Gleanings: Reading Lists, Global Warming, In-n-Out Burger:

• What will Susie Bright not be reading this summer?
• Interview with Davis Guggenheim, director of An Inconvenient Truth (via NMM).
• Dave rounds up a selection of season finales from this year's TV shows. Thankfully almost all my favorite shows are coming back.
• The Yelp Blog is now in the Technorati Top 100. That was fast.
• You know about the hidden In-n_out Burger menu, don't you?

Winning Combination:

Three things I did today when I played hookey with my friend Amy: Visited a chocolate factory, played mini golf and ate an In-and-Out Burger.

Life does not get any sweeter.

Gleanings: Six Feet Under, Sunsets, Michael Pollan and Yawning

• Is the explosion of DIY tools for artistic expression a cultural renaissance or cultural divide? I so have to read this (via Butts in Seats).
• Please yawn very big at yet another argument that the current state of book publishing is damaging to literature (via Arts Journal).
• Top 10 stock photography cliche's. This is hilarious. I'd also throw in the Sunset over a City to indicate that we-can-breathe-easy-after-a-heavy-day-of-commerce (via Kottke.org).
• Great interview with MIchael Pollan at Powells.com.
• If you haven't seen the series finale of Six Feet Under, it will knock you on your ass.

Six Years:

Six years ago today, on a brisk, bright day in Austin, TX, I bordered a plane bound for California. The next day, my youngest brother Daniel arrived and met me at the corner of Taylor and Lombard Streets in the North Beach neighborhood of San Francisco. My possessions arrived later that afternoon. We waited for then at the café across the street, eating paninis and drumming our fingers. That evening, we took a break from lifting boxes to take a bike ride down to Crissy Field, where we stopped and ran, fully clothed, in the freezing waters of San Francisco Bay. “Kevin, you live here now,” my brother said.

Six years. Longer than I’ve lived anywhere since leaving home at 18. In that time over half of my initial friends have moved away. I’ve changed jobs 4 times and apartments once. I’ve lost favorite places and gained a cat. I’ve had frustration, pain, loneliness, and terrible loss. One day the earth will rumble something terrible here and make me wonder the deepest kind of why. Why am I still here?

And yet I will stay.

I will stay because I have collapsed to my knees and thanked God for the overwhelming natural beauty of this place. I will stay because few places I have been value literature, art, culture and human creative achievement the way this place does. I will stay because I believe there are few cities in the world where the citizens are constantly working towards utopia, knowing it is impossible and yet trying anyway. I will stay because despite the soaring prices, the cramped quarters, the self-importance and the foolish rejection of the future, San Francisco feels like where I belong. It feels like home.

I’m not going to say I’ll be here forever because, if the last few months have shown me anything, I know now that the only constant is change. One day I may awaken and find that my long term relationship with San Francisco has done all it can and that we’ve grown apart. Then I will go.

For now though, I look at the past six years as the best of my life. The people who’ve contributed to that know who they are. The city, well, I hope she knows. I hope she knows, that despite how on somedays I want to rage and kick and scream at her narrow, pigheaded ways, that on most others, when I turn off the lights, feed Faygo and climb into bed, I thank her for bringing me here, for taking care of me and helping me to grow.

So happy anniversary San Francisco, from a blessed adopted son. Us Jews don’t believe in heaven but I sure like what one of this city's wisest men had to say about it.

“If I go to heaven, I'll probably do what every San Franciscan does. I'll look around and say, "'It ain't bad, but it ain't San Francisco..”

--Herb Caen.

Weekly Roundup:

Enron guilty. 'Akeelah' rocks. The New Yorker plans its digital facelift. Another look at the indies v. chains bookstore debate and I celebrate an anniversary.

Gleanings: The New Yorker, Petite Sizes, and Paul Bettany.

• The New Yorker will be getting a digital facelift says its editor in this interview. Eager to see how that turns out.
• Great piece by Paul Collins about bookselling. Adds some much needed nuance to the whole indies v. chains debate.
• The NYT reports that petite sizes are vanishing from department stores. I cannot for the life of me understand why, with Fed-Ex, just in time manufacturing and a tape measure, a clothes shopper couldn't be fitted for any size and have it shipped to them in 48 hours. A huge missed opportunity?
• This person was NOT an intern anywhere I ever worked (via NMM).
• Aren't we a little early on for Paul Bettany to have a fame audit?

(Way More Than) One Sentence Movie Reviews: "Akeelah and the Bee":

Akeelah and the Bee (2006):

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
We ask ourselves, who am I to be - brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be?
We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.
As we let our own light shine,
we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same."

---Marianne Williamson

What a day for birthdays!

Rachel Carson, Dashiell Hammett, Tony Hillerman, John Barth, Julia Ward Howe, and John Cheever, all on May 27th. Wowee. (via The Writer's Almanac).

Reasons Why This Saturday Was the Bestest Day Ever:

1. Used my Saturday morning writing group to start the proposal for my second book.

2. Went to my martial arts training class at Crissy Field and broke a board with my bare hand.

3. Stopped in on my friends Ted and Molly.

4. Browsed at Christopher's Books, read a magazine at Farley's and had dinner at Goat Hill Pizza.

5. Saw Akeelah and the Bee, one of the best movies of the year, and left the theatre feeling on top of the world.

6. Slept like a baby.

Gleanings: The Clintons, The Mob goes WiFi and an Impending Oprah v Ice Cube Smackdown!

• I've been meaning to read this piece about the Clinton's marriage because, er, it might explain a lot.
• Documentary Films.net, a blog about documentaries. Long overdue (via Steve Rhodes).
• Powells.com is now offering a set of Author Trading Cards with any purchase. I have some. They rock.
• I have no idea if Oprah is dissing Ice Cube but that's a debate I'd buy a ticket to (via LHB)
• WiFi at this conference provided by the local mafia, er, the D.C. Convention Center. I was there, man. Have you ever seen anything like this? WiFi offered for a day for what a month's worth would cost you at home?
• I heard about Deborah Eisenberg's new short story collection Twilight of the Superheroes on Bookworm. It sounds fantastic which means I'll be be buying it in hardcover when I shouldn't be.