HTMLGIANT Meetup: “Two-Lane Blacktop” (Chicago)
Warren Oates, Dennis Wilson, Laurie Bird, and James Taylor in "Two-Lane Blacktop."
This coming weekend (October 8th & 9th), Chicago’s Music Box Theatre is screening Monte Hellman and Rudy Wurlitzer‘s 1971 masterpiece Two-Lane Blacktop. Long overlooked, Two-Lane has for the past five years or so been enjoying a critical renaissance, and is increasingly regarded as one of the greatest films of the ’70s. (Click here to read some of my own thoughts on it.) And right now is an especially opportune time to see it, what with its grandchild Drive currently killing things in theaters.
There are two screenings, one Saturday, one Sunday, each at 11:30 AM. I’ll be attending the Saturday 11:30 AM show. Anyone care to join me? The movie is 102 minutes long and I was thinking we could grab a coffee afterward, before peeling off onto our nation’s highways.
(Yes, Two-Lane Blacktop really does star James Taylor and Dennis Wilson—in their only film roles! No, they don’t sing, nor is any of their music used in the movie. Yes, they’re both incredible—though it’s Oates who really steals the show.)
Your Brooklyn Book Festival Dance Card
Every year I feel overwhelmed about what to see and hear at the Brooklyn Book Festival; When I finally do shuffle over to Borough Hall I realize that the three most interesting things (upon first glance at the distractingly large itinerary) are happening at the same time, so I just turn around and shuffle home, vowing to do a better job next year. This year ‘next year’ finally happened and I curated this list with you all in mind. You’re welcome. See you Sunday.
10 AM: A panel about using time travel and non-linear narrative featuring Seth Fried, Samantha Hunt and others. Or, if you’re feeling able to handle deep, dark stuff this early in the morning, Granta is having a panel about writing after trauma, focusing on 9/11.
11 AM: The Good, The Bad and The Family, a panel moderated by Rob Spillman of Tin House. Or, Radical Fictions a panel and readings by David Goodwillie, Jennifer Gilmore, and Justin Taylor.
Noon: Something called Epic Confusion which features Nadia Kalman, Chuck Klosterman, Sam Lipsyte, and Tiphanie Yanique who will read and talk about this confusion.
1 PM: Apocalypse Now, and Then What? featuring Tananarive Due, Patrick Somerville and Colson Whitehead. Moderated by Paul Morris, Bomb Magazine.
2 PM: Politics & Poetry: Timothy Donnelly, Nick Flynn, Thomas Sayers Ellis and Evie Shockley.
3 PM: Lifestyles of the Rich and Richer. Chris Lehmann (Rich People Things) and David Graeber (Debt: The First 5,000 Years) discuss the current state of our economy and where we’re headed.
4 PM: Where are we? A bunch of critics talk about where we are any why we’re anxious. Or go have a drink somewhere.
5 PM: And because life is not fair, you’ll be forced to chose between three awesome-sounding events all happening at the same time in the same building.
-Amelia Gray & others reading for Short and Sweet (and Sour)
-A panel titled The Sacred and the Profane: A Modern Pilgrim’s Progress. Featuring Darcey Steinke and others.
-Unholy Paths to Redemption: Jennifer Egan, James Hannaham and John Burnham Schwartz look at the alternative routes their characters take to lose themselves—jeopardizing work, family, and love—to find themselves again.
(Or, if you walk outside this building, David Shrigley will be drawing on audience members)
Locations & full details after the jump…
2.4 cents
Magic The Gathering as Literature, part 3: The Vocabulary
Players react as Josh Utter-Leyton defeats Sam Black in the semifinals.
It’s day three of Pro Tour Philadelphia, and the final (“Top 8″) competition is underway. This part of the tournament is webcast (you can watch it live here), and is also being transcribed. (Since this is such high level play, players will want to read descriptions of what, precisely, happened on each turn; this is what Bill Stark was doing in the photo at the top of Part 2.)
These match transcriptions often read like a foreign language to non-players. For example, here’s an excerpt from a write-up of a match played yesterday between Jeremy Neeman and Luis Scott-Vargas:
Magic The Gathering as Literature, part 2: The Articles
Bill Stark (seated far right) documents a feature match between David Williams (seated left) and Brian Kibler (seated right).
