July 30, 2007

In case any of you New Yipers forgot to pick one up last night, you can always check out the Transbay Creative Music Calendar online for all your local avant, free jazz, new music & noise needs.

July 29, 2007

NY Times on Translating Zbigniew Herbert
&
Rob Dunn Mackay
&
Cache of Nobel laureate Gabriela Mistral's poems found
&
Michael Moore's Traverse City Film Festival
&
Langston Hughes' home
&
Lake Merritt Geese

July 28, 2007

I turned Oscar a little so the leaves immediately around the bud got more sun. The bud looks more flower like. It's still buddy, but it looks like it may want to be flower.

July 27, 2007

When I first arrived back in Oakland, I moved in to my friend (artist) Eric King's old place. He left me many useful things. A futon & frame, tenant-made walls that made sense, an artist studio big enough to house a piano and my disparate dabblings; he did me right.

In addition, he left me a plant, a peace lily, that sat in a dark corner for 2 years (out of my ignorance). I thought it was a green leaf plant and was happy with that.

I have since named the plant Oscar [it's the only other living thing in my studio, so I thought a name was appropriate] and transplanted it to my new place.

I put it in the newly moved into window, and it seems to be doing great. At the moment has a less than a half bloom (which it has had for four days now).

These are my question, how long does a peace lily take to full bloom? Have the cloudy mornings recently affected Oscar's decision to bloom?

Is there something [not expensive] I can do to usher the bloom?

Again, remember I thought this was a green leaf plant; I'm very excited to learn about it's flowering potential.

Some of you must be botanists.

July 27, 2007

New up at Deep Oakland:

Interview exceprts from jazz musician and Acme music store owner Jay Rose:
Excerpt 1 :Jay talks about his arrival in Oakland and the jazz scene he encountered.
Excerpt 2: Jay discusses Acme's beginning while working nearly full-time as a musician.

July 26, 2007

July 26, 2007

Poets Noah Eli Gordon and Andrew Joron
Friday, July 27th, 7:30 pm

Poets Noah Eli Gordon, author of Novel Pictorial Noise, and Andrew Joron, author of The Cry at Zero: Selected Prose will read from new and published works.

Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley, (510) 649-1320.

July 24, 2007

Time-Space-Locations I've called home & received mail at (so far):

2007 Oakland, California [Lake Merritt, Peralta Heights]
2005-7 Oakland, California [East Oakland, Seminary]
2005 Beijing, China [2nd Ring Road near Dong Si Shi Tiao subway stop]
2003-05 Nanjing, China [near No. 1 Bridge]
2003 Brooklyn, New York [Greenpoint]
2002-03 Nanjing, China [Ming Gu Gong area]
1999-2002 Oakland, California [West Oakland, 26th & Adeline]
1999 Brooklyn, New York [Clinton Hill, on Ryerson kitty corner from Uncle Walt's kip]
1998-9 Atlanta, Georgia [Little Five Points]
1995-8 Athens, Georgia [Nantahala and Boulevard]
1993-5 Kalamazoo, Michigan [Douglas Avenue]
1993 Mount Clemens, Michigan [Ferrin Place]
1989-93 Athens, Georgia [Boulevard area, mostly]
1988-89 Ypsilanti, Michigan [on campus of Eastern Mich]
1988 Fumel, France [also Condat, Monsempron-Libos, and Condezaygues with it's literal mansion on the hill, all in the same proximity]
1985-7 Mount Clemens, Michigan [Ferrin Place]
1980-4 Detroit, Michigan [East Side, Loretto Street near Houston-Whittier]
1979 Macomb, Michigan [Hall Road]
1978 Davisburg, Michigan [12345 Scott Road]
1970-7 Mount Clemens, Michigan [multiple locations, mainly on Eldridge Street]

July 24, 2007

The beauty of finding an old recording ("Kill Me in Cleveland" [1988]) from an old band (Vladimir's Universe) that you used to be in back in your Ypsitucky days ([home of Iggy Pop & Wolf Eyes]1988-9, before the move to Athens, GA[1989-93, 95-7]).

Joy, just joy.

"Ohio is the promised land"

July 23, 2007

Maired Byrne's "Some Differences Between Poetry & Stand-up Comedy" up at ubu.

