Ben Tanzer's Blog, page 266
June 21, 2009
The Hold Steady. Rock. But why should you care?
Well, you could care because seeing them live as we did tonight is so enjoyable. You could also care because The Hold Steady and their music serve as the muses for our new novel tentatively titled You Can Make Him Like You which we are currently editing so seeing them at this time seems like potentially good kharma or something. Or, you could care just because we want you to and like Oprah everything we say or do is for you because more than anything we hope to change your life if only briefly.
June 20, 2009
This Self-Portrait Will Change Your Life, Week Twenty-Three - "Father's Day."
Father's Day is looming, and lurking over our shoulder and so what could be a better title for this week's edition of This Self-Portrait Will Change Your Life than "Father's Day?" Nothing. Also, did we mention that it is week Twenty-Three of this ongoing self-aborbed love fest and that we remain committed to posting one self-portrait per week for one year? No, how about the fact that we do this because while we love ourselves, we love you as well and we know how much you look forward to this wee
June 19, 2009
The new edition of This Zine Will Change Your Life is live and feeling all coincidentally Fathers Dayesque.
The new edition of This Zine Will Change Your Life is live and feeling all coincidentally Fathers Dayesque. Or something like that. We have a new poem, A Glazing Misfortune by Jim Carson, which we are way excited about, and, as always, photo action from Adam Lawrence, a music selection from Jason Behrends and loan repayment prose love from Pete Anderson. We hope you enjoy this edition and we appreciate all shout-outs and links. Finally, please note, that we have re-opened for submissions. Nice.
June 18, 2009
We have been interviewed by author Kelly Moran. Massive name-dropping ensues. Self-absorption runs rampant. And books are given away. Wow.
And we're not sure what else to say about this. We love the Moran. And Patrick Ewing. We had fun with the interview and we really do hope you check it out. Cool?
June 17, 2009
Friends! Interviews! Downloads! Compassion?
That may have been a lame play on words, though maybe not, we will definitely focus group that and get back to you. In the interim though, we came across two things we want to share with you from and about two friends and writers we are fans of. First off, Joshua Mohr author of Some Things That Meant The World To Me, which we recently riffed on here at the blog, has a great interview up at SFGate, very nice, do check it out, and second, Ken Wohlrob of the Love Book fame, also riffed on here at b
June 16, 2009
The Chicago Literary Scene Examiner is celebrating its one year anniversary. Cool, right? Totally.
Speaking of books and media and such, and we were doing that, right, we want to give a big shout to the quite cool Chicago Literary Scene Examiner and its host the quite handsome Robert Duffer. We would add, that the Examiner has been very supportive of TBWCYL, Inc. spokesperson Ben Tanzer and we really appreciate it. We would also add that we would be offering this shout-out even if the one year anniversary column hadn't been so kind as to name-drop us and our work. Then again, if we're being h
June 15, 2009
Yet another thing we may have in common with Dave Eggers and one thing he will do for you that hadn't occurred to us.
We have been thinking a lot lately about the status of books and even sounding off on this occasionally, for example our recent interview with Chicago Subtext, because from what we can tell people think books are dieing and on their way out. We are not so sure though. Traditional publishing houses are certainly hurting, distributors are disappearing, book review sections in newspapers are endlessly being trimmed, and even cut, and then there is that whole Kindle thing. And yet, great books are g
June 14, 2009
The weekly round-up courtesy of Phil Spector.
It's true that we don't really do a weekly round-up here at TBWCYL, Inc. headquarters. It is also true that we have no intention of going all Drudge Report or Smoking Gun just to increase sales and traffic in an increasingly cluttered market. And yet, this photo does somehow seem to touch on a number of themes/topics we blogged about this week including, but not limited to, mug shots; portraits, self and otherwise; music and skewed celebrity worship. It is also both horrifying and wrongly funny
June 13, 2009
A sort of literary music minute. Punks. Jews. Springsteen. Love. Okay, we're not sure about the love part in general, but we're feeling it. Big time.
Last week we were riffing on meeting author David Masciotra who's doing this new joint on Bruce Springsteen at Continuum and then almost immediately we see that Continuum has posted some lengthy blurbage about the book Working on a Dream - The Progressive Political Vision of Bruce Springsteen on their website. Quite cool stuff indeed. And then today we see that The New York Times, yes that New York Times, has done a piece about a gathering and panel discussion in New York City on the intersectio
June 12, 2009
This Self-Portait Will Change Your Life, Week Twenty -Two "I'm Keith Hernandez."
We had this awesomely self-absorbed meta-like idea that we would somehow combine our efforts on This Self-Portrait Will Change Your Life with the interests of director Rob Perri and the crew behind the I'm Keith Hernandez documentary and street art joint because they are interested in their followers sending them photos of themselves in their I'm Keith Hernandez T-shirts. We love this project and highlighted it on This Zine Will Change Your Life and we thought, look they want portraits, and we w
