Wednesday, July 25, 2007
July 25, 2007-------Paranoid Park


Here's a cool picture of Taylor Momsen from the PARANOID PARK movie party in Cannes. I found this googling PARANOID PARK, which I hadn't done in several weeks. A few new things. Still waiting to see when the official release date will be.

They showed the film in Portland recently. I wasn't there, but Gus and the gang were on the local news there. Gus explained the award he won in Cannes. He is so poised and smart when he talks to the media. It's always impressive. I think one of the most important things for me in the whole experience was just being around him a little and seeing how he handles himself and how he deals with things.

Anyway, I am far far away from Cannes today, working in the Cedar Mill Public Library in Beaverton, using their wifi and still fiddling around with a possible "early work" collection.

Here's the website for the party photos, for any hardcore Paranoid movie fans out there. (And also watch for Taylor in the Gossip Girl TV series, that will be huge I'm sure.)

http://www.mk2.com/datamk2/blogs/contrechamp_a_cannes/index.php?2007/05/22/22-gus-a-la-fete


Saturday, July 21, 2007
JULY 21, 2007--------


Anyway, yeah, so fast forwarding: we got through the desert, got into LA, found our way to Topanga Canyon to our funky little hippy house in the hills.

Beth my wife found the place and I hadn't realized how hard it is to find places in Topanga. Everywhere we go, people say to us: "how did you find it?" And are kind of in awe. But Beth is good like that. She finds the cool stuff and somehow she gets it.

So then we had to unpack really fast and we bought some cheap furniture and tried to get organized as we have other stuff coming up.

First though we drove into LA to have dinner with Dan Bismuth and his cool artist girlfriend. Dan recently translated PARANOID PARK into French for Hachette Books in Paris. I had never met with a translator before, I was a little unsure what we would talk about but we gabbed on and on about Proust and should it be "Remeberence of Things Past" or "In Search of Lost Time" stuff like that. Also we talked about Bob Dylan and his book Chronicles which we all agreed was amazing, though I still don't understand this thing everyone has about: "Is Dylan telling the truth about all this stuff?" Who cares?

Anyway, so then I jumped on a plane to come up to Portland, where I am now. I am here because an old friend who runs a small press suggested I collect some early writing and see if we could make a book out of it. This is SO SCARY, as reading back through your old stuff you 1) see how much bad crap you wrote and 2) realize how brilliant and alive you were when you were 20.

I am dutifully slogging through it though, an entire attic of it at my parents house. Reading through journals, bits of letters, short pieces of "humorous" journalism. There are boxes of this stuff--most of it not intended for publication, (interesting how unconcerned I was about being published. I apparently thought I had all the time in the world.)

Much of this stuff was intended for Open Mics and Spoken Word "performances" all of which seems terribly embarrassing to contemplate, and yet might be of interest to someone somewhere . . . I don't know. We'll see. I guess my goal for it would be to at the very least talk a little about the process of being a writer and also evoke some to the time and places the stuff was written. The 80s in NYC was cool, and in SF. And being a kid from Portland, these places had a lot of glamour for me. I really thought I was doing something extraordinary heading off to the big city with my "talent" and my dreams . . .


Tuesday, July 17, 2007
July 17 ----- NEEDLES


We left the Arizona mountains and hit the beginnings of the Mojave Desert where it was 114 degrees. Seriously. It was. We were baking. And then our air conditioning went out. We stopped in a McDonalds to catch our breath. Then limped across the street to a hotel that had a pool. We didn't care how much it cost. Not much it turned out since it was Needles, CA. Not the happeningest town. So we settled there and watched the local weather. The next morning it was 99 degrees at 8am. Ah the desert. the airconditioning was working though so we made it out of there.



July 17th 2007-----Flagstaff to Needles


Flagstaff AZ was awesome. It's kind of a Colorado-esque western town, dry but forested and with mountains. Went to a cool burger joint called "Diner". Those are usually best. IHOP and Denny's kind of suck at this point. According to me.

Anyway, so we headed west and took a slight detour to do a part of Route 66, made famous by the song, and which is very very famous just because of that one song. (Music publishing, a lot more money in that that in books....)

