arrBlogEntry = new Array(); arrBlogEntry[230] = new Array('2007.06.13', 'Some notes on Dutch TV Monday night:

1. At 20.00, prime time, they had a show in which they sent a blonde Dutch guy in to various international companies to rent a car. Even though he was underage, it was no problem, at each place he could rent a car. Then they sent in a Moroccan guy, and nowhere, nowhere would they rent him a car. They didn\'t even ask his age, they just said: \'No cars available\'. This is in Amsterdam, and it was shocking. Even more shocking, they interviewed one of the women who refused the Moroccan guy the car. The interviewer was reasonably neutral, asking questions like, \"Hoe kan dat? (How can this be?)\" And the woman, whose face was blurred out, threatened him. And then they called the companies\' various head offices. So what did EuropaCar do? They told the interviewer that in the five minutes between the blonde Dutch guy and the Moroccan guy, their sophisticated computerized rental system had updated their inventory and there were in fact no more cars available. Of course we saw that the woman didn\'t check her computer, but ok.

2. I was very impressed with this show. What would they do next? A 20 minute segment on buying a bra that fits properly. With models showing off, uh, what not to do.

3. I changed the channel, and was ecstatic to see that Are You Hot? is back on. I remember the first time I saw this show, watching this man who was skinny (far less skinny than me) but really well-built, muscular, and Lorenzo Lamas (the Renegade) said to him: \"Dude, to compete at this level you\'re going to have to put on at least 20 pounds.\" The compassion. What cracked me up this time was how skinny the women were supposed to be, and how over-muscled the men were supposed to be, and what would happen if you put them together? They would be totally incompatible.','','', ''); arrBlogEntry[231] = new Array('2007.06.14', 'I did actually make it to see the Hannah Hoch exhibit at the Berlinische Galerie. It was really, really good. The entire collection is fantastic, the building really gorgeous and open. And I learned that after her \"formative\" relationship with Raoul Haussman, she met a Dutch poet, Til Brugman, and they lived together in Den Haag and Berlin for 5 years. Funny thing: in maybe 10 percent of the literature I\'ve since Googled about them, does it say: \"lesbian relationship\". In the context of her political views, self-identification as a feminist, gendered critique of Dada, and so forth, this might be important, but in most cases, the literature notes her male lovers, but she and Til simply \"lived together\". Hmmm. I will try to find some of her poetry.','','', ''); arrBlogEntry[232] = new Array('2007.06.26', 'if you\'re riding your bike in the rain, and you\'re properly attired, and instead of thinking, this sucks, i have to ride my bike in the rain, and i look like a rat in a new york city toilet, you think, this is cool, i\'m riding in the rain, it\'s kind of nice...','','', ''); arrBlogEntry[233] = new Array('2007.07.21', 'i\'ve been off the grid for the last month, preparing my last days in a\'dam and having a few weeks in the US. I\'m busy acclimatizing and dealing with major culture shock, and so haven\'t really been able to communicate. I arrive in Los Angeles next week, and will start up again then...suffice it to say that everything has gone well, tristen\'s wedding in SF was awesome and SLC is pretty interesting, got a place to live, and now on Orcas Island, which is breathtaking, and we saw the biggest black slug...','','', ''); arrBlogEntry[234] = new Array('2007.07.27', 'Dear All,

I (temporarily) leave Amsterdam with much hope and some sadness. While I don\'t think anyone really has enough time to say goodbye to a city and the community they have created over 8 years, the last month in Holland went by especially quickly - i didn\'t have my last day of work until the Friday before I left, and there was the small business of trying to buy an apartment. I am so pleased to announce that it does (fingers crossed) appear that we have secured funding, and we look forward to a short move from our corner of De Baarsjes to Bos en Lommer. Laura, who has done the majority of the work, slugging around from potential home to potential home, has now occupied herself with books on renovation, agonizing choices over the relative merits of polished concrete and stainless steel. We are looking into how to make our place more eco-friendly and power efficient; I am especially optimistic about the new innovations in animal slavery. Apparently you can hook up a habitrail to some circuits so that your hamsters can generate power for you while running on the wheel.

But seriously, to all my A\'damians, Berliners, and other Yuropean folk: Thank you. Thank you for teaching me, bettering my life, and being part of my community. I\'ll see you in October!

