May 27, 2004
Dinner With David
On Tuesday, May 25, I went to hear David Leavitt give a reading from his new novel THE BODY OF JONAH BOYD at The Free Library of Philadelphia, where I used to work. We went to dinner afterwards with some former students of his from the University of Florida. Lots of good literary gossip, including a repeat of a very juicy tale I also heard from Ed White when he was in town a few months ago. Not safe to put in writing here, alas...Invite me out for a few Henny Pennies (see next blog entry below) and perhaps I'll spill!
I've followed David's writing career since he first published a story in the New Yorker in 1983 and have interviewed him on a couple of occasions. While we've spoken on the phone from time to time, I hadn't actually seen him in person since the mid-80s when we did an interview for THE LOST LANGUAGE OF CRANES in Berkeley (I was living in SF and doing a story for an alt weekly in the Bay Area).
The thing that's impressed me so much about David over the years is his diligence and prolificness (real word?) even in the face of some of the nastiest and most uncalled for backbiting I've seen in the literary world. The early commercial success and marketing push o FAMILY DANCING and THE LOST LANGUAGE OF CRANES in the early/mid 80s generated lots of inappropriate resentment from an earlier generation of gay writers who felt that Leavitt was somehow unfairly benefitting from their pioneering efforts while they went unrewarded. Of course, that means 'unrewarded' in terms of dollars and celebrity -- never mind that the ability of a young gay author to get mainstream attention should have been understood as a great reward in and of itself: a significant indicator of social progress. Later, Leavitt had to deal with generational rifts again as Stephen Spender got absurdly huffy and dangerously censorious over WHILE ENGLAND SLEEPS. And then there was the Esquire hub-bub over the wickedly delish novella THE TERM PAPER ARTIST.
Anyway, I really admire David for never getting discouraged by controversy or caught up in opportunites to turn himself into a personality/cause celebre. He's a real writer, which is not such an easy thing to be in this age of hype, even if you are financially successful.
There's an interview I did with David a few years back that you can access via the GoBiblio section of this site. Just go there and click on the Author Interviews page to find it.
A Hinky Pinky Drinky
So, I was reading the NYTimes article about the closing of La Caravelle restaurant and there was a reference to a rather absurdly named cocktail I'd never heard of before, the Henny Penny. It's vodka with a splash of Aquavit.
My guess as to the origin of the name: Drink more than a couple and you'll feel like the sky is falling.
I first tried Aquavit in a Malibu beach house in 1986. I was lent this amazing home, with a hot tub overlooking the pacific, a handgun on the night table, and a subzero fridge/freezer full of amazing stuff to eat and drink. The liquor went nicely with poached salmon and a frozen lemon souffle. There is a short story in here somewhere...
Aquavit
http://www.drinksmixer.com/desc181.html
First In-Store Events for GGG
On May 22 and 23, I held in-store game 'lessons' and audience challenges at Borders stores in Newark and Wilmington, Delaware. I was really happy that several high school and middle school kids came to the events and got into the games I taught them. Long live sociability and creativity...We shall overcome the X-Box yet!
Props to Paul at the Newark store, who was a terrific host and shows signs of championship potential in a game called Gravilex that I invented for the book. And the cafe staff at the Wilmington store was one of the smartest, friendliest crews I've met in quite some time -- they rocked at Hinky Pinky and were very enthusiastic about the book. If I lived closer, I would hang out at that cafe. Also at Newark, I taught the game Bongo to James Jariwala, an engineer and internet consultant. Talking about games and puzzles, I ended up recommending Mark Haddon's fresh, inventive and moving novel, THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT TIME, a tale narrated by an autistic 15-year-old...The book came up because it includes a discussion of "The Monty Hall Problem," a famous probability conundrum regarding the TV game show "Let's Make A Deal". Worth checking out, both the book and the Monty Hall Problem.
James Jariwala
http://www.jariwalaww.com
Mark Haddon and "The Curious Incident..."
http://www.powells.com/authors/haddon.html
Sweet Bun of Youth
On Saturday, May 22, my nephew Mitchell celebrated his eighth birthday. I gave him a freeze-dried and varnished frog that I purchased when I visited Brownsville, Texas earlier this year. Actually, I bought the frog in Mexico, just over the border...I drove across for a cabrito (baby goat) dinner one night with my friend Peter Wagner, the psychiatrist, his brother Stephen, and Stephen's Czech wife Katka, who actually knows how to butcher a goat on her own.
The highlight of Mitchell's birthday party was an incredible cake in the form of a giant cheeseburger and fries created by my sister-in-law Suzy. It was an astonishment, from the Rice Krispies posing as sesame seeds atop the rounded poundcake upper bun to the drizzles of red icing atop the faux frites.
