Watch Your Mouth

I like the idea of stopping a conversation by saying "Watch your mouth!".

Mike Is Pathetic And Loves No Age, Finally, And Believes The Generation Right After His Is Probably The Emo Generation But He Likes People Who Sing Out of Tune (And He Knows Alot of Emo Dudes Are Way Not In Tune But He Likes Malkmus not-in-tune as Opposed to Conor Oberst not-in-tune, There's A Huge-ass Difference)

So how is this No Age band doing basicly the same thing that at least alot of other indie bands are doing, and yet their music is so fucking good?

Take "Cappo". Off-kilter guitar and drum stomping: Check. Loping teenlove tempo: Check. Two people in the band: Check. Sort of introspective lyrics: Check.

Sorry. It's not them, it's me.

But it all sounds so, I don't know, youthful. Kind of like if the Ramones were born 30 years later. No, if the Ramones grew up on Dinosaur Jr. No wait, if the Ramones grew up on Sonic Youth.

Oh and I only have half of Nouns. You know... and there's half of Weirdo Rippers, a more open-ended affair, psych-....

Man that one Flying Saucer Attack song "Come And Close My Eyes" used to really make me wish I had a girlfriend. It's one of those songs that makes you wish you had a girlfriend. Let's see, "Let's Save Tony Orlando's House" that's another one. This can all be googled.

But "Come And Close My Eyes" is in a peculiar wish-I-had-a-girlfriend or WIHAG category, which is the post-apoclyptic wish-I-had-a-girlfriend category. Pretty much, listen to Sonic Youth say circa Sister and you get my drift.

Maybe someday all of our girlfriends and boyfriends will post-apocalyptic girlfriends and boyfriends is all I'm saying. And we can listen to No Age, then.

Salacious Banter Update

I haven't informed Karl of this yet, but Salacious Banter Readings from now on are going to take place here.

Dream Punt

I've always been fascinated and perplexed by how to act. As in the "...don't know how to act", "how you gonna act".

I'm gonna go out on sort of a limb here and put forth the idea that whatever this "knowing how to act" is, that knowing how to act is a way to get your work published, whatever genre. Publishing in the Small Press world is essentially knowing how to move in within groups, how to connect and get one's work published is it not? So I've been thinking that getting the work placed is a social skill. So does that mean that whoever happens to have been influenced by Robert Creeley and was the Prom Queen in High School is bound to have the most chapbooks published?

There is a part of me that dismisses even the premise of that question, and another part of me that thinks that's an exaggeration but says Yes that's kind of the case. But what kind of a person carries around some supposed wounds from High School and applies them to poetry? What could that possibly be other then some kind of passive-aggressive projection.

I've figured out by this point that there are certain basic steps in getting the work published if you don't wanna go the Emily Dickinson route.

1. Correspondences: write to writers; saying what tho? omigodyourworkissoimportanttome? How did you write your books? How did your work get published? How is Bob Perelman?

2. Publishing in a number of literary magazines, thereby letting others get acquainted slowly at their speed with your work, letting them wade into the pool of You waistdeep. (But then is a person their work? Of course not. Goddamit... Fuckit...)

And yet I'm still kind of perplexed at how all this happens, but I'm actually not, I'm just angry at it. I don't know.

After Lisa Jarnot and George Michael

I think there’s something you should know
I think there’s a shadow over your face
from the sweater-print I think it’s time
I told you so

I think that all we have to do now is take
these lies and make them true and make these dreams
into transactions of faith and make these wishes
closer to you and better by me and wish for
the transmutation of the sweater to tell us

something beautiful about the weather at the zoo
and the fashion show and
something beautiful about the weather
in Air Force One and the weather on the tarmac
and the sun which leans in to confide

it’s thoughts about box office records
and quilting in the south and laughter on the fringe

the mania of thus on city buses
feels like the road to heaven looks like
the road to hell and thus the failure
to make us laugh or make us dance
our failure to quilt and sing and
make love in otherwise unorthodox ways

that logs on and simultaneously out
I think I’m back down to earth on this
I think we’re through with singing in the rain
I think there’s someone with a transfer
I think we better ask somebody

After Lisa Jarnot and Scritti Politti

where the money flows toward
the ocean where the money is ready for love

because of the 1980s
that the world is mystifying
and conspicuously passionate
fortifying and with an emphasis on production

leafless done down
bloodless all but the most delicious sequins

comma holding tanks for
conscious elegies rammed forth
by teenage boys and the aunts
and sickly farm implements
and the animals that operate their

solar panoptic contingency
where the money flows toward
the ocean where the money is ready for love
in the ocean and the sequined tears

and the poor old boats
or said contingency in homage
and the brain which is key which is
mysterious and says perverted things

that flood the oil tankers with love that flood
the oil tankers with artificial snare hits

How To Be Lazy Writing About Poetics

I don't know I'm thinking about a crustal abbreviation now for the text. Or the poetics of that smurf-dandy secretion are here already.

Knowing tools or like function. An excitable sex position or classic SNL quote, but either way a bumpkins foot stool for thinkin' rowdy stuff round said secretion. Militant anyway attention span of the already always there wayward passive clicker finger.

To surmise, write poems in war crouch and gangsta slouch.

How To Be Lazy Writing About Poetics

As ridiculous as the dream where Rowdy Roddy Piper is telling Robert Creeley to stop making friends.

Into feelings burgled without and not-in the bounds of your Grandma's depression. Builds bleek food conspiracies into hovelable cock-eyed clinching fingers.

A man stood a bison or weathering his top-spin of simpression. Dupression. Synechdotion.

Happy birthday envelope.

Cold climbing down through a gender specificity.

Joints pooling there corners and curlicues and trying pass on the traditions of haberdashery.

How To Be Lazy Writing About Poetics

It is hard to imagine how poetry in it's own mind. In what wondering filling up glances nervous-like Your Grocer's Shelves.

How to hide green poetry grocer reducer, or find fissionable material for that matter, is poetry's Poetica Ashante Sashe. Poetry grounds finite observations inside little baby human dryers.

That's fucked up. Or that's come into it's weatherable ass-face architecture.

And in blank spots finding new avenue cloisters banana talk spores through forms or reprisal. A ticket god, y'see.

Human squirrel!

