Holy &@^&@#  $%!*

I spent Sunday in New York, sightseeing as it were, but since this is the week of the first anniversary of "9/11" -- as it's now being referred to in shorthand by almost everyone -- many of the sights and activities have to do with that day. I did three things today, and all of them referred directly to Sept. 11.

First I rode the train into Manhattan and walked a few blocks to St. Bart's Episcopal Church, a big ritzy edifice hard by the Waldorf-Astoria hotel. As part of their remembrance, they had a children's choir singing Britten's Missa Brevis, and the rector preached on St. Paul's exhortation to love your enemies.

Then it was off to Queens to the American Museum of the Moving Image, where they were showing a series of documentaries about, what else, Sept. 11. I saw part of a film called Circling Zero: We See Absence and then the entire HBO documentary In Memoriam: New York City 9/11/01.Despite its over-reliance on the perspective of then-Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, it not only tells the story of the day very well but has an extraordinary collection of footage from every perspective. It doesn't shy away from anything; you hear every utterance of "Holy shit!!" and see bodies falling from the towers.

But the most heartbreaking images, curiously, were still photographs of people holding up MISSING fliers, their faces contorted in anguish, still trying to deal with the obvious fact that nobody was coming back from that hellhole. The film will air again this week on HBO. I found it very good.

Then it was back to Manhattan and Lexington Ave., where I attended a church service that was expressly a memorial for Sept. 11. held in St. Peter's Lutheran, a hyper-modern space in the basement of the Citicorp Center. I must say that the Episcopalians beat the Lutherans today; Midwestern-tinged earnestness was less appropriate than a bit of distance, a tiny smidgen of irony, and Benjamin Britten.

But at the (literal) end of the day, I have to say that I found the experience of going to a museum and watching a documentary about Sept. 11 a more effective way of dealing with my memories of that day than going to church. Of course, I experienced the fateful day itself entirely on television from San Francisco. If I'd been here in NYC, maybe I'd prefer to be in church. And I will be in church again, on the day itself, when I'll go to a Greenwich Village church near the Zone.

That's my exciting day of sightseeing. One thing about yesterday -- I spent the whole day in my hotel room trying to work on my novel, and I have to say I had a lousy day of writing. I wrote 2000 words of notes but only 400 words of fiction, and in the latter made no progress at all, but merely added on to an existing chapter. I'm forced to face the fact that I'm at a turning point in the writing of this novel, where I really have to work out some issues with one of the main characters. I won't be making much progress til I do.

Another east coast trip

I'm in Newark, N.J., halfway between my company's office in central New Jersey and Manhattan, at the Airport Hilton. Airport Hiltons are great -- they're cheap and extremely well kept up. The L.A. Airport Hilton is *very* ritzy; the fact that it's right next to a sleazy strip joint and a Carl's Jr. doesn't matter. In fact, those are positive amenities compared to the Newark Airport Hilton, which is next to a huge cemetery and a Budweiser brewery. (You've seen the latter if you've ever flown into Newark; it's right across the highway from the airport, a huge brick edifice.)

The hotel does have a free shuttle bus to Newark Penn Station, and last night after eating dinner in my room, I took a PATH train to Greenwich Village. I walked east along Houston St. and Prince St. and went to see the new Godard film, Eloge d’Amour (“In Praise of Love” is the American title), at the Angelika Film Center. For me, going to New York means going to see films that haven't come to San Francisco yet -- I feel so cultured doing it.

There was a moment of levity in the lobby, where they make you line up for each film that is going to be shown. While we were standing in line, another film was starting, and they announced over the loudspeaker, "This line is only for 'In Praise of Love.' If you have tickets for 'Amy's Orgasm,' please come right to the door. Again, 'Amy's Orgasm,' come right up. 'Amy's Orgasm!!'" the guy added unnecessarily, apparantly just because he liked saying it. Chuckles in the lobby. Then when we were seated and before the film started, a young man engaged me in conversation, which I thought was very odd and unusual for New York. He asked me if I were French and started talking to me about Godard movies. He wasn’t hitting on me because his girlfriend had just gone to the restroom -- maybe he just wanted to practice his French. Anyway, I’m so anti-social that we stopped talking as soon as his girlfriend came back from the restroom. If I were more outgoing, I might have turned it into a real conversation with them.

When the film ended, I jumped into a taxi and was taken back to a PATH station, and the train came within five minutes and soon I was back in Newark. Even though it was 12:45 when I got to my room, ESPN was showing the Giants game from San Francisco, so I watched the end of that -- a scoreless tie won in the bottom of the 9th after a double and a single -- with pleasure.

 

Meanwhile, in California

In this bizarre L.A. Times story about a forest fire, a delusional woman who says she "protected the forest" for many years is prevented by cops from shooting herself as the flames advance. Investigators say that "candles associated with a ritual involving the use of fire and animal sacrifices started the fire."

 

I'd rather be in San Francisco

The annual event known as Burning Man has just ended. I have never been seriously tempted to go, seeing as how I generally dislike camping even in the most sylvan environments and cannot comprehend doing it in the middle of a dust cloud for a week with no running water. And every year that goes by, I get farther and farther away from being the type of person who goes to such things or ever would.

But in fact, I was never the type of person to go. I've always been bad at parties, hated costumes, and especially bad at fitting in to scenes where everyone was ever-so-cool. I have no technical knowledge to contribute to such an event, and no artistic flair. I'm just a writer.

That's not to say I don't love going to the desert, taking drugs in the desert, or hanging out with weirdo pierced alterno-gender people. But not tens of thousands of them all at once -- a situation Cris loves to characterize as a "cluster fuck." (Hyphenation optional.) Too much stimulation. For me, the whole point of going to the desert is to remove all the stimulation that assails me every day. (Bloink! Another IM just arrived.)

Not that the desert is empty or desolate (although the "playa" where Burning Man takes place reportedly is) -- it's full of life. But it's also full of silence and absent any high-speed internet connections. At least for the time being, thank God.

 

An interesting stand taken by a small-town editor

The editor of a small town newspaper -- The State College (Penn.) Centre Daily Times -- has decided to drop the weekly syndicated column of arch-conservative columnist Ann Coulter. She's the columnist who is famous for being blond and for writing a piece in the aftermath of Sept. 11 that the U.S. "should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity."

After a huge negative backlash against that original blatt, Coulter was dropped by the conservative National Review, which published it. But that only seemed to encourage her and to strengthen her base with the far right.

The most flaming conservatives need someone like her -- young, blond, attractive, and female -- to confound liberals and act as a lightning rod. But with the Sep. 11 anniversary approaching, the stand taken by the small-town editor might be more significant. It could be -- I hope it is -- a sign of a real backlash against Coulter that will leave her high and dry.

Of course, the internet, not to mention right-wing talk radio, means that no one ever really goes away; Alan Keyes and Oliver North are as popular as ever with the far right, and I'm sure the stations that carry their b.s. would love to stick Coulter on their rotation as well, if they haven't already. But it's a small sign of hope that the flyover-country mainstream is willing to draw the line someplace.

 

I said watch it!

After spraining my ankle on Wednesday evening, I was back up and about on Saturday, carefully stepping around and going so far as to walk almost a mile on city streets. I felt that as long as I was really careful where and how I stepped, I'd be okay. So this afternoon (Sunday) I forgot about being careful for a minute and ka-ping! I turned it a little. So it was back on the couch with ice for another 90 minutes.

