his nerd jig.

Tomorrow: Mad Libs

When I was in Austin last month, I had an incredible plan. I was going to film everything. Every brunch, every bourbon and ginger, every breakfast taco, every drive down South Lamar, and every conversation that accompanied it. Because, I hadn’t seen these friends in years. And, I knew it might be awhile before I heard them or saw them, and the absolute glee they give me would wear off eventually. I wanted to preserve it. Maybe just for me, maybe for a larger project.

I hate to brag, but my friends are pretty much the shit.

Since I’ve been away doing my grown up things, they’ve all grown up. And I suspect in a few more years they’ll be even more grown up, and farther away from the friends I used to drink beers with at Showdown and talk about making things. Showdown is gone too.

But I forgot to bring my camera charger. All I had enough battery power to do is to record is one “um” from Claudia. I missed documenting the dollar bellini’s at Taverna, the fried brie tempura at Uchi, Jessica’s hand dances to JT, the incredible bar fight at Side Bar, the homemade ginger ale at Mug Shots, Rick Astley Sing-alongs, and shooting fireworks out of the car window in South Austin.

I decided, then, I would interview my friends on this blog. Writing is a kind of preservation I prefer, anyway. But after several drafts of questions that included “do you think you’re happy,” I couldn’t think of any that didn’t make me sound like a Gen Y Lelaina Pierce.

I admit that I’m taking the long way to get to this introduction, but I promise you, it’s worth it.

So I let someone else come up with the questions. I’m taking questions from old interviews with musicians that remind me of each friend and asking them to fill in the answers. They can answer in the voice of said musician, answer as themselves, or something in between. It’s a kind of mad libs, Q&A style.

Look for Matthew Barney Gumble tomorrow. I gave him questions from a Paul Westerberg interview. MBG’s not a friend from Austin, but he’s funny and he turned his answers in first.

So maybe my idea didn’t happen, but this way you’re getting the clever parts of my friends, instead of reading whether or not they think they’re happy, and whether they prefer major or minor chords. I can’t wait to see what they come up with, because, like I said, my friends are pretty much the shit.

Christmas Eve: The night in which I finally understand my entire adolesence by visiting the one remaining book store in my home town.

1. There is a Christian Fiction section
2. The Christian Ficiton section is larger than the literature section
3. The Sci-Fi section is larger than everything
4. Hunter S. Thompson is filed under Social Sciences
5. Persepolis is filed under History
5. I overheard two people ask for Bill O’Riley’s latest book

In case you are the rare person I haven’t told, I stopped being so post-MFA angst-y since I started volunteering with this sweet little program.

Capitol Letters Writing Center (it’s a pun!) teaches kids all over DC how to write creatively. I’ve taught a workshop on zine making (a la Elizabeth Anne Moore) and now I’m working on the first student publication project with seniors at Cardozo High School. The students get to work directly with pretty-big-deal published authors and editors, and by the end of the school year they’ll put out a professionally edited, designed, and bound anthology about “The Hidden DC”.

The Northwest Current just wrote a story about the project (see the corresponding picture of the back of my head above). My friend is quoted here:

“Their job is to be reporters of their own experience,” said Mike Scalise, Capitol Letters’ liaison with Cardozo and an English instructor at the University of Maryland. “We want them to focus on the quality; we want them to focus on what they know [so] they’re able to write with authority.”

Touching, no?

Right now we’re pretty small, with only 50 volunteers, no paid staff, and a tiny balance in our bank account.

So…

We’re doing an end-of-the-year campaign to raise funds for a new facility and I’ve been challenged to raise at least $500 by New Years. So, if you like me, and you think this organization sounds all right, c’mon over and donate something. Anything.

I’ll sweeten the deal: if you donate I will write a haiku just for you. Yes, that’s right. Not only will you get to feel good about yourself, you’ll also get a haiku. Just shoot me an email with your address after you donate and you’ll be reading sweet ancient Japanese poetry in no time.

Recent Obsession: Anne Carson

I went to the Dixion Place while I was in Manhattan this weekend to see “Experiments & Disorders: Anne Carson and Robert Currie, and Legends” and sort of fell in love. Carson and her husband Currie (who calls himself the Randomizer and can’t be anything but lovely in person) collaborated with Currie’s best friend, Lou Reed, and Laurie Anderson.

Laurie Anderson was amazing as always, and Lou Reed was the most disappointing. Though I got to see their small spotted dog.

Carson won me over the moment she stepped up to the mic. She’s is a mile tall, poised, and can sculpt what should be an essay into a poem. And you don’t even realize she’s doing it. She also wears red cowboy boots and I couldn’t get that scene from Footloose out of my head.

I’m going to start with Plainwater and go from there.

Look, I thought we had gotten this out of our system. Can we please be done with the hipster jokes? Please?

Hipsters hate hipsters! That’s so clever. So deliciously ironic and has never been used before. Never. Ever.

Christ. Can we go back to making fun of hippies now?

(Winter Version)

On my three-mile loop down to “mid-city” and back, I saw a guy in a thrift store t-shirt, pleated khakis and chucks. I hoped for a second that I had slipped back in 1999 and the Pavement I was listening was still new (to me). Which would mean that there were so many other things that would be new. I wouldn’t have read Joan Didion, or seen a David Gordon Greene film.  I’d be driving a Nissan Sentra. I’d still think that Mr. Roboto Project was the best place to see a show. Death Cab for Cutie was still lo-fi and Modest Mouse sounded new. The tickets I just bought to see Built to Spill would be $5, instead of $33.

But I wouldn’t be running, I’d be eating lots of queso and talking about taking up smoking and being something—I didn’t know what yet, but something.

I would have read my first David Foster Wallace essay. And my creative writing classes would be filled with freshmen boys who loved to dress up like him. By dress up, I mean in the uniform bandana and ratty t-shirts, and also in their footnotes. I loved and hated those boys, and the particular way they said DFW. I loved them because they were the staple of creative writing classes—a workshop needed their standard cynicism. 

But they were so god damn annoying. I loved and hated them much like I loved and hated David Foster Wallace. Even though he was new to me, I knew from the moment I read “Existentiovoyeristic conundra notwithstanding, there’s no denying the simple fact that people in the U.S.A. watch so much television basically because it’s fun,” he and I would have a difficult relationship. Mostly because he taunted me, begged me to imitate him. I think I hated those boys because I knew that the something I wanted to be was DFW, but I just had the common sense to reign in it.

If it was still 1999, I guess he’d also have new things to look forward to.

I snapped out of this back-when nostalgia once I ran past a girl in Thomas Circle wearing yellow crocs. I’d been running on that block many times. The pavement wasn’t new.