Experts: Palin Chosen for Women's Votes

This article in the USA Today, uh, today, states that the consensus among so-called "experts" is that Alaska Governor Sarah Palin was chosen as the vice presidential running-mate of John McCain in order to court the votes of women disillusioned with the promise of the first female Presidential candidate.

Now you don't have to read the article, but read this: if pointing this out makes you an expert, than I, Klaus Varley, declare myself an expert in politics, for that's EXACTLY what I said when I first heard the news.

What else am I am expert in? Procrastinating, blogging, and Super Mario Kart (SNES).

But now, add politics to that list.

Booya.

Seriously, if McCain cared about strengthening the executive branch - or his proposed version of said branch - would he not have chosen someone who is an expert in the economy, something that which McCain has said - on at least three occasions - that he knows nothing about?

Listen to me; I am an expert.

Or listen to the Obama camp: "Bill Burton offered a harsh critique of Palin's credentials, saying McCain 'put the former mayor of a town of 9,000 with zero foreign policy experience a heartbeat away from the presidency.'"

Gotta love that "heartbeat" imagery.

Enjoy your "labor day," whatever that is.

-KV

Another Quote from Bukowski

"shit, it would be sweet to get paid to write! to just sit here and bang bang bang, and get paid to do what I have to do anyhow - like getting paid to shit or fuck, what? too much but worth a try. and prob. will not happen."

-Charles Bukowski, June, 1967. From Charles Bukowski, Selected Letters, Volume 2: 1965-1970.

Jonathan Gold - One of our Favorites...

ONE OF OUR FAVORITES - JONATHAN GOLD

Jonathan Gold, Pulitzer Prize winning food critic for the LA Weekly, Gourmet Magazine, and more, is one of our favorite writers.

If you just moved to LA (welcome my acting/screenwriting friend!) add these two books to the bookshelf your over-priced Los Feliz apartment. Lord knows you didn't come to LA to read, but trust me, you NEED these books, like, now.

The Thomas Guide 2008 - Los Angeles County Street Guide

and

Counter Intelligence - Jonathan Gold

Sure you can read his articles every Thursday in the LA Weekly, but he only has one restaurant review, and guess what - everybody reads that. Try getting a reservation at El Sazon Oaxaqueno after a Gold write up? (Ha! Trick question! They don't take reservations!)

Instead, pick up Counter Intelligence. With hundreds of restaurant recommendations - most of them extremely affordable to downright "cheap" - you'll be instantly converted to Gold and believe in his subtitle: "Where to eat in the real Los Angeles."

Oh yeah, and he's also one of the best writers out there. Of any genre. Here are some quotes from Counter Intelligence:

"Lavishly buttered bowls of grits appear at breakfast, served with hot cornbread, eggs any way you like them, and pungent, profoundly salty slabs of real country ham-the kind of breakfast that any sensible person would trade for the ability to squeeze into a pair of size-6 jeans."

-Gold on Johnny Reb's

"Hot Dog on a Stick is yet another gift Southern California has bestowed upon the world...A summer behind the fryers at Hot Dog on a Stick is almost the archetypal first teenage job, and the garishly costumed employees figure in local teenage iconagraphy as surely as lifeguards or cheerleaders."

-Gold on Hot Dog on a Stick

"The cooks are Asian; the waitresses Peruvian. The walls are decorated with pictures of campesinos and llamas and gory bleeding Jesuses; above the serving counter sit plaster Japanese good-luck cats, paws raised in greeting...Across the street is a well-stocked liquor store where you can pick up a six-pack of Sapporo to drink with your dinner.

-Gold on Mario's Peruvian Seafood

"Like all good hamburgers, a Pie 'N Burger burger is about texture: the crunch of lettuce, the charred, slightly friable surface of the meat, the outer rim of the bun crisped to almost the consistency of toast...The slice of American cheese, if you have ordered a cheeseburger, does not melt into the patty, but stands glossily aloof form it, as if it were mocking the richness of the sandwich rather than adding to the general effect."

-Gold on Pie 'N Burger
(The best damn hamburger joint in the world, I dare you to find a better place. Dare!)

Hungry? Me too.

-KV

I Shadow Box Naked But My Shadow Has Shorts On

I thought of the name of this post while in the shower, NOT while shadow boxing naked.

Or did I?

(Not sure, actually. That's a real question. If you know the answer, well, I have two questions for you. 1. How the hell do you that? 2. You seem to know a lot. Can you help me find my keys? In the drawer, why would they be...oh, you're right. Never mind.)

