Author: zora

May 9, 2011

The Hip Girl’s Guide to Homemaking

A couple of days ago, I peered into the shelf where we keep the sheets and towels, and something looked odd. I couldn’t put my finger on it.

A tiny act of domestic order, courtesy of Kate Payne

And then I realized: That light-blue duvet cover was folded properly!

How could this have happened?! I searched back in my brain, back back back, till…last week, when Kate Payne was visiting. Yes.

Kate is the eponymous Hip Girl, and she’d been here for a couple of days in the early stages of her press tour for the magnificent new Hip Girl’s Guide to Homemaking, a splendid book that I’m just having the pleasure of getting to know.

Kate is one of the best things to come out of writing Forking Fantastic!, because she saw the book and decided Tamara and I were just her sort of people, and tracked us down, and she was completely right. The first time I went to her apartment, I realized I was in the presence of greatness, because she’d managed to make a basement in a Bed-Stuy row home look like a palace, and she’d only been living there a matter of months.

By contrast, when people come to our house, where Peter and I have lived for five years, they often say, “It’s so…lived-in!”, which is a euphemism for “It’s so…dusty, and why is this coffee table so sticky if you don’t even have any children?” Due to steady work and lots of travel, we’ve lost the thread on a lot of the domestic arts, so the HGGH couldn’t arrive at a better time.

Kate’s book is so full of tiny bits of wisdom (how to manage your compost, how to hem your pants, how to make bread) that I’m getting that feeling that everything is possible. Even folding my sheets properly, so they give me that sense of peace and order when I look at them, instead of a feeling of panic.

So I’m dog-earing pages and making lists and looking at my laundry with a fresh eye. And I’m completely loving Kate’s approach–that managing your home life is empowering and makes the whole rest of your life better. And while Kate may have more natural talent for rigging up ingenious things with clothespins, she’s also just a super-enthusiastic beginner who’s tenacious enough to stick with things until she learns how to do them. Or until she realizes that maybe perfect isn’t the goal, and that good enough is just fine.

Just at the moment, I don’t have free time to improve our whole house, I’m just briefly setting the book in the various trouble spots, ritualistically, hoping its magic will rub off and start to instill order. In our bedroom, which is a pit of organizational despair. Or over by the pile of half-finished sewing projects. Oh, or there, on that shelving that’s the catch-all for crap on the second floor.

So I heartily recommend this book, which is a joy to read. And this isn’t even because Kate gives a big shoutout to FF! in it. It’s because I realize how much I need this book, even though I thought I was reasonably domesticated. Which means pretty much anyone setting up a home anywhere needs this book.

If you’re in the NYC area tonight (May 9), you can nab your own copy at Greenlight Books. I’ll be there. Even though I probably should be home folding my sheets.

May 2, 2011

Queens Writers News

Sniff. The lovely Heather Hughes, the first Queens Writers Fellow, has left us, gone on to graduate from her yoga program and is now conquering things left and right and having champers poured for her. No one deserves a drink more than she.

She had this to say after she left the upstairs desk:

When I entered the Conquering Lion Yoga teacher training program, I was prepared for the physical intensity that awaited. What I was less prepared for was the number of written assignments. There were monthly assignments, weekly assignments, and, yes, daily ones. I had a background in writing: MFA in creative writing, stints as a copywriter for an infamous men’s “fashion” catalog (ruffled poet’s shirts and underwear with built-in cock rings were just two of the best-selling items, although probably not due to my prose) and as an editor at a magazine about books. But I had gradually fallen out of the actual practice of writing.

Left to my own devices, in my own apartment, I wasted a lot of time gazing out the window or finding new ways to rearrange my bookshelves (grouped by author and then alphabetized by title? grouped by author and then by publication date?). Your fellowship arrived at the perfect time and helped get me on track and actually writing.

I’m indebted to you and Peter for all the generosity and hospitality (and food—I’d definitely be remiss if I didn’t mention the crack ham, the sourdough bread, the giant deep-fried grasshoppers…) you’ve provided me, not just over the past few months but over the past few years. The world is considerably richer for having you two in it.

Gah! Right back at ya, Heather!

