Kyle Beachy's Blog, page 8

Photographic Proof That Gravity Is As Effective as ever

This squirrel fell from the sky onto my neighbor’s fence. I saw it while walking back from buying eggs and at first wondered what kind of sicko was the kind of  sicko to mount a dead squirello to a fence. I felt my head slowly shake on its own accord and I actively  worried for the youth. Then I looked up at the branches overhead and it all became very clear, and I could imagine him falling, her falling, she leapt for a branch and missed, then fell. And it was a hell of a thing to admire for a f

Affecting And A Little Bit Strange

Tina Brown’s webiverse conglomerator (or god, surely there’s a term? someone tell me what we’re calling these, please) The Daily Beast has a feature today on “Four Overlooked Books of 2009“, which includes the following and other nice words for The Slide:

Beachy has a distinct and very funny voice, and the book’s mood of confused longing sticks with you...It’s affecting and a little bit strange—and when I was done I vowed to read whatever Beachy writes next.

Anyone looking for a juicy-as-hell stor

Regret, Jealousy

I just now learned of a book called Slide and Slurp, Scratch and Burp: More About Verbs (Words are Categorical), which is actually and amazingly the very full-length working title I had for years before Dial made me shorten it out of concern for Noah called “man, that’s already an illustrated book for ages 4-8″.

Wunderkammer

Friend Della recently began compiling a hell of a “curious collection of art, poetry, and prose”, called, wonderfully, Wunderkammer. Here’s a tiny thing I was happy to contribute, “A Single Sneeze Would Ruin The Whole Shot“.

How Ever will Austin, TX, avoid a “St. Louis-style decline”?

Why, by voting for Brewster McCracken of course! In this campaign video, the Austin mayoral candidate succeeds in both gently peddling fear and taking the absolute piss out of St. Louis, MO. According to Brewster, whose name is funny I don’t care what you say, the future of his city holds two distinct options: “The Austin Model or the St. Louis slide”.

Though one might wonder how the vacant condominium towers poking awkwardly out of Austin’s skyline fit into this model.

“With a Tangled Skein is a fantasy novel by Piers Anthony. It is the third of eight books in the Incarnations of Immortality series.”

Here’s to men who have bachelor parties and make pins to hand out to each other at the party, and also hand to strangers at the bar. Pins with the groom’s face on them, mustached, cross-eyed. Here’s to the pin ripping my shirt when i forgot about it and took off my shirt and the pin ripped it a little.

It is not a bad rip. And also here’s to baby showers where couples go together, even though baby showers are very obviously an event designed for women exclusively, i think. Except once I did feel

The Senescent Sportscaster Validates His Legend Between Pitches

The following comes to me by way of a kindhearted and funny man named Courtney, a friend of a friend who also happens to be a Cubs fan but that’s okay, taken I believe from Will Leitch’s blog. Vin Scully speaking on behalf of the Dodgers regarding the fate of Angels’ pitcher Nick Adenhart:

Nick, from Maryland, had pitched six scoreless innings and was in a car with three friends, and a driver apparently went through a red light and T-boned the car, killing three of the four, including Nick, and o

Wings, Flies

Todd Dills, Birminghamian and author of Sons of the Rapture and editor of The 2nd Hand, recently conducted a nice email back-and-forth with me about The Slide. Today he’s posted the interview. In it we discuss titles, city / county tensions, Bolaño, and white vans.

Thorough.

As in-depth a write-up as I’ve received, today. From the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography, a couple thousand words that are just thorough in every possible way, not to mention very positive. From the final paragraph:

And that’s why today The Slide becomes only the fourth book in CCLaP’s history (and the first this year) to earn a perfect score of 10, and why in my opinion it wouldn’t surprise me at all to see this get a dark-horse Pulitzer nomination come next year. It’s one of those

Resignation Tendered

After one full day as a baseball blogger, I have decided the position does not suit me, mainly for the, um, rigor? Of the position? The sheer number of games and so on? Crap, man, one-hundred-sixty-two is a whole lot of games. I’m frankly shocked I lasted this long.