Friendship For Everyone

According to this source among others, there will be a musical episode of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia this season featuring the Day Man and Night Man characters. Without overhyping this too much, I'll just say that the day that this episode airs will be the happiest of my life.

Some Things Stay In Place (5 Songs on a Saturday Night)

I'm sad that Levi Stubbs (the lead singer of the Four Tops) died at 71. He was one of the best vocalists ever and definitely my favorite of the Motown era. In Standing in the Shadows of Love you can hear what separates him from the rest: anguish and anger, pain and a tiny figment of hope. Listen to to Reach Out I'll Be There.


Or just watch this amazing version of Baby I Need Your Lovin (he's on the right):





And here's an amazing video of Billy Bragg's song Levi Stubbs' Tears in which he imagines the singer's pain as a proxy for someone else's:





Speaking of great vocalists, I have to say I like Adele (just saw her on Saturday Night Live). She sounds like November 1986:





Which reminds me of:





And just for the hell of it - the world's greatest rock and roll band:

The Death (and Rebirth) of Century Boulevard

(Note: This blog entry contains hyperbole. [Special thanks to the unknown flickr photographers from whom I stole pics 1 and 2])

This morning I drove to work on my new favorite street, Norton Avenue. It provides a convenient non-maddening "shortcut" from the Larchmont area to the 10 freeway. For a while I had been using Wilton Place as a shortcut. Wilton was a shortcut that I "discovered" in 2006. Apparently I wasn't alone. When people at work found out where I lived, they lowered their voice and asked me if I "knew about Wilton?" Yes, I assured them. They nodded in approval. But Wilton is dead now. Nothing can save it. There are too many cars. There are too many abrupt changes - from straightaway to curve to school zone to straightaway. Wilton Place is now the worst street in Los Angeles. Every morning there's a car illegally parked in the right lane, next to one of those ugly apartment buildings, likely belonging to someone who got lucky and spent the night but didn't know about local parking restrictions. Every morning, there's an angry man (not me) tailgating unnecessarily past the elementary school.

Norton Avenue, which extends from 3rd Street to Pico is my new morning home. (Note: Norton starts up again on the south side of the 10 and if you go far enough you'll find where the body of the Black Dahlia was found.) Then, it's just a short hop to underrated (on weekdays only) Western Avenue to the freeway.

I said that "nothing can save" Wilton Place. I'm wrong about that. Let me tell you a story about Century Boulevard, the main road from the 405 freeway to LAX.


In the eighties and nineties, Century was a busy street. One of the busiest I had ever seen. On my first trip to Los Angeles as an adolescent, I remember being awed by the wide boulevard lined with fast food restaurants, billboards, and sex shops as the family trundled along at eight miles per hour in our rental car (likely a Taurus).


Eventually word got around that everyone took Century to get to the airport, that Century was a permanent traffic jam. At mid-90s parties from Long Beach to La Verne, from Simi Valley to Santa Monica, word got around: Take Sepulveda. Take Lincoln. When it finally opens for traffic, take the 105. Hell, take IMPERIAL. But don't take Century. I distinctly recall a former co-worker named Patrick telling me in his New York-tinged Trinidiadian lilt "Only stupid fools take Century."

If you go to LAX via the 405, the most direct route is to exit Century and head west to the airport. It's always been that way and will always be that way. The laws of geometry cannot be changed. But the traffic-savvy southern Californians heard these cautionary tales about this particular road to perdition, this Hotel California of boulevards. Everyone heeded the advice of Patrick and other self-proclaimed traffic experts. They abandoned Century Boulevard. Eventually even the stupid fools abandoned Century.


Even Larry David went along with the crowd. In season 1 of Curb Your Enthusiasm, in The Baptism episode, Larry and Cheryl had to hurry to the airport. Cheryl wanted to go the logical, geometrical route (405 to Century). Larry wanted to take Lincoln from Santa Monica. Knowing that he married a woman who didn't like to be disobeyed, he asked Cheryl for "Lincoln Approval."


