EDGE San Francisco

Just as there are bartenders who struggle with the problems of alcoholism, and drug dealers who grapple with substance addiction, Out There has long suspected that there are restaurant critics who have their own issues around the overconsumption of food. Now the new paperback edition of Born Round - A Story of Family, Food and a Ferocious Appetite by Frank Bruni (Penguin Books) confirms our suspicions, fatly.

Until recently, Bruni was the restaurant critic for The New York Times, appointed to this powerful position in the world of cuisine in 2004. Before that, he was the Times’ Rome bureau chief, and he’s still a correspondent. Born Round recounts his struggles with overeating and bulimia - "bingeing and purging" - starting as a chubby gay boy and continuing well into adulthood. Perhaps there are a few too many descriptions of induced vomiting here for OT’s delicate sensibilities, but all the gruesome details do add up, and bring home the pathology of Bruni’s food addictions.

"I’d turn on the stereo in my room and set the volume to a level slightly louder than usual, to conceal any gagging or choking, but not so loud that Mom would show up to complain. I’d heave to the strains of Duran Duran’s ’Hungry Like the Wolf’ - the cheeky choice was deliberate - or Tom Petty ’s ’Don’t Do Me Like That.’" There are also plenty of passages about purging through other means, such as extra-large doses of Ex-Lax. Please don’t try this at home.

As Bruni enters the gay "dating world," the savvy reader can draw his own connections between Bruni’s insecurities around gay ideals of body image and his taking solace in gluttony. Soon he moves on to the addictive use of Mexican speed, Metamucil, Branola and Shedd’s Spread, "a pathetic butter imposter marketed as less fattening." It’s true, you always wind up on the harder stuff.

Many struggles later, Bruni had managed to shed 65 lbs. from his heaviest weight. So when the job offer of restaurant critic came, it was both temptation and challenge. If you have a high tolerance of sentences that begin with lines like, "Here’s what I did before that twenty-odd-course at the French Laundry," you’ll enjoy this candid and revealing look into one contemporary gay life.

Moving on to other life stories, everyone we know who saw the festival run of Howl, the film about the publication of Allen Ginsberg’s epic poem, has wanted to talk about the poet, the poem or that era of American letters. We can recommend a new nonfiction effort from Ginsberg’s bibliographer and archivist Bill Morgan for a more complete consideration of the time and ethos. The Typewriter Is Holy: The Complete, Uncensored History of the Beat Generation (Free Press) was named for a line in Ginsberg’s Footnote to Howl, and neatly surveys the lives of the most prominent Beat writers. Morgan argues that the Beats were not a literary movement (their literary styles were all over the map), but were instead a social group, and that Ginsberg was at its core.

Here are a few of the book’s juiciest revelations: Jack Kerouac, Ginsberg, and others "on the road" never had driver’s licenses, and couldn’t drive. Kerouac lived with his mother for his entire life. William Burroughs believed that Timothy Leary was a charlatan, and he had no use for psychedelic drugs. Narcotics were, of course, another story. "During the whole of 1955, Burroughs remained in Tangier alternating between shooting junk and trying to kick his habit." "Back in New York, Burroughs connected with his pusher Bill Garver, and in no time he was back on junk again." Et cetera, ad nauseam.

Of course, what’s most interesting about writers like Ginsberg, Burroughs and Kerouac wasn’t their drug use, but the works they produced while on these drugs. On the Road was written in an amphetamine frenzy. Name another speed-addled rant that’s had quite so much staying power.

Tennessee waltz

Four films made from Tennessee Williams plays are on the bill at the Castro Theatre this week (find our coverage on p. 21). Here’s some background dish. In 1941, the Theatre Guild, which had commissioned The Fugitive Kind (originally called Battle of Angels), was considering it for Joan Crawford’s Broadway debut - a thought that didn’t thrill Williams at all. In any case, Crawford turned it down, calling the part "low and common." It would be played by onscreen by Miriam Hopkins.

Williams was also initially not thrilled by the prospect of Vivien Leigh playing Blanche in Streetcar. He had avoided the London production, in which she was directed by then-husband Laurence Olivier. But when he watched her during the rehearsals for the movie, he changed his mind, writing to a friend, "Madame Olivier is so good, she scared me out of my sissy britches."

The opening-night audience for the 1964 Tallulah Bankhead /Tab Hunter production of The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore was very gay - in fact, our old-school scribe was there. It prompted one NYC critic to comment, "It was the queerest audience since the days of the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo." Reportedly, he was right.

High-design slam

Out There’s datebook is still chock-full in midsummer. Last Friday was the opening-night party for TechnoCraft - Hackers, Modders, Fabbers, Tweakers and Design in the Age of Individuality, curated by designer Yves Behar (through Oct. 3) at YBCA in SF. The party got started with the creation of a pair of "Droog’s Do Hit Chairs" designed by Marjin van der Poll , stainless steel cubes intended to be banged up by their users into a chair of their own devising. During their making, the slam of sledgehammers echoed against YBCA’s walls and hard surfaces in a most punishing din. Fortunately, we had been issued a set of ear-plugs, which made conversation impossible but prevented us from going out of our skull. The show is an interesting compendium of ways technology can intersect with the do-it-yourself aesthetic. First-nighter pal Wilder got some cool ideas for redecorating his apartment.

Last Sunday we went to see local singer Susie Butler sing the Sarah Vaughan songbook, directed by Norman Gee , in the intimate Fillmore Jazz Heritage Center in SF. This turned out to be the screening of a documentary about The Divine One, interspersed with Butler interpreting some of Vaughan’s signature tunes.

Finally, the human-interest story "A Congressman’s Abs Garner Yeas" from last Thursday’s New York Times told all the news that’s fit to print about the 29-year-old Republican Congressman Aaron Schock from Illinois - specifically, about the photo of him posed in a skimpy red swimsuit that garnered lots of attention on the gossip site TMZ.com. The picture "shows him reclining with legs splayed in swim trunks by a pool, showing off glistening washboard abs." Out There might not like a thing about Rep. Schock’s conservative politics, but we’re glad to see that his principles are solid. If that’s what a rock-ribbed Republican looks like, we’ll take one on a bun, hold the mayo.