Posted: September 22nd, 2009 | Filed under: barbershop | No Comments »
Please join us for an exceptionally scary event, a joint production between The Barbershop and Litquake, San Francisco’s annual literary festival, now celebrating its Tenth Year.
BE AFRAID!
Evil Queens, Menacing Dykes, and Secret Gay Agendas
From lurid pulp novels to YouTube sermons, America’s fear of the gay menace still runs strong. They could be your neighbors or your children’s teachers. They could be lurking in your locker rooms and your foxholes, moving, one step at a time, closer to world domination. Are these just crazy conspiracies, or is there something real to fear about the shadowy queens and dykes forced to skulk at the edges of society?
Our full lineup:
Meliza Bañales is the author of SAY IT WITH YOUR WHOLE MOUTH. The first West Coast Latina to win a poetry slam championship in 2002, she has toured with Sister Spit and Body Heat. She won an AIRspace residency for her one-woman-show, ONE BAD YEAR, which ended its run at the 2009 SF Fringe Festival. She was awarded a 2008 Creating Queer Community Grant, and a 2006 Frameline Completion Grant for the film DO THE MATH, with Mary Guzman. She is currently working on her second collection, 51 POEMS ABOUT NOTHING AT ALL.
Justin Chin is an award-winning spoken word/performance artist and the author of three poetry collections, all published by Manic D Press: GUTTED – which received the 2007 Thom Gunn Award for Poetry by the Publishing Triangle – HARMLESS MEDICINE, and BITE HARD, as well as the essay collections BURDEN OF ASHES and MONGREL: ESSAYS, DIATRIBES, and PRANKS.
Marcus Ewert wrote the groundbreaking children’s book 10,000 DRESSES, gorgeously illustrated by Rex Ray. He is currently working on still more kids’ books, plus a memoir about his real-life affair with William Burroughs. He is also an actor and director, and cocreated the hit animated series, Piki & Poko, Adventures in StarLand, currently being shown on MTV’s LOGO channel. He has appeared in the Gus Van Sant short film Four Naked Boys and a Gun, in Sadie Benning’s Flat Is Beautiful, and the movie Frisk by Todd Verow. In 2008, he starred in the feature film The Lollipop Generation by G.B. Jones.
Justin Hall is an award-winning comic book creator and world traveler best known for his series TRUE TRAVEL TALES, HARD TO SWALLOW, and GLAMAZONIA THE UNCANNY SUPERTRANNY. His work has appeared in the Best American Comics and the S.F. Guardian, among others, and he has appeared at the San Diego Comic Con, the Toronto Comic Arts Festival, and the Tom of Finland Erotic Arts Fair. He recently read at the local Smack Dab Reading Series. You can find him online at All Thumbs Press.
Monica Nolan is the author of THE BIG BOOK OF LESBIAN HORSE STORIES (co-written with Alisa Surkis) and LOIS LENZ, LESBIAN SECRETARY. Her next book, BOBBY BLANCHARD, LESBIAN GYM TEACHERS, will be out in 2010. Her films include Ashley, 22, Chuckie or Ben-Hur in Five Minutes, World of Women, and Lesbians Who Date Men. She has taught film at San Francisco State University, and the Film Arts Forum.
Aaron Shurin is the author of KING OF SHADOWS, a collection of personal essays published by City Lights Books in 2008. He began publishing in the gay press in 1971, and is currently a professor in the MFA in Writing Program at USF. He has received California Arts Council Literary Fellowships in Poetry and an NEA fellowship in creative nonfiction. His book PARADISE OF FORMS: SELECTED POEMS was chosen as one of Publisher Weekly’s Best Books of 1999.
Details:
Joe’s Barbershop
2150 Market St (between Church and Sanchez)
Saturday, October 10th, at 8 pm.
We suggest arriving early, especially for this event, and especially if you want to kick back in one of the barber chairs.
Our awesome bookselling parter in crime, BOOKS, INC will be on hand with copies of our featured author’s books. Buy one or three and get them autographed.
SUGGESTED donation: $5 (everyone welcome)
That donation helps to cover our expenses and buys you highly addictive Kettle Salt and Pepper potato chips, baked goods, cold beer, and a Diet Coke or two.
We can always use volunteers to help set up and clean up afterward. Volunteers pay no cover and earn good karma. If interested, email Michael McAllister.
Posted: September 10th, 2009 | Filed under: daily, fireplug, my book, you're so vain | 15 Comments »
Recently I noticed an uptick in my visitor traffic, and since anyone can see that I am far from prolific or even consistent these days, I knew it had nothing to do with what I’ve actually written here. So I looked into my search results. Many people were stumbling across my blog by typing the words “dog poet” into Google.
