Ben Tanzer's Blog, page 122

Happy Birthday.

“I always had a repulsive need to be something more than human." David Bowie

MOONSHINE. Debauchery. Skivork. And words. With the Barry Graham, Jacob S. Knabb, and many, many, others.

Right? Yes. Totally. So please do join us this Saturday, January 12th at the Old Man Skivork's and debauchery we will.

This Book Will Change Your Life - The Infects by Sean Beaudoin.

We well understand that zombies are this year's black. Vampires. Or whatever. And we dig it. We also understand that monsters in general, and maybe even zombies in particular, come to represent the socio-political issues of the day. That even in a society where violent crime is on a downswing, we live in a twenty-four hour, seven days a week, media world fraught with war, violent uprisings, and yes, school massacres, that we just cannot make sense of, much less escape, the need to fight a living dead that emerges from mysterious, possibly even nefarious circumstances, just makes sense in terms of popular entertainment and escapism. Which brings us to The Infects by Sean Beaudoin, which is yes, about zombies, zombies, who are at least partially, maybe wholly, a result of corporate malfeasance, a topic as current as any. But deconstructing zombies is not the same as talking about one's reaction to a book, even when said book does such a nice job of both hewing to the understood parameters of zombie culture and mocking them. So, what we will say is this, what is most entertaining about the wildly entertaining Infects is just how much fun it is. The Infects is full of humor, snappy dialogue, and knowing pop culture riffs, and while reminding us of what Patrick Wensink did best with Broken Piano for President and its takedown of corporate culture and its hold on the country, what it truly reminds us of is Lynda Barry's Cruddy, possibly the most fun we've recently had reading a book of any kind. This kind of fun is a gift, and writing it requires craft, and reading The Infects we were reminded that not only do we need to read more books like this, the culture needs more books like this, now especially, but at any time. They not only allow us escape, they just might change our lives as well. If only for a moment at that.       

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

The new edition of This Zine Will Change Your Life is live. We have new piece from old friend, THE BOOK OF LIFE by Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal, which we are way excited about, and, (almost) as always, photo action from Adam Lawrence, music curation from Jason Behrends and fiscal cliff not 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, Happy New Year, yo.

Beachy. Stielstra. Rowan. Weller. Tanzer. And endlessly massive Hair Lit, Vol. 1 release awesomeness.

We know right? So please do join us at The Book Cellar on January 12th. It just might change your life.

We are Daddy Cool Bullies No More! KICKSTARTER excerpt and it is most beautious indeed.

We are so beautious and we are so co-authors of Bullies No More! with TBWCYL, Inc. spokesperson Ben Tanzer and son Myles. So please do hit that. Now, how about some excerpt of that excerpt? Word.

"There was a geeky kid named Frederick who lived in Bulltown. Frederick’s face was covered in freckles, moles, and warts. He had green, squiggly mad scientist hair. A bucktooth. And he was very pale.

Frederick always had schoolwork with him. Sometimes it was a book, other times it was homework or a study guide.

Frederick was the least popular kid in school and he knew it. People called him “dummo” and “stupido,” which didn’t make sense to him, because he was the smart one."

"Fresh, unexpected, and intentionally unsentimental." My Father's House gets Chicago Ex-Patriated. And likes it. A lot.

Quite a lot. Big thanks to Jamie Yates for the kind and insightful words and drinks on us for sure when next we meet. Cool? Good. Excerpt? Word.

"As I mentioned before, the narrator is emotional without veering into needlessly sentimental ruminations. As the novella unfolds, the actions and happenings themselves are strong enough to stand on their own without any added emotions. This is evident from the very beginning. The work is established with clinical details, and Tanzer is smart enough to let the reader determine his or her own emotional involvement in the proceedings."

New year. New joint. Younger. At the SPARTAN. Yo.

It's true. We are Younger. We are quite thrilled. And we are big thanks to the Ross McMeekin and the whole SPARTAN crew for all of that. Now how about some excerpt? Cool.

"MAYBE YOUR DAD was right, your wife says as the two of you sit at the kitchen table one Sunday morning, the half-eaten pancakes laying there in a pool of coagulating syrup, The New York Times scattered everywhere, the boys off in the back, screaming, crying, shouting, fighting, all of it, and endlessly at that.
   You sit there for a moment trying to figure out what your father might have been right about. He was a smart guy and full of unsolicited, though at times useful advice, but what could he have said that applies here, and now?
   Yeah, you say, about what, how you should never pee off of the back of a truck into the wind? That was sound advice, you think, though clearly stolen from On the Road.
   Your wife laughs her throaty Brenda Vaccaro laugh.
   No, that other thing, she says."

