Back from the Dream Factory

Yep, Sarah and I made it to Hollywood and back over the last weekend, and had a great if largely sleepless time. Here we are in front of Grauman's Chinese Theater, which was a mere block from our hotel.


Note a very diminutive Jason Voorhees passing by nonchalantly behind us.

What with the Fangoria Convention and the general sightseeing, I didn't have time to keep a journal of the trip. Therefore, I'll simplify things with this bulleted list of highlights from a weekend full of them:

• Met Richard “Jaws from the Roger Moore Bond Flicks” Kiel at the convention. He’s a very kind, personable man, but that didn't stop him from regressing me to a 12 year-old TV addicted kid and subsequently scaring the crap out of me. He doesn't seem to be in great health, but really reveled in the attention from scores of appreciative fans. Made a mint on autographed photos, too.
  

• Friday night the Slab Crew plus Sarah had dinner at the famous Rainbow Room, where rock stars present and past stared at us from the walls. I wanted to be seated under the huge (probably almost life-size) portrait of Ronnie James Dio, but unfortunately that prime real estate was taken. Still, no matter where you are in the Rainbow Room, you're never far from Lemmy.

• After the Rainbow Room we walked down the block to the Whiskey A Go-Go and heard several hard rock bands. Since everyone wants to play the Whiskey, each band had maybe a half-hour set and had to tear down and set up QUICK. Sarah really loved doing that, even though the music wasn't her usual cup of tea--after all, The Doors were once the house band there (a fact they don't let you forget). Celebrities in the crowd included some generic blonde porn star flinging DVDs into the crowd, and a leather-clad, silver-crown-of-thornsed Jesus. I guess He's in His rebellious stage now.
  

• My editor was staying at the famous Roosevelt Hotel, site of the first Oscars ceremony and one of Marilyn Monroe’s first photo shoots. We hung out by the pool and saw loads of gorgamous peoples. I had a $15 martini, which I have to admit was excellent. At one point in the dark I saw a tall Italian-looking dude walk within feet of me, wearing a nicely fitted Armani, and realized a beat later it was Paul Sorvino. I wanted to tell him his daughter was great, but figured he already knew.

• Lots of great people-watching at the Fangoria con. Other spotted celebs included Sid Haig (The Devil's Rejects, House of 1000 Corpses, Black Mama White Mama), Lynn Lowry (I Drink Your Blood, Shivers, Sugar Cookies), author guest of honor Clive Barker, legendary b-movie filmmaker Ted V. Mikels (Astro Zombies, etc.), and George A. Romero along with Night of the Living Dead alums Kyra Schon, John Russo, Judith O'Dea, Bill "First Zombie" Hinzman, and George "They're Dead--They're All Messed Up" Kosana. Also walked by Stephen King adapter-extraordinaire Mick Garris several times, but pretended I didn't know him.

• In the "Why are THEY here?" section of the convention, also saw Brian O' Halloran (Dante from Clerks) and the old Indian guy from The 40-Year-Old Virgin.

• Lots of costumed folks, including several gunshot victims, one gory dog attack victim (cradling his demonic dog), and lots and lots of scantily clad platform-booted zombie babes. It seemed to be a recurrent theme. Also saw a girl attach a dollar bill to another girl's upper arm with a staple gun, then later a sideshow act by a guy who ran pins and needles through various parts of his body. Fun fun!
  

• Our hotel was within a block of Hollywood Boulevard, so we were right next to the Kodak Theater and lots of cool shopping. We went on a Hollywood bus tour and took loads of snaps--Paramount Studios, the LaBrea Tar Pits, Beverly Hills, Rodeo Drive, the works. Didn't hunt down too many stars on the Walk of Fame, but I did get my pic by Humphrey Bogart’s hand prints and foot prints in front of Grauman’s Chinese Theater. Check it out:And Abbott and Costello just behind that. Yep, pretty sweet.
  

• Caught a show at The Laugh Factory Saturday night. Hee-larious. Dane Cook showed up for a surprise set, though he was by far the least funny of the group. Unfortunately I don't remember the other guys' names, but they killed.
  

Then Sunday we went out to Universal City for some last minute shopping and checked out of our hotel at noon. Our flight was at 2:41, and we were taking the public transport to the airport, which was our favored mode of transportation all weekend and usually pretty good. However, thanks to a couple of delays it took us nearly two hours to get back to LAX, which left us scrambling to get to the flight on time. Some helpful United Airlines employees and understanding airport security helped us make it though, and we actually got into LR about 20 minutes early.

So that was the trip. Feel free to comment with your expressions of envy and awe at my coolness. Just make sure you check with my bodyguards first.

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On my way to L.A.!

