Don't set the bar too high

I linked the other day to Katia's post about opening, as it were, for Michelle Tea at a reading in L.A. on Sunday where M.T. was treated like a rock star by a packed house of glamorous dykes.

Every author deserves to be treated like a rock star at least once in their career. Especially Michelle, who not only has put in the work as a writer, but is genuinely generous with her time and encouragement of other writers.

But just now I ran across some woman's list of about twenty "life goals," including:
      - PhD in linguistic feminism
      - Learn Russian or Arabic
      - Have babies
      - Have coffee with Michelle Tea

The fact that the last one is much lower on her list than the others means it's either less important than the others, or she thinks it will be harder to achieve. Perhaps she thinks she needs a PhD in linguistic feminism to have coffee with Michelle Tea. I don't know about the coffee date, but all you have to do to have a word with Michelle Tea is go to a bunch of readings and literary events in San Francisco, because she attends a lot of them, and just go up to her and chat. She's really nice and gives time to everybody.

Hero worship is okay if it motivates you. If you think Michelle Tea or StarryShine or Benjamin Bernanke would want you to get that PhD, by all means go for it. But most people are approachable*, especially if you have something even slightly interesting to say to them.

*Famous people I've met who were extremely nice and approachable:
     George Romero, director of "Night of the Living Dead" and many other zombie films
     Jane Hirshfield, poet
     Phoebe Snow, singer-songwriter
     David Bromberg, singer-songwriter
     Kathy Acker, author

Michelle Tea, writers, George Romero

Lit stuff for busy people

I've been very busy at work this week and this blog has suffered somewhat. here are some good things:

Borders and its subsidiary Waldenbooks will not stock an upcoming issue of the magazine Free Inquiry -- there's your irony of the day -- because it contains those controversial Mohammed cartoons that gave an excuse for radicals to stage riots across the Middle East. I guess Borders thinks Muslims have longer attention spans than most people, since no one's written a word about that story in the last two months.

Long piece on Copper Canyon Press, the preeminent publisher of poetry in the U.S., in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Copper Canyon published one of my prized possessions, The Complete Poems of Kenneth Rexroth, as well as the June Jordan anthology co-edited by my friend Sara, a book up for a Northern California Book Award. They do a beautiful job with the kind of books you want on your shelves for the rest of your life.

A Lewis Carroll seminar gets underway today at Univ. of So. Cal.

Michelle Tea takes wing

I just noticed this deal from a few days ago:

Creators of Rent Girl, Michelle Tea and Laurenn McCubbin's CARRIER, a graphic novel about a superhero girl with wings who fights crime and gets a second chance at having a family...

Michelle is hitting the big time. Read Katia Noyes's account of opening for her at a reading in L.A. on Sunday night.

writers, Michelle Tea, Katia Noyes, Laurenn McCubbin

Spam names of the week

Muskrats S. Overstayed -- this actor was often seen in W.C. Fields films

Briefing M. Xhosa -- minor African diplomat

Albertina Steinhauer -- secretary of the Department of Central European languages at a Midwestern university

Paralyzed E. Stake -- an "F Troop" character killed by Indians in one episode

Flutura Cabiness -- 22nd century taxi driver

Orba Work -- now out-of-work Y2K COBOL programmer

Tuned L. Curviest -- alluring member of the violin section

What are you working on? : Ericka Lutz

Just posted in my series of interviews with authors about their current projects, fiction and non-fiction writer Ericka Lutz, who says:

I've spent the last few years learning how to write good short stories, which require a tight focus. Novels are a bigger canvas, so while you get to make bigger strokes (easier!) you also need to cover more ground (harder!). So I'm working on finding this novel's pace and voice. The beginning stages -- and this means many months -- of a project don't always feel rewarding as I struggle to answer the big questions: what am I writing about? Why? Who cares?

I've completed two novels that are unpublished -- though I've published widely in other areas -- so this one is the keeper. It's hard to write another novel when the first two remained unwanted. It's a challenge to leave myself at the studio door, to get out of my own way.

writers, Ericka Lutz,novel writing

Freed at last

From Slushpile comes this dispatch: Rescue Effort Planned for Tortured Writer.

White House spokesman F. Scott McClegald confirmed that members of the Navy SEALs and the Army's Delta Force are in position to storm the University of California in Davis in order to free tormented author Lynn Freed.

"I think we all remember Ms. Freed's plaintive cry in her essay 'Doing Time: My Years in the Creative-Writing Gulag,'" McClegald said. "Here is a woman that wrote she did not want to teach. Not now, not ever. And yet as the Spring Quarter, 2006 begins today, she is being forced to do exactly that very thing."

Yes -- as is said of the MIAs from the Vietnam War, We Must Never Forget Them.

Previously: The Secret Diary of a Prisoner in the Creative Writing Gulag

I feel so much safer now

Hey, Bolton's on the case. Everything's going to be all right -- right?

If you don't cease your nuclear program right now, I will swat you with this extremely small booklet. Then I will kiss you with my bushy mustache, and you will never be the same again. Beware, Iran!

(Not a real quote.) Meanwhile, it's happened again -- another toddler crawled into a claw machine. You have to wonder whether the mothers are stuffing their kids in there just for the publicity -- some sort of Munchausen Syndrome By Proxy-like wierdness, the same urge that causes people to purposely stage pratfalls for "America's Funniest Home Videos."

How writers are born

An Iowa college student decided that spending almost two days in a Wal-Mart might be a good idea for an article. After 41 hours he couldn't stand it anymore, and went home, "convinced his project was a failure" (I guess he didn't think up any angles during the sojourn).

Then local media heard about the stunt and started calling. He appeared on "Good Morning America." He got a book agent. NPR called, he's doing Letterman...

Bartels said he's surprised by the attention, but it's like a dream for anyone with hopes of ever becoming a writer.

"Whereas, I think the project itself is a failure, I could use this media stuff as a third leg of a book if I wrote it, about how America eats this stuff up," he said. "I'm incredibly happy with the press coverage. It would be kind of silly not to accept it with open arms."

And all without writing a word! There's a young man with a future.

Wim Wenders

Wow, I almost missed this entertaining interview with filmmaker Wim Wenders on SFist.

Wenders is mostly known in the U.S. for being responsible for the increasingly sentimental series of angel movies starring Bruno Ganz -- 1987's Wings of Desire was the first and best, while Faraway, So Close! jumped the shark -- but film geeks (like I once was) treasure his early stuff:
The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick
Alice in the Cities
Wrong Movement -- the best road movie ever made
Kings of the Road
and finally, in 1977, The American Friend with Bruno Ganz, Dennis Hopper, and a raft of obscure European and American film directors -- one of my favorite movies ever.

After that he had his ill-fated American stint (he did Hammett in 1982 for Coppola's Zoetrope Pictures, leading Coppola to buy and rename the Zim's Coffee House "Wim's"; it's now the Café Niebaum-Coppola) and also did the better-received Paris, Texas, then moved back to Europe and resumed making good stuff.

