I'm Here for Your Entertainment

"Adam Lambert chose me. I actually despise American Idol (there’s a reason people hate amateur talent shows — why would I want to watch that?) and have never made it through an entire episode. I became interested in Adam Lambert after I saw his Rolling Stone cover plastered all over the city. It’s truly an iconic image. I started thinking I might want to write about him, and then I saw the submissions call for Storyglossia’s musical obsession issue, and that was the push I needed to get going."

"Adam Lambert is himself an adept engineer of others' responses. On a recent magazine cover, widely remarked upon and visible in public space, a neon green snake slithers up his thigh. This image, with its attendant suggestions of sexual prowess, original sin, was Adam Lambert's own idea. He is an artist fully conscious of his own iconography."

"I too have always loved costumes, have latched onto various personas as though they were mine from birth, a quality that comes in handy when getting famous people to take of their clothes."

"When I say I became obsessed with Adam Lambert as I wrote, I’m not exaggerating. Within about a month, he became the third most played artist on my last.fm profile, a profile I’ve kept for over three years. I really did create an Adam Lambert “mii” on my Wii, and one night a month or two ago, my partner was playing a flight simulator game, and our Wii stuck my Adam Lambert mii in a two-seater airplane with him, and for a moment I was legit jealous… of my partner. I was like, “Bitch, step back from my Adam Lambert mii.” I’ve got all the parts picked out for my Adam Lambert Halloween costume. I actually went online and ordered the same eye liner Adam Lambert says is his favorite. I’m probably incriminating myself more than I really want to here."

"He lined my eyes, extended my lashes, spread cream across my cheeks. I watched myself becoming something unfamiliar, feline, some jungle animal that stalks glossy, long-limbed creatures."

I remembered a magazine article where the reporter called Adam Lambert's a "show pony voice," and felt the expression "show pony" gallop across my tongue, tingly. I watched him bend over to color my lips, felt his breath, looked down his torso to where his abdomen met his hips, his legs spread in a plie second position, thighs filling his pants. I thought about ponies, their haunches, how they buck and thrash.

"I think one of the themes of these stories is iconography, what does it accomplish for us? And what does it mean to develop these incredibly intense emotions that have more to do with our own fantasies and ideas than with real people? One of my favorite writers is Dennis Cooper, and one of things I appreciate about him is how he explores the darker impact of our becoming obsessed with our narratives about the people we desire, what we believe they represent, rather than experiencing them as individuals."

"Briefly, before I think better of it, I'd like to pose a question to the blog's readers. Purely hypothetical, of course: Is it possible to fuck a voice?"


Read the interview in Storyglossia's blog.

READ my story "Seducing Adam Lambert" in Storyglossia's "Music & Obsession" issue.

I really like this paragraph from What if the Dungeon Closes, translated into German then back into English using an online translator:

I described an iron grid-accident, the blocking. I thought of the customers of Marlena, lonesome men, asked itself how they passed. They would listen to old, registered insults in tense apartments. They would become her own donkeys, whip dissatisfied because they always exactly knew where the whip would land. This reminded me of myself, Internet sexual sides warbling, five words missives to Adonises carved from tone lighting, then my falling stomachs movingly and, better remembering, my news extinguishing, my profile extinguishing, new the next day creative.

The original, for comparison:

I pictured an iron grate crashing, locking. I thought about Marlena's clients, lonely men, wondered how they'd get by. They'd listen to stale, recorded insults in cramped apartments. They'd whip their own asses, dissatisfied because they always knew exactly where the whip would land. This reminded me of myself trolling internet sex sites, firing five-word missives to Adonises carved from clay, then grabbing my sagging stomach and thinking better of it, erasing my messages, erasing my profile, creating a new one the following day.

etsy presents

LITERATURE: THE SKIRT

My mom sent me this after she read this.

So now I really want to do a live reading of this where somebody pours this all over me.

Would be awesome, I think.

I think I would have more tolerance for animal rights activists if they didn't make totalizing comments like this shit that seem to dismiss critical social justice issues affecting scores of, you know, human beings.

hat tip: shane jones twitter

Somebody thought I was insulting Where the Wild Things Are. I was just being silly. Once Upon a Potty makes me giggle. Perhaps I'm still in the bathroom humor stage. Or maybe it's that I never went through the bathroom humor stage as a child. When I was six, I used to roll my eyes at boys on the playground singing that Popeye the sailorman garbage can song, like "Grow up."

I appreciated Where the Wild Things Are quite a bit. I experienced it as a film about disillusionment... realizing that children are lonely and disappointed, and so are adults, and you will be lonely and disappointed your whole life, and families and communities, in particular, will never meet your expectations ...but there's a glimmer of hope in it, I think. Sometimes you and your friends will build awesome forts, and jump on top of one another and fall asleep in a big pile, and there will be various kinds of love to get you through the loneliness.

I related to Max a lot more than I expected. I was not much of a wild child, I tended to feel very invested in my identity as somebody who made adults lives easier, particularly my mother's. I was always well known by my mother's colleagues as the kid who could entertain himself for hours without disrupting others. However -- when I did get angry, I had a lot of trouble processing that emotion, and I've absolutely damaged gifts I've given my mother in fits of rage, like Max does to that little heart thing he gave his sister. Once when I was mad at my mom, I ripped up the lyrics to a silly song I'd written about her. I think often my anger was directed at friends, family, communities, etc who didn't meet my expectations for them, a lot like the Wild Thing Carol. I can absolutely see myself stomping off to obliterate my own artwork when the other kids didn't play the game the way I wanted them to play it. I had multiple parties where I locked myself in the bathroom because my friends didn't act the way I wanted them to act.

