Hi.
I want to learn Spanish, and I’m pretty sure I need a classroom to do it.
The community colleges are all as they say “impacted,” and even if I managed to get in I’d be displacing some unfortunate person who needed 1 more class to get out, I bet.
What are good places (private or otherwise) to learn Spanish within about 25 miles of Costa Mesa?
TIA, substitute
We’re as pleased as punch and just as excited to share this summer’s new releases with all of you. As always we remain eclectic yet focused, with a concentration on a wide variety of accessible yet cerebral titles. Please visit our booth, #35B in Kentia Hall. Justin Celine, our VP of marketing, is the one in the hilarious mad scientist outfit!
Now to the releases. We are excited to present:
NONFICTION:
Chived: Hard Times and Stale Tastes in the Dried Spice Business. Basil, Oregano, fines herbes: every day we open a bottle of dry leaves and add flavor to life. But what’s it like where these little jars are filled? Chef and freelance journalist Katie Montaigne spent a year in the rough-and-tumble world of professional spices. Her stories may shock, surprise, and even humble you. You’ll never look at poultry spice the same way again.
Pillows and Predators: A Year in a Quality Inn Off I-10 Somewhere. Notary and freelance journalist Justin Svevo walked out of his comfortable life to manage a mid-range travelers’ motel for a year and came back with this powerful yet nuanced picture of an industry on the brink. From rough towels to midnight pot deals, no detail escapes his questing eye. Nominated for the National One Small Topic Book Award.
Will There Ever Be a Flag Day? When mom and freelance journalist Katie Firbank learned her youngest daughter had sunburn, she didn’t back down. This is a powerful and surprisingly accessible story of science, sun, health care, and one mother who wouldn’t stop until the real story — and the real cure — was revealed. Soon to be a Lifetime Channel Movie of the Week. Book club study guide available.
Rebar: The Stuff of Empire Ignored and even mocked, the strong yet flexible stands of this ubiquitous material hold up most of Western Civilization. Construction supervisor and freelance journalist Justin Bulgakov tracks the hidden history from the story of Hans Rebar’s first discovery through the Rebar Treaty of 1938, and finally to the Presidential Medal for Structural Items. You’ll never look at an urban construction site the same way again.
Nothing Over $20: A Long Year in a Tollbooth. When dental hygienist and freelance journalist Katie Calvino walked into a tollbooth in 2008, she had no idea of the journey that lay ahead. Greasy cash, angry drivers, and the dark secret behind America’s $500 billion toll road industry frame this gripping story of one writer’s passage from boredom and fear into a new strength born from knowledge. Forward by Malcolm Gladwell.
Go Fish! The Card Game that Gave Us World War — And Hope. Families and friends gather every day to play this simple card game. But does anyone know why? Sales associate and freelance journalist Justin Faulkner spent a year tracing the game’s history from its dark Nazi past in Munich to its life-changing energy in modern-day Turkey.
Pulling Iron: A Year on the Tugboat ‘Marie Rouge 223-B’ New York Times reporter and freelance journalist Katie Mishima walked out of a divorce and family tragedy onto the deck of an ocean-going tugboat in Long Beach, California. This is a story of huge ships, smaller ships that tow huge ships, grease, gumption, and finally redemption. Soon to be a major motion picture starring Reese Witherspoon. Book group study guide available.
These Pants are Made for Walking: The Sansabelt Way To Grow Any Business Justin Sansa, freelance journalist and son of legendary pants CEO Victor Sansa, teams up with his father in this hard-hitting, hard-nosed story of the man who didn’t need a belt to win. From the early days of Rubr-Shorts to the peak of 1979’s Stretchin’ film appearances, the whole story — and we mean really the whole story — of the Sansabelt phenomenon is here.
FICTION:
Can’t Get No Satisfaction. Young Sanjay DeSantis is only 10 when his abusive father mails him to a fruit processing plant in Camarillo, California. The world of a fatherless child, seen through a strawberry glaze, shines its luminous light over Sanjay’s molecular journeys through time. A thunderous achievement by first novelist Katie Lysenko.
