May 30, 2013 at 9:11 pm (Artists and Writers, Books, Recommended, Weather, Women Writers)
Tags: Burma, Just published, novellas
It is soooo hawtt!
Self, remember what you were moaning about only yesterday? About how chilly it was inside the house?
Must you always need reminding: BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR ???
Kyi’s novella, Black Rice, arrived in the mail today. That was quick! Self only ordered it on Tuesday!
The voice packs a punch. The reader is immediately immersed in the narrator’s world, Burma during World War II:
. . . The bricks in the old temples are held together by stucco cement mixed from nothing but lime, sand and boiled sticky rice.
Yet this rice-based cement has held the temples together for hundreds of years. The monk and the nun fortune-tellers always say: My name fits my skin color. My skin color matches my name. That is necessary for good luck and survival. In our country these are necessities, like food and drink, like good health. No one proves that better than the Old Man, Bright Sun himself.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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May 26, 2013 at 6:33 am (Artists and Writers, Links, Movies, Recommended, Writing)
Tags: comedies, Literary Magazines, reviews, Saturdays, short story, websites
Frances Ha (directed by Noah Baumbach, and co-written by him and the actress Greta Gerwig) is a very beguiling movie.
It’s in black and white, which lends an almost documentary feel to it.
The heroine is clumsy, somewhat of a dork. The scene where she gets an IRS refund check then immediately decides to treat a friend (who is actually 10x richer than she. Seriously) out to dinner? Classic. The poor girl has to run to an ATM since the restaurant had a problem with her credit card. She ran a really long way, and fell down. When she got back to the restaurant, the guy, so sweet, said: “Who do you know in Switzerland?” or “Did you have to go to Switzerland?” Ha. Ha. Ha. Then, his next line: “Why are you bleeding?” “Oh,” poor Frances says. “I’m bleeding? Where?”
The girl is huge and ungainly (somewhat like Brienne of Tarth), but dreams of becoming a dancer. It’s not happening. Yet you root for her, all the way.
* * * * *
Alimentum, self loves you. Why? Not only are you rich in imagery and full of (meaty) content, self discovered this evening that her story “Cake” (which appeared a long time ago: which is to say, last year) is featured on a sidebar in the Fiction section. Yes!
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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May 26, 2013 at 5:30 am (Artists and Writers, Links, Recommended, Surprises, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: discoveries, Filipino writers, photography, praise, Saturdays, science fiction, seasons, short story, summer, websites
It makes self sad to write the above. Indeed, it is the last Saturday of May 2013 she will ever live through. Then May will turn into June, and before you know it, July will be here (though she loves July. And not just because it’s her birthday month!) Before you know it, it will be Christmas again. And those silly Christmas doo-dads she pasted on her dining room windows, and has been too lazy or too distracted to take down? She’ll just leave them on, so that when Christmas comes, there will be no more of this hunting around for them in the garage!
Self has discovered a new Kindred Spirit Blogger! She’s not sure how she stumbled on this site, but she must have added it to her Bookmarks after she got back from Venice.
Tonight, she was browsing through it and thought: Hmm, it’s been a while since self blogged about another blogger. Let’s just say, she was very moved by the series of sunset pictures on this blog. They reminded her of the picture that Philippine Genre Stories used to illustrate her story “The Departure,” which was the very first story of that webzine, and which she’s been reading regularly ever since. It was fun to see it on the site, and a few months ago she discovered that Ellen Datlow (Who is Ellen Datlow, you may ask? Don’t blame you, self had to look her up: She is the editor of Science Fiction Magazine) had given self’s story (and a couple of other ones by Filipino writers, one of whom was Kristine Ong Muslim, whose writing self likes very much) an Honorable Mention for Best Science Fiction 2011!
Just now, self wandered over to Kristine’s website and discovered that Kristine has “garnered multiple nominations for the Pushcart Prize” and that “her short fiction and poetry were accepted in over five hundred anthologies, periodicals, and podcasts.” Gadzooks!!! Way to go, Kristine !!!
Later, self browsed for mentions of her own story, and found some other writer mention it in passing, saying it was “rather dark.” To which self could only respond with a hearty
BWAH. HA. HA. HAAAAAA!
