Spooky canyon

I'm taking off at this moment on my journey toward the spooky Southwestern canyon full of Fremont-era granaries, petroglyphs, pictograms and other remarkably intact ruins (they found actual corncobs in in some of the granaries!). The place was inhabited about a thousand years ago but the people deserted it quickly for mysterious reasons. The other strange thing is the fact that they built their shelters so far up on the rocks, out of reach from water on semi-vertical cliffs. In fact, you would need to be a fairly skilled rock climber just to reach many of the cliff dwellings in this place.

Exploring ancient ruins in Utah

I'm heading off to Utah to take a look at some very old pictographs, petroglyphs, granaries and other ruins in a remote slot canyon about three hours from Salt Lake City. I'm doing this for a magazine assignment. I'll give a full report when I return next week. I'll make sure to bring plenty of water this time!!

Revolting "healthy snacks" for Halloween

I've never liked Halloween, America's annual nod to Satanism, but at least I took some cold comfort in the junk food: infant-sized versions of Mars Bars, York Peppermint Patties, Milk Duds, Junior Mints and Raspberry Spree. In the past, if a parent departed from the protocol and tried to drop an apple or an organic cracker into your treat bag, the response was simple: you reported them to the police. Now, the kids of today have nothing to look forward to in terms of Halloween. Health-conscious parents are phasing out the wonderfully slimy and bad-for-you artificial snacks of yesterday and replacing them with sustainable "health food'' options that take all the fun away. Listen to these stomach-churning new Halloween snack options that parents are handing out to unsuspecting corpses, Darth Vaders, Vampires and pint-sized Tila Tequilas:

1. Small lumps of artisanal cheese. In the past, if someone dared to hand you a lump of cheese for Halloween, you would call Child Protective Services and let them handle it. This year, parents are handing out lumps of three-fourth-ounce reduced fat farmhouse cheddar to the little Britney Spearses of the night.
2. Vegan options, organic and gluten free.
3. Organic Fruit Splooshers.
4. Organic Prunes. (Can you imagine someone handing you prunes for Halooween????

5. And, last but not least, Airborne Power Pixies.
Yes, I swear I'm not making this up. Adults are actually handing out little packages of "immune boosting formula'' to kids on this night of fake bloodletting, fang-wearing, cross-dressing and sugar gobbling. Don't get me wrong. I support Slow Food, organic produce and all kinds of low-impact eating options --but Halloween is supposed to be the one night when a kid can rip his fillings out on Juju Bees and eat Abba Zabbas all day long. I say, leave the prunes and Fruit Roll-Ups alone and pass the Sweet Tarts.

San Francisco has the ugliest couches in the world

In light of all the terrible things going on in the world at this moment (and, when you think about it, every moment) it might seem flippant to complain about this city's selection of utterly hideous sofas and couches, and the fact that Craiglist in San Francisco offers nothing for sale other than the most stained skanky cat-claw-punctured sofas and futons I have ever seen. However, I think it's worth mentioning, considering there is so much ugly furniture in this town. So far I've gone to about a dozen stores in search of a bearable sofa. I've seen sleazy black leather couches (the salesman assured me that they "never wear out, they only wear in.'') horrible mixed-plaid couches, and showroom couches that looked like they were dragged from the side of a Kern County highway. After more fruitless net searching, I decided to stop looking for nice couches and focus on the hideous ones. Thankfully, I found a one-stop shopping site (http://www.uglycouches.com) with a great selection of truly vile couches. Check this site out. They are even worse than the ones on Craigslist.

Southern California blazes

I am watching these California blazes with grave concern; I have family not far from the fires, as well as a backpacking friend who is out there hiking in the backcountry, solo, not far from some of the blazes! Be careful down there.

Frank Zappa's posthumous beer

The other day, I decided to celebrate my recent graduation by ordering extra-spicy Thai take-out from my favorite restaurant in Cupertino, and then washing down this meal with a bottle of Frank Zappa Kill Ugly Radio, a commemorative offering from the Lagunitas brewing company. The bottle has a picture of Frank's face from the Mothers of Invention years. Anyhow I ate a huge mouthful of pad thai noodles, and it was so fiery hot that I poured myself a large helping of the beer and tried to cool off my mouth with it. For some reason, the Frank Zappa beer only made the situation worse! The beer, like Frank Zappa, is complex, surprising, and more than a little bitter. Somehow, the Kill Ugly Radio beer, combined with the thai spaces, caused a fiery sensation to wash over my mouth, quadrupling the agony. I think Mr. Zappa would be pleased.

Graduating today

This week I am graduating from Columbia's MFA program. I am very excited about this. Three years ago, around this time of year, I relocated myself, my wife Amy Ettinger, and Robert (our huge, obese cat) to New York City for the program. I can't be there in person, so I'll have to hum the "graduation song'' remotely while I extend my congratulations to all the other writing folks who are getting degrees this week:
Fayne Ansley
Pranav Behari
Jeff Bender
Augustine Blaisdell
Thomas Blaylock
Michelle Brotherton
Marie Elia
David Francis
Ruth Galm
Cristine Gonzalez
Nadine Gorelik
Alena Graedon
Matthew Hamity
Melissa Heltzel
Adam Katz
Adina Kay
Doretta Lau
Elyse Lightman
Krista Manrique
Filip Marinovich
Joshua Martinsons
Ashley Murray
Matthew Passet
Gabriel Pilar
Miriam Schiffer
Anna Selver-Kassell
Chandler Klang Smith
Patricia Sonntag
Rhena Tantisunthorn
Stacy Torres
Johnathan Donald Wilber
Alexis Wolff

Dancing the MUNI macarena

As I've said before, this is a nice city. However, I am not enjoying MUNI. Part accordion, part bus, part cable car, part marionette, the MUNI takes forever to arrive and makes strange squeaking noises as it makes its slow, poky way through the city. I hate sitting on the little reversible seats while waiting for MUNI. They aren't really designed to hold a human being's weight. In fact, they have a tendency of dropping you right down onto the indescribably filthy sidewalk if you aren't careful. But the worst part of it is the 'transfers' they give you once you pay your fare. The transfers are printed on what seems to be one-ply Charmin Ultrasoft Toilet Paper. These transfers start to disintegrate the moment you put them in your hand. Also, they are insanely easy to lose. That's why you always see all kinds of panicked people on the MUNI, clutching their chests and hips while making all kinds of desperate faces and mad gyrations as they tear open their wallets and turn their pockets inside out in their efforts to find the vouchers. It looks as if they are dancing.

Mindful suffering in a natural setting

Last year, one of my students turned in an essay that really summed up my feelings about the outdoors.
"I think it's very important that we all take some time out of our busy schedules to commiserate with nature,'' he said.

Haightful behavior

You shouldn't hang out in my neighborhood unless you like revisionist hippies who were born long after the Summer of Love (a period of peace and harmony that revolved around the intersection of Haight and Ashbury streets and lasted --- according to cultural historians -- for approximately three and a half seconds.) I don't understand the embittered people who skulk around the Haight just so they can scrap with helpless hippies. The other day I was hanging around near the organic food store -- the same one where I knocked the strawberries into the street -- and I saw a small bulldog of a man screaming at a hippie who had asked him for spare change.
"I won't give you a handout,'' said the bulldog man. "I'm not the government.''
"The government takes money away from me and gives me nothing,'' said the hippie.
"But I'm not the government so leave me alone.''
"But if you're not the government, why don't you just give me money anyhow?''
The conversation devolved to the point where the bulldog man started threatening to stab the hippie in the neck with a set of car keys!
Anyhow, the point of the story is: if you dislike people who smoke Thai stick while wearing pilled-up alpaca sweaters and walk the streets in packs of 11 or 12 people while carrying ferrets and walking huge clumps of dogs tied to leashes made out of hemp, you might want to go somewhere else. Personally, I have no problem with these behaviors. After all, I'm from Santa Cruz.

and I almost forgot --- more info on the Steinbeck Fellows reading

A few of you asked me for a more detailed run-down on last week's Steinbeck Fellows reading at San Jose State University's MLK Library. Peter Malae read from his novel. Lysley Tenorio read a short story. I read a brief nonfiction piece involving my thirsty trek across an arid region of the southern Sierra Nevada range. It was great to get a good-sized (and enthusiastic) turnout. I was also glad to see so many SJSU students there. In fact, the evening went so well that I hope we can get even more people into the next event. By the way, I'm hoping that we'll do a reading up in SF soon (I'll post that as soon as I get the details.)

The other Dan White

It's very strange to be named Dan White and live in this particular city. I'm a calm, quiet, law-abiding person --- and it feels strange to share a name with such a notorious local person. Imagine how you would feel if your last name happened to be "Manson" and you found yourself moving, for some reason, into the Panamint range. People would talk. Or what if your last name was Ripper and you found yourself living in Whitechapel, England? I've already had a couple of mildly awkward interactions because of this.

"Hella"

I think it's time that people phased out this awful expression. What does it mean, anyhow?

Hipsters

I love San Francisco. However, I'm noticing a small problem. Skinny, vintage-clothes-wearing, Conor Oberst-worshipping, authentic-dive-bar-seeking hipsters have taken over this city. They are starting to affect my life. For example, I am in serious need of new glasses but I can't find anything that doesn't have thick black wire rims to broadcast an ironic-nerdy look. I'm afraid that if I wear such glasses, the irony will be lost on a lot of people.

