– MEET ALASTAIR. I made a new friend this weekend over at Alastair’s Heart Monitor, a fun and quirky pop culture blog based out of the U.K. I encourage you to check it out.

– POETRY, GET YER RED HOT POETRY. Some nice new poems over at Be Not Inhospitable To Strangers by one of our frequent commenters, Scot Young: A Beer With Bukowski, International Poetry Festival, and Chinatown Jazz.

– SOME KIND OF PROPHET. An excellent review over at Pop Matters on the posthumous Kurt Vonnegut essay collection, “Armageddon in Retrospect.” I devoured the book several months ago in preview form and I can guarantee its brilliance.

– NO SHIT, SHERLOCK. Research conducted by Professor James C. Kaufman, California State University, concludes that writers die young, and poets have it the worst. Read The Book Bench at the New Yorker Online.

– HERE’S TO YA, JACK. Johnny Heinhold’s First and Last Chance Saloon, the Oakland waterfront bar where Jack London and other literary spirits drained distilled spirits, celebrated its 125th birthday on Sunday, as reported by the San Francisco Chronicle. I chronicled my own adventure at Heinhold’s for Dead Drunk Dublin in 2003.

– BYE BYE, BUKOWSKI. Tonight the final installment in the 15-story cycle of Mr. Bukowski’s Wild Ride, Bukowski Meets Bukowski, debuts here at Carver’s Dog. The stories will be deleted from our site come July as we will be going to print publication with the collection at that time. We are lucky to have found an investor who is fronting the cash for the limited-run first edition and are busy collecting reviews and essays for the front and back of the book at this time. Wish us luck.