Live Reading from Brett Gallagher’s Bed

                This is the best reading I’ve seen of boykitten material. According to the event, seventy five people committed to seeing them perform live from Brett Gallagher’s bed. Of course, this is never the case. People randomly stumble upon it and those committed party members sleep in too late. Still, this ended up bringing nearly forty people together, no mean feat. Omar De Col, Aurist, and Crispin Best were there to give it a bit of British glamor. 

                Kat Dixon appeared. You may better know her as one of the best-known critics of the boykittens. It seems she’s willing to give these guys a chance. Whether or not she actually enjoyed it, I’m not sure. Throughout the reading she did appear to have fun and playfully commented on some of the silliness going on in their small space. 

                Is the internet vegan? Is water vegan? Omar knew how to ask the important questions. Brett Gallagher asked “Are Animal Crackers vegan?”  Brett had a larger issue however and it involved his penis. For his upcoming book “Vessel” he wanted to put a dick pic as the main picture for his collection. Those who were not Brett (Stephen Tully Dierks, Cassandra Nguyen, and Steve Roggenbuck) thought this to be the most obnoxious way of showing off his book. Members of the chat room had a different opinion. Since we’re on the internet we don’t have to give good advice. We expressed to Brett our unwavering support in favor of his proposal. Sex sells. 

                Omar De Col got some attention. Eyes gleaming, charming and drunken in a hot pink swimming suit he was covered in the Daily Post. Stephen read the report with a large amount of passion. Lacy Maxwell, a local reporter, spoke at length to Omar. I figure in the UK internet poets are given more coverage since there isn’t much going on there now that the royal wedding is over. Hopefully Omar and Lacy hit it off after the impromptu interview. 

                Let People Poems received at least one reading as is tradition. Reprobus has submitted a lot of stuff for the site, but he hadn’t been read before. Among other things, he discussed how he liked internet poetry when it was written in books. Basically Reprobus created replica of what an online poetry pissing contest might sound like, complete with other nonsensical references. Steve Roggenbuck’s chapbook “i am like october when i am dead” got a wink, Poncho a nod. Egyptian internet poets from the BC era, overlooked in my view, were discussed at great length.  

 

                “I don’t respect Female Expression”, Frank Hinton’s recently released chapbook received the proper respect. After the perfect reading, Stephen Tully Dierks said “Damn she can write”. Everyone agreed. While he read it I began to feel vestiges of my Catholic guilt coming in, reminding me I should probably get her book. 

                Crispin Best wrote a poem based heavily off of Aladdin. Disney clearly owes him money. I wonder how much money Crispin will get for his heartfelt tribute to the classic movie. Whatever the amount it is far too little. 

                Poncho could not make it. Unfortunately he spent the night in the Dallas-Fort Worth airport. He couldn’t even make it virtually. In honor of Poncho’s entrapment, they read “Today’s the Day!” on Metazen. To accurately capture the tone of the poem, Brett drank five beers. Completely in the zone he tried to get through the poem. Obviously his intoxication prevented him from finishing it. Stamina ended up not being there even as his mind tried sloughing through. We tweeted for him but alcohol proved to be stronger than his love of literature. Besides, Poncho writes poems on a rather epic scale. 

                Of course we got there for the bed. According to the event page on Facebook, they would be reading live from their bed. All of them looked tired as they collected into an asexual pile on the bed. They looked happy together. They looked drunk together. For a brief moment, they looked like a family of poets. We got introduced to their cat and the final segment of the broadcast. 

                Casual Encounters received a great deal of laughter. By reading these out of context, we realize how funny they really are. Seeing the expression on the quartet’s faces was priceless. According to Steve Roggenbuck, they saw more pictures than they wanted. Poetry can be found anywhere. I guess they wanted to show that to us in the grossest and funniest way possible. When people post on casual encounters they don’t think about grammar, verbs, or even coherence. It can be hard to type with only one hand. So sentences like “Just be smell like a man” make sense in the clouds of horniness. 

                I love these ustreams. Hope they continue to do these silly, goofy, and surprisingly rewarding things.

The Hipster Runoff Hotline: Was it a ‘Success’?

              Carles is an important figure in the feedback loop that is the blog-o-sphere. Beach Sloth has given him more than ample coverage, due to boredom and general interest in his blog. In 2010, his blog failed hard. It was the worst thing I’ve ever encountered online since those women that step on cats with high-heeled shoes. Speaking to his listeners from his last podcast of 2010 before he went out and partied in the New Year, he promised change. Change we could believe in.

