Sunday Funday Tuesday Top Ten: Top 10 Weirdos of 2008

When did "weirdo" become the go-to noun for personal greetings? See, all my language is stolen from other thieves, or from an ex, or a BFF. Language is funny like that. I'm going back to school, I'm studying Linguistics. (Other subjects I've claimed I will soon pursue a Master's Degree in, due to recent falling-of-sky, etc.: Education, Welding, Computer Programming, Nursing, Opera.) Because most people I know and/or read about and/or watch on various screens are at least slightly insane, it's always a challenge to select the Top Ten Weirdest Weirdos of 2008. There are so many weirdos. There's obvious choices I'm not allowed to write about, and then other worthy contestants I just didn't include, like Tegan & Sara and eric mathew.

This year we have three repeats from last year's list: Jenny Schecter, Haviland, and me. I will always be number one. Trust me, if last year's number two couldn't beat me out for top spot, then no one can.

Actually I had a hard time writing this, it took forever. I think it's been a really long time since I've actually talked directly about my friends or other living, breathing people who will read this -- like who they really are. I don't know how long it's been, maybe just a few weeks, but possibly that's been a long time for me, relatively?

And now I'm like "what's up, this is me."

Sunday Top Ten: Top Ten Weirdos of 2008
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10. Rachel Maddow

"I have a little stockpile of lawn mowers, some of which it has been years since they worked.
But it seems wrong to get rid of lawn mowers, so I keep them."
(Rachel Maddow)

I've enumerated her many virtues many a'time on this here blog because I love Rachel not only for her political acumen & homosexual hair, but also for her weirdo dorkdom. She's the geek the popular girls are too endeared towards to talk shit about. She's bright, earnest, humble, knowledgeable, well-informed. And Rachel crushes aren't really about sexified passion as they are about being sort of warm and settled, intensely satisfied by the quality of life enabled by this supreme physical and intellectual union.

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9. Stef

"I really want to express first and foremost that my hair in this photo [on my blog]
is inspired probably 99% by alanis morissette,
the only person in the whole world who really GETS me."
(Stef, on an adolescent photograph)

Stef is Weirdo Pride, one day she will write a book like John Waters yet-unwritten Role Models ("a self-portrait where I write profiles of other people and how much I love them and how much they changed my life and influenced me—famous people, criminals, people you’ve never heard of"). Stef faces every day with a Sharpie on a rope looped around her belt-loop, black eyeliner and sunscreen. Stef, fastest texter in the West, is an obsessive conisseour of all things terrible/AWESOME and their bretheren: JT Leroy, Lindsay Lohan & Samantha Ronson, fedoras, The Spice Girls, Amy Winehouse, Courtney Love, Alison from Intervention, etc. and is "a totally shameless nerd about theme parks, water parks and zoos." She's not just moderately interested in things she is interested in. She's also totally ironic about most of those interests, and ironic about the irony of me using "ironic" to mean whatever I want it to.

I've come to realize life's got a lot to do with who knows what you're referencing when you reference something. If it's something weird, I know Stef will get it.

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8. Jenny Schecter

"Well you know what, Kevin? I don't really care what you and your
fucking
purple
tie
think about my whereabouts, okay? What the fuck do you think this is, 1952?"
(Jenny, The L Word)
Initially, including Jenny on this list for the second consecutive year brought me joy. Now, I approach this task solemnly 'cause now I know that Jenny's gonna kick the bucket in Season Six. But y'know. What better time to honor her memory? Right-o. In Season Five, Jenny built upon Season Four's steamrolling glory with all new levels of megalomania, but this time her initial divaliciousness changed as the season went on -- ultimately we saw it morph, like a butterfly, into something laced with humility and sadness and a sort of muted humanity that evolved and then self-combusted.

Though I described Jenny as a "manipulative weirdo amazing ball of psychotic joy" early in the season, things changed by season's end. After losing Niki and her film to All About Adele, I described Jenny as a "dark angel from dark angel heaven" and declared "We love you too Jenny! Even though you've combined a doilies with your garbage bag dress for an all-around disaster, it's fine, at least your tights don't have holes, you've grown up so much."

Although often insufferable, she had some really vulnerable/self-important moments in Season One. What I mean is she was only a weirdo insofar as I, also, am a weirdo, and all of us, who think too much about ourselves, are indicted in this too.

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7. Natalie

" I just feel I'm not human, more of the animal world. I wish I was an animal & I could have puppies."
(Natalie, on how "moo" became a part of her vocabulary)

Natalie is a very special person who I've been besties with since the year 2001 and now we live together. Sometimes when she knows I can hear, she'll burst into the opening chords of "Circle of Life" or "Jingle Bells" or "Where I Stood" and then I'll sing back, from my room, the next line or two. Natalie's pick-up-the-phone greeting: "Moo moo moo?" Natalie believes there are 24 usable hours in every day and each of these hours is equally adequate for any given activity -- the gym, sleeping, working, phone convos, a long walk in the freezing cold, dinner, breakfast, coffee, etc. Natalie talks to strangers. Strangers on planes, in lines, on the street, apparently in the gynecologist's office, at the car rental place, everywhere. Natalie wants her gynecologist to be her friend and just came into my room to announce that she's pretty sure she could seduce Shane, given the chance.

Natalie is also legitimately brilliant and actively contributes to the betterment of the world via a Women's Rights in Development (whatever that means) NGO.

Natalie watches Office Space every night while she (tries to) sleep. When Natalie comes home, she goes: "Bernie?" and then I go "Rabie?" (variations on our last names) or sometimes we'll switch. Natalie wants to walk to Pinkberry right now, and it's about 23 below zero, windy like apocalypse.

There's this part in My So-Called Life where Angela emotes: "there are so many different ways to be connected to people. There's people you feel an unspoken connection to, even though there's not even a word for it. There's the people who you've known forever who know you in this way that other people can't because they've seen you change. They've let you change." That's how I feel about Natalie.

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6. Andy Warhol

"I wanted to paint nothing.
I was looking for something that was the essence of nothing,
and the soup can was it."
-Andy Warhol

This year I became obsessed with Andy Warhol (coincidentally, it would've been his 75th birthday this year, thus inspiring millions of media tributes) and secondarily, Little Edie, who was my party-fashion icon far before I took the time to learn who she was. I feel like I get him. I don't feel like we could've been friends, but if the dead lived among us, I feel like his ghost and my real self could be friends. You know? "Meeting creative new people -- especially young kids -- was always important to him; he thrived on it. But he knew that people only come to you if they think you have something to offer them."

I want to make the Factory, you know, still I do. I mean that's still the point, I guess, if there is one. We can get Rite-Aid brand tin-foil, print our magazine on all the unused credit card applications that still come every day in the mail as if we've got anything left to owe. I'm 27, for Chrissake!

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5. Michael Scott on The Office

"Yes. Money has been a little tight lately. But, at the end of my life, when I'm sitting on my yacht, am I gonna be thinking about how much money I have? No.
I'm going to be thinking about how many friends I have, and my children, and my comedy albums.
I mean, I have a yacht, so I obviously did pretty well money wise."
(Michael Scott, The Office)

If you haven't really watched a sitcom, besides occasionally Arrested Development on DVD, in several years, and if everyone's been telling you to watch The Office and you've thought to yourself; thanks, thanks really but no thanks, when you do, you love it, and watch hours & hours back to back while cleaning .... you eventually begin embodying the spirit of Michael Scott. He's not even my favorite character. After several hours he annoys me. But in some way, sometimes, I get this man.

Though his character is sympathetic but still quite unlikeable, one often desires to inappropriately interrupt people diligently doing work because work is what one does with pointless, poorly executed hijinks and other totally non-productive activities in the name of "having fun." You can see this effect directly in our NewNowNext movie.