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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May 8, 2013 at 8:07 pm (Artists and Writers, Conversations, Links, Lists, Publishers, Recommended, television)
Tags: contests, decisions, interviews, lists, rejections, Stanford
You did not give in to temptation and slink off to see “Oblivion”! No, you stayed home, and saved $7. Not only that, you saved two hours of your life which were instead spent on:
- Catching up with old friends. You found an e-mail from Beth Alvarado. Which was just so, so – zen, because you had just been in the Stanford Creative Writing Program yesterday, attending a colloquium with T. C. Boyle (T.C., why are you so hip? What gives you the right to be so hip? How can you be a famous author and not be an ass? How? How? How? Is it your red converse sneakers and the black suit and the hair that probably at one time used to be a mullet?) and it would have been a terrible waste of the energy flow from that event to see a movie like “Oblivion.”
- You got to try to get son off from jury duty. That is, you called the San Mateo County Courthouse on his behalf and explained that on the date in question, son would be in Claremont, receiving his Masters diploma. And the lady said, “Fine. I’ll move his date to the following week.” To which self really had no rejoinder. Well, actually, she did attempt a rejoinder but the lady cut her off and said, “Ma’am, this is the second postponement. By now he should know what his summer plans are!” Self meekly subsided.
- You got to hear the mail landing in the mailbox. And you were then able to see that you had a form rejection (from Colere) and an announcement of winners of the Sarabande Book Prize and were informed that IF you were a finalist, the entry fee for next year’s contest would be waived, so you thought that you were a finalist, until you read the names of the finalists. What is the point of sending a letter saying IF you are this, then you won’t have to pay a fee to join the contest next year, when there are only three finalists and the letter was probably sent to EVERYBODY?
- You got to do more web research on your favorite characters from “Game of Thrones” : Jaime Lannister (You finally realized you’d been mis-spelling his name forever), and Brienne of Tarth. And you found this fascinating interview between Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Self can’t believe she actually spelled that correctly), and Rolling Stone. NC-W says quote unquote: I’m sorry, I’m going in circles. You were asking about Brienne and I’m talking about Jaime! To which interviewer responds quote unquote: It’s very Jaime of you. To which NC-W responds quote unquote: We should have Gwen on the phone. It’d be more fun.
See, this is the reason why watching Jaime Lannister and Brienne of Tarth on “Game of Thrones” is so much fun: there’s this on-going banter between two people who respect each other, one of whom just happens to be a man. And maybe Brienne, the woman, really wishes she were a man as well. The man’s good looks are completely incidental to the relationship, and the woman’s plain-ness is incidental as well. Holy Cow! Did you catch that smokin’ hot tub scene in Episode 5? When Brienne stood up from the water where she’d been just moments earlier simpering like a blushing bride and displayed herself to Jaime in all her earthly glory (from the back, but her curves were evident), and the guy was just — mesmerized? As were we, the viewers?
Until the fight on the bridge episode (Episode 2?), which was the last one self saw before leaving for Venice, self’s favorite character on “Game of Thrones” was Daenerys. But – no more! Give her Brienne’s awkward ungainliness any time!
So, given that self had skipped watching approximately three weeks’ worth of “Game of Thrones,” she could be forgiven for wondering why Jaime Lannister was wearing that hand on a rope around his neck. She didn’t realize it was his own hand until some bandit began ridiculing him about it. Then it was — GASP! – Holy Major Plot Development! As some other person on the web said (You see? Self really HAS been all over the web this afternoon!): Jaime. Oh, Jaime. I really hope you’re ambidexterous.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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May 5, 2013 at 3:49 pm (Artists and Writers, Books, Links, Lists, Recommended, Sundays)
Tags: biographies, book lists, hist, Just published, poetry, reviews, Sundays, Vietnam, war literature, writing process
Below are the books self is interested in reading after perusing the 7 March 2013 issue of The New York Review of Books. Her choices are nothing if not idiosyncratic:
Former People: The Final Days of the Russian Aristocracy, by Douglas Smith: reviewed by Michael Scammell (Self admires the title of this book tremendously; she, too, has felt, many times, like a “former people.”)
Now All Roads Lead to France: A Life of Edward Thomas, by Matthew Hollis: reviewed by Helen Vendler. In a nutshell: “Thomas meets Frost in London in 1913, begins (for the first time since Oxford) to write poetry, feels guilty (in complex ways, including the fear of cowardice) about watching others die while he remains at home, decides to enlist, trains as an officer (in part for the higher pay), volunteers for the front, and courts death. When the death arrives (from a bomb blast in Arras) it is both shocking and unsurprising.” Tragic.
