Wake-Up Call
…believe what Janet tried to pull. No. I know! It’s not going to sit well with management, either.…
Really, 5C? Are you serious? You have lived here for a long time—longer than we have, at least. Thus, you have lived in this building long enough to understand how sound travels in the bathroom. The moment you go near that tub, it’s as if all walls and floors were to melt away, leaving you sitting in our bathroom, yelling into that phone.
You know what time it is, I presume? It’s 5:25. That’s not the fun evening 5:25, when people are trickling out of work into the romantic twilight. It’s the weird morning one that generally exists without me.
Do you know who is awake at 5:25 in the morning? The jetlagged, the elderly, travelers kicking themselves for having booked unwise flights, easily bullied types with poorly socialized children or pets, the freshly Oscar-nominated, exurbanites staring down long commutes, physical education teachers, club kids hitting a second wind, child practitioners of esoteric sports, Al Roker, my Uncle Sol, our nation’s more competent newspaper deliverymen, and bakers abiding by cliché (more…)
Completing Your Novel
One word: committment. Or perhaps commitment. Spell it how you must, in this age of mass media and easily downloadable Internet pornography, it is the key inherent to completing your novel. Get to know it—not just the way it rolls off your tongue, but the way that it is such a difficult thing to commit to.
Few things are as important to completing your novel as choosing a comfortable reading position. Without this trump card, you may as well turn the television on right now. Every reader is different. Some people prefer arm chairs, while others like a nice countertop on which to rest their book. Some approach their novels while in bed, either lying flat on their back, and thus holding the book upright, or resting their head on their right arm for even pages and left arm for odd ones. Still others—oftentimes aficionados of Michael Crichton and Tom Clancy—require an airplane seat to concentrate on their book.
Once you have found the position that works best for you, it is time to begin the novel. Let us pretend that you are about to launch into F. Scott-Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. As with many classic tomes, most additions of this book come with an introduction; in my experience, it is best to ignore these. Frequently tedious and universally pedantic, introductions ruin exciting plot twists and indulge in the type of academic mumbo jumbo that sends the average reader straight to the local video arcade or Internet pornographer. What’s more, many introductions are numbered with “Roman” numerals that do not factor into the book’s final page count, leaving a prospective reader to slog through twenty pages of text only to find herself, discouragingly, back on page one. (more…)
Load Up Your Bookshelf
By now, you undoubtedly have a copy of our book, The Lowbrow Reader Reader. In fact, if you are anything at all like our sample group (our parents), you have no fewer than ten copies! But surely, the bookshelf you purchased to display your Lowbrow Reader Reader copy or copies looks somewhat empty—even downright weird—considering that it holds no other titles. Here are three volumes with Lowbrow ties that we strongly recommend:
–Hitting stores this week is Escape Velocity: A Charles Portis Miscellany, a collection of short pieces by the great comic novelist Charles Portis. We would be queuing up to purchase Escape Velocity no matter who was involved, as Portis’s novels have been leaving us in stitches for years. But get a load of this! The new book was edited by none other than longtime Lowbrow Reader contributor Jay Jennings and features illustrations by another Lowbrow all-star, Mike Reddy. Read an excerpt of Jennings’s introduction at the Daily Beast. And New Yorkers, take note: On Thursday, October 4, Jennings hosts an Escape Velocity party at Soho’s swank Housing Works Bookstore, featuring music by Rhett Miller, appearances by funny literary heavies Calvin Trillin and Roy Blount Jr., and a reading from Portis’s play, Delray’s New Moon. Frankly, we’re just happy Housing Works wasn’t raided by the feds following Professor Irwin Corey’s set at the Lowbrow Reader Variety Hour back in May.
–Believe it or not, Charles Portis is not the only master novelist to find his work brought back to print thanks to Mr. Jennings. Back in 2009, in Lowbrow Reader #7, Jennings wrote about the wondrous fiction of Gilbert Rogin, whose three books had slipped out of print. That same issue featured “My Masterpieces,” the first Rogin short story to be published since he broke ties with the New Yorker at the end of the ’70s. (Both pieces are included in The Lowbrow Reader Reader.) In 2010, our friends at Verse Chorus Press published a new, single-volume edition of Rogin’s two novels, What Happens Next? and Preparations for the Ascent, featuring Jennings’s article as an introduction, plus cover art by Reddy (him again!) and fellow Lowbrow contributor Nathan Gelgud. Wait a minute…. You have yet to purchase this book? A shanda fur die goyim! Amend this wrong today!
–When we started working on the Lowbrow Reader back in 2000, there were a handful of publications to which we turned for guidance. MAD? Check! Puncture? Sure thing! CARtoons? What are we, red-blooded Americans or lowly communists? High on that list was the Minus Times, the fetchingly abstruse literary journal that Hunter Kennedy has edited since 1992. Freshly published is The Minus Times Collected: Twenty Years / Thirty Issues, a lovely door-stopper bound for smart coffee tables nationwide. The book features interviews with Stephen Colbert (just as he was becoming “Stephen Colbert”) along with writings by Sam Lipsyte, Wells Tower, Jeff Johnson, and many more. The handsome volume shares with The Lowbrow Reader Reader three contributors (David Berman, Neil Michael Hagerty, and Jay Ruttenberg) as well as a publisher (Drag City, here tag-teaming with Featherproof Books).
We beseech all Lowbrow Reader Reader readers to buy all three books! And while you’re at it, we request that sometime within the next five weeks you move to Ohio, Florida, and possibly Virginia and vote for President Barack Obama.
