it was over before you woke up

Had a killer time in Boston, even as a decidedly non-"local boy," flattered apologies to Time Out Boston. Carolyn and I trekked the three hours from Northampton, got swamped in traffic, and Carolyn explained the intricacies of every showtune we could find on the rental car's XM radio, intricacies I promptly forgot in favor of staring in terror at Carolyn's enthusiasm. Then we showed up and read and had a good time. Carolyn read a story about the Boston Molasses Disaster on the anniversary thereof, the audience was full of smart laughers and occasional bowties, and Gene Kwak was a dashing host. Reports indicated that people bought Look! Look! Feathers because I read the beginning of the baby story, and the people wanted to find out if the baby was "okay." Old fashioned suspense: I didn't mean to do it, but there you go. The next morning Gene's housemate John got everybody pastries. Carolyn and I drove home and listened to different decades of music and confidently diagrammed the progression of American pop in relation to American hair gel.

Some internet news: I went beserk participating in Largehearted Boy's respected and much-loved-by-me Book Notes series, matching every story in Feathers to a song and writing way too much and way too obnoxiously "skittery-do-dah." Check it out here, and thanks very much to David of LHB for letting me play.

Also, I wrote a blurb for a nonexistent book called Now They Turn Left, which is about a NASCAR driver named Hank Reckon dying on the last lap of the Daytona 500 and getting immediately replaced by a zombie version of Ada Lovelace, daughter of Lord Byron and inventor of computer programming, who goes on an epic American roadtrip in Reckon's #00 car, which somehow turns into a #69 car as the blurb progresses. Why the hell did I write this ridiculous blurb? Why, for a conceptual anthology put together by Ben Segal and friends called The Official Catalog of the Library of Potential Literature. In this Catalog, you'll find descriptions of "wished-for and ideal books" by a host of awesome folks, like Aimee Bender, Bhanu Kapil, David Ohle, Lance Olsen, Vanessa Place, Diane Williams, and a bunch of yuk yuk factories like yrs truly. Or falsely, as the project entails. Do your projects have tails? Are the manes of your projects destined for best-in-show? Do your projects demand expensive shampoo?