I was alerted to this story about HP’s venture into DIY magazine printing via several friends, and although the cost of printing is still exorbidant, it’s nice to see that the option’s there. This could really help super specialized titles with micro print runs (my suggestion to my drum-playing partner was Cowbell Monthly), but if it could work like POD (print on demand) does for indie book presses, this could really get interesting. POD has stimulated a huge surge in presses putting out books that increasingly look almost exactly like major publisher’s paperbacks, and while the cost of putting out a glossy is prohibitive to most people who might otherwise start an indie mag, the idea that you can charge people one copy at a time might bring in a new cadre of publishers. The cost of printing was one of the many things that killed Kitchen Sink, and I’m still waiting around for somebody to start something as interesting as what we did. Get on it, people!

Back in 2005/2006, I wrote an essay for Kitchen Sink Magazine called “Ass Politics: Navigating the Big White Butt” (the title is hopefully self explanatory). I had this linked over at my old website for several years, but since the magazine’s website no longer exists, links there don’t work anymore.  Hopefully our web helper monkeys will be able to re-post it here at some point, because it was the primary driver of traffic to my site. I regularly got hundreds of hits per day from people searching for some phrase including the words “big” and “ass”, even though my site was down at the very, very bottom of Google searches for that combination. People are dilligent.  I’m not shy, so let me share my keyword stats for the month of March thus far. It’s kind of poetic in a way. Luckily, the person who usually arrives here seeking “big booty grandmas” gave it a break this month.

Vacation this week from teaching, so I don’t have much to tell you. I am enjoying the time off, but have papers to grade (of course), so I’m getting my relax on before that work begins.

Things I am reading and learning about:
The history of meteorology (actually quite interesting; I’m dipping into Isaac’s Storm by Eric Larsen, who also wrote the creepily fascinating The Devil in the White City. Nonfiction can be just as engaging as fiction. Trust.)
Carthusian monks and the lives of enclosed monastics (no, I am not joining a hermitage, but I’m interested in the lives of contemplatives. This group in particular lives a very, very different life than most of us would want, but I imagine they get a lot closer to the divine via silence than we will ever do via writing or talking)
Thomas Merton (am finally starting to read The Seven Storey Mountain and some of his short works. Am thinking about writing something about hermits, as you can probably figure out. Indie hermits? Do they exist?)
The history of the Sea Ranch development and the struggle for public land rights in northern Sonoma and southern Mendocino counties (just went on vacation in Gualala)
“living” roofs and shack building on a budget (see item above about vacation in Gualala)

I’ve had a blog since 2003. It’s a rusty old no-image, no-video, text heavy wrack I keep mostly hidden from the public, but the way things are today, all blogs belong to the reader. Twitter still freaks me out — the teensy word counts seem to be antithetical to logorrheic types like me — but I’m getting comfortable enough with this new format to actually manage to post links and images without going nuts. So, internet wanderer, welcome. If cutting and pasting doesn’t kill me, I may move some of the blog entries I wrote while I was drafting the manuscript of Slanted and Enchanted over here (are you ready for a zillion tales of trying to reach musicians via their record company’s PR departments?  I also like the entry I wrote on the day Ian MacKaye left me a voicemail: “Holy Shit.” I can be succinct on occasion).

In the meantime, I’m here to write about the ever-changing landscape of indie media. Even though I was still editing the book two months ago, things shift every day. David Berman pulled the plug on the Silver Jews; Richard Nash left the venerable indie publisher Soft Skull press; Operation Ivy’s Jesse Michaels started a new band; Kitchen Sink magazine finally got some of the money we were owed by our bankrupt distributor, two years after our last issue came out. It’s too late for footnotes (though we did manage to squeeze one in about Berman), but it’s no too late to keep you posted, as much as I’m able to and as much as I can find out, via this blog.

You may occasionally also hear tales from my other job (and my other other job, which I’ll be starting this summer, giving talks on Beckett’s Happy Days and Noel Coward’s Private Lives), stories about things happening in and around my home town*, tales from the occasional poetry reading, and lots of anecdotes involving cat barf.

Pleased to meet you. Oh, and if you link to this new blog site, let me know so I can return the favor.

*I’m kind of embarrassed that Oakland only rates four stars on Yelp. People are harsh.