I’m a Lebowski, You’re a Lebowski
By Bill Green, Bill Peskoe, Will Russell and Scott Shuffitt
Bloomsbury Press
$ 15.95
256 pp
The foreword by Jeff Bridges is a big bonus here but the real guts of this whole odyssey lives in the words of one Jeff Dowd. Dowd, for those who aren’t Achievers, is the real life basis for Bridges’ character in the Coen Brothers’ classic noir comedy, “The Big Lebowski.” “Achievers,” for those of you who aren’t, are those crazies single-mindedly devoted to the cult of “The Big Lebowski.” Now there is an official guidebook to the Lebowski Universe, a veritable Koran of all things Dude. It’s mandatory reading whether sitting on the can or between frames at the local bowling alley. The Lebowski juggernaut shows no signs of slowing. The local boys who’ve turned it into a bona fide cult phenomenon have done well; today fans cross oceans and continents to attend the yearly festival.
epithelium, n.
(epithelial, adj.)
Membranous tissue composed of one or more layers of cells separated by very little intercellular substance and forming the covering of most internal and external surfaces of the body and its organs.
Louise Mathias grew up in a small village in Suffolk, England, and later, Los Angeles. She attended the University of Southern California where she received her BA in Creative Writing. Her first book,
Lark Apprentice, won the 2003 New Issues Poetry Prize. Poems have appeared in journals such as Denver Quarterly, Triquarterly, Massachusetts Review, Crazyhorse, Prairie Schooner, Hunger Mountain, Epoch, SHADE, The Journal, Green Mountains Review, Slope, Verse Daily, and others. She is the recipient of awards from the Academy of American Poets, The Atlanta Review, and The Anderson Center for Interdisciplinary Studies. She lives in Long Beach, California and works as a grant writing and fundraising consultant.Subterranean
To move in a woman, he says, is to move
underneath
"Ingmar Bergman, one of the greatest filmmakers in the history of cinema and an artist who changed the way the world perceived the movies, died Monday, local media reported. He was 89 years old."
For more of Michael Wilmington's piece on Bergman click here. (Registration at chicagotribune.com is required, but it's free.)
What is there for me to think? I've been miffed since the day I met him. All of the fierce competitiveness, creativity and flat out hard work that goes into making a viable painting and then here comes the photographer, who with one click of the finger (don't strain yourself and break a sweat now! Careful! Don't snag that finger and get a hangnail!...Ouch!...) and Presto! An image! Hence, comes a name; 'THE FINGER'...
Eileen R. Tabios has published 14 print (including
Reproductions of the Empty Flagpole), four electronic and 1 CD poetry collections, an art essay collection, a poetry essay/interview anthology, and a short story book. Recipient of the Philippines' National Book Award for Poetry, she releases this fall a multi-genre poetry book, The Light Sang As It Left Your Eyes (Marsh Hawk Press, 2007). In her poetry, she has crafted a body of work that is unique for melding ekphrasis with transcolonialism. Her poems have been translated into Spanish, Italian, Tagalog, Japanese, Portuguese, Paintings, Video, Drawings, Visual Poetry, Mixed Media Collages, Kali Martial Arts, Modern Dance and Sculpture. She edits GALATEA RESURRECTS: A Poetry Engagement and runs
Meritage Press.Corolla
Sometimes, I pray. Love is always haggled before it becomes. I clasp my hands around my disembodied truth: I am forever halved by edges—in group photos, on classroom
I photographed so much, that I can't make sense of everything yet. But, the churches were the most comforting. The child mannequin and projector came along for the trip, smashed in a suitcase. Fortunately, no problems with airport security, at least in Chicago...
Editors note: David Olney is a master songwriter, raconteur and all-around stand-up guy. His work has been covered by the likes of Emmylou Harris, Linda Ronstadt and Nanci Griffith, among others. To see him live or hear him recorded is a real treat - by turns melodic and heartbreaking, passionate and world-weary, jocular and deeply profound. Never one to take himself too seriously, Olney is possessing of an abundance of sardonic humor. Who else could write a song about the Titanic disaster, written from the viewpoint of the iceberg? If you haven't yet encountered this artist I envy you the pleasure of new discovery. His web site is davidolney.com
I’ve got this memory: It’s June twenty-something, 1973, Nashville Music Row… Tree Music, do you recall cooling your heels there?
