Posted: December 3rd, 2011 | Author: Ginger Mayerson | Filed under: Dr. Hackenbush Gains Perspective | No Comments »
Where to buy: see sidebar
Dr. Hackenbush Gains Perspective
AIDS and Class Warfare
By Ginger Mayerson
ISBN 9780982581346; 176 pages
It’s 1984 and Hackenbush’s broken heart is on the mend as she assists the very roguish, but devastatingly charming theater director, Monte Vista, in his last and greatest production. Mabel Hackenbush, better known as the singer, dancer, ukulele player extraordinaire, and front woman for Dr. Hackenbush and her Orchestra, has taken a chance on love and lost. After an epic binge, she can’t sing, won’t dance, and can only get through the day by focusing on her temp secretary job. Add in all this, the band has a big show coming up that Hackenbush might not be able to do in her current state of mind. Could this be the end of Dr. Hackenbush and her Orchestra? Into this dire situation saunters Monte Vista, theater maven supreme, who says he wants Hackenbush to help him write his memoirs. But for what he really wants… well, Hackenbush will have to call in reinforcements for that. And even then the outcome isn’t a sure thing.
Ginger Mayerson lives in Los Angeles, California. She’s published in the Coe Review, Roux Magazine, The Velvet Mafia, and The Journal of the Image Warehouse. Originally trained as a composer, she now writes novels, poetry, essays, reviews, interviews, makes collages, and edits the Journal of the Lincoln Heights Literary Society and publishes books and magazines at the Wapshott Press in her spare time. You can find the Hackenbush scene at www.hackenbush.net. Or you can get the whole story at www.gingermayerson.com.
Posted: January 14th, 2012 | Author: Ginger Mayerson | Filed under: Various | No Comments »
If this chart doesn’t make you see red, there’s something wrong with you:
“The following chart tells the story. It shows inflation-adjusted GDP per capita and median family income from 1947 (the earliest year for which the income data are available) to 2007. To facilitate comparison of the over-time trends, each is indexed to its 1973 level. Since the mid-to-late 1970s, growth of income at the median has been slow — very slow — relative to growth of the economy. The current decade, with no improvement at all in median income, is especially striking.”
Slow Income Growth for Middle America, Consider the Evidence, September 3, 2008 (I wish I’d seen this sooner)
Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. America making more while the general population are making less? It is truly time to Occupy America because the current management really sucks. Yes, Wall Street, Banking, Insurance Industry, Reagan Administration, Social and Neo Conservatives, I’m looking at all of you. It’s time for the Looting of America to end.
Oh, and yay, it’s an election year, so plus ça change… I think I’ll send the Occupy-iers some swim googles. It won’t stop the pepper spraying, but it will protect their eyes a little.
(via the divine Dr. K)
Crossposted from The Hackenblog
Posted: December 6th, 2011 | Author: Ginger Mayerson | Filed under: Dr. Hackenbush Gains Perspective, Serialization | No Comments »
“News travels fast,” she said. “That’s what I get for betting on Lola Rae to do anything sane.”
“I hear she’s comin’ back,” Cody said.
“Figures. You gonna come see me in my suffering?” she asked.
“I might fall by. Arty said he’s tired of being the only Negro at his nightclub.”
Hackenbush shrugged, but Ross thought it was funny.
“He said that? Hell, Cody, maybe I should come by, too, except lute music gives me hives,” he managed to say between guffaws.
“Laugh it up, cats, at least dinner comes with the gig and you know how good the food is there,” she said on her way out. Eddy was packed up and tapping his foot waiting for her to get with it. They went back to her place; she’d spent part of her afternoon cleaning it up and changing the sheets.
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Posted: November 30th, 2011 | Author: Ginger Mayerson | Filed under: Dr. Hackenbush Gains Perspective, Dr. Hackenbush Gets a Job, News and reviews, Various | No Comments »
I will be donating $10 to First Book for every four copies of any Hackenbush novel sold. That’s a book for a book.
