R.I.P. Jeff Hanson

We have terribly sad news to report:

Kill Rock Stars singer/songwriter Jeff Hanson was found dead on Friday, June 5 in what his label calls “a terrible accident.” He was 31.

It has been widely reported that Hanson most likely died from a fall onto the concrete floor of his new apartment, which he had just moved into days earlier. His parents found him in his apartment. It appears he fell and hit his head.

Portia Sabin, president of Hanson’s label Kill Rock Stars, said, “Jeff was only one of two people we have ever signed from an unsolicited demo tape. We get hundreds and hundreds of tapes, and for us to have been so captivated by him is pretty impressive. He was a terrific songwriter with beautiful melodies. The icing on the cake was his incredible voice.”

A 2005 Paste magazine review wrote that Hanson’s idiosyncratic voice was an “angelic falsetto, a cross between Alison Krauss and Art Garfunkel that is often (understandably) mistaken for a female contralto.”

Hanson recorded three albums under Kill Rock Stars (2003 Son, 2005 Jeff Hanson, 2008 Madam Owl), the label that also supported Elliot Smith.

On May 15, Hanson opened our Meadowlark outdoor stage for the summer, here in Denver. As with most of the venues Jeff played on his last tour, he held the audience in his grasp for the entire set.

Jack Kerouac’s Fantasy Baseball Leagues

Unbeknownst to his close friends, one of my literary heroes – Jack Kerouac invented a fantasy baseball game and played it for most of his life.

[Kerouac's game charted] the exploits of made-up players like Wino Love, Warby Pepper, Heinie Twiett, Phegus Cody and Zagg Parker, who toiled on imaginary teams named either for cars (the Pittsburgh Plymouths and New York Chevvies, for example) or for colors (the Boston Grays and Cincinnati Blacks).

He collected their stats, analyzed their performances and, as a teenager, when he played most ardently, wrote about them in homemade newsletters and broadsides. He even covered financial news and imaginary contract disputes. During those same teenage years, he also ran a fantasy horse-racing circuit, complete with illustrated tout sheets and racing reports. He created imaginary owners, imaginary jockeys, imaginary track conditions.

Don’t miss the slideshow of some of Kerouac’s notebooks and publications related to his imaginary sports.

Yesterday. Was Beautiful.

Ghosts of the Queen City

“Denver is a square, proud, prompt little place, surrounded by immensity.”–Demas Barnes (Denver visitor, 1865)

Denver has a rich history, a haunted history, and at times – a nearly invisible history. Many are unaware of the men and women that served as histories characters in the formation of the city: William Green Russell, John H. Gregory, William Jackson, William Byers, Soapy Smith, Colonel John Chivington, Silas Soule, Horace Tabor, Mamie Eisenhower – for these names are primarily of the nineteenth century.

However, natives may remember some of the dead establishments of the Queen City: Muddy’s Coffeehouse, City Spirit Cafe, the old Skylark, Celebrity Sports Center and Cooper Theater, the old viaducts that pocked the city.

If the history of Denver intrigues you, several notable local contributors have collaborated and put together a great blog called Buck Fifty: www.buckfifty.org.

James Joyce and his (farting) Fuckbird.

In 1909, while away in Dublin on business trip, James Joyce makes a pact with his wife that they will write each other erotic letters. The letters of his wife disappeared, but the ones he wrote were published in 1975 as the “dirty” letters of James Joyce to his wife. Here is one of these (deliciously) filthy letters.

Many more appear in this upcoming, May issue of syntax.

Dublin
8 December 1909

To NORA

My sweet little whorish Nora I did as you told me, you dirty little girl, and pulled myself off twice when I read your letter. I am delighted to see that you do like being fucked arseways. Yes, now I can remember that night when I fucked you for so long backwards. It was the dirtiest fucking I ever gave you, darling. My prick was stuck in you for hours, fucking in and out under your upturned rump. I felt your fat sweaty buttocks under my belly and saw your flushed face and mad eyes. At every fuck I gave you your shameless tongue came bursting out through your lips and if a gave you a bigger stronger fuck than usual, fat dirty farts came spluttering out of your backside. You had an arse full of farts that night, darling, and I fucked them out of you, big fat fellows, long windy ones, quick little merry cracks and a lot of tiny little naughty farties ending in a long gush from your hole. It is wonderful to fuck a farting woman when every fuck drives one out of her. I think I would know Nora’s fart anywhere. I think I could pick hers out in a roomful of farting women. It is a rather girlish noise not like the wet windy fart which I imagine fat wives have. It is sudden and dry and dirty like what a bold girl would let off in fun in a school dormitory at night. I hope Nora will let off no end of her farts in my face so that I may know their smell also.

You say when I go back you will suck me off and you want me to lick your cunt, you little depraved blackguard. I hope you will surprise me some time when I am asleep dressed, steal over to me with a whore’s glow in your slumberous eyes, gently undo button after button in the fly of my trousers and gently take out your lover’s fat mickey, lap it up in your moist mouth and suck away at it till it gets fatter and stiffer and comes off in your mouth. Sometimes too I shall surprise you asleep, lift up your skirts and open your drawers gently, then lie down gently by you and begin to lick lazily round your bush. You will begin to stir uneasily then I will lick the lips of my darling’s cunt. You will begin to groan and grunt and sigh and fart with lust in your sleep. Then I will lick up faster and faster like a ravenous dog until your cunt is a mass of slime and your body wriggling wildly.

Goodnight, my little farting Nora, my dirty little fuckbird! There is one lovely word, darling, you have underlined to make me pull myself off better. Write me more about that and yourself, sweetly, dirtier, dirtier.

JIM

Denver Music. New. 2009.

