Jamie Iredell's Blog, page 18

More Tour

After not sleeping much in Portland had breakfast with Bryan Coffelt and his fiancée and talked about breakfast places of which Portlanders are very fond, something I kinda knew already from Kevin Sampsell and Frayn Masters from when they came to read in Atlanta and they were down for some kickass breakfast but we couldn't get into Ria's Bluebird ever because it's always hard to get in there, and things were pretty much the same in Portland on a Sunday morning with everyone eating before or after church and stuff although I'm not sure how much of Portland is made of church-goers because it seems like a really young city and I know that the people are all highly educated and thus not superstitious. Whilst mid-drive to Ashland we spotted two bald eagles. I bought a six pack of Bud tall boys in an attempt to chill while Mike took the wheel and maybe I could sleep, but I'm not very good at sleeping in cars, so we talked about driving itself and Mike told me how he hit a parked car once. Mike said he gets nervous cause he doesn't drive a lot, which is good. I wish more Americans didn't drive. But Mike said I made him comfortable in the car so we figure if we drove another thousand miles still he'd be a real American by the end of it.

Ashland was rainy and quaint and fun. K. Silem Mohammad met us at his apartment and we then ate latin fusion and the server had trouble knowing what was on the menu that the restaurant didn't have and remembering things we ordered and actually bringing them, but we had mojitos and margaritas and altogether it was good (especially the empanadas) so we left a tip still and the loud drunk girls sitting behind us said that they'd order the same things because one of the girls was the other girl's bottom. The reading there was intimate, which was a nice contrast to the huge Portland reading and I told everyone that I was having a baby, and lots of other very personal things. Mike recited his poem/play, the first section from his poem "Let's Build the Last Song and Sneak Away While Everyone Is Listening" and it went over well. We sold a few books, but more important kicked it with almost everyone who came to the reading at Kasey's house where we re-defined the road novel, created (maybe?) the anti-road novel, talked about the first person omniscient (Whitman), and generally spent the night perusing Kasey's amazing cornucopia of displayed books. Morning brought me Morning Glory, the much hyped (by Mike and Bryan Coffelt) Ashland breakfast Mecca that lived up to its hoopla by serving me a giant chicken fried steak that there was no chance of finishing. I had a bite of Mike's omelette: carmelized red onions, smoked applewood bacon, and fontina cheese: the most amazing omelette I've ever tasted. Mike won.

Drive through the Siskiyous: gorgeous: snow sifting, dusting cedars, big semis. Open vista at Siskiyou Pass and clouded over Mt. Shasta, the peak peeking through. Sagebrush that I miss we don't get sagebrush in Georgia. Or mountains, real mountains, not foothills. Past weed we got a full view of Shasta, to which Mike a funny story told me is tangentially related: Lemurians are an ancient Alien race that live upon Mt. Shasta, according to some weirdos who live around the mountain, particularly around the town of Weed, where a brewery created Lemurian Lager. This cult showed up at the brewery one day, waltzing in clad full in white, carrying a cease and desist letter, claiming "Lemurians are 5,000 years old, they live in the mountain, and they don't drink beer. Please stop production." The delivered the letter then stood around quietly, not saying anything at all in their white clothing. Freaking out everyone, the brewery agreed to stop making the beer but if I were them I would've just changed the name which is what they probably did.

Along I-5 we saw a horse in a pasture chasing a gaggle of geese away like the horse was thinking fuck I'm gonna go fuck with those geese. This conglomeration of blackbirds circled and wheeled over a field and together in unison they made a face of many emotions, a cloud. Mike said it looked like pepper. In San Francisco we saw Jimmy Chen and Chelsea Martin, and that was great to see those old friends. We also saw my pal Todd Cincala and he hooked us up with a couch and cushions. The reading went well there, too, sold books, I got Chelsea to sign my copy of her The Really Funny Thing About Apathy. Jimmy and I talked about making pasta with different delicious sauces and I want to cook with him.

Davis next where we saw Jeremy Spencer of Scrambler Books. Met Mike's parents for dinner and they were really nice. Went to weird college beer bars in Davis that closed at 10 PM, but Jeremy and his buddy Ben were great hosts and it was fun talking to them while in the background one television featured some Hooters things with bikinis tug-o-warring on clouded over beaches, and on another TV snowboarders plummeted from scarped snowy cliffs and performed typical snowboarder antics such as driving RVs and throwing snowballs at one another whilst donning their cool baggy clothing and snowboarding goggles circling their necks and I was reminded of that subculture and how fucking stupid it is. Mike read a sad story in Davis, maybe not really sad, emotional. Mike's dad after the reading said, "I'm surprised. You guys are really good!"