It tells you a lot about the late 80s and the emotional and moral exhaustion of the time -- not to mention the bankruptcy of cinema -- that Wings of Desire was welcomed as a masterpiece. It's still a good, pretty, and sometimes moving film, but the sheer fact that it paved the way for the sentimental sequel makes me question the value of the original film.

One of his strangest movies, and one few people ever saw -- I'm one of the relative few to have seen it in a theater -- was 2000's The Million Dollar Hotel, starring Mel Gibson of all people. Unbeliveable miscasting, yet the film is still watchable.

But nothing can beat the pleasure of watching Hopper and Ganz in The American Friend. Based on an amalgam of Patricia Highsmith's books about Tom Ripley, the film revolves around art fraud, a hoaxed illness, and a Mafia war. It's set in some strange, soon-to-be redeveloped parts of Hamburg, on a high-speed train, in the Paris Metro, and on the soon-to-be demolished West Side Highway in NYC.

Rich, saturated reds and greens dominate the palette. Hitchcockian thriller music accompanies the action. And this was Hopper's comeback role, the job (aside from Hoosiers) that restored him to the good graces of Hollywood financiers and allowed them to take a chance on casting him again. He's funny, weird, and his physical presence is completely not-on -- he looks exactly like what he was at the time, a recovering addict. A totally terrific movie.

Oh -- did I say I used to be a film geek?

What are you working on? : Catherine Brady

I've just posted an interview with a writer who's working on one of the most exciting projects I've heard about yet: a biography of a microbiologist. Doesn't sound that great? Here's short story writer and biographer Catherine Brady:

I wanted to write this story for several reasons: first, (stem-cell biologist Elizabeth) Blackburn came of age as a scientist when women were a tiny minority of research scientists and faced enormous discrimination, so her story illuminates that history and also underscores the difficulties women continue to face. The field of research she founded is one of the very few scientific fields in which there is gender parity, and it's worth asking why in order to see how changes in other fields of science might produce the same equity. Second, I think biology is beautiful and was captured by the idea of trying to write about a research scientist's intellectual life and creativity, which for me has parallels with artistic creativity. So many books about science lock out the lay reader, and I wanted to write a book that would not be buried in jargon and could describe scientific processes accurately and in an engaging way. Third, Blackburn's dismissal from the bioethics council [by President Bush, for her opposition to his anti-science policies] raises important questions about the relationship between public policy and scientific advice, and the politicization of science threatens the welfare of every person in the country.

What a great project! And since Brady is a past winner of the Flannery O'Connor Award for short fiction, you know she knows how to tell a story. The only bad part? We'll have to wait til spring 2007 for the book.

Lit up

Today's first raft of literaria:

The Premiere Bookshop in Bangalore, long a refuge for the literary set, is closing. The Bangalore Buzz blog reprints a story from the local Deccan Herald.

Even in the old Bangalore which stood out for its hospitality, grace and charm, Shanbhag was unique. He was personally acquainted with all his customers, and all his books. He encouraged the browser, although in his shop, browsing was a contact sport.

Over the years, informal rules had to be observed. You could, of course, spot your own favourite, but it was best to leave the actual pulling out of the book from the pile either to Shanbhag or one of his assistants to whom he was constantly reeling out names, positions, directions, and occasional anecdotes.

The shop hasn’t changed in 35 years, and neither has its proprietor. Those who knew him with a full head of hair are long gone.

Also: The SF Chronicle talks to Mary Karr, poet and memoirist. Michelle Tea interviews Carol Seajay, founder of Feminist Bookstore News (now replaced by Books To Watch Out For). And Liz Henry translates Salome Urena de Henriquez, one of the Latin American poets she's been excavating.

All these brilliant people -- if I can't have them on my shelves, at least I can have their books.

A book deal for an editor

If you've been following the What Are You Working On? interviews, you saw one several weeks ago from Jordan Rosenfeld. Yesterday she posted the happy news of a book deal with Writers Digest Books for a how-to book called Master the Scene. Way to go, Jordan. (And thanks to Myfanwy for the link.)

FOB girl turns the corner

Let's check in with Erin the NASA bedrest study subject, who halfway through her 90 days of enforced bed rest (at a minus 7-degree angle, at that -- try keeping your appetite up with your feet constantly higher than your head) seems to have turned the corner:

Every night it takes me a little longer to get to sleep, a little less time spent sleeping and a little more time thinking. and thinking. and thinking. finally getting around to some of the introspection that i was expecting from all of this. and i'm surprising myself with what i'm finding out.

By having to completely depend on people to survive right now, i'm learning that my desire to be independent far far FAR outwieghs my desire to be doted on and spoiled, or waited on hand and foot. holy shit, someone please let me cook for myself.

i've always known that i like having time to myself. but now i'm learning how necessary it is to keep one's sanity in order. this is most likely why i'm staying up later and later, to counterbalance the hectic days with nurses in here all the time and volunteers and visits from mike and bright lights and everything else, when i can't get a moment's peace to myself. this is also why i tend to feel better after the nights that i've slept less, because i've gotten some time to sort the day out, sort my head out and relax without constant interruptions. when it's gogogogoGOdeadstop? All of my brain power has gone to my distractions, and not to myself.

And if you didn't see the photos of her daily "suspensions," you must.

R.I.P. Stephanie

Today is the 7th anniversary of the death of my dear friend Stephanie, ex-lover and near-superhero. Last fall I wrote a remembrance of her that will be published this year in the anthology Best Sex Writing 2006.

Stephanie died in a rollover on a lonely stretch of Arizona interstate highway; the accident was a result of road rage. The driver of the other car fled the scene and was never found.

A sad end to a great girl. I remember her today, and almost every day.

But enough about you

Saturday morning, and I feel like saying a few words of nothing about my life. The rain of spring continues here. On, off, hard, drizzle, sudden brilliant sun, hail; at the moment it's lovely, but it could be pouring in half an hour. Since it's actually raining well into late March, this has officially been a reasonably rainy winter followed by a genuinely rainy spring. Reservoirs are almost full, and there's enough snow in the mountains to give water to California for two years. This creates a feeling of plenitude and relaxation in Californians (which, having lived here for over 25 years now, I can begin to call myself, though some would say San Francisco is not part of California in any real way -- speaking of water, for example, San Francisco has its own dedicated water supply) and makes them stop killing each other, or at least keeps them indoors.

I'm sitting in the Morning Due cafe, home of the Saturday morning Dante club, which is meeting just across the cafe -- cute, smart high schoolers led by a cute, smart teacher who does this on her own time. Stuff like this makes me love the world and gives me confidence and faith in people. Despite all evidence to the contrary, people are still capable of real courage, of real acts of juctice-making and love. Which is what giving up your Saturdays to teach kids is.

Now it's off to work on my poor, neglected novel, but I have a hopeful note about even that -- I actually made contact on tribe.net with a guy who works in the state dept. of transportation in Karnakata, which is where Bangalore is -- the setting for my novel.

Movie review by proxy: The Heart is Deceitful...

The very brave and selfless Thomas Roche went where no one has gone before -- and where very few people are likely to go: he sat through, and reviews the "J.T. LeRoy"-adapted film The Heart is De Seat Full of All Things. (Thanks to Violet Blue for the link.)