A recap on the Steinbeck Fellows reading. Plus --- John Prine returns

Thanks to everyone who showed up to the Steinbeck Fellows reading. It was a great time --- and the crowd was so much bigger than I expected (standing room only. Cool.)

in other news, John Prine played for free at an enormous festival at Golden Gate Park this weekend. I joined a small throng of Prinefreaks who made a single-file line that snaked its slow way to the very front. Prine is one of my heroes; his songs are so precise. (no word or phrase feels out of place to me. He can switch gears from heartbreak to comedy and back again. Sometimes he'll even figure out ways to combine these things in the same three-minute song.)

Prine sounded great to me; he battled throat cancer a couple of years ago, and, if anything, his voice sounded scratchier, deeper, croakier and more distinctive than before. More than this, it was great to see all the twenty-somethings and teenagers close to the front, 'discovering' his music at long last. His songs sounded more relevant than ever (especially his Vietnam-era classic, "That Flag Decal Won't Get You Into Heaven Anymore,' which drew a lot of rueful laughter from the crowd, along with an almost violent rebuttal from a fellow standing close to me who decried the song as "disgusting.'' Prine must be doing something right if he can get under someone's skin like that.)
As I was walking home from the set, I heard an unusually beautiful live version of Nick Lowe's "What's So Funny 'Bout Peace, Love and Understanding.'' Upon further investigation, I realized that Nick Lowe himself (!) was the man on the stage singing the song. All in all it was a fantastic festival. My only quibble is the fact that so many people showed up to the festival for the sake of talking very loudly, in braying tones, during the performances. That's just plain rude. The louder acts held up just fine but quieter acts (such as Gillian Welch and David Rawlings) got lost in this sea of lame kibbitzing.

Steinbeck Fellows Reading Tonight --- reminder

Come out and see us read at the MLK Library, fifth floor, at 7 p.m. tonight (Thursday, October 4.) I will be reading a very sad story about cacti (and one cactus in particular)

Thanks a lot, cheese lady

It's official --- I've moved to San Francisco -- and weird things are happening already. I went into a high-end cheese shop in Noe Valley and asked the woman behind the counter if she had any good-quality fresh-made ricotta cheese. She said, "Absolutely,'' and reached into the fridge. She pulled out a huge tub of ricotta cheese. "You would really like this stuff,'' she said, smiling, as she dipped a tasting spoon into the cheese and skimmed off a delicous looking sample. And then, instead of handing it to me -- she ate it herself!! "Ahh,'' she said. "That was really good. You should try it sometime.'' Also, when I was in the Haight, I said hello to someone I recognized. She did not remember me -- and, on top of that, I knocked over a container of organic strawberries, which spilled all over the filthy street. Trying to cover my tracks, I stuffed the strawberries back into the plastic box and was putting them back onto the shelf (not very nice, I now realize) when a homeless man came up and screamed at me for putting the strawberries back on the shelf. Oh well. The apartment is really nice, though.

Bad barber

I just discovered that the aforementioned barber left a small, lightning-shaped dent (a tribute to Harry Potter?) in my hair. I also discovered a bunch of wasps hanging out under my car on two separate occasions. I'm worried that there's a wasp's nest growing deep inside the chassis of my car. More later.

Steinbeck Fellows reading in San Jose

It would be great if you could all come out to hear Peter Malae, Lysley Tenorio and me read on October 4 at 7 p.m. on the fifth floor of the lovely MLK Library in downtown San Jose. Light refreshments will be served. The event is free.

Tales from Cupertino part two: My shapely hair

Yesterday I went to a neighborhood barbershop in Cupertino. These days, barbers don't need a whole lot of instruction or advice when it comes to my hair. I tell them, "Use a one and a half on the sides and a two on the top.'' They scalp me every couple of weeks. Anyhow, the female barber took out the clipper and was buzzing away at my skull. She stopped, looked at me through the mirror and said, "You don't have a lot of hair, but the hair that you do have is shapely. Your hair has a good shape.''
I just thought I'd pass that along. Next time you see me, make sure to compliment me on my shapely hair.

Professor Diddy: the origins of a nickname

I'm not quite sure how this happened. Some of the students in one of my comp classes at San Jose State University call me Professor Diddy. HOw on earth did I get such a nickname? I must admit, it's my fault entirely. Here (I think) is what happened: A couple of my students were trying to figure out what to call me in class. They threw out a whole bunch of possibilities. "Dan.'' "Mr. Dan.''"Professor Dan,'' "Mr. White.'' "Professor White.'' I could have chosen any one of those options and it would have been just fine. The problem is, I overthought the situation. "Mister White'' sounded a little too much like a hated PE teacher, while "Dan'' sounded too informal. I didn't like "Professor Dan'' because it sounded a bit too much like "Ranger Rick.'' I'm a lecturer, technically speaking, but "Lecturer White'' sounds weird to me, like a character for a Phillip K. Dick novel. I said that they could probably call me "Adjunct Professor White'' but that is very wordy and awkward-sounding. Finally, I said that I didn't really care what they called me, as long as they don't call me something ridiculous, such as "Diddy.'' Voila. A nickname was born!

Songs from the 80s I want to forget

I kind of stole the inspiration for this entry from a conversation I had last night in SF. Anyhow, it's strange for me to hear about 80s 'nostalgia' parties and hear 'flashback' weekends highlighting the songs of my adolescence. I'm wondering if anyone in my age group remembers (with a shudder) the following ditties that tormented me on KROQ during my teenage years. I'm talking about the kind of songs that had me in a mad rush to change the dial, even when I was hurtling down the 405 freeway at 85 miles an hour.

"Shanoo, Shanoo'' by Haysi Fantayzee

"I Eat Cannibals" by Total Coelo.

"Pepperoni Ice Cream" by Killer P ....

"Oh! My Janitor" by Suburban Lawns.

"Slang Teacher'' by Wide Boy Awake.

"We Don't Have To Take Our Clothes Off'' by Jermaine Stuart.

"Rappin' Duke'' by John Wayne.

"P-A-J-A, Pajama Party!" by (I couldn't remember the name for this one, but the singer sounded like she is about six or seven years old.)

I think that 'authentic' 1980s nostalgia parties --- and 1980s oriented karaoke gatherings --- need to draw more deeply from this dark well of noxious tunes.

Willing to live in a storage facility

(I accidentally deleted the second half of this blog entry; here's the restored version from some years back.)

That might be the best way to go. I would just move the lawnmower out of the way and set up my sleeping bag and Therma-Rest.

This is a tough market. San Francisco -- way too expensive. East Bay -- it's the Brooklyn of the west, but it's too far away (one of my colleagues says it took him two hours and fifteen minutes to get to campus yesterday!) and about to become very expensive. Santa Cruz --- you've got to deal with Highway 17 and the fact that there aren't jobs. I've never done the 'blind dating' or internet dating thing but it must be similar to this. The advertisements on Craiglist are always quite different from the reality (i.e. crackhouse by the beach, scary apartments, etc.) I'll keep you posted -- and let me know if you hear of anything.

I should point out that my standards are pretty reasonable at this point.  When it comes to living situations, I am as far from a snob as you can get. At this point I've lived in a hippie commune-type house on the Central Coast, and in a household of nudists in rural New England, where the keeper of the manor and his girlfriend would engage in clothes-free skeet shooting and lawn-mowing,  among other things. I've also lived in an illegal "granny unit" owned by a prominent law enforcement officer. At this point I can get used to just about anything.

Leg in holding pattern

Three days after the hornet situation, my leg now looks like a leg again. I'll keep everyone posted. I'm learning that I have extreme reactions to insects as well as venomous plants, especially poison oak. The weird thing is, yellowjackets, poison oak, and most of my other enemies, are not "non-native invasive'' species. They are all "natural'' and native to California.

More on hornets ...

It's not just that I'm very allergic to hornets. They also, for some reason, find me attractive. They swarm all over me -- and instead of just flying around me in an exploratory way, the hornets usually sting me without provocation. Anyhow, my leg still looks weird but I think the situation is under control. However, I am going to be a bit gun-shy about hiking for a while. I might start hiking with a thick, full-body raincoat or a suit of protective mesh.

Hornets -- nasty little beasties.

I have a fraught relationship with nature --- and my trip last weekend to Point Reyes reminded me of this. It was beautiful there --- fogbound, lots of deer, the rolling Marin Headlands, egrets and herons everywhere. And then, in the middle of a trek, I somehow disturbed a wasp's nest. A bunch of them descended on me. I was stung about four times -- and I had some sort of nasty histimine reaction, causing my ankle (and, really, my entire left leg) to swell up to frightening proportions. Still recovering from this. Keep a close watch for these nasty little beasties. (They are ruthless.)

The rats are disgusting in Richmond

My rat-o-mer is turned down pretty low after living in New York and being exposed to that sort of thing every single day. But I saw a rat in Richmond that beat all previous records. He was at least a foot and a half long from his filthy head to his unspeakable tail. It was a major turn-off from an otherwise nice and sleepy neighborhood.

Cactuseaters blogsite: one billion sold?

