April 2008 Archives

Laura Fraser has won the 2008 International Association of Culinary Professionals essay award for "Food for the Heart" in EatingWell Magazine. 

Congratulations, Laura!

Hey folks, here's my latest, a short op-ed essay on the disastrous Farm Bill
about to be passed through Congress. Hope you can give a quick read and pass
along to friends and colleagues. This isn't just a farming issue, this bill
defines our food and fiber and the future of our environment and public
health, among other things. 

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/04/18/8382/

George Birimisa, Diane DiPrima, and Steve Susoyev will be reading from Return to the Caffe Cino, a collection of plays originally performed at the Manhattan club credited with launching the Off-Off-Broadway theater movement. Birimisa, now 83, was the first openly gay playwright to receive a Rockefeller Grant and wrote many groundbreaking works, including Daddy Violet, Georgie Porgie, and Looking For Mr. America.

From the book:

"[Caffe Cino] was a coffee-house, a theatre, a brothel, a temple, a flophouse, a dope-ring, a launching pad, an insane asylum, a safe-house, and a sleeper cell for an unnamed revolution..."

Tuesday, Apr 22, 7:30 pm @ Different Light Bookstore, Castro bet 17th & 18th.

More about Caffe Cino on Wikipedia

The Washington Post ran a nice feature today on Meatpaper, the meat-centric magazine published by Grotto wife (or at least my wife) Amy Standen and Sasha Wizansky.

"They are on to something," Peter Carlson writes, "the notion that meat, and the endless variety of rituals, symbolism and taboos surrounding it, can tell us a lot about our fellow humans."

(Carlson also ponders whether my own feature in the latest issue, "Sweat Sock: The Other White Meat," was written with the assistance of much alcohol. I resemble that remark.)

More info about Meatpaper itself right here.

Saturday, April 19, 7pm at The Makeout Room- 3225 22nd Street, San Francisco, (415) 647 2888

Gerard Jones is now serializing his new novel, Million Dollar Ideas online, one chapter a month, at this link: http//edandjohnny.blogspot.com.

It's a funny novel about a couple of Hollywood screenwriters in '40s, with a surreal twist. Gerry cowrote the book with Will Jacobs, his old collaborator from back when they were regular writers for National Lampoon. Yes, that National Lampoon - it's a wonder Gerry is able to keep his puckishness under wraps as well as he does. See those wraps come completely off in Million Dollar Ideas.

Mark Schapiro, author of Exposed: The Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Products and What's at Stake for American Power is launching a radio documentary he co-produced/reported with American Radio Works. It's out today: Check out CIR's website: www.centerforinvestigativereporting.org. Airs on KQED on April 25 and 29...meantime it's up on the web...Mark holed up here to write his book and is threatening to come for lunch...

The super-informative Grotto Notes didn't go out this month because there's some stuff going on with our list server. But you can still read them here.

Meghan Ward, Elizabeth Bernstein and David Gleeson will be reading at Inside Story Time on Thursday, April 17 from 6:30 to 8:30 at Edinburgh Castle, 950 Geary St. between Polk and Larkin. The theme of the night will be CELEBRITIES.  Other readers are Emily Mitchell (The Last Summer of the World) and Andrew Altschul (Lady Lararus). $3-$5, sliding scale.

 Our own Mary Roach is reading from her new book, BONK: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex, on Tuesday the 8th at the Booksmith. Word is there'll be surprises in store....The Booksmith is on Haight St. www.booksmith.com.

The NY Times has a piece today by Motoko Rich about a new HarperCollins imprint that plans to drastically reduce—and possibly do away with—writer advances: 

Ms. Friedman said the new group, which will initially publish just 25 titles a year, would offer “low or no advances.” Mr. Miller, who was most recently president of Hyperion, said he hoped to offer authors a 50-50 split of profits. Typically, authors earn royalties of 15 percent of profits after they have paid off their advances. Many authors never earn royalties.

Is this a bad thing for writers? Maybe not. Writers who command high advances might jump at the chance to trade them for the upside of higher royalties. With lesser known writers, publishers have less of an incentive to push a low-advance/high-royalty deal (because advances are lower). But even if the approach catches on, there could be another benfit to writers: publishers might issue more titles. Talented new authors would have to figure out how to pay their rent ("Welcome to our world," say the independent filmmakers), but they could wind up with a larger share of the fruits of their labors.

I'm hosting the next Progressive Reading April 19, 7pm, at The Makeout Room. Readers include Jane Smiley, Yiyun Li, Michelle Richmond, and Charlie Anders. There will also be music from The Progressive Reading Series All-Star Minstrels and a special appearance by Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin.

All funds from the reading go to save rent control.

More information at www.progressivereadingseries.org

You can't judge a book by its cover, goes the old saw, and you certainly can't judge it by it's original title.

Consider these three beauties,

Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson was almost called “The Sea Cook”

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald was almost called “The High-Bouncing Lover”

Death of a Salesmen by Arthur Miller was almost called “The Inside of his Head”

So the next time you're bemoaning your chosen title, take heart that many a master before you has also stumbled, only to find fresh inspiration just as the printing presses started rolling.

Here's a great piece about facing up to the dreaded contributor bio request:

“Giles Turnbull is a freelance writer based in Bradford on Avon, England. He has a web site at gilest.org. He has written for the BBC, The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, MacUser, O’Reilly Publishing, and many others.”

Oh, please. “And many others?” Who am I trying to fool with that sort of weasely rubbish? Of course there have been others, but not many, and most of them were years ago. Some of them have gone bust. A lot of the stuff I wrote in the past is stuff I would rather forget.

Check out Helena's latest Chow column. It's about teaching kids table manners:

http://www.chow.com/stories/10981.