Shattered Wig Press

New Blaster Al Ackerman Drawing!

2012-01-26T13:45:00.000-08:00

Out of Memory At Line 21 (for David Franks) by Chris Toll

2012-01-25T10:13:00.000-08:00

Out of Memory at Line 21
for David Franks
by Chris Toll

A Nazi flying saucer
is stored in Hangar 18.
An ex-cop ex-con
pilots the flying saucer
to a planet
on the other side of the galaxy.
He extracts poison
from an imprisoned equation.
Satan is an agnostic,
I build my mansion
in the valley of the shadow of death,
and nothing is impossible at 3 a.m.
An ex-circus strongwoman
picks the lock of a door.
An ex-MI5 operative
hands a syringe
to an ex-Homeland Security special agent.
She bends over a bed.
The Word is my leopard
and your shoes are constellations.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Chris Toll and his wife live in a castle in the Black Forest. They are invisible. They practice benevolent magic, and they are striving to uncreate certain horrors of the 20th Century.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

We have lost some giants the last few years. One of the biggest locally was the poet and prankster David Franks, who is also suspected to have been the Poe Toaster. Since his death it was the first year that no one showed at Poe's gravesite.

Alan Parsons Winter Wonderland

2011-12-19T19:10:00.000-08:00

Great Grandaddy song.

I Am Convinced That People Can Walk Through Walls

2011-12-15T21:27:00.001-08:00

Amazing scene from "The Ninth Configuration" that I first heard about through Rocco Randy George McWilliams long long ago.

More Book and Record Stores of the South

2011-12-06T20:35:00.001-08:00

(Above is Jim Adams, proprietor and kind Bookman of Books Again)

It's a weird scene when you find yourself inside a bookstore defending books against the guy working behind the counter at the bookstore. But then, the store was closing and nestled like a hypo in a box of cotton balls in yet another strip mall in the exurbs? of Atlanta.

I got all hyped up when Everly and I pulled into the generic parking lot, got a space right in front of the bookstore that was close to Everly's sister's house and saw the closing sale sign in the window. Of course I first bowed my head and said a prayer for another fallen book soldier, but then again I was far afield from my home turf and perhaps I'd be able to feast on a stranger's misfortune.

But the friendly gent behind the counter seemed only minutes away from perhaps setting a match to all the glorious paper and strapping on his jetpack to go get in on some Wii (no disrespect to jetpacks or Wii. My little nephew Jackson kicked my ass severely at Mario Cart while Everly and I were visiting and I enjoyed every moment of it, except when Jackson yelled out "Sad Old Man!"). He excitedly told me how he had long ago gotten rid of all his books, records and cds and felt a trememdous liberation from it. Then a customer - who was buying books! - came up and happily told how her husband was a teacher and soon there would not be a single book in the school system.

Well, different strokes, folks, different strokes. Neither of these two book hatin' creatures who would soon slide into only cursory slothful scanning of cyber ink on a screen, easily skipping through parts they didn't like or understand, looked particularly liberated or unfettered, but then again I was doing my very best at the time to keep from having my bookstore loving induced BM while holding a big batch of paperbacks on the Muslim faith.

Apparently this store, "Once Again" - I have to say that overall book and record stores that we hit down South didn't have the most imaginative names - was one of a small chain and this particular location had never done too well from the get go. It definitely seemed to target the more upscale, but not necessarily deep bibliophile. Even with the 20% off a lot of the books were barely at half price and they had no hardback literature other than a few Franklin Library type leather bound items and some mainly bestselling crime novels in their bargain bins.

I did find a mint hardback of The Selected Stories of Patricia Highsmith (Hail The Dark Master!) and an early Modern Library hardback of Joyce's Ulysses in their small bargain area, though. Plus a few obscure books on Islam and Freemasonry.

But even degenerates clinging to old forms of physical culture can't live on boards and wraps alone while vacationing. In between book and record stores we hung out with the family - Missy and Dan and the kids, Jackson and Laurel. There is yet to be a photo taken by even the most wall-eyed nabob with a disposable camera that doesn't capture the powerful sunrays emitting from these folks. I bet they're even happy early in the morning, but that is only something I can speculate on, it being the strictest rule of my religious beliefs that I not rise before 9:30 unless to begin a trip or walk down to the beach or Grand Canyon. Luckily, Waffle Houses are still open 24 hours despite Kid Rock brawls and hoods using them as driveby ATMs.

When I successfully followed Missy's vehicle through a long stretch of terrifying Atlanta superhighway and we made it into Decatur and I saw this beautiful mural featuring The Ramones, I knew the day was going to get even better.

The main shopping drag of the area had some really cool looking ethnic restaurants and we popped into a shop that sold new kids' books and some toys. Jackson honed right in on a police car toy and Laurel began playing with the toy train village in the back. I not only saw that there was a beautiful new annotated hardback 50th Anniversary edition of the wondrous Phantom Tollbooth, but I also got to see a book clerk break into loud Broadway show-type singing in the middle of the store.

Once the kids got their fix, Missy took us wandering slightly off the beaten track to a book store she said she always drove by thinking I'd like it - Books Again.

This is the view when you first walk in. The kindly owner had just taken in a deaf white long-haired cat who I bonded with around the new arrivals. I immediately saw a hardback of Pasolini's Collected Poems and some nice philosophy in the new arrival area, so my spider senses were tingling.

Hours later when Missy and the kids were long gone and back home and Everly was done with her day at the Librarians' conference I was still working my way through the literature. Tons of Simenon and Highsmith firsts, an Arthur Clarke on Gnome Press and signed Paul Bowles! Needless to say, I'd used the available back bathroom twice and had disrobed down to my tee-shirt (with pants).

Come checkout time I had a long talk with the friendly proprietor, Jim, and of course it turns out friend Kevin Johnson of Baltimore's Royal Books is a regular visitor (sadly, with far deeper pockets than myself, damn him). Talking about all his signed Bowles - including a hardback first of Mrabet's The Lemon, signed by both Bowles and Mrabet. If you haven't read Mrabet, you need to. Especially The Lemon and Love With a Few Hairs - he told me that Bowles had come to Atlanta when he was a fairly elderly man for health reasons.

I left this fine shop two boxes of books heavier and snapped the photo at the top of this post of the shop's owner. I will hopefully get back there around Christmas when they have their December specials.

I can thank or blame Everly for getting me to legendary Wuxtry Records. It was rush hour time when we finally left Books Again and Missy had advised her that we'd be better off spending more time in Decatur before venturing back onto the snakepit superhighway.

I'd been to Wuxtry's Athens location many times many years ago, when my wig was large and cottony like that of Athens native Herr Stipe. This location did not seem quite as hopping as I remembered their Athens location. In fact a great deal of their rock section had the air of not having moved since the '90s. BUT! they have a wide, nice selection and I found some fantastic stuff in their international areas, particularly Brazilian. The guy behind the counter was even nice enough to psychically know my favorite New Wave/Punk album, putting on X-Ray Specs when I asked him if they had a separate area for Punk Rock.

It would have taken many more hours to go through all their rock, soul and jazz and Everly had been patient enough (even being so cool as to score me one of Wuxtry's t-shirts when I wasn't looking. She got it as a Christmas present for me, but broke down and gave it to me a few nights ago when I was wading in the dumps), so I had to cut myself off with a great stack of '60s and early '70s Brazilian gems, a sealed blues record on the Victoria Spivey label and a strange ambient noise album of a group called Twilight Memories of the Three Suns recorded live in Baltimore!!! How could I possibly leave that behind?

You Hear That by Blaster Al Ackerman

2011-12-06T16:48:00.000-08:00

you were giving me a ride someplace
that didn't pan out, the movies I think
but that closet's too dribbly to go to the movie
you hear that
Words mean nothing to such a game of wetness and
that's why cats faint as they learn that who made us
if not he who made the big purple heads
is like a wet dream of thought now willed
that can make a new being made of elements
which cannot be identified, only spent.
You hear that?
Words mean nothing to such a thing
These transitional expressions really can not be real
Now it seems to have disappeared
No, wait. It seems to be coming back again, a little
But it's becoming broken like a fruitcake
It's dreaming all the while like the blackness of sleep
But what is this? You say sleep is black as night
And yet it seems possessed by nothing but imagination
That is the way sleep goes and we are a lot like Dryden
We cannot be correct
We haven't time

from JMB

- Blaster Al Ackerman

ClickClackGorilla

2011-11-30T18:22:00.000-08:00

Gypsy Niece Nikki finds fame off the grid. Oh how I envy her lifestyle these brutal U.S. days.

ClickClackGorilla

Literary Emissaries Take The Love to Blaster Al

2011-11-22T20:28:00.000-08:00

It seems like only yesterday that Blaster stepped off the bus and we were getting mugged together in the alley between North Ave. and the Charles Theater after re-upping on beer for the Shattered Wig Night at The Astro Chimp Impact Crater. He's now been in Austin for a year and skull shaking hallucinations just haven't been the same, not to mention life behind the counter at Normal's or up on the Shattered Wig Night stage.

But he's getting daily fresh enchiladas and basking in the Texas sun, regenerating his formidable writing machine once again. Delaware poet and Blades editor Francis Poole and Baltimore poet and archivist Megan McShea happened to both be visiting Blaster this week and Francis was kind enough to send some jpegs.

The Mud Luscious Stamp Story Anthology is Out and I'm In

2011-11-22T10:20:00.001-08:00

Arriving just in time to make me feel almost like a real writer again is the beautifully bound Mud Luscious Stamp Story Anthology with my tiny 50 word story. Order a bunch! Perfect stocking stuffer.

[ C. ] An MLP Stamp Stories Anthology is shipping now & to celebrate, we've done two things: First, we hooked up with the wonderful & freakishly good Scott Garson to create a special edition of Wigleaf, including thirteen original Stamp Stories by thirteen of our [ C. ] authors, all online & free here. Second, we are putting [ C. ] on sale for the next few days, giving you one-hundred Stamp Stories by one-hundred of the greatest contemporary writers, all for $10 with free shipping here. Good right? We thought you'd like it. So, read the special Wigleaf, order a sale copy before our deal expires, & then wait hummingly at your mailbox for the likes of some beautiful new Mud Luscious.

Stamp Stories are texts of 50 words or less, printed on 1×1 cardstock, & shipped free from participating presses. We wanted to tie together the indie press community in a vibrant yet viable way, & so this venture was born. Through 2010, we solicited stamp-sized texts from 100 authors & distributed the physical Stamp Stories through more than 40 participating presses. [ C. ] collects all of these texts into one perfect-bound edition.

Participating Authors James Tadd Adcox, Jesse Ball, Ken Baumann, Lauren Becker, Matt Bell, Kate Bernheimer, Michael Bible, Jack Boettcher, Harold Bowes, Jesse Bradley, Donald Breckenridge, Melissa Broder, Blake Butler, James Chapman, Jimmy Chen, Joshua Cohen, Peter Conners, Shome Dasgupta, Andy Devine, Giancarlo DiTrapano, Claire Donato, Elizabeth Ellen, Raymond Federman, Kathy Fish, Scott Garson, Molly Gaudry, Roxane Gay, Steven Gillis, Rachel B. Glaser, Amanda Goldblatt, Barry Graham, Amelia Gray, Sara Greenslit, Tina May Hall, Christopher Higgs, Lily Hoang, Tim Horvath, Joanna Howard, Laird Hunt, Jamie Iredell, Harold Jaffe, A D Jameson, Jac Jemc, Stephanie Johnson, Shane Jones, Drew Kalbach, Roy Kesey, Sean Kilpatrick, Michael Kimball, M. Kitchell, Robert Kloss, Darby Larson, Charles Lennox, Eugene Lim, Matthew Lippman, Norman Lock, Robert Lopez, Sean Lovelace, Josh Maday, Dave Madden, John Madera, Kendra Grant Malone, Tony Mancus, Peter Markus, Chelsea Martin, Zachary Mason, Hosho McCreesh, Alissa Nutting, Riley Michael Parker, Aimee Parkison, David Peak, Ted Pelton, Adam Peterson, Ryan Ridge, Joseph Riippi, Adam Robinson, Ethel Rohan, Joanna Ruocco, Kevin Sampsell, Selah Saterstrom, Davis Schneiderman, Zachary Schomburg, Todd Seabrook, Ben Segal, Gregory Sherl, Lydia Ship, Matthew Simmons, Justin Sirois, Amber Sparks, Ken Sparling, Ben Spivey, Michael Stewart, Terese Svoboda, Sean Ulman, Deb Olin Unferth, Timmy Waldron, William Walsh, Rupert Wondolowski, James Yeh, & Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé.

Participating Presses Artifice Magazine, Artistically Declined Press, Atticus Books, Barge, Blood Pudding Press, Blue Square Books, Calamari Press, Cow Heavy, The Cupboard, Dark Sky Books, Dzanc Books, Ellipsis Press, Fairy Tale Review, Featherproof Books, Gigantic, Greying Ghost, Hobart, The Iron Rail, Ink Monkey Mag, Keyhole Books, Kitty Snacks, Lazy Fascist Press, Magic Helicopter Press, Monkeybicycle, Narrow House, Opium, Outside Writer’s Collective, Pank, Paper Hero Press, Pear Noir!, Pilot Books, Publishing Genius Press, Quick Fiction, Ravenna Books, Scrambler Books, Starcherone Books, Typecast Publishing, Tyrant Books, Word Riot Press, & Yes Yes Books

From Trucker Spunk Island to Hog Heaven!

2011-11-17T18:45:00.000-08:00

They say that when you travel a great distance with a loved one you unearth new secrets about each other. On this trip down South I discovered that Everly thinks hotel rooms are giant spunk traps where the spilt liquid DNA of lonesome truckers live forever like nasty sticky ghosts on every polyester fiber of bed cover, carpet, plastic tv remote and vinyl chair.

She brought this up vividly as I tried to choke down a Greek salad and some of her pizza that we'd just purchased at a closing joint up the street in a strip mall. We turned on the clunker of an old electronic dream box and the remote system looked like the equivalent of the first Space Invaders video game. It basically seemed to be hooked up to be a conduit to porn movies. The four movies "currently showing in theaters" that you could see were "Captain Ron" starring Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell, "Couples Retreat", "Bruno" and some movie where Amy Adams buys high heel shoes.

We happily went back to Duke University radio, which was playing all Rough Trade singles from 1978 to 1982. Kleenex and Delta 5 really hit the spot and still sounded fresh. And in honor of the land we were visiting (although in the Red Roof Inn we could have been pretty much anywhere) I cracked open the Collected Stories of William Faulkner.

Everly is nothing if not the researcher. Plowing through Yelp and old Splendid Table shows she got us to the amazing Sunrise Biscuit Kitchen somewhere near Chapel Hill, North Carolina. A drive through only and a longstanding legendary joint they were not amused by or indulgent with our initial confusion pulling up to their window of vast splendid greasy coronary journeys. They knew that if we dithered for even two extra minutes there'd be a pile-up of hungry angry drivers.

When I'm at home I usually stick to just a piece of toast or croissant to line my stomach for incoming iced coffees and allergy pills, but I love me a good greasy breakfast on the road. But this place is the Speedy Meemaw of Hash Slinging. Just in the ten minutes that we were there wolfing down our chicken, egg and cheese biscuits (and I ate my hash brown hockey pock after standing and waving like a fool in front of the annoyed lady in the order taking glass box so I could get some hot sauce) at least a dozen cars went through.

With swollen gut and my pleasure centers sated with cholesterol and carbs and Texas Pete we headed for Chapel Hill's main drag and came upon a coffee place conveniently located next to Occupy Chapel Hill. Although I've been a fried and frazzled bastard and all my time lately has been sucked up by work and trying to at least keep up a pretense of being of a writer, I confess I haven't checked out Occupy Baltimore, but the movement has been a breath of psychic fresh air in the atmosphere of politicians fighting each other to see who can turn the clock back as far as they can to pre-FDR times and common human empathy.

The first bookstore of the day was Nice Price Books. A friendly unassuming shop that had the feel for some reason of a beach shop Nice Price also had a good vinyl record selection. In fact, I found the records to have nicer prices than the books, which were generally paperback and strictly half the cover price which these days and for most paperbacks isn't really that great.
But in the vinyl bins I scored a nice 12" Ramones promo, an original Bikini Kill split with Huggybear and a few obscure jazz pieces.

There was an enigmatic man working there who resembled a Nashville mix of Neil Diamond and Elvis with a sliver of Benicio Del Toro. He kept hovering nearby with a broom clearing phlegm and emitting a vibe of "I just want you to be aware that I'm miserable". But he kept reminding me of a lounge singer that used to be my assistant manager when I was a teenager working at Rite-Aid (it was a quaint pharmacy with a lunch counter and was named Reads before the Rite-Aid hog ate the head off it). He ate chili for breakfast every day, his admirable dark hair was always exactly the same without looking like a wig and he took me aside after we talked music and I told him I was a writer and singer and he told me to always follow my dream no matter how much resistance there was and who got angry about it.

Above is a picture of All Day Records, my Moby Dick of vinyl. It was such a beautiful day in Chapel Hill, around 70 degrees in November and we were on only the second day of our vacation adventure and Nice Price Books had whetted my appetite to find some great records.

Walking up to All Day Records I thought I'd found the place. The lights were out, although it was Tuesday and near noon, but I could see great stuff lined along the one wall in three rows - Erkin Koray, Skull Defekts with Asa and Brother Moonfish Higgs, a bunch of titles on the Indian label and Link Wray in front of the used bins.

Despite the darkness and no upright humans insight within I grabbed the door excitedly and it opened to an empty shop. Was this a cruel scientific lab test? Was William Shatner dressed as an army psychiatrist in a backroom watching me, waiting to send volts of electricity through me if I tried to pluck a $5 Ajda Pekkan album (the one where she's riding a horse nekkd) from a rack?

Apparently we had arrived at a time not falling within the parameters of "All Day".

But hey, I am a fellow dealer who does not like waking early. Or waking period, really. It's an ugly affair, getting the electrified ancient meat prone and functioning after 9 or 10 hours of flying through hidden mountain caves with Batman. Plus it made us feel like participating North Carolina citizens to hang out by the door and make sure those more desperate or less enlightened than us not walk in and have a mad grab of freebies or engage in a foul "Blastoma" - the medical term for an orgasm reached while having a Starbucks' induced bowel movement crouching in a darkened retail store.

Also we got to check out the graffiti near All Day and post some Normal's stickers (although if you're Johnny Law I'll deny it).

Eventually a much younger couple approached the store and sadly they weren't there to (hu)man the counter. The girl was touring under the name Headache and the gent was touring under the name Michael Collins, which he claimed was his real name. Turns out they had just played the Copy Cat building in Baltimore a few days ago, so that led to me heatedly throwing out all the Baltimore venues I could think of until they backed away Twittering.

The four of us did bring up the possibility, though, that maybe the counter person was collapsed behind the counter in the dark. This brought to Everly's mind a library story of a patron sliding under a table after a heart attack and not being seen in the slow, quiet period until another patron came along and discovered him.

At any rate, Everly ventured in just long enough to peek behind the counter like someone rushing through an apartment where you'd just set off pesticide bombs, then ran back out. Having determined no foul play or acts of God, she went to the open business next door and told them "Human Vaporizing, NC" what was going on. They kind of chuckled, shaking their heads and saying the record store owner's name in a manner that implied perhaps this wasn't unusual.

The young touring couple moved on, but I couldn't let go. Finally Everly lured me away, promising me we'd drive back after cruising the neighborhood some more. And to her credit, as always, she told the truth and return we did. At 1. Still no lights on. We exchanged a quiet moment of mutual understanding like in a Hallmark television special when little Aiden realized that Innskeep the Gerbil had gone on to Heaven and it was time to put it in the Keds shoebox and bury it next to Grandma's grave in the backyard.

And like many a human who's old enough to see end written in the newly exposed crinkle lines of his balding pate and no longer has good strong vices to erase the pain of being human, I happily let tasty North Carolina style barbecue assuage my vinyl lust at Hog Heaven, another Everly discovery (hopefully she will Yelp this bitch up, cause she writes real good like!). This place is on the outskirts of Chapel Hill when you're pointed towards Atlanta and they serve up a tasty subtle chopped bbq sandwich. And the best chicken and dumplings I've ever tasted in my life.

To top it off, they also had hanging the Men's Room this plaque that reflected both portions of their sign "Hog" and "Heaven". "Accept one another. Just as Christ accepted you." Sentiments I definitely like. But these hogs are up for slaughter!!!!!

Thermos Iced Coffee Loaded, Lungs Hungry For Air, Eyes Craving New Books & Records, We Hit the Road

2011-11-10T21:35:00.001-08:00

Thankful and feeling more lighthearted now that the store was on somewhat of a roll and that I had a crew that I felt confident leaving it with, hungry as hell for some sunlight and new scenery and new books and vinyl, grateful and blissed out that I was with a partner who loved books, records and funky road food as much as me -, we set out to see what was left of America and how its mutation was going.

