i am very pleased to announce that hogan and myself, along with the rest of the band, will be appearing at a handful of border’s bookstores. i’m excited about this for a couple of reasons. one, hogan and i will get to meet a number of folks who have perhaps read the book at this point and would have a few questions they’d like to ask or be intrigued to hear hogan and i discuss various portions of the book. and two, the band has really been wanting to play some of the stripped down acoustic oriented bluegrass numbers in a live setting. so that’s what we’re going to do. hogan and i will talk a bit, which should be interesting since neither of us are orators nor do we posess good filters, and the band will lug in their acoustic instruments, eg. acoustic guitar, banjo, toy piano, xylophone, fiddle, mandolin, a crazy noise making device that looks like this:

all i’m saying is this is going to be a hoot. and did i mention it is free? well of course it is, seeing as an instore event is designed to get people “into a store” in hopes of eliciting the purchase of items from them, so it would be redundant and disadvantageous to charge for such a thing. but i’m just saying free is good. i mean we’re playing music and we’ll get to hang out and such. and we’ll sign stuff too, i mean, if you’re into that sort of thing, you know, people writing on stuff you own and such. now the larger picture is that if we have lots of folks show up, border’s will think we’re really neat and stock more of our books, thinking other people might like to buy something made by neat people like us. and we think that’s a good thing. but i mean, who doesn’t want to hear noises coming from that thing pictured above, or hear hogan throwing down some boot-stomping nasty fiddle, or jack parker working a banjo silly, or mike d throwing down on a tiny toy piano? no one! unless you’re crazy inside.

now here are the dates/times/locations confirmed so far:

austin tx, oct 6th – 5:30pm Borders 4477 South Lamar

tulsa ok, oct 6th – 10pm following the concert Borders 8015 South Yale

san antonio tx, oct 19th 5pm Borders 255 E Basse Rd, Suite 350

houston tx, oct 21st 2pm Borders Fountains on the Lake 12788 Fountains on the Lake Circle

there will probably only be a couple of more added so please, if you’re any where near these places come out and we’ll give these border’s folks a hoedown/book signing/thing they’ll not soon misplace from memory.

hope to see you soon!!!

awesome.

ok, so, i know, this game is super old and appears in the back of practically every newspaper and possibly even, people, or us, or tv guide - i am without ignorance of this detail – however, today, on a flight from portland oregon to dallas texas, i “discovered” it.

i have seen others whittling away at these spordadically numbered boxes, in fact on a previous flight i sat catty-corner, across the aisle and one row back, from a couple of pleasant elder women who poured nonstop over books of these puzzles (no, “puzzle” does no justice…um…”enigmatic conundrums!” is better.) i remember distinctly thinking, “ah, how sweet – old ladies and their puzzle books. yawn.”

today, this very afternoon, while midair, flipping through a copy of the complimentary airline magazine located in the seatback pocket in front of me, i found myself reading the description for the game sudoku (pronounced: sūdoku): “the aim is to fill in numerals from 1 to 9 so that every horizontal and vertical line and every large 3-by-3 square contains only one instance of each number.” i thought, “hmm…” and soon myself, and toni (my wife) were pointing with black ink pen, whispering numbers. it was glorious. it is a drug. oh my word! sudoku!!! i can’t quit. i have been working these sudoku puz…, sorry, “enigmatic conuncrums!” nonstop since. if you have not given it a go, try this, and behold its psychosomatic effects:

please submit your completed answers below in text form.

this happens every time i help with the mailing of the orders from our store website – i get a tad emotional. i’m such a tender soul. anyway, so i posted this: “buy the book/cd combo from our website for a fantastic price and we’ll sign the books,” thinking that, you know, that’s what authors do – sign books, and that this was a good idea, and it will add to the beauty of the world, and such, and so on. well, i neglected to inform jamie (our friend ben’s wife) who does all of our website mail order stuff. this would be what is referred to as, “a massive oversight.” so, i show up to sign the books and jamie and our good friend holly have gotten a jump on things and had already packaged a heck of a lot of orders. which is great. except that all of the books that are now in sealed packages must be removed and signed and i have to tell jamie this. so i say, “hey! how are you two? wow. looks like a lot of stuff huh? man. wow. you guys are really working. man. hey. ha, the funniest thing. you know, uh, i, uh, see, well the thing is i mentioned on my xanga, and we sent out an email, and well, we told everyone that if they bought a book from us, we’d sign it, since you know, that’s what authors do – they sign books, so you see, …” jamie threw something at me. i couldn’t tell what it was because she threw it so hard but, so anyway, i got busy signing books and helped jamie and holly reseal all the previously packed envelopes. here, look at us, we’re really working it.

just after this photo was taken i had the little emotional episode i mentioned in the primary portion of this post. i just can’t help but get a tad overwhelmed that people would actually spend their hard earned money on something i made, i mean obviously i care deeply about it but why you would is beyond me. thank you. thank you so much. i can’t tell you what it means.

on a side note, for all of those who have already read the book (you know who you are) is this not the most insane thing ever! [LINK TO THE MOST INSANE THING EVER!] what have we done?!!! WHAT HAVE WE DONE??!!!