Hey, readers --- feast your eyes on that little box at the bottom right of this blog page with the little number in the middle of it. That is my brand new reader-counting thingamabob! Many thanks to Kara for helping me install this wonderful new device that allows me to track the number of 'hits' I get into the site. This is huge for me. Each of the numbers that you see on the screen represents my total number of readers -- in the hundreds of thousands. In other words, if the little box says "nine,'' that means that 900,000 people have read my site. If it says, "10,'' I've reached my one million readers mark. This means I can now accept gigantic advertising clients for my site (and retire comfortably by next year.) T-shirts, cross promotions, action figures, and a special CactusEaters cactus-flavored cereal, are sure to follow.

Sea Monkeys: not a good memory for me

What can I say about Sea Monkeys? They are actually shrimp, they mail them to you in a weird little vacuum-sealed package, and when you put them into the plastic tank, they flail around for a while and die off very soon. The weird thing about sea monkeys is, they never reproduce. There is nothing you can say or do to make sea monkeys take a romantic interest in one another. They just float around and ignore each other and, eventually, they all plotz, one by one. There is nothing you can do about this. In about a month, you've got a useless plastic tank with a bunch of floaties in it.

So far, no break-ins by rats, and no more ants in my car

I have a lot to be thankful for. In the past week, I haven't seen a single ant farm taking shape in my car. That's pretty amazing, considering the size of the antfarm that was living in my car for the past month. I finally got tired of it and sprayed my car down with Fantastic, which did the trick. Also, as of this moment, no rats have tried to break into my house. In New York, rat break-ins were a frequent occurence. Once time (I swear, this is not a fabrication) I had to defend myself from a rat by bopping it on the head with a short work of experimental fiction.

The rats have found me.

I can't believe this, but the rats apparently followed me from NYC to Silicon Valley. I joined the Rat Witness Protection Program but I guess someone "ratted'' me out. The other day I was jaywalking (fun to do in Cupertino, and you need to jaywalk some of the time because the sidewalks end so abruptly) when a giant rat --- the size of a shoebox --- came charging out across the street, with a look of cruel intent in his eyes. In his jaws, he carried a coupon for a $100 I-phone rebate. I got out of his way. He was in a hurry.

Still searching for a house.

I am now living in a peaceful, gorgeous house as part of my very last house-sitting gig. You would not believe the loveliness of this place. There is a pomegranate tree in the front yard, and pears and apples galore in the backyard. Anyhow, once I leave here, i will be living, temporarily, in a smallish tool shed. It will be cozy in there (six by four feet!) and there are lawnmowers and things in there, so it's going to be a bit of a tight squeeze but it should be ok.


By the way, I am temporarily in Silicon Valley, and, as far as I'm concerned, the place gets a bad rap. I had no idea that the place had so many forests, hiking trails, etc. They have a lovely open-space area called Rancho San Antonio -- rolling chaparral foothills, hawks, deer everywhere, quail squeaking around in the bushes, and bobcats skulking around after dusk. I think it's amazing that a place like this thrives in the information nerve center of the world. You see young couples with strollers and joggers all over the place. It's our little Central Park out here.

Another anagram attempt

Given that i misspelled Ms. Lohan's first name in that last post, here's another go at it:

'Lyndsay Lohan arrested again'
anagrams to ...

'Dastardly as annoying healer.'

Not quite as snappy.

Anagrams can save your life, and help you figure out current events

I believe in the power of anagrams. Whenever I'm feeling confused about a current event, a scandal or a situation in my life, I try to enter that situation into an anagram-generating machine that will puzzle out the hidden meaning within.

Here are a few anagrams for your consumption:

The anagram for 'Lyndsey Lohan arrested again' is: 'Rantingly analysed sorehead.'

The anagram for 'Should senator Larry Craig resign" is ... 'Harlot's coarse-grained slurrying.'

more to follow!

Let's hear it for my favorite blogs

Hi everyone. I want to direct you to a very funny blog, http://semprelaltracosa.blogspot.com/ Take a look at the list of blind-date-evasion excuses in the latest post. If you want to learn about life in the Bay Area, this is the blog for you. I also dig "dogpoet" (which is extremely well-written, and makes me feel kind of bad about the fact that I write my own blog entries in about two and a half minutes, tops.) and the shocking but very funny "stereolabrat'' blog. I am jealous of the fancy fonts in some of these blogs, and the fact that the bloggers are technologically savvy and know how to put slide shows and films and three-dimensional twirly-swirly decorative stuff while my blog is just blocks of text, with the exception of the "Today Show'' entry, in which you get to see me on television for about nine and a half seconds.

Who knew that crack houses had ocean views?

My wife and I have started our 'house search.' Sometimes the listings are too good to be true. Yesterday we took a four-hour round trip slog in Memorial Day traffic to see an allegedly "nice'' space with an ocean view. It sure sounded cool in the advertisement. Anyhow, the carpets had some sort of organic scunge on them. The whole place looked scraped up. Dingy. Stinky. Dark as a dungeon. I should have known by the thousand-dollar price tag. That's how much Jennifer Connelly paid for her apartment in "Dark Water.''

A four-wheel antfarm?

Hi everyone. Last week, I discovered an ant colony living in my car. How is that even possible? I close my car windows all the time when I'm not using it. Did the ants spring to live spontaneously? It seems supernatural to me. Anyhow, Windex took care of 'em. I haven't seen a single ant in a couple of days.

The bagels here are disgusting

Enjoying California but the bagels here are, basically, circles of air with ropes of mealy dough around them. I'm sorry, Noah, but this is not a bagel. This is a dinner role with a bellybutton in the middle of it. California needs artisanal bagels. Maybe I'll have to open up my own store.

I don't recommend living next to an ice cream parlor

I live (temporarily) near an ice cream parlor in Santa Cruz. It's called Marianne's, and it's probably my favorite ice cream parlor anywhere. Fresh. Great flavors. Prompt service. The only problem is, it's literally right across the street from my house, which means that I'm eating trough-loads of ice cream for every meal. This is bad news for me, especially in light of the article that my friend Sam sent me about porcine authors who never leave their homes and weigh 500 pounds. Tomorrow we're moving to another location just to get away from the ice cream parlor. I'll keep you posted.

Stink-eyed at Rite Aid

I was standing in line at Rite-Aid, just minding my own business, reading the Us magazine article about Britney Spears and the sleazy college student in the hot tub, when I looked up and saw that a guy in another line was staring at me in a very threatening manner. I am not sure why he was staring at me in this way. Anyhow, I had a friend with me in the line who stink-eyed him right back. I'm wondering if the starer is the same person who has been texting all those NFL scores into my cell phone.
In other news, I watched two DVD movies in the past two weeks. One was "The Host,'' about a man-eating slime monster in Korea. The other was "The Pursuit of Happyness,'' starring Will Smith as a guy who spends the whole movie chasing people up steep hills and hauling machinery around and shouting through traffic. I thought "Pursuit'' was way more scary than "The Host.''

Not a sports fan!

Some bozo keeps texting NFL scores into my cellphone.

Questions raised about my "Road'' review

Someone has raised a few questions about my short review of "The Road.'' This particular reader said she perused the book quite carefully and could not find any references to Starbucks in the book. Here, then, is a quotation from page 343 that directly addresses the Starbucks situation. I think it should put the issue to rest:

"The day dawned, ashes swirling, the usual pallor across the sky. The man and the boy saw a light in the distance, a pale burning in the middle horizon. Perhaps it's a farmhouse, and someone is home, thought the man. Perhaps there will be shelter, or tomatoes and cucumbers in jars. But when they got there, it was just another Starbucks. Disheartened, they walked inside, knowing there would be nothing to eat that day except a 'Heart Friendly' egg-white Swiss cheese sandwich on focaccia, a maple-nut scone and an extra large macchiato split between the both of them.

''I'm sick of Starbucks,'' said the boy. "I'm sick of all the sugar and caffeine and carbs.''
"But we've got no other options,'' said the man. "It's all we've got right now. Okay?''
"Okay,'' said the boy.''

Mammoth Lakes and the New York Times.

It was a little surreal to open up my favorite paper and see my story in there on Friday. I wrote about the Eastern Sierra -- specifically, about Mammoth Lakes. My family has been visiting that place, almost every year, for nearly four decades. It was scruffy in an appealing way back then. Lately it's been a real estate hot spot, with quite a few celebrity sightings. Pink proposed to her now-husband at a motocross there. Justin Timberlake (apparently a snowboard enthusiast) was seen hanging out in the Village, a relatively new lodging and retail complex not far from the base of Mammoth Mountain. When we first started visiting the place, it was as far from chi-chi as you can get. There were one or two "fancy'' restaurants. In the off-season, it was mostly a fishing village/backpacking retreat. Now you can get $300 bottles of wine with dinner, get an herbal mud wrap and eat foie gras sandwiches. I like the fact that some of the best "old stuff'' has survived, including Schat's Bakery, etc. Here is a link to the article...

"The Road.''

I am really scared right now because I am reading Cormac McCarthy's outstanding novel, "The Road.'' It's a vision of the future, uncompromising and bleak. Basically, civilization has been blotted out, and there are roving groups of thugs with sack cloths and swords. The two heroes of the book are a young man and his father. They are on the run. Dead trees line the road. Trash and shrunken heads are everywhere. There are no institutions that have survived the unnamed cataclysm in this book, with the lone exception of Starbucks, which somehow thrives. So anyways, these roving bands of thugs, all hopped up on coffee and pastries, are going around laying waste to cities and forests. Great book, except for the many product placements (Pennzoil, Chuck E. Cheese, Amoco, Twizzlers, etc.) which I found discouraging. I'm also reading a great book called "On Chesil Beach'' by Ian McKewan. Basically it's about this neurotic British couple who are trapped, for 48 hours, in a washroom in the back of a Peet's Coffee in Oakland while on their honeymoon. McKewan writes with tremendous subtlety about class distinction, sexuality and deferred dreams, plus he describes the Peet's bathroom extremely well. (you really feel like you're stuck in there with them.)

