Spindrift (My comic book)
3:47 PM PDT, April 29, 2007
http://www.projectbluerose.com/projects/spindrift/ links to a preview of the first seven pages of my latest project, Spindrift. It's a comic book written by myself, penciled and inked by Stephanie Folse, and toned by Vom Marlowe. There is a legend… Of a martial arts school hidden in the mountains of Tibet. Only the strongest will find it. Only the best will be accepted. Within its doors, bodies will be honed as weapons… And half-naked men will grapple and kiss. Thoroughly researched! Historically accurate!* Hot enough to melt the Himalayan snow! * Mostly. Available June 2007. If you’d like to be notified when pre-orders open, please e-mail rachelphoenix2@yahoo.com, or sign up for the mailing list on the website linked above. Thank you! The preview is inks only-- no tones, no dialogue. But it's probably pretty clear what's going on without any dialogue.
The Night Watch, by Sarah Waters
12:20 PM PST, February 10, 2007
I really like Sarah Waters. Her other novels all feature Victorian lesbians. Affinity is a very spooky, claustrophobic thriller/love story/spoiler about a medium imprisoned after a seance goes horribly wrong, and the woman who visits her in prison. Tipping the Velvet is a very fun picaresque which bounces from oyster bars to theatres to the rooms of kept girls. Fingersmith is a wild thriller which doesn't entirely make sense in places, but is one hell of a ride. I recommend all of those. Some people hate Affinity because of the DO NOT SPOIL ending, but it's my favorite.
The Night Watch is well-written and gripping, but lacks the excitement, passion, and sense of joyous discovery that permeate Waters' other books. (Even her tragedies seem like she had fun writing them, even if the characters didn't have fun living them.) It's about the intertwined lives of several Londoners after and during the Blitz, and is told backwards in time. This narrative device is not arbitrary, and provides for a few interesting discoveries and poignant moments; but it also makes the entire book quite depressing, as we already know how everyone will end up, and nobody ends up better than "maybe, just maybe, they will now take a tiny step toward improving their life," and some of them don't even get that. Several years after the war is over, everyone is miserable. Kay, the butch former ambulance driver, is mired in post-traumatic stress, depression, and agoraphoia; Duncan, the young former prisoner, is living with an old man and collecting worthless antiques; his sister Vi, a young woman, is stuck in a loveless and passionless affair with a married man; and Helen, whom I regret to say that I HATE, is obsessively jealous of her lover, the cold writer Julia whom I also kind of hate. After a long section exploring their lives, the narrative jumps back to the Blitz, and we see who they were before, what their relationships were, and some light is shed on the more myserious elements of the first section. At the end of this, the concluding section jumps back even further, to the start of the Blitz; the concluding scene is lovely, but intensely depressing because we know how that particular relationship worked out. I was fascinated by Kay, the heroic ambulance driver, her work rescuing victims of the air raids, and the society of butch volunteers she hung out with. I could have happily read an entire book about her and her friend Mickey, whom I loved with a passion disproportionate to her brief appearances. The other characters either interested me less, or their situations interested me less; the reason Duncan was in jail was tragic and not a story often told, but he was a rather opaque character and so were the men he interacted with; I liked his sister Vi, but except for her brief but wonderful interaction with Kay, her story was mostly about loving a married jerk and that has been told a million times; Helen and Julia I just didn't like, ever, and the more I learned about them, the less time I wanted to spend in their company, even on paper. Worth reading if you're a Waters fan, but not a good introduction. It did make me want to read more about the Blitz, though. (Two of my favorite short stories of all time are set there, Connie Willis' "Fire Watch" ("deaths: one cat") and "Jack," both in her collection Impossible Things) Any recommendations? Especially, any recommendations for fact or fiction featuring lesbians and/or people doing the more dramatic sort of volunteer work, search and rescue, fire watch, ambulance drivers, and the like? CERT, Day 2
10:40 PM PST, January 20, 2007
Today I learned how to drag a person with a blanket, and that sprinkling any powdery substance like salt or sugar over rough ground will facilitate that.
