Keeping abreast of Jesusism

In Hawaii, the Lieutenant Governor announced that "Hawaii belongs to Jesus." Only problem: the governor, Linda Lingle, is Jewish.

In the heartland, Indiana youths enjoyed "clean, Christian humor."

A famous televangelist, Benny Hinn, went to Nigeria for a three-day event, but left in a huff, charging organizers with inflating crowd projections and raising pointed questions about where all the money went.

In the Texas town of New Braunfels, the pastor of the city's largest church resigned, and a married couple charged he had tried to break up their marriage by sleeping with the woman. The church offered the minister $60,000 to relocate; it offered the jilted woman nothing.

A little perspective

Still upset over the Freed Screed -- which is subtitled "My years in the creative writing gulag" -- I did a little googling to see who else had commented. I came across a weird, poorly written but still interesting article on a conservative website bitching about an "anti-American" poetry reading held at San Francisco State University. The author points out that there are writers who have survived and written poetry and other literature in an actual gulag, so perhaps (and this is my point, not that of the author of that piece, as she was writing in 2004) calling the far-flung galaxy of creative writing programs and workshops a "gulag" simply muddies the waters.

To give her the benefit of the doubt, "My years in the creative writing gulag" was merely the article's subhead, not a word in Freed's own article, so it may well be that a copywriter chose the term and not Freed herself.

There's a discussion forum on the Chronicle of Higher Ed's website.

Lynn Freed, Freed Screed, creative writing

Hot town, summer in the city

If this were Friday, we could compose our usual Bad Behavior Friday!™ entirely from headlines in today's Houston Chronicle metro section:

Body Found in Drum Pulled from Rubble of Tire Store

Teacher Who Had Teens Torch Her Car Surrenders

Mom Gets Life for Her Kids' Decapitation Deaths

City Alarmed by Profanity on Public Access Channel

Houston

Ugly man found solution to problem of getting laid: hookers

A Chicago Sun-Times columnist publishes an account from a man reacting to recent street prostitution stings in the city. The anonymous john's letter is both pointed and poignant:

When I imagined my future sex life as a kid, I never envisioned myself [having sex with] hookers. I graduated college in the middle of the swinging '70s. It was almost impossible to not get laid in that era, remember? But no matter who I asked out -- co-workers, women in bars, etc., the answer was always "no."

One day as I approached 30, a woman who wasn't very attractive herself, by the way, just blurted out that I wasn't very good looking. I think her exact words were, "You are nice enough, but you just don't have it in the looks department." I wasn't even asking her out. I can't remember what caused her to say that. I appreciated her honesty, though.

It was shortly thereafter that I discovered streetwalkers. They don't discriminate. And for that, people want to lock them up! Trust me, there's a lot of guys out there just like me. They're going to do what they have to do, web sites be damned.

The writer's reference to "web sites" refers to the Chicago PD's new hookers and johns mug shot gallery, which I linked to last week.

Chicago, prostitution

Blogs to books

Thomas Merton -- before he became a monk and then a much-published, world-famous author -- used to joke that the only way he would ever get published was if his unpublished manuscripts were admitted into a court record as evidence when he was charged with subversion. But nowadays the bar is somewhat lower, despite complaints by mid-list authors that it's getting harder and harder to survive unless you produce blockbusters.

Now a British team has announced plans to open a new publishing house to turn blogs into books. The new house's name was inspired by one of its founders websites, The Friday Thing.

mid-list, publishing, Friday Thing, Friday Project, Thomas Merton, blogs

Forward into the 18th century... BCE

Some people say Islamic fundamentalism wants to return the whole world to the Middle Ages. We should be so lucky! In a recent decision, the Iranian supreme court upheld an "eye for an eye" sentence in the case of a man who threw acid in the face of another and was sentenced to have his eyes gouged out.

The concept of an "eye for an eye" is based upon concepts first articulated in the Code of Hammurabi, who lived in the 18th century BCE. It was considered an improvement over tribal codes that demanded death for small infractions.

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Dept. of bad planning

After hearing (on the radio) and reading (on the web) reviews of War of the Worlds, I've already decided I don't want to see it. But I do have one question. Many of the reviews mention the film's assertion that the aliens' attack has been "millions of years" in the planning. Well, if they had that much foresight, why didn't they just take over 20,000 years ago, before humans became the dominant species?

War of the Worlds

Come on, writing is fun

Though I and many others wanted to throw ourselves under a truck after the Freed screed on the moral and artistic bankruptcy of creative writing workshops and programs, I decided to delay committing suicide while I hunted some truly inspiring prose.

Almost immediately, I ran across this passage from Pizza Marketing Quarterly. The dish in question is a sort of domed, enclosed crust with all the pizza stuff inside it.

As soon as I set eyes on the voluminous domed pizza, I thought of PMQ and how other pizza owners would like to know of this phenomenon. These singular marvels include Volcano Fujiyama, which erupts with assorted seafood, the Volcano Kintamani that is full of molten meats and Volcano Papa's that explodes with the lot!

After creating six cookbooks and countless culinary formulas, one of my favorite presentations is the edible container. Sweet potato soufflé in acorn squash, soft scrambled eggs in avocado halves or fish fillets in rice paper interests my sense of whimsy and omnivore tendencies. ... When it was brought to the table and slashed open, the fragrances were exhumed from a base of seafood or molten meats. Rather showy like a fajita, this is a popular choice for locals and tourists alike.

Isn't that the best kind of language for food reviews? "Explodes"! "Slashed open"! "Exhumed"!

Lynn Freed, Freed screed, creative writing gulag

Something's imbalanced

Last word on the Tom Cruise eruption: Washington Post official blogger Joel Achenbach says:

Cruise told Lauer that there's no such thing as a "chemical imbalance" in the brain. Maybe Lauer should have responded, "So what's your excuse?"

And speaking of secretive cults, the Belfast Evening Telegraph looks at the McKinsey group, a consulting firm it calls "capitalism's Jesuits," saying it is highly influential in Tony Blair's administration.

There are lots of nuts around

The latest Tom Cruise eruption has drawn attention to the actor's religious beliefs (to use a polite term), so Salon is doing a multi-part series on Scientology and its latest most famous adherent. Yesterday was an overview, with lots of interesting speculation linking Cruise's recent outbursts with his, uh, faith, and today Laura Miller issues a game review of the sect's founding document, "Dianetics."

One suffers for one's faith, so from Miller's admirably reserved and clear-headed analysis, it is possible to guess that her faith in prose written in English -- not to say literature -- is at least as strong as any believer's. For suffer she did, judging by her piece.

