My Home Town

Current t-shirt: actually a gray sweater (went to church this morning)
Current music: Abba (blame my husband)

Yes, you read right. I got up and went to an Episcopalian service this morning. Dad says' Episcopalianism's a great religion 'cause it doesn't interfere with your politics or your religion. Actually his dad said that, too. But the family was Protestant back when it was badass. Got kicked out of France for it. (Actually, our venerable ancestor dressed up in many disguises, including as a woman, to protect himself. He thought he made a good woman.)

The peace talks were held in my home town. Was down there at the time, but thought nothing of this except that a)there might be roadblocks, which is difficult in a town on a penninsula and b) I might not be able to get to one of the two pubs worth frequenting in the town. (Reynold's Tavern and Middleton Tavern. People say the Ram's Head is good. Don't believe them.)

Mostly I was bothered by the brand spankin' new Starbucks in the basement of the building where the Treaty of Paris, the document ending the Revolutionary War was signed. Something's wrong with that.


But with an article in The Guardian today about Al-Zawahiri (Taliban - scary) saying that the Annapolis talks will do nothing, I realized something frightening. Thanks to George Bush, Al-Qaeda now has my home address.

Before this, I could always think to myself "New York might be blown up, riot itself to death, or die spiritually of a sort of cancer due to exponential real estate prices, but my home town will always remain. I'll always have a place to go back to.

Now, maybe not.

Thanks, George.

(I used to like the name George. George Plimpton. George of the Jungle. George the Third thinking he was a teapot. It was a sound, wholesome name.)

Love and a different zip code,
The Red Pooka!

Day of quiet

Current t-shirt: green with tentacles
Current music: Sleep Station "After the War"

My internet went out yesterday. Time Warner sent someone out fairly quickly. They don't know why things go out. I believe that, had I suggested fairies or acts of God, the cable woman wouldn't have disagreed.

But it was so quiet. Mentally quiet. I got things done. I was aware of where I was. I went to bed that night and slept.

I think I'm going to restrict my time online to specific blocks. Some surfing, because I need to, but to do it in blocks. It's like something's picketing my mind, having the internet always at my fingertips.

Dean Young and Mary Jo Salter have books coming out. Dean Young's book is good, (January). I haven't seen the Mary Jo Salter yet (March).

NY Anime fest is this weekend. Anime overlaps with what I do, but I'm far from an expert. So I'll have to do some research, see what's up. The horrible thing is that, while I don't know anime as well as I should, I know conventions. Looking on the schedule, I see the usual suspects. I'll know how to talk to them. This knowledge feels like false knowledge. Something that lets you coast through the world without being real. It's not real, I'm not real. Ghosts all around.

Love n' silent spooks,

The Red Pooka!

Thoughts about fat... and other things.

Recently finished "Big Fat Manifesto," by Susan Vaught, for a review. It's about a teenage girl who writes a column, Fat Girl, about the way society treats you when you're overweight.

I don't know what to think of the book. The author has a point, and it's well-written, but it's supposed to be a YA book for and about kids. These kids don't talk like kids. They don't think like kids. They think like grownups - wish - they had thought when they were kids. Plus, Vaught, whom the book publicist assures me has had weight issues herself, makes the lead character come off like some brassy, opinionated, loud stereotype of a fat person.

I don't have an either way on the issue. I'm fairly thin. Breathing has always been more of an issue for me. I know about discrimination (translation: people acting like asses because something about you disrupts the way they think the world should be) from having learning disabilities and having to advocate for myself in grad school.

It got kinda funny when I was teaching and had a pregnant student who wouldn't fit behind the chair desks. The professor I answered to said something like 'pregnant women shouldn't be in school,' and when I finally got a chair that fit her, some other prof stole it from me for an AV presentation to prop up something.

Meanwhile, I was going to the same people asking for special recs for myself and, except for a few eye rolls, had no problem. Then I went Ivy League. Ivy League means you're supposed to be perfect. The moment I said 'learning disability accomodations,' they looked at me as if I'd escaped from a mental asylum.

