David S. Atkinson's Blog, page 177

Paris Reflections: Office Chair

Continuing on the theme of reflections of the recent Paris trip, we’ll connect this to yesterday by the fact that my wife and I were eating cassoulet at the time when it happened. Regardless, I have to wonder what that guy was doing with that office chair.

My wife and I had intended to go out to a highly lauded raclette restaurant near the Rambuteau metro station. The guy at the desk mumbled a little, but my wife said he either put the wait at two hours or ten. Neither would work, but she’d seen someone eating cassoulet at La Station Rambuteau we’d passed on the way. It was probably the second best cassoulet we’ve ever had, and not bad at about 12 Euros.

However, while we were eating we saw a man carrying a large black office chair down the street. I commented on it and my wife speculated that perhaps he was going to wait in a line to get in somewhere and didn’t like standing. As if to refute her, he immediately carried it down one of the sets of stairs into the Rambuteau metro station.

Who takes an office chair on the metro?

Perhaps he doesn’t like the metro seats, but an office chair seems a really ungainly thing to try to cart through the Paris metro system. There’s tons of stairs, sometimes not a great deal of room, and so on. Maybe he had to get the chair across town and he had no other way to transport it. Either way, all we could do was eat our cassoulet on the terrace of La Station Rambuteau and wonder.

It’s just kind of an odd thing that happened.

Paris Reflections: Street Cassoulet

I’m going to continue with my reflections on my recent Paris trip with another street food occurrence that surprised me (and another plug for my friend living abroad in China’s regular YouTube show about street food). Today? Street cassoulet.

My wife and I were walking through the Rue Mouffetard street market. I’m sure you’ve seen the sort of thing before, stalls set up in a square stocking mainly food, fresh fruits and vegetables, and so on. However, one stand had a gigantic pan (about two feet across perhaps) of cooking cassoulet.

Now, cassoulet is a “rich, slow-cooked casserole originating in the south of France, containing meat (typically pork sausages, goose, duck and sometimes mutton), pork skin (couennes) and white beans (haricots blancs).” This is not the sort of thing I thought you could cook in a street stand. I associate it with ovens and long, long cooking times.

This stand was doing it though, all in a gigantic dish. My wife and I would have tried it, but it was early in the morning and we were pretty sure it needed a while yet to cook. There were giant pieces of pork belly in it that looked almost raw. I was betting finished cassoulet was a long time off yet.

I’m kind of a bad street food reporter, aren’t I? Two interesting occurrences now and I didn’t actually eat either of them. Oh well.

Paris Reflections: Shopping Cart Street Food

My wife and I just got back from a trip to Paris and I thought I’d take a few days here on the blog to share some reflections. The first thing I wanted to talk about was shopping cart street food.

I’ve got an interest in street food. Besides liking snacks and the variety one tends to find in street food vendors, I’ve got a friend living abroad in China who runs a regular YouTube show about street food. Watching his very cool show regularly got me paying more attention to this…and the shopping carts.

We were in the Saint-Denis neighborhood one evening. This neighborhood is kind of sketchy for tourists. It isn’t bad, but it’s certainly not like the majority of Paris tourists stick to. It’s much less affluent, and has few police regularly hanging about to make sure things don’t happen. Like I said, it isn’t bad, but definitely not what most Paris tourists are expecting to get into. We needed to be there though because we were seeing a production of Molier’s The Learned Ladies (a really well done production, by the way) and didn’t get there until well after dark. We walked off the train and I saw a huge crowd of shopping carts in a crowded square. They were food vendors.

These guys had actually balanced a tin of hot coals on top of a shopping cart and were cooking food on top. Some were ears of corn, but most were meat on a stick. I kind of wanted to get something, but I didn’t really want to take out money in the crowd that was around. My wife was also hesitant about meat from a shopping cart. I also wanted to take a picture, but didn’t really feel like taking my phone out to do so (the likelihood someone random would grab it and run seemed high).

Regardless, it seemed cool. I hadn’t seen shopping cart street food vendors before. I saw one later selling roasted chestnuts in a similar fashion outside the Galeries Lafayette (which I didn’t end up having time to stop for), so it must be becoming a thing. Still, I hadn’t seen it before and it struck me as kind of an odd thing. Lowest budget food cart operations that I’ve ever seen.

In any event, I kind of had to feel sorry for the guy who had a plastic shopping cart instead of a metal one. That didn’t seem very long term given the pan of hot coals.

Watch A Commercial For A Product That No Longer Exists

Let’s watch a commercial for a product that no longer exists (the reported recent re-release having nothing to do apparently with the original candy. There’s a certain bent appeal in that, right? Remember Bonkers? Let’s watch a commercial for that and thumb our noses at the fact it was designed to get us to buy a product and cannot possibly do that now.