This post is a return to the form of a true rant. What is a true rant? Specifically, it's when you riff on one topic, land on something that reminds you of something else you hate, at which point you switch to that topic, and go off on that. Generally, it's a bunch of complaining. When that complaining is combined with a lot of grammatical mistakes it is referred to as a blog.

But this is not a blog.

[Transition to rant about blogs]

How is this different from a blog?

Well, a blog can be, "look at my pictures from my weekend!" followed by twenty pictures you did not ask to see (but still enjoy looking at! Seriously, friends, seriously.)

A blog also might also read like a laundry-list of activities, juxtaposed with thoughts from those activities.

"Today I took the dog for a walk, and was thinking that man, I should do this more often! When the dog poops outdoors, it is SO much easier to clean up!"

Yes, cheap joke, but stay with me - we're ranting about blogs.

The complex blogger might go even further, and get a bit post-modern in his or her entry, acknowledging the role of the reader, such as:

"You might be thinking, hey stupid, you should have known about the pooping patterns of dogs BEFORE you purchased that animal. What can I say? I'm from the City."

I have no idea if the "the" in "the City" is supposed to be capitalized, and I refuse to look it up in this context - a reference to San Francisco.

[Transition...]

To this day, I honestly get confused when someone calls Frisco "the city." Since my mid-twenties, I have been a stickler for people using the appropriate or nearly appropriate, or a closely accurate words to describe specific things. I don't know if it's just getting old, or I don't want to assume I know what people mean when they say something vague, like "the city."

You're going where? Oh, SF. Why didn't you just say so? You know, there are lots of cities. In fact, San Jose AND San Diego have more people than San Fran. Look it up. It's true.

The OTHER thing I deplore about San Francisco is the disdain for Los Angeles. I suppose it isn't representative of the entire city, and so I shouldn't characterize it as such. But man, when you're in the city by the bay, and you mention you're from LA, watch out. Here are some things people - who I don't know very well, but have reason to be polite to - ie: they're friends with my friend who lives up in Nor Cal - have said when they find I'm from LA.

"Is it hard to breathe down there?"

"Do you like, drive a lot?"

"How are the movie stars?"

"Do you ever get sick of the superficiality?"

"What's your screenplay about?"

The answers:

No.
No.
Cool.
No.
A romantic comedy between a strict parking enforcement agent and a girl who breaks all the rules.

At least, that's what one of them is about.

-KV

Klaus Varley Brings Semi-Literary Back - A Book List (Sort-of)

Since Bringing Literary Back was so darn popular, and like an ambition teenager, one of our goals here at The Brothel is to become more and more popular, below are a number of lists* serving various purposes, including, but not limited to, your amusement, your procrastination, your something, and for you to scoff at.

List 1: Books On My Shelf I Have Not Read but Would Honestly Like to Read (as opposed to those books on my shelf that I have not read and would not like to read and am not sure why I bought them or maybe they were a present. A bad present)

War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
Cock and Bull - Will Self
Trouble is my Business - Raymond Chandler
The Big Sleep - Raymond Chandler
You Just Don't Understand - Deborah Tannen, Ph.D.
Black Dahlia - James Ellroy
Burr - Gore Vidal
Operating Instructions - Anne Lamott
Dune - Frank Herbert
Red Harvest - Dashiell Hammett
The Story of Philosophy - Will Durant
South by No North - Charles Bukowski
Godel, Escher, Bach - Douglas Hofstadter

List 2: Books that I don't "pretend" to have read...let's just say "Books, that when brought up in a social setting elicit a, 'who wants another drink?' from yours truly." In fact, they're so famous I don't even feel the need to include the author's name. Just imagine each title followed by "you know who."

The Fountainhead
The Sound and the Fury
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Moby Dick (I may have read this as a kid, I can't remember. A good discussion this does not make. Who needs a drink?)
Crime and Punishment
A Confederacy of Dunces
The Road
The People's History of America
Any Book by Cormac McCarthy
Why do people keep bringing up Cormac McCarthy?! He's not that good...is he? Who needs a drink?

List 3: Books that after reading will make my life glorious. Or at least that's what I imagine they will do. At the VERY least after reading the books below, I could say at a party, "If you like Cormac McCarthy, you'll LOVE ____."

The Bible - God and his/her translators
Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace
Gravity's Rainbow - Thomas Pynchon
The Complete Works of Lao Tzu - Lao Tzu
The Wind-up Bird Chronicle - Haruki Murakami
In Search of Lost Time - Marcel Proust

And...more? I'm never going to get to any of these by blogging about them.