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4. Autumn
"ok so i read, re-read, and re-re-read this post. sadly i am at a loss.
maybe i would understand if i would have read the book. that might have helped.
just a little. but the one thing i understood was that hitler sucks."
(one of autumn's first comments ever, on the Oscar Wao book club post )

Starting now the Weirdo Commenter of the Year will be an official designation with a voting process. However I received a lemon tree last week in the mail, therefore cinching Autumn's auto-win. The tree's currently living in our living room. Natalie's singing to it.

Here's the thing: back when we made the 'zine, Autumn declared: "not that your poems arent great and stuff, but i think i can pass on buying stuff, especially when i dont get it." We clearly took action mailed Autumn a 'zine immediately, therefore extending an olive branch to the red stated plains of Kansas, where Autumn lives. But obviously she was already turning around even before receiving the 'zine and becoming the best commenter ever. She even took a photo of her 'zine with Lieutenant Teddy and emailed me a photo of her toilet-paper-hosted list of Cool people, and I was totally on it! Rock!

As I write to you today, Autumn has sent us a lemon tree, no longer lists Jesus as top interest on facebook, and voted for Obama. That means I [kinda indirectly in this sitch, but whatevs] influenced 5 people to vote for Obama this year. That's pretty much my biggest accomplishment of the year. Srsly.

I mean, seriously, actually. It does mean a lot to me to engage someone in a dialogue about political issues that's not possible in their 3-D lives. I think it's really cool.

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3.Haviland
"If I told u where I was and what I'm doing right now, u might wanna kill yourself.
Alternative universe faux reals."
-Haviland, BBM, yesterday.

Haviland is a weirdo still just like last year. Actually, she's even weirder, 'cause I think we are all getting super weird with age.

PRETTY PARTY PYRAMID!

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2. Caitlin
"A hoodie does not a critter make."
(Caitlin)

A quick confession: I listen in, you should know this. I pick up voices, phrases, words, expressions, we swap and cut and paste and incorporate and then develop an intricate and multi-sourced linguistic web. After Cait & I landed in L.A. in February, Haviland declared "you guys are totally talking the same." Some melding of cadence, volume, vocab ... later we determined it probs made it really irritating to hang out with [all of] us. But still, we go on; i have a lot of feelings right now, time for sleepy sloos, this makes me itchy, okay i have a lot of feelings about this first of all, team meeting, i have a lot of questions for [person], hot panic, my head's gonna explode, mouthing off, talking crazy, crazytown, and really an endlessly bountiful bevy of phrases and words we've picked up this year. Like I said in the intro, I'm sort of interested in linguistics these days. When I say "these days" I mean it, 'cause I usually keep an obsession for about 3-4 days.

Caitlin prefers to be the one sitting or lying on the floor and is grossed out by the thought of hot soup.

Caitlin is frequently mistaken for the elevator guy, a situation that [in order to be true] would require serious time travel (which luckily I love), I mean who still uses elevator operators? Paddington Bear or something? By "Caitlin is frequently mistaken for the elevator guy" I mean that when other people enter the elevator and Caitlin is in it, they are inclined to announce, loudly, their intended floor: "TWELVE!" "FOUR!" "THIRTY-TWO" expecting her to press the button.

Anyhow: who among us have not wanted someone else to make that final action, anyhow, the action directed by your choice, let someone else conduct as to how far up you'll be going, how high you can get. Who among us haven't dared to lean against the mirrored walls of that tiny industrial transportation machine with the confidence and surrender and complacency of a person traveling but not conducting, traveling sweetly and laughing, not a care in the world besides to, once you get off into the world; to save it. The thing is, she does do it. She does press the button for them, and it happens all the time. Usually in the time it takes for someone to yell "TEN!", for her to press the button and for us to arrive at our floor, we can hold the laughter and laughter-inducing looks in. More often we can't, and so we laugh and smile as we go up into the air. And so on.

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1. Riese
"Obvs."

Because I still write this blog. Wouldn't it be funny if this was like when Time made "YOU" the person of the year with a reflective cover? I remember thinking it was "YOU-tube," I just couldn't see the "tube" from the street when the cover flashed by. That'd be funny if I could do that here. They'll invent that soon I bet. Then ... who will be Number One? Huh? Joe? Joe Who? Joe Mama, totes.

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In conclusion, one may ask oneself -- "how does one become a prestigious weirdo?" You may notice that this year's list does not include idiots from OurChart or soulless bisexual dating show contestants, like last year's. That's 'cause I've grown & changed and feel it's more important to honour only weirdos with good hearts rather than wasting one's time on the scourge of the earth.

One becomes a weirdo by harboring strange obsessions, maintaining inconvenient neuroses, greeting prescribed situations with unexpected behaviors, being someone that I love, etc. Any sort of functional yet serious psychological disorder enhances one's weirdo-hood, though it is not necessary for your success. One becomes a weirdo by paying attention, and, consequentially, totally freaking out about it. This freakout is the most beautiful thing forevs and evs, I promise. Don't trust me, but I promise for real!

Sunday Top Ten: I Was 27 I Was Sure I Was Growing Pains Like Lead in my Feet

Firstly, doesn't my brother look just like Michael Cera? I saw this article about Cera in the times today and it reminded me of this important thought, one of many important thoughts I have in my head every single day:

Anyhow, onto the Sunday Top Ten on the topic of aging. During my oft-discussed tenure at the Olive Garden Times Square I dated an older man. I was 18 -- a young spry maiden in the fresh poppy fields of her youth -- and he was 27; a freshly divorced law student. I've never been so acutely aware of what it meant to be my age as I was then -- "18" was imposed upon me like a personality trait, and it was the focal point of many relationship discussions with Mr. 27. Consequently 27 has become, in my mind, the age at which one becomes "older." 27 is the age at which I arbitrarily decided people became old enough to have their shit together.

18 was a good age to be. Ripe and on the cusp of something grown-up and fabulous but still charming. Now I'm 27, when youth loses its charm and becomes an old old song in need of a DJ Carlytron Mega-mix. Have I gotten my shit together? Obvs no, I was closer to having my shit together in 2003. But today I spent four hours in high heels, fishnets, gold-hot pants, a corset, and a giant blonde wig and insane drag queen makeup for a sex blogger calendar shoot. I mean who would've guessed? That's way better than a mortgage [which I just had to look up as I don't know how to spell it], which I hear aren't good investments these days anyhow. I'm gonna be whatever month Hedwig and the Angry Inch copulated with Celene Dion and birthed a spry shimmery Mousekeeter named autowin. So that's something.

See I progressed at a highly abnormal rate most of my life. Reading before kindergarten, writing novels before the invention of computers as I was born in the land before time. I started researching colleges and taking myself seriously as a professional something before I even went through puberty. I tried to get into college a year early but my Mom was like "No way, Josè." Basically I was on a fast-track and was convinced that if I didn't go straight to Manhattan at 18 and make it STAT, I'd let the best years of my life pass me by. I slowed down a little bit after that.

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Sunday Top Ten: When I'm 27


[stephen nibbot ]

10. Married!

I figured, at 18, that I had about 10 years of effortless sveltehood and charm left. My high school sweetheart had praised me for making him feel "like a boy again," and my 27-year-old paramour said I was "immature" and "SO 18." I wanted to keep that up.

See -- obvs I intended to spend my Cialis years in a perpetual never-never land of processed snack foods, vodka, carrot cake, anachronistic footwear and My So-Called Life marathons, so I knew I'd have to get married before I began that phase of my life so that I'd be settled in with my fried chicken babies and therefore rendered unleave-able at the precise moment I'd become unbearable and plump. I'd sit on the couch with my nuggets of children, reading great literature out loud like everything was a fairy tale and my husband would be like "I'd divorce that bitch, but she won't get off the couch," and then I'd be like, "go eat a apple pie!"

Instead I just went gay.¹ Marriage is illegal and "letting yourself go" is de rigeour, so I'm good to go.

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9. Live in an unbearably cute apartment on a cute tree-lined block.

I think I've been over this a few times already.

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8. Be a fabulously successful writer, associate editor at New York Magazine, the next new thing prize-winning young novelist, news journalist a la Lois Lane or have started my own magazine, which is still my number one dream, although it's now starting my own online magazine, obvs.