Several books about General David Petraeus, reviewed by Thomas Powers:
- The Insurgents: David Petraeus and the Plot to Change the American Way of War, by Fred Kaplan
- The Fourth Star: Four Generals and the Epic Struggle for the Future of the United States Army, by David Cloud and Greg Jaffe
In the course of the review, Powers cites three other fascinating books:
- The Centurions, a novel by Jean Lartéguy, about the lessons learned by French army officers captured by the Vietminh at Dien Bien Phu (“You’ve got to have people on your side . . . if you want to win a war.”)
- Street Without Joy, a “history of the long French failure in Vietnam,” by the French writer Bernard B. Fall
- Hell in a Very Small Place, also by Bernard B. Fall, about “a set-piece battle at Dien Bien Phu in 1954.”
And now, self must get going if she wants to catch the Menlo Park Farmers Market.
Arrivederci, dear ones.
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April 26, 2013 at 7:18 pm (Artists and Writers, Places, Recommended, Traveling, Venice)
Tags: discoveries, Fridays, photography, travel, Venice
San Toma’ is a quiet neighborhood; it feels home-y. There’s a small supermarket just around the corner, where early this morning self bought a loaf of bread and a thick wedge of Asiago. Venice restaurants are not cheap; the Billa Supermarket is a godsend!
Down the Street
The Next Street Over (About a 5-Minute Walk From the Apartment)
Self wondered what the sign meant and decided, after closer inspection, that the building must be some kind of bed-and-breakfast. She’s always on the lookout for such places, everywhere she goes. One never knows when such information can come in handy!
Today, also, self spied a poster at the entrance to a café in San Toma’. It was about the photography of a man named Gotthard Schuh. The exhibit, called L’Ultima Venezia (The Last Venice), is on display at the Palazzo Loredan, Campo Santo Stefano, seat of the Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere e Arti. (Where is that? Perhaps Margarita can find it; she can find anything!)
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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April 10, 2013 at 2:02 am (Artists and Writers, Books, Lists, Recommended, The Economist)
Tags: art, book lists, inspirations, Iraq, Just published, nonfiction, novel, reviews, The Economist
Self has Don Quijote so much on the brain (it’s overdue at the Library: she better hurry up) that she even sees a theme in the latest book list: it seems to be a list of Quijotic Endeavours. After you read the capsule descriptions, see if you don’t agree, dear blog readers:
- A first novel, Ghana Must Go, by Talye Selasi (Penguin Press): A brilliant medical student from Ghana becomes the scapegoat in the death of a 77-year-old “Boston socialite, wife, mother, grandmother and alcoholic.”
- The “agony” of Iraq, described by Toby Dodge in Iraq: From War to a New Authoritarianism: “The collapse of the Iraqi state” allowed ‘ethnic entrepreneurs’ — “political manipulators of sectarian fears – to flourish.”
- An artist talks about his process in The Lost Carving: A Journey to the Heart of Making, by David Esterly (Viking): Esterly’s medium is wood. His inspiration was a 17th century woodcarver who went by the name Grinling Gibbons. When “a fire at Hampton Court Palace damaged a series of Gibbon carvings . . . Mr. Esterly was chosen to recreate” one of them, a “seven-foot-long cascade of fruit and flowers . . . This book is the story of the year it took him to do it.”
And, from The New York Review of Books of 27 September 2012, two very interesting reviews: the first by Jerome Groopman, reviewing God’s Hotel: A Doctor, A Hospital, and a Pilgrimage to the Heart of Medicine by Victoria Sweet (Riverhead) and the second by Ezra Klein, reviewing The Obamas, by Jodi Kantor.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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April 9, 2013 at 9:19 pm (Artists and Writers, Links, Recommended)
Tags: classic movies, fashion, San Francisco Chronicle, transitions
Quotes are from Associated Press by way of yesterday’s San Francisco Chronicle.
Although self has never owned a Lily Pulitzer dress, she knows exactly what they are. Lilly Pulitzer was the Tory Burch of her day, a woman “who married into the famous newspaper family” and “got her start in fashion by spilling orange juice on her clothes. A rich housewife with time to spare and a husband who owned orange groves, she opened a juice stand in 1959, and asked her seamstress to make dresses in colorful prints that would camouflage fruit stains. The dresses hung on a pipe behind her juice stand and soon outsold her drinks.”