I hear it's better now. I mean for LD people in grad school. I hope careers of administrators were damaged in the process. (If they haven't, and someone needs an aggressive ax behind the passive voice, I'll volunteer.) I received some first class hell over the issue.

But the book. It had a nice pace, but is a bit formulaic. Plus, the author is obviously from an era before iPod, and probably before personal computers. If the subject means so much to her, I wonder why she didn't do the research/soul-searching/google-searches necessary to make the book credible. I'm not sure God is in the details, but when novelists sweat the small stuff, they've usually sweated the large stuff, too.

So the book feels more like a personal rant, perhaps a necessary venting session, than a work of art, or even of activism. The personal has to take a step or two to be effective politically. She may have an agent, and Vaught can write a decent sentence, but it feels as though she's never left the therapy session.

I've a close friend whose girlfriend is overweight. R suffers horribly because of it, and she's a nice person. Excellent writer. Sweet lady. But then, I have the feeling fat women rarely dare to be other than sweet, the world already hates them so. R is a nuanced person. One problem with politics in books is that it often strips people of nuance. Some people lack nuance—perhaps the author is one—but stripping people of nuance is one of the things discrimination does.

I remember struggling to get into the disability office at Columbia (on an upper floor, with a non-motorized door that even I had trouble opening) and having a mean woman in owl glasses with a scowl that would sour not only milk, but an entire cow, look at my paperwork, and attempt to turn all my hopes dreams, struggles, and reasonable writing samples into a heap of unnecessary bother that she could write away. "We have standards here, you know." So why haven't they fired you yet?

But of course, I'll give the book a good review because it's for a certain sort of magazine, and that's what is required.

Love and that fuck-you attitude,

The Red Pooka!

Torture book

Current t-shirt: Narwhale, red and cream on gray.
Current music: Tilly and the Wall (yes, I'm obsessed).

I'm doing Darius Rejali's book, "Democracy and Torture" for the LAT (Princeton U Press, Dec.). Rejali is a political sci prof at Reed and rather canny. Because governments tend to open their more embarrassing archives sometime after the twelvth of never, you're never going to get the full story on torture according to the paper trail.

Well, we know a lot about peoples who didn't leave a paper trail: the Celts, Powhattan Indians, the Maya. We know these things because we use anthropology to examine and trace traditions, which tells us what comes from where and who was influencing whom.

Rejali does this with torture.

Creepy, eh?

Never knew anthropology could be so bad-ass.

Love and enemies of the state,

The Red Pooka!

Evel Knievel dies

He did Ninja Warrior years before anyone else thought of it, and he did it on a motorcycle:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2220208,00.html

His father taught my grandfather how to drive. For the record, grandpa was a safe driver.

Japan n' stuff

Current t-shirt: Skull and cross-bones with hearts
Current music: George Crumb

I have a friend who's half Japanese, Anne Ishii—please check out her excellent blog, http://ill-iterate-anne.blogspot.com/—who writes a great deal about Asian issues, etc. Recently she linked to a piece about the Canadian government asking for an apology from Japan over Japanese comfort women.

I'm in my thirties, and back reading (and reviewing) comics, which means lots of manga. I love the freshness of the medium. And Japanese culture is huge in design and art now. Ok, that's the sort of over-arching statement Anne rails against, so apologies.

While I was home, I got to talking w/Dad about my Uncle Fil, or Fillipus Ishmael Goeltom, an Indonesian nobleman who married Dad's sister, Fontaine. Fil and Fontaine died a few years back, but their son recently went to Indonesia, and returned with pictures of the dozens of Goeltoms and of the Batak Lutheran church Fil's Dad built. I remember Fil and Fontaine explaining to me that, according to Batak rules, I and every other Maury niece, nephew, and cousin was now a Batak relative, and considered family. That's a lot of white Southerners with a lot of acknowledged brown relatives, but when my aunt and uncle said it, it seemed warm and real. When my cousin H went back, they treated him like a cousin, even requiring his very blonde and Western wife to be silent during dinner like a good Batak woman.

