The Bennett Madison Extravaganza

Elsewhere

2009-07-30T18:54:14Z

Slowly moving this blog over to a tumblr. You should go there!

Once More Into the Bleach

2009-06-09T17:24:12Z

So I think I'm going to be switching this blog over to Tumblr soon, but in the meantime here's the new official cover for The Blonde of the Joke, for those who haven't seen it yet. The new one is obvs totally different from the old one, but I actually think it reflects the mood of the book even better. Also who can argue with "people like pink!"?

The book comes out at the beginning of September. (Finally-- I mean for fuck's sake.)

So far, people have said some totally nice things about it:

Off-kilter humor, moody narration, and twisted psychology make this sardonic exploration of suburbia thrilling-like pocketing lip gloss and walking right out of the store... Dreamy collisions of reality and fantasy, of the nonsensical and impossible, make for a magical, slippery read. -- School Library Journal

...A ridiculous, riotous, tongue-in-cheek mad dash through the mall where everything is not as it seems... -- Kirkus

A John Hughes movie on downers. -- VOYA*

You pre-order it here now. (It doesn't seem to be on IndieBound yet, but obviously you should can/should get it from your favorite indie when it's actually released.)

*I count this as a rave

Dressed for Success

2009-05-06T05:00:02Z

Great news! Roxette has recovered from brain cancer and is reuniting. If you are unfamiliar with these amazing Swedes you're either way younger or way older than I am. JOYRIDE was the #1 jam of my fourth grade. Later in college I drove from New York to Florida with my then-boyfriend and we couldn't agree on anything to listen to, so we stopped in a Salvation Army off the highway and bought a copy of LOOK SHARP on cassette. We listened to it for at least 20 hours straight and the entire way back. It must have been love, but it's over now.

What We Talk About When We Talk About the Grifter

2009-04-17T18:44:58Z

Everyone around here is predictably obsessed with Doree Shafrir's HIPSTER GRIFTER investigation in the Observer. It's the usual story-- comelyish tatttooed jezebel flees Utah/the long arm of the law to hide out in Brooklyn where she seduces everyone at Union Pool, claims to have lung cancer, and writes a bunch of bad checks before getting busted by her new friends and moving on to do the same thing all over with the crowd at Barcade, Pete's Candy Store, repeat repeat repeat.

The story itself is actually a little too low-stakes and ordinary to be exactly novel and it's about as repetitive as a bad joke. Still, at least as of yesterday, all of my friends and I were captivated. Everyone I've talked to seems to have their own personal reasons for being into the whole thing. Some of my ladyfriends seem primarily interested in the Grifter's amazing/unlikely powers of sexy persuasion, while others just seem baffled by how this girl could seem to be everywhere at once. Most people have known a compulsive liar who manages to snow everyone by being so magnetic and likable, so there's that angle too. I guess I personally am mostly interested because this completely crazy girl reminds me, sort of, of myself. I have never written a bad check-- partially because I can never find my checkbook-- and I'm too indiscreet to be a convincing liar, but still there is something familiar and unsettling about the way she managed to make the same mistakes over and over.

I often fantasize about moving to Sydney or someplace like that and being a perfect person. No one there would know about any of the embarrassing shit I've done over the years. I could reinvent myself amidst a tan crowd of jolly surfers with hot accents toasting me with sloshing pitchers of beer. (Right Justine? That's what Australia is like, right?) In a sunnier place, I like to imagine, I could be a better person and none of my new surfer friends would be the wiser as to my former annoying self. It seems like a great plan.

Which is why Kari Ferrell's story is just sad to me. She actually had a shot! Although she was totally WANTED in Utah, she managed to escape to Brooklyn where she promptly got a semi-coveted job, made more friends in a few weeks than I've made in New York in six years, and left the beehive fuzz in the dust. Then, having succeeded at giving herself a second chance, she went about fucking up her life in the exact same ways that she'd done it before. When she sort-of-but-not-really got away with THAT, she did it all over again. Girl, I've been there.

