Now reading .... updated

Jeanette Winterson, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? I got plenty of strange looks from people who saw me reading this on the bus in Santa Cruz. They must have figured it was a self-help book in reverse. In one sense it is. This memoir does not provide any soft and fuzzy pathway to creativity.  Winterson's adoptive mother is an accidental mentor who shaped her daughter's language while providing a reason for her creativity. The mom -- identified here as "Mrs. Winterson" -- gave her something to work against. What really struck me here is the amount of light Winterson lets in. The ultra-religious mom is frightening -- she sometimes locks her daughter in a coal hole -- but never comes across as a monster. Worth re-reading to see how she pulls this off. I would have gone through this a third time but it was borrowed and I had to give it back. ILL doesn't mess around.

Graham Greene, Brighton Rock.

Charles Yu, How To Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe

Kenneth Gross,  Puppet: an essay on uncanny life

Amy Ettinger & Dan White reading at the Martin Luther King Jr. library in San Jose

Hi, everyone.  I am very excited to announce that my wife, Amy Ettinger, will read with me on October 10, 7 p.m, at the Schiro Room, adjacent to the Martha Heasley Cox Center for Steinbeck Studies, located in Martin Luther King, Jr. Library at SJSU, not to be confused, under any circumstances, with  the Steinbeck Museum down in Salinas, although my mentioning of this distinction will probably cause even more confusion.  A reception will follow.

Amy Ettinger has written for the New York Times, New York Magazine, the Huffington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, Sierra, Backpacker and other publications. Her personal essays delve into issues ranging from parenthood, childhood, mortality, creative competition among spouses and growing up on "the other side" of Silicon Valley. She will read a selection from her recent work.


I am a former Steinbeck Fellow, an occasional teacher and freelance travel writer, the institutional voice of Sammy the Banana Slug, and the author of a nonfiction book, The Cactus Eaters: How I Lost My Mind and Almost Found Myself on the Pacific Crest Trail,  which I completed during my fellowship. So it's fitting that both of us will be back at the center when I'm reading from my as-yet untitled, still-in-progress, brand-new nonfiction project. If you want to find out more, you'll just have to be there in person.  Looking forward to this. See you  then. In other news, looks like I'll be teaching a second -and significantly longer writing class out here. More soon.

Cheryl Strayed at the Capitola Book Cafe: "My feet are fine. They’ve been restored to their original beauty. It’s taken a while for my toenails to grow back.”

Plus: Mary Karr sings and dances, and much more.

Well, it's been a very eventful month here in Santa Cruz, and since I always bring my little black notebooks to all these events anyhow, I figured I'd share a few journal highlights with you. 

Never, in all my years, did I think I'd get to see the great memoirist and poet Mary Karr shimmying, shaking her hair, stomping her boots and singing back-up vocals -- and in one case, lead vocals! -- with songwriting legend Rodney Crowell at the Rio Theatre right here in Santa Cruz. 

In a couple of instances, I had to pinch myself to see if I was hallucinating. Was Mary Karr really up there on the stage, enthusiastically harmonizing to

-->"It's Hard to Kiss the Lips at Night that Chew Your Ass Out All Day Long?" Karr, who must have very good genes -- she looked all of 23 years old -- did not seem to be the principle draw that night. I had a strong hunch that most folks were  there for Crowell. The fact that Karr's last name was spelled incorrectly on almost all the promotional materials, except for the publicity put out by the co-sponsor, Bookshop Santa Cruz, suggests the concert organizers aren't familiar with her legendary work, including her classic, The Liar's Club.  But Karr -- who teamed up with Crowell on a brand-new album called Kin, featuring an all-star group of performers --  proved she could 'kill' even with a crowd that, amazingly enough, seemed to have no idea who she was. Sad to say, I have temporarily misplaced the little black notebook with some of the funny, shocking, and all-too-true observations she made about family and memoir writing. I bet you it's under a pile of laundry somewhere, but when I find it, I'll go right back into this blog entry and fill in those details, so stay tuned. When I find the darned thing, I'll add an "updated" tagline to the subject heading.

Was the Capitola Book Cafe ever so packed as it was on June 21 when Cheryl Strayed was in town to promote Wild? She read from the Hobo Times reporter scene, which had the whole place howling. That evening she offered some insights about Wild's creation and why it resonates with so many readers. 

Among some of the questions she answered from various readers that evening:

Have you always been 'all in' when it comes to revealing raw truths about yourself on the page?

"It's always terrifying. But writing that interests me reveals who (the writer) is with all their humanity. When you are taking those risks --and the endeavor of memoir is to tell a universal story -- when you do that right, other people see and hear themselves. Why should we read about this person's hike? The goal is to obliterate the question so people know why you're telling the story."

Are you surprised by the reception to the book?

-->

"I am stunned --completely shocked. The

-->hike I had back in 1995 was this wholly private thing." (She had a similar feeling of solitude during the early composition process.)  You’re profoundly alone with yourself. The only way to write a book is to go to a place of deep solitude." 

Later in the presentation, she answered questions about the PCT and the book's origins.

"The story in Wild began when I reached what I really thought of as the bottom. I didn’t know where I was going and there was so much I had to regret about where I’d been. It was really sort of by chance that I chose the PCT. There  was a blizzard and I needed a shovel. It was only later on when I realized, 'hey, that’s  metaphor.' I really needed to dig myself out. (Upon buying the shovel, she happened upon a PCT guidebook.) “(The trail) seemed so magnificent and incredible and big and everything I was not, everything I needed to attach myself to. My mother went from being perfectly healthy to dead in several weeks. I didn’t know how to be in the world without her. The question realy was, how could I live without my mother. For a long time, my answer was, I will not. I will do bad things. I raged against myself. Then I found out about the PCT. "

-->

"I'd  never gone backpacking one night, which turns out not to be a good idea. I was a waitress. I had wads of cash. I spent it all on backpacking stuff. The REI people kept saying, you really ought to pack your pack. (Shortly before embarking on the journey), “I could not lift my pack. At all.

-->Those first week weeks were the most humbling experience of my life. I thought, “I can do this. I can walk. Then I got out there and I thought, what the *&$%$! was I thinking?  And that was within the first 15 minutes!”

The book signing line was humongous, but Strayed, in the spirit of a true PCT hiker,  stayed until the last dog was hung.

 

Mary Karr and Rodney Crowell at the Rio Theater

I live almost across the street from the Rio; how could I not go? If I have a spare moment I will try to give you a report right here.

