Attention writers

Miss Snark says "Japan is getting to be a very hot topic."

Who knew?! All you ex-TOEFL teachers, get your butts in gear and grind out those proposals for memoirs on your time teaching English or meditating in Japan.

Soundtrack

In case you were lacking recommendations for seasonal music, Slacktivist attacks the whole issue of Christmas music at length. His previous post was also about Xmas music.

I'd say he got carried away a little, but hey, it's the internet. Space on the internet is infinite.

Another brave one

I just stumbled across a feature on Advocate.com called High School Diary -- apparently each year they pick a queer teenager who writes a few columns about being out at their school. Last year's columns were written by Paige Palmer, a student at Clear Creek High School in League City, TX -- which I attended for my first two years of high school ages ago. Here are her articles:
Aug. 2004
Oct. 2004
Feb. 2005
Jun. 2005

Previously: SF Bay Guardian, 23 June 1999: Katharine Mieszkowski writes about a queer girl at another high school in the district, Clear Lake HS, from which I coincidentally graduated.

Shocked, shocked

Police discovered strippers performing lap dances and serving alcohol in an RV near a Tampa stadium during a football game; it was at least the fourth game this season the vehicle, emblazoned with the logo of a local strip club, had worked the parking lot. Several people were arrested, including one customer caught smoking a joint.

Absolutely on the money was police Sgt. Bill Todd, who said:

I don't understand what justification they think they had, bringing this to a family environment like a Bucs game.

Now that's an interesting way of putting it. Sort of like WMDs were the justification for the war in Iraq? Hey, pal, this is America -- profit is justifcation enough.

The only Xmas movie I'll mention

Gawker says Woody Allen's movie "Match Point," which will be put in "limited release" on Xmas*, is "good, really good." The film was shown in Cannes in May; here's Roger Ebert's positive appraisal.

Allen better hope it's as good as people are saying it is. He ran out of last chances a long time ago.

* This means it will probably be shown only in New York and LA -- if a film is released in NY and LA for at least one week during a calendar year it's eligible for the Academy Awards for that year.

Previously: Melinda and Melinda: so bad I wanted to be sick

Early 70s feeling

People say "the sixties" ended at Altamont, but in fact the notes of the sixties echoed for several years. Today Flavorpill SF touted a showing of the 1970 Antonioni film Zabriskie Point and linked to two pieces of period material concerning the stars, Daria Halprin -- daughter of SF royalty, her father was (and still is) a famous architect, and her mother, dancer and choreographer Anna Halprin was famous for helping create the alternative arts scene of the 1970s in SF; the girl later briefly married Dennis Hopper -- and Mark Frechette, a gorgeous, "troubled" young man who died five years later in prison, where he was incarcerated after robbing a bank near the Boston commune where he lived.

This mind-blowing interview with Halprin and Frechette is from a 1970 one-issue zine called Pluto. It perfectly captures the post-Altamont mindframe: equally self-absorbed and self-important on the one hand, bratty and nihilistic on the other. It helps you understand why the heightened "consciousness" of the 60s never amounted to anything.

Where's Daria today? Following in her mother's footsteps as head of the Tamalpa Institute, apparently one of the last outposts of the New Age 70s:

Tamalpa Institute, founded in 1978, offers training programs and workshops in the Halprin Process, a movement-based healing arts approach that integrates movement/dance, visual arts, performance techniques and therapeutic practices. This approach supports personal, interpersonal and social transformation, teaching new models for health, psychology, art and communication.

Shudder.

Today's satire, today

Writing in the New York Times, Campbell Robertson gives the celebrity breakup of Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey the full Monday morning quarterbacking pundit treatment, complete with the furrowed-brow single sentence paragraph:

Were we, as Americans, misled?

In The Onion, the best bit is perhaps the pumpkin pie chart showing "What Are We Giving Thanks For?" The Indians, for sharing their land; panda weddings.

Meanwhile the online personals company that runs on the Onion's site, plus Nerve and SFGate and God knows who else, Spring Street Networks, continues to feature that girl (left) who wants to hang out "in some moss by the water."

In some moss? I guess Hurricane Katrina wasn't enough for her.

Speaking of Louisiana, the story Goat Attacks Couldn't Keep Her From Church, in the Alexandria, La. Town Talk, is not satire at all.

"I don't know how I was able to get in the car that fast. I think God must have picked me up and put me there."

That's not satire, folks. That's the news.

Too much information

Badger posts on the phenomenon of finding out people's secret attitudes and wishing you hadn't. It reminded me of this guy who was a "team-building" consultant at a large company I once worked for. He went around from department to department leading these so-called team-building exercises and getting people to open up to one another, but what really happened is that people found out that their co-workers were racist or that they didn't like someone else's religion or had other objectionable attitudes. Every single department the guy went to, people worked together worse when he was done with them. It took months before management took complaints seriously and got rid of him.

Military ethics officer's suicide raises questions

Col. Ted Westhusing, 44, was no ordinary officer. He was one of the Army's leading scholars of military ethics, a professor at West Point who volunteered to serve in Iraq to teach his students better. He had a doctorate in philosophy; his dissertation was an extended meditation on the meaning of honor.

