Rebecca Flowers

You can see a whole buncha these at I Can Has Cheeseburger.  Joshilyn says she says they’re called LOLCats.  And she knows ever’thun!

Don’t get started unless you has time on yer hands.

I hate to even tell you how long my four pages took me this morning. That’s all I’m trying to do, before anything else (email, blogging, picking at my toenails): four pages. Four measly little pages. Why are they so hard to fill? Why?

Ok, here’s something that’s been bothering me: Since becoming the mother of two little girls, I can’t read Lolita anymore.

I tried. I really did. I brought it to the gym with me, best place of all places to lose oneself in a good book. I’ve read Lolita before, at least a couple of times, and saw the original movie with James whats’-his-name. I loved it. Poor Delores Haze, persecuted brat that she was. I loved how the language in that book works, I loved how he marries poor Shelley Winters only in order to seduce her adolescent daughter. I loved the descriptions of middle America, and road America. I loved how Lolita starts sneaking around with someone even creepier than Humbart Humbart: creepy Peter Sellers as Quilty — Qu’il t’y, “who is it,” as some critic pointed out — and his creepy accomplice Vivian Darkbloom (a near anagram of Vladimir Nabokov, thanks to same critic), who is like freakin’ Morticia Addams directing the high school play, in the middle of all this. And I loved how HH had fallen in love with Lolita by the end of the book, when she is Mrs. Richard Schiller, happy and pregnant; and then we find out that Lolita dies. She’s never allowed to become a fat old mother, like Shelley.

Oh, the whole thing is so weird and funny and heartbreaking. I couldn’t wait to get back into it.

And then I started reading. I grew increasingly uncomfortable as I made my way through the first chapter; and then I got to the part where he’s all blissed out because some child had to crawl under the park bench where he was sitting to get a toy…and I had to put it down. Couldn’t do it, just could not. Because the man is an f’in pervert. And where before I could understand it as a GENIUS piece of LITERATURE, and look down at the reactionaries having the reactionary reactions against it, well, I don’t have that anymore. All I can think is, God, what a pervert.

Which SUCKS! Cuz it really is a great book! But, you know, no. Just…uh-uh. Sorry. My critical days are CLEARLY behind me. Wahh!

First of all, I’d like to announce that I will now be using Porochista Khakpour’s author photo as MY author photo.

I will also be using Porochista Khakpour’s age (29) as MY age. I will find out where she got that lovely liquid eyeliner and begin using it myself. Actually Porochista Khakpour looks like the love child of my friend Marisa and Cher, doesn’t she? (OH that link is gonna make Blobby so happy!)

And I will, naturally, be assuming the name Porochista Khakpour. You can call me Chista, of course. Hey Chista! you can yell. Get yer keister over here, Chista!

Note to self: More boobage in the next author photo shoot. Actually, that’s a note to KEVIN.  Boobie it up, man!

Also in the Sunday NYTimes Book Review: a review of THE ZOOKEEPER’S WIFE, by the wonderful Diane Ackerman. And Diane, we DO love you, we do…but WHY did you use this construction for the title of your otherwise-tantalizing-sounding book? Has it not been used enough? The this’s that. The whoseit’s whatsit. I know she did not choose this title for her book; I think her editor just could not resist it, given the popularity of those other titles. But really; we’re done with that.  Until, of course, I write THE AUTHOR’S MAIN CHARACTER.

Hey, I kind of like that!

And imagine my hyperventilating excitement when I turned the page and saw an ad for the New York Times Literary Brunch featuring these authors:

Alan Alda
Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself (Random House)
Stephen L. Carter
New England White (Alfred A. Knopf)
Chris Matthews
Life’s a Campaign (Random House)
Ann Patchett
Run (HarperCollins Publishers)
Tom Perrotta
The Abstinence Teacher (St. Martin’s Press)

Tom Perrotta, people! Ann Patchett! ALAN ALDA! Then, if you possibly can, and many of you will not be able physically to reach this level of excitement, imagine what I felt when I got to the web site to see if there were possibly any tickets left to this event (which happens to correspond with the out-of-town trip my husband needs to take) when I saw that this had been added at the last minute, because not to include her in the ad that ran would have been absolute madness:

Amy Bloom
Away (Random House)

Amy BLOOOOOOOM!! My hands shook, shook I tells ya, as I typed in my credit card information. But the darn thing wouldn’t let me buy two tickets, so when I returned to the selection screen, it told me that there might not be any left! Shriek! Luckily I thought to pick up the phone and call the 800 number, PRAYING that there were some left (now I know how Blobby felt trying to score those Madge tickets in NYC), and lo and behold, by the time the INCREDIBLY SLOW TYPING person got done taking my info, I was able to purchase my two seats to this event.

Which is a HUGE DEAL and I am SO EXCITED! I mean, just being in the same room with, with…ALAN ALDA!

He looks just like my Dad, btw. If Alan Alda had a baby with Sean Connery, anyway.