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May 22, 2008

Belated Tour Diary, Part 2: Los Angeles

Just writing the title of this entry, I'm aware of how ridiculous "tour diary" sounds. It was only a book tour, nothing like the kind of tour I imagine rock stars head out for, every year or two. The main part of my travels only lasted a few weeks. Still, I have a sense of all the negatives that accompany this sort of thing: not quite as dramatic or depressing as the the way it's depicted in Meeting People Is Easy, but still, filled with nights of terrible sleep, days of awful eating habits (as I said before: tons of French fries; tons of beer), and the overarching loneliness of hitting one city per night.

L.A., however, was fun and sort of fantastic, partly because I made certain I could stay for 4-5 days, and partly because I stayed with my excellent friends Bryce and Eryk. (I discussed LA in an earlier entry, the only one I wrote while I was "on the road." You know, the one where I talked about HER walking into the L.A. bookstore. And oh yeah--for a better idea of Eryk's coolness, I recommend searching out the excellent TV show he's currently producing and co-writing.)

Below: Book Tour Animal Bedmate #2, the lovable and gorgeous GRETA, Bryce & Eryk's dog, and #3, IGGIE, their cat.

The LA weather was stellar. Eryk made an excellent dinners. Daily we walked past the houses of Mark Ruffalo and Cheri Oteri. I drove my rental car to Beverly Hills to meet with my new film agent for the first time. My skin broke out in a weird rash. The air smelled like lemons.

The Book Soup event was small but cozy. I finally got to meet my email pal Matthew Allard face to face, and while he was every bit as kind and handsome as I expected, he was also taller, which I didn't expect. Also in attendance were Amy Wallace, which thrilled me because I've been obsessed with the Book of Lists series that she co-authored ever since I was ten years old, and Scott Bradley, with whom Amy's co-authored the forthcoming The Book of Lists: Horror (in which I was lucky enough to be included... more on this in a couple of months!). Gregg Araki also showed--it was fantastic to see him, so many months after all the Mysterious Skin promotional traveling ended--as well as Beau Genot, who was the production supervisor (and one of the associate producers) on the film. I love Beau. Oh, and after the reading, Gregg, Bryce, Eryk, my friend Waleed Anbar and his boyfriend Hector, and I all went to dinner.

Bernard Cooper, my friend and also one of my favorite writers, not only came to the reading, he also threw me a party the following night at the amazing, amazing, AMAZING house he shares with his partner Joel. I can't even begin to explain how beautiful his house is, and how gracious these guys were for throwing the party. Bernard had even compiled a perfect soundtrack for the party which featured a lot of my favorite shoegaze & electronic bands and a few I hadn't heard before. I met some artists and writers I'd wanted to meet for ages, including visual artist Alexis Smith, and I was elated that one of my favorite poets in the entire universe, Amy Gerstler, showed up too. (Wanna know why I love her poems so much? Here's an example. And here's another. And yet another.)

Unfortunately, I was too excited and tipsy at the party to (a) have my photo taken with Amy or (b) get some good shots of Bernard's mansion and surrounding grounds. I did, however, get the photos below: (1) Timm Keppler and Matt Allard; (2) me with writer D. Travers Scott, whom I totally adore and hadn't seen in years; (3) Bernard and Joel's swell dog Cubby--unlike so many other animals on the book tour, I didn't get to sleep with this one; (4) Waleed with Bryce in Bernard's kitchen (sorry that this photo's a bit blurry).

During all my days in LA, I was continually Skype-ing with Michael, who was still in Brazil on his fellowship. Also around this time, my friend, writer Dennis Cooper posted a sweet blog entry about me on his site. He dug up a bunch of odd photos and web links and an early version of a scene from We Disappear before I revised. I'm forever grateful to Dennis. (Oh, and for "otto": this is for you).

Before I leave LA and go forward with San Francisco, I'll mention that one of my favorite reviews of the book appeared in the LA Times. The review was written by Sarah Weinman. Until recently, I'd only seen the online version; apparently the print edition also had an accompanying illustration by an excellent artist named Nathan Huang. That picture is below. If you've read the book, you'll see how carefully this reflects one of the recurring images.

Posted by scottheim at 10:54 PM | Comments (5)

May 07, 2008

(Intermission: Biggest Laughs on YouTube)

A little break from my ongoing travel diary: here are seven YouTube films that have made me laugh the hardest since I first started visiting the damn site.

