Incident at the Charging Station 28 Sep 2023 8:03 AM (last year)
The first short story in this history of crime fiction set at an electric vehicle charging station has been published by Uncharted Magazine. It's called, wait for it, "Incident at the Charging Station." Here's a sample:
Hank zones out while Cyco lays out his plan for taxing churches, which involves a shadow army of IRS agents fanning out across the land. The sun is going down, and Hank is watching the charging station across the street. He loves the charging station. Four white pillars glowing with green neon light, like something out of a science fiction story about a new religion. Except this isn’t science fiction. It’s the ass-end of the Bank of America parking lot, and it’s beautiful. He usually parks farther down North Park Way at the church, the weird one by the freeway. No one ever complains about his car over there.
Photo by Edward Colver.
Coming in April 2023.
Corporate Rock Sucks Named Best Music Book of 2022 28 Nov 2022 8:09 AM (2 years ago)
Pitchfork has named Corporate Rock Sucks: The Rise & Fall of SST Records one of the 15 Best Music Books of 2022. Here's what Nina Corcoran had to say:
With Corporate Rock Sucks: The Rise and Fall of SST Records, author Jim Ruland organizes a plethora of original interviews, newspaper clippings, and battered flyers into an ode to the label that helped rock evolve. Across 14 in-depth chapters, the book catalogs how SST moved beyond hardcore, fed college radio its meat and potatoes, and impacted regional scenes by amplifying their artists – often at the expense of the pockets of its bands. These anecdotes will likely become a go-to resource for punk archivists looking beyond the impact of Damaged or Double Nickels on the Dime.
The paperback doesn't come out until June but there are still plenty of hardcover editions available wherever you buy books.
Vermin on the Mount Has Moved 2 Aug 2013 7:22 AM (11 years ago)
To celebrate our ninth year of irreverent readings in Southern California and beyond, this blog has been moved to its own dedicated website at Vermin on the Mount.com.
Save the Date: Friday April 5 7 Mar 2013 9:23 AM (12 years ago)
Vermin on the Mount returns with a ferocious night of irreverent readings with Maria Bustillos, Pamela des Barres, Kate Durbin, Dina Gachman, Justin Maurer and Jerry Stahl. Come to 826LA Echo Park on Friday, April 5 at 7:30 and be sure to enter through the Time Travel Mart on Sunset Boulevard!
Season's Beatings 29 Nov 2012 1:11 PM (12 years ago)
Vermin on the Mount is on holiday hiatus. We'll be back very soon with announcements regarding events in 2013, which promises to be packed with exciting new developments.
Want to find out about our next events? The best way is to like the newish VOTM page on Facebook, and after you do, click the like button again and put a check next to "show in news feed" to make sure you see the updates. Get it? Got it? Good.
In the meantime, please peruse this tastefully curated list of New York's 100 Most Important Rats Living in the Subway System from HTML Giant.
Look Who's Coming to Vermin (SD): Antonia Crane 18 Oct 2012 12:35 PM (12 years ago)
VOTM: What's the most unusual experience you've had at a reading?
CRANE: I had a strange encounter at a Vermin on the Mount reading when I saw a tall guy in the audience wearing an unbelievably awesome black t-shirt with Fassbinder written in Metallica font. I approached him. “I’m going to have to rip that t-shirt off you and steal it,” I said. He turned around. “Oh hey,” he said warmly as though he knew me. Then I recognized his mouth, but it looked different. The last time I saw that mouth, it was crammed with a ball gag that held a dainty metal shelf, where a pint glass sat, full of Pellegrino for me. I remembered that for months after his girlfriend hired me to add spice to their date, he became “baby monitor birthday boy.” And although it’s not that unusual to spot sensual massage clients pushing shopping carts in Trader Joe’s or munching a cookie at an AA meeting, it was weird to see baby monitor birthday boy at Vermin on the Mount, because I couldn’t just smile vaguely and walk into the parking lot and giggle with Patrick. I had to be discreet. VOTM is an intimate setting and the writers and crowd members are usually my friends, so my social/intimacy/work wires were crossed and I suddenly didn’t know how to act. I may have muttered, “How are you?” I probably turned bright red. We may have hugged. I can’t remember, which is what happens when I’m anxious. I do remember J. Ryan Stradal’s animated reading that was enhanced with excellent flash cards of furniture that he held up while reading. His reading was enhanced further by me flashing back on the night with baby monitor birthday boy and his girlfriend. I remembered opening all of his birthday presents and eating all of his birthday cake in front of him while he held my sparkling water in his mouth shelf. When he crawled away on his knees, I recalled the tassel tails on his festive butt plug wriggling like cooked spaghetti. Later, in the restaurant, his girlfriend forced him to sit at a table in the corner, away from us while we sent over only food he hated: olives and liver and truffle oil drenched bread and afterwards, back at the apartment in a dark bedroom that seemed surprisingly plain, she and I had loud sex next to a small receiver. Our static sex sounds traveled to his hogtied position on the couch next to the baby monitor. I forgot all about the Fassbinder t-shirt.
ANTONIA CRANE is the only person from Humboldt
County who doesn’t smoke pot. Her
work can be found or is forthcoming in Akashic:
The Heroin Chronicles (edited by
Jerry Stahl), The Rumpus, Black Clock, Slake, PANK, The Los Angeles Review, ZYZZYVA and other places.
She wrote a memoir about her mother’s illness and the sex industry, Spent. She teaches creative writing to
incarcerated teenagers in Los Angeles.
Come see Antonia read at 3rd Space in San Diego on Saturday October 20 at 6pm.
Look Who's Coming to Vermin (SD): Jason Napoli Brooks 18 Oct 2012 5:49 AM (12 years ago)
VOTM: What's the most unusual experience you've had at a reading?
BROOKS: For the past five years I've hosted a reading series in New York that has seen its share of rowdiness/nudity/illicit drug use/etc. But I'd have to say that the strangest thing that ever happened to me there was a few years ago...it was one of those off the wall, totally out of nowhere displays of low stakes insanity, which involved a well-known New York writer who shall remain nameless. (Let's just say she's probably the country's most famous middle-aged lesbian poet who self-published a well received book of essays a couple years ago, the title of which involves a Scandinavian country) She was the headlining reader for the event; there were two other writers on the bill before her. As the second writer left the stage, I came on and announced the reading's one and only five-minute break, at which point this well known writer leaped from her seat in the audience and screamed at the top of her lungs, "NO, NO, NO, NO, NO! No fucking break! I'm fucking reading now and we're not taking a fucking break!" I could see from the glint in her eyes and the sharp furrow of her brow that this woman meant business. She then fixed her gaze on the audience, "Do any of you really want this break? If you want this break, stand up and say so." The terrified audience remained in complete silence. You could hear a fucking pin drop. She then took the stage and read a twenty minute hastily written essay about how reading series suck and how people who run readings series are assholes. The audience responded well to it, and I'm not sure if it was out of genuine appreciation of the work or utter fear of what this woman would do to them. In any case, after the reading she thanked me and said she'd read for us again.
JASON NAPOLI BROOKS's stories and journalism have appeared in various publications, including Ninth Letter, Asymptote, Index, and the Spanish national newspaper El Pais. He is the author of the internationally distributed spy serial, Cock of the Walk, from which he will read at Vermin on the Mount. He lives in New York City.
Come see Jason read at 3rd Space in San Diego on Saturday October 20 at 6pm.