text:
christmas with family…
…means Christmas with Republicans.
Labels: socializing
solamente en los angeles
Last night AK and I took the Gold Line to Pershing Square (we're so urban!) to see a free concert by Los Abandoned, a sort of punk-Spanglish- dancehall band that I've been somewhat into lately, and would be more so if the CD player in my car were working properly.
It wasn't the easiest venue—an outdoor stage beneath an arbor of bejeweled palm trees and styrofoam snowflakes, across from an ice skating rink—but Los Abandoned rocked it. Lead singer Lady P even wore a red and silver-sequined skating dress (which looked remarkably like my 10th grade drill team uniform) over her black leggings to complement the scene. And leave it to your local LA punk-Spanglish-dancehall band to perform the best medley of "Hanukkah, Oh Hanukkah," "Dreidel, Dreidel, Dreidel" and "Hava Nagilah" I've ever heard.
the healing power of pirouettes
Whoever invented that low-slung stationary bike I'm so fond of (you know, the one that's more like sitting on a kitchen chair than an actual bike) is a little bit evil. For years it's been a staple of my workout, or maybe I should say "workout," making me forget the vast superiority of exercises that actually get your adrenaline going.
Last night I went to Bally's in hopes of taking the new hip-hop class. I brought a book with me—since about 50 percent of Bally's classes are canceled (and the staff always acts surprised: "Really? The yoga teacher isn't down there? That's weird"), I figured there was a good chance I'd end up on the bike, slightly bored and barely sweating.
But lo and behold, the hip-hop class was on! And the teacher was good! And he (unlike most Bally's hip-hop teachers) did an actual warm-up and cool-down. And taught a good-looking routine that was not too hard and not too easy. And the class was full of kids like me—folks who'd picked up a little dance or cheer here or there and couldn't resist pirouetting in front of the mirrored walls, but who ultimately were sort of out of shape.
It was perfect. I'd been in an alternately anxious and grumpy mood regarding my cat's unpredictable bladder (long, not very interesting story), and it was nice to think with my body instead of my useless brain for a while. Unlike on the bike, where I spend most of my time thinking, Okay, when I get to the end of page 39, I'll check the clock, in hip-hop the hour flew. And so did I.
getting to know velocity
Some observations upon beginning Dave Eggers' You Shall Know Our Velocity!, in which two 20-something guys try to give away 30-something-thousand dollars in a one-week trip around a large chunk of the world:
This is a ridiculous idea that only two privileged Americans could come up with. Traveling to countries you know nothing about and giving wads of cash to people who seem needy—but not too needy, or annoying, or ungrateful—is naïve at best, reckless and exploitative at worst. Sure, it makes a better story than, "We donated our money to a respected nonprofit organization, and the experts distributed it accordingly," but it's hard to get past the insane premise.
Boys travel differently from girls. They are spontaneous, they don't worry about getting raped (though they occasionally worry about getting killed) and they like to climb trees and jump from moving cars.
Some observations upon getting to the middle section, in which the up-till-now secondary character, Hand, begins to narrate, and the book makes something of a 180:
Postmodernism. Yawn. Let's get back to Will's part. His story was just fine.
Oh, okay, I think I get it—Dave Eggers is obsessed with the manipulation of grief. He wants to express it in all its aching humanness, but he's wary—he knows it's marketable. He knows fiction cannot do it justice. He knows that fiction is the only way to do it justice.
One of the mantras in my writing class is that the first chapter of any novel makes certain promises to the reader, and the job of the rest of the book is to fill those promises. I'm pretty sure Dave broke that rule with this section, or at least way, way bent it. I love him for that, and am irked.
That recklessness thing? Maybe they're reckless, but, as Hand explains, their actions are an outward expression of an inner grace, which is really the only way to live an honest and full life. You can never truly fault someone for acting on their good intentions. What's the alternative? Act against your intentions? Don't act at all?
Some observations upon finishing:
The book is a bit of a manifesto in favor of action, which seems appropriate given that A) Dave Eggers is a busy guy. He runs a press and a nonprofit. He was popular in high school. He has lots of friends and he does projects with them. He is not the stereotypical reclusive, solitary writer who writes reclusive, solitary characters who quietly observe the chaos of the world. I can't help but relate to such writers and characters, and yet, I appreciate that Dave is a person who believes in creating the world. He's doing exactly what people should do when they're well adjusted and given ample resources. He goes out on a limb, and he jumps from it, spectacularly.
And B) Dave Eggers is globally engaged. His current project is What is the What, another fiction-nonfiction hybrid, this time about the Lost Boys of Sudan. AK and I saw him and his co-author, Valentino Achak Deng, speak a couple of weeks ago at the Hammer Museum. The guy who introduced them gushed and gushed, but when Dave came onstage, he just got down to business. There's a terrible world out there, but it's also funny and human, and worthy of our best strategies.
blood, bling and two trips to the bathroom
Last night, AK and I decided to see a movie on a whim, and I found myself at the 11:20 p.m. showing of Blood Diamond, Diet Coke in hand to keep me awake. Even though I've fallen asleep during late showings of some pretty riveting movies, I think that even sans Diet Coke, I couldn't have nodded off to this one.
The movie tells the story of Sierra Leone's warlord-ruled illegal diamond trade through the eyes of a cynical white smuggler (Leonardo DiCaprio), a muckraking journalist with a thing for bad boys (Jennifer Connelly) and a local fisherman (Djimon Hounsou) who hopes to use his discovery of an immense pink diamond to save his family, which has been split apart by the rebel army.
It's the sort of movie that follows all the rules of storytelling, some to very good effect, some not so much. It's hard not to roll your eyes when the white couple's sexual tension is given more screen time than the scenes in which Hounsou's son is drugged and brainwashed by the rebels.
Yet the movie keeps the pandering to a minimum, and, more than that, I found myself willing to forgive a few unfortunate filmmaking choices because the incredibly powerful true story of the diamond trade is so compelling and so much in need of exposure. If just one couple listens to Blood Diamond instead of those annoying Robbins Brothers commercials this holiday season….
But my Diet Coke also proved very powerful, so I had to tear myself away from several gripping and horrific scenes to go to the bathroom. My head was full of men with machine guns storming through villages in the backs of trucks, hip hop blaring as the locals tried to run—so it was weird stepping into the cheerful, tastefully decorated lobby of the ArcLight.
On my first trip to the bathroom, another movie had just let out, and the lobby was full of a diverse but universally bored-looking bunch of men standing around with their arms crossed. Clearly, they were waiting for the their wives and girlfriends, who were in the bathroom. But my first thought was, Militia! They're here—it's all over!
On my second trip, I was busy thinking about how the awfulness of war-torn Africa is worse than just about all the other things I usually think of as awful. What can I do? I thought, sitting down on the toilet. I need to be more international in my thinking. How can I fix this? What can I join? Who can I tell?
I flushed. And the toilet just kept flushing. I jiggled the handle, and jiggled again, but the toilet was committed to its mission. Fuck, I thought. How am I supposed to save Africa if I can't even stop this toilet from flushing?
On the way out of the theater, I approached the girl at the concession stand and said, "There's a toilet that won't stop flushing in the ladies' room. It seems like it's wasting a lot of water, so, I don't know, maybe you can call maintenance or something?"
She said she would, and I congratulated myself on being the sort of person who didn't let problems go unchecked. Or, at least, the sort of person who asked someone else to do something about them after watching the rest of my movie.
Labels: movies
scrooge drives a chrysler 300
My first moments in Houston were very Texan:
Rental guy: Let's see, you reserved an economy car. Would you like a free upgrade to a Jeep Grand Cherokee?
Me: I don't think I'd even know how to drive a Jeep Grand Cherokee.
Rental guy: What do you normally drive?
Me: A Honda Civic.
Rental guy: Okay, I'll see what we have.
[Twenty minutes later]
Rental guy: I'm going to give you the smallest car we have, the Chrysler 300. It's, uh, more like a Honda Accord.
Friends, the Chrysler 300 is more like a boat. Your grandpa's big-ass gold boat. But despite this introduction, Houston was a lot greener and more beautiful than the dusty land of strip malls I had pictured after talking to my friend Kristi, who lived there for several years. (Granted, I probably talked to her during the hellishly hot summer, not warmly misty December. Now that Kristi is back in NorCal, she speaks quite highly of Houston.)
Anyway, all of this is to say I've been out of town and just now discovered that my guest post (along with many other holiday thoughts from fine guest bloggers) is up on Kaply, Inc. To enjoy my Scrooge-y side, click here.
blog post to a young writer
I just finished sending acceptance and decline emails to all the good folks who submitted work for the spring issue of Blithe House Quarterly. Afterward I checked to see how many stories were in my "No" folder in my Yahoo account—93. Plus the six I accepted. That's almost 100 stories. And now I am having one of those "so that's where my time went" moments. Sometimes such epiphanies follow ten back-to-back episodes of My Super Sweet Sixteen, so it could be worse.
Lately I've done a fair amount of reading for contests and lit mags. If you're an "emerging writer" (as we call ourselves until we hit Oprah's couch), I highly recommend finding such a gig. Besides being fun—the thrill of discovering good work, the amusement of discovering really, really bad work—it tells you a lot about what happens to your little manuscript after you send it off into the big wide world:
You know how, when winners of just about anything are announced, the announcer says, "There were so many great entries. It was really hard to choose"? This is, in fact, true, as cheesy as it sounds. What the announcer doesn't say is that there were also a ton of crappy entries.
Sometimes, just one person has to like your stuff. But sometimes a whole chain of people do—the screener, the reader, the judge. So even though the judge might love your stuff, if the initial screener has an irrational prejudice against stories about girls who run animal rescue organizations and go to Malaysia, you're screwed.
It really does help to have a strong beginning. Avoid opening with a weather report.
It also helps to have actual subject matter. Even if the heart of your story is in the tender moments between everyman characters, it will be more memorable if they're digging for dinosaur bones or assembling mannequins or faux jousting at a Ren Faire while having those moments.
But quirk for quirk's sake is annoying. It's all about balance.
There are so many words in this world. Just so, so many. Your best bet is to write a lot of them and send them to a lot of places. Be careful about what you write and where you send it, but not to the point of preciousness. It should be a process of abundance, a big meaty thing--a flow, not a trickle.
shoppers rush home with their treasures
As AK's roommate Alberto recently pointed out, "Even when I was a little kid, I was like, 'What's up with "Silver Bells"? That's a song about shopping.'"
One of my goals for the holiday season (well, pretty much my only goal, since "send cards early" is pretty much out of the question) is to not buy people a bunch of shit that they don't need, that I can dubiously afford and that was probably made by a 15-year-old in Bangladesh.
I'm happy to see that holiday fairs selling fair trade goods, local handmade products and donations to good-causes are popping up all over the place. On Sunday I went crazy getting tubes of caulk for Habitat for Humanity on behalf of my manly relatives at All Saints' Alternative Christmas Market. I'm totally caught up in the whirlwind—it's a slightly less glamorous whirlwind than the evil-but-sooo-shiny one that blows through the glittery corridors of the Grove, but it doesn't leave me with that I-just-ate-a-whole-bag-of-greasy-potato-chips feeling afterward.
Apparently, there's a craft fair happening tonight at the Eagle in Silver Lake. It will be very wholesome, although I imagine the usual guy-on-guy leather porn will be playing in the background.
For those who prefer a little less ho in their ho ho ho ('tis the season for ho jokes), there's also the Bazaar Bizarre on Dec. 16: http://www.bazaarbizarre.org/. I went last year, and I highly recommend it. Unless you're on my gift list, in which case, please stay away, it's totally lame.
Labels: art art
gentrification junction, what's your function?
This morning I jogged up West Boulevard instead of up Vineyard and—this is the miracle of Los Angeles, and of jogging—a whole world opened up to me. From the small bridge over Venice Boulevard, I could see into the rundown-but-elegant gated community on my right and the gravel pit that was once a closed-down hardware store on my left. It was a clear, sunny morning, warm but with a bite, the light golden and almost dangerous-feeling, the way I've heard it is not in other parts of the country.
When I turned onto Pico, I passed the Pico/Rimpau Transit Center, also known as the bus station. I admit I hadn't been there on foot since my keys got locked in B's car at the carwash two years ago and I unexpectedly found myself taking the bus home. But I've noticed public transportation is enjoying a renaissance (or maybe just a naissance) in LA, and Pico/Rimpau testified to this.
Last I checked, the bus junction was dingy and haunted-looking, the way you want bus stations to be in movies, but not when you're taking the bus after dark. Now it was all pale stone and bright signs and, most distinctively, adjacent to a Starbucks. Since the liquid pumping through my heart is two parts decaf nonfat latte, my first thought was, "Hooray! A Starbucks within walking distance!"
But as I took in the other stores in the brand new strip mall—Panda Express, Foot Locker (coming soon) and Wells Fargo (also coming soon)—my feelings grew distinctly mixed. My neighborhood is starting to look like the area where my sister lives. Westchester/Ladera Heights is a pleasant, middle class, largely African American but ultimately diverse neighborhood with an overwhelming abundance of convenient chain stores: Vons and Marshalls and Magic Johnson Starbucks and T.G.I. Friday's and Bath and Body Works all on one block. It has all of the things that poor neighborhoods are lacking.
And so the part of me that knows, statistically, that bad things happen when there's nowhere to hang out but 25 liquor stores is glad to see Panda Express and Foot Locker. These are stores that the people who already live here—myself included—could use. They suggest that Mid-City will not be Downtown, where overpriced boutiques sprouted next to the tents of Skid Row almost overnight, with little time for the working class or even the middle class to put down roots.
