carolyn kellogg

paperhaus November 21st, 2008

With all of California facing a budget crunch, the city of LA is facing difficult cutbacks. The first round of funding cuts has been proposed — recommended by the city’s top budget official — and will be considered by the LA City Council on Monday. On the chopping block:

* $1.45 million from the $79-million library budget
* $800,000 from the city’s tree-trimming program
* $1 million from the crossing guards program
* $650,000 from the program to install more left-turn arrow signals at city intersections.
* A freeze on new hires at the City Attorney’s Office and City Controller’s Office, with limited exceptions
* $1.92 million from the Los Angeles Police Department program to replace older squad cars

Now I’m not a city budgeteer but I can see that the targets of many of these proposed cuts are things that are considered nonessential. And it kills me that in a big, difficult city like Los Angeles, where one in five children live in poverty, that anyone thinks that public libraries are nonessential.

Just yesterday I blogged at Jacket Copy about Andrew Carnegie and his libraries. Yes, Carnegie was a bad bad capitalist. But when he turned to philanthropy, libraries were one of his top priorities. Without his work, the US wouldn’t have a tradition of free libraries. And Carnegie cared about libraries because he saw them as one of the real ways that individuals could control their own destinies.

The new Malcolm Gladwell book, Outliers, seems to imply that individuals can’t. Fuck that. People are left out of the big fat clichéd-but-I-still-love-it American dream if we leave them out. If we cut off their resources — like free libraries.

I urge the City Council to not make any cuts at all to our library budgets. Period.

But if they must, here’s an idea: Make cuts to those in the wealthiest communities first.

Someone who lives in Beverly-Hills-adjacent Brentwood is better able to drive their car for library services than the bus-bound parents of kids in, say, El Sereno. People who live in Silverlake — where the median home price is still almost $600,000, more than $400 per square foot — can afford to buy the books they want. Leave the free libraries for the households earning the county’s average income of $36,687.

This would probably be politically stupid — affluent and engaged constituents might well protest losing library hours, library projects, library staff. But that just shows they want their libraries.

Libraries are important. And they should be available to the members of our community who have the fewest resources, the hardest fight, the farthest way to go.

• LA
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paperhaus October 14th, 2008

Maybe you heard about the homeless man who was burned to death in Los Angeles last week. According to witnesses, a Honda Civic stopped; some teens or 20-somethings jumped out with a gas can, poured gasoline on the homeless man and lit him on fire. At this point these claims are alleged — no one knows exactly what liquid came out of the gas can (although the area later smelled of gas), no one knows the exact age of the young men who jumped out of the car, because they have not been found.

Local TV station KTLA reports: “One resident, who did not want to be identified out of fear for his safety, said he spoke to someone who allegedly witnessed the crime.” Why would a resident fear for his safety? Because the man fears retribution from the perpetrators, or their friends — there is, not surprisingly, speculation that the incident was gang-related.

The man was killed on 3rd Street between New Hampshire and Berendo, in front of a closed dentist’s office near a donut shop and the legendarily cheap and veggie-friendly Mariella’s burrito joint. He died three-quarters of a mile from my apartment, seven blocks away.

The LA Times aptly described the neighborhood as “a densely populated, diverse neighborhood west of downtown.” It’s not a bad neighborhood, and where I live is a slightly better pocket than where the homeless man camped out. But this tree — tagged by the notorious 18th Street gang — is halfway in between here and there. Tagging is everywhere in Los Angeles — but spray-painting a tree? How incredibly stupid and lame is that?

Just as stupid and lame as the skater kids that were trying to break off the lower branches of a tree this afternoon around the corner from my house. I was coming home from a coffeeshop and walked down the sidewalk watching 8 of them hanging out on the steps of a mini-mall, urging one on. He jumped, grabbed a lower branch, and when it didn’t snap off, tried wrapping it around the tree in an effort to break it. Two adults stood on the corner, watching mutely.

I’m the one who asked them what they were doing. Instead of running off when being challenged by an authority figure, they didn’t care. Shut up, they said. No really, I said, stop fucking with the tree. When the kid holding the branch didn’t let go, I grabbed his skateboard off the ground. Hey! he said, and his friends all stood up. I thought that would get your attention, I said, and gave the skateboard back. Leave the tree alone, I said. Go away hippie, one said (What I didnt say: hippie? I was punk rock before you were born, asshole.) What are you guys doing here, anyway? I said. Go back to Pittsburgh, one said, reading my shirt. Fine, I said, but first why don’t you take off. Leave the tree alone. They stood there watching me. Do you want me to call the police? I said. I skate, I don’t want to call the police, but I will. One guy — a nasty guy — he came up to me. I can’t remember what he said then. He was very close. He was not nice.

