It's the Poor Folks' Fault

Not.

Go read this clear-eyed, pulls-no-punches article by the good folks at McClatchy:

As the economy worsens and Election Day approaches, a conservative campaign that blames the global financial crisis on a government push to make housing more affordable to lower-class Americans has taken off on talk radio and e-mail.

Commentators say that's what triggered the stock market meltdown and the freeze on credit. They've specifically targeted the mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which the federal government seized on Sept. 6, contending that lending to poor and minority Americans caused Fannie's and Freddie's financial problems.

Federal housing data reveal that the charges aren't true, and that the private sector, not the government or government-backed companies, was behind the soaring subprime lending at the core of the crisis.

Subprime lending offered high-cost loans to the weakest borrowers during the housing boom that lasted from 2001 to 2007. Subprime lending was at its height vrom 2004 to 2006.

Federal Reserve Board data show that:

_ More than 84 percent of the subprime mortgages in 2006 were issued by private lending institutions.

_ Private firms made nearly 83 percent of the subprime loans to low- and moderate-income borrowers that year.

_ Only one of the top 25 subprime lenders in 2006 was directly subject to the housing law that's being lambasted by conservative critics.

"Read the whole thing," as bloggers are wont to say. The piece demolishes the conservative canard that places the blame for the crisis on working class people and on the Clinton Administration for making it easier for them to get credit. And while you're at it, go read Anglachel's post, which makes explicit how restricting credit to the poor and working class (except on the most onerous terms) is yet another tactic in movement conservatives' class warfare.

(H/T to Corrente, another fave on my rapidly dwindling political blogroll)

Riding the Tiger..

When rage is the energy that fuels your movement, this is what happens:

The anger is getting raw at Republican rallies and John McCain is acting to tamp it down. McCain was booed by his own supporters Friday when, in an abrupt switch from raising questions about Barack Obama's character, he described the Democrat as a "decent person and a person that you do not have to be scared of as president of the United States."

A sense of grievance spilling into rage has gripped some GOP events this week as McCain supporters see his presidential campaign lag against Obama. Some in the audience are making it personal, against the Democrat. Shouts of "traitor," "terrorist," "treason," "liar," and even "off with his head" have rung from the crowd at McCain and Sarah Palin rallies, and gone unchallenged by them...

...When a visibly angry McCain supporter in Waukesha, Wis., on Thursday told the candidate "I'm really mad" because of "socialists taking over the country," McCain stoked the sentiment. "I think I got the message," he said. "The gentleman is right." He went on to talk about Democrats in control of Congress.

On Friday, McCain rejected the bait.

"I don't trust Obama," a woman said. "I have read about him. He's an Arab."

McCain shook his head in disagreement, and said:

"No, ma'am. He's a decent, family man, a citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with (him) on fundamental issues and that's what this campaign is all about."

He had drawn boos with his comment: "I have to tell you, he is a decent person and a person that you do not have to be scared of as president of the United States."

The anti-Obama taunts and jeers are noticeably louder when McCain appears with Palin, a big draw for GOP social conservatives. She accused Obama this week of "palling around with terrorists" because of his past, loose association with a 1960s radical (William Ayers).

Barack Obama, socialist.

I'd be laughing a lot harder if these people didn't have guns.

Surfing the Apocalypse

My mom once told me that she read an article about trends and how they got started, and according to what she'd read, I was an early adopter. I don't know if this is true or not (I didn't read the article). I am not particularly trendy, and in some ways I feel like I'm generally a few steps behind. It took me a while to get out of college (six minors, no major) and I lived like a student for years after that. I guess I'm no longer living like a student because I bought Shack By the Sea five years ago, but if you visited my humble abode and looked at the funky old Korean and Chinese cabinets, the 50s era dinette set, the framed poster of Zhou Enlai spinning yarn (with the slogan "A Common Soldier") and more to the point, The Great Wall of Books, you'd probably conclude "eccentric hermit academic writer". Possibly a Commie. But I don't actually have a degree either. You know, six minors, no major, way more credits than necessary for a BA, a drop-out due to boredom and the need to get on with my life, which surely would consist of six figure screenplay deals and rock stardom. But I digress.

In some ways, I guess I have been ahead of certain trends. I lived in China in '79, when that was pretty much unheard of for an American. I came home and taught myself bass guitar, so I could play in a band - I had Carol Kaye and Tina Weymouth to inspire me, but it was still pretty rare at that time, to the point where I got both admiration and a lot of shit. More of the former, but the latter was not insignificant. Later, I recognized an under-utilized resource at my former company and managed to turn it into something relevant and really cool.

Which brings me to my latest trend-setting activity: I left my job of over 15 years on Sept. 2. Right before everything went crazy.

Anyone who's been paying any attention knew this was coming, that our current economy was unsustainable, based on debt and obscure financial transactions that were some form of mutated pyramid schemes on steroids. I'd felt this anxiety acutely the last couple years, that any moment it was all going to come crashing down, that I had to somehow get out, play it right. Escape.

But truth be told, I've nearly always lived my life in the shadow of dread, with the sense that disaster can strike at any moment, that I am not safe. That no one is.

While this is more or less logically true — hey, you could get hit by a bus! — it does make for a certain degree of ambient stress.

Particularly in the case of my job, where I never felt secure. This was actually a pretty rational conclusion. My department was nearly sacrificed to the Corporate Gods a number of times, and only a certain cockroach skill at politicking on my part and great allies within the company managed to save it. This time, politicking (by a bunch of folks) backed up by the department's good reputation preserved it. But as far as my own job went, I realized that I just wasn't up to fighting for it. It wasn't worth it to me anymore. I'd rather see the department stay and make a decent exit. Everybody got what they wanted that way.

Sometimes you have to let go, particularly when you may not have a choice. And I wanted to leave.

So, here I am, an "Unemployed American" sitting on my couch, watching wave after wave of economic crisis crash on our shores. I feel okay. When you've already lost something big, there's not so much anxiety, you know?

I have about a year's worth of resources. Maybe a little more. I have the sense that I'm holing up in my shelter, stocked with supplies; enough, I hope, to weather this storm.

No one knows how bad this is going to get. I think it will get pretty bad, and that for a lot of people who don't have the resources I have, things will be very bad indeed. But I also think that after the shakeout, we may be in better shape, because maybe our economy and our society will out of necessity get back to basics, rebuild on a sounder foundation. Based on real things, of value.

Maybe I'm an optimist after all.

No Release for Guantanamo's Uighurs

"Appeals court blocks release of Guantanamo detainees":

A federal appeals court temporarily blocked the release of 17 Chinese-born Muslims detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba , a day after a landmark decision required them to be freed to the U.S....

..."Seventeen men were told yesterday that they were going to be released after nearly seven years of wrongful detention," said Emi MacLean , an attorney for the Center for Constitutional Rights , which coordinates the representation of detainees including the Uighurs. "Now, they have to be told that their detention will continue to be indefinite."

The Uighurs are among a group of more than 60 men inside the prison who've been cleared for release by the military but who are stuck in limbo because the U.S. government can't find a country to ship them to. The Uighurs say they can't return to China because they'll be tortured as political dissidents.

Urbina's decision marked the first time a court had ordered the transfer of Guantanamo detainees to the U.S. and could have prompted the release of others who've been cleared by the military.

Urbina declared the continued detention of the Uighurs to be "unlawful" and said the government could no longer detain them after conceding they weren't enemy combatants.

However, Justice Department lawyers continued to argue that the release of the group into the U.S. could pose a security risk and warned that the decision could harm international relations with China.

In court papers, Justice Department lawyers attacked Urbina's ruling, warning in court papers of "serious harms to the government and the public at large" if the appeals court did not intervene.

The lawyers said that Urbina's decision "directly conflicts with the basic principle" that the executive branch, specifically the Department of Homeland Security , has sole discretion as to whether to admit foreigners into the U.S. The Justice Department also raised security concerns about releasing men they say were captured at a weapons training camp run by the Taliban in Afghanistan.

The Uighurs attorneys disputed that characterization, saying the men merely were living in a small village in Afghanistan where they'd kept one weapon, but lacked ammunition.