July 23, 2007

from Michael Cross:

[Please forward this on to interested parties, post on blogs, etc....small
presses survive on word of mouth!]

Dear Friends,

Atticus/Finch is honored to announce the release of its tenth chapbook,
Patrick F. Durgin’s _Imitation Poems_. For most, Durgin’s name will need
little introduction: as editor of Kenning for nearly a decade, he’s played
an inestimable role in the cultural production of some fantastically
important work, and, as a poet, Durgin writes some seriously taut and
careful little numbers. I’ve admired his work for years, and when a Durgin
volume did not materialize in said years, I decided to make one myself. When
you see it, I’m certain you’ll be glad I did! These poems promise to knock
you back into your chair and then onto the ground, and then they promise to
roll you around and around on the ground until you’re dizzy and exhausted
and just want to go to bed.

And to commemorate this, our tenth-book-anniversary, we’ve finally added Pay
Pal to the website! Stop by (www.atticusfinch.org) to view an image of the
cover and read some sample poems, and then buy _Imitation Poems_ for eight
dollars (!) with the click of a button! And if you’ve been meaning to
purchase a copy of John Taggart’s _Unveiling/Marianne Moore_, you should buy
that too before the handful of copies in existence disappears with the click
of a Pay Pal.

OR, if you prefer to do it the old fashioned way, write me a note, cut a
check for eight bucks (made payable to Michael Cross) and mail it here:

Atticus/Finch Chapbooks
c/o Michael Cross
State University of New York at Buffalo
Samuel Clemens Hall #306
Buffalo, New York 14260-4610

And finally, just in case your curious, forthcoming from Atticus/Finch:

Taylor Brady and Rob Halpern, _Snow Sensitive Skin_ (Fall 2007)
C.J. Martin, _Lo, Bittern_ (Winter 2007-2008)

July 20, 2007

I'm finding that out here on the West Coast I'm more often using the Deep South construction "you all" to refer to the plural 2nd person, as opposed to my native Michigander "you guys" (much more since I've started working at West Coast Women's College), as witnessed by an email I sent to all my bosses today: "I can compile what you all give me."

Yikes. Linguistic deracination.

July 20, 2007

Apogee Press Party at Diesel

Time: Sunday, July 22, 2007 3:00 PM Location: Oakland Join Diesel and Apogee Press for an afternoon of poetry with the wonderful poets, Elizabeth Robinson, Paul Hoover and Valerie Coulton. These three poets have new books from Apogee Press and they will read from their latest poems. Celebrate poetry, independent presses and independent bookstores!

July 20, 2007

4.2 earthquake woke me up and rattled my cage.

July 19, 2007

July 19, 2007

Up at Deep Oakland:

Rebekah Werth's Bison bison and Megafauna & Amazing Powers (with CD by Core Ogg and R. Werth)

July 18,2007

Keith Johnstone's chapter "Status" found in his book Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre. Good stuff.

July 17, 2007

Annie's Social Club SF
Tonight 9pm $5
917 Folsom St. @ 5th. St. San Francisco, CA 94107

Some Dark Holler (EMA from Gowns)
Treasure Nest (members of Woman's Worth, Vholtz, Saboteurs)
Core of the Coalman
Inca Ore Tuesday

Note from Jorge Boehringer: hey here is my new Core of the Coalman record, you can even listen to excerpts from it by pushing the arrow keys next to the record. Its the second one in the list, scroll down, its easy, even in California where the gravity is stronger- dont be lazy.hey, here is this, it is free if you click the words "your treat" you get an .mp3 of the whole two hour live set. http://soundcrack.net/2007/03/soundcracknetroaming-radiocore-of.html

July 14, 2007

"Who and what gave you the right to express an opinion regarding our work?"
&
American reading responses to poetry (1880-1950)
&
Do Canadian voters care about culture?
&
Telling the saga
&
German poet Wolfgang Kubin the new Qu Yuan?
&
Starbucks out of the Forbidden City

July 13, 2007

PROSODY CASTLE
David Horton
Dennis Somera
Dillon Westbrook
and others whose first initial is not 'D' rewrite metal anthems of the 70's and 80's, along with other poems at:

The Gallery of Urban Art- 1746 13th St. @ Wood (deep West Oakland)
in conjunction with the opening of exhibitions by Charlie Milgrim, "The Wrong Friends", and Cassandra Auker, "tropicalismo".

