NOW, MORE THAN EVER,
NOT THE NEW ANYONE

I keep hearing about how Chicago is ungodly hot right now, and it’s so strange to be here in San Francisco where it’s almost kind of cold. Sadly, my hotel has an outdoor pool. Even more sadly, it has no internet access. But I’m getting out and taking photos.

Here is a quick LA summary. I ate: curried wild boar, an In-N-Out burger, and fresh scallops at a restuarant somewhere around where the Manson Family lived. I saw: Hollywood Blvd., the Scientology Celebrity Center, my friend Amy, some improv, the stage where Thai Elvis plays (but not Thai Elvis himself), my friend Brian, Glenn Danzig’s house, the ocean, about seven thousand promotional signs for Herbie: Fully Loaded, for fuck’s sake. Celebrities I met: the woman who makes the 30-Second Bunnies films; Pamie. I drove: The 5, the 110, the 101, the 105, and the 134, though not at all in that order.

I talked to Eve at SFist this weekend, and the interview should be posted there later on today. And my reading is tomorrow night at A Clean Well-Lighted Place for Books. See you there…

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(And yes, I know that’s a stupid way to get there from LA.)

1.) Take pictures with cameraphone (as shown.
2.) Lose one whole dollar in the slot machines. Decide that being easily discouraged is a good thing sometimes.
3.) Consider buying chocolate poker chips.
4.) Discover there’s free wireless. Decide that being a twitchily compulsive email checker is also a good thing sometimes.
5.) Check your boarding pass. HOLY SHIT, YOU’RE IN “GROUP 1.” YOU NEVER GET GROUP 1.

More (and LA pictures) when I get to San Francisco.

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Tomorrow I fly to LA for my reading at Dutton’s on Wednesday, and then next Tuesday I’ll be in San Francisco at this wonderful place. (More info here.) And in between I hope to be posting some photos, if not some entries. When I get back I’ll be launching the new version of this site and reprinting some classic old poundy.com stuff, and God willing, it’ll be the beginning of the end of rushed, exhausted entries like this one. But then, maybe you’re all at the beach. I hope you are.

If you come to one of the readings I’ll be happy to entertain you with the droll little title-page cartoon I draw on EACH AND EVERY PERSONALIZED COPY of my book, as shown in this photo that Not Martha took at one of the Seattle readings.

In San Francisco I hope to say hi to this dude, whose book I will be reading on the plane. I might also make a pilgrimage to this store. Any other suggestions about what to do/where to go in LA and SF, post ‘em in the comments.

See you in California…

It seems Flea is wondering if perhaps I, too, was stricken with the RedEye Curse that caused her to break her toe and Justin Kaufmann to get a speeding ticket after being featured in yesterday’s paper. The answer is no, because, clever me, I didn’t even READ the RedEye yesterday. I’d seen the cover online and I’d meant to get a copy, but I work in the surburbs where I couldn’t just run out to a newsstand. I knew l’d see it eventually because my boyfriend picked up a couple copies, so I didn’t go out of my way to find one and bwah hah hah, I CHEATED THE NEWSPRINT-SMEARED HAND OF FATE, SO THERE.

If you’re not coming from the RedEye, perhaps you’ve somehow made your way here from a link in a a Salon article which referred to the ‘74 Recipe Cards. It’s nice to have a nod, though I can’t help wishing that for all the attention Salon has been giving fat people they’d notice my book, too. Moreover the last pargraph of this article bugs the hell out of me from the way he felt compelled to describe a newly widowed woman “gnawing away” on a cake and “smearing icing down her chin” just because she happened to be bereaved while fat and at a Jenny Craig center. Because see, the fatties, they grieve, too. Really, it’s lovely that Dale Hrabi is touched by our chubby, grease-stained humanity, even if it is “a bit gross.” Oh, for fuck’s sake.

The revamped Poundy.com is just days from launching, as soon as the Moveable Type-Wrangler works out some kinks and I eat three or four whole roast chickens or something.

I read in Oak Park on Thursday! It’s freaking me out a little, since it’s my hometown. Maybe more on that later.

I was looking at earrings at a jewelry stand on State Street outside the student union. As I browsed, I became aware of a voice behind me a few yards away.

“Hi! Can you spare a moment to help out the environment?”

I could tell it was a girl and that I sure as hell was in a college town.
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I was looking at earrings at a jewelry stand on State Street outside the student union. As I browsed, I became aware of a voice behind me a few yards away.

“Hi! Can you spare a moment to help out the environment?”

I could tell it was a girl and that I sure as hell was in a college town. When I was walking around Cambridge a couple weeks ago there were scary kids in yellow T-shirts and clipboards lurching around the sidewalks saying, “You�ve got a minute, RIGHT?” I dodged two of them, since I was pretty sure that my out-of-town-just-passing-through-minute would be worthless to their cause and thus wasted. At one point I�d had to turn around and backtrack half a block, which meant I had to pass one of them again, a tall lanky kid. “I knew you�d come back!” he�d said exuberantly. “No.” I�d mumbled, rushing by. But the girl here in Madison wasn�t accosting me. I couldn�t even really see her but as I tried to decide on a pair of earrings I kept hearing her try to engage passerby.