Still, the part of me that unjustly prides herself on living in Liquor Store Land like it is some kind of accomplishment, and the part of me that likes bleak and haunted spaces, and the part of me that likes arty little boutiques, and the more justifiable part of me that roots for small family-owned businesses like Aceptamos Estampillas—all those parts see Panda Express and sigh a little.
Labels: mid-city
this post is not about penélope cruz's ass
What is the world coming to when even Terry Gross spends most of her interview with Penélope Cruz asking about the actress' now-famous ass-padding in Volver? The NPR reviewer, too, was equally body-oriented, rhapsodizing about how Cruz's sultry make-up spoke volumes about her character, and how she was the new Sophia Loren, etc., etc. The guy basically spent 10 minutes intellectualizing his crush on Ms. Cruz.
I'll get it out of the way more quickly: Penélope Cruz is hot. Now, moving on.
Volver is a physical film, maybe even more so than most movies, but it's also a tough and mature movie, which can get lost in the ass-padding excitement. Cruz plays Raimunda, a hardworking, newly single mom who seems too busy running a restaurant, dealing with her aunt's death and covering up her daughter's (quite justified) murder of her (Raimunda's) husband to put on all that make-up, though we do see her doing so once. Her sister Sole (played by the actually-plenty-attractive-herself Lola Dueñas) has even more to worry about when their dead mother shows up—looking very much alive—in the trunk of her car.
A flood of long-kept secrets sweeps through the family like the east winds that spark fires and superstitions in their home village. Incest, murder, disappearances—the women in the film handle it all with a matter-of-factness that falls short of stoic (it would be impossible to call such a vivid, colorful film stoic) but seems somehow very European to me. Revenge and forgiveness are not contradictory to these characters, or at least not far apart. Burying one's rapist husband and lovingly carving his headstone are all in a busy day's work.
I suspect that an American movie—at least one with a less adept director than Pedro Almodóvar—would have spent a lot of time driving home the point that child abuse is bad, and then have followed up with a lot of weepy epiphanies. These characters laugh and cry quickly and then move on; sometimes my American head almost craved a little hammer-hitting. The movie is dark and funny, but not quite a dark comedy. Lush but not a spectacle. Almodóvar holds and delivers all of these tensions like a figure skater at her fourth Olympics—it's only after the breathtaking routine that it occurs to you that triple axles aren't all that easy, and that the intricate footwork between leaps probably isn't either. Like Raimunda, he just shakes out his apron and gets back to work.
revise revise revise
That's what David Wong Louie wrote when he signed a copy of his much-rewritten second book for me. I haven't started revising my novel for real yet, but I am doing some line editing before sending chapter 10 to my writing group. A window into my so-called process:
I took refuge in the aisles of gorgeous fruits and vegetables.
I took refuge in the aisles of luxuriant fruits and vegetables.
I took refuge in the aisles of garish fruits and vegetables.
I took refuge in the aisles of ostentatiously gorgeous fruits and vegetables.
I took refuge in the aisles of fruits and vegetables.
not just bitches
1. a good long life
At this very moment, my real high school reunion is happening. Or I should say, my official high school reunion is happening, because the real thing, as far as I'm concerned, happened last night.
Instead of paying $55 per person, we had a potluck at Bonnie's apartment. I arrived second, apologizing for my burnt brownies as I walked through the door. Amy said, "Yeah, I was supposed to make a vegetable dish, but I ran out of time and just ended up buying something." Then Jenessa called, saying she was running late and did we still really want her to bring a salad?
Our gathering reaffirmed what I observed at last year's mini-reunion—that we're very much still our high school selves: over-achievers with slacker tendencies (or maybe vice versa), self-deprecating, sarcastic, creative.
And that we're also not—the sarcasm that we honed making fun of people for ridiculous reasons ("Remember how we used to make fun of Shannon Christiansen?" Bonnie said. "Why?" Angie asked. "She said her name weird," said Bonnie. "Like Shunn-un") has softened as we've grown more confident and discovered better uses of our time and talents. When I recounted how Monica offered me a scholarship to the official reunion, I could hear the gossipy edge creep into my voice—it's like a drug, the cheap high of inviting others to bond with you over shared judgment.
"That sounds like Monica," Angie laughed. "But she really is so nice. I heard she gave her dad a kidney."
"I ran into Isaac the other day, and I was telling him about that, and he was like, 'Yeah, I'd never do that for my dad,'" said Bonnie. "I thought he was joking. I kept saying, 'Sure you would.' But he was like, 'No, man, he's lived a good long life.'"
"Wow," said Amy. "I'm estranged from my dad and I'd still give him a kidney."
We agreed: kidneys for all our dads.
2. upon closer examination
Not too long ago, AK told me about an LA Times article she read, about a club that Mira Costa students started to encourage friendships between developmentally disabled kids and mainstream students. "It was the most positive, heartwarming story you could possibly imagine," she said. "And it was so funny, because the way you described your high school, I imagined it being nothing but bitches."
We watched the video Bonnie made at the end of our senior year. The last time we'd watched it, it was our hamminess that stood out to me. We were constantly putting on a show. We never met a driveway that didn't need to be turned into a stage.
But this time—maybe because I've been in a bit of a melancholy mood off and on this weekend—I noticed how we grew and grew apart between eighth grade and senior year. How Bonnie's clothes started to skew hip-hop and Amy and Jenessa's veered toward skater, and I went from anorexic to distinctly overweight.
We were never a completely cohesive group—we always used to joke, for example, that Heather had a secret life, mainly because she had a couple of friends who went to Chadwick. But by the end of high school it was becoming clear that there were all sorts of different places—entirely different cultures—where we might land as adults. That we were hungry for it and terrified by it.
3. still different, less scared
After dinner, we decided to go out. It had to be somewhere close, because Bonnie's mom was only going to baby-sit her son for another 45 minutes.
"I'm curious about South Bay dive bars," I said. "All those places I've driven by my whole life but never gone in. Like the Dolphin, that gay bar on Artesia."
Bonnie perked up. "Yeah, let's go there. I love gay guys."
Heather, who lives in West Hollywood now, said, "I don't know…I think it might be kind of weird if five girls walked in all of a sudden."
We settled on the Hangar, a vaguely airplane-themed bar on Aviation Boulevard. They only served beer, in giant goblets that made us giggle. Bonnie and Angie didn't like beer, so they borrowed mine and Jenessa's and Heather's to take pictures with. I'd ordered a Hefeweizen and repeated what I'd recently heard on NPR, that it was a less bitter beer because it had a lot of malt and not very much hops. I felt half cool, half alcoholic.
Soon, Angie and Bonnie left, and Jenessa's boyfriend Sam joined us and did a spot-on impression of Jenessa's mom that sounded just like the impressions she's been doing since she was eight.
Do people really change? When I look at all of us, it seems entirely believable that we are who we turned out to be. Jenessa once marched into the school library and demanded to see all the scary books (which her mom had warned her not to read). Now she's looking for a job working with gang members and won't hesitate to tell you about the time she got arrested. Bonnie was always bossy and goofy around her friends and painfully shy around adults. Now she teaches third grade.
But we've all muddled through a lot to become the selves that seem so obvious. Breakups, babies, rehab, half-finished grad programs, a few thousand dollars worth of therapy. More than anything, I think we all had to shed a lot of insecurity to become the nice (yet gently sarcastic, partially tattooed and occasionally bitchy) young ladies we are today.
I guess what I'm trying to say is, beer at the Hangar: $4.50 plus tip. Eleven-year reunion with people I'd still do a kick line with: priceless.
Labels: hometown rants and reminiscences
conversations with my 28-year-old self
I just drove back from my dad's house after a long day of extended family and tasty side dishes. It's finally starting to get cold, and I kept having to turn the windshield wipers on, even with the defroster going full blast. The roads were wide open, and Chris Pureka's "Swann Song" was playing in my CD player. It's upbeat and sad at the same time—smoky-voiced, nostalgic, sing-along-able. It embodies late autumn perfectly.
Chris Pureka is a new discovery, brought to my attention by a mass email from B, who likes heartbreaking girl folk singers, and who broke up with me a year ago this weekend.
A year ago this weekend I could not peel myself off the floor, and when I finally did, I ran five miles and hardly even felt it. I thought about that self tonight (maybe because earlier in the day I was listening to Pink's sweet but less spectacular "Conversations With My 13 Year Old Self") and I felt so sad for that self, and loved her so much.
She had no idea what was ahead of her—that a year from now she'd be so thankful for what fate enabled, so in love with a new girl who was an old soul but liked to stay out late, so full of love that she worried she'd become one of those people who walked around talking about how full of love the world was. For that one-year-ago self, the world was, possibly, still full of love, but suddenly she had nowhere to put it. She suspected things would be okay, though, and that thought was a little scary. What did love mean if you could heal from it? How unromantic—a world in which mothers could die and people could leave you and your heart would just slowly stitch itself back up and go about its business.
From what I know of the spiritual side of quantum physics (courtesy of What the Bleep Do We Know?, You Shall Know Our Velocity and The Time of Our Singing—creative types love this stuff), theoretically all possible futures exist simultaneously. In a parallel universe, B and I are still together, working things out or not, in Indiana or maybe Philadelphia, because maybe she got into Wharton in that universe.
Right after we broke up, it was really important for me to believe that things could have worked in a parallel universe. Not so much because of quantum physics, but more out of a stubborn need to be right, to not have wasted four and a half years.
I know that time wasn't wasted, not even in this life. That past had to happen to get to this future, and that past was a good present in its time, in its way. Still, I am glad to be living this particular present in this particular universe.
"It was a good life," Chris Pureka sings in "Swann Song," "I'd do it all again, I'd do it all again."
I put the song on repeat, and cried and cried, but then I was home and it was time to go in.
Labels: music, waxin' philosophical
a thanksgiving message
Courtesy of J.P., Akbar craft captain and holiday philosopher:
Thank you for the very weird experience of a holiday that suffers from gross historical distortion, but still has the gleanings of a message that endures (the concept of gratitude and celebration of the harvest). Despite all the starvation, disease, nasty catty fights about real-estate, back-stabbing, maize, muskets, hats with buckles, pretty head-dresses, small pox, the Narragansets and the Puritans...we're essentially thankful for mostly everything.
I guess. Whatever. Turkey.
I would say "tofurky," but other than that, I couldn't have said it better myself.
Labels: waxin' philosophical
As of a lovely ceremony Sunday morning, I'm officially a member of All Saints. It felt a little like graduation, where you're sort of moved, but also sort of worried about when you're supposed to sit and stand and walk off stage. Afterward, our Covenant I group practiced the ancient Episcopalian ritual of going out for Thai food.
the locals call it "san luis." "slo" is like saying "frisco"
Speaking of art, we stopped in San Luis Obispo, where AK spent her college days, and saw the famous Bubblegum Alley, where people have been sticking chewed-up wads of gum for years. And they say public art is dead.
Labels: art art, travel
jellyfish-ish
On Friday, AK and I visited the de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park, where one of the highlights was an exhibition of Ruth Asawa's modernist take on those wire baskets that hold potatoes and lemons and stuff. They were intricate, eerie and oddly warm and organic for sculptures made of twis ted metal.
this was partly a business trip, i swear
I'm at least 1,000 words behind in my blogging, so hopefully these pictures will tell the story of my past week. Three fun days of it were spent in San Francisco. Unfortunately I didn't document lunch at Citizen Cake, where Erin (fresh from proving art and sports do mix at our work meeting) and AK bonded over their mutual love of Jenny Lewis, and Jamie and I devoured a dessert that literally looked like shit (think fudge logs sitting on top pumpkin skid marks) but tasted so good we were proud to claim our citizenry.
I'll start with karaoke at the Mint, where Jamie played air flute, Patricia channeled Dolly, AK rocked Axl Rose and I tried to do fan kicks to Fiona Apple. And a 70-something leather daddy sang a version of John Lennon's "Imagine" that was so sweet I really could imagine all those things. All before 6 p.m., ladies and gentlemen.
bookberry
On Friday I made two delightful discoveries.
1) The Pinkberry frozen yogurt that people are clogging the streets of West Hollywood for totally lives up to the hype. Isn't it nice when something does that? Actually, I have to admit that I tried a knockoff version, the Big Chill's Chillberry flavor, which has thus far only clogged a small strip mall parking lot.
But it's damn good stuff. A frozen yogurt version of plain yogurt, basically—tart with just a little sweetness.
When I returned from lunch, I reported my findings to Jamie and Cait, our intern.
"It's so good," I said. "It totally lives up to the hype. The only bad part was that I got a chocolate peanut butter cup topping—it was like putting a really ornate Victorian chair in the middle of a sleek, modern apartment."
Cait, being a 19-year-old USC student who is already over trends I've never even heard of, was familiar with Pinkberry, but Jamie hadn't heard of it. When I described it to her, she said, "That's like the original frozen yogurt that was around when we were kids! They had tart vanilla and regular vanilla. But later they only had regular."
I decided it must be a Hawaii thing, since the Klein family had a pretty serious frozen yogurt habit in the early '90s and I remembered no such thing. Plus the current tart frozen yogurt is an interpretation of a Korean dessert, and Hawaii is half an ocean closer to Asia than Southern California is. As for Cait, she was barely eating solid food in the early '90s.
2) Borders has my book.
