This evening, as I was sitting out on the 3rd Street Promenade having a snack, a crazy-looking guy walked past me, glared, and spat on the ground at my feet. I was like: Whoa, what did I do? Then later I saw him on the sidewalk and noticed that it wasn’t just me — he was spitting at every single person who walked past. So then I felt better.

A nicely-dressed, nearly-spherical gentleman just walked past my apartment singing opera at the top of his lungs, and he was pretty good. Made me think of this.

Tonight, as I was waiting for my friend Adam outside his apartment near USC, a young woman approached me and asked, “Do you have a cell phone I could borrow? My friend was supposed to pick me up, and I’ve been waiting for half an hour, and I’d like to call him, but I don’t have my phone with me.” I said, “Sure,” and handed her my phone. She dialed and spoke in Chinese to someone, then handed the phone back to me and said, “Thanks. I got his voicemail.” We chatted a bit, and I learned that she was just finishing up a phD in phonetics and was then planning on going back home to Shanghai. Finally her friend arrived and picked her up. When Adam finally showed up, he said, “Sorry I’m late,” and I said, “No problem. I had a nice chat with a Chinese girl,” and I described how she’d needed a cell phone. Adam said, “Weird. I was standing out here last week and a Chinese girl came up to me and said exactly the same thing.” Just a funny coincidence, I’m sure, but I joked, “Maybe it was the same girl. Maybe this is how she strikes up conversations with guys,” to which Adam replied, “Or maybe this is how she affords phone calls home to China.”

Last night I was at Subway and at the register they handed me a wrapped-up foot-long sub. I said, “This isn’t mine.” The “sandwich artist” told me, “Yes, it is.” I said, “No, it’s not.” He unwrapped it and saw that I was right. How did I know? Because I could instantly tell from the weight that the sandwich had more toppings on it than I had ordered. Wow, I eat a lot of Subway.

d_aulnoy writes, “Please tell me you’re planning to post a spoilerific [Golden Compass] review.” Ask and ye shall receive.

* * SPOILERS * * (As per request)

I had only middling expectations going into this one. I was half expecting the filmmakers to strip out all the subtext and emotional intensity of the novel and deliver only a lame and shallow action/adventure CG-fest for children. I read the novel years ago, and I thought it was brilliant, but I’m not the sort of hardcore fan who would notice or particularly care if they made moderate changes to the story, but from what I remember the movie seems pretty faithful to the book. I was also worried, having seen the trailer, that star Dakota Blue Richards didn’t have enough attitude to play Lyra, but I thought she actually did a terrific job. The screening featured a Q&A afterward with the director, Chris Weitz, and he mentioned that due to very strict child labor laws in the UK the production was always rushing to squeeze in rehearsal time and shooting time with the young star. Fortunately, he says, Dakota didn’t really need much help since she already knew the books inside and out and understood the character completely. In fact, she doesn’t particularly want to be an actor, she just really wanted to play Lyra. There’s been a lot of talk about the degree to which the movie would tone down Pullman’s critique of Christian mythology and the Catholic Church. This aspect seemed fine to me. A movie by necessity is going to have to cut out 90% of the novel (Serafina Pekkala’s part is reduced to about eight lines), and it didn’t seem to me that the philosophical underpinnings had been cut out disproportionately to anything else. The movie got a very positive response from the audience. People cheered at the bear fight and at the closing credits, and during the Q&A several people gushed about the movie, including one guy who’d brought along his 10-year-old daughter. He said they were both huge fans of the book and that they “loved every minute” of the movie. Chris Weitz seemed very committed to doing justice to the books, and said he’d been obsessed with the books since before he was picked to direct the film. The movie ends well before where the novel ends. Weitz said that the book has a very dark ending and that with a film this expensive there’s enormous pressure for it to have a happy ending. He felt that rather than completely compromising the ending of the book, it would be better to push those events back to the beginning of the second film, and he talked about how he hoped to do an “Empire Strikes Back thing” with the second film and make it much darker and more adult. The movie does have a few awkward moments. The characters sometimes over-explain what they’re doing, presumably for the benefit of younger viewers, and the movie sometimes creaks under the weight of trying to cram such a long, sprawling storyline into one film, resulting in moments that feel rushed or illogical. But overall I was extremely pleased, and I hope the movie does very well because now I’m really anxious to see the second one.