The first point of interest was "Aqualand" in southern Maryland. Sadly closed down, but it looked like it probably originated in the '60s or '70s and I'd never heard of it before. Had that Enchanted Forest kind of DIY vibe to it.

Our first stop was a very disappointing quick peek in at a roadside antique shop. It was full of granny lamps, but I thought it was worth a shot asking for records and books because it might be the kind of place where they just threw a few boxes of them in the back for sale cheap with no regard for their value. Instead, I just got a lecture from the too prim white moustachioed gent about how a man can't make a living off of selling records. "Tell me something I don't know Bizarro Santa. How many elves do you have strapped into Iron Maidens behind all those Tiffany glass trinkets?"

The next stop was much more fun and gratifying - Plan 9 Music in Richmond. After loading up on historic “Sally Bells Kitchen” potato salad, deviled eggs, cheese nip and Smithfield ham of course. The place was started in 1924 and some of the original sunlight from that year still warbles in egg yolky blobs throughout the eldritch interior.

As I was near giddy with happiness going through Plan 9’s International Music bargain bin and finding a few really cheap treasures, the gawky young teen behind the counter played some of the most gruesome hair rock I’ve heard since being mocked in Jumper’s Hole Mall in Glen Burnie in the ’70s. Refreshing, though, in a backwards masochistic way to hear such awful music in a record store in these ultra-hip times.

In their new arrivals I snagged a near mint Bob Dylan bootleg I’d never seen before called “Tangerine”. Live in Paris from 1978 it covers a diverse selection of songs from his career. And the cover is a photo taken during the shooting of Billy the Kid. Also got a really nice clean copy of Leadbelly Sings Play-Party Songs Volumes I and II on the Stinson label, pressed on red vinyl and a very good + original Reprise stereo copy of the Fugs’ “Tenderness Junction”. Does the gatefold include a nude picture of Sir Allen Ginsberg? Why, yes.

The one frustrating thing about picking up all this great stuff on the road is not being able to spin the new vinyl. I've got about a dozen Brazilian albums from 1975 or before that I've never heard but that look fantastic. Plus the Dylan boot has a live version of the weirdly compelling "Changing of the Guards" from the underloved masterpiece "Street Legal".

Cary Street where Plan 9 abides, also hosts a great new and used book shop called “Chop Suey”. It’s two-storied and the first floor is mainly a fairly small but well curated selection of new books. But their new arrivals area near the front boasted four Phil Dick paperbacks, so my bibliowillie was engorged.

One of the books I was seeking out for myself which I’d owned many times before but didn’t hold onto, was a copy of Paul Bowles’ autobiography Without Stopping. Sure enough I found it, along with a hardback bibliography of the books of William Burroughs, in their “Beat Era” section. It’s a fine UK Peter Owen hardback to boot. (And today I just found a Putnam first of it in Decatur, but more on Decatur later).

The stairs leading up to the used floor were lined with really good contemporary art. If I had had more time I would have gotten some information on the artists, but we wanted to get to Atlanta at some point and who knew how many more thrift stores and flea markets awaited us.

AS I HAVE SAID BEFORE by Austin Al Ackerman

2011-10-27T14:24:00.000-07:00

As I Have Said Before

Face the lumpy one the hairy cookie
under the couch and my stone of stunning water
where I broke my ticktack camera do it
even before meat's door grows sticky with your black heads
finding an airport destination, setting and landing
on a giant empty hole known to all of us in the club
as what if not a scream to yourself into an empty hole
anyway I drew my trash thicker across my forehead
with pagination had I clutched the wheel
mumbler dazed into the windshield scummy
its holiday strips open late
my foreskin lost in towels
basins tongues watches trembling
petulant you've addressed yourself to all that surgery
I thought I'd whistle locker's throat fainter than
the key's throat but that was not the locker's throat
that was brittle nesting theory brought to you by
crossed eyes and how many open late

(from jmb of 2/24 etc.) - Blaster Al Ackerman

Lectures on Marxism 3 - The Glory of the Lard, by Mark Hossfeld

2011-10-18T10:10:00.000-07:00

Lecture on Marxism 3 – The Glory of the Lard.

I was sitting beside my bed-ridden grandmother not long before she died when we got to talking about lard.

For her beautiful, flaky biscuits she preferred the lard from Regyptus County , Mississippi , where even the livestock was virtuous.

The humans of that county were famous for a profound act of Christian charity: they had shaved off the horns of grateful Jews so the poor heathens could wear bigger hats.

Regyptus lard was used as a salve for aching horn stubs.

When she was thirteen she got work as a yolk spooner at a biscuit factory in Vicksburg , where she learned the lubricatory secrets of lard, for which she credited her landing a husband.

I asked her to entrust these secrets to me, but she took up the question of flour and the grind thereof, gave out on me and passed on.

When I entered my late middle age I started to think on death, politics and biscuits.

All I had left of my grandmother was a wooden spoon by which I mastered yolks.

Even though I lack all vibration in my dangling lobes, I listened for rumors of a certain lard.

I recalled my grandmother believed there was one particular lard that should be universally despised and yet was coveted.

It came from Clitchen County , she said, not far from Dripping Nipple.

The men there preferred to marry animals and were dying out because what offspring they had were helpless, bleating monsters.

Needless to say, the lard from there was spunky, the men having made mistresses of the boars, fucking, slaughtering and selling the remains of all they had not married.

-Mark Hossfeld

Dodson Drive by Amanda Dorsey

2011-10-12T11:35:00.000-07:00

Some of you may already know the talented, gentle Amanda Dorsey with the beaming smile from local folk duo Sea Couch, who are playing the upcoming November 4th Shattered Wig Night with Her Fantastic Cats, Kim Gek Lin Short and Bruce Jacobs. Not only can she play a mean banjo and mandolin, but she has also been doing some fine artwork and writing. Here is a poem that I love from her blog "Hello My Name Is Dreaming" at:
www.amandadorsey.blogspot.com

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dodson Drive

This morning passing
metal boxes
all at once--
birdseed patio galaxy
suspended in ivy
twin fig trees and typewriter
sharing far-off love
hummingbird kissing
your afternoon eyes
damp cheeks of sisters
tricycling through bed sheets
watering the rug
below blue room rotary
the taste of candy corn
lingering in our mouths
lingering once again

Lecture On Marxism 2 - Resolution on the Current Situation by Mark Hossfeld

2011-10-08T09:51:00.000-07:00

(Image borrowed from Mr. Topp).

Lecture on Marxism 2 – Resolution on the Current Situation, June 2011.

So the Trotskyites didn’t like the class composition at Syntagma Square .

No, composure is not entirely different from composition.

For example, I had a rabbit-headed character once – I used to draw comic books to entertain my friends – who calmed down enough to be a Marlowe-like detective.

I suppose I did mean the one who wrote “Edward II.”

Some people thought that Marlowe was a spy, which is somewhat like a detective.

Anyway, here is how people in Chengdu eat rabbit heads: after the spicy meat is gone, use the jawbones as utensils.

Once I held the rabbit head on my fingers and made it say funny things, like a puppet.

“I’m the gay King of England! You can’t find my butt!”

Nothing peeks out when you are incorporeal.

The story of the King’s two bodies was in another play in which two bloated, bobbing monarchs were towed out to sea.

I’m so sick of monarchs, aren’t you? They just swell, explode and ooze.

Swell, explode and ooze.

That’s also the three stages of socialism.

If trinity could be a verb, it would mean something like that.

Meanwhile, I have never met a rabbit that enjoys high humidity.

They just fall out like the rest of us, lolling about in the grass, demanding to be shaved.

Well, they don’t say, “Shave me, shave me!” It’s just that everyone knows what they mean.

And then, as the harpsichords plink merrily along, a real human baby is born, or a champagne bottle is smashed against a big spaceship or a crowd of workers is shot.

That’s how it goes most of the time.

Since the Moon got popular we’ve been gathering at the riverside lighting incense and commemorating the late Michael Jackson.

Some have been grumbling, but, as I gnaw at the cheek flesh of this rabbit head, I think we have a lot to be thankful for: no King; actual Soviets; General Intellect.

- Mark Hossfeld

Mangumetized

2011-10-07T16:03:00.000-07:00

The change of season could be smelled in the air at night, but the last swampy tendrils of August and August, The Sequel (The Month Formerly Known As September) were still trying to snatch at our flying ragged coattails.

It was nearing the end of a pleasingly busy day when the tall thin gent with the deadpan expression, long black Prince Valiant locks and Huck Finn cap entered holding a Regal acoustic guitar with his equally tall girlfriend endowed with loose black ringlets of hair, holding a black chihuahua and looking like the head of a cutting edge ballet company.

The woman eventually passed the dog off to the gent and we talked about his dog and my dog Max. How I actually had a black chihuahua in my mind when I looked for a dog years ago, but then into my lap dropped THE GREATEST DOG THAT EVER LIVED. By a very subtle extra light that came into the quiet man's eyes I could tell that my passion for young Maxwell had not frightened him but touched him.

From dogs, the conversation easily moved to one of the other great passions of life - books. The couple also came in with a few friends and one of them had helped unionize Powell's in Oregon, one of the Promised Lands of used books.

At this point I was already a happy bookseller. Embroiled with good talk among customers who were making tidy piles of books and records. With a black chihuahua to boot. At about this point the enigmatic and beautiful possible Ballet Company Director said: "We should probably go soon Mangum".

The rusty bells of the chapel that I usually set my hunchback to each gray UK morning in the abbey finally began to clamor.

"Wait, are you Jeff Mangum, playing Baltimore tonight?" Indeed he was. The beautiful acoustic guitar should have been a tipoff, but in the mood I was in I was fixated on the dog more than a customer walking in holding a guitar. "I'm coming to your show tonight with my nephew. He and my nieces sacrifice gentle creatures in your name on handmade eco-altars each night and hold you only slightly below Buddha in esteem."

The surprising thing was that from my nephew and niece's hushed discussions of Mr. Mangum's decade of silence since "In The Aeroplane Over The Sea" and some sort of possible Christian induced seclusion from the material world, I always envisioned him as a small haunted nervous man, but here he was completely in the moment and at peace in his skin and pretty damn tall and model-like.

Riding the crest of my third iced coffee I asked if he would sign something for my nephew Geff, saying that it would place me at the highest reaches of Unclehood. He went me one better, asking for a piece of paper and doing a signed drawing on the spot. Plus an additional one for the store.

At about this time said nephew himself, claiming he had received psychic messages that Jeff Mangum was in the store (true), showed up to use the can. He played it far cooler than myself and engaged Sir Mangum in subdued musical chatter. I loaded up his bag with my Origin of Paranoia As a Heated Mole Suit, Blaster Al Ackerman's Corn and Smoke and The Baltimore String Felon's CD.

I almost dropped the ball on getting my own ticket for the night of Hawk and the Hacksaw and Jeff Mangum after pulling the few strings I have left in Baltimore (thank you Todd and Tiffany!) to score one for my sleeveless nephew Homie Geff, but luckily Madame Tiffany called me a few days before saying she had one for me. I count myself a fan of Neutral Milk Hotel and a few other groups from the Athens, GA Elephant 6 collective, but I hadn't quite had my Jeff Mangum religious conversion moment until catching his show that night after meeting him in Normal's.

Opening act A Hawk and A Hacksaw (the core of which is pictured below) didn't hurt. They played crisp charging Balkan music that had my limbs stirring and made me want to call my old pal from Furniture Falling Down the Stairs and Little Gruntpack, Scott "The Swede" Larson. The things that Jeremy Barnes (formerly of Neutral Milk Hotel) was doing to the accordion would have had Scott drooling expensive imported beer into his rustic wiry beard. And Heather Trost on violin was impeccable. I hope to live and remain married to Kim Jong Ev another 9 nines at the least and to have a lot of money so I could hire these folks for our 10th wedding anniversary. By then I most likely will only be a pair of gray eyes floating in magic water inside an old Cracker Jack box, but still.....

After a blistering set by A Hawk and A Hacksaw, Sir Mangum quietly took the stage with a few acoustic guitars and a music stand. The atmosphere he created and nurtured was truly blissful. The crowd was so far into his songs that they sang along very ably with most of them and did some nice background on others. And once again I was surprised because his live voice was even stronger and clearer than on the records.

Among all his by now classic songs he also did a moving version of Daniel Johnston's "True Love", which local duo Sea Couch also covers. It was beautiful and reminded me of how happy I was in my own life having found Everly and how just a few years ago I'd lost all hope of my heart finding a home.

And then, as if I wasn't already floating on air from the Zombies show the week before, Jeff Mangum and crew hanging in the store and then catching his great show that night, someone yelled "Where have you been?" "What do you mean?" Sir Mangum asked. "Like today? Today I hung out at Normal's Bookshop."

Bliss indeed.

Violet Hour Show at Normal's - Thursday, October 27

2011-10-07T12:55:00.000-07:00

Thursday, Oct. 27th. 8PM at Normal's - 425 E. 31st St.
Baltimore, Cultural Capital of the Known World
Suggested donation of $5 or $6 for musicians

The Violet Hour
Alicia Jo Rabins and Aaron Hartman
Jefrey Brown

Local duo The Violet Hour who played an amazing Sunday afternoon here long ago return to enchant and introduce their touring friends Alicia Jo Rabins and Aaron Hartman (pictured above), who play "post-biblical art-pop" .
Leonard Cohen meets Owen Pallett with Violin looping; lyrical songs about leprosy, betrayal, and love.

Here are some rave reviews from top guns:

"Hauntingly lovely" -- LA Weekly
"Dynamic folk-rock" -- New Yorker
"Stellar"--Largeheartedboy.com

And here are their sites to check out:
www.myspace.com/girlsintroublemusic
girlsintrouble.bandcamp.com

Also on the bill will be Jefrey Brown of Jackie-O-Motherfucker and Evolutionary Jass Band fame.

Lectures On Marxism I By Mark Hossfeld

2011-10-06T09:04:00.001-07:00

Okay, I finally send something that I think I haven't sent before. Don't be fooled by the title: Lectures on Marxism.

But it is kind of funny: I actually gave Lecture One at Dian zi ke da (University of Electronics, Science and Technology of China, where I teach) to a roomful of bewildered students and got paid for it. The things a foreigner can do around here!

I copy it here in the email and as an attachment:

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Lecture on Marxism 1 – From Chengdu , Sichuan .

I just stole this pen from Rupert over there.

His reply was, “Property is theft.”

The happy philosophy which instructs me to cheerfully steal from my good friend – who knows when I’ll be able to do that again – also proves my beard-worthiness through exceedingly apt quotation about sulky submissiveness and how it just ain’t right.

But even these lofty ideas came to grief when the high-spirited became:

!). The professional and finally, fatally, the credentialed.

At this rate, the stately, graven system will grow hard as a hoof day before yesterday.

No more about it then.

That’s like looking for the soft side of an axe.

Speaking of which: the dashing Che, who all the girls cooed over, where are his hands?

Why, they’re safe in haven, that little opening to the sea.

Where is Dietzgen in his leather apron?

Gone, gone; pinched down to the size of a Fukushima particle.

That particle is the narrowest, privatest portion of collectivity, by the way – private because some things become the memory of just one person only.

Watch as it gets inhaled: length without breath, air without the little poky bits, shrunk back into their molecular scrota – even the fossils lie screaming up for more.

Who has the microscope that can find me out in the vast tracts of my nothingness?

Out of nothing I came, nowhere near rich, yet I was nonetheless formed a pauper princeling, idling my childhood in a castle by a lake.

There are dragons at the bottom of the Lake of the Saline Women.

Rheumios dipped their dicks into the skirts of the lake and the game of spoons glistened over girls’ knees.

It was a golden age, for there is no need to be somber when you know how dumb you are.

But it was also a long time ago, when apples had skins like polished furniture and everyone had recently escaped a breached Bastille.

Then there was thunder.

Omens are like that, they grumble that nothing’s happened yet.

Then there was wind and rain and hail.

Smart black cats scurried under carports.

Millions of humans put on their ponchos and revved their motorbikes.

Machines labored on, lashed by the weather.

I called my family after the storm – the power came back – and America sounded nice enough.

Apparently a giant, metallic robot lumbered by, almost stepping in the rosemary.

The Communist President had turned out to be a disappointment, though.

I called my friend in Shanghai , who, in a hushed voice, told me indignant Spaniards were everywhere.

I called my mentor, a Greek Jew, who told me my grandfather is the dust wherein I draw a happy face with my forefinger.

He was right, I had done that.

2) My phone card ran out, so I went to my meeting and found a friendly guy who confessed he was a murderer.

I thought to myself how the letters of the law spell a tortured soul.

Thou shalt knot, from the holey scroll of punk perfection.

I said, well I hope you done give that shit up.

Turns out he had, of course, but he had taken up thieving, which was crueler, in its own way.

Crueler to him, that is.

The urge to kill good and suppressed, he was full of lust for toaster ovens, garlic mashers and sturdy ladles.

The glint of the sun on a perfect stranger’s French press was a palatine dream.

But that’s the key to understanding, he said.

It’s the sun that’s the original and despite what you may have heard, you can’t steal the fire of the sun.

The mosquitoes had found us on the roof, so I said I’d walk him home.

We walked until we heard a rustling in the ecological park.

We went in, peers in fear.

There was graffiti-scarred bamboo shouting warning and giant banana leaves darkened the place.

We saw some light on the ground and pushed the fallen leaves away until we found the glowing roots of the moon.

Them is some photons, he said, illuminated.

-Mark Hossfeld

November Shattered Wig Night Sea Couch CD Release Party

2011-10-03T22:00:00.000-07:00

Shattered Wig Night is very honored to be the venue hosting the CD release party for Baltimore's loving string duo Sea Couch. Original material on mandolin, banjo and acoustic guitar with a pleasing punk edge. Plus some beautiful servings of a few old traditionals and contemporary gems like Daniel Johnston's "True Love". Part of the Loveasaurus and Soulgasm collectives, Sea Couch keeps expanding their vision and sound.
Listen to songs and view video here:

https://www.facebook.com/seacouch?sk=app_2405167945

Pictured above is Her Fantastic Cats. Do not let his feet frighten you! This former Annapolis lad plays some of the most original stew of solo guitar with percussive feet beats that I've heard since Abner Jay stole my chicken cheesesteak. Part Delta blues, part post-punk angular sideways construction, part I don't know what because I'm not much of a music writer.

Bruce A. Jacobs is a poet, author, and musician. His newest poetry performances treat poetry and music as one. He founded the long-running First Tuesdays Poetry Reading Series at Irina's Cafe in Baltimore in the 1990s. He has won poetry slams in Baltimore and at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe in New York City. His books of poems are SPEAKING THROUGH MY SKIN, which won the Naomi Long Madgett Prize from Michigan State University, and CATHODE RAY BLUES from Tropos Press. His latest nonfiction book is RACE MANNERS FOR THE 21st Century. He has appeared on NPR, C-SPAN, Sirius, and elsewhere. His work has appeared in dozens of poetry journals and in many anthologies, including, unbelievably, one edited by Billy Collins. He also does a weekly Tuesday poetry blog at agonist.com and a race & politics blog at aliasbruce.typepad.com. He plays drums, poems, and saxophone. A friend has promised she will teach him how to whistle through his teeth.

Shattered Wig is also very happy to announce that Philadelphia author Kim Gek Lin Short will take our stage for the first time:

Kim Gek Lin Short is the author of two full-length collections, The Bugging Watch & Other Exhibits and the forthcoming China Cowboy, both from Tarpaulin Sky Press. Her chapbook Run was the 2010 Golden Gloves selection from Rope-a-Dope, and a previous chapbook, The Residents, is available from Dancing Girl Press. You can visit Kim at a reading at her blog or in Philadelphia, where she lives with her husband and daughter and co-curates General Idea.

http://www.kimgeklinshort.com/HOME.html

"Say It With Writing" Friday, October 7th At Normal's

2011-09-29T12:28:00.002-07:00

OCT 7: Martin, Maxwell, Scalise, van den Berg
Posted by Adam Robinson ⋅ August 30, 2011 ⋅ Leave a Comment
SPECIAL Normals Books reading!