That's right, this time tomorrow (with luck and an un-grounded plane) I should be in Hollywood attending the Fangoria Weekend of Horrors convention with City Slab magazine. I'll be rubbing elbows with horror stars, pushing the mag, and hopefully doing a little sight-seeing. Sarah's coming too, but she's not a horror geek, so she'll be out on the town while I'm stuck in a hotel basement with a bunch of costumed weirdos. I can't wait.

Full report and pics on our return (knock wood)!

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Rock Report: Clutch Live @ The Village

So last night I went down to The Village at Asher and University to attend a concert by Clutch, one of my favorite bands ever. Clutch is one of those bands whose music is hard to define, which in the age of cookie-cutter emo-Metal and mass-produced rubber-stamp power pop is nothing short of the highest compliment. If forced to come up with a description, I'd have to call them "Southern-tinged groove-oriented stoner rock with witty, literate lyrics and a raw, grungy flair," though even that falls short of what these guys bring to the table. I've been a fan since catching their early hardcore video "A Shogun Named Marcus" on Beavis and Butthead back in the early 90s, and since then they've just got better and better with every album, refining their sound and carving out a niche that no other band can really occupy. I'm a bit of an evangelist for them, actually, and have exposed several friends and coworkers to their music, gaining converts along the way. One of these acolytes, my old friend Nathan, accompanied me to the show.

The Village used to be Little Rock cinematic landmark The Cinema 150, and the repurposing as a live music venue is really pretty cool. The stadium seating remains, but where once I watched Indiana Jones steal treasures while scary Nazi faces the size of blimps melted before my terrified young eyes, now they've got a neat stage with lighting scaffolds and an amply-sized mosh pit. They sell BBQ and other snacks from the old concession stand (though not last night, for some reason), and where the tickets used to be punched they had set up a t-shirt table and, strangely, an oxygen bar. Smoking is not allowed in the venue, but a chain-linked area accessible from inside is available for nicotine addicts. Approaching the building from the parking lot, Nathan and I saw several bikers and metal dudes behind the fence, puffing and snarling like Dobermans from Hell. They sell beer and Jaegermeister shots too, right there in the theater area.

The opening band was Sweden's Kamchatka, a trio who played almost exclusively blues and Southern Rock jams. I'd never heard of them before, but these guys were TIGHT. They barelled through a very impressive 40-minute set, with many extended jam sessions that were always entertaining for their groove and technical virtuosity. The guitarist and bassist traded off lead vocals, and both had very soulful singing voices despite their thick Scandinavian accents when speaking. The guitar player wore thick glasses and a beret and looked like a bit character in a Woody Allen movie, but dude could wail. And the bassist has to be one of the boniest men I have ever seen in my life--instead of holding up a lighter, I wanted to throw the guy a sandwich; still, his impressively shiny, flowing locks distracted somewhat from his emaciation. He was an excellent player, and his tight harmonies with the guitarist along with his great voice won the crowd over in a big way--especially one dude right up front who kept trying to hand him a half-empty beer during their scorching cover of the Allman Brothers' "Whipping Post." Dude, he's busy! Wait for the break!

Anyway, expect to hear good things from these guys. Nate was so impressed he bought both their CDs from the merch table before their set was even over. I don't think he was the only one, either.

Clutch were great too. They played a little bit of everything, from their earlier hardcore-type stuff to their most recent ZZ-Top on steroids jams from the album From Beale Street to Oblivion. They didn't play as many songs as I'd have liked from my favorite Clutch CD, Robot Hive/Exodus, though that's understandable perhaps since their keyboardist was mysteriously missing, and many of those songs rely heavily on his playing. Frontman Neill Fallon delivered his witty, hilarious lyrics with a grim expression and a revival preacher's flair, making for quite a theatrical presentation. The real standout, though, was drummer Jean-Paul Gaster, who made a four-piece kit sound absolutely MONSTROUS. He did a lot of jamming and more than one drum solo, but again I was never really bored--dude's an artist. Guitarist Tim Sult has a loose, grungy blues style that fits the songs great, although when the band went on several extended jams his limits started to show--especially after the virtuosity of Kamchatka's axeman. Toward the end of the show the band started looking a little worn-out, not surprising given their relentless tour schedule and high-energy opening. They made the crowd earn the encore with several minutes of yelling and clapping, then played one long instrumental jam and called it a night. That was a little off-putting to me--they hadn't played signature songs like "Pure Rock Fury" or "A Shogun Named Marcus," so the crowd was hoping for those, and what they delivered seemed almost designed to bring down the adrenaline level and send everyone home mellow. But again, perhaps road fatigue played a part.

All in all a great show--got to see a favorite band live, and discovered a new great group. Double-score!

