August 28, 2008

Punk as more than an outdated pose.

August 27, 2008

August 26, 2008

Theodore Roosevelt (Bull Moose 1912, 27.4%), Robert M. LaFollette (Progressive 1924, 16.6%), George Wallace (American Independent 1968, 13.5%), John Anderson (independent 1980, 6.6%), Ross Perot (independent 1992, 18.9%) & again Ross Perot (Reform 1996, 8%).

I'm ready for "third" (the term itself is patronizing) parties to step up and be recognized/counted. I'm overexposed to the Democratic and Republican speechifyings and platforms in the corporate (nearly all) media. I'd like to get a good sense of what else is on the table/ballot.

And no, a short piece on NPR's All Things Considered or the like during the entirety of the campaign process on a smaller party doesn't count as "fair, unbiased coverage".

August 25, 2008

The Olympic commentator last night who was pointing to the fact that the Led Zepplin song was 40 years old and irrelevant displayed his complete lack of understanding rock and roll in China. Before the opening up of China in the late 80s, rock wasn't really a part of the culture. In the mid-90s rock albums began flooding in in the shape of cheap pirate CDs. This meant that bands like MC5 and Joy Division were introduced at the same time as Led Zepplin and Nirvana, making for an atemporal soup of rock culture. Good examples of this are the plethora of pirated Best of the Beatles CDs that include non-hits like Dr. Robert or And Your Bird Can Sing but don't include Help or Strawberry Fields. Older washed-up bands like Guns n Roses or the Cure are somehow still equally relevant as more current bands like the White Stripes.

What the commentor should have remarked is that it was a shame that China's own Cui Jian or Gao Feng wasn't up there on the bus playing with Jimmy Page.

August 25, 2008

Lara Durback, Geof Huth, and Truong Tran

CANESSA GALLERY READING SERIES
Friday, August 29, 2008

WHAT: How do you picture the world? How does what you write translate visually to the page? And what the heck is vis-po anyway? Poets Lara Durback, Geof Huth, and Truong Tran draw us a picture and get “visual” in this second installation of the new Canessa Gallery reading series.

Lara Durback loves Oakland, Philly, and San Francisco so much. She: an artist/poet working with text, letterpress printing, sound (analog synthesizers and field recording), as well as the book form, and any other medium that can be combined and smashed together. Currently contemplating humans awash in electromagnetic fields: both those from the earth and those emitted by power lines and electronic devices, and how difficult it is to match a field to a source. Radiant Coordinates People, a chapbook from The Press Gang, is forthcoming in 2008.

Geof Huth has lived in Africa, Europe, the Caribbean, and North and South America, all the while using language for his purposes. His interest in language turned him into a poet, a visual poet, and a thinker on words. He works words in many media: pixel, type, crayon, paint, pen, pencil, video, and object. He writes almost daily on visual poetry and related matters at his blog dbqp: visualizing poetics.Geof

Truong Tran is a poet and visual artist. His publications include, The Book of Perceptions (Kearny Street Workshop 1999, finalist in The Kiriyama Book Prize), Placing The Accents (Apogee Press 1999, finalist in the Western States Book Prize for Poetry), dust and conscience (Apogee Press 2000, awarded the San Francisco Poetry Center Book Prize), within the margin (Apogee Press 2004), and Four Letter Words (Apogee Press 2008). He lives in San Francisco where he teaches poetry at San Francisco State University and Mills College.

WHEN: Friday, August 29, 8pm
WHERE: Canessa Gallery708 Montgomery Street, SF
TICKETS: Open to the public ($3 suggested donation at the door). For more information, the public may visit www.canessa.org

August 24, 2008

Hawai'i 12
Mexico 3

Hawai'i wins Little League World Series.

August 23, 2008

Things that have made me happy today:

The overabundance of Jack Morgan's generosity: in the mail today, he sent Kasey's Breathalyzer & Deer Head Nation, Abe Lincoln #1, his own manuscript, 2 ink on paper works & 2 pretty awesome posters he designed for poetry readings. [thanks Jack]
&
The obese African-American man who passed me as I was walking home from the gym via Lake Merritt (he was chugging along at a good clip); he was loudly singing Madonna's "Borderline" to himself & anyone within earshot. It fit my mood perfectly, and obviously his, as he looked genuinely happy to be running and sweating profusely at that moment. If I ever write a movie and have Lake Merritt as a location, this scene is going in it. (c) 2008 David Harrison Horton
&
Picking up a free copy of C. Sullivan's zine Heat Lightnin' at 21 Grand. And also talking to Darren Jenkins, who is always great to talk to.
&
Picking up Isaiah Berlin's Karl Marx, Polybius's The Rise of the Roman Empire (mostly for the section on Hannibal) & John Gay's The Beggar's Opera at the Goodwill downtown. I also picked up a dark blue 4 pocket Mexican shirt for $4. I just might wear it to my first day of classes.
&
Skype-ing my dad for an hour this morning. Videophonics are so much better than telephonics. And they are free.
&
The fact that Kristina Lewis recognizes in her artist statement that she removed any "use-value" from the materials she made her pieces out of.
&
Watching Olympic soccer on Telemundo, because the Bay Area Spanish speaking audience apparently cares about soccer; whereas, NBC 's audience apparently doesn't. It's partly funny because NBC owns Telemundo. I really wish I understood Spanish. I get about 25-30% of what the broadcasters are saying.
&
Knowing it's only 5:30 and there's a whole lot of this day to go yet.

