Perhaps one day I will be selected by some council somewhere, maybe the Masons or guys in robes who use big words, have platinum library cards and have secret meetings. Some God somewhere down the dusty road will chooseth to grant my heartfelt words to be included in a widely read kind of New Yorkish, phenomenally wondrous, monstrously important, Algonquin-like - not to mention wildly entertaining - literary offering.
Just maybe.
So I wait. And write, and listen and live and write and read and hope...and keep all the fingers and toes that God has bestowed upon me pretty much crossed, which makes it entirely impossible to purchase the proper width shoe and glove size.
Awarded a Toronto Arts Council Grant. Go figure. Quelle surprise!
I opened the letter and it started with, "I'm pleased to inform you that..." I couldn't help but assume the rest of it had to be positive. Though, in my negative and mopey parallel universe, the completed sentence sounded something like: "...you are a gargantuan goofball and should give up all hopes of being any kind of writer, you unfortunate man-child." I got lucky on this one. Good day.
Invitation to the 215 Festival in Philadelphia.
We're off this weekend to take part in the 215 Festival in Philadelphia. I've been invited to read at one of the events on the Saturday called the "Tossed Art" event. I'm on just before Neil Pollack, which is good, I guess, because he's kind of a draw, and well, I'm not. Not yet anyway. Jonathan Ames, John Hodgman and the usual suspects will be there, along with a slew of cats I've never heard of but am interested to meet. Should be a trip.
I'll be reading one of my cynical but heartfelt essays on Thanksgiving and something from my book. I'll report back once we're home in one piece. I'm brimming with glee and merriment. And nerves. *Note to self: Bring fresh socks and underwear and convey your passion for the word sincerely.
Planning to hunt down and ingest this Philly cheese-steak concern I've heard so much about in a 'George Plimpton kind of participatory-journalistic' sort of way. As Homer would say, "MMMMmmmmm cheese." (Not the Iliad guy, the heavy set, pudgy-fingered, slothy one).
Thanks to all who have staying in touch. It's nice to have inspiration around me.
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A L S O . . .
I just picked up these two gems, which would be journalistically irresponsible for me not to share with you. A Canadian fellow named Graham Roumieu, put out something called 'ME WRITE BOOK: It Bigfoot Memoir'. I'll just tell you that there is a forward by The Loch Ness Monster and the illustrations are that of a mental patient sniffing Neo Citran. It's original and amazing, grotesquely off-the-wall and life affirming. Finally, a side of Bigfoot humans have not heard of before: an important read for the new millennium.
Then there's the new-fangled DFW (David Foster Wallace) called, 'Consider The Lobster and Other Essays': the funniest, albeit most disturbing, full-on investigative journalism correspondent stuff; the first yarn comes from the Adult Video Awards in Las Vegas, where a good deal of his reporting is astrally projected onto cocktail napkins. So good, such fun, a three-ring-circus of virtuoso talent, flowing and unpredictable brilliance, a mad mind in flight, at times into the length of an entire page of twisted and phenomenally rapturous gonzo gastronomity Wallace is so famous for. *Note Look up Gastronomity. I'm betting it ain't in no dictionary. I bought a dictionary last week at a garage sale, it had no L and most of X to Z was torn out, but I figured it was a steal at $10. Dear Diary: Is this wrong?
Still, Most Sincerely,
Tim
P.S Also just got the new McSweeney's sent to me. One is a DVD Magazine of Unseen Things - those innovative clever bastards - and the other is their #18 edition. They inspire me, keep me breathing and afloat, honestly, when a friend first introduced me to A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and Infinite Jest, and I saw how authors can push the envelope, go against the grade and basically fuck with the classic boring standard form, it really got me thinking. I owe a lot to them, those cats. They got the kernal snapping, so to speak. It led to my idea, the good old Scratch 'n Sniff Pop Up Book for Adults, or those in Mid Life Crisis; they opened a whole new genre, more charts, graphs and illustrations, audio inclusion plus absurdly gargantuan footnotes, all that. That's where the fun begins, when you can really see an author's mind become unglued on the page.
Thanks for reading, and listening, have a great weekend and enjoy.
Would love to hear back from you. I am in a field waiting for The Great Pumpkin, which is astronomically retarded and full-on just crazy as it's monumentally freezing and it ain't no where near October. What's a man child to do? I have no excuse, other than I am an only child and did not get the guidance necessary or the Coles Notes sorely needed to survive this life. Oh well.