Tour

In Seattle I got into town much earlier than Mike, so I picked up our rental car, which ended up costing more than I anticipated, and that was a little shocking so I had to think for a while whether or not Mike was gonna be pissed, so I left the airport and found a road with a golf course next to it and that golf course had a restaurant/bar/banquet hall where I sat and ate nachos with brisket and grilled jalapenos that destroyed my mouth's lining while the new bartender took over for the old one and she had some serious problems with customers from the night before who had walked out on their tab and I listened while she adjusted her hair into a bun and made that face people make when they're so astounded by some people's audacity, that look that's like seeing the world's largest donut in your bathroom. Mike wasn't pissed and I think the beer I drank helped. We went to the reading and saw Matthew Simmons. I also saw my cousins and some friends from Reno who now live in Seattle. The people in Seattle were cool. Thanks Seattle!

Me, Mike, and Matthew drove to Portland. On the road we thought up a video game called the World of Litcraft, and my idea of this game involves avatars that grow up in weird ways (like, they pick actual strawberries so their mothers can make fresh daquiris and stuff) and that influences what kind of adult they grown into, when they eventually enter apartments with desks and computers where they sit and write stories or essays or poems or all of it and you get to see what kind of writer you've created. In Portland we were invited to Kevin Sampsell's and Frayn Masters' wedding reception. The were delicious sandwiches and cupcakes at this party. We also met Riley Michael Parker and Marika Haskins. They were really nice and fun. We got a cup of coffee that really fucked me up, because my wife's pregnant so we don't drink real coffee anymore it's been about 6 months and I only drink decaf and I'm in Portland right so the coffee's actually a syringe loaded with caffeine and shoved in my spine. I didn't end up sleeping, or I only slept for 4 hours, and that was after a xanax and 9 beers. But before all of this we went to Powell's where I restrained myself and only bought Chelsea Martin's new book along with Jason Bredle's Smiles of the Unstoppable, that Mike's Magic Helicopter Press put out. Then we had this amazing reading at Ampersand Vintage. Kevin and Michael Schaub of Bookslut. I was just meeting Michael, and he was really nice. He and Kevin were great introducers cause they didn't have anything planned but just talked about me and Mike and about our books, and they were casual and funny and it made this ridiculous crowd that showed up feel comfortable. There people all over that place, and they bought our books. Portland made me feel comfortable high up, like on a ski lift. So then it was I could not sleep.

Reviews

This

This

This

I just landed in Seattle. The PBR here tastes exactly the same as everywhere else, just like McDonald's, except it's beer and not McDonald's but that actually makes them more similar than different.

Teaching essay writing class right now, and one of my stu...

Teaching essay writing class right now, and one of my students, stuck on drafting her personal essay about her mother dying, said, "I don't know where to start. Should I just devastate them from the beginning?" I laughed, and said, "Yes, absolutely, devastate them from the beginning."

Another

I am here again and today the clouds scrunch up against the sky's dome like they want to snuggle each other. The wind makes me want to make my own wind, so I keep breathing.

Futbol

I have been in a bar working all afternoon, a bar in which the televisions perpetually display football matches--obviously by the title of this post, not of the American variety. Interestingly, I'm not in a faux WASP pub of the American variety, you know the bar in your town, the only place where wayward Brits, Irish, Scots, and Welsh find employment solely on the merits of their accent? This is an American sports bar. We're in one of those lulls--only the NBA and NHL are alive and kicking which means that sports America has gone into hibernation.

Anyway, I think I perhaps have discerned the difference between Americans and other cultures, based on my observance of football (non American). This is not the first non-American football contest I have observed, I must say. In fact, I am very good friends with a formerly non-American football professional. He is now an American, but he still plays football, but he does not play American football. Americans call this soccer. I realize that that sounds stupid, like when white people say, "Well I have Black friends" when they really don't. So, to provide the details: he's Israeli, he works as a trainer, his kids are three and one years old. Yes, I know the guy.

Anyway (x 2), whilst watching this football contest, with the sound superceding conversation (despite this bar's emptiness on a Wednesday afternoon) I'm assaulted by the constant elaborate crowd chants screamed by hooligans tossing their empty beer cups from the stands of football stadium in said football contest. Said chants at least sound complex. They might not be. But they are definitely multi-syllabic. It sounds like 100,000 people are chanting, "Oh, Healthcare, we love you, but you take away our pay, but still it's kinda good to go to the doctor and not get fucked on the bill, wow it's actually a pain and at the same time not so bad to be European." Sometimes they're not European, but the teams playing right now are--or at least I think they are.

The point is, you never hear such mass coordinated utterance from citizens of the United States. You don't even hear that shit from Canada. Is this Americans' problem? Is it what defines us, what saves us? Go to an American football contest and universally there's no point in sitting down, cause everyone's up and shouting different shit. The guy next to you actually roots for the other team, yells fucked up shit about [enter your favorite athlete's name here], and when he turns to you, he says, "No offense," and he actually kinda means it. He's just that guy. And--generally--it's okay for you to root your thing from where you are. Yes, certainly it's dangerous at an Oakland Raiders game (in fact it's entirely possible you could get shot), but that has nothing to do with your allegiance or lack thereof.

