NEWSFLASH: CONTEST #2 WINNERS ARE IN, COMING IN, HERE AND NOW ON SUNDAY, APRIL FOOL'S DAY!!! Okay -- I'm in the midst of posting the new winners! Check back. Once again, I had an embarrassment of blackly comic riches -- but there was one piece which stood out this time for the way it nailed the contest's spirit with its breezy confidence, clean prose and laugh-out-loudness and solid voice -- no small feat. No nepotism or favoritism at work here, though the winner of Contest #2 is a former student of mine, Jerry Brunkala. He was clearly possessed when he wrote this, whether by one or all of the Seven Deadly Sins, or the Divil Himself, or just his own personal Lunada Bay Muse, I dunno, but it worked!
CLICK ONTO PICK-OF-THE-LITTER on the left side bar and read his story! I'll check with him to get his email so you can write fan notes, too. Create a cyber writer's community, why not. I have been hearing from other winners, that they have gotten responses, and struck up email dialogues, and all kindsa stuff. More to come! There will be other honorees, too -- so keep checking back in next few days!!!
Besides Jerry's story, I got tons of other totally exciting work -- too much to post all though I would love to -- but I am going to create some different ways to showcase some of the other outstanding works. While they may not have stuck as closely to the Contest, which called for a darkly comic take on the Seven Deadly Sins (for more details, click on backfile November Update at the tailend of this Update) -- they deserve posting and publication for exuberance, daring, imagination, varied styles -- even if sometimes they're not right on the moolah yet, or they're a little raw and ragged around the edges which I love, or barely connected to any comedy or Seven Deadly Sins -- still, there's no question every piece was informed by some kind of vaporous sinful stimulation. Stay tuned!
I have JUST posted Jerry's story, which features a clever twist on the contest -- Jerry pits one deadly sin against the other. Watch for Envy v. Pride in "The Day Envy Tried To Kill Pride." Don't forget to zip these guys an email to say how much you dug their writing! And keep coming back for Contest #3 Rules -- it might be you published next!
MUSIC!: So that cool Brit musician (who at fifty's snagged a 19-yr.old gal, bless him) Dave Dale, whom I mentioned ages ago in an earlier update -- finished his wild new CD, "Heads or Tales" by Audiomatic -- and there's a track featuring Yours Truly if you want to check it out. It falls under the category Experimental/Post Rock (?!) and has instrumental/spoken word. He lured me down into Colin Hay's (of Men At Work fame) studio, plastered these monster headphones on my ears, told me to just wing it and read, so I did, trying to imagine an audience there, minus their undies of course -- and I read from a nasty little piece called "Bangluck" which was not in GO WEST...but did appear in The Ohio Review #55 -- and then after I winged it -- Dave futzed around with the recording for months, chopping up my words and sentences just like the Asiatic chop-chop I referred to in the piece -- and spliced them together with his trippy music, added Cecilia Noel (of rockin' band Cecilia Noel & The Wild Clams) vocals to background and, presto! I contributed to my first recorded music! Just go to www.mp3.com and put in AUDIOMATIC, then scroll down to find "Pressure Suit" -- that's the track I'm on. Let me know what you think!
LA TIMES PIC & THE MYSTERY MAN IN PSYCHEDELIC WOODBLOCK PRINT: Okay, I've got some excellent tries -- but no dice yet. We had a Dylan Thomas -- one of my favorites, among other smart guesses. I figure it's time to give a clue. And if you figure it out, I'll post your praises. CLUE: THINK POETRY, VODKA AND BEDBUGS. And write me your guess. Okay okay, one more clue. A quote from the Mystery Man: "After seeing electricity, I lost interest in nature. Not up to date enough." And a line from one of his poems: "Love's boat -- smashed against the daily grind." Happy guessing!
