Click here to view the embedded video.

[Note:  the theory about animals that I put forth during the horse section isn't mine.  It's from an academic essay I read years ago.  I tried to figure out who wrote it, but if one of you fine viewers knows, please drop a line in the comments so that he or she may get credit.]

All this week, my wife and I have refrained from eating any factory farm meat, though in reality, we rarely eat this meat anyway.  The one meal with meat that we ate was a sausage pasta from this fine Jamie Oliver cookbook.  The sausage was from Rocky Canyon Farms.  We purchased it from the farmer at the Hollywood Farmers Market.  Vroman’s Bookstore would like to ask everyone to take this week and next and think about where there food — meat or not — comes from, and to consider the ethical, environmental and healthy implications of that.

This is the last video in our series on eating (and not eating) animals.  This was a series we ran to get ready for our event with Jonathan Safran Foer this Sunday, when he reads from and signs his new book Eating Animals.  We hope you’ll join us for what will be a very interesting and lively discussion.  Bonus!  Jacket Copy interviews Jonathan Safran Foer.  Also, check out his website, which has lots of useful information to help you avoid factory meat, should you decide to do so.

“I remember one time we had a discussion in class about a sensational news story.  An insane woman had kidnapped a pregnant mother, and had killed the mother and performed a c-section and claimed the baby as her own.  A truly horrifying tale.  And we had been talking about it in class, and I asked:  which character would you choose if you were writing a story?   The pregnant mother or the insane woman who took the baby?   At that point, a young woman spoke up, a sophomore. “My God!”  she said.  “The ghost of that dead woman is probably spitting on us as we sit here talking about this!”  I think that was you, Edan, who was so appalled.  I remember that it gave me pause:  At what point does imagining, does the attempt to inhabit, become wrong?  At what point does it become morally repugnant?   I still think: never.  But I understand that it’s fraught,  that it’s compromised, that it’s suspect. That it’s an invasion that borders on—or crosses over into—the criminal. During the writing of this book,  I followed the exploits of a number of trolls who used invented personas to invade and then (often hilariously) disrupt various solemn internet message boards.   I read about a depressed teen who was goaded into suicide by a cruel classmate’s mother who was pretending to be the poor girl’s “boyfriend” on MySpace.  I myself set up a dummy email address and briefly tried out various fake personas to see what would happen.”
And then check out this trailer for the book:

Click here to view the embedded video.

I think this trailer does just what a good book trailer ought to do:  it entices without revealing too much.  Plus it looks amazing.  (In the interest of disclosure, I helped put Chaon in touch with the filmmaker, Jamieson Fry.  In other words, I’m biased, so go watch it, and judge for yourself.)

Aiming for the jugular of the American unconscious, the photographs of Los Angeles-based artist Charlie White inspect the culture’s fictions through staged artifice, reminiscent of, say, Jeff Wall or Gregory Crewdson. American Minor delves into an important and ongoing theme in White’s work—the American teen, and all that goes into its manufacture.

Having approached this theme with an earlier project whose protagonist was a hairy, fragile doll named Joshua, here White tackles the taboos of nascent sexuality in the American teen girl—both the vulnerability of that sexuality as a topic and the ruthlessness with which it is exploited when it goes unexamined.

If you haven’t seen White’s new book American Minor please do click through and check it out.  It’s a beautiful edition and thought-provoking to say the least.  The signing is Saturday, April 18, from 5 – 7 p.m. at Printed Matter (195 Tenth Avenue New York, NY 10011). For those attending the event, White has a limited edition poster for a forthcoming exhibition in Norway that he will be signing and giving away with purchased copies.

As an added bonus, here are  some link to White’s cartoon OMG BFF LOL. Mall Bathroom Bedroom

Click here to view the embedded video.

Thanks again to Jones Coffee and Mireya for being great hosts.  Stop by and check them out if you get a chance.