Laura Miller, Tom Cruise, StarryShine, Dianetics, Scientology

New headline of the week

Okay, I said the headline about Pooh, Tigger, et al. was the headline of the week, but this tops it:

Aquarium Shouldn't Serve Fish, PETA Says

Teaching: the job that successful writers love to hate

Twenty years ago, during my brief career as a high school teacher, my first job ever was also my best. After my year of student teaching and the successful attainment of my certificate, I got a job teaching summer school to high schoolers at a school just eight blocks from my house. (In this picture, the school is in the background on the left, with the red roof and ornate tower.) I had one day to prepare, and I spent it cleaning and rearranging the classroom until I felt at home; then at the end of that day I went down into the basement book depository, where I came up with a freshman lit anthology and a little hardback grammar. I figured I would go from one to the other, and that's what I did. The two-hour-long summer school classes were perfectly timed to learn composition. You could deliver a grammar lecture, have the students read a short story, discuss it, and have them write a short theme, all in two hours. In the afternoon I graded the papers. And the students progressed. They did great, and they loved the class. I felt like a genius.

I hasten to add that when the summer was over and I was thrown into the real world of five classes a day in high school, things weren't nearly so ideal. But I still look back fondly on that summer of 1985 as one of the best times of my life.

That was before I had figured out anything about writing fiction, before I edited a magazine, before I published my own books. Since then, I have never gotten an MFA, and I have never taught creative writing. I've only been to one writers workshop, and I'm going to another in 6 weeks.

So I don't have much exposure to the world of creative writing programs, the ones that teachers and published novelists and poets and everyone badmouth and say how horrible they are. You know the lament: the students are barely literate, they have false hopes, they have been raised with endless praise and expect the same for their poor efforts, they have an unrealistic idea of what it means to be a writer, they are infected with writers workshop-speak, and above all, they have no talent.

Joining this chorus, in the July Harpers (so new they don't even have the cover up on their website yet), is novelist Lynn Freed. She runs it down, from the graceless students to the faculty memos to the fear that teaching is detracting from her own writing. She scorns her students' work, their dress, their informality. For page after page she goes on about how soul-destroying the whole enterprise is -- for her. By her count, she labors for ten years before she sees one good story.

And then, in the middle of the piece, I found the key:

When, as an adult, I found in a Japanese piano teacher a woman of fierce and uncompromising standards, I felt immediately at home. ... I was taking the lessons because I loved to play, because I wanted to play better, and because a weekly lesson with a master of the instrument forced me not only to practice regularly but also to play in a way that would make her less likely to push me off a cliff.

For fuck's sake -- she's a bottom! She wants only to do well for fierce, uncompromising teacher who might, if she has not practiced her lessons assiduously enough, kill her. Toiling under this strict disciplinarian gives her life meaning. Of course she doesn't like teaching. She can take it, but she can't dish it out.

Watching a Giants game a few years ago, I heard one of the announcers make a remark about an umpire who was showing such little enthusiasm for his task that you could barely tell whether he had called a pitch a ball or a strike. After several innings of trying to distinguish the umpire's calls, announcer Duane Kuiper blurted, "You know, if you don't like your job, quit and do something else!" That was exactly my reaction after reading Freed's article.

Update: another blogger comments on the piece.

Lynn Freed, Duane Kuiper,Creative Writing, MFA, Harpers

Slime

Once in a while, everyone feels the need to get down and dirty -- to revel in the kind of amoral depravity and guilty thrill-seeking that could get you thrown out of the house, turned down for a job at the local schoolhouse, or made the subject of one of those curious-news stories that play out on the web. We just have that urge some times, an urge that demands satisfaction.

But you're know it's perverted, right? Andrea Nemerson, for one, suggests that "only a total freako would enjoy such (things), and hey, it's kind of hot to be a total freako."

All right, here's your chance. A true flamer writes of "The Ten Things I'd Do As President" -- read it and weep. I guarantee that after reading this essay, you will want to take a shower and then play some music extremely loud, the better to forget all about it.

Headline of the week

Two veteran voiceover performers died, leading to this headline:

Pooh mourns Tigger, Piglet

If Pooh is torn up about it, just wait til Christopher Robin finds out.

Travels with Abby

Another amazing entry by Abby G, punk band guitarist on tour through the South, and a hell of a writer.

Quelle disastre

As for the Giants, they are so atrocious I'll be surprised anyone comes to the park for the rest of the year. Yesterday they scored five errors. Today they lost 16-0. Appalling, disgusting, embarrassing -- choose your adjective.

Summertime

Back from a full Sunday. I marched with my church in the parade and then, not wanting to squeeze onto a BART train and wind up at home, went to see Star Wars. You'll remember that the first time I went to see Star Wars, I was a week early. This time I was a couple hours late, and it wouldn't start again for three more hours.

So I wound up at Batman Begins. Notes:

• The first 40 minutes, a chronologically confusing mishmash of how-he-got-his-ninja-training, was silly and dull, I thought. Take some really dull version of a Tibetan monastery and stage the karate-training scene of The Matrix there, then extend it to 40 minutes with some really stupid dialogue.
• But I enjoyed the middle of the movie, especially the degree to which Gotham City resembled the city in Blade Runner.
• Nevertheless, the whole economic situation of the city, in which a large part of the population seems to be an underclass in rags, was not explained very well.
• I thought the elevated transit system which Bruce Wayne's father was responsible for, and which ends up playing a major role a la Speed, was ugly and not credible.
• Morgan Freeman played the role that he always seems to play (cf. Chain Reaction) -- a brilliant, wry scientist whom the audience is supposed to look up to.
• I didn't believe Katie Holmes for a minute.
• Christian Bale, in the title role, did just enough not to seem totally generic, but not enough that anyone will remember who starred in this movie.

But back to the parade. I actually had fun. I don't know why I was so crabby last year, but this year I really enjoyed myself. I even marched in time to the disco float in front of us (though no one else did so). Advice to anyone visiting San Francisco: walking down the middle of Market St. in a parade is a great way to see the city. Or at least it's a great way to see Market St.

I love the smell of pussy in the morning

Alexis wrote me asking for something exciting. Exciting news, I supposed she meant. I had little to offer, but here's Badger on the Dyke March, complete with pix. I loved her account of how she asked dozens and dozens of Women Motorcyclists to let her ride with them and they completely scorned her but she went away happy, not in a masochistic way (I presume) but because of her sunny and unsinkable personality.

I am still playing footsy -- in the business sense -- with the literary agent, and I am making scant progress on my new book, which I'm supposed to workshop at Squaw. Perhaps the only things of interest I have to offer is StarryShine's blog, and the possibility of another new blog I'm starting which would have erotic content, but probably not be interesting to anybody.

I dunno, I'm not feeling particularly confident this morning. I wish the Giants were doing better. Perhaps this is what it's like to be a Cubs fan -- only they experience it year after year after year.

alexisthegirl, badgerbag, Dyke March, StarryShine

Cinema

I saw this lovely film, A Tout de Suite, a French movie about a young woman who impulsively joins her bank robber boyfriend on the lam. It's not nearly as raucous and chase-crazy as that sounds, having been made in black and white in a sort of neorealist fashion. It's part low-toned Patricia Highsmith, Masculin-Feminin, part Kings of the Road. Not a "big" movie, and not one to have huge expectations of. But if you're a fan of the French New Wave, and wish they made them like that again, this is the movie to see.