Of course at any rock concert one of the main draws is the people-watching, and in this case the Village crowd did not disappoint. I was a little afraid that I would be the old creepy dude in the audience full of young rockers, but a lot of the crowd looked about my age, and there were plenty of folks there who were MUCH older and MUCH creepier than I. The rock-show eccentrics were out too:

• One dude in an insane ringmaster-style tux jacket (over jeans and a Western pearl-buttoned dress shirt) earned my respect with his willingness to pursue his style in the face of what must have been withering ridicule. If he'd pulled out a flattened top hat and popped it open with a flourish before settling it on his thin, spiked hair, I'd have bought him a beer.

• I saw several sternum-length beards and eyed their owners enviously.

• One acrobatic fan shimmied to the top of the lighting scaffold during Clutch's second number, and stood up on top of it--well over 30 feet above the concrete floor, gyrating drunkenly to the groove. A sense of impending fatality gripped the crowd as security moved in. Luckily he came down without dying and was ushered out by security, probably wishing he'd waited at least a few more songs before going all Spider-Man on us.

• The requisite mosh-pit brawl broke out, leading to many hard feelings between one fan and a highly-strung security guy who paced up and down the aisles like a panther after the fight was over, obviously working off the adrenaline.

Anyway, it was a great time, I don't think anybody got seriously hurt, and it was much easier to get out of the Village parking lot than Barton Colosseum. (Leaving, we passed near the old site of the Asher drive-in, and the strip mall that used to house the University Quartet cinema--I'd forgotten what a movie-going mecca Asher and University used to be, and it made me nostalgic.) I'd definitely go again if another band I liked came through. If the late-fifties biker with waist-length hair, inch-deep wrinkles, and leather pants taught me anything, it's that you're never too old to rock.

Well, at least I'm not.

Yet.

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Misreading the Signs

So this morning at work I was grabbing some coffee, and I glanced at the Blood Drive sign that was posted above the machine. Its headline, in big white letters, read:

EVERY 2 SECONDS SOMEONE IN AMERICA NEEDS BLOOD

But in my coffee-starved inattentiveness, what I saw was this:

EVERY 2 SECONDS SOMEONE IN AMERICA NEEDS ALCOHOL

I mean, wtf? That's not even close. And no, I'm not hungover.

Still, I wonder if it means something...

Any funny misreadings from my reader(s)?

Is anyone out there?

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Post-Pub or Perish Report

Well, the 2008 Pub or Perish is in the books, and it went pretty well overall. I opened the show (after a brief and very poetic and heartfelt essay by organizer David Koon), and the place was packed and the crowd responsive. "Noir, #28" got a big reaction, as did the limericks I threw in to break up the "serious/literary" stuff. Click here for the poems I read this year (not in reading order, but you get the gist--just scroll down past the prose posts till the poetry starts).

There were open mic readers, festival guests, memoirists and poets. The biggest draw was Jill Conner Brown, who read from one of her half-dozen "Sweet Potato Queen" guides. She brought a lot of the crowd with her (and took them with her too, leaving immediately after she read--so it was just as well I read early), and brought the room to guffaws with her detailed essay on how a woman can get anything she wants by promising (not delivering, but promising) a blow job. Very tongue-in-cheek (wahey!) and a crowd pleaser. Other featured readers included PoP regular S. Y. Hoawah and newcomer Kelly Corrigan, who both brought the good stuff.

Other readers included a few brave first-timers reading prose and poetry--one man reading a story about a duck-hunting trip gone wrong, an earnest New Yorker reading about the power of music to bring folks together in Memphis, a poet who missed her first call by taking an ill-time bathroom trip but came back strong later to read a satirical poem about futuristic anti-depressants, a musically-inclined woman performing a memorable spoken word piece, and others who were just as brave and wonderful. Probably my favorite was the Australian-Arkansan Georgia Ashmore reading a chapter from her novel in which the protagonist attends a very unusual wedding ceremony. I'm sorry I didn't write down anyone else's name--you were all great.

In fact, the writing was great across the board this time--no hilariously well-meaning-but-bad stuff that's been a staple of open mic readings from time immemorial, unless I was the bad one and didn't catch on. But I got several compliments after the reading, so maybe I was okay. :) David even brought the show in under time this year, which is no mean feat.

So thanks to all my wonderful friends who came out to hear me read, thanks to David and the Arkansas Times, thanks to the audience for listening and clapping, and thanks to Sticky Fingerz for the venue and the booze. I already can't wait till next year.

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Pub or Perish 2008! It's a Sonnet Boy Media Blitz!

Wow. I've never had this much press in my life. Check it out:

I'm FEATURED!