That was a long time ago. Today? No one uses Century. It's a Ghost Boulevard.  If you wanted a clean surface to eat off of, I would suggest having a picnic on the asphalt of Century Boulevard, perhaps near the intersection with Airport Boulevard. If you were a homeless person and needed a safe, well-lit place to sleep, I would point you to any of the crosswalks on Century between the 405 and the bomb-sniffing-dog-security check. No one uses Century anymore. Nobody. Oh sure, there's the occasional hotel bus and the random sex shop counterperson. And there's me. But that's about it. These days Century Boulevard near LAX is a beautiful well-maintained palm-lined boulevard, with wide lanes of pristine asphalt the only thing that separates one from the ticket counter and baggage check.

Where did everyone go? The masses are inching up and down Sepulveda at six miles per hour, losing their cell reception as they get stuck at the light in that creepy tunnel beneath the runway. From the south, they ride the 105 west to Sepulveda, creating a westbound traffic backup on the 105 for miles, all the way back to Prairie. From the north, they take Sepulveda or Lincoln. You know what Lincoln Approval gets you these days? Twenty minutes trying to get past the stoplights at Venice and Washington. All because of that new Costco, in my opinion.

What is the lesson of all this? Information will spread. Shortcuts will be shared via word-of-mouth. Secret traffic blogs will tell you secret traffic routes, imploring you to keep it to yourself. Nothing lasts forever. Norton Avenue will not last forever. Not because of what I'm writing. My hit count is so small (and half of you are in Wisconsin) that I doubt what I say will make a difference. Eventually, Wilton Place will get back to 2006 levels. The universe may be infinite but human behavior patterns are not.


Maybe this weekend I'll head to Century Boulevard. I have no flights to catch, no people to pick up. I just want to roll down that road, approaching the relaxed Pacific vista, remembering the California that was (and still is if you work hard to find it). I'll blast that Brian Wilson & Van Dyke Parks album from 1995 in my CRV, sipping pink lemonade, fanning myself with a vintage 1959 Dodgers pennant and staring up at the palm trees wondering which frond will fall next, hoping no one's picnic gets ruined.

Behind the Line

Watching the debate last night I came to a realization. I've always liked Barack Obama, from his impressive speech at the 2004 Democratic convention to his off-the-cuff campaigning for a failed California gubernatorial candidate on the steps of the university library across the way. He seemed like a bright passionate guy - spirited without being annoying, pragmatic without being dull. It was clear from the beginning of the campaign that I was voting for him - not Hilary Clinton and her Fountainhead undertones, not John Edwards and his TQM technique, not John McCain and his everything (how did such an interesting Daily Show guest and David Foster Wallace book subject turn into such a cranky ass?) No, I was clarly voting for Brack Obama.

Last night, Obama - at the point of greatest pressure, when the election seems like it's almost wrapped up, when he has the most to lose - didn't back down from a single tough question. He tackled abortion, the economy (I'll take that penalty-free 401K withdrawal you promised, Barack), William Ayers (really - try finding a college professor in Chicago who's not a reformed domestic terrorist) and did it coolly, smartly, inspirationally, and pragmatically. (Note: These are admirable traits) McCain, on the other hand, offered intellectually vacant sentences and scripted "zinger" comebacks that went nowhere. That might have worked in 2000 and 2004 but not against an opponent who can shoot you down with one well-thought-out sentence. Plus, he plays basketball and has lived in Hawaii, Kansas, Indonesia, and the south side of Chicago (all of which is pretty much analogous to Sweden, Egypt, the NJ/PA corridor, Minnesota, and the sort-of-east side of Los Angeles).

Speaking of Chicago - read my cousin's amazing account of a horrifying scene outside his apartment building.

