p.s. Hey. I didn't get anywhere enough sleep last night, so I'm sleepy. I'll be sleepy and yawning while I do this. This space is not the place. Otherwise, I want to forefront something. As most of you probably know, the splendid author James Champagne aka the lovable d.l. Sypha published a book of stories last year called 'Grimoire'. It was the subject of a post here, and it was one of my favorite books of last year. Until now, it's only been available as an eBook, but it is now obtainable as glorious solid object. Here's James/Sypha to explain: 'This second edition fixes a number of typos present in the free PDF one I released last year. It also features a 19 page interview with, well, me (and interviewing oneself is tiring work), along with a bonus 30 page story entitled "The Withering Echo."' I'm going to order my copy today, and I urge you to do the same, either today or soon. You can get it here. Now let me see if I can get through this with some semblance of dignity. ** David, The story I read was that Morrissey wanted to compete in the Eurovision Song Contest as England's official entrant, but the powers that be decided that his fame and etc. would cause that to be unfair and nixed his offer. Really, that Traveling Wilburys album is good? I would never have imagined. ** Daniel, Hello, Daniel. Thank you very much for stopping by. ** Esther Planas, Howdy, Esther. I hear you on the not being allowed to sleep thing, although my enemy was banal stress. Love, me. ** Chrstopher/ Mark, Boat race? I missed a boat race? It's a good thing I see tanned, fit bodies as a consolation prize. ** Doomed But Cheerful, Greetings and welcome and thank you. ** Crispin Best, Hi, Crispin. Welcome to this place. Nice call/find on the link. Let me ... Everyone, our new pal Crispin Best supplements the week's post with this trailer for a documentary called 'Sounds Like Teen Spirit' about a teen version of the Eurovision contest, and it's a nice thing, so check it out. Oh, hey, while I've got you. I had a quick beginning of a read/flip through of your ebook 'Hangul' just now, and I really liked it -- killer ending -- and I'll go read it closely and the other ebooks there when my brain is functioning. Everyone, one more Crispin Best thing. He and some other writers/ artists have fully readable ebooks on this pretty interesting site Unnecessary Press. Check that out too. Thanks for the riches. ** Bernard Welt, I do remember 'Persistent Voices'. I feel like I also remember 'Persistent Visions', but I think that's just my sleepiness thinking aloud. That's great about the readings, panel, and catalog. It's about time the poetry game made you hitch up your stockings. ** Kier, Oh, I think the super strong coffee thing was great. I think I'm going to do the same thing in lieu of having a handy coke connection. Oh, yeah, the Honore thing is cool. Uh, I guess I should save the main pooh for my Itmpw report, but, mm, well, I'm going to play a guy who lends money to a character played by Francois Sagat, and I have to make him do something to earn the money, and I'm supposed to figure out what that something should be and then tell Honore what I've decided, and that will constitute the scene. It's going to be at least semi-improvised. He wants to it be something to do with the themes of my writing/ books in some way. It's all very cool, but I'm nervous, of course. I'd never met him before, and he's a totally awesome guy, I must say. I did nothing Eastery. Just saw a couple of friends. That was plenty. Dirty scrabble ... like dirty as in dirty words? ** David Ehrenstein, No, I'm in a scene with Francois Sagat. You know who he is? He's kind of the big French porn star du jour or du recently. I met with Honore before I read your comment, but I will pass along your respect and ask him about Vecchiali. ** JW Veldhoen, Did you nail down the inker yet? It's 家瑩's friend 惠蘋惠蘋 I'm worried about. He had weird vibes. ** Pascal, Hey, P. I was visiting with Robert Gluck yesterday, and we were talking (warmly, natch) about you, so what a nice coincidence. You do sound busy, but I'm glad the novel's off, and of course I'm interested to hear what happens. 'L'Aventura' for Easter, very nice. Good to see you, sir. ** Dorna, Hey, Dorna! Oh, gosh, everything about that post was a deep and total honor for me, my friend. I'm glad you thought it was okay. I heard LA had a heck of an earthquake yesterday. How was that? Lots o' love to you. ** Tosh, Hey. If my understanding is correct, the translation is nowhere near complete. I believe Dorna is pausing to see if the grant comes through which, of course, will allow her to concentrate on the work. Nice to chat with you last night. ** Ken Baumann, Ah, you're such a divide straddler, god love you. I aspire to such straddling myself. Oh, yeah, that scene in 'Nog' is a knock out. No Easter candy?! Me neither. I did wish I had one of those big ridiculous supermarket cellophane-enclosed, overflowing Easter baskets full