This week, in the Talk of the Town department of The New Yorker, I have a story about the jumbo squid "invasion" of Orange County. Details not contained in the story: how I forgot a change of clothes and—crucially—shoes, and drove home barefoot, teeth chattering, at two in the morning, having thrown out my squid-juice-soaked sneakers in a bin on an abandoned street in Newport Beach. The other thing I threw out: the squid steaks given to me by some of the fishermen I met. Why? Because, the following morning, someone was looking at my car to consider buying it, and squid have a powerful fragrance. But I had fried calamari, from teeny little six-inch restaurant-friendly squid, at Bottega Louie last night, and they were delicious.

I'm delinquent in posting that I have a piece about Neil Gaiman in what is still for a few more days this week's New Yorker. Also, Gaiman and I did a Q&A for readers on Wednesday, which you can read here.

I'm reading at Book Soup tonight with some of my students from USC's Master of Professional Writing Program. The theme is "Lessons Learned: The Wisdom of Baby New Year." 8818 W. Sunset Blvd, LA, CA 90069. Reading starts at 7:30 pm.

My Blogger was acting up, so I wasn't able to post here what I put on Twitter last week: that I blogged on The Millions about "Tender Morsels," a brilliant fantasy book that's categorized as YA but is as sophisticated as anything "adult" I have read recently. Here's a snippet:

This was the year in which I read Twilight, in something less than forty-eight fevered hours, and thought: Tantric rape fantasy. And: Wait, is this a Volvo ad? This was also the year in which I read Tender Morsels, a young-adult novel by the Australian writer Margo Lanagan. It was a revelation, a dark, engrossing fairy tale whose intricacies and images are as haunting and impossible and psychologically freighted as a dream.

I have a little story about Lady Gaga, Frank Gehry, the Museum of Contemporary Art, and twelve dancers from the Bolshoi Ballet in this week's New Yorker.

I have a piece about Jonathan Gold, the restaurant reviewer for the L.A. Weekly—he's famous for celebrating the city's strip-mall-based ethnic cuisine, and for being the only food critic to have won a Pulitzer—in this week's New Yorker. (It's behind the registration wall.) I also blogged about Gold, and linked to some of his reviews, on the magazine's Web site.

I have a piece about James Cameron and "Avatar" in this week's New Yorker. It—and a blog post I wrote about the movie's visual effects—are available free at www.newyorker.com