And I was getting scared. Seriously, 8 guys, none of them budging, just waiting for me to walk away so they could go back to fucking with the trees on my corner. The guy who had been fucking with the tree came up, standing as close to his friend, trying to deescalate. It’s cool man, he said. He caught my eye. He wasn’t nasty. I think he was older.

This is my neighborhood, I said.

This is our neighborhood, they said.

My iphone was in my hand. I started dialing and walked around the corner. The two adults were standing there, still watching, and they were afraid. I decided to call the LA info line to report a nuisance disturbance — I didn’t really want to call the cops — but was transferred to the police anyway. As I was on hold I stood on the sidewalk watching the corner; one kid and then another would poke his head around to see if I was still there. Eventually, they all came wooshing up as a group on their skateboards, and I ducked in the doorway of a sandwich place to stay out of range.

“If you see them again,” the police officer told me, “call us right away.” He didn’t understand — I don’t care about kids on skateboards, I care about kids on skateboards fucking up my neighborhood. Or their neighborhood. Which is exactly the problem.

• LA
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paperhaus August 14th, 2008

Author Jonathan Evison (All About Lulu) is in town, or should I say the whirlwind tour that is Jonathan Evison. There will be a video interview with him on Jacket Copy, once it’s done. But we’re not done filming yet.

We met at hot dog place Skooby’s in Hollywood — me and Jonathan and tour manager Brooks and documentarian Justin — because a hot dog place features prominently in Jonathan’s book. But soon we retired to Musso & Frank across the street, to have a drink in the bar. While Jonathan and I were talking, Justin set up his camera and began filming.

Suddenly the maitre d’ appeared, out of nowhere, and told Justin to put the camera away. I’d never seen that before. Musso & Frank doesn’t care if you take pictures inside. I mean, they didn’t used to.

Except if someone real famous is trying to have a quiet dinner. In this case, Keanu Reeves.

Dude. Woah.

As I’ve said many times before, I love Musso & Frank for its martinis and longtime waiters in uniform and it one-time backroom Fitzgerald/Faulkner hangout and its 1940s ambiance. But I know when I drag people in there sometimes they see a lot of grayhairs and stiffs and a place that isn’t ostentatiously fancy Hollywood and they don’t quite believe me that it’s really an amazing hot spot.

But a little Keanu goes a long way.

• LA , andetc
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paperhaus July 28th, 2008

David Ulin will be on KPCC’s Air Talk with Larry Mantle today, around 10:30am Pacific — that’s 89.3FM in socal, online elsewhere. Ulin has also talked to Publisher’s Weekly about changes in book coverage at the paper.

• LA , book reviews
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paperhaus June 23rd, 2008

I’m heading to the Fairbanks Center for Motion Picture Study for my third day of research for my thesis. Stumbled across a 1926 letter from DW Griffith to Adolph Zukor, complaining for 10 pages about scripts being forced on him and changes he’d been bullied into, then ending with “no ill feeling.” Zukor took 10 days to send an unbending note back; Griffith followed up immediately with another long treatise. Ten years earlier he’d revolutionized the film industry, making long-running pictures with an astonishing level of artistry, but by 1926 he was getting the brush-off. His letters show he wasn’t taking it well.

This only has tangential connection to my thesis, I admit. But archival research is so much fun! And some things — like the elaborate Paramount budgets, written in pencil — are concretely related.

Meanwhile, Stop Smiling magazine talks to David Milch, the creator of Deadwood, for their gambling issue. In the excerpt online, they never get to Faro, which is the gambling that would have been played in Deadwood. Faro is in my thesis (and it was there before Deadwood, thank you very much), and I think it’s the strangest game of chance ever. It’s sort of like card-based roulette — you bet on a card or cards, and wait for the dealer’s draw to match yours. No skill at all — just guess and wait. And it was so insanely easy for the house to cheat at Faro, it’s a wonder anyone played it. But it was massively popular. Maybe Milch gets to it in the print version.

All of this seems to indicate that my MFA thesis is a work in progress. Indeed. My coursework is finished, but the thesis is due later this sumer.

• LA , magazines
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paperhaus May 29th, 2008

I’ve gone to Book Expo twice before, and still I feel entirely unprepared for BEA 2008.

The first year, it was in Washington DC. I stayed at an unfortunately expensive shitty hotel; I had to wait in line as an intense guy checked in before me. I had never seen him before. But somehow I knew it was Ed Champion, and when he turned away from the desk, I tried saying “Ed,” loudly. He turned. Yep, it was Ed. This year, Ed will not be at BEA. Seems wrong, somehow.

