Monday, August 8, 2011

Momentous Occasion

The play-by-play...

Saturday night in St. Louis saw one of my favorite N@B events yet. The readers were fantastic as always, but it held a couple of special distinctions to me - one, it was the first St. Louis event for Scott Phillips' Og-tastic new book, The Adjustment. Yeah, since we've been doing this series, he's had Rut and Rum, Sodomy and False Eyelashes released, but this one holds an extra-special place in my heart. And two, it was the public introduction to our labor of love - Noir at the Bar, the book! It was great to have so many close friends and contributors on hand for the event. I got mine signed by Matt Kindt, David Cirillo, Matthew McBride, Scott Phillips and Laura Benedict (who stopped by before the event, but unfortunately couldn't stay - she rocks).

And though the contributions to the book are a monument to the event's past, the excitement shared for it points only to the future. If you count folks that've participated more than once, (myself, Scott, Anthony Neil Smith, Frank Bill), add the two that got away (for time-crunch reasons - Theresa Schwegel and Tim Lane) plus those who've participated since - Aaron Michael Morales, Fred Venturini, John Hornor Jacobs, Jane Bradley and Jesus Angel Garcia - shit, we'd be half-way to another collection already. Hmmmm. Let's see if we can't recoup our money and raise some funds and awareness for Subterranean Books with this first one, for now.

Scott kicked off the evening with a look into the head space of my favorite sociopath Wayne Ogden and David Cirillo read a novel excerpt featuring bad English accents, nudity, public disturbance and a scene that reminded me of nothing so much as the restaurant scene from John Cameron Mitchell's Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Jane Bradley made everybody really uncomfortable with a reading from her fantastic book You Believers (really - go read the shit out this one. I'm picking up one of her short story collections next - either Power Lines or the one Kyle Minor supposedly told her should just be called Sex - Are We Lucky Yet?). Jesus Angel Garcia put the lights out with his megaphone preacher routine from badbadbad and I gotta say, my admiration for that guy and his hustling is just growing constantly. 9,000 miles into his self-funded book tour and he looked fresh and full of energy. WTF? I look like hammered shit three days into a work-week. That guy deserves any and all success that finds him.

I'd like to point your attention to a couple spots of interest on the N@B front -  Laura Benedict is giving away three copies of the book on her blog Notes From the Handbasket with a cool little contest, (nothin hard) and David Abrams featured the anthology with a little note from me on his excellent literature blog The Quivering Pen. Thanks ere'buddy. Scott also mad this ridiculously fun trailer for the book. I like watching it on a repeating loop and have been humming that song non-stop for a week now.

Over at Ransom Notes it's Don Winslow's The Gentleman's Hour stirring thoughtsnshit. Plus, I make passing mention of Urban Waite, who it turns out has his story Nobody Heard a Thing the Night the Chicken Died posted at Design Observer. Checkerout.

1 comment:

David Cranmer said...

Thanks for the write-up, Jed. Wish I was there...as always.