Cactus Eaters reader photo of the week: reading in the highest peaks

Thank you, John Murray, for sharing this picture with me today (it's his daughter, Chelsea, reading my book out in the Himalayas. As far as I know, that is the second farthest point my book has ever traveled.) And thank you, readers -- keep those photos and messages coming.

Former pirates go legit: KZSC radio celebrates 45 years

Here's a little story I wrote about a tiny station whose small "pirate" crew made their first broadcasts during the summer of love, and once tried to use an upside-down garbage can as an antennae. It's an unlikely success story that continues to the present day.

In 1967, the year of the Summer of Love, a group of UCSC students started an FCC-unauthorized campus radio station that broadcast from a clammy basement and tried to use an upside-down garbage can as an antenna.

The broadcasters initially put egg cartons instead of acoustic tiles on the walls, and the disc jockeys played the psychedelic single, “Incense and Peppermints” by the Strawberry Alarm Clock, so many times the record cracked. They kept on playing it anyhow.

“When I left campus, [the station] was very shaky,” said Marc Okrand (Stevenson College ‘70, interdisciplinary studies), who went on to have a far-ranging career that included teaching linguistics at UC Santa Barbara, doing research for the Smithsonian and, most famously, developing the Klingon language for Star Trek—both for the movies and also for Star Trek spin-off TV shows.

Read more right here.

Banana slug cookies are selling out (plus, books)

Hi, both of you. I hope you're well. First of all, I just wanted to let you know that the banana slug cookies are selling exceptionally well. The bakery actually ran out of them over the long weekend, and now they're into the second printing. Oops,  I mean, baking. In some ways this is even more fun than the publishing thing.  My cookies, unlike my writings, do not provoke extreme emotional reactions. No one can go on Amazon and describe my cookies as arrogant or overly profane. They just gobble them up, wash them down with a nice cold glass of milk,  and that's it. Today I went into the bakery and I vowed to keep my mouth shut, just this once, but just when I was walking out the door, I turned around and said "Those are MINE! I designed those!" 

Now for those books I was talking about. The first one is called The Man Who Quit Money by Mark Sundeen. I've been a fan of his work for a long time so it's nice to see one of his books fly above the radar this time.  I just love his droll sense of humor and his writing style. The sentences are so well-tempered and clear. The other one I mentioned is Lydia Davis's translation of Madame Bovary, which is so good, it will make you want to write her letters asking her to translate his other books, too. More news about cookies and books very soon, and welcome back.

Help the Capitola Book Cafe "thrive and survive" this Sunday

I hope to see you all at the festive fundraiser at the Capitola Book Cafe.  I'm not an owner of the bookstore or in any way employed there, but I hang out there constantly and wrote a huge portion of my early draft of The Cactus Eaters there. It's also the place where I met the writing group that helped me get that early manuscript into good enough shape to get a scholarship for graduate school (it would have been impossible to attend without it; now I've rejoined that same book group, and they're helping me move forward with a brand new project, so I guess you could say that a big part of my literary life is tied up with this one store.) Aside from this, I've seen so many great writers there over the years and consumed about 10,000 cups of coffee. A bunch of writers who live around here (including me) will be speaking  around 5 or so. And here's the little blurb announcement: hope to see you there

SURVIVE & THRIVE KICK-OFF PARTY & FUNDRAISER

 Sunday, May 20, 2012 • 3-6pm • Capitola Book Café

FOOD • DRINK • MUSIC • SILENT AUCTION • DOOR PRIZES!

$10 at the door or click here to buy in advance.
(Kids under 12 free.)

RSVP on Facebook & share with you

Hell yes: my Banana Slug Cookies shall return!

Not to get you overly excited but I just heard that my big claim to fame -- the Super-sweet Extra-Crunchy Banana Slug Cookie with gloppy yellow frosting-- is going to be resurrected soon. Apparently, the Buttery Bakery in Santa Cruz is going to bake up another limited run of these cookies (which I invented and designed all by myself, including the cookie cutter, not to brag or anything like that)  in honor of the upcoming UCSC commencement ceremonies.

The fact is, you won't meet many author types who dabble in baked-goods design. A few of them treat baked items with outright contempt. (I was shocked and upset to read that my favorite fiction writer, Junot Diaz, doesn't like cookies at all.) Anyhow, I'm amped up about this and ready to take on the big corporate cookie producers. Watch your back, Entenmann's.

Save the Capitola Book Cafe

Please read this story and do what you can to preserve one of my favorite bookstores anywhere.

Friday night at the Capitola Book Cafe

Wow!!! Thanks everyone. Our place-writing class could very well sell out. Really looking forward to this.

Scrambled, out-of-order version of The Cactus Eaters appears in book store

I just heard from a reader who said she purchased a hard-copy version of The Cactus Eaters that begins on page 361.  I am assuming that one of two things took place. 1. Your book contains a printing error, which means it is a rarity, which means you can try to sell it online for $$$$, or 2. HarperCollins has printed a scrambled-up, surreal, non-linear version of the book to attract a more experimental demographic. I'm making inquiries and will try to get to the bottom of this soon. And keep those cards and letters coming. (by the way, I'm not making this up.)

My upcoming writing class

Here are a couple of recent blurb/announcements for the upcoming writing class on May 11 at the Capitola Book Cafe, one in SantaCruzWrites.org and another in SF Station.com. And here is the feature story in the Santa Cruz Sentinel.  I've fiddled with the list of authors just a little bit, and I've created some activities that should be fun for you, while creating food for thought for your place writings in progress. The Book Cafe has been sending out free mini-anthologies of place/travel writings and a couple of preliminary exercises for everyone who signs up.

My hideous lawn

I now, officially, have the most hideous front lawn in America. Basically, the owner chopped down the shady pretty tree in front of our house and replaced it with a huge pile of jagged stones -- hundreds and hundreds of them lying beside my driveway like a midden of broken teeth. Personally, I don't know what we're supposed to do with all these (expletive) rocks. Unless Goliath attacks our house.  In that case, I'll be well-prepared.

Cactuseaters reader photo of the week

A Cactus Eaters reader in Carmel Valley sent in this alarming photo of gefilte fish in reference to my  comparison between the mountains along the Southern California section of the Pacific Crest Trail and a certain cold and slimy soul food, purchased in jars and consumed at Passover with mountains of horseradish to cover up the nasty taste. Quite a photo. You can see the gelatinous brine shining on every little dumpling. Thank you, and keep those cards and letters coming.

Elizabeth McKenzie and the Post-War Life. Plus, the photography of Carolyn Lagatutta

Read this engaging story in the Santa Cruz Sentinel about my writing friend Elizabeth McKenzie and her new book in progress. If you're one of my two blog readers out there, and this name sounds familiar to you, she's the one who wrote a funny, edgy fiction story for the Atlantic Monthly some months back. Also I want to congratulate my colleague Carolyn Lagatutta, a talented photographer who just got written up for her Flickr work.