Published authors' drinking and eating habits

My friend Sam Autman, out in NYC, sent me a very interesting article from the New York Observer talking about the dark side of being published. Basically the article said that a lot of the authors become very large (physically) and isolated and end up eating way too many Entenmann's pastries because they don't have time to manage their health. They interviewed a nice assortment of authors for that piece. After reading that article, I've decided to eat more holistically and start marathon training again.

The dark and secret world of marmots

I've dug up tons of research that I can't fit in my book; I just can't find a place for it. I'm thinking that I'll post some of this excess useless research on my blog because I have no other purpose for it. The first blurb of research involves marmots. They look like guinea pigs but they're the size of a small dog, have russet or gray fur, and can stand up on their hind legs like human beings. These mammals are quite common in the California high country, in elevations 9,000 feet or up. They look cute but can be quite savage. One of my friends, a former park ranger, said marmots wage war against parked cars. They slither up through the chassis, nibble through the plastic tubing, and suck out all the radiator coolant or brake fluid -- and for some reason the chemicals do not harm them. Rangers try to subdue marmots by injecting them with hypodermic needles filled with a serum made from a PCP derivative. But the marmots are incredibly resistant to such chemicals. In one case, a ranger used enough of that sleep serum to put a full-grown black bear to sleep for a while -- and the marmot would not go under. In fact it was wide awake! just thought I'd share this with you all.

Harry Potter, Matt Damon's "dorky'' boots.

A lot of people are going around blabbing about the Harry Potter ending. I still haven't heard what happens. Please don't tell me. I'm still mad at the chubby kid in my bar mitzvah preparation class who told me that Darth was actually Luke's father. Also, I read the GQ interview with Matt Damon the other day. He's apparently still furious about GQ's previous interview with him -- just because they made a dismissive remark about his boots!! Apparently the previous interviewer called Damon's boots "dorky.'' Damon said that the interviewer did not have the "stones'' to call the boots dorky to his face.

By the way, we're back in the Bay Area now. Where are we living? It depends on which day you're asking. We're basically living all over the place.

Cactus craziness

My book will be called "The Cactus Eaters.'' It will be coming out next year, and the book has required me to do a lot of research about cacti. The book is not about cacti per se, but a cactus figures prominently in one very painful backcountry scene that takes place about a quarter of the way through, in the middle of the desert. For this reason, I've been looking for all kinds of ephemera and weird facts about cacti. My wife dug up a great piece of information: she found a document that suggested that a prickly pear cactus caused a shocking international incident in California about a half-century ago )I won't go into any more details -- you'll have to read the book to see exactly what happened.) I also found out that Aztec priests used cactus spines to scourge themselves as part of a painful-sounding purification ritual. Anyone with other strange cactus facts: please post them here.

Life Without Rats

It's weird to live in a place where there are no rats, or where the rats, if they are here at all, are keeping a low profile. In New York, my life was rat-o-centric. I saw rats all the time. Rats fighting. Rats jumping through the laundry area. The last week I spent in New York, I even saw a rat hanging out in a poisoned rat trap! I asked it what it was doing, living in a poison-filled chamber in the middle of an alleyway. "Location, location,'' he replied.

Falsely accused beagle is now suing me over missing eyeglasses

I am looking after a beagle right now near the beach. Anyhow, the other day my glasses went missing, and I was sure -- absolutely sure --- that the beagle had eaten or hidden them. I asked the beagle to give me some clue about the glasses and where they might be but she refused. In desperation I searched every bush and section of the yard, trying to find the beagle's stash, and ended up more than an hour late for my sister's birthday party at the Star of Siam restaurant in Soquel. So I searched the grass and my suitcases and drawers to no avail, which increased my suspicion that the dog had indeed gobbled the glasses. Anyhow, it turns out that I threw the eyeglasses in a garbage can by mistake. The dog had nothing to do with it.

The Innocence Project has intervened on behalf of the dog, who is also filing a "wrongful accusation'' claim against me. The dog is being represented on a pro bono basis by a well-known attorney. I will probably lose my shirt over this one.

I made up that last part.

Weird week, lost glasses

This week we drove all the way across the country. During this time, we saw some strange things, including a strange man in Wisconsin, riding a jet ski through a drainage ditch off the side of Highway 94; intense snow falling all over us in Idaho -- on June 5!! --- and the nearly deserted downtown of Minneapolis, occupied solely by vagrants. In California, I was walking on the beach just the other day when I saw a guy listening to a garbage can, sticking his face in it, collecting its inner vibrations. It turns out he had one of those itty-bitty black and white TV sets connected to a generator and an extension chord and shoved into the bottom of the garbage can. The TV set had a radio attachment, which he had set on full blast. "Wild Thing'' was playing on the TV set. Only in Santa Cruz! Also, I am now dog sitting in Aptos, California. The dog is very nice and much calmer than last year. I falsely accused the dog of devouring or burying my prescription glasses, but it turns out that I was the one to blame (somehow I threw my glasses in the trash accidentally.)

Coffee jerk

Tried to get an iced coffee from Cafe Fresh, the attractive but not-very-well-managed coffee place across from campus, on Amsterdam Ave. I went in and the guy barked, "We're not open right now." I asked him, "Well, when are you going to open.'' He said, "I'm not getting into the details of why we are not open.'' So I repeated, "No, no,I didn't ask WHY you aren't open, I wanted to know WHEN you are going to open so i can have an iced coffee.'' He replied, "I don't feel like having a conversation right now about WHY we are not open.''

And so I went to Starbucks. Nuff said. Their coffee was delicious and they were nice.

Mountain extravaganza

I've just returned from a grand tour of the mountains for a freelance writing assignment. I threw down a 12-mile trail run into the backcountry, explored a creek and a briny lake, hiked through a field full of swallows and dragonflies, traversed a national park, learned a lot about mining and earthquakes, ate a duck, toured an Ayurdevedic spa, interviewed 20 people, spent the night in an historic lodge and watched the sun set over the humpbacked mountains. It was a terrific experience though I'm sleepy now and trying to get some rest but my cat is mauling me. Tomorrow I'm back in NYC (but only for a couple of days)

Return of the human boomerang

I just had a strange realization about my life in relation to geography. I was born on the West Coast, and then my father moved us all to the East Coast when I was two. At age three, my family moved back to the West Coast, where I stayed for 15 years. Then I moved to the East Coast for six years, at which point I returned to the West Coast for six years, at which point I moved to the East Coast for three years. Now, I'm about to move to --- guess where - the West Coast AGAIN!! I am a human boomerang but didn't realize it until this moment.

The tease continues

So check this out. I went into our friendly local grocery store the other day, the one that sells tomatoes that look like someone hurled them against the wall -- and for once, they were unblemished, tasty and beautiful. I decided to try my luck in the 'student rush' ticket line for the Broadway show, "Talk Radio,'' expecting to get shut out and yelled at by nasty people. But guess what, there was no line, the tickets were cheaper than dirt, we got second row, dead center, and Liev Shrieber just tore the roof off the place. In fact, the guy at the ticket counter sold me the tickets 15 minutes before the box office was supposed to open! How weird is that?

New York is a tease

This city has been showing its very best side to us, now that it knows we are leaving.

We have been going to the Shake Shack and getting their vanilla ice cream cones, then watching the Empire State Building flash a strange new color each night. We've been going on long hikes and runs, snarfing the famous banana pudding at Buttercup Bakery and strolling through the cherry blossom esplanade in Brooklyn's surreal botanical gardens. I know that if we changed our minds and decided to stay out here, the nice weather would vaporize in an instant, and cockroaches (as big as spaniels) would crawl into our apartment and throttle us in our sleep. But this is a perfect, gorgeous time in NYC, a time when there is no better place on the planet. Everyone is having fun, throwing Frisbees all over the place, and even the rickshaw drivers near Columbus Circle are almost smiling. In three or four weeks, the weather will be hot and disgusting, and desperate people will pay good money to see Sandra Bullock movies just for the air conditioning. But in this two-week grace period, the city is accessible, overflowing with options, good humor, art, music and dogs of all shapes and outlooks. I'm scrambling to take advantage of it.

Dreading the bagels but full of anticipation

I am moving, for the time being, to the Bay Area --- lovely place, brilliant people, great weather, although the bagels are dinner rolls with bellybuttons. Though I am excited to be out there again, I am not looking forward to the bagel withdrawal. As a result, I've been mainlining H and H and Absolute bagels like you would not believe --- just opening my mouth and shoveling in fistfuls of bagels to make up for the fact that I will soon be eating Noah's bagels, which are so insipid. One time at Noah's Bagels in Santa Cruz, I asked for a toasted bagel with cream cheese on it. Instead, the guy ignored me and microwaved the hell out of a bare bagel. When I complained, and clarified what I wanted, the guy took the microwaved bagel, stuck cream cheese on it and then put it in the toaster!!! It was like eating a shingle with mouth-searing, melted cream cheese on the top of it.

