Ben Tanzer's Blog, page 114

So this is what happens when you let Michael J. Seidlinger take over your blog for the day during his epic, and dare we say, life changing My Pet blog tour. Be afraid, be very afraid.

Alias/Known As: “Psych”

Real name: Ben Tanzer
Number of victims: 7
Description:
~Estimated to operate between the hours of 7PM and 11PM.
~Cold-called from a pay card various local residences.
~Spoke to receptive individuals, often for hours at a time, discussing the ups and downs of their life choices.
~Gave advice and proceeded to ensnare victims with a truth that kept them on the phone waiting for his every command.
~After providing advice, reportedly used influence to command victims.
~Stated to have told victims, “This is how I will change your life.”
~Told victims how to stabilize/improve life.
~Victims resist or desist.
~Victims that resisted resulted in self-induced suicide.
Be Mine
“I’m picturing a rainy day like any other day and a woman dripping wet...
“I’m picturing the night I returned to my apartment, soaked, and there he was, Victor Hent, a normal attractive male, turning one body into two. I’m picturing it split down the middle because it sounds so much better that way.
“I’m picturing what I said and what I didn’t say...I’m picturing his face when he realized I was serious.My offer, serious and true...I’m picturing our kiss.I’m picturing everything you can’t picture, and it makes it so much better knowing that it’s mine and mine alone.
“But see how I’m not really telling you the whole story?”
My Pet Serial Killer. More here. For real. Enjoy. It just might change your life.

Point/Counterpoint Beaudoin Mohr The Weeklings Cowboy Hats Lena Dunham On The Road Oprah Doc's Clock and Tacos.

Here. And definitely here. With latte foam.

"Both hard hitting and mournfully yearning at the same time." Repetition Patterns gets some Goodreads love. And likes it. A lot.

It does. It is. And big thanks to the David S. Atkinson for that. Excerpt? Cool.

"Tanzer manages to be both hard hitting and mournfully yearning at the same time, the stories being extremely tender gut-shots. This is a marvelous short collection and I'm definitely going to check out more of Tanzer's work." 

Happy Birthday.

“Nothing bad can happen to a writer. Everything is material.” Philip Roth

New joint. My Vasectomy, My Life-Insurance. The Good Men Project.

Much appreciative we are. We wrote this piece for the quite killer The Seven Deadly Sins reading series here in Chicago, as well as, our forthcoming essay collection Lost In Space, and are quite happy to have found a home for it in the Marriage section of The Good Men Project. So, please do enjoy, and as the mood strikes you, please feel free to share it, widely, yo. Excerpt? Cool. 


"I want to tell you about my vasectomy.It started one day when I went into my urologist’s office. I have one due to kidney stones, poor hydration, and consuming too much spinach.Really.The conversation went like this:“The problem is spinach, that and you don’t drink enough water,” my doctor said.“Spinach though, really?” I said.“Well, and too much black tea. And cranberries,” he said.“I’m sorry, so it’s spinach, tea, and cranberries. Why did I give up drugs, again?” I asked."

The new edition of This Zine Will Change Your Life is live. All Slide. And full of Hewitt.

The new edition of This Zine Will Change Your Life is live. We have new piece, Slide by Gary Hewitt, which we are way excited about, and, (almost) as always, photo action from Adam Lawrence, music curation from Jason Behrends and straw poll prose love from Pete Anderson. We hope you enjoy this edition and we appreciate all shout-outs and links. Finally, please note, we are hoping more of you will submit comix, and music, novel excerpts, and art, and video, yes, video, and combinations there of. And most finally, Girls, huh.

And then there was the time we all signed our Cobalt contract and joy was felt far and wide across the land.

This Podcast Will Change Your Life, The AWP 2013 Edition Part II - Overthinking, starring the Ray Charbonneau.

We are podcast. And Charbonneau. We are also run. The Charles River. Compulsion. And Murakami. So please do hit it. It just might change your life. 

This Book Will Change Your Life - Shenanigans! by Joseph Michael Owens.

There is a guy who might be the guy you have been looking for. He looks enough like the guy you've seen on Facebook or Goodreads, but not exactly. Many of those photos are black and white, though maybe it's just the one photo you see again and again. this is real, however, as real as things get anyway, and in color regardless. This guy is also wearing glasses and a baseball hat. Which guys do, though not just guys, and he may be doing too. He is also tall, and that may be the biggest disconnect of all. Your image of the guy may or may not involve him being in black and white, or wearing a hat, but tall, no, that does no compute, and so you question whether he is in fact the guy, and you find yourself confused, possibly scared, and though you don't think you are experiencing dread, it doesn't mean you aren't either. The problem as you see it, is that you are very much caught-up in your own head, and the answers are not clear, which means how to escape your thoughts and fears are not so clear either. All of which makes you feel like one of the characters that populate the stories in Shenanigans! by the Joseph Michael Owens. Maybe you're the guy who can't quite deal with his morning coffee, or can't quite talk to his significant other. Maybe you're the dude who decides to bike into the Rockies and just sort of maybe wants it to end. Or the character who doesn't quite know what's wrong with his liver, but wouldn't mind if he did. They are characters who are in situations they, like we mostly recognize, but can't make sense of. They persevere though, mostly, if not entirely triumphantly, and much of the time because of the passage of time, and the presence of love. Their lives change, if only subtly, as did ours when we found out that the tall man before was is in fact Joseph Michael Owens. Because like one of his characters, we were done with our journey, we were out of our heads, and we were no longer lost.    

Fiction Advocate Hair Lit Mixtapeness.

Most definitely here. Most definitely cool.