City of Roses is a serialized epic firmly set in Portland, Oregon: a wicked concoction of urban pastoral and incantatory fantastic, where a grocers’ warehouse might become a palace, and an antique bank is hidden beneath a department store.
I think “solidarity” is what Freaky Tales would call it, a movie which, believe it or not, I’m actually going to talk about. But again: I’ve given myself permission to write the longest essay anyone will write about Freaky Tales, as an exercise, experiment, statement, and/or self-indulgence; I like writing, and I am enjoying writing this, so I am. But the more I write, the more that length gives permission to anyone who doesn’t want to read it—even encourages them—to close the browser and move on. You’re not stuck with me, after all, the way you have no choice but to see a mural as you drive past it each day. You can go find something you like better and leave me to my fun.
A sharp eye might’ve noticed some changes to the various outlets listed on the Books page, as other places where: Spectator Books in Oakland has been added, there’s a selection of zines on the shelves there now, so if you find yourself on that side of the Bay, head on over, say hi; and but also, Smashwords has been removed.
Boots Riley
So for me, the question isn’t “Is the public ready?” I start from: the public already knows things are messed up. The public is more open than we’re told. The question I ask myself is: how do I move people emotionally towards imagining something they can do? Not “the” solution, but a solution—something that shifts them from “It’s all hopeless” to “Maybe we can try this.” That’s what I’m after.
Miyazawa Iori
It’s true that I don’t want to say anything... I think there’s this mutual understanding among yuri fans, “don’t talk about yuri, make yuri.” If I accidentally blurt something out, it’ll provoke a flame war, and I don’t want to have what I say here spread around with a totally different meaning. And if it does, I’ll have to slice you all in half. I’ll be talking today with these feelings in mind.
The Last of the International Harvesters, say letters greenly sprayed across a sheet that’s pinned to the beige and olive side of it, channeled like siding, studded with grids and hatches for outlets, hookups, compartments, and wide windows of flimsy sliding glass. Tires of it lost in the grass gown up about them. The scrub that blurs the line between field and copse has crept out over the bumper of it, seized hold of the radiator grille, stretched up to the dully staring headlights, reflectors pitted by rust. Yellow-spined magazines can be seen through dust-streaked windshields, sloppily stacked in the gap between dashboard and curtains. There by it a small enough fire burns, haphazardly contained, licking an untidy pile of sticks in a scorched splotch of grass. She’s bent over it, poking the flames with a crooked stick, light of them slipping red and gold a-sliding cross the blankly opaque lenses of her heavy spectacles.
“Girl’s in it, you know,” says the man sat in one of the lawn chairs by the fire. “You saw how she was with them boys. She ain’t just in it, she’s all the way up in it,” waving a paper-wrapped bottle for emphasis, “nothing but respect.”
“Up in what?” says the other man, leaned against the fender of a hulking pickup parked close by the stranded motorcoach. “What you got going on, Ma?” The dome light in the cab up behind him’s dimly shining, and a song is playing within, faintly chugging bass and tinny soaring horns, than the first time you placed those stale smooth cigarette lips to my mouth.
“Shut that noise off,” she rasps, but not unkindly, poking the fire again. He steps up on the running board of the pickup, reaches in through the open window. The song snaps off mid-swell. “Ma?” he says, stepping down. A cat yowls somewhere back that way, she stiffens, straightens, “That was Hot Soup,” she says, holding up a hand. “Somebody’s coming.”