As part of Free Fall Baltimore, this reading will be held at Normals Books

425 E. 31st St

7pm

FREE

Megan Martin‘s first book of prose poems, Sparrow & Other Eulogies, was released in April 2011 by Gold Wake Press. The collection was the runner-up for the 2008 Slope Editions Book Prize, judged by Maxine Chernoff. Her work has appeared inWebConjunctions, Denver Quarterly, H_NGM_N, CakeTrain, Action, Yes!, Tarpaulin Sky, elimae, BlazeVOX2k8, Word Riot, andWunderkammer, among others.

http://goldwakepress.org/

Kristi Maxwell was born in Tennessee and currently lives and writes in Tucson Arizona. She is the author of Realm Sixty-four(Ahsahta 2008), Hush Sessions (Saturnalia 2009), and a chapbook, Dancing & Wise (Dancing Girl Press). Her latest collection,Re-, will be released by Ahsahta in fall of 2011. She holds an MFA in poetry from the University of Arizona and a doctorate in English from the University of Cincinnati. Boise State Bio

Mike Scalise lives in DC. He has written for a bunch of magazines, blogs, websites and journals and received fellowships and scholarships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Corporation of Yaddo, and was the Philip Roth Writer in Residence at Bucknell University.

Laura van den Berg was raised in Florida and earned her M.F.A. at Emerson College. Her stories have or will soon appear in Ploughshares, One Story, Boston Review, American Short Fiction, Conjunctions, Best American Nonrequired Reading 2008, Best New American Voices 2010, and The Pushcart Prize XXIV. Her first collection of stories, What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us (Dzanc Books, 2009), was a Barnes & Noble “Discover Great New Writers” selection, longlisted for The Story Prize, and shortlisted for the Frank O’Connor Award. She currently lives in Baltimore.

Feasting On Zombies With Niece Shredder

2011-09-28T18:41:00.000-07:00

A few Mondays ago I had my first taste of being a feeble old man in the tender loving care of a kind relative. In a good way. My beloved Niece Shredder (pictured above) who got a teaching job straight out of the starting gate at the very Junior High that I went to when I was limber and full of hope and my neuroses were fresh - visions of goitered booted nuns still dancing in my head. Needless to say, Boom! she's already making way more than her beatnik uncle with his high falutin' popsicle stand.

(Dave Cousins, vocalist and guitarist with Dave Lambert, guitarist and vocalist, of the acoustic Strawbs)

Shiva, Kali, Buddha, Jesus and John Astin's Gomez have blessed me with three amazing and talented and sensitive and smart nieces and one amazing and talented and smart nephew who just needs to stop chopping all the sleeves off his muthafuckin' t-shirts! They are all huge scholars and music lovers, but Tina is perhaps the specialist of the bunch. Her love is not widespread among all the Delta bluesmen and/or country pickers and/or whatnot, but focused like a government top secret laser on one or two groups or solo acts at a time.

For many many long and fertile years of her childhood and tweens and early teens she plowed diligently the fab field of Beatlemania. Histories were read, posters sprouted. Then, there was a natural progression or expansion to Beatle contemporaries The Zombies! Who doesn't love the dang Zombies??!! That's some smooth catchy smoky soul stuff being laid down with funky organ and slinky guitar work. And to her aged uncle's surprise she somehow branched out to creaky crunchy Tom Waits (it was from a high school experience in a reverb drenched hallway during a theater project). Currently, and she can be forgiven for this, for she is a kind and gentle person, she is stuck on Eddie Vedder like an elf on a rainbow. A very cool outgrowth of this unreasonable Vedder passion is she has now bought herself a very groovy "Sea Foam" color ukulele and is strumming up a fierce wake of jubilant sound.

At any rate, all that being said, said Niece Shredder pounced on some Zombie tickets at The Annapolis Rams Head the second she heard they were on sale. Luckily her beau was not going to be in town and is not that big of a Zombie fan, so her aged uncle got to escort her to the show and share a table that was directly pushed up against the front center of the stage. A view so intimate that I felt like if I stared any more deeply into Herr Blunstone's eyes one of us would have to make the first move.

But speaking of passion for all things vintage and especially originating from the '60s, Niece Shredder has a very cool blog wherein she writes of vintage clothing and her highly skilled sewing excursions: http://decadedisplacement.blogspot.com/

(ABOVE: Dave Lambert, who possesses one of the most intense faces I've seen in real life. Kind of as if John Hurt experienced perhaps twice the pain and developed maybe a half dozen more folds. It made for powerful expression when he sang.)

A sweet bonus of this show in addition to the venue being very intimate and friendly (not one hassle while we were in there and the waitress didn't seem to care at all that we were both teetotallers ((perhaps glad to see a few folks under 60??? Not that I am much under that or to be ageist about the crowd)) was the opening act -- The Strawbs. I had heard a few songs by them over the years, but this was before Pentangle and Trees and Bert Jansch had helped me pierce the veil of British vocal rusticism.

A good deal of the songs seemed to come from "From the Witchwood", which we just happened to have at Normal's and which is now playing on my car stereo. Strong songwriting mixing in British history and olde folk with sitar and occasional funky organ flourishes. On stage this night it was just three acoustic guitarists, but man Dave Lambert, the gent above who looked like he was weeping when he sang, could really play. Did some very nice bird sounds also with his strings and without effects pedals. Also, having heard "From the Witchwood" about three times now since the show, I have to say that Dave Cousins' voice has really remained strong. Or at least remained at a high level. I mean, he's not Van Morrison or Colin Blunstone, but his voice serves well his tales of working underclass English folk.

We also got lucky and shared our small table with an older Annapolis deejay named Charlie and his wife. Charlie has been around the music world for a long time and really knew his shit on the blues and folk. Heard many fine stories of him meeting old blues greats. Since he and his wife live near the venue they have caught quite a few of the shows there, including two I would have loved to have caught - Kris Kristofferson and Marianne Faithful. Which made me think of Leonard Cohen! Man, if he were to play this small intimate club I would give up an entire paycheck for sure. I gave passing thought to catching him when he was at Merriweather a few years ago, but the evil "legal" ticket scalpers who aren't Ticketmaster, but actually are Ticketmaster, had driven the price up to around $100 for a crummy lawn seat where you might as well be at a cricket match.

But I am not just hung up on the Eldritch Ones! I was soon to catch Jeff Mangum with opening band Hawk and the Hacksaw, but more on that in a later post......

But the smoky smooth sweet melodic blast of the night we were anticipating began when the Zombies themselves (with "new" guitarist and drummer) took the stage slipping right into "I Love You". Immediately I was awash in my Niece Shredder's voluminous flow of drool and I realized that my grin had knocked my glasses off my ears.

Now I am very picky about my reunion shows. I held out for many years with a purist record until the Gang of Four reunited with their first drummer! The ho who left them for the simpering band ABC. The Gang of Four sounded just as fresh a few years ago as they did in my drunken fairly angry and confused twenties. They were clearly loving what they were doing and having a great time and I did not regret revisiting them live.

The same can definitely be said of seeing the Zombies with three of their original members. Colin Blunstone's ethereal voice is still 95% percent right there and the music with its strong dose of soul influence really holds up.

The fairly touching part of the night was that Rod Argent kept selling the band their history to the audience as if we weren't already aware of their significance and tastiness. He told us how many indie and alternative bands over the last few decades have named "Odyssey and Oracle" as one of their all time favorite and most influential lps and instructed us on all their offshoot groups and hits. Part of this might be that somehow the group is not yet in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Which seems pretty ridiculous. Isn't Weird Al Yankovic in there now even???

The one "ouch" of the night was when they did "God Gave Rock 'n' Roll To You", which I think was an Argent song that Kiss had a giant bloated cash-filled pus explosion with. But with charming Senor Blunstone singing it looking like an androgynous slim granny it was kind of fun.

I really enjoyed their cover of Argent's "Hold Your Head Up" Colin knocked that one out of the ballpark. Pictured above is Sir Argent of the Bounteous Wig.

The gent above is Jim Rodford and he can strike a timeless austere pose. This badass cat also played with The Kinks! So you know he knows his way around an addictive hook and a hotel room full of plush madness.

There is a new Der Sting album out. On the cover The Man Who Wears Down Mirrors Almost As Fast As Phil Collins is standing with his back toward us (if we were to look at his greatness head on our eyes would flash out instantaneously into smoking black holes!) knee deep in a lake. I guess he is looking for where his private helicopter dropped Excalibur. At any rate, I want to see this pugnacious Rodford fellow doff his breeches and hit that fucking water like the pitbull after Josh Brolin in "No Country For Old Men". Then the back cover of Sting's album could be Rodford's head completely spattered red in a frothy red lake, nothing of Sting to be seen except the remaining splinter of the neck of his teal colored Ovation acoustic guitar floating a few feet away.

We speak now of Zombies, though, and the '60s and love. Above is Colin Blunstone with the guitarist Tom Toomey. Sadly the lights have come on. Announcing the end of the magic night and revealing that at the peak of Niece Shredder's ecstasy during the set, when they played "Can't Nobody Love You", which she wants played at her wedding, she had lost control and put her shrimp fork through both eyes of Charlie's wife, her last whimpering cries for help smothered by the comforting aural blanket of Zombie sounds.

Normal's Snags Another City Paper "Best Of"!

2011-09-21T15:46:00.000-07:00

It always jazzes us up like Jane Fonda in '80s neon pink leggings when we get an award recognizing that we are culture trolls shining our dinosaur eggs beneath the gleaming digital bridge, but it felt especially good right now in these tough economic times and with book stores folding up like ice skaters' legs smacked by Tonya Harding's crowbar.

Long live physical media!

Baltimore Goods
Best Used Bookstore
Normal’s Books and Records

Published: September 21, 2011

425 E. 31st St., (410) 243-6888, normals.com

Normal’s is one of those places we love that we almost kind of avoid sometimes, because we have a tendency to get sucked in. Most times we stop in to look for one thing (sometimes a newish book, a used copy of which we happen across there more often than you might think) and manage to escape, but sometimes we wind up, oh, seeing if a copy of that recent history of Casablanca Records has happened to slip past the buyers, or if there are any new old Julian Barnes books we’ve been looking for, and that reminds us, what was the name of that Turkish author—not Orhan Pamuk, the other big name, from an older generation—whereafter somehow we wind up around the corner from the fiction area, near the bathroom, seeing if any fool sold back any Gay Talese, and then that reminds us and we’re back over in poetry, seeing if the Hollanders’ translation of Dante’s Paradiso might happen to have turned up, and by that point it’s almost an hour later and we’re late for where we were going when we stopped for one thing.

WHAT IT WOULD LOOK LIKE IF YOU WERE IN SPACE for David Franks

2011-09-17T21:17:00.000-07:00

WHAT IT WOULD LOOK LIKE IF YOU WERE IN SPACE

for David Franks

The social fabric covering the furniture is tearing at the

   corners

Differently, indifferently

Down at the inconvenient store the visually attractive (bubble

   butts) form a conga line

Footloose or footless    there's Footlong

Help me    I'm crestfallen     & I can't get it up

Never live it downtown

Can't keep it uptown

Can't live with it    can't live without it

I left my mini-obsessions hyperventilating in the minivan

The edges of Acceptability are closing in

Closing of all exits but one

Who's robo-signing for tomorrow's Mozzarella Chunk?

All this infrastructure generated to pacify the animal within

Indispensable or indefensible

A burglary happens every 18.3 seconds here in the Land of the

   Break In

I'm trying to break out

-Joel Dailey

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

JD's most recent publication is SURPRISED BY FRENCH FRIES, available from Ugly Duckling Presse. He lives in New Orleans.

The Whiskey Rebellion Publication Party At Normal's Books and Records

2011-09-09T11:48:00.001-07:00

Normal's Books and Records is hosting a book release party for out-of-towners' Jerome Crooks and Jason Baldinger's The Whiskey Rebellion, just out on Six Gallery Press. It's shaping up to be a great little show that will also feature music by local group The Daily Lion and solo guitarist MacGregor Burns.

The show takes place Saturday, September 17th at Normal's Books and Records, 425 E. 31st St. It starts at 8pm and there is a suggested donation at the door of between $3 to $5 that will go towards the poets and musicians.

Jerome Crooks began writing poetry 20 years ago this September. "i've been a mess and i feel fine" (Speed and Briscoe) was released in 2001. "The Whiskey Rebellion" (Six Gallery Press) with Jason Baldinger, was released this year to be followed by "The Moment I Feared" (Low Ghost Press). Jerome has served as the active head of the Speed and Briscoe writer's collective since its inception in 1998. His work has appeared in the City Paper, Natural Language, The New Yinzer, and Open Thread's regional review. His journalism has appeared in Magazino and Islas. He is the son of Mary Anne and Jerry Crooks, brother to Theresa, brother in law to John Leonard, and proud uncle of young Aeden.

Kristofer Collins is publisher and editor-in-chief of Low Ghost Press.
He is the book reviewer for Pittsburgh Magazine. He is the manager of
Caliban Bookshop and owner of Desolation Row Records & CDs. His latest
collection of poems, Last Call was published by Speed & Briscoe in
2010.

Jason Baldinger has been writing for over twenty years, he just recently got around to performing it publicly. He's been published in The New Yinzer and has a split book of poetry with Jerome Crooks available now from Six Gallery Press. You can catch his bands House of Assassins and the Skirt Tasters at irregular intervals around Pittsburgh.

On The Whiskey Rebellion: Outlaws & revolutionaries, crooked cops & patsies, ghost towns and superheroes come out to play in this collection inspired by the Whiskey Rebellion, Wordsworth & Coleridge's Lyrical Ballads, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Lord Byron's Don Juan.

Baltimore Poets Do Philly

2011-09-05T13:25:00.000-07:00

I needed to get out of Baltimore and its cruel summer so bad I wanted to lick the knobbled bimped greasy roadway of I-95 on Labor Day weekend. And what better time to head North to convene with a bunch of great Baltimore poets in Philly than while giant metal penis toys buzzed like mutant angry hornets around the downtown streets of Baltimore for the "Grand In Your Face Failing Schools And Homeless Fucks Prix".

Doubling up on my loves, poesy and collecting books and records, Everly and I left "early" for the reading and I did some homework on what shops remained in the smoking ashes of contemporary America. Right off the bat I found out the shop I'd been hearing about for years and that put out at least one Jack Rose lp, Tequila Sunrise, was no more in physical form. Then I spotted two locations for Beautiful World Syndicate Records and called them. An actual human answered and assured me that they were open until 9. But as it turned out, the location which had been at the top of the page, which we went to since it was at the top of the page, was no longer in existence.

Throwing in the towel we headed toward the reading where we found "Long In the Tooth" just a few blocks from Fergie's Pub where the reading was taking place. Not the low priced vinyl paradise I keep hearing Philly is, in fact generally around $10 or $15 higher on items than I'm used to, but I still found some cool stuff. A Cave 12", some doo wop, Skip James on Monk (okay, I could have ordered that one myself, but once it was in view I had to snag it!) and a good fem vocal organ driven garage pop band on Billy Childish's label. Plus a nice hardback containing both Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Charlie and the Glass Meth.

Arriving in the nice, dark, cool Irish pub, I found that my Baltimore comrades felt only shame towards me when we were outside home turf. Could it be that I forgot to pay Adam Robinson (pictured above, reading that night) for the new Mole Suits? Hosts Kim Gek Lin Short and Debrah Morkun put the names of the various Baltimore bumblebees into a hat and drew slips to see what the order will be, but your intrepid reporter has his doubts that this truly was how it was figured. Was it mere chance, coincidence, that this wriggling batch of traincars of imagination ended up being led by zephyr Adam Robinson and finished off by master Chris Mason?

Justin Sirois of Narrowhouse Publishing, with CA Conrad in the background.

Filmmaker and poet Stephanie Barber.

Wise master of Baltimore poetry Chris Mason with Christophe Cassimassima.

Chris Toll with his new book, The Disinformation Phase.

Co-host Kim Gek Lin Short, who as it turns out, I published in Shattered Wig Review all the way back in 1996. It was the first time I had the pleasure to meet her and she gave me an incredibly sweet and moving introduction that included pulling out the actual response letter I sent her to accept her story. I signed off on her letter as "Fred Engels" (I may have borrowed that from Blaster's "Crab" story).

Poet Les Wade who performed a linguistic exercise with the word "spork".

Professor Jamie Gaughan-Perez who was so dazed from being sick with fever and from being temporarily displaced from his home by the Grand Prix that he thought he was Ted Leo of the Pharmacists and spoke repeatedly of how he did his best shows with the flu. Eventually his Narrowhouse partner Justin Sirois had to lead him off stage and Jamie hugged Justin, shouting "ladies and gentlemen, my good friend Frank Black!"

Pictured above is a Baltimore poet I hadn't met before that evening - Joe Hall. But he hasn't been here too long, so I didn't feel too remiss. I believe he moved here from the Midwest and at first mistakenly decamped in Columbia, MD. until one night he and his wife watched the forgotten Peter Fonda B-movie "Futureworld" and something clicked and they got the hell out. Joe read from his book Esme.

The closing reader was the always resonant, thoughtful Chris Mason who read from Hum Who Hiccup. I not only got to read with him on his "dream" poem that included me, but also in the dream poem involving Magus Magnus. Oh if only that action entitled me to a portion of Magus' brain.

It was a refreshing daytrip away from the homeland among some great writers and some new people. Including getting to speak with CA Conrad about the smokestack belching magic of Blaster Al Ackerman.

New Chris Mason Poem About Normal's Books And Records

2011-09-01T15:13:00.000-07:00

Normal's Books and Records
425 E. 31st St.
  Baltimore
   Maryland

  Filling in

at register so

  Rupert can

go to Post Office

  see used book

just brought in - book of

  my poems

I gave girl I liked

  thirty years

back - inscribed "ill-met

  by moonlight

proud Titania".

  Coffee stains,

finger-smudge, corners

  of pages

curling, spine bloated

  or spine cracked,

books sent out come back

  older. The

flautist performing

  at Normal's

Books and Records, her

  notes altered

electronically,

  is daughter

of director of

  J.S. Bach

Society my

  mother in

Minneapolis

  sang Bach in,

their notes in moonlight

  now dispersed.

Each book on shelf at

  Normal's once

lay open, face down,

  on someone's

stomach, half-asleep,

  half-mouthing

words just read to self.

------Chris Mason

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Shakemore 2011

2011-08-19T12:57:00.000-07:00

Returning to the enchanted land outside time known as Shakemore and seeing the great unique people who inhabit it, I was reminded of Serge Gainsbourg's famous quote, "Beauty fades, but ugliness lasts forever". Except in this I wanted to paraphrase it to say "Normalcy crumbles, but weird endures".

(Below is the esteemed Randy Austin Jr. who rocks my world with his pedal steel playing in The Go Pills.)

The two Shakemores that I've been lucky enough to attend partly featured weather drama of Biblical proportion. Last year the heat clocked in at 110 and up there in the rough hills of Westminster it became so hot that even the waves of the pool caught fire at one point, singeing the flesh off of a few of the unfortunate swimmers. Some onlookers driven mad by the extraordinary temperatures skewered some of the floating cooked flesh and devoured it like hyenas as The Junkyard Band played a fine chaos on stage.

The worst tragedy of that day though, was that even the fabled waist length, Jim Morrison-like, locks of poet Chris Toll were seared off by the violence of the angry sun's rays. To this day they have not grown back and it's become apparent that he bears a striking resemblance to Vladimir Lenin.

(Below is not the newly hairless Chris Toll, but longtime Baltimore bon vivant, Shakemore newbie, Warren "Goldfiinger" Greenberg.)

(Below is Selena performing as Animal Eyes.)

This year was a trial by water, but nothing could shake the blissed out dispositions of the Edenic crowd. Or rattle the high energy positive antics of emcee Babs The Roman who had to wrangle the ever shifting Blob of the schedule. It's amazing how she keeps revved up for over 12 hours giving each act a psychic Elvis cape to wear to bring them comfort and courage.

Ricardo Dreyfus of Spidercake and Half Japanese made the t-shirts and banners along with playing in two or three bands.

This year St. David of Half Japanese Fair himself asked She Bites to perform, having heard that we crawled from our hoary crypt for the momentous event of Everly's and my wedding party. It's been funny revisiting the rollercoaster of emotions that is She Bites. Now without drinking, my back hair a full Turkish rug, the upper register I love to seek out, sometimes in vain, even more of a Whack-a-Mole proposition.

We, like many of the groups scheduled earlier when the torrential downpours were happening, screwed up the schedule by not being assembled on time. In fact, I had figured we weren't even going to get to play, not being able to get in touch with Pope and the hours advancing. So I had put on my seersucker suit and was kicking back with a lemonade, thinking "Enough electric waves of anxiety, it's Tourist Time!"

But play we did and I never thought I would see such faces of anger at gentle Shakemore. I think a lot of the youth were too young to have been battered by the songs we cover being played over and over on their car radios or at tragic, awkward moments in their teen years (since they were right now experiencing them) and they merely saw an old balding man in a dress singing along to a good keyboard player.

