The song’s from their album “The Family Swan.”

What had happened was, Tim Feeney and I saw Mecca Normal in Urbana-Champaign. We adored them (it was easily one of the five best concerts I’ve ever seen), and invited them to come play Bloomington-Normal. They agreed, and Tim and I helped arrange a concert at ISU. Jean and David stayed with Tim, and one night while we were out eating sushi, I asked them about their music videos. That conversation led to me proposing to direct one for them. The result is what you see above.

Elf and I took the video footage from Alexander Hammid’s 1950 educational film “Angry Boy,” which is in the public domain and available at the Prelinger Archive. Hammid was of course once married to Maya Deren, one of my all-time favorite filmmakers; he helped her make such classics as “Meshes of the Afternoon.” He passed away in 2004, and I regret that I never got the chance to meet him, or show him our video. I highly recommend that you watch his original film, which despite its mundane script is very beautifully directed and shot.

I went on to direct one more (much longer) video for MN; I’ll try posting it later.

I also took a moment to update my guide to all of my writing at Big Other. Enjoy…

I wrote “Roses” in 1995–6, soon after I started taking writing workshops at Penn State University. My primary interests then were poetry and flash fiction, mainly because I’d yet to write anything longer than 500 words. I didn’t know much about making stories, so everything I wrote that year is an overly precious, roundabout attempt to communicate some tidbit to the reader. Thankfully, I soon lost interest in this kind of stuff; all that remains is that I still fuss too much with my sentences.

The story is here; enjoy!

Time: 7:30–9:30pm (there will be an open mic, starting at 7:30)

Place: South Halsted Gallery (1825 S. Halsted, Chicago)

Concept: Possibly ugly sweaters still?

Cost: $5 but there will be free drinks!

More: Here’s Revolving Door’s website, where you can see videos of past readings.

+ there will be another reader, Roger Reeves, so come see him if not me

Hope to see you on the 25th!

…I also updated the events page.

Time: 7:30–9:30pm (there will be an open mic, starting at 7:30)

Place: South Halsted Gallery (1825 S. Halsted, Chicago)

Concept: This month we’re celebrating the holidays with you! Put on an ugly Christmas sweater and come mingle with us!

Cost: $5 but there will be free drinks, plus “a prize given for the ugliest sweater!”

More: Here’s Revolving Door’s website, where you can see videos of past readings.

Hope to see you on the 21st!

On Wednesday, 14 December, 7–10pm. At the Beauty Bar (1444 W. Chicago Ave., Chicago).

Also reading will be James Tadd Adcox, Chris Bower, Lindsay Hunter, Samantha Irby, Meghan Lamb, Dan Shapiro, Ben Tanzer, John Thurgood, Russ Woods, and Joshua Young. And the MCs will be Mason Johnson, Jon Mau, and Matt Rowan.

Untoward Magazine published my story “5000 Units of Product,” as well as a two-part interview with me, concerning Amazing Adult Fantasy and Giant Slugs.

Specifically, [C.] An MLP Stamp Stories Anthology, which is an anthology of extremely short stories (each one is under 50 words), and which will presumably look something like the image directly above.

I’m pleased to have been included alongside so many other writers:

James Tadd Adcox, Jesse Ball, Ken Baumann, Lauren Becker, Matt Bell, Kate Bernheimer, Michael Bible, Jack Boettcher, Harold Bowes, Jesse Bradley, Donald Breckenridge, Melissa Broder, Blake Butler, James Chapman, Jimmy Chen, Joshua Cohen, Peter Conners, Shome Dasgupta, Andy Devine, Giancarlo DiTrapano, Claire Donato, Elizabeth Ellen, Raymond Federman, Kathy Fish, Scott Garson, Molly Gaudry, Roxane Gay, Steven Gillis, Rachel B. Glaser, Amanda Goldblatt, Barry Graham, Amelia Gray, Sara Greenslit, Tina May Hall, Christopher Higgs, Lily Hoang, Tim Horvath, Joanna Howard, Laird Hunt, Jamie Iredell, Harold Jaffe, A D Jameson, Jac Jemc, Stephanie Johnson, Shane Jones, Drew Kalbach, Roy Kesey, Sean Kilpatrick, Michael Kimball, M. Kitchell, Robert Kloss, Darby Larson, Charles Lennox, Eugene Lim, Matthew Lippman, Norman Lock, Robert Lopez, Sean Lovelace, Josh Maday, Dave Madden, John Madera, Kendra Grant Malone, Tony Mancus, Peter Markus, Chelsea Martin, Zachary Mason, Hosho McCreesh, Alissa Nutting, Riley Michael Parker, Aimee Parkison, David Peak, Ted Pelton, Adam Peterson, Ryan Ridge, Joseph Riippi, Adam Robinson, Ethel Rohan, Joanna Ruocco, Kevin Sampsell, Selah Saterstrom, Davis Schneiderman, Zachary Schomburg, Todd Seabrook, Ben Segal, Gregory Sherl, Lydia Ship, Matthew Simmons, Justin Sirois, Amber Sparks, Ken Sparling, Ben Spivey, Michael Stewart, Terese Svoboda, Sean Ulman, Deb Olin Unferth, Timmy Waldron, William Walsh, Rupert Wondolowski, James Yeh, Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé.

Thanks to J. A. Tyler and Andrew Borgstrom for putting together both the project and the book!

Other reviews:

• NOÖ Journal (Jonah Vorspan-Stein)
• SF Site (Paul Kincaid)
• The Quarterly Conversation (Jeff Bursey)
• H_NGM_N (Matt Dube)
• The Collagist (Peter Fontaine)

Amazing Adult Fantasy is available through its publisher, Mutable Sound, as well as Powell’s Books and Amazon. Also, as of today, there are copies at Quimby’s!

Open Books, now there.

Next month, on Tuesday, 6 December, at 7:30pm, I will be reading at the Wit Rabbit Reading Series, at Open Books (213 W. Institute Place, Chicago). Also reading will be poet and sculptor Anne Shaw, and someone else.

That will be the second Wit Rabbit reading. The first one is tonight, also at Open Books, also at 7:30pm. The readers will be Anthony Madrid and my UIC classmate Tyler Mills. Plus someone else.

About the series:

We are an inter-genre reading series in the Chicagoland area devoted to showcasing new poetry, fiction, and drama from our city’s best and brightest writers. Also inter-collegial in our foundation, our organizing body is composed of faculty and students from English and Creative Writing departments at UIC, SAIC, and Columbia College. We believe, quite simply, in the power not only of the written word, but of the spoken word, and in the importance of community support for the performance of new work being written by talented and engaged writers, in shaping the human mind and spirit to create new songs and stories for our generation. Our inter-genre focus is based on the belief that hybridity, originally a biological term, is the zeitgeist of our multicultural, globalized world, and that as writers, thinkers, teachers, and human beings, our survival and happiness depend on recognizing the value of interdisciplinarity as a means of negotiation, transgression, and engagement with the world.

Its curators are Nikolas Allen, Alexis Buryk, Virginia Konchan, and Sarah Meltzer. And it’s pronounced “White Rabbit.”

Hope to see you there!