We (Heart) Our New Kids' Section

Every September when we put our huge calendar selection out, we need to move things in the store around a bit to make room for them. And every year when calendars go away in late January, we need to move things back. We always use this as an opportunity to mix things up a bit- expand sections that are selling well, shrink sections that aren't. If you've been in the store at any point in the last six weeks, you've noticed that we did more shuffling around than usual. We shrunk CDs a bit, and moved old-fashioned records more towards the front of the store. Travel books moved over to the annex, graphic novels moved to the front of the store. And so on.

And maybe one or two of you noticed that our children's book section has moved. It always felt a bit cramped in its old digs, so we decided to move it up to the mezzanine and give it some more space. In the coming weeks we'll be putting down a nicer floor, get a rug for the young ones to sit on and a nicer table and chairs than the ones you see pictured here. And we're hoping to start a Sunday morning story time soon. If you don't get our email newsletter, you should sign up here.

Touko

My roommates and I were watching that old Marlon Brando movie The Wild One a while back, the premise of which is a bunch of bikers getting scolded by small townies for partying too much (well, basically). At some point not too far in to the film someone commented on how 'gay' the main characters, especially Brando, look. The tight jeans and leather jacket combo, that once meant 'bad boy,' has long since transmogrified, and in this day and age the face of masculinity is much different. In The Wild One, Brando looks like something straight off of Tom of Finland's desk. Familiar?

I'm not gonna' lie, Tom of Finland's illustrations aren't really for everyone. Heck, it's probably for very few in the grand scheme, but in all honesty, I'm an admitted fan. Aside from the big remaindered Taschen collections of his work (kept upstairs next to exhilarating titles such as The Big Penis Book, and Japanese Bar Girls Bare All) most of his books would be found in the fantasy and erotic art section of Green Apple, the most puzzling section that I am set to the task of maintaining. There, amongst the Boris Vallejo and Hajime Sorayama collections, Tom's work stands out- and not just because of its blatant homosexual content amid a myriad of clearly heterosexual artists. There is something in Tom's work that is inherently subversive.

Tom's drawings were appearing in 'men's health magazines' before the closet door had a handle. He was questioning gender roles and above all, authority. This was a time when most countries in the world still held on to archaic 'acts against nature' laws (Tom was born in nineteen twenty). Still it was not until the nineteen seventies that Tom began to receive public recognition. Fashion designer Viviennen Westwood picked up on Tom's art and incorporated it in to her own back in the heyday of UK punk, sometime before the genre had become a parody of itself. Floating around somewhere out there are some very famous photographs of Sid Vicious wearing her designs which feature Tom's art.

I suppose what fascinates me is (aside from the fact that his drawings crack me up), is the concept that two yoked dudes getting sweet on each other is so appalling in this world. Maybe I've been living in The Bay Area too long to understand. Regardless though, I'm happy Tom's work is out there, and I'm happy that he made it safer for us all to be a little weirder.

Touko Laaksonen (Tom's real name) RIP (and Marlon too).

Poem of the Week by Kit Robinson

Happy Monday. Here's this week's poem:

Walnuts

In poetry
you are given all the letters
and have to arrange them yourself

On a wall
in the next episode
you are a married couple with kids

Going between three houses
to pick up stuff
along a narrow stair

You are glad to be out of there
invigorated, unencumbered, hopeful
passing by the window of another

Man who knows you
roughhousing with a massive, naked bald woman
her husband comes in and says, "Walnuts!"

The sea is the color
of poetry
as defined in a guide

To leading questions
left out to dry
in the sun

The fish live under
the sign of the pelican
in a sea of answers

Not written in any book
the kids went back up to the house
you taste rock

And the salt stings your eyes
20 Spanish mackerel
in point of fact

Your pen is leaking water
like newly real details
of the world at large

by Kit Robinson, from The Messianic Trees (Adventures in Poetry, 2009)

Book of the Month/Books in Translation

Even with the amount of press that Roberto Bolaño has had over the last couple years, even from us, and with Horacio Castellanos Moya's- an author who's books She-Devil in the Mirror and Senselessness I consider to be a couple of the best books I read last year- article Bolaño Inc. damning North American press as being "squeezed dry", I would like everyone to read Monsieur Pain, the latest of Bolaño's novels to be released from New Directions.