“Hi there! Can you spare a moment to help out the environment?”

(Silence and footsteps)

“Hi! Can you spare a moment to help out the environment?”

(Muttered, noncommittal reply)

“Okay! Hi! Can you spare a moment to help out the environment?”

I handed the earrings I�d chosen to the jewelry vendor, who wrote the receipt slowly. Someone had stopped to help out the environment. From what I could hear, the environment required a monthly debit amount from a checking account. Someone would think about it.

“Yeah, that�s fine!” I heard the girl call after him or her.

Then she said, “Hi! Can you spare a moment to help out the environment?”

The vendor gave me my earrings and pointed out some necklaces that were twenty percent off. I started examining some silver pendant.

“Hi there! Spare a moment to help out the environment?”

I decided to buy a necklace, too.

“Hey!” Environment Girl said suddenly. Her voice was different. I froze and was afraid to turn, because for a moment I thought she was talking to me. “So guess where I am,” she said, and then I realized she was on her cell phone. “I�m on State Street,” she told her friend on the phone. “I�m doing that job? Yeah.”

I tried to catch the name of the organization she was working for, but the jewelry vendor was counting out my change.

“�Yeah. Classes are out now. (Pause.) I�m by the bookstore? (Pause.) Yeah. The thing is? I think? Um, this job makes me totally want to shoot myself. Seriously.”

I looked at the jewelry lady to see if she was listening, too, but she was busy writing another receipt.

“I mean, my God,” the girl went on. “This sucks so bad.”

***

I�m back from Wisconsin now. I didn�t get a chance to take many photos, but I�ll post the few that I have this weekend.

And if you’ve been by the book site, you’ve noticed you�ll get a chance to see me three times this weekend: 1.) 7:00 pm Saturday for a short reading at at Book Cellar in Lincoln Square 2.) 12:30 pm Sunday for a reading at The Printers Row Book Fair and then 3.) 2:00 pm Sunday at the fair I’ll be doing a memoirs panel with Paula Kamen and Amy Krouse Rosenthal. Come see me! It’s for the environment! Okay, so it’s not, but for the sake of that poor girl, PRETEND IT IS.

The Redeye article where Flea and I are interviewed is most likely going to come out Monday. But you can read about Ron in the New York Times today. I’m happy that they ran one of my favorite photos from his site.

I was sad to hear that Alicia Frantz passed away on Friday. I’d linked to her Audible Frequency blog a couple years ago, and I’d met her a couple times only in passing, but her site was one of the most interesting weblogs in Chicago. Eric Zorn wrote a wonderful tribute to her on his Chicago Tribune blog and I recommend listening to the strange and moving radio noise recording featured on Gapers Block this week. (Chris, I bet you’d like this. I wish I could have introduced you to her.)

I’m leaving now to drive up to Milwaukee, with an iPod full of songs and a mix tape (an actual cassette tape I can’t wait to listen to.

See you tonight, Wisconsin. I just might read my story from this book.

There are two new entities in my life that have kept me from updating more lately. Both play songs on demand and both devote much of their existence to collecting huge encylopedic shitloads of recorded music. One is an iPod and one is a person. The iPod is a mini but the person is full size, and unlike an iPod, the person can probably be soaked in water, which I believe gives him somewhat of an advantage. That is all I will say for now. Please add these to the fifty-seven other reasons I have for not updating more.
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There are two new entities in my life that have kept me from updating more lately. Both play songs on demand and both devote much of their existence to collecting huge encylopedic shitloads of recorded music. One is an iPod and one is a person. The iPod is a mini but the person is full size, and unlike an iPod, the person can probably be soaked in water, which I believe gives him somewhat of an advantage. That is all I will say for now. Please add these to the fifty-seven other reasons I have for not updating more.

Reason Fifty-Eight is that we went to the Body Worlds exhibit today and saw all kinds of freaky plastinated bodies all flayed out like meaty Transformers, as well as assorted parts and accessories. I never much wondered what male genitalia looked like without skin, but jeez, did I ever find out. (That link is totally safe for work, by the way, as are links to other things that came to mind). When I looked at even the most impressive bodies, the ones where the organs are arranaged in cunning Swiss Army formations, inevitably some thought like hey Nougat Nuts, put some pants on would cross my mind. I couldn’t help it. Maybe it’s because I used to go to the Museum of Science and Industry when I was a kid, so I associate the place with the train set and the Mold-A-Rama machine and other juvenile things.

We did not steal a fetus. But then, one of us couldn’t pass the cardiovascular display without shaking a fist and saying “Why, aorta…,” and really, that might be a crime as well.

On our way out of the exhibit we tried to go over to sign the guestbooks, but it was crowded, and half a dozen boys were pressed against the counter where the guestbooks were. We got just close enough to see one of the pages, which said, in big loopy print letters:

I saw a lot of balls today. And nipples.

How life-affirming is that, I ask you?

In other news, Leigh Anne and I were interviewed for Red Eye this past week, and it might run as the cover story on Tuesday, though I have no idea who or what will be on the cover. Nobody took my photo, so we can only hope that the cover will be Leigh Anne holding up a Hitachi you-know-what. We’ll have to wait and see.