Show of hands — who do you believe?

Maybe I'm cynical.

Some good news (we hope)

I posted about the plight of Chinese Uighurs detained in Guantanamo over three years ago. As the Washington Post reported at that time:

In late 2003, the Pentagon quietly decided that 15 Chinese Muslims detained at the military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, could be released. Five were people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time, some of them picked up by Pakistani bounty hunters for U.S. payoffs. The other 10 were deemed low-risk detainees whose enemy was China's communist government -- not the United States, according to senior U.S. officials.

More than 20 months later, the 15 still languish at Guantanamo Bay, imprisoned and sometimes shackled, with most of their families unaware whether they are even alive.

Now, after nearly seven years in detention, a US judge has ruled that the Uighurs must be released into the US, agreeing with their attorneys that holding the men without cause is unconstitutional:

At a hearing packed with Uighurs who live in the Washington area, Urbina rejected government arguments that he had no authority to order the men's release. He said he had such authority because the men were being held indefinitely and it was the only remedy available. He cited a June decision by an appellate court that found evidence against the Uighurs to be unreliable.

Urbina said in court that he ordered the release "because the Constitution prohibits indefinite detention without cause." He added, "The separation of powers do not trump" the prohibition against holding people indefinitely without trial...

...Justice Department lawyer John O'Quinn asked Urbina to stay the order for a week, giving the government time to evaluate its options and file an appeal. Urbina rejected that request and ordered the Uighurs to appear in his courtroom for a hearing on Friday. He said he would then release them into the custody of 17 Uighur families living in the Washington area.

Apparently the government plans to appeal, but Urbina seems firm in his determination that these men have gotten a raw deal and that they will be released from custody, period (he didn't take kindly to the proposal that US Immigration authorities might re-detain the Uighurs either). Good for him.

I'll go further: the United States of America should pay these men an annual stipend equivalent to a decent income for a period of time allowing them to adjust to their new lives here. I'd say for about seven years, at the very least.

(H/T to Nathan Bransford)

Why I Like Hillary Clinton

And why you should be reading Anglachel.

On How Many Levels Is This Wrong?

I'm really not much in the mood these days to comment about American politics, but I have to say one thing...

What the hell is with the Republican chant of "Drill, baby, drill!"?!

This is just deeply weird, and not a fun kind of weird. I mean, do I have to get into just how perverse it is to celebrate the destruction of pristine natural environments with a crude sexual metaphor?

Okay, there. I just did.

None of your business...

Gah. It's inevitable that if you blog long enough, you will get tagged with a blog meme, and I have gotten tagged again. This time it's "six interesting things you don't know about me."

Okay, look. First, if you know me, you probably know what's interesting, or not, about me. If you don't know me, why would I want to tell you?

Besides, I'm pretty sure that I already did this once, except it was five things you didn't know about me, and now you want six?

Unfair.

I'll give you two.

I once gave a speech during a Democratic convention to the California delegation during our delegation's breakfast. Me, Barbara Boxer (she gave away cute boxer shorts), Bill Bradley, and I forget who else. I was pretty good.

I also arranged and sang half the backing tracks for the scene in the film, "Undercover Brother," where Eddie Griffin and Denise Richards sing "Ebony and Ivory" in a karaoke bar.

I think that's enough for this evening.

The New Imperialists?

Provocative, disturbing article on China's investments in Africa. The title of author Peter Hitchens' piece: "How China Has Created a New Slave Empire in Africa."

Obviously you are not going to find a lot of positives here.

After recounting an incident in which he and his companions were nearly killed, Hitchens sums the up Chinese presence in Africa:

Out of desperation, much of the continent is selling itself into a new era of corruption and virtual slavery as China seeks to buy up all the metals, minerals and oil she can lay her hands on: copper for electric and telephone cables, cobalt for mobile phones and jet engines - the basic raw materials of modern life.

It is crude rapacity, but to Africans and many of their leaders it is better than the alternative, which is slow starvation.

One of more interesting points raised is Chinese attitudes towards worker safety and how these have carried over to their activities in Africa:

Denis Lukwesa, deputy general secretary of the Zambian Mineworkers' Union, also backed up Sata's view, saying: 'They just don't understand about safety. They are more interested in profit.'...

Hitchens quotes a Zambian worker who collected the remains of workers who died in an explosion at a Chinese-run mine:

'A Chinese supervisor said to me in broken English, "In China, 5,000 people die, and there is nothing. In Zambia, 50 people die and everyone is weeping." To them, 50 people are nothing.'

It's telling that Chinese workers are treated hardly better than the Africans (in fact the article speculates that many Chinese laborers in Africa are convicts off-loaded from China's vast penal system) — suggesting that the problem here is not so much Chinese attitudes towards Africans, but Chinese attitudes towards themselves.

Milk Scandal Satire

If you're not familiar with the fenqing "angry youth" strain of Chinese nationalism, you may not find this pitch-perfect parody as funny as I did. But here's a sample from a post at Baidu.com, thanks to China Digital Times:

Don’t forget the fact that the milk powder industry has developed for hundreds of years in other countries but for only a few decades in China. Chinese-made milk powder has made progress in recent years. Don’t expect to achieve perfection in one step. Untainted production systems can only be achieved gradually. Only a gradual process can serve China’s unique characteristics.

Boycotting or confronting Sanlu will only complicate the problem. We should take the approach of dialogue, taking time to communicate while drinking Sanlu milk powder. Only stability can ensure the development of the milk powder production. If we bankrupt Sanlu, China’s milk powder market will go into chaos, and Western milk powder will have a chance to take over China’s market.

As we can see from the history of the development of other countries’ milk powder industries, without exception there has got to be a gradual purification process to decontaminate tainted milk powder. It is the conspiracy of the west to indoctrinate Chinese to drink untainted milk powder form youth in order to destroy China’s milk powder industries. China’s milk powder industries are still very feeble, and the decontamination should still take a long time. If we adopt Western standards, every year, even the recall of 7000 tons of tainted milk powder won’t suffice; can the Chinese milk powder industry still have a chance to grow strong?

Chinese should have a long-term perspective and first drink tainted milk powder for another few decades sacrificing one or two generations; after Sanlu later promptly becomes strong so that it can compete with western production, then we can start to produce infants untainted milk powder step by step, given the assumption that there still remain some infants at that time.

A Modest Proposal

This article on the Chinese baby formula scandal by a well-known Shanghai TV host really cracked me up:

I have been asking myself the following questions: Why did it happen? Why did so many brand-name companies disregard the health and lives of infants? How could their products pass quality inspections, and why was it that some of them were even given inspection-free status by government agencies? ...

...I’m sure the scandal would not have happened if government officials inspected baby formula as strictly as they inspect films.

Not a single film in China has been given an “inspection-free” status. Film directors are treated equally regardless of whether they are internationally renowned or if they’re just starting their career. Even films from top-notch directors are trimmed, revised, or pulled from distribution completely if there are any problems.

Censoring a film starts with inspecting its script. The government prohibits any changes to be made to the original script and inspects each step of the film’s production. Do officials do similar things with dairy products? Do they check our milk supply? A film would be revised again and again until it satisfies the censors. As for milk powder, there is an inspection-free policy which allows unqualified products to be sold directly to consumers. By contrast, there is a strict film recall system. Take the film Apple（苹果） as an example, it was pulled from all movie theaters across the country as soon as officials detected something wrong with it, and subsequently the company that produced the film had its license revoked. However, the dairy product company Sanlu still holds a production license even after the damage it’s caused.

You gotta love the way this guy takes the government's own logic and turns it on its head.

There's more at China Digital Times. Check it out.

"Idiocracy" — Satire or Prescient Documentary?

A couple of years ago I had the pleasure of working on Mike Judge's film, "Idiocracy." It's easy to have missed this film, because like "Office Space," it was unceremoniously dumped by the studio. So here's the basic premise: totally average guy is put in suspended animation, wakes up hundreds of years in the future, where the stupid people people have out-bred the smart ones, and society is so dumbed down that the number one TV show is something called, "Oww! My Balls!"

The hit film is "Ass."