I sat on the couch, during a hot afternoon, watching the Albert Brooks - Sharon Stone movie The Muse. It's about a screenwriter, his wife, and his colleagues -- cameo appearances from everyone from Rob Reiner to Martin Scorcese -- who believe that a mysterious blond woman actually has supernatural powers to break their creative blocks. She is supposedly one of the genuine muses of classical mythology, updated to modern-day Hollywood. It was amusing enough, no pun intended, but as soon as the upshot started, I turned it off. Two psychologists show up to say the woman is actually an escaped lunatic. I had no desire to watch that sentimental, dumbass ending.

Speaking of writer's block, I haven't got it. In the last five weeks, I've written two whole chapters of my novel, finishing one yesterday. I'm still on pace to finish the first draft by the end of the year, which would be such a relief. I've been working on this thing since summer 1998, and I want to get it over with and get on to all the other ideas I have. Of course I realize I probably still have at least a solid year of rewriting to go on this thing before it's anywhere near publishable. For one thing, it's twice too long -- already over 115,000 words and at least six chapters to go, the first draft will come in at around 150,000 words. Seventy-five thousand would be much more like it.

 

Back to the weekend

Went to the orthopedist -- a fancy Palo Alto doc who repairs the ligaments of pro footballers -- who almost laughed at my ankle sprain. He called it a "level one" and said just be careful with it and I'd be fine in a couple of weeks. So I will get back to meditating and so forth on Monday.

Meanwhile I've been luxuriating in sleeping late and doing practically nothing. I've slept nine hours two nights in a row, and we're just starting a three day weekend. If only I were exercizing, I would feel so great. Anyway it's back to work today on my novel.

I still seem to be attracting some strange energy, though. Last week a fan wrote me asking if I'd seen a book called Carrie's Story by Molly Weatherfield. She rhapsodized about its inventive s/m plot, in which a grad student bottoms for a year to a guy who then sells her in an auction to a man who then subjects her to "pony training." I hadn't heard of the book, but then a few days later my publisher sent me the book saying they thought I'd like it.

This was very strange. I wasn't surprised when the afore-mentioned fan zeroed in on the book, given its subject matter, because she had talked with me before about her submission fantasies; this would be perfect for her. Then it was odd that the guy at Cleis picked up on the same thing, especially given that I had never talked with him about the book or the author. But the really strange thing is that I myself had been having these "pony training" designs on a new girlfriend, but hadn't spoken to anybody about them, including her. Since this is kind of an obscure s/m cul-de-sac -- even Dan Savage hasn't made fun of it yet, as far as I know -- it seems really strange that two completely unrelated people would pick up on it at the same time, and think of me, while I was having the same ideas. I guess I should read the book.

 

Watch your step

Last night on 16th and Valencia, I flagged down a taxi, stepped off a curb and stepped right into a pothole the exactly size and shape of my foot, spraining my ankle. Damn!

That scotches tonight's dinner plans, zazen for the rest of the week, and a variety of meetings at work as I sit here at home with a large bag of frozen peas tied to my ankle. (I have recently acquired a digital camera but I don't think you need to see the bag of frozen peas.)

That's my first ankle sprain ever. I'm famously stable and have been known to stumble over (or run through) an obstacle course of stones, roots, gopher holes, city streets, cobblestones, icy sidewalks and practically everything else you might find underfoot, all without turning an ankle and usually without even falling down. But here I sit. So much for my "physical high"!

Stupid marketing tricks

Target Stores released a line of back-to-school clothing with the seemingly meaningless legend "EIGHT EIGHT," undoubtedly thinking this qualified it as some kind of 80s nostalgia item. Oopsy! Turns out the "EIGHT EIGHT" phrase is skinhead code for "Heil Hitler." That wasn't as dumb, of course, as Abercrombie & Fitch's slant-eyed coolie gear, released earlier this year. The latter instantly became a collector's item thanks to the publicity. (Thanks to uberchick for the links.)

When mentioning goofs like these, it's always fun to recall marketing slogan translation errors like "Come alive! You're in the Pepsi Generation" being translated into Chinese as Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the dead, or Coors' "Turn It Loose" being translated into Spanish in such a way that it suggested "Coors loosens your bowels." And from there, it's only a short distance to the always entertaining world of fractured English as employed by the Japanese in slogans and advertisements.

Philip Whalen Memorial Reading

Friday August 30, 7:00 pm
@ Presentation Theater
(formerly The Gershwin Theater)
Univeristy of San Francisco
2350 Turk Blvd
San Francisco

admission is free

Together with the Hartford Street Zen Center and the MFA Writing Program at USF, The Poetry Center is sponsoring a memorial reading in honor of Philip Whalen's life and poetry. Philip Whalen's friends and fellow poets will speak and read from his work, and from their own and others' work in tribute to him. Michael McClure, Diane di Prima, Leslie Scalapino, David Meltzer, Clark Coolidge, Anne Waldman, Jane Hirschfield, and Bill Berkson are among the many poets and friends who will appear on the program.

* * *
i.m. Philip Whalen
October 20, 1923, Portland, Oregon -- June 26, 2002, San Francisco, California

* * *

HYMNUS AD PATREM SINENSIS

I praise those ancient Chinamen
Who left me a few words,
Usually a pointless joke or a silly question
A line of poetry drunkenly scrawled on the margin of a quick
    splashed picture -- bug, leaf,
    caricature of Teacher
    on paper held together now by little more than ink
    & their own strength brushed momentarily over it

Their world & several others since
Gone to hell in a handbasket, they knew it --
Cheered as it whizzed by --
& conked out among the busted spring rain cherryblossom winejars
Happy to have saved us all.

--from Memoirs of an Interglacial Age, 1960, The Auerhahn Press, San Francisco

A Zen Buddhist memorial service will be held for Zenshin Philip Whalen at Green Gulch Farms and Zen Center on Sunday September 1 at 2:30 pm Green Gulch is located at 1601 Shoreline Hwy (Highway 1) just south of Muir Beach, Calif.

Small events early in the morning

Every morning that I go to the zen center, I spend a few minutes on the sidewalk across the street stretching. There's a house with an iron bannister on its steps that is perfect for hanging onto and loosening up my legs and back. At a certain moment when stretching, I always arch my back and look straight up. Last week I was bemused by the sight of stars for the first time in months, and they're only getting brighter. It's late enough in the summer now that it's still dark enough at 5:50 a.m. to see the stars. This morning there was also a moon.

A morning without fog is a predictor of a warm day -- the last little heat wave of the real summer, as opposed to the "Indian summer" that comes in late September and in October.

I walked down the steps and into the zendo and found a new guy sitting in my place. That's like a big event at Hartford Street -- someone new in the morning. I can count the number of new people in the last six months on two hands.

I went and sat somewhere else. It's not like there isn't plenty of room -- there are about 18 places and usually only 4 or 5 people present. My sitting has been good this week, meaning a minimum of drowsiness and restlessness. Then on Wednesday as part of the "service" -- the new guy left beforehand -- we do a long chant, the Genjo Koan. It's so long that we skip the "work period" that concludes the morning service, even though the "work period" never lasts more than five minutes.