I like to think that I learn from mistakes, but I've made that error in judgment one too many times. Would things be different in Australia? It's really really far away, that weather is nice, and there are lots of exotic/colorful birds. But if I'm as much like Kari Ferrell as I suspect, I have a feeling I'd figure out a way to make it exactly the same.

Reading Thursday

2009-03-16T17:49:22Z

Hey unemployed people and children! I'm reading this week from The Blonde of the Joke (due out in September) as part of the NYC Teen Author Festival.

Also reading will be David Levithan, Lauren McLaughlin, Billy Merrell, and Marie Rutkowski.

The only bad part is that it's at 4pm, which means if you have a job you might have problems attending-- but extra credit to those who take the day off. It's at the Jefferson Market Branch of the New York Public Library, 425 Avenue of the Americas. Hope to see you there.

Make sure to check out the rest of the festival events here.

Cracking Up

2009-03-11T00:08:13Z

I guess the rumor of my crack-up has spread because a friend just sent me a copy of THE CRACK-UP, the posthumous document of F. Scott Fitzgerald's total meltdown. I'm pretty sure F. never had to exile himself to his parents' house in the suburbs BUT I'm only just finished with the first chapter so who knows how low he will sink later.

It's impossible (to the point of triteness I know, SORRY) not to read the first essay in the book, Echoes of the Jazz Age, without feeling creeped out and unsettled by how familiar it seems-- the only seeming difference between now and the post-crash years being, duh, that at least in the 20's they had waited for the war to be over before they commenced with the drinking, sexing and insane consumption. But they didn't have the internet in those days so we can use technological panic as the excuse for our own oblivious excesses, right?

"Now once more the belt is tight and we summon the proper expression of horror as we look back on our wasted youth. Sometimes, though, there is a ghostly rumble among the drums, an asthmatic whisper in the trombones that swings me back into the early twenties when we drank wood alcohol and every day in every way grew better and better and there was a first abortive shortening of the skirts, and girls all looked alike in sweater dresses, and people you didn't want to know said, "Yes, we have no bananas," and it seemed only a question of a few years before the older people would step aside and let the world be run by those who saw things as they were-- and it all seems rosy and romantic to those of us who were young then, because we will never feel quite so intensely about our surroundings any more."

Isn't Not Funny

2009-03-10T07:04:32Z

Does this mean there might be a market for SLAVE TO YOUR LOVIN: The Tami Akbar Story? I've had my original screenplay sitting in a drawer for so long I'd given up hope...

What is Art?

2009-03-04T13:03:23Z

I always return to the music of Lucille Cataldo when I need to be reminded of why I bother.

Riding in Vans With Lesbians

2009-03-01T10:02:37Z

Ariel Levy's article in this week's New Yorker regarding a nomadic band of badass van-driving separatist 70's lesbians known as the Van Dykes was great by any measure, but it almost made me cry. Why? Because I have had the fleeting, sometimes frustrating pleasure of knowing a lesbian with a van. Well, a minivan: blue Dodge Caravan, fake wood paneling, creepy doll parts superglued to the dashboard, a mattress where the seats should be. A musty dirty-foot smell poorly disguised with Bath & Bodyworks strawberry-kiwi body spray and Ani on the stereo, bitch! You know the drill. If you don't you should. Some of the nicest times of my life were spent in a minivan with all of those things.

I met S. during my gloomy freshman year of college, when I lived in a picturesque but lonely room in a gingerbread house in which no one would visit me because it was at the bottom of a giant hill. S. was was never my best friend or anything, but she was magnetic and the ringleader of the tight-knit circle of girls with whom I had thrown in my lot, so we ended up hanging out all the time. She was always spearheading some activity that no one else would have ever considered.

She had a van. You weren't really allowed to have a car as a freshman, but S. had been forced to bring her van to school because she needed it in order to leave campus every weekend to attend Ani shows. Since the school didn't grant special Ani DiFranco parking permits, S had to park in the scary-posh neighborhood that engulfs Sarah Lawrence's (also scary-posh) campus. One afternoon I was sitting in my lonely room, probably feeling sorry for myself, when I heard honking, looked out the window and saw S.'s Caravan outside. It had been freshly decorated: where before it had been a staid navy, it was now spray-painted with neon swirlies, womyn symbols, and, in giant pink letters, the words LESBO SEX. It took me about two seconds to make it into out of my room and into the back of the van where a gang of girls was already sprawled on the mattress drinking beer, with S. in the driver's seat as the cheerful pilot. I don't remember where we went that day-- probably nowhere in particular-- but after that paint job S. was always getting mean notes on her windshield from the people in front of whose giant Tudor mansions she parked.