Yep, that's me in the photo from PoP 2 years ago, at the Peabody Hotel. But this year I'm one of the mentioned names, which is more pressure but also immeasurably cool. See details two posts below, and come out this weekend! I need the support!


(Also, if you're in LR, check the inside cover of this week's Times. I'm thinking of getting the ad tattooed on my back.)


UPDATE: NEW START TIME! According to the Times ad, the PoP 2008 festivities will start at 6:30pm instead of 7:00pm. If I read it right it's for "pre-show appetizers," but like I say I don't know when my reading slot will be, so just be aware. And please come!

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World Horror Convention Report

In the effort to save digital trees, I'm not going to post my WHC report over all three of my blogs--rather, I'll just point people to the main entry site for all the name-dropping and self-aggrandizing goodness, and then bring you back here for the less magazine-centric stuff:

Click here for my WHC report on the City Slab Blog!

Okay, you back? Great.

It really was a blast getting to hang out with all those great and soon-to-be-great horror writers in SLC, and it was a thrill to attend the Bram Stoker Awards, since in the coming months I'll be able to point to the books with that legend emblazoned on the covers and say, "Hey, I was there when they got this award!" I'll take all the cheap thrills I can get--I'm on a budget.

It was also nice to realize that City Slab is fairly well-known and respected in the horror community, at least among those people I talked to. (I guess the ones that hated us wouldn't bother to stop by for a chat.) A few even described CS as "a dream publication," and weren't at all upset that I'd rejected them in the past. For the most part the horror writers I met were cool, down-to-earth, totally awesome people who I had tons in common with and could talk to for hours at a time within minutes of meeting them. It was like Governor's School, but for horror nerds. In a word, awesome.

I spent the whole weekend next to the display table for McFarland & Co. press, a mid-size publisher who puts out over 300 titles a year, many of them film and horror-related. I bought a few half-price books and struck up a conversation with the managing editor, Lisa Camp, and the long and short of it is I might get to do some freelance editing for them. In two words: FREAKIN' AWESOME. Hey, editing's what I do, it's what I'm good at--the more of it I can do, the happier I am.

And in the "strange coincidence" section of the trip, I was minding my own business at the Slab table when who should I run into but ANOTHER horror writer from Little Rock, Arkansas? That writer was John Jacobs, whose blog Bastardized Version I've added to the link bar at the side, and we had to travel all the way across the country to meet each other. Weird. We were both a little worse for wear running on convention-time, but we plan to meet up and discuss starting the Arkansas Horror Writers Group, which will probably be him and me crowding the little old lady romance writers off the tables in Barnes & Noble and laughing loudly about supernatural evisceration and what not. Can't wait.

So now I'm back, I'm energized to send out more of my horror poetry and fiction, I'm editing like a madman, and I wish I could go again next week. But I'll be at the Fangoria convention in LA at the end of April, and while there won't be as many writers there, it should be a blast nonetheless.

Yoiks, and away!

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Reading My Poetry This Weekend! No Joke!

If you're in Little Rock and looking for a good time this weekend, drop on by the Arkansas Literary Festival in the River Market district for some literary fun and frolic. And once you've worked up a thirst for beer and poetry, come to the Arkansas Times' annual Pub or Perish fiction/poetry/essay reading, to be held this year at Sticky Fingerz bar & grill and featuring yours truly!

I'll likely be reading some more of my sonnets, and maybe some free verse and a limerick or two just to mix things up. Festivities start at 7:00 pm and go on till 9:00 pm or sometime thereafter, depending on how conscientious the readers are about staying within their allotted time. I have no way of knowing when my time will come up till I get there, so if you want to be a member of the Sonnet Boy Groupie Brigade, best get there early!

Beer, Buffalo wings, and sonnets. What could possibly be better than that? :)

UPDATE: NEW START TIME! According to the Times ad, the PoP 2008 festivities will start at 6:30pm instead of 7:00pm. If I read it right it's for "pre-show appetizers," but like I say I don't know when my reading slot will be, so just be aware. And please come!

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Park City Was Not Ready

Yep, that's me in Park City, Utah, getting ready to roll down the slopes like a FREAKIN' AVALANCHE! "Gang way! I don't know how to stop these things!"

Had a blast at the World Horror Convention this weekend at Salt Lake City. Sold some magazines, pressed the flesh, made contacts, got some addresses, bought some books. SLC is a lovely city, absolutely ringed with mountains all snow-capped and beautiful. I wish I'd had more time for sight-seeing, but all in all it was a great weekend. Can't wait to go skiing again.

Oh, and eventually I figured out how to stop. It involves screaming in a very high-pitched voice and throwing yourself into a handy snowbank. FYI.

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