Bread and Bread

Conversation after working all weekend at the L.A. Times Festival of Books : Jamie : When I got home last night, I lay down on the couch, and it felt like I literally had thousands of people walking through my body. Cheryl: Yeah—in tiny little cleats. Jamie: I just had to lie there and wait for them to leave my body. But they left all their trash behind. Cheryl: And their self-published poetry books too, right? Jamie: Right. Cheryl: Get some rest. Jamie: You too.

Last night we were supposed to go to the Dodgers/Giants game, but it was sold out unless we wanted to pay $35 or more. We did not, so AK and I found a not-too-shabby plan B in the form of a reading by Felicia Luna Lemus , Raquel Gutierrez and Claudia Rodriguez at IMIX in Eagle Rock. Claudia is my friend from CalArts, and she and Raquel both read beautifully descriptive, funny prose about genderqueer youngsters. Felicia also went to CalArts, although we didn’t have any classes together, so I never got to know her. But I definitely knew of her—as the superstar who went out and nabbed Sandra Cisneros’ agent right after graduation, published her first book with FSG and wore gorgeous, bright-colored vintage dresses while doing it. Am I jealous? A little. A lot. I used to be really ashamed of my envious tendencies—maybe because of the Why can’t you just be nice ? look my ex would give me whenever I wrestled with someone else’s success. These days I stop short of embracing this particular...

One thing that sucks about not being famous, besides not being handed gift bags full of iPods and designer sunglasses everywhere you go, is that no one’s knocking down your door to interview you. So you have to go knock on a few doors yourself—I knocked on Claire ’s, and she emailed me the questions below: 1. If you had the opportunity to write a nonfiction book, what would its topic be and how would you prepare to write it? Form-wise, something along the lines of Adrian Nicole Leblanc’s Random Family or Susan Orlean’s The Bullfighter Checks Her Make-up —something that would require me to spend a lot of time with a group of interesting people and write about them in a vivid, narrative, predictably fiction-esque manner. I was a journalist for about five minutes, you know. Topic-wise, I think it would be about the circus. 2. Do you have any tattoos? If so, where and what? If not, what would you get and where? I have one tattoo: a vine wrapping around my left wrist. There are light bulbs...

Okay, so I’m in a somewhat lower income bracket and I wouldn’t describe myself as agnostic, but otherwise, this Onion article (“ This American Life Completes Documentation Of Liberal, Upper-Middle-Class Existence ”) skewers me pretty successfully, right down to the Honda Civic and the lack of anger. How do I know for sure (besides the fact that I love This American Life )? Because I found myself protesting a bit too much while reading it: Hey, TAL covers a lot of working class and lower class lives—what about that story where the really articulate homeless guy talked about sleeping outside ? What about all those quirky but undeniably blue-collar jobs David Sedaris worked before he made it big? If you need me, I’ll be at Starbucks thinking about how my non-disposable mug might, in some small and pathetic-but-sweetly-poignant way, counteract the effects of global warming.

1. Taking the Red Line downtown. I drove halfway to TC Boyle ’s reading at the Mark Taper Forum, a benefit for Red Hen Press , parked in Koreatown, and took the train the rest of the way. I know that people do this everyday in other cities, that the experience is tiring and tedious and full of smelly people. But in LA it feels positively luxurious. As I opened my book and read approximately three and a half pages over the course of five stops, I kept thinking, I am so urban and sophisticated! And I am reading ! I’m a sophisticated, urban multi-tasker ! 2. My orchid blossoming. AK gave me Kid (as I named the orchid) a few months ago, and I thought I’d killed it by not giving it plant food per the little plastic instruction card. But it didn’t look totally dead, just sort of stick-like but still green, so I kept watering it anyway. I felt crappy because, around this same time, the succulent she’d given me earlier had tu rn ed a troubling shade of purple that seemed to suggest su...

