Music
Visual Music
Fluffy Schwartz
Talking about Zig's work has gotten me thinking about other types of visual music. J. Randolph Hostetler, also known as Randy, was a close friend of mine and a wonderful musician who passed away tragically in 1996. He was, i...
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Zig Gron
Fluffy Schwartz
Zig Gron is awesome!
Zig grew up in Detroit, studied music composition and now works as an independent filmmaker and deditor in Los Angeles. Zig and I met at the California Institute of the Arts way back in the 1980's, re...
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Trans-Canada Highway
Mark McCawley
for Angelina
Let’s turn off the ignition
lock the doors and coast this curved
highway until we stop
watch snow which splatters
sperm-like across the car windshield
The air is chilled with crisp echoes
announcing jazz and...
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Essay
Looking Back On KISS
City of Strangers
I hadn’t thought about Kiss for years, until I saw the 1979 Tomorrow Show Interview with Tom Snyder.
Like most of the kids of my generation, I came to Kiss young, at eleven or twelve, in my case through the Destroyer al...
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Art
The Smile
Jeff Spirer
So I was walking in The Mission with my friend, photographer Brad Evans, when he said, "There's the lady with the smile." He ran across Valencia Street, and I followed. And there she was, a woman carrying a huge black an...
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Music
Eddie Marshall, RIP
Fluffy Schwartz
A living legend of the San Francisco jazz scene, drummer and band leader Eddie Marshall has passed away. Eddie was an amazing person and so giving of his time and spirit to so many generations of musicians it would be imposs...
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George Kuchar, RIP
Mark McCawley
George Kuchar, RIP. Kuchar and his twin brother Michael practically invented the "camp" genre. He prided himself on making films with non-actors, script, or theme, for almost no money. The 8mm movies he made in the 60s were ...
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Essay
Memories of Jones — Subject Matter
Mark McCawley
The very first time I encountered the writings of Daniel Jones was in the Fall of 1989. I was accepting submissions for a small chapbook anthology of social/political poetry. Jones submission was the highlight of the lot (r...
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What I Did Today, Part IV
Ron Kolm
So we’re about to be hit by hurricane Irene, alright! And, at the same time, Carl Watson spends the day in an upstate hospital with something akin to colitis – so it goes. Carl is the very person who would give both his ...
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Vacation
Sean Flaherty
Vacation
It was a hot, long, necessary three days:
my wife was eight months pregnant
and the pressure was on at work
but I had to leave that behind –
more than a year had gone by
and I hadn’t visited my mother ...
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Rich
Michael Aanavi
I’m an old time smugglin’ man,
I know just what to do.
I sell guns to the Arabs,
I sell dynamite to the Jews.
—Tim Hardin
I first met Rich soon after he and my mother started seeing each other. My mother had come f...
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What I Did Today, Part III
Ron Kolm
If you’ve been following this series of posts, you’ll remember that there are four 2,000 word “essays” in each What I Did Today chapbook, and that Dan Waber is the publisher, and that if you want a copy you have to c...
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NEW
don't read this
D. Scot Miller
friday night, i'm
in an underwater
ballet kind of mood like when
you're a kid at the swimming pool, you sink beneath the surface of the water
and pretend you can do everything the water can
&
i see
becky anderson la...
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Interview
Philip Quinn — Outrageous But Beautiful
Mark McCawley
Whenever anyone asks me who my top transgressive Canadian writers happen to be, Philip Quinn is always at the top of that list. Hamilton-born, Quinn's writing takes the familiar and makes it strange; then takes the strange a...
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Essay
Fake Shemp vs. Real Shemp
Sir Andre Bemler
The Real Shemp
Born Samuel Horwitz, he was nicknamed Shemp because that's what Sam sounded like with his mother's thick Latvian accent. He was one of the original 3 Stooges on vaudeville, along with his younger brothe...
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