However, I am very much looking forward to seeing loved ones, being able to afford sushi (the kind of sushi that I can afford in NYC looks suspiciously like the stuff that they drag behind fishing boats in shark-chumming contests) and enjoying a wonderful fellowship (the Steinbeck, through the auspices of San Jose State University) which will allow me to finish my book, develop a second book, and get going on some intensive research. I will miss the Chelsea pier, cheap student tickets at the Metropolitan Opera and the staggeringly good vanilla cones at the Shake Shack. I won't miss our stomping, thumping sociopath neighbors and the rats in the laundry room, but I will miss my colleagues at Columbia's School of the Arts (though I've been told that a huge contingent of them lives in the Bay Area.)

The sweet misery of free ice cream

Yesterday, I waited in line with thousands of other people to get free ice cream at Ben and Jerry's in the Upper West Side. I'm not sure if the delicious frozen treats were worth the volley of verbal abuse. You should have seen the ice cream servers screaming at everyone! "WHO WANTS CHOCOLATE? I KNOW SOMEONE SAID STRAWBERRY!!! MOVE THE LINE ALONG!! GET MOVING!! WHICH ONE OF YOU SAID CHERRY GARCIA!! MOVE YOUR BUTTS RIGHT NOW!!'' When I finally got to the front of the line, I was sure that the server was going to start pounding on me for no reason or at least lob a big lump of ice cream on top of me. "WHAT DO YOU WANT??"" she roared. "Cherry Garcia,'' I replied, sheepishly. She reached into the vat and scooped me up a big wedge of ice cream and practically stuffed the cone up my nose. I grabbed up my treat and got out of there as fast as I could. In the ice cream servers' defense, they had to wait on an endless crowd of mopy, rain-drenched people and they probably got carpal tunnel syndrome from all the scooping. The other weird thing was the line itself: A kid, no older than 11, took it upon himself to herd the line into single file. He would not let my wife and I pass by until he was sure that we were walking in an orderly fashion. This sort of behavior scares me. Pre-teens are supposed to resist authority and not behave in such a crypto-fascist way.

Graduating, sort of

When I was checking out grad schools, I crashed on the floor of a fiction writer who took me to a protest the next day while dressed up as a cow. (He was protesting the cost of tuition. The cow suit was relevant to the protest. It's a long story.) It's hard to believe that three years have passed since the angry-cow incident. These are my final days in the Columbia MFA program. I will definitely miss homework (reading two books every week) and having a dozen or so smart and dedicated people close-edit my work. I'll also miss the study alcoves at Columbia, the lectures about crazy short stories, the constant visits from writers and the occasional beery hangouts at Toast and the Amsterdam Lounge. This has been great (and the three years have gone by in a flash.) I'm grateful that the program has given me a chance to teach Ivy League freshmen, work as a research assistant to an NY Times editor and shape a full-length manuscript. Now I'm marking the end of my time here with a little get-together this weekend in the Upper-Upper Westside. I guess this means that I am graduating -- though that isn't true technically (I'm still fiddling with the thesis and probably won't do the graduation "walk'' in June.)

Vodka in matzo balls: Don't knock it til you try it

I'm in the middle of a Jewish soul-food blitz right now. This week I made a big batch of matzo balls fortified with a full two tablespoons of Popov vodka in the batter. They have a nice "kick'' that your run-of-the-mill ordinary matzo balls don't have -- a bit of a sting at the top of your mouth when you bite them --- but I'm concerned they aren't Kosher for Passover. (I know there are strict restrictions on certain grains and legumes during Passover, though it's also true that vodka is made out of all kinds of different things. Perhaps there is a matzo-flour-based vodka that's out there somewhere on the market.) Anyhow, I'm wondering if anyone else has tried this concoction. I got it straight out of the New York Times Passover Cookbook. In case you're curious, it also involves a cup and a hald of matzo meal, four to five farm-fresh eggs, a tablespoon or so of cooking oil, a tablespoon and a half of chicken broth, salt to taste and the aforementioned tablespoon and a half of vodka. Boil in broth for 45 minutes. I strongly recommend cooking them in canned chicken soup for that time and then transferring them into a big vat of Zabar's Homemade Chicken Soup.

Here's the Today Show Link

Click here to watch my interview about the male biological clock.

Nationally televised smooch and soundbite on the Today Show

I was, briefly, on national television this morning, (the Today Show) kissing my wife, and talking briefly about male menopause. I was on for about seven seconds.

They had me remove my glasses for the interview and the smooch because the Klieg lights were reflecting off the lenses. It was fun to take part in this. I hope I am on television again.

Cactuseaters on the Today Show

I am on the Today Show, Tuesday morning (Seriously!) at some point between 730 and 8 a.m., talking, with two other dudes, about male menopause and other issues, including male fertility, etcetera. They taped the segment today. Among other things, they had me talking about aging, talking about my Dad, and at one point I smooched my wife in front of a zillion potential TV-land viewers.

On Tuesday morning I will watch myself and find out how I look on TV. They didn't give me any make-up (unlike a cable access program in Santa Cruz, where they put so much pancake make-up on me that I looked like Gray Davis.) It was pretty casual and fun, and I got to check out the Big Room where Al Roker and Matt Lauer hang out. Also, they had me use the same throat-microphone that George Clooney used last week.

Even rats hate rats

The other day I was getting take-out from my very favorite Italian place near here, Max's Soha, when I heard a scream and a squeak. I looked down and saw that four rats were getting into it, having an all-out brawl, right on the street corner near a stairwell, just flogging each other with their tails, clawing, fisticuffs all around, fur flying, literally. It went on for a very long time and they finally scattered in all directions. I guess even rats can't stand rats, which is sad when you think about it. I spend so much time being disgusted by putrid, fat, stinking rats that I forget they are sentient mammals, with self-esteem issues and concerns like everybody else. You'd think rats would be united with an 'us against the world' attitude toward us humans, but being vermin has taken its toll on their self-image. Their response is to brawl in the streets.

Rat prints in the snow

I saw a bunch of cute, mysterious footprints in the snow near my apartment yesterday -- and i was shocked and disturbed when I saw that the footprints led straight into a rat trap! I swear, they were as big as rabbit prints.

Vosges chocolates

This is the wildest, craziest chocolate in the world, and probably the most expensive, but it is delicious. The people who make them are fearless. They throw just about anything into their candies --- Banks Beer, rum, champagne, dried violets, powdered tea leaves, even dried-up kalamata olives. They have one chocolate that is so fiery spicy hot that it will make your tongue shrivel in your mouth and fall off (my tongue actually fell off, no kidding, after I ate it.). They have another chocolate that is made from the mashed-up roots of an unpronounceable, endangered shrub. I got a bunch of these candies for my wife for a late Valentine's day gift and she loves them. She's eating one a day. They come in a big purple box. My only concern is that the Vosges flavors will one day get so "daring'' and weird that they will become inedible. (i.e. sausage-flavored chocolates)

Werner Herzog at Columbia

I managed (somewhow) to get a seat for Werner Herzog's ultra-sneak preview of his new movie (it hasn't been screened anywhere until now and there isn't even a release date.) The packed crowd was told not to blog about it but I can at least say that someone should check and make sure the main actors (including Steve Zahn, who was great in this, and completely believable) are still alive and well. It looks like Herzog damned-near killed them making this movie!! You've never seen such skinny, scratched, tormented and dragged-about movie stars in your life. Anyhow, that's all I can really say, but Herzog was a fascinating presence, talking about the tribulations of movie making and his absolute confidence, which I envied. Asked if he ever doubted himself, he replied, "NO.'' I tried to get my class into this discussion because Herzog directed a documentary called 'Grizzly Man,' about a well-meaning preservationist with a Prince Valiant hairdo who gets eaten by one of the critters he's attempting to 'protect.' Herzog is obsessed with capturing authentic moments on film, which is why he once had the cast of an earlier movie drag an actual ship over a mountain, and, at one point, he reportedly hypnotized a film crew. In this movie, you see a lot of unsettling 'actual' stuff taking place but I don't want to spoil it so I'll just leave it at that.

Binging can be fun

Today I ate an entire gooey pizza that I baked myself, a huge bowl of Tuscan white bean soup, a chocolate croissant, a turkey burger with everything and an enormous bowl of cereal. And I don't feel the slightest twinge of remorse about it.

FDR's house --- kind of a dump.

I was out at Hyde Park the other day to see FDR's house --- and it is not in very good shape! The paint was cracked and peeling, and the place had that neglected-outbuilding-storage-sheddy vibe, and there were no visitors at all except for me and Amy. It's strange to think that they don't fix the place up a little bit. FDR, after all, was a good president. The whole New Deal thing was impressive, and he made it cool for presidents to use cigar holders. I think he deserves better. The FDR stables were creepy -- no horses in them, and there was no stables-ish smell at all in there; it was just musty, like an outdoor attic. Strange, how people revere FDR and yet his house is such a dump.

It makes me wonder if George W. Bush's house will ever be opened to the public 60 years from now. I would bet against it. They'll probably just knock his original house to the ground, leaving a weedy field, and maybe there will be a small pebble with an inscription, in Magic Marker, saying, "George W. Bush used to live here but no one cares.'' And then the pebble will get stolen. Also, we tried to go to the CIA (Culinary institute of America) but all the damned restaurants were closed!!! It was Sunday, but the stupid guidebook said they would be open. I found a guy wandering around campus and begged him to make us an omelette or something but he refused so we left.

