-timey sayings, safe-guarding the hell out of ten acres filled with trees and some fruit-bearing vines. Reader, you’re perhaps thinking Ian’s not his real name at all, but to elaborate, I mean it. It is. Mishaps with his childhood slingshot rang doom to his young genitalia.

Nowadays, Ian curates his valuables, worrying when his acres get flooded. Sideshows, otherwise, but Ian’s the curator now. This one time, we were shindigging around and the oak branches caught Ian off guard. Man, that fucking tree was an actual alleyway mugger. Two healthy males, Ian and me. I watched him tie one on.

Fake Meat Cheesesteaks

2011-02-16T11:42:00.000-08:00

Philadelphia,

Campo's in Old City has fake-meat vegan cheesesteaks! They are not on the menu, but they have them. I have eaten them. Twice. They are good. They even have a fake chicken if you want to go for a fake-chicken cheesesteak, but I can't vouch for that one.

They seem to use the same fake steak as Steve's Steaks on 7th and South, but my wife does not like Steve's and she does like Campo's.

They use fake steak, not like places like Steaks on South who proclaim to have vegetarian cheesesteaks but really just leave out the steak altogether and charge you $6.50 for a green pepper, onion, and cheese sandwich.

Other than Steve's and Campo's, the only fake-meat cheesesteak I've found is at Basic 4 in Reading Terminal Market. It's good, too. But I kind of hate going to Reading Terminal Market.

Today at Campo's the guy yelled "I got two vegan cheesesteaks!" when our food was ready, then said to me, "These are going to be the best sandwiches you ever ate."

I like that kind of confidence from a guy cooking my food. Especially at a place known for steaks where I'm ordering some kind of wussy-ass version of what they're famous for.

They depicted hostages

2011-02-16T05:35:00.000-08:00

“Espresso, Mister,” Sven carefully inculcated.

Unexplained mischief taught signatories to ignore email (it’s the quotidian form of encouragements).

Sincere as ever, Sven directed the shopkeeper to try again. “Espresso. Get it? It’s coffee in a hurry.”

The insincere barista spat out an email. It was foamy, a latte, a drink that psychologists like. “I can’t figure it out,” she whispered. “I’m tired of this.” She tugged at her two-ply shop apron, wistful.

Percolating, Sven figured, “Let’s have a seat.”

They did.

They depicted hostages, bound for the next half hour, hopeless, desperately making bargains with God.

Real but Unlikely-sounding Rap Names, Installment 97

2011-02-12T14:45:00.001-08:00

Damu The Fudgemunk

We have all dined with him

2011-02-11T20:15:00.000-08:00

"We have all dined with him in restaurants: the host who insists on calling his special friend out of the kitchen for some awkward small talk," says BR Myers in The Atlantic: .

Well not me, motherfucker.

Ron Likes Mathematics

2011-02-11T20:05:00.001-08:00

1.

I remember something about a musical teddy bear. He had initiative, the only excuse for so much complacency. The writer’s long-term memory, which can exist in the mind as well as in outside resources such as books, is a storehouse of knowledge. So I wrote about Mr. T, who our, all the girls in our class were in love with him. I remembered him from earlier. I also remember him wearing yellow checkers.

2.

I was the musical teddy bear. The important lesson to be drawn from this almost fearful symmetry is to attempt to describe the other band members: Ron, likes mathematics, land surveying, and business. Leonard, a radical who keeps referring to the social and economic basis for education; and Russell Walters, forged over ten years of rising from stock boy to assistant manager of a large store. Whether factual or hypothetical, one wants to know what happens when Ron decides to “just sit there and watch.” Ron came to college, tried to look at how elements dissociated this way could be rejoined. Ron’s own goals in sixth grade: a trip to the zoo, a trip to the zoo, a trip to the zoo. The resulting imbalance has clear ethical consequences.

3.

Ron, it seems, is not talking. I have to find somewhere I can iron a pair of pants.

4.

I thought for Mother's Day I would tell you some stories about my life. First, ad hominem arguments don’t impress me. Now you may have inferred that I believe that because there is a culture of power and everyone should learn the codes to participate in it. Actually, I was in this little skit that we did about a mother whose son has gone off to war. A lot of the kids smoked. Ron mediated the situation he found himself in and in doing so translated that context into action. He needed some money, he decided, so he auctioned off things like comic books. It sort of livened it up.

