This Afternoon In Drama

The Cancer of Cancer

I went with my dad to his chemotherapy session today, which was held in a bizarre, twenty-plus seater clinic where patients reclined on first-class-airline type chairs under their drips. When the nurse went to put the needle into the skin pocket/vein hub in my dad's chest, I saw him flinch with pain for the first time, I think, since either (here my memory goes fuzzy, both incidents are from when I was younger) he stubbed his toe jumping over the couch to catch my brother, who was being an asshole, or since I accidentally kneed him in the balls. I have a tendency to do this to people.

Moovahng Take Deux

and p.s. to clear things up, the sunflower accessories are not mine and are going.

Are You There God? It's me. . . Debut Novelist

Because of Sessalee Hensley's mention of my book, I decided to see what was going on with it at Barnesandnoble.com last night, and found that people buying Panda were also purchasing Where The Red Fern Grows, Are You There God...It's Me, Margaret, and other staples of my childhood. At least four of the recommended books were of this ilk, and I got kind of excited and kind of weirded out that maybe twelve year-olds were already anticipating the release/prepping book reports? But I guess (?) all the preteens decided to pump their money into other ventures overnight because I just went back to the site to copy the list for the blog, and it's drastically changed:

BN.com:
People who bought this book also bought:

She Is Me Cathleen Schine
Any Human Heart William Boyd
Pompeii Robert Harris
The Book of Ralph: A Fiction John McNally
Indelible Acts: A Collection of Stories A.L. L. Kennedy

At least on Amazon, I'm still hanging tight with Judy Blume.

Amazon.com:
Customers who shopped for this item also shopped for these items:

The Book of Ralph by John McNally (Author)
Holy Cow by Sarah Macdonald (Author)
Something Rising by Haven Kimmel (Author)
Summer Sisters by Judy Blume (Author)
Retribution by Jilliane P. Hoffman

In The Meantime

Posting may be irregular while I get my Irvine on. Two notes:
1. If I hear one more Orange County girl with frosty highlights and a toe ring describe something in Nordstrom's as "classy" while she holds it up for her boyfriend/friend/mom to see, I'm going to flip out.
2. I was watching Entertainment Tonight or Access Hollywood or one such show the other night and there was a segment about "Ben Affleck's special friend," who is obviously a wheelchair bound kid with a crippling disease, and who is currently on medication that has swollen his face so badly that he can barely open his eyes or speak. The kid said (subtitled) that what he liked best about Ben was that the A-man didn't treat him like a baby, but this comment was intercut with footage of Ben "marveling" at how big the kid's dwindling, diseased, bicep was(n't). Then the ET/AC host held up autographed (personally, to the kid) pictures of J. Lo and Jennifer Garner and asked the boy, "Come on, if you had to choose? Who would you pick?" The host chuckled like a lunatic. By the time I was finished watching the segment I felt worse for the kid than at the beginning of it, not because I learned more about his condition and struggle, but because his "Hollywood friends" behave patronizingly under the benign guise of not being patronizing and this somehow reads to the kid as "different" behavior, whereas if the guy at the gas station pulled the same shit I don't think his stuff would be as magical. And I additionally felt creeped out that the segment was intended to show how celebrity attention and autographs were (seemingly) more vital and heroic to a dying boy than than either himself or his own family. I don't know. If I was dying, I don't think I'd want strangers befriending me because they could clearly see that I was dying, but maybe I'm wrong. Please, Ben Affleck, no angry emails. I know you're being kind and good. That doesn't mean it's not sort of yucky.

The Book Of Life

Ever since I've been reading Oliver Sacks' The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat, I've been suddenly questioning the neurological status of people around me, since the book makes the collapse or hyper-stimulation of parts of the brain seem so near and possible. Sacks encountered the same problem after becoming aware of the existence of Tourette's Syndrome-- once his eyes had been "opened," he saw ticcers (or, as he sometimes refers to them, "ticqueurs," which always kind of makes me laugh. So French.) everywhere in New York city. So, for example, when yesterday a grown woman approached me in the park to comment on the baby that I was sitting for, except her smile was too big and her walk was a little twitchy and she was wearing one of those kiddie fuzzy bear backpacks and she was in pigtails herself and she was singing at the top of her lungs, except maybe not realizing it, I began jumping to neurological conclusions. In the past I would have thought there was some sort of psychological problem, written her off as crazy; now I'm assuming she's got a little Witty Ticcy Ray with a side of Korsakov's that permanently deposited her mind in third grade. Everyone is seeming messed up on a more permanent level. Even my ex-boyfriend, Ryan, with his obsessive and crazed and apparently uncontrollable desire to see me sample a piece of the chicken he had pulled from the fondue, gave me pause for thought last night. Oliver Sacks has me convinced that everyone is a disaster waiting to happen.

Merry Christmas!

