Song of the Day: Atticus by The Noisettes

ModCloth, Racist?

This necklace is called, "The Fob-ulous Necklace." Is that racist, or funny?

Grizzly Bear Video, Two Weeks

Two Weeks - Grizzly Bear from Gabe Askew on Vimeo.

I love them.

Love and Hate and Love

I'm supposed to be writing right now--but I'm so filled with joy that I can't focus on my story.

When you have those moments in your life when you realize that you are happy, and blessed, you have to seize them, and appreciate everything that life has given you before the moment passes.

I can say quite soberly that I am happy. I have a wonderful husband who loves me and who I love with all my heart. I have family that loves me and supports me and believes in my dreams and aspirations. I have a great job where I get to use my brain. I have my writing, which is progressing, little by little everyday and which is getting better with every attempt. I am rewarded for my hard work which makes me work harder.

There are those times in your life when you feel like there's no way out of the quagmire of difficulties and despair. But then there are moments like this, and these are the moments that bring that ray of hope in those hard times and make you believe, like Barack Obama--si se puede. Yes we can. Yes I can.

New Moon Photos: Edward and Bella Sitting in a Tree

New New Moon photos.

Image of the Day: Ireland

I was looking for images for our Tour of Ireland content and stumbled upon this image. I wish I was there right now.

A Canteen? Really?

I was checking out the BBC World News front page and saw this advertisement:



My initial thought was you've got to be kidding me. But then I thought about it, and I could totally see some Williamsburg hipster rocking this shit. Ugg.

Image of the Day: Blair and Chuck

click for larger image.

Well hello there, Sufjan

I've been a fan of Sufjan Stevens for quite some time, but I think I like him a little bit more now that I know what he looks like. =)

I don't need it, but I WANT IT! Supporting the Arts

I bought two prints from Catherine Campbell on etsy.





This is the type of style I could imagine for the cover of Paper Doll...if it ever gets published (I should probably finish it first).

And I donated to KCRW and you should too! You can only listen to the pledge drive for so long before the guilt overwhelms you, but you know it's totally worth it. I listen to KCRW everyday and $10 bucks a month really isn't that much, considering I pay $60 a month for my gym membership and rarely ever go.

Support the arts!

Now I just have to try really really hard not to buy this dress. I'll try really hard Boyan. Promise.

Borders, Westwood: A bookstore in decay

Many of you know one of my favorite places to be in all the world is a bookstore. I love being surrounded by books, names and titles of things I have read or look forward to exploring. I love it so much I used to work in one and enjoyed every painful second of it. So when Boyan asked me if I wanted to go to Borders with him it was more a matter of letting me know we were going rather than asking.

The parking lot of Borders in Westwood has always been a bit daunting. The ribs of the structure, covered by curdled asbestos, creek and shake as if by driving down into the lot you are entering the lungs of a cancer patient who has been smoking for eighty years. It's hot, muggy, uninviting. But you make the journey because at the end of it you are rewarded with the golden fleece, a plethora of books with a wide selection of publishers, topics, and languages.

We took the small barren elevator to the first floor and stepped out into our wonderland. But like Alice in the rabbit hole were transported into something strange and unfamiliar. The tables that held book suggestions, new releases were filled with young adult vampire books. I surpassed this area and went to the fiction section, only to notice that several stacks of books were missing, replaced with benches where people, I can only guess, were expected to sit and peruse. But peruse what? The book shelves themselves weren't fully stocked -- stacked cover forward rather than binding out -- most of them best sellers. In fact, row upon row was filled Michael Chabon, Jodi Picoult, and Meg Cabot as far as the eye could see.

I left the area and went to the Young Adult section, or should I say, the vampire section. An entire wall filled with nothing but black covers dripping with blood, flowers, moons and wide-eyed pale faces.

Upstairs the situation was worse. The music and movie section of the store had been reduced to a third of it's size. A black curtain separated the back of the store which once had a vast music selection.

The book store itself was pretty empty, uncharacteristically so for a Saturday night. Where were the young couples that came to impress their dates? Where were the mother's dragging along their children to look at picture books? Even the bum population was minimal, all took up camp in the lower north corner of the store, the only place on the first floor where there were chairs.

The staff that was there that night was tiny, maybe ten people where on a Saturday night they used to employ almost double that amount.

