Video Notes

You may have noticed a change in the past few Five-Two YouTube videos. I've been trying to incorporate our neon STOP sign logo, but YouTube has been hit-or-miss showing it. My solution is to include the logo in the lower right corner of every frame of every video.

Format Change

I use DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials web browser extension, which has begun blocking embedded YouTube videos because Google tracks users' interaction with them. While no longer embedding videos, I will still upload them to my YouTube channel, linking to them in poem text posts as in the post for "Hawk's Day in Court" by Peggy Landsman.

#VerseDay Rearrange

I made this poem with Michael A. Arnzen's Fridge of the Damned word tiles. For this week's #VerseDay challenge, make a new poem by rearranging the words I used. Post it to your blog by noon Eastern Friday, March 8, or keep it to submit elsewhere.

Heroes Behind The Badge

Seeing The 5-2 had been selected as a top law enforcement blog by California Casualty Insurance, retired Miami-Dade Police Lt. Bill Erfurth asked me to spread the word about a documentary film he's working on, Heroes Behind The Badge.

You can view the trailer below. When completed, fifty percent of the film's proceeds will go to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund. More about Heroes Behind The Badge is on Facebook, Twitter, and in this news story.

Meanwhile, there are still a few days left to vote for The 5-2 to win California Casualty's June competition and a $200 donation to the American Red Cross.

Yogurt + Willem Dafoe + Poetry = Brilliant.

While I'm on a video kick:



Here's the story behind the poem.

"The Last Wallet"

Here's a video for my poem "The Last Wallet", originally published in Mouth Full of Bullets #1 (September 2006), ed. B.J. Bourg:

My YOUNG JUNIUS Special Edition

Here's a video showing off my special edition copy of Young Junius by Friend of The Lineup Seth Harwood:



Seth has twice featured The Lineup on his CrimeWAV podcast (Episodes 36 and 55), and we look forward to more metered mayhem.

CrimeWAV Update

Seth Harwood will post The Lineup's return to CrimeWAV, Episode 55, sometime tonight Eastern. It's not a live show, so there's no need to tune in at a certain time, and CrimeWAV.com keeps a full archive of episodes.

I'll post a playable link to the episode as soon as I can. In the meantime, our episode number reminds me of this song:

Today's Lineup Update

The Lineup 3 Video Announcement

The Symphony of Science: "The Poetry of Reality"

John Boswell's The Symphony of Science is a site that encourages science education through musical remixes. I enjoy all of Boswell's videos, but the one below may particularly resonate with poets:

Thanks, SJ.

SJ Rozan, author of the Lydia Chin/Bill Smith P.I. series, has been a favorite of mine for years. Almost as long as The Lineup has been around, I've invited her to write for or review it. She's mostly demurred, claiming she isn't a poet (yet she blogs haiku weekly...). At The Cell reading last Sunday, she was impressed with my read of "Witness Protection" and decided to buy The Lineup 1 and 2.

Mending from a basketball injury, yesterday she blogged a brief recap of reading, mentioning, "Gerald edits THE LINEUP, a terrific magazine of crime poetry. Say what? Well, go check it out."

Below is some video I shot of SJ reading from The Shanghai Moon, the latest and most complex Chin/Smith novel. This excerpt is from a letter written by Rosalie Gilder, a Jewish woman forced to resettle in Shanghai during WWII:

The Cell Theatre Reading Recap

I'm just back from the very sociable and successful reading at The Cell Theatre. It was great to meet organizers Seamus Scanlon and Karen Heuler and catch up with S.J. Rozan, Jason Starr, Keith Snyder, and Harold Schechter—one of my graduate professors at Queens College.

My thanks to Seamus, Karen, Mobile Libris, everyone at The Cell, and Lineup 2 contributor Deshant Paul, who recorded my portion of the reading.

All I want for Christmas is YouTube.

My YouTube Debut

Ever since we missed out on visual evidence of the Lineup reading at KGB Bar, I'd been eying a Flip Mino. My brother Henry gave me one as an early Christmas present. I'll get to Lineup content, of course, but for now...

Visit Gabriel CIty

Gabriel City is a community for people directly affected by our criminal justice system. I came across this great site yesterday, and it tangents our literary attempts here at The Lineup. ''Inmates and the formerly incarcerated, family members of those serving time, men and women under community supervision, professionals in criminal justice and corrections, and the victims of crime . . . support and respect each other . . . to break the endless cycle of crime and incarceration that afflicts our nation.''

While most people and many writers have the luxury of experiencing crime only through their imaginations, the people at Gabriel City have had their lives disrupted by it -- many have written their own poems. Check their Poetry & Spoken Word section if you get a chance.

Here's a sample: