Virgin Formica

2009-11-15T12:56:00.000-08:00

An Evening in the Bronx with Romanian Writers, Poets and Two Americans

2009-07-13T17:02:00.001-07:00

On Sunday, Paul Doru Mugur and Adina Dabija invited us over for dinner al fresco. This is their daughter, Ana-Maria, the flower fairy:

Also sharing victuals and libations were Carmen Firan and Adrian Sangeorzan:

Here, Adrian pours wine . . .

. . . and here, poses prettily with Paul:

Here we are in Rembrandt light: David . . .

. . . and Carmen:

And me:

Flarf Is In Bookforum

2009-07-07T17:06:00.000-07:00

With thanks to Franklin Bruno, for this.

One Tiny Thing About Michael Jackson

2009-07-07T09:16:00.001-07:00

What do I have to add to the Michael Jackson discussions? Nothing, God knows. Well, maybe just one little thing: last Friday evening I was sitting at the kitchen table in the cool half-darkness after finishing the dishes. A beautiful blue light, like the blue of blue glass, was filtering into the kitchen from living room windows which look out onto state game land. (This was at our little “country house” in Pennsylvania, where we’d gone to spend the holiday weekend.) That particular quality of light always brings on the same memory: when I was a kid in the ‘70’s I used to dream of being in a clean, cool blue room, in a house that was — to use a phrase of my dad’s — “way out in the country.” He’d use that phrase when describing the suburbs where his more successful brothers had homes, suburbs that were not really “suburbs” yet, but more like semi-rural areas bordered by prairies. To drive out to visit those relatives was a long haul because my dad didn’t like to drive on expressways: “You gotta have a t’ousand eyes,” he’d say. So, we took local streets, usually Archer Avenue until, after an hour or so, it ceased to be Archer Avenue and became (what looked to me like) a dirt road cutting through forests and farms, like in fairy tales, or in the photos that went with the life stories of famous movie and TV stars who came from humble beginnings. All the way out I’d sit in the back seat behind my dad, staring at the “evening in the country” landscape and listening to a transistor radio pressed to my ear. My sister, who always sat behind our mother, had a radio, too, and it was pressed to her ear because we listened to different stations. She listened to one station, WVON, the soul station, but I switched around constantly from ‘VON to WLS to WCFL.

I was ten when “Never Can Say Goodbye” was a hit by the Jackson 5 in the spring of 1971, and spring was when these long drives out to “the country” would usually begin, bringing with them the promise of summer and longed-for summer vacation. There’s a particular quality of longing — for summer vacation, for friends, for a boyfriend — that one feels at the age of ten. And that song had that particular quality of longing to it: a light 3-note harpsichord riff repeated four times drifts into a sigh, which then floats down into a dreamy, twinkly-sounding cloud of young male harmonizing on a rhythmic “oo-oo.” Then a hypnotic, snake-charming flute brings in the voice of 12-year old Michael Jackson singing the title, and his brothers in the background sighing, “Giiiirl …” “Even though the pain and heartache seem to follow me wherever I go,” sings Michael, “though I try and try to hide my feelings, they always seem to show . . .” I don’t think I ever reflected that this was a 12-year old singing. What he was singing, and how he sang it, rang so true, even to a ten-year old. There was something about that song that matched the deep blue quality of the “country” light – we walked into my aunt and uncle’s house, into their air-conditioned, plush-carpeted living room — in our place, you entered through the rickety, cigarette-stinking kitchen — and all their lights were turned off (ours were always on, and hideously bright) except for the color TV and the lava lamp, which was, of course, blue. And I probably had a crush on Eddie Jozefiak and he was probably ignoring me, and I wanted to be beautiful and wasn’t, and I hated myself and the way I looked and wanted more than anything to be like my cousin, who lived in that clean, cool, blue world. Even more than that, I wanted to be adored, to be a singer on a TV show with a whole studio audience applauding for me, and a big clean, air conditioned house way out in the country to go home to, where maybe I would be interviewed, and fans could come and visit me. That’d show everybody who ever made fun of me, who thought I’d amount to nothing, or thought I was too ugly to love.

And now I do occupy a clean, cool, blue house — at least on the weekends. I know I’m not ugly, but it took a long time to come around to that. But that ugly girl’s still there, feeling sad about something and listening to Michael Jackson. Who was, we now know, feeling sad about something, too.

I Was Columbia College's 2009 Alumna of the Year

2009-06-26T09:54:00.001-07:00

Chicago, May 2009

As Alumna of the Year, I got to boss people around. For instance, I demanded that Michelle Passarelli, Director of Alumni Operations, meet me at the airport wearing a mask . . .

I demanded that they put me up at the Four Seasons, in a corner suite with a view of Lake Michigan . . .

I demanded that a selection of masks be provided (Chicago *is* my hometown, after all, and there had been some, uh, "incidents" ...):

Of course, my friends Jessica, Pablo (I heard he won a Pulitzer or something) and David had to travel with me in the limo:

Poor Josh Culley-Foster -- he's the National Director of Alumni Relations for Columbia. I really put him through a lot. Look at him not enjoying himself:

And poor Michelle! Having to keep up with my demands for certain "favors" ...

Here, Debbie Pintonelli, my one friend left in the world, is saying, "Don't you ever shut the hell up?"

Randy Albers, my beloved teacher: "Why did I think this was a good idea?"

Yeah, well, they didn't exactly put the fizz in my Fuzzy Navel, either. Thank the Holy Mother of Monkey Poo that I had these babies. . .

Here's their reaction when I said, "Kiss my MacArthur, bitches":

Here's me giving the president of the school, Warrick Carter, an earful:

This is Laurel Carter, the only nice person I met the whole time I was there:

No, wait ... Marcia Lazar, of the Board of Trustees, was nice, too:

Okay, Dean Eliza Nichols, too ...

But then meeting all those nice people just started getting to be too ... nice. I needed a drink. I demanded Josh take us all out for drinks. If you could see his whole face in this photo, you'd see how pissed off he was. Thank God you can only see half!

Now, don't even get me STARTED about Commencement! Everyone wanted to get their photo taken with me!

I TOLD them I didn't want to put that stupid hat on. It totally ruined my hairdo!

Take a look at this -- Dean Deborah Holdstein is making devil horns behind the photographer! What the hell kinda school is this?

Oh, and check this out: we marched in to "Walk This Way" by Aerosmith:

Aerosmith??? What, they didn't KNOW I have a poem called "Retarded Aerosmith World?"

