Bread and Bread

I’ve spent a lot of time the past couple of days doing mad edits to Lilac Mines before it heads off to the printer. It’s been a flashback to my undergrad days, when I often asked myself the question, Can I read a whole book in one day? Only then it was usually a result of having spent the previous day watching reruns of 90210 . It’s been stressful, the way I hear book publishing can be (from AK, who reads Poets & Writers Magazine more thoroughly than I do), but I think I’ll be pleased with the result. Right now I’m trying to detox from the nitty-gritty part (yay for yoga!) and get excited for what comes after the nitty-gritty, which is the fun part: readings. Where I get to see all of you ! Here’s the first one, which I’m pleased to announce on the eve of Buy Indie Day : Where: The Promising Series at Skylight Books, 1818 N. Vermont, L.A. CA 90027 When: Friday, June 5, 7:30 p.m. Who: Cheryl Klein, Raquel Gutierrez , Orlando Ashley and Scott Turner Schofield; hosted by the fabul...

For the past six years, I’ve spent the last weekend of April sweating (or avoiding rain) inside a plastic tent at the L.A. Times Festival of Books . This year my organization didn’t have a booth, meaning that I was free to roam, which was cool but also like waking up from one of those dreams where you have to take algebra again and didn’t know you were enrolled until the day of the final. I kept having to remind myself, No, I’m not working. I’m not due back at the booth to take over Jamie’s shift. I did spend some time hanging out at the Manic D / Gorsky Press / Poetry Flash booth, home of brightly colored table cloths and some good indie reading. (I’m biased , but I’m also telling the truth.) Panels are always a bit of a gamble—I’ve seen so many on publishing and L.A. lit that no matter how good the panelists are, I usually end up wanting to claw my eyes out. So I try to steer clear of those now. But I saw a lovely fiction panel with Susan Straight , David Benioff (who taught us how ...

In case you thought my thumbs-down for 17 Again proved I was a big snob, let me take this opportunity to say: I heart Fast & Furious . Everything about it: Michelle Rodriguez (though there’s too little of her), Vin Diesel, the way the cars are both pristine and feral, the ridiculous dialogue, the ridiculous but well-paced plot, the ridiculously gratuitous three-girl make-out scenes that are part of every underground street racer party scene, and did I mention the ridiculous hotness of Michelle Rodriguez? (Seriously, she’s practically the only celebrity out there for girls whose tastes veer tomboyish and non-blonde. She’s shouldering that burden on very nice shoulders, but it would be great if she could have a little company.) My favorite aspect of the ridiculous plot is that a drug lord would A) hire street racers to zip drugs across the border—because there’s nothing more inconspicuous than four pimped-out hot rods driving in formation at 120 miles an hour; and B) stage a race th...

As of today, my six-week post- surgery ban on strength training is up! And the ban on lifting things like boxes of magazines and buckets of cat litter, both of which I apparently have lots of occasions to lift. And I heard saunas were off limits too, although I don’t really know why and don’t use them very often anyway. But it’s good to know I can. I actually haven’t done any of these things (except go in a sauna in February ; go figure) for three months because the rules for a pre-op hernia are pretty much the same as for post-op. And this is just a theory, but I think my totally un-diversified workout routine has been partially responsible for the recent grumpiness of my lower back. So, in my mind, I’m about to embark on a healthy diet of yoga, weights, core training (whatever that actually involves, unless it’s Pilates, which I kind of hate), dancing and running. And why not throw in a little rock climbing? Ooh, and parkour ! In reality, I’m actually going to miss making AK lug th...

There are some movies you want to see because you know they’ll be good, and there are some movies you see for the air conditioning. Like 17 Again . No, that’s partly a lie. Although AK and I did see it at the cheap-o Highland 3 during the still-scorching late afternoon yesterday, I also kind of wanted to see it because 1) most movies about teenagers have fun clothes , 2) maybe my 16-year-old mentee would see it and then I’d be, like, speaking her language (although last I checked, the movie at the top of her to-see list was Obsessed ), and 3) I have a high tolerance for dumb comedies, in a way that I do not for dumb action movies. Because of its dumb-comedy designation and its 13-year-old target demo, I tried to be patient during the scene where Mike (Matthew Perry reincarnated, sort of, in Zac Efron ’s body) gets beaten ad nauseum with a variety of toy swords by his geek best friend who doesn’t recognize him. After all, I’d signed up for this. The movie is a revival of the ‘80s body-s...

