After only a few weeks, I’ve decided to shut down the Newspaper Blackout Poems blog. With work, three different comics I’m working on, and doing my own poems, I just don’t have time for any other project. (I’ll still be posting some on this site now and then.) Thanks to everyone who sent me their poems, and I hope that those interested will go on doing their own.
Today a woman called and wanted the 1-800 number for Red Delicious Apples.
I had to calmly explain to her, with several patrons turning their heads to listen, that “red delicious” was a VARIETY of apple that farmers grow, not a BRAND.
I think this information blew her mind.
Clouds have lifted around our place. I think we’ve figured out what we’re gonna do for the next couple of years, and that always feels good. My wife and I are two people who like to have a battle plan.
I was reading a Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi book in Half Price yesterday, and he was talking about happiness/sadness in terms of mental entropy. I like that idea a whole lot. Our brain wants to take chaos and make some kind of order out of it. With art, it’s the same thing. Putting order — our style, our worldview, whatever — to the mess of experience.
Anyways, I found this doodle/sketch in an old book, and it just felt right for today.
drawn on our trip to Austin
If you wondered why no posts, here’s the lowdown:
Wednesday morning I catch some type of 24-hour puke bug.
Thursday morning my wife puts me on a plane to Austin, Texas that she Pricelined only hours earlier. It’s a last-minute attempt to figure out the grad school situation. We eat barbeque at Stubb’s, shop on South Congress, swim in the Sheraton pool, take a look at the architecture department at the University of Texas, hang out on Sixth Street, and watch the bats fly on the South Congress Bridge.
Friday afternoon we’re back in Cleveland.
Not sure there’s anyway to process that kind of whirlwind madness. Couple of thoughts: It feels incredibly dorky to be named Austin in a city called Austin. This dorkiness is somewhat offset by the supreme coolness of the city and the warmness of the weather. Airport security is a joke. Quite literally, in this case.
Got back to Cleveland, and even though we were exhausted, we went out with Meg’s parents to see writer Rick Cleveland (West Wing, Six Feet Under, Cleveland native) do his one-man show, “My Buddy Bill,” at the Coventry Unitarian church. It was hysterical, and it’s gonna be a filmed special for Comedy Central real soon. Here’s a clip on Youtube.
My father-in-law did a great writeup of Rick in the PD yesterday.
So anyways, there you have it. More to come.
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