The Throwdown Press

World News:
Members of the Chinese army were secretly photographed, with Buddhist monks robes under their arms after they changed out of their "disguises." The soldiers are on their way back from Tibet, where they went to run on the rampage, dressed up as Buddhist monks, in order to bring Tibet's monks into disrepute. The title that accompanies this photograph is: "Here are the false monks who caused the violence in Lhassa":

That's what I would call playing dirty.
***

A Few Things:

1) I'm wearing purple pants today & am a bit embarrassed by this.

2) I'm done with animal documentaries. For a bit. I watched the "Meat Eaters" episode of The Lives of Mammals and had to see a baby seal get attacked and eaten by a wild dog. I need a break. My documentary on Astor Piazzolla, the Argentine tango composer and bandoneón player, just arrived.
The bandoneón looks like this:

and you can hear/watch it here: Bandoneon

3) Um, if you live in NYC, easy targets for mockery are tourists who come here and eat at The Olive Garden to try the fine NY cuisine. I don't think further explanation is necessary. After years of speculation and derisive jokes (i.e. "Let's go some place nice for dinner, where should we go?" "The OG! The OG!"), a friend and I decided to see for ourselves if the special offer of "The Endless Soup, Salad, and Breadsticks" was as good as the tourists seemingly believe.

I regret this decision.

You do understand that by "Endless" the Olive Garden means "Our waiter will come over to your table, look at you sadly with glazed eyes, and then replentish any dish you're running low on, for no extra coast."

My friend refused to have his/her head in the photos.

Cheese grater, abandoned by our waiter next to the table:

Endless salad:

Endless breadsticks:

Endless watery, meat filled soup:



I feel like I just punished you guys for making you look at those photos. But I did wait until after lunch to post them.

**

Ok, there are a zillion readings this week. But I'm only going to two and both are at the Poetry Project. I was there last for the Selah Saterstrom reading two months ago.

1) The Kate Greenstreet / Frank Sherlock reading tonight (Monday).
Frank Sherlock & Kate Greenstreet
Monday April 21
St. Mark's Poetry Project
131 E. 10th Street
8pm

and 2) LARRY KEARNEY and CA CONRAD
at St. Mark's Poetry Project
Wednesday, April 23rd, 8pm

Conrad says:
I'm VERY EXCITED about this reading! HOPE TO SEE YOU THEN!
CAConrad

my NEW BOOK (Soma)tic Midge (Faux Press): http://CAConrad.blogspot.com
PhillySound: new poetry: http://PhillySound.blogspot.com

***
I made this whole word document with ALL the readings for this week and now I can't find it. I've searched my documents for "readings" and "poetry readings" and nothing is coming up. What else could I have saved it under? Anyways, I don't have the heart to compile this list again, so all I'll say is, you should also go to the reading pasted below on Friday. I'll be in North Carolina that night, visiting my brother. Adam, I challenge you to a game of beer pong. Yes, you. You're going down.

So those not challenging younger siblings to drinking games can tell me how swimmingly the reading went:

WHY: Eating, growing, and celebrating locally to find the world in a grain of Brooklyn and eternity in an hour or two!
WHEN: Friday, April 25th @ 7 p.m. – Sharp!
WHERE: Stain Bar in Williamsburg, Brooklyn

WHO: BANIAS ~~ BERRIGAN ~~ BOZICEVIC ~~ BRYANT ~~ DICKOW ~~ HOY ~~ KOCOT ~~ SMITH ~~ STARKWEATHER ~~ WILLIAMSON

ARI BANIAS grew up in California, Texas, and Illinois. He now lives in Brooklyn, NY and teaches undergraduate creative writing and literature at Hunter College. His poems are forthcoming in The Cincinnati Review, Literary Imagination, and FIELD, and have recently appeared in Mid-American Review (as a feature), Arts & Letters, and RealPoetik.

EDMUND BERRIGAN is the author of Glad Stone Children (Farfalla Press, 2008) and is co-editor with Anselm Berrigan and Alice Notley of a forthcoming Selected Poems of Ted Berrigan (University of California).

ANA BOZICEVIC moved to NYC from Croatia in 1997. She's the author of chapbooks Document (Octopus Books, 2007) and Morning News (Kitchen Press, 2006). Look for her recent work in Denver Quarterly, Hotel Amerika, absent, The New York Quarterly, Bat City Review, MiPOesias, Octopus Magazine and The Portable Boog Reader 2: An Anthology of NYC Poetry. Ana coedits RealPoetik.

TISA BRYANT is the author of Tzimmes (A+Bend Press, 2000), which collages concerns of breast cancer, Barbados genealogy research, a Passover seder and a film by Yvonne Rainer, and her first book, Unexplained Presence (Leon Works, 2007), is a collection of original, hybrid essays that remix narratives from Eurocentric film, literature and visual arts and zoom in on the black presences operating within them. She currently lives in Brooklyn, NY.

ALEXANDER DICKOW grew up in Moscow, Idaho, traveled to France, got married to a French woman, studies French literature at Rutgers, and writes poems. His work has appeared in both Yankee and Hexagonal journals including MiPO, RealPoetik, Sitaudis, Il Particolare, Hapax, can we have our ball back? and others. A full-length bilingual collection, _Caramboles_, will be published by the Parisian press Argol Editions in October 2008. Alex currently lives in bucolic central New Jersey.

DAN HOY lives in Brooklyn and is an editor for SOFT TARGETS. His poetry chapbook, Outtakes, was published by Lame House Press in 2007.

NOELLE KOCOT is the author of 3 books of poems, 4 and The Raving Fortune, out from Four Way Books in 2001 and 2004, respectively, and Poem for the End of Time, out from Wave Books in 2006, of which the NY Times Book Review deemed the long title poem, "extraordinary." She has won awards from The National Endowment for the Arts, The Fund For Poetry, The Academy of American Poets and The American Poetry Review, among others. She lives in Brooklyn, where she was born and raised, and teaches for a living. Her fourth book, Sunny Wednesday, will be published by Wave Books in spring, 2009.

JESSICA SMITH is the editor of Outside Voices Press, which publishes Foursquare magazine. She wrote a book called Organic Furniture Cellar. She maintains a blog that incites both hate mail and proposals. She recently moved to Brooklyn and is looking for a job.

SAMPSON STARKWEATHER is a small African village patrolled by dream-fed lions. They sway in the grasses when you move. His handwriting, which has been featured in several medical journals, strong-armed him into a life of asemic writing. He is the author of The Book of Sky, a wordless text published by anyone.

DUSTIN WILLIAMSON is the author of Heavy Panda (Goodbye Better), Gorilla Dust (Open24Hours Press), and Exhausted Grunts (Cannibal Books). He publishes Rust Buckle Books and is the current curator of the Zinc Talk Reading Series.