Chicagoodbye :(

Au revoir, ma petite cherie. My heart is emptier than the New York Tyrant table.

CU IN 2010 IN CO

Poetry in an Elevator

Living it up while I'm going down to the bookfair...nuh nuh nyeeeah! nuh nuh nyeaaaah!

That is not my favorite Aerosmith song! My favorite Aerosmith song is the one that is a big metaphor for love and sex! That one rocks so hard, oh my god.

SOMEONE HAS HACKED INTO THE CHICAGO HILTON CLOSED CIRCUIT TELEVISION FEED AND IS BROADCASTING POETRY INSTEAD OF CSPAN. We are at Threat Level Red, people! This is like the time in Live Free Or Die Hard when Seth Bullock time traveled from the 1800s and used technology against us! Or when SKYNET set off all the bombs and started the Robot-Human War back in August of 1997 that the Deep South is still recovering from! And what's worse is that the robots like POETRY. We are SO DEAD. How could we let this happen! They were just machines! How did they learn to be sentient beings with an appreciation for depitation (don't be fooled robots! they used the Microsoft Word thesaurus!) and keen rhetorical devices! Today, like any other day we wake up empty BECAUSE THE ROBOTS HAVE TAKEN OUR HUMANITY. You could have at least warned us, Rumi! You're all mystical and shit! I blame your translator. When I see Coleman Barks I'm gonna use primitive man-crafted tools to fuck him up! Unless of course he's a cyborg and his head is kind of like Krang from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and he's wandering around in a exosuit and then he will be really difficult to defeat unless of course I press A and B at the same time to initiate my SUPER-SAI attack (Robert Haas spilled Jolt on the Leonardo side of the arcade console...be more careful next time, BOB!) and then carefully wail on him with my ninja forks until he starts flashing pink, and then red, and then he'll activate his second-boss form and start FLYING and dropping bombs like 'I don't even speak Persian' and we'll all be like 'seriously dude?' and we'll be DISTRACTED by April O'Neil and it'll be like CONTINUE? blink blink blink.

OR we can send Billy Collins back in time to protect a young Kay Ryan who will give birth to the savior of our human race!



Here come my night thoughts
On crutches,
Returning from studying the heavens.
What they thought about
Stayed the same,
Stayed immense and incomprehensible.

They sent him back through time to 1984.
Man. He hadn't even been born yet.
It messes with your head;
Mom and him were only together for, like, one night,
but she still loves him, I guess.

I see her crying sometimes.
She denies it totally of course,
like she got something stuck in her eye.

---

Uhhh....On second thought...maybe I should just take the stairs.

Descending Figure

Is Louise Glück's wrist still broken? Where you at girl? I told you to lay off the tennis! That'll just reaggravate it! Your re-match with Martina Hingis can WAIT.

Hearts on Fire

Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaappy Valentine's Day! If there's anything that us writers love more than love it's writing about love! Love is in the air! Love lifts us up to where we belong! Love is a battlefield! *shoulder shrug pimp fight*

I'm going to propose to my girlfriend at AWP! I'll probably do it right in front of the New Madrid table! I will get down on one knee and my little badge will sway back and forth and turn around and I'll make sure to adjust it accordingly so everyone can see it so that there's an off chance they know my name from '________ Review' or 'Best _________ Volume _____' and will be like 'OMG I LOVE YOU' because that's what Valentine's Day is all about! I will then pull out a BUTTON that I have acquired from one of the many tables that give out buttons and be like 'With this button I thee wed' and I'll pin it on her overly frumpy hand-me-down sweater and I'll try my best not to stab through the porous material but I'll probably do it anyway and she'll be like 'OW...who are you?' and then I'll go hang out with the nice Hilton employee who is serving 2 dollar baby bottles of Diet Coke and I'll be like 'Buster' (his name will be Buster) 'Buster, life is hard...love...love is...strange.' and he'll just nod and maybe he'll give me a free ice cube or something.

OR maybe I'll do it in the middle of the lobby like that one commercial where the guy is like 'I LOVE THIS WOMANNNNNNNNN' and all the pigeons fly away (and by pigeons I mean those who are self-publishing) and then I'll be like 'Hit it Buster!' and Buster will be playing that grand piano and play our favorite song Jermaine Stewart - We Don't Have To Take Our Clothes Off, but it'll be a piano version and soft and sweet and I'll delicately chime in at the 'na na na na nanana naaa naaa' part and as I'm doing this I'll present her with a bottle of Tabasco sauce I got at the Southern Review table and I'll be like 'we are a lovely and efficient blend of tabasco and vinegar, hot to the touch, spicing up anything that we pour ourselves onto, including chicken, fish, crab cakes, omelets, and other food stuffs and also we select Poems and fiction with careful attention to craftsmanship and technique and to the seriousness of the subject matter but shy away from experimental forms because our love is not a gimmick and it can distract from the integrity of our sanctity,' and we'll be in love forever!

