All Over Albany

The Memoir Office

Earlier this year local writer and St. Rose professor Daniel Nester set up at the Arts Center of the Capital Region as part of a public writing project called "The Memoir Office."

The result of that project -- The Memoir Office: The Writer is Present -- is out today as a Kindle "single" (it's 99 cents):

Inspired by performance artists who take their work to the public, Daniel Nester set up shop in an art gallery lobby in Troy, NY and started to write about himself. He brought a desk, chair, office lamp, and a plant. He called it The Memoir Office. The result, The Memoir Office: The Writer is Present, is a 12,000-word piece of first-person writing--part journal, part memoir, and part essay.

So, why release The Memoir Office as an e-reader single? Nester explained today on Google+:

It's too long for a single article, too short for a book, and not really viable as a book. The long form of it really suits the material, if that makes sense. Plus, I am getting into my Kindle a lot these days and buying and reading a lot of these singles things myself. Hat into ring and so forth.

A clip of a portion released this past July in Painted Bride Quarterly is after the jump. (Yes, like an excerpt of an excerpt.)

(there's more)

A tribute to tributes

St. Rose professor -- and general man of letters -- Daniel Nester at The Morning News today about tribute bands, after seeing a Judas Priestess show recently at Bogie's:

"We f-----' rocked, didn't we?" Mercedes asks, giving me a light. "It took about four songs tonight, but we won 'em over."

We are standing outside Bogie's rock club in Albany, NY, where among the crowd were a tall dude in a Beavis and Butthead "Breaking the Law" t-shirt; two lipstick-ed grad students in cocktail dresses who sang every word; a Nikki Sixx lookalike taking cover in the back; and the band's drummer's parents, who drove up from Lawrenceville, NJ, in their tan Chevy Suburban.

Mercedes can tell I agree because I am smiling, but I go ahead and tell her Yes, you all did f------- rock.

And:

I could be wrong, but there is probably at least one performance-studies Ph.D. thesis to be written on the implications of a biracial Catholic school girl from Columbia, Maryland who reverse-engineers the power relationship of a male gaze by performing anthems written for pimply boys that were originally sung by a closeted gay man who wore motorcycle leathers onstage.

Also in the mix: the value of derivative work, Harold Bloom, Wilco, and surviving "yet another epoch of twee."

JP photo: Judas Priestess | Nester photo: Joe Putrock

The weight of Thanksgiving

While you're celebrating this Thanksgiving, St. Rose English professor Daniel Nester will be weighing his head. He explains today at The Morning News:

This year in southern New Jersey, Thanksgiving will offer no shortage of family theater. My mother, holding court as reluctant matriarch, will offer backyard advice on relationships as she puffs away on her Marlboro Light 100. My cousin, who just eloped to Philadelphia with her chef co-worker, will introduce her husband for the first time. He is a Mexican-American, and it's only a matter of time before someone makes a joke in a Speedy Gonzales accent or asks about drug cartels or his green card status before they realize their faux pas. My 13-year-old nephew will play his jazz saxophone in a confined space.

And everyone will weigh their head on a meat scale.

Because we know you're curious -- Dan's head weighs 30 filet mignons.

Earlier on AOA: Summer with Daniel Nester

photo: Joe Putrock

CAPITAL LIT

St. Rose is hosting the first Albany Lit Mag and Small Press Fair this Saturday. From organizer Daniel Nester's web site:

Hundreds of regional and national independent literary publishers will converge to sell their journals for only $2 an issue and books for $4 each. Many publishers will attend in person to meet Albany's eager readers, so don't miss this opportunity to discover literature you are unlikely to find in a single store, and meet the publishers and editors who do the real work of keeping American Literature vibrant and vital.

There will also be readings and discussions throughout the day. The fair runs from noon to 6 pm in St. Joseph's Auditorium on the CSR campus. It's free.

