it's a-coming

Prepare to be a tiny bit bombarded by "stuff" about the Pacific Northwest Reader. The book is due to come out the end of this month. My story "Finding Bayocean" is one of the handful on Oregon included in it.

First up, a quick pre-publication shelf talker I made with an image that appears in the cover art, and which the editors were kind enough to send me. Because the Reader project sprung from the book State By State (a great book of essays on the fifty states) I thought it would be good to do a bit of "if you like this, you'll like this..."


The shelf talker is on the shelf under State By State. A little piggyback merchandising. How could I not?

smallpressapalooza

Every year Powell's City of Books puts on a very cool author event called Smallpressapalooza. It lasts from five to ten and contains a lineup of some of Portland's best small press writers and publishers. It's hosted by our grand sovereign of the small press, Kevin Sampsell. This year, it's on March 15th, and starting up the festivities will be Justin Hocking, the... [let's just use it again because I liked it the first time] grand sovereign of the IPRC.

Guess I'm being redundant since I included the graphic for the panel I made for the Powell's window display and most of what I just said is in there. Ah well. What can I say, I like the sound of my own voice. Here's some more redundancy, followed by some new information. Below: the rundown...




The second looks smaller because it's longer. It's not that I like any of those writers any less. It's just the way of the blog world. Come out on Monday evening! Fun!

39 steps

On Sunday (yes, I know it was Oscar night), Stephen and I went out to Portland Center Stage and saw The 39 Steps. I didn't have any Thirties clothes that fit the season, so I had to go for the decade after. What a fun evening. I laughed so much I worried that I was annoying the people in front of me. The woman behind me laughed so much she annoyed me.

I have to admit, I have some issues with the movie. (Don't hit me.)

Sp-sp-sp-

oilers

There's the two-fugitives-who-hate-each-other-so-they-will-inevitably-fall-in-love thing. And the mysterious 39 steps is a tantalizing question with a let-down of an answer. But seeing the story the way it was performed at PCS was completely satisfying. Not only because of the tongue-in-cheek approach or the fact that the huge cast of characters was played by only four actors, but because those actors did such an amazing job.

I think I'd only seen Ebbe Roe Smith as Scrooge in the last PCS Christmas Carol. I've seen Darius Pierce in... well, he seems to be in every production I see in Portland. They were both fantastic - hysterical deliveries, great physical comedy, some very good drags - and even in their quickest quick-changes, they really became different people.

Leif Norby made a great 1930s leading man. I don't know if I'd seen him on stage before. What I did know him from is the locally-produced web series Wage Slaves. Check him out. A very different character. And I hear Darius Pierce is now part of the cast as well. The new season starts this month.

Christine Calfas was perfect for her three roles. Funny. Sexy. Somehow creating full, alive characters even with as played for laughs as this play is. And giving us poignant, even, on top of everything else we got out of her. The brief encounter between the handsome leading man, Richard Hannay, and Margaret the farm maid (Stephen, you're right, she is played by Peggy Ashcroft in the film) is one of the spots maybe most ripe for being played for laughs - and it was funny, yes, but Christine also gave us sweet. And sad.

One more thing about the cast - but about the non-human part of the cast... The scenes in silhouette? Loved. Maybe one of my favorite parts was when the silhouette cut-outs of the good guy and bad guys go running across the landscape, the camera (yes, the play created a camera for us) craning up a mountain, to stop on the enormous figure of a.......n elk? And then, blink: scene change, and we see the hero riding that elk through across the countryside. So funny.

review

Alright, I have to post it here too. So nice to see it reviewed again after... how long? Yay.

Can I also say Portland Noir is still on our fiction bestseller shelf at the City of Books? #3...

li-h-h-hink

an evening of story and song

Brad's benefit was great. First rate readings and music. It seemed like everything read was yet unpublished, too, which made you feel extra special, being there for it. Actually, I'm not certain about Emily Chenoweth's and Margaret Malone's pieces. Margaret said she was going to read an old piece, so it may be a published story I just hadn't heard about. Things labeled as "old pieces" shouldn't be allowed to be that good. They should be the quaint efforts of an earlier period, which you smile over and say, but you can see the beginnings of her greatness here, and here. Also, things Margaret says she re-read after a number of years and thought oh god this is horrid... shouldn't be allowed to be that good either. Damn it.

Monica Drake, first in the lineup, read from a novel in progress. Funny, endlessly quirky and surprising. She writes her crazy situations with a matter-of-fact sureness that adds to the humor. Really enjoyed it.

Tom Spanbauer also read from a novel in progress. It was a piece he'd read in Dangerous Writing some time back--so lush and brilliant. And dreamlike. It's been amazing to follow the creation of this book--and to see Tom go to places even he hasn't gone before.

Emily Chenoweth read two different pieces, each about guns. I hadn't read her before. She has an easy style full of great details and truths. She was a charming reader--even breaking into her own piece to tell an impromptu story that had just happened, about kids making a drug (?) exchange on her front lawn.

Cheryl Strayed's piece was from her soon-to-be-out memoir, Wild. Wow, amazing, stark revelations from her life. I think it's going to be a fascinating book. With a top story about Cheryl hiking the Pacific Crest Trail and all sorts of very personal stories underneath.