OR maybe I'll go to the United Center and do it during halftime of the Chicago Bulls game and Benny the Bull and the Luv-A-Bulls will help me in some hilarious and elaborate proposal scheme and Bill Cartwright and Toni Kucok will give me the 'THUMBS UP DUDE WAY TO GO' and there will be NACHOS and it'll be awesome and have nothing to do with writing with the exception of Mary Jo Bang being there and trying to hit a half-court shot with the chance to win $5,000 and a one-and-a-half year subscription to Willow Springs, except she'll shoot the ball and like a strange balloon mounting towards infinity it'll clank off the shot clock and hit me in the face right as I'm about to propose and now VALENTINE'S DAY IS RUINED!

J/K I DON'T EVEN HAVE A GIRLFRIEND (CALL ME?)

I'm gonna get a lip ring or a baby!

Okay, so I might be living in a cave or in Stuart Dybek's basement, but aren't liprings and babies passe? I mean, I guess a lipring is kind of cool...I mean, it's metal through your lip, but babies? Babies are so stupid. They're just excuses to be sentimental and stop writing about the ecstasy of Guatemalan house cleaners and the intimacy of the image.

If you needed something to jog your 'creative brain', you could've just asked me...watch...volcanoes. See? Easy. Here's another one: Baptists. Those first two are free, other ideas are gonna cost you, uterus-girl.

Go write a poem about your future child, MOM...geez. Running out of ideas much?

Frog Fucking and a Marching Band

I...I don't know what to say.

Shut Up Environment!

Hello Greenpeace worker! I am on my way to eat a delicious sandwich that consists of meat and more meat inbetween some slices of meat! Would you like to come along with me? What? You have a clipboard! Clipboards are great! You can clip things to them AND you can attach a pen to it so you don't have to worry about losing your favorite Mont Blanc! I think Mont Blanc uses dog's blood for their ink! In that case, maybe you would prefer to use a Bic or maybe a PILOT (books) or something along those lines! I don't know, writing utensils are so hard to come by these days. I hear that August Kleinzahler used a mini-golf pencil to write 'The Strange Hours Travelers Keep'!

You shout at me saying 'Writers Like Whales!' which is a logical fallacy! Writers HATE whales! In fact, we are against all members of the Cetacea order as we are against all things that are spindle-shaped, such as cigars and explicitly phallic sex toys (we prefer the Sybian!) In fact, the Muscovy Company was originally a writer's circle who were tired of the constraints of the workshop format and were really looking for another way to creatively express themselves as they had exhausted the intimacy of the image and had done all of the exercises in 'Writing Alone, Writing Together'!

Our favorite hockey team is the Hartford Whalers! Rita Wolf has a #10 Ron Francis jersey in her closet and whistles "Brass Bonanza" before every reading!

Know why you see a bunch of writers sitting in circles in the hallway? Because WHALES ARE SCARED OF CIRCLES! It makes those blubbery bastards quiver in the ocean! It has nothing to do with some semblance of fake camaraderie that comes from sifting through (AND CIRCLING) events in the AWP Guidebook!

Lake Michigan? NO WHALES.

We all think The Decemberists are terrible!

Jonah: published in the August 39BC issue of Ploughshares!

Pinnochio and Gepetto: collaborative sestina in 'Saints of Hysteria'!

Moby Dick is a metaphor for trying to get into that journal that gives you handwritten rejections and all of your friends are like 'Oh, have you tried Indiana Review? They'll LOVE you!' and you grit your teeth like grrrrrrrrr.

Benedict Arnold > Judas > Vidkun Quisling > Marcus Junius Brutus > Heathcote Williams

If he started a literary journal it'd be called 'Fifth Column'!

I guess sashimi is okay.

I hear The New Anonymous is protesting scientology over in Grant Park! Let's GO!

