Ode to H.P. Lovecraft

Happy Halloween!

British Author

A rare interview with Jeff Noon in Deluxe lounge bar circa 2000.

feathers

Vurt by Jeff Noon

Peep Show

If I hadn't finished reading Ticket That Exploded, I would have never known where the band Miranda Sex Garden got their name. This is the only song I ever heard by them and it's a good one. I still have the album it came on: Hideaway movie soundtrack.

unfinished

The Ticket That Exploded
by William S. Burroughs
I started reading this many years ago and stopped reading it less than 50 pages from the end. I guess I didn't like it as much as Western Lands and Naked Lunch. Also I was grossed out by the repeated use of the words "rectal mucus" as well as pervasive descriptions of "hard cocks flipping out and up". This book will receive an asterisk on the annual list, indicating it's partially read status.

Open Book

Cake

secret stash

Best five picture results from my Google search for "hollow book".

The Wind From Nowhere

by J. G. Ballard

BLOODHAG

Halloween Reading

Shadows With Eyes
by Fritz Leiber

cool parking garage

Somewhere in Kansas City.

Melvinge of the Megaverse

Night of the Living Shark

by David Bischoff
from the mind of Daniel M. Pinkwater

A Book At Bedtime

author reading

Chris Elliott reads from his book Shroud of the Thwacker at Clean Well Lighted Place for Books, San Francisco, CA, December 15, 2005.

Cooking with Cool Cleveland

Michael Ruhlman has worked for over a decade with the best chefs in the country. From his first best-selling food book, The Making of a Chef, and his next one, The Soul of a Chef, which focused on Cleveland's Michael Symon among others, Ruhlman's groundbreaking work has exposed, celebrated and delineated the shadowy backstage world of America's greatest kitchens and the chefs who run them. His previous book, The Reach of a Chef, zeroed in on the increasing popularity of food culture and celebrity chefs, tracing the lives of master chefs and showing what happens when they leave the kitchen for the TV studio and best sellers lists. His new book The Elements of Cooking, is an opinionated food glossary patterned after Strunk & White's Elements of Style, jam-packed not only with key cooking terms, but definitions towards an understanding of how good cooks become great. The book is designed for anyone from the beginner to the experienced chef. Cool Cleveland's Thomas Mulready spent time in Michael's own Cleveland Heights kitchen as he prepared a meal of roasted chicken, fingerling potatoes fresh from the local farmer's market, green beans with toasted almonds, all topped off with a nice jus made from the scrapings on the bottom of the pan. He talks with Mulready about how America has become the center of the food universe, the secret code of the kitchen, and the eight indispensable fundamentals of cooking.

Elvis Costello Writes The Book