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By Vincent Cellucci |

The Katrina Decameron

The Katrina Decameron
LISTEN TO THE FIRST CHAPTER
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The Katrina Decameron is a piece of collaborative, fiction written by eight Louisiana writers in 2006.  The recordings have been collected over the past four years and now the project is completed and available here in .mp3 format for idevices and media players of all kinds.

By Maggie Dubris & Scott Gillis |

In The Dust Zone

IN THE DUST ZONE
written by Maggie Dubris
drawings by Scott Gillis

Introduction

In August of 2001, New York City writer Maggie Dubris was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. Three weeks later, on September 11th, she responded as a 911 paramedic to the World Trade Center attack. In The Dust Zone began as her story of being thrown across the great divide, into a world where the landscape, both inner and outer, is destroyed in an instant. . .

In The Dust Zone is an illustrated book that weaves together strands of this experience with visions of a now vanished Afghanistan, an eye-witness account of Pliny’s death in the eruption of Vesuvius, the journal of a young man who would become the writer’s great-grandfather, caught in the throes of the ague fever. The drawings layered into the text are threads in a tapestry of dislocation, faces and sights drawn from an “enemy land” whose people spent have years wandering in the Dust Zone. As the book progresses, moving through this world where no one can ever see clearly no matter how many times they rinse out their eyes, people emerge, one by one, somehow still walking, and connected to a larger human experience by their time spent in this strange and terrible place.

By Hariette Surovell |

CHAPTER TWO: SLEEP WITH YOUR GRANDMOTHER

SERIAL! VALENTINE DAY SPECIAL TO THE CORPSE!
WE CONTINUE SERIAL PUBLICATION OF HARIETTE SUROVELL’S MEMOIRS! WHAT A LIFE!
CHAPTER TWO:  SLEEP WITH YOUR GRANDMOTHER

Sweet sixteen and I hadn’t even had my first multiple orgasm, yet I found myself a nationally-acclaimed “sexpert”, with my opinions on teenage sexual habits and needs for sex education and contraception being sought out by Dr. Mary Steichen Calderone and John D. Rockefeller III.

I didn’t even know who Edward Steichen was, or that Dr. Mary was his daughter, yet I guest-lectured with her at a SIECUS (Sex Information and Education Council U.S.) convention.  It was held in the summer, and we took our meals together.  Sitting outside at a picnic table, we learned that the entrée was fish.

“I never eat seafood in the summer!” the elegant, patrician, silver-haired world-renowned doctor/former acclaimed stage actress/National Women’s Hall of Fame member exclaimed gaily.  “It is simply swarming with staphylococcus!”

I love that phrase--it should become part of the lexicon. Unlike my ex-husband, Robert, perpetually on the look-out for the meaning of life, I never experience existential dilemmas.  The way I see it, things are either simply swarming with staphylococcus, or they’re not.

By Hariette Surovell |

THE SELLING OF THE AMERICANS, part one

INSIDIOUS MOVIE PRODUCT PLACEMENT TRENDS

Television shows are sponsored by advertisers who really get bangs for their mega-bucks when the products promoted during commercial interruptions are also used as props in the show itself, or even more insidiously, written into the plot.

“Seinfeld”, brought to you by Snapple, created controversy by having its characters not only drink the beverage, but tell jokes about it. “Too fruity!” said the character Babu Bhatt in the episode, “The Visa.”

Another NBC hit, “30 Rock”, a television show about making a television show (it’s the updated Shakespearean concept) is also sponsored by Snapple.  The discussion among the show’s staff in the episode “Jack-Tor” about how “Diet Snapple tastes just as good as regular Snapple” was followed by an actual Snapple ad in the subsequent commercial break.

“Mad Men”, the AMC cable series about a 1960’s Madison Avenue advertising firm, Sterling Cooper, is sponsored by Heineken.  In the episode, “A Night to Remember”, Sterling Cooper takes on Heineken as a client.  Coincidentally, Betty Draper, one of the executives’ wives, serves Heineken at a dinner party, unaware that her own husband had just talked up the virtues of introducing suburban housewives to exotic foreign beers.  Betty’s menu causes much mirth among the dinner guests.  Cut to a real commercial break for…what else?  Heineken.

By Hariette Surovell |

WITCHES AND GHOSTS

SERIAL! SPECIAL TO THE CORPSE!
WE BEGIN SERIAL PUBLICATION OF HARIETTE SUROVELL’S MEMOIRS! WHAT A LIFE! READERS, YOU’RE IN FOR THRILLS! PUBLISHERS, LOOK UP!
WITCHES AND GHOSTS

I spent my childhood expecting my father, Abe Surovell, to die.  He was 50 and I was 16 when his third coronary finally decimated the remnants of his tattered heart.  June 4th is the anniversary of his death.  A subtle end-of-May depression, a general sadness is a yearly occurrence, one which nonetheless cunningly catches me by surprise.  Last May, for the first time ever, I remembered that it was impending and tried to pre-empt it by “spending time” with Abe.  I did this by examining the contents of disintegrating cartons brimming over with photographs taken of, and not by, Abe.  In the 1940’s and fifties, when a camera lens made everyone seem movie-star handsome or fashion model glamorous, Abe was no exception. Not especially athletic, he was nonetheless capable of strenuously rowing a boat.  He even wore his goofy Navy uniform well.  Leaning up against a tree on the Brooklyn College campus, sketching, his mien was intent and studious.  All were scenes from a life that existed before I did. I was tempted to concentrate on them, yet I couldn’t linger there. A need to confront the Abe I knew, the unhappy, tense, semi-invalid father impelled me to spend most of my hours observing Abe’s life as a husband,  father of four and beret-wearing artiste. In those images of Abe that hung on walls or were mounted over desks, he seldom smiled for the camera. Abe always wore the identical expression--one compounded of grief, hopelessness, trauma and disappointment.

By Hariette Surovell |

HARIETTE SUROVELL?S MEMOIRS

PRELUDE TO AN EXQUISITE CORPSE EVENT! THE SERIAL PUBLICATION OF HARIETTE SUROVELL’S MEMOIRS. OUR VERY OWN MATA HARIETTE BEGINS TELLING ALL, BEGINNING IN HER RED-DIAPER BABYHOOD! IN THE VERY NEXT ISSUE!

The point of this update is that, yours truly, Matahariette, an apartment-dweller, am suffering from my own home-related recession, so this wknd, I am going to revise and revitalize Chapter 1 for our 11/15 pub date. We still gotta date, Handsome?

Har

Corpse: Yes.

Read first installment! Click Here

By Dave Brinks |

Conversations with Dave Brinks

BERNADETTE MAYER, BILL ZAVATSKY ON VALERY LARBAUD, JOHN SINCLAIR IN CONVERSATION WITH DAVE BRINKS

Brinks:  So here we are at the Tsatsawassa and Kinderhook creeks just behind Bernadette’s house in East Nassau, New York; one of her absolute favorite places to hang out with her dog Hector; and an area frequented by many great birds including the common merganser and the blue heron.

Mayer:  I refuse to answer any questions. (laughter)

Brinks:  One thing I love most about your works Bernadette, and I rarely find this in any other poet’s works, is whenever I’m listening to you read a poem, I often suddenly feel like I’ve beautifully misheard something; but then I discover it’s exactly as you’ve written it.

Mayer:  Yes, I’ve taken care of that. (laughter)

Brinks:  Which leads me to my next question, which is actually my first question; but based on your idea of Utopia, how is our sitting here any different than our non-waking state?

Mayer:  I refuse to answer that question. (laughter)

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