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.