The star, actress Isild de Besco, reminded me of a woman named Liv I met at Holden Village -- a blond both ethereal and earthy, as only a post-hippie can be.

I'm not afraid, 'cause you hear this too

At the big Glastonbury music festival in the U.K. (England? Scotland?), organizers mollified locals who have protested noise levels in years past by creating a silent disco in which all attendees were issued wireless headphones. No loudspeakers were used in the dance hall; the only music was beamed to the dancers' headphones.

Brigadoon

This California town barely remains alive all winter, awakening in early summer when the road over the mountains opens. Ah, sounds like heaven.

Destruction of the 60s

Several years ago I visited, for the first time in over 30 years, the northern St. Louis neighborhood where my family lived for many years and where, even after we moved across the river to a small town in Illinois, we continued to return to shop and attend church. On my visit, which took place in the mid-90s, I noted that the two shopping centers my family often went to back in the 1960s had become derelict. Today I ran across this amazing collection of photographs documenting the destruction of Northland, one of the largest non-mall shopping centers in St. Louis in the 50s. The other shopping center we went to was River Roads, now abandoned. Related: BoingBoing posted a link to a site with pictures of shopping malls of the 60s and 70s.

We're in the last something or something

A lot of talk in the last few days about the remark by Cheney that the Iraqi "insurgency is in its last throes" (and it's not spelled "throws," people! Come on!). In the last couple of days Rumsfeld and Bush were forced to defend the remark.

In all seriousness, their defense goes something like this: "We" are making progress in Iraq despite everything, and we're looking forward to the day when Iraq has a constitution, free and fair elections, and can take care of itself. Until then, we're staying the course. This is what they say when asked about the "last throes" standard -- they try not to address the words directly, they don't disavow them, they just talk optimistically. See Bush's remarks today, particularly his response to the first question.

I finally realized this morning why they can feel comfortable with the notion that "the insurgency is in its last throes" even as a hundred U.S. soldiers and a thousand or two Iraqis die every month: It's the same thing as the evangelical Christian concept of the "last days."

According to evangelical Christianity, the "last days" is the period of time which began with Christ's first coming and will continue until his second coming -- an event which, as evangelicals like to remind us, Jesus himself said could come at any moment. So we're in the last days... we were in the last days in the year 700, and 1215, and 1914, and 2001. We're still in the last days. Just like Iraq: the insurgency was in its last throes in late 2003, and in 2004, and today. And they'll be in that condition until they are no more.

last throes, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Bush

Improving on fiction

I ran across this synopsis of a thriller by a writer named David Bowker. I've never read him and I make no comment on his writing; I'm only using this synopsis as an artifact. Thus:

Mark is a mild-mannered twenty-three-year-old bookseller who makes endless lists about stupid things. His life changes when he reestablishes contact with his old girlfriend, Caro. At seventeen, Caro was an implausibly sexy, promiscuous, druggy big-mouth. Six years later, she's exactly the same and Mark falls in love with her all over again. Caro, who has nothing but contempt for Mark's lists and his choirboy attitude, asks him to prove his love by giving him a list of her own: a list of people she wants him to kill for her. As things begin to spiral out of control and the bodies pile up, Mark himself becomes a target and realizes that to survive, he needs to be as ruthless and decisive as his enemy.

Sigh. It sounded all right until the part about being "ruthless and decisive;" it makes it sound so movie-thriller-ready. And I wanted it so badly to be a comedy:

Mark is a mild-mannered twenty-three-year-old bookseller who makes endless lists about stupid things. His life changes when he reestablishes contact with his old girlfriend, Caro. At seventeen, Caro was an implausibly sexy, promiscuous, druggy big-mouth. Six years later, she's exactly the same and Mark falls in love with her all over again. Caro, who has nothing but contempt for Mark's lists and his choirboy attitude, asks him to prove his love by giving him a list of her own: a list of people she wants him to kill for her. He would like to agree, but since he's only 23 and can't even make a decision on what kind of beer he likes, tells her he doesn't feel quite ready to become a dashing assassin. But he offers her a compromise: he'll take the first step and go and buy a gun with her if she'll go to counseling for what is obviously a persecution complex and a lot of misplaced hostility. After she leaves, he calls the FBI, and when he shares her hit list with the young, hot FBI agents (to be played in the film by 30-something cast members from recently cancelled NBC series), they realize all the people on the list are in the witness protection program. Therefore Caro must be an agent for a ruthlessly inefficient (or she wouldn't have approached this lunkhead) international criminal conspiracy. Thus begins a comic story of double-cross and triple-cross, as the FBI tries to get Mark to get Caro to lead them to the mastermind of the whole operation who, of course, has his secret headquarters in an empty warehouse somewhere in the Port of Long Beach.

The story ends with all the shootouts of the over-serious original idea, but it's funnier.

Focus on the Fundies

This is how well the right wing is organized: They start whole colleges and law schools to turn out right-wing fundamentalist lawyers, eager little Christian pricks who can't wait to be appointed by a Republican president to the federal bench.

Danger

This is the funniest thing I've read in weeks. Don't read it while you're eating lunch, because you will choke.

California real estate fire sale, part 1

In the first of what is sure to be a long series, this blog will offer, as a public service, tips to cheap California real estate in the aftermath of wildfires.

It's going to be a long, hot summer.

real estate, wildfire, Morongo Valley, cheap California real estate

Anticipation and dread upside-down-cake

I heard two weeks ago that I was accepted to the Squaw Valley Writers workshop. I dutifully filled out the form they sent which addressed housing and transportation issues, and sent it back with my deposit.

Then I had two conversations with a writer friend who's gone to Squaw twice, and both conversations depressed me and filled me with dread. Apparently I have done everything wrong: I didn't sign up for the "Finding the Story" workshop, thinking from the description that it's a session for people writing memoirs, but my friend told me it's the most intense experience Squaw offers and that its participants walk around like they're on little acid trips. I indicated that I would be coming up to the conference (it's somewhere near Truckee and Lake Tahoe) by train but learned I should carpool from the Bay Area, because that's when the bonding starts. I should make sure I get a room in one of the large shared houses, because meeting and living with all these people is part of the networking and bonding that makes the whole thing worthwhile; but I had asked on my form for a "single" room which means I might get isolated in a condo-like place.

Now I ought to telephone them to correct my living and transportation choices, in other words ask for special treatment, which my Midwestern self recoils from. Otherwise I've practically sabotaged my whole experience before it even begins.

The other depressing aspect is that the conference is, my friend reported, full of in-groups and old-timers and long-time staff, some of whom simply treat it as R&R from their lives as creative writing teachers in the UC system. I'm highly sensitive to cliquishness and in-group language and behavior, as shown by my experience two summers ago at Holden Village, and when confronted with it I become alienated and depressed. I guess I'm going to have to drink a lot of alcohol when I'm up there to compensate. That should be interesting, at 7000 feet elevation.

