Sorry, kids. I’m on an Oregon beach, which means it’s freezing and internet’s as spotty as the gray whales … As soon as I finish the book I’ve come here to get away and finish, I’ll write another book on the absurdity of going away to finish a book. Remind me.

Until then … Happy Birthday Mike Dinan of Potsdam, New York.

Okay, I’ve moved on.  I’ll pretend nothing nauseating ever happened today.  Here’s some other stuff.

• Pamela Ribon, of Pamie.com and Call Me Crazy, the play she wrote based on Anne Heche’s memoir, now has a book out: Why Girls Are Weird (why are we weird, anyway?)  She talks to Bookslut. 

(Regarding Crazy):  “The most famous thing about the show was the show itself.  A lot of people had forgotten about her running around topless in Fresno.  We had to remind them.”

• London Times columnist Kate Muir’s fiction debut is a send-up of famous Franc couple Bernard-Henri Levy and his hot actress wife Arielle Dombasie called Left Bank.  Forget how much or little you care about real-life Levy and his real-life wife (or if you don’t know who the hell they are), any portrait of a married couple — one of the oddest social conventions yet — is fun, don’t you think?  Consider this reviewer‘s crumb: 

“Olivier has quite forgotten that in falling for a thin beauty, he will be married to a woman who smokes for lunch and confuses aesthetic maintenance for faith.” 

• And one more thing on nausea — my favorite quote about this whole Starbucks Now To Promote Crappy Books thing, from no less than the Entertainment President of Starbucks, Ken Lombard:

“We don’t want customers to walk into their favorite Starbucks store and think it’s become a music store or DVD store.  We’re going to stay true to the core of who we are.  We’re a coffee company.”

Um, okay, so dude, why do you have an Entertainment President again?  I forgot. 

… This is absolutely horrifying.  I can’t even write it.  (Starbuck’s to feature Mitch Albom).  Thankfully, however, there is this, the poetry of Morrie Schwarzenegger, to help all of us, in some small way, go on. 

A teaser from one site dedicated to salving the nausea produced by the unforgiveable writing of one of America’s sappiest, most unremarkable citizens:

“You are terrible.  You are a joke.  You are a parody of a parody of a parody.  You fit in the Al Roker category of importance to American pop culture.  Nobody likes you (except for idiots).  Leave town.  Stop writing.  Now.”

[* Full disclosure:  I own Al Roker's BBQ book and I like it.]

  .. I sucked a big spider up in my dustbuster today, I swear it was the size of a small rat.  And then I panicked and left the dustbuster running for twenty minutes until the power died so the spider wouldn’t crawl out and come after me.  This was all at the office.  I’m sure he’s climbed out by now and has his creepy buddies crouched in the corners, waiting.  I try not to scream and smash their guts into bloody pieces in front of the kids, but I do have a bit of a spider issue. 

Last year in the office it was ants.  I’m leaving it empty the whole month of August, who knows what I’ll come back to. 

What else? 

A. is in Glamour this month, that’s what I was trying to say (below) but the words are all squished up and I was being too coy.  He’s the brother with the Yankee tattoo.  Fame is in the eye of the beholder. 

A Masturbate-a-thon over the weekend in London, a fundraiser.  You get money for minutes at task, plus number of peaks … almost as funny as this.

More later. 

Carole Radziwill gets a column for Glamour and next thing you know, Rudi and her brother are getting Yankee tattoos. (Second to last question.)

Heh, heh. (Pssst! It’s A!)

 

 

 

 

Finally, something interesting in the paper!  Jerry Mersereau, 23, is suing the government (Jerry Mersereau v. United States of America) because he fell off a cliff while trying to pee in the dark. From the lawsuit description:

Invokes that age-old philosophical stumper … you know, the sound of one man peeing, while falling down a cliff in the dark … can you hear the man falling and peeing, does he make a sound if no one’s there?

First, this, for fun, from Gawker: gangsta prepsters.

And then I’m just throwing up something old … I’ll do borrowed and blue on Monday. Something old because I’m still tired and grumpy from Pe Ell and need to find a babysitter ASAP … can’t just sit around entertaining you all day. A presto! (See you soon!)

Reading for random and chaos

We have a new library in town and I’m crazy about it. I can walk there and it’s two blocks from G’s pre-school. Big bright windows; deep, cozy chairs. I’ve been sneaking in with soy lattes (a Stephen Pratt superfood, soy) … haven’t seen a sign one way or other on food and drink. Anyway, I drop G off, run to the “Y” to work out to the last of Regis.

I hate to exercise, btw, but like how I feel after, so it’s always a big dramatic internal ordeal. When I was younger, my roommate wouldn’t let us go out until we went for a run, or some other healthy thing.  Then we’d come back and make batches of margaritas. I had another friend, in Pennsylvania, who cooked these big outrageous meals every night and always started them off on ice-cold vodka tonics, lime twisted just so.  But his rule was a run or bike ride first.  I loved those runs.  A little extreme, I guess, to get someone to exercise, and then probably nullifying. His grilled burgers were ten pounds of meat stuffed with blue cheese and mushrooms. His twice-baked potatoes hid about 3 pounds of chopped bacon and were to die for.  Snappy refills, of course, on the tonics. All for the price of a run.