Also, I learned that with a lever and fulcrum, a ninety-pound woman can lift a car. Alas, that was not a demo, but only an anecdote. I brought in my transparent backpack/survival kit in for show-and-tell. Everyone loved its handy transparency. (No need to go digging around for items, possibly losing some in the process- you can see without opening it exactly where everything is.) Apparently the last day, next Saturday, is a massive hand-on simulation. No idea how far they're going to go, but I overheard one of the instructors saying something like, "Don't you think it would be too difficult to make them search the entire structure?" (We're in one room of a very large complex.) One of the teachers is a hazmat (hazardous materials) specialist. He mentioned the incident last week in which a man, apparently transporting medical supplies, apparently accidentally spilled mercury on the subway platform. He reported the spill to a subway manager, then hopped on a subway, presumably confident that it would be treated with all proper seriousness and immediately cleaned up in a matter befitting a toxic chemical spilled in a public location. It was eight hours before the station was cleared and the mercury was cleaned up. Most of this delay was due to the subway officials not bothering to report it or do anything else useful for about seven hours. I think LA officials are still trying to figure out what happened and who to fire. Now, it was a very small amount of a chemical which, albeit toxic, is at least not likely to harm anyone by having tiny amounts tracked around a subway platform. But still. This does not give me a great deal of faith in the Metro Transit Authority's Mmm, flaming propane
5:34 PM PST, January 13, 2007
I spent the day today doing the CERT (Community Emergency Response Team)three-Saturday crash course, mostly stuff I already learned but nearly ten years ago, so it's good to refresh. I am way too tired to actually describe it. But we all put out small propane fires with fire extinguishers, which was something I had never done before so that was cool. Someone asked if I'd ever used an extinguisher before and I said no, but I'd smothered a "pillar of flame" type cooking fire with a saucepan once. Decided not to mention my other major fire extinguishing experience, in which my pants caught fire while I was in the shower (and not wearing them) so I had to extinguish what became a large apartment fire while naked and dripping wet-- it's kind of a long story-- until and unless I know those people much better.
I was a little disappointed that we only discussed triage and did not do a simulation, especially after I was all revved up after we repeatedly set fire to a bubbling tub of propane in the parking lot. When I did similar but more in-depth training with the Red Cross, I took an entire class on triage. To simplify, this is sorting mass casualties into no injuries and minor injuries (who will not need help), moderate injuries (who can be dealt with at one's leisure), life-threatening problems that can be dealt with really quickly and should be, and people who are either dead or require extreme and time-consuming aid like CPR/rescue breathing to give them an unlikely shot at survival-- and so are treated as if they are dead already. They are marked with colored tags to indicate which category they fall into. Obviously, this is something one would only do in extreme circumstances. For the final exam, we were given a flashlight, a pen, and a bunch of tags, and then were individually thrust into a pitch-black room full of overturned furniture, a radio blasting white noise, and "victims"-- some made up with injuries, some with tiny tags in appropriate places saying stuff like "no pulse," some mobile and hysterically screaming "WHERE'S MY BROTHER?! YOU HAVE TO HELP MY BROTHER!" Meanwhile we were followed by the instructor with a stop-watch. We had to find and appropriately tag each victim in something like thirty seconds each. By the time I got to the last victim, I had lost my tags in the confusion. I took my pen and was about to write an appropriate category on her forehead (she, another classmate, cringed away in horror) when the instructor grabbed my wrist and informed me that I'd made my point. Anyway, we didn't do anything like that today. Too bad. I have been interviewed by Bookslut
