Comic Sans

So there's a snazzy new martini bar in town, and J.C. and I decided to stop there for a drink last night.

The place looked good--like any old fancy-pants martini bar. Lots of polished wood, cool lighting, black leather sofas and armchairs. Not the kind of place you expect to find here in Galesburg.

We took a seat and started to peruse the menu.

Right away, J.C. said, "Look at the font."

It was Comic Sans.

"What kind of martini bar," she said, "uses Comic Sans for their menus?"

I may not be able to get her to go back.
* * *
A Comic Sans Joke, as Told by J.C.:

Comic Sans walks into a bar.

Bartender says, "We don't serve your type."

Stories

"Please Contact" by Scott Garson, at Juked.

"Prow" by Claudia Smith, from the new issue of SmokeLong Quarterly.

"Okeechobee" by Claudia Zuluaga at Narrative Magazine. You have to sign up for an account if you don't have one already, but it's free and worth it--there's always lots of stuff worth reading over there.

"Straightedge" by Matthew Vollmer at Salt Hill Journal, from Issue 18.

Fishing With D.

I took my nephew D. fishing last Thursday, and all I have to say is this: The pupil has definitely surpassed the master.

The truth is, I was never much of a master fisherman, but here's how our days at the lake would usually go: D. would fish for bluegill and sunfish off the dock for most of the afternoon while I sat in the shade and read. Occasionally, he'd call me down to the water to help him get a fish off his hook or just keep him company, and I'd happily oblige.

And then, around seven p.m., we'd take my parents' fancy paddle boat--they have the type with pontoons--down to the dam and fish for bass and Northern pike. This is where UnkaChad would land a keeper or two, show the boy how it's done.

So, Thursday began like most of our days at the lake, only D., in addition to catching a number of baby bluegill and sunfish during the afternoon, snagged a keeper-sized crappy. We put it on a stringer, and he was elated.

Then, a little before seven we paddled down to the dam, where we saw a peacock. (The peacock isn't really a part of the story, but it did fascinate the two of us. We saw it from a few hundred yards away and kept paddling toward it, hoping to get a closer look, and eventually we did. A peacock, strutting along the dam road. I thought it was an anomoly but found out later the guy has been hanging out at the lake for quite a while).

So, the peacock eventually walked out of sight, and we set to fishing. I was using a Rapala, my lure of choice, and D. was fishing with a worm and bobber. Eventually, he asked me to paddle near a weeping willow at the corner of the lake and he switched lures--to one of those pumpkin-scented fake worms. He cast all of two times, I think, before he snagged a two-pound bass. Unlike UnkaChad, who has a tendency to get excited and lose fish before he actually gets them in the boat, D. was patient, got the fish up near the boat, and asked me to grab the net. (Or, you know, shouted, while stomping his foot, "Get the net. The net! Get it!").

At that point, since the paddle boat doesn't have a live well, I became the guy holding the net with D.'s two-pound bass in it, so that I could keep the fish alive until we got back to shore. A little while later, D. switched his lure back to a worm and bobber, and UnkaChad started paddling us back to the cabin. About a third of the way there, I paused so D. could cast a few times, and he very quickly had something big on his hook. The fish was fighting, and we thought maybe it was going to be the biggest bluegill in the history of the world. Once he got it back to the boat, though, we realized it was a four-pound catfish--D.'s favorite fish to catch.

So, that got added to the net UnkaChad was dragging in the water, and a little while later we parked the boat and took off for home.

Final Score:

D: Three keepers.

UnkaChad: Zero.

At least he still needed me to drive him home.

Two Essays

By Joni Tevis:

"Bigfoot's Widow: An Essay" from Barrelhouse

&

"Chihuahua Desert Love Song" from AGNI

I'd never heard of Ms. Tevis before reading the Bigfoot essay, which blew me away. What a turn that thing takes toward the end. After googling her--and reading the essay over at AGNI--I found out she has a website, where more essays are available. Plus, she's going to have a whole book of them coming out soon. Based on the five total essays I've read by her so far, I"m definitely going to be picking up a copy.

So: Go and read the above essays and then check out her website for a few more. Really. It won't take much time, and you'll be glad you're not reading silly ol' blog entries.

