Here. Is. Your opportunity...

...to witness majesty in action. Kate Braverman will be reading at Cantina in San Francisco this coming Saturday evening. This is very exciting; she has never failed to impress the few times I've seen her read.

Information:

Babylon Salon, San Francisco’s rollicking reading and performance series, presents a night of literary mayhem…

When: Saturday, June 14, 2008, 7:00 p.m.
Where: Cantina SF (basement level)
With Performances by: local authors Ann Ryles, Corinne Loveland, and S.J. Sasken; Farallon Review editor Tim Foley; and 2008 O. Henry winner, NEA Fellow, and Executive Director of Kore Press, Shannon Cain

And Featuring the incomparable Kate Braverman, award-winning author of novels, short stories, poetry, and non-fiction.

Read Michelle Richmond’s interview with Kate here on Fiction Attic.

Braverman’s groundbreaking novel Lithium for Medea imbues a raw, dangerous world with her startling lyricism. Her latest work, the Graywolf Press award winning Frantic Transmissions to and from Los Angeles, brings the same sensibility to memoir. The result is a genre-bending challenge to the form.

Cantina SF is conveniently located at:580 Sutter Street, San Francisco, CA 415-398-0195(www.cantinasf.com) Plentiful parking below Union Square. Up one block on Powell, left on Sutter; or Powell Street Bart Station, walk past Union Square one block to Sutterthen left, 1/2 block on right. (580 Sutter)

-Free Admission-

Come at 7:00. Reading and performance begin promptly at 8:00. Complimentary eats. Cash bar exotica.

Babylon Salon is a reading and performance series sponsored by alumni of the University of San Francisco MFA in Writing programYour hosts: Timothy Crandle, Timothy B. Rien, Lindsay Tam Holland, Maury Zeff and Laurie Doyle.

I'm Impressed Press

In three hours a press was born. A press is like a match.com profile; everyone has one but so few get updated.

I wrote a few short vignettes and bound them into an 8 page booklet called "One of the Strangest Days" IIP-001. I love serialized things, assigning objects numbers and a place in line. Perhaps I ought to be an airline ticket agent. I think not.

This is the mission plan: I'm Impressed Press will be (1) a free publication given to friends or anyone. (2) Anything and Everything. (3) Whatever I want.

Here's a sample for you:

Running Up That Hill

Alex and I were walking down 16th Street towards the Mission to get to BART. She walked her newish red Schwinn and we had just finished drinking some drinkie-drinks at Il Pirata after a tedious day of working at our jobs.

As we passed the SFPCA a woman was running towards us. She wasn’t dressed for running, and by that I mean that her outfit was more suitable for a squat in a comfy office chair. Her run was smooth and had the appearance of ease; a little too easeful for climbing a steady but noticeable incline. But something was wrong with her mouth. It was… removable. As she passed I saw her pop out her lower teeth, play with them and pop them back in.

Alex and I looked at each other. Could the day get any stranger than this?

I *Heart* Canadians

And, right now, South Park is high on my list.

Before I left for Vegas I caught the show where Canada goes on strike and the turn-around phrase of "I'm not your buddy, friend!" "I'm not your friend, guy!" I'm not your guy, buddy!" stayed with me from SFO to the Flamingo. During a cloudy afternoon we sat by the pool and wouldn't you know the douchebags behind us started in on this exchange. I didn't know realize it had cult status.



I wonder what Canadians have to say about their portrayal through South Park.

What I Did With My Summer Vacation

Yesterday I took a plunge that can be more humiliating than getting an STD test with your primary care physician.

I sold some old CDs.

I've done this a million times before, I've even been on the other side of the purchasing counter. I know the drill. I know not to take selling the Christina Augilera & Ricky Martin duet single (do you even remember that? When I found it again - I thought it must have dropped in from an alternate universe) personally but there's still that twinge of shame, guilt, and desire to explain why you once had a copy of Santana's Supernatural (I got it for free!) or 3 or 4 Groove Armada albums (again, free).

I wanted new music but, now more importantly, I wanted to release myself of these deadweights. Ten years ago I surrounded myself with walls of CDs; I loved their security and comfort; the way the binding colors blended (ever line them up according to the visible light spectrum? I did), monitoring the growing width of my Throwing Muses section, the geometric splice and slice when they were shelved alphabetically and then by year released. I thought for sure I would eventually have a closet devoted to their storage.

