I really did mean to keep a tour diary here as I whizzed through four events in three states plus multiple radio interviews in less than a week, but the combination of fatigue, problems with my laptop’s wireless, and the sheer weirdness of the series of events I’ve done have all conspired to keep me from filling in the gaps in my blogging. Suffice to say that a pattern has emerged in this lineup of readings: minimal turnout one night, huge turnout the next, minimal turnout again. San Francisco was not really surprising in its small attendance; though the folks at Books Inc are sweet as pie, The Marina is not really an indie friendly neighborhood (though it does have some good restaurants — food is becoming the secondary narrative on this adventure). Pegasus in Berkeley held strong to its tradition of being the only store where I’m guaranteed a massive turnout and good sales because I knew everyone there, we had a live band (Nobody Beats – thanks!), many bottles of two buck Chuck, many kids running around, a priest in attendance and of course the great Pegasus staff (past and present). After waking at 5am after three hours of sleep on Thursday to get to the Oakland airport, Seattle was weird again. Elliott Bay is one of the most beautiful bookstores I’ve ever been to — a hulking big old ship of a store with brick walls and little balconies and a cool reading room lined with $2 oddities and a wonderful staff, especially Greg, who hosted the event. But Michael Jackson up and died and I guess everyone stayed home to mourn, because turnout was once again smallish (okay, small. In case you’re wondering, I don’t take it personally when I do events and only a few people show up. I worked in a bookstore, and we had events by really famous authors with huge reputations and only a handful of people would turn out. It’s a combination of timing, media, and which night of the week you land on. Also celebrity deaths.). Afterwards we ate at a tiny Italian restaurant near Pioneer Square — the name of which escapes me — with cute girls making out at the table next to us and the most enthusiastic waiter ever (seriously, this guys needs to follow me around every day, because after every course he got super excited to see I’d cleaned my plate and said, “Good job! God job!”). And now after a train trip I’m in Portland for the weekend, hanging out at my sister’s place with a snoring dog and the final event at Powell’s tomorrow night (I also did a guest blog for their site on Thursday). Sage and I had our anniversary dinner on Friday at Park Kitchen and after ordering the tasting menu and working our way through six delicious courses and cocktails we had to be airlifted back to the apartment. I seriously think I stretched my stomach to latter day Orson Welles proportions. Like I said, food is the secondary narrative of this trip. Anyway, it’s been fun, and I’ve been so appreciative of my friends and family for helping spread the word, and I would love to see anybody who reads this at Powell’s. I don’t bite, I like entertaining people, and I’m wearing some killer shoes.

The weather forecast for Seattle and Portland this weekend is nuts: sunny? Warm? Only a 20% chance of showers? I am truly flying off into a parallel universe. When I lived in Seattle and Olympia, I almost got trenchfoot from the nonstop rain, and my sister in Portland had to buy one of those lightboxes to deal with the gloomy weather. Well, I’ll take the sun if you’ve got it, though I hate to leave Oakland when the weather here is finally perfect and not yet hot and miserable.

I have pretty bad OCD tendencies about traveling, and I’ve already mentally started calculating everything I need to take along and whether I can fit it in my carry on bag (green cowboy boots, you may not make it). Flying doesn’t bother me, but I loathe airport security; the atmosphere is panic inducing at best. I’ve got a pretty nasty rash on my leg right now, and trying to squeeze in my icky steroid cream along with the various ointments, shampoos, sunscreen and makeup I need into that teeny ziplock bag always worries me. Readings worry me too, to be honest — I worked in a bookstore for five years and saw plenty of events where two people turned up and we went out on the street and rounded up homeless people to fill seats (we paid them a few bucks. This is a dirty secret I have never before revealed). But if no one shows up, I’m okay with that too as it’s an excuse to go get a drink (or more) and I really do love the two cities I’m visiting.

Updates might get sporadic while I’m gone but I’ll do my best to keep blogging and twittering. I’ll be guest blogging at Powell’s website on Thursday and my KINK appearance got rescheduled for tomorrow morning at 8:30. See you here or on the road.