Retarded Aerosmith World

Where dirt bikes meet hips
there's a smell of wood smoke and pussy
there's a windswept junkyard dog
there's nothing for a long time and then there's sex
where the twelve-point centaur rests:
little blue trailer
far end of the parking lot
behind the Walgreens
where there's starlight through dimity curtains
and someone bent over a bathtub
and three people in another room
smoking on the soul cakes.
Later there's a lily bath
and a new hairdo for a funeral
and a great love torn asunder
but another love renewed.

People ... research????

Oh -- check this out:

They told me, "Go ahead -- invite twenty people." Twenty people? Twenty people is what it takes just to get my eyes open in the morning!

Well, finally, it was all over but the drinkin' (and -- quelle coincidence! -- that's when Margaret Sullivan and Debbie show up!):

Yes, Debbie, there is a Santa Claus . . .

Good freakin' riddance, Chicago. Here's what I think of you:

Vote for Me for Brooklyn Poet Laureate!

2009-06-25T08:56:00.000-07:00

The article, from yesterday's Brooklyn Paper: "New Poet Laureate Has Big Muse To Fill"

VOTE HERE

Flarf Is In POETRY (And So Am I)

2009-06-23T08:03:00.000-07:00

Flarf is in Poetry, and I’m in flarf, so I’m in Poetry too. Oh, Harriet Monroe. Oh, Ruth Lilly, whose family’s liquid vitamin B — Homicibrin, or some such name — I took as a child for underweightedness. I can still taste it.

In this, the July/August issue, with a summery watermelon smiley on the cover, flarf falls under the same watermelon smiley as Philip Levine, Tony Hoagland and Jane Hirschfield, whose poem (“Perishable, It Said”) ends with the line . . .

inside that hour with its perishing perfumes and clashings.

For comparison, here’s Philip Levine’s poem, “An Extraordinary Morning” . . .

Two young men — you might call them boys —
waiting for the Woodward streetcar to get
them downtown. Yes, they’re tired, they’re also
dirty, and happy. Happy because they’ve
finished a short work week and if they’re not rich
they’re as close to rich as they’ll ever be
in this town. Are they truly brothers?

. . . and here's fellow flarfista Nada Gordon’s “Unicorn Believers Don’t Declare Fatwas”:

I was sort of doodling Hitler at my friend’s
house and we couldn’t stop watching
unicorn hardcore soft porn abortion e-cards
containing scenes in which the baby angora unicorn
and Hitler stay warm on a cold night.

Here’s a taste of Tony Hoagland’s poem, “At the Galleria Shopping Mall” . . .

And here is my niece Lucinda,

who is nine and a true daughter of Texas,
who has developed the flounce of a pedigreed blonde

and declares that her favorite sport is shopping.

. . . contrasted with Drew Gardner’s interstitial “Why do I hate Flarf so much?”:

She came from the mountains, killing zombies at will. Some people cried, “But that was cool!” and I could only whisper “we should NOT be killing zombies!” . . . Hate and love — if those are the options I just want to hate and love lobsters.

Finally, here's the watermelon smiley cover . . .

. . . and here is flarfisto K. Silem Mohammad's cover:

"Can Flarf Ever Be Taken Seriously?"

2009-06-22T08:49:00.000-07:00

By Shell Fischer, in this month's Poets & Writers

If You STILL Can't Get Enough Flarf ...

2009-04-22T18:47:00.001-07:00

... and, really, who could blame you, here's another chance!

NADA GORDON!
SHARON MESMER!
GARY SULLIVAN!

READ THIS SATURDAY!
APRIL 25th @ 8pm!
390 SENECA AVE.
CORNER OF SENECA & STANHOPE!
RIDGEWOOD, QUEENS!
BEER!
POETRY!
BEER!
FLARF!
BEER!

www.poetrytimeatspacespace.blogspot.com

At the Whitney: Flarf Versus Conceptual Writing

2009-03-17T13:25:00.000-07:00

Surely, one of the signs of the Apocalypse . . .

On Friday, April 17 the Whitney Museum of American Art presents eight poets associated with two cutting-edge movements in contemporary poetry: the Flarf Collective and Conceptual Writing. The followers of both movements employ technology to create their works, often using strategies familiar to the visual arts: appropriation, falsification, insincerity, and plagiarism. Fusing the avant-garde impulses of the last century with the technologies of the present, these strategies propose an expanded field for twenty-first century poetry. This new writing is not bound exclusively between pages of a book; it continually morphs from printed page to webpage, from gallery space to science lab, from social spaces of poetry readings to social spaces of blogs. It is a poetics of flux, celebrating instability and uncertainty.

Featured poets are Christian Bök, Nada Gordon, Kenneth Goldsmith, Sharon Mesmer, K. Silem Mohammad, Kim Rosenfield, Gary Sullivan and Darren Wershler.

This event was conceived and organized by poet Kenneth Goldsmith on the occasion of the Jennny Holzer exhibition PROTECT PROTECT. Reading begins at 7, and is free with Museum Admission, which is pay-what-you-wish during Whitney After Hours on Fridays from 6-9 pm. Advance reservations are recommended. Tickets may be reserved at the Museum Admissions desk or online at http://www.whitney.org. Inquiries: (212) 570-7715 or public_programs@whitney.org/

Fracking

2009-01-31T16:17:00.000-08:00

This is some serious shit. David (my husband) and I went to a public meeting about this two weekends ago in PA, but it affects New York as well. Please read this and pass the information on. (I'm doing this quickly, so please copy and paste the URLs into your browers -- I'll change it all into links later) ...

Dear Friend,

As part of the Bush-Cheney legacy, the oil and gas industry is
accomplishing what we feared would come from foreign terrorists: the
contamination of our water supplies.

Gas companies use the Halliburton-invented hydraulic fracturing
process to drill a mile or deeper, forcing one to four millions of
gallons of water and toxic chemicals into the earth with each
drilling. The waste water, stored in open pits on site, contains the
deadly chemicals as well as underground radiation.

The 2005 Energy Bill exempted hydraulic fracturing from the Safe
Drinking Water, Clean Air, and Clean Water acts.

Gas companies have been drilling and polluting across the country. Now
they’re in New York—and they have leased land near and in the New York
City watershed to drill for natural gas using hydraulic fracturing.

If the drilling moves forward, New York City will have to build a
filtration plant at a cost of at least $10 billion. However, it is
unknown if the chemicals involved in drilling can be filtered out—
especially since by law these chemicals may be kept secret.

How can you help? Here are two ways.

1. Please sign this petition to protect New York City’s water.
http://citizenspeak.org/node/1436

2. US Congressman Maurice Hinchey, from New York, has co-sponsored the
bill HR 7231, reinserting the regulation of Safe Drinking Water for
hydraulic fracturing.