Amy Ettinger's essays and articles: Huffington Post and beyond

So far Amy has received 313 comments on the article in the Huffington Post not including Facebook messages and emails. I guess she hit a nerve. And I'm not kidding when I say the comments continue to pile in, every other second, on the web. If you'd like to read more, here is another great one: Memoir Horror: Can You Break Up With Your Life's Narrative? which tells you all you need to know about being married to someone who is obsessively writing a warts-and-all memoir concerning a previous phase in his life. Writers and writer's spouses, you may wish to clip and save her essay. Also, here is her cautionary tale, which appeared in the New York Times, concerning those lovely but lead-infested Victorians of San Francisco. If you've got a little kid and you're living in one of those beautiful Princess Anne confections, take our advice and get out right away. Just for fun, here's her take on pursuing vintage finds in San Francisco for New York magazine. She also has a thought-provoking essay about what it's like to live in a two-writer household. The title is "It's not a competition." The essay cannot be found anywhere online but it is available in an anthology called the Secret Lives of Lawfully Wedded Wives, also including a Cheryl Strayed piece you won't find anywhere else (as far as I know). Stay tuned for more Amy stories.

Those who sign up for my writing class ...

... will get a mini-anthology consisting of three travel essays (actually, two essays and an excerpt) that I would like you to read before May 11. You will get these things in an email along with a brief place writing assignment that should not take too long ... Looking forward to meeting everyone. Anyhow, that message will be sent out on or before April 28th.

Kids overcoming shyness: Amy Ettinger's Huffington Post debut

Congratulations to my wife, Amy Ettinger, for this beautifully written story about learning from our initially shy daughter (who, I am glad to say, is becoming less shy by the minute) This is Amy's first story for the Huffington Post. Enjoy.

The Cactus Eaters and upcoming class featured in Santa Cruz Sentinel

The Sentinel published this article today, featuring that picture of me on the left, dining al fresco at Joshua Tree with my least-favorite snack in the background. The author, Christa Martin, who writes for O, the Oprah Magazine and many other places, worked with me at the Sentinel some years back. This piece mentions my first book, The Cactus Eaters, the 36 Hours anthology featuring two of my travel pieces, and my upcoming place-writing class, which will be held May 11 at the Capitola Book Cafe.

In other news, one of my blog's devoted readers let me borrow an alarmingly good book by Adam Johnson called The Orphan Master's Son. The bummer is that I have to give it back to this particular reader tonight -- and I've got 301 pages to go!!!! Drat. I don't know how I'm going to pull that off. And, finally, in closing, I find myself inexplicably disappointed that unhappy Axl won't go through with the rumored Guns N' Roses reunion at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ceremonies. At least I can take comfort in the fact that UCSC's very own Grateful Dead Archive is going to have a big presence at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame that week.

Passover macaroons that actually taste good

For the past few years, every time I baked up a batch of homemade macaroons for my family during Passover, a precise -- and deeply disturbing -- description from Steve Almond's bestselling nonfiction book Candyfreak (a classic, by the way, if you haven't read it) would always come to mind. At one point in the text, he shudders at the "creepy dead-skin texture of shredded coconut." Every time I would bake up a batch, I would worry about their chitinous consistency. How could I serve authentic macaroons without subjecting loved ones to the 'dead skin' problem? Finally, I figured out that if you simply divide up parts of the wet and dry ingredients and place them separately in a food processor and whir the living daylights out of them, you will have a macaroon that tastes creamy, decadent, and nothing at all like dead skin.

So here's what you need:

three cups dried coconut, unsweetened
one teaspoon Tahitian vanilla
one cup of sugar
two egg whites
a few little crumbs of salt

preheat oven to 350 degrees

combine the sugar and the coconut, then scoop out a cup of the sugar/coconut mixture and set it aside

combine all remaining ingredients (remaining coconut/sugar combo, along with vanilla and egg whites), place them in a food processor and process the hell out of them for at least three minutes.

clean and dry food processor, and dump the set-aside sugar/coconut combination in the food processor until it is totally pulverized and has the consistency of flour

combine dry and wet ingredients in bowl, mix thoroughly with a spatula or large wooden spoon, then shape into thumb-sized balls with slightly pointed tops and place on a parchment paper-lined cookie sheet. It doesn't matter if you put them very close to one another. They pretty much hold their shape throughout the baking process. Bake for about 15 minutes until brown on the top. Let them set for at least 20 minutes. At this point you can turn some of them into 'black and white' macaroons by slathering them with a holiday-appropriate melted chocolate.

I suggest you try this. It's actually quite good, and infinitely better than those hideous macaroons that come in oversized cans.

Fuzzy baby falcons on live "Nestcam"

I have about 10,000 things to do, but I can't stop looking at the live "Nestcam" camera feed of the cute fuzzy baby falcons up in San Francisco. Get a load of this:

A Cactuseaters writing class: "A sense of place" at the Capitola Book Cafe

Hello everyone. I want to start getting the word out that I will be teaching a one-night class called "A Sense Of Place" over at the Capitola Book Cafe here in Capitola, CA., on , Friday May 11, from 630 to 830 pm.

We will talk about capturing the idea of places (from your own backyard to the Pacific Crest Trail.) We will compose on-the-spot place sketches, discuss strategies and approaches for travel and place writing and have a chance to discuss some of my very favorite place writing selections, featuring samples from Joan Didion, Edward Hoagland, Jonathan Raban and more. Place writing can help you bring to life most any kind of writing you do, from creative nonfiction to fiction and poetry.

The class size is limited so reserve a space soon.

I will share more details in the coming weeks.

Kim Tingley's Whisper of the Wild: both of you should read this

I wanted you to check out this story by my former classmate Kim Tingley about soundscapes and silence. Fascinating stuff. I wanted to send her a message congratulating her on this but she isn't on Facebook (good for her.)

And more memoirs (and other books) that I loved: expanded and updated

Here are a few memoirs that I've read and can't stop re-reading. Sigrid Nunez: Sempre Susan. OK, I've got to quibble with that title, which sounds a bit too much like that Brooke Shields show from the mid-1990s -- Suddenly Susan -- but the book captivated me completely. I read it twice in one sitting, and you will see, from the book's admirable svelteness, that this is possible. Not to ruin anything, but the book is a memoir of Susan Sontag -- not a biography, not 'a life of,' but a memoir in the Vivian Gornick sense, a tale about a point of engagement between two friends/antagonists.

