Sunday, October 22, 2006

The Bard Rocks

My friend Roland Vinyard has a brand-spankin' new website. He calls his one-man act "The Bard Rocks," which is explained on the site. Check it out at www.thebardrocks.com

Unlinke the musician I mentioned in my previous post on this blog, Mr. Vinyard is a non-fictional character.

Thursday, October 19, 2006

Uncle Jim Jugson

Did I ever mention that I have a great, great uncle from West Virginia named Jim Jugson? He dusted off his old fiddle a while back and played along with me on a recording of "Coffee Blues." We had such a great time that I was able to convince him to create a page for himself on Myspace. He's pretty sure that the Internet is an invention of the devil, but that sort of thing never stopped him from trying new things. Check him out at the link below:

http://www.myspace.com/unclejimjugson

 

Sunday, October 15, 2006

Two Geniuses At Odds

Most of the people who read this blog probably know James Joyce is one of my favorite writers. Strange coincidence that one of my favorite modern comics, Patton Oswalt, recently wrote an alternative ending to Joyce's acclaimed story "The Dead."

If you like Joyce, or if you like Patton Oswalt, or if you like midgets, you must read:

http://www.pattonoswalt.com/ht/spew10.html#100506

Friday, October 13, 2006

The horror!

For your macabre pleasure on this Friday the 13th, I offer the following x-ray of my collarbone. The broken part (where it's sticking up under my skin) is circled, and the arrow points to what I believe to be a bone fragment. And this was taken a month after the injury ...

A Literary Question

My fiction writing is progressing nicely this fall, but I've been wrestling with the question of whether to set my stories in real places or fictional ones. That is to say, should I use the real names for the places I'm writing about ( in and around Fulton County, N.Y.), or should I make up names to stand in for those actual places?

I've already made my decision, but I'm curious about one thing: Can you think of any cases in which an author has made up a name for a large city, instead of setting his tale in New York or London or Paris or Dublin, etc. I can't think of a single made-up metropolis, other than the Gotham of the DC comic books, and the otherworldly cities of fantasy and science fiction. If you can think of any such made up cities in realistic/naturalistic fiction, please let me know ... smokinbill@aol.com

A Couple of Songs

I've recorded a couple of songs this week, covers of Mississippi John Hurt's "Coffee Blues" and the Carter Family classic "Keep on the Sunny Side." These are no-frills productions, with just a couple of acoustic instruments in the mix. Have a listen:

CoffeeBlues.mp3

KeepOnTheSunnySide.mp3