Pinky's Paperhaus

S-A-TUR-DAY - night!

This Saturday, ladies and gentlement, at the dark yet dazzling Mountain Bar on the fabulous Chinatown Plaza, it's Vermin on the Mount! Featuring:

BoingBoing editor MARK FRAUENFELDER is the author of a book that compiles the very worst things in this terrible world we live in. It's called The World's Worst, and you don't want to miss it.

MARC WEINGARTEN'S book, The Gang That Couldn't Write Straight, offers a close look and thick description of a unique period in American journalism Tom Wolfe, Hunter S. Thompson and Joan Didion re-wrote the rules.

BUCKY SINISTER is the author of several books of poetry, including Whiskey and Robots from Gorsky Press. Vermin has had some amazing poets, and Bucky is one of the amazingest.

ME, I'll be reading a short essay. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll hold onto your purse.

Drinks begin flowing at 8, reading start at 9. I am NOT allowed to have a martini until after I've read. So I hope I go on first.

80 degrees and sunny

Today is an amazing LA day, the kind that makes me wonder why the entire country hasn't moved here. No snow, no transit strike, clean(sih) air, bright blue sky and brilliant, but not baking, sun.

My hands have been full at LAist but I am starting to see how this will all work. I am starting to be able to read other blogs again. I am starting to have time to read books again. And Paperhaus -- oh, it's cooking! A few more tasks at hand before the next Papaerhaus arrives on your doorstep with a thwap!

Merry and merry and merry. Time to go outside.

Saturday and Saturday

Why, oh why did they do it? The ever-wonderful Vermin on the Mount reading series will be this Saturday Nov.12, as always, at the Mountain Bar with an eclectic array of writers on the bill. Just  a few miles away, at the very same time, Swink Magazine welcomes Small Spiral Notebook to town with readings and refreshments. I don't even have Tivo and I'm thinking, can't I go to one and Tivo the other? Life Tivo. Somebody oughta invent it.

Ain't they cute?

Josh Kun, Rick Moody and John Doe at 826LA Saturday Oct. 8.

WeHo Book Fair report

So I made it there at 1pm, late, amazed that they let book fair attendees park right across the street at the Pacific Design Center for free. This is West Hollywood, people, and there was free parking. That's a goddamn miracle. Reason enough to go.

And if you didn't go, well, you weren't alone. This is no LA Times Book Bonanza, with so many authors on so many topics that anyone within 50 miles who reads seems irresistably drawn to Westwood. This one is, well, cozy, with stages bucking up against each other, delicious barbecue smoke blowing across the entrance, and small-to-moderate-sized audiences. But the attendees were phenomenally diverse, a reminder that this is not your average small-town book fair. The details after the jump.

Hobart meets Rampart

Sure they said this was in Echo Park, but we know that once you're south of the 101 you're not in Echo Park anymore, Dorothy. The area known as the Rampart district is primarily defined by the rocked-with-scandal police station located 0.8 miles from the Tribal Cafe and the exactly one-mile away original Tommy Burger, a plight on American gastronomy. So I suppose an artsy, literary coffeeshop with fresh juices and delicious-looking sandwiches is a good addition to the neighborhood.

Speaking of neighborhoods, that's what Jim Ruland's essay is about: his neigborhood. The piece is in the Hobart travel issue. Online you get a photo tour, but to read the story -- and discover the truly best chicken joint on Manchester Blvd. -- you've got to get a copy of Hobart for yourself.

Another fab reader of the evening was the slightly nervous Salvador Plascencia, whose  debut novel, The People of Paper, is getting raves. His story (excerpt?) was beautifully written, and he even brought visual aids. That's what teaching at USC will train you to do: bring pictures to a reading.

That's Jim there in the above photo, the best I could manage with my cell phone. Maybe Mark Sarvas captured the evening better with his blackberry-like device. But you'll have to wait to see his, since he's taking a couple days off from The Elegant Variation.

Me, I'm heading back to the land of Villette for a little while. At least another 50 pages or so.

Catching up

I'm emerging from the hurricane-n-homework hole.

Thursday: Cecil Castellucci, the young adult author, made a movie! It's playing at the American Cinematheque.

Friday: Hobart, a literary journal from Ann Arbor, showcases work from its travel issue in the unheralded vacation destination of the Rampart District of Los Angeles, at the unfortunately named Tribal Cafe.

Saturday: Jim Ruland's Vermin on the Mount is back in all its glory, this time splitting the reading roster with Opium Magazine.

I'll be the one trying to find a pool of light, clutching Bleak House.

lit ladies of the eastside

If you're anywhere near Pasadena on Thursday night, head into Vroman's and climb the stairs for the Eastside Women Writer's Panel (punctuation from Vroman's -- at least it's not a copy editors panel).The snappy Meghan Daum, foodie/fiction writer Michelle Huneven, Leslie Schwartz and Ellen Slezak will panelize to talk about writing, and presumably, things eastside and lady-ish. Admittedly, the browner East LA doesn't seem to be represented, but don't hold that against these four, who are bound to say something illuminating.

Poetry and Pimm's

I am not entirely certain that you can purchase Pimm's at the Good Luck Bar, but I am sure that if you show up on Sunday night 8/7 at 7pm for the Rhapsodomancy reading series, you will catch some poetry. Accomplished poets Eileen Myles, Alistair McCartney, Christopher Russell and Alene Terzian will be reading in the back-ish room, which looks like an opium den, except cleaner and darker. The gracious hostesses of Rhapsodomancy, Wendy and Andrea, will, I trust, put on an excellent show. They won't even mind when you slip off to the bar for a refreshing beverage of choice.

Pen vs. Sword

Tonight the Smartgals Speakeasy stages a poetry slam pitting poets who died a natural death against those who offed themselves. It's their first Dead Poets event, which asks members of the audience to guess who wrote what as live actors and writers read from the works of, say, Sylvia Plath (We cast our skins and slide/into another time), John Donne (We have a winding sheet in our mother's womb, which grows with us from our conception, and we come into the world wound up in that winding sheet, for we come to seek a grave), or John Berryman (Life, friends, is boring). I would imagine that Dorothy Parker will make an appearance, although whether her death is considered natural or suicide by drinking I can't say.

Speaking of drinking, the Speakeasy, which is in the bottom of a church in Los Feliz and requires a password (this time: "stop rhyming and I mean it"), includes a spiked punch of some sort. Other beverages are also on hand; bring more than the $7 entrance fee if you want to purchase the limited-edition bookmark or become a member.

Because it still tickles me, and is appropriate, here is Dorothy Parker's Résumé:

Razors pain you,
Rivers are damp,
Acids stain you,
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren't lawful,
Nooses give,
Gas smells awful.
You might as well live.