Gabe Durham's Blog, page 17

9/22/11 – The Day a Hiker Was Rescued by Helicopter from a Topanga Cliff

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Dark Sky Magazine #14

WHAT?? New issue of Dark Sky Magazine with writing by Katie Jean Shinkle, Blake Kimzey, Jason Larson, Corey Eastwood, Katherine V. Seger, Joseph Musso, Ryan Bender-Murphy, Brett DeFries, Friedrich Kerksieck, EC Belli, Thibault Raoult, and Zach Savich. Art by Sarah Pater. Edited by Christy Crutchfield, Brian Mihok, Sarah Boyer, Ted Powers, and myself. HERE.

AND LOOK: Already every water cooler is talking about Larson's saucy BURTS.

Also in the issue is a new kind of book review Zach Savich and I invented after he described a book to me in great detail without ever mentioning the author's name.

Here's his: Sun Stuck Like Gum on a Chip of Brick

Here's mine: "Love, Love, Lovin It" Says the Tree Canyon River Review

The next issue will feature some more of these reviews, so if you think you might like to write one, email me at gabe AT darkskymagazine DOT com and I'll fill you in.

Also out is the newest of NOÖ so LETS SETTLE IN and READ UP.

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9/22/11 – The Day of Much Muffingate Speechifying

Turned out this $16 muffin story was a bust, but on 9/22/11, we didn't know that. It was Hilton's word vs. everyone else's, and some among us had reason to relish the hunt for stories of extreme government excesses.

9/22/11 – The Day Vesta Williams Passed Away

Yesterday evening after dinner, I began the actual writing on a new project I've spent the last couple of months preparing for: A book about Thursday, September 22, 2011.

I picked the day beforehand, and not for any significance the day held for me, but because it was just a day, any day. And then the day came and, turns out, a number of interesting things happened.

So, in the brave tradition of radically shifting the tone and regularity of this blog to suit my whims, I will occasionally in the coming months link over to some of my more interesting 9/22 findings.

Finding #1: Monday's post, which linked to a story about an old Japanese Star Wars Nintendo game.

Finding #2: 9/22/11 was the day we lost Vesta Williams, an R&B singer with a killer range whose career peaked in the late 80′s.

Here's her 1989 signature hit, "Congratulations," a ballad about hearing through a friend that a former lover is getting married:

And here's "Once Bitten, Twice Shy," an uptempo hit with the opening line, "Your name is Dracula / You suck the life right out of me." Even if you don't watch the whole thing, make sure to check out the stop-motion "chase around the pool" sequence that begins at the 2:10 mark.

I wasn't familiar with Vesta before I read her obituary, and now I've listened to each of these songs a few times each. Which brings me to one of the true motivators of the 9/22 project: I like having a professional excuse to root around through old music videos on youtube.

Items

- More Dark Sky biz: Kevin Murphy vs. M Thompson at Hobart

- Anne Holmes, Lily Laedwig, Gale Thompson: They have books coming out!

- Thanks to everybody who came to see me read with Matthias and Emily. After a year in Nashville, it was kind of miraculous to see a big room like the upstairs of Amherst Books fill up. FUN CAMP is going away for awhile so that it can return as a book in a year and a  half.

- This is my favorite piece Matthias read that night: The one on "Seeingers."

- Liz sneaked over to Flying Object yesterday and filled out the James Hoag section of our home library.

- Have you heard this amazing new Wilco song, Art of Almost? Have you made sure to ignore the rest of the album? (That's not fair, I haven't even listened to the whole thing…)

- My favorite scene in Star Wars is the one where Luke Skywalker fights the shark.

 

I know a lot of people throw up a donate button on their websites. But what we could do is make a big donate button. Like a really big one. You know?

I have begun editing Dark Sky Magazine.

Look at our masthead page. Also editing: Christy Crutchfield, Sarah Boyer, Brian Mihok, Ted Powers

Kevin Murphy and Brian Allen Carr and I talk about it a little. Then we lose our train of thought. Then we catch it. Nope, lost it.

