Big Lonesome

SMOKELONG QUARTERLY

I had the honor of guest-editing the latest issue of SmokeLong Quarterly, a fine online literary journal dedicated to short-short fiction. The experience was a rewarding one and I talk about it a bit in the guest editor's introduction.

One of the interesting things about SmokeLong is that the editors interview the authors about their piece and the stuff they choose to reveal (or not reveal) is often as arresting as the fiction itself. A link to each and every story and interview in the issue appears at the bottom of every page, so you can jump around intuitively.

If you enjoy reading short-short fiction, please do check it out and feel free to tell me what you think in the comments below.

BRING OUT YOUR DEAD

I'm honored to be reading at the Centro Cultural de la Raza in Balboa Park on Friday, November 2 at 8pm alongside a whole gang of poets and prose writers. I'll be reading the piece I wrote for the Esquire Napkin Fiction Project, which for some strange reason I forgot to mention here. I could be mistaken, but I have a feeling we'll end up here after the show.

MUSICAL INTERLUDE

I don't mention it nearly enough, but every-two months I write a column for Razorcake Fanzine. I've been writing for Razorcake since it first came out, and before that I wrote for Flipside before it crashed and burned in a puddle of its own piss. Flipside was the biggest and longest running of the punk rock zines that came out in the '70s, though my tenure only goes as far back as '96. Razorcake is America's only non-profit punk rock zine and they just came out with their 40th issue, which is pretty incredible when you think about it. What is Razorcake? Everything that SPIN is not.

Razorcake has a website, but you won't find any of the content that's in the magazine on the site. So if you want to read about my honeymoon in Yucatan and Campeche, you're going to have to buy a copy. Or you could just subscribe. That said, I recently did an interview with San Diego band The Challenger Deep, which is available on the site.

That's Dan Padilla on the cover. Here's a picture I took of front man Davey at the Tower Bar, home of the Pabst Smear, last month. Good times.

OXFORD AMERICAN MUSIC ISSUE

Speaking of music, the Annual Oxford American Music Issue is out and I'm honored to be a part of it again. This year I wrote about Amy LaVere, whose work constitutes a crisis of classification. I was pretty much hooked thirty seconds into her performance of Never Been Sadder. As soon as I received her new CD Anchors and Anvils, it went into the regular rotation at Casa Mick. Best of all, I didn't just write about the CD, my wife and journed to Pioneertown outside Joshua Tree and saw her perform with her band at Pappy & Harriet's Pioneertown Palace. I also interviewed her earlier that day.

It was an astonishing weekend. Amy was a delight to interview, the show was amazing, and the Yucca Valley was as strange and wonderful as we hoped it to be.

BIG LONESOME ANNIVERSARY PARTY

The Big Lonesome blast began with a brisk walk along the Sweetwater Marsh, a lush little National Wildlife Refuge that separates National City from Chula Vista, and it's chockful of interesting little creatures, including:

razor clams, ghost shrimp, mud crab, African clawed frogs, striped shorecrab, water hyacinth, brown algae, spikerush, pickleweed, California killifish, longjaw mudsucker, sailfin molly, mullet, goby, Pacific staghorn sculpin, topsmelt, coot liver, wigeon liver, black-necked stilt liver, and clapper rail egg.

You probably think I'm making this up and believe me, I wish I was imaginative enough to invent such a fantastic catalog, but it's all true.

After our morning stroll my wife and I captured a plump wigeon liver and fried it with some California killfish for burritos and then blended up some pickleweed smoothies. Okay, this time I am kidding. Senor Lonesome joined for some soyrizo and sauza, tecate, and limeaid margaritas. Desayuna de campiones, amigos y amigas.

Then we went downtown for the Tijuana dagger fights, the strawberry archers from Escondido, and the Filipina power ballad sing-off. The boys were drunk on Budweiser y Clamato and the women harvested honey champagne from giant bees. For food, we hacked off pieces from a creature roasting on a giant spit that may have been a Starbucks barista. I took plenty of photos but they all came out blurry and weird. Only this one survives, from the aftermath. Don't be fooled by the pink lace tablecloth, my friends, it was a dangerously good time.

