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New York At Night on A Roof Top

Enjoy the slideshow...

KEG may not make good music, but he knows it
This dude, Keg-The Lone Ranger of Rock was at the Seattle auditions of "America's Got Talent"... he does have a talent... it's not making music though, he's not completely horrible though, but he has a talent that is much better.

Finding music

. Scroll to below the SHIT-FACED Radio to some great free downloads of bands I've never heard of, but all found enjoyable.

NBC Promotions confuse
How is The Jonas Brothers a selling point for Jimmy Fallon's show? Totally seems like the wrong demographic.

My Livejournal dying
At least it feels that way. Poor dying journal... gasping for air... struggling to survive... losing the will to live. It needs food, air, water, but I'm all out.

Catch Up
First of all, a message for anyone who’s waiting to hear back from me about anything. I’ll be going through the massive backlog of emails and messages on facebook or myspace over the next few days and I’ll get to yours soon, I swear.

Meanwhile, the book has left the building. It’s nowhere near perfect yet, but I really needed to take a break and try to gain a little perspective. To that end, it’s now in the capable hands of the lovely and talented Sunshine Guthrie. I’m expecting (and undoubtedly deserve) to be worked over with the literary brass knuckles some time next week, but I plan to take it like and like it. Until then, it’s all about the mundane shit. Dusting. Laundry. Catching up on my email, my reading and my sleep. Refill the batteries. Because I have a feeling I’m going to need them.

Looking at Comics Coming my Way
I've decided to try something quick. Under the following cut will be a list of the 63 comics coming to me in my bi-weekly shipment for July of June books. I'm going to quickly look at and try to explain my reasoning behind each book and at the same time, you might find something to buy for yourself. These will not be reviews, just quick stuff.

( Comics and stuff )

Using a Meme to create a Post
I've said before I'm not into memes, I won't take tests, but sometimes a "meme" is a good prompt to just write things that you would on your own, but just haven't... so here are Five "words" (some of them are more concepts than words) from

flisleshnitz. If you want to give me other words for prompts, I'd be willing, but for now... enjoy this, I hope.
The "words" were:
Graffiti
Photography
1 of your adventure stories!
New York City
Your WTSHTF plan! (when the shit hits the fan)
( Read more... )

the unceasing joys of Google Alerts
Thanks to Google Alerts, I can now confirm that a poem I wrote about my worstest, most painful bout of unrequited love is currently available as a ringtone!

http://beemp3.com/index.php?q=Cristin+O%27Keefe+Aptowicz&st=artist

And for only 15 cents for the "legal" download too! Nice!

Well, now I know where to go if I want to a ringtone to remind me to never stop crying!

Ah, technology!

Eureka + Warehouse 13 + ECW
Season Premiere of EUREKA was excellent. Clever, intriguing, and fun. Sad that ANDY won't be joining the cast (or so it seems), but glad to have this quirky show back on the air and expect good things.

Second episode of WAREHOUSE 13 established the show has a lot going for it and with quality writing can be a really strong show. Yes, we've had the odd male/female pairing before, and the investigation of the supernatural, but if the actors are fun and the plots interesting, who cares? I'll be there... I even like the campy special effects. I think they have a certain kind of charm, plus I like that there's character development!

Sadly... ECW wasn't so great. A little Vladmir Koslov goes a long way... a LOT of Vladmir Koslov ruins a show. Plus I was hoping we'd get some debuts instead of just further efforts from only three of the current new talents. Plus, Sheamus really needs his last name. Sheamus O'Shaunessy rolls of the tongue... just Sheamus... sounds retarded. Naofumi Yamamoto could have a real future as Yoshi Tatsu, as long as they never break him like they did with Jimmy Yang or Shoichi Funaki. I have nothing to say about Tyler Reks... there are some amazing talents down in FCW so ready to come up... Joe Henning, Drew McIntyre, a repackaged Steve Lewington, Kaval (Lo-Ki)... any one of those would be great additions to the roster.

[wrestling] Music of Tommy Dreamer
I have no f'n clue how I never realized or noticed this... but Tommy Dreamer's WWF/WWE theme music is exactly the same song he actually had while in the original ECW. Well, not the SAME song, but a Jim Johnston instrumental re-interpretation of it.

That song? "Man in the Box" by Alice in Chains. How I never realized that they never changed Dreamer's music I'll never know.

What's for dinner?
TONIGHT:
SPARE RIBS...
but not sure how I wanna prepare them. Suggestions?

(have ingredients for all types of prep)

R.I.P. Dash Snow

New York Times Obit here.

2007, New York Magazine article about the artist/photographer/creative vandal here.

Out of respect to possible people who somehow might get offended I'm placing the tribute under an LJ cut.

( Read more... )
Click here to see a full size version of my tribute to Dash "SACE IRAK" Snow's work.

This chat may be recorded for training purposes...
Last night I did a chat with the members of the Snutchlabs writing workshop, speaking mostly about the stories in You Might Sleep... (which you should buy, as thanks to the Wildside/Prime split I'm forced to repeatedly mention the book myself like a Whole Foods employee who for an hour has to pretend to be very excited about chicken apple sausages). We also discussed MFA programs, the alpha brainwave state, how to begin and end stories, and how Kurt Dinan's new haircut makes him look like a stick of roll-on deodorant.