Reality: 2nd Place in the Hot Blogger Calendar Contest, 2nd place in the Lesbian Blog of the Year, 2nd place in the 50-yard dash 1990.

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7. Have a savings account with actual money in it

I think I'm going to start one before I turn 28.

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6. Enter a fabulous job market, flash my diploma all the way to the top.

When I was applying for schools in '98-'99, the future wasn't just bright, it was blinding. Kids like me -- smart, well-read, completely pretentious asshats from academically inclined families -- believed the world was totally our Oyster 2.0 and we were gonna grab it by the horns and make sweet love to it, call it performance art, and collect our big fat checks. Within two years of matriculation, the world became a very different place. Also there's just a lot of us now. Like, by the numbers? A lot of kids in the city who want the same things.

My best friends were entering schools to study the following trades: acting, art history, directing theater, piano, set design, poetry, filmmaking, violin, modern dance, women's studies, etc.

When I transferred to University of Michigan to get a B.A. in English Literature, I thought I was being really fucking responsible, 'cause I'd left Sarah Lawrence where I'd planned to shell out $160,000 to get a degree in "Liberal Arts." In retrospect I should've learned a trade I could stick my hands in like they had in the Olden Days before the economy was invented, like basket-weaving or glassblowing.

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5. Some version, however abstract, of the [Artist]'s American Dream. Warhol-ish. Obama-ish

And maybe that's what I like about Obama. That he seems to believe in the dream we were sold -- the dream of a meritocracy. But our government for the past 8 years hasn't been a meritocracy, it's been some bizarre combination of theocracy and aristocracy. Bush wasn't even elected, but his arm weilded its power and the people fell in line.

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4. Have massive amounts of ass-kicking fun/adventures!

You know what I just fully wholly 100% realized just now is that in the mess of things that so many things have become over the years, there's also the other things, as in, all the things I never ever thought I'd have the chance to do in a million trillion years that I've done in the time between then and now, like some of the purest funnest fucking fun I've ever had like ever. So much fun, seriously, so much fun. Crazy fun. A dream world for everyone involved so much of the time, but maybe that's what makes it feel like so much magic, laughable magic ... that so many times, if you closed your eyes and tapped your shoes it could be a dream world that beat the hell out of any other dream worlds I've known. Years of memories of adventures burning way too bright to last the night, but believing every time that it would was half the fun.

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3. Watch Amèlie

I bought Ameliè in like 2002 I think, 'cause I thought I would watch it on my laptop on our way home from Ohio one Thanksgiving. Unfortunately my boyfriend was being an asshole and said it would be rude for me to do that when I could just be awake listening to him annoy me with assholery. Now I'll never watch it, 'cause it has subtitles and that means I'll be doing two things at once, which makes it hard to do yet another thing, like write my blog or clean my room , while I "watch" the movie.

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2. Get a six-pack

I think I want more apple strudel.

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1. Have health insurance

SCORE! Howevs, if I ever accomplish any of the other things on my list, I'll stop qualifying for my health insurance. You win some, you auto-lose some. Vote Obama! Then we'll all get health insurance!

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¹ I still identify as bisexual but often play with facts for the purpose of a good sentence. Even for a mediocre sentence. The point is that we're all queers, labels are for pineapples that have labels on them. Cans of pineapple.

Sunday Top Ten: We Didn't Do It

"We think of our lives as a series of events ... of things happening one after another. But it's just as accurate to see our lives as a series of things that don't happen to us."
(Ira Glass, intro to "We Didn't" episode of This American Life)

She did it, she boarded and flew all the way across the country, away from New York's industrial erections and valiantly towards somewhere that made up for its failed promises in baths of well-lit potential and it wasn't just her who did it. People move in body if not in mind, and finish novels and start revolutions and quit jobs and lose weight and get really into yoga and sometimes I do and I will but when you think about it -- and I have, 'cause I have a lot of thoughts happening at once in my head -- there's way way more things that I didn't do.

Sunday Top Ten
We Didn't Do It

exhibit a: things i was gonna do

10. California Here I Come

I didn't move to California or Michigan but I L.A apartment-hunted online. I didn't say goodbye to all that and disappear like heaven on wheels but if I'd had the financial means I would've left this apartment before they asked me to but I didn't so I didn't. I didn't move to Walden Pond but I looked on craigslist for cabins in the woods. I didn't leave for the summer or the winter but I packed for both. I didn't move to Australia but I downloaded the form to get a passport and left it on my desktop where it still stands today, awaiting my attention, having survived the acquisition and subsequent fall of a new passport in the meantime.

9. You Had Time

I didn't write my book. I took a lot of notes. Mom & I voyaged to the Michigan storage space to excavate the artifacts of my little life and Mom said she'd kill me for losing the key to my locker's lock 'cause we had to pay for a chainsaw 'cause I was supposed to hold onto the key but I didn't. I read books for research and I assembled my notes & research & wrote an outline, marketing plan, etc. But I didn't write the actual book 'cause I'm not ready for such substantial truths and so I decided to write a novel instead but I didn't. But I will. "Did you know it took Diaz 11 years to write Wao?" I wrote to my agent. "This segues neatly into my next topic ..."

8. Falling is Like This

I didn't jump out the window but I did forgive you except for the few times later on when I didn't. I didn't overdose on anything though I felt my heart beat so hard inside my chest I thought it might leap right out of my body on legs of its own, bound across the city and get on a plane and leave me all alone, heartless. I didn't ever go heartless but I did get sad and mean. I thought I could make it all better and I tried but I didn't.

7. Out of Range

I didn't apply for an M.F.A. program but I sat at B&N with books and copied down lists of the best schools, sent out for brochures to put into the file folder "Graduate Programs." So I didn't move to a room of my own in Iowa City where it'd get so quiet at night that I'd feel my sober heart beat like a horse. I didn't move to Missoula to forget about reality and embrace my past friends as characters.

6. And Darling

I didn't write back to many emails & I've got 182 e-mails in my draft folder and some of them are for blog-readers. I generally try to discard drafts rather than keep them but sometimes 'cause of auto-save I didn't.

Of the 182 e-mails I never sent: 33% = to exes, 33% = jobs , 20% = angry rants to friends & 10% = emails I thought I DID send but didn't.

These are the titles of some of the emails I didn't send: Sancho is Not Retarded, obvs it's me so it's not good news, STOP., Typist Position, that's fine I'll send you three emails in a row I'm not above that, portfolio samples, copy gig, part-time assistant, your blog makes my firefox crash, fall or silence, UPDATE, room for rent, communication, re: apts and such, Pick Me! So Qualified!, um., guestbian blog, the summer they electrocuted the rosenbergs, this is stuff for my book that i am going to write about myself because i am self-centered, home is where my habits have a habitat, some things i wanted to say to you.

exhibit b: things i was gonna do

5. If I Gave You my Number

I didn't try to track down anyone's phone number when my phone got stolen so I didn't ever keep in touch with anyone I knew before that time though I didn't ever say I would anyway so I didn't.

4. Take me Anywhere

I didn't go to Reno or China or the West Indies but I researched plane fares and packing lists and room rates. I didn't go to Paris and I didn't apply for Yaddo but I did download the application & inserted it into the "writing-work related" folder and I bookmarked some web pages.

3. Walking With A Ghost

I didn't start The Factory but I watched Factory Girl and started to read The Diary of Andy Warhol but I didn't finish it. I looked at warehouses online all over the country but I didn't look at any in 3-D but I still believe in it and I'll make it happen, I didn't yet but I will.

2. Fix You Up

I didn't make my resumè into the kick-ass thing it wants to be but I did look at resume examples and read books about resumès and made ten different copies of my resumè for different kinds of jobs but I don't like any of them. I didn't put together a copywriting portfolio but that's 'cause Brian didn't send me my samples and I asked him twice. I didn't call Natalie's temp agency and I didn't work at the new Starbucks just to make it go faster and I didn't start that Sacred Altar business with Mary or sell that teevee show with Carly and I didn't send that new pitch to New York Magazine and I didn't do the Best Idea EVER yet but I WILL.

