The Triumph of the BookFest

Posted on September 11, 2007 by ubu507

Wow – yesterday I was too wiped to type, but I’m glad to say the Fifth Annual Kerrytown BookFest went off very well. Attendance was good, steady and plenty, the weather started dicey but turned beautiful, and the tents weren’t big enough to hold the overflowing crowds for the author panels and children’s activities. Woo hoo.

One thing that really chuffed me was that the Ann Arbor News featured us prominently in the calendar and book events listings on Sunday and had photos of the events on Monday. Dag, it made me feel like Mark Maynard for a second. (Minus the Ypstipanties, although I love that Ypsipanties – not for women only ad where he says "I didn’t just invent Ypsipanties – I wear them around the house." But that’s got to be a butt double on the close up.)

I was also very pleased that when I talked to the book sellers they seemed to love the event and feel very invested in it, that it’s an event celebrating the book community that they want to support. At most book shows the vendors start tearing down and heading home at least a half an hour before the putative closing time, but everybody at the Fest stayed to five and beyond, not only because people were still there and buying, but simply because they were having fun and hanging with their peers. Of course that meant that myself and the tear down crew had to stay a little later, but we, the few, the proud, the extremely sore and sweaty, didn’t mind. Kudos to my protesting progeny, their friends, brother John Morgan, my soul sister Jeanne Joesten, and her son Nathan for their brave rearguard activity.

One of the many infamous comments made by the Drum Majorette selected to head the first edition of the other Festival five years ago was This is not about selling books, which, as you might imagine, did not endear her or her production to booksellers, authors, publishers or pretty much anyone else who works on a for profit basis. Well, the Kerrytown BookFest is about selling books, and we’re proud of it. But it’s also about making books, writing books, reading books, collecting books and all varieties of bibliomania, not to mention fish printing, and I’m proud to be a small cog in it.

Rest assured that normal (i.e. abnormal) artistic UBUtivity will return tomorrow.

Love Ya,

Yr Pal,

UBU 

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Final Fest Drumbeat

Posted on September 8, 2007 by ubu507

Hey, I’m working on a steaming slice of Hypnagogic Journal for you all, but it still needs a little icing, so I’ll I just beat the drum for the 5th Annual Kerrytown Book Fest.

http://kerrytownbookfest.org/

Thanks to my wife I’ve had a first hand look at the struggle it takes to put something like this on, especially when it’s done, as Dr, Johnson said in his memorable introduction to the first dictionary, with:

…little assistance of the learned, and without any patronage of the great; not in the soft obscurities of retirement or under the shelter of academic bowers, but amidst inconvenience and distraction, in sickness and sorrow.

And to this you can add the neglect of the myopic media and the sneers of the ypsipantied hipsters of this world. So here’s to Robin, the Hollanders, Gene, Bill, Jamie L., and everybody else who worked hard to make the Fest the smash hit I know it’s going to be tomorrow. 

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The Proliferation of the P.O.D. People!

Posted on September 7, 2007 by ubu507

Help! The proliferation of the P.O.D. (Print on demand) people is becoming alarming! The trend seems to be that more people are writing books and fewer people are reading them, which, taken to its logical conclusion, is going to be hard on the book industry, except for the vanity publishers who profit from humanity’s seemingly endless (and generally hopeless) desire to be famous authors. Here’s the UBU monthly rundown of the choicest titles from very, very small publishers and self-publishers. Looking at this list makes one thing clear – Jesus is evidently inspiring a lot of people to self-publish really weird books that nobody will ever read – but I’m sure he has his reasons! These descriptions are provided by the authors and/or publishers:

Apocalypse Fire

The Great Tribulation and Wrath of God

Michael D. Fortner

With exceptional insight and the ability to figure things out, Fortner has written an astonishing new interpretation of Bible prophecy. He shows that there is an asteroid headed for Earth that is named in the Bible. Its impact with Earth in 2036 will be the trigger that begins World War III. 344 pp. (Christian) Great Plains Press

 

