kick them in the belly again?

I posted not so long ago about the Ludwig Bemelman pig fame chronicle Dirty Eddie. Now Overlook has released a new collection of his autobiographical writing, When You Lunch with the Emperor. According to Daily Candy:

Lunch takes Bemelmans further afield, from the Austrian Tyrol to the Amazon, from rustic inns in the German countryside to the glittering ballrooms of Manhattan’s grandest hotels, where the irrepressible voyager impersonates the warden of New York’s infamous Sing Sing, gets caught by the Gestapo with his toenails painted red, smuggles a contraband toy poodle aboard a ship to France, muffs his Off-Broadway debut, lets Parisian criminals nanny his young daughter, and investigates the rivalries of Ecuadorian restaurateurs.
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arranging her legs in an M of receptivity

If you haven't seen it already, don't miss the long list for the Bad Sex in Fiction award.

She touched it and her fingers were light and became excited at once, and he started mumbling, "Good, good, good." She listened with wonder. This wasn't like the moans she had heard from thousands of others, but like someone suddenly recognizing something they had previously only heard about, like a boy who sees an airplane in the sky for the first time, not in a story-book, and he stands and cries out: Airplane, airplane! When she looked at him, a sigh escaped her. He was so beautiful at that moment, as if a boy and a girl were twisting inside him like two ropes or braids, intertwined, like something you see only in dreams, she thought, or in the Indian shrines, and even there it's not like this, not this pure and whole and glowing. She whispered to him eagerly, "You can do everything, you'll see, nothing will stand in the way of your courage."
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all the cool kids get invited

An animated world is the only space that could contain four writers' egos.

"We started with the idea of Moe as Charles Bukowski," explains Matt Warburton, who wrote the [Simpsons] episode. "We brought Lisa in as the person who discovers in scuzzy, barfly Moe something that we've never seen before: a poet." Antics ensue, with Wolfe and fellow guest stars Gore Vidal, Michael Chabon and Jonathan Franzen voicing themselves. All were thrilled to participate.
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graf attack

Watch this video of a gang of graffiti artists who completely cover a train while it's stopped in a station. I love the way the subway security looks on dumbfounded.

Via Wooster Collective (stop in to see some coverage of the response to Sony's graffiti-based ad campaign)

have your social constructs straight

The LA Times is diving head-long into the literary landscape. David Ulin's influence perhaps?

Writers offer the most surprising book they encountered in 2005...

Carolyn See: Hugh Nissenson's novel "The Days of Awe" (Sourcebooks Landmark) changed my life this year. It's set in New York, during a period of about two months before and after Sept. 11. But that is only one of many grimly ominous events. The point the author makes is that everyone is going to die, and THIS MEANS YOU! Thanks to Nissenson, for about a month I was afraid to go into a parking lot or walk through my own house at night or get in a car and drive. He did a wonderful, terrifying job of restating the real terms of the human condition. The book is what art should be.

More writers blog about writing in LA...

Marcos Villatoro: I’ve lived in a lot of places: Bolivia, Guatemala, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and a little country called Alabama. My wife and I were involved in political work with poor people. This meant we lived within an environment of consistent fear (especially in Guatemala and Nicaragua, where we were based in specific war zones). In Alabama, our last home, we worked with migrant farm workers, during a time when the Ku Klux Klan liked to march through our town, demanding the Mexicans be burned out of the county.

After those difficult though wonderful, educational years, we landed in Los Angeles. It was here I could get sick. Here, I felt safe. L.A. offers the familiar: I live in a Salvadoran barrio in Van Nuys, where I can walk two blocks and get pupusas. I can’t tell you how important that is. This is a great city to have a nervous breakdown in.

And a great city to get well in too. Sometimes we relegate psychological issues to the circle of concerns of the upper middle class. Yet I know poor men and women who have come to L.A. from far away, have come here running, because of the horrors of their homelands. Here, they rest; and here, they weep. They’re allowed to mourn. They can lose control, without getting lost. Here.

The powers that be offer the best fiction and non-fiction of the year...
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marriage is for old folks

As much as I enjoyed Walk the Line, I think I may have hit my limit on musician bio pics. I'm also hesitant to learn more about one of my favorite artists of all time, Nina Simone. Her music is such pure, magical joy for me that I'm afraid to let something as common as humanity taint it. With Mary J. Blige set to star as Ms. Simone, I'm not exactly persuaded otherwise.