1. As Cool as I Am

I didn't stop writing this blog. I didn't do another comment contest or make Autowin totebags or black shirts or continue Great Mysteries of Life or The Year in Review. But I mean I'm still writing this blog. That's something.

I thought the whole world was gonna change in January and it did but it didn't change exactly how we'd expected. But when I say now that I feel like things are falling in place I'm not taking about magic anymore, or blessings or karma, I'm just talking about people and stability and change and calm that's tangible. It's like the year of magical thinking, and if you haven't read it I'm not giving anything away when I quote the last lines: "You had to feel the swell change. You had to go with the change. [John] told me that. No eye is on the sparrow but he did tell me that."

I love ending a blog on an obliquely optimistic note. I think if I sound vague, it's 'cause I feel vague too. Vague ... but good.

I'm trying to think of the biggest thing I didn't do and I'll write about that later but first I'll ask you; what didn't you do this year?

Stuff I've Been Reading: June & July Super-Special

Hello and welcome to "Stuff I've Been Reading," a weekly variety show starring Barry Williams (the original Greg Brady) and the number one flirt herself Haviland Stillwell. I'm your host Riese. Today's show is going to be a blog post about Stuff I've Been Reading, a.k.a. the (bi)monthly auto-win segment inspired by Nick Hornby's column by the same name at The Believer. (Prior installments of "SIBR": Jan., Feb, March, April/May ) Hornby's mission statement, and mine: ""A Hilarious and True Account of One Man's Struggle With The Monthly Tide of The Books He's Bought and The Books He's Been Meaning to Read.""

This month I combine June & July into a Big Reading Sandwich, like World Book. More about Auto-Win Book Club #2 at the end of this post. Guess who wrote a book? Mia Kirshner (Jenny from The L Word)! OMG, what if I WROTE Some of her Parts? Like, the memoir? Then we could vote on what's better, my edition of Jenny Schecter's Some of Her Parts or Mia's book I Live Here, which's not about the toolshed, it's about people with real problems, like in Africa and stuff. It's not out 'til October, but probs most of you know a thing or two about waiting.

BOOKS BOUGHT/RECEIVED
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Dìaz
Live Through This: On Creativity and Self-Destruction, edited by Sabrina Chapadjiev
The Andy Warhol Diaries, edited by Pat Hackett
How Sassy Changed my Life: A Love Letter to the Greatest Teen Magazine of All Time, by Kara Jesella and Marisa Melzer
The Worst Days of Your Life, edited by Mark Jude Ponier
Learning to Love You More , edited by Harrell Fletcher & Miranda July

BOOKS READ
Veronica, by Mary Gaitkskill - (re-read)
Live Through This,, edited by Sabrina Chapadjiev
Orlando, by Virginia Woolf
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz
How Sassy Changed my Life, by Kara Jesella and Marisa Melzer
Learning to Love You More , edited by Harrell Fletcher & Miranda July

I was talking about books and re-reading w/a blog commenter on facebook (I'd like to make this sentence as geeky as possible. I should add: "while reading babylon-5 fan-fic & watching re-runs of Quantum Leap."), and he asked me: "How do you know if you really like a book if you only read it once? Reading a book for the first time is like having sex with someone for the first time ... it's new, and it's exciting, but none of the bits quite line up like you're used to, and it's always a little bit confusing."

[Just as a sidenote; he also compared creative writing vs. literary criticism to sex in a recent comment.]

I'm currently in withdrawal over Mary Gaitskill's inability to pound out a Joyce Carol Oates-ian nine novels a year. I eat M.G.'s work. I'm hungry. So I returned to Veronica. I loved it! Again! I'm re-reading all my favorite books now from now on. I realized I'd missed much of the present-tense voice (w/its trees, moss, grass, etc) the first time around. Caitlin read it simultaneously for the first time so we could have mini-bookclub.

If I had to compare re-reading Veronica to sex, I'd say it'd be like having sex with an ex you know you're going to fall in love with all over again, and that this time around it'll work. That never happens in real life, that's why I love literature.

I'd suggested Live Through This: On Creativity and Self Destruction as a book club selection, then got it anyway. Firstly, so glad I picked Oscar Wao. (which clearly I won't talk about here, 'cause that's what Auto-Win Book Club is for!) I read it in about two days, 'cause I thought I'd include it in a review I penned for a new magazine, but didn't finish in time.

Anyhow, if you thought you'd like LTT, you should get it, 'cause it has some really perfect moments, I'd recommend it. OK but -- Secondly; though the collection's got a great-line up (e.g., Eileen Myles, Bell Hooks, Cristy C. Road) and several intensely compelling pieces, I did yell at my wall and scream at Tinkerbell about it.

Here's why: most essays aren't about creativity & self-destruction so much as they're about rehabilitation from creativity & self-destruction and advice on how to stop self-destruction. I know that's wise, but it felt preachy, I was expecting more about how to lessen the harm and incorporate various 'self-destructive' behaviors, not escape it. Myles's contribution, about obsessive toothbrushing and alcoholism, "Live Through That?!" is a stand-out - exceptional piece. Other highlights include Silas Howard's San Francisco addiction memoir "Friends as Heroes" and Toni Blackman's poignant "Rappin' my Wounds." An excerpt:

"Your insanity is his insanity. His crazy belongs to you ... you want to love him ... want to make the nonsense make sense ... he has used your secrets as weapons in verbal warfare. He berates you and puts down your work. He tells you how to speak at meetings, how to stand in line ... he was taught that criticism is love. It is not ... He wants you to be different, to be like him, think like him, talk like him and you want to simply be. Even his best attempts at apologies feel like intentional disses." (pg. 138, Toni Blackman)

But what really got my goat is that of all the pieces, only ONE addresses incorporating this self destruction into their lives (sans "my work is MUCH better now that I'm sober/eating/whatevs!" waxing poetic) -- and it's a bipolar writer arguing that other bipolar peoples should eschew "cutting off" "so-called symptoms" with medicine/treatment and rather explore their inner beings and untapped capacities. Then she mouths off about how she loves her cello and sometimes she sits down and talks to it and all bipolar people should damn the man, fuck all kinds of Seroquel, mental health is just trying to keep us DOWN!

That's fine, I hope she never hits or berates her daughter/son or girlfriend/boyfriend, like um, Toni Blackman's ex-boyfriend, clearly all he needed was a cello or maybe a viola. Moving on.

How do I consistently end up w/Virginia Woolf by the pool? Key Bisquane's windy bluesy wind nearly stole A Room Of One's Own, and I found myself on the Ro-Boat deck reading Orlando. Anyways, you know how when you're exercising, you're pumped up thinking how good this activity is for you rather than how good it feels right that minute? It was like that. I kinda felt like Woolf was playing with us, but in the funnest way possible, like "I'm Virigina Woolf and I'm gonna write a crazy-ass story where all kinds of bizarre shit happens and it's kinda mostly about/for this girl I la-la-love! There's pictures! Oh, and it's gonna be GOOD!" I found it super interesting/monumental from a queer studies perspective, filled in a lot of gaps from bisexual studies books I've read.

Anyhow, speaking of page-turners -- haha! No, this one really was. I'm bursting with big revolution ideas lately and I'd been hoping to read How Sassy Changed my Life, since it came out, we saw it in a D.C. bookstore and nabbed it, I read it immediately and everywhere, then made Stef, Caitlin and Haviland read it. Hav stole it away to L.A., and then mailed it back to Caitlin who's in New Jersey with cholera.

HSCML is packed with "ooo! ooo!" moments -- "OMG, Jane Pratt and I have so much in common!" I squealed about teenage-girl-in-the-90's nostalgia (omg! postal mail was so important!), like a trip down one of the only adolescent memory lanes I'd still find charming. A bit kiss-ass at times, but I'll kiss Sassy's ass any time. I'd like to start a magazine one day but first I need my own cooking show called "One-Pot Cooking" with a guarantee no meal will require washing over two (2) dishes.

