Holograms are all the rage these days. I guess Princess Leia was ahead of the curve.

Though seeing your favorite dead writers duke it out via hologram, should not be on your list of worries.

But it would be nice to hear a good prediction from someone in the know for the future of writing.

Maybe everyone in publishing should just listen to Louis C.K. when it comes to book distribution.

Or perhaps audio books will make a triumphant come back and save us all.

People might read more if we updated the classics with modern-day slang, home skillet.

Or the answer might lie in literary power couples, who could team up to write books of awe-inspiring depth.

But until we find an answer, we can fin comfort in the fact that there will soon be a slurpee on every corner.

(Image Source: F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Life in Letters; Image: F. Scott Fitzgerald with his daughter, Scottie, in 1924.)

Everybody knows Israelis are sexy. They’re all buff from years in the military, they can curse fluently in Hebrew and Arabic and English, and to top it off, they’re impossibly tan from living under the Mediterranean sun. I’m jealous of my friends who go to Tel Aviv in the summers and lounge on the beach with great eye candy, some Goldstar beer, and a few Israeli books.

Yep, books. Sayed Kashua’s Second Person Singular, which came out in Israel two years ago and is out in English now, had me turning the pages, wondering what sort of scandal might be going on under the protagonist’s nose.

The author is an Israeli Arab—a sizeable minority living in Israel—and it’s no surprise that his characters are similarly marginalized. When a rising Arab lawyer who has successfully become Israeli discovers a love letter from his wife to someone he doesn’t know (in a used bookstore, no less), he sets out to discover who the addressee is, and how this has all been happening without his knowledge. Needless to say, Israel’s a country that struggles withits identity and its survival, and the descriptions of the rift between Arab and Jewish cultures by one who straddles the divide are illuminating, frighteningly accurate, and deeply moving.

I kept thinking of an evening in college: I got to talking with a fellow freshman who had a hookah in his room and said he was from Jerusalem. When my friends and I walked out of his room that night, we saw the sign on his door with his name—just like the signs the freshman counselors had put on all the other doors—and his hometown. It said East Jerusalem, Palestine, but I paused when I saw he’d crossed out the Palestine and scrawled Israelunder it. From my side of the fence, I hadn't ever thought about the feelings Palestinians might have about this ongoing struggle.

Every so often I hear about bombings in Israel or Palestine or the territories in between (and, to put this in context, I hear about this just as often as I hear about murders or violent crimes on the local news). It's true that there are deep-rooted historical arguments for the divide between Jews and Arabs, between Israel and Palestine, but there's more to the story. In fact, they already do work together in spite of the ongoing conflict, making reality far less black-and-white than either side's rhetoric might suggest.

There’s a mystery to be unraveled in Second Person Singular, many mysteries in fact, but the biggest questions remain unanswered in the book’s pages. If I ever go back to Israel, I’ll go to Bat Yam with my surfboardand my eyes open. Behind those superficially shiny bodies are some astonishingly forceful sentiments about Israel, Palestine, and the people trapped in between.

image credit:flickr.com

Are you as pissed as I am about the impending arrival of 100+ 7-Eleven stores and the Big Bite they will chomp out of Manhattan's bodega community? Yesterday, my Black Balloon colleague Jake reminisced on the homely bodega's many high points. I feel you, Jake, but let me just say one thing: if this were actually an invasion of sebun-irebun, the cheery kombini(convenience store) chain owned by Japan's Seven & I Holdings Co....now that might not be so bad.

Just think: spotless, well-lit, one-stop destinations for sustenance, banking, even package shipment and receiving.

I'm heading to Tokyo next month. Most of my money will go toward concert tickets and fetish bars, so I have willingly resigned myself to “dining” at 7-Eleven at least half the time. Meaning a tallboy of Suntory and a transcendent katsu-sando (breaded, deep-fried pork cutlet and sauce on springy, crustless white bread) for 500 yen, or approximately $6. Breakfast—or whatever—of champions.

Of course, to make these 7-Elevens truly authentic, they would need to beam in a Japanese staff. The super-polite kind who will inquire if you want that curry pan microwaved, and who won't get on your ass if you loiter in the store for three hours, soaking up free WiFi and paging through phonebook-sized manga journals with busty gravure idols on the cover. Yeah, not gonna happen.

Then again, “Big Gulp” doesn't exist in the Japanese vernacular—let alone “Big Bite.” So a proper sebun-irebun in the Big Apple? Fuhgettaboutit.

Image: Ragamuffinsoul (Big Gulp) and Wikipedia (katsu-sando), photo-chopped by the author.