Conversation With J.C.

J.C.: You smell like woodchips.

Me: Really? What would you rather I smelled like?

J.C.: A millionaire.

Come Pick Me Up

I wrote the essay below mostly while listening to Ryan Adams' "Cold Roses."

I'd bought that album just before we moved to Galesburg two years ago, and it somehow got lost in the transition.

Last week I finally bought a replacement off iTunes. And I wanted to post a song from that album, but I couldn't find anything I liked on YouTube.

Instead, there's this: an edited version of "Come Pick Me Up," as performed on Letterman.

I do love this song.

Home of the Poor and Unknown

I spent the last few days banging out an essay for a particular literary magazine. I'd like some more time with it--I'd like to hang it up on the hanger-rod in my office with the story I completed recently and see how it develops--but the magazine has a deadline, so I went ahead and sent it off. It's in ten parts, and below you'll find part number one.

1.
It’s three o’clock on a Friday afternoon, and the Cubs are up 3-1 in the bottom of the sixth at home against the Padres. David Wells is still on the mound, facing Alfonso Soriano. I don’t know the count because I just ordered a Coors Light, and instead of the game, while the bartender goes for my beer, I’m looking at the Old Crow statue on top of the cooler behind the bar. The crow is two feet tall, bedecked in a tuxedo and top hat. Over the brass tuxedo, he wears a Cubs vest and bowtie. It’s obvious someone sewed them specifically for this statue, and, most likely, so that the outfit could be displayed at this bar.

Next to the TV, there’s a neon Miller Lite sign declaring this place Wrigleyville. We’re in west central Illinois, a three-hour train ride from Chicago, but Duffy’s is as close to Wrigley as you can be in Galesburg. Besides the crow and neon, throughout the dark bar—it’s tunnel-shaped and barely lit—there are Cubs helmets, bobbleheads, and pennants. There’s a framed Michael Barrett jersey, four or five representations of Wrigley Field.

While the bartender makes change for my beer, Soriano whacks a down-and-in curveball from Wells off the fence behind the bleachers in left field. At Duffy’s, this should mean the next round is free. And up and down the bar—thirteen of its nineteen stools are occupied—men, half drunk, cheer and repeat what the TV announcers have just said. “That one got out of here in a hurry,” they say. “The left fielder didn’t have a chance.”

A man, maybe sixty years old, deeply tanned and wearing overalls, says, “Oh—there’s another home run for the Cubs,” when the TV replays the shot. It seems he’s only half attempting to trick the bartender, and it seems, too, like it’s a joke the two have shared a million times or two.

The bartender hands me my change, and I wait to see if he matches my beer—brings me the free one. I wait for five or ten seconds, pocketing my change slowly, placing a dollar bill on the bar for a tip, but no free beer comes. I figure he’ll get me on the next round, and I take a seat at one of the tables behind the barstools and watch yet another replay of the Soriano homer. The guy in overalls raises a finger in the air in the direction of the TV, says again, “Oh—that’s another one.”

We Have Two Cats

and this is pretty funny.

Beware, though: The music is a little louder than it should be.

Also: It took me a couple viewings to figure out what exactly had transpired. Such is my brain, I suppose.

(via clusterflock)

Live Blogging

As someone who frequently takes advantage of "live blogging" (I'm talking mostly about ufcjunkie's coverage of UFC's PPV bouts, which I love), I found this little tidbit quite interesting.

I'm also curious about the lengths to which the NCAA et. al. will go to enforce such a policy.

Not to mention the other arenas in which this kind of censorship may ultimately apply.

Ruining My Summer

Miller's Chill.

According to the label, it's "Inspired by a Mexican Recipe with Lime & Salt." In other words, it tastes something like a Corona, only you don't have to slice your own lime.

I'm sure there are doubters out there, but Chill (which J.C. and I for some reason have dubbed "Chalupa") is pretty damn good in my book.

And for the record: it's not necessarily ruining my summer. So far, things are going pretty well. I wrapped up my first story on Friday--the one I posted bits of on here. In those posts, I speculated at first that I thought the story would be about 900 words. Later, I guessed 2,500. Right now, it stands at about 4,000. I'm going to let it sit for now.