"Who needs a drink?"

Much easier.

-KV


---
*I will not know this number until I write the lists, at which time I might go back and change this introduction. However, if you are reading this, it must mean I have not deleted this section. Why not? So you know that every time someone starts a paragraph knowing too much about what will follow, they have actually already written what will follow and are pretending not to know. In other words, you will be reading the work of liars. But not here; not at The Brothel. Well, not here, on this piece. This piece just has long footnotes. Well, one long footnote. My bad.

North Dakota Gold Snow Women Sasquatches Paris Hilton

The Literary Brothel has had visitors from 49 states.

There is only one state that stays away.

(In case you couldn't do the math)

Can you guess which one?

That's right. North Dakota.

Or "South Canada," as it is sometimes called.

By people who are not from there,

but run a website

that tries to get visitors

from North Dakota.

What will it take to get visitors from North Dakota?

Will it help to mention North Dakota and Paris Hilton in the same sentence?

Probably not.

It might be better to talk about Fargo, Bismarck, or Grand Forks.

And even better to say,

"We know where the treasure is buried."

Or

"When this snow melts, boy are we going to be rich."

C'mon ND.

Lower the Drinking Age to 18 - and other things in the news

Dwindling coverage of Michael Phelps means a drop in hits for The Literary Brothel.

So, as another strategy to keep our 100 visitors a day (yep, you read right - one hundred) we're gonna try to keep up on other current events - or at least we are going to try that today, for this afternoon edition of The Literary Brothel.

Google News, don't steer me wrong. Let's see what we've got:

"Should 18 be the legal drinking age?" - Answer: yes. Moving on.

"Seinfeld to become new face of Microsoft" - Ah, so that's how one follows The Bee Movie

"Obama points to McCain as wealthy and clueless" - In other words, "In debate with McCain, Obama holds up a mirror to his opponent."

"Margaret Cho has some serious tattoos." Okay, not the "official" story from the New York Times (she's got a new show or something...who has time to read these NYT articles all the way through?) but check out this pic:





That's news. I guess.

-KV

CBEST, CWORST, CAVERAGE by Klaus Varley

Wrote this back in 2002 after taking the CBEST - the test you must take in California to become a teacher. And I became one, for a very brief time. No, I did not get fired (but perhaps I should have been, for referring to myself as White Destiny in pieces like this one. Good god.) -KV

CBEST, CWORST, CAVERAGE (Caverage! Yum!)
by Klaus Varley

The CBEST - the test to become a licensed school-teacher in California - stands for the California Basic Educational Skills Test. "Skills?" The SAT, taken to get into college has a fancy smancy name (Scholastic Aptitude Test). But the test to become the adult handing out that test on a Saturday morning? The teacher test is the "skills" test.

And so I didn't study, nor fret, and slept well the night before. So well in fact that I woke up ten minutes after I was supposed to leave.

"Shit," I said, with disdain for my unconscious behavior.

But because of my phenomenal driving skills I negotiated the freeway and made it to the valley, right on time, taking a seat next to those whose punctuality skills were obviously a grade above mine, but how will they fare when 2x + 5 = 7? Will they have the skills to solve for little "x"? I looked at their faces and new the answer was questionable, at best.

I sat behind a fair-haired maiden; her paper said her name was Rebecca Smith and her sweatshirt said she went to Pepperdine.

"You got skills, Becca?" I whispered in her ear with a sneer (and got ready for the rhyming section).

"Did you say something?" she asked, polite as a deer, turning to face my body, or like some refer to it as, The Temple of the White Destiny.

"Um, good luck?" I suddenly became nervous, transfixed in her steady gaze and large, green, and unblinking eyes. The temple was crumbling.

"Thanks, you too," said Rebecca, turning around and being bored once more. "Why can't guys ever say anything interesting?" she thought, twiddling her hair and popping her early morning Bubble Yum. Okay, no Bubble Yum, but she did twirl her hair--and think those thoughts.

It's nine AM. Let's begin.

The answer booklet is slapped on my desk by a disgruntled Calculus teacher working overtime on Saturday to facilitate a test for prospective members of her profession. She's pissed; I can tell. But is she frustrated with the long hours, little pay, and lack of respect she gets from her Brown colleagues at the reunion: the cost of being a dedicated educator of America's youth? (Typical reunion conversation: "Goddamnit I'm SAVING these kids, these, these lost little fuckers. They'd be on drugs without me, DON'T LAUGH THOMAS, I'M SERIOUS! Oh okay, laugh it up TOM…(She takes a long swig of the martini in her hand, finishing it off and setting her glass unsteadily down on a table nearby) but that's why your daughter is on coke and your wife gets more pleasure from the lawnmower than she does from you and your limp noodle. And when I say noodle, I mean you have a tiny dick, motherfucka!!")

