Dec 31, 2010

Happy New Year hair cut! Before n' Afters...



Dec 30, 2010



on Christmas i discovered a box in my parent's garage full of my old baseball cards. among the collection were a bunch of autographed cards. what no one knew as a kid was that i had my Mom forge almost all of the signatures. she was good at it and more than happy to oblige, a lot of believable variation in signature style. all the kids on the cul de sac thought i was tres cool. in truth, my coolness was a put on, worth less than a 1987 Beckett Baseball Price Guide used for reference at a sports card convention in 2010...

Johnny Sakkis ‎"I’ve always thought it would be interesting to teach a class where we read the books of a certain press, rather than an author, movement or period. Could you imagine anything more disruptive and various? It could be wonderful." --Kyle Schlesinger...if i was a teacher i would do this. fantastic idea.

7 hours ago  ·  · 
    • Johnny Sakkis this is how i learned about electronic music and hip hop music as a teenager. label devotion and dissection...you'd end up with a lot of duds but also with a ton must haves learning a whole bunch about aesthetics in the meantime. when i first got to SFSU Krupskaya was the "label" i followed. didn't know much about anything but was eager to learn. so i bought everything Krupskaya because i knew i could trust "them"...
      6 hours ago ·  ·  1 person
    • Joshua Marie Wilkinson I taught a Flood Editions course last year and had 4 of the authors and the publishers come in throughout the term. It was a lot of fun.
      6 hours ago ·  ·  2 people
    • Erika Staiti a few years ago i didn't feel like leaving my house for a few days so i reorganized my bookshelves by press. it was very illuminating.
      6 hours ago ·  ·  1 person
    • Thom Donovan 
      this would be a cool idea for a teaching anthology/essay. maybe we should write it? I'm totally with John's equation of press and label.
      though some presses have clearer visions/discourses than others. not naming any names. Flood and Krupskaya notwithstanding... ;)
      5 hours ago · 
    • Thom Donovan I kind of wrote an essay in this vein--not sure if anyone saw it--that Kyle edited for American Book Review the fall before last. on "three activist presses." trying to convey a sense that community-based presses are activist inasmuch as they promote a particular lit/culture they wld want to exist. in some cases this vision intersects with wanting to effect socio-political change, as I argue Factory School, Krupsakya, and Palm Press all do. if only at the level of cultural production...
      5 hours ago · 
    • Johnny Sakkis damn thom, no i didn't get to see that essay. online or only off? Les Figues immediately jumps out at me as a press that might also fit your mold. i feel lucky in that i get to interact, on a professional level, with the personalities behind the presses on a daily basses. Make Now out of LA is another one that definitely promotes a particular poetry culture...
      5 hours ago ·  ·  1 person
    • Johnny Sakkis 
      erika. such a great idea. my House records are by label. makes a lot more sense that way than by producer if you're trying to figure out a set. a Twisted records doesn't sound like a Nervous record so it's convenient to keep them organized by sound rather than artistl. and a cool residual effect is the all yellow Twisted sleeves vs the Naked sleeves vs the Nervous sleeves vs whatever...same thing would happen i imagine with Post-Apollo vs. Krupskaya vs. Factory School vs. UDP vs. Les Figues vs Otis/ Seismicity vs BlazeVOX...
      4 hours ago ·  ·  1 person
    • Thom Donovan 
      Les Figues and Make Now both have a very clear vision--I agree with that. Also, Nightboat among presses that have wider distribution and have been quite active this past year (that no one has really reviewed their books is weird to me). And UDP--the UDP flava. I think you have to pay to read at ABR's site, but I can send you a Word doc. Also have been meaning to thank you for the many books you have sent me this past year (and over the years), which I have enjoyed. And especially for your Rude Girl, which along with a handful of others would make my short list were I to generate one (I have an allegery to best ofs despite Michael C's best efforts...) Peace in the New Year, John!
      3 hours ago · 
    • Johnny Sakkis hey thanks Thom. and you're right, Nighboat is doing amazing work, and a somewhat surprising West Coast interest for an East Coast press. Motika is a real sweetheart...
      33 minutes ago · 

Dec 29, 2010

Monday Night...