Bubba Goes to Alabama

Kenneth David Mobley

On the eighth day God created Bubba, whose prayers are answered when on the ninth day God creates Lucy. Ultimately, Bubba is fast-for-warded into the future to Alabama, where he is befuddled by motorized vehicles, television sets, modern man’s fascination with sports – and the fact that people there seem to only look for God on one day out of the week. 220 pp. (Fiction) Thomas Max Publishing

 

Divine Thoughts

Jo L. Harris

Creatively intertwining her strong Christian faith, her paramedical professional background, and her love for the literary arts, this first-time author has successfully woven an interesting and engaging tapestry of commentary about the spiritual significance of the DNA code and how it relates to the concepts of self-worth and personal fulfillment. 132 pp. (Practical Life) Xulon Press

 

Jesus’ Diet for All the World

Gene Wall Cole

Edmund Bordeaux Szekely’s amazing diet found deep within the Vatican vaults is the subject of this work by Cole – a must-read for those who are looking for real solutions to diet and health issues. 180 pp. (Diet/Health/Fitness) Awakening Imagi-NATION

 

The Rich Hiker’s Guide to Walking with God

Paul Krautmann

This inspiring and informative guide starts by looking at the basic attitude and approach Christians are to have in their walk with God, and examines a number of pitfalls and potholes. Krautmann also provides some guidelines for spiritual foot care. 216 pp. Xulon Press

 

And here’s my nomination for the most scintillating product description:

The Danville Diaries, Volume IV

Warren B. Dahk Knox

The author examines 1862 and 1863, a time of horrendously bloody conflict that resulted in two parts of the nation sacrificying (sic) its finest sons without the prospect of any acceptable indemnifications from the victor. 408 pp. (Military History) Black Forest Press

 

This wins best title, hands down:

Some Chemicals That Cause Tumors of the Kidney or Urinary Bladder in Rodents and Some Other Substances, 1st Ed.

 

Finally, let’s hear it for Xulon Press, the Christian Vanity Press (wait a minute, isn’t that a deadly sin?) for bringing us two of today’s entries, God bless ‘em.

 

Yr Pal,

UBU

 

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Reply to the mighty Maynard

Posted on September 6, 2007 by ubu507

O.K., so on Markmaynard.com he posted an announcement of the upcoming Winter Shadow Art Fair and I made this comment:

Mark — shouldn’t you tag this as "shadow art fair"? You have zero entries for that topic. Not that you need the publicity — I’m sure the Ann Arbor News will cover it like the Moon landing again, no matter how many times you have it a year. Have you thought of maybe going weekly? Shadows happen every day you know.

To which he, rather more snarkily than necessary, replied:

 

My fantasy is that every Ann Arbor store owner is as pissed off as you are, Ubu, over the fact that the News sends a reporter out to Ypsi two times a year to cover the Shadow Art Fair. It really gets under your skin, doesn’t it?

My reply was:

Wow, you have such a rich fantasy life…

Which, you gotta admit, isn’t a bad snappy comeback. But I will amplify here on RADIOFREEUBU, free from the sniping of the Ypsilanti Blog god’s dittoheads and secure in the knowledge that the czar of the Ypsipanty never lowers himself to read the blogs of a mere UBU and say what I was going to say but held back to avoid needless rancor:

What really pisses me off is that the Kerrytown BookFest, an event that has three times as many exhibitors and three times the attendance of the Shadow art fair gets a third of the coverage, when all a Ann Arbor News reporter would have to do is walk down the street. Maybe that will change this year….

There, I said it and I feel better. I’ve got nothing against the Shadow Art Fair of Ypsilanti. I’m sure it’s desperately hip and all, and it has a great hook in trading on the name of The Ann Arbor Art Fair, but, really, in my ever humble opinion, the Kerrytown Bookfest deserves at least as much ink.

So don’t forget to come to the Kerrytown BookFest Sunday 11-5

 http://kerrytownbookfest.org/

STELLA will be there so you know it’s cool!

 

 

 

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Come to the Kerrytown BookFest!