* * END SPOILERS * *

Which brings me to my next point. Apparently some twit named William Donohue, president of the “Catholic League,” is calling for a boycott of this movie because the movie “introduces [kids] to atheism.” Of course there are many legitimate reasons to avoid a movie that you might find stupid or offensive, but avowedly avoiding a movie for the reason that it might introduce kids to a religious viewpoint different from yours is about the furthest thing from a legitimate reason for a boycott that I can imagine. I’m not Christian, but no one was more excited than I was to go see the Narnia movie, and if I had had any kids handy I would have dragged them along too. Why? Because I don’t choose which movies I watch or which movies kids should watch based solely on whether or not those movies coddle my prejudices. Apparently Mr. Donohue feels that his religious views are so feeble that they can’t survive contact with a fictional story about talking polar bears. I think that’s pretty pathetic. And Mr. Donohue, no atheist parents in this country have the privilege of raising their children without “exposing” them to Catholicism, so I don’t know why you feel that Catholic parents should have some special privilege to raise their kids in an atmosphere of comprehensive ignorance. (Donohue also refers to the books/film as a “stealth campaign” promoting atheism. This is conspiracy-mongering at its most witless. Pullman could not possibly have been any more forthright and outspoken about the thematic underpinnings of his books, and the movie studio’s only motivation is — duh — to make money.) Anyway, I’m proud to see that The Church of Scotland is showing more respect for freedom and debate, rejecting the boycott and stating that the film “provides a golden opportunity to stimulate discussion on a wide range of moral and spiritual issues.” Hopefully the boycott won’t make any difference. The Catholic League also boycotted The Da Vinci Code, which still seemed to do all right at the box office. (Though it occurs to me, considering how much that movie sucked, that this may be the one time in my life that I’m sorry I didn’t do what the Catholic Church wanted.)

Tonight over at the Writer’s Guild I caught an advance screening of The Golden Compass, and I thought it was great! Off to bed now.

I had two strange conversations last night.

First I crossed Santa Monica Boulevard and noticed that a woman who was in the process of closing up a flower shop was talking to me. I said, “What?” She said, “You should be careful. They’ll give you a ticket for that.” I was baffled. I said, “For what?” She said, “For crossing against the red light.” I said, “I don’t think I did that.” She said, “That’s a $35 ticket.” I said, “I’m really quite sure I didn’t do that.” She said, “These people, they’ll run you right over. And you’re so young. Much too young to die. What are you … 18? 17?” Me: “Um, not really … goodbye.”

Then when I was over at the 3rd Street Promenade a woman approached me and said, “Are you new to the area?” I said, “Um … not really.” She said, “Do you know anywhere cheap to stay around here?” I said, “Well, there’s a hostel around the corner there.” She said, “How much is it?” I said, “I think about 40 or 50 dollars.” She said, “That much? That’s really expensive.” I said, “Yeah, I guess.” She said, “I was supposed to stay in Santa Barbara tonight but I reneged it, and now it’s getting dark and I don’t have anyplace to stay, and it’s cold — does it seem cold to you?” Me: “Yeah, I guess it’s pretty cold.” Her: “So you have an apartment around here?” I didn’t really like where this conversation was headed, and I tried to come up with an answer that involved neither lying nor admitting that I have an apartment, but I couldn’t think of one, so I said, “Um … yeah.” She waited expectantly. I said, “So, yeah, about that hostel, it’s right around the corner there. Good luck! Bye!”