More stuff ripped from the Facebook headlines/notes application: 1. Did you date someone from your school? I went on one double-date-like thing with Bonnie, Jason and this friend of Jason’s who clearly had some mental irregularities. He called me for a few months afterward to tell me the news that was coming through his police scanner. I didn’t go on another date until college. 2. Did you marry someone from your high school? No, since I am not into police scanners. 3. Did you carpool to school? I walked or hitched a ride with Bonnie in her mom’s VW Bug, which would sometimes stall when we tried to drive over the huge roots in our school’s crappy parking lot. 4. What kind of car did you have? None. I wished I had an easily-stalling VW Bug. 5. What kind of car do you have now? Ninety-seven Honda Civic. Movin’ on uh-uuup. 6. It’s Friday night in the present: I’m probably dashing off to whatever my social-butterfly girlfriend has planned for us, complaining mildly that we’re too busy. 7. I...

Just like how that set of stairs in Washington, DC will forever be known as The Exorcist Stairs , wine-tasting in the Santa Ynez Valley has, since 2004, been known as The Sideways Tour. I've seen ads for actual bus tours built on this theme, a la the Sex and the City tours of Manhattan. But we had something better than a bus: We had Meehan , who'd scoped out the area a couple of times since moving to SB in August. Ever since her friend's dad got ill from picking pesticide-drenched grapes, she's been an advocate of organic wines, so our first stop was a small but beautiful winery called Demetria , which practices not only organic but also " biodynamic " farming. Lee, the head winemaker, was happy to fill us in on the principles of biodynamics , which involve reviving damaged soil and planting according to the phases of the moon. It seemed like one part sustainable farming, one part Scientology. But as Meehan said, "The main thing is approaching the pr...

Claire’s comment on my previous post reminded me that it’s time for my annual Cadbury Crème Egg Experience, in which I am lured in by its fascinating/creepy faux-yolk center, then reminded that it tastes like a big gob of nasty frosting. I will proceed to finish the egg anyway, because nasty frosting is still frosting, and I like to finish what I start (thanks to This Afternoon in Drama for alerting me to this pathology). I will repeat this exercise with Peeps , which look like how a cloud would taste if you’d just dropped acid. Except in real life clouds probably taste like water and/or pollution, and Peeps taste like stale goo. Just as I sometimes put off eating healthy things that are delicious (mangoes, strawberries, pineapple) because some part of my brain has declared it a chore, I also get excited about disgusting things that are bad for me because my brain thinks it’s going to have a sinful good time. That part of my brain seems to be stuck in its early 20s, the years of st...

Instead of New Year’s resolutions, Jenny over at Run Jen Run always comes up with themes or role models for the year. This year she’s channeling Patti Smith . Since I’m still working on fulfilling my 2009 resolutions (sorry, dusty bike, I’ll let you out of the garage soon), I decided it was best not to be too action-oriented regarding my 32nd year. This may not be the catchiest theme, but I think I’m going with Slow Food Life. Here’s what I’ve learned from the slow food movement (of which I’m not actually a part, having just consumed a bagel with Trader Joe’s hummus and 7-Eleven coffee), which I think can be extrapolated to the rest of my life: Fast and productive are not necessarily better. Organic is good. Doing it yourself is good. Quality is more important than quantity. Your neighborhood and your loved ones are wonderful resources. Sometimes recipes go wrong and you have to throw out a bunch of tomatoes and start over. I’ll stop before I get too self-helpy. This weekend AK and I...

Nothing like dancing on a bar top to keep you young. Unless, of course, you're super drunk and even the gentle Christmas lights strung throughout the bar can't hide your crow's feet and you yell out, "Oh my god, you guys, I'm so crazy!" and what everyone hears is, "Oh my god, you guys, I'm trying desperately to hang onto my obviously fading youth!" I didn't yell on Friday night, but I did--for the first and possibly last time ever--climb on top a bar and, well, actually I hula-hooped. Apparently it's what they do at Birds if you stay past 10:30 p.m. Who knew? We had a great time watching the absurdly comedic, semi-improvised Glass Beef Musical at UCB (and sneaking peeks at Natalie Portman, who was in the audience), then we headed next door for a few Citron martinis and the next thing I knew, Alberto was pushing me toward the bar. I would be lying if I said he had to push hard. Soon it was clear that it was all part of Alberto's pla...

