the GOP presidential hopeful was apparently something of a bully in high school.

steve almond wrote a thoughtful response to this news on the rumpus.

according to a politico poll, most americans who were aware of this news—two of three—said this didn’t change their view of romney.  but maybe many americans thought he was an asshole even before this came out.

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i was gonna do this whole big post right here.  a sort of “state of the union” type thing for mfa programs. (SOTUMFA?)  and i was gonna crowd-source the whole thing, and get mfa’ers from all over the land to talk about what’s happening in their programs.  then i got lazy.  but the original spark behind that idea still seems relevant, even if i don’t do any actual reporting.

there’s been some funny business afoot at columbia college in chicago.  a few weeks back, it was announced that long-time chair of the fiction writing department there, randy albers, was not having his contract renewed & he would essentially be demoted to just a faculty member.  not for “performance-based” reasons, according to the dean of the school of fine & performing arts—but because of money prioritization.  i didn’t really know what that word meant, but it sounded like something a sneaky consultant would come up with (which turned out to be pretty much true).

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remember when you used to get toys?  that was great, right?  the novelty of something new, the imaginative sparks that resulted, and yada yada yada…

kids get toys.  readers, not so much.  some books are very pretty, or interesting to hold, but they’re rarely fun like a toy is fun.  and i love a good bookmark, but they don’t really get my motor runnin’.  and what other accessories do readers really get that be possibly be fun?  a fucking lamp?  that’s lame as shit.

but allow me, dear readers, to blow your damn minds right now—cuz you do have a new toy: small demons.

this new website somehow contains a ridiculous amount of data regarding people/places/things that are covered in your favorite books, and it maps them for you.  you can even go on an actual map, zoom in, and see what books are tied to that place.  don’t ask how the magical wizards responsible for this thing conjured it into existence.  just enjoy it.  check out the bajillion references to drugs in your dog-eared copy of infinite jest.  see all the books johnny rotten pops up in.  discover how many tomes take place in east village.  it’s all just so awesome…

welcome to the internet’s newest & greatest time suck.

last saturday i was doing my level best to avoid all the drunk, fake-irish fucks that were running amok in chicago.  i can’t pretend to understand why the temporary appearance of green miller lite makes so many people lose their shit in this town, but it does.  somewhat ironically, i went into the heart of the idiocy to find my reprieve: the ike reilly assassination was playing lincoln hall & i try not to miss any show he plays in this town.

ike doesn’t have the following of [insert your favorite band here], and the show wasn’t sold out (despite being not a terribly large venue), and i feel partially responsible for that.  i haven’t spread the gospel of the IRA like i should, and i’m here to make amends.  i mean it as no hyperbole when i say ike might be one of the finest songwriters working in rock today.  he’s got blue collar soul like the boss, and crazy flow like hova.  i think his genre-defying brilliance is most evident on my favorite IRA record, sparkle in the finish, with gems like “i don’t want what you got (goin’ on).”

and here’s the best part of this post: now that i’ve told you you need to listen to this fucking guy already, you can download a free 10-song(!) sampler, explicit lyrics & all.  never again can you say amazon is pure evil.

for more immediate gratification, below you can check out one of the few official videos ike’s ever done: “whatever happened to the girl in me.”  the video’s got something for everyone: dudes, guns, beers, dudes with guns & beers, dudes shooting beers with guns, dudes doing donuts in a field (while drinking beers & shooting guns), and also an epic-yet-soft-spoken landscape full of wonder & sunshine & hope & other bullshit like you can only find in the plains of illinois.  none of which really has anything to do with the song.  so: totally something for everyone.

as kathryn noted earlier this week, it’s required for all literary bloggers to reference AWP this week.  tin house did a field guide for the people you’ll likely see there.  so i guess this is more like a field guide for stuff to do.  if you’re in/around chicago this week for reasons totally unrelated to the conference, but really do like reading stuff, i highly recommend heading down to the hilton chicago (720 s. michigan ave.) on saturday, when entrance to the bookfair is free (for non-AWP folks: the bookfair is like a convention hall that gets transformed into the world’s largest independent book store for a few days).  if you’re in/around chicago this week precisely for AWP, and looking for things to do outside the conference, allow me to make a few suggestions:

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remember when i was bangin’ on the printers row thing? at least partially because they wanted me to be a member of their community—which really meant they wanted my money?  here’s the part where someone else offers another thing eerily similar to that, but i get kinda excited instead of annoyed.  it’s called the chicagoan, and it’s primarily a new bi-annual publication that’s basically like a book-length lit mag.  the publisher even says it’s got 26 pieces, so you can read one a week until the next issue comes out.  i bought the first issue this week (newstand price $20), and it’s freakin’ beautiful.

the editor is the same guy behind the utterly-brilliant-but-now-defunct stop smiling, which featured long-form interviews & essays which its contemporary magazines seemed to shy away from.  the chicagoan tries to reinvigorate pieces like that, while also taking a bit of inspiration from the original 1920s magazine called the chicagoan.  the first iteration was chicago’s attempt to create it’s own new yorker, and while it succeeded in publishing amazing illustrations (most notably on its covers), the consensus was that the content didn’t really compare favorably.  nevertheless, a 2008 anthology of that old magazine had captured the city’s attention recently, including that of the new chicagoan‘s editor, j.c. gabel, who took a long time bring this new thing to life.

