july 25-7:00PM barnes and noble
12850 memorial drive
houston, tx
Oakland Public Library Lakeview Branch
550 El Embarcadero
Tuesday, July 29th
5:00 to 7:00 p.m.
Reading, Q&A
Thursday, July 31, 7:30 PM Barnes & Noble #1922
98 Broadway
Oakland, CA 94607
510.272.0120
Reading, Q&A, Signing
august 28 - 7:30PM
borders
torrance, ca
Tomorrow is my first signing. I'm nervous, and I don't know what I'm going to read, and I have no idea what I'm supposed to wear. I hope someone shows up. I hope I don't look like a tool.
caterwauling
11 July 2003
I do not know what is wrong with my cat. Cal has taken to wailing in the middle of the night. He howls as if he's on fire, running around the house in the dark, for about an hour. It starts at six in the morning, and many times this week I've gotten up, carried him around on my shoulder like a baby, patting his back and whispering to him, only to find I can't go back to sleep afterward. This morning I pulled him into a hug and held him to my chest. He purred and licked my face for about five minutes (so there was no going back to sleep) and then he freaked out, bit my arm, kicked my chest, grabbed my ponytail holder off the nightstand and ran out of the room.
It doesn't even sound like a cat noise, that wailing he's doing. It's like a rare exotic bird. It's a rumbling deep in his belly that opens up into a loud "O" sound. All of the cats in the house have been fixed, so it doesn't seem likely that this is Cal trying to find a mate. He just goes crazy at night. He sounds like he's lost or has been abandoned. It's the worst sound. He likes to do it mostly in the bathroom, where his voice will echo in his ears and be the loudest. But he's completely fine. He's just singing a little sunrise song, apparently.
Last night we scored free box seats to The Hollywood Bowl. I highly recommend you take any free box seats you can get. It was so much fun, carrying a picnic basket up to "the rich seats," noting that your seats aren't much worse that Lucy Liu's. Sadly, Lucy's best friends Cameron and Drew weren't in attendence. I'm sure they really, really wanted to go, Poo totally had the night off and everything, but it just didn't work out because of stupid phone calls and farty managers. Kisses! Or perhaps since Charlie's Angels made much less than they expected the girls are no longer contractually obligated to hang from each other's shoulder joints any more.
It was a perfect night to sit outside with a bottle of wine, a little cheese, some pretzels, a sandwich and some friends. I rarely get to listen to orchestral music, and I hadn't heard the Los Angeles Philharmonic before, so I was grateful to turn my brain off for a couple of hours and stay quiet. I don't know much about music, so I never know what to look at to be impressed. I don't have to critique a thing. Unlike when I watch television, when I find continuity errors or get furious that so-and-so gets to do a show when I can't catch a break or my friend didn't get cast in some part that so-and-so just made horrible -- with music I know nothing, nobody, not one fact. I watched the conductor, and tried to figure out just what makes someone want to be a conductor for a living. But mostly I listened to the music and enjoyed a warm, calm evening.
The Philharmonic closed with Strauss, Jr.'s "The Blue Danube" Waltz. Around my house, this was known as The Bugs Bunny Song. You know it. Bugs Bunny dances over (Duh-nuh-nuh-NA-NAH) and then he slaps Elmer Fudd with gloves (Duh-Nuh!) - twice - (Duh-Nuh!). It's in 2001: A Space Odyssey, among other things. In any event, you know the tune. And so did everyone at the Hollywood Bowl. Because three notes into the thing, they all began to applaud, like Bruce was finally getting around to Born in the USA. And then the solemn, snooty patrons of the Hollywood Bowl proceeded to lose their shit.
Yes, everybody was a bottle of wine in at this point and had been sitting relatively still for almost two hours, but people were so excited to know a piece of music by heart, every section of it attached to a media memory, that they were swaying in groups. The man next to me was clapping his hands. The woman next to stee became a conductor herself, her arms high in the air as she instructed the orchestra to play whatever her fingers were wiggling to. Someone behind me was actually singing the notes ("Duh, nuh, nuh, na NAAAH! Dah-dum! Dah-dum!"). People were tapping, smiling to each other knowingly, everything but holding lighters in the air and flashing the conductor.