That was fun and we saw a cool gargantuan dust storm that freaked out my wife. Then we raced a train and got ahead of it so I could take this "Train Coming Toward me" photo. It's not that great but it turned out the intersection we were standing in was in the middle of an Indian Reservation. So then we cruised around that and checked it out. It was pretty ghetto. I felt bad. What can you do though? Beth wants to teach kids on the reservation, that would be something I suppose. I don't know what I can do. Write more books about suburban white kids? It kind of makes you feel helpless . . . .


Monday, July 16, 2007
July 16, 2007------METEOR CRATER


In Arizona there is this huge meteor crater. A meteor hit there many years ago and left this huge hole in the ground. Now there is a museum there which costs 15 bucks. It is privately owned, so it is a little cheezy, but it was still fun. A meteor landed in Siberia in 1908, and totaled a whole forest. So that stuff really happens.

anyway, so we went there and I braved the heat and took the guided tour. This turned out to be another example of something I've noticed: when you leave NY, people in authority suddenly talk to you like you're a child. Like if you go the doctor, or take a class, or take a tour of a crater, the guide talks to you like you're an idiot. Which you probably are.

In New York, they talk to you like they hate you. In the rest of America they talk to you like you're mildly retarded. Seriously, like the dental hygenist even gets that baby talk thing in her voice.

I don't know if this makes sense to people that haven't lived in big cities. But it's scary. It makes you realize how politicians take advantage of people. Or why advertizing really does appeal to the lowest common demonimator. Or how terrible newspapers in small markets get away with being terrible.



July 16, 2007------ABQ to AZ


Headed west out of Albuquerque and drove and drove and started seeing more deserty things and cool red rocks like this one.

Arizona is a little fancier than NM, a little slicker. That was my impression.

We also went to the Petrified Forest and the Painted Desert national park. The ground is all different colors. It was okay. It was more freakish than actually beautiful.

In AZ and NM there is more native americans and so we got a little bit of a feel of that. I mean, you just do not interact with Native Americans in any way in the East. At one place, in the national park, one NatAmerican woman was running a gas station by herself. it was the old kind of gas station where you just pump the gas and no computer figures out how much it is or how much you got. It was all based on the honor system. I don't know what that means. I just know that affluent white people are sort of creepy whenever you get any kind of perspective, and you don't get any sort of perspective usually, so it's good.



July 15--------ALBUQUERQUE, NM


We spent two days in Sante Fe, staying with family friends of Beth's. They were great, and one of them taught at St. John's College, which is the cool college where you only read classic texts.

That led me to read Aristotle's Poetics one morning, which I never got around to reading even though my whole life and career is dependent on me grasping it's simple principles. (A's Poetics are a breakdown of why we like plays and stories and what they should contain to win over their audiences--needless to say none of my books follow these rules. I plead Modernism.)

Anyway, so we had a really fun time in Sante Fe though the adobe thing sort of . . . doesn't work for me so much, nor does the botoxed western ladies you see haunting the boutiques around Sante Fe's Plaza. But like any town, there are probably more cool things to find or see, you just have to hang around long enough to find them.

We blew out of there early in the morning and made it down to Albuquerque, which is where the Shins started their career. The local weekly managed to mention this like 5 times in the one issue I read. I guess it follows. Is there a band better than the Shins? Not really. They seem to be almost Nirvana-ish in their level of Total American Greatness.

ABQ, which is what Albuqurque calls itself, we dubbed it "Portland South" because it was exactly like Portland in every way, except extremely sunny instead of extremely rainy.

Examples: Portland calls itself PDX. Alb calls itself ABQ. Portland calls itself Stump Town. Alb calls itself Dirt City. The scenes are about the same size, or were until Modest Mouse, Decembrists, Shins and everyone else moved to Portland. ABQ had a dumb band called The Mutz that dominated the scene in the eighties. Portland had Nu Shooz. And on and on.

Anyway, we had a nice afternoon driving around and chatting with some scooter types we met at Buster's Coffee shop.