I believe in confusion and obscurity, in difficulties with goal-setting. I am thinking of other similar moments of nothing much.

It might be interesting to write something aimed at high school girls, their skirts halfway to their ankles. I could talk about taking a bus ride. It might be interesting. But the redistribution of the past according to modern criteria, this game is twofold: at the same time fictional and autobiographical. I was the musical teddy bear and so-and-so the kid whoever it was, was very happy to get me and I played some song.

* Certain phrases are taken from certain books, like Janet Emig’s The Composing Processes of Twelfth Graders
** Notice that Topic Sentence A is an example of a statement assembled by quotations from throughout the paragraph.

Checkbook Faltering, She Thinks Over a Wood-Varnishing Bargain

2011-02-11T14:53:00.000-08:00

Iris gathered her wits. “It’s not my favorite dogsled, but it’ll work. Naturally, a Dalmatian harness to attach it to…” Iris had a gift for non-important patter. That’s why the Dalmatian sleeps downstairs. With Iris supplying reruns for so-called entertainment -- if you want to call it that -- hospitality or something overtook her, wrung guilt out of the bitch.

She drove her dogs then, boldly, off-road, back home. She varnished, intentionally polishing her rundown dogsled. By the way, this broad is a big sleepwalker. Overtly, she portrayed the sled in Citizen Kane for Dummies, a book on the toiling theatre insiders who sunblocked Welles the director and picked up his ties and suits from where he’d dropped them off.

The Dalmatian shook a tennis ball about, so Iris pocketed the thing and instilled restraint into the sleddog (knowing he'd clench empathy launched out of thin air). He depicted a tween -- a vampire-loving canine, not to mention a sleddog. A perennial follower, Iris ran actively to his door. The Dalmation turned up his earphones. The sled trip planned by the two of them hung in the balance.

“Back up, Iris! My bedroom door is shut and locked,” the Dalmatian proposed. Iris kicked the door. “Just to think,” she coughed, “If I’d known how cheap dog-boarding or giving-away could get…” Bantering, the dog king swung open the entranceway. Had Iris determined his temperament, she’d have bailed out last month. But apparently stuck in her eternal need to Iditarod dogs, she crumpled.

Chimps Promised a Townhall Hoedown

2011-02-11T14:51:00.000-08:00

Symphonies sung, the tallest GI upheld meth-lab bylaws, comforting the townhall’s artist colony. Unanswered whispers thanked voters with thickened accents. They said, “Ride bikes toward the townhall, but donate the monkey’s two-wheel tuition costs.” Intake valve launched us that day.

“So ...” we said. “Orthodontist appointment book?” Thunderstorm barged listlessly forward.

Retirement

2011-02-11T14:49:00.001-08:00

I haven't done a reading in over a year, since the great Broad Set soiree of January 2010.

I haven't read one word of The Nostalgia Echo out loud.

Interviews with My Former Students, Installment Three

2011-02-11T14:44:00.000-08:00

In which I interview my former student, Christeen Amburgey, who dabbles in corporate culture as a hobby. We talk about former classmates and bad erotica...

Fat Rappers, Real or Fake?

2011-02-11T07:02:00.000-08:00

Chunk
MC Thick
Chubb Rock
Pudgee Tha Phat Bastard
Chunky A
Bone Crusher
Big Bone

"Notable Beefs"

2011-02-10T08:10:00.000-08:00

Notable Beefs, imho:

Kobe
Wagyu
Black Angus

"Long Island University offers its first course on rap’s history, including origins and notable beefs"

Real but Unlikley-sounding Rap Names: Installment 77

2011-02-10T05:21:00.000-08:00

Earl Sweatshirt

The Pool Players

2011-02-09T14:16:00.000-08:00

Car shop guys darted back and forth as we shimmied through the place. We were deer antlers — that’s not a simile. When pool halls bottomed out, we didn’t need to look for employment.

The fungal numbness stuck, and I hardly said, “This place is almost a place for mechanics.” People reacted. I don’t remember how.

An extracted personage, the butler was a guest here. “Two-percent milk,” he chimed, hit his pace while seven aging pool hall louts lined up, repenting. Most of the time, these fellows acted like they had master’s degrees. Within three minutes, though, the butler had googled them – at most, ten percent of them had one. Car shop workers applauded.

“A little under ten percent,” yelled the butler. “And most of them in Liberal Arts.”

