So, whew! Left last Saturday for Montgomery, Alabama, where my friend Jen spent two days getting me liquored up, barbecued up, flea-marketed up, and where we did totally girl-tastic awesome things, like cooking, and watching twee indie movies, and getting drunk in our pajamas, and talking too much about sex. It was the awesome. Thence to Houston, Texas, where I contemplated buying a hideous black t-shirt featuring an armadillo made out of gold sequins with ruby-red claws, but backed down. I am sartorially timid. Also I did some work stuff and drank a scotch. Yay!
After Houston, I glided on back to DC, only to stuff me and the Jeff onto a train bound for NYC, the land of poems. Seriously, poems drift out of the sky in New York and hit you on the face and get you slimy. It's gross.
On Thursday night, we met Shanna Compton and Jen Knox for dinner, and then went over to an artist's studio in one of those places in Brooklyn that doesn't have a name because it is located in a corner where four places with names meet. It was the Four Corners Monument of New York City. There I saw many a fine reader, Matvei Yankelevich, various Ugly Duckling personnel, and met Laura Sims and Farrah Field.
Next day was FREE DAY IN NEW YORK, which for me meant spending too much money on books at the Strand and Forbidden Planet. I became addicted, during my week away from home, to Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels, and to Charlaine Harris' Sookie Stackhouse novels. I can at least feel mildly British and snooty about the Pratchett, though it is incredibly funny; the Harris books are basically Regency Romances (Hi, Mom!) with fangs and southern accents. Nothing redeeming, but oh-so-entertaining.
On Saturday, I returned to my old haunt of the Four-Faced Liar, where Shafer Hall has paired up with Marion Wrenn and the Painted Bride Quarterly to revive the Frequency Series. I read with Corrinne Fitzpatrick, met Karen Weiser (who will be reading here in DC in February) and caught up with some old friends. It was wondrous, and then Jeff and I whisked ourselves off to Penn Station, and hied ourselves home.
Sunday, I hosted In Your Ear, which brought together Karen Leona Anderson and Kate Greenstreet. Kate was on day 73 out of 73 of her epic tour in support of The Last Four Things. Her husband, Max, grew hair worthy of Samson during this sojourn, and the PA skills to match. Very awesome, and then came dinner, which was ridiculous. I had dinner with, among others, Rod Smith, Cole Swensen, Kate and Max, and Sandra Beasley. It was some kind of poet last supper. I wonder which of us was Judas? I have the reddest hair, but I'm really not very good at betraying people. And to whom?
And now it is Monday, and I have name-dropped like a mo-fo, putting me in mind of a thing my dad always used to say -- "Some people drop names and kiss ass; I'm here to take names and kick ass" and, of course, from there it is but a step to They Live: "I'm here to chew bubblegum and kick ass, and I'm all out of bubblegum." I have neither bubblegum nor any particular ass-kicking skills, so dropping names it will have to be. Alas.
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