I spent an hour there Friday afternoon, scanning the acknowledgements pages of books I liked in hopes of discovering who my favorite authors' agents were. All the literary marketing smarties tell you to do this, but it actually wasn't very fruitful. Who knew so few writers had acknowledgements pages? Ungrateful brats.
I was about to leave when I decided to see if they had my book—just for fun or self-torture, depending on the results. I figured it would be the latter. But lo and behold, there it was, just to the left of Stephanie Klein's Straight Up and Dirty. My heart skipped a beat when I saw it. My little book! In a bookstore not known for ordering local writers' books just to be nice.
I wandered around in a daze for a few minutes. I toyed with the idea of writing a little note inside each of the two copies. Something along the lines of, "Hi, I'm Cheryl. Right now I'm shopping at Borders. Please buy this book." It's not graffiti if it's your own book, right?
I also thought about buying it, just because it would feel great to walk into Borders and buy my own book. Then I thought, I'm not about to shell out $12.95 for a book I already have. Then I thought, Shouldn't its mere presence here mean I'm rich enough to shell out $12.95 for a book I already have?
In the end, I contented myself with turning the book so the cover faced outward instead of the spine. This involved some repositioning of Deanna Kizis' already-facing-outward chick lit novel, Finishing Touches. Actually, I used to intern at Entertainment Weekly when Deanna was a staff writer there. She was never very friendly.
(Wow, that sounded chick-lit-y of me.)
Labels: carbs, my book
the good, the bad, the weird and the deep-fried
Since I had to work slightly harder than usual to vote yesterday, (meaning I had to print my sample ballot from the internet rather than just pull it out of my mailbox—god, now I know what Iraqis go through to vote!), I got an extra special little buzz in pasting my "I Voted" sticker to my shirt. I voted at 7:30 a.m., so I had nearly 15 hours to walk around in ignorant bliss, hopeful that America would make good choices.
The good news is that, unlike in the 2000 and 2004 elections, the results did not make me cry. The good news is that Democrats are no longer letting Republicans have the lock on morality rhetoric, and Nancy Pelosi is third in line for the presidency.
The bad news is that I'm having double assassination fantasies (note to blog police: Did I say "double assassination fantasies"? I meant "double simultaneous naturally caused heart attack" fantasies), which doesn't seem healthy. The bad news is that America still hates fags, except in Arizona, where they're busy hating undocumented immigrants.
The weird news is that in Arizona there was also a measure (defeated, but still, it made it onto the ballot) to give one million dollars to a randomly selected voter each election. So, let's see…a million dollars for some dude who fills in his ink-a-ballot in the shape of a smiley face: good. Childcare for the people who do your shit work and make it so you don't have to pay payroll taxes: bad. And the HRC wants me to congratulate you for letting gay marriage remain plain-old illegal rather than making it super-duper illegal.
Okay, I'm going to shut up before I start singing the Canadian national anthem like the predictable and no doubt under-informed lefty that I am. Maybe I'll just make some deep-fried treats and send them to the Whitehouse. In a gesture of bipartisan goodwill, of course.
not that anyone asked....
Sometimes, when the kids are having a fun game of meme tag—or whatever they call it—you just have to tag yourself. And when it comes to books, I can resist a little self-tagging.
1) One book that changed your life.
When I was five, my mom started reading the Little House on the Prairie books by Laura Ingalls Wilder to me. Soon I was narrating my own life in the third person: "Then Cheryl went into the bathroom. It was dark, and she hoped there were no kidnappers hiding behind the toilet." In kindergarten, when we wrote little stories to explain what was happening in our finger-paintings, I raised my hand and asked, "How do you spell 'replied'?"
Before a thousand other books brought beauty and darkness and history and social consciousness into my life, a little girl in a bonnet brought words themselves.
2) One book that you'd read more than once.
Would read again: anything funny that I can read out loud to people I like to hear laugh. Have read again: In the Heart of the Valley of Love by Cynthia Kadohata. I was writing a paper—but also, I love it. Should read again: One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez. I only made it through about 85 years of solitude. I blame post-AP-test burnout, not Márquez.
3) One book you'd want on a deserted island.
The bible seems to have kept people talking for a couple thousand years. Maybe it could keep me busy until I was done building a raft out of coconut shells.
4) One book that made you laugh.
Tiny Ladies in Shiny Pants by Jill Soloway. Because everyone says David Sedaris.
5) One book that made you cry.
Flesh and Blood by Michael Cunningham. Parents' most subtle, innocent wishes can kill their children.
6) One book you wish you'd written.
The Time of Our Singing by Richard Powers. Parents' most passionate, fought-for wishes can't save their children.
7) One book you wish had never been written.
Any book that promises you can make a million dollars or lose a million pounds without any real effort. That's a lot of books, but isn't it really all one book?
8) One book you're currently reading.
You Shall Know Our Velocity by Dave Eggers. It's great, but I'm not reading it with much velocity.
9) One book you've been meaning to read.
The Rough Guide to Malaysia. Or something by Dickens.
the tale of the shark, the tabby cat and the disappearing bus
One Halloween night, a shark and a cat named OC (who looked, to the untrained eye, much like a generic tiger but was in fact OC—orange tabby, Mid-City resident, connoisseur of plastic bags and popsicles) set out to have some West Hollywood fun. They had plans to meet their friend the vampire at the KBIG stage, where Tiffany was performing. (This was what happened when gay men found corporate sponsorship—Tiffany got gigs again.)
They drove to the house where OC was cat-sitting and fed Mao, Miso and Stripe, who were not especially worried about being cared for by a giant member of their species and a shark who had recently eaten a scuba diver. From there, OC and the shark walked to the bus stop, where they waited.
And waited.
And called the shark's roommate to confirm the bus schedule.
And waited some more.
Finally, the shark said, "Can we go back to Jamie and Lee-Roy's house for a little while? I'm freezing."
"Of course," said OC. "I'm wearing a wool sweater, but I forgot—you're cold blooded."
As they walked back, OC tried to explain how, sometimes, when buses just never showed, he felt like he was living in the eerie, magical LA he'd written his undergraduate thesis on, but which he tended to forget about now that he was a practical, efficient grown-up. He'd forgotten the beauty of things not being what they appeared.
His brain was doing funny things lately. It was feeling guilty and restless and wondering if its little fictional pursuits could really change anything in the world, because surely it was his duty to change the world. Surely beauty and curiosity were not enough. He was excited—and filled with trepidations, because he knew how good and relevant the book would be—to start reading You Shall Know Our Velocity. Even though he was only on page 25 now, it was good and relevant, and seemed to be about survivor guilt, and OC lived his life weaving in and out of various degrees of survivor guilt, to the point where sometimes his brain shouted at him, Just do something. Just fix something. Other times it said, Hush, hush, you're just a little cat. Just lay down and purr.
It was funny, all this guilt and restlessness, because usually all OC wanted was a firm head-scratch and the milk in his mistress' cereal bowl.
Back at Jamie and Lee-Roy's, OC and the shark lay down—just for a minute, but that minute quickly turned into the whole night.
In the morning, the shark said, "Sorry we didn't make it out. But I'm glad we dressed up anyway."
A smile spread between OC's whiskers. There was a time, not so long ago, when he would have put such a night in the Things That Did Not Get Accomplished column. But he liked the way the shark thought. He liked the idea of a world where some nights, you got dressed up just for yourself, an invertebrate friend and a few local felines. That was the city he wanted to live in.
where's a duck bill when you need one?
Okay, so the scary clown has not yet begun to shoot blood from his eyeballs as I had hoped, but he is now tied—by the neck—to the lamppost with what looks like a periwinkle unitard. In the interest of better clown posture, I guess.
I'll probably stop by that store today to see if I can find a cheap, minimal, last-minute costume. The other day AK described the following conversation with her coworker, and I could relate:
AK: I'm trying to come up with a cheap, minimal, last-minute Halloween costume.
Coworker: Alright, let's think about what we have to work with. What do you have in the costume section of your closet?
AK: [Blank stare.]
Coworker: You know, your old clothes and stuff. What do you do with your old clothes?
AK: I give them away.
Coworker: [Shaking head.] Before you give anything away, you should always ask yourself, "Could I use this as part of a costume?"
This morning I checked the shelves above my closet to see if maybe I had a costume section I'd forgotten about. I distinctly remembered buying a duck bill, devil horns and orange plastic platform shoes in the past (the latter weren't originally part of a costume, I'm afraid), but they were nowhere to be found. Curse my periodic attempts to pare down my life to just-the-necessities! This time, when I go next door and buy a new costume, I'll make a mental note that giant lobster claws are absolutely a necessity.
three movie reviews
Most of my week in New York was kind of…worky. Breaks included: 1) getting food poisoning and 2) seeing some good movies. I'll spare you the details of the former.
The Prestige: Nicole S. (of NYC, not to be confused with Nicole K. of LA—although, interestingly, they both have sisters named Vanessa) and Bram and I went to Nicole's favorite theater on 33rd St., the one with the good chicken tenders. I was still a little nauseous—and still a vegetarian—so I ordered the so-much-more-stomach-settling nachos, and settled in to see Christian Bale play an obsessive magician competing against his fellow obsessive magician (Hugh Jackman) in turn-of-the-century London.
Given that I love Christian Bale (especially in turn-of-the-century period pieces) and anything that vaguely resembles the gritty, creepy, fun-house glamour of an old-fashioned traveling circus, this movie didn't have to do much to win me over.
In the nearly perfect opening sequence, we see Hugh Jackman's character perform his famous "Transported Man" trick, in which he disappears from a stage crackling with lightening only to reappear almost instantly in the theater's balcony. Except this time, the trick goes awry—the disappeared man drowns in a tank of water beneath the stage, and Christian Bale finds himself on trial for murder. This scene is intercut with shots of Michael Caine—playing an elderly engineer, the guy behind the magic—explaining the components of a good magic trick to a small girl enchanted by his ability to make a canary disappear and reappear. Thus the stage is set with the movie's themes: doubling, sacrifice and the dark side of trickery.
I say "nearly perfect" because there are parts of the scene that are confusing, and the movie has so many twists and turns that Nicole compared it to Sixth Sense, and I'd go so far as to compare it to the spoofily twisty Wild Things. Usually, I see movies like that and think, Wow. I'm so not a plot person that I can't even handle watching this much plot. But such thoughts might indicate that the filmmakers can't handle as much plot as they took on either. The Prestige has a couple of "Now that I have you trapped, I'm going to tell you my evil plan"-type moments, but never at the expense of character development or eerie shots of magical contraptions that look like—and ultimately are—torture devices.
Marie Antoinette: So much of any artistic experience is the life and knowledge you bring with you—Sofia Coppola was counting on people watching Marie Antoinette knowing that sometime after the teen queen's on-screen frolicking through piles of pastel dresses and sculptural desser ts, she'd be dethroned and executed by the angry, impoverished masses.
Tommy's friend An, who owns a clothing boutique and saw the movie with us, thought the whole thing was incredibly boring, although she conceded, "Sofia Coppola would make a great music video director." An brought her own aesthetic expertise (she, like so many people I saw in New York, made me feel like I'd accidentally left the house wearing my pajamas), but she didn't see the point in a two-hour story.
I spent most of the movie trying to decide whether Coppola was indicting Antoinette for her let-them-eat-cake behavior (even if she never actually uttered the words) or not. Coppola makes the wise choice of almost never depicting anything that happens outside the grounds of Versailles, showing how insular Antoinette's life was. Can you really get mad at someone for saying "Let them eat cake" if that person doesn't know that anything but cake exists? (I say, bringing with me my current obsession with insular lives thrust upon the global scene.)
But Antoinette isn't completely off the hook either—the self-centered defiance that gets her through her teen years and ultimately makes her a brave and independent woman in a world where women weren't encouraged to be either also enables her to continuously not give a shit about France. Her husband Louis XVI, on the other hand, lacks her guts but does his best under the crushing weight of his unwanted crown.
I also brought my love of tabloids to the theater with me, and kept thinking, Paris Hilton, this is you—I hope you're watching.
The Lake House: I'm more or less working on a novel about a magic mailbox (which relates to the insular lives/global scene thing—really), so I donned my airplane headphones excitedly, hoping the movie would prove the premise to be ripe and viable. Unless the 20 minutes I spent napping were the best 20 minutes of the film, it did not.
The good news is that the magic mailbox genre is still wide open.
there's no such thing as baby weight in manhattan beach
After 11 and a half years, people from my high school are finally planning our 10-year reunion. I had made up my mind to go: I was already in town, I was curious, I'd made a decent life for myself and I thought it would be nice to run into one of the four people I'd like to catch up with who aren't on MySpace.
Then I read the part of the Evite that said "Send $55 per person to…."
Then again, I thought, they'll have to join MySpace eventually, right?
Around this time, I also stumbled across the MySpace page of a fellow Mira Costa Mustang who'd recently had a baby. She smiled up from her profile pic, looking blonde and radiant, sans an ounce of baby weight. Her gorgeous daughter was in one arm, and her designer leather diaper bag was in the other.
I thought, Do I want to pay $55 to be reminded more viscerally than ever of what Manhattan Beach is like?
I looked at the "No" section of the Evite. The people who had declined so far had included comments like, "Sorry to miss it, but I'll be in London" and, "I'll be in Singapore. Miss you guys!" This also seemed very Manhattan Beach.