 

"It's kind of... a bummer"

After reading this 27 Aug 02 LA Times story, take a look at the Apple ad in question. (QuickTime required.) It's pretty hilarious. The lass who stars in the ad has become an internet-era star, sez the news story. The New York Times also reported the ripple in a 19 Aug 02 story ($):

''It was, like, beep beep beep beep beep beep beep,'' she says, ''and then, like, half of my paper was gone.'' She characterizes the experience, over all, as a ''bummer.'' ...

Ms. Feiss has already gained a cult following among Internet viewers, who have created a flurry of Web sites devoted to her. Some are charmed by her slackerly expressiveness -- her slowly raised eyebrows speak volumes and her shrug when confronting the hungry PC is a moment worthy of Buster Keaton. ... Other fans simply debate whether her delivery suggests that she is, to put it bluntly, drugged.... Among the Feiss sites, some have digitally altered images from the ad to include takeoffs on Apple slogans, including ''Think stoned.''

 

If this is August, I shudder to think of September

I was talking last night with Dina about dates, schedules and such. Ours are opposites: I'm booked, sometimes overbooked, every hour of the day, every day of the week. She is between engagements. Which is not to say that whatever I'm involved with is any more important than how she's spending her time. I just have to schedule things to make sure they happen. She said something about "You don't have much down-time," and I replied, "No, not really -- or maybe it's the meditation. That has become my down-time."

Zazen -- i.e. the sitting meditation that zen practitioners do -- has been described as amounting to "sitting quietly doing nothing." I can't remember who coined that description, but it certainly works for me. It describes my meditation when it's going well (today was a good day). Sometimes I even use the phrase as a mantra of sorts, to keep me from doing something while sitting -- "sitting quietly doing nothing, sitting quietly doing nothing" -- while counting breaths. When done right, it's enormously relaxing, in such a way that it makes me more alert and less drowsy, even at 6:00 a.m.

This fulfills the requirements of leisure, at least on a daily basis (though I really should go hiking one of these days), in a way that watching television does not. Mainly I watch television these days to keep Cris company, or to kill time while waiting for something else to happen in a few minutes, or because the Giants are on. Or because there's one of those great shows on that show lots of videotape of fucked up freeway chases, car crashes, runaway speedboats, and airshow disasters. Yeah baby!

I love the freeway chase show. Have you noticed that every freeway chase is narrated by the same voice-over, someone who is apparantly pretending to be a helicopter pilot narrating the chases in real time? Whether the chase happens day or night, it's the same voice, as if the same copter pilot were on duty 24 hours a day. And he always uses the same phrases, my favorite of which is, "Oohhh! That is extremely dangerous!"

Anyway -- if I'm this busy in August, what will September be like?

 

Irrelevant baseball rant

The Giants lost two consecutive games to the irrelevant Expos, at home, by scores of 7 to 2. What's that about? Last year around this time, when the team was clawing toward first place and, no matter what it did, seemed like it never got closer than 1 1/2 games behind the Arizona Diamondbacks, I went to a game. The Giants performed enough baserunning errors and left enough men on base that they lost the game, and I said to myself, "This team is just a second-place team." This year I said that to myself a month ago; now they're a third-place team, 11 1/2 games back and 4 1/2 games back in the wild card race. (They "won" the wild card race last year and were defeated in the first playoff round by the Mets, so it was all for naught.)

This was supposed to be the make-or-break year. Last year of Jeff Kent's contract, last year of Dusty Baker's. Though Kent has come through with an excellent season, Barry Bonds has been playing hurt for the last six weeks, and is now a liability in left field. Speedsters Kenny Loften, acquired too late in a July trade, and Tom Goodwin, a plucky rookie who would have become the everyday left fielder if not for Bonds' bat, haven't made much of a difference. It doesn't look good for the Giants.

 

If I win the lottery

The California Lottery jackpot has made one of its occasional forays past the hundred-million-dollar mark, which is a trigger for me to actually buy a ticket. Last night I was walking on the treadmill, listening to the Giants' loss to the Expos on the radio, and watching a strange CBS drama with the sound turned off (it turned out to be "CSI," and completely incomprehensible without the dialogue, though I have no faith it would be any more comprehensible, much less more bearable, with the sound). Since neither the walking, the baseball game, nor the elaborately produced teleplay were enough to occupy my mind, I passed the time fantasizing what I would do if I won the lottery.

First off: The "jackpot" is $120 million or so; a winner gets about 55% of that after all is said and done. So call it $60 million. Okay, so first I would set aside $3 million as a reward fund for information leading to the conviction of lottery officials for any crimes or malfeasance. Fucking losers. Then I would set aside $20 million or so to give a half million to each of about thirty friends who are artists and writers. They've worked for 20 or 30 years of their lives at day jobs so they can do their art; that's enough. They should have the leisure to just do their art. I suppose I'd have to make this a foundation or something so they wouldn't have half of their gift subtracted by the tax man. Then I would give $20 million or so to Bay Area schools for art and music programs and for library books.

That would still leave me about more than enough that I would never have to work again. I could just write my novels for the rest of my life. Nice fantasy. But since I'm not going to win the lottery, tomorrow (Sunday) afternoon I'll get back to work on my novel. I think it's only slightly more likely that I will ever be able to support myself from writing fiction than it is for me to win the lottery. In fact, I there must be far more lottery winners in California every year than successful novelists, so maybe I have that backwards. I should be investing in more lottery tickets.

Something to see

Some friends will be performing "action theater" at 8 pm on Saturday, 31 Aug 02 at Western Sky Studio at 2525  8th Street, Berkeley. Tickets are $7-$10. For info & reservations call 510-915-3883 or e-mail: katarinaeriksson@aol.com. Among the performers is my friend Jenny Schaffer, with whom I performed songs a couple of times several years ago. Jenny's a dream on stage; I'll bet the rest of the gang is top-notch, too. Yes, it's improvisational theater, but the good kind. Not like those comedy shows on TV or like "Big Brother."

Speaking of which, I watched "Big Brother" pretty religiously the first year (summer 2000) and got sucked in again last summer. But this year I turned it on once, and turned it back off in about five minutes. The people all seemed like total unreal creeps, and the producers have neautralized all of the weird audience participation stunts, like hiring airplanes towing banners on which viewers had composed with cryptic messages to the hamsters. I'm enjoying my free time this summer a lot more than I would enjoy this year's version of the show.

Blog of the week

This week's recommendation for a killer website is http://www.reallans.com/mmml.shtml the name of which is Real Lans, I think. Via gigglechick.

Listening to: Milk Cult Project M-13, a compilation of strange mixes, electronica, low-tech arch-pop, and all-around happiness. I can't call it a fave, but it's compelling once a month or so.

My real fave this month: The National Trust, "Dekkagar". Despite occasional technical mishaps (they attempt some vocal harmonies that I think only Crosby, Stills and Nash or the Beach Boys could quite pull off), this album of gorgeous neo-funk is the best thing I've heard all summer. It's sort of like War crossed with Crosby, Stills and Nash, but with modern production values. Just great.

Today's dirty story

A writer friend, "Lisa Wolfe" (a pen name) has a new story on Cleansheets, and I like it a lot. (Be warned, it is erotica.)

Six day novel nets $475K advance

Today's Chicago Tribune has an article about a young journalist whose proposal for a book about "Latina divas" was going nowhere.

That effort came to nothing, but several of the editors who saw a sample chapter asked Daniels if Valdes-Rodriguez had a novel in one of her desk drawers. Daniels didn't know so, around the first of the year, she asked her client. And Valdes-Rodriguez said, well, yes, she did; she just needed to polish it.

