Culture Surfing

Any doubts that David Fulmer writes staid drawing-room mystery novels will be dispelled by the title of his Decatur Book Festival workshop “Sex & Violence: Writing About Them Without Sounding Like a Virgin Pacifist” (Fri., Sept. 4, 4 p.m.). While most of Fulmer’s work to date has been mysteries set in the South, he’s made a couple of changes of pace. His newest novel, The Blue Door, recently nominated for a Shamus Award, takes place in Philadelphia in 1962. He’ll also try his hand at theatrical drama when the DBF presents a staged reading of his play Storyville, directed by Joe Gfaller, at the Old Courthouse Stage (Sat., Sept. 5, 5:30 p.m.).

The Blue Door has been nominated for a Shamus Award, and you already won one for an earlier book, Chasing the Devil’s Tail. How does the Private Eye Writers of America define “private eye”?
As I understand it, a private eye is not a cop, and it’s not a tea-cozy kind of mystery about an amateur sleuth. It goes back to the old gumshoe of movies and dime novels. The guy — or girl — is out there solving the crime, working outside the confines of the criminal justice system. I wouldn’t really know how to do a police procedural. People come to my books not for the whodunit but for the sense of place. My guys don’t deal with the scientific part of detection, but motivation, the psychological aspects. My guys tend to understand human foibles.

Continue reading “Speakeasy with David Fulmer”

(Photo by Bryanna Brown)

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Thousands of people gathered along 10th street and Piedmont Park for the Red Bull Soapbox Derby on Saturday, August 29. Over 40 teams competed in an awesome display of creativity, engineering, and stunt devilry. And of course, the spectacular crashes.

Video shot, edited and produced by the agile George Goodman, who was strategically situated along the banks of the course.

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SAY IT AIN'T SOW: Norman Vincent Peale (Wade Benson, left) and Big Edie (Kathleen McManus)

In The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde wrote, “All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy.” The stage musical Grey Gardens emphasizes the tragic transformation of “Little Edie” Bouvier Beale by casting the same actress as both Little Edie and her mother at high and low ebbs of their family fortunes. Both women share a love of music, but in Grey Gardens, the convention of breaking into song at times emphasizes their tenuous grasps on reality.

Big Edie and Little Edie are iconic women — in an eccentric, cautionary fashion — as the subjects of Albert and David Maysles’ documentary Grey Gardens, which has drawn an enormous cult following since its release in 1975. The Edies were the aunt and first cousin, respectively, of Jackie Bouvier Kennedy, but in the early 1970s, they lived in squalor and self-delusion at the once-proud family estate, Grey Gardens. They could’ve been characters from a Tennessee Williams play, and added scandal and a hint of madness to the Kennedy family mystique.

Continue reading “Complex family drama grounds Grey Gardens“

(Photo courtesy Chris Ozment Photography)

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I didn’t see this one coming: it’s a video mash-up of clips from the Hayao Miyazaki’s delightful family fable Ponyo to the tune of The Lonely Island’s “I’m On a Boat.” It works hilariously well, but know that the hip-hop braggadocio is totally unsafe for kids.

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The Aug. 26 cover story “Monsters of Poetry” puts the spotlight on the poet’s art to preview the fourth annual Decatur Book Festival, to be held Sep. 4-6. This blog will count down the days to the festival by posting a poem each day by a different writer, to let the verse speak for itself. For Aug. 31, “The Quiet World” by Jeffrey McDaniel (which offers some intriguing implications for the Twitter era).

“The Quiet World”

In an effort to get people to look
into each other’s eyes more,
and also to appease the mutes,
the government has decided
to allot each person exactly a hundred
and sixty-seven words, per day.

When the phone rings, I put it to my ear
without saying hello. In the restaurant
I point at chicken noodle soup.
I am adjusting well to the new way.

Late at night, I call my long distance lover,
proudly say I only used fifty-nine today.
I saved the rest for you.

When she doesn’t respond,
I know she’s used up all her words,
so I slowly whisper I love you
thirty-two and a third times.
After that, we just sit on the line
and listen to each other breathe.

