Cities Helping Each Other

So many sterling moments at last night’s Progressive Reading it’s hard to know where to start. It was great to see so many former Progressive readers in the standing room only Makeout Room (bring your own chairs, for god sakes!), Starlee Kine in town from New York made it a point to stop by, and Rachel Howard, Caroline Paul, Sarah Fran Wisby were all there; mutual love all around. Stephen read his letter (see it below and Stephen’s post on The Huffington Post) from Mayor Bill White of Houston. Thanks goodness for progressive thinking.

Tom Barbash kicked off the reading with a story from his forthcoming collection, about a divorced mother and her son who was being hit on by an easy restaurant hostess, an older woman. About the age the women’s ex-husband is dating and she’s not happy about it. He still collects rare stamps the mother told the easy hostess. He’s a baby. “No he isn’t.” the easy hostess replied. Poor Mom. Next Matthew Eck cracked us up with a story whose narrators bluff his way into a teaching position at an Ivy League university using Chekhov’s CV. Made me wonder if any of my own professors had tried something like that.

We love April Sinclair. First she was willing to pinch-hit at the last minute, then she honored Bernie Mac, then she read a story about trying to be a cool mom and hearing about girl kissing! And then she read about her no-good nephew who had to be pried off the couch and was banned from the house. My sides were splitting, but it was just another day in the Sinclair family, apparently.

Ali Wong cracked us up. “Oh Progressive Reading Series, you’re all so serious. Girls with bangs and glasses, Rainbow Grocery employees smelling of hummus and privilege!” Her story of Disneyland rides that simulate the landscape of California reminded me I’ve never been to Disneyland/World and I’m going to keep it that way. Like most horrible things, they're hilarious to hear about.

All Star Minstrels sang an ironic version of a folk song made popular by the Pogues. Davy Rothbart read a story about pulling pranks on his deaf mother that were so horrible and devious I was embarrassed for him, yet very impressed. What a terror that kid was. In the end, though, his mom got the last laugh and Davy grew up to be one of the kindest people you’d ever be lucky to meet.

In his third (third, people!), Progressive Reading appearance and proving that recycling in Houston is as important as Shakespeare in Santa Cruz, Jonathan Franzen railed on technology and how it can actually make life more difficult. I knew just what he meant. My cell phone had been beeping at me all day for absolutely no reason. Stephen ended the night by telling us we raised $1,729, which equals 276 bins for Houston. Next month on September 20th: Daniel Handler, Jane Ganahl, Aimee Bender, Glen David Gold, and Katie Crouch. Don’t forget your chair or cushion.

The Huffington Post

Last night's Progressive Reading on the Huffington Post.

The Tom Barbash Interview: He has substance and style!

Tom Barbash is the author of On Top of the World: Cantor Fitzgerald, Howard Lutnick and 9/11: a Story of Loss and Renewal and The Last Good Chance. He is from Manhattan, lives now in San Francisco and I'd vote for him.

PRS: Tell me about the first time you voted in a presidential election.
TB: My first voting experience was for Walter Mondale who I so badly wanted to beat Reagan. Mondale was decent, honest, a bit on the dull side and would have made an infinitely better president.
I recall being amazed at what a landslide it was considering that virtually everyone I knew in my New York City and Haverford College circles mocked Reagan, and Nancy's reliance on psychics, etc. I never saw his appeal, and never did until George Bush came around and made Reagan seem regal in comparison.

PRS: What, if any, was the first political scandal that had you glued to the television, or that you followed pretty closely? Can you explain your fascination with it?
TB: Watergate, though I didn't entirely understand it. I remember being at my uncle's beach house over the summer and everyone was watching these hearings and I knew it was great drama, and I knew the bad guys were getting in trouble, and that pleased my parents and pleased me. We all hated Nixon and Agnew. My fascination had to do with the concept of an evil president, titillating stuff for a kid raised on stories of Washington, Lincoln, and Roosevelt.

PRS: You've seen the Paris Hilton fightback? What do you think of the mixture of celebrity in politics? I have to admit I found the line "I'll see you at the debates, bitches" funny.
TB: I think celebrity is being used as a substitute for attractive, and well-liked. The myth promulgated by people as ill at ease in their own skin as McCain is, is that the smoothies like Barack must lack substance. But maybe its their substance that makes them so attractive.