Posted on September 5, 2007 by ubu507

I’m going to lead with this statement COME TO THE KERRYTOWN BOOKFEST!!!

http://kerrytownbookfest.org/

Sunday, September 9 11- a.m. to 5 p.m. At the Ann Arbor Farmer’s Market. There will be 130plus exhibitors, including booksellers, artisans, authors, book art demonstrators, librarians, etc., as well as a full slate of author panels, children’s activities and other bookish stuff. I won’t mention the workshops at the unique Hollander’s school because they’re already full, but if you want to help me, the rest of the organizers and a crew of bohemian young ladies and gents move the tables at five I’d appreciate it because the boy scouts crapped out on us!

 

I was actually going to write a tell all article about the Kerrytown Bookfest and the Ann Arbor Book Festival (not affiliated), exposing the backstage dirt and origins of both of them. But guess what, I’m not. I guess it’s because the Ann Arbor News has finally deigned to admit that the Kerrytown Bookfest exists and is a vibrant success. Last time we asked them to write an article about it they said Why? We covered it last year. But I’ll cut off that rant right there because they actually had a feature in the paper Sunday. I guess we’ll see if they have a follow up, but that could be too much to ask for one year. I mean it’s not like we’re the Ypsilanti Shadow Art Fair or anything.

Our store first got involved with the BookFest because Gene Alloway, a founder, owner of Motte and Bailey, and one of the nicest guys in a business which is filled with a lot of, uh, eccentrics, asked me to. Pretty much all of the independent bookstores in town (except for the one that was running it) had had a bad experience with the Ann Arbor Book Festival, so there was a little spite factor involved. But when we got there spite was left in the dust. There’s just such a good, positive feeling about the Fest, a vibe if you will, and we felt it right away. It’s like the best of Ann Arbor, communal, informal and driven by a passion for books and ideas, and all our favorite people were there with smiles on their faces. As professional book event presenters we saw the author panels were the one part that didn’t work. There was no direction from the moderator, and, as a seat filler, trying to make it look like there was somebody in the crowd, I sat there in a big, hot tent, listening to a few local authors gripe about how tough it is to be published. I went back to our table and said to my wife that they should just eliminate the author events, but she had a gleam in her eye and said No, they should just make them better. A few years later there I was, moderating a panel with the nationally syndicated comic authors Jeff Mallett of Frazz and Dave Coverly of Speed Bumps in front of a SRO crowd that filled the tent and spilled out all around.

We’re not really a book show type shop – we’re more set up for rabid readers than rabid collectors and the Fest is now the only show we do, not for money, because we like it. (Though we will deign to take your money if your so inclined. This is about selling books after all.) Gene came up to me at a library book sale and asked if I wanted to be on the board a while ago, and like the true committee-phobe that I am I offered up my wife in my place. It’s been both inspiring and a little depressing to watch her and the rest of the gang struggle to get the thing going in the face of the financial neglect of the high and mighty and the silence of some portions of the media, but they’ve pulled it off to increasing attendance and participation each year. There’s some great panels and great authors like Loren D. Estleman, Elizabeth Kostova, Eric Villegas, and my own panel Midwest Noir with a bunch of up and coming newer writers whose books I really dig: Marcus Sakey, Sean Chercover, Steven Sidor and Mitchell Bartoy.

The day itself is simply magic, and if you have any sense you’ll be there. This year also marks the return of Gregory D. Anthony OFFICIAL PHOTOGRAPHER, so if you come you can be immortalized by this shutterbug legend….  

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From the Principal’s Office

Posted on September 4, 2007 by ubu507

September, 04 07

Dear Hoover students,

It is my honor and privilege to serve you and your families this year as the new principal of East Ypsilanti Herbert Hoover high school. Hoover is rich in tradition and fame as one of the most extremely talented, committed, and brave group of students in the greater Ypsilanti Metropolitan high school school district. The school has an enormous number of extremely fantastic programs available to students as well as classes in many subjects. In addition, as well as the academic portion of the day Hoover is also known for many of the schools and students extracurricular activities, known both statewide, citywide and nationally as seen on shows such as COPS Ypsilanti, America’s Funniest Home Schoolings and the 48 hours show program very special episode Crack Epidemic In Our Schools.

