Shattered Wig #28

Shattered Wig #28
Coming In November!

Saturday, February 27, 2010

Reading March 6th With Barbara DeCesare



SATURDAY MAR 6TH--the corner of poetry and main

features Rupert Wondolowski and Barbara DeCesare, plus open mic. hosted by cliff lynn
Type:
Date:
Saturday, March 6, 2010
Time:
6:30pm - 9:00pm
Location:
Starbucks below the Maryland Inn at the top of Main St.
Street:
Main St.
City/Town:
Annapolis, MD

Description

The story of Barbara DeCesare (not her real name) is the history of flight. Or that of the building of walls, followed by deep, long, intoxicating staring at walls. A precocious child, she often beat Teddy Roosevelt at various games of chance and was rumored to have coined the urban phrase “mos def” when she was enchanted with her Uncle Moe’s poor hearing.

Her vivacious nature, blinding smile like a morning field in spring and quick wit have often elicited the response “Surely you are not a poet!” when she is queried about her vocation. Once a week the ghost of Sylvia Plath haunts Barbara’s drainpipe and implores her to at least try to perhaps mewl a little or slunk around in a black turtleneck listening to early Simon and Garfunkel.

DeCesare has had work published in over 45 journals, including the Pulitzer Prize and Edgar Award winning Shattered Wig Review, and one of those pieces starts off with the words “Your urologist”, which I find brave and refreshing.

When critics discuss her work the word “thunder” tends to pop up a lot. She is the author of JigSawEyeSore, was the 98 Rock Poet Laureate and has been featured in hundreds of venues nationwide including the Philadelphia Fringe Festival and the Baltimore Museum of Art, where her lectures on Italian Futurism were met with both nervous languor and amorous disdain.

She somehow also finds time to co-host the reading series Upward Spiral where the readers afterwards are thrown to starving pit bulls, raise three children and work in the field of law, all while wearing scintillating pumps. If it was all left up to her, though, she would probably throw it all over to just kick back and play board games at David Fair’s house.

Although she has no recorded albums - other than a really great spoken word cd, Adrift - the official newsletter of the Holy See, L’Osservatore Romano, called her one of the top ten pop vocalists of the 21st century. If you hear her words and do not feel the deep vibrations of the human condition you probably run around your broke ass house at night wearing the skin of dead people.

Rupert Wondolowski (not his real name) attended University of Art School off and on in the 1980s. When he finally graduated, he was presented with an antique cheese log with magical properties. He has used the log's powers to bring him great literary fortune and find himself a hell of a swell little lady.

Best known for chasing pesky children away from the front of Normals Bookstore in Baltimore, Rupert established himself as a visionary by perfecting the convection method of popping corn and inventing the Soul Patch.

Rupert's writing is a blend of Corso, ouzo, and Groucho. You've heard him on The Signal and you love him at Shattered Wig. He's the author of, most recently, The Origin of Paranoia as a Heated Mole Suit (Publishing Genius, 2009). It's a brilliant book. Did you get one yet? I know! It's great!

Mr. Wondolowski plans to read topless.

Saturday, February 20, 2010

Kim Jong Peeps



In addition to this being the Year of Love and the Year of the House and the Year of Work Ulcer, it has also surely been the year of Our Dear Leader Kim Jong Il! While I am sweating (actually freezing) my tender slag cheeks at retail without heat in the store because the soon-to-be-new landlord's work crew accidentally cut off the power line to our heating system, putting down workers' insurrections and placing buckets under roof leaks from the monstrous snow, my sweetie has been out making a marshmallow Peeps diorama! Where is the justice in this cruel world? Most likely she has also met like the world's greatest Peep diorama maker who is a raging geek yet also a smoldering lothario beneath all his still living with mom slight rankiness.

If I come home to her licking Pixie Stix dust off his ivory mole belly I will surely move to one of those Earthship abodes in New Mexico.

But tomorrow I have coerced fine artist and mensch Matt Bovie to help me finally finish off my Epic Charles Village move that has left me stooped and impacted with dust for the remainder of my days. And then I get to go to the Creative Alliance and see my haunted moon face in Michael Kimball and Luca Depierro's new movie "60 Writers/60 Places". My part was actually shot the day after I asked Everly to marry me and about one hour or so after I told her my one dark secret (and no it has nothing to do with std's), so I'm very curious to see if my altered state is visible.

