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Submissions Numbers: Flatmancrooked

Duotrope (which, frankly, I haven’t been checking out lately, so anyone with more current information, please send it along) offers percentage of acceptance in regard to journals, but only in regard to the numbers offered by Duotrope users. In this new series, I’ll be sharing information gathered regarding the volume of submissions received by a journal. After the jump, read Flatmancrooked‘s numbers. And thanks, Flatmancrooked (click here to get to them), for the information. It means a lot to the writers submitting:

Pudding Pops!

sidneypoitier

This is a speech worthy of Father Mapple, given at a college by television actor Bill Cosby in Percival Everett’s new novel, I Am Not Sidney Poitier—one of the funniest books I have read in quite a while. I’ll never sell Pudding Pops for the white man. Check this book out. It’s genius.

You men think I’m going to take it easy on you. You think because you’re in college and sitting here in khakis and loafers that I’m all right with you. You think that because you’re not bopping your heads to rap music while sitting here that I’m going to embrace you. You’re wrong. You’re all pathetic. You’re pathetic until you’re not pathetic, until you do something strong and good and not until you do that. You think because you probably won’t be clad in an orange jumpsuit for stealing a piece of pound cake that I feel all warm and fuzzy about you. I sell Pudding Pops for the white man. I don’t know why I’m saying that, but I am. I make myself sick, but the white man is not to blame. He didn’t put the gun in the hands of the black kid down in juvenile hall. No, his missing father put it there. Pound cake. I’m on television. Black girls have babies by three or four fathers and why? Pudding Pops! That’s what I’m saying. Some of you are probably wondering how I can stand up here, call me high and mighty, talking about how I can stand here when I’m being sued for having babies with a woman other than my wife. Well, hell, I can afford to have babies. Pudding Pops! If you don’t know who your children’s friends are, then you’re not doing your job…I kissed a Japanese woman on screen in nineteen sixty-six and managed not to have a baby with her. I want to thank you for having me here today, and I want you to know that I will be more than happy to sign copies of my book, Fatherhood, which is on sale just outside at an attractive discount. Believe me, you need to read it. Thank you.

Ryan Call

I just park the cars, ma’m

In my search for a suitable image to place at the head of next week’s A Public Space giveaway post (issues 2-6, so look out for that), I discovered this video at Urban Prankster, which documents a project in 1994 that several artists organized at Southwestern College in Chula Vista.

On August 31, 1994 from 6am to noon, a team of 50 professional and volunteer parking attendants directed the arriving cars to predetermined lots according to car color. Each of the fourteen lots was filled with cars of a different color: dark blue, blue, light metallic blue, silver & gray, black, beige, brown, metallic raspberry, yellow, electric blue, white, aqua, green and red

Basically, they color-coded all the parking lots and had people park their cars according to some chart or something. It reminded me of Chris Cobb’s project in Adobe Books, but instead, like, with cars and lots of people and orange traffic vests and awkward interviews.

My favorite part of the video might be at 2:29, though some of the other things people say about the project are pretty funny. I can’t get the video to embed, so just click the link below.

Carpark by Mark Tribe

Random / 6 Comments
May 15th, 2009 / 6:58 pm

Justin Taylor

Tomorrow is LitCrawl NYC (!!!!)

This is just a friendly reminder that tomorrow night is LitCrawl NYC, masterminded by Opium master-chef Todd Zuniga, and sponsored by Harper Perennial and LitQuake (the SFCA literary festival, gone bicoastal). The promotional bookmarks they gave me promise 40 authors giving 11 readings over the course of 2 hours, to be followed by 1 afterparty. Phase 1 begins at 7 Pm and is the East Village Phase. My top picks for this round are either Muumuu House at Botanica (readers are Zachary German, Brandon Scott Gorrell and Abigail Lloyd) or Harper Perennial’s “Silk Ties vs. Black Eyes” at the KGB, where my man Tony O’Neill will be teaming up with Simon van Booy for a nnight of “sartorial and pharmacological trivia.” Sure, why not? Phase 2 is the Lower East Side Phase, and begins at 8 PM. (The idea is you bolt from one thing to the next, bar-crawl style.) This time there’s a clear favorite choice. Is it Opium’s trademark OpiumLive show at Happy Ending? No. Is it the Gigantic magazine microeading at Home Sweet Home, featuring Ben Blum, Shane Jones, Tao Lin, and more? Almost…but no. I’m going to have to go ahead and nominate the New York Tyrant reading at Fontana’s, featuring Robert Lopez and…who is that other guy? Oh yeah! It’s me. Gian (aka Mr. Tyrant) tells me they’ve got it set up so Lopez and I will be on a balcony, reading down to/at/on the crowd, like a true tyrant addressing his loyal subjects, possibly while deciding how many of them to slaughter. Does fun get funner than this? Only at the afterparty, which is ALSO at Fontana’s, so if you come to the NyTy reading you get the double bonus of already being where the blow-out’s at. To see the full schedule, including complete list of readers and directions to all the bars, click here.

Uncategorized / 4 Comments
May 15th, 2009 / 5:47 pm

Excerpt from “The Agonized Face” by Mary Gaitskill

On one of those long-ago assignments, I had interviewed a topless dancer, a desiccated blonde with desperate intelligence burning in her otherwise-lusterless eyes. She was big on Hegel and Nietzsche and she talked about the power of beautiful girls versus the power of men with money. READ MORE >

Excerpts / 17 Comments
May 15th, 2009 / 4:34 pm

Reviews & Web Hype

Ryan Call

Houston Indie Book Festival: A Review by Kirby Johnson

hibf-300px 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.

Surrealism case studies: video game glitches

I’m fascinated with video game glitches, especially in POV games, given their inherent ‘narrative’ orientation. What makes video games so evocative is the pristine artifice and utilitarian rendering; and when transgressed by a coding glitch, is very unsettling. I find the inadvertent surrealism in the clips below uncanny, humorous, and ‘anti-brilliant.’ It begs the question: if accidents are where the really good ideas are — full of, strangely, more ‘natural’ logic — then what the hell is a writer supposed to do?

Case No. 1:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VK9lS0rE0uY&feature=related

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.

Web Hype / 93 Comments
May 14th, 2009 / 6:54 pm

Adam Robinson

Whoa!

whoa1 Hey World, how’s it going? Oh? Great, I’m glad to hear it. Um . . . this is just a little thing, please don’t worry about it, uh . . . but, yeah, it’s spelled W-H-O-A. Everywhere I look lately it’s misspelled and I wasn’t going to say anything, but it’s so awfully ugly with the “h” at the end.

No, no. This is more embarrassing for me than it is for you. No seriously, I’m the one who should be sorry. I just, well, I just thought if I was making such a silly blunder I would want someone to tell me. That’s right, World, “Whoa.”

Okay, cool. See you around.

Mean / 25 Comments
May 14th, 2009 / 4:58 pm