How To Be Lazy Writing About Poetics

In the near constant-gathering coming up poetry will who-knows what it thinks in it's own mind.

How To Be Lazy Writing About Poetics

Poetry in Social Star Wars is ultra-complex Jedi training in Jedi training relationships between Jedi jumpsuits in Jedi perpindicular spaces where you earn the right to help so & so hem in so & so's ultra spandex proto-Jedi more fixedly within the globo-not-fascistic-utra-cool-Jedi realm.

How To Be Lazy Writing About Poetics

This blog has become steadily more opaque. Which has been become its format. Which is me trying to articulate myself then essentially musing on some idea of what is essentially dicking around.

If dicking around brings up the rear, it takes on whole other connotations. It could become ego-trippin. But if I ego trip for awhile I seem to invariably end up out of my depth.

Standing tall on the wings of my dreams. Slouching under poetry's wing, which smells like curry and old spice.

TO BE CONTINUED

How To Be Lazy Writing About Poetics

Is there an alienation effect in the company of poets?

In other words, should a poet not be "chummy" with their audience? Making it all a little inside? A little too inside?

A little tutu aboard a whaling ship?

Poets should probably talk to their audience without assumptions. But don't assume we don't know who Jack Spicer is jack-ass! And conversely, Don't assume we know who Jack Spicer is jack-ass!

Just explain who Jack Spicer is and then say, 'y' know... Jack Spicer' And be prepared for Jack Spicer to stop talking to you.

The audience does not want to see the poet talking to other poets, they want to see the poet talking to other poets.

Like, flip it around on em. Yeah, and since you're using a whole bunch of words I don't understand, I'm gonna go ahead and take that as an insult.

This is directed at anyone where I've ever woken with their hand in my pants, when it should be in my poems. This is implicated in my style. It is an assumed Spicerian eye-roll. On a Spicerian California roll.

Does poetry have to have an indentifiable matrix to be written about?

Salacious Banter Reading Series
Thursday, June 26th

Jess Mynes
Michael Carr
Dana Ward

Food & Drinks @ 6:30
Reading Promptly @ 7:30
900 S 5th St.(5th & Walker / Enter on Walker)
Milwaukee

salaciousbanter AT gmail DOT com

French Coat

Aphasia is a byword of patience
a trick feeling, to have compensated
in odds of disturbance. Consent
and mingled popularity

become details to
handsome mercy, the aritillery of
the women in my life. A person of
quality will understand

showing judicious license therefore
not be treated with indifference,
maybe you would have
overt concern if there's such
thing as compulsion. Being welcomed

in a large city gets cold
in my eyes, relying on selective help
one might not credibly avoid.

2.
As sober bait I mustn't be qualified
projecting on what may have
happened within an aquifer. They abandon
the parking or add dependent on enough

double access; the welfare of
a personal condition makes it worth
replying believably or a credible
witness's safety. Waiting for a stretch in the
kitchen while outside

someone is sent to guide them to the
address. Immediate
response gets in the way of visible
excess, as a voluntary buffer
I was determined to listen. Behind on

new year the empathy lines
seem punctured because of
foreign movies.


--Michael Carr

Salacious Banter Reading Series
Thursday, June 26th

Jess Mynes
Michael Carr
Dana Ward

Food & Drinks @ 6:30
Reading Promptly @ 7:30
900 S 5th St.(5th & Walker / Enter on Walker)
Milwaukee

salaciousbanter AT gmail DOT com

Aphids 

for Publico 2003-2008

"not sinking into the ground, mysteriously,
but in the Roman sewers, forever, our home town"

--George Stanley

Aphids are
whatever feeds on the
emptied momentum that
tastes of white pine. Bang it
in your car b-bang it
in your truck
The Easter
LV on a Luis Vuitton bag
explodes with engorging neutrinos and I
see its dove-meat that's gene-spliced to soft Beijing leather.
False fathers husbands believers--moonshine
pours through the dikes, Animiniacs
who? They're the false husbands fathers, believers
aphids leave honeydew
crucibles deep in their features until they're
like astrolabes tending immobile stars.
But you can't judge the Universe
wounded pride blooming like lake district summer
flushed soft & fast down the fucking brass ring.
Golden retrievers explode in the verdure
who can put dogs back together?
Big Dad in Valhalla
the boatman named Sex,
Rasputina
my collar & tag start to hurt.
Tell me dad what should I do with my pleasure?
destroy it, confirming its own malign life
or embrace it by means of
deformative play? It ends well, in war
you learn how to catalogue ships in the dark
describing the plant lice that feed on couture,
where, because we are impure & live
our reveries aren't overcome. But they are
dad I saw the raw data, the tombs flaring
various prismatic fires
their Oceanside camps between Clay St. & Main,
sweating a vicious armada.
No dad we won't eat you
the lights in the Mediterranean, lights in the high
blocks of Over-the-Rhine,
we've been here a long time
amid the Emerald City, amid the walls of Troy
Penelope Nokia Telephone
rings many suitors
with fabulous answers & lies
whisper comely things through the receiver. Hello?
dad the aphids invaded my
arm daddy what should I do I would chill
son &, drink. Recreational love-making
inside a project space
"dusted"
in theory & fact.

Yet later
the aphids have gone
& the goddamn garden goes
on with the imporous
posture of some
politician

I come to this altar piece
Clear eyed and mean
from deep in the mind of a parasite
teasing your dad for his ambulant lock
derive in reverse
a real Sasquach without any
frothing pulling teething
in the mouth. Its only the North Pole honey
its only the summerless agony
how will we
remember
how will I remember
this

I cried again
in school today, they
asked me my feelings for Polaroid pictures
for me they're Victorian things
fairy tale mice with a
sun-ruined Cheshire life gutted
color wheel light for their unstable sign.
I saw their tombs in the dawn (basically)
cradle with all of its blisters in tact
beckons like bubble wrap, pop
the encasements of that
& the honeydew pours out in torrents of pixels
floriated like love's will in "Asphodel", nothing
to drink in what's now just decor.
Sutter Home here
in your Venice, the many-canaled
hollowed out neural city
lasciviously broken
sobriety
comes
down like the church yard nativity, piece
by delirious piece
until there is goose-flesh
all over the Virgin.
I feel it too
in the end of the song
& the lights coming up at last call, that
panic.