I won't say that "Idiocracy" is without flaws, but it's pretty damn funny (I am particularly fond of the Extreme Court and the Fox News take-off).

Here's the thing: I'm having trouble distinguishing "Idiocracy" from America 2008.

Case in point: three new TV reality shows.

"Hole in the Wall" is a show where contestants try to, um, leap through a hole in the wall (IMDB's description if you are curious, is: "Contestants are required to try and fit through holes in a polystyrene wall, which is moving towards them").

"Wipe Out" seems to be about people crawling on top of giant rubber balls and falling into mud.

Then there's "Hurl." Yes, it's exactly what you think it is.

Well, okay. There's a lot of smart stuff on TV too. "Mad Men" and "Dexter" to name two, and there are plenty more.

Besides, it's not like we've plunged to the depths of "Idiocracy," where the future Starbucks features "Gentlemen's Lattes — with extra Foam."

And then I heard this NPR piece.

Brondo! It has electrolytes!

What They Said...

"China watches U.S. elections with bemusement"

"A lot of people think Western-style democracy is a joke -- it's more like a pop idol contest or a beauty pageant," said Pan Xiaoli, an anchorwoman for International Channel Shanghai, an English-language TV station. "I think the Chinese watch with a sense of inherent superiority, saying, 'This is not the way for us.' "...

..."People think the capitalist way of campaigning is all about making up fake stories to slander your opponent, that it's just a political show," Shen said.

Another reason for the negativity is that many Chinese don't like either candidate.

Perhaps from nostalgia for her husband, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton had been the clear favorite here.

Sen. Barack Obama has alienated some Chinese by criticizing Chinese-made products. And Sen. John McCain infuriated many more by meeting with the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan leader who is reviled by the Chinese government.

"For ordinary Chinese observers, it is hard for them to differentiate between the platforms or understand the anxieties. They've seen it mostly as a competition between a woman, a black man and an old man," said Wang Jisi, dean of the School of International Studies at Peking University, speaking at a seminar of journalists this week in Seoul.

DISCLAIMER: Yes, there are genuine differences between the candidates. Yes, it matters who wins. I'm just in a very cranky mood about the whole thing.

Rage Against the (Wine) Machine

For years here in Venice, we've had a disappointing mini-mall at the corner of Rose and Lincoln Avenues. Lincoln is the big north/south thoroughfare that is officially Highway 1 in places, Rose is one of Venice's main streets that goes west to the beach.

Years ago, we had an actual supermarket there, along with a drug store. The supermarket went under and a succession of discount stores followed: Pic 'N Saves and Big Lots and 99 Cents. As a shopping destination, it was a great place to buy crack. I will never forget the very sad encounter I had with a young woman in that parking lot, when I first moved up here. Actually, I don't remember most of the conversation, just how sad she was, how desperate, living in her car, addicted, abused. I was young myself, and naive, and sort of stunned by the drama of it all - I hadn't had that many encounters with homeless crack addicts up till then.

A few years in Venice, and that became pretty mundane.

Well, crack addicts and people living in their cars will have to find a new place to hang out, because Whole Foods is here, on Lincoln and Rose. With Taqueria, Wine Bar, gelato counter, and "Community Artisans Corner."

Wait, stop. Did you say, "Wine Bar"?

Why yes, I did!

In the middle of this huge yupscale market - and it is huge, taking over what used to be two full store spaces - is a little counter with bar stools and artisanal cheese plates, where you can sit and sip wine from an Enomatic wine dispenser and eat "tapas." And have political discussions, about Obama and Sarah Palin. Which strikes me as deeply ironic on a level that I can't even begin to articulate.

Well, you know, Venice has been gentrifying for years. I used to say that I gentrified along with it, working my way up from being a salesclerk to the exalted position of Mid-Level Film Studio Bureaucrat Shack-By-the-Sea Homeowner. Now that I'm unemployed, I'm not sure where I stand in the scale of yuppie striver/homeless crack addict. I do know that I will be doing some shopping at Whole Foods, after I get my little old lady wheeled cart so I never have to drive my car there and compete with the hordes of Prius for parking. Or would that be "Priuii"? They've got some good food, good deals, and hey, that taqueria is really tempting.

But I will continue to buy my wine at Lincoln Fine Wines, whose prices and selections are much superior.

Chapter Next

I'm sitting on my couch, surrounded by boxes and bags of stuff brought home from my office of 15 years. Books, mostly, and papers. Like I really need more books in my house. Or papers. Some of this I'll no doubt discard. I'll just have to find homes for the rest.

I never blogged about my work, for a number of reasons. First. you can get fired for that. Second, I blog anonymously (up to a point), and it would have been too easy to identify me if I talked about my work in any great detail.

Third, and most importantly...I didn't want to.

I mean, I was at work for enough hours of my life. Why would I feel compelled to write about it too?

Now that it's over, this big chunk of my life, maybe I'll feel like writing about it some day. Not yet though.

I will say that when I walked out the door on Friday, I left happy. I left feeling proud of the work that I did, what I accomplished, the goodwill I accumulated (if praise were money, I really could retire). Heck, I even feel like I left a legacy of sorts. The work I did will continue; the department that so many labored to build over the decades of its existence survives, and I hope flourishes, in good hands.

So, that's my big brag. Funny, it's the first time I've ever felt so free to brag about something I've done, now that it's over, and I'm no longer doing it.

I can't say that this change hasn't sunk in. I was ready to go. It was surprisingly easy to walk out that door. No big emotions, no tears, no regrets.

Everybody asks me what I'm going to do next. I tell them I'm planning to relax. Exercise. Write. Maybe go to China for an extended period next year, so I can really work on my Chinese, finally. Sell my house? Maybe. i'd like to keep it if I can, but if I can't, I'll try to let go with as little angst as possible.

We'll see.

Murphy

I wasn't going to post this because I don't like posting really personal stuff. But, well, she was a great cat.

I am watching a San Diego Chargers preseason game because I don't know what else to do. I'd hoped that my cat Murphy would be watching it with me. When she was younger, she was fascinated by football, particularly if one of the teams wore red. She'd get up on top of the TV, watch the plays upside-down, batting at the little red men as they'd run across the green field.

The vet just took Murphy away. She was 19 1/2. She'd had kidney problems for the past few years, hyperthyroid for years before that. In the last six months she had noticeably declined, and I was seriously concerned about leaving her for two weeks while I was in China. But I'd planned the trip a year ago, paid for it all, and with the upheaval in my work life (as in, unemployment after 15 years at the studio), I felt I needed to continue my China connection, both for my writing and for whatever other opportunities might present themselves.

So I reluctantly left her, in the care of a cat sitter who had taken care of her for a number of years and knew her medical routine.

When I came home from China on Saturday in the early afternoon, the minute I saw Murphy I knew that she was dying. She still tottered over to her food bowl, still looked up at me, knowing that eventually something good would come of it. But she couldn't really eat. She'd lost more weight. After spending a few hours with her I emailed the house-call vet to tentatively schedule a visit on Monday.

I slept the next two nights on the couch, where Murphy liked to sleep most nights. She slept with me, sat on my lap when I read or watched TV, and last night crawled up on my shoulder to sleep for hours. I agonized about the vet appointment. Was it time? Was I doing the right thing? I stayed home today but knew I had to go into work for the rest of the week - it's my last week there after all - if I weren't working, could I have more time with her? Why did this have to happen now, just before I'd have all the time I wanted?

This afternoon, she tottered over to the couch, climbed up and rested her head on my lap. That's where she stayed, until at last she lay on her side, nearly comatose. I no longer had any doubts it was time.

Murphy accompanied me on my life's path for nearly my entire time in Los Angeles. I named her Murphy when she appeared inside the Murphy bed in my old apartment, half-grown, half-starved, skittish and sweet as hell. She was with me for my rock and roll years - she loved it when I played the bass and sang - she loved music in general, would sit in front of the stereo between the speakers, right at the point of greatest stereo separation. I am not kidding. She was particularly fond of the John Adam's opera, "Nixon in China." Again, I'm not kidding.