Since she left, we’ve managed to dry our tears a little, and although we haven’t had a full-time steady person here, we have had a couple good visitors. The exemplary Kate Payne spent a couple of days here recharging mid-book-tour. (Check out her totally inspiring Hip Girl’s Guide to Homemaking — more details in a bit.) She didn’t wind up doing much writing, but she did intern with Peter on knot-tying (not what you think, people!), and to prep for her book event in Philly, she made some pretty cool chore wheels. (I’m proud to say she used our 7-inch of the “Dukes of Hazzard” theme song as a template. I mean, how else do you draw a perfect circle if you don’t have records lying around?)

Sara Markel-Gonzalez has popped over a couple of times as well. Sara’s a regular contributor to Serious Eats, and she’s finishing up a program at NYU. And she’s currently working under a serious deadline, which is not actually the end of the school year: It’s that she’s pregnant and due to give birth…oh, this week. So I don’t expect I’ll be seeing her again for another few months, but I’m glad we got to meet. And she did come over and totally buckle down to work. She is a model for us all!

Going forward, I’ve got a few more weeks here (till May 21) until I hit the road to Morocco. Any and all Queens-y writer-y types welcome to come over and work whenever I’m home. Drop me a note!

April 27, 2011

Survey: Where Should Roving Gastronome Go?

Big news here at RG HQ: I think I’m getting more…mature. A little wiser. At least in the field of travel.

After, oh, 20 years of slogging around the world being rigorously independent, I’m finally realizing there’s tremendous value in putting yourself in the hands of experts.

In the last couple of years, I’ve had the pleasure of going on a few organized outings–whether a full-on week in Syria with Anissa Helou, a couple days of Thai cooking classes in Chiang Mai, or, most recently, just a morning taco-noshing tour with Eat Mexico. And you know what? I learned something! I felt connected! I was often so giddy I was jumping up and down!

So I want to share this experience, via Roving Gastronome tours. They’ll combine the knowledge I’ve gained from guidebook research trips with fantastic insider connections–the kind of thing that makes a group excursion really worthwhile.

To this end, I’m working with the delightful Brown + Hudson, a crew of savvy Brits who have been leading tours for years and seem to know everyone everywhere. (Yup–same fab guys who put together the stunning itinerary for the Forking Fantastic! Morocco outing. Which reminds me: I’m headed there soon! Yipes.)

Right now, we’re tweaking details for a fall trip (the location’s a surprise! I’ll tell you soon!). But for future trips, I’d love to have your input. Please fill out this quick survey to give me an idea what you’d like to see in a tour: destinations, cost, timing, etc. It’s easy, and who doesn’t want to spend five minutes fantasizing about travel?

Looking forward to hearing your input! And I can’t wait to tell you what we’ve got in the works…

April 25, 2011

Thailand, Let Me Count the Ways, part 2

So, all this, and I would love to say the Thais are my people, that I have found my true heart-home on the globe.

And yet. And yet… I can’t. There is a connection that isn’t happening, some part of me that doesn’t throw off sparks when I come into contact with Thailand. I have felt it scores of times in Mexico, and in Syria, and even occasionally in Egypt, when I can cut through the smog and the traffic and the tourist fascination.

Is it because there is just too much like-going-with-like in Thailand? There, I’m on board with everything already. In Mexico, I feel like I’m visiting what could be my better self, if I stretched—my self that’s quicker to laugh but also more polite, that paints the room in cobalt blue and rose pink, that drinks without fretting about it. Syria is the model me that has perfected the art of hospitality, developed my sense of taste without being snobbish about it and learned to live with dignity no matter the circumstances.

More practically, though, the answer may simply be language. I speak Spanish and Arabic. Except for the ten hours Peter and I spent in a classroom in Bangkok near the end of our trip, I don’t speak Thai.

Those five days of classes were thrilling, though. Why did no one tell me there are languages in which you don’t have to conjugate verbs? That pronouncing tones can be fun, and not impossible after all? Our teacher was a delight, and even if we don’t recall anything we learned*, we at least made a Thai friend.

I rely on words. Even as I’ve switched to more of a photo format on this blog, I’ve felt like I’m cheating. The sensation produced by a great picture somehow doesn’t count if I haven’t hashed it out in three too-long paragraphs, then pruned it all back to one tight one.

