I don’t know much about Stephen Berkman, except that his other-worldly images have the power to make you smile with inspiration and freak the hell out of you at the same time.

Most interesting is how he gathers heavily from the late 1800’s to create a vibe of surreal whimsey, particularly his use of old-timey ambrotype technology (positive image burned on to a sheet of glass, as opposed to daguerreotype, in which the image is exposed to polished silver). I couldn’t decide on which image I liked the best, so I just included all my favs. Here’s to a delightfully nightmarish weekend!

I pulled all the old books out of storage to find a few gems:

Ugh. Kinda gross. Anyway I thought I’d take this opportunity to dig through muck and find a few modern classics that I never completed. Let the failure begin!

Drop City by T.C. Boyle

Man, I must not have gotten far in this one cause save for a small fold on the upper right corner my copy of this book looks like it came right off the shelf of the book store. I’d always heard Boyle was supposed to be one of the funniest writers of his generation. I guess that’s what motivated me to pick up Drop City in the first place. When I think of funny I don’t think of spending a few dozen pages setting the scene of the novel: a group of 1970’s hippies on a commune setting out to colonize Alaska. That, and I think around the time I picked up this book I had jsut finished reading an issue of Vice that was devoted to destroying the baby boomer generation, so I was all, “fuck these self-diluted people.”

Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

I think I picked this one up cause it seemed like a good book to have under your belt to talk about with girls. I’d say the same about 100 Years of Solitude, which I enjoyed the shit out of. I thought to myself, “For some reason babes love the fiery latin rhythms that GGM is capable of throwing, so why not familiarize yourself? You might learn something.” Turns out the only thing I learned was that unrequited love has never been so boring. Thing about Marquez is he’s real hit and miss. 100 Years of Solitude may be one of the best books I’ve ever read, but Love and Other Demons? Holy shit, what a stink pile.

Humboldt’s Gift by Saul Bellow

I’ve no excuse for not finishing this one other than being downright lazy. It had everything going for it: set in Chicago (a town I was in love with at the time), a narritorial voice that gripped you like an old friend putting his arm around you and walking you to the bar to buy you a drink, and Saul Bellow, master storyteller. I need to read this one. I will read this one. Lemme just check out these lolcats first. Goddamn internet.

Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

I just recently met Alix Soubiran and she’s not only a delightful person but she’s also a fantastic artist. Go check out all her patron saints and animal circus’s.

Sheba came down to FL for her summer vacation. She’s posting all the ups and downs, twists and turns, highs and lows on her blog. Check out part 1, wherein I conquer nature, and part 2, wherein the beans get spilled concerning a crush I have on a local barista and I almost get murdered by a snake.

Photographer Liz Wolfe’s world is one filled with delightfully horrific confections and sequined tampons. If I had a nickle for every time I typed that sentance…

Check out her collections of sugar and creatures here.

Welcome to a semi-weekly segment wherein I chronicle a selection of modern classics that I have started reading but subsequently given up on for various reasons. Let the failure begin!

Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger

I love, love, love Salinger’s Nine Stories. Probably the best collection I’ve ever read. A true master of character, dialogue, interaction, humor and pathos. But something about his novels never really did it for me. I thought Catcher in the Rye was whatevs to be quite honest. I realize that the reason it was such a groundbreaking book was because of when it was published. Reading that book in 2003 kind of takes a bit of the subversive oomph out of it.

I got about a third of the way through F & Z before I called it quits. I don’t know. I just had a hard time sympathizing with the young socialite crowd of New York in the 1950’s. I know with Salinger there’s an eventual payoff. I just lost patience I guess. I’ll come back to by, my love. Someday.

The Forever War by Dexter Filkins

Probably the most important book I’ve ever given up on. Filkins has been writing about his encounters with Islamic fundamentalism for over ten years now and it’s all in this here book. Every savage detail from a public beheading he attended in a burnt out soccer stadium to wandering the ruins of the twin towers on September 11th.

I don’t think there’s any surprise why I gave up on this one. It’s an amazing book, but I simply got tired of being bummed out and scared shitless when I picked it up.

The Wind-up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

I’ve got very little tolerance for stories that go nowhere. Apparently that’s just how Murakami rolls. The only thing keeping you going in this book is his voice. Slow, languid, cool, matter-of-fact, almost in total antithesis of his American conteporaries who feel the need to belt you over the head with an intense storytelling style.

It’s a little harsh to say that this story goes nowhere. He sets his characters a course, but where that course is going is a mystery to anyone. An unemployed man goes searching for his wife’s lost cat and along the way he encounters a surly nine-year-old girl, a mysterious abandoned house and it’s all  supposed be a story about a deteriorating marriage. Sounds like a blast.

Kind of off topic here but did you hear that he just sold roughly one bajillion copies of his new book?

Man, must be doing something right. Does this make me an idiot for not getting what the big deal is? I’ll give him another shot when his new 1,005 page jam comes out in English I guess. But if there’s a missing cat in it, so help me…

I could go into a whole didactic breakdown of why this is a bile-inducing book cover, but this shithead who’s responsible for decades of shitty music and even shittier people who follow his career religiously doesn’t even deserve that much. All he gets in terms of a critique is this: Given the choice, I’d rather barf up all the cheese burgers and margaritas that ever existed than read this book.

I got these guys to print up some post cards for me for this. If you show up this weekend (we’re at booth #146) I will give you one of each of these extremely limited edition postcards. For FREE. That’s right Chicken Little. The sky is falling.

Been a little boring on the blog this week, I know. Life got the best of me. What am I gonna do? Blog about my life? Yeah, right. The internet don’t care about that. All they care about is this. You know it’s true. Admit it.