She was with me for all my attempts at screenplays, at novels, sitting on my lap, competing with the laptop for space. She was here through the drafts and the revisions of the novel that finally got me an agent. My little gray Muse. She was with me for my various romantic disasters, my work dramas, and she was waiting for me when I returned from my adventures. I honestly think she waited to go until I’d returned from this last one.

I don't think of cats as people, or children, but they are companions to many of us, and Murphy was a great companion to me.

I can't quite process the irony that at the same time as my fifteen year stint at the studio is ending, at a time when I may be selling my house and leaving Los Angeles after more than 20 years here, when my life suddenly looks very different after years of continuity, that this one constant companion has left me as well.

I picked this photo of her because it shows how involved she liked to be with anything I happened to be doing. Here she is, helping me with my study of Chinese revolutionary history...

Goodbye, Murphy. You were a great cat.

Greetings from Shanghai!

I'm sitting in my friend's lovely (air conditioned!) apartment in Shanghai after an overnight train from Beijing. I'm sleep-deprived, sweaty and ready to scrounge up some late breakfast. Would have loved to have posted from Beijing but my computer time was limited to non-existent. For now, I'll just say that the old Imperial capital never looked so good or in such fine spirits, not since my coming here, anyway. For all of the skeptism about the Games, the costs, the controversies and crack-downs, the improvements to Beijing's infrastructure and overall environment are significant and much-needed (Subway Lines 5 & 10 - have I mentioned how much I love you both?). By the time of our arrival on August 12 (er, was it the 12?), the pollution had faded and aside from a deluge during Beach volleyball, the weather was great - clear and warm.

I should have more to say about all this when I get back to LA (and lots of photos), but here's my wish for Beijing: may you keep half those cars off the road forever. What a difference it made...

UPDATE: On the negative side of the Olympic tally, a sad and too common story - two elderly Beijing women sentenced to a year's detention for protesting the 2001 demolition of their houses to make way for Olympic development.

There are good acts and evil acts, and sometimes it's very hard to determine where it all balances out...

On the road again...

I just finished watching the looonnnggg rebroadcast of the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics. Over the top doesn't quite describe it. Enough fireworks went off to pretty much nullify all those factory closures that were supposed to bring blue skies for the Games (did you know that fireworks produce significant and long-lasting air pollution? Well, they do).

I'm off to Shanghai tomorrow, and then on to Beijing. I'm not bringing a laptop (doing this trip carry-on thanks to the reportedly onerous security checkpoints, not to mention the checked baggage fees), something I will probably regret at some point because I still have some writing to do on my book. On the other hand, this trip promises to be packed with sporting events, parties, random socializing, and oh yeah, another round of drinking with the Manchurian hairdressers.

Stay tuned...

Hollywood Bowl

Hollywood Bowl
Originally uploaded by Other Lisa

Thanks to my former boss, I had a lovely terrace box at the Hollywood Bowl tonight for the LA Philharmonic. The program was Beethoven's 7th Symphony, Grieg's Piano Concerto and Rimsky-Korsakov's Capriccio Espagnol. The latter two pieces I know nearly by heart; they were favorites during my childhood. The second movement of the Beethoven symphony is a piece of music I just love.

So it was a really nice concert, even with the police helicopters and airplanes adding an off-kilter counterpoint to the Beethoven.

First, the orchestra played the Star Spangled Banner. After hearing the anthem butchered so many times by singers whose collective philosophy seems to be seeing how many melismas they can cram into a tune (NOTE: guys, just because you can sing those notes doesn't mean that you should), the orchestral performance was bracing, Stirring, even.

Except that, nowadays, hearing the Star Spangled Banner makes me cry. I think of what this country stands for, the "better angels" of our nature: the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, principles that mean something. I think of what we've become, a nation where the concept of the rule of law has been perverted to allow torture, indefinite detention, coerced confessions. I think of how a tradition of egalitarianism has been replaced by a new Guilded Age, in which a small group of oligarchs has rigged the system to funnel money out of our infrastructure, our poor, our middle-class and into their own hands.

Yeah, I know, bad shit has always gone on. This country was founded on the original sins of slavery and genocide as well as democracy and equality.

I just didn't think I'd be living through another round of it. I thought we were better than this.

Maybe I will stay in LA...

Yay!:

The city of Los Angeles announced it will ban all plastic bags from retail stores as of July 1, 2010, following similar anti-pollution regulations already enforced in San Francisco.

Good Luck with that...

"China announces Olympics stability drive after riot":

Over the past decade, the number of petitioners journeying to provincial capitals and to Beijing has swollen. Nationwide, petitions and complaint visits grew from 4.8 million in 1995 to 12.7 million in 2005.

"Our most fundamental demand that is that zero go to Beijing, zero go to the province capital and there are zero mass petitions and mass incidents," a county official in the southwest province of Sichuan said, according to a local official website (http://www.scpc.gov.cn).

Many changes in my life right now. I hope to blog about them soon.

Why I Love California Pt. 1,999

Today, Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin were married after more than fifty years of partnership.



Gavin Newsom, you rock.

A Conversation with Xujun Eberlein

Cross-posted at Peking Duck.

Xujun Eberlein grew up in Chongqing, China, and moved to the United States in the summer of 1988. After receiving a Ph.D. from MIT in the spring of 1995, and winning an award for her dissertation, she joined a small but ambitious high tech company. On Thanksgiving 2003, she gave up tech for writing. Her debut story collection Apologies Forthcoming won the 2007 Tartt Fiction Award and was published in May 2008. You can buy the book here.

The stories in Apologies Forthcoming deal with the Cultural Revolution, which defined the generation now coming to power in China. Xujun departs from the more typical "victim literature" about the CR, and the stories show a broad range of perspectives, actions and responses to the turmoil of the period.

Lisa: Tell us about the title of your collection, "Apologies Forthcoming." Why did you choose it?

Xujun: I had considered calling the book Men Don’t Apologize, but some writer friends objected. They pointed out that people would probably expect a feminist treatise, while I'm not a feminist at all. And the stories don't actually have any agenda other than realistically portraying human behavior and psychology at a particular time. While that namesake story is about several men and a woman, the idea of apologizing for, or even acknowledging participation in, activities during the Cultural Revolution cuts across the sexes. Apologies Forthcoming was actually the publisher’s suggestion and I like it, though I am not sure we will ever see the apologies. ☺

Speaking about apologies, two years ago I interviewed a few ex-Red Guard leaders in Chongqing, who had been in jail for more than a decade and now are businessmen. I wrote a short journalism piece about this, which you can read here.

Let me just quote one of the men here – he said, "We castigated the capitalist roaders for two years. They punished us for many more." He didn't think he ought to apologize to anyone at all, and you have to acknowledge his point.

Lisa: Related to this question of apologies…my first time in China was in 1979, so the Cultural Revolution was still very present in peoples’ lives. At the time I felt like the country suffered from a massive emotional depression from the after-effects of so much mass trauma. And a number of Chinese people I met told me about some of their experiences during the CR – some very traumatic and personal things. I’m guessing this was because I was a young foreigner, not involved and therefore safe to confide in. Did you talk about your experiences with fellow Chinese? To what extent did people feel they could honestly speak about what had happened to them and what they had done during this time? Did you talk to anyone about your own experiences?

Xujun: Oh, plenty of people talk about their sufferings, but few mention their roles as participants. One representative example is the memoir Wild Swans. I admire the book's writing, but as I mentioned in my Amazon review for it, I wish the author were more honest. Readers relish suffering stories, but suffering stories alone provide limited insights into human behavior.

It also occurs to me that few westerners know the subtleties and nuance surrounding the participating parties in the CR. I once did an informal poll among writers I workshop with on what they thought of the Red Guards, and the answers were pretty much uniform with the representative one being "pretty much the same as the Hitler Youth." This is quite baffling and at the same time very interesting. As we know (I'm aware of the pitfall of generalization) Americans hate the communist government of China; but did they know the biggest thing the Red Guards did was to break China's state apparatus? Should a communist hater applaud or condemn that? There is just no simple black-and-white answer.

Another thing is that the Red Guards consisted of an entire generation of students from middle school through university, and though viewed as a collective by westerners, there were many different factions emerging, converging, breaking down and reorganizing over times.