In fact, she didn't. But she had made several attempts at novels since high school, and, using those drafts as raw material, she began working up a list of characters and an outline. ... Finally, in February, she sat down to write at a local Starbucks, and, for six days straight, she created the book on her laptop, writing for as many as 15 hours a day. And, four months later, after some editing by Daniels, the book was sold. "It was a process of years leading up to those days," she says. "A lot of it was sort of cut-and-paste from the other books I had written."

(Thanks to Romenesko's MediaNews for the link)

All I can say to that is, wow. Of course, the crucial part of that story is the "years leading up" to the six-day writing frenzy. But it is reminiscent of some other famous intense and productive writing stints: the three weeks it took Jack Kerouac to produce "On the Road" and the three days when the unknown Sylvester Stallone paced up and down in a room dictating the script for the first "Rocky."

 

"A plan for spam"

Even if you're not a programmer, this guy's article describing his work on a foolproof email spam filter is interesting.

Trout Fishing in America, and other forms of meditation

Apropos of my constant bragging about my nascent zazen practice, the great 20th century poet Kenneth Rexroth had this to say:

Life in the city in the winter seems too full of distractions and busy work. Who said poetry was emotion recollected in tranquility? I don’t know about others, but I find most tranquility Camped by a mountain lake at timber line. There whatever past emotion and experience I choose to recollect and write down, take on most depth and meaning.

Dry fly fishing has the same effect on me. It seems to me it is a kind of higher mathematics, practically embodied, of the study of the free flow of water. It combines all the virtues and none of the strains and responsibilities of both art and mysticism. Besides, you catch fish. You don’t have to read books on Zen and Taoism and do funny gymnastics with your breathing and put your legs in painful contortions.

Fly fishing is Taoism in simple and fascinating action. If you let it, it produces, and by much more natural methods, the same results, the crystal clear calm of heart that so many people seek by so much more difficult ways. Maybe if Lao Tse and Bodhidharma had just known about it, they would have been fishermen and not mystics. Of course, you can’t use it, like Zen, to impress gullible chicks in espresso bars. Or can you? I’ve never tried. Maybe I should.

That's from one of the San Francisco Examiner columns by Rexroth collected at The Bureau of Public Secrets. Writing in 1960 as public interest in Beat literature and lifestyle -- and its concommitant obsessions mountain hiking and zen meditation -- was peaking, Rexroth was sending a shot across the bow of Gary Snyder and others.

But Rexroth's riff also anticipates one of the transitional works between the Beat and the Hippie eras: Richard Brautigan's Trout Fishing in America. That novel is commonly associated with San Francisco of the hippie era of the mid- and late 60s, but Brautigan wrote it no later than 1961, placing him definitely within the Beat era. And he appears in the classic photograph of all the beat generation writers gathered outside City Lights Books.

Brautigan was one of my first, and strongest, influences. His work is easy to imitate, and I copied his voice in my first efforts at fiction. Furthermore, "Trout Fishing" contains a chapter that counts as the first erotica I ever read. I'm due to write an essay about that for my friend Marilyn's "Erotic Muse" column. Still doing research. Brautigan was a fascinating figure, extremely hard to pin down, it seems. But he epitomized the California experience for me and so many other people who grew up in the 1960s.

 

The opposite of whining

I don't know what's worse -- a weblog that consists mostly of the person whining about their lives -- which is a hell of a lot of the weblogs out there, as far as I can tell -- or a website where the person constantly brags about themselves and does nothing but self-promotion. This website is admittedly self-promotional, but here in the blog I do try to focus on other things I've seen, heard or read. This entry, however, is about nothing but what a swell time I'm having.

Having started seeing someone new, I'm on some kind of physical/sexual high that is simply the opposite of being depressed. Without being on anti-depressants or ecstasy, I've managed to get myself into a terrific state of mind. I wish I could say exactly how, but I don't really know, though I think the fact that I got two fan letters in five weeks from people who liked my books sort of kicked it off. (If I got any more fan mail I might get completely insufferable. I may already be insufferable; this entry will be a test of how much.)

So, like I mentioned yesterday, I went to the chiropractor. One of the nice things about this particular chiro is that they have masseuses on staff for muscle/joint work, and the masseusses come in and work you over for ten minutes, so that by the time the chiro comes in to twist you like a pretzel you're nice and warm and soft for it. The masseur (in this case, a guy) made some remark after a couple of minutes that I didn't seem to have any knots in my back at all. The more he worked, the more excited he got; he couldn't stop talking about it. Finally, after ten minutes he exclaimed, "Yours is the best back I've seen since I started working here! -- in January!"

I had to laugh. The reason I went to the chiro at all was because I've been doing these all-day meditation sessions once a month, in addition to 45 minutes every weekday morning, and I wanted to make sure I wasn't completely kinking up my back. I guess not -- my back seems to have become much stronger. This was borne out when I was in L.A. last week and spent all Thursday in museums. In the past that would have killed my back; this time, it didn't hurt at all.

So there you are: fan mail and zen meditation -- an unbeatable combination.

 

One more L.A. moment

I forgot to report one more perfect L.A. moment from from trip.

It was 9:00 a.m. on Thursday morning, and I was walking along N. Highland Ave. just north of Franklin St. with some coffee on my way back to my hotel. Down the side walk the other way came a man with red hair wearing a purple suit and an agitated expression.

"Angela! Angela!" he cried in anguish, like Stanley Kowalski on meth. I became aware that he was hailing a woman on the other side of the busy four-lane boulevard, which was thick with morning traffic. "Angela! Why you wanna leave me??" he screamed.

At a momentary break in the traffic, he scuttled across the roadway and cornered a young black woman who looked none too happy about it. They conducted a conversation with many gesticulations, inaudable over the traffic. I didn't know whether to shout "Hey! Leave her alone!" or "Hey, you're wearing a purple suit!!"

After several minutes, they began walking down the hill together, the purple-suited guy obviously pleading his case with vigor.

Seriously

I went to my chiropractor today. Apropos of nothing, she brought up the war-to-be. Everybody can see it coming; can't somebody stop it?

Even some Republicans -- and some say, Bush pere himself -- are advising Bush against it (see this 17 Aug 02 New York Times article -- free reg. required), but I think W thinks it's his destiny.

If he does manage to muddle through without causing World War III, I suppose the best we can hope for is that he won't get re-elected, though that seems like small comfort. Don't even the Republicans realize that the Gulf War plunged the country into a recession? -- you'd think that, at least, would dissuade them. But they're all in it for the short run. I've always had the impression that the Republicans, when they're in power, are the quickest to steal and defraud because they're all 60 or 70 years old and they know they have only a few years left to live. Democrats, on the other hand, are young when they're in the White House -- they know they have decades left -- they're still thinking about getting laid!

Just in time for the next war

This looks fascinating:

         Tse Chen Ling center for Tibetan Buddhist Studies invites you to learn from the spiritual journeys 

         of six inspiring women. Please join us for this six evening lecture series of personal exploration   

         and discovery. 