Swedish artist Makode Linde performed in his own piece "Painful Cake" at a party for World Art Day at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm on Sunday. With his head stuck through a hole in the table, which bore a giant pastry in the shape of a “black African woman,” he screamed as pieces of the cake were sliced from the groin. Minister of Culture Lena Adelsohn Lijeroth presided. It is thought that she was supposed to whisper "Your life will be better after this," before making the first incision. The internet has gonewhat Thackeray might call “black in the face” with horror. When someone sasses you, Perfect Party Cakes Made Easy suggests baking them in effigy.

1.

“Lena Adelsohn Liljeroth was invited to open the festivities by performing a clitoridectomy on the cake, which she did by slicing off the part of the cake depicting female genitalia. She then proceeded to feed that part of the cake to a performance artist, done up in blackface, his head protruding through the table.”

—Fria Tider, “Shocking Photos Show Swedish Minister of Culture Celebrating with ‘N*g*er Cake,” 17 April, 2012.

2.

“ ‘Marry that Mulatto woman?’ George said, pulling up his shirt collars. ‘I don’t like the colour, sir. Ask the black that sweeps opposite Fleet Market, sir. I’m not going to marry a Hottentot Venus.’ Mr. Osborne pulled frantically at the cord by which he was accustomed to summon the butler when he wanted wine—and almost black in the face, ordered that functionary to call a coach for Captain Osborne.”

—William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair, 1847.

3.

“If your child has a tendency towards cheekiness and you want to get your own back, this cake could well be the answer. Personalise it with your child’s hair colour, perhaps making it longer if it’s to be for a girl. You could also change the blue and white sweater to the colour of their favorite garment.”

—Carol Deacon, “Horrible Child,” Perfect Party Cakes Made Easy: Over 70 Fun-to-Decorate Cakes for All Occasions, 1996. 

Let Me Recite What History Teaches (LMRWHT) is a weekly column that flashes the lavalamp, gaslight, candlelight, campfire, torch, sometimes even the starlight of the past on something that is happening now. The form of the column strives to recover what might be best about the “wide-eyed presentation of mere facts.” Each week you will find here some citational constellation, offered with astonishment and without comment, that can serve as an end in itself, dinner party fodder, or an occasion for further thought or writing. The title is taken from the last line of Stein’s poem “If I Told Him (A Completed Portrait of Picasso)."

Image: The Local 

7-Eleven, that bastion of finely textured burgers and sweetastic Slurpees, will soon dot the isle of Manhattan like popcorn bits on movie theater seats: in the next five years, 114 of the suckers will be opening. No doubt some will applaud this proliferation, but I weep for the ubiquitous crusty bodega. Like peepshows and subway art before them, bodegas stand in serious danger of becoming safe for visiting relatives. In that dystopian future, you’ll have to shower before rolling into the corner deli on weekday mornings, hungover, your body panging for an egg-and-cheese and sock-juice coffee.

So, fellow wallowers, let us now praise dingy bodegas. As is proper to nostalgia, we’ll do so with a string of anecdotes only tangentially related to bodegas and their signage trumpeting (nonexistent) stores of “organic” and “natural” foods, as well as cold beer and ATMs.

1. A few years back, I was moving into a new place in the nosebleed section of Manhattan, north of half the Bronx. While new roomie and I were schlepping boxes into the lobby, the sweetest orange tabby I’ve ever seen got himself caught in the vestibule. He mewed so incessantly I caved and let him in. As soon as I’d opened the door, he was climbing me like a tree. “Hey fucker, get off me!” I yelped, thinking fleas and other crawling nasties. I discovered that he belonged to the bodega next door, so I tried to take him back. “Here’s your cat.” “Not my cat.” “Hey man, c’mon, just take your cat. People know he’s yours.” “Not my cat.” So we took him to a cat lady, and I took my business to another bodega. Not only did it have a cat to keep rodents away; the owner wasn’t a prick.
2. All those times we needed a loosie, you shady bodegas were there for us in a way that tobacco shops rarely are. Even if it was a Newport.
3. One in the morning in Harlem, and we’re out of liquor and the wine’s running dry. My friend suggests to fresh-in-the-city me that we get some grande Coronas at the corner bodega. I concur. We get there and I make like to open the door, smashing drunkenly, with full walking force, into it: it’s locked. “They closed?” My friend laughs. “No Jake, you gotta order through the window!” “Oh…I doubt that glass is bulletproof.”
4. A guy at this Midtown deli was so goddamn good that he knew what his many weekday regulars wanted and would have it ready for them in the time it took them to approach the counter. Within a week, he'd memorized my $1.75 “special”: butter on a toasted roll plus coffee like a hot milkshake.
5. Or that hypothetical time you needed condoms, like stat, and it was after ten and the pharmacy was closed. 7-Eleven probably carries mainstream brands like Trojan and Durex, but the bodega at the end of your street? It’s going to broaden your horizons. When else is necessity going to be so compelling that you purchase (and use) Rough Riders?

