This Thursday’s Chicago reading: will be a benefit for Literacy Works and not some other organization, despite what you may have read on a couple of events listings somewhere. Literacy Works does all kinds of fantastically swell stuff like train ESL teachers and volunteer tutors to help adults learn to read, and while presumably the other organization is devoted to good things as well and not, say, into playing cruel literacy-related tricks such as hiding rubber cockroaches in books, tearing out the final pages of mystery novels, and recommending House of Leaves, they are nonetheless not the same organization as Literacy Works, on whose behalf I am reading on Thursday. So come to Hyde Park! And bring ten dollars! Or more!
(It’s hard not to be nervous about the attendance. For most readings, having a lousy turnout simply means that I’m pathetic. When it comes to this reading, a lousy turnout means that PEOPLE WILL BE DENIED THE GIFT OF KNOWLEDGE THROUGH READING, and that I’m pathetic. So do what you can.)
Last Thursday’s New Jersey reading: was fine, except for all the apocalyptic rain. From my rental car along the Garden State Parkway, New Jersey looked very, er… smeary, though I’m sure it’s way nicer when it’s dry. This state has lovely radio stations, which are great to listen to while you’re trying to find a place to turn around on the highway.
My cold: is much better, thank you. You needn’t have worried at all.
The Beeping Thingy ceased its daily beeping two days after I wrote about it and I KNEW THAT WOULD HAPPEN. I still have no idea what the hell it was.
We did, however, catch a squirrel in my office building today, after the thing came down through the ceiling this weekend and ate some of the office M&M’s. Working for a children’s book publisher means you are always surrounded by enchanted animals. And by “enchanted” I mean “awesomely freaked out on sugar.”
Bootsy the Fish: Still alive after a year and three months. Sort of. He seems to have swim bladder disorder. (Look it up.) From what I’ve read this won’t kill him, but it’s killing me to see him lying listlessly at the bottom of the tank like a junkie, flopping his semi-useless fins around like a thalidomide baby Smurf. I mean, you can’t have a fish “put down,” can you? Something dignified and fast. A tiny harpoon I can shoot into him, maybe.
Weight Watchers: Oh, you shouldn’t ask right now. I’m only mentioning it because I know you want to know, which is my own damn fault for telling you I was doing it again in the first place. You get where I’m going with this? Yeah? There you go. (And this may not be up for discussion, inasmuch as I can control that.)
But never mind that. Most everything else is good.
Posted by Wendy | Tue 10.18.05 04:03 PM | Comments (15) | TrackBack | send link
Okay, so that Chicago Author’s Roundtable is this coming Monday night—not, as I’d totally foggily reported last week, this past Monday. (I guess that’s obvious, since time moves forward and not backward.) I hope you’ll come to the lovely air-conditioned comfort of the Sulzer Regional Library to hear Zulkey and Erin and Kevin Guilfoile and me, along with Kevin Smokler, who is touring this summer as the editor of a very cool book, and who is a great person to commiserate with about the bugfucking crazy business of having to push your own book as much as possible within about six weeks and on about four hours of sleep per night. We’ll be talking about stuff like what it means to have both online audiences and books to promote, whether having an internet presence can help a writing career, and, most importantly, discuss the mystifying differences between a blog and a chatroom (kidding).
So please come. It’ll be fun. I have no idea whether the table will actually be round. That could be awkward.
I feel I ought to provide some updates regarding the dicksmackery observed in Wednesday night’s post.
It seems Bill Zwecker was pretty much spanked by his co-anchors on the Channel 2 morning news the day after his blog post (video here), and they read some viewer/reader email, including one my friend Brenda wrote. Richard Roeper continues to totally leave his karmic toilet seat up by posting a brief response at the end of his Thursday column, in which he's under the impression that we ladies a.) need him to tell us that the Dove women are indeed "normal-sized," b.) are persecuting him for his "preference for fantasy-thin women in their underwear" and c.) have no sense of humor whatsoever.
