Click here to visit the Big Lonesome blog.
If you’ve been wondering who’s going to read at Vermin on the Mount’s New Year’s kick-off celebration, wonder no more.
Join us Sunday, January 10 at 8pm for a night of irreverent readings with Vanina Marsot (Foreign Tongues), Porochista Khakpour (Sons and Other Flammable Objects), Goodloe Byron (The Abstract, Revisions of, The Wraith) and Vicki Forman (This Lovely Life).
Check back soon for interviews and updates…
Nothing says “holy shite the holidays are coming” like a black metal Thanksgiving offering of vermin! (Poster art and design by Kiyoshi Nakazawa, creator of Drunken Master zine.)
On Sunday, November 8 at 8pm cap off your weekend pre-holiday procrastination with a night of irreverent readings at the Mountain Bar in L.A.’s Chinatown.
BLAKE NELSON is the author of many novels, including Destroy All Cars and Paranoid Park, which was made into a film by Gus Van Sant.
California native MARIE MUTSUKI MOCKETT’s debut novel, Picking Bones from Ash is set in both Japan and California. She lives and works in New York.
L.A. writer JOSEPH MATTSON is celebrated the release of Empty the Sun which includes a soundtrack by Six Organs of Admittance.
KIEREN VAN DEN BLINK wears many hats: writer, actress, organizer and, most recently, children’s book author. Kieren will read from her forthcoming memoir.
The acclaimed author of Stillwater Saints, ALEX ESPINOZA, returns to Southern California to share new work.
Plus, representatives from the literary magazine BLACK CLOCK will be on hand to sell copies of the latest issue. You can also win a copy in the return of the famous Vermin raffle! Plus, free cake!
VOTM: What's the most unusual experience you've had at a wedding?
BLAKE NELSON: Back in the early Nineties, I was chosen to be one of the opening "spoken word artists" for a Grateful Dead concert/party that Ken Kesey was having at his farm. Many of my friends thought this was funny since I had been quite the punk rocker and had constantly denounced the Grateful Dead any time I could. Still, i was excited to do this huge gig, which would put me in front of more people than I'd ever read to before. But then about a month before the gig, Jerry Garcia died. They still had the party and I read, but I felt guilty the whole time, because all anyone talked about was how cool Jerry was and how much he would be missed. Later, a beautiful girl on acid found me standing by myself by the stage. She took me into her arms and told me not to worry, she would love me. Which in one way made me feel better, but in another made me feel worse.
VOTM: What's the most unusual experience you've had at a reading?
JOSEPH MATTSON: The first ones that come to mind are a 3-way tie: Jerry Stahl telling a room of 50 people that I was looking to buy some speed.
A rich, philanthropic, but disheveled drunkard wandering into the gig asking where he can park his elephant. Twenty minutes later he bought 20 copies of my book.
I did a reading at this notorious dive bar with Six Organs of Admittance backing me up. The patrons heckled the hell out of the two opening readers, or they just talked loudly through the whole thing. We brought knives: I had a machete, and the two Six Organs guys had a hunting knife and a dagger (they were playing their guitars with them). We three--already a little boozy--proceeded to drink an entire fifth of Jim Beam--just us three--blades in hand. Of the 75 people in the audience, nobody heckled us or interrupted. Nobody was cut. We ended the reading with a Bob Seger cover--"Fire Lake."
Come heckle Joseph Mattson at the Mountain Bar on Sunday, November 8 at 8pm.
VOTM: What's the most unusual experience you've ever had at a reading?
Marie Mutsuki Mockett: I think the Elliot Bay bookstore in Seattle, Washington, is located nearby a homeless shelter. Or at least, homeless men and women like to come to readings there. A few weeks ago, while sharing a section of Picking Bones from Ash out loud, I noticed a man with long silver hair and a very fat and tattered backpack in the audience seated next to a rocking woman with a cup of coffee in her hand. You do not see many homeless people like this in New York; the East Coast homeless are a different breed. But the rocking woman and the backpack man I recognized. One of my summer jobs as a teenager was on Fisherman's Wharf in Monterey, California, where a substantial population of Viet Nam veterans lived peacefully just under the wharf. Most were men, but there was the occasional woman. The glamorous Sicilian proprietor of the delicatessen where I worked had a nice arrangement with them; she received their mail, cashed their checks and gave them coffee. They made sure we never had any problems.
When the reading was over, I asked for questions. Family and friends had come prepared. And so, apparently had backpack man. He said: "As you were reading, I was thinking about Van Gogh and how he went to Japan and how he was seeking a kind of truth . . . a wholeness in his art. You can see it, right? The colors. And . . . I'm asking for a lot here . . . " he strained. He wanted me to help him. I could feel how much he wanted me to help him. I wondered if maybe some LSD had gotten in the way of his past and current probing, in answers that might have come had he not indulged. He went on for a bit. What is it about Van Gogh and crazy people? There was a time I was wearing a brightly colored 80s sweater, and working as a bank teller, and a man came up to me to cash a check and repeatedly told me, "Those are the colors of Van Gogh's inspiration, man. Those are the colors of Van Gogh." This does not happen in New York, where crazy people seem more violent, and don't have checks to cash but instead, are prone to asking for money.
Eventually, backpack man stopped talking. And I thought about the smart professors I had in college who had a knack of turning non-questions into questions that sounded intelligent. So I didn't point out that, no, Van Gogh never went to Japan, and that it was Gaugin who went to Tahiti, which only some people consider to be Asia. But I talked about the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, and how Van Gogh learned to paint relatively late, and how, seeing his worked arranged chronologically in the museum, you can really understand how a light was switched on--the early pieces are so dark, so northern European and the later pieces, in France, so bright. And then, because I was thinking about myself, and how hard it is for any artist to sell her work, I asked that we all consider how difficult it must have been for Van Gogh to be furiously painting, with only his brother Theo believing in him, and how sad it is that Vincent never learned of his own success. How many people really care about art? I think I even have a Van Gogh reference in my book. After the Q&A ended, rocking woman fled the building. Backpack man gave me this napkin. It is a response to my reading and presentation. I do not understand it, but I take it out every now and then to try and see if it too has some kind of hidden message, or if it is also striving for wholeness. I'll be bringing it to LA, but in the meantime, look at the photo and give it some thought. I am, in general, an open-minded person. I'll be curious to learn if any of you have an interpretation.
Come see Marie read from her debut novel on Sunday, November 8 at 8pm.
Join me on Sunday, November 8 at 8pm for a stellar night of irreverent readings from Blake Nelson, Kieren Van Den Blink, Joseph Mattson, Marie Mutsuki Mockett and Alex Espinoza. This event will start as close to 8pm as humanly verminly possible!
