Julie Nipp or Lisa Austin better call and invite me to lunch! But not today, I’m busy.

… It’s raining. I hate my car. I hate what time I get up.

I have three stupid books overdue at the library and I can’t find even one. The screen door at my office slams my leg before I get inside. The zipper on my boot is broke. The dog bites. The bee stings.

But there is one thing. Oh yes, there’s one.

There is a Keurig Special Edition B60 sitting just to the left of my kitchen window, right next to the toaster.

A. will quibble with this. He’ll say, “Well, it’s actually on the right side of the window.” A., let me explain. I don’t like the way “right” sounds (not to mention the echo five words later, see it?) “Right” isn’t as pretty a word as left; it’s not so sure of itself or as fluid. Read the sentence out loud, one time with each word — which one rolls easier off the tongue? There, you see? So the Keurig is to the left of the window, for the greater good of prose. To the left.

Anyway …

A drawer beneath the counter holds a few dozen single-serving size tubs of coffee — the Variety pack. I can have Kona, French Roast, Breakfast Blend, House Blend, Nantucket Blend, Get Your Butt Out of Bed Blend … I can choose from Coffee People, Timothy’s, Tulley’s, Newman’s Own … decaf or caf, Organic or chemically doused, teas and hot cocoas … you get the picture.

The Keurig, God bless it, works like this:

1. Lift the lid.

2. Put the coffee container in.

3. Press “Brew”.

Okay, okay, yes I’m exaggerating for effect. You have to select a brew — espresso strength, regular, or the 9.25 oz. travel size. Then there’s the wait, of course. You have to wait 10 seconds. And then the mess, you have to throw away the little tub.

All in all, I think it just changed my life.

Now, about the stupid rain. Non mi piace il piove; a domani. (Oh, and wherever you are, hug a mother-in-law today. One may just save your life.)

… Happy Day of the Priest Who Lost his Head and Wrote Love Letters to his Girlfriend from Jail! (Not necessarily in that order.)

Much more later.

(Also: I have the best mother-in-law west of Mars!)

Scroll down to read what “harcamone” says about that really sucky review. It really sucked! It wasn’t just me feeling bad about my neck and other stories.

“Libarbarian” is obviously Sandra’s mother.

(Very busy today. Trying to save a fun, freckled, fearless, fortunate, hope-filled, feisty marriage. Wish me luck.)

First — I can’t find Five Little Pumpkins. I’ve renewed it three times to stall and was just informed minutes ago, by italicized screen message, that “this item has exceeded the number of renewals.” It wasn’t even that good — weak plot and the fifth pumpkin was never really developed. Now I’m buying it. Damn libraries and their return rules.

Second — Everyone knows to pretend to have read books you haven’t, or to say “Rosebud” so they’ll think you’ve seen Citizen Kane (and the other 99), but Sarah Vine presents a more intriguing concept: How to fake like you haven’t read the books you shouldn’t have but did. You know, like People Magazine’s Entertainment Almanac, or that “maudlin, embarrassing ode to a pooch“; Mitch Albom. Some of you are reading that stuff and pretending you’re not! I’m not fooled.

Third — Pun of the day: “The oil well driller had a boring job.”

Make merry.

Lisa Austin never brings me flowers.

… Instant karma’s gonna get me, I’m sure, for taking on two writers in one week. So be it.  Today I send a big blog high-five to James Wolcott for putting all of my Adam Gopnik eye rolls into words. Mr. Gopnik has just bothered us with a new book.  Thank you, James, for reviewing it — I couldn’t have made better fun of him myself!

C. and I had long fits of laughter when Adam blogged for Powell’s last year. (You might have long fits of laughter over something else, but writers are incurably nerdy, and not in a cool way). He kicked his stint off with buses “buzzing and coughing” outside his window. Yes, buses. Buzzing and coughing. Just like the bug-eyed cartoon garbage truck who coughs and burps in my kids’ picture book, I Stink. I Stink was out his window. Whee.

“Buzzing and coughing buses” became our code for “big huge bore who thinks there’s someone actually reading who cares.” (I don’t make that mistake where Teresa DiFalco dot Com is concerned, by the way. I know you all care.)

We were actually reading because he is unintentionally hilarious. Kind of like when A. and I catch Top Gun on one of the cable channels and watch it on mute. I play Maverick, and A. does Goose and Ice and we laugh ourselves silly.

Anyway, James Wolcott picks up where the coughing buses left off and begins his critique thusly: “I sometimes wonder if Adam Gopnik was put on this earth to annoy. If so, mission accomplished.” He said it, not me.