And now we pause for our annual New Year's wishes from faux TBWCYL, Inc. celebrity spokesman Steve Martin.

If we at TBWCYL, Inc. had one wish that we could wish this holiday season, it would be that all the children to join hands and sing together in the spirit of harmony and peace. If we had two wishes we could make this holiday season, the first would be for all the children of the world to join hands and sing in the spirit of harmony and peace. And the second would be for 30 million dollars a month to be given to us, tax-free in a Swiss bank account. You know, if we had three wishes we could make this holiday season, the first, of course, would be for all the children of the world to get together and sing, the second would be for the 30 million dollars every month to us, and the third would be for even more encompassing power over every living being in the entire universe. And if we had four wishes that we could make this holiday season, the first would be the crap about the kids definitely, the second would be for the 30 million, the third would be for all the power, and the fourth would be to set aside one month each year to have an extended staff-wide 31-day orgasm, to be brought out slowly by Rosanna Arquette and that model Paulina-somebody, we can't think of her name. Of course our lovely wives, and husbands, can come too and they are all behind us one hundred percent here, we guarantee it. Wait a minute, maybe the sex thing should be the first wish, so if we made that the first wish, because it could all go boom tomorrow, then what do you got, y'know? No, no, the kids, the kids singing would be great, that would be nice. But wait a minute, who are we kidding? They're not going to be able to get all those kids together. We mean, the logistics of the thing is impossible, more trouble than it's worth! So -- we reorganize! Here we go. First, the sex thing. We go with that. Second, the money. No, we got with the power second, then the money. And then the kids. Oh wait, oh jeez, we forgot about revenge against my enemies! Okay, we need revenge against all of our enemies, they should die like pigs in hell! That would be our fourth wish. And, of course, our fifth wish would be for all the children of the world to join hands and sing together in the spirit of harmony and peace. Thank you everybody. 
(Borrowed (and slightly tweaked) from Steve Martin's monologue on the 1991 Saturday Night Live Christmas Special).

Where The Wild Things Are - These Things We Loved (and Lost) in 2012 Will Change Your Life.

It always starts with books and we suppose it always will. But we did more than read this year, not much mind you, but there was more, movies, and music, and television, and podcasts, and we thought we would take a moment to share some of that with you yes. 

Books we intended to finish or start in 2012 and then actually did. 

B-Sides and Broken Hearts/Caryn Rose, Solace in So Many Words/Ellen Wade Beals, Volt/Alan Heathcock, Half a Life/Darrin Strauss, Three Ways of the Saw/Matt Mullins

And those we did not. But here's looking to 2013.

Nothing/Blake Butler, American Masculine/Shann Ray, Pulphead/John Jeremiah Sullivan, Out of Touch/Brandon Tietz       

Memoirs and essay collections, any and all of which we need to read more of in 2013.

Legs Get Led Astray/Chloe Caldwell, Famous Drownings in Literary History/Kevin Haworth, Hack/Dmitry Samarov

Television shows starring Elizabeth Mitchell we started watching because our older son asked us to, but did nothing to change our lives.

Revolution

Television shows we started watching starring Elizabeth Mitchell because we needed something to watch with our older son when Revolution ended that have in fact changed our lives.

LOST



Books published by CCLaP that we quite dug and may have only been partially biased towards as we read them.

solo down/Lauryn Allison, Get Up Tim/Sally Weigel, Have You Seen Me/Katherine Scott Nelson 

Books published by Curbside Splendor that we quite dug and may have only been partially biased towards as we read them. 

May We Shed These Human Bodies/Amber Sparks, Chicago Stories: 40 Dramatic Fictions/Michael Czyzniejewski 

Books published by Artistically Declined that we quite dug and may have only been partially biased towards as we read them.   

AYITI/Roxane Gay and Temporary Yes/Kat Dixon

Podcasts we still love much and listen to compulsively.

Other People with Brad Listi

Podcasts we love slightly less than we once did, but still listen to compulsively.

WTF with Marc Maron

Podcasts we have rediscovered.

This American Life (not technically a podcast we know)

Podcasts we discovered anew.

Slate's Culture Gabfest and WordPlaySound



Books by Chicago writers we quite enjoyed not named Joe Meno.

The Cradle/Patrick Somerville, Inside The Whale/Joseph G. Peterson, How To Hold A Woman/Billy Lombardo, Herself When She's Missing/Sarah Terez Rosenblum

Books by Chicago writers we quite enjoyed named Joe Meno.

Office Girl and The Boy Detective Fails

Television shows that got in the way of reading, thinking, and sometimes sleeping, but ultimately made us very happy.

Game of Thrones, Louis, Justified, The Walking Dead, Happy Endings, Mad Men, Modern Family

Music, of which we apparently listened to not much of this year, but we still listened to these.

Cancer 4 Cure/El-P and R.A.P Music/Killer Mike   

Movies that are funny and action-packed, but quite possibly racist, and regardless are too goofball to be anything remotely as interesting as Pulp Fiction or Reservoir Dogs.

Django Unchained

Movies we are happy we got out to see during a year that we didn't get out enough to see movies.

Flight, Argo, Lincoln, Moonrise Kingdom, The Queen of Versailles, Silver Linings Playbook

And those we still hope to see.

Zero Dark Thirty, Beasts of the Southern Wild, The Sessions, The Master

Books that involved cease and desist orders, which apparently can be quite good for sales.

Broken Piano for President/Patrick Wensink

Books that didn't.

Tongue Party/Sarah Rose Etter and Nine Months/Paula Bomer  
 
Books by handsome men with facial hair, bearded, and otherwise.

Hank & Jules and Salt Creek Anthology/Jason Fisk, Gospel Hollow/Jesse Jordan, Short Bus/Brian Carr, A Cloth House/Joseph Riipi, Americas/Jason Lee Norman, Every Laundromat in The World/Mel Bosworth (who is coming to dominate this category)

Books by handsome man sorely lacking in facial hair.

Code for Failure/Ryan W. Bradley and Damnation of Memory/Mark R. Brand 

During a year filled with way too much loss, three voices we lost that might not compare to those others in terms of senselessness, but were still silenced too soon for us. 

Adam Yauch, Ray Bradbury, Maurice Sendak

And most finally, there are many, many people to thank for this most rocking of years, and we are most definitely overlooking some, a lot maybe, and we apologize for that, here, now, but there you go.

Lauryn Allison, Mason Johnson, Matt Rowan, Jacob Knabb, Dave Housley, Jason Behrends, Leah Tallon, Anna March, Victor David Giron, Jason Pettus, Moeses Soulright, James Claffey, Nathan Holic, Ryan Bradley, Steve Lafler, Lavinia Ludlow, Alex Pruteanu, Rob Funderburk, Greg Olear, William Walsh, J.A. Tyler, Carly Oishi, Ryan Singleton, John Barrios, Joseph G. Peterson, Michael Seidlinger, Adam Lawrence, Dave McNamara, Mike Smolarek, Nik Korpon, Andrew Keating, Dave K., Lindsay Hunter, Matty Byloos, Brad List, Michael Czyzniejewski, David Masciotra, Mel Bosworth, Brenda Brown Browne, Benoit Lelievre, Tim Frederick, Hosho McCreesh, Peter Schwartz, Jason Donnelly, BL Pawelek, Brian Carr, James Goertel, Amber Sparks, Robert Vaughan, Meg Tuite, Meghan Lamb, Robert Duffer, Johnny Misfit, Michael Paige Glover, Chris Terry, Ross McMeekin, Samuel Snoek-Brown, Mike Bushnell, Maggie Richie, Jesus Angel Garcia, Richard Thomas, Patricia Ann McNair, xTx, James Tadd Adcox, Julia Borcherts, John Reed, Lori Hettler, Cort Bledsoe, Barry Graham, Melinda McIntire, Robyn Pennacchia, Russ Woods, Jeff Phillips, Steve Himmer, Tom Williams, Patrick Wensink, Davis Schneiderman, Pete Goutis, Ray Charbonneau, Laura Szumowski, Gina Frangello, Nick Ostdick, Scott McClanahan, Pete Anderson, the Tomaloff's, Paula Bomer, Wyl Vilacres, Caleb J. Ross, Brandon Will, J. Bradley, Jason Fisk, the Knee-Jerk crew