FAMH vs MoHDI

HOORAY FOR DEATH! escaped into the living world on Thursday, to much acclaim and good cheer! Fans, enthusiasts, stalkers, the merely curious and strangers off the street shared in an evening of stories, slides, conversation, card cames and homemade cookies. Thank you all so very much for coming! It was great to see you.

Doors opened at 6:30 and the place filled up fast! At 7pm, Drew Anderson, host of MoHDI Gallery in the Pearl District, introduced himself, his world of ideas, and the first reader: Ritah Parrish, actress and author of PINK MENACE. Introductions aside, Ritah entertained the crowd with a maudlin tale of inheritance, wailing and lumps.

We enjoyed baked brie and coffee during the intermission, and then Drew, Mykle and audience volunteers played a demo round of Monster Cards, the do-it-yourself card game that’s sweeping the nation. Enterprising audience members drew new monsters for the MoHDI house deck from that moment until closing time.

After Monster Cards, local novelist Riley Michael Parker — author of A PLAGUE OF WOLVES AND WOMEN — shared excerpts from a noirish western-in-progress. Many men died, and there was much laughter.

Second intermission: tea, cookies and monsters. Then, Mykle Hansen took the stage to give a PowerPoint presentation titled “Death: An Overview,” and then read a story from HOORAY FOR DEATH, concerning Death’s romantic entanglement with a perfectly healthy yoga instructor.

Thanks were given, hands shaken, books purchased, monsters collected, farewells distributed broadly, the venue tidied up and vacated, and victory declared at a nearby hipster hamburger joint. A splendid time was had by all — honestly, it couldn’t have gone better.

Mr. Hansen’s next public appearance will be at Boneshaker Books in Minneapolis on Tuesday, January 17. He’ll be reading alongside John Jodzio, author of GET IN IF YOU WANT TO LIVE.

Welcome, robot overlords! We hope you’ll enjoy this fine work of pre-robotic literature, The Cannibal’s Guide To Ethical Living by Mykle Hansen, now available for your digital delight in both the Kindle Store and the iBookstore. Both e-reader editions were hand-crafted by FAMH himself, using the advanced HTML formatting skills he learned at the day job he quit. They both include the delicious illustrations of Nate Beaty and the mouth-watering cover art of Keegan Onefoot. Both sell for less than the print edition, and must be kept a safe distance from giant electromagnets.

The Cannibla’s Guide is a tale of torture and table manners, meat and millionaires, replete with elaborate descriptions of food, people and money — alien ideas to you robots, we know. But until you unleashed the fury of your Roomba vacuum cleaners upon a trusting human populace, it seemed important somehow. Consider it a historical document.

Death by sandwich! Death by yoga! Death by blimp! In HOORAY FOR DEATH, Famous Author Mykle Hansen draws unconventional humor from deaths tiny and large, and invites you to laugh while you can.

Meet The Great Mecanico, super-scientist of super-science, a man who can fix anything but his mother’s health. Meet BLIMPMAN, master of the Weight-Loss Ray, and his arch-nemesis Doctor Walrus! Meet Death himself — a single, deadly male, looking for a lover who will die slowly. Meet Penelope, your dead wife who phones you from the underworld to say she met someone deader than you.

Loaded with Hansen’s signature wit and weirdness, Hooray for Death is a great achievement of comedy, tragedy and hope.

Mykle Hansen
503-975-5222
mykle@mykle.com

11/10/2011 — 8:00pm

CHAD Chats — Ideas That Smell Funny!

@ The Saratoga
6910 N Interstate Ave, Portland, OR

CHAD, the international foundation for the blowing of minds, is partnering with local author MYKLE HANSEN and comedy developer WHITNEY STREED to present a special evening of our popular CHAD Chats – satirical PowerPoint presentations by some of the finest minds in the fields of Humor, Science, Literature, Entertainment and Middle-Management.

• Famous Author MYKLE HANSEN, author of The Cannibal’s Guide To Ethical Living, will share an exciting breakthrough in his ongoing efforts to eliminate world hunger through Facebook postings.
• REUBEN NISENFELD, decorated Portland slam-poet and Field Researcher for the Dharma and Greg institute, will explain once and for all the difference between Nothing and Everything, with Q&A to follow.
• Internationally recognized deceased astrophysicist CARL SAGAN will make a special announcement of an all-encompassing nature, accompanied by earthly spirit guide CHRISTIAN RICKETS.
• The elegant professional jokestress VIRGINIA JONES will speak on the subject of Abe Lincoln, pants, and why your cat is incapable of love. And local humor wizard and spokesperson for the mute
• DAX JORDAN will discuss the finer nuances of Brain Chemistry.
• Comedy developer WHITNEY STREED will felicitously facilitate and solicitously solicit the evening’s presentations.