I loved the things that fill this book, those scraps of dialogue, the way Nunez captures Sontag's entrancing/seductive/condescending/cajoling/encouraging ways with all of the people around her, not just friends and confidantes but total strangers.

I can't stop talking about Stephen Elliott's the Adderall Diaries. Let me be clear: there is a lot of tsuris in this book, but I'm convinced that Elliott could have turned around something brilliant even if he had a nice, ordinary, uneventful, yawn-worthy childhood. However, he has a lot of trouble to work with, and he capitalizes on it in ways that you won't expect. Elliott anchors the book -- or is that the metaphor I'm looking for? -- with a murder case that illuminates his own life in unexpected ways as the book progresses. The prudish and squeamish -- those who shut the book because of the subject matter -- are missing out, I think.

I want to mention Frank Kermode's book Not Entitled again, just because that's the one you've probably never heard of; I'm completely enraptured by it. See below.

Other books? I just started Tupelo Hassman's Girlchild, and I'm under its spell. Reading it brings back memories of seeing her read from the work in progress in New York City a few years ago, wrapping up her reading with a hypnotic chant: "I am a heaven and hellflower," repeated several dozen times. The book is helping me to address the mystery of that closing chant. Right now I am under the spell of another iconoclast -- Ralph Eugene Meatyard, whose best photos can be found in a newly published volume called Dolls and Masks; some of the most haunting images I've ever seen, and with special resonance for anyone in the process of writing a family memoir (as I am.)

I finally had a chance to read Cheryl Strayed's Wild. I just loved this. After finishing this, I kept thinking about all these potential problems and solutions: how to create a journey for the reader, always situating them physically on the trail, how to convey heartache so a reader can feel it, too, and how to flag the importance of each section and the related dangers (snow, sun, various creatures, and, in this case, the territory of men) while never losing sight of the separate but related larger narrative -- the psychic journey, relating to her family, the loss of her mother and her flight from her marriage)

As I read this, I was never anxious for her to cut back to either the trail material or the memoir material. The book kept the momentum going as it followed both threads. She also conveys menace incredibly well, in the bow-hunting scene among others. The book keeps up a headlong pace without sacrificing meaning; we never lose sight of what was going on in her head at that time and what the journey means to her now. Quite an accomplishment; add me to the cheering section. Oh, and this just in: I just read, in a Santa Cruz Sentinel article, that she will be speaking at the Capitola Book Cafe on June 21.

Another great one that I just read: Liz Moore's Heft. Yes, it's an act of ventriloquism -- a young female writer channeling the voice and physical presence of a housebound morbidly obese former professor and a young neglected student athlete, but Moore goes beyond mere channeling to create a work of beauty and depth; you never think about the channeling, only the lives on the page and the story.

up next: Lsyley Tenorio's Monstress. Eager to read this. I was a Steinbeck Fellow with him a couple of years ago, along with Peter Malae, whose gripping and vividly written first novel is also now available.

On a totally unrelated note, one of my two eagle-eyed readers just emailed me a link to a Cheryl Strayed interview in which she mentions the Cactus Eaters as part of a hypothetical book display built around Wild. Cool.

Congratulations are in order -- Santa Cruz author Elizabeth McKenzie and the Gail Rich Awards

I returned to the Rio Theatre on Wednesday for the first time since that historic Lucinda gig. The big event was the Gail Rich Awards, honoring outstanding community builders and artists. For me, the standout moment was the fine speech/short story excerpt by my friend Elizabeth McKenzie, a fantastic writer whose fiction has appeared recently in the Atlantic Monthly and who has a piece up in the Saturday Evening Post (did you know that was still being published?? I'm very glad to hear it.) She read an excerpt from her story cycle, Stop That Girl, which should be on your reading list along with McGregor Tells the World. I was unfamiliar with most of the other award recipients except for the talented sign maker Steve Hosmer of Stokes Signs, whose funny and profane acceptance speech was one of the evening's real highlights. He explains that his parents told him he could do anything he ever wanted in life "if I had enough ham and perseverance."

Speaking of books that should be on your reading list -- it was a real thrill to get a copy of Lise Pearlman's brand new book The Sky's The Limit, a fascinating nonfiction book that gives you a grand comparative tour of America's 'trials of the century' with a special emphasis on Huey P. Newton and the Black Panthers. It was a real kick for me because I, along with the author Sara Houghteling took a look at early drafts of the work-in-progress. I hope to be there for one of the book-launch parties. Incidentally, Lise is a retired Superior Court judge and an absolutely tireless researcher, writer and interviewer. All for now.

Corroboration from hard-core Lucinda Williams fans -- and some words about the best shows ever in Santa Cruz

Looks like I'm not the only one who thinks it may well have been Lucinda's best show ever. I'm hearing from lots of folks who have seen her upwards of 26 times and think that Rio show blew all the others away. Anyhow, let's hope she rolls this way again very soon, and let's hope she keeps on drinking that vitamin-fortified tangerine juice.

Meanwhile, here are some of the other greatest shows ever in the Santa Cruz general area:

Neil Young and Crazy Horse: 1996, the Catalyst. You should have been there. Neil didn't say one freaking word for the entire set, but what a set it was, starting off with "Cowgirls in the Sand." My sister kept telling me, you'd never even know he was famous. Neil and the band seemed like they were trying out for something. And it was so punk, and so damned loud. All that feedback, and Neil with his bangs in his eyes, just shredding away. My ears are ringing even now. By the way, the four-hour wait for the wristband was a concert in and of itself. I met one of my best pals in Santa Cruz in that endless line. And the crazy thing is, the Catalyst didn't even try to fill the place. I think they capped the sales at 500 people, so we were watching Neil Young, and there was tons of room to dance and jump around. By the way, someone told me that Neil Young shopped solo at Bookshop Santa Cruz before that show. And no one recognized him. No one!

Midnight Oil, 1994 (?) The Catalyst. Do I have the date right for this one? One of the greatest rock bands in the world, able to fill sports arenas but playing at this little teeny Santa Cruz club? Peter Garrett, the band's left-leaning, skin-headed giant, started things off with "That's Progress," and from then on it was a full-on two-hour assault of the smartest, hardest pop music in creation. It was like hearing "The Dead Heart," "Read About It," "Only the Strong" and "Now or Neverland" in your own living room. Garrett at one point lost patience with a fan who was flying and shaking an Australian flag. "Now, would you put that thing away already?" he asked. I had to buy my ticket from a scalper at a severe mark-up. It ended up costing me a grand total of twenty bucks. I believe this was part of their last full-fledged U.S. tour ever. Correct me if I've got that wrong.

Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, The Kuumbwa Jazz Center, 2003: So haunting and soulful and spare -- and, just to give you a little context, the Kuumbwa is probably smaller than your living room. Do you ever find yourself having one of those transcendent musical moments, and there's always someone sitting next to you who just doesn't get it? There was someone behind me that night who kept muttering "This is just like old-time church music." And I kept thinking, "Well, what's the matter with old-time church music?"

John Prine at the KPIG Fat Fry, 1994. There's a great little story that keeps circulating about this legendary concert, and who knows if it's true? John Prine was headlining that day, and the crowd was packed in there pretty tight in the Aptos fairgrounds. A fan was hanging back in the shade, and suddenly this guy with a thick gray-brown mustache and a bit of a beerbelly taps him on the shoulder and asks if he might bum a light from him. And when the fan looked up, guess who was asking for that cigarette? Anyhow, believe it or not, but this was the first time I'd ever heard "Sam Stone," "Big Old Goofy World," "You Got Gold" and all the rest. Haiku and three chords. Can't stop talking about it even now.

Doc Watson and David Grisman at the Mello Center, 1998. Not one of those pairings you see every day. At one point, Doc turned to Grisman and ordered him to make his mandolin bark like a dog.

Lucinda Williams's best concert ever? Live in Santa Cruz at the Rio Theatre

Best Lucinda Williams concert? Rio Theatre, Santa Cruz, 1/18/12

(sorry, I keep updating this danged thing. Little details keep incorporating themselves into the story. Scroll to the bottom for complete set list if you're into that sort of thing.)

Nothing against the Catalyst Club in downtown Santa Cruz but every time I go there's some 250-pound, 7-foot tall drunk guy standing right in front of me, swaying to the music and stepping on my feet, while blocking my views of whatever band is playing that night.

That's why it was a special treat to see Lucinda Williams"in full soaring voice" (my sister's description) at the historic Rio Theatre on Soquel Avenue in Santa Cruz. Imagine -- seeing Lucinda in a place with crisp, clean acoustics, and being able to sit down.

I've never seen Lucinda this good or this candid, and I've been going to her concerts since the days of Car Wheels On A Gravel Road (she started off Wednesday night's concert with the title song from that breakthrough LP before launching straight into "The Night's Too Long" from the Lucinda Williams album. The night was full of meditations about her literary influences, from Carson McCullers to Mary Karr, along with a lot of juicy deep cuts, a nice, swampy version of "Concrete and Barbed Wire," "Side of the Road" and "Greenville." A chilling solo version of Woody Guthrie's "I Aint Got No Home" was part of her hard-times/recession theme, along with Skip James' "Hard Time Killing Floor Blues" and her own "Memphis Pearl," inspired by a woman she saw rifling through a trash can in Los Angeles many years ago.

Let's give some credit to the talented Blake Mills (not to be confused with Lake Mills, a city in Wisconsin), who played beside her, and was much too good -- too precise -- for me to call him a mere "accompanist." Mills, a Venice, California-based singer/songwriter, was bold enough to include a cover of a Lucinda song -- "I Just Wanted To See You So Bad" -- in his solo opening set, along with some of his own standouts like "Hey, Lover." Mills is a thoughtful, flexible interpreter of Lucinda's songs. All the arrangements were faithful to the material but he never overpowered it, like some of Lucinda's overenthusiastic pickers from the distant past. His playing and singing always heightened the emotional impact of her voice and lyrics without ever gumming up the works, whether he was charging through . "Honey Bee" and "Change The Locks," or plucking a 10-string tiple for songs like "Well, Well, Well."

Lucinda responded with a combination of tact and mischief to shouted-out audience requests. When someone bellowed for "Lake Charles," she smiled, raised her eyebrows, and said, "Another song about a beautiful loser. Here's another one." Then she launched into "Pineola," her tribute to the Frank Sanford, "a brilliant young poet" who committed suicide in 1978. Once, during his rave-up at the end of "Pineola," I heard someone in the audience grumble that Blake Mills was "too blaring and loud" toward the end of that song-- but if you know "Pineola," you know that it has to be there; some painful truths require a lot of feedback and amplification. (At the end of Mills' solo, Lucinda laughed and said, "You're trying to blow me off the stage with that thing!"


Besides, in past Lucinda concerts, the band, if anything, was too faithful to the records. Sometimes they sounded like a note-for-note mock-up of the records, only breaking out of their little boxes during the long, overly noisy solos. I think the 'duo' format gave Mills and Williams a lot more leeway. Last night they could get a little loosey-goosey with the arrangements in a way that made the songs surprising and more powerful than the full-on rock-band treatment ever could.

The stripped-down arrangements brought out song shadings I'd never noticed before. The drawn-out, repeated vocal at the end of Randy Weeks' "Can't Let Go" seemed desperate and pathetic and funny at the same time, with Lucinda playing the role of a jilted lover who couldn't acknowledge defeat. She ramped up the laughs by turning the song into a commentary on GOP candidates squaring off against one another, falling and rising with Whack-A-Mole regularity: "Come on, Newt! It's over but I can't let go. Mitt, Mitt, Mitt, it's over but I can't let go." The arrangements also let you focus on the sorrowful objects that make up "Bus To Baton Rouge" -- a song about a pilgrimage to a strange old family house with a "piano nobody played," and a locked room where no kids could set foot. The song made her so emotional that she had to pause and catch herself before she could launch into it. Afterward, she cryptically explained that the song came from "the side of the family where the mental illness came from. Look for them in my memoirs. I'll have to wait until everyone's dead so it doesn't hurt everybody's feelings."

There was only one drag about the concert, and that was the almost total lack of young-ish folks. At one point in the lobby just before the set, someone shouted out, "Is there anybody here who is under 45.' "I am!" I replied, but I noticed only two 20-somethings anywhere in the crowd. Young folks, you're missing out.

Finally, it bears mentioning that Lucinda could seem distant and grumpy in those old late 1990s shows. Here it was like hanging out in her living room. Why the change? Who knows. I think she must be living right and drinking a lot of tangerine juice.

"Thanks for digging into your pockets and buying a ticket to see me during these tough economic times," she said. "I really appreciate it. I hope I gave you a little something to take home with you."

Set list at the Rio:

Car Wheels On A Gravel Road

The Night’s Too Long

Side of the Road

Memphis Pearl

Bus to Baton Rouge

Greenville

Words Fell

I Didn’t Know

Stowaway in your heart

Concrete and Barbed Wire

People Talking

Well well well

Can’t Let Go

Drunken Angel

Don't Let the Devil Ride

Pineola

Changed the Locks

My Little Honeybee

I Aint Got No Home

Blessed

Hard Time Killing Floor Blues

Get Right With God

Tea Obhreht at Bookshop Santa Cruz: Advice for young writers (and a few words about headaches, heartaches, pitchforks and false starts)

Tea Obreht on failing better and growing a novel

"Any advice for young writers?"

