This Afternoon In Drama

Anatomy Of My Author Photo

After reading Nathalie's discussion of author photos and their fallbacks, I am sort of relieved to discover that my own photo has escaped the shackles of Posing With Hands and Pair Of Glasses. This is thanks to the combination of my having been drunk, my longtime and persistent fear of the camera, my daily use and preference of contact lenses, and a boyfriend who knew he had to snap the pictures quickly and without hand/body direction because I was like the Yeti-- not as hairy, but just as skittish. I cop to the black and whiteness, which was dictated to me by my publishing house, but I always suspected that that had more to do with money and the cost of reprinting the picture on the black and white back cover than anything else. Then again, this could be a really naive assumption. Anyway, I've decided to lay out the top three candidates, explaining why the winner was the winner and what it's supposed to convey, so just in case I ever get backed into one of these Franzen's-photo-is-too-hot-and-thus-is-a-sad-or-arrogant-comment-on-his-self-perception corners, I can defend the portrait with symbolic excuses.

The scene was this. Harcourt told me I had to turn in an author photo. I didn't want to take a photo. My parents have been trying to take photos of me for years. It was decided that Brett would do it, since we figured that maybe the presence of romantic love in the room could surpass all fears. This turns out not entirely to be the case, but he did get in a whole roll.

Because I immediately flinch in front of a camera, we mixed Green Apple Schnapps, lemon-lime soda, and Otter Pops. I changed into a brown velvet triangle bikini top because I felt like author photos are similar to yearbook photos and didn't want to look back in a year and think, "Why was I wearing that?" I figured the solid string bikini does not go out of style. I think I used the word "timeless."

When I was tipsy enough, Brett and I went into his bedroom and I stood against the white wall and physically cringed. And Brett told me to stand up straight and just look at him for one second, one second, and for the next twenty minutes I alternated in between grimacing and being on the verge of tears. Luckily, there were maybe five or six halfway points between the grimace and the eye watering, points that gave the impression of me being composed or neutral, that made it possible to select a handful of author photo options.

This is the author photo:

I chose it not because of what it says about me as a writer, but because of what I think it says about me as the writer of my specific novel. The most crucial thing for me was that because the book is about suicide and because I didn't want suicide to immediately be treated as something depressing or dark, I also didn't want to be the dark and depressing author on the back. It was important that, since I think the book has a sense of humor about it, I was not visually portrayed as the dour girl author. For me, there is an ambiguity in the expression, and that's why it was selected. Seriously, that's all.

The runner up:

Well, here's the dour girl author photo I was talking about not wanting. I knew the tone of it was completely wrong, and the only reason I considered it was because it was dark (literally) and did not show much of me and I found that pleasing. But I only found that pleasing for awhile, because then I realized that this author photo is kind of the Friendster-version of author photos, where you conceal just enough and show just enough and the sum total of these opposite exercises is complete bullshit.

And the second runner up:

Which became the second runner up because it cracked me and Brett up. References that arose were Carole King and Laura Branigan. This is not an author photo, but a CD cover of a vaguely hippy (yet still tortured) songstress who feels the earth moving under her feet. If this had ended up on the back of the book, it would have amused me for a long time, but again, since I was going for an ambiguous photo, I didn't want to go in the direction of outright humor.

Destiny

A long time ago (well, 1999 to be exact), I decided to stop dressing in a gothish manner, so I donated my black clothing collection to Goodwill. As I filled up the bags with all my velvet tops, ribboned corsets, and mermaid skirts, it comforted me to know that someone was going to be able to walk into the thrift shop and instantly, quickly create a whole new (or extended) gothy identity for herself.

From that point I broke into color wearing, becoming so intent on introducing the rainbow into my warddrobe that I consciously avoided black or fishnet. I stripped my hair of black dye and went red, and by the time of my arrival at Berkeley as a visiting student, I was looking positively alive. I thought.

It turns out it's not just the warddrobe, but something essential about me that gives off the goth vibe. Even after ditching the Victorian cemetary clothes (which were helpful in keeping people from talking to me on planes, and not helpful in that they made the Northface jacketed Brown kids at the airport too scared to ask me if I wanted to share a cab back to school post-flight), people continue to perceive me as somehow dark and foreign. And it doesn't seem to matter if I am in a pink floral.

