“I worry that the person who thought up Muzak may be thinking up something else.” ~Lily Tomlin (writer, Jane Wagner)
Archive for the ‘Really Awesome Insults’ Category
LOLZ!
October 5, 2009James Ellroy
October 1, 2009Tonight my friend HA (Ha!) has invited me to see James Ellroy speak at the Public Library here where I live. The event is being hosted by a fancy young people’s philanthropy group, which inevitably means my old boss, a skinny, saccharine automaton (OUCH!) who is likely to tell me she loves me even though we never speak will be in attendance. Oh, the joys of living a satiric life.
I am excited to see James Ellroy, though I have to admit I’ve never seen L.A. Confidential (and am ashamed of this, now has been moved up on my Queue), but I hear his ego is about as robust as my employer’s, so if he’s boring as hell, I can just imagine the two of them as murderous claymation figures on Celebrity Death Match or something.
When I ask my friend HA about James Ellroy and whether or not she’s read anything by him, she responds that she hasn’t read any of his work, but that he “calls himself the ‘God of Europe’ and other self-congratulatory things.” (On Wikipedia, it says he calls himself, “The greatest crime novelist who ever lived.”) Yeah, well, I’m the Goddess of Asia, a BIGGER continent, so SUCK IT, James Ellroy!
I really enjoy getting into fake fights with formidable literary icons. There has to be some way to capitalize on this…?
There is one topic on which I completely agree with Ellroy, and that is closure! CLOSURE IS FOR IDIOTS!
“Closure is bullshit,” Ellroy often remarks, “and I would love to find the man who invented closure and shove a giant closure plaque up his ass.”
After I read some of his work, I’m going to write a little piece called, “Me, Wishing I Were James Ellroy.” This is a series I intend to do. I have one ready, about Harold Pinter. I can post that now. If you really want me to. Okay, I will.
This outfit is SO splashy!
DAVID MAMET
September 18, 2009Good news! I got the David Mamet book on Anti-Semitism to review!
Bad news! I have three days to read it and write the review.
That’s okay, though, cause I’m kinda psyched. David Mamet “On Anti-Semitism, Self Hatred and the Jews”? Get ready for some vitriol.
School with David Mamet
When one student asked Mamet who his favorite actresses were, he exploded: “Women who act are not actresses. They’re actors. Why do they need to fucking qualify what their genitalia are? Folks, seriously, I need to disabuse you of the notion that ‘actress’ is anything other than a euphemism for ‘floozy’ . . . Do women fucking writers call themselves ‘writressess?’ No!”
Balbirer – who appeared on “Seinfeld” and wrote and performed the solo show, “I Slept With Jack Kerouac” – says Mamet advised her, “There’s nothing worse than being a woman in show business . . . you’ll be asked to do only two things in every fucking role you ever play: take your shirt off and cry.”
He also told his class he considered critics “the syphilis and gonorrhea of the theater,” and delivered a lecture, “the premise of which was that Bill Cosby was a whore . . . television was evil and for whores, Hollywood was a hotbed of whoredom, and we were to avoid all of these things like the plague, unless, of course, we, too, were whores and not the artists we said we were.”
Originally printed in the New York Post, sans the expletives. I added them back in. You’re welcome.
True Story!
September 10, 2009“Tourists are vulgar, vulgar, vulgar!” ~Henry James
Ouch!
September 4, 2009My roommate, on Friday night, says, “You’re the only person I know who can take an absolute compliment and make it bad.”
Why Aren’t People This Quick and Mean in Real Life?
September 1, 2009
Audrey Hepburn in Charade
- Peter: We don’t know each other, do we?
- Reggie: Why? Do you think we’re going to?
- Peter: I don’t know — how would I know?
- Reggie: Because I already know an awful lot of people; until one of them dies, I couldn’t possibly meet anyone else.
- Peter: Mmm. Well, if anyone goes on the critical list, let me know.
(from Charade, 1963, starring Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant)
Fuck You, Time Warner
August 19, 2009So the Internet in my house has been down for about three weeks, and someone from Time Warner is finally going to come tomorrow, hopefully to fix it, so I will finally have the time and access to write more substantial things here…and by “substantial,” I just mean longer, and not at all more interesting or poignant. Well, maybe, but I can’t promise anything.
Some things I’ve been meaning to get off my chest…
It could be worse…
You could be Courtney Love, and you could have told New York Magazine that your new album is, “…really epic. Very, very big. It’s like giant black pyramids. It’s like side two of The Wall. The good side of The Wall.”
This is a good insult
“You have a flair for the obvious.” ~Ed Hennessy
Why do I have nothing more exciting to say? I need this cake.
This is an Insult, Debatably Awesome
August 4, 2009“Every cell in your blood stream in asshole.” ~ my friend’s downstairs neighbor to her husband and babby daddy to be…again.
A Master of Insults
July 31, 2009If you listen to Bob Dylan’s music, you can hear many a great jab. The cheery lightness that seems infused in a lot of his music seems to overshadow some of the more vitriolic comments. Sorry to go all cliche on everyone’s ass, but I still think one of the sentimental Hate Ballads (or…schadenfraude ballads?) is Like a Rolling Stone, in which he kicks Edie Sedgwick while she’s doped up and down.
“Princess on the steeple and all the pretty people
They’re drinkin’, thinkin’ that they got it made
Exchanging all kinds of precious gifts and things
But you’d better lift your diamond ring, you’d better pawn it babe
You used to be so amused
At Napoleon in rags and the language that he used
Go to him now, he calls you, you can’t refuse
When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose
You’re invisible now, you got no secrets to conceal.”
Not to mention Positively Fourth Street, far less poetic and adorned but straight to the heart of the matter:
“You see me on the street
You always act surprised
You say, “How are you?” “Good luck”
But you don’t mean it
When you know as well as me
You’d rather see me paralyzed
Why don’t you just come out once
And scream it”
Or about the Masters of War:
“Even Jesus would never forgive what you do”
This is a man on whose bad side you do not want to be.
I would like to name my daughter Edie, because two of my most beloved cultural icons are Edies, but they were also both irreparably fucked up, and so my friends tell me I cannot do that. But I can give her that middle name.
I am in a rambling mood, partially inspired by and inspiring the writing about Bob Dylan. As my teacher said this morning, “Somebody please stop me from talking!”
Why So Sleepy?
July 27, 2009I always anticipate being prolific at writing camp, but in reality, my brain sort of turns to mush, and all the talk of craft and prose and narrative arc makes me crave stupid shit like US Weekly and shopping.
I’ve been thinking about starting a new category recently, and here it is: really awesome insults! Or, should I write: Really Awesome Insults! The first is from our dear friends, The White Stripes, from their song “There’s No Home For You Here.”
“I’m only waiting for the proper time to tell you
That it’s impossible to get along with you
It’s hard to look you in the face when we are talking
So it helps to have a mirror in the room.”
Burn, Jack White. Burn.
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