So it was only natural that Westhusing acted when he learned of possible corruption by U.S. contractors in Iraq. A few weeks before he died, Westhusing received an anonymous complaint that a private security company he oversaw had cheated the U.S. government and committed human rights violations. Westhusing confronted the contractor and reported the concerns to superiors, who launched an investigation.

In e-mail to his family, Westhusing seemed especially upset by one conclusion he had reached: that traditional military values such as duty, honor and country had been replaced by profit motives in Iraq, where the U.S. has come to rely heavily on contractors for jobs once done by the military.

In June, Westhusing was found dead in a trailer at a military base near the Baghdad, Iraq, airport, a single gunshot wound to the head.

Kiss o'death

A 15-year-old Canadian girl with a peanut allergy died after kissing a boy who had just eaten "a peanut butter snack."

Got braces? Better think twice about giving that blow job. Metal braces can cause microscopic tears in both condoms and flesh, according to a Boston dentist's own press release. I wonder just how she transmits that message to her teenage patients. Does she counsel just the girls? How about the boys who get braces -- does she provide equal opportuntiy counseling? Can you see being a teenage boy with braces -- you're probably totally mortified that you have to have them... and then to top it all off your attractive female dentist tells you, "By the way, just in case you're giving blow jobs, better think twice." Yikes!

Speaking of condoms, a Brazilian singer who promoted the use of condoms to stem AIDS has been disinvited to perform at a concert at the Vatican intended to raise money for Jesuit missions. The performer, Daniela Mercury, reprotedly has worked with UNICEF and the UN-sponsored anti-AIDS program.

Truth in labelling

Seen on Market St. on Saturday, an eight or nine year old boy walking with his late-30s parents; the boy wore a hoodie, probably from Neighborhoodies.com, with the legend HIPSTER IN TRAINING.

Just another happy holiday entry

Bored? Had enough of the Bondathon on Spike TV? There are few better blogs to read than:

Miss Snark. Written by an anonymous literary agent, with the best advice on the publishing business I've ever read. Entertaining, authoritative, and informative. It just rocks.

Badgerbag. Written by an anonymous translator, lit grad student, mother, and sexual revolutionary. It's funny and challenging, and utterly candid except for the fun of figuring out the obfuscated nouns which she uses to keep people from finding her entries by subject.

Jackadandy. This newcomer to the blog world publishes cogent bits on gender and art. She really gets the blogging business.

Me? I'm not discipined enough to stick to a single subject, and not learned enough to riff the way Badger does. But I am having fun working on my latest book.

Buy Nothing Day

Famous Twin Cities shopper Girl Friday shops not on the day after Txg, also known variously as "Black Friday" (because of profits) or Buy Nothing Day. She commemorates Fridays otherwise, and I for one stand with her in that effort.

You don't have to shop if you want to go out. Too Beautiful recommends the following films now playing:
Capote
Shopgirl
Good Night, and Good Luck
The Passenger

About that last: The Passenger was one of my favorite movies during my college years, when I probably saw it six or seven times. I loved the sophisticated European setting, the existentialist theme, and Maria Schneider's butt. I loved the fact that Jack Nicholson looked totally great covered in dust and sand wearing a faded green polo shirt. I loved the Spanish landscapes and the flamenco music that plays under the end credits. And Maria Schneider is probably the reason I have always had the hots for Latin or Mediterranean women with dark curly hair.

Get party trained

A "web cam dance girl" has the most popular blog in China. She is, however, probably just a marketing gimmick.

New pictures

I just posted some pictures from my trip to the desert a few weeks ago and from the visit in August by my friend from Japan, Hitoshi.

Breakfast conversation

Cris (reading news article): Why don't these coyotes ever die?

Me: Huh?

Cris: You know who the coyotes are, right?

Me: The, uh, people who bring mojados across the border.

Cris: Right. This guy's wife went back to visit her family, and paid a coyote to bring her back across the border. She collapsed in the desert from heat exhaustion and the coyote went off and left her there. Why doesn't her husband (points to picture) hunt down the coyote and kill him?

Me (looking at picture): Because he's a middle class guy.

Cris: You would hunt someone down, right? If they left me to die in the desert.

Me: Hmm... No.

Cris: I would. If that happened to you, I'd hunt them down and kill them.

Me: I'd, uh, pray for both your soul and that of the coyote while happily fucking new girls.

Cris: That's because you're a Lutheran and I'm a Latina.

Another babe in the woods

Either this guy is ripe for being scammed, or is trying to launch a scam of his own:

Looking for an agent...

Hi, I'm looking for an agent to represent me. I have published two books (one fiction and one anthology) and have been published in a handful of reputable publications as well. Please feel free to e-mail me if you wish to discuss.

Thanks and happy Thanksgiving!

In my research on how to get an agent, I ran across many approaches but never this one. Let me quote from a recent Miss Snark entry:

Some agents have full client lists. They might take on one or two new clients a YEAR, if that. They get those clients by referral: from editors, other agents, their authors or other seriously connected to the lit world folks. Those agents don't want a slush pile. They are also the ones most likely to get slush cause they're successful.