Greetings once again from Pro Tour Philadelphia! The second day of the tournament is well underway. As you’ll recall from Part 1, I’m curious to what extent this event—and all Magic culture—is a literary phenomenon. The most obvious place to start seems to be the wealth of Magic articles produced every day by the game’s players, designers and developers, judges, and casual bystanders, some of which I think will interest the upstanding gormandizers at HTMLGIANT. Let’s take a closer look, shall we?
Magic The Gathering as Literature, part 1 (introduction)
Jon Finkel (seated left) plays Patrick Chapin (seated right) in a feature match at Pro Tour Philadelphia 2011.
Hello! I’m new here.
I am in Philadelphia, attending a professional Magic: The Gathering tournament (Pro Tour Philadelphia 2011). The event runs through Sunday, and throughout the weekend, I’ll be posting updates “from the floor,” so to speak. I’m currently sitting in the pressroom (I have a press pass!) alongside a few other reporters; they’re busy Tweeting and posting about the current tournament standings, what the format looks like, which cards and decks are proving the best. It’s high stakes stuff—one of four invitational tournaments held annually around the world (the last two were in Paris and Nagoya; the next will be in December in San Francisco), with a top prize of $40,000.
All of which, I think, should interest even those who know nothing about the game. Here’s why:
Stephanie Barber works at a museum
Photo by Cara Ober
Poet and artist Stephanie Barber has installed herself in the Baltimore Museum of Art. She’s been there since June 25, and she’ll be there until August 7. And she brought along her studio.
This isn’t an endurance piece, like what Marina Abramović did so beautifully at MoMA. Stephanie, who is doing the performance/installation/video work in conjunction with the Sondheim Prize, is making videos as she normally would, but at a faster clip. She’s producing one a day. Her setup in the gallery is a sight to behold for the way it deconstructs the museum. When is the last time you’ve seen pictures from a magazine haphazardly tacked to a museum’s wall? Or the last time you watched a video with a soundtrack performed by museum patrons as they pass through? READ MORE >
The Indie Lit Summit 2011: Baltimore/DC Edition
On July 16th, 2011, editors and writers from the Mid-Atlantic region will gather in Washington D.C. to hold a one day summit called the Indie Lit City Summit. The effort, spearheaded by Dan Brady and an organizing committee, one of the Barrelhouse editors, is designed to bring together small press editors for a day of brainstorming, problem-solving and exchanging ideas for how small presses and independent magazines can work better, smarter, harder. Dan and I had a conversation about the summit, what’s planned, and how editors and writers (and other interested parties) in other cities can plan their own summits in the future.
How did the Indie Lit Summit come about? Who is involved in planning the summit? Who will be attending the summit? What do you hope to accomplish?
Two years ago I went to the Nonprofit 2.0 Unconference, organized by bloggers Allyson Kaplin, Geoff Livingston, and Shireen Mitchell. Beth Kanter and Allison Fine, who wrote The Networked Nonprofit, were the keynote speakers. After Beth and Allison’s talk, we broke into sessions that were self-organized by the participants so the topics were focused on what the people in the room wanted to learn about. We covered everything from blogger outreach to social media ROI to engagement strategies. It was great and I thought to myself, I wonder what would happen if you got the whole DC literary scene together and we had this big knowledge exchange about what works, what doesn’t, how much things costs, how to do things better, how to work together, and how to build a community for ourselves in which everyone is a resource to everyone else.
I chewed on the idea for about a year and then started to sketch out what I thought would have to happen to organize something like this. I kept it to myself, though I talked to the other Barrelhouse guys, Adam Robinson, Maureen Thorson, Mark Cugini, and a few others and it seemed like this was something we should do.
Gigantic Issue #3 Launch
New York City’s consistently innovative print/online journal Gigantic is launching its third issue (Gigantic Indoors) in Brooklyn on Friday 8-4:30 AM. Beer’d by Brooklyn Brewery, “live performance and installation by Newvillager,” and on the Williamsburg Waterfront (!)–all the trappings of a Williamsburg soiree (what my parents used to call a “function” or “gala”) without the constant discomfort and guilt. “Our people” don’t often throw such massive events on this side of the borough, so take advantage, please. Readers include: Chloe Cooper Jones, Joshua Cohen, Lauren Spohrer and John Dermot Woods. Admission is free for subscribers, and $10 for non-subscribers. Please RSVP here, on the Facebook. Attractive people will not receive free admission simply because they are attractive, easing the resentment that their less attractive friends already feel toward them.