To which I'll respond:
a.) Look: if you think the Dove women are chunky, you think they're chunky. God knows how your eyes work, but we trust our own, and we also trust our knowledge of Standard English enough to understand that "chunky" isn't what you say when you mean to convey "normal-sized" with humorous intent. It's just what you say when you're a dickclown.
b.) We never asked for you to apologize for your preference for fantasy-thin women in their underwear. You don't have to apologize for your preference for fantasy-thin women in their underwear any more than you should apologize for preferences for fantasy-fat women wrapped in Cling Wrap, say, or fantasy-freakshow women with six to eight impossibly perky double-D-cup dirtypillows, or whatever the hell happens to rock your little Richard, Roeper. We never asked you what your fantasies were to begin with, and in fact we wouldn't give a shit about your fantasies if you hadn't published a petulant half-assed half-column about how icky the Dove women are for not fulfilling them.
c.) Um, we're so funny we have the motherfucking power to make your columns funnier retroactively. Did you like how your July 19th column got funnier after July 19th? Notice how all those lines that weren't jokes on July 19th are totally jokes now? Isn't it cool how you're funny, but only when you write crazy nutty time-release jokes that we don't get? Ha ha!
Have a good weekend. I'm going to see Gravy Train!!!! tonight, because they are my fantasy women. (And that includes the two guys.)
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Posted by Wendy | Fri 07.22.05 02:29 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack | send link
The Redeye article where Flea and I are interviewed is most likely going to come out Monday. But you can read about Ron in the New York Times today. I’m happy that they ran one of my favorite photos from his site.
I was sad to hear that Alicia Frantz passed away on Friday. I’d linked to her Audible Frequency blog a couple years ago, and I’d met her a couple times only in passing, but her site was one of the most interesting weblogs in Chicago. Eric Zorn wrote a wonderful tribute to her on his Chicago Tribune blog and I recommend listening to the strange and moving radio noise recording featured on Gapers Block this week. (Chris, I bet you’d like this. I wish I could have introduced you to her.)
I’m leaving now to drive up to Milwaukee, with an iPod full of songs and a mix tape (an actual cassette tape I can’t wait to listen to.
See you tonight, Wisconsin. I just might read my story from this book.
Posted by Wendy | Wed 06.08.05 12:15 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | send link
…on the plane to Seattle; in a hotel room in Seattle for four nights; in the same hotel room in Seattle for two totally konked-out hours during the day after an early morning TV thing; in a town car driving from Seattle to Portland; in a hotel room in Portland for about four hours; in the guest bedroom at my friends’ house in Portland for two more totally konked-out hours; in the guest bedroom for three more nights; in a chair at the salon where we were getting pedicures; on the plane from Portland to Denver; on the plane from Denver to Chicago.
Thank you: Laurel and Mark, who put me up in Portland; Pam and Suzanne, who drove me to the Bellevue reading (I will email you!); Linda and Chiara, who hung out with us afterwards; Tiffany Midge, who took the photos at Third Place; Dawn and Jennifer, who took me out for drinks later; Charmaine, who painted my toes I’m Not Really A Waitress Red; Crofton, who helped me not freak out in the green room; Ron, who gave me a ride to the damn airport; everyone who showed up at all three readings; everyone who bought a book or asked a question or just nodded helpfully; all the bookstore folks (Don! Wendy! People at Powell’s!); Brian in Tulsa, for doing such a fun interview; the tattooed chick who cut my hair on short notice on a Sunday; anyone else I’ve neglected to mention.
If you’re in Seattle, you can get signed copies at the downtown Borders, Third Place Books, the University Bookstore Bellevue store, and Elliott Bay Books in Pioneer Square. Portland folks can find signed copies at the Lloyd Center Borders, the downtown Borders (including the “Borders Express,” where I guess all the books can be read more quickly than at the normal Borders); a Borders somewhere around Beaverton (it was a big strip mall); Powell’s.
That sound you just heard was my head hitting the desk. I slept there, too.
Posted by Wendy | Sun 05.08.05 11:50 PM | TrackBack | send link
If my brain could breathe it would be making Darth Vader noises right now. Fwoooh, fwhihhh, fwoooh, fwhihhh. Like that. Fwoooh, fwhihhh, the you-know-what is out; fwoooh, fwhihhh, fwoooh, live TV Tuesday morning; fwoooh, fwhihhh,the reading Wednesday night; fwoooh, fwhihhh, the other reading Wednesday night. Fwoooh, radio Wednesday. Fwihh, radio Thursday. Fwoooh, fwhihhh, fwoooh, Seattle Friday.
Yes: give me a paper bag. For my head to breathe in. And also, just so I can be really, stupidly, annoyingly shy just for a minute, okay? And then I’ll be fine. Fwoooh, thanks. Fwhihhh.
