Spidercamp

it has made me realize, with a physical pang, how deeply i miss the subway

"...he understood clearly enough that he was the accidental repository of the girl's baffled affection. She took to wearing handsome ribbons in her hair, and blushing furiously when her mother suggested that it was for Mr. Dressler's sake; and sometimes he would exchange with Alice Bell, past her mother's shoulder, a look of mournful understanding.

One morning she gave him a little flat package wrapped in blue tissue paper. When Martin opened it, he discovered a lock of blond hair. He was on the verge of saying something witty when he raised his eyes and saw little Alice Bell staring at him tensely. Without a word he nodded gravely at her, gently wrapped up the curl of hair, and placed it in his pocket."

Martin Dressler, by Steven Millhauser. It won a Pulitzer. One man's swoony true romance with late 1800s NYC commerce. Art deco wrought iron cable cars. Crisp weather. Hats. Delicious. I'd never heard of it. What's wrong with me?

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also:

"The museum was deserted except for a single heavyset man in a silk hat who walked slowly about with his hands behind his back."

i mean jesus christ don't you want a whole novel based on that sentence?

i like barbecue

any day where i get a beard rubbed up against me is automatically pretty good. yesterday this happened while the bearder was describing me as fanTAStic. in front of a room full of curious strangers. i can still blush! 20 minutes later a delicate young pharmacist looked at me over his glasses with his pale, pale eyes and said my new favorite endearment: "baby, you are no drug lord." a good day.

wendy rene - bar-b-q

the best agonizing book i have read in quite some time

Hank Stuever's Off-Ramp. It doesn't hurt for a good reason, it's not about war or dentists, it's just sloppy in a way that makes me claw at my face. Check out this sentence, which made it past the editors Henry Holt presumably employs:

"After the strippers leave, but before Andy's friend Gilbert beats up a guy named Robert (whom no one invited), and way before Robert comes back angrily with a group of his bros and way, way before a bigger fight breaks out in front of the Nuñez house, and certainly before someone breaks some guy's jaw, before any of this occurs, I left."

Stuever WHAT, you use "whom" but do not have a problem with "After the strippers leave... I left?" Tell me you are a time traveler and not just lame.

Also, dude literally says stuff like "I should make a birth analogy here." So do it. Don't tell me what your text should be doing, go crazy and actually WRITE it. Only don't. Birth analogies (re getting a couch through a narrow passage) are dumb. Mentioning one in passing is dumb, weak, and hipsterfuckedly self-aware. It's gross.

I'm guilty of this laziness myself. I have pages of text thick with temporary shorthand cop-outs: "remember to explain how she got the bike," "make this paragraph awesome." You don't see me sending it to a publisher in that state though. It's not a valid stylistic choice, it doesn't make Hank Stuever cute, it just means he is as retarded as me. I look for more in an author.

A book full of funny, touching anecdotes about couch surgeons, stormtroopers, and ladies with big Texan hair should not annoy me this much.

or hank

when i walk into the post office my name is Media mail! when i walk into the library my name is Five dvds! when i walk into the pub my name is Cakes! i wonder what percentage of these people know my other name, my wrong name. fuck it! from now on i am Five Cakes Media

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Sharam ft. Kid Cudi, ft. (?) Patsy Cline - She Came Along

The Hood Internet - Good Ol' Fashion Rump Shaker (Beastie Boys vs. Matt & Kim)

driving back from athens. very happy indeed

weezer vs. lil wayne - got money in the sun

i like it when they make hiphop sad

kid cudi - pursuit of happiness (ft. mgmt & ratatat)

dj fox mashup - hypnotized gypsy (plies / akon / fleetwood mac)

but i did the math!

y girls - animal collective vs yeah yeah yeahs

your love my girls (frankie knuckles mashup)

kinema - terrible cover of my girls

you can tell i want you to have nice things by my being willing to do html drunk

i'm looking at you, origami camp

it's a little too vib ribbony for its own good (although i enjoy it more if i pretend it actually IS vib ribbon) - but it offers these gems, which is best?

"i'm in the lab like bill nye the science guy"

"i'm well endowed like harvard and yale"

"ladies man, jesse katsopolis"

"periodically i'm in my element"

chiddy bang - truth

...i spelled katsopolis right on my first try wtf ftw

good in the grocery store

dj axel - could you be kicked, pushed, and loved (bob marley vs lupe fiasco)

telephoned - turn my swag on

vengeance mashup - close to me (lil wayne vs the cure)

of course i don't mind. here's why i don't mind.

Before I ever knew her, I watched Andrea's house burn down. Years later, when we met, I didn't want to mention it, but it was one of the first things she said, matter-of-factly: So, you saw my house burn. She said it was strange, that one of the things she remembered the most vividly about that day was not the fire itself but someone she didn't know very well, holding her for a long time.

Later that night I did something very foreign to me; I told her how my life was crumbling. It was easy to talk. She said, I know we don't really know each other. But do you want a hug?

I really, really did. And then I knew Andrea.