News, publications and blog for the author of AM/PM (Featherproof Books) and Museum of the Weird (FC2).
BEIJING — When viewers tuned into China’s most popular dating show this spring, they saw beautiful women, brutal rejections and plenty of money worshiping, as when a female contestant was asked by a possible date whether she would like to go for a bicycle ride.
“I’d rather sit and cry in the back of a BMW,” she said.
(NYT)
Today I saw the trailer for that movie about Facebook. I think the producer that greenlit that project made a huge mistake in assuming that the Zuckerberg kid is not going to do something crazy down the line that will render this movie utterly obsolete. It is like making a movie about O.J. Simpson’s successful college football tenure at the University of Southern California.
Thanks to the telephone game that is the internet, the XX Factor called me a poetess. This is what I get for making fun of W.S. Merwin last week, the man who can only accept the laureate position if he can escape a pineapple plantation built atop a dormant volcano. We broke all manner of hit count records around here. The blog went platinum and Mark Zuckerberg sent me a check with an ascii middle finger in the PAY TO THE ORDER OF section. There was some excitement but now things are quieting down. I’m emptying out the ashtrays. For the record, I am not a poetess.
Oh, and I saw Inception after the Facebook trailer, the trailer for the movie about Facebook. Good plot weaving and fun overall, but anyone who thinks the writing is presenting some seriously new ideas has not read much, or seen The Matrix. I said “Look at that handsome Shia Labeouf” multiple times and later had to be told his name is pronounced “Shy-ah” and also it was Joseph Gordon-Levitt. I am my own grandmother.
Wishing I knew 300 people who wanted to come over and play the baba yaga with me tonight. My downstairs neighbors would flip.
It’s my last day in Portland. I put my face on the green grass. I was here in order to teach at a workshop for young writers and I didn’t ask how old they were individually because I always hated it when people asked me that when I was their age. They all seemed kind and industrious. I felt envious that they were spending the whole two weeks wandering around a grassy campus and doing writing exercises, but I got to be there for two days and that seemed good enough to get a general feel for it.
Ruth Franklin wrote a review of my threats reading in New York last week for The New Republic. It’s an interesting piece and I’m beyond flattered to be on a triptych with Sarah Silverman and Joan Rivers, complete with ideas about women and subversive performance. I feel like I’m developing some kind of related theory, though I’m taking a long time to figure it out because my brain is the brain of a baby who smacks his own stomach with his fist over and over. I hope that baby is sitting next to me for the flight home so I can tell him my ideas about women and subversive performance.
There is a coyote outside. If you ever hear what sounds like someone shaking a dog over a balcony rail, that’s a coyote. How did a coyote get to Portland? How did I get to Portland? I sat next to a toddler on the flight here and she slept from the moment the plane took off until when it touched down. She woke up, looked at the change in scenery out the window, and started crying in hysterical terror. I was like, girl, I know it.
I’m coming out to read to room-sized portions of California in a few weeks. I always hold myself back from saying “Keep it locked for more details” but now that I’m going to California I believe it’s time for you to keep it locked.
Black Heart Magazine named me one of the top 5 emerging writers under 40. Click here to see me straight up looking like an elementary school librarian between sexy ladies AV Flox and Gillian Sze. Man, 41 year olds are EATING IT this season.
Another cool thing happened: India Menninghaus wrote a review of AM/PM that ended up in the School of the Art Institute of Chicago paper. Check out the larger size of the image to see the hand-lettering from India. And look at her site. Maybe if you’re sweet to her, she’ll send you a handwritten letter.
I keep forgetting to mention it but now I will, speaking of reviews, if you or someone you love would like a review copy of my book, to review, for a place that runs reviews, please drop me a line via that “Contact” link above. I promise I won’t write a crazy 1,500 word rebuttal if this action results in a bad review. Or will I? (Yes.)
As the President of Hot Dogs I’m obliged to say that I ate a hot dog in New York and it was okay. It was at Gray’s Papaya and it burned the flesh at the back of my mouth. There were tanks behind the men that looked like the type that serves those nasty daiquiris in New Orleans, so I felt hungover, though I was not hungover. Get it together, Gray’s Papaya.
I’m on the ass-end of a whirlwind here on the fifth floor of the Larchmont in NYC. The bed is on casters and the shower is down the hall. The style of this hotel room is “cozy institutional.”
The A/C works great
I always rip my feet up in this city. Yesterday I got my toes done in the cheapest place I could find. I started walking down the hallway to go to the bathroom and a woman got in my face and asked me what I was doing. I said I was going to the bathroom. She was mad about it. There was a language barrier. The soak water was so hot it started parboiling my feet. Another woman touched my toes. She asked if she should cool the water down and I said no. She asked if I wanted the razor and I frowned at her and she said I only needed the stone.
I met a new friend named Emily and we had adventures. The food we ate was so pretty I wanted to photograph it, and she said the restaurant’s sister restaurant experienced that so much they had to ban the practice. They served sliced scallops mixed with spicy red and crunchy green bits. We drank a tequila cocktail with a long pepper afterburn. The train stopped while we were underneath a river.