Here are some new tracks from Denver artists that have caught our attention:

Alan Alda: “Red Sky Morning (A Sailing Song)”

Tyler Despres: “Paradigm”

Speakeasy Tiger: “Speak Long, Dream On”

A Mouthful of Thunder: “From on High”

Cody Crump: “I’ll Be There”

Jesse Nesbitt: “015 Gracious Fact Check”

Victor Grimm: “Gary New Duluth”

Six Months to Live: “Spin a Top”

Dirt Circle Dogs: “Autobahn Pub”

The Don’ts & Be Carefuls: “Color TV (demo)”

The Build-Up: “The Violin Song”

(click on names to listen to songs)

Goodbye, my love.

“Fires run through my body — the pain of loving you. Pain runs through my body with the fires of my love for you. Sickness wanders my body with my love for you. Pain like a boil about to burst with my love for you. Consumed by fire with my love for you. I remember what you said to me. I am thinking of your love for me. I am torn by your love for me. Pain and more pain. Where are you going with my love? I’m told you will go from here. I am told you will leave me here. My body is numb with grief. Remember what I’ve said, my love. Goodbye, my love, goodbye.”

- Anonymous Kwakiutl Indian of southern Alaska
Transcribed from the native tongue in 1896

Please Find This.

It’s no coincidence. I play that song around you so maybe you’ll actually listen to the lyrics for once and know how I feel.

I was wondering if you had a second. To talk about anything at all.

(text from: pleasefindthis.blogspot.com)

I am. (Already).

I am the Biggest Dick in the World

After learning that a couple I know actually met through a personal ad, I woke up on Valentine’s Day morning, decided to take a look at the ads – and then it came to me, slowly:

My personal ad.

So, I created it. And ran it.

The only response I received? From a Princeton graduate, current Ph.D. student that described herself as: insane, irresponsible optimist, impulsive, articulate. She said, “I am three standard deviations above the mean by most measures, including baggage and general fuck-up-ed-ness.”

This couldn’t have gone any better. Here’s the ad:

…so, the initial title of my post was to be: I HAVE the Biggest Dick in the World. Somehow, strangely, I mistakenly input AM for HAVE. And so, when I went to post my desperate plea to the world for some good lovin’ on this day of Saint Valentine, I found that it was oddly appropriate. And more than that, I’m the kind of dude that knows: Chicks love Bad Boys.

And I, dear reader, am ba-ad. I will strangle you and slap you upside the head with my awesome lexicographic badness. Really, you’d love to meet me.

Because really, once you get around the fact that I have a massive rooster and like to talk in dysphemisms to emphasize my awesome bad self, you should easily locate the fact that: I AM the Biggest Dick in the World.

Trust me: You’d love to meet me. I am such a Dick/Johnson (both are my birth names, but I won’t tell you which is my surname – if you even know what that means) that:

I will probably tell you things like: You can’t split an infinitive. Or, stranding prepositions is okay. But after that encouraging pat on the back, my true cockiness will become erect in some foul-lick state and I will say: An ellipsis consists of no more than 3 (read: three) periods. Idiot.

Caveat Emptor: I. Am. Bad.

(I am so bad, I actually wear all white – like J.C. or Colonel Sanders)

I am such a Dick/Johnson that at some point I will probably demonstrate my wealthy pedigree with some bedazzling gems including: My sesquipedalian lexicon. My aptitude for locating and destroying everybody’s grammatical and verbal solecisms.

I am such a Dick I can’t even tell you how many times in an evening I will brag about how badass I am at holding the door open for you. In fact, I may even give you a fat lip with my favorite of the antiquated words: chivalry (second place, “sepia”).

Caveat Emptor: I am a colossal, endowed, gigantic Dick. Er, Johnson (You bet your serf-like existence that I’m proud of my family’s name. Bow down and lick the hand that feeds you, please).

I am such a ginormous (yes, that’s a word, language serf – it was one of the top neologisms for 2007) Dick/Johnson that my bad biker self will probably always say things like: The word “irony” is not the same as the word “coincidence”. Geezus (I’m pretty bad, but I misspell on the fact that I don’t want to offend the top badman of the world, J.C.). I’ll have you know that “cliché” is not the same as “hackneyed”. And really, get it right: “notorious” is not synonymous with “famous”. Nor is “modern” synonymous with “contemporary”. Douche.

I will probably use contractions appropriately and you will probably become annoyed at my awesomeness and general adroitness with language. If you are lucky, I may even recite some of my favorite poems from poets like: Myself, Rilke, Neruda, Plath, Bukowski or even cummings. Yes, that’s right I am the kind of Dick that’s a pleonastic erudite. A giant Johnson in the ass.

Huh?

Anywho: You probably should know however that yes, I’m the kind of Dick that won’t capitalize anything in my emails because I believe in artistic liberty. And yes, by liberty I actually do mean: choice. And while there are multitudes of other fine, awesome-ass points that I could make on my behalf, I will simply leave you with these facts which support the fact that I’m NOT the kind of Dick/Johnson that:

Has any friends named Chad.

Owns even one baseball cap/wears it backwards and in public.

Visits LoDo’s scrumptious bars or grills (with or without that British “e”).

Says “delish”.

My favorite word, however, is: fucktard. And no, you can’t say it just because my gigantic Dick of a bad self uses it. I hate followers, but I do like to have my ass worshipped and rubbed. Kneeded (did you catch that word play. She-it. Be-otch.)

In the end I am the kind of big Dicked Johnson that does not enjoy the company of very fat, er check that – stupid – girls. You can be kind of fat as long as you’re not kind of stupid. For I wish not to diminish the fine pedigree of my family (this of course will happen after you see my massive Johnson and begin the worship ceremony which inevitably will lead to the dispersion of my coconut infused man juice).

What?

“Kim & Jesse”: by Jason Thielke for the 2009 Scope New York Art Fair