++

I think lately I'm especially drawn to books which provide glimpses into the evolution and maintenance of various community-oriented/collective arts. I ordered The Andy Warhol Diaries during my intense phase of obsession, it's approximately a bajillon (20,000) pages long. If Andy Warhol had a twitter feed (and you KNOW he would), this'd be it. Everywhere he went, all he ate, who he saw. I'll never finish it. It's an epic.

I got Learning to Love You More (Harrell Fletcher & Miranda July) at The Whitney gift shop when Alex, Caitlin and I went there with my Mom for the Biennial. July & Fletcher started a website in 2002 that invited visitors to accept assignments, complete it following instructions and send in a specified report (writing, photo, etc), this book's a collection of those things. Internet gimmick books aren't how I usually spend my money, but something about this mission -- which garnered heartfelt stories and photos from all over the world that truly penetrate a breadth of human emotion -- seemed way more beautiful than Stuff White People Like. I read it on the subway with Alex and Caitlin mostly, and then finished it at home. Howevs, I don't want to see anyone's parents kissing ever again.

++

Book Club!

I want the next Book Club book to be by a lady-writer. Though I loved Wao like SO MUCH, I was thinking that I wouldn't have ever recommended it to a friend so we could talk about it together (though I would recommend it simply because it's so good), like Veronica. Which isn't to say Veronica's a better book, it's just a book that for some reason struck a chord with me, that made me want to scream and recommend and gab. I'm gonna try to pick a book like that this time.

Wow. It's way harder to think of books by ladies I'm eager to read -- probs 'cause men still outnumber women in what's "out there" in the media so I'm more aware of their output. I've got heaps of women writers I still need to read pre-death, but those are older books and I like newer things for book club.

When I love a lady-writer I LOVE her, I never love a man-writer with the same intensity except Stephen Dunn. But, it's kinda lame that with all the feminist and literary blogs I read every day I don't have anything on the top of my head. Maybe women don't write as many books 'cause they have their period or have babies. BAKE ME A PIE WOMAN thank you.

Auto-Win Book Club #2 ... I'm really intrigued by the first one, I've read a lot about it and it would be fun! But in the interest of a democratic process, take a gander:

What it is, by Lynda Barry
Lying: A Memoir, by Lauren Slater
Diary of a Mad Housewife, by Sue Kauffman
White Teeth, by Zadie Smith
Family and Other Accidents, by Sheri Goldhagen
Break it Down, by Lydia Davis
The Best of Everything, by Rona Jaffe

Tell me what you like, grasshoppers. Personally, I love bears.

I Wanted To Paint Nothing. I Was Looking For Something That Was the Essence of Nothing, and the Soup Can Was It.

[Attempting to construct a frivolous Sunday Top 10 with disproportionate self-consciousness, I figured I'd just write down my feelings -- mostly carry-overs from a few weeks ago -- and move on from there. Here they are. Yay! Sunday Top 10 is finished, will come tomorrow (it's finished, so that's a real promise)].

An Open Letter to All Interweb Haters and Self-Righteous Anti-Blogging Journalists:

[Not Good Autowin Readers, I love y'all. You're the best! This is directed at interweb haters, which sometimes includes people I know, but 95% of the time, doesn't.]

You Chorus of Cuntish Commenters [not my commenters, obvs], your twatiliciousness skyrockets. You under-sharers! You private, nasty people with little boxes of secrets in your stomachs! You're still riding the self-righteous tails of That Emily Gould Thing, a "kids these days" nose-snubbing/squabbling, or you're fired up by a number of additional fuels: NY Mag's recent "microfame" dissection, Keith Gessen's me/"the me you hate" breakdown, Julia Allison's continued Julia Allison-ness (although even she called it quits once).

The problem is: I let public & private negative discourse pervade my headspace. I get beautiful, supportive emails & comments from Autowin/straddle readers and yet a few negative voices overwhelm them. It's precisely the grateful notes that stop me from giving up -- it's not about ego-stroking, or wanting attention, it's about feeling that it matters though Old Media says it don't.

Why is sharing inherently bad -- and NOT sharing consequently "good"? There's plenty of bad oversharing out there, of course ... and I don't read it. Furthermore, I understand we must withhold most things, in fact, our hearts & guts tell us precisely what to hold back, just as it tells us it's time for lunch.

I like the internet! I LIKE IT! I'm sick of apologizing. I'm tired of reading over & over that the cultural pulse is beating inside an indulgent body and that this body is sitting & judging while we bloggers croon on like washed-up lounge singers. Watch me, watch me, I'm a lock-free Dear Diary, my Hooker Name is Elizabeth Wurtzel and my special trick involves opening my whole mouth and letting you touch my wisdom teeth. My Pandora's Box was opened against my wishes, but I haven't figured out how to close it and besides, everything happens for a reason.

In fact, this here blog has lead to many fabulous beautiful intangibles and I think it's better karma to keep going than to stop. I refuse to believe the internet isn't a little magic, look at this video from Kelka Pride. It's easy to scowl protectively at everyone, but it's more fun to play with them. Next year, p.s., we're all going to Kelka Pride.

(I read: "On the Internet, a person can enjoy all the downsides of fame without actually being famous. You can inflate your ego, betray your friends, alienate your family and earn the contempt of strangers without earning a penny in extra income" here and wonder -- am I about to make a ridiculous, flagrantly wrong point? But then I think -- I'm a young earnest writer, isn't it only natural that I'd write a blog, explore the medium? I wouldn't be the first "artist" to forge on so foolishly, w/o it being my "job"?)

[self portrait with sunglasses, andy warhol]

Watch me! Stick a tip or a word in the g-string of my informational striptease. I'm human. I've got a concrete heart & walls like pink floyd ... but humans, even loners like me, need some connection to the rest of the world, even if they hate the rest of the world. Even better, I like feeling that I've done what can to change it just by being me. And that live person-to-person thing -- that petrifies me, and I'm getting too old to keep drinking every time I'm forced to cross the gulf to strange strangers. But I'm safe here, and I like it here.

[Ten Portraits of Jews of the 20th Century Portfolio: Sarah Bernhardt
by Andy Warhol]

Example of Magic: Women's voices. Queer voices. Are everywhere. There's still a million differences between how they're received vs. the traditional voices but to simply exist is a big step in the right direction.

And here's what really I don't get -- and didn't get, re: the emily gould debacle, or any situation in which the writer isn't actively attempting to incite/provoke argument/debate, expressing hateful or bigoted ideas, or auto-playing an annoying song on launch ... if you don't like it ... don't read it. I don't like video games, but I'm not writing Nintendo to critique their latest version of Death Killer Raider Game #456 and, while I'm at it ... "p.s. Nintendo is fat & ugly!"

But -- commenhaters, you do read it! You eat it, devour it, lick the plate click-by-click and then smack your lips and vomit on the cook's face: "That was terrible."
The cook will ask: "Why'd you eat it?"

“Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness.”
- Eckhart Tolle

Writers (and musicians) have been oversharing forevs, it's just more searchable now. We're not savages. But we're vulnerable, 'cause we've taken off our armor and are now sitting behind it, naked & waiting. And there you hatoraiders are with your daggers & shimmering shields. You see our weapons and our best defenses, but decide instead to plan attack based on your feelings about our underwear (and women's underthings: far better to criticize). I didn't ask you to undress, so you don't have to, but you don't have to watch my undressing, either.

[Andy Warhol -Burkley Reinhold]

What can bloggers say in return to anyone who isn't "out there" like we are? I don't even know, 'cause I don't sit around thinking about why I hate people and where I can yell about it. I have complete respect for cyber-"anonymity" (in fact! Not only do I respect it, but I think it's a good thing that the blogosphere seems to be getting less crowded -- those meant to endure, have, and those who haven't, haven't, for whatever reason. Also 'cause if I add one more blog to my Google Reader, I'll have a heart attack), what annoys me is self-righteousness about cyber-anonymity ... the chip on the shoulder of many cyber-anonymous/non-bloggers ("learn your lesson from Emily," they say); loyal only to native art.