You bodegas are somewhat more salty than sweet, it’s true. But those of us who savor life’s tangier bits will mourn you the way others mourn New York’s pickle vendors.

Image: flickr user zippagraphics

The new book How To Sharpen Pencils by David Rees got me thinking about what other guides might be useful to writers. The genius behind Get Your War On did, in fact, start a pencil sharpening business, and he subsequently wrote the instruction manual in the hopes that all of us might one day be free of the tyranny of not knowing how to sharpen pencils.

Since Rees has the pencil covered, I had to come up with something just as essential. My first idea was a book called How to Not Set Yourself on Fire. Unfortunately, this does not gel with my skill set. My second idea, which can’t guarantee you won’t set yourself on fire, might actually prove a tad more practical for writers struggling to make a living. I call it, Harnessing Your Inner Scrappiness.

Embrace the Loss

The first thing you’re going to want to do is let go of any notion that you will make enough money to eat and pay rent. Eating and sleeping in what society deems a decent shelter is for bankers and doctors. Stop fighting this. Just as what you own ends up owning you, once you live nowhere, you live everywhere. You don’t need a roof. Roofs are bourgeois.

Any Item Can Provide Shelter

I once slept underneath a deflated air mattress, utilizing it as a blanket, as there was no blanket. You know what it was? Warm. And waterproof! Sure, cardboard boxes are classic, but that doesn’t mean you can’t use almost anything to cover and warm yourself. Give that trash bag a nice shake and tuck yourself in.

Any Item Can Be Clothes

Just because you’re homeless doesn’t mean you don’t have a personality. Discover your inner flair. Tie a bunch of shoes together to form a cape. Wouldn’t that discarded oil can make a lovely hat? Maybe you want to string used tissues into a scarf. Only your imagination can stop you.

Put It In Your Mouth

Teach your stomach to digest food alternatives. Start with natural substances like leather and wood. Synthetics are something you’ll want to work up to. Putting almost anything in your mouth will help saliva production, which is good for overall mouth health. And yes, there will be a lot of things you’ll be putting in your mouth. Lots of...things.

Befriend Rodents and Insects

Make nice with the scurrying inhabitants of the underworld. Not only do they know where the food is; if trained properly, they can also provide much needed companionship. The faster you learn to put up with all those itchy bites and strange rashes, the faster you can pretend you’re not talking to yourself. Which you are. A lot.

But maybe scrappiness isn't your thing. There are five gabillion how-to guides out there to show you how to, you know, do things. Perhaps you want to draw manga? Or maybe you haven't figured out how to eat stuff. Or yes, and this is probably necessary. Because you haven't figured that out yet.

Image: The Awl

Scoping out Tati Luboviski-Acosta's frenetic, awesomely collaged journal on HTMLGiant last week, I started thinking about all the things I've written that I really don't want the internet to see. Sure, it's usually a fun surprise to trip through old journals. If you're disciplined about it, you could even keep a record of all the books you've read, like Pamela Paul's  Book of Books. But keep them long enough and the memory jostle becomes a bit more jarring: who was I when I wore this stuff?

I experienced this sort of selfhood-whiplash a while back, when I finally got around to arranging my books. Part of this involved getting my motley collection of sketchbooks, handbound diaries, travelogues, collage binders, classroom notebooks, and the like into chronological order. Then I started fingering through my earlier journals—tailing a shadowy figure I'll call Younger Me.

Younger Me never ceases to impress me with his lack of all discernment and much judgment. Oh, and his poetry. He wrote about girls and sex, of course, and wild parties and domestic disputes. Sounds entertaining, maybe some of it even lurid. But Younger Me left out too many of the details that anyone other than him would want to read. Presumably he had those tasty little bits firmly in mind while he wrote, confident that they were permanently etched in voluptuous red cursive on his brain. Problem is, I don’t know where he etched them. In the mind we share, those finer, fleshier details are lost. So much for posterity.

I journal now because it helps me understand the tacit construction of my sense of identity. No one cares what my favorite movie was when I was 16, not even me, but I am interested in who Y.M. thought he was when he wrote about it. Revisiting his entries prods my eyes with how much I've changed.  