so here’s why i’m excited about all this…

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a few weeks back i heard stu dybek read portions of “nighthawks” at event.  the s.o.b. mentioned offhandedly that since publishing that story, he felt compelled to keep writing similar vignettes—in effect, that he continued writing the story.  but he didn’t really do anything with the new material.  my heart nearly leapt out of my throat at the notion he might read his unpublished additions to that piece.  but did he?  no.  no, he did not.

i sailed with magellan was published in 2004.  he hasn’t published a new book of fiction since then.  eight motherfucking years, man.  this makes jordan’s first retirement look like an afternoon nap.  that reading was a terrible tease, and one which would not stand.  with coast of chicago, i sailed with magellan, and brass knuckles already in my library, i tried (again) to track down childhood and other neighborhoods, dybek’s first collection, which i’m pretty sure is out of print (or, at least, which i’d never seen used copies of for less than $30).  i managed to find a beat-up copy reasonably priced from powell’s, and in the process of checking out even learned he also put out a new book of poetry back in ’06.  nabbed ‘em both.

but i can’t share those with you, primarily because i haven’t read them myself yet and am thus unwilling to give up my precious.  what i can do is dig up a link to a story of his in the new yorker: “if i vanished.“  i stumbled across it while i was waiting for those books to arrive and roaming the vast interweb wastelands, drunk & howling, with outstretched arms flailing, desperately searching for a dybek story i hadn’t read yet.  read it with me now.  as d’angelo barksdale once said, “the king stay the king.”

…her face was so lovely to him that he hadn’t yet allowed himself to gaze at her with the full force of recognition. That was true of her nakedness, too; it dazzled him, and he found he could take it in only in glimpses. He wonders now what else he didn’t look at, what else he didn’t see.

last sunday, while reading the paper & farting around the apartment, i listened to the entire back catalog of galaxie 500.  it was fucking awesome.

the other day, i went to a jeff mangum concert.  he had hadn’t played chicago in something like 15 years.  at some point that night, my bro-in-law said “if he would’ve come out and played one song for my $38 ticket, i would’ve been happy with that.”

every single time i go to a cat power show, i think to myself, “man, i could listen to that girl sing all day long.”  this thought occurs in various iterations: putting my cat power playlist on repeat; imagining a marathon concert that would put even bruce springsteen to shame; or chan marshall lounging around at our home, singing to me the words to clorox commercials or whatever else suits her fancy, all the livelong day (inbetween the times we’re making out, of course).

i may or may not have obsessive compulsive tendencies, especially w/r/t to music i like (ask any girl i’ve dated in the last 6 years what they think of the national after having dated me).

on tuesday, i created a new itunes playlist called “my ceremony” and loaded it on my ipod.  it features only four tracks.  they are different versions of the song “ceremony“—by the original band (joy division), the band formed from the ashes of joy division (new order), galaxie 500, and radiohead.  i’ve been listening to it a lot the last couple days.  because i really, really love that song.  it’s probably my latest all-time favorite.  but now i’m going to put that love to the test.

after mike doughty inspired me to quit facebook, i guess he’s also now sort of responsible for inspiring this (potentially asinine) experiment.  in an interview about a year ago, doughty talked about the things in music that might only be revealed to someone after repeated listens.  at the time, i felt like i knew what he was talking about because i’d recently developed a new appreciation for jeff buckley’s cover of “hallelujah” after hearing it for years.  today, i’m going to try to replicate that depth of relationship with a song, but over the course of a single day.

here’s the plan.  i’m writing all this introductory stuff on wednesday night.  i’m going to watch control before going to bed to try to learn a little something about ian curtis, the joy division singer who killed himself just weeks after recording “ceremony” with his band (if you’re not familiar with this particular song’s history, you can get a quick primer via wikipedia).  i’m going to put “ceremony” on repeat when i go to sleep.  and after waking up, i’m going to listen to “ceremony” non-stop, all day, occasionally checking in here with an update on my thoughts, re: the song (or my status, re: declining mental health).  i might reach some kind of transcendent moment, or i might just get really tired of this song yet keep listening anyway until i freak out, or maybe nothing interesting at all will happen and this post will just be shit.  but i’m gonna give it a go & see what happens.  stay tuned.  or not.

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remember when newspapers used to have book sections?  that was awesome.  remember when they started going away?  that was not.  remember when newspaper book sections made a triumphant return and the world rejoiced?  me neither.  but i’m still holding out hope for that one.  in the meantime, i’ve got the new printers row from the chicago tribune.  and i have no idea what the fuck to do with it.

in theory, it sounds like a good idea maybe.  it’s got all the things i used to love about the books section: reviews, recommendations, essays, interviews, fun little Q&A’s with book-loving peoples, best-seller lists, a calendar of literary events, all that good shit.  it’s even got a column from rick kogan, the best storyteller/old school newspaperman our town’s got since dear studs passed away.  but here’s the thing: the newspapers had all that before, and got rid of it.  probably because of economic inefficiencies, or economies of scale, or sliding scales, or because the terrorists finally won.  so, obviously, they had to do something different this time.  and what they decided to do was charge for it.

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