6:47 PM PST, January 12, 2007
Baba-lovers are divided on the topic of All the Fishes Come Home to Roost: honest account of a difficult childhood, or sleazy work of blasphemous slander. Shadow Divers, by Robert Kurson
4:25 PM PST, December 30, 2006
Walter Jon Williams, author of terrific and inventive novels like Aristoi, Metropolitan, and the "Praxis" trilogy, recommended this non-fiction account of deep sea wreck divers exploring a German U-boat as being far more terrifying than any horror movie, and cited the scene in which a diver reaches for his knife with his left hand instead of his right, and so sets in motion a chain of events which ends in his death. Walter was absolutely right: this book is scarier than most horror, and more suspenseful than most thrillers. There was one moment toward the end when I actually exclaimed aloud, "Noooo!" Though there's some melodramatic phrasing at the beginning, the writing style soon settles down into smooth, unobtrusive clarity. It's one of those stranger than fiction tales, and an extremely satisfying read. Deep sea wreck divers explore wrecked ships for kicks and souvenirs. It's extremely dangerous hobby, particularly in the early nineties, when they used compressed air instead the now-standard helium-nitrogen-oxygen "trimix." The latter allows you to function normally at great depths; the former means that once you get to the incredibly dangerous wreck, where every move stirs up blinding silt and perhaps knocks down rotted timbers to pin you in place as your air runs out, you are so oxygen-deprived that you are essentially dead drunk and prone to irrational fits of panic or fury. Plus, if you ascend too fast, you will get decompression sickness, or "the bends": the pressure that causes nitrogen to dissolve in your blood in the depth, releases it in large bubbles if you shoot to the surface instead of ascending in slow stages. In minor cases this can still cause excruciating pain; in severe ones, your blood basically turns into soda pop and you die in agony. As portrayed in the book, deep sea wreck divers are adrenaline junkies, mostly men with something to prove. (To my annoyance, though a couple female divers are mentioned, none are described. I'd have liked to hear more about being a woman in what is clearly a highly male-dominated field.) The various iterations of wreck-diving culture and characters, from the careful technicians to the rowdy frat boys, are vividly depicted. The story begins in 1991, when some divers find a sunken U-boat off the coast of New Jersey. There is no record of any U-boat ever having been sunk there, so they begin exploring it to find out which one it is. This proves to be way, way, way more of a challenge than any of them ever expected: all identifying marks have worn away, and the submarine is a death-trap which, over the course of several years, claims the lives of several divers. Two of the divers become obsessed with figuring out its identity, and alternate increasingly dangerous dives with historical research that takes them digging through US Naval records and interviewing German U-boat commanders. The historical mystery ends up being just as fascinating and suspenseful as the diving itself, and has more surprising twists than an Agatha Christie. From the simple story of a dangerous exploration, the book evolves into a look at the uncertainty of the historical record, the limits of obsession, and the commonalities between men at war and men at play. An excellent, gripping book.
Casino Royale
4:10 PM PST, November 26, 2006
I've never been a big fan of James Bond, though I treasure the memory of watching Octopussy, which was partly shot in India, in a New Delhi theatre so jam-packed that we all would have died if it had burst into flames, with a crowd of people who cheered madly every time they saw a location they recognized or when a random extra they knew walked into the frame. Otherwise, I've watched them when they were on TV or when someone else wanted to rent one. The ones with Sean Connery are fun, although annoyingly sexist and a bit slow in between the action set-pieces, and the Roger Moore and recent ones are a bit ridiculous. I've never much cared for camp, so the alleged humor of a lot of the dialogue eluded me.