There's a cool blog about cacti!

Today my upcoming book was mentioned in an unusual blog that talks all about cactuses. I swear. The blog somehow tracks every online mention of cacti. The book is not all about cactuses, per se, though a cactus plays a very important role in the narrative. The blog also included a very cool 'patent' that tells you how to get rid of the spines (which would have helped me tremendously if I'd known about it)

World's Greatest Backpacker

A couple of days ago, I made contact with the world's greatest backpacker --- Scott Williamson, the sport's Lance Armstrong, who is less famous than Lance Armstrong simply because people put so much stock in biking and so little in the sport of backpacking. I've known Scott for quite a while but lost contact with him because he's been out in the woods and changed his email. Anyhow, I want Scott to be one of the people I feature in my book to provide some good balance. In case you haven't heard of him, Scott is the guy who hiked the Pacific Crest Trail twice in one single, sustained effort. I, on the other hand, took two years to hike it, in large part because I contracted giardia and lost more than 30 pounds in the process while recovering in the town of Happy Camp, California. Anyhow, I'm in awe of anyone who can travel 5,200 miles in about five months, in all kinds of steep terrain, in snow, desert, etc.

See 'Spring Awakening.'

I really think that everyone should see Duncan Sheik's "Spring Awakening.'' (or maybe my real motive is to put something really popular in Cactuseaters so someone reads my blog; this happened some time ago when I mentioned Guillermo Del Toro! No, really, the play was startling, smart, funny, tragic, with a demographic that skewed really young without giving you that sleazy feeling that it's an old-person creation masquerading as youth entertainment. I think it captured the rapturous misery of adolescence very well, and the songs were great. The one reservation: the male lead is great but he is kind of an expectorator, if you know what I mean. What I'm trying to say is, he spat lots and lots of times, and with pretty impressive range, during some of the songs -- foooooooo, saliva just raining down all over the place. I'd think twice about buying front-row seats unless you dose up with Airborne.

Article about cactuseaters

My first-ever press mention appeared last week in a Santa Cruz Sentinel article, and the column also appeared on Posthole.com, which is cool because i'm a fan of Posthole. My friends in Santa Cruz threw a 'pre-launch' party featuring theme food from the book, including salsa made from a prickly pear.

Anyhow, this is the article as it appeared in the paper:


"Success dogs Sentinel reporter

Former Sentinel reporter Dan White, now at Columbia University, sent word he's sold a book to Harper Collins Publisher.

With the working title of "The Cactus Eaters," White's book tells about his trip along the Pacific Crest Trail with a former girlfriend, both of them wilderness neophytes.

But this is no tragic piece of literature.

Instead, says White's good friend and Sentinel feature writer Peggy Townsend, think Bill Bryson on the Appalachian Trail in "A Walk in the Woods"

Like Bryson, White's not exactly a Daniel Boone type.

Consider, for example, the title of White's book — taken from an experience he had when his trail wound through the desert.

His backpack much too heavy, White has already dumped his water when, in the desert, his thirst gets the better of him.

Thankfully, he's read somewhere that cactii hold liquid refreshment.

But for White, the cactus holds only a mouthful of needles.

So, is Dan White's autograph worth big bucks now?

"My autograph at this point is worth about five Bazooka Joe Bubble Gum wrappers," he e-mailed me recently.

Don't know the publication date yet, but when I do, you'll be the first to know.''

P.S. -- my review of Slanted Door take-out was probably a little harsh; I've been hearing from a couple of Slanted Door fans who think I ordered badly and should have just waited to get seated in the main building.

A quotidian amount of pastry pain

NYC has a very good bakery called Pain Quotidien --- but the people who wait on you are uniformly stupid and evil. You might even say that it's the Kim's Video of pastry. The other day, I went into the east-side branch to get my wife a French Cream Bun. I asked the guy behind the counter what was inside the bun. "FRENCH CREAM,'' he snarled, pointing at the sign. This cream bun was beautiful to look upon --- two wedges of pastry with a finely sculpted layer of goo inside it --- but when I told the shmuck that my order was to go, he took out a little plastic cup and squashed the pastry inside of it, literally pounding the cup with his fists until the pastry flattened out and spewed its custard-cream guts all over the packaging. It was still edible but looked very bad by the time we brought it home. If you go, bring your own packaging.

"Company On Broadway,'' and why won't my neighbors just leave?

Everyone should see the great new production of Sondheim's "Company'' on Broadway. Raul Esparza, as Bobby, may be the Broadway performer of the year. His Bobby is shifty and enigmatic and you can't quite get a bead on his sexuality. I loved the youngish performer doing the Elaine Stritch part (when she's in the piano bar, feeling bitter, ordering vodka shots and singing about the 'ladies who lunch,' and it starts out sultry and sarcastic and turns into a shriek.) My parents took me to see this, and I worried they wouldn't like it because they've seen it twice before, but they liked it a lot. Esparza, playing piano and singing "Being Alive,'' near the show's end, was incredible to watch. Also stunning, but in a bad way, are my nightmare neighbors who blast Enya-type music so loudly and thump around and play Loreena McKinnit-like Eurodirges and have mercifully short (10 seconds is their all-time world record) bouts of lovin' upstairs at a million decibels -- "ook, ook, eek!" --- and use the floorboards as a trampoline at three in the morning, and drag their furniture hither and yon like Troglodytes. Naturally they are sticking around during Christmas break to make life miserable for everyone else in the apartment building. It may take a village to stop these noise polluters.

Preview of "Shipwreck, Coast of Utopia.''

The first half was quite boring and too expository. Too much blah-blah-blah. The second half was outstanding. I think Brian O'Byrne is a marvelous actor. He carries the entire thing as far as I'm concerned, especially near the end when he delivers a wrenching speech about the death of a child. Ethan Hawke did very well, too -- portraying a gruff, boisterous scalawag (forgive me, Russian history buffs; I can't remember which scalawag), and I thought he was very engaging, although my wife thought he was doing a Jack Nicholson imitation up there. This one has gunshots, betrayal, nudity, flag-waving, you name it. In case you haven't heard about the plotline, the play (by the great Tom Stoppard) is a prequel to the Russian Revolution; you get to know the six friends who helped set the thing in motion. Or something like that. I liked the second half because politics, romance and friendship get conflated in ugly and unpredictable ways. In case you are wondering (both of my readers) how a grad student can afford to go to Broadway so much, the answer is: I wait out in front of the theater and wait for desperate theater goers to sell me their extra seats for dirt cheap.

Whaat a horrible computer keyboard s ystetm this is1

Dear bloog reaaders, (the boththt o of you) I am atatempting to file a message to my own blog, uusining a terrirble computer keyboard w ith sticky keys. As you can see, the result is kinid of embarrassing... thte compuutter keeps insertinig all kinidds of rididculoous erroors, addititionaal l etters and strange spellings i nto the text. Anyhow, I hope thattp eoplel whoho check the blog don't think I'm typing while drurnk. You'd thinkn the city governmentn would spring for a a more sopohiisticated computer system!!

Columbia University's friendly rat

It's true --- my university has a friendly rat. He lives in the bushes outside the School of the Arts, and I see him every single day, just chilling out in there, enjoying the fall weather. He doesn't really bother anyone.

I still can't come up with an ending for my experimental fiction

What can you do. My experimental fiction remains unfinished, and it's now reached the seven-month mark. Maybe I should try to write something that has some sort of logical structure.

Experimental fiction and more rats

OK --- I just got some good advice from a couple of people about my experimental fiction. Make it longer. That makes sense -- the piece is very, very short. Nothing happens. The question is --- how do I make it longer? It's hard to lengthen something that is virtually plotless, but my writing professor and two of my fellow students gave me the same advice. Also, you wouldn't believe the rat I saw yesterday at the corner or Broadway and 125th. It ran out of the street, collided with some guy's shoe, and then raced right back out into traffic! I hope the rat is OK. (Live in this city long enough and you start sympathizing with everyone who shares space with you, even vermin.)

'High Fidelity' on Broadway with high-low results

We liked the Nick Hornby book and the Jack Black/John Cusack movie very much so the idea of a Broadway version seemed appealing -- especially since my graduate school doled out 150 free tickets (close to the stage.) The sets were amazing (a nicely apppointed Brooklyn walk-up apartment transforms before your eyes into a scungy record store, complete with The Clash, Sex Pistols and Springsteen posters, a beat-up cash register, and, above the glass front window, a fake NY skyline rising up. The actors were all good -- the lead was terrific, and one of his sad-sack pals (the skinny one who is not trying to reprise the Jack Black role, and who could transform himself into Snoop Dogg) was hilarious --- but the song lyrics were often excruciating to the point of distraction. You have only just recovered from one groan-worthy line when, boom, another plops in your lap. One character emotes that the record store "smells like ass.'' The female lead, complaining about her brand-new, tantric-hippie boyfriend, sings that "when he's mounting me, I feel a mounting sense of insecurity!'' Ugh. That's what you call Au Bon Painful. While it was an enjoyable evening, I can't help but worry that someone's going to lose a bundle on this one.

Who is cannibalfan?

Cannibalfan, identify thyself!