In fact -- bloggers can get fired (or -- just to avoid risking a blogger will blog about work when there's plenty of applying talent w/o blogs -- never hired in the first place) simply for having a blog, w/o first amendment protection. Your online-self is so damaging that companies exist now simply to erase it (for a fee). Blog-to-book sales have disappointed. Blogger-to-paid-blogger tales are increasingly less frequent. Oversharing's the Eighth Sin.

Sometimes "I'm not an internet participant, just an observer," is the new "We don't have a television, it's in the closet." (P.S. My teeve's in the living room, though I don't turn it on. I'm so cool, aren't I? For not watching teevee at home? I'm so much better than you. Don't worry, I'm also just like you at your worst and ugliest. Wanna hear about it? Listen: I watch TV at the gym, or with friends I'll stare blankly at its cheap stories and flat people w/expressive eyes and let it fill me like so much styrafoam.) Don't get me wrong -- I don't want you cyber-anonymous, or anyone who doesn't want to, TO participate. But if you do observe, and consequently choose so participate, I'd hope your contribution would be productive rather than just bitching at the content creators.

"The price of being known has gotten really low. I mean not the price, the reward.
Or whatnot. Andy Warhol could more accurately have said in the future everyone will be famous for $15."
-Emily Gould, Emily Magazine
*

[Screen Test: Edie Sedgewick. By Andy Warhol.]

So here's the kicker: the thing about microfame is that it doesn't necessarily bring any profits whatsofuckingever. It can even be a liability. This can be tough, I imagine -- dealing with the cons of fame (being recognized, criticized, insulted, gossiped about, dumped or attacked by a friend/partner) without the pros that make the cons bearable (this is how I make a living and feed myself and my family, so the sacrifices are worth it). I say "I imagine" because I'm not famous enough to deal with those cons, not because I have dooce.com-ish economic "pros." I don't know if the financial rewards for blogging will change, or if that's even the point -- though in a capitalist society, it sure seems like it is.

Saying you're a "blogger" once meant you were part of a forward-thinking generation of new-media enthusiasts, dreaming of an age that marries art, community and self-expression and births an international and ideally merit-based medium. Now, it kinda means you're a sucker, unless "for Deadspin" or "for Jezebel" are the next two words rolling off your tongue. Hell, it's gotten so bad that even Gawker seems to be pretty nice these days. Everyone's been snarked at, it's boring now.

The only thing left to do is be earnest, I think.

[In the Bottom of My Garden, by Andy Warhol]

What I like about Andy Warhol is his playfulness -- this can be fun. It can be entertaining or poetic, but bloggers can't have a deep thought or pull off perfect similie every day. Personally, I've lately tried to save those moments for the Sysiphean task of my novel. (Not a memoir anymore. I just ... can't.) Also, personally: my commenters don't yell or hate and are usually encouraging, and I like the challenge of increasing the user-friendliness and overall derth of fulfillment and format I can do with a receptive audience ... and at its very best most thrilling moments, it's like being an editor of my own little magazine, which has always been my dream job. I like dreams and the beach!

I've got faith that this medium's ultimately good for humanity, and also -- this medium's one of the only things I believe in that I can elect to take part in w/o spending money or leaving my apartment. There's frivolity, but there's also stuff I'm passionate about: group therapy, internet performance art, literature, book club, making people feel a little less alone.

The journey is all. We'll see.

*

The magic of the internet, again!: I just went online to track down some referenced posts, and found this at Slut Machine/Jezebel, expressing similar resolve. When I went to Gessen's blog to grab a link for my earlier graf, I found he'd posted this, which says what I just said, but better & briefer, and includes this exchange, which reminded me of conversations I've had:

Hampton: Rich people don’t blog. Happy people don’t blog. Successful people don’t blog.
Gessen: I’m not any of those things.
Hampton: But you’re those things enough, man. You wrote your book out of pain, and that’s why your book doesn’t suck. I don’t care what these people say. Whereas this blog is just the result of pique and wounded vanity.

[ Details of Renaissance Paintings (Paolo Uccello, St. George the Dragon), by Andy Warhol]

So, all ye haters, just shut your mouth. If I've learned anything of substance from blogging, it's that human beings are, by and large, better than we expect -- or could be. I think we will make this matter. We enjoy the first bite so we'll take it, and when we're all certain it's not poisoned, I'll pass it on to your grandchildren. I could do doomsday too, dressed in black for you, skip to my deepest blue. But this is much more fun.

Because I'll never be happy, therefore I must try whenever possible to feel happy, otherwise I'll die like a SIM, plunging red, time for bed, the hitch is dead.
I can't prove you're wrong about this medium ("the medium is the message"), but you can't prove I'm wrong about it either.

I've been obsessed with Andy Warhol lately, following the recent Interview Magazine issue dedicated to remembering him, which Alex brought me one evening and which enthralled me. I bought The Warhol Diaries and we need to finish Factory Girl. We wanna re-create The Factory, yes! we are such posers! Even my desire is a clichè, and I don't care! into something we call "The Warehouse." Like many things, it may not happen. Also though; it may. There was dry lightning for thirty minutes before the rain, and then the heat returned, following thunder. And then we went to bed, and then we woke up.

Brigid Berlin: He'd sit behind me reading The Post. He'd say; "Well isn't this a great story. Why can't Pat make a script out of this?" I'd say, "What are you talking about?" I didn't have the Post in front of me. "Well, this is a great murder, why can't we do this?"
Vincent Fremont: Or, "they're so peculiar."
Brigid Berlin: "All these young kids, they're doing such great things, and we're doing nothing."
Vincent Fremont: "He liked youth and he liked the news. I think that Andy would have been with the kids at 80. He would have appreciated anybody creative who was young, and helped them go forward. ..
*
Vincent Fremont: It's hard to project what Andy would be like today because he was so unpredictable. People always ask me what Andy would have painted. I think, with all the scandal that's gone down over the years, Andy would have been fascinated. And all that world of technology -- we would have stayed with it. Andy was very curious and he always wanted to know what was going on, and that keeps you young. I'm still trying to emulate him in that sense. Can you imagine how many young artists would have been coming to visit him?
*

It's YOUR Chance to Auto-Win Some! SWEEPSTAKES! :: And Auto-Fun! :: 6-16-2008

Happy Bloomsday, everybody! Yes, today is the day that James Joyce wrote about in his famous book "Ulysses," which I haven't read and probably never will. It's also my brother Lewis Bernard's 24th birthday. In order to best celebrate this momentous occasion as well as the launch of the Auto-Win Book Club, I'm giving you (yes, you! ALL OF YOU!) the chance to win a free copy of the book club's first selection (if you already own it, you can select a substitute prize of auto-gear or the Book Club's second book or a date with Lozo) ... it's super easy, so listen up:

1. Send an email to "Lewnard@gmail.com," with a BCC or CC to automatic_win@yahoo.com. The title of the email must be "Happy Birthday Lewnard."
2. There will be two prizes awarded: one will be selected at random from everyone who completed the mission, probs pulled out of a hat by one of my unpaid interns/personal assistants.
The second will be selected based on overall creativity and genius displayed in your birthday wishes. For example:
- Animated gifs
- Clever wordplay/poetry
- E-greetings of some sort that might make his computer explode
- Anything involving an e-greeting for a different occasion, but tailored for the birthday situation
- Creative photoshopping
- Any photos or other images
- Music
3. If you choose a format which won't allow you to send it to multiple recipients, then just forward it to me.
4. If you don't have time for anything creative, just say Happy Birthday and send it off, you'll still have a shot at love with Tila Tequila and a shot at winning a book/whatevs and contribute to my delight, re: Lewis's inbox today.
5. You have until midnight on June 16th (today) to complete this mission. If you live in Australia, that means you've got 'til 2 P.M. on the 17th. Late submissions are accepted, but not encouraged.
6. Some extraneous information about Lewis: he lives in New Orleans, he is very tall, he is 100% heterosexual, his car uses diesel, he's an engineer, he thinks I'm crazy, and we have very similar senses of humour.

