Twenty-something with a bevy of psychiatric problems gets a service monkey (they exist) who teaches her to be happy. Maybe they fall in love. It’s like Max Mon Amour for the hipster set.
Archive for the ‘I Hate Writing’ Category
Movie Idea
April 13, 2013The Real World
April 11, 2013Ever since I finally made my Real World Seattle gif, which you can see here, people have been encouraging me to reminisce about other seasons of the Real World –– the prime ones, mostly, like San Francisco and New Orleans, which was an excellent one, what with Julie the Mormon and Kelly who ended up marrying SCOTT WOLF OMG and that enormous beautiful mansion they lived in. Oo-wee! And as my friend JW pointed out this morning, they mostly got along, too, which is far more interesting to watch than the squabbles and bathroom hook-ups and declarations of murderous hatred. Anyway, JW was telling me all about his obsession with Melissa, about whom I had completely forgotten, and about how he reads her blog, so I Googled it and I just spent basically the past thirty minutes blacking out on the Tumblr of that tiny Filipino princess, who apparently has converted to Judaism (mazel tov!) and is married to the guitarist from Glassjaw and was super super pissed about Casey Anthony getting exonerated. And guess what? She’s also hilarious.
A very young person on Twitter just said he’d like to start “a blog or something with just words.” I instantly felt old as shit recalling the days I’d sit in my studio apartment in LA putting up “web entries” before I knew it was even called “web logging,” then shortened to just “blogging.” In the year 2000, y’all. I kept that blog going into 2009. Just words. One place. Old school PrincessMelissa. It had exactly three looks in nine years. There were the icons of my paintings on the original. Then there was the splash page where you click on the sofa to come in, like “Have a seat and read with me.” And then there was the tiny PrincessMelissa logo all over with the tag line “Them chickens is ash and I’m lotion.” People really liked that last one because it had font control! Make this bigger, wow!
I want the old school PrincessMelissa! I could read that shit for years. Also, at one point she says she heard that JWoww and Snooki were looking to buy a house in Long Island so she tweeted at them that her house was for sale and would be perfect for them, which sounds like something I would do (except replace Tweet with “write long missive in microscopic handwriting and send via messenger pigeon.”)
Tender Buttons
March 28, 2013I was just telling my beloved that I find my ability to get jealous of other people’s ideas quite unnerving. It’s not like there is a limited number of good ideas in the world, or that I have never had a good idea myself (PUH-LEASE) and yet still, when I see other people cracking great stories or doing excellent projects, I bristle and think, “Stupid me, why didn’t I think of that?!”
This goes too for the new edition of Tender Buttons, illustrated by Lisa Congdon. My jealousy is doubly meaningless here because I am not an illustrator. But when you look at the wonderfully whimsical drawings below, can you blame me for envying her talent and idea?
Tender.
Although come to think of it, I do have a pretty good idea involving this book. Admittedly, when I was in college and read TB in a graduate school seminar, I was a bit befuddled by it. I was trying to find the meaning behind the words, not allowing the prose itself –– the rhythm of it, the feel of it in your mouth –– to give me pleasure. One day, a fellow student said a friend of hers had given the book to her six-year-old daughter, and that the girl had read it with great delight, and she realized that perhaps the best way to read the text was as a child would. It was a lightbulb moment for me, and has made me want to re-read the book ever since, which I have yet to do (someone buy me the Congdon version?) I’m thinking maybe there should be an audiobook of TB read entirely by kids under the age of ten. Imagine this in a kindergartener’s voice:
COLD CLIMATE.
A season in yellow sold extra strings makes lying places.
MALACHITE.
The sudden spoon is the same in no size. The sudden spoon is the wound in the decision.
AN UMBRELLA.
Coloring high means that the strange reason is in front not more in front behind. Not more in front in peace of the dot.
A PETTICOAT.
A light white, a disgrace, an ink spot, a rosy charm.
A WAIST.
A star glide, a single frantic sullenness, a single financial grass greediness.