Sat., July 14th
reading at 8pm
beer and nibbles
be there

July 13, 2007

from Ms. Wintz

*hey everybody!*

the pretty panicks press is very pleased to announce distribution of postcard no. 5 featuring a new rock composition by Suzanne Thorpe with graphic design by Kristin P. O'Laughlin!

here's the specs! ::::

Suzanne Thorpe is an electro-acoustic flutist, improviser, composer, teacher and curator. As a founding member of Mercury Rev, Thorpe composed, performed, recorded, produced and toured with the band, from 1989 through 2001, earning numerous critical accolades. Thorpe is a member of The Wounded Knees, with Jimy Shields (Rollerskate Skinny, Lotus Crown), Look It and The Forest for the Trees, with Cindy Wheeler (Caulfield Sisters, Pee-Shy), Hocket, with Marshall Trammell, and Cor Craft with J Mascis (Dinosaur Jr., Witch). She has also been known to accompany Mascis on solo gigs. Thorpe has recorded with Devendra Banhart, Mark Gardner, and Grand Mal, among others, and was co-writer/producer of Grasshopper & the Golden Crickets' Orbit of Eternal Grace. She has found herself sharing the stage with Bob
Dylan, Hole, Spiritualized, Pavement, High Llamas, Dinosaur Jr., My Bloody Valentine, Porno for Pyros, Hum, Cat Power, Secret Machines, Ride, Sonic Boom, Cranberries, St. Johnny, Sonic Youth, and more. As an improviser, Thorpe has performed with Chris Cogburn, Rob Cambre,
David Dove, Annette Krebs, Maggie Nicols, Liz Tomme, and Bhob Rainey. As an MFA candidate at Mills College, in Oakland, California, she is studying electronic music and media with Chris Brown, Maggi Payne and John Bischoff, and creative improvisation with Joelle Leandre and Fred Frith. Currently Thorpe is on tour with thenumber46, a flute and feedback duo with multi-media artist Philip White. Visit http://www.myspace.com/thenumber46 or www.suzannethorpe.com for moreinformation.

AAAND... *one more time!*

the pretty panicks press is a newly formed small-press that prints rock and roll compositions, articles, and artwork materials.

the press' first large scale project is a series of twelve postcards featuring rock compositions on the front sides and brief artists' statements (or bios) on the backs. the postcards will study how rock music is made, how that process varies from artist to artist, and how rock composition is similar and/or different from the way that other forms of music are composed.

*if you would like to receive a copy of this postcard, please email your mailing address to
pretty.panicks@gmail.com
(note: all postcards are totally free and we do accept international postcard requests!)
OR
if you're in the mood for a field trip, come visit panicks' awesome nyc and bay area friends and pick up a postcard yourself
:::at!:::
amoeba music*2455 telegraph ave., berkeley
&
aquarius music*1055 valencia st., san francisco
&
*issues* at 20 glen ave. (cross street: piedmont ave.), oakland
...in addition to!:
beacon's closet*88 n 11th st., brooklyn
+
other music*15 e 4th st., nyc

*OR* come *BE* our friend at: www.myspace.com/prettypanicks

xx! sara wintz //
the pretty panicks press

July 12, 2007

I'm not happy to see scab garbage trucks roll down my street this afternoon.

July 10, 2007

Deep Oakland is proud to announce the release of Dennis Somera’s SpOAKlanD available for download here.

Dennis Somera uses text as “a seed for ideas needing manifestation in da world as performance through his body or better true collaboration with udders.” He has performed his spoken-word-play with a pinch/punch of performance art at Oakland and San Francisco Bay Area performance venues including the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Pusod, SOMArts, and the Oakland Asian Cultural Center. He has been published in Tinfish, Chain and PomPom.

