Happy Banned Book Week!

This week the American Library Association is celebrating banned books! How cool is the American Library Association, they've always been way hepper cats then I give them credit for. How cheeky, I mean really? If you go on the website they have a little blurb about free speech and have complied banned books by decade author et cetera.
Gloria Anzaldua and I would like to present the list of most challenged books. I think you could also switch the title to greatest literary classics and no one would be the wiser. The number on the left represents where the book falls on the ALA list of 100 greatest novels. Viva books!

1. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
2. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
3. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
4. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
5. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
6. Ulysses by James Joyce
7. Beloved by Toni Morrison
8. The Lord of the Flies by William Golding
9. 1984 by George Orwell
11. Lolita by Vladmir Nabokov
12. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
15. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
16. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
18. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
19. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
20. A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
21. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
23. Their Eyes are Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
24. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
25. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
26. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
27. Native Son by Richard Wright
28. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
29. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
30. For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
33. The Call of the Wild by Jack London
34. To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
35. Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
36. Go Tell it on the Mountain by James Baldwin
38. All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren
45. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
48. Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence
49. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
53. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
54. Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger
55. The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
56. Jazz by Toni Morrison
57. Sophie's Choice by William Styron
58. Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner
59. A Passage to India by E. M. Forster
60. Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
61. A Good Man Is Hard to Find by Flannery O'Connor
62. Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
63. Orlando by Virginia Woolf
64. Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence
65. Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe
66. Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
67. A Separate Peace by John Knowles
73. Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs
75. Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence
80. The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer
84. Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller
88. An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
97. Rabbit, Run by John Updike
98. Where Angels Fear to Tread by E. M. Forster
99. Main Street by Sinclair Lewis
100. Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie

SGV Por Vida! I love you, you Mousy Bitch!

Sarah turned another year young and had the most amazing party in like, forever. Shiz got crayzee. but in the 'there is no party after this party' kind of way. you can put sarah in a dress, you can put sarah in a fancy house in beverly hills, you can surround sarah with classy art and peeps, she can read a million books on philosophy and theory but you cant take the Swang out of the sarah. girlfriend is a good ass time. and that is one of the one million reasons why i love her so.

you don't know me!

birthday beauty. she looked gorgeous.





















mateo's. face.

The Dude

Someone needs to get Zigs on the phone and tell him that he has a doppelganger and it's the new Venezuelan LA Phil conductor Gustavo Dudamel.
But this post is not about that snippity salamander but rather about beautiful Gustavo. I very rarely post LA Weekly stuff on here other than my own but I must share, if you have not picked up this weeks LA Weekly, do so, now. Gustavo Dudamel the twenty-eight year old new conductor taking over for Esa Pekka Salonen is on the cover and the adjoining article is wonderful! Aside from being a total babe the Dude, as he is called, le sigh, is also one of the first successful alumnae of Venezuela's famous El Sistena orchestra started in the early eighties to change the lives of poor and marginalized youths in that country. The program has had overwhelming success and many of its first students and graduates- as you would cal them- are now in their late twenties. Many our now going into philharmonics around the world and energizing classical music with zest and youth. Something that is transforming the way the music is heard and received critically. Gustavo is the most visually available of these working musicians. And taking over our philharmonic!
I grew up not surprisingly in a house with music, around music lovers, my mom liked Paul Simon, Enya, Credence Clearwater, Tina Turner, Cream, Los Lobos, Bob Marly, et cetera, my dad only listened to Jazz but he was a fiend and the short while I lived with him it was always on in the house, my sister was into Goth and listened to the normal nineteen eighties bag of The Cure, Cocteu Twins and the odd Prince song. But classical I was not exposed to until school. I was lucky enough o be in schools with amazing music programs my entire life, even if I couldn't play I developed a taste for classical, and now I love it very much, although I wish I had a deeper knowledge of it. In any event I will definitely be heading to the Disney Center and the Hollywood Bowl next summer to see the Dude.
click here to read the entire article