With MP3s and development of three digit gigabyte storage capability hanging onto the remixes of Destiny's Child's Bills, Bills, Bills is no longer a priority. I still own it. In digital form on my computer. And, if anything were to happen to that computer and the greatest hits of Whitney Houston disappeared into the 0/1 ether I can be okay with that. I don't need to archive the popular culture of late 20th to early 21st century music. My CD collection will not end up in the Smithsonian when I die. Atleast not one with the Go soundtrack.

There are some dinosaurs that I will never, ever get rid of even if the only time I ever listen to a CD is when I'm taking a shower or going to sleep.

I'll still need a closet space to hold all the CDs I will never get rid of, that's for sure. And I still buy them on a semi-regular basis. I once vowed to never by music in digital form while there was a tangible version somewhere. The idea of buying an album without touching it, reading liner notes, closely inspecting cover art was horrifying. But I found a great subscription site and I moved forward, deeper into the millenium.

Anyways, I slept easier last night knowing that the corpses of CDs I haven't listened to in almost 10 years have been buried in greener pastures with the hopes that someday some brave soul will dig them up, give them a spin, and shoot 'em with a laser.

Oh! And BTW I did improve my collection yesterday with the purchases of the following: Aimee Mann: @#%&*! Smilers, Cyndi Lauper: Bring Ya To The Brink; The Knife: Deep Cuts; and The Go-Go's: God Bless The Go-Go's (pulled from the brink of used CD extinction).

North Korean Toddler Colonies

Over the past few days Stanford has rekindled my fascination with North Korea. Ever since Mayumi turned me on to an atrocious video done by the BBC depicting the devastation and political propaganda of this bizarre country I've been intrigued; with their monuments, the way they present themselves, the ghost-town Pyongyang, the "non-existent" Ryugyong Hotel and the phenomenal spectacle of their shows. 

Who they're meant for (the few visiting journalists or the North Korean denizens themselves) is anyone's guess. I imagine the performers believe they are presenting the awe that is their nation. 

And indeed they have. But is their intention to bewilder? The enormity of the production is staggering. But the truth behind the facade is a too monstrous to forget.

Watch this.

I wish I could link you to the original bit I saw but I'm beginning to watch the Vice expose found below.

Here.

Twenty Four #02

Folsom Street, San Francisco

Unicorn

Twenty Four #01

My sister has been sending me mass emails lately. Some of which haven't been that awful. My favorite ones are those that promote regional pride.

You know you're from New England when...
You know you're from Massachusetts when...
You know you're from Medway when...

etc., etc., etc.,

They're funny, sometimes true, and if after reading a declaration I'm confused then I get a sense that I missed out on some kind of cultural heritage that would otherwise brand me as an outsider. For those no longer living in the region these lists can be nostalgic and almost enough to punch to break your lease. (Then again, who wouldn't trade places with you, am I right?)

The best part is when you read a list like this and recognize the same statements made about New Yorkers, Philadelphians, San Franciscans, etc. Like that wee lad at some baseball game holding his middle finger out and shouting. He changes teams more times more times than a narcissistic Hollywood C-lister.

Here we go. Today's 24 siting comes from a list as previously mentioned. And, I apologize, but it's one of those facts that I can't even pretend to understand. But, what's great about it, is that it's self-referential. A very "meta" beginning to this new segment.

24. Sorry Manny, but number 24 means DEWEY EVANS.

Thanks!

Introduction to Twenty-Four

The past few weeks have been a wash of ridiculous ideas. There's something about being catapulted out of graduate school that makes you want to complete every possible (and near impossible) task you come up with. And, if you happened to graduate from an art school, then most of these tasks involved the current obsession in modern art: the Obsessive Compulsive art form.


From the 20 million beads sculpted by hand into installation pieces (thank you, Liza Lou):

To the chronicling, documenting, administrative handling of shredded car pieces into a skyscraper filing cabinet (and thank you, Sam Yates):

What we have is Art's obsession with Obsession. Anything that is meticulously done for a period of time unseemly for any "normal" person; anal-retentive organizational skills; the enlargement, exaggeration, parody, sarcasm, length, width, & height stretched to the borderlands of recognition is in vogue.

Add a pinch of magical realism and you have a new segment to The Werewolf Hotel: Twenty-Four.

To get it out of the way 24 is my favorite number for two reasons. (1) I was born on July the 24th. (2) It's divisible by many fantastic numbers: 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 12, & (like any whole number, itself) 24. I find that when this number pops up it's a sign, an omen, a message. I don't proport that it's always the case but it still seems to have personal properties I prefer to pay attention to.

Including its inverse: 42. The first time I really caught that number's eye I remembered to pay very close attention and I can't say why just now.

Perhaps, when the time is right, any other 24-Fanatics will pay attention with me. OK?