He introduces it as a “where Obama is leading us,” in “traditional America vs. secular progressive America”. What is scary about SF? We’re so despicably tolerant. We get to know our homeless. We talk about sex, and we condone marijuana. Be afraid, be very afraid.

Bill O’Reilly Smear from Huffington Post.

Great quotes that have been getting attention on some discussion groups:

“You wouldn’t go to the Presidio at night, I wouldn’t” - Bill
“Every city has a tenderloin, and North Beach is San Francisco’s” - Bill
“Lots of dopes everywhere. Those clinics are everywhere.” - Bill

Today and tomorrow, Stacey’s Books is continuing their semi-annual License to Save for Literary License holders (it’s the store card). That’s 20% off anything in stock except periodicals. Now’s your chance to stock up on those Best American anthologies at a discount!

No book events (to my knowledge) are going on tonight.

But tomorrow November 8th is a big day:

First, Kathi Kamen Goldmark will be honored as the recipient of the 2008 Women’s National Book Association Award at the Century Club of San Francisco, in an event from 4:30 to 6:30 PM. Tickets or RSVP (for members) here. Amy Tan will be a guest speaker.

Kemble Scott says of Ms. Goldmark:

It would be tough to find a person who’s contributed more to the local literary scene. Kathi Kamen Goldmark helped launch Litquake, Book Group Expo, and The Rock Bottom Remainders - and her work as a literary escort means she has some of the best author anecdotes in publishing. She’s an accomplished writer and musician herself, making her one of the jewels in the Bay Area’s literary crown. Bravo!

Another event Saturday is at 7:00 PM at Book Bay Fort Mason (Building C). The San Francisco International Poetry Festival presents Vietnamese Poets of the Diaspora. Free event.

Your third option is something involving a little more booze and perversity. If that’s your thing, head out to the Make Out Room (22nd at Mission, don’t act like you’ve never been there) at 7:30 PM for Writers in Drag, featuring Michelle Tea, Austin Grossman, Stephen Elliott, Annalee Newitz and Jaime Cortez. The doorkeepers will exact a teensy-tiny cover charge of $3 to $5.

Sunday the 9th at 3 PM, Glen Park’s Bird & Beckett features Jeff Kaliss discussing his book I Want To Take you Higher: The Life and Times of Sly and the Family Stone. B&B owner Eric says: “Author Jeff Kaliss is a local hero, and for his book he scored the first face-to-face interview Sly has granted in 20 years! He even got Sly to write the intro and George Clinton to write the preface! Don’t miss this one!”

Funny thing, Sly’s been in the news lately. (Thanks for that item, Allan!)

Monday, November 10th has its own slate of literary events to watch out for, including Alison Bechdel (author of Dykes to Watch Out For) at the Booksmith on Haight at 7:30 PM.

Also, Lambda Literary Award finalist Sarah Schulman, author most recently of The Child, will appear at 7:30 at Books Inc. in the Castro.

Note: the John Hodgman/Dave Eggers event at the Herbst Monday night is already sold out, and I’ve been advised that rush tickets are not likely to become available for this one, considering the great fame of both authors. But if you’re a total Hodgman nut, fear not:

John Hodgman will make his next appearance on Tuesday night the 11th at 7:00 PM, at Book Passage in Corte Madera, which is just over the Golden Gate Bridge, at 51 Tamal Vista Blvd. The event is free, and if you show up early enough, you’re likely to get a good seat.

Wednesday the 12th at 7:00 PM, City Lights brings Charles Robinson & Al Young, who offer Jazz Idiom, a book of photography by Robinson and commentary by Young. Knowing these two, it’s bound to be a cool night, and it looks like a beautiful, fun book.

There are so many great events next Thursday and Friday, I’ll have to prepare a special edition of the Word Nerd early next week. Til then!

Last night some 2,000 people came out to City Hall to hold a candlelight vigil and protest the passage of Proposition 8. Susie Cagle at Curbed predicts this is just the beginning, and she’s right. You can take part in the next major protest this Friday. Word here. The plan is to meet above the Civic Center BART station (Market and 7th) at 5:30 PM, then march down Market street to Castro Street, down to 18th, and then back along 18th to Mission Dolores Park. The bigger the turnout, the better.

Earlier today whilst sitting around at the Web 2.0 Summit Scott from Laughing Squid, Xeni from BoingBoingTV, Tim from NextNewNetworks and I realized we’re rarely all in the same city at the same time and that seemed like a damn good excuse to invite people to join us in some kind of bar wherein people might seize the opportunity to get their drink on. So we made it official - Tonight from 8PM until the ever popular question mark, we’ll be hanging out at Lucky 13. If you are around and want to join us, please do. Here’s the details. Woot!

