Pulling myself out from this little online hiatus is to some extent a matter of digging myself out from under a couple hundred backlogged manuscripts at work (including YOURS, probably, but don’t ask), but I’m getting to the point where my office is normal office colors again and not caste in a queasy yellow-beige light from so many manila envelopes. I seem to be making some progress.
If you’re in Chicago, you might wanna hit Sulzer library Monday night to see me at this thing. More later…
already.
I guess I’ve been taking a midsummer hiatus here while I recover from the California trip and get ready for my trip to Durham this weekend. Even though I’m not there yet I’m going to be on North Carolina Public Radio today at 11:00 Central time to speak philosophically about my own fat ass and the fat-assery of the nation as a whole. And then on Friday, I’ll be reading at the Regulator Bookshop in Durham for my last captial-O Official scheduled reading for this tour. There will likely be some other local events (including a panel in a couple of weeks), and I wish I could have hit DC, Minneapolis, Pennsylvania and other cities, but for now, I need a break from flying. The only kind of travelling I want to do after this weekend is of the goofy summer road-trip variety: Dickeyville Grotto or bust!
Expect a wrap-up of the whole damn tour thing sometime after I get back. (Emphasis on the “sometime.”)
I keep hearing about how Chicago is ungodly hot right now, and it’s so strange to be here in San Francisco where it’s almost kind of cold. Sadly, my hotel has an outdoor pool. Even more sadly, it has no internet access. But I’m getting out and taking photos.
Here is a quick LA summary. I ate: curried wild boar, an In-N-Out burger, and fresh scallops at a restuarant somewhere around where the Manson Family lived. I saw: Hollywood Blvd., the Scientology Celebrity Center, my friend Amy, some improv, the stage where Thai Elvis plays (but not Thai Elvis himself), my friend Brian, Glenn Danzig’s house, the ocean, about seven thousand promotional signs for Herbie: Fully Loaded, for fuck’s sake. Celebrities I met: the woman who makes the 30-Second Bunnies films; Pamie. I drove: The 5, the 110, the 101, the 105, and the 134, though not at all in that order.
I talked to Eve at SFist this weekend, and the interview should be posted there later on today. And my reading is tomorrow night at A Clean Well-Lighted Place for Books. See you there…
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(And yes, I know that’s a stupid way to get there from LA.)
1.) Take pictures with cameraphone (as shown.
2.) Lose one whole dollar in the slot machines. Decide that being easily discouraged is a good thing sometimes.
3.) Consider buying chocolate poker chips.
4.) Discover there’s free wireless. Decide that being a twitchily compulsive email checker is also a good thing sometimes.
5.) Check your boarding pass. HOLY SHIT, YOU’RE IN “GROUP 1.” YOU NEVER GET GROUP 1.
More (and LA pictures) when I get to San Francisco.
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Tomorrow I fly to LA for my reading at Dutton’s on Wednesday, and then next Tuesday I’ll be in San Francisco at this wonderful place. (More info here.) And in between I hope to be posting some photos, if not some entries. When I get back I’ll be launching the new version of this site and reprinting some classic old poundy.com stuff, and God willing, it’ll be the beginning of the end of rushed, exhausted entries like this one. But then, maybe you’re all at the beach. I hope you are.
If you come to one of the readings I’ll be happy to entertain you with the droll little title-page cartoon I draw on EACH AND EVERY PERSONALIZED COPY of my book, as shown in this photo that Not Martha took at one of the Seattle readings.
In San Francisco I hope to say hi to this dude, whose book I will be reading on the plane. I might also make a pilgrimage to this store. Any other suggestions about what to do/where to go in LA and SF, post ’em in the comments.
See you in California…
It seems Flea is wondering if perhaps I, too, was stricken with the RedEye Curse that caused her to break her toe and Justin Kaufmann to get a speeding ticket after being featured in yesterday’s paper. The answer is no, because, clever me, I didn’t even READ the RedEye yesterday. I’d seen the cover online and I’d meant to get a copy, but I work in the surburbs where I couldn’t just run out to a newsstand. I knew l’d see it eventually because my boyfriend picked up a couple copies, so I didn’t go out of my way to find one and bwah hah hah, I CHEATED THE NEWSPRINT-SMEARED HAND OF FATE, SO THERE.
If you’re not coming from the RedEye, perhaps you’ve somehow made your way here from a link in a a Salon article which referred to the ’74 Recipe Cards. It’s nice to have a nod, though I can’t help wishing that for all the attention Salon has been giving fat people they’d notice my book, too. Moreover the last pargraph of this article bugs the hell out of me from the way he felt compelled to describe a newly widowed woman “gnawing away” on a cake and “smearing icing down her chin” just because she happened to be bereaved while fat and at a Jenny Craig center. Because see, the fatties, they grieve, too. Really, it’s lovely that Dale Hrabi is touched by our chubby, grease-stained humanity, even if it is “a bit gross.” Oh, for fuck’s sake.
The revamped Poundy.com is just days from launching, as soon as the Moveable Type-Wrangler works out some kinks and I eat three or four whole roast chickens or something.
I read in Oak Park on Thursday! It’s freaking me out a little, since it’s my hometown. Maybe more on that later.