of crap yesterday. I think I would have even eaten a Peep maybe. ** Sypha, Hey, man. Yeah, I put the link and exciting announcement of 'Grimoire' mach 2 up top. Congrats, James! I'm excited to get mine. ** No more teenagekicks, Oh, that's your favorite Dylan song too? High five! ** Chris (British), I'd guess the degree of translator vis. degree of author is at least minutely different in each case. For fiction, a word for word translation surely wouldn't work at all unless it was a little kid's book or something. ** Steevee, Well, that seems okay, or, I mean, not knowing that Ken from Adam, it seems okay. Unless he's a diehard sociopath or something, and I'm assuming he's not. How did it go? ** Bill, Hey, Wow, that venue Miss Hecker looks totally amazing! Everyone, check out this very cool looking venue in Berlin where our friend Bill performed the other night. Yeah, obviously I'd love to see the video, if it worked out. Congrats, Bill! ** Thomas Moronic, Hey, T. A better time will come, man. Just know you can talk about it if you ever need to, okay? In the meantime, yeah, luxuriate in friends and writing and art. And, heck, if a slip-slide into Paris will help do the trick for you, we'd love to see and Frenchify you. Much love to you, man. ** Alex Rose, I've sort traded sickness for insomnia, but I suppose that's a bright side. Oh, yeah, the x-ing out of that Nazi gave me an amount pleasure that was almost kind of ugly. May Cork be your magic carpet, man. ** _Black_Acrylic, Glad the launch was a blast even if the soundtrack hit a sour note or two. Your set-list is sonically illustrated, awesome. I'll spin it. Maybe it'll help me wake up. Everyone, Ben Robinson's sonically illustrated set list for his dj turn at the Yuck n Yum launch shebang is spookifying, uplifting, and here. ** Jose, Oh, yeah, man I saw/read your guest-post over at Transductions, and it's great, and I wasn't even jealous or anything, ha ha. Everyone, our ultra-talented maestro of a friend and d.l. Jose did a guest-post for the great Transduction site over the weekend entitled 'Jose presents…Bold New Bodies for a Brave New World: David Altmejd’s The Index and Wangechi Mutu’s This you call civilization?', and it's really, really good, and it's right here. Go look, read, savor, etc. Awesome, man. ** Lux, Wow, hey, Lux! A rare and gleaming pleasure! Favorite bands right now? Hm, I can't think of any big, new surprises, but I'm very sleepy at the moment. I'll dwell on the question. I like Vice Magazine. I don't always pick it up for no reason, but, yeah, it's a cool magazine for sure. The theater piece progresses. A week from today, I go to Brest for eight days of very crucial, hard work on it, and I think I'll be able to have a more objective opinion after that. Great if you can come to Avignon, obviously! Oh, you have a blog, and it's looking hot and sweet. I'll dig into it as soon as I take a nap or something. Everyone, Lux, a divine filmmaker and one of the very longest lived and most distinguished of d.l.s to boot, has just started a blog called 'Lux Than Zero', and, knowing him, it's an instant bookmark waiting to happen. Start your addiction by clicking this. Terrific to see you, my man! ** Inthemostpeculiarway, Yeah, but one of the definitions of beauty is that it's a fragile thing that won't last, I think. Or I'm weird. Or I'm very, very sleepy and thinking like a zombie. Probably. Probably the only book of mine that Hollywood wouldn't fuck totally up is 'God Jr.', which is not so coincidentally the only book of mine that's under option by an actual Hollywood-style movie producer. I haven't seen 'Factory Girl', no. I heard too many bad things about it. I met with the director of that film because he was going to make a movie about, ugh, the JT Leroy thing, but I think that project fell through, thank God. My weekend. Let me see what I can pull out of my sleepiness. Well, Saturday I met with Christophe Honore. I already mentioned a few things about that to Kier. CH and his really rather attractive young assistant and I had a coffee at this cafe I like in the Gare de l'Est. He told me about the film and what I would do. I said I totally will do it. I have to think of some things to do because the film is somewhat improvised, and that's nerve wracking. The scene I'm in will be shot a week from this Friday. I'll have to train back from the rehearsals in Brest for a day to do it, but Gisele is fine with that. Anyway, I liked him a lot. I think we got along really well. And, yeah, he wants to make a movie of one of my novels at some point in the future. So that was the highlight of Saturday by far. I can't remember anything else that happened. Yesterday I had a nice visit, food, and coffee with my friend the wonderful writer Robert Gluck at this very cool apartment in the Marais where he's staying. He's here in Paris to do two readings. One of them is tomorrow night, and I'm going to attend that one. So that was cool. We talked about writing