Fil spent time in a Japanes concentration camp. They hanged his Dad in front of him. He was nearly nailed into an airplane against his will to be a Kamikaze. We believe he was tortured.

Then he came to America, met a pretty young and very opinionated brunette at an inter-faith social, and married her. Fil was very dear to my Dad and to my Grandpa, and we like to think the Maurys gave him some happiness, or at least a sense of peace. There are a lot of us, and we tend to be bookish and boisterous. But as a teenager, I knew he was sad. Which made me sad. He was one of the gentlest people I've ever known.

So I've got a squicky internal relationship with Japanese culture. I admire many Japanese artists, but then I know a bit about what Japanese soldiers did to the Batak. I know the generation who did those things is dying out, but the silence still knaws at me.

I have no idea how to talk to people about this, especially the Asians who are my friends. (Hell, I'd like to talk about it to any of my friends, but they don't get how moved I am by my uncle, and for many people I know, anything before 1969 might as well be Victorian.) And for all I understand the racial dynamics of the South, I'm still a neophyte to the social dynamics of Asia. But I loved Fil, and I love my cousin H a lot, and need to understand.

I imagine many people feel this way about America.

Love and confusion,

The Red Pooka!

Fairly large apology

Hi,

A few blogs ago, I said something about the South being about as racist as the North. Well, I ate crow along with my turkey a few days ago.

An article appeared in the Washington Post about hate crimes being more prevalent in the South. It had that horrible ring of truth, that oh-shit bell tone to it. I'm guessing they're right.

I've found a lot of racism in New York. I'm not sure what to call the 99 44/100 % pure white offices at The New Yorker. I've also found a lot of classism. Kinda blows my mind when I hear a person dressed as an unwashed E. Village hippie start on the tacky evils of the middle class. For those of you who live outside NYC, the translation is that the young man is a trust-funder slumming it, but this phenomenon is confusing the artistic scene to no end. Translation: I don't trust the well-off to save the world through money, art, or good deeds.

But yes, racism is in the South. I only have to hear my mom talk to her black house-cleaner to find it. I love my mom, and I love Ms. M, and it's vaguely entertaining to hear them do a Jeeves and Jim or rather a wily-black-servant and gracious dim massa routine. Ms. M. gets huge amounts of furniture from us each year, donations her partner, Mr. F. would rather not arrive "She's a damn pack-rat, I'll tell ya!" And mom feels more comfortable having an older black woman around. Some white people in the South, if they're of a certain age, the only tenderness they received was from black people. And the line between love and pay discretely buried.

Love, clean floors, and a guilty conscience,

The Red Pooka!

Back in Maryland (still)

Home taking care of my Dad. He had a hip operation. Is doing swell (not as in imflamation-swell, though that's a whole 'nother story), but swell as in that word meaning "great" that first appeared in a New Yorker review of some restaurant back in the '20s.

Thank you for asking, but Dad is doing swell.

The more time I spend in the South (or is it outside of New York, I sometimes can't tell), the more freaked I become. It's -not- alright for damn-Yankees (yes, you still exist) like most of my friends (don't worry, I still love you) to bitch about the South without context. I may. And I'll bet my more than 50 cousins that I know more about the actuality of the place than any graduate degree in American studies focusing on Georgia.

Yeah, scrap me and I'm that kinda of hick. The cousins galore-kind. I have fantasies about selecting, say, 12 of them and bringing them to some hip par-tay in Brooklyn and watching them form an immovable clot in the midst of the living room.


Anyway, I went to the Bare Essentials makeup counter at Annapolis Mall yesterday. My face has been breaking out, and I wanted some coverage. Didn't buy any. I asked what was in the cover-up, and the woman said "all natural minerals."

"What minerals?" sez I.

"All natural minerals," sez she.

"Yeah, but which?"

"Well it doesn't contain things like talc." (Talc -is- a natural mineral, but I let this one slide.)

"Could you find out for me?" sez I. Much rummaging around in back.

"We don't have the ingredients, but it's all natural minerals?"