It seems like you and me were getting thrown out—not thrown out, but not asked to stay.
You artists who perform plays
In great houses under electric suns
Before the hushed crowd, pay a visit some time
To that theatre whose setting is the street.
William Allegrezza teaches and writes from his base in Chicago. His poems, articles and reviews have been published in several countries including the U.S., Holland, the Czech Republic and Australia, as well as in several online journals. His chapbooks, e-books and books include Lingo, The Vicious Bunny Translations, Covering Over, Temporal Nomads, Ladders in July, Ishmael Among the Bushes, and In The Weaver's Valley. He is the editor of Moria Poetry, a journal dedicated to experimental poetry and poetics, and the editor-in-chief of Cracked Slab Books, which just released the The City Visible: Chicago Poetry for the New Century. His latest book is Fragile Replacements (Meritage Press, 2007).From Go-between
II.
in early years given over to your desire
from then indeed loved only and found you
in my ear all was not right
Here is a guest essay by Leonard Bullock, an artist living in Basel who has contributed to Sharkforum in the past. His article is a bit longer than usual for posts on the internet, but well worth the read — and every thought here is necessary and vital. Read on ...
As much as Rolling Stone Magazine has come to signify how far we have come down in our expectations of popular culture –with covers in recent years featuring the likes of Brittany Spears, Ben Affleck, Lindsay Lohan amongst others, occasionally there is a glimmer of the storied rag’s past, a moment where someone working there is able to cut through all of the pulp fiction and serve up some small truth, and a sense of what got them to the place they now are
The male woodcock’s courtship flight is spectacular to behold. At sunset he flies to the singing grounds and gives an insect-like “peent” call.
10 New pieces, plus a select collection of recent work. All of this work finds it's pretext in High Modernism, natural processes, and the ever-fascinating subject of symbolism.
For more info, click here.
Simone Muench
Brandi Homan
Erin Bertram
at Quimby’s!
Saturday, July 14th, 7:00 PM
FREE
To read more about the readers, click continue
Michael Moore’s latest makes the point once again: we are living in the Golden Age of documentaries. This time, he affords us a disturbing look into the diseased guts of the American medical system.
Plenty of Americans – perhaps a majority – blindly believe that we have the best medical system in the world. In fact we are near the very bottom the list (#37) according to the World Health Organization. The fallacy of American medical primacy is one whose debunking takes up a good deal of Moore’s film. Toward that end Moore takes a truly circumspect approach: he (partially) circles the globe to look at the health care apparatus employed by other countries, namely Canada, Cuba, Britain and France. It is an evenhanded approach that perhaps slightly exaggerates the effectiveness of those systems, nevertheless, it is hard to dispute the superiority of all of them (with the possible exception of Cuba’s). If we’re going to import all our luxury goods and cars from countries that make a better product, why not import their health care systems as well?
Lisa Robertson was born in Toronto and for many years lived in Vancouver, where she was a member of the Kootenay School of Writing and Artspeak Gallery. She is the author of The Apothecary (1991), XEclogue (1993), Debbie: An Epic, which was nominated for the Gevernor General’s Award in 1998, The Weather, awarded the Relit Poetry Prize in 2002, Occasional Work and Seven Walks from the Office for Soft Architecture, a Village Voice top book of 2004, Rousseau’s Boat, which won the 2005 bpNichol Chapbook Award, and The Men (Book Thug, 2006). She now lives in France.
From The Men
Some have gone to buy food
And some are returning and some
Never do. Some will die
Last Fall for the Chicago Review's 60th anniversary party, Lisa Robertson appeared on a roster with four men. Interestingly enough, when it was her turn to read, about 25 percent of the audience dispersed. (My roommate, Kristy Odelius, insists that about 50 percent left). Why, you may ask? The toilet was calling, fatigue from a long reading had set in, or the longing for Peroni was inescapable. I think The Men (Book Thug, 2006) attempts to address this emblematic situation.