It’s not enough, but it’s a start. Please email your Congressperson
and ask her or him to support HR7231.

Here’s what I wrote my Congressman: Please support HR 7231 and help
protect our drinking water from unregulated gas drilling practices. In
addition to repealing the exemption of the Safe Drinking Water Act
from hydraulic fracturing, please support repealing the exemption of
the Clean Air and Clean Water acts. It is very dangerous for this
practice to be exempt from environmental regulations. Thank you.

For a quick link to your Congressperson, use this link:
https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml

To learn more about hydraulic fracturing, read this Scientific
American article:
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=drill-for-natural-gas-pollute-water

"What's In That Fracking Fluid?": http://www.riverreporter.com/issues/08-12-04/fracking.pdf

Twenty Years On

2009-01-24T10:25:00.000-08:00

(Written a few weeks ago...)

Today I ended up back at the first place I lived in New York, and from where I moved exactly twenty years ago today. A set of fortuitous circumstances got me to the place in the first place, and the same could be said for how I got back there today. I haven’t figured out the cosmical/meta-symbolical reason I ended up back there today, but maybe that’s for later.

The first time: I’d always wanted to live in New York, to be a poet in New York. The New York I’d formed in my mind was a juxtaposition of “That Girl” and ideas gleaned from articles about punk in rock magazines. It may not have been entirely cohesive, but whatever it was it was the opposite of dull, judgmental, racist, comformist, narrow-minded working class Chicago. It seemed open, improvisatory, vulnerable, strong, self-creating, self-deprecating and celebratory — the perfect place for me. When I finally resigned myself to the fact that becoming a world-famous poet/rock star like Patti Smith was not my fate, I decided that getting myself into one of those poetry MFA programs everyone was starting to talk about would be the best way to establish myself in the Magic Kingdom. At least I’d have something to do, a place to go, some structure. I applied to Columbia University’s MFA but they put me on the waiting list, which pissed me off. At the urging of my therapist I quickly applied somewhere else — Brooklyn College. I knew absolutely nothing about Brooklyn College (except that they had an MFA program), not even that my idol Allen Ginsberg was teaching there. The outdated information I’d found in some catalog of graduate programs at Kroch’s and Brentano’s — this was 1987, and pre-Internet, so information was sometimes hard to come by — listed John Ashbery as the MFA poetry teacher. Ashbery was someone whose work I certainly liked. I could definitely see myself studying with him.

After I was accepted, my therapist then suggested I call the English department and see if I could visit the campus, talk to somebody about housing, job opportunities, a student loan, etc. I dilly-dallied at that point because of the now-pressing need to put my vague plans in action. In general I’m always on the alert for omens and clues as to how to proceed, and when I found the tarot card Temperance on the sidewalk outside my apartment building I decided that was how I had to proceed: with moderation, patience, reliance on intuition, and a willingness to experiment until I got “it” — the establishment of myself in New York — right.

I called the Brooklyn College English department and got an appointment with Maurice Kramer, the Graduate Deputy. I had no idea how to get to the school, or to Brooklyn. And where would I stay? I couldn’t afford a hotel, and the few people I knew in New York were mostly my boyfriend Carl’s friends, and lived in tiny Lower East Side studios with plenty of chairs but nothing you could rightly call a couch. On a visit with him a year or two earlier we’d slept on folded-up sleeping bags on wooden pallets on the floor of his friend’s windowless, unlit, under-the-hallway-stairs utility room. (Remember that “Seinfeld” episode where Elaine pretends she lives in a storage room, so she can get Chinese food deliveries? It wasn’t that nice.) “Good thing I’m the super,” Carl’s friend assured us, handing over a flashlight. “Don’t’ worry — this is one of the few buildings that doesn’t have rats.” I still have nightmares about that place. That night I decided that no matter how desperate I got, no matter how important it might ever be for me to be in New York, I’d never stay in a place like that again.

With some prodding I got Carl to recall another old friend who (he thought) maybe still lived in the East Village. He made some calls, got some numbers, made more calls, and sure enough, she was still there. I stayed with her and slept in an actual bed. She had a subway map, and I was ecstatic to see that Brooklyn was accessible via many trains — who knew? The Brooklyn of “Car 54, Where Are You?” seemed like a made-up place. And Brooklyn College was even on the subway map — the last stop on the 2/5 lines, also called “Flatbush Avenue.” Flatbush Avenue? There was actually a Flatbush Avenue? Like in “The Lords of Flatbush”? Not only was this easy, it was hilarious.

On what had to be the hottest day of June, 1987, I trudged up the subway stairs and onto Flatbush Avenue. The first thing I saw was the huge, hulking Flatbush Federal Savings and Loan building. Flatbush Federal? I had to smile. And then across the street was a store called “Carl’s College Beat,” with a window full of 1950’s-looking baseball jackets with leather sleeves, alpaca sweaters and button-down shirts. Were these people for real with all the Brooklyn-y stuff, or what? I laughed out loud, and some teenage kid walking past me said, in a mellifluous Jamaican accent, “Didja just see your reflection in the window, gal?”

This was really going to be something else.

I had no idea where to go. I looked around and saw no signs for any college. I’d figured Brooklyn College would be like where I got my BA, Columbia College – a nondescript block-y gray building on a corner. I checked the address; it wasn’t Flatbush Avenue. I looked down the block and saw some trees. My intuition told me to go that way, and I did. I walked past a building with a sign that said Brooklyn College (thinking: oh, that’s the college), through iron gates and then further on, curious, towards more greenery. When I saw the ivy-covered brick buildings and the grassy quad for the first time — the whole vista so restful and pleasing to the eye — I was absolutely shocked: it was a real school. A real beautiful school, too. With students sitting on the grass with books — open books! And there were birds singing, too. Birds! Winding around on the paths, I came upon a pond. With lily pads. Freaking lily pads! I really couldn’t believe it. This was the place I had chosen, sight unseen, with no information, to spend the next two years of my life. Somehow, I was doing something right.

Of course, I was late for the interview. I was wearing a white blouse and totally sweating my ass off, and I knew I’d not only ruined the blouse for further use on the trip but I’d also ruined my chance to make a good first impression. But Maurice Kramer was really nice. I told him I was really excited about being able to study with John Ashbery.

“Oh, no,” he said. “You must’ve gotten some outdated information. I’m sorry to tell you that John isn’t teaching here. He got a MacArthur and took a leave.”

“Well, no matter,” I said, shrugging. “I feel like just being here is important. Who took his place?”

“Allen Ginsberg.”

He said something after that, but I didn’t hear him because the voice in my head going HOLYSHITALLENGINSBERGHOLYSHITALLENGSINBERG overwhelmed everything else. I felt like crying again. I had to really pull back. It was hard, trying not to cry and/or sweat more. He then asked me if I needed a place to live, and I must’ve said I did.