That reminds me of another strange conversation I had that involves my current apartment. Before I moved in, my new roommate told me to mail my first month’s rent and security deposit to the landlord, which I did. So I get an irate call from this guy. It turns out that my roommate had neglected to inform him that she was moving in a new tenant. He said, “So who are you? Somebody she met on craigslist I bet,” his tone indicating that craigslist is an unparalleled cesspool of deviance and depravity. I charmingly explained that actually I know her through grad school. He calmed down a bit. He said, “You sound all right. You understand why I’m upset though. I mean, you could be some vagrant she picked up on Venice Beach.” I said, “Um … I’m not.” (I fought down the overwhelming temptation to jokingly add, “She picked me up on Santa Monica beach. We don’t associate with those Venice Beach types.”) He said, “I mean, for all I know you could be moving into my building to sell drugs — you could have a … a brick of ‘marijuana,’ or whatever they’re calling it these days.” Me: “Yeah, wow, I’m sure I wouldn’t have any idea.” Anyway, it all worked out in the end.

My good buddy Douglas Elliot Cohen (a.k.a. “slushmaster”) has his first ever fiction publication, “Feelings of the Flesh,” in the Sep-Oct issue of Interzone. I just came across this issue in the bookstore yesterday, and I’m really looking forward to finally reading the story.

Well, I got a kick out of Beowulf (screenplay co-written by Neil Gaiman). It’s different, some of the CG work is really cool, and the theme is one of those eternal, universal truths: Don’t have sex with Angelina Jolie — it’s not worth it. Man, you’re telling me.

And speaking of troublesome home-invading monsters, check out the uber-popular “Mean Kitty Song.”

A leading children’s author was told to drop a fire-breathing dragon shown in a new book — because the publishers feared they could be sued under health and safety regulations.

What the hell?

On Sunday afternoon I went to see Brian Jacques, author of the Redwall series, and I was finally able to unravel one of the greatest mysteries of the universe. No, not “Is light a wave or a particle?” I mean something far, far thornier: How the #@$! does one pronounce “Jacques.” Neither of my two main guesses — “zhock” and “jaw-kez” — turned out to be anywhere near right. It is actually pronounced “jakes,” as in the plural of “Jake.” The audience was mostly kids and their parents, and we all had to sit on the floor in the order we had been standing in line. I tried to tell the burly and uniformed bookstore security guard, “It’s okay. I’ll just stand in the back. I don’t need anything signed, and I’m meeting someone after this so I might have to slip out a bit ear…” The guard, who very possibly suffers from the misapprehension that he’s working a secret service detail, was like, “SIR, I’M GOING TO HAVE TO ASK YOU TO SIT ON FLOOR RIGHT NOW.” So I sat. Brian Jacques in person is extremely boisterous and theatrical. (He originally honed his storytelling skills while reading and making up stories for children at a school for the blind.) He also has a tendency to tell really old jokes, and when he would get on too much of a roll with this, his wife, who was sitting in back, would interrupt, “Brian, Brian, just answer the question.”

Afterward I met up with new children’s fantasy author Kaza Kingsley, who came across my Myspace profile a while back and messaged me, and who was in town for her book tour. Her second novel, Erec Rex: The Monsters of Otherness, is out in stores now, and you can see some of her TV interviews on her website.

Speaking of Myspace, my account has been absolutely snowed in recently with spam friend requests. Like, 30 per day. I used to look at all these profiles just to make sure I wasn’t accidentally blowing off a real person, but I just can’t keep up anymore, and really, what are the chances that it’s a real person when their profile picture is Jessica Alba’s butt? The most shameless one I received went something like: “Hi! Im Cindy. I came across yuor profile and you seem relly cute. If you want to see more pictures of me (and some that are a bit racey, OMG!!!) check out my other profile. I don’t use Myspace to much. I cant stand all the spam.” Man, the nerve of these people. Seriously, “Cindy,” DIAF.

I had always heard that Richard Garriott, creator of the legendary Ultima series, lived in a huge mansion with its own carousel, suits of armor, secret passages, etc., and now thanks to the magic of YouTube I can finally see what the house actually looks like [dead link].

Wow. Cool. My friend Andrea Kail’s short story “The Sun God at Dawn, Rising from a Lotus Blossom” is getting some major media attention.

Behold, I have spiffed up the art design for the Audio section of my website’s Stories page.

Crap. I really, really wanted to see King of Kong, but it came and went while I wasn’t paying attention. Did anyone catch it?