I'll keep trying to push It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia on all of you until someone tells me I'm right. This show is the natural successor (companion?) to Curb Your Enthusiasm except that it features five egocentric inappropriate characters instead of one. Not only that but Kaitlyn Olson - Larry's sister-in-law on CYE - is one of those five people. Here's part one of her "I'm not a bus person" scene from a couple episodes back. It can't touch the scene I linked to last week (nothing can) but it does perfectly represent a certain kind of public transportation claustrophobia that everyone can relate to.

The Early Nineties

There's a time that I keep hidden, in reserve until it's needed. And it seems that it's never needed. Yes if you're a careful reader of BpB, you notice that I speak frequently of my past, sometimes through the filter of pop culture or, more specifically, music and sometimes through no filter but my memory. Going backwards: In this blog and in my conversations with some of you, you learn about the early '00s - the marriage and its fall, the legendary incidents (Sbarro, The Anonymous Pop Star and the French fries, "Grandma's got a hot date tonight). You hear about the mid and late '90s - the "Amherst August" and its crisscrossing moving vans, the Hal Hartley years in Minneapolis apartments, Professor Edwards and the difference between relative and absolute zero, the night a runaway horse ran down First Avenue. You discover the '80s - the basketball obsessions, my job at the movie theater when Purple Rain and Ghostbusters screened simultaneously (!), wine cooler parties on Xerxes Avenue, the Billy Joel and Springsteen and Violent Femmes concerts, the Stellfox Duel, and Amy's red mustang in the Davanni's parking lot. And of course - Brea, '89. You even hear about the distant faraway years before then. Have I told you about seeing Muhammad Ali at a freaking McGovern rally and later procuring his autograph on a paper towel in the Allentown (PA) Airport, me and Patrick being dropped off with each other's parents in fast food parking lot meeting places in central Jersey, my mean first grade teacher making me stand out in the hallway because I wasn't singing freaking Frere Jacques with the rest of the kids (I didn't sing until '79), picking mangoes off the tree in Alexandria, Egypt. Yeah, you've heard it all.


But what's missing? If you read that last paragraph carefully, you'll notice that I didn't mention the EARLY NINETIES. Yes, these are the lost years that I dare not speak of, the time that spanned, to paraphrase Office Space, the best years of mid-20s. Why do I keep this time a secret from you - my friends, my ex-wife, my cousin, my readers - why indeed? Well, I really have no valid reason. Ostensibly it's to forget about a particularly strange and "difficult" relationship that spanned the years 1991 to 1994. (Disclosure: I did tell a "3/4 True Story" about one event during these years. But that one was sort of fictional.) Or maybe it's to bury the frustrating loneliness that consumed me during this time (but still - not like it went away). Maybe I made some bad decisions (like moving back to California in 1991, after a brief return to Minneapolis during the Twin Peaks years) that I spent too much time regretting.

Recently, two people from this time of my life have sort of re-entered my life, as much as being "friends" on a social networking site can signify life re-entry. One of these people is my ex-girlfriend. Let's call her Lauren. The other person is Lauren's friend Jennifer.

So, with the understanding that one or both of these people could actually be reading this, let me proceed in my discussion of 1991 to 1994. These were not bad times. These were not always good times but they were often interesting times. These were lonely times but they were also filled with odd trips out of town and freaky late nights in lovely L.A. These were the years when I first wrote good poetry and when Seymour entered my life as a skinny little white kitten. He's now a fat old creamsicle cat, my favorite creature in the world. Sure, I managed to live in bad apartments in three different cities (Monrovia, Newbury Park, and Ventura (the last being in '95/'96 but I'll count it anyway) but I lived in good ones in Pasadena and North Hollywood. I traveled to San Francisco and Seattle, to Monterey and Mexico, to Las Vegas and Phoenix, to Minneapolis and the hotels around LAX.