Just came to my attention that we were mentioned in N Judah Chronicle’s, Greg’s note on “1 to 1 Marketing: How I’m Voting for David Chiu,” the effectiveness of 1-to-1 marketing, vs. newspapers/ads/smears/robocalls:

But because I heard about David’s campaign from people I know and whose judgment I trust, such as my friend Stan (the quizmaster at the Blackthorn’s trivia Mondays), and my friend Anna at Metblogs (who lives in the district), their opinions mattered more to me in the end than what some ad said or what Chris Daly’s shifty junk mail says.

So nice that Greg clicked back to here, and he has helped me numerous times with complicated MUNI props, but more importantly, I like this trend of us showing our work. While in line at City Hall today, getting ready to vote, I talked to two women. One was from the Mission, another from Silver Terrace. They both were well read and interested in the issues in their district. Both had done legwork before voting. One had invited friends whose opinions she respected, over for dinner to go through the propositions. The other created a spreadsheet and listed all of the interesting information she researched online into a large matrix. So decide for yourselves, share your work if you want (my cheatsheet is here), but be knowledgeable! Let’s not let stupid win again.

Tomorrow is Saturday, November 1st, and lots of things are happening that day alone:

First, NaNoWriMo begins. Sharpen your pencils, rev up your laptops, and get ready to create a work of highly dubious quality. Write-ins are being planned all over the city right now: join up on NaNoWriMo and register with the San Francisco cohort on the forums to receive updates. The truly ambitious and impatient can even begin tonight at midnight, before changing out of the costume, or even sobering up much. Just think: an army of inebriated, sexy nurses and vampires, typing their first lines. Yes.

Next up, the Alternative Press Expo is open at the Concourse the whole weekend, from 11-7 Saturday and 11-6 Sunday. This year’s Expo features comic-book superstar Chris Ware. His latest offering, Acme Novelty Library #19, has just been printed up by the truckload, and Ware plans to sign at least a goodly handful of them at the Drawn and Quarterly booth from 4-6 Saturday. On Sunday from 12:30-1:30, he’s got the spotlight panel, in conversation with Eli Horowitz (AKA the “other” McSweeney’s guy), with more signing of Novelties to follow.

After that (as we previously reported), the Cartoon Art Museum is hosting a reading at 8:00 PM. It features Jesse Reklaw (of Slow Wave fame) and many others. Go here for details.

On Sunday, November 2nd, there’s the aforementioned Chris Ware panel at the Alternative Press Expo.

Not much happening Monday, November 3rd, apart from a poetry reading at 7:00 PM by Genine Lentine and Brian Teare, followed by an open mic at Bird & Beckett in Glen Park.

Tuesday, November 4th is ELECTION DAY. So cast your ballot before doing anything else. But in the evening, if you’re not absolutely glued to the TV — or figure the votes’ll be counted whether you’re watching or not — you might head over to Borderlands Books at 7:00 PM and meet up with Ann and Jeff Vandermeer, who edited the smart anthology Steampunk, just out from Tachyon Publications. The question on the table: Steampunk: What Is It?

Wednesday, November 5th brings Michelle Tea’s monthly Radar Reading series at 6 PM at Main Library, Lower Level, in the Latino/Hispanic Community Meeting Room. This month features Stephanie Kuehart, Pilou Miller, Danny el Lute Levesque and Marriage. You don’t need a link from me: just go.

Finally, on Thursday, November 6th at 6:00 PM, the Mechanic’s Institute presents Jonathan Hennessey, whose graphic novel, The United States Constitution, explains just how the dag-blasted thing is supposed to work. With pictures! For We, the Laggards in the Back Row. Details here; free to members, $12 to the public.

[Thanks to Kemble Scott, Borderlands, and D&Q.]

In 1999, Chris Baty had the harebrained idea to write an entire novel in a single month. The reasoning was simple: if you could write about seven double-spaced pages a day, for thirty days, you’d end up with about 215 pages. And how hard could that be?

Baty told all his friends and enemies about his plan, and somehow, he got twenty other people to join him on the journey. They had a lot of fun and talked about doing it the next year, in November (”to more fully take advantage of the miserable weather,” as he writes in this detailed history). And that is really where the whole thing should have ended.