Robertson’s book seems to be an effort at reconfiguring the famous Man Ray photograph from 1924, “Waking Dream Séance,” in which a woman (Simone Breton) is seated before a typewriter, haloed by hovering male surrealists, presumably transcribing their dreams, not her own; thus, situating her as a secretarial medium.
Steve Litsios is an artist and frequent contributor to the Swiss Sharkforum. He lives in the French-speaking part of Switzerland and has frequently exhibited paintings, sculpture and installations in many parts of Europe. Here, he discusses the “king” of art fairs, the Basel Art Fair, called oh-so-trendily simply “Art” in German and French, as if the fair owned the word. I hope to have contributions from him at Sharkforum central regularly as well.
Art Unlimited
I just had to laugh: a lottery had been organized in a nearby town at the soccer field which had been divided into 4000 lots. Two cows were set free and the winner was the owner of the lot that received the first cowpie.
![ACM47_posterArt_03[1].jpg](http://sharkforum.org/archives/muench/pics/ACM47_posterArt_03%5B1%5D.jpg)
Featuring
Another Chicago Magazinehttp://www.anotherchicagomagazine.org
6pm Sunday, July 8th
$10, includes a copy of ACM #47
A final HotHouse reading
writers from issue #47 (ACM is DEAD)
Elizabeth Bloom Albert
Ray Bianchi
Stephanie Cleveland
Nina Corwin
Michael Czyzniejewski
Jessi Lee Gaylord
Jeb Gleason-Allured
Brandi Homan
Quraysh Ali Lansana
Joshua Marie Wilkinson
with funerary musicians Tina M. Howell & the Fellas
at HotHouse
31 E. Balbo Avenue
Featuring Steve Halle, Andrew Lundwall, Adam Fieled and Simone Muench
P.F.S. Presents hosted by Adam Fieled
When: Friday, July 6th, 2007
Time: Reading begins at 7:30PM
Cost: Free admission.
Location: Kate the Great's Book Emporium, 5550 N. Broadway, Chicago
To learn more about the writers, click continue
On January 1, 2008, a new management team will be taking over at Art Basel and Art Basel Miami Beach. Supported by an appointment committee of international experts, Messe Schweiz has decided that the current Director, Sam Keller, will be succeeded by a triumvirate: Cay Sophie Rabinowitz, Annette Schönholzer, and Marc Spiegler will be assuming joint responsibility for the international art shows.
I was reading a book by Larry McMurtry, author of Lonesome Dove and probably Texas’ best known living author. This book is called Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen, subtitled Reflections at Sixty and Beyond. I’m not sure who Walter Benjamin was, some kind of literary critic. But more to the point, McMurtry’s grandparents were land hungry Texas pioneers who lived a life characterized by hard work and perseverance… and the same was true of his father, a cowboy and small time rancher who worked his whole life fighting mesquite and prickly pear cactus. McMurtry said watching his father gave him the idea that work formed character… he spent all those years chopping back the mesquite and it kept growing back…working against impossible odds…it was a Quixotic thing. He said that the cowboy life…
formicophilia, n.
The specific practice of gaining sexual pleasure from ants and ant bites.;
Those who suffer from this condition have been known to endure ants crawling over their genitals and even entering their orifices until sexual arousal and climax is reached.
Entomophilia is the wider term for those who find sexual pleasure with a range of various insects rather than ants alone.
From Wikipedia
Kevin Nance’s excellent review of Tony Fitzpatrick’s first book, The Wonder: Portraits of a Remembered City -- The Dream City, from the Sun-Times, August 2, 2006, is no longer available on-line. Or at least very difficult to find, as most newspapers tend to delete archives of art articles after a relatively short time. I was able to find it at FindArticles.com, a great resource, which may not exist forever, considering the current, often oppressive, use and interpretation of copyright laws. I think Nance’s article should be readily available to read for individual research. So here it is. Just use it for your own intellectual delectation and study, don’t make any money from it, etc. Fitzpatrick’s books, both volumes, are true delights. Get them!