We were constantly driving around in that van-- not just me and S, cause like I say, we weren't really solo friends like that-- but her and me and The Girls and often whoever I was dating. We went to the diner what seemed like every night, and S. would order weird off-menu vegan meals cobbled together from various substitutions. ("Can I get a burger but with extra lettuce instead of buns, no mayonnaise, extra ketchup and pico de gallo instead of beef?") She was always taking us to some thrift store or another in a series of down-at-the-heels suburbs with names like Rompompano so she could buy toy pianos or whatever for her latest art project. The best time we barely went anywhere-- we'd gotten all this beer and toffuti and kosher marshmallows and stuff for a picnic but there was a huge thunderstorm so we just parked by the side of the road and all crammed into the back of the lesbo sex van and got wasted and discovered that kosher marshmallows don't really compare to the regular kind. I mean, it wasn't that exciting; it was just nice.

S. got over her Ani phase and started painting. She stopped wearing broomstick skirts and started wearing white pants and old t-shirts with lacy Victorian frills sewn into the collars so that they buttoned up to her chin. She took a year off and went to Texas, where she got into synchronized swimming. She was always telling you about her latest scheme with these wide eyes and an incredulous shit-eating grin, basically daring you to believe her. She punctuated everything with a gargly cartoon laugh.

She could be moody and unpredictable, but she was always funny, even when she was being an asshole. One time she got mad about something and superglued everything on her roommate's desk into place. Well, that was funny to me.

Eventually S. got a dog named Vandal who everyone hated. She had adopted him as a mangy puppy from a homeless man she met over a summer when she'd organized a traveling lesbian circus. She named the dog Vandal but addressed him as Wanda, which seemed appropriate-- he identifies as a Wanda, she explained. I thought it was more likely he identified as a monster; he was always trying to eat people. Everyone hated that fucking dog. On top of being crazy and scary, he was also a racist. On top of being racist, he liked to shit indoors for no other reason than to piss everyone off. Really, he was much too skittish, aggressive and carnivorous for the undergraduate lifestyle. Wanda had to be on the move or he would just have to eat someone, which only fed into S.'s already-ballooning wanderlust. With Wanda around, S. had someone to ride shotgun and didn't need anyone else. She seemed to have grown bored of people anyway-- or maybe just of me.

I still saw the van a lot, but only when she stopped to roll down the window and chat on her way to some solitary destination. She had become obsessed with abandoned buildings and had taken up squatting in this old empty mansion in a hidden part of town before Hollywood kicked her out they could use it to shoot Mona Lisa Smile. After that, S. was even more distant. But I was all wrapped up in my own stuff too, and, anyway, we were still friends and everything. Sometimes we went to Wendy's after art history class (she got fries or maybe she had stopped being vegan by then; I can't remember) but those occasions grew few and far between. We fell out mostly out of touch after college, which was something I regretted after I got dumped by someone I thought I was in love with and considered taking up nomadicism myself. I was hoping to hitch a ride, but I didn't know how to summon the van anymore.

Last time I saw S., she'd blown into New York for about eighteen hours. It was never easy making plans with her; we both had this thing about cell phones and she always had a packed itinerary and not much time. On the rare occasions that she appeared it was always like "meet me at this warehouse at 2 in the morning and bring beer." So I met her at 2 in the morning a party in a warehouse in the middle of Brooklyn where a nude man in his fifties wandered aimlessly amidst a crowd of twentysomethings. The music was really loud and S. and I had to shout to hear each other, but it didn't matter, she still made me laugh. She was wearing some crazy outfit but I can't remember what. She might have been had a fake moustache fashioned from the real hair on her head; she did that a lot. We talked for a couple hours. I haven't heard from her since.