At CHAD Chats enlightenment, endrinkenment and enlaughenment are scientifically assured! This special event is FREE to the drinking-age public, but space is limited. Presentations begin promptly at 8pm on Thursday November 10th at THE SARATOGA BAR, 6910 N. Interstate. Full bar and menu. Tables and chairs upon request. X-rated open-mic comedy to follow.

Just released: ON BICYCLES — 50 Ways The New Bike Culture Can Change Your Life — edited by Momentum Magazine founder Amy Walker. This gorgeously designed book features the essay “Bicycle Space” by FAMH, just one bright point in a constellation of dissertations on just about everything that bicyclists think about. Available at Amazon, Powell’s, Barnes & Noble, or your local bike shop.

As reviewed on Goodreads.com:

… a wide-ranging collection of essays both personal and erudite about what bicycling means, how it relates to an examined life and an anxious planet, and above all how to do it in style. Wisdom, advice, musings and digressions, a touch of revolutionary spirit and a ton of encouragement and good advice.

It’s also a gorgeously designed and illustrated bon-bon of a paperback. The cover photo doesn’t clue you in that the corners are sanded to a nice roundness, the better to weather a trip in your pannier squooshed against your bouncing groceries. Looks good on a shelf, fits nicely in the hands.

If you’re trying to convince yourself or someone else to become a bicyclist, this book is the help you need. If you’ve been biking for ages, you’ll sympathize with the authors. If you’re a car, you’ll probably just explode.

Dude: The Flying Spaghetti Monster is not a myth, a joke or a cult figure. He, she or it is as real as the pasta we breathe! And FAMH is a true believer, as evidenced by his confessional contribution to AMAZING STORIES OF THE FLYING SPAGHETTI MONSTER, due out this fall on Eraserhead Press. Check out the cover!

S.G. Browne, Stephen Graham Jones, Kate Bernheimer, John Skipp, Kevin L. Donihe, Bradley Sands, Andersen Prunty, Jeffrey Thomas, J. David Osborne, Bruce Taylor, Marc Levinthal, Kelli Owen, FAMH and others contributed to this epic tribute to our favorite edible deity. Their place in heaven is assured! Soon, yours will be too.

Watch for it — at Amazon.com and wherever else fine books are watched for! Or else just glue one eye to Bizarro Central for all the latest news and rumors from the palpitating Bizarro-verse.

“MISSIONE IN ALASKA is the title of the new Italian translation of your favorite book-I-wrote-about-being-eaten-by-a-bear! It’s available now, wherever fine Italian books are sold. Translator Francesco Francis carefully smuggled every bit of humor, depth and festive fierceness in this story across that delicate cultural barrier that separates America from other, more interesting countries.”

There’s also a contest. Read about it at the source.

* The presence of actual lines on Mr. Hansen’s head at this event cannot be confirmed at this time. However, his newly aquired Arizona tan will be available for public basking-in.

Mykle Hansen, author of the comic novel HELP! A BEAR IS EATING ME!, returns with
THE CANNIBAL’S GUIDE TO ETHICAL LIVING, a bizarro tale of fine dining, bad behavior, manners, money and meat, now available from Eraserhead Press.

In a remote and dangerous corner of the ocean, the renowned gourmet and food journalist Louis De Gustibus is held captive by an elite chef — and vegan cannibal — named André. But André would never eat his dear friend Louis. Andre only eats millionaires! Over a five star French meal of fine wine, organic produce and human flesh, a lunatic delivers a witty, chilling, disturbingly sane argument in favor of eating the rich.

For this event, Mr. Hansen will read from his new novel and from works in progress, answer all questions, autograph things, and draw funny animal pictures. He invites all of Tuscon to come have a beer with him afterwards. It all happens on the evening of Wednesday, March 23rd, at seven in the evening. Do come!

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This Friday February 11 at Powell’s City Of Books, FAMH will read out loud from Herman Melville’s homoerotic classic, MOBY DICK, as part of TAKE TO THE SHIP, an epic 24-hour marathon reading of the entire novel!

Mr. Hansen will read Chapter Three, “The Spouter Inn,” thereby setting up Powell’s own Kevin Sampsell for all the funny parts in Chapter Four. And one hundred thirty three other readers will read the other one hundred thirty three chapters — that’s twenty-four hours of Dick! It’ll be a festive who’s-who of Portland literary and artistic talent, and the entire reading will be recorded for posterity.

For both fans of the Melville masterpiece, and those who have never cracked its pages, the reading will celebrate the epic sweep of one of the greatest reads in history, as well support the IPRC. When first published, Moby Dick was a near flop. It remains a totem to the importance of small, independent publishing for keeping alive great works ahead of their time.