Kyle Beachy's Blog, page 4

So Quick, These

Hobart has just posted a nice, healthy roundtable discussion among twelve writers who either have a book out recently or one coming soon. Some truly interesting people in the group (who I won't link here because it's work, but you've got fingers, you've got a search bar), and I thank them for the experience: Jedediah Berry, Andrew Ervin, Roxane Gay, Rachel B. Glaser, Julia Holmes, Caitlin Horrocks, Holly Goddard Jones, Tom McAllister, Laura van den Berg, Kevin Wilson, and Mike Young. And...

A Certain (Dude) Life

I'm fortunate enough to be part of a truly impressive collective of like-minded artists who value blank over this other…

Actually, no, but I hang out with a cadre of assholes who have a blog and a thick, serious rep around town called Dude Life. Tonight I posted my first piece of writing there, about the Shane Oneill debacle (tiny inside joke). It's about skateboarding specifically, but generally about payment for digital content, and shifting paradigms of consumption and a certain...

For the Infant I Been

I'm wondering the word for the process by which one stops knowing anything about bands as they emerge, and coincidentally begins critiquing trends so terribly similar to his (it's me) own from a time not too I don't think long ago. Pull up your pants!, one thinks, as they walk in front of me on my way to the train. But one's own pants! How they once did sag! How many were given glimpse of my ass thanks to my keen fashion sense!

I know the word, okay yes thank you. The word is aging. The word f...

The World's Worst Singalong

About a year ago I pitched the idea for an essay to St. Louis Magazine. The thought was to look at the baseball rivalry between St. Louis and Chicago, addressing it as a lifelong Cardinals fan living among Cubs faithful. There was a bit of back and forth and a long stretch of time between when we agreed on the fact of essay and the time when the essay would eventually come out, which was in time for Opening Day of the 2010 season. During that time I read a bunch of baseball materials, took...

A Place Where Abba Plays and Brothers and Sisters Reunite, Dance, and Sing

Today the world lost a precious, beautiful woman. Lost a laugh and voice it will miss. So please turn on Abba and feel free to cry along with we who were lucky enough to know and love her (there was no knowing without loving, that much I promise). Love you, Violet. You were a miracle in every way.

Sometimes I think of my grandmother's hands, and the way a teacup shakes, now, when she carries it from the kitchen to her chair. Because these days my grandmother is growing older in a way you can...

Big Hair, Long Talk

Happy to share and interview I conducted last week with the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography, available right here for you to enjoy, or download, or ignore completely, as per your own personal druthers. We met at the Intelligentsia in Lakeview, a kind of epicenter of something or other, it always feels like, and talked writing, skateboarding, and a thing or two about the continuum of mind-fuckery that is publishing a novel.

Three Times I've Fallen

I was asked nicely to contribute to the Three Guys One Book blog's "When We Fell in Love" series, in which authors talk about a book or books that that made readers or writers out of them. Today, my three-book answer has become internetty, right here.

Standing, Booing

In explanation but not exactly defense of this, which I just had handed to me and have no clue of its origin, though I'll just bet it's a Cub fan…

Mark McGwire got a standing ovation at the Cardinals' fan convention. In the wake of calling out McGwire and other juicers as liars, cheaters and phonies, Jack Clark was booed. As you can see, Cardinals fans check their brains at the door.

…I will add that: Jack Clark made the single gravest error in Cardinal fandom which is talk shit about another...

Life Hammer

I was walking on the sidewalk just now and saw one of the city ladies in an orange vest slip a ticket under the wiper of a green Tercel. As I passed her I said, Ticket season, and she looked at me and her eyes were big and it occurred to me that the world is full of assholes, they're everywhere, on the internet and outdoors in the real world. Here in this bar there's a guy talking to the server like she signed up for some subscription of his. I hear asshole narratives about friends' and...

Assorted and by no Means Complete

A few  thoughts recalled from my time watching the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame 25th Anniversary concert the other night on Pat's couch while our two dogs (beautiful bitches, both) watched us:

At this point, Stevie Wonder is at least a minor deity. I can't imagine a single religion that would argue.John Legend is goddamned handsome and I will admit right now that I am jealous of his handsomeness. It's fine. It's okay. I'm okay with it.Smokey Robinson would do well to take a cue from Stevie and...