-Dana Ward

Why The Simpsons Will Never Get Old

"Texas Cheesecake Depository"

november

Web's sheer
above leaves
spasms to breeze
witch hazel buds blister
blossom yellow pinwheels
sewn threads
lack reluctance
fall forth to froth
of verdant fallen

Morning sky steeps
to smother seconds
after sunrise wash
ashes November snow

white animate
scatter shot

Then again later

sunny

Sunset 4:23


-- Jess Mynes

Salacious Banter Reading Series, situated snugly in Milwaukee's beery underside, checks in with reading number 2 on Thursday June 26 at 7:30pm, as Jess Mynes, Michael Carr, and Dana Ward invade the Saffran Loft Manse bearing an incense of poetry and rapscallionry, with much jollity to follow.

For more fleshed out deet's on the event, check here.

Meanwhile I'm gonna be posting some nuggets from these pote's respective troves in the coming days:

Segway Invite

lets go rent segways
and act all badass

insulting my credit debt and such
as we look over our shoulders

checking for the cops
and for my loan officers

the whole while snorting lines
from The Godfather

such as “You talkin to me!”
“Attica!” “Who is your

daddy and what does he do?”
You know em all and

you can recite them all
but only to geese because

these geese are tripping balls
and you know that in this state

in front of anyone else
You lose your composure

You start sweating, comparing Kenneth
Koch with “duende”

and I have to warn you again
not to go around doing that in front

of the bigshots at the Universitay.

Check it.

Out of Pocket


I been hangin around

without the exact change

in the orbit of what

to lay down

around and in

money troubles being

a close second

within 2/3 of ecstatic

depreciation

just the waiting for

who cares how many

really desperate postal workers

to deliver issue

3 of TIGHT

to my door starring

me and Lisa Jarnot

dodging the weather cells

and drinking the drinks

with specially made shoes

to bump up trouble

by losing thoughts

to the mumbling of

the corrupt referee

who comes around again

having lost alot of money

on the lilacs in spring

I mean wouldn't it be funny if...

Now that he has the nomination, Obama unveiled an androgenous Ziggy Stardust-like alter ego, named like Lance Chlorozone or Jill Absinthe or something...

Pullover

I wear a pullover.
It's not quite "summer"
temperatures here in
Milwaukee yet, so I have
this grey pullover I wear around.

What I was thinking today
is that this pullover might
make me a more peaceful person.
It looks non-threatening
to say the least.

And I can't imagine, say,
yelling at a person
in this pullover, or
beating someone in this
pullover,

or imagine telling someone off
and abruptly pulling it
over my head in an angry
motion before leaving the room.
I can't do it.

How To Become a Poet

First you will need to hand me your card. You should have a card. Come on, just gimme your card!

There are many ways to become a poet. There is no absolute way to become a poet. I believe this.

Hey, you, siddown. Yeah you buddy! (Index and middle finger pointing at own eyes then addressee.)

Now look out that window. That is what John Ashbery would call Nature’s Filmstrip, and he should know. (Pointing at window.)

But in Alabama, the tusks are looser. Here is a picture of Groucho Marx. He became a poet by accident, he stepped in some vaudville!

Now get out your protracters. No seriously. I’m going to teach you all about the geometry of poetry first, before we jointly go into hysterics.

O Captain, my Captain. Who knows where that comes from? Anybody?

Sorry, sorry. (laughter) OK now look at these pictures. This is how poets dress.

Notice the craftsmanship, the finely cut hemlines. You will all eventually feel this sensual and freely espousable. OK get out your hankies and popcorn, people.

Now this is a city. You must move to it, and circulate. Here is a diagram of the heart, some arteries and ventricles.

Notice how the white blood cells can only interact with the red blood cells under certain well-defined circumstances. If you want to be serious about poetry, you will have to open gmail accounts. Open to page 34 of your gmail accounts.

Now these are trees. Trees are our enemies. When you look at trees you should see only one thing, potential poems.

Now I’m going to hand this picture around. I want you to look at it closely, what do you see? That’s right, a sweaty-toothed madman!

And what does he have on that leash, look at it closely. That’s right, W.H.! It’s a pooch!

And why do we need to know about a pooch? Because when you write a poem, the pooch is what you don’t want to fuck. Don’t fuck the pooch, people!

Now let’s learn about the history of poets. First there was Homer, a righteous dude. He had some 40,000 quadragesimal tattoos, all of ladies.

Who can tell me who this is? Oh sorry, that’s Scarlett Johansen. Anybody hear that album, where she does the Tom Waits covers?

I heard it’s not that bad, actually. Now this is Walt Whitman. He became a wealthy real estate magnate, and founded the Charlotte Hornets.

Here is another, of Emily Dickinson. This was before she became Storm from the X Men. She was still on Kill Rock Stars.

And last but not least, take some time out each day. Look at plants and sexy people. A poet always knows who is sexy, and who is plant!

Now go out there and be poets. Burn like origami in the feverish gloaming! Burn like origami in the feverish gloaming?

Kid: Hey it's the dude from Superbad. Hey I loved you in Superbad!
Me: Thank you!

Jeez...

Hairdresser

Stairway to Stardom (1981) - Gloria Huddle

I'll be in New York from 4/30 through 5/5, and I'm reading with my good friend Weldon Hunter at Zinc Bar at 90 W Houston St on Sunday 5/4 at 7 o' clock. So like say hi to me or something. I could end up at your house, doing something like this.

Sunday, April 20th 7pm

Gina Myers & Kevin Thurston

Salacious Banter Salon
(a.k.a. my apartment)
900 S 5th St., Milwaukee

5th & Walker in Walker's Point

1 Block South of National, La Perla, & the Mexican Restaurant District
3 Blocks West of 2nd St & the Gay Bar District(a.k.a. Fun for Everyone!)

Enter on Walker St.

Look for balloons or something.
Come on up.

salaciousbanter@gmail.com
for questions, concerns, my number in case you get lost, etc.

The Wire

I'm now through Season 2 of The Wire. And it seems like something people do alot when they talk about The Wire is try to say what it's "about", because it really is incredibly sprawling and I guess one feels the need to make sense out of it. So here's my stab at it. The Wire is about the fact that there is a certain set of social norms and ways of behaving and moving goods to and fro and moving within late capitalism's infrastructure that have always existed and will always strawberry goodtime John McCain's Honda Gold Wing polaroid-derived funyuns...

