HTMLGIANT BACK
Hello! It has been ages! Well, not literally ages, like, you know, ages, but like a LONG TIME! Five years to be exact! Actually, I am not being exact! If I was being exact I would say 1893 days! I have been keeping track of this in a Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet!
Wow I really need to learn how to use Microsoft Excel to its full potential!
Anyway, GENE AND BLAKE are saying goodbye to HTMLGIANT and therefore have opened up posting to all of HTMLGIANT’S former members! Whoaaaaa! It is like a GHOST PARTY in here! Or it is like that scene in Metal Gear Solid 3: THE ONE IN THE JUNGLE NOT THE ONE IN THE INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX LIKE THE OTHERS where you have to walk down that path with all of the dudes that you killed except they are ghosts! You may think that I am using a lot of exclamation points but it is actually because I am no good at Metal Gear Solid! and I keep getting! discovered! snake? snaaaaaaaake!?
ANYWAY how is everyone!? Do you all have twitter now? I hope so! Are we on ello? Haha just kidding I know you’re on ello even though no one knows how it works! The internet has gotten really weird since HTMLGIANT launched! How is your book? Oh that’s good! I’m sure it’ll get picked up right away. I believe in you!
This is where I get nostalgic! The internet was super magic back in 2009! No one really knew what writing was! Or there were independent presses out there! Or that every single day of the Internet has kind of turned into AWP CONSTANT WHEEL OF SADNESS, INTERNET, INTERNET with all of these voices and ways to express them! Writing was just some thing we did because we were kids who grew up making up stories in our heads and at some point we thought it’d be a good idea to write them down! Sometimes I feel like writing is the scene in the sports movie (do you watch sports? do you watch sports movies? you should really start they are great! both the sports and the sports movies! you might not understand the sports movies if you do not understand sports but that never stopped anyone from comprehending the human condition am I right?) where the star player (that’s you!) is feeling really down because he is not making super awesome basketball shots or super awesome touchdowns (ROLL TIDE) and at some point they have to remember what it was about the game that they fell in love with in the first place! And then they go out to the park and meet some ruffian teenagers who are just playing 4 the LOVE of the GAME! And then they regain their smile and go out into the world and win CHAMPIONSHIPS!
Sometimes there is a lot of digital noise when you are thinking about ‘being a writer’ and it can be super discouraging! I’m not saying that HTMLGIANT didn’t add to the white noise symphony (lol what did i just type (c) brian oliu) but it was a pretty nice beacon at times! I know it was for me! It is something that I am super thankful for and even though it wasn’t the best days of my life like that dido song (no not white flag the other one that was sampled in that m&ms song) it was pretty great to see in a weird vast sea of vastness because good lord that Microsoft Word document (two plugs for MS Word someone buy me a copy of Microsoft BOB if you are reading this, Microsoft) is absolutely terrifying when it is blank and extra horrifying when it is NOT blank and you have this thing that came out of your head and your heart and you are just like ‘what is this what do i do this how do i do this’! And this was a place where there were people like BLAKE and GENE and ROXANE and DONORA and MARK and MIKE and KYLE and MATT and JESSE and CATHERINE and JJ BARREA and SNACKPACK who were earnest and honest about writing and publishing and what it was to do these things in a magical world of land! Wow.
GOODBYE HTMLGIANT may you be like one of the stars in the background of your Web 2.0 design and shine brightly above us until you burn out and explode into a whole bunch of weird nothingness when website hosting dues come around because I’m pretty sure that’s how astronomy works but who knows because space is a mystery and so is writing on the internet but y’all made it less so and maybe Chelsea’s baby image of me won’t be one of the first images that comes up when you image search my name on google because that scared my mom once and she wondered if there was a way to take it off
xo
Brian Oliu, famous writer
Black Warrior Review Fifth-Ever Contest
BWR is awesome and you know it. Extra bonus, check out those judges! Sexxxy!!! (with three xs and three !s)
READ MORE >
Pick it up. Pick it up. Pick it up. Pick it up.