Anyway, I do a different version of that now. I bribe myself with trashy tv to work out, and then on Monday Wednesday Friday, the prize is 90 unbothered minutes of library. I comfy up with latte, grab a book off the shelf, or one from my bag, and pass them all around among myself.

Yesterday I picked up John Banville even though I’m on a big Edmund Wilson kick. (reading EW: A Life in Literature and can’t get enough of it.)  I have odd habits. Certain books capture me in such a way – whether the place or characters, or the simple delicious unraveling of plot – that I can’t bear the thought of being done with them so I put it off. Read no more than a page a night, or every other night, or just put them away indefiinitely to postpone the disappointment of finishing. So because I want to stay with Edmund in the west village and be teased by Edna St. Millay a little longer, I’m not so anxious to pick that book back up. This way I have the Mary McCarthy years, still, to forward to. (Meanwhile I’m reading his The Twenties and A Piece of My Mind as sidekicks. Though not crazy about Piece … bored to death, actually. Muscling through.)

Blah, blah, so I picked up The Sea. For one hour. Thought, okay, never read him. Booker prize, etc. lets see if he does anything. See if I care one wit about the story after first page. I did.

more »

Back from Pe Ell, Washington and tired and crabby.  Here’s nothing useful:

• Ugg has introduced the “Classic Mini Boot” for women.  Wheee. 

• Mickey Rooney has a movie coming out

• ” … the joke turned out to be a bit of a damp squib” when man sends his soon-to-be ex-boss a tarantula.

• Brat Pack rundown

• A good dipping sauce

• Woman in Portland coffee shop judges record number of people (147)

Vedo qualcosa che commincia per … (Italian “I Spy”)

Completely unrelated. A. (junior) and G. have a stuffed Orca whale, his name is Whalie. I’ve grown oddly attached to him. There was a 6-month stretch where we thought we’d lost him forever and I was devestated … like Tom Hanks and that volleyball. But he turned up one day on a secret shelf in Grandma’s closet, phew! Anyway. Whalie is technically A.’s — A. is his “Dad”. But G. is his caregiver. She keeps track of his moods, feeds him, keeps A. posted on his shenanigans. Whalie’s a bit of a scamp. For instance, in closed quarters Whalie gets hyper and jumps around slamming into walls, or sometimes he yells at strangers, and sometimes he just repeats the same thing over and over and over. A.’s remedy for all of it — the jumping, kicking, yelling, annoying — is a potato. “Just give him a potato,” he says. Whalie devours potatoes, he eats them like candy. His nickname, in fact, is “Potato”. Yesterday A. let me take Whalie to the office for company. Luckily he was well-behaved, did not throw himself at the windows or shout obscenities at pedestrians. I would have been in trouble because I didn’t have any potatoes.

This morning A. and G. were playing Legos and then trains, first one then the other and G. cried out, “A.! I know! Let’s have the Legos, meet the Trains!” And so they joined the Lego world with the Train world and somehow they all ended up in space. With four lizards.

Just saying … their days seem more interesting than mine.

Yesterdayyy … (heh, heh). All my troubles seemed so fah-ahr a-wayyyyy … and I hosted Better Wives Club, “BWC”, a group of run-around-a-lot moms (RAALMs) who meet Tuesdays for cocktails and storytime.

They have rules and they are these: 1. If you’re hosting, you bring the drinks and don’t run out.  Everyone else brings a snack.  2. A cleaning tip or recipe must be exchanged. I think we forgot that one yesterday. Oh wait, yeah, “Wisa” (names changed to protect, etc.) told us about her dip — can of beans, cheese, sour cream; there, a recipe. 3. Third rule is for the boys, seems fair. On the off-chance it annoys them to have their wives come home looped once a week, on Tuesdays we’re to put out. 

There’s a movie in this group, I see it. We cast it yesterday: Elisabeth Shue as “Wisa”, Lisa Rinna plays “Maren”. “Kulie” … I forget who’s playing “Kulie”. Maybe she’ll play herself and her shotgun rise to rocker fame will be a subplot.  “Bennifer” had to run to soccer practice before we had her cast … next time.

Anyway there’s something about drinking pretty things with your girlfriends. It’s important. But it gets lost somewhere between babies and field trips and schlepping out three crappy meals for everyone every day. I’m not a charter member, I’m the newest girl, I think … and I’ve missed months of meetings for Jr.’s piano lessons. So yesterday was the first time at my house and I was like, totally nervous. (What if they think I’m so lame and never come back, OMG?!) I peeked out my window every 5 minutes, I practiced the drinks (too strong), I put glasses out.  I bit my nails I picked my scabs, then ding-dong, they all filed in and took over. They grabbed bowls and plates, whipped out coasters, pulled out chairs, pointed their kids to Legos, bathrooms and Goldfish crackers … then we assembled around the table and got to business.

Topics covered included, but were not limited to: Superman belt buckles, getting hit on by couples, waxing, how to get out of sex … Sensitive Men and their Computer Monitors, Coop, Red Sox tattoos, A.’s Diesel jeans, Scenes For My Book … also the weird way “Wisa” says “penis”

Next week’s at “Wisa”‘s house … Tuesday, 4:00. See ya there.