This exists

Byyyyyeeeee!!!

Blessed are the weird

H/T to Sun Gazing.

It's been two years...

My Dad passed away two years ago today.

I swear if they have one of these in Southern Cal, I'm going

Oakland hosts Internet Cat Video Festival.

OMG!!!

...Teddy was among several cats who accompanied their owners to what could be easily described as a feline lovefest. On Saturday afternoon, thousands of people turned out for a block party featuring local bands dressed up as cats, comedians telling cat jokes and even a troupe of cat-themed dancers...

...But the real attraction came just after sundown, when a 70-minute reel of the most popular cat videos on the Internet was beamed onto the side of a 10-story building here in the city’s historic downtown district. The clips, compiled by Minneapolis’s Walker Art Center for its inaugural cat video film festival last summer, featured everything from cats behaving badly to a feline cast as a depressed French existentialist...

BTW, I have to say that I think the article's author was a little lazy, at least as far as identifying these famous cats.  The depressed French existentialist is the world famous Henri, le Chat Noir, while the cat in the accompanying picture is obviously OMG Cat.  On the other hand, it's Yahoo "News", so I guess should know to lower my expectations by now.

We seriously need a Cat Video Fest in L.A.  I'm leaving Sophie home, though.  Her continued failure to become an internet sensation means no extracurricular activities for her.  Not that I think she cares.

Six-Word Memoirs

Found this on Writer's Digest's annual list of top websites for writers: Six-Word Memoirs.

You can also do six words on a variety of other topics.

Here are the ones I submitted:
On life (memoir): Almost a late bloomer.  Almost there...
Advice: Common sense.  Not that common actually.

I'll be going back to that one for more.

And the day started off so well...

I'm not familiar with TSN's The Panel, nor was I ever the target audience for the Hangover movies, but this vid that was unleashed on the hockey faithful this morning cracked my shit up nevertheless:

Two observations: I love to think that Kopi answers his phone like this in real life ("Anze Kopitar here. Stanley Cup champion.") and coach at the end is just utterly priceless ("That's what you get for picking the Canucks last year.")

Then the shit that was Game 1 of the Kings Stanley Cup playoffs happened.

And then I had the following Twitter convo:

I may have tempted fate there.  Having said that...

The postseason is young.  GO KINGS GO!!!

Greenlight this now. NOW. PLEASE.

James Ellroy shopping L.A. Confidential sequel series.

Yes, please.  OH PLEEEEEEEASE!!!

L.A. Times Festival of Books - Inside Hollywood

This panel featured moderator Margaret Woppler, Alex Espinoza (The Five Acts of Diego Leon), Adam Braver (Misfit), Matthew Specktor (American Dream Machine) and Nina Revoyr (The Age of Dreaming)

Alex Espinoza:

• Became interested in Hollywood's transition from silent films to talkies.  Silents could be used worldwide, but sound required foreign-language versions to be shot.  During this period the "Latin Lover" was popular with filmgoers.  However these stars were not necessarily treated as well by Hollywood as their Caucasian counterparts.
• In discussing the layers and complexity of reinvention of self, he mention how early Hollywood would "Latinize" actors who looked the part, even if they weren't Latino.  He told about the silent star studio executives dubbed Ricardo Cortez, who was actually a Jewish New Yorker born Jacob Krantz.
• Like many of the "Latin Lovers" of early Hollywood, Espinoza was born in Mexico and eventually moved to Los Angeles.

Adam Braver:

• Misfit focuses on the last weekend of Marilyn Monroe's life, especially in terms of what Hollywood does to people, their identity and need to reinvent themselves.
• Attracted to Marilyn as a subject because she was a great, real-life complex character.  He felt the key to writing someone like her is finding the core human part of a character.

Matthew Specktor:

• His father was legendary Hollywood agent Fred Specktor, whose clients included Gene Hackman and Robert De Niro.  Because Hollywood is constantly depicted negatively, he wanted to describe a place inhabited by real people.  In American Dream Machine, the stars are in the background and the experiences of the fictionalized agents sons are not limited to Hollywood.

Nina Revoyr:

• The Age of Dreaming is about a Japanese former silent star who is tracked down by a young reporter with a script for him.  He is excited about a comeback, but hopes no one looks too deep into his past.
• Sessue Hayakawa was an inspiration.  Despite his stardom, like the Latin Lovers, Asians were also not treated well by Hollywood.  In addition, growing anti-Asian sentiment in the U.S. at the time meant that Hayakawa was limited to sinister and villainous roles.  This created animosity toward him back in Japan, where his countrymen felt that his roles contributed toward negative Japanese stereotypes.  Revoyr wanted to explore the idea of being hugely successful in an industry that doesn't accept you, and the personal cost of making the necessary compromises to attain that success.

The shortest short-story contest ever

Via Gotham Writers Workshop, it's the Very Short Story Contest!

It may be apocryphal, but the story goes that Ernest Hemingway won a bet by writing a short story that ran fewer than ten words. One version of the story places the bet at the famed Algonquin round table. Whether true or not, there is an actual bet-winning short story attributed to Hemingway:

For sale. Baby Shoes. Never worn.

You have to admit its pretty good. It builds, and theres a whole world of background and emotion lurking beneath those words.

We would like to make a similar bet with you. Write a great short story in ten words or fewer. (You may use a title, but that goes into the word count.) Submit it to our contest. Entry is free. Winner of the bet gets a free Gotham ten-week workshop.

You also have a very short time to enter - the deadline is tomorrow!!!

L.A. Times Festival of Books - Crime Fiction: City of Angels

This fascinating Southern California-themed panel of was comprised of moderator Paula Woods (Charlotte Justice novels), Marcia Clark (yes that Marcia Clark, and the Rachel Knight series) , Denise Hamilton (Damage Control, L.A. Times Magazine) and T. Jefferson Parker (the Charlie Hood series).  Easily the highlight of this year's FOB for me.