There's only one way to redeem the experience and create a glint of hope: write and rehearse several short, sarcastic, hostile songs about the conference in advance, and perform them during the inevitable talent show.

Squaw Valley, Squaw Valley Writers, Holden Village

Summer in a band

Blogger AbbyG is chronicling her band's tour of the southwest and south -- they just crossed from Texas over to New Orleans -- with some really good, funny writing.

In Austin:

I knew we sounded terrible though I couldn't even hear the parts I was hacking out. As usual, Devon whined for drinks and as usual was rewarded with a shot of whiskey. At one point he launched into a new song I'd never even heard before with little more heads up than a curt "It's in A minor Ok guys?" Allen stepped into the crowd and began performing one of his solo songs and at one point we drifted into two bars of the Misfits "One Last Caress." I gave up on being confused and embarrassed and just tried to endure it all as nobly as I could.

In New Orleans:

"you alright dude?" I called
"yeah. I think. Too drunk. I feel kinda sick."
"You look it. Get up and go puke you'll feel better."
"I should but where am I gonna do it, this a is a public place."
"This is New Orleans. The whole place smells like puke. If people don't puke enough they release a chemical reproduction of vomit scent into the air so it feels authentic. We’re in a park too... pick a tree."

The whole thing is great and really funny.

Another dream fulfilled

Not many people live to see the actual destruction of the high school they attended. (I went to this one for my first two years, then they finished a new school closer to home for my last two years.)

The surplus boys

A renegade LDS sect says all its male members must have three wives each, which means surplus boys must be cast off to maintain the ratio. Hey guys, come to the Bay Area! The odds are in your favor here.

BREAKING: Report confirms claims of bias at AF Academy

The Air Force has released a report on religious bias at the Air Force Academy. The probe confirmed claims that conservative Christians had "inappropriately" expressed their religious beliefs. But the atmosphere of intolerance did not amount to discrimination.

Here's the Air Force's own press release on the report.

EARLIER: Chaplain who made bias accusations resigns; Commandant admits bias

Air Force Academy, intolerance, religious discrimination, anti-Semitism, fundamentalists

Too many cats

Less than a year after it opened, the animal shelter in San Jose, Calif. is being overwhelmed by an avalanche of kittens. Scorecard for month of May:

Cats and kittens turned in:                  1307
Number local groups took for adoption fairs:   96
Number adopted directly from shelter:          97
Number euthanized:                            931

It gets worse:

"We have so many right now, we had to clear out dog runs to put moms and their newborn kittens in," said Julie St. Gregory, spokeswoman for the center...

It's taking a heavy toll on the staff as well. Rows of towel-covered cages filled with kittens line the hallways most days as harried workers and volunteers try to figure out where they'll put them.... "What we need are the people to come here to find their pets and to tell others to come here if they are looking for a pet,'' Cicirelli said.

Life in the 21st century

The 11-year-old Boy Scout who was rescued after a four-day search in a Utah wilderness could have been found sooner -- but mindful of warnings from his parents of strangers who might kidnap him, he deliberately evaded searchers.

His father, Toby, said they had never talked with Brennan about how that stranger rule shouldn't apply if he got lost. "This may have come to a faster conclusion had we discussed that," he said.

You think? Or maybe he was raised with such fear and complete inflexibility that he didn't even have the capacity to think for himself. But that's okay, his parents have only two years to think of all possible contingencies and drum them into him, just in time for his teenage years. Good luck with that.

Boy Scouts, Scout found, Utah, lost Boy Scout

Eyes turn to Air Force Academy

As we await today's report on the proselitizing scandal at the Air Force Academy, the Philadelphia Inquirer posts this backgrounder on the allegations that right-wing Christians created a climate of intolerance of other faiths (and, indeed, other expressions of Christianity).

Earlier, an academy chaplain whose complaints to superiors led to her transfer away from the school resigned; here's the story from the local (Colo. Springs) paper. The school's commandant has already admitted the academy has a bias problem.

Oh, and that whole Air Force Academy rape scandal is still being played out too.

Air Force Academy, fundamentalists, evangelicals

And you thought you were having a bad day

Get a load of the Chicago PD's page full of johns and prostitutes arrested in recent raids.

Winner, today's unfortunate choice of phrase

Here's a story about a nonprofit agency that could close its counseling services if it doesn't come up with more funding.

Kathy Dust, an intern for Lutheran Social Services who has been providing a variety of counseling services at the Barstow office, said she is dismayed.

"I have children in treatment that are going to be hanging," she said.

Animals think they're pretty smart

Wow:

Lions Rescue, Guard Beaten Ethiopian Girl

A 12-year-old girl who was abducted and beaten by men trying to force her into a marriage was found being guarded by three lions who apparently had chased off her captors, a policeman said Tuesday...

Meanwhile, in the capitol of our great nation, Dr. Bill Frist, Senate majority leader in a Republican administration that runs the House, the Senate, and the White House, is practically bailing on Bolton. At first he called the fight to confirm a near nutcase the U.N. ambassador pointless, then after a pep talk with Dubya, allowed the nomination is "not dead" yet.

God, if they chicken out like this when they run the table, why aren't the Democrats fighting tooth and nail every fucking day??

Bill Frist, John Bolton, Biolton nomination, Bolton is a nutbag

Father's Day

Another writer asks, Why are fathers on TV always depicted as dumbasses? (Okay, he doesn't say "dumbass," he says "doofus.") Says the question came from his 6-year-old while watching "The Simpsons."

Let me splain it to you, kiddo. There are two reasons. First, the creative people behind television mostly had cold, disapproving fathers who scorned their creativity; this is their revenge. Second, men rule the world anyway, and this is a simple, if ineffective, way of balancing out the energy.

Focus on the Fundies

Tempers flared in the House of Representatives yesterday when debate on a military funding bill turned to the matter of the Air Force Academy proselytizing scandal. When a Democrat attached a rider condemning religious discrimination at the school, a Republican jumped up and said:

The long war on Christianity in America continues today on the floor of the United States House of Representatives... Like a moth to a flame, Democrats can't help themselves when it comes to denigrating and demonizing Christians.

Rep. John Hostettler, R-Ind., was made to retract his remarks.

Here's a typical example of Christianist thinking on the matter:

You want to know why the Biblical account of Balaam and the donkey (Numbers 22-24) is so important? It is the only time in history that God EVER spoke through a Democrat.

Ooh, zing! Balaam and the donkey! Truly, "Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a guide unto my path" (ps. 119).

Air Force Academy, proselitizing, fundamentalists

Date my friends!

Here's my friend in Oakland -- a total jewel. Give her a whirl.

Which is a dream, and which the waking life?

Some people are still having fun. Link courtesy Violet Blue, who avers that account of an enthusiastic orgy is the truth and not simply someone's extended fantasy. I don't know, I wasn't there. But it sure beats the hell out of the only other naked houseboy party I ever attended.

