Bread and Bread

Who needs perfect teeth when you have a bedazzled face? I started this blog almost exactly seven years ago. I’m sure I have at least seven more years worth of posts in me about movies, books, babies, Taco Bell radio commercials and other pressing matters. But I think it’s time for a hiatus—probably somewhere in the network sitcom range, not the HBO range, length-wise. I’ve been thinking about living my life in public—something I started doing accidentally as a result of being a writer, an all-too-willing Facebook addict and someone who generally can’t shut up. As much as this blog is not a diary (my actual diary sounds like the most boring therapy session in the world), constantly documenting my life in any capacity has created a weird obsession with presentation. It’s like I visit my blog or my Facebook page to find out what I’m like. The places I need to visit are church, my friends’ houses, my therapist’s office. Maybe some poetic mountain or freeway underpass (depending wh

Let's all go to the lobby! Let's all check our eeeeemail! Last night I read with some fabulous gay men at a reading hosted by Artillery Magazine (“the only art magazine that’s fun to read”), which provided free wine for the hour before we took the mic. I have decided this is a key component of a successful reading. Those folks laaaaughed (in a good way) when I read from my Untitled YA Adoption Scam Novel.* The reading was in the groovy Cactus Lounge at the Standard Hotel in West Hollywood. When my dad arrived—and god bless my dad for unblinkingly attending readings where it’s not uncommon for someone to start his (really great) poem with the word “Semen”—we had this conversation: Me: Did you have any trouble finding the place? Dad: No, no. It’s kind of run-down, though. At first I thought it was abandoned. Me: This is a really nice hotel. I could never afford to stay here. I mean, I don’t know if it’s at the top of the trendy hotel list anymore, but—

Is that a magnet in your shirt or are you just happy to see me? My car is such a tease. It’s doing this thing where sometimes it doesn’t start, but it won’t replicate the problem for my mechanic. This morning I tried to explain what Jeff had said to me to my car-expert dad: “It could be that the starter is making the distributor break, or the distributor is making the starter break. But until we figure out which, I can’t replace either.” My dad proceeded to tell me that what I’d described was physically impossible. Things get lost in the Car-to-Jeff’s Chinese-to-English-to-Cheryl-to-Dad translation. But the problem hasn’t cost me any money yet, and walking the mile and a half to and from the shop was strangely uplifting in the lovely Saturday weather. I prefer to save my getting-upset cards for existential matters. And then, oh, do I play them. I made Michelada beer cocktails for book club and they were SO GOOD. I got uppity with anyone who disagreed with my love for Man