A Boring Liveblog Of A Panel On A Boring Liveblog

11:55: Finish eating aforementioned donut.
12:00: Take seat at panel.
12:03: Talk to Roger, a representative for Hilton Event Services! Asks us if we need to use Powerpoint! I tell him 'don't you realize that powerpoint is an ineffective learning tool? People are too distracted on the fun backgrounds (look bubbles!) and MS COMIC SANS and STARWIPES to pay attention to the material on the screen! Besides, I don't even know how to use the internet!' He arranges our water glasses and pitcher in the shape of an arrow pointing out to the audience! If I ran over that arrow, I would go SUPERFAST and might be able to catch DONKEY KONG who is obviously in the lead after timing that jump at the beginning of Rainbow Road perfectly!
12:05: Close doors. Flick lights on and off to let people know that there's only 5 minutes left to finish your zebra snack cakes and mosey on over to ART where we will be using GLITTER today!
12:07: There is a lipstick smudge on my glass! HOT. I wonder who spoke before me? If I touch my lips to the lipstick, it'd be just like kissing this person, right? Kim Addonizio makeout session HERE I COME!
12:08: Making out with Kim Addonizio
12:09-12:32: Hi and welcome to panel blah blah writing blah the children blah blah you can do it too blah synergy blah blah and someone leaves in the middle of my speech, thanks a lot, it really means a lot, DON'T SHOW UP if you can't stay for the whole thing! Blargh! Also, that woman over there is eating a sandwich! Yum. I wish I had a sandwich. Wait am I saying this aloud?
12:32: Applause! Thank you thank you!
12:33: Applesauce! Thank you thank you!
12:34: Remaining panel members, activate! A bunch of other folks leave, but they look GOTH! Remember GOTH, guys? Man, was that weird. I'm glad that's over. I like your non-functional zippers, lady. Buy yourself a track jacket...now THAT'S a zipper with some function! Or apple bottom jeans!
12:40: HA! You tried to leave and totally knocked over a chair. That's what you get! Shit just got real! So real it was probably John Updike's GHOST.
12:46: Oh look, someone just arrived! UR LATE
12:55: TEXT MESSAGE: 'Italian beef?' Yes and please.
1:10: HANDSHAKES!

That was meta!

HOLY SHIT LOOK IT'S STEVEN KING!

THERE HE IS! THE MASTER OF HORROR!

AWP Wants You Dead/Not Dead

Dear UCR Palm Desert MFA,

Thank you for sponsoring this year's blue neck band thing! It is incredibly stylish and will match the color of my tears later on after the folks at Newpages give me their first ever thumbs down and send me down the Bad Egg chute to the Chicago Hilton Incinerator! Also, thank you for making the blue neck band thing STRETCHY! Wow! I could poke out Anne Sexton's other eye with this! Can you say slingshot? (slingshot!)

However, how can I ever hang myself from the sprinkler in my Hilton room? There is way too much torque and everyone knows that TORQUE is key in self-asphyxiation! At this rate, I'll just fall to the ground and slingshot (slingshot!) and hit my head on the ceiling! Ouch! Oh well...alcohol poisoning it is!

Wait...Mid American Review is giving out a PIZZA CUTTER? RADICAL. If there's one thing Mid-America knows, it's its starch and cheese combinations! Ohio is even shaped like a pizza that you'd make for your girlfriend when you tried to make your homemade dough and then you put pepperoni on it, but she's a vegetarian and is not a fan of encased meats (no homo) and then the NOID shows up and is like 'Hey! Remember me! I was just used in an AWP Liveblog!' and then the creepy plastic post-bariatric surgery guy from Papa John's (I believe his name is Father John) is like 'Better Ingredients! Better Pizza! Better Late Night Talks About Destiny And Fireflies!' and THEN you remember that you read 'James and the Giant Peach' AND 'Maniac Magee' AND 'Encyclopedia Brown Sings The Blues' AND 'Goosebumps: Horror Bug Camp' and so you go to PIZZA HUT so you can BOOKIT and perhaps get NINE FUCKING POUNDS of Pizza Hut lasagna which was approved by unsuspecting Italians (oh no, Italians!) who, apparently, have the tastebuds of someone from Ohio (sorry Ernest Byner) and don't know anything about food ever, because, yes, REAL LIFE ITALIANS go to fine restaurants that serve MACARONI AND CHEESE WITH BACON!

