New & Notable
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When I was in Chico, Quinn told me an interesting story. Chico is a huge university town with tens of thousands of students. His ladyfriend Karisha is incredibly in tune with the natural energies and Quinn says that she suffers bouts of stress every December and January because she absorbs all the tension of the students who are frantically preparing for their exams.
I have always believed in the auras surrounding people so this story made sense to me. It made twice as much sense after Vegas. The second I got into the city, I felt irritable and annoyed. I needed an immediate drink to take this desperate edge off and then a bunch more to keep it off. I think I was absorbing the negative energy of the city.
The place abounds with pawn shops and loan joints and these places that will give you money if you sign over your car to them. My first night there, I was amazed by how many beautiful young women were sitting alone in the casino bars at two in the morning until I realized they were all working. Maybe gambling and prostitutes sounds glamorous in a lad’s magazine, but it is desperate and hollow when you see it up close. That part of Vegas has a total bad vibe to it and trying to mask it with the fake Eiffel Tower and all that other Disneylandesque crap is like putting lipstick on a decomposing corpse.
The only positive part of the city’s vibe was that when you encountered something good it stood out because of the contrast. That was the case with the Reading Room, the bookstore where I had an appearance. It is in the Mandalay Place casino and was put there because the casino’s former general manager was a literature nut who attended the writer’s program at the University of Iowa. The bookstore is a haven of sanity amid the gambling madness and it is staffed by tremendously kind souls. This is a picture of two of those souls, Michele and Heather. Sadly, there eyes appear demon red, but that is my damn lack of photography skills, not a reflection on them. They are both beautiful young ladies.
All in all, a bookstore in a casino is a pretty odd experience. My picture was up on the main casino neon board, alongside the Wayne Newtons and Howie Mandells. Just a few steps from the bookstore door were jangling rows of slots. (This is a fuzzy picture of Will in front of them. More on him soon.)
But, another tip of the cap to the power of a bookstore: once inside and browsing the shelves, the entire casino disappeared …
Posted in New & Notable, Waystations | Leave a commentBeaulicious
Many people marvel at Kilometer Zero Issue #3 and wonder why it is so beautiful. The answer is this fellow. He was just travelling around Europe, happy as a lamb, when Quinn kidnapped him from Budapest and forced him to sleep on the floor of our Paris art squat so he could spend several weeks of 20-hour days designing the magazine. Amazingly, he has fond memories of the experience.
Technically, I was going to sleep at his new place in San Francisco but I was drinking late and then I had to get up at 4.45 in the morning to drive Cody to the airport, so I just kind of didn’t show up. He is worried and I should call or email him, but instead I’m just blurbing it out here.
Posted in New & Notable, Waystations | Leave a commentSan Francisco
Another whistle stop. Arrived in town at about six, read at seven, then some drinks, a few hours sleep and the road to Vegas. What was special here was a chance to spend a bit of time with a special friend and some fellow Shakespeare veterans.
One of the people who made a great impression on me at Shakespeaere and Company was Chris Cook Gilmore, a writer who split his time between Morocco, Paris and Margate, New Jersey. He started writing while in an Italian prison for drug smuggling in the 1970s and had his first success with ‘Atlantic City Proof’, a coming of age adventure novel set in Atlantic City during Prohibition. I wrote about Chris in my book, so I won’t go on too much here, but suffice it to say he was an inspiration: a working writer who’d lived off his wits for the better part of 40 years.
Chris died last year, shortly after visiting me in my Marseille apartment. For two days of his visit he was the Chris I knew – peppy, funny, dashing off to Chateau d’If so he could see the setting for the Count of Monte Cristo. The other two days he was laid out on the couch, a ghost of himself. It turned out to be brain cancer and he was gone a month later.
Everybody who knew Chris misses him, but nobody more than his wife Anita. She is a tremendous woman, a total spark. She gave me Chris’s watch when I passed by Margate to pay my respects last year and I wear it with pride. She also came out to my reading in Philadelphia and then completely surprised me by showing up in
San Francisco too. She now runs an underground speakeasy, so if you are ever Atlantic City way, look her up …
One of the reasons she came out here was to visit Karl and Jordan, friends of ours from Shakespeare. They live in a great art squat, a natural continuation to their Paris bookstore life. It was good to empty a few glasses with them.
Win a lottery/Meet Cody Ellerd
While driving through Iowa, I received a phone call from a reporter from Seattle who was doing an advance piece on my Mercer Island Books gig. This reporter was intrigued by the tour and wanted to follow me on a couple of stops to put together a second piece, this time something for NPR. I thought for a moment. Publicity, obviously, is a good thing for a book. But sharing my car, my friends, my life with a stranger for three days?
Well, when in doubt, say yes, that’s my philosophy and it paid off this time. What were the chances of this random reporter being fun, adventurous, well-read, and a wonderful navigator? About the same odds as winning the lottery, I figure, and I certainly did win some kind of cosmic lottery by having Cody Ellerd drop into my life for three days. This jack-and-coke drinker got along with Tom, Quinn and Will, a winning trifecta of my friends; she had no qualms about sleeping on floors; she wasn’t bothered that most of our interviewing took place while intoxicated between 3 and 4 in the morning; and even a bad pork taco couldn’t take her down (though there was some very operatic vomiting).
I should note that this fine taco truck wasn’t the one that made Cody sick; she wanted to climb back on the taco horse the day after so we stopped here.
Posted in New & Notable, Waystations | Leave a commentQuinn’s World
How does one describe Quinn? His first toy as a child was a claw hammer he called nana. He grew up in a California junkyard with warm hippy love all around him. He never knew what he wanted for Christmas because he was raised without a television. He is a self taught computer genius. He left America, travelled the world, and, thankfully thankfully thankfully, ended up in Paris where he was one of the founders of Kilometer Zero. He juggles five balls and walks very well on stilts. He can go into the Paris sewers and turn the water back on in our squat when police cut the pipes. He bicycled from Paris to Marseille to visit me in October. He is love.
So clearly, anytime I am within six or seven hundred miles of this fellow, I make every effort to visit.
This is his lovely house which has a lemon bush out back.
This is his vicious attack parrot named Boobie who bit my finger and drank my blood.
This is his mother Paulette and his brother Casey
And this is his lovely lovely love Karisha.
Lemons, Oranges, & Persimmons
California in December. Smite me now.
