My article on Atlanta, to be included in the
(upcoming?) Australian zine Milk Bar (thanks to Amber Carvan for giving me
the opportunity to show another continent altogether that there's a reason
I didn't become an English major) (written October
1998) (post-script - milk bar #1 published February 1999--additional issues came out,
but none of them had stories from me...hmm, wonder why)
My description of our fabulous spring break 1998 trip
to Orlando, FL with my old roommates and friends (who are probably the
only ones interested in it). I originally wrote this in an email for my
friends Kim and Paul, but I spent so much time on it that I realized I
probably needed to save it for the rememberance of days gone past when I
get to be an old person. (written April 1998)
My prize-winning essay for Criminal Records.
Well, only one other person entered (I was surprised even of that). The
call for an essay on an album that changed your life came in the inaugural
issue of the Criminal newsletter, and this quite appropriately showed up
in the second installment. Despite the fact that Lillian always told me
it was great and funny, I think she was just saying it because she knew me
and might have felt bad if I didn't win, I don't know. When I got the
otherwise great second issue of You Are Here (the name of the
newsletter), I was a little upset because it makes me sound so
pretentious, like (snidely) I am so great. Well, I still think that Live
is a great personification for everything that's wrong in 90s rock and
roll (well, either them or Guided By Voices, haha), and I've written worse
things, I'm sure. So dig in, see what was all the critics' rage!
(written February 1997)
My tale of the fateful day that Seth and Adrian
Tomine came to Criminal Records. In case you don't know, Seth does the
comic Palookaville and Adrian does Optic Nerve, 2 of my very
favorites. I originally wrote this in an email to a new acquaintance at
that time, Amber (see above story about Atlanta), after she sent me a nice
message from visiting my web page. Then later I found out that she did a
mini called Big Smoke and she wanted to illustrate my email about
the incident. I gave her the okay, flattered by it but you can tell from
reading it that I didn't write it knowing that it would go out to more
than one person (at least I hope you can tell; I like to think I can write
better than that--hmm, all of these descriptions I'm writing are too
self-loathing). Obviously, this is only the text part of it, which is
taken from my email. Each paragraph was a panel, with Amber embellishing
the scene by drawing either a reenactment of it or else drawing me telling
the story (and since she didn't know what I looked like, I was a faceless
head--I thought it was pretty becoming, to be honest). By the way, this
was taken from the 3rd issue of Big Smoke, and it was included in a
compendium of her first four issues titled Therapy, and she may have some
additional issues, I don't know, so let me know if you're interested. Of
course, there's a lot of great stuff in both of them, though, so if you
don't care for my writing you'll still be entertained, I'm sure of
it. (written January 1997)
Back to your start-point.