The great schlep

If you don't have an aversion to Sarah Silverman, check it out.

He Could Be a Cup

An interview with Miranda July's book, No One Belongs Here More Than You. Click here.

Sadder

Here's a link to a short Salon article on David Foster Wallace, and a brilliant commencement speech he gave at Kenyon College in 2005.

I don't even know what to say. It's no more shocking than any other suicide perhaps. Sadder, maybe, because of what an influence he's been on so much of what's being written right now in America. Sadder, because always in his work, despite what some people deemed overly self-conscious cleverness, was a deep and rare wisdom about the internal concentric layers of all things human. And we can't forget humility. He had that, too.

Post Road #16 available on Amazon

Hola friends,

Was informed by a Post Road editor that issue #16 (with my new nonfiction piece "Farewell") is available on Amazon.

Of course I want you to buy it because it has my piece in it, but I'm also a sincere believer in the literary magazine and think everyone should support them whenever possible.

So in the spirit of helping literature, supporting writers, and investing in the power of the printed word, here's the link to Amazon where you can purchase the "lite brite" copy of Post Road.

Wisdom

Wisdom.

Post Road #16

It's out, on the stands, in select stores (see St. Mark's Book Shop below). My piece "Farewell" printed in its pages.

PR sometimes posts some content from the new issue up on their website, and have a place where you can order it, but it's not up yet. #15 is still hanging around.

When 16 is up, I'll post it here. It's a great issue.

Playing the Building, Playing in the City

[David Byrne installation, Playing the Building]

Spent Saturday and Sunday in Manhattan. And aside from doing the regular NYC things--eating pirogies at Veselka's in the East Village, going to St. Mark's Bookshop to peruse the lit mags--I stayed at a famous cartoonist's apartment in Washington Heights; walked across the Brooklyn Bridge (for the first time!) and saw Ms. Liberty all regal in the sun; and went to David Byrne's installation, Playing the Building (pic above, and you can watch a video w/DB at this link), at South Ferry. The installation was wild. The whole building an instrument. Standing there, in it, was like being in the belly of a confused clock inside the body of a whale. Clinks and clanks and hisses and exhales--through the pipes, on the radiators, all controlled by the keys of the piano played by whatever visitor.

Speaking of bellies...had a great dinner at Cafe Habana on Prince & Elizabeth. The corn! If you ever go there, get the corn! It's grilled in spices and rolled in some kind of soft buttery cheese. Best ever.

My friend A. and I also discovered a strange patch of land on Broadway and 25th and watched tourists take pictures next to over-sized planters on weird beige sand.

And, thanks to A., I contracted the worst laugh attack ever on the subway. Could not stop. Tears and everything. So embarrassing (and totally fun).

Post #100!

So for this post, the 100th, I'm here only to say that this chick went rock climbing this week for the first time since she was 22 years old (and that was a long time ago)!

Aside from worrying about whether or not I'd done an adequate job shaving my legs, it was an awesome experience--I did well I think. Am mostly proud of myself for even giving it a shot, and now am so sore that whilst smoothing a Post-It note at work yesterday morning with my right index finger, i was like "ow ow ow ow ow ow..." Fingers, hands, arms, shoulders, toes, calves, quads... OW .. but YAY!

The best part, aside from getting myself up there, was the group of people I went with. So supportive and encouraging. Made it really easy and totally fun. And I want to go again!!!

Congrats to Jane!

Shouting out to my dear friend Angela Jane Fountas in Seattle, Washington, who was just chosen to be a Hugo House writer-in-residence. A big deal. And a great gig. You can read this short article in the Seattle Times! May her success be contagious.

60 Revolutions per Minute

God bless adrenalin and lord have mercy on my beat-up body...but OH MY GOD. What a f--king show!

My punk rock friend D-Love would be ever so proud of my foray into moshing mania...Sure, it hurts when I breath, but we don't care!!

Much LOVE in the regions of the floor through which I traveled--lovely to be amongst my fellow citizens of Planet GB.

And I got to hang during parts of it with my dear friend R. for his first GB extravaganza. A special night for sure.

Here's a clip of the song that brought on one of the more fun moshing experiences during the show...




Here's the set list, though I'm very uncertain about the order past the first four songs:

Ultimate, Not a Crime, I Would Never Wanna Be Young Again, Supertheory of Supereverything, Wonderlust King, Mishto!, Tribal Connection, Forces of Victory, 60 Revolutions, American Wedding, Start Wearing Purple, Underdog World Strike, and Think Locally, Fuck Globally. Encore: Alcohol, Immigrant Punk, Baro Foro (which sandwiched samples of the following songs: Undestructable, Sally, My Strange Uncles from Abroad).