A girl with a van has places to go. She has people to see. You can be friends with a girl with a van, you can ride shotgun and sing along to Ani on the stereo. It is very easy to fall in love with a girl with a van, even if there are more than a few reasons a relationship would never work. From the passenger's seat of a girl's van, windows rolled down, you always know for sure that, in the end-- probably sometime soon-- you'll be standing in an empty parking lot waving goodbye as it speeds out of there on the way to some dyke paradise that can only be seen from the top of a pyramid, and that if it ever rolls back into town its driver will have another name and a new tattoo.

Jealousy

2009-02-13T22:42:08Z

The one thing that kind of sucks about "being a writer" (putting that in scare quotes so you don't puke-- secret "writer" trick!) is that once you make your first writing dollar you start to get jealous of things you would have once just enjoyed. I know there are probably some people who will claim not to have this weakness (JUSTINE perhaps??) but I think more are like me than will admit it. Whenever I read anything that's really good or even see a book that just looks really good I'm torn between pleasure and suicidal ideation. Because that should have been my great book!

The worst and most ironic part is that the closer a book feels to your (my) soul, the more you (I) can't totally enjoy it. Peter Cameron's SOMEDAY THIS PAIN WILL BE USEFUL TO YOU is probably one of the funniest and most moving books I read all last year, but the narrator reminded me so much of myself when I was in high school that I had to get up every few pages and fume over the fact that someone else had written the book that I was meant to write-- and worst of all, had done it better than I probably could have. If I had read the book ten years ago, none of this would have occured to me; I would have just really liked it. OH LOST INNOCENCE.

There are many other books I avoid entirely just because they feel too close to my personal interests. Such areas of interest include crazy girls, sluts, press-on nails, and hot stoner guys with impossibly long eyelashes. If I know in advance that a book touches on any of those topics I am not going anywhere near it cause what if I want to write something similar someday? (The answer to that rhetorical question is admittedly fuzzy but it seems like something bad could happen.)

This must all make me seem like the most crazy and petty person in the world but I am just trying to give you all of my realness. The internet is a safe space for realness, right?

What it ultimately means is that I can basically only read things that are either really shitty or things on topics that I don't care about at all. Things published before the death of Kurt Cobain/birth of Lourdes Ciccone are usually okay too because somehow that just feels like a whole different category. As for everything else I have a hard time.

You would think that this would take the fun out of everything AND IN SOME WAYS IT IS THE SADDEST THING IN THE WORLD, but the flip side is that it does make it much more pleasurable to read stuff that sucks. Terrible literature makes me feel so great inside. Airport bookstores are now my favorite. Happy ending!

OPERA!

2009-02-12T19:56:26Z

Hey, I have that hat too!

Release Me

2009-02-12T19:36:44Z

Mercury went direct last week (but don't get too happy cause knowing Mercury it will be all screwed up again ASAP) and this Saturday, the moon will be in Libra's 7th house while Jupiter aligns with Mars. That's right-- the dawning of the Age of Aquarius. I mean, maybe-- this is all third-hand.

All this good astrological news coincidentally (or not!!?!?) coincides with the great news that The Blonde of the Joke finally has a new official release date: August 25. So soon! Which means you can and should pre-order it now. That's still the old cover on Amazon but I've seen the new one and it rules. Hopefully I'll be posting it here soon too. Hint: it might match this site's new-ish color scheme!

"The Book Club Process"

2009-02-11T20:12:09Z

I don't much care about the Scholastic Book Clubs one way or the other. My books will never in a million years be picked up for one of their pamphlets so I have the luxury of not caring. On one hand they're famous for forcing authors to bowdlerize their work but I also generally think concerned parental groups like the one in this article need to lighten up already. So while I was predisposed to side with Scholastic, this LOL quote from book club president Judy Newman kinda proves the uptight hippie parents' point:

“We work with teachers to make sure that items are O.K. to put out in their classrooms,” Ms. Newman said. “In a class of 24 kids, some of them will be turned on by a game, and it helps kids engage in the book club process.”

