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Good
day, gentle readers,
Before
anything else, we'd like to thank all of you who came out
to the HBC event at the very amazing Vroman's Bookstore in
Pasadena. We'd also like to thank Red Pony Clock for being
fun, nice folks who came and did their thing for us and exchanged
bizarrely homoerotic emails with Kyle. You're all winners
and make us feel warm and gooshy inside, like newborn babies
made of pudding. We learned a lot from the event (including
the fact that Kyle can watch his language for a full
fifteen minutes!) and really hope to do another in the future,
though not necessarily a concert. Feel free to email us suggestions.
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| Two
members of Red Pony Clock playing at Vroman's. |
One thing
we have learned is that because we're a global community,
throwing a party for our readers is impossible; no location
is convenient for the majority. So for now, we'll settle for
meeting you via e-mail. We never cease to be flattered by
the feedback we receive about the site. After last month's
music issue, and Marie Mundaca's wonderful article
on No Wave, we received separate emails from both
of the authors. Yes, that's right, folks. We received an e-mail
from Thurston Moore. That Thurston Moore. The Sonic
Youth-founding, record label-owning, soundtrack-scoring, music-video-directing,
Library of Congress inductee/guitar shredder Thurston Moore.
Normally, we're not terribly fazed by celebrity (we both live
in Southern California, for crying out loud), but that was
pretty awesome. We all had a bit of a swoon-fest.
Speaking
of swooning, we hope you're all prepared for the worldwide
swoon-fest that is Breaking Dawn, Stephenie Meyer's
last book in the Twilight saga, which is released this
month. Females the world over have been working themselves
into a tizzy over this, including the majority of Yennie's
female students (and, okay, Yennie too). If all of the hype
is to be believed, Breaking Dawn may very well be the
biggest book of the year.
The hype,
of course, just rankles our dear Yennie even further. As
many of you know, Meyer has foiled Yennie's initial plan
for world domination: writing a wildly successful series of
young adult vampire romance novels and winning over the minds
of teenage girls and their mothers. Meyer, we suspect, is
lurking somewhere in Los Angeles County and purloining Yennie's
ideas. It's pretty nefarious. It's as if Mother Theresa said,
"Oh hey, Stephenie Meyer. Could you keep up my campaign for
poverty awareness for a second while I go save some kids from
a well?" And while she's gone, Meyer wins fifty Nobel Peace
Prizes. In fact, it's exactly like that in every way.
But,
even if Yennie's hopes of gaining celebrity as a teen vampire
romance novelist have been dashed, we still have hopes for
our other intrepid editor. In fact, Kyle has long talked about
writing a romance novel. No joke. We suppose he's just into
the idea that a guy who sits around all day growing a beard
and watching episodes of Stargate: Atlantis could write
something that housewives everywhere will secret away in their
boudoirs. Plus, the idea of a 20-something dude writing a
bodice-ripper is pretty hilarious. Preliminary drafts have
been described by ladies as "very hot." So, you know, that's
promising.
Fortunately,
(or unfortunately?) Kyle's would-be Harlequins would not exacerbate
the HBC's other epic feud—the one between him and Sandra
Tsing Loh. After she foiled Kyle's plans of having multiple,
criminally un-funny spots on NPR every day, Kyle vowed to
destroy her totally and has taken to writing long anti-Loh
screeds in his LiveJournal that contain disconcerting phrases
such as "I will feel your blood in my mouth, Loh." Frankly,
the rest of the HBC finds it unhealthy and unsettling.
It's
probably best, then, that Yennie (who has no beef with Loh
herself) reviewed Loh's book instead of Kyle, as we generally
like the idea of staying unbiased. Then again, you may not
even notice her, considering the stories we have for you this
month. Comic genius and (very famous) Hollywood celebrity
Michael Ian Black graces us with an interview, while we keep
you otherwise distracted with books relating to experimental
short fiction, Haruki Murakami, and the Wu-Tang. With such
an amazing cross-section of hipster awesomeness, both Loh
and Meyer may very well implode. They, after all, are not
cool enough to get e-mails from Thurston Moore. But then again,
there is nothing cooler than that.
Tell
your friends. Feed our egos.
<3,
Yennie and Kyle
(August,
2008)
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