PAUL MICHEL

At last I am holding Houdini Pie in my hands. Twenty "advance copies" arrived today via UPS; "advance" in the sense that the back-blurbs are not complete, and there are a couple of typos I already know about, but hell's bells, it's the book. The moment of introduction was odd, and one I'll ponder for a while: I've wanted to write a book since I was old enough to read one, and here I was holding in my hands a book indeed, with my name on it as the author, on a blustery Tuesday afternoon at 5pm, in a city so far from "old enough" that I couldn't have placed it, back then, on the right continent (I was four when I started reading, after all), at an age a good three decades beyond what I might have imagined, once, was "right" for a first publication. (more…)

So I walk into my local little indie grocer, just two blocks away, for some spices and veggies, and as I come out there is a fellow I work with sort of--an office neighbor and occasional colleague--with whom I've been discussing doing some recording on a CD project he has going. We duck into the neighborhood dive bar next door to chat and for him to get me a CD demo out of his backpack...and in the corner of the tavern near the pinball machines there are a half dozen 20-something lads quaffing pints and goofing around with...(I look more closely...)....ah, yes, they have an aerosol air can and a lighter and they are taking turns ... lifting their shirts and spraying the can while lighting the lighter and burning off each others' chest and arm-pit hairs....for fun!.... (more…)

I'm working on setting up a book release party for Houdini Pie on April 17. The exercise thus far is a lesson in Why I am not a Professional Party Planner. After weeks of dithering I've settled on a venue, a hair salon/gallery in my neighborhood that wants to do more evening events, so I am a guinea pig of sorts. It's a very cool space with lots of art on the walls in an open, angled, many-windowed room that did prior service years ago as a dry cleaner and before that a gas station. I stopped by today to talk to the owner and start hashing out the details, which after all should not be many. It's just a party, after all. People, food, drink, music. Nothing exotic--no pole dancers, jugglers, wild animals, light shows or mud wrestling. So why am I so apprehensive? Because I fear, as I suspect everyone does in my position, that I will be throwing the Party to which No One Comes. (more…)

To conjure an image of the world before computers is to invite a sympathetic tsk and a bemused smile, naturally from the young but often from analog age-mates as well. It's like evoking the days of stagecoach holdups, ice-storm outhouses and surgery without anesthesia: *yes they managed, but how?* Frankly, we can't remember. We were too busy splitting wood, trapping beavers and trudging through snowbanks to one-room schoolhouses to have time for the formation of frivolous childhood memories. So I was plenty stumped this weekend as I attempted to recall how in the world commerce occurred in the days before Craigslist... (more…)