First issue is due in about a month.

Kevin and Brian will focus on putting out books by Jensen Beach and Ryan Ridge.

If you are a writer of fiction, poetry, or essays, please consider sending some writing to Dark Sky. Here is our submissions page. If you are a visual artist, same deal.

Keyhole 11 is going to be great. Last week, Peter sent me a cover he'd designed. It looks awesome. But it is my last issue as editor. Someone else is taking over the magazine, I believe, but it'd be premature to say more than that.

Earlier this week, I ordered a "tall" coffee instead of a large coffee at Haymarket and I thought, OH NO, I AM TRAPPED IN AN ANECDOTE FROM 1997!

Reading THIS FRIDAY at Amherst Books

Thanks to Brian Foley for asking me to read in Amherst this Friday night. Please join us! – Gabe


Friday, September 30

8:00pm
Amherst Books
A PRODUCTIVE VISIT WITH MATHIAS & FRIENDSstarring

MATHIAS SVALINA

GABE DURHAM

EMILY TODER

reading to Celebrate the release of Mathias Svalina's I AM A VERY PRODUCTIVE ENTREPENEUR, out now from Mud Luscious Press – http://mudlusciouspress.com/books/svalina/i-am-a-very-productive-entrepreneur/

The 15 Best National Songs

From Sad Songs for Dirty Lovers: Murder Me Rachel

From Alligator: Secret Meeting, Lit Up, Mr. November

From Boxer: Fake Empires, Slow Show, Apartment Story, Ada, Green Gloves

From High Violet: Bloodbuzz Ohio, Lemonworld, England, Terrible Love, Anyone's Ghost, Little Faith

Okay, your turn.

FUN CAMP was a semifinalist for the Lake Forest/&NOW Madeline P. Plonsker Residency

I entered FUN CAMP in the running for this fellowship before it got picked up by MLP, and it got pretty close! Glad I made the list and glad I didn't win: It would have been hard to turn down $10,000.

From the site:

The 2011-2012 Madeleine P. Plonsker Emerging Writer's Residency Prize Finalists and Semifinalists:

Winner: Elizabeth Gentry, Knoxville, TN: Housebound Finalists (in alphabetical order):

Lena Bertone, Liverpool, NY: La Revengista Lindsey Drager, Champaign, IL: The Sorrow Paper Elise Pollard, Davis, CA: The Worry of Our Dreams

Semifinalists (in alphabetical order):

July Cole, Oakland, CA: Rat Gabe Durham, Nashville, TN: Fun Camp Jennifer Stockdale, Notre Dame, IN: Pink Eye

NewPages Review of MAR & "Another Village"

Robyn Campbell wrote a thoughtful review of the new Mid-American Review, drawing some metaphysical parallels between my story, "Another Village," and some of the other works in there:

"Arguably, there is a line between humanity and the supernatural. There is the world as we know it and there is that which is otherworldly. The latter may be interpreted as: God (in all his/her/its forms); Death; the Spirit; Magic. Regardless of what we choose to call it, our fascination with it is and always will be present. In the latest issue of the Mid-American Review, we see the line crossed and re-crossed…

"Gabe Durham's "Another Village," appearing early in the publication, beautifully illustrates the intersection of two powerful worlds. It's a (sort of) re-telling of Little Red Riding Hood's story in that it features the same main characters, but it focuses on the abstract mysticism hidden in the original. The girl—her name unimportant, "something with an 'H,'"—is tricked and led away from her village of humans with questionable morals to one of wolves, who also unfortunately have questionable morals. Both groups are intensely ritualistic (sending eight-year-olds into the woods to "learn a little something," dancing around fires, etc.), further amplifying the closeness of the body and spirit. The narrator, after explaining that the "personal quest" business petered out, offers a bit of wisdom regarding the human tendency to be drawn to, well, the other."

And here's Matt Bell's essay on the same story: "This is the crux upon which the rest of the story—which I won't ruin—turns: Either the girl in red shoes sets the village apart and above, or else it does not. For what else do they have, in their ignorance, to set them apart?"