Even if you don't want to win a book, you should do it anyway 'cause I LOL'ed just thinking about it. If you're my 3-D friend, you're pretty much obligated to do this. Too busy you say? So am I!

As for the book club, I've done some research and discovered that Junot Diaz's The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, due to its bestseller status, is usually about the same price as a paperback anyhow, and there are used copies available, the library, etc.

Try allbookstore.com for price comparisons of various online outlets. You've got about 7-10 days to get your hands on this book while I figure out what a Book Club is.

It will involve team meetings, as the book is being read. These will be very exciting and involve strategy development, watch out! Read fast!

The First Auto-Win Book Club Book Is:

Why this selection? It's the only list book I know fo'sho is legit genius (it won the Pulitzer), no one spoke out against it & everyone wants to read it. LK's already started! I'll pick something more specifically special (maybe from the same list) next time.

I'm guessing the "Finish Date" for the book will be mid to late July. I don't know exactly what'll happen in the meantime (team meetings!) but I'll have a few more ways for you to get the book this week.

This contest though is the only one for sure I know I'll do, 'cause I just did it!

I wrote a Sunday Top Ten, read it after you read "Ulysses" and e-mail Lewis.

---

quote"Andy [Warhol] saw the world through different-colored glasses, ones that we will never imagine. He was fortunate but tortured. Torture of his kind seems to plague all great artists because of their vision. They see deeper, they think deeper, and they translate their ideas from the mundane to the realistic. Not that there will ever be anything realistic about Andy's vision. It will never be conceived as mundane or realistic -- only poetic, and visionary, and mind-blowing." (Elizabeth Taylor)

---

links:
1. How to Nap. (@boston.com)
2. Also, you can rent one from enterprise for $25/day. (@lifehacker)
3. The Tonys happened. (@nytimes)
4. If the photos turn you on, just buy a vibrator! (@street carnage)
5. Lit 101 Class in Three Lines Or Less. Great Gatsby: "I love being rich and white." (@mcsweeny's)
6. It's all about the list: How We Read Online. (@slate)
7. Oregon Trail is somehow not included on this list, I don't know why. (@nerve-61fps)
8. NEA finds California tops in artists. Or, "artists."? (@latimes)
9. Rich points out that Tila Tequila "really is the stupidest person to have been given a public platform in some time.." Also, watch the video ... Kathy Griffin's facial expression is priceless. (@fourfour)
10. Poem: Slow Drag Blues, by Kevin Young. (@the new yorker)

Auto-Fun of the Day :: 6-9-2008

Mom's going back to the midwest tonight, and then ... well. No. I'm remembering now a conversation from my prolific past of advice-giving (I'll bring this back around, I promise) with a friend who was having troubles with her significant other. "It's just really hard right now," she said. "We're both totally stressed out and overbooked and busy working [insert ridiculous amount] of hours, not sleeping, and with [insert additional health or job/apartment/family-related difficulty], we're just both on edge --" And I was like "But you've been saying that for years. It's always like that. You're going to have to stop waiting for things to go back to 'normal' to get better, because I think stressed out and overbooked is your 'normal.' This is where you're going to have to be working from when you're trying to make it work." Anyhow, I think they screamed at each other for another year or so before breaking up, I don't remember -- the point is: I was about to say, "and then I'll get back to a normal blogging schedule," but clearly there's actually no such thing. Also I don't now what happened to me that I started using "blog" as a verb, and like ... often. But next Sunday would be a primo opp for a Sunday Top Ten, and Stuff I've Been Reading is happening, and so is more advice columns (have you read our first one?!), and the Carly Vlog! OMG! What am I talking? I gotta get crackin'. Auto-fun is good for me though, it makes me read and stay aware of the webbernets world.

Oh um : askautowin@yahoo.com. Send us your questions. I know you have them, as well as feelings., 'cause if you didn't, you'd be Old Macdonald E-I-E-I-O. Today I found out that even though my Mom has a degree in Hamburgerology, she never finished McHamburger School for reals 'cause she got preggers w/me which makes me feel a bit guilty. I dashed her dreams and it would've been really fun on Take Your Daughter to Work Day if I could've had all those french fries. No worries, everything's coming up roses! I'm gonna be a writer, like Ann M. Martin.

---

quote:"No I can't write for you because I have promised myself I wouldn't take on any new writing deadlines for a year because I'm working on a self-assigned project and I don't want to continually be distracted from it. I am of course continually distracted from it enough as it is, it seems like I work on it less than everything else, in fact, very admittedly just-in-time if you will. The pieces I'm making continue the theme of "structures that fit my opening," a phrase that speaks quite directly to the question of necessary, of forms that fill entryways, needs, desires, etc. ... Maurizio Cattelan was once quoted as saying: 'If I didn't have any shows, and there wasn't any interest, I wouldn't do anything." Right now I don't want to write anything now, and yes, I sort of have, but this doesn't count, or does it?" (From "DEAR X" by Frances)

---

links:
1)Peach Arse has got your book all ready: "You're Not the Only One - Charity Book for Warchild: "Ok, so it took three months, but rest assured it is three months of BRILLIANCE, of EXCELLENCE, of carefully chosen GORGEOUS bits of writing, of lovingly tendered editing and proofing, of gently nurtured and carefully catered for tastes and styles and with over ONE HUNDRED BLOGGERS' ENTRIES - woo hoooooooo!" (@peach)
2) Sad Doesn't Have to Mean Hungry: Elif Bautman is commissioned to dig up what all the sad young literary men eat to help her friend Carey, who's writing this article on the topic of Keith Gessen's chosen feedings from his novel All The Sad Young Literary Men. "Rice and Beans for Grad Students" has an answer. (@steam thing) (@muskegee phoneix)
3) How to organize or get rid of your book collection. (@the washington post)
4) A Grrl and Her Gun : On Valerie Solanis, author of the SCUM Manifesto, who shot Andy Warhol in 1968 -- ", her work has the rare virtue of seeming at the same time totally insane and totally right." (@the la tiimes)
5) Everyone has to go out and buy The New Yorker if they want to read the latest offering from my favorite author Mary Gaitskill. Here's the abstract. (@the new yorker)
6) It's summer! Time to buy shorts! SHORTS! The word "shorts" sounds like a quick and swiftly applied physical punishment. "Watch out or I'll short you!" etc. (@nymag)
7) Lesbian and Bisexual Women in Reality TV 2008. "For the first time ever, this week there are at least a dozen lesbian/bi women in prime tine TV reality shows. With the exception of Jackie Warner, all of the women on all of these shows appear to be drunk, almost drunk, wishing they were drunk, or pursuing a career in "promotions" or "theme bar waitressing." No judging, I've got no career and no likker. Just saying. I don't want our people to be just as retarded as their people. Is this democracy? (@afterellen)
8) Salon suggests summer reading, this week's category is memoir. (@salon.com)
9) I mentioned the butterfly effect on Friday. Now someone's written an article about "why pop culture loves the butterfly effect, and gets it totally wrong." : The Meaning of the Butterfly (@boston.com)
10) David Sedaris might occasionally exaggerate the truth for dramatic effect. Doesn't everyone? Since when have memoirists been held to higher standards than even our friends & family? Anyhow, he's funny: What You Read is What He is, Sort Of. (@nytimes)

Chelsea 2BR for me, Alvy Singer, Gia, and the monkeys

Once again, the time's come for me to pull up my bootstraps, pack up my 15 pairs of designer jeans, 300 books and six plastic boxes of sentimental childhood items (on the off-chance that I'll wanna scan an old photo for my blog that no one'll think is cute but me [and my Mom, maybe, but she's probably got her own copy of it and it'd take her less time to dig for it in storage than load it via internet] [no, jokes about my mother's dial-up'll remain endlessly amusing to me and I'll never stop telling them, until Mom joins the other homo sapiens and springs for DSL]) and move to a new apartment. I hate moving. You wouldn't know that if you asked the US Postal Service because:

1. Obvs that's just a figure of speech, you can't ask them anything, like, not even: "Will I be in this godforsaken line for the rest of my life?"
2. I've completed 16 change of address forms in the last 10 years.
3. Just so you know, "2" is 100% true. Most things on this blog are between 50%-95% true, so grab hold of that gem and keep it, people.

