Literary Baseball

I went to a Dodger game. I would have never gone if the tickets weren't a gift from a friend. The last time I went was well over 25 years ago when I was twelve. I saw Fernando Valenzuela hit a home run.

My basebll story would have ended there...until now! I was there for all of 3 minutes when I got into the spirit of the game. I was cheering, hootin' and hollerin'! I couldn't believe how much fun I had! I got caught up in the culture of the stadium, standing up to participate in The Wave, singing "Take me out to the baseball"--I knew all the words--and hoping the Dodger would win (they lost to the Marlins).

On the giant TV, I was shot back to my childhood when they showed that Fernando Valenzuela was in the stadium watching the game also. Whoa.

I kept kicking myself because baseball is such the American past time and The Dodgers are such an icon of Los Angeles. I consider myself a Los Angeles writer (above other labels like gay writer or Asian American writer) that I couldn't believe that I allowed myself to be deprived of such a Los Angeles cultural event. Hmmmm. I wonder if I can get Laker tickets.

Literary Music

I love this idea of artists inspiring other artists. What gets me to write the most is when I am exposed to a great movie, an incredible painting, an amazng performance. Check this video of songs that were inspired by literature. Who knew George Orwell inspired so many?!?!?

Literary Worley Wind Tour

I highly recommend this story by Cole Ynda about the Joanne Worley no one ever knew. See here.

Literary Caricature

I hate narcissistic blogs where all you see are pics of the author, but I had to show this. I've never been a caricature before. It was done by Rama Hughes (http://www.ramahughes.com/) for Skylight Books. See other Skylight staff drawn like this here.

Literary Cut

At my old job, it took me fifteen minutes to get to work and fiteen minutes to get back, maybe 25 in traffic. With my new job, it takes on average an hour to get to work and an hour to get back. That's two hours out of my day driving and not writing.

I needed more writing time. One way of doing this was to cut my grooming time. My hair actually takes a bit to prepare. With the drying time, gel or pomading time, combing and styling time, I lose about 20 minutes. So, I decided to cut off my tresses. This is the shortest my hair has ever been. I like it. It takes me three minutes to prepare it now.

Literary Tongue

I was fortunate enough to partake in the Tongue and Groove reading series put put on by Conrad Romo (above with fellow writers Faye Lane and Catherine Griffith). I shared the stage with some great talent, including Kate Crash, Kerrie Kvashay-Boyle, and Jake Labotz.

In preparing for this, I had an interesting time. I couldn't decide what to read. I was sort of tired of reading from the novels. I didn't feel like reading from the new novel-in-progress. I considered some short stories, maybe an essay. In the end, I chose a monologue from one of my solo shows and borrowed an entry from My Finger Project, a piece written by Cheryl Klein.

As I prepared, I remembered how I didn't have much of a choice 10 years ago. I didn't have that much to choose from. To think that now I have a "Body of Work" to pull from was actually kinda cool.

I read/performed a piece from The Rice Room. I hadn't done anything from that war horse in awhile. Performing Rice Room was interesting. I was acting! Inside it felt like home. I couldn't sleep because the feeling was so familiar and exciting.

Funny, when I was a twenty year old actor, I didn't know I'd become a performance artist. When I was thirty, I only had dreams of publishing a novel. Now, that I'm forty, I wonder what I'm going to become.

Literary Heat

I. I've noted that my next novel will have Blood and Disease as themes. Earlier this month, I got into a heated e-mail exchange about how gay men can't give blood becuase of the fear of tainting the blood supply with AIDS. However, heterosexuals who make up most of the HIV infections in the world aren't held to the same standards. Also, it turns out drug users and prostitutes can eventually give blood after a certain time, but gay men can't. Ever! Some of you who read my second novel Talking to the Moon may have remembered a scene where a son couldn't give his dying father blood because he was gay. Well, that came from my real life experience.

Writer (and former student) Serena Lin wrote (with minor assistance from me) this piece for Asian Week. It says in a nutshell that this practice is wrong and should be changed.

II. I escaped the heat of Los Angeles by doing a reading in San Francisco with Michelle Tea (below) on Tuesday. It was most fun. For the first time, I read a section from my novel-in-progress, Boy With Bleeding Hands (see section I about what it's about). It was a wonderful exercise in putting my next novel out into the world.

III. It's going to get hot this weekend as I do a reading for Conrad Romo's Tongue and the Groove. I'll probably be reading from the new novel as well.

Details:

"Tongue & Groove"A monthly offering of short fiction, personal essays, poetry, spoken word + music produced by Conrad Romo. This month featuring the following: Noel Alumit, Kerrie Kvashay-Boyle, Kate Crash, Katherine Griffith, Faye Lane and music by Jake La Botz.