PRS: Mr. Smith Goes To Washington? Have you ever seen that? Do you think there is place for a decent and honest politicians in American politics, and that they'll prevail?
TB: I think there's a place for an ESSENTIALLY decent and honest person, but it seems as though if you want to win you have to play tough, and compromise occasionally, and you have to raise money. The trick is not to bend so far in the opposite direction that you become unrecognizable - as the cranky old senator from Arizona has this campaign season.

If YOU have any questions you'd like to ask Tom Barbash or any of our August authors, come to the Makeout Room Saturday night, August 16 at 7p.m. The rest of the lineup includes last minute and very exciting addition April Sinclair, all the way from Ann Arbor, Davy Rothbart, author of The Farther Shore, Matthew Eck and headliner Jonathan Franzen! All for the low price of ten to twenty dollars. Plus we're helping Houston with their recycling issues. What more could you really ask for a on Saturday night?

Late Addition!

As if you needed more incentive to solve Houston's recycling problem, we were able to set up a late additon to Saturday's already kick-ass line up of readers: April Sinclair, author of the critically acclaimed (and award winning) bestseller, Coffee Will Make You Black. April has been confronting—and making fantastic literature from—issues like race, gender, and sexuality for years. Not to mention, she's from Chicago, which automatically makes her the coolest reader on the bill (sorry Davy, Ann Arbor's OK too).

As always, you can buy tickets in advance right here.

AN INTERVIEW WITH DAVY ROTHBART



Davy Rothbart makes FOUND Magazine, contributes stories to This American Life, and wrote a book of stories called The Lone Surfer of Montana, Kansas. He also writes frequently for GQ, SLAM, and The Believer. If you've found something cool, please send it to him at his parents' house -- details at foundmagazine.com

This interview was conducted despite jetlag (at least two time zones apiece), technical difficulties (both of us), and a misremembered password (me). Davy Rothbart will be reading for Houston's recycling program on August 16th at the Makeout Room, along with Tom Barbash, Michelle Tea, Jonathan Franzen, Matthew Eck and with comedy by Ali Wong.

SA: Has anyone ever bribed you for your vote?

DR: In 4th grade, my friend David Pfeiffer spent weeks circulating a petition among our schoolmates, trying to finagle more recess for all of us. About half of our school had already signed it, and David believed that if me and another friend of ours named Blair Austin got on board, the rest of the kids in school would follow suit. I'm not sure it would've worked out like that, but that was David's thought at the time.

He stayed overnight at my house one weekend, and spent the whole time hectoring me to sign the petition. What kind of red-blooded American boy could possibly be opposed to such a proposal? Me, I guess. I mean, recess was cool and all, but our teachers were pretty cool, too, and I liked the shit they were teaching us. I didn't really think we needed more recess. I was in a tight spot. On one hand, David Pfeiffer was bound to keep haranguing me until I signed the damn thing; he even offered me bribes -- a dollar, a Jolly Rancher, a 1979 Topps Carlton Fisk. When the bribes didn't budge me, he tried threats, which had a bit more power to melt my convictions. But on the other hand, more recess meant more opportunities to be pummeled by the big kids in Dodgeball, and ultimately, I couldn't in good faith sign the petition. So I did the only thing I could do... I did, in fact, what many other policy-makers might've done if Congress was held in their basement. I snuck the petition out of David Pfeiffer's backpack, ripped it to shreds, and tossed it in the bathroom trashcan. Then an hour later when he started freaking out thinking he'd lost the thing, I led him to the bathroom and sheepishly pointed out to him what I'd done with it.

On Monday, at lunchtime recess, he made good on his threats and beat me up with cement-filled nunchuks. There's two morals to this story. One, more recess is always good. Two, if anyone offers you their 1979 Topps Carlton Fisk to sign a petition, take the catcher and run.

SA: Wow, that's a great story. Do you know what sort of career David Pfeiffer has had? How did that experience affect what you learned about policy?

DR: Ya know, I'm not really sure what happened to Pfeiffer, and I can't say it affected my policy education. but I remember one other thing about David Pfeiffer...My last name, Rothbart has the unusual property that you can change a single consonant and end up with either Rothbarf or Rothfart, and plenty of my grade school classmates made that discovery; as far as invoking those nicknames goes, they voted early and often. But David Pfeiffer, after the petition incident, always called me a new name, which to this day I still marvel at for its catchiness and cleverness despite being so unclever. He simply called me Rothcrap.

