LA Brain Terrain

I’ve become addicted to the lecture recaps over at The Final Club.org.

I’m really enjoying blogger fauxneme’s recap of the “American Protest Literature from Tom Paine to Tupac” at Harvard College. His posts are witty, cogent and informative.

I also dig Robert Darnton’s freshman seminar on the history of the book.

Indeed, the two courses merge along similar topics such as the role importance of the printed word in disseminating protest ideology. It’s all one big, intellectual Reece’s Peanut Butter Cup.

Kudos to the Final Club.org principals, they’ve launched precisely the blog that I’d been looking for when I started LA Brain Terrain. Now if they can just launch a UCLA or Occidental version.

	Enter your search terms Submit search form
	Web www.labrain.com

Tags: academics, candy, Harvard, history

To think of writing a blog post or any other writing. I’ve been enjoying the a/c at the Edendale library but their wifi is too slow for blogging.

I celebrated my birthday on Friday.

Easy E just coined a good motto

I’m just tired of looking at the bright side of life. I want to BE on the bright side of life.

So I’ve been reading the books in the photo above, watching “Sex and the City” reruns on HBO and drinking water. I just obtained “Witches Sabbath” at a great book store in Echo Park. It’s more a pop up store than a retail establishment. Open only on Saturdays, a former Amok book employee sells books out of his garage. You’ll find him on Echo Park Blvd, just south of Sunset..two doors down from the police station. heh.

Continue Reading »

Tags: books, Los Angeles

Les Figues Press is having a Rummage Sale!

Saturday, May 24th
9am-5pm
2776 La Salle, Los Angeles, CA 90018

Yes, come join us for a fabulous rummage sale, a delicious picnic, plus an exciting “rummage reading!”

How can you help?

1) Come by the Les Figues Headquarters (2776 La Salle, 90018) Friday, May 23rd and drop off your rummage donations. Bring items that you think someone else may have a use for. Here’s your chance to give that porcelain vase collecting dust in the attic, that well-loved side-table, or that yellowed copy of Paradise Lost, a great new home. Email Teresa (trose@mindspring.com) to let us know what items you have and to solidify drop off arrangements.

2) Saturday 9 AM- 4 PM: Come browse and buy wonderful knick knacks!

3) Saturday 3:30 PM: Join us for a picnic meal. Bring your favorite summer dish or drink to share. Eat, socialize, and browse the rummage!

4) Saturday 5 PM: Participate in our “Rummage Reading.” Dig through your old writings, journals, poems, rants, and bring something old, something you’ve forgotten about, something you haven’t read in a long time and share it with the rest of us!

All proceeds benefit Les Figues Press: creating aesthetic conversations with readers, writers and artists.

I wish I had the money to attend this year’s college reunion in New Haven because I’d give anything to see the Sara and Gerald Murphy exhibit, called “Making It New: The Art and Style of Sara and Gerald Murphy” at the Yale University Art Gallery this month.

Once upon a time we idolized people who lived well like the Murphy’s. They befriended all the greats of the Twenties and Thirties and inspired many artists in return. I’d love to research their papers for letters from Dorothy Parker. She was a great friend of theirs and stayed with them on her fateful trip to Spain in 1939. Perhaps those letters to the Murphy’s will tell me the address of the house she and Alan rented in Coldwater Canyon. That’s the only remaining DP address in LA I have yet to find.

When I was 14 I wanted to be a cross between Sara Murphy and Slim Keith, another style maven in the 40s. She was much cooler than Babe Paley and married Howard Hawks.

It’s funny. We Americans seem to have everything in this day and age but we’ve lost the art of living well. The Murphy’s symbolized that art–the ease of being rich and inventive and friendly. We still have plenty of rich people but I don’t think any of them live especially well. I look at the pinched faces of the swells in W magazine or at New York Social Diary and wonder if any of them are having fun. Too much seems at stake or maybe our lives are filled with too much–too much choice, too much stuff, too much information, too much scheduling…

Tags: lifestyle, twenties

San Marino’s One City, One Book Announced, sez the good people at Vroman’s Books.

San Marino’s launches its first ever One City, One Book event. This landmark occasion will feature Gail Tsukiyama’s bestselling novel, The Samurai’s Garden.
The read launches in May with several events

	Enter your search terms Submit search form
	Web www.labrain.com

Tags: author readings, books

It’s National Library Week!

