Meanwhile from the LBC…Cheap Drinks, Surf Rock, Literary Contests and Sexual Tension at The Lightbulb Mouth Radio Hour

1. On the right is poet, bouncer, proud Samsung employee, and charismatic stallion Andy Buell.  On the left is career criminal and art lover, Stephen Benz.  If you show up wearing cocktail attire, you only have to give Andy five dollars.  If you show up in street clothes, your dirty ass has to pay eight. 2. The lady in red herself, Adrian Wyatt~ one of LBM’s producers and one of its speakeasy-chic poetry girls.  She was armed with a full lineup of Write Bloody authors, and enough moxie to knock out an alpha male elephant walrus. 3. Poetic dynamo and inspired performer Brendan Constantine brandishing his artificial flower covered flyswatter.  He said he interpreted the invite’s call for formal attire to mean formal attire for rehab.

  

I descended the damp, steel basement steps of Harvelle’s in Long Beach, California and was given a blue poker chip by a dark haired woman in a red velvet dress.  Her eyes were full of burning embers and her cigarette tray was full of poetry.  The house band started playing “Fate” by Dr. Dog, and it was at that moment that I knew I was going to have a holy & a heartfelt Sunday night.  As I walked though the dark club filled with artists and other cool, well-dressed, sarcastic people, I realized I was feeling almost frightened about the amount of sheer talent I was going to be exposed to in one evening.  Many of the performers were writers that I could listen to for days and days, and with their powers combined they could have very well summoned a spirit wolf, or perhaps Captain Planet.

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Real Love and Cheetos Dust: A Night with Mike Doughty

1. Mississippi Street is my favorite place to scare passengers while parallel parking. 2. Dan and the ghost bartender of Mississippi Studio, who recommends very good beers for friends who aren’t specific and have given you beer money. 3. Eddie and Melissa held down the left side of front row with my friend and me.

  

On Friday night, Mike Doughty brought stage banter, memoir, and music to Mississippi Studio. No one took a cool seat towards the back. Everyone filled the main floor rows closest to the stage like a game of Tetris.

I got a seat in the front row and joked about losing my Ruby Vroom tape with a woman holding a copy of Doughty’s memoir, The Book of Drugs. I sat in the front row to get a good stage shot of Doughty for this write-up without getting up, but I was also more than a little excited to be at his feet. The man’s got great pipes and music capable of consuming the duller details of the moments around us. The woman with his book said he writes like he talks. She loves the way he talks.

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The Greatest 3-Minute Punk Stories Ever @ Public Assembly

1. Tobias Carroll opened up the evening. 2. The crowd, including Tobias.

Last night Williamsburg’s Public Assembly saw a good turnout for Volume 1 Brooklyn’s The Greatest 3-Minute Punk Stories Ever. Founding Editor Jason Diamond hosted. There was more comedy than anything else. We were treated to a seemingly endless (though appreciated) compilation of reminiscences from the punk scene, and the punk not-scene—which many storytellers made a point of.

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Considering the Awesome Debut of Adam Levin’s Hot Pink, Presented by Vol. 1 Brooklyn and McSweeney’s

1. Adam Levin’s balloon, having a nap. 2. Ian Perez, a teacher, with Patrick Hannon, a Levin fan and fiction writer.

 

Hot pink is not a color my eyes catch in pleasure, though when I was covering an event at WORD about a month ago, I spied these words on a book authored by a dude named Adam Levin. He wrote this book called The Instructions and it’s really big and incredible. Also about a month ago, I started anxiously awaiting last night’s event at powerHouse Arena in DUMBO: Vol. 1 Brooklyn and McSweeney’s helped debut Levin’s short story collection, Hot Pink, with readings from Adam Wilson and Karolina Waclawiak, a live Q&A, and free beer. And there were Adam Levin balloons.

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Dear Cheryl: A Wild Night with Sugar and The Rumpus

1. This is how many people read an advice column. Also how many pretty people exist at 7:15 P.M. on Crosby Street. Send letters. 2. Dana Hammer, a writer, with Abby Kulchin, a Philosophy PhD candidate at Philosophy (who finishes Friday–send her cake) and tutor at Brooklyn Institute.

 

Each time I visit Housing Works its vibe changes to match the event, and A Wild Night with Sugar and The Rumpus was the first time the bookstore looked anything like a club. My Dishmate Ryan and I waited in line outside, repeated our last names to a woman holding a pen and clipboard, got tickets, walked into the dimly lit space. Past the beer line, which was full of former members of the outside line, was a stage with drums and guitars waiting for their musicians, and lights illuminating a giant Rumpus banner, which marked the head of the store like the top of its webpage. The tagline under the logo read “Waste time better.” Rumpy, the magazine’s mascot, was on the banner, stalwart, catching his ass in a net. All of this was to celebrate the release of Wild, a memoir by Cheryl Strayed, more intimately known as The Rumpus’s Sugar, the Ann Landers of all the sad young literary boys and girls. Hosted by writer and Fitzgerald biographer Rachel Syme, the evening was at turns funny, tender, and maudlin– maybe the last because I’d been in the beer line.

