dial-a-poem

In 1969, John Giorno founded Dial-a-Poem, a 212 number anyone could call to get a quick poetry fix.

Millions called. "The busiest time was 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., so one figured that all those people sitting at desks in New York office buildings spend a lot of time on the telephone...The second busiest time was 8:30 p.m. to 11:30 p.m. ... then the California calls and those tripping on acid or couldn't sleep, 2 a.m. to 6 a.m."

Now we have the liberty of getting our Dial-a-Poem in mp3 version via the UbuWeb. Check out Frank O'Hara, Sylvia Plath, & Charles Bukowski (no acid required):

Frank O'Hara - Having a Coke with You

Sylvia Plath - Daddy

Charles Bukowski - Cloud Nine/I Live in a Neighborhood of Murder/Two Horse Collars

Via Bookninja

snip-arts

* If you attended last year's Whitney Biennial, you probably saw the massive installation of Zak Smith's illustrations for each and every page of Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow (as opposed to Pat Benatar's Gravity's Rainbow). Although Smith's illustrations were much more impressive en masse, they're still interesting to look at one by one. (Via Fool in the Forest)

* Slate has an excellent "slide-show essay" on the move of the Barnes Foundation art collection to downtown Philly.

* You can enjoy browsing through this cleverly designed photography site, life through a polaroid; just be careful that the tranquil music doesn't lull you to sleep. (Via fd5000)

the united states of wal-mart

An old Brooklyn pal has just come out with a "lively and insightful profile of the big-box retail leviathan": The United States of Wal-Mart.

Former Colorado Springs Independent staff writer John Dicker admirably sums up the conventional complaints against Wal-Mart, detailing poverty-level wages, skimpy benefits, scorched-earth antiunion policies, shuttered smalltown Main Streets, suburban sprawl abetment and rampant outsourcing. Behind the facade of "corn-pone populism" fostered by folksy but steely founder Sam Walton, Dicker asserts, Wal-Mart has become a "global despot." Dicker's analysis is unsparing but balanced. He sympathizes (and sometimes strategizes) with Wal-Mart opponents, but also chides them for ignoring the appeal of the company's cheap, convenient offerings to cash-strapped customers and underserved communities. And Wal-Mart's sins, he argues, are America's; the company merely caters to the national religion of consumer entitlement that assumes shoppers have no interests in common with workers and puts low prices ahead of any social consequences. (Publishers Weekly)

If you're in LA, do come to the reading at Skylight Books on June 19th.

botox for your belongings

against the world, against life

McSweeney's imprint Believer Books' latest publication is an analysis of H.P. Lovecraft by controversial French novelist Michel Houellebecq.

“Those who love life do not read. Nor do they go to the movies, actually. No matter what might be said, access to the artistic universe is more or less entirely the preserve of those who are a little fed up with the world.”

RIP cupcake

The NYC reading series and general gathering of lit chicks has bid adieu.

2 legit 2 quit

I feel like I've cracked into some kind of blogging underworld. I've been referenced on another blog - for the first time - for my Festival of Books posts. It somehow seems more glamorous now than it did when my roommate's cat came and took up residence on my back because I'd been on-line too long.

r-o-m-a-n-c-e spells relief

Fluxblog posted two songs this week to which I've grown hooked. The first is Stag Party's "Rachel (My Dear)" which, after my brief Atlas Strategic obsession, has me concerned that I'm falling for the ravings of madmen.

Stag Party - Rachel (My Dear)

The second is Scout Niblett's "Lullaby for Scout in Ten Years." I've had some strong feelings about Ms. Niblett in the past that were not always as charitable as maybe they should have been. This song has me singing a different tune.

Scout Niblett - Lullaby for Scout in Ten Years

chickfactor

There are interviews with fabulous femmes Eleni Mandell, Joanna Newsom, the Girls Guitar Club of Greater Los Angeles, Keren Ann, and Shirley Simms (among others) in the first on-line version of chickfactor: "purveyors of girlpop glamour, crushworthiness, mod style, and everything else that matters," or "the official lifestyle manual of swedish clubpop, french nerds, soft-rock yanks, and extra reverb," or "the international bible of french new wave, fluffy bossa nova, anglophilic baroque pop, and other junk," depending on what page you're on.

