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.)