“Because,” he said, “a place just became available today — one of our professors, Nancy Black, is going to France for the semester and she’s looking to sublet her place for three months. Three months isn’t a long time, but you’ll be able to have a base of operations while you go to school and look for a permanent place. Here’s her phone number. Call her as soon as you can because there’s a high demand for apartments here, as I’m sure you know. Oh, and are you looking to do some teaching? Because the department chair just happens to be here today. I don’t think she has anyone in her office right now. Let me just call her . . .”

I had once said to someone, jokingly, that I’d never move to New York unless I had a job, an apartment, and a career waiting for me. I got back on the subway that day with a job, an apartment, and Allen Ginsberg waiting for me.

A month or so later I received a letter from Professor Black, with photos of her home — “Just so you know what you’re getting into.” The first photo was the exterior of 178 Lincoln Road — a classic, attractive Brooklyn brownstone with geraniums in planters on the windowsills. Wow! My apartment would be a room in that nice place! The next photo was of a big kitchen with a stove/table/butcher block island in the middle. Wow! I’d be doing some cooking there, which would definitely help me save money. The next photo was of a huge, airy room with a curtained bay window, a couch, a chandelier, a fireplace with a mantle and (wait for it) a grand piano. And the photo after that was a bedroom with a four-poster canopied bed, a stained glass bay window, a chandelier, and an antique divan. On the back of those photos was written “your living room” and “your bedroom.” This was my first apartment in New York, for which I would be paying (wait for it) $500.

Go ahead — hate me. All my Chicago poet-friends did. It felt great.

It was to this gracious place that I returned earlier today. An old friend back in Chicago had mailed a Christmas present to me at that address because she didn’t know my current one, and I was going back to retrieve it. Interesting, I thought, that I’m going back exactly twenty years after I left (minus two weeks). I’ve only lived in two places in New York, and so I still have very vivid memories (both good and bad/sad) of Professor Black’s beautiful home — my first home in the Magic Kingdom.

Getting off the subway at the Prospect Park B train stop I kept my eyes open for things that had changed/things that had stayed the same. Oddly, almost everything seemed the same: Sister Patricia the psychic was gone, but the Chinese take-out place where I first ate lo mein, the little grocery on the corner with its not-so-great produce, the pharmacy on the other corner, and “French Dry Cleaners” on the opposite side of Flatbush Avenue were all still there. Yes, I was living a block away from extremely Brooklyn-y Flatbush Avenue. In fact, when Carl and I drove into the neighborhood for the first time, and stopped at the light at this intersection, a man in the next car saw that I had a map open and yelled, in a classic Brooklyn accent, “Where ya goin’?”

“178 Lincoln Road!”

“Go ta da next cornah, make a left, go two blocks, make anudda left, den anudda left after dat, an’ go two more blocks — it’s on ya left!”

Walking toward 178, I tried to recall and feel the things I thought and felt twenty years ago. Was I always happy to be here? No, not always. Why the hell wasn’t I? Looking back, I was damn lucky to have landed where I did. But what did I do with all that luck? Studying with Allen Ginsberg had been an amazing experience. He nominated me for, and I received, the coveted MacArthur Scholarship (John Ashbery had graciously donated a portion of his MacArthur money to fund the award). And Ginsberg had chosen me to represent Brooklyn College at a Poetry Society of American event, “Best of the MFA Programs.” He wrote recommendations for me, wrote a blurb for my first poetry collection, introduced me to his friends at poetry events as “one of the most talented young poets around,” counseled me when my father was dying, and defended me in class when other students criticized my work. Once he called me at my boyfriend’s (not the same boyfriend I moved to NYC with) apartment at 11 am on a Sunday because he’d woken up thinking he’d forgotten to do something for me, and was worried we’d missed a deadline. The night before I got the call that my first poetry collection was accepted for publication, I had a dream that he and I were standing in front of my childhood house on Racine Avenue in Chicago, pressing our pregnant stomachs together and laughing about how funny it was that we were both pregnant at the same time, and that a man could get pregnant. But mixed in with all the good memories festered a major regret. In 1997, a Japanese literary magazine put me up in the Chelsea Hotel for a week, and told me to “have experiences and write about them.” An interview with Allen, I knew, would be perfect for the article, so I called his office to schedule it. Bob, his secretary said he was out of town, but he’d have him call me as soon as he got back. Sure enough, Allen called, but it was too late — I’d already written the article. But why didn’t I just interview him anyway? He died a few months after I spoke to him on the phone. Ours would’ve been his last interview. I totally blew it, but even in death he taught me something: be ready, think ahead, say yes.

Crossing Bedford, with 178 Lincoln coming into view, I recalled how Carl and I sat on the “stoop” our first night in Brooklyn — August 15, 1988. Those first days in Brooklyn were happy, so funny. Carl and I broke up soon after leaving Lincoln Road, but no matter; I met my soul-mate (and now husband), David, later that same year. New York had been so good to me, helping me get rid of what was no longer serving me. New York had known what I needed, all the way. Why wasn’t I ecstatically happy back then? One of the reasons was the other person that Carl and I had shared 178 Lincoln Road with: a relatively established writer who was also in the MFA program. Relatively Established made sure that we knew his connections were not to be shared. One time he invited us to come along to what would certainly be a very interesting, totally classic New York literary party. One of the reasons I had moved to New York was to go to totally classic literary parties. When we were all ready to leave he announced, “Oh, the hostess said I couldn’t bring you. Sorry.”

Nancy Black answered the door. She looked exactly the same as the last time I saw her, when I handed back the keys. She smiled and ushered me in. There was the table where we’d had the shitty Thanksgiving dinner; there was the counter where I sat when Ma told me over the phone that Dad had been diagnosed with cancer; there was the little table made out of a sewing machine at which I planned to read and write in the mornings until Relatively Established decided it was his favorite place to smoke. On the wall back then had hung rusted garden implements from Professor Black’s family’s antique shop, but those were gone now, replaced by needlepoint samplers.

Nancy made me a cup of tea and gave me a band-aid (I’d scraped my knuckle in the subway coming over) and we went upstairs. Ah, the carpeted stairs! I was always worried I’d fall down those stairs on my way downstairs to the bathroom in the middle of the night. There was the living room with the grand piano, the curtained bay window, the fireplace and the mantle with the antique clock and two brass bird sculptures — I used to write in this room, on the couch on Saturday and Sunday mornings. The guy I cheated on Carl with sat there once. And last was the room that was the bedroom — now back to being an extension of the living room — with the stained glass bay window, chandelier and bookshelves behind glass doors. While talking on the phone to a friend in that room the beautiful antique divan I was sitting on had suddenly shuttled back and forth across the floor. I thought it was a ghost, but it had been an earthquake — the November 25 Saguenay earthquake, the epicenter of which was in southern Quebec. The next day the Daily News’ front page headline was THE NIGHT THE APPLE SHOOK!