Hey do you remember ska? I do! It was SO GOOD. My parents were all like ‘don’t listen to that razzamatazz!’ and I was like ‘but mom there are HORNS in there!’ and she’s like ‘well, can’t argue with a good horn section…’ and then this gave her the opportunity to make me listen to Herb Alpert’s Tijuana Brass and then I saw the album cover and my eyes were all like ‘boinnnnng!’
I started listening to ska because Melissa Napoleon (happy Bastille Day btw) had a patch on her Jansport that covered up the Jansport that said ‘SKA’ on it! At first I thought it meant SKATE or POLSKA but nope! So I went to the Princeton Record Exchange and bought three albums! Skankin’ Pickle – The Green Album! Fugazi – Repeater +3 Songs! Gorilla Biscuits – Start Today! Two of them changed my life! One of them did not!
Either way, we can all laugh about it now! (Literary Ska-Band Names: David Foster Skalas, The National Books Critic’s Circle Skaward, One Hundred Years of Ska-litude)
Except for SOMEONE WE KNOW. Yes, Pitchfork Media, the Internet equivalent to that one friend who is kind of a douche but sometimes suggests decent stuff except when they went on that art-noise kick (ew!) had a layout change a few months ago. In this giant html htmlgiant-like facelift, they did a little bit of housekeeping, including eliminating the 9.5 review they gave of Save Ferris’ debut album ‘It Means Everything’. A 9.5! Wha! You remember those guys! They were famous for being mis-identified as No Doubt when you downloaded their feel-good cover of ‘Come On Eileen’ off of Napster! They had a song called ‘Spam’ that was about ‘Spam’ the meat not ‘Spam’ the email! 9.5!
Seriously…the review exists (it was one of the super short ones way back when) and is absolutely nowhere to be found on the Interwebs; a link from Wikipedia is dead. We at Le Giant are no stranger to unpublishing and the risks of publication online, but this is a conspiracy like that conspiracy movie! If you can find this review it needs to be saved 4ever! SAVE SAVE FERRIS
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July 14th, 2009 / 7:47 pm
July 14th, 2009 / 7:47 pm
Poetry! In MOTION!
Hey nerds! Guess what I did this weekend? I played BASKETBALL which is a sport! Also, I watched SOCCER which is also a sport! Also I watched GOLF which may or may not be a sport! but it probably is a sport!
Which got me thinkin about WASHINGTON WIZARDS POWERFORWARDS! Mostly Oleksiy Pecherov but also Etan Thomas! He has a book of poetry called ‘More Than an Athlete‘ which I can totally relate to because while I am a WRITER I am MORE Than a Writer! I am also a man who can make an occasional lay-up (that is when you shoot the basketball from very close range off of the backboard and it goes through the hoop and then you get a high five!) and an occasional grilled cheese sandwich!
Other favorite books of poetry by athletes:
Mike Tyson – Heartsongs
Charles Barkley – Every Angel is Turrible
Tiger Woods – Dare Thy Fearful Symmetry: Poems About Augusta
Darryl Strawberry – Strawberries in Heaven: Translations from Grzegorz Musial
Nice work gentlemen! If only Lauren Conrad could hoop it up; she’d be the ultimate TRIPLE THREAT!
You Must Be This Tall To Ride Anthology
Folks,
A new anthology, called ‘You Must Be This Tall To Ride’ is a collection of ‘Coming of Age’ stories (fiction and nonfiction alike) and includes some nuclear writers such as Michael Martone, Aimee Bender, Dan Chaon, Kate Bernheimer, Stuart Dybek, etc etc etc. Furthermore for all you teacher folks out there, each story includes a ‘craft essay’ which explains the process of writing these stories which can prove beneficial to your little aspiring Stephanie Meyers.
In other words, this thing rocks; more info (and submission guidelines for book version 2.0) at http://www.youmustbethistalltoride.net/
Poet Craig Arnold Missing in Japan
Hey all. Not exactly an upper, but I received this e-mail from a friend and it seems like an apt place to use our powers for good (!) and get the word out.
The poet Craig Arnold is currently in Japan with the U.S.-Japan Friendship Commission’s U.S.-Japan Creative Artists Exchange Fellowship and has been missing since April 26th (evening Monday April 27th Japanese time).
Poetry.com. You know you were a semi-finalist.
