This is great. I'd always hoped to be in a band long enough and with their shit together enough to do a band tour. Cross country or at least down the west coast. That never happened. A reading tour I now realize is better. The same idea of meeting nice people, sleeping on couches and selling your handiwork, all without hauling gear or the fear of a broken into van!
This is my second time in the southern half of the East coast, ever. It's been great to hang out with Dave Cole and eat, read and visit independent bookstores in cities such as Charlotte, Athens, Birmingham, and Asheville. I'm sorry I am not going to get to the Richmond Zine Fest this fall but I know that would be one awesome time. Maybe next year.
Dave had the great idea of doing a WNHP podcast, ala This American Life. I hope to make this happen.
Monday, October 5, 2009
Monday, September 21, 2009
essay from WNHP5 by Gus Iversen
This issue features the bittersweet theme of HOME. We are a print only journal but to give you a taste, I have chosen one essay that you can read in entirety here on the blog.
DIFFERENT DIRECTIONS
There were two Indian women on the subway. Each of them wearing a colorful sari and holding an enormous blue cart at their feet. Like a grocery cart but twice as big. The carts were filled with large cloth sacks, which were filled with I don’t know what. The older one had a small stud in her nose. We were sitting directly across from each other and I wondered if they had just arrived from India or maybe Bangladesh. I looked closely at their mouths and tried to see if they were the kind of mouths that form English words.
A man with a gray goatee and a Puerto Rico baseball cap sat down next to the older one and accidentally brushed her elbow. They smiled at each other in the way people on the subway do when unintentional contact has been made. She then turned away from him and back towards me. She put her head on her daughter’s shoulder and giggled uncontrollably. Her eyes had fireworks in them. I imagined he was the first American she had exchanged idle pleasantries with. Between bouts of laughter she would whisper a strange language in her daughters ear. My heart nearly exploded, I diverted my eyes and concentrated on those mysterious cloth sacks. I wanted to know their secrets.
In Berlin I met a Russian man at 4 o’clock in the morning. We were the only people around and we both wanted company. I spoke zero Russian and he spoke zero English. We drank two beers together, throwing non-sequitors back and forth to the keep the silence at bay. His countenance was sort of frightening but I decided it was just a cultural thing. I imagine our conversation may have gone something like this.
“I am going to Prague in two hours. Sad to leave Berlin. Beautiful people here.”
“I don’t understand a word you just said. What a shitty night it‘s been!”
“Umm… yea. Ah. Have you ever been there? I want to see the Charles Bridge.”
“You’re a strange person, aren’t you? Thank god for beer. Why on Earth haven‘t you gone home yet?”
“…My sister broke her leg once taking out the garbage…”
One morning in Amsterdam I awoke to find a ladybug had made a home for herself in my belly button. I had been dreaming about flowers. Beautiful flowers of all different colors and impossible compositions. They were everywhere and for some reason I lacked coordination and kept stepping in their beds. Every time I stepped on a different flower it made me feel terrible. I really didn’t want to step on them, but my muscles were not in my control. So to awake from this dream and find a ladybug had made a home out of my belly button -- well, I stayed in bed extra long so as not to disturb it.
When I finally got up I scooped my little tenant onto my finger and she walked around a little bit. She was disoriented with sleep but at least I hadn’t squashed her. I hopped down from my bunk bed and took her to the porch. This woke up my Italian roommates. I told them all about it but I’m not sure it really came across. I do not speak Italian.
It was the first time I’d been out of The United States in over fifteen years. I was traveling alone and I only got back a week ago. Ever since returning home people have been talking to me more on the streets. They ask me for directions, they comment about how nice the weather is, one little kid even asked me to pet his dog. Nobody spoke to me before the trip. I had been closed off somehow without knowing it. Furthermore, certain elements of the tourist still compel me; the landscape will not be lost on my lens. This is New York City, after all.
