After reading a lot of non YA stuff over the summer, finally got to check out Eleanor and Park.  Great read!!  Congratulations Rainbow Rowell.  I always like stuff set in Omaha, which is demographically and population wise, the exact same size as Portland.  Or it was.  I went through their once on a Greyhound bus and got off and walked around the city, this must have been like 1988, and I spotted this one girl with sort of cool hair so I followed her for a while and she went in a big door with no markings, and this music came out, and so I went to the door and opened it and it was this weird rock club/coffee shop place, I think.  I couldn't really hang out.  But I always think about what a scene would be like in a place like Omaha.  Pretty small, but probably pretty intense.

                                              My research team is hard at work.

Summer is here.  Let the ennui begin!

Ocean Park, California

This is a painting of my neighborhood from the early sixties.  It doesn't look like this anymore.  No open fields remain.  Except for a dog park nearby.   Which is dirt.   Still nice and sunny though.

Hanging out in Palms Springs.  I sometimes go there to work for a day or two.  It's easy to get to and a nice change of pace.   Finishing up THE PRINCE OF VENICE BEACH at the moment.  Look for it in about a year, I hope!!

A bookstore in the UK linked GIRL with one of my favorite books of the last year:  THE SISTERS BROTHERS by Patrick deWitt !!    My friend Sally who first turned me onto SISTERS, is now listening to it on Audio and likes it so much, I might have to do the same.

Just watched SOMEWHERE by Sofia Coppola and recently also read Sheila Heti's (pictured) book HOW SHOULD A PERSON BE?   The two seemed similar in some way.   I guess in the honesty of their female perspective.   Loved them both, though it's painful as a guy to experience how girls think of us.   Sofia Coppola can be especially brutal.  In VIRGIN SUICIDES there's this scene where the dad opens a beer and watches a football game that I swear, is the most painful thing I've ever watched on film.   The emptiness Coppola sees there, it's horrifying.