I'm currently enjoying the NS song "Marriage is For Old Folks":

I love dancing
Crazy romancing
Fellas advancing constantly

Marriage is for old folks
Old folks, not for me
One husband
One wife
Whaddya got?
Two people sentenced for life

I love singing
Good healthy clinging
Quietly bringing on a spree

Marriage is for old folks
Cold folks
One married he
One married she
Whaddya got?
Two people watchin' tv

I'm not ready
to quit bein' free
And I'm not willing
to stop being me
I've gotta sing my song
Why should I belong
to some guy who says
that I'm wrong?
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he was young & handsome -- his mother's hope

And you thought hairy palms were your only worry...
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chainsaw chick

Awhile back, someone introduced me to the 1980 trash classic Foxes, in which Cherie Currie plays a troubled young woman who meets a tragic end. Before that, I had only known her as Joan Jett and Lita Ford's bandmate in teenage rockchick collective The Runaways. In an astounding identity evolution, Cherie Currie has gone from Runaway to Chainsaw Chick. If I didn't have a reason to travel to Chatsworth before, I sure do now.
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wenlock edge

There's a new Alice Munro story in this week's New Yorker.

My mother had a bachelor cousin a good deal younger than her, who used to visit us on the farm every summer. He brought along his mother, Aunt Nell Botts. His own name was Ernie Botts. He was a tall, florid man with a good-natured expression, a big square face, and fair curly hair springing straight up from his forehead. His hands, his fingernails were as clean as soap itself; his hips were a little plump. My name for him—when he was not around—was Earnest Bottom. I had a mean tongue.

But I meant no harm. Or hardly any harm.

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that far-flung, cosmetically flawless utopia

The New York Observer chronicles the celebrity magnet that is Brooklyn.

It would have seemed that, by now, few New Yorkers still cling to the old anti-Brooklyn bigotries. Who persists in seeing the borough as little more than Manhattan’s waiting room, its discard piles, its backwater wilderness? Who still considers a move there on a par with the exile eastward from Eden? Even prejudiced Manhattanites are migrating en masse to Brooklyn.

This hegira off the island into Brooklyn has been going on for years, but can no longer be understood simply as the search for cheap, mythically large apartments; rents in Brooklyn are nearly as high as those in Manhattan. It’s different now. People aspire to Brooklyn. The vector of the city has reversed itself.

Judging by today's posts, I'm apparently feeling a little nostalgic.
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housing and stuff

Due to the location of my new job, I spend a lot of time looking at Frank Gehry's architecture. It's distinctive if not moving. Now, according to New York magazine, because of Gehry's latest projects in Manhattan and Brooklyn - including the proposed Atlantic Yards - New York's architectural snooze is over.

But how can we be a city of glamorous cutting-edge architecture without finally getting our own Frank Gehry building or two or—hell, sure, why not—nineteen? The first, under construction on the West Side Highway in Chelsea, is a nine-story headquarters for Barry Diller’s InterActiveCorp. It’s a new Gehry iteration; instead of an exploded giant tin can, it will be boxier, more traditionally building-esque, with townhouse-size modules and wedding-cake setbacks wrapped in translucent textured glass. “We’re gonna do more things behind there, too,” Gehry says, suggesting a future Gehryfication of Tenth Avenue. “Housing and stuff.”

And next spring, construction should begin on the first Gehry skyscraper on the planet, a 74-story apartment tower (plus hospital and school) just south of the Brooklyn Bridge. Given the string of abortive New York projects he’s been through (like the doomed ground-zero theater center), he doesn’t want to publish his design for Beekman Tower “until they’re sure they’re going to build.” But he showed me the renderings. For a Gehry building, it’s conservative, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing—a classic Manhattan skyscraper with several setbacks. But for a Manhattan high-rise it’s radical, since it will likely be clad in titanium—creased and wrinkled as if it’s a few yards of draped fabric rather than a dozen acres of metal.
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from pigeons and rats to pynchon and rousseau

About five years ago, as part of a project I was directing, I spent a lot of time inside various branches of the New York public library system. One of the most impressive locations by far is the Jefferson Market branch at 6th Avenue & 9th Street. Maud Newton tells the tale of its transition from prison to library.
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who needs other people?

Create your own internet radio station based on what you already like with Pandora from the Music Genome Project. It's like having a music geek friend to make recommendations without having to report back whether you think their taste is any good. So far, it seems like Pandora & I have similar collections, but there's still the element of surprise as to what song will pop up next.

Via That's Just the Booze Talking

Update: I don't this is quite as cool - possibly because I don't understand how it works - but another stale radio alternative has emerged: roadcasting. (Thanks to E.)
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bah humbug

Each year at this time, I am nauseated by the annual assault of Christmas music. I truly detest holiday songs, and I think that if there is a hell and I end up there, I will spend eternity carolling. That said, I could almost stomach gorilla vs. bear's holiday mixtape and I was dismayed to discover my favorite Reverend has his own Christmas album. Forces are conspiring against me...
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injured bad

This (fake?) commercial for health insurance is adorably hilarious. While you're there at Revver, take a look around at their other offerings.
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