Settle in, folks. Tales from the road ahead.
There was some kind of chemical spill on I-70, so we had to take a detour from just east of Indy all the way to the Ohio border. Around New Castle, I saw the sorriest sorry-ass sheriff EVAR waddling out of a Starbucks, all loaded up with scones and coffee, shirttail hanging out of his trousers, gingerly climbing into his SUV. Meanwhile, his cop buddies are all over the place, looking sharp and polished while directing re-directed traffic to and from the I-70 spill. Nice! Maybe they put Barney on scone detail. I don’t know.
On the radio, we hear “HAZMAT suits” and “won’t be reopened till at least noon,” so we figure flaming sparrows should be falling from the sky any time.
Speaking of charred flesh, Buckeyes apparently will put anything in a hotdog. Saw one what came with sausage and eggs. That's right: SAUSAUGE IN A HOTDOG. That compartment in my brain where the concept of turducken lives? It just explodiated.
Somewhere in Ohio, I experienced a good omen: a Mennonite lass gassing up her car! Yes, I know it’s perfectly acceptable; but damn my infernal Amish/Mennonite fetish. Show us thine ankle!
As if in atonement for that sentiment, also in Ohio we were forced to view a sandwich artist’s foot tattoo of a dolphin whilst dining at a truck stop Subway. That’s the last time I make a crack about someone eating dolphin-safe tuna. It’s just not worth it. (But I mean really, how do the nets know to dodge the dolphins, huh?) Fortunately, the young lady had already made our sandwiches, so I neither noticed nor cared if she changed out gloves before moving on to the next 6-incher. And for the last goddamn time, NO, WE ARE NOT BROTHERS! But if we were, I’m the older, wiser one; Joe’s the younger, sexy one who can river dance.
Actually, in our li’l roadtrip movie here, I like to think of myself as Tyler Durden to Joe’s Jack. ’Cuz no matter what happens, he’s got that sofa problem handled, and I’m prone to saying things like, “The best fat for making soap comes from humans.”
Come to think of it, though, I’m generally the polite, patient one. Which Baldwin am I again?
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In Erie, we stayed with Chris Harter (publisher of Bathtub Gin and all things Pathwise Press) and his wife Liz and boy-child Wheeler. I got the toy room on the top floor, complete with the “jumping bed” and Finding Nemo nightlight. Unfortunately, no race car bed. Had a strange, vivid dream about losing both my pants and a lens from my glasses, and walking around Bloomington in the rain with a towel wrapped around me that barely covered the goods, searching.... Whoa.
The Erie Bookstore is in a beautiful, restored laundry wringer factory. All wood, lots of lighting, well stocked, and mature but eclectic. Apparently the store has been in the same family for 85 years in 5 different locations. Nice, enthusiastic crowd; attentive, and excited to have all of us there.
We read with Mike James (his chap Nothing But Love is also published with Pathwise Press) and M. Scott Douglas (editor of Main Street Rag). Very nice guys. Chris was our roving MC and merch hawker for the weekend, which was great. Loved hanging out with him.
Erie Set:
Stats
Gifted
Our Killing Styles
Women on Currency
The Colonists
Photogenic
War Effort
Then there was the slam around the corner immediately after the reading, and it ended up being fairly low-key. It was an odd venue: top-floor boutique/antique/knick-knack store of some sort, with a stage like for modeling bridal gowns or something. Not a bad place, just ... odd. But that was sort of the theme of the weekend. Of my life, actually. I believe the proprietor was a TS, but then it was kind of dark in there. The slam master was VERY stoned, and fucked up the scores (which he was trying to do in his head ... as if) but it was a good time nonetheless. And I won, which included some prize money and a chance to compete in another slam in August. We’ll see about that.
Slam Set:
Spark
The Worst Poet I Ever Recorded
Cicada Blues
Saturday morning Chris took us around the Presque Isle area of Erie, which was, well ... eerie due to the heavy fog and lighthouse and whatnot. I don’t get that kind of landscape often, so it was a nice change. Unfortunately, I had battery problems the whole trip, so I have virtually no pix. Really just the ones from the car and a few from the B&N reading in Pittsburgh, but they're not great -- and there are none of me reading, so in fact, they're awful.
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Saturday, we stayed with Pittsburgh poet Mike James, who has three kids and another on the way, so of course, more jokes about who was going to get the race car bed at his house. Alas, still no race car bed. In fact, no wife or kids. Seems Mike’s father-in-law was ill while Mike was out of town the week prior to our arrival, so the wife took the kids for a visit, leaving Mike to bach it up with his poet buds. I enjoyed hanging out with Liz and Wheeler in Erie, but it was nice to have the whole tree fort to ourselves in Pittsburgh.
We read at the Squirrel Hill Barnes & Noble, and I have to say I was a little concerned about this one considering they had us tucked away upstairs at the back of the store, barely an aisle all to ourselves. National Poetry Month my ass. Talk about feeling marginalized. But we managed to cram about 15 people in the chairs, plus a few spilling over into the next aisle, and I saw several people browsing and listening and a few more who listened for a while then left then returned, etc. So not a bad crowd by the end. And again, they were attentive, enthusiastic, and welcoming to us out-of-towners.
jkerschb
Mike James
M. Scott Douglas
Pittsburgh Set:
Stats
Cody, Wyoming
Our Killing Styles
Radnòti’s Wife
Gifted
Gossip
Photogenic
Wake
Met a busking gypsy show-tune violinist, whom I had seen (but not heard) on the street on the way to B&N, so I had to chat with her when she showed up at the reading. Kim was very nice.
