'Loo Go Bragh

The midwestern IWP squad came to Waterloo to celebrate St. Patrick's Day this weekend. I spent some time playin Virgil in Dante's Inferno, giving the tour of Hell, and we did lots of fun things, like walk the nature trail, crash the Bosnian bar because Jameson's was over capacity, and witness truly cutting edge karoke at the Tymes, where everyone leaves a little uglier than they did when they got there. There were some things we didn't get to do. The open mic at the Arts Center was a bust (a bigger heads up than a note on the door might have helped), Jameson's was too crowded like I said (apparently Ben was there the same time we were -- could have been standing right next to him and not known it), and we didn't play Pitch! We forgot! But I'm so happy and glad they all came and enjoyed Waterloo. I'm sorry the others couldn't make it, but there's always another get togther around the corner.

Co, Matt, and Lisa in awe of the Tymes' karoke:


Andrew appreciates the Tymes:


Me and Mandy at some point between "Sweet Home Alabama" and "White Wedding":


Exploring the woods out at Cedar Bend with Amy and Co's dog Dharma:


Dharma identifies an enemy target in the water and engages:


Wrapping up Saturday night:


The best news: Amy and Co are pregnant! I'm so happy for them. Congratulations and salinte!

Comments

Benjamin said…
Ooooh, the Tymes. Yikes. I got a great story about that place I should tell you some time.

Yeah, Jameson's was insane. I didn't get there till around 10:30-11, and I stayed because my peeps already had a table. I wouldn't have stayed otherwise, since the place was too busy (took a good ten minutes to get a pint from the beer wench) and I had another invite to Vic's.

Glad you guys still managed to have a good time. :)
1:14 AM
Matt Hanneman said…
Thanks for hosting Darby. We had a great weekend! Thanks for posting the pics too. Lisa and I will put our pictures up on our new photo blog soon...as soon as we have a new photo blog. It was great seeing everyone!
8:02 AM
Darby said…
Can't wait to see them. Thanks for coming, too, I'm glad everyone enjoyed the weekend. It was a big treat to have everyone here.
10:19 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Visit From The Goon Squad: Charting New Territory

Image
 Credit - Tessie Girl I recently finished A Visit From The Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan and it's one of the best books I've read in a while.  It flows from one character to another in a kind of narrative relay.  At first it's disorienting and honestly I lost track of who the focus was or was supposed to be - the point, I think - and it required me to stop and start again once or twice.  The book also caroms from one era to another.  This narrative river just flows along and then washes ashore deep in the future, providing a brief, sober glimpse of the fate of the character we follow, before retreating back to the sea of the present.  At some point you almost long for a chart mapping out all these people, these places and times, and then as if on queue, Egan actually depicts an entire sequence of the book in a succession of flow charts.  I wa struck at how effective, and affecting, this was; the PowerPoint slides gradually became thought bubbles, accumulating tension
Read more

Get Lost Writing

Image
Writing for me has always been an act of discovery.  At various times you will feel like Magellan, or Columbus.  Others you will feel like the Donner Party.  You will feel these at varying times throughout the process of writing the same novel, if you're anything like me.  And at some point, you will experience another feeling - the sheer elation of knowing you are the first person to ever lay eyes on this undiscovered country of a novel.  That's the way it feels to me when a novel reaches that tipping point, when the mass is so great that the collapse from dust into light becomes to powerful to deny.  I've felt this feeling before, a couple times.  It's a great feeling.  I feel it now, as I'm 211 pages into the novel that I've documented here recently on the blog (otherwise known as the #scifijohnhughesbook ).  A lot of the disparate threads - fits and starts really - that I've experimented with over the last few years are finally bearing fruit.  This
Read more

Diamonds In The Rough

Happy to announce that my brother and I won the Main St. Waterloo 10th Anniversary Poster Contest, co-sponsored by the Metro Arts Guild . Our piece, entitled "Metamorphisis", is on display at the gallery -- unless it's somewhere else now. I'll try and get a scan of it to put up on the blog (why didn't you think of that before, Darby?) There's a new literary journal out there called A Public Space that could not have started off better. The contributors and bredth of the material really has me excited not just to pick this up, but submit there as well. The coolest thing is they have a new story by Kelly Link. Check out the excerpt . My own zine, Other Than , continues on pace toward completion. It seems like I may be hosting a joint reading at the gallery to launch it along side Osie's Murmur , which would be very cool and exciting. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter made it safely into orbit .
Read more