The Red Guards did have a hand in lots of violence, yet the individual members were often idealists. This complexity seems beyond the average outsiders' comprehension. It is very hard for someone to understand another culture without actually experiencing it. But the real problem is not the limitation in understanding – everyone has limitations; it is failing to recognize limitations. Too many people are vocally righteous about other cultures they know little about, that is the problem.

As a writer, however, I am more interested in human behavior and the mentality that leads to it. I'm not interested in pointing fingers because what does that do to increase understanding? I think as realistic fiction the story "Men Don't Apologize" departs from the usual victim literature and takes one step further in exploring human nature and the different behavior that manifests between ordinary and extraordinary circumstances.

I don't want to digress too far on this topic, let's just say that, as far as political conflicts are concerned, victims and victimizers can easily switch positions. The distinction between victims and villains is very unclear and my stories show a broader range of behavior beyond suffering.



Lisa: “Snow Line,” the opening story in the collection, is set in Chengdu, a city I’ve spent some time in and really love. Even in the immediate aftermath of the Cultural Revolution, it felt a lot more relaxed and open to me than most of the cities I visited. It’s surrounded by a lot of natural beauty, and places like Qingchengshan, which is considered one of the birthplaces of Daoism.

I notice that flowers are a recurring motif in “Snow Line,” and I’m curious if this is something that connects specifically to Chengdu.

Xujun: Yes, Chengdu! My favorite city of all! (I hope my Chongqing townsmen will forgive me for saying this.) In the north it is Beijing and in the south it has to be Chengdu. Do you know a saying, "少不入川，老不出川" - "When young don't enter Sichuan; when old never go out of it"? In this saying "Sichuan" actually means its capital Chengdu. Chengdu is such a relaxed and cultured city, a young man would only be spoiled there and never work hard, is what the saying means. But it is heaven for a relaxed and richly cultured life. Every year I go back for a visit, I can't help but wonder how such a free and at leisure population make their livings. Yet they live leisurely on. All my close friends from Chongqing have moved to Chengdu by now.

And yes, Chengdu is a true flower city. Everywhere on the streets and in every season you see flower girls and flower stores. Even Chengdu's air is fragrant and colorful. You don't see or smell this in Chongqing for example. Don't get me wrong, I love Chongqing, too, but that's for its ragged hilly paths and two legend-filled rivers.

You can probably sense my love of Chengdu from descriptions in "Snow Line." But the reason I placed "Snow Line" as the opening story is because of the artwork, "Dandelion." The artist, Mr. Wu Fan, is a renowned "literati artist" in Sichuan, a very classic kind. "Dandelion" was his signature work and won a gold medal in the 1959 international block prints competition. During the CR the gold medal became a criminal indictment for him and nearly killed him.

Mr. Wu is a friend of my parents, and his daughter and I are friends. The genesis of "Snow Line" actually came from the daughter; she had modeled the little girl in "Dandelion." I thought the artwork would add a nice dimension to my story, so I asked for permission to include it from Mr. Wu Fan, and he generously agreed. I ended up using three works from him, each fits nicely with one of the stories. His daughter did the sketch for "Men Don't Apologize."

When I was in college, every summer I would go to Chengdu and spend time with the Wu family. The mother, an oil painter, would bring her two daughters to paint from nature in Huanhua Xi – Wash-flower Brook, and I would go with them. Those were some happiest times of my youth.

Lisa: The first time I was in China, one of the phrases I learned right away was “work unit.” The idea that so many decisions about one’s personal life could be made by one’s place of employment was very foreign to me. “Snow Line” presents a typical situation in the China of the late 1970s to early 1980s, where a woman lives in the factory in which she works. The whole notion of privacy and personal space is very different from the West. So a two-part question – when you moved to the US, was this a difficult adjustment to you? And do you think that China as a society has moved towards more “Western” notions of privacy?

Xujun: Hehe, the phrase is still there, on everyone's lips. And you ask an interesting question. When I am writing stories I wear the hat of the times, and this all seems perfectly natural. However, when I think about actually doing something like living in a printing factory it does seem pretty strange. It is curious how quickly I became accustomed to the easy (and private) life in the US. I don’t think I could make the adjustment in the other direction nearly so quickly. There is a Chinese word for that – xiguan – that would be used only in one direction.

China has changed a lot since the early 1980s, when I was in college. There is surely more privacy in people's lives now. For example the question "How much do you make?" was as common as "Have you eaten?" in conversation when I lived in China. Now you hardly ever hear the former spoken. ☺
However I don't think Chinese will completely adopt the Western notion of privacy - that would be very sad anyway. Neighbors still love to "chuan-men" (drop-by) without having to first set appointments, for example.

Lisa: “Feathers” tells the story of a girl losing her older sister. In a way it is a typically “Chinese” story, a Cultural Revolution tragedy. But on the other hand, the family dynamics transcend the cultural particulars and deal with universal themes of loss, denial and suffering.

Xujun: I think that is an important observation, and I think it may apply more broadly than just this story. People have a lot in common with one another, and a lot that sets us apart. “Feathers” is about family and dealing with tragedy, and this is an area where similarities are much stronger than differences. Still, the story tells a Chinese way of dealing with things, for example making up stories so the grandmother wouldn't know about her grandchild's death. I remember workshopping the story and some American friends just couldn't understand why the lying was necessary. Some things that might stand out to a Western reader would simply be background to a Chinese reader.

You know, this story is close to my heart. And go back to your question earlier if I talked to anyone about my own experiences during the CR, I was a child when the worst thing happened to my family – my big sister's death. She was a 16-year-old Red Guard. I had to safeguard my 75-year-old grandmother from knowing the bad news, just like in the third-person story "Feathers." Imaging a 12-year-old girl running around bare her teeth like a fierce cat hissing at any gossipy neighbor who dared to mention the incident. That practice trained my habit of silence; for more than three decades I did not talk to anyone other than my diary book about the incident. I never shed tears either. I cried for the first time in 2002 when I began to write the memoir piece "Swimming with Mao".

One question a reader raised was if my loyalty to my sister might have impeded my condemnation of the Red Guards. However, though my sister was both a participant and a victim of the CR, she foremost was my dear sister and no political identification could change that. This became never so clear after I started to write about her.

The story also reflects my aversion to heroism. When my sister died, her comrades called her a "hero." As a child I was very confused by the notion that a life was tradable with the title "hero." I just wanted my dear sister back – who cared what her title was?

Lisa: I particularly liked “Watch the Thrill,” with its two bored neighborhood boys who are looking for excitement. It’s not that they are bad or evil, they just seem to lack the capacity to make moral choices, and there are no adults around to guide them. This had a lot of resonances to me, both to kids growing up here and now without adequate parenting and to figures in classical literature – “Lord of the Flies” comes to mind.

Xujun: It is interesting you should mention this. There is a broader belief that youth and innocence should go hand in hand. In this story I wanted to portray not that the boys were bad, but that they really weren’t concerned about the concepts of good or bad, but just interesting or boring. Becoming invested in good and bad requires some reasonable landmarks of this type of judgment, and those landmarks were missing when these boys were raised. This makes the emergence of any sort of morality difficult.

Random thoughts of a jet-lagged brain

So I guess I am officially middle-aged. Since I lack a lot of the typical cultural markers (i.e., kids), it's a hard thing for me to grasp. I don't feel all that different. I exercise a lot. My energy is good. The gray hair and the gut, well, those are a little alarming. Worse is losing some of my Trivial Pursuit memory — I flounder for words at times, forget things that I used to remember. I'd give an example, something that happened yesterday, but I forgot what it was.

Apparently some of the changes in the brain that happen with aging are not a bad thing. According to some recent brain research:

for most aging adults, the authors say, much of what occurs is a gradually widening focus of attention that makes it more difficult to latch onto just one fact, like a name or a telephone number. Although that can be frustrating, it is often useful.

“It may be that distractibility is not, in fact, a bad thing,” said Shelley H. Carson, a psychology researcher at Harvard whose work was cited in the book. “It may increase the amount of information available to the conscious mind.”

Be that as it may, the main thing I've noticed lately is my inability (or unwillingness) to split my attention.