So, the short version: This "not at all autobiographical" "fiction" is, and I'm putting this as delicately as I can, in close competition for the title of "Most Egregiously Ridiculous Piece of Shit the Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Have Ever produced." Hell!! It may be the most egregiously ridiculous piece of human culture ever created, though I'm sure there's some pretty bad cave paintings out there.

As such, Deceitful really should blow Showgirls out of the water as the ideal drunken-screaming-queen date movie, and in many ways is just begging for the Rocky Horror Picture Show treatment. I, for one, spent the last half of the movie sketching out my Halloween costume.

I'm sure that makes it sound a lot more fun than it is. You know how they say we're all supposed to "support the troops?" Roche deserves combat pay, and perhaps some R&R, for his sacrifice.

JT LeRoy, Thomas Roche,movies, film reviews

Lede of the week

Randy Quaid, who plays a tough sheep rancher in "Brokeback Mountain," claims he was fleeced for his work in the movie.

Who knows what happens off camera? A.P. story.

It's Bad Behavior Friday™!

In Tennessee, the wife of a clergyman was charged with his murder. Police found the woman and the couple's children hundreds of miles away in an Alabama beach town where "police were lucky to find them among hundreds of spring break revelers." Yeah, I'll bet a 32-year-old woman and three kids really blended into the party.

In other church news, we turn to a place called South Coogee -- see, this is already worth it -- in Australia, where an email jest has turned into "a year-long nightmare of gossip and allegation, whispered suggestions about lesbianism, the nature of her relationship with the rector's wife, and even pedophilia." It's like a 21st century game of telephone -- make the wrong joke in email and you're a pedophile. The ill-timed jest?

The sender, a loyal Anglican, used tinges of blue humour -- as well as several light-hearted biblical references -- to question women's subordination and why male but not female lay members of her eastern suburbs congregation were allowed to preach. "Whose penis must I hold to do a real sermon in the morning like [name deleted]?!" the email concluded.

Hmm, I wonder what the "light-hearted Biblical references" were in that context? Perhaps something about her coogee.

In Paris and other cities across France, protesters continued burning cars, which must make the car dealers happy, at least.

And in a new development in a story that consumed the NY media world last fall, the lawyer for writer Peter Braunstein said he will plead insanity in charges he dressed as a firefighter on Halloween in order to gain entrance to the apartment of a woman he'd been stalking and sexually assault her.

Thrice-nominated Katia

Congrats again to my pal Katia Noyes for another award nomination for her splendid novel Crashing America. She reads this weekend in L.A. with Michelle Tea, so all you southern Californians, here's your excuse to drive into town. Like you need an excuse to hop in the car.

I hope readers aren't getting tired of me promoting my friend Katia. If you are, tough. I wouldn't do it if I didn't think her book fucking kills.

Katia Noyes, Crashing America, Michelle Tea

What are you working on? : Gary Amdahl

Just posted in my series of interviews with writers about their current projects, Gary Amdahl, author of the just-published Visigoth. (Disclosure: Amdahl and I have the same agent.)

WIth much experience as a playwright, Amdahl is working on a novel:

In the theater, the more you write, very often the worse it is. In a book, you have no other recourse: if you want something understood, you write it out. If you write yourself into a corner, you can write yourself out. Plays require architecture and carpentry; the thing has to be sound. A novel is more forgiving of uncertainty and (even awkward) explorations.

Gary Amdahl, writers, playwrighting

Adventures in book publicity

Want a harried reviewer to get into your book? Mark sections with post-its that say something like "If you can only read a bit, just read these pages." That's how it works for Jenna Crispin, the founder of Bookslut:

I started reading Marisha Pessl's Special Topics in Calamity Physics because the publicist had actually tabbed sections for me to read. It seemed like so much work to go through, I had to stop and take a look. And right now, I'm hooked.

I guess she means that she appreciated all the effort the publicist had gone to. Anyway, it's a cool idea, especially if your first few paragraphs are sort of not flashy. Because, you know, we can't all have great first lines, or such a great, if slightly confusing, title. (I wonder if the book gets mis-shelved in the science section, in the same way "Trout Fishing in America" used to be ordered by unwitting sporting goods stores.)

bookslut, first lines, book publicity

Today's fake: Marilyn detritus

The LA Times has a piece about the booming market for Marilyn Monroe's old clothes and other posessions, spicing up the story with the warning that "sophisticated fakes" lurk among the swag.

Jill Adams of Tujunga, who runs a Marilyn Monroe fan website called forevermarilyn.com, groaned as she recalled the time her mother tried to surprise her with a pair of the late actress' shoes, size 9.

"Clearly, they weren't her shoes," Adams said. "Marilyn wore size 7."

"My mother got taken for over $700," Adams added -- not saying whether she offered to repay at least part of the money. But I can see a real market here. Could you buy Elvis's medicine cabinet? JFK's back brace? Michael Jackson's used condoms? I'll bet you can -- somebody do that eBay search, okay?

Previously: The Museum of Characteristic Objects (low in entry)

And somehow related: Christine posts on drag and the difference between costume, uniform and signifiers of the true self, including a must-see picture of her resembling Jackie Kennedy

Marilyn Monroe, fakes, hoaxes

Mega-thriller author reveals provenance

In a funny take on a court document submitted by Dan Brown in the ongoing case in British court against his novel Why should I even give the title? You know what I'm talking about, Slate highlights moments in Brown's career, including the Eureka moment when the Amherst-educated east coaster realized literature didn't necessarily have to be, you know, boring:

Brown resolved to become a writer when he read Sidney Sheldon's The Doomsday Conspiracy while vacationing in Tahiti. "Up until this point," he writes, "almost all of my reading had been dictated by my schooling (primarily classics like Faulkner, Steinbeck, Dostoyevsky, Shakespeare, etc.) and I'd read almost no commercial fiction at all since the Hardy Boys as a child." The Sheldon book was a revelation, swift and merciless where Shakespeare, etc., had been slow and cumbersome. "[L]ife seemed to be trying to tell me something," Brown notes, adding, "I began to suspect that maybe I could write a 'thriller' of this type one day."

But first he had to sell his soul to the devil, saying, "I wish to learn of this 'thriller' genre, and also not to put words denoting 'concepts' I look down upon in 'quotation marks.'"

I made that last part up. The item is courtesy Mediabistro's Newsfeed. But notice the false modesty: "I began to suspect that maybe I could write..." Jeez, could you qualify a thought any more? Give me a break, Brown! I'll bet it was more like: "Fuck, I'm wasting my time studying Chaucer -- give me more of this pablum pronto. And someone look up Sidney Sheldon's agent -- this has got to be a fucking gold mine!"

Dan Brown, writers, Eureka moments

Frey figures to find freedom from fracas in France flight

Apparently James Frey under the pressure and booked off to France. Read StarryShine's take -- so hilarious.

What are you working on? : Dashka Slater

Just posted to the "What are you working on?" series of interviews with writers about their works in progress, Dashka Slater, who is bringing out two children's books this year, and whose charming novel The Wishing Box was set before, during and after the 1989 earthquake in Northern California.

