InDigest Magazine

We are officially on the home stretch of our little literary venture—InDigest Magazine (at www.indigestmag.com coming Dec. 3)—and we are all feeling a little pressure. There’s a lot to be done, but all the hard work, we think (and hopefully you will, too), will be worth it in the end, as we have been extremely fortunate in the fact that some very talented people have agreed to be a part of this thing from the beginning. For the time being check us out on Facebook and at MySpace to get a feel for what we will be all about.

I really can’t express enough thanks to the people who, by allowing us to put their work in “print,” forced us to take this endeavor to a level already exceeding (even before the first issue!) the limits we had originally set for ourselves. A special thanks among this group must go out to Alex Lemon, a talented and accomplished poet who, from our very first request, has been helpful, responsive, and encouraging. And on top of all of that he gave us some fantastic poems to start us off real proper like. If you do not have his book of poems, Mosquito, do yourself a favor and pick it up.

Issue 2 is taking a nice shape already, and with such fine content from the beginning we can’t wait to see what will come our way for future issues.

Please come by and see us often once we’re up and running. Knowing that someone out there is reading will give us a whole new thrill. For now, we’re focused on the thrill of actually getting InDigest up and running.

Read, read, write, and look at pretty things!

More on The Mountain Goats

Ok, I promise this will be the last I say of The Mountain Goats for a while. But this blog, Last Plane to Jakarta, is apparently that of the lead singer of said group, and it's f'n great. I don't like metal (music), but this guy does. I love when people can like something so far from what they themselves create. I think this shows intelligence: the ability to see beyond what my be familiar, and understand, or at least try. Anyway, he goes on about metal and politics. I follow him mostly on the politics. And I have no idea what he's talking about when he goes on about metal, but I still think he does it well, if that makes sense. At any rate, it's worth a read. So check it out. And go get a The Mountain Goats album.

It's You...And You're Standing In The Doorway

"The most remarkable thing about you standing in the doorway
Is that it's you...and you're standing in the doorway.
And you smile as you ease the gun from my hand
And I'm frozen with joy right where I stand"

Ever felt that way? Fuck yeah. It's from Going to Georgia by the Mountain Goats. This, right now, is about as obsessed as I get with a band. Everything they do (that I have heard) blows me away.

If you don't get anything from this lyric, I suggest you go far far away from someone you love very much and stay gone for a good amount of time. Then come back and see them. Then you'll know what he's talking about.

Hello?

Why do people have blogs if they're not going to do anything with them?

Poetry at Guernica

Here's some poetry brought to you by guernicamag.com. While you're there, check out the blog section.

Every Year

Every year around this time it begins. As children shop the aisles for their mechanical pencils, Five-Star notebooks, and, now, Apple laptops, as leaves start turning brown, orange, and yellow, and folks drive to remote locations of their states to see masses of trees do this in unison, as college freshmen meet new dorm roommates and drink themselves into oblivion in the few days between their high-school selves and their, obviously, more mature selves, another season-changing indication continuously crosses my path.

And I wish it would stop already.

This obnoxious marker of the end of summer will go unnoticed to those of you who do not also mark the beginning of fall as the beginning of football season. For this you should feel fortunate. For the rest of us, those of us in three fantasy football leagues--don't judge me--or just those who enjoy a Sunday afternoon game, one person has become synonymous with this time. When you turn on Sportcenter to get caught up on the day's football goings-on, there he is in his suit that looks like it could be from any year of the montage of clips from the 80s to the present they undoubtedly will play before actually showing him.

It's Chris Berman.

Am I the only one that is sick of his nicknames and the way he re-caps highlights, which, as far as I can tell haven't changed in a decade (I know it's not football, but "Back, back, back, back..." anyone?)? I mean, c'mon, doesn't the same ol' shtick get a little boring? The Josh Mc "go milk the" Cown, the Trent Green "with envy," the "Who shot J.R. on" Dallas Clark, the Robbie "Good as" Gould, the Drew "Cool as a summer's" Brees...I mean, is it just me, or are others kind of sick of this bit already?

I think it's time for the Swami to get some new material. It was cute for a long time. Now it's just lame. But, come to think of it, the same could probably be said for a lot of the sportscasters on Sportcenter.

Some Writing Online

So, I entered this writing competition that was looking for short nonfiction pieces about people's experiences with the Great Lakes. Click here to read the story, and check out the site for ways to take action in protecting the Great Lakes.

(Oh, and look at that, after all my talk/complaining of The Hold Steady being called a Brooklyn band, they go and put "David of Brooklyn." I swear I put both Brooklyn and St. Paul.)