Beth got into all the fifites signs and crap there. Which I am immune to being a westerner to start with.


Saturday, July 14, 2007
July 14 2007-------SANTA FE, NEW MEXICO


Different people respond to the intense heat and altitude of Sante Fe, New Mexico.

Beth, my lovely wife, decided to unfurl the biggest black umbrella anyone had ever seen in that area. She nearly poked out the eye of an elderly lady, and stabbed several others.

Then when she got to the shade she handed it to me and I had to carry it.




I, on the other hand, responded by looking totally awesome.



July 13--------RIO GRANDE


This is the dry dusty Rio Grande Gorge. You follow it briefy from Taos to Sante Fe. There are a lot of people in these areas in July, obviously. I stood above the river and watched kids and parents and other groups paddle down in rafts, rubber kayaks, etc.


Friday, July 13, 2007
July 13, 2007---CAR CAMPING


Another shot of us car camping. It wasn't so bad.

Later that morning, after our super fun morning with Dan we went back into Taos and had some awkward encounters with some cheesy New Age types. I really am going to have to slow myself down a little and not be so anti-whatever. I am such an easterner now just the sight of torquoise wrist bracelets or walrus mustaches makes me queesy. I just gotta get with the flow. Also: it really sucks when you're in the chill restaurant and you're the uncool big city guy bumming everyone out with your uptight vibe.

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July 13, 2007--DAN, in the mountains of NEW MEXICO


Pulled into Taos, which was a bit of a culture shock.

We had pizza at this super mellow pizza place where two slices cost thirteen dollars and everyone was super happy and mellow even though two slices cost thirteen dollars.

Then we drove up to the mountains and "car camped" which is pretty much what it sounds like. You pull your car in somewhere and park and sleep in it and it's fun. I guess.

We had trouble finding a place though, as it was late and wet and rainy out. We finally pulled into an odd spot which was not a designated camping area. I thought all of this was going to end in disaster but we got the car set up and managed to sleep a little.

Little did we know: we had seriously lucked out. Our only neighbor, Dan (pictured) was a retired chef and lived in the woods in just such camping places. He had a van which had a bed and an office and a desk and musical instruments in it. He was living the dream and making it look good. He invited us over to his camp for coffee and we accepted.

Dan was great company. He said that people help him out since he has a bad back, a lot of the new hippies, he called them "nippies" liked to hang out with him. He could pass on stuff he'd learned over the years. Dan also makes Dream Catchers and is an accomplished musician and told us about some cool hot springs. Also, the coffee was excellent. We scored when we ended up next to Dan.



june 12--NEW MEXICO


Drove through Oklahoma for a couple hours and ended up in Northern New Mexico. The grasses got lusher and hills and low mountains started to appear. We were approaching the rockies.

A storm was blowing through so I put on my feeble rain gear and we stood around the rest area we were in. We threw a football around with some guy from Houston. You can tell a lot about a guy by how he throws a football.

While we were standing there a woman in a convertible BMW pulled in. She was smoking a cigarette and wore high heels. We hadn't seen anyone like that in a while. We have passed through the middle and are nearing the debauchery of the coast.



June 10----DODGE CITY, KANSAS


There's a lot of corn in Kansas. A farmer guy at a cooperative farm store (we mistook it for a quickie mart) showed us a little monitor they had that showed all the prices of all the different kinds of corn and grains and livestock, etc. Pork Futures, things like that. This market moves like the stock market, shifting constantly. They really got their act together in Kansas. The crops and the fields are all neat and healthy and everyone you meet is smart and on his game. Then you enter Oklahoma and things get kinda . . . deserted and unkempt.


Wednesday, July 11, 2007
July 10-----Greenburg, KANSAS


So we're driving the back roads of Kansas, Wichita to Dodge City, having our summer fun, and we pull into this little town called Greenburg. We're noticing there's a lot of piles of crap around. In one large pile I see a boat. Other stuff looks kinda trashed too. There's an old building that's kind of fallen over.

