New Story: Ash Mounds

My story, Ash Mounds, just came out on the You Must Be This Tall to Ride website, edited by BJ Hollars, alongside new stories by Roxane Gay, who co-runs the journal PANK,  and John Dermot Woods, who co-runs the excellent podcast series, Apostrophe Cast. Good company.

It’s a Hadley, MA story, set in a real parking lot with real dirty snow mounds and a real Barnes and Nobles. It’s also, I think, my longest piece of fiction to appear online. I just re-read my story and then read Gay’s story, and thought, Wow, poor moms.

Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough

I just posted Chaper 8 of Lolita, Scrubbed. It’s the first longish chapter in the book and features the famous first cab driver/wife’s lover, which goes largely unchanged except for Gerard’s downplaying of Humbert’s muderous rage.

New online stories are coming soonish from Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens and You Must Be This Tall to Ride. You can read about the YMBTTR anthology here, which has a pretty amazing lineup of contributors, each of whom wrote craft essays to go along with their stories.

Facts: Michael Jackson wowed me as a kid with his “people shifting into other people” music video. Captain Nemo was my first 3D movie. The moonwalk is magic. Everybody had a great time dancing to Billie Jean at my wedding, some 2 years and 2 days ago.

Insatiable Decalogue at Yankee Pot Roast

A new/old piece, Insatiable Decalogue (previously called “Ten Morality Stories…”) is now up at the comedy site, Yankee Pot Roast.

They print some funny stuff. Here’s one from last week I like a lot: “How I Unwind” by Mot Trablett (”THIS GLASS OF ICED TEA IS MY GOD NOW.”)

Also: I just posted Chapter 2 over at Lolita, Scrubbed. Stay tuned next week for Chapters 3, 4, and 5.

New Blog: One Isn’t Enough

Friends: I hope you will join me at my new blog, Lolita, Scrubbed, where I have begun to serialize a new edit of Nabokov’s Lolita based on the taste and whims of Gerard Kibbey, a guy I made up. Watch and cringe as Kibbey has his way with one of the greatest novels of the century that just happened.

I’m shooting for verisimilitude here, so I won’t use my name on the blog itself. This is not to trick people into thinking Gerard Kibbey is a real person, but instead to create a self-contained fictional space. (I briefly considered starting the blog in character while never owning up to it, but I think the “Is he, like, serious, dude?” concerns that could arise would be both distracting and done-to-death.

If you’d like to follow along with the original, there is a free full-text PDF edition of the original Lolita here.

New Remix: Woke Me Up

This one transitions into “Prison for Jerks (Back to Cali),” the album closer. Like “Yoko in Idaho,” it’s not going to be a dance-hall favorite, but instead another chance to showcase Bjork’s voice over Andrew Bird’s instrumentals.

Woke Me Up (at MySpace)

It’s composed of:

Bjork – Sonnets/Unrealities XI
Andrew Bird – You Woke Me Up!
Andrew Bird – Master Sigh
Andrew Bird – The Barn Tapes
Andrew Bird – Carrion Suite
Andrew Bird – Imitosis
Andrew Bird – Skin Is, My
Kanye West – Love Lockdown

I also added the Madonna remix to the MySpace roster. It’s now retitled “No Beatbox in Baseball.”

New Short Short: Basics

My new short short, Basics, is up at Matchbook, a new feed-style lit mag edited by Brian Mihok and Edward Mullaney. It’s about a sport I made up, like Quiddich but sexier. Matchbook is also having contributors write a little essay to appear right beside the story, a cool way to set themselves apart, so I did one of those too.

New Remix: Big Poppa

Here’s the album’s other Biggie remix. Both this one and “Cali” feature a spooky (reverby) distant higher-pitched doppleganger rapping alongside with Biggie. In this one, they start trading lines around 3:45.

Gabe Durham – Big Poppa (MySpace)

Composed of:

Notorious B.I.G. – Big Poppa
Damien Rice – Volcano
Andrew Bird – Happy Birthday

Crick Reading

Francis Crick

Adam Cogbill has roped me and friends into reading and playing music at his prestigious Except for Tim Reading Series.

May 20th, (Wednesday)
7:00 @ The Creek

Rachel B. Glaser
Christy Crutchfield
Gabe Durham
The music of the Cinnamon Urns

(email me for directions)

New Remix: Paper Planes

Now summer ‘09 can be summer ‘08 all over again!

Gabe Durham – Paper Planes (MySpace)

Composed of:

MIA – Paper Planes
Blind Melon – No Rain
TV on the Radio – Crying
Animal Collective – My Girls
Beyonce – Single Ladies
Proclaimers – I Met You
LCD Soundsystem – Get Innocuous!

It’s best enjoyed if followed by the “Show Me Forgiveness” remix. They form a 2-song thingey.

Bookspot Central Interview is Up

The generous Brian Lindenmuth interviewed me for Bookspot Central as part of his salt-on-woundly-titled “Conversations with the Bookless” series.

Mostly the site is into genre fiction, and Brian got in touch after reading my part-time cop story in Thieves Jargon and called it crime fiction, which made me feel hard-boiled and muscled.

Los Angeles came to us / chapbook / MAR people

We went to see Sara Watkins and her brother Sean at the Iron Horse on Tuesday. Liz impacted the set, getting Sara to play “In Tall Buildings” for her encore. Good work Liz, good work Sara. Her new album is solid–it’s got covers of John Hartford, Jon Brion, David Garza, Tom Waits, others, and seven originals, my favorite of which (maybe) is “Where Will You Be.” It’s produced by John Paul Jones and has Benmont Tench and all those Largo ringers on it.

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Along with Jack’s chapbook, Mike just put out a new chapbook by Jimmy Chen called Typewriter. It’s about the internet, and investigates internet weirdness from a number of funny and insightful angles.

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When I got my call about getting a story in Mid-American Review last week (mmm!), I was re-inspired to read the copy of MAR (XXIX, Number 1) that my neighbor friends gave me for my birthday. I was surprised to find so many right-up-my-alley wild stories from such a reputable lit magazine. The stories of Mattew Eck, Becky Hagenston, and Baird Harper, are so well-sculpted. I felt my interest considered, my time unwasted.

And then that got me off on the stories of Michael Czyzniejewski, which themselves have the aesthetic of the MAR stories/Aimee Bender/Etagr Keret. I like them a lot. Here they are:

- The Athiest Reconsiders (with notes)

- Nephophobia

- Wind (my favorite of the three)

Richard Yates Reads a Story

I’m slowly making my way through Eleven Kinds of Loneliness, the collection Yates released a year after Revolutionary Road. I read “The Best of Everything” tonight and then found this:

Richard Yates – The Best of Everything

It’s Yates reading the story years (decades?) later, speaking with a light consistent lisp. He actually sings that little bit of “The Easter Parade” that he later named a novel after.

Check it out: Jack Christian chapbook coming soon!

Time-waster: Here’s a game, Bubble Spinner that’s like Bust-A-Move but harder and more complicated.

Anjali’s first of many Mt. Fuji poems.