More:
- “The signature Lilly palette features tongue-in-cheek jungle and floral prints in blues, pinks, light greens, yellow and orange – the colors of a Florida vacation.”
- In “a 2009 interview,” Ms. Pulitzer was quoted as saying: “I designed collections around whatever struck my fancy . . . fruits, vegetables, politics or peacocks. I entered in with no business sense. It was a total change of life for me, but it made people happy.”
One unforeseen result of having watched “To Catch a Thief” and “Vertigo” is that suddenly self is very, very interested in what women wore in bygone decades. She would love, for instance, to get her hands on the grey suit worn by Kim Novak in “Vertigo.” And she has studied Eva Marie-Saint’s wardrobe in “North by Northwest” and finds it truly iconic.
And now, back to her reading of Don Quijote (almost to page 500!)
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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April 5, 2013 at 1:31 am (Artists and Writers, Lists, Movies, Recommended, Weather)
Tags: documentaries, Filipino movies, inspirations, lists, performances
So it was a very dreary day — rain! Continuous rain! And wiping up dog pee in the kitchen! A flood of dog pee!
But the latter half of the day was very fine. Self found Lisa Y’s house, and bugged her about her documentary, Marilou Diaz-Abaya: Filmmaker on a Voyage.
Self must admit: she has always been fascinated by (Lisa and) Marilou D-A: models, for self, growing up in Manila. In convent school. In a convent school founded by French nuns.
What was possible?
So, in the course of the afternoon, self had reason to ponder the following names:
- Amy Austria (Self saw her in the few clips from Marilou D-A’s Brutal. This actress was revelatory, heartrending.)
- the iconic Marilou Diaz-Abaya herself, who passed away last October at 56 (“The real battle is not against cancer cells; the real battle is against fear.”)
- an actor self had never heard of before: Jaime Fabregas (He played the Spanish official responsible for Rizal’s execution in the movie Jose Rizal)
and of course: Lisa herself!
Thank you for the fun time, Lisa! You rock!
Mona Lisa Yuchengco, who directed MARILOU DIAZ-ABAYA: FILMMAKER ON A VOYAGE
More of Lisa
And STILL more of Lisa!
Self just has to say this: Lisa, you look so adorable in purple! You’re welcome!
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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March 30, 2013 at 1:43 am (Artists and Writers, Links, Places, Recommended, Weather)
Tags: art, exhibits, Fridays, museums, photography, San Francisco, Stella Kalaw
Ever since Stella K told self about the Garry Winogrand exhibit at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, self has ached to go.
She was about to go yesterday, but then she got hung up with gardening.
She went today, though. What a gorgeous day it was in the City!
On 101, approaching the Seventh Street exit (The exit for SFMOMA is the one following, on Fourth Street)
It will be clear from the above snapshot that self was doing the dangerous thing again: snapping photos while driving. But she just couldn’t give up the chance to document the day, the excellent weather, the freeway signs, the San Francisco skyline, and of course the traffic!
The Garry Winogrand exhibit was fascinating. Thank you for telling self about it, Stella K! She was fascinated by Winogrand, his “anti-journalistic” stance, his perceptivity about crowds, his alive-ness to facial expressions of people he passed on the street. On the audio tour, his son is quoted as saying that when Winogrand would take his children on outings, he was constantly taking pictures of people they passed, and so it took a very very long time to get from Point A to Point B. But Winogrand’s son said that he was so accustomed to his father’s behavior that he regarded it as entirely normal.
As self was leaving the 4th floor, where the Winogrand exhibit was, she decided to snap a picture of the stairs:
Woman Ascending the Stairs in the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Afterwards, as self was walking back to the 5th and Mission Garage, she decided to walk through the Metreon. She would have made it out without damage if she hadn’t been attracted by a colorful sign saying Cako. When she went up close to investigate, she saw tubs of ice cream! And she decided to try the vanilla salt with caramel swirls. She brought her ice cream outside, to the Yerba Buena gardens, and luxuriated in the sunshine and the pigeons. It was such a gorgeous day! Self reflected that she is so lucky to be alive, and living where she does, with pretty easy access to the gorgeousness of San Francisco.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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