I know what you're thinking though...'AWP Liveblog, Pizza Cutters are too practical and I can't get proper laceration because the pizza cutter's natural motion is to press down instead of across, and besides, killing onesself with a pizza cutter isn't exactly all that cool; if I were to off myself with a kitchen utensil, I would have to go with the much classier mezzaluna, because it sounds much more romantic (ITALIANS CAN'T TELL THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN GOURMET LASAGNA AND PIZZA HUT LASAGNA HOLY SHIT WE ARE FUCKED) and the Inuits used something similar to trim little Inuit children's hair!' And to that I say, wow, you sure do think a lot about cutting tools, did you wikipedia that or something, and then you say 'Yes, I did use wikipedia for that, it is a multi-lingual web-based free-content encyclopedia project that is a portmanteau of the words wiki and encyclopedia,' and I say, wow, you sure do know a lot about wikipedia, did you wikipedia that or something, and then you say 'Yes.'

And SO I give to you...THE IOWA REVIEW LETTER OPENER!

It's a piece of yellow plastic that can be easily broken to reveal a freaking RAZOR BLADE. Also, upon smashing of the letter opener, the plastic becomes a CHOKING HAZARD, so double the death! Hurry up and get to the table fast before the people working the Iowa Review table realize their incredible fortune and start ending their lives after coming to the conclusion that they currently live in Iowa City, Iowa (Regenia Bailey holler back!) and they have spent three years hearing stories about how Mark Jarman once baked too many peanut butter cookies for a function even though Robert Penn Warren was all like 'Mark, don't you think that's enough peanut butter cookies?' and Mark Jarman was like 'No!' and then it turned out to be TOO MANY PEANUT BUTTER COOKIES and isn't that a funny story???

And if those things won't kill ya, those heat lamps will! I feel like an airport bagel sandwich under those things!

A Donut Looks Like A Zero

Why hello Dunkin Donut! You are delicious! Apparently AWP has you listed as a sponsor because your orange and pink signs light up the sky like Valzhyna Mort's smile. I love you so much right now, especially since you have this delightful combo that will provide me with a medium coffee and TWO donuts for less than four dollars American! Wow! In these difficult times, Dunkin Donuts, you are somehow able to provide a little ray of sunshine in my stomach. But what donuts shall I purchase? Personally, I like the succulent lemon donut, however, you appear to be out of this particular type of donut, which makes me quite sad. However, it is for the best, because the white powder will undoubtedly make me look like I have been doing a great deal of cocaine and getting 'Funkdafied' with famous Chicago rapper Da Brat even though she is currently in prison after smashing a rum bottle on some woman (it is okay, Da Brat, Malibu makes me want to break people's faces too! I suggest trying some Mr. Boston! It's made in Boston, the epicenter of sugar cane, so you KNOW it's good!) Speaking of Boston, a Boston Cream donut sounds fabulous! Yes! I will have one of those! And for my other donut, I will have an apple fritter! Apples are great! Did you know that Chicago is called 'The Big Apple'? It's so appropriate! I am so excited for these geographic treats! If only you guys had a 3 Donuts and 1 coffee deal I could get myself a Cincinnati Roll!

Wait. What? An apple fritter is not a donut? What do you MEAN an apple fritter is not a donut? What IS it then? A fritter? What the fuck is a fritter? A fritter is a donut! Wait...a fritter is a pastry? YOU'RE A PASTRY! ANTOINE CAREME IS GOING TO TRAVEL FORWARD IN TIME TO FEBRUARY OF 2009 AND HIT YOU IN THE NOSE WITH A GLASS PASTRY DISH AND THEN HE'LL ESCAPE INTO THE PAST AND NEVER GET CAUGHT BECAUSE IT'LL BE LIKE IT NEVER HAPPENED BECAUSE THAT'S HOW TIME TRAVEL WORKS AND HE'LL FIX IT BUT HE MIGHT STEP ON A BUTTERFLY OR SOMETHING OF THAT EFFECT AND THEN THE WORLD WILL COMPLETELY CHANGE AND NICHOLAS SPARKS WILL BE THE HEAD OF AWP AND THEREFORE THE NOTEBOOK WOULDN'T BE A FINANCIAL SUCCESS AND NO GIRLS WOULD READ IT AND I WOULD HAVE WATCHED THE MOVIE WITH A GIRL THAT WAS TOTALLY NEVER SLEEPING WITH ME EVER BUT I TRIED ANYWAY, TRIED TO ENJOY THE SUBTLE NUANCES OF THE GOSLING-MCADAMS TUMULTUOUS RELATIONSHIP AND COMMENT THAT YES LOVE ISN'T EASY IT'S HARD AND IT'S SUPPOSED TO BE HARD FOR NOTHING! HAVEN'T YOU READ THE TIME TRAVELER'S WIFE!? I THINK THAT IS WHAT THIS BOOK IS ABOUT! GO ASK AUDREY NIFFENEGGER SHE HAS PINK HAIR THE COLOR OF THE DONUTS IN THE DONUTS OF YOUR PUNCH AND JUDY JORDAN OPERATION AND SHE'S GONNA BREAK A BOTTLE OVER YOUR COLLECTIVE DONUT HEADS AND MAKE YOU CHANGE THE NAME OF YOUR CORPORATION TO 'DUNKIN DONUTS AND FRITTERS AND PASTRIES AND AUDREY NIFFENEGGER BROKE MY FACE'.