I've also read one Ian Fleming novel, The Spy Who Loved Me, which was pretty awful although possibly not characteristic, being narrated by a totally unconvincing woman whom Bond rescues, and which devotes about a fourth of its length to her unremarkable, yet pruriently described sex life. It further alienated me by having her think things like "Every woman enjoys a bit of semi-rape." EWWW. Casino Royale, which ditches the elaborate gadgets in favor of something vaguely resembling realism, was much more to my taste. Though I loved the ways in which it is in dialogue with the earlier Bond movies and the Bond iconography, it could easily be enjoyed as a particularly well-done action movie even if you've never seen a James Bond movie, or dislike the whole franchise. I suspect that the people most likely to dislike it are fans of the Roger Moore or Pierce Brosnan films, which this seems a reaction against. There are terrific action sequences, but stripped-down, relying on physical stunts (like a marvelous chase at the beginning through a Tetris-like construction zone) or old-fashioned suspense (a variant on the classic bomb-defusing scene, which takes place entirely in the front seat of a car with Bond on the phone to headquarters.) Judi Dench and Daniel Craig have wonderful chemistry, and I now am dying for a prequel where we see M as a young agent. There is an annoying interlude with a random Bond girl early on, but the actual female lead, though not an action heroine, is believable and not helpless. Plus, she is involved in a shower scene that is not what you would normally think a shower scene would be, and is not only the emotional center of the movie, but has now gone on my top ten list of sexiest scenes ever filmed. When I saw Casino Royale, I realized why I have never been much of a Bond fan, though I do like a good action/spy movie and enjoyed many elements of the Bond films: I never believed that Bond could be hurt. Of course you know going in that Bond won't die; but I know when I watch Lord of the Rings that the Black Riders won't catch the hobbits in the Shire, and that Boromir will succumb to temptation, and yet I still feel a terrible suspense every time I see the film. It's all in the presentation: acting, script, and direction. I never believed for a second, in any Bond movie before this one, that anything really bad could ever happen to him. And that prevented me from ever being truly engaged with the character. Casino Royale made me worry about Bond. Daniel Craig's knuckles bleed after he punches people, and his face bleeds when other people punch him. He's not a perfectly suave and unflappably competent gentleman who can stroll out of any confrontation with his hair slicked back and a perfect quip on his lips; but that's the persona you can see him creating for himself. This is the beginning of Bond, and the Bond icon is something we see being constructed onscreen. The whole movie is about the tension between the persona and the barely-glimpsed self, between elegant poker games and men getting beaten to death in stairways. Bond is arrogant, and he makes mistakes; and his mistakes have consequences. He's sexy, and he knows it and uses it to his advantage; but he's not really conventionally handsome, not like a model or a movie star. There's a line early on about the lifespan of a double-0 agent, and it echoes through the whole movie. This has got to be the only Bond movie ever where you believe that he could die. God is Gay, and Chicken is Evil
4:30 PM PDT, October 25, 2006
This weekend I visited a friend in San Francisco. She and I were eating lunch at the Ferry Building, overlooking the bay, when we began perusing the discount book rack that was outside the bookshop, on the pavement next to us. It was an odd mix of pretty good YA (like Nancy Werlin and Paul Fleischman), decent-looking gay lit, and horrible self-help books, like Healing the Amazon Wound and Cry of the Soul-Daughter.
