It’s My Two Cents: And We’re Back

And we’re back.   Sorry folks, sometimes a columnist needs to have a nervous breakdown or three before three-dotting his way back to sanity. Onward. Some predictions sprinkled in…Am I the only person who love that the same image of the same smiling guy appears on the cover of The Ultimate Guide to Fellatio (complete with a giggling woman) and The Ultimate Guide to Anal Sex for Men?…Prediction for 2010: the original line-up rock supergroup Journey will finally reunite. This will happen in Canada. Former replacement bassist Randy Jackson will have nothing to do with it..A message to litbloggers in their twenties and thirties: enough with the “you’re old” jokes. Your time will come…

I like writing that uses the semicolon; I just don’t know if I can use it and not sound stupid…Osama bin Laden will mention reality show results in a video dispatch…More than 150 people will figure out what Google Wave does exactly…I wish my metabolism was faster…If I ever utter the phrase “negotiating the curriculum” out loud again, someone needs to smack me…

Bands from the late 80’s and early 90’s I’d like to see again: Fetchin’ Bones, The Reivers, The Veldt, 24-7 Spyz, Deee-Lite, The Housemartins, Style Council…Ross McElwee needs to be celebrated, honored, deified.   He may have invented reality TV, sure; but he also changed the way we look at ourselves…Bolo ties are making a comeback?…I miss the first iteration of Muxtape, where you could make your own mixtape online. Waaah…

Am I the only one who didn’t know Paul Westerberg is a big cigar smoker? … People I miss in my daily life: Ross Martin, Jill Ivey,   Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz, Thomas V is for Victor Hartman…Come to think of it, wait: Do I miss Philadelphia?   No. That can’t be…Dave Barringer’s There’s Nothing Funny About Design is twice as good as most experimental creative nonfiction lyric whatchamacallits.   Why?   Well, it’s about something, for starters…

There is a whole cohort of suburban males who will never get over Phoebe Cates in Fast Times at Ridegmont High…Speaking of teen movies, I saw 1995’s The Low Life back when I worked at NYU, and thought it would be a big hit. It wasn’t, but I saw Rory Cochrane, the lead, mounting his motorcycle outside Joe’s Pizza in the Village, and said I loved it. “Thanks,” he said, “that means a lot”…I think Todd Zuniga and his Literary Death Match is genius, and I think it’s logical and brilliant that he’s teamed up with Bob Holman and the Bowery Poetry Club…Is there an American equivalent of Withnail & I?…The greatest invention for parents with stuffy noses is the nosefrida.

More predictions…Teenage hackers will break into streaming music sites and replace songs with their own homemade tracks…A new form of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome will emerge as a result of the iPad‘s button-less keyboards…Henry Kissinger will die…Poets will continue to draw artificial, stark distinctions between rear- and front-guard aesthetic movements…The old Palm shorthand will be used as a secret code…Someone will do a Heavy Metal Parking Lot-style documentary on AWP. Just make sure you do it when I’m not there.

Daniel Nester‘s latest book is How to Be Inappropriate, a collection of mostly humorous nonfiction. He teaches at The College of Saint Rose in Albany, NY. Photo by Joe Putrock.