You may have noticed that dark grey banner hanging right above this column. It points to SingleShot.net. And it's high time I gave everyone the full details.

Single Shot is my lovely wife's new company. She started it four months ago, and has been pounding out daily shots of what's hot in and around Los Angeles. It's a subscription-based email list, but it's totally free to sign up. You should do it.

I'm sure that you all would be patient with me hawking my wife's wares, but there's some more Jim Pascoe goodness behind the Single Shot door. While Gabrielle writes all of the gadget and event shots, I've jumped into the ring to write a feature called "The Single Shot Girl."

I think it's very, very nice of my wife to give me the girls.

Some have remarked how the text I write next to these print-out pin-ups is a bit noirish. Okay, I can see that. But I like to think that even though the girls are all high class, the words are pure pulp.

Here are the links to the past girls: Sherron, Angelique, Jamie, Jennifer, and Desire.

All the photos are by Lindsey Walker, who is a star in her own right.

So once again I tell you: sign up already!

Tomorrow morning I head out to New York for BEA, the national book trade show. If you're in town, we're partying with the punks from Contemporary Press in old-school Brooklyn (or is Brooklyn now "new school"? I'm sure I'll find out on Thursday.)

Will try to post from the road. But don't count on it!

Heading over to a birthday party for Ross Richie: marketing wiz, movie producer, and now comic book publisher. His Boom! Studios looks to be doing some awesome stuff -- gotta love that exclamation mark in the middle of the name, sort of like Godspeed You! Black Emperor. And check out his blog, because, well, it's what the kids are doing these days.

Silly me.

Last night was the Kill Whitey book launch party at Daddy's Lounge in Hollywood. The turnout was great; the bar staff, incredibly accommodating; the whole evening, long and enjoyable. Thanks to everyone who came. And I'm sorry I didn't get to talk to everyone.

It's not that I don't like parties. It's certainly not that I don't like bars and social drinking opportunities. But I've become slightly saddened by the middle ground that I seem to occupy at big events.

I don't seem to have the energy (or what-have-you) to flit about the room, spending equal time with everyone, engaging one and all with pleasant interactions and conversation. And I haven't quite got technique down -- least at parties that I'm organizing -- of sitting my ass down and letting everyone come to me.

That's the middle ground. A sad, distracted space in which I move around, not enough to see everyone, but just enough to avoid people that I'm not trying to avoid.

Anyway. I had actually thought that I would be home in time last night to post about the party. Instead, all I had energy for last night was to mutter, "it's how late?" Then I was out.

Silly me.

We all know that I'm always up for a challenge. Good friend and fellow music lover Chad Hermann threw one my way. I've long thought about doing some regular feature on this site about the music that inspires me, but I always somehow get bogged down by it all. I'm sure I could do a list like this once a week and it would be almost entirely different each time. But clearly I'm not going to do that -- I've got books to write, people.

So, to Chad and to you all, enjoy a slice of the music that inspires my madness.

TOTAL SIZE OF MUSIC FILES ON MY COMPUTER: 37.47 GB

THE LAST CD I BOUGHT: Funny that I just had this conversation with Chad that my buying habits have changed recently. Now I'm very likely to sample songs from my wonderful resources of friends, and if I really love it, I'll buy the album on vinyl. That way I'm rocking the turntable and the iTunes. So I'll split this category into...

VINYL: Welcome/Nowhere by Thanksgiving. Haunting, beautiful, and the best packaging for collection of music I've ever seen.
CD: Woman King ep by Iron & Wine. One of the best songwriters of our time. Really.

SONG PLAYING RIGHT NOW IN iTUNES: (actually on shuffle on the ipod in the airport ... I'll list all the one that come up while I write this)

1. "Lawyers, Guns, and Money (live)" by Warren Zevon
2. "Fantastic Voyage" by Takako Minekawa
3. "Big Time Sensuality" by Björk
4. "Lit Up and Protruding" by Electric Company
5. "On With the Show" by Motley Crue
6. "When the Levee Breaks" by A Perfect Circle
7. "Let's Not Shit Ourselves" by Bright Eyes
8. "Do Not Be Afraid" by Mt. Eerie

EIGHT ALBUMS I LISTEN TO A LOT RIGHT NOW: I'm not a song guy; I'm an album guy. So once again, I changed this category to my liking. In no order.

1. Glow, Pt.2 by The Microphones
2. Devil's & Dust by Bruce Springsteen
3. Franz Ferdinand by Franz Ferdinand
4. General Patton & the X-Ecutioners by Mike Patton & the X-Ecutioners
5. The Disintegration Loops II-IV by William Basinski
6. Super Hits Vol. 1 by Max Raabe & Palast Orchester
7. Odyssey by Fischerspooner
8. With Teeth by Nine Inch Nails

EIGHT SONGS THAT EVOKE A LOT FOR ME: Watch how I still succumb to the power of song ... at least for this category!

