“The minute I stepped inside the Washington Heights branch of the public library, I fell in love with Miss Anna Gilfinane, assistant librarian. I fell in love with her glinting green eyes, with her shimmering auburn hair, with her luscious red lips – I was nineteen…”
Last week, I posted my conversation with Tom Allon, the editor of the new book, Sez I To Myself: The Collected Essays of Frank and Malachy McCourt. This week, with permission, I did a reading over the air from one of my favorite short pieces in the book called, “James Joyce Destroyed My Romance,” written by Frank McCourt.
Click on the small white triangle or mp3 link above to hear my reading of the story, as broadcast this week on the Arts Express radio show, heard on WBAI FM NYC and Pacifica stations across the nation
Yet another installment of our semi-occasional weekly round-up of the most absurd and head shaking news!
Click on the small triangle or mp3 link to hear it as broadcast on the Arts Express program this week on WBAI FM NYC, WBAI.org and Pacifica affiliates across the nation.
“When most New Yorkers look up they see skyscrapers, but award winning journalist Ryan Goldberg sees birds. In fact, he sees birds everywhere: New York City beaches, parks, cemeteries, even garbage landfills–and discovers how birds help tell the social, cultural and even political story of our city…”
Click on the small triangle or mp3 link above to hear my interview with Ryan Goldberg, author of Bird City: Adventures in New York’s Urban Wilds, as broadcast this week on the Arts Express radio program, heard on WBAI-FM NYC, WBAI.org, and Pacifica affiliates across the nation.
How do you write fiction in a world that is perhaps post-fiction? When the horrors of the present world outstrip what our imaginations imagine? Arts Express favorite, Luke O’Neil, author of Welcome to Hell World and A Creature Wanting Form, writes stories that are full of the pain of men and women–but mostly men–who are trying to figure out how to deal with the helplessness and terror that make a mockery out of any John Wayne or Ernest Hemingway definition of manhood.
Now O’Neil has come out with his third collection of short stories called We Had It Coming, published by O/R Books.. We’ve always resonated with his work, but in this new collection especially, O’Neil’s short pieces are to our time what Raymond Carver’s short stories were to his. Stories of the soul and body struggling to make sense of the senseless cages in which capitalism has trapped us.
Click on the small triangle or mp3 link above to hear my reading of “Something That Was Once Potentially Good,” from We Had It Coming, as broadcast on the Arts Express radio program, heard on WBAI FM and Pacifica affiliates across the nation.
Sometimes in life you see a person in a different context and it changes everything, like seeing a favorite teacher climb into a sports car. I had the same sort of feeling when I discovered that novelist Amy Tan has just come out with a new non-fiction book called The Backyard Bird Chronicles, a diary of Amy Tan’s backyard birding experiences. I was happy to have her as a guest on the Arts Express radio show.
Click on the small triangle or mp3 link above to hear my interview with Amy Tan as heard on Arts Express, broadcast yesterday on WBAI FM NYC and Pacifica affiliates across the nation.
After nearly a year off, back from hiatus–which is ten miles east of Dallas–The Jack & Rick Worldwide Network and hamburger stand is happy to announce the return of Jack & Rick’s Radio Shack! Thanks to Rick Tuman!
Click the small triangle or mp3 link above to hear the satirical segment, as broadcast on Arts Express on WBAI FM NYC and Pacifica affiliates across the nation.
Last week we played part one of our interview with investigative journalist John Washington, author of The Case For Open Borders. John laid to rest some of the most persistent arguments against open borders, reiterating that Immigration neither decreases the economic health of a community, nor does it “take away jobs.” In fact it increases both. This week we’ll listen to part 2 of the interview where John will give yet more reasons to support open borders, and he’ll talk about what he thinks the path to making open borders a reality might be. We’ll pick up with John talking about the general arbitrariness of borders.
Click on the small triangle or mp3 link above to hear part two of the interview as broadcast yesterday on Arts Express over WBAI-FM and Pacifica affiliates across the nation.
One of the most volatile issues facing the US electorate this year concerns so-called open borders. Despite whatever rhetoric may be coming from the two major US political parties, their basic positions are the same—they see open borders as a threat to the country. But is any of the fearmongering true? My guest on Arts Express is a journalist and translator who writes for the Arizona Luminaria, John Washington. He has written a compelling new book called The Case for Open Borders.