Nancy and I sat down and had tea, and after a while her husband, Michael, joined us. We talked about her retiring from teaching, medieval women writers, Christmas, Allen Ginsberg, how I really should join the Park Slope Food Coop, and how Relatively Established screwed up Thanksgiving. Michael asked me how I came to live in their apartment, and I told him the story. “Things don’t often happen that way!” he laughed. I agreed.

I felt sad when it was time to leave. I wished I’d had more time there, to look at objects and the space between objects again, to concentrate on the trajectory between then and now to understand what was gained and what was lost, and to get inside the wonderful, dream-come-true feeling of being newly arrived in New York. I guess I wanted to go back and really feel the excitement of being there, in a way that I didn’t before. Relatively Established’s emotional depredations kind of put kibosh on feeling excited, as did reading Joan Didion’s essay “Goodbye To All That” on a rainy August morning a few days after I first arrived:

“It is often said that New York is a city for only the very rich and the very poor. It is less often said that New York is also, at least for those of us who came there from somewhere else, a city only for the very young.”

I was only twenty-seven when I moved to New York but I felt very, very old, and those lines sent a chill through me. Was it already over? It hadn’t even begun. Relatively Established made me feel that way, and so did Carl, at times, because he was such a nay-sayer. To a self-expressed bohemian like him, the idea of an MFA program, even with Ginsberg teaching in it, was about as repugnant as a coffee table and Lladro figurines. The people who were solidly behind me during that transition I could count on one hand and still have fingers left over. And reading that Didion essay was a mistake. But, looking back, it was one of the few mistakes I made in terms of the move and my first few months in Brooklyn. I had done everything right, actually. The effortless way it happened made me think that that was the way things always happened. But, as I now know, that’s hardly ever the case.

But what did I do right then, and how can I learn from it now?

I had a real plan, but I allowed myself to be open to experimentation with the process of seeing it through. I often felt scared, and like I was abandoning my family, but while I acknowledged those thoughts, I never “invited them in for tea” — that’s what Allen taught me when he taught me to meditate on the floor in front of his little altar on a quiet, sunny afternoon on the Lower East Side. Afterward, he heated up some soup for us, and packed the leftovers for me to take home. What I learned from him went beyond rhyme and meter. How I wish he were still alive. How thankful I am that our paths crossed.

Look at the View
Right to horizon
Talk to the sky
Act like you talk

Work like the sun
Shine in your heaven
See what you done
Come down & walk

From “Gospel Noble Truths”
AG, New York Subway, October 17, 1975

Things I Hated About the Inaugural Poem

2009-01-22T08:01:00.000-08:00

That there were no goats or sheep in it
That there was a farmer with a pencil in it
That somebody was doing their business in it
That Larry Fagin could’ve written it

That it didn’t rhyme
That she read it like she went to the William Shatner
School. for.
Poetry.
Reading.

That it contained nicknames for potatoes by people
who really hate potatoes

That there was no candy or baked goods in it
plus I fucking hate crochet white tights --
really cute, but they're bunching around my ankles
like a granny

That it treated me like a deadbeat who missed car payments
That the reason leftists are so sensitive is because
they’re LOSERS!!!
That there was not sufficient attention paid to the recent death
of Stooges' guitarist Ron Asheton

That metal rocker Lars Ulrich and Lars' dad Torben
and Lars' dad's wife Molly tried to pay $33.8 million
to see a fat guy and social loser
cruising on a Segway
pulling out of Gaza

That she's ushering in an era of someone trying to make
a somewhere of spoons

That in China lately people are playing ping pong with nunchucks

That I watched it from the doc's office where I'd gone for my
follow-up visit and was recovering from a gigantic injection
in the ass :(

That the Obama Youth Parents ordered a Kool-Aid mega-hurl in it
That Hitler goes off on Hollywood, Obama, the birth certificate,
FACTCHECK.ORG and Schwarzenegger in it

That she had a thing about how Hitler is really angry
about the Hollywood airheads, led by Demi Moore,
pledging allegiance to Obama even though it’s a fact
that Obama's name “intersects" with a passage
in the book of Daniel, specifically Daniel 7:25,
which speaks of the last "king" who will oppress God's people
under the rubric of bringing about "change" in it

That Kevin Davies is a meanie in it
That she totally skimmed over the Evaculated Elmo Head thing* in it
That there was no “wtf?” in it
Wtf?

(* see previous post)

Evacuated Elmo Head Elmo

2009-01-21T08:32:00.000-08:00

Dear Wal-Mart:
Elmo vs.Tigger vs. Barney is mildly funny.
Also funny is Barney hijacks stuff plucked out of his head
with iron pincers.

More funny is Suicide Pact/Potty Training Elmo,
Beat Me Up Elmo Elmo,
and Chinese-led Anti-Christian Conspiracy at Wal-Mart
to Brainwash our Children Elmo.

Not funny is Condi & Those Fucking Googly Eyes Elmo.
Not funny is O’Reilly Factor for Kids Hosted by Richard Nixon
Livin’ Large on His Gold and Diamond Potty That Spells Out
"Elmo's Gotta Do What Elmo's Gotta Do” Elmo.
((No, wait — that *is* funny.))

Funny is Bird Seed Milkshake/Oxycontin Cocktail Elmo.
Funny is Jay Gatsby, Fat-Elvis-Playa-at-Large Elmo.

Not funny is Do I Really Want To Get Beat Up by
the Ginormous Black Man Who Plays Elmo
Fisted By Fat Elvis? Elmo.
If Fisher-Price had taken my concerns seriously
none of this would’ve happened.

Funny is Mary Poppins Toy Tells Boy To 'Beat Up Elmo'
After Screwing Osama Bin Laden and Then Shooting Up
with Shoot Me Up Elmo Elmo.
Funny is Elmo Farting All Over the Teletubbies (Uh huh —
jazz hands!) Elmo.

Not funny is the feminine lack of a penis.
Not funny is my otherwise wonderful child
who wakes up every morning wrestling Elmo’s huge nipples
and stinking of breast milk.

Not funny is trying to find a penis faucet.
Can you club a baby seal to death with a flaccid penis?
NYU’s school of medicine didn’t beat around the bush:
“That’s a flat NO.”
And don't get me started on that penis.
That penis is the most sickly, mutated thing formed.
And what is up with that pubic hair?
Before I get into how Beat Me Up Elmo beat up Grover,
I’d like to tell you a little story.
Once upon a time, there was a great lord in Japan . . .

