come say hi to me this Sunday at SPD! it's our 40th anniversary! buy some books! eat some eats! see some poets! buy books! and then buy more books!

another celebrity/ poet doppelganger thingy...

for Lindsey Boldt

TONY COLLETTE



and

SARA LARSEN

3 bands that i actually kind of really don't like at all but feel bad for it

1. The Police (extreme suckitude)

2. Blondie ("Atomic" is one of the most irritating songs ever)

3. David Bowie (i like a lot of Bowie...i think i dislike more though...)

another celebrity/ poet doppelganger thing

Saoirse Ronan



and

Erika Staiti

DODIE on tomorrow night's Spicer event...

reading by DEMOSTHENES AGRAFIOTIS at Paros Translator's Symposium 2008

God this song freaks me out it's so good...

for Steve Dickison (Paros 08')

The Gatherers Words Of My Mouth...

woke up last night in a panic, thought we were having an earthquake...spotted my shoes then spotted my jeans...good job brain...

had a terrific time at Gevirtz's Craft of Translation class...like an hour and a half interview, i think i did okay...

Kevin Killian's non-site Spicer thing at Saidenberg's on Sunday...i'm going to read some Spicer poems, say something about working on the Collected as an assistant...

Kazwell turned 24...

Rosmarie Waldrop's Wiki page is, i don't know, kind of moving...

Garbage Pail Kids project forthcoming...

went to the bar with Lindsey and Cat...Cat got hammered and showed Lindsey my text messages...some pervy...some clean...

took a nap in my car...

Dad's birthday on Saturday, Mom making lamb...

going to visit Jay

and Megan in

Brooklyn in June...holy cow can't wait to see these idiots...

Logan and i watched a lot of WBC...

Steve bought those skinny brown slacks...he looks really good in them...

going to Jenner with Jon and Jenny and James and Cat and Logan Easter weekend...

Logan went crazy and posted 100 pages of poems to his blog...

Bill Lee...finished Burns's Baseball...and then there was Bill Lee:



watched Serenity...wow...this was a great movie...the show Firefly...i liked...Serenity...wow...i loved...

Matthew got the job!

went to Mini-Bar for the first time...wow that place sucks...but the bartender is really nice...

sent Megan my Working Class Magazine "Loves"...new issue comes out next month...

"meg!

1. Peanut Milk from KK Cafe (http://www.yelp.com/biz/kk-cafe-san-francisco)

2. Samuel Johnson's Lives Of The Poets

3. Miller High Life "2.25 out the door" 40oz

4. Alexyss K. Tyler's "Penis Power" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAwLYJYsa0A)

5. Tim Lincecum (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Lincecum)

love,
johnny"

James is going to Argentina next Wednesday for some reason...drinks and culture and girls i think...maybe not in that order? maybe hiking?

listened to a lot of X...listened to a lot of ABC...

i really like X but don't know how to pronounce Exene Cervenka's name...is it "Christine" or is it "X-Ene"? i feel like a poseur...

UPDATE: Kati Knox is hanging out today so i just yelled from my office "hey Kati" "yeah...?" "how to you pronounce Cervenka's first name...is it Christine or Exene?" "Exene..." "thanks..."

word to your mom Kati...and she's moving to the City!

watched Waxwork last night...going to watch Waxwork II tonight...

went to the library...got a library card...

cd's checked out from the library

1.Sufjan Stevens- Come On Feel The Illinoise

2. Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan- Greatest Hits Vol 1

3. Olivier Bernet- Persepolis

4. Rahat Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan- self titled

5. Various Artists- Rembetica Historic Urban Folk Songs From Greece

5. Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan- Traditional Sufi Qawallis Live In London Vol. IV

6. Smithsonian Folkways Recordings 11- Vocal Music In Crete

found out that Cat has never seen The Lost Boys...like Uncle Agile says in Braveheart "we'll have to remedy that..."

have read 300 pages of Lives Of The Poets...i feel good about that stat...

ate a Cobb Salad sandwich last night watching CNN...

that's all i guess...

Happy Greek Independence Day!

so long Tetra Balestri! Moriarty hooked up the Mediterranean spread (happy Nowruz Day!!!) for Tetra's last day at SPD...Tetra has been my loyal carpooling buddy for the last year...i'm going to miss her falling asleep on the way home...i'm going to miss talking shit with her...i'm going to miss her facial reactions as i accelerate and swerve and dodge and honk and maneuver and flip people off in traffic...i'm going to miss her laugh!!! she laughs at everything, even at 8:45am!!! it's the best...good luck in LA Tetra! you're the best carpooling, MSG mastering (SPD in-house software), contagiously giggling, impeccably dressed boyfriend having (what up Malinko!), non-pastry eating, banner holding, Hollywood script reading, Punky Brewster looking, bike riding girl a co-worker could ask for...

see you in LA sucker!