In addition to Suzy, another creative guest at the party was author/entrepreneur Julie Carlson, the mom of one of Mitchell's classmates who's developed some really nifty kids' media including StorySeeds and does editing for Harvard University Press.
Here is what Mitchell has to say about GLADSTONE'S GAMES TO GO:
"The games are not too hard for kids. I can play Grandmother's House and Gourmet Grandma and Looperman and some of the others. Um, Uncle Jim, in Gourmet Grandma, why did you put those weird words like UNI and INJERA?"
The Burger and Fries Cake...as featured on ZOOM
http://pbskids.org/zoom/activities/cafe/burgerandfriescake.html
Julie Carlson's StorySeeds
http://www.storyseeds.com/
Getting in touch with my inner Wink Martindale
On Friday, May 21, I did a live guest appearance on CN8 television's "Your Morning" show, thanks to a really engaging young producer named Henry Franz who worked with me via e-mail over the prior week to develop a game segment to play with the show's hosts.
Most times I've been on TV, I've been seated for an interview...I haven't had to be physically coordinated on air since I sang and danced on the "Captain Noah and His Magical Ark" show when I was 17 (And my coordination then was, frankly, debatable. Fred Astaire, I'm not. Even a dancing hippo from Fantasia, I'm not.). So, it was a bit nervewracking to have to handle props and move around on the CN8 set as the cameras were rolling; I actually avoided watching the tape they gave me for a whole day. As it turns out, it all went quite smoothly, especially given the fact that there was no rehearsal or editing. So now I've decided I'm up for being the next Ben Stein. Agents, I await your calls!
CN8 "Your Morning"
http://www.cn8.tv/channel/article.asp?lArticleID=4546&lChannelID=649&subhead=abtshow
Captain Noah
http://www.tvparty.com/lostnoah.html
A Winning Game Night
On Thursday, May 20, 'Gladstone's Games to Go' lapel buttons affixed to our breasts (well, the breast areas of our shirts), the members of my first Quizo team in six years or so ascended the stairs of Fergie's Pub and trounced the competition, winning a $50 bar credit.
Quizo is the long-running bar trivia competion held on Tuesday and Thursday nights at Fergie's. Well worth checking out. Our team, consisted of myself, dayjob colleagues T.C. McCafferty and Joel Ferris (visual genius behind 'Imodium Man: Your Diarrhea Hero'), and UsedWiggers Jeff and Kelly Lyons and was named (you have to name your team in honor of some current events topic) SIX FEET UNGER, a tribute to the recent demise of Tony Randall (Good one, Jeff!). We kicked some butt on questions including:
-What is the only English language anagram for REDUCTION?
-What was the name of the family on the sit-com "Growing Pains"?
-What was the last Canadian team to win the Stanley Cup?
Earlier that day, I passed a pre-interview vetting and was booked onto NPR's Weekend Edition to talk about GLADSTONE'S. It was a very happy day for me and games.
http://www.fergies.com/quizo.html
http://www.usedwigs.com
Going to the Chapel (Hill)
On May 15, I was thrilled to attend the beautiful North Carolina wedding of my dear friend Ina Stern, the Associate Publisher of Algonquin Books [ http://www.algonquin.com ], to her soft-spoken silver-haired beau of two years, Glenn Sawtelle. Ina is in her 50s and this is the first time she's been married...True love, unexpected and much-deserved. My favorite part of the wedding was seeing the excitement on the faces of Ina's parents, Charles and Mildred -- you've never seen teeny little octogenarian Jews beam so brightly -- it made Judah Maccabee's dram of oil look like small potatoes (or small potato latkes). Speaking of which...there was an amazing New South-meets-Jew South appetizer at the wedding -- shredded barbecued duck on mini-latkes.
I had met Ina's dad, Charles Stern - a sculptor, one-time literary agent, and a complete character - once before: He was the most cantankerous audience member when I read at Chapel Hill's Regulator book store on THE BIG BOOK OF MISUNDERSTANDING tour. I'll spar with him any time, and I hope I've got as much vinegar in me in my ninth decade of life as he does. An inspiration.
Also in attendance was Anne Winslow, the fantastico graphic designer who took a simple photo I'd fallen in love with and crafted it into the evocative jacket of THE BIG BOOK OF MISUNDERSTANDING. Elisabeth Scharlatte, Algonquin's publisher was down from New York, classy as ever -- we shared our mutual hope that Algonquin author Steve Almond's confectionary-neurotic travelogue CANDYFREAK will soon hit the NYT Bestseller List. [Steve and I share a website designer...Not to mention a sweet tooth]. And I met two cool new friends: Jim Joseph - who owns a cafe in Jackson Hole, Wyoming and is finishing a book intended to help men survive the fear of social dancing (!) - and designer/entrepreneur Paul Hanson - inventor of the Page-A-Day calendar (really!) and creator of the spectacularly successful recent kids' book MY GRANNY'S PURSE (500,000+ sold!); just talking to Paul had my internal idea-factory kicking into high gear, and he's kindly offered to let me bounce some concepts off of him. Over the years, I've met so many great people in the Algonquin-Workman enterprise...It's a big goal of mine to work on a project with them someday!