Did you know that poetry.com‘s database is SEARCHABLE? Well guess what, Internet? IT IS. Welcome to terrordome.
When I was 16 I sent a poem to them through bolt.com (anyone remember bolt.com? Social networking v.08 BETA…I was a bolt.com all-star, FYI…much less success on makeoutclub.com; did not like Coalesce…sad, so sad.) and it was from the point of view of a fortune cookie! But you didn’t KNOW it was a fortune cookie! Whaaaaaaat? I know, right? I was one mysterious poet!
Anyway, I totally was a SEMI-FINALIST and they were going to publish me in their MONTHLY ANTHOLOGY for like $45.00 and I was so psyched! Fortunately my parents did not believe in eCommerce at the time (shout-out to Patricia and Ed) and so I never got to see my poem in its Times New Roman 12-point double-spaced center-justified glory! This is why I write nonfiction today, no matter what Albert Goldbarth sez.
So, yeah, their database is searchable; plug your name in, hold your breath, and hope that you submitted too early for internet-foreverdom. Also, they have ‘POETRY REFERENCE’…’Need Help Rhyming?’ WHY YES I DO! Thanks for asking poetry.com! What rhymes with BLOODY?
Please God, Let This Be Real.
Hello. By now you should understand my schtick here on HTMLGIANT (and abroad!) but there is no hyperbole necessary to display to you the awesomeness that is THIS.
It is my job to come up with a SNARKY COMMENT, but…I…can’t.
Okay…just one. I fear posting about this because when I see HTML coding like that, it makes me think of the Heaven’s Gate website (they were webdesigners, you know…I’m being totally serious…THANKS FOR RUINING THE NIKE CORTEZ FOR US APPLEWHITE!) and I’m scared that they’re going to find me and carve a poorly assembled chapbook with no central theme with the exception of ‘SPACE!’ into my chest and how am I going to explain that the next time I am with a woman?
In other words, bodybackground=”#FEFDD6″ FONT-FAMILY: MSCOMICSANS scares the shit out of me.
So enjoy(?)
Bacon Explosion Wins A Book Prize!
Yes it is true! The Bacon Explosion has won a BOOK PRIZE which is something that ALL of us want! It just goes to show that BACON > US! I hear that The Bacon Explosion has quite a way with language and its work was called “elegant and lucid, emotionally charged and precisely controlled,” by the National Book Critics Circle! And that’s a circle I don’t want to mess with! Hooray for Bacon Explosion! AND the Bacon Explosion didn’t even have to die of liver failure like Roberto Bolaño to win this award! Because everyone knows that the Bacon Explosion CAN’T DIE! The Bacon Explosion was the inspiration for the modern children’s classic ‘Tuck Everlasting’! It is the perfect example of humanity’s awareness of our own mortality and makes us comprehend our role in the world! It’s so sad at the end of the book when the Bacon Explosion stands over Winnie’s grave! It’s so ironic that we all want to live forever, but then when we do, we’re all like ‘no i don’t want to live forever!’ and then it’s kind of like that BORGES story where Connor MacLeod fights his first battle in the Scottish Highlands in 1536, but fights his greatest battle on the streets of New York City in 1986!
“Castle” ABC TV Series! It’s about WRITERS and MURDER!
I love the television show LOST! (no, really! the show’s title is actually in all-caps! this isn’t part of my MEME or my writerly VOICE which you are trying to STIFLE! what is this an undergraduate poetry workshop?) If you haven’t heard of LOST it’s about people who are LOST on an island! They also might be LOST in their own LIVES, but I’m not sure!
Anyway, during LOST they’ve been showing promos for a new TV show called CASTLE which stars the guy from the last season of Buffy The Vampire Slayer (Sarah Michelle Gellar STAND UP!) and I am sooooooooooo excited for it because another one of my favorite TV shows is HOUSE which is also a show where the main character is also named after a shelter or building that is a dwelling or place for habitation by human beings and is ALSO the name of the show! Wow! I feel at HOME already! LOL (did you get that joke?)
Get this! RICHARD CASTLE is a WRITER who helps solve MURDERS! Whaaaaaat? What do writers know about MURDER? (except for street poet SHYNE, FREE SHYNE Y’ALL SKIDDLY WHOAAAA)