The Indian women, they understood this. It was an enthusiasm we shared. They got off the train at 104th St., deep in Queens. Their gargantuan carts thumping as they jostled from the train to the platform. They pushed their carts westward, the mother walking ahead of the daughter. I continued on until 121st St. in Kew Gardens. I don’t live here. I am cat sitting here for a friend of a friend while she is in Seoul negotiating fabrics. That was a long train ride. I was on my way back from downtown Manhattan. You can sit on the steps of Federal Hall with it’s bricks and winding sidewalks and forget for a moment that this is where you live.
DIFFERENT DIRECTIONS
There were two Indian women on the subway. Each of them wearing a colorful sari and holding an enormous blue cart at their feet. Like a grocery cart but twice as big. The carts were filled with large cloth sacks, which were filled with I don’t know what. The older one had a small stud in her nose. We were sitting directly across from each other and I wondered if they had just arrived from India or maybe Bangladesh. I looked closely at their mouths and tried to see if they were the kind of mouths that form English words.
A man with a gray goatee and a Puerto Rico baseball cap sat down next to the older one and accidentally brushed her elbow. They smiled at each other in the way people on the subway do when unintentional contact has been made. She then turned away from him and back towards me. She put her head on her daughter’s shoulder and giggled uncontrollably. Her eyes had fireworks in them. I imagined he was the first American she had exchanged idle pleasantries with. Between bouts of laughter she would whisper a strange language in her daughters ear. My heart nearly exploded, I diverted my eyes and concentrated on those mysterious cloth sacks. I wanted to know their secrets.
In Berlin I met a Russian man at 4 o’clock in the morning. We were the only people around and we both wanted company. I spoke zero Russian and he spoke zero English. We drank two beers together, throwing non-sequitors back and forth to the keep the silence at bay. His countenance was sort of frightening but I decided it was just a cultural thing. I imagine our conversation may have gone something like this.
“I am going to Prague in two hours. Sad to leave Berlin. Beautiful people here.”
“I don’t understand a word you just said. What a shitty night it‘s been!”
“Umm… yea. Ah. Have you ever been there? I want to see the Charles Bridge.”
“You’re a strange person, aren’t you? Thank god for beer. Why on Earth haven‘t you gone home yet?”
“…My sister broke her leg once taking out the garbage…”
One morning in Amsterdam I awoke to find a ladybug had made a home for herself in my belly button. I had been dreaming about flowers. Beautiful flowers of all different colors and impossible compositions. They were everywhere and for some reason I lacked coordination and kept stepping in their beds. Every time I stepped on a different flower it made me feel terrible. I really didn’t want to step on them, but my muscles were not in my control. So to awake from this dream and find a ladybug had made a home out of my belly button -- well, I stayed in bed extra long so as not to disturb it.
When I finally got up I scooped my little tenant onto my finger and she walked around a little bit. She was disoriented with sleep but at least I hadn’t squashed her. I hopped down from my bunk bed and took her to the porch. This woke up my Italian roommates. I told them all about it but I’m not sure it really came across. I do not speak Italian.
It was the first time I’d been out of The United States in over fifteen years. I was traveling alone and I only got back a week ago. Ever since returning home people have been talking to me more on the streets. They ask me for directions, they comment about how nice the weather is, one little kid even asked me to pet his dog. Nobody spoke to me before the trip. I had been closed off somehow without knowing it. Furthermore, certain elements of the tourist still compel me; the landscape will not be lost on my lens. This is New York City, after all.
The Indian women, they understood this. It was an enthusiasm we shared. They got off the train at 104th St., deep in Queens. Their gargantuan carts thumping as they jostled from the train to the platform. They pushed their carts westward, the mother walking ahead of the daughter. I continued on until 121st St. in Kew Gardens. I don’t live here. I am cat sitting here for a friend of a friend while she is in Seoul negotiating fabrics. That was a long train ride. I was on my way back from downtown Manhattan. You can sit on the steps of Federal Hall with it’s bricks and winding sidewalks and forget for a moment that this is where you live.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
WNHP5 reading tour and readiness details
WNHP5 front cover, Gabriel Liston
this issue features:
Gus Iversen
Jaime Borschuk
Cecelia Mariscal
Shaheim Jackson
Karen Lillis
Veronica Liu
Redguard
Dave Cole
Andria Alefhi
Issues are $4 by mail. Contact me.
