I Have Stories to Tell

But first I want to start with a photo I'm inordinately proud of.



Aw. I've always liked Alicia Silverstone. Anyway so this weekend here at UCLA we had the annual LA Festival of Books! A huge event about books and writing and publishing and reading... ahh. An English Major's heaven. Every year tons of people attend, and they have interviews with authors and panel discussions and all kinds of booky things. I enjoyed all that, of course, but a large part of the fun was playing hunt-the-celebrity, of course.



Sarah Silverman read from her book, The Bedwetter. There were all these kids in the audience which I found amusing since every other word was a cuss.



David Lynch was there to sign his book, which I did not buy, because it looked really lame (sorry) but I wished I had a copy of Mulholland Drive, or better yet, Dark Night of the Soul, with me. Thanks so much for introducing that to me, Huimin, I love it.



Then we met Yann Martel and I was so awed and awkward that all I could really do was pathetically burst out, I really love Life of Pi, for which he politely thanked me. What I meant, though, was, After having attended your interview/talk I have decided that you are an incredibly wonderful individual and you have my fullest admiration and I want to marry you, ok thanks bye.

He mentioned, during the talk, this ongoing project of his where every 2 weeks he mails the Prime Minister of Canada a book that he thinks the man should read, along with a letter. It's all documented here. (He sent him Godot, hahaha. "Samuel Beckett was with the same woman, Suzanne Beckett, née Deschevaux-Dumesnil, for over fifty years. And he was apparently an avid fan and player of tennis. In these two attachments, I see a contradiction between what the man wrote and how he lived. If he had the joy and energy to whack a bouncy yellow ball over a net, if he had the joy and comfort of knowing that someone was there for him at the end of each day, what was he so desperate about? A wife and tennis—how much more did he expect from life?") Geez, I wish Yann Martel would send me a book every 2 weeks and write me a letter. (Ugh, I totally should have asked him to, instead of my babbling. It's not like people haven't been saying "I really love Life of Pi" to him every day for probably the last 8 years.)



Finally I saw and met Bret Easton Ellis of American Psycho, Rules of Attraction and Less Than Zero. He was pretty much what you'd expect Bret Easton Ellis to be - difficult, somewhat self-absorbed. The talk was quite enjoyable, though; he made mention of both Donna Tartt (old college friend) and Christian Bale ("Something happened to him after American Psycho. He's become such a boring, monotonous actor. I'd like to see him do a romantic comedy, that'd be really fucked up.") Also, my favorite moment:

Himmelsbach: You recently set up a Twitter.
Ellis: Yes, I did.
Himmelsbach: I'm going to quote one of your tweets... from the day that J.D. Salinger died.
Ellis: Oh. (puts on sunglasses)
Himmelsbach: (reading from notes) "Yeah, thank God he's finally dead..."
Audience: (laughter)
Himmelsbach: "...I've been waiting for this day for-fucking-ever..."
Audience: (laughter)
Himmelsbach: "....Party tonight."
Ellis: (takes off sunglasses)
Himmelsbach: Care to elaborate?
Ellis: That's just how I was feeling.
Himmelsbach: What did he ever do to you?
Ellis: Nothing. I think that tweet is open to interpretation.

On the plus side I managed to stop the incoherent mumbling and hold a decent conversation with Bret Easton Ellis. We talked about the possibility of me doing an exchange program to Bennington, the college he and Donna Tartt went to. Also the fact that his new book is coming out on my birthday. Then he signed my Less Than Zero and all was well.