          

         Venerable Robina Courtin 

         Topic: Changing the Mind 

         Time: Tuesday, Sept 3, 7:30 pm 

          

         Venerable Tenzin Palmo

         Topic: Wisdom of Emptiness - Mother of All Buddhas 

         Time: Thursday, Sept 5, 7:30 pm 

          

         Venerable Thubten Chodron 

         Topic: Working with Anger 

         Time: Thursday, Sept 12, 7:30 pm 

          

         Venerable Sarah Thresher 

         Topic: Healing the Pain 

         Time: Thursday, Sept 26, 7:30 pm 

          

         Venerable Sangye Khadro 

         Topic: Balancing the Spiritual and the Material 

         Time: Thursday, Oct 3, 7:30 pm 

          

         Venerable Karma Lekshe Tsomo 

         Topic: Mindful of Our Actions 

         Time: Thursday, Oct 17, 7:30 pm 

          

         Location: Unitarian Center, 1187 Franklin Street (at Geary) San Francisco,California. 

         Tickets: For the entire series $108, Advance Tickets $20/lecture; at Door $25; $12.50 for seniors/students.

          

 

Wish list

Happy Supply sounds like a lot of fun; I found them in a review of "24 Hour Party People" in the SF Weekly. I'll get their LP when it comes out. (By which I mean their full-length CD.) In other music news, recommendations by the Aquarius Records staff -- Windy: Circle's "Sunrise" and Cup: OP8's "Slush" -- kept me happy while driving around L.A. in my rented car.

I also listened to "Circulatory System", an album by Olivia Tremor Control members that I continue to find fascinating, if wearing. Imagine if John, George and Ringo had continued the Beatles without Paul until 1974 or so, and delved more and more into the woozy, acid-tinged music like "Blue Jay Way," "Dear Prudence," and "Tomorrow Never Knows." Take a whole album full of such experiments and you have "Circulatory System." Though it's long and a little repetitive, it definitely puts you in that acid space.

Bits and Pieces from L.A.

I'm back from L.A., and would like to report on the following.

I managed to finish a chapter of my novel and start another. Total was about 4500 words, which is not bad. It's tough for me to squeeze out more than that in a two-day period, which was essentially what I had to work with, and considering I spent almost all of Saturday galivanting around, 4500 words isn't bad at all.

One of the main things I did was see a reading in the Larchmont district -- I supose it's a district -- by Mary Woronov. She's the artist and actress who became famous for her performance as the domineering woman on the bed in "The Chelsea Girls." She has written a short book called "Eyewitness to Warhol" (2002: Victoria Dailey Publisher, Los Angeles; ISBN 0-9657858-3-1; P.O. Box 461150, L.A., 90046) and read an essay from it. She is tall, greying, still quite handsome, which is a term I believe one is allowed to use for une femme du certain age. She conducted a lively question-and-answer session and then signed books.

I got a digital camera while I was in L.A. and I took pictures of Mary Woronov as well as my friend Christine, and I will publish them just as soon as I can figure out how to transfer them out of the camera.

After the reading I drove to Santa Monica and saw a British film called "24 Hour Party People," a very enjoyable comedy about the Manchester music scene in the 1970s and 80s. Then I took a walk along the Santa Monica promenade as the sun set through the fogbank.

I then found Venice, since I'd never been there before and wanted to see if it really did look like the set of "Touch of Evil." By this time I was quite hungry but delayed eating while I logged into the internet and checked for messages. I did this all weekend at various places because the modem on my laptop was broken. It turned out to be a good thing that it was broken, because it kept me from wasting as much time in the hotel room as I normally do.

I wanted to go to a sushi place there in Venice but as soon as I opened the door, I saw it was full of chattering hipsters who seems to be having some sort of standup party, so I didn't even cross the threshhold. Instead I drove back to the airport and ate a sandwhich at the Carl's Junior next to the hotel. Horrible, I know, but the prices at the hotel were so high I didn't want to give them the satisfaction.

Then I really couldn't resist my curiosity any longer about the strip club next to the hamburger joint, so I went in ($5 admission). It was a bit like the Bada Bing in "The Sopranos," only less glitzy and less ominous-seeming. Stacked girls with incredible bodies went on the stage one by one, and then filtered around the audience trying to talk guys into lap dances. The atmosphere was so much less predatory than the same kind of place in San Francisco, and the women seemed somewhat more wholesome too, not to say clone-like. Not all of them had -- what's the polite term -- implants, but they all had perfect hourglass figures without a shred of fat. It was like one of those episodes of Star Trek where they go to the planet of the perfect bimbos. No piercings, no tattoos -- rather bland, if you want to know the truth.

 

Murk

I'm down in Los Angeles, writing in a Kinko's on Wilshire Blvd. It's so smoggy outside that the streetlights are on at 10:00 a.m. Aside from that I won't dish Los Angeles, out of respect for people I know who are living or moving here. (WHY, WHY, WHY?!?)

All right, I've got that out of my system. Now for my report on my reading Wednesday night. Held at the very large and attractive Hustler Store on Sunset Blvd. -- a place so well-designed and attractively lit that it actually makes shopping for smutty magazines and dildoes seem no more threatening than a trip to the supermarket -- the reading was not actually a reading. It was more like a panel discussion on what it was like to be a pornographer. It featured three male writers -- me, M. Christian, and Alma Marceau -- and a woman named Susannah who had done a comic about bukkake. The host, a British guy in a plaid coat named Stan Kent, urged us to keep a lively discussion going, and it was so lively that I was the only one who dared slow things down enough to actually read from my work. (This may not have been a good strategy, since afterward I saw people buying everyone's work but mine. I don't think I sold *any* books. Maybe it was what I read, a sort of quirky passage from my story "Lizza.") In any case, it was a fun discussion and very entertaining, for me at least.

My good friend Christine came down from the desert and to the reading, which meant I actually knew someone there, and that was comforting. Afterward we went out for drinks with Stan and Alma, who is actually a bloke named Jacques. Coming along was this young woman who was either on some very good drugs or was simply naturally outgoing. She not only flirted madly with everyone at our table but then went to *other* tables and flirted madly with everyone there too, hauling out her wares, which were sex toys made from Pyrex glass. Her phlegmatic companion was a blond man who said he was a chef; he provided a dour balance to the woman's off-the-ceiling energy. When we left, Christine laughed and said that I had had a true L.A. experience.

The next day we went to the MOCA, both of them, and saw the Andy Warhol and the Arte Povera exhibits. It was very funny watching parents trying to explain Andy Warhol's work to their children, and thought-provoking, too: does the work mean anything if you are a nine-year-old girl and don't recognize Jackie Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe or Mao Tse Tung? This particular nine-year-old girl kept squirming and whining "But it's so BORING," to the dismay of her dad. I usually find such family antics insufferable, but in this context it was hilarious.

The other reason I came down here -- or rather, the reason I'm staying down here for the weekend -- is to work on my novel. But the modem on my laptop broke, and I have had to download the files for my novel off my FTP site. (That was good contingency planning.) So it's now off to my new weekend hotel for some work on chapter 18.

 

Publicity

In this country where everyone is supposed to be briefly famous, and where any appearance on a screen, no matter how dubiously earned*, can be justified somehow, it's also true that some people can hardly pay to get noticed.

In my career as an author, I've spent plenty to promote my own books -- books that established presses published but had little publicity money to spend on. For example, I put an ad on Nerve.com last Xmas season for my two Cleis Press books, paying $3000 for the extra bump of Xmas sales. Was it worth it? In this instance, since $3000 was the total combined advances I got for both books, anything I spend is strictly an investment in the long term. It's to get my work known, not for me to make money to pay my bills this year. (If it was, I'd be starving. But I have a day job.)