As much as I felt freed up last year when we went to Thailand and bumbled around, language-less and reduced to pointing and smiling and giving the thumbs-up, I also felt cut loose, bobbing along in the current and never mooring anywhere or with anyone.

A lot of people, probably most of them, travel like this. But a lot of people are simply better at this style of travel than I am—they’re more outgoing, and they can make a real connection with people by pointing at lines in a phrasebook. But coupled with my more passive style, my lack of fluency, or even functionality, makes me a pure spectator.

I would never say I’m fluent in Spanish or Arabic, but I can order in a restaurant, buy bus tickets and crack the occasional joke—all without thinking too much about it and worrying over what kind of impression I’m making.

I think this is the key: if I can slip off my cloak of self-consciousness (like an invisibility cloak—but the exact opposite), there’s a chance for me to really see the person I’m talking to and really listen to what they’re saying. Less me, more them—probably a lesson I could use in any language, in any country.

It appears the only solution to my Thailand quandary is…more. More visits, more study, more food. And plenty more time with my bootleg Rosetta Stone software.

And in the meantime, I won’t take my grasp of Spanish pleasantries for granted, nor my ability to read Arabic.

*except the phrase paw dee, which means “just right.” But even that doesn’t really count because it turns out I already knew it, because my mom has been saying it for decades, to mean something more like “close enough.” I didn’t even know it was Thai until I took this class—it was jarring to hear a familiar phrase in a list of other non-cognates.

It must’ve worked its way into the family idiolect through my ex-stepdad, who was a monk in a Thai monastery for a while before he showed up on our patio when I was six or so. In my memory, he was wearing his saffron drawstring pants the first time I saw him, and he probably said, “Paw dee” right then, for all I know.

April 18, 2011

Thailand, Let Me Count the Ways, part 1

Ah, Thailand. The whole time I was there, I was making a mental list of all the ways in which I am totally down with Thai culture. The Thais and I—we are copacetic. For example:

1. Take your shoes off.
Aside from appealing to my sense of hygiene and aesthetics, the no-shoes thing is great as a traveler. Padding around on the cool stone floor of a museum in bare feet is lovely. And when a class of schoolchildren swarms in, they’re all soft and shuffling instead of crashing and stampeding like elephants.

And if you happen to stay in the nicest hotel in Phetchaburi, because it’s the only place that has a room, but it’s not like it’s actually a super-nice hotel, and that room has wall-to-wall carpeting—well, it’s nice to know that a significantly smaller number of people has walked on that carpeting in shoes, when compared with an American hotel of the same vintage.

And shoes-off culture supports excellent footwear. As someone who currently owns three pairs of Worishofers, I am thrilled by Thailand’s slip-on shoe scene. I apologize from the bottom of my heart for never starting that photo essay of all the ridiculous shoes I spotted in Bangkok. But I could never take the photos because I felt like I’d been gawking too obviously to then whip out my camera.

First in the photo essay would’ve been these spongy, Crocs-like things shaped like big, bulgy cartoon animal feet, complete with little claws. They came in pink and orange and blue and yellow, and I saw otherwise perfectly normal-looking people strolling around in them. One woman was all suited up in a gray pencil skirt and a white button-front blouse…and these bright-pink shoes. And not even in an ’80s-Working-Girl-high-powered-commuter way.

2. Kids are quiet.
Speaking of schoolchildren: They’re so good in Thailand. And they look cute in their uniforms. And their matching haircuts. Draconian? Nah—if those matching haircuts are contributing to their good behavior, I’m all for them.

3. Colors are fabulous.
Speaking of bright-pink shoes. And taxis the color of Barbie’s dream house, or an iridescent green beetle, or a turquoise sky. And monks in safety-orange robes (“saffron” is a euphemism).

Granted, it’s not color like Mexico has color. Everything’s a bit more muted. But it’s also much more broadly applied and non-gender-specific. The king dresses his dogs in little pink coats. And as you saw above, schoolkids wear lavender uniforms.

4. Conflict is avoided.
It’s a stereotype of Buddhist culture, but keeping your cool is valued in Thailand. Yelling is rude, as is pushing or shoving.

You never see people shouting at each other in the street, or someone having a one-way fight on a cell phone. I didn’t realize how relaxing this was until I was away from the hair-trigger freak-out zone that is New York City.