POLITICAL DIGRESSION: to come -- but suffice to say, with what that fuckhead is doing, daily, to fuck with you name it, women's rights, environment (I'm targeting those) -- it's time to GET OFF YOUR ASSES AND GET ACTIVE! If you haven't joined Planned Parenthood and you believe in a woman's right to choose -- don't be a fucking ostrich -- dig your sorryass head out of the sand and look around -- THIS RIGHT TO CHOOSE IS ONCE AGAIN IN DANGER! -- so join Planned Parenthood if you haven't. I'm also going to contact them, and Feminist Majority Fund, and see if there's not something concrete to do -- in light of latest sneaky reversal Bush made allowing that EVIL site to exist where anti-choice people POST PRIVATE INFORMATION ABOUT DOCTORS WHO PERFORM ABORTIONS -- I mean down to license numbers, addresses -- so they can be TARGETED with violence. When they get hurt, their names are grayed out -- when they're killed -- their names are erased. DO YOU WANT TO LIVE IN A COUNTRY WHERE WOMEN ARE NOT SAFE, WHERE THE DOCTORS WHO TREAT THEM ARE NOT SAFE? STAND UP FOR THIS! And for environment, jesus, all just makes me weep if I stop and think about it for even a second -- try joining World Wildlife Fund -- if you believe like I do that the rainforest is number one right now -- look at it as the lungs of the planet -- and they're being hacked right out at the roots!!! Wanna watch Mama Earth choke to fucking death? Oi. Anyway -- I'll keep you posted anything else I come across -- thanks for reading this -- and getting active!
UPCOMING EVENTS: This coming Saturday, April 7th, I will be on a panel made up of contributors to recently published LA SHORTS anthology, along with cool local writer Ruben Mendoza (LOTERIA) -- and moderated by the man with the sonorous tonguetwister name of Galust Mardirussian in my old neighborhood (locale of much of GO WEST YOUNG F*CKED-UP CHICK) -- at LACC (Los Angeles Community College) where I used to go on weekends, climb over the fence, and jog around the track there.
Snap from LA-Tin House party in the Chateau Marmont penthouse -- that Mark Z. Danielewski pile-up I was telling you about in previous update? That's me on the left, whispering, ahm, reciting Chaucer or something in Mark Z. Danielewski's ear while simultaneously revealing a bit o' cleavage and is that a tricep?), and that's kickboxing actor extraordinaire Sandi Schultz to his right (also on mzd's lap) and my most excellent friend Marilee Albert (also on mzd's lap -- how's he do it? same way he wrote HOUSE OF LEAVES I guess -- or, maybe that's WHY he wrote HOL!!! where's MY harem?!) -- photo by the LA master chronicler, Gary Leonard (TAKE MY PICTURE, GARY LEONARD!).
Sorry to announce this will be the last update ever, due to Bush minions censoring the site and shutting down my Topanga operations, and hauling me off to a tiny cell somewhere unknown, but damp and filled with manic-depressive spiders and sleep-deprived rats, where I will have to eat nothing but rancid Cheezwhiz and stale crackers, no water, and watch footage of Bush playing quarters and snorting Mama Coca, and attempting to speak English.
April Fool's! Course we all know who the real Fool is -- except SOMEHOW the Fucking Fool got into the White House (did YOU vote?), now Shame House -- every DAY there's a new atrocity being perpetrated by that...
Wait. Political digression was up above. Okay. Writing. We're here to talk about writing. Calma te.
Did that panel with Arianna Huffington (HOW TO OVERTHROW THE GOVERNMENT) and Judy Muller (I forget the name of her book right now, she's an ABC TV correspondent) -- whoa! Take my advice -- think twice before accepting a gig with people whose living is made from being On Camera, Before Public. Those two were so smooth, I felt like a babbling fool. But that's okay. I got to be the token human -- I blushed, I paused (and thought, in the middle of talking even), and like that. It was a blast in the end. Couldn't have been a more disparate group of panelists. Arianna was doing her exhortations for liberal Democratic causes (wait, wasn't she the woman married to Michael Huffington not so long ago, who was a staunch conservative Republican? Am I dreaming?) -- and being totally charming (she wore this snazzy purple sweatery top with purple jeans, yowza! and walked in with new paramour whose uncle happens to be in business with my grandfather on the Jewish side in New York City in the shmata business -- how strange is this world!), and Judy was telling charming anecdotes about becoming a journalist at age 43 -- rock 'em, sock 'em.
What'd I talk about? I tried to provoke the audience with questions. I kicked it off by reading this quote that I fronted off like maybe I'd written it:
"I have a terrible confession to make -- I have nothing to say about any of the talented women who write today. Out of what is no doubt a fault in me, I do not seem able to read them. Indeed I doubt if there will be a really exciting woman writer until the first whore becomes a call girl and tells her tale. At the risk of making a dozen devoted enemies for life, I can only say that the sniffs I get from the ink of women are always fey, old-hat, Quaintsy Goysy, tiny, too dykily psychotic, crippled, creepsih, fashionable, frigid, outer-Baroque, maguille in mannequin'sw whimsy, or else bright and stillborn. Since I've never been able to read Virginia Woolf, and am sometimes willing to believe that it can conceivably be my fault, this verdict may be taken fairly as the twisted tongue of a soured taste, at least by those readers who do not share with me the ground of departure -- that a good novelist can do without everything by the remnant of his balls."