On the outside chance that the Craigslist poster is sincere and simply incredibly naive, let me direct him to the Miss Snark blog. Read the whole thing and all the archives. Then you'll understand what an agent does and how to go about getting one (and especially how not to go about it).

And I ride like the wind

Another nice interview on Mediabistro by Rachel Kramer Bussel, this one with Don Weise of Carroll & Graf -- the only person in New York publishing I actually know, and that only because he worked at Cleis in SF when Cleis published my erotica books.

My pick for holiday gifts for many of my writer friends: this t-shirt emblazoned with the legend, I FUCK LIKE A GIRL.

Our time

The Chronicle interviews a former prostitute with a new book and a former basketballer with a new book, and has an entertaining story about a louche evangelical pastor who fell 1500 feet off a cliff.

It's the last day before Txg. Is anybody going to do anything at work today? No -- but we go anyway.

Interview with Charlie Anders, impresario of the Writers with Drinks literary readings series

San Francisco writer Charlie Anders has been organizing and MCing the spoken word event Writers With Drinks for over five years. The series, which takes place on the second Saturday of the month at the Make Out Room on 22nd St. near Mission, attracts a standing-room-only audience of over 100, mostly people in their 20s and 30s, to hear novelists, poets, comedians, and non-fiction writers read from their work.

Anders, a tall, slender woman with a shy demeanor, transforms on stage into a scattershot comic whose introductions of writers tend toward the fantastic and veer off into uncharted comic territory. She says, "It's easy to be funny when you're caffeinated and everybody else is drunk."

Anders is also the author of the novel Choir Boy (Soft Skull Press, 2005), about an boy whose career as a star falsetto is threatened by adolescence.

 

 
Q. How long has WWD been going, and how many writers have you had in that time?

A. In April it'll be five years. Maybe 150-200 writers over that time.

 
Q. So how did the Writers With Drinks series end up in a bar?

A. I always liked the idea of doing a spoken word show in a bar -- it's less stuffy, more freewheeling. If people like one of the readings, they can get drunk and get it tattooed on their butt -- or on their back if it's a longer piece.

 
Q. The series has been at the Make Out Room on 22nd St. for more than two years. How did you find the right bar?

A. The number one piece of advice for finding a venue for a spoken word show -- try to find a rock venue, a place that has music. It's a better space, usually they'll have a good sound system. When I saw the Make Out Room I could tell they were the best -- the atmosphere, the location, the fact that it was disabled-accessible -- that was important. Café du Nord, where the series started, was the most inaccessible place imaginable -- even for people who aren't disabled it's hard to get around in.

The thing I always wanted to do with WWD -- my attitude was always "start early, be done early." My offer to the management was, you can have our event, and afterward you can have your main event. We'll be out whenever you want. Actually the Make Out Room DJ doesn't start til 10 on Saturdays, so we go from 7:30 to 9:30.

 
Q. Still, a Saturday night in a popular bar, it's not a usual time to have a spoken word event.

A. I got that time slot by being low risk. That's good to do if you're starting a show. I've seen a lot of shows die because they took on a risky time slot and they couldn't get a big enough crowd fast enough to justify the time slot.

Another rule I would suggest for word evenings: don't pay for the venue. They'll make enough money on drinks. And if you're doing it at a time when they'd normally be empty, they'll be happy. Never put yourself in a position where you might lose money.

 
Q. The Writers with Drinks readings are a benefit for Other Magazine?

A. Yeah, that was one of the reasons we started Other Magazine, so we could have something to do a benefit for. At first it was a benefit for Anything That Moves, but they went under. And we wanted it to be for something. Annalee [Newitz] came up with the basic idea of Other Magazine.

 
Q. Which is?

A. It's a general interest magazine like the New Yorker or Harpers, but aimed at an alternative readership that don't see themselves represented in the mainstream media -- the New Outcasts, people who are too queer or too nerdy or too other to be represented in the mainstream media.

 
Q. Is that also true of the writers who appear at WWD?

A. At WWD, there's no particular kind of writer, not even "other." Other (Magazine) is about rejecting categories; at WWD we experience the categories and put them up next to each other.

 
Q. You book four to six writers in each show month after month. That's a lot of writers -- how do you find them?

A. I'm constantly looking for writers to participate. I'll spend hours Googling. I also spend hours -- any time I receive an email announcement about a spoken word event or a reading, I'll save the email. And sometimes get recommendations from friends.

 
Q. What's your motivation for doing this? What do you get out of it?

A. I think it's fun. I really enjoy trying to break down these artificial divisions between different types of writing. It's like a mashup. It's fun to show how these different genres are the same and different. It's like collage.

 
Q. One of the most entertaining aspects of each evening is the introductions you give to each writer. The introductions are usually about half actual facts and half stuff that's completely made up. Are these completely spontaneous, or do you think about them in advance?