SA: This money raised at this month's Progressive will raise funds to donate recycling bins to the city of Houston. Have you ever been to Houston? Did you find anything interesting there? What's the best thing someone has sent you from Houston that’s ended up in the magazine?

DR: Houston is like home to me! It’s awesome that this event will benefit Houston’s recycling program. We've received a ton of amazing finds from Houston over the years. I fear, though, that once we hook up all these new recycling bins, the kinds of notes and papers that folks used to find strewn in the street will now be more properly disposed of and the Houston finds will dwindle!

One particularly memorable find was given to me in Houston by a 120-year-old man. I was doing some radio reporting after Hurricane Katrina, talking to storm refugees at the Astrodome in Houston. This old guy - the oldest guy I’ve ever met in my life - we started talking for a while, and he gave me a stack of papers he'd carried with him from New Orleans. He'd mistakenly believed he was rescuing his own treasured mementos and letters, but they turned out to have belonged to this neighbor whose home had been washed away. It was a series of love letters between a woman in New Orleans and her husband, an air force pilot stationed in Korea. Months later, I managed to track down the woman, this old guy's former neighbor, and return the letters.

SA: I’m sure the good people of Houston will continue to send in their finds and that you’ve received many items from cities that do recycle. What sort of sense of place do you get from places you've never been to based on what people have sent you?

DR: The thing I'm most often struck by is the similarities between the
finds we receive, even from vastly different places. Whether someone's in Madagascar, Maine, or Mississippi, they seem to be
dealing with the same kinds of general issues in their lives --love, family, work, and the new Dilated Peoples record.

SA: Did you find anything interesting on your recent trips, to 29 Palms or in Pittsburgh?

DR: My friend Nikki Kemp in Pittsburgh gave me this pretty awesome find yesterday. It's some torn up pieces of a typed letter between friends; she only found enough scraps of it to piece together
certain fragments of the letter. Most of them seem to deal with some questions about a home mortgage, but then out of nowhere there's an invitation to come to D.C. for Thanksgiving and watch porno flicks! Like the best found notes, the actual story is elusive, just out of reach, but there's enough hints there to spark our curiosity and let our imaginations run wild.

SA: Can you give us hint of what we're going to be hearing you read on the 16th?

DR:I’ll either read a piece of mine that's already aired on This American Life called "Nibble, Lick, Suck, and Feast" (those critical words were bleeped out when the piece aired) or this other new piece called "Bigger and Deafer" that is due to air but hasn't yet aired, depending how much time we have. One is about pulling pranks on local morning TV hosts during the Found tour; the other is about pulling pranks on my deaf mom when I was a kid.

SA: I'm pretty sure Dublit puts up a lot of readings and doesn't bleep anything out so people will be able to access it online in its full glory.

DR: Rad, will do!

SA: Anything else you'd like our audience to know?

DR: Come find me and talk to me before, during, or after the show so I can tell you the details of our super-secret after-party on August 16th, the night of the reading!

SA: You heard it here first folks.

Making Progress

I spoke with someone from Houston Waste Management. It looks like they are going to accept our donation of 200 recycling bins. Hooray Houston!

Now we have to see if we can get matching funds, perhaps from Exxon, a Houston company. Houston needs 25,000 more recycling bins.

The Progressive Reading Series For Houston

Hey everyone. There was a piece in this week's New York Times about recycling in Houston. One of the problems Houston is having with recycling is a lack of recycling bins. Apparently, some people have to wait years for a recycling bin. With that in mind, a portion of the funds from the August 16 reading will go to purchasing recycling bins for Houston. We're hoping to purchase 200 bins, but we're waiting to hear back from the city on the bins' specifications. Hopefully we'll be able to contract with a factory in Houston to make the bins. Here's the original article: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/29/us/29recycle.html.

Comedian Ali Wong is joining the August 16th bill. And there will be music from The Progressive Reading Series All-Star Minstrels, along with readings from Jonathan Franzen, Davy Rothbart, Michelle Tea, Matthew Eck, and Tom Barbash.