Except, it didn’t. The next year, when Baty enlisted his friends, they enlisted theirs, and 140 people signed up for the ride. The same kind of thing happened the next year. Except: instead of 140 people, five thousand people signed up, overwhelming Baty and those who had agreed to help him manually process the signups. (They learned how to automate things in a hurry.) And those numbers have grown larger every year: last time around, there were more than 100,000 participants, and there’s no reason to expect any fewer this time. In fact, the contest has attracted so many participants that Baty and his colleagues have been able to build an ambitious nonprofit organization around it: the Oakland-based Office of Letters and Light. In addition to NaNoWriMo, the organization sponsors a script-writing event and a youth-oriented version of each contest.

Tens of thousands of people have met the basic challenge — technically, you must tell a complete story in at least 50,000 words to win — but more than two dozen of those winners have gone on to achieve something a little tricker: publication of their manuscripts by commercial publishers. Unbelievably, one of those, Sara Gruen, wrote a book that actually became a New York Times #1 Best Seller (after much revision, I’m sure): Water For Elephants.

However, the best thing about NaNoWriMo is that it’s not about publication; it’s about being creative and having as much fun as possible. And that can mean getting to know your fellow “novelers.” If you sign up on the website to participate, you’ll have access to the regional forums, where people are already planning “write-ins” (group writing sessions) all over San Francisco and the East Bay. Maybe I’ll see you at one of them.

The contest begins Saturday, November 1st, and participation is free. Happy noveling!

In a Dream, which screens at SF DocFest over the next few days (details below), is a film about the mosaic artist Isaiah Zagar, who has become an icon in South Philadelphia for the massive scale and extent of the mosaics he has created there. They include, by his description, about “a hundred murals” and “seven buildings, top to bottom, inside and out.” His best-known work is Philadelphia’s Magic Gardens, which represents the transformation of two derelict buildings into a labyrinthine complex that covers half a city block with winding mosaic-covered passageways and sculptures.

Zagar’s mosaics are bright, colorful, and complex, rich with a celebratory spirit towards physicality and sensuality. But the surface cheerfulness of these mosaics belies the deeper obsession and the narcissism that makes such vast, intricate works possible in the first place, and Jeremiah Zagar — the director of the film and the artist’s younger son — uncovers that darkness here with unrelenting economy. All the father’s past secrets rapidly come out in the open, culminating when one of his most shameful episodes plays out right in front of the camera: his self-centered pursuit of “passion” with his assistant, which ends with a brief separation from his wife Julia, right when their oldest son is separated from his own wife and having drug problems.

Jeremiah describes the moment: “I went home to film my parents as they picked my brother up from rehab. The stress from the situation boiled over, and my father suddenly admitted [the affair] to my mother and me … that same night, my parents separated for the first time in 43 years.” Isaiah’s admission is made directly into the camera, and it’s a moment of remarkable drama. Amazingly, Jeremiah retains his composure — he coughs and the handheld camera shakes for an instant, but that is all — and he goes on to capture every instant of what ensues. “I shot 16 hours that day and hated myself for every minute of it,” he writes. Fortunately, Isaiah realizes he has made a big mistake quickly enough. Soon afterward, he goes to stay with his assistant and, as he confesses, “within minutes, my whole being started to rebel. My whole being.”

In the end, he reconciles with Julia, and the film has a brief epilogue, highly effective in its simplicity, that shows how, after a time of healing, the two simply picked up their life together and continued on into the next adventure.

For all the darkness that Jeremiah reveals, it’s an affectionate film. He shot his footage over the course of seven years, filming “whenever something significant happened,” and he describes the result like this: “what started as an exploration of my father’s life has exposed the secrets of our entire family. But I don’t think that’s a bad thing. … We know now how imperfect we really are, but also how much we need and love each other.”

The film is highly recommended. In a Dream screens at the Roxie this Sunday, October 26th at 2:45 PM, and Tuesday, October 28th at 9:30 PM. It will also screen at the Shattuck next Sunday, November 2nd at 2:45 PM.

Saturday October 25th, Modern Times Bookstore will have its 37th birthday party at 3:00 PM. Food and fun times for all. [via Mission Mission]

Then at 7:30 PM, the Booksmith on Haight will present Christian Lander, who is promoting Stuff White People Like; a category that presumably includes his book.

Monday the 27th, the Commonwealth Club, 6 PM: Frank Rich, Michael Tomasky, Thomas Powers, Martin Kettle & Bob Silvers will talk politics, live on stage. If you just can’t wean yourself from the New York Times Opinion Pages, you won’t want to miss this.

But if you’ve had enough opinion for the moment, go see David Sedaris read at the opera house instead, at 8:00 PM. Tickets here. His last book was more somber than usual, but still pretty damn funny.

Tuesday the 28th at 7:00 PM, Books Inc. in Opera Plaza (601 Van Ness) presents poet Mari L’Esperance, winner of the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry, reading from her collection The Darkened Temple.