Click on the grey triangle or mp3 link above to hear my interview with John Washington as broadcast yesterday on the Arts Express radio program on WBAI FM and Pacifica affiliates across the nation.
Holy smoke, I love magician Steve Spill’s new book.
It is so close to the creative process. It takes leaps. I don’t know how Steve went about writing this book, but I have a suspicion. I think he didn’t know exactly what he wanted to say, but took a creative leap of trust that if he could get sparks started somehow in his overstuffed brain, something magical would come out. Maybe he started with just a premise, a title, a few questions— “How is what I do like a religious experience? If I throw out a couple of words relating to religion, how do those words resonate with regard to magic? What’s for dinner tonight?”
And blam, because he has so much experience performing and doing, and feeding himself with all kinds of creative permission and discipline, the synapses make new connections, and finally with hard work and editing, those connections become more fleshed out and become something special and valuable. While it’s true that Steve has written some great books about magic–you should read every single one if you are in the least interested in performing and creating anything, never mind just magic–but this book, how can I say it, is the book that seems closest to Steve’s subconscious.
If you can see how he has put together this book, the risks he took, the creative leaps he makes, the openness he embraces in the book itself, then you will understand his message about how to be and create for a stage. The medium is the message. Or the massage, as Steve would probably say. Fortune tellers are good for something after all.
Here, for example, is a chapter called Resurrection. Cute, considering the religious theme. But more than cute. Because what that word triggers in Steve is a whole chapter on burn out and how to understand the progress of an artistic intention, its life cycle. How to respect the cycle, and then resurrect oneself artistically. It’s only if one has gone through it many times as Steve has that one understands where and what forms the highs and lows of a creative endeavor occur. Steve writes about how to embrace and take refuge from burnout, how to expect it, and how to move on. I am just a magic hobbyist, so I cannot speak when it comes to performing magic full time, but everything he says about performing magic certainly applies in my experience to writing, acting, and directing. These pages are just some of the most on-point and healing words I’ve read about trying to lead a creative life.
Steve keeps saying that you have to reveal some of your own self to an audience, reveal what makes you tick, and he does it over and over for himself in this book. It is really a gift, and I cannot think of any other magic writer who has come close to what Steve has done in his books.
But…You say you don’t want to hear this artsy-fartsy stuff? You say you want to get down to business? Well, Steve has plenty of commercial advice here, too. In this little package we call a book, wherein the very next chapter is called “Sermon,” Steve has a whole chapter on pitching for commercial gigs. It turns out Dr. Spill for all his artistic inclinations is also highly in favor of eating every day. And so forthwith he delivers the secrets to pulling off a nice paying corporate gig which may well require touting a client’s product (Can you say Francis Ford Coppola Wineries?) And for you disappointed artistes, just know that should you decide to skip this chapter so that you don’t get tomato stains on your immaculate artistic principles, Steve has a description of a wonderful one-in-five prediction effect in this chapter, highly adaptable for other events, commercial or not.
The book’s latter section like his previous books, concludes with a dozen great presentations and effects, with hilarious premises. The methods are sometimes absurdly simple, while others are so devious, you wonder how he came up with them. Clearly, Steve decides what he wants the audience to see, feel, and experience, and then uses his noggin to come up with the best and most do-able method that fulfills the effect.
I won’t go through all the effects—the ad on his website gives a good description of each of them—but I will mention that while I think that Penn & Teller’s “Silver Fish” is the best presentation for The Miser’s Dream I’ve ever seen, if you don’t feel like lugging around a fish bowl and assorted live fish, then Steve’s solution to presenting the Miser’s Dream is my new favorite version. And it’s easy and fits in your pocket.
Really, perusing these descriptions makes me want to book a magic show performance tonight just to try these out for an audience!
Reading this book I kept saying to myself, “Reading a magic book shouldn’t be this fun.” Enough of magic books where you have to slog through yet five more variations of Triumph, or ask your buddy to point out the best tricks in it because the book is otherwise too boring to comb through. Steve Spill has written another wonderful book, and it’s a don’t miss.
It was just announced that Julian Assange has been granted a plea deal that will allow him to plead guilty to one charge and be freed from Belmarsh prison and come home to Australia.
