nudle

I'm seven.

I am at my coffee shop and I'm supposed to be paying bills and writing the next installment in my unpublished serial about the little girl and her brother but instead was just reading Poets & Writers and feeling both hatred and worship for Jonathan Lethem. Okay, I could never hate him; I'm a little in love with him and I am jealous of him and I want to be him, except I'd never want to lose my mother at fourteen like he did. Or give up my current family. So when given the opportunity to change lives with him I guess I'll say no. Writing this, I feel like I'm about Iona's age, because she sometimes talks about how she wants to be sisters with Anya or Siri, then sweet-naturedly backpedals, reassuring me that she would still want me as a mother. She would have two mothers.

While I'm in the seven-year-old frame of mind I better get my butt into a blank Word file and write the next installment, in which I try out the idea that the free-spirited boy that has just walked into their life is an inventor. Of sorts. With mean, loserish parents who smoke. (And if any of my friends who enjoy the occasional cigarette are reading this, I love you even though you smoke. Says seven-year-old me.)

But before I leave this blog and my twelve (more likely eleven) readers, I will confess that I am addicted to the Sopranos. I just finished season three in which a certain douchebag relative of Tony's is murdered. The comical part of my addiction is that I forgot to put season four in my Netflix queue and so instead of more delightful mobsterness I'm getting two movies I don't want, and I have to wait an extra couple days for my fix.*

* Originally I typed 'goomba fix' but not sure if that's an offensive term. If you have an opinion please clue me in.

Shiny, pretty show.

I used to watch more TV. Now I don't watch so much, what with writing and falling asleep putting Iona to bed and doing design work for free. I find myself busy, I guess. One of the shows I watch when I do watch is Entourage. It's Sex and the City, the male version, totally formulaic. Four old friends try to conquer an iconic city while looking for good sex, and occasionally accidentally almost fall for someone.

Tonight I made Ewan watch the show. It would be his virgin voyage into Hollywood with the lads. Watching through his pure, unadulterated eyes, I sat up, ripped from my sitcom trance. I suddenly realized I was appalled by the misogyny, though maybe that's too strong a term. The show's attitude toward women seemed, in that moment, to be more offhand dismissal than out-and-out hostility.

But after reflecting for about a half a second, I found myself reluctant to get too worked up. I was tired today after having my whole class over last night. Ewan, Iona and I had just gotten home from a favorite restaurant after a nice dinner, and I was full and lazy. Plus, okay, I like the show. It allows me to escape to a place where people are pretty, it never ever rains, and heavy issues are for others. The characters' raunchy good humor appeals to the baseness in me, and I have a lot of baseness. Plus I love men. And there's this one strong female character in the cast, the movie star's publicist, who regularly kicks the boys' asses. They're all from Queens, so they have great fake accents. Vince's manager Eric sometimes almost appears to respect women.

I allowed myself to settle back in. It's okay. It's an hour a week. Where's the harm?

(Let the sunshine, let the sunshine in, the sunshine in)

Gender bending.

I'm doing fussy's Nablopomo, or National Blog Posting Month (because Ms Nina is doing it, and I'm a sheep -- baa-aa-aa). The idea behind Nablopomo is that one must post every day. Perhaps it goes without saying that I will find that a challenge.

But I knew, when my husband received two emails with the same subject line today, that I had a blog post. The emails were variations on this theme: "Hey Ewan! I saw you and your lovely wife in your kitchen on TV today! Why were you on TV? And why am I watching this?"

A long time ago I blogged about our (now former) kitchen being on TV. It was silly; a crew came in for eight hours and filmed us cooking chili oh-so-naturally, and the segment was about twenty minutes long. The show liked our cabinets. If they could only see us now. Our current kitchen is lovably elderly, having been installed in 1985. No high-end appliances here! And our dishwasher is haunted. She moans me to sleep every night. I love it.

What I find funny is that the the emails were both from men. Men watching a home decorating show.