Via Largehearted Boy

that newfangled, abominable, heathenish liquor

As I enjoyed my morning cup, I was greatly amused by this petition signed by thousands of British women in 1674 to outlaw coffee because it was keeping their husbands from proper performance in the boudoir.

But to our unspeakable Grief, we find of late a very sensible Decay of that true Old English Vigour; our Gallants being every way so Frenchified, that they are become meer Cock-sparrows, fluttering things that come on Sa sa, with a world of Fury, but are not able to stand to it, and in the very first Charge fall down flat before us. Never did Men wear greater Breeches, or carry less in them of any Mettle whatsoever. There was a glorious Dispensation ('twas surely in the Golden Age) when Lusty Ladds of seven or eight hundred years old, Got Sons and Daughters; and we have read, how a Prince of Spain was forced to make a Law, that Men should not Repeat the Grand Kindness to their Wives, above NINE times in a night: But Alas! Alas! Those forwards Days are gone...

festival of books - day 2

Yesterday was my second outing to the Festival of Books. It felt right to be going to my version of church bright and early on a Sunday morning. On Saturday, I saw a panel of Southern California historians followed by a panel of Southern California theorists, so we kicked off the day with a panel of Southern California fiction writers:

Reinventing California

Steve Erickson, Our Ecstatic Days (who must think I'm stalking him coast to coast)
Michelle Huneven, Jamesland
Michael Jaime-Becerra, Every Night Is Ladies' Night
Peter Lefcourt, The Manhattan Beach Project

My two favorite quotes from this panel both came from Steve Erickson. At one point, he said something advantageous about writing in Los Angeles rather than New York is that Los Angeles encourages you to constantly rethink it, whereas New York rethinks you. He also said that the trope of the apocalypse is so pervasive in L.A. literature that "it appalls us to think they might end the world somewhere else." This panel was followed by:

Jared Diamond

The UCLA professor gave a lecture to hundreds of people on the basic premises of his follow-up to Guns, Germs, and Steel: Collapse: How Societies Choose to Succeed or Fail. It was a totally depressing overview of what will happen to us if we don't radically alter our environmental policies now. In short, we're fucked.

We wrapped up the day with a highly entertaining panel of short story writers.

The Art of the Short Story

Steve Almond, The Evil B.B. Chow and Other Stories
Aimee Bender, The Girl in the Flammable Skirt
Merrill Joan Gerber, This Is a Voice from Your Past
Tod Goldberg, Living Dead Girl
Bret Anthony Johnston, Corpus Christi

While I work on my dissertation, I'm going to try to keep in mind something Steve Almond said about the work of writing: "Any time at the keyboard is time in heaven."

talk about struggles between myth and reality...

I just got carded buying wine at Trader Joe's! Life is sweet.

festival of books

Today, I took my dissertation research to the streets at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. I'm writing on L.A. literature, and the festival is providing me with ample opportunity for exploration. I attended two panels so far, one that was more about the past...

Discovering California

William Deverell, Whitewashed Adobe: The Rise of Los Angeles and the Remaking of Its Mexican Past
Barbara Isenberg, State of the Arts: California Artists Talk About Their Work
Malcolm Margolin, founder of Heyday Books, The Way We Lived: California Indian Stories, Songs, and Reminiscences
Rick Wartzman, The King of California: JG Boswell and the Making of a Secret American Empire

...and one that was more about the future:

To Live & Die in L.A.

Norman Klein, The History of Forgetting: Los Angeles and the Erasure of Memory
Richard Rayner, The Devil's Wind
David Ulin, Writing Los Angeles: A Literary Anthology
D.J. Waldie, Where We Are Now: Notes from Los Angeles

I've listed the latest books by each panelist to give an idea of what was discussed. The most common theme was the idea of Los Angeles in constant struggle between myth and reality.