Monalia's World

This year I published a book called >Whatever Happened to Suzuki Beane?

The original Suzuki Beane is a book published in 1961 centering around a baby beatnick who befriends a ‘square’ kid from school named Henry. She brings him home to her beatnick mom and dad, but they make fun of him for looking so uncool. So Henry invites Suzuki to his house, where his upper crust family is at first charmed, but when Suzuki tries to liven up his cotillion dance class by showing them how to dance free style, she finds herself getting pulled off the dance floor by the scruff of her neck. Go Suzuki Go!

I was about 6 or 7 years old when my father brought this book home. My dad was a cool cat; along with Suzuki Beane he had me reading Lenny Bruce, James Thurner, Macchiavelli, Dante’s Inferno, Archie and Mahitabel (another brilliant book!), Sartre’s Lr Petite Prince (The Little Prince) and other wildly illustrated esoteric classics, all before age 10. Every one of those books had

Baby beatnick Suzuki Beane had a seminal influence on my life, but not many people seem to have heard of her. For those of you uninitiated with this adorable baby beatnick, here’s a YouTube video from 1962 of a pilot for a TV show which was never deveñopped into a series.

Here’s what Wikipedia has to say about the original Suzuki Beane:

from Wikipedia:

The story, sometimes described as “the Eloise of Greenwich Village”, is told from the viewpoint of a young child of Bleecker Street beats. Little Suzuki encounters a different lifestyle when she becomes friends with Henry Martin, a rich kid from the Upper East Side. The two learn about life, love and how to deal with prejudice in the early 1960s. The pair finally decide to “run away from home and start a village where a Square can be a square and a swinging cat can swing in peace”.

I own a very valuable hard cover version of this book, which is considered a collector’s item and sells for hundreds of dollars. Here’s the original Suzuki Beane book cover placed next to my book cover of “Whatever Happened to Suzuki Beane?”

One of my favorite parts in the original Suzuki Beane is when she rocks out at her friend Henry’s dance lesson:

I also love the ending, where she and her “square” friend Henry run away together to find a world that would accept them both. This has become a major theme in my life.

Recently I had six of my stories from “Whatever Happened to Suzuki Beane?” translated into Spanish by a professional translator named Ernesto Gómez Cereijo, who did a great job:

1- Six translated excerpts from my book. 2- This second photo makes me feel like a *real* writer, with all my books laid out, heh heh heh.

Again, I end with the link to my new book in case you missed it the first two times.

>Whatever Happened to Suzuki Beane?

Every New Year’s Day the Club Nataçiòn de Barcelona has a first day of the year swim. It is quite something to view from our plush Hotel W suite. I take some shots with my Nikon, which has a phenomenal zoom:

The above big swim lasted about a half hour, although many literally dipped in and out just to honor the tradition. That water is cold! Notice the Catalan flag in many of the shots. I recently joined this very Catalan Club de Nataçiò so you can look forward to a future blog post about it at some point. This club provides me the opportunity to become more fluent in Catalán. Many of the hard core members will only speak to you in Catalan, so I’m learning to be quite comfortable with simple chit chat about weather, dogs, and sports.

It is fun to photograph our stomping grounds from this perspective. Normally it is I down below scurrying about, for our apartment is just hidden from view here. I’ve taken many photos of the iconic Hotel W from down below, so its a real thrill to have an unique point of view from above.

In every day life, Quixote takes a poo in front of the caged sculptures every morning and then we either take a beach walk, a bike ride or I simply throw balls for him until he tires.

Mark and I spend the rest of the day lazing around and snapping last minute photos of our spectacular city view:

views of the city from our hotel room. Notice the iconic Christopher Columbus statue, Tibidabo and La Sagrada Familia. What a great city Barcelona is!

On December 31st we wake up to see they are preparing fireworks directly below our Hotel W room:

This looks promising. Fireworks will go off directly in front of our window at midnight.

We spend the day ordering room service and taking photos from our big picture windows. This is an exciting New Year’s eve already, we are staying at the fulcrum of all the action.

I share some shots taken from our rooms. We live in such a pretty city:

Views of our beach. You can almost see our apartment in the first shot.

Funicular from our beach to MontJuic. In the second shot you can see Tibidabo.

After spending a lazy and somewhat indulgent day, New Years Eve finally arrives.

HAPPY NEW YEARS!!!

Iphone and Ipad videos edited together for the purose of sharing the fireworks with you.

Although we had planned to check out the Disco upstairs, instead Mark and I have our own private party in the room, which is equipped with speakers and a docket where we can listen to music on our iPhone while it charges up.

Who needs to go to the discoteque when we have front row seats to the fireworks? After the fireworks we dance around to the music. Life is good!