LA Book Festival, Second Go-Around

This year I had been planning early to take Cass to the book festival on Sunday of the weekend's events. On Saturday of the weekend, I had an appointment at the Aquarium at noon and had the Boy as well, which was very cool except that noon is in the middle of a toddler's nap. We left after the most pressing parts of the meeting.

On Sunday, the napping turned out to be problematic, and I ended up going alone. Last year we went and parked and missed John Lewis. This year, on this Sunday, maybe due to Patton Oswalt being there talking about his late wife's book and writing projects, all on-campus parking was full, and I drove around looking for a street spot in the residential neighborhood around USC's campus. Just like home...

My friend Ruben was also on a panel, but as I didn't get the free ticket reservations early enough, I missed out on his talk. Sorry, Rubes.

Last year I spoke with the atheists and the socialists, and this year I found the anarchists:

Both of these books were published by PM Press, an Oakland-based publisher of radical works, many of which are anarchist. The Housing Monster, above, is an odd mix of the philosophical underpinnings of the way humans group up and construct society, the practical realities of a building house and building a city, and nearly sequential graphic images. That prosaic summary makes more sense when you notice that the writer is credited as prole.info, which is also a website of the same name. As in proletariat...

That was the first booth I went to and it took up three-quarters of my budget. I remember thinking that there was no problem finding something to buy in the very first spot. There was always going to be something to find and buy in nearly any booth, and these two books are so cool and random that it's a double score: awesome uniqueness and classic artifacts in the very first stop. No worries for the rest of the afternoon.

From there I walked around, thinking about how to spend the rest of my budget. I did find a very nice (see: new (non-used)) copy of Les Fleurs du Mal, but I'm not quite ready to tackle Baudelaire's classic. Having a copy would be nice, but not at the price they were asking. And used may even be better...

Eventually I did procure three more books, all for free:

Wild Animus was being handed out by the publisher. "Free fiction novel?" the guy said as I walked by. At the exact same time and girl was also walking by, and the hawker came under the impression we were together. That was funny. The book is hardcover and dust-jacketed, and after reading the jacket's summary, it seems much more interesting that I was guessing even ten minutes before. I won't paraphrase here.

An older gentleman was listlessly holding stacks of the organic cider-vinegar-maker Bragg's book Bragg Healthy Lifestyle et al, and saying to no one in particular, "Anybody want a free book...does anybody want a free book..." Obviously I answered in the affirmative.

There was the Muslim tent booth as well, and they were handing out Qurans. I'm sure they were around last year, and I would have grabbed one then had I seen them. This is my first copy of the Quran.

I had some visions about the campus and the development of the surrounding neighborhood that may find their way here later, and while I don't miss being a college student, walking around campus with debauchery on the brain has inspired some plans.

ALSO: Last year NO ONE RECOGNIZED MY PYNCHON SHIRT. This year---because I obviously wore it again---plenty of people recognized and commented on it. That was very cool and reaffirming.

Also also: I've got a Baudelaire thing on the burners...

Simpsonized!

My brother's birthday gift arrived today, and it's awesome:

I guess he found an art group that will take photos of loved ones and turn them into Simsponized versions.

Two things I noticed from this:

1. It got my wristwatch correct---on my right wrist, like a left-handed person (I always put my watch on my right wrist, even though I'm nominally right handed (I was switched in kindergarten from lefty to righty));
2. Over the years both Corrie and I have become brunettes? Really?

I've been noticing pictures lately from the last few years and in each one my hair looks darker and darker. I used to be blonde, or strawberry blonde---like some days it would look more reddish and other days more golden. This was back when it was still really long.

Then the gold started to get darker and darker, and now that it's short, the gold has given way to bronze almost, but certainly not the lighter shade of yellow it sported back in high school. Maybe it was always a dynamic collection of colors and thicknesses.

I read that certain things on your body change over the years as you mature in the adult years, before the Old sets in with the graying of the hair (if you still have it). It said that as the result of hormones things will darken...hair, areolas, genitals. The hair darkening was due to eumelanin, a hormone that makes dark hair and gets turned on later in a person's life.

Anyway, thanks Dan! Love it!

My Kind of Book

I watched a video on Cracked.com's website about some different ways our ancestors had gotten high. It was silly and somewhat informative, which is exactly what Cracked does. They've taken the idea used for so long to great ends by The Daily Show---real facts hiding in a grove of humor---and present various conundrums and historical tidbits through the lens of humor to get the point across.

They do their part to make history lessons "more entertaining," as if that's a serious thing. (It IS a serious thing, just ask any high school history teacher.)

Anyway, the person running the video mentions that he spent a few years doing research on the topic and wrote a book covering both his research into the history and his experiments in recreating many of the ways that people centuries ago wrecked themselves with inebriation.

Upon hearing this, I got on Amazon and got busy:

Some of the critiques I read before starting the book was that it didn't have enough citations; or that Robert Evans didn't really prove that "Bad Behavior Built Civilization"; or that there were too many dick jokes...

Pshaw, I say, PSHAW!

This book is around 250 pages long, with fifteen chapters and maybe two-thirds of which have experiments. Each chapter is on a different topic---ur-booze, music, the ephedra shrub, et al---and each chapter reads like a Cracked article. It's around 250 pages of cracked article with some how-to's added in.

THIS IS NOT A BAD THING.

The tone is conversational and the details are not hidden away. He mentions so many different articles and authors that I was shocked anyone would complain that he didn't cite enough things. I mean, goddamn, this isn't a research paper bound for a dusty tome on a back shelf of a university library (I have some papers in those places...and its about as exciting as it sounds). I could tell, as a  writer who writes for a blog (among other places) that he was trying to strike a balance. He mentioned enough names that anyone who was interested could easily enough find the pieces to which he referred.

His target audience doesn't give a shit about citations! And if you have a problem with wrapping your head around how vices of the inebriation variety and trash talking might have shaped the development of society, then you're also likely not part of the target audience (and you probably need to lighten up a little).

While the Cracked article format is a specific approach, it does make for a quick read. I devoured the first hundred pages in a sitting, and could have easily finished it with a pot of coffee and a quiet few hours.

Plenty of things I didn't know about, like:

• The ephedra bush nearly conquered the world, only to be nearly forgotten because of caffeine and nicotine, and then remembered just in time to be made illegal because of its readiness to be synthesized into meth;
• Chicha, a Mesoamerican beer made by chewing up corn meal and spitting the mixture into jugs to let it ferment, tastes best when the ladies do the chewing and spitting, an old tale that their experiments supported---lady chicha is better than fella chicha;
• The original tobacco the natives smoked was way stronger than today's and would get people super effed up;
• Stonehenge is, either by accident or by design, an incredibly good music amplifier that hums when a specific drum resonance is hit, making it the earliest rave scene ever (possibly);
• Milking a poisonous salamander and mixing the poison with vodka and drinking it does...something...

So far I've tried a few of the experiments, like using my cast iron skillet to fry whole coffee beans (1 cup beans, 1/2 cup oil) for about 20 minutes. The result, while not as tasty as Mr. Evans would have me believe (I'm willing to try it again with a different bean variety and for maybe more time in the oil), did give me a snack that gives the best parts of the coffee experience without the having to pee or getting the shakes or the Breathing.

The write up for the chicha experiment was hilarious and awesome, as was the bhang-lassie experiment. The tobacco laxative experiment was also one of the ones you'll never forget (I will write it up here as a SPOILER in a second).

I would like to note, though, that Evans never does any thing with illegal drugs in this book; he goes to great length to procure his items legally through mostly internet-based distributors when the going is tougher than a trip to the grocers.

And, to end it on a gross note, the tobacco laxative:

Mix with a mortar and pestle:

tobacco from one cigarette

garlic, two cloves

Add to:

one shot, your own pee

Mix well, and slam down the hatch

He described it like shooting a warm Slim Jim, and because his quotes are best, in his own words:

"It worked! After about twenty minutes my constipation was gone, and for the next hour my body purged everything it could, as fast as it could. I vomited three times, likely thanks to mild tobacco poisoning. I personally think the garlic deserves just as much blame."

Birthday Week

My birthday was earlier this week---er, last week. Time creeps along in a blur. Sunday, the day before the birthday itself, we headed down to the beach. It was hazy and mostly pleasant, but the following picture makes it look more clear than being there did:

We got to play and kick the ball in the low tide sand:

Nearly a week later, I had an event at Knott's Berry Farm, and I had Cass, and he got to make his first ever visit:

We tried the merry-go-round, but it broke down as we waited (bummer):

He wanted the kitty

And then on the seventh day after, Corrie and I got to go to the show she got tickets for for my birthday.

Corrie scooped up tickets for the Postmodern Jukebox, a musical project that interprets recent and/or pop music hits in an older style, somewhat like the nineteen-forties mixed with big-band-era (if there's a difference between them?). It was at the concert hall at the Segerstrom Performing Arts Center. I used to work across the street from this place and spent time there taking pictures before work a half-dozen years ago. Here's the iconic cube-looking deal on the right side:

It has that huge arc cut into that side and the odd pyramid looking like its stuck in some metallic spider web. On a different approach it looks downright cubic. The hedging pattern is also apparent on the left behind the fountain.

Our venue was across the quad and looked like a futuristic police precinct or office building. Inside the auditorium was voluminous while also being quaint and intimate:

Doesn't that organ look awesome?

