Bread and Bread

What's Memorial Day without a barbecue? We almost found out, because we couldn't get the two in our back yard to work. The one that came with the place turned out to be a propane grill that lacked both propane and a tank to hold propane. "So basically it's just a grill that you can put charcoal in," AK explained. "It's like finding a car with no engine and deciding to live in it." She messed around with upstairs neighbor Alyssa's charcoal grill for a while, but it turned out that the easily-five-years-old bags of charcoal that came with the house were not in such good shape either. Luckily there were stove tops inside. Alyssa has lived above us for just a couple of months. We love her, partly because she loves our cats. Just look at Ferd strut down those stairs. All the barbecue commotion was a bit much for some members of Team Gato, and for Jody and Christine too, who were tired from a long day of comforter-shopping. So they tried out our comfor...

No matter how progressive and lovely a wedding is, it’s always a little weird to be a queer person at a public celebration of straight marriage. I had this thought Sunday afte rn oon as AK and I watched Joel and Holly exchange vows at Fa rn sworth Park in a ceremony that was traditional in some ways and mode rn in other ways and sweet and fun in all ways. No more vague awkwardness allowed, I admonished myself. You can get married too these days. But the thing about history is that it sits on your shoulder and whispers in your ear even when the conversation has moved on. This is kind of the point, I think, of Kara Walker’s show, My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love , at the Hammer Museum . She’s known for her small and large silhouettes of antebellum tableaus. They feature white and black characters (though, of course, they’re all black in silhouette, which draws attention to the fact that we perceive race only partly based on color) in poses and situations that a...

This is Vivi, a character I sketched for the children’s book writing and illustration class I just started taking at Art Center at Night . My first class was equal parts intimidating and inspiring. I’m the only non-visual-artist in the class, and I found myself leaning over my sketchbook like it was my junior high diary. Today I pulled my friend Lee-Roy aside and asked for a quick crash course in water color techniques because I’d exhausted all the art-101 questions I could ask in a class that wasn’t technically art 101. Nevertheless, it’s fun to feel like a beginner. It’s like trapeze and skiing —I’m drunk on the myth of my own potential, and light with the lack of expectations. I feel kind of like the four-year-old I’m drawing, actually. Speaking of trying new things: My friend Bronwyn has set up a new lit mag/blog (mog?) for videos of people reading their own fiction at unexpected venues. It’s called GuerrillaReads , and she’s now accepting submissions. (I’m listed as a c...

This is a lorax. It is not to be confused with a soas, which is the thing in my leg that has been hurting me at random times for a few weeks now. Using the diagrams on the side of weight machines at the gym for guidance, I had self-diagnosed it as my hip abductor, but Veronica —a dancer and massage therapist—saw me last night after my hip hop class and said otherwise. She poked my knee in the gentlest way, had me do a couple of stretches and said, “Yeah, that’s your soas. If it still hurts in a week, call me and I’ll come over and work on you.” Veronica is an old-lady dancer ’s best friend. Now if I can just get her to teach me to shake my ass at warp speed like they do in hip hop videos, I’ll be all set.

1. i bet the eucalyptus groves weren’t crowded Ah, luxurious coolness. This was the first really hot weekend of the year, and AK and I were pleased to discover that the ceiling fans for which we petitioned our child-prodigy landlord (he’s 26 and he owns rental property, which in my book places him in the same category as teenage concert pianists) work fabulously. We also made it to the beach with Christine and Jody —and I feel like, on the first really hot weekend of the year, “made it to the beach” is the appropriate term. On the way, I called my sister to see if she wanted to join us. She said, “Actually, I’m already at the beach, and, just to wa rn you, so is everyone else.” Even the $20 parking lots were full. Getting to the ocean was a feat. Normally I’m proudly anti-beach. I grew up in a beach town and I’m always amazed by how many of my high school classmates’ MySpace pages list the beach as a primary part of their identities. I mean, the beach is lovely, but I also...

Gay marriage is now legal in Califo rn ia : http://www.mercurynews.com/centralcoast/ci_9270265 . I’m already going to two gay weddings this summer. It’s nice to know the cops won’t shut ‘em down.