I decided to get snippy.

"You mean all natural minerals, like arsenic and asbestos?" Some really blank looks.


Ok, maybe that wasn't fair. And if a New York makeup salesgirl was wearing makeup as cracked as miss natural minerals, she'd be canned. But it's a facet of the suburban South that people take things from commercials as if they're the scientific truth straight out of NIH.

Grumble. Fuck the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion, Wizard, n'get me outta here.


BTW, Princeton U has a book coming out Democracy and Torture, by Darius Regali, that gives the history of various torture practices, tracing their lineage. And where lineage goes, follow backwards, and you have origin. And when you have origin, you know who to blame.

Back to Maryland

Current t-shirt: white cashmere T (Trying to channel them fifties movie stars)
Current music: Tilly and the Wall "Night of the Living Dead" (Love that song).

Heading back to Maryland today - didn't go yesterday.

Recently read the NYTimes review of the new Gone with the Wind sequel. And it came to me again, like a hammer to the head, followed by a sigh—because it's always a hammer to the head—that the North still doesn't get the South. They write about it as if it's a cartoon.

I remember my mother, who's from Georgia, telling me about the first time she read Gone with the Wind. She was on a train for fourteen hours, and she read it in one go, ten hours of reading. (Her great-grandmother, who lived to be 102, attended that ball Scarlett attends right as war breaks out.)

Thing is, Mom got that it was hokum. Blarney. A sweet dream. Integration was underway. All the propaganda from everywhere was all about how awful the South was. That it was a place where no human kindness could seep through the cracks of racism, feudalism, and awful men who, like the owner of the town store in Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry, enjoyed their sadistic hold on their small portion of civilization.

And here was a book that gave an image of heroes and lovely women. Of course people loved it. But outside of the Junior League, St. Cecelia's Society (Charleston) and other such groups, I'm not sure people exactly believed it. Or rather, they did that very human thing, and held two realities in their head.

Who hasn't done that?

Can't Southerners be complex enough to be conflicted?

***

A few thoughts:

I've found far more kindness—black and white—among people who live below DC than among people who live above it. Especially among strangers.

I don't find the institutionalized racism in the North and the South to be different in quantity. The main difference is that upper-class people in the North tend to be less racist in word than upper-class people in the South, but in the South, people are more likely to actually know people across class and color lines. (Up here, when rich people know poor people, it's through college, and through college only.) Old money in the North doesn't realize how much their privilege buys immunity from racial tension, while old money in the South does. On the other hand, old Southern money and old white Southern families (rich and poor) will speak openly about problems with 'coloreds' at the dinner table. (I can never tell how much this is normal or how much it's to annoy the cousin (me) who's gone Yankee on them.)

My granddaddy was horrendously angry at the North. Not because of the war, but because of the economic sanctions that kept him and his brothers and sisters in extreme poverty, living off the land. I believe he knew people who starved and may have amost starved himself. But though he didn't agree with the economic sanctions and other laws, including integration, he believed in the rule of law. When integration came to the high school where he was principal, he informed the teachers that the law was the law, and any law-breakers could consider themselves fired. The school integrated peacefully.

Never, when looking at sanctions at Iraq, Iran, or Cuba do people bring up the close to home example of sanctions against the South. If you want a lesson in how to bring about feudalism, ethnic violence, and endemic starvation, I can think of no better classroom. And the accounts are all in English.

Men are far nicer to women in the South, at least in casual relations. (I imagine the same percentage of bastards exists everywhere.) It wasn't until I went to school in Vermont that I heard men flagrantly bragging about how many women they'd bagged. Many of the profoundly accomplished and often pretty women I know in New York who can't get a date would be mobbed with admirers in any city below the Potomac.

The South isn't all one place. It's a lot of different places. The Appalachians, the coast and the plains have different issues. Virginia is way different from northwest Georgia. No one above Baltimore gets this.