And it all unravels.

So I can't really explain what it's "about". It might just be that the corruption and certain codes of "loyalty" that permeate America in various forms (not just in "gang-banging") of palms greasing other palms and hands reaching into pockets, and various territorial pissings bleeding into each other are all so prevalent that's it's hard to discern where It ends and Society begins. Or once you start following the money, you have no idea where it's going to go.

I do have to say that Idris Elba, who plays Stringer Bell, is a really good actor because the character of Bell scares the shit out of me, what with his freakishly unbreakable composure punctuated by the little mouth tics and eye rolls he exhibits when you know that whoever just crossed him is fucked.

I also think about what Kasey Mohammad said about The Sopranos, how by the end of it everything is "so totally beyond fucked", and that that is basically exhibited in every frame of it. And how The Wire has that in an even more all-encompassing, wide-swath-cutting way, how it seems like it has an even more "hyper-realistic grasp of the American and global now". Or as The Greek, Season 2's main target says, "The world's gotten smaller." So maybe these two shows are just demonstrating (I mean, not to presume their, like, verisimiltude, but what would contemporary HBO drama be without the V-word?) how the sociopolitical phenomena I tried to articulate above have reacted chemically with globalization and mutated in ways no-fuckin-body can even begin to understand but are almost uniformly evil... almost giving some perverse credence to characters on The Wire who use platitudes like "all in the game" and "business is business". The fact that so much of what is perpetrated in The Wire makes complete sense from the point of view of the perpetrater, is another part of what makes it so fuckin scary. But that's pretty grim. And I guess the verdict (for me anyway) is still out on The Wire, since I'm only past Season 2.

Oh, and Joshua Clover has a pretty interesting post about television as the new long form here that incorporates The Wire.

Start/Stop Making Sense

Sometimes I think my problem is that I look at things and don't see that they make sense, or do so at least out of a feeling like I don't need to see that they make sense, that things really need to make sense, and they really do make sense, but I'm already off somewhere else not making sense, and it just ends up not making sense, or just being something that someone made that doesn't make sense.

How To Prepare For a Cognitive Dissonance

those keys are just near each other on the keyboard

4 5 6 4 8

don’t worry
you did not

“we seek out the best in Christian video
for substance and sizzle”

forget how to count

_____________


The Divide Between The Rich And The Poor

I have my own
probably at least
somewhat misinformed
ideas about it

but my source who
never lets his right hand
know what the left one is doing

says its part of
an increasingly untenable
unassailable
and intractable
unmentionable

Repost from 3/07

On the 60 bus, people at two consecutive stops waved the vehicle by, as they were waiting for the much more popular 15 bus. The first person, a woman in her 50/60s, did a kind of misleading gesture with the index finger, a gesture like "Come here, but then pass by me." The second person, a man in his 20s probably, did a more dismissive be-gone-from-my-sight, right hand swinging low back-and-forth gesture.

Absolute Annoyance in Absolute Space

Lately when I'm in the coffee shop I do alot more thinking than activity. I become that guy shaped by the space around him. Slumped comfortably within irritatons of bendable hope. Hope schmope. I'm not making sense so why should you? One thing we can't measure is how fast this becomes lopsided, in talking grief. Refusable, come-pleteness of the completely Tom Landry memory. One thing we can't measure is how NFL Films fast this slips away. And how everything NFL Films breaks down. And finally it just broke down. Curving back on itself. I don't want to be doing anything in this coffee shop so I leave it.

Fuck it.

The volume outside the next door is too loud. I write slow. Write this slowly. Lumbering reprosed lines. Now I'm writing in New Sentences. Will someone please tell me the difference between NFL Films and the New Sentence? I'm serious that's a compliment. Or, I'm not serious and that isn't a compliment.

Write something about birds I'm depressed.

Means magically feeling sorry for Absolute Space. Sleazily so. In the bendable reforming of it's own Incredible Hulk likeness. I don't know the difference between NFL Films and the New Sentence. I think about weird things y'know, like what if Mr. T and E.T. had a baby. I think it would sound a little something like this. "I pity the fool who doesn't phone home."

Plus absolute annoyance in the refried some shit or other shit, and reverting to Robin Williams.

Needs an ending unlike the R.W. stream and self-consciousness forming there of.

Beach House

I'm really liking this band, uh, Beach House. Uh yeah, they're good, ooh especially that song Turtle Island, like makes me all soft and gooey inside, and that reminds me I have to do a wash. And even though that sentence makes it sound like, oh never mind.

It's just the basket with fresh laundry is getting heavily outnumbered, that's all.

My favorite Beach House songs though, and I haven't heard that many yet, would have to be Astronaut and Turtle Island. Yes, good late-night listening, in a way similar to Blue Skied An' Clear, a Slowdive song I downloaded a couple weeks ago.

Their cover of Some Things Last A Long Time is pretty good. I kind of want them to cover Father Figure by George Michael. No wait, I want to cover Father Figure by George Michael.

Victoria Legrand has a voice that makes me wanna do a wash. In fact it makes me wanna be a wash, be in the wash, or take a bubble bath and pretend that it is some kind of oceanic laundry cycle, in the ocean. Anyway its very pretty and it sneaks up on you. And the last few cooey seconds of Turtle Island remind me, as if I could've forgotten, man, it's really time to do a load of wash. That's laundry's piling up and I don't seem to care.

Hopefully somewhere Karl Saffran is smiling.

Question

You are wearing a pair of those sweatpants that have something printed on the butt. What it would it say?

I'll start it off. Mine would say either CAN'T HANDLE THIS or POST-AVANT. Or P=R=I=N=C=E=S=S.

Maybe DOUBLEMINT. Or KONG PAO.

But not HILLARY 08. Or BEAR STEARNS. Or CHOMSKY.

They could say I HATE SPEECH. Or EX-TRACK COACH DIES. But not STIMULUS CHECK.

They could possibly say YOST. Or BOOTIETASTIC. Or SPRING AND ALL. Or CANTOS. But probably not PERSONAE. Or THE IDEA OF PRINT ON THE BUTT SWEATPANTS AT KEY WEST.

