Now I live two blocks away, one block off the Haight, and my apartment complex has this awesome, fancy doorbell system that calls my cell phone to buzz open the lobby door. When I see the right number calling, I answer the call, press “9″ and in goes the delivery man. It works great.

So a few days ago I had my iPhone in the back pocket of my jeans and, oh!, it fell in a coffee shop toilet when I sat down to pee. After a couple days of the rice trick failure, I surrendered myself to fate and late last night I ordered a refurbished iPhone from AT&T.

Just over 12 hours later it dawns on me: I need a cell phone if I’m going to buzz in the delivery of a cell phone.

Seems I’ve failed to embed it. Nor link it for that matter. Nevermind. It isn’t that good. Don’t take up your time.

Behind the scenes fun: I sewed all the bracelets/hairpieces the night before, as well as hand painted the shoes. To get the leotards I went to a magical warehouse called Danny’s Warehouse where everything is 10 dollars and dug through bins that are taller than I am, looking for six matching leotards. I couldn’t find the kinds of judges outfits that I wanted, so John drove me to Walmart at midnight the night before. We ate Sonic, it was freezing cold in Lancaster. By the time I arrived on set the next day I’d slept two hours out of the past thirty-five.  It was a beautiful shoot.

Carole Corlew.

I know a guy from Ohio who worked as a long-haul trucker for a good while after high school. Then he did other things and we wound up working at a library together and after a time he became a big wheel at the MacArthur Foundation.

He claims to have met Patty Hearst when she was on the lam, and he told me that she stole his drugs, but I know he was just spoofing me.

9:35a – “Did you listen to that Adventure episode of This American Life? It was pretty phoned in, in my opinion.”

I do not look up, I say: “It’s just another material posession.”

She laughs brightly and I sign my name twenty times or more.

I suppose you’re right, but from my experience, writing a novel is like having sex with a gorilla. You ain’t done till the gorilla’s done. You might think, Well, when I’m done, I’ll be done. But you’re not done.The gorilla’s still going.

“Well,” he replied, “there’s an interesting story behind that. Edward I was king at the time the regions were all laid out, and he gave them their names. But he suffered from a terrible neurological condition that prevented him from turning to the north. And because he was the king, nobody wanted to say, ‘King, you’re forgetting one of the cardinal directions’.”