Good morning. HH is featured over at the blog The Page 99 Test, where I try to explain how page 99 of the book fits or doesn't fit in with the theme of the book as a whole. It's a pretty cool idea that blogmaster Marshal Zeringue has come up with--he asks various authors to address this page 99 question, which in turn forces the author to say a little something both about the book itself and page 99 of the book. Fun. Thanks, Marshal.
Not too much going on these last couple of weeks Hullabalooza-wise, but the BU Alumni Magazine "Bostonia" just ran this interview piece with me, and I guess they're taking questions for me about church/state issues. Also, the Boston Globe is apparently running a review of the book in Sunday's paper, which will be sweet, unless it turns out the review is negative, in which case it will suck. I'm working on a couple more reading dates in the Boston area, as well as probably one in the northern Bay Area for October. And one week from today I'll be in St. Louis, reading at the Barnes & Noble in the West County Mall at 7:00 (that's Thursday, July 9). If you live in STL, I hope you'll make it. If you have friends there, I hope you'll tell them about it. Thanks, and have a great long weekend.
An astute reader of Holy Hullabaloos who was at my Brookline Booksmith reading last week suggested to me that he thought my whole motivation for writing the book--the two years of research and writing, the agonizing self-promotion, even possibly the ten previous years of teaching church/state law to position myself as someone who could publish a book--has been basically to infinitesimally increase the chances that Liz Phair might notice me. Now, this person has known me for many years and knows of my crush on Liz Phair and was even randomly at the same show with me at the Paradise last fall when I tried, unsuccessfully, to throw my boxers on the stage at Liz (this, by the way, is quite a difficult task to accomplish, with all the shoe-removing and jeans-pulling-down and security guard involvement and what not, which might explain why men don't do this little manuever very often). And, yes, to some degree my friend is certainly correct.
As I write in the book (on page 112), when I was in Austin for my trip to visit the Ten Commandments monument that was challenged all the way to the Supreme Court by Thomas Van Orden, a hilarious and brilliant homeless lawyer, I was sitting at some bar in the South Congress neighborhood one evening when "I kept drinking beer after beer in the hopes that the stunning woman two tables away really was Liz Phair, the Chicago indie rock queen whom I've had a crush on for years and who I thought might--well, I don't know what I thought, maybe that she'd suddenly stand on the table and start giving me a private concert or something." I'll spare you the version of that sentence which appeared in the first draft of the book. Anyway, it probably wasn't her, although Austin would be a place where she could conceivably be and she was with a big hairy guy who resembled "Dino," a guitar player/boyfriend (maybe ex-boyfriend, I'm not sure) who pretty much ruined the first show I saw of Liz's by getting really irritated at his amplifier and cursing it throughout the entire concert. Incidentally, that show was also generally a letdown, I think because it took place during a period of 8 days in a row of rain when everyone was so fucking sick of the weather like they are now that everything we saw or read seemed to suck (like I imagine this blog post will seem).
Now, of course, yes, I'm married, but as I've pointed out previously on this blog, Liz is one of the two women on the list that couples typically either have or don't have of people they could have "relations" with if ever presented with the opportunity (the other being WCVB weather-goddess JC Monahan (I should point out that a good number of people have arrived at this blog by searching for Ms. Monahan, though not as many as find me by looking for an image of Sue Ellen Ewing, my childhood TV crush)). I'll also reiterate here how my wife's list only has one person on it, and he's dead (Heath Ledger).
(It occurs to me that a good plot for a movie or a short story or other work of fiction might involve a married guy or lady who actually does somehow get the chance to sleep with someone on this kind of "free pass list" and what happens to the relationship afterward as they argue about whether such a list really exists or whether it's just a joke; has there already been such a story or movie--please let me know?=).
Anyway, back to the point of the post, so what if my motivation for writing Holy Hullabaloos wasn't really to explain church/state law to general readers or to evaluate the Supreme Court's religion clause jurisprudence or to suggest that we might achieve some modicum of social peace if we started talking about religion and government with some levity but instead was just to increase infinitesimally the chance that Liz Phair will notice me? Does that make the book any less fantabulistic? In other words, so I have a crush on Liz Phair, what do you care?