I might consider POET LAUREATE. Or I WAS MENTIONED ON SILLIMAN'S BLOG. But probably not STUFF WHITE PEOPLE LIKE. Or BLACK METAL.

I would need a bigger butt for some of these.

Like for instance if they said WOODLAND PATTERN, which would be totally cool, don't get me wrong.

Has that Grant Hart/Godspeed You Black Emperor collaboration become indie rock urban myth yet?

Some Poetics


I let my pants

fall down

around my ankles

Tim & Eric Awesome Show Great Job

This is pretty much my favorite thing right now. Subsequently I've been watching that Absolut Vodka thing (below) at least once a day, and I can honestly say that it has affected my perception (if I had one) of Absolut Vodka. So it's probably effective advertising in that regard. But I don't care.

Let me see if I can articulate one thing I love about Tim & Eric. They use awkwardness in a way that's similar to alot of comedy today. See The Office (British and American versions), Curb Your Enthusiasm and Flight of The Concords. But in a skit like the one below, the awkwardness (a Zack Galifianakis outburst) is simultaneously framed and interrupted by excessive slurping, glass clinking, a din of ice jiggling, and intricately edited panting in anticipation of more Absolut Vodka being poured, not to mention downright frightening wigs. This makes it more like Monty Python than most contemporary awkwardness and/or topical comedy.

One skit from T&EASGJ, if you can even call it a skit, is Tim & Eric playing, I think, 3 year old boys with toy cars. A middle-aged woman comes down to the basement to check on them. They see her and they start yelling "ooh mama!" repeatedly, first happily then angrily. Then they trash the basement, as the "ooh mama" chant is looped into a song, with a spooky keyboard melody. I won't spoil the end, but that's pretty much all it is.

It might sound stupid. It might be. I don't care. I like stupid, especially annoying stupid.

But the absurdity is decieving. A Tim & Eric episode, at the standard Adult Swim length of 10-11 minutes, weaves together ridiculous tape loops, questionable celebrity impressions ("I'm Jack Nicholson. I like spaghetti & meatballs."), awesome "pumping" footage, and bottom of the screen crawls where Zack Galifianackis reminds you you're watching a show where he plays "The Snuggler", among other things, in a way that's more clever and sophisticated than any sketch comedy I've seen accepting maybe Python or Mr. Show. Season 1 even had a cliffhanger that had ambiguously impaired Casey, of the Uncle Muscles Hour kidnapped by a suspicious man in a van.

Now you might be saying, "Yes Mike, I've seen Tim & Eric Good Job With Your Comedy or whatever its called. My roomate loves it, won't stop watching it actually. And he also somehow managed to eat the entire box of Kellogs Mueslix while I was sleeeping. Besides, I live in Brooklyn and we hear about everything at least 3 months before you do." Well, I am that roomate. I eat your Mueslix.

Some Vibes I Give Off

-post muzak distillation

-necro-limbs

-hort-i-tude

-blanched off/downbeat

-platters of dumb yum

-milk of amnesia

-glorious spoon concupissance

-genial climate change, Alex Trebek breath or No quarter

-lumps

-facelift of animal magnetism

-Aphex Twin politeness

-no diggity

-magic carpetride

-Morris Day on vicodin drip

-literal John Cage

-fat Warhol

-fat David Bowie as Warhol

-never been touched/show me love

-mostly harmless Phil Spector

-Phil Whalen frustration

-the Rite Aid mints

My vibes might come at least partly from Pop Culture. Which is inherently seedy, and in the mind, inherently fecund and feral.

It's at least half-inherent. Focused outward too, tho at a genial-refraction rate of 10.7 to 55.88, they can be more like high-pressure and low-pressure systems mingling. From time to time they're even formally rigorous. These are the challenging days. And finding a form for the form of them.

think: let even that
inorganic tiny hair
go it's myriad ways

already futuristic
fossils of The Beach Boys

let those vibes
clink together
til din

A Vodka Movie by Zach Galifianakis, Tim and Eric

This is this blog's low point.

Physiognomy

How is this pronounced?
is it pronounced like... lasagna?

Song

right eye lid acting up

Song

step inside the chatroom of your mind

Things Poets Like #7

Poets like the rigamarolle' of talent spine reductive theology.

Things Poets Like #6

Poets like making up contradictions that have to do with their diet.

Things Poets Like #5

Poets like, against their better judgement, to be simultaneously reassured, massaged, slapped and podcasted Magic Wizard stories.

Things Poets Like #4

Poets like to imagine that they could afford therapy.

Things Poets Like #3

Poets like proclaiming that they're poets, then jumping into ball-pits, and proclaiming again that they're poets; then they leave a "surprise" in said ball-pit.

Curb Store

What if there were a place that sold curbs called the Curb Store? And this store would sell several different kinds of curbs. It would sell the curbs that, say, are right outside your house, if you live in the city. You could, upon entering The Curb Store, browse several curbs all in a row, each differentiated by size, hue and place of origin. Curbs from New Mexico would be the most valuable, while curbs from New Jersey would be the least valuable. Curbs from New Jersey would probably carry a stigma, cheap, low-grade, only for poor people etc. Eventually curbs from the United States would be outsourced, making those considerations completely moot. People would soon find themselves buying curbs from places they had only previously heard of in filmstrips and postcards, only had any inkling of by seeing them depicted on vintage wallpaper.

These stores would also sell the curbs that come in verb form, say, if you wanted some feeling or sensation to be attenuated or toned down you could put in an order for a "curb action". These "curb actions" would have to be regulated by the government and would be protected under the Second Amendment. The waiting period for such a "curb action" would be 3 to 4 weeks. And in the midst of this waiting period, whatever feeling one wanted "curbed" would slowly dissipate and turn into something else. But this would not stop some people from using curbs for very evil purposes. Some would use curbs to hurt others. And these people would become "criminals" "branded" as such. They would (ideally, this is civilization people!) lose any and all access to curbs for life. And this would be very hard for them because TV shows and commercials would continue to glorify the many uses, both good and evil, of the curb. But everyone, through some vague uncurbable feeling of unanimity, would accept that curbs are a part of life, like waiting for snow to melt and for the UPS man to arrive, which he never does.

