Year of the Micro

I don't know if it's the year of the micro, but it's fun to proclaim things.

There are two really short ones -- the shortest yet -- in the queue @ Wigleaf, by Edward Mullany and Joseph Young.

And -- though this isn't my news to my break -- let me say that I'm looking forward to the next FRiGG.

Maybe this all comes to mind because today @ Wigleaf Katrina Denza's "Peace" went up. It's a beautiful story, just under 200 words long. She also contributed to the mag one of the very first micros to appear in the main column, "Soap," which has been a reader favorite.

I Should Be on the Side of the Utah Jazz

I should appreciate them.

They have a fine coach -- a selfless, long-suffering man. This guy.



The play very good offense. They play offense like you always wish your team played offense. Take it to the rim. Put fouls on your ass. Then, when you overcommit inside, kick it back out for threes.

They do this without all-stars. I should like them. I should admire the Utah Jazz.

The closest they came to an all-star this year is their point guard, this guy.


And he doesn't have a very nice face. This is not the face of a man in commercials. This is the face of a resident of the state of Utah.

I should value the team effort of the Utah Jazz above the approach of other teams, who have good-looking stars and run things through them.

I should say, Who cares if the low-level stars of the Utah Jazz do not have handsome faces?

I should argue that we-- the Utah Jazz-- are what basketball is supposed to be about.

I should adore this guy, Matt Harpring.



I should be excited when Matt Harpring comes off the bench to throw his not very talented self all over the other team's good-looking star.

I should scream, GO HAPRING! DEE-FENSE!

And if anyone intimated that I feel should feel stupid about how poorly our New Orleans-born moniker suits us, I should ignore this frivolous person.

Obscure Anniversaries: Joseph Mankiewicz's Quiet American

Okay so I'm a little late in noting the 50th anniversary of this one. Came out in '58. I'm assuming that nobody celebrated it last year, though -- so I'm okay.

The film is an absolute horror and so an absolute delight. Nobody has ever done anybody as bad as Mankiewicz did Graham Greene. It's really amazing. Philip Noyce set out to right the wrong of the Mankiewicz film in his 2002 remake. It's a good film, with inspired casting (Brendan Fraser as Pyle), but it just makes me want to read the book. That Mankiewicz film, though. I'm telling you: astonishing! I've come to love WW II hero Audie Murphy in the role of Alden Pyle (see pic). If you watch the film even slightly outside of its own context -- and it's impossible not to -- you see this shining lack of self-knowledge, this stunning purity in that regard....

Something to see, fo sho.....

In related news: for the first time, I borrowed a character in something I did. The "Boston Gymnopédie" stars Alden Pyle in his late 30's boyhood.

D. Corr

Dawn Corrigan is not a shooting guard but she was an early friend of the mag -- did the first 'Dear Wigleaf.' I love her new one, "Omniscience." It's just gone up.

Featured in My Latest Micro

Maybe for that reason I've got this beachboyzie punk in my head this morning.

March Harper's

I'm hoping this is some sort of historical signpost. Zeitgeist, or whatever they call it.

Diane Williams is in the March Harper's. On the cover her work is billed like this: "Seven Stories." But that doesn't seem to be anything but a functional marker. What they appear to have published is seven of her stories, very short ones.

Confessions of a Man with a Head Cold

* I drink

* I like to moan about shit

* I shave about once every two weeks, when the curl of the beard starts itching. I trimmed it once, to avoid shaving, but felt unmasculine doing that

* I hate not going to AWP, but I'd be uptight if I went this year. I'd have to meet all these people that I feel like I already know -- through their work, though e-life in general. It'd be like a meeting of skins. Would it not be strange?

* I've been thinking about rewriting a story that I'm perfectly happy w/. I like it, you don't. So I'm thinking of re-doing it. The basic problem, as I imagine it: nobody gets to the end. They're put off by the particular first-person approach, which is very much out of style. It's the American naif thing, a la Lardner, Anderson and Faulkner in the early part of the last century. So I'm considering rewriting it. 3rd person, maybe.....

Nu Tuday

"How to Wear an Indian Village," by Kuzhali Manickavel.

There's a great postcard too. The pcards have been pretty awesome in general lately. Darby's, for sure. Everybody's. There's lots of good ones in the queue, too. Brandi Wells' really had me laughing...

I Wrote Something Today

It's called "Albuquerque Gymnopédie." It's a hundred words long. I don't know if it loves me. I love it.

I also wrote something about writing super-short stories. It's for a mag. I wish that I loved it like I love "Albuquerque Gymnopédie." I'll be happy if it's interesting and not pompous....

N O COLON Y 0 0 2

This has been blogged some already but here's my angle: No Colony is necessary. No Colony is not evil. No Colony is a necessary not evil.

For real, I loved NC 001. Beautiful scary live-wire stuff. ANd when I'd finished it there was nothing to do but wait for NC 002, because other mags, they don't do what NC is doing.

Ken and Blake look to have done (insert many syllabled adjective) work on this one. My story, "The Bomb," is one that I really like. I wrote two others around the same time and they were immediately published and appreciated, but in my head I was like, yeah, but they're not as good as "The Bomb"....

Here's the full list of contributors. Pointless to chart my particular enthusiasms here. I'll just say again: REALLy looking forward...

Isadora Bey
Kristina Born
Aaron Burch
Blake Butler
Luca Dipierro
Scott Garson
Rachel B. Glaser
Chris Higgs
Brandon Hobson
Edward Kim
Matt Kirkpatrick
Rauan Klassnik
Lee Klein
Darby Larson
Evan Lavender-Smith
Patrick Leonard
Eugene Lim
Sean Lovelace
Anthony Luebbert
Conor Madigan
Gene Morgan
Bryson Newhart
Christian Peet
Jennifer Pieroni
Kathryn Regina
Joanna Ruocco
Bradley Sands
Ken Sparling
William Walsh
Corey Zeller

New Online: The Northville Review

Erin Fitzgerald edits this one. Looks very good! Stories and poems. Work by the always interesting Kenneth Pobo, Christopher Woods and others. My contribution, "Jerry," is the first of NV's 'Inside Jokes, Explained.' (As the guidelines say, this feature "is what it says it is.")