POUR US A SCOTCH ...

... Just as long as it is a blend, of course. We don't dabble in single malts. The master would never have it. Anyway, welcome to Bukowski's Basement.

Think of our subterranean dwelling as the red headed stepchild of Hemingway's Lounge. Over here, we'll showcase some of our grittier creative writing posts that seemed a little out of place over on Papa H's blog. We'll also be exploring the writings of some of our skid row luminaries. There will also be musings, videos, amazing podcasts, book reviews and the like.

So pour yourself some cheap hooch and settle in because we're here to celebrate all things wondrous in the gin-soaked literary landscape of Chuck Buk, Jack Kerouac, Tom Waits and Raymond Carver.

GOBBLE GOBBLE!!!

Chuck Buk wants you to have a happy (and sexy) Turkey Day!!

TOM WAITS READS BUKOWSKI'S 'THE LAUGHING HEART'

It's easy to see how the sensibilities of musician Tom Waits and author Charles Bukowski easily coincide with one another. Here, Waits reads Bukowski's "The Laughing Heart" (posted below)

THE LAUGHING HEART
your life is your life
don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is a light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.

RANDOM HOUSE GOES DIGITAL IN A HUGE WAY

NEW YORK - With e-book sales exploding in an otherwise sleepy market, Random House Inc. announced Monday that it was making thousands of additional books available in digital form, including novels by John Updike and Harlan Coben, as well as several volumes of the "Magic Treehouse" children's series.

Random House CEO Markus Dohle said in a statement that "more people everyday are enjoying reading in the electronic format and Random House wants to extend our reach to them with more of our books."

The publisher already has more than 8,000 books in the electronic format and will have a digital library of nearly 15,000. The new round of e-books is expected to be completed within months; excerpts can be viewed online through the publisher's Insight browsing service.

To read more, click HERE

HOW DO YOU SCREW UP MAMET or 'AMERICAN BUFFALO' ???

... For starters, you hire a comic, a C-list actor (an annoying one at that) and that gawky-lookin' kid who saw dead people in "The Sixth Sense."

Seriously, you take one of the coolest tough-guy plays and you make it a mockery... Robert Falls' Broadway production of "American Buffalo," starring John Leguizamo, Haley Joel Osment and Cedric the Entertainer, perhaps will be headed for a very quick curtain call.

The show opened in New York on Monday -- and if you can imagine, already posted a closing notice -- for this Sunday!!

That would mean the official Broadway run will be one week. One of the shortest runs for a revival in Great White Way history.

The producers have said they'll extend if ticket sales suddenly spike, but that seems hardly likely.

The official plot: The play concerns a team of men, Don, Teach, Bob, and Fletcher (who does not appear in the play, but is referred to), who are conspiring to steal a coin collection from a wealthy man. Don, who owns a junk shop, sold a nickel to a man for much less than what it was worth. Out of revenge, he and his friend-in-training, Bob, plan to steal the man's coin collection after suspecting that he went away for the weekend. Teach, an experienced and misanthropic friend of Don's, persuades Don to release Bob from the job because of what Teach feels is inexperience and potential disloyalty. Towards the end of the play, Bob, out of a need for money, attempts to sell Don a rare nickel, similar to the one Don sold. In a culmination of anger, Teach hits Bob on the head, believing that he stole the coin back and betrayed them. Fletcher, the outside man who never appeared in the play, ends up getting mugged and beaten by thugs. The play ends with the plan called off, and Don and Bob making amends.

The play won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for best play of the 1977 season. And lookee who starred in it:



Jon Hamm would have been my choice for the new revival.

This play was also adapted to the screen with Dennis Franz and Dustin Hoffman starred in it.

NEVER UNDERESTIMATE THE POWER OF A CRAPPY WORD

Being that Bukowski's basement deals more with tidbits of the more creative nature or rather, stuff that would appeal to creative types, this is pretty damn amusing...

Someone out there is excited about the utterance, "Meh". The expression of indifference or boredom has gained a place in the Collins English Dictionary. Publisher HarperCollins announced recently that the word had been chosen for inclusion in the dictionary's 30th anniversary edition. Go figure... At least you can now use it in Scrabble.

To read more, click HERE.

BUKOWSKI POETRY FOR KIDS

OK, so now that I have a kid and all I think it may be time to introduce him to the Chuck Buk world of kiddie poetry. Enjoy this hilarious video

RAYMOND CARVER DOCUMENTARY - 'DREAMS ARE WHAT WE WAKE UP FROM'

Enjoy this probing 1989 documentray "Dreams Are What We Wake Up From" about minimalist master Raymond Carver. It's directed by Daisy Goodwin and includes contributions from Richard Ford and Jay McInerney. BTW, why are all the good documentaries about American masters all made abroad? Oh, I know ... Cuz we're all too busy following the likes of Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian.

ASK THE DUST - VINTAGE PULPY COVER

How deliciously vintage is this pulpy cover for John fante's "Ask teh Dust," a true favorite of mine.

The under-appreciated Fante's second outing chronicles the adventures of the writer's alter ego, Arturo Bandini, a struggling young writer who tackles Los Angeles in the late 1930s. He gets it right and sets it down in his Chianti-steak-and-potatoes style, with prose both simple and rich.

Fante was born in Colorado in 1909 and began writing in 1929. He published numerous short stories, novels and screenplays in the following decades. "Ask the Dust" is a coming-of-age novel set in the City of Angels and was first published in 1939.

Says Charles Bukowski in the preface:

On his first encounter with Fante's work...

"Then one day I pulled a book down and opened it, and there it was. I stood for a moment, reading. Then like a man who had found gold in the city dump, I carried the book to a table. The lines rolled easily across the page, there was a flow. Each line had its own energy and was followed by another like it. The very substance of each line gave the page a form, a feeling of something carved into it. And here, at last, was a man who was not afraid of emotion. The humour and the pain were intermixed with a superb simplicity ... that book was a wild and enormous miracle to me."

John Fante died in 1983.

The book was made into a halfway-decent film starring a miscast Colin Farrell and the hot as hell Salma Hayek

FOR ALL THOSE BUDDING VAN HELSINGS OUT THERE

Thanks to Gizmodo for this... For you Bram Stoker-types, check out this authentic vampire kit made circa 1800 and sold at auction for $14,850.

In this hand-carved walnut portable suitcase comes loaded with all you need to killthe likes of Lestat including:

• Creepy-looking cross
• Bible
• Hand gun and silver bullets
• Holy oils
• Holy water
• Mirrors
• Candles
• Garlic
• Badass wood and metal stake with added cross for vampiric extra-pain
• Extra wood stakes, just in case

'SANDMAN' - COMIC LITERARY PERFECTION

"The Sandman" has always been one of my favorite comic titles, if not most favorite. Writer Neil Gaiman infused gothic sensibilities, horror, supernatural, fantasy and drama all under one wickedly entertaining book. If you haven't checked it out, run to your bookstore.

In any case, this week saw the 20th anniversary of the release of the first issue of the series and everyone pretty much agrees that Gaiman's now-classic fantasy series rewrote the rules of mainstream comics more than once in the 75-issue run.

Without Sandman, you'd never have comic titles like "Fables," "Y: The Last Man" or "The Invisibles."

To celebrate Morpheus' 20th birthday, the web site 109 has drummed up five ways in which entertainment is different because of comics' favorite dream god.

Click HERE to read them.

OK ... I'M LAME!!!!!

God, how lame am I?? I haven't updated in way way too long. No excuse... I will try to keep the creative juices flowing as well as bring you items that slant towards the creative sensibilities of Chuck Buk and Co.