Back when Cris and I were doing Frighten the Horses, one of our regular contributors was comix artist Angela Bocage. Angela got an idea that she'd like to have a tea party for her female friends -- artists and sex activists -- where the servers were naked men. She recruited her male friends for the duty, but only I and writer Michael Botkin were willing to serve tea in our birthday suits to a bunch of hot sex activist women -- go figure. And a pleasant time was had by all -- or so we thought.

About nine months later, I opened the Sunday San Francisco Chronicle to see Susie Bright on the cover of the magazine supplement. She had written a piece called "Strip Tea" (reprinted in Bright's own books and in Libido, another erotica zine of the era). In this piece, Susie wrote about having attended Angela's party and how so very disappointing it was. It did not live up to Susie's expectations of the event, it was not as she had pictured it would be at all. So she decided to do it right, and the rest of the article is about how she borrowed a mansion in the East Bay hills from a rich friend, got some Chippendales-ready gay strippers to be the naked serving boys, and made sure all the friends she invited dressed properly. In other words, she dissed Angela's party, stole her idea, and "improved" on it, then profited from it by selling the story.

Hey, that's America. And when I wrote Susie telling her that this was an abominable way to behave, she justified it by saying she had a child to feed.

I guess that story, which is now 12 years old, doesn't measure up to a post-tea party orgy, but hey, some people live the dream, and some only write about it.

Bonus sex link: Parts of women's brains "switch off" during orgasm.

Violet Blue, Angela Bocage, Susie Bright, Frighten the Horses

Saddam but wiser

The Houston Chronicle quotes a GQ interview with some of the soldiers who guarded Saddam Hussein as he awaited trial. (I guess they couldn't get a book deal.) Among the details is the dictator's discovery of junk food:

For a time his favorite food was Cheetos, and when those ran out, Saddam would "get grumpy," the story says. One day the guards substituted Doritos corn chips, and Saddam forgot about Cheetos. "He'd eat a family size bag of Doritos in 10 minutes," Dawson says.

The paper also features a Vanity Fair-style wide-screen picture -- unfortunately reduced for the web -- showing the guards in civvies, posing with motorcycles. This may be intended to offset some of the other details in the story, such as:

Once, when Saddam fell down during his twice-a-week shower, the article says, "panic ensued. No one wanted him to be hurt while being guarded by Americans." One GI had to help Saddam back to his cell, another carried his underwear, it adds.

A longer excerpt from the article is on GQ's own site, where another photo from the same shoot oddly substitutes a tricycle for one of the motorcycles.

Saddam Hussein, GQ

Free Katie!

I have been seduced by the slow-motion celebrity train wreck that is the Tom Cruise - Katie Holmes romance. It's like I used to watch "Big Brother" every summer, well, for the first three years, then it got really boring and ultra-controlled. StarryShine helpfully links to an anti-Cruise website, Free Katie.

Perhaps they could benefit from the intervention of Queen Elizabeth who, the story says, "cancelled three engagements." Now we finally know what she does -- she goes around approving or disapproving other people's romances. Maybe she's finally found her calling.

Tom Cruise, Katie Holmes, StarryShine, Free Katie

Colorado rocky mountain low

In what I hope will be a series of resignations, prosecutions and lawsuits, the superintendent of the Air Force Academy resigned in the wake of rape and proselitizing scandals. The resignation comes days before an Air Force task force is expected to release findings in the proselitizing issue. Look for Gen. Johnny Weida, the second in command, to be the focus of the task force's report; Weida has repeatedly given clueless and obfuscating explanations for the well documented charges that fundamentalist Christian staff and senior cadets created a culture of Christian triumphalism at the service academy.

Probably the Christian right is going to spin this as just more evidence that Christianity is under attack. They just can't win!

Air Force Academy, Johnny Weida, fundamentalists

It's good behavior Friday

I'm going out of town for the weekend to visit my mother, so I'll be on my best behavior. Before that: cats to the vet!

Went last night to the Fresh Meat evening of performance, another tranny-themed evening of art. If you're going, my advice is: see the first half, which is almost all great; skip the second, which almost all stinks.

More baseball

Entertaining NYT article on how Coors Field in Denver is hell for pitchers. Because of the high altitude and thin air, there is less resistance as the ball flies from the pitcher's hand toward the plate, and thus the pitchers are able to make the ball do fewer tricks. This translates into lots and lots of hits and drives pitchers crazy.

What I don't understand is, why don't they just raise the fences and make it harder to hit balls out? It's not like they're selling every seat, the way they did when the place opened in the early 90s.

$88 million

I think I have internet fatigue a little bit. My postings have been down all week. Meanwhile the mysterious bot that keeps asking for "other.html" on my site has been getting plenty of views of the home page, i.e. the blogger page. I won't whine or say I'm taking a break. I am going to Portland from Friday noon to Sunday noon, though, to visit Mom.

Here's something: a NYT piece on a film studio's angst over the poor showing of one of its products. The two important data points are $88 million -- the amount the picture cost to make -- and $34 million -- the amount it pulled in in the first 10 days. The way these things work, at this rate it'll barely clear $50 mill. So they'll all second-guessing themselves. But I'm still stuck at the $88 million figure. That's about a third the budget of the SF school district. Or, closer to home for Hollywood types: a recent survey revealed there are 90,000 homeless people in L.A. County.

So a Martian would be forgiven in thinking that we as a society choose what is essentially a gamble over the success of a film over, say, educating working-class kids. Not that any more kids get educated if the movie is a hit. Oh, never mind, here's the latest news on Angelina Jolie.

Cinderella Man, movie flops, education budget, Angelina Jolie

Focus on the Fundies

Here's something you've always wanted to know: A day in the life of homophobic Christer Donald Wildmon, head of the American Family Association. The aged preacher is quite a joker, a reporter found:

Wildmon calls a staff member who is sick at home. After hearing she is improving, he announces she no longer has a job.

"Get on welfare," he says, then hangs up. A visiting reporter listens, stunned.

"I fire half the people here every day," Wildmon explains, showing the slightest hint of a grin.

What a card!

Donald Wildmon, American Family Association, Christian right, evangelicals

Blast from the past

Driving around this afternoon listening to the Giants pre-game show, I heard a "this date in Giants history" segment and realized, hey, I was at that game 26 years ago, June 15, 1979. I showed up at Candlestick Park on a cool, breezy Friday night in a light jacket -- it was my first year in SF and I was not hip to the fact that you had to wear a parka even though it was June -- and suffered through an extra-inning game. Finally, after the Cards batted in the top of the 13th, I gave up and left, because I was so freaking cold. As I reached my car in the parking lot, I heard a cheer rise from the remaining fans: Willie McCovey had just hit a three-run home run in the bottom of the 13th to win the game.

The other remarkable thing was that playing for the Cardinals was another legend of the 1960s, one of my heroes as a kid: Lou Brock.

Someone saved my life tonight

Tom Cruise continues to deny his well-publicized romance with a starlet is merely a publicity stunt. The aging action star and Scientology adherent was widely rumored to be gay. Clearly, in the 21st century parading your heterosexuality is considered media-whoring, but rumors about being gay must be crushed.