That threw people off. It's actually from his 1992 book ADVERTISEMENTS FOR MYSELF...Gotta love that Mailer! Funny as fuck, and damn good writing, too. I prefer his ranting to those who pretend to be sensitive, pc, and other bullshit. I also brought up Francine Prose's cool provocative 1998 Harper's article with the Mailer-inspired title: "Scent of a Woman's Ink." And mentioned some counter articles, by Laura Miller in salon.com, etc. -- and threw down the gauntlet again about are women writers more timidi? Hampered by the myth of the Great American Novel (and the understood part of the myth that only a man will write it)? Funnily enough, about a week later there was a NY Times article about Women Writers and Anxiety -- (see NY Times Health& Fitness, Tues., March 27, 2001), "Examining, and Easing, the Anxiety of Authorship". Oh yeah -- not that many people in the audience were too interested -- I think most of them hadn't read a book in years -- they were there to urge Arianna to run for office I think. My pal Richard Edson (still surfing on the well-deserved fame for being John Lurie's sidekick in Jim Jarmusch's classic "Stranger Than Paradise") was there with his camera to snap a few, but mostly he was nodding out sitting on the floor of the packed room -- but I digress! It was wild, and truly an honor to be invited to be on the panel with those guys -- Jan Lindstrom, who organizes events over at Barnes & Noble/Santa Monica, is the Hip Lit Chick -- which doesn't mean you should forget to support your local indie stores! Dutton's/Brentwood, Midnight Special, Small World Books, Skylight (man does Kerry Slattery pull together some happening events, keep checking the Calendar) -- etc.
What else. Not too many adventures to recount (though I didn't even finish regaling you with Tin House party stories from our NY launch at the Chateau Marmont in the penthouse, dahling -- or the smaller one in NY at the Screening Room -- this little detail might encapsulate it: my grandfather John Aloysius Reidy, an orthopedic surgeon who used to go around the dining room table and jab all his kids in the back with a stick and say "SIT UP STRAIGHT!" used to wear a little white pin, with a red string and a red bulb hanging from it -- and when you tugged that red string, up would pop a white flag with these words in red: MARTINI TIME! And it always was, from eight in the morning -- no exaggeration! I recall the sound of silver shakers along with the sizzle of fake bacon, yeah. What I mean to say is, the martinis were aflowing on both coasts (I was sighted holding a martini in each fist numerous times) -- tongues were loose, and cocktail conversations were like flashes of greased verbal lightning. And I met Elizabeth Wurtzel (PROZAC NATION, BITCH) at the NY gig -- didn't know who she was. Looked like some LA babe, doe-eyed and tan and blonde and pretty -- she's definitely got the right does of meds down -- or her stars are in total alignment. Also met Tamara Jenkins there in NY -- she's like Mae West all over again -- bawdy and full of zingers. Dug her beau, too, some Polak cinematographer I forget his name. Posted one pic from the LA bash above --
Okay -- will try and riff some more later, still owe some Notes From San Miguel (and Yelapa) from my Flee-The-Holidays trip -- but now want to post the contest winners -- or at least the numero uno piece tonite --
Back to work -- hard at, on the second book. No teaching until fall if I can keep racking and ratcheting the debt -- writing a section set in Bangkok right now -- and, if you like, I will post some of the BOOK-IN-PROGRESS with all its genital warts and barnacles and breaches...man, am I wrestling the demons or what with this book. Don't do what I did and lose the writing HABIT (see Flannery O'Connor's MYSTERY AND MANNERS) -- it is hell getting back -- not to mention the inferno of dealing with psycho-grit -- but then, if you don't aim for the bone, why bother? I am willing to suffer, a lot, as long as the pages come and they're good. Let me know if you want to see in-progress bits --
Hasta from Topanga, California, where I can now say I am a minority, thanks to the recent census! Wrap your minds around that one. Vaya con Dios, compadres.
Rachel
Click to get back issues of updates -- more gossip, ranting!
December/January 2001: Happy Kwanzaa Send-Off, Holidazing
November 2000 Update: Seven Deadly Sins Contest! Plus Bonus Political Rant
June 2000 Update: Hell's Angels, Rocking the Tin House, and More!
February 2000 Update: My Bloody Valentine