She's now working on a short story collection:

In my life as a writer, I have written poetry, a novel, magazine articles, and picture books, and I find short stories to be the single most difficult genre I have ever attempted. There's just no room for error. It's like building a bridge out of toothpicks -- one false move and the whole thing collapses. There was one story that I wrote five times from top to bottom before I finally hit upon a way to tell it.

Dashka Slater, writers, Oakland writers

Dept. of circle jerks

Thanks to GalleyCat for linking late yesterday to my interview with novelist Alev Croutier. They took a rather jaundiced approach to Croutier's statements about her project -- but what do you expect, they're in New York.

They link to me, I link to them, I link to myself -- it's the internets! That's how it works!

And in the Times, stop the presses: Literary Novels Going Straight to Paperback!! Old news, of course, but that's why it's called the Paper Of Record. It isn't really happening unless they say so.

Now if my novel went straight to paperback, that would be news.

galleycat, publishing

Writers, have faith

Rachel Kramer Bussel continues her Mediabistro gig today with an interview with MacAdam/Cage's Kate Nitze, who edited Michelle Tea's just-released book Rose of No Man's Land. Nitze sounds very chipper, says she really wants new voices, and "if we absolutely love a book and want to publish it, in the end it doesn't matter if it is an author's first or 10th book." So that's good news for would-be authors. The bad news is that she "only occasionally" reads unagented submissions, so get yourself an agent first. (If you're clueless about the process, you could do no better than to read Miss Snark's blog. Start with the archives and read forward. It'll only take you a couple weeks to read it all, and when you finish, you'll be fully educated with good advice. It's better than sending out bad, fruitless query letters.)

By the way, that is not Savannah Knoop on the cover of Tea's book, no matter how much it looks like him.

Miss Snark, Kate Nitze, agents, editors, publishing, Michelle Tea

What are you working on? : novelist Alev Croutier

Just posted in my series of interviews with writers talking about their current projects, Turkish-American novelist Alev Crouter, whose next book, set in Paris and Constantinople, is based on a real literary hoax involving a famous writer and three women who live in a harem.

I was doing research for my first book Harem: The World Behind the Veil when I came across the story. I was so drawn to it that I almost abandoned everything else I was writing in order to concentrate on it. It would not leave me and kept coming back and I kept researching and coming across additional information that made it more and more mysterious and fascinating. It was like going through a gallery of mirrors without reaching an end.

writers, Turkish writers,hoaxes

War-zone reporter has ' serious PTSD'

Courtesy Poynter.org, here's a Mercury-News interview with Washington Post reporter Jackie Spinner, who returned from a long posting in Iraq "jumpy, angry, unpredictable, depressed -- I have very serious post-traumatic stress disorder."

Things to read: the Chronicle

You know how some days you wake up and there's nothing in the paper you want to read? And other days there's all this great stuff? I don't know why it happens, but today the SF Chronicle had one of its best days in recent memory. And I wouldn't post about it except it was truly unusual.

First, a feel-good feature on a Mission High School (that's where I used to teach) teacher who meets with a group of a dozen students on her own time every Saturday morning and teaches them Dante. They're going through The Inferno line by line, and the kids -- immigrants from Asia and Latin America for the most part -- totally dig it. The saintly teacher is only 30 years old... I shouldn't say "only" 30, since that's when you have the energy for stuff like that.

Then there's a front-page analysis story on California Republicans who are fed up with Bush -- real Orange Country types, too. Both heartening and saddening.

Even columnist Jon Carroll -- who long ago lost his edge -- wakes up and contributes a blistering attack on homophobes like the American Family Association. I wish this column could be printed in every newspaper in the U.S., that's how sharp it is. And I wish Carroll wrote like this every day -- or even every week!

San Francisco Chronicle, Heather Knight, education, high school, homophobia, American Family Association, Republicans

Today's fake: LeRoy redux

We go once more to the well for some investigation into the J.T. LeRoy hoax. Today SF Chronicle writer Heidi Benson -- who first wrote that LeRoy's real identity didn't matter, and only weeks later, when the hoax was revealed by others, finally found it in herself to actually knock on the door of the Albert-Knoop residence, from which the principals had already fled -- publishes a long piece in which all the "clues" and background to the LeRoy farce are listed. Laura Albert -- author of the LeRoy tomes -- has a playwright mother. Geoffrey Knoop -- whose half-sister played LeRoy during photo shoots and live appearances -- has a filmmaker father.

The only other new information in the piece is the fact that the first LeRoy bestseller, "Sarah," has been optioned by film director Steven Shainberg, director of "Secretary;" and some interesting details from a Vanity Fair photo shoot in which assistants to photographer Mary Ellen Mark were told not to engage "JT" in any way, even as they were doing "his" makeup, but to direct all statements and questions to "Speedie," née Albert. Mark says she read "JT" as a woman all the way, but didn't speak up; in addition, "JT"'s voice gave her away: "It was someone from a good family, not someone who came from any poor white trash" as "JT" was supposed to have done. It makes you wonder about how many other of the celebrities she has photographed are frauds and phonies about whom she's had to hold her tongue.

Benson does make one interesting point in the piece, where she creates a context for the LeRoy hoax in "San Francisco subcultures (which) don't just co-exist; they coalesce.

From Polk Street¹ to North Beach², the Mission³ to SoMa⁴, the music scene overlaps with performance art, which overlaps with the erotica scene, which overlaps with the queer scene, which overlaps with the literary set. The same faces pop up at LitQuake, the Red Devil Longue, Burning Man and the Exotic Erotic Ball.

That synchronicity defined the mid-90s, when the LeRoy hoax incubated. Anyone with cultural aspirations was in a band, making a movie, staging a one-person show, organizing a festival or a fundraiser or all of the above. It was the height of DIY culture, part of the punk ethos that inspired zines (the blogs of the day) by the hundreds. In this milieu, Albert began faxing messages to editors and writers, starting with hipster novelist Dennis Cooper...

That's a very smart couple of paragraphs, for a couple of reasons. First, the "overlapping" she talks about is very real, and it describes me and most of the people I know. I did almost all the things she talks about, though I started in the early 80s and by the mid-90s was about done. I did performance art, wrote erotica, held benefits (though I never attended Burning Man nor do I know anyone who thinks the Ex.Er. Ball is for anyone besides tourists -- true freaks go to the Folsom Street Fair, while the Ex.Er. Ball is for straight people). Secondly, the notion that this subcultural ferment created a petri dish for the LeRoy hoax rings true. The overlapping demimondes of San Francisco have space for all kinds of weird ideas.

Finally, to her credit, Benson quotes two local writers, Susie Bright and Michelle Tea, who have expressed outrage at the hoax (unlike Mark, who takes it in stride, and Benson herself, whose original piece on the LeRoy hoax, coming months after initial reports, was inconclusive and did more to confuse the issue than to shed light on it). My favorite outraged take on the whole thing is still Violet Blue's; she nails the real issue, which is authenticity versus posing, not as a way to separate the in-crowd from the tourists, but as a way to judge whether someone's statements and work is of value.