Street Spirit. The Kepler sisters, hosts of three competing television talk shows, frame this sweeping narrative of the mid 1990s in suburban America. This second novel from rising superstar Justin Mulholland will resonate with anyone who knew the chain bookstores and college rock of those years, and will be a touchstone for that magic moment in 100 years — or more.
No Parking On The Dance Floor. Neil Heliopolis, a brilliant and deeply troubled college freshman in 1983, chooses to spend the entire year in his dorm room. His tiny paragraphs on Post-It notes are the building blocks of this extraordinary first novel from facilities manager and freelance journalist Katie Merck. Forward by Malcolm Gladwell.
Crocodile Rock. When failed graduate student Esi Jones receives a carved stone in the mail, he’s confused at first by its intricate hieroglyphics and images. As he delves deeper, he is drawn into an ancient and deadly conspiracy that brings together the Pyramids of Giza, Big Oil, and the United Methodist Church. This page-turning thriller goes from hymnal to gusher and finally to a shocking denouement that nobody — not even Cheops himself — could have predicted. Another instant classic from Justin DuPont.
Right Round Like A Record. The short, chaotic career of Israeli disco impresario Luis Kent is brought to life in this series of five linked stories by Booker Prize winner Katie Lister. Once again her empathetic ear for the dialogue of failure and her extensive drug experience illuminate this rocket-speed narrative of long club nights, using short club sentences. Soon to be a major motion picture starring Owen Wilson.
Once again, please stop by and say hello. Justin, Katie, Katie, Katie, and Justin will all be there and we have some great “swag” to hand out!
The Angry White Guy on TV is nasty, brutish, and probably short. He bulges with barely repressed bigotry. He and his Angry White Lady wife hate foreigners, Muslims, intellectuals, and anyone with politics to the left of Ronald Reagan. He’s poorly educated, or perhaps just willfully ignorant. He feasts on improbable conspiracy theories and violent languages provided by TV personalities who are paid to do this by nauseating billionaires. Worst of all, he’s intent on sawing off his own branch by attacking public infrastructure that he needs, and taking everyone else with him.
Christ, what an asshole.
That having been said, we need to check ourselves. Angry White Guy opposes us on serious political issues. No good can come from appeasing know-nothing reactionary populism (hear that, White House?) and we mustn’t. There’s something else we mustn’t do either.
My own reading of the progressive and liberal response to the Angry White Guy depresses. Major media, writers, bloggers, and others take the same easy route every time. We’re snobs.
We hit Angry White Guy with the class bat. He has terrible taste: NASCAR shirts, chain restaurants, airbrushed van art, current Nashville country music, and the 2009 Chevrolet Monte Carlo. He’s a Guido or an Okie or a backwoods Ozarks rapist out of Deliverance. Worse, he’s a suburbanized version of all these things, without even the Noble Savage credibility of “real” country folk. Not only is he a Christian, but he’s got bad taste there too: he goes to a suburban megachurch. His hobbies are ridiculous: guns, powerboating on fake lakes, scrapbooking for the ladies.
Okay, I’ll stop now.
The next level of failure comes when we take a moment to ask why he’s being so awful. At this point, patronizing explanations arrive: AWG doesn’t really know what’s going on. He lacks our education, our sophistication, our informed perspective. If only he’d been plucked out of his awful culture and groomed! Neither does he have the deep but self-accepting guilt we feel at our own privilege, much less our natural generosity towards the less fortunate. The empathy we draw from this gives us a wider view of the world than his. Unfortunately, AWG is stuck. He can’t enlighten himself, and oddly enough he doesn’t react well when we arrive to explain him to himself. He wants all the riches to himself and hates the poor. Again and again we explain that he’s really poor like them and should be nicer. Why can’t he get that?
