Tonight, Abby, Annette and I attended a poetry reading by one of my favorite professors ever--the ever-delightful Mr. Peter Davis. If you can imagine me, clean-shaven, a good foot shorter, and talking even more like an excitable muppet than I already do, you've got a pretty good idea of what he's like. His new collection of poems, Hitler's Mustache is out now on Barnwood Press. It is the very definition of "amusing."
When I took his songwriting class in the spring of '05, he mentioned to us the germination of this idea--he had been suffering a spell of writer's block, and decided the best way to fight it was to just have a stock phrase to use every time he was at a loss for what to say next. That phrase was (suspenseful ellipsis) "Hitler's Mustache." Mostly because Hitler was an actually kind of terrifying person--an ordinary human who somehow became this atrocious mass murderer--who just happened to have this ridiculous, goofy-looking mustache. It takes all the power of Hitler away from Hitler by being so innately giggle-worthy.
There's a poem from the book called "Hitler's Mustache: The Journey Tribute Band" on the wonderful poetry website, Unpleasant Event Schedule. It's the McSweeney's of verse. In fact, the editor, Daniel Nester, an amusing (Queen-obsessed) poet in his own right, is McSweeney's' Sestinas editor. I don't know if I properly made the posessive doubly posessive there... but that's not a problem I've encountered before.
Because I don't want this to be a pure book/performance review, I will add three things:
Abby says Puerto Vallarta's margaritas are the best. At least in Muncie. Take her at her word. The drink is still sweeter than I like my alcohol, but delicious nonetheless. It's the closest I've come to enjoying a margarita.
When I got dropped off at my apartment, on my way up to my apartment, I was passed by two guys, each equipped with two bottles of Miller lite in each and every pocket (including those pockets underneath the outer layer, as evidenced by bulges where shirt pockets usually are. All anyone in my neighborhood ever talks about is how they think public intoxication is probably the best way possible to get arrested by Wee Man. That and how they don't even know who LaToya Jackson is. "Is she one of the Jackson 5? Am I even thinking of the right family?" It makes my sense of being too old to a) live in the village and b) still be an undergrad all the more poignant.
And, finally, Babies with Beards! Babies with Beards! Babies with Beards!
(And no, none of them are me as a child. I was very cute as a small child. And not just so-ugly-he's-cute cute, but real, child model cute. Regional stuff, mostly. The kid in the Sears Portrait Studio display--that was me.)
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