Or does Disgruntled Debby (Mrs. Durbey) see us as the competition-the eager recruits waiting in the wings, watching for any error, any sign of weakness? (Look at these eager faces. They're waiting, oh yes, you'd better believe it: that clear complexion hides a wicked, warted, double crossing demon waiting to pounce. Waiting to pounce on me! POUNCE ON DEBBY? When the chips are down don't look to the young owl to help you out; he'll just eat you! It's no accident that teachers are depicted as owls in Tootsie Roll commercials-scavengers, I tell you, every last on of 'em!)

I sign the honesty agreement, or insurance plan, or contract with the devil, or whatever the hell it is, and me and my first #2 pencil (I christened him "One of Two" just before the start of the test) go to work.

The first paragraph looks something like this (the real test may not be replicated in any way, thus the excerpt below is some fake-ass shite).

1. Jim Johnson cured cancer. Throughout his life he had many _____ going for him. Never before had such a world seen such a man such as Jim Johnson. Jim had a wife and three kids, but they were killed by a hungry, hungry tractor while he was in Munich receiving one of his three Nobel Prizes for literature.

Question 1: The excerpt above most likely came from a work entitled:

A) Big Jim and the Twins
B) Jim Johnson: The Man, the Myth, the Smarty Pants
C) Blank Things
D) Hungry Hungry Tractors
E) The American Revolution

"Hmmm, this test might be trickier than I thought," I thought, correctly, and moved on to the next question, which, to my dismay, covered the same badly written paragraph.

Question 2: In the excerpt above, which word would best fit in the _____?

A) whores
B) therefore; however
C) Rocketman
D) good-things

I didn't ask why this question only had four answers and the other five--nor did I care. What did bother me was the fact that some answers had two words, most were sexual in nature, and I'd never seen the words "good" and "things" put together in hyphenated form. That's when I knew it was going to be a long morning.

I moved on to the writing section, because the CBEST also tests your "skills" in managing your time (on the test at least, not in your personal life), thus allowing you to go from section to section at your leisure. I wrote the two required essays and moved on. Don't want to say too much about them, but I'll say this: tears will shower my test, pouring from the eyes of all those blessed enough to have been chosen (by the lord almighty!) to grade my pieces. The dramatic account of the troubled early years of Timmy O'Toole is told with such pinpoint accuracy through the eyes of one Klaus Varley, that only one conclusion can be drawn: he uses a pseudonym. This "friend called Timmy," must be none other than Klaus Varley! in the flesh! Dry your tears readers, for it was a fictitious account, but don't forget the passing grade, eh? No, "A."

I went back and finished the Reading portion, leaving only the Math.

Average Math Question: If three less than one hundred is divided by seven, and the remainder is multiplied by 97 (you may laugh at this), how many Nobel Prizes did Jim Johnson win?

A) 97 X 97
B) µ
C) 7 of 9
D) µ2: The Sequel
E) Three People Who Have Never Been in My House.

The parentheses are my own, but I could just hear the composers of the test chuckling at their own cleverness: everything seemed like one big inside joke and a reference to Cheers. Though the math was easy, I felt like I was missing out on something-maybe a laugh?

But at 10:30 AM on a Saturday, I felt none two amused, yet oddly thankful that the correct answer was always one of the choices. I felt a security in that, and like all things secure, I felt safe--safe enough to hand my test to Mrs. Angry-Eyes when I smoked through the math section and leave in peace.

In the above paragraph, the word "two" is used in which sense:
A) The misspelled sense.
B) The sorry-attempt-at-a-joke-relating-to-numbers sense.
C) The sense like in the sentence: "Two gerbils for the price of one"
D) Sense-less.
E) All of the above, along with the sense of using it as an excuse to create a supposedly 'clever' question and answer session that has little or no relevance to the rest of the piece, and is the author's lazy way of avoiding any sort of moral or literary conclusion.

Well then, time's up. Put your pencils down and get out of my classroom you freaking brats. Mama needs a smoke.

-KV

Addendum: You'll be happy/frightened to know that Klaus passed the CBEST with flying colors and will soon be an official edumacater of America's youth.