This is awesome, and I am therefore excited about it. Some of you may have heard, some of you may not have, but here it is. The new book by Mike Hogan and myself is being released today, Sept. 12th! The title is: Everybody Wants to go to Heaven, but Nobody Wants to Die or (the eschatology of bluegrass).
If that weren’t exciting enough, we are offering a special package deal on our website where you can get an autographed copy of the book and a copy of B Collision for the happy low price of 15 dollars. Go check it out HERE and benefit from our lunacy!
We are super happy about this, and we sincerely hope all of you guys will be, too!

ok. if that last post brought to you a terrific weight of sadness, here is something that may restore to you the joy of your salvation.

what do you think?

JESUS CAMP

while on the topic of summer reading and following my prompt burst of exuberance, in regard to one david foster wallace, (a brief confession: in all actuality, i’d be quite hesitant in my recommending the rightful reading of infinite jest to a great number of associates, as it is a tome whose investment many would find best spent elsewhere – unless you plainly obtain pleasure from lexicological discovery and brief literary excursions into game theory and trigonometry, in which case, your speculation of time and currency will be suitably satisfied.) i now feel the need to offer recompense for the potentially misleading and unquestionably preceding post and adamantly insist upon your immediate purchase of a book whose pages will fly beneath the fingers and leave a most decidedly pleasing grin upon the face.

the book i’d most highly recommend from my summer reading is “body piercing saved my life: inside the phenomenon of christian rock” written by one andrew beaujon.

andrew beaujon is/was/is a contributing senior writer for spin magazine which, according to their website, purports both “music for life” and “reaching cool, trend setting young adults.” here, observe diagram:

andrew has also written for a number of other periodicals of significance such as the washington post, the washington city paper, the guardian, and salon. the book, which released in april, is a very fair look, by a self professed “outsider,” into not only this genre of music but also the “christian” subculture that this genre flourishes within. it is rare that you have the occasion of someone taking such time and effort to peek in on you, to see what exactly it is you are up to, and then to offer what it is that they have justly observed.

at some point during the writing of his book andrew called to ask me a number of provoking questions that i in turn attempted to the best of my ability to provide answers to. there appears a fantastic index in the back of the book that, when i first saw a copy, i turned to. i browsed for my name. sure enough, there it was. i turned to the first page number listed. here is my first appearance in the book: “when stryper came along i was like, ‘holy crap!’” and it only gets better. and so i say that you simply must go immediately to your local book store or amazon.com and pick one of these things up. i’d loan you my copy but right now another friend of mine has it. i promise you, you will be both pleased and provoked. pleased – that someone took the time and presented the current scene so fairly with insightfulness, humor and humility. provoked – to think about the culture we breath in and out so readily with little thought and much assumption.

but most importantly, andrew rarely wears bandanas on his head. here, observe the following:

you can check out some of andrew’s spin features and music reviews here.

for immediate purchase and to retain my friendship (as it will ensure that we have things in common for days on end… ):
body piercing saved my life: inside the phenomenon of christian rock

this summer i’ve been reading this book “infinite jest” by david foster wallace. i’ve read many of wallace’s essays in the past and really enjoy his writing, but this book – that sort of put him on the map as a youthful-intelligent-writer-to-be-watched, eventually leading to a MacArthur Fellowship – is incredibly dense and has been sitting on the floor beside my bed for two years. i had just finished up the bulk of writing for “everybody wants to go to heaven…” and finally picked it from the floor thinking it a perfect diversion and suitable companion for the many plane flights this summer. it has been.

today i came across a speech given by wallace at a symposium sponsored by the PEN American Center in New York City to celebrate the publication of a new translation of kafka’s “The Castle”. toward the end of the speech i came across what i found to be one of the basic tenets of the re-articulation of christian faith that we’ve been attempting over the past number of years, particularly the portion referencing the “horrific struggle”. as well, it gave great insight into much of infinite jest’s thematic intent. i’ve included it here for your inspection:

“And it is this, I think, that makes Kafka’s wit inaccessible to children whom our culture has trained to see jokes as entertainment and entertainment as reassurance. It’s not that students don’t ‘get’ Kafka’s humor but that we’ve taught them to see humor as something you get — the same way we’ve taught them that a self is something you just have. No wonder they cannot appreciate the really central Kafka joke — that the horrific struggle to establish a human self results in a self whose humanity is inseparable from that horrific struggle. That our endless and impossible journey toward home is in fact our home. It’s hard to put into words up at the blackboard, believe me. You can tell them that maybe it’s good they don’t ‘get] Kafka. You can ask them to imagine his art as a kind of door. To envision us readers coming up and pounding on this door, pounding and pounding, not just wanting admission but needing it, we don’t know what it is but we can feel it, this total desperation to enter, pounding and pushing and kicking, etc. That, finally, the door opens…and it opens outward: we’ve been inside what we wanted all along. _Das ist komisch_.”

but then i must show you this:

[photo appearing on the back cover of my summer reading - “infinite jest”.]
i am wondering what color the bandana is and whether it matches or compliments the turtleneck.

this guy stole my mailbox. seriously. so uncool.

click here to watch