West Hollywood Book Fair, musings on Sunday morning, Queen in Japan, the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, what is Obama doing?

September 26th, 2010

 This is the only really literary book fair in this city.  The events are literary, there are writers rather than cooks, kids and dog people like you have at the LA Times Book fair.  Nothing against all those people who are amazing, or can be unless they’re delusional freaks which they might be since they live in Los Angeles which is a freaky place to live.  But I like a book fair to be literary and about books and the West Ho  book fair is.  We have political writers like Blasé Bonpane and great poets like Jamey Hecht, great fiction writers like Rob Roberge.

 My daughter and her girlfriend are coming.  It’s the girlfriend, Cassidy’s 21^st birthday tomorrow.  So she can drink for 40 days before Amy.  Live it up. 

 It’s going to be fun.  Mark got up at 6 am and he’s already there.  Yours truly is blogging in bed listening to Queen.  Freddie Mercury (Born Farrokh Bulsara) could sing with an amazing range and was an actual musician unlike many of the people putting together music today, but some of those outfits?  I wouldn’t dress in those on my worst day.   A lot of these videos were filmed during their last Japanese tour, it looks like the Japanese love this big hunky shirtless Brit.  In “I want to Break Free” he starts off with these huge breasts and then he loses them during the performance and is down to his bare hairy chest.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7oRnSFsOHA&feature=related

 What is funny is that until I had kids I basically listened to my own college days music (80’s!) and classical.  They got me into Queen and Zeppelin and all that.  And my dog JJ is in the room and I had to let Charlie in.  That cat is high maintenance.  Siamese talk all the time.

 I’m definitely planning a marathon in Feb so the daily situps and yoga and the running training have begun.  That will be part 1 of getting my life on track.  Running and then writing and then getting published.  We are also transforming the house, but I use the term “we” very loosely. Mark is transforming the house, but I’m like Garfield, I can watch people work for hours without moving a hair.  And then I ask for tuna afterwards. 

 So, my students are writing on the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and their cost in terms of people and money.  Recruiters are always trying to get them to drop out of college and join the military and some of them do.  In most of my classes, there are at a least a couple people who are in the military.  We’ve spent over a trillion dollars.  For what?  We haven’t set up democracy in either country.  We’re making the rich of this country frighteningly richer.  And the poor keep getting poorer. 

 Obama was elected with a mandate to change things.  Since he hasn’t changed anything, is he surprised that he might be a one term president?  We like him, I think he would be great to have over for dinner.  But name me one thing he has changed.

 Education is going down the tubes.  The wars go one.  There are no jobs.  You can’t buy or sell a house because the housing market is frozen. 

 People ask us how Red Hen continues to thrive.  On a wing and a prayer.  We need to hire a marketing/publicity/sales person and we need our development person to be full time and we wish for a production person.  But staff would entail big grants and those aren’t happening in this climate.  Insects have tiny fragile wings.  You can see sunlight through them