The most daunting thing was the quiet. A book store should be filled with light background music, punctuated by browsers questioning book sellers, squeals of children, a muffled laugh between lovers. Instead there was silence and silence breeds silence. Where in a library silence can be comforting, in a book store it's paralyzing.

I told Boyan we had to leave. It was too depressing to stay.

I predict that the borders on Westwood will fall to the same fate as did the one on third street by January 20th of 2010. And when it goes, I will remember the place I used to work, filled with young smiling people who loved books, music. Not the borders I saw this weekend. A desecrated carpus of something that used to be beautiful. A place that was alive.


Do not fear death so much, but rather the inadequate life.

Song of the Day: Wild Young Hearts by the Noisettes

Photo Inspiration

Sometimes the best way to inspire yourself to write is to keep a hoard of images that are unique and intriguing. One of my favorite places to go is Apartment Therapy. Check this stuff out.

I would love to have high ceilings like this. And I would fill them with books just like this person. I love the wallpaper underneath the shelves.

Large windows that let in lots of light. A green background and lots of wood. An ideal place to write or get lost in a book.

Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins, Out September 1st

Oh how I wish I could get my hands on an advanced copy. I re-read it too early! Now I'm going to pull my hair out waiting until September.

You can read the first chapter of Catching Fire here (pdf), if you feel like torturing yourself.

Updates and Song of the Day: All We Ask, Grizzly Bear

It's been quite a while, and a lot of things have happened.

Nataliya, my sister-in-law, has been living with us since mid-June. We're a happy trio living in our small West L.A. apartment.

We visited my parents in Newport.









We visited my parents in Covina.

We went to the Getty.

We celebrated the Fourth of July.

We went to Vegas.

Lots more fun experiences to come.

It's been hard, cramped up in our small apartment to get anything productive done. But I have managed to read Outlander and Nation, and re-read Jane Eyre, the Thirteenth Tale, Catcher in the Rye and the Hunger Games. I even got 17 pages of writing done last night. It's been a great summer so far, I'm hoping to make it to San Diego, San Francisco and Yosemite before Nataliya leaves.

Until my next update I will leave you with a nice little live version one of my favorite songs of the moment. All We Ask by Grizzly Bear.

Books or People?

"Picture a conveyor belt, a huge conveyor belt, and at the end of it a massive furnace. And on the conveyor belt are books. Every copy in the world of every book you've ever loved. All lined up. Jane Eyre, Villette, The Woman in White...And imagine a lever with two labels, On and Off. At the moment the lever is off. And next to it is a human being, with his hand on the level. About to turn it on. And you can stop it. You have a gun in your hand. All you have to do is pull the trigger. What do you do?"

"Of course I loved books more than people. Of course I valued Jane Eyre over the anonymous stranger with his hand on the lever. Of course all of Shakespeare was worth more than a human life. Of course."

--Diane Setterfield, The Thirteenth Tale

With our writing, we will live forever

An excerpt from The Thirteenth Tale:

People disappear when they die. Their voice, their laughter, the warmth of their breath. Their flesh. Eventually their bones. All living memory of them ceases. This both dreadful and natural. Yet for some there is an exception to this annihilation. For in the books they write they continue to exist. We can rediscover them. Their humor, their tone of voice, their moods. Through the written word they can anger you or make you happy. They can comfort you. They can perplex you. They can alter you. All this, even though they are dead. Like flies in amber, like corpses frozen in ice, that which according to the laws of nature should pass away is, by the miracle of ink on paper, preserved. It is a kind of magic.

As one tends the graves of the dead, so I tend the books. I clean them, do minor repairs, keep them in good order. And every day I open a volume or two, read a few lines or pages, allow the voices of the forgotten dead to resonate inside my head. Do they sense it, these dead writers, when their books ar read? Does a pinprick of light appear in their darkness? Is their soul stirred by the feather touch of another mind reading theirs? I do hope so. For it must be very lonely being dead.

Diane Setterfield is an amazing writer, and if you haven't already read The Thirteenth Tale then you really should. I think what she says here makes so much sense. As writers we share the same desires, same fears, as everyone else. With our writing, we will live forever.

Hayao Miyazaki's Ponyo

I love Hayao Miyazaki. I think I saw Princess Mononoke in the theaters three times when it came out, and Ponyo looks amazing. Make sure to watch the video in HD.

Song of the Day: Naked As We Came

New video from Beirut: Concubine