I have been involved in the educational process for over 14 years, the last 16 months as an educator myself, and if there’s one thing I have learned about schools and schooling, it is that attitude should be at the forefront of every endeavor that one makes in the academic field of endeavor. For without attitude we do not know where it, at, you or dude is at. You young people will find that I am a very hands on principal with a lot of attitude, and hands-on approach to dealing with the assets of young people. My door will always be open, even after Mr. Costello replaces it. By the way if anyone knows what happened to it this summer please see me at any time, no questions asked.

After meeting and talking with many of our staff and security team, it is obvious that everyone from the cafeteria lunch ladies to the brave men who man the metal detectors are concerned about their own well-being as well as that of the students. Our purpose here this year centers around achievement, achieving the success of making it through one more day, achieving the success of achieving class attendance at least weekly, or achieving the success of achieving an achievement in football or other competitive sports or endeavors of a physical nature. We must ask ourselves this question – are we achieving it?

We need to work together to achieve the achievements that we can achieve. Students should attempt to attend school, and not only attend school but attend it in the classroom if they are scheduled to attend. They must present themselves well, to behave respectfully to others around them, and be willing to do whatever their principal asks of them, no demands of them, no matter how strange and unfamiliar it may appear to be. I truly believe that failure is not an option, so do not worry about failing your classes as long as you are willing to cooperate in the spirit of school spirit in order to enrich and support those administrators who want more enrichment.

It will be a priority of the teachers and me to communicate effectively and involve you in the activities that they and I attempt to go through within the course of our working life. Please remember that although your input is valued to the utmost it is only through your complete and total co-operation that Hoover can achieve new levels of valuation, emancipation and remuneration.

Although, as your new principal, I will spend be spending great amounts of time in Las Vegas and Hawaii researching their methods of education and an equally great amounts of time researching job opportunities outside of the city of Ypsilanti, you may rest assured that I will look forward to meeting the most mature of you in the proper forum.

Sincerely,

Witt D’Michael

Principal 

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Quote Bag: Remy de Gourmont

Posted on September 1, 2007 by ubu507

Quote Bag: Remy de Gourmont

 

His one and only subject matter was sex; he was deeply fascinated by the essential capriciousness of the sexual impulse, by the ill-effects of social and religious repression of sexuality, and by the intellectual strategies which might maximize the quasi-transcendental experience of sexual rapture.

– Francis Amery

 

I am not listening. What does it matter to me whether she is a mere girl or a marquise, or both? I am thinking: here is a companion for the game of elementary sensations, flesh malleable to intimate experiences, and a soul sufficiently becalmed by ennui to accept navigation towards that isle where fabulous creatures rejoice in fabulous creativity…

It becomes certain that human intelligence, far from being the object of creation, is only an accident and that moral ideas are merely vegetable parasites born from an excess of nutrition.

"Style" means visual memory and metaphoric capacity, combined in variable proportions with emotive memory and all the obscure contribution of the other senses.

Mallarme’s work is the most marvelous pretext for reverie which has yet been offered to men weary of many heavy and useless affirmations. It is a poetry full of doubts, of shifting nuances and ambiguous perfumes, and it is perhaps the only poetry that will be able, henceforward, to give us pleasure. And if the word decadence really summed up all these autumnal, twilight charms, we should welcome it and even make it one of the keys of the viol. But it is dead, the master is dead, the penultimate is dead.

– Remy de Gourmont 

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Honey, cancel our reservation…

Posted on August 31, 2007 by ubu507

RESTAURANT INSPECTIONS

Rush Street Restaurant

314 Main St., Ann Arbor

Date: Aug. 9

Number of critical violations:

5

Critical violations

: The duck confit in the top of the cook line prep cooler was moldy (corrected). Bar and wait staff were observed preparing fruit at the bar with bare hands (corrected). Several foods were not properly date marked (corrected). Chlorine sanitizer was not provided in the final rinse water of the conveyor dishwashing machine (corrected). Several chemical spray bottles were unlabeled and mislabeled (corrected).