So—speaking for the non-globetrotting masses, I thought—I checked the "No" box and wrote, "I would love to see everyone, but I'm less in love with the $55 fee. Sorry to miss it."
A day later, I got an email from Monica, one of the coordinators, saying, "Cheryl, I would hate for the $55 to keep you from coming. If we can work out an alternative, would you consider coming?"
Yes, I was being offered a scholarship to my high school reunion.
At which point I got deeply embarrassed and started thinking how dare I have bitter thoughts about Manhattan Beach when, look, my classmates had grown up to be sweet and generous, and, hello, $55 wasn't really that unreasonable for two hours of all-you-can-eat-and-drink anyway. It costs money to put on a big event. Did I think it was going to be free?
Usually when I feel bummed about not owning a designer diaper bag, I remind myself, I'm a starving artist—that's glamorous! Also, I don't have kids and it would be weird to carry around a diaper bag, designer or otherwise.
But of course Monica is an artist too. She, like, owns her own textile design company or something. So I sent her a polite thanks-but-no-thanks email and realized that now I definitely can't go to the reunion. I doubt my name will come up among those who do go, but if it does, I know the rumor won't be, "I hear Cheryl Klein published a book!" or even, "I hear Cheryl Klein is a dyke!" It will be, "I hear Cheryl Klein is really poor!" But hey, at least that will distinguish me.
P.S. I'm off to New York for a week, so adios for a bit.
P.P.S. It's for work. Rumor has it that I'd be way too broke to fly there recreationally.
what you dream after eating veggie sausage and onions for dinner
I was traveling for work (seemed like some sort of Central Valley town, somewhere with a lot of strip malls and open space) and, coming out of a meeting, I wandered across the street and into a warehousey-looking store.
It turned out to be a giant thrift store that catered to drag queens, especially drag queens of the slightly tragic, less-than-fabulous variety. They type more likely to wear polyester than sequins. They had to live on the DL in this town, and it showed in their shoulders. I looked around for something to buy, and was repeatedly drawn to quiet, casual clothes. Cotton shirts. Jeans. I thought, Wow, I'm such a dyke.
I befriended the owners, this cool drag-queen couple, and as I was drawn further into the store, it lost its Salvation Army vibe and became more and more magical. There were twinkly Christmas lights. Steamer trunks full of silk slips. Wine and music. One of the owners gave me an apple, and when I bit into it, it was full of chocolate.
the therapeutic powers of lagomorphs and carbohydrates
I've been in a bad mood for the past 36 hours or so because I'm at the stage of novel-writing where I hate my draft so much that I want to erase my name from the title page and replace it with my worst enemy's. Family Genus Species, a novel by George W. Bush.
But then I look at pictures of bunnies and bread and I feel better (thanks Jay Jao and Patricia).
by halloween, he'll have started to shoot blood from his eyeballs
The balloons that were previously tied to the scary clown's mannequin wrist have all popped, leaving eight or ten dangling strings attached to shreds of rubber. Basically it looks like a bunch of giant spiders have repelled down from his Madonna-glove hand on fat webs.
augäpfel mit ihrem bier?
Perhaps almost as important and informative as fictional has-been movie stars are the current projects of my real live artist friends:
1) My friend Nicole just co-authored (with Mike Szymanski) The Bisexual's Guide to the Universe. I haven't gotten my copy yet, but I did take one of its quizzes on http://www.guidebi.com/. I learned that based on the foods I like (eggplant, pancakes, curly fries), I am apparently bisexual.
2) My friends-of-AK's-friends J.P. and Jennifer Jordan Day collaborated on the online Halloween advent calendar-slash-art exhibit Gothtoberfest. I learned how to make pumpkin pizza and say "Do you want eyeballs with your beer?" in German.
why yes, i am a 60-year-old gay man
As I was driving back from the San Diego City Book Fair this weekend, listening to the Sunset Boulevard stage musical soundtrack (featuring the sexy-voiced Kevin Anderson), I had an epiphany:
Norma Desmond has called my office dozens of times.
She's also approached my organization's booth at lots of book fairs, asking questions like, "Do you want to hear me recite my epic science fiction poem?" But for the grace of sometime-stardom, Norma would be one of the loony minions who show up at public events in search of fresh blood to inflict their egos and idiosyncrasies on. I've mostly come into contact with the literary loony minions—at the SD book fair, there was the guy with the tall walking stick who smelled like peanut butter, and the guy who told everyone who'd listen about how world peace could be achieved by holding hands (interestingly, his left hand was bandaged—workplace injury?). But I know they exist in every subculture.
Sunset Boulevard is one of my favorite movies, and even though I'm not a huge fan of Andrew Lloyd Write-One-Song-And-Reprise-It-15-Times Webber, I like the musical version a lot too. So, on the 5 North, I asked myself, What is it about this story that's so appealing to me, besides Kevin Anderson's sexy voice?
Conventional wisdom says that Norma is appealing because she's glamorous, crazy and presents a cautionary tale: Here's what could happen if you live in the past. Her tale is scary, too, because it's not just a result of her own vanity but of circumstance—the world could fall in love with any of us, and it could forget about any of us. That's the thrill of Hollywood. That's why we read Us Weekly.
But I started to feel like Norma was probably always nutty; fame was just something that swooped down and put a very attractive veil—or seven Salome veils—over her for a little while.
Then I felt like that conclusion said something about me—something cynical and unpleasant, like "People never change." We're supposed to relate to Joe Gillis (played by sexy-voiced Kevin Anderson. I have a thing for sexy voices), the struggling screenwriter who sells out to become Norma's screenwriting coach and then her kept man. We're supposed to relate to him because he has to make a choic e.
But I actually relate to Betty Schaefer, the screenwriter who says hopeful things like, "They still make good pictures!" and encourages Joe to remove car chase scenes from his script. Betty is innocent and hardworking and blindly determined and pretty damn boring. It would never occur to Betty to shack up with some freak who employs her ex-husband as a butler, and so Betty will never be the main character.
It's okay, I'm at peace with my boring Betty Schaefer-ness. But I hope that my conclusions about Norma teach me not to dismiss the book fair loonies of the world too quickly. I don't know, though—is anyone really nicer to nerds after seeing Napoleon Dynamite? I hope I won't instead start dismissing some of fiction's most interesting characters with a smug "Stop wallowing and get a job, you old loony" attitude.
And, also, I hope I can be brave enough to be Norma sometimes: big and fragile and impractical and self-promoting and in love with the world's magical possibilities.
two updates
1) The scary clown outside my office is now wearing a single fluorescent yellow lace glove on its creepy mannequin hand.
2) Well, this one only qualifies as an update to those who've heard me tell the following story (and they are many):
About a month ago, I started noticing a strange noise outside my apartment building: "Waah!" It sounded sort of like a bird—but not quite. It was a short, loud, simple sound, performed at random intervals. Not anguished, just squawky. One day I came home and saw a guy standing on the corner of my street, shouting "Waah!"
Mystery solved.
Then, last night, I heard the familiar "Waah!" but this time it was answered by a different voice, also saying "Waah!" The inflection was the same, but the vocal cords clearly belonged to someone else. It carried on for a couple of minutes. An entire conversation composed of one non-word.
I welcome any theories you might have.
a three-day weekend in postcolonial socal
Last week my boss sent out a company-wide email saying, "Just a reminder that, while Columbus did not discover America, we will have Monday off. Enjoy the long weekend."
I did. I finished Middlesex, which I will not bother to review here because what brilliant conclusions am I going to make about its brilliance that the Pulitzer committee didn't already make? (Suffice it to say, they were right.) I finished draft one of the novel I've been working on—the one about the nuclear family vs. the global family, featuring bicycle rentals in Malaysia. I'm hoping that its brilliance emerges—like the late and surprisingly blooming Calliope Stephanides—in draft two. I also discovered that Jamie, whom I've known a year and a half now, is not only an excellent poet but a bold, riveting performer. I discovered that Brendan Constantine, whom I'd never encountered until Saturday night at Beyond Baroque, is both of those things too.
And on Sunday, AK and friends and I gave two British boys a favorable impression of postcolonial SoCal, I'm pretty sure.
AK's roommate Alberto hosted a semi-spur-of-the-moment brunch, attended by a handful of his Highland Park high school friends, a newer kickball friend and the kickball friend's two very new British buddies, Matt and Chris, who had found him through this really cool-sounding website called couchsurfing.com.
We all bombarded Matt and Chris with the sort of questions that Americans bombard foreigners with:
"What surprised you about America?" (Big cars. Stores that stay open all night.)
"Do Americans just seem horribly fat to you?" (No, not especially.)
"How much does gas cost in England?" (About $6 a gallon, but their tiny cars get twice the mileage.)
"What part of London are you from?" (Cambridge, which is not a part of London.)
All this over mimosas, baked tomatoes, watermelon, AK's cumin potatoes, Tony's buttery bread pudding, Veronica's slightly under-fried plantains, my chocolate cake from a mix and Alberto's tortillas (which, in this case, were big flat omelets pinwheeled with bell peppers).
Then AK and I started playing frisbee—outside the Craftsman bungalow, underneath the lemon tree. As we did little between-throw salsa steps to the music punctuating from the boom box perched atop the barbeque, Veronica laughed, "Wow, this scene is so California."
It was true: All we needed was a volleyball net and some guacamole. Despite its sordid origins, this was a California (dare I say an America?) I liked and felt happy to share with two nice guys from a rainy empire.
It's probably good that they were long gone by the time we started organizing a grassroots campaign to get Oprah elected president.
stephanie just called to tell me two great things
1) "There's a review of your book in the Sacramento News & Review."
2) "I just had an audition for two parts on Two and a Half Men. I don't know how I did with 'Cashier,' but I nailed 'Snack Bar Cashier.'"
a good pace
Sometimes I forget how much I love running. That's because I don't love starting to run—getting off my ass, finding a semi-clean sports bra, taking those first awkward steps when I haven't figured out my pace and my bandana feels crooked on my head. But last night AK and I finally went jogging together after months of anxious deflecting ("I'm sure you'll be faster." "No, you'll be faster."), and I quickly remembered why I stuck out a whole season of cross country in high school, even though the coach was an ass.
It turns out we're pretty evenly matched. We're both medium-slow, better at distance than sprinting. Which reminds me how much I love running-as-metaphor. I glowed: See! We're perfect for each other!
I may have glowed out loud a tad too much, because AK politely indicated that she prefers a slightly less chatty run.
It's cool, it's cool. Soon I was too tired to talk anyway. There was only breath and pavement and the scary-thrilling rush of cars whizzing by the jogging path. Yellow-gold light from Tudor-style cottages reflected in the Silver Lake Reservoir as we looped around the lake, and I felt like I was jogging inside an off-season snow globe.
We ran by the dog park, where sheets of paper fluttered against the chain link.
"Oh no," I said, "are those signs for lost dogs?"
"Don't look, don't look," AK said breathlessly as she ran ahead of me. There had been too many sad pet thoughts lately.
On the second lap, a shaggy black mutt and a cocker spaniel raced joyfully in the same space.
"I love dog friends," I said.
"So cute," AK agreed.
And then we stopped and stretched and rested.
not ready for my close-up
You know how, in interviews, actors always say they can't stand to watch their own movies? And how you think, Oh shut up and stop being modest. I know you have a big home theater where you watch all of them over and over again, Norma Desmond-style.
Well, I maybe get it just a little bit now. Not too long ago I encountered my first nasty reader review of The Commuters on Amazon (which is weirdly missing now, but I swear I did not report it to the Amazon authorities). Luckily the late Jake Dante posted a very thoughtful rebuttal. (Jake was AK's shy, cuddly, scholarly cat, whose fate was sealed by a careless driver on a foggy night last week. He is very much missed, and deserves more than a parenthetical. But, um, for the record, many people and cats who've read my book are doing just fine, so I don't think there's a curse or anything.)
But on the heels of the negative review, I was nervous about reading the two links to real live journalistic reviews that my editor sent me, even though he promised me they were good. For a whole day I didn't even click on them, and when I finally read them, I read them fast—like eating ice cream that I knew had a pill hidden in it.
I got off pretty easy, though. The ice-cream-to-pill ratio was in my favor. Since you're not me, that should make reading this review (scroll down to the bottom of the article) and this review much less nerve-wracking, although also possibly less interesting.
To prove I'm not totally Norma Desmond, I am now going to promote a reading that has nothing to do with me, but which I will definitely be at, given my regard for Jamie FitzGerald's poetry. The girl writes about Big Sur and Hello Kitty in ways that are so not your average Big Sur or Hello Kitty poems.
The Cobalt Café Reading
Saturday, Oct. 7, 7:30 p.m.
681 Venice Blvd. Venice, CA 90291
Also featuring Brendan Constantine, Michael C. Ford and some other cool local poets.
it's beginning to look a lot like halloween
Specifically, the dancewear and costume shop next door to my office has put out its life-size clown mannequin, which it does toward the end of every September. But each year the clown—which stands on a busy street from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. every day for a month—gets a little shabbier.
Its yellow wig has had sooty black tips for awhile now, but today I noticed that one of its cartoony, white-gloved hands has been replaced by what appears to be the hand of a small female mannequin. So what used to be a sentinel of Happy Fun Kiddy Halloween is now an unintentional harbinger of Scary Ghoulish Horror Movie Halloween. If one of the little tap dancer mannequins in the window display turns out to be missing a hand, all the better.
the locals call it "san luis." "slo" is like sayin...
the tale of the shark, the tabby cat and the disap...
there's no such thing as baby weight in manhattan ...
what you dream after eating veggie sausage and oni...
the therapeutic powers of lagomorphs and carbohydr...
by halloween, he'll have started to shoot blood fr...