1. duplicity, duality As I head into my late early thirties, I’m developing a mild obsession with actresses who haven’t had plastic surgery. When I was younger, all grownup faces looked the same to me, and that look was “boring.” But just as I’ve discovered that people over forty can do things other than make you dinner and pay for college, I’ve also learned that some of them freeze their faces into little shrines to their former selves, and some of them age. After seeing Duplicity , AK and I had this conversation: Me: It’s really nice to see Julia Roberts looking so great but also normal. I mean, maybe she’s had a little Botox here and there, but I don’t think she’s had any full-on surgery. And she’s skinny, but not so skinny you can’t imagine her eating. She looks like she has a life, you know? AK: Yeah, it’s nice to see. But I’m not against people getting face lifts if they want. We do lots of stuff that’s unnatural to our bodies, so it seems hypocritical to judge them for taking it...

Some parts of this weekend sucked (thank you, reproductive cycle! You are why our new towel rack is still on the floor, just staring wistfully up at the towel-rack part of the wall). But it got off to a great start when I met with AK’s coworker Hataya’s guy Sergio (got that?) about collaborating on some kind of text/visual art thing. As you may remember, I have a love/hate relationship with collaboration . At CalArts, I participated in this project called “Blind Date,” wherein a bunch of writers were given works by people in the art department and asked to respond creatively, and vice versa. I got to write about a sculpture I remember as silver, loopy and about knee-high. It was cool-looking, but it did not bring forth great emotion in me. So I wrote some trippy, abstract prose poem in response. But even though my meeting at Vroman’s with Sergio was also something of a blind art date, I have to say I was totally smitten. He’d read a couple of my stories and I’d gotten a chance to chec...

According to my McDonald’s place mat**: “Chicken is so rich with potential. It’s ready to be elevated into tender sliced chicken breast. It longs to be premium all-white meat chicken. It wants to be crispy or grilled chicken breast that’s laid across a honey wheat roll or an incredible hand-tossed salad. Chicken doesn’t want to be ordinary, it wants to be juicy, tender, premium chicken. That’s why the best chicken, Tyson chicken, goes to McDonald’s so that you can have a tender moment…with chicken.” *“Chicken” is not to be confused with “ chickens .” “Chicken” is apparently a conceptual yet sentient substance that wants nothing more than to be your mealtime bitch. “Chickens” are birds that, while not known for their intelligence, probably do not have this desire. **Interestingly, the Spanish version said, “Se puede convertir…. Puede ser crujiente….” If my high school Spanish serves me correctly, that means “Chicken can be…” not “Chicken wants …” Is it a translation thing, or is the S...

Apparently Akbar has been hosting a weekly queer-ish comedy night for three years now, but last night was the first AK and I heard about it. I don’t mind being late to the game, though, as long as I’m not too late to see Karen Kilgariff , quite possibly the funniest person alive , who performed last night. She started by reading off the list of people who’d RSVPed “yes” on Facebook. It was a sad but hilarious roll call. Then she did a bit I’d heard her do before, but which still made me laugh so hard that if I’d attended a few days closer to hernia surgery, I could have seriously injured myself. I love funny people. Even though I’ve heard they’re all crying inside, and even though there were a fair amount of anecdotes from, as comedian Erin Foley described it, “my 20s, when I didn’t know if I was gay and did a lot of overeating and overdrinking.” So there’s evidence that maybe they’re not models of well-adjusted-ness. Still, when I hear funny people talk, it makes me want to get ove...

1. train gang I have a complicated relationship with suspense. In movies, that is. In life, I just flat out don’t like it unless I’m on pins and needles waiting to find out just how much I won in the lottery. Except I don’t play the lottery, because [see first half of previous sentence]. With movie suspense, there are pros and cons. Con: “Stressed-out” is not the emotion I go to the movies to feel. And suspense stresses me out. I can handle blood (unless it’s animal blood, in which case I cover my eyes and cry). I can handle sorrow. But if I wanted to feel stressed, I would just, I don’t know, schedule too much stuff to do. Oh, wait…. Pro: A little suspense will keep you awake while watching a DVD in your cozy darkened house after 10 p.m., and that is a task I most definitely need help with. Enter Transsiberian , one of the most stressful/suspenseful movies I’ve seen in a long time. The first half is a believable drama about a couple (Woody Harrelson and Emily Mortimer) taking the trai...

