January 2017

The Mark Baumer Celebration of Life – February 4

Saturday, February 4th at 2 PM at the Granoff Center at Brown University

All are welcome to join us for a celebration of the life of Mark Baumer

Please come out, we’d love to see you

0007820856_10

Here’s a profile from the New Yorker on Mark and the tragic end to his beautiful life

Massive People / Comments Off on The Mark Baumer Celebration of Life – February 4
January 27th, 2017 / 1:09 pm

Literature of the Final Interaction

A browser window of playful digital innovation has closed. Like a light wind that dies after sunset. We see the cursor move, a soft click, the tab vanishes.

Something like a literature of the web was born and then almost immediately died, along with the most ambitious social lives traversing our generation – the last generation to experience the world before pervasive digital media. Blogs (Gawker, Hipster Runoff, HTMLGIANT(?)) were like… this thing that happened and then became either institutional, irrelevant, or crushed by political detractors. Comments sections became essential and then as quickly: perverse, violent. At some point, Pitchfork became Pitchfork. Reification.  READ MORE >

Opinion & Technology / 17 Comments
January 24th, 2017 / 2:52 pm

Mark

tumblr_ojgzdjbsjW1qa9qw4o1_1280

RIP Mark Baumer. We will miss you, dear friend.

Massive People / 2 Comments
January 24th, 2017 / 11:41 am

Rachel and Ben (episode 6)

rach&ben239(1)

READ MORE >

Random / 1 Comment
January 20th, 2017 / 12:50 pm

plzplztalk2me: Moss Angel Witchmonstr

talklogo

Welcome back to plzplztalk2me, a semi-regular feature in which I talk to people who want to talk to me about stuff they want to talk about.

Recently, I e-mailed back and forth with Moss Angel Witchmonstr. Moss Angel Witchmonstr is author of four books, most recently Sea-Witch v.1 (2fast2house, 2017). She is a scorpio & a transsexual & lives in Portland, Oregon. Follow her on patreon at http://patreon.com/monstr.

READ MORE >

Interviews & Random / Comments Off on plzplztalk2me: Moss Angel Witchmonstr
January 19th, 2017 / 12:09 pm

2017 Indie Lit Wish List

 

read-all-the-books

 

There’s a lot of exciting stuff headed our way in 2017 from independent publishers. Here are some of the books I’m looking forward to getting my hands and eyes on this year.

(What books are you looking forward to in 2017? List them in the comments section below!)

READ MORE >

Random / 9 Comments
January 13th, 2017 / 12:09 pm

emoji collages w Matisse

img_4025

Stefania doesn’t really use the internet but still received a package from Amazon Prime. What’s the point, she thinks, in opening the box when I can use it as a table. Plus, I’m so tired, from what, I don’t know. Let’s see, where did I put my shoes. What are all these mangos doing here and what is this new trash can? The moon looks insane outside and it’s not even full. I don’t know where this vase came from. I must be losing my mind.

img_4024

Clarice can only handle art books. Right now she’s looking at Dorothy Ianonne (Siglio Press) and checking to see how many likes her photo got. She posted “Air de Paris” because it’s a controversial one involving a blow job that Instagram won’t notice because it’s too abstract. She doesn’t even really like hot dogs or donuts. She just put them there. And the white brand-less tennis shoes? Those are abstract too which makes me wonder where she’s going with that. READ MORE >

Behind the Scenes & Random / Comments Off on emoji collages w Matisse
January 12th, 2017 / 2:52 pm

Rachel and Ben (episode 5)

rachben2361-4

READ MORE >

Random / Comments Off on Rachel and Ben (episode 5)
January 10th, 2017 / 10:47 am

Radiohead’s 25 Best Unreleased Tracks of 2016

A Beehive Is Not a Little City (Made Out of Honey)

Tremendous Ache in My Fingers

Are You Reasonable?

In Your Motor Car (Flash Your Lights at Satellites)

Klimt in the Country

Never Break, Day

Booze Cruise

Fellas Remind Yr Mothers

Cantankerous Oval Godhead

Green.Pleasant

Euphoric and He Looks Like a Baby

Cheeseburgers in Paradise

At Loggerheads w/Reptilians

Pants (Refrain)

Murphy and the Solar Bowler Hat

Center of the Earth (Everybody Dances in the)

This Colossal Waste of Time

Preview of a Great Massacre

O Shit I Missed the Brexit Vote

Fan Theory about the Karma Police Video Involving Edward Snowden

Casual Friday (Hazmat Suit)

Something Something Hamilton I Guess

Fodor’s Guide to Antarctica

Anvil Meets Head

Guh

Random / 2 Comments
January 9th, 2017 / 11:37 am

Reviews

Strixologist as Examining Magistrate of Nature: Notes on Juliet Escoria’s Witch Hunt


I.

I’ll let you fuck me

if you make it quick.

Like mechanized.

Like we both come

and that’s it.

No funny business

in between.

Those four sentences uttered by the narrator of Juliet Escoria’s new book, Witch Hunt, published recently by the critically acclaimed indie press Lazy Fascist, demonstrate the precise composition, emotional wreckage, and elegance of language on display in this powerful text.

The passive first line compared to the assertive lines directly following illustrate the text’s general ethos: deadpan checked-out ghosts of people bumping into one another’s atmosphere where desire forms and floats without anchor. Still, these ghost people transform drug addiction, mental illness, suicide, domestic abuse, political correctness, formal experimentation, epistolary, haiku, conceptual, confessional, visual expectations.

So many ghost people exist inside her sentences. So many performances. From the opening section of the ten-part long poem titled “True Romance,” where the above quote originates, the speaking subject comes into focus so quickly and so resonantly, readers sometimes mistakenly presume to understand Escoria’s speaker way too prematurely. It’s true we come to know a person in the pages of Witch Hunt, but through the course of the book the speaker remains unflinchingly unpredictable. What she does one moment doesn’t forecast what she’ll do in another. To assume to know the narrator, to expect to know what she will say or do or think at any moment proves preposterous. Since this passage appears late in the book, readers who start at the beginning and move forward in the standard reading fashion (as opposed to skipping around) already know they don’t know what’s coming next; what distinguishes this particular moment in the book is the role it plays in the overall structure of Escoria’s fragmented twenty-first century confessional romance narrative. It begins the descent to terminus.

Hopefully the following notes convincingly attest to the raw elegance of Witch Hunt, while nevertheless ultimately revealing my strong admiration for it. As we enter the darkness of 2017 — don’t forget, those Game of Thrones people kept warning us the winter was coming! — let us not forgot this powerful 2016 release. Escoria taps into something vital about our current cultural condition and engages with it in provocative ways. So here’re my thoughts on why I highly recommend it:

READ MORE >

Comments Off on Strixologist as Examining Magistrate of Nature: Notes on Juliet Escoria’s Witch Hunt
January 6th, 2017 / 3:26 pm