Things Poets Like # 2

Poets like the delicate flang of Bob Barker's nipple feedback.

Things Poets Like #1

Poets like pasting cardboard to their asses.

Weirder Than You Ever Thought You Could Feel
for Zack

like someone yelling the food at you
blasting kisses through the doorway
like someone perhaps negative about globalism
like barney’s reefer madness
like bowls of ugly nonstop radio talk
like the vitriol of pagans in que
visitations desire to be written about
talking glamour here, cheap outre space tricks
like feeling like sushi very early in the morning
like it was complicated gloiven
when could you feel weirder
pick up the truckstop phone
with Harrison Ford flustered on the other end
write about the mechanics of poetry
don’t stop believing
a man with leather lungs singing out the century
on the History Channel
which must be owned by Christians
some programming on there we feel a little weird about

Clairvoyancy?

I had a dream that Animal Collective were playing Reverend Green during a Packers game, but Brett Favre had to go up into the luxury box where they were set up and tell them to stop playing because it was distracting him. Later on the day of that dream, Brett Favre announced his retirement. Am I clairvoyant in some really indirect, almost uninterpretable way?

The David/Godard Contingency

Has anyone ever noticed the resemblance between these two "auteurs"?

This Electronica Album


makes me feel all

dark and windy

and gooey inside


like Roger Moore

on a hot day during

the filming of “Man-a-Skin”


my legs become all

treacherous and

wonderful foot filling


my teeth ring

against dead friends’

memory bop


mm-bop as

the wind changes

registers


in the middle of

“The Tiny Tim

Wedding” rehearsal :)


laid out like

sticks in the wood

from the rustic


repeated thrusts

of the sunset

nightmarish gravity


of the outsourced

Chinese hiccup

learning Menudo


in the cheap

garish sunshine

of someone’s video


makes me tum

te tum all

over your car floor

Naychur

Belief in a certain pronunciation of gawd, like when the habitants.

Naychur lunch. Naychur fayble. Naychur wagon.

If nain't your wagon, this naychur is a brother with maysure, cockluck. Pussfelt etc.

Naychure wags or lags folks brokaw bummin. Naychur has yer number. Food doodle space makes peck-a-neck lander craft.

Naychur fiddle. Naychur doodle etc. Give equal time for bro money.

The missing peg-a-leg form. Crux of naychur and dandy artwork. Crux of cave naychur paiynt. Blew chip sawlsa. This gnightmare tewl uwsed in bleu.

This naychur, naychur faint.

Synthesizer

throw down wikipedia, blushing gauntlet
a window of skittles covered in rain

a window of skittles covered in snow
this makes you, the proletariate, feel nefarious

crazy lung excercise learned in tibetan sweatshop
ok the drug drags maybe learn luddism

the look-up style gap well-informed
heavily document thusly paternables’

lilting quench-a-saurous, quench-a-pedia
learn like lovers do, subtract the cold

subtract the burrito, subtract pavel bure
from the field, grow a pair

link to this well-shoveled stylishly
quaffed blog as a learned redundancy

a hazy one-act being as we know
a hazy conjunction of villains

stomp-a-pedia lovelorn lady
writes viciously, reads tenderly

whole oligarchy or potato wall
sundried blush hovering in the hall

winona ryder is pissed, sunkist, starkist.

Synthesizer

temple body music
aphoristic techno, y’know

jungles in the round-robin coinage
boob or bob, poignancy of piano mover’s

back down driveways of candy, where we
were we robo rumor, lily lowell conductor

why not change that soup brain poop
ooh, diss gusting snow, owls commiserate

7 babies collaborated on this
functional ear infection worry

the piano is floating in the gully in a boat
some lanky gentleman serenading

remembrance of things phat
flub up partition, get fired, stump for a dole

likewise skies of perfect meal breath
a girl of echoey freckles

2 midgets sucking off a siberian huskie
in the corner, corners make a firm comeback

a lot of impounded imprezas waking
adrienne rich is all like ah, aah crap

throws keys at attendant, throws metal fingers.

You're missing me blogging about my taste in music over here.

Recycled from conversation: The equivalant of being punch-drunk for an ultimate fighter might be to just turn into some kind of panda-like very cuddly creature.

I want to try to popularize this phrase: "Yo, I'm skittles!" At first I thought it might be used in a kind of celebratory way, but now I think it would be more like an indication that one is freaking out or can't keep it together, that kinda thing.

Synthesizer

synthesizer, microwave me
give me a drug so I can make 7 babies

percolator, later Daddy
caucus my leg about a million feet

flexy accordian doobie this
silk screen a big sky, tongue some argentina

over the shoulder boulder holder
put a wet thumb on the air

record of the year, ripchord
my good yontif, zesty salsa etc.

moog marginalizer, move over
bleed through of radio wake

2 live to stymy bickle’s do
bundchen my poorish scarf out loud

cloudbusting tiny retro chicken
shove thy ninja in another direction

mother hush that fuss
dr. scholl ricky martin

move to the back of the bus.

Dr. Hauser Say


sometimes crank

"Cloudbusting"

not peter out

not break down

enjoy success

My Disordered Mind

If I could take off one booby and give it to you, I would.
I'd give the other to Sherlock Holmes, let him look for it awhile.

dude, the man with a child in his eyes!

dude, where have all the cowboys gone!

dude, the milk-eyed mender!

dude, easy breezy beautiful cover girl!

dude, your precious heart!

dude, cornflake girl!

dude, I don't wanna wait for our lives to be over!

dude, building a mystery!

dude, I need a hero!

dude, he's gotta be fresh from the fight!

dude, total eclipse of the heart!

dude, you're so vain!

dude, in the pink!

dude, god, it's me margeret!

dude, that's so raven!

dude, here's where the story ends!

dude, never is a promise!

dude, this is my night without armor!

dude, your knuckles are like little moons!

dude, it's raining men!

dude, stay (I missed you)!

dude, you're my favorite mistake!

dude, my name is luka!

dude, you oughta know!

dude, I only wanted one time to see you laughing!

dude, I only wanted to see you bathing in the purple rain!

I had a dream this morning where it was my duty to destroy YouTube. And then I got up and watched Elizabeth. Are they in some way connected?

Yesterday being Jack Spicer's birthday, I had the traditional potato chips with sour cream and onion dip.