Marcia Clark:

• "Rachel Knight was an avatar" based on Clark's own experience in the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office, but way cooler.  For example, Clark has Rachel reside at the glamorous and historic Biltmore Hotel in Downtown L.A.
• Based on her experience, homicide detectives are the funniest people she knows (particularly in terms of black humor).  She cited a sign in the LAPD homicide bullpen that reads, "Our day begins when your day ends".
• Her latest novel explores what it's like to be in the middle of a media circus, something Clark, as a major player in the O.J. Simpson trial, knows all too well.
• Noted that "we live longer lives" and so have time for more than one career.
• She has a deal with TNT to develop her books as a 1-hour drama series.

Denise Hamilton:

• With sex scandals all over the news, she wondered what it would be like if you were one of the people involved and had a deep, dark secret that would destroy you if it was revealed.  
• As part of her research she asked a friend who works in Public Relations if they had ever turned down a client.  The answer: Kim Jong Il, although they were impressed that he'd heard of them.  Hamilton also asked if they had to believe that a client is innocent.  The answer was no, but they still have to be able to maintain their firm's professional rep.  This was the reason they also turned down Michael Jackson - it would have hurt their credibility with clients.
• Considers her work "surf noir" that explores the dark side of Southern California's beach culture.

T. Jefferson Parker:

• Many people in law enforcement want to write because they have such great stories.  His connection to this was a neighbor who was the Forensics Director of the ATF's Orange County office.
• His latest Charlie Hood novel is his last with that character.  He wants to start a new series, although he hasn't figured out yet what it will be.  Admitted that ending a seires was "a little scary", but the fun part of writing is finding out what happens next.
• When he writes, he feels like he's along for the ride, rather than in charge.
• Has 17 million books in print.

L.A. Times Festival of Books - Crime Fiction: What We Can't Tell You

I don't know who comes up with the titles of the "conversations", but they need to give it up.  Just call it what it is: Conversations with authors.  About their latest books.  I'm not sure what it what things they couldn't tell us that the FOB had in mind, but luckily for me and the rest of the audience, these authors told plenty.

Moderator Tom Nolan (Ross McDonald: An Autobiography and Artie Shaw: King of the Clarinet), Ariel S. Winter (The Twenty-Year Death), Attica Locke (The Cutting Season, Black Water Rising), Fuminori Nakamura (The Thief), Chris Pavone (The Ex-Pats)

On how they came to write their current novels:
Nakamura: Fascinated by pick-pocketers and prostitution.  The Thief combines both.

Locke: She is from the south, where some old plantations live on as venues for tourism and events.  In addition, in the south "plantation" can mean pretty much any venue.  She was invited to a wedding that was held at an old plantation that really was a former plantation and as an African-American wasn't sure how to feel about it.  She became interested in exploring the location's past and present and the book was written "to explore that...with a dead body."

Pavone: After a couple decades as an office drone, he was startled when his wife came home one night and asked, "How would you like to live in Luxemborg?" She worked for Amazon and had been offered a job overseas.  One big move across the globe later, he found himself a stay-at-home dad in a strange land.  He often made small talk with mothers he met at the park with his kids to and was fascinated by one woman who would chat but would never really reveal anything about herself.  It made him wonder if she was hiding some sort of terrible secret that she had to keep from everyone and that launched the protagonist of The Ex-Pats.

Winter: The Twenty-Year Death follows a Fitzgerald/Hemingway type character in the last twenty years of his life (1931-1941-1951) from the heights to depths of success.  His agent wanted him to write a character that could recur in future books, but Winter decided to have his character recur at different points in his life in one story.

On becoming a writer:
Pavone: Was a voracious reader as a kid.  In college he majored in government, then ended up working in the book publishing world and loved it, mainly because most people involved were in it for the love of book and writers, rather than the money.  But after twenty years in the biz, he tired of it and decided to write himself.

Nakamura: He suffered from depression as a teen and coped by writing out his thoughts.  When he went to college he couldn't figure out what he wanted to do and decided to write out his diary as a novel and loved it.

Winter: Always wrote, had decided to become a writer by the 6th grade.  In college he he decided he wanted to be a playwright, but grew dissatisfied with the collaborative process and turned to back to prose.

Locke: Always wrote as a kid, but grew up wanting to be a filmmaker.  By twenty-four she was working as a location scout and sold a script only to be told that it wasn't going to be made.  Her husband was in law school and they were broke, so she became a "writer for hire".  While she made enough money to buy a home, nothing she wrote was being produced and she tired of writing for people who didn't read in what she described as a "fear-based industry".

The genre:
Nakamura: Despite writing about crime, he is regarded as a writer of serious literature in his native Japan, but doesn't mind people categorizing his novels as either genre or pure fiction.  The film Diary of a Pickpocket is a favorite of his and he referred to it while writing The Thief.  He actually practiced picking pockets of friends and claimed to have had a pretty good success rate.

Pavone: Interested in unreliable narrator/narratives.  On the topic of success: Only one-tenth of 1% of the American reading public needs to purchase your book in order to be successful, so he's okay with 99% of the public not buying his book.

Locke: She feels caught between literature and mystery, and doesn't like to be pigeon-holed as a mystery writer because she's worried she will miss out on potential readers.  Feels that crime fiction is inherently political because it involves distribution of power.

Here comes the Festival of Books

The L.A. Times Festival of Books takes place tomorrow and Sunday at USC.  I've got my schedule and tickets ready to go.

I went to the FOB last year for the first time and had a blast, and also came home with a truckload of books.  Really looking forward to going again.  It will be interesting to see how many more books I own by Sunday night compared to right now.