Tomorrow (I promise, I swear) the final recap.

MANAGEMENT REGRETS

The Big Lonesome Two-Year Anniversary Party was a great success. However, the day after wasn't so bueno. I got ahold of some bad ceviche and am just now feeling human again. I'll posts pictures and more soon as well as the long overdue recap of the title story.

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY!

Big Lonesome is two years old today, and to celebrate I'm taking "BL" out on the town. Check back next week for a full report, a recap of the title story, some thoughts on authoring a short story collection, and a special giveaway.

#12 EASTWOOD

Eastwood is the twelfth story in the Big Lonesome Second Anniversary Recap. The story takes its title from the actor who starred in A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Eastwood is not a character in the story, nor are any of the characters he portrayed. However, the protoganist dresses up as The Man with No Name at a very important Halloween parrty and he shares his author's obsession with Spaghetti Westerns. (Although I have to admit I much prefer the work of Sergio Corbucci to Sergio Leone's much more famous films.)

The protagonist's best friend is a performance artist named Dan who was inspired by the epic, drug-fueled performance of a friend who dressed as Elvis for Halloween and never came out of character. I remember ducking into a bedroom to find my coat as we prepared to go to yet another party and found my friend/Elvis on the telephone. "Damn," he drawled as he hung up the phone, "my drummer's sick."

It was an incredible performance and the best thing about that night is that we didn't realize that's what it was until it was over. Most of us only "went into character" when someone was taking a picture, but my friend took a method acting approach. It wasn't just a costume. He was Elvis.

In the story, the protagonist gets angry at Dan for foisting his useless trivia on him, which is funny, because that's pretty much what I've been doing here in there posts for the last two weeks! In many ways, "Eastwood" is a study in ventriloquism and masks. It's about the lengths we go to convince others we're something that we're not and how we seldom reveal our true selves to those who matter most until it's too late.

#11 THE HITMAN'S HANDBOOK

The eleventh story in the Big Lonesome second anniversary recap is The Hitman's Handbook. As you can guess by the title, this is a crime story. It takes place in Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and Flagstaff, and the idea for the story came to me while I was walking in the woods on Mars Hill, which overlooks Flagstaff and is the home to the Lowell Observatory. The photo above was taken in 1915, three years after Arizona was admitted to the Union, so it's a little dated.

Flagstaff is one of the strangest places I've ever lived. Arizona, as everyone knows, is a desert state. A very small portion of the state is privately owned, which means its sparsely inhabited. Flagstaff, however, sits on the Colorado plateau and is known for its striking landscapes: dense pine forests, the San Francisco Peaks and a high altitude -- all in the middle of a desert. Most people are surprised to learn that Flagstaff's altitude is comparable to Denver's and is home to the largest Ponderosa pine forest in the world.

Although tens of thousands of people truck through Flagstaff on their way to the grand canyon, once you get out of town and away from the highways it feels awfully desolate, especially when it snows, which can happen any time between October and May. It's a place that antagonizes the imagination. When you're hiking on Mars Hill and the pine boughs are soughing and there's snow on the ground and the ravens are squawking it's hard to believe you're in Arizona. This is the sense of dislocation I tried to create in the characters that inhabit the story. If nothing else, Mars Hill would be a great place to leave a body. 

#10 BRAINS FOR BENGO

The tenth story in the Big Lonesome second anniversary recap is Brains for Bengo. The premise is simple: a young boy decides to put his sister's brains inside of his favorite toy. While I'd read A.M. Holmes amazing story My Date with Barbie, I got the idea for Brains for Bengo while watching Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein.

I watched the movie on Laser Disc with my cousin at his house. He was really into horror movies. It's a surprisingly well made movie, more comedy than horror. The basic premise involves Costello getting his brain switched with the Frankenstein monster to make the creature more obedient. This scene has been aped by just about every cartoon series imaginable from Bugs Bunny to Scoobie Doo. Not only did I get the idea from the film, I decided my protagonist would, too.

I admit, it's not the most original premise in the world, but while Costello (and Bugs and Scoobie) always get the transplant done via a jolt of brain-switching electric current, the nameless protagonist of Brains for Bengo takes a more hand's-on approach.