What better way to celebrate than attending a reading of Stephen Vincent Benet’s radio play They Burned the Books, featuring characters including Heinrich Heine, John Milton, Jonathan Swift, and Mark Twain. The play was originally broadcast on May 11, 1942, the ninth anniversary of the Nazi book burnings, under the auspices of the Council on Books in Wartime and the Writers.
Thursday, April 17, 2008 at 2 PM at UCLA Charles E Young Research Library Presentation Room

Organized to supplement the current exhibition, “Fighting the Fires of Hate: America and the Nazi Book Burnings,” on view in the UCLA Charles E. Young Research Library through April 20. War Board.

	Enter your search terms Submit search form
	Web www.labrain.com

Tags: book burning, library, Nazi, UCLA

If you are flat broke after Tax Day, you can still entertain yourself at the Circle X Theater Co. where they are presenting their Spring Reading Series.
Six new plays, presented FREE to the public
Consecutive Wednesday evenings
April 2 through May 7, 8p.m.
Studio/Stage, 520 N. Western Avenue, 90004
Street Parking

April 16: HELLO FAILURE by Kristen Kosmas
directed by Abigail Marateck

Kristen Kosmas’ lyrical and unpredictably comic story of seven submariner’s wives negotiating the peculiar drama of absence.  Throw in one counterfeit civil war ghost, one lusty renegade hairdresser and a poignant potted plant all making it through the day, barely, in this oddly affecting and delightfully disorienting examination of modern alienation.

Starring: Kelly Brady, John Wallace Combs, Thomas Craig Elliott, Chris Goodson, Jamey Hood, Suzanne Jamieson, Jen Kays, Christina Mastin, Johanna McKay & Julie Millett.

April 23: WHAT ONCE WE FELT by Ann Marie Healy
directed by Stefan Novinski

In a city by the river, society divides along the lines of imperfect DNA, trashy bestsellers and fertility porn. Macy O. Blonsky, author of the last print published novel in the Western World, must decide how far she will go to bring her creation out into the world. WHAT ONCE WE FELT: A terrifying and hilarious romp through the annals of genocide, suicide, infanticide, and atrociously bad manners.

Starring: Rebecca Avery, Camille Brown, Heidi Darchuk, Melanie Elliott, Thomas Fiscella, Joe Tyler Gold, Kate Mayfield & Thia Stephan

April 30: THE GOOD BOOK by Moby Pomerance, directed by John Langs
May 7: THE INTERNATIONALIST by Anne Washburn, directed by Bart DeLorenzo

Tags: plays, theater

Do you ever have crushes on inanimate objects? I do. In addition to an inexplicable devotion to Keanu Reeves, I’ve fallen passionately in love with my TUL Gel Retractable pen. I’ve had long flirtations with other pens in the past: Rollerball, Papermate…to name a few.

But the TUL has besotted me like no other. It’s thick body is easy to grip yet its nub is fluid and true. I love writing with it and obsesses about it when I cannot find it.

Where’s my pen? Where’s my favorite PEN?!!!

My thoughts seem to flow better when using this pen.

Does this happen to you?

Tags: pens, writing, writing instruments

“Fighting the Fires of Hate:  Musical Responses”

Tuesday, April 15, 7 p.m.

Jan Popper Theater, UCLA

“Fighting the Fires of Hate: Musical Responses” will feature performances by UCLA students of works by Paul Hindemith, Olivier Messiaen, Ernst Toch, and Eric Zeisl.  Admission is free, and seating is unreserved.

This event supplements the traveling exhibit “Fighting the Fires of Hate: America and the Nazi Book Burnings,” on view in the UCLA Charles E. Young Research Library through April 20.  

Tags: books, library, UCLA

David Cronenberg aficionados can gather at the Steve Allen Theater at Hollywood Bld and Vermont for an 8-week journey into the mind of the legendary filmmaker, capped by the American premiere of his latest short film.

Opening night is FREE!

April 12: Dead Ringers

May 31: Spider, with the American premiere of “At the Suicide of the Last Jew in the World in the Last Cinema in the World.”

8 p.m.
Saturdays from April 12 through May 31.

Tickets: $8

Tags: David Cronenberg, movies