Lame En Fuego:

What's lame is when something you've never second-guessed puffs up in flames. What I mean is that I never ever even entertained the thought that El Sombrero wouldn't exist. For instance, it's like thinking about gravity just all of a sudden not being around anymore. You don't think about that. You accept the fates of our heliocentric world. You say to yourself, there is gravity, there has always been gravity, we will never be free of its horrendous shackles. Ball up, ball down. Now until eternity.

So too with El Som. Number five, light on the lechuga, all rice, no beans por favor. Chicken Sombrero Burrito. Root beer. And yes, more salsa. Always more salsa.

But now it has gone up in flames. Now sixty firefighters have come and doused it with water. Now there is no more roof and there is no more mural and there is no more lollipop dish.

Which, I guess, isn't entirely true. There is El Sombrero Number Two over on Artesia. And, surely, El Som will soon be back with the same food and the same cooks and Jose will still work there with his big thick moustache. This will come to pass. In fact, being so far away for so many months, I'll probably not even notice that it's gone. I'll notice new paint. A new stucco, flame-retardant building. I'll notice those but won't much mind.

But:

There is something frustrating about the booths being gone. About the tables being different. About my children never getting to experience El Som like I did. Beacuse it isn't just about food, somehow. It's also about the fact that that building held many moments of my life. Dinners with my sister and mother, me pouring salt on to a wetted napkin upon which I'd rub my chips. Eating cheese quesadillas or McDonald's because I hated Mexican food. Or then getting it, realizing Mexican food really is the only food you need, and ordering in Spanish because Ms. Galvin gave us extra credit. Or those group dates there. The salty smell of that tiny bathroom.

What's lame is having the husk swapped out for something I never wanted or desired. I was fine with the old husk. The husk that burned last night for five hours. That husk, that sturdy restaurant shell, it served me well and housed my growing up nicely. I think it would have housed many more growing ups with great success. But it will never get the chance.

Sentimental, but, well, lame.
Lame lame lame.
Etceteras.
Scooters razed.
Now this.

Shitty,
Al

I Read Books, Too (Two)

It seems that all I do is read. I read a lot. When people ask me what school here is like, it isn't something I feel easily translates for most people. It's not really "school," per se. Or, rather, not any type of "school" that I am used to. Mostly I just mean that everything is lax. The daily demands of each class are rather slim-to-none. Homework is usually allowed to come late. Professors are not strict about dates or following directions. Basically, school here is whatever you make of it. For me, that means reading. And reading and reading.

Mostly, before college, my book reading was limited mostly to novels. Ambrose Bierce helped me appreciate the short story in my high school days when I read "An Occurance at Owl Creek Bridge." I just had my students (yes, I teach!) read it and I think they got a lot out of it. Or enough out of it. Still, as wonderful as that story was for me, I never "got into" the short story writers. Especially, I never got into the short story writers of modernity. Since heading off to Princeton, and especially now at Columbia, I've come to champion and acknowledge the short story as the metaphorical fastball of fiction. If you don't have a good working knowledge of the short story, or the modern short story writers that are helping to reformulate just exactly what fiction ("fiction") can do, I guess I just figured I'd throw some names out there. Hooray. If nothing else, my Uncle Jerry will get some mileage out of these names.

I read about four or five short stories a day it seems. I can't sleep lately. I get up and head to the pot and prop a short story on my lap and away I go. These are the new breed of short story homeboys that I'm jocking like platinum grills:

a) Kevin Moffett - this dude just won the 2006 Iowa Short Fiction Award for Permanent Visitors. His stories take our world and offer a hitch, offer caveat, slash it open with exacto knife slashes. Consider "The Medicine Man," wherein a twenty-something dude attempts to save his sister's fetus via a Safeway employee. Real good.

b) Deb Olin Unferth - besides having a great name, this woman writes some of the best short short fiction I've managed to down lately. She's an "up and comer" with a book due out in the Spring from McSweeney's (more on them later). She's given us a story for the Columbia Journal (where I'm fiction editor) and it's all about dead composers. She works little turns of magic.

c) Rebecca Curtis - an admitted bias here: she is my teacher. However, she's great. Objectively speaking, even. She got into the "new fiction" edition of the New Yorker and, from that, has launched herself into a book of short stories that will be out next year. She either writes simple, realistic stories (which I don't like so much) or really wacky, odd, topsy-turvy stories (which I love) like this one: "The Wolf at the Door"

d) Gabe Hudson - the book you're going to want to read is Dear Mr. President and you're going to want to read it as soon as possible. The stories in that book are all reminiscent of the title story, stories that are written using the guise of the first Gulf War to fully explore exciting emotional realities of modern day living. He's really great. Again, sort of biased as he was teaching at Princeton when I left, but his expertise can't be denied. Let yourself be swept away!

