Doing Some Shows

Tomorrow night I feature at North Star Cafe in Portland. I really can't say enough about their sandwiches.

Next Tuesday night, I'll be featuring for the Slam Collective at Hampshire College. I'll be doing an hour long set, the second half of which will involve a guitar. Some of my best friends and favorite poets go there, and I'm looking forward to the visit.

Anyone who reads this should please read Shoplifting From American Apparel. If you know me, you probably know what it sounds like when I geek out on Tao Lin, but I really want some people to talk to about this book. (P.S. I don't agree with Melville House that he's the "American Murakami," I think Lin is more radical--as in new and different, but also in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles sense. Okay done.)

Ian Khadan and Connor Dooley

Ian and Connor are a couple of friends of mine from New Jersey. Connor runs the LoserSlam out in Long Beach, whose "rag-tag" team beat the infamous Slam Charlotte in their first bout at Nationals this year.


These two guys did a double-feature at Cantab last night, and they put on a really good show. It wasn't "rag-tag"; it was "rough-and-tumble." They managed to charm the audience without wasting time with too much banter. You could just tell how much they enjoyed performing together, and how much they enjoyed performing for our venue. I said on the mic, and it proved very true, that Ian and Connor don't play "good cop/bad cop," they play "suckerpunch cop/kick-to-the-gut cop." They brought a little bit of the funny and a lot of the heartache, and now they're touring the country, and anyone who doesn't see them should feel very sorry for missing the chance.

And their CD sounds awesome. Okay, now I'm done gushing.

PANK

Three of my poems are in the new issue of PANK Magazine, which also features poems by PSi President Scott Woods and host of the Indie Feed Performance Poetry Channel podcast Wess Mongo Jolley

I'm also featuring for Port Veritas at North Star Cafe in Portland on Tuesday, November 3rd. I'm planning to do a whole set of poems accompanied by guitar. I may cheat a little and do one or two poems without guitar, and there will definitely be some singing.

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The Most Boring Thing

I work at an ice cream shop now. I'm still a vegan except that I eat a small amount of dairy for the job. I feel like I'm just doing what I have to do here, from a financial perspective.

I have pretty bad "first week jitters," as the Employee Handbook calls it, but it's going well enough. I served my first customers yesterday and talked to one of them about how nice Denver was in January while scooping a perfect 5-ounce medium cup of coffee ice cream, then rang it up on the register correctly.

Actually, I think this might have been the customer I made the frozen yogurt drink for. I screwed that one up a little, I think. I screw up a lot.

I remember in first grade when my teacher told my mother that I was an "absent-minded professor." I took it as a compliment when my mother told me about that, but I don't know anymore.

Maybe I'll go to grad school or something.

A Russian Traffic Cop Claims Himself The Second Coming and Commands His Followers to Keep Vegan

Found this article via Newser.

"His followers, who have given up their lives to follow him, are strict vegans and are banned from smoking and drinking or handling money."

"Around 300 of them live in wooden huts in the village that has grown up around his church and which does not appear on any maps."

I'm going to say this: veganism doesn't need any more bad PR. I think there's been enough to keep us vegans looked at askance for at least the next two decades. PETA has handed out its share of pictures of scalped sheep and debased women, we've had McDonald's blown up on our behalf, plenty of liberal arts graduates have had vegan roommates they ended up quietly resenting--all and all, I think we look maniacal enough for a group of people who are just trying to leave animals alone.

And now we've got Jesusmania on our team.

I'm also going to say this, though: a sad and desperate part of me wants to join him. Never having to deal with money ever again? Living in a quiet little hut in Siberia? Which I'd build myself, giving me something concrete and ultimately rewarding to do, something directly and not just implicitly tied to my survival? Of course, it would mean never touching another glass of bourbon, but at least I would know what I was doing with myself.

Okay, I don't really want to live in Siberia. What I really want right now is bourbon.

I don't have any though.

Sean Lovelace

Rose Metal Press has just published a chapbook of short short stories by Sean Lovelace called How Some People Like Their Eggs, the winner of their third annual short short chapbook contest.

I helped proofread this book and really liked it then, and now that I have it in a fashionable-looking font inside of pale yellow cardstock I like it even more. I am now going to get mushy and probably a little pretentious about it:

Sean Lovelace writes in a brisk, dry style, describing sequences of events that aren't entirely surreal and aren't entirely lifelike, which is to say that they occupy as fully as possible the world of the human mind. The wryness of his voice sometimes gave me the feeling of reading from Raymond Carver's shroom log.

The book consists mostly of first-person narratives that move and turn a little like James Tate's more fun poems, but one story, for example, is a series of diary entries from an aging Charlie Brown, each of which begins, "I wake, and hear the birds coughing."

"Meteorite," the story about 'meeting with a friend who's dying of cancer and eating bad bar food with her while feeling a little concerned about destiny' that opens the book, seems like the best, but my favorite was probably either "I Love Bocce," a story about 'a medical student mourning an unrequited crush and cathecting the sport of bocce,' or "Molasses," a story about [spoiler alert] 'feeling less motivated and responsible than one's girlfriend and starting to mow the lawn and then talking with the girl who walks through the lake selling junk from a tire on a rope and learning that one's favorite molasses store has gone out of business because of a syrup superstore opening up nearby.'

Generally speaking, Sean Lovelace's stories are hard to sum up; I feel that they are very complete and good.

I'm in West Palm Beach for the National Poetry Slam

West Palm Beach is like the inside of a gigantic mouth. Our hotel is an ice cube on its tongue. The other buildings are the teeth. The person whose mouth this is flosses too much but still has bad breath, possibly from drinking too much.

Connor's been carrying around his huge bottle of Tullamore Dew. I wrestled two of my best friends last night for no reason. This is the least depressed I have been all summer.

Peanut Butter Stir-Fry

This is my easy meal that I make when I want an actual meal but don't want to work very hard. I also consider it a good recipe to have if you're a vegan house guest in a non-vegan home, and you end up in a situation where it's acceptable or expected that you make dinner. You don't have to ask for any special ingredients. You just say, "Alright, do you have peanut butter, soy sauce, rice, and some vegetables?" because those are the only really necessary ingredients.

INGREDIENTS:

• water (okay, I mean besides water)
  
• 1 cup rice
  
• peanut oil (or just vegetable or canola oil, whatever)
  
• 1 clove garlic
  
• 1/2 pound tofu, sliced into thin triangles
  
• 1/4 cup peanut butter
  
• 2 teaspoons soy sauce
  
• 1-2 tablespoons chives, chopped
  
• a handful each of onions, carrots, green peppers, mushrooms, and/or whatever other vegetable you want, chopped
  
• salt and pepper and maybe some hot sauce to taste
  

DIRECTIONS:

1. Start the rice.
   
2. Coat a medium-large pan in the oil and put it on medium heat. Crush the clove of garlic with the side of your knife and slosh it around a little in the oil. (Alternately, you could mince it and put it in with the vegetables later, but I find this trick easier--"bruising," they call it).
   
3. Fry the tofu for about 3 minutes a side, so that they're just golden. (Since you've already got some protein in the peanut butter, you can totally leave out the tofu if you feel like it).
   
4. While the tofu is frying, put the peanut butter in a bowl and add 1/4 cup of water, and mash it with a fork until it's a nice creamy texture. Mix in the soy sauce and chives (chives, again, aren't really necessary, just delicious. I actually use green onions more often).
   
5. Take the tofu off of the pan and replace it with the vegetables. Throw in the salt and pepper, plus some hot sauce if you want. Stir-fry the vegetables until they're slightly browned, or however you like.
   
6. Throw the vegetables, tofu, and peanut butter sauce into the rice and mix it together, gently enough so as to leave the tofu more or less in tact.

I have this as leftovers all the time. Leftovers of this will be my dinner in about an hour. I am not unhappy about this.