ANOTHER SHOW this Friday in Providence, RI, @ Lupo's Heartbreak Hotel, with my friend Mo. Also her first time. Yee haw! Show #8 for me... bring it on!

GB in NH...here I come!

Leaving in 1 hour to head for New Haven and a night of music madness!

Wellspring Residency...

Just made my reservation for a weeklong writing residency at the Wellspring House in Ashfield, Massachusetts. When I look at the pics of the place, the grounds, the rooms, I almost cry for how quiet it looks (for those of you who know me and my living situation, quiet is an extinct creature in my life). I can't wait!

Magical Thinking and Magical Photos

The Joan Didion book I wept at the end of last night is the first matter at hand. I highly recommend it. The Year of Magical Thinking. I'm feeling struck dumb in terms of writing anything that will do it justice. It is just beautiful and moving and smart. Smart smart smart. Which is a strange adjective to use in describing a book that serves as a "model of consciousness" (I believe this term comes from poet Larry Levis) for grief. She somehow manages to reveal no more than I really want to know, but just enough to make me want to know more. The most captivating part of the book--which won the National Book Award and covers the year her husband of 40 years died of a heart attack and her adult daughter suffered from a serious neurological illness (and subsequently dies, though not during the writing of this book)--is her rendering of her marriage with writer John Gregory Dunne. It was an unusual, beautiful, and inspiring togetherness they had.


Also beautiful and inspiring are photographs by my new cyberfriend, Russ Taylor. Incredible pictures from around the world. Really amazing stuff. Check it out:
Russ Taylor's photo journal.

Where Have I Been?

So I was checking out the website for the Afro-Punk Festival in Brooklyn that has already come and gone this month (you'll find live clips, videos, and some great bands on the site), and came across P.O.S. (Pain of Salvation). I feel like I've arrived at Nirvana... rap, hip-hop, could you call it punk?, and pop...all together? Get out! I love this song, "P.O.S. Is Ruining My Life," so I share it, with the knowledge that it's totally old news. (If you're short on time, there's a nice 60-second stretch starting at about the :55-second mark.)





Tomorrow I will write about the book I just finished reading, Joan Didion's memoir, The Year of Magical Thinking, which had me up at 2:00 am in its final pages weeping into my pillow. Jesus.

Tether Free Vision: Who Knew?

Check it out. I'm quoted on a life coaching website. Right under Marianne Williamson. Left hand side. So weird.

In the absence of inspiration

I'm re-reading this great spiritual book, Search for Serenity, from 1959, by a dude named Lewis F. Presnall. I love this book. I think the following is one of the best pedestrian descriptions of surrender that I've ever read (forgive the default masculine pronoun ... it was the Fifties after all):

"One who has the habit of success is like a man who walks down a corridor or hallway, along which there are doors on both sides ... If [a door] swings open, he can take a peek inside and see if it is the room he wishes to enter. But if he comes to a door which does not respond to a gentle push, he does not stand there and batter futilely at it with his fists. If it does not open easily, he knows it is either not the door that he should enter or it is not the time to go through it.

To take this attitude toward life, one must have a belief in the goodness of the universe ... The man who believes that he designs his own future in his own limited wisdom will never be content ... There must be the conviction that the purposes of one's life are best served when he is going along the lines of the mainstream of the universe. He must know that if he thinks right and stays relaxed, trying to do his best each day, that the universe will provide the best he is capable of receiving."

Best Pool Party Ever: Gogol Bordello at McCarren Pool, June 20, 2008

Every time I think the thrill is gone, something happens, mid-concert. What that something is, is hard to describe. All I know is that the minute I give up on the idea of being transported, my feet start to lift and my body remembers one of the things it is meant for: to be crowded amongst other bodies--one body, one fist in the air--not woman anymore, not "Laura," just rush and shock of energy and worship and that old Greek moment of creative force manifest in performer, god in the accordion, god on the drums, god in the Ukrainian's mustache, god in the people next to me, us screaming in each others' god-like faces.

Come to the front of a stage at the edge of a giant drained out swimming pool in a residential neighborhood in Brooklyn and you won't find a congregation more ecstatically present. The next thing you know it's 2 in the morning and you're massaging Charlie horses out of your calves (from all the god in the jumping) knowing you won't need to sleep again for at least 80 years.