Following the success of Where the Wild Things Are, I believe somebody should produce Once Upon a Potty: the Movie. The boy and girl versions of the story should be shot in split screen. On each side, different parts for making weewee. The girl who potties could have been played by former Pepsi girl Hallie Eisenberg, if she hadn't gotten old. Maybe Eisenberg can play the girl's mommy.

My Last Post...

...was perhaps dishonest, in that I argued something hyper-rationally -- in terms of language and definitions -- that is ultimately a values issue. I believe for a publication to declare they do not accept gratuitous sex and violence, then immediately reject all sex and violence in general, regardless of its purpose within a narrative, is to declare all sex and violence inherently gratuitous, that is, without purpose, meaning, etc, and this is a belief system I find appalling. Kind of indicative of much of what's fucked in our culture w/ regard to sexuality. The sort of thinking literature ought to challenge, not reinforce.

something I believe

Gratuitous, by definition, means w/o "apparent cause, reason or justification." Graphic sex and violence are not in and of themselves gratuitous sex and violence. If a publication's guidelines say 'no gratuitous sex or violence,' this should not mean said publication automatically rejects any graphically violent or sexual content. If said publication is going to reject work based primarily on sexual or violent content (as opposed to other considerations, of which there clearly many), they should do so only if the sex and violence are genuinely w/o purpose, intended primarily to shock and exploit.

If a publication's policy is in fact to automatically reject all graphic sexual and violent content, then this is how their guidelines should read, and they should exclude the qualifier "gratuitous."

They say he was hiding in a box, but I know the truth. I know February stuck him underground (and broke the balloon).

Last night I went to the ACM party. I met my friend Donna Vitucci in the flesh for the first time, she was wonderful and warm and personable. I conversed w/ some folks I already knew but am enjoying getting to know better: Rebekah and Tadd from Artifice and Mairead Case from Neighborhood Writing Alliance. Also Aaron Burch, a little bit. And I got to officially meet a couple of those people I see at things and recognize and am "friends" with on Facebook, but whom didn't necessarily know me, like Kathleen Rooney and Mary Hamilton, who were both very nice. The program was well-planned w/ dj sets for drinking/conversing interspersed w/ readings in groups of 3. I encountered the many faces of Erica Mikkalo (Erica Mikkalo is perhaps a changeling, is perhaps Odo), some of which uncannily resemble Donna Vitucci, Aaron Burch and Kathleen Rooney. When Erica Mikkalo resembles Aaron Burch, she is a dirty man. Lesson: When you handle Erica's pole at its base, it functions more effectively, and everybody can hear what Erica is saying. Critical if one wants to better understand idiots, donkeys and elephants.

My guest post on Queer Visibilities appears today in the Pank blog. Please read & comment -- this is intended to generate conversation.

I finally made it to Quickies (hip and fantastic Chicago reading series) last night and enjoyed it quite a bit, although I do not think my life is well-suited to events that last until 10:00 on weeknights. My partner ate dinner w/o me and left it on the stove for when I got home ...And I've got another, similarly late evening tomorrow... my fabulous friend Donna D Vitucci is in town for the Another Chicago Magazine release party, and I am looking forward to meeting her.

satire

Yesterday I received some unexpected good news.

It's exciting to be in such fine company w/ the other winners and other finalists.

***

I've been thinking about satire. I think I undervalue it. Smart, broadly drawn, topical, comic, absurd, etc. stuff feels very easy to write (as compared to, say, heavier emotional realism), and I think for this reason I haven't always taken it as seriously. But some of my more satirical pieces (the best example available online is prob my Monkeybicycle piece) have received positive responses, and I feel almost weirdly guilty about that, like they don't deserve the attention.

I also worry that satire might not be durable -- once its point has been made, once the joke is over, etc, there isn't anything left. And also, there's the timeliness, the specificity of certain issues. How can satire last past the political context in which it's written? Of course there are plenty of examples of satire that holds meaning for multiple generations. What sets those works apart?

I'm thinking about this because my piece that placed second in the Pank contest is, from my perspective, satirical, and although I felt confident-ish and quite tickled when I first wrote and submitted it, in the months since I'd gone into "harshest critic" mode and begun to dismiss it as a one-note joke. ...So because of this, the win caught me completely off guard, and has me doing some reassessing my own ways of judging stuff.

...I didn't want this post to get all me-me-me-me, and I'm afraid it veered off in that direction anyway. What I intended to do was pose a broader question regarding satire, its value as lit.

Thoughts?

the pedophile label strikes again

This Kevin Jennings business (check out Amanda Marcotte's coverage at Pandagon -- for some reason I'm getting an error message when I try to open her individual post, but if you scroll down the page, it's pretty easy to find) makes me want to link to a post I wrote back in 2006:

Toward a Feminist Defense of Cross-Generational Sex

new stuff

I've got two new pieces up -

"Slime Me" in Necessary Fiction

"Advice for Locating the Whirl" in elimae

...I'm long overdue for a more substantive blog post. I'm feeling sort of backed up on writing & online lit community stuff in general. I've been feeling a little burnt out (and am very busy at work), but am almost recharged, I think, so stay tuned. I've got some blog posts and/or reviews promised to other folks, so hope to get on top of finishing those this week.

I've been on a little bit of a new music binge this week -- lots of neo-new wave/80's revivalist/electro-pop/dance pop/neo-disco-type stuff of late. I've been enjoying boys who ape the Pet Shop Boys and girls who imitate Dale Bozzio.

I participated....

...in the "Writer Interviews Reader" feature at Randall Brown's flashfiction.net.

Check out my answers to Meg Pokrass's questions about her Smokelong Quarterly story "California Fruit."