Across the street from the house where I babysit, there is a weekly gardener who tends to a neighbor's property. He is always wearing a bandana, a curly ponytail, and kind of flashy sunglasses. Oh, and I can't forget the coveralls, which are of the hip variety and not the utiltarian variety. Last week, as I was strolling the baby back up the driveway, the gardener yelled at me, as if it was one sentence, "Hey I make t-shirts You'll like them I'm going to bring you one and throw it over the gate for you." Well, okay. The family I sit for has a front gate and if he wanted to toss this garment over the rails, I guessed, as Bobby Brown insists, that it was his prerogative.

Yesterday, the gardener called out to me again as I was going up the driveway. He told me that he didn't want to scare me and didn't mean to seem so abrupt last week, but that he also designed shirts and thought I would look good in them. After proceeding to name drop the Melrose boutiques which currently offer his product, he shouted that he had been thinking about a particular t-shirt that would look fantastic on me. He had to make a gift of it. Had to, as in he felt absolutely compelled. "It's got this red black widow spider right across the chest," he said, pantomiming the mass of the insect on his own, "and there's like, this hourglass shape on it, and it's black. Very dark, very cool."

"Uh huh," I said, neither wanting to encourage him to bring the shirt, nor wanting decline the shirt and have to deal with even more convincing that it was destined for my body.

When I babysit, I wear soft things, banal things, should they get spit-up on them. I wear faded jeans. I wear pastel shirts so faded from washes that they are beyond pastel. I walk a sweet, cute, innocent baby who is usually also dressed up in friendly, happy colors, as baby goth fashion has never really taken off. Often my hair is pulled back into a very harmless ponytail.

The goth must be in the eyes, and eyes are not tax-deductible donations.

Something To Remember Her By

As part of their annulment settlement, Britney had to give over her nipples (including areola) to her ex-husband.

The Laughter, The Tears, The Asphyxiation

Far and away, my favorite moment of the Golden Globes last night was when Osama won for Best Foreign Film. This was because the ensuing reaction shots made it very clear that the GG audience had no referent with which to interpret the vague hopes expressed in the director's speech. Suddenly, the gods and goddesses of Mount Hollywood were thrown into an unexpected round of old time improv exercises! Long gone were the days when they'd toiled in hole-in-the-wall L.A. and N.Y. theater classes, receiving cues like, "Tell your friend you want your jam back, but as you do, go from slightly friendly to incredibly hostile in subtle increments," so naturally, things were a bit creaky. A lot of these people have been working script-only for decades. They are out of practice.

As Siddik Barmak spoke about his wishes for the film, which included wide-ranging topics like "luck"-- in other words, wishes which could be construed in many ways considering that Americans are already incredibly nervous about anything with the word "Osama" in its title, the Golden Globes producers cut to stars and starlets being the most interesting they'd been and would be all night.

Antonio Banderas had his daughter on his lap, and the camera lingered as she proceeded to chop his throat with her little hand and press firmly on his larynx. Antonio made sufficient, humorous gagging faces, and the little girl continued to try to choke him. Then, Nicole Kidman (who, as Nathalie points out, has the worst habit of scrunching up her nose like she's trying to detect where her The Hours proboscis went) stopped practicing her Tabitha Stevens role for long enough to just sit there with her mouth agape. She held this face for the entire duration of her shot as well, reminding me of this girl in my Calculus class at Brown who used to strike the same panicky, droolly gasp every time homework was being corrected on the board. The cameras caught Sharon Stone repeatedly nodding as if she was bopping her head along to "Hey Ya," and the fierce but completely blank zeal in her eyes reminded me of the look she co-opted for her recent guest-star appearance as an insane lawyer on The Practice. Jennifer Garner was making the face she does on Alias when her character is around uber-nerd Marshall and he's talking and talking and she doesn't care or understand, but she's just too nice to actually show bewilderment. Once she gave her trademark, dimpled, "Ohhhhh Marshall," smile, the cameras were satiated and departed her table. In his dull-eyed confusion, Jeff Bridges looked a lot like "The Dude."

