Christopher Barzak’s

This past weekend I went to Columbus for the Ohioana Book Festival, where I was one of the guest authors. It was a lot of fun to meet readers and sign books and meet other Ohio authors and catch up with those I already know. Afterwards, there was a party for the authors at the governor’s mansion, which is quite beautiful. I got directions to the mansion from several Columbus residents, or those who live in the suburbs of it, and everyone mentioned I’d have to drive through a bad section of Columbus to get there. But as I drove both there and back, I didn’t notice a bad section, unless they meant the several blocks that seemed to be mostly apartment houses and rental units, rather than homeowner-land, and if that’s the case, I could have told them that’s not a “bad area” where I come from. Besides, all the places seemed really well kept up. If Youngstown looked like the bad area of Columbus, I wouldn’t be as worried and concerned, I think. Maybe that’s why a lot of people have no clue of the reality that the dying rustbelt cities face these days. It’s just not on their mental maps, it’s not a part of their daily realities, so they don’t think about it. The governor’s party was fun. I was allowed to take one guest, so I took my mom for Mother’s Day.

Now I’m back home and catching up with things. It seems whenever I go away for a couple of days, I come back to fifty things that need to be taken care of now now now.

One item of notice I wanted to mention before wrapping up, though, is that the Interstitial Arts Foundation, for which I’m co-editing the next volume of Interfictions, is holding a handmade jewelry auction until May 28th. The pieces look interesting, and they’re all based on various stories from the first volume of Interfictions. Go take a look at the cool stuff people have made and bid on something!  There’s also a third Interstitial Salon going on as well.  Lots of fun and provocative thinking going on over there, so take a look at that too.

I’m off for now.  More sooner than later, hopefully!

One for Sorrow debuts in Italy this month. Here’s the cover of the book there. And they’ve retitled it as The Secret Voice of Crows, since the title doesn’t translate well because of the rhyme from which it comes not being part of the culture there, I think. I like the new title as well. They’re comparing it to the film Donnie Darko, which I also like a whole lot. I hope my Italian readers like the book. I’ve had the most wonderful conversations via email with my publisher and translator in Italy over the past few months, and hope I have the chance to meet them one day.

This book has felt like a non-stop birthday party. It’ll be over one day, but I’m still having fun until then.

This video is from Logo, an MTV owned televison station programmed for the GLBT community. All I can say is that it’s about six minutes long, and you have to “wait for it” till about the last one or two minutes for the really interesting part. (The famous transexual Amanda Lepore is hilarious and weird, but the really interesting part comes late in this little clip). Watch it, then afterward go here and vote.

I’m busy grading final essays for the semester, doing lots of landscaping work on my yard, and getting ready to write a short story, but when I return there will be lots of photos of kittens, a beautiful garden-like yard, treats sent to me recently from Japan, Japanese food I’ve been making, and a bunch of other cool things. For now, I’m off to complete more tasks, though. Spring has sprung in full, and it is lovely to be outside in it.

An excerpt from the first essay in Michael Chabon’s new book of essays, Maps and Legends, which is a gorgeous book. It has three covers of varying sizes and colors, overlapping one another to make a sum that is greater than its three parts. Those people at McSweeneys know how to put together a beautiful looking book. The essays are wonderfully written, literate and entertaining on a number of subjects, but in particular they consider an issue of entertainment in literature, the value of entertainment, what it means, and how it’s become something “serious” people (which I think is a nice way of not naming the sort of reader he’s referring to) look down upon in writing, which could in fact be why so few people seem to be reading these days, if that recent poll is right: 1 in 4 Americans didn’t read a single book last year. Maybe it’s time to re-evaluate the value of books that entertain as well as those that enlighten. I think books can do both at the same time, and probably should.

Entertainment has a bad name. Serious people learn to mistrust and even to revile it. The word wears spandex, pasties, a leisure suit studded with blinking lights. It gives off a whiff of Coppertone and dripping Creamsicle, the fake-butter miasma of a movie-house lobby, of karaoke and Jägermeister, Jerry Bruckheimer movies, a “Street Fighter” machine grunting solipsistically in a corner of an ice-rink arcade. Entertainment trades in cliché and product placement. It engages regions of the brain far from the centers of discernment, critical thinking, ontological speculation. It skirts the black heart of life and drowns life’s lambency in a halogen glare. Intelligent people must keep a certain distance from its productions. They must handle the things that entertain them with gloves of irony and postmodern tongs. Entertainment, in short, means junk, and too much junk is bad for you — bad for your heart, your arteries, your mind, your soul.

But maybe these intelligent and serious people, my faithful straw men, are wrong. Maybe the reason for the junkiness of so much of what pretends to entertain us is that we have accepted — indeed, we have helped to articulate — such a narrow, debased concept of entertainment. The brain is an organ of entertainment, sensitive at any depth and over a wide spectrum. But we have learned to mistrust and despise our human aptitude for being entertained, and in that sense we get the entertainment we deserve.

You can read the rest of the excerpt by clicking here.

I’m always writing about The Stage when we have one here in Ytown, about once a month, under the wild and wonky lead and people-exciting power of my friend Brooke, and my friend Karen always loves the posters and publicity images Steven Andrew is making for the Stage, but here are some lovely photos from our latest show, taken by local photographer Jaci Clark. I think they capture the spirit of the Stage and what it is we’re, in part, doing there: opening up a place and a space for the people of this area to share whatever it is they do with others, be it art, dance, song, story, poetry, comedy, monologues, skits, movies and, well, in these particular photos, how one girl transforms herself into a drag queen over the course of the evening. Quite a feat, and quite a transformation. Ah, Brookey, always going where no one else will go.

Here’s a pic of me, watching from the sidelines. Go see the rest as well as the cool slide show at Jaci’s place by clicking here.

I have been interrupted whilst trying to watch The Neverending Story THREE NIGHTS IN A ROW NOW. Clearly there is a conspiracy to keep me from revisiting films from my childhood. However, the YouTube video for the film’s theme song is much shorter than the film itself, and includes Limahl with crazy hair as usual!

Looking for a laugh?  This did it for me this weekend.  Via Kelly.  Arigatou!