How to make a cat toy out of a tampon.

Can I really move to another city?

Amy Sedaris is on Conan (which is late-night television for those of you who CLAIM not to watch). Apparently she is the voice of Cinderella in Shrek the Third. I hardly ever watch late-night television, and I like Conan, but I don't watch him. Sometimes on Thursdays when I'm up anyway. But I do like those Sedarises. Happy accident that I'm up anyway. I hope she's a fast talker though, because Ewan is home and he falls asleep more quickly than anyone I've ever seen, except for maybe Iona.

Okay, she's on now, talking about crafts, which is funny. She's a bit awkward, but it's hard to tell if she's actually awkward or just preTENDing to be awkward. It's interesting, I've been asking this of public speakers lately: Is he/she really awkward, or PRETENDING to be awkward, just putting that smart stutter on to seem smart? And this begs the question: WHO CARES?

But then we get trapped into having low standards for the authenticity of our public speakers. Let's keep those standards high, people! Up with authenticity! #&*#%@-ay!

Right now Amy is showing Conan how to make a toy for a cat or dog out of a tampon by taking it out of the applicator and gluing googly eyes on it.

Eight hours. Four minutes. (Part II)

Perhaps you read my post about our kitchen. Here are future airings of the segment on HGTV:
•    May 21, 2006 1:30 PM ET/PT
•    May 21, 2006 11:30 PM ET/PT
•    May 22, 2006 3:30 AM ET/PT

May I suggest 3:30 AM?

We can't watch it because we don't have cable, so let me know if we look like total dorks.

The not-porn TV taping.

Oh, I know. You saw it coming. She’s all talk, you’ve been whispering among yourselves, some of you with your voices full of hope. She doesn’t really write porn. And certainly she’s not going on the air to talk about porn. You lean forward. Your voice gets conspiratorial. You snicker. She sure likes to use the word PORN though, doesn't she? You don’t think she’s DONE porn, do you? Hmm, maybe. Still waters and all. Who knew there was a market for THAT?

The truth is I sometimes write short stories (sometimes long ones) and occasionally the characters get up to stuff. Together. You know. So my writing coach, who doesn't often run across people willing to, um, lay it all out there in front of people, asked me to be on her local-access TV show. Only available in Wilmette, a village north of Chicago where all the gas station signs are tastefully low and small.

The show’s title: Sex, Food and Money. The funny part is that even though I can write about sex, I can’t talk about it. I turn red, I sweat (what else is new) and my voice starts to ring in my ears if I have to read even one dirty word out loud.

Maybe that’s why I got lost trying to get to the television station Friday. Driving on the freeway, laptop open on the seat beside me, I was yelling into the phone at Ewan who interrupted a conference call for me, “Mapquest it! Just please! I’m late! I’m on the Edens! I don’t know if I’m going north! I thought I was going west! Just tell me, is the Lake exit past Old Orchard?” Perhaps my subconscious was telling me there was no way I was going on TV to talk about sex, even if it was just to twenty-eight housewives in the village of Wilmette.

I found the place in the basement of a community center. It was so difficult to find and so dingy that it actually could have been a porn studio. I’ve never been in a porn studio, but I saw one on the movie Fame.

I walked into the chaos of Starbucks and donuts and Post-It flip charts to find that I had been bumped from the Sex show and slotted into the next taping, a show entitled First Person. Boy, and I thought I didn’t have anything to say about sex.

In the end it went okay and was fun. Nancy was smart and full of energy. I want to bottle her up and spritz her on every morning. Her crew, other writers I know, had been transformed into efficient camera operators and television producers. I was impressed.

I blurted some stuff about the immediacy of first person, how it can help a writer get to know her characters. I spouted some nonsense about how adventure writing (which I've never done and will never do) can be especially good when written in first person present tense.

I tried very hard not to sweat.

Eight hours. Four minutes.

The crew was in our kitchen for eight hours last Saturday filming. Our segment will be four minutes.