*****
Affiliated with neither the tourism nor better business bureaus, Deep Oakland seeks to create a compendium of inter-linked images, text and sound that represent the complications and vitality of Oakland’s current moment.This project is ongoing. As the website grows, we will continue to solicit and present archival and current materials from a diverse range of Oakland writers, artists, community leaders and organizations, materials that engage or investigate the city’s ecology, economics, politics, development, history and the arts.Our hope is that Deep Oakland will both serve as a location for conversation to begin, and will extend conversations already in progress, to the point of critical mass where the interconnectivity of the activities of these disparate activists, artists and writers becomes visible and begins to positively impact the Oakland community and the world at large.

www.deepoakland.org

July 10, 2007

My new/old favorite timesuck.

July 6, 2007

My friend Jon in Beijing has a blog.

July 6, 2007

Thanks to Dillon for bringing a huge-ass hauling truck yesterday to help me move my sad four pieces of furniture. Beautiful overkill. [By the bye, Dillon is now curating a brand spanking new poetry series (I don't even think it has a name yet) at West Oakland's Gallery of Urban Art.]

This means that I now have no excuse for living out of boxes and leaving crap everywhere on the floor. Think the forest and leaves, except it's my floor and pieces of random paper. Yep, no excuse.

I can also start moving my books home (where I actually read them) from my office (where they are decoration).

I forgot how much talk radio I listened to the last time I didn't have a TV. I don't actualy listen. It's more for what Rodney called "the sonic shape of people talking."

Rodney's in town tomorrow night for benshi.

July 4, 2007

Drove Sha to Minneapolis. She'd never been on a US road trip, so it was a good time to take off on one.

Notes:

1. The Gay Pride celebration in Minneapolis was on the weekend we arrived. Hotels booked. Young ripped men without shirts everywhere flashing tanned 6-pack abs. Positive energy all around. People came from all over the Midwest for this. This gave me a good feeling about Minny (having never done more than driven through before).

2. Target seems to have its name on everything.
3. The next weekend, free jazz in the downtown mall area. Several stages. Jazz youth outside of Dakota's did the standards credibly. Bratworst & kraut at the comcessions.

4. Didn't get ripped off by the car repair guys who could easily have hosed me for a couple of hundred and didn't.

5. Rent is cheap. Sha got a big one bedroom for much less than I'm paying for my studio. But then again, they get snow and lots of it along with their free heat.

6. IKEA's build it yourself model took two days to complete Sha's set-up. Allen keys and plastic strew nails for everything.

7. Watching a DVD of the Mary Tyler Moore Show, so Sha could get the reference of the MTM statue in the mall area.

8. The used bookstore (forgot the name, on Nicollet I think) had a decent contemporary poetry selection spread somewhat helter-skelter in boxes on the floor and on a shelf right before the stairway to the basement. Modernist poetry, however, was in with the rest of the literature alpha by author style.

9. Church bells, all day.

10. Nicollet Village Video. Smelled like cat urine the first time we visited, but not the second. Good collection, better staff. When we rented The Day of the Locust (1975), the guy behind behind the counter said that if we were trying to skip out on our [film studies?] homework, that we should just go ahead and read the book as it would take like 2 hours. Pretty good classic, cult, indie and LGBT titles.

11. The Twins ballpark is in walking distance of everything downtown Their new park will also be downtown. [Take note Oakland: remember the Jack London deal? Thank you, Jerry Brown. Fremont is not even a suburb of or all that near to Oakland. It's a commuter line terminus, hence the sticks, not a draw.]

12. Nevermind the travelling Picaso show, the Walker is top drawer. They are now showing works on paper from their collection by a lot of folks you [read I] wouldn't immediately think of as paper folk. I also liked the Myhtologies exhibition, even if it was chock-full of the usual heavy-hitters, heavy-hitters being the curatorial price to pay when trying to run a world-class art museum in Middle America. The Walker is just awesome.

13. The view from Sha's balcony has a view of both Loring Park (which has an official-sized horse shoe pitch among its wonders) and downtown.

14. The decision to get Sha a blender, and the subsequent decision to end nights with nightly ice-crushed Margaritas.

15. The fact that the elderly Volvo (as yet unnamed, but soon) made it back over the mountains [always mountains after mid-Nebraska] and through the boring-boring Utah Salt Flats to Oakland uncrippled if not quite full of pep, which it lacked from the git-go.