Monalia's World

A couple weeks before I came to L.A. these fires were raging through Malibu Canyons:

Every time I am in L.A. I take a Malibu hike with Michelle, who lives in Paradise Cove. She decided in advance we would hike Serrano to view the fire’s aftermath. She had been hiking there only a few weeks ago when it was overgrown, bursting with fragrance color. But now it looks like a lunar landscape:


We each pose at the Serrano Valley/ Pt. Mugu trailhead.

Following is a photo essay of our dramatic hike:

1- State Wilderness Boundary. 2- Charred trail to burnt homestead, only recently overgrown with green brush and foliage.

Burnt, rusty debris at homestead.

More rusty debris.

Although hiking uphill on a shadeless trail is not my idea of fun, in hindsight it was pretty awesome!

Signs of rebirth in this yucca:
Lone yucca plant survives like a phoenix from the ashes.

April 23, 2013

This Festa San Jordi we set up a kiosk in front of our Partners in Rhyme headquarters. My friend Ernesto translated 6 stories from Whatever Happened to Suzuki Beane?

San Jordi is a popular holiday in Barcelona, with florists and authors cashing in everywhere. We were surprised to sell 28 copies of La Diva Cubista y Otros Relatos
for 3 euros each. I also sold 1 copy of Horizontal Rain and 2 copies of Whatever Happened to Suzuki Beane?

Not bad for a day’s work. Thank you Shakespeare and Cervantes. (see original Festa San Jordi blog for back story.)

We had a small celebration afterwards in our Gracia headquarters with old friends:

1- Jordi and Sol 2- Ernesto, who translated my stories from English to Spanish.

1- San Jordi Cake 2- Vicente, who hand bound Ernesto’s translations into a beautiful Japanese style limited edition hand printed book. I gave all proceeds of sales to Ernesto and Vicente.

Marta with boyfriend Karafa, both featured in multiple past blogs.

1- Quixote (bored) ignoring girlfriend Lupe. 2- Sol peruses our kiosk.

Later, I traded a book at the local marihuana dispensary for this big spliff:
A good time was had by all, and it felt great to sign so many copies of my work. Life is good!

I love Festa San Jordi

This year I published a book called Whatever Happened to Suzuki Beane?

The original Suzuki Beane is a book published in 1961 centering around a baby beatnick who befriends a ‘square’ kid from school named Henry. She brings him home to her beatnick mom and dad, but they make fun of him for looking so uncool. So Henry invites Suzuki to his house, where his upper crust family is at first charmed, but when Suzuki tries to liven up his cotillion dance class by showing them how to dance free style, she finds herself getting pulled off the dance floor by the scruff of her neck. Go Suzuki Go!

I was about 6 or 7 years old when my father brought this book home. My dad was a cool cat; along with Suzuki Beane he had me reading Lenny Bruce, James Thurner, Macchiavelli, Dante’s Inferno, Archie and Mahitabel (another brilliant book!), Sartre’s Lr Petite Prince (The Little Prince) and other wildly illustrated esoteric classics, all before age 10. Every one of those books had

Baby beatnick Suzuki Beane had a seminal influence on my life, but not many people seem to have heard of her. For those of you uninitiated with this adorable baby beatnick, here’s a YouTube video from 1962 of a pilot for a TV show which was never deveñopped into a series.

Here’s what Wikipedia has to say about the original Suzuki Beane:

from Wikipedia:

The story, sometimes described as “the Eloise of Greenwich Village”, is told from the viewpoint of a young child of Bleecker Street beats. Little Suzuki encounters a different lifestyle when she becomes friends with Henry Martin, a rich kid from the Upper East Side. The two learn about life, love and how to deal with prejudice in the early 1960s. The pair finally decide to “run away from home and start a village where a Square can be a square and a swinging cat can swing in peace”.

I own a very valuable hard cover version of this book, which is considered a collector’s item and sells for hundreds of dollars. Here’s the original Suzuki Beane book cover placed next to my book cover of “Whatever Happened to Suzuki Beane?”

One of my favorite parts in the original Suzuki Beane is when she rocks out at her friend Henry’s dance lesson:

I also love the ending, where she and her “square” friend Henry run away together to find a world that would accept them both. This has become a major theme in my life.

Recently I had six of my stories from “Whatever Happened to Suzuki Beane?” translated into Spanish by a professional translator named Ernesto Gómez Cereijo, who did a great job:

1- Six translated excerpts from my book. 2- This second photo makes me feel like a *real* writer, with all my books laid out, heh heh heh.

Again, I end with the link to my new book in case you missed it the first two times.

Whatever Happened to Suzuki Beane?