Oh the Humanity

Because Stacy is a kind soul she came over to my hermit hole and helped me read and grade essays for my undergrad class. uggghh.
sorry this blog is turning into the den of slack, as lelaina likes to say. i have been doing things and going out a tiny bit but ive been sort of sick and a little bummy and not really into photographing things. plus ive been bz up the wazoo with school.
in any event, because i have been reading so many books and writing so much and and just consumed with literature and philosophy and theory these past two weeks, i thought it was actually fitting to have stacy on the blog. her blog btw is the definitive source for all things literary and sort of the best book blog on the nets. visit it. it ruuuulz.
seriously her blog is amazing and way addicting click here to read it!
Oh I cut my hair! yayayayayayay! it needed to happen. i feel 19. this is the same haircut i had when i was 19. and in alot of ways, i actually feel 19 these days. its strange and i'm too sleepy to elaborate.
goodnight moon.
Read:
Of Human Bondage
The Importance of Being Iceland
Hells Angels
Zeroville
Tender Buttons, but only after reading William James's essay The Stream of Thought. It will blow your mind.
A Cool Million
Wuthering Heights- trust me!
Bad Behavior

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Well shit, I should just start a weekly celebrity death post. It's as if every corner of every persons heart is exploding at some new sadness. Oh Patrick. Can it end now? Please, no more celebrity deaths, at least not ones I feel so connected to. I know this is shallow and real people die every minute, but this is starting to freak me out.


I think it's time to actually quit smoking. I'm not an idiot or a teenager. Or rich. It's just decadent and dumb. Man, this is so sad.

Now it's serious

O'l bloggy and nightlife and friendships and what not might start to suffer. Second year of grad school has proven to be no joke. It's just me and my thesis baby. Gotta work that novel out.


Robert


Peg

WTF!!!!???????

What is happening? It goes without saying but rest in motherfucking peace. Goddamn already.

Happy Birthday Fiona!

Come back soon, ok? We miss you.
Love,
The smart girls. xo

ps, have you heard of Joanna Newsome? She looks just like you and writes and plays her own stuff, just like you, but she's a little intense and watching her makes me nervous, like watching a pregnant lady jump on a trampoline. somethin in the water ain't clean. but all the same, i'm glad she's out there doin it.

Oh, Summer

Sometimes it feels good to be dramatic. I am, by nature, a crybaby. And maybe a little spoiled. My parents have guilt, when you get older and stop wanting hugs, you start to appreciate compensation. Until it blows up in your face when you don't get what you want and you start throwing tantrums about the human condition and can't seem to wrap your brain around the fact that people are people and not barbie dolls or tonka trucks. You can't pout your way into the human heart. I mean, you can try, and I do, but trust, it doesn't work very well, and if it does, it doesn't hold up very long.
Sigh.
In any event, oh summer, I'll miss you.

Things I'm doing:
Finishing my novel
looking for an agent
making a new zine called "letters I never sent but wanted to"
teaching the raddest group of college freshman in all the land
bleaching the ends of my hair vato orange.

Smart fingers, smart feet.

It's been a rough couple of days but i'm hanging in there. i have wonderful friends.

it brings out the down home vato in me. ive been country all weekend.

king tuts new favorite place to hang out is in this dust pan.

fyf happened and with the exception of stacy, eric, busy, la record peeps, my kind kind editor and that one ice cream truck, it was pretty eww.

coachella much? in all seriousness though, good for sean, he's a little hustler and he makes magic for the kids.




Daniel and I hung out today and fats and him shared a moment.



and then paul came over

and forced a moment with fats.


then we just watched true blood.


also, should i cut my hair? its really long, longer than its ever been, EVER. i've always had a bob or forties bangs. i've turned myself into a new person these past two years. but maybe thats good and and now thats just me. maybe i should quit trying to go back to a person i think i am and should embrace the person i am now, a hippie with long natural colored curly hair. but then again, i haven't dyed or cut it in a long time and old habits die hard....