WNHP south eastern reading tour: Athens, Birmingham, Asheville:
Athens, GA on Oct 2: TBA
Birmingham, AL at GREENCUP BOOKS October 5
Asheville, NC at DOWNTOWN BOOKS AND NEWS October 6
Sunday, September 6, 2009
Vol 5 and Philly Zine Fest
Volume 5 is nearly complete. Will be ready before Philly Zine Fest Sept 20.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
sample essay
This is a high quality, personal and hysterical story by Cassie J Sneider who allowed me to reprint this and include it in WNHP Volume 4. This is meant to help give writers an idea of what I am looking for, but certainly not limited to, this example.
"
Extreme Close-Up
by Cassie J. Sneider
“You got that new Armored Saint album?”
I looked up from what I was doing, rubbing my temples and seeing a guy in his early thirties with glasses and a Mike Meyers in Wayne’s World mullet and baseball cap combination. At the record store, I am frequently spoken to by the customers without a formal greeting to garner my attention. It is then up to me to determine without a ‘hello’ whether or not I am being addressed. He blinked, staring emphatically in my direction.
Yes. He was talking to me.
I nodded and remembered that someone had called earlier in the day asking for that very album. I started to walk to the counter, where I thought I had left it, when he asked another question without addressing me specifically.
“Who does your work?”
This is the way one person with tattoos acknowledges those of another. Even if I am wearing a sweater, I am asked this all day, every day. I were covered in roses and barbed wire, or had an exboyfriend’s name enscripted on my neck, I might feel special, glad for the attention from a like-minded individual. Instead, I feel weird and indecent, like I have been walking around with my fly open in the children’s oncology ward. This happens so often that I’ve thought of saying things like, “Dr. Rothstein did the butt implants. Dr. Sinclair did the breast lift,” but I am genuinely surprised each time someone comments on my appearance, so I just tell the truth.
“Some guy in Connecticut,” I say, pressing my thumbs into my head, like a person in an ad for Nuprin. Little. Yellow. Different.
“That’s cool,” Wayne Campbell continues without absorbing my response. “I do my all my own stuff, and you know, sometimes it just…” He rolls up his sleeves and talks, not to me, but for his own sake, to feel alive and connected to a human being at that moment, regardless of whether or not they care or have had a headache for two days and the sound of human voices are making them want to vomit. Pugsley came with me to work today, and he sits at my feet, staring at me, then looking to the time-warped metalhead talking at me. Pugsley has been touched by every dirtbag in Ronkonkoma today, stooping to pet him with hands that smell vaguely of weed before looking for Halford on cassette.
Pugsley does not mind that the people petting him think he is a bulldog or smell like liquor. He just wants to be petted, and I have a feeling if Pugsley were human, he would be an out-of-control teen on a talk show, the kind that admits to the producers that they slept with an older man for sneakers.
“That’s a great dog, you know, how he just follows you around like that. Real fuckin’ great dog. My girlfriend had a Pomeranian- Rottweiler mix, but she took it when she left me. Fuckin’ bitch…”
I dig through the special orders, determined that once I find this Armored Saint album, the talking will end. Then I will be left alone with my migraine, to recoil from noise and rays of light like a nocturnal animal.
“I called you this morning. That was me. I hadda make sure I had enough bottles to cash in to make the money to get this fuckin’ album. So I stayed home drinking all day and then cashed ‘em in…”
In an hour, I will close the store. In an hour and five minutes, I will lay in the dark in my room, feeling like my skull has turned into a centrifuge, listening to the sound of Pugsley laying in the dark, chewing a rawhide with the methodical compulsion of someone who needs every Armored Saint album right now no matter what.
My friend Matt works at the record store, too, and we have discussed this phenomenon before, the customer who comes in reeking of alcohol, talking about how they just got laid off and their kid is in the hospital, but buys three Accept records with car change. “Don’t do it, buddy,” we want to say. “Save it for a rainy day. ‘Balls to the Wall’ will sound much sweeter once your kid is in remission.”
