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p.s. Hey. ** Shane Christmass, Fingers strangled/crossed re: your up and about-ness. Ha ha, yeah, that piece I wrote on Ryu Murakami was really mean. He just seemed like a bourgeois fraud, and I felt very punky about it. Boy, was he pissed. I listened to the Wake Island Podcast with Thomas yesterday. Nice. That’s a good podcast. That guy is cool. All the old AR-G posts have been restored, but I’ll try to make a new one even if just another book spotlight. Always very happy to prop him. Never saw ‘My Friend Dahmer’. Just assumed it would be crap, but, okay, I’ll look for it. Thanks, man. ** Misanthrope, Well, of course difficult doesn’t automatically mean doom and gloom. I read a novel the other day that was just 180 pages describing a guy using a screwdriver. And I loved it. Ah, sorry, too bad about your party. I don’t know, I feel sympathy with people who being extremely careful these days. Pretty much all my close friends in LA are living on eggshells. I should say sympathetic if they’re in the US apocalypse. But it still sucks about the party, which sounds like it would have been pretty safe. ** David Ehrenstein, Brad wrote ‘The Silver Age of Death’, it just never got published. Not sure how he feels about it now. He seems to have given up writing fiction. Everyone, Mr. David Ehrenstein’s long running and ever more legendary house/yard sale is still in effect, and he says, ‘PLEASE contact me about the DVDs, CDs and Books I have for sale ASAP, people.’ And I say that you are guaranteed to pick up some very cool things for a song from him if you want cool things and also want to help out a great guy. ** Tosh Berman, Hi, Tosh. I saw Sabrina, who just moved to Paris, yesterday, and she was telling me about the crazy Tea with Tosh MILA-related project with you interviewing people in a scary costume in some kind of fog enshrouded environs, and I will say I got a bit drooly. I didn’t remember that she was involved in the Mick Ronson LPs until I rediscovered that post. Yeah, wild. ** G, Hi! I’m very happy you’re enjoying her work. And it goes without saying that if you’re enjoying GbV my heart flies to the moon and beyond. Your day does sound very nice. The heat wasn’t as bad here as predicted, and I hung out with my friend Sabrina, who just moved here from LA, and we rode the crappy (but fun) dark ride at the fun fair and blabbed over coffees at a cafe for hours. Lowkey but very nice. So you and I both scored on the yesterday front. Do have any big plans or hopes for the weekend? Are you writing? Is it going well? ** _Black_Acrylic, Hey, Ben. I know, I miss the Glove. He popped in here a couple of years ago and said hi, but then he vanished again. I very much like the sound your story, and one would think your group will be suitably blown away. ** Steve Erickson, Well, that’s good news. Knock on wood and all of that. Good move: setting up a bandcamp. Everyone, Mr. Erickson has set up a bandcamp page for his ongoing music composing, and you can find it at callinamagician.bandcamp.com. Best of all luck on the eyes front. Hopefully it’s, as he said, a normal glitchy part of the healing phase. I read your Other Music piece/interview yesterday. Very nice, congrats, kudos. Everyone, Also Steve interviewed Puloma Basu and Rob Hatch-Miller, directors of the new and hotly anticipated documentary film about NYC’s tragically defunct Other Music, and you can read that on the newly revived Trouser Press site here. I’ve already read it, and it’s super interesting. ** Bill, Hi. I know, I miss the Glove and wonder that myself. Is he totally elsewhere or is he still checking this place out silently or … what? I remember now that you read ‘Zombie 00’. You’re one of the few. That novel just almost totally disappeared as soon as it was published. I’ll get the The God in Hackney thang, thank you. Yes, the wild fires make the news here. Every year like clockwork now. Just what you need. Increasingly scary world. Keep ultra-masked, obviously. ** Okay. On a whim, I decided to indulge a personal fetish I happen to have for fake food in a very straightforward manner, and that’s your day. See you tomorrow.
Now available in North America 
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Fake Food is a Great Japanese Art Form — as anyone who has ever looked in the window of a Japanese restaurant well knows.
Joe Biden was magnificent last night — kickin’ ass and takin names. FOX would like you to believe he’s on life-supports, but he’s far from it. HERE HE IS
Dennis, I’m presuming that when you were in Tokyo you visited Kappabashi, which is inbetween the Ueno station and Asakusa. It’s the one area where one can purchase plastic food displays. Also great architecture that you would like for sure. Such as the building that looks like a series of coffee cups on each floor. And statue of a “chef” looking over the street. I love that neighborhood/area of Tokyo.
