West Hollywood Book Fair

Last weekend Spunky Books had a booth at the annual West Hollywood Book Fair. I always really enjoy this event, but this is the first time I got to participate. Everyone was super friendly, and we got to meet plenty of readers and other authors. Here are a few photos from the weekend.

Robert and I at the Spunky Books booth during the book fair:



My boyfriend goofing off during set up of the booth:



Robert gave a spirited reading of "Death of a Past Life":



And I fielded questions about "Before I Lose My Style":



Sadly, there was no one in the crowd since this was Saturday during set up. Thanks again to everybody who stopped by our booth!

BILMS playlist entry #7

The Decemberists: “Sixteen Military Wives”



So at this point, it is just embarrassing that I haven’t gotten a blog up in over a month. First of all, the last stages of getting my book out were quite stressful and time consuming (It is available now on Amazon…although I still don’t have a cover picture up! The folks at Powell’s said it should be up on their site by Monday). Then, I tried writing a blog two weeks ago, and it just ended up this crazy rant about how mad I am at John McCain. Here is the basic message of my trashed anti-McCain blog: he is so old there is a high probability that he will die in office and leave us with Evangelical, bullying, aspiring-facist president Palin. And president Palin will just look like a third term of George W. I’ll save you from the two pages of fuming that got me to that place. But I’m keeping the Decembrists video as a humorous take on the horror that has been Republican foreign policy in the last eight years.

What’s even worse than my sad attempt at political blogging is that I thought it would be a really good idea to have all of my blogs between now and Election Day canter around reasons why you shouldn’t vote for John McCain. For example, I wanted to write a blog about how a president who has never used email would be so completely out of touch with modern America that he couldn’t govern effectively. My god, McCain’s so clueless he doesn’t even realize how bad it sounds to say you’ve never used email. And I wanted to write another blog about how ridiculous it is to have an energy policy based on off-shore drilling for oil. And there probably should be one about McCain’s inability to handle the crisis with the American economy. Anyway, enough with the political talk. Buy my book and don’t vote for John McCain!

BILMS playlist entry #6

My Bloody Valentine: “Only Shallow”



I still have no idea what My Bloody Valentine are singing about, but the music sounds terribly boozy. So, in that spirit, I’ve chosen this song from the playlist to mark the release of my partner’s book, Falling Off the Catwalk. The official release date is August 8, 2008—we’re pretending China is throwing the big party for us! The book covers roughly a year and a half during which Robert left a job at Hewlett-Packard to move to Europe to become a fashion model. During this time, he is an alcoholic, a fundamentalist Christian (a sect of his own making, based on close-reading of the bible), and totally in denial about being gay.

Reading the drafts of this memoir, more than anything, I am blown away by Robert’s willingness to be as frank as possible. He recounts, for example, a time when he was picked up by a German guy on a train, went back to the guy’s apartment in Hamburg, had the guy smear his body with chocolate pudding and lick it off during sex. Robert than catches a train to Cologne without bothering to shower because he “likes being chocolaty.” If this happened to me, I’m not sure I would have the guts to talk about it in a book—even if I put it in a novel and hid behind the claim that the whole story was fictitious. Furthermore, Robert does not play the scene for laughs, but fills it with pathos—even after such incidents of guy-on-guy pudding sex he still can not bring himself to recognize he is gay.

Before I met Robert and heard his story, I had no idea that most alcoholics have only fragmented memory of what occurred during their years of heaviest drinking. Due to Robert’s near compulsive need to document his life--through entries in a daily planner and extensive journaling (and video recordings, some of which have been placed on YouTube)--he was able to reconstruct much of the time lost during his modeling days. Robert, for example, explains that he has no memory of certain roommates, or meetings with certain friends, and only knows they occurred from his documentation. It gives Falling Off the Catwalk the interesting quality of being simultaneously both a memoir and a piece of journalism.

Obviously, I am the least objective person on the planet when it comes to this book. Still, I am very proud that my boyfriend has put this story in print with such honesty and without glamorizing this difficult period in his life.