My social circle then consisted of three people: Lauren, Jennifer, and, toward the end of these years, my cousin Sharif, then matriculating at UCLA. Thinking back, there were a few memories that make me cringe. But in a good way. Lauren had a thing for trannies. She also had a bullhorn. The bullhorn worked in one of two ways: in the normal bullhorn way (speak into it and everything gets amplified) and a second function that wasn't typical of bullhorns: the bullhorn had songs pre-programmed into it that one could also play loud. So back to the trannies. Back in the day there used to be a lot of transexual and transgendered prostitutes working Santa Monica Boulevard in Hollywood, roughly between Highland and La Brea (or, more vividly, between Shakey's and Del Taco). Lauren loved these prostitutes. She appreciated their beauty and their work ethic. She empathized with them. She believed in them. So she would open the window of my eventually stolen '91 Honda Civic and scream words of tranny encouragement into the bullhorn: "Woo-hoo." "I love you." "You're beautiful." If the phrase existed then she surely would have said "You go girl." Luckily it did not yet exist.


So there's that. She also liked to play the preprogrammed Hava Nagila on the bullhorn as we drove past Jewish pedestrians on Saturday evenings as they walked to temple. She liked to play the mariachi song as we drove past groups of Mexican people. She loved to play the German songs when we drove past anyone really. That's the bullhorn.

There were also the weekends we would drive up to San Luis Obispo, where Jennifer was attending college. Those were great, more normal times. We walked down Bubblegum Alley. We ate at Hudson's Grill. We saw The Fugitive (Harrison Ford version). (Brief aside: Lauren gave Seymour his name but liked to call him Harrison because of his resemblance to the actor.) We watched some strange local San Luis Obispo fishing show. Jennifer had a boyfriend named Bill. Lauren used to say Bill was boring but he seemed alright to me. Later Jennifer had another boyfriend whose name I can't recall. I think he was from Iowa.

I remember driving back to Los Angeles from San Luis Obispo on one particular occasion. Jennifer was driving back home with Lauren and me, to her Mom's house (I think) in Glassell Park (where, it's been told, the aisles of Sav-On were lined with pyramids of canned corned beef). I recall listening to Weird Al Yankovic and fucking Toad the Wet Sprocket. I remember Jennifer reading aloud from a book called 13th Gen about the generation after Generation X (the 13th Gen name never really took). But I remember being thoroughly entertained and interested in the generational differences and divides the author was describing and Jennifer was narrating. There was a bit of generational divide between me and them anyway - I was six or seven years older.

Back in L.A., Lauren and I saw lots of movies, mostly midnight shows on Friday nights (many at the claustrophobic and now dated Beverly Center theaters). It should be noted that Lauren nor I lived nowhere near the Hollywood/West Hollywood/Beverly Hills nexus we socialized in. She always believed it was important to leave the area where she lived (Highland Park and, eventually, Glendale... they ALL move to Glendale). So yeah we saw lots of movies. We even saw that John Ritter/Pam Dawber movie, whatever it was called. We had many late night meals at 24-hour restaurants. The ones that are still around (Canter's, Jerry's, Astro Burger), ones that have died unfortunate deaths (Beverly Hills Cafe, Pennyfeathers), and one that is still around but should have died a thousand fortunate deaths (French Marketplace).


Lauren didn't like to go out before 11 at night. She wasn't really a Goth but she admired them. What else did we do? We went to the Museum of Tolerance but not any of the other museums. We saw The Cure at the Rose Bowl in the afternoon. We saw Ween at the Jabberjaw on Pico at night (different night). We got into altercations with innocent restaurant employees (Sizzler, '94) and obnoxious restaurant customers (Jerry's in Encino, '92). We drove slowly past her ex-boyfriend's place on Edgemont in Hollywood (later the street of Jason and Monica). We went to a few parties at my sister's house (birthday parties for the kids mostly) but eventually we stopped getting invited. We lived through the Northridge Quake, the L.A. riots, and the O.J. Simpson Trial. On the night of the double murder (for which I'm only 98% certain was committed by O.J.), Lauren and I ate at Viva La Pasta on Wilshire and Bundy, blocks from the murder scene. Don't know why that's important but we ate there. Viva La Pasta was a small L.A. chain. Their hook was that you could get any one of their 30 pastas in combination with any of their 40 sauces, for a total of 1,200 different combinations. Anything you want! Viva La Pasta no longer exists.