But who better to cap things off with than...Melanie Griffith, since there is an undeniable beauty in coming full circle back to the Banderas Table of Mischief. Melanie was giggling! Something was really, really cracking her up. Had her daughter finally succeeded in cutting off the passage of air through her husband's windpipe? Someone get this family a sitcom on UPN.

The Pear Code

Check out the Secret® Sparkle Collection for a selection of dazzling scents that will show off the sparkling side of your personality.

Peach Shimmer-- In certain areas we've got peachy-fuzz covering our skin, and maybe we wish that this peachy-fuzz would shimmer in the light, turning us into downy soft beings. Maybe like little ducklings. Or perhaps we're going simpler, if we're Caucasian, and are only dreaming of a shimmer that we could exude with will from the pores of our creamy skin. Maybe.

Berry Sparkle-- Getting tougher. There's something automatically clean and fresh about the notion of berries, the way they are used as symbols of spring, being reborn, and palet cleansing post dinner. The sparkle is the sparkle of dewy youth. It is the shimmer, but not Peach Shimmer, of the sun on the soft skin of strawberries in a field. Secret has me stretching, but it is not an unobtainable position.

Violet Dazzle-- Since learning the colors as a child, I've long been pounded with the supposedly mystical powers of purple. It has been taught to me as royalty, mystery, sorcerers' hats, a fairy tale book midnight sky. So the dazzle must be the aura of the hue, violet, not the flower, and the unknowable quality of its power. Like the dazzle of ultra violet rays.

Moonlit Rose-- I think, at the Secret headquarters, this was a no brainer. The armpit itself is like a moonlit rose, is it not? Well, if not, then this calls forth the majestic union of beauty and bewitchment, of things so delicate that they must not be viewed in direct light. Both sing of delicacy.

But Pear Illusion. I am lost when it comes to you, Pear Illusion. The pear is an illusionless fruit. It's visibly bruised in the supermarket bins. It does not pretend to be anything other than what it is (unlike, for instance, the watermelon). What is this illusion of the pear? Is it this fair maiden's ability to juggle the fruit as unicorns and bunnies dance near her...dress of moss? How did the pear and the illusion come together and if I spread them on my armpits, what will come of this unholy union? Is it that the pedestrian quality of the pear is the illusion, hinting at the dangerous concoction of equating surface with beauty? Is Secret trying to tell me that the pear is an extremely underrated fruit? Body shape? That it is, indeed, more than strong enough for a woman? That it is strong enough to build a new worldview upon?

Maybe She's With Spalding Gray

My nighttime, anti-glare digital photography is obviously not a personal strength, but this "missing girl poster" qualifies as the weirdest fucking one I've ever seen and needed to be captured immediately. I couldn't risk it being gone tomorrow. It's posted outside the Tasty Goody on Lincoln in Venice-- lately my favorite Chinese restaurant because of it's warm, generic ambiance and its helpings so generous that the tasty goodness lasts for at least two meals. And what is clearly so striking about this poster, although I probably don't have to explain it to you, is that this guy Dave is looking for this girl Mariah/Nikita, and the way in which Dave does this is to put up a poster with pictures of her squeezing her breasts together, of her in some sort of maidish costume with her legs spread, and of her in a Frederick's of Hollywood matchy-matchy undie and camisole set. On top of this, he is offering the hefty sum of 200 dollars to anyone who can locate her, and 200 dollars to Mariah/Nikita herself if she'll just come home.

Yeah, I understand why she has decided to go missing. Dave, really. It's not like I'm going to be strolling down Lincoln and pass Mariah/Nikita, failing to make the identification from the completely useful headshots provided on the poster, but then look down at the scoop of her tank top neckline, see her ample boobage, and be like "Now where I have I seen those suckers before? Oh yes, the Tasty Goody! Get me speedily to my princely reward!"

Sometimes I, too, enter into a withdrawal mode and turn off my phone and stop responding to the calls and visits of loved ones, but it is my hope that none of these people in my life will plaster the front window of Pick Up Stix with assorted softcore sex shots, and that they will offer me and strangers more than 2 hundo to tell them I'm not lying in a gutter somewhere, my cleavage turning blue.