Jonathan Franzen to headline the August 16 Progressive Reading

Announcing The Eight Progressive Reading of 2008
Saturday, August 16th

7 PM at the Makeout Room
3225 22nd Street
San Francisco
415.647.2888
$10–20 sliding scale

Featuring

Jonathan Franzen, author of The Corrections

Matthew Eck, author of The Farther Shore

Michelle Tea, author of Rose of No Man's Land

Tom Barbash, author of The Last Good Chance

Davy Rothbart, This American Life contributor and editor of Found Magazine

and music by The Progressive Reading Series All-Star Minstrels

Hosted by Stephen Elliott

Proceeds benefit progressive congressional candidates

Click here for advance tickets

First there were grapes, then a dinosaur

The first reader was Tara “Who’s that hot chick walking down Valencia Street?” Jepsen. Before reading she told us a story about being a kid in San Francisco with her father. They’d visit Tara’s uncle, who lived on Fell Street in the original Grotto location. All the residents were all a little Cu-koo (her words, not mine) thanks to the punk bands they were in and the heroin they were on; the two go hand and hand. Her father used to shield young Tara’s eyes from all the riff-raff going in and out of the building. It was good to hear that her uncle is now sober and living in Green Bay. And Tara ending up completely unsullied by the events. Happy endings all around. Anyway Tara read this wicked piece about Paloma and Irma, two young women causing a ruckus while demanding respect for the girls at a strip club in North Beach. If you need more Tara catch her show Getting In on the Ground Floor and Staying There at The Center for Sex and Culture.

Before introducing Frank Portman, Stephen told us we were free to bring our own folding chairs, “so you’ll always be guaranteed a seat.” Also the floors had just been cleaned. So what’s your problem? Frank read a piece from his novel King Dork about how shockingly little French Tom Henderson knew even after years of classes. He could only discuss the activities of his friends, Claud and Jean, in present tense. I’m sure they were your French class friends too. I myself remember them fondly, if a little dimly. Au revoir, Claud and Jean. Au revoir.

Upon his arrival at the Makeout Room Neal Pollock told me how much he enjoyed being back in San Francisco, where writers are actually appreciated. “In LA," he said, (where he lives now) "writers are considered to be one notch above drug-addled pan handlers.” But he and his wife wanted to raise their son in a place that’s calm and quiet and that has good values and clean air. I think it’s working because Elijah Pollack’s insightful maxim upon being told nobody’s perfect: Everybody’s perfect. Neal also told us a story about his very open-minded SF cab driver. Judging by the groan from the audience I’d say the squick factor was about an eight. Up on Dublit soon. And don’t say you weren’t warned.

Next we had W. Kamua Bell. He’s voting Obama. McCain: the name just sounds like he’s already been president. He thinks we should just build McCain a library and send him on his way. Sounds like a good plan to me. Minus the library actually. The All-Star Minstrels were up next and sang about watching the tall grass grow. Looks like these two have already quit their day jobs.

Po Bronson, co-founder of the Grotto, illuminated the stage next and in a quiet voice read from a work in progress, which came out of this article in New York magazine. He’ll be finished in a long time or two weeks depending on how you look at it. His piece had to do with why white parents don’t talk about race to their children. When he was finished he got a rock and roll scream like he was Ringo, Paul, George and John. Even the rowdy Pentecostals next door got drowned out.

Ethan Canin, the other Grotto founder, concluded the evening reading and by then we were just stunned by the talent in the room. Ethan urged us all to vote yes on the ballot measure to name the sewage treatment plant after George Bush and then read from his just-out novel, America, America, which is about a liberal senator running for president in 1972. Sound familiar? It should. But remember, this is fiction, not truth, so don’t expect Nixon in the White House at the end of that book, or maybe do. I haven’t finished it—please nobody spoil it for me. Next month on the 16th we’ll welcome Jonathan Franzen, Michelle Tea, Matthew Eck, Tom Barbash and Davy Rothbart. It’ll be just two days after I come back from an east coast visit, so I won’t have as much time to fulfill my life’s mission of putting posters up on every pole in San Francisco. You guys will have to pay extra attention to those emails Steve sends out. Thank you to Vivian for giving me the dinosaur, to Eric Tang and to my homonym twin for the pictures.