My reasoning is this: Bolaño has been over marketed in the United States, primarily for Savage Detectives and 2666, both of which I found to be unstructured and a little to rambling for my liking and both of which I felt seemed a little unfinished.

But Bolaño is a master. He knew that his short fiction, short stories or novels, had to be exact and precise. This is the Bolaño that New Directions has been putting out since his death in 2003. These are books where every word matters, every action, description, and character planned out. They are books that deal with love, death, paranoia, and corruption. Monsieur Pain is no different.

Monsieur Pain is trying to cure César Vallejo, the Peruvian poet, who is on the verge of hiccuping himself to death from an undiagnosed illness. Meanwhile Pain is wandering through Paris trying to tie up the mystery that surrounds him.

If you want to read the true Roberto Bolaño, read Chris Andrews' amazing translations from New Directions...and why not start with Monsieur Pain? I guarantee you'll like it.

Thanks BoingBoing!

Short but sweet from my side...

Another insightful post on boingboing.net caught my eye this morning...

I'll just let the fine folks at The Journal of Electronic Publishing that this interesting notion from here!

p.s. - joe hill just stopped by and signed copies of his new tome, Horns. get them while you can!

Inspirational Clothing

I hoarded absolute crap for a long time. In fact, I still do, but the most extreme of my pack rat tendencies have waned significantly over the course of many moves. I now allow myself to pass broken furniture and warped records on the street. I've even managed to part with much of my absolute crap collection. Of course a few precious items still remain, but these are the ones embody the whole reason I started rooting around in dumpsters and hauling all this whatever around in the first place (or at least that's what I tell myself). A fine example of one of these items is my crazy psychedelic cat shirt.

In the height* of my junk collecting days I found this shirt in a garbage bag on Polk Street, not far from where I worked at the time, Out of the Closet. I believe it was 2004 or so. I remember I had just started that job. When I found it I was on my way from OTC, walking toward my buddy Mike’s house. Mike let me in to his place, and upon entering his bed/living room I immediately focused on a book laying open on the bed, a psychology text with the exact image on the shirt printed on one of its pages. I made a comment about my find, showing it to him. He explained to me who Louis Wain was (note the kind of awesome typo in our website's description of the book I just linked to there), and told me the whole deal with his crazy cat drawings. A long obsession with outsider artists began for me, finding myself especially fond of art by the mentally affected. I became aware of the existence of a whole mess of intriguing painters and illustrators- Henry Darger, Adolf Wolfli, Alexander Lobanov** (my all time favorite next to George Herriman probably, but Herriman wasn’t a violent deaf mute) to name a few.

Anyway, the Louis Wain shirt has been on my back more than any other since its inaugural wash. It has traveled with me on just about every trip I’ve ever been on, and has won me compliments and interesting conversations with people of all walks (a pretty unforgettable one with a cop in Austin TX deserves honorable mention). Sadly though, it's now so torn up I can't be wearing it to Green Apple anymore. Too revealing. In fact it's so thin I'm going to have to slow its rotation down altogether. I’ll miss it when it totally goes, so from now until then it’s gonna’ have to be a special occasion shirt, treated with dignity and respect.

* “Height,” meaning I was still willing to root through a dirty garbage bag just sitting on Polk Street.

** As far as I'm aware Lobanov did not make enough art (or at least capture a large enough audience) for anyone to publish a collection of his work. Documentaries on him as well as images of his work are widespread online. I highly recommend taking a look.

A new book I like: Chasing the White Dog

We just received one of my favorite non-fiction books of the last year or two, Max Watman's Chasing the White Dog: An Amateur Outlaw's Adventures in Moonshine. I'm surely not the only who wonders why it's OK to make your own beer, cheese, wine, or jam, but not liquor. The answer, and so much history, chemistry, adventure, tomfoolery and even NASCAR, are within.

If you're at all interested in moonshine, southern culture, the feds, tax evasion, boutique liquors, or how to make your own hooch, I promise this book will be interesting and fun.