6 1/2 in. x 2 1/2 in. x 3 in.
For Nowhere to Run Chavez cast the back of a statue of the Virgin Mary and doubled it, creating a ghostly but familiar figure. Available colors: White, Black, Pink and Yellow. Signed.
Mariano Chavez lives and works in Chicago.


It's officially down to one week of Christmas shopping left and I'm feeling the pressure. I just haven't been feeling particularly motivated, but I was scheming up some great wrap up posts for next week while I got ready this morning and I think the energy is back!
And on the brightest side…this is the last Monday of work for 2018 for me!
I know weather forecasters think it's awesome to talk about how this is the wettest year for the D.C./Maryland area ever, but those of us who need to take book photos aren't loving it! Meet my boring fireplace mantel and list of reads for this week!
This stack is actually missing HARK! THE HAROLD ANGELS SCREAM, because I was confident I would finish the short story anthology last night, but fell into a Netflix binge with hubby instead. Worth it. I have about 4-5 stories left to go. I have really been enjoying this read. There have been a few duds along the way, but overall I really enjoy this book!
Last week I wrapped up KINGDOM OF THE BLIND and wasn't sure what to start listening to next. While browsing my library's selection I noticed that December's Criminally Good Book Club selection, THE WIFE, was available, so I figured it would be the perfect listen to entertain me on my commute. So far I am loving the storyline and the tension Alafair Burke is building up between Angela and Jason. This book was massively well received by several bookstagramers I follow earlier in the year and it's easy to see how they fell in love!
Tonight I'll be starting NIGHTBLIND, which is the second book in Ragnar Jonasson's Dark Iceland series. I adored the launch of this series (check out my review of SNOWBLIND here) and I can't wait to see what Ari Thor is up to this time around. I am a little concerned that I read that this is actually the sixth book in the series, but when they decided to translate them to English this became book two.
I'll be continuing to close out my month with Nordic Noir reads, as I am picking up THE REDBREAST by Jo Nesbo later in the week. I love the way the Harry Hole series is unfolding and I've heard particularly good things about this book. I do think the more I read these in order, the more I want to plan a re-read for THE SNOWMAN.
In between my reads this week I plan to slide in UNMEMORY by Kristi DeMeester, which is a chap book that came in my December Night Worms package. This tiny book is only 40 pages long, so I should have no trouble squeezing it in and reviewing it this week!