The entry title is a reference to the Elton John song, which refers to his decision not to marry a woman:

You almost had your hooks in me didn't you dear
You nearly had me roped and tied
Altar-bound, hypnotized
Sweet freedom whispered in my ear
You're a butterfly
And butterflies are free to fly
Fly away, high away, bye bye

Maybe somebody should play the song for Tom Cruise. But shit, he's a Scientologist -- he knows all about being enslaved.

Tom Cruise, Elton John

Tsunami, tsunami, baloney*

We were watching "Law and Order" tonight. Right before the end of the show, just as the verdict was announced, the cable system cut away and a real live tsunami warning scrolled across the screen.

Wow! We live at the foot of a hill on the banks of what used to be a creek that leads to the bay. It's not a creek anymore, but a four-lane boulevard; the creek is under the road someplace. Anyway, our house is maybe about 20 feet above sea level, but the tsunami would have to go all the way into the bay and come a mile and a half up Cesar Chavez. Still... it could happen. Fortunately there is a 600 foot hill quite close, so in a pinch, we could just trot up there. We got the cat carriers out of the basement just in case we had to cram the cats in them and start running.

But then no tsunami happened. So we had all the excitement and none of the mess. Just as well, as Cris had just washed the rug in the basement.

* Who can name my clever 1950s reference? Fifties nostalgia is in this year; you might need to know.

tsunami, emergency preparedness

Fundie of the week

In an op-ed in the Atlanta Journal-Con, an Air Force Academy grad and Vietnam vet writes that the Christian fundies are actually good for the Air Force Academy. (Use BugMeNot for a login and password that will allow you to read the screed.) He's not being ironic, either. He just lays it right out there, like one of those guys in a bukkake film whose come shoots out hard, straight, and all at once -- and yet there's little actual content. The best he can come up with is that when he was at the school 40 years ago the guys who talked about Jesus were known as the "good guys" and it sure never hurt anyone back then. How the fuck does he know?! Like a Jewish kid would make waves in 1964 in the middle of Corn Land.

For a little balance, here's the NYT editorial on the matter. But to hell with balance, here's another flamer who says:

these examples pale in comparison to the almost daily accounting by students who have to endure lectures by anti-Christian professors who use their classrooms to intimidate the religious beliefs of their captive audience...

et blah blah blah. And this just in: Where are the next generation of young conservatives spending the summer? At the abundantly funded Heritage Foundation. Funny Wonkette take.

Air Force Academy, Heritage Foundation, young conservatives

All that needs to be said

StarryShine writes:

michael is free and, if it were me, believe you me, i would dive head first into a bowl of xanax and desert wine which from the looks of him, he was probably doing before he got into the courtroom.

This morning I heard, while driving to work, a lot of "analysis" about how Jacko's music career is dead. But the best comment was in the Chronicle's inquiring photog feature, in which one man said:

What could he do to revive it? Maybe he, Robert Blake and O.J. Simpson could open a cabaret somewhere. I'd pay to see that.

Michael Jackson, Michael Jackson verdict, StarryShine

Carnage

There's hamburger all over the highway in the pix accompanying this news story of a Tikrit car bombing.

'Very painful. Very painful. Very Painful.'

In a story that begs to have quotation marks put around nearly every word, the AP reported that Paris Hilton Plans to Give Up Public Life. Just what in the world could that mean, exactly? What is she without constant exposure to the public? "A businesswoman and a brand," she asserts. But a brand is the epitome of something public, only it's trademarked. I guess she's saying she will start licensing her name to various manufactured goods and stop "going out." She says:

It's such a pain. It's everyone saying, "Let's do a deal! Can I have a picture?" I'm just, like, "These people are such losers. I can't believe I used to love doing this."

Yeah, but it was the only way you "become a brand."

Paris Hilton

Blogosphere

Courtesy Wonkette, here's the Christian Coalition's executive director for New York State:

We put warning labels on cigarette packs because we know that smoking takes one to two years off the average life span, yet we 'celebrate' a lifestyle that we know spreads every kind of sexually transmitted disease

And blah blah blah. More here. Wonkette says he is suggesting some kind of "warning label" for gay people, but I think that needs to be thought through some more. First, what would such a warning label say? "Danger -- this person isn't afraid to be him/herself. May cause lust, envy, regret"?

Marilyn Jaye has a very funny entry about renting a low-budget sex-and-gore film and the effect it had on her paramour.

The father is snapping on a pair of latex gloves and clearly getting ready to give the daughter a gynecological exam against her will. I won't spoil it for you, but the scene totally delivered for such a low budget flick. Mike was, like, SPROING -- total woody. From then on, if he had to go out of the room for any reason, he said. "Pause it -- I know it's a fucked-up movie but I don't want to miss anything."

I completely missed the San Francisco blogger meet-up sponsored by a local TV station, even though I was invited. I chose to hang out with friends instead, and glad I did. We had such a great time dallying in Cath's garden. It was almost like being on ecstasy, that sense of delight and all-the-time-in-the-world. How rare that feeling is! Even on vacation one doesn't feel like that, because you feel obliged to run around and see whatever there is to see, in that exotic place you spent a ton of money and PTO hours to visit. My friend Sara had a similar tale. She told me this morning of hanging out on Sudnay afternoon -- it was lovely and sunny here -- with her partner in a backyard hammock with their chickens happily scratching beneath.

Reading list

In Salon, Laura Miller tackles "War and Peace" as her summer reading. Funny, I'm doing the same thing -- really. I ordered it from Amazon a few weeks ago. But I have to finish Death and the Dervish first. It's been on my shelves for a few years and I'm just getting to it. And it's great, but very dense. I'm on a real kick of reading serious classics. Before the dervish book I finished Stendhal's The Red and the Black.

Stendhal, Laura Miller, Death and the Dervish

Republican of the week

Right out of the gate, here's Vice President Cheney: "Those who most urgently advocate that we shut down Guantanamo probably don't agree with our policy anyway," the vice president said in responding to critics who want the prison camp closed.

Interesting. "Those who most urgently advocate" shutting down the place are those who don't agree with the policy -- whatever policy he's talking about. Okay. So there are some who gently advocate closing Guantanamo, and they, perhaps, do agree?

It's like he's saying, "The only people who disagree with us are those who already disagree with us" -- as if the population of each group is set in stone. And in this era of polarization that may actually be the case.

Guantanamo, Cheney

Mister weekday on the weekend

I'm sorry my posts are mostly made on weekdays, but it's because I take little mental breaks at work, or look at websites while I'm uninstalling and re-installing software, and then I have lots of material to post about. On the weekend, on the other hand, I do little web surfing. I make my own news, and a lot of it just isn't that remarkable. This weekend, though, was somewhat of an exception.

On Friday I went to the TransForming Community spoken word event at the LGBT Center, and it was surprisingly good. Not nearly as much cant as I expected, and Michelle Tea, who produced the event, did a good job of organizing, stage-managing and (I suspect) editing. Even the Q and A session was well done.