1. cirque love Since starting gymnastics at age five—or at least since reading Geek Love in college—I’ve wanted to run away and join the circus. Actually, the problem was that I wanted to join the circus but I didn’t want to run away. How fortunate, then, that AK found out about Cirque School , where you can lea rn the trapeze arts without ever leaving L.A. She gave me a class for my birthday, which I finally redeemed last night (after reading up on it, I decided it sounded kind of hardcore, and that I needed to build up some flexibility and upper body strength before going—I’m not sure that happened, but a month passed, I was a little closer to reuniting with my left splits and I was itching to take the class). The classes are held at Absolution L.A. , a small West Hollywood studio walled with honey-colored wood and stocked with pilates machines, trapezes, a climbing wall, red vinyl chairs and other items of expensive-looking fu rn iture. It reminded me, I told AK later,...

At 451 pages, Richard Powers’ The Echo Maker is actually a highly economical novel given the subject matter it takes on. It’s the story of a young woman and her brother, the latter of whom doesn’t recognize his sister after a mysterious auto accident sends his psyche on a ride more bizarre than any Nebraska highway could deliver. Mark Schluter knows he has a sister named Karin—he just doesn’t believe this imposter is her. It’s also the story of an Oliver Sacks -like brain researcher who, in studying Mark, starts to question his possibly exploitative relationship to his case studies—all while questioning the usual things he questions: the brain, the body, the self. Finally, The Echo Maker is also the story of the cranes who migrate through Nebraska each year as part of an ancient jou rn ey on a road that’s being whittled away by mode rn ity. I worship at the altar of Richard Powers because he manages to combine reams of research (ecology, the latest neurological developments) ...

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you know that I like to spend approximately one out of every 10 posts bemoaning the difficulty of finding a publisher for my Big Fat Lesbian Novel . And if you’re AK, you’ve actually seen me shed tears about it. You’ve counseled me through a long drive on the 5 as I blubber, “But how do I know if I’m a real writer?” So imagine my surprise when—after two solid years of rejection letters (most of them form letters too, with the exception of one encouraging note from an editor whose press promptly went under, and one “not for me, but keep on truckin’” email from a kindly agent)—two presses said yes in one week. “It’s like being asked to the prom by two people,” Amy said wisely. I will add that it was like being asked to the prom when you have frizzy hair and are fatter than all the other cheerleaders and actually quit Girls’ League because they planned the Christmas dance and you just knew you wouldn’t have a date, and you tu rn ed out to...

1. merging onto the information superhighway in an ’87 toyota tercel This seems like a question that a savvy young-ish person with a blog and no less than five online profiles shouldn’t have to ask, but…how do you get a website? (This is not rhetorical: I’m hoping that you—savvy young-ish Bread and Bread readers—will tell me.) I mean, like, I know I have to buy a domain name and stuff, but who should I buy it from? And does that same entity host it on their server? Which hosts (is that even the right word?) are cheap but won’t bombard visitors with ads promising a free dinner at Chili’s if they can identify a celebrity senior portrait that is clearly Tom Hanks? I’ve resisted building a site because I’m lazy and a late adopter, but it looks like the inte rn et is here to stay. And the first step in being a Real Live Professional Writer is having a Real Live Professional website, right? Okay, arguably the first step is “writing some stuff.” But I’ve toiled at step one lo...

In my former writing group, Pat would often complement writing she liked by saying, “The language is so great. I just want to roll around in it.” I didn’t totally get it—I’ve read lots of really strong prose that I didn’t necessarily want to lather up with. But right now I’m all about rolling around in Francesca Lia Block ’s Quakeland , which I picked up this weekend at the L.A. Times Festival of Books at the Manic D Press booth (this was easy to do, since the other half of the booth was occupied by my organization, and I spent a sweaty but fun 16 hours there). I first read Block’s Weetzie Bat books when I was in junior high, and I fell in love with an L.A. I’d never visited. It was queer and punky and neon, which made it enticing and a little scary. I read the books again in college when I was just beginning to explore the city for real (and write a thesis about it). I liked taking pictures of homeless kids in leather jackets and the then-under-construction Red Line on Holly...