Weather, Models, Gossip, and Karma

It's been warm in Houston, and as a fan of cold weather, I'm looking forward to the cooler temperatures we're expecting over the course of the next few days. But my new colleague and I feel this will be the last of it, which is too bad…Am looking forward to the second episode of America's Next Top Model tonight (MAKEOVERS). They are looking for girls 5'-7" and under for the next cycle, and I seriously considered applying because, you know, there industry really needs a 5'-6" 140-lb twenty-five-year-old model on the runway (ha ha ha!), but I realized I already have a job…Gossip Girl finally returns with "The Age of Dissonance" on Monday, March 16 (Daily Intel's reality index!) As for the actual episode, according to Wikipedia:

The Constance Billard and St. Jude seniors put on a production of "The Age of Innocence" and find their personal lives mirroring conflicts in the play. Serena develops a crush on the play’s director, Julian, and enlists Vanessa’s knowledge of theater to help her get the otherwise uninterested guy’s attention. Blair receives devastating news about her future that leads her on a witch-hunt for the person responsible. Dan and Rachel agree to stay away from each other in the aftermath of being discovered as more than teacher and student, but find it impossible to keep that promise. Chuck enlists help from an unlikely source to win over Blair, his nemesis Carter Baizen.

I lost my "Gossip Girlfriend" to Atlanta so I'm accepting applications for that position…Also, a word on exercising at the gym. Don't make fun of the squat Asian guy on the elliptical next to you, because somehow your earphones will fall out of your ears and to the ground, taking the iPod and you with it.

Please Keep Reading

PHOTO VIA NYTIMES

Never have I craved a book as much as Lush Life. And by that I mean, after a day at work, I actually want to read a book rather than sit in front of an episode of The Tudors like some historical fiction-obsessed zombie. I made the mistake of not buying it after last night's reading, and, tonight, my neighorhood half-price bookstore did not have a copy, or anything by Richard Price, if I looked in the right places. Having stopped in on my way home from the gym, I decided I was too grossly sweat-stained to look for it at Borders. I imagine the local bookstore gods are pleased, as I will probably go to Brazos tomorrow to satisfy this most unexpected craving.

Last night Richard Price read to a large crowd at the Alley Theatre in downtown Houston. Having read—with difficulty—in the Fall 2007 issue of The Paris Review (N0. 182) the Lush Life excerpt "Night Fishing on Delancey," I anticipated the reading mostly out of love for The Wire, for which he wrote screenplays during his hiatus from novel writing.

How can I describe the reading to you? Richard Price has curly hair and is wearing jeans and brown shoes. He steps onto the beautiful stage, the stage set for "The Man Who Came to Dinner," stands behind the podium, wood. Lots of dark wood, Oriental rugs, appropriately, or oxymoronically scholarly. He gets right to it—tells us what we need to know to be able to, you know, get into what he's going to read—three escalating interviews conducted by a couple of detectives trying to solve a murder that takes place on the Lower East Side of Manhattan—Matty (Irish) and Yolanda (Puerto Rican). I imagine The Wire's McNulty and Greggs the whole time, of course. So does my good friend who sits to my right.

Richard Price does voices, sort of. Listening to Richard Price read—granted, his own dialogue—was a little bit like riding on the back of an old boyfriend's blue bicycle (you know, standing up, fingers and toes holding on tight) through the dark streets of Kensington, Brooklyn, late at night. You're sure you're gonna lose hold, fall off, but you don't. With Price, you're sure you're gonna get lost in the dialogue any second, but somehow you're able to hang on, and part of you wants him to go on for a little while longer than you know he's gonna go. When it's over, part of you thinks, He practically read the entire book. But you know he didn't. And now you want to read what he didn't read and what he did read—all of it. Originally you thought you'd like it because it's set in your old neighborhood (of a year), because Berkman's is totally Schiller's. But those details are nothing next to this reading that might be the best one so far in your twenty-five years. It surprises you. (You did love the Congee Village nod, where you, too, have had something comparable to a mojito. You also loved the part about real versus fake absinthe, because you've had that conversation enough times that it's become one of those annoying things that people talk about and can everyone please just shut up. And the part about a summer program—weren't you there, too? RISD Pre-College Summer 2001?) P.S. Richard Price hates people your age (and "hipsters"), or anyone younger than him, for that matter.

