Bread and Bread

If you’re like me and make the daily mistake of listening to commercial radio , perhaps you’ve heard the Taco Bell commercial for their new Locos Tacos . Believe it or not, I’m not here to question the edibility of a taco made out of Doritos. We all grew up eating those finger-dying orange chips, so filling them with meat (or “meat”) and other “food” isn’t really a big leap. They probably taste pretty decent, in a 49-cents sort of way. I am a little concerned with the name: We should call them Tacos Locos if we want to stay true to the Spanish language and Mexican culture, which, as we know, Taco Bell is devoted to doing. If we want to acknowledge the inherent and sometimes positive hybridization that happens when two cultures merge (hello, banh mi sandwiches!), we should call them Loco Tacos. In English, the adjective comes first and is never pluralized. Locos Tacos is a fair but awkward linguistic compromise, in my opinion. Make mine without the inside part. Or the outside ...

I'm sure they're very nice people. 1. the gay 1950s Today I read this interview with Sarah Schulman (thanks, Raquel, for posting). Executive summary: AIDS killed radical urban queers and left literal vacancies to be occupied by gentrifiers, namely the children of the middle-class whites who hightailed it to the suburbs in the 1950s. She argues that we’re now living in a “Gay 1950s,” wherein gays—no longer forced into radicalization by oppression—just want to get married, own a home and raise 2.5 children, despite the visible failure of capitalism and the family as institutions. Got all that? I love me some Sarah Schulman. I have ever since I discovered her book about how Jonathan Larson stole her ideas and made them into Rent. (For the record, I don’t think he did. They were both writing about the East Village in the ‘80s, and there was going to be some overlap, you know? However, I don’t think it’s a total coincidence that a literary novel by an activist lesb...

Cowboys, Republicans and prepsters, oh my! Another whirlwind work trip, this time to San Francisco. I was in a better mood, and it didn’t hurt that I got to see a couple of old friends, the kind who are endowed with magical powers in both the healing and philosophical arts. Jamie and I also saw Kay Ryan read, which worked its own kind of magic. She’s a quirky lady: charming and sort of adorable in a way you wouldn’t associate with a middle-aged butch woman, but stopping short of schticky. A lot of her poems rhyme—subtly and impressively—and she would stop in the middle and say something like, “Now, did you catch that rhyme?” or “Can you believe I rhymed ‘why we’ with ‘Hawaii’? Isn’t that just terrible?” or “Do you all know what the word ‘greensward’ means?” (It means “turf that is green with growing grass.” It appeared in a poem about Easter Island and the delicious audacity of artists.) It takes guts to engage with your audience that way. In my mind, I have a silent ...

Sometimes I love traveling on my own for work. I can be as anal as I want to be about lining my toiletries up next to the hotel sink. There’s time to write, get inspired and watch lots of Khloe and Lamar on cable (I kind of like those two kids). Tucson is a particularly great town, with a wide-open, sun-bleached vibe. But my heart wasn’t in it this trip, and I just felt kind of lonely and contemplative, but not in a here’s-a-great-idea-for-my-novel kind of way. One night I ate dinner at my hotel. It wasn’t one of those nice hotels that prides itself on having a top-quality restaurant on the ground floor either. More like a sports bar with so-so fish and water that came in a disposable plastic cup. For a few minutes, that sad little cup seemed to symbolize my entire life. But I more or less dusted myself off, and the great thing about my hotel was that they were having a German Shepherd show there. It was noisy, and when it rained the whole courtyard smelled like wet dog, but i...

Well, Easter happened, so I like to think that spring has begun in earnest and I will now be all the things I didn’t get around to being during the past year. If Jesus can be reborn, why not me? Wait, that’s terrible logic. Jesus does all sorts of things I can’t do, like heal the sick and not include passive aggressive footnotes in his blog. But maybe I will at least manage to get ready for bikini season or something. Here’s what I read in March, which seems like a long time ago now. The Writing Life by Annie Dillard: A lovely extended prose poem on writing in the vein of Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird , though it actually predates the other book. Bird by Bird offers more practical advice, which either makes it more useful or more audacious, depending on your take (mine is mostly the former). At times Dillard's rustic metaphors almost made me cry--see her description of a sphinx moth fighting fate: "It gained height and lost, gained and lost, and always lost more t...

People keep getting pregnant. This is not news. It’s probably also not news that one of Facebook’s main functions is to make members feel like pathetic puddles of nothing-much in a sea of award-winning, best-selling mothers of adorable babies who sleep through the night. Nevertheless, yesterday’s ultrasound picture with its witty, self-deprecating caption did its thing to me. It probably didn’t help that this is Squeakies Death Anniversary Week, and the week I turned 35, meaning that if I was pregnant, I would officially be an “older mother.” (Adopting only slightly hushes one’s biological clock. I would still like to not die when my kids are in college, you know?) But beneath the flurry of outraged texts and emails I sent to people who are tired of getting texts and emails on this particular topic, there was a tiny glimmer of something. I think it was the Option To Not Be Sad And Full Of Hate. It was hard to see, because it was underneath the woodpile of sadness and hate t...

I’ve never understood people who do extreme sports (or other activities that seem to involve a lot of expensive gear) to “conquer their fears.” If I have a fear of sharks, I’ll avoid slitting my wrists and then going for a swim. Fear = conquered. It’s the unavoidable fears that keep me up at night: my uncertain future, various diseases, those creepy commercials that show people dying of lung cancer. If I could defeat my fear of never having children by skydiving, I would skydive. That said…. AK gave me a flying trapeze lesson on the Santa Monica pier for my 35 th birthday. I’ve been taking static trapeze classes , which are hell on the trapezius muscles*, but not so scary, given that the trapeze is about four feet off the ground. Flying trapeze involves climbing a rickety ladder to a platform in the sky, then flinging yourself off of it. I don’t love heights. I took the class because I do love flinging myself in various directions and because I love the circus; AK took the c...

Jamie and I spent the morning at a nonprofit training seminar, the highlight of which was running into my old Daily Bruin editor, Edina. When I think back to my Bruin years, I picture myself and my fellow A&E section staffers running around like vulgar little monkeys, doing interpretive dance in our cubicle, immortalizing our own hilarity on our Quote Wall and not returning calls from hardworking arts publicists, because we believed publicists were the devil incarnate, and because we were lazy. Edina was a grownup amidst the chaos, laughing good naturedly at our absurdity, then going about the business of getting the fucking paper out. So when I say she seemed exactly the same 14 (oh my god) years later, it’s a compliment. She was a very mature 20-year-old. Me, not so much. I felt like I needed to be on really good behavior today. I’m proud to say I didn’t pick all my black nail polish off and leave the chips in a little pile on the table or leave the meeting to go buy myself ...

For Valentine’s Day, AK got me tickets to American Idiot (the musical), which combines two things I like very much: Green Day’s American Idiot (the album) and musicals. When we went to Saturday’s matinee, I discovered that it also includes a lot of another thing I love: Rent . A lot. From the general punk aesthetic (understandably) to the choreography to the spare sets adorned with scaffolding and a shopping cart to opening each scene with a date stamp to the curly-haired Puerto Rican-ish love interest who wears short skirts, fingerless gloves and gets addicted to heroin and in one scene angrily throws it across the room. A bit derivative, right? (See photos below for further evidence. American Idiot followed by Rent .) So watching it was a little weird. As various disaffected youth writhed about on stage, I felt sort of like, What’re you so mad about, honey? I wondered if this was what it would be like to see Rent for the first time at age almost-35. I even had one of those awfu...

It was one of those weeks. Yeah, AGAIN. But I had the day off today, and I had a gently used laptop with my former mentee Daniela’s name on it. She mentioned that she was in the market for one, and my amazing friend Craig donated his. So I drove out to Lancaster to deliver it. Not a drive I was looking forward to, but the trip plus Daniela worked their magic. There have been times when I’ve wondered if I find hanging out with Daniela healing because her problems have often been bigger than mine. I’m not at all comfortable with this possibility, but that might be a piece of it. Mostly, though, it’s about who Daniela is: this hilarious kid who’s faced down her demons at times, chased after them at others, but never given up—and who, now, is not really a kid at all. In the past six months, she’s become a mother, gotten her papers, gotten a grownup job with benefits and everything, and become the primary breadwinner in her household of six. That’s a hell of a lot for a 19-year-old to take...

Here’s what happened after my plane touched down Friday night: I came home bleary and self-pitying and woke AK up to get some sympathy. She had a class early the next day and wasn’t feeling very sympathetic. We grouched at each other, and no one but the cats got a good night’s sleep. Then we proceeded to have a very lovely weekend. Saturday night we celebrated her mom’s birthday with a leprechaun cake (you will never meet a Mexican who loves St. Patty’s Day more than Bea Ybarra). Then we went to a drag show* at Mr. T’s Bowl. For you non-Highland Parkers out there, Mr. T’s is a former bowling alley that, according to the sign, has been around since 1966. It’s still a certifiable dive in a time and place where they’re harder and harder to come by. There are notes to the staff written in Sharpie on the plastic switchplates. There’s a fish tank behind the bar that doesn’t look clean or up to code. There are frayed wires sticking out of the wall that are all fun and games until someone has ...

I’m working in New York right now. It’s a meeting-packed trip. But the nice thing about New York is that, even if you don’t have time to see a Broadway show, you still get a show. Some things I’ve seen/heard/eaten in my first 24 hours in the city: A woman dressed from head to toe in orange-rust. Her hair was orange-rust. So was her luggage. A panhandler with a strong Nuyorican accent claiming, “It’s my first trip to America! I have no family here!” He lit up a cigarette on the subway. When someone told him he had to put it out he said, “It’s my first trip to America!” He snuffed out his cigarette, then immediately lit another. Food from a place called The Best In New York Food. I think that “The Best” is intended to describe “New York Food,” but I prefer to think of it as “The Best In New York” “Food.” I just like the idea that an eating establishment would label itself so boastfully (the best!) and so humbly (not even a diner or a deli, just straight-up food). Food...

I’ve always had problems watching movies and TV shows about people at the same life stage I am. I think this would be interesting news to marketers, who seem to think people don’t read/view outside their own demographics, unless vampires are involved. But when I was in middle school, I hated watching The Wonder Years because Kevin had gotten his first kiss and I hadn’t. When I was in high school, I wouldn’t watch My So-Called Life because Angela had gotten her first kiss and I hadn’t. And so on. Therefore, I went into Friends With Kids with trepidation—but it looked sort of funny, and AK doesn’t want to see The Descendants for some reason. In a way, I needn’t have worried. As AK pointed out, it’s not so much a movie about wanting to have kids when all your friends do, or even trying to have kids, as it is a movie about having a kid with your friend and then trying to make room for romance. And it’s a good thing it’s not about people trying to have kids, because of course the...

March has come in like a lion, which is not easy on a sheep-snake like me. Hence the lack of blogging (that, and my continued addiction to Polyvore ; why do I not spend all my free time applying to writing residencies and reading things by smart people?! ). Anyway, here’s what I read in February before I discovered Polyvore. A lot of it was short. Wish You Were Me by Myriam Gurba: This is a strange, great, funny little nugget of a book. Gurba writes about having Tourette's Syndrome (though in no way is this a memoir about a clinical condition), and sometimes the chapbook feels like a performance of Tourette's. In the best way--like, thank you for SAYING that! If you get deep satisfaction from popping zits and think Michelle Rodriguez is only made hotter by an eye patch, this is a book for you. Me, Frida by Amy Novesky; illustrated by David Diaz: Just as the best biopics are strategic snapshots of famous people's lives, Novesky wisely chooses a key moment as her...

My new time suck is not actually new, just new to me. There was a long New Yorker article about it a couple of years ago, and for all its thoroughness, the New Yorker doesn’t really catch things at the very beginning of their ascent. I think they accurately described Polyvore as “paper dolls for grownups.” At the time I thought, Wow, I should make sure to never try that out because it could be a huge time suck. The site lets you create “sets”—fashion or design collages a la magazine spreads but without words as more than an accent or placeholder. (See where our world is headed! Aaaaah!) You can choose from the site’s vast catalog of dresses, outerwear, tops, pants, skirts, accessories, jewelry and visual embellishments, or you can upload your own stuff, but I haven’t bothered with that. Yet. Since Friday I’ve made like a dozen of these things . I wanted to limit myself to two a day, but so far that hasn’t happened. I’ll set some boundaries…tomorrow. In the meantime, it...

Since AK has been in school, our church-going has gotten way less frequent. This became extra clear yesterday when I saw a guy walk into Starbucks and found myself thinking, What is on his forehead? An extra eyeball? Some kind of medical implant? He doesn’t look like the kind of guy who’d be rocking a face tattoo. Don’t stare! Don’t stare! Then I realized it was Ash Wednesday. Today being, what, Freshly Scrubbed Thursday?, I’m a little late to the Lent game, but I’m going to play anyway. Here’s what I’m giving up. 1. Changing the subject to myself. This is an extension of my “listen and lurk” New Year’s resolution, which I’ve been plugging away at with mixed results. Did I ever tell you about the time my favorite college roommate Amber told me I had a habit of interrupting people to tell stories about myself? (I realize I just told you a story about myself, but you clicked something to get here—I’m not interrupting anything except whatever you should be doing instead of fu...

Right now I’m reading (well, listening to) The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie , about a Spokane Indian kid who makes the radical decision to attend high school in a farm town outside the reservation. I’ll try not to give too much away, but there’s a scene where Arnold, the protagonist, finds out about a death in the family—the third in a string of senseless losses. His dad is due to pick him up from school, and when he doesn’t show up on time, Arnold becomes convinced he crashed his truck on the icy roads. He descends into a desperate dialogue with God, pretty much just chanting, Don’t let my daddy die. Arnold comes from the kind of community where it is not rare to have attended 42 funerals by the time one is 14 years old. I’m 34 and I’ve been to six. That includes the funeral of AK’s coworker’s 80-year-old husband, whom I never met. Still, I get it. How loss makes you crazy. Or maybe in my case it’s more accurate to say, brings out the crazy that ...

Wednesday night I read in the Writers’ Row series at The Last Bookstore , an old bank converted to a big used bookstore, with shelves salvaged from a dead Borders and a wall clock that leaps forward every hour but is always wrong (well, except for twice a day, I guess? Its marginal functionality confuses me). You cannot get much more Downtown L.A. In 2012 than that. I was a little nervous because Jean and Linda, coworker and former coworker from New York, were there. They’d been to Really Important Readings at Really Famous Places. Would L.A. represent? Open mics are a little crazy. I probably don’t need to tell you that. But my nervousness reached a whole different level when an unbathed-but-not-exactly-homeless-looking guy took the stage with a hard black plastic case. He spoke into the microphone—something about breathing, about making the choice to breathe every day—but he kept wandering away from the mic and fiddling with the case. His eyes darted around, and he ran his ...

If you read my everyone’s a critic post, you can probably guess how much I loved this post on Bluebird Blvd. , in which Courtenay Bluebird assumes the persona of all those magazines that profess to make us (us = especially women) feel better and usually have the opposite effect . It’s enough to make a girl want to retreat to a cabin in the woods and light a giant fireplace fire with magazines as kindling.* Except then I’d get bored and wish for something to read. Can I make a humble addition to Bluebird’s list from my own monthly mail pile? Hi, I’m REDBOOK . I’m a gift from your really nice sister, whose generosity you totally appreciate . I make you feel weirdly middlebrow—and therefore snobby about feeling not good about feeling middlebrow—whenever you read me. Also, old. And then ageist about feeling not good about feeling old. Sometimes I have refreshing, if mildly simplistic, articles about transgender issues and infertility. But this month is my “Confess...

Factory Girl is one of those movies I added to our Netflix queue a million years ago and felt kind of meh about when it showed up (this is why we recently downgraded our subscription—our moods change too fast for the USPS to keep up). But I also wasn’t ready to totally give up on it, so last night we watched it as AK continued to recover from food poisoning from (probably) Friday night’s veggie pho. The movie is a biopic of Edie Sedgwick and the time she spent in the gaze of Andy Warhol and his camera. Sienna Miller is a great Edie (I say this having almost zero familiarity with the actual Edie, so take my praise with a grain of salt)—all big eyes and deep dimples, somehow both kind and carefree. Guy Pearce’s Andy is a childlike genius whose natural curiosity makes him a star and whose jealousy brings him down. When Andy and Edie slide in and out of each other’s spotlights—showering genuine love but playing stupid games—the movie is a long, glorious, tragic music video. But t...