I accompanied Christine, one of my best friends, who is in town to hang a painting in the Fresh Meat in the Gallery show. And the next day she had brunch with me and Cris, after which we went to visit Jenny and my ex, Catherine, at Cath's Oakland house. Catherine and her boyfriend Brandy bought the place last year, a small Craftsman house on a good block a few blocks from MacArthur station. Yesterday we sat out on the patio and had tea and took a bunch of pictures of each other in the garden -- I'll post them when I get them. The visit gave me the same feeling as when I went to her house last weekend for her housewarming: deep satisfaction at Catherine's success in America. When she came to the U.S. from France 21 years ago she was in her early 20s and planned to stay for just the summer. She was a dancer who didn't even have a high school diploma. Since then she got her GED, a bachelor's degree, a master's, and MFT certification. And now her own house. I'm so proud of her.

I did say she was my ex. We were married for a few years in the mid-80s. One of the greatest people I know.

I got back from that and it was only five o'clock. Cris wanted to spend the evening working, so I went to the ballgame. And since the treadmill had gone on the fritz a couple days ago, I decided to walk the two miles to and from the ballpark. Good idea, though the Giants lost.

This week the Giants play the Twins in Minnesota; the Twins will probably kick their butts. I hope Alexis, who's going to the game Tuesday, will give me a report.

More beauty

Nice updated website for Kim Addonizio, a terrific writer and all-around great and generous person. Can't wait to see her new novel, Little Beauties.

Kim Addonizio, Little Beauties

Fundie of the week

The Texas governor signed a bill in a church gymnasium this week because he had promised to celebrate its passage "with my Christian friends." The event was duly protested by however many liberal people still live in Texas. This led one of the guests of honor, notorious anti-gay bigot Donald Wildmon, to wonder what people were so upset about:

"Of all the things in the worlds to argue about," he said. "This is not the sanctuary. God ain't in here. He's in there!" He pointed outside in the direction of the church.

I guess Wildmon's God isn't omnipresent. Even the gov was able to set him straight: "He's everywhere. If we did this in a parking lot of Wal-Mart, God would be there."

Donald Wildmon, Rick Perry, separation of church and state, Texas

It's Bad Behavior Friday™!

A San Francisco asst. D.A. has been busted for trading a plea deal for meth and ecstasy. Man, I don't know about the X, but it's not like it's hard to get meth in SF these days.

I just love this:

When relatives of Vivian Shulman Lieberman went to visit her final resting place in a Houston mausoleum one year ago today, they discovered that the cedar chest containing her ashes was missing.

In its place, behind the locked, glass door of Lieberman's niche in Congregation Beth Israel's mausoleum, was a can of sour-cream-and-onion potato chips.

What more could possibly be added to that?

A deranged "fan" is the recipient of a restraining order after continuously screaming "Bitch, bitch, bitch" at a television reporter outside the Michael Jackson trial. Link courtesy Mediabistro's daily Media News email blatt.

In the failed state that is Guatemala, girls and women are being murdered "faster than anyone in authority can cope." Boy, having a born-again Christian for President sure helped out that country!

And in Cleveland, dozens of people have killed themselves by jumping off a prominent bridge (link courtesy Obscure Store). Only problem is, the bridge isn't over water, but a neighborhood, where the residents are tired of scenes like this:

They came upon a man splayed out in the grass, next to the bushes. Shreve remembers the middle-aged white guy lying on his stomach, his head busted open. His name was James Lehman. He was 33 years old.

Her children stared at his brains, which oozed into the spikes of green and yellow grass. More neighbors gathered. Then the police. An hour or so later, the body was carted away.

People, there's a basic rule of thumb involved here. If you're going to kill yourself, don't inconvenience other people.

suicide, Cleveland, Micheal Jackson trial, Rios Montt, Guatemala , potato chips , Mediabistro , Poynter

Focus on the fundies

Fred Phelps and his one-ring circus plan on showing up in the Bay Area exurb of Tracy [map] for graduation ceremonies at a high school where a teacher resigned after making anti-gay comments to students.

It's hardly fair to call the universally reviled Phelps a fundamentalist. His radical homophobia makes even conservative Christians shudder.

In the latest development in the Air Force Academy Christian proselitizing scandal -- man, do you know how hard it is to spell proselitizing? -- Commandant of Cadets Brig. Gen. Johnny Weida is under investigation by the Air Force for pushing his fundamentalist Christian beliefs on cadets.

There is actually a movement among pro-lifers to legalize the adoption of embryos -- something to do with the stem-cell debate. Quoth one misguided woman: "We really felt like the Lord was calling us to try to give one of these embryos, these children, a chance to live." Good Christ.

The flamers at Bob Jones University make ordinary conservatives look like "tree-huggers," writes a student journalist. Link courtesy Christianity Today's news blog.

Johnny Weida, Air Force Academy, fundamentalists,Fred Phelps,Tracy, Bob Jones University, embryo adoption

More good news

Just got some really nice news: In my third year of trying, I've finally been accepted in the Squaw Valley Writers workshop this summer. This is one of the better workshops on the West Coast, and (evidently) not that easy to get into. I've heard most people get turned down at least once, at least people like me with no connections. How exciting!

Pump me

Bald-faced plea for compliments: Would anyone like to review my book Too Beautiful at this site?

Sisters are doing it to themselves

Female disempowerment made easy: the Chronicle's Mark Morford explains it all to you.

Claustrophobe

Went last night to Katia Noyes' appearance at the monthly Michelle Tea-produced literary series at the SF Public Library. My friend Katia did great, but I have to say it was an odd evening.

There are always four people on the bill. Joining Katia were local literary lion Robert Glück, a smooth, warm, confident presence; one Christopher Cook, author of a book about the corporatizing of the food system; and Kate Braverman, une femme d'un certain âge whose performance, both during her reading and in the Q and A session, reminded me of this NYT review of the stage production of "The Graduate." Speaking of Kathleen Turner, the reviewer wrote:

She tends to plant herself solidly and defiantly on the stage as she delivers withering, deadpan epigrams, occasionally whipping back her head like a restless mare. Hers is a commanding presence, all right, although it might have been more appropriate in a guest spot on the late lamented "Xena: Warrior Princess." At any moment you expect her to say, "Foolish mortal, how dare you defy Me."

So Katia led off the evening, and she did just fine. Then came the non-fiction guy, who was a complete downer, just because of his content. Then Glück, who was fine, then Braverman. And Braverman's reading was really good, but her energy was definitely on the intense side.

Then the Q and A period started. The first two or three questions were for the food guy who, because his topic is serious and complex, took about a minute and a half to answer each one; so that was five more minutes about the depressing topic of industrialized food production and marketing. Then the next two people to ask questions were both schizophrenic transexuals, and of course they were totally into Braverman; she answered their loopy, insane questions with the same serious and intense energy with which she had read.