A. I try to be spontaneous; I'll think about them for 15 minutes a day.

 
Q. But how do you come up with all that funny made-up stuff?

A. I'm not making anything up about them, I'm revealing the truer truth about them. Nobody has ever been offended.

 
Q. Do you have any history doing standup or improv comedy?

A. No. I was MCing events for Comet magazine -- that's where I started being kind of loopy.

I think it was a good thing when I decided to no longer drink during the show. Once I had a couple of drinks and started off on this whole thing about how the audience had to love me. I thought it was funny, but the audience didn't, so much. I thought okay, maybe I should not drink. I'm on caffeine and everybody else is on alcohol. It's easy to be funny when you're caffeinated and everybody else is drunk.

 
Q. How do you fit your WWD work into your career as a writer?

A. Reading your stuff aloud allows you to see how dumb it is, and talking a lot allows you to see what works and what doesn't. Sometimes people don't realize I'm a writer, they think I'm just this mental patient that was let out. I hit them on the forehead with my book to make them see I'm a writer.

I just finished a second novel. A couple of people are critiquing it, and I'm hoping to sell that someplace. Meanwhile my novel Choir Boy has been translated into Italian.

 
Q. Who are some of the biggest names you've had, and how do you get them?

A. Lauren Slater, Vendela Vida, Andrew Sean Greer, Karen Joy Fowler -- we just had Peter Beagle. I get them mostly by email begging. The longer I've been doing it, the easier it is to get people.

 
Q. Do people now make WWD a stop on their book tours?

A. I'd love to have publishers put their writers on book tours in our series.

The next Writers with Drinks, on Dec. 10 at the Make Out Room (map), features Karen Joy Fowler, author of The Jane Austen Book Club, Beth Lisick, author of Everybody Into the Pool, and Terry Bisson, author of Bears Discover Fire. For more information, see www.writerswithdrinks.com.

Media malaise

Courtesy Mediabistro, a screencap from CNN that shows a technical glitch in which a large black X was superimposed on a feed of Cheney lambasting war critics. TVNewser -- another Mediabistro blog -- gives the trivial explanation.

Me, I'm still waiting for the editorial cartoon showing Bush pulling on a big set of doors labelled EXIT FROM QUAGMIRE.

Bush retreat stymied

Frustrated by a reporter's challenge while on tour in China, Bush snapped at the scribe "Ever heard of jet lag?!" then tried to leave the room. Only problem: the doors were locked.

I love this city

How many other newspapers in the U.S. -- never mind the approx. 2.5 million pop. of the S.F. metropolitan area and the fact that there's another major newspaper, the San Jose Mercury News -- still have a regular radio columnist and give him 20 column inches on Sunday? From today's Ben Fong Torres column is this great moment in a profile of a local DJ in which the guy glances at his watch, gives the station identification and the time at the top of the hour, then:

Music comes on over his headphones, he's off the air, and he looks at his wrist and laughs.

"Fifteen-dollar watch," he says. "Fifteen dollar watch, and it hits that thing exactly!"

I love that line. I think I'll steal it.

In other news, a powerful local politician has joined forces with Lawrence Ferlinghetti, founder of City Lights Bookstore, in a campaign to add a statue of St. Francis, the city's patron saint, to Washington Square. The square is also the site of the statue of Ben Franklin shown on the cover of Richard Brautigan's Trout Fishing in America -- an image I gazed at longingly throughout my early teen years, wondering if I would ever be in such a fantastic place as San Francisco.

Speaking of City Lights and Brautigan, check the photo in a recent entry by my friend Christine. That photo seems to be another image from the photo session that produced this more famous photo of the Beat writers of America posing outside City Lights. In each picture, Brautigan wears the same white cowboy hat he is seen in on the cover of Trout Fishing.

Half this book writes itself

I'm working on a new novel about an American woman who goes to Bangalore to open an offshore call center for the California bank she works for. I've never been to Bangalore but fortunately there are scads of articles in the papers about the whole issue of offshoring, the cultural changes in India, and the unintended consequences of globalization. Take this Daily Mail article about backpacking Britons getting work in Indian call centers so they can earn some coin and continue their wanderyahr, or "gap year" as the British paper has it. (That article courtesy BoingBoing. And here's an earlier Times of India article.)

Stuff like this is great -- I never would have thought to introduce the idea of westerners clamoring for jobs at Indian call centers.

There must be some kinda way out of here

Chr. and I had a long conversation last weekend about the veracity of visual images in the age of Photoshop and reality TV, and this article (courtesy BoingBoing) just further pollutes the truth-reality continuum.

The producers of "Big Brother," a long-running "reality" program with versions in many countries, are raising the stakes by fooling nine participants (who have already been sequestered) into believing they're travelling into space. They're already undergoing "training" by a former Russian cosmonaut and will spend their five days "in orbit" on what is really a recycled set from a Hollywood movie. The windows of the "craft" will actually be super high-definition monitors projecting an unending reel of high-altitude footage of the earth.

I don't care how many releases they make them sign. Some day one of these rubes is going to go after these producers with a gun.