We started out slightly rough, opening with the fantastic Irma Thomas song "It's Raining". We had just worked on it a few nights before and figured we should open with it because of the weather. No brainer, eh? But we kicked into the zone during Skeeter Davis' "End of the World" and I personally think "At 17" that day was the best version we ever did. I was calmed and excited to see Chris Mason close by the stage grinning during our set and David Fair whirling with his wife. When the angry mob saw these icons expressing approval they swallowed their bloodlust and hid their shivs back in their cut-off jeans and cargo shorts.

And after the set poet Cliff Lynne, who is also a highly paid secret agent whose hands are registered weapons that even caused Dick Cheney to wet himself when Cliff shook his hands at the Pentagon, came up to me wide-eyed and said "Wow, I didn't know you sang!" And then he punched me. It took the high energy manic bluegrass punk of From the Hills to stir me from the sodden ground.

John Moreman, the gifted as all hell guitarist who played with Half Japanese during the "Charmed Life" period and who has been laying down the hooks with them of late, did extra duty this year with Bag 5 and The Naybros. Sadly I didn't stick around long enough this year to catch Bag 5.

(Photo below is by Lloyd Wolf of guitarist John Moreman from Half Japanese, The Naybros and Bag 5.)

Last year I chewed on and swallowed up the whole fest. Took it in and ran on it like a vitamin enriched acid tab. But this summer has been a brutal one of retail survival and I was up late over-caffeinating the week before, so after She Bites played and I caught a few acts, I deflated and faced the fact that I just didn't have it in me this year.

But as poet Father Beaudouin said, "It's about the people" and I got to have my magic Shakemore moment talking with my friend, who I will only refer to here as S., who had just finished up one of the Johns Hopkins psilocybin studies. Her study was centered around spirituality and she had two "sessions" of ingesting psycho-active mushrooms in capsule form, blindfolded listening to a mix tape of music that the doctors had made specifically for the trajectory of the psychic journey.

S. said that she met before the ingestion with the two guides and formed a relationship with them so that she would have trust and communion with them when she was launched into the Ether. As soon as I saw her walk across the dewy field of Shakemore from her car I could see that her already normally sparkling sorceress eyes were kicked up a few more notches of laserbeam. She was downright giddy and said it was one of the greatest spiritual events of her life.

She and D. stayed throughout the entire festival, which didn't end until around 3am this year because of the rain wrangled schedule, and she disappeared for many midnight hours with only a grin and a glowstick and at the end of Half Japanese's blistering set D. discovered her perched like the mysterious owl of Smamot on the top of the center tent pole. Some would later swear that she had the hairpiece of Bob Ehrlich in her mouth.

Below is the rather goat-headed wild gent from the Westminster bluegrass punk group that I think is called From the Hills. This great photo is also by Lloyd Wolf.

Translation of Anya Logvinova, Contemporary Russian Poet

2011-08-17T09:04:00.000-07:00

So, hiena. I have returned to our town.
I am comical in this leather topgoat.
From beneath my legs jump buckyards
and cardinalleys flutter.
We live in Moscow, therefore we’re mosquitos,
used to drinking at the Red Mare.
I leave my doormice open
and my windoes also.
I don’t write my credo on crossfox
or on hary leaves of cabbage.
We cockle every Wednesday
so therefore on Thursdays we’re mouserable
Once the allitator wanted anarchy
but now boardom makes him squint.
Tell me about my minxoft cheeks
in the language of kangorussian.

Ну, жирафствуй. Я в наш город вернулась.
Я смешная в этой кожаной куртке.
Из-под ног выскакивают кулицы
и вспархивают переутки.
Мы живём в Москве, мы - москиты,
впившиеся в Красную лошадь.
Оставляю все медвери открытыми
и волкна тоже.
Я на зебрах не пишу своё кредо.
Лишь на заячьих листочках капустных.
Мы змеёмся каждую среду,
но зато по четвергам нам мангрустно.
Раньше буйвольски хотелось анархий,
а теперь глаза от кротости узкие.
Расскажи мне про мои щёки хомягкие
на языке кенгурусском.

- Translated by Larissa Shmailo

Snow, Tree Forts & Alcohol

2011-08-16T19:55:00.001-07:00

There were rock battles in the claymines.
Shingle tile fights in the tree forts.
Crabapple wars in the backyards.

The one kid with a ridiculous last name
that was a foodstuff that doubled as yet
another slang word for penis killed his
girlfriend while the rest of us were
sort of thinking about college.

The one brother of the guy who put his
cousin's eye out with a whipped roof
shingle that had a couple rusty nails
in it killed a friend in a bar fight.

The fellow up the street who
looked like a young
Michael Stipe or Gene Wilder -
big puffs of cottony hair swarming
his slender face - and was involved in
high school theater one year ahead of me
held out until he was an adult to kill his wife
and leave her body out in some far flung field
in order to be with a bar maid or waitress.

The skinny blonde who always had A's
and liked to pick something out of his
eyebrows and eat it all the time, reacted
to the deaths in Bhopal by saying "Those
people lived in tents. How dare they ask
for so much cash for damages?"

And I keep thinking of my parents
hounding me, saying "Why don't you go
out and play football with those boys?"

Sometimes

2011-08-05T13:50:00.000-07:00

Sometimes at retail I sit quite still.

You are going to North Carolina and I like your spats.

Don't confuse Glory Hole

with religion.

Or religion

with the sacred.

I grew up next door

to a friend with a former

Miss North Carolina pageant

winner for a mom

who always left the door

open using the bathroom.

Plus I went to Catholic School.

I never had a chance.

A Sunday At the Museum

2011-07-29T09:04:00.000-07:00

Praise Vishnu and the overdose of Coca-Cola the night before - I awoke the late morning after the humongous pleasure filled Normal's night at the Golden West (early on in the evening Sir Tony said "follow me". He led me into the heart of the kitchen area, strong beautiful youth looked upon me with horror, and he stopped before the soda machine. "Drink as much as you want you goofy-assed old man". Taking me back to my childhood days of working the Friday Bingo nights for Holy Trinity Church. Explode that bladder! Sugar levels Rise!!) and immediately thought "Today is the day to check out the Sondheim Prize finalists at the BMA.

Too many years, too many shows, I've thought "I'll get around to that when I am a well-paid Hopkins surgeon or when all my back hair falls off, each curly brittle strand turning into a speaking serpent). Well, not this time hombre! One of my favorite Baltimore multi-media power hitters - and softball team comrade - Stephanie Barber, was a finalist and had an ongoing installation.

I have to say that I felt funky fresh and invigorated to be back in the BMA, and not just because of their superior air conditioning, but the first room of the exhibit underwhelmed me like a sluggish whisperer in the kitchen at a family party.

The front room was all wood sculpture by Rachel Rotenburg. There were some spots with color stain/painting on the pieces and beautiful vines intertwining, like in the piece "Sacred". The artist is obviously a handy craftsperson and the wood was beautiful, especially for a late in life tree huncher such as myself. But I couldn't help thinking "Gosh if I was wealthy and I had a wealthy aunt this kind of thing would be great to buy her for her back patio".

Sort of like if Red Tree in Hampden handled larger scale arts and crafts. Not a bad thing, by any means, but there were no butterflies in my swollen belly and my aged knees were nowhere near buckling or even bending with the shock of the new or the mystery of the resonant. Especially in a city like Baltimore that is exploding with great art, music and writing now, more than ever, ruled over by the firm mystical hand of Madame Drogoul, High Priestess of Art.

Also, the pieces had such kind of shopworn, or we could be generous and say archetypical, titles as "Sacred", "Memories" and "Dream". If you're going to go with titles like that you really have to pack a punch on the Jungian level.

(picture below is not from show but lifted randomly from internet)

The second room contained powerful graphic photo pigment prints of the war in Afghanistan by
Louie Palu who is Washington based. These photos had titles like "Standing In Dust From Improvised Explosive Device Blast, .....Kandahar, Afghanistan", "A Soldier Asleep In The Morning Before a Combat Operation" and "Horse Killed By Improvised Explosive Device". These three photos were the most effective for me.

Being too young at the time for the Vietnam War, the last war with a draft, and too old and not at all interested in signing up to shoot down folks like Saddam who we propped up for years and gave weapons to so he could whoop up on Iran, I can't imagine what it's like to fight in modern war. As if wasn't bad enough that a near silent bullet could come out of nowhere and take out your windpipe or eye or a lobbed hand grenade plop in your lap like a sea turtle's malignant tumor, now the smiling teen walking beside you and your troop buddies could have a fairly sophisticated explosive device lodged up his ass and one second you could be doing air guitar (or rifle guitar) to a Tool song and in a blinding instant you are flying tartar, clam dip and chunky salsa.

The one photograph, "A Soldier Asleep", actually captures what appears to be a moment of serenity for a soldier. You see him chest up peaceful in bed, the lighting mild and velvety, beside an endtable with a miniature Christmas tree, a very large piece of flatbread of some kind and a glass of what seems to be tea. A moment of humanity in the middle of unimaginable hellishness.

The hellish part of modern war is depicted graphically and starkly in "Horse Killed....". All that's left of a majestic creature is a flattened skull and one charred curving side of ribcage. Everything else has been smeared flat black and charred into the equally grim charred landscape.

Beyond just for being the escape from the horrors of endless modern war, entering Stephanie Barber's laboratory portion of the exhibit was exhilarating and refreshing. She had a mini-studio set up within her exhibit room and was having museum visitors stop and read from scripts she had written. Then she would process these recordings and use them in a new video for the exhibit. While I was there two different sets of guinea pigs were emoting and the electricity was crackling. A group of teenagers read and it was as if this was what they were born to do. Meanwhile people floated around checking out her walls and the videos that were already showing on the monitor.

(Image of Lady Stephanie borrowed from Human Pyramid blog):

As it has already been widely reported in the tabloids, Dr. Barber is not only a hyper creative being pulled in many directions, she also never sleeps. After a few days of non-stop writing, videotaping and sculpting, she merely hangs upside down from a simple acrobat bar from the back of her knees and swings loosely with her fingernails grazing the surface of the floor. Watching her calm attentive treatment of these random art lovers, it is difficult to think of her diet as being strictly the stardust shaken from comets when they strike the Earth.

Stephanie's piece was called "Jhana and the Rats of James Olds". On little standing scraps of paper atop the video monitor is printed "Every day I make a new video and add it to these. They are between one and five minutes long.......they are like poems." Indeed. As a testament to the blurring of poetry and film in her work, Publishing Genius Press published these here separated to see how they standing alone, which is film narration and a dvd of her actual films.

Like poets whose voices are so distinctive that certain words are almost trademarked by them once they've utilized them, like "sheet" or "spit" in the work of John M. Bennet or "goodies" and "bigtime" in the writings of Al Ackerman, certain images, though they may be appropriated or "neutral", have become associated in my brain with the work of Stephanie Barber.

For example, her video which I think is called "Puppet Television", at least I wrote that down in my notebook with quotes around it, features a still photo that looks like it came out of a '60s era House Beautiful or Modern Home type magazine. A TV screen sized area has been cut out of the living room picture and in that area two sockpuppets are communicating in indistinguishable burbling. There are then cut away shots, closeup, of a young girl's face with various emotions crossing it, in apparent reaction to the sockpuppets. There is something about the still photo and the other similar pictures of home interiors that she had delicately pinned sparsely to an area of the museum wall that is as distinctly "Barber" as the high pitched violin strained sound "wheep wheep wheep" is Bernard Herrmann's.

Sweat Was Social Glue at The Gold Plated Normal's Night at The Golden West

2011-07-24T20:53:00.001-07:00

Despite the fourth day or so of grueling temperatures with heat indexes over 100 degrees and many other great shows happening, The Gold Plated Normal's Show at the Golden West drew an amazing crowd. I would put it at between 150 to 200 people who streamed in and out throughout, but DC park police are estimating a mere 50. It was humbling that so many fantastic musicians donated their time and brought the love.

Pictured above are Sir Nathan Bell, whose recent album "Colors" is one of my favorite releases of the last year (and has some great cello work by Kate Porter) and Michael Lambright and Justin of Madagascar. Nathan played with Liz Downing on this night as Spacecrafts and Insects and the chemistry between the two them is spellbinding - even in a sweating, buzzing beehive.

They've been working on a recording together and I plan on going on a Nyquil bender and robbing a shitload of Walmarts so I can pay for a massive 180 gram virgin vinyl pressing of it. To ride strapped beneath Jack White's portable record store mobile like DeNiro in that bad remake of Cape Fear and knocking the White Stripes albums out of youths' hands and replacing them with the sacred sounds of Nathan and Liz.

Pictured here is Tony Lambright of Madagascar, who suggested the idea of the show in the first place as a way to celebrate Normal's 21st Anniversary and to get some extra crucial mid-summer funds going to keep the three struggling air conditioners going and to pay off Max the dog's personal trainer/psychic. Since Tony has moved to Waverly and father Higgs has left his Charles Village apartment to roam the apocalyptic landscape of Third World America in his van, Tony has become my new guru.

And not only was the night a big night for Normal's, but it was most likely the last show for Madagascar for quite a well, since Michael has decided that it's time to clear out of Baltimore for the icy climes of Minnesota. He feels that his vast collection of Isaac Hayes floor length fur coats won't draw so much unwanted attention in a region that actually has underground tunnels for you to walk in to avoid death by frozen lungs.

If I achieve nothing else in my seedy life, I am at least amassing a good collection of photos I've taken of Baltimore poet Chris Toll, who has a brand new book out on Publishing Genius, cheerily raising a beer. Here he is beside Asa of Zomes and legendary Lungfish. Asa closed out the night with a fine set performing with Professor Andy Hayleck who lives a block or two from Normal's. If you are a scalper stalker who sells stolen human hair, it would be hard to beat the dark flaxen wig of Hayleck. Andy and I believe a woman named Jordan (Jordie?) were in the early format of Zomes.

Poet and curator of the WORMS reading series, Bob O'Brien, took on the burly crowd after Walker & Jay and Spacecrafts and Insects performed. He read a new version of his piece on war and responded to a rowdy voice in the crowd at one point, "Nothing you say will be as interesting as what I have to say because I've had time to revise it". Robert knows how to stand his ground with a crowd and work them into a frenzy of worship and he's also spent some serious time behind the counter at Normal's explaining to befuddled folks that no, we are not a martial arts center and we don't sell swimsuits or plastic owls for scaring away pigeons. And my favorite, back when we briefly had the two split in two spaces across the street from each other, a gentleman asked me while I was in the basement book side if I would hold his crack 8-ball behind the counter while he worked his sales pitch out on the street. And without even any enticement of a cut! Just putting neighborly guilt/pressure on me!

Here is one chunk of the crowd right after Bob's reading. I spy T-Dogg Duggan and Bob of the Junkyard band and at least three registered sex criminals.

And here is the closing act, Asa and Andy. Note that at this point it's probably pushing 2am and they've been rubbing elbows and with 100 or more sweaty friends and they look like they're sitting out on a backporch in Maine enjoying a chill breeze.

It was a great show and a great week at the store. One nice small world coincidence was that a longtime great customer, smart friendly guy turned out to have played bass on one of my top ten favorite albums, Emmylou Harris' "Pieces of the Sky"! He and I have talked many a time, mostly about music and he'd never even mentioned that he was a musician. Then he came in looking for "13" by Emmylou because she was coming to Pier Six and he wanted to get her to sign it for a friend of his who drove across country with a cassette version of it as the only music to listen to the whole journey. I mentioned how "Pieces of the Sky" warmed my soul one snowy Christmas eve when I was 15 and received it on vinyl from my brother. I laid in bed past 2am listening to it over and over on headphones watching the snow swirl.

Four or five days after I discovered my friend and customer's earlier life, I was holding three signed Emmylou albums.

The day of the Golden West show, about an hour before closing as my guts went into anxiety mode, a friendly gent walked in with a slick homemade crate full of nothing but vinyl gems, including two near mint second pressings of John Fahey. Of course, since this is Baltimore it turned out he was a good friend of good friends and a working musician to boot. A friendly conversation was had, fantastic vinyl was added to the stock and I was reminded again of why I love my job and hope the world doesn't go all white empty zen room digital.

Thanks again to everyone who played the show and came out and made the night so special.

Love Plugs For Normal's Night at The Golden West

2011-07-21T19:53:00.000-07:00

Many thanks to the folks at The City Paper:

Normal's Night

With musical performers Asa Osbourne (Lungfish, Zomes), Thank You, Madagascar, Walker & Jay, and Spacecrafts and Aliens (featuring Nathan Bell and Liz Downing), and poet Robert O'Brien.

We Say...

If you were to build a diorama of the Normal's Books and Records musical universe, you could start by collecting battered little musical instruments that fell out of the doll house that grandpa built. Then glue them to miniature dolls hand-carved in the likenesses of such local musical visionary-oddball-luminaries as Asa Osbourne (Lungfish, Zomes), Thank You (pictured), Madagascar, Walker & Jay, and Spacecrafts and Insects (featuring Nathan Bell and Liz Downing). You'd have to feature a poet, of course, so why not carve up a Robert O'Brien out of some winnowed soap? Place them on a scrap of old carpet, set them in an cut-up cardboard box, plug in some twinkly lights, and set it all in front of a plate glass window, where everyone walking by could puzzle over the curiosity. The whole thing would lure them off the street, ideally, as might this benefit show for the venerable used bookstore/culture hub. (Tim Hill)

> READ MORE

and The Urbanite for these nice plugs for our show. Thanks to the great musicians for giving their time and talent for this night that already is singeing my back hair off with fevered anticipation!

Gold Plated Normal's Golden West Show

When: Sat., July 23
www.normals.com

Normal’s bookstore will be grooving to folk music and exercising its right to drink legally at the Gold Plated Normal's Golden West Show, a celebration of the store’s 21 years in the book and record sales business. Golden West restaurant in Hampden will host Asa Osborne of Zomes, Lungfish, and Madagascar. Walker & Jay and Bob O’Brien, host of the WORMS reading series, will represent the literary with some poetry readings.

Golden West Cafe

Hampden 1105 W 36th St
410-889-8891
www.goldenwestcafe.com/

Great Amusement Parks

2011-07-20T19:38:00.000-07:00

Thank god for MPT. The grotesque swamp weather has numbed my brain and glued me to the couch. The air outside is like stepping into an old catcher's mitt that baked in grandma's attic and not only has the humidity short circuited my brain too much to write, but I can't even summon the concentration to read.

Thankfully MPT broke through the blizzard of cable TV grotesqueries to air a homey documentary on amusement parks in America.

Two weeks ago they aired a kind of Junior High level doc about Hershey Park which I used to go to almost once a year or so when I was a fresh wee neurotic in Catholic School garb.

They spent a lot of time on this happy gent who plays a massive organ for a roller rink at one of the parks. The glossiness of it all cheered me greatly and made me think of Peter Pan.

Sadly, they focused primarily on the rollercoasters at all the parks. Which are cool. But then whenever they got to some funky eerie designed rides or park decoration the cameraman suddenly got ADD. One place had a nursery rhyme theme going like Maryland's own dear departed Enchanted Forest - http://theenchantedforest.ellicottcity.net/ - and had some great detailed slightly grotesque decor, but the filmmakers flew right past all of it. And come to think of it, why wasn't Maryland's Enchanted Forest mentioned/covered? Maybe there is an MPT doc on it yet to come.

One of my moments of achieving some slight touch of romantic wisdom was when I was fourteen and I somehow ended up on The Zipper - the wildest ride I've ever been on to this day - with this kind of tough, but extremely sexy many leagues cooler than me girl. When we were finished being spun upside down while simultaneously being whipped sideways we both tumbled out of the steel cage of pleasure and the power fox who I placed on a pedestal turned a fetching gray poupon collard green-yellow and tossed her cookies and perhaps even a beer or two onto the pavement that was also covered with scattered coins shaken from the riders' pockets as they broke all rules of gravity.

She beat a quick retreat from the scene but I was happy as a lark. She was human! I too often vomited. Never in public, though. Not until the college lush years anyway.

The special really got me jonesing for the song of the creaking rollercoaster boards, the wafting stench of fried everything, many things on sticks. moles getting whacked, something tiny and shrouded displayed in the back room, rides that swing me around, pin me to walls, dunk me in water - all operated by hungover stooped carnies too slothful to try crank, their nicotined fingers covered in the blue-black of homemade tattoos.

As synchronicity would have it, one of the emails in my box this morning, a morning that crawled even deeper into the harsh airless poophatch of Azathoth, was from my friends Ken and Aimee inviting me and my wife to a day at park called Knoebler's in PA. Ken calls it the best park in the country and this man knows his stuff. He has a masters in arcane fun. Never misses a Mermaid parade, calls all the security guards by name at the Mutter Museum, swam at Coney Island high on glue with Joey Ramone, knows all the funky dim lounges of Baltimore still left standing from the '50s and '60s and can sniff out a duckpin alley like Nixon could sniff out white socks and highwater polyester suit pants.