The next few days will chronicle the last two weeks in the US; the weird culture shock, the unexpected, and the generally everything-going-fine. I feel like for the next weeks, I will have an \"outsider\'s\" view on America, which will become normalized over time. For now, I\'m sticking to what\'s strange. Tomorrow: San Francisco. But for now, how lucky I was to spend a few days with L\'s sis Priscilla and our two nieces, Kano and Maya:','','', ''); arrBlogEntry[235] = new Array('2007.07.29', 'Well, what to do when you get into SF for the first time in a year? You get a burrito? Drop off my bags, walk down Mission, listen to a Japanese-American guy in ska outfit and porkpie hat chatting with the counter guy about a drive-by they witnessed the prior day. Love, love the painting of the meat on a spit at El F-. Then going downtown, getting stuck in traffic. Why? The All-Star Game. Ugh.

Then, to be more a-merkin, we went to Walgreens, where we saw this:



Yes, the Barbie Pop Tart. You just don\'t realize how weird it is until you\'re away for a while.

Having said that, it is true that most places have such weirdnesses. This was a Hungarian brand of beer:



We had a wonderful and busy time in SF, thanks in part to the kindness of the proprietors of Eugenia Towers, Kurt and Tim and Ripley. Kurt is a wonderful composer ( www.kurtrohde.com ) with whom Laura and I are beginning a collaboration - hopefully to come to fruition in 2009 or 2010.

Then we headed down to Carmel for T\'s wedding, which, I must admit, took place at a Clint Eastwood owned place. It was heaps of fun and I got to see many many old friends and I was very happy and not altogether sober.','','', ''); arrBlogEntry[236] = new Array('2007.07.30', 'Salt Lake City, round 1: I must admit that I did not have high expectations of Salt Lake City. Perhaps it was the fact that everyone had to make their Mormon joke, or simply that it\'s a small town. And part of it was that, when I called landlords the week before I arrived in SLC to make appointments to see apartments, they basically laughed at me for doing things so far in advance - every single one just said to call them when I arrived. So I had a feeling that SLC was working on a small-town scale. On the other hand, we were working on a short time schedule - we only gave ourselves 2 work days to find a place for me to live.

Having said that, after 48 hours I was very presently surprised. Salt Lake is beautiful, with charming houses, local coffeehouses, canyons, snowy mountains on one side and the Great Salt Lake on the other. The air is clean, the city manageable - we could get through to downtown in 25 minutes. And we found good food, a Wild Oats health food store, even good sushi - though I won\'t be able to afford it on my PhD salary.

Finding a good place was more difficult than we imagined. People didn\'t return our calls, and with only 2 business days, it was tight. By the middle of the second day, we had found 2 reasonable places, more expensive than we expected (550-600 dollars). What we found, however, was that the best way to look for places was simply to drive up and down the neighborhoods. Small town, not everything on the net. So at the end of the second day, we found a great place, and the landlord gave it to us on the spot - mostly because Laura is so charming and we are a couple married by the grace of. Cheap, nice, in a good neighborhood, and the landlord has started to employ various eco-devices on the place (including heated floors!) In return, I get to water the lawn and shovel snow in the winter. So we walked away very happy. I hope to replace the wallpaper with some kind of skull print, and then everything will be perfect. Thanks to Corbin and Nori for taking care of us!



Note to all: do not try to find a place to live in 2 days; it is a bad idea.

On the other hand: SLC is still a small town. Case in point: Laura was reading an article about how a Utah legislator bought 100 tickets to Sicko. This legislator invited all the other members of the legislature to see the movie for free. The newspaper article detailed the event; approximately 10 legislators attended the screening. But here\'s the fun part: the article interviewed a legislator who was opposed to the \"media stunt\", who was, in fact, vehemently opposed to any state support of the health care system. So what does she say: she compares Michael Moore to Joseph Goebbels - presumably because he was Nazi Minister of Propaganda, not because they are/were both reasonably overweight. I hope that not having a television will help shield me from such craziness - a world where giving insurance to all people is still considered \"communist\".','','', ''); arrBlogEntry[237] = new Array('2007.07.31', 'Orcas-Seattle: A long journey from SLC to Orcas Island, airplane and three-hour shuttle and ferry and car ride. Had a lot of fun pulling an OJ at the airport, loading all of our bags onto a SmartCart and running through SeaTac to catch the shuttle. The plan: to meet my family and my sister\'s fiance\'s family at their place on Orcas Island, which is this amazingly gorgeous island near the Canadian border. Immediately I felt very Pacific Northwest, lots of trees and people with beards: it is against Mormon doctrine to sport any facial hair, so this earthiness came as a bit of a surprise. By the time we got on the ferry, L- and I started to feel some of the stress melt away; helped along by a healthy dose of Ivar\'s Clam Chowder (est. 1938).