I’m past the age where, when that phrase sums up my weekend, it refers to vodka. (And even when I was at that age, dessert was my real vice of choice.) No, this weekend it referred to KCRW ’s awesome but somewhat interminable Sounds Eclectic concert at the Gibson Amphitheatre. The Jurassic Parking structure (don’t you wish you lived in LA?) spit us out onto CityWalk , where huge neon signs and the sent of kettle co rn somehow add up to nightlife. We groped our way through the crowd until we saw a couple in their late 20s, both with shaggy haircuts, she wearing high heels and skinny jeans, he wearing…well, some other type of good-looking jeans. I’m bad at noticing boys. “They’re clearly going the same place we are,” AK said. “Let’s just follow them until we get to all the other well-dressed aging hipsters.” When we united with the aforementioned group, we heard a woman say to her friend, “This is such a KCRW crowd.” “Oh my god,” I whispered to AK, “we’re even all having...

A long time ago I saw a cartoon of a man walking down the street. A few feet behind him was a piano that had just crashed to the ground from some great height. The man’s thought bubble said, “Wow, another close call.” The caption said, Thursday the 12 th . Was it any wonder that I came home yesterday to find a giant tree toppled next to my apartment building, but not on top of anyone or anything but the sidewalk? This Friday the 13 th , Ca rn ival of the Mundane presents Tales of Close Calls and All-Out Bad Luck. (But if you scroll down far enough, there’s always happy stuff too. None of us has blogged our suicide note yet, knock on cyber-wood.) Nevertheless: Claire of Taller Than Average Tales is so unlucky that not only is sangria drawn, moth-to-flame-style, to her light-colored pants, but even her friends can’t get a break . Nelumbo of Mommy Plays Bass discovers that the only thing more fun than a breast exam is going into labor while getting a breast exam . ...

That line was spoken by Darlene in the episode of Roseanne —circa 1993—where the family gets a VCR. It goes through my head every time I acquire a new gadget, usually four to seven years after most people in developed countries do. My dad, on the other hand, is an early adopter, albeit a somewhat contradictory one. We were one of the first families in our neighborhood to acquire a VCR and video camera, but 15 years later, when other people were walking around with hand-held camcorders the size of a coffee mug, my dad was still carrying around our giant camera and the entire VCR, which, in the old old days, you had to strap to your hip pack-mule-style if you wanted to shoot a little footage of your daughter performing a gymnastic routine to the opening medley from Cats at the school talent show. In a polo shirt hand-puffy-painted with a giant cat face. Needless to say, my dad has been a proud iPod owner for several years now, while I continued to squeeze everything I could out ...

He was a she back then, or as she as he ever was, androgynous in a gray hooded raincoat and baggy black jeans. This is a sentence from chapter five, draft two of the novel I’m currently working on. Who knows if it will live to see draft three—the sentence, that is. The itself novel better survive. Here’s another sentence, from chapter 10: Becca unzipped the biggest section of her backpack and removed what appeared to be a messily rolled-up beach towel. But then I smelled it. If you want to hear more sentences like this, come see me and my writing group-mates read May 1 at Skylight Books. It will be the debut of my new project and the finale of my time with the Writers at Work gang . If you are into writing sentences of your own and do so regularly on some type of blog-type device, please consider participating in the aforementioned Ca rn ival of the Mundane . I haven’t gotten many submissions yet—what, are you worried you’re not mundane enough? I’m talking to you Sara ...

Jamie and I had had a long day of Talking About The Arts, or, more specifically, listening to other people Talk About The Arts. Funding, outreach, funding for outreach. This stuff is our life, and it’s really important, but since this particular meeting was at the Getty , by hour three we were itching to experience the arts. So we did. After being greeted by Tim Hawkinson ’s giant Uberorgan (giant being an understatement—it’s probably the only musical instrument that could fill the entire atrium of the Getty), we were anxious for more of his organic-meets-mechanical work. The accompanying exhibit, “Zoopsia” (which means “visual hallucination of animals”) was dwarfish by comparison—just four works—but not disappointing. What I love about Hawkinson, whom I first encountered at LACMA a few years ago, is how he combines concept and craft. A Puritan work ethic shoots through my artistic soul: I can’t help but set aside big splashes of color and idea in favor of thousands of painstaking b...

I just took an abs class at Bally’s. By accident. I went in for yoga, but in classic Bally’s style, a guy walked in and announced, “Joelle couldn’t make it tonight, so I’m subbing. But I don’t know yoga, so we’re gonna do some abs and cardio.” I didn’t suck as much as I thought I would, which made me wonder, So where are my six-pack abs? Why is my middle more the consistency of flan? I am still wondering this as I sit here eating leftover tres leches cake from Saturday’s party. Exciting discovery: Like lasagna and soup, it gets better after a couple of days in the fridge. Moist and sour-creamy. If you are the sort of person who enjoys philosophical musings on the likes of cake, Carnival of the Mundane —a roundup of blog posts about everyday life—was made for you. An early and enthusiastic participant, I have to admit I’ve been slacking lately. But I’m due to host again this month, so if you have a particularly fabulous post about your unfabulous life, please send a link, along with yo...

This is where I had my birthday party on Saturday. Let me explain. AK and I discovered the Old Zoo Picnic Area of Griffith Park when we went hiking over the holidays. Built by the WPA, these old habitats and enclosures served as the LA Zoo until the mid-‘60s, when the animals moved on up to (comparatively) deluxe quarters a couple of miles northeast. Now you can picnic in and around the Old Zoo. Since wandering through decaying ruins and eating outdoors are two of my favorite activities, there was really no other place I could have my party, even though a small co rn er of the park caught on fire on Friday and the Old Zoo is almost impossibly hard to find. My friend Amy circled Griffith Park for almost an hour. Finally she gave up and text messaged, “Happy Birthday. Sorry I’m retarded.” (Sorry, Amy—it’s not you, it’s the zoo.) Each habitat seemed to have drawn a different subculture to picnic there—kid’s family birthday, stoner couple with dog, teenage punks who called ...

Some photos from yesterday’s rally and march to renew the charter of Academia Semillas del Pueblo .

Great news, T-Mec watchers: The tumor was benign. A big, black, bumpy, two-inch, perfectly harmless tumor. The bad news, as far as Mec-Mec herself was conce rn ed, was that she had to wear a little sweater to protect her stitches. It was actually more of a wife-beater—ribbed and sleeveless—and she looked like a bad-ass, in a cuddly sort of way. I took a bunch of pictures, which quickly became historical artifacts. Girl figured out how to get her sweater off about 20 minutes after getting home from the vet last week. Yesterday mo rn ing I took her in for a check-up, and told Dr. Marks (subbing for Dr. Wong , who’s out of town this week) that T-Mec has been wriggling out of her sweater. “You could try to find a tighter T-shirt for her,” he said, looking me over. “You’re pretty big, but maybe if one of your girlfriends has one of those itty-bitty baby tees….” I’m still not sure if he was calling me fat or telling me I had big tits, but either way, I can see why he works with animals rath...

Okay, I’m back from Crazyville, more or less, thanks to ramen with Steph and Nina (right), some mellow quality time with AK, a lot of phone calls to my very patient dad and sister, and a really sweet get-well card from Sara ’s cats, Chaucer and Schro. It was especially nice of them considering that they’ve never even met T-Mec in person—but they used to all live in the same building in Northern South L.A., so I’m sure they’ve had their eyes on many of the same pigeons and free-range pit bulls. Now I have new cause for bittersweetness: On Tuesday I let my writing group know that April 25 would be my last day with them. I’m at a stage in my novel where I need to do a bunch of research, and being in a regular writing group brings pressure to turn in pages rather than study the rainforest conservation movement in Eastern Malaysia. That’s right, I’m quitting my writing group because it was causing me to write too much. Also, I’ve been in it for almost three years, longer than most MFA prog...