Poor Katia and Robert Glück were sitting between these two, glumly silent, like hobbits at a conclave of wizards. Then another fucking question for the food guy. Finally Katia got to answer, like, half a question.

Was I wrong to want to run out screaming? Was I the only person conscious of the weird energy? To her credit, Katia didn't seem too upset by the outcome; in fact, she had even warned me that the panel discussion might be a little weird. But this wasn't what I thought she had meant.

Then again, I might have just been sort of hypoglycemic, because after I went home and ate something, I felt a lot better.

Katia Noyes,, Kate Braverman Robert Glück, Christopher Cook, Diet for a Dead Planet, RADAR reading series, Michelle Tea

Today's lesson: honesty, satire not wanted

Students at a "visual and performing arts magnet" high school in St. Louis produced a yearbook full of "offensive" and outré references, so officials recalled the publication, even offering a $15 bounty for copies. The yearbook had kids making hand gestures associated with street gangs and photo captions describing students as most likely to become a stripper, a porn star, or a bum.

I'm of two minds. It sounds to me like the project was rife with parody on the one hand, and showed students' true lives and/or what they desire or fear, on the other. As such, it is probably a valuable document of the student body's subconscious. But even taken at face value, it sounds like they threw themselves into it and had fun -- but now the adults are saying, oops, you had too much fun, you aren't supposed to show what you really think and feel, must abort, abort, abort.

On the other hand, the project may also have instances of -- I'm just guessing, but having taught high school I have a pretty good idea -- mocking the weak, fag-baiting, and so forth -- people who can't really defend themselves. And those students don't deserve to have their high school careers summed up in such negative terms.

Adolescents -- you can't control them. For better or worse, they can be stunningly brilliant, or shockingly cruel and horrid. Sometimes in the same breath.

I've often thought that the modern high school is one of the worst ideas ever. It works for, maybe, 15% of the students. The other 85% is made up of loners, losers, geeks and dweebs, latent criminals, kids who would be terrorists if they grew up in another country, but also kids who could be fantastic artists, dancers, writers, sculptors, farmers, builders and so on, and they don't need to sit around in classrooms for years on end, they need to start now on their life's work.

But what happens is that all these kids are thrown together in what we call "high school," half factory and half minimum-security prison, and expected to learn "the basics." Is it any wonder they produce a satirical yearbook? We're lucky they didn't burn the whole place down.

Happiness at friends' successes

Alex Chee has sold his new novel:

THE QUEEN OF THE NIGHT, inspired by a story of P.T. Barnum's nineteenth-century American tour of Jenny Lind, about an orphaned farm girl who makes her way from Minnesota to Paris and transforms herself from a courtesan into a world-renowned opera singer gifted with the most ethereal and transcendent of voices, to Houghton Mifflin, for publication in fall 2007.

And don't miss the RADAR reading series this Tuesday.

Then again, it's dangerous to read too many descriptions of just-sold novels:

...about a teenage mother who flees post-Glasnost Russia by becoming a mail-order bride and lands finally as a maid in the home of a wealthy Chicago family -- as the search for her own long-lost father and the path back to her daughter redeem her challenging, darkly humorous journey.

... in which a local realtor discovers it is awfully hard to find a kidnapped kid, catch a murderer, and tame two unruly Afghan hounds while trying to deal with her maternal urges and her growing attraction for the father of her step-daughter's twins.

... about a talk show host whose late night radio show discusses everyday ethics and annoying behavior who is on a mission to get people to stop talking on cell phones in public -- but she goes too far and risks losing everything before discovering how easy it is to become as bad as the people she's judging, and ultimately how wonderful it is to fall in love with someone unexpected.

Those are descriptions from a daily email blatt I receive from Publisher's Marketplace, listing book that have just been sold. Maybe my book will be there too someday, and its capsule description may look just as ridiculous, but they sure look strange.

Eating is good for you

The Chronicle did a big feature on my friend Jessica Prentice, a local foodie who has a book coming out based on her monthly columns about sustainable agriculture and "eating locally."

Tyson agonistes

Mike Tyson is out of jail, terrified of a future without money and celebrity, and raising pigeons, says this bizarre profile in the Guardian (courtesy Amy's Robot). Quoth he:

I want to get this part of my life over as soon as possible. In this country, nothing good is going to come of me. I'm so stigmatized, there is no way I can elevate myself. They would give Jeffrey Dahmer a second chance before they gave me another one. If you saw a lineup and saw Tyson and Dahmer and they asked, "Who killed and ate those people?" you would pick me and not Jeffrey.

Heh, that's a good one.

    Something to do

My fabulous friend Christine, or Chris as she is now going by -- or Dandy as she is calling herself in some contexts -- is going to be part of a queer artists' show this month as part of the usual avalanche of activities that make up Pride Month. The reception is Thursday the 16th, and I plan to be there.

She is one of several artists who have moved from SF and LA to Wonder Valley, a collection of shacks and goofy piazzas in the middle of nowhere in the southern California desert. Except, unfortunately, it's now becoming known and somewhat trendy.

Sunday school

Speaking of Sunday School teachers, John Updike writes in the Nov. 1, 2004 New Yorker in a review of a new translation of the first five books of Moses:

Reading through this book, or five books, is a wearying, disorienting, and at times revelatory experience. ... The Creation, the Garden, the Fall, the Flood, the Tower of Babel, and the patriarchal saga of Abraham, Issac, Jacob and Joseph make a more or less continuous story. Rereading it awakened certain sensations from my Sunday-school education, more than sixty years ago, when I seemed to stand on the edge of a brink gazing down at ploychrome miniatures of abasement and terror, betrayal and reconciliation. Jacob deceiving blind Issac with patches of animal hair on the backs of his hands [1], Joseph being stripped of his gaudy coat and left in a pit by his brothers [2], little Benjamin being fetched years later by these same treacherous brothers into the imperious presence of a mysterious stranger invested with all Pharaoh's authority -- these glimpses into a world paternal to our own, a robed and sandalled world of origins and crude conflict and direct discourse with God, came to me via flimsy leaflets illustrating that week's lesson, and were mediated by the mild-mannered commentary of the Sunday-school teacher, a humorless embodiment of small-town respectability, passing on conventional Christianity by rote. Nevertheless, I was stirred and disturbed, feeling exposed to the perilous basis beneath the surface of daily routine, of practical schooling and family interchange and popular culture.

I only read this passage today, from an issue of the NYer in a pile I'd left in the bathroom at work, but it seemed so apt to an experience I had last night. I met with Katia at my church to give her a little feedback on her reading style, in preparation for her appearance next week at RADAR, the reading series produced by Michelle Tea. Katia got up and read the passages from her novel Crashing America, and when she was done, we remarked on the good acoustics of the church sanctuary.

"Good for reading scripture," I remarked, and she said, "Yes, get up there and read some scripture!" I said okay, and got a Bible and read Jesus' trial before Pilate from Matthew 27. How rich and exciting the scene is! When I finished, I said, "Now that's writing."

(1) Gen. 27    (2) Gen. 37