I don't wanna move: I love this place. But I gotta, so I'm trying to excite myself about it by framing the move in a "Total Life Re-Vamp" Context. These imaginary re-vamps often involve a transition to somewhere suspiciously cinematic. When I was a girl in the heartland, staring at the ceiling and listening to Juliana Hatfield, I dreamt of a certain kind of apartment. The fictional kind.

SUNDAY TOP TEN: WHAT I WANT IN AN APARTMENT

10. Like the Ones in Woody Allen Movies

I like all the books on bookshelves and the typewriter and the papers. Alvy Singer has let his dust collect, he hasn't moved 16 times in 10 years. The perfect rooms for neurotics, for crisis, for breakdown. It may not've looked like that in real life, but if I wanted real life, I'd be living in some tepid romantic comedy set in the suburbs starring Jennifer Aniston, or something. I want bursting bookshelves.

9. Like the One in Igby Goes Down

I remember Amanda Peet all strung out on cocaine, billowy sheets, big loft space, Jeff Goldblum in a flashy suit, Kieran Culkin lookin' all Holden-ish and wide/bright-eyed. I think a disturbingly high amount of my apartments-i-liked-in-movies are occupied by drug addicts. This loft is pretty standard fare as far as films-set-in-NYC go. Huge windows, shiny hardwood floors. You can break down in these lofts, get all bloody and wired, and still not make a mess. The beds are random, walls are afterthoughts (in After Hours, I Shot Andy Warhol, Basquiat, Gia, etc). This'd be a perfect spot to explore my secret love for painting abstractions on large canvases while stoned.

8. Mary McCarthy, Manhattan, When I Was Young

Back in the diz-zay, writers could totally wax poetic on the detailed layout of their apartments without worrying that the reader'd hurl the book at the wall and pick up The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. I read this memoir in the summer of '01 while on my 11th street-to-110th street commute to a non-fiction writing class at Columbia and the apartment descriptions remain apt, vivid. 21 Perry Street, McCarthy remembers, housed "the most secret of all the Village's secret gardens. It was very large, with two fountains, a small stoner altar, private sitting areas at the rear"; you get the idea. Bushes, turtles, peacocks, all things now only afforded by Madonna and SJP. She lived on East 21st for $90/month! And she can speak of the village like this: "Giving up Greenwich Village would have meant giving up not only its sweet, seedy streets, but a certain self-image. B and I were Villagers; we bore (I told myself) a noble heritage" which we could never do, now, because it's so cost-prohibitive. Am I NOT the first person EVER to make this point? Sometimes I'm really impressed with myself.

7. The Annie Leibovitz/Susan Sontag Situation

They lived across the hall from each other. Permanent dorm/permanent genius. Developed artistically, loved, fought, pushed, grew, etc. Perhaps even more remarkable is that on my first google, my initially incorrect spelling of "Leibovitz" resulted in a top result of: a post from "this girl called automatic win." When we aren't plotting to be the gay and half-gay Paris/Nicole, Hav and I often dream of being famous friends in the same building like this. Last week, in the midst of this mag-article/party-planning/memoir-writing nonsense, TB noted: "We're like so Sontag/Liebovitz right now. Guess which one I am? Right--the white-streaked one of course, cause I'm fucking old. And you, the celebrity-canoodling Jew."

6. The Characters without Box-Springs: As Featured in the Writings of Tama Janowitz, Maggie Estep, Mary Gaitskill

Their characters live in hovels. A stench of something fecal and feline, dark windows haunted by ghostly stalks and stems, wallpaper peeling off in great strips like the skin of some sad psychedelic beast. The sexually deviant and perpetually underemployed and their shameless filth, and scraping by and wild-craving-fucking protagonists of their short stories--they're horrid but also beautiful. In particular: "Soft Maniacs," "Two Girls Fat and Thin," "Slaves of New York," "Bad Behavior."

5.Oh, RENT.

I think this musical's soundtrack tapped into our Midwestern Teenage Dreams of transporting our spoiled selves into unheated apartments (not important when passion burns deep inside you to keep you warm) to pursue art and love and esp. loving the sick/dying people and drugs and cold. That was a nice thing to sing along to. Now I think, that is pretty f'in amazing that they didn't pay their rent for an entire year. That's fucking crazy shit. I mean, why didn't they have any money saved up after a year of no rent? (I probably wouldn't've either, but i'm sure most of my tres responsible friends would be like "After that year of no rent, I've got enough in my pockets to buy a place in Soho!") Still, the romance! How can you connect in an age when strangers, landlords, lovers, your own blood cells betray? Sing! Burn things! Candles! Yay! Music! Damn the Machine, Save the Empire!

4. The Hotel Chelsea

Oh, the romance! The Andy Warhol Superstars, Dylan Thomas, Sid Vicious, Rufus Wainwright, Allen Ginsberg, Simone De Beauvior, Stanley Kubrick, Bob Dylan, Jane Fonda, Nabakov, Robert Crumb, Quentin Crisp, Sarah Berndhart, Burroughs, Christo, de Kooning, Jimi Hendrix, Jasper Johns, Janice Joplin, Robert Maplethorpe, and I love Chelsea! I just love it! It's everything we ever dreamed of, everything, everything!


3. C.C.'s Pre-Star Apartment in "Beaches"

During my first viewing (circa 1990) of this chick-flick tearjerker, I sobbed because: 1. someone died, 2. soft rock really yanks at my heartstrings. Now I'd cry from pre-internet nostalgia; this plot would never stand up now ... the precious b+w photostrip from the beach's booth, the faithfully exchanged handwritten letters, the trouble of tracking someone down in a time when only obscene fame or luck would land them naturally at your doorstep. (Now, C.C.'s character would totes've pimped out her MySpace and her Mom would have like, been her webmaster) ... but I also loved her little apartment, with the Chirstmas lights and tiny bed, the proverbially small kitchen. I don't recall where she lived, but I imagine it was someplace that claimed to be gritty and no longer is, like Hell's Kitchen. I just called Hav to ask her where it was and she was like "I don't remember, I just remember that really big apartment she got when she was famous that was on Central Park West or South or something. It was amazing."

2.The Apartments of Michael Cunningham Characters in The Hours and A Home at the End of the World

I told Lindsay I was reading The Hours and I'd noticed Clarissa also resided on West 10th, like we did (Summer '04). Clarrisa's pad is vastly superior: it's not, for example, a series of closet-sized boxes pretending to be rooms. It wasn't on the 6th floor of a 6-floor walk-up. In the movie, it's so lovely, and even the site of Richard's discontent verges on derelict glory. That being said, I'd take the threesome's starter Village hovel from A Home at the End of the World, too. It had a lot of love and wine in it, a good place to dye one's hair crazy colors, or for Colin Farrel to sport the worst haircut ever.

1. The Actual Apartment I Am Going to Live In

As I wrote this post, TB solved my apartment problem for me. So this is what I'm doing: something I never thought I'd do (and it doesn't involve a U-Haul, you skeptical bastards!) I'm gonna be homeless for 22 days, then move into a Warlem summer sublet and put my shit in (TB's) storage. This moving-again-fiasco has reminded me of how much I loathe myself for being so tied down to places cause I have so much shit (partially not my fault; my Mom doesn't keep any of my stuff in her house, like most people's parents do). So I'm going to be a hobo for 22 days, ideally finding places to stay for free and eating Ramen. I've considered living in storage space like the girl in Shortbus. I've considered couches. I've considered Central Park. I've considered your couch. I've considered, at length, the possibility of Hawaii.