One more time: this matters because of the war in Iraq. If Bush can lie about WMDs; if he can present himself as a folksy Texas rancher rather than the privileged child of millionaires; if he can pretend his actions are patriotic rather than the machinations of a bunch of rich indistrialists and investors who have taken over the government, then why should readers be any more discriminating about the provenance of purported non-fiction. The difference between truth and lies matters.

Much more interesting is the piece by Jack Boulware in Salon two weeks ago which revealed Laura Albert's backround in the subcultures of SF with much greater detail. Boulware's thesis -- that Albert embarked on the whole scheme because she wanted fame -- makes clear the most ironic element of the whole thing. Her works earned the author fame, all right -- but only in a way that meant she could never reveal her true identity. Instead she had to live vicariously as "JT"'s sidekick Speedie, listening to her husband's sister communicate in gruff monosyllables. That must have been a drag.

And when the truth was finally known, Albert was generally condemned for perpetuating the hoax. There are several people who say they admire its audacity and success, but there are more condemning her as the ultimate fraud. Yeah, she's going to do a tell-all, but honestly, you think the same people who thought it was cool to get "JT LeRoy" to write for "Deadwood" or the NYT travel section will think it's cool to get Laura Albert to do that? NFW.

1 - Polk Street is the downmarket street for gay male culture and ground zero for tranny and boy hookers; tricking on Polk St. was supposedly part of the "LeRoy" bio
2 - North Beach is the traditional home of the Beats and is still regarded as a place where literature and writing are cherished
3 - The Mission is the new generation's North Beach, where housing is still relatively cheap and where there are tons of bookstores, galleries, bars and performance spaces
4 - SoMa is a sort of second-rate copy of the Mission District; it's always had fewer bookstores, galleries and such, but it is the home of the sex demimonde, with all the leather bars and leather accoutrements stores.

JT LeRoy, Mary Ellen Mark,Heidi Benson, hoaxes, fakes

Pin-up girls

Rachel K-B posts about a Modern Vixens book. Violet Blue puts up a shot of someone's bionic butt. Audacia Ray posts sneak preview images from her Sex Work Matters show here. But best of all, I love this beautiful photo of Badger.

But if you're looking for actual smut, here (courtesy Audacia's SugarClick site) is NerdPr0n:

i am the cute girl on the subway with her nose in a comic book. i am the girl who beat you in the m:tg sealed-deck tourney. i am the straight-A student you love to hate. ... and i LOVE getting naked on the internet.

pin-up girls, booty,Violet Blue,Rachel Kramer Bussel, Audacia Ray

'Visigoth' party

A couple nights ago, on my way back from Redwood City, I picked up Katia at her house in Glen Park and we drive through the rain to Varnish Gallery, south of Market, where she had her book party last fall and where more and more people are doing the same. We went there for the party for Gary Amdahl and his Milkweed Editions short story collection Visigoth. I didn't know him but we share the same agent, and I always look for opportunities to shmooze with her in an unobtrusive way.

We got there about half an hour after the official start time, just as the rain started picking up. Amdahl began to read from his book just as Shannon came in the door -- she had arranged to meet me there too -- and as he continued reading the rain came down harder and harder until it was a truly stupendous cloudburst, the likes of which is almost never seen in San Francisco.

We used to get these gully washers in Texas once in a while, and when I was a child in Edwardsville it happened twice that during early recess a cloudburst opened up on the first graders, out of a cloudy sky with no warning, just CRASH as if a huge drain had opened up, and as we watched and laughed from our classroom looking out on the playground -- a big empty area paved with gravel -- the first graders all let out a scream at once, as if you had hit all the keys on the cat piano, and ran pell mell for the school door.

Amdahl read on through this Biblical rain, which drummed on the roof and skylight of the gallery -- a refurbished machine shop like so many of the small older buildings south of Market -- even as it threatened to literally drown him out. Finally he gave a pleading look up at the skylight. He finished reading before the rain halted.

I had a really fun time hanging out with Shannon, as Katia worked the lesbian side of the room, and Elise also introduced me to Amdahl, whom I asked to participate in my interview series. Later on he read some more. I bought his book and later read and really liked the first story, "The Flyweight."

Watch for an interview with Amdahl in my series of interviews with writers.

writers, Gary Amdahl,Visigoth

Fish in a barrel

It struck me today that the JT LeRoy hoax is the latest entry in a string of classic San Francisco stories. Classic SF stories must have an element of the bizarre, and they must develop slowly over time like an excellent cheese. The biggest classic SF story of recent years was the dog-mauling case in which a woman was killed by two guard dogs in the hallway outside her apartment. This had sex, violence, and the requisite San Francisco weirdness -- in spades. The dogs, it turned out, were owned by an equally vicious white supremacist prison gangster; they were cared for by a strange lawyer couple who represented the convict and had a strangely crypto-sexual relationship with him through notes and pictures. And when the lawyers came to trial on manslaughter charges, they were represented by an equally kooky attorney who "wept, stood on tiptoes, got down on all fours and kicked the jury box repeatedly to portray how her client fought to save (the victim's) life."

Man, that was as good as it got -- but that's not all! The victim was a lesbian, and public sympathy for (and some clever politicking by) her bereft partner wound up changing state law on same-sex partnerships, granting domestic partners greater rights.

Now that's a classic San Francisco story. But how does the JT LeRoy hoax measure up?

Sex - yes
Money - yes
Death - no, unless you count the death of the innocence of many wee trannies who hero-worshipped JT LeRoy
Bizarre factor - yes
Celebrity - yes
Happened largely in SF - yes
Took advantage of SF liberal fantasies about itself - yes

I rest my case. But what of the movie of JT LeRoy's The Heart is The Seat Full of All Things? SFist's Sarah Hromack lights it up for us.

JT LeRoy, SFist, Sarah Hromack, The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things, San Francisco

It's Bad Behavior Friday™!

We begin with Today's Fake: Courtesy Fishbowl NY, this WWD report of a book proposal with problems. The fashion-industry memoir-cum-exposé "How to Wear Black: Adventures on Fashion's Front Line" has scenes with people who claim the events never happened or that they never met the author; other scenes were apparently lifted from the work of others. Hello! What have we learned recently about memoirs and veracity?

In Los Angeles, people are agog over the continually unfolding story of private eye Anthony Pellicano. A recently uncovered police tape captured the gumshoe boasting about his celebrity clients and the practices, such as secretly taping phone calls, that have got him in trouble. Vanity Fair is all over this one, you can bet -- just wait a few more issues.

Also in LA, a man successfully got a court order to stop his elderly father from transferring any more money to a Nigerian bank scam. Ironically:

The elder Gottschalk, a neuroscientist, gained national prominence in 1987 by announcing that President Reagan had been suffering from diminished mental ability as early as 1980.

Chip off the old block eh?

Kate Braverman's feverish memoir-slash-circus act "Frantic Transmissions To and From Los Angeles" -- a friend called it "prose poetry," which only begins to capture the roiling, chaotic character of the book -- is reviewed in the Village Voice -- I really liked the reviewer's line "Need every sunset sound so toxic?" Meanwhile, bloggers keep cheerfully reporting her blurts and bon mots. This is one situation in which the very worthy work itself is being drowned out by the author's force of personality, but since there is no such thing as bad publicity, and Braverman herself has absolutely nothing to lose, there's no real reason for her to hold back, is there? (Previously: in June '05, K.B. was already taking no prisoners.)