My office is in the basement, in what was going to be a bedroom for the previous occupants. When they were converting it into a bedroom, they made a little makeshift closet in one corner, so there's a hanger rod along one wall. I've always wanted to find some way to clip drafts of stories to that rod, to hang them like developing photographs. Maybe I'll find some way to do that with "The Most Beautiful Thing About Her."

Cult Following

At a writing workshop a number of years back, one of the students asked the instructor about his readership "goals."

I thought it was an odd question to pose, but the instructor immediately said, "I'd like a small but devoted cult following."

Again, this seemed a rather odd aspiration. Why aspire to a "small" following?

The phrase stuck with me, though. And Wednesday night, watching Wilco perform for about 1500 adoring fans, I was again reminded of that "small but devoted cult following."

As I mentioned in the previous post, everybody stood for the entire show. Most people sang a good many of the lyrics. And this crowd, the one that was so obviously into this band, standing up and singing the lyrics, came from all over the Midwest and was made up of people from, I would guess, age ten to about sixty.

Would it be "better," I wondered on the way home, to perform for multitudes of the mildly to severely interested at Soldier Field? Would it be "better" to have one's book on the shelves in every Walden and Borders?

Financially, I suppose it would, but if I were the rock star, I think I would want it just the way Wilco had it last night.

And now that I've had six or seven years to come to terms with that instructor's modest "goal," I've also come to realize that a number of the writers I admire have their own small but devoted cult following. Think Charles D'Ambrosio. Amy Hempel. Lydia Davis. Dan Chaon. The list, I think, could go on and on.

And in the end, too, I think it's a fine goal for any artist to aspire to.

Wilco

I would be a remiss blogger if I didn't in some way cover the Wilco show Wednesday night.

But first, some links: My friend Alison, who went with us, has her take here. And you can scroll down to find another nice take on the show here. The forums and set list are here.

The highlights, for me: The band opened with "Shot in the Arm." A beautiful song, and it kicked off the concert beautifully. The crowd stood up once the first chords were struck, and nobody ever sat down. It was a great atmosphere until that fight during the encore, which you can read about at the above links. My friend K, who also went with us, was right next to the fight (and next to a mother and her ten-year-old child who were also next to the fight) and he said that the one guy was definitely taking a beating. He went so far as to say it was the most violent fight he'd ever seen in person.

But back to the highlights: The arrangement of "Via Chicago" was gorgeous. And Tweedy, I should mention here, sounded great throughout the show. This was my first real experience at a Wilco show (I saw them one other time but it was at an outdoor venue) and I wasn't sure how they would pull off some of what they pull off in the studio, but they did. All that sound, from just six guys on stage. And Tweedy, I'll say again, sounded fantastic.

Lastly, the second song of the encore was "The Late Greats." To me, this song is pure pop heaven (and smart besides--it's great standing in a crowd of adoring, screaming fans while Tweedy muses, "This song, will never get sung," etc.). I danced for the entire three minutes, and was even doing some strange things with my arms.

All in all, it was a fantastic show. The lowlights, if there were any: the fight, obviously; and the 10:30 curfew, which cut the encore short by five songs. Had Wilco been allowed to continue to play, we would have heard "What Light," "Heavy Metal Drummer," "I'm a Wheel," "Poor Places," and "I'm Always in Love." I have a lot of love for a couple of those songs, but the show was so good I'm not devastated or anything.

Oh--and though I missed a song or two by the opening act, Low, what I saw was pretty great. I read this a while back, and ever since then, I've wanted to check out Low but haven't. After seeing them live, they'll be a high iTunes priority in the near future.

*Image by way of Alison by way of Quad City Images, because when I got my fancy new cell phone out of my pocket to take a shot, I found out the battery was dead.

Tonight

My belated birthday present: We're going to see Wilco kick off the North American leg of their "Sky Blue Sky" tour in Davenport, Iowa.

Plus, my office mate from grad school is coming up for the show.

And I think we're going to eat at a Burmese place.

Now I have to go clean the house a little.

. . .