Lately I'm getting peeved at people who don't dress for the weather. Last night, ok the temp did drop 30-something degrees in 12 hours but still, that's your springtime frat boy outfit, you have to winterize your frat boy ecoutrement for January bro! Don't wear a Vols cap and spring jacket.

And maybe since I last posted, I've become the type of person who blogs about spring jackets and scolds underdressd young people.

This past weekend it was wonderful to see Robert J. Baumann, who brought with him fellow Kansans (is that right?) Robert Knapp, Gabe Holcombe and Chloe Jones for Woody P marathon. Highlights included Baumann's Miranda July soul-fantasy, Karl Saffran's Maximus remixes, and Karl Gartung putting me in my place by reminding me "you should never take WCW in vain". Because just prior to that I'd been shaking my fist at the ceiling screaming "Damn you Williams! Damn you to hell!" Also there was me asking how I'm supposed stir a very hot beverage with no a stick and Chuck replying "convection".

I'm doing a music blog now.

This is a picture of Close Gauge Petcock which is now available. What is it? Words. About 18 pages of them. Pure. Unadulterated. And the author is Mike Hauser, who is me. I'm soon setting up a PayPal account to sell this through, but for now you have to contact me at flabscoresbig@yahoo.com if you want a copy and I will tell you where to send $4, if you trust me.

Since you're probably tired of linking over to this thing and seeing Richard Mulligan (RIP) and his Empty Nest "I'm not comfortable with the men my daughters are seeing" look, I will say that last night I saw There Will Be Blood, and it's pretty fucking incredible. I don't normally like overtly serious American films, but PT Anderson's films encompass enough of the range of humanity that can come through the screen- frailty, vulnerability, delusion, among many other things- to pull off a film like this. And then there's Daniel Day Lewis, whose character is almost like this half-corporeal essence glaring out of the film at you. The more an actor can do with little- facial expression, posture, a menacing gait, annunciation- says something about what makes them worth watching, no? Something I've noticed about PT Anderson is that his films can be both as austere as Kubrick and as open and allowable to human frailty as Cassevetes. It's always kind of a jarring juxtaposition, but jarring in a good way. I guess I'm thinking here of Magnolia which I heard accurately described as something like a huge, messy, flowering of a film where everyone ends up covered in frog blood but also of this film. And one of the amazing things about TWBB is that, unlike Magnolia's glorious messiness, there's nothing I can think of that's wrong with TWBB. I might have to see it again, after that I might not think it's an absolutely perfect film, but for now that's how I feel.

That reminds of my short stint on Empty Nest, a sort of reprise of the Trendee McDonaghee character. Only this time the character was named Chazzie. Apparently Nest creator Susan Harris had seen the erotic cake episode of Night Court and been pretty impressed with my work. So she called to say she'd written this part for me, a performance artist/provocateur who was briefly in a relationship with the character of Officer Barbara Weston, and also whom no retired doctor in his right mind would want near one of his daughters. Among Chazzie's shenanigans was standing in front of a local Arby's and rapping the menu, wearing a fake gerri-curl and a large sign that said No Blood For Schmoil. At the conclusion of that episode Chazzie is arrested by an understandably mortified Officer Weston.

As time went on however, they found they had increasing difficulty distinguishing my "space cadet" from that of David Leisure's over-sexed neighbor Charley Deitz, and after about 4 episodes had my character ship off to Poland to stalk Lech Walensa.

From a 1984 appearance on Night Court, where I appeared as Trendee McDonaghee, poetry prankster and erotic cake maker. Here Dan Fielding, played exquisitely by John Larroquette, views a "Horny Haiku" cake sent to him by my character for successfuly defending a public indecency charge.

"Hey."
(Leans forward, chuckling a little, fondling Mondrian bow-tie)

I've noticed that in trying not to make sense, certain words keep showing up like "ratio" "cornicopia" "trunk" and "dean's list".

The Magical Headache

the space ain’t mine
the space-age rind
you were in the dream
wearing some strange blue pants

in the Play Dome
please-a-saurus

kind of like bewildering oneself
too shy to Heart
to hear dripping

skuzzy beneath pantaloons
you already have that part covered

which anchors as well as
sings it’s name to drug dealers

we are out back of this
in carts downstole wholesale
explaining minks to pardonable succlusion

writing the pot odes
I flesh colorfully
linking oafish cormorants to
the will of the people
illustrated through blended
French Vanilla play-things
pardonable offences many
3-syllabled words make us sanguine
and ready to be fucked

The Ape Consciousness on the
radio knows this
To disinstall it’s image from
the landing gear we try being nice
then if that doesn’t work

the alchoholic refreshments arrive

tugging the skies that build us
rodeo fragments

in the Blizzard cop-to
ranging over many helipads
like dogs marking their territory

cards protect us from our feelings
dazzling all over wendy filmic
getting glossary contact from
fibro mialga speech patterns

Could you hide something?
here put this down your vocals
I smuggled in a little skepticism

_____

The Conscience Of The Race

Theology wedded to itself is happily
some Taco Bell trickery

this is the simulation of events
that would happen were it the bloody case

That we are fat and alone
in post-industrial nightmare

I cheat to get back to safe
Hey No Fair on Sirius

Seriously we’re patrolling some
dirty waters, organising

the fat black night
into faltering pairs of
rummage sale tagged flow

could you borrow this forever please?

Well I don't have much to say. Let's see. I had naughty thoughts in my bed then go up and drank coffee, walked the Corgie, who always wants to smell things and sometimes pee on them, very strategically mind you. I took a shower and rode my bike to Jimmy Johns. I had a Beach Club, pretty good. Some kind of Satanic mix was playing at the Exclusive Company. I bought these cd's:

Kate Bush: The Kick Inside
Harry Partch: Revelation In The Courthouse Park
Deerhoof: Apple O'

also:
K. Silem Mohammad: Breathalyzer, at Wal Mart. (Kidding!)

The Simpsons: The Complete Seventh Season.

From the library, Twin Peaks, Season One Discs 1-3, A Story of Floating Weeds/Floating Weeds (Ozu), Alphaville (Godard), Dylan: Modern Times, Low: Drums And Guns.

Picked up The Onion, Arthur.

Got a little carried away with the old media acquisition.

