Speaking of ninjas...

I ended up on the water taxi to Governor's Island this past weekend with a guy in a pseudo-Punisher skull tee and a Vanilla-Ice hairdo and a girl sporting a severe bleached blonde haircut who wouldn't share their four-person bench with me. It was so off-putting --  until a couple hours later, when I saw the duo up on stage opening for MIA at the Hard Fest NYC show: Ninja and Yo-landi Vi$$er of Cape Town's Die Antwoord. They do this sort of techno-based Afrikaans hip-hop that evokes both Alvin and the Chipmunks and Eminem -- and somehow it works. Die Antwoord's performance was so climactic, I left as soon as M IA appeared, caught the first ferry back to Manhattan, and rode my bike through the post-midnight downpour. And now, looking for illustrations, of course, Dave Choe got there first. If I'm not mistaken, those two numbnuts in the background  below, with their shirts hanging around their necks, are his sidekicks, including (L) Harry, director of  Dirty Hands: The Art and Crimes of David Choe.

Listen to the Echoes

I was at a party last night, doing my usual ridiculous thing -- avoiding it, when I picked up a journal and started reading a lengthy interview with Ray Bradbury. (This was to celebrate a book of Ray Bradbury interviews, hosted by The Paris Review.)

I thought I'd read a little, drink a little, and, then, if the two editors I knew who were helping host the soiree weren't presently freed up, leave, you know, French. But the interview was so charming, I ended up cozying into this long, brown leather couch with some bourbon, immensely enjoying the fact that I was essentially sitting in on a very entertaining, very full conversation with Mr. Fahrenheit 451 -- as opposed to the usual unnerving party staccato.

Several pages into it, a man set his coat down on the chair in front of me. I looked up and smiled politely. As we shook hands, I couldn't help but excitedly ask, "Have you read this interview with Ray Bradbury?" His answer was the best I could've ever hoped for: "I wrote it." His name is Sam Weller, and he spent ten years of his life working on two books about Bradbury: The Bradbury Chronicles and now Listen to the Echoes (with a foreward by the Pixies' Black Francis, no less!).

A highlight:

Q: ...you did receive the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. How important was that for you?

A: It was a fantastic evening. There was a real problem getting back to my hotel room, though. The hotel where they held the ceremony in New York was so huge, it filled me with despair. Since my stroke, I walk very slowly. I saw a sign that night that said: NEXT RESTROOM, TWO HUNDRED AND EIGHTY MILES. The registration desk was on the eighth floor. You have to wait ten minutes for an elevator just to go up and register! That night some of the women were taking me back to my room and I said, For God's sake, where's the men's room? We couldn't find one. One of the girls said, There's a potted palm over there, why don't you go use it? So I went over. Nobody saw me. At least I don't think so.

Rocking Machine for sale

Phillips de Pury and Company is having an art auction, next week June 24 in NYC. They'll be hawking, among other things, Herman Makkink's Rocking Machine (1969). Of course he was Dutch and his last name is Makkink. It's one of the few things I remember from A Clockwork Orange. The auctioneers have tagged it as a "kinetic sculpture." I'm looking to redecorate my apartment this summer, and while it could be an amusing addition to my bohemian/country/Swedish-Japanese dwarf aesthetic, I wouldn't have the cajones to actually go for it. 

Okay, I lied. I remember a lot of things about Clockwork.

I know someone who'd love this, also up for sale:

When it rains in L.A.

It's a rare day in Los Angeles when you can pack in several appointments with an efficiency usually reserved for a city like New York. But back in April, I had to interview two bands (Maroon 5 and Taylor Locke & the Roughs) and an artist (David Choe) on the same day, while editing down a friend's grant application essay before his deadline the next afternoon. Fortunately, the musicians only lived a couple miles from each other, if that, and the artist's studio was a twenty-minute drive downtown.  In between, I managed to meet a friend for lunch at Best Fish Taco in Ensenada on Hillhurst, followed by dessert at Scoops in Wilshire to get some brown bread ice cream. And then ended up having dinner with Dave, his girl and his pal James Jean at The Lazy Ox (my favorite restaurant in L.A. right now, with their genius salads, rice pudding, and fantastically interesting and tasty daily specials. Like crispy pig ears and welks in lemon and butter, if you must know.) As a result, I have three stories in Nylon and Nylon Guys this month, detailing some special moments with M5's Adam Levine and Jesse Carmichael, Taylor Locke et al, and Dave, who has a self-titled coffee-table art book available for purchase July 7. Oh yeah, and I spent a good few hours editing my friend's application statement until the wee hours of the night.

Our House, In the Middle of the Trees.

Earlier this year, I'd been telling just about everyone I came in contact with how deeply impressed I was by the journalism coming out of Vice magazine and their VBS web TV channel.  My dream of looking back at my career, at oh, 90-years-old and saying, "I'm proud to have always been a journalist" was flagging under the pressures of a bad economy and seemingly shrinking opportunities. And then there was Vice's editor-in-chief interviewing post-civil-war Liberia's General "Butt Naked" -- cannibalizing rapist, committer of war-atrocities-turned born-again Christian -- and wondering if it was okay to eat dinner with killers to the nth power.  My faith in interesting journalism was restored right then and there, and I thought, I really need to start pitching to these guys. Of course, life got in the way, and the notion fell into a frozen ditch somewhere along the potholes of Bowery.  A month later, when the weather warmed up (it helped that I'd gone back to the West Coast) and I was minding my own business, I get an out-of-the-blue missive from their managing editor, asking me for story ideas. And hot damn, just like that, my faith in humanity -- restored, like a post-fire, fifth-floor East Village walk-up. The very first pitch that popped into my my head was something I'd been wanting to write about for three years, after I climbed a 100-story redwood in the San Francisco Bay Area to see a secret tree house. And here it fucking is. Along with my Employee of the Month accolades.

Ever faithfully yours.

28 E. 20th Street

From the master bedroom of Teddy Roosevelt's childhood home in the Flatiron district, and conceivably, where Teddy Roosevelt was conceived.

Seedy behavior, as usual

In the fall of 2008, I moved back to Berkeley, CA, where my plan was to write things I wanted to write -- leaving deadlines aside while doing all those things you can't usually do because you've got some editor sitting on your head for a 2,500 word piece on the dangers of anti-depressants. But kicking workaholism after a decade in New York City for me was as futile as promising to only eat half of a carne asada super burrito and save the rest for later. So I filled out my days by volunteering at the John Muir Elementary School, working with Farmer Jasper (Eiler) and Chef Carrie (Orth) in the gardening and cooking program.  I originally intended to spend a few hours a week at the school, but as soon as I entered the magical, amphitheater-structured garden hidden in the courtyard of John Muir, it became closer to a few hours a day. While the kids got to learn where food comes from, the basic science behind gardening, from weather patterns to nitrogen in the soil, and how to prepare simple, yet interesting recipes, etc. -- I do believe I benefited equally as their average kindergarten- to fifth-grade-level student.  (p.s. Caitlin Flanagan, you can SUCK IT. More on her Atlantic Monthly piece later.) And now, it comes full circle. A few weeks ago I was assigned two pieces on gardening for iVillage.com, which not only prompted me to interview the Berkeley Unified School District's Edible Schoolyard mentor/adviser Wendy Johnson, but also a staff gardener at the High Line park and the curator of the Central Park Conservatory Garden. It also instigated my new East Village roof top garden experiment.

Read about growing an edible garden here, with photos here.
Or creating a cutting garden here , with a slideshow here.

And while we're at it, I have another story in this month's Men's Health (April 2010), a nutrition piece on cooking with oil.