1. sometimes the balance came out wrong Turns out I am not fluent in vet-speak. “The full mammary line” actually only means one side—in this case the three left boobies, which would make her lopsided if she weren’t an A-cup anyway. And, it turns out, “the X-rays are clear, but her tumor was big and nasty and bumpy” means there’s a fairly good (meaning very bad) chance that it has spread in some small way and could recur, which wouldn’t give her all that long. After Friday’s cautiously optimistic blog post (during which I was secretly feeling very optimistic), I came crashing down and stayed there for 16 excruciating hours. I was feeling strange and stir-crazy, and since T-Mec was scheduled to be at the hospital overnight, I decided to meet AK in Hollywood for a movie. She indulged my need for the lightest of light fare and let me drag her to (she even suggested it) Reno 911! Miami , which I’m pretty sure was pretty funny. (On Thursday, the first of what’s shaping up to be the monasti...

For those of you kindly tuned into the T-Mec saga , I just got an update from the vet, the super nice, energetic, seemingly 17-year-old Dr. Wong: Mec’s X-rays came back clear (though it’s possible she could still have tiny bits of undetectable cancer floating around in there, but hey, so could any of us). She’s still having surgery to remove the lump we knew about as well as what Dr. Wong calls “the full mammary line.” I.e., all six boobies. Luckily, when you’re covered in fur, you don’t need to worry about how you look in a bikini. Thanks for all your nice comments, Bread and Bread peeps. T-Mec couldn’t have more cyber-support if she had a Catster page.

I’ve developed a strange new hobby of filling out consumer satisfaction surveys. It started with a questionnaire about an Excel class I took at the Center for Nonprofit Management . They’re nice folks down there at the Center, so I filled it out. And I won a digital camera as a result. Now, even though most surveys don’t enter you to win anything, I can’t stop. Earlier this week I let the Miyako Hotel in San Francisco know that I that the cleanliness of their bathrooms exceeded my expectations. I even typed a nice note into the optional “comments” box. Today I informed Expedia.com that the staff at Payless Car Rental was slightly below average in friendliness. Part of it is the fake power: Expedia is listening to me ! Part of it is empathy. Someone on the other end of the DSL line is compiling the results of these surveys, and I feel like it helps to balance their conclusions if not all the respondents are crazy, retired or venting about the worst customer service experience of thei...

One year ago Monday , I was driving to Akbar, decked out in a red thrift store skirt, black T-shirt that said “Denise Rossi’s Dance Ten Presents Into the New Millennium” and a scarf with owls on it. It was my idea of a cute blind date outfit, though later I would find out that my date’s first impression was, She’s wearing a skirt. Weird. But I guess it wasn’t all bad, because there was a second date, during which I choked on empanada toppings and lost my car in downtown LA. “God, I hope it didn’t get towed,” I worried. “No, you just forgot where you parked it,” she assured me. “Don’t worry, I do stuff like this all the time.” Our attempts to celebrate one awesome year of looking for our respective cars after many fun days and nights on the town were somewhat thwarted by AK’s sudden and nasty cold and my discovery that my cat Temecula probably has breast cancer. Yeah…I’m not taking it well. She’s scheduled for X-rays and surgery on Friday, and if the vet discovers it hasn’t metastasize...

Friday I showed up late to Noel ’s reading at Vroman’s . While you can count on many authors to read for a good (or not so good) 45 minutes, it was just my luck that Noel kept things short and sweet—so I only got to hear a few minutes of his seemingly really interesting new novel, Talking to the Moon . Noel is a sometime actor, so he read well, too. Sigh. At least I was there for the inspiring Q&A and tasty samosas. I can’t wait to read Talking to the Moon , but I have about 250 more pages of Han Ong’s The Disinherited . It’s an ambitious and well written book, but it’s slow-going because A) the sentences are a lot more complex than those usually found in contemporary novels and B) it’s uber-cynical. The narrator is the disillusioned son of a Filipino sugar mogul who (contrary to the title’s suggestion) finds himself with a huge chunk of dirty money to get rid of. He’s equally disgusted with the virtual caste system and unthinking Catholicism of his home country as with the greed ...