A portrait of the fighter MACH Sakurai prior to DREAM 14, in 2010. Originally published at mma-japan.com
Monday, May 24th, 2010
The MACH dojo is a small rectangular room on the bottom floor of a short building North of Shinjuku at the Sugamo train stop. It is a damp afternoon. There are piles of shoes, sandals and boots scattered under the awning of the gym and... Read More »
The matriarch of the Hartrum family, Debra Lynn Hartrum, took her last breath in Charlotte, North Carolina on November 12th, 2021. She passed on... Read More »
Narrated By Elisabeth Lagelee, THE DIARY OF ANAIS NIN is the published version of AnaĂŻs Ninâs own private manuscript diary, which she began at age 11 in 1914 during a trip from Europe to New York with her mother and two brothers. Nin would later say she had begun the diary as a letter to her father, Cuban composer JoaquĂn Nin, who... Read More »
âSam Pink is a keen observer of the culture of minimum-wage jobs and low-rent studio apartments that is the reality of life for all those who donât find a cog space in todayâs hyper-capitalist economy.â âThe Guardian
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I just finished producing a new audiobook with Marcia Douglas and the legendary New Directions.
Reincarnated as homeless Fall-down man, Bob Marley sleeps in a clock tower built on the site of a lynching in Half Way Tree, Kingston. The ghosts of Marcus Garvey and King Edward VII are there too, drinking whiskey and playing solitaire. This amazing novelâin bass riddimâcarries the reader on a... Read More »
It was the early morning in Kabukicho. The sun was only just up and everything was weird and tinted blue. The breeze pushed a piss smell from the gutters. There were cigarette butts in puddles along the curb. I was alone in front of a Family Mart. I didnât know why I was alone. The morning light continued to open the corners.[Read More]
Link to PostAudiobooks: The Past, Present, and Future of Another Way to Read// In the early 1990s, the books on tape section of our public library comprised a spinning rack much smaller than the one 7-Eleven used for comic books. Titles like Zig Ziglarâs Secrets of Closing the Sale and Awaken the Giant Within found their way onto the floorboard of my momâs Civic. She worked in sales, and the audience... Read More »
Episode #17 of The Talking Book Podcast features me and Dave Burr on 103.3 Asheville FMâs Wordplay. We talk about the nonprofit, our mission, plays excerpts from the audiobooks and have a hoot. Weâre famous now. Go check out the radio show!
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Cool peeps at Hobart published a new TYO story in Tampopo. Getting shot by stone hippos. Movies about food.
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Gang at Hobart published a new Tokyo story in Rokugatsu No Hebi. Sho chu, mystery pills and masturbating in the rain.
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Nice people at Entropy Mag published my story Sprawling Cartpet, Lost at Sea aboout a Myrtle Beach wedding, lonely sea visions and a Cracker Barrell pregnancy.
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The gang at Entropy published NEON SUNSET MURAL, a true story about a rat, a dog, some roaches and my folks on an island before I was born.
Link to PostI wrote a piece about my grandfather, his friend Bud Crum and using old family stories as ammo for fiction over at THE TALKING BOOK.
Link to PostElke Journal picked up one of my stories in KAKI SOUNDS COOL.
Go and read it, por favor. Itâs COOL.
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Like A Slow Bird (excerpt)
An attractive girl in a white, Victorian-style dress sat down next to John in an old coffee shop on the West side of Shinjuku. It was nearly dusk and the large yellow windows over the counter, the scuffed chairs and smoke-stained walls made everything appear worn and dirty. John was reading a book of stories called Men Without Women. He liked... Read More »
The man took the childâs hand and carried all the persimmons in the front of his shirt and the boy was laughing as they turned down a narrow street towards the Kanda river.
Link to PostBeing a large version of a small thing does it. The big, shiny brown ones that sit on the walls at night and wind up on your face before you wake to smacking yourself as the son of a bitch takes off behind the headboard. Most people have a natural distaste for the fuckers, but Linda was one of those women who lost her head every time she saw anything... Read More »
I was able to convince Shi Shi Yamazaki to take part in an interview before her new show opened up at ROCKET in Harajuku last week.
ShiShi: I was born and grew up in the suburbs of Tokyo. I was very talkative, and I used to make bunny ears or something like baikin manâs ears (a character from a famous TV show for children, Anpanman ) and wore them... Read More »
III
My Tokyo art project (executed alongside web design genius of AD Regan) TYO mag has birthed a 3rd issue. The title of the issue is äž (san) which means three. Within it youâll find:
Illustrations by Japanese animator/ mask creator Shishi Yamazaki A short story by the artist Jack McLean A short story by the writer Marc Kaufman Illustrations by Mitzi Akaha Paintings by Tomo Ishii A short... Read More »
My old comic-making partner in crime Joseph Tenney has a new blog about his adventures in comics. The site is just up, but thereâs a cool video about why he does what does. We used to make a comic called Bastards Of The Infinite together. Youth!
King Capricorn/ J. Tenney
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I wrote a piece for http://tyoindex.com/ about Yasunari Kawabataâs House of Sleeping Beauties (ç ăăçŸć„łNemureru Bijo) , Julia-Leighâs Sleeping Beauty and the Tokyo âsleep-togetherâ shops.
