Vermin on the Mount

VERMIN #22 IN REVIEW

Cake? Check. Lit geeks at the bar? Yep. Blood-dripping down the walls? Most def. That can only mean one thing: a Vermin on the Mount book release party!

The man of the hour was none other than Legion of Vermin member Mark Sarvas, author of Harry, Revised and The Elegant Variation. I've been friends with Mark slightly longer than Vermin on the Mount has been around. In fact, Mark helped me pass out flyers for the first Vermin on the Mount at a writerly gathering at LACMA on summer evening nearly four years ago. In any event, I was honored to present Mark and introduce his debut novel. But it didn't work out that way.

VERMIN #21

Jaysus, is it raining blood in here again? No, Owen Dara, it's just the recap to the Kiss Me I'm Vermin edition of Vermin on the Mount!

First we kicked things off with a little cervesa verde at Casey's Irish Bar & Grille downtown. Schlocky, but necessary.

The black velveted voice of Joe O'Brien warmed up the crowd with a reading from his novel-in-progress about the trials and travails of a stand-up comic.

To celebrate the paperback release of Perfect from Now On, Angry John Sellers traveled all the way from New York City to tell us why Bono isn't the wanker we think he is.

Here's Owen Dara again, this time reading from his memoir, White Horses: An Irish Childhood, which is filled with many moving moments and comic touches.

Who's that man accosting the host, you ask? It's none other than the illustrious infamous Nathan Cathcart, the inspiration for Dickie Island's amazing poster. Need a little clarity? Check the similarity:

Nathan helped me give many Kiss Me I'm Vermin shirts away in the Vermin raffle (still plenty of shirts left, especially if you're a little verminita or a big pest (ladies M & L, guys XL). All shirts are made in the USA, just like Jay, the man who makes it happen at the Mountain Bar.

Be sure to stop by soon to check out what we have in store next month when we send-up celebrate the release of Harry, Revised, by longtime member of the Legion of Vermin, Mark Sarvas.

RETURN OF THE RAFFLE

Vermin on the Mount returns Sunday, January 13, to satisfy all of your slightly irregular literary needs with a great slate of writers to kick off 2008.

In addition, we're bringing back the raffle in a big way: you could win a signed print by acclaimed artist Jorge Prado, one of the owners of the Mountain!

Get your lit. Support the arts. Win a print.

HAVE NO FEAR, VERMIN IS HERE!

The first Vermin on the Mount reading of 2008 is right around the corner with an eclectic line-up of writers from near and far on Sunday January 13 at 8pm:

JAMI ATTENBERG, author of Instant Love, returns for her second Vermin appearance to celebrate the release of The Kept Man, a novel about "art, love, death, sex, drugs, comas, donuts, Mount St. Helen's, cab drivers, Christinas, punk rock, holding on, and letting go."

VERONICA GONZALEZ'S debut novel, twin time: or, how death befell me, is a modern-day fairy tale that ranges from Los Angeles to Mexico City. Gonzalez has recently appeared at the UCLA/Hammer Museum and on KCRW's Bookworm.

DOUG CORDELL is a playwright and a regular contributor to National Public Radio's "Marketplace" program. He is also a recent transplant to Los Angeles from New York where he was involved in a number of radio and performance venues.

SAM QUINONES is a freelance journalist and California native who has been writing about both sides of the border for a decade. He is the author of two collection of nonfiction stories: True Tales of Another Mexico and Antonio's Gun and Delfino's Dream.

Plus, when you come celebrate the 20th Vermin on the Mount, you could win a spectacular prize in the Vermin raffle. More details to follow after the New Year!

VERMIN #19 RECAP

Have zombies invaded Chinatown? Souls of the damned swimming in a lake of fire? No, it's another Vermin on the Mount recap for the event that took place the day after the day after the Day of the Dead.

Kevin Moffett kicked off the reading with a love story that takes place in a zoo. The Vermin faithful can relate.

Mary Otis reads a story about quirky Angelenos. In the background, Scott O'Connor wonders if he qualifies.

Duncan Murrell knows etouffee.