1. "I'm Deranged" by David Bowie
2. "California Dreaming" by 386dx
3. "The Charles C. Leary" by Devendra Banhart
4. "We Must Have Blood" by Dwarves
5. "Die Bifindlichkeit Des Landes" by Einstürzende Neubauten
6. "Visitor Q - End Title" by Kôji Endô
7. "The Struggle Against Unreality" by Matmos
8. "Washer" by Slint

EIGHT BANDS I JUST FEEL LIKE MENTIONING: My mangling of the categories is now complete!

1. 13 & God
2. Animal Collective
3. Autolux
4. Eyvind Kang
5. Jon Brion
6. Mono
7. The Twilight Singers
8. The Winter Pageant

Today I was very honored to spend the day at West View Elementary School, where I was the invited guest for their Author Day program. I'm somewhat used to being marginally well-known, especially in the mystery community -- that usualy translates into someone introducing me to someone else with a, "do you know Jim Pascoe?" and them responding, "oh yeah." But I wasn't in any way prepared for going to a school full of Kim Possible fans.

The craziest thing was how the whole school was decked out with Jim Pascoe-themed decorations. I kid you not. Banners with my name on them. Pictures of me that had hundreds of welcoming signatures. Planets and stars hung from the ceiling in honor of the Star Wars comics I've done. And the total head trip of it all: an auditorium filled with cheerleader posters saying "Gimme a J-I-M P-A-S-C-O-E!" in which each kid wrote a different word for each letter of my name. So one poster had "P is for Playing, A is for Art, S is for Star Wars, etc."

Totally humbling and surreal.

I was so overwhelmed I couldn't even write them all down, although I wanted to. I did pay special attention to the Os in Pascoe, for some reason. I noticed one "O is for On-time homework" (someone who doesn't know me very well), one "O is for Obtuse Triangle" (someone who does know me very well) ... and a big three instances of "O is for Oral."

Education is awesome!

No, I'm not talking about Iraq. A thought hit me this morning, one that turned into a prediction. The next president of the U.S.A., or at least the next Repubican candidate:

Laura Bush

We all know that Cheney isn't going to run (thank god), and that the Rs will pick someone "high profile" from the current administration. First administration "stars" like Powell, Ashcroft, and Rumsfeld all seem unlikely. The current star would seem to be Condoleezza Rice. I wouldn't be surprised in the least if they ran her. And while in theory I would LOVE to have a woman (better yet, a woman of color) in the oval office, Rice is about the LAST black woman I'd want in there. I'd feel much better with Queen Latifah as chief executive.

Seriously, the reason I feel like Laura Bush has a strong chance of being picked (and a strong chance of winning *gulp*), is that she would appeal to many liberals who want to see a woman in office, she appeals to those who are against "professional politics," and most importantly she is a warm, loveable, middle-America conservative.

Would it really be bad to have a teacher as the president?

I'll leave that one unanswered.

Those who know me know that I love to write in coffee shops/diners. I wrote almost every word of the Buffy novel Tom and I did (Creatures of Habit) at a family restaurant in Silver Lake.

It's funny. Even after Gabrielle and I got our lovely home in the hills (which feels like a perfect writer's retreat -- one of the most important things that made me realize it was the right house for us), and even though I have a perfectly secluded, retro UglyTown office (metal desks, baby!), I still feel the need to sit at a coffee counter to work.

It all started many, many years ago when I first started college. I lived at home with my parents for the first two years, and that meant I needed to get out if I wanted to get anything done. I figured the bottomless cup of coffee would help me stay awake when translating Latin or reading Nietzsche -- both activities I remember well.

Tonight, I went back to that family restaurant that I went to when I was a teenager. I had my laptop with me, and it made me think that the last time I came here to work, I'm not sure they had even invented laptops. (I'm only half-joking here.)

Perhaps the weight of time brought with it fortune, because I cracked a rather important problem with the outline for my next novel.

I used to really love (well, hell, I STILL love) reading back a page or a chapter that I feel I really nailed. But I've come to appreciate even more that raw moment when the flow of a story breaks open. When an outline reveals itself to be not a static skeleton, but something more alive. It's a Frankenstein moment to be sure; that moment when the story you are calling and calling and calling makes its first small step toward coming home.

I bought the Jay Rubin biography of Haruki Murakami today for a dollar. That's right. One American dollar. Murakami is my current favorite writer, and this quote particularly inspires me:

"For me, novels are hard, physical labour, a form of combat, and when your physical strength gives out, you can't write any more. Which is why I exercise and condition my body every day, so that even after I turn 64 I will at least not lose my physical strength."

I could pretend that I've spent the last month away from this site doing exercises and conditioning my body, but it's really been more of the good ol' combat. Though if this quote isn't a good reason for me to start exercising again, I don't know what is.

Maybe this isn't really hard to believe at all, but here it is. Gabrielle gets this tip about a new underground club in downtown Los Angeles called The Cocaine. She wants to call them to get some info (I know, I know ... foolish!), but she doesn't have the number.

So she calls directory assistance.

[insert joke here about putting the ass in assistant]

Gabrielle asks for The Cocaine.

And the woman hangs up on her.

Priceless!