A reader first clued me in to what was going on. He emailed me the following sentence:
“In the latest Half Past Human report (The Shape of Things to Come 2009/2010), a “dog poet” is said to become a hero to up to 1 billion people in the Winter of this year and Spring of next.”
I had no idea what this meant. Absolutely no clue. But since he included a link to Half Past Human, I clicked on it.
There are vast stretches of the internet that make absolutely no sense to me. Complete gibberish. Sites where the language is so obtuse, the layout so incoherent, the lack of context so startling, so unwelcoming, that even after a few minutes of intense focus, I still have no idea what I am looking at.
You are welcome to try to make sense of the site. And I wish you luck on that endeavor. But if you are short on time and patience, I will try to translate for you. From what I can tell, the Half Past Human Report, and a few other related websites, are places where people who believe in the power of the internet to predict the future gather to trade predictions and theories. Another site sums it up better than I could:
Originally designed to track stock market trends, the Web Bot uses a system of spiders that crawl the Internet looking for patterns of behavior, trends and chatter pertaining to coming events. This tool is believed to be able to forecast the future by tapping into the collective unconscious of society.
These sites claim that web bots predicted the anthrax attacks, the 2004 Tsunami, and 9/11. Maybe they did, but I just didn’t have the patience to scan through the web bot archives to see for myself, so I’m just going to take their word for it.
Naturally, the people who follow these web bot predictions attempted to figure out the identity of this “dog poet” Messiah. Since my blog is the first site to come up on Google when searching under those two words, many of the Half Past Humans have stumbled across ME!
They discussed this turn of events on password-protected forums, where someone posted a link to my blog:
“We are all doomed,” said one.
“I don’t think hundreds of people will go for the stuff this guy is peddling, let alone billions,” said another.
Now, the Manly Fireplug would be excited to see that people actually thought I was “peddling” stuff here, since he thinks I could stand to do a little more self-promotion. But I will say, for the record, that yes, missy, a few hundred people – maybe even a FEW THOUSAND – stop by here regularly for the stuff I peddle.
I have no idea what the future portends. And I have no idea if I will be doing anything noteworthy this winter, let alone next spring, or if a billion people will take notice. But I do hope to finish my book by then and yes: you are all doomed.
Posted: September 1st, 2009 | Filed under: daily, fireplug | 5 Comments »
One of the things I love about the Manly Fireplug is that he is not only willing to ride ALL of the scariest rides at an amusement park, several times, but he is also willing to wait longer in order to GET THE FRONT CAR.
We’d planned on visiting the Spam Museum in Austin, MN, but traffic on 35S was looking a little miserable, so we hopped over to Shakopee and visited Valleyfair instead. Shakopee, for those in the know, is also home to the first challenge winner on this season of Project Runway. Who knew?
I grew up going to Valleyfair every summer, so I was feeling nostalgic. Plus I got to eat one of my three to five alloted corn dogs per year.
We were back in Minneapolis for my 20-Year High School Reunion, which turned out to be sort of an awkward event, with everyone getting REALLY drunk and dancing THE BIRD in unison.
I actually did not detest high school; at least not junior and senior years, when I had a pretty cool circle of friends. As a sign of how cool they still are, they have formed an all-girl Clash tribute band. Fortunately, after the liquored debauchery of the reunion, my friends invited the Fireplug and me to a dinner party the next night, and that made my entire trip. Valleyfair was icing.
The Fireplug’s 30-Yeah High School Reunion is in November, at which I will be the trophy boy!
Also: just finished draft seven of my book. A couple more quick drafts and I hope to start showing it to people.
Posted: September 1st, 2009 | Filed under: barbershop | No Comments »
UPDATE: Author Jane Juska had to cancel for this event, though we hope to have her read in the future. That still leaves two writers and a musician for our Chains of Love event…plenty of love and dysfunction to go around.
In honor of September’s annual Folsom Street Fair, “the granddaddy of all leather festivals,” and something of a High Holiday in San Francisco’s gay community, our theme of the night will be “Chains of Love!”
This month’s performers:
KATIE CROUCH was raised in South Carolina and received her MFA from Columbia University. Her debut novel, GIRLS IN TRUCKS, was published in 2008 and became a New York Times bestseller. “The just-published debut novel about Southern debs gone bad is winsome. Crouch possesses a deft comic voice and a gift for observation,” said The Philadelphia Inquirer. Her next novel, MEN AND DOGS, will be published in 2010.