Note to self: Renzo.
Friend Dunn Good
Old pal Sarah Dunn and I got together for an evening of games, sandwiches, reminiscence and celebration of her soon to be bestselling first novel, THE BIG LOVE. It's being published by Little, Brown in their prominent mid-summer pole position (occupied last year by Carolyn Parkhurst's THE DOGS OF BABEL and the prior summer by THE LOVELY BONES). Sarah's got a wry, self-deprecating sense of humor that's always tempered by kindness and common sense. I'll take a miniature bow for persistently urging her to reach beyond the entertainment section (called 34th Street) of the University of Pennsylvania's student newspaper (The Daily Pennsylvanian) and submit work to The City Paper, one of Philadelphia's alternative weeklies, where I was freelancing at the time...This was way back in '87-'88: Sixteen years later, THE BIG LOVE performs a gentle act of comic alchemy on Sarah's subsequent tenure as a City Paper columnist -- All of the names have been changed to protect the innocent (and guilty), but in truth, Sarah (who spent the years between CP and THE BIG LOVE writing the non-fiction SLACKER HANDBOOK and TV shows including MURPHY BROWN and SPIN CITY) doesn't give anyone more than a genial ribbing. The thing that she does in this book that's rather brave is draw upon her own struggle with an Evangelical upbringing and an ongoing tense relationship with J.C. and The Big Guy. Heaven help us avoid having this sort of thing grow from one good book into a full-blown marketing subgenre, but if THE BIG LOVE catches on as it deserves to, be prepared for an onslaught of Cruci-Chix Lit.
May 26, 2004
Well said
One's style is an idiom arising spontaneously from the personality but deliberately maintained
Quentin Crisp
I love the quote on its own. But check out the context:
It appears on the back of the business cards of 'Aidan Gill for Men' on Magazine Street in NOLA, an intoxicating shop full of gleaming pewter liquor flasks, marble-handled shaving brushes, handsome lighters that sit heavy in your palm, and other icons of time-warped manliness. There's even a barber on duty in the back. This is the kind of store I love to browse in but realize its not worth buying anything from: the magic is in the merchandising...as soon you take an object out of the stage-set environment, its power will be lost. I find it fascinating, this idea of buying things that are really little more than souvenirs of your shopping experience. It's retailing as tourism.
May 25, 2004
May 6-10: New Orleans
For the second year in a row, I served as a panelist, moderator, and performer at the Saints & Sinners Literary Festival. It's the most attitude-free literary conference I've ever attended, and its a fundraiser for NO/AIDS, the major HIV education organization in the Crescent City...Highly recommended for GLBT writers and readers alike. Check it out next year!
http://www.noaidstaskforce.org/development/events/literary/sas/
Even though pub date was not until May 15, Blake, the amazingly efficient festival bookseller had copies of GGG on hand - The Big Book of Misunderstanding, too! - and they sold briskly to fellow attendees, who were intrigued that I'd followed my novel with a book of games(For a discussion of this, see the interview in this website's GoGames section and the FAQ in the GoJimbo section).
Some NOLA souvenirs:
1) I rented a red convertible Mustang to drive out into the parish for a swamp-boat tour with my friend Kelly McQuain...We saw tons o' gators and had a great Cajun guide who directed us to a place we'd never have found otherwise for lunch: a ramshackle bar next to a convenience store where boiled crawfish were $8 for three pounds. Major headsucking action!
Bartender/server was retired Navy so we had an interesting roundabout discussion of Iraq, followed by a discussion of the evening activities at this bar: a weekly lingerie show. Is that a crawfish in your thong, honey, or do you have crabs? Guy next to us at the bar did part time work skinning nutria for pelt exporters (Nutria = fancy marketing name for swamp rats)
http://www.nutria.com/site.php
2) On the recommendation of Nick Street, my editor at Alyson Books, I drove out to the parish hinterlands a second time to have dinner at Mosca's a legendary Cajun-Italian restaurant patronized by the bigwigs of NOLA's police dept., city government, and - allegedly - the Louisiana mob. It's been immortalized in one of Calvin Trillin's great food essays, which spotlighted the baked oysters - about 18 fat ones cooked and served in a deep dinged-up pan with breadcrumbs, cheese and loads of garlic. Simple, inelegant, and devoured by my writerly cohort, which included two of my great pillars of moral support Jill Terry and Chris Muncy (aka M. Christian) along with Mike Ford (aka Michael Thomas Ford) who does wickedly accurate impersonations of the mannerisms of folks he doesn't like, and Mike's partner Patrick (aka I-Can't-Remember-His-Last-Name). A good time was had by all.