We take their money. We say nothing. We talk about it amongst ourselves, hoping the therapy of admission will turn us into good people.
“…and you know how that all turned out! Fuckin’ A! Hey, were you at the Twisted Sister show last night?”
This catches me off guard.
“What?”
“Twisted Sister. Were you at that show?”
“Uh,” I start to laugh. “No.” My cerebral cortex shrinks and tightens. “Should I have been?” Pain shoots everywhere.
“Coulda sworn I saw you there. Great fuckin’ show. They really packed it out…”
I find the Armored Saint album. Then I am struck by the realization that I LOOK LIKE A TWISTED SISTER FAN. I look like I walk around in a denim jacket with jeans and white Reeboks. I look like I have a perm. I look like I listen to “I Wanna Rock” in a rented room, wishing I had the wherewithal and tools with which to rock, but somehow, because of conspiracy and socio-economic status, cannot.
I look down at my hands, where tattoos creep out even when I am wearing a sweater. I think about all the times someone has asked me where I get my work done. I think about how the first show I ever went to was Ratt. I see my life is a cruel full circle of irony taken a little too far, the embrace of from where and whom I have sprung that has turned into a hug of all the things I think are disgusting and laugh at. I look down at my feet, making sure this is not a bad dream, that I am still wearing shoes. I see Pugsley. If this is a bad dream, we are in this together, kicking, twitching, and whimpering in our sleep.
Pugsley wags his curled tail.
Once for a bad dream; twice if it’s real, son.
There are two sideways rotations.
Shit.
“Hey, you know Johnny Wild Child?”
“Who?”
“Johnny Wild Child. Black hair. Bandanna. Blue eyes. Wears a leather jacket. He fuckin’ comes in here all the time.”
“Yes,” I say. “I know him. Why?” The person he was referring to bought Iron Maiden DVDs and had told me five hundred times that Al Lewis once tried to come on to his exgirlfriend in a strange mirror-within-a-mirror attempt at hitting on me. I had no idea that his name, as a forty-something year old man, was Johnny Wild Child. Now I knew.
“That’s my roommate!” We now knew the same person, which made us in the same peer group. A real connection had been forged. My brain twitched, and I closed one eye, disclosing the lightening storm of misfiring neurons in my skull.
“Look, dude, I-” I started, but was interrupted by another customer walking in the door. She had bigger hair, white eyeliner, and real roses and barbed wire curling around her bruised bicep.
“Nice doggie!” she said, bending so that eight inches of thong slid out and revealed itself. Pugsley ran back and forth under her acrylic nails, doing all the petting himself. “Hey, I know you!” she said to Wayne Campbell. “Village Pub?”
“Fuckin’ A!” he said. “Say, weren’t you at the Twisted Sister show last night?”
“Fuck, yeah! They really fuckin’ rocked it! Hey, you’re friends with Johnny Wild Child, right?”
Pugsley returned to his place at my feet. We looked at each other, me rubbing my temples, he wagging his tail in motions of two, and we counted down the hour until it was time to close down our corner of a small world. "
"
Extreme Close-Up
by Cassie J. Sneider
“You got that new Armored Saint album?”
I looked up from what I was doing, rubbing my temples and seeing a guy in his early thirties with glasses and a Mike Meyers in Wayne’s World mullet and baseball cap combination. At the record store, I am frequently spoken to by the customers without a formal greeting to garner my attention. It is then up to me to determine without a ‘hello’ whether or not I am being addressed. He blinked, staring emphatically in my direction.
Yes. He was talking to me.
I nodded and remembered that someone had called earlier in the day asking for that very album. I started to walk to the counter, where I thought I had left it, when he asked another question without addressing me specifically.
“Who does your work?”