Liz: call me!
You'll recall that a while ago I blogged about the new Monkeybicycle 6 and how it is kicking ass and taking the names? It turns out that the volume is getting a lot of well-deserved nice press in the blogosphere and the printosphere, for example a shout out in the Philadelphia City Paper and these nice comments here. Oh, and also here. If you look at these comments, as you should, you will notice that my ludicrous story "The Advisor," is not singled out as one of the volume's high points. This, undoubtedly, is because my story is not one of the volume's high points. For example, I just read two of the stories in the volume that are much better than "The Advisor," one by Sarah Salway and one about a guy whose wife goes to see the gynecologist every year on Valentines Day, written by Michael Czyniejewski. Still, though, over at a blog called "Ejaculations of a Perverse Adult," Tim Jones-Yelvington is reviewing the entire volume story by story, and since "The Advisor" is indeed a story within the volume, he has written a post about it. He says some very kind things, like that the story is "funny," but he suggests that at the end of the story, when the crazy presidential candidate drops the giant television from the top of the ladder, it would have been more satisfying for the television to fall on top of the candidate's little white kitty-kat rather than the narrator's prize-winning bonsai tree. A comment echoes his wish. Now, I like kitties very much, I even have a kitty, but hey, if the people want the kitty to die, then the kitty shall die. Moooohahahahaha. And therefore I present here and only here an alternative ending to "The Advisor":
There, that's better! Happy now, Ejaculating Perverse Adult?
In any event, buy Monkeybicycle 6 here now!
Last night on CBS News with Katie Couric they did a segment on a Boston artist named Bren Bataclan who makes funny paintings and leaves them in public places for people to take home with them. It's what he calls the "Smile Boston" project, and these days, with the recession and everyone having no jobs and eating lentils only and all, he attaches a note to the paintings that says "everything will be alright." Bren leaves the paintings in all sorts of places all over the country and the world. The paintings, as I mentioned, are really funny looking and will inevitably make you laugh. We learned about him a few years ago when I think he did a talk or something at the high school where my wife teaches, and we then bought a couple of big goofy paintings from him which are now hanging in a prominent place over our dining room table. It was great seeing him and his work on the national news, although I'm pretty sure that they did not identify him as a Boston-area artist (Cambridge, I think), which if true is kind of lame--now everyone is going to assume he works out of New York when he doesn't work out of New York but instead out of the Boston area, where there are a lot of good and talented and funny people, yay Boston.
Check out Bren's website here.
Sunday was my first appearance on TV in connection with Holy Hullabaloos, and it was very exciting, although given my hangover from Saturday night, obtained in connection with no special event at all, just sitting on my couch mixing liquors, it was kind of hard to get too worked up about it. For most of the program, I assumed I had been cut, because I wasn't mentioned on any of the promotional messages, which kept talking about "Latino politics," something my conversation about Judge Sotomayor and Holy Hullabaloos really wasn't about, but then in the program's third segment there I was, sitting in my chair with my awesome tie and giant jowls. I mean, they say that the camera adds ten pounds, but I didn't know they meant that all of those pounds were packed into your jowls! Will you look at these things? They look like they're flapping in the wind or something. Plus, my weird appearance was made worse by the fact that the first guy on the program was incredibly sharp and good looking, although I have to thank my son for kindly pointing out that "I think his ears are too giant" with regard to that attractive man's ears. Anyway, I think the interview went very well, and although I don't like to brag, there is some talk in the blogosphere about my jowls being nominated for an emmy in the "best performance by a pair of jowls in a weekend afternoon news program category." It will be tough to beat Newt Gingrich, but as the stars always say, it's great just to be nominated!
Last week I did a radio interview with Rev. Welton Geddy on Air America's progressive religion program "State of Belief." The interview is now online here (June 20, 2009, starting at about 19:30 remaining).