Now that we’ve told Angry White Guy that he’s a few notches below us, a Snopes to our Sartoris, unenlightened, hard-hearted, greedy, a victim of his own (lesser) culture, and frankly a bit dim, we can declare victory with satisfaction.
Sometimes real information is stuffed in the cracks of this big shitball: how taxes work and where money goes, why wars are being fought, why pluralism and tolerance make sense, why things are hurting so damn much right now. I doubt anyone but the converted hears the Gospel over all this crappy preaching. We exit smirking and now Angry White Guy is ten times as angry with more reason than ever.
I propose a different line of communication. Set aside the aristocratic mess detailed above and just talk straight. There’s an honest, simple message with some punch to it:
You and I are up against the same enemy. I know you don’t think so, but hear me out, because we’re in danger. The big money guys and their friends in Washington are doing their best to grind us all down into the streets. Everyone on television is lying because they’re paid to lie, and that means the ones you like as much as the ones we like. There aren’t any fancy conspiracies, just jerks with money who want more. The only way we can push back on these guys is to hold our noses and work together on the shit we have in common. Otherwise, we’re all fucked.
Maybe some others among my people have a different way of putting it, but it might just be time to switch off the Snide Channel and try something more like this.
This is Central Orange County. At least most of it. If you head inland more than a couple of miles and can’t smell the sea air any more, here’s what you get. This, interrupted by strip malls:
Here, have a whole set of those. More to come, I’m sure.
But it was so good. Call the photo wabi-sabi.
It is a fact generally acknowledged that the institution of marriage in the United States is troubled.
Editorial writers, television journalists, and politicians are agreed that less people are marrying, less are taking their marriages seriously, more are ending their marriages, and those who end them often have several. The importance and permanence of marriage appear to be badly eroded.
More recently, the attempts by homosexuals to have their marriages legally recognized have alarmed many of the same people. They’ve urged others to stop these proposed changes, on the grounds that marriage between anything other than a man and a woman is against Nature, and that this change will further damage this wounded institution of marriage or even finally kill it.
Whatever the measurable facts might be, there is a perception among the educated middle class that marriage is reduced, threatened, devalued, and possibly outmoded, and it’s a great cause for concern for many people. It would be generally helpful to calm their fears and, if possible, to revive marriage as a serious institution for those who choose it. Mistreating homosexuals is not helpful, nor is theocracy.
Prohibiting divorce and remarriage is the most obvious approach, but is politically impossible. Religious or simply conservative individuals who dislike homosexuals and fornicators are still unwilling to abandon serial marriage as an option, and will resist this fiercely, despite implied contradictions in their thinking.
Instead, I propose that we treat this as a matter of state incentive, and make our improvements with pricing as we do in the case of roads, for example. In this particular case, the problem is not the first marriage itself, which must be kept simple and inexpensive, but the mechanism of divorce. Easy divorce erodes the permanence and seriousness of marriage.
I propose a new set of taxes or fees, which will at once act as a brake on casual marriage and benefit the people financially. The act of divorce also must remain simple and inexpensive; the cost of endless failed marriages is measured not only in misery but in the cost of domestic violence and child abuse, which unduly burdens us all.
Instead, the schedule of fees will apply to remarriage. A second marriage, for example, might cost $5,000. This is a reasonable fee for a serious commitment, and will emphasize to both parties that they are taking on a serious responsibility. The third marriage in this case would require a $15,000 fee; the fourth, $50,000; and the fifth, $100,000. Whether to continue increasing the fee or not is a matter for further discussion.
This schedule of assessment on new marriages would apply to any marriage license issued by the government. Religious institutions would remain free to declare marriages valid or not by their own accounting, but none of this would apply to the legal status of those marrying.
In the case of polyamorous marriage, fees would apply to all participants.
Widows and widowers would be exempt from the remarriage payment for the next marriage after the death of their former partners. Legal penalties for the intentional death of a spouse to avoid the marriage fee would be increased over and above those for other murders, to reduce moral hazard from this rule.