[you can't see the band at all in the clip below, and the sound is pretty fuzzy, but you'll get an idea of the ecstatic nature of the crowd--which really starts about 35 seconds in. It was at this point in the show when the drained pool we were all in became more than a pool....]



I stayed front and center for the whole show, one hand on the rail at all costs, and two fine protectors who had my back: Tama (Samoan) and Vesko (Bulgarian)--hunky bare-chested pals clad in silky purple scarves.

Best encore of "Baro Foro" I've ever seen (and this was show number 6 for me), co-starring Manhattan Samba--a 40-person-strong marching band with drums, bells, whistles--and one of Gogol Bordello's most satisfying and raucous fake endings yet: lights off, a pause that lasted forever, then BOOM, lights UP, Sergei at the front with his violin, bow paused above the strings, a quick raise of the eyebrows followed by one strong loud stroke, and off they go ... for ... how long was it? Ten more minutes? Hours? Days?


They played "Immigrant Punk" which I haven't heard live since my first show two years ago!



My friend J. put it perfectly later that night as I walked her to the G train. It was her first GB show ever (and she held her own in the pit!); she said, as she walked next to me with a literal bounce in her step, "I just feel like after something like that: I can do anything. My life can be whatever I want it to be. Everything feels possible!"




After participating in the surge of humanity that is the pit at GB shows, that is their music, their commitment to their audience, their willingness to go full force full blast for as long as they are allowed, one can't help but feel that anything really is possible, that you are possible, that people are good, and the human body can endure hours of something it isn't physically prepared for because somehow it knows that it has a responsibility to the spirit...




[Video clip of "Not a Crime" filmed from the shallow end at the very beginning of the show (song #2). More crowd mania and more of the band....]





Woo hoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!



[the above pics, with the exception of the first and the pic of Pamela screaming because she never wants to be young again, were taken by great NYC music photographer, Jonny Leather--click here for his review of the show and here to go to his website for a lot more pics of other concerts]

Hippys=Aliens

A longtime acquaintance of mine lives and works in Thailand and he just sent me a slew of pictures. This one is mint, his favorite sign, he says, in the country (click on it so you can zoom in):



I always had a feeling I might not be allowed to enter the kingdom...

Two things

1) Saw Ms. Sarah Borges and the Broken Singles play last night at Club Helsinki in Great Barrington, MA. They were awesome. Part country, part rock, part rock-a-billy. As my friend R. would say, she is a pistol! Hilarious, strange, beautiful, and, god, who can't admire a woman in cowgirl boots, a gold lamme top, a short ruffly pink skirt, and an electric guitar hanging from her by a strap covered in stars?

You can listen to a few tracks on her website, and I'd recommend downloading "On the Corner" from I-Tunes, and/or, my favorite, the slow song "Ring in the Shape of a Heart" (which they played last night which made me very happy and made me cry a little, too...).

2) So I generally laugh several times a day...and I thought it worth it to share the thing that brought on today's first. I subscribe to a podcast out of Vienna, Austria, called Chat Chapeau. And I read this, the new description of their 'cast, on I-Tunes:

Chat Chapeau: Balkan Groove and Gypsy Madness

Cat in a hat--in French it's chat chapeau.
In Spanish it's a gato in a sombrero.
In German it's a Katze in a Hut.
I also know it's a gwonka in a bonkeauank in Eskimo.
Now if you will allow me sir--but please don't think I'm pushing--I think that I can tell you--what it is in Russian: Chapka, shlyapa--what?-- It's a chapka in a shlyapa, right!
It's a cat of many countries--it's a cat of many hats-- it's a gufee in a busbee--it's a snaka in a snak. But that's enough of that. It's a cat in a hat. (Thanks to Dr. Seuss!)
"But..." you may ask, "if it's about music from Eastern-Europe, Balkan and with Gypsy roots... why a French name for the label?"
Well, it sounds better, doesn't it? And actually that's what really matters: the sound!

(I think it was the "gwonka in a bonkeauank in Eskimo" that really got me the first read through. And "snaka in a snak" didn't help matters.)

Cashing in on the Flood

So I'm reading this Times article about the flood in Cedar Rapids and came across this paragraph toward the end, which, surprisingly, went by without comment from the writer. I know it's not a laughing matter, but someone might want to tell this guy that he probably could have made more than ten bucks.

Demenick Ankum drove to his house on 19th Avenue to save anything he could. By the time he finished packing, his car was underwater. He had to pay a neighbor, Louie Brundidge, $10 to rescue him from the house in Mr. Brundidge’s red aluminum boat.