Trash can sent airborne, seven aging pool hall somebodys were sent away. Mechanics chimed, “Their aspect ratio was more than ten.” A minor explanation for the matter, but we received it.

“That’s a pretty high ratio,” the butler suspected.

High fives.

A pool hall phenomenon.

* this piece incorporates elements of the Gwendolyn Brooks poem ”The Pool Players. Seven at the Golden Shovel (We Real Cool)”

Flak Jackets Shrank

2011-02-06T07:59:00.001-08:00

Flak jackets shrank, so the waiters wore aprons. Comeuppance began.

Slack theory: waste money on the purchase of a pot-blazing think tank. Hired hands’ molasses tour gave waiters a lot more than they hoped for. Bathrobes land in knots --fact is, people who own these items don’t know, but it’s a phenomenon lately. It’s just about their only feat, their bag monkey clothes herd. At last, the waiters show up, applauding their clotheslined coworker.

Unheralded Hoodlums

2011-02-04T17:11:00.000-08:00

Unheralded hoodlums with flammable things discovered the weathered motorcycle jacket.

Scents were musty. The X-Ray tech spent his third lunch break venting. Dentures on the ground, Pop Hospital lacked teeth, but he loaned us an unearned satchel. He buttered up what had repressed him already.

Looking tidy, Pop was a black belt with a lethal crack of his hand. Pop bared his knuckles, tarnished from where us fellows suspect the X-Ray tech originated. “Dowsing rod, bedtime sing-a-long,” Pop declared.

“Slacks with the foil strains,” sang the nighttime sheriff, handcuffing me and my dusty old Pop.

“Polish-Town loafers,” the X-ray tech specified.

Windows below us, we thought through these quotes.

She Showed me the Ropes

2011-02-04T06:51:00.001-08:00

She showed me the ropes: triangular rap hymns, the neglected backwoods jalopy. Seems the doctor’s office scored medical capital, while felon-assisted researchers went bowling alone.

Charts down, beginners lit the doctor’s office on fire. Cough lozenges, the different forms that doused the patient’s accordion. Mother-worrying beacons of laziness, the chaps stand asynchronously. In confessional booths, the old country goon dreamed of a minister that burns buildings. The lads and chaps proffered a viable basketball, cornered the gymnasium thespian. Grinning goons and seersucker fellows, the parking lot employees guessed. Thespian accountant school, bending the whisk broom.

Another thing – a bowler processional. Alertness was the expectation. Upset, she wore two-inch supporters (I would’ve straggled). Form a term to describe her -- “Layperson.” Obvious wooden track recourse, shovel rust painted over, she was a bargaining person. She was a rusted sparkplug. She wouldn’t be shaken awake.

She Encountered Dictionaries

2011-02-02T12:52:00.000-08:00

She encountered dictionaries. Definition was a nightclub, a dented tube of foot ointment left open. Bicycle Night. Nightclubs mix skate rinks and someone’s severance profit. New-fangled floorshow? At last, people go to the nightclub.

Poor club, stompfeet people hop the opposition, spill drinks, and dance with shaved underarms. I love dangling both my limbs and the nightclub isn’t a bad place. The club isn’t necessary, but a likeable place so far.

There are tree swings in relatable nightclubs, ironic alleyway tree swings. Irate apes who swing from trees reason, “Why go in the first place?”

While apes reason, we’re ashamed and mindless and silly. Swaying there, best friends land. Their hair all gorgeous, don’t get me wrong.

Irate monkeys compete. Dodgeball. I’ve been told that third-rate primates on occasion go stampeding next. The tree bends, sways forgiveness. Trees bend and bend, but overlook you at the night club. Well, that isn’t entirely true.

I rate reproaches by humans, but here it’s usually tree swing along with the monkeys. Last week the tree swing dragged me under the club, into New York’s pale shadows. I called home: “Tree swing recourse, Dad.”

Dad: “We’ll swing big bats. Bring Bob’s and be here.” Anyway, I advanced with this varicose dental plan. Before we moseyed to the bar, Dad tipped his hat. If it were up to us, months would pass.

Dad to me: “Satchel time. Mediate the novice.” Washed his universal gesture. “The former you wants a drink.”

I nodded. My dad sent a clobbered hint to the bartender.

Sandwich was a brittle reducer, so we didn’t have toast but allowed our tongues to wear hats. “You were saying?” Apeman gets lured to the bar.