and about our mutual writer comrades and about the sublimity of Paris and so on. And then I walked home, and, as I walked, the skies opened, and by the time I got home, I was totally drenched, and I think that made my cold return because I felt shitty and coughed a lot all the rest of the day. When I became dry, I had a coffee with Scott Treleaven. Very nice, of course. I ate some food that evening, tried to work but felt too shitty to work. Oscar B. and Kiddiepunk got back from Sicily last night, and they called me, and we will all restart our coffeeing and adventuring today. I then crashed, but I slept badly and woke up for good at 4:3o am, which is why I'm a wreck. That was it, I'm afraid. Monday awaits us both now, and you first. ** Justin, I hope you get that sewing machine you want. Is it the deadline time yet? Oh, I get those mysterious, indefinable things that make me miserable a fair amount, yeah. I think I got one last night, which is why I couldn't sleep. My reaction to that feeling is getting stressed out. I don't curl up in a ball, I stare and bite my fingernails. So, yeah, I think I understand at least a little. The good thing is -- at least with me -- that when it's indefinable, it has no staying power and it either goes away pretty soon, or I figure out what the problem is exactly, and that always helps. ** Blendin, I'm sorry about your candidate withdrawing. I bet she didn't think she was smart and interesting enough for you. I bet you that was it. I bet you. Glad about the flurrying and grids (yum) and Fibonacci numbers (intriguing). I saw Beakman's World at least once. Oh, or I might have just seen a bunch of TV promos for it, I'm not sure. But I know who you mean, and that's all that matters. That's pretty darned cool, man. You should open a haberdashery component to the newsstand. Don't ask me why. It's just one of those genius or psychic ideas you get when you're sleep deprived. ** Misanthrope, If only 'American Idol' was even a tiny little fraction as fun and trashy as 'Eurovision'. I'll try to start noting which posts lure the spambots to the blog. I hadn't paid attention to that. Wait, weren't the last batch of them attached to Robbe-Grillet post? That makes no sense at all. ** Math, Your macaroni & cheese temptations were all I could see. They were like blinding lights in the middle of your comment. I think maybe when you're sleep deprived, macaroni & cheese must take on some aspect or ingredient or something or other that seems cure-like or something. Like it brings out the animal in you, like when animals instinctively know they should chew on a certain plant when they're sick or something. Oh, wow, I'm getting really sleepy, aren't I. I'm just blathering. I hope there aren't too many more comments left because I might say something I will regret. ** The Dreadful Flying Glove, The sad thing was that when Jean-Paul Gaultier did the 'Eurovision' sound-hosting gig a couple of years ago, he was not cynical in the slightest. He gushed and gushed and gushed. There was no irony. It might have been an utterly false gush delivered by him because he was told to or because he thought he must, but he loved and loved every piece of shit act. There were articles in the French papers the next day saying he had completely destroyed his credibility, and that he was finished. He wasn't finished, of course, but it is hard to look at him now. It was grim, Mr, Glove. Oh, while I have you, your magnificent guest post will appearing on this very blog on Saturday, the 17th, and what a weekend that will be! ** Put The Lotion In The Basket, Ah, there you are, you gift giver you. (I'm very sleepy, maybe half-aware, not fully responsible for my poorly constructed thoughts and sentences). That said, it sounds like the skate and surf shop investigation and querying was quite a total success, no? I mean, you have really promising, multiple possibilities there. Very, very cool. Hm, does all this stuff starting to happen give you second thoughts at all about moving to Spain? It made me wonder. It just seems like things are really happening in a new, really sharp way for you in London lately, you know? Anyway, I'll go try to take a nap now, and a downpour of respect of love to you before I do. ** Bollo, Hey, man. I'm falling asleep. Literally, I was just reading your comment, and then, boing, I discovered myself waking up from two seconds of deep sleep. All of which is to say, I'm about good for a 'hey, man' at the moment and not much else. I will go check out your Father Ted links later, though. I know nothing about him/that. Take care. ** Okay, I really have to go. Uh, the post, right ... Ai was a really forceful and kind of startling poet whom I liked a lot when I was a younger poet, and I still do, actually. She died about two weeks ago, and I thought that if you guys don't already know her poetry, you maybe should. Today is a start, in that case. Bye, zzzz, yawn, and love and etc. to you until tomorrow.