Flowers That Gloze

In Chattanooga for a week or so, working on a book project that has been very long in the offing. It's not poetry. It's ... well ... I don't know what to call it. Histo-ethno-editing. University of South Carolina Press is meant to publish it. Dissertation: rolling along.

Took in some yacht rock whilst down Tennessee way. Since A didn't want to go, my pal K took me along to the Steely Dan show in Nashville. It was excellent. Long time Dan fan. To my tremendous surprise, however, Michael MacDonald (the singer, not the world's foremost authority on mental illness in renaissance england currently serving on my disseration committee) was the opening act. He also did his first set with the Dan since the seventies, backing up such fan favs as "Peg" and "Hey Nineteen." They even did a version of "Dirty Work," but they had the backup singers do the lead vocals, which was ok but not super.

In my experience, people don't tend to give They Might Be Giants enough respect. Admittedly, they are pure geek rawk, but all the people I know are geeks, so that can't be the problem. Suz and I watched the TMBG doc a couple of nights ago (Gigantic: A Tale of Two Johns). It was good and made me go back and listen to all the records I had stashed away. The "fingertips" cycle from Apollo 18 is probably my favorite thing they did. It predicted the Guided By Voices string-of-songs-that-are-really-just-the-chorus/hook thing, which I love. The doc also made me look into what they have been up to lately. This most recent set of streaming videos (Venue Songs), featuring the "PC-guy" from the Mac Ads as "The Deranged Millionaire," convinced me again that TMBG is a top-10 all-time rock band.

Tost is doing some sort of personal Rings of Saturn over there. I thought about doing some of that nostalg-a-tanic stuff here. I might. Next thing you know...somebody's photoshopped light sabers into the thing, tho. That could also be cool.

How does one transition to mid-career poet? I suspect it is necessary to stop publishing all-together and begin training for absurdist displays of athletic prowess. Note to self: find a very current book of world records.

Recent (somewhat recent) talk of my upcoming book Little Ease over at Rhubarb is Susan. Thanks to Simon for that. John mentions prose poems, turds, and our coffee together over at Isola di Rifiuti.

Am I pimping myself out with this new blog? Maybe.

Syriana...George Clooney good as large man. Film is utterly humorless...in other words, serious beyond the point of being helpful. Suzanne fell asleep. I hung on to the bitter end. Affecting, but self-righteous. Smug cloud produced was very large. Grade: B.