Top Albums of My 2008 subject to change

Harvey Milk -- Life...the Best Game in Town



Electric Wizard -- Dopethrone



Steeley Dan -- Aja



Art Ensemble of Chicago -- Les Stances a Sophie



Manuel Göttsching -- E2-E4





Emerson, Lake & Palmer -- Tarkus



Gui Boratto -- Chromophobia

Super Synesthetic Freakout.

Hello Friends!

I am playing music this Sunday with Sportsman's Paradise!

A seven-man-and-woman-strong army of guitarists will generate a
forty-minute-long blast of psychedelic blissout mash-up with Tibetan
bell interludes.

There will also be four screens of hypnotic and luminescent video
accompaniment.

How does that sound?


It's free (except it's not. You have to buy $10 in food/drink. They
have good burgers.)

It will be loud.

Monkeytown
58 N 3rd St
(btw. Kent & Wythe)
Williamsburg, Brooklyn

Sunday, December 14, 8pm

http://monkeytownhq.com/monkeytownhome.html

Please come!

The Voice of Experience

My mother is a Senior Case Manager for the Rappahannock Rapidan Community Services Board/Area Agency on Aging in Culpeper, Virginia. She works with seniors to get them services they need, like hot meals, transportation to their appointments or fixing their leaky roof. Her article was recently published in The Voice of Experience, the Board's newspaper. I'm posting it below.


Christmas All Year?
By Toni Browning

As the holidays approach we begin to get the spirit of giving and sharing. We find ways to help the less fortunate; we seek causes to donate to, we give food to the food bank, we may belong to an organization that adopts a family for the holidays. Our children dress up as angels and the school choir they belong to sing carols in the halls of nursing homes or serenade their elderly neighbors. And of course if our elderly Mom or Dad, Aunt Susie or Uncle Bob live far away, we make plans for the yearly holiday trip.

The holiday season for many of us is a happy time, a time of excitement and joy and a time we want to do some selfless act of caring. But what happens after we’ve visited our relatives, helped the elderly neighbor trim the tree, donated all the canned good that have been unused in our pantry all year, provided Thanksgiving dinner or gave gloves to the less fortunate? Is that it? Do we wait until next year so we can get that feeling of joy and giving again?

Let me tell you a story. I used to work in a nursing home in Warrenton. Around Christmas many of the schools wanted to have their classes come to visit the residents, sing carols and give small drawings or presents to the seniors. Other organizations also wanted time to visit with the seniors during the holidays. The activities director who coordinated these events could not accommodate all the groups, clubs and schools that wanted to participate. She explained politely to several of the schools/organizations that the nursing home schedule was full and would it be possible for them to make a visit in January or February? Every one of them refused. A few were indignant that they couldn’t be accommodated. Another caller actually said, “What good would that do us?”

Although we laughed about this comment it was a sad commentary on our times. It is regretful that the spirit of giving does not last throughout the year, that when a person volunteers to help an elderly person put up Christmas lights outside his house, or decorate a tree for their aunt or uncle he or she doesn’t remember to come back a month later to take them down. It is heartbreaking when family members visit their mother or father and do not notice that he/she is depressed or mourning the loss of a good friend who died recently. Often the visiting family act as if nothing is amiss and wave “see you next year,” as they drive happily away, relieved that the visit is over and that they won’t have to do that again until next year.

For some the holiday season does not bring sentiments of joy and celebration. Many of the elderly are going through major life changes, or have health issues. They could be struggling to make ends meet but feel obligated to buy presents. These are situations that need more time to be resolved that a brief holiday visit.

Christmas is a time of giving but why does it have to stop January first? Spread out your good works during the other eleven months. Stop in on a regular basis to see a senior who is living alone. Volunteer at a food bank or nursing home a few months out of the year. Adopt a family in April or July. Sing or dance at the nursing homes in January or May. When you go shopping pick up an extra item for the food bank. Drive an elderly woman to get her hair done. Keep in touch with your relatives and notice any changes in their behavior, their mood or their lack of interest in things that use to make them happy. These are the little acts of caring that make a difference.

I am in no way criticizing all of the good and charitable works done during the holidays. They are generous and most times heart felt. But the let-down many seniors feel after their family drives away, or when they look out the window in June with their Christmas tree lights still winking off and on hoping the neighbor will return, can be devastating.

Small acts of kindness can make a tremendous difference in the lives of some of our seniors; please find the time to accomplish a few of them all through the year.

Trouble With Mapping by Brett Price

Trouble With Mapping is ready for you.




Tony and I worked all night (10 pm) to nearly, just about, pretty much finish em.





Brett's poems are great.



Every copy has a unique cover.




Get one at Flying Guillotine.

Just Go Eat a Doughnut

AND listen to me read poems this Wednesday, November 19th, with the amazing Timothy Donnelly, Thomas Hummel, and Nancy Kuhl.

The 2nd Draft Reading Series
7:30 pm at The Roots & Vines Cafe in the Lower East Side

409 Grand Street (at Clinton)

This cafe is very very near the Doughnut Plant, which has the best doughnuts you've ever put into your face. They close at 6:30, so get your doughnuts early and bring me one. I'd like a vanilla bean.