There's nothing better than when euphemistic corporate doublespeak accidentally reveals the actual truth. Notice that no one is trying to help kids engage in READING. Instead it's "the book club process" which of course just means "instilling in children a lifelong love of cheap plastic crap."

Keep in mind that I don't actually think "engaging kids in reading" has any inherent value; books are good, obvs, but no one has ever made a convincing case to me regarding what's wrong with TV. It's really just the gross, dishonest and really transparent substitution of the book club process for books that bothers me.

Valentine

2009-02-11T08:34:44Z

Hey, did you know that I once wrote a whole book about Valentine's Day? Probably not because despite the link to your left I still haven't added any of my books to this site. (I know that's the whole point of having a website in the first place but whatever.) Anyway, yes, I wrote a whole book about Valentine's Day. Don't blame me, okay? I was paid to do it. It took me forever and was at least two months late. Because it turns out it's a bitch trying to think of a whole book's worth of things to say about a topic you basically don't care about. Eventually I managed it though and I think it was pretty funny in the end.

Although I Hate Valentine's Day was the second book I wrote it was the first one to actually come out because of the publishing schedule, which meant I was sort of sensitive about the whole thing. After Emily read the manuscript (this was when we were roommates) we got into a huge fight because she did that thing where she picked out one tiny nitpicky thing to criticize before she said anything nice. Sorry, but I hate that. I don't know what it is, but somehow it seems like if you can't say anything nice, whatever negative remark you feel compelled to make should at least be substantial. Thankfully Emily and I have since made up. (And in fact the mistake she caught would have embarrassed me.)

This is all getting around to the fact that Tyler's very nice Valentine's Day playlist inspired me to do a copycat mix, and then I thought, "Perfect, this can be my weak attempt at publicizing the VDay book this year." But then I went and looked on Amazon and it seems like maybe the book is out of print? If so I wish someone would have told me. (Not that it really matters.) Well, whatever-- everyone go buy this fantastic book except you probably can't.

What I mean to say: Happy Valentine's Day! How romantic! Baby you are so special to me. I've made you a tape! I know that one is actually supposed to make a romantic Valentine's tape for one's lover but my man-friend hated the one tape I ever made him (he was like "my mom liked a song on it") so I won't make that mistake again!

Instead this is my VD gift to you. I used this thing called FAVTAPE to make it. I don't quite get Favtape and a lot of my original choices didn't work based on the site's bizarre selection-- no Annie soundtrack, BOO!-- but oh well.

Click here to go straight to the tape, or click ahead to read my annotated playlist. (Note to web 2.0 nerds creating online mixtape utility thingies: built-in annotation functionality so essential!)

]]> VALENTINE
This Romantic Mix Tape Is My Gift to You
by Bennett

1. Tonight You Belong To Me - Unknown artist
I obviously wanted the Steve Martin/Bernadette Peters ukulele/cornet version from The Jerk, but it wasn't on FAVTAPE so you will have to settle for this version by some unknown people. (Does anyone know who is singing this?)

2. All I Want is You - Carly Simon
You know I had to have some Carly on here. This is one of those songs that used to gross me out so much when I heard it in the car with my parents. (My dad had Carly's greatest hits on heavy rotation during car rides when I was little.) There is just something so gross/LOL about "the sexy hurricane that we share." Also I imagine hurricanes are out of fashion as love metaphors in a post-Katrina world. All of which adds up to me loving this song in my manhood.

3. He Was a Big Freak - Betty Davis
Only Betty Davis could make beating someone with a turquoise chain seem so Valentinesy!

4. Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone - Sleater-Kinney
This song was the pinnacle of romance to me in high school. If someone had put this song on a tape for me in those days I would have been instantly gone. Maybe I still would; I don't know. No one ever makes me tapes anymore.

5. Sugarcube - Yo La Tengo
I like this song because it reminds me of those stories about some bitchy/demanding Princess who will marry anyone who completes some menial but nearly impossible task for her. I've often considered writing a book with a premise like that but have never gotten around to it.

6. Favorite Waste of Time - Freedy Johnston
I wanted the Bette Midler version of this song cause I'm just that gay. Unfortunately the Bette version on Favtape inexplicably didn't work. Maybe this mix was getting to heavy on '70s ladies anyway.