e) Courtney Eldridge - I read "Young Professionals" the other day and was pissed off because she made writing seem so goddamn easy. The book is Unkempt and it is better than most sex and all chocolates.

f) Robert Coover - by far one of the greatest living writers still tapping away at the keyboards. Pricksongs and Descants is the golden orb upon which I often slather. It is sitting next to my bed. He is the super creator of modern day wonderfulness.

g) George Saunders - it feels silly to me that people might not have read this man. It's hard to think I hadn't until last year. He's a master. Everything flows from the voice of his narrators, the verve of the prose. Each story is like a rollercoaster. You can't stop until you are done and you don't ever want it to stop. CivilWarLand In Bad Decline, Pastoralia, and In Persuasion Nation are all ready for you to read. Do it!

h) McSweeney's - I said I'd mention it later and now it's later. Read McSweeney's. It's tough for me to jump onto a bandwagon and continue to toot its horn even after so many others have joined the float and have slowed down the journey so, but this is really the Bible of current short fiction. McSweeney's is a publishing house run by Dave Eggers (author of the much-heralded A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius) which publishes great new novels that big publishers are afraid to take risks with. They also publish a quarterly journal that features all of the authors I've mentioned so far. Check the thing out. Get into it.

I guess, lastly, I also wanted to mention this book:



It is called The Loser and it is by Thomas Bernhard. One day he will be touted as a modern master. He writes long, digression-filled interior monologues that, while sometimes taxing and difficutlt to wade through, somehow manage to explain the absurdities of living a human life with great complexity and accuracy. I read this book in two nights. I will soon finish reading all he's ever written.

So there you are.
Some more books to read.
Some authors to explore.

I've got a lot more stuff to put up here: a new camera, a new visitor to the pad, a trip back home for Thanksgiving.

Soon,
Al

Halloween Get-Up

As a child, I spent my Halloween nights over at my Aunt Suzie's. There, my cousins Mikey and D.C. and John would roam the streets of Torrance and come back with Big Brown Bags full of candy. I never ate much candy. I still don't eat much candy. But there was something not-to-be-missed about those Halloweens. There was a guy who always decked his house out to the nines; cobwebs, mummies, dry ice. It smelled like Halloween back then. My costumes (Zorro, Skeletor, a ghost) would have glowstick sauce on them and my tongue would be coated with the taste of toxic chemicals from biting through the plastic.

Once my mom took me to the Galleria mall dressed as an ewok. I was very little.

Or Halloween was also Knott's Scary Farm when I was a teenager. Trying to figure out if I was more scared of the shaker can sounds clamboring from the darkness or my own sweaty palms. I remember making out with Katherine Caballero on the dinosaur ride which, sadly, is very much now a real ghost. Or taking big charter bus excursions to the theme park and having all these kids get drunk in the back. And then having to be the one of the only sober ones and running through the park rounding everyone up because the Asian driver wouldn't leave without everyone checked off his list. I felt like a parent that night, which sucked. But also there was the fact that I lost my virginity that night. The good with the bad.

Halloween is intertwined with Dani's birthday, as well. I used to resent that.

And I was always home for Halloween during college because we had Fall Break. No one else was home, usually, and so I'd hand out candy to the three or four groups that straggled to our home.

Lately, my mom has been going nuts with decorating for Halloween. I wonder if it makes her feel better about something missing in her life. Or if it's just nostalgia. I like that it makes her happy.

So, anyway, I hate Halloween these days. It doesn't smell like Halloween anymore. Just Red Bull and vodka. And I don't want to sound like a prude scrooge, but I'm pretty annoyed with the crotch grinding, skimp clothing festival it becomes at this age. I was at parties all over this city this past week, at some West Villiage fancy shmancy apartments and at a place called Crobar (which played unce music until I had a headache), none of them actually on Halloween, and I didn't have any fun. The Villiage Halloween Parade was interesting, but just bodies and bodies and bodies rubbing on mine with this slow friction I can't stand. Bahumbug.

I hear Sydney was a cat. I would have liked to have seen that.

Anyway, I bought some warm clothes for the coming winter. And that was my costume. Just me keeping warm. My Halloween get-up: