The Weekend is Finally OVER!!!

Austin Grossman and Tao Lin at Moe's tonight at 7:30 in case you were stupid and missed last night's New Yipes.

Last night's New Yipes was fantastic, by the way.

I have like a million new friends on facebook now. Would you like to be my facebook friend? There's no obligation for six months, but after that you must defriend me and tell everyone what a horrible person and poet I am.

Did you know that Tao Lin's blog gets 80,000 hits a day?

New Yipes is for Lovers

If you love poetry, you love New Yipes. It's that simple.
Come see Tao Lin and Stephanie Young. It will surely be one of those nights you won't want to miss. I know I won't.
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There is so much going on this weekend, so many amazingly wonderful things happening, that I won't be able to talk about how poetry is destroying my life or even how all the readings are going until Tuesday. I can't believe how great things are right now. For the first time since the Union derailed, I am loving life in the bay as a poet.

I hope to see all of you tomorrow at New Yipes (I' m a little excited about it).
LRSN did the New Yipes poster. It's great, no?

Joron and Gordon TONIGHT!!!

Tonight is going to be great! Almost as cool as last night.
Last night I sang and drank with Jack Hirschman.
Ask Sara Mumolo, Paul Evencamp, Gillian Hamel, Casey Speer, or Jack Hirschman, or any of his friends; they'll back me up; they were there.
I'll tell you more about that soon, but now I'm off to see Noah Eli Gordon and Andrew Joron.
YAY!!!

Big Weekend!

Did you hear that this weekend is totally crazy with how much is going on?
Right.
Jack Kerouac Alley tomorrow.
Pegasus on Friday.
Café Trieste on Saturday, followed by Back Room Live at McNally's.
Sunday is all about New Yipes.
On Monday, there's an art opening at Lanesplitter of all places.

That's just the stuff that I plan on seeing. There's so much happening, so if you don't get some poetry in your life this weekend, you have no one to blame but yourself for your clinical depression. I hope you refilled that Prozac prescription.


Zoloft makes you kill yourself and has been proved to have no effects on depression. Sorry.

My Enemies are Cowards and Other Observations

All of my enemies are cowards. If every person who claims to hate me bought my chapbook, I would be on the national best-sellers list. The problem is that the only people I've managed to piss off are sycophantic nobodies with no talent or real interest in art. I would buy their work in a heartbeat if only to speak with a shred of authority while badmouthing them. Fortunately, they will fade into obscurity, and I won't have to badmouth them or spend money on them. Really, though, I would buy their work if they actually produced anything(!!!). I would like to see if they are better than I am . . . like going to see what the other dojo is up to in kung-fu movies.

Now my chapbook is available at Rock Paper Scissors. If you haven't picked it up yet because you were afraid I'd find out it was you and laugh myself to death, now's your chance.
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Speaking of sycophants, a blog recently went up and promptly went down by the person I used to call my best friend. Apparently he was above the Trainwreck Union the whole time he was in it and the whole time he was banning people (2) from it and the whole time he was destroying it in the end. He said we were all beginners and drunkards who he wished he had nothing to with. I wish he had come to this earlier; maybe we would still be having really cool readings and publications. If I were still doing the Switchyard, it would be out by now. Instead, my work on it was stolen for nothing. It was supposed to come out in May, by the way, but I don't think it will ever come out now. He was just the secretary anyway. We could have done without him from the beginning. He's gotten rid of his blog already. Why did he write it? Why take it down? A little bit of cowardice and sour grapes and buyer's remorse all wrapped together, I think. It all saddens me. But if he ever writes a book or ever does a reading, I'll be there. Maybe some day he'll actually produce something worth reading. Doubtful, but who knows? I'm sure he'll kiss enough ass to get something published, and I'll be the first one in line to buy it. I'll write about it right here. Can't wait.
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On a positive note, I found a blog I really like from a guy I met today.

International

The SF International Poetry Festival is happening this week. You probably already knew about it. Their website/flyer/poster campaign boasts some of the worst design ever seen, guaranteeing a minimal turn out of poetry newcomers, but for the die-hard poetry freak, it should be quite a cool time. I'll be there on Thursday night and hopefully the Trieste reading on Sat.
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A little while ago, there was a reading that Watchword Press and Instant City put on at Pegasus that featured a young poet named Matt Rohrer. Try finding him on line, and it's a wild goose chase because there are two poets going by that handle, and I just can't manage right now. But if you can manage it, check him out.
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There is a mostly German language poetry/art clique I met up with in Hannover about nine years ago, Bremsspur. I like what they do very much. If you speak German, maybe you will, too. If not there are pictures of things.

