I play rochambeau with ghosts, take photos of space, and ride my bike in the bus lane.
Matt Dillon nailed Charles Bukowski in the movie Factotum. He never smiles and got the cadence just right. Someone should cast him again in another Bukowski / Chinaski novel turned movie. Mickey Rourke missed in Barfly.
There’s a man playing a lonely trumpet outside. I turn on WNYC and listen to the talk radio people go on and on about the G20 potentates on parade. Saturday Night Live will do something clever with this.
Via Digby. This pleasantly reminds me of elementary school and watching movies that explained the banking system. Watch it if you’re confused about what’s going on.
The Grey Fox Bluegrass Festival is happening there again so you best be showing the love. They served me the best corn chowder I ever had. Besides some good sandwiches.
Watching Ben Kingsley muddle his way through Elegy, I thought of The Dean’s December by Saul Bellow. They were both long falling moments when a couple of my heroes got really ugly. They stumble out at the end a ready-made baptism. (Both are fictions.)
I thought I’d seen it all but then I didn’t have Google in mind. The Sun is there. To be fair, Google probably photomaps urban streets once a year at most and I’m not sure it will hold up in court.
The Ding Dong Lounge hosted a ‘zine fair on Saturday. They didn’t do a very good job of promoting it as it seemed like only ‘zine publishers were in attendance slapping each other on the back and outnerding each other. If you want bar regulars to come in and hang around, you may not want a naked old guy with distended testicles and large man boobs walking around your zine fair. I know it’s a pagan sort of act, but it’s really grody.
I didn’t take notes but a couple of the zines I looked at were interesting and some had great color graphic work. I also looked at a couple that might’ve been done by fifth graders. You shouldn’t charge $8 for your zine if it looks like it was done by fifth graders. Given the proliferation of blogging, publishing a zine is sort of like making yourself breakfast every day and tossing it in the garbage. I threw out all of my friends’ zines from the 80s and 90s. They’re not worth anything.
Unless you’re Dave Eggers and can produce something as slick (or nearly) as McSweeney’s or n+1 or… you know what I’m talking about– don’t bother. Definitely do it in color. Maintain a nice website/blog and pass out cards with the URL. Take it multimedia people. Once you’re hipper than Dave and get an audience, you might consider charging Kindle subscribers.
The band Wolfhaven performed and Chet messed up by introducing them as Wolverines. They played really nice blues rock sort of like Masters of Reality. I like that they have “333” in their myspace URL. That means they’re half-evil.
And you know the owner is a professional. (i.e., xo9wuf98)
“I was in a band called the Silent Humphrey Bogarts and we used to open for the Loudmouth Charlie Chaplins.”
Let us praise The Onion.
Prague’s Franz Kafka International Named World’s Most Alienating Airport
What can you say about the food sold at the 99¢ store? They got my 99¢, I got some food that tastes different, and the big guys with the obnoxious website did not get my $3.99. These are the same guys voraciously taking over the packaged organic food industry.
From Richard’s Forewards and elsewhere:
So what if it’s made of steel and weighs 35 pounds and cost a hundred dollars at KMart.