The point is (x 2), American aren't homogenous. Maybe that's why we're so fucked up and have so many problems. Maybe that's why this place is diverse and beautiful and almost no matter where you go you don't have to eat a hamburger if you don't want to.

Small Press

Molly Gaudry has just announced a bunch of stuff, cool stuff, ambitious and viable stuff. She's working now as an independent publicist. Along with that, she's initiating a small press collective. Molly talked to me about this at AWP and it sounded like a great idea then, but it really was only an idea. In the last few weeks, Molly's run with that idea and has accountants and lawyers helping to get her started. I talked to her on the phone today, and she has innovative ideas for getting books to readers, and not just the small press and literary readership that contemporary lit has niched itself into. Molly's talking about, like, my mom reading Lindsay Hunter's Daddy's, for example. And why not? My mom would love that book. But she doesn't know that it (or Featherproof Books, for that matter) even fucking exists. If you publish books, you should send your favorite to Molly so she can maybe help you sell it. She'll kick ass at this.

In other news: it's no longer cold here. Maybe it will stay that way? It's been in the 70s. I wore shorts to teach yesterday. My students were awesome. They've been reading Nineteen Eighty-four. I know that's a book you normally read in high school. I'm teaching it in English 101. That's mostly because I'd never read it, and wanted to, and knew that I'd never get around to it unless I was teaching it cause I got a stack of to-read that's reaching the moon. I love those ridiculous hyperbolic comparisons you hear on Discovery Channel documentaries. They say things like "Jamie has so many books that he owns but has not yet read, that if those books were golf balls, and you put all of those golf ball in the Grand Canyon, they would fill the Grand Canyon to a depth of three feet. That's three feet of golf balls." My students had all this stuff they wanted to talk about with the book. They've really taken to it. They're all interested in what's happened in Egypt and what's going on in Bahrain, Yemen, Jordan--all over the autocratic world. These are the same students who, a week ago, didn't know what a season was. Next week I think we'll get to seasonings. Maybe we'll eat. Class starts at lunchtime.

I don't know why I'm posting all this stuff about my stud...

I don't know why I'm posting all this stuff about my students. I guess it's cause I care about them and their success, but they're also in some ways sadly funny. Today I was talking about critical thinking. I kinda break that down into two components: paying attention to your senses, and asking questions. I had them go outside and record every sensory impression they could for about ten minutes. When they came back the thing they kept talking about was that it was cold outside. So first we talked about describing that in sensory ways, which they did pretty good at. Then I asked them why. They said why what. I said why's it cold. They said cause it's winter. I said why's it winter. They said cause it's a season. I said what's a season and why do we have them. It took them a long time to think about that, but eventually they got saying because the Earth turns on an axis. I said yes that makes night and day for us on the planet but what makes seasons? One student yelled because god made it that way. I said okay but is there a more direct reason what if someone in the class doesn't believe in god that doesn't answer the question for them. The idea that someone wouldn't believe in god was weird to them but they got past it. Finally we got to that the earth wobbles on its axis, and right now that wobble has angled the planet so that sunlight does not hit north america as directly as it does, say, Chile right now where it's summer. They all agreed that that sounded right. I said why. They said why what. I said why does Earth wobble on its axis. Now they were really stumped. So I said that about four billion years ago before Earth solidified another forming planet about the size of mars slammed into what would become our planet, and this cataclysm caused axial tilt and created our moon and that without this violent moment in Earth's early history life would not be possible. They said why would you believe that and not the bible. Then I laughed.

Somewhat related to students (i.e., mine)

On the way to class this morning listening to NPR I heard this story, which came on the heels of this story.

I thought it weird that no one kinda put the two together, at least directly. The NYU sociology professor at one point said that college professors work hard, but that in many cases the sole criteria for judging their effectiveness is student evaluations. As an adjunct professor, that's certainly the case for me. I had an administrator visit my class once after I got hired, and said admin person sat there for five minutes, took some notes, and walked out and I never heard anything about a "faculty eval."

So in order to get good student evals many professors don't have rigorous coursework, are entertaining, and grade easily. All = happy students = good evals = keeping job = students don't learn.

On top of that there's retention. Whenever they say not-for-profit college or university that's some serious bullshit. They need those people in seats otherwise budget cuts are gonna force layoffs. So it's in the professors' and administrators' favor to be easy in order to keep college enrollments up. All of that = happy stupid unemployable students.

AWP is getting old

or it's very likely more like I'm getting old because I was fucking hurting yesterday and today. today I jogged and that felt really good cause I didn't do anything of that in washington dc and all I did was eat shitty food and get a little drunk well okay actually especially on friday night I got a lottle drunk and was having trouble standing and slurred quite a bit and saturday morning I asked a bunch of people who I partied with if they made it to the party at all and they were all like, yeah dude, I was with you all night. awp you're fun probably too much for me, fuck i'm going to be someone's dad.