Object that is in wood. Hold the pine, hold the dark, hold in the rush, make the bottom.
A piece of crystal. A change, in a change that is remarkable there is no reason to say that there was a time.
A woolen object gilded. A country climb is the best disgrace, a couple of practices any of them in order is so left.
A TIME TO EAT.
A pleasant simple habitual and tyrannical and authorised and educated and resumed and articulate separation. This is not tardy.
Auditions will be held this summer. Reach out if you’d like to pimp out your child for this.
Sweet.
All this invocation of the word “tender,” by the way, has made me reflect lovingly on the Disney cartoon Recess, in which the kids use “tender” as a synonym for “awesome.” Great idea: spread this habit.
Mantras for Nervous Writers
March 27, 2013If Naomi Wolf can get through Vagina, you can get through this.
A Tweet
March 20, 2013Lena Dunham looks like Jackie from the 7-Up series at 14 years old.
TV Show
March 18, 2013A pen pal of mine –– one of quite a few –– had the following idea for a TV show, which I think is really quite brilliant (though his partner is probably right when he says it’s not salable.) If someone steals it, though, I’m coming after you with an icepick.
“i went through a period of obsession with them (the videos, not LDS) (well, both) — i wrote a TV pilot, which i might have already told you, about an ad agency that specialized in religions. the main character was an ex-nun who was a sex addict. the art director was the Ayatollah Khomeini’s neice (her uncle was a client). i really loved it, but my writing partner, who’s a TV person, was like, there’s no way.”
A Tweet
March 17, 2013I’m going to start a Chabad prog-rock band and call it Lights and Vessels.
Something I Want to Say
March 13, 2013… but that I will most certainly have to cut out of this essay I’m working on. This is terribly selfish. I apologize.
“If I’m going to take all Adler’s admirers into consideration here, and I can’t see how I can ignore the throngs of them, then I suppose I’ll start with a borderline sycophant, and re-quote Wilde via David Shields: ‘All criticism is a form of autobiography.’ So if that is so, then perhaps I am the lone critic out there who ends up downtrodden by the incessant nihilism of Adler, because my name is ID, and I am a nihilism addict, and just like an alcoholic cannot take a sip of booze lest he or she tumble down that mineshaft again, I cannot entertain any nihilistic impulse in me because sooner or later I determine that life is meaningless and for me, that’s always been a dangerous path to follow.”
Also, is it possible that The Shining is having a moment? Evidence: the release of the documentary Room 237 later this month, and also the below:
Jack Torrance dress at Fashion Week.
Shining graffiti in Red Hook, Brooklyn.
I’ve Never Really Wanted to be a Ghostwriter…
March 12, 2013but if I could take Lisa Pulitzer’s job, I’d be all over it. From the Times:
Ms. Pulitzer helps young women who have fled religious sects or cultlike organizations give their accounts in compelling, often best-selling prose. “I’m now the official cult gal,” she said over a salad at a French bistro in Huntington, N.Y., where she lives with her husband and two daughters.
She’s written about women fleeing fundamental LDS communities, the Westboro Baptist Church, and Scientology. G-d DAMMIT life isn’t fair.
Sara and Clare Bronfman –– if you’re ever ready to get out of NXIVM, call me!
Freelancing Opportunities
February 23, 2013CHARISMA MAGAZINE
—
Each year, freelancers write 80 percent of our articles, but we
assign most of these to writers who have established themselves
with us. In most cases, we only give article assignments to writers
with published clips. All Charisma articles, with the exception of
the shorter stories (specified below), should be between 1,800 and
2,500 words in length. More than half our readers are Christians who
belong to Pentecostal or independent charismatic churches, and
numerous others participate in the charismatic renewal in mainline
denominations. Charisma Media is a leading creator of diversified
Christian resources that empowers believers for God’s purpose. Our
vision is to inspire people to radically change their world.
—
What exactly is an “independent charismatic church?” Anyone?
Itinerantdaughter's Blog 