Are you sooo Plath that ovens call to you like sirens? Do you carry a pipe while schooling the Scotland Yard in crimesolving? Is there a painter with a missing ear or a girl with a pearl earring inside you?
If so, you don’t need medical attention, but you do need to join FORTH Magazine at our BE ART Issue 5 Launch Party! Whether you’re an angsty teen like Holden, or a complete recluse like his creator, whether you’re a can of soup or a unibrowed Mexican genius, we want you to bring out your inner art or artist and party with us in costume!
Now, this isn’t some regular party. It’s a costume party!
Come dressed as any writer, piece of literature, artist, or piece of art.

JP-

I hope you receive this fax in time. I’m still sitting in the lobby of the Citizen Hotel, just outside the Capitol building where the Governor is arguing with the Senate about how to remedy this massive fuck-stain of a deficit. I’m frozen in catatonic horror at the rumors spewing across the Capitol lawns. And I’m afraid I won’t be able to produce any coherent sort of material on deadline for this issue as commissioned. If you were to witness first-hand what I have, however, you would understand. You think this state is in the shit bath now? Wait ‘til the good Governor and his henchmen get through sucking the blood veins from California. You ain’t seen nothin’ yet. We’re all turning into zombies, and the next generation will be a slum of bumbling fools and thieves. We’re doomed.

Listen to the Interview:
Part 1
John Lithgow
Featured Artist, Painter
By Jeremy Pollack, Forth Editor
Photos by Bootsy Holler

I met John Lithgow (pronounced “Lith-go” to my surprise) at Santa Monica Fine Art Studios one night during an open house. Among the many fine artists that hold space at the studio, John was showing his work publicly for the first time that evening in mid June. FORTH sponsored the event, and Sofiya—our Events Director—introduced me to the artist early in the night. Lithgow towered above me at 6’5” but tendered an easy, welcoming presence. After browsing the magazine, he cordially accepted the offer for FORTH …

Echo Park was where I grew up

And where Tom Waits sat drooling bourbon drunk
And cocaine heavy in the 70s
And where in the 90s chinks stood atop grocery markets with AK-47s
And blacks ran down streets in a glorious show of the power of mayhem
And it was like watching hundreds of fingers coming together as a fist
Pulling men from trucks

I was born
to live a single day
lived it as long as I could
My childhood was my first hour
and I cried it into a second
hour when I wrecked all that I touched
In the third hour