Cut , pasted: Four jobs I have had in my life: 1. bagel slinger 2. gymnastics teacher 3. entertainment journalist or possibly "journalist," as it was the anything-goes dot-com boom 4. arts administrator Four movies I've watched more than once: 1. Waiting for Guffman 2. Sunset Boulevard 3. The Birdcage * 4. Soul Man * *Sometimes you don't re-watch movies because they're good, or even because you love them, okay? Sometimes they're just on channel 9 on Saturday afternoons a LOT, or your roommate owns the DVD. Four places I have lived: 1. West L.A. 2. South L.A. 3. Southwest L.A. 4. Northeast L.A. Four places I have been: 1. Oaxaca, Mexico 2. Kuching , Malaysia 3. Berlin, Germany 4. pretty much everywhere in California that you can go in a motor home Four of your favorite foods: 1. bread pudding 2. flan 3. sushi 4. burritos Four places I would rather be right now: 1. the gym, because my doctor barred me for two weeks and I'm contrary by nature 2. some posh wri...

I'm not sure whether, when you take a week off for surgery, you're allowed to go see a movie if you feel pretty good on the sixth day and think that it might be useful to ease back into the world gradually rather than jumping in the deep end on Thursday. So, if you are my boss, let's just say that I got an illegal screener of Sunshine Cleaning and watched it on DVD from my sickbed. And if you're a member of the MPAA , or whoever polices such things, let's say it wasn't illegal and I'm in fact a member of the Academy. But whomever you are, you should see this movie (unless you're the dad of the girl who was in front of me coming out of the movie theater, who told her in a semi-baffled tone, "I think I liked it...except it was kind of boring"). As I explained to AK, I love movies about people trying to figure out their lives: in this case, Amy Adams is Rose, a former high school cheerleader and present-day single mom trying to turn her housecle...

1. channel changer What’s tiring is not so much the staples in my side or the fact that Team Gato doesn’t really understand the meaning of “not a good time to pounce on my stomach” (as I type, T-Mec is trying to wedge herself in the non-space between my laptop, my pillow and my elbow). What’s tiring—and also kind of interesting—is all this living in my body . The last time I lived so intensely in my body was probably puberty, which I went through early and reluctantly ( Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret was a cruel joke—why would anyone pray to get her period?). After that my relationship with my body pretty much had two channels: Fat and Not Fat. I spent a lot of time and energy trying to switch from one to the latter, but even during the fattest times, there was a reassuring predictability to my struggle. Cookies = Channel 1. Vegetables = Channel 2. So to be reminded that my body is capable of all sorts of wild-card things—that it can put a piece of my intestine where it’s not s...

I'm writing to find out if I really am different on Vicodin . The bottle says, "Use care using machines." I've asked AK to hide the keys to the forklift, but I'm not sure how this applies to internet machines (a.k.a. AK's laptop). I do plan to spell check, so hopefully that counts as using care. In classic Cheryl style, I psyched myself out for a month only to have the actual surgery go totally smoothly. The nurses were nice, the doctors were nice, my dad and AK had a nice chat in the waiting room, sharing a Subway sandwich and debating the pros and cons of I Can't Believe It's Not Butter (AK is of the Michael Pollan eat-real-food school of thought, my dad is totally '80s in his love of low-fat products). One of two nice nurses named Karen promised, "It'll be over before you know it," and I realized that this was literally true. One minute the anesthesiologist was telling me how he was giving me a preliminary drug that was the equi...

The upside of hernia surgery is that it gives me an excuse to be completely irresponsible for a week, which I intend to take full advantage of, beginning Thursday. I shall call on my high school-era procrastination and rerun-watching skills—they’re a little rusty, but the foundation is solid. It’s ridiculously hard for me not to make a to-do list for my involuntary staycation, and yesterday, after one of my New York co-workers kindly offered to write up a document I might have otherwise written, I confessed to my boss, “I could feel my fingers being pried open as I reluctantly let go of it.” “It’s good to let go,” she assured me. “I promise you something wonderful will come and fill your hands.” I hope so. But the first thing may be a remote control, which would be wonderful, actually. (I guess I mean a figurative remote control because our TV has pretty much permanently relocated to the repair shop.) If I’m feeling energetic, maybe I’ll read. If I’m feeling really energetic, maybe I’...