The no-conflict ideal trickles into the physical realm as well. If you stop in the middle of the sidewalk to snap a photo of some obscene-looking mannequins…

…no one jostles you, or curses you under their breath, or shouts, “Hey lady, getthafugouttathaway!” They just flow around you, barely breaking stride.

And taxis never honk. In a taxi one night, someone passed us too close, and our driver had to swerve out of the way. He briefly slowed down, but just kept driving. No horn, no fist-shaking. After about 10 more feet, he reached out the window and flipped his mirror back into place.

Plus, you’d never see a sign like this in the US:

5. OK, and: THE FOOD!
This is all I raved about after the last trip, so I was trying not to fall into that pit of oh-my-god-then-I-ate-that-and-that-and-that again. BUT. MY GOD. These people are insane. Everyone is eating at all times, no lie.

My analysis of Thai culture came largely from reading the Bangkok Post at breakfast every morning, then cherry-picking the quotes that seemed to illustrate my preconceptions. An academic I am not.

But how can you not extrapolate a whole wonderful worldview out of a news story about some white-collar criminal who is required to turn himself into the police but gets waylaid, and then produces the excuse “I was on my way to the police station, but I got hungry, so I stopped at the mall.”

Then we were in the Jim Thompson House museum, reading news clips from the 1950s, when the World Bank imposed austerity measures. (No one imposes austerity measures anymore. Did we just decide they don’t work? Or did we forget about them?) Women were asked to refrain from wearing makeup and stockings. Men shouldn’t go out drinking. And everyone was asked to eat only three meals a day, maximum. Please. If they could. That would be great, thanks.

So, Thailand, I love it and all its crazy eating and dressing and sweetness and shyness…but.

(to be continued…)

April 11, 2011

Adventures with an Extrovert, part 2

(read Part 1)

This trip to Bangkok, Peter proposed exactly three activities:

1. Stay at the Atlanta Hotel and maybe write a little at their funky old writing desks.

2. Eat at Soul Food Mahanakorn.

3. Go to that crazy market that the train goes through.

I said, “OK, fine, but we have to go to Nahm too. And what market?”

“Watch the YouTube video,” he said.

Having so few goals for our trip is another “signature” of our travel style. Less is more, we tell each other, as we order another coffee. Even the train market sounded a little active for us, but that was trumped by the fact that it involved a train. Trains trump everything.

We scheduled the train market outing for a day with Rod. The trip required leaving our hotel at the ghastly hour of 7:30 a.m., so we were counting on his energy to propel us there.

The train market is in the town of Mae Khlong, aka Samut Songkran. To get there from Bangkok, you take two separate rinky-dink commuter trains, with a ferry in between.

Or, if you’re like us and get lost in the transfer town, you take two ferries, because the first one is the wrong one. Once it became clear how inept we were, a nice man walked us all the way to the proper ferry dock, past grilled squid, a live elephant and papasan chairs of shrimp paste.

The train market is a phenomenal two-in-one excursion, just made for Jack Sprat-ish spouses. She likes to shop? He likes trains? The Mae Khlong train market saves your marriage! I don’t really like to shop, and I don’t dislike trains, but we still made this joke a lot.

If you didn’t click over and watch that YouTube clip, here’s the gist: the train goes straight through the middle of the market. Before it does, everyone packs up all their stuff and pulls back their awnings and presses themselves back against the wall. What’s amazing is how quickly they put everything back and get back down to selling live eels, hacking up fish and all the other standard business.

So we lined up with the handful of other rail fanatics and watched the train go back out through the market, vendors standing frozen to the side, like stagehands waiting in the wings. We marveled and took a million photos. And then we walked around town for a few hours, got a foot massage, ate some fried chicken, as you do…

(As Peter points out, it just doesn’t seem fair that Thailand has this tremendous rich food culture, and they make perfect fried chicken on top of it all.)

Half an hour before the last train was set to leave, we took a spin through the rest of the market, the non-train-tracks part. It was late in the day, so it was almost deserted, but we could hear music coming from one end.

We rounded a wall, and there was a somewhat rowdy crew gathered around chatting, toasting each other and watching a delicate man in a crisp white shirt crooning karaoke. A few people were swaying to the tune.

We stood at the edge of the group for a moment, Peter and I settling easily into our hang-back-and-observe groove.

