Okay, first of all, there is a stripper pole in this room. It may be a leftover from
Shteyngart; I don't know, but it's creeping me out.
They did a pretty good job with my rider: fresh organic fruit, obscure German design mags, tofurky sandwiches, and a vintage turntable loaded with 1980s hardcore-punk LPs. I specifically said no Judge records, but I'll let a few things slide.
Anyway, so last night a bunch of the Powell's book geeks were hanging out in the green room with me. I was getting my pre-blog-writing massage, and they were putting band-aids on their paper cuts and discussing how much they would be willing to pay for a copy of Stieg Larsson's zine Sfären. (One book-blog editor, whom I will not mention by name, said he would "give his left nut" for a copy, which made me think: a) who would possibly want a book-blog editor's testicle and b) what happened to his right nut?)
They finally got to asking me some questions about how I started ALARM, and I directed them to this handy video:
Turns out that these guys had no idea you could get books anywhere but Powell's. So, as an out-of-town guest, I'm turning to you, my faithful local blog readers, and asking: Do you ever use your local library? The Multnomah County Library dates back to 1864! Holy shit, that's old. Do you ever go? While I'm here, should I make the visit?