look at what my brother found on the street! and then gave to me! this morning! i washed them! and now they are drying! i'm going to stage them in my office! Thunder Cats! and Chewbacca!

i don't know, Laura Moriarty was there...we were standing in a group on the field at Woodside Elementary in Concord...Brandon Brown was probably there, but sort of as a black amorphous blob...and then suddenly a young Ron Silliman walks up...and he looks exactly like Michael Koshkin...he's handsome, and short...he has five o'clock shadow and a fade...he's wearing stylish black rimmed glasses...i think to myself "wow, i'm like 3 actual feet taller than young Ron Silliman"...and then Moriarty is talking about her poetics and i'm mouthing over Brandon Brown cum black amorphous blob's shoulder "it's young Ron Silliman...this is fucking crazy...young Ron Silliman is here..." but Moriarty doesn't quite get what i'm saying, looks at me confused, and keeps on talking about her poetics...and now we're walking down Pierce St. in front of my building...and it's raining...and i get a running start and slide a few feet on the slick pavement...i'm sort of showing off...and then from behind me comes young Ron Silliman sliding down the street...only he slides a lot farther than i did...and he suddenly looses control, falls back and hits his head on the pavement...and he goes limp...and he keeps sliding down the block...and now i notice a thick trail of blood on the pavement...and i run up to young Ron Silliman and he's dazed and bleeding profusely from the head...and i see that young Ron Silliman has cracked his skull pretty bad...and now i'm taking him into my apartment and wrapping his head in a bath towel...and the blood is soaking through the towel...and i think young Ron Silliman is dying...and suddenly i'm thinking about Natasha Richardson and i'm getting really scared for young Ron Silliman which makes me think about my 7th grade teacher...and how her and her husband went to Tahoe for the weekend on a ski trip...they went to Alpine Meadows which is where i used to ski as a kid...and that was the week she had been teaching us about poetry...we wrote haiku, persona poems, we attempted sonnets...i wrote a haiku about a bloody knife, and a sonnet about my grandma's soft skin...and then later we learned that my teacher's husband had been in an accident...he'd collided with a tree that weekend...and he'd died...and now i'm standing in my bathroom on a rainy night with young Ron Silliman who's bleeding from the head thinking about my 7th grade teacher's husband who died in a skiing accident and i can't remember her name...and i'm remembering all of this this morning driving to work listening to A Confederacy of Dunces on CD thinking about Ron Silliman's review of Jared Hayes's RecollecTED which came out at the end of our time together at Naropa which made me think about drinking beers with Michael Koshkin on his porch in Boulder writing silly drunk poems about Ted Berrigan's saggy scrotum based on a postcard of Berrigan in his underwear stuck to Koshkin's refrigerator...and then i thought, oh yeah, young Ron Silliman, he looked exactly like Michael Koshkin in my dream last night...

JANE MANSFIELD, HELLO

had a great weekend except for that fight i got in at The Top (SF Underground) on Friday night...but i won! so, didn't damper my weekend all that much...

some dude hit on Cat right in front of me...i called him out...he walked up on me all hard...i told him to have some respect...he called me a douche bag...he threatened to head butt me...i laughed and called him a "little bitch" and said "try it..."...he tried it...i caught his forehead in the palm of my hand and threw him on the ground...i got up and took off my jacket (how cinematic)...he tried to come at me again...and then he was on the floor again...and then he got dragged out of the bar like a rag doll and that was that...

i don't fight very often...it takes a lot for me to get angry enough to fight...one way to do that is to talk shit to my brother...the other way is to disrespect my girlfriend...i don't know...i'm a really nice guy...

UPDATE: not a brag, i hate fighting, i do it rarely, so when i do it's kind of an event...hence the report...just walk away kids!

my throat is going to fall out? my left tonsil is the size of a very large testicle? can't swallow (haha). numbish on Ora Relief... doctor's tomorrow...

unless your name is Brandon Brown (because he's so cute) i'm issuing a moratorium on mentioning anything about word verification in your blog comments.

not to be all, 'rave culture was over in 94' dude...,' but word verification hijinks got played out in 2006...

sincerely,
John

Happy Purim!

going to Boris's tonight for a traditional Purim feast...Shoshi is cooking us all dinner, maybe Boris is cooking us dinner too? he cooked for Willie Nelson and Mario Batali last week...they loved him! and then he was in GQ a couple months ago for their "hot young restaurateur" feature, Purim! it's so fun being friends with "hot young restauranteurs"...and jews!

reading from the Megilla? most definitely!

here's what i won! BINGO!

i'd like to blog about yesterday but i'm really exhausted.

stuff happened that was fun:

Katy's BBQ in the Panhandle with the crew

Steve bartending at Thieves

the free beers

USA beats Venezuela in the WBC

soul night at Amber

eating soul food

playing bingo in a rowdy bar

winning bingo and then screaming across rowdy bar "BINGOOOOO!!!"