Hand to hand combat with rats -- a true story

I forgot to mention that three smallish rats somehow got into the apartment over the past year and a half. I hate violence in all forms but it was them or me --- and they are vicious, so what could I do? Since I don't believe in chemicals, I finished off one of the creatures with a copy of a famous work of borrowed experimental fiction (a thin one, not a fat one like Infinite Jest hardcover, which would have been easier to use.) The question is, how did three rats get inside the apartment in the first place? It makes me wonder if the rats were there all along, just biding their time, or if they were living in the walls and somehow got out.

Guggenheim-Spain/James Bond

Everyone (if you are here) should see the Guggenheim's Spain exhibit (huge, overwhelming, arranged by strange themes instead of chronology, i.e. crying women, skulls, dead animals on display, saints, martyrs, etc.)The only difficult part of the exhibit is the fact that it is on a slant and, therefore, tiring. Afterwards we walked through the park, got on the C train and went to Soho for tapas at Pixshos, which was fantastic, and we were the only ones there. In fact, there were no harrowing New York experiences afterward, no loud cell phones, screaming couples or filthy creatures to hamper my enjoyment of that day.

The new James Bond is worth seeing although it has about four endings, one after the other, and the script has some silly aspects. For example, I don't understand why they have the worst villains competing against and sometimes killing each other to provide deux ex machina escape opportunities for the good guys. The best part of the movie is the extended gambling scene, and I liked the heavy who looks like Freddy Mercury and cries blood when he is upset --- he is creepy and striking, like a young Udo Kier --- but I thought they could have done more with him.

Philip Roth's visit

Philip Roth visited the program to talk about his latest book, "Everyman.'' I thought his reflections on this dark book were inspiring and bleak at the same time. When asked if his vision, with every book, is getting darker, he said, "well, I know more people who've died -- colleagues, friends, family members falling off the ledge. If you're a writer, you are in tune to what is around you. I'm just trying to stay on top of my experiences. It's strange how you fail to understand things throughout your life, how you fail to understand deeply what you haven't experienced, even if you've watched somoene go through something and felt empathy toward them. Your (direct) experience piles up.'' In his book, he has the narrator 'converse,' or think he is conversing, with lost loved ones. "We do know (these conversations) take place all the time but they are imaginary,'' he said. "People push aside the fact that this is themselves talking to themselves.'' He also has a scene in which the narrator has a "moment of buoyancy'' when his best, most sensual memories flood back to him just before he goes under for an operation, and dies. One student asked if those good memories help to end the book on an 'optimistic' note. Roth said no. "The joke's on him,'' he said. Though the subject matter was bleak (because his latest book is so bleak), there were some (somewhat) lighter moments when he talked a bit about his process. For one thing, as most people know, he writes standing up, at a stand-up desk. "I walk around a lot,'' he said. "I walk a mile for a sentence. When you're a writer, you're kind of like a beggar, begging for the next sentence. You should walk around with a cup in your hand.'' He also spoke about the writers that formed him. (Henry James, ''elaborate style, ridiculous and grand,'' Faulkner ('a devastating discovery, rich, comic, and mean' ) Thomas Wolfe ('elegiac, lyrical, sometime bombastic, a great portraitist)'' and dozens of others.

Grey Gardens, loud snack eater, and Kiki Smith

Hooray. The inconsiderate bozos upstairs have stopped stomping around on our ceiling! They have stopped moving their stupid desks and chairs and dragging their big mattresses all over the place for no reason at three in the morning! In a celebratory mood after defeating the "Thump-a-linas' once and for all, my wife and I went out to see a Broadway musical called "Grey Gardens.'' We were way, way, way up in the oxygen-mask seats --- New York theaters are strange in the sense that they are often small but have ceilings that soar so high above the main floor --- but "Grey Gardens'' was still fantastic. Christine Ebersole's performance is a sleight of hand. She plays both the social-climber mom and, later on in the play, the older, decrepit daughter, making retro-flapper outfits out of curtains. The first half shows the Grey Gardens house in its East Hamptons heyday; by the second half it's a hovel, overrun by cats and raccoons. As usual there was a not-very considerate person seated near me -- in this case, a young, but by no means petite, woman who elbowed into me and kept checking the time on her cell phone, eating gloopy snacks with crinkly crankly wrappers, murmuring to herself and loudly leafing through the pages of her Playbook (!) She also spoke loudly to her pals through most of the first act. Mustering all the diplomacy I had within me, which is not much, I asked her to please stop it, and she did.
Today I also saw the incredible, if disturbing and sometimes quite disgusting, Kiki Smith exhibit at the Whitney. It is not to be missed, and makes amazing use of space and craftsmanship. Her various papier mache, glass, plaster, paper and wax creations dangle from the ceiling, crawl up the walls, crouch on the floor and make insanely clever use of space. I think it's one of the most powerful 'body as metaphor' exhibits I've ever seen, though I must admit that it freaked me out and will probably give me nightmares, with its images of wolf children, intestines rendered in ductile brass, and mounted beeswax figures in uncomfortable poses. There is a 'Little Red Riding hood' installation in which the girl herself is part wolf. When you walk past the installation, the sculpture -- equipped with a motion sensor and a hidden music box-- starts playing loud and atonal chamber music tape. See this exhibit now, even though you might need therapy afterwards.

More about historic cannibals

On the other hand, if I was in the same situation as the aforementioned pioneers, (i.e. the Donners from last month's blog) I can't say for sure what I'd do. At the International Studies library, I found a hair-raising book called the "Cannibal Within,'' which claims that cannibalism is "evolutionarily sound'' and that "everyone has cannibal potential." The book also makes the case that Americans, in particular, are preoccupied with cannibalism. In America, there are cannibal-themed rock bands, a one-hit wonder band from the eighties (Toto Coelo) with a stupid song on the subject ("I eat cannibals'' -- remember it from KROQ?) and thousands of zombie or cannibal movies (Silence of the Lambs, Soylent Green (famous line: "Soylent Green is PEOPLE!!'', Cannibal Holocaust, Shawn of the Dead, Land of the Dead, etc.) There are at least half a dozen cannibal-related episodes of "Gilligan's Island,'' and at least one movie -- the not very good "Ravenous'' -- that is directly inspired by the Donners. So it's possible that I'm being unfair about the Donners when I say they are "not true pioneers." Maybe they were pioneers in terms of pop culture.

Grey Gardens nosebleed seats and imploded rat

Every once in a while I get to take advantage of "hot'' events at NYC, though usually I need to sneak in, get a student discount or wait in the rain for rush tickets. This time I am going to see "Grey Gardens,'' about eccentric Kennedy in-laws living in a hovel with cats (did I get that right? I hope so.) The theater is small but the ceiling is very high -- and we will be up near the ceiling, with binoculars, and wearing oxygen masks. I'm also hoping to see the new "Spain'' exhibit at the Guggenheim (the one that's been in the news; one of the Goyas was stolen en route to the museum!) The city is its usual combination of incredible opportunities and stomach-churning squalor. Just as I was walking home with the New York Times, its 'events' page crammed with amazing gallery shows and performances, I almost stepped on an imploded rat with its innards strung out in the street -- easily the most disgusting thing I've seen in months.

Thumpo-Lena Hell

In case both of you readers were wondering, the Thumpo-Lena problem (new arrival in my apartment building moving chairs, furniture, etc., at 3 a.m. above our heads, shoving things around, banging, pounding, ) continues. It's just like "What's He Building In There'' by Tom Waits, but in an urban environment. One night at 1 a.m. I went upstairs and knocked on the door. I non-giant -- actually a petite woman --- answered. I asked if she was moving furniture around. Meekly, she said yes and apologized profusely. The next evening at 11 it sounded like a couple of rhinocerouses were consummating their relationship upstairs. Thump stomp crash kick stomp stomp crash. I went upstairs and this time it a defensive, but, fortunately for me, a thin and not very tall man, answered. He said he was "quite frankly surprised'' that I was hearing so many noises. "Really, I truly am surprised,'' he said. "i mean, what could be making the noise? Us dragging a chair around? It just doesn't make any sense.'' He was taken aback and wondering if the sounds ''were coming from the floor above me and somehow reverbertating downstairs,'' which strikes me as Voodoo Physics --- if that is true, why wouldn't he hear the thumping -- but finally he said, "Sorry, guy. We'll work this out, man. If we make a noise, just thump us with a broom handle.''' I love that sort of reassuring language, and the problem was solved -- for a few minutes. Last night the stomping and banging woke up my wife at 1:30 a.m. Indeed, we got out the broomhandle and thumped their floor pretty good and the banging stomping etc. stopped for a while. Stay tuned.

Thump-o-lena

Some guy, probably a big, dumb, hulking giant, moved into the apartment right above our heads. Every night he stomps around so hard up there that our whole bedroom shakes and dust falls out of the ceiling. It sounds like he's up there crushing grapes with his feet. The problem is that NYC is not designed for neighborly communication --- or any kind of interpersonal communication whatsoever. No one talks to anyone for any reason in this city. I plan to knock on the door and talk to the guy but it worries me; there is no context for this around here. This is not California, where people dump their personal issues and encounter-group stories on complete strangers. Last year I knocked on someone's door just to borrow a half-cup of sugar and he looked stunned, as if no one had spoken to him for the last 20 years. But it's gotten to the point when the thumper is waking us up. Stay tuned. If you read in the newspaper this week that some guy on Morningside Heights got stomped by a big, stupid giant, look for my photo next to the article.