Recentings

Tony and I are working on Trouble With Mapping.



There's a Multifarious Array tomorrow night. I will see people from most of the parts of my life.

I missed the WEC on Wednesday, but mk kindly DVR'd it for me.




Before, it was Halloween. Alison and I turned these guys



into these guys.

They Are Letting Me Read Poems

They are quite nice.



So are these.




This Friday!

Why didn't I tell you sooner?

October 24th @ 7 p.m. - Stain Bar - Williamsburg, Brooklyn

with Julia Cohen, Mathias Svalina, Patrick Herron, Brian Howe & Ken Rumble


Click on this for details on the poets.

stain

766 grand street
brooklyn, ny 11211

(L train to Grand Street, 1 block west)
718.387.7840


Hosted by two lovelies: Amy King and Ana Bozicevic!!

That's So Ancient Greece #3 -- ALL NEW

Check it out.

Mildred Pierce Interview!

Valuable blackmail details revealed! Tidbits that, brought up in the wrong company, will make me feel ashamed!

My friend Leeyanne Moore interviewed me for the zine Mildred Pierce. Check it out.

Tonight at Keyfood

I was happy to see tonight that the Keyfood near my house has started stocking experimental fiction. William Gass’s Omensetter’s Luck, David Markson’s Wittgenstein’s Mistress. There was some Ducornet. I even saw a couple of copies of How It Is. The selection isn’t picked through at all. I talked to the manager and he said they would try to keep most of the seminal titles in stock, but you should probably get there soon. I bought their only copy of Nadja, I nearly bought Ubu Roi but I think I have it somewhere.

Jahns, Jackson Heights, Queens

You must go to Jahns.
Photo by Matt Koroghlian. Watch his movies. Do Aerobics.

Another Comic Up at The Foghorn!

You may have seen it before, but not in this particular swath of cyberspace.

Rope-a-Dope!

Rope-a-Dope Collective did a lovely yellowy wistful silkscreen print in honor of our August So & So Reading in Boston! And by our I mean Hazel McClure, Aaron Tieger, and me. Listen close to it. There is an ocean breathing in it.

New Comix Up at The Foghorn

Check out this magazine called The Foghorn.

They just took my That's So Ancient Greece Series!

My Bloody Valentine Last Night at Roseland Ballroom

It was the best thing I've ever seen.

New Poems In Past Simple (Includes Progenitor)

Hello Friends! Please enjoy the new issue of Past Simple. Inside are two poems Brandon Shimoda and I wrote, read by my mother, Toni Browning!

Mini-Comic

This is a cute little number. Upsetting comix you may have seen before collected in a small book made from paper bags and boiled sinew. About 20 pages. Yours for $3 (includes shipping). Let me know if you want one! It seems silly to Paypal it, but there's the option below. Otherwise, just email me your address and I'll mail you one in your mailbox!

sommerbrowning [at] hotmail [dot] com

So and So Reading Up In Your Boston.

Do you live in Boston?

Do you find wide waters of viscera worth crossing?

Have you mastered the coma of disintegration and musk, but still yearn?



I am reading poetry this Saturday!!

Saturday, August 23, 8pm

at The Distillery
516 East Second Street
South Boston, MA 02127


I read with Hazel McClure and Aaron Tieger.

Please come!


Hazel McClure wrote Nothing Moving, a chapbook from Lame House press. Her work has been published in Mirage #4/ Period(ical), the tiny, Coconut and Can We Have Our Ball Back. She lives and writes in Buffalo.


Aaron Tieger's most recent books are Anxiety Chant (Skysill Press) and The Collected Typos of Aaron Tieger (Editions Louis Wain). Formerly the editor of CARVE Poems, he now publishes Petrichord Books in Cambridge, MA.

Pleasure Your Ear Holes

This Sunday expect one of three things:

1.

2.

3. A poetry reading with Mathias Svalina, Julia Cohen, Julie Doxsee and me!

From 2-4pm at Chop Suey Books in Richmond, Virginia.

Bicychlamydia Screams this Weekend!!

You Get On -- It Gets Off!


This short film I helped write is playing Saturday!
(And I won't be there.)

It won first prize at the Bike Shorts screening a few weeks ago.

Come if you dare!!!


What for: The Brooklyn Waterfront Screening Series

When: 3pm - Saturday, July 26th

Where: The BWAC screening room 499 Van Brunt Street, Red Hook Brooklyn


It's the opening day of the Brooklyn Waterfront Artist Coalition's Summer Show. Free movies! Free popcorn! Beer, wine and food by donation!


The screening will also include Jack-of-all-trades by Lisa Kletjian (editor of Bicychlamydia and front woman of Riff Raff).


Most of the filmmakers will be on hand to discuss their work (Andrew!), and there will be hundreds of artists and pieces of art to see in the rest of the show.



