{"id":453,"date":"2009-01-15T04:28:04","date_gmt":"2009-01-15T12:28:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jeffwerner.ca\/wp\/?p=453"},"modified":"2013-03-07T17:44:13","modified_gmt":"2013-03-08T01:44:13","slug":"saguaro_by_carson_mell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jeffwerner.ca\/testa\/saguaro_by_carson_mell\/","title":{"rendered":"Saguaro by Carson Mell"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A review in tabs&#8212;excerpts I found noteworthy in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.carsonmell.com\/saguaro_main.html\">Carson Mell<\/a>&#8216;s&#8212;who as far as I can tell is a young independent writer&#8212;writing about Bobby Bird, &#8220;a classic rock star who&#8217;s been producing rock albums of greatly varying quality since the early 60s&#8221;, 2006 (second edition 2008; ordered directly from Mell and his apartment in LA).<br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/jeffwerner.ca\/images\/journal\/saguaro-cover.jpg\" width=\"540\" height=\"360\" alt=\"Saguaro, by Carson Mell\" \/><br \/>\nPage 7<br \/>\n&#8220;But here I was, the kids at school loving my songs, the adults disturbed by them, and that&#8217;s all I needed to keep going. That&#8217;s all I needed to make a start.&#8221;<br \/>\nPage 13<br \/>\n&#8220;And like when you look at any one thing too long, it turns inward and you end up looking at yourself, learning something about yourself.&#8221;<br \/>\nPage 16<br \/>\n&#8220;&#8216;Cynics make the mistake of assuming everyone else shares their faults,&#8217; and &#8216;Only being strong allows you the privilege of being kind,'&#8221;.<br \/>\nPage 33<br \/>\n&#8220;Me, I don&#8217;t think there&#8217;s anything worse on this planet than someone with a bigger brain than their personality&#8230;&#8221;<br \/>\nPage 61<br \/>\n&#8220;See, I&#8217;m telling you all this not as an excuse, but as a warning. You think you&#8217;re above becoming an asshole? Then you&#8217;re the same kind of guy who thinks he can smoke without becoming addicted, and you&#8217;re the most prone to become an addict.&#8221;<br \/>\nPage 86<br \/>\n&#8220;The same way when you break up with a girl you say, &#8216;Dear God, I hope she gets over me,&#8217; when deep down you know you want to break that heart a little bit, put a good crack in it at the very least.&#8221;<br \/>\nPage 100<br \/>\n&#8220;Then she told me that she&#8217;d always hated her birthmark too, but that when she was eighteen she&#8217;d gotten completely naked before her mother&#8217;s vanity to try and give herself an honest appraisal. It was then that she realized it was beautiful. &#8216;It was like somebody flipped a switch,&#8217; she told me. And when the thing that had held her back for so long suddenly became a source of pride, an unstoppable and completely unique accessory unmatched by a thousand shimmering handbags and a million stupid diamond necklaces, things changed for her. A diamond, next to a real woman&#8217;s smile, may as well be a chunk of turd.&#8221;<br \/>\nPage 149<br \/>\n&#8220;I&#8217;m all covered in tattoos, everyone knows that. Back when I was an asshole I wrote my whole history on my flesh. A bunch of names and cartoons all over me. I look like a Formula One race car sponsored by nonsense.&#8221;<br \/>\n<strong>Bonus<\/strong>: For a limited time on YouTube&#8217;s featured artists, Mell&#8217;s short film and extended backstory to Bobby Bird, <em>Chonto<\/em>.<br \/>\n<object width=\"480\" height=\"295\"><param name=\"movie\" value=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/7kI84chCZ74&#038;hl=en&#038;fs=1\"\/><param name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\"\/><param name=\"allowscriptaccess\" value=\"always\"\/><embed src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/7kI84chCZ74&#038;hl=en&#038;fs=1\" type=\"application\/x-shockwave-flash\" allowscriptaccess=\"always\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" width=\"480\" height=\"295\"\/><\/object><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A review in tabs&#8212;excerpts I found noteworthy in Carson Mell&#8216;s&#8212;who as far as I can tell is a young independent writer&#8212;writing about Bobby Bird, &#8220;a classic rock star who&#8217;s been producing rock albums of greatly varying quality since the early 60s&#8221;, 2006 (second edition 2008; ordered directly from Mell and his apartment in LA). Page [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[9,11],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeffwerner.ca\/testa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeffwerner.ca\/testa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeffwerner.ca\/testa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffwerner.ca\/testa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffwerner.ca\/testa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=453"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jeffwerner.ca\/testa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1188,"href":"https:\/\/jeffwerner.ca\/testa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453\/revisions\/1188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeffwerner.ca\/testa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffwerner.ca\/testa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffwerner.ca\/testa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}