And then there was God is Gay. It was a slim, yellow, self-published paperback. The back cover quotes (which we decided were sock-puppets) were decidedly strange: Ah, it is marvellous... I read and read and then ponder over it. --Dr. K. D. Chauhan Jagdishnagar Society North Gujarat, India I just read your book and I felt 'happiness creeping over me.' G. Rommersheim Munich, West Germany ['Happiness creeping over me' turned out to be a quote from GiG; the narrator, Bob, feels that sensation when he talks to his soon-to-be cult leader, Daniel.] The chapters are all headed with peculiar drawings reminiscent of the Rider-Waite tarot deck, but with more animals, some with faceted eyes and all a disturbing cross between cute and evil, like the subliminal octopus in Serenity. It's the swinging 70s. Bob, along with God, is gay. He lives in San Francisco with his lover, Steve. Then Bob meets Daniel, who is obviously a crazy cult leader. Only Bob doesn't think so. GiG is a love letter to Daniel, Daniel's superb musculature and gentle smile, and Daniel's whack-job philosophy, which consists of crazed nattering about androids and mouseries and "the sound of hearing, the music of the spheres," not to mention "the sight of seeing, the vision of the third eye." (No, there is no scent of smelling. Alas.) Daniel points out that Asia and Asians are spiritually superior to non-Asians. (A concept which, in addition to creating many awkward encounters between obtuse Westerners and unfortunate Asians, ruined my childhood.) Bob is overwhelmed by Daniel and his circle: A very handsome, muscular man let us in. As I was introduced to him, any doubts about his gayness were resolved when he cruised me. Plus, there is gay boxing (normal boxing, gay boxers), and Daniel takes Bob out for a banana split. But Steve, whom Bob describes in phrases like an ugly sneer crossed Steve's face, cannot appreciate the wonder that is Daniel. In fact, he accuses Daniel of being a cult leader. But Bob finally drags Steve to a meeting, where Daniel goes on for pages and pages of gibberish, including Isn't it obvious that male gays are men, with the understanding of women; who understand instinctively that war, violence, and hatred are wrong. Bob is sure this will make Steve see the light. But Steve takes Bob aside and tells him that Daniel reminds him of Charles Manson. Horrified, Bob runs to Daniel and says, "You won't believe what Steve said about you!" Daniel says, "Did he say I reminded him of Charles Manson?" Since Daniel wasn't there, this convinces Bob that Daniel is clairvoyant and telepathic, because there is no other way Daniel could have known Steve said that. It does not occur to Bob that perhaps Daniel often reminds people of Charles Manson. Needless to say, Bob dumps Steve and runs away with the perfect and telepathic Daniel. That was the point when we noticed that the book was coauthored by Ezekiel (who presumabably used to be known as Bob) and... Daniel! There is a clearly fictional chapter in which Steve later apologizes for not being wise or brave enough to embrace Daniel. I think that Steve is now happily working for Google, and he and his handsome live-in lover sometimes do dramatic readings from GiG at dinner parties. Having finished Gig, we then picked up a novel by bestselling fantasy author Terry Goodkind, and opened it to a six-page scene in which the heroine is menaced by... an evil chicken. No, this is not played for laughs. There are more excerpts at fandom wank if you don't believe me. The bird let out a slow chicken cackle. It sounded like a chicken, but in her heart she knew it wasn't. In that instant, she completely understood the concept of a chicken that was not a chicken. This looked like a chicken, like most of the Mud People's chickens. But this was no chicken. This was evil manifest. She is terrified! For six pages! This is the heroine-- scared of a chicken. Kahlan frantically tried to think as the chicken bawk-bawk-bawked. In the dark, the chicken thing let out a low chicken cackle laugh. In between being terrorized, Kahlan remembers her perfect boyfriend, Richard. Brilliant, strong, probably omnipotent, Richard seems to be a clone of Daniel. Did I mention that he is wise, too? Richard had been adamant about everyone being courteous to chickens. Clan of Death: Ninja, by Al Weiss and Tom Philbin
7:31 PM PDT, October 10, 2006
I’ve been meaning to write this up for a while, ever since I pulled it off a dusty Little Tokyo shelf and bought it for a quarter, but it’s hard to do it justice.
The cover features an embossed black-clad ninja against a black background, with only his (rather Caucasian-looking, and light brown) eyes and katana visible. The title is in red. Above the title, in white underlined caps, it says The incredible true story! Below the title, also in white caps: In the quiet of a whisper, come the deadly soldiers of the dark. Here’s the back cover: The amazing true story! From the ancient world of the Shogun to the modern terrors of Shibumi, here are the ninja and their arts of sudden death! The overleaf claims that modern ninja are even better fighters than the old ones, because they have access to a wider range of techniques. The book begins at a modern seminar on ninjutsu, taught by modern ninjutsu master Stephen K. Hayes. Hayes asks everyone what would make them willing to kill someone. Most give idealistic reasons; one says he’d do it for profit. What we had seen impressed us. What we had heard in those last moments from those who attended from all parts of the country (we have no idea how many of them were truly ninja) was an introduction to the diversity of ninja thought—a microcosm of ninja philosophy. Weiss and Philbin backtrack to do a decent, albeit totally lacking in citations, history of the ninja. Having cunningly laid down their four-page groundwork of history mixed with historical speculation, they promptly begin erecting an edifice of crazy (albeit rather touchingly enthusiastic) fantasy. During World War II, for example, the Japanese high command had ninja-trained troops deployed to assassinate General Douglas MacArthur if and when the opportunity arose. I confess, I would love to see a movie or manga about that. But the ninja did not fail very often. Information on their specific World War II activities is scant, but according to Ron Duncan, a ninja practitioner living in New York, there were many strange incidents which had a ninjaesque quality… But do not think that the ninja are a thing of the past! In 1948, some ninja switched sides, or at least became employed by the CIA, says Duncan. … “As far as I know, there are still ninja in the CIA.” He recounts the assault on the Iranian embassy by the SAS to rescue hostages: …the core members are in black, only their eyes showing through the hoods covering their heads. In short, they were in the uniform of the ninja. “They were ninja,” says Duncan. “Absolutely.” But wait! There is even more compelling evidence for the existence of modern ninja! Someone told us that he was in Kyushu two summers ago and went into a room where there were five or six businessmen standing around talking. “It was only later,” he says, “That I learned they were all ninja.” The rest of the book recounts ninja folklore, stories about ninja, and ninja techniques, interspersed with photos of black-clad guys sneaking around and climbing trees. The jaw-dropping chapter “I Am Ninja!” is about a boy ninja who gets revenge on an enemy by having sex with an insane prostitute and so infecting himself with a fatal venereal disease, and then presenting himself to his enemy as a catamite. But he rejoices at the success of his plan, even though it gets him tortured to death. After all… he is ninja! Segovia
11:55 AM PDT, October 9, 2006
Yesterday I took a bus to Segovia. This came about because I had mentioned to Sara (the artist) that my mother had suggested that I go to Avila, because it's where Saint Teresa of Avila is from. (Um, yeah.) Sara said that she thought Segovia would be of more interest to me, since it has an "aqueducto."
"Ooooh!" I said. I have a thing about aqueducts. (They're cool! You should see the one at Nanzenji Temple in Kyoto!) "And it's famous for cochinillo." (Suckling pig.) "Oooooh!" This despite having just read British children's author Nina Bawden's The Peppermint Pig, purchased at a used bookshop in Madrid, in which four children are very, very traumatized because of their idiot mother's decision to raise the pig fated for the butcher as a pet and name it Johnny. That book also features the exact same plot point that appears in Little Women: a girl from a family with upper-class aspirations but currently fallen upon hard times, who loves babies, goes to visit a poor family of the lower class, cuddles a sickly baby, and is stricken with scarlet fever and nearly dies, and the sickly baby does die. I guess the moral is "Don't cuddle poor people's babies, or you'll get scarlet fever." So yesterday I went to Segovia, which is famous for a cathedral and the Alcazar, a palace which was replicated in Disneyland. The aqueduct is an ancient Roman one, and all the guidebooks claim that you get a great view of it driving into the town, and it is enormous and impossible to miss. I did not see it coming into town, and the bus station was singularly lacking in helpful maps or signposts reading "This way to the famous aqueduct." So I looked around, saw the spires of a cathedral, and started wandering in that direction. Then I glanced down an alley and saw, in the distance, the unmistakable arches of an enormous Roman aqueduct. I trotted down the