The Name Game

As I have probably told many of you already, after the last Toiling in Obscurity (of which one can find more pictures here) Erin the bartender offered me the opportunity to do a monthly show, starting on May 12.




I have enlisted Giaco’s help so that I do not go completely insane from my scheduling disease. We already have a couple of readers and theme (stories from the service industry*) for the first show – you see, it’s going to be more compact, more controlled, more conversational – but if you’d be interested in participating in this or future shows, you should get in touch with me. You should also help us name this thing, because right now, our best bets are:

Fresh Paper
and
Bildungsroman and Beer

What do you think?

*If you’re interested in reading or performing at the first show, get in touch with me by mid-April. I already have a few people on the list. The second show, which should be the second Tuesday in June, will be "Genre"-themed. While that one is Giaco’s baby, I will be happy to put the two of you in touch.

What I Have Learned

Some things are hard for me to admit:

1. that I need help
2. that I have parents who aren’t wolves
3. that I have been influenced by other humans

None, however, are more important for you to pay attention to than #3. (Especially ignore 1 and 2.) If there were ever a person who had an influence on my adult mind, it would be Sebastian Agudelo. I followed him through UArts Liberal Arts classes, thorough poetry and prose and cigarette breaks. He is the best teacher that ever taught me anything.

Sebastian, who so bravely and grumblingly did my reading last week, is doing another reading this week, on Friday, at Brickbat Books. You, reader, should go, and you should listen, and you should probably buy his book, because of all the people that ever taught me anything, only two of them have published books*. And even if you won't do it for me, or for Giaco, who will be handing out wine, I hear, do it because the world demands of you some participation, and listening is always the easiest option.


*Do you recall that I mentioned another person? It was Christian TeBordo, who has written a story collection (from which he read last weekend), that is available only through Paper Egg Books. You should also probably get that, because no one else has ever bent the English language to fit the culture as perfectly as he did when he wrote "Tupac-alypse."

Gratitude

Sebastian asked me on Friday night why I put together the reading series. My first answer was, "Because the only way I can get people to pay attention to me is to make them." It was a joke, but I meant it, too. After a year and five shows, each better than the next, I can only thank those involved for helping me scream louder and longer than ever.

Poster by Jeremy Eric Tenenbaum

The Pole vs. The Hole

Germaine Greer, whose most notable work, The Female Eunuch, argued that women are not aware of how much they are taught to hate themselves, has written an essay for The Guardian about how women aren’t as funny as men. Well, she says that women are "droll," but "men [are driven] to more and more outrageous and bizarre mental acrobatics, to stay ahead of the game and have the last laugh. The greater the pressure, the faster the firing of neurons in the male brain." And she also says, “Women famously cannot learn jokes.”

Hey, Germaine, why don’t you read between your own lines: "When they are not running themselves down, women comedians are often astonishingly vicious towards other women."