We don't think anything of it and keep driving. Then we come to an intersection and there's no traffic light. No traffic poles even. The gas station that should be on the corner is just not there. Finally, we wake up and look out and we see that the entire residental part of the town is gone. It's levelled. The trees are all ragged stumps for as far as the eye can see. We sit there like: what?

This of course is the Greenburg that got hit by the tornado two months ago. May 4th. (The locals all knew the date like other people know 9-11.)

Ten people died in this. The landscape looked like a nuclear bomb had gone off. These pictures don't do it justice. The sight of it kinda made you quesy. The place was LEVELLED.

A local woman was telling us the locals had twenty minutes warning. There's a siren and all TV and radio are interrupted. A cop told us that some people are living in Fema trailers. Some just left.

We didn't know what to think. They had just opened it up so you could actually drive around in it. Most of the houses had already been bulldozed. There were some work crews starting to build some stuff. Or maybe just finish bulldozing it.

And all the time you're driving through Kansas you're noticing all the religious/christian signs everywhere. There's so much church-oriented stuff out there. When I saw this town, or what was left of it, I was glad they had those kind of support networks, they are going to need them.

But I also felt like if any group could cope, these people could. The midwest people, they really seem indomitable in some way that you don't feel like coastal people are. They really think "us" first.










(This is an AP photo)


Tuesday, July 10, 2007
July 9 2007-- KANSAS CITY


Pulled into Kansas City in the midst of one of those epic midwestern thunder storms. Awesome. Love that Sturm and Drang stuff. Kansas City was awesome too. Really fun in some weird way. Nutty and hot and boring. But cool.

Driving around we found this awesome map store and spent an hour with the guy showing us old wagon train maps and maps of the first auto roads. Think of all the cool stuff you'd get into if you lived somewhere as chill as Kansas.

Then we went to Lawrence, which is the nearest college town and sat on a bench in front of the happening coffee shop. They had proper lattes there. Little ones that cost two dollars. Not the idiotic 16 ounce cup of hot milk that Starbucks charges you 4 bucks for. This place was great. We were just gonna sit for a second and stayed for an hour and a half just watching people and listening to them (and Beth picking up everyone's dog and making embarrassing dog/baby noises at them.)

Then we started driving the backroads of Kansas and were instantly rewarded by a "Field of Dreams" style girl's softball game that was so fun to watch. Oh my god. And the sun was setting over the silos as the game went on.

Now I'm sitting on the ground at midnight outside the cheap motel we're staying in. That's the only place they have wireless. I'm facing the local strip, which is deathly still and then the huge tucks come rumbling along. Ah to sit on the ground with the stars overhead . . . .


Monday, July 09, 2007
July 9 2007- ST. LOUIS


Beth getting some of the Mississippi River on her. A park ranger, on how muddy it is: "It's too thick to drink, too thin to plow."

Also got to have lunch with an old college friend, John Shonle and his wife. John is a minister by trade, between congregations at the moment, in Ohio. Unlike, all my artist friends whose lives and issues are all just like my own, John was really in a whole different world. Great to see him though. He was one of the sharpest guys I knew in college and still is. Stuff like that doesn't change I guess. He promised to read my Sci Fi book and get back to me so I'm looking forward to his analysis.


Sunday, July 08, 2007
JULY 8-------THE PORCH PROTOCALS


Made it to Indy today, where we had a morning moment on the porch. I've heard about the "Porch Protocals". Like in the midwest, sitting on the porch is so part of your life that there's rules about it. Our rule was sit there, drink coffee, clear brain.

Then we went to breakfast with an old writer friend Dan Barden who is now a profesor at Butler university. We were laughing about the writers life and how things turn out. He's doing great and has a beautiful kid and a super fun wife and a new book. His wife and he run the Big Hat Bookstore in Broad Ripple.

We also drove by David Letterman's old highschool. I love the midwest. Everyone is so rock solid.



JULY 8 2007-----Jim Maszle SUPERSTAR


Here's some of Jim Maszle's doodlings. I love his stuff. Once when he was going through a period of sexy period stuff from the sixties and seventies we went down to Soho and sold his stuff out of the back of a pickup truck to people. We weren't the best salesmen but it was so fun. He also ruined the floor of an apartment I was renting by setting up this huge printing deal on the floor and covering it with goo.