But Rod grabbed Peter by the elbow. “Let’s go talk to the tech guy. See what we can sing.”

The karaoke MC was just what you want in a small-town AV guy: curly hair, half-tint sunglasses, a couple of big amulets on gold chains dangling over his satin-finish shirt. Within seconds, he and Rod were scrolling through his library of songs in English. The delicate crooner soon reached the tear-jerking climax of his song, and Rod and Peter stepped up to the mike. A momentary hush fell over the market.

“Dancing Queen” has never been so warmly received. The crowd surged in close. Men pressed drinks, fresh peanuts and plates of spicy pork into my hands, and lined up cups to wait for Peter and Rod. Two people started a coordinated line dance in front.

Women advanced one by one to drape Peter and Rod in garlands or bashfully hand them long-stem roses. One of them poked me, nodding toward Peter, clutching her chest in a swoon.

As the song reached its crescendo, I checked my watch. Just about time for the train. In the wild applause that followed, Peter and Rod waved to the crowd, I gathered our belongings and slugged my Pepsi-and-whiskey and we all hustled for the exit, with cries of “Happy new year!” in Thai and English ringing out behind us.

We bounded onto the train, flushed and giddy, draped in flowers, already recounting the highlights.

“Did you see the guy doing the motorbike-revving dance?”

“That lady selling the fish was so in love with you!”

“And how did they refill my drink so fast?”

The train chugged out, and we squeezed into the rear cab to watch the market fall back into place as we passed, like the teeth of a zipper clicking together.

Soon we were out in the farmland between towns, rice paddies and shrimp ponds stretching away to either side. The conductor never came to kick us out of the rear cab. We felt very VIP. A man and his young son sat next to us, and we all watched the bumpy, narrow tracks unspool behind us.

When they got off at a small village, we gave the boy one of our garlands. The train pulled away, leaving the father and son walking together, each balancing on a rail and holding hands across the pebbled bed between them.

Peter and I sat back and watched. The pair on their parallel balance beams grew smaller, and eventually dissolved into the bluish haze. Even Rod was quiet.

“This was the best day,” he finally said. “The absolute best day.”

*Read Part 1
*Thailand photo set on Flickr

April 5, 2011

Winner, Winner, Enchilada Dinner!

Thanks a million for all the fun comments in the giveaway for copies of my new Moon New Mexico guidebook!

This is real-time winner-picking: I’m going to random.org… (Sorry, no lovely assistant is awake yet this morning. Must rely on computers.)

…and I’m asking the random-number generator to pick four numbers between 1 and 17:

#4
…
#6
…
#17
…aaaaaaand…
#14

That means the winners are Joanna Marsh, AV, Monica and Trudi!

Congratulations all around, and thanks again for playing. May you all have a New Mexico sojourn in your futures! With plenty of sopaipillas and enchiladas.

April 4, 2011

Adventures with an Extrovert, part 1

I’m very lucky that I happen to be married to someone whose travel style meshes perfectly with mine. (It might be that I got married only because I found someone I could travel with.)

That travel style is awfully particular, as it involves a lot of sitting and watching people go by. I didn’t quite realize how rooted we were in our ways until we were traipsing around Bangkok with a good friend of ours who’d come to meet us for a few days. Rod is an excellent traveler as well, but…he is just not like us.

He goes up to people and talks to them! I mean, he just asks them questions. And dumb questions, even. Like at the mall, when we’d already gotten our feet nibbled at the fish spa, which was really just a couple of tubs of fish stuck in a hallway toward the parking lot.

(Excruciating. Like having a million mosquitoes attacking your legs. Worse: the attendant thought she was being nice by not starting the 30-minute timer until I’d stopped squawking and shuddering.)

Rod marches up to the girls at the info desk, grins and says, “Soooo, what’s fun to do in the mall?”

Meanwhile, Peter and I are averting our eyes, looking utterly disinterested and pretending like we don’t know Rod at all. I discover I’m clutching Peter’s arm in desperate embarrassment.

I am 38 years old. What is wrong with me?

The girls just giggle, look confused and say, “Shop-ping!” in that Thai way, where each syllable is given equal weight. Only after Rod has fully stepped away from the desk can I sidle up and say, “Oh, well. Nice try.”

