My husband Scott has just launched MediaBugs, a website whose goal is to improve the quality of Bay Area news coverage. Readers who spot an error in a news report that they believe needs to be corrected can file a bug report on the site. Then MediaBugs connects you with the journalist behind the story and the conversation begins — with the goal that the error will get resolved.
For more on the project, read Mark Follman’s blog (Scott’s colleague on the project).
We had some fine folks over for dinner last week: Stephanie Snyder, a wonderful yoga teacher who is featured in Yoga Journal’s “Yoga for Strength and Toning” DVD, and her husband, Lars Frederiksen of the punk band Rancid. Stephanie and I bonded over our common love of folk music and yoga, and our husbands’ love of punk. I wanted to get Lars and Scott together, so they could discuss punk arcana (Lord knows I can’t), which they did with unabashed joy. “It’s a punk nerd convention” Lars said, laughing, as I served the noodles.
Lars told us this great story. He was touring with the great Billy Bragg, who said that his son wanted to get Guitar Hero.
Instead, Bragg handed him a guitar and said, “Here’s a guitar. Be a hero.”
I filed “Ravenous” two weeks ago. The next morning, as I was getting ready to board a plane with my family for a vacation in southern California, I bumped into Michael Pollan. “May this be an auspicious sign, Lord,” I thought silently.
We got to Newport Beach and while I was working out in the hotel’s exercise room, I noticed a leggy blond working out next to me. And I do mean leggy. I’m reasonably tall, but her legs came up to my pipick.
Next to her, was a guy with a shock of blond hair. “I know him,” I thought, trying to place his face. It was Rod Stewart, looking pretty darn fit for an alte cocka.
I swam with the boys, read some books by Tamora Pierce, enjoyed an occasional Bloody Mary, trying to rest after the final mad dash to file my book. The subtitle of “Ravenous” is “A Food Lover’s Search for Balance”. I was ready to rename it, “The Big Shlepp”.
Scott, my husband, is really, and truly a brilliant editor. I knew my book needed work but after being in the thick of it for so long, couldn’t say exactly what that was. He saw it, and through a remarkable process, got me there. Even in the midst of his own big projects, he gave me the time I needed to make my book better. Then he had the generosity and grace to say to me, “You had the vision, you built the ship, you sailed it across the ocean. I just pulled it into harbor.”
And now, I’m flailing a little bit. I’ve been, um, consumed by this book for over a year. There will be more work, of course. More editing. I have to re-design my website, create a YouTube video, but moving past the giant act of creating a book from just an idea leaves me a little bereft, a little empty. A weird in-between state.
I should be grateful, at least, I reached the finish line — happy, proud, sometimes limping and bitching, but done.
I have a tie for most beautiful of the evening:
Queen Latifah
Carey Mulligan
The Queen, because she shows the world curvy is gorgeous, and Mulligan, because she is young, edgy, and adorable.
Kristen Stewart is a close runner up. I like that she’s uncomfortable being there and can imagine her wearing high tops under her Marchesa dress.
Most original: Maggie Gyllenhaal, and Sarah Jessica Parker.
I’m at lunch yesterday with my son Jack. We look at the menu and as we’re about to order, I see it’s cash only. I don’t have enough for both of us to eat so I tell him to order and I’ll have tea. I’m fine with that.
A minute later, a woman comes over to me and says, “I couldn’t help but overhear you. Would $20 cover your lunch?”
I’m speechless. Jack is speechless. She says, “I know what it’s like to want to have lunch with your kid. Please, take it.”
I do. I write her a check. She tells me her name is Narda Zacchino. She is both beautiful and kind. This act of kindness leads to more talk. I learn she had been an editor at both the SF Chronicle and the LA Times. She’s now a fellow at the Annenberg School of Communications. With her was her husband, the political columnist Robert Scheer.
When our lunch comes, Jack says, “People are amazing. Even strangers.”
For the first dozen or so years of my career, I was a book publicist. I worked at different Bay Area publishing companies, including Ten Speed Press (eclectica), Mercury House (literary fiction), EarthWorks (environmental), Nolo (self help law) and Collins Publishers SF (big picture books, food and sports). I always liked being a publicist because I got to visit different people’s worlds, briefly, and then leave.
Turns out, I’ve visited a lot of strange worlds. So, as I procrastinate finishing “Ravenous”, my food and eating memoir which is due at my publishers end of this month, I thought I’d share a few stories.
It was 1987, and I was the receptionist at Ten Speed Press. Somehow, while answering the phone and taking messages, I booked Ermie Mickler, author of the seminal and wonderful “White Trash Cooking” on the David Letterman show. I got promoted to publicist the next week.
I flew to New York and met Ernie and his partner, whose name I no longer remember. We went to the Letterman show, where Ernie was booked to cook chicken feet.
Ernie doused an electric skillet with enough oil to cause a heart attack from just looking at it. When the oil was hot, Ernie cooked the feet, which still had the toenails on. The feet curled in on themselves, turning into something from a horror movie. I seem to remember some jokes about foot fetish. Ernie ate a few feet on air, I think Letterman demurred.
After the show, we went to get some drinks down in the meat packing district, which was a lot more funky then than it is today. After, I put Ernie and his friend into a cab, then stood on the corner, waiting for another one to show. It didn’t. But a cop car kept circling the block, and finally stopped and pulled up to speak with me.
They thought I was a hooker.
I said, pardon me, but do hookers generally wear a black pant suit, pumps, pearls, and carry a Coach briefcase?
You have a point, they told me.
Still, I said, thanks for the thought.
Eventually I caught a cab and called it a night.
That wasn’t the last time I visited the Letterman Show. About a year later, I worked on a weird little book called “How to Repair Food“. I pitched it to the show, saying that if you stick limp celery into ice water, it stands straight up again. Well, they loved that, so I’m soon back to the show with the book’s co-author, John Bear, who demonstrated how to make a limp celery stalk erect.
I call this period of my career, my “food porn phase.”
Which was shortly to be followed by the “scatological phase.”
KQED Forum will be doing a full hour on the Yoga Journal SF Conference Friday, 1/29, 10 AM.
Interviewed for a piece in today’s New York Times.
Not the planet, the music website. I’m always ridiculously late to learn about current technology, though I’m married to technology man (TM).
TM introduced me to Pandora Internet Radio and I am in love! Just put in the artists you like and it plays back those artists and those they think you will like. So far, batting close to 100. Such a great site.
