You know how, when you take the cardboard out of the middle, a roll of toilet paper holds itself together for awhile before it sinks in on itself and falls apart?
This Weekly
Did you see the really nice article in this week’s Philadelphia Weekly about storytelling, Hillary Rea, and me?
There’s also a profile of Sarah Rose Etter, who’s going to be reading at Toiling tonight with Lee Klein, Jeremy Eric Tenenbaum, and me. Tinmouth will be playing his last show in Philadelphia for awhile.
This is all going down at The Dive later (7PM), and you should be there, because there’s really no better way to spend a damp Friday evening than in a dim bar having stories read to you.
Appearances
I have reached a kind of stasis with my haircut where it looks like the perfect cross between Nana and Dee Dee Ramone.
I think it suits me.
I have two shows this week. Hillary Rea’s Tell Me a Story show on Wednesday, and TOILING IN OBSCURITY XV on Friday. If things go according to plan, I will devastate.
My current favorite cocktail, the one I’ve been making every time I “want” a “cocktail” is the Boulevardier. One and a half measures bourbon (I’ve had much success with Bulleit and Four Roses), one measure Campari, one measure sweet vermouth. Shake over ice. Serve immediately. It smells like Cherry Coke, and tastes like delicious bourbon.
I am on the verge of the kind of freak-out no one has ever seen, because I keep those things private. Maybe y’all won’t notice. I have a knack for that, and there are a slew of Herzog documentaries I’ve been putting off.
Who Are You And What Do You Want?
I’m not good at having a blog. I say this all the time, but that’s only because I mean it.
I don’t like to talk about personal stuff, because I think an air of mystery does me some good. I tend not to write about what movies I’m watching (or television) because I do so in obsessive bursts, and there are only so many things I can write about having seen another Herzog movie or episode of Law and Order: SVU before I become some boring, morbid cartoon version of myself. (Which, considering the source, would be something of an accomplishment.) The music I listen to isn’t all that relevant. (I’m going through a Pulp phase.) No one cares if I ate wine and popcorn for dinner again. I don’t have an adorable baby, or an adorable pet, or even a camera with which I’d take pictures of either. Nor do I care enough about fashion to write about what I wear. (Plaid, a lot of stripes, more skirts than you’d expect.) I do not have beauty tips or life advice.
But really, what it is, is that I don’t know how to perform for an unknown audience. Unlike fiction writing, which is something I’ve always done to one degree or another, writing like this, for the internet, feels like being onstage. When I’m up there in person, connecting with the audience is more important than language, punctuation, tone. Writing here is problematic, because I don’t know who, if anyone, is reading.
Do you care how Tuesday’s show went? (Really, really, extremely well.)
What about the fake Nicolas Cage-Mariah Carey vehicle my brother and I imagined yesterday morning? (She plays a former diva — obviously — who owns a karaoke bar. Nicolas Cage is a floundering sports agent who tries to revive her career. Tom Waits and Jim Jarmusch run the local rec-center/junkyard. The Wu-Tang Clan makes cameos, including ODB in footage from Mariah’s “Fantasy” remix music video. There are many dramatic yelling scenes. They live happily ever after.)
What about the last book I read (The High Window by Raymond Chandler), or the last food I ate (fancy pizza), or the mysterious illness that descended upon me in the middle of visiting Jennie Thwing‘s opening at the Fleisher Art Memorial last night?
I don’t know what to say, because I don’t know who I’m talking to.
I Know from Hurricanes
I lived in or around New Orleans til I was nearly five. When my parents met, I’ve been told, my father lived mere doors down from Pat O’Brien’s, home of the Hurricane.
One of my favorite memories from Metairie is watching a neighbor paddle a boat down the street. We were a few doors down from a canal, we were flooded, it made sense. I can still see it, even if some of it might be my own fiction. He had a long ponytail, and a beard, and though I don’t remember who he was, I know I thought he was kind and that he was lucky to have a boat on a day like that.
When I lived there, I had my own room, which was pink, and my blanket was quilted with teddy bears. At most, I was four, although I might have been younger. I slept in a cheap, white-painted metal daybed, which was where I played “tuberculosis” and where I tried not to sleep, and where I slept through storms and the time the house across the street burned down. When that happened, I was angry that I missed it, and that my mother gave Jason, the boy that lived there, a Fla-vor-ice. In my memory, it was an orange one, which was always my favorite, and I remember having to tell myself that he needed it more than I ever would.
I wasn’t scared when I had to sit on the bed with my baby brother, because the water on the floor was filthy. I wasn’t scared of the lightning or the wind. I wasn’t scared if I woke up to the world amiss, to scattered branches, to fallen houses, to puddles the size of cars.
Friends, it’s only weather. We’re in it every day.
Misanthrofascination
I’m constantly torn between my misanthropy and my fascination with other people, except when I’m listening in on stranger’s conversations, when I don’t have to feel conflicted at all.
Oh, Yeah
I’ve been feeling anxious for a couple of days, and I think I figured out why. I watched The Kingdom over the course of a single weekend, and I have been listening to Goblin nonstop.
Oh, and I’m finally finishing The Avian Gospels. And I’m neurotic.
Last Week
Last week I did two shows and saw my family and distant friends and was on the local NPR affiliate and I closed the coffee shop up for two weeks and sent my brother off camping (Have I mentioned that he’s crashing at my apartment? I keep forgetting to tell people this because then they inevitably ask how long it’ll be till we kill each other, and then I have to laugh, even though it’s not that funny, because I’ve spent more time with that boy than with any other person in the universe but myself, and if I haven’t killed either of us by now, I probably won’t. Probably.) and bought the same dress in two different colors and made plans and read in the park and got drinks and watched The Kingdom and got drinks and slept.
Now I have two weeks to remember how to write and get things done before it all starts over again. I’ll drink to that.