In honor of Declan McManus’s live appearance at Amoeba Records today, I thought I’d give him a little shout out so I can update you about radio, radio. Tomorrow (Tuesday, 6/23) I’ll be on Portland’s KINK from 8:30-9AM, with a rebroadcast coming on the 29th, the day of my Powell’s reading. And on Monday, the 29th, I’ll be on KPOJ, also at 8:30. Both stations have live streams, so if you’re not in Portland, you can still hear my early morning nasal tones. On the 25th while I’m in Seattle, I’ll be recording an interview for Evergreen Radio’s Literary News, which will air at a later date — I’ll let you know about that when I get the date. And on July 2nd I’ll be on my beloved KALX at noon for Arts in Review with Greg Sharpen. Thanks to my awesome publicist Chastity Lovely for hooking me up! I’ve been keeping a “Do Not Swear” post it in front of me during the two radio shows I’ve done thus far and it’s still working.

One of the major building blocks of this book was the boatload of interviews I conducted over the course of a year and a half. I’m a pretty introverted person by nature, so I got off to an awkward start with some folks (the recordings are painfully full of uhms, ahs, and me interrupting people — a huge no no), but eventually it became second nature and I really got to love talking to people. I’m getting back in touch with some of those folks now, and I’ll update occasionally about their current goings on.

Faythe Levine’s documentary about crafting culture, Handmade Nation, is currently screening all over the place (internationally!). The making of the film is a total DIY story — Faythe and her filmmaking partner Courtney Heimerl shot the whole thing themselves, drove their own car all over the country, did all the post production work, are screening it without a distributor, and authored an accompanying book. Very inspiring!

Rob Walker’s blog is always worth a look, and his last book, Buying In, is a must read for everyone, not just people interested in indie (though it may make you re-think those Chuck Taylors you’re wearing). And of course you can also read his “Consumed” column every Sunday in the New York Times magazine. Rob writes about marketing, which sounds dry to some of us until you realize how insidious marketing has become in our culture and how much we unwittingly identify with things we own.

Mike Watt has to be the hardest working musician I’ve ever met, and he continues to constantly gig. He was one of the first indie musicians from his generation to really embrace the internet as a way of communicating with fans, and his website is always being updated with gigs, new music, and writing. I like reading his tour diaries, and the most recent edition chronicles his trip in the boat with The Missingmen.

All images via these fine folks’ websites.

It’s time to submit panel proposals for South by Southwest, and never having been to it (or to Austin), I’m racking my brains trying to come up with a good idea for one. In the thick of trying to get the word out about S&E, I’m wondering if it’s time for a panel about the end of indie. This is something I address in the final chapter of the book, the idea that the clichéd notion of indie has become so pervasive that the core ideals no longer really fit into the term. Hmm… given sxsw’s democratic panel picking system (people vote for panels online, so re-appearing folks and people with big email lists have a clear advantage), I may have to give this a more marketable spin. BOOBS. There ya go.

Saleability has been much on my mind of late, since I am trying to blog, Facebook, Twitter and get back in touch with folks I worked with in my magazine days to get the book reviewed, talked about and promoted (speaking of which, I’m offering up a custom mix cd and out of print issues of Kitchen Sink as prizes for the best Amazon reviews… of which I currently have none. Come ON people!). A friend reminded me about this brilliant video by Dennis Cass today, which I first saw a while back but still makes me die laughing until I realize this is exactly what I’m going through at the moment. O brave new world…

Okay, fine, I joined Twitter. As you can see, I joined like five minutes ago. But I like talking to people who read my work, so follow me, I’ll follow you, I’ll get used to those annoying ampersands!

ETA the next morning: I meant @ signs, duh!

For a long time, I only did a couple of readings a year, since any young writer has to suck it up and bear through the occasional open mike night or other event where you’re one out of twenty “featured readers” and somebody in the audience yells out “Free Bird” or throws up or throws a beer at you. It’s called paying dues, and once you’ve survived reading in a pizza place or a hospital or at a bake sale, you learn to deal. When I started running an independent magazine, hosting readings and MCing events started to become a regular thing, and I finally moved up to events in bookstores instead of grungy warehouse squats (not that I don’t love those). When my first book came out in 2007, I did a lot of readings — probably fifteen that year, and my adventures included two events in New York,  a stolen suitcase at JFK, at 11AM saturday reading at Litquake to ten groggy audience members, and a seriously packed house at Pegasus in Berkeley. Gradually I’ve eased out of my early bouts of stage fright, and now I really enjoy doing readings, and suddenly the string of events to promote Slanted and Enchanted is here, having snuck up on me out of what feels like nowhere.

There’s an events page on my website where you can find out all of the details, but for the lazy, here you go. I’m really excited to take the book to San Francisco, to be back at Pegasus, to hit the road to my former hometown of Seattle (and the gorgeous Elliot Bay Books), and to wind things up at the incomparable Powell’s City of Books. Looking forward to seeing y’all somewhere out there.

