ENTERTAINMENT REALM

I was bullied in elementary school by Sandy Litzenburg. She told a boy to push me down in the snow and then came up to me and told me that “they” didn’t want me in their group anymore. Starting junior high was tough.

I’m so poor. I’m so poorly utilized. I’m ridiculously single. I’m broke, I’m frustrated and I don’t have any health coverage.
–The Low Life [film]

I don’t hate myself, as a general rule. I’d say the best way to describe it is that I have moments of self-loathing at fairly regular intervals.
–Janeane Garofalo

Tonight I am ugly. I have lost all faith in my ability to attract males, and in the female animal that is a rather pathetic malady . . . I don’t care about anyone, and the feeling is quite obviously mutual. What is it that makes one attract others?
–Sylvia Plath, Journals

I’m not miserable. I’m just not there yet.
–Ally McBeal [TV show]

I share the same birthday week with:
Tom Brady
Evangeline Lilly
Lauren Tom
President Barack Obama
The Beastie Boy’s Adam Yauch
David Duchovny
Soleil Moon Frye
Brigid Branagh (Army Wives)
Jonathan Silverman
Maureen McCormick (Marcia, Marcia, Marcia!)

Aug. 5:

Actress Maureen McCormick (The Brady Bunch)

Guitarist Pat Smear (Foo Fighters)

Tawny Kitaen

Adam Yauch (MCA) of the Beastie Boys

Actor Jonathan Silverman (“The Single Guy”)

Since you ask, most days I cannot remember.
I walk in my clothing, unmarked by that voyage.
Then the almost unnameable lust returns.

Even then I have nothing against life.
I know well the grass blades you mention,
the furniture you have placed under the sun.

But suicides have a special language.
Like carpenters they want to know which tools.
They never ask why build.

Twice I have so simply declared myself,
have possessed the enemy, eaten the enemy,
have taken on his craft, his magic.

In this way, heavy and thoughtful,
warmer than oil or water,
I have rested, drooling at the mouth-hole.

I did not think of my body at needle point.
Even the cornea and the leftover urine were gone.
Suicides have already betrayed the body.

Still-born, they don’t always die,
but dazzled, they can’t forget a drug so sweet
that even children would look on and smile.

To thrust all that life under your tongue!–
that, all by itself, becomes a passion.
Death’s a sad Bone; bruised, you’d say,

and yet she waits for me, year after year,
to so delicately undo an old wound,
to empty my breath from its bad prison.

Balanced there, suicides sometimes meet,
raging at the fruit, a pumped-up moon,
leaving the bread they mistook for a kiss,

leaving the page of the book carelessly open,
something unsaid, the phone off the hook
and the love, whatever it was, an infection.

ocean expands
waves end
horizon meets calm
seeping into every pore
gulping water with intense thirst
gasping
darkness swallows my surroundings
sinking
awash with emptiness
clarity
calm
relief
nothingness

Easter is the darkest black with a white star on her pretty face.
She knows what she wants and big horses treat her with grace.

Welsh Mountain is her breed.
Why the name Easter? She happened to be born on the holiday on April 22, 1973.

Amy took Easter swimming, on long trail rides and to shows.
She also brushed her as kittens, a-top Easter, curled up and dosed.

This Welsh mountain pony is rugged, sometimes stubborn, more often sweet.
She doesn’t mind being out in rain, snow and sleet.

Easter moved to a new barn, little bantam chickens would roost on her back.
The pony was round and comfortable and never gave the chickens any flack.

These days she lies out in the sun because she needs a nap when she gets tired.
She’s now 37-years-old and retired.

Beneath Easter’s barn live a few foxes with dark cinnamon colored fur and bushy tails.
Many days you can see the foxes running alongside the rails.

In the field, also called a paddock, the foxes and the pony sometimes stay close to each other.
Although a bit afraid of the pony, the foxes and Easter still respect one another.

– Amy Steele

Jonathan Tropper’s writing completely resonates with me as a fellow Gen-Xer. All his novels are cerebral, intricate and amusing.

This Is Where I Leave You captivates from beginning to end.

This Is Where I Leave You
SUMMER 2010 BOOK TOUR DATES.

Wednesday, July 7, 2010, 7:00 pm
Borders
10720 Preston Road
DALLAS, TX

Thursday, July 8, 2010, 7:00 pm
Borders
2817 North Clark Street
CHICAGO, IL

Tuesday, July 13, 2010, 7:00 pm
Borders
1499 Post Road
FAIRFIELD, CT

Wednesday, July 14, 2010, 7:00 pm
Borders
680 White Plains Road
SCARSDALE, NY

Thursday, July 15, 2010, 7:00 pm
Borders
(With Allison Winn Scotch)
10 Columbus Circle
NEW YORK, NY

Tuesday, July 27, 2010, 7:00 pm
Huntington Book Revue
313 New York Avenue
HUNTINGTON, NY

Wednesday, July 28, 2010, 8:00 pm
Elliot Bay Books
1521 Tenth Avenue
SEATTLE, WA

Thursday, July 29, 2010, 7:00 pm
Book Soup
8818 West Sunset Blvd
LOS ANGELES, CA

Tuesday, August 3, 2010, 7:00 pm
Newtonville Books
296 Walnut Street
NEWTONVILLE, MA

Wednesday, August 4, 2010, 7:00 pm
92Y Tribeca
(panel with Peter Hedges)
200 Hudson Street
NEW YORK, NY

Got the tip from Aimee Barnes on Twitter.

Easy and so tasty
–chop fresh mint
–cubed watermelon
–crumbled feta

mix it up and voila– a delicious and nutritious [K+ (potassium), vit A, vit B6 and vit C] summer salad

More info: National Watermelon Promotion Board

Love means never having to say you’re sorry.
– Love Story by Erich Segal

LOVE IS THE EXTREMELY DIFFICULT REALIZATION THAT SOMETHING OTHER THAN ONESELF IS REAL.
– Iris Murdoch

I don’t want to live–I want to love first, and live incidentally.
– Zelda Fitzgerald

MY LOVE FOR YOU IS MORE/ ATHLETIC THAN A VERB.
– Sylvia Plath

Take me or leave me; or, as is the usual order of things, both.
– Dorothy Parker

So many people looking to dump heartache, guilt and fear. I feel like without the burden of expectation, we’d be free of all that, no?
– James Van Der Beek via Twitter

I LOVE YOU NO MATTER WHAT YOU DO, BUT DO YOU HAVE TO DO SO MUCH OF IT?
– Jean Illsley Clarke

My mouth blooms like a cut.
I’ve been wronged all year, tedious
nights, nothing but rough elbows in them
and delicate boxes of Kleenex calling crybaby
crybaby , you fool !

Before today my body was useless.
Now it’s tearing at its square corners.
It’s tearing old Mary’s garments off, knot by knot
and see — Now it’s shot full of these electric bolts.
Zing! A resurrection!

Once it was a boat, quite wooden
and with no business, no salt water under it
and in need of some paint. It was no more
than a group of boards. But you hoisted her, rigged her.
She’s been elected.

My nerves are turned on. I hear them like
musical instruments. Where there was silence
the drums, the strings are incurably playing. You did this.
Pure genius at work. Darling, the composer has stepped
into fire.