Last month I got my first-ever unsolicited piece of fan mail (via email); today I got my second. (I was tickled when that reader deemed my work "ever-so-dreamy.") This week I'm going down to L.A. for a reading. Should be fun, though I'm paying my own air ticket and expenses and taking off work besides. Anything to get more of that fan mail!

There was a week, though, when I was a sought-after spokesperson for Queer Nation. In October 1990, we staged a big demonstration in San Francisco's Civic Center against a right-wing Christian evangelist who had decided to come to S.F. on Halloween in order to "exorcise the spirit of evil" form the city. I volunteered to be the media contact -- actually, in Queer Nation, where we had a funny name for everything, we called it "media whore" -- and got myself on TV right and left. The crowning moment came during the demonstration when I spotted a TV crew while chatting with Cris (who had come in a fetching devil costume I was way too busy to notice -- sorry, dear) and said to her, "Excuse me, but I'm going to go over there and get on CNN." And I did. That night millions of viewers watching the news while their kids counted up their Halloween booty saw my mug, explaining why we were chanting "Born-Again Bigots, Begone!" I also got into a Wall St. Journal advance story on Oct. 30 -- that front page story in the center column that is always about something whimsical -- getting a lot of milage out of thatt because it made my parents freak. Back then I was for anything that drove them crazy, and that included not only alternative culture but most of mainstream American culture as well. (When I'm 75, I'll probably feel the same way about American culture as they did. But I don't have any bratty kids who'll rub my face in it. Live and learn.)

*link harvested from from Romenesko's Media News
** I've got that story lying around, and I swear I'll type it in one of these days and share it with all six people reading this.

Here comes Sept. 11 again

It's almost time for the first annual Sept. 11 rehash. It won't go on forever -- it will just seem like it. The news event that provides the best recent comparison -- the assassination of JFK -- was commemorated up the wazoo for years, and every Nov. 22 rolled around like doomsday. Sept. 11 will seem like that too -- only there are more images to trot out -- a lot more images -- for ten or twenty years, until it fades from the collective consciousness.

Of course, if Bush manages to start a huge war by invading Iraq, the resulting conflagration could make Sept. 11 look like a Labor Day pileup on the New Jersey Turnpike by comparison.

Speaking of images, here are some great ones, posted at the Digital Journalist site in their issues 110 and 111. The latter contains digital images salvaged from the belongings of a photographer whol was killed in the collapse of the second tower to fall.

I'll be in New York for that day. Man, what'll that be like.

 

No, you can't have my driver's license to "make a copy"

We're going car shopping today -- always an onerous task. Getting ready to go car shopping, we gird ourselves by reminding each other of things we've learned the hard way.

One of the sleazy things a car salesman will do is ask you to hand him your driver's license so he can "make a copy" so that he may check your credit history. In fact, this is merely a ploy to keep you on the lot once you've decided he is an asshole and you want to leave. "I want to leave now, can you give my my license back?"  "Oh geez, let's see, where did we put that??"

Never accept their order of free coffee. The ploy is to make you so desperate to go to the bathroom that you'll agree to close the deal much sooner than you have to.

As long as they're showing you things you don't want, just keep repeating the phrase "But it's not what I want." There is no defense a car salesman can make against this magic phrase. "This comes with a great style package."  "But it's not what I want."

If you ask for something, write down on a note that you've asked for it. Then you have a little checklist you can refer to. "Oh, a few minutes ago I asked for the maintenance history of this car. Weren't you going to get that for me? You do have records of that, don't you?"

In fact, that's one of my favorite tactics in almost every business situation. "Do you have a record of that?"  "Can you show me where it says that?"  "Do you have the specs on that? Do you have it in writing?"

Salesmen hate me.

Heaven

Sunday morning. I wish I were a good enough writer to depict how delicious the San Franciso weather is. Yesterday a brutally hot day, hardly a breath of wind until late in the afternoon, then the cooling breeze from the ocean. And this morning, sunny and 70 degrees, the epitome of coastal California summer weather. The only thing unusual in that sequence is how hot it got yesterday -- over 90, which happens once or twice a year but only for a day or two. (Two days or more and people start freaking out.)

I worked on my novel in the disused church office yesterday undisturbed, borrowing the big box fan from the new office. In the evening, Cris and I walked over to the Flamenco restaurant-bar on 26th and Valencia. It was already cool enough to put on a sweater, and as we walked the few blocks west, we enjoyed a view of a brilliant planet (Jupiter?) and of the brand-new moon, just 36 hours old, its occluded portion glowing softly grey-red and its brilliant crescent shining low in the sky.

 

Another thousand words

Wrote another thousand words on my novel today, but I didn't finish the chapter as I'd hoped. It keeps expanding. Not just the chapter, the whole book. At the current rate, the first draft will be about 150,000 words (I'm at 110,000 words now), which is approximately the length of Underworld. I guess it's always better to have something longer to cut than it is to reach the end and find out you've only written, say, 37,000 words.

My friend Susie, also a writer, really started laughing when I once reported my day's work to her in terms of word count. "It's really about quantity for you, isn't it?" she asked. (Just as a comparison, her short stories generally run about 2200 words, while mine run three or four times that long. So that shows where she's coming from.)

Had a lovely drink last night with Dina, a genuine sexual revolutionary. The stories she had to tell! I won't repeat them here in case she wants to write a memoir someday. So much fun.

 

Long days

These are long days. I get up at 5:00 and shower, feed the cats, eat breakfast. Then I head over to the zen center in the Castro, and back home to change clothes, and then head downtown for work. So that's like two hours added on to what is a normal day for most people. Then after work I often have some meeting or other to go to. By the time I'm heading in or out of that after-work thing, it already seems like it's been a long day.

None of it's likely to change. So I take naps on the floor of my office at work to keep from running myself ragged. I just hope that the descent of winter (showoffy WCW reference!) doesn't further sap my willingness to get up at 5:00 a.m. It's one thing to get up and go sit in a basement before dawn in nice weather, but what will it be like when it's 40 degrees and the sun doesn't even rise until 7:00?

That's why I'll never live in Minneapolis. Not that anyone's asked me. It's just one of those cities which I think must be nice, even though I've never been there -- and I've definitely never spent a winter anywhere close to that far north. My only midwestern winters were in southern Illinois as a kid -- nowhere near as bad.

I'm rambling. Just getting psyched up for my reading in L.A. next week -- which I have to keep mentioning because otherwise no one will come. Now I'm worried I didn't put that mention high enough in this entry.

 

Into the heat

Kind of a strange week. I took Monday off to work on my novel, on account of having spent all day Saturday meditating. And today I have to take the last two-thirds of the day off to go to Fairfield. That is a town way northeast of here, halfway to Sacramento. Cris's mother has been living out there in an Alzheimer's care facility for the last couple of years. Today we have to go out there and make some Major Care Decisions. It's going to be over 100 degrees, so I'm sure glad we have Tank Girl, our Volvo.

I'm glad I took off Monday, though, because it was extremely productive. I wrote over 3000 words, which is a very good day -- a large chunk of chapter 18.