I used to love that commercial.

Vermin Supreme Needs To Step Up His Game

Vermin Supreme really needs to step up his game.

I don’t know if you’ve heard of this candidate, but he promises everyone a pony if elected. He proposed legislation to require people to brush their teeth. He promises to defeat the coming zombie apocalypse and schemes to defeat ISIS with a plan that involves a lot of ponies. He wears a boot on his head and is sometimes seen carrying a large toothbrush.

Personally, given the way that this election has been going, I think Vermin really needs to step up his game. This is barely weird enough to get noticed. Some of the other candidates are making it kind of hard for Vermin to compete.

“Not Quite so Stories” Blurbs! Timothy Gager!

And now, the final blurb for Not Quite so Stories! Last, but certainly by no means the least, Timothy Gager!

I was thrilled when Timothy Gager agreed to blurb Not Quite so Stories. He’s the author of eleven books (including, among many others, The Thursday Appointments of Bill Sloan, The Shutting Door, and Treating A Sick Animal). His writing appears…well, pretty much everywhere (Night Train, American Short Fiction, Smokelong Quarterly, McSweeneys, Hobart, Twelve Stories, JMWW, Connotation Press, Thunder Sandwich, The Smoking Poet, Word Riot, Matchbook, Poetica, Dogzplot, Metazen, Six Sentences, 55 Word, Monkeybicycle, and more). Former Fiction Editor of The Wilderness House Literary Review, he is also the founding co-editor of The Heat City Literary Review and edited the book Out of the Blue Writers Unite: A Book of Poetry and Prose from the Out of the Blue Art Gallery. I could easily go on.

But now, the blurb:

In Not Quite So Stories David S. Atkinson creates conflict within the moral and the immoral of society, a world where things are not what they seem, yet are represented deliciously by something altered. Atkinson creates spaces where inanimate objects become animated, soft sodded lawns have landmines and good old reality is replaced by a new reality someone must explain to you. In fact, good is never always good, and evil is never always evil –because Atkinson’s black and white animals are really green and pink zebras.

—Timothy Gager author of “The Thursday Appointments of Bill Sloan”

“Not Quite so Stories” Blurbs! Bud Smith!

Ready for our next blurb for Not Quite so Stories? Today: Bud Smith!

Bud Smith‘s bio is far too long to fully do justice to here. Head of Unknown Press; author of Or Something Like That, Tollbooth, Everything Neon, and F 250; co-author of Tables Without Chairs; and much more. I even understand that he’s not the kind of guy you want to fuck with:

And now, the blurb:

“Not Quite Stories doesn’t have stories, sentences, paragraphs, characters, nah, it has bright explosions of color that will knock you over. David S. Atkinson is Kurt Vonnegut and Aimee Bender wrestling spotted leopards as George Saunders eats popcorn and claps.”

— Bud Smith, author of F 250

“Not Quite so Stories” Blurbs! H.L. Nelson!

Ready for our next blurb for Not Quite so Stories? Today: H.L. Nelson!

H.L. Nelson is the founding editor of Cease, Cows. Her publications include Nightmare, The Big Click, and many others. Her story “A Creature Comes Home” was chosen by Kevin Brockmeier for The Masters Review Volume IV anthology. She also co-edited the dark fiction anthology Choose Wisely: 35 Women Up to No Good (Upper Rubber Boot Books).

And now, the blurb:

There are few contemporary writers I’ve read who can convey so much weirdness, dry wit, and je ne sais quoi in such a small space as David S. Atkinson. His Not Quite So Stories are strange literary adventures for the child in all of us–even us crusty old farts.

— H.L Nelson, founding editor of Cease, Cows literary magazine and co-editor of Choose Wisely: 35 Women Up To No Good.

“Not Quite so Stories” Blurbs! Nate Tower!

It’s time to start sharing blurbs for Not Quite so Stories (my new short story collection due out March 1, 2016 from Literary Wanderlust)! I like to reveal these one at a time, but they’ve already started getting out there. That doesn’t matter though! I’m going to do it anyway.

First up: Nate Tower!

Everyone knows Nate. Founding editor of Bartleby Snopes, author of A Reason to Kill, Hallways and Handguns, Nagging Wives, Foolish Husbands, and more; juggler; joggler; and so on. Nate needs no introduction, which is why I just gave him one.

And now, his blurb:

With Not Quite So Stories, there’s no need to suspend disbelief. David S. Atkinson makes the absurd 100% believable. These stories are hilarious and real. Atkinson is on his way to becoming the master of absurdity.

— Nathaniel Tower, author of Nagging Wives, Foolish Husbands

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter!