Ben Tanzer's Blog, page 70

This Podcast Will Change Your Life, Episode Eighty-Three - When I First Held You, starring the Brian Gresko.

We are so podcast and quite When I First Held You. We are also very Gresko, New York City, Anais Nin, Benjamin Percy, and Lynne Tillman. So do hit it, it just might change your life.

Wherein we are Lost in Space reading in New Orleans with the quite amazing Bill Hillmann on April 30th at the Maple Street Book Shop and look forward to seeing you there thank you cool done.

Like totally. More here. Seriously. Nice.

We are Freddie's Dead and Goreyesque.

We are also in insanely fine company and quite appreciative for that. Excerpt? Word.


Freddie went and hugged the flood.Freddie floundered in the mud.Freddie went crazy in the head.And now Freddie Flounder is dead, dead, dead.
This is the song we drunkenly sang after the flood and after Freddie Flounder was dead, and no longer around for us to mock and tease.He wasn’t there anymore for us to pour milk in his locker or clap his ears with our hands when we sat behind him on the bus.We couldn’t call him fag or snap his alabaster ass in the locker room with our towels. We would never follow him down the street threatening to rape his sister or set his house on fire.No one would be able to call his home to let his mother know that his father had died in a car crash on the way home from work, was being accused of molesting children, or had left her for another man because she was such a fucking whore.He was no longer there for us to plan his imminent demise as we took long bong hits at parties in the endlessly empty houses where our parents were not around, and would not be around, until some magical time when they sobered-up, cut down on business travel, or merely came home from whatever secret debaucheries they engaged in when we had no idea where they were or what they were doing.

We are "Writer, with Kids." And big thanks to the Cari Luna for that.

Totally writer. With kids. And thankful. Very. Excerpt? Word.

"I don’t know balance and I never have. I don’t know from moderation either, but I love the sound of it.

I do compulsive and mania well though. I understand extremes. Binge eating, television watching, gin & tonics. I know those things intimately. Give me five Jelly Bellies or 500 hundred and I will eat them all in one sitting. Feel free to tell me that 24 is on DVD or that Orange is the New Black has been released en masse on Netflix and I will consume them. Pitchers of drinks. Those too. I’ve done all of it.

I can quit anything, stop, dead to me, easy, but manage something. No. Not really. Barely. Never. Not reading or running or jerking-off or drinking or watching television.

I’m all in, and I am all consumption all of the time.

But I am also a parent and I have a day job and I write, and I am fully engaged in those things as well, and so, how should I talk about the balance between writing and family and work?

How do I balance all of that? How does it work? And what does it look like?"

Shameless, albeit much appreciated, Seminary Co-Op Lost in Space Paula Bomer quoting Tweet hype. And big thanks to the Seminary Co-Op for that.

& Chicago literary man-about-town/@CurbsidePress affiliate @BenTanzer's LOST IN SPACE is a "book of beauty and truth," quoth Paula Bomer
— Seminary Co-Op (@SeminaryCoOp) April 21, 2014

There is Lost in Space book trailer. Rejoice. Share. Love. Purchase copies. Though not necessarily in that order.

Wherein Lost in Space is all excerpt and I Need at the Sundog Lit.

Quite excerpt. Lots of need. And very thankful to the Justin Daugherty and the whole Sundog Lit crew for making it so. Excerpt? Word.

"I do need to learn how to say, “Are you okay?” more often. I learned this in family therapy. Apparently, when a child of mine and I are in the midst of what is otherwise a minor misunderstanding about what constitutes picking up one’s toys, doing homework, taking a shower, brushing one’s teeth, turning off the television, clearing the table, moving the laundry, talking respectfully, and using “I” phrases, and said child inadvertently trips over a toy or pile of laundry, slips in the bathroom, bumps into a closet door, bangs their head on a doorknob, cuts their finger, toe, elbow, knee, or ear, gets a headache, stomachache, or spontaneously combusts, my tendency is not to respond with, “Are you okay?” but something less empathic, and possibly in a voice not deemed suf­ficiently low, which I am told is not cool, and something I really need to do, which I will, promise."

Lost in Space is Barnes & Noble Webster Place and Staff Recommended.

And then there was the time the Loren Kleinman and crew interviewed us about Lost in Space at Mellow Pages Library and I was totally, and absolutely, thankful for that.

Rejoice, yo. There is Gideon's Confession by the Joseph G. Peterson.

So do hit it. All post-haste and such. It just might change your life.