I've Already Started
A day off today, time to buy gas, get the oil changed, do the laundry, drop off the Gay Pride stuff, make a doctor's appointment, call MRW for the first time since his hip replacement (Be careful in Mexico lads when somebody suggests you climb one of those fucking pyramids.) and delete the guestbook. Too many pop up windows. Thank you if you were kind enough to write an entry, but pop up windows suck. I may axe Open Pages for the same reason, although I'd probably suffer some kind of postpartum depression. Don't want to add no postpartum depression to my collection. My collection is big enough already.
Now that the energy seems to be returning (man, knock on wood, button your lip, take no unnecessary chances) there are things I'd like to accomplish, some still having to do with the journal. A redesign, for example? I don't know, I doubt it, but the thought occurred for the first time without any accompanying internal laughter. Get artandlife fleshed out, get the webcam up again, just for the hell of it, even though there's nothing worth photographing outside my window. (I wonder if they'd let me put a camera on the roof? Run a cable? Wireless? A bird's eye view of Lake Merritt? Shit. That's not a bad idea.)
Finished Pamie's Why Girl's Are Weird. I notice she's due at Jack London Square for a reading and book signing on Thursday, July 31st, the day I'm arriving in Portland. I had the thought, as I was reading, "girls really are weird...." and that's not a bad epitaph, a book that lives up to its title.
While I was reading Pamie, I was also reading Sarah Vowell (Radio On and her two sequels) and Tom Robbins (Villa Incognito). Robbins first book was Another Roadside Attraction, a story in which the body of Christ is stolen (as I recall, it's been a while) from catacombs under the Vatican. How would Pamie have handled catacombs under the Vatican? Come to think of it, she may have addressed the subject at some point in her journal. Think of the possibilities, now that we know something about DNA: Dolly, the sheep, cloned from her sheepish father; Eddy, the Son of the Son, cloned from, well, you know, Himself.
How does that follow, exactly? Pamie to Robbins to DNA and the son of the Big Enchilada?
Well, Pamie beat 'em both. Here I am, reading Vowell, NPR star, part Cherokee, totally impressive talent; reading Robbins, who was once considered something of a phenomenon, and Pamie's stolen my attention. Robbins has had the practice, his chops, in other words, have become rather spectacular, although he's still doing those awful rhymed things, something to do with drugs it's whispered, and Vowell, well Vowell's not only a former marching band geek, but grew up in Montana, a real dynamic duo, and Pamie's way out ahead of them.
You did like the book, right? This isn't some icky way around saying you liked it?
I thought she did a pretty good job, got down inside the beast two fisted and I know her readers will like it and I think it was a serious attempt and the book will be a success, but I have no idea in the great scheme of things if the world will spin a little faster or a little slower cause Pamie's been published. I hope she does well and I hope she writes another and I wish I could be at Barnes and Noble instead of in Portland when she comes through Oakland, but, you know, life's got its agenda and I've already bought the ticket.
I thought you were going to write less often?
Shit, maybe I've already started.
|