When actors want to put on a Southern accent, they rely on some standard cornball that isn't really spoken anywhere. There are many, many different accents, from the Scots-influenced areas to the heavily African-influenced ways of speaking in parts of Georgia and Alabama. And whites and blacks speak differently in the cities, but their accents are far closer in the small towns, and can be indistinguishable in the countryside, especially in the deep South away from the coasts.

***

Finally, I find many people in New York who have extremely strong opinions about the South without really having spent much time there. Or any time there. I sometimes feel the place gets grouped with Saudi for civil rights violations.

Love and grits,
(which, by the way, aren't cooked with cheese)

The Red Pooka!

Home again home again jiggety-jog

Back in da' bronx. Remember September 11, back when we were still calling it things like "The Bombing of the World Trade Center," and "The Fall of the Twin Towers? There was this joke:

"New Yawkers."

(audience answer) "Yeah."

"New Yawkers!"

(audience answer) "Yeah!"

"This means war, you know dat?"

(audience answer) "Yeah?"

"You ready fo' war?"

(audience doesn't answer)

"You ain't ready for da' bronx!"

***

Dad had his right hip replaced. He was supposed to go from the hospital into a rehab clinic. But Dad, being Dad, decided he was going to do the Maury uber-healthy thing, get out of the hospital early, and go right home. Actually, the doctors kicked him out. He's 75 and healing like someone thirty years younger. His dad once outran a forest fire for 54 miles to warn a town in Montana. Dad's not quite that, but despite some pudge has legs like tree-trunks.

***

If you're feeling happy without feeling properly guilty about being happy (and Darfur isn't ruining your sweet smile) go read Mary Jo Bang's book "Elegy." It's -almost- a great book of poems. Let's call it a minor classic. Her son died, and it turned her from a good poet to one with something to say. She was very flip and '90s once. Now she's deep.

I guess, when good people go on vacation to hell, they hide flashlights in sulphurous corners for other folk, in case we get stranded, too. Mary Jo Bang has hidden lots of flashlights.

And she still has bangs.

***

Day's coming

Current t-shirt - plain white under a cashmere sweater.
Current music - NPR. (Ok, it's not music, but Nina Tottenburg is hot.)

Day and Rene are coming today. Day's my friend in DC who is (self-described) a sleazy lobbyist. Actually, she's disability coordinator for the American Psychological Association.

Day comes with a guide dog, Vinnie, the wonder-idiot. The last guide-dog was smarter. Vinnie's a bit of an ADHD child. My apartment is kinda tiny, so this should be interesting.

Also four people mit dog in an apartment, and then we all form a caravan to go down and see Carmen at the Met.

BTW, David Thewlis, who plays Remus Lupin in the Harry Potter films has a book out. Damn him, but he can write. No, let me remedy that. Fuck him. I read twelve pages looked up and said "this guy could win the Booker."

It's called "The Late Hector Kipling."

Love and British character actors,
The Red Pooka!

Thoughts on Book Publicists

Some get it, some don't. I'm going to try to make this into an article and publish it somewhere.

How to handle reviewers. I'm sorry, but dealing with us is a bit like herding cats, or at least greased pigs.

But here are the dos and don'ts

Do

1) Get us the galley/xerox/PDF as fast as possible. It's more important that we have something in hand than that we have something pretty.

2) Put the pub date at the top of all publicity materials. Preferably in large print. Actually, we'd like it in flashing neon, if you've got it.

3) Tell us if the pub date slips.

4) Let us know the book's genre in the first two sentences.

5) Be respectful of our contracts, many of which have strict ethics guidelines about contact with the publisher, disclosing information to the publisher, meeting authors, and accepting gifts.

6) Send books to PO Boxes. Many of us don't have doormen and do part (or full) time work apart from our writing. So we have PO Boxes. (If this is a problem or a huge expense, let us know: there may be some wiggle room.)

7) Have faith in us. Most of us do this because we like telling people about good books they should be reading. That's what gives us our buzz.


Don't

1) Ask us if or when a review will run. Often we don't know, and often our contracts stipulate that we aren't supposed to discuss the inner workings of the places where we review. Sometimes we mention it, sometimes we don't. Please leave it to our discretion and don't inquire.