An Evening of Poetry at the White House
If you’re wondering what Kenneth Goldsmith ended up doing when he read at the White House, here’s the video (he’s at 8:55).
Next Tuesday in New York
Tuesday, May 17, 2011; 7 pm PROSE EVENT
With readings by Renee Gladman, Danielle Dutton and Amina Cain.
This is the second of the Belladonna* Collaborative PROSE EVENTS. Each is a reading and conversation with prose writers who write at the intersection of fiction and the essay, producing texts that are urgent and often unclassifiable. We will be especially interested in exploring the idea of the walker as essayist, flaneuring through city and suburban space, skirting around the crosswalks or margins of genre.
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Renee Gladman is the author of four works of prose, most recently To After That (TOAF) and Event Factory (Dorothy) and one collection of poetry, A Picture-Feeling. Since 2005, she has operated Leon Works, an independent press for experimental prose and other thought-projects based in the sentence, making occasional forays into poetry. She teaches in the Literary Arts Program at Brown University, and lives in Massachusetts.
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Danielle Dutton is the author of two books — S P R A W L and Attempts at a Life — and her fiction has appeared in magazines such as Harper’s, BOMB, and The Brooklyn Rail. She designs books at Dalkey Archive Press; teaches in The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa; and edits Dorothy, a publishing project.
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Amina Cain is the author of the short story collection I Go To Some Hollow (Les Figues Press, 2009), and an upcoming chapbook, Tramps Everywhere (Insert Press/PARROT SERIES). She is also a curator/organizer, and a teacher of creative writing/literature. Her writing has appeared in publications such as 3rd bed, Action Yes, Denver Quarterly, Dewclaw, Encyclopedia Project (F-K), LRL, onedit, and Wreckage of Reason: Xxperimental Prose by Women Writers, and has been translated into Polish on MINIMALBOOKS. She lives in Los Angeles.
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Curated by Kate Zambreno. Kate Zambreno is the author of O Fallen Angel, which won Chiasmus Press’ “Undoing the Novel—First Book Contest.” Another novel, Green Girl, will be published by Emergency Press in Fall 2011. A nonfiction book revolving around the women of modernism, Heroines, will be published by Semiotext(e)’s Active Agents series in Fall 2012. She writes the blog Frances Farmer is My Sister. She is also an editor at Nightboat Books.
Location: Dixon Place: 161 Chrystie Street; New York, NY
Admission: $6
Low Lives 3
My wife is performing today as part of Low Lives 3, an online international performance festival. It’s going on from 3-6 ET today on UStream, so if you’ve got some time and you’re just like hanging-out and eating a sandwich or watching your cat sleep, you should tune in here.
Mike Young—
Poets are dreamers who don’t understand capitalism. Poets are sandwiches who don’t understand fried chicken. And some of them are going to be reading for Supermachine tonight @ 8PM at the Outpost (1014 Fulton Street) in Crooklyn. And by some of them I mean all of them are good: Paige Taggart, Justin Marks, Jeannie Hoag, and our own troublemaker Andrew James Weatherhead.
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Chomsky on Ali G
I’m boning up for “The Poetic Sentence,” a panel I’m moderating tomorrow at the Conversations & Connections conference in DC, and I found this video pretty insightful.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zPHAhj_Cio
If you’re nearby DC and you’re a writer, you will probably want to cancel whatever you’ve got going on so you can attend this conference. For the $65 admission fee you’ll see Michael Kimball’s 1-Hr MFA lecture, which is worth twice $65. You’ll also get to attend my panel with Mel Nichols, Magus Magnus, Maureen Thorson, and our own fingerlickinggood: Mike Young. Other panels and lectures by a hot list of my faves. You’ll also get one of the featured books, a subscription to a magazine, speed-dating with an editor (an intellectual lap-dance, basically) and a kissing booth with Steve Almond. Maybe not a kissing booth, I don’t know, that’s unconfirmed, but he’ll be there so why not?
big-ass crunky green tomato reading notes
Done went 50+ poets in three days Alabama, something. Reading (s) questions/notes:
1. What to do with hands?
1. How long do you think about what you are going to wear?
2. Introductions longer than poems.
44. Risky: reading in southern accent because you are in The South.
11. Poetry readings in bars make the bartenders almost mime-like, hushed ordering, pouring of drinks, a reverent tinkling of glass, silent smiles. Quite lovely.
