 The famous Chicago skyline AWP, the 2012 conference of the Association of Writers & their Programs, cometh nigh upon the face of Chicago. If you’re visiting the Windy City this week for writerly reasons — inspiration, networking, casual sex or just to borrow money — here’s how you can get lit the FAMH way:
- THURSDAY: Arrive, check in, pin credentials to various parts of your body. Track down FAMH in the Dealer’s Room and ask him about the $1 Book Blurb Special. If it’s not too early in the day for future shock, the 9:00 am panel on THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT sounds cheery. After lunch, be sure to check out the BEYOND PULP panel at 1:30.
- THURSDAY EVENING: After a day feasting on High Literature, come let Eraserhead Press wash the normal out of your mouth at THE BIZARRO HOUR — 8pm at the KnockBox Cafe. Featuring FAMH and talented Bizarro readers Garret Cook, Andersen Prunty and Michael Allen Rose, plus the musical hosting of The Pop Tarts. Prizes, snacks, kittens and more! If you’ve ever wondered what Bizarro is, you’ll leave wondering more.
- THURSDAY NIGHT: Come sing along to ultimate small press lung-wrestling at the 2012 AWP KARAOKE IDOL at The Beauty Bar! OR: head to Simone’s Bar for the tail end of the Six Small Presses reading. If you’re lucky, you can still catch John Jodzio!
- FRIDAY: So many panels! Start your morning with oblivion at the APOCALYPSE NOW panel at 10:30, or just wander from room to room. Remember, you can always barge right on in to any in-progress discussion. Tell anyone who scowls that you’re looking for Mararet Atwood’s headscarf.
- FRIDAY EVENING: The Bread Loaf Waiters Reading at the Greed Door Tavern. There’s writers on ever corner in this burg, but how often do you get to listen to waiters for a whole night? Assuming you’re not a busboy, I mean. (If anyone wants to schedule a Former Busboy’s Reading Night, FAMH will be there with a hot towel!)
- FRIDAY NIGHT: The McSweeney’s party may have some booze left if you hurry. It’s Friday night, and hundreds of drunk poets are loose in the streets of Chicago! Print out the offsite events listing and staple it to your pants. This will be an evening to remember!
- SATURDAY: Remember nothing, feel like ass. In the A.M, sleep in and/or vomit convulsively. Then clean your shit up and head back to the hotel for the Richard Brautigan tribute panel MINE IS CLOUDS. It’s not until noon. You can do it! After that, find a friend in the Dealers Room and curl up for a nap under their table. FAMH promises not to wake you.
- SATURDAY EVENING: You’re starving! There’s a happy hour at 5, also at The Beauty Bar. If you missed John Jodzio on Thursday, go now! Also Chelsea Martin and Amelia Gray. And snacks! And drinks!
- SATURDAY NIGHT: Then, follow Amelia Gray over to the Ear Eater reading. There she will read some more, and Kevin Sampsell will read from A COMMON PORNOGRAPHY. (If Amelia Gray accuses you of stalking her, burst into tears and run away.) Later there will be a million parties, all secret. When you find one, post details here!
There are a million AWP stories in the windy city. FAMH is sticking to this one. We’ll see you there!
 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.
At his eponymous blog, Jay Slatyon-Joslin interviews FAMH about comedy, Kindles, Bizarro, the proper length of novels and more.
JUST ADDED!
Join us at Boneshaker Books on Tuesday, January 17th at 7pm for an irreverent evening of life and death in literature. Portland author and Powerpoint artist Mykle Hansen will read stories from his latest book HOORAY FOR DEATH! He will also present the brief slideshow “Death: An Overview.” In counterpoint, local literature superstar John Jodzio will share stories from GET IN IF YOU WANT TO LIVE, his new illustrated short story collection from Paper Darts Press that Fred Armisen called “lovely and captivating.”
About HOORAY FOR DEATH!
“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. Loaded with Hansen’s signature wit and weirdness, this book is a great achievement of comedy, tragedy and hope.”
Mykle Hansen’s inability to have a normal reaction is key to the popularity of his strange fiction and neo-gonzo journalism. He is the author of the tragic comedy HELP! A Bear Is Eating Me!, the acclaimed short-story collection Eyeheart Everything, and Rampaging Fuckers Of Everything On The Crazy Shitting Planet Of The Vomit Atmosphere, winner of the 2008 Wonderland Book Award. Hooray For Death, his latest effort to cheer you up, arrives in January 2012.
About GET IN IF YOU WANT TO LIVE:
“From bears hooked on sex outside the species, to hookers hooked on a neighbor’s bomb chili recipe, Jodzio shanghais readers in the course of only a few pages and sucks them into 19 different gonzo worlds populated by intensely unapologetic characters. Each story is accompanied by a specially curated illustration by local and international artists. The entire book was designed using the eye-popping aesthetic Paper Darts Magazine is known for.”
John Jodzio is a winner of the Loft-McKnight Fellowship. His stories have appeared in One Story, Barrelhouse, Opium and numerous other places in print and online. He’s the author of the short story collection, If You Lived Here You’d Already Be Home (Replacement Press) and the recently released collection Get In If You Want To Live (Paper Darts Press). He lives in Minneapolis. Find out more at www.johnjodzio.net.
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.
A new collection of witty, cheerful, light-hearted stories
about death, dying and being deceased. From the back cover:
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.
Official release event and upcoming author tour TBD, but you can buy it today in the popular dead-tree format — 100% compatible with the book reading firmware already embedded in your face.
JUST RELEASED! FAMH discusses long titles and awkward pauses with the man known only as Goat! At the bi-monthly interview blog Mourning Goats. A smorgasbyatch of other fine interviews also await you there.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
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.
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