Noncritical violations:

The dishwashing machine spray heads were plugged with food debris; many of the hinges on the kitchen prep top coolers were damaged or loose. The interior of the dishwashing machine, including the water spray wands/nozzles (inside and outside) were not cleaned often enough. A significant buildup of condensation was observed at the bottom of the main bar coolers and the bottoms of the kitchen prep coolers. The walk-in cooler evaporator unit drip pan (recently replaced) was dripping condensation out of a hole used to attach the pan to the cooling unit; the replacement faucet spout for the four-compartment sink at the 800 North bar was too short. The floor wall juncture at both bars, several bar area floor sinks and the floor sink for the prep kitchen three-compartment sink were not clean. 

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EVENT OF THE DAY

Posted on August 30, 2007 by ubu507

GOCKS

2 p.m., Canton Public Library, 1200 S. Canton Center Road.

Teens pierce, tattoo or give mohawks to Goth sock puppets.

Supplies provided. Details: 734-397-0999 

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You’re the Man, Stuart MacBride

Posted on August 29, 2007 by ubu507

You’re the Man, Stuart MacBride

I have a new guy and his name is Stuart MacBride. I’m always happy when I can find a writer who I can recommend enthusiastically to almost anyone who walks in the door, especially when that writer is relatively new and unknown. It doesn’t literally have to be a guy – my last favorite hand sell was Louise Penny who we have pretty much pressed on everyone.

MacBride is very different from Penny, but they’re both great writers who guarantee an enjoyable reading experience. Instead of Penny’s bucolic village in well mannered Canada, MacBride’s books take place in dingy, dangerous Aberdeen, Scotland, which, he assures the reader in the acknowledgments of his first book Cold Granite is "really not as bad as it sounds." That’s a good thing because the Aberdeen of the books is a place of "pubs, churches and rain" whose inhabitants look "like a casting call for Deliverance" and where "we murder more people, per head of population, than the whole of England and Wales combined."

Cold Granite is one of those first novels that seem to be torn from the middle of a series, with a lot of water already under the bridge. The book begins on the day that Detective Sergeant Logan McRae returns to duty, not quite completely recovered from the knife wound that left him dead for five minutes, leading his less than compassionate co-workers to nickname him "Laz" for Lazarus. He doesn’t have much time to readjust, as the force is immediately galvanized by the discovery of a young boy’s body and the specter of a serial killer preying on children. As a DS, he’s above a uniformed Constable, but at the total mercy of his superior, in this case Detective Inspector Insch, a compulsive candy eater, Gilbert and Sullivan enthusiast and a man who "didn’t suffer idiots gladly. And the Inspector though everyone was an idiot."

The grim subject matter and convincing depiction of the danger and tedium of police work are livened with great characters like McRae’s former girlfriend Isobel MacAlister, the ice queen coroner, his possible future girlfriend Constable Jackie "Ball Breaker" Watson, and Colin Watson, the upstart reporter from Glasgow, who seems to have an inside source. MacBride has firm control of the essential elements of setting, character and plot and guides them to a satisfying and thrilling conclusion.

In the second book Dying Light, McRae has been exiled to the "screw-up squad" after leading a disastrous raid. The chief screw-up is my new favorite mystery characters, DI Steel, a woman whose hair is variously described as "styled by seagulls," and looking as if someone had "sellotaped a cairn terrier to her head" or "tried to comb her hair with a ferret." A lesbian, she is also "the biggest womanizer on the force," her relationship with McRae succinctly described by the latter as "He did the work. She smoked fags and took the credit." Desperate to escape the screw-ups, McRae works feverishly to solve their murdered prostitute case as well as trying to horn in on DI Inch’s deadly arson investigation. Again, the case takes twists and turns, ratcheting up to an exiting ending and McRae’s mordant observation "Another case solved. Another life ruined."

MacBride’s new hardback, Bloodshot in which Constable Jackie lives up to her nickname while busting a serial rapist, only to find out that her suspect’s status as a local football hero might get him off the hook, keeps the series going at a high level. Along with Ian Rankin and Denise Mina, MacBride is at the forefront of a Scottish renaissance in crime fiction. Although his subject matter is dark, the books are satisfyingly absorbing reads, his Aberdeen cops exhibiting just the right blend of cynicism, righteous indignation and hilarious gallows humor. The combination of the mundane, the horrific and the ridiculous gives the books a quality that effortlessly pulls the reader into a very real world from the first page, a world that, despite its many warts, you hate to leave.  

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