Join myself and others as we read our awful teenage journal entries to a crowd of strangers. I’ve done two different pieces before, (one is in the new book, Mortified: Love is a Battlefield). I have hundreds of pages of journal entries to choose from and this show will have new stuff - on the evils of drugs and drinking, and the art world? I had some odd rants when I was in high school. Get tickets early, Mortified sells out fast.

WHEN: Wednesday, May 14, 2008
TIME: 8:00 PM
VENUE: King King
ADDRESS: 6555 Hollywood Blvd., 90028
COST: $10 adv; $15 door

TICKETS:
By Web: GetMortified.com By Phone: 877-238-5596

For some reason when I agreed to let Dave publish my old journal entries in his new Mortified book I didn’t accept that people would read the book. People I know. People I work with. People who will be surprised I wrote about them. And people upset that I didn’t write about them.

Oh well, too late now. At least my friend GJ’s piece is raunchier. (I never describe a partner’s ass as “an inverted heart that my dick will make into a spade.”)

If you want to see me recite my section live, I’ll be doing it at the Doomed Valentines Mortified show in LA next month, Feb 14, 8 PM. Get tickets here, it always sells out.  

The Fight Club author just started touring to promote his new novel, Rant, but he’s also promoting books he didn’t write–like, mine. In San Francisco earlier this week, he described Obscene Interiors as, “the funniest, dirtiest, book I have seen in years,” then gave out coppies durring the Q&A. (He’s also giving away Monica Drake’s debut novel, Clown Girl, which I haven’t yet read.) I never thought my book was that dirty, I mean, it’s not like I wrote about guys getting their intestines sucked out through their anus while masturbating in a hot tub.

Join me Monday, May 9th at Vroman’s Bookstore, 695 E. Colorado Blvd. Pasadena CA 91101 for his only planned LA appearance. There’s bonus prizes if you come wearing a a wedding dress (males and females), it’s related to the novel somehow. His other book tour dates are here.

And online translation of their description of my appearance reads:

INTERVIEW - INTERIEURS OBSCENES: You never never tested a strange attraction for the decorations of films X or photographs of bottom amateur. You are not alone any more: Justin Jorgensen, a young Californian artist, hides the bodies stripped to propose these interiors banals or straightforwardly ugly. He then devotes to a criticism way “house and unslung decoration”. The whole is connected in charming a small work simply entitled: Obscene Interiors.

I have a piece about Playboy in the gay SoCal rag, Frontiers. (Sadly, the bits about Hef’s bisexual experimentation and my suggestion for a jack-off party were cut.)

And the graphic design mag, HOW, said some very nice things about my “really, really adult-themed book,” Obscene Interiors.

Muslims aren’t supposed to eat pork, but apparently viewing pork in cartoon form is also forbidden in the Middle East. I assume this means Dr. Seuss’s Green Eggs and Ham is out too. Charlotte’s Web? Babe? From QatarLiving.com.

The 1976 Norman Bridwell classic revisited.

I found it on this blog. ART FORUM BERLIN tells me the artist is Fred Eerdekens, and he’s represented by Spencer Brownstone Gallery, NY.

This memoir of new motherhood woudn’t be something I’d ever expect to pick up, but I did. Why? Because the author read early versions of it in my writing group, and her work frequntly left us in tears - usually from laughing. Not that it has many sad moments, but as any new mom knows, the whole deal arrives swaddled in emotion. All around it’s a charming read.
From my Amazon review: “How does one resolve a decision your heart knows is right, but which threatens the rest of your being? Here, Brett knows having a husband, child, and family was the right choice, but she’d like a second opinion. What follows is a story of a woman searching for the answer she knows it out there. The answer that is, “yes. Yes. Yes!”

Hear her read the beginging here.

In the Sept 06 issue of Blackbook, Fight Club author, Chuck Palahniuk, lists his top 10 book picks over the past 10 years. My collection of online male personal ads, Obscene Interiors, takes 2004. And now I’m taking the rest of the day off to bask in the glow of his approval.

Earlier: Fight Club Author Disappointed

Here’s what’s happening: reading The People of Paper and enjoy feeling where certain names were punched out of the pages, also, Joan Didion’s new book, the color of which reminds me of Tiffany’s. Just finished: How We Are Hungry, Another Bullshit Night in Suck City, Less than Zero, then rented the movie­good God what the hell was that? Also finished: The Contortionists Handbook (thanks Steve), The Lone Surfer of Montana, Kansas­got it signed by Davey himself at a Found event.) Waiting in the queue: Survivor by Chuck Palahniuk (it’s the only one I haven’t read yet) and a pile of the more elaborately bound McSweeney’s.

Oh and this past summer I saw a pre-apologetic James Frey at a not packed Vroman’s in Pasadena, gave him a copy of Obscene Interiors, and had him sign both his books for my brother (collectors items now?). He swore frequently and read an excerpt from his book almost as if it were a chore. He said his next book will be a novel set in LA about a man who thinks he’s Jesus. Best of luck with that.

Also, I’m working on a GRAMMY related project, waiting and waiting to hear if I have new book, and fretting about how I’m not in Disney World to see the new Expedition Everest ride, it’s like the Materhorn only bigger and with a diferent yeti.

From the Kansas City Star last week:

“You have no idea what it is like to constantly disappoint people. You see it the moment you meet them. You see in their eyes that they expected something so entirely different, and here they are meeting you.”

Chuck Palahniuk chuckles as he says this, steering his pickup down Highway 14 just on the Washington side of the Columbia River. He’s saying you can’t judge an author by his books.

Come to think of it, he’s wearing a black T-shirt that says “Disappointed” in Disney-style script.

Palahniuk (pronounced “paula-nick”) loves the irony of this…

That would be my Disappointed shirt. I gave Chuck one last year after he complimented me on mine at a “Haunted” reading.