Salman Rushdie vs. Los Angeles

WHEN i agreed to hang out with novelist salman rushdie in and around hollywood for a few hours, i would not have been surprised to find myself embroiled in a discussion about george harrison's facility for the sitar, or to be shown the very drugstore where an acid-tripping aldous huxley encountered "the doors of perception." but i did not expect to get into a hilarious story about "starsky and hutch."

that's part of what i like about reading rushdie as well -- you never quite know where his work is going to swerve, but most of the time his excursions reinforce rather than undercut his literary personality. here is that piece, by the way, which is about the most fun i've had on a literary story. and i am very glad neither of us got shot, which looked for a minute like it was about to happen.

a few days ago i visited a new exhibit at the los angeles county museum of art dedicated to comics from india -- more on that in a future post. but the show made me think of rushdie and his wild mixing of ancient and pop-contemporary, especially in books like "midnight's children" (a book i read in a kind of fever it was so good) and his last novel "the enchantress of florence."

these days, i hear from his publicist, rushdie is completing a new novel and the script to a "midnight's children" film. since his books -- as he discusses in our interview -- were so profoundly effected by movies, especially bollywood and "the wizard of oz" -- this project could appealingly close the circle.

The Late, Great Elliott Smith

YESTERDAY would have been the 40st birthday of elliott smith, perhaps the finest songwriter of my generation, and a musician who killed himself six years ago. my wife -- a longtime music journalist who considers him the deepest artist she's ever interviewed -- and i remember that dark day well.

smith, of course, came up through the portland band heatmiser, and released some powerful and very spare solo records up there before moving to LA... he came to the southland a few years after i did, and i was lucky enough to see him perform several times, as well as to sit next to him at the bar at the troubadour, where he was nursing a guinness and clearly did not want to be disturbed. (i also recall, maybe a year before he died, smith waiting in line behind me in line at amoeba music, with a basket full of vinyl. his girlfriend had to lead him to the register like he was an overmedicated old man.)

HERE is my piece from 2004, in which i interviewed his girlfriend, producer, biographer, and musical friends, and look back at his life and then-controversial death. as sad as i still am to have him gone, he's one of the people who reminds me of how emotionally direct and inventive the music of the indie-rock movement can be. also: as influenced as he was by indie and by the british invasion (especially george harrison), smith was, musically, every bit his own man.