Francois Pointeau and Owen Egerton also won some literary awards and my former employer, BookPeople, continues their reign as best bookstore in Austin. We got to party for free, got a nice tshirt, drank a lot of Austin Beerworks and ate a lot of Via 313. Sometimes life's just damn good.
I've been in Texas since 2010, though.
The Weekly Weird Monthly Automatons at the Austin Chronicle Party
Nina, me, Cheryl, and Chris
Austin is losing Francois Pointeau to the road soon. We sent him off at the Whip In at his book release party. It was wildly successful. I had the honor of hosting the whole thing and all I can say is that Austin got a whole lot less French. Get Francois's book by clicking here.
Francois as a boxed wino. The If Onlys on stage.
Death Thing is continuing to generate positive interest and I'm starting to pursue next steps career-wise. It's overwhelming but it's also necessary to keep forward movement. I think Death Thing is perfect for the screen and I'm talking to a lot of folks on how to get that done.
I'm extremely grateful to the city of Austin and Texas in general. I don't know that I'd be writing as much as I am today if it wasn't for a rather sudden move to Texas. Texas revitalized me. It threw me around and sent me to some depths in the beginning, sure, but it was for the best.
I'll be updating this blog more. I'm terrible at internetting.
The release party for Death Thing at Radio Coffee and Beer went incredibly well. Holy War at the Sex Store was the opening band and they played classic standards like, "Stigmata Handjob." Francois Pointeau also acted as a fluffer with a short reading of his poetry. Chris Mattix was the host of the night. The Weekly Weird Monthly was represented by Cheryl Couture at the merch table. One lucky buyer got a can of tuna. It's possible they said, "Fuck tuna," but reports are unsubstantiated.
It was quite a night.
Sold some books, signed some books, drew some silly doodles that I regret. Such is life.
Francois is a local man-about-town. He's a bartender at one of my regular haunts, he's a radio show host, and a poet. I met him at Owen Egerton's One Page Salon at the Whip In almost a year ago now and we became fast friends. I was lucky to have him invite me on his radio show the first time in promotion of my chapbook Toilet Stories From Outer spaceand he invited me again to promote Death Thingyesterday.
The first time I was on the radio, I was nervous. This time it was a breeze. Francois is good at making things feel like a conversation (albeit without all the cussing).
Anyways, I'm pretty exhausted. I knew I wanted to promote the hell out of Death Thing as much as I could with live performances but I didn't expect to be so damn tired.
We're not stopping there, either. I'll be announcing more dates soon.
One big surprise of this past weekend was that my mom and grandma showed up in the humid hellhole of Austin right now to be at the release party. I was pretty nervous about the whole thing but they, as always, kept me near planet Earth. My grandmother is Donna Hilbert, a phenomenal poet who has always been an inspiration to me. She's encouraged me since the day I asked her how to write poetry when I was just a little snot-nosed twerp. She also printed the first edition of the first book I ever wrote, Fat Legs. At 29 I still have the same sense of humor as 5 year old me. That's something.
In other news... Ted Cruz does terrible Simpsons impressions
Ted Cruz astounds me. He managed to do every impression with the same voice.
Now, there are people on my Facebook feed that -I shit you not- refuse to watch the video because they don't want to give Ted Cruz any more legitimacy. I can assure you, watching this video will not add an ounce of credibility or legitimacy to the walking SCOBY that is Ted Cruz.
In fact, it just adds to a narrative of his own delusion.
I finally saw Mad Max...
Nina and I went to the first showing of Mad Max on a Friday. We were the only folks in the theater. I thought it was excellent. It was a lot of fun. It was just a damn good action flick with damn good action and damn good heroes.
Luckily, Tom Hardy had as many lines as I do fingers on half of my left hand. He only delivered half of those well. The other half sounded like bad impressions of Mel Gibson's Max. Small potatoes there. I didn't go there for lines.
And in the end, like every good western or samurai movie, the hero walks into the sunset for the next adventure.
