Bread and Bread

The only person I know in New Orleans still has a place to live. Fiona Apple ’s third album will finally be released on October 4. When I got home there was a red jacket hanging on the gate with a cup of soda sitting comfortably in the pocket. Another person I know, who was doing some freelance work for a New Orleans organization, has suddenly found herself with, um, an extended deadline. She used the extra time to work on her excellent novel about Afghanistan, and when it gets published I know it will do good things in in a world very much in need of good things.

When Bari was in grad school she could never hang out with my friends (or hers, even) or make it to parties. She was just one of those hardcore studiers, and I admired her for it. But sometimes I wondered if people believed I really had a girlfriend. Somewhat self-consciously, I began referring to her as my Snuffleupagus girlfriend, after Big Bird ’s friend who mysteriously disappeared every time anyone else was around. Bari is slightly more accessible these days, although this particular fall she will be doing a lot of traveling for work. Perhaps as a concession—and to give me something to do while she’s gone besides watch reality shows—she finally gave me her blessing to blog about her. Until now you may or may not have noticed that I’ve mentioned her only in very abstract terms. She was a little wary about being on the web, and since my blog is totally world famous, that seems understandable. This is a girl who carefully tears the address labels off her magazines before she recycle...

The class of ’95 was never much for tradition. When we were in eighth grade, we were the first class to let seventh graders hang out on the Eighth Grade Patio. In high school we walked on the Senior Walkway long before we were seniors, and by the time we were, we graciously let underclassmen use the allegedly coveted strip of cement. I’m proud of our collective progressiveness, but I suspect it was and is fueled by apathy. Case in point: It seems no one has gotten around to planning our 10-year high school reunion. Although there are rumors that Paige Nelson is, or a guy named Steve, or both. Go class of ’95! Way to prove you’re grown-ups! My friends and I decided to take matters into our own hands and hold a mini reunion. For one thing, the big reunion will inevitably be about showing off and gossiping. I enjoy both activities in moderate doses—and trust me, a just-in-case-there’s-a-reunion diet will be undertaken, and probably broken—but it’s also nice to spend some quality time wi...

Last night I dreamed I was checking my email. A while back, I dreamed I was filing my nails. The only thing sadder than having really boring dreams is blogging about them. When I was a kid, I had a dream that I was being chased through a forest by some type of wolf-like creature. It was scary, but my dream-self thought, "This is just a dream. I can escape." So I climbed a tree and slid down the trunk. It turned into a firehouse-style pole and, presto, I was in a new and better dream where I was surrounded by other kids and fun toys. Usually I dream my teeth are falling out. Let me know if you know what that symbolizes. I also dream about pets who've died--in my dreams, they're alive and I've just forgotten about them. But I'm already in therapy to deal with my guilt issues (among other things), so I don't think I need any feedback about that particular dream.

One of my favorite blogs, Andrea Siegel’s This Afternoon in Drama , recently (somewhat apologetically) made self-proclaimed Seinfeldian comments about doctor’s office scales . I feel compelled to add to the “what’s the deal with…” dialogue by saying: What’s the deal with place-of-origin nametags for waitstaff? If you’ve been to Vegas recently, you’ve probably noticed that many of the waiters and dealers have nametags that say things like “Svetlana: Ukraine” or “Santiago: Philippines.” It’s a conversation piece, I guess, and it sort of makes sense in a city like Vegas, where almost everyone comes from somewhere else. But Manhattan Beach, where I had dinner with my dad and sister at The Kettle last night, is not such a city. It’s a pleasant little suburb that many people avoid leaving (although I’m proud to say I migrated a full 17 miles northeast), and The Kettle is staffed almost entirely by longtime locals. Our waitress’ nametag said, “Nicole: Gardena,” and it just didn’t seem like t...

When I was little, my mom used to bake her own bread. It’s one thing to bake cookies or muffins, a special treat that will be oohed and ahhed over, but a thankless, everyday item like wheat bread—that’s hardcore. At the time, I was mainly embarrassed that my sandwiches were twice as thick as those of my classmates. My friend Cara brought neat little squares of egg salad on store-bought white bread with the crusts cut off. For the longest time I thought they were cake. My mom didn’t make the bread from scratch. She wasn’t Martha Stuart, and she wasn’t all that into cooking. But that makes the love and dedication of baking and slicing even frozen loaves once a week all the more impressive. Recently I decided to do the same. Not every week, but, well, once. I bought a three-pack of frozen bread dough and, after leaving it in my freezer for a few weeks, I took it out and read the baking instructions. They involved buttering a pan, and there was something about covering the dough and lettin...