On Wednesday the 29th, go to Stacey’s on your lunch break at 12:30 PM, and hear Antonia Juhasz read from her book, The Tyranny of Oil: The World’s Most Powerful Industry, and What We Must Do to Stop It.

Finally, on Thursday the 30th, you might join me in North Beach and hear the world-famous DJ Spooky at City Lights at 7 PM. He’ll read from and discuss the book he edited, Sound Unbound: Sampling Digital Music and Culture. Said book includes a “groundbreaking mix CD,” according to the publisher’s description, which features “Nam Jun Paik, the Dada Movement, John Cage, Sonic Youth, and many other examples of avant-garde music. Most of the CD’s content comes from the archives of Sub Rosa, a legendary record label that has been the benchmark for archival sounds since the beginnings of electronic music.” The book also features an introduction by Steve Reich and a foreword by Cory Doctorow, which might give you an idea of the contents. (Awful pun intended!)

As for Friday October 31st — wait a minute! That’s Halloween! What the hell are you doing with a book in your lap? Go to a party already, you anti-social bookworm!

[Unless otherwise noted above, all events via Kemble Scott.]

[Image courtesy Sony Pictures.]

Charlie Kaufman is now well-known as the writer of Being John Malkovich and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, but he may soon be better known as the writer-director of Synecdoche, New York (say it out loud: sih-NECK-duh-kee). At least that’s the opinion of Curbed SF blogger Jimmy Stamp, who interviewed Kaufman a short while back for his architecture blog, LifeWithoutBuildings.net. Describing the film as “sublime” and “a piece of work so beautiful, yet so incredibly terrifying that it becomes even more beautiful,” he goes on to liken it to “the ocean seen from the edge of a cliff.” It’s about Caden Cotard (played by Philip Seymour Hoffman), a 40-year-old local theater director in Schenectady, New York (say it out loud: skuh-NECK-tuh-dee) whose marriage and health are rapidly deteriorating. He fears that he will die before accomplishing anything important in his life. But then! He receives a MacArthur Grant, and uses the money to create a massive theater piece — an all-consuming Great Work that will rival life itself in its vastness, complexity, and heartbreaking truth.

Not surprisingly, the interview takes its most interesting turn when they begin discussing the architectural aspects of Kaufman’s work:

Stamp: In your movies, but especially in this one I think, there are these broader architectural and spatial ideas but then you also have these smaller set pieces—the burning house in Synecdoche, the 7 1/2 floor in Malkovich, the Montauk house in Eternal Sunshine. Are these just designed to convey a sense of place, or a mood, or do you always intend them to have deeper, metaphorical meaning?

Kaufman: Yeah. It’s all of that. I find myself really interested in spaces, actually. I tend to think about environment early on in writing. I’m doing it now, actually. I find myself going back to houses or buildings as environments environments for my stories — you know, odd buildings or very specific types of spaces. I don’t know why… a Jungian scholar was in here talking about houses being representations of the self. I think that’s what it was, anyway… you know, I tend to write intuitively and I don’t really know why I do certain things, but they resonate or they feel funny or they feel sad. Um, you know, I have my ideas about why Hazel lives in that house but I don’t really explain that because I want people to be able to bring their own metaphor to the experience. That’s kind of the biggest goal I have — to put something out there and let people individually interact with it. So I try not to say “this is what it means” or “this is not what it means” or “this is what it means to me.”

And check this out from later on:

Stamp: In [Paul Auster's] book, The Music of Chance, this eccentric millionaire hobbyist builds a model of what he calls ‘The City of the World.’ It’s a condensed depiction of his entire life that includes all the important places and pivotal events that made him the man he is— including the construction of the model. So in the model, he’s building himself building the model…

Kaufman: Wow. That sounds great, but I haven’t read that. It does remind me of an idea I had though. I wanted to build a casino in Las Vegas called Las Vegas, Las Vegas. Like the idea of Paris, Las Vegas (the real life casino) is that you don’t have to actually go there — their campaign is something like ‘all the best of Paris without the French people.’ So then (with Las Vegas, Las Vegas,) there’s the idea that you don’t actually have to go to Paris, Las Vegas either because there’s a replica of all of Vegas—including Paris, Las Vegas—within this other casino. So you get even more safe by not having to go out into the strip at all. I thought that would be a pretty successful resort.

Say, aren’t they already planning to do something like that in Dubai?

Anyway. Full interview here; provoked by the trailer for the film, Stamp also wrote this interesting article back in September, on the notion of infinitely-repeating cities.

Synecdoche, New York opens November 7th at the Embarcadero, the Shattuck, and the Piedmont.