Sorry to be picking on my hometown blog commenters here, but seriously, does no one understand meter?

I mean, I know I’m just a fiction writer and all, but I at least sort of get it. I think. Maybe I shouldn’t let this get to me, but we’re only talking about a couple of syllables here. And it’s not like the limerick is a sestina or something. It’s really not that complicated.

There once was a man with a stein,
Who thought Coors Light was just fine,
‘Till his friend said “fuck it,
just drink out of the Honey Bucket
you’ll think that shit is wine.”
Posted by Skip on August 25, 2010 at 11:29 am

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I have a new minibook. You can order a copy now. If you want.

There’s some black metal in it. And three short stories.

UPDATE: Can I just point out how awesome my name looks as a black metal band logo?

Monday night, I did a reading to promote Dzanc’s Best of the Web 2010 collection. It was nice. Dave Rowley and Christine Hartzler read, too. It was sunny out, so not a lot of people were out to see the reading. That’s okay.

I read CAVES. Or, well, most of CAVES. See, something happened.

I was reading CAVES, and figured I had enough time to read the whole thing. And had intended to read the whole thing.

But then, I stopped. At section 16, I stopped reading and paused. READ MORE >

Let us now acknowledge the passing of Ralph Records, home of The Residents who, in secret, have been the greatest band on the planet(tm).

Someone break out the Duck Stab. And the Eskimo. And Songs for Swinging Larvae. And Amerikka Stands Tall. And some Snakefinger. Scour the rekkid stores. BUY OR DIE!

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In the ever-evolving effort to figure out how to use internet video to sell books, Matthew Sharpe has hit on this idea: introduce themes from the book in six silly, strange, short little videos in which the author plays a video artist named Marc Sharf.

All six can be seen here.

Personally, I like them—I like the absurdist energy and the seemingly unnecessary play with identity. (Sharpe’s books are funny, but darkly funny. The character may be a way to break from that.)

So, what do you think? Is this a step in the right direction? Will these videos help sell books? (I was already on board, and my copy of You Were Wrong is on my nightstand.) Did he get you? Did he lose you?

(Weird that this post appears after a Jonathan Franzen post, eh? Franzen was a champion of Sharpe’s novel The Sleeping Father.

“A person of any mental quality has ideas of his own. This is common sense.”

—Franz Liszt

(Though, really, I too enjoy being introduced to new writers through lists of writers.)

Civilization by Marco Brambilla from CRUSH on Vimeo.

Bigger version here.

That apparently inspired this. Which just goes to show: inspiration is really not enough.

The last Pindeldyboz. (And again I’m posting about a death.) Thanks to all the editors who worked there over the years. UPDATE: ‘Dja publish there at some point? Give us a link in the comments.

“Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.”

“I have never grown out of the infantile belief that the universe was made for me to suck.”

“The ordinary man looking at a mountain is like an illiterate person confronted with a Greek manuscript.”

“To me a book is a message from the gods to mankind; or, if not, should never be published at all. A message from the gods should be delivered at once. It is damnably blasphemous to talk about the autumn season and so on. How dare the author or publisher demand a price for doing his duty, the highest and most honorable to which a man can be called?”

“There are hardly half a dozen writers in England today who have not sold out to the enemy. Even when their good work has been a success, Mammon grips them and whispers: ‘More money for more work.’”

“Falsehood is invariably the child of fear in one form or another.”

“Ordinary morality is only for ordinary people.”

“With the Dagger destroyeth He.”

Kind of feeling like the HTML Giant Grim Reaper. James Greer’s blog mentioned the death of cartoonist John Callahan.

When Callahan was 21, he was in a car accident that left him a quadriplegic. He was, as the video above illustrates, a drunk. He and a friend were bar hopping when the accident happened.

He held his pen between both his hands to draw his cartoons. His drawings were, because of that, simple and crude. His humor, too, could be crude—sometimes juvenile, sometimes a little (or a lot) discomfiting. He poked fun at his disability, and at the 12-step recovery process that pulled him out of his alcohol addiction. He was, way back when the phrase meant something, politically incorrect*. And because of that, he was kind of brilliant. READ MORE >

The greatest second act career in hip-hop history? I’d go with middle of the pack Boogie Down Productions rapper and DJ D-Nice, who for the last few years has been directing a series of sit-down interviews with golden age hip-hop artists like Big Daddy Kane, Masta Ace, Sadat X, Special Ed, Monie Love, and more. Note that not only are the short True Hip-Hop Stories fun and kind of informative—Monie’s behind the scenes story of Big Daddy Kane’s play for her affection, Special Ed’s sweet and sort of sad insistence on his contemporary relevance—but the pieces are really beautifully shot and edited.
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Tickets and more info here.

Old interview Brian and I did on a long-forgotten blog.

I was just about to post about the fact that the Museum of Art and Design in New York is playing Lucio Fulci’s amazing zombie flick The Beyond (discussed here) tonight, when it occurred to me that I live on the West Coast, and the East Coast is three hours ahead. So it’s already started. They started the film at 7pm. And you really don’t want to miss the beginning.

I’m an idiot. The Museum of Art and Design is showing a bunch of Italian zombie films, though, in their ZOMBO ITALIANO series. And tomorrow night, they will play the third film in Fulci’s Gates of Hell trilogy. (Which I would’ve maybe mentioned a couple of days ago when the first film played if I wasn’t, you know, an idiot.) Check out the rest of the schedule here. Possibly our friend magick mike can comment on the relative merits of the upcoming films. Know the movies, mike?

And now, everybody point at Matthew and say “Knucklehead!”

One…two…three!

what is it called

what is it called when a doe gives birth to her litter
what is it called when you like pain
what is it called when the moon is closest to earth in its orbit
what is it called when a snake sheds its skin
what is it called when a dog gives birth
what is it called when you cant sleep
what is it called when a sea bird lands on a channel marker
what is it called when a solid changes directly into a gas
what is it called when you can’t smell
what is it called when you cant hear

More after the cut. READ MORE >

Harvey Pekar

Punk Van Gogh image by your friend and mine, Jim Ruland.

Want that on a t-shirt? Beginning tonight at 9pm, you can order it from TeeFury. 24 hours later, a new design will take its place and you will be the only HTML Giant reader/contributor/or commenter without one. And then we will all point at you and laugh. Point and laugh at first, and then possibly talk about you when you leave.

Because we are HTML Giant. And we are totally clique-y. And mean to outsiders. And insular. And hip. Really very hip. It’s rad being us.

Want a song? Looks like you could use a song. Here, have a song:
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