Occult Los Angeles (And This Is Just The Beginning)

I wanted to direct your attention to this piece I wrote last summer for The Towner, The Architecture of Belief, about (of course) Los Angeles (of course) and the occult (of course):


Here is a story about Los Angeles: In 1935, a man who attempted to murder his wife gifted over 4,000 acres of land – previously owned by a man who had survived two attempts on his own life by separate, jilted lovers – to a corrupt mayor later driven from office by the efforts of a charitable Christian businessman with a side business in sexual novelties, who discovered that mayor’s secrets behind a false wall in a fake library. That businessman founded a thriving chain of restaurants built on the premise of giving away free food, one of which became the meeting place for a science fiction writer’s club, whose members included a man who conned a rocket scientist out of his life savings after first taking notes on how the scientist masturbated, and another man who convinced the city of Los Angeles to erect a three-story-tall fake Babylonian arch in the middle of Hollywood and then turn it into a shopping mall. This really happened, and I mention it here to remind you of the old saw about truth’s superlative relationship to fiction.


I've just started work on a book about the occult in the San Fernando Valley and I couldn't be happier. Have a story about goths in Burbank, psychics in the North Hollywood, or healers in Pacoima? Let me know!

So You Want to Write a Shipwreck Song

I'm back in The Awl today discussing the only good kind of song.

How To Tell If You Are in a Dostoevsky Novel

"Every night Pontius Pilate berates you in a dream."

I forgot to post this earlier, but check out my recent piece in The Toast, How to Tell If You Are in a Dostoevsky Novel, and a special thanks to Nicole Chung for being the most helpful and patient editor ever.

Without a single apology to John Keats

"O Weazel Ball, tumble on! Bold weasel, never canst thou clasp thy prize!" is the best line I have ever written or ever will.

Check out Ode on an Abandoned Shopping Mall today on The Toast.  With hilarious illustrations by Shing Yin Khor.

Eating Kids, on The Awl

"Made you eat your kids" was the "your shoe's untied" of the ancient world.

I'm back on The Awl this week discussing the ancient Greek penchant for cooking and eating kids: "Episodes of Eating Children in Ancient Greece, Ranked in Order of Reasonableness."

The Best Places to Get Free Coffee in Los Angeles

"When the Great Old Ones are recalled to power someday, they will be summoned right here in the Valley, in a strip mall between an El Pollo Loco and an adult bookstore."

Check out The Best Places to Get Free Coffee in LA - my first time in The Awl; not my first time talking about free coffee, PTA raps, LSD-laced sugar cubes, Freemasons, or the Deep Valley.

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"The truth is, I can’t imagine living without constant low-level embarrassment about my teeth, like the roar of silence in a room after someone turns off the TV."

Meanwhile, on Medium, I published The List. This will probably be the only time I discuss my butt on the internet, so get on it.

Also, while we're talking about Medium, You Have Plenty of Time to Love Them Later is at more than 213,000 views!

Take that, Radiolab!*

What has studying the infinite complexity of the indifferent universe taught you about yourself and your personal relationships?

Check me out on Medium skewering popular science journalism.

* Just kidding, guys.

Updates This Week

A few of the projects I'm doing these days:

I've been working with startup Evertoon to create short, funny YouTube videos that showcase their text-to-video app. The first one was posted here just in time for Valentine's Day.

I'm also continuing to do content writing for the smart home automation company Cliqk, as well as maintaining their social media accounts.

I'm now helping out 826LA writing product copy for their awesome Time Travel Mart - look for Tiny Tim's Instant Gruel and Lil' Gutenberg's Moveable Type Kit soon.

My very best assignment, though, is definitely working with Mat Laibowitz on his projects, Endgame and Midnight Madness, researching, writing, and testing scavenger hunt puzzles.

In addition to these regular assignments, I'm writing pieces for The Toast and McSweeney's, plus publishing on Medium. My most recent piece on Medium is here. Another one should be out this week. (And amazingly my last Medium piece, You Have Plenty of Time to Love Them Later, is now at over 207,000 views - thank everyone so much for their support and kind words!)

I'm also working on a new comedy series, "The Best Places to Get Free Coffee in Los Angeles."

I haven't started revising my play The Nightmare Box yet, but I will definitely start doing that any day now.

Also, I've been thinking over the possibility of a novel, a modern retelling of Flaubert's comedy Bouvard et Pécuchet about internet culture. I'm still in the reading and research stage, but feeling excited.

And last but definitely not least - Hot Dish brunch is back! Join us Sunday, March 29th to hear readings by Dorothy Fortenberry, James Hannaham, Ana Kasparian, J.J. Keith, and Samantha Powell.

