The Other Side of the Wind aka Exceptional Night Here It Comes

Went to Sedona and ate an entire carne asada at my favorite eatery in order to impress my idols. I have had the most amazing time with them. One night earlier I had had about as much fun as one could possibly have at Mia's Lounge with Mia and others. Had my gourd extracted and thrusted to me on a plate of what I would consider songs to learn and live for. I truly could have died. Doris went to Phoenix and got me 1.75 liters of the best scotch you can buy for 22 dollars. I truly could have died. We looked for Orson Welles' mansion, this was back in Sedona. I don't know if we saw it considering we didn't know what we were looking for. David and Mia asked what celebrities live in Sedona and I said Orson filmed his last film here; the film that remains unreleased, but the mansion still exists. I googled OW and Sedona and Sycamore Road came up. It's available for $250k. The film stars Peter Bogdonavich who makes an appearance in a short story set in Flagstaff I am working on and it would be silly not to include Orson and the mansion in there as well. I am getting on the phone to his daughter after I post this. Boyracer opened with The Clean's Getting Older. They sort of stunned me and everyone else thoroughly from that point forward. We danced like we had pickled jalapenos in our dungarees. I liked what Ara did and Mia, having her sing in Mia's Lounge was out-of-this-world to me; to see David and her in in town was McCarthy-ish considering the Clarkenator was here and that blew my mind. OMG I swooned. Jen and Stew, how do they do what they do, but they do and they did and Bobby's band was the best bandage they ever done did too. Besides going out, I have been a horror movie whore: John Carpenter's Halloween is an annual event, it's as gnarly as it ever was; Return of the Living Dead, Re-Animator (double feature thanks to Corwin's NAU movie nights), a bunch of Val Lewton like Cat People and stuff starring Boris Karloff. I'd like Body Snatcher more if Karloff wasn't so damn unscrupulous. I said the same thing tonight with Doris Karloff my housemate, while watching Hostel, which is pretty damn good, and she said, “it's only a horror movie, stop being a pussy!” I also witnessed several Masters of Horror efforts, some of which are grisly

Tonight's the night and too much hair besides

Finally got a picture of my favorite motel that never quite works out for guests (the Saga is on Route 66 between campus and Goodwill Industries). Anyway went to randomly pluck a sentence from what I'm currently working on and then I realized it was too good to share so I thought I'd talk about my hair. It's gotten big. Mia, my Scorp sista in town, says she likes it, but she also says it's way huge Shane, and I tells her that I just got it cut a few weeks ago to which her droll hubby asides, did you have it all shaved off, insinuating that my hair grows back inhumanly fast. We had sui generis Mexican food with the boyracer pack: pork chimichangas with silantro cream sauce. Was telling my lunch companions today (not the same as my dinner comp about it and then they chuckled and I was like what, this is serious mexican biz and then they snickered and said, no, the way you pronounced cilantro (lon instead of lan). Whatever, I stormed off hoping to kill some time at the motion pictures, but the mid-life crisis movie with Steve Martin and those other guys wasn't playing at the time that I showed up to see it. I'm done writing, I'm considering reading. I am not drinking anything just yet. Tonight's the night that Mia's Lounge is graced by Mia Schoen herself. All of this is a long way to say that I probably won't ask my hairdresser back again. I miss Cat and Craig and the follicles crew. Tonight I get to see Boyracer too and David on drums and Jen on vocals and Ara is a kick in the pants hisself. Plus I don't have class tomorrow. I'm going to enjoy this. Let's make it precious already!

I just spent the last twenty minutes organizing a photo shoot between the cat and the cover of Scorpions' Blackout by instigating a fight!

I was a preteen metal maniac

Captain Berserko

Flanked by beloved volumes, McGuane is taking no shit for literature today; he won’t join the chorus of doom-mongering about the death of reading and the fate of fiction in a digital age. He tells a story about his recent fishing trip to Belize, how he saw all these media types, including Brokaw, hunched over their BlackBerries and iPhones, madly clicking away. And he told them, “You know, guys, my side — the novelists — are going to give a clearer picture of the truth years from now than you guys.” He asked them: What gives a richer portrait of the ’20s? Newsreels, newspapers? Or The Great Gatsby? “I strongly believe that literature can do something that nothing else can do,” he says, “and that is embody the human spirit. And whether or not literature gets marginalized by some machine, that or a hula hoop or a 3D movie, I couldn’t give a shit less.”

— from an article in Men's Journal entitled "Captain Berserko writes a Better Ending"

Too many eggs?

I'm out of practice eating eggs, but since I mainly cook alone, I figure I need to stay busy with a full dozen before the carton expires (I had 3). I'm 4 weeks into teaching. Hard to figure what my students think of me. They seem to like my curly hair and moustache because I ask them if they do and I did this anonymously in order to get honest answers and they wrote back things like, "it's boss" "stay classy san diego" and "I'm thinking of growing one myself (which is weird because I think this was from one of the girls and she certainly should not because it would look funny).

I wrote about my conception imagining how it transpired for my non-fiction class. I was trying to frame my birth around the theme "triumph over negligence." How no one wanted me and to tell this story, or essay, with a lot of playfulness and color. I sent Mom the first few pages, a quite mellow beginning before the manure hits the fan and she took umbrage:

"Sorry, you were conceived out of love not a bunch old squirrel calls!" she writes. "We sound like a couple of hillbillies. This had better be fiction!"

Later, she writes, "You need to take out the part about your own experiences. It's not tasteful or relevant." The part about my own experiences is basically everything else, so in effect what she is saying is trash it all. Writing is hard. I try awfully hard to be funny. I recall in our workshop how one of my classmates wrote about her Mother hitting her brother with a shovel full of dog shit and I got really jealous because those episodes are what make good non-fiction to me and I wish I had this experience in my life, but sadly we never had any pets.

I am getting excited about the Cannanes show with Mia Shoen and David Nichols, their original drummer, visiting. I met David in December 2001 (which means our tenth anniversary is coming up)...here's a nice photo of me and some cannane royalty eating thai in Sydney back in June. The Belster!!