alley, walked up a flight of steps, and suddenly was in a big plaze with the aqueduct looming above me, the plaza, and the entire town. It is built of immense gray stones fitted together so precisely that no mortar was used, even in the arches-- which is amazing, when you look at those great rocks suspended overhead by nothing but geometry. The arches framed a blue sky, and clouds, and the specks of birds flying by. It was about three by then, since I had gotten up late and then had a hard time finding the bus station. In what has become my ritual, I asked for directions and got a long explanation which I only understood in retrospect. (In this case, "There is no 'bus station' per se-- there are a bunch of mini-stations scattered all up and down this road, and you need to know which bus company you're looking for." Since everything is done later in Spain (Lawrence amused me yesterday by referring to 7:00 PM as "mid-afternoon,") I realized that restuarants would now be open for suckling pig. I wandered around till I found one with customers and appetizing smells, and ordered the lunch set menu. These are posted outside, with a choice of three to six courses for appetizer and main dish, sometimes with bread, a drink, and dessert included. I had cantaloupe and Serrano ham (which I am rapidly getting addicted to) for an appetizer, a mini-bottle of red wine (I had attempted to ask for a glass, but that was what I got) and a plate with three big hunks of unadorned suckling pig in a pool of its golden juices, with crunchy skin atop white meat so succulent and tender that you didn't cut it, but used knife and fork to pull it apart in shreds. (The pig fought back at one point, flipping a piece over and splattering my shirt with oil that I am, even as we speak, attempting to remove with specially purchased stain remover.) Followed by an orange that was presented unpeeled on a little plate. Between the wine, the suckling pig, and the sunny afternoon, I was more inclined to take a nap then walk to the cathedral and Alcazar when I emerged from the restaurant in a satiated haze. In fact I sat down for a brief rest in the sun beside the aqueduct, and was alarmed to see that fifteen minutes had passed between blinks. I did make it to the cathedral, which, like Narnia-in-the-wardrobe-, was bigger on the inside than the outside, with all the lines sweeping upward to the intricately carved ceiling, and every inch of it proclaiming, "Behold the glory of God above!" At the Alcazar, which was indeed oddly familiar because of the Disneyland replica, I was waylaid by one of those elderly men who enjoy hanging out at tourist attractions to educate the tourists. I interrupted his semi-comprehensible spiel about Saint Teresa and the Knights Templar by asking him about a cliff in the distance-- was it a natural formation or a quarry? "Oh, that. It is... um... it is two thousand... um... what is the word...?" "Anos?" I suggested. (Years-- pretend my computer has a tilde-- as written, that means "butt.") The idiocy of that suggestion brought the correct word to his mind. "Kilos," he explained. Either two thousand kilos of rock was mined there to construct some houses, or else there was a landslide and two thousand kilos of rock fell on some houses, I am not sure which. Then I returned to Madrid for dinner at Sara's house, with Sara, Lawrence, and two friends who are professional translators. It was really fun, and Sara cooked a delicious vegetarian paella, which she served with two types of red wine and a homemade liquor made by steeping the fruits of the madrono (missing tilde) tree in anis. However, it did not taste like anis, which I despise, but like sweet aromatic brandy. She had made green tea truffles for dessert, with white chocolate centers rolled in bitter matcha powder for contrast. Sara and I are going out for a girls' tapas night tonight, so there will no doubt be more food-centric reports later.
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Bio
I'm a writer in Los Angeles. I study Shotokan karate, read hiragana and katakana, and love Tokyo, but have not yet acquired a taste for natto.
My first book, "All The Fishes Come Home To Roost," was published by Rodale in October 2005. It's the true story of how my post-hippie parents raised me on a bizarre ashram in India devoted to Meher Baba, who is best known for having been Pete Townsend's guru, taking a vow of silence for most of his life, and for coining the insipid motto "Don't worry, be happy." I was the only foreign child within 100 miles of anywhere. Despite being Jewish by birth and a Baba-lover by parental decree, there was only one school in town, and so I spent my formative years attending Holy Wounds of Jesus Christ the Savior Convent School. I also write television and comic books. My manga "Project Blue Rose," which is sort of like "The X-Files" if Mulder and Scully had both been gay men, is forthcoming in spring 2006. You can pre-order it and see some sample art here: http://www.rachelmanijabrown.com/current.html
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