Tea Obreht handled that musty old question with grace at Bookshop Santa Cruz. Her response is good enough to clip and save.

"You're writing for a reason: you love it," she said. "It gives you something. Your family may not be pleased with you for doing it but you have a need to write so write. Don't write anything just because it's trendy.Write what you love to read. If it fails, who cares! If it fails, learn from it and write the next one. It's a lonely process but continue doing it because you love it."

During her talk, she spoke about the role of circumstance, having her early drafts shredded in a writer's workshop, and the chance viewing of a television documentary. In her estimation, her book started out as a "very bad" short story that somehow took on weight and beauty when she stretched it out, pruned and reworked.

Born in Belgrade, Obreht, who did her undergraduate studies at USC, and earned her MFA at Cornell, began the book in graduate school. At first, she didn't realize it was a book at all.

She stumbled upon one of the book's main ingredients while watching TV.

It happened like this. Obreht had moved to upstate New York and was looking forward to locking herself in a room, drinking hot chocolate and getting to work on some writing. That cozy state of mind lasted a day or two.

"Then the snow fell and I dug up the wrong car because it was the same color as my car. The windowsill (of my room) was on the level of the street. When the snow started falling, it was as though you were in an hourglass."

In just such a snowstorm, she was supposed to be writing. Instead she sat around biding time and watching a National Geographic special on Siberian tigers. The program mentioned a woman who raised tigers and used a soothing voice "to talk them out of the most horrible rages."

Taking a cue from the program, Obreht began to write about a young deaf mute circus performer who arrives at a Balkan village in the middle of a snowstorm in search of a circus tiger. "I was very excited about the story. I wanted the little boy to be the eyes and ears of the story"

Then she took it to her Cornell MFA workshop -- "and it got completely destroyed. It was a terrible short story. I was sweating, and a colleague of mine said, 'there is pitchfork-wielding rabble but the story isn't Frankenstein. There shouldn't be pitchfork-wielding rabble in a story that isn't Frankenstein!"

Chastened, she threw away the pitchforks and the torches, but something about the tale kept calling her back. "The story was 25 pages, and then it was 30 and still bad. Then it was 40 pages, and it was a little bit better, perhaps because the badness got dispersed."

She pressed on. The moment that it became a novel was no cause for celebration, nor was it even a 'moment." "I didn't go the workshop and say, 'I'm writing my novel,' and then my classmates carried me on their shoulders. That's not how it happened. It just kept growing until it was 70 pages long-- and at that point, I couldn't really say it was a short story anymore."

The final book was a long process, the result of "obsessive work habits, tics and antisocial tendencies" and a return to Belgrade, where she researched vampires for a magazine, had a few doors slammed in her face, and also joined the locals in a powerful fruit brandy that she compared to turpentine, "but more awesome." She also made some brutal cuts. "I learned to lop off sections of my writing as if they were bad flowers in pruning."

Her next project? "I don't think I'm done with the Balkans just yet," she said.

She couldn't say much more. Stay tuned for my reflections on the Lucinda Williams concert, which has just sold out.

Music, books and shrooms: Lucinda Williams, Tea Obreht, and great glowing globs of flaming fungus

Well, I just went and purchased a ticket to see Lucinda Williams live at the Rio Theater next week in Santa Cruz. I think she's a songwriting genius, so we should all indulge her a little bit, even if she sometimes gets grumpy, and even if she sometimes chooses to perform her own songs while reading the lyrics and chord progressions off a music stand set up near the front of the stage. The best Lucinda concert I've ever seen was at the Warfield, just after Car Wheels on a Gravel Road came out. Pure bliss. Another time I saw her, she had some kind of loud on-stage tiff with the bass player at the Fillmore. They worked it out, but it was a little dodgy there for a while. By the way, Tea Obreht, author of The Tiger's Wife, is coming to Bookshop Santa Cruz this Friday, while the mighty Fungus Fair -- an exhibition of tasty, poisonous, beautiful and just plain disgusting mushrooms -- rolls into town all this weekend. You'd better believe I'll be there at all three events. I love this town, but sometimes cultural events come in these little bursts. No matter where you live, you've got to grab culture where you find it, even when it's fungal. (and, by the way, if either of my two readers is curious about Lucinda's music, and I know you are, the best places to start are the albums Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, Sweet Old World, and the epynomous record Lucinda Williams. If you like all three of those and want to go a little deeper into the discography, let me know)

My Q and A with Nikki Giovanni

Here it is. I wrote this up to spread the word about the upcoming Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Convocation in Santa Cruz. I hope you enjoy this. By the way, I have a few more Q and A's set up with various nonfiction and fiction writers so stay tuned. I'll write and post those when I can.


Poets and grandmothers in outer space: A Q&A with Nikki Giovanni

Nikki Giovanni, acclaimed poet, bestselling author, creative writing professor, and living connection to Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks, is this year's keynote speaker for the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Convocation in downtown Santa Cruz.

King's assassination, and his memorial service, which she attended, inspired some of her earliest published works. She has the authority and credibility of a '60s activist from the front lines of the civil rights movement. Giovanni also has an insurgent sense of humor and the delivery of a seasoned stand-up comic, breaking up audiences with her incisive wit and deadpan expressions.

Giovanni had a free-ranging conversation with UCSC News & Events about her memories of King, her 20-year friendship with Rosa Parks, the importance of bearing witness, America's great economic divide, and her wild dream of sending poets and grandmothers into outer space.

You are a National Book Award finalist for your autobiography, and your children's book about Rosa Parks received Caldecott honors, but poetry is your enduring love. How did you choose poetry as your art form?

It's always been with me. That's how poetry enters your life—your mom, your aunties, and your grandmothers do these little rhymes for you. Some of us keep it, always, and some of us, unfortunately, push it out of our lives. We're told it doesn't matter. We're told we're soft for reading and writing poetry. My students ask me, 'Can I write poetry?' I tell them, 'Of course you can! You just can't make a living on it.’ But that's not why we write it. We write for joy. I'm not going to say you don't need money. Look at me. I'm an old woman. You need food, your dogs need shots, but there's a limit to what money can do. Money is totally out of control right now. There's nothing wrong with being rich, but there's something seriously wrong with being a billionaire.

Do you support the Occupy Wall Street movement?