Sunday the 29th of June

6:00-7:30 pm

The Hotel Cafe1623 1/2 N. Cahuenga Blvd.Hollywood, Ca 90028

$6.00

Literary Queery

I'd been doing a lot of really queer stuff lately. Maybe because it's June and it simply screams Gay pride month. I started with an event on gay and lesbian publishing, hosted by PEN USA West.
Novelist Sarah Schulman (left), joined here with novelist Nina Revoyr, cracked open the evening by stating the disparities in publishing. Last year, not a single lesbian novel was published by a major publisher.

The host was KCRW's Michael Silverblatt (left), joined with Corey Roskin from the City of West Hollywood, who was most passionate about gays and lesbians TAKING a place in the world of writing--cuz no one is going to give it to us.

I hung out with the mostly lesbian crowd at the Hammer Museum to check out Sister Spit, a troupe that writer Michelle Tea started in the 1990's in San Francisco that provided space for girls to read their work and develop as writers. Poet Eileen Miles headlined the event.

The Lambda Literary Organization moved to Los Angeles and Executive Director Charles Flowers and Poet/Editor David Groff decided to have a lunch. Some noteworthy writers showed up like Peter Gadol, Chris Rice, and Mark Thomspson. The joint we lunched in was known for it's pizzas, but most of us chose salads to gorge on.

Here is the seafood salad I ate.

Here's to the gay writers who lunch!

The queer month ends with me doing a reading, curated by Michelle Tea herself, at the San Francisco Public Library (above, located at 100 Larkin and Grove) on June 24th at 6pm. I will be joining zinestor and illustrator Nicole J. Georges (Invincible Summer); performance artist and Sister Spit member Sara Seinberg; and writer, activist, performer and educator Guillermo Gomez-Pena (author of American Book Award winning New World Border). Come on out and say, Hi

Literary Summer

For the Pride issue of IN Los Angeles magazine, I was asked to put together a summer reading guide. Look at who I talked to and find out what ten books I chose that every gay man should read this hot season. See here.

Literary Distraction

I know I'm a creative person. I must create or die. My writing is, ur, um, so-so. I started this internet arts endeavor as a way to stay creative while my writing slogs along.

Click here.

Literary closure

Many of you know that I'd been doing AIDS work for a veeeeeery long time. It has affected my life, spurred me to write, forced me to grow. I started doing AIDS work at the Chris Brownlee Hospice for People With AIDS, located in Elysian Park. It was back in the early 1990's. Many passed away. One death, in particular, hit me particularly hard and I left abruptly. The hospice closed down in 1996 when life-saving medication came onto the scene.

Today, I went to the rededication of the new Chris Brownlee building. It was in the same place, but the use of the building is different. It's now used for AIDS education purposes.

I thought I'd break down when I walked through the familiar walls, remembering all those who died there. I cried a little, then felt a renewal hope. This building found a new purpose, a new reason for being. Oddly, I felt a closure happening. Things came round.

I wasn't writing then. I didn't know I'd become a writer. Strange: if it weren't for the hospice, I don't think I'd be writing. Alot of people died unceremoniously. Their lives uncelebrated. I think about them sometimes when I write.

Literary Expo

I went to Book Expo America. It's a huge event with publishers from all over coming to pitch their latest line of books to booksellers. I went to network and check out trends. I also went to a number of networking events (um, parties really) to meet new people.

There were, of course, big wigs there taking up huge amounts of space. Every publisher you can imagine was there.

Deals were being made. This hall had agents, editors, and publisher making deals about rights and acquisitions.

At some events, the champange was flowing. I only had water.

There were important scholarly types talking about their books, like Robert Thurman who endowed the first Chair at Columbia University for the study of Buddhism. He's a brilliant man. Alas, some just call him Uma's dad.

There were celebrities like Ernest Borgnine pushing his memoir.

People in suits promoting stuff like this book Marley's Treasure.

There was a small lane called "Writers Row." These were people who had the gumption to pitch their own line of books, like this guy with Ghetto Heat Publishing

Or this guy stood pushing his book and his buddy sleeping there.

At the end of the day, I had a blast!

Literary Long Ago

I am in this book called Best Gay Asian Erotica, edited by Joel Tan. I began my writing life writing nothing but Gay Asian life. Embracing who I am was part of my development as an artist and a man. From my recent work, you can see that I began writing about other things as well.

Not too long ago, I began going through old folders in my computer. I ran across a long short story that I started in the mid-nineties. It was really the first story that I'd ever cared about developing. It runs 50 pages long and it's about a gay Asian health worker in the mid-nineties and his unfulfilled love life. (Back then, I was a gay Asian health worker with an unfulfilled love life.)