Kate Braverman, writers, fakes, Anthony Pellicanohoaxes

Betwixt

Violet Blue posted today about a lot of amazing things. Her point of departure is the JT LeRoy hoax and how it epitomized the kind of poseur she says she encountered throughout her early years here as a queer gutter punk in San Francisco at a time when the sex underground was already well-established. She writes about breaking into sex writing and reviewing, competing against privileged middle-class people who pretended to be punk (she graciously leaves out the names) -- a fascinating perspective on the so-called community of the San Francisco sex demimonde.

The subtext is that the SF sex demimonde is just as cliquish and elitist as any other close-knit collection of people, whether it's a high school, a country club, a summer camp, or (in this case) a few hundred people who live the rest of the country's sexual fantasies, both explicit and hidden.

By virtue of publishing Frighten the Horses for a few years and being a SFSI volunteer, I managed for a brief time to reach just the edge of this community, though I had a totally middle-class background and was holding down a full-time straight job the whole time. And the only thing I could see from the edge of that community was how difficult it would for someone like me to get any deeper -- because the center of the demimonde is very much off the edge of straight society, a society I never really left.

On the other hand -- having just visited my mother and been reminded of how far I've come -- I know I don't live in the utterly square world of my parents' expectations either. To them -- if they had ever glimpsed my life -- I would have looked like an utter freak. To the real freaks I looked utterly middle class. I've always been sort of neither-nor, neither a freak nor a square, and if only in that sense, I really am sort of a misfit.

Violet Blue, San Francisco,queer community, sex positive,sex writers

Elmira

As I wrote a few days ago, I swung by the hamlet of Elmira, Oregon on the way back to San Francisco. I wanted to visit it ever since reading what Richard Brautigan wrote about in "Revenge of the Lawn" about being a child and standing on the bridge over the Long Tom River at Elmira, gazing into the water. Having read this as a teenager I imagined a somewhat grand brige, probably some kind of cantilever job. But when I finally found the bridge, it was little more than a viaduct:

The pictures from the second half of my trip are here.

Elmira, Richard Brautigan,Oregon

Spam names of the month

Nestling H. Cosmologies
Folio D. Luckiness
Scaliest I. Etiquette
Spawn L. Oman (!!)
Infected D. Ramrods (!!!)
Oberon Krauss
Hart Burns -- no, it wasn't for a diet aid.

What are you working on? : Binnie Kirshenbaum

I'm excited to be able to post my latest in the series of interviews with writers talking about their current projects: widely published novelist and writing teacher Binnie Kirshenbaum, author of several novels and story collections.

Each draft seems to present its own set of challenges. Right now, I'm stuck on the shape of it. There are two stories intertwined, one very much in the present and the other about nothing but the past. It's finding the balance, a way to keep the present story alive while going back in time with which I am currently struggling. ... The last draft, I know, is a two week or so process. I read it over a bunch of times with the red pencil in hand, taking out whatever is clunky, awkward, unnecessary. The drafts between now and then... I'm aiming for two months on each.

writers, novelists, creative writing, Binnie Kirshenbaum

Girlbomb update

You're going to be hearing a lot about Girlbomb, a debut memoir by 36-year-old Janice Erlbaum. I just got the book and am digging into it; I'll interview Erlbaum next week. Meanwhile here's a short interview on Book Reporter.

Girlbomb, Janice Erlbaum, writers, memoirs

Reset

After coming back from vacation I was busy at work and too tired to do much of anything else, so it really took me until now -- 48 hours after actually arriving back in the Bay Area -- to reset my brain enough to even get into Blogger.

I offer you this: Galleycat on Kate Braverman. Previously: Braverman on the warpath; and profiled in the Chronicle. See also Miss Snark on Braverman here and here.

It's not pretty, but it's entertaining.

Kate Braverman, Galleycat, writers

Medford to SF

This morning after I left the motel I drove across the street to one of those espresso shacks that are ubiquitous in Oregon. The shack was staffed by two teenage girls who were so darned cheerful and friendly it was like they were on ecstacy. I have no trouble believing they are encouraging repeat visitors and their tips with their extra-friendly attitudes, but they gave me the full treatment even though I was driving a car with a California plate and was obviously just a motorist hitting the road.

The drive down I-5, and then 505 and 80, from Medford, Ore. to San Francisco has some small mountains to go over during the first hundred and fifty miles or so; after Redding, the road flattens out, I drove south into the sun, and the drive becomes a little boring. It doesn't take that long -- five or six hours at the most. I used up all my pictures in the camera yesterday so I took no pictures.

It's great to be home.

Portland to Medford

After spending Friday afternoon to Sunday noon with my mother, I took off again -- almost. My first stop was at a nearby coffee shop with wi-fi, where I checked the weather on the road south. Then it was off down I-5 toward my intermediate destination, Medford, a little less than halfway to San Francisco. I had thought of going back via the sea highway, 101, but I thought it would take too long and be too tiring. Besides, I wanted to be in my motel room in Medford in time to watch the "Sopranos" season premiere at 9:00.

The one side trip I did take was to the hamlet of Elmira, about 15 miles west of Eugene, because Richard Brautigan mentions it in his stories. I thought there was a mention of him standing on the bridge over the Long Tom River at Elmira, and I'd always wanted to find this spot to see if it would accord with the misty forested picture I got in my mind when I read Bratigan as a teenager. After circling the area for some time, and appreciating its pastoral beauty, I did find a spot conceivably in Elmira where the road crosses the Long Tom River, but unfortunately the bridge itself was little more than a simple viaduct. I took several pictures, nevertheless, and once I get them developed I'll post them.

Then it was off down the road, and driving was a piece of cake compared to the trip up -- gorgeous hills and green valleys, flowering trees, sheep and cows grazing in pastures, along with the occasional llama. The only thing that kept it from being a perfect day was that I was constantly monitoring my speed. I didn't want to get another speeding ticket.

Tomorrow, home to SF.

Great post from a sexy babe

I love what Rachel K-B is doing these days. The column she links to is deinfitely hot, but the great thing is that unlike most such essays it doesn't subtly put the reader down for not being as sexy, connected, libertine and in-crowd as the writer.

Pictures from first leg of trip

I posted pictures from my trip from San Francisco to Portland here. If the link doesn't take you straight to the right "gallery," click on PHOTOS under my ID and look for the "March 2006 Road Trip" gallery.

But Buzznet is acting kind of wonky, so here are a couple of pictures:
 

Dunsmuir, Calif rail yard
 

Hwy. 26 through the Mt. Hood forest

Klamath Falls to Portland

I drove north from Klamath Falls on US 97 all the way through Bend and Redmond to the turnoff for US 26 and Portland. Much of the morning drive was snowy, through pine forests. It would be monotonous on a summer day -- mile after mile of big fir trees. Today they were covered in snow, it was like driving through a Christmas card, and for two hours I saw only three colors -- green, white, and the color of the tree trunks.

