What my life is worth (last days in Atlanta)

I feel like I have a massive, mad amount of catching up to do, in terms with chronicling the Amazing Adventures Of Russ As He Moves To The North (TM). Fact of the matter is, though, I feel less "amazing" at the present moment (cue a Kanye West rant from his VH-1 "Storytellers": "Russell Stovers-AMAZING. Russ Marshalek-AMAZING. Russ, you know that company that makes the stuffed animals you buy at the greeting card stores? Are they not amazing?") than I do "in stasis". Things feel weird , because every activity I engage in in Atlanta is the "last". The "last" time I'll ever go to Your (mine?) Dekalb Farmers Market, aka the Greatest Damn Place On Earth. The "last" time I'll ever walk to the Decatur square and get angry about all the happy people. The last time I'll ever say "oh, dear, this is the last time I'm..." And really, what good does any of that serve? Basically, my brain is fabricating nostalgia at this point. "Hey, remember the time I ran into the Indigo Girls while I was shopping for coffee at Target?" No, because that didn't happen. I've run into an Indigo Girl ONCE in my entire time in Decatur (a city that they, like, own, or something. Shhhh. I'm trying to tell you something 'bout my life.). My "getting sassed by Michael Stipe" quotient is like eight times that, and Stipe lives in, like, an underground cave carved to resemble an independent coffee shop somewhere below the 40 Watt in Athens, GA, right?

Right...

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futureproofisinthepudding

Not to completely overwhelm you, gentle heart, with Russ-generated content all at once, but my BabyGotBooks interview with N. Frank Daniels is up right now.

Daniels is the author of a stunning, harrowing first novel, titled futureproof. Whether you care about that or not is irrelevant; read the interview anyway, as it's one of the most blissfully candid takes on the current state of the publishing industry that you'll experience anywhere:

...More than anything because I only recently realized that the ’story’ behind futureproof’s being published was the main reason why HarperCollins decided to pursue me to publish this book.

Read the rest at BabyGotBooks.

The Old Apartment

My very first girlfriend, in 10th grade(I know, right, I was a slow bloomer but I, um, flowered, or rather, deflowered, quickly...and...often? Oh, god, very veiled reference to me being a teenage slut), was a huge fan of The Barenaked Ladies. Before you go rolling your eyes at me for ever having been involved with someone possessing such mainstream oriented rock tastes, know a couple of things:

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Resonator Magazine presets: REStart-the birthday party

One of my other projects, Resonator Magazine (which I'm one of the co-owners of and write for under my thinly-veiled pseudonym Shaun Bateman) is having a birthday party and launching a new live music monthly, about a week after I relocate to New York city:

For more info and MP3s from all involved bands, check the Res post. 

A fish with a bicycle on myspace is still a fish with a bicycle

I generally tend to shy away from posting about my chosen industry, that of publishing (if one can define "chosen industry" to mean something akin to what you'd call it if you keep sticking your finger into the exact same electrical socket, possibly with each new insertion choosing a different angle to approach said outlet, thinking that a new approach, a different technique, might warrant something other than heart-breaking, bone-frying shock), here. It hasn't really been much of a conscious effort, rather my world, after becoming "underemployed", has focused on three things: one, my moving, two, my chronicling of it, and three, finding a full-time job in New York, preferably even before I'm there.

In regards to the third, thanks to a spiffy resume remix by my good friend Wayne Fishell of the wayne fishell experiment and cleaning expert slash resume-rejiggerer for hire extraordinaire, I'm feeling as though what was told to me by the GA Dept Of Labor's Unemployment Office, henceforth called the "unemploymentarium", just might be true: things are looking up.

Don't know what those "things" are yet, or in what relative direction this "up" might be, but it's the name of one of my favorite R.E.M. albums so it has to be good.

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