I got a massage today, my first one ever. There's a woman the college asks to come to campus once every two weeks or so to give fifteen-minute massages, and this morning, after I'd finished writing for about three hours, I opened an email that said she had appointments available. So, since I was pleased with the work I'd done, I called and set one up. Plus, I figured it'd get me out of the house and over to campus, where I could spend the afternoon writing.

On those fifteen minutes of lying down on the table, one word: Owww.

It was a "Chinese" massage, the masseuse said. She focused on pressure points, and on my stiff neck and shoulders. She kept saying, "Tight. Tight," while pummeling me. Afterward, though, I felt good. Relaxed. I actually found it harder to get started writing than usual. Maybe some part of me prefers to be uncomfortable.

In other news...I'm quite thrilled to say I received word yesterday that a little story of mine is going to appear in next year's issue of Salt Flats Annual.

You can look at Issue 2's table of contents (and read some of the contents) here. I recommend beginning with Randi Triant's "Starfish."

Conny

This is pretty cute.

Finis, Redux

I won't go on too long about this, I promise.

I watched my first episode of The Sopranos on VHS. I was living in Champaign, working third shift, and one morning after I got off work I ran some errands and ended up at Blockbuster. I'd heard things about the show--good things, usually--but nothing too specific. That Blockbuster, though, was pretty terrible. Not too much selection. I'd seen the first two seasons of The Sopranos on the shelf for a few weeks, and I figured what the hell, I'll see what it's all about. In less than a week, I'd been through the first two seasons. I wasn't able to check them all out from the same Blockbuster, though. Sometimes, the tape I needed was out, and I'd have to go to another video store. I think I probably used four video stores in seven days.

Later, I watched Season Three on DVD. And when Season Four was about ready to start, I got HBO, just so I could watch The Sopranos. I also ended up getting into Six Feet Under and became pretty invested in boxing, too. I've had HBO ever since.

And tonight, as pretty much everybody knows, is the end.

Back in grad school, back when I first ordered HBO so I could watch The Sopranos, I had a conversation with a professor one afternoon about the show. For some reason, we started talking about how it would end. "There's only one way it can end," my professor said. "Tony has to die. It'll end like a Shakespearian tragedy."

My first response, mostly in my head, was, "No way. They won't do that."

The way things have been shaking out, though--and I won't spoil things for those of you who are waiting for this season to come out on DVD--he was pretty much right.

And the way Tony's been acting this season, it's almost as if they've been preparing us for it--justifying the day he gets his.

But I'm still not so sure. Apparently, you can bet on who's going to die tonight. And not only that. You can also bet on who's going to die first, second, and third.

The odds right now (or, rather, the last time I checked) are 150-110 that Tony will live.

I'm not going to be betting, but I will say here that I think he's going to make it. I don't know what exactly that'll mean for the pygmy, and I don't know what kind of "closure" all of us fans will have if Tony doesn't die, but there's my guess.

Maybe you do need a gynecologist to know which way the wind blows.

Sunday Scribblings--Spicy

The theme over at Sunday Scribblings this week is "Spicy." Below is the continuation of "The Most Beautiful Thing About Her." I said when I posted the first part that I thought it was only going to go about another 500 words. Well, the story got not only a little "spicier" as I continued but also longer. I guess that's what happens when you write an actual scene into a story. It's at 1800 or so words now, and I'm guessing it'll wrap up in about another 700 words, but who knows? The first part, if you're interested, is here.
* * *

When I first met her a few years earlier, she waited tables at the place where I tended bar. She’d just graduated college with a degree in political science, and she was seeing a woman who would bring guys home and tell Lauren to suck their dicks, to let them fuck her.

Lauren. That’s her name. The woman I knew for a while three years ago and who had come back to town and asked if she could stay at my place with the depressed guy who’d lost his job.

Lauren’s girlfriend brought the guys home as a kind of test. She knew Lauren had been with guys and wanted to see how it all went down, to see how Lauren reacted to their dicks now that the two of them were in a relationship. Only she didn’t give her much of a choice. She’d bring the guy home and tell Lauren what she wanted her to do to him. Lauren disobeyed only the first time.