Ask a Mexican author Gustavo Arellano has all the answers.

Vermin on the Mount will return on Sunday, January 13 at 8pm. Vermin wishes you a filfthy holiday season!

POOR, TIRED, UNWASHED

Sounds like Sunday night in Chinatown to me...

VERMIN #18

Either the vermin are getting aggressive or the lights at the Mountain Bar are even stranger than I remember. Or maybe it's simply time for the Vermin on the Mount recap.

Here's Ron Currie, Jr. He's got Popeye arms and drinks like a sailor. Sadly, he's also a perfect gentleman. At least he was during his reading of his outstanding short story collection God Is Dead. In the distance looms the Temple of Hop Louie and the Dim Sum of Death.

This is Michael A. FitzGerald, the hardest working man of letters in Idaho, who came all the way from Boise to read from Radiant Days. I owe everyone who came out to Chinatown an apology for talking him out of reading the cunnilingus scene. If you read one book about a guy who becomes obsessed with a Hungarian prostitute this year, make it this one.

What can we say about Katherine Taylor's performance? She moved way too fast for my not-so-mega-pixel camera and her reading from Rules for Saying Goodbye had me wondering if there were similar rules for men and if there was any chance in hell I'd gotten any of them right.

Special thanks to Fred Savinon for the excellent poster. The next reading will feature the art of El Chikle.

VERMIN #16

It's amazing. It's incredible. It's another blow-by-blow account of the first, and quite possibly last, all-poetry Vermin on the Mount. And you thought we hated poetry*. We like poetry just fine, it's the poets we usually can't stand. But on Easter Sunday the Mountain was host to three titans of poetry.

*Comment from actual Legion of Vermin. I won't say his name, but his initials are Jod Kaftan.

Meet Razor. He's been around the L.A. poetry scene a long time. He was away for a while, but now he's back, and we were both pleased and proud to have him kick off the reading with some poems that were both personal and political.

Now here's a man who never pronounced poem with two syllables. I got to meet the prodigiously talented S.A. Griffin at Bucky's last appearance at Vermin on the Mount and knew it would only be a matter of time before we got Mr. Griffin in the Legion of Vermin. He sings, he recitates, and he's one hell of a good poet, too. He was also an early mentor to young Bucky Sinister...

See? Here his is sending Bucky psychic waves of support from across the room. The book Senor Sinister is reading? It's his newest from Gorsky Press, All Blacked Out and Nowhere to Go. It contains all of the poems in Whiskey & Robots, which is now sold out, as well as the House That Punk Built epic about Bucky's time in an Oakland squat. Better get your copy now before they...

...disappear.

VERMIN #15

What's this? A Vermin recap a little more than a week after the event? This smells like a technology breakthrough at Casa Mick. Behold the wonders of ye fiancee's camera telephone...

This is Perry Crowe, novelist, journalist, and editor of the brand-spanking new online humor adventure called Mr. Judas.

Here's Jod Kaftan, erstwhile neighbor and soon to be bethrothed. He read from something he referred to as a "meta-autobiography," which goes to show you the lengths people will go to avoid calling their work a memoir. Nevertheless it was quite good and very funny.

Which brings us to Antoine Wilson, depicted here reading an excerpt from his forthcoming novel, which he taped to his shoe. 

Chances are you already know who this gentleman is. If you don't, feel free to give that rock you've been living under a shove and suck in a hearty lungful of bodacious brown air. It's L.A. author Brad Listi reading from his bestselling novel, Attention. Deficit. Disorder!

If you are scratching your head wondering if you missed the recap of Vermin #14 with Rolf Potts, Daniel Hernandez, Theresa Duncan, and Stephan Clark, you can stop looking under the seat cushions and in the cabinet where you stash the bad porn. We forgot our camera that evening, but that is not to say we did not capture some images. Stay tuned for the first ever sketchpad recap...

WATCH THIS SPACE

"Eye" know what you're thinking: Where are the updates, the blitzes, the someone's going to get their head kicked ins that I've come to love? Well fret not. The online component of Vermin on the Mount is preparing to launch a new offensive.

You've been warned. Don't be bitten...