Bread and Bread

A month or so ago, I got invited to participate in an art show at the Shoshana Wayne Gallery called Chain Letter . You were probably invited too. As best I could tell, approximately twenty percent of the world’s population showed up at Bergamot Station this morning to unload their artwork. I guess that’s what happens when the premise of your show is “Invite ten people who will each invite ten people who will….” Pretty soon you get people like me, who aren’t even visual artists, making little collages. The next thing you know, it’s installation day and Cloverfield is backed up all the way to the 10. It was like an effing Dodger Game, or what the Glendale Galleria does to the 5 at Christmastime. And once I got to the actual gallery, it was pure Hollywood Forever. I immediately turned around, which tells you something about my commitment to visual art. I sent some of the people I invited—Sara, Pedro and Jennifer—mission-aborted texts. Suzanne actually made it in, so it will be...

Carmageddon —a.k.a. the shutting down of a ten-mile stretch of the 405 for two days, allegedly prompting a citywide traffic nightmare in a city that is already a daily traffic nightmare—is now old news to Angelenos, who collectively decided its effects were overhyped. Of course, it was hype that kept people off the roads and prevented what one writer called Sepulvedapocalypse. Never underestimate the power of fear as a motivator. Carmageddon was never exciting news to my four non-L.A. blog readers (shout-out to Tracy , Sizzle , Keely and Claire ), but whatever. I’m blogging about how I spent Carmageddon anyway. My strategy was basically to make people come to me. So arguably I cheated. A nobler carless weekend would have involved finally visiting one of the 75 galleries within a one-mile radius of my house, or taking public transportation. Instead, I: Stayed in Friday night and graded student reading journals while AK and Amy worked on a paper about dental care for poor children and re...

After seeing Midnight in Paris a few weeks ago—about a guy who romanticizes Paris in the 1920s—AK, Meehan and I tried to figure out what our own overly idealized Golden Ages would be. “There aren’t many eras when it would be good to be brown and queer,” AK pointed out. “Time traveling doesn’t work out well for me.” I remembered how, during my Little House on the Prairie phase, I wanted to travel back to pioneer times and buy a couple dozen acres of land for $5, like Pa did. I could do that with my allowance! But now I’m pretty sure washing one load of bonnets by hand in the river would cure me of any prairie lust. Saturday AK and I went to see Art In the Streets at the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, the first national exhibition of graffiti art, and I landed on my Golden Age: New York in the ‘80s. Wandering through the nooks and crannies of a huge multi-artist work that recreated not just graffiti art but the streets themselves—a sort of impressionistic playground of rundown shops and...

June was a special month: I only read one book, and I gave up on two. I’m usually really stubborn about finishing books, but I’m trying out this new fuck-you attitude. So I said a (respectful) fuck-you to The Sound and the Fury . I’m sure it was very original in its time, but I had to Google the plot to figure out what the hell was going on, and when my car’s CD player refused to play disc five, I decided that my car was performing an act of passive resistance. Who am I to argue with the literary tastes of a wise old Honda Civic? I did see a really good play this weekend, though: 100 Saints You Should Know at the Elephant Theatre . Written by Kate Fodor and discovered for us by Christine, it’s about a scholarly, uptight priest who decides he’s had enough of the theoretical God and longs for the more touchy-feely spiritual experience that comes from, well, actually touching other humans now and then (but not in a creepy way). Cheryl Huggins and Kate Huffman as the rectory cleaning lady...

Since a one-night work trip to Fresno didn’t cure my blues, oddly enough, it was time to enact Operation: Get Outta Town Part Dos. I.e. a two- night, non-work trip to San Luis Obispo. I’m working up to Italy, okay? Over the years San Luis has become AK’s and my place—although she went to college there, so I guess it was her place and I just glommed on. It has small town charm—but not so much that you start to wonder if people actually live there (like Cambria, which we visited Sunday)—windswept bluffs and good food, but mostly it is not L.A., and even though AK’s radiator blew last time we were there, it feels like a place where nothing can go wrong. We spent the first night at the home of the Millers, who rescued us after last year’s radiator incident and this time fed us olala berries and baked French toast, which is like the love child of French toast and a cinnamon roll. In exchange, we read picture books to four-year-old Hattie and watched two-year-old Tilly dance ar...

The org I work for co-sponsors writing workshops at places like community centers and senior homes, and we spend a lot of time talking about how literature enables self-expression, healing, etc. When you say something enough, it becomes an abstraction. But lately, while crashing a couple of workshops in the name of evaluation purposes, I’ve been floored by the power of writing-as-therapy, to the point of getting choked up by my own tragic profundity (an embarrassing, little-discussed side effect of being a writer). Yesterday at the Burbank Senior Artists Colony —where I totally want to while away my golden years sculpting and writing plays—the teaching writer passed out fortune cookies and asked us to write poems based on our fortunes. Mine was “YOU DESIRE TO DISCOVER NEW FRONTIERS”: You begin like all pioneers, your ears full of stories: streets of gold milky rivers open-armed natives in need of restaurants and apothecaries. You think it’s only a matter of packing the right iron skil...

Speaking of NPH, last night I saw the big screen version of the New York Philharmonic version of Company . NPH is Bobby, a guy living the swingin’ single life in the 1970s and contemplating the pros and cons of marriage as played out in the relationships of his many coupled friends. I thought I’d seen it before because I’d listened to the soundtrack a zillion times and had memories of seeing songs from it performed live.* But suddenly there was all this dialogue that was completely unfamiliar to me. It turns out that what I’d actually seen were various Sondheim revues . And Company is a great little musical that is both a snapshot of a time when divorce, pot and sexual freedom were just entering the mainstream and a totally timeless meditation on what it means to be a human who interacts with other humans. It was a weird day. I left my purse at home and had to borrow cash at work to cover the movie, which I saw by myself because AK is in Chicago and Stephanie had acting class. So there...

Apparently, Broadway is not just for gays anymore. Maybe that’s why I’m out of the loop. I recognize The Book of Mormon , but I have no idea where all those nuns and sailors came from. All I know is that I love me some NPH , even (especially?) when he’s wearing a sparkly purple suit and a little neckerchief.

I’ve always been a fan of fresh starts (or as my friend Devoya said, “Oprah is the angel on one of my shoulders. But I don’t know what is on the other”). Over the past two months, I’ve named dozens of Points At Which I’ll Feel Better: adoption info session , last doctor visit for a while, Easter, Memorial Day, whatever. Oddly enough, I have not been resurrected. The feeling of wanting to run screaming from my own body has hovered like my own personal raincloud . Deep down knew it wouldn’t go away until I got out of town. If this were Eat, Pray, Love, I’d be rejuvenating over focaccia and cappuccinos in Italy. Instead, I had lunch at El Torito in Fresno. But the effect is wonderfully similar. As soon as I hit the 5 this morning, I could feel a weight lift from my shoulders. I’m pretty sure it will settle back in as soon as I get over the Grapevine on my way home, but if I’ve learned anything in the past months, it’s to take the good moments where I can get ‘em. Watching the fl...

I was going to post something about how V.S. Naipaul is the latest practitioner of the where-are-you-in-relation-to-where-I-am school of criticism, but I think Jezebel said it just fine . And Amy Poehler said it (as quoted by Tina Fey in Bossypants )—“I don’t care if you like it”—although I think she said it to Jimmy Fallon, technically. The point is 1. women write as well as men, which all non-idiots know. And 2. women aren’t always writing for men, which a surprising number of people don’t know. It’s also probably true that when men write really good domestic novels they win prizes (like Michael Cunningham before he started writing about aliens ; I love that guy), and when women do so, they get a pat on the head and a seat on the midlist.* It’s Friday, and I’m just as interested in the pizza I plan to make tonight as in literary gender equality. But I am just sort of generally angsty this week, so I will mention some other things that bug me: 1. Christy Turlington, whose face is eve...

Pinko by Jen Benka: The poems in this collection are sometimes tough to figure out (not that that's the goal, of course, but it's an unavoidable impulse for a narrative addict like me). But they're not coy in the way of so many poems. They're more like bits of text that almost spread out into epic novels, then thought better of it. Only intriguing, intimate, unflinching traces remain. In the opening essay-ish piece, the narrator recounts coming across a snippet of window-frost graffiti. She expects it to indict the cops in some uncouth way, but instead it's a declaration of queer teen love. That pretty much sums up the world view of this book: Where you're expecting terror, you'll find tenderness. And the reverse can also be true, which is why the world, however beautiful, is never quite safe. Unfamiliar Fishes by Sarah Vowell: Sarah Vowell is a geeky amateur historian who loves to plumb the depths of centuries past and pull out quirky facts. She holds ...

Last night our book club met to discuss Unfamiliar Fishes , Sarah Vowell’s book about missionaries in Hawaii in the 19 th century. My official review will go up when I post my May reads in a couple of days. My unofficial review is: meh. But the evening itself will go down as our most on-theme yet (with our zombie -themed World War Z book club coming in a close second). We had some sort of Vietnamese catfish called swai (if that’s not an unfamiliar fish, I don’t know what is), Spam musubi, macaroni salad, pineapple upside-down cake, mochi cake, coconut pudding and mai tais. It was plate lunch at its proudest. We even had a small child with a Hawaiian (and Japanese) name. Kohana was about twice as big as when I saw her last, which was half her lifetime ago. It was fun to play with her—she gives high fours and makes farting sounds with her mouth now. Sometimes I think I have all this angst toward babies. Hanging out with a real one (especially the kind that appears never to c...

I spent most of this week making a terrible movie pitch to an evil director in my head: Unsuspecting girl goes into the basement. Something lurks there. It’s been waiting all this time. If she’d known, she would have done things differently. Poor unsuspecting girl. Except the girl does suspect, because she is me, and a part of her floats outside herself at all times, narrating horrific outcomes. The fact that she’s a convincing storyteller is biting her in the ass because she’s believing the worst possible stories she can imagine. And she feels guilty about it because the world is full of people actually living those outcomes or worse. What is the difference between something being real and something being in your head? Probably a lot. Definitely a lot. But when you’re in the bubble of your car screaming along to a musical about in-your-head-awfulness, that difference shrinks just a little bit. And that, my friends, is post-semi-traumatic anxiety in a nutshell. I’m going to try not to...

From now on, I'm going to get all my news from M.A.R., as she calls herself. This girl covers it all: international news, sports, weather and human interest stories. Including but not limited to such topics as: where not to swim if you don't want to encounter Osama bin Laden's remains just how hot it is in Cali, Hawthorne, Santa Clarita or wherever you wanna be whether or not the cheerleaders know how to do their cheers who needs to get laid what mints to invest in if you're going to see your lady and you have stinky-ass breath M.A.R. is also an investigative journalist, as demonstrated by her probing video "Girls:) Question," in which she polls females at her school about same-sex attraction. I would definitely brand her an advocacy journalist, however: There is a correct answer to this question, as Sandy "who's single but talking to someone" and other friends find out.

Apparently all one has to do to round up friends on an otherwise lazy Sunday is say, “We’re going to see Bridesmaids . Want to come?” That snagged Christine, Jody and Holly, and almost Emily, until she had some sort of emergency involving a chicken pot pie. There has been much debate in the media over the very important question: Is Bridesmaids the chick equivalent of The Hangover ? And the corollary question: Is Bridesmaids Sex and the City plus puke? The studio is playing up the raunch factor in the marketing, so you can’t really blame anyone for thinking the answers are yes and yes. (This backfired in the case of one radio reviewer I heard, who all but said, “Chicks should be hot, not gross.” And this was NPR, not KROQ .) The posters also depict all the bridesmaids in hot pink satin dresses that don’t appear in the film. For a really good movie, the marketing team is certainly acting like it has a lot to hide. But I guess that’s what you have to do to sell a nice, uncontroversial m...

(Given the recent onslaught of heart-on-sleeve posts, I’m feeling the need to write about something pop culture. So, cue Jerry Seinfeld voice: What’s up with bank ads?) On the radio, a fake traffic report featured the following (paraphrased) dialogue: GUY: It’s slow-and-go on the 405 this morning and a little sluggish on the 10— WOMAN: What about the 271? GUY: What do you mean? WOMAN: There’s the 110 and the 215 and now the 271—that’s how many locations US Bank has in Southern California! Chase and Bank of America have similar ads, though I’ve mostly just seen billboard versions . Chase’s are plastered with palm trees tinted Chase blue, and B of A’s feature the same lame freeway jokes when touting “the 572” or however many ATMs they have around town. There’s also one featuring a guy saying, “Now I can bank online while I wait at the food truck!” You can practically see right through the billboard to a table of executives—in New York or Beijing or wherever banks are headquartered these ...

I was going to say that having lost both my mom and babies-to-be makes me feel like a single person on Valentine’s Day today, except I lost three people, so it’s kind of like being a polyamorous widow on Valentine’s Day. Taking in ads for flowers and brunch specials,* I pitied myself hard. Some people had moms! Some people had babies! How was it even remotely fair to have neither?! Then I kind of started laughing at the pathetic figure I’d created for myself. Then I cried some more. Then I worked on some adoption paperwork, which, I’ve learned from AK’s psychology program, is called “sublimation” and is considered one of the healthier defense mechanisms, thank you very much. Nicole and her sister Vanessa decided to host a Motherless Mother’s Day high tea, which felt like a nice respite—“the first Mother’s Day I’ve looked forward to in eight years,” said Cathy, who came too. They took it seriously: I kept getting very specific texts from Nicole like, “Can you bring a box of ...

Pedro and Stephen just moved into a new loft in what I’m pretty sure is the exact building my friend Miah lived in until a few months ago. Maybe the building managers have a quota of sweet, stylish gay boys they have to maintain. We ate panini and fancy desserts from Bottega Louie at their place last night, and I admired how, when they have objects that don’t fit into their closets, they put them in giant matching tupperware containers. Over at our place, we put them in a pile. A neat pile, but still. Stephen is excited about our current book club selection, Unfamiliar Fishes by Sarah Vowell. “I guess we probably shouldn’t talk about it too much before book club,” he said, with a sneaky expression that suggested he’d be down to break the taboo if we were. But Pedro, AK and I hadn’t read it yet, so no rules were defied. I have a lot to read in May: Fishes , a student thesis, two adoption books. I’m pretty excited about all of them, actually, but this is quickly turning into one of th...

1. baby match.com When I was a college student working weekends at Book Soup, it was my job to shelve the childcare section, which is how I found myself reading The Kid , Dan Savage’s memoir about open adoption. (I was less intrigued by What to Expect When You’re Expecting, with its cover mom staring sedatedly from a rocking chair.) I wasn’t even out to myself at that point, although I had to admit I had a little crush on my fellow weekend-shifter Nancy. But I read The Kid with more interest than any straight girl with bio babies in her future should have. This weekend, AK and I attended a two-day registration seminar with an open adoption agency. We’re still mourning the Squeakies; I think we always will be. But adoption takes a long time, and I figure I can fill out a few forms while I mourn. It also feels good to know I’m doing something to actively pursue having children, and that it doesn’t start with someone telling me to undress from the waist down (I know this is more...