The advantages of this system are obvious. No one is prevented from legally ending an insupportable marriage. Those who are seriously committed to further marriages are free to do so after paying the fee. Feckless and flighty couples with money will progressively enrich the state and the people. And as in all such plans, the cycle of divorce and remarriage will be dramatically slowed. Finally, the power of the institution itself will be greatly enhanced both in practical decision-making and generally respect. Nothing commands more authority in American society than a very large price tag.
I hope you’ll join me in sharing this proposal with friends, family, church leaders, and government representatives. I think that all of us, whether we intend to marry or not, can support a rescue of the power of marriage that restricts none of us and enriches all of us.
The Santa Ana Boxing Club
Mural and a store
The Mojave desert is a mess. I love it, not in an ironic-slumming decay-hugger way, just love it. Chaparral crackles when there’s no other sound. Weird stuff grows out of nowhere and sits there daring you to find context. Ancient Mexican cowboys sell fruit to displaced urban black teenagers. The light is fierce and perfect and constant. Things break down and people just board them up and move on with their lives. All my life I’ve seen the desert as more functional, better adjusted, more of an organic whole than the city and the suburbs.
I want to say “don’t change,” Mojave, but I know you will, and I know you’ll always surprise me.
“I was driving for a tow company in L.A. We had official police tow contracts for three cities and it was busy, with lots of freeway work. Towing stuff for cops, AAA stuff, and crashes. You know, the crashes can get gory as hell.”
“There was this one driver named Ralphie Bermudez. Ralphie liked crashes, gory ones. The gorier the better, stuff that nobody wanted to see. He loved that shit.”
“So he’d show up at just about every really splattery gross crash, but he’d stop on the way. And he’d get a dozen jelly donuts and bring them to the scene.”
“He’d walk up eating one, try to hand them out, kinda squeeze them at people. ‘Who wants a jelly donut? Jelly donuts for everyone!’ People would get grossed out, like, c’mon Ralphie. That’s not cool. He’d just keep chuckling.”
“Yeah, that was Ralphie. Jelly donut Ralphie.”
American English is a relaxed, anything-goes affair. Swear all you want, or make up words, or mangle the grammar and it’s fine. There are still a few words and phrases that stop the music and make all the cowboys turn around, like the n-bomb or the c-word, but the sharp corners on those are being worn down too. Euphemisms for death and other bodily functions persist but without serious effect; saying “gravedigger” instead of “funeral director” is an eccentricity and not an abomination.
But there are forbidden words and phrases, just forbidden not to all. Important temple priests, once ordained, must not use these without permission and sacrifice, on pain of severe punishment.
Two of these are “The Superbowl” and “The Olympics.”
Ordinary people are allowed to say “The Olympics are less exciting this year!” or “Come to my Superbowl party.”
However, those who sell, or promote, or even report professionally are forbidden to use these phrases unless they’ve given an expensive sacrifice to the appropriate temple. If a bar has a Superbowl Super Happy Hour, or a snack company suggests a Superbowl Dip Bowl, or a newspaper has a special Olympic Games section, an inquisition of attorneys arrives and begins punishment.
This is why confusing advertisements appear saying things like “Get ready for the Big Game with Triscuits!” or “FOX Sports is your Summer Games coverage HQ!” Brahmin who utter these things without having sacrificed and cleansed are struck down by God’s hands in the form of intellectual property lawyers.
News media are stuck in a theological No Man’s Land where they tussle with the priests. They say “we’re reporting on events! We’re atheists, and you can’t judge us for the holy words!” The guardians of the temple disagree, and blood is shed.
So, a happy Super Sunday to all! Enjoy the gladiators, the entertainments, and the snacks. But spare a thought for those for whom this is holy, and for those persecuted for penetrating a hermetic sanctuary forbidden only to them. Without them, all our commercial pleasures would fade into the shadows to join the lost power of profanity and euphemism.
Be My Blog 