Inauguration Day Poem

2008-11-21T12:11:00.000-08:00

Crap! I was just checking out the Best American Poetry blog because I'm going to be guest blogging for them next week, and saw their "Inaugural Poem Contest." So, I wrote one. THEN, after I wrote it, I discovered that faculty from the New School Writing Program can't enter. Oh well; fair enough. I think I wrote a good poem, tho, so here it is. The first line is from Laura Cronk's poem "Entering," which appeared in BAP 2008 (one of the rules was that the poem had to contain a line found somewheres in BAP 2008):

Inauguration Day Mouse
(for Laura Cronk)

The mice must have these visions:
the founding fathers, their poor eyesight,
the littlest mus musculus escaping the trap
to ultimately become the most recognizable

American icon, after the flag.
Today I personally honor these smallest
of small world contributors, so full of integrity,
faith and hope, ever steadfast in the face

of so many bigger and stinkier heels.
Where the faithful and hopeful mouse goes,
there go I, squeaking Change to Power.
And soon, in some undiscovered corner,

in the middle of the night, I shall find
some savory delicious and nutritious
crumb of something, and for once — just once —
it won't snap its breathtaking jaw.

Where Billie Holiday Once Sang ...

2008-11-17T16:42:00.000-08:00

Please come to a great reading ...

Sharon Mesmer, Susie Timmons and Bob Hershon
The (new) Zinc Bar
(formerly the Baggott Inn, formerly the Cinderella Club --
where Billie Holiday once sang)
82 West 3rd, two doors west of Thompson
New York City, New York
Sunday, November 23
7pm

$5 donation goes to the poets
Your hosts: Joe Elliot, Kimberly Lyons and Douglas Rothschild

Park Slope Euphoria, November 4, 2008

2008-11-08T16:55:00.000-08:00

What's So Funny About Community Organizing?

2008-09-08T12:45:00.000-07:00

Six minutes into his speech to the Republican convention, Rudolph Giuliani said the following about Barack Obama:

“He worked as a ‘community organizer.’ What?”

Then he shrugged and laughed. The camera cut to the audience, also laughing. Giuliani tried to continue, but the chanting of “Zero! Zero! Zero!” drowned him out. The former mayor of New York City, “America’s Mayor,” the hero of September 11th, was barely able to fire off his next comment: “This is the first problem on the resume . . .”

Since when is service to one’s community a “problem”? Since when is it something to be laughed at and mocked? Isn’t the presidency of the United States basically service to one’s community? Don’t Republicans engage in grass-roots community organizing? Isn’t that how they propelled George Bush back into the White House in 2004 — the same George Bush who has let them down so badly that they are now, finally, demanding change?

But there’s a bigger issue at hand: if the Democrats don’t strenuously address that moment, they don’t deserve the privilege of running this country. Yes, Senator Obama responded in a measured, dignified manner. Yes, political action groups used it in their mailings. But it’s not enough. This revelation — completely antithetical to the Christianity that Republicans so vociferously promote — should be broadcast and re-broadcast until the truth of it is securely planted in voters’ minds: that any group of people who would publicly mock the grass-roots community work that they themselves engage in cannot be trusted with picking the next president.

What Republican voters may not realize is that Senator Obama worked for three years on the South Side of Chicago as director of the Developing Communities Project, a church-based community organization. How is that different — in practice — from the faith-based community organizations that moved George Bush back into the White House in 2004? Republican voters also may not realize that Obama directed Project Vote from April to October 1992, a voter registration drive that registered 150,000 African-Americans in Illinois. How does that differ — in practice — from the mass voter-registration drives that occurred in Ohio from 2004 to 2006, sponsored and underwritten by the state’s Christian mega-churches, meant to propel Ken Blackwell, Ohio’s Republican secretary of state, to the governorship (a race he ultimately lost)? Rod Parsley, pastor of World Harvest Church, and Russell Johnson, pastor of the Fairfield Christian Church, formed Reformation Ohio and Ohio Restoration Project to win the state for President Bush in ‘04, propelling him back into the White House for his disastrous second term. And they laughed at community organizing??

I grew up on the blue-collar South Side of Chicago, in an area called Back of the Yards, named for its proximity to the Union Stockyards. My neighborhood was the home of the nation’s first — and still functioning — community council, the Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council. Founded in 1939 by Saul Alinsky, the father of community organizing, and Joe Meegan, manager of the Chicago Park District's Davis Square Park, the council’s motto is “We the people will work out our own destiny.” According to Robert Slayton’s 1986 book, Back of the Yards: The Making of a Local Democracy, “As the established representative of the community, the Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council began working for control, stability, and freedom, articulating goals and realizing them. To do this, the Council not only placed pressure on powerful groups outside the neighborhood, but also dealt with powerful local institutions. During its founding years, the BYNC confronted both the meat-packers and the political system, and emerged victorious. Its power was based on the neighborhood’s new sense of unity and on its leaders’ skills . . . Back of the Yards, though its formal representative, practice[d] participatory democracy in an efficient and meaningful way, using its residents’ energies and skills to create a better community for all.”

For my neighborhood, change came from within. And for Republican voters, change needs to come from within as well: with self-reflection, self-education and the embrace of true compassion, which they are fully capable of doing — as evinced by their community service groups. And this is where the Democrats really need to step up. NOW. Republican, swing and undecided voters need to be shown that truly ugly display of mocking laughter in the hope that they might somehow look within and embrace true change. Those voters need to be shown that moment to prove once and for all that any people who would publicly mock the same community organizing that they themselves engage lack the self-education and self-reflection to pick the next president. And if the Democrats don’t show it to them — and to everyone — they don’t deserve the privilege of running this country.

Books for Barack

2008-09-08T12:01:00.000-07:00

This came from author Ayelet Waldman. If you can spare copies of your books, send them to her!

Hey guys,

We're doing a fundraiser (one of MANY) for Barack out here that's going to include a silent auction. I'd be your best friend if you would send me a signed book. I know I should be offering to buy one and send it to you with a return envelope, but I'm hoping you'll decide to just go ahead and give me one from your stash, and if it was for any other of my philanthropic ventures, I'd do that. But since the world is going to come a fucking end if Obama doesn't get elected, I'm thinking maybe you'd be willing to donate the book and the postage. The event is in 2 weeks...so I'd need it before then. I hope to get a few thousand dollars for this "signed book basket."

I'd also love you forever if you'd ask a few of your friends to send one,too. Turns out I have far fewer email addresses than I thought.