Jeffrey McDaniel is the author of four books, most recently The Endarkenment (University of Pittsburgh Press), and teaches creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College in New York.

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NO MAN'S LAND: Money Changes Everything

“I normally feel like I’m in total control of my films,” Roger Beebe says. Watching some of Beebe’s films — which range from spliced-up 8mm visions of strip malls to laser-printed black-and-white animations — you get the impression that “total control” might be an understatement.

A tall, lanky professor at the University of Florida who wears a permanently disheveled beard, Beebe makes films on his own terms and budget. One film, TB TX Dance, cost about 30 bucks. Beebe’s films are both erudite and punk, lo-fi yet high-brow shorts that wrestle with a disfigured, contemporary American landscape.

Beebe visits Eyedrum with the Film Love series Films for One to Eight Projectors. His latest technique involves using multiple projectors to create “expanded cinema” by combining 16mm and 8mm film with digital formats. One of the films he’ll screen, Last Light of a Dying Star, uses no less than eight projectors. Attempting to run all the machines simultaneously is a performance in itself, with Beebe changing films and keeping all of the projectors functioning properly. The scope of the approach has changed something fundamental: “It exceeds my ability my totally control it.”

Continue reading “Roger Beebe loses control at Eyedrum”

(Image courtesy Roger Beebe)

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Bad decision making runs in our family.

What do you get for the God who has everything? A silk tie? A severed ring finger? Virgins? All fine ideas, but the still-beating heart of a supernatural being would truly let him know you care. And Maryann cares. Really really cares.

The mystery of Maryann wasn’t necessarily solved last night, but it was explained. Sort of. Bill’s audience with the Queen (Evan Rachel Wood) revealed the convoluted, delusional backstory that gave rise to Maenads. “Everything that exists imagined itself into existence,” the Queen says to Bill between Latvian boys and games of Yahtzee. Maenads basically willed themselves immortal over the millennium through free love, bestiality and cannibalism. It’s all in the name of a higher power — the God Who Comes — who, despite his name, rarely shows up. So here’s where the sacrifices come in. Despite having spent 100-plus lifetimes developing immortality, all Maryann wants is to die. Tricky, right? Not if you have a supernatural: someone such as Sam, or even Sookie, who “straddles the two worlds.” Hypothetically, the God Who Comes would be so pleased with the offering, he’d kill you. Hey, different cultures have different traditions.

Now, knowing this, I’m not sure why Daphne wouldn’t have been a sufficient sacrifice. Or how Maryann could have lived so long and never run into a telepath before last week. We do know, though, that Maenads are poison to the Vampires because of their unselective mating processes: Maryann’s got as much pig blood running through her as she does human.

Continue reading “‘True Blood’ season 2, episode 11″ »

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1) Midtown Restaurant Week continues.

2) The Medicine Showdown closes at 14th Street Playhouse.

3) Everest and Cirque du Soleil Journey of Man open at Fernbank Museum’s IMAX Film Festival.

4) Brian Lavelle plays Star Bar.

5) Taking Woodstock continues at area theaters.

See more Atlanta events.

(Photo by Heidi Geldhauser)

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The Aug. 26 cover story “Monsters of Poetry” puts the spotlight on the poet’s art to preview the fourth annual Decatur Book Festival, to be held Sep. 4-6. This blog will count down the days to the festival by posting a poem each day by a different writer, to let the verse speak for itself. For Aug. 30, an excerpt from her book-length poem Cradle Song by Stacey Lynn Brown.

Excerpt from Cradle Song

I.

When I was four, we drove to Nashville,
Grand Ole Opry-bound, and stopped
the night at a broken down motel
in Tennessee—shag walls,
mossy carpet, dank concrete—
and I remember standing in
the doorway as evening fell,
a busful of believers rattling their way
to the pool for a makeshift
baptism, the Amens and Hear us, Lords
ricocheting through the courtyard
as underwater lights glowed
the pool algae green.