Reason: more items, traps, general information, monster houses.
Gentle Slope Cave (Japanese: なだらかな洞窟 Gentle Slope Cave) is a dungeon in Pokémon Super Mystery Dungeon that is located on the Water Continent. It is unlocked after completing Sheer Mountain Range. It is the second dungeon that the player and their partner pass through while they travel to Lively Town.
This page was last edited on 4 November 2018, at 03:48.


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HP handheld sales look promising
HP may have struck the right balance between form and function with its 620LX.
Has Hewlett-Packard (HWP) moved closer to finding the right formula for slow-selling handheld PCs? Maybe so.
Handhelds based on Microsoft'sWindows CE operating system have never set the computer world
HP620LX
on fire because they have typically been too slow, the keyboard too cramped, and the screens too basic. But HP may have struck the right balance between form and function with its 620LX Windows CE handheld. Its formula for success: a wide, color screen, a slightly larger design to accommodate a larger keyboard, and better Windows software.
The initial response from retailers has been encouraging. Already, Computer Discount Warehouse (CDWC), a large catalog and online reseller, has almost sold out its initial order of the HP 620LX handhelds at $825 a piece. According to CDW, the shipment is not expected to arrive until February.
At CompUSA (CPU) in Santa Clara, California, sales of the 620LX are ahead of the pace of earlier Windows CE devices. CompUSA is selling the 620LX for $899.
Like a number of other new Windows CE devices, HP's new handheld is inching toward the notebook PC segment in terms of size. At just over 20 ounces, the 620LX is slightly larger and four ounces heavier than its 300-series predecessors and approaches the size of mini-notebooks, which are the smallest of notebook PCs. The newest HP handheld also offers a color display with 256-color 640-by-240-pixel resolution, a feature that seems to be driving the newfound popularity of the Windows CE-based device.
In terms of processor power, HP has also been creeping toward the Pentium processor-based mini-notebook segment. HP, which officially introduced the 620LX in November of 1997, upgraded the device with an Hitachi 75-MHz RISC processor, improving on the original 44-MHz chip. Also, HP has increased memory from 8MB to 16MB and added a slot for a VGA-out card that allows users to display items such as PowerPoint slides on an 800-by-600-pixel monitor. The card must be purchased separately.
"I think color displays are a great advantage," said Dr. Gerry Purdy, president of Mobile Insights, a consulting firm based in Cupertino, California. Color displays are easier to read, and perhaps more importantly, they are "an emotional communicator. It's a more enjoyable experience," he said.
A systems integrator with MobileScape, which sells only mobile computer products through retail and online channels, says the new devices are selling better because customers are more confident Microsoft is committed to developing the CE operating system.
"Windows CE 2.0 is much more scalable and robust when compared with Windows CE 1.0. The added support for color as well as promised support for ActiveX and Java and added stability make CE 2.0 a viable solution," said Harald P. Nagel, Internet systems integrator for MobileScape.
HP isn't the only vendor enjoying some early success with the color CE 2.0 handhelds. Sharp Electronics' Mobilon HC-4500, which sells for $999 at CompUSA, is selling fast enough in the Santa Clara store that a demonstration model isn't yet available because the devices are on backorder.
HP and Sharp were not available for comment.
Microsoft says that 500,000 Windows CE devices have been manufactured based on numbers from its licensing program. Analysts have previously estimated that 200,000 to 300,000 units have been sold to date.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


