For Christmas, I had pulled off a gift-giving victory, finding and purchasing the first six "Tales of the City" novels on-line with nary a scribble in the margins. Mauricio was thrilled. Armistead Maupin, I assured him, provides the only introduction to local, literary allusions and his writing is marvelous and accessible for non-native English speakers. His protagonist is Mary Ann Singleton, a plucky gal from Cleveland, Ohio who becomes mesmerized by Baghdad-by-the-Bay and moves there suddenly. Throughout the series, she has these "Mary Ann Moments;" San Francisco situations that shatter her sense of manners, reality and expectations. Mary Ann is tested, annoyed, delighted, creeped out and horrified. She finds a world that cannot be contained in any neat box and it frustrates her midlander sense of decorum. Likewise, I've had a strange, San Francisco week in which I quoted the Joker with "This town needs an enema." In no particular order, the ...
It's been a week abuzz with a level of gaiety that surprises even San Francisco. LOOKING, a new program that features gay male characters in Fog City, premiered last Sunday on HBO to mixed reviews. More excitingly, Armistead Maupin returned to the town that made him famous (he now lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico with his partner). Maupin, whom I worship (obviously), is the best-selling writer of the "Tales of the City" series, a string of books that fictionalized life in 1970's San Francisco. He began penning his tales as a serial at The Pacific Sun then The San Francisco Chronicle, two broadsheets where he had worked as a correspondent. Last Sunday, I enjoyed the chance to hear Andrew Sean Greer, author of The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells interview Maupin on his latest (and last) installment of the TOTC series. It's a book called " The Days of Anna Madrigal " and it's delicious. There will be no spoil...
With its temperate clime and ocean-kissing caresses, Hawaii has always called me. Having been raised on the East Coast, the lush archipelago felt remote and fantastical as the only reference I had of Hawaii as a kid was when the Brady Bunch, in 1972, jumped the shark and encountered a lot of bad juju there. Still I appreciated the fact that our youngest U.S. state is the most geographically isolated string of rock on the globe and has a cultural and racial diversity that gives most alpha cities reason to pause. I just could not foresee going to one of the most beautiful places in the world in a state of shock, more like one of suspended belief, following my dad's death. Baldwin Beach on Maui's North Coast Dennis Kilduff died on March 2nd and I flew home the next morning and was thrown into the heady whirlwinds of funeral planning, greeting family, friends and guests and "catching up." As anyone who has been through this before, this ...
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