How the Gingrich Stole Christmas
categories: Cocktail Hour
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When I lived in Boulder, Colorado I had a weekly cartoon called The Ballad of Boulder. After Newt won South Carolina I remembered that I had drawn a cartoon, almost twenty years ago, about him. Of course he hasn’t changed a bit……(note picture of tiny Nina in corner.)
Read Local!
categories: Bad Advice / Cocktail Hour
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I was sitting here musing the other night, and mulling (my friend Peter Campion told me on the same night that mulling refers to the medieval practice of heating an iron rod or poker white-hot and plunging it into your alcoholic beverage—instant boil, and instant vaporization of the alcohol, and so an efficient delivery of your musing fluid), that is, I was sitting here somewhat mildly fluthered (Irish for shitfaced, which I realize is a kind of absolute—I mean, what could “mildly shitfaced” actually mean?), anyway, sitting here pondering among and amid my bookshelves, and I thought, Think how far these books had to come to get here! Published all over the world, printed even moreso, Continue reading →
Guest contributor: Lia Pupura
Letter to my Representative by Lia Purpura
categories: Cocktail Hour / Don't Talk About Politics
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We are very proud to have Lia Purpura join us as our guest poster. She is the author of seven books of essays, poems and translations. Check out her latest book, Rough Likeness, which prompted Philip Lopate to say: “Lia Purpura is at the forefront of the New Essay, and this latest book (her best) takes us much closer into the rough terrain of her quirky mind than she has ever gone before. The surprises and insights keep coming.”
Take it away, Lia:
Letter to My Representative: An Essay
Dear Representative,
Letters are so rare these days, and I believe we are sorely missing what they allow – a chance to feel oneself the sole subject of another’s attention.
Here’s the scene I’ve wanted to tell someone like you about for three years now. I had just finished watching Al Gore’s film, “An Inconvenient Truth” in a church fellowship hall in Iowa City. It was well advertised and the room was full – students, professors, artist, writers, townspeople of all ages had gathered on this snowy evening. Continue reading →
Reviewing My Reviewers: Part II
categories: Cocktail Hour
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As some of you remember, a few weeks back I reviewed my Amazon reviewer, a strange man named Dobyx who mistook On Golden Pond for Walden. A couple of people suggested that I e-mail Dobyx the link to my post, but I didn’t want to take it too far. (He lives pretty close, up in Duck on the Outer Banks, and I didn’t like the idea of him running down here in his aviator’s cap and sicking his water dog on me.)
Today’s task is a happier one. I want to thank Gina Webb of the Atlanta Journal Constitution for her review this week. It’s been a hard slog getting The Tarball Chronicles out in the world, trying to get folks to listen to a story they don’t really want to hear. How heartening to have someone understand what you are trying to do. It’s not just that it’s a positive review–that’s great of course–but the best part is that she gets it.
(Of course I especially like that she calls the book “a full-strength antidote to the Kryptonite of corporate greed and human ignorance,” which somehow calls for a Bill and Dave superhero cartoon.)
Here’s her review. If you’re short on time, just read the last ‘graph:
Bad Advice Wednesday: Jack Yourself Up! (Through Rituals)
categories: Bad Advice / Cocktail Hour
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There are those who think it’s hard to write every day. Maybe. I’m of the camp that it’s harder to write once in a while. The rituals of daily-ness are built to contain a writing life in a way that the formlessness of the occasional is not. And for most of us who have chosen to make knocking words around our life, there are rituals a-plenty. Mine include getting up early, stretching my back (chronically bad since I was a teenager), drinking a cup of tea for calm before starting in on coffee for intensity (I am currently on day 11 of no coffee for the first time in many years so I apologize if my prose is sluggish), keeping note of my hours at the desk on a chart, listening to music (different albums for different drafts—The Talking Heads Stop Making Sense, for instance, for rolling along on first drafts), and, later in the day, long walks by the Cape Fear river armed with a microcassette recorder (and later still, notes in my journal armed with a beer.) Right off I notice that there are a lot of liquids involved in my rituals which seems right since there is an element of communion, and ablution, in the whole thing. Like most daily rituals mine was never planned but rather evolved, and did so for the single purpose of getting words on the page.
At the moment I am teaching a graduate class called The Writing Life, and some of you might remember that I posted the syllabus last year (I’ll paste this year’s revised syllabus below). The class starts, fittingly, with Annie Dillard’s The Writing Life, and as I re-read that book I noted that her rituals were more extreme than my own, and seemed geared toward creating an intensity far beyond the everyday. She writes: Continue reading →
The Little Sweep
categories: Cocktail Hour
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This past weekend I was in my first theater production. As a member of the chorus in Benjamin Britten’s opera “The Little Sweep.” Elysia played Sophie, and Juliet was in the chorus, too. A very stressful way to spend time together! And fun! Don’t let me forget to say that! Three more shows this coming weekend, if you’re in the vicinity, paired with A.A. Milne’s short comedy, “The Man in the Bowler Hat.” The talent in this little community is dazzling. I don’t know where to start. But Jane Parker, the musical director, taught us the difficult music with great good humor and dedication (Britten and his dissonance, cantilevered waltzes, rockslides of emotion, and snowdrifts, too). And Dale Hill, the director of both productions, is a kind of wizard. He lets you Continue reading →
Do Not Taunt Happy Fun Ball
categories: Cocktail Hour
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There have been a lot of fine commercials in the history of Saturday Night Live, but my favorite has always been Happy Fun Ball (written by the brilliant Jack Handey and voiced by the great Phil Hartman). Now my daughter Hadley has discovered the happy fun and we repeat phrases from the mock-ad to each other (like “certain types of skin.”)
Enjoy: HAPPY FUN BALL!
Jerry
categories: Cocktail Hour
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Not long ago Bill made a bold attempt to attract Deadheads to Bill and Dave’s with his great post, Further, in Portland, Maine.
It occurred to me that that post deserved an official Bill and Dave’s cartoon. So here it is:
Bad Advice Wednesday (Creative Nonfiction: What Kind of Roast Chicken IS This, Anyway?)
categories: Bad Advice / Cocktail Hour
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Eat This Image!
Andrea Zeeman, a very sweet and gentle friend of mine was, back in the day, a food stylist. Not a chef, not a cook, not a sandwich maker. What she did was prepare food to be photographed—whole menus for food magazines, sample dishes for cookbooks, convincing chef’s creations for Hollywood. She was brilliant at her work and made a good living because she was indispensable. And the reason the likes of Gourmet Magazine couldn’t live without her was that even the most beautiful, most appetizing dishes photographed as they were, fresh out of the oven, no matter how renowned the chef, looked . . . plain. And sometimes ugly. Or even sickening. Roasted chickens—plump and Continue reading →