The perfect addition to your DIY or craft projects, the Poly-Fil Basic Pillow Inserts will make lovely home decor accents. Personalize them with fabric, faux fur, needlepoint or a monogram to add a special touch to your favorite spaces, or give as gifts to those close to your heart. They are a quick, easy and inexpensive way to change and refresh the look of a room in your house, or use as holiday and seasonal decor. Their firm texture allows them to retain their shape when working with the heavier upholstery fabrics or heirloom pieces. Made of 100% polyester fibers with no added chemicals or flame retardants, they come with a non-woven polypropylene cover. An easy way to add a splash of color to your decor, these two 24 x 24-inch pillow inserts can be used as decorative throw pillows for your couch or bedroom.


This was the views of ex-President Jonathan when Governor Dickson yesterday led a high powered delegation of Ijaw leaders to the former president to deliberate on the All Progressive Congress ad-hoc committee on restructuring.
Said; Dickson and other top Ijaw leaders called on President Mohammadu Buhari and the leadership of the APC to be sincere in the implementation of the recommendations of the party's ad-hoc committee led by Governor Nasir el-Rufai of Kaduna State.
"I am pleased with the calibre of people who came with the governor to brief me on the issue of the recommendations of the APC committee on restructuring. "I am also pleased that the APC set up a committee to look into the grey areas to come up with these recommendations. When we were in government, we came up with a confab and several issues were addressed which, if sincerely implemented, will encourage relationship in the country".
Soriwei said a sincere implementation of the recommendations on these grey areas will make the country to move forward." Speaking also, Dickson said: "As you all can see, this is a high-powered delegation of Ijaw elders and leaders from all the zones from the Ijaw nation.


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Sigma Announces Pricing and Availability for DP2x Advanced Compact
Starting in April, you'll be able to pick up the latest FOVEON creation for $800.
By Dan Bracaglia | Published Mar 29, 2011 3:58 AM
If you have been waiting for Sigma to get official witht he details on their latest super-compact, you'll be glad to know that it starts shipping in late April for $800. That makes it cheaper than Fujifilm's retro-tastic X100.
For those of you familiar with the DP2s, you will notice that on paper, not much has changed between the previous release and this new model—however the changes made seem promising. For starters, the DP2x uses an updated auto focus algorithm that results in much snappier focus speeds. The algorithm is apparently the same as Sigma's SD1 DSLR and the DP1x.
The other major tweak comes in the form of Analogue Front End (AFE) technology. Because Sigma cameras use FOVEON sensors, light must penetrate three levels of sensor diodes, instead of just one (like on a CCD or CMOS sensor). Sigma's AFE technology amplifies the signal from these sensors, effectively increasing color accuracy and offering smoother tones.
Aside from that, The DP2x offers the same 20.7×13.8mm FOVEON X3 sensor (which is just slightly smaller than a 23.6×15.7mm APS-C sensor), the same TRUE II image processing engine, RAW shooting capabilities, 9-point focusing area, 2.5" LCD and the 24.2mm (41mm 35mm equivalent) f/2.8 Lens.
Dan Bracaglia
Dan Bracaglia is the News & Features editor at Popular Photography. He has been writing about technology and photography for 12 years and has had work—both written and photographic—appear in places including American Photo magazine, Digital Photography Review, Popular Science magazine, Sound & Vision magazine, and of course, Popular Photography. Dan's current camera+lens combo of choice is the Fujifilm X-E4 and XF 35mm f/2. He also enjoys shooting with a Konica Big Mini. Contact the author here.
Sigma Dp2
Sigma Dp2x
New gear: The Canon EOS R5 C can shoot unlimited 8K video thanks to a giant fan on back
What do you get when you cross the Canon EOS R5 mirrorless camera with a Canon EOS Cinema camera? The EOS R5 C.
The Nikon Nikkor Z 400mm f/2.8 VR is two super-telephoto lenses in one
Nikon's new super-long prime lens has a built-in 1.4x teleconverter for extra reach at the flick of a switch.


Though al-Shabab has been forced out of the port city, it remains nearly impossible to get around.
Sometimes as a reporter, you can feel out on a limb, isolated both physically and in the way you understand a story.
And so it is here in Kismayo – the hot, dry port city in southern Somalia, where the afternoon breezes whip up gritty red dust that gets into your teeth.
We're told that Kismayo is a beautiful city.
I'll have to take their word for it, because it looks as though we are not going to see it.
Kismayo has been an elusive story, ever since the Kenyan military successfully pushed al-Shabab out, just over a month ago.
The town is the heart of the south – the economic hub that connects southern Somalia with neighbours Kenya and Ethiopia.
It has a devilishly complex mix of clans with a history of conflict.
An increasingly rancorous argument over who should control the port threatens to shatter the fragile peace that settled in here after al-Shabab left.
On top of it, there is the charcoal – a multi-million dollar stockpile that I wrote about previously that has become the focus of a row between the Kismayo business community, neighbouring states and Mogadishu.
All those problems have made the town an icon of the wider crisis facing Somalia, which is why it is so fascinating for journalists covering the country.
But from the outset, access has been almost impossible.
The Kenyan military, fighting in African Union helmets, have been in control of "Sector 2" – the southern portion of the country – for much of the past year. You can't get in or out of Kismayo without their say-so.
Land, sea and air routes are all theirs. That makes independent travel impossible.
Believe me – we have considered everything from chartering our own aircraft to getting on a local fishing trawler to get in, and not one is likely to get us past the edge of town.
So, official visits are the only option, and we have had no less than five false starts.
For reasons that have never fully been explained, every time we have been invited on one, it has been cancelled.
In the absence of any clear answers, it has been increasingly hard to escape the conclusion that someone is trying to hide things.
So when the opportunity finally came to join a special presidential task force on a visit to Kismayo, it seemed that at last our luck had changed.
Surely, a high-level delegation sent from the president himself to investigate charcoal, would be able to move through all the parts of town that we were interested in – the charcoal stockpiles, the port, the business community... What could go wrong?
Just before the task force was due to board the aircraft along with a group of journalists, we here told the flight had been cancelled due to "security concerns" that were never fully explained.
Two days later, we finally flew in, but on arrival, the sector commander anounced that Ahmed Madobe – the commander of the Ras Kamboni militia that has been working with the Kenyans to oust al-Shabab – had declined to see anyone with the group.
While the Kenyans control access to town, Madobe controls its centre, so without his say-so, movement is impossible.
And worse, he warned he couldn't guarantee security if anyone left the airport compound.
To the delegates, that sounded like a thinly veiled threat, and the Kenyans seemed to be more prepared to do Madobe's bidding than the president's.
So, what is really going on in Kismayo? We still don't know.
The charcoal task force was put on a plane straight back to Mogadishu, well short of the three days they had planned to spend in the town.
And the journalists are still stuck.
There is no plane to take us out, and Madobe won't let us go in.
Peter Greste is now safely back in Mogadishu.


To everyone who contributed so far, inspired, listened, downloaded, inspired, and supported this podcast in everyway. From on-air talent, guest hosts, to the fervent and even casual listeners, I humbly thank you ALL!
Remember, "we are tonight's entetainment...and here we go"!!!!


What causes the "RW:VLAT:PAT:MTH:" messages to appear within the CA Service Desk Manager (CA SDM) STDLOGs?
What causes the "RW:VLAT:PAT:MTH:" messages to appear within the CA Service Desk Manager (CA SDM) STDLOGs and how to address them?
These messages occur due to an incorrect customization.
Most frequent cause are that there may be a few string/integer fields that are set as "dtlLookupReadonly" when they should be "dtlReadonly".
To address, one should examine the customized HTMPL forms in the NX_ROOT/site/mods directory and locate any forms that were assigned a custom "dtlLookupReadonly" field and then replace the references as "dtlReadonly".


Paygoo Prepaid MasterCard® Gift can be given as a gift when celebrations like birthdays and confirmations are being held. The gift card can also be used to give prices and gifts to your clients, employees or partners legally.
Paygoo Prepaid MasterCard® Gift can be bought at Narvesen, 7-Eleven and Shell/7-Eleven, where you can load the card with an optional amount between 200 NOK and 2 000 NOK.
The recipient can use Paygoo Prepaid MasterCard® Gift to shop online and in all stores that accept cards from MasterCard.
1. Buy the gift card: The purchase can be made at one of our many merchants.
2. Activate: You can easily activate the gift card online or by SMS.
3. Use: The recipient shops online and in all stores that accept cards from MasterCard.
3.1 When purchased the maximum value that may be loaded onto the card is 2000 NOK subject to clauses 3.3 and 3.3.1. The Gift Card will be activated at the point of purchase and the monies on the Gift Card will be available for use immediately after purchase, but the card will require activation prior to use. This can easily be done on www.paygoo.no or through our SMS service by typing in AKTIVER and send to 2380.
3.2 If the Gift Card is purchased over the Internet, the maximum value that may be loaded onto the card is 2000 NOK, subject to clauses 3.3, 3.3.1. The Gift card will require activation. You can activate the card through our website www.paygoo.no or through our SMS service by typing in AKTIVER and send to 2380. Monies on the Gift Card will normally be available for use immediately after activation.
3.3 The card can not be reused in any way. And after the initial load is used the card should be destroyed by cutting it in two pieces and throw it away in a trash bin.
3.3.1 Upon registration we are storing your mobile number for identification purposes.
4.2 The Gift Card is designed for use in shops, retail locations in the originated country of purchase. For Norway that accounts for Norway and the same accounts for our Swedish gift cards. To use the card, present it at the time of payment. Use it in full or part payment of your purchase in which case you will be required to pay the outstanding amount of the purchase by an alternative means, for example, cash or debit or credit card providing the retailer accepts a combination of payment methods.
15.1 If you would like to make a complaint, or contact us for any other reason connected to these terms and conditions please write to e- mai; hello@paygoo.no, Paygoo AS/AB, Dronning Eufemias gate 16, 0191 OSLO or call us on 63 98 43 57 (no charge). We have procedures in place to make sure that we handle your complaint fairly and quickly. However, if you are not satisfied with the outcome of your complaint, you can write to the Financial Ombudsman Service at Exchange Tower, Harbour Exchange, London, E14 9SR.


