First, a happy heavenly birthday to Charlie Watts. The best rock & roll drummer there ever was — he was the drummer for the Rolling Stones for 58 years (and I think that whole time, he would have rather been playing jazz).
Anyway. He passed away in the fall of 2021, from throat cancer. He was 80.
Greatly missed by so many!! RIP, Charlie.
Second!!
Nick Cave continues his In Conversation book tour today, in support of the paperback release of Faith, Hope & Carnage, in Amsterdam. (There’s also an in-store signing, but this might have already happened, since I’m a trillion hours behind the Amsterdam time zone.)
If you’ve never been to one of his In Conversation thingies, you should attend one, or two — or several! They are wonderful!! (He had one here in my house back in 2019 and it was a complete delight!) (I am, of course, just kidding. But in the event something miraculous like that ever occurs, I am making a (really, really long) list of all the things I would like to converse about with Nick Cave! I’ll keep you posted.)
Meanwhile, here is an example of how thrilling it is to listen to Nick Cave read aloud. A treasured favorite of mine, he is reading the lyrics of “Dead Joe” in London, 1992 (1 minute):
Okay.
A chance of a lifetime kind of thing will be coming up here soon, so keep your eyes peeled on this blog!
Yes! That is correct! Val in Brooklyn is helping me design a series of coffee mugs over at zazzle that feature the cover art of all my many, many books!!
Just when you thought you would never get to see the cover of 1954 Powder Blue Pickup, up close, while drinking coffee…
Or just when you were wondering: what the heck did the original cover of When the Night Stood Still look like? You can just glance down now, at your coffee mug, and refresh your memory!
(It looked like this, btw:
This is the only actual cover there ever was for this book. And yes, that means that this cover — which is all over the Internet:
–lovely as that cover is — is from a plagiarized, hard cover edition of my book that never, ever existed. And neither I nor the (now deceased) publisher make any money whatsoever off the sales of that edition. And when it first came out, it was selling for $300 a copy as a ‘rare collector’s edition.’)
Anyway.
I just thought it would be a fun idea, to have the covers of all my books on coffee mugs, because I have quite an extensive collection of coffee mugs. And then I thought: why not offer them for sale to everybody?
So I texted Val, who was hard at work, relaxing with a cold one, in her kiddie pool in her backyard in Brooklyn —
–this is a “cold one” in the event English is not your native language:
— and Val said, “Oh sure!! I’m happy to do it!!”
And that’s how a spectacular idea is born.
All righty.
I do have a few more revisions to do on the play here today. It is another gorgeous day and I just feel really happy about a whole lot of things, many of which revolve around this play! (“The Guide To Being Fabulous!”)
And I’m also looking forward to an extended phone chat with Peitor Angell, who is flying to NYC today from France, and so will be in my time zone for a number of days!!
Peitor and I have not only been close friends for 38 years, we are also partners in this:
Our micro-short film production company.
So, I’m just feeling really excited about a lot of things.
Okay. Enjoy your fabulous Friday, wherever you are in the world!
Thanks for visiting!
I love you guys. See ya!
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Music to feed cats by at 6am on a fabulous Friday!!