I sort of abandoned it. Recently, I started picking at it again. It reminds me of a time and place in my life that I'd said farewell to. It was inspired from a bar called Mugi's that is now called The Stone.

1994

I used to hate it here. I mean Ito's is not exactly the Bonaventure Hotel. It's old and dismal, a real dive. Ito's is located in the east end of Hollywood. Far from the Mann's Chinese theatre and the Walk of Fame. Ito's is surrounded with decaying brick buildings. These brick buildings would have probably housed starlets back in the 1930's, but not today.

Ito's bar attracts a very interesting clientele. There's a lot of Korean, Mandarin, Cantonese, Tagalog, Japanese, Thai, and other Asian languages spoken here. Most of the guys here aren't Asian-American like me. Most of these guys are from Asia.

Not too many Asian Americans come to Ito's. Many of us, American born or bread Asians, will party in the bars in Silverlake or West Hollywood. We look at Ito's as that embarrassing place where people who can barely speak English go, where their rough accents are painful to our ears.

I don't know why we divide ourselves: Asian-Asian versus Asian Americans. That's just so.

Lesson # 1: There are certain things that just are, no rhyme or reason.

Literary Scrolls

This is Garupuda and his interpreter Nandita. We recenty hosted them when they came from India. There is a tradition in a region of India where Scrolls tell a story. Sort of like a comic book with panels depicting a portion of a story. What makes this even more enchanting is that Garupuda sings the story. He is a respected scroll singer where he's from.

He created scrolls dealing specifically with HIV. The panels tell a sad story in a beautiful way.

Literary Marriage

I used to think those story book weddings were ridiculous. I mean that whole Cinderella thing has hi-jacked the lives of many who believe that this magical relationship will come by, ending in a loving marriage. I never thought it was something for me to believe in.

Well, today California okayed gay marriage. You know what? I was thrilled! There was a little bit of the romantic in me and for a moment I thought maybe the Cinderella thing ain't so bad. I actually began to whisper a phrase that might be happen someday: Will you marry me?

Now, I just need to find someone to say it to.

Literary Feathers

In my last post, I talked about the most amazing reading with Corpus Journal. I didn't mention that Native American Sherman Alexie was one of the writers in the journal. There was an attempt to get him to the reading, but he was unavailable. Interestingly enough, the next day was a Pow Wow on campus. I thought that if we couldn't get Mr. Alexie, atleast the spirit of native cultures were present around the same time.

Literary UCLA

Last week I was a part of an amazing literary event at UCLA. MAKE ARTSTOP AIDS and AIDS Project Los Angeles teamed up to do a reading of Corpus, a literary journal from APLA. Students (above: Coordinator Bobby, with readers Sarah, Turquoise, and Nick) were asked to "respond" to work published in the journal. It was one of those events that made me glad to be a writer. The night was truly magicial. More established writers read their work, then heard how students reacted to it. The room was packed and good vibes went around.

Pato Hebert from APLA did a great job with the journal, a publication that included Sherman Alexie, Elton Naswood, Jaime Cortez, and Keith M. Harris.

On another note, I was asked to write something up for the Center for the Study of Women on campus. I wrote a personal essay on my experience with AIDS and the work of women in the MAKE ARTSTOP AIDS exhibition. The essay also ran on the website for the International Institute. Check it out here.

Literary Slamming

Last week, I hosted the Dead Poet's Slam an annual event produced by Smartgals, an incredible org doing amazing sight specific work. The Slam pits a group of dead poets against another group of dead poets. This year the rivalry was West Coast dead poets vs. East Coast dead poets. Writers, performers, actors intrepret the work and get judged by a panel of experts. One performer interpreted Langston Hughes, while another interpreted Charles Bukowski. And so on. The dead East Coast poets won. Not only is the event fun, but it brings together a great group of talented people.

Screenwriter Nevin Schreiner and Smartgals Leader Christine Louise Berry.

Slammers included writer Brendan Constantine and actor Shawn Michael Howard.

Memoirist and judge Rita Williams with Judge and Smartgals guy Tau-Mu Yi.

Poet and Judge Chris Davidson with writer Aimee Bender.

And there I am, host. I was in a goofball mode, dressing in the spirit of the evening's fun. Hence, the updturned collar and funny tie.

Literary "Times" Remix

As we head into the weekend, here are memories of the Times Book Fair from a weekend past.

Cheryl Klein poeting and writing in her booth, Poets and Writers. Check out her blog here.

Lavonne and Emily from Skylight Bookstore, my launching pad. You know they're sweltering in that heat. That smile proves their great actresses.

Me and my friend Gali trying to look cool in the cool shade of my camera.