In the meantime, I would like a marble frosted. Scrumptious!

Black Warrior Review/Bat City Review/Mare Nostrum Reading

This is totally a fire hazard. This is a city known for fires! Their MAJOR LEAGUE SOCCER TEAM IS CALLED THE CHICAGO FIRE. And as we all know, MLS Teams are fully representative of their people! Columbus has a lot of CREWS and CREW CUTS. New Yorkers drink a lot of Red Bull! Tampa Bay used to have a lot of mutinies! Chicago has FIRES.

I wonder what the structural integrity of The Hop Leaf is! I hope it is sound! Structural disasters are rampant and terrifying! Ask a Bostonian about his phobia of molasses! I made a Shoofly pie once and give it to Ted Kennedy in celebration of Obama's Inauguration and it was NOT a good idea! Boy do I have egg on MY face! Sheesh!

At what temperature do writers burn? I say '3', but my friend Dave says 'probably around 320 degrees.' I think he's being a little extreme here! Metaphors are like fuel for the fire! Whoa! That was a metaphor! See what I mean?

OH MY GOD THE FIRE ALARM JUST WENT OFF. Oh, no...that was someone's ironic rap ringtone! I assumed it was ironic because it was 50 Cent's 'I Got Money', which is sooooooo not true, stipend-boy! Unless you got published in Narrative or something! That's GOTTA be a money-laundering business for the Colombians, right?

'We have all of this dirty cocaine money, boss...what are we gonna do with it?'
'Well, comrade, how about we start an online journal where we make people PAY us to send submissions...'
'You mean for contests, boss?'
'No...ALL submissions...we'll call it a reading fee...muhahahaha.'
'Wow! That's brilliant, boss! It sounds shady though!'
'We'll spin it so we'll say that we're an online journal and so you can READ us for free instead of paying money for an actual journal! It's foolproof!'
'But there are really high quality online journals like Blackbird and Diagram and Octopus who offer their stuff for free and submissions don't cost anything!'
'SILENCE!'

Well, it's a good thing those Narrative folks are getting exposed for being a total scam and...

"The gold standard for online literary magazines. In addition to fiction, creative non-fiction, and poetry, Narrative publishes features on craft, teaching, and other topics related to a writer's professional life. Website content is updated bi-weekly, weekly, and monthly, depending on the feature. They also send e-mails alerting readers to the "Story of the Week" — which has recently featured Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Edith Wharton, Stuart Dybek, and Joyce Carol Oates. Narrative is also the only literary magazine currently available on Amazon's Kindle." --Esquire, Jan 22, 2009

DAMN YOU COLOMBIAN DRUG TRAFFICKERS! YOU'LL NEVER GET AWAY WITH THIS!

The fire alarm just went off for real this time!!! Noooooooo! I will carry you to safety Elisabeth Benjamin! All you other losers can burn!

Whew! A false alarm. Must have went off because Hadar Bar-Nadav is on FIRE like NBA Jam! (second NBA Jam reference this liveblog!) DUNK FROM THE FOUL LINE!

AWP Raps!

Bob Hicokblokaz
Kim Addon Eaze-E O
Hayden's Fury
Black Warrior Review
9MM Letter
Haki Madhubuti
Tomaz Salamar in 81 Sound
AGNI
Cash Rules Everything Around Me City
TupeShawtyLo Press
Packingtown Review
Black Ocean
Rita Peanutbutter Wolf
Joyce Carol Bros

I know you can outdo me in the comments! You know how rap works, right???

Registration!

Wow! I am so excited that I pre-registered for the AWP Conference! As soon as I saw that the option was available I was like 'heck yes, the early bird always gets the worm I say and my lady really likes it when I pre-register while we do some heavy petting while we read each other Gulf Coast!' Have you tried fondling breasts and holding an extraordinary large literary journal at the same time? It is an advanced move! Gotta be careful with that ecstasy though! You might get so wrapped up in reading lyric essays you'll leave an unnecessary contributor's note on the sheets! HEYYO!