After the relationship ended, my friendships with Lauren and Jennifer continued. Late 1994, 1995, and 1996 were filled with "friend" dates with Lauren, UCLA parties with Sharif, and time spent with the Mormon (another story, for a different time). I remember going to Jennifer's graduation during this time with Lauren, both of us in new relationships at the time (the Mormon for me, the Hockey-playing Goth for her). It was a bittersweet drive to San Luis Obispo. We had to share the same tiny bed in Jennifer's tiny apartment the night before the graduation. Which was odd. But it was a fun weekend. We saw a young man vomit in a Mexican restaurant (end of school year partying). We went to the wretchedly over-the-top Madonna Inn to check out the bathrooms (Google it.) We listened to Shudder to Think, the Judybats, and more fucking Toad the fucking Wet fucking Sprocket. Everything we listened to was on cassette. Later, we all went to Lauren's graduation in L.A. and, a short week and a half later, her mom's funeral in Glendale. That was the only time I was ever in Jennifer's L.A. house. I remember her new boyfriend (the one from Iowa) was talking too much. I remember the actor Harry Morgan was arrested that day for spousal abuse.


(Note: Does that Judybats album cover define sincerity circa 1994 better than anything you've ever seen or what?

Then we all went separate ways. Lauren eventually moved to (and from) Minneapolis while I was living there. The late '90s happened and then it all changed. I saw Jennifer one other time on one of my visits back to California (at the coffee house in Pasadena that was used for a scene in the first Brady Bunch movie). And then no word, from anyone, from me. I invented the fiction (sprinkled with only a tiny morsel of fact) that the early '90s were bad times and they should be purged from my memory. No, they were good times. I was surrounded by good friends who reminded me that not all...... (no I shouldn't finish this sentence; certain personal issues should only be discussed in private, perhaps in therapy).

Today Lauren is in Wisconsin. I don't know the details. She moves around (California to Connecticut to Minnesota to Hawaii to Wisconsin). Jennifer is in Pasadena, with a son and an Oscar-nominated husband. And having two more friends is fine with me. I wouldn't even mind hearing that bullhorn again.

10 Seminal Songs of the Early '90s (in no order but the order in which they come to me)

1. Girlfriend - Matthew Sweet
2. Lulu - Trip Shakespeare
3. Pain Makes You Beautiful - Judybats
4. London's Brilliant Parade - Elvis Costello
5. Smells Like Teen Spirit - Nirvana
6. Under the Bridge - RHCP
7. Nothin' But A G Thang - Dr. Dre (feat. Snoop D. Dogg)
8. Summertime in the LBC - Dove Shack
9. Birthday Boy - Ween
10. That screen door song by Shudder to Think

The Metrodome Waits

Okay. It's time to acknowledge other sports besides basketball.

Baseball: I'm just waiting for the White Sox to lose so the Twins can get into the playoffs. Should be any hour now. Oh wait. The Sox are up 1-0. Only the first inning. Go. Tigers.

College Football: Just because my employer's team lost doesn't mean it's time to panic. There's still time to get back to number 1. It's still early. Even the Golden Gophers have a chance. They just need to win their next seven games. Should be easy.

Pro Football: Not a major sport. Not until Los Angeles gets a team again.

Election: It keeps getting better.

Champion of the Sun

I've avoided linking to videos that I think are "fun." Not because of any aversion to the viral ubiquity of youtube. Just because what's funny to me is often not funny to others.

But the video clip of Charlie and eventually Dennis writing the song "Day Man" from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia is so funny to me that I can't not write about it and link to it here.



