Just UP

Ravi Mangla's "Jupiter."

A good one.

Obscure Anniversaries: "Bee Thousand."

Fifteen years back.

It was the first GBV disc to get any notice. Here's an mp3, via Aq. Drunkard, of the most radio-ready of the tracks, "Hot Freaks."

But it wasn't really radio-ready. What I've always loved most about GBV is the loose weave, how you can hear the rock-star daydreaming going on.

Dogzplot FF and More

I've got one in the new batch, the "Eau Claire Gymnopédie."

Here's the rest of the line-up: Robb Todd, Kathy Fish, Brandi Wells, John Stadler, Greg Gerke, Ricky Garni and Robert Scotellaro.

Brandi Wells is also going to be in Fox Force Five, the now pre-orderable chapbook collective from Paper Hero Press, along w/ Elizabeth Ellen, Lydia Copeland, Andrea Kneeland and Suzanne Burns. This is looking fairly cant-miss-ish, no?

And Greg Gerke--his debut collection of shorts and longers, There's Something Wrong with Sven, is just out from Blaze Vox books. Here's enticement: Greg's Eyeshot story, "Loose Ends."

Me Reading No Colony #2

Who is Isadora Bey? And could it really be true that she lives in a place like Kansas City?

I can't talk about this story without using exclamatory expletives. I can't talk about this story.

Pre-orderable: Dewclaw #1

Great name: Dewclaw.

Names are important, especially when the thing doesn't exist yet (as Dewclaw didn't when I subbed).

I have a feeling about this one. I get the sense that Evelyn Hampton (whose own work I get to check out in the upcoming issue of Unsaid) is thinking of the mag itself as a kind of composition, which of course it is -- but I don't know how many eds think of it that way... I saw proofs the other day, and the page design is out of sight.

Really, really looking forward to sitting down w/ it.

Get it now. Get it here.

Contributors:

Claire Donato
Matthew Simmons & Amy Minton
Mike Young
Blake Butler
Rachel B. Glaser
Claire Becker
Shya Scanlon
Cherri Wood
Amina Cain
Kathryn Regina
Matthew Salesses
Scott Garson
Jessica Treat
Leslie Patron
Isadora Bey
Stephanie Brachman

p.s.: for some internet encouragement, read Amina Cain in Action, Yes, or Rachel B. Glaser in elimae.

Nu Nu Nu Nu

@Wigleaf: Elizabeth Ellen's "Samuel L. Jackson Is Not a Good Name for a Rabbit." (I sent her an anonymous hair box to induce the sending of this story.)

@Keyhole: Molly Gaudry's i-view w/ Jimmy Chen about Typewriter, his chapbook just out from Magic Helicopter Press.

My New Computer Is Fast and Other Stories

* My new computer is fast. "If you want, you can have more speed put in, but you won't need it," they told me at the store. I told them, "I want it. I need it." Now I can really tool around. Vroom, vrroom, vroom, vroom, vroom!

* I once made up w/ a boy I'd got in a fistfight with, a linebacker on the high school football team, by taking him out for a ride in my father's sports car, which was a vintage Triumph Spitfire. It wasn't very powerful, but it looked pretty good, and it was a convertible. I tooled around upscale residential streets with this guy in the passenger seat, and because I was going too fast and didn't know these streets well, I spun out and hit nothing. I can't remember what we said as we sat there crossways in the street. "Woh!" I imagine we said.

* He provoked the fistfight by coming up to me in the stands at a basketball game and spitting on me. So I had to go fight him, outside. All these people followed us out there. I thought I was getting my ass kicked because my nose was bleeding all over both of us, but in the vice principal's office the following Monday a.m, I saw that I'd blackened his eye pretty good.

* He did that -- spit on me -- because I was, according to him, messing around with his girlfriend, who was a good friend of mine. I told him that he had that all wrong, that we were just friends. But I lied. I was messing around with his girlfriend.

* I played high school football myself only one year, freshman year. I was a guard. Sometimes I got in on defense too, and one of these times I intercepted a pass. I was just standing there, not knowing what the fuck was going on, and the ball fell into my hands. Interception. I ran a few yards and got pounced on. Later, down the street from where the high school was, I got the high score on Asteroids and put in my initials. SAG.

Live and Free: FRiGG All-Microfiction Issue

Includes my eight-set, w/ some of my own recent faves -- the Green Lantern one, "Glass Horse," and three Gymnopédies, "L.A.," "Wichita," and "Albuquerque" (the second, third and fourth to be published, after "Seattle" in SmokeLong).

A fantastic line-up overall. Sets by Randall Brown, Kim Chinquee, Lydia Copeland, Kathy Fish, Barry Graham, Tiff Holland, Mary Miller, Kim Parko, Jennifer Pieroni, Meg Pokrass, and Joseph Young.

Preorderable: QF #15

My story in this one is called "Sofa." It's one of the only things I wrote when we were staying in a cabin on the Greenbrier River last summer. If I'm lucky, the reactions it'll get will be as good as the reactions my little grammar exercise-cum-story got in one of my classes today. These are verbatim:

"What the hell's wrong with you?"

"This is weird."

"I'm going to have nightmares."

Here's the full list of lovelies:

Jami Brandli
Andrew Brininstool
Randall Brown
Kenneth Calhoun
Elizabeth Ellen
Scott Garson
Lydia Copeland
Stefan Kiesbye
Andrea Kneeland
Charles Lennox
Sean Lovelace
Jen Marquardt
Lee Martin
Michael Meyerhofer
Taylur Thu Hien Ngo
Dylan Nice
G. C. Perry
Andrew Michael Roberts
Helen Klein Ross
Joanna Ruocco
James Scott
Don Strange
Jensen Whelan
Daniel E. Wickett
Blythe Winslow
Spencer Wise
Mike Young
Mabel Yu

I blow all of you kisses on faith....

Good Mail Day

The middle one is maybe the only one that needs explanation. It's a 1928 woodcut by Frans Masereel. Got it on ebay for pretty cheap. The walls are looking empty, you know....

April @ Wigleaf...

is only the cruelest month if for some reason you don't like GOOD STUFFFFFFF.

Gary Moshimer's "Birds" is the latest. Read the story. Read the story. Read it. Read it.

"Make the pasta. Make the pasta. Make it. Make it."

Hobart Baseball

Lots of good-looking stuff in the annual baseball update over @ Hobart. Jim Ruland, Adam Robinson, Simon Smith, Paul Silverman, others.

I've got a haiku in this year's batch. It's called "Storm Clouds."

How much of a teaser can I give for a haiku? Maybe one syllable. The first syllable is 'thun'.

Extra Extra

Kevin Wilson's "Tunneling to the Center of the Earth," from Ecco, has just been released. This is for me an event. Every once in a while a book of stories comes out that will seem, during the reading, just too good to finish. I close the book, hold the spine in one hand and feel happy about what's left to read. I've read enough of "Tunneling" elsewhere to know that it's going to be just that kind of book.

I Guess This Is iTunes' April Fools Joke

Their current free 'Discovery' download: the first movement of John Cage's 4'33'. "Listen carefully," they tell people.

Last Night

My kid asked me how people come back. I thought about playing dumb, but I knew what he meant. He meant after people die.