This is the way one person with tattoos acknowledges those of another. Even if I am wearing a sweater, I am asked this all day, every day. I were covered in roses and barbed wire, or had an exboyfriend’s name enscripted on my neck, I might feel special, glad for the attention from a like-minded individual. Instead, I feel weird and indecent, like I have been walking around with my fly open in the children’s oncology ward. This happens so often that I’ve thought of saying things like, “Dr. Rothstein did the butt implants. Dr. Sinclair did the breast lift,” but I am genuinely surprised each time someone comments on my appearance, so I just tell the truth.
“Some guy in Connecticut,” I say, pressing my thumbs into my head, like a person in an ad for Nuprin. Little. Yellow. Different.
“That’s cool,” Wayne Campbell continues without absorbing my response. “I do my all my own stuff, and you know, sometimes it just…” He rolls up his sleeves and talks, not to me, but for his own sake, to feel alive and connected to a human being at that moment, regardless of whether or not they care or have had a headache for two days and the sound of human voices are making them want to vomit. Pugsley came with me to work today, and he sits at my feet, staring at me, then looking to the time-warped metalhead talking at me. Pugsley has been touched by every dirtbag in Ronkonkoma today, stooping to pet him with hands that smell vaguely of weed before looking for Halford on cassette.
Pugsley does not mind that the people petting him think he is a bulldog or smell like liquor. He just wants to be petted, and I have a feeling if Pugsley were human, he would be an out-of-control teen on a talk show, the kind that admits to the producers that they slept with an older man for sneakers.
“That’s a great dog, you know, how he just follows you around like that. Real fuckin’ great dog. My girlfriend had a Pomeranian- Rottweiler mix, but she took it when she left me. Fuckin’ bitch…”
I dig through the special orders, determined that once I find this Armored Saint album, the talking will end. Then I will be left alone with my migraine, to recoil from noise and rays of light like a nocturnal animal.
“I called you this morning. That was me. I hadda make sure I had enough bottles to cash in to make the money to get this fuckin’ album. So I stayed home drinking all day and then cashed ‘em in…”
In an hour, I will close the store. In an hour and five minutes, I will lay in the dark in my room, feeling like my skull has turned into a centrifuge, listening to the sound of Pugsley laying in the dark, chewing a rawhide with the methodical compulsion of someone who needs every Armored Saint album right now no matter what.
My friend Matt works at the record store, too, and we have discussed this phenomenon before, the customer who comes in reeking of alcohol, talking about how they just got laid off and their kid is in the hospital, but buys three Accept records with car change. “Don’t do it, buddy,” we want to say. “Save it for a rainy day. ‘Balls to the Wall’ will sound much sweeter once your kid is in remission.”
We take their money. We say nothing. We talk about it amongst ourselves, hoping the therapy of admission will turn us into good people.
“…and you know how that all turned out! Fuckin’ A! Hey, were you at the Twisted Sister show last night?”
This catches me off guard.
“What?”
“Twisted Sister. Were you at that show?”
“Uh,” I start to laugh. “No.” My cerebral cortex shrinks and tightens. “Should I have been?” Pain shoots everywhere.
“Coulda sworn I saw you there. Great fuckin’ show. They really packed it out…”
I find the Armored Saint album. Then I am struck by the realization that I LOOK LIKE A TWISTED SISTER FAN. I look like I walk around in a denim jacket with jeans and white Reeboks. I look like I have a perm. I look like I listen to “I Wanna Rock” in a rented room, wishing I had the wherewithal and tools with which to rock, but somehow, because of conspiracy and socio-economic status, cannot.
I look down at my hands, where tattoos creep out even when I am wearing a sweater. I think about all the times someone has asked me where I get my work done. I think about how the first show I ever went to was Ratt. I see my life is a cruel full circle of irony taken a little too far, the embrace of from where and whom I have sprung that has turned into a hug of all the things I think are disgusting and laugh at. I look down at my feet, making sure this is not a bad dream, that I am still wearing shoes. I see Pugsley. If this is a bad dream, we are in this together, kicking, twitching, and whimpering in our sleep.
Pugsley wags his curled tail.
Once for a bad dream; twice if it’s real, son.