Sadly, as fate seems to get me with these things every time, despite my fairly sparse social schedule, the amusement park party day is the same day as the legendary ultra fun Shakemore Festival in Westminster. And She Bites is booked this year for 3:30, right before that mean ol' Selena belts out some Roy Orbison with Animal Eyes. She Bites opened up for her in Nashville at the Opry (Granma's Tiny Opry on Visigoth St.) and she stuck a wad of Britney Spears' gum on my mic.

Everly and I will have to venture out to the wilds of PA to check out this park when the weather drops down to below curdling temperatures.

Normal's Golden West July 23rd Show Lineup Beginning to Gel & Wiggle

2011-07-02T20:45:00.000-07:00

Normal's kind friend, other groove psych folk musician, Waverly dad about the village and all around good guy Tony Lambright convinced the kind folks of Golden West restaurant in Hampden to let Normal's Books & Records take over their venue on the night of Saturday, July 23rd. Not take over exactly, they'll still do all the hard lifting, but Tony is filling their stage (maybe stages) with great music.

So far the definites are Madagascar - having a reunion show before Michael takes off for the chillier climes of Minneapolis - the sparkling Thank You boys, who also played our 16th Anniversary Party back in 2006 on a hot humid evening that even made Thank You McGrath's fearsome wig droop and Spacecrafts and Insects, the mind blowing duo of Liz Downing (also of Lurch & Holler and Old Songs) and Nathan Bell. Poet and charismatic host of the WORMS reading series Bob O'Brien will get the night started with some fire breathing poetry.

Rumored possible acts are Walker & Jay and maybe even the esteemed and enigmatic Zomes.

Come hear some great music cheap and help us celebrate 21 years in the wild-assed cultural biz of book and record selling.

Hedgehog Resemblance Poem by Blaster Al Ackerman

2011-07-01T15:29:00.000-07:00

Hedgehog Resemblance Poem

So come on you little hedgehog in a tupperware bin

You're here and I find myself thinking about devil woman doctor a bit

I find myself longer than a true blue shadow

quivering on this page

and resembling an ever-changing Mexican stagehand

with how I can't stop slugging myself in the neck

I'm like some more sublime monster doing dishes at Arbeys

swimming shirt climbing the steps trailing clocks

the finger grunter the dog blister the lab dung

being self destructive

only more mysterious

THANKS TO JMB OF 1/26/11

- Blaster Al Ackerman -

Normal's 21st Anniversary

2011-06-22T21:27:00.000-07:00

Where did 21 years go and which window did they exit from? From nine we are now 4. Not too many violent incidents and throwdowns considering the length and weight of the project, really. This year's anniversary wingding was somewhat more sale based than last year's big 20th anniversary blowout, but we got some great musicians to donate some time and talent and to saturate our walls with more aural goodness.
One of my all-time favorite sets of music in the last few years was Susan Alcorn (above) playing Senor Gnostic Moonbeam Higgs Christmeastermass at Normal's. She started out riffing on Hawaiian pedal steel flourishes, soared into the stratosphere and then somehow made a landing into "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas". She played another beautiful set for the Anniversary show to kick things off. By the end of it I was a luminous jellyfish pulsating on the ocean floor.
Following Madame Alcorn and digging their tender young heels in as the mobs next door loved up on the mad 30% off sale, was Sea Couch. I've been following these guys since they were selling LSD behind the catholic high school in Tiimonium and they only get better each time. This time their voices in particular seemed to really have found new heights of expression. One new song that is featured on the Love-a-saurus compilation sounds like an Appalachian hybrid of a Japanese koto song. Amanda's voice effortlessly found an eerie high pitched music box quality. They also did a wonderful song about the belief that you will find your true love that was straight forward and inspiring without being sentimental. They didn't mention who it was by and I confess I didn't recognize it. Maybe Daniel Johnston? I will have to ask young Dan, if he is still speaking to me after he caught me stealing the chapstick from his mother's purse.
Here is Amanda of Sea Couch snuggling against Geff of The Baltimore String Felons who later that night would have their cd release party at the Free Farm in Hampden. I actually rose back up from my crypt a second time that day and made it to their show. Being twice as old as everyone there (other than fellow Aged Pursuers of the Dream Chairman Rachel and Giant China) and openly displaying every craggy loss and crushed hope of my many years, the oiled up youth gasped and wept as I crawled through them leaving a trail of dust that when caught in the right light could pass for glitter.

Happily I was rewarded by catching Sea Couch for the second time in one day and catching for the first time "Her Fantastic Cats". This gent was on fire and I'm not entirely sure what all he was doing on guitar and in his songwriting but it was fresh. Kind of Delta blues crossed with post-punk angular guitar lines like Mission of Burma or something. And there was something resembling verses in the lyrics, but they had a structure all their own.

Right before the String Felons was The Return of the Bowlegged Gorilla. Those Gorilla had been tending lawns in Glendale, California for a few months. Working for an hour or so shirtless by the pool as idle wealthy female executives hopped up on prescription weight loss pills ogled his primal form.
Above is the Jersey Contingent that arrived. Tina is brandishing her copy of "Hairspray" that she just bought from Normal's. I promised her to one day get her one that is signed by the Low Lord of Baltmore himself, Herr Waters.
Probably the biggest surprise of the day was the appearance of former DC punk rocker and former Baltimore maneater Anne Bonafede. Back in 1982 when I first met Anne I was in a group called Neighbors' Children and eaten up with jealousy over Anne's old band Chalk Circle. They played one show and were on some WGNS cassette compilations and they were legendary!!! Anne played a wildly pounding poly-rhythmic drum battery while her best pal Sharon Cheslow (The Chez) beat out unpredictable chords on guitar.

As fate will occasionally throw us a good bone while wars spread like wildfire and wildfires spread like Mid-East wars, the amazing Oregon label Mississippi Records somehow found out about Chalk Circle (perhaps Ms. Cheslow's current notoriety in the LA free music scene?) and has released a full length lp of what is probably their entire recorded history, along with a generous beautifully done large booklet. There is a hilarious part in the booklet where Don Fleming of Velvet Monkeys and Dim Stars relates how he was blown away by catching Chalk Circle live. He approached Bonafede (who at that time looked like a cross between young Linda Ronstadt and The Cheshire Cat) and said that surely she must have been studying African poly-rhythmic drumming or something to come up with her unique style. Anne guilelessly responded that no, she was inspired by Tony DeFranco's "It's a Heartbeart, It's a Lovebeat".
Despite (or because of) a two night battle against a petulant panang curry, Normal's co-owner, Red Room impresario and graphic designer commando John Berndt performed a sweet saxophone solo.
Local brain wizards Megan McShea, Linda Franklin and Stephanie Barber soak in some 'Pants. Sweatpants have talked about moving into a new format of pipe organ, ukulele, Yes vocals processed through swimming pool filters and vibraphone, but for this show they were kicking out old school. Head trouser Adam Robinson of Publishing Genius Press even jumped from the bass drum and performed an impassioned version of Springsteen's "Racing In the Streets". The gent on the right from above stopped by the store to talk to me about some textbook sellling project and then the next thing he and I knew he was deep in the web of the 'Pants, intoxicated by their heavy musk.

All in all an enjoyable day and a successful sale (praise Allah!). It was even later reported that enigmatic magazine distributor Chris Stadler lost his lunch afterwards from drinking too much of the free party coffee from Dunkin' Donuts on an empty stomach and then going home wobbly to combat the queasiness with V-8 juice and Valerian root(?)

Normal's lives another day to push an exquisite second edition of Kafka's The Castle with intro by Thomas Mann across the counter and to hold out the hope that perhaps this year, this 22nd year of retail, could be the magical year that The Man Whose Ass Is Made of Cake will pull up in his convertible Lexus and for the very first time plunk down a five spot for a book.

Many thanks to all the beautiful folks who over the years have supported us, provided us with great informative conversation and/or sold their treasures to us. Despite the collapse of Western Civilization, the Unearthly Birth of the Kindle and the dumbing down of America, a used bookstore is still the best organism to live within.

"Yay Empty Spider Catches Fire" by Blaster Al Ackerman

2011-05-30T14:44:00.000-07:00

I've been having too much fun with four out of town visitors a few weeks ago and then a glorious escape to Chincoteague Island, but it's made me fall way behind on posts. Here is a fresh morsel
from Blaster Al that came in the mail while we were away.

Yay Empty Spider Catches Fire

When empty spider crumpled in the gutter
gross this must be to those choosing sleep with my sweet clock choosing to eat
real clamor, real chamois, then over my kidney stone my sweet clock's blazing
and my drizzling bone on my desk
for the locker in my lap
let me fight them off with my Saturday afternoons
towelette when having sandwich reveal my paste hole
soon my squealing ladder mice go charging up the hill
but to be really out of it,
see how tongue shadow quivers on the page
and hopping toward the spat sardines
we'll be better too, better than your whistled eye, gasoline
helps taste the shadow in your sock that's friendship for you
but it's also obscure and nothing should be obscure when it's on fire

(thanks to JMB of 1/26/11 etc.)

"Say It With Writing" At Barber's Salon Lafeyette

2011-05-18T19:42:00.000-07:00

Yowzah, yowzah, yowzah what a weekend last weekend was. Great old favorite friends dropping from the skies like paratroopers with chocolates and well-trained French can-can dancers. First got word that Courtney "Camel" McCullough was flying in for a "Baltimore bachelor weekend" (thanks Sabra! Although it would have been great to see you, also. Reggie can man the helm), then got word that Nancy from Groovy Like a Pig and one of the co-founders of Shattered Wig Review was also popping in from Detroit.

As if all those sweet surprises weren't enough for one weekend Chris Mason, one of Baltimore's most seasoned and open-hearted experimental poets was reading at Stephanie Barber's Salon and he asked me to be his date. It is a neighborhood that sports about as many pieces of plywood as windows and Chris was afraid it might send him spiraling back to his early dark days of alley crawling in search for a long moist piece of jimson weed. I would be his puritan escort, leaving my thong at home and bringing along my King James.

Other than Chris, the lineup was comprised of well-credentialed New York folks, who were very sharp, fresh and accessible. My one criticism is that I wish the multi-media trio would have closed the show. My own personal prejudice with shows is that the acts should be layered by volume. That once the sound barrier has been pierced by drums and electronics it's hard to get back to a lone human voice. But then again I still like to watch "The Andy Griffith Show".

Part of it might also be that for me the trio was so successful. Often with that kind of setup it can feel like three disparate parts kind of working on their own at the same time, but these guys really enhanced each other. The story at its core was great and would love to read more by its author, which I think was Michael Barron. The lineup is posted below as Stephanie wrote it up.

Stephanie was a great host, crackling electricity as always, and the space left plenty room for psychic expansion despite local marauders The Smelling Salts from the Northside being there, yelling "Time for a beatdown" between each set.

Michael Barron, James Copeland and William Rahilly will be presenting “Hot Face,” a new performance of video, music, and text by the same arrangement of people that brought you “The Pigeon” (Poetry Time at Space Space, 2010) and “Horn One” (Bowery Poetry Club, 2010). See Aa description of their work at the Poetry Project website. Michael is an editor at New Directions and a member of Supermachine and Holy Spirits. James is Managing Director of Ugly Duckling Presse and the author of misc chapbooks, most recently Fax II, and he collaborated with Will on Fade to Fax, the first 7″ from Unicorn Evil Records. Will is a video maker and musician. Trailer for Hot Face.

Nicole Trigg lives in Brooklyn, binds and repairs books, and co-curates the CROWD reading series. Writing is (was or will be) featured in Flying Fish, Cap Gun, The Poetry Project Newsletter, Love Among the Ruins, and on the website Ink Node. View recent work at http://www.loveamongtheruins.com/nicole-trigg.html

Chris Mason has lived in Baltimore for 40 years, is the author of several books, and plays music with The Tinklers and Old Songs.

No finer backdrop for a reading than this Claus Oldenburg-like piece behind the saintly and brilliant Chris Mason.

"Intact Animal" (Globetrotter Mickey Cutler) Presents a Night That Enters The Future Through The Backdoor

2011-05-11T14:36:00.000-07:00

People under 30 often ask me as I attempt to wheedle some change from them outside a 7-11 or Dunkin' Donuts, "Gosh Mr. Cabbage Hat, what was Baltimore like in the '80s and '90s with all that crack and murder and lack of fabulous stuff?"

Well, let me tell you, it was just as fabulous, just in smaller quantities and you often had to drink or drug a lot harder to see it. Lots of cabooses went off the rails, aye, but many came back from the dark side and what they came back as makes the new zombies movie look like early Disney.

Then there are a few who ran and got far away and occasionally dip a teasing toe back into the brackish psychedelic city water to prove they still got the Crazy Bone. Queen of these Marauders, close personal friend of Nicolas Sarkozy, gym workout pal of Queen Latifah, frequent cocktail companion of Jose Merce and late night phone consolor of what's left of Pauly Shore is tiny Mickey Cutler.

Rumor has it that she's been visiting her old stomping grounds here in Baltimore for a week or so and she's rounding up some of the fiesty musical icons of Baltimore's '90s to come to Normal's and the Red Room to strutt their Nancy Sinatra-level-of-preservation-stuff. Here is the show spiel:

Tuesday, May 17 at Normal's Books & Records
425 E. 31st St.

An evening of live musique with The One And The Other (Eric Maroldo, Jefrey Leighton Brown, Alex Layne), Tony Agostinelli, Amanda Pollock, and the Ding Dong Daddy himself, William Marshall. Other guests TBA.

Entrance is FREE. The music will rotate throughout the evening. You can’t miss a thing unless you don’t show up. Normal’s will be open for browsing and shopping (a very hot clerk will man the register).

We will be recording the evening, and sounds of jubilant accord are welcome, as well as regular ol’ shout ‘out’s to my homies in San Quentin’ also encouraged.

More information to follow regarding the international INTACT ANIMAL project - email list to be collected on site.

Bring a camera, take a picture, enjoy enjoy.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This should be a fantastic night of entertainment and revelry whether yee be an old head or a new head.

the hollow of the 4th

2011-05-10T12:12:00.001-07:00

What is the special hollow feeling that comes on the 4th of July? My own personal beige demon leftover from suburban summers alone?

Walking through scorched brown baseball field. If only that soda machine worked.

Hammered zombies of Light Beer taunting folks? As if teetering on one braincell while jeering at differences is the main cultural heritage of independence.

A day usually pulsating with Camus' "The Stranger" overbearing bright light and broiling heat becomes the most popular day for glowing coals grilling meat out in a tree-less backyard.

Even when it's a peaceful one, my arm around my loved one on the banks of Chincoteague Bay, fireworks being set off from various points on the island, the membrane between worlds feels thin and pliant. At any moment either Red Skelton or The Red Skull could reach through and pull you into a dark gluey abyss.

Ghosts of war are not far from the surface. What does a nation mean and can it be defined without the conversation becoming a snake eating its tail?

Is it any wonder that at least one cable station always runs a Twilight Zone marathon on this day?

its beginning and its end cannot be found

2011-05-08T08:54:00.000-07:00

its beginning and its end cannot be found

like two strangers chained to pipes
in an underground bathroom
or neuro-theology practiced by
a largely ceremonial department
with a tiny budget and few
employees
you may dance but
you may only dance
without
shoes
within a parameter
of a few square inches
　
Dance
like a little shack
built with floss
and discarded
board games.
Floss used by a
near toothless man who
lives on ballpark cigars
and fava beans

The little shack dances
O how the little shack dances
buffeted by wind in a field of
corn and despairing scarecrows as
you dance only with your inner mind
where feet are many and frog-like
and you and an old Ravi Shankar
record can be alone

Just then
when you tapped
the shoulder of the guy
in front of you
well, his torso is behind you
gladiator air freshener
tendriled your remains
meal worms shifting
in a dental chair, the
final prop left standing
on The Planet of the Apes

I thought today was
going to be the day
but it was another

Goodloe Byron Renders Cort McMeel In Pen and Ink

2011-05-05T15:39:00.001-07:00

For some reason at the last Shattered Wig Night - it's been a few months now, actually, time creeps on - I didn't take my usually handy camera. And it was a particularly memorable evening, what with Cort McMeel kind of levitating a few inches off the ground and his generous belly (an admirable worthy mound that I suspect is his secret seat of power, but it was slightly downsized here in Goodloe's otherwise inspired drawing) undulating like Gumby on roofies.

Not to mention the debut of Nathan Bell and Liz Downing playing out together and summoning the angels from many parallel dimensions. And Goodloe himself! AND the Go Pills.

At any rate, a few days after the show Cort emailed me and said that he was so ashamed at being involved with a Shattered Wig Night that he had gotten a hold of some old "Twilight Sleep" meds that they used to give middle class women so they would have no memory of the awful gooey mess of childbirth. Consequently, he had no memory of even being at the show, let alone his reading segment, and he was wondering if there were any photos.

Bummer. I had none.

I put out a Facebook distress signal fishing for some and generous enigmatic Sir Byron said his brother took some blurry ones of his Hush Puppies, but there were none extant of Cort, so he kindly whipped up this drawing.

"Skin" by Larissa Shmailo

2011-04-20T11:49:00.000-07:00

Skin

My tongue is bruised
My nude is creaky
Like a cabbage I sit and wait for you
I stutter like an old gun:
Take me
Know
The fast love of my hair.

Your beady little eyes transfix me
Like rats at the foot of my bed
Your limp pendant wrists still hang on my door
You snicker: Get a grip.

You own too big a piece of me
Your eyes say spare some change and I
Don’t want to I
Take and give no quarter and I’ve
Already cut my hair.

Skin is just sausage we call home.
Skin is just sausage we call home.

- Larissa Shmailo

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Larissa Shmailo is a poet and a translator. Her book In Paran is available from Amazon.com and Small Press Distribution. Her poetry CDs Exorcism and The No-Net World, with music by Bobby Perfect. are available from iTunes and CDBaby. Larissa translated the Russian transrational opera Victory over the Sun by A. Kruchenych; a DVD of the original English-language production is part of the collections of the New York Museum of Modern Art and the Hirshorn Museum.

"We Are Different Here In The Present" - Stephanie Barber & Megan McShea at The Benevolent Armchair

2011-04-17T17:09:00.000-07:00

It was a glorious sunny, breezy Spring day after a Saturday of Biblical proportion flooding and howling winds. I had been to the Benevolent Armchair readings, hosted by Chris Toll in Baltimore and Barbara DeCesare in Pennsylvana, many times when it was called The Upward Spiral and was held at the El Rancho Grande coffeehouse on Falls Road, but I hadn't made it to their spot at the Bromo Seltzer Building. Mostly because Sunday afternoons are my time to haunt the dog parks with Max. And today being so beautiful it was tough to cut our jaunt short, but it was well worth it for the refreshing word craft provided by Megan McShea and Stephanie Barber and for perusing the various "dirt soaps" down in the first floor gift shop. Love the smell of dirt and the ironic thought of cleaning with it, but if I am paying a whole $15 for something to feverishly rub against my unclean body it must be something over the age of 18 and wearing either a nun's habit or a sailor's cap. Sadly, I crept in a little late, having to stop for a cold caffeine fix on the way and being overwhelmed by the old grandeur of the Bromo Seltzer building and the refurbished Hippodrome. I missed the open mic portion of the reading and the very beginning of Megan's reading, but luckily she did one of the longest most generous readings I've seen her do. Usually she pulls a Kool Keith and whips through one or two of her evocative micro-tales and then beats it to her trailer to feast on all the riders in her contract. There was a funny moment when she was flipping through pages, obviously reading a portion to herself and deciding to edit it from the afternoon, when an audience member encouraged her: "Why don't you read them out loud."

(Above is audience member and publishing mogul Adam Robinson sporting a handsome Normal's Books & Records 20th Anniversary t-shirt). Megan's reading was followed by a brief question and answer period and then Stephanie Barber joined Megan for a reading of some great collaborations they had done. Hopefully at the bottom of this post is a working video of this portion of the reading. (It has now been about an hour and the video hasn't loaded so I'll try a separate post for it tomorrow).

Stephanie read about twenty short pieces which were all descriptions of photographs. This was a great concept that Stephanie really brought a lot of life to - the evocative, mysterious nature of life being frozen for that split second. During her Q&A, Adam asked if the photographs were real (I like a chucklehead laughed at first, thinking he'd jokingly asked if the poems were real). "Some of them," Stephanie answered. The oldest piece had been written four years ago, the most recent was written yesterday when she was compiling what she was going to read for today and she received a photograph of her nephew.

Below is host Chris Toll engaged with the sweet Lynchian retro microphone. Co-host Barbara DeCesare was occupied peering in the window of a wedding reception in Red Lion, PA that the Elvis impersonator she is stalking was performing at. The day was somewhat bittersweet because now that I'd finally caught a reading at the nice new space it turned out to be the last one of the season until September or October.