Do you remember C who used to post here? I used to love reading his posts. And Slatted Light of course, he was straight up one of the smartest people i’ve met on or off line.
Are you allowed to offer us any teasers of your novel in the build up to publication or it is totally under wraps? Will you publish any parts before it is released?
We are thinking of moving back to the Uk from Peru. If we can afford it and if the world doesn’t end.
I’ve sent out my novel to a bunch of different places again. Hardened by failure but still going.
keep safe man
I’ve an idea for a day. If people are interested. Everyone submits one sentence. One sentence of something they’ve written that they like. Totally context free. Maybe an image. Anyone up for it?
I always thought Haribo fried eggs were the most subversive of sweets, but their bland taste could never touch other varieties in the same bag. Super-sour fizzy cola bottles though, now you’re talking. There was a time when I would devour a whole bag of Haribo Tangfastics and regret it most sorely afterwards. No wonder the schoolkids were misbehaving!
I’m so glad you had a nice time with your friend Sabrina. Sabrina was also the name of one of my alter egos in one of my old blogs… she was quite a character… Anyway, I find it so adorable that you and your friend rode the dark ride at the fun fair! Yes, seems like we both did score on the yesterday front. As for the big plans and hopes for the weekend, nothing too exciting unless painting the radiator and applying for more exploitative teaching contracts can be deemed exciting somehow… What about your weekend? I have a feeling yours will be more interesting than mine.
Yes, I’ve been doing quite a bit of writing. It is going well, I think/ hope. A nonfiction piece of mine will be published at the end of August, although I feel rather odd about it; it’s a very personal piece and I wrote it last year, but had to sit on it for a year as my publicist loved it so much she said she was going to get it published as publicity for my short story collection. But this was all before the pandemic… the pandemic makes my piece sound utterly irrelevant, tricky even… so the mainstream presses that were interested in it during the pre-pandemic times refused to publish it around the time they said they would – April 2020. I wish I’d just gotten it out there last year, when it felt fresh and relevant. So, I’m a bit worried about that even though I’m pleased it’s finally found its home… Poetry collection is done now and I’m just looking for interesting/ interested publishers. I hope you don’t cringe at this but I’m also working on an essay about your fiction and poetry. The essay and even some of the references came to me in a dream a few weeks ago and I got 1000 words of it down but it’s very messy at the moment. I think I have a good argument though and I think I have read most of the scholarship on your work, and I believe my argument might be something new. I am also writing a new story about obsession, sexuality, intensity, my kind of themes…
No idea why but even the sight of fake foods makes me feel a bit sick… I have the same reaction to artificial flowers.
Sorry about going on for too long… I hope I haven’t come across as a solipsistic bore… xoxo (perhaps you should impose a word limit for commentators? :D)
Dennis, I like fake food. Love it when a kid’s playset will have fake food in it. Always found that kind of charming.
Yeah, I didn’t mean to conflate difficult with gloom and doom.
Okay, yeah, um, I might not take that screwdriver book recommendation, hahaha. 😉
Oh, we’ve had a couple such parties in the past couple months with no problems. No one has COVID either, so that would make it hard to transmit too.
What’s going on in LA? They’ve had a mask mandate since April 10, and CA has had one since June 18. Seems there’s been good compliance. There shouldn’t be any spread. Weird.
I love fake food. What is it? Actually, I kind of love fake anything in a way – replica or representation or impression is just tasty for some or many reasons. So yeah – I wanna touch all of this fodder!
Dennis! Thanks so much for listening to the podcast with me on! It was really fun – I hope you didn’t mind you swooning over you and your work!
Love,
Thomas xoxo
At the doctor’s office today, they were playing cable TV in the waiting room, and I was amused that the first ad I saw was from Wayfair, now enjoying QAnon conspiracy theory fame.
It’s still clear that my eyes need more time to fully recover from surgery. My doctor told me he expects them to take about 3 weeks. At least he examined them and said they look fine, despite the blurry vision and itchiness. I have an appointment to come back for another follow-up in late September.
Has the controversy over the French film CUTIES – or, rather, its marketing by Netflix – made it to the press in Paris? It premieres on Netflix US in early September, and they just released a poster and trailer that show 11-year-old girls exposing their midriffs and wearing very short pants, with a description about the girls twerking. That has led to Netflix getting “cancelled” – or, more seriously, getting attacked for marketing that sexualizes pre-teens. The people on Letterboxd who have actually seen the film mostly like it.