Given the massive terrible propaganda assault against Assange by the US government, a government caught committing war crimes in video footage that Wikileaks had released, and the government’s attempt to smear, silence, and murder Assange, it’s more important than ever to really understand what Assange was doing and the important message he had.
In lieu of this very important news, I am re-posting a piece I put together a little less than two years ago consisting of passages from Assange’s speeches and writings, read by a cast of WBAI and Arts Express friends. Click on the title below to hear the piece.
In which I talk about Douglas Rushkoff’s brilliant but frustrating book about how tech is leading us to a dehumanized society.
Click on the triangle or mp3 link above to listen to my commentary as heard on the Arts Express radio program today, broadcast on WBAI-FM NYC and Pacifica stations across the nation.
Hey, it’s National Noodle Month! Who knew? Anyway you can listen to my review of A Short History of Spaghetti With Tomato Sauce, as heard today on Arts Express radio on WBAI FM NYC and Pacifica affiliates across the nation, by clicking on the triangle or mp3 link above.
We’ve featured the work of the revolutionary fiction writer Manuel Tiago on Arts Express several times with dramatic readings from some of his short stories. Those stories are a part of an eight book cycle about the 40 year fight against the Portuguese fascists from the 1930s to the 70s. That series has recently come to completion with the publication of the last book to be translated into English, titled Until Tomorrow, Comrades. I was happy to speak with Eric Gordon, the translator of the series.
Click on the gray triangle or mp3 link above to hear the interview as broadcast on the Arts Express radio program heard on WBAI FM NYC and Pacifica affiliates across the nation.
Our dear friend, Connie Norgren, died Monday. She was a wonderful, caring woman who spent her life making her community better. She was a committed public school teacher for decades, as well as a political activist, fighting against military recruitment in the schools. Her love and passion was poetry–she was an award winning poet. We were fortunate to have had her as a guest on Arts Express several times to read her poetry and talk about her writing. Here’s an interview and poetry reading featuring Connie. If you put her name into the blog’s search bar, you’ll find more:
Wherein we review Jim Feast’s mash-up historical murder mystery novel that features Karl and Eleanor Marx, in league with a 16 year old Sherlock Holmes!
Click on the triangle or mp3 link above to hear the review as broadcast on the Arts Express radio program today, heard on WBAI-FM and Pacifica affiliates across the nation.
A few weeks ago, I was happy to read a short story on the air titled “Thy Kingdom Come” by Luke O’Neil from his new collection of short fictions called A Creature Wanting Form. If you heard the reading, then you know that Luke O’ Neil is a powerful writer who takes journalistic impulses and turns them into sharp accounts of the present and near future world. I was happy to have Luke on the show as our guest.
Click the triangle or mp3 link above to listen to the interview with Luke O’Neil, as broadcast today on the Arts Express radio program, heard on WBAI FM NYC and Pacifica affiliates across the nation.
Great Balls of Fire and other exultations of exclamatory joy! Hoo-roo and hoo-rah! We made it by the skin of our teeth through one more year of daily posts. I hope they’ve provided some sort of diversion and interest for you. As is my custom, on anniversary day, I post what I feel were my favorite audio pieces of the year. I’ll try to keep the list short this time, a baker’s dozen, so that you can get a chance to sample the ones you missed or re-visit posts that you enjoyed.
Some years ago I had the privilege of reading on the air a selection from author Luke O’Neil’s terrific collection of essays called Welcome to Hell World. Now Luke has come out with a new collection of short fiction pieces called A Creature Wanting Form, published by OR Press. This new collection is a kind of perfect companion for the current ashes in the air. I thought the best way for you to get the flavor of the book was for me to read one of the stories from the book, a piece called “Thy Kingdom Come.”
Click on the triangle or mp3 link above to hear the story as performed on the Arts Express radio program, broadcast today on WBAI FM NYC and Pacifica affiliates across the nation.
In a geopolitical world where the US is increasingly using every tool of control and coercion it can on other countries, the truth can be deeply hidden. Now a new book titled, Underground Empire: How America Weaponized the World Economy, clearly outlines the ways in which technological and economic choke points, many on U.S land, are being weaponized to pressure the worlds’ foremost powers into complying with America’s interests. I was happy to interview the authors of Underground Empire, Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman.
Click on the mp3 link or triangle to hear the interview as broadcast today on the Arts Express radio program, heard on WBAI FM NYC and Pacifica stations across the country.
