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June 14, 2005

Iced Tea

I love iced tea. Or "ice tea," as most people write it in the midwest. I like it with lots of crushed ice. I never put sugar in it. As a kid, iced tea was all I ever drank. I don't remember anyone ever pouring a glass of water in our house; instead, we all poured glasses of iced tea. My mother bought instant Nestea or Lipton in the screw-top cylinder glass bottles. Whether you added water to the tea crystals, or tea crystals to the water, you always got floating brown lily pads of excess tea, floating at the level of liquid. I ate these, and they made soft, luscious crunches. Today, I guess that by the time I was 15 I'd had more caffeine than most Brazilian coffee growers. Maybe that's why I can't tolerate caffeine now, and can only drink green tea, or regular tea in very small doses. Why am I writing about this? Because it's hotter than hell in Boston right now, and all I can do is lie in bed with the fan blasting across my skin, drinking iced tea.

I drank iced tea a lot recently. This is because I went back to Kansas, where it's served everywhere (and where the bottled iced tea is often unsweetened, unlike here on the east coast where they cram sugar into EVERYTHING). I was in Kansas for my high-school reunion. I had a pretty good time, and it was wonderful to see all my old Little River, Kansas classmates (with the exception of one homophobe)... although, upon returning, my body went numb with nostalgia and/or depression.

But, great things are still happening with the Mysterious Skin film and its reviews, so that's been keeping my head up a little. Yesterday, for instance, we found out that at the Seattle Film Festival, Gregg won Best Director, and Joe won Best Actor. I'm elated for both of them. This weekend, I'm off to Provincetown (via ferry!) for their Film Festival, where I'll do the intro and Q&A for the film's screening. Right now, Mysterious Skin is showing in 14 cities; on June 24th, it will spread out to many more US spots.

I had iced tea before I went to a great reading tonight, for the new memoir, THE TRICKY PART: ONE BOY'S FALL FROM TRESPASS INTO GRACE, by Martin Moran. This book shares some of the issues and themes and obsessions of Mysterious Skin, but it also has a wholly original and disarmingly funny force running through it, too. I have also started reading ONE OF THESE THINGS IS NOT LIKE THE OTHER by my pal D. Travers Scott, and GHOST GIRL, a stellar book of poems by Amy Gerstler, with whom Michael and I had dinner when we were recently in LA. "Poems" doesn't seem the right thing to call Amy Gerstler's work; thankfully, they don't at all resemble the stale, alienating poetry of so many other current poets I've tried to read lately. Amy's writing is totally genius. And while I'm at it, I have to also recommend the poetry of Brigit Pegeen Kelly. Grand, nightmarish, mythical, and epic without soaring too high off the earth. The stuff in THE ORCHARD is mindblowing.

You know what-- if you're paying attention to my recommendations, then please read anything and everything by Daniel Woodrell, as well. TOMATO RED is my favorite.

Hey, Dennis Cooper has a weblog now. It's just as fiery and engaging and cool as his books.

Elyse Sewell has a blog, too. I have a huge crush on her. She got third place in the first season of AMERICA'S NEXT TOP MODEL, which the moronic VH-1 marathoned this weekend.

Here's a new online T-shirt company that rocks hard.

And this is a really fascinating way to kill some time.

I'm going to have some iced tea. Then I'm finally going to sleep.