LC invited me to a reading at Bluestockings on Friday night, which was awesome and not just because I got a last-minute reprieve from working the Winter Antiques Show, longing for the release of a bloodbath or at least for the redistribution of wealth with an auto-da-fe on alternate Thursdays.
I’m glad I went. It was an entertaining reading. A big group of readers, too–several members of the Broad Set Writing Collective, who are very talented and also young. (Fuckers.)
In addition, their professor Mickey Hess, who is totally hilarious and also young(er than I am), read. (Fucker.) He signed a book for me: “Keep on rockin’ it!” Why have I never thought of that inscription?
He read from his book, Big Wheel at the Cracker Factory,* as well as a chapbook called Shittin’ on a Jet:
If you ask me, the greatest hip hop success story has to be that of Brian “Birdman” Williams, founder of Cash Money Records. In his song “Poppin Bottles,” Birdman takes the typical American Dream story to a new level. Generally, American success stories take us from rags to riches or from the poorhouse to the penthouse, but Birdman tells us that he “went from shittin’ in a cell, to shittin’ on a jet.” In that one line, Birdman re-envisions success as going from shitting in one place to shitting in another.
….Then I realized Brian had pictured Birdman squeezing through the aisle, sliding closed the OCCUPIED lever in a cramped Southwest Airlines bathroom, looking at himself in the tiny mirror above the sink and thinking I made it.
Shitting in an airplane bathroom is maybe three steps above shitting in a cell. In between you have gas station, hospital waiting room, and Burger King.
But Birdman doesn’t say airplane. He says jet. Jet implies private jet. I bet Birdman’s is made of diamonds.
And then the evening got better when, rather than going out and spending money we don’t have, LC and I went back to her abode, had pizza** and wine delivered, and looked at old photos. A perfect wintry Friday night.
*I really like Garrett County Press. Many years ago, during the #1HS era, they sent me a copy of Mykel Board’s Even a Daughter Is Better Than Nothing and set me up with an interview.
**The pizza we had delivered was DiGiorno, which makes the whole scenario like a Zen koan: It’s not delivery…it’s DiGiorno…except when it’s delivery.
Stroke me.
