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August 08, 2005

More Than a Feeling

Thanks, everyone, for posting comments to this site. It's great to meet new people this way, and to hear from a few old friends. Also, I can't even begin to explain how much it means to hear people say nice things about the books and movie.

I'll try to address the comments individually when time allows. I've been rattlingly busy the past couple of weeks with some heavy-duty progress on We Disappear-- good news for me and the book, but a black spot on my abilities to stay in touch with people and answer emails and letters and etc.

I haven't ONLY been working, though. Last week Michael and I spent five days in Vermont at a lovely resort place near a little town called West Dover. Our good pals Tommy and Michael got married-- my first "gay wedding"-- and I had really wonderful, relaxing time. Instead of gifts, they just had a huge group of their best friends rent out this huge house in the mountains for a week. We played a lot of MAFIA (tipsy, of course) and went swimming at a rather eyebrow-raising nude beach on the Rock River. I made a bunch of cool new friends. And I still owe Mark ten bucks for not knowing my "Amazing Race" trivia as well as I thought I did.

The movie, by the way, did NOT get banned in Australia. Cool. I think it opens there in a couple of weeks. The film also just won an award at the Brisbane International Film Festival, so we're all elated re: that.

(Here's a pretty cool interview with me about the movie, which recently appeared in the Kansas City STAR. The photos aren't too bad, if you can get 'em to load.)

Just saw MURDERBALL. Fantastic. I heart Mark Zupan.

I'm going to steal blatantly from a common practice on Dennis Cooper's weblog and start making random lists of things, because, like him, I'm obsessed with doing that. Here's one now.

Ten Favorite Female Voices
1. Elizabeth Fraser
2. Bjork
3. Kate Bush
4. Nina Simone
5. Sinead O'Connor
6. Harriet Wheeler
7. Debbie Harry
8. Iris DeMent
9. Caroline Crawley
10. Beth Gibbons
11. Karen Carpenter
12. Lisa Gerrard
13. Alison Goldfrapp
14. Nicola Hitchcock
15. Clare Grogan

Speaking of music.... Today on the drive to the gym, my iPod was playing a nice string of my usual stuff-- My Bloody Valentine's "No More Sorry"; Talk Talk's "New Grass"; New Order's "Everything's Gone Green"-- when it then started playing "More Than a Feeling" by Boston. What a kickass song. Folks in the cars next to me were staring. I was reminded of when I was 17 and a total new-wave freak, listening to Ultravox and Gary Numan and the Psychedelic Furs, and how I would sometimes sneak off with my friend Shannan in her car and listen to stadium rock with her as though it was something dangerous and forbidden. Therefore I am now listening to the debut Boston album in its entirety, as well as another of Shannan's 1983 favorites, Heart. Which makes me think, I could have almost put Ann Wilson's voice on that little list, too.

Can anyone name a singer who can hit high-scream notes like Boston's Brad Delp could? (Maybe that singer from the band Muse...?)

Okay, my end-of-summer resolution, I think, is to update this blog more often, but write shorter and sometimes trivial entries. All while working on my novel, I mean. I'll start that practice next time.