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My good friend & artist Joesph Colt Tenney made this illustration based on my short fiction MAGIC SOFT that appeared in Tyomag #2. You can read that and other cool Tokyo works at TYOmag.com. This piece was made using gauche, zippy-tone and yellow paper for the flowers. Joseph is a comic book illustrator and visual artist. He lives in North Carolina, USA.
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We released the second issue of Tokyo based art and literary magazine known as TYOmag.com. It has been a relative success, attracting attention from some notable artists and a few quality digital publications. This issue is called KABUKICHO. Â It contains paintings, poetry, short fiction, photography and sequential art by Tokyo based artists. I included a chapter from a long piece of fiction Iâve been working... Read More »
(originally published at the now defuct Screensyndrome.com)
Anybody will do for you. Not for me. I must have somebody, and with the Oscars (silly as they may be) just hours away, paired with the time-honored tradition of self-indulgence, Iâve decided to put forth a list of my favorite films of 2012. Better late than never. God bless cinema and all her pretty whores.
The Top... Read More »
Childhood Beach
I recently published a short story on TYO. Itâs a piece of Beach fiction I wrote over the summer. I originally wrote it as a chapter for a longer piece called BIG TIME. The excerpt is called The Skinny Girl with Big Tits, Shonan and You Can Take New York.Â
You can read it here.
âThe sea, once it casts its... Read More »
TYO is a three-letter abbreviation that may refer to:
Tokyo, Japan IATA airport code for all airports in the Tokyo metropolitan area The Tokyo Stock Exchange New art and literary website from Tokyo, Japan.
A good friend and young poet Duncan Regan and I have started a very modest publishing platform in Tokyo called TYO. The mission of the website is to digitally publish... Read More »
âEvery year our gang travels, in an erratic caravan, to the barrier islands of the Outer Banks, those losing strips of North Carolina locked in an unceasing decay between the unmoving sounds and wearing forces of the Atlantic. The excursions began in the spring of 2002 (assorted Carolina beaches, North and South) and have continued for 10 years, which may not seem long, but the photographs... Read More »
ć·ç«Ż ćș·æ Kawabata Yasunari
Recently I finished a story by a Japanese novelist named Yasunari Kawabata. House of Sleeping Beauties (ç ăăçŸć„łNemureru Bijo) is a short novel about a sort of brothel that caters to very old men. These men pay to sleep next to young, naked women who are drugged with a very potent sleeping medicine. The girls are in... Read More »
After many months and a new ăšă, TKO has resumed shooting the adventures of Kid Tiger. Due to a series of mishaps, we lost the original actor (may you fly truly, Dan Herbertson) to the gentlemanly nation of Australia. Paul Butler (a dear friend and fellow Carolinian) has been kind enough to take up the mask for one more shot at the prize. Below are a couple pictures from shooting on... Read More »
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French whores with painted faces in ornate dresses smoking opium near the turn of the century appear lost and sad and beautiful in Bertrand Bonelloâs House of Tolerance (LâApollonide Souvenirs de la maison close/ 2011). The audience is given an uncensored view of an upscale French brothel somewhere along the Parisian countryside where repetitive nights seem endless, save the occasional lazy afternoon spent near the river, mutilation, new... Read More »
Tanka is a short poem çæ. It is one of the traditional forms of Japanese verse. Recently, a friend asked me to read this one by Hiroshi Homura and I havenât been able to forget it.
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elephantâs dung in the savanna
listen to me
I am drowsy, heartbreaking
terrifying, lonely
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Original Japanese:
ă”ăăłăăźè±ĄăźăăăăèăăŠăăă ăăăă€ăȘăăăăăăżăă
sabanna no zĂŽ no unko yo kiite kure darui setsunai kowai samishii
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Below is the script idea for THE SECOND FALL of KID TIGER. It is the humble sequel to CREME. Weâre shooting the existential wanderings through the city and by the sea in our free time.
THE SECOND FALL OF KID TIGER
Original Script
Written by K. Hartrum
Color
TIGERÂ FANTASIZESÂ ABOUT GIRL
TIGER SEES GIRL
TIGER LOSES GIRL
TIGER GETS...
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Part 1 VIDEO
CREME: A Tigerâs Fall
Directed by K. Hartrum
ACTOR/CAMERA/EDITOR
Dan Herbertson/Dean Marchand/Duncan Regan
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The town was thick with the smell of grass and earth. It was the end of April and Iâd been back for nearly a month. Nights spent drinking Dadâs Millers and sitting on the big porch with Mom talking about the long ago in California, my childhood, her sisters and when she was a girl. I was weary and pissed about being away from the city... Read More »
*REJOICE, because the sun rises in the tiny hours of the morning with the bull-stained troops continuing their chanting. Someone hollers âHAPPY NEW YEAR!â and then an echoing crackâ balloon filling rapidly to a taught, purple end.
Itâs 7 in the morning on the 1st of January. The warm glaze from a bottle of Jameson paired with the salt-watery GHB retreats. A loud crash through a... Read More »