So last night I went to some wine tasting party in some loft with my sister and Angel and my sister's friend John. You take a glass and wander from table to table where they give you like ONE SIP of each wine which was very annoying, especially as you often had to wait a while at each table since the annoying wine pourers and other guests seemed hellbent on actually discussing each wine! The fact that I got so extremely tipsy is really a testament to my perseverance and indominatable spirit. I also at one point glamorously flung my glass in such a manner that my wine sprayed out of it as it were a fountain in a Fellini film, and sluttily landed Anita Ekberg style on John's groin.



Here are some more classy photos:







The end.

I am heading to New York tomorrow and, amongst other exciting events, will be reading with Daphne Gottlieb on Saturday eve:

9/27
Fucking Daphne Anthology Reading
With Diana Cage, Carolyn Turgeon, Jamie Berger
Bluestockings Books
172 Allen Street between Stanton and Rivington
NY, NY
7 pm
Free
www.bluestockings.com

Here is a photo of my best friend Aoife in the extremely fashionable boots I bought for her in an Amish store:

Since my friend Krysztof put this up, I am clearly compelled to follow.

Take a picture of yourself right now.
Don't change your clothes, don't fix your hair...just take a picture.
Post that picture with NO editing.
Post these instructions with your picture.



In other news...

1. I love my accordion and dark room photography classes though between them I think my head might explode. So many technical details! But I can now play POP GOES THE WEASAL, which is really all that anyone could ask for, and by tomorrow eve I will have processed my first two rolls of film. I met a classmate on Saturday to take photos, and it was raining, and when we came upon a whole patch of wet and dying black-eyed susans next to a twisty massive-rooted probably-comes-to-life-every-night-and-kills-people tree, my vaguely gothic heart exploded and I proceeded to lie in the mud and shoot all two rolls of film right there. And probably every photo I took was completely cliche but the awesome thing about hobbies if you can suck at them and it doesn't matter. Tho secretly I plan to be a genius at both within a year. By then I will play Pop Goes the Weasal with such finesse you will burst into tears the minute I hit the first note.

2. Actually, I have nothing else to say. I am now going to finish proofing the second-pass pages for Godmother and then get back to finishing my noir.

3. Oh except I forgot that I love these photos by Susan Mieselas, from her book Carnival Strippers, which is the best title for anything ever, except maybe for the F. Scott Fitzgerald story "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz":





The end.

I am back in Pennsylvania and tonight saw this most gorgeous, haunting film from Norway, Reprise. It veers from weird and funny to spooky and wrenching to this wild energy in a flash. See it! At least go look at the trailer. It has novel writing and punk rock and suicide and pretty blond boys. I MEAN REALLY.

I will point out that when people in movies write novels they send one manuscript to one place in a nice yellow envelope and then it's either accepted or not and that's it.

But maybe in Norway there are no agents and only one publisher.

Here are many many photos from the VERY AWESOME second night of the The Bad Things extravaganza. I would say more but if I don't fall to sleep this very second I might die.

I would just like to humbly point out that I own the coolest tshirt ever.



In other news, yesterday, after hanging out at Pike Place Market all day with Barb, I met the wondrous Lisa and Paul, Lisa being the most adorable girl ever and someone I've known online for 500000 moons, for dinner.. Lisa does cool fashion things and flies off regularly to Hong Kong and Paul has done surgical types of things with snow leopards and owls.

I MEAN REALLY. Look how cute they are.



We then met Barb and Brenda and all went to see The Bad Things at the Columbia City Theater, which was AWESOME despite the terrible sleep deprivation that kept whispering in my ear, trying to lull me into other worlds. The theater was old timey and glamorous, there were 50000 boys in pinstriped suits and fedoras, girls in fancy dresses with flowers behind they ears, and the two opening bands -- The Peculiar Pretzelmen and Miss Mamie Lavona and Her White Boy Band -- were great. I MEAN GREAT. If I didn't rhapsodize about mundane things all the time I might possibly be able to find the language to convey how awesome these bands were, but all I can say is they were very cool, very funny, and did many things involving spoons, garter belts, dangling frying pans, and just heaps of plain old glamour and angst. Then the silks came down and this wondrous girl did a lovely aerial act while Beirut played in the background, and then the Bad Things came out in all their glory. The lead male singer plays accordion, the lead female singer dances around with all kinds of little contraptions, including at one point this corset thing with jutting silver bra-ish cups that she played with spoons.. The aerialist came out for several songs and twisted about in the air in front of them... And it was all just exactly what I love, and tonight we see it all again.

Here be some photos.

