Lunch Box Podcast

Ed’s birthday cake was consumed by ants. John’s delivering furniture and dining under sexy angels. In this conversational smörgåsbord, they discuss literary road trips, music festivals, meat experiences, and teaching unwoke books. Follow links to Rosie’s Bistro Italiano, Winter in the Blood, 49 Venezuelan Novels (again), The Bemus Point, Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, 4505 Meats, “The Making of Ashenden”, The Displaced, Air Traffic, Fishtrap, Terminal Gravity Brewing, potato sidewinder controversy, and the Rotato.

Ed went to the Winfield Bluegrass Festival, and John went to the New York State Fair. They talk about pigeons, Aaron Neville’s farm, a good meal’s reliance on the right circumstances, why candy and Cool Whip constitute a salad, and the horror of the walking family taco. Follow links to Molly Tuttle, Maren Morris, frillback pigeons, Freville Farm, Aaron Neville, Jimmy Scott, Dizengoff Hummus, frozen limonana, Zahav, Le Pigeon, The Pesthouse, The Buried Giant, Ling Ma on Severance, Diana Khoi Nguyen, John Mahoney, Succession, The Death of Stalin, and the first photograph of a human being. (Sorry that John sounds lousy. Skype updated itself, wiped his settings, and recorded him through the laptop mic instead of his real mic.)

Ithaca has stolen Portland's weather, Ed's shed is nearing completion, and John is worried about how much context is too much. Also: Idyllwild nearly burned down, John's watching TV, and Ed plans to go to Missoula and to eat the whole bread bowl. Follow links to Cynan Jones's Cove, Nicole Krauss's Forest Dark, Dominique Fabre's The Waitress Was New, the weirdness of season 2 of Friday Night Lights, Foyle's War, Attic Institute, Jimmy Martin, Motorcyclez on Instagram, Baerlic Brewing, Frickin Fried Chicken, and Charm School Social Club.

Ed has to go build a shed with his father-in-law, so let this short episode be your sountrack to America's imminent demise. Hear about Ed's misbegotten road adventures and social media replacement plan, and John's amateur upholstery, covers gig, and and bumper-sticker grievances. Follow links to Birdsongs of the Mesozoic, The Lyres, Valley View Auto, Reginald Dwayne Betts, Blue Heron Rescues, and adoptable pigeons.

John's new desk is kinda sticky. Ed's new desk is a large pile of books. They talk about John's move, funeral eats, Ed's hurt foot, the joys and pitfalls of rotisserie chicken and old houses, and some restaurants and books. Follow links to Rachel Cusk's Kudos, Sebastian Castillo's 49 Venezuelan Novels, Mother Foucault's Bookshop, Rodney Koeneke, Fred Haefele's Rebuilding the Indian, Elizabeth Bishop's "The Bight", The Terror, A. P. Bio, Neverwinter Nights, 24th and Meatballs, and Pizza Jerk.

Smelly ants are emerging from Ed's ceiling, and John is trying to eat fewer carbs. Not no carbs, just fewer. They talk about harmonicas; artisanal ice cream sandwiches; quitting a band and committing even harder to a band; what you get when you slice off a bit of pyramid; a bunch of books; and the imminent demise, or perhaps eternal eminence, of Donald J. Trump. Follow links to the Hohner 280/64, the Dead in Ithaca, frustum, The Iron Horse in Missoula, Andrew Martin's Early Work, Nicolas Freeling, Nicholas Blake, Mount Hood Meadows, Trader Joe's Sublime Ice Cream Sandwiches, Ruby Jewel, and Phở Oregon.

Ed's back from AWP in Tampa and sleeping peacefully, and John has brought a delicious beet dip to dinner for his low-carb friends to eat. They talk about Thai food, dessert hummus, archiving a writer's papers, eggs, Hershey's Gold, the boundaries of obscenity, and our glorious leader Donald J. Trump. They do not discuss the feature film The Florida Project. Follow links to Wat Tampa, Brian Hall's Fall of Frost, ambulance-chaser William Mattar, the Zero Bar, Joey Sweeney and the Neon Grease, Za'atar beet dip, Off the Cob chips, Good Hangups, and Taco vs. Burrito.

Ed and John are joined by frequent guest Alice Bolin, to talk about her forthcoming book, and also about good bookstores in Memphis, songs you write to sing at home, Los Angeles, terrible jokes, remote hoarding, ill-conceived cookbooks, and the state of Florida. Follow links to Joy Williams's Ill Nature, Karyna McGlynn's Hothouse, Alissa Nutting's Tampa, Debra Lafave, "I Have to Go Back to 1994 and Kill a Girl", Elegant Meals with Inexpensive Meats, Xanadu Music and Books, Burke's Book Store, Two Rivers Bookstore, neural networks recognizing sheep, "Sheep" by Robert Francis, The Arrow Book of Jokes and Riddles, and belt balancers.

Ed's thinking about getting a non-poetry job, and John has been living in an alien-infested space station for three weeks. They discuss Ray Bradbury, smokey cheesers, chocolate chip cookies, keeping your car alive, and café menus from distant towns; John describes his dream about a haunted hallway, and Ed describes his dream about getting a ride home from Paul Reiser. Follow links to books by W. S. Merwin, Jonathan Dee, Zadie Smith, and Mary Gaitskill.

Christmas is coming, and John and Ed are decorating their trees with ornaments and lights. Ed played a gig that went just right, and John is a little embarrassed at his collection of LPs. They discuss the feminist divorce ballads of the seventies, guitar amplifiers, the tension between the sentence and the line in poetry, typography, and the Microsoft spaghetti horror. Follow links to Boon's Treasury, Aimee Mann's "I've Had It", Truck Stop Love, Frank Zappa's "Honey, Don't You Want a Man Like Me", Helen Reddy, John's random poem idea generator, Polina Barskova, poets writing during the siege of Leningrad, and Trebuchet.