Sold a “Cheesesteak”; gave away a “Cheesesteak,” “Lollipop,” “Schiz,” and “Most Outrageous.”
The sale was to a 40ish couple – husband and wife, I presume – from Mexico City but 25-years in the US. They operate a commercial cleaning company.
The gift – a package deal – went to my brother’s visiting twins, whom Adele and I last saw at their bar mitzvah about 20-years ago. One lives in Bed-Stuy and consults with hedge funds on where and how to invest. The other lives in Morgantown, having recently completed a tour of duty with an ultra-elite Navy SEAL unit. It would be difficult to say with whom we felt we had less in common going in.
But we had a nice visit. (It was, I remarked to Adele, the most time we had spent with people their age since… Well, when we were that age.) We sat in and outside the café. We drove up and down the North Berkeley hills, into Tilden Park. We walked across campus, down Telegraph, through People’s Park, lunched at Bateau Ivre, and walked back. (8000 steps). They asked questions it was fun to answer and provided answer to questions we asked that were fun to hear.
In other news…
1.) It looks like FOM will run a story of mine soon. When I pitched it, the editor recalled having seen it three-years ago. He had lost it, and I had forgotten I had submitted it. So I sent it again.
2.) It looks like TCJ will be running a piece of mine too. It had asked my opinion of a controversial book and I submitted it. “Fantastic, Bob” I was told. “You’ve still got it.” That registered well – until I envisioned an editorial meeting with “Has Levin lost it?” on the agenda.
3.) Our anthology rolls along: (a) we have figured out how to pay the printer. (All Board members will chip in); (b) contributors have been asked to submit 30-word descriptions of themselves. (A limit determined by how many I needed); and (c) unasked – and with some chutzpah – I line-edited four submissions. Three authors expressed thanks and accepted all or many of my suggestions, (including a woman who first “lost” them). The fourth called me a “jackass.” He told me that people on two continents (Australia and North America) had loved his story without finding a single nit to pick. When I suggested he dump, oh, two-dozen metaphors as quickly – speaking metaphorically – as Friday’s fish on Wednesday, he pronounced them examples of the “lyrical/poetic infusion” he brought to his work.
. An infusion, alas, he had arrived at after abandoning Raymond Chandler’s stylistic influence for Mickey Spillane’s – which strikes me – Australians not withstanding – as a classic inversion of the Buddhist maxim that from garbage comes the rose.
So many Bob Levins on the Internet; I'm the Bob Levin who writes.