You Have Plenty of Time to Love Them Later

Wow, what a week! I am very pleased - and more than a little surprised - by what a great response I've had from You Have Plenty of Time to Love Them Later.

I originally wrote this as an email to my friend Sommer Browning when she was pregnant with her daughter. I decided to post it on Medium on January 7 and since then it's been viewed almost 200,000 times and counting. And I've gotten so many nice notes and messages from people all over the country, too.  Thanks, everyone!

Magical Thinking

"For Christmas this year, my daughter wants Santa to bring her a magic wand that allows her to enter books and movies, interact with the characters, and change their outcomes . . . She also wants the wand to resurrect the dead, though she adds this bonus feature as something of an afterthought, like a stand mixer that also makes sausage."

I'm back on Medium talking about adult American Girl fans, ontological freakouts, and Lovecraftian horror.

Modeling on Medium and More from the Music Center

"In the nicest shot Beatrice is sitting on an overturned trash can with a giant pink plastic flower in her hair, but somehow she makes it look good, which is probably the definition of a born model."

I have my first piece up on Medium, discussing my complicated feelings about Beatrice's short stint as a clothing model.  So far I'm really enjoying the Medium interface, I think I'll stick around.

 

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Also, there are more Music Center episodes up! Check out #7, 8, 9, and 10.

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Lastly, I've started working with the home automation startup Cliqk, writing some of their web and social media content and generally helping out.

Up This Week

Just catching up on the last week's events and publications.

"Discoballs are the new teen danger drug of choice.  Teens across America are snorting this mixture of powdered caffeine and glitter that was first popularized by hip hop musician KR4FT*Z."

I have a piece in The Rumpus, "Five Disturbing Teen Trends Every Parent Should Know About," including discoballs and lumberjacking.  (And thanks to Dev, who invented the idea of lumberjacking.)

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The Music Center posted more videos from the series I wrote with J Ryan Stradal.  Here so far are episodes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6.

 

 There's a whole campaign of games, contests, and giveaways, so check it out and get involved.

 

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The Dinner Party Hot Dish was a success! Absolutely packed, and with nice write-ups from the Los Angeles Times and Los Angeles Magazine.  Look out for the next Hot Dish (probably) sometime in December.

 

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And last, today I'm on the Dwellable blog talking about some of Burbank's best residential haunted house attractions.

Growing up in LA, and more from the Music Center

Today I have a short list up at The Bold Italic, 20 things about growing up in L.A.

And another #Playlist video, this time Episode 2.

Everyone Believes In At Least One Crazy Thing

I'm so pleased to be on Jezebel today!

Tracy Moore had some nice things to say about my piece in The Bold Italic, "Navigating All the Fringe Beliefs in L.A."

This month's column in Trop

"In the last eighteen years, I have taken classes in skiing, snowboarding, SCUBA diving, pole dancing, fencing, ballroom dancing, burlesque, ballet, jazz dance, yoga, tap, spinning, kickboxing, Pilates (prenatal and post-), Bar Method, karate, and wu shu; CPR, the Bradley Method, breastfeeding, infant care, and early childhood education; German, French, Old English, Latin, and Chinese; taxidermy, knitting, crocheting, quilting, needlepoint, candle-making, spinning, and sewing; drawing, singing, and sketch comedy; French cooking, wine tasting, olive oil tasting, landscape design, driving, and, due to a regrettable misunderstanding of the course description, geriatric water aerobics."

This month's column is up at Trop.

Role-Playing

In this month's column, I reveal some of my deepest, darkest secrets.

Herodotus Writes the History of the 20th Century

"But there are others who say Rasputin survived these tortures by secretly drinking a mixture of ginger ale and pigeon’s blood, and that he roused himself from the river bottom and fled Russia together with his son, who was a lion."

I am beyond delighted to have a piece in The Toast, one of my absolute favorite publications.

Parties: A How-To Guide

In this month's Trop column, I pass on some quality advice on how to throw a party or attend one (hint: the answer to both is, don't).

Turtles All the Way Down

"I'm not hiding, stuffing, repressing, or buttoning anything. This is the real me. There's no one underneath. It's turtles, as they say, all the way down."

In the second installment of my Trop column, I defend one of society's most beleaguered identities, the Not Fun.

Gumby: The Jade Warrior

"Visionary director Nolan gives us a Gumby for our age, exchanging the glib campiness of the fifties classic for a serious adult film that challenges us to confront our darkest longings in the person of a small clay figure with no external genitalia and the ability to make only four or five distinct facial expressions."

Another fake film review, this time of Christopher Nolan's gritty Gumby: The Jade Warrior in Trop magazine's Sleeper Celluloid, a weekly column dedicated to reviews of movies that never were.