Chris\'s family has owned property on Orcas for 100 years now, were raised there, and they have a fantabulous place right by the ocean, where they can comb for beach glass and let their amazing sheepdogs (puff and pooky?, shown here) run free:



They were huge and messy and lovable and they would take up our entire apartment in Amsterdam. It was great to meet Chris\'s fam. They are generous and well-read and do-it-self all at the same time. Orcas itself is woodsy, a strange mix of locals who insist on driving the speed limit despite there being only 2 cops on the island, and well-to-do Microsloth types who have more recently bought land here. Beth and Chris had just arrived from their home in Mumbai, and have brought me barf-bags from all the low-cost carriers in India: I think I might have to start a barf-bag West collection. They also bought me some excellent chutney: thanks!!!

We were sad not to go kayaking, as this was the site of L- and I\'s first ever vacation, and as Beth and Chris are preparing for their wedding here next year, I was quite nostalgic and happy for them. Since Mom and Dad have now been married 40 years and L- and I almost 9 (shocking!), I feel like a bit of a generational link for Beth and Chris. I am also thinking a lot about being their officiant, and I am utterly honored to have them ask me (they claim it\'s cause I\'m the only one who won\'t freak out) to marry them.

It was too short on Orcas, and soon we all went back down to Seattle: Beth and Chris returned to India, while Mom and Dad headed back to LA. Ted and Carolyn, respective step-father and mother of Chris, graciously allowed us to stay with them (and the dogs) in Seattle for a few days - these days would be the last that Laura and I would see each other, and also the first in the whole two weeks that were not occupied with some great stress (housing) or family gatherings. So what did we do? Not a lot. Yoga, thai food, bookstores. In some ways, we were reconnoitering (sp?) Seattle, which really seems like a great city - despite the same kinds of gentrification/hipification we have seen in SF. Lots of bands, incredibly eco-conscious, close to the water and reasonably laid back. Laura, who had lived here some 15 years ago, explored her old haunts, and there seems to be coffee everywhere:



I was incredibly grateful to have some quiet time with Laura. Regardless of my ability to hide it, these last twelve months have been incredibly stressful: preparations for graduate school, acceptances, rejections, Laura\'s interview at UCSD, buying a home, and preparing for these huge life changes: going back to the US, being in a PhD, being apart from Laura for huge chunks of time, and trying to do all this on top of a full time job and my curator-ship at wordsinhere. It has been so challenging, and while I am so full of hope and excitement for the future, it\'s still a little scary-especially being apart from Laura, who will be based in Amsterdam this year. I am so grateful to have time to connect with her before she flew to Texas, I to Los Angeles, and I feel very lucky to still feel quite utterly in love.','','', ''); arrBlogEntry[238] = new Array('2007.08.01', 'Elliott Bay/Left Bank Bookstores, Seattle - Because it has been so busy this last year, I have done precious little writing. In some ways, this has been a necessary sacrifice, the alternative being to not sleep. On the other hand, I tend to go, how do I say this, utterly insane when I don\'t have time to write. I have predictably waited for a time where I had the physical and emotional space to start writing again. Finally, in Seattle, I felt that I could *afford* to start thinking about writing, and, by extension, graduate school, and this thinking began in what is always an ambivalent trip to a very good book store. It\'s a strange, bitter, optimistic feeling to (voluntarily) situate yourself in a room where there are thousands of products and none of them belongs to you, none of them created with your hand (laptop). And 80 (90) percent of them are so bad, you wouldn\'t even use them to fuel your campfire. But you (switching to 2nd person) take so much pleasure in the wonderful works, the treasures, the difficult books that found their way to print, the impossible odds and the brilliant people who have zero commercial viability - 1 book makes it all worth it. And it helped jumpstart the gears of the brain, to start connecting a to b, and beyond. C, even.