There are two sideways rotations.
Shit.
“Hey, you know Johnny Wild Child?”
“Who?”
“Johnny Wild Child. Black hair. Bandanna. Blue eyes. Wears a leather jacket. He fuckin’ comes in here all the time.”
“Yes,” I say. “I know him. Why?” The person he was referring to bought Iron Maiden DVDs and had told me five hundred times that Al Lewis once tried to come on to his exgirlfriend in a strange mirror-within-a-mirror attempt at hitting on me. I had no idea that his name, as a forty-something year old man, was Johnny Wild Child. Now I knew.
“That’s my roommate!” We now knew the same person, which made us in the same peer group. A real connection had been forged. My brain twitched, and I closed one eye, disclosing the lightening storm of misfiring neurons in my skull.
“Look, dude, I-” I started, but was interrupted by another customer walking in the door. She had bigger hair, white eyeliner, and real roses and barbed wire curling around her bruised bicep.
“Nice doggie!” she said, bending so that eight inches of thong slid out and revealed itself. Pugsley ran back and forth under her acrylic nails, doing all the petting himself. “Hey, I know you!” she said to Wayne Campbell. “Village Pub?”
“Fuckin’ A!” he said. “Say, weren’t you at the Twisted Sister show last night?”
“Fuck, yeah! They really fuckin’ rocked it! Hey, you’re friends with Johnny Wild Child, right?”
Pugsley returned to his place at my feet. We looked at each other, me rubbing my temples, he wagging his tail in motions of two, and we counted down the hour until it was time to close down our corner of a small world. "
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
We'll Never Have Paris VaRiEtY sHow 8/22
We'll Never Have Paris Variety Show #3
where: Hi Christina 632 Grand St, Brooklyn, just off the L at Lorimer
Saturday Aug 22, 8-11pm. Cost: $10 for show, includes raffle prizes
We'll Never Have Paris is a NYC literary journal and zine that publishes narrative nonfiction. The WNHP variety show is an opportunity for anyone new and experienced to perform their stuff, just as the zine encourages first time writers.
Performers include Amy Harlib with yoga dance contortion, TJ Hospodar of BACON PANTY (http://www.tjhospodar.com/), Russ Josephs (http://russjosephs.wordpress.com), Scott Magri music and video, Joseph Mauricio with comedy, Fritz and Christina of LOVE Sparkle, ANdria Alefhi, Pablo Paniagua from the Mera Makia Circus System and more!
OPen Mic performance opportunity! for more info: http://www.hichristina.com/
where: Hi Christina 632 Grand St, Brooklyn, just off the L at Lorimer
Saturday Aug 22, 8-11pm. Cost: $10 for show, includes raffle prizes
We'll Never Have Paris is a NYC literary journal and zine that publishes narrative nonfiction. The WNHP variety show is an opportunity for anyone new and experienced to perform their stuff, just as the zine encourages first time writers.
Performers include Amy Harlib with yoga dance contortion, TJ Hospodar of BACON PANTY (http://www.tjhospodar.com/), Russ Josephs (http://russjosephs.wordpress.com), Scott Magri music and video, Joseph Mauricio with comedy, Fritz and Christina of LOVE Sparkle, ANdria Alefhi, Pablo Paniagua from the Mera Makia Circus System and more!
OPen Mic performance opportunity! for more info: http://www.hichristina.com/
Monday, August 17, 2009
SUBMISSIONS for We'll Never Have Paris
this is a good time to relax and write that essay you have been meaning to write for We'll Never Have Paris. Don't know what to write? Think of it as an email to a friend you are never going to send. Something real and not fictional, something personal but universal. something 1,000 words or less.
OR send me Facebook status messages, tiny bubbles of prolonged failure. deadline! Sept 3
thanks. contact me with questions, send submissions as a word doc to neverhaveparis@gmail.com
OR send me Facebook status messages, tiny bubbles of prolonged failure. deadline! Sept 3
thanks. contact me with questions, send submissions as a word doc to neverhaveparis@gmail.com
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