I still have no idea when we're going to be on TV. Did I already write that I'm going to be on TV? Twice? For our kitchen and for my porn. The porn show is being taped Friday. I have two words for that show: DRESS SHIELDS.

The very calm producer, Katie, told us to just be natural, be ourselves. Then Pat stuck a giant black camera in our faces and made every move we did, along with Anthony, the sound guy, who was wired directly to Pat with about a hundred three-foot cables. We naturally narrated the cooking activities (who doesn’t do a play-by-play when they’re making chili?) and naturally talked about the cabinets and the Corian.

I was struck by how UNnatural I felt being on camera. I used to do a lot of Handycam filming when I worked for Doblin, and I always secretly wanted to be the one in front of the lens. I used to beg my friend Sarah, who writes screenplays, to put together a short film just so I could be in it. When we finally got down to filming I was nervous and sweaty. In fact, I am convinced I have the sweating disease. It's called hyperhidrosis. They treat it with Botox, but I’d rather get the Botox in my forehead.

I kept wanting to jump over the cables running between Pat and Anthony to get to the refrigerator. I kept looking at the camera, when I should have looked at Katie, the calm producer. Katie kept saying, “Could you try that one again? Take it from “I bake about twice a year...” and then Pat would say, “Okay, can you move back two feet so you’re in the same spot?” So I naturally tried to remember what I was saying and say it again naturally.

I loved the whole thing.

The guy being filmed here is Douglas, the designer from the cabinet company.

Trying not to sweat.

Talking about Balvenie 15-year.

Watch for me on TV.

News flash: I’ve been invited to be on TV. Twice. Okay, not me specifically, but our kitchen and my porn.

HGTV recently invited our refurbished, tiny kitchen to be on a show called “Kitchen Trends.” They subsequently renamed the show “I Want That Kitchen!” and the segment on our hovel is going to be aired sometime soon as one of the first episodes under the new brand.

We don’t even have cable.

I think it’s a spin-off of this:

The producer told me there would be lots of press and promotion for the new show using our kitchen, which is approximately the size of a paper napkin. They will enter with their equipment and look around and say, Where the hell is the kitchen?

They’re supposed to film us making my sister Kathy’s white bean chili (stay tuned for the recipe).

All the kids who made fun of me in high school: Eat your hearts out. I’m on HGTV. What’s more, feast your eyes on this. It’s in our kitchen:

I betcha none of you can say you have this clock.

So yeah, we don’t have cable. We've never watched HGTV. But did that stop us from sluttily saying yes to fame? No. Granted, I did not jump up and down in the pants-wetting way of contestants on The Price is Right. But I gave up a precious Saturday to strangers for the promise of BEING ON TV. I did it for the story. I am a story whore.

The production crew is filming our kitchen for eight hours tomorrow, beginning at 9:00. That’s pretty early for me on a Saturday. My most recent Saturdays have involved getting Iona dressed in pink tights and leotard and schlepped a block away for Intro to Ballet.

I met a cool woman, the mother of Mia, at Intro to Ballet. Her blog is here.

Intro to Ballet starts at 9:30. Tomorrow I have to be TV-ready, and our kitchen has to be TV-ready, and Iona has to be TV-ready, and I have to scrape Ewan off the sofa, by 9:00. That’s going to be a feat, especially after drinking a bottle of red wine tonight and then blogging until one.

Ewan and I are positioned for a half-night’s sleep on our ugly, comfortable sectional. We are a veritable L of old married couple. I’m trying to down enough water to ensure I wake up fully human, unlike this morning, which was ugly and led to me trying to murder our cat. (She has eight lives left.) Ewan is snoring. He fell asleep at 9:15 sitting at the table in front of my laptop until I threatened and cajoled him to a horizontal position on the sofa. Being abandoned on Friday nights is nothing new to me. Neither is finishing the bottle by myself. But don’t cry for me. I’m going to be on TV!

Oh yeah, more on the porn later.