Seriously. Over on Line Out, Megan Seling has information about how you can win free VIP passes to this year’s Genius Awards at the Moore Theatre on Friday November 13th. And Eric Grandy tells you why They Live! will kick your ass at the party.
They Live! are only one quarter of the musical entertainment, though: There will also be sets by U.S.F., Throw Me the Statue, and Emerald City Soul Club. And booze. There will be a lot of booze. And this year’s crop of Stranger Geniuses will be milling about. Here is something I wrote about Literature Genius Stacey Levine last year:
It is kind of a shame that Stacey Levine’s stories have to be published in the form of a book. It’s not that they should appear in e-books or anything so mundane as that. Rather, I wish it were somehow possible to hire elfin booksellers to sneak into your home and hide Levine’s stories in odd places—inside a cereal box, tucked into a pair of swimming trunks, taped to the back of the oven—so that you could discover them at random and, perhaps, inopportune times. Levine’s stories are rare and mysterious things, and confronting them in a book makes them feel less wondrous somehow.
They all begin compellingly: “Hallo. I’m a fool. I married Mike Sump.” “Imagine being a bean: a pale supplicant, rimy dot, a belly-wrinkled pip, lying enervated on the kitchen chair, trying too hard all the time.” “Oh, to be Bill Miller, the unreachable one with the invulnerable eyes, the 35-speed bike, the sixty years more of life and a future as good as real.” Some of the stories are plain as day; others are willfully obtuse, as though jealously guarding a secret. You can’t just read fiction by Levine the way you’d appreciatively read a short story by, say, Alice Munro. You have to pry the words apart like a poem and trust the language to reveal something of value…
Our annual Genius Awards issue hits the streets tomorrow, but all the information you need about the party is right here. This is your only chance to party like a genius in 2009. So get fancy on the 13th and come on out; I’ll see you there.
Was that an imprecise use of “rimy”?