BILMS playlist entry #5

The Spinanes: “Noel, Jonah and Me”

One of the comments on this video is that Rebecca Gates looks a lot like Scully from the X-Files. As it happens, I’ve been thinking a lot about Scully these days—and only partially because of the new X-Files movie. I’ve decided that my obsession with Scully in the 90s was a particular form of the diva-worship that gays throughout the ages have practiced. I propose that Scully was the ideal diva for nerdy gays.

Just to clarify what I mean by diva-worship: I have in mind the old-school gays and their endless references to the bitchy grand dames from movies I’ve never heard of and the young gays with their disposable, interchangeable dance-pop divas. During the height of my Scully obsession I used to literally dream I was her: one of my recurring dream motifs was that I was agent Scully running around dark hallways in pursuit of aliens. Isn’t dreaming you are a particular woman diva-worship taken to its logical extreme (at least on the subconscious level)?

Who is my pick for the current diva of the nerdy gays? Juliet from Lost, totally. Just like Scully, she is a scientist. Just like Scully, she is a little wiser than the men around her. And Juliet is even more of a bad-ass than Scully! I can’t get enough of her beating up the whinny, flip-flopping Kate. And she is way to good for Jack and all his controlling, secretive crap. She might have ended the season still stuck on the island, but at least she was treated to a shirtless Sawyer washing up on the beach just in time to share her bottle of Dharma-brand rum.

BILMS playlist entry #4

Boards of Canada: "Dayvan Cowboy"



It has been a trying couple days for me, so I want to keep it simple this week. If you don’t bother to watch the YouTube videos that go along with these blogs, make an exception this time. Admittedly, most of these indie music videos are just equal parts shaggy haired boys and girls, nostalgia, and moody performance clips. This video is an exception, one of the most beautiful videos you’ll probably ever see.

BILMS playlist entry #3

Railroad Jerk: “Clean Shirt”

“Clean Shirt,” comes from Railroad Jerk’s final album, 1996’s The Third Rail. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any videos on YouTube for this song. As an alternative, I’m posting the live footage of the band playing “Gun Problem,” the opening track from 1995’s One Track Mind.

From 1995, when I moved back to Los Angeles from Davis, until 1998, when I moved to Santa Barbara, one of my obsessions was Tricia Halloran’s show, Brave New World, on KCRW. Since it broadcast between ten and midnight and I often didn’t get home from work until after it had begun, I would set my stereo to record the show and then listen to it in my car the next day. I got so obsessive about Brave New World that I would record my favorite songs from these tapes to a second set of tapes to keep and replay. I believe that I labeled this second set of tapes the “Stuff Taped off the Radio” series and that they are still sitting in a drawer at my mom’s house.

I have Tricia Halloran to thank for many of the CDs in my collection, and she introduced me to many of the artists in this playlist, Railroad Jerk included. Most significantly, I heard Yo La Tengo for the first time on her show. I still consider them one of my favorite bands, and two of their songs show up on this playlist.

Let me say here that I have a love/hate relationship with KCRW. (Reason to love them: Michael Silverblatt’s Bookworm; reason to hate them: they fired Sandra Tsing Loh. I could go on.) Most of all, I’ve never forgiven KCRW for taking Tricia Halloran off her Monday to Friday spot. Last year, they let her go from the station entirely. On her My Space page, Halloran says she is “at peace with it.” Good for her…but I’m still angry with the station’s music programming.

Her bio is still posted on the KCRW website. She is a computer programmer by training, which I never knew at the time I listened to her show, but makes me like her even more in retrospect. This quote from her on the KCRW page also caught my attention:

“Alternative music can be world, punk, acoustic, country, dance, or rap. It can be on a major record label, an independent label, or even a self-produced CD. Alternative music always captures the moment, the feel of the world, or one person's world, right NOW. It's about substance over style, and following your heart."

I am drawn to her non-idealistic approach. Basically, if it is good, it qualifies as alternative. I like to think I have the same approach to literature: If it speaks to me, regardless of the category, I’ll take it.

