In Which I Finally Become Too Cool to Live

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Last night, Marianne and I drove up to NYC to catch Philip Glass and Patti Smith performing at the City Winery. The evening was titled "Footnote to Howl, The Poet Speaks, Homage to Allen Ginsberg," and was held twelve years to the day after the poet's death. Which was an event Smith and I believe Glass too were present to witness. So Glass played piano (is anybody surprised that he's a brilliant pianist?) while Smith read Ginsberg's poetry. Plus some of Smith's poetry and songs and a couple of Glass's etudes, and a fair amount of reminiscing about "Allen's passing."

Patti Smith really did manage to catch that incantatory-prophetic thing that Ginsberg's best poetry embodies. I thought her reading of "Wichita Kansas Vortex" was the highlight of the evening, but Marianne thought it might have been a poem about Manhattan which was (I blush to admit) new to us both.

So, having been there, I am now officially too cool to live.

Allen Ginsberg breezed through Williamsburg back when I was in college, as he did from time to time, on the day when a total eclipse of the sun was visible from nearby Norfolk. A couple of my friends saw him in a diner and went to say hello.

"Did you see the eclipse?" he asked them. "Oh, it was mad! Mad!"

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City Root Rootless

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Yesterday, Marianne and I jaunted down to 12th and Callowhill Streets to see Keiko Miyamori's sculpture City Root.

The blood-red cube of resin contains a 4,000-pound root mass of an oak tree pulled from the ground at an urban excavation at 11th and Girard Streets, here in Philadelphia. Bricks, metal, and glass caught in the roots are visible, as are strings of bubbles and fracture lines within the resin itself.

City Root is gorgeous, monumental, and essentially abandoned. It's sitting behind a chain-link fence on the grounds of Shelly
Electric Company , because cracks developed during the long curing process, rendering it unsuitable for outdoor display, and so the park which commissioned it refused to accept ownership.

The whole sad story can be found here.

What a beautiful piece of art it is, though! If you happen to have a business with a huge lobby or a mansion that needs something to astonish and intimidate your friends . . . well, here's your chance.


And in the mail today . . .
. . . came an advance copy of The Best of Michael Moorcock, edited by John Davey with Ann and Jeff VanderMeer, from Tachyon Publications. Now, the idea that you can squeeze all the best of Moorcock's short fiction into a single handsome trade paperback is laughable. Nevertheless, it is one heck of a good-looking book, crammed with absolutely superior fiction.

The bottom line? If simply knowing this book is about to come into existence doesn't make you want a copy of your own, then I have no respect for you. Intellectually, that is.

I got an ARC because Jacob Weisman, the publisher, is a buddy. The rest of the world, alas, will have to wait until May 15.

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This Glitterati Life (Part 10,343)

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Tuesday, Marianne and I went to see Kyle Cassidy's play, Raven's Gate, which was given a reading at The Painted Bride. It was directed by Carla Emanuele, and performed by Trillian Stars and an actor whose name (this kind of low-budget event doesn't have programs or anything) I managed to miss. Plus Get the Woolite written by Mona R. Washington and directed by Anthony P.Kamani. Quite a splendid evening, with surprisingly lively question-and-answer sessions after each play.

Then last night we went out on Toad Patrol again. It's a glamorous, glamous life!


And I cannot resist sharing this with you . . .





It's called Matrix Ping-Pong, and what a terrific example of the power of the imagination it is!

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A Pleasant Thing to Find in One's Mailbox

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My Alex Award has arrived!

The Alex Awards, you'll remember, are given out by the Young Adult Library Services Association of the American Library Association every year to ten adult novels that young adults can read with pleasure. Nick Hornby has dubbed them the "not boring" awards, because by definition any novel a teenager can be bothered to read is not a snooze.

You can see why I'm so pleased with this. And being in the company of nine other winners very pleasantly points out the fact, often obscured by awards, that this is not a competition. We're all of us engaged in a common attempt to write books that will endure.

The ALA gives out a slew of YA awards yearly, the very biggest of which is the Newbery Medal. Which was won this year by Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book. I just now checked its online listing at Amazon and saw that it's rated as being for ages 9-12. I hate those upper-age caps and their implicit aren't-you-too-old-to-be-reading-this?-ishness.

So I guess that it's the twelve-year-old in me that thought it was a fine piece of work.

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The Immortal Bud Sparhawk

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Very quickly, because I've got to do taxes . . .

Above is a snap from the dinner after last Friday's Philly Fantastic reading by Bud Sparhawk. (Bud's the bemused-looking one at the center.)

One thing most people don't know about the reading series is that afterwards we go out to dinner. And usually the group is so small that an audience member can invite him- or herself along and for the price of a meal get to hobnob with the glitterati. Pretty good deal!


Oh, and check this out . . .

The tech guys keep getting closer to making wearable computers seem sensible. Here's the latest version thrown together with off-the-shelf components. It opens a little slow, but hang in there:




I do think Ms Maes slings the word "genius" about a little loosely, though. Remember when you had to be Einstein or Picasso to get that title?

Still, a neat hack.

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The Few, the Proud . . . the TOAD WATCH!

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Last night I joined Marianne on toad patrol. Every spring, when the weather starts to get warm, you see, a young toad's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love. Unfortunately for local toads, the path to their mating territory at the old Roxborough Reservoir requires them to cross a road which has been increasingly busy of recent years, resulting in a real-life version of Frogger. As a result, the local toad population has been crashing.

So every night while the season is on, the road is closed and Marianne and her brave compeers go out to find the small creatures and usher them safely across. Alas, the road cannot be completely closed to cars (there are people who live on it), and so a significant fraction don't make it across. But the carnage is greatly reduced.

It's fun, in a weird way.

And what have I learned from the experience? It helps to bring along a thermos of something hot to drink and (if you end up standing at the barricades, turning away cars) something to read.


Oh, and incidentally . . .

There's a lot going on these days, so I think I'm going to be blogging daily this week. This isn't a change of guaranteed frequency, though. That's still Monday and Friday.

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In Which I Invent A New Drink

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Brace yourselves! I was in Penzey's the other day and discovered that they sell juniper berries. Reasoning (correctly as it turns out) that a couple of them would bring out the juniper flavor of gin, I brought home a four ounce bottle and promptly created a new variant on the martini.

I call it -- for obvious reasons -- THE COMEDIAN!

Here's the recipe:

Comedian

Six parts gin

One part Noilly Pratt dry vermouth

Two juniper berries

One crescent slice of lemon peel

Shake with ice and serve stingingly cold.

Be aware, however, that Noilly Pratt has recently changed their formula, turning the dry vermouth that was legendary for its compatibility with the martini into just another aperitif. Be sure to get the real stuff -- Noilly Pratt classic.

To the right: The Comedian expresses his opinion of Noilly Pratt's meddling with perfection.

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