After the reading about 12 of us strolled in the light rain down to Guiliftys. Had drinks and conversation with (I was told) the poet laureate of Pittsburgh, Michael Wurster, who runs the Pittsburgh Poetry Exchange.
Also met and bought a chapbook from Ziggy Edwards, a charming local poet with the PPE, with whom I conversed about copper detox bracelets, bestiality, sound effects, Jupiter’s big red spot, macrocosms and microcosms, and other poetic non-poetry-related matters. Hard to believe, but talking shop does get old, and sometimes it’s nice instead to discuss a man’s colon exploding while he’s fucking a horse. True story.
While in Pittsburgh, at Mike’s house three of us experienced what we termed a Whale Vortex, wherein I commented about an article I was reading in the Utne on Mike’s coffee table about whale falls; Joe then said he’d been writing about whales that very week; and Chris chimes in that he picked up a Charles Mingus biography at Mike’s and randomly turned to the section describing when Mingus died ... the same day that 56 whales beached themselves in South America. Cue the Theremin!
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Cleveland was just weird. Top to bottom, side to side, oddness all around. Good reading, nice crowd, but a rainy day and lower energy gave me an allover blah kind of vibe. And that, along with myriad oddities, made the whole experience wack. Again, not a bad wack, but wack nonetheless.
We stayed with Bree, a local poet who helped organize the reading and who also read with us. Girl smokes like a chimney! Damn! I mean I think she smokes more than she breathes air. She also has a cat with (no shit) 28 toes (they’re called polydactyls) and a dog with a calcium deposit sticking out of its head like a horn.
Not to give you the wrong impression, though! It’s just that the Odd Factor crept higher all weekend, starting with that fucking dolphin tattoo, and by the time we got to the Heart of Darkness (i.e., Cleveland), I was punchy, tipsy, wired-tired, and the Weird-o-meter was redlining. Final wisdom, total coverage indeed.
The Barking Spider is a very cool pub. I had to break it to the entourage, though, that “barking spider” means fart in Midwestern parlance. It’s true! Check out their logo. My dad used to call his that all the time. Dark and woody (how fartlike!) yet with lots of windows, BS gave us free beer all night (the Holy Moses Wheat Ale was exceptional). It was a light, decidedly downbeat crowd, and there ended up being 6 of us on the bill, but I was pleased with the camaraderie among the locals, and Mike James said I gave my best reading of the weekend that night. (I disagree, though. I think I peaked at B&N.)
The lineup went:
Ben Gulyas (really liked his stuff; he was penciled in on the flyer day of show)
TB
Mike James
Joseph Kerschbaum
Bree (totally had her Patti Smith thing working)
Tom Kryss (older, quieter, more somber local poet; kind of the headliner; only does about 1 reading a year, though, and had only prepped about 10 minutes)
Cleveland Set:
Naked in Cleveland
The American Voice
How to Write a Political Poem (Mali cover; duet with Joe)
Cicada Blues
Photogenic
Toast
Also did The Devil Is My Prey with Joe during his set.
Before I uttered word one on mic, a guy asked me about the barn house back home. Yes, I knew about it; I used to live just down the road from it. In fact, I could see the flames from my house when it burned to the ground in 2002. So, yeah....
Anyway, then I got heckled a bit when someone shouted out how much my book was going for and kind of got the crowd riled about the price, so I later dubbed myself “the loud expensive one,” as my books were indeed more expensive and I was indeed louder than everyone else, I think. But heckler bought a copy anyway ... and it turns out she was poet Katey Daley. We chatted a bit afterwards, too, and she was way cool.
Unfortunately, Cleveland was the only reading I was able or remembered to record (see battery problems earlier). It came out okay, but the Erie Bookstore was better acoustically -- and I think I would have been happier having that reading of mine on minidisk. Everyone else absolutely rocked, though.
There was a bluegrassy C&W duo (featuring a dwarf in a wheelchair on guitar) up after us, and they were good! We didn’t get to stay for their whole set but they were very talented. Instead we repaired to Bree’s place (along with Ben) for eggs and bacon, beers, The Simpsons, and more interaction with her misshapen animals. Great conversation, and I would have loved to stay up into the wee hours if we hadn’t been hankering to leave at the ass-crack of dawn, which we did.
What a difference a weekend and insufficient caffeine make!
More Mennonites gone wild on the way home: We encountered two carloads of Mennonite grrls, leap-frogging through traffic. One car was a GRAND AM with vanity plates (“ROSA BTH”) with the li’l chain around the border, and she was jabbering the whole time on a cell phone. Hilariously holy. Beyond that, the 6 hours from Cleveland to B-tizzle was a pleasant blur.
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Saturday, May 6 @ 8p
Blue Bottle (206 S. Walnut St., Muncie, IN)
Sunday, May 7 @ 6:30p
Chatterbox Jazz Club (435 Massachusetts Ave., Indianapolis, IN) TB solo; also featuring TonyWhoa and musician Kyle Quass.