Monday, February 8, 2010

Monstrous Snow Smashes 60 Writers



The kindly Michael Kimball was charitable and wise enough to include myself and Blaster Al Ackerman in his and Luca Dipierro's new film "60 Writers/60 Places". I got to read my poem "On Wallowing and Rapture" in front of the very diner that Barry Levinson shot his film that launched Mickey Rourke into the Public's Eye and Blaster did a Pepper Young translation in the legendary Red Room.

"60 Writers" was set for its Baltimore premiere at the Creative Alliance last Friday until the tumultuous snow event struck. It's now re-scheduled for Sunday, February 21st. It will show along with Michael and Luca's earlier film "I Will Smash You". Below is a link to information about the films and screening with great posters.

http://www.littleburnfilms.com/screenings.html

Saturday, February 6, 2010

28 Inches Or So of Slack

This year has been nothing if not epic. A country that sat still for an eight year coup by a rich Texas spoiled brat elected its first black president. The economy still tanking almost as bad as The Great Depression from the Texas brat not giving a shit about anything other than war and filling his buddies' pockets (okay, he does seem to have helped diminish AIDS in Africa, but I'm sure there must be some creepy diabolical reason behind it. Like the pesticide company here in Maryland selling all its assets to go into selling pills to women with breast cancer, an illness more and more linked with pesticides.) A once seemingly proud nation displays its greatest rage over attempts at getting health care for an uncovered populace of epidemic proportions.

Haiti getting slammed to an Old Testament degree.

John Fahey successor Jack Rose dying tragically young, followed by Sir George Rickels and poet performance artist, prankster David Franks.

And I fell in love and bought a house. Surely the gods are angry. As I've muled books and records steadily for weeks now I've constantly felt the shifting of the earth beneath me - a race between setting up a refuge before the wrecking ball comes for me like it's come for so many others. To think I chose journalism as a major in college over acting because I thought journalism was a more stable choice. To think I then chose English instead. To think I bothered to even go to college. Owning a house I now know it's the plumbers and carpenters who rule the world.

Now when we are almost moved in, the pristine white walls starting to dot with friends' artwork, the windows starting to cover with blinds shielding the innocent passerby from our Swan Lakes of domestic squalor, the Great Snowzilla stomps upon our puny plans and lives. BWI reported 26.5 inches early this morning with a projected 4 to 8 additional to come. Apparently the most recent record snowfall was 2003, but I barely recall that one. I thought there had been a huge one in 1996, but that just might be a reflection of my level of poverty and anxiety at the time causing me to feel it as relatively larger. I did get inspired to write the song "Chinese Food" for the group I was in, Little Gruntpack, from the grouchy old woman who lived above me and Pope living on Chinese food deliveries during that big storm. I'll never forget when I first moved into Pope's and the old woman knocked on his door to ask in her spectral voice if he knew why roaches went from one end of the bed to the other. "Hhhmmm, uuhhmmmm," Pope answered in his gravely Tom Waits mumble. "I guess to reach the other side."

And I have a childhood memory of one in the early '60s hitting on the same day that the "Batman" show starring Adam West premiered. I remember looking out the sliding glass door at my older brothers playing in what I thought was snow higher than my head. Wanting to be out there, but not wanting to miss Batman either.

And after the initial anxiety worrying about the closed up store and the unfinished move it was a relief to walk wide shut down streets almost completely free of traffic except for the occasional monster truck, exotic snowmobile and weenie operated Humvee, Max running gleefully off the leash. Everly and I have had two weeks together in the house without really being able to be together except at night when we crashed exhausted. Juggling schedules for car use being home for various appliance deliveries or phantom plumbers and now a record snow of over 26 inches is gracing us "free" time by paralyzing our outer world.

And nothing beats a snow emergency for meeting new neighbors. Everyone parading - Everly in her Mayor Snow Bunny brightly striped clown pyjamas, me in her floppy eared shaggy blonde fur hat that looks like (as Mike of Sri Aurobindo pointed out) the hair of Bruce Vilanch - in the novelty. The secret joys of apocalypse without the nasty trimmings (well, unless you're sick and/or aged living alone, or your power went out and you have no food. Or you have no lodging for that matter.) All the daily repetition has momentarily been buried by a blanket and you can see your old surroundings with new eyes. People walking up and down Hartford Road hailing each other and exchanging news on what few things are open - the tobacco shop and the liquor store. One guy saying he's going to make $300 tomorrow shoveling when the snow is completely done and people want to get on with their lives.