Happy Holidays. The first few seconds of this are what are mine are usually like.

Damn right. (Scroll down). You know those hacks at Pitchfork be readin my ass. But seriously, compared to the usual list of SNL-aspirant smugabees, this proves why Pitchfork is at least still worth looking at. And now here's where I say that I normally don't give two fucks about "lists man" but ok I was checking a few and will continue to do so because I'm rooting for Person Pitch to get the recognition it deserves.

I was going to blog about "The Menards Guy", but really what can you say. So here he is.

"The breast milk is whiter than the evening shade."

(This is from an episode of the early 1990s sitcom Evening Shade where I appear as Arkansas' Poet Laureate, reading The Autobiography of Alan Alda to the entire cast to mark the occasion of the show's 100th episode. Burt told me afterward that he doesn't usually like poetry readings but he would be checking out some more of my stuff. Later that night he, Marilu Henner and I were joined by Tom Bosley at local watering-hole Hank's Room (owned by then Home Run King, Hank Aaron). I hadn't seen Tom since our days at Iowa teaching workshops with the likes of Jimmy Wright and Phil Roth. This appearance was an important step in my climb to the top of the poetry world.)

I have a receding treasure-trail.

I didn't hear alot of albums from this year, or at least it seems like I missed so much more than I heard, but I can't imagine that any of them are better than Person Pitch by Panda Bear. I was going to write a review of Person Pitch but I almost don't want to ruin it. All I can say is listen to it. It's a wondrously great, inventive, inspiring release. Right down to the great National Geographic collages, and the list of artists in the liner notes. The Times New Viking album was good, though I haven't found myself listening to it as much since the initial goodness. I like the Dan Deacon song that song that samples Woody Woodpecker. I like what I've heard so far from the Fiery Furnaces album.

I heard what I think was a pretty good song from In Rainbows, though I'm not someone who salivates for all things Radiohead. I really liked Jusitice on Jimmy Kimmel Live, which can be found on the YouTube, as well as a Kenneth Anger-ish Fiery Furnaces video for the first single from Widow City. The new Black Dice is pretty good.

Now that I think of it, I liked alot of things. I evened liked Arcade Fire on Austin City Limits (actually I thought that was fucking amazing) and Feist on that commercial, or from that commercial, or in that commercial, or appearing on that..., or rather Feist inspite of the fact that she was hawking iPods during the halftime of some football game, or rather just the song "1234". Yeah it's almost the "Stay" of this decade, but it shys just far enough south of that. The National seem like they might be a good band. The new Animal Collective, which I did go out and buy the day it came out, is kinding of making me go "eh" right now but that may change. At the risk of seeming... square?... "#1" seems to have been a poor choice to perform on Conan. Am I becoming more commercial? I didn't think I was. Oh well I'm just glad neo-garage is on the way out and is being replaced by what seems like more of a bent toward maybe eclecticism and even conceptualism (though we know that "rock" as it can still roughly be called gets carried away with "concepts"). And people are beginning to see what a one-trick-pony the White Stripes are.

Oh and Joanna Newsom. I still love her. She was fucking amazing at The Pabst.

And the My Bloody Valentine reunion? I'm trying not to get my hopes up.

I can't think of anything positive to write. I need help. Commision me to write a poem

I am a Young Hot Shot, writing the Young Hot Shot poems that shoot and ping and leave your shitty retinas smoking. You are befuddled and scratching your head. I just whip off my ray-bans and cackle in your direction.

I am invited to read in Norway, where I single-handedly revive the Norwegian Poetry Scene with my reading of Cat Piss In A Didgeridoo's Dead Dying Laser Cornhole. Think William Carlos Williams crossed with "Eruption" crossed with Goya crossed with Carrot Top. Having inaugurated Language Prop Poetry, I travel on to LA.

While taking a steam with Robert Pinsky and Robert Evans, hashing out the details of a new Laureateship-themed Reality Webcom, throwing out the names of possible co-stars, a Chris Elliot here a David Spade there, I spot my future wife Kelly McGillis.

Off come the ray-bans, my shorts and my future in show business. I do the one thing you should never do when you are the Young Hot Shot. Walking backward lockstep with Pinsky and Evans, fingers snapping in time to a lean walking bassline. I reach back, pull out a diamond-studded pool cue and line up my shot. Paul Newman is jaded, outside the frame.

In essence I reach for Cupid's Rifle, not Cupid's Arrow. My come-ons all fall off Kelly McGillis like so much jello from a lunch tray. She is the lunch tray. I shoot a ping, then a zip, then zap, then ping-zim-Zinn. All of it fails utterly to impress Kelly McGillis.

She is walking away on Lyle Alzado's arm. I am crest-fallen, shrinking back to being just another young poet, another dreamer with a few too many twinkles in his eye, all little-kid wonder and prozac fueled slacker ranting.

Joanna Newsom - New Untitled Track (Live - 10/07/07)

Ok this qualifies as a criteria. I know Joanna Newsom is one of those "devisive" artists. But this song just well, I turn into some kind of retarded, gaping pumpkin whenever I hear this song. As in if you were my GI system and you made an emergency call while this song was playing, I'd probably have to do a load. Let's just leave at that.

Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! - Dads

Ok at this point I'm very drunk and angst ridden. I may be headed for a nervous breakdown or I may just be laughing and howling at this because it's fucking hilarous.

Terrell Owens throwing popcorn in his face is still the dumbest touchdown celebration ever.

Mmm fractal.

Paris


That one's a little inside

and here's another one

Men's Group meets tonite

Blog Note

I want to thank me
for being me

Squirrel



Today is my day off, what should I do?

I think I have hemorhoids.

Today is my day off, what'll I do.

I think I have hemorhoids.

Today is my day off, whaddaya want?

I think I have hemorhoids.

Today's my day off, whaddaya want man huh please pass the freakin
steroidy cheez?

Armantrout’s brief stanzas are skeptical about almost every source of human confidence, trust, hope, joy, strength or belief. I don't think this is true. I think they're skeptical of the forces that variously act on these "human confidences".

Why is it that just because they don't offer the preferred consolation tents with pitiable decor of most poetry, they have to be read as somehow unfeeling? What I think they withhold is reassurance, which is not the same thing as distrusting humanity.