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...

Conversation after seeing Stop-Loss , an intense if not-so-well-written movie about soldiers on leave from Iraq : AK: Do you want to stop at The York on the way home? Me: It’s kind of late— AK: It’s just that that scene where they were doing tequila shots made it look so appealing. Me: I know. It was one of the best scenes. AK: Oh well, there’s vodka in the freezer, right? Me: Right.

I’m listening to The Lovely Bones on CD right now (I know, sooo 2003, but whatever—books are timeless). Of the handful of books I’ve listened to during my purgatorious commute, this is the first that’s been read by the author rather than an actor. I liked Judy Kaye’s interpretation of Sue Grafton (her voice was somehow both hardboiled and melodic), but I found Suzanne Toren’s reading of Jane Smiley’s Ten Days in the Hills far too actress-y. Maybe that quality was appropriate to the work, which was all about movie industry types lounging about in the Palisades , but it was way too easy to picture Toren backstage in furs, chanting, “Red leather, yellow leather.” Alice Sebold is a bit of an anti-actress. As the author, she knows exactly how each word is supposed to be pronounced and which part of each sentence should be emphasized. This is appealing to my own inner control-freak author (although it can also be fun to hear how actors envision your characters). But she has a ca...

I love Jackie Harvey’s “The Outside Scoop” column in The Onion . It reminds me so much of working at Zap2it.com , where we never met a Variety story we didn’t want to inaccurately repost, or a Sabrina, the Teenage Witch cast member we didn’t want to fawn over. And I, like Jackie, have woken up with this thought: Why do I know the name Kim Kardashian ? I woke up in the middle of the night and it took me a few minutes before I realized that she was in a sex tape and is now on a reality show. But really, so what? She is just taking up the space in my brain that good, honest celebrities like Gabreille Carteris should hold.

It was a busy weekend. The only logical way to break it down is by carb: Saturday Lime rickies (or “slutty ricks,” as Tania called them), jalapeño muffins, chocolate-covered cherries, various things made with a pastry tube: all handmade by domestic goddess Amy at her birthday/pool party, all eaten by me. Red velvet cupcakes, chocolate cupcakes, frosting in a big gay rainbow of colors, chocolate chips, sprinkles, peanut M&Ms, lemonheads, orangeheads, cherryheads: assembled by craft goddess Jennifer at her birthday/cupcake-decorating party, all eaten by me. Sunday Cheese enchiladas, rice and beans, chips, watermelon, deliciously butter-centric dump cake: made by AK’s incredibly sweet mom as proof that my birthday is not just a day but a season, all eaten by me. Veggie meatballs, the fluffiest mashed potatoes in the world, charoset (kind of like sangria after you’ve drunk all the wine out of it), Manishewitz ...

I missed my chance to participate in a very cool blog fundraiser for RAINN last week, but luckily it’s not too late to raise a dollar for Tracy of Kaply, Inc . All I have to do is fill out this meme by Grant of Discombobulatingrant . 1. Describe yourself without the use of any vowels (treat “y” as a vowel). __l_p_ -rsstnt. 2. Write a short paragraph about a truly horrifying encounter you once had using the word “sippy-cup.” When I was a very small child, I was not known for being generous or having a good understanding of pronouns (not that I’m known for these things as an adult either). When my parents handed me a toy or a piece of food, they would say, “Here, Cheryl, this is yours.” I would take it and repeat, “Yours.” So when it came time to fight for what was mine in various playgroups, I would grab stuff out of other kids’ hands and yell, “Yours! Yours!” They were confused. But not as confused as I was when my parents decided to show slides of their charming todd...

Nicole has a new 23-year-old French roommate named Boris, who wears blazers and jeans and likes meeting L.A. “hotties.” The first and only time I hung out with him, the three of us went to see Penelope , which I found to be a lovely, Tim Burton-esque feminist fairy tale, and which Boris gave a D-. Nevertheless, Boris was kind enough to hook us up with passes to City of Lights , City of Angels , the Franco-American film festival running at the DGA this week. Last night Nicole, Jamie and I saw Female Agents , a World War II drama about four, well, female agents recruited for a secret mission in occupied France . The plot is standard fare (evil Nazis and reluctant heroines who must occasionally go undercover as strippers), but, sacrebleu, what an intense movie! I haven’t seen enough French films to attribute its attributes to Frenchy-ness, but I nevertheless suspect that an American version of the same story would have had a few more explosions and chase scenes, and a few less dea...

It’s no fun to jog to a slow song at the gym. But you know what’s less fun? Slamming into the moving treadmill after you try to twist around and mess with your iPod. My knees haven’t looked this Kerrigantastic since my one and only foray into skateboarding at age nine.

Things I could have done in the four-and-a-half hours it took me to take the train and bus to and from work yesterday: driven to Vegas flown to Chicago put in a week’s worth of work on the novel taken three yoga classes watched two movies ea rn ed enough money to pay for at least a small item of Ikea fu rn iture written to several representatives advocating for better environmental policies, which probably would have had more impact than the soupcon of greenhouse gases I avoided emitting read 92 pages of Richard Powers’ The Echo Maker Actually, I did do the last one while en route. Not everything about public transportation sucks.

It was a good birthday. Seeing (almost) all my friends in one place always reminds me how much I like them. Like superheroes, they're even more impressive as a team. Not to underestimate family. Cathy was there to remind me that the Kleins have lazy eyes in photos. Then, of course, she proceeded to look great, while I turned out like the Joker with Bell's palsy. I took lazy eye picture after lazy eye picture. I was not even drunk when this photo was taken. Amy tried to show me how to stare down the flash. The martini shot: all hair, no eyes (plus a little Steven and Pedro in the background). Me, myself and Meehan. Jamie and Lee-Roy, looking sly. Kimberly, Christine, Jody and one very funny joke that I didn't catch. Afterward, we caught a ride home in JP's new-old truck. By now, the lazy eye could possibly have been blamed on alcohol. Because it's from the '70s, the doors are heavy. Before slamming the passenger side door, JP commanded, "Hands on noses!...