Last year, in New York, I stayed with non-book friends in Brooklyn — they provided a welcome dose of sanity even though NY transit added hours to my travel time. (Strangely, those same friends will be in LA this year just in time for BEA. Maybe they’re all bookish after all). Last year, the LBC had a party, and I got to meet more fellow litbloggers and publishers and a logjam of authors. Running late the next morning, I worried that I’d miss the panel I wanted to see, but realized one of its members — Christopher Hitchens — was standing right in front of me on the escalator. I followed him. He was grumpy about morning. I walked onto the floor and was dazed by the enormity of it — or maybe by the heat (the air conditioning in Javitz was on the fritz). I had a marvelous time, sort of full-to-overflowing, all of it, including my bags, with books.

This year I have planned. I have a schedule. I am in my own town (yes, I am here, in LA, which I have reclaimed, by the way). I know when William Shatner is supposed to be signing his new book, that Alec Baldwin is speaking at a breakfast, that George Hamilton is throwing a party. That Salman Rushdie is going to be hanging out, cracking jokes. But there’s so so much that I don’t know. I might even see you there.

• LA , LA events , events
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paperhaus February 26th, 2008

I’m very excited to be blogging over at the Los Angeles Times’ book blog, Jacket Copy, starting, well, yesterday. And continuing daily, along with contributions from the paper’s book review staff. So add to your rss reader, if you’re into that kind of thing.

Pinky’s Paperhaus will continue, with more about what’s up in Pittsburgh, grad school, teaching, non-book-related rants, and perhaps even a podcast or two. With authors. Who are good. Oh, yeah.

• LA , andetc , meta
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paperhaus February 19th, 2008

Longtime Los Angeles literary nonprofit Beyond Baroque may lose its lease. It’s been in its location, in Venice, for decades.

This isn’t simply a matter of changing real estate realities. Apparently the organization is in a city-owned building, and their city councilman recommended a 25-year lease extension. With these nonprofit leases, Beyond Baroque’s website says, a rep’s recommendation usually holds. But Los Angeles City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo is recommending against the extension.

I’m not sure what Delgadillo is thinking. He had trouble this summer — including covering up an accident his wife had in his city-owned vehicle — and for some reason this has compelled him to … crack down on literary nonprofit leases?

As I tended to be an LA eastsider (Pittsburgh=very east), Beyond Baroque, way across town, never became my favorite lit place; their claim that they’ve been LA’s “only literary center for four decades” is certainly hyperbole. But the organization certainly deserves to go on, and I don’t see why they should be evicted from their current location. I hope Delgadillo has a good reason for countering the city councilman’s recommendation to extend Beyond Baroque’s lease. Either that, or that he soon changes his mind.

• LA
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paperhaus December 1st, 2007

Tony Pierce, the enthusiastic, wild, obsessive, peerless* editor of LAist is moving on to manage the blogs of the Los Angeles Times.

Congratulations, Tony!

Photo: That’s Tony in the center, mid-Skooby’s hot dog, telling Rob Takata and Cecil Castellucci what’s what.

* not predecessor-less, though: his predecessor was me.

• LA , media , news
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paperhaus November 30th, 2007

The coolest thing I’ve read all day:

Mark Sarvas’s first novel is funny and sad, rueful, wised-up and curiously moving. A remarkable debut. - John Banville, winner of the Man Booker Prize for The Sea.

Although perhaps it should read John - fucking - Banville. The book is Mark’s upcoming debut, Harry, Revised.

Bukowski’s home will be saved after all. Eh. I like him as a dissolute icon, I do; but literary talent, not so much.

Tod demonstrates how to get on an FBI watch list.

Antoine Wilson is interviewed at Please Don’t, a new online quartlery. He describes his ideal audience — “I write to a version of myself, a literary doppelganger. I’d like that doppelganger to pick up my novel, read it, and say, ‘I wish I’d written that.’” — which is entirely appropriate for a guy who’s written a book about someone with an alter ego. Did I say excellent book? It is: The Interloper.

Truth is stranger than fiction, part 7,135,087: in the 1920s, a Memphis woman ran a sordid adoption ring. She’d trick unwed mothers into signing away their infants, bribe nurses to lie and say babies had been stillborn. One of her ill-gotten infants became Joan Crawford’s daughter (and you know how well that turned out). The Baby Thief: The Untold Story of Georgia Tann, the Baby Seller Who Corrupted Adoption sounds too good to pass up.

• LA , on books , online
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