No, No, No, No, No. And No.

No to the title, no to the concept, no to the surgery, no. There’s a new magazine devoted to cosmetic surgery called, no lie, Skin Deep. Understand that I am as vain as anyone and I reserve the right to change my mind should the time come when I can no longer bear to look in the mirror. But even then I will fight my vanity with everything I have and it will not be hard because the thought of getting sliced, especially anywhere near my face, terrifies me.

Stereotypes I Wasn't Aware Of

According to the letters section of the December Harper's, a Richard Lange of Santa Cruz, CA mentions the "shallow stereotype of experimental writers as weird, bitter people with an axe to grind." Huh. I consider myself at least somewhat experimental, and okay, weird, maybe, but weird and bitter? Maybe the problem is I just don't know what experimental means? Anyway, this is a stereotype? I seriously doubt anyone's bothering to stereotype experimental writers, not when it's so much more fun to stereotype movie stars.

I’m At a Loss

Oh, Tom, you shouldn’t have. No I mean really, you shouldn’t have. I’m working hard on a joke here reagarding what would be the gifting equivalent over here and, you know, there’s nothing, really. Well, the collected DVD of my acting career would at least make him chuckle. Which is pretty much the one line from the short film I was in that no one saw, in which I played a salesgirl: “Don’t you want your (excruciatingly overlong actory pause) – change?” Or I could give him the gift of all my diaries, but then he’d have to suffer through entries like this:

August 22, 1977. Here I am listening to Barry Manilow on the stereo. … Then out of one of the bedrooms comes John R., another lifeguard and a friend of Nina’s. Nina introduces us and he greets me not with a hi or hello but a ‘how ya doin.’… I met Danny P., who’s from Florida. He came off as a little too cool for me though. I guess. He greeted me with a ‘how ya doin’ also.

Okay, clearly at the appalling age of sixteen, I was yet unfamiliar with the greeting, “How ya doin,” and this is only one extremely brief moment in the life of E. Crane that I’d just assume not subject my husband to, especially, you know, as a gift. Because there are over a hundred volumes of this, and I’d like to say they get more sophisticated over the years, but really, not so much. I’ve always been a late, late bloomer.

The point is, there’s no equivalent.

Between You and Me

Props to cousin Rebecca for forwarding this awesome movie, shot entirely on a still camera. I so have to get on this. Actually I shot footage for a thirty second film on my cell phone, but I don’t know how to get it onto my computer. So I may have to reshoot on the camera.

The Balance of Service

I think it’s off. Because when I go shopping in a small boutique, I am often swarmed by seven salespeople who, fashion sense or no, are rarely able to sense what I like or might look good in, or to intuit that I already have sixteen camisoles to go “with that.” At one store in particular where I have bought things on occasion, there is one salesperson who is very attractive, sort of like if a certain “asthmatic” starlet were thirty and back at her fighting weight, makes me so uncomfortable I kind of hardly ever even go in there anymore. Attention salespeople: if the zipper is two and a half inches long? I will not wear it because I prefer my butt to remain on the inside of my pants.
Why aren’t people like this where I need them, like at the grocery store? Yes, I go armed with a list, but the grocery store is a place where I might be open to suggestion. Can I help you find something in a root vegetable? Maybe, can you recommend an easy ten-minute root vegetable-based meal?

I So Totally Love Mary Karr

Yes! Yes! Yes! If anyone is qualified to comment on the whole fake writer week debacle, it’s Mary Karr. If you haven’t read it, you should read The Liar’s Club, which in my opinion is as fine an example of the genre as there is.

Rock School the Movie

Is a totally fun rental but also one of those fascinating character portraits because the guy who runs the school is… well he says fuck to the kids a lot. He says fuck at the kids a lot. Beyond inappropriately. Except it kind of works. Except he’s kind of funny in that way that he’ll say anything to be funny and sometimes he is and sometimes he’s really not but you laugh anyway. Except they will probably need to include him alongside their parents when they go to therapy later. Because it’s like the Rock School of Fun Dysfunction. A couple of the kids are especially good, and my favorites are these twin boys, Tucker and Asa. Tucker has long blond hair and plays the drums with a tie on and closes his eyes when he drums. Asa has a mohawk. I LOVE long hair on little boys. I love it. I totally want twin boys who have long hair and a mohawk.

Okay, I’ll Join The Party

Seeing as how I started it a while ago with the whole “suck it” thing, which I actually came to regret, not just because Big Jim wrote me a snarky email, but because I’m at least a little nicer than that, usually, and had second thoughts about saying something that harsh to someone that I probably wouldn’t say to their face, and even though I still disagree wildly with his whole “hold on” thing, I’m sort of over it. That said, I am reminded now of why I write fiction; so I don’t have to keep track of what I made up. Well, that and it’s just fun.
All that said, longtime readers of standBy Bert know my feeling about categories. I think, excluding journalistic and biography-type writings, which have a clear-cut responsibility to documented truth, in terms of what my dad likes to call the litrachah, there should be two:
fiction
non-fiction
I enjoyed very much Megan’s take on this and I will add my two cents:
Cent one: fiction can be all made up, partly made up, exaggerated, stretched out, blown out of proportion, over the top, maybe even not made up at all, if you change names and don’t care if people recognize themselves and maybe hate you.
Cent two: nonfiction can not be made up. If you’re going to say it’s true, I believe there is a responsibility on the part of the author to write to the best of their memory. Yes. There is a certain amount of gray area in terms of what the word “truth” means; memory can be tricky. (I suspect I’d remember pretty well whether I was in jail for a day or three months, drunk even, and so yes, I think it matters very much.) However, can nonfiction be extremely creative? Absoefffin-lutely; witness Dave Eggers. Some say he made stuff up too. The difference? He flat out said some of it was made up. This is some of us in the biz call “cross-genre.” And I have no issue with this if it’s billed as such, in fact, bring it on, I say, especially if it’s flat out fun to read, as A Heartbreaking Work of SG was. Not so much A Million LPs, that on top of being allegedly untrue – had it been a brilliant book in either category, I might be more forgiving. The whole thing about this book was the supposed horrifying truth of it. And to me there’s a difference between my version of the truth, someone else’s version of the same truth, and what might be gray about that. I had on a blue sweater vs. a gray one, not so critical, and probably unprovable. I am a horrible criminal vs. a guy who spent a night in jail – there’s gonna be papers. It casts into doubt the whole rest of it, in my mind.
Perhaps a new category, if it wouldn’t mess up the librarians too much:
Maybe it’s True, Maybe it Isn’t.

Irony Levels Reach New High

Had lunch with my new friend Anne Elizabeth Moore yesterday, who told me of her adventures at the American Girl store last year. You can read more about it here. Fascinating and frightening to me that freedom of speech is discouraged at the AMERICAN Girl store, but also I just want to say I really admire her totally artful way of trying to effect change, and the way she has of setting an example and getting people to ask questions rather than, I dunno, shouting about it. Plus? She’s just really funny. Should be no surprise that she’s the publisher of Punk Planet, y’all probably know about that already, but as usual, I’m late to the game.

Vote for Pedro (ok, Vote for Me)

I’m sorry, I can’t resist. If you have a minute, go here and help me out. There are any number of categories. I don’t really care which, although I think I have a real shot with “Best Tagline”. I’m preparing my acceptance speech now.