(1) Marbles Harsgrove on e.coli (I've watched this about 500 times. Be sure to watch all the way to the end! And yes, it's an actress: Melissa McCarthy). "Looks like pork, Randy!":

(2) Pratfalls (I think it's the slow motion and sound effects that make me nearly die laughing):

(3) While we're on the "painful falls" topic, here's an unfortunate grape stomping incident:

(4) "Weiner Poopie":

(5) The late, great Anna-Nicole Smith, drunk:

(6) and (7) first, Marguerite Perrin, the "God Warrior":

...and a follow-up, as reinterpreted by the sublime NYC diva Candis Cayne (be sure to watch 'til the end):

Posted by scottheim at 05:12 PM | Comments (4)

May 05, 2008

Belated Tour Diary, Part 1: Boston and NYC

So. If I weren't so damned lazy, I would have been gradually chronicling the book events for We Disappear since early March, around the time the book actually hit the stores. After all, I had my PowerBook with me (even though the pin at the end of its power cord snapped off in the Portland airport... good thing I was still under AppleCare), so I could have been blogging during especially tedious flights. But I didn't do this; I kept thinking, "oh, I'll wait until late April when I'm back." Instead I waited until tonight, May 5th.

First of all, for the most part, it's been a terrific couple of months. The first pair of events were held in Boston, at two of its best independent stores: the Brookline Booksmith and Porter Square Books. Unfortunately, I forgot to bring my camera along to document things. On the Booksmith night, a gigantic thunderstorm swept through town, so it was especially nice that about 40 people showed up (a notable exception tonight, and on every night of the tour, was my #1 Michael, who had to miss these events because he was spending three months at Brazil's Instituto Sacatar on an artists' fellowship, won because he's so amazing). I was a little bit hopped-up on iced coffee, which the great events coordinator Brian Foley had handed me before I read; afterward, a group of us headed to the nearby Finale, which is mostly just desserts. This awful lack-of-dinner was only the beginning of a long series of bad dietary choices. Beer and French fries were soon to become my staples.

But I'm starting to digress. The crowd at Porter Square was just as nice, and this night, it wasn't raining. A bunch of my close Boston-area friends showed up. I'm pretty sure no single person came to both Boston readings, which was fine with me, considering I read the same two passages on both nights (the first 4-5 pages of the book, followed by the cafe scene in Chapter 3). By now I was starting to realize what the most-asked audience question at these events would be: "Why did you decide to use your own name and your mother's name in this novel?" I think I started shaping and reshaping a pretty good answer to that by the the first few readings or so.

Then I hit the road. Two CDs on my iPod rotation at the beginning of my travels: "Seventh Tree" by Goldfrapp and "Let the Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel" by Atlas Sound. And the book I began reading: So Long, See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell, which was so gorgeous and amazing that I think it's quite possibly one of my favorite books ever. I feel ashamed that it took me so long to finally read it.

After Boston, I took the train to New York. For the first night I stayed with my friends John and Smith on East 22nd Street. I finally met their bulldog Kate, who became the first in a long line of animal sleeping companions I experienced on this book tour. Kate breathes a little loudly and occasionally snorts in her sleep, but she's very snuggly and made me feel right at home. She's pictured below, on the morning after our sleepfest... click on a photo to see her closer up.

(Around this time, Michael Miller's swell Time Out New York article hit the newsstand, and that made me very happy.)

Before the NYC reading, I had a drink at this place with my editor Jeanette and publicist Heather. Then we walked over to the Chelsea Barnes & Noble. This night was one of the highlights of the tour. Since I had previously lived in the city for 11 years, I still know a lot of folks there, and I'd invited a large mailing list; in addition, this particular Barnes & Noble store was soon closing its doors, and I discovered that my reading was the very last that the store would ever have. So there was a really great crowd--one friend said he counted 145, while another said 170. I almost got a little teary-eyed.

This evening was filmed by my friend and fellow writer Rich Merritt (his book Code of Conduct is relatively new on shelves, as well). He's posted the reading in sections on YouTube; below is the embedded link to the first of these sections. (I didn't realize this until someone pointed it out, but apparently these films prove that I have a habit of running my hand along my just-recently-shaved head when I'm a little nervous in front of a crowd. UGH.)

I saw a ton of people from my NYC past (but didn't get to talk to many of them)--old housemates, old friends & boyfriends, email/Myspace/Facebook friends I'd only written to but never officially met. I signed books. I was pretty good at remembering names. One of my pens flooded ink on somebody's book. Brady and his mom Mary showed up; so did my wonderful agent Dorian Karchmar and a bunch of guys from my old NYC softball team. After the reading, a group of us headed over to some Chelsea hotspot to drink our night away. Hence the slightly blurry photos (of writer friends & the like--click on their links!) shown below: (1) Jon Barrett and Vestal McIntyre with Mitchell Waters; (2) Cole Rachel with John Grant; (3) Rod Keenan and Scott Savaiano; and (4) Tony Knight and me. Guess which six of us are originally from the Midwest?

Next installment: leaving New York for a sunny week in California.

Posted by scottheim at 11:02 PM | Comments (5)