Falling and Laughing

This is the glamorous.: My one-sided conversation with the guy on the scooter as the bus taking me to work stalked behind him this morning.

“What are you doing there champ. Corduroy suit? It’s still August, dude. It doesn’t matter how cool it is out today, it’s still August. I’m pretty sure the inverse rule to wearing white beyond Labor Day is no corduroy before Labor Day. I will give you that, it’s a nice suit.

Given that your bus was loop-bound, it could be that this gentleman was just an extreme Silver Jews fan. From “Black and Brown Blues” (Emphasis added—Ed.):

When I go downtown
I always wear a corduroy suit
cause it’s made of a hundred gutters
that the rain can run right through

26 Aug 2010 //

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In 1966 he succeeded Stephen Spender as consultant in poetry to the Library of Congress — a job we now call poet laureate — and he enjoyed his term in a way few have since. He held a news conference, ripping into Dylan Thomas for who knows what.

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“Deliverance, by James Dickey, turns 40”

James Dickey, two-fisted poet laureate. The U.S. started going soft when its poet laureates stopped delivering ranting press conferences. W.S. Merwin, you reading this? You need to get drunk, call in some reporters, and tear Billy Collins a new one. Also, Garrison Keillor should be strongly rebuked, both on general grounds and specifically for his foray into the erotic sonnetry. C’mon, W.S. Do the right thing for America.

25 Aug 2010 //

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My Mantra

For some while now I have been interested in transcendental meditation—the kind that the Beatles ran off to India to learn, and that David Lynch espouses.

It’s pretty complicated to get into it, though—my understanding is that you have to go to Iowa and take an intensive weeklong course, at the end of which you receive your own personal mantra, the sound-phrase you recite when performing your meditation.

Until I’m able to take the trip to Iowa, I’ve been using what I think of as a placeholder mantra for myself. I repeat it over and over in times of difficulty, and it calms me down. When you get your actual mantra, I think you’re supposed to keep it like a secret, but since this is just a placeholder, I thought I’d share it with you in case you want to use it. It’s “quonset hut.” Here’s how you do it:

Quonset hut
Quonset hut
Quonset hut
[repeat 437 times]

HTH

12 Aug 2010 //

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I had a dream, I had an awesome dream

Being pulled on a tiny sleigh by Bruce Springsteen. He was pulling me pretty fast (unconscious “Born to Run” reference?), but in the dream I really wanted a lash so I could make him go faster. If I see Inception, will it teach me how to conjure a lash in a dream?

Man, I wanted that lash so bad.

8 Aug 2010 //

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This is how Gem has been sleeping lately to stay chillwave. You can kinda see the one box fan on the floor; there is an additional fan out of frame so she is getting a two-way breeze on her belly.

P.S. Sometimes I let G sleep in my bed DON’T JUDGE

7 Aug 2010 //

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[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

“There is a Place,” Silver Jews

6 Aug 2010 //

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Dear readers of F+L,

Hi, how has your summer been? Mine’s been really chillwave. By that I mean I’ve been listening to Waves, Beach Coast, Best House, and a lot of other underground bands you probably haven’t heard of.

I also went to summer day camp, where I crafted an extremely complex Ojo de Dios (God’s Eye) using particolored yarn, multiple sticks, and Native American imagery (pictured above). Not a bad day’s work, right?

Anyway, speaking of chilling, I’ve also been away because I’ve been doing some pro bono marketing work for the American Energy Conservation Alliance. They needed some catchy slogans for their summer reduce-air-conditioning-usage campaign, so I did some blue-sky concepting with them and came up with the following slogans, which you’ve probably seen on posters, bookmarks, etc: