books that make you dumb

Yes. Just... yes.

omfg

Buttercup Festival is back!

My heart aches with it. Yes, I fall in love too hard. Do you remember January 2005? There was wonder in those drawings, and now the wonder is back.

what happened

Last night we took a ride around Hollywood in the Ron Paul stretch limo. I don't think I could make this up if I tried. Obviously it was the last place I expected to find myself after dinner at Greenblatt's and wine at Stella, and how this happened I don't know if I could possibly relate. Suddenly there we were, walking back to the car, when Dre starts running down Sunset for no apparent reason. When he came back to us, out of breath, all he could manage through furious grinning is "it's the ron paul limo! we're gonna go party with them!"

And in the limo: A man gave me a shirt that he'd made and afterwards I found out he was an anti-semite. The cops turned a flood light on us and told every one to lay off the megaphone. A hospital technician named George told me stories over champagne of girls who don't seem interested anymore when he admits to them he's not in "the business."

I guess, all around it was a night of the unexpected. Jon Brion sat facing me all through dinner, sometimes staring but mostly writing. This man (whose real name is James) and his screenwriting pal chatted up Laura and I at the bar. At times I didn't know who I was.

if you're a "believer"

As much as I may lambaste McSweeney's... I read this anyway. If you didn't already know it, Jonathan Lethem is my favorite author ever. I do think Dave Eggers is occasionally amusing... but in this conversation the both of them are brilliant in their own ways and it is good. It is very good.

Some quotes that I believe to be true statements:

I've been in LA this week, and as horrible as it was staying on Sunset, I do really like the city's enthusiasm for just about everything, every stupid ugly cheap thing. I like that they get excited about making TV shows. That they want to make things, and make them quickly, and then make more things, and reach people, and make them laugh or cry or whatever. It's nice — it's jumpy and desperate in a healthy and wide-eyed sort of way. They obviously fear death, and this is good. - Eggers

(I feel it now, in my current bi-coastal life. LA to NYC to LA to NYC and back...)

Okay, several thoughts, an attempt to burrow further inside this subject, our subject, our slippery, elusive hydra-headed rant. Too much I feel we're surrounding the real subject, pecking at it. But that feeling is good, actually, that urge, that itch, it suggests we're somewhere worthwhile, scrabbling to get in. That's the lovely, quite traditional frustration which drives everything worthwhile: art, falling in love, good conversation.

First, I have a superficially amused response to your pitting California-naive-liveliness-creativity against New York-sterile-academic-death urge — after my ten years in California, and my return to New York (from whence I came) I've consoled myself and ordered my self-understanding around a rejection of California's ahistorical, goofy, new-age, banality-of-evil olestra (nothing sticks, I get drunk, I fall down, what's the problem) atmosphere in favor of New York's intense, achievement-ratifying and knowledge-based substantiality.

But those are my silly biases. Needless to say, safe to say, cultural 'life-urges' and 'death-urges' thrive in their many (remarkably) different urban biospheres equally, in close coexistence, and so often, so confusingly, wearing one another's clothes at unexpected moments. -Lethem

there is art here

This weekend we built Rome in a day.

even before seeing the movie

Bobby Fischer died!

Little known fact: When I was a kid he was my hero.

or am i origami

Last night I met a guy named Andy, who enacted with me what we both agreed would be the perfect date: sitting in a parked car, semi drunk, obsessively going through unknown mix CD's to find out what the next song would be, and singing along when inspiration struck.

Yes, Andy appreciates the nostalgia tied to Eve 6.

los angeles gettin' ya down?

According to G: "this is awesome" (it is).

the long and short

Much thanks to Cheryl's LAX pick-up skills. Have you noticed lately that she's a peach?

The result: I am now back in that city of angels that I'm sure missed me more than words during my three week stint to places where winter actually feels like winter.

To be brief. FLG and PHX was a "nice" of the boring variety. In other words: a very needed kind of nice for some one who hasn't taken a vacation in longer than she wants to remember. And NYC was MasterCard priceless. The lower east side apt that G lent me kicked some ass. Also, it came complete with both a big brother and a cousin, who were almost as entertaining as the city itself. Said big brother even threatened to beat up an unnamed suitor, should he fail to meet up to big brother's standards. I felt the love. As well: Julia Farwing was there in some rare form indeed, quoting our subway rides to me over numerous cups of coffee.

Am I glad to be back?

...