I decided that at Elliott Bay Books, I would limit myself to 1 book, as well as a book (that I will be reading in Melanie Rae Thon\'s fiction workshop) called The Spell of the Sensuous by David Abram. Imagine when my surprise when the worker bee took me not to the fiction section, or even memoir, but to the nature writing section. I don\'t know what this means for my class, but I am seriously intrigued how we\'re going to incorporate this and Al Gore\'s An Inconvenient Truth into our writing practice.

Parenthetical: Melanie Rae Thon is a wonderful writer - check her work out now.

I tried to limit myself to one book, wound up buying two: Rebecca Solnit\'s A Field Guide to Getting Lost and George Saunders\' Pastoralia. Since I\'m about to read a lot of fiction, I wanted to read work in another genre. In that vein, Rebecca Solnit\'s book is more or less about how to get lost in a city. This ties into a short story I am thinking about, and, more particularly, the Situationist concept of the derive, which, building on and turning away from Rimbaud\'s flaneur, explores how a particular mode of walking a city has psychic (psycho-geographic) effects. The novelist Will Self has recently taken to walking from the airport to his hotel in various cities - from JFK into Manhattan, from Heathrow into London proper. (and, in Los Angeles, my friend and artist Sara Wookey has her own Drift LA project.

So that was Elliott Bay. Then we went to Left Bank, which is this politically-oriented bookstore right at the foot of Pike\'s Market. I wasn\'t expecting to buy anything there: indeed, I was having more fun looking at the crazy political t-shirts and reading about DIY projects and the pointers on the ceiling to the anarchist section. But: one of the prominently displayed books in the fiction section was, to my great surprise and joy, a collection of performance texts by my old friend and colleague Justin Chin. Justin was one of the other performance artists in SF when I was getting my MA degree; a co-conspirator of sorts. It was a great pleasure to see the book in print (wonderfully titled Attack of the Man-Eating Lotus Blossums). Also a surprise to see myself listed in the credits. Call it narcissistic, but it feels really good to be part of a diffuse community of friends and colleagues who are having their works published. It may be trivial, but it made me feel that my small contribution to a body of work, a body of thought, had been noted, recognized. And dammit, Justin\'s collection is great.

One freaky side result of not writing lately is that I have a large number of works in progress, which makes it easy to start working again. It also is an interesting barometer; you can see what you\'re obsessing over at any given time. After doing an inventory of the seven pieces I have in progress, it seems that I\'m really thinking about families, aging, and dying - how original(note to self: a friend asked me last night if I had had my mid-life crisis yet, and I vehemently said I hadn\'t, but maybe, for me, it\'s an ongoing crisis, one that will manifest itself in binge book buying rather than buying a 5000 dollar Merlin). I was also thinking about a sort of mission statement I wrote many, many years ago - that I wanted to tell powerful, emotional stories, but I wanted to tweak formal rules to do so - and I still feel that way. I don\'t have any idea where that will take me, but that\'s still, I think, where I\'m going. We\'ll see.','','', ''); arrBlogEntry[239] = new Array('2007.08.03', 'Los Angeles - it so like so weird to be here. Maybe you lose sight of it when you live here, but it is really true that there are plastic surgery ads everywhere. And that no one walks - I have a 1-mile walk to the cafe, and I have 3-4 cars pull out of parking lots in front of me, making me go around them, each time. Drivers do immoral things: the Range Rovers park diagonal, taking up two spots at the shopping mall: impatients veer into the left turn lane, then go back into traffic at the intersection. By the same token, I am very happy to hang out at the pool, 95 degrees, chez Glick, with the extended Russian families. It is really true, now, perhaps always, that the Valley is a land of immigrants: Russian, Middle-Eastern, Latino. The most popular cafe by me is Israeli, the Mongolian BBQ next to the sushi bar. It reminds me of my September 11 Haiku:


Afghan restaurant
neon sign peeled away
now a kabob house

Other pleasures: turning on the TV at 1 in the morning and finding Boa vs. Python on the Sci-Fi Channel: driving home from Venice at midnight the following day and being stuck in traffic, not moving at all, for 45 minutes: going out for dinner to a Thai Vegan restaurant: seeing the Pacific two days in a row: driving around the Prius, which, being a hybrid, means you don\'t have to pay for parking meters; at the same time, you don\'t have access to the carpool lane. Go figure. life is good.

