August 2, 2008 (15 minutes after posting below)
Beautiful Children has been sold! Congratulations to Mr. Bock. Now if I can only move those copies of Art Garfunkel's poetry...

Jonathan Miles reading from Dear American Airlines (photos by Michael Dashkin)

August 2, 2008
This past Wednesday, Jonathan Miles concluded his book tour for Dear American Airlines at our store. How appropriate. The novel is set at O'Hare International Airport, so our newly paved Columbia Street (a landing strip to Ikea shuttles, Chinatown buses, and the B61) made an excellent aural backdrop to Jonathan's voicing of his protagonist Bennie Ford. Ford's white-middle-aged-rant is in the high literary tradition of Zuckerman and Schmidt, leaping from the interminable hell of plane travel into the depths of a misspent life. Hearing Jonathan read in his Mississippi accent put a different spin on the character of Bennie, who I initially imagined as a variation on the angry, red-faced, ticking timebombs of male frustration in my hometown of St. Louis. But Bennie is more than a boorish cliche--listen to Jonathan's slow burn performance on this podcast we just uploaded.

Afterwards Jonathan told us a bit about his process, akin to "method" writing. Trained as a journalist (he must have one of the most desirable positions at the NY Times--as cocktail columnist), he researched what a bad layover would entail for a traveler like Bennie. He purposely spent 30 hours in between planes at O'Hare, an experience that led to some very useful details and insights, but probably enough material to fill several volumes of hate mail literature. Merely walking between concourses at that Midwestern behemoth is enough to turn quiet monks into raging sociopaths.

However, that participatory experiment pales in comparison to the performance art of Tehching Hsieh, who visited the store the other night to see our ongoing group show (in particular the sound project "Coney Island of the Ear" by Hong-Kai Wang). For one year in the late 1970s, Tehching lived in a cage. In the early '80s he punched a clock on the hour every day for twelve months. Each punching would snap a photograph of him--which strung together created a remarkable six-minute compression of the experience. For an artist whose work revolves around time and existence, Tehching fittingly commented that his own acceptance by mainstream critics has been a test of patience. This winter he will formally be honored at MOMA and the Guggenheim.

Such feats of endurance are all the more cherished here at Freebird, where we are attempting to set the record for the most days Charles Bock's much hyped Beautiful Children has gone unsold. The hardcover has sat forlornly on our new arrivals table for five months no matter how hard we display it. Reduced to $8 it has been passed over for, among other things: Susie Bright's Sexual Reality, a field guide to roadkill, a set of Bobbsey Twins stories, a manual on flower painting, a biography of George Harrison, a Creole cookbook, and several cases of Moxie soda. But the night is still young.
--Peter Miller

July 25, 2008
Every once in a while we will be approached by a customer who wants to know where the free birds are. It always conjures for me the time I walked from my old Village apartment to the financial district and stumbled on a bird shop in long ago Tribeca. A clerk emerged from the front door to the shrieks of parrots and cockatiels. He shakily lit a cigarette and said to me: "It's as bad as it looks."

But today the question was if we had any free bird books. Now that made me wonder if we had any bird books at all. Kneeling for the first time to properly examine our pet section I actually found a few guidebooks for the hobbyist. And none for more than $3. Oh hell, the next customer can have the entire lot for a dollar! And we'll throw in the Canadian section as a bonus.
--Peter Miller

[If you want a soundtrack to this blog, we recommend Freebird's house band: Hatebeak.]

ROLLER CANARY HANDBOOK by Haig Sarkisian
Haig first discovered the canary at age 11 and has been in love ever since. The Roller is a variety originating from the Harz Mountains of Germany ("the cradle" where "the Roller canary rocked"). He argues that "as household pets they are unsurpassed" due to their beautiful birdsong, which is deeper than other breeds such as the Triller, the Chopper, the Waterslager, or the Timbrado. Apparently they like to bathe and sing in the sunlight. Being a book for potential breeders, Haig focuses on the nature of the bird boxes, the temperature to keep them in, and their diet. He advises to look at their "excreta" for any change in their eating habits: "The white (urine) and dark (feces) portions take on an ideal appearance with the assimilation of greens." There's also the fierce canary circuit, in which birds are scored competitively on their warbling: "The 100-point standard has been the forerunner in scoring changes. Over the years, hollow roll, bass, gluck, water tour, schockel, flute, and hollow bell have all been designated as major tours and assigned various point values."

MACAWS by Loren Spiotta
Loren minces no words, admitting that some macaws are just downright "nasty," advocating against involvement with a problem bird. But they can make excellent pets nonetheless: "The macaws have a harsh high pitched call that is often very irritating to the human ear. Fortunately, however, these birds don't give voice all day long. They usually screech only in the early morning or later in the evening. Bored and frustrated macaw will also scream to get attention. The contented bird is much more peaceful."

A STEP BY STEP BOOK ABOUT COCKATIELS by Anmarie Barrie
Who knew they were the second most popular species of parrot? "The cockatiel will benefit from exercise. There are no accounts of a housebroken cockatiel. Droppings are likely to be found around the flying area. Also furniture and other items may be chewed as the bird explores."

July 19, 2008
Oh what a day. As the NY Press stated in their listing, let's party like it's 1599. Jess Winfield, author of My Name Is Will, and one-man troupe (though we have to credit his wife and prop master Sa for her deftness with the "poor" Yorik skull) astounded a stalwart crowd on hand to witness his record setting stunt of the most Shakespeare plays performed solo in the span of a day across one ferry, three bars, a theater, and a park. The highlight may have been his rap Othello at Jalopy (see above), though we are partial to his Hamlet finale in our backyard (below). Not to mention his clever appropriation of B61's pool table as a stage for a finger puppet Romeo and Juliet.

The thermostat hit 100, but we were cooled by the backdraft of Jess's whip-crack delivery.

Thanks go to Cary Goldstein, Jess's editor who presented this idea in the first place, the folks at Rocky Sullivan's (Lisa), Brooklyn Ice House (Trevor), Jalopy (Geoff and Lynette), B61 (Matt, Rachel London's husband and the man behind the incredible Freebird bookshelves), and as always the amazing Brooklyn Greenway (Brian McCormick, who kindly arranged for cold beer to be on hand as we straggled down the home stretch of Columbia Street). And none of this could have gone so seamlessly without the contributions of friends Michael Dashkin, Carrie Majer, and Peter Ohlin.
--Peter Miller

A map to the Shakespeare crawl this Saturday.

July 17, 2008

While it's been all quiet on the blogging front, we've been anything but idle these last two weeks.
Here's a quick run-down on where we've been and where we're heading in the next week.

As we reach mid-Summer on Columbia Street, our refurbished backyard is getting plenty of good use, especially so in the latest entry of our Sunday night reading series, organized by the ever-resourceful Rachel London. Both Nick Flynn and Nuar Alsadir made game attempts to be heard above the sweet din of well mannered children at play in the backyard of our neighbors, the Pit Stop bistro. Check out the accompanying photo to see attendees dangerously listing forward to catch the stray snatches of intelligible brilliance.

Five days later, Freebird made space in its stuffy aisles for an art show constructed largely from the detritus of city streets. Ingeniously curated by Mariko Tanaka, the show features some seven artists working in a variety of recycled media--drawing, photography, sculpture, sound and film. To pick randomly from a fine group, there's Hong-Kai Wang's "Coney Island of the Ear,"which shakes and stirs carnival sounds from our favorite endangered amusement park; John Breiner's gruesomely elegant bestiaries (see below for one tucked within our New York section) concocted from painterly brush strokes and moldy old books; Yuko Oda's swarm of trashbag butterflies; and filmmaker Megan Whiteford's vertiginous tour of the projected Greenway seen from the vantage point of her sneaker tops. We were simply overwhelmed by the crush of tastemakers that descended upon us opening night, possibly lured by the liberal pouring of good Domaine Chandon Rose graciously provided to us by Moet Hennessy distributors.

And now--puff puff--sorry, trying to catch our breath--this Saturday afternoon, The Bard comes to Red Hook, courtesy of Freebird. This isn't the Shakespeare that you dozed off to in Freshman Lit. This is the vastly abbreviated Will, as engineered by Jess Winfield, author of the new novel, My Name Is Will. He'll bring us some 31 plays in two hours at five neighborhood locales. It all begins from the unlikely proscenium of the Brooklyn IKEA ferry, disembarking promptly at 2pm from Wall Street's Pier 11 in Manhattan.
--Charles Hutchinson and Peter Miller

Art by John Breiner (photo by Michael Dashkin)