Surprised by joy

Congrats to winners of the Nat'l Book Awards, including William T. Vollman, who said he didn't prepare a speech because he thought he'd never win.

I'm searching for a transcript of the proceedings (here are acceptance speeches from past years), which included a speech by Norman Mailer, winner of a lifetime achievement award. Mailer has twice won the Pulitzer Prize and won a Nat'l Book Award in 1969 for "The Armies of the Night," an autobigraphical essay on the antiwar movement and his ambivalent part in it. I reread the book a couple years ago and it really stands up. It's especially interesting in light of today's war.

Early bird

When I was in the desert last weekend I slept in a room next to a big patio door with no shades, so that when it just started to get light, I woke up. That was beautiful -- dawn over the desert -- and also much earlier than sunrise here, since it's about 200 miles east of here. That got me into a pattern of waking up early, giving me time to write a little before going off to work. Just another benefit of going out of town for a spell.

Like a sex machine!

Some people are apparently working hard. Today Wired News and BoingBoing link to different iterations of sex mechanisms. Wired's story is about a "divorced Christian homesteader from Idaho" who built a sex machine in his garage; BB writes about an iPod attachment that vibrates in time to music.

It's not you, it's me

Another in my series of occasional entries in which I inflict the mixture of excitement and anxiety I experience as my novel makes the rounds of publishers.

As of today the count is: five submissions, three rejections so far. Of the three rejections, two were what my agent termed "really nice declines." These feature the editor's pleasant and appreciative reactions to the book, along with the reasons he or she is not taking it. Today's nice decline read, in part:

Pritchard gets the banter and the scene so well-- I felt like I was sitting in the back of the car with the (characters).

I admit I enjoy reading the compliments -- probably way too much -- even as the editor is rejecting the book.

Leaders out of control at Charismatic Christian churches; devil blamed

In an arresting article posted on his publications's website, the editor of Charisma magazine says the leadership of Charismatic churches -- a loose term for independent conservative churches that believe in the "baptism of the Holy Spirit," speaking in tongues, and so on -- has lost its moral compass. J. Lee Grady writes of pastors who announced a "revelation" that men could fuck whoever they wanted to, a church where several male members were having gay sex with the male pastor, and another church where the female staff and the wives of the pastors all got breast implants. ("I wonder if they had a staff meeting about that.")

How does the author explain this epidemic of immorality? "The devil is working overtime, yet our discernment is at an all-time low... We've been bewitched." But my favorite sentence was:

Of course we forgive, but forgiveness does not involve putting a preacher back on stage the next week if he just had a serious moral failure.

Yes.... "back on stage." I can almost hear Jon Stewart utter his famous phrase, "So... this is theater."

Esquire names Aniston 'Man of the Year'

Remember Monday's suggestion that Nov. 20 become Secretly A Man Day? Esquire magazine is all over it. Their Man of the Year is a woman -- Jennifer Aniston, whom they talked into posing discretely topless. Courtesy FishbowlNY.

Previously: An idea whose time has come: Secretly A Man Day

Jennifer Aniston, Secretly A Man Day

Happy Birthday, Christine!

It's the birthday of one of my dearest friends, Christine. We've known each other for 20 years, performed together, had many misadventures, and now support each other's art. What a great friend and fabulous person she is! Happy birthday!

Someone else's book deal

A charming account by an unknown writer who finally learns her novel will be published. Plans to quit her day job. Why not -- she's got a partner with a job.

Me, I'm still waitin' and hopin'.

After LeRoy hoax revealed, work shrivels

Prompted by speculation (including a major article in New York magazine) that the 24-year-old male author J.T. LeRoy does not exist but is actually a hoax initiated by a forty-something female, the NY Times -- which doesn't need any more credibility problems -- killed a travel piece they had commissioned "LeRoy" to do. The piece was not only ready to be printed in an upcoming travel supplement, but a whole photo layout had been shot. Courtesy GalleyCat.

Previously: Reality comes crashing down on J.T. LeRoy hoax

Ask the Ethicist

Q. I'm doing a feature on a brutal murder, and in order to get the whole story from one of the killers, I told him I'd get him a good lawyer. Now I don't feel I can finish my story -- well, it turned into a book -- until the brute is executed. Should I fire the lawyer to speed the execution?
A. You have just summarized the main conflict of the film Capote, which follows author Truman C. and his pal, fellow novelist Harper Lee, as they investigate a mass killing at a farmhouse. I saw it with Christine in Palm Springs this weekend (and you thought we were just hiking in the desert or something).

In the Chicago Tribune today, Julia Keller discusses Capote's ethical conflict and draws attention to the fact that another big film set in mid-century, Good Night, and Good Luck, is also concerned with the ethics of journalism.

Pathetic civic claim of the day

A federal air quality study has new rankings for cities with the worst smog. The Houston Chronicle plays the story with this headline:

L.A.'s Smog Tops Houston's

Most other newspapers carried a more neutral headline like "Los Angeles named nation's smog capital." Only in Houston could they grab at the news like it's the best thing they've heard about their city in years. But if you read the story, you find out it's even more pathetic, since it explains that the EPA switched measuring systems this year, and under last year's system, Houston would still rate the worst.