BICYCHLAMYDIA is A Back and to the Left Production


Starring: Alison Walsh, Missi Bullock, Christopher Boosahda, Mike Daronco, Elle Kay, Wade Bowen & Kira Rutherford-Boese

Special Effects Makeup: Yukki Nakamura, Niamh Moloney & Jane Rose

Title design: Ron Miller

Director of Photography: Francis Buxton

Edited by: Lisa Kletjian

Written by: Sommer Browning and Andrew Miller

Produced by: Jon Bentley Wiggins

Directed by: Andrew Miller

Now Out With Flying Freaking Guillotine

X-Ray by Michael Rerick.

Order Here or Email Me

New Study Reveals 2 in 5 People Love Dancing Cat Videos or Love Someone Who Loves Dancing Cat Videos

BOWLING GREEN, Ohio -- A new study reveals two in five people love dancing cat videos or love someone who loves dancing cat videos. A group of research sociologists at The University of Bowling Green State Ohio College University (go RedCups!) have just completed the two-and-a-half-day long survey of most every human on the planet. "We missed a few people in Bangladesh and St. Augustine, Florida because our dial-up connection was screwballs, but we answered for them as accurately as possible," says Dr. Robert Bob. Survey takers were asked questions such as: Do you love dancing cat videos? Do you know someone that loves dancing cat videos? Am I doing it too hard? The results will be published in an article coming out this July in the Yale Journal of Sociology.

I See Steely Dan in Nineteen Days

I Haven't Posted in Twelve Years Yet I Decide to Share Some Very Personal Things, or, Julia Cohen Tagged Me

What were you doing five years ago?

1.) Slinging tater tots at Grill
2.) Hanging clothes out on the line in the backyard of the cutest house I will ever live in
3.) Writing this poem
4.) Sweating
5.)


What are five things (in no particular order) on your to-do list for today?

1.) Get Tito Ortiz to sign my book
2.) Call Ron Miller
3.) Eat dinner (hopefully hamburgers) with mk
4.) Try not to cut my own hair
5.)

What are five snacks you enjoy?

1.) Pork
2.) Beef Jerky
3.) Hamburgers
4.) Bacon
5.)


What are five things you would do if you were a billionaire?

1.) Give money to mk to invent a gun that shoots money
2.) Give money to Cheryl to start some crazy ass school that teaches critical thinking
3.) Buy my mother everything she wants
4.) Learn to surf standing up
5.) Renounce my wealth


What are five of your bad habits?

1.) Thinking I'm still playing GTA4 when I walk down the street
2.) Watching shit ass TV instead of writing shit ass poems about TV
3.) Worrying I'm not worrying enough
4.) Thinking I only have four bad habits
5.)

What are five places you have lived?

1.) In a shack in Church Hill, Richmond, VA
2.) In a shack in Brooklyn
3.) In a shack in Fredericksburg, VA
4.) In a shack in Tucson, AZ
5.) In a shack in Alexandria, VA

What are five jobs you have had?

1.) Waitress at Denny's, graveyard shift
2.) Under quota bookseller at Waldenbooks
3.) Uncomfortable cashier at community pool


4.) Incompetent Richmond dishwasher
5.) Cataloger

Which five people do you want to tag?

1.) Ron Silliman
2.) Mark Horosky
3.) Marjorie Wine
4.) Jennifer Bartlett
5.) Ann Fine

Flying Guillotine's First Endeavor!

A collection of Melissa Koosmann's wonderful poems is out with Flying Guillotine!

Check it all out here.

Here's What Human Beings Are Saying About Vale Tudo!

"The book is terrific (I love reading about sex in hotel rooms)..." -- Larry Hama

[To Self] "Self, I'm tickled by these poems in a depth-charged, urgent, almost dire sort of way." -- Matt Hart

"Is that a tooth?" -- Toni Browning

Pick up a copy at horse less press.

You Will Be in Boston Sunday Night

Vale Tudo is Just Like You and Me!

Vale Tudo Eats Pie!


Vale Tudo Plays the Guitar!

Vale Tudo Sleeps!



Vale Tudo uses the Toilet!


Vale Tudo Hangs Out With His Friends!





Vale Tudo is now out with horse less press! Order one here!

As a special gift, each copy comes with a hand-drawn Mixed Martial Arts Fighter Playing Card!

Like these!

A Like Story

A Like Story

A Like Story

If you can't believe it, choose to believe it.

I believe it!

horse less press is publishing my chapbook, Vale Tudo, in December! Maybe you've seen some of the poems in Forklift, Ohio and soon in Handsome.


Check out the horse less' fall/winter line-up. Alex Lemon, Sampson Starkweather, Chris Tonelli and Sarah Bartlett! Esteemed company! Poetic prowess!

Thank you horse less press. I won't let you down. I'll pick you up from the airport on time. I won't put back the empty milk carton. And I'll never wipe off your steak when it falls to the floor. I'll eat that one.

Bumper Things

Bumper Things

Bumper Things

Thank you: Melissa and Andy.

The Multifarious Array is Back.

The first reading of the new season!

Matt Donovan and David McGimpsey knock your socks off this Friday, September 14th, 7pm, at Pete's Candy Store.

Come or risk untold horrors.