Afterward, when Richard Price is asked about the difficulty of writing dialogue (not difficult at all, Price says), he refers to the dialogue he writes as a "heightened reality," which, yeah, it is. It's what I live for.

Recession for Men

A Day Spent

After a few days' hiatus because of, I don't know, other plans (and car troubles), I go back to my fancy ass gym, where I continue to feel uncomfortable until I am too exhausted to feel anything. Although for the most part I try to avert my eyes, I think that every man I "notice" is gay. The fact that they are often with another man taking turns on one machine might cause one to think so. Not that I want to meet my future husband at the gym . . . This morning, in line at Brasil, I overhear two women talking about wild salmon, which apparently is good for your skin and twice as expensive as farmed salmon. The scones at Brasil are pretty good, by the way . . . I've been working on my impersonations of The Wire characters, which include Bubbles, Kima Greggs, Lieutenant Daniels, Marlo Stanfield, Namond's moms, Snoop, Tommy Carcetti, and the crooked politician, whose name I can't remember . . . Am still getting to know my Blackberry Storm, which also means blocking my peripheral vision in the presence of iPhones.

Calling All Hot Chicks

My downstairs neighbor asked me to bring hot chicks to the premiere screening of his sketch comedy troupe's movie, Deadbeat TV. So if you're a hot chick in Houston, join me at the premiere screening tonight at River Oaks Theatre. If you're not a hot chick, you can watch some of it here.

Caught Snacking

PHOTO VIA KHOU.com

Last night I got to go to the Spacetaker Gala thanks to Jessie Mann of Freeway Films. Spacetaker, to my understanding, is a resource for artists operating out of Winter Street Studios. Highlights included almost winning the "original designer mid-century modern Italian four arm brass light" courtesy of Metro Modern with the encouragement of these two, meeting author and fellow Rice alum David Eagleman, the Travesty Dance Group performance, and snacking, apparently.

New Fiction

Tonight I attended a reading/talk by David Eagleman, author of the seven-day-old Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives at Brazos Bookstore. Last night, I saw Ha Jin, author of A Free Life, at Zilkha Hall, part of the Inprint Reading Series (Richard Price on March 9!). The events were similar in that I had expected more reading than talk, but, in retrospect, I didn't mind that they were what they were. As for questions from the audience, they almost always put me ill at ease, and I wish they would be eliminated altogether, but maybe one day I'll have a burning question (as a turquoise jewelry-wearing, salt-and-pepper-haired readingsgoer) and will be glad they're still taking questions from the audience.

Sum is about possibilities. Possibilities of the afterlife, of our inevitable, unknown end (or is it?). Eagleman playfully presents these musings of what-might-happen-when-we-die in forty short vignettes. Which, because they were published—and I am curious if anyone agrees—makes him, the author of the work, somewhat less human. The short "tales" of the afterlife, which are funny and poignant, remind us of the value of our present lives, and maybe, even if for a moment, enable us to abandon our worry, our existential angst concerning what may or may not become of us. Because we don't know (and by "we" I mean "I"), we probably won't ever know, and it's okay that we don't.

Eagleman claims not to be agnostic, or anything, really, other than possiblist, I think he called it. For the sake of tonight's talk and future talks, that is all good and fine. But I rarely want too much of an explanation behind a piece of writing, or art. For Sum, Eagleman doesn't need it, because the make-believe stories activate my mind, make me laugh and lament all the same, and wonder. Which is enough, I think. Some members of the audience, however, wanted to compare notes with this newfound "religion," which was annoying and a waste of time, in my opinion. Anyway, I look forward to reading the rest of the tales and may post some excerpts if you're lucky.