This Business of Art: In the Flesh Reading

What are you doing a week from today [Thursday]? Watching Friends? Well, newsflash: it's not on anymore, so you're probs free now. That's perfect. Because, as one of the best readers of all time, I've been asked to read at Rachel Kramer Bussel's "Best of the Best of 'In the Flesh'" reading next Thursday, September 20th, at the Happy Ending Lounge on 302 Broome Street in New York, New York. At eight, which coincidentally is when The O.C. used to be on.

[Sidenote: It is now officially allergy season. In an effort not to literally claw my own eyes out, I instead scratch the sides of my nose. I don't know why this works; actually, it doesn't. I'm basically just re-routing my fingers from my itchy red eyes to the part of my nose where, if I wore glasses, there would be little glasses marks, so if I do accidentally break skin, it won't look that weird. Howevs I don't wear glasses, so instead it just looks like someone with acrylics grabbed my nose with their fingertips and dragged me around for a bit. Obviously that happens to me all the time, I live in Planet Harlem. I just want you to know what I'm dealing with here as I write. Actually, the keyboard is a good place to re-route my fingers. [Insert sexual innuendo about re-routing fingers here.]]

It'll be crazy crowded, 'cause the other readers are mildly famous, so you should probs get there early, I'm actually planning to arrive on time.

Usually I like to layer my self-promotion in several coats of disclaimers, but this's gonna be fo'reals hot, you should honestly go for your own entertainment. Last year I read a story called 'Fucking Around,' (which'll appear in RKB's anthology "Dirty Girls") in which the protagonist metaphorically slept with a lot of cities, and I wrote lines and Haviland read them. It was super-hot. See:

"Fucking Around" led to many things. For example: [redacted] read RKB's event write-up, asked to read the story, I sent it over, and apparently her enjoyment of that story "sealed the deal" [the deal=liking me a lot]. Also, I met an editor from [redacted] magazine @ "In the Flesh," he was totes impressed ... I was mostly drunk and've got a vague memory of our convo, remember feeling totes overwhelmed and flattered and like, wow .. later, he asked me to write them an article which got killed. [Not by him, obvs, he worked his ass off on that thing with me]. This year will undoubtedly be equally fruitful. No really, both of those things were super-good before they were super-bad, obvs. Oh! Just remembered, I also met Brian there, I've done a lot of fun copywriting for him, including a gig that earned me a hot pair of leather cuffs and a whip, as well as cash money obvs. So yeah, this year, probs, I will meet Jackie Warner.

This is one of those posts where I just ramble. Actually, this whole thing about the reading was supposed to be an intro to another blog entry, but I think I'll just save that for tomorrow/the next day/the day after that, clearly this is going on long enough. The introduction has now taken over the post. That might be a really good metaphor for my life.

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Anyhow, this year, the douchetards at Les Miserables, the Musical, won't give Haviland the night off to read with me. [Let's see how long I can keep this line up here before Hav asks me to take it down. Right now, it's Thursday at 6:51 PM] [UPDATE: Haviland is "being bold" and letting me keep it up. So there, Prisoner 56421 or whatevs!] We tossed around the idea of doing a little movie or something, but I realized that'd be a good way to repeat one of Riese's Top Ten Destructive Life Patterns: namely, finishing one stressful thing, and, before I can relax/sink back into the bell jar, I start another stressful thing immediately.

New Year, New Story, New Hot Girl! My friend Stephanie, also an actress, has stepped up to the plate and'll be reading with me. In order to best display this to you, and to encourage your attendance, I have constructed a graphic for you. The theme is, obvs, "Girls in Bikinis." This has nothing whatsoever to do with the reading. It's possible that this graphic'll remain as long as the above Les-Mis-bash line. [UPDATE: Also approved. Because, after all, there is this music video.]

Also, obviously, I have no story to read for the reading. Last year I wrote my story on Monday and the reading was on Wednesday. So this year, I figure I'll be churning this baby out on Sunday. I think I'm gonna use the same format [personifying cities, and then fucking them], but this time, I'll be talking about sleeping with various NYC neighborhoods/boroughs/tri-state area. Yeah? That'll be funny. I don't write erotica actually, I think I've mentioned this before.

Apparently I started writing notes for this hypothetical story in my notebook in July, and never picked back up on it. Here are the highlights of these notes, all of which are incredibly promising for the future [read: I am so fucked. And I mean that in the "what the hell am I gonna write?" way, not the "About to have sex" way.]:

Riese's Notes for "Fucking Around Part Two," as transcribed from her notebook,
where they were written in what appears to be an incredibly drunken scrawl:

-New Jersey isn't wearing underwear. I laugh: "You're not wearing underwear," and she doesn't laugh back, she just takes mine off, and we're close but not so close that I can't look down at her fingers -- chipped black nailpolish. Then I notice she's got each middle finger painted a smooth glossy un-chipped bright purple that reminds me of Bubble Tape, and I imagine her in traffic, flicking off drivers, I imagine her in photos, flicking off the camera, I imagine her inside me, flicking off. I want to laugh at this, too, but I learned my lesson about that already. New Jersey doesn't understand irony, which is why I'm confessing she's the best I've ever had outside of you, and outside of Chelsea.