Posted by Wendy | Mon 04.25.05 08:28 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | send link
Dear trade paperback sales representatives, editorial and marketing staff at Riverhead Books and Penguin Putnam, booksellers, wholesalers, library buyers, book club people, members of the media, and maybe even Ira Glass, as well as various friends and family members of all of the aformentioned, and anyone else who happens to have a bound galley of my book:
Hello! And thank you for agreeing to read an advance copy of I’m Not the New Me! Or, if you didn’t explicitly agree to reading the book, for continuing to do whatever extremely sexy job you do for a living that requires you to read galleys night after night. At any rate, I hope all of you enjoy reading your galley of I’m Not the New Me, my first book.
Please note this advance edition is FOR LIMITED DISTRIBUTION NOT FOR SALE, as indicated in the block letters on the bright red banner on the front cover, and in the two red banners on the back cover. You may also be aware that this is an UNCORRECTED MANUSCRIPT. While I understand that those of you who read galleys are well accustomed to seeing numerous print and even factual mistakes at this stage of the pre-publication process, and that really, you don't mind if you can see where I drooled random punctuation and half-assed grammar all over the keyboard and where nobody bothered to clean it up for God's sake, I am more than a tad mortified. And I know that reading the galley for a book is a lot like watching a dress rehearsal for a play, but all the same you’d hope the lead actress shaved her legs that day. Therefore I have begun to compile a list of all the typos and factual errors appearing in the galley edition of I'm Not the New Me in the hopes doing so will make your reading experience as pleasant as possible. Thank you. --WM
p. 3: We will fix that bad break at the top of the page. I mean, Jesus.
p. 41: There really should be commas after "thought" in Line 10 and "office" in Line 11.
p. 50: On the very last line on that page, the use of punctuation outside the word in quotation marks is wrong, unless you happen to be British. Then again, if you are British, the quotation marks are the wrong kind anyway. So I think the correct punctuation for the word in question, depending on who you are, can be " 'shitty,' " or ' "shitty",' or maybe even 'shitty', but definitely not " "shitty",."
pp. 65-67, 69 Not sure if we can legally use the word "Slurpee" in this context. They're checking.
p. 81: Lines 1, 2 and 4 should be in italics.
p 115: In Paragraph 2, the part that says "driving west towards the sun" is incorrect. Because I'm driving from Chicago to Pennsylvania in this chapter and going, you know, EAST. The corrected passage should say "driving east towards the sun," and the scene in question should take place in the morning, even though technically it didn't, because The Chicago Manual of Style does not advise reversing the earth's rotation unless absolutely necessary.
p. 124, Line 1: I said "Louisville" but I meant "Knoxville." You may have noticed that Louisville is not in Tennessee. Sorry. Knoxville. God.
p. 114: Typo in the first line, as I did not intend to actually say "anyβ."
p. 177: Line 12 isn't supposed to be indented like that. I'm sure you didn't even notice, but still, it's the principle of the thing.
p. 201: There's a really bad break in Line 9. Oh, you'll see.
p. 216-217: This part, starting with Paragraph 3, is really going to be a lot funnier in the published book.
p. 218: If you think the third sentence in the fourth paragraph ought to be in quotes, I have to agree.
p. 225, last line: You'd think I was retarded.
p. 226, Line 7: Or blind.
p. 227: Pretend Nathanael West's first name is spelled correctly here. Thanks.
p. 242: There's a word in Line 12 that looks as if I typed it with a goddamn stick held in my teeth.
p. 243: I know that "uncharacteristically" in that second paragraph is spelled correctly, but I swear to God, the more I stare at it, the weirder it looks. It really doesn't sound like it should have as many letters as it does. I don't know about you, but it's starting to bother me.
p. 246: There should be a capital "L" in "Dom DeLuise."
p. 246: Yes, Dom DeLuise. He's in my book. Shut up.
p. 279: Line 3 should be "Sometimes," not "S�ø metimes," but I bet you knew that.
p. 291: Please substitute "Cumberland Avenue" for "Golf Road," even though in real life they are nowhere near each other and not in the least bit interchangeable.
p. 301: I may cut the word "fucking" in Line 3, so any offense taken here is provisional and must be checked against the bound book.
Posted by Wendy | Mon 12.06.04 11:19 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | send link