Speaking of cultural exchanges, I think it’s very, very bad for global relations that the only interactions that most Americans and Indians have with each other is via tech support call centers. I say this after having spent far too much of my time (though Jamie and our downstairs computer guru Calvin spent even more of theirs) on the phone with Verizon’s minions trying to set up our new DSL at work. I’ll spare you the details, partly because I don’t even understand them—basically there is an evil spirit trapped in our modem. Said details required us to call Verizon many times. Each time we had to jump through five or six of the same please-provide-a-phone-number-in-case-we-get-disconnected hoops, a tactic that could ultimately lead to insanity. After stepping politely through the hoops each time, we would be given roundabout instructions that inevitably didn’t help, and we would be forced to call again. And after a while, one wants to grab one of the hoops and strangle someone with ...

Do you believe in love at first sight? I have never tasted Krispy Kreme bread pudding, but now that I’ve seen the recipe (brown sugar! corn syrup! three dozen Krispy Kreme donuts! ) I know that it’s my favorite food in the world. Falling for a recipe is not even like love at first sight, actually. It's more like falling in love after seeing someone's Friendster profile. Still. This is why it’s important to read midwest-based blogs like Run Jen Run . It's all about cultural exchange. I have nothing against the desserts available on the west coast—mochi ice cream, Diddy Riese cookies—but come on: It’s bread pudding made from donuts. Comfort food meets comfort food. Cheryl meets type II diabetes.

The wallpaper on Stephanie’s camera phone was the Yo! MTV Raps logo. Her connection to Y!MR is a long story, but how the logo got on her phone is the more interesting story. “A six-foot-tall albino named Ducky took the picture,” she informed us as she, Heather and I left Fabiolus . Heather and I both did a double take (would that make it a quadruple take, collectively?). “Wait. We know a six-foot albino named Ducky.” Our Ducky, we explained, was the crazy-sweet, sometime movie extra and frequent freeloader friend of our friend Jenessa’s ex-boyfriend Bill. The crazy thing is that it’s not like we all travel in the same circles. Heather and Steph had met once before. I see both of them way less than I would like, maybe once every few months. Heather and I go back to high school, Steph and I are college buds, and Jenessa is in Massachusetts these days. But there can’t be that many six-foot albinos named Ducky. Stephanie met him in a bar in Burbank. I don’t remember where they found the...

Line from a hip-hop song I heard on my drive home last night: "You ain't just wack. You're what wack wants to be when it grows up." I'm not sure if this is a compliment or an insult--if I hadn't come in in the middle of the song, maybe I would know. Or maybe not. But I plan to use it.

So I wonder if I jinxed myself with that last entry about the fictional fiction writer who would get her book published before me. But, like, jinxed myself in a really good way. Because a few hours after I wrote that, I learned that my MFA thesis project—a collection of connected short stories titled The Commuters —is going to be published by a small nonprofit press called City Works . This is huge, multiple exclamation point, dance-around-the-room territory. For those of you unfamiliar with the world of small nonprofit presses, that means I won’t make any money, and you may not see the book in Barnes & Noble, but I’ll actually have a say in what goes on the cover, and I'll actually get to talk to my editors, Jim and Kelly, and they will be really nice and smart and laidback, if today's phone conversation with them was any indication. More exclamation points to follow. And a big blog-to-heaven shout-out to my mom, who is entirely to blame for this whole loving-reading-and-w...

When I was in junior high, I hated watching The Wonder Years . Kevin Arnold’s awkward first kiss was not charming or cathartic, just a painful reminder that I was a good five years away from even a peck on the cheek. And I suspect that now, if there were a movie or TV show about a 28-year-old “emerging” writer with a girlfriend, two cats and a handful of neuroses-she-hoped-were-charming, I would find it equally stressful. The girl on the show would probably get her novel published long before me. But movies about awkward 11-year-olds? Bring ‘em on! I watched Mad Hot Ballroom , a documentary about a competitive ballroom dance program in New York’s public schools, with my friend Heather, whom I’ve known since our respective band geek and drill team dork days. From our vantage point of 20-something confidence, it was delightful to watch these sixth graders transform their urban ragamuffin awkwardness into sophisticated grace. They swing and tango joyfully, but still look like the half-gro...

After spending almost three months reading The Time of Our Singing , it was weird to plow through my next book— Kira-Kira by Cynthia Kadohata—in a weekend. Like following up a relationship with a one-night stand. Maybe it’s appropriate, then, that compared to Richard Powers’ intricate, choreographed style, Kadohata’s writing is raw, plainspoken and sometimes random. Just what I needed. Kira-Kira (which means shining or glittery in Japanese) is technically a kids’ book. My mom was a children’s librarian, and I learned long ago that you can read Huckleberry Finn in the fifth grade and write your college thesis on Weetzie Bat (which I did, along with one of Kadohata’s other books, In the Heart of the Valley of Love ). Kira-Kira is narrated by Katie, a Japanese American girl living in 1950s Georgia, where her parents work long, grueling hours in various stages of chicken production. Kadohata, like Laura Ingalls Wilder, is able to write about desperate conditions while still conveying ...