San Francisco Reading

Tuesday, June 23, 7:30 PM

Books Inc in the Marina (2551 Chestnut St, San Francisco)

Berkeley Reading

Wednesday, June 24th, 7:30 PM (with music by the Rubber Wobbles)

Pegasus Books Downtown, Berkeley, CA

Seattle Reading

Thursday, June 25th, 7:30 PM

Elliott Bay Book Company, Seattle, WA

Portland Reading

Monday, June 29th, 7:30 PM

Powell’s City of Books, Portland, OR

Other than actors and politicians, does anyone like watching themselves talking? Years ago, I interviewed my former teacher Robert Hass for my department’s Berkeley Writers At Work series of conversations, and to this day I have never watched the video, due to my extreme aversion to what I perceive as my lisping voice, insane giggle, complete lack of chin and problematic absence of teen orthidonture. But other people tell me I’m a decent public speaker, and when I do readings nice things are said about them. So who to believe?

I’ll let you decide for yourself. I sat down a couple of weeks ago with my friend Chris Stroffolino (poet, indie rocker — you can hear him on the Silver Jews classic American Water — and journalist), and we chatted about the book in front of Mama Buzz Cafe while Chris filmed. Due to the sunshiney afternoon glare, I wore sunglasses, which I think make me look distressingly hipsterish, and I really need a haircut, but, well, okay… judge for yourself at The Big Takeover, where interview clips are interspersed with an essay about the book (and other things indie).

I wanted to give props to my nearby neighbor Novella Carpenter, whose memoir Farm City got a rave review in the New York Times today. Novella and I share a literary agent (along with the great Julia Wertz), and I’m a big fan of her writing, so I encourage everyone who’s curious about how people farm (not garden — farm — she has livestock) in Oakland to check her book out.

This week I whizzed through Dean Wareham’s Black Postcards (entertaining, and he’s honest about what a dick he is, but a bit choppy), and saw a production of Romeo and Juliet at the theater company where I’ll be working this summer, Cal Shakes. John Moscone (Cal Shakes’ artistic director and the director of this show) has staged R&J in a contemporary staging with real-looking teenagers and Rhianna on the soundtrack. R&J’s one of the Shakespeare plays I’ve seen a zillion times, yet every time I see it I get really bummed out when Mercutio bites it, and this was especially true in this production, which has an excellent Mercutio and is fast-paced and pretty consistently engrossing throughout.

We went on sale yesterday and I am sad to report that I did not spontaneously lose 20 pounds or meet a nice Russian lady or maintain an eight hour erection as some spam comments here have implied I would. I did, however, find copies of the book in several of my beloved local independent bookstores. Thank you all — you are splendid.

I wanted to continue with the “hypothetical questions people might ask me about this book” thing, partially in response to reviews and comments here and there on the internet. One thing that’s come up both positively and negatively is my decision to start the book in the 50s and 60s with the New York and San Francisco independent press and music scenes. According to various other people, I should have started the book (a) with the Dadists, (b) with the Bloomsbury group, (c) during the Jazz Age, and (d) with the creation of Cuneiform. Okay, (d) is not true, but you get my point… nobody really knows the exact date when “indie” was invented. We do know that Walt Whitman, for example, self published Leaves of Grass, and that Shakespeare’s colleagues John Heminges and Henry Condell paid for the printing of quatros of his plays in a limited edition, like the greatest chapbook ever published, and that numerous garage bands in the 50s and 60s started their own labels, and that the cave paintings at Lascaux were done by hipsters who just wanted to express their frustrations about the lack of Pabst during the Upper Paleolithic. We can squabble about this, but the argument would be pointless because there is no easily locatable date and time, no one subculture, no one person who created the thing we call indie today.

The reason I locate indie’s beginnings in the 50s/60s was because that version of indie — the collaborations between artists of different genres, the emphasis on DIY I heard over and over while interviewing people, the creation of alternative newspapers, the emphasis on networking with other communities, etcetera all look the most like the indie scene of the 80s and 90s and what’s left of indie today. There are distinctive parallels in place between those decades, and if you think indie today is closer to Dadaism, or Paris in the 20s, or Omaha in 2005, you might be right too. But that’s really no reason to get nasty!

This Cuneiform tablet roughly translates to “I liked their early albums better.”