Yesterday I was indiscreet enough to mention my reading in L.A. next week to one of my employees. I had the feeling he might know people in L.A. that he could tell about the reading, and besides, 8 of his coworkers trooped over to a nearby bookstore a few months ago to hear his partner read, so he owes me. I've been trying to keep my life as a pornographer sort of hidden from my tender tech writers, and I shouldn't have blurted it out, but I'm just afraid nobody will come to the reading -- or what would be even worse, that a lot of people will come, but they'll all be friends of the three other people on the bill. Luckily he's cool and won't blab all my secrets around work. Right Brad?!

 

Lots of nothing

There are lots of things happening in my life, but they're either not very interesting for public consumption, or I'm not sure I want to blab about them. For example, I had a trip to Newark arranged for September; I just spent a couple of hours arranging to take the trip a week earlier. So what, right?

On a more interesting theme, I want to keep reminding people of the reading I'm doing in L.A. on Aug. 14. If you have ever read this and you live in the area, you get a free prize for coming to the reading. Also, I'm going to be in the area and sort of up for grabs for a few days, so any ideas will be welcome. I've already planing to see the Andy Warhol retrospective at the MOCA the next day.

In other news, I've been getting to know the inestimable Windy Chein of Aquarius Records. If I give her a list of my top twenty or thirty favorite records, she'll triangulate some custom recommendations, she said. That should be fun. Windy, and everybody else at the store, is helpful and unpretentious -- the opposite of the indy record store stereotype captured in the movie High Fidelity.

On Saturday I did another all-day sit at HSZC, and Sunday was a totally ordinary day of reading the paper in bed with Cris, going to church, and taking Cris' aunt to the park to feed the pigeons. There's a tango class practicing in the bandshell on Sunday evenings these days, and our pigeon-related activities make an amusing backdrop to their quick stepping.

 

Some people will do anything to get a reaction

MTV `Jackass` host held on obscenity and battery charges

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Steve-O, a host of the MTV daredevil show ``Jackass,''
remains in jail on $150,000 bail for obscenity and battery charges stemming
from a July 11 appearance in Louisiana.

The 28-year-old performer, whose real name is Stephen Glover, was arrested
Monday and charged with being a fugitive, police said.

Glover, of Los Angeles, is accused of violating obscenity laws by exposing
himself and stapling his scrotum to his inner thigh at a nightclub in Houma, La.

Boy, can you imagine the scuttlebutt on the standup comedy circuit? "You think audiences in L.A. or New York are tough? Guess what I had to do in Houma to get a laugh! I put my hand in a blender!"

I have never seen the program "Jackass," nor have I seen very much of MTV programming. I don't get it, and I'm not supposed to -- I'm 46 years old and way over the target market, no matter how much electronica I listen to. I don't get "Beavis & Butthead." I don't get "South Park." (I do get "The Simpsons," but hey, that show started ten years ago and was created by a baby boomer my age. It's totally 70s and 80s humor.)

Here's the summary, from the MTV website:

MTV is funding a bumbling cast ... to play with poo and dress in a variety of men's undergarments. [It] features a startling array of silly pranks, ridiculous stunts and a bunch of other stupid crap. .... WARNING: The following show features stunts performed either by professionals or under the supervision of professionals. Accordingly, MTV and the producers must insist that no one attempt to recreate or reenact any stunt or activity performed on this show. MTV insists that our viewers do not send in any home footage of themselves or others being jackasses.

Okay, I won't.

 

It must be summer

You know it's the dog days when pundits, suffering from indescribable ennui as they wait for their next trip to the Hamptons, interview each other.

Psychopath, or just plain crazy?

Salon.com has an informative article (actually a week old) on Henry Darger and his work, by way of reviewing a John MacGregor book on Darger's life and work. Not just an overview of the reclusive "outsider artist" whose life work was a 23,000-page, single-spaced opus about a war against children, called "The Vivian Girls," the article mentions controversies surrounding the man who discovered Darger's work, art dealer Nathan Lerner.

I saw an exhibit of Darger's work in New York last spring. The paintings are fascinating. Obsessive, beautiful, weird, they are an amazing reflection of the clash between a disturbed mind and American culture.

The Salon article wonders just how disturbed Darger was. The question raised by the article -- pretty hard to answer at this point, as Darger has been dead for 30 years and his work is practically impossible to study in its entirety -- is whether he was just a weird, obsessed recluse or actually a violent psychopath who might have murdered one or more children. There's no evidence for the latter theory, but Darger's own work certainly makes the question an interesting one.

 

Kwatz!

My sitting in the morning -- zazen at HSZC -- has been going reasonably well. For several months I sat seiza style with the aid of pillows, but lately I noticed that I wasn't breathing smoothly for some reason. So this week I switched to sitting cross-legged with pillows propping up my knees. My breathing's a little easier but my feet still fall asleep. I guess I'm not supposed to let that bother me, but since there are times I manage to get myself into positions where my feet don't fall asleep, I keep thinking that's ideal.

After meditation and the chanting service -- I've finally managed to memorize the English version of the Heart Sutra enough not to need to consult the printed version -- we do a little work period, cleaning and dusting. While I was dusting the altar, the priest John was dust-mopping and François, a recently arrived resident student, was cleaning the windows. At some point they stopped to talk, and somehow the handle of the dustmop dropped from John's hand and struck the floor with a loud bang. "Ooo, I'm enlightened now," François drawled.

I got the joke. In his book One God Clapping, Alan Lew writes of his experience at the San Francisco Zen Center that roshi Richard Baker used to watch for students who were struggling at the edge of an enlightenment experience, and would sneak up behind them and bang the floor with his stick to send them over the edge. "But I saw him sneaking up on me, so I missed it," Lew confides. (His book is a witty and heartfelt account of a spiritual quest that took the author from non-religious cultural Jewishness to Zen Buddhism and back to a religious, mystical Judaism. I recommend it.)

 

Here we go again

I predict we will now have several years of inspirational crap based on the Appalachian miners who were rescued early Sunday morning. How long were they underground? Three days. You get the idea.

The good part? They had to "cuddle" to stay warm. I'd like to see the Franklin Mint figurine of that.

Focus on the Fundies

Saturday's New York Times had an article (Free registration required) on the religious-right group Focus on the Family. This group has been one of the most influential conservative voices for the last twenty years. Its voice has a huge reach, through daily radio programs that blanket the U.S. and Canada, plus videos, cassette tapes, magazines, websites and newsletters. Their email alert system alone has the capacity to get tens of thousands of conservatives calling and emailing their elected representatives on any "pro family" issue. Because they aren't a church or owned by a church, they are independent of any particular organization or religious agenda. Yet they've consistently reflected the most conservative mainstream religious-right positions. (They're mainstream, not radical -- they aren't some crackpot white supremacist cult from Idaho. They have mainstream positions that can be, and are, supported by mainstream politicians like the Bush family.)

My biggest exposure to FOTF has been through the radio. Because I like to keep track of what the enemy is up to, and for entertainment purposes, I've been listening to these jerkoffs for years as I drive around in my car. They are impressively subtle -- they don't rant and rave. Everything they say sounds reasonable. Many of the guests on their radio show are respectable people with advanced degrees. Many of the issues they talk about are linked to some legislation currently moving through Congress or a state legislature, providing their listeners some action to take when the show ends: call your congressman and tell him to vote for HR such-and-such. It's a frighteningly efficient influence machine.

The group is led by a calm, grandfatherly man named James Dobson, always identified as "Child Psychologist and Author." Dobson holds unshakable religious-right views on abortion, creationism, the role of women in society, capitalism, how much government should influence daily life, and free speech. And he has the ability to back up his positions, either by himself or by inviting some pedigreed guest.