Then home again, to a house where the roof is only a year old and has held up and the power has remained on. Time to spin some hidden gold vinyl that had been buried and left behind in the attic of Everly's old place by former tenants - The Staple Singers on VeeJay, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee's "Folk Songs" and the J.B.'s "Doing It To Death".

Life can be very good indeed. Now if only Everly would realize the true genius of "Green Acres".

Monday, February 1, 2010

A Shattered Wig Night Oasis - 1/29/10

Courtney McCullough of the Lockhorns with artist
and 14 Karat Cabaret overlord genius Laure Drogoul.


Goodloe Byron, author of The Abstract and
Revisions Of, reading from his forthcoming free
book, The Wraith.


Blaster Al Ackerman with Geff Stewart and Beth Dinsick



Geff "Soft Serve" Stewart getting spiritual with it.









Courtney doing Lockhorns solo.






Poets Tom DiVenti and Chris Toll.







Actor, model, dancer, writer, Billy Bob Thornton look-
alike John Eaton on the left with artist and musician
Scott Larson.






Amanda Copeland of Sea Couch.









Dan Dorsey of Sea Couch and one of the Pasadena
music mafia. How the hell so many good musicians came
out of that hellhole in the same generation is a mystery
on the scale of "Village of the Damned".




















Tears of joy and gratitude for John Dierker and his work.












Redbird getting up to some pre-set snugglin'.












Amanda Pollock of Redbird, formerly of Velvet Mafia and Cloaca.












Now I never served in Falluja or Nam or been a native in those places living sleepless in fear avoiding death by lead or fire volleys, thank God, nor have I served in the Red Cross during one of the many incidents that wipes countless humans off the Earth like a half asleep waitress wiping a coffee spattered lunch counter, nor have I shivered through nights of hypothermia in a small embankment up on an impassable mountain crag, but goddamned I'm freaking tired. And I never say "freaking". "Fucking" just seems so un-blog-like.

Four months of brain and soul penetration by a mortgage company to prove I am of standard enough fleshly issue to own a house, and a great great house it is with singing hardwood floors and jaunty one year old roof, followed by two weeks of muling two apartment loads of books and records has my yarbles and my lower lip dragging the pavement. Please, kind sir, a week of no moving, no work drama/collapse and no friends dying so I can get my dull on and spend all seven of those sweet days floating away on our new woolly mammoth of a couch reading book after book that I just packed and unpacked. Such sweet marvels, many that I'd forgotten!

That said, in the middle of this oddly domestic period of bliss mixed with crippling stiffness landed a Shattered Wig Night of Extreme Warmth and Grandeur. Not only did an old friend and former Baltimore rock star/provocateur/stream of consciousness wizard/wearer of supremely unique hubble jubble clothing Amanda Pollock descend from the Great North to play with her new duo Redbird, but Lockhorn songwriter and singer and old old friend of Normal's and Shattered Wig, Courtney McCullough, got flown in for his 50th birthday by his wife and mother.

My giddy feelings of love for Courtney and all the other acts on the bill this night could fill more Harlequin romances than your Aunt Padonia Road contains in her dumbwaiter. We got a huge crowd also, despite part of Saratoga St. being iced over by a broken water main and a huge huge show at the G Spot.

The night ended for me with a Time Machine moment when I was waiting for Courtney to arrive back from closing up the Mount Royal Tavern after the show so he could break in our new couch. We had attempted to find a bed at IKEA in time for his arrival, but we both were so fuddled from fatigue and IKEA's maddening mix and match overlit showrooms that we bolted after woofing down their cafeteria carbo-load wares (saving two of the rubbery "Swedish" meatballs for Max in napkins in my coat pocket).

I let Courtney in about 2:30 or so and he walked in holding Amanda's moon boots and looking sheepish. I was transported back 15 years or so except I should have been in Courtney's place. Asking him what was up he pointed down the shadowy street (lined with all our new unknown neighbors) to a graying ragtag post-bar time party headed our way.

Hopefully this show struck for others as it did me old roads and loves and the new and upcoming. But like watching "To Sir With Love" the first time and losing it when Lulu has her moment, this night was so tender it hurt.