Archives for May 2006

So the local Dutch computer guys fixed my laptop. This did not, contrary to earlier reports, require replacing the hard disk. In fact, I think it only took them about 20 minutes. In fact, I think all they did was run checkdisk or something and that fixed it. I’m glad I got all my precious, precious data back, but I’m still vaguely irritated with IBM tech support for telling me that I needed a new hard disk when I didn’t.

I had all sorts of unforgettable observations this week that I would’ve blogged if I’d had my laptop, but now I can’t remember any of them. Oh wait, here’s one thing I was thinking:

I’m going to be reading some short stories by Guy de Maupassant. I’ve never read him before, don’t know if he’s any good or not, but I can say this with some certainly: he has the most kickass writer name ever. Seriously, Guy de Maupassant, how frickin’ cool is that? I would totally change my name to Guy de Maupassant if he hadn’t preemptively stolen it first. In fact, if I ever find and/or invent a time machine, the first thing I will do is travel back in time to kill Guy de Maupassant, so that I can appropriate his name without anyone being the wiser. Then people would all be like, “Wow, aren’t you that Mr. de Maupassant?” and I’d just be all like, “Please, please. Call me Guy … de Maupassant. That is, please call me ‘Guy de Maupassant.’ The whole thing. It just has this ring to it, don’t you think?” Then I would be famous.

Well, it’s late. More trenchant commentary later.

So last week I’m sitting in LAX and it’s a half hour until my flight to the Netherlands. I pop open my laptop to copy pertinent information about my itinerary from an email into my spiral notebook — information without which I will have no idea what to do when I land in Amsterdam. (I hadn’t had a chance to do this earlier, and I couldn’t just print it out because my printer was already in storage.) And … my laptop won’t boot. Not even in safe mode. It just cycles continuously between the loading Windows screen and a Blue Screen of Death error message: “UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME.” That doesn’t sound good. But I’m able to use my cell phone to get my itinerary information.

Then I call up IBM tech support. They say I should replace my hard disk. Thanks, guys. (I sometimes suspect that instructions for tech support workers read: “1. Ask customer to describe problem. 2. Instruct customer to reboot computer. 3. If problem persists, instruct customer to replace hard disk. 4. Thank customer for calling. 5. Hang up.”) They say that I may be able to retrieve data off my computer. This is an even bigger disaster than usual because I had just moved out of my apartment and tossed out most (hopefully not all) of the hard copy backups of some stuff I worked on this past semester. And of course, all that stuff’s in storage in the U.S., so I can’t dig through it and check to make sure I’ve still got everything.

Blurgh. At least the laptop’s still under warranty (it’s less than a year old), but working this stuff out from the Netherlands is a serious hassle.

On the other hand, my bicycle tour around the Netherlands was cool. If I ever get a working laptop around here, I may post more about it. One of the photos did come out looking suitably authorial enough that I decided to toss it up as my new author photo on my website.

I’m leaving in a matter of hours for the Netherlands, where I’ll be hanging for the next couple months. This past week has combined the joys of wrapping up a semester’s coursework, moving out of an apartment, and packing for a summer trip abroad, all in one. So I didn’t really get a chance to say goodbye to everyone, but I promise to look everyone up when I get back in the fall.

A car is parked in front of my building. In the extremely grimy rear windshield, someone has written, “I wish my boyfriend was this dirty.”

Anyway, this weekend I went to the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, which was more massive than I could have possibly imagined — hundreds of writers, thousands of attendees. It stretched across the whole UCLA campus. It was amazing that so many people showed up to talk about books, but the crowds were just out of control.

I showed up Saturday around 1:00 p.m. I would have gotten there earlier, but I’d had an appointment at noon in Santa Monica to get my car serviced. While my car was parked on the street recently, its headlight was bashed out. I know nothing about the driver other than her name, but I feel oddly certain that she is a sorority girl who was driving her SUV while talking on her cell phone. I got to the dealer and they said they didn’t have the part. I said, “But I talked to you last Thursday and you said you had it.” The guy explained, without the slightest trace of apology, that they’d been bought out by another dealer who had made them send back all the parts they’d ordered and reorder them from a preferred manufacturer. So that was a total waste of time (and gas).

Anyway, I arrived at the Festival of Books. I didn’t really know what else to do, so I went to an information booth and asked when and where on Sunday the T. C. Boyle reading would be, since I was supposed to meet people there. The woman asked if I had tickets. Tickets? To an author reading? I’d never even heard of such a thing. She explained that I should swing by the Ticketmaster booth and pick up tickets, if I could. That sounded ominous. I walked for twenty minutes to the Ticketmaster booth, where I happened to run into my friend Lindsey, who explained that all the tickets had been given away already. I said, “So I can’t get into anything at all?” She said, “You can wait in the standby line and if some of the people with tickets don’t show, they might let you in.” That didn’t sound so promising either. On the upside, Lindsey had an extra ticket to see Joyce Carol Oates later that day, which she gave me.

We waited in a standby line and managed to get in to see a panel on “the Book Biz,” which consisted of a lot of the usual doom and gloom about how book readers are dwindling and how it’s harder and harder to get published if you’re not a celebrity. Which led someone to mention James Frey, which led someone else to remark, “Wow! We made it through an entire half hour on a panel without mentioning James Frey.” Which of course led into a discussion of the girl from Harvard who seems to have accidentally cut-and-pasted numerous long paragraphs from someone else’s novels into hers. (She got a half a million dollar advance, by the way.)

I tried to get into a panel on writing young adult fantasy, but I didn’t have a ticket and there were about 500 people in line ahead of me, so I bailed on that one and wandered around the booths for a while. Then I decided I was going to damn well get a good seat for Joyce Carol Oates, so I went and got there before anyone else and camped out at the head of the line. Later, I struck up a conversation with the woman next to me, who gave me the lowdown on the festival. She and her husband have come every year for the past 11 years. (Even moving from L.A. to Austin four years ago hasn’t stopped them from coming.) She told me that the organizers hold back a large number of tickets to distribute each day, so if you come first thing in the morning you’re virtually guaranteed to get whatever tickets you want. Good to know.

Joyce Carol Oates was great. My favorite part was where someone asked her about her blurbing materials that some might consider lowbrow, such as the Hellboy graphic novel. She maintained that Hellboy, and many graphic novels like it, have far more literary value than many prose novels that are published, such as almost the entire “chick lit” genre. She also confessed that there wasn’t much reading material around when she was growing up, so much of her childhood was spent reading comics such as Tales From the Crypt and MAD Magazine.

Sunday I showed up bright and early and got in line for tickets. I was about twentieth in line. The woman in front of me turned around, and it was the same woman I’d been standing next to in line the day before. I said, “We’ve got to stop meeting like this.” Then I saw someone I know from USC, so I hung out with him for a while and got tickets to everything I wanted. I saw Berke Breathed, creator of the newspaper comic Bloom County, one of the most brilliant creative works of all time. I also saw Larry Flynt, creator of … well, you know. Actually, Flynt told a pretty funny story. For years Flynt’s greatest nemesis was this televangelist. When the televangelist was eventually caught in a hotel with hooker, the police also found a copy of Hustler in the room. Then I went and saw two veterans of the ongoing Iraq war, one of whose memoir I’d read. At one point, the other soldier said, “There’s been a lot of criticism of the media that they’re not providing ‘balanced’ coverage of this war, not reporting the good along with the bad. But look, if you want good news, go report on Disneyland. War is a completely f***** up thing. It’s not about good news.” Then I went to T. C. Boyle’s reading, and actually got invited to tag along to dinner afterward with him and his friends and family, which was lots of fun.