So Is It Mr. Axelrod, or Should I Just Call You Ticklah?

This week, the Village Voice is running a great feature on the life and times of independent reggae producer and basement-dweller Victor Axelrod, written by conference participant and my pal Matt Scheiner, who certainly knows a lot about this sort of thing. Here’s a snippet from the article, which you can find in this week’s music section:

At one point, Symeonn’s sweet vocals throw the drummer into a trance, and Axelrod has to remind everyone not to “zone out” during the performance, bringing a dose of structure to the historically mind-bending abstractions of dub music. Although Axelrod says he doesn’t subscribe to the romantic notion that legendary reggae studios like Studio One and Channel One relied on spontaneous jam sessions sparked by random people who just happened to be hanging out there, he may not realize he’s creating that very same vibe at Don’t Trip. But it all starts with him. In addition to his Antibalas tenure, he was an original member of retro-soul titans Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings, and did production work on Easy Star Records’ Dub Side of the Moon, the NYC label’s highly successful reggae tribute to Pink Floyd.

So read it online, or if you’re a New Yorker (which is like 85% of the conference partcipants) pick it up on your street corner. Either way, make sure to leave some love for Matt in the comments.

“Studio Two,” The Village Voice

Do What You Want Me to Do.

At the end of this month, two of the conference participants, Christian McLean and Sally Jane Kerschen-Sheppard, will be contributing to Dancer for Money, a series of ten minute plays in Manhattan that promises to “explore the various ways we will do or say or be just about anything,” which sounds like an excellent night out.

The event will be at the Sargent Theatre at the American Theatre of Actors from October 25-28, and tickets are fifteen bucks. Sally Jane’s slice of the pie is entitled Chemistry, a play that “humorously shows what happens when two lonely people come together for all the wrong reasons.” Christian wrote the title piece, which “holds up an uncomfortable mirror to the underbelly of modern capitalistic society,” and — contrary to rumors — is not a stage-set re-imagining of the following piece of arthouse film:

So if you’re in NYC, go support Sally Jane and Christian. Go here to buy tickets, and here’s a map to the place, which is pretty close to a bunch of main train lines, so you have no excuse for not showing up. If anyone’s interested in helping SJ and CM spread the word, you can download the postcard after the jump.

Best of luck guys, and make sure to send an update on how everything goes.

Paging Dr. Virginia

So: it’s been a while. I’m not even sure if anyone still reads this thing, but here’s a little news to those who still dial in to Don’t Date to keep track of the tumbleweeds. This week’s New York Times Book Review featured both a review of Ursula Hegi’s new novel, The Worst Thing I’ve Done, and well as an excerpt of the first chapter, which should be a nice walk down memory lane for conference participants.

We all know how we feel about the work Hegi read at the conference, but the reviewer, Jennifer Gilmore, seems even-handed but ultimately negative on the novel as a whole, unfortunately. Though she praises Hegi by noting that her “writing about the resilient natural world, a mirror for the resilience of these grief-stricken characters, feels utterly genuine,” Gilmore can’t seem to get past what she calls “unbelievable plotting” and “soap-opera dialogue” that tends to “veer toward melodrama.”

Ah, what the hell. We say buy the book, give it a read anyway. If you like it, leave some love and praise for UH here in the comments.

Reading Review #7: Meg Wolitzer & Ursula Hegi

 

As I settled down in the front row for the Meg Wolitzer/Ursula Hegi reading, I had mixed emotions about what to expect. I had read and enjoyed Meg’s The Wife, but had never heard of Ursula’s work. With the way readings had been going, one never knew if it would be a hit or a miss.

Meg broke the ice by introducing her new novel, Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows, causing brief fits of squirming and reaching from Harry-starved writers in the audience. This small distraction made me miss the title of the piece she was reading from, but there were parts (or, more accurately, one part) of this story that were impossible to miss.

Antrim On Family Dinner

Donald Antrim’s piece “A Man in the Kitchen” appeared in the September 3rd, 2007 issue of The New Yorker. Here’s a snippet:

When I was a boy, it was said in my family that my mother, an otherwise respectable cook, had prepared for my father, during the first days of their marriage, a very bad dish. The dish was a hot tuna-and-mayonnaise casserole with potato chips as a decorative garnish. It was this tuna casserole that had, as it were, driven my father to teach himself to cook. Over time, the story of the tuna casserole took on the status and weight of Received History; it became my father’s explanation and alibi—“Baked mayonnaise! I had to take action!”—for his dominion over our kitchen. Looking back, I can see that the story also functioned as an origin narrative; it united us—my mother, my father, my sister, and me—in lighthearted understanding of the triumph of bluegrass gentility over whatever in our natures could be seen as vulgar and Appalachian. (My father’s people were from Virginia, my mother’s from East Tennessee.)

You can find the essay here.

Tuesday with St. George

Just when you thought it was safe to eat out, St. George reminds us that people who carry food for a living hate us all with a passion:

RESTAURANT EMPLOYEE’S FANTASY

Before returning to work,
I’ll be sure to wash my hands

In the toilet, rinse them
in the urinal, and dry them

With paper towels
from the waste basket.

Originally from Jersey City, George Searles holds a Ph.D. from Binghamton University. He has published many poems–most recently in The Coe Review, HazMat Review, and Main Street Rag–along with three volumes of literary criticism from university presses and three editions of a writing textbook used at more than 100 colleges nationwide. He teaches at Mohawk Valley Community College and at Pratt Institute’s upstate campus in Utica. In 2002 the Carnegie Foundation named him New York State’s “Professor of the Year.”