KEMBLE SCOTT is the author of the bestselling novel SOMA, finalist for the national Lambda Literary Award for debut fiction. He’s the editor of San Francisco’s SoMa Literary Review and THE LIT GUIDE. An alumnus of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, he’s been honored with three Emmy Awards for his work in television news. His new novel, THE SOWER is a twisted, page-turning thriller about a San Francisco bad boy who becomes the sole carrier of a manmade virus that appears to be the cure for all diseases. But the only way to pass the cure to others is through sex. When word gets out, he becomes the world’s most wanted man – the ultimate weapon in the culture wars, pitting him against right wing ideologies, The Roman Catholic Church, and the most famous pop star on the planet.
Our unofficial house musician, WOLF LARSEN, wowed everyone at our opening event this past June with her beautiful voice. Nomadic by nature, the singer-songwriter has currently settled in San Francisco, where she’s quietly gathered a devoted following. You can usually find her at the Hotel Utah Saloon’s open mike shows on Monday nights, where she recently had a solo gig. Rumors of a newly released EP have spread, so bring a few extra bucks and you might get a copy.
Details:
Joe’s Barbershop
2150 Market St (between Church and Sanchez)
Saturday, September 5th, at 8 pm.
We suggest arriving early, especially if you want to kick back in one of the barber chairs.
Our awesome bookselling parter in crime, BOOKS, INC will be on hand with copies of our featured author’s books. Buy one or three and get them autographed.
SUGGESTED donation: $5 (everyone welcome)
That donation helps to cover our expenses and buys you highly addictive Kettle Salt and Pepper potato chips, baked goods, cold beer, and a Diet Coke or two.
We can always use volunteers to help set up and clean up afterward. Volunteers pay no cover and earn good karma. If interested, email Michael McAllister.
Meliza Bañales is the author of SAY IT WITH YOUR WHOLE MOUTH. The first West Coast Latina to win a poetry slam championship in 2002, she has toured with Sister Spit and Body Heat. She won an AIRspace residency for her one-woman-show, ONE BAD YEAR, which ended its run at the 2009 SF Fringe Festival. She was awarded a 2008 Creating Queer Community Grant, and a 2006 Frameline Completion Grant for the film DO THE MATH, with Mary Guzman. She is currently working on her second collection, 51 POEMS ABOUT NOTHING AT ALL.
Justin Chin is an award-winning spoken word/performance artist and the author of three poetry collections, all published by Manic D Press: GUTTED – which received the 2007 Thom Gunn Award for Poetry by the Publishing Triangle – HARMLESS MEDICINE, and BITE HARD, as well as the essay collections BURDEN OF ASHES and MONGREL: ESSAYS, DIATRIBES, and PRANKS.
Marcus Ewert wrote the groundbreaking children’s book 10,000 DRESSES, gorgeously illustrated by Rex Ray. He is currently working on still more kids’ books, plus a memoir about his real-life affair with William Burroughs. He is also an actor and director, and cocreated the hit animated series, Piki & Poko, Adventures in StarLand, currently being shown on MTV’s LOGO channel. He has appeared in the Gus Van Sant short film Four Naked Boys and a Gun, in Sadie Benning’s Flat Is Beautiful, and the movie Frisk by Todd Verow. In 2008, he starred in the feature film The Lollipop Generation by G.B. Jones.
Justin Hall is an award-winning comic book creator and world traveler best known for his series TRUE TRAVEL TALES, HARD TO SWALLOW, and GLAMAZONIA THE UNCANNY SUPERTRANNY. His work has appeared in the Best American Comics and the S.F. Guardian, among others, and he has appeared at the San Diego Comic Con, the Toronto Comic Arts Festival, and the Tom of Finland Erotic Arts Fair. He recently read at the local Smack Dab Reading Series. You can find him online at All Thumbs Press.
Monica Nolan is the author of THE BIG BOOK OF LESBIAN HORSE STORIES (co-written with Alisa Surkis) and LOIS LENZ, LESBIAN SECRETARY. Her next book, BOBBY BLANCHARD, LESBIAN GYM TEACHERS, will be out in 2010. Her films include Ashley, 22, Chuckie or Ben-Hur in Five Minutes, World of Women, and Lesbians Who Date Men. She has taught film at San Francisco State University, and the Film Arts Forum.
Aaron Shurin is the author of KING OF SHADOWS, a collection of personal essays published by City Lights Books in 2008. He began publishing in the gay press in 1971, and is currently a professor in the MFA in Writing Program at USF. He has received California Arts Council Literary Fellowships in Poetry and an NEA fellowship in creative nonfiction. His book PARADISE OF FORMS: SELECTED POEMS was chosen as one of Publisher Weekly’s Best Books of 1999.