So we went upstairs and sang karaoke.

At least here I’ve made a little progress. When a friend’s Japanese roommate in college explained the concept to me, I was horrified. Karaoke sounded like the absolute most horrible experience in the world. You were really singing?, I asked, incredulous. All alone? At a party?

But at the kinda dumpy coin-operated karaoke booth on the fifth floor of MBK mall, I felt very mature. We sang Petula Clark’s “Downtown,” and tried to ham it up as much as Rod did. Impossible.

The next day, we all got on a canal boat just for the sake of riding the boat. It was the most phenomenal form of public transit I’ve ever been on, and I’ve been on a lot. (It sounds like I am independently cool/nerdy enough to do this, but Peter really gets all the credit.)

We barreled along at terrifying speeds, rooting for the tiny ticket-taker girl who walked up and down the edge of the boat, occasionally winching down the roof so we could fit under bridges. When we got off, we didn’t know exactly where we were. My guidebook was at the bottom of my bag that I was still clutching to my chest in half-terror, half-glee.

While I was digging around in my bag for a map, Rod disappeared. I was just finding the right page in my book when he came back.

“The woman at that tourist-info booth said there’s a temple on a hill over there, and we can climb up and get a nice view over the city.”

I spend a great deal of my professional life talking to people at these tourist-info kiosks, asking them obscure questions about bus routes and opening hours. But it had not even crossed my mind to use them the way god intended, as Rod had just done.

“Yeah, I just asked her what there was to do around here,” he said with a shrug and pointed us off toward the Golden Mount.

The next day… Well, the next day it got even crazier. But I’ll leave that for another post.

*Thailand photo set on Flickr

April 1, 2011

Bangkok Smile Bike

The world needs to know: You can get free bikes in Bangkok!

On our trip last January, Peter and I had read about these in our guidebook, but when we went to find them, the kiosk was abandoned.

Imagine our excitement then when, on this trip, we saw a crew of people zip down a street one day on very touristy bikes. Last time around, apparently, the system was way too broad–you could go anywhere. Now you’re supposed to take the bikes on only two set routes–one on the east side of the river, and one on the west. You can pick them up and drop them off at any kiosk along the route. And did I mention they’re free?

We hit the east side (EAST SIDE!) first. That’s where all the big fancy temples are, and the bike route takes you in a big loop past all of them. But Peter and I were so excited to be riding bikes that we didn’t bother doing any of the sightseeing at all.

We did cruise past our previous point of disappointment. Now much happier:

The bikes are well designed for city use, with just one speed (Bangkok is totally flat) and a nice integrated basket on the front. Only trouble for Peter was that the seats didn’t go up very high. These bikes were not made with American tourists in mind, much less Dutch ones. They have this cool built-in prong that ka-chunks the bike into place at the kiosk rack:

There were a lot of buses and other things in the way on the bike route, as well as mobs of schoolkids (next time, I’d make a point of being off the street by 3pm). But it was far less strenuous than riding in NYC. Traffic moves more slowly, and drivers are on the lookout for more crazy behavior, having to deal with mopeds zipping between lanes, and tuk-tuk drivers, and food vendors biking along with their carts full of sizzling whatever. We even got big smiles and thumbs-up from some drivers.

A couple of days later, we took the west side (WESSIDE!) (sorry, can’t help it) bike route. This was much niftier, because it was more residential, and we felt no obligation to sightsee at all. We followed a spur route to the royal barge museum, which was just closing (fortunately, or we might’ve been obliged to go in it!), and wound up in a neat little warren of canal houses, where we were riding along narrow little paths right next to the water. These women were sitting near a bridge.

Later, back on bigger boulevards, we cruised past some dudes unloading pig carcasses. They were stacked so beautifully. They could teach a thing or two to the halal-meat delivery guys around here.

And, don’t tell the bike people, but we got a little lost and off-route, and while we were at it, we passed these girls, raising money for a charity.

And then Peter got transfixed by some locks.

And then we finally got back on the route, and found the guy we’d been looking for, a candied bael-fruit seller. He was marked as a destination on the bike-route map. I had a dim memory of seeing some travel-show segment about him, on some flight or other, and this magical fruit that was so rare and odd-tasting. We rolled up, and there was no sign of any real commerce. But we asked around, and a guy turned up and took the cover off his display, which seemed to draw customers out of nowhere.

