Draft 2008, Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love “Uprock Headspin Scramble and Dive”

Dear Amigos,

The Austin Chronicle has posted my latest NFL Draft preview, featuring a prominence on F.O.T Patrick Rosal’s collection of poetry “Uprock Headspin Scramble and Dive.” In the coming weeks I should have links to fellowship-travel essays (I will be attending the Prairie Center For The Arts and The Mary Anderson Center as the Dorothy Norton Clay Fellow) and new essays in literary journals and websites about hamburgers, minor league baseball, 20-foot tall women, and the a “last supper” with the hippies that are camping next to my apartment.

You can catch the NFL Draft preview here…
http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Blogs/Sports?oid=oid%3A616644

Timothy Braun
Austin, TX
April 24th, 2008

Five Easy Pieces (a quintet of other matters on my mind.)
1.) Congratulations to both the “30 Rock” and “Project Runway” for snagging Peabody Awards. These shows are marvelous and are deserved.
2.) Congratulations to F.O.T. Chris Shinn in being a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama.
3.) Congratulations to The Onion’s AV Club, for finally reviewing “Evil Dead 2” and commenting on its luminosity. Yes, the best horror-comedy of all time should be described with the world “luminosity”.
4.) The violence in Africa (Congo, Kenya, Zimbabwe) has me very nervous. I get the feeling in my bones the worst is yet to come. Oh, I have written this before, but I am going to write this one more time: I am bothered I need to visit the BBC to get this news while CNN is reporting on Carmen Electra getting engaged…again.
5.) I’m looking forward to this year’s Fuse Box Festival, featuring buddy Lisa D’Amour and Witness Relocation Theater. Both are old F.O.T.’s from New York, but what draws me to Fuse Box this year is the sound project “Inside The Dream Machine” and the late nigh cabaret at the Victory Gardens.

CODA: I would like to thank the Santa Fe Art Institute for naming me a 2008-2009 artist-in-residence. Several of my plays take place in and around Santa Fe and this is nothing short of wonderful. Last Sunday, I got a drunken phone call at 1:30 in le AM from my frequent collaborator, Thomas Piper (Gissendanner), with an idea for a “Three Sisters” adaptation with characters dreaming of Memphis over Moscow. Ironically, this might be the play I will work on at SFAI, and not a New Mexican story.

And Just One More Thing Before I Hit The Road…
“Lost” last night was brilliant, with a globe skipping Ben, but the lines of the night where…
-Hurley on Risk: “Australia’s the key to the whole game!” This is very true.
-Faraday on time: “When? ‘When’ is kind of a relative term.” This is very true too.