Buncha lightweights.

An idea whose time has come: 'Secretly a Man Day'

The fabulous and talented Charlie Anders, who runs Other Magazine and the Writers with Drinks reading series in SF, has a hilarious and deeply weird M.C. style. She introduces each writer with a spiel of information, some of which is true and some totally made up, and only some of which actually has anything to do with the person she's introducing.

Last weekend she reportedly introduced -- off the top of her head, I'll wager -- a new annual holiday: Nov. 20, Secretly a Man Day. On that day you're supposed to start rumors to the effect of "Hey, did you hear Jessica Simpson is secretly a man?" or "I heard that Condoleeza Rice is secretly a man!"

And the blog author whom Wonkette outed today? Secretly a man!

Charlie is so brilliant.

Secretly A Man Day, Charlie Anders

Hey, I get it! 'My best friend' is me!

Courtesy Metafilter, a website by a woman who offers some affirmations for healthy living. My favorite:

I Say Nice Things to My Best Friend

I ask myself, What do I wish a man would tell me in this moment? And I say, "I wish I had a man to tell me..." And I complete that sentence with "Great job!" or "I like the way you take care of yourself" or "I like the way you're making time to do your exercises today" or "I really love that about you - the way you care about others" or "It's OK that you made that mistake. Nobody's perfect" or whatever else would give me a lift.

That's right. In order to make yourself feel better, she recommends asking yourself, "What do I wish a man would tell me in this moment?" Unfortunately for many of us it would be hard to think of a man telling us anything but "Out of the way, asshole!" or "Fuck off!"

Line of the day

Monday is for beginnings, isn't it? You need some cheerful people, some folks whose optimism and, dare we say it, naivieté, reminds us of our own fresh-faced beginnings. Katia writes of being backstage before a TV interview, where a publicist approaches her before the show:

The singer's publicist sidles up to me, "You are just who I should talk with. I just finished a book! I don't know what to do with it."

"So your manuscript is ready to send out?"

"Yes, I checked the spelling and everything," she tells me.

Sex celebrities in the city

Several NYC sex writers and columnists, including the increasingly orbital Rachel Kramer Bussel, were interviewed for New York magazine's annual sex issue.

Two things to note. First, take a look at the women in that photo. Either it's the crappiest photo possible of six gorgeous women, or the reality behind the bylines is a lot more average than most people imagine. I have the feeling it's a crappy photo.

The other thing to note is that NY mag has its annual sex issue in November. November, people. My only guess is that this is when NY weather is turning cold and people are socializing exclusively indoors, which I suppose leads to canoodling. Any other explanations?

I'm back

I'm back from my weekend in the desert. Postings will resume shortly.

I think I see the problem

Today in Baghdad, several dozen were killed in a bombing "in a restaurant favored by police."

If you were a policeman in Baghdad, being paid by American money and propping up what's perceived as an American puppet regime, wouldn't you, on your spare time, try to get as far away from other cops as possible? Or would you stick around a locale that may as well have a big sign on it that says BOMB HERE?

The media is the mass age

Trade publication Editor and Publisher tracked newspapers who endorsed a presidential candidate in 2004, and recently asked those who endorsed Bush if they had any buyers remorse. The verdict -- not a single paper said they regretted endorsing Bush. But "nearly all ... did express disappointment in several aspects of the president's second-term performance."

San Francisco-based PlanetOut, is buying the publishers of the Advocate and Out magazines and Alyson Books. Alyson recently moved its offices to New York and hired all new staff; none of the stories says what's going to happen to them.

Dept. of There's no such thing as bad publicity

Readers are so curious about Scotter Libby's heretofore forgotten thriller, The Apprentice, that the publisher has decided to reissue the book which "includes references to bestiality, pedophilia and rape," as used copies "have been offered for as high as $2,400 on Amazon.com."

Libby's novel is in a fine tradition of Republican crypto-erotica, the most infamous of which, until now, has been Lynne Cheney's Sisters.

It really ought to become part of the vetting process for Republican appointees: "Have you ever published a novel featuring a big gay sex scene?"

Previously: The Erotica of Republicans.

The war between adults and kids, episode 26: The Sanctioned Kidnapping

You've heard about the concentration camps for kids, where allegedly impossible teenagers undergo brainwashing and behavior modification at the behest of their own parents. Ever wonder how they get the kids there in the first place? Easy -- they pay to have their child kidnapped by a private "escort" company -- no, not that kind of escort.

The mother and father nodded, shifting in their seats. Boussard got a black overnight bag from a closet and handed it to Strawn, along with a check for $1,800. In return, Strawn asked him to sign a notarized power-of-attorney that authorized his company to take "any act or action" on the parents' behalf during the transport to Casa. The document also promised that the couple would not sue for any injuries caused by "reasonable restraint." Strawn warned them that he would take Louis away in handcuffs. ...

"Do you have some underwear on?" Louis's father said. "They're here to help us. They're here to take you to a school."

Louis shook his head to clear it.