Finally the road descended out of the forest and into the high desert, going through towns like Redmond and Madras. (Not the Redmond of Microsoft fame -- that's in Washington, this is Oregon.) Then 26 took me past Mount Hood, and then it was really snowy -- medium flakes falling, the road covered in snow, and for 90 minutes I was once again in a winter wonderland -- but this was so snowy that I actually got a bit concerned. For the first time in the trip I thought maybe I really should have put chains on -- not that I know the first thing about putting on tire chains, nor did I have any.

Finally we started coming down out of the snowy Mt. Hood forest, and the line of traffic I was in passed a sign that said "Chain Removal Area" -- and nobody was stopped there! So nobody had chains on that snowy road.

A few minutes later the highway opened up so much that I got a speeding ticket, darn it. Then poking through Portland -- the highway goes on city streets.

So I'm at my mother's house. Tomorrow I might get photos from the first half of the trip put on disc and posted to the web.

An inch or two of snow

Whoa, while I was eating dinner it snowed an inch or two and stuck. I just ripped that picture, of quiet (i.e. dead) downtown Klamath Falls, about two miles from where I am here in a motel on the outskirts of town, from this live webcam . Yes, even this podunk little town has a webcam.

Not sure what it's going to be like tomorrow morning, but I've got all day to get to Portland where... whoops, it snowed there today too.

What are you working on? : writer Elliott Kalan

Just posted in my series of interviews with writers about their current projects, Elliott Kalan, writer and segment producer on The Daily Show (yes, The Daily Show), star of his own monthly comedy revue, and humor columnist. Kalan co-produced the "gay cowboy montage" introduced by his liege, Jon Stewart, on the Oscars telecast on Sunday.

writers, Daily Show,Elliott Kalan

SF to Klamath Falls

I'm on a short road trip to visit my mother in Portland. Ordinarily the drive from SF to Portland is a long 10 or 12 hour day but since I had a couple comp days at work I decided to split it up and go the long way, via Klamath Falls, Oregon. I was interested in this back way since taking the train up to Seattle in 2003; this is essentially the route the train takes, parallel to US 97 from Redding to Klamath Falls and around the back side of Crater Lake.

On the way up here I stopped at Redding so I could see their sole tourist attraction, the Sundial Bridge, an attractive bike and pedestrian bridge across the Sacramento River. At the foot of the bridge the town has built a museum and restaurant where I ate lunch. The food is indifferent but I'm sure it's a very nice place to sit on a summer evening and have a beer, since there's a large patio. Today it was a little cool, but it was all right if you sat in the sun. This being spring the river was high and rushing along pleasantly.

After I left Interstate 5 at the town of Weed -- already 200 miles north of SF -- I climbed into a range of mountains and it immediately started snowing lightly. For the rest of the drive, about 70 miles, it snowed. There wasn't enough to pile up on the road or worry about much, though the gunk on the road -- dirt and salt -- really messed up my windshield. The road leads through forest at first, and then an eerie flat grassland that's really beautiful.

Now I'm at a Holiday Inn Express in Klamath Falls, and I have to say this is the best hotel for the money I have ever stayed in. Everything is new, the room is filled with features (iron, hair drier, microwave oven, fridge, jacuzzi). There's free wireless internet all the way down here at the end of the hotel and not just in the lobby. And it's really quiet. All this for $52. That's what you get if you go to the middle of nowhere and the town is just large enough to have some chain motels.

On the road

I'm going to be out of town for several days til the 13th, though I will probably figure out ways to post to the blog.

XOXOX

Northern Calif. Book Award nominees

Congratulations again to Katia Noyes for her nomination as a finalist in the fiction category for the 2006 Northern California Book Awards. She's up against 2005 National Book Award winner William T. Vollmann as well as Eric B. Martin's Winners and Gloria Kurian Broder's Their Magician. Award ceremony is on April 5 in San Francisco.

Previously:
Noyes nominated for Lambda award
Crashing America on Amazon's 2005 best list

Katia Noyes, National Book Award,Northern California Book Award

Rejection the 8th

Here are some of the latest comments on my book by an editor:

Such an interesting idea here, and really great details!

But:

... but I have to admit the story itself didn't draw me in, ultimately, and didn't get "there" fast enough to keep my interest after the initial opening.

True that. The middle of the book does develop a little slowly. I wonder where the "initial opening" stopped for her.

No complaints here. My agent is awesome -- how many people even get seen by eight top publishing houses?

Today's fake: Barry

There's a big feature on Salon on Laura Albert, who wrote J.T. LeRoy's books.

But that's not today's fake. That's old news.

Today's fake: Barry Lamar Bonds.

S.F. Chronicle photo by Deanne Fitzmaurice

A single statistic in today's Chronicle story tells the whole sad truth. Barry hit a home run every 16.2 at-bats during the first 13 years of his career. Beginning in 1999 -- when he turned 25 -- he began taking steroids, and nearly doubled his output, hitting a home run every 8.5 at-bats.

Big cheater.

This passage from a TV review in today's NY Times by Ginia Bellafante is pertinent:

If reality television can be said to be about anything at all, it seems to be about impersonation and the odd and increasingly tenacious hold it has on the American psyche. The crooked-nosed are made over and play the genetically good-looking. Heiresses get out of their $200,000 sports cars and enact the habits of the agriculturally inclined. A vegan mother from Boulder trades houses with an evangelical wife in Mobile, is encouraged to care about scripture and breakfast sausage, and essentially tries to pass.

Reality television, as we know it, in fact, could exist only in a culture infatuated with passing -- a world where white suburban boys dress to look more like Nelly and Punjabi girls from Queens wear blue contact lenses to link them closer in appearance to someone who might trace her lineage four generations in Laguna Beach.

And where a legitimate baseball superstar, jealous of the success and fame of a white player who cheated by using steroids, takes steroids himself to double his home run output and surpass the white player's figures and fame.

Too bad it was all a fake.

Barry Bonds, JT LeRoy, fakes, steroids

Matt Briggs' Shoot the Buffalo

I interviewed Matt Briggs a few weeks ago but I hadn't yet read his novel Shoot the Buffalo. I finished the book a couple days ago, and I thought it was terrific. Switching back and forth between the narrator's childhood and his anxious early adulthood, the book perfectly balances the comedy and tragedy of an American post-60s family.

Matt Briggs, Clear Cut Press,writers, fiction

Making the world safe for bimbos

Here are updates to yesterday's post about the Dallas-area cheerleaders (or their parents) who want non-elite girls kicked off the squad:

Attorney: the girls "just want their prize"
School board caves in and agrees that 19 girls must try out for varsity squad again

Best sentence from a third story: " After the school board vote, some of the original 14 cheerleaders applauded and squealed."

cheerleaders, elitism, Texas

Today's fake

A group of boys created a MySpace profile for a fictional teenage girl in order to "cheer up" a friend who'd recently broken up with his girlfriend. But when a 48-year-old man began sending the fictional girl propositions, the boys worked with local police to arrange a "meeting" in a local park, where police arrested the guy.