Send to:

Ayelet Waldman
2815 Woolsey Street
Berkeley, CA 94705

At-Home and Online Writing Workshops Taught By Me

2008-05-19T15:46:00.000-07:00

"Sharon's workshop was a mind-expanding, block-busting experience. I walked out of the class with great new material, a wealth of fresh ideas, and renewed creative confidence."

-- Janice Erlbaum, author of the acclaimed memoirs Girlbomb and Have You Found Her? (both from Villard)

"Sharon's workshops at The Poetry Project have always been big hits with the diverse range of students taking them -- the expansive humor, energy and meta-charged language found in her own work translate into a great working and learning environment for writers looking to come into themselves or finish a specific work or both."

-- Anselm Berrigan, author of Zero Star Hotel (Edge Books) as well as many other poetry collections, and former director of the Poetry Poetry at St. Mark's Church

I'm about to start up my fabulous at-home writing workshop again, and this time I'll also offer it online. I'm a published author of seven rockin' books — four poetry collections and two short fiction collections — essays and reviews, recipient of a Fulbright and two New York Foundation for the Arts fellowships in poetry, as well as residencies at MacDowell, Hawthornden Castle (Scotland) and Fundacion Valparaiso (Spain). Through the nomination of my MFA teacher, Allen Ginsberg, I was awarded a MacArthur Scholarship, given through Brooklyn College from a gift of John Ashbery. I've taught both live and online fiction and poetry workshops for thirteen years at the New School, and can pretty much guarantee that you will generate amazing stuff via assignments, model texts and discussions — stuff you never thought you had in you. This workshop will be especially good for you if you think you have so-called "writer's block" (a non-existent condition, in my view). If you're interested and want more information, please feel free to email me at shardav @ verizon.net (remember to delete those spaces when you put it in the address field) and I promise to get back to you with great alacrity!

For those interested in the at-home workshop, you must be recommended by someone I know.

How the workshops will run: eight weeks for both the at-home and online, with an option to extend it to ten if things are going well. For both at-home and online, our first "session" will be devoted to figuring out the best project for you to work on, and a strategy for generating ideas toward that end. If you're already working on something but are stuck, we will brainstorm how to get you unstuck. If you don't have a project but just want to simply write, that's absolutely fine; we'll discuss what you're interested in, and how to generate and see your ideas to fruition. For each subsequent session, you'll have an assignment to work on, either connected with the project or free-floating. The subsequent sessions will be devoted to fleshing out the project. If you get new ideas for new pieces along the way, great. We can make detours to pursue new ideas, or discover if these things will feed the project. Everything serves to further. Toward the end of the run we'll begin to think about where to send the work, if that's what you'd like to do. If you don't want to send it anywhere — perfectly fine. There’s nothing wrong with writing for your own pleasure.

For the online workshop, you'll send me one piece per week that I'll make comments on, and we'll go back and forth in discussions until the following week, when you'll either resubmit that piece or send a new one. As with the at-home workshop, I'll suggest ancillary readings/model texts and give you weekly assignments. And toward the end of the run we'll have the same discussion about where to place the work, if that's what you want to do.

The price for the at-home workshop is $500; the online is $600.

The Virgin Formica ... out at last!

2008-04-08T08:39:00.001-07:00

Please come to the Hanging Loose book party, celebrating The Virgin Formica and the other recently released and fucking brilliant titles:

Indran Amirthanayagam's The Splintered Face: Tsunami Poems
Marie Carter's The Trapeze Diaries
Michael Cirelli's Lobster with Ol' Dirty Bastard
William Corbett's Opening Day
R. Zamora Linmark's The Evolution of a Sigh
Tony Towle's Winter Journey

Friday, May 2 from 6-8pm at Teachers & Writers Collaborative
520 Eighth Avenue, Suite 2020 (between 36th and 37th Street)
New York, New York

FREE!!! LIQUOR!!! ILLUMINATING CONVERSATIONS WITH DRUNKEN POETS!!!

Flarf Is Life — Flarf Festival '08

2008-04-08T08:35:00.000-07:00

FLARF IS LIFE
2008 Holistic Expo & Peace Conference

THURSDAY, APR 24, 8 PM, DIXON PLACE, 258 BOWERY, $8
Film, neo-benshi, and theater by:

Brandon Downing: Two new short films
Rob Fitterman: Film: Bisquick / Bismarck
Nada Gordon: Neo-benshi: "Uzumaki"
Mitch Highfill: Play: "The Secret History of the '60s"
Rodney Koeneke: Neo-benshi: "Mary Poppins"
Michael Magee: Play: "William Logan: A Sedentary Life"
K. Silem Mohammad & Gary Sullivan: Play: "Chain: A Dialog"
Kim Rosenfield: Neo-benshi: "Meglio Stasera / The Libido Theory"

FRIDAY, APR 25, 7 PM, 300 Bowery, buzz "Sherry/Thomas"
Publication party for new books and DVDs by:

Brandon Downing: Dark Brandon (DVD)
Mitch Highfill: Moth Light
Sharon Mesmer: Annoying Diabetic Bitch
K. Silem Mohammad: Breathalyzer
Mel Nichols: Bicycle Day
Rod Smith: Deed
Gary Sullivan: PPL in a Depot

SATURDAY, APR 26, 6 PM, BOWERY POETRY CLUB, 308 BOWERY, $8
A Segue reading to benefit Bowery Arts and Sciences, featuring:

Shanna Compton
Katie Degentesh
Benjamin Friedlander
Drew Gardner
Nada Gordon
Mitch Highfill
Rodney Koeneke
Michael Magee
Sharon Mesmer
K. Silem Mohammad
Mel Nichols
Eiríkur Örn Norðdahl
James Sherry
Rod Smith
Christina Strong

With music by the Drew Gardner Orchestra and The Saw Lady.
Hosted by Brandon Downing and Gary Sullivan.

This benefit reading will help keep Segue readings at an affordable $6.

Bettye LaVette in the Allen Room/Jazz at Lincoln Center, February 8, 2008

2008-02-10T15:53:00.000-08:00

There’s a strange magic about the years of toil, heartbreak, and humiliation—but only when you can look back on it all from higher ground. For Bettye LaVette, with her backstory of unreleased albums and singles, cancelled tours, and a log-jammed career, her appearance at Lincoln Center last month came as a much-deserved Cinderella finish.