Bender unchecked, he pouted a little, then looked up at a lout my age. Apeman had 23 or 24 raffle tickets he bought me (I think). That ape leaned into me and said, “Porch swing.”

“Porch swing?” I couldn’t quite eek out to him. He was uncovering something, he said. What, I didn’t hear.

“See-saw,” he repeated (said it again), and again I still couldn’t understand. Apeman was swaying. He bent back and forth like a birch tree in quieter times, before the cave-in, then proceeded to sink his teeth into this band. The band gave me a crumpled pile of old sayings, very clearly worded. “Put your arm around her,” things like that.

Band happenings caught me so often that my friends started calling me “The Left-handed Hound.” Oh, well. Women love the band, I find.

Titles of Academic Journal Articles on Hip Hop: Real or Fake?

2011-01-31T18:34:00.000-08:00

Blocka Blocka: Firearm Onomatopoeia and Hip-Hop Rhyme Scheme

Don’t Smile for the Camera: Black Power, Para-Proxemics and Prolepsis in Print Ads for Hip-Hop Clothing

It’s all about the Walter Benjamins: Gangsta Aura and Biggie’s (Mechanical) Life After Death

Vikings and Rappers: The Icelandic Sagas Hip-Hop across 8 Mile

Musical Trafficking: Urban Youth and The Narcocorrido-Hardcore Rap Nexus

Nuttin’ to Fuck Wit? Why the Academy Needs Wu-Tang Studies

Jigga What? Usages of the Rhetorical Question in Hip-Hop Locution

Reconsidering Rap’s "I": Eminem’s Autobiographical Postures and the Construction of Identity Authenticity

Let a Ho be a Ho: Critiquing Hip-Hop’s Laissez-faire Feminism

"Will the Real Slim Shady Please Stand Up?": Masking Whiteness, Encoding Hegemonic Masculinity in Eminem’s Marshall Mathers LP

Handsome Dan and the Unwanted Chromosome

2011-01-31T11:59:00.000-08:00

"Handwashing got my best friend a boyfriend. Submerge away,” panted the nurse.

Bare-armed, I delivered dialogue: “Who else is going?”

"Well-wishers, sawdust troubadours, and Dan,” she giggled. What ensued then rattled her boyfriend (Dan was her boyfriend).

As long as I have known him, Dan’s been one of the most well-read people. Dan unbuckled belts. Guests awkwardly stood their ground.

Out of earshot, I bench-pressed. Someone’s guest -- Bill somebody -- sent them backward in time. My remarkable uncle (the telethon host) couldn’t quit reminiscing.

Sedating my best friend, what recourse did we actually think we had? Bumblebee Jones had to wait a few minutes outside, with what standards he packed in tow. But Dan and me thought wishfully, forged ahead with a one-on-one conversation with Dan. (Handsome Dan, actually). Pitiful guy. We talked a bit -- our finest seven experiences, compared.

At lunch, chef people planned much-needed meals for bitter families. Rally for the nachos. Almost a has-been, Dan the boyfriend jumped five chairs in a row (second course I would offer him coat racks). We met sophomores, swore in English, clasped hands – action! The mutual friends got over megaphone introductions.

We were Scotch terriers, Dan and me, shy and somehow always about to swerve westward. Green galoshes on an underclassman.

Somehow forcibly friendly, our high-powered shyness led us beyond the intimate bylaws of the rental car population. Man, we made an impact.

“Savior beard,” which neither of our unmarried brothers chimed in. “We’re forward-thinking -- we’ll just marry each other.” Fortunate laughter ensued. Waspish Dan bowed. Dan bent so righteously over that it impressed us, but because he had a completely shaved head, the bulk of our admiration retreated. Gas-guzzling muchachos.

“Hello, darling.” Those ears! He massaged her down, faceless, unhinged. Dan’s hands, heavy, are no more chapped than your own.

Commenting like it was Friday night, he rolled down avenues. Dan drove to Dan’s apartment, whereas practical has-beens called home, convinced that their finest weeks of undaunted amusement existed more in times past. Sterling Dan wore moccasins, marking a rerun Indians thought surely would be their short-lived, awaited windfall.

My car in the parking lot, Dan soon enough pulled up unarmed, the white 19-year-old that he was. Besides the color difference, he looks exactly like me. Two summers ago, we were twin brothers.

Dan then affectionately called the cops.

***

Thinking uncalmly, Dan looked almost impatient. “Arm yourselves!”
“Gang action,” I quietly replied. Dan got in the car.