Go feed the ducks, they’re funny.

Every morning I think of something fun to write.  I swear, really.  It usually hits me going into Dundee — right at that house with the big boat in the front yard.  Then I think of three more fun things, and two more after that.  But by the time I drop G. off 30 minutes later, it’s all gone. 

I do remember thinking something about a “one-eyed monster,” which is how the van looks right now to the people I tailgate.  And is also how some might have misinterpreted Prince’s guitar.  But of course it came together much better in Dundee.  

So there’s that.

And then I wanted to blog about this show I watched Sunday night with my Uncle Bill – an old (mid-50′s) black-and-white western called Cheyenne.  (Get DVDs of old episodes on Netflix). 

Cheyenne Bodie is a do-gooder cowboy who is also “physically huge,” according to Wikipedia.  He’s actually breathtakingly huge.  It’s hilarious.  He ripples right out of his skin-tight cowboy shirts and he’s twice as big as everyone else on the show, with an unnaturally deep, soothing voice. 

He’s played by Clint Walker who obviously inspired that whole Chippendale’s thing. 

The first episode we watched had a treat – the bad guys caught Cheyenne and ripped his shirt off so we could see his physically huge and hairy naked chest.  Then they whipped him.  (Bad Cheyenne, bad!)  The first network gay porn.   

Hey, you know what?  This is the kind of stuff we should be getting from Very Obvious List, duh!  Show me cool and campy stuff I never knew about, not the leftovers from Sunday Magazine.  Jeesh.  Anyway, that’s all I’ve got. 

(Julie Nipp never comes to my house.)

(From M.)

OK, I’ve been following up on the Lisa Mowak story, and I’ve figured it out.

When she was on that shuttle mission last summer, she used the robot arm to retrieve from orbit an old bottle, which turned out to contain a Genie. The (male) Genie is completely devoted to her, but it is constantly embarrassing because Lisa is:

1) A Captain in the Navy
2) A highly-trained, carefully selected astronaut
3) A married mother of 3

She is “more than a colleague” to the other astronaut because he is the only other person who knows about the Genie. The intended “victim,” an Air Force officer (a psychiatrist), suspects that both of them are covering up something and is determined to find out what it is.

The whole episode with the disguise, the diapers, the rubber gloves, pepper spray, and the BB gun was a screwball plan to throw the other woman off the track, gone horribly and comically awry. It will all turn out OK before the final credits roll.

**

Zulkey has ideas, too.

It’s all tied up in the cure for homosexuality, somehow. Mark my words.

(Click here if you thought Prince’s guitar was a penis.)

… then I’ll say this — The Atlantic Monthly has bad taste in women.  First, Caitlin Flanagan pillaged the deep well of writing mediocrity like a bathysphere.  (A poor attempt, yes, but I don’t see you trying!)  And now Ms. Tsing Loh, good Lord.  Once again, reading her essay, I found myself yelling to the chair, “what the hell is this?” 

Seriously – what the hell is it, Sandra?  Okay, cute title (“She’s Just Not That Into You”, purportedly a review of this book), good dek (“Women prefer food to sex with their husbands –and that’s OK”), but from there it goes horribly wrong. 

Did they publish the wrong draft?  Was there an editor?  It’s one big appalling mess — and the dildos … do they add something?  Are the cool kids all writing ”dildo”?  Hey, Beavis.  She said, “Dildo”. 

Oh brother. 

You know the people who talk and talk and talk at parties.  Well this one writes and writes and writes.  At least in reviews.  I don’t remember that she used to be so boring and pointless (pointless as in she never gets to one – or maybe I just don’t manage to hang in there long enough.) 

The insult to the injury of reading her piece is that I lost out on a column to her last year — a regional family mag in Orange County.  They must not have read her work.  Or maybe they’re crazy. 

I can never get enough of Kingsley Amis, ever.  There’s a new bio out, and I’ll add it to my list in a minute.  Though don’t feel like you have to wait – buy it for me right now for crying out loud.   

Or don’t.  Instead read this delightfully well-written review from the Times Literary Supplement by Clive James.  In it you’ll find a number of acrobatic word strings that will have you shaking your head (with a slight smile and cluck, or maybe low whistle.)  But I stopped reading right near the end, to give you this:  bathysphere. 

James, you dog!  Where’d you pull that from?  It works beautifully. 

“The depths of his drinking were achieved after Jane left him, but the bathysphere was well on its way down while she was there.”

Bathysphere.  Use it in a sentence today, impress your friends.  (Send your best attempts here.  Winner gets a real bathysphere.  Or only a picture of one.)