Here’s the whole book, originally published in 1965. Also see his “The Witch’s Catalog.” And send him a message on Facebook, he loves hearing from fans – the man was born in 1928 people. Although famous for his Clifford the Big Red Dog series, via email he mentioned “The Witch Next Door” was one of his favorites and that it was once used in a Sunday school class to teach tolerance of others. O how times change.

Can I get my hands on this new novel from McSweeney’s any faster?

God Says No By James Hannaham

“Gary Gray marries his first girlfriend, a fellow student from Central Florida Christian College who loves Disney World as much as he does. They are nineteen, God-fearing, and eager to start a family, but a week before their wedding Gary goes into a rest-stop bathroom and lets something happen. God Says No is his testimony—the story of a young black Christian struggling with desire and belief, with his love for his wife and his appetite for other men, told in a singular, emotional voice. Driven by desperation and religious visions, the path that Gary Gray takes—from revival meetings to out life in Atlanta to a pray-away-the-gay ministry in Memphis, Tennessee—gives a riveting picture of how a life like his can be lived, and how it can’t.”

I’ve long admired Pentagram Design and here’s a project they just did with designers volunteering to create murals for school libraries. Maybe I can volonteer. Pentagram appeals to me now the way Imagineering did twenty years ago.

From the back cover: “When seventeen-year-old T. J. Parsell held up the local Photo Mat with a toy gun, he was sentenced to four and a half to fifteen years in prison. The first night of his term, four older inmates drugged Parsell and took turns raping him. When they were through, they flipped a coin to decide who would “own” him. Forced to remain silent about his rape by a convict code among inmates (one in which informers are murdered), Parsell’s experience that first night haunted him throughout the rest of his sentence. In an effort to silence the guilt and pain of its victims, the issue of prisoner rape is a story that has not been told.”

I don’t know what possessed me to buy it. I guess I didn’t realize it was all about that. I’ve never read a memoir with dialogue that made me nauseous. So, fun bedtime reading ahead for me! (On a related note, I found Slumdog Millionaire to be very disturbing. I’m not into watching kids being tortured, blinded, mutilated, or auctioned. I think watching one of those Saw movies would have been easier.)

I half expected this memoir about a contemporary art curator to be dry, academic, and full of art world nonsense I was supposed to accept. But given the cover photo was of the author, Marcia Tucker, on a motorcycle in the desert. How stuffy could she be? Turns out, not at all.

In 1968, during an interview for the position of curator at the Whitney, after enduring too many sexist questions, she responds with a rant about why they shouldn’t hire a woman. “…once a month I’ll go crazy and no one will be able to reason with me,…and of course I’ll get pregnant within the year so your investment in me will have been completely wasted.” Regardless, she’s hired as the museum’s first female curator.

Years later she’d start The New Museum, which is an amazing accomplishment. I can’t imagine thinking, “You know, I have no money and no property, but I want to start a major contemporary art museum in New York City.” AND THEN DO IT.

I appreciated her constant challenging and questioning the status quo of everything related to art, museums, and running a non-profit. Genius example: Asking her 10  year-old daughter to write a guide for the show “Bad Girls” a show so controversial the NEA demanded their name be taken off it.

And then, after 20 years of curating shows at one of the most well respected contemporary art museums in the world, at 60, she starts taking classes in stand up comedy, loves them, and starts performing. Show me another art curator/stand up comic. This was a woman who lived passionately. Totally sucks that she died two years ago. I hate hearing about great people who just left the party.

 

This happened months ago but I’ve been to busy to bitch blog about it ’til now.

So I’m at this big publishing convention, Book Expo America, here in LA when I see Tashen’s Big Penis Book, a title that excites me very much, but I can’t buy it ’cause it’s just an industry show.

So I look on the Taschen website and see there’ll be a little launch party for the title in a few weeks and of course I have to go. I figure I’ll bring a few copies of my book to give to the editor Dian Hansen and Chad Hunt who’ll both be there signing.

The party is at 7 on a Thursday night in West Hollywood which means driving through Hollywood during rush hour to get to a part of town with no parking. What I’m saying is: this effort better be worth it.

I find the small shop where the event is happening and there’s a couple people in line. I park and hike back to the shop and the line is gone and I’m the only one there.

I ask the door twink if Dian is here signing but he doesn’t know who she is or if she’s here. (Hint: this party is for her book.) He asks my name and I tell him and he says I’m not on the list.

“Yeah it wouldn’t be, I didn’t RSVP.”

“I can’t let you in if you’re not on the list.”

“But the Taschen site didn’t say anything about a list or even RSVPing. It didn’t say it was a private party.” I looked down at the black envelope I was holding with my books in it. “So…that’s it?”