So yesterday Barb and I went off and met the exceedingly lovely Cherie Priest in a quaintly named coffee shop and we wooed and were wooed by her for many hours during which secrets were exchanged and blood bonds were made and ghost stories were told and steampunk was defined and super glamorous and badass photos like the following were a taken:




We then all went to Cherie's smashing abode, where books were given and ginger ale was consumed and the most slutty and luxurious old time movie star cat Spain lolled and even agreed briefly to accessorize my already extremely fashionable ensemble. Look at her gazing up at the heavens! All she needs is some bon bons and satin sheets and possibly a bathtub full of bubbles.



After ripping ourselves from Cherie's couch and shedding many tears whilst doing so, we went and consoled our broken hearts by buying things and drinking things and elegantly posing with said beverages




before meeting Layne, who by the way wrote this book, and his awesome 9-year-old son Sam for a lovely Thai dinner. Sam, who is my new best friend, is a genius who will some day rule the world, and he is an exceptionally good model to boot.




Barb and I then vamoosed to Georgetown where we spent many more hours hanging out with her friends Padraig and Tony at a bar aptly names CALAMITY JANES, and talked about all manner of things including crow funerals and hissing bats and Wisconsin fireflies and wily swallows and up-to-no-good pigeons and swatter-eluding flies and really, I am not sure if any winged creature went unacknowledged or if any naturalist strain in our hearts was left unplunged. I ended up talking to Tony, who is extremely beautiful, until the wee hours of the morning and learning all about dub... something and many many other mind altering things. I would of course have many photos of said fellow naturalists but my camera rooooodly and selfishly ran out of power, I think just to prove a point. We are going to have to have a little talk later so that this does not happen again.

Also: I am extremely sleep deprived. And quite, quite charmed by Seattle generally.

The end.

So I'm in Seattle for the first time in 5000 years--I was last here in 1993 maybe, I think, or maybe 1995 or 6--and last night Barb and I hung out with her friend Brenda, who lives in this wondrous converted brewery in a sweeping raw space filled with art and antique compasses and Brenda's this slip of a thing with this sweet high girly voice but she can build herself a motorcycle and wire a space with electricity and do things with drywall and concrete and on top of that she can fly ultralight planes and one time she made an emergency landing in a pasture full of cows. The three of us hung out and ate tater tots, which mysteriously seem to be very popular here, and then went to this glamorous Dietrich-y bar where we met up with Barb's very sweet and musicianly friend Brian and my rugged and writerly friend Layne and proceeded to have much fun. Brian was gonna put Barb and me up but I have relocated myself to a HoJo's near the airport, on a strip of highway lined with little motels that look like good places to murder people in and restaurants with signs advertising cocktails, due to Brian's catly ways. I do love me a cheap motel though, I always have and always will.

Here is evidence of all wrongdoing:










The end.

I am sitting in the Harrisburg airport with Barb, after having driven over last night and staying with her brother Bobby, who was at work, and his girlfriend Delva. Bobby might have the BEST HOUSE EVER. All huge and clean and gleaming and wooden, with antlers everywhere. He has a big comfy couch with arms in the midst of it that PULL DOWN and have little cupholders in them. In front of this couch is a large coffee table that you can somehow raise up and pull into you, so that you do not have the inconvenience of sitting forward or bending down to get something from the table. He has a big screen TV upon which the best show ever Project Runway was playing. The moment we walked in Delva took out 50000 piles of food from the refrigerator and told us how bad she felt that she didn't have more. She took out bins of meatballs and chicken and burgers and melon. She put out plates of cheese and crackers. She opened a big bottle of wine. She sat us at the couch. A very-much-a-player pug dog Josh inserted himself between Barb and me on the couch and whilst trying to partake of her meatball sandwhich smoothly stuck out his paw and placed it on my knee. We slept in a huge king bed that was at least a mile off the ground. Next to the bed was a tiny fridge filled with beer and soda. Delva gave me one of those long pillows that stretch the length of your body and I almost died of happiness. I REALLY LIKE PILLOWS.

We are now waiting for a delayed flight to Philly, and there will get a flight to Seattle... but I secretly suspect we should have stayed in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Forever.

The end.

I'm just gonna say. Sitting here all day at this desk staring at this screen and writing is not actually something I love, at all, and actually I think it's weird and I don't relate when writers talk about how much they love writing, I think it's tedious and, well, DISORIENTING for a gal like myself who might like to be more grounded in this world and not less so... HOWEVER. When one is writing a novel and sees the end of said novel suddenly looming into view, like the whole thing spread out clear as day just with a buncha holes that you know exactly how to fill.. WELL. Even tho the fillin of said holes will take hours and hours and hours of being alone and being crazy when you COULD be watching Law and Order or doing something in the world at large.... Well. It is still some damn exciting.

I AM SO CLOSE!

The end.