We’d been biking for a while, so we took a breather, on the tumbledown couch in the alley.

The fruit was strange, slightly numbing, and so intensely candied that my teeth hurt just thinking about it. He also sold dried slices of the fruit, which I wish I’d gotten, but they were big bags, and they weren’t cheap. I don’t think being in a tourist brochure has gone to this guy’s head.

Down the alley a bit, we found we weren’t the only ones out for a sunset bike cruise.

We were just getting a little tired when we passed a guy by the side of the road with an old-fashioned projector.

Peter stopped to take some photos for our friend Katie, and next thing we know, people were pouring us shots of booze, offering us Cheetos and giving us high-fives.

One woman realized I was never going to drink all my hooch, and so took it back and poured it back in the bottle. I like that kind of sensible hospitality. We took a tour of the back room, where we finally figured out they were getting ready for a dragon parade. Oh, so that’s why the kids outside had been playing around with boxes on their heads!

We left them some bael fruits (a little went a long way), gave some more high fives, and wobbled off down the road. Fortunately, it wasn’t too much farther to the next bike drop-off point.

We’d almost done the full circuit (it’s a straight line on the west side, not a loop). But we were somehow almost more pleased to be able to drop our bikes at the penultimate stop–because we got to use the word penultimate.

We wandered over the bridge back to the east side and found ourselves smack in the middle of the wholesale flower market. Which took us a little while to figure out. “Gosh, there sure are a lot of marigolds here…”

Stupendous, and so much better than if we’d made a special trip.

Thank you, Bangkok, for your wonderful free bikes. We’re smiling still!

March 31, 2011

Blood, Bones & Butter: Where were the editors?

As a former Prune employee, I’ve been looking forward to Gabrielle Hamilton’s Blood, Bones & Butter for an awfully long time. I ran out the first night the book was released, bought two copies and read it immediately. Even though I already knew lots of Hamilton’s backstory, it was compelling, and it was as well written as I’d expected. Which is to say, splendidly written.

But all I could think when I was reading it was:

Where were the goddamn editors?

It’s a complete disgrace that for a book this heavily bankrolled and long anticipated, the publishers could not hire someone to tidy it up the way it deserved. The misspellings, typos, repeated phrases, inconsistent verb tenses–nothing egregious for a writer to produce, but nothing that should make it to print. It all made me so aggravated that about halfway through, I started keeping a list.

This is a book about food. It should not have the following errors:

mis en place
McDonalds
hors d’oevre
ouef en cocotte
barbeque
blanche

That’s just copy editing, and the process should’ve caught motly, Ballanchine, koochy koo and Chang Mai too.

There also should have been editor to say, “Gabrielle, you’ve described two different places in Greece as ‘orange-scented,’ this guy feeds you apples and honey twice, and maybe there’s another word to use besides ‘meandering’ twice in the first two pages.”

Don’t get me wrong: I am not slamming Hamilton. No writer can make her own text perfect. After a surprisingly short time, you just can’t see anything. And the reason “orange-scented” seems like the perfect phrase and comes to mind so easily is because it’s already lodged in your brain from when you wrote it 500 words ago, and then promptly forgot that you had.

This is exactly why there are editors. Unfortunately, the good ones seem to be all retiring, and younger editors appear to be hired for their trend-spotting acumen, and not for caring about the words themselves. And copy editors are often just inexperienced freelancers who don’t yet know they’re being paid crap.

I just proofed my husband’s new book, for free, to spare the fiasco caused by cheap-ass copy editing on his previous one. But his publisher is not Random House, and it’s not sending him on a 19-city publicity tour. A good copy editor can be had for less than the cost of one or two days’ book tour. (For the record, he had excellent in-house editors on both occasions, who really got into the nitty-gritty of his wording. But that still doesn’t produce clean copy.)

I know I sound like a crank, dwelling on this. I have already tacked 35 years on my age, and donned a little crochet sweater, just typing this up. No–the aging started when I began keeping the list of typos.

But, really–I’m not the only one who’s bothered by this. Right? Right? People just don’t mention it because it seems like a diss on the author. But it’s a systemic failure. Chime in and make me feel less cranky, please.