I have made a very important decision in my childhood branding and listening habits. I am, after 20 years, not going to listen to KROQ 106.7 (Rock of the 80\'s) any more. I spent my entire high school listening to KROQ, it is solely responsible for my New-Romantic sensibilities. I remember every DJ and their time slots. And whenever I came back to LA, I would turn on KROQ. In the last five years, however, I have come to the conclusion that: KROQ sucks. It does not rule. Perhaps it is simply a victim of national airwave consolidation, the oligopoly of radio, the big-business of getting a song onto the airwaves, but the fact is that they play the same really bad music that they played two years ago, and the bio-diversity of music is atrocious - I hear the same songs every 90 minutes. It breaks my heart, but I will not listen to KROQ any more. If any one has some good indie radio in LA, please tell me - I\'m desperate. ','','', ''); arrBlogEntry[240] = new Array('2007.08.05', 'Some notes on culture shock and America:

No one cares that you\'re from somewhere else, have lived somewhere outside of the US.
People are large.
Did I say that people were large?
The dumbing-down/anti-intellectualization of America within mass media is in fact true. Cases in point: radio commercial for new Pomegranate Fusion drink where they interview people, none of whom can pronounce the word pomegranate. Radio announcer (another station) talks about New Zealand, other announcer says that NZ is somewhere near Australia, maybe, or South Africa; he\'s not sure. Television announcer says the word gesticulate and other announcer asks if he can borrow the thesaurus, which, I suppose, is some word-eating lizard. The corollary that so many Americans (at least the media) is ignorant also seems to be true. Announcer on ESPN talks about the drug problems with the Tour de France and says: \"they should just shut it down, no one watches it anyway\". Hello, half the planet watches every minute of it. And this same announcer isn\'t requesting that they shut down baseball, right?

Having said that, I am deeply disturbed that The Chicken, Mikael Rasmussen, was kicked off the Rabobank (proud sponsor of Laura and Robert\'s mortgage!) racing team when he had the yellow jersey and would have probably won the Tour. The Chicken didn\'t return a positive drug test, but he did think he could get away with the fact that he said he was in Mexico before the Tour but was really in Italy, therefore missing a drug test. I was going through some nederlandse gevoel(Dutch Pride) until he got kicked out. Still, I was proud of the performance of the Rabobank team this year. Interesting that the US press didn\'t seem to care that although the winner of the Tour, Alberto Contador, was Spanish, he was working for the (American) Discovery Team - the same team that Lance worked for. Obviously team allegiances are less relevant than personal nationality. ','','', ''); arrBlogEntry[241] = new Array('2007.08.07', 'More notes on Americana: Went with Mom and Dad and a family friend to the Hollywood Bowl last week to see Michael Tilson Thomas conducting the LA Philharmonic for a pops concert: Bernstein, Copland, Gershwin. Not my cup of classical, but I had never been to the Bowl, and a good bonding point between Mom and Dad and me and (not present) Laura. The concert itself was fine, nicely played. At the start of the concert, MTT had the audience stand. I was confused. I had never stood before when a conductor came on stage. But we weren\'t standing for him, we were standing because the LA Phil was playing the National Anthem.

Even weirder: the end of the show. The last piece was Rhapsody in Blue, and really, I swear, the second the last note came out, a huge portion of the 10,000 strong crowd starting jetting for the exits. Clapping and walking at the same time. Total lack of respect, all to beat the traffic. Still, you should have seen the look on MTT\'s face. He was flabbergasted/ashamed/pissed. I think he had planned an encore, but then cancelled it - there was that confusion where orchestra didn\'t know whether to pack up or not.

Post-Script: Mom showed me a Los Angeles Magazine from the previous month where, in the Go Out LA Tips section, they actually recommend that you leave the concert early - before or in the middle of the last piece - to beat the traffic.

For whatever reason, people no longer respect the integrity of a Program, a holistic body of music carefully planned and ordered. One way or another, Angelenos are forfeiting the possibility of transformation through music in order to gain 10 minutes on their return trip.