One of those old New York men, the ones who are never happy with anything once he left his stoop in Brooklyn, turned to us as we were leaving. "Rotten Los Angeles. If this was New York, everybody would have been waltzing in the aisles! Buncha lumps! Buncha wimps we got here in Los Angeles." I wish that man had been the first to pick up his wife and swirl her around the empty wine bottles and rolled-up trash bags. I would have liked to have seen that.
My dad played that song around the house often, and my mom would dance from one end of the living room over to Dad's recliner and smack him twice with a dishtowel ("Dum-dum! Dum-dum!") Mom always compared classical music to Bugs Bunny cartoons. It always forced that smile on his face -- the one he tried to hide that he'd get when he thought, "I love that crazy wife of mine, the one who ruins my music by making me laugh."
I told stee that story as Lucy Liu left the building. He nodded and then solemnly said, "Bugs Bunny was a funny motherfucker."
Currently Reading: Drinking Coffee Elsewhere. I have had no time to read lately, so it's right where I left it.
Canadians! I'm sorry you have to take a skill-testing question in order to win anything. But I'm glad your country keeps you on your toes. I guess because you guys are so used to answering questions, that's why all of you sent me an email explaining Rule #10 of the contest. You're all so eager to get the right answer. I don't have any prizes other than this: thank you for teaching me something.
Buffalo Bill asked me to tell you that he already knows about this and he's working on a way to mount a production from his very own well.
I am about to pimp all of my friends. Are you ready?
Master V, AB's "amazingly beautiful" and talented husband, has a band. It's called Hardlucy. If you buy their new album, AB might be able to afford the dental care she needs to fix the hole in her mouth before JournalCon. See her newest entry for details, or visit the Hardlucy website instead to avoid skeevy tooth-rotting stories.
People of Los Angeles and the surrounding area, I give you two fun things to do with your upcoming weeks. Three if you count my signing tomorrow.
The Latino Comedy Project is funny. It starts one of your favorite web celebrities, Omar, in addition to some of the funniest people I knew in Austin. Omar and his friends are going to be in Los Angeles, performing at the Improv Olympic on Santa Monica, Wednesday, July 23rd, at 8pm. Go see funny Latino comedy, and try not to stalk Omar in that way some of you do. You know who you are. His friends will never stop teasing him, and I already tease him enough. It'll just be messier if Trejo gets in on the teasing.
Busy that week? Well, you can't be already busy for that Saturday, can you? Because I will be flying from Houston, straight from my mother's arms and into the arms of Laemmle Theatres for my big screen premiere! Actually, if you blink you'll miss me, but that's not the coolest thing about this movie premiere. The coolest is that it stars John Hawkes, from Identity, The Perfect Storm, and Hardball. Even cooler than that is the cameos from Karen Black and Dan (Homer Simpson) Castellaneta. Even coolester than that is he fact that Adam Blau, composer of Anne Heche Monologues classics, worked on the music. And the coolest of coolosity cool: it stars stee. Yes, it does. Stee's in the movies.
It's called Buttleman, and you can see it's world premiere at the Dances with Films Festival:
SATURDAY, July 26th 11:55 PM
Santa Monica Laemmle's Theatre
1332 2ND Street, Santa Monica, CA 90401-1103
BUTTLEMAN is the story of a small town tuxedo salesman who thinks he's
the next great daredevil stuntman. And just like everyone, it has its very own website.
Tickets are available at the theatre box office or on ticketweb.com.
Keep sending your pictures of you with my book. I'm going to make a gallery. Let me know what city you're in, what bookstore you're visiting, and if anything funny happened on your way to the cashier. I'm really enjoying the stories you guys have been sending. Thanks for being such a publicity machine!