Her comeback began in 2000, with the release of her mysteriously shelved 1972 Atlantic album, Child of the Seventies, continued through 2005’s magnificent I’ve Got My Own Hell to Raise, and has finally reached its perfectly pitched crescendo with her Grammy-nominated The Scene of the Crime, which debuted at #1 on Billboard’s Blues chart. Just writing these details gives me a chill, as did seeing her sing in the Allen Room in front of floor-to-ceiling windows with a glittering length of Broadway at her feet, as part of Lincoln Center’s “American Songbook” series. And, judging by the response she got, every single person in that audience must’ve felt the same. But at the same time there was a feeling of everyone — LaVette included — holding their breath.

The last time I saw LaVette perform was in Paris in 2006, at the venerable Montmartre music hall Le Cigale. At that show, she wore the years of toil, heartbreak, and humiliation on her sleeve—with attitude: She introduced her 1962 song “You’ll Never Change” by saying, “This was my second recording, and it did not sell one copy. Not one. Don’t know why you all didn’t buy it.” At her New York show, standing in that elegant room before that incredible vista, she said, “You could never make me believe forty years ago when I was living on the streets of New York that someday I would be here.” But here she was, demonstrating from the very first song perhaps why her career had stalled, but likewise its uncompromising greatness, as she kicked the band into Free’s “The Stealer.” Her material has always been eclectic: Neil Young’s “Heart of Gold,” Ron Davies’ “It Ain’t Easy” — covered by Three Dog Night and Long John Baldry, but maybe best known for sitting weirdly at the end of Ziggy Stardust — and Kenny Rogers’ “Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was in).” And on The Scene of the Crime she retools Elton John and Bernie Taupin’s “Talking Old Soldiers” in a way that makes the song utterly her own story. That night, her interpretation of “The Stealer” showed off her genius: by turns funky and rockin’, while all the time referencing gospel and blues. She reached back into the bad old days a magical three times, first for 1965’s “Let Me Down Easy,” her signature song, and then even further for “My Man—He’s a Lovin’ Man,” the single she cut at age sixteen, and then to “Right in the Middle (of Falling In Love)” from her only Motown album, 1982’s Tell Me a Lie. “Close as I’ll Get to Heaven,” from her 2003 W. C. Handy Award–winning CD A Woman Like Me took on new coloration. When she performed it at Le Cigale it was bittersweet — perhaps this was as close to heaven as she was gonna get — but here, with the city at her feet, it was as sweet as a triumphant homecoming, especially when she sang the line “This time for sure I know I’ve broken through the right door,” with everyone at the tables in front smiling and nodding.

She followed that up with “Before the Money Came (the Battle of Bettye LaVette)” from The Scene of the Crime. As the title announces, the song, written by LaVette with Patterson Hood (of the Drive-By Truckers, her backup band on the CD), chronicles the bad old days and celebrates success—with reservations:

There was a time when I would call it luck
 If I got me a gig for fifty bucks 
Now I got all these big decisions to make 
Never thought success would be hard to take

When something appears, something else disappears, and at this stage of the game some artists have suffered some sort of loss. Often it’s their talent. But that’s not the case with LaVette: Her voice is more powerful than ever, her interpretations of material more revelatory. As at Le Cigale, she sang her final song — Sinéad O’Connor’s “I Do Not Want What I Have Not Got” — alone on the stage, a capella, with special emphasis on that last word, “got.” In 2006 she was almost there. Now, here, what will success’s strange magic impart and at the same time take away? It’s an interesting moment for Bettye LaVette, and for all those who’ve been with her this far.

Annoying Diabetic Bitch and Sonnetailia -- the Book Party!

2008-01-09T12:01:00.000-08:00

Sharon Mesmer and Marc Nasdor cordially invite all of yous
to fête with them on the occasion of the release of their books

Annoying Diabetic Bitch (Combo Books)
Sonnetailia (Roof Books)

Thursday, January 24
8pm
Mehanata Bulgarian Bar
113 Ludlow Street
NYC

F/J/M/Z trains to Delancey/Essex
Free admission until 10:30
Cash bar
Eugene Hütz of Gogol Bordello DJ-ing at 10:30

Drinkin’!
Dancin’!
Rockin’!
Aww yeah!

More info:
http://www.myspace.com/mehanata
http://virginformica.blogspot.com/

Our Celebrities, Our Celebrity Cheese™

2007-12-20T07:21:00.000-08:00

The more corrupt our country gets
the more we love Our Celebrities —
their jobs, their haircuts,
their money.
One year is as another,
and it becomes hard to remember
even the death of one’s own mother
when Nicole Kidman’s Botox issues
stand firmly in the way.

Let's face it: we hate our fat people,
but we love Our Celebrities.
Posh Spice's love life
is more on our daughters' minds than dolls are,
and every damn day
Brangelina dies a little for our sins.
Yea, though I be surrounded by despair,
I shall not let it engulf me,
for you shall take my sufferings from me,
George Clooney.
The darkest and harshest of life’s events
are simply mysteries of gentle benevolence.
Hasn’t Christina Aguilera ministered to this?

When Our Celebrities heard that England
was at the bottom of the European Tree League
they sprung into action with five thousand pounds
of nutrient-rich goo sealed in lard
and swirling with bacteria.
That’s how Celebrity Cheese™ was created.
Celebrity Cheese™ has become the most important
of all celebrity cheeses
in the post-Diana celebrity cheese-making genre.
Celebrity Cheese™ is milk's leap towards immortality.
And somewhere in the world today
lives a Celebrity Cheese Child™
who will change everything.

Our Celebrities are regularly asked,
"Do you make and eat your own cheese?"
Whitney Houston, for example,
packages and finishes her own cheese logs.
And Robin Gibb wants Bulgarian sheep milk cheese
in his dressing room on the day of his concert.

What cheeses would you like to see
in Celebrity Cheese™?
What cheeses would you like to see
in Celebrity Cheese Deathmatch™?

Today I got calls from David Bowie,
Melanie Griffith
and Celebrity Cheese™.
Whose do you think I answered first?

With their basic human themes,
Our Celebrities are one of our most powerful
and personal ways of working out
what we feel about celebrity.
And cheese.

So let's cozy up in celebrity style,
in love with every living being in the universe.
Let's take a good look at Alec Baldwin's chart
to better understand why he would mouth off at his kid.
Yes, there is a lot wrong with this picture.
But I think you'll understand that if I suddenly slip into
my dirty ballerina flats and stained sweater
it's only because I love Jennifer Garner.
I love her and Victor Garber.
I love her and Ben Affleck together.

What is my message?
That we are living in The Great Celebrity Days,
and let’s hold ourselves to that power which gathers
on the celebrity side of transcendence.
Let's drink our fill of love ‘til morning.
Let's gorge ourselves on terrible perfect apples.
And let's accessorize!
Because the ability to accessorize
is what separates us from non-celebrities.
And cheese.