So, yesterday was a busy day. I taped a radio interview with Air America's "State of Belief" program which will be airing sometime this weekend, and even more fun, I went to WCVB (channel 5 in Boston) studios in Needham to tape a segment of their Sunday talk show CityLine about the Sotomayor nomination and Holy Hullabaloos. I've been on TV a few times before, most notably the segment that Nightline did on me and my very important groundbreaking earthshaking idiotic Supreme Court oral argument humor study a few years ago, but I've never taped anything in a studio. Pretty cool, especially these weird robotic cameras that seem to move by themselves (I assume--also hope--that someone is controlling them). I think the interview with Karen Holmes Ward went well. I suppose it all turns on whether the weird nervous twitching feeling I kept having in my left eye is visible on camera or not, so make sure to look carefully for that if you tune in Sunday at noon. The highlight of the interview, however, took place off camera, when Karen told me that I was wearing a "great TV tie." It's so great getting a compliment on a tie anytime and from anyone, but to get one from a TV host is particularly sweet. Not that this is the first time I've gotten a compliment from a prominent person on the tie, which is a pink and purply patterned thing that really "pops" from Nordstrom where I went last fall to meet my high school girlfriend to go shopping (don't ask). Indeed, I've received compliments on this beauty from a justice on the Massachusetts Supreme Court and the sommelier at Per Se, a super crazy good restaurant in New York where I went for my 40th birthday. I'm actually considering wearing the tie every single day, whether I'm wearing a suit or not. In fact, I wore it to the red sox game last night, which may be why I got beat up so bad in the beer line. Actually I didn't wear the tie to the baseball game last night, and also I didn't get beat up in the beer line.
But in any event, if you want to check out this awesome tie for yourself, CityLine airs Sunday at 12 noon on WCVB Channel 5 in Boston.
Over at Beacon Broadside, Blog Mistress Extraordinaire Jessie Bennett has posted a terrific video blog post she put together at Grendel's Den, one of the places that I talk about in my book where a big Supreme Court case involving religion took place. We had a beer, talked about Grendel's and religion, and then the Peet's Coffee next door, which now stands where a church used to be. I love both Grendel's and Peet's Coffee. Mmmmm, Peet's Coffee. I'm not one of those people who won't go to Starbucks (or to Dunkin' Donuts, for that matter, or even drink some sludge out of a cup I find on the street), but the coffee I buy to brew at home is always from Peet's, and if I have time to make it there for a cup or whatever I do. The only thing you have to be careful about is making sure that if you're in Peet's not to order like you're in Starbucks. Once I ordered a "tall" coffee at Peet's, and the barista glared at me before going to get my coffee. I realized my mistake and apologized profusely and felt like a doofus. The Peet's lady was actually very nice (the glare was just a joke glare), which is not surprising because everyone who works at Peet's is nice because why wouldn't they be, they work at the best coffee place around. Yay, Peet's. And Yay, Jessie!
Boston's Weekly Dig has a nice announcement for my reading tonight at the Brookline Booksmith (7pm), in which they say that I'm "funny." Thanks, Dig. The best part of the announcement, though, is when it says that "some of the best stuff (ahem, hand-painted oil portrait of Justice
Samuel Alito with a green bunny on his shoulder) can only be found on
the book's website, holyhullabaloos.com." I'm psyched that someone has singled out the painting, which I included in the first draft of the book but which lasted probably around 3 seconds of editing from my skillful (and wise) editors. There's a bit of irony, however, in the Dig's pointing out my painting, because I've several times sent the art editor there some examples of my "work" (like my "I am a doofus Pear") in hopes he might feature a painting on the cover (the Dig has great and crazy art on its cover every week, and I've always thought my stuff would fit right in), but I've never heard back. If you've changed your mind, Dig, please email me!
You can see the Alito painting in person tonight at the reading, so please come and bring relatives, friends, and confused people you see wandering around the street. Thanks!
