Category Archives: Books

Shebeen Club: Gonzo Vancouver

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The Shebeen Club: Gonzo Vancouver!

When: 7-9pm, Tuesday, April 15th, 2008

Where: the Shebeen, 7 Gaoler’s Mews, behind the Irish Heather, 217 Carrall Street, Vancouver BC

How Much: $15 includes dinner: limited to 40

What: mingling, door prizes, eating, drinking, fornicating!

Who: Heather Watson (Civixen), Gonzo Journalist and founding columnist at Terminal City

“We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multi-coloured uppers, downers, screamers, laughers and also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls.”
Hunter S. Thompson

Well, we probably won’t have that, but we will have a great introduction to indigenous Vancouver Gonzo journalism with the hyperkinetic and internationally infamous Heather Watson, alias Civixen (http://www.civixen.com/ and http://cvxn.tumblr.com). Coming at you straight down the Mojo Wire at 95 miles per hour, it’ll be an evening of raw, uncut literary power. Bare-knuckling her way up the ladder from the wide open frontier of the Wild West to the mean streets of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, Heather has seen it all, done most of it, and has a damn hell solid alibi for everything else.

Bio: Heather Watson created the satirical op/ed column “Civixen,” which became a source of enjoyment and irritation for political bright lights and dim bulbs alike (including the current mayor) in the four years it ran in two local alternative newspapers. Besides a brief tenure as editor-in-chief of the 30,000-circulation Gonzo-inspired Terminal City (now sadly defunct), Heather Watson also presented a popular seminar on Gonzo Journalism at the request of the Western arm of the Canadian University Press in 2006. She is a published poet, a produced playwright and her essay “Vancouver Today” is featured in the Time Out Guide to Vancouver. In addition to a few years at Vancouver’s éminence grise of independent bookstores, Duthie Books, some of her more surreal side jobs have included voice-over and motion capture for a video game and six years spent hand modeling toys from Star Wars figures to Barbies in dozens of TV commercials.

Meet and Mingle 7-7:30
Listen and Learn 7:30-8
Drown Sorrows and Vow to Buck the System 8-9 or, really, the rest of your life.

Quentin Crisps

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Sometimes the volleys of blogger tennis get a little heated, resulting in a strange and hitherto only mythical phenomenon. Like Ourouboros swallowing his own tail, a fleeting tangent on the Mummified Fairy post has spawned its own spinoff on FFE‘s blog, to which I’m linking back here. Now all someone needs to do is post in the mummified fairy post linking back to this and all will come full circle and the universe will end.

Presenting the original mummified fairy: Quentin Crisps

Quentin Crisps

Sure, great in the can but pretty sharp anywhere else, come to think of it.

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blog fodder made easy: how to write epics!

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We’ve all been there: When you open the Write Post page, the void looks also into you.

Here is the quick and dirty version of how to feed your blog on a majah scale: with EPICS! Who doesn’t like epics? They’re epic! Epically epic!

First: you need a setting. Rip one off from an existing epic and call it une hommage. We’ve got BiblicalBabylonianCarolingianArthurianGangsterianBeat Generationianand Space Operaamong others. Look at your (comic)bookshelf and pick one.

I’ve got The Book of Murderso Chicago in the Twenties, here I come!

Now you’ll need characters, several of them. Just try to write an epic without any character! We call that a Livejournal.

‘Nuff said.

Now, if you get both the characters and the setting from the same epic, what you’ve got is a retelling (we call it “retelling” or “reworking of the archetype,” we do not call it a “ripoff” for that makes our lawyers quite defensive and we just can’t deal with that right now). And we’re not writing How To Write A Retelling here, are we? We’re talking about writing a brand-new epic! So you’ve got to steal your setting and your characters from, and this is the key, different epics, or even one epic and one Symbolist poem or one epic and an old radio drama or something. That could be good. They had the best hair on those old radio dramas.

If you still can’t find any characters you like, we recommend stealing them from this handy-dandy Characters for an Epic Tale chart from Tom Gauld (via Edenborough).

Epic Characters for an epic tale

As for plot, just use one of these ready-made plot generators. Don’t say we never did nuthin for ya.

If you find your well running dry even so, just have a man come through the door with a gun OR add bo stick wielding flying cephalopod ninjas. Everyone loves the big squids! After that, who cares how you wind it up as long as the hero ends up with the girl and the villain escapes to cause sequels another day?

Flying Octopian ninjas

And, most importantly, it is a truth universally acknowledged that in the online world, every epic blog post must contain a direct link to http://raincoaster.com.

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RIP Gary Gygax

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Gary Gygax

He failed his saving throw vs Death. You just can’t come back from a natural 0, even if you did invent the game.

Gary Gygax, inventor of the fantasy roleplaying game Dungeons and Dragons and born-again Christian, has died at his home after a long battle with illness. He had suffered several strokes and a near-fatal heart attack within recent months. The funeral is to be a private, family event. Forum posts by friends and fans are posted at Troll Lord Games, who are adding information as it becomes available. His influence went far beyond the world of RPGs and influenced two generations of fantasy writers and not a few armchair theologians as well.

Where now the horse and the rider? Where is the horn that was blowing?
Where is the helm and the hauberk, and the bright hair flowing?
Where is the hand on the harpstring, and the red fire glowing?
Where is the spring and the harvest and the corn growing?
They have passed like rain on the mountain, like a wind in the meadow;
The days have gone down in the West behind the hills into shadow.
Who shall gather the smoke of the dead wood burning,
Or behold the flowing years from the Sea returning?

-JRRT

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Shebeen Club Meeting: Amy Tan’s Birthday Party February 19th

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Amy TanShhhh, it’s a surprise!

What: The Shebeen Club Presents: Amy Tan’s Birthday Party

When: 7:30pm-9:00pm, Tuesday, February 19th, 2008

Where: Upstairs at The Shebeen, behind The Irish Heather, 217 Carrall Street in Gastown

Why: to celebrate Amy Tan’s Birthday, duh!

Who: Contact lorraine.murphy AT gmail.com for more information

How(much)? $15 includes presentation, dinner of bangers and mash or vegetarian pasta, one celebratory beverage, and mingling.

Resurrecting the Old Skool Shebeen Club tradition of celebrating authors who are not actually present, we move up from our former practice of toasting dead celebrities and begin to celebrate the living! Amy Tan is deservedly one of the best-beloved authors on the contemporary fiction scene. February 19th is her birthday, so we have arranged a short presentation on her life and works and her (I’m sorry) don’t-quit-your-day-job rock band, the Rock Bottom Remainders. If anyone has a CD, you’re welcome to bring it!

7-7:30: meet and mingle
7:30-8: listen and learn
8-whenever: The Joy Luck Club Literary Lottery: good luck!

cross-posted to the Shebeen Club