NOW, MORE THAN EVER,
NOT THE NEW ANYONE

It’s not easy to get to the end of things. It’s hard even when it comes as a relief, with enough of a rush to knock you down because you were more exhausted and overwhelmed than you wanted to admit. The book has been like this.

But Dana is going to be here in just a few hours and I’m going to spend my first weekend of relative freedom with her, and at the wedding of the century, and with friends of mine that I’ve missed so much over the past couple of months, who were patient and kind and supportive and confident that this stretch of being stupidly busy and frustrated and slightly-more-than-half-crazy wouldn’t last forever, even when I wasn’t sure myself. I’m looking forward to being happy again.

The new BUST is out now with my column on… um, “What It Would Be Like If You Totally Gorged Yourself On All The Girly Shit That’s Marketed To Us Women.” That’s the only way I can summarize it. Also, if you happen to be browsing through the September Teen Vogue for whatever age-inappropriate-yet-not-perverted reasons you might have, you’ll see me quoted in an article about teen online diet journals. I sound very stern with my whole critical- theory-informed assessement of the youth of today. But dude, I’m not going to french-kiss them the way Madonna would. (And you know I don’t mean that literally, right? RIGHT?)

Diet Coke; cold cereal; Apple Computers; Michael; all sugarless gum everywhere not including wintergreen flavors; ice; that coffee place on Lincoln across from the Davis Theatre which had reasonably non-wobbly tables; the band Iron & Wine; red licorice; Ron; Diet Rockstar Energy Beverage; Shylo; the Indie Pop Rocks internet radio station ,save for certain intervals where they really freaking needed to lay off with the Mates of State already; the Epson C64; Office Depot; Royal Thai; Trader Joe’s brand pitted prunes which I first found in the cupboard in the Ragdale kitchen and since then cannot stop eating for some damn reason; secret path by the Chicago river which I am so not going to tell you about; electricity; the laundromat on Damen with the drop-off service; automatic bill payment; water; gravity, the uncharacteristically cool July and August weather even though it is depressing the hell out of me now, this picture; carbs; Jesus; Microsoft Word. In no particular order. I couldn’t have done it without them.

The first draft is a little over 300 pages. It took about two hours to print on my inkjet printer. The manuscript is about as thick as my laptop.

There are still more pages I need to add, and stuff I want to cut, and I feel I can’t even look at some of the chapters without my eyes crossing, and I’m still sort of twitching from a trippy mix of exhaustion and anxiety and stupid brute frustration at how stinking long this takes, but… hey! Look at that.

I’m going to pass out now.

1. The book: Almost done.

2. Bootsy the fish: Still alive.

3. I’m the 103rd person to be interviewed on Zulkey.com.

Have a good weekend!

Fix up the site; Swiffer; hit a flea market; buy a nice skirt or something, or no wait, maybe one of those dumb ponchos; ride bike to work; drink on someone’s nice back porch somewhere; see if I still know anyone who has a nice back porch; change sheets; get a decent hotdog; drink in a bar; fix cd drive on laptop; get wireless card on laptop; cry sloppily and with intense relief; take road trip; take plane trip; take New York trip; take another plane trip not to New York; rearrange books; watch a DVD; watch DVD AGAIN, with the bonus commentary tracks and stuff and everything; answer email; put up Disturbing Children’s Books; make that nice chicken salad; color hair; buy new bra; have people over for drinks; donate stuff to charity; weep; write fan letters to random people; treat corn on toe; go to the Container Store because hey why not; sleep late; sleep in middle of day; read a book; read a magazine as more than a means of distraction while on public transportation or in waiting room; download new music, legally or otherwise; go to Millenium Park; knit like a crazy motherfucker; cry some more.

I’m looking forward to finishing my book for lots of reasons, but I especially can’t wait for my book to get an Allreaders.com review. From what I can tell, it’s a write-your-own-book-review site that goes above and beyond customer reviews at Amazon or Epinions by providing a handy “detailed literary breakdown” chart with every review. (Scroll down to see the table on the left). Given the selection of plot, setting, character and style components available on this search page, I sincerely hope that my book is properly characterized as a PHYS DISABILITY/MENTAL STRUGGLE with FATNESS/BLUBBER and that it will appeal to anyone seeking a book with an AVERAGE AMOUNT OF DESCRIPTIONS OF SETTINGS and also NO TORTURE/DEATH. Because that’s really what I aspire to.

And this review of The Bell Jar is just the best thing ever.

PAMIE WHY DIDNT YOU TeLL me writng a BOOK WA S SO HARD??! i think I am RETARTED NOW ITS ALLYOUR FAULT. Oh and also how waS THE BOOKDRIVE !? I Want TO DONAte A BOOK. i HAVE a Book but I am Not done writing it and I dind’t KNOW you had to know how to DRIVE it too. how far do I haveto DRIVE IT??! ?!? aM I THERE YET? when!? HOLD ME PAMIE

…a service like Meals On Wheels, only instead of delivering food to the shut-in eldery who cannot cook for themselves, it delivers hot, fresh, content to the shut-in book-writing bloggers who are slouching at their desks in sweatpants and cannot blog for themselves.

And I mean, there could be food, too. I wouldn’t turn that down.

(Let’s pretend that I actually had time on Wednesday to post this, okay?)

For some reason I’ve always had a thing for recapping celebrity wedding specials, probably because there’s not all that much dialogue to transcribe, just creepy vows. The rest is just attention to all the gazillion little tacky details swarming microbially all over the blessed event, and you can pick everything apart, one Swarovski crystal at a time. The link to the original recap is here.

For months afterwards I kept getting emails from confused brides-to-be who were desperate to find out what music Jennie Garth played at her wedding and seemed to think I would know.

You need to understand that at the moment, the book is leaching all the clever out of me. Every day I sit down and open a Word document and then I put my hand flat against the screen and shut my eyes and I can feel bright lights flash and there’s this high-frequency sort of ringing noise and it goes on and on and then hours later I stagger away from the computer and six double-spaced pages print out. And then I’m useless. I will be for at least another week.

In the meantime, though, I guess you can read a bunch of my Television Without Pity recaps for shows you were lucky enough to never see. I’ll post annotated links to them all week.

First up (in no particular order): Glory Days. About seventy-three of you saw this when it originally aired on the WB in the spring of 2002. It’s kind of a shame the rest of you didn’t see it, because, in retrospect, it was a wonderfully sincere kind of awful. It was produced by Kevin Williamson, who’d first made a name for himself with the Scream movies and, for reasons I’ve never been able to fathom, really wanted to be David E. Kelley instead and make quirky, cleverish dramatic comedies instead of transcendent teen crap like Dawson’s Creek. Glory Days is the result of that confusion. Read the recaps Here.

(More later.)