Wednesday, August 30

Dial M for...

No, not that other thing Hitchcockian thing. I'm talking about Dial M for Musicology, a new blog from a trio (or more?) of really smart music professor people, including my friend Jon. JoeBob says check it out.

She's fourteen

So my daughter turned 14 today.

Wow.

Friday, August 25

Lamb

Oh, and I'm also reading what I find to be a really great book right now: Lamb, the Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal by Christopher Moore, "a divinely hilarious yet heartfelt work 'reminiscent of Vonnegut and Douglas Adams.'"

Why so much Christopher Moore all of a sudden? When Jared and I went to that writer's conference in Colorado Springs 16 months or so ago, I was telling (practicing my "pitch) this other guy about Messiah's Sneaker, the novel I was pretending to be a writer with for the weekend, and he said, "That sounds like Chris Moore." Who, I said? "Christopher Moore. He writes these off-kilter comic novels."

Well, I'd never heard of this Chris Moore guy, so I made a note to check him out. It took me a year to get around to it, and I'm five books in it's worth it, and this one is clearly (to me) his Masterpiece. Kurt Vonnegut times Douglas Adams is a good summary, I think. And, that's how I would love my work to be described, only now maybe I'd say Kurt Vonnegut times Christopher Moore divided by Thomas Pynchon (if I'm going to drag Vonnegut into this, I may as well go all the way and aim as high Pynchon too) or, more realiistically, Tom Robbins. I'd be happy with Tom Robbins, too.

So, that now leads me (any my obviously huge ego) to the equation of me: KV x CM / TR = eba

Friday morning jokes

Two penguins are standing on an ice floe. One say, "Hey, it looks like you're wearing a tuxedo." The other says, "What makes you think I'm not?"

A penguin walks into a bar and asks, "Have you seen my brother?" The bartender says: "What's he look like?"

A skeleton walks into a bar and asks for a beer and a mop.

Thursday, August 24

Linkity links

Some recent stuff that has passed my eyeballs: How Jonathan Franzen Learned To Stop Worrying from Time magazine, DFW on tennis Godling Roger Federer as Religious Experience from the New York Times (thanks, nick, for the tip) and, let's see, there was something else.... maybe it was this? Ads Coming to Texbooks from the WaPo news might create a new (unwanted, at least for readers) stream of revenue for novelists by allowing paid product placement in works of fiction (like Hollywood does).

Oh, and have you seen Brick yet? If you love old '40s film noir, you should totally check out this update of a murder mystery into a modern Southern California high school.

And, by the way, I wrote for an hour the other day. Yes. Progress.

Monday, August 21

Routine once again descends on the edge of nowhere

Film at 11? The two teen-agers who share this house with us on the Edge of Nowhere respectively resumed or began their high school educational careers today, so that means some semblance of routine will once again descend on the old homestead. And routine means I'll have a much better chance of getting back to work on all my nonpaying, nonwork work, as in updating this blog, and in working on the novels, and the short stories, and the editor pitches and agent queries, and so on.

So, look for more regular and frequent posts, and look for reports of progress from here on the Edge of Nowhere. At least when I'm not playing my guitar.

Sunday, August 13

Fiddle camp

I'm too tired right now to write with any coherence about what an amazing experience we had up in the mountains at fiddle camp last week, but I'll point you to this post over on the family blog for right now. More later.

Sunday, August 6

Wrapping up summer

So, the end of summer nears. The heat waves are over. The thunderstorm clouds have returned. I don't write, but I run and walk and ride my bike and recharge. I see I was cheering Floyd in the post below, and now we have some serious accusations against him. Oh well. Nevermind. Bleech. As Fox Mulder would say, "I want to believe."

Last week we went down to Denver to see Vienna Teng play in support of her new album. We saw her almost two years ago at a friend's house here in Greeley, and it was fun to see her at a new club down in Denver. She sounded great, and there's a half-dozen very good songs on her new album.

We're off on an end of summer vacation, heading up to the mountains for a week to attend Rocky Mountain Fiddle Camp for six days, all four of us with our various instruments and varying degrees of talent. We have the house-sitter and dog-sitter in place, so I'm gonna turn off my brain, and the computer, and try to learn to play some music. See you in a week.

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