She scratched me with those nails, but when you asked me about it the next day, I don't remember what I said, all I know is what I didn't say: I didn't say it was from New Jersey.

-I can't remember if I slept with Red Hook.

-Upper East Side didn't come. He left $100 cash on the nightstand. I don't know if he did that on purpose or not, maybe he was just emptying his pockets. Maybe he didn't know the difference between hookers and pretty girls.

Personally, I'm super excited to see Jessica Cutler, who got famous for writing like, five blog entries -- which happened to be about fucking Capital Hill douchetards, consequently landing her a book deal (The Washingtonienne ), a lawsuit, and a bevy of honors including Gizmodos "Top 10 Blogger Babes," Jane's "30 Under 30" -- and, most importantly to me, was called "beautiful, untalented, and morally corrupted" by Number One Twatwaffle Michelle Malkin. I'm not linking to MM, because she's a twat.

Also, I have a lot of secret heroes-- women I admire because they say whatever the fuck they want without any shame or pretense or concern for repercussion -- and Jessica is one of those. [Rosie O'Donnell would be another, but on completely different topics, obvs.] I don't really care about her book or her five-entry blog, I just think it's cool that she's always saying ridiculous things in public and not apologising for it. Actually, she's sort of made a career of doing things women aren't supposed to do and not apologising for it, and also participated in a Sex Columnists Sex & Dating roundtable in New York Magazine in which she actually prompted the entire panel, save for RKB, to WALK OUT, which is fucking incredible. That would be the moment that sealed the deal for me with JC. Also, she's kinda foxy (see photo).

(This "outspoken woman=secret hero" policy doesn't apply to Ann Coulter, I hope she gets hit by a truck) (Or while sitting in a parked car like what happened to Chelsea on South of Nowhere. Except Chelsea didn't get killed, 'cause she's a nice girl, but the baby she was preggers with did get killed. If Ann Coulter was in that car, I'd like for her to be pregnant with the spawn of Satan, and for both of them to get killed.)

Also, I searched my blog archives to see if I've ever talked about Jessica Cutler and it turns out that indeed I have. I'm not sure if I prove my own point here, or directly disprove it, but here it is:

"On Friday, I spent the day at work mediating the joy and the backlash [from my bi-girl survey], and when I got home from work at 6 I felt utterly battled and totally unqualified to enter the public sphere, that perhaps I was carrying on a bit too much with the naysayers, like I would become one of those writers who always says dumb things in public (sometimes I repeat to myself at night: "It's okay Marie, you could be Jessica Cutler.") or jumps on couches or becomes 85 pounds and then parties all night. So I got a massage and drank until Haviland came over. That's what Ernest Hemmingway would have done."

-Sunday Top Ten, "Surveying the Surveys," November 5, 2006

Have you ever seen this ad for "Cymbalta"? It's all like "depression hurts," and then it shows these people doing things I find perfectly enjoyable; sitting on the ground staring at the wall, sitting at a table with their head in their hands, lying in their bed. Then, they take Cymbalta, and start doing all of these things that would personally make me miserable: running outside with dogs, talking on the phone, working in an office and lying in bed with their 300 children. Is that supposed to sell people? I seriously don't understand how most of the world works.

Anyhow. Now that I've throughly ensured that meeting Jessica Culter will be totally awkward, let me go on. Although I suppose I did post an entire section of a blog entry about how my ex and I were completely obsessed with RKB, so clearly I like to stack the deck against myself.

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Anyhow! Also reading:
-Polly Frost -- from the first moment I heard about this woman, I thought, her name is awesome, she should be a comic book character. Like, "Oh, you think I'm Pollyanna, JK I will ICE YOU!!" We've emailed. Yeah, that's right, and also, she met Haviland last year and she's just toured the entire country with this "Erotic Sex Scenes" show ("erotic and comic tales of Hollywood"), casting local actors in each show, and, obvs, will be doing that at the reading .
-Todd Levin, who's like a real comedy writer who's been on Comedy Central and HBO, writes for Salon, Esquire The Onion, and Radar, and might have the best writer website I've ever seen. Look at it.
-Satirist and political writer Andrew Boyd, who's published actual books and lead some really ace satiritical political campaigns including "Billionaires for Bush."
-Um, Samara O'Shea who actually has an Emily Dickinson quote on her webpage right now. How hot is that? I've wanted to read her book since I first heard about it, it's called "For the Love of Letters." I also love letters.
-RKB OBVS.

OMG, seriously writing out those author bios made me freak out. I wonder if they see my bio and think I'm a real writer? I should probably start drinking like, right now, to prepare. Or, you know. Writing.