Jay is in town, start off the night playing Domino's

Katie started off the afternoon giving Jay acupuncture treatment and warning him to stay off the booze

Jay ignoring Katie laughing and imbibing and racking up points (mustache points!). and then right after i took this photo Cat sneezed up a hurricane Katrina all over my new corduroy shirt

my night is going okay so far despite the fact that, as you can see, i'm shit out of luck this round

and then things started getting grim, i took this photo right before i had to excuse myself, when i realized that everyone was flipping me the bird it really bummed me out, i needed to go to the bathroom to cry it out a little

later that night, drinking rum at a corny bar called The Gulf Of Aiden, it's an Irish themed "Somali Pirate Bar" in Hayes Valley...this is a crappy photo of a 2-story waterfall ride called The Coconut

later that night we ended up at Chevy's Tex Mex in Pleasant Hill, CA...went through FOUR baskets of chips before our food even arrived!

Anthony with the photobomb right after sucking down a Flan-flavored shot of vodka off of our waitress's ample buttocks

Katie and Cat sharing a "Boot" of Fernet Branca, only in San Francisco! photo taken seconds before Cat broke the "Boot" over Katie's head screeching "sometimes you just feel like eating breakfast for dinner...SO SUE ME WHORE!"

Dec 26, 2010


Stephen King's The Shining "If there is trouble...you give a shout."

Dec 24, 2010

here's my SF BAY GUARDIAN YEAR IN LIT: A small assortment of Bay Area book highlights from 2010 contribution...

read the rest of the feature here...

"I told Micah last night that my new book would be a haunted house." Berkeley-based poet Julian Poirier's El Golpe Chileño (Ugly Duckling Presse, 128 pages, $15) is filled with the ghosts of past and present. Essentially a bildungsroman, it tracks Poirier's protagonist's growth from youthful journeyman into adulthood though a kind of mixed-genre Theatre of the Absurd. Vaudeville, comics, memoir, film pitch, epistolary, failed novel, poetry, the carnival, and travelogue are all wielded brilliantly in the hands of Poirier, making for a phantasmagoric reading experience where the whole emerges defiantly greater than the sum of its parts. Poirier writes, "I turned my whole brain into a city and wrote down everything I saw happening there." And indeed it certainly feels that way — the book is ripe with the names of places, of friends living and dead; with lists of dates and years; and with drawings and photographs, making up what Poirier somewhat obliquely labels "The Stolen Universe." El Golpe Chileño is truly a success of form and content, of the high and low, of pop and elegy. (John Sakkis)

Dec 23, 2010

"The male plight is tantamount to starving to death on a desert island, then having to walk amongst plates and plates of heavenly food; not only forbidden to devour it, but ALSO required to pretend you don't give a fuck."
--BN

Dec 22, 2010


Secret Santa gift from Zack Tuck.

vintage Poison (yassou Persephone!) work out tee...

swee...
it's been 10 days and my lungs still sound like The Blob's adenoids on cocaine
via asthma inhaler lost in the mail for 4 days

just realizing that Bruce Andrews is the perv of the group
via Temblor #4 in the bathroom

Akashic reprinted Matthew Stokoe's controversial book Cows
i read it in two days, i almost threw up 3 times, i have a strong stomach
via the Hagbeast bathroom/dinner scene

Laura Moriarty is buying us all Zachary's Pizza today
via SPD Christmas party

i'm reading The Complete Poems 1927-1979 by Elizabeth Bishop
i'm having a hard time liking her early work
via my mind wanders midway through the poems

i'm very nearly out of food at my apartment, 2 cans of disgusting light Minestrone soup is all that's left
via i haven't been grocery shopping for months

this week is going on forever, i wish i had food poisoning so it was Christmas already
via i've been sick all week but still working which is still better than laying in bed all day watching 9 hours of Law & Order SVU on Netflix

going to miss my families Christmas party tonight because of the asthma
via don't want to scare off family members 

i'm about to play Secret Santa for 4 people and i can't wait
via HTML Giant and SPD


Johnny Sakkis the problem with Buffy is that we all talk about the great episodes. the "silent" episode, the "musical" episode, the "one where her mom dies and is convincing as a dead person" episode while ignoring the all the other totally shite episodes that make up the majority of the show. almost done with season 5 and to be honest, Buffy is not a good show. Buffy has neat episodes. but as a show? its just not very good.