I read at Happy Ending, which was fun like a Lynchian dream sequence, accordions followed by Shane Jones reading a story about a hair monster making love to a handicapped girl followed by Audrey “the time traveler’s” Niffenegger reading Finnegans Wake backwards, I shit you not. Then we ate late-night treats from Central Mexico, I think, shredded meats in corn masa pockets and a plate of fried plantains. I signed a copy of AM/PM by squirting salsa into it.
My dad wanted me to go check up on Bleeker Street Pizza, an establishment he has not visited since 1973 but thinks fondly of. I walked an hour, found it, and drank some water while sitting next to an oven and eating the most perfectly crispy slice of mushroom pizza in the middle of one of the hottest July days on record. Fine, New York. I give in. I love you.
I’m going to New York next week to read with Shane Jones at Happy Ending on July 7. Tickets here.
Sometime last week, I took my spare AC adapter out of my laptop bag and found that it had been neatly wrapped and secured, something I never do. I have more of a “unplug and shove it into the bag while running out of the coffee shop like you just received communication that you are wanted by a black ops group” kind of style. But there it was, perfectly aligned right down to the Velcro strap, which I never realized had a purpose until I saw its purpose was to make it look like I can have nice things. I’ve come to the conclusion that someone has broken into my apartment and rearranged my spare laptop cable. (If “paranoia” is only #7 on “Reasons Why It’s No Fun to Date Amelia Gray,” just imagine the other six!)
Nature ITEM! Yesterday I saw a mom and dad cardinal feeding a baby cardinal on the tree branch outside my window and it was so beautiful that I got a little pissed off about it.
Then, I wrote 300 words about how great it is to be able to turn a doorknob.
Other Nature ITEM! There’s a squirrel pulling off tree branches outside my window and consolidating them closer to the trunk. Just learned a squirrel’s nest is called a drey.
going drey crazy
At first I had this idea that maybe I’d write a story about what the squirrel is really thinking, and then I realized I have already written that story. Now my cat is freaking out. This is the first time I have ever liveblogged an event and I’m glad it’s this one.
everyone in this picture thinks they're people
Here’s a post I found online about squirrels:
As everyone knows, squirrels love to frolick in trees and play and jump from tree to tree and limb to limb.I was out back the other day (as the squirrels love our backyard) and witnessed one that fell from a tree. Scared me….it fell (I would guess 15-20 feet) and landed on its back. I heard the thud. The squirrel got up immediately and took off, but I still can’t stop thinking about this poor little squirrel and if he was injured or not. It is still on my mind. Does anyone know about squirrels falling from trees and how injured they can be. I have read that they show no pain, which worries me since the squirrel just took off :(.
Thank you….can’t seem to get it off my mind…….
New skin ended up being spiders. My right arm is a constellation. My parents and I went to see Psycho in the theater. It was great to see, particularly that last shot. The place was doing a raffle beforehand and I won a book called “The Moment of Psycho: How Alfred Hitchcock Taught America to Love Murder.” When the guy was describing the book, I thought I want that book, and then I won it, so I think it’s a sign. That colon in the title makes me worry it is one of those repackaged grad thesis things wherein allusions are carefully described. Hope not.
I feel like I’m at a church lock-in. (Did you know that they sometimes lock the children in?) When I was young I was required to memorize all 107 elements of The Shorter Catechism. An older lady came over to the house every week and went over them with me. Here’s #87:
Q. What is repentance unto life?
A: Repentance unto life is a saving grace, whereby a sinner, out of a true sense of his sin, and apprehension of the mercy of God in Christ, doth, with grief and hatred of his sin, turn from it unto God, with full purpose of, and endeavor after, new obedience.
Of course, it’s all gone now. I think there’s not enough memorization in education today. After I passed the confirmation test, the older lady gave me a porcelain figurine of an angel holding a flute.
I’ve played more Solitaire than is allowed by law and now I’m on the run. Keep a candle in the window for me.
I flew over a forest fire to get here. Mom puts four bottles of hot sauce on the table with every meal. A yoga instructor told us to imagine we were chocolate bars melting under the sun. Dad helped me repair my busted “A” key so I could type my name again. Temps are supposed to get up to 108°F on Wednesday. I’m sharing the guest bed with a pile of straw. The wind feels like a flat stone pressed against my face and the water tastes like home. I’m growing a new skin.
I’ve been staring at the same three hundred words for the past two hours. The coffee I made looks like an oil spill. I’m considering Top Kill. I’ve never liked running but lately I go out at the hottest part of the day, which is any part of the day in June here. It’s like bikram yoga but with running. The soundtrack alternates between Die Antwoord and DMX. I wonder how many people in the history of the world have had to run for their lives and what that would look like spliced back-to-back on YouTube. This should all be a list but I don’t believe in lists, paragraphs, or coffee. Once I ran because a homeless guy was chasing me, though I still think he was kidding around. Homeless guys in Phoenix have kind of a sun-addled sense of humor. I’d like to say more but that seems against the oink oink oink oink oink oink oink. Well anyway later.