The Sneezy Bunch

I was just wrapping presents so admittedly, I was somewhat distracted, but I am ninety-nine percent sure I just saw Barry Williams, he of Greg Brady and Johnny Bravo fame, in a cold/flu prevention medication commercial. Not starring in it or acting as a spokesperson, which wouldn't have been so weird, but just making a super-stealth cameo appearance among ordinary "sick" folk. The commercial cuts from medium shot to medium shot of "average" people sneezing against a solid color studio background, the editing implying that as each person gets sick, he/she passes the illness onto the next person in the sequence. For awhile the people sneezing are your average, unspectacular commercial actors, but then (I think!) Barry Williams is mysteriously thrown into the mix! Without any ado! If this is, indeed, Barry, then either a.) He harder up for cash than anyone knows or b.) The director/producers are trying to make some sort of subtle comment about the equality of "celebrity" and non-celebrity bodies, that a cold/flu could EVEN get to Barry Williams, so us peons should really watch out.

I checked the Barry Williams website to see if I could find any info, but he's wisely not talking (yet).

A Song In My Heart

I originally wanted to see Love, Actually solely based on the promo where a little girl sang Mariah Carey's All I Want For Christmas and reached the line, "I just want you for my own," drawing out that "o" with all the soul stirring aching that I could ever hope to express in one, single syllable. She made the exercise of writing novels seem really stupid. That "o" contained multitudes, her mouth forming a portal through which was released the pain of unrequited longing and the desire to turn herself out, to release her organs from their ever-tightening cage and lay them out on the Christmas table. Well, maybe this wasn't exactly how the young girl was summoning her delivery, but she nailed it nonetheless. Tonight I decided to bite the bullet and just go ahead and order the Love, Actually soundtrack off of Amazon solely because I wish to own this "o" in a hard, official copy. And when I get the CD I will put it on loop, as I did four Christmas's ago with Dreams by Gabrielle as featured on P.T. Anderson's immaculate Magnolia soundtrack.
P.S. Happy Hanukah, everyone.

Split-Ups Should Be Listed In The Paper Like Obituaries

We received this on Friday afternoon, two days pre-physical break-up, and while I know it shouldn't be, it's kind of funny.
(P.S. Someone please tell her.)

To Be Five Again

The major issue that people who read this seem to be hung up on is: So did your landlord rethink his rabbit policy? And what kills about that is: Yes, did he did. Don't get out your pom-poms yet. Don't pump your fist into the air in righteous victory. Stay with me. As Brett and I are separating (not just in the housing sense) and I am currently looking for an apartment that is within my price range, but does not require me to stand in the "shower" while washing my face, or "look at other people," also known as "roommates," the rabbit thing is currently a non-issue. This is making me, to say the least, sad.

Other things making me sad, to varying degrees:

1. Yes, I know my name was mispelled in the Wall Street Journal. This has the slight effect of, when looking at the article, making me feel like I am not really me or that person being mentioned is not truly the same one as the one holding the paper, but in my heart of hearts, I know that is total bullshit and that I am just hyper-sensitive because this break-up is also revealing itself to be bullshit as well, which is tougher than it being warranted.

2. When I called on an apartment the other day the landlord told me, "Well, there's a girl who says she's taking it and she has 24 hours, so it might be gone. But you should call back tomorrow because, well...You know how women are. You KNOW how women are." I made some sort of gutteral sound in response just because I was trying to think through 1. If I did sound like a particularly knowing person on the phone. 2. If, for some weird reason, this landlord who didn't know me would rather that I get the apartment because I sound like a "different breed" of woman. A decisive breed? 3. How unbelievably weird it was that this landlord was saying this to me if he actually wanted to rent to me. That gutteral response was neither a yay nor a nay, but just sort of a, "Meghghghg, I'll call you tomorrow." When I hung up the phone I realized that the answer could only be 4. The landlord believed that I was male. This made me sad not because I mind my voice being mistaken for male, but because this confirms that there is all this creepy "You know how girls are" talk still going on in the world during clandestine conversations that I will never hear unless I am being mistaken for something I am not.

3. This was taken last night and, to me, says volumes about the delusions induced by brainwork gone awry.

Hot Shit

I woke up this morning to find an email from my book agent telling me that there was an article in the Wall Street Journal mentioning me and the book, and that Publisher's Lunch had also picked up the story. Barnes and Noble fiction buyer and my new hero, Sessalee Hensley (Do you need your car washed? I'll fly out. Vacuuming? Anything, Sessalee, anything. My love for you runneths intense and deep, and I want you to know this), named Like The Red Panda as one of the two favorite novels she's read lately. She's also made me amazingly happy by previewing that a "spring of death" is coming, filled with novels about those that have kicked the dust. I'm so there.

My mom, being my mom, ran out to the local Barnes and Noble and bought out all the copies of the Wall Street Journal that she could find. So I figure, at least a little-- as far as family spending relates to supporting Sessalee's business, that this is a small version of me gladly, happily making out with the hand that feeds.