The Long Wrinkly Tendrils of Young Asher Howl

2011-04-14T14:28:00.000-07:00

O fresh flesh creation! Baby war on bummers! A new wee one in the house of Baltimore poetry. But how will this affect Senor O'Brien's wild plans of lengthy tours of many cities with Baltimore poets caged like wild beasts before terrified new audiences. And what of WORMS??? Father Bob and Mother Mel are glowing and their son Asher Howl already has 700 people following the Tweets from his recyclable whistling diapers.

Did You Know There Were Vast Numbers of People Kept on a Teen Prison Island Called White Marsh?

2011-04-13T14:53:00.000-07:00

On a recent Saturday night, Encyclopedia Brown and I were left with a hole rent in the delicate fabric of our social schedule. The Lunts, a local famous theatrical couple had backed out of dinner plans in the afternoon. Both of them calling separately not knowing what the other was up to, with wild tales of illness.

"Right now I am kneeling by our bathtub and a shark is devouring my arm," Harold said, trying to sound like he was wincing hard from unbearable pain.

About a half hour later Harold's tall, lithe bride called, sounding sheepish: "Would it be vain if I were to cancel for tonight having just broken out with leprosy? I have to make some calls to that island off Maui where they keep others like myself."

This being, as Sun Ra says, after the end of the world, and the two of us being mainly homebodies anyway, our schedule usually consists of me trying to remain as strictly parallel to our couch as humanly possible while Kim Jong Ev props a tome on the Holocaust on one knee while the Fogcaster runs a marathon of the show "Hoarders Who Hoard Other Hoarders While a Bunch of Cute Animals Get Trapped".

Without remembering any of George Romero's early zombie masterpieces, one of which took place entirely in a mall, we headed off for the White Marsh mall to catch either "Insidious" or "Hanna". I didn't know much about either, but I was leaning toward "Insidious" because although it was done by the people who foisted the godawful mess of "Saw" crap on us, this was supposed to be their attempt at redemption through classic psychological horror. I doubted it would be as fun as "The House of the Devil", "Drag Me To Hell" or of course no where near as brilliant as "Pontypool" I was hoping I at least would whiz in my pleated khakis.

But like the anticipated candlelit evening dinner of sophisticated repartee with Harold and Lana Lunt, it was not to be.

"Yeah, sold out. Over three hundred people in there. Of course, mainly teenagers," scoffed the puffy cheeked teen.

We were blown away and terrified by the masses of writhing ex-urbanites or post-surburbanites, or whatever real people are classified as these days. People who work in real estate, live in McMansions without trees in their neighborhood, occasionally wig out and slaughter their families. We're used to catching a high quality film at the comfortable Charles or deco Senator with only ten or twenty other cinephile weirdos, but here was a firehose of 21st Century DNA gushing at us, most of it teenaged. I forgot how rarely I see teenagers in groups these days.

As it turned out "Hanna" was a blast, reminding me in its rollercoaster slightly arty international thriller post-hippy hippy vibe of the film "Diva" in the '80s. I had a weird Twilight Zone parallel world experience after seeing "Hanna" though, of asking folks whether they remembered "Diva" and at first only one out of about ten remembered it! My memory of it was that it was huge among our circle in the '80s and that it caught something of a "zeitgeist" of the time, a bit of mucal plug from the cosmic sneeze.

Finally, out of desperation, I do what I always do when I fear the world has been turned upside down - I called the wise Desert Vixen out in the desert of New Mexico.

"Diva?" she said. "Is that that new movie with Cher and what's her name, Christina Applegate?"

"NO", I cried out in anguish. They had even gotten to the Desert Vixen! Should I call Matt Damon or George Clooney? Were they my last hope?

"Oh wait, Court has taken this hookah out of my hand and Gavin has hooked me up to an electro-shock treatment. I am also burning a candle I got from 'The Hugging Monk' and it's becoming clearer. Not only did I see it, but I saw it with you and Gavin! And there was wine! And beer! And smoke, followed by a little bald guy and an opera singer. Why did you call?"

At any rate, "Hanna" features not only a foxy ethereal star with an unpronounceable old school Irish name, but also one of the funniest side characters in recent films that I can think of - a great cynical before her time world weary early teen Brit girl. Can't wait to see what all this girl does in the future. The only two weaknesses in this polished thriller (besides the plot which of course ends of being way silly and hard to believe - the Maguffin, as Hitch would say) is Cate Blanchett's weird Southern accent that doesn't really show up until about mid-movie, is at first really hard to figure as Southern and then by the end turns into Minnie Pearl on goofballs. Also, there is a moment when a scraggly gnarly Euro-hippy magician threatens to reduce everything to "If only we could all juggle and believe in circus magic and wear stovepipe hats there would be golden happiness everywhere, but lots of bad music".

WORMS Reading Writeup In What Weekly Wherein A Photo Depicts Me As Ginormous

2011-03-31T08:37:00.001-07:00

Two of the best new cultural growths here in Baltimore The Second Angriest City In the U.S. (Goddamn you Detroit!!!!) are the stellar WORMS reading series curated by the thoughtful Robert M. O'Brien and the weekly media review events calendar website/email magazine What Weekly. Today the two of my favorite new things are combined with my big ol' pumpkin head sandwiched within looking like Joey Hindenburg.

Once again the What Weekly camera loves up on Chris Toll. This time making him appear to be a cherub of the shadows.

Here is the link in case what lies below is screwed up on your particular viewing device:
http://whatweekly.com/2011/03/30/worms/#

WORMS

30 March 2011

Photo by Tedd Henn

WORMS is the name of an event billed as “an interactive literary magazine in 3-D.” Every month, typically on a Wednesday, the basement of the Bell Foundry is opened for an evening of spoken word and other shenanigans. The evening’s host and editor, R. M. O’Brien, usually begins with an introduction that is two parts editorial and one part late-night showbiz. For the most recent incarnation of WORMS, O’Brien read from the letters of Saint Patrick, in honor of what O’Brien referred to as “the day the Irish celebrate the demise of their ancestral religion.” He mentioned the snakes, which are like worms, that Saint Patrick is said to have driven out of Ireland, the snakes that never existed there, that is. Someone heckled, “except for the two-legged kind.” This is an unusual sort of editorial, performed on stage; interactive, and although any editorial might be enjoyed with Natty Boh in a basement, these can be enjoyed in the company of a wriggling, live audience.

Photo by Tedd Henn, story by Dylan Kinnett.

Photo by Tedd Henn

Chris Toll was the first performer who read from his forthcoming book, from the Publishing Genius press, The Disinformation Phase. This performance was also filmed so that it could be used for promotion. You shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, let alone its author, but just this once, let’s do exactly that. The landscape on the cover of this book depicts the surface of another planet. That planet is inhabited by a clown, a tiger, a giant amphibious creature straddling something that looks like a cactus, an aardvark, a nun, or perhaps a nurse, a tiger, the invisible man, two different species of birds, Yoda, a flying saucer and yes, a snake, which is like a worm. The poetry of Chris Toll is just as imaginatively populated as this tableau. It is populated by unusual imagery, from which the cover is derived, no doubt. The poetry is also populated by Toll’s startling inquisitions of the language. For example, in a poem entitled Why is Try in Poetry the question is posed: “why is love backwards in evolve?” The title and that line are just two examples, among many, where Toll playfully examines the presence of one word within another.

Photo by Tedd Henn, story by Dylan Kinnett.

Books, Live Music, Art Gallery and more!

Same block as Windup Space, across from Joe Squared. Plenty of room inside for your bike; FREE street parking for your car (well plug your meter before 6, after that its free anyway) come on over…

30 West North Ave.
Baltimore, MD, 21201

Photo by Tedd Henn

The second performer, Dave K. read a recently published short story entitled Harrison Ford is
Naked. He says that you need to imagine that the title is read to you in the voice that announces the movie previews. The tale is one of candid, detached irregularity. Its narrator is an artist, of sorts, whose occupation involves sculpting cakes, made to order, in the shape of nude bodies, usually men, and in this case, in the shape of an “anatomically generous” Harrison Ford. The story’s author is unquestionably an artist of performance and prose, whose reading left the audience to wonder whether this story is too strange to be true, or not.

Photo by Tedd Henn, story by Dylan Kinnett.

Photo by Tedd Henn

Up next was Buck Downs. Mr. Downs has the honor of being the first WORMS performer to come to the reading from outside of Baltimore. He is the author of several books, including Marijuana Softdrink, Ladies Love Outlaws, and Recreational Vehicle. His style of presentation is something to see, indeed. He paces; he queries his audience with riddles; he moves quickly. The papers he holds while reading seems to be designed for the task. They resemble flashcards more than manuscripts. His poems are short. Here’s one, for example. It’s called “Secondwave Dysphoria.”

sweating it out
until it’s over

I did a double
take with my feet

the way I lost it
a map will not help

Photo by Tedd Henn, story by Dylan Kinnett.

Photo by Tedd Henn

For the finale, we heard from Rupert Wondolowski, who is no stranger to Baltimore’s literary underground, nor to WORMS. This is his second performance there. As the editor of Shattered Wig Review and Press, he can often be found at the i.e. Reading Series or the 14k Cabaret. Wondolowski’s poems have something in common with the poems of the Beat Generation, because of their jazzy, casual, sometimes sarcastic cadences and their references to jazz and jive. The things to listen for, though, are the well-aimed phrases such as “the second time you’re told you’ll drown in a river of blood, it loses some of its chill.” Wondolowski can hardly read six lines without having to pause for the chuckles of the crowd.

Photo by Tedd Henn, story by Dylan Kinnett.

Photo by Tedd Henn

In the movie Roxanne, Steve Martin’s character says “I’m afraid of worm” but he meant to say words. Although this might be where the reading series gets its name, there’s nothing to be afraid of here, even if you have stage fright. In addition to the literary performances to be had at WORMS, there is also something of a carnival of literary publications, zines other miscellaneous publications available for purchase. If you’d like to read, see or hear the writings of these literary performers, and others like them, WORMS might be the best place for you be. More details are available at the other end of this link.

League of the Unsound Sound

Photo by Tedd Henn, story by Dylan Kinnett.

Photo by Tedd Henn

Photo by Tedd Henn, story by Dylan Kinnett.

Photo by Tedd Henn

Photo by Tedd Henn, story by Dylan Kinnett.

Photo by Tedd Henn

Photo by Tedd Henn, story by Dylan Kinnett.

Strawberry Xanex

2011-03-30T12:40:00.001-07:00

(Image above is "Coma Chan" proving once again that fur, nurses and oxygen masks make the world go 'round)

Shuffling dance
with coma
In a hot air balloon.
Squares in a crop circle
Discussing Brubeck.
Heimlich refuting reflux
And wishing for the
Return of jive
Or at least a
Decent tea towel.

The second time you're told you'll
drown in a river of blood
it loses some of its chill
down your spine
the third or fourth time it's
another trash fire in the backyard
and gets stuffed
you poor child you have
lice eggs in your hair
where you no longer reach
cut off at the knees

She glanced over at me
from the easy chair and
I could see no recognition
in her eyes
like one of those old
Viewmaster toys -
rudimentary slideshows
of how she saw me
ka-chunked in her vision -
cabbage in a Winston Churchill hat
potato whistling bowtie
Carbunkle Pete the house dick

"Are you the Un-Cola?" she asked me
melting away all the years
gathered in a stress hump on my shoulders
by reminding me of a time
when ad campaigns not only
mattered but were a way of life -
the Colt 45 Man in a
suit, some kind of James Bond
echo, shooting down rapids
on a raft, but somehow
a bikini clad woman arrives
and Colt 45 Man has a waiter
serving him malt liquor
off a silver tray
the three and a half
grueling hours of football
that this oasis was
sandwiched within were all
just an elaborate illusion
to give life to this
few minutes of true magic

Can Aliens Be Reborn? For Once It Is Not a BM Placed In My Hand But A Beautiful New Book By Chris Toll

2011-03-26T13:11:00.000-07:00

When Publishing Genius mastermind Adam Robinson knocked, scratched and rubbed feverishly against my door at 3am two nights ågo, I thought the exterminator had failed in his job of eradicating the herd of raccoons that had invaded our neighborhood after "Lay Your Trash Out Resplendently In The Grass Week".

I hurriedly ran downstairs with my pellet gun after Everly refused to go first.

With beer foam still caught on his late 1800's baseball player neo-handlebar moutstache, writers of more purplish prose might have described Adam's state as "mad as a hatter", or "rabidly inflamed" or "downright batshit", but I will go for a more subdued description of him as beside himself. "Please calm down, Adam. Tell me what's going on. And why do you have that microphone with a ripped cord in your hand?"

"Justin, Steph and I were out karoaking and you'll never believe what we found out behind the building! This being from another planet that drinks beer and looks like Lenin! After we warmed him up some at my apartment and showed him cashmere sweater porn that he requested, he actually began to speak. And his language came out in almost poetic form - a weird cross between Emily Dickinson and some kind of cosmic spiritual sci-fi."

It was at this point that my spider senses began to tingle. Either Max my faithful collie was rubbing against my bare leg or I had a strong suspicion of "what" or more precisely "Whom" Adam had stumbled upon.

An hour later, after Adam and Justin had for no particular reason put a black bag over my head and made me empty out my bank account at two ATMs (my bank's ATMs only dispense $10 at a time), we arrived at the condominium that sits on the Inner Harbor where Adam resides with the city's ingenue mayor, Stephanie Rawlings Blake.

Sure enough, once we passed through the guards and the heavy penthouse door swung open, there facing us, sipping a Yuengling and looking like the cat who ate the canary or the Burt Reynolds who gave the Dom DeLuise a wedgy, was none other than my old friend and literary mentor Chris Toll.

When I first moved to Baltimore in the early '80s, the last glow was fading from the Orioles and there was a fantastic poetry magazine here run by Chris called Open 24 Hours. Over the next few decades many writers have succumbed to burnout or drugs or booze or death itself, but Senor Toll continues to evolve and shed skins. He even started a new reading series a few years ago with the Italian Futurist, Barbara DeCesare. Now here he was, youthful again, with a new book coming out on a powerful Baltimore press. The book in question is The Disinformation Phase and it sports an original Toll collage on its cover.

Chris Toll's precision with an Exacto knife, the main tool of his collage making, is so legendary at this point that when Dick Cheney was brought to Johns Hopkins for a tumor on his moral conscience, they had to bring in Chris to locate and excise the miniscule portion of Cheney's brain. Chris, despite whatever he felt about the former Vice President, felt obligated to carry out the task - such is the weight of his powers.

As always, Chris is irresistibly quotable: "Chaos is my preacher/A Big Voice pours through me" (Irregular Galaxy); "I call my sickness the Guest./The Guest will speak now." (No Blues Blues #43); "Satellite dishes drink stars,/a church falls asleep in front of the TV,/and you're a prayer just the way you are." (Love Your Enemies). As I pull these, more lines jump out waving their arms in stay pressed unitards of quirky timelessness.

As Magus Magnus, the frighteningly brainy poet with the eery saucer eyes says on the back cover of the fancy "Advance Review Copy" I am lucky enough to hold (but which may soon belong to Henry Rollins since his $50 bid on it on ebay is so far the highest):

"His is poetry of propulsion : for/towards a sonic age, every sentence goes off like a rocket, objects act, sonnets are psionic, civilization collapses while shafts of light break through the earth's crust. What's more, The Disinformation Phase, as a phase, suggests the next phase: if suns go out, manufacture new suns (through chaos magic, as in 'paradox is my toolshed'), manufacture new solar systems. Cosmic!"

The official release date for this book is June 28th and summer seems like an appropiate season for it. You can feel the ache of brutal winters past in these prayers to the skies, but there is a feeling of fresh urgency and rebirth to them; each one explodes with possible stories, possible new lives. Chris writes that "the job of the poets is not to explain the Mystery./The job of the poets is to make the mystery greater." and indeed with his dynamic new book he has given us many more cloaks to wrap ourselves in and feel like Cyclops strutting on the crumbling catwalk arching over the Milky Way.

If you are not already familiar with Publishing Genius or you want to contact them to pre-order this great collection, they can be found at:

http://www.publishinggenius.com/

The House Was Full of Love and Then Full of More Love and Hard-Earned Wisdom and Whimsy, So Much Said So Simply - The Chris Mason Book Party

2011-03-18T13:17:00.000-07:00

A few years from now when books no longer exist and the only things being read will be descriptions of the daily stool samples of the latest 16 year old pop star or of the drug addiction meltdown of some hack pseudo actor on the i-Pad X along with snuff e-magazines giving detailed photos and brief descriptions of daily murders and the most recent flood, drought and/or earthquake, complete with devastating videos one click away, the drones for the privatized "Removal Works" will be loading me up into the van for obsolete laborers who are not employed by search engines, hospitals, rescue agencies or radiation treatment plants.

And just before they slam the lead-lined door of the vehicle that will take me to the factory that will convert me into soylent green I will have one last tiny bit of courage and will and yell out "People once read books! Even poetry! And not only that, one warm Sunday in March, 2011, a book of poetry was published by a thing called Narrow House. It was written by a man named Chris Mason and not only was he not 18, he was not carried into the show in a giant egg carried by servants. In fact he drove up on his own volition in a kind of battered family type station wagon, his grown talented daughter Elizabeth seated beside him.

"People turned out in great numbers for the event of this publication and hung on the words of his verse. Music was played. The bald one calling himself 'Dierker' played so swift and passionately that his likeness could not be captured on camera except as a demonic blur! Surely there must be a copy of Chris' book Hum Who Hiccup surviving somewhere. Ask Secretary of Defense Justin Sirois. He once ran Narrow House before he renounced the printed word and art. Colonel Qaddafi's all female security force shall avenge not only my death, but the death of all booksellers!"

Above are proud Narrow House publishers holding the fine new book, which contains most if not all of his poetry from the last decade or so, including his dreamt poems of poet friends, "Homeric Hums" and the beautiful spare "Hiccups" themselves. As Jamie Gaughan-Perez held the book up someone yelled out "Lauren Bender, if the book is as good as you say and you are truly so proud of it, pose as if you are hypnotized and being forced to stare at the nude engorged wang of Mel Gibson with a small anvil attached to it". And indeed she did.

Kickstarting the event was young Robert Michael O'Brien, curator of the WORMS readings. I wish I had had a notebook with me to jot down a few quotes that really grabbed me since my retention rate is that of a banana peel, but two of his pieces grabbed me in particular. One was about being pulled over by a cop late at night and the officer is impressed by his love and feeling for life and expresses his own lack of such feeling. It was not all Ice-T hatin' on the cops, just using the uncomfortable situation of being halted on the roadside as a vehicle for getting across the inexpressible.

Another standout was his chant-like piece that included the lines "The body is power/The abandonment of body is power". Which made me think of the Gang of Four's "Our bodies make us worry". What more needs to be said?

Taking the stage of the re-vitalized Red Room of Normal's Books & Records next was an expanded trio version of The Tinklers with Downtown Blood on My Spatz Peyton on ukelele. His slick licks interwove nicely with Charles' slide guitar excursions. Recently the Tinklers have added "Bully of the Town" from the Harry Smith Anthology of Folk Music to their set. I would love for them to take on an extended project of covering that entire groundbreaking collection with various friends sitting in.

Also sitting in on a few Tinklers' songs was Chris' talented daughter Elizabeth. She sang on "Splash Splash" and did an acapella duet of "I'm Sticking With You" with her pops that was truly moving. Long long ago Elizabeth interned at Normal's and when things were slow we would get her to play the hell out of Bartok and Stravinsky on the old Red Room piano. And Elizabeth, like her dad, being both a populist and a consumate artist, would be playing beautiful, complicated classical pieces on the piano while at the same time talking loudly to Courtney about how she wanted to be a cheerleader.

And here be just a slice of the crowd in attendance. Study them well! The swarthy bearded one there, in foreground in white t-shirt - surely he is a threat to homeland security? And the one in the maroon hoodie, next to the one they call "Magus" who resembles a choirboy, surely his dry laconic joking covers for a heartless hatred for pickup trucks, reality shows and the right to keep impoverished people from having health care.

Speaking of choirboy Magus, here he is reading along with Chris on the poem that Chris dreamed of him. I believe this piece is called "I Will Read Every Poem In This Book Except The One for Rupert, Despite His Being Seated Right There in the Front Row Making Doe Eyes At Me". I have to say that the whole reading Chris did was masterful, but this was probably my favorite piece of the day. The two readers really worked well together and the sounds and words resonated like a big old gong on Kung Fu.