"Even prisoners get bread. Bread is so basic that, unlike water, restaurants don't have the guts to charge for it. Certain foods cannot even be made without bread--such as French toast and bread." --From "Eat This, Low Carbers" in Time

If you are a sheltered lefty like myself, you occasionally wonder, “Who are these ‘Republicans’ everyone keeps talking about? I mean, besides my dad, who I am determined to believe is really a social liberal crippled by the fact that he hates taxes as much as he hates paying extra for guacamole.” Next time you ask yourself this, I suggest clicking “next blog” in the upper right-hand corner of this or any other blogspot blog. (This is my new favorite way to waste time. My old favorite way to waste time was to Google people I went to high school with, which gets old and ultimately makes me creepy. Clicking “next blog” offers all the voyeurism and a million times the variety.) In addition to blogs featuring wedding photos and needlepoint projects , there are a lot of conservative rant blogs. I’m not talking about high profile wonks, just regular folks who post pictures of butterflies that their child drew one day and warn about the evils of Planned Parenthood the next . People (multiple ...

The first thing I did when I got to my sister’s house for a night of cat-sitting was watch Filthy Rich Cattle Drive , E!’s new Simple Life rip-off. It was a good thing, too, because the second thing I did was feed Madeline (Cathy’s cat, who reminds me of a pair of black silk pajamas). I reached my hand into the bag of cat food on top the washing machine, and when I pulled it out, it was covered in ants. Now, my first instinct was to drop the handful of infested cat food, run screaming to the sink, plunge my arm into a stream of water and go buy Madeline a new bag of food, leaving the mess for Cathy. But I had just watched a bunch of spoiled children of CEOs stick gloved hands into cows’ rectums to determine whether they were pregnant. (I think Paris and Nicole did this too—I suspect that real ranches use ultrasounds when the cameras are off and have a good laugh convincing city folk that fisting is the bovine EPT.) A few of them were good sports about it, but most squealed and whimper...

The Time of Our Singing by Richard Powers is, like all my favorite books, a book about everything. Every thought I’ve ever had (and a lot of ones I didn’t) about life, death or culture is in there, stated much more eloquently than I could ever state it. As a writer, this is daunting and depressing. As a reader, it’s wonderful, and I shall make it my mission to proselytize this book in every form available to me. So here goes: I know I just said that The Time of Our Singing is about everything, but more specifically, it’s about music, race and time. The novel is narrated by Joseph Strom, born in the early 1940s to a German Jewish physicist father and an African American musician mother. The family’s early years are spent around the piano playing “Crazed Quotations,” a soaring crazy quilt of phrases pulled from songs classical and gospel, European and American. Together they produce the harmony that their country fights to call impossible. All three Strom children are musical prodigies...

I just learned about a new activist magazine called Clamor . I don't know if they have a section (maybe featuring people wearing fur and sweatshop-made clothing, with black rectangles over their eyes) called "Clamor Don'ts"--I can only hope--but I did read an interesting essay about day laborers, drug dealers, coffee shops and cops: http://www.clamormagazine.org/issues/33/people.shtml .

This is the part where I out myself as a huge fan of the musical Rent . As in, for a long time I dressed like Broadway’s idea of a homeless person to emulate the ensemble. As in, my friend Stephanie and I were so sad when the tour left LA our junior year of college that we followed it to Arizona, sleeping in her car and changing into our theater dresses in the restroom of a Jack in the Box. It’s a little embarrassing in retrospect, but I have no regrets. There have only been a few bandwagons I’ve jumped on in my life (collecting My Little Ponies, working for a dot-com, blogging), and sometimes it’s nice to be a part of your time. Sometimes it’s nice to do something really intensely. And how else is a nice queer girl from the suburbs supposed to discover la vie Boheme? Like most fans who learn that the source of their fandom is going (even more) mainstream, I had mixed feelings about the upcoming movie, directed by Chris Columbus. Would they cast a bunch of American Idol stars? Would i...

Apparently, I'm not the only one who has a complicated relationship with hipsterdom. If I'm onto something by sidelining irony, does that make me...really hip? (But if I secretly want the answer to be "yes, you're so hip," does that make me really lame?) The answers may or may not lie in this LA Times article: http://www.calendarlive.com/printedition/calendar/cl-et-antihip20jul20,0,2499896.story?coll=cl-calendar .

Maureen lived in LA for several years before moving to upstate New York, so when she comes to town—as she did this weekend—she has a list of old haunts she likes to visit. Many of these places were restaurants: Electric Lotus , Fred 62 and Capital Seafood , which serves a garish and irresistible hot and sour whole fish. I ate a good three fourths of that fish. In other words, Maureen’s nostalgia coincides nicely with my gluttony. We traipsed through the hot and sour garment district downtown, stockpiling purses and sunglasses and those frozen treats that look like Otter Pops on steroids. We saw Charlie and the Chocolate Factory . Afterward I mused on the Oompa Loompa globalization allegory while shoving Mrs. Fields cookies into my face. This was also the weekend that our landlord finally got around to hiring Bugs Ugh! to zap all the apartments in our building. Which meant that, after Friday night’s Creole feast at Harold & Belle’s , I got to come home and put every plate, box of c...