OK, update--Margaret's story was a published piece--her first, she told me. Meaning it was her first publication, not meaning she hasn't published since, because she has.

I got to give Tom his second round of applause and then do an intro for Closureyes. Though the mic sounded plenty loud to me as I spoke, apparently I wasn't quite loud enough. A lot of us weren't quite loud enough, with all the bar noise going on in the back of the room. What I said was that Colin Farstad, who is part of Closureyes and was also the host for the evening and the man behind setting up the event, is also an excellent writer. I had heard Closureyes' music before but never live. It's great--edgy and raucus but also a lovely sound.

Brad--the man of the evening--they even got him up there to speak. Well-deserved standing ovation. Even still recovering from the infection and the surgery, he wrote an impromptu piece and got up to read to us. It was full of his great voice and was a very heartfelt thank you to a lot of people who have been there for him during all this.

It was a packed house and the event raised about two thousand dollars. Not long after, I discovered that the on-off button on my computer had disengaged and was sort of floating around inside, and I had that initial impulse reaction of, oh @#%$*%# do I have to buy a new computer now? Prices of computers started hitting me in the head, and in the moment after I pulled myself out of a downward spiral of NoNoNoMommyNo, it hit me that you could buy a measly computer with what was raised for Brad's enormous medical burden. There's a bit of perspective for you. But there's more that can be done.

Donations can be made to the cause by simply going into any Wells Fargo Bank and saying, I'd like to donate to Brad Rosen.

calling all portland intellectuals!

You need someplace important to be tonight. The Blue Monk is someplace important to be tonight.

7 PM - a reading of a number of Portland's literary rockstars - interspersed with the music of a number of Portland's literate rockstars...

Story and Song: A benefit for Brad Rosen

Our lineup includes a Pulitzer Prize finalist, two current holders of Literary Arts Fellowships, a Great Lakes Book Award finalist, and a winner of an Arizona Commission on the Arts Award.

Tom Spanbauer.
Margaret Malone.
Monica Drake.
Cheryl Strayed.
Emily Chenoweth.

Plus cool Portland musicians including the very awesome Closureyes.

The event was born when we of the Dangerous Writing workshop found out our friend and fellow writer Brad was hospitalized with an infection in his spine which required emergency surgery. As he gets back on his feet, we'd like to help offset his medical bills. Come out and enjoy a night of truly great Portland talent and help out a guy who, I have to say, has one of the best books-in-progress that I've read in a long time.

Blue Monk
Tonight, February 19
7 PM.

For more info, email DW.ArmyInfo@gmail.com

hildegard

On Sunday at two o'clock, Stephen and I will be souls imprisoned in our bodies.

Fun!

That's the part we, along with upwards of 100 other chorus members, will be playing in a performance of Ordo Virtutum at two o'clock at the First Presbyterian Church at 1200 SW Alder (in Portland).

It's a one-time performance, and when our friend and *impressario* Stephen Marc Beaudoin put out the call for people to sing, we thought it would be a cool experience, so we signed on.

Ordo Virtutum is the oldest known morality play in history, written around 1151 by the mystic and abbess Hildegard von Bingen. I had known of her but was not familiar with her work before this. I've been looking at the music and listening to recordings to get familiar with the little bits that the chorus will be a part of. Really interesting. Really difficult. Because not only is the text mostly just sounds in my ears with no meaning to hang my memory on, the tune itself seems not to have any logic to follow. No time signatures, no rhythms to hold onto. The notes wash up and down like foam on river water: if you try to grasp it, it runs through your fingers.

But as I start to get a little more used to it, a strange, elusive logic starts to appear. Something emerges out of what at first sounds like a randomness of notes. It's a very particular beauty.

Here's a link to a little bit of it.

The words start to emerge kind of in the way that the music's liquid structure does. Sing these sounds over and over and the knowledge, locked away in your brain, of latin and latinlike tongues starts to put bits of understanding to the sounds.

Sunday's performance is being put on by Portland's self-proclaimed "manband" Fourscore - who get to play the part of the devil. I love drama with the devil in it, and I like that they've given him four linked voices. Like he can't be contained in one.

Alright, enough musing. Here's the info off one of Stephen's press releases:

*

Stephen Marc Beaudoin (“The Beggar’s Opera,” Opera Theater Oregon) stage directs, and the movement and choreography is by Kaj-anne Pepper. Additional cast members include Tim Galloway, Andy McQuery, Maria Karlin, Gigi Urban and Kristen Buhler. First Presbyterian Church organist Jon Stuber is special guest performer, and the entire company will be joined by a special pick-up choir featuring more than 100 local singers from groups including Roxy Consort, Flash Choir and Portland Vocal Consort, as well as students from Lewis and Clark College and Portland State University.

“Ordo Virtutum” is scheduled for one performance only: 2pm on Sunday, February 21, 2010, at First Presbyterian Church, 1200 SW Alder Street. Tickets, $10 for general admission and $8 students/seniors, are available at the door the day of the performance. More information, including directions to First Presbyterian Church, available by calling 503-228-7331