I’ll also be keeping a tally on the sidebar.
Getting books to kids who don’t have any is a wonderful thing to do and I salute First Book for doing it. Now, if there was only a way to get a ukulele to every kid…
Posted: November 29th, 2011 | Author: Ginger Mayerson | Filed under: Dr. Hackenbush Gains Perspective, Serialization | No Comments »
“How?” Shorty asked. He was a big fan of the willowy, blond dancer, but knew she had certain eccentricities and gave them a wide berth. One of them was that she mauled Hackenbush every chance she got.
“She grabbed my hair at Bart’s Bar and Grill to tell me she liked the way I sang ‘Moonglow’,” Hackenbush said, opening her VW Bug’s door for him. “She could have just told me, but no, she had to bend me nearly backwards to tell me.”
“Well, we are talking about Lola Rae, aren’t we?”
“Yes. Thank God Cody held me up while she did it.” Hackenbush shuddered at the memory. “I might have been snapped like a twig.”
Shorty didn’t comment on Hackenbush’s un-twig-like figure; few twigs of his acquaintance had quite so many curves as she did. He merely smiled, and said he figured Lola was in the Bay Area for good. “She’s knocking them dead up there.”
“Dancing?”
“Of course!”
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Posted: November 22nd, 2011 | Author: Ginger Mayerson | Filed under: Dr. Hackenbush Gains Perspective, Serialization | No Comments »
Hackenbush was happy; dear God, at last she was happy. All the years of scuffling, starving, working day jobs, suffering, and moments of pure musical bliss, followed by long stretches of creative growth, when all the work paid off and the music was as free and easy as breathing. In all those years, she’d always felt threatened, scared, and watched her back. Shorty was the first person in LA she felt safe enough with to let her guard down and relax a little. And now Eddy: Lordy, did that man make her feel safe and loved. She carried the warmth of his arms through the hours without him. His embrace was the home she thought she’d never find, and she knew it would be there when she got back to him. His love was one of the few things outside of herself she could count on. It was always something to look forward to at the end of the day, there was Eddy Lee, home, and all the peace and love in that.
She had thought that when she found this kind of love, she’d understand all those happy songs. It was not the case. No song could capture what she felt, not even words and music could do it justice. So, she reasoned, either what she had with Eddy was unique or this kind of once-in-a-lifetime love was just bigger than thirty-two bars and a verse could express. Hackenbush now had a better understanding of the dark songs of lost and hopeless love. She felt she knew more about them from her observations of others’ emotional shipwrecks and her own varied and personal experience. She still sang those songs, they were some of the greatest songs ever written; but she now sang them with more hope than tragedy, in an effort to tell her audiences that life is sad, but it might not always be. She kept the message subtle, because she didn’t want to get bashed in the face by some heartbroken poor devil who hated her for her happiness. And Hackenbush could dig it: when she was really down, the last thing she wanted was to hear about somebody else’s joy. It was petty of her, but there it was.
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Posted: November 15th, 2011 | Author: Ginger Mayerson | Filed under: Dr. Hackenbush Gains Perspective, Serialization | No Comments »
Shorty was a patient soul and Hackenbush loved him dearly for it. He made her look like a better dancer than she was and made her into a better dancer than she thought she could ever be. So as not to provoke him and because she really was interested in this complicated new dance he’d concocted, she only smoked half her Pall Mall. “Okay, boss, I’m back on the clock,” she said, picking a shred of tobacco off her tongue.
Shorty giggled and turned the metronome back on. He worked them hard for another hour and then they had dinner at a Thai place across from the Samsara School of Oriental Medicine on Third near Rampart.
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Posted: November 10th, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Various | Tags: fresh, twitter | No Comments »
AAC Tour Postcard 2010: 6″w x 4″h
I made this postcard on the Arroyo Arts Collective Tour on November 21, 2010
… http://t.co/h1IH6yDj
Personal data trafficking: I went through hell to get all my info off the web and I still don’t think I succeede… http://t.co/i1yL3h0b