And speaking of that long gone loved show that would be most likely torturously bad today if I were to view an episode, what to make of this bald master, Grasshopper? Here is reed king John Dierker playing with the energetic dynamic improv trio Microkingdom, along with drummer Will Redman and guitarist Marc Miller. Dierker's passionate face while playing is so difficult to capture on camera that he made a five figure deal with both MAC and Windows where you have to pay for a special APP that will present him clearly. And clearly I cannot afford that.

All in all, a great day. Beautiful words read well conveying strong messages of caring and hope. Goofy music of love and concern for all people and nature. And the underloved cash register of Normal's was embraced by wallet food!

But if all this wasn't magic enough, when the show was over and no one was left in the store other than me and Anthony, Anthony told me that none other than Kima Greggs (Sonja Sohn) of The Wire popped in the store looking for a book during the show! Luckily I didn't notice her or I would have left everyone with a bad taste in their mouth for the event by breaking down into some kind of Jerry Lewis spazz out. Truly her presence was a sign that we were all on the right path!

Cheers to Chris Mason for creating writing from both the head and heart that will withstand the horrors of time and to Narrow House for containing so much of it so well within a beautiful object once known as "book".

Some Late Night Thoughts of Mortality While Staring Glassy-Eyed At Karen Black

2011-03-11T09:00:00.000-08:00

Some Late Night Thoughts of Mortality While Staring Glassy-Eyed At Karen Black

Look at you all chased by shin
high tribal fetish with razor sharp
spears! Bug-eyed and winsome
courageously daffy really
among a family of rich eccentrics -
the ping pong kept them human,
in the '70s tables were everywhere
and the silenced Poundian father
gave them gravity -
dithering alone to Tammy Wynette
without realizing you're alone
It really truly does often all
come down to trapped
in a truck stop restroom
either puking and pregnant
or puking and deserted
staring at what's left
in a smeared reflection
passing for a mirror
If only you knew
what was coming -
the global crash, the air
the floods
you would grab
a few of those handy
rolls in the john
and construct what
is known as a shirker's nest
and wait out a few nights
If you think those hairs
on your chicken leg
were gross just wait
until Ronald Reagan
is upheld as a hero

WORMS! Buck Downs, Dave K., Chris Toll & Rupert Wondolowski - March 16

2011-03-10T09:00:00.000-08:00

Time	Wednesday, March 16 · 8:00pm - 11:00pm

Location	Bell Foundry 1539 N Calvert Baltimore, MD

Created By	Robert Michael O'Brien

More Info	Just at the moment when March is a perfect lion/lamb hybrid, WORMS shall strike! Buck Downs, Dave K., Chris Toll, & Rupert Wondolowski perform! A native of Jones County (Miss.), BUCK DOWNS lives and works in Washington, DC. His books include Marijuana Softdrink, Ladies Love Outlaws, and Recreational Vehicle. ...www.buckdowns.com DAVE K. is a Baltimore writer whose essays and speculative fiction have appeared in Welter, Front Porch Journal, Battered Suitcase, ULA Redux, and the Nautilus Engine. He is also a regular contributor to Adfreak, Adweek Magazine's weblog. In addition to the experimental work he publishes through his 'zine imprint, Banners of Death, DK is working on a novel about clowns. When he's not writing, DK is a village and civil parish in Hampshire, England. CHRIS TOLL is a poet and collagemaker who lives in Baltimore, Maryland. He co-curates the Benevolent Armchair Reading Series. Publishing Genius Press will soon release his new book, The Disinformation Phase. RUPERT WONDOLOWSKI is editor of Shattered Wig Review and Press, which has somehow become Baltimore's longest running literary magazine despite no one knowing of it. He is the author most recently of The Origin of Paranoia As a Heated Mole Suit (Publishing Genius Press). His work has recently appeared in City Sages: Baltimore, The i.e. Series Reader, Everyday Genius and Fell Swoop. He also appears in Luca DiPierro and Michael Kimball's film "60 Writers/60 Places". He is currently clearing a spot in his house for getting down and ugly with some acrylic paints. Shattered Wig Press activities and Rupert's writing can be found at: http://shatteredwig.blogspot.com/ As always it's free, but bring $$$ for books and to help Buck make enough money for the train ticket back to DC; he's been stranded all day, & he has a good job, he'll show you his pay stub and his ID.

Some "Hiccups" To Warm Up For The Chris Mason Show This Sunday

2011-03-08T16:04:00.001-08:00

Most Baltimoreans interested in poetry and music know of venerable Chris Mason of The Tinklers and Old Songs, but for those who don't this Sunday's show and publication party for his new book Hum Who Hiccup out on Narrow House Press would be a good introduction. The book collects most if not all of the chapbooks he's written over the last few years.

Poet extraordinaire and critic Charles Bernstein says "Chris Mason has fabricated a set of visual charms, small and intense constellations of words that make & do, bounce & hop, zap & slap. These are dreams of poems more than poems of dreams, sweet & filled with delight".

Here is a taste from the "Hiccups" portion of the book:

carbon puddle loves

electric spark loves

cloud

race of men who weep

Nor Norse Navajo

sleep

this dialectic

kids cursing teachers

sucks

airplane noise fueled by

dinosaur flesh now

gone

what's with young Dogwood?

clay soil? bugs eat leaves?

so?

large penis parade

Greece's goofy Gods

Spring

Mash Note From A Stranger

2011-03-07T16:16:00.000-08:00

Though it is ancient as a tree in the forest, Shattered Wig is also mostly as hidden as an ancient tree in the forest. It inhabits a tiny little attic space of gibbering wonder that is not for everyone, that is for certain, but it's always so pleasing when someone runs across it and truly gets it. Just got this great little postcard of praise in the snail mail today lying squashed by the threatening letters of creditors.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

3/4/2011

Dear Rupert Wondolowski:

Tom Weigel mailed me a copy of your latest issue. I knew when I saw the cover that it would be good. But a lot better than good. I love the writing. Favorites: "TWNDATOETOAA", "Ode to Mescaline" and Chris Toll. But those are the standouts in an altogether outstanding publication. Brilliance & wit on every page. I also love the art work. "Jack LaLane School" cracked me up - words & image.

Your intro to the issue was its own special poem, setting the tone. This thing is a keeper. Please don't wait another two years to put out another issue. Bookmarked yr blog. Best,

Jim Cory (Philadelphia)

"Bodies" by Erin Gleeson

2011-03-02T07:56:00.001-08:00

Every once in a while forays into the outside world do not end in existential anguish, but in the magic of discovery. Such was, and usually is, catching the latest WORMs reading and hearing for the first time writer and puppeteer and filmmaker Erin Gleeson.

I quickly swooped down in all my mothball menace and booked her for the Shattered Wig Night that coming weekend where she said "I will read my best stuff for Shattered Wig Night. I kind of coast for Bob O'Brien because he once stole my watch and beat me down at a craps game."

And indeed they were two fine pieces she read at the Wig Night, both of which will run in the next Shattered Wig Review. Here is one now for your seasoned palate.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Bodies

1. You are asleep and you have pink eye. Earlier in the day, your best friend told you that pink eye comes from poop, leaving you wondering who put poop in your eye. Around 1 am, you're awakened by a gentle squeeze on your foot. You roll over and see your mother in the shadows. She whispers, "I just wanted to make sure you're still breathing." As you fall back asleep, you begin to worry that pink eye can spread to the lungs.

2. Performing daily and rushing from one city to the next began to take its toll; his body grasped at sleep whenever it could. Mid-tour, he began to fall asleep without warning. He'd be drinking his coffee at a cafe or reading somewhere and he'd drop off. Head flying forward, shoulders hunched, he'd nap unintentionally, then wake a little while later, disoriented and confused.

He wore an old 35 mm camera around his neck: an SLR with a nice long lens. He wasn't entirely sure how to work the thing; he just pointed, feebly twisted the focus ring and clicked. In spite of his temporary narcolepsy, the camera found a permanent home on him. He kept it on-hand for fear he'd miss something. He hadn't traveled much before and now he was eager to sop up every moment he could. The idea that it could be stolen or damaged mid-slumber nudged him from a distance, but overall he ignored it.

He developed the photos as soon as he got home and found a long series of poorly composed, soft images. A couple of kids in upstate New York waved fuzzily at him, an old woman in Chicago bled fluidly into the newspaper she was reading. A couple photos seemed to be extreme close-ups of his lap, accidental snapshots taken as he nodded off. Shuffling through the pictures, he was startled to find three of himself: asleep, slack-jawed and in crisp, beautiful focus.

3. You have just had sex with someone you’ve recently fallen in love with. Your love is so new, in fact, you realized you were falling in love earlier today. The feeling socked you in the stomach when she was miles away, when you were explaining to your mother how to use the computer she recently purchased. You turned it on to find everything a little off. 
“Mom, all of your programs have been renamed ‘Jerry.’”
“I didn’t do it.”
“You’re telling me it came from Best Buy like this.”

Your mother shrugged and you flashed forward to an imagined future where you’re old alongside the woman you love. She has accidentally renamed all of the newfangled appliances she doesn’t understand. The electronic cat, your bionic grandchildren, your USB ear, everything. In that moment the world was Jerry. Sprawling and perfect, unified under one name.

And here you are now, young and still in touch with the times. You haven’t told her about your realization from earlier in the day because it terrifies you. That said, you’re also eager to know if the feeling is mutual. You open your mouth to start the conversation, but in the dark she can’t see this and interrupts you to sit up, lifting the curtain beyond your bed. A brilliant white light is thrown onto her face and she gasps, “Oh it’s snowing again.”

The two of you roll onto your stomachs and watch the world turn white. You hold the curtain up together, listening to your inhales, exhales and the sound of snowflakes slamming into snowflakes.

4. A half hour before the barbecue, Julia could not stop eating the cake. She decided to bring one of those American flag cakes, a sheet cake depiction of the stars and stripes fully illustrated in strawberries, blueberries and whipped cream. As she applied the finishing touches, though, she wanted nothing more than to run a knife right through it. She wanted to enjoy the springiness of it, to take out a slice for herself and feel the heft of it in her hand.

So she did.

She took a bite and felt the soft snap of it as she punctured its surface. The whipped cream stuck to her lips and the cake clung to her teeth as she bit down on the blueberries. The pop and burst of each piece thrilled her, producing a rush of flavor that flooded her senses before fading into nothing.

By the time half the cake was left, she felt the stretch and ache in her stomach and a sense of sleepy satisfaction. She staggered into her bedroom, passed out face down on the unmade bed and sunk into a light nap, only to be brought out of it when her husband shut the front door with a slam. She could hear his steps through the house to the kitchen, his muffled voice through the door of the bedroom. “Julia. My mom isn’t going to want half a fucking cake."

5. It’s in AP English that all of the televisions click on at once. No explanation, no word of warning. Thinking it’s a technical error, your teacher reaches up and turns it off without looking up. She continues the lesson without breaking her stride, pausing briefly when Sister Joseph Anne’s voice crackles through the PA. “Francis Taylor, please report to the Principal’s office immediately.”

This strikes you as odd, since only assholes are called to the principle’s office, and Frank Taylor is one of the quietest, most unassuming kids you know. The lesson continues until Sister Joseph Anne interrupts again. “Anthony Nguyen, please come downstairs to the Principal's office.”

Weird. Anthony’s on the fast track to becoming valedictorian. What did he do?

But your teacher continues, trying to wrangle your wandering mind. Her efforts are obliterated by the PA once again. This time, Sister Joseph Anne is calling off a list of names and you count them. Eleven. And the lesson continues.

A half hour goes on like this, the lecture pierced by the voice from the speaker overhead. No explanations, just a cold list of names. You begin to suspect that half the school has been sent downstairs, when the dean’s voice booms out of the PA. “Class is dismissed for the rest of the day. Please leave the school at once.”

You and what remains of your class pour out of the room and into the hallway, along with all of the other kids in all of the other classes that didn’t get called downstairs. You all course through hallways and down staircases, herded by a fleet of nuns and teachers, the deep red of your sweaters creating a dense, bold streak throughout the pathways of the building. Rumors hum through the crowd, and the only plausible piece of information you can pull from the lot is that the list of names read over the PA were kids that were picked up by their parents. The rest of you are being sent home, but you’ll discover soon that all bus service has been cancelled.

You and the rest of the school stream out of the building, blinking in the sunlight. From above, the red of your uniforms makes it look like the school punctured an artery and is gushing blood into the street. You all spew out, then disperse. You find Gina, your best friend, and try to figure out where to go from here. The streets are quiet, save for the mass of disoriented Catholic school kids. You see one of your classmates from English, one of the chosen few with a car of his own. He breezes by you and Gina, sticking his head out the window. “We’re all gonna diiiiiie,” he bellows, then disappears down the block.

Okay, I get it. We’re going to die, you think. But would someone just tell me how?

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

ERIN GLEESON is a writer, illustrator and co-creator of the touring puppet series Showbeast. Her work has been featured all across the country, and she recently co-wrote and co-directed videos for Dan Deacon and Beach House. She writes the blog letsbeselfsufficient.com, in which she explores sustainable living in an urban environment.

"Munch" by Austin Al Ackerman

2011-02-19T19:31:00.000-08:00

Munch

Have you enough round hole flabby-strength to skate your eye lint
Let's ask someone who knows
Let's ask patchy lint custard on your elbow
About dog cough, mist halation, all that wisdom fulla smoke
When I get to going I know it sounds silly and sordid
People begin to predict I'll go to the chair
A bunch of flying snails in the end is only wrinkly folds
The way you lunge sets us to belching and the clouds
Throat combination screwy storms in my mask collection
Sets something to sparkling in my lap
I seem to see floppy shorts will name your life
Look out for bombing phones you always followed
When you place your trust in cheese then blocks of salt
Glisten in your tub like lumpy ashcakes
No wonder a football bursts and stinks
I'd have to say I'm charging you with that
You who made these letters act all screwy and thud
Like apples behind the toilet
Thanks to you I smelled and stunned the coughing hat
That's what it means to foam beside the river
And find the birds stacked to north and south
Have you enough round hole flabby-strength to munch on those buggers
I bet you have

(from jmb of 11/3/10 etc etc)

Tardy Thoughts On the Grammys

2011-02-17T20:13:00.000-08:00

Thanks to a Big Daddy Roth of a stomach virus - Rat Fink bulging eyes, colors not found in nature, everything ensconced in flame - last Sunday found me doing some serious couch riding, missing the love filled resonant acoustic show at Normal's with Sea Couch and Her Fantastic Cats.

One thing led to another, including viewing a filmic charmer named "The Black Death" that would make a great double feature with the original "Wicker Man" with its tale of a small pagan town living peacefully without the plague until Christian Crusaders invade and next thing I knew Kim Jong Ev had me watching The Grammy Awards for the first time since maybe High School when The Andrews Sisters were battling it out with Leslie Gore and Cee Lo Green was still nothing but a protoplasm being stirred up in an ice cave on some far away planet.

Either it was the absence of a stomach lining putting a drain on my brain or perhaps the cobwebs of age itself, but I was pleasantly surprised. Not by the winners since I didn't like any of the nominees (other than an appreciation for Arcade Fire, of course, although the singer is still sporting that Nazi Youth hairdo and naming an album after a concept - the suburbs -that is long dead and already dealt with handily by '80s New Wave), but by the entertainment.

Loved crazy Old Man Bob stretching his pretzel legs with the new kids on "Maggie's Farm". He got quite a bit of dramatic effect out of minimal movements and gesturing with his harmonica mic. His fifteen seconds of harmonica playing at the end though was a bit of a tease. And I want to enter whatever world Cee Lo Green is on. What the what! Muppets, '70s funk, Gwyneth and Big Bird and somehow it all works. Love that guy.

And fucking Mick Jagger. Always kind of put up with him so I could love the Rolling Stones great early music, but of course truly only loved Keith, but sweet Jesus, the guy is a stage natural. Where the hell is he coming off like that at his age???? I guess being filthy rich for four decades and being able to spend your whole life exercising, swimming on tropical islands, fornicating with models and eatng only the finest foods and drugs pays off.

It also always warms my heart to see soulful Kris Kristofferson on stage in all his raw warmth, even if it is just to introduce Dame Babs Streisand. Was it just me or were all the black superstars filmed during Babs sequence hating on her? Man, some real sour expressions.

Of course right off the bat at the beginning during the red carpet sequence there was Lady Gaga supposedly being carried in an egg and spoken of as if she was Christ carrying a cross. What, what is her mysterious attraction? A 21st Century female Liberace? Performance art that is so campy and put to robotic beats that even the masses can spoon it up? The thin extended pointy shoulder blade was a nice touch, but sweetest of all was picturing her under the giant hat as all the awards passed her by.

"Like Gandhi, I Want More" by William Merricle

2011-02-05T17:49:00.000-08:00

Like Gandhi, I Want More

Raindrops penetrate a chthonic sonnet
limning the gluons that propel fetid corpses,
a limping wartime river,
a newfangled abyss the size of a neutron,
your tempting tongue's cruel care,
god's hands covered in dark ointments,
the sickly fire in the center of sincerity,
all the worldly kisses in the afterdeath foyer.

The band strikes up a tune analogous to entropy,
the world turns and twists in Klimt-light,
the beginning of a universe radiates itself out of existence,
wisdom's penetralia deliver a wallop of spontaneous symmetry,
innocence carries profound implications for the concept of putrefaction,
Janus turns lazy and bitter,
I perform a bad imitation of cruelty
for the faces in the back of the car just ahead.

Back of the forest lies groggy with sunshine,
death looks for kindred moisture,
logic emends the manuscript
until it falls off the edge of the world,
rain feels like a dove to the heart,
light predicts the future by
rummaging through the universe's rotting body.
How do I sleep? Because space-time is curved.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

William Merricle lives in Lima, Ohio. He once was the assistant manager of a porn theater, and would open up the little window panel in his office and throw paper airplanes with quotes from Heidegger at the patrons below. His latest chapbook, "Heimlich the Donut," is available from Pudding House Publications.

Baltimore Bon Vivant Linda Franklin Celebrates Her 70th Birthday By Channeling Her Grandmother Grace at Show and Tell

2011-02-05T14:48:00.001-08:00

With breasts stuffed with blackeyed peas and exhorting the crowd to "Smell my purse!!", Baltimore artist and gadfly, avatar of Robert E. Lee dog park, Linda Franklin celebrated the milestone of her 70th birthday taking a packed crowd in Minas on a trip through her eyeballs and heart and through time itself.

And just as the presence of the Elvis Impersonator was too powerful to glimpse clearly with modern technology, so too the image of Linda summoning the spirit of her long gone grandmother.

If you have ever met Linda you not only remember it, but you lose any belief in linear reality. Former writer of books on antiques and kitchen collectibles? Wood nymph of Robert E. Lee. Filmmaker. Folk art collector. Raw nerve open receptor of wonder 24/7.

It was a Boite: Show and Tell night hosted by the enigma known as Lauren Bender at the ever friendly and well curated Minas shop and gallery. Two of the showers on this night were Linda who was turning 70 and radio star Aaron Henkin. Linda celebrated her birthday by inhabiting the clothing and spirit of her grandmother, Grace, having Grace tell us about her own life at the age of 70. It was a moving and illuminating look at her family and at her childhood with Linda right there feeling it. After the show she was dj'ing at a party down the street where she promised the crowd "There will be funk". One day I hope to have a satori that fills me with half the energy that she contains. Truly she has supped at The Cup of Borgnine.

Dr. Henkin of The Mellifluous Pipes took us back to his early days in Baltimore when he and his pal Todd started up a heavy metal band called Destroyer 666, a name they found out was already taken by an Australian white power heavy metal band. The moment of truth came when Aaron unveiled the flying V electric guitar he purchased after Destroyer 666's first gig. Not only did it have devil horn's at the head, but it rested in a coffin shaped pleated purple cloth lined case. I for one was relieved that it wasn't the shrunken cold corpse of Andy Bienstock revealed when Aaron with a leering smile swung open the lid of the case.

"Fuzzy Grape Drink" by Austin Al Ackerman

2011-01-31T16:00:00.000-08:00

Fuzzy Grape Drink

    And as my doggy link drops behind garage
my stone box rotted like a frog wet with what
I clawed forgot like head a box of matches
filled with
       buttons barking making those who come
to peddle
       flat pants and piles peddle flat pants and
piles plus certain large black face phones
             leaking
paragraphs. The Purple Big Heads with my ghost
sit there
       tantamount so that in the file cabinet
where my tongue sits greased you may find a little
laughter in your life.
          Still, you can't have everything,
I'm no Ray Bolger.
          I'm no collection of gopher holes
neither.
       I'm a believer! which is to say you can have
an OK time
       if you'll just realize that suddenly everyone
starts screaming.
       Because you might say dung clock radish
the size of a door while through it the noodles creep on an
adorable high
       as an enormous root begins breaking the walls

(from jmb of 1/17/11 etc)

Somewhere In the Back of Beyond: The Sublimely Strange Stories of Robert Aickman

2011-01-29T09:45:00.000-08:00

Reading someone's "Top 20 Horror Writers Of All Time" list online that left off my favorite, Robert Aickman, completely inspired me to post this old piece I did for The City Paper a while back when I had hair. Aickman is one of a kind, in my top ten of any kind of writers.