December 16 at 8:31pm  ·  · 

  • Thom Donovan likes this.

    • Johnny Sakkis thom donovan is a good show though...
      December 16 at 8:37pm · 

    • Stacey Adams i'm sorry but you're just so wrong about this. also. you write about buffy a lot.
      December 16 at 8:53pm · 

    • Johnny Sakkis 
      hi stacy. i don't think i am. everyone tells me that season 5 is the best of the series. that it should have ended in season 5. that 6 is actually not very good at all. but what's so good about 5? the god-monster who likes shoes? no. dawn as the key? hell no. buffy's mom dying. kind of, but even then it played out like a weak episode of six feet under. buffy is watchable, but really only after season 2. and then it peaks with the silent episode where you're like 'finally! the writers are hitting their stride!'...and then we get Adam, the lame frankenstein cyber monster...and it's back to square one.

      December 16 at 9:02pm · 

    • Stacey Adams oh my god the people who have raved about season 5 are idiots. it's all about season 6. no lie.
      December 16 at 9:06pm · 

    • Johnny Sakkis 
      at least 'buffy' wasn't one of my top 5 words. that would have been embarrassing. i guess i talk about it a lot because i've been trying to watch the show since 2006. on netflix. i've been slogging through the damn thing for 4 years. i watch half a season and then i get really bored and i stop, but then i'm compulsive so i go back to it and then i get bored and disappointed and then i stop, and repeat... i've put in a lot of time and work and i'm just realizing that if season 5 is the best joss whedon has, then this whole thing has been for naught.

      December 16 at 9:07pm · 

    • Johnny Sakkis also i think i really don't like sarah michelle geller's face. her face really bothers me. and her voice. her voice is disgusting. so, there's that...i wish they made a gilles and anya spin off. i wish they killed willow in the pilot. and it would have been cool if xander was a more consistent character. maybe it's the fact that he has a real life fraternal twin.
      December 16 at 9:11pm ·  ·  1 person

    • Johnny Sakkis i mean identical twin.
      December 16 at 9:17pm · 

    • Stacey Adams 
      i get that. stop and go watching can't/won't do. season 6 really is worth the time if you have it in you. plus. you've come this far so you should give it a go. or not.

      but. season 5 is the shits. that's the season with glory, no? yuck. and dawn? EGADS. i love buffy and hate that season...

      December 16 at 9:17pm · 

    • Stacey Adams i hated smg until the second time through the series. and despise willow. LOVE anya. and giles. i think you have buffy fandom in you yet...
      December 16 at 9:19pm · 

    • Stacey Adams also. i think if you watch the series as though it were a comic book, it becomes exponentially more valuable.
      December 16 at 9:19pm · 

    • Johnny Sakkis 
      definitely plan on finishing it, just very lackadaisically. i think part of my frustration comes from the feeling that the show completely and utterly fails as a comic book (though i've read that the actual dark horse buffy comics, at least the early ones, are fantastic). i'm a huge comics fan. and sci-fi fan. and horror fan. and cult and camp fan. but buffy is just too peripatetic a show to navigate any of these waters successfully. the writing is so uneven and the aesthetic so inconsistent that it feels like more of an accidental send up. like 'i get it, don't take you too seriously, but DO as well, and it's camp, and girl power, but also social commentary, and gender relations, and teenage angst and whatever else you want to fit into a shallow or deep close reading of the show...' sorry but no, i don't think the quality of the show merits the quality of the close reading.

      December 16 at 9:41pm · 

    • Johnny Sakkis all that being said, at least we're talking about it. i watched two episodes of gossip girl tonight (don't ask), and i have absolutely nothing to say about that show. good or bad. i kind of feel like i was picking at my thumb nails for two hours. an episode of the x-files...lost time.
      December 16 at 9:44pm · 

    • Stacey Adams hmm. maybe i went into it with such LOW expectations that i ended up pleasantly surprised. it sounds like you had people hyping it up before you started watching? i could see being disappointed after that... the show definitely suffers from creatively restrictive network television edits for the first 5 seasons and no doubt there is a serious resulting loss of potential. shrug. i choose to believe you'll love it in time. or you won't and that's ok too. let's talk post season 6...
      December 16 at 10:13pm · 

    • Stacey Adams gossip girl!?!
      December 16 at 10:15pm ·