 The band felt way closer than this makes it look, but whatever:

After a chat with dawamesk, I got to thinking about what we were watching.

It's a rare time for me right now to be the youngest person in a place, but it sure seemed that way as we milled about the lobby of this grand hall. This wasn't the same crowd as the show we went to on a school night a while back; it was older...but about the same level of white.

The band had taken pop hits and made them even more white, like it had sanitized the music and turned it into what could be expected if WWII hadn't happened like it did, or had the civil rights movement unfolded differently.

I definitely enjoyed the show and had a great time, but something about the whiteness will always fester in my thoughts about the event.

One amazing thing about the night was that our babysitter (thanks Lauren!) came over while Cassius was still awake. She was able to get him a bath and into bed without any fuss (!!!). Amazing.

Liquor straw cup time

"Nah, I like my gin so I can feel it."

---Me, feeling compelled to explain why I opt for the well gin to the bartender on site.

Out of the Past

It's been 30 years since Tim Burton's Beetlejuice was released. Ah, 1988...in those years in between doesn't it seem like the originality of a movie like Beetlejuice would cause it to NEVER get made these days?

Maybe as a television series on Hulu or something? It seems so weird and odd.

Here's an interesting article on the history of the movie, how it got made and the like.

It was released on March 30th, 1988 (according to the Internet), and Police Academy 5: Assignment Miami Beach was released on April 6th, 1988. My birthday is on April 9th, and my party was going to be spent partially at the movies with my buddies (if I remember correctly).

I bring up Police Academy 5 because that was my choice for the movie with my friends. My mother vetoed that for some weird ghost movie.

Of course we all loved it and it has become a re-watchable classic. In the sixth grade for a pizza party near the end of the year we settled on the VHS Beetlejuice as our movie choice. Two kids from a pretty severe religious sect weren't allowed to partake in watching the movie (occult reasons, maybe?), and our teacher fast-forwarded through the brothel scene, but overall it was greatly enjoyed.

Bracket Busting, Again

The NCAA men's basketball final game is tonight, and if Villanova wins, Corrie will have kicked my ass again in the bracket-filling-in that we engage in each year. Many years I'll snake a few games ahead of her, or pick trendy underdogs that fulfill destinies, or end up with Final Four contestants, but she always seems to end up at the end of the tournament with eye-popping results.

One year, when we lived in Texas, Corrie won the tournament pool where I worked, beating out of GM who fancied himself a college-hoops expert.

This year an amazing amount of underdogging was undertaken. For the first time ever since the tournament expanded to 64 teams did a 16-seed beat a 1-seed, and that 16th seeded school, University Maryland, Baltimore County, is known as the Chesapeake Bay Retrievers:

Old pal Joey actually attended Loyola Chicago, so getting to watch that Cinderella team get all the way to the Final Four was pretty exciting. In one bracket, the spot in the Final Four was played between the 11-seed (Loyola Chicago) versus the 9-seed (Kansas State). For the first time ever, two 1-seeds failed to make it past the first two teams (overall top seed Virginia lost to the Retrievers in their first game, while fellow 1-seed Xavier lost their second game to Florida State).

Corrie and I typically fill out two brackets each, and then we fill out our "control" bracket, which just picks the favorite each time.

In one of my brackets I picked Arizona to win it all---they lost their first game. D'oh. Plenty of people picked Virginia to win this year---it seemed about time their methodical play style would finally yield tournament championship results. See how that worked for everyone?

So, amidst all this commercialized madness, all this generally awful enslavement and profiting off the labor and work of young people who have no rights to themselves or likenesses...the NCAA is a rickety structure that, as it stands now, is not a sustainable organization...

Anyway, amidst all this madness, and busted and burned down brackets, Corrie has a bracket with Villanova beating Michigan in the final game. SHE HAS BOTH FINALISTS!!!!

There was one year she bragged about how the White Sox would sweep way the Astros---it happened.

She talked trash to all the Trojan fans back in 2006, when Texas was set to play USC in the Rose Bowl for the college football championship, "Longhorns gonna kick yo' ass!" all through out the burgundy-sporting bar in San Luis. Because she's a girl, the USC backers who didn't know her didn't much say anything, and the guys who did know her knew it wise to temper their own responsive shit talking---because we all knew USC was the far superior team. Couldn't convince Corrie.

Of course Vince Young, in one of the college football games for the ages, crushed the hearts of the Trojans and Trojan fans everywhere. Corrie, coming back through the bar after the game, as the long faces mounted: "Told ya! Shoulda listened...maybe could have won some cash on that game!"

I don't mean to paint her as a sore winner, but most of those USC fans in SLO were a-holes and deserved that treatment

But, on occasion, she has some nearly supernatural knack for picking sports winners. See, it's just not often enough for us to have developed a sports-gambling vice.

Which is for the best.