The Lowbrow Reader Reader: Addenda and Annotations—Queens of Comedy
The Lowbrow Reader Reader contains over 40 chapters and runs to nearly 300 pages. Those who read the book in its entirety and fail to laugh aloud are almost certainly illiterates, pederasts, or active members of the Republican party. But our very favorite piece from the book? No contest! That would be “The Queens of Comedy on the Commandments of Sex,” an interview that Margeaux Rawson conducted with the absurdly funny comics Adele Givens, Miss Laura Hayes, Mo’Nique, and Sommore. We first published the interview in 2003 in Lowbrow Reader #3 (when its author’s surname was Watson); soon thereafter, we posted it to the Lowbrow website. Since posting the article, our search engine keywords—that is, the phrases people type into Google to lead them to lowbrowreader.com—have been reliably randy. Let us proffer long-overdue apologies to those gentlemen visiting this site hoping to find nude and naked pictures of Sommore. (Those interested in said photographs can find them here.)
We published a handful of these filthy search strings in Lowbrow Reader #7. Taking a cue from our friends at Afflictor.com, we here present an expanded list of our favorite lowbrowreader.com search engine keyphrases. (more…)
Learn Like a Pro
Learning Annex Course Offerings for the Fall
Sleep with Your Ex Like the Champion You Are
All too often people leave a relationship before the crucial transitional sex has ended. This class teaches you how to effectively drunk dial your ex, check your emotions at the door, and explore sexual positions that were previously off limits or reserved for statutory holidays. Learn a bevy of exit strategies that will leave you on top while avoiding unflattering morning light and the disingenuous breakfast offer.
Juggling: Not Just for Clowns
Do you have two hands? Then you can probably juggle. Maybe you failed physical education and lack intellectual or artistic skills, but you can still stand out at parties and get dates (although some might have to learn to juggle sharp objects and/or eat fire). Many a numbskull has mastered juggling. (more…)
Come to Doctor Vic!
Come to Doctor Vic!
Unlike other doctors…Dr. Vic will NEVER pester you with unneeded surgery!
You know the drill: You go to the doctor complaining of a cough, and the next thing you know, he has persuaded you to get your gallbladder removed. The surgery is costly, painful, and time-consuming. And for what? Mostly, so the doctor can go home to his wife and brag about performing surgery. Dr. Vic pledges never to perform unnecessary surgery.
Unlike other doctors…Dr. Vic doesn’t specialize!
One doctor can only deal with athlete’s foot, another with brain surgery, another with scream therapy. It’s maddening! (more…)
The Lowbrow Reader Reader: Addenda and Annotations—Project Achhh
In Lowbrow Reader #6, I wrote about my experience, years prior, recording a spectacularly botched comedy album that was to have starred the voices of a comedian friend, his girlfriend, and his psychiatrist. The article, “The Making and Uncoiling of Project Achhh,” now appears in our book, The Lowbrow Reader Reader, accompanied by the typically sharp illustrations of Carl Cassel. The essay mainly concerns a rocky friendship, as well as the profanity-riddled debate that broke out between my friend and his psychiatrist during recording. Not included in the article, however, is the full text of the sketch that this motley crew had gathered to perform. Ominously titled “Suicidal Aspirations,” it was written around 1997—I must have been 21 or 22. As such, it does not live up to the sterling literary standards and indisputable hilarity that readers have come to expect from The Lowbrow Reader. Yet its dubious quality, borderline offensiveness, and all-around puerility seem very much at home on lowbrowreader.com. And so, without further ado, let me present “Suicidal Aspirations.” (more…)
The Lowbrow Reader Defeats Chicago
After years of bringing mirth and melody to tuned-in New Yorkers, the Lowbrow Reader Variety Hour made its Chicago debut last week, at the Hideout. And guess what? Chicago may as well go ahead and cancel its Pitchfork Festivals and Lollapaloozas and whatnots. Hell, why not just shut down the entire Ravinia Festival operation, too? Game over—Lowbrow wins! We extend our heartfelt thanks to everybody who came to the Hideout and, of course, to the night’s performers: musicians Ezra Furman and Daniel Knox; comedians Charlie Bury and Dan Ronan; and readers Jay Jennings and Marsha Ruttenberg. After the jump are photographs taken throughout the night by Philip Barnett. (A kind soul posted YouTube clips of two Ezra Furman songs, here and here.) (more…)
The Lowbrow Reader Variety Hour Hits Chicago! (July 5 at the Hideout)
For years, the Lowbrow Reader has made sporadic leaps off the printed page and onto the stage, presenting concerts starring the brightest luminaries of New York City standup and song. On Thursday, July 5, we take our first steps out of New York for the Chicago debut of the Lowbrow Reader Variety Hour, at the Hideout. The night helps celebrate our award-winning book, The Lowbrow Reader Reader, recently published by Chicago’s own Drag City Books.
The Manhattan events have featured performances by many of our New York favorites—fittingly, the Hideout show will center around some of the Lowbrow Reader’s favorite talents of Chicago. The concert will include music by two of the sharpest young songwriters working today: the guitar-wielding Ezra Furman and the piano-wielding Daniel Knox. The night’s measly $10 admission also brings the side-splitting standup comedian Charlie Bury as well as short readings by two of The Lowbrow Reader Reader’s all-star contributors: Jay Jennings and Marsha Aronson Ruttenberg. Get excited, Chicagoland! (more…)
N. Double A. D. S.
One, if by land.
Two, if by sea.
Three, if by air, and,
Four, if by me…
Awkward. Let me spell it out for you. A.W.K.W.A.R.D. And don’t you let it fool you.
They don’t call me that for nothing, you know. Sometimes I’m just socially “off,”
And the harder I try, the worse it all gets.
One, if by land. (more…)