The Litquake festival kicks off October 6, and runs through the 13th with events all over the Bay Area. I’ll be part of the Porch Light Storytelling night on Monday October 8th at the Swedish American Hall, along with Marta Acosta, Robert Mailer Anderson, Dave Eggers, Alvin Orloff, Milta Ortiz, Frank Portman, Eric Spitznagel, and Cameron Tuttle. Tickets are $15, available at ticketweb.com or cafedunord.com. I’ll also be producing a few of the other events, so please drop by throughout the week and say howdy. There’s over 350 authors this year, and over 50 events. For more info on Litquake check out our website at www.litquake.org.

On November 10 I’ll be part of the second annual Swearing Festival at the Edinburgh Castle Literary Pub. Events include The Mass Swearing Experiment, A Most Horrible, Vile Oaths contest, The Verbal Abuse Duel, live music, and Curse Torture, sponsored by The Dick Cheney Ideas Group. This gets really packed so plan ahead. For details go to castlenews.com.

Penguin, 2009. Since December 2006 I’ve been working almost full-time on an oral history of punk rock in the Bay Area. My co-author is Silke Tudor, and we’ve interviewed nearly 200 people, from Green Day, Rancid and Operation Ivy, on back to Maximum Rock n Roll magazine, the Dead Kennedys, Flipper, The Avengers, Crime, and The Nuns. Check out our myspace page for a nice swath of Bay Area punk!

I haven’t written much about this era of my life, and I don’t know exactly why it feels time to post a few things about it. Probably because if something isn’t available online, it automatically doesn’t exist for a lot of people. And perhaps because enough time has passed. And maybe because I’m publishing a new book about punk rock history, and people aren’t sure if I was ever a punk. Anyway, here goes.
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