Hold On

I am in the midst of some anxiety problems.

Which One of These Things Doesn't Belong

I'm reading a book written by an American sociologist on the phenomenon of adult doll collecting, which is very good so far, but last night I came across this sentence:

"Likewise, if children have an idea of what a "house" is before they can say the word, it is because they have crawled around it, tasted it, fallen off it, been lost in it, felt happy in it."

I was with him through the tasted it part, since I'm sure we've all licked walls as babes, but the fallen off it part really gave me pause for thought. Tellingly, in the introduction of the book, the author, A.F. Robertson, states:

"I argued vehemently that someone like myself, married but without children, maybe actually be more [italics his] observant about family life than someone afflicted with diapers, teenage deliquency, and school bills."

If Robertson and his wife should ever decide to have some kids, I hope they plan on going with a low lying California ranch home with lush greenery all around.

The Return Of Musicnut3

Back in early winter I had an everyday visitor to the blog, "Musicnut3," who felt almost religiously compelled to leave multiple comments about how poor my casual writing style and posts are. This was fine for a few days, but when the same, basic message kept being reiterated ad nauseaum, I just took away the comments option. Now they're back and "Musicnut3" is too, except he/she is posting a hundred percent anonymously, whereas before he/she used a fake handle to give the illusion of some sort of responsibility for the diatribes.

Anyway, last time I'll say it: if you hate my writing, don't read it. Don't visit everyday. Don't leave comments correcting my syntax and grammar because I'm aware when it's incorrect and deem it stylistic choice, no matter how sloppy. I'm going to continue to erase your comments in the hopes that you'll stop wasting your typing energy.

The only compromise I can think of is this: you seem to want to be heard badly, so I am offering you a guest column on my blog. Every Friday you can type up your impressions of how bad my writing has been the previous week and how stupid it is that I like to discuss TV and pop stars, and I'll put it up on the site. You're going to need a catchy title for the column though and at least a pen name. Let's consolidate the anger.

I've become a little paranoid about this person since reading the travails of authors Spike Gillespie and Allison Burnett. If I was a house painter, I'd start some sort of computer war. But because I'm an author and my first book is coming out and the rest of my life depends on it, I'm just saying to this particular visitor/commenter, please forget about me. Or turn in 200-500 words on me every Friday.

I Wouldn't Walk 500 Miles

Brown has invited me to read at the university bookstore during commencement week, which is interesting to me because by the beginning of commencement week 2001, my graduation year, I was already on a plane out of town. I wouldn't qualify it as a full-blown phobia, but I do feel a strong bewilderment toward the supposed attractiveness of walking in front of people. I'm not referring to your average and necessary walking to the car, walking the dog, and walking inside of In and Out Burgers to get my meal because the drive-thru line is ridiculous, but "walking as a ceremonial act." I have no desire to walk down a marriage aisle. I had no desire to walk in a cap and gown across a stage. Part of the reason I felt the burning need to leave New York come 2002 was because walking almost took on a ceremonial form there and was commented on as such by assorted men putting up scaffolding and sitting on park benches and hanging out in front of liquor stores.

While this bookstore invitation is fortuitous because my second novel takes place completely at Brown and involves graduation activities that I have never witnessed/participated in (instead relying on Geoff to fill me in), I am starting to wonder this about bookreading protocol: where do you walk in from, and when? I'm guessing it's different in every place, but if I try to think back to the most recent reading I attended, it seemed that David Foster Wallace appeared out of nowhere and suddenly was just there. I am not excited about being called forth from the back of the room, nor sitting and staring Brown graduates and their parents in the eye for fifteen minutes before I'm introduced. So I'm also wondering, which is the same thing I wondered when I was sort of getting married, is it possible for me to pop out from underneath a podium? Stand like a statue with a white sheet over me (I'll be very, very still), and then have it yanked up by the bookstore manager when the party starts? Can I travel with a portable playhouse with a quaint, plastic front door that I come out of when my name is called? I'm not really kidding. It could be this whole Mr. Rogers/Peewee's Playhouse/psychotic thing, and people might come to appreciate it.