"The only thing we want you to know is that we love you very much," Boussard continued. He and his wife stepped forward to hug Louis, but the gesture was forced and none of them seemed to want the contact.

"Where am I going? When am I coming home?"

Louis's parents walked out the door.

If you wonder whether your teenager is bad enough to be sent to a concentration camp, just take this Difficult Teen Test on the website of one of the "schools."

You call that compact?

This morning the Chronicle published a feature on famous local writers' workspaces, calling them "compact" -- but a glance at the pictures shows that each writer has, at least, a whole room of a house. This is funny because last night I visited Christy C. in Oakland -- she's the only other person left in my writers "group" -- who just put up a tiny shed in her backyard to serve as her writing space. It's one of those little prefab jobs; she's wired and insulated it and put in a little desk. But the whole thing can't be more than 20 square feet.

Also this morning, so appropriate: In Salon, Garrison Keillor on "A Shed of One's Own."

Great moments in diplomacy

Robert Mugabe, the certifiably insane president of the failed state of Zimbabwe, was quoted on state radio today as telling the U.S. ambassador to "go to hell" after the diplomat said the long-time politician's rule was characterized by "gross corruption."

French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarzoky's use of the word "racille" to describe teenage rioters, a word which has been translated as "scum," is more properly translated as "rabble." Somebody please inform the stone-throwing youths of that distinction.

And in San Francisco, Prince Charles and Camilla continue their visit without incident.

Web nerd alert

Check out the new Yahoo Maps Beta. You can now drag and scroll like Google Maps, and there's also an inset window showing the geographical context:

I don't like Mondays

Courtesy The Morning News, this totally excellent news story about a teenaged Japanese girl who, obsessed with a 1950s British murderer, copied his crime by poisoning her mother, recording her deeds in an online journal.

In other family news in focus, Tom Cruise has fired his sister from her job as his publicist after finally realizing he had become a laughingstock during a year in which he agressively pushed his Scientology beliefs (Cruise's sister is also a Scientologist), married a starlet 30 years his junior, and demanded the presence of Scientology "counselors" on his movie sets.

And in Miami, Oh., goats help a 12-year-old boy manage his ADHD. He jumps on a trampoline with them -- I swear to God! Check out the picture that accompanies the story. The news hook -- as if this story needed one -- is that zoning officers don't like the family keeping goats in their suburb.

But officer, the only time they "bahh" is when they jump on the trampoline! It's fun for them!

Uncontrolled onomatopoeia

Washington Post TV critic Tom Shales got a little carried away today at the end of a column on last night's broadcast of "The West Wing":

What sounded bold and gripping in NBC promos proved limp and wimpy on the air -- shilly-shallying in a namby-pamby way.

Holy cow! Are you sure it wasn't also willy-nilly, pell-mell, or flim-flammed? And is it possible to shilly-shally in a bold, macho way? Someone ask Geraldo Rivera.

Tom Shales, West Wing, TV review

Just enough for the city

Sitting in a cafe on Church St. Nearby there are two people talking. One is a dumpy trans woman in a bad wig; the other is an attractive woman with black hair. She is apparently the other person's sponsor, because the tranny is whining and complaining to her. "I feel so tired of this person I am. I feel like I'm supposed to do something; almost every time I relapse, something happens that almost kills me."

The sponsor is trying to talk sense. "But you don't die."

It's early evening; just a month ago the sun was still shining brightly at this time, 6 pm, but now it's night, and the rain is coming.

Something strange about San Francisco this weekend: both Prince Charles and the Dalai Lama are visiting. I haven't run into a motorcade yet but I've been staying off the highways. Nevertheless the increased gravitas didn't help the 49ers.

A gorgeous day

A perfect fall day, perhaps the last of the year; tomorrow clouds are predicted, and rain in the evening and all day Monday. I am not looking forward to that Monday morning commute in the rain. I might even stay at a motel in Redwood City Sunday night just to avoid it.

Today we went to the hamlet of Princeton, Ca. -- a small housing development, a few restaurants, a boat ramp, and a pleasant little beach behind a harbor jetty, without even a post office -- where some friends put out to sea in kayaks to scatter the ashes of another kayaker friend. A gorgeous day for it, as I say. Cris and I sat by the water on a picnic bench with the aged mother of one kayaker -- the one whose partner had died -- as we waited for the kayakers to return. Just that, a couple of hours of sitting by a bay in the warm sunshine chatting quietly with people.

Let's see, how many security warnings linked to bad weeks for the administration does that make?

Wow, they're still pulling this trick: Bush had such a bad week that they had to leak another terrorist plot warning -- three guys were arrested in London who allegedly planned to blow up Washington targets.

Yeah, whatever. Here's what I believe:
1. They arrest people all the fucking time for stuff like this, whether it's justified or not.
2. They chuck them God knows where. You never hear from them again.
3. When they want to distract people from how badly Bush is fucking up, they announce the latest arrests.
4. You think they make just as big a deal when it all turns out to be a big hoax, or a plot that hadn't got past first base, or just a FBI sting where there never was a real plan to blow anything up? You think they ever make an announcement when they drop the charges and let people go?