Another proposed soap opera was The Boulevard or The Avenue (I forget which). It was to have aired around five or six o'clock on the USA network. One rumor was that Victoria Wyndham was to be in the cast. The writer was one of the nighttime serials.


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Blogs ›
G&A: The Contest Blog ›
Diaz, Keene, and Link win MacArthur "Genius" Grants
Poet Natalie Diaz, fiction and nonfiction writer John Keene, and fiction writer Kelly Link have received 2018 MacArthur "Genius" Fellowships. They will each receive $625,000 over five years. The annual grants are given to "encourage people of outstanding talent to pursue their own creative, intellectual, and professional inclinations."
This morning the MacArthur Foundation announced the full class of twenty-five fellows, which includes artists, musicians, scientists, scholars, social advocates, and more. "Working in diverse fields, from the arts and sciences to public health and civil liberties, these twenty-five MacArthur Fellows are solving long-standing scientific and mathematical problems, pushing art forms into new and emerging territories, and addressing the urgent needs of under-resourced communities," says Cecilia Conrad, the managing director of the fellowship program. "Their exceptional creativity inspires hope in us all."
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Poet Natalie Diaz teaches at Arizona State University and published the poetry collection When My Brother Was an Aztec (Copper Canyon, 2012). "Diaz is a powerful new poetic voice, and she is broadening the venues for and reach of Indigenous perspectives through her teaching, cross-disciplinary collaborations, and language preservation efforts," the MacArthur Foundation says in the award announcement.
Writer John Keene is the author of several books, including the story collection Counternarratives (New Directions, 2015) and the semi-autobiographical novel Annotations (New Directions, 1995). "Through innovations in language and form, he imbues with multifaceted subjectivities those who have been denied nuanced histories within the story of the Americas—primarily people of color and queer people—and exposes the social structures that confine, enslave, or destroy them," writes the MacArthur Foundation.
Fiction writer Kelly Link "pushes the boundaries of literary fiction in works that combine the surreal and fantastical with the concerns and emotional realism of contemporary life." Link has published four story collections, most recently Get in Trouble (Random House, 2015). Listen to Link read an excerpt from that collection here.
Viet Thanh Nguyen and Jesmyn Ward received MacArthur grants last year, and Claudia Rankine, Maggie Nelson, and Gene Luen Yang were among the writers who won grants in 2016. Fellows are recommended by external nominations, and then chosen by an anonymous selection committee; there is no application process. Between twenty and thirty fellows are selected each year.
For a complete list of this year's recipients and more details about the fellowships, visit the MacArthur Foundation website.
Photos: John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
Upcoming Contest Deadlines
Nervous Ghost Press Prizes in Poetry and Prose Open for Submissions
Deadline Approaches for Kresge Artist Fellowships
Disquiet Prize Accepting Submissions
Kallisto Gaia Press Prizes in Poetry and Fiction Open for Submissions
Deadline Approaches for the Vern Rutsala Book Prize
Deadline Nears for Nightboat Books Poetry Prize


This auction is for 5 seeds out of Spinner Bait X Rolling Raven.
BONUS # 1 for this auction will be 2 additional seeds out of the same cross. Bonus #2 will be 12 seeds out of (Highland Lord x Skeezix) X Rolling Raven , if payment is received within 7 days of close of auction.
After 7 days, any bonus will be seller's choice. If you are still bidding and wish to combine shipping, PLEASE CONTACT US. We will be happy to hold your wins until you are finished bidding, as long as you keep payment up to date weekly.
Welcome to our seed auctions for this season. We offer many crosses that can't be duplicated anywhere else & we hope you will find them worthy of your consideration. For several years, we have worked with Bonnie Holley, (Goldcoast), testing her lovely flowers for Northern hardiness. As a result, we not only have many of Bonnie & Stan's best intros, we have managed to acquire several Goldcoast seedlings that no one else has. We have worked with our mentor, Dave Jackson since we started in daylilies, and have an entire garden devoted to his excellent Northern hardy plants. We are co-introducing several cultivars with Dave, and we have the only seeds available from these daylilies at this time. We also offer crosses from some very interesting seedlings, intros & futures from our own gardens, as well as unique seedlings & possible futures from several other well-known Ohio hybridizers.
All seeds are from the 2013 growing season, are air-dried for 48-72 hours, & refrigerated at least 3 wks prior to end of the auctions. Seeds are inspected before listing, & again before shipping. If not planting immediately, please re-refrigerate seeds upon arrival until planting time. You may want to remove seeds from the bags & air dry them a few hours in case temperature changes during shipping caused condensation in the baggies.
If you are new to daylilies, please be aware that the size & shape of viable seeds can vary greatly. Round, oblong, large, small, smooth or wrinkled, slightly soft or hard as a rock. We only ship seeds we would plant ourselves.
PLEASE-ALWAYS INCLUDE YOUR USER NAME on all checks, money orders, PayPal payments and email. This helps us to serve you better. Thank you.
We accept PayPal, Money orders and personal checks inside the US, but wait for checks to clear the bank. We ask that large orders be paid by PayPal or Money Order only. All PayPal & Money Order Payments will be shipped within two weeks. PayPal ONLY for all international orders.
Please bid responsibly. If you can not pay promptly, PLEASE do not bid. Appropriate feedback will be given.
Thank you for stopping by, and happy bidding!


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THE TRAVELER'S TALES
THE TRAVELING WORLDS
THE ANRAPHET
B R I A N S A G E P O P L I N
Boskone 57
As much as I feel late to the convention game, I hit the ground running at my first Boskone. I met some wonderful fans of the genre and reveled/commiserated with fellow writers.
This was my first full convention and while it was somewhat grueling to hit every single panel I wanted to see, I'm looking forward to future conventions and opportunities therein.
Digital Painting: El Paso
El Paso by Brian Sage Poplin
My cloud study turned into a landscape painting of El Paso's east side. From left to right you might be able to identify the Rio Grande, downtown El Paso, the Franklin Mountains, El Paso's east side streets and neighborhoods, and far off to the north are the Organ Mountains.
The Traveler's Tales page and site updates
I've added a primer page for THE TRAVELER'S TALES as well as pages for those curious about some elements of the story and universe. You can access all of those pages from the dropdown on the top menu or the links on THE TRAVELER'S TALES page.
Yes, there is much more to the book, including a very unique magic system and stellar cast of characters. More to come on that front.
Other site updates include a comprehensive bio on the AUTHOR page. I've also added a newsletter sign up and links to social media on the CONTACT page.
Be seeing you!
-Brian
Traveling planets, space dragons, and multidimensional characters (in both senses)...
I'm writing the great American science-fantasy novel.
ALL CONTENT © BRIAN SAGE POPLIN 2009 - 2019


Over the past decade, the options available for the prevention of cervical cancer have changed tremendously. The resulting policy questions have been addressed in our modeling work, which has directly influenced public health decision making.
Until recently, cytological screening – the so-called "Pap smear" – was the only means for cervical cancer prevention and population-based screening programs have reduced the incidence of cervical cancer in most developed countries. The finding that a virus, the human papillomavirus (HPV), is causally associated with cervical cancer has led to the development of two new prevention–methods: an HPV vaccine and HPV-based screening.
Currently, the Dutch screening program consists of five-yearly cytological screening among women aged 30 to 60. In 2016, the Netherlands will change to a primary HPV-based screening program among the same age-group. The screenings interval will however be extended to 10 years among women over the age of 40 who have a negative screening test result.
In addition to screening, an HPV vaccination program was implemented in 2009 – targeting girls aged 12 years, and with a catch-up program in 2009 only among girls aged 13-16 years. Almost 60% of girls in the targeted cohorts are vaccinated. The first vaccinated girls will enter the screening program in 2023. An important question is what the intensity of screening needs to be among vaccinated cohorts and how we can provide a screening program that takes into account the differential risk on cervical cancer in vaccinated women and unvaccinated women.
Our team has developed static and dynamic microsimulation models reflecting both the natural history of cervical cancer and the HPV infection. The models include parameters for the risk on HPV infection, the persistence or clearance of infection and the subsequent trajectory of (pre-) cancerous lesions. Furthermore, the interaction of vaccination and screening with the different infection/disease stages can be simulated. We have used these models to estimate (cost-) effectiveness of girls-only HPV vaccination and of HPV-based screening – and our results have been instrumental to the National Health Council in the decision-making process for a population-based vaccination program and a revision of the screening program. Building on these models, we are currently evaluating aspects of improvement for the vaccination program and its optimal integration with the screening program.
In addition to the mathematical modeling, we also perform epidemiological modeling for impact assessment and develop new statistical methods to answer more methodological research questions . In this manner we continuously improve our models.
Bogaards JA, Wallinga J, Brakenhoff RH, Meijer CJ, Berkhof J. Direct benefit of vaccinating boys along with girls against oncogenic human papillomavirus: bayesian evidence synthesis. BMJ. 2015 May 12;350:h2016. doi: 10.1136/bmj.h2016.
Coupé VM, Bogaards JA, Meijer CJ, Berkhof J. Impact of vaccine protection against multiple HPV types on the cost-effectiveness of cervical screening. Vaccine. 2012;30(10):1813-22.
Bogaards JA, Xiridou M, Coupé VM, Meijer CJ, Wallinga J, Berkhof J. Model-based estimation of viral transmissibility and infection-induced resistance from the age-dependent prevalence of infection for 14 high-risk types of human papillomavirus. Am J Epidemiol. 2010 Apr 1;171(7):817-25. doi: 10.1093/aje/kwp466. Epub 2010 Mar 15.