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You Want Some Big Black Clock? — Issue #15 Launches at McNally Jackson

 1. Anthony Miller showing us why fictional history is more fun than the other kind. He does a surprisingly good impression of Chris Farley, Owen Wilson, and Yoda. 2. Kyra Simone describing a surreal trip on the Paris metro. I’d take shape-shifting thieves over the track work in New York.

 

Sunday’s Black Clock Issue 15 launch at McNally Jackson was packed with people and plastic fold-out chairs despite two lit-event anomalies: it was a Sunday afternoon and there was no booze. The second surprise was explained by the first, and the amount of people by the quality of the magazine, which has published scruffy old literary voices with fresh and squeaky new ones since its debut eight years ago. The theme of Issue 15 was alternative histories of cinema. I stood, packed between people, but happy, sober as Cathedral-era Raymond Carver.

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The Story Prize 2011 Reading Extravaganza!

1. The crowd at Tishman Auditorium. 2. Mr. Elusive, AKA Don DeLillo, with Larry Dark.

 

Last night in the Tishman Auditorium at The New School, Robert Polito, Director of the Graduate Writing Program, said The Story Prize has “accomplished something incredible … a sophisticated evaluation of the form.” Now in its eighth year, The Story Prize selects three finalists, hosts a reading and conversation, and, at the end of the night, awards one book $20,000 in cold hard cash, and $5,000 to each of the two other books. If that sounds pretty sweet it’s because it is. Dish editor Julia Jackson and I made our way to Tishman to see and hear Don Delillo (The Angel Esmerelda), Steven Millhauser (We Others), and Edith Perlman (Binocular Vision, winner of the 2011 Wallant Award and PEN/Malamud Award) read from their 2011 collections. Later, we went to the reception and ate spicy meatballs, tried to photograph Don DeLillo, and talked about Livejournal communities. Yes, I repeat: Livejournal communities.

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For Maris, With Love and Slaughter: Slaughterhouse 90210’s Third Year Anniversary Party

1. All three hostesses. Rachel Fershleiser, literary outreach at Tumblr; Maris Kreizman, founder of Slaughterhouse 90210; Amanda Bullock, events director at Housing Works. 2. Miles Klee, representin’ NJ to the fullest, hurling jellyfish. Behind him: Miami Vice.

 

I’ve attended events at Housing Works before, but last night’s Slaughterhouse 90210 Third Year Anniversary Party pulsed with the excitement and trepidation that only an IRL meeting of online friends can have. Pigeon-chested dudes, barely filling out their blazers, and women with bangs and thick-framed glasses held wine provided by Tumblr, whispered to each other: “Is that Maris Kreizman? Do I say hi? Will she remember that she retweeted me?” Maris, founder of the blog Slaughterhouse 90210, emceed the third birthday of her hilarious contribution to our dashboards, which matches sitcom screenshots with contemporary and classic literary quotes.

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Heidi Julavits at The Center for Fiction

1. John Wray interviews Heidi Julavits. Julavits won’t play poker with him anymore, 1) because he lives in Brooklyn, 2) because she’s sick of all the Bob Dylan worship going on. 2. Columbia MFA student Marlon Frisby gets his book signed. His idea for another constraint for Julavits’ next book: sports. (Julavits played rugby in college, so she’s game).

 

Have you seen the book trailer for Heidi Julavits’ new novel, The Vanishers? It makes me want to take a shower, in a good way.

Which is strange, because as John Wray put it in his interview with Julavits, a founding editor of The Believer, at The Center for Fiction last night, there’s no “actual sex” in her latest novel. (Julavits’ mother-in-law wrote her the “weirdest e-mail,” which said the novel was “the most sexless thing she’s ever read” – which made Julavits feel sort of like a prude.) That’s not to say there isn’t sexual tension in The Vanishers; in fact, every character seems sexualized. Julavits said she’s interested in un-acted upon sexual tension, the way this appears in the confusing way women interact with each other (“Do I want to fuck her or be her?”) – female characters who have a sexual desire for someone else’s being.

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From P-Town… The Shanghai Tunnels Project’s Poetry Film Competition

1. Dena Rash Guzman, the event’s co- host, and I got there around the same time. 2. Holly Hinkle, editor of Unshod Quills, on the stairs with artist Jason W. Herzog. 3. While waiting for a drink, my investigative waiting uncovers The Jack London’s copy of The Call of the Wild.

  

On Monday night at the Jack London Bar, Dena Rash Guzman and Monica Storss co-hosted the Portland screening of poetry films. This was part of a competition for second and third place, as part of The Shanghai Tunnels Project presented by HAL Publishing and Unshod Quills. Entries included “Dust” by Liu Xiaobo (2010 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate), and “Your Limbs Will Be Torn Off in a Farm Accident” by Portland’s Zachary Schomburg, among others.

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