Let's see, let's just go down this flight of stairs and WHO ARE ALL THESE PEOPLE? This must be some mistake! They must be wanting to go to the healthspa that was so deliciously advertised on the sign in the lobby! I can appreciate that! I went online and bought a PedEgg and buzzsawed those calluses smoother than Terrance Hayes (I know! That's SO smooth!). Also I hear that they're giving out Swedish Massages at the OneStory booth! Have you seen those pink tanktops? H-O-T-T HOTT! If it's anyone who needs a makeover it's me! I gotta get my tweezer right so my eyebrows stop looking like Freytag's Pyramid with a jagged vertical shaved eyebrow a la Soulja Boy representing my tendency for inconsistent denouements!

This is the Pre-Registration line? What the ZZ Packer is this hullaballoo! Man. This is what I get for trusting the Internet! Oh well, at least us writers are a demure and kind people who will not make any noise or rumblings about having to stand in line. In fact, everyone is cracking jokes like 'Wow! This is a long line!' and 'Is this line long enough for you?' and 'I haven't seen a line this long since *insert time you saw some dead poet read at some abandoned warehouse in some swanky city I've never been to*' and I'm all like 'I know! I haven't seen a line this long since I went to David Foster Wallace's funeral...I thought I was getting close to the casket but then I realized I had to read all of the footnotes, and by footnotes I mean everyone in the world giving his corpse one final handjob!' But no, I didn't say that, or else DFW would haunt me from the grave and make me make him grilled cheese sandwiches for NO REASON AT ALL! So, to you, David Foster Wallace, I JEST (infinitely, but not infinitely because that would require an afterlife or ghosts and we already talked about that).

Whoa! An old lady just got DRILLED by a rolling suitcase! You just got SERVED by an American Tourister carrying 800 copies of an undergraduate literary journal chock with lines such as 'warm milk and honey', 'dark is the night', 'azure spider tears' and the words 'cacophony' 'bloodface' and 'ye'! If only you were upended by a bunch of critically acclaimed but difficult to track down limited edition chapbooks by so-and-so, that tear in your eggplant colored linen pants wouldn't be a whole lot more decadent!

WHY ARE THERE SO MANY WRITERS WITH THE A LAST NAME THAT STARTS WITH L THROUGH O!? For real, though! All of these McFlarfannerys and O'Irishes need to go back to farming potatoes (Why did the father potato not want his daughter to marry a newscaster? Because he was a commontater!!! LOL) and quit WRITING about farming potatoes. Who do you think you are, Seamus Heaney? I know Seamus Heaney and you are NO Seamus Heaney! Besides, his last name starts with an H and therefore he would go register over THERE in the heavenly fast moving G-K section and bury us sucka L-O(sers) without shrowd or coffin because that's just how the man rolls. He'll cut ya!

I made friends in the line! One is a writer from Maryland and the other is a writer from California! TWO writers in the same line! Crazy, right?

The person helping give out sleek black tote bags in the G-K looks like Amy Winehouse! Oh, wait, no, she just has black hair and has an arm sleeve! Sorry, I thought I was Paul Muldoon for a second! (DAD JOKE!)

Art Spiegelman hates cats.

Art Spiegelman! In the 8th grade you TRICKED me into learning about the Holocaust, which is, oh, I don't know, THE MOST DEPRESSING THING EVER! Here I was in Silent Sustained Reading (SSR) and there was an option for a comic book with PICTURES in it and I got super excited and was like 'Wow! Perhaps my public school education has not failed me like it has failed so many others...' but NO! There were concentration camps and the whatnot and SADNESS and it made me think about how lucky I am to be an upper middle class white male in the northeast in 1995 and I HATE thinking about that kind of thing! Ughhhhhhhh. You're the worst. There's a reason I pretended I had an upper-respiratory infection during Elie Weisel Week (EWW) and prefer DOOM II to Wolfenstein 3D! (it's for the non-perpendicular walls...also the height differences!)

But the worst, the WORST thing is that you ruined CATS for me (the animal, not the Broadway musical, although it won't be around forever!) In the Maus world, CATS = NAZIS. And holy shit do I hate Nazis. Those guys were the worst! I mean, every once in a while there's a movie where there's a GOOD NAZI who helps people escape or claps when Pele hits that bicycle kick at the end of Victory, but I even HATE THAT GUY because it's like 'Dude!'