Potter

Henry Rollins once said that we are living in a world of disposable culture, but I think it's a little different. After all of those years reciting "recycle, reuse, reduce" as children, we have taken ecological conservation to heart and redirected it to art and entertainment. Why else would Britney Spears cover a Bobby Brown song and Travis cover a Britney Spears song? Why else do we make sequel upon sequel until all of our movies have numbers after them? Ebay has taught us that, if you pick up a tarnished and dusty relic, polish it to a shine, and call it new, people will go ape over it.
Transformers came out in theaters this year as a movie about giant alien robot cars. I could tell you that it used to be about much more than that, but you would never believe me. You would never believe me if I told you that sophisticated story-lines and insanely drawn plot continuities made it much more; you would laugh at me. The movie proves that the whole Transformers series was always about giant robots, which is very sad.
Harry Potter proves that Brothers Grimm and J.R.R. Tolkein wrote about dragons and fairies. That's all. By recycling their stories, adding water to make them a bit easier to digest, a bit more marketable, J.K. Rowling spins a story about the easy stuff. The kind of stuff fans can dress up as or just easily remember. After all, it's just for kids, right? We can't hold kids responsible for wanting spectacle over message or style over substance.
Last night, I went to Pegasus just to see what the midnight openings were like. It was
pretty cool in that people seem to have formed a community around the books. There were squeals of joy and cheers throughout the evening that made me kind of wish I were a kid again. I read the first book, which didn't appeal to me, but I kind of wish that it did. I wish that I still liked the Simpsons and Bugs Bunny, too.
In the end, it was anticlimactic. Most things kids do are anticlimactic to the adult observer. Swingsets and teetertotters.
Bukowski said that Mickey Mouse had no soul. He hated Mickey Mouse. But Bukowski was an old man. I don't like Harry Potter, and it's hard for me to understand when adults try to tell me that Harry Potter is something more than what it is. But I like that kids like it. I like that the movies, even though I don't watch them, are coming out now. I hope that the fans of today will be dead before the remakes come out. I hope that Harry Potter will not suffer the same fate of Darth Vader and Optimus Prime while any of the kids I saw last night are still breathing.

Back Room Live. SAT, 28 July

I go to as many of these as I can, and I will be coming to this one; mos def.

The short version is this:
This month ! Back Room Live Presents ! Writing Artists ! Blake Ellington Larson ! Vicki Hudson ! Jenny Drai ! and Janet W. Hardy ! Saturday Night July 28th ! Mc Nallys Irish Pub ! 7pm ! 5352 College Ave ! Oakland

I hope to see you there. They card at the bar (not at the door), so if you're an underage poetry lubber, you're welcome. It's straight through to the back in a secret room type place. I love that. The bartenders are unbelievably affable, so ask them if it's confusing. It is confusing.

If you're an oldtimer, they're known for their spectacular Irish coffee. It is raaaahther spectacular, I do say! Or try a Hoegaarden Belgian White. That is also raaaaahther worth the money.

The Love of Bad Stars

To love poetry is to believe in the inherent beauty of words and their uncanny ability to be abominable. And they are abominable because of their potential to be beautiful. Poetry is disastrous.

In order to escape the disaster of poetry, I will write a movie. My movie will be about beautiful people who all seem very beautiful until they begin doing horrendous things to one another. Violence. It will seem like they’re really ugly––have been all along––until they find out it’s all a big misunderstanding. It will become apparent that they are, in fact, beautiful––they just seemed ugly. The audience’s original opinions regarding these beautiful people were correct all along. Validation. My movie will make you feel good and sad and happy again, challenging and reinforcing your faith in beauty.

Shampoo the Thorn

Xu Smith is amazing.
I went there looking for Stan Apps; check him out, too.

I finished wallowing in David Larsen's THE THORN today. If you haven't read it, I think you should. It's a bit rough on the corona, but it's the coolest thing you'll read. Fo Sho.

I am glad that I didn't go into pancake vending when I had the chance to switch from churros.

In the Ghetto, in the City!

I've been wondering for years why I like Björk so much.
I think, now, that it has something to do with the fact that she pronounces "ghetto blaster" "Jetto Blaster."

I don't usually go in for the type of poetry Alan Bern writes. Last night at Pegasus, though, his performance along with "Lucinda" was surprisingly refreshing and enjoyable.

It's real easy to take this whole thing too seriously. I take art too seriously a lot. But Alan Bern gave us a night of unpretentious surprises that were just fun to see. Lucinda danced about in a silver leotard all over the store and someone interrupted the performance looking for a Lonely Planet on East Asia, and there was a haunting Spanish whisper piece that blew my friend Casey away. So much going on!

The whole thing was very Berkeley, and that's cool. I think that the performance as a whole had something for everyone. You couldn't hate or love the whole thing, but there were parts that I really dug. Actually, it was probably one of the better readings I've been to lately.

A New Favorite

ABSENT MAG

MARK WALLACE

Electric Personality

Every time I pay my electricity bill, I overpay.
I also write nice things on the envelope.
And put colorful stickers on it.
I figure the person opening it needs a little
poetry and light in their life.
It must be a boring job opening all of those
little envelopes with soulless checks inside.

It occurs to me that they might send all of those little
envelopes in a big canvas sack to china where political
prisoner children open them for free. I hope not.
But if that's the case, I hope they like the Chococat sticker.


I send a poem with my check, though, and it's not in Chinese.

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A couple of days ago, I finished reading Mark Wallace's book, "Nothing Happened and Besides I Wasn't There."
I loved it. Very much. It brought a little poetry and light into my life.
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I met a guy named
Gareth Lloyd who liked my poetry.
That was great because it's hard to find people who like my poetry.
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Poetry Reading at Pegasus Downtown.

ALAN BERN

It's going to be great.
Monday, July 16.
at Pegasus Downtown.

poetry reading tonight

hello.
I am outta town and cannot go to a reading that I would love to go to.
Also,
I am sorry about all of the typos on this blog. I will work diligently to remedy the situation. I almost never drink and blog, btw. I just type quickly, and that big orange "publish post" button is so tantalizing that I want to press it as much and as often as possible.

In Orange County, there doesn't seem to be much poetic stuff happening.

So I am reading Gary Lutz and Mark Wallace. I am enjoying both. There are beaches here. . . and swimming pools. That's nice.

I actually wanted to get away from everything for a little while. I thought that since this place is so dead that it would be easy to just relax and not think about art and poetry and all of that. . . like rehab. But all I want to do is get back to the bay as soon as possible. I keep going into bookstores and scoffing at their poetry selections.