July 8, 2007-----PITTSBURG


we got to Pittsburg on Friday night where my friend Jim Maszle the artist lives. He just bought a building on this ghetto strip in Pittsburg, and opened a skateboard/sneaker store on the ground floor. He's a great artist and it looks in this picture like i am telling him something really interesting, though throughout our friendship, it's been the opposite, he tells me cool stuff, especially about New York.

The other fun thing about showing up there was he was having a party the night we got there, which we got thrown into the middle of and which included a gang of his local buddies who were super cute, fun, smart, younger artist types. it was a total blast.

Then funnest of all: after everyone went to bed, there was a wild street brawl out on the ghetto street outside and all hell broke loose. I have to admit, I have this character flaw: when a wild brawl breaks out, I gotta check it out. So I ran down the stairs and stood there, in my underwear at 3am watching these gangsta dudes have it out on the street. My favorite part of the fight was when a guy drove over his friend's foot. Dude, he's on your team!

My wife was yelling at me from the top of the stairs: "Don't go out there! We don't have health insurance!"

So I stayed in inside. The car took a shot though, we found blood on the windshield.


Thursday, July 05, 2007
(July 5, 2007) New Review


They Came From Below
Blake Nelson
"Tight, fast-paced prose makes this book appear deceptively simple; in actuality, it is a deep and sad contemplation of humans' relationship with the world and other forms of life. Though Nelson never dives overtly into religion, there are distinctly mystical, quasi-Buddhist undertones to some of his statements about life, death, and human purpose. This would be a great literature tie-in for a unit on environmental studies." 2007, Tom Doherty Associates, Age 13 up. Stephanie Guerra. July 2007 Children’s Literature Review
ISBN: 0-765-31423-1
ISBN: 978-0-765-31423-9

THEY CAME FROM BELOW at Amazon:

www.amazon.com/gp/product/0765314231/ref=cm_arms_pdp_dp/105-9441918-8482007


Wednesday, July 04, 2007
(July 3, 2007) SUMMER DC KIDS AT THE EVENS SHOW




(July 3, 2007) THE EVENS in DC


First stop post Brooklyn, was my wife's parent's house in DC. Here we got organized and spent time with her 96 year old Grandmother who sees ghosts. If you left me alone with this woman I would talk about nothing else but in polite company we just touch on the "ghost" subject and then move onto other things.

Anyway, so we got to DC and Beth checked the paper and it turned out Ian McKaye, (of the legendary bands Minor Threat and Fugazi) was playing a free show in a local park nearby with his partner. This new band is called The Evens. So we went to that.

It was great. The Evens had great songs, some quite slow and beautiful. Ian was his usual self: rocking out at times and saying funny things and being the star he truly is. "You Won't Feel a Thing" was my favorite song. People played frisbee behind the stage, other people chilled. There were a lot of aging punkers in the crowd, with their punk six year olds, a lot of normal-appearing people too, and some cool kids up front. You could sort of sit in the grass wherever you wanted, or go right to the front too. It wasn't one of those horrifying crowds you get at free concerts in NY.

Maybe the non-NY world will be cool. I hope so. This was a good start.

www.theevens.com



(July 1, 2007) One Last Brooklyn Blog


So the movers came at like eight in the morning and starting carting away our "precious belongings". Most of our stuff is street-finds, thriftstore, vintage, etc. It got a little weird knowing the moving was going to cost more than the stuff we moved.
As we sat around watching them do it, a stray cat from the neighborhood hung out with us. Everyone knows this cat, everyone feeds him. My wife came up to me and in a very serious tone asked if we could bring the cat with us across the country. This didn't seem like a good idea, since the cat's paws were dirty in that street cat way, and he had some sores and we didn't know anything about him, like could he ride for ten days in a boiling hot car with two strangers and no place to go to the bathroom . . .
So we left the cat. It was sad though. Weird to drive away. Greenpoint Brooklyn, ten years I lived here, well there you go.