So BFD, guys. Go fuck yourselves.

Happy birthday to Cris!

It's the birthday of my darling partner of almost 20 years, Cris. I was thinking last night that of all the women I've known, loved, worked with, and adored from afar, I am so lucky to have her as my partner for life. Happy birthday, darling.

I give up

I was reading Like Being Killed, a 1998 novel by Ellen Miller I saw mentioned someplace. I was impressed with the first 50 pages, which recount a fatal nighttime drug bachhanal, and the next hundred pages, which cover the time after, and leading up to, the opening scene, were intriguing. I liked the writer's quirks even if I found the increasingly depraved atmosphere of the book oppressive. But last night, a little more than halfway through the book, I suddenly decided I didn't want to spend any more time with these characters, and gave up.

Why humans wear makeup

Women's complexions reflect their estrogen level, says a report cited in this BBC story, with "women with high levels of estrogen (having) prettier faces." Makeup somewhat masks this effect, while allowing women lacking the hormonal boost to increase their hormonal glow. The result is that all made-up women broadcast a uniformly medium-to-enhanced level of crypto-fertility.

Head of the study, Miriam Law Smith, said: "Women are effectively advertising their general fertility with their faces. Make-up can improve appearance across the board, but it will obviously help people who are less attractive more." For example, eye make-up can be used to make the eyes appear bigger and foundation can make the skin look clearer.

"Our findings could explain why men universally seem to prefer feminine women's faces. In evolutionary terms, it makes sense for men to favour feminine fertile women -- those that did would have had more babies," she added.

I guess they didn't figure in goth.

Speaking of which, see this site which suggests Jesus was goth.

• He went to the coolest clubs and dens of iniquity. Jesus hung out with the real "alternative" crowd of the time. His buddies were tax-collectors, fetishists, and women of ill-repute. He also literally hung around with murderers (check out the cross scene), once again showing his fascination with death.
• Christ surrounded himself with goth chicks. Mary Magdalene and Veronica were two of the first goth-chicks, but Jesus also has a horde of gothic groupies. How else would you describe all those nuns/brides of Christ? They wear all black and white, and are heavy into crosses, rosaries, and the contemplation of holy masochism.
• He had the gaunt look down pat. You have to admit, few pictures you've ever seen of the guy had him rosy-cheeked and robust. The man was positively scrawny and white. He had cheekbones from Hell, and even his hipbones stuck way out.

Dept of What Does It All Mean

Courtesy Booknoise, here's a great web page for anyone who's ever had a book listed on Amazon.com: What Amazon Sales Ranks mean, by Morris Rosenthal. He's writing from the perspective of someone who self-publishes books that are then listed on the online retailer, but for people like me who are (so far) published by small presses and whose Amazon numbers are usually around 350,000 (or, yikes, today #947,784) it gives a good idea of just how many books are being sold. Rosenthal also offers the interesting tidbit that Amazon now includes "marketplace" sales, i.e. the sales of used books listed on Amazon by "marketplace" affiliates.

publishing, Amazon, books, book selling, Morris Rosenthal, Booknoise

Sweet spirits do surround us now

Readers familiar with my usual jocular and even profane tone may be surprised that every morning I go to a prayer service at a neighborhood Episcopal church where we do what may be the only daily sung service of morning prayer outside a monastery in this country. (Even at cathedrals and other prominent churches, such as Trinity Church in New York, the Morning Prayer service is spoken, not sung.)

At this time of year the mood is elegaic, as we not only celebrate All Saints Day (Nov. 1) but also All Souls Day or Dia de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead, which in San Francisco is celebrated not only because of the large Mexican-American presence in the Mission District but also because of the twenty-year old AIDS epidemic -- not to mention the continuing street violence in the Mission and other neighborhoods.

This morning we spoke the names of our dead and sang a Shaker hymn:

Sweet spirits do surround us now,
I feel them gathering near,
I can perceive them lowly bow
And hear their heavenly cheer.

Tonight in the Mission, the Mission Cultural Center sponsors the annual parade through the neighborhood. Despite the annoying presence of post-hippie drummers and college girls of dubious provenance who draw on mustaches and speak Spanish in bad California accents, the nighttime procession is beautiful and touching.

Here's a moving essay by Sara, the organizer of the morning prayer service, a piece that captures this day's embrace of life amidst death.

Day of the Dead, Dia de los Muertos, Sara Miles, morning prayer

Promotion

Following a trail behind the author of the controversial NYT piece Publish and Perish, Elizabeth Royte, I found her most recent book at this site -- then realized it's a site of a book publicist. Interesting that she can afford to hire her own publicist but still complains about her publisher's publicist.

Khrushchev the bus driver, and other famous names

In a village in Kerala, India, where the Communist Party still polls strongly, many children in the last 50 years were given the names of Lenin, Gorbachev, Pushkin and other famous Russians. They recently had a get together in which it was discovered that many of the people with famous names knew little about their namesakes. The village itself has been called Moscow since the 1950s.