My friends Kyle, Clay, and Oliver have a new show in New York. If you live there, you should see it. These guys never disappoint. Details:

Tickets Now Onsale!
Only $15 with discount code “ROCK.”
Or pay-what-you-can on Thursdays 4/3, 4/10, 4/17.
To buy tickets, click here or call 212-868-4444.

HOSTAGE SONG
The new indie-rock musical
in a limited engagement

Stories and Book by Clay McLeod Chapman
Music and Lyrics by Kyle Jarrow
Directed by Oliver Butler

April 3-26
Thursdays through Saturdays at 8pm
At The Kraine Theater
(85 E. 4th Street btw 2nd and 3rd)

Bound and blindfolded in a war-torn country, two hostages take refuge in music, memory and each other in this new indie-rock musical. Hostage Song is the creation of a powerhouse combo of downtown favorites: playwright and novelist Clay McLeod Chapman (creator of the Pumpkin Pie Show), Kyle Jarrow (OBIE winning author of A Very Merry Unauthorized Children’s Scientology Pageant, member of the glam rock band The Fabulous Entourage), and director Oliver Butler (The Debate Society).

Performances by Paul Thureen, Hanna Cheek, Hannah Bos, Abe Goldfarb and Clay McLeod Chapman.
Music performed by Kyle Jarrow, Drew St. Aubin, Paul Bates and Jonathan Sherrill.

“Mr. Jarrow is the kind of writer who likes to provoke people.” -The New Yorker

“Downtown hipster raconteur Clay McLeod Chapman wears his heart on his sleeve - a bloody, still-beating organ safety-pinned to his cuffs.” -Time Out New York

A Horse Trade Production
Stage Manager: Amy Ehrenberg, Lighting Designer: Mike Riggs, Set Designer: Amanda Rehbein, Costume Designer: Sean Tribble, Associate Producer: The Thursday Problem, Publicity: Emily Owens, Photography: Jeffrey Weiss, Graphic Design: Paul Thureen, Web Design: MLT.

To buy tickets click here or call 212-868-4444.

More info at www.hostagesong.com

I’m starting something new. It’s called Awkward Press. I don’t really know what it’s going to be yet, but it will have something to do with words. This is the URL: www.awkwardpress.com. (FYI: Contemporary Press still exists, we’re just on hiatus while we clear up some monkey madness with our distributor.) We’re having a coming out party/reading in New York on Monday. I think it’s going to be pretty cool. If you’re in New York, please come!

Details:
Awkward Press Coming Out Party
Monday, February 11th
7-9 PM
KGB Bar
85 E. 4th St. btw. Bowery & 2nd Ave.
Free

More details:
Join Awkward Press, a new publishing experiment from the creators of The Pumpkin Pie Show, A Very Merry Unauthorized Scientology Pageant, and Contemporary Press, for a night of reading, music, and future regrets. Featured readers include:

Clay MacLeod Chapman: creator of the Pumpkin Pie Show, a rigorous storytelling session backed by its own live soundtrack. He is the author of rest area, a collection of short stories, and miss corpus, a novel.

Jeffrey Dinsmore: cofounder of Contemporary Press and author of the novels Johnny Astronaut (as Rory Carmichael) and I, An Actress: The Autobiography of Karen Jamey. Occasional rock star. What not can be found at www.jeffreydinsmore.com. You do not have to click this link because you are already here.

Kyle Jarrow: OBIE Award winning playwright and member of rock sensations The Fabulous Entourage and Sputnik Sweetheart, among many other talents. Kyle’s play Armless won the Overall Excellence Award at the New York International Fringe Festival. Upcoming projects include writing the music for Hostage Song which will premiere April 2008 at the Kraine Theater. More info at http://www.landoftrust.com.

Tony O’ Neill: author of Seizure Wet Dreams, Songs from the Shooting Gallery: Poems 1999-2006, and the underground classic Digging the Vein. He has two new works coming out in 2008—Down and Out on the Murder Mile (the sequel to Digging the Vein, available on Harper Perennial) and Hero of the Underground (the memoir of former NFL player Jason Peters, available on St. Peters Press). More info can be uncovered at www.tonyoneill.net.

Lou Perez (Luis Amate Perez): writer and performer whose short stories have appeared in Fiction and will be published in the forthcoming anthologies: Born in the 1980s (Route, 2008) and Rejected (Villard, 2009). You can check out his sketch comedy duo at gregandlou.com.

Rachel Shukert: Rachel Shukert is an author and playwright in New York City. Her first book, Have You No Shame? will be published by Random House/Villard in April 2008.

With a song or two by Jeffrey D. Probably two.

This is the blog for a dude I used to work with named Norbert. He writes & records hip-hop under the name Eddie Caine. He gave me a bunch of tracks before I left and they are pretty freaking hot. He’s having a record release party soon. I highly encourage you to spend some time on his blog and go to the release party.

I am proud to say that my publishing company, Contemporary Press, has achieved the pinnacle of indie-publishing success by getting a review in uber-hip periodical The Believer (note: link may take a few seconds to load). Kudos to Michael Shulman for a great review that makes me feel like a winner as I sit at home, writing dismal freelance passages for national middle school assessment tests about kids who are having a hard time adjusting to their new schools.

The article is in support of our new book, Danger City II. I edited the collection with my partners-in-crime Jessica Dukes and Mike Segretto, and I also have a story in the book entitled “The Alcoholic Monkey Who Took Over My Mind and Turned Me Into a Cold-Blooded Killer.”

Sarah & I went over to her sister (Julia) & brother-in-law’s (Sonny) place last night and chopped up some pumpkins.

Sarah’s is on the right. It’s a Macintosh pumpkin. Julia’s is in the middle. She was going for a friendly pumpkin that would not scare her 1-year-old son, Ben. Mine is on the left. My pumpkin is meant to induce SPINE-CHILLING TERROR.