I'm a '60s person. We were allowed to do our sit-ins, and I think they should be allowed to do their protests. I enjoy watching the Occupy movement because they are saying, 'Something is wrong, but we are not powerless.' They are all about changing the conversation, and that is incredibly courageous. That was what we were trying to do during the Vietnam War.

You often talk about following your own conscience regardless of public pressures.

Well, I'm not a big fan of going along with the mob. I resented (House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Virginia) when he called the Occupy movement a mob. Mobs lynch people and throw bricks through windows and burn things. Eric, where did you go to school, baby? Occupy is not a mob. We have a right to peaceably assemble. That's not a mob. That's citizens doing their job.

Speaking of nonviolent resistance, you were a friend of the late Rosa Parks, and an acquaintance of Martin Luther King Jr. You've often said that Parks should loom larger in the American memory.

I like to wish people a happy Rosa Parks Day, and when they look at me and say, 'I didn't know there was a Rosa Parks Day,' I tell them, 'There should be.' I had the pleasure of knowing Dr. King. We weren't friends but he knew who I was. He'd say, 'Hi, Nikki.' (Laughs.) We've got this great big statue of Martin now, but without Rosa, we would not have had the occasion to meet Martin. Martin was not calm. He wanted to get things done. He had the urgency of 'now.' But Rosa had that calmness. You always felt that whatever was going to happen, it wouldn't be so bad with this woman around. Rosa Parks would never have given a 'March on Washington' speech like Martin did, but on December 1, 1955, she said, 'I'm going to take my seat today.' Let me be clear. Martin was a minister. He was used to leading. His father, his grandfathers, were all ministers, but it is the Rosa Parkses of the world who gave him his handle. The Rosa Parkses of this world provide the Kings of this world with the opportunity. Martin couldn't have just said 'Let's have a boycott."

It's clear that you value the importance of courage in everyday life.

Courage is always important. That's why we read Ulysses. That's why we try to understand the journey of Hamlet.

You've taught creative writing for decades, and you currently teach at Virginia Tech. One of your former students is Nikky Finney, who won a National Book Award for poetry. I'm hoping you can share your writing and teaching philosophy.

What I say to my students is, 'Write what you know.' They don't realize that it is so clear when they don't know what they are talking about. I have a friend who likes to write English novels, and I'm thinking, 'No, baby, you don't know anything about it. The British write English novels!' You are your own muse. I know I have some students who think I don't care because I always look and say, 'That's good.' The whole world will find something wrong with your writing. It takes a certain commitment to say, 'This is good,' and a certain level of faith to say, 'If she says this is good, and I respect her, I can build on that.'

In your own words you are a "Black American, a daughter, a mother, and a professor of English. You have earned 25 honorary degrees and have received the Rosa L. Parks Woman of Courage award. Is there anything else you're still hoping to accomplish?

Well, I am a big fan of space, and I am incredibly sad that every penny we put into (the war in Afghanistan) could have been used for space travel. If I were a young man going into outer space, I would be so nervous, so why not send a few grandmothers into space? I would go, by the way. People will say, "But Nikki, you won't come back!' I'd say, 'look, I'm 68, I'm going to die anyway.' Let's send the poets and the grandmothers. That would be my ideal space crew. Maybe throw in a painter and one songwriter, and we would need to get a cook. We'd have a good time, and if we survive, wonderful. If we don't, we'll have taken a great route to that next step. We don't know very much about death because some of us don't know very much about life.

Speaking of fate and circumstance, do you ever wonder what you would have done with your life if you hadn't become a poet?

I am compulsive. I could have opened a cleaning business. I would have called it Nikki's Cleaning.

Read along with me ... if you dare.

OK, both of you. First of all, it was nice to see you last week, and second of all, here are some good books to read. Get your hands on Elif Batuman's hilarious, startling and clever book The Possessed, about freaks like me who can't get enough of Russian literature. She is always so funny and surprising. I once sent her a fan letter and got a nice response. You're 11 years too late to celebrate the book's sesquicentennial; still, this is as good a time as any to conquer Moby Dick if you haven't already, and if you can, get your hands on the Arion version, which is beautifully illustrated and has a nice big font size for nearsighted folks like me. Don't listen to all those people who make it seem as if reading this book is like taking a daily dose of codfish liver oil. The book has marvelous pacing and, for the post part, it rollicks along. The digressions - some of them pure journalism, some of them pure fantasy -- enrich the story, and have a metaphorical power that keeps building right up to the book's abrupt ending. I just finished reading it and I'm glad I waited. I'd heard so many horror stories about this long, fishy tale that I wasn't prepared for Melville's wry, self-effacing humor and the endearing jokiness. (Melville darkens the mood and eases up on the jokes as the Pequod begins its final pursuit of the treacherous Dick.) As a treat, I'm going to read Nathaniel Philbrick's book about Moby Dick afterwards. Another book I read for the first time ever: the Pevear-Volokhonsky translation of Anna Karenina. Read it, but it will ruin you. No other book is better than this. I should also point out that this translation is excellent. A great translation makes a big difference. If you don't believe me, check out the clunky, grinding translation that is available for free on the Amazon Kindle. I agree with those who say the Levin scenes in the country side were not quite as interesting as the rest of the book, but I think they place the book a different register and help balance out the domestic misery/horse racing/adultery scenes. You will also enjoy the hilarious Pevear-Volokhonsky translation of Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol, though I was mightily confused about the missing chunks in book two. (Initially, I did not realize that part of the manuscript was lost to time.) As part of my job, I am just about to interview (I hope!) an extremely successful production designer for the movies. To prepare, I am reading an interesting book called Ken Adams, the Art of Production Design, about the man who, among other things created the sets seven classic James Bond flicks and the war room in Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove. Lately, I can't get enough of the criticism and essays of the late John Updike, whose books, Just Looking and Still Looking are like taking a stroll through a museum with a funny, self-effacing and extremely learned amateur (and I mean amateur in the best sense of the word!) And finally, you should get your hands on Eleanor Henderson's 10,000 Saints which is so full of surprises that I don't want to ruin anything, even by giving you a plot synopsis. Just get a hold of it as soon as you can. That's all for now.

Christopher Hitchens

Sad to hear today's news. Then again he lived and wrote about 17 lifetime's worth. I don't agree that he's our Orwell or our Mencken. I think of him as a complete one-off, and while I'll enjoy reading his work for a long time into the future, I'll miss his timeliness and topicality. I won't be able to read about some demagogue or invasion without wondering what he would have said about it. Regardless of what you think about his positions (Falkland Islands, Iraq War, etc.), you have to admire someone who doesn't care about the politics of consensus, isn't afraid to make you mad, and is willing to put his opinions on the line by going on some truly scary talk shows and TV programs. (Sean Hannity, etc.)