The most interesting part of the program was when the Phil performed Copland\'s Abe Lincoln, with Gore Vidal reading the text. The text is primarily about Abe, and refers to his heroism, bravery, his vision of democracy - which most of the audience strongly related to. Gore Vidal has a strong, expressive voice which made the piece especially poignant and belies his physical appearance; he sits now in a wheelchair, which gave extra theatrical effect when he, after the piece and with the help of MTT, walked off the stage on his own two legs.

The whole thing got me to thinking: why is this audience so strongly in favor of this piece? Is it because they believe that our America, our current America, still holds Abe\'s beliefs as self-evident, its actions (the actions of the Bush administration) consistent with Lincolnian thought, or do they read the programming of this piece as a critique of contemporary America - that we have somehow lost the path espoused by Abe (can I call him Abe?) and that this piece is some kind of call to arms, a pointer of what we must, to be a true democracy, return to? Is land of the free, home of the brave interpreted to be who we are, or a nostalgic reminder of what we have (perhaps, if ever) been and have since lost?

On another note, I am glad to see that there is in fact a new movie called Ninja Cheerleaders.','','', ''); arrBlogEntry[242] = new Array('2007.08.19', 'It has been utterly hectic, getting all the stuff from storage in Salt Lake. So far, it has been really great, details to come. For now, because it\'s important to stay centered, I offer you these two yoga links: Christoga: Faith in Fitness and Bush Yoga - the leader of the free world demonstrating Yoga Poses.','','', ''); arrBlogEntry[243] = new Array('2007.11.03', 'Sorry about the 2 month hiatus! I can\'t really tell you all the things that have happened, other than it has been extremely busy acclimatizing to SL,UT. I am very happy here, and I promise I will be more forthcoming with blog postings, including some very curious retroactive bits. Meanwhile, here\'s my Halloween Costume (as Raggedy Andy Warhol).','','', ''); arrBlogEntry[244] = new Array('2008.07.18', 'A few notes on hiatus: First, sorry! Second, part of it was because I\'m exploring other site management options. In the last year, book reading has been replaced by Goodreads, Facebook has taken over, wordpress has started to do blogs, and no one but me writes these things by hand! So I haven\'t been sure what to do. Plus life has been nuts. Also I\'ve been looking at Joomla, a nice looking open-source content management system. which doesn\'t seem to work on my com. but anyway, this is all to explain the absence of blog cuteness...','','', ''); arrBlogEntry[245] = new Array('2008.07.19', 'You should go out and read Anne Carson\'s Autobiography of Red right now. Unlike anything I\'ve read...','','', ''); arrBlogEntry[246] = new Array('2008.07.20', 'Might as well be transparent. One other reason to play with the website is the removal of two of the main headers: poetry and novel. And it\'s not as if I have stopped writing in these labels. But the novel is on hold for the next year while I concentrate on shorter work - it will be my dissertation - and the poems. Well, funny thing about the internet, that publication locations are now starting to not accept work that have been published on the net - including your own site. So I\'ll keep you posted about poems, but I\'m taking down the complete poems. Odd...','','', ''); arrBlogEntry[247] = new Array('2008.07.22', 'When i go to museums, I often find one or two things that really catch my fancy, or surprise me - and are worthing checking out:

Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin: Cy Twombly
Tate Modern, London: works of Cornelia Parker
Hampstead Gallery, London: amazing dollhouse installation by Rachel Whiteread

It\'s also worth checking out the cool cool blog of super-architect Zaha Hadid','','', ''); arrBlogEntry[248] = new Array('2008.07.30', 'Orcas Island is amazing. Purple starfish!!!','','', ''); arrBlogEntry[249] = new Array('2008.07.31', 'Some things you have to check off when you are a foreigner coming into the US: Do you have a communicable disease: physical or mental disorder: or are you a drug abuser orr addict? Have you ever been or are you now involved in espionage or sabotage; or in terrorist activies; or genocide; or between 1933 and 1945 were involved, in any way, in persecutions associated with nazi Germany or its allies?','','', ''); //this is the syntax for adding a link that opens a new window. //Label name //Last Page //arrBlogEntry[240] = new Array('2007.08.05', '','','', ''); //holland festival