2) Introduce us to the author. We aren't supposed to know the people whose books we review.

3) Send us gifts or freebees that aren't books. Many contracts stipulate that we can't accept gifts.

4) If you ask us out to lunch, and we refuse or ask to split the bill, don't be offended. Some of our contracts say we can't accept meals.

5) Omit the pub date.

6) Require that we fax review copy request on letterhead. Freelancers often don't have access to letterhead.

Love and rules,
The Red Pooka!

Small hells of journalism

Current t-shirt: Infiniit character with funky wings and tennis shoes.
Current music: Bruce Springstein, "Devils & Dust."

By which I mean transcribing. Love interviewing, hate transcribing. And I hate the thought of having someone else transcribe. Even if I could afford it, it's like paying someone else to do your stinky underwear. Convenient, but hardly honorable.

Spent the day transcribing tapes of two interviews with Booz Allen Hamilton employees. They're involved with Urban Enterprise Initiative. The name sounds like some ponzi scheme or con-game, but it's actually a noble venture. Booz Allen people are volunteering their expertise with business to small businesses in Harlem - good ma & pop places that might not otherwise be able to survive the new 'hip' 125th St. area.

[Ever notice how, once the '90s went away, so did all those little ironic tic-marks?]

Anyway, they speak in business-speak, but they're fighting the good fight.

***

Another small hell of journalism - I made the common mistake of writing two pieces without a contract in hand. I was expecting one amount, and so may get another. I wrote my boss, let's call her Margaret the Martian, a letter saying what I thought the two pieces were worth and the price for the book review section I'm already putting together (which she has okayed).

Ms. Martian hasn't gotten back to me. Neither has her rather sweet henchman.

By the way, never write for someone before googling them. Ever. Found out Ms. Martian has a slightly shady past. I wish it were something cool, like drug trafficking, or moon-lighting as a striptease. That I can respect. But plagiarism? Ick.

Love and my burned ass,
The Red Pooka!

Tea with Wasserman

Current t-shirt: button-down, I'm afraid (went out today).
Current music: Haven't turned it on, yet, but am considering Gillian Welsh.

Had tea today with Steve Wasserman, formerly Book Review editor of the LATimes. Surely old curmudgeon and really refreshing. He's from the old school, where book reviewing means a literary discussion, ala Edmund Wilson, or at least Susan Sontag.

He's doing a new book review section for TruthDigg.com, and of course, I pitched myself. Trying to be helpful, I also suggested an acquaintance of mine, LS, who write for the NYT Book Review. He paused, and said no.

Inside, I jumped. LS publishes regularly for the NYTBR and for a lot of other places, as well.

Wasserman, whom I believe used to wear all white, but does so no longer, said that he found her completely competent, but that the day after reading one of her reviews, he could remember a damned thing she said.

Inside, I went hmm.

I asked him if, after reading something I'd read, he'd ever been able to remember it the next day. Wasserman is nothing if not honest. He paused, thought, and said no.

Inside, I withered a bit. Then went hmm again.

I told him how, in book reviewing, there was subtle pressure not to ever trash anything, or to have edgy conversations. That it felt as though it was no longer the done thing. I mentioned that I'd tried it within memory with the San Francisco Chronicle, over Karen Armstrongs "A Short History of Myth," which was full of a lot of the pro-Goddess bullshit that archaeologists and historians began to give up mid-century, and had gotten my hand slapped. (I'd also tried it dissing Shalom Auslander's first book, which I compared to writing the Torah on toilet paper, then using it, but didn't mention it. In both cases, I'd been taken to task for having unkind opinions.)

Therefore, I tended not to diss things or get edgy. I like my paycheck, you see.

This made him go hmm. Then he said he was angry. I agreed, but what can one do?

So I am going to try to write reviews that Wasserman can remember the next day. Be a bit more edgy. Take some risks. Life is too short to spend it with a mouth full of other people's words.

Love and Hard Tack,
The Red Pooka!

At home, writing.