But civic issues are not the only ones that FOTF tries to influence, as evidenced by the name of the group. Many of their topics have to do with intimate personal and family issues like raising children, how to improve your "Christian marriage," and depression. Of course, whenever possible, they make connections to civic issues. So if they're talking about how to get Daddy off his internet pornography addiction, you can bet they'll also discuss filtering technology, whether or not you can see porn in libraries, and those damnable liberal librarians who want to allow it. Their agenda, and their ability to push it, is complete.

The article says their funding has flattened off, which is well and good. I'd love to see them shrivel, just as the Moral Majority did. But as long as Dobson is still living, I wouldn't bet on it.

Here are some links to more information on FOTF:

• Queer Resources Directory (QRD) page on the Religious Right
• Know the Opposition, a page on the Feminist Majority's website
• California Abortion Rights Action League page on the Christian Right
• This article from 1994 by Glen Eyrie is a valuable look at FOTF at the height of its influence
• Religious Right Alert, a website of the Interfaith Alliance of California

 

Gadgets and gizmos

Among the several computers I use is a Gateway laptop I got in late 2000. I had gotten it because I was about to go away for ten days to write, and the only laptop I had was my work laptop that belonged to my employer. So I bought a too-expensive laptop from Gateway and transferred all my personal stuff from the work laptop to the new one, and went off to my writing retreat. I felt very smart for having done that when, a week after I got back from my retreat, I got laid off. Instead of worrying about all the pornography on my machine -- that's what I had gone away to write, I was finishing my book How I Adore You -- all I had to do was pick up my desk lamp and a few other things and walk out the door.

That was the last time I ever had to go to Pleasanton, a godforsaken cow pasture at a freeway interchange 40 miles east of San Francisco. Today I went back there, because the Gateway store where I bought my laptop closed and the next closest was way out there in Pleasant-not.

The trip turned out to be a waste of time. I went out there because I thought only Gateway would have an ethernet card for the laptop; but ethernet cards turn out to be an interchangeable commodity, and in fact they didn't even sell them. Fortunately there was a big Comp USA next door, so I went over there and bought a cheap network card and, somewhat on impulse, a Handspring Visor Neo. I did that to inoculate myself against buying a more expensive model. I don't need one that has a phone built in; I've got a cell phone.

But things were strange at the Comp USA (a huge electronics chain). Their section of PDAs and phones was completely unattended, and when I got somebody to help me -- all they had to do was unlock a case and hand me a box, I could see it right in front of me -- the guy who finally showed up didn't have the key to the case. He went to somebody and they wouldn't give him the key. So he just sort of came back and complained to me: "Man, why don't they give me the key?! I work here -- they should trust me!" Finally we waved somebody else down and, after about ten minutes, a manager with a very harried attitude came and opened up the case. Then he went away without locking it again, so I hope somebody goes in there and walks away with every single PDA, including the expensive ones with phones built in.

Then I ate lunch at a Chevy's and drove back to SF, listening to the ballgame. The Giants are playing the Dodgers -- I've got tix to tomorrow's game -- and they're doing crummy. They lost last night and they ended up losing today. I hope that makes it more likely they'll win tomorrow.

I found a place to work and wrote about 1100 words of the first part of chapter 18 of the novel I'm working on. I didn't get as much done as I wanted, but maybe tomorrow, after the ball game.

 

Reason no. 6075 I wish I lived in New York

The Film Forum (in New York) is showing every film directed by Akira Kurosawa and starring Toshiro Mifune. My favorite: The Hidden Fortress, which George Lucas used as his inspiration for "Star Wars."

 

"We abuse the hand sanitizer"

A very funny and well-written account of life as a clerk at a porn video shop is here. By the time you read this, you've probably already seen it blogged someplace else ... but it's worth it. I even paid them when they asked.

 

That's real dedication

When a newsmagazine ran a cover story on General Muhammad Naguib, shortly after he became Egypt's first president in 1953, the writer said that Naguib was such a modest man that his name didn't appear among "the 000 people listed in Who's Who in the Middle East" and that he refused to live in "the royal palace, surrounded by an 00-foot-high wall". A cable was sent to a Cairo stringer to fill in the data. The magazine never heard from the stringer, so they rewrote the story so that the numbers were not needed. Later, they received a cable that looked like this: I AM IN JAIL AND ALLOWED SEND ONLY ONE CABLE SINCE WAS ARRESTED WHILE MEASURING FIFTEEN FOOT WALL OUTSIDE PALACE AND HAVE JUST FINISHED COUNTING THIRTY EIGHT THOUSAND FIVE HUNDERED TWENTY TWO NAMES WHOS WHO IN MIDEAST.

That's from a wonderful article on fact checkers and their work, in the Columbia Journalism Review. (Thanks to Romenesko's Media News, one of the two or three websites I read every day, for the link.)

 

Little girl of the week

Officers gently stopped the girl, who spoke only Spanish. She began yelling and kicked one officer
in the groin, Pinkham said.

Three-year-old girl sets off in middle of night, searching for parents. -- SF Chronicle article

Death defying

Though it's sponsored by some f**king corporation that splatters its name all over everything like snot, I feel compelled to alert people to the upcoming annual Street Luge event this coming weekend. It supposedly starts at 8:30 a.m. on Potrero Hill at DeHaro & Mariposa Streets. I can't imagine anybody I'd like to hang out with going to that and standing around all day to see some deluded thrill-seeker whiz by on a glorified skateboard, but I can imagine avoiding it on purpose.

I was stunned, though, to read that St. Gregory's Episcopal Church -- my best friend goes there, and it's one of the most liberal, artsy churches in San Francisco -- is actually welcoming the event.

Go to de... window!

Leo McKern has died, according to this AP story. Best known as Rumpole in the British comedy-mystery series "Rumpole of the Bailey," McKern first came to the attention of American audiences as the portly, half-dressed leader of the religious cult that chased Ringo through the movie "Help!" Picture him in a phone box outside Buckingham Palace, trying to lure Ringo to his death: "Go to de window. Go to... de window!"

 

Four ring circus

My upcoming reading in L.A. is going to be quite an event, according to this dispatch from Stan Kent, the organizer:

As far as the evening goes it is very flexible -- this is not your normal bookstore reading at all. It's mostly madness in a live talk show setting. You'll have an enthusiastic audience, and I'll be the host to keep things moving or derailed as needed. Have some selections to read but be prepared for detours. Figure you'll have about twenty solo minutes in the spotlight and the rest will be interaction with the audience and other guests. We give a bunch of stuff away. That night -- since we'll have such experts of the craft on hand -- we'll invite members of the audience up to write a few sentences of erotica -- perhaps a lusty note to a lover -- whatever -- and you'll give advice, have a laugh and give out some prizes. We'll do book signings (and sales) before, during and after the event which kicks off at 8pm and winds up around 10-10:30. In addition to M. Christian we've added Alma Marceau, author of Lofting, and Susannah Breslin, who is in Fantagraphics Dirty Words Volume 3. I expect thirty to fifty people and they'll not be shy about asking questions, so be prepared for an interactive and fun night.

Whee! That's 8:00 pm on Wednesday, Aug. 14, at the Hustler Store, 8920 Sunset Boulevard, in West Hollywood, between San Vicente and Doheny.