My roommate has a beautiful little cute cat! His name is Batman! I love him and feed him and sometimes he sits on my lap when I am trying to read Sharon Olds/look at porn and he is kind of adorable how he meows and rubs his little cat ears on the sides of things. He is the best! NO! HE IS A FUCKING NAZI!

This guy:



NOT FUCKING FUNNY.

This:



No! Don't hang in there! Fall to your death, Nazi! Go spread your hate in HELL! I am not inspired by you at all!

THANKS A LOT ART SPIEGELMAN!

We're Glad You're Here!

I am glad you are here too, Chicago! I'm really happy to hear that you survived that whole 'CHICAGO FIRE' thing (too soon?) and that whole Obama debacle. Yikes! Do you have an Egg McMuffin on your face or what?

I am so excited to go to ChicagoLand! It's like EPCOT but for Chicago! The entire city of Chicago is surrounded by an AMUSEMENT PARK that is Chicago themed! Do you like the CHICAGO WHITE SOX??? Well, why don't you go to Shaumberg and go see the SHAUMBERG FLYERS! Wow! Some guy with a name that obviously ends with a Z asked me if I wanted to go on 'The Moustache Ride Sponsored by Doritos' and I was all like 'YES PLEASE! Where do I get tickets!?!' Chicagoland has an OUTDOOR ROLLERCOASTER like BATMAN THE RIDE except BE CAREFUL because you'd think that the PINK line is safe for caucasians (it isn't) and the BROWN line might make you feel awkward even though your roommate in college was, like, totally half African-American and your ringtone is Flo Rida - Low, but it's kind of ironic, you know, like, I don't really LIKE that song, but yeah, I have it on my iPod because it's FUNNY and it kills at some DJ sets, even though no one really LIKES that song, but it's kind of ironic, you know, but NO DON'T WORRY it's safe for white people! Totally, I swear to you! Chicagoland is a fun environment!

AWP this year is at the Chicago Hilton! It's on Michigan Avenue! Now wait. I know what you're thinking 'BUT LIVEBLOG! CHICAGO IS IN INDIANA! HARF HARF HARF' but you must know that the Chicago Hilton is shaped like a Freezy Freakie which is the same shape as Michigan! Also, Philip Levine was born in Michigan! I don't have a joke to say about him except for he's OLD! haha

I'm so excited to see the great city of Chicago! I'm totally going to re-enact the opening credits of the TGIF Sitcom 'Perfect Strangers'! Playing the part of wacky crazy cousin Balki Bartokomous will be ME and the part of 'Cousin' Larry Appleton will be Sven Birkerts! I'm gonna be all like 'Chicago or Burst' and he's gonna get in his Mustang and look whimsical because sometimes you just feel like some kind of change, and then we're gonna go for a run because nothing is gonna stand in our way and I'll pet a police horse and then he'll read the Chicago Sun-Times and be like 'JAY MARIOTTI IS GONE FUCK YES' and smile and the wind will blow us over (it's the Windy City, LOL) and then we'll run to Wrigley Field and I'll be like 'do you have your tickets' and he'll be like 'yes i have my tickets' and I'll be like 'are you sure?' and he'll be like 'yes', and then we'll run and cheer and watch newly acquired Aaron Heilman blow a 5 run lead (walk, walk, single, sacrifice to left, double, walk, infield hit, single scoring two, fielder's choice, fly out) and then we'll spin around in the revolving door in the Hilton with the weird globules of something trying to get me to eat a 32 dollar omelet represent ice or water or something and just wind up looking like milky discharge and then we'll get on TUXEDOS and go to the theatre and it's my life, my dream, and nothing is gonna stop me now until he gives me a nice personal rejection from AGNI but it'll be illegible and then we'll run into HARRIET WINSLOW and no one will give a fuck about us anymore because it's all about URKEL, who will be played by Aleksander Hemon and there will be a great episode later where he will step into a 'coolness machine' codenamed 'The Lazarus Project' and he'll turn into 'Alex Heyman' and he'll totally hook up with Laura and the audience will go 'woooooooooo!'

We Fly High!

OMG HI! Did you miss me? I know it's been a long year since NEW YORK CITY NEW YORK but I'm sure you've done okay! Did you get that thing you wanted to get published? Good! What about the book? Well that's okay, I'm sure someone will LOVE it! Did you sleep with that cute boy from the INTERNET? Oh!