7. Quiet Heart - The Go-Betweens
I have been thinking for awhile about making a tape called "Opposites." This song would probably be more appropriate on that tape-- paired, of course, with Stevie Nicks's WILD HEART.

8. Picture This - Blondie
This is my favorite Blondie song/the only Blondie song I'm not totally sick of cause it wasn't on the greatest hits collection I listened to a thousand times in high school. The rhyme "Picture this: my finest hour/The one I spent watching you shower" is very hot and kind of brilliant to me.

9. Into Your Arms - The Lemonheads
Oh Dando! I will make everything okay for you!

10. When You're Old and Lonely - The Magnetic Fields
This seems at first like a love-lost song rather than just a plain love song (which I've tried to limit this to, notice?) but to me it's the most romantic and weirdly sincere of all of the many Magnetic Fields love-ish songs. I like the sweet irony of it: two people who think they missed the boat with each other but who are secretly in a codependent relationship without even realizing it!

11. Balham Rise - The Guild League
Some might find this song kind of cloying, others might point out that it's more of a song about an apartment than a love song. I say maybe it's cloying but another word for cloying is sweet and it's both a love song and a song about an apartment. I like it because it's about being left behind in the cold in the morning and I can relate to that cause I don't have a job.

12. I'll Never Love This Way Again - Dionne Warwick
Yet another '70s lady. Because she is the shit. (Imagine this song as the finale and the next as the encore.)

13. Moon River - REM
I almost used the Morrissey version of Moon River here and then I remembered how much I hate how Morrissey changes the lyrics in his performance of the song to make them all gloomy and everything. Like it go against the Morrissey BRAND to sing a song that isn't 100% hopeless? Anyway, don't kill me; I know it's not allowed to say anything bad about Moz. But, girl, please. You don't change the words to a song like this. Just singing it in Morrisseyvoice would have made it plenty sad enough. As for this REM version, I think Stipe handles it quite gracefully when a heckler screams "THIS SONG SUCKS" halfway through.

Factotum

2009-02-10T20:16:27Z

Hey do you need some TASKS done for free? Do you want to participate in fancy pomo art? My old roommate, the brilliant performance artist Erin McMonagle, is (dangerously in my opinion) offering her services up as part of her next piece, FACTOTUM. Here are the details (isn't she so pretty?):

I will be performing a new piece, Factotum, February 25-March 3 at chashama 266 (266 West 37th Street). Factotum will explore the life of Marlene – the silent secretary in the Fassbinder film The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant – after she ends her employment with Petra.

At the end of the film Marlene simply packs a suitcase and, with only a look at her former employer, walks out the door. Throughout the film Marlene proves essential to Petra von Kant not only for her business operations, but in her day-to-day life. The questions that I want to work with are the following: where will Marlene work? How will she survive? How will she find her work?
I imagine Marlene landing on her feet, and becoming a free lance factotum – with her extensive and various skills (including typing, note-taking, bartending, silver polishing, making and serving coffee and tea, machine sewing, hand sewing, creating clothing sketches, cooking, cleaning, dancing, answering the door, etc.) she can help anyone with anything.In order to find projects for this piece I am sending out, to all of you, a request for work/tasks. If you have ANYTHING that you would like to have done during the run please fill out the following form and email it back to me at erin.a.mcmonagle@gmail.com.
Please also feel free to pass this along to any and all friends. During the performance I will complete and perform the activities. I will enter into a mutual contract with YOU, my employers, to determine what you want, how you want it done, and when your work will be completed.
Each employer will receive a contract that details when the work will be finished and a precise time when they will be able to retrieve it from Marlene at the Chashama space. The times are precise and if you are late you will have to wait for Marlene to have another free moment. (She is German, afterall.) thank you in advance for 1) giving me some work and 2) coming to see the show! Email me anything, even if you think it's weird. I'll decide if I can manage it within the space.
Erin

Everyone should totally do this. Not only will you be supporting art but you can get some annoying chores out of the way. Here's the link to download the work form.