[Brandi Wells reading at The Green Bar. The can of beer in right corner low is Abe Smith's beer. It is a Good People IPA.]
3. POETRY (profound, hushed voice…book in hand) versus “Uh, these are some poems.” (crinkly paper in hand)
3. Read first or read last or read middle or refuse to read?
3. Inside jokes to friends during reading to larger audience as never effective?
3. Flask/no flask?
3. Revelation: I am beginning to prefer undergraduate or other poets who have not read live very often.
3. I honestly thank/congrat one poet and he blows me off. He ‘cut’ me as Hemingway used to say. A poet. It costs him one book sale and some bad word of mouth later at a beer trough. So what? Respect or hater? A tad of both, I suppose. I still dig his poetry.
4. Do you prefer podium or some physical thing to psychologically shield you from audience?
6. Moon, muses, gossamer. Three words possibly enfeebled/faded, or possibly a challenge to prove otherwise?
4. Best intro line I heard since it could be innocuous or an absolute rip-shot across bow or simply authentic or really smart-ass: “Hey ya’ll, I’m not really a poet. I wish I was, I’d be real smart.”
3. Eagerness is interesting.
Modes of Love & Reason: A Bernadette Mayer Symposium
If you find yourself in or around Buffalo, NY this Friday, check out the day-long symposium dedicated to Mayer’s work…featuring CA Conrad, Dorothea Lasky, and many other superstars, including my wife, Caitlin Newcomer:
Fools Gold
The best collection of poetry I’ve read this year to date is Becoming Weather by Chris Martin. Its confident, bold, excavating and it all feels natural. This Friday in NYC is the release party for that book. There’ll be original music from Oneida & I Feel Tractor, an original film from Stephanie Gray, and a sermon on becoming weather by Evangelist J.B. Best (Anticon’s Pedestrian). Its a serious event. Happening 8:00 P.M. at Secret Project Robot in Brooklyn.
See the Facebook invite for detailed info.
Live Giants 11: Sommer Browning & Noah Eli Gordon
You missed the live reading but you can still check out Sommer & Noah’s new books, Either Way I’m Celebrating and The Source, available from the publishers at the according links.
Internet Freedom Reading
My friend Joey Miraculypso and I arbitrarily decided, sometime in January, that we would put together a poetry zine grouping poems that fell under the theme of “freedom.” We made a facebook event and invited people we were friends with on facebook that we thought might have any interest.
Cut to a month later: we had 30 poems for a zine. We accepted everything anybody sent us, there were no editorial decisions involved, other than the decision to make the zine in the first place. I printed them off and bound them. Cut to another month later (i.e. today) and I decided that I would throw a “release” party on the internet that consists of me reading the content of the zine, along with some related stuff, on UStream.
If you’d like to watch, go here at 9PM Central:
INTERNET FREEDOM RELEASE PARTY LIVE BROADCAST
I’ll probably read the zine twice, as I don’t think it’ll take longer than ~20-25 minutes to read (it’s 40 pages).
Inside the zine you can find: JAMES TADD ADCOX // ANDREW FOX // DCM // AUDUN MORTENSEN // RYAN TV GREEN // KEN BAUMANN // MEGHAN LAMB // MIKAYLAH BOWMAN // JEFF GRIFFEN // M KITCHELL // JERIMEE BLOEMEKE // PATRICK HAJDUCH // ANDREW JAMES WEATHERHEAD // CHRISTIAN CAMPOS // JORDAAN MASON // MOLLY LEE // THE LIVER VET // SEAN RAFFERTY // THOMAS BOETTNER // RUSTY KELLY // R WOODS // DAVID W PEDERSEN // BEN GRIGG // JASON JUDD // MIKE YOUNG // C.W. KELLY // GFMPM // WILLIAM SERRADET // MAYILU DIAZ DE LEON // & ERIC DODGE