Was a time when: I wrote fiction, played in a band where I was writing the songs and arranging the gigs and singing and playing the bass, and studied Chinese. And oh yeah, worked a full-time job.

Now? I can't imagine doing all that. I can't even manage to post more than once a month on my increasingly sad little blog. No posts for the entire month of May? This is pathetic.

It's not that there aren't plenty of interesting things to post about. The news coming out of China in recent months has been voluminous, important and fascinating. Politics in America...well, there's a lot I could say, but there are a lot of folks saying it better than I could. I've added a few of these new voices (some of whom are only new to me) to my "comments" section. I've purged others. I'd like to give a particular shout-out to TalkLeft and Anglachel's Journal , TalkLeft for its tireless coverage of politics and wonderful commenters, and Anglachel for the impressive intellectual scope and erudite commentary on politics and political theory. I read the stuff there and am so impressed by the use of language and clear expression of ideas and concepts (check out this recent post on libertarian paternalism for an example). I have no idea how people write like that — I certainly can't.

Maybe it's true that my "attention has widened" as per the research cited above. I'm not sure. What I do know is that what I'm really good at — where I've really put my attention — has narrowed.

It's the collapse of the probability curve, in quantum physics (oh yeah — that was one of the things I was trying to explain to somebody the other night, and couldn't remember, either then or now). Observing the phenomena brings it into existence.

Except, I'm not sure if that's what I really mean.

When you start making decisions about what you want to do, about where you want to focus your attention, all those other possibilities that your life once held begin to collapse. You can be a writer or a painter or a ballerina or a ballplayer or a brain surgeon or a quantum mechanic — you probably can't be too many of those things in a single lifetime.

This narrowing of possibilities happens as you age, whether you make conscious choices or not. At this point, I'm not going to birth babies, in all probability. Nor am I going to be a ballerina. Brain surgery is probably out as well.

So, better to choose, because it's going to happen to you anyway. The process of living will make choices for you.

I've chosen to write fiction, above everything else. In a way I wonder how much of a choice it really was. I've always wanted to write, have always been compelled to write. It's hardly been a decision at all, more of an acceptance of an existential fact. It's who I am, it's what I do. It's why the scorpion stung the frog that took him across the river. It's my nature.

Years of focus and practice have trained my brain to be good at this particular activity. I'm slow at times and struggle to express myself, but when I finally do, I look at what I've written and think that it's pretty good, and that over the years, I've gotten better.

I pretty much suck at just about everything else.

May Day

from Stefan Landsberger's collection

My book went out to publishers today. Which is actually April 30th, but May Day is easier to remember, and it's almost midnight now. 

It's been a long and interesting process getting to this point. I queried the agent with whom I eventually signed on July 5th of last year. Many months of rewrites followed. That part was mostly fun. There was some stress involved — mainly, was I up to this?

The agent at one point picked out a line I'd written that he particularly liked. His note was "More, please!" I'd thought it was one of my best lines too. Did I have more of those in me? I really wasn't sure.

But working with this guy was fun. His feedback was an ego boost, even when it was critical, because what he said told me that he really got what I was trying to do with this book. This still amazes me, given how many directions I'd gone in the earlier incarnations. Take a bowling ball, a chain saw and a chihuahua and juggle them. That's sort of what I was working with.

There was a real give and take and creative exchange that energized the process for me, when I'd thought that I'd wrung every idea out of my own tired head that I possibly could have.

After a few rewrites, I was pretty sure that I was going to get representation, so no more stress on that front, other than my wanting to really make the book as good as I could make it.

Getting the contract felt every bit as wonderful as I'd ever imagined it would. There was just no downside. Having a professional whose job it is to sell books decide that my book was something he wanted to represent was a validation for me beyond just about anything else I can think of in my creative life, particularly given the thought and care he'd already put into the project.

So, smooth sailing, right? Heh. What happened next is something that I would love to post about in great detail, but right now I really can't. I'll just say that it held up the book's going out for nearly two months, and of everything that has happened in this story thus far, it was the most stressful thing I've had to deal with, on a lot of levels. Probably the worst for me was the self-doubt. The longer I sat in this strange limbo, the more I began to doubt the book, myself, everything. At times I went to the bad place, where everything was going to go wrong and all that I'd worked for would be for nothing. I told myself that I was being paranoid, and I knew that I was, but that didn't matter, because all the paranoia could be justified by real-life horror stories, and I knew damn well that things just don't always work out.

Thank you, Agent X, my friends and family and writing buddies, for holding my hand during this period.

Now the book is out in the world. I don't know when we'll hear back from this initial round of publishers, whether the response will be good or bad. But I do know that I've done everything I could do to get to this point, and that for now, my job is done.

Guadalupe Dunes

Guadalupe Dunes

My rule for making the Los Angeles/San Francisco trip is, I try to see something I haven't seen before each time I make it. This trip I accomplished a two-fer — hitting "Taste of India" on the way up and the Guadalupe Dunes on the home stretch.

Going home, I took the 101, and when I got to Pismo Beach, the Mini Cooper decided on its own to peel off onto Highway 1. There was a sign calling this stretch an "Official Scenic Car Route," or something like that. The signs do not lie. The road runs though dramatic green hills, sharp against the sky this time of day, late in the afternoon. On the right, the ocean, now and again, glimpsed through the towns and then receding as the road pulled further away from the shore. I drove through a strange little town called Oceana, a place with a ramshackle, working-class edge that has mostly disappeared from California's beach towns but was very familiar to me growing up.

The gap between beach and highway widens, taken up by croplands, open fields surrounded by hills and groves of eucalyptus. Then, the town of Guadalupe, bordered by the highway, fields and dunes. Cecil B. DeMille's "Ten Commandments" was filmed here, the original sets buried somewhere in the sand. Mostly Guadalupe is an agricultural town, a few historic buildings here and there, tacquerias, a modest subdivision of terracotta-colored tract homes that edges up to the fields on the town's southern boundary. 

Between that subdivision and the fields is a narrow road that leads to the state beach. Again, the Mini wanted to go there. I was along for the ride. The road was deserted, the fields empty of labor; it was the end of the day by now, but there was still plenty of light. 

 At the end of the road was an open car gate, a guard shack, a sign indicating that this was Guadalupe Dunes State Park and suggesting that a $3.00 fee per car was appropriate to help support the place. But no one was in the guard shack, and there wasn't anyplace to leave the suggested fee, so I drove on. 

The road, which had been narrow before, faded to nearly a path, and as it wound into the dunes, blowing sand covered it from either side, and I found myself wondering if this had been such a great idea on my part. I hadn't seen another person, another car. Just dunes, sculpted by the wind, crazy blue sky, golden light.

Finally the little road emptied into a parking lot. About half a dozen other cars were there. Gusts of wind kicked up the sand, and the ocean was slate-gray and ripped by whitecaps. 

I got out of the car, stretched my legs, stood a while. Then drove back the way I came and continued on my way.

I have this response to overwhelming natural beauty at times: I obsess on what it means, what's the purpose? More to the point (because it is, after all, all about me) what is my purpose?

Somewhere south of Lompoc, the Obvious Fairy hit me over the head with her magic wand and said: "You're supposed to be writing, dummy! How many times do I have to tell you this?"

Road Trip! Or, Why I Love California

I'd had a stressful few weeks, and though I'd planned a long weekend's road-trip, put it on the calendar and everything, I was really tempted to cancel. It just seemed too hard. Everything seemed too hard. Especially writing. Even a blog post. I couldn't summon the energy or enthusiasm to compose anything beyond emails here and there. 

I started wondering, am I losing my mind? Is this early onset Alzheimers? 

Maybe I'll never be able to write another thing. I sure could not imagine sitting down and starting something new. 

On Friday, the day I was to leave, I managed to accomplish a little business in the morning, enough to lift the exhaustion that had been sapping my enthusiasm like some sort of vampiric shroud. Well, okay. I packed a bag and fed the cats and got in my car and started driving.

Because I'd gotten such a late start, I decided to take the 5 North to San Francisco. Lately I'd been taking the coast route, exchanging speed for beauty. But I was tired, I had a pinched nerve in my back, and I was late. So, the 5.