BILMS playlist entry #2

The Magnetic Fields: "Strange Powers"



It seems like any article I read about Stephin Merritt inevitably calls 69 Love Songs his greatest triumph. As much as I enjoyed those albums, it is all his earlier works which remain my favorites. Maybe the songwriting did get better with 69 Love Songs—I’m not a good enough musician to judge—but my appreciation of the lyrics decreased. Following are my ten favorite lines from Magnetic Fields songs. Notice the marked bias towards his early work.

#1
Every time you feel wonderful, baby, I feel bad.
Either you don't love me or I don't love you, oh yeah.
When you remind me of all the good times I feel sad.
Either you don't love me or I don't love you, oh yeah.
(“Either You Don’t Love Me or I Don’t Love You,” House of Tomorrow)

Sometime in your 20s you were in this relationship. There were no glaring problems. He was acting OK, you were acting OK. But when you got near the end there was something wrong that you just couldn’t put your finger on. Neither of you were really happy, and you couldn’t quite figure out how to end it. Solution: rather than bite the bullet and break up, you decide to rummage around for obsolete radio equipment.

#2
When we kiss it feels
Like a flying saucer landing.
(“Strange Powers,” Holiday)

For most of us, I feel like metaphors and similes are best avoided. But they can be brilliant in the hands of a master.

#3
I saw you today
At the café blasé
And thought of the nights
When we had firefights.
(“Living In An Abondoned Firehouse With You,” Distant Plastic Trees)

How perfect is that word, “firefights”? It isn’t clear whether we should take it as something explicitly sexual or as particularly charged banter. Either way it evokes a relationship filled with equal parts intimacy and sparring. The placement at the end of two successive couplets gives the word an extra kick that further accentuates the passion, especially played against “blasé” two lines earlier.

#4
Butter won’t melt in her mouth,
But you will.
(“Falling In Love With The Wolfboy,” Distant Plastic Trees)

I was in this dating disaster in my 20s as well. Don’t go for the cold, aloof ones—no matter how interesting they might be. “She’s a trollop in paisley” from the same song almost made the list. We don’t use the word “trollop” nearly enough.

#5
Why are we still screeching
When we mean soft things?
We should be whispering all the time.
(“100,000 Fireflies,” Distant Plastic Trees)

Fuck all those songwriters through the ages that have brainwashed us into thinking a good relationship doesn’t involve arguing and fighting. Fuck them. Fuck them for making us think we need to achieve effortless accord. Thank you, Steven, for expressing the love that is beneath the bickering.

#6
And your eyes are Kansas City:
In Kansas and in Missouri.
(“Long Vermont Roads,” The Charm of the Highway Strip)

But you’re not sure if he’s saying “Missouri” or “misery.” I’m a sucker for a pun.

#7
Like a Galapagos turtle
We grow old and stay that way
Build a nest in the sand dunes
Lay our eggs and walk away.
(“Jeremy,” The Wayward Bus)

The saddest lyrics I can think of. And another great simile.

#8
I was hoarse you were mean
We designed drum machines….
They made sounds just like drums.
I was young you were dumb.
Now you’re older and I’m wiser.
We design synthesizers.
(“Falling Out Of Love With You,” Wasps Nests)

You have to be a bit of a bitch to write lyrics like this. I’m not criticizing; I can be a bitch, too.

#9
But when the city’s so hot
The winos burst into flames.
(“Aging Spinsters,” Wasps Nests)

Once you hear the song, you can’t walk by a homeless person in August without giggling to yourself, even if you feel slightly guilty for doing it. In the same album he also refers to pigeons as “rats with wings,” another great urban image.

#10
Highway 405 will take you
From the Boom Boom Room
To interstate 5 which goes right to
The San Diego Zoo.
(“San Diego Zoo,” Wasps Nests)

What can I say? I’m a SoCal guy. Mark this one up to provincialism…and fond remembrances of a night at the Boom Boom Room that I won’t go into on this blog.