MAGIC MOLLY

Beautiful beautiful Central Park!

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 14:10:10 -0500

Beautiful beautiful Central Park!

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Sun, 22 Nov 2009 14:10:05 -0500

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Sun, 22 Nov 2009 14:09:59 -0500

20 Columbus, 24 Divisadero, 26 Valencia

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 00:16:06 -0500

In 6th and 7th grade I read a zine called 20 Bus, which focused entirely on public transportation in San Francisco. It was an excellent zine written by a girl named Kelli who traveled often on Muni, the SF bus line, and collected interesting stories along the way.

When she wrote about the 38, 22, 43 and 1 buses in particular I felt a pleasurable identification. Tales of other buses, like the exotic 36 Teresita or 21 Hayes, were more exotic.

My own experiences of being screamed at by drivers or shoved out the backdoor made more sense in the context of a body of San Francisco lore, or, in more concrete terms, made me see the experiences as adding up to a type of childhood that I was happy to have had.

Four book recommendations for hard-to-please readers

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 09:26:30 -0500

•If you like minor James and novels that center entirely around furniture disputes (*broadly overlapping demographics) check out The Spoils of Poynton

•If you like wrenching novels about the Raj, cholera, and corpse-eating dogs, check out J.G. Farrell’s The Siege of Krishnapur

•If you like horticulture and inequality, check out Andrew Jackson Downing’s Gardening For Ladies

•If you like realpolitik and precocity, check out Nick McDonnell’s An Expensive Education

Weighs more than a butchering hog

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 12:54:32 -0500

Weighs more than a butchering hog

Twitching at intervals

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 12:13:09 -0500

When it’s not lonely or yearning, the act of waiting for someone can be exquisite. I guess this would be called ‘anticipation’, but that doesn’t quite nail it.

It’s a feeling of suspended animation but with the addition of consciousness. Like freezing the entire world but leaving your eyeballs free to toggle like a Kit-Cat clock. That is exactly how it feels.

What I Didn't Get For Christmas

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 16:13:23 -0500

What I Didn't Get For Christmas:

I have a short story in this adorable little book, along with Miranda July and others. Take a look!

Molecular Gastronomy At Home

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 14:25:46 -0500

Molecular Gastronomy At Home:

I write about xanthan gum—in pudding, fake blood, and at Wylie Dufresne— at More Intelligent Life.

Goodnight Triops

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 10:38:55 -0500

At 3 AM I went to pour my dead Triops down the drain. The water leeched out but the Triops became lodged in the grille of its tank. Jiggling did not release the corpse, so I put the whole tank in a trash bag, knotted it, and put that inside a paper bag. It was bulky.

Even through the paper, I could sense exactly where the Triops was, crushed in one corner of its plastic box and sprinkled with colored gravel. It still didn’t seem right to stick the bag in the hallway, and neither did I want to descend five flights in my nightgown to drop it into the trash. So it stayed within the house, my x-ray vision boring into the bag, performing last viewing rites.

God Wants Us To Dance

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 15:40:00 -0500

“People, after midnight, they start to look for themselves.”

Watch my dear brother Alexander talk to the Nachmans in Tel Aviv.

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Wed, 18 Nov 2009 11:42:22 -0500

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Wed, 18 Nov 2009 11:42:17 -0500

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Wed, 18 Nov 2009 11:42:11 -0500

Tell me the truth, doctor, I'd sooner know. But only if the truth is what I want to hear.

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 09:19:35 -0500

One of the greatest mysteries facing me—one of the smallest and most pedestrian too—is the question of what I will do next.

This applies equally to basic things (talking, wandering or eating) as it does to non-basic things (thinking, writing). There’s nothing to do about the mystery, either. Focusing too stringently on solving it leads to making weird faces.

Death of a Triops

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 21:47:42 -0500

Death of a Triops

This will be good! I am excited.

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 15:25:31 -0500

This Friday, November 20th at 7:00pm

Please join editors and contributors Keith Gessen, Mark Greif, Chad Harbach, Allison Lorentzen, David Noriega, Marco Roth, and Katherine Sharpe to talk about recession and the environment, the neuronovel, gay marriage and abortion, Juan Villoro’s fiction, and, of course, Internet dating—as well as anything else of interest from Issue 8.

McNally Jackson Bookstore
52 Prince Street (btwn Lafayette and Mulberry)
New York, NY 10012

Free and open to the public

A charismatic roof

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 13:00:04 -0500

A charismatic roof

Weather to weather

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 09:54:36 -0500

The good kind of rain began at three o’ clock. It came down evenly, in mid-size drops, at only a slight angle. The kind of rain in which umbrellas work well. Polite, atmospheric rain. Rain that disposes of itself down the drains without obstruction. Movie-day rain. Et cetera.

What comes in cycles

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 09:54:17 -0500

I can’t remember the last time I was crushingly humiliated, and this amounts to a forecast that I will be crushingly humiliated very soon.