You may need to set up a hulu account to view it because it's for "mature audiences only" (likely because of the thing with the sock). It's not exactly new (it's from last season) but I've been watching it constantly over the last five days. If you're sad, it will make you happy. If you're bored, it will make you busy. If you're uninspired, it will make want to paint murals. Here are my favorite five things about the video:

1. Sock, spraypaint.
2. The way Dennis says "I like that" after only hearing one or two default beats from Charlie's keyboard.
3. The way Dennis first looks at Charlie and then looks at an imaginary audience as he discovers the perfection of his backup howls.
4. Dennis taking the spraypaint away from Charlie while they're singing (what friends are for).
5. Charlie taking off his blanket as the song reaches its peak.

Fly Like Paper

I've made it through day 8 of my self-assigned vegetarianism. It's fun. I've had these bouts of meatlessness before, once for six months or so in 2001. Interestingly I've lost five pounds in the past week although I think that's more likely due to my swearing off breakfast pastries.

I've been to a lot of interesting meetings with highers-up in my professional and academic careers. These meetings have been at universities, government agencies, private businesses, and fast food restaurants. Never, until today, did I hear anyone - and the big boss at that - quote Dr. Dre lyrics. It was a lovely moment.

David Foster Wallace's spring 2005 Pomona College Literary Interpretation syllabus. Dude was tough. But fair. If your shit was "mind-blowingly good" he'd give you the A+. He also used the word "sexy." And "spiel." (full syllabus available via link. thanks to http://alasophia.blogspot.com/ for original link)

Favorite old song of the weekend: Metal Firecracker - Lucinda Williams

Favorite not really new song: Paper Planes - M.I.A.

Favorite new video: Sir Ben Kingsley, Punk.

Which reminds me of a funny story. A few years back I was at a party in the home of someone who worked on the creative fringes of the entertainment industry. Without saying too much, I'll just mention that Ben Kingsley was one of her clients. On her office wall was a printed "thank you" email from Ben. Two things struck me about the email: 1) It wasn't grammatically perfect; and 2) His email address - which I really want to tell you but I'm cognizant of the fact that there are two roles in the screenplay I just (co-)wrote that would be perfect for Ben and I don't want to burn bridges - includes both a "2000" and a "sir_ben."

And speaking of Lucinda Williams - hottest 55-year old woman ever or what? (scroll down for each link) (Note: Isabella Rosellini wins the award for 56-year olds.)

Here's a story I wrote around the turn of the century.

Here's something funny about something sad.

Here's some good news.

Here's another DFW tribute. More here.

And Michael Silverblatt here.

David Foster Wallace part two

"I am seated in an office."

I was terribly saddened by David Foster Wallace's suicide over the weekend. As I've said too many times to too many people, Infinite Jest is my favorite book ever. As I've said to a few of you, Infinite Jest helped make me a better (fiction) writer. Besides the sheer experimental audacity of the book, there are the words - the sentences that made one's jaw drop or, on several occasions, made me reach for my laptop or notebook to write something myself. I never wrote at a more prolific level than the period of time from 1996 to 1998 when I was reading Infinite jest. Yes, it took me that long. Now, I should be able to read 1,079 pages in less than 28 months. But there would be weeks at a time when I wouldn't pick the book up. And other periods where I couldn't pull myself away from it. And then the norm - days where I'd read three or four pages and switch to something else. At the time I suspected that I was trying to stretch out the experience of Infinite Jest - to make it last way longer than its 1,079 pages. I feared that I would be disappointed when I was finished with it, that I'd never to get to read those words again for the first time. I was absolutely right. I remember exactly where I was when I finished the book (something I honestly can't say for most books I finish). It was a Saturday afternoon in November 1998. I was seated on the green couch in the Dunn Brothers coffee shop on 34th and Hennepin in Minneapolis. When I read the final page, I remember thinking "Shit. This is it." Not because of the book's not-really-an-ending ending. But because there were no more pages. I walked to my car resignedly with the big blue book in my backpack in a heavy rain. And that was that.