***

We wore boring toeless tights all day, while other people wore sombreros. After we pulled them off, roughly, I got the feeling back in one elbow.

Dan, becoming alarmed, started asking directions. Blue inflation ticks, bangs itself open, and showtunes ensue. The omission was Dan’s, just something about life he couldn’t admit. Dan likely rethinks his era of laying low. “Slingshot could be disposed of,” he reacted. Hatless Dan, already righteous and land-locked, practically closed down Seven-Eleven.

Assuming we hit the highway, Dan cracked up. The radiant Land Rover down the avenues. Dan abnormally loved listing the ratio of my self-worth to his. Solo, Dan’s saw-bucking old unwanted jumpers tossed out the window. Then, between Dan’s solipsistic steering wheel and wood-burning armoires (chairs) the two youths shared a rough habit.

“Headstands away,” they caused him to repeat. Now, neither of them sported headbands, save for Officer Dan. “Ride bikes -- it’s a quick ride,” posed Dan. “Ramp wore down, but I didn’t vacate it,” they said.

Yet the thought of mawkishly allowing the two-lane by-passers any ground made them want to backpedal, so quickly and contrived that it paid for their parkas. Switch-headed cowards entranced them.

We caused Dan to drown.

“Gravy,” I started, “Ain’t it?”

I Will Blurb any Book within 24 Hours!

2011-01-31T07:06:00.001-08:00

Michael Martone's Fort Wayne is Seventh on Hitler's List

"If you are already friendly (beyond a childlike level), this book will give the illusion of improving your handwriting." -- Mickey Hess

I Will Blurb Any Book within 24 Hours!

2011-01-30T16:32:00.000-08:00

“From the smallest towns to the largest cities, Jamie Iredell’s The Book of Freaks has become a shocking metaphor for a life spent bodybuilding. Because of its subject matter, this book will be interesting to all decent hippies and the dead literary critic Leslie Fiedler.” – Mickey Hess

The Book of Freaks is a Book (I Intend to Read it)

2011-01-28T07:59:00.000-08:00

Jamie Iredell, who designed the cover for The Nostalgia Echo, wrote a book himself and made a video to promote it, as authors tend to do these days. These videos can be fun, or terrible and pretentious.

Jamie Iredell:

Jonathan Franzen:

Contrast.

Real but Unlikely Sounding Rap Names, Installment 113

2011-01-27T05:22:00.000-08:00

Shady Nate
Messy Marv
Johnny Spanish

Washed up Rapper Got a Song

2011-01-26T07:41:00.000-08:00

I started another blog devoted to good hip hop songs: Washed up Rapper got a Song

Kilgore Trout For Sale (Never Used)

2011-01-17T13:51:00.000-08:00

I read in an interview from 1974 that after Kurt Vonnegut sold Universal the film rights to Slaughterhouse-5, he had to pay them $15,000 to buy back the rights to use his character Kilgore Trout in subsequent books.

And Universal didn't even use Kilgore Trout in the movie.

The Nostalgia Echo cover, unveiled!

2011-01-13T15:21:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Jamie Iredell at C&R Press for this fine-lookin sumbitch.

Ineligible Uses of New Jersey Arts Council Grant Funds

2010-11-27T07:56:00.000-08:00

"support for 'The Nutcracker' or any organization
whose sole activity/season is based on 'The
Nutcracker'"

Stray

2010-11-10T00:25:00.002-08:00

"I don't like to stray too far from my grit pot when I'm cooking grits." -- Paula Deen

Real but Unlikely-sounding Rap Names, Installment 119: Wu-Tang Clan Affiliates

2010-11-09T15:17:00.000-08:00

Stabbing Steve
Shorty Shitstain
Scotty Wotty the Jackpot
Ill Knob (aka Ill Knibbly aka Big Knob aka Knibbly Knob)

TV is shorter than magazines

2010-11-02T14:46:00.000-07:00

Poets & Writers sold my address to gypsies, so I get junk mail from other writing magazines.

I got this mailing from Writer's Chronicle:

"Have you noticed how many magazines seem to produce more and more reading material designed for people who don't like to read? Magazines with more pictures than articles? With more celebrities than substance? And features that become shorter and shorter, as if they aspire to the condition of television?"

They seem to be saying that TV is too short.

I agree.

Rally for longer TV.

Let's take to the fucking streets.