Over time, I've developed a system to highlight this. I leave wide margins with enough space to allow Current Me to annotate Younger Me’s concerns. The thought was that I’d reevaluate and expand upon significant events, building a layered record of this process of self-fashioning. These pages, with their multiple hands and inks, reveal how perception of the self, like every other perception, arises out of processes involving subject and object, observer and observed: each time you think about yourself, you're remaking yourself.

And so I return, irregularly, to the chickenscratch of my late teens or the not-quite-graceful italic of my mid twenties (thank you, Arrighi), jot down some notes in my current fashion, whatever that is, and reshelve the volume, my self to be rediscovered there in a year or three, a month or two.

Blogging is a similar monster. It's just already out there for all the webby world to remember. And judging by fascinating/terrifying resources like this one, it's not going anywhere soon.

Image from flickr user Richard Winchell

Few record stores match a serious selection of wax with proper in-store performances—and that addictive indie spirit—like London's Rough Trade East. Now BrooklynVegan announces that Rough Trade is coming to Williamsburg this autumn. To a live-music lover and vinyl junkie, this just sounds sweet.

There is little to go on beyond Rough Trade's press release, which uses the term “saturnalia” (noun: unrestrained revelry; orgy) in the second sentence. Oh yeah, and the somewhat divisive news that they've partnered with Bowery Presents for live shows. Look: I whine about Bowery Presents ticket prices less now after acclimatizing to the expense of seeing live music in Tokyo. If it's dope, I'll pay.

In the spirit of April's "What If?" theme at Black Balloon, I've come up with a wishlist for Rough Trade NYC's first in-store shows, cherry-picked from the legendary Rough Trade label.

 

 

The Strokes. A no-brainer. These rakish lads—erm, Yanks—still personify New York cool. Performing: Is This It, start-to-finish without pausing. Julian will be howling “Take It or Leave It” and we'll beg for more. But that's it.

Chris & Cosey. aka Chris Carter and Cosey Fanni Tutti, or Carter Tutti—one half of industrial pioneers Throbbing Gristle and among the most seductively sinister soundscape duos today. Performing: '85 darkwave classic Technø Primitiv.

Super Furry Animals. Golden-voxed Gruff Rhys and his Cardiff mates released two slabs of psychedelia on Rough Trade (2007's Hey Venus! and 2009's Dark Days/Light Years) plus Rhys' eclectic Candylion. Performing: A selection from their back catalogue (including wobbly-edged burner “Juxtapozed with U”) plus some Welsh a capella would entice quite nicely.

A Cabaret Voltaire reunion. Hey, this is my wishlist, dammit! The Sheffield-based post-punk avant-guardians, as danceable as Joy Division but thrice as dour—if you can wrap your head around that one. Performing: Red Mecca, a startlingly salient comment on Islamic and Christian fundamentalism...recorded over 30 years ago.

Mazzy Star: Hope Sandoval (gossamer crooner) and David Roback (über-musican) with band tour Europe this summer and have a new LP—their first in 15 years—on the way. Performing: Hell, they could do nothing but Bieber covers and I'd be happy.

Before visiting a new city, I make a prioritized shortlist, and “best record shop” falls just after “best dive bar.” I usually eschew Austin's renowned Waterloo  for its quirkier southside kindred, End of an Ear. I get hyphy within Haight-Ashbury's mega Amoeba, and while in Tokyo I alternate between Disk Union's punk-postered walls and Spiral's exquisite audiophilia. NYC claims top for noise (subterranean Hospital Productions) and electronic (DUMBO's designer-y Halcyon).

Rough Trade NYC's imminent arrival is probably making Other Music a little nervous (watch this immediately), not to mention the longstanding Williamsburg stores Sound Fix and Earwax. May the spirit of saturnalia unite us all.

Image: BrooklynVegan

Think your childhood diaries are bad? At least you didn't post them on the Internet.

Though, nothing could be as disastrous as the pairing of Axl Rose and Lana del Rey.

Perhaps in an alternate history, things between them could even make sense.

Then again, Abe Lincoln could've also been a vampire hunter, so who knows?

We might as well live in the present and just attend thought-provoking readings instead.

Just make sure you bring along a correctly sharpened pencil to take notes with.

Don't be caught texting, or you could get a snappy response. Possibly from Madam Secretary?

In short, just behave. Readings can be hard work, so let the readers do their best.

Otherwise, you might as well just go record shopping instead.

Image source