July 14th, 2005
Smells Like Hippy

I'm off to the South Country Fair today, and I ain't coming back till next week. Yup, I read at Ten PM on Saturday night, right after the drum circle and tribute to fallen poets. Could be a tough act to follow. Everyone will be feeling a bit sad, mellow and warm and fuzzy, and I will ride out on the back of a dying bay stallion and launch into a roaring a-cappella version of Born in the USA, followed by my attempt at banter and introducing the book, which will probably go like this:

"My name is Mingus Tourette, and I'm gonna read to you from my book, nunt, which is about three things: killin', drinkin' and fuckin'. Now start throwing them fucking panties or I'm gonna burn down this stage. "

The rest of it should be a rather spiritual affair. After that, I'm going to read to kids at a Youth Writing Camp. To save time, I'll probably just re-use the same banter.

So, there won't be much action around here. Come back in a week or so. I should have some stories. Or not. And maybe some direction, with this site and everything else. Because there will be changes in the Mingus online presence. There has to be. I'll get into this in greater depth later, but it has to do with the blog as an art form, it's impact on personal life and The End Goal. I will be asking for suggestions. Maybe.

In the meantime, check out dgcproductions.com - they're having a big launch party for Touch's album Self Evident. The thing about Touch and the rest of DGC is that they're so freakin' prolific that they've got new albums and wax coming out in the near future, so they're providing this whole album for free download. And it's fucking hot. These guys are lyrical monsters.

'Course, I'm biased, 'cause me and my publisher did the photography and designed the album artwork. 'Cause before I was a poet, I was straight up motherfucking hiphop. 'Course, before I was hiphop, I was a hard-drinking, volatile self-destructive poet, so it's nice to see how things come full circle.

Get yourself some genuine motherfucking E-Ville hiphop, and check the details on the launch party. And listen carefully to the lyrics, and maybe you'll hear our names in there somewhere.

Peace.

July 13th, 2005
Hard Liquor Hangovah

A good night of poetry, when you end up with CT Staples in a Karaoke bar at last call, slamming shots of whiskey.

And it's too late to write anything more

July 12th, 2005
Hard Liquor

A reminder that CT and Mike and Shima and Rocco and Monika are reading poetry tonight. Of course, if you didn't know that already, you probably aren't going. So shove it up your ass.

I've received emails on this reading from about six different people, which is great. Obviously, E-Ville is hungry for the poetry. My hope though, is that this reading reaches past the regular core audience. It would be a fine thing if the Wine and Rasp readers have to contend with speaking to a packed room with a hundred sweating hipsters - half of them complete newbies, drawn to the scene like pigeons to the flame. That's always my hope, I guess, that the audience grows. The more folks we can get to masturbate onto the same cracker, the better.

So, come one and all, and bring a poetry neophyte, if you got one. Myself, I plan to bring an entirely new persona, who will sit at the table across from me in an empty chair. He will not answer questions and will not respond to philosophical jibes. If you ask me about him, I will look at you cock-eyed and ask what the fuck you're talking about. If I've been drinking gin, I'm liable to lean into you like I'm about to tell you a secret, razor your pocket, steal your wallet, trip, pull down your pants and stuff a thumb up your ass 'by accident'.

The Details: The Rasp and the Wine - Hard Liquor Version
An unmissable evening of poetic exploitation featuring ct staples, Shima Robinson, Monika Ptak, and very special guest Rocco de Giacomo (www.latchkey.net). Four featured readers and an eight-reader open mic to follow. Remedy Cafe. 8631 - 109 Street, Edmonton. 8:00pm.

July 11th, 2005
Architeuthis rex

It is late and I have been writing all night. I haven't been writing for the Daily Mingus. I've been writing for Morrie. I've been researching Architeuthis dux (sometimes known as the Giant Squid) and making lists to back up my script arguments. Morrie wants the beast ripping people in half with its tentacles. The creature is thirty to forty feet long, but it only weighs four or five hundred pounds. That's not a lot of muscle mass to generate the kind of destructive power he wants. By comparison, the great white shark usually weighs in at three thousand pounds.

If he were going to focus on one fact about this whole scenario, I wish he would focus on this:

Below five hundred feet of water, there is no light.

That's where the Giant Squid lives. It's one of the reasons that no one has ever seen one of these animals going about its daily business. In my opinion, if we're really going to use a Giant Squid as the antagonist in a film, we should focus on its mysterious nature, not its destructive power.

For pure blood-bath capacity, there is only one animal that deserves a feature-length film dedicated to its raw ferocity.

The hippo.

I pitched that to Morrie, but he still wants the squid. The fact is, one hippo could singlehandedly destroy a dozen giants squids in a moment of gelatin-spattering, tentacle-ripping, hole-punching carnage that would make any shark battle look like two goldfish fucking.

And yet, Koboko: Wrath of the Hippo, still rests on the shelf. The horror.

Copyright © 2006 Mingus Tourette