Continue reading “Poem-a-Day DBF countdown: Stacey Lynn Brown” »

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1) Last chance to check out this year’s Atlanta Underground Film Festival!

2) The Summer Shade Festival is at Grant Park.

3) Comedian Chris Hardwick performs at Laughing Skull Lounge.

4) Opening Exchanges showcases the talent of local performers on an outdoor stage at the Arts Exchange.

5) TCM’s Summer Under the Stars ends with Lolita at Starlight Six Drive-In.

See more Atlanta events.

(Photo courtesy Darren Herczeg)

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The Aug. 26 cover story “Monsters of Poetry” puts the spotlight on the poet’s art to preview the fourth annual Decatur Book Festival, to be held Sep. 4-6. This blog will count down the days to the festival by posting a poem each day by a different writer, to let the verse speak for itself. For Aug. 29, “Summer City Python” by Karen G.

“Summer City Python”

Nothing brings out the smell of poverty
like Georgia summer heat.
We become cats clawing for scraps
our gazes harden into chain link fences
and there it is–
the rising fetid perfume of dumpster
termite wood and bathroom
meeting with magnolia, gardenia, honeysuckle
overly sweet with the tacky pink of mimosa flower
–familiarize your cheap shoe sole
melting on the sizzling asphalt
the man on the corner screaming about
the Lord coming, another sipping paper bag at 9 am
and we’re just fumbling for the token change
MARTA buses slow and late
struggling for survival like the boys in big neck chains
of dubious metallic origin
and ankled low-riders.

Continue reading “Poem-a-Day DBF countdown: Karen G.” »

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1) Eminent Domain: The Piñon Canyon Project opens at Composition Gallery.

2) The Red Bull Soapbox Race comes to town.

3) Alton Brown and Ted Allen team up for Good Eats Live at Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre.

4) German Bierfest invades Woodruff Park.

5) Drummer KJ Sawka plays 529.

See more Atlanta events.

(Photo by Kaylinn Gilstrap)

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On many levels, the Eyedrum fundraising auction held Aug. 14 was a success. “We raised something in the ballpark of $15,000,” says Robert Cheatham, Eyedrum’s executive director. Despite that success, however, the nonprofit arts organization still faces an uncertain financial future. Paying off debts and accumulated rent took more than $6,000 directly out of that figure, Cheatham says, “You can see how quickly that number starts to shrink.”

The group readily admits it can’t afford the cost of rent for its massive converted industrial space in Grant Park. There’s been some talk about moving, but the Board of Directors is divided on the issue. Regardless of some of the board’s desire to change locations, its lease on the Grant Park property runs through December of 2010. Negotiations with the landlord, Braden Fellman, have deteriorated. “They’re a landlord, they want their money. They don’t say anything, really, though. They don’t return phone calls, e-mails. We’re frankly confused by their lack of contact,” Cheatham says.

Continue reading “Eyedrum auction raises funds but crisis lingers” »

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NATURAL WONDERS: The Nature of Existence by Roger Nygard

Roger Nygard’s documentary The Nature of Existence suggests how flexible and inclusive the term “underground” is in the Atlanta Underground Film Festival. For its sixth year, the festival presents more than 100 shorts and features from well outside the movie mainstream. Underground film might conjure images of taboo-breaking indies such as Adam Goldstein and Eric Kutner’s The Snake (Sun., Aug. 30, 8:30 p.m., at Eyedrum), a comedy about dating a bulimic.

But The Nature of Existence (3 stars, Sat., Aug. 29, 9 p.m., at the Carter Center) avoids flirting with offensive content or indulging in avant-garde style and instead takes on the biggest themes imaginable. Nygard, director of the droll doc Trekkies, takes a philosophical trip to the real final frontier. He crosses the world and inquires after the meaning of life, whether God and the afterlife exist, and more. Nygard introduces the film by observing about his childhood, “I remember church as being a countdown to brunch.” He also explains how Sept. 11 inspired him to explore the big questions.

Continue reading “Atlanta Underground Film Fest looks up to ask big questions”

(Image courtesy Roger Nygard)

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