I'm also amazed that he kept cranking out the essays and columns up to the very end (including a beautifully written response to the term 'what doesn't kill you makes you stronger' in the most recent Vanity Fair. Not sure if I told either one of you this but I met him once a long time ago at the Capitola Book Cafe. I showed up late, not realizing there was a reading. An acquaintance of mine, who vaguely knew Hitchens, grabbed me by the shoulder and frogmarched me to the podium and said, "Christopher, this is Dan White of the Santa Cruz Sentinel!" before I could retreat. Mr. Hitchens was kind enough to pretend to be impressed. It was really awkward. I can't remember what we talked about.

Nikki Giovanni in Santa Cruz

I just had a great, free-wheeling phone conversation with Nikki Giovanni, who will be here in Santa Cruz in a few weeks. Among the topics we covered: Martin Luther King, Jr., space travel, Occupy Wall Street, Prince Charles, writing pedagogy, and the importance of poetry. I will post that here once I've distilled it down to a Q and A. Be patient. It takes time to put it all together. In other news, I've got a slamming headache from watching the White Stripes' "Seven Nation Army" video on YouTube.

The anthology has arrived (and I survived cat bite.)

I just received (in the mail) The 36 Hours/150 Weekends anthology book published by the New York Times and Taschen, and featuring two of my recently published travel pieces. Please go out and buy it but don't drop it on your foot. It must weigh five or six pounds!!! In other news, I don't have rabies. Also, I just wanted to know that my pecan pie turned out fine. However, my pumpkin pie was a gelatinous horror that sent people running from the table. Sorry for the bad food, everybody. There's always next year. I also want to apologize for the small type. I bet you're experiencing eye-strain right now. I tried to increase the font size but the button isn't working.

My day can only get better (I just got chomped by my own cat!)

I am going to take a break from blogging for a while because typing is almost impossible right now. My cat took a huge bite out of my finger! It's not his fault.
Here's what happened. My cat has not been feeling well -- he's been fighting off an infection -- so I had to go to the vet in San Jose and get these gigantic, stinky brown pills for him. You wouldn't believe the size of these pills. Maybe they thought I said "moose" instead of "cat." Anyhow, he refuses to eat them on his own, even if I stick them in a "pill pocket'' that is made out of smelly cat food. Following the doctor's instructions, I had to stick the pill directly down his throat and push. That meant opening up his jaws, gently nudging my finger beneath his razor-sharp teeth, and inserting the pill into his throat and pushing it down there without choking him or having him bite my arm off. After several tries (and a pretty huge bite) I finally succeeded. And then I looked at the jar and realized that I'll have to the do thing every single day for the next freaking week! I have newfound respect for people who own tigers and lions and servals.

Mad Men, Weeds, Charlie Sheen and critical thinking

In case you're interested, I have a new-ish story that gives you an inside look at Lionsgate TV, which produces, among other things, Mad Men, Weeds and Nurse Jackie.

Poisoning Pigeons in the Park: my interview with Tom Lehrer

Here's another one from the vault, a rare interview with Tom Lehrer. This came out 10 years ago but I think it's still relevant. Too bad that America's most incisive and funny political songwriter isn't writing political songs anymore. He could have a lot of fun with Herman Cain among others.

More on whales

As it turns out, that crazy whale photo you've been seeing in newspapers and broadcasts across the country is by Santa Cruz's own Shmuel Thaler, "complete with misspelled name in the photo credit." His whale image recently made the NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams. Thanks, Shmuel, for sending in. If it wasn't for people sending in, I'd have no content at all. Still waiting for advice on the pie.

Thanksgiving draws near. Time for me to make another inedible, goopy pecan pie

I'm just looking at the calendar and noticing that Thanksgiving is creeping up on me again. For me, this means one thing: friends and loved ones will soon be gagging on my overwrought, undercooked chocolate-pecan pie.

Every year I screw it up in a different way. One year I burned it so badly that the outside was black as pitch, and yet it was raw and glutinous in the middle. No one wants to hurt my feelings, so everybody ends up choking down one piece -- and in some cases, more than one piece -- of my mucilaginous, viscid baked product.

Another time it was so hard that you could barely pry the pieces apart, even when you used a sharp knife and hit the handle as hard as you could with your fist. Last year it came out OK, but for some reason I accidentally added mint flavor so it had this disgusting menthol aftertaste like Listerine.

Anyhow, if anyone has any advice on baking these pies, send in (but I have a feeling you won't. You're all a bunch of lookie-loos. No offense.)

By the way, this stupendously disgusting pie is something I found online on a blog. I can't claim credit for baking that one.

Cactuseaters on True Fiction Radio

Thanks again to my brother Phil for finding this and sending it along. I knew it was about to be posted online but didn't know it was already up! Anyhow, here is that free podcast from True Fiction Radio, including brand-new readings by Wallace Baine and Richard Stockton, and also a brief reading by me (from the Cactus Eaters.), recorded recently in town. If you've got access to iTunes, download away. I'm part of the radio show #12, podcast on 10/30/11.

Extreme close-up with whale in Santa Cruz!

See. I wasn't kidding. Ignore the silly tagline -- I seriously doubt that a krill-eating mammal would ever gobble up a surfer -- but it's still a shocker when the whales appear.

Banana slug color variations

I hope you enjoy this stereotype-shattering link. Now that I've read this, I might have to redesign my cookies.

Joan Didion coming to the Bay Area

She's going to be in conversation with Vendela Vida at the Herbst Theater. Go if you can. (I can't.) I went to a fantastic Didion event in NYC some years back. She was in conversation with New Yorker editor David Remnick, and it was all going well until someone in the audience asked Didion a truly dumb and appalling question at the very end.

Skyhopping whales, part two

In case you aren't following the local news, certain Santa Cruzans have lost their minds in regard to this surge of humpback whale sightings. Kayakers are going right up to them and practically rubbing the creatures' noses. I think this is a good time to remember that humpback whales can swim 16 miles an hour and have the combined weight of 350 humans.

In other words, annoying them is a very bad idea ...

The ghosts of Torrington, Connecticut

I chuckled after watching this scary trailer advertising a new horror movie that takes place at the Yankee Pedlar Inn in Torrington, Connecticut. This struck me as funny because the Yankee Pedlar is a real place. In fact, I frittered away a certain amount of my early 20s at the bar on the bottom floor of that very inn. I have a real life, silly "ghost story" that takes place in part at the Yankee Pedlar. When I get a moment, I will upload that for you. (it's long and rather complicated.)