I am so excited to take an AIRPLANE to Chicago Midway! I wonder if I can play various fun arcade games from the mid 1990s there! Perhaps I can play a wonderful game of NBA JAM and my shoes will light up like the color of the team that I'm playing as (WHAT THERE IS NO MICHAEL JORDAN??? WHO IS THIS HORACE GRANT GUY? AT LEAST HIS GOGGLES MATCH UP LIKE HIS SHOES!) when I use TURBO and then maybe I can play MORTAL KOMBAT 2 and Scott Russel Sanders will be like 'GET OVER HERE!' and I'll be like 'no! use your force of spirit to get me over here not some harpoon like a lazy man's John McPhee' and I'll punch his head off three times (forward forward down up low punch low kick block) and THEN and ONLY THEN will Sandra Beasley love me for who I REALLY AM! Yesssssss.

But first the airplane ride! I am flying Southwest! But I am NOT flying Southwest! That is ridiculous! If I were flying Southwest, I would be in MEXICO and we all know that AWP 2012 San Cristóbal de las Casas is still MATH years away! Besides! The world might end and then I might NEVER hear back from Notre Dame Review! All aboard the Dreamspell Express! Woo woo!

NO! That is a train sound and I am on a plane! What do I read? I did not bring any reading material :( :( :( because I'm gonna get SO MUCH READING MATERIAL :) :) :)

Inflight Magazine! Yessss! Spirit! That was a good movie about a crime fighting Supernatural breath that teamed up with God and Jesus and eye-fucked Eva Mendes! It was based on a comic book! HEY WHAT THE HECK IS STEVE ALMOND IN HERE?

Steve Almond is in my in-flight magazine! WOW. Not That I Asked for you to be in there, Steve Almond (see what I did there?) You seriously are everywhere! You are the HPV of the literary world; benign but tainty!

This is kind of like when William H. Gass was in SKYMALL! You really need to get yourself an underground mole deterrent when you live in the heart of the heart of the heart of the heart of the country!



Oooh...and then there's the HairLaser as used by Albert Goldbarth!

BEFORE



AFTER



Wow! What a difference Albert! That's amazing! Sadly you will never see this because you are a Luddite and believe the Internet is for real estate moguls and bunnies! THERE ARE PEOPLE ON THE INTERNET WRITING STUFF ABOUT YOU ALBERT. KABOOM, BITCH, WEBLOGGED! I am going to make you a FACEBOOK page, Albert, and I'm going to make you send out 'LIL FARM REQUESTS' to everyone and everyone is going to think you're an idiot for falling for Internet Horticulture! I will have my sweet revenge for when you said that all the girls at AWP are out of my league in ATLANTA (this is a true story!) And this revenge will be carried out on the INTERNET! And for the record, I HUGGED AN EDITOR OF A PROMINENT LITERARY JOURNAL, OKAY? And she was HOT!

Ding! You are now free to move around my BALLS.

I LOVE AWP

We Chicagoing!

Do you get it? Chicago! Going! Chicagoing! Chicago-ing! It was so much better when Common rapped it!

For all of your livebloggggging needs WELCOME SUCKERS (THIS IS SOMETHING THAT COMMON MIGHT SAY!)

You see that domain name, baby? We are thinking about THE FUTURE! The children are the future! Incorrect! The AWP Blog blogspot name without DATES are the future! You can't pigeonhole this!

Remember when Dr. Dre was all like 'It's the CHRONIC 2001' and we're all like 'WOW, CHRONIC 2001 THAT'S THE FUTURE' and now 2001 is LAME because of ENRON and The Concert for New York City, "a celebration of the strength, resilience, and pride of New York and America," and we're all like 'THANKS DR. DRE I JUST WANTED TO LISTEN TO THE CLEVER RHYMES OF KNOC-TURN'AL BUT NOW YOU'VE GOT ME ALL BUMMED OUT.'

So we're avoiding that! There was no 'awpliveblog is taken...how about awpliveblogapple.blogspot.com or awpliveblog696969420.blogspot.com or awpliveglog.blogspot.com' This be original!

Chicago! Let the FINAL COUNTDOWN (GET IT BECAUSE IT WAS THE BULLS SONG WHEN THEY CAME OUT AND THEY WERE ALL LIKE AT SMALL FORWARD AT 6'6 FROM NORTH CAROLINA CHEROKEE PARKS!) begin!

It is SO on, Wednesday!

AWP LIVEBLOG 2009

Oh best believe we be back at it...CHICAGO STYLE!

To relive the memories and heartbreak of AWP NEW YORK, get to this: awp2008.blogspot.com.

-B