If you've ever driven this route, you know what I mean. The Great Central Valley is one of those landscapes that is so featureless, it almost defies description. Flat. Endless. Dust. Broken up by cattle feedlots now and again, with their characteristic smell. Truck stops. Denny's. Fields stretching to the dust-obscured horizon. 

Well, not the first hour or so, leaving Los Angeles.  The Grapevine and Fort Tejon are dramatic enough, stark hills and crags, trucks and older cars struggling up the incline, burning transmissions and brake pads and radiator fluid. The pass was particularly beautiful this week, thanks to the rains we've had this winter. Not a lot grows on some of these hills, they are not forested, like in the north; there is scrub, chaparral, grasses of various sorts — to be honest, I'm not really sure what it all is. My knowledge of plants and trees is pretty sketchy. But on some of the hills, there's very little beyond grasses, and whether this is their natural state or the aftermath of brush fires, I couldn't say.

This spring, these bald hills are covered with swaths of color — purple lupine, golden poppies, green grasses, undulating in the wind like some massive natural acid trip. 

Once you go down into the valley, you have to expand your notion of scenic. There's not a lot to draw the eye, especially because what there is tends to be washed out by the omnipresent haze.

When I drive this route, what I usually do is stop at Harris Ranch. Or, as I like to call it, the Cattle Concentration Camp. The feedlots come after the Ranch, proper, and I guess they really aren't so bad, but it still sobers me, seeing all those cattle standing around, crowded together in fields of dirt, shielded by tin roofs and cooled by misting sprinklers. The smell is pretty bad too.

But Harris Ranch is a nice place to stop — a complex of pinkish "adobe" buildings, crafted in a vague "Ranchero" style, several cuts above your typical truck stop or Days Inn. They have a great bar, a casual diner and a nice restaurant, with good food, especially if you're partial to steak.

I wasn't particularly in the mood for steak that day, but the options on the 5 are few if you don't want a burger.

So I was intrigued to see the hand-painted signs for "Taste Of India — Wraps to Go — Authentic Indian Food — Everything Cooked Fresh!" as I approached the McKintrick/Buttonwillow exit. 

I could see "Taste of India" from the freeway. Housed in a typical chain-restaurant building, like where you'd expect to find a Denny's, except with a blue roof (maybe they'd taken over some defunct chain gone bankrupt?). What settled me was the adjacent Starbucks. I needed a cup of coffee.

I was reassured by the "A" rating on the door. Inside, "Taste of India" is a big, open room, with cheap, moveable tables covered by plastic tablecloths. Faded silver striped wallpaper with posters of Indian women, a cooler filled with Indian beer, and a counter where you could order "To Go" Biryani wraps. 

Best of all: a flat screen television mounted on the wall that played some absurd Bollywood musical that I couldn't begin to describe.

I had Lamb Korma (spicy), garlic Naan and a Yeti Premium Beer. All delicious. Complimented the waitress (owner?), an Indian woman. Caught sight of another worker, in a yellow turban (her husband? Who knows?) taking orders at the "To Go" counter.

After I ate, I went outside, passed the Super 8 Motel and the truck stop and grabbed a fresh Starbucks coffee (the new Pikes Blend).

I love California.

Interesting Times

I really wish I could have been in Beijing this week. My San Diego Padres played the dreaded Dodgers in the first MLB game ever played in China (for the record, it was a tie - typical for a spring training game, which this essentially was). I would have loved to have seen a 棒球赛 in Beijing. I'd have been there with my Caminiti jersey and Tony Gwynn cap, cheering on my team.

As it is, I probably won't get back to Beijing until this summer for the Olympics. I'm going with a good friend who is sort of an Olympics junkie; we already have our plane tickets, hotel reservations and events. It's something I have to see, the latest transformation of what was once funky Beijing to...well, whatever it will be. In my book I described it as looking like the set of some bad, big-budget science fiction movie.

That's just one piece of it, of course, the part that's China's leaders building their showcase to China's aspirations: to be a great power, to once and for all retire the last hundred and fifty years of history, when China was a victim, the "sick man of Asia."

But you know what they say about what comes along with great power. Great big pains in the ass. International scrutiny. Massive protests in Tibet, the biggest in 50 years, that began with Buddhist monks protesting restrictions on the practice of their religion and have escalated to Tibetans attacking Han Chinese and Chinese security forces now pouring into Lhasa. I direct you all to the Peking Duck, where you'll find a comprehensive post on the situation and a fascinating discussion by Americans, Europeans and Chinese from around the globe. Just about every shade of opinion is represented there.

I found one overseas Chinese' sentiments particularly poignant. He talks of the dream of a modern, multi-ethnic China, how he'd contributed to Tibetan students' funds, and how now, he feels betrayed by the explosion of ethnic violence, by seeing Han Chinese "ethnically cleansed" from Lhasa.

I don't exactly want to laugh. I think he is sincere and well-meaning. I more want to say, "Hey, welcome to the Imperialist Club!"

I'll meet you in the library for a cigar and a whiskey.

This is what happens. Those "ethnic minorities" just don't appreciate your enlightened attempts to bring civilization to their "backward, medieval, superstition-ridden society." Oddly enough, they don't like becoming minorities in their own country.

I know, it's tough to understand. Manifest destiny can be a bitch.

Another sentiment running through this discussion thread, expressed by some seriously pissed-off Chinese: Restore order. Send in massive force. Take an example from America and treat the protesters as terrorists. Shoot the bastards. And fuck the Olympics.

This last notion I found particularly interesting. The Chinese government has put so much stake into these Games. The Games will demonstrate to the world that China is a modern superpower, harmonious, friendly and formidable. But the Games draw attention to China's failures as well. Everyone with a grievance knows that with all attention focused on China, it's a chance to air their issues on the world stage, right next to the pageantry and prowess.

As for ordinary Chinese, I wouldn't presume to speak for their sentiments with any certainty. I'm guessing that a majority are proud of their country and excited about what the Olympics represent for China. I figure a sizable minority think there are far better things to do with the however many millions of Renmin Bi it's cost to put on this show. And then there are those who would rather "kill the chicken to frighten the monkey" and restore order at all costs, and if that means risking the Olympics, so be it.

It's going to be an interesting summer.

Update: Padres beat the Dodgers, 6-3, in the second and final game in Beijing.

Update 2: Good summary from Time Magazine, and protests spread to provinces outside Tibet.

Really Done...

No, really.

I did a little polish last week, emailed the book on Monday, and it's done, baby. Next up —

Well, that's a little complicated. The short version is, we start submitting. Rather, my! agent! does. The long version has to do with the intersection of my writing and my working in the entertainment industry. I'll leave it at that.

Mainly, my work on the book really is done for the time being, and it's up to the agent from here. I trust him, and I'm happy to have the MS off my metaphoric desk (which in my case would be my lap) and on his.

Being done is interesting. I did a lot of drafts of this book. Some were a lot more fun than others. Some felt like I just dragged myself to the end, to the point where I was so utterly exhausted by it that I couldn't possibly change another word.

The last major revision,when I finished, I was, for once, relaxed. For one thing, I already had the contract at that point, so I wasn't stressing out quite so much about how it would go over. Mainly, I knew I'd nailed it. Almost. Whatever wasn't quite right would be easy to fix. And it was.

But still...those few things I tweaked and moved and polished...those little things weren't quite right, and it wasn't until after I fixed them that I finally felt done.

It's hard to explain, and honestly, I'm not always good with words. I'm not an essayist, and I swore that I was not going to be one of those bloggers who writes a lot of narcissistic posts about my feelings; I'm not sure they are all that interesting to anyone, not even to me.

But being done is interesting. Feeling that sense of completion, like a bunch of tumblers in a lock finally clicked into place; it's done. I'm open.

Which begs the question, what now?

I have a really hard time starting new projects. Once I finally get going, I'm pretty consistent and obsessive. I don't write fast but I write hard, and I don't stop till I'm done. But starting...ugh.

I have a couple of ideas for new books but haven't done the prep to really start either of them, and in any case, I'm told it would be smart to wait for some feedback on the Book That Is Done before I commit to the next project.

