I Got My Ass Whupped By Gertie Stein

Well I am happy to say I'm included in the new City Lit anthology - City Sages: Baltimore with the likes of Poe, Mencken, Michael "Hot Lips" Kimball, Joe "Swan's Neck" Young, Laura Lippman, Mad Bell and many other fantastic Baltimore writers living and dead, but I had to eat humble pie or crow pie or gelatinous bladder legume when the Baltimore Sun Read Street blog decided to promote the publication by pitting the book's authors gladiator style in a popularity contest.

I am happy and proud to say I appeared up against my old inspiration and mentor Gertrude Stein, pictured above in front of Old Glory which she actually sensibly left behind for the sensual pleasures of France. My favorite story of her and Alice in France was that when young Paul Bowles came star struck to meet them Gertrude would have him wear shorts and lederhosen each morning and then have him wash their poodle Basket and afterwards run Basket up and down the yard to dry him (or her) while Gertrude and Alice watched giggling from an upstairs window. Much more perverse and fun than Poppa Hemingway's need to go off into the wilds of Africa to shoot big beautiful things.

Anyway, I got my ass kicked in the voting. Gerty got in the twenties and I got four. And the salt in the wound is they used this photo of myself from an old Sun article about Normal's where they had me pose nerd-like on a stool hovering moon-like. I had submitted to them my recent author photo in a bandana astride my Harley, but I suppose the lighting was off on it.

But to be fair to myself, I have to say I didn't vote and my beloved Everly thought the voting was today, not yesterday, so her vote wasn't tallied. But then again the sacred and profane art of writing isn't about getting done up in gowns and singing on a gaudy stage for rich fatcats in slipping dentures, damnit!!! We struggle and create alone in darkness in order to squeeze out a few sparks of lasting pulchritude and then we keel over from eating poorly and our relatives sell our junk at a yardsale and discuss how our toenails at the time of our passing resembled long curling tendrils of banana peels.

I think the living writer who got the harshest deal in this cruel event was Michael Kimball who was up against Frederick Douglass for Christ sake! Not only up against a time tested author of moving historical tracts, but the representative of an entire Freedom Struggle. Yowch.

Here is the link to more info on City Sages: Baltimore, which won't be in stores until May:
http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/books/blog/2010/04/citylit_festival_this_weekend.html

I love you Gerty and Fernhurst Q.E.D. and Others changed my life.