Working on another piece. Is this life for me now? Get up, go to the desk... Golly, I even look forward to commutes when I have them.

Down side: I've forgotten how to get ready to go out the door. No more 20 min from bed to subway. Like, an hour now. If I'm lucky.

Yesterday was Chinese herbs. Today is Booz Allen doing philanthropy. Then a book review section to put together. I'm mixing manga with Jacques Couteau, want to see if they get along.

Then a review about a book about a Viking woman who turned up in the Eddas (or is it the Sagas) and in archaeololgy. I used to love the Eddas when I was a child. They're all rhythmic and wierd-namey.

Or maybe I'll switch the Viking woman with the book review section. Set Gudrid to sorting out the mer-man and the big-eyed Japanese girls.

There's gotta be more to life than this.

Oh well. Wandrin' the Bridge of Sighs in my mind.

Love and lack of exercise,
The Red Pooka!

Panelling the walls...

The panel went well. My power is in my voice - I can purr with it. Sound reasonable. Simply have to remember to. Like my magic weapon, or something.

But the panelists were all good at what they do and reasonable. Young, too, so they didn't need wrangling so much as being made to feel safe. Some tremendous talent, though. Yali Lin - I fear she's so good and such a speed demon, publishers may work her to death. Nikki Cook is frighteningly smart, and Miss Lasko-Gross gets to the gravy of how fucked up with psychology was the 20th century.

No one I knew made it, but the house was full. I'm not a big name, but the series is getting a bit of notoriety. Maybe I'll be a name eventually. Maybe I'll get that column with the LAT.

Maybe I'll change my name to Hepzibah. My mom almost named me Hepzibah. Hepzibah the pooka.

Love and good woodworking,
The Red Pooka!

Out of the blue

Current t-shirt: Tie-dyed flower on purple (vintage)
Current music: Sunset Rubdown (because Spesner Krug is a god)
Check out Daytrotter for a taste: http://www.daytrotter.com/article/98/sunset-rubdown-feature-band-june-12

Tonight I host a panel on young women in comics. The gist is that women are set to take over comics, and will probably do a better job than men. And oddly, having women take over is taking a marginalized form and bringing it mainstream. How's that for lit-crit turnaround?

Anyway, here's the low-down:

MoCCA Monday, October 1st - New Voices in Comics: A Friends of Lulu Panel
There are more girls and women reading, writing, drawing, and enjoying comics today than ever before. Comics creators Hilary Florido, Miss Lasko-Gross, Yali Lin, and Danica Novgorodoff discuss their backgrounds, starting out in the comics industry, and how the graphic novel revolution the publishing industry has undergone affected their work and their opportunities. Moderated by Laurel Maury of Publisher's Weekly.

Starts at 6:30. I have to get there at 6:00.

Odd being asked to do something. To have people return my phone calls. I'm just a girl from Maryland, and not a terrifically successful one. I was invited to do this thing out of the blue.

Love and primary colors,

The Red Pooka!

Cool Books (and a small rant)

The Arrival
By some guy named Tan (who's fucking brilliant).
Arthur R. Levine, November

A graphic novel without words, and the most sophisticated I've seen. A refugee flees to a New York-like city. Only it's a city with strange servant-creatures and transportation systems resembling late-19th c. fantasy. He meets other immigrants, many who've fled ridiculous ideological wars.

The most pro-immigration book of the season has no words at all.


The Squandering of America
Robert Kuttner
Knopf, October

The Editor-in-Chief of American Prospect has another diatribe. He talks about how hedge funds and derivatives are probably ruining the American economy, perhaps irrevocably. Makes a good case, and unlike a lot of people who discuss free-markets, his words make sense.

Look Me In The Eye: My Life with Asperger's
John Elder Robison
Crown, September

Memoir - rather eloquent - of living with Asperger's Syndrome. Reading it, it came to me that Aspies, like ADDers, don't need manuals to understand how we work. We know how our insides work. We have to, because it's so damn hard for us to get what we need from a world not set up for our minds.

What's needed, actually, is a handbook for how normal people's minds work. Perhaps it needs to be different for each culture, who knows. Here's why:

A) Most normal people don't know how they work.

B) Because of this, normal people tend not to realize when their unconscious actions are cruel (not just to Aspies, ADDers, and other people with disabilities, but to people of other races and shapes).

C) Because most cruel actions are unconscious, confronting someone about their unconscious action either boggles their mind (it's like talking about the purple Snufalufagus, because they didn't see that, either) Orit angers them, because you've suddenly pulled them out of the flow of their life. And pulling a person out of the flow of his life to force introspection - that will make most people really mad.

Books by ADDers, Aspies, and high-functioning Autistics often touch on how normal people work - usually with a mind-boggling jolt at the illogic of NTs (neurological typicals) - and therefore are the best thing we've got to manuals for the normal mind.

You see, we're on the outside (I'm an ADDer), so we know how screwy you all are.

Love and the Americans with Disabilities Act,
The Red Pooka!

Book publicists don't get it...

Current t-shirt: punk skull with heart-eyes
Current music: Elvis Costello, "Spike." (Okay, everybody who's wondering why it's not "Blood and Chocolate," get with it. Yes, that's a punk classic, but it's not his only good album.)

Ok, a lot of publicists get it, but a significant subset don't...

Last night, I found a 3+ minute message on my cell phone from a publicist, wondering if I'd received the galley (generally the question is a pretext for asking if I plan to review it), and elaborating on what, according to her, were the extraordinary merits of the book.

My Dad is going in for major surgery on Oct. 15. My mom recently hurt her back badly. Yet they've decided that, despite health issues, they're going to renovate the house. Meanwhile, I'm playing phone tag with one of my editors (read someone who may eventually send me a check).

The last thing I need is some damned publicist clogging my cell phone in-box with messages - messages that, quite possibly, might fill up the space so that I can't hear the latest message from my Dad.

My Dad is one of the people I love most on this earth.

So I left a firm message telling her never to do this again.

I don't know of a reviewer who wants unsolicited messages from publicists on their cell phone. And actually, we aren't supposed to talk about reviews before they run. This is standard practice. Editors don't like it, and a reviewer who pisses off her editors is a reviewer who doesn't get a paycheck.

And I resent anyone who gets between me and my paycheck. (Wouldn't you?) Therefore, I get kinda mad when publicists call, asking if I'm going to review something.


Furthermore, reviewers aren't really supposed to have much contact with the people putting out the book. When we're pitching reviews on our own, we have to, but we're supposed to limit it. This barrier is to avoid conflict-of-interest issues, and as such, is a deeply sensible wall.

Good walls make good neighbors.

Love and stones,
The Red Pooka!

Life's been strange

Current t-shirt: Happy Sushi Family.
Current music: Joan Osborne, "Crazy Baby" (concert version). Ok, it's really '90s, but then so am I.

Some things that only happen to me:

I sit in a hot plate of soup and burn my ass.

I had my husband take pictures of my poor burned butt to send to my sister (she's a doctor, and we were deciding whether or not I should go to the emergency room - we decided not to).

While I was interviewing a chinese herbalist and he was getting to the part about using wingless cockroaches on ankle injuries, I look over, and my husband, who's working as my photographer, has the pictures of my burned ass up on the digital camera - frantically scrolling to get to the end or something. (David's technologically disinclined.)

Almost get to interview Bill Clinton, but then don't get the interview, possibly because that particular boss is a crook, and certainly because the Clinton people are difficult, to say the least.

Learned campsongs about Wehrner Von Braun and dropping nuclear bombs as a child.

All true. All me. Latest is that I was hanging out with this theater group called Vampire Cowboys, and went out later with the entourage of one of their actresses, Melissa Roth. (She's a good actress.) Turns out ths group won some contest on MySpace and are now shooting a feature film produced by Spike Lee. The director, Mitch Gettleman, and two other actors, Joe Pacillo and Keenan Moynahan where also there. Keenan feels like someone who might be going places.

Love and extended warranties,
The Red Pooka!