I have some stuff I could work on in the meantime. Trashy Novel 3, I could finish that. I have an old screenplay that I still think is funny and relevant at its core, if I totally tore it apart and reworked it, that is.

Plus, I have this blog. If I'm fortunate enough to sell the book, I need to look at ways to promote it and myself as a writer. I've been looking at some writers' blogs, and they are really impressive — a lot of consistent work and thought, and many more bells and whistles than this one.

The focus of this blog has never been my writing; it's been a catch-all for China topics, political musings and the occasional post about how the novel has eaten my brain. I'm not a China expert, and as mentioned, I'm not an essayist, so it's not clear to me that I should focus exclusively on China-related topics. On the other hand, I might want to start a different blog that's only about my writing. One that uses my full name. Or the name I decide to publish under. I'm looking for pen-name suggestions, by the way...

So, do I build up this blog? Start a new one? What kinds of things do I need to add and consider if I want to promote my writing?

In Case You Were Wondering...

From the Asia Times: 

The Iranian oil bourse - the first oil, gas and petrochemical exchange in the Islamic Republic, and the first within the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) - was launched on Sunday by Iran’s Oil Minister Gholam-Hossein Nozari, flanked by Minister of Economy and Financial Affairs Davoud Danesh Ja’fari, the man who will head the exchange...

...Transactions at this early stage will be in Iran’s currency, the rial, according to Nozari, ending worldwide speculation that the bourse would start trading in euros. The Iranian ambassador to Russia, Gholam-Reza Ansari, has said that "in the future, we'll be able to use the ruble, Russia’s national currency, in our operations". He added that "Russia and Iran, two major producers of the world’s energy, should encourage oil and gas transactions in various non-dollar currencies, releasing the world from being a slave of the dollar."

Russia’s First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said last week that "the ruble will de facto become one of the regional reserve currencies"...

...The trillion-dollar question is if, and when, most European and Asian oil importers may stampede towards the Iranian oil bourse. OPEC members as well as oil producers from the Caspian may be inevitably seduced by the advantages of selling at Kish - with no dreaded middlemen. Europeans, Chinese and Japanese will also see benefits if they can buy oil with euros, yen or even yuan - they won’t need US dollars – and the same applies to their central banks.

It would take only a few major oil exporters to switch from the dollar to the euro - or the yen - to fatally bomb the petrodollar mothership...

...The symbolism of the Iranian oil bourse is stark; it shows that the flight from the US dollar is irreversible - and so, sooner rather than later, is diminution of Washington's capacity to launch wars on credit. But at this early stage in the game, only one thing is certain: the empire will strike back.

And what form might the empire's actions take?

Well, back in 2000, Saddam Hussein insisted that Iraq's oil be paid for in Euros. By June 10, 2003, after the US invasion of Iraq, the transactions were switched back to dollars.

(cont...) Football, My Secret Shame...

As previously mentioned I love football (the American version). I'm a little embarrassed by this at times. The culture surrounding it (the frequent misogyny), the horrific violence (there's a reason football players tend to die young), all those stupid beer and Viagra commercials...

But I still love it. The strategy and athleticism. The soap opera. There are "story lines," with heroes and villains. Defeat and redemption. Destiny.

Plus, I've always been amused by the sorta repressed homo-erotic aspect. You know. The male bonding. The tears. The ass-slapping and talk of penetration.

But none of my mild snarking on the topic prepared me for Michael Silver's hilarious article about the NFL scouting combine:

Walk the halls of the Indianapolis Convention Center adjacent to the Dome, and you’ll hear scouts and coaches throwing out compliments like, “That guy’s (expletive) pretty, now.” You’ll see write-ups lauding a prospect’s “big, bubble ass” or “great explosion in his hips.”

Go to the bars at night, and you can’t walk five feet without encountering a 60-something-year-old man with a gleam in his eye who’ll talk about how he has “fallen in love” with one player or another...

...For NFL prospects, the ogling begins at the Shrine Bowl, then continues later at the Senior Bowl when participants are trotted into a Mobile, Ala., hotel ballroom and weighed and measured while wearing glorified Speedo swimsuits.

“I’ve seen guys with some horrible physiques,” agent Gary Wichard says. “One big guy this year, I kid you not, had C-cups. I’ve seen man-boobs before; these were woman boobs. They looked like implants. I felt so bad for the kid, having to walk around that room with 650 people looking at him and gasping.”

Conversely, the excitement that an exceptionally cut prospect provokes is unnerving in a different way. Two years ago at the Senior Bowl, Wichard’s client Brodrick Bunkley, a former Florida State defensive tackle now with the Philadelphia Eagles, practically had people drooling as he cat-walked through the middle of the crowded ballroom.

“They talk about ‘Winning the Beauty Contest’ – that was Brodrick Bunkley,” Wichard says. “When he weighed in, there were murmurs throughout the room. His legs were exploding out of his shorts, and it looked like his skin was swathed in Saran Wrap. You had a bunch of grown men who acted like they were at a strip joint outside of town. I thought they were going to offer him money for a lap dance.”

Yeah. I love this game.

Testing the Waters...

Howdy all! 

Another draft in the can. I feel pretty good about it. I know I fixed some problems, am not sure about a couple of other spots. But whatever is left to do won't be too much. I don't think.

I'm still really really happy about My! Agent! (okay, thrilled), who has made a difficult process, well, pretty fun, actually. Now I'm at the point where most of the hard work is done, and the stress associated with rewriting and hoping that I was getting it right and going to get signed is pretty much over too. 

I celebrated signing the contract and finishing the draft by taking a road trip up north to visit my sister and other assorted cousins. I really like it up there. Somehow the Bay Area seems like a better fit for me than image-obsessed Los Angeles. Plus, I like seeing the Chinese street and shop signs all over the city. It makes me feel at home.

Right now, however, I'm happily settled on my couch in Venice CA, cat on my lap, fighting for space with the laptop. Life ain't half-bad...

So, no more excuses. Back to blogging, I hope with more substantive posts than this one.

Oh Yes....There Will Be Rewrites...

I kinda figured I wasn't quite done.

The good news is, I now have an agent. A great guy at a storied, top-flight agency.

More on this later...but I'm psyched.

Paper or Plastic?

When I read about things like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, it does my heart good to hear news that China has cracked down on plastic garbage bags:

China launched a surprise crackdown on plastic bags on Tuesday, banning production of ultra-thin bags and forbidding its supermarkets and shops from handing out free carriers from June 1.

China uses too many of the bags and fails to dispose of them properly, wasting valuable oil and littering the country, China's cabinet, the State Council, said in a notice posted on the central government Web site (www.gov.cn).

"Our country consumes huge amounts of plastic bags every year. While providing convenience to consumers, they have also caused serious pollution, and waste of energy and resources, because of excessive use and inadequate recycling," it said.

Good for them. I'd like to see the U.S. do the same.

For those curious, yes, I have finished my book. Sort of. I wouldn't be surprised if more tweaking lies ahead. I'll keep you all posted.

Why I love Star Trek

Classic Trek only.

glumbert - Star Trek follows the White Rabbit

(HT to my friend Deb for this gem)

Traffic Crashes Chinese Anti-Corruption Website

From the Associated Press:

BEIJING -- A new Web site created by China's anti-corruption bureau crashed after barely a day because too many visitors tried to log on to register complaints, state media said Wednesday.

The National Bureau of Corruption Prevention was formed in September to tackle mounting corruption scandals involving government and Communist Party officials.

It set up a Web site Monday that allowed the public to leave comments about its work, but the strain of too many visitors brought down the site Tuesday, the Beijing Youth Daily reported.

The site was back online Wednesday and had 16 pages comprising more than 250 comments, which ranged from complaints about the promotion of public officials to criticism about the Web site itself.

I'm too sleep-deprived to say anything very intelligible about this, except to comment that when a government opens itself up to take complaints, it had better follow through — but by following through, it also empowers citizens who see by their participation that they are able to change things.

Okay, that was knee-jerk profundity at best.

Al Gore in Bali

Here's some much needed inspiration from Al Gore. I'm finally starting to accept that he won't be President — because he's found something more important to do.