“Sorry.”

“Ah oooookaaaaay. I…guess…I’ll…just…go…then?” And I turned and hiked back to my car in shame shame shame. When I got home (late that night after going to a bar, bitching about said event, going home with this nice artist guy I’m now good friends with, blah blah blah) I re-checked the Taschen website to verify that there was, in fact, no mention of the Big Penis Book party being a private event. It was even promoted on some local blogs as a fun thing to do that night. I emailed Taschen about the issue and never received a response, so that was a nice, second “fuck you.”

Now, I had planned on blogging favorably about this penis book party, it had potential for great wackiness as there are very few parties celebrating volumes about large genitalia. But no. Instead I will blog about something I found a week later when I bought a Taschen book about Jujol, a designer who worked with Gaudi.

A single blurb on the back of the book printed at almost headline point size read: “TASCHEN has design all figured out. They know what’s good, has value, lasts, engages, indulges, uplifts, and is new…”

And who is credited with this glowing bit of verse? In microscopic type: “-Reader’s comment, amazon.com” Seriously? Crediting your (own) praise to an anonymous, unverifiable amazon shopper? Oh how I’ve been expecting more from you Taschen.

Hailed a “cultural phenomenon” by Newsweek, Mortified is a comic excavation of teen angst artifacts (journals, letters, lyrics, home movies, and more) as shared by their original authors before total strangers.

WHEN: Wednesday, October 15, 2008
TIME: 8:00 PM
VENUE: King King
ADDRESS: 6555 Hollywood Blvd., 90028
COST: $10 adv; $15 door

TICKETS:
By Web: GetMortified.com By Phone: 877-238-5596

I was in Minneapolis at the Chuck Palahniuk event for his new gang-bang novel Snuff. Anal-beads and blow-up dolls were given away, as was copies of my book. Chuck was mobbed as usual so I spent the night chatting with Don Pollock whose raunchy/gritty story collection Knockemstiff is also being promoted by Chuck on this tour.

Then there was the artist-designed mini-golf course at the Walker Art Center, a temporary thing just for the summer.

And I saw some small buffalo on the drive to Fargo where I then ate some buffalo. As always, more pics in my Flickr pages.

Join myself and others as we read our awful teenage journal entries to a crowd of strangers. I’ve done two different pieces before, (one is in the new book, Mortified: Love is a Battlefield). I have hundreds of pages of journal entries to choose from and this show will have new stuff – on the evils of drugs and drinking, and the art world about going to a new school and how to be gay.  Get tickets early, Mortified sells out fast.

WHEN: Wednesday, May 14, 2008
TIME: 8:00 PM
VENUE: King King
ADDRESS: 6555 Hollywood Blvd., 90028
COST: $10 adv; $15 door

TICKETS:
By Web: GetMortified.com By Phone: 877-238-5596

For some reason when I agreed to let Dave publish my old journal entries in his new Mortified book I didn’t accept that people would read the book. People I know. People I work with. People who will be surprised I wrote about them. And people upset that I didn’t write about them.

Oh well, too late now. At least my friend GJ’s piece is raunchier. (I never describe a partner’s ass as “an inverted heart that my dick will make into a spade.”)

If you want to see me recite my section live, I’ll be doing it at the Doomed Valentines Mortified show in LA next month, Feb 14, 8 PM. Get tickets here, it always sells out.  

The Fight Club author just started touring to promote his new novel, Rant, but he’s also promoting books he didn’t write–like, mine. In San Francisco earlier this week, he described Obscene Interiors as, “the funniest, dirtiest, book I have seen in years,” then gave out coppies durring the Q&A. (He’s also giving away Monica Drake’s debut novel, Clown Girl, which I haven’t yet read.) I never thought my book was that dirty, I mean, it’s not like I wrote about guys getting their intestines sucked out through their anus while masturbating in a hot tub.

Join me Monday, May 9th at Vroman’s Bookstore, 695 E. Colorado Blvd. Pasadena CA 91101 for his only planned LA appearance. There’s bonus prizes if you come wearing a a wedding dress (males and females), it’s related to the novel somehow. His other book tour dates are here.

And online translation of their description of my appearance reads:

INTERVIEW – INTERIEURS OBSCENES: You never never tested a strange attraction for the decorations of films X or photographs of bottom amateur. You are not alone any more: Justin Jorgensen, a young Californian artist, hides the bodies stripped to propose these interiors banals or straightforwardly ugly. He then devotes to a criticism way “house and unslung decoration”. The whole is connected in charming a small work simply entitled: Obscene Interiors.