August 21, 2008

from Dillon Westbrook:

good people,

We Players, one of the more innovative companies in the bay, was nice enough to ask me to sound design their production of Macbeth, opening very soon. The production takes over, or is taken over by, historic Fort Point in San Francisco. The whole thing promises to be not the least bit staid (and not the least bit warm either, so bring a coat)- would love to see you there:

Details:
We Players present:
Macbeth at Fort Point (off Lincoln Blvd., at the end of Long Ave.)
September 4-7, and 11-14. All shows begin promptly at 5:30pm (be early!)
admission is free, reservations encouraged (see We Players link for reservation info)

August 19, 2008

Fiveness without the word five.

August 15, 2008

Saturday** August 16, 2008
Samantha Giles & Yedda Morrison
LIVE at 21 Grand$3--$infinity sliding scale

SAMANTHA GILES recently received her MFA from Mills College where she was also managing editor of the literary journal 580 Split. Her work has appeared at/in Deep Oakland, Vert, Work, The Press Gang, and Cricket Online Review.

YEDDA MORRISON was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, Montreal based writer and visual artist Yedda Morrison joins us for the launch of Girl Scout Nation (Displaced Editions, August 2008). Her other books include; My Pocket Park (Dusie Press, 2007), and Crop (Kelsey Street Press, 2003). Yedda was a founding editor of Tripwire: a Journal of Experimental Poetics and Visual Art and has exhibited her work in the US and Canada, most recently at Republic Gallery in Vancouver and at the McCord Museum in Montreal. She is currently working on a multi-media project entitled How Flora Became an Ornament.

** note this is not the usual-third-Sunday-of-the-month-thing, but a Saturday, the day before our usual slot.

August 13, 2008

I am pleased to announce the release of WORK no. 8, featuring Kenneth Goldsmith, Brandon Brown, Jacob Eichert, Richard Kostelanetz & Stephanie Young.

Copies will be available soon at Issues in Oakland, Quimby's in Chicago & Bluestocking in NYC. Copies are also available directly through me $3 or trade:

dhh / 230 Wayne Ave / Oakland CA 94606

August 11, 2008

Am I the only one thinking that they are treating /covering Phelps like a sure thing pony?

August 9, 2008

Mahmud Darwish (1941-2008)

August 9, 2008

Brion Gysin, Turning into the Multimedia Age, edited by Jose Ferez Kuri (Thames & Hudson, 2003).

I first learned about Brion Gysin via Wm. Burroughs & their cut-up projects they did back in the late 50s (I managed to interlibrary loan a first (only?) edition of Minutes to Go when I was an undergraduate), working my way to his permutation poems which I still find fascinating to hear & to read aloud:

kick that habit man
that kick habit man
kick habit that man
habit kick that man . . .

and once I learned of the Dreamachine, I fruitlessly tried to convince any sculptor I knew with sufficient skills & technology to build one.

This book traces Gysin's art career from his days as a surrealist, cut-up artist, visual poet, minimalist water colorist, etc. . . touching on the many phases of his long career. Beuatilfully illustrated, this does a good job as a restrospective catalogue. The essays are for the most part shortish and surface, more intro than delving.

This coupled with Back in No Time: The Brion Gysin Reader offer a better than good introduction to Gysin's approach to the arts.

August 7, 2008

from Ben Piekut:

Hello,

I'm writing to let you know about a video project that I've just completed, titled "Henry Flynt in New York." I make no claims about my ability as a video-maker (some clips have audio problems), but this piece does represent a few years of work on the part of Henry Flynt and myself, and we're happy that it's finally finished. Equal parts oral history and polemic, the video might be of interest to anyone working on the 1960s and 1970s, music and politics, the avant-garde, or the sectarian Left. In each of the short scenes, Flynt stands in front of an important building or location and recalls one or more visits to the site and why it has been important in his own life.

"Henry Flynt in New York" totals nearly three hours of video, but individual scenes are rarely more than ten minutes long. Although we have used a playlist on Youtube to order the clips in a rough chronology, viewers are free to click around however they may please. The project can be viewed here:

www.youtube.com/benjaminpiekut

I've also created a mirror site at www.vimeo.com/benjaminpiekut, where higher-resolution versions of the clips can be found.

This email is the only publicity that we're doing for the video, so please forward it to anyone you think might be interested, or even link to the clips on your own site if you have one.

Many thanks,

Ben Piekut

August 1, 2008

I am really excited to announce the arrival of WORK no. 7, featuring material by Michael Basinski, Erika Staiti, David Buuck & Bill Luoma.

It will be avaible at Issues (Oakland) early next week & at Bluestockings (NYC) and Quimby's (Chicago) as soon as the post office gets it there.

As always, copies are available directly through me for trade at:

dhh / 230 Wayne Ave #311 / Oakland CA 94606.

August 1, 2008

Tomorrow at 6 pm, the park at 16th St & Adeline is the place to be.