New Episodes of The Home Video Review of Books Now Available
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2-zdxy2dpg&
Don’t wait for the DVD extras! Watch them now. Books of poetry (and at least one novel) are “reviewed” with short bizarre bursts of cinema, intended to make you free-associate and baffle happily. I’m highly pleased to report that this latest installment contains a review of my poetry chapbook, More Perfect Depictions of Noise. Here’s what they thought-
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6Ht-Lsg_U4&
I say that video is the equivalent of one thumbs up. Also reviewed this issue is Bob, or Man on Boat by Peter Markus, To Hell With Sleep by Anselm Berrigan (the other video included in this post), and a shit-hell of a lot more. Check it out.
4 Comments
May 17th, 2009 / 10:48 pm
May 17th, 2009 / 10:48 pm
Houston Indie Book Festival: A Review by Kirby Johnson
I missed my chance to attend last weekend’s Houston Indie Book Festival because I was caught up in various Mother’s Day events; however, I was able to get in touch, through Signe Cluiss, with Kirby Johnson, cofounder/coeditor of NANO Fiction and one of the organizers of the festival. I asked her if she would write some of her thoughts about the day, and after the break I’ve posted what she kindly sent back.
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May 15th, 2009 / 12:59 pm
May 15th, 2009 / 12:59 pm
God damn it: ‘The Road’ trailer
I mean, I knew they were going to fuck it, but… really? This hard in the A?
Sigh. Next they’ll be making ‘Suttree’ into a romantic comedy starring Luke Wilson and featuring Verne Troyer as the watermelon.
The little search engine that should
Allison Glock’s article “I Blame Blogs” at the Poetry Foundation says two things: 1) blogs are bad and people who blog are bad, and 2) poetry is good and people who write poetry are good. (Of course, she doesn’t really say ‘bad’ or ‘good,’ but you can tell from the derisive rhetoric this is some kind of ‘moral’ issue with her.) She says that poetry does for the world what blogs fail to do, which is fine an all, but she’s just so mean about it:
[…] blogs inevitably activate our baser human instincts—narcissism, vanity, schadenfreude. They offer the petty, cheap thrill of perceived superiority or released vitriol. How easy it is to tap tap tap your indignation and post, post, post into the universe, where it will velcro to the indignation of others, all fusing into a smug, sticky mess and not much else in the end.
The Circle is Now Unbroken
You knew this day would come. As anyone who has ever watched a serial TV drama knows, epic feuds are always bound to reverse into epic loves, because the same engine–passion–is what drives them both and draws the players inexorably to one another. Shall we recap for the latecomers?
YOUR LIFE SUCKS, WHY NOT TRY TO BECOME A CHARACTER IN MR. TYREE’S NOVEL
yo yo yo. this was recently brought to my attention. nate tyree, author of the book “BLOOD MERIDIAN” i think it is, is auctioning off the opportunity to be a character in his next novel. you can bid on ebay. go here for the information. apparently, the book is guaranteed to be published in a year. fancy fuckin that. i hope that guy who played “al borlen” on “tool time” wins.
Friday Boobs
In the early nineties Bono said “We thought we were a punk band, for about 2 seconds” (paraphrase) and I’ve hated U2 since. (Actually, I didn’t like them before that either, even though I can be TYPICAL and say Boy was a pretty good record.) I felt alienated; they were suggesting that “yeah, we liked what is important to you, we got it and everything, but we’ve moved on and look at us now. Now we’re cool.”
So it isn’t like that when I say I was a feminist for two seconds. I didn’t get it, and I still want to be one. I wish I was a feminist more than anything. I did a semester in grad school for theology because I think feminist theology is maybe second only to queer theology in terms of, you know, solving all of life’s problems. My tongue is set firmly on the bottom of my mouth here.
But my tenure as a feminist was stalled after reading Luce Irigaray and learning that cutting the umbilical cord gives a child its primary name, namely the navel, a sufficient identifier, READ MORE >
Arsenic Childhood Food
One of the most seminal bits from Bill Hicks’s seminal ‘Relentless’ performance seems to have something to say about something bookwise also, but instead of trying to rummage that, let’s just relive the Bill:
On the other hand, I enjoy creative marketing. Creative marketing is fun, if the product is actually worth having. Or if it’s not. People are trying to ‘learn to use the internet’ or are accidentally ‘having fun with the internet.’ I have found myself thinking about this a lot lately: promotional tools that do not feel like promotional tools.
I have had little to zero palpable results.
Mostly things just happen.
This blog post is apropos of nothing. Jimmy just deleted a post about Tao selling his myspace, after I commented saying it seemed obviously fake, I felt bad after that. I like ideas and thinking. I like thinking. ‘Hmmm.’
I remember the first thing I ever searched in a search engine when we finally got internet at my parents house on a computer in my room by myself: ‘jenny mccarthy nude.’ It was one of the best days of my life.
You didn’t have to market Jenny McCarthy’s tits to me. They were. [Subliminal shoutout to Ryan Downey.]
What is a book? Where is blood? I miss the TV show Hee-Haw, even though I never watched it when it was on. I like the band the Birthday Party, and that is one of my favorite band names for some reason.
None of the statements in this post have had any direct application or intent behind them, and that’s because they are genuine thoughts. Chew on that.
I’m going to bed.
WHAT IS THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE TERM “INTERNET WRITER”
there was recently a post here concerning blake butler and shane jones, and their conversation about writing . the idea of the “internet writer” was brought up. i have used this term before because it signifies a group of people that others would more or less understand. but now i am thinking about the term and it seems difficult to comprehend. does this mean that the quality of the writing (subject, tone and whatever else) is different? does this mean simply that internet writers are those who use the medium of the internet? if so, how does the medium change the style? this seems like an argument that will happen forever and yet never essentially change. meaning, when writing itself became a medium, people were having the same argument (phaedrus, i think). i like the internet because of its liberty. i can write whatever i want and publish it and that may compromise its quality to some, but to me, that guarantees that someone else’s idea of quality doesn’t encroach on mine. what is the meaning of “internet writer?” is there any way to prove that the medium has directly influenced style? i think most terms are bullshit. maybe it is i who am the bullshit though.
TV Tropes
Once a week or so, I check my traffic on my other blogs. One of them gets a few hundred hits on a good week, the other gets almot none for the most part. (I have sort of abandoned it…maybe I’ll pick it up again someday…) Today, I checked the traffic on the latter, abandoned blog and noticed that TV Tropes sent me 24 visitors! And what is TV Tropes? It’s here. Check it out for yourself. It’s very thorough!