Wallace wrote a lot more after (and before) Infinite Jest - all of it clearly the work of a brilliant, difficult, and dead-on mind. I remember reading the title story of his first short story collection Girl With Curious Hair in a taxi from O'Hare to downtown Chicago and hoping I'd finish it before the ride was over. I read all of it - his two collections of essays, his second story collection Oblivion, his amazing article about Roger Federer (Wallace knew tennis.) Okay so I didn't actually read his first novel Broom of the System. I will. Soon.

I liked his essays but I loved his fiction. The world he observed and recorded and reflected upon came across brilliantly enough but when he threw his imagination into the swirl, well then it got god-like. Yeah I know I could be prone to post-death hype but no. As I wrote in this blog nearly two years ago "His essays are nice and his short stories are nicer but the man's vision, brain, and ambition demand something big, something huge, something infinite and 1000+ pages long."

He really did make me a better writer. I can't explain it now but there was something about the way he structured it all that got to me. It could be a cliche to say that he wrote the way I think, which helped me write the way I think. But yeah that's true. He wasn't a mannered writer. He wasn't a minimalist. He wasn't an easy writer. I'm sure his brain got tired. There's no way someone could write something like "I presume it's probably facilitate that the tennis coach mistook for accentuate, though accelerate, while clunkier than facilitate, is from a phonetic perspective more sensible, as a mistake." (p. 3, Jest) and not eventually feel exhausted.

If his personal pain matched at any level the relentless of his written words, then the fact that the ultimate exhaustion of his head and heart and body may have lead to his suicide seems not that surprising. But it's still so very sad. One page earlier in Infinite Jest, he also wrote "My chest bumps like a dryer with shoes in it." 930 pages later, he wrote "...the sad kid holds something terrible up by the hair and makes the face of somebody shouting in panic: Too Late."

I saw Wallace in person three times in my life. The first was in the now-closed Hungry Mind bookstore in St. Paul. It was for a reading from A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again. He shook my hand and signed three of his books for me. He was disheveled. The second time was in 2003 at the Barnes and Noble at the Grove in Los Angeles. He was on a panel discussing "the short story." (Jason - am I right about this or were they talking about something else?) He was less disheveled. I believe this was after he became a professor at Pomona College.

The final time I saw him was at a theater in the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles in 2004 or 2005. He was dressed sharply. He was part of a panel about the current state of fiction. There were other writers there but he was the star of the event - almost all of the Q&As were directed his way. He was an insightful and respectful panelist but he did become testy at one point. Discussing a story from Oblivion called Good Old Neon - a young man (presumably a UCLA student because the UCLA English Department was sponsoring the event) nervously asked Wallace a question - whether Wallace shared some of the same beliefs of the protagonist in the story (I don't recall the specific beliefs.) Wallace paused for a moment and in the most subdued yet sarcastic tone you could imagine said "You're talking about a work of fiction. Fiction. Derived from the Latin word fictus, which means to feign or to make stuff up." The room fell silent. No one asked Wallace any more personal questions. Of course the poor college student was humiliated, being fantastically dissed by a famous writer, probably his favorite writer. I couldn't see the student but I'm sure he was slinking in his seat. I'm sure he was scarred for months. But, considering that the subject of his question - the character in Good Old Neon - commits suicide in the story, maybe he was on to something. (but here's a good counterargument of that contention.)

So yeah David Foster Wallace could occasionally be something of an asshole. Well so could I. And from everything that's been said about him these past few days - read the McSweeney's tribute especially - he was a great guy and a treasured teacher. He leaves behind some amazing work.

The first sentence of this post is the first sentence of Infinite Jest. I'll close with the final sentence (I thought about making this explanation a footnote - you know, as sort of a joke but I can't figure out how to superscript in HTML):

"It was raining out of a low sky, and the tide was way out."