                For a moment I thought he was just bullshitting us. As the wise man John McCain once said about Hipster Runoff’s site re-designs: “That’s not change, that’s more of the same.” I wondered if Carles would go back to his tricks, covering useless characters possessing various degrees of unchill. We’d laugh at how silly they were from our ivory tower of ironic detachment, and he’d laugh from his ultra-sarcastic impenetrable castle of snarky attitude.

                Here I had some positive things in my life yet felt down. Those positive things will take time to get to me but will ultimately be fulfilling. In the interim, I need to kill the next couple of months as I wait for my accomplishment to bear fruit. To do that, I need important blogs to keep me sane as I go through these challenges to arrive at my goal. What I hoped for was that Carles could keep me amused for roughly six months.

                Going onto Hipster Runoff in 2011 was a whole new world, via Aladdin from the taste-making production company Walt Disney.  I was shocked with some of the new features Carles created in his infinite whatever emotion he experiences. Now you could have your own profile, a corner of his site that you could call your own. At first I thought Hipster Runoff was becoming a dating site for alts. Then, thinking twice, I realized how silly that was. Instead, I figured it would work as a “Casual Encounters” section, the way that Craiglist used to have before the Craiglist killer went around killing people. If someone got killed for that Hipster Runoff casual encounter, I could imagine the amount of traffic Carles’s site would get. Then at the trial the murdered could do a bunch of band name-dropping, impressing the jury. 

                What I got was something different. Immediately my blog traffic increased exponentially. Now I created a brand piggybacking off of his. I felt glad that Carles didn’t resort to leaking pictures of his penis like Kanye West, in an attempt to generate buzz. But still, I noticed the comments ended up being significantly less than before. Maybe quality was more important than quantity. I don’t know. I did know the registered users enjoyed firsts the most.

                Then I saw it, the thing that changed Hipster Runoff forever. Besides having the profiles to create a more unique viewing experience, there was a hotline. Honestly, I don’t know whether or not I’d trust Carles on helping me with the ladies. Since he’s anonymous, I don’t know if he ‘has game’ or ‘is attractive’. All I know is I occasionally laugh at his articles and he entertains me. Could he really offer advice without his trademark douchebag wit? I wanted to find out.

                909-276-7542 (BRO-SKI2) ended up being the number to call. Part of me wanted to call, but I didn’t. Since the profiles freaked me out a bit and felt ‘casual encounters’-esque, I thought that the hotline would be some sort of hipster sex hotline where he’d try to seduce young women by going through his MP3 collection in his masculine voice. 

                A Podcast came out of the questions. I listened, curious as to what was wrong with people and their lives. Nothing in my life presented itself as a reason for me to call him; I had close friends in the blog-o-sphere who helped me through the good times and the bad. Those people know who they are, following me every which way on my path to enlightenment. I’d like to thank them for being there, and I hope someday I can be there for them, to be a light in the darkness.

                Carles did an unusual thing with the Podcast: he had a point. Usually they tend to ramble on, like a creative writing assignment gone amuck. Like America’s botched effort to liberate Cuba from Communism in the Bay of Pigs. Hearing my peers, I felt better. Their problems stemmed from robbing liquor stores. My problems are nowhere near that stupid. Some had problems being too alt, or with college. Those I could relate to, and I was glad they asked it. Perhaps some of the people who asked those questions are reading this right now. I want them to know I’ll be there for them as well, but I will not be doing a Podcast at any foreseeable point in time. Instead, if they have questions, they can go to my forumspring, which is the poor man’s help hotline.

                I don’t know why I write about Carles’s blog so much. Most of it has to do with the volume of stuff I write on here, and there ought to be some developing stories. By this point, I’m approaching that Rob Horning guy who does the HRO Exegesis blog. The hotline thing sounded like a success with a great amount of participation from the readers. Maybe I write about him because I want him to be my friend. Or I could use some solid blog-hit creating material. Hope someday I can “bro out” with him or Gchat, but I’m painfully shy so neither will happen.

PS:          Those reasons are partly true, but the real reason is he owes me buzzbucks. One previous reader stated that I just got paid a bunch of buzzbucks. Well, I didn’t. Carles owes me buzzbucks.