But, wait. There's more. The day will be capped off with an event called "Karaoke + Poetry = Fun" at Valentine's at 7 pm.

How Not to Be Inappropriate in the Capital Region

The author, being bookish.

The folks at AOA asked me to come up with an inappropriate-themed post to accompany my new book -- How to Be Inappropriate -- and I was happy to oblige.

What I have come up is a series of don'ts to prevent you from committing the same local faux pas, blunders, and gaffes as your intrepid author has.

(there's more)

Dan Nester's Watchful Analysis of New Growth

St. Rose English professor Daniel Nester is back on The Daily Beast today with an essay about, um, enhancement:

The manufacturer of ExtenZe claims more than 460,000 customers have bought in the neighborhood of 250 million pills. Recent campaigns tout the ExtenZe drink, and infomercials in front of the Playboy mansion feature "ExtenZe Girls" dressed in cheerleader outfits. Response, a trade magazine that covers the "direct-response ad" industry, ranked ExtenZe as the seventh-most popular campaign in 2008, beating out the Ab Rocket and the Dual Action Cleanse.

As a former hack medical journalist, I wanted to find out if ExtenZe really works. I bought 120 pills on eBay, recruited 12 thirty- and fortysomething overeducated white males, and mailed each of them a 20-inch tube filled with ten ExtenZe pills, a foot-long ruler from Staples, an informed-consent form, a survey, and what I called a Boner Diary. I advised each patient to try to have an erection each day for ten days, directing them to the YouPorn, Victoria's Secret, and American Apparel websites. Armed with an official-sounding name, the Watchful Analysis of New Growth, we were in business.

Caution: may induce strange feelings about Alex Rodriguez.

Nester is holding what we can only imagine is a sort of poster session about his research Wednesday night at the reading series Live From the Living Room in Albany.

photo: Daniel Nester

Daniel Nester's fake bake

Daniel Nester, the CSR professor who recently stirred things up with a piece about IVF, is back in the Daily Beast this week with an account of his journey into the tanning culture of Albany:

Albany, N.Y., is an indoor tanning mecca, a hotbed of hot beds. There are more than 800 tanning salons in the greater capital region. Four-term Albany Mayor Jerry Jennings presides over ribbon-cuttings with a year-round bronze. At the historically Catholic college where I teach, students grow more preternaturally orange as winter progresses.

I have never fit in here. I was pasty-faced even for Brooklyn, and when I moved to this tanner's Valhalla I became even more freakishly white. And so, half anxious to fit in, half curious to learn the appeal, I decided to embark on an experiment in which I would join the ranks of the fake-baked to see how a deep, midwinter tan could change my life.

Noted: smelling "like a french fry" not the best way to seduce wife.

photo: The Daily Beast

The $20,000 baby

Saint Rose professor Daniel Nester has a piece on the Daily Beast today about the choice he and wife made to use IVF:

Turns out, when you pay a battalion of medical professionals $20,000 to help you induce a pregnancy that didn't want to happen on its own, nobody likes you. My wife and I have been called selfish and narcissistic by adoption activists. Religious zealots have condemned us as immoral manipulators of God's will. And prudes just don't want to discuss where babies come from. Every time I mention our struggle to conceive a child in an Upper East Side Petri dish, I wander into a mine field of awkwardness, discomfort and rage. I'm made to feel I've provided way more information than is socially acceptable.

According to Nester, the response around Saint Rose wasn't so warm, either:

The pitfalls are different with those who regard IVF as subverting the will of a higher power. With 12 years of Catholic school under my belt, I should have known better than to mention it in the halls of the historically Catholic college where I teach. Seems I forgot the Vatican's "Every Sperm is Sacred" doctrine that considers most IVF methods to be sinful, the unsanctioned creation of life outside the integrity of a marital union. The lapsed Catholic conspiracy theorist in me did notice, however, that fertility treatments weren't covered by our health plan.

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photo: Daniel Nester