I'm just sayin...

Read the chat here.

On the fence on G.I. Joe live action
Plus= RAIN as Storm Shadow
Minus = Marlon Wayans?!?!?
Minus= Oh wait, that's not RAIN... it's Byung-hun Lee?!
Plus= Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje as Heavy Duty
Minus = The newest TV trailer isn't very thrilling
Plus= The online trailer is a bit better.

Not that any of this matters, I suck when it comes to even going to movies. I still haven't seen UP, or Public Enemies...

Police state, you're soaking in it!
When I was a kid, I remember reading in The Weekly Reader or some other free periodical handed out to schools of the horrors of the Soviet Union. In one story that listed many terrible absurdities, I read that a person with mild retardation was sent to prison for spilling ink on a newspaper that had featured a photo of Stalin. (This wasn't a story contemporary to the 1970s or early 1980s, when I read it.)

Meanwhile, here in 2009 in the US:

On Oct. 15, 2004, Mary Elizabeth Schipke entered the Oracle post office to buy a 47-cent stamped envelope. When she got frustrated with the clerk behind the counter, she told her: "God, I pray a bomb falls on your stupid, fucking head."

Almost a year later, Schipke was convicted of threatening a federal facility with weapons of mass destruction. Schipke describes what she told the clerk that day as an "imprecatory prayer"—basically, a simple curse—but that defense didn't keep her from serving a four-year prison sentence, with the last two years at Carswell, a women's federal medical prison outside of Fort Worth, Texas, that has been the subject of allegations about the questionable care of prisoners with physical and psychiatric conditions.

One of the things I noted immediately: "WMD" has been dialed down to apparently mean any bomb at all. That'll be handy for the next round of preemptive invasions, eh?

A couple of other interesting things. Schipke is kook in her own right (see November 7, 1998). Also, she looks forward to the day when the Chinese military frees their children from George Washington since the American people are utterly brainwashed by their masters. She certainly seems to count as mentally unbalanced, perhaps in a way not so dissimilar to our poor Soviet ink-spiller.

But real threats with WMDs? Nah.

The End and Beyond
I just typed THE MOTHERFUCKING END on this latest novel.

The work is far from over. I still need to go back through and fix various minor holes and connective tissue, and then once I turn it in to the Tartan Ninja on Wednesday, there’ll be his notes to deal with. But all that aside, I’m stunned and amazed to have finally made it to The End.

I still have no idea why writing this particular book was so excruciating but it was with out a doubt the toughest so far. Ever, I hope, because I'd be glad to live the rest of my life without having to go through this kind of torture ever again.

An interesting change to Google Images
Do a google image search on say... the color red.

There's this new filter, that will allow you see only red images that are marked as red.

an image showing the new color filer for google image search

an image showing the new color filer for google image search

Not sure how I or anyone can use this to any real purpose, but it's interesting.

Mark Harmon and a mustache....
First time I'm seeing this episode of NCIS and I gotta say...
that mustache does him no good.

He looks... just really weird. Like Kevin Kline's clone where they messed up a bit.

The Sumos of Wrestling
Recently I discovered that the wrestlers who were titled YOKOZUNA and RIKISHI were not meant to be names for the characters, but actually representative of their ranking/titles in a Sumo class. As in collegiate and olympic wrestling, boxing and even MMA, Sumo wrestling has weight and level classes.

Yokozuna is the highest of ranks and has very varied history. Rikishi is the general term for a Sumo. I don't know why I didn't know this for years, but there it is. Quite random I admit... but something that was on my mind.

As an extra note, these two "sumos" are/were cousins.

As an extra extra note, here is recent footage of Solofa Fatu, Jr. now going by simply KISHI (instead of RIKISHI) in the Chile's RRL.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkZjoL2SD80

Shaptowicz Page Meets Stage duet
Joining "presidential trivia" and "giraffe that are trained to rape" as themes of my poetry for 2009 comes a new theme: "drunk boyfriends saying funny things"!

Here's a video of Shap and I performing "Drunk Boyfriend at the Poetry Reading" at last May's Page Meets Stage:

Another poem with this theme was published in the first issue of kill author and has the lengthy-yet-honest title "In Lieu of His Writing Any New Poetry, The Author Critiques The Four Line Song She Hear Her Boyfriend Spontaneously Create While Drunkenly Walking Up Their Apartment Building's Stairwell":

http://killauthor.com/issueone/cristin-okeefe-aptowicz.shtml

Fingers cross that the video of Shap and I performing this at Sarah Kay's 21st Birthday will surface soon. Shap performed the piece whilst holding an egg & cheese sandwich, and then devoured it lovingly in the final stanza. That's what I call committment to a role!

Shwayze and Cisco like Miami Vice
for some extra flavor, another Nick Goosin video with a preview single off the next SCHWAYZE album. Shwayze and Adler kicking it old school, new school and next school up in this one. Hot shit. Fall can't come sooner... in terms of music.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lglCOhM7Ag

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