NOT COMFORTABLY READABLE: TWO AGAINST LITERATURE TOUR DIARY PT. 1

Our book Quantum Criminals: Ramblers, Wild Gamblers and other Sole Survivors from the Songs of Steely Dan is out and it seems like everybody is digging it except bold dissenters Bev and Dennis:

We— genius painter Joan LeMay and me, the riff-happy former Weekend Update anchor and star of 1996’s Tales From the Crypt: Bordello of Blood— are “on tour” on and off for the next few weeks. If you’re seeing this on or before May 31 and you’re in the greater L.A. area we will be at Skylight Books on Vermont Ave in Los Feliz this Wednesday night, with the great Matthew Specktor, author of a fantastic book about Los Angeles and doomed artistes from Ashby to Zevon:

Come forth and sing with us.

Here is a flier that tells you what I just told you, but adds Joan's beautiful portrait of the Dread Moray Eel:

On June 7 Joan will be showing prints of the Quantum Criminals paintings at Photobookcafe in Shoreditch, London UK; RSVP here to meet the Squonk.

On July 1 at 3PM we will be in Chicago talking to Jessica Hopper at Seminary Co-Op, and then I will join my fellow dads at the Hold Steady/Mountain Goats/Dillinger 4 show at the Salt Shed. San Francisco/Portland/Seattle dates at the end of July.

I apologize to Bev and Dennis who have every right to stand athwart the tide of public opinion when it comes to Quantum Criminals. I also apologize for the continuity problems I created on Bordello of Blood due to my "constant improvisation and refusal to show up on set," okay, babe?

Here are some notes on how New York was.

5/22

Early alarm for early flight. Got ready fast and tried to meditate in the time remaining. Halfway through, soft head butts and insistent yowls from Dolly Parton, the Cat Who Does Not Care About Your Book Tour.

Grateful to Uber driver Shakira for whipping us out of the way when some jerk jerked into our lane to avoid a stopped truck. (Felt the car we didn’t hit slide by me— if Shakira’d been a little less awake he’d have gone through us like paper.)

Sped up techno “Total Eclipse of the Heart” playing in security line. A song my kid thinks is a banger. Or they’re 13 and have internalized irony to the point that anything can be a banger.

Grateful to the guy who pointed out that I’d dropped my T5 while rearranging carryon stuff at the gate. Another disaster averted, especially considering how much more expensive these things have gotten since Jenn bought me one for my birthday ten years ago. Need to remember to actually use it on this trip.

Work, in cramped plane seat, like chimp w/ a laptop. Checked into Aloft room with view of the neighboring apartment building’s ALL NIGHT DOG PARK, a nice dopamine bonus.

Wrote this for an email interview I didn’t finish: “the elliptical quality of SD lyrics and the elliptical experience of reading superhero comics in the ‘80s when you were at the mercy of whatever was on the rack when you got to buy new comics & were often reading part 8 of a 10 part storyline…there was always exposition about Wolverine’s claws or w/e but you still had to fill in the gaps, and the sense of a story beyond the edges of this one was part of the experience, even if you didn’t ever get to read the rest. & how the one experience prepared me for the other.”

And then, in parens: “editors want hand-holding. I don’t know if audiences do.”

I already forget the question this was supposed to be the answer to.

5/23

Technically “pub day” for Quantum Criminals even though people who preordered have had it for weeks.

46 for 5 days now and I never know when I’m going to rise and look in the mirror and see Rainer Werner Fassbinder looking back. Shook it off. Meditated & then walked the BK waterfront looking at the Manhattan skyline, listening to Bob James’ version of “Pure Imagination” trying to hot-wire a Significant New York Day feeling. It works. Bob's whole BJ4 album is phenomenal Manhattan-montage music, plus you get the sample Large Professor used on Masta Ace's "N.Y. Confidential."

I sit and compose a long caption for the obligatory pub-day Insta post which always feels self-valedictory like an Oscar speech even though the point is to thank other people.

I owe people actual work that I’m not going to look at until I get home. Trying to remember previous Significant New York Days and that in retrospect none of the time spent on those days worrying about some deadline was of value (I was being chased for copy at my wedding.)

Writing on a shaded bench. Making myself laugh by saying “Shaded bench” and “sativa headache” in a Sean Connery voice. Text these jokes to Big Hit Show Colin.

Met Joan for a lunch at Junior’s that marks the first time we’ve ever knowingly been in the same room after almost two decades of professional acquaintance and a couple years of working on this book together.

Went back to the Aloft and put on the suit I'm calling my Famous Writer Costume. Citibiked across the bridge to our first event, at P&T Knitwear on Orchard. That climb to the midpoint of the bridge is no joke but biking this city is transformative, especially if you take out the part where you have to carry a bike up X flights of stairs to store it in your file-drawer-sized apartment. Bought a $40 Metrocard & will not use it once while I’m here— all I do is bike, until the very last day when I take a Lyft to JFK in Friday-afternoon traffic and it’s the first time I’ve almost been late for something.

Waiting for Joan, made a pilgrimage of a couple blocks & took a panorama of the Paul’s Boutique corner:

(Was at Adam Yauch Park earlier, too, but forgot to document it.)

Later, standing at P&T with Naomi “backstage”— in the children’s book/YA section— talking about our kids and the pang of seeing kid shit that would have delighted them just a year or two ago that they’re too old for.

Good reading, lots of strangers, which bodes well. Everyone in arena-style seats up to the ceiling. Photos on people’s insta afterwards indicate I looked down the whole time. Best image is by Joan’s friend Jenny who’s an illustrator who’s done New Yorker covers and stuff and sketches me & Joan & Naomi as we’re talking— me doing a weird thing with my hand that I recognize as a Thing I Do.

Then signing. Last time I published a book I never knew what to write when I signed them for people, so this time I’m prepared and I sign everybody’s book with a quote from this list of Steely Dan Imperatives and Joan gets into it and starts drawing light bulbs and battle apples with her signature and we are a Machine that Produces Delight.

It takes a while to get through the line and then the Manhattan portion of the night ends like so many other Manhattan nights have for me in what now feels like the distant past: at San Loco, with whoever was left standing.

I check out a new Citibike and cross back over to Brooklyn. Traffic is much more intense after dark— racing bikes and delivery-guy type scooters blazing past as I’m huffing along at beach-cruiser speed. Does every screenwriter in this town already have a pitch for “AKIRA, but with bikes, in a postapocalyptic Neo-York?”

To be continued