Phil the bartender and MC (donning bushy blond fake mustache) for the night saying "WE HAVE A BINGO...AND I KNOW THIS GUUUUUUY!!!"

Phil on the mic saying "and tell the bar what your name is..." "John..." "and tell the bar what your sign is..." "SAGITTARIUS!!!" and then the bar goes crazy whooping and clapping...

my bingo prize...a huge bag full of cocktail stuff like: magnum size bottle of (i forget) really really good vodka, set of hand painted glass palm tree wine glasses, mixer and some other things i forget

hamburgers and pizza and more free drinks from Amber bartender Marcus (finding out that winning at Bingo in a rowdy bar makes you really popular)

getting into a kicking fight with Cat on the walk home

other weekend highlights include:

watching 4 WBC baseball games in a row

Logan coming over and joining me 3 games in for Saturday afternoon libations

drinks with Brandon and Steve and Matthew and JP

heading to my brother's for more beers and company being joined by Jesse and Dempsey and Steve H. and Kazwell (in a fresh Panama WBC ballcap)

James's insane story about his weekend bike trip (coyotes! mud! rivers! ferry boats! wine! beaches! bails! sleeping bags! Golden Gate Bridge! hitchhiking! girls! the filth and the fury!)

Jesse recording the entire conversation...which might actually be a low light...we talked about very dude'y things...if my brother's house was The Real World we would have offended the entire world (or at least our parents and our significants)...and been voted off by our housemates...and Jesse was recording the whole thing, unbeknownst to us.

MUFON PHOTO ID (no girls!)

i feel like i'm really enjoying punk rock right now, am i too old to punk rock?

almost done with On The Road, most of it is pretty hokey, but i also hated The Adventures of Huckleberry Fin, Mad Max is pretty good though, i don't know, road epics...

the entry on Richard Savage in Johnson's The Lives Of The Poets as great lunch time gossip.

tonight there's another artwalk on Divis.

last night my brother wanted me to come to Bean Bag but i've been sober all week.

i watched a couple episodes of Firefly instead.

Firefly is somewhat passable in a "this reminds me of Buffy The Vampire Slayer...why was Buffy The Vampire Slayer so popular again?" kind of way...but i'm only on episode 3.

but i think there's only 1 season and a movie.

received my contributor's copy of Try in the mail yesterday, i like it when me and Brandon and Bernheimer and Shufran and Samantha G. and Erika Lewis end up in a magazine together

tried to go to Brandon's reading at Canessa the other night, filled a flask full of Jameson, hopped in the car with Cat, smoked a cigarette in front of the gallery, heard Boldt say "there's always good food here...," got kind of confused by the comment, gave her a fowl look, felt bad about the sour-face, started to feel woozy, started to rain on my head, looked at Cat and said "i think i'm going to be sick...can we go?" Cat said "yes of course...," walked away and said to Alli "tell Brandon i feel sick?," Alli grunted nodded "okay...," walked past Buuck and said "what up...," went home and ate ice cream and watched Six Feet Under with Cat until i felt better...

joined MUFON, i'm applying for the apprentice field researcher position, the closest local chapter is in Santa Rosa i think.

read a lot about British pulp zines, pornographic literature, female kickboxers, Zeta Magazine, Elvis, Dr. Kinsey, The Exorcist, the complicated history of The Wicker Man, Harvey Pekar, hippie 60's era Christian halfway houses, underground UK music magazines, Hardcore punk rock, my Pappou, Kindle and sleep deprivation hallucinations...

got a big promotion at work, now i have my own office.

bought 3 mylar sleeves worth of Garbage Pail Kids for 2 bucks.

ate another KK Cafe bacon cheeseburger with the works.

the new blog photo is some graffiti i found on a rock in Port Costa, it reads "exo-skeleton"

planning a "house crawl" tomorrow night with Brandon and Steve and Matthew (no girls!), start at Brandon's then head to Matthew's then head to a bar then head to my place then head to Steve's...that takes us from Outer Mission (ish) to Mission proper to the Lower Haight to the Tenderloin...

me and Angelos's translation of Demosthenes Agrafiotis's Maribor has been accepted for publication at The Post-Apollo Press.

it's my friend Lauren's 21st birthday tonight, we're going to Kilowatt to celebrate.

Caitlin made a great post about torsos.

Twitter still confuses me, it makes me want to shoot my generation in the adam's apple.

my social networking days are over, i'll keep my Myspace but won't pay attention to my Facebook. i guess i'm just really really 29 years old.

next Wednesday going to talk at Gevirtz's Craft Of Translation class at SFSU.

as soon as i'm done with On The Road i'll start The Complete Sonnets of Edna St. Vincent Millay.

the flowers that Cat bought me when i got the promotion are now dying.

WORLD BASEBALL CLASSIC BEGINS