This had been going on for four months, I found out later, when the three of us were drinking at their place one night after closing. There was a DVD playing in the background—something Disney, animated, it was probably supposed to be funny in an ironic way—and we were drinking chilled sweet red wine and shots of tequila. Lauren and I talked about work mostly. Her girlfriend sat with her elbows on her knees, holding her wine glass in both hands, and listened. At some point—the movie’d stopped playing and the television screen was blue—her girlfriend sat back, took a sip of wine. “I’m kind of looking forward to watching this,” she said.

Lauren’s hand made a fist around the stem of her wine glass. “No,” she said. “You’re not.”

Her girlfriend smiled, but there wasn’t any kindness in it. Lauren set the wine glass down on the coffee table, put the hand that had been clinching it on my knee.

“I’m not?” her girlfriend said, one eyebrow raised.

Lauren put her head on my shoulder, fixed her eyes on the carpet. “Look,” she said to me, her voice a whisper. “Would you—”

Her voice broke off, and though I couldn’t see her face, I knew she was crying silently. It may have been the first time I ever heard her do it.

Lauren’s girlfriend took over for her. “What I’d like to see happen is this,” she said.

She didn’t get too explicit. Instead, she told me about how this had been going on for a little while, how it was a way, however strangely, for Lauren to do something for her enjoyment. She enjoyed watching, she said, enjoyed watching Lauren, but she wouldn’t join in. “I know you’ve at least thought about this since you found out about the two of us. Since you found out Lauren wasn’t just friends with that chick sitting at the end of the bar most nights during closing.”

Finis

I just graded my last portfolio of the term, and at 4:00, I'll head up to my office to enter everybody's grades.

But for now, in my first official act as my own boss this summer, I'm requiring myself to watch Oprah.

This won't become a part of my summertime routine; Cormac McCarthy is appearing on the show today.

And since I've brought up Oprah: Any guesses as to what her next Book Club selection is going to be?

I'll admit: I was a little stunned to hear she'd chosen The Road in the first place. So, my guess: something by Thomas Pynchon. Maybe The Crying of Lot 49.

Mug Shots

Back when I was a juvenile probation officer, I used to have to take detainees' mug shots. This was one of the last steps of the intake process. During training, we'd read a number of horror stories about intake, and it was thus always a pretty nerve-wracking task. I tended to be overly cautious while also trying to establish a decent relationship with the kid I was processing.

If things were going well at the end of this process, when it came time to take the kid's mug shot, I'd sometimes say something like, "You can smile if you want to. Come on, say 'cheese'." I think only one kid--who was going to be released in about fifteen minutes--ever smiled.

Now, though, The Smoking Gun has a gallery of smiling criminals. After looking at it, I'm kind of glad most of those kids decided not to smile. They knew what they were doing.

Summer Reading

A little over a week ago I went out to dinner with some colleagues, and one of them mentioned that she was trying to figure out what her first "summer" read was going to be. "It's a lot of pressure," she said, "deciding on that book. It kind of sets the tone for the rest of the summer."

I hadn't necessarily thought of it in that way, but I do have about forty books I've ordered over the past nine months sitting around the house. I'm so excited about reading so many of them, I'd kind of like of like to just consume them all simultaneously. But, of course, I had to make a decision. And my answer was d) none of the above. I went to the Galesburg Public Library hoping they'd picked up a copy of Phil Lamarche's American Youth, a book I just barely dissuaded myself from buying two weeks ago. They didn't have it, so I looked around a bit, and found, on the "rental" shelf, The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid.

Part Camus' The Fall, part The Great Gatsby--this little novel was absolutely riveting. I said it's part The Fall, but it actually makes better use of that particular form; and I said it's part The Great Gatsby, but it takes a wholly contemporary look at the American Dream in a way that quite literally has me seeing the world a little differently. After finishing the novel on Saturday, J.C. and I went to see Knocked Up, and I found myself feeling a little disgusted at the "commercials" before the film, and at the enterprise that is Kerasotes itself. My feelings for these things are always there, I suppose, in the same way I was already aware of many of the ideas presented in The Reluctant Fundamentalist, but Hamid presents those ideas so fiercely, intelligently, and beautifully that they leapt to the surface there in the movie theater after I spent Friday night and Saturday afternoon with his book. It's definitely worth checking out--and was an excellent way to begin my reading this summer.