The current issue of the lit mag Tin House is themed “Fantastic Women” and features all women who write fantastical / magical / surreal fiction. It’s an incredible lineup, including Kelly Link, Aimee Bender, Judy Budnitz, Stacey Richter, Julia Slavin, and Miranda July.

Subsequent to my last post, a writer alerted me to an interview he just did with Steve Erickson. The interview includes this tidbit that I thought was interesting:

JC: And finally, on a lighter note — are you familiar with the fantasy novelist, Steve Erikson, and have you ever been mistaken for him?

SE: Please, let’s not make it even more confusing than it is. He’s Steven Erikson, which is to say that we’re divided by more than the lack of a “c” in his last name but also the addition of an “n” in his first. I imagine we both cling to such distinctions. The only time I know of that I was mistaken for him was when I chairing a panel at the LA Times Book Festival some years ago and one of the panelists very diligently had done her homework and read all seven volumes of The Malazan Books of the Fallen. I could only assure her that those sounded like very interesting novels indeed and that if I had written them, I probably would be richer. There’s your last bit of “wisdom” for aspiring young writers, like the guy in The Graduate imparting “one word” to Dustin Hoffman. But here it’s not “plastics.” It’s “genre.”

Oh yeah, so I live in Santa Monica now. I really love being able to walk to the beach, and I’ve been heading over there every evening to catch the sunset. Though Santa Monica is a bit out of the way as far as L.A. geography goes, particularly when traffic is bad. For example, last night it took me two and a half hours to battle my way across the city to get to Skylight Books to see Steve Erickson. Amazingly, it was worth it. He read an excerpt from his new novel Zeroville, in which the protagonist is a guy named Vikar who’s so obsessed with film that he’s had Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift tattooed on his shaved head. Vikar has come to Hollywood in hopes of finding other people who are as into film as he is, but he’s constantly disappointed. In the first section, a hippie confidently misidentifies the actors on Vikar’s head, and Vikar beats the guy with a cafeteria tray. In the next section, Vikar gets the drop on a burglar and ties the guy to a chair, only to discover that this burglar knows way more about film than Vikar does. It was hilarious.

I also recently went to see Alice Sebold (at the Hammer Museum) and Nick Hornby (at Book Soup). Alice Sebold read the first chapter of her new novel The Almost Moon, in which a middle-aged woman suffocates her elderly, infirm mother. Someone asked how Sebold’s own mother had reacted to the novel, and Sebold noted that her mother had received from a friend a T-shirt that reads: “I am not a fictional character.” (Speaking of amusing T-shirts, the best one I’ve seen recently says: “Videogames ruined my life. Fortunately I have two extra lives.”) At Nick Hornby’s reading, he had just been in a shop and found some sort of head lotion for bald men, which delighted him, and he jokingly offered that any bald men who bought his new book would, as a free bonus, receive a dollop of head lotion. Hornby’s new novel, Slam, concerns a shy teenage boy who unintentionally impregnates a girl he barely knows. The protagonist, a huge Tony Hawk fan, has memorized Tony Hawk’s memoir and is able to hold imaginary conversations with his poster of Tony Hawk, and in these conversations Tony Hawk speaks using only material from the memoir. Someone asked if Hornby had gotten Tony Hawk’s permission for this, and Hornby said of course, and that Tony Hawk was actually a fan of Hornby’s writing, which made things very easy. Although Hornby also said that it was probably a little weird for Tony Hawk to read the new novel, since material from the memoir about Tony Hawk’s first sexual experience shows up in the conversations between the protagonist and the Tony Hawk poster.

In stores now — the new Writers of the Future, which includes my good friend Andrea Kail‘s story “The Sun God at Dawn, Rising From a Lotus Blossom.” I’ve raved about this story, and I’m not the only one. Robert J. Sawyer calls it, “A total knockout — this is a Hugo-caliber story, folks. It’ll be worth the cost of the anthology all by itself” and The Fix writes, “Of all the science fiction stories published this year, this one is among those not to be missed.” If you’re a SFWA member, you can read the story for free.

Wow, you never know what’s going to pop up on the internet. I just stumbled across this Russian-language electronic-music-accompanied audio rendition of my 2001 short story “The Prize.”