More about Del Toro

I forgot to mention that Mr. Del Toro had quite an animated response to an audience member who asked, "So, who is your target audience? You've just made a movie with a child protagonist, but it's scary and there's lots of gore.' Del Toro responded: "(Who cares about) the target audience. I am the target audience. If I thought about such things, I'd be out there making 'X-Men Part Four. The rules of commercialism are pleasurable to subvert. If you try to 'appeal to both quadrants,' if you let that lingo seep into what you do, you will domesticate your imagination. In the long term, all that is false anyhow. Besides, you can see a lot of Jennifer Aniston movies that failed to appeal to any of the 'quadrants.'''

By the way, I was very impressed that he storyboards his entire movies himself -- including his own elaborate pen-and-ink drawings of every character. But he also says that 'preparation should not be a straitjacket. Film is about capturing the accident even at its best, while orchestrating a bunch of things that do not seem to relate to each other.'

Columbia MFA story in latest Poets and Writers

Columbia got written up in the latest Poets and Writers study of the top 5 MFA programs. The article was highly entertaining, and there was a great quote from Michael McAllister. All in all, it was a great read.

Sneak preview of "Pan's Labyrinth''

One of the great things about Columbia's MFA program is the free events at the School of the Arts building (Dodge Hall.) The Film Division, for example, has screenings almost every week, featuring first-run movies, including many that are in the sneak-preview phase. The film division lets us know about these things, in the form of flyers and emails, but we get so many emails about goings-on that it's easy to miss the best offerings. Last week I saw Guillermo Del Toro's "Pan's Labyrinth,'' a strange but potent blend of horror-movie images, Grimm-style fairy tales and Franco-era fascist nastiness. The movie focuses on an 11-year-old girl whose stepfather is a cruel and overbearingly macho Franco supporter. He's in charge of an outpost on the edge of a vast forest, where guerrillas are hiding out and mounting attacks against the Fascists. Trespassers and curfew breakers --- including two hapless rabbit hunters -- are gunned down on sight. The interweaving of fantasy sequences (from the girl's imagination), and the Fascists-fighting-the-guerrillas sequences, is extremely well-done. The girl's imagination takes her to some increasingly dark places, including the lair of the "Pale Man,'' a cannibal with eyes in his hands. He presides over a banquet table. If a guest dares to take any item of food from the table -- even a single grape -- the Pale Man, a dead-ringer for Goya's "Saturn Devouring His Children,' springs into action and devours them. De Toro himself was on hand to talk about making the movie. In an eye-opening and profanity-laced interview, he said he was trying to create a film about disobedience in the face of an overwhelming power. This movie is a "Harry Potter'' for adults. (Impressionable kids should steer clear. It's full of sudden violence, torture sequences and some pretty off-putting horror imagery.) If nothing else, it's a reminder of a nasty (and recent) episode in Spain's tragic past. De Toro spoke of Generalisimo Franco "dying happy, in bed,'' in the mid-1970s.

Rename Donner Pass

Lately I've been doing a lot of research about California (my home state) and the emigrants who made their slow, miserable way across the Great Salt Flats in the 1850s. After reading quite a few books, I'm puzzled by one thing: Why is Donner Pass named after the Donners, the murderous, quarrelsome and (some would say) stupid group of people who left too late, brought way too much stuff, took an ill-advised 'shortcut' and wound up marooned in shanties in the Sierra Nevada, where they were forced to eat axle grease, dogs, mice, coyotes, rawhide, and, eventually, each other? It's not just the fact that Donner party behaved in reprehensible ways. On top of all this, they were not the first emigrants to cross the pass that bears their name. A homely -former blacksmith and fur trapper named Elisha Stephens crossed the same pass a full two years before the Donners clawed and gnawed their way across it. In fact, Stephens did not lose a single man, woman or child in his wagon train while half the Donner Party died of starvation and exposure. Stephens got very little glory for his role in all this. He ended up a beekeeper in Bakersfield and died alone and obscure. It's strange, how people who make a mess of things can become household names. Sometimes, doing your job properly, and quietly, confines you to the dustbin of history.

Beauty in a rat-infested courtyard

Sometimes you can find beauty in seemingly disgusting places. For example: my wife and I live in an attractive Pre-War apartment building, and Columbia owns the place so the rent is way cheaper than it would be if it was market price. Anyhow, there is a dungeon-like courtyard where we must go to do the laundry. It's in the basement of our building. To get there you must descend some rusted-out stairs to an enclosed flat area with large stinking Dumpsters (registered trademark) where some of the fattest burliest rats in the world live and thrive. In fact, every other time I get there, a huge honking rat runs right in front of me, looking terrified. It's kind of strange, the way rats run in terror every time I approach. It's not like I'm going to try to pet them or eat them. Anyhow, I was dragging our laundry down the stairs of that rat-infested hellhole when, all of a sudden, I heard this unearthly sound: a woman singing, mezzosoprano, perfect pitch, perfect tone, and the sounds of it were wafting through the air, out of an open window on one of the upper floors. It was one of those moments where everything seems to stop for a while. I just stood there with my laundry basket balanced on one of the stairs and listened for 10 minutes. It was like front row seats at the Met. Then the singing stopped and the courtyard was quiet again. Only in New York.

Hair-raising True Stories about the Natural World

Yesterday I asked my students to come up with some stories about the natural world, situations that challenged their assumptions about man and nature. They came up with all kinds of amazing stories. One of them talked about having to fed off a horde of crazy raccoons when he was in elementary school. Another told me that his surf break was temporarily rendered off-limits when wildlife officials tried to 'bury' a dead whale at sea, attracting the attention of enormous white sharks. Another was shocked by the murderous behavior of his feral cat. One student was shocked when he moved to New York and saw that the shy, retiring squirrels of his countryside home were nothing at all like the vicious aggressive squirrels we have here in the city. It's all part of a class section in which the students will be reading essays about man's uneasy relationship with nature. We started things off with a screening of "Grizzly Man,'' Werner Herzog's strange and hair-raising documentary about Timothy Treadwell, the grizzly enthusiast who was, eventually, eaten by one of his ungrateful (and hungry) beneficiaries. The class mostly thought he was well-intentioned but a total kook. We're going to put these experiences in context by reading Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, Aldo Leopold, Bill McKibben and others. I'm hoping to develop this (eventually) into a semester-long course. Another instructor in the writing program helped me out immensely by suggesting an essay about William Cronon, which challenges the American view of "man'' and "nature'' being separate realms. He claims that city parks and city trees are just as 'natural' as their counterparts in the forest.

A more positive outlook about experimental fiction

This is a revised version of my previous post about experimental fiction. The previous post was -- in all seriousness --- kind of a joke, the result of some exasperation. I sent out my strange little story to a couple of magazines and got some perplexed responses. However, I will continue my publishing quest while trying to flesh out this story. I wrote this piece for a class in my writing program. The other day, I ran into the writer who teaches the course. I told him I was having a bit of trouble finding a home for this thing and he said, "Well, it should be a book.'' That was pretty cool to hear him say that. However, I'm wondering if people will buy an entire book about Golem-like slave children made of terracotta and wood, with raisins for eyes. The cool thing is, after I published that last post, a couple of classmates have emailed me with some thoughts on this matter --- many thanks.

Thank God for Po, and lack of subway tweakers

This is an unbelievable restaurant (in the village.) There were gnaw-marks on my plate by the time they finally dragged me out of there. It's on Cornelia Street, just off Bleecker. My wife wanted to go there because she just read "Heat,'' a book about Mario Battali. Battali doesn't actually work at Po anymore, but the restaurant is doing just fine without him. We had the gnocchi and the cod. For once there were no loud tweakers on the subway to kill the mood. And there were no tuba trios or rats on the way home. I've been extremely busy lately so this was a nice break. By the way, uneventful subway rides are a rarity for me this month. Why, just the other day, I was taking a southbound 1 to somewhere or other. Some guy stepped on another guy's foot and, instead of apologizing, made kissy-kissy noises at the offended party!! I kept thinking, just apologize and shut up and stop giving this guy air kisses, please, but he just kept doing this. I was sitting right between them and was sure they were going to throw punches but I waited it out and nothing happened.

Raging tuba headache

So I was hanging out in Soho with my wife the other day, and we were eating Portuguese food at a restaurant with outdoor seating, right next to the Ear Inn. It was a nice, balmy evening, a hint of breeze, and the servers ladled out this great big pile of bacalao fried up with onion and egg on my plate. So far so good. Amy ordered some crazy dish --- shrimps with lemon shellfish bread pudding. Then suddenly out of nowhere I heard the blaring squawking shriek of a trumpet, a tuba and a snare drum. A trio of street musicians called the Stumblebums started cakewalking down the sidewalk, shrieking and wailing and making all kinds of faces while dressed up as tinpan alley tunesmiths from Prohibition times. They sounded like a cross between the Squirrel Nut Zippers, Tom Waits and an industrial gas-powered leaf-blower. I kind of like them --- they have style --- but I wish they wouldn't play so loudly. When they moved close to our table, it was just so ungodly loud, it felt like my skull was going to unhinge itself from my spinal chord. Waiters and diners watched helplessly as the Stumblebums squawked and wailed, with the drunken encouragement of Ear Inn patrons, who were lining up outside to get in to that bar. I'm wondering if the Stumblebums are one of those weird only-in-New York traditions that I'm supposed to know about already. I just hope this roving wind ensemble doesn't read this and somehow figure out where I live and show up to my apartment at three in the morning with drums and tubas a-blaring. That would be a horrible thing.