That must have been one compelling profile.

fakes, MySpace, pedophiles, stings

Round 'em up

Nice interview with Rachel Kramer Bussell on Eros NY. (I did Rachel a few weeks ago as part of my What Are You Working On? series.) From the large number of New York sex bloggers, you'd think the adult industry was centered there rather than the San Fernando Valley. Come to think of it, I'd much rather see a New York porn ethos than a southern California one.

sex bloggers, Rachel Kramer Bussel

Indian women blog against sexual harrassment

Today (Mar. 7) in India female bloggers are blogging tales of sexual harrassment in a campaign called the Blank Noise Project.

Here's just one sample:

I was groped in a train when I was 12. I was coming out of the train toilet, when an old man( in his 50's I guess) pushes himself onto me and squeezes my butt. I scurried around him and I run to my mom. I never left her side for the rest of the journey. I was felt up my skirt(my school skirt) within a matter of weeks after the train incident, by the bus conductor, in a pretense of helping me get down from the crowded bus. My breasts have been pinched SEVERAL times in crowded areas and while sitting in an auto during a traffic signal.

Almost every woman goes through the same harassment every day in one form or the other.

sexual harrassment, India, feminism, Eve teasing, Blank Noise Project

What are you working on? : C.A. Willis

Just posted in the "What are you working on?" series of interviews with writers about their current projects, flight attendant and novelist C.A. Willis, whose subject matter spans the globe from India to the Arctic.

(My) first novel is being submitted to publishers by my agent, yet I am somewhat obsessed with continually rewriting it on some kind of bent for absolute perfection. I sense this won't stop until it is, hopefully, taken out of my hands.

writers, C.A. Willis

Texas parents sue to protect sense of elitism for cheerleaders

In an action designed to protect the sense that a high school cheerleading squad is meant to set apart only the most popular, superior girls, parents in a Dallas suburb sued to force the school to drop 12 of the 32 girls selected, saying the result of cheerleader elections was "overly inclusive."

"Varsity cheerleading has never been more competitive than today," the grievance says. "These girls have earned the right to be called varsity cheerleaders. They deserve recognition for years of hard work. These girls also deserve a squad equivalent to their talents."

If the board won't agree to cut members from the team, the parents said they would consider a compromise to create two cheerleading groups: a competition team with the original 14 girls and a spirit squad.

The teams would have separate coaches, classes and uniforms, and would not mix on the field or gym floor, according to the grievance.

Yes, you wouldn't want the merely adequate, spirited girls to mix with their Aryan superiors. They might get contaminated.

Texas, cheerleaders, elitism

San Francisco authors among Lambda finalists

Congratulations to Katia Noyes and Ali Liebgott for their nominations as finalists for the Lambda book awards (lesbian debut fiction category). Also nominated, in the transgender/genderqueer category, was Charlie Anders for Choir Boy.

Lambda awards, Katia Noyes, Ali Liebgott, Charlie Anders, queer writers, fiction

Dept. of Schadenfreude.

Hard not to appreciate the ripping the LA Times gives hack painter Thomas Kinkade, whose mass-produced kitsch hangs in dentists offices and bourgeois dining rooms across the nation. Former owners of Kinkade franchise galleries are suing Kinkade (link courtesy BoingBoing) and his sole-owner corporation, claiming he hoodwinked them into opening too many franchises and made buckets of money on their sales while driving the owners to bankruptcy. The story also details how a drunken Kinkade heckled a Sigfried & Roy show in Vegas, fell off a barstool while plastered, and urinated on a Winnie the Pooh statue.

But my favorite line in the piece was this plaint from a former gallery owner:

"I took a bloodbath, an absolute bloodbath," said De la Carriere, the Los Angeles art dealer...

Update, also courtesy BoingBoing: Kinkade's images photoshopped

Thomas Kinkade, shlock,kitsch, metaphors

Truth or consequences

In the wake of the Frey imbroglio, Janice Erlbaum, whose memoir Girlbomb is being launched with a certain amount of fanfare, was grilled by her publisher as to the veracity of her hard-knocks memoir, USA Today reported Thursday. (The piece was actually a sidebar to a larger piece about the issue of truth and fiction in memoirs.)

I had just read the prominent feature on Erlbaum and her book in the March/April Poets and Writers, so this made a ton of sense. Not only does Erlbaum, like the disgraced Frey, recount an experience of recovering from addiction, but in her P&W interview (not available online) she freely admits that she developed an ability to lie in order to cope with the stress of being leaving home as a teenager and making her own way.

Erlbaum is modest and self-conscious to the degree that she's unlikely ever to call herself a great performer, but she freely amits that she knows how to lie. "I used to be a big liar," she says. "I wanted people to pay attention to me and to notice me and to think that I was special.... I lied for a long time." .... [In a group home, she was identified as] Janice the Liar. The one who lied to everyone, all the time."

So what do you do with someone who, on the one hand, publishes a book full of edgy anecdotes and presents it as her life story, and on the other tells interviewers she is (or was) a polished liar? Is she playing a little game with us? If some of the larger events in the book (and I'm not talking about the usual things autobiographers do, like imagine the details of conversations decades past no one could possibly remember) turn out to be false, then she might well say "Hey, I told you in no uncertain terms I was a practiced liar."

I genuinely hope things don't turn out that way. Since coming across her blog a few months ago I've really enjoyed reading it, and I'm looking forward to reading her book. But I don't blame her publisher for putting her on the hot seat for at least a few minutes. Nobody wants to see the lucrative genre of triumph-over-adversity memoirs get completely undermined by authors' inability to resist the temptation to pump things up.

Previously: Stephen Elliott on veracity in memoirs: "People have such entirely different memories of the same events that reality becomes impossible. Reality is interpretation."

Janice Erlbaum, writers,memoirs

What are you working on? : Audacia Ray

Just posted in my series of interviews with writers about their current projects, Audacia Ray, blogger, model, organizer, editor and writer.

I want to show work that is engaged with the issues that sex workers face, not just sexy pictures of pretty girls with shiny lipgloss... By displaying art that shows many perspectives on the sex industry, I hope to further to concept that sex work isn't a black and white issue of empowerment versus exploitation, but that there are many complex issues involved.

Ray is also another Taurus monkey, and Taurus monkeys are the best.

writers, Audacia Ray,sex blogs

It's Bad Behavior Friday™!

In Sydney, people whose view of Sydney Harbor is blocked by trees have a solution -- poison the trees! Whether they're on your property or not.

A New York tax lawyer was spotted by an alert hotel clerk and arrested yesterday; the shyster was wanted for paying a client so he could have sex with her teenage daughters. That's clearly not the only thing he had going -- they caught him with 30 to 40 Amex gift cards and $10,000 in cash.

Nineteen southern Californians have been arrested in connection with a string of robberies in which the bandits used police badges to fool victims; among the arrested were a former prison guard and former plice officers.

A man and woman were cited today for disorderly conduct (hooray for disorderly conduct!) and criminal mischief in a case which involved microwaving a urine-filled dildo in a gas station microwave oven . And it gets better:

Creighton asked a store clerk to microwave the device so the urine inside would be body-temperature and fool those giving the drug test, Pero said.

Police still aren't sure why or how Creighton chose to use a device that mimics the male sex organ to pass her drug test.

So best.