Somewhere in the Back of Beyond

The Sublimely Strange Stories of Robert Aickman

Chuck Shacochis

Imprints Literary Supplement 1999

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By Rupert Wondolowski | Posted 10/13/1999

The only players in "Your Tiny Hand Is Frozen," one of Robert Aickman's most chilling short stories (included in The Wine-Dark Sea, a posthumously published collection of his writings), are a lonely translator named Edmund, a humming telephone, and an oafish intruder named Toby. There is no squirting, squelching blood or exploding body parts, and the action never leaves its studio-apartment setting until the story's last page. Still, this is one of the most disquieting tales ever written, a story of the disintegration of a mind that begins with Edmund hearing "a rather high pitched gabbling" on the telephone. "It occurred to him even that the sounds might not be vocal, but might come from the telephone system itself."

Critics often compare Robert Aickman to M.R. James and Walter de le Mare, two authors of classic ghost stories, but his work also fits well spiritually with that of Franz Kafka and Samuel Beckett, writers who depict the agony of human communication in a mechanized world. As Paul Kincaid wrote in a review of Aickman's Night Voices: Strange Stories in British Book News: "He writes a precise and elegant prose, full of sharp perceptions of the ordinary, so sharp that a niggling sense of unease slowly develops without anything out of the ordinary actually happening." Most of Aickman's horror is of a clean, well-lighted madness, made all the more painful by the perceptive characters' awareness of their psychological descent.

Robert Fordyce Aickman was born in 1914 in London and died in 1981. He was the son of an architect, whom he described in his autobiography, The Attempted Rescue, as "the oddest man I have ever known"; his maternal grandfather was the noted Victorian novelist Richard Marsh. Starting in the mid '60s, Aickman produced 11 short-story collections, two novels, the autobiography, and two books on England's waterways. He founded the Inland Waterways Association in 1946 and is widely credited with saving the British canal system for future generations. He was also a drama critic for the British magazine Nineteenth Century and After and a film critic for another periodical, Jewish Monthly.

His strengths as a writer of self-aware horror are evident in one of his signature pieces, "Never Visit Venice." The tale depicts an introverted man nearing 40 named Henry Fern, who has reached the point in his life where he "simultaneously matured and withered." All his life he has felt "something in him which made him different from most of the people he encountered in the office or in the train or in the park or at the houses of others. He could not succeed in defining what this difference was, and he simultaneously congratulated and despised himself for having it." For many years Fern glides through his gray office-worker existence with only a recurring dream of riding in a gondola with a beautiful woman in Venice to console him. When this dream stops occurring "its place was taken in the back and at the edges of Fern's mind by the sentiment of death. . . . It was a soft-footed, never-absent familiar."

With omnipresent thoughts of death prodding him and a promotion at work making it financially possible, Fern decides to visit Venice and make peace with himself. Once there, the reality of modern Venice crushes him. "Venice was rotted with the world's new littleness. To many her beauty was actually antagonistic, as imposing upon them a demand to which they were unable to rise. Soon the Lagoon would be "reclaimed' and the Venetian dream submitted to a new law of values; a puritan law antithetical to the law of pleasure that had prevailed there for so long."

Depressed and making no friends with fellow travellers ("sentimental, self-satisfied philistines," he calls them), Fern decides to go back home early after a perfunctory ride on the city's famous gondolas. He meets a woman in a hooded black cloak who tells him, "The city of Venice would like to invite you for a gondola trip." Believing she works with some sort of tourist agency, Fern goes along with her on a gondola ride. They quickly hit it off and trade mawkish romanticisms, including calling each other Tristan and Isolde. At one point the strange cloaked woman tells him, "Venice is everyone's dream. Venice is a dream."

"With no reality?"

"The reality is what you call a nightmare."

Their gondola glides further and further from the city, paddled by "the gondolier, with strokes as strong and regular as if he were swinging a scythe." As they approach the Porto di Lido, "that notorious wilderness of pleasure," they make love and Fern believes "he was proving himself right and the rest of the world wrong." When Fern awakens from his postcoital nap, he discovers the small craft is drifting at sea; the mysterious gondolier has disappeared. When he reaches for his beloved he finds that she is only a skeleton inside a cloak. "And now there was only the Lido breakwater and, afterwards, the turbulent, nocturnal Adriatic. The gondola sped on like a black leaf on a millstream."

This is classic Aickman. An aging protagonist who feels alien in a world grown flat encounters an apparition or a different dimension. It seems at first to be paradise, but he is ultimately received into nature through death.

A similar trajectory drives the story "The Stains" (from The Wine-Dark Sea), in which Stephen, a recently widowed man, goes to visit his brother in the country in search of emotional succor. During a walk, Stephen encounters Nell, a young woman gathering moss and lichens for her father. She seems to know little of civilization and Stephen considers her "a part of nature . . . perhaps because she lived without contamination, merging into the aspect and mutability of remote places." The two make pleasant small talk and plan to meet again the next day. In no time they feel a mutual bond and Stephen realizes that "[f]or so long he had been isolated, insulated, incarcerated." They decide to set up house together in one of the old, abandoned stone houses they see in their wanderings. During their first act of love Stephen notices a "curious, brownish, greyish, bluish, irregular mark or patch" on Nell's skin. Soon similar patches start forming on the walls of their house and then on the walls of Stephen's apartment, where the couple briefly returns to set his affairs in order. When Stephen goes swimming, a co-worker points out something on his back, "rather like the sort of thing you occasionally see on trees."

When they return to their house in the wild Stephen's hands are covered with "horrid subfusc smears" and at night "the eyes that were watching from behind the marks on the walls and ceiling and utensils glinted back at him, one and all." The couple's love has taken on the mutually beneficial relationship of a fungus and an algae—the fundamental description of a lichen, which Nell was collecting for her father.

The story ends abruptly when they hear a snuffling, wolflike creature outside their house which they suspect to be Nell's supernatural father. They descend into the basement to hide, and the perspective of the story changes. We learn that Stephen's body was found at the verge of a small, lustrous pool, one of the first places he and Nell had visited together. It's left unclear whether the whole story was a hallucination, a nightmare, or a tale of love too great for this earth.

Aickman received only one literary prize in his lifetime, the World Fantasy Award in 1978; it was for his only vampire story, "Pages From a Young Girl's Journal." Like his two novels, The Late Breakfasters and The Model, "Pages" is lighter in tone and more humorous than his main body of stories. A tale of vampirism as the ultimate adolescent rebellion, it should find an audience today among the many fans of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, although "Pages" takes place in the time and hometown of Lord Byron, the legendary poet who arouses in the story's teenage heroine the same adoration bestowed on today's rock stars.

Aickman referred to his work as "strange stories" and considered ghosts to be "creatures we once knew . . . things within us which we have, as psychologists say, projected outside us." In his introduction to the anthology The Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories, he wrote, "The ghost story hints to us that there is a world elsewhere." Aickman's own approach to the form was summarized by Peter Straum in his introduction to The Wine-Dark Sea: "What attracted Aickman to ghosts was not the notion of dripping revenants but the feeling—composed in part of mystery, fear, stifled eroticism, hopelessness, nostalgia and the almost violent freedom granted by a suspension of rational rules—which they evoked in him."

Great Review of The Tinklers' The Elements In Chicago's "Roctober"

2011-01-27T20:13:00.001-08:00

To the left is "Portrait of The Blogger As An Auxiliary Tinkler On The Way To Jersey City". This new issue of Roctober with a great review of The Elements by The Tinklers on Shattered Wig Press was a good excuse for me to pull out this old snapshot of me with Chris Mason in the parking lot of a New Jersey rest stop on the way to play legendary WFMU.

I got to play both as a member of The Tinklers Auxiliary and in The Diana Froley 3. These were the days when Tinkler Charles Brohawn was in his retiring "T.S. Eliot" phase and refused to leave his ivy covered cottage to take the stage. Now he not only is playing many gigs with the reinvigorated Tinklers, but also rocking out in Elvis shades with David Fair's Coo Coo Rockin' Time.

If you're not familiar with it, Roctober is a thick classic "punk" zine that does feature articles and also reviews a heady mix of music and books and zines and movies. And I say punk in kind of a catch-all philosophical DIY way of life manner. This issue not only boasts a fine review of The Tinklers, but has a well written article on the Cleveland '80s punk band The Easter Monkeys. I hadn't heard of them before I read the article, but it excited me and reminded me of Baltimore's Marble Bar period. There are also articles on Chicago soul music and Ian Whitcomb. Also, there's an article about White Sox organist Nancy Faust, who has been active with that team for four decades. Below is an illustration of her:

But enough of hawking Roctober! On to their great review of The Tinklers' The Elements!!

"The Elements by The Tinklers (Shattered Wig Press). I was surprised to see this book because I knew The Tinklers from a couple of great albums I bought years ago at the space that sold Shimmy Disc albums next to CBGB's. But according to the press release and clippings, and part of a documentary I saw on The Documentary Channel (which I didn't even know was a channel until I stopped to watch this movie) The Tinklers have been around for over thirty years and have done as much writing, art, and happenings as music.

"This book is a brisk, triumphant morsel of edutainment that imparts information about several elements occupying the periodic table. This is done through a narrative that is sort of like a Dick and Jane old time book where a guy and gal go around meeting people who conversationally, indirectly, teach them things. But in this case as we learn about the remarkable properties of magnesium from a Milk of Magnesium swilling Magnesium Unlimited intern or sodium's benefits from a little girl at the saltwater beach doing a science fair project, each impartation of scientific knowledge also reveals the damage our country suffers because of problems in industry and labor, and we get a glimpse of the inevitable erosion and dysfunction in our protagonists' relationship (that science fair girl gets Mary's biological clock ticking, forcing Steven to make a heartbreaking false promise).

"In other words: awesome book. (sidenote: Microsoft Word spellcheck had no problem with the word 'Edutainment'. Apparently Bill Gates is a KRS-ONE fan.)"

Morning Arrives With John "Beltway Sniper" Muhammad and The Arrival of Dusk Is Heralded By Burt Reynolds In His Plum Dandies

2011-01-26T16:07:00.000-08:00

Notes of An Aged Bookseller Told That Books Will Shortly Be Extinct

Ah, the snow day. Often slightly magical as long as there isn't ice in the mix or too many desperate drug addict sellers panicking at the thought of being cut off from the world and the juice for a day or two.

I'll never forget digging out my car AT MY HOME, many blocks from the store, when one of our pushier sellers saw me bundled up scraping at my car. He started a sales pitch of his books on me in the blinding snow without even knowing who I was. Then once he did recognize me he was like a pitbull who had just settled onto a good leg joint.

Of course a year later, when The City Paper ran a feature article on him as a long time repeat felon charged with rape and murder who keeps slipping through the disjointed jaws of the system, we discovered that he was something beyond a daily pushy seller of horror novels. Here we'd been haggling with and telling our correct buying hours to a man who had drained life itself from fellow beings. But at first when he started coming around I gave him the benefit of the doubt because he was selling and had obviously read Le Fanu, Maugham, E.T.A. Hoffman, M.R. James and Algernon Blackwood. Good stuff.

This snow day, a mid-sizer - somewhere in the 4" zone, started with the first customer being the guy who looks like John "Beltway Sniper" Muhammad coming in darting around and looking anxious. "I'm just going to leave my bag up here to perhaps deflect any suspicion you may have of my darting eyes and then wander into the back with my bulky coat and when I leave I will be walking like a hunchback who has a load in my pants. But do not get distressed, the square book-like humps in my shorts and back will only be true loads in my pants and exploded postules, nothing for you to be concerned about." At least John Muhammad's song and dances are brief. He doesn't do the added indignity of dragging them out so that not only does he decrease your stock, but he also attaches onto your time and pretends to be your bud. Luckily, the false "John" was followed by two friend Johns, cultural power hitters who shall be named in no more detail, other than one of them has and one of them used to have a long flaxen ponytail and both would look at home riding steeds through a lost kingdom. They circled each other quietly, giving each other sidelong glances. Suffice it to say that other than the tales the two Johns spun for me, one of them involving historic moments with Baltimore legend Ethel Ennis, the day drifted like the flakes outside as I dreamt of finishing my cyber thriller novel where the world turns out to be a chip inserted into a hedgehog which is the only thing of flesh that truly exists. Or something like that. Finally around 4 I acknowledged that Nature had beaten Retail thoroughly this day and even though I've been in this game for decades I still had a fierce battle with my conscience to close early so I could hit the post office. As I made peace and worked on counting out the drawer, in walked Burt Reynolds, the star of our stable of Duckville regulars who pride themselves on coming here for 20 years without buying anything. Impressive. But even more impressive than his withholding of his wallet essence was the fact that he was sticking to his plum dandy shorts, despite the blustery snowy weather. He is of the School of Playboy Jazz whose main tenet is that if a man is able to wear shorts on a daily basis he is one smooth badass dude. The irony was that when I told him I was closing early he was taken aback: "What, now?" "How much time do you need for your invisible purchases sir? Should one of our non-existent elves carry the many tomes and vinyl slabs to your jazzmobile?" He sulked back out and I slowly skidded my way to the post office. Beginning the day with John "Beltway Sniper" Muhammad and ringing it out in the gray dusk with the fading legend of Burt Reynolds.

Later that night I dusted off my sled, wired it beneath a Colt 45 truck with deliveries to make and for four hours I breathed the lightning cold air of the gods, my lungs and head exploding with true life.

Wildman of Literature Cort McMeel Returns Triumphant For a Shattered Wig Night Reading

2011-01-15T10:34:00.000-08:00

Old friend of Normal's Books & Records and Shattered Wig, former Baltimorean and co-editor of the dear departed Murdaland magazine, Cort McMeel returns to town triumphant after St. Martin's Press published his first novel, Short. The picture of Cort here is taken from a Baltimore City Paper article about Murdaland. Here is a link if you want to read more:

http://www2.citypaper.co/arts/story.asp?id=13124

If you've ever met Cort before - say, at a bar, literary salon or howling drunkenly outside Melville's home - you surely remember him. He is an exuberant burly gent who is outspokenly passionate about literature like your old High School football coach on a few hits of mescaline is about Joe Namath's skills with the ladies. And he knows his shit, as they say. His magazine Murdaland is much missed (and not just because they were wise enough to solicit a piece from yours truly) and he now teaches modern literature - like Hammett, Chandler, Fat City, and of course Melville, in Colorado.

This colorful writer will be returning to Harm City on February 25th like the bulls in Pamplona chasing Hemingway's tired old ass to read from his new novel at Shattered Wig Night. His novel masterfully depicts a brutal cluster fuck in the world of energy traders. Here is an excerpt from the Denver Post's review of the novel:

The floor at a trading company is alive with a crazed energy, one that is captured to perfection in Cortright McMeel's engaging debut, "Short." A writer who has worked as a commodity broker and energy trader, he knows well the world he writes. This novel in stories juggles the lives of a multitude of rich and deeply drawn characters, all fueled in varying degrees by ego, alcohol and cholesterol.

McMeel's novel, if it were focused on the details of trading energy futures, would have limited appeal. It is not, and it does not. It is, instead, about the people who inhabit this world. The structure of the work, in which each chapter can stand on its own as a story, supports the actions of a huge cast of characters. The main players are seen off- stage as well as on: Gallagher with his artist wife, who feels smothered in Boston; Andrews with his family; the Ghost in his Boston penthouse, with a sweeping view of the harbor, one he cannot appreciate due to his failing eyesight.

It is this approach that spotlights the complexities of character, revealing the whole as a sum of the parts, much as a prism reveals white light comprising a rainbow of colors. The result is fueled by resonant high-octane prose that glues the reader to the pages; the temptation is to immediately go back and reread this singularly rich and satisfying work. The world in which these characters operate may be initially unfamiliar to the reader, but it is nothing that stands between the reader and the character. In the end, each character is rewarded for his choices, and the reader will care deeply about whether these rewards are just. That is the measure of the work, coming to live along side these characters in their often tawdry but addicting world.

Read more: Book review: "Short" takes look at electric, excessive trading life - The Denver Post http://www.denverpost.com/entertainment/ci_16820178#ixzz1B8HnZqLA
Read The Denver Post's Terms of Use of its content: http://www.denverpost.com/termsofuse

I'm really excited for Cort and to be honest, envious! The book is a great read, fortuitously timed to come out right after the tanking of our odd Wall Street economy. Told believably in great detail through the eyes of many well drawn characters it's a great read. I have got my "office" all set up at home now, life is calming down, it is time for me to buckle down and do "The Great Used Bookstore Novel". Lurkers and Duckvillers beware!

The Shattered Wig Night featuring Cort will be Friday, February 25th and so far the lineup includes The Go Pills, led by Skizz Czyzyk with one of the best pedal steel players in town, Randy Austin, right up there with Susan Alcorn.

(Photo From the Baltimore City Paper)

http://www2.citypaper.com/arts/story.asp?id=13124

Buff Joe Medusa Has Left His Post at The Shattered Wig Empire Building

2011-01-15T10:18:00.000-08:00

The job of "Door Man" is a brutal, thankless job. Frequent gunplay defending the bankroll that each Wig Night brings in, mopping up the frequent vomit of performers (Aye, we could fill the Baltimore Aquarium with Chris Toll's "green slushies" alone!), having to listen to angry paying customers demand their money back, or worse yet - read aloud their own poems, saying it should be them up there on that glittering stage.

And unlike some clubs (Not to name names, but let's say THE OTTOBAR, at least back when I was an active youngster), the door man at Wig Nights and Cabarets does not receive two or three times the pay of the performers. Buff Joe Medusa, who is himself an amazing theatrical performer and director (in fact, when my fancy new phone, with an extra very expensive "app" that the salesman hooked me where it tells you who is calling, told me it was Buff Joe calling my heart skipped a beat! Surely this is the big call I was hoping for, where he asks me to play the Richard Burton role in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf"! But no....) has steadfastly worked the doors at 218 W. Saratoga Street for decades. But enough is enough! His doctor will no longer write the script to make this bearable and he has decided he has "better things to do on a Friday night"(??)(!!!)

We heartily thank Buff Joe for doing us the huge favor of performing this task over the years and do not blame him one bit for bowing out now in his Golden Years. We will miss him up there, but hopefully now he will attend Shattered Wig Nights as an audience member or performer.

We love you Buff Joe!

John M. Bennett Is Hoisted Aloft By The Shattered Wig Dancers

2011-01-10T18:59:00.000-08:00

(From Piedra Portatil by Sheila E. Murphy and John M. Bennett)

John M. Bennett is not only the hardest working mench in the poetry avant-garde and just retired curator of the experimental writing wing of the University of Ohio library, but his long running and vital magazine Lost & Found Times, which ran from 1975 until 2005 (54 issues in all! The last few assembled while Professor Bennett was undergoing all kinds of hellish eye surgery), was the conduit for me to discover the weird and wonderful world of Blaster Al Ackerman.

(Sheila E. Murphy & John M. Bennett)

"From its origins in mail art to its more recent participation at the edges of language (and what is coming to be called post-language) poetry, Lost and Found Times provides a model of how marginalized cultural workers can create productive areas of engagement within a network of activity." — from Loose Watch.

Although Bennett no longer publishes his magazine Lost & Found Times, his press, Luna Bisonte Productions, continues to crank out tiny beauties like the above Piedra Portatil and Benzene, his collaboration with Musicmaster, below.

But of course the meaty core of Bennett's production is his own slippery writing. Shattered Wig was very pleased to just receive a thick packet of new work by Bennett and we feel it sings among his finest. Here are a few. And although it's too soon to call this a Shattered Wig Review #29 sneak peek because God only knows when I will arise from sluggardness to put that one together, I guess that's what this sort of is.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Numb Thorn

the jerky suit the chest of hair

and socks .blast of number phone

called my I you did .your did

my unit clamber .dice and dime

.dressed in lieberwurst conejo !mine

dusted ,bash what spoon nimbles the

thoughtless dust ,I dressed ,you

dreamed I pulled you pilled .ah

epiphyte rolling down the steps !

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Plunder

chased my cloudburst you a golf

ball mildewed in my soapdish

what the mist dried like ziti

in your lap a dozen masks g

runt and chain inside the soup

closet dribbly with your dogwash

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Check out John M. Bennett's Luna Bisonte/Lost & Found Times website at:

http://www.johnmbennett.net/Lost_&_Found_Times_Luna.html

There are video poems, text poems, a catalog of the immense amount of titles published by John and some history of the press and its mission/passion.