3) Another good time was had later that evening. It involved a shock of purple hair, an impressive canvas of technicolor tattoos, an infatuation with eyeglasses, and a greasy cheeseburger delivered to a bar.
4) In honor of Mosca's I gave a performance of "Shell Game," my oyster-themed short story at a reading sponsored by Suspect Thoughts Press, the dangerously different non-profit publisher run by my friends Greg Wharton and Ian Philips. Actually maybe Mosca's and "Shell Game" are both just in honor of my own oystermania...I hit a raw bar a couple nights later to take on even more of the slippery fellas.
[At the ST reading, I had the great pleasure of meeting D. Travers Scott, a strong, original writer and performer who I hope to collaborate with on some project at some point].
5) I spoke on a great panel about the relationship between writing and activism with Mark Doty, Michelle Tea, and Patricia Nell Warren. I was honored to be in such fine and eloquent company. Kevin Allman moderated with aplomb, and the audience was impressively engaged.
Ann Arbor 4/29-5/2
I went to Ann Arbor to visit my old friend Scott, who happens to work at Borders HQ. He took me into the great white pod farm. He showed me the 'event room' where authors and musicians come to entertain the worker bees -- Recent guests: Cyndi Lauper and Madeline Albright. Along with album art blow-ups, autographed celeb standees ("Thanks Borders! You rock!"), etc., there is a small plaque on one wall commemorating the lives lost on 9/11/01 (There was a Borders in World Trade Plaza). This struck me as being in Juxtapo-taste.
Scott has two cool and sexy housemates: Kevin, who is funny and flippant, works at Xerox, and is headed to Stanford for grad school in Art History this fall; and Shane, who plays the theremin (Yes!), has been working as an editor and photographer, and who is headed to law school this fall. Shane and I played a great game of anagrams with the tiles from a Scrabble set and he turned me on to a supercool website:
Also see... http://www.thereminworld.com
Scott and I had lunch on Derby Day at Zingerman's Roadhouse. He ordered a mint julep. In my mind, Zingerman's had always been a classic delicatessen with a creative, engaging marketing sensibility. Now, alas, Zingerman's has come to signify the outrageousness of charging $16 for a bowl of mediocre "gourmet" macaroni and cheese.
One upside to this mid-day mugzing: tow-headed waiter Zach, who had done time in bakeries, explained the secret to good pecan pie construction: fill the crust with nuts first, then pour on the liquid filling, then bake. There should be several strata of nuts per slice. Cheap ass pie makers basically serve you a crust filled with sweet brown Jell-O and topped with a single thin layer of pecans. Of course, there's a corollary to top-to-bottom nut-layering...You have to charge $16 for mac and cheese to pay for all those pricey pecans. Resolution: Go to Z's Roadhouse for dessert and coffee.
May 24, 2004
My Blog Issues, or "Gladstone Shines Rocks"
I confess. I'm not a blogger at heart.
When I was a kid, there was a toyish product in the market that was a sort of rock tumbler-shiner thingy. You would take an ordinary stone, put it in a rotating metal cylinder with some magic fluid and eventually (I have no idea how long...I only saw this machine in TV commercials and catalogs) it would be transformed into a sleek ovoid fake-precious object (like those overpriced Zenny stones sold in New Age bookshops alongside electric-powered burbling tabletop fountains and books about how a cleansing diet of watercress, tofu, and knotty lengths of fibrous rope will make your chakras glow [see http://www.mikealbo.com .]
Anyway. I tend to treat the anecdotes I find myself in the midst of every day like rocks, with my imagination as the tumbler. I'm much more interested in the artistically elaborated stories that can emerge from letting an incident tumble around in my mind for a good long while than with instantly passing along the raw material of my actual experiences. I've never been a journal keeper...I like to let stuff ferment and turn into some richer version of itself...something that can pack a wallop when you eventually pour it out and serve it up.
So, I'm ambivalent about even trying this. But hey, blogs are all the rage, right? And one has to do his bit to promote his new book, right. And at least with a blog, I don't have to hard-sell...I can just spill thoughts. But I want to tell you, I'm reserving all rights to transform, deform, and utterly reconfigure this spillage at some later date. It's all fodder for fiction. And frankly, I'm withholding all the genuinely powerful emotional bits...That's my art-fuel. It's too powerful to squander in service of book-flogging or egomaniacal blogging.
You wanna know just how ambiguous I am about this whole undertaking? Well, this site has been up for over a month. And this is my first blog entry. Which means that the next few entries are based on experiences that have been tossing around in my tumbler for as long as several weeks. So they're not exactly raw material. Which means that they can be trusted more - or less - than raw material. You decide. To recklessly paraphrase Blake Gibbons on General Hospital in 1963: "I'm a creator, not a regurgitator."