May 3, Houston: The big one -- the Inprint reading -- occurs at the Alley Theatre on Monday, May 3. Do not miss it or you'll be sorry. I'm not kidding -- I'm going to say the craziest, most intellectual yet hilarious stuff I can think of, and I'll be sharing the stage with the ultra sexy Oscar Casares, too.
June 24, Houston: I'm one of the peeps scheduled to read at Poison Pen, at Houston's famous Poison Girl bar. Besides me, everyone there will be ultra, *super* sexy. Come see me and drink!
June 26, Washington, DC: I'll be reading at the American Library Association conference. Come on down.
My other blog: Go read my the Houston Chronicle parenting blog (or my ChronMomBlog, as I like to call it) and make sure my kids won't resent me more than other kids resent their own parents.
Buy my new novel, Lone Star Legend. Already did? Well, buy a few more for your friends, then. :)
Sunday, April 30, 2006
I'm in LoveNear our favorite pho place is a dry cleaner or tailor who has a bird. I think it's a myna bird. Sometimes this person sets the bird's enormous cage outside the shop, and we stop to look at the bird. He/she/it is very pretty - iridescent black with yellow and orange markings on the face.
Today, for the first time, the bird spoke to us. "I am MPO," he said, in a rusty little vocoder-sounding voice. Like a little robot.
Maybe he didn't say "I am MPO." Maybe he actually said something in Vietnamese. Still - it was cute as hell. And then he would whistle very, very loudly, with his little head turned way over. Then, he'd whistle quieter, with different notes. Then he'd say something else, in Vietnamese. Then he'd make a whistle like a video game.
"I love you, little bird. I love you!" I told him. And I wasn't lying. Man, I wish I could afford a bird like that.
When we crossed the street to our car, the myna bird did his loudest whistle. "I love you!" he called in his husky robot voice.
Aw.
Ethnically Conflicted Authors, Unite!
Today we went to the Asian Pacific Heritage Festival in hopes of finding cute trinkets and something good to eat. Instead, we saw a lion dance. And then I met this guy named Irwin Tang, who wrote a book called How I Became a Black Man and Other Metamorphoses. He seemed nice and his book was a short-story collection with a long title - my fave kind - so I bought a copy and let him sign it.
Irwin Tang gestured towards my boyfriend, Tad, and asked, "Is this your friend? Or boyfriend?"
I thought that was kind of funny that he just came right out and asked, but then again, I knew why. It's not common for Caucasion women to date Asian men, they say. Asian men mention it on their blogs rather often. Indeed, Mr. Tang brings it up in his book.
However, people don't usually come right out and ask me, "Oh, my gosh, are you, a Caucasion woman, dating him, an Asian man?!?" Even the local old Vietnamese ladies refrain from asking. (They make do with glowering at us disapprovingly, instead.) Everyone else, I assume, can see the love shining from Tad's eyes and mine, and they just know.
Maybe Tad's contacts were dirty at that moment. Or... maybe Irwin Tang asked because he was hoping I was romantically available.
Just kidding. Ha. So... On the way home, I read the first story in the book aloud, and everyone in the car laughed. So, if you see Irwin Tang at a festival in your town, you should pick up his book, show him your boyfriend, and give his stories a try.
Sighs
Now, in addition to annoying asshole neighbors who are making noises downstairs as we speak, my apartment complex features giant, flying tree roaches. Yay, right? God damn it, I don't know how it's possible for me to be readier to leave this place than I already am.
::wish::wish::wish::
[I'm not going to say anything about you-know-what (as mentioned below) until there's something worth saying. In the meantime, please continue to wish, wish, wish for me, okay?.] 12:19 AM #
Comments:
*wish, wish, wish*what a cute little bird you can visit. I dont appreciate caring for birds as much as other folks. They always make noise when I want silence, scatter seed and poop everywhere and make dander dust all over the air so that when the sun shines through my windows you can see the bird dander particles like snow flakes falling throughout the house. *sigh*
Thats funny about Irwin Tang, now I must go look up his books.
# posted by
pixielyn : 9:05 AM
Apropos of very little, can I just say how much I love the last name Tang? I know that Asian folks aren't intentionally referencing retro 1970s beverages or anything, but I can't help making that association every time I hear this name. The attending pediatrician at Sam's birth was an awesome woman named Clementine Tang (or Dr. Clementine Tang, to be precise), and goddamn... if Sam had been a girl, I think that would've been his name.
# posted by
Doppelganger : 2:26 PM
Pixie: Aw, man. I didn't know about the dander.
Doppel: It is an awesome name. A good name for a drink *and* for a person. I wonder what '70s Chinese immigrants named Tang thought when they first saw that.
# posted by
Gwen : 9:57 PM
P.S. If my three boys had been girls, their names probably would've been Nadia, Veronica, and Alexandra.
# posted by
Gwen : 9:58 PM
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