| Current mood: | spin-headed |
| Current music: | just ringing in my ears |
Gillmore Girls and BookBuilders--no connection
My head is spinning. The voices in my head all sound like "Gilmore Girls," except that I cannot sustain the insight, humor, and relevance they get; Norman Mailer neither sips ice tea in my lunchroom nor writes for my show. The stupid-wonderful show just runs-on in my head—even after I had the good sense and discipline to tear myself away from it before it even got to the good part, it still runs on my head, and I will see visions of Lauren Graham dancing in my head all night long. Lauren, if you ever read Blurties, please read and love this one, because there’s a little writer guy in California who really is just perfect for you. Given the right setting, I could not only radiate awesomeness from the inside out but also could take-on a little radiance or awesomeness from the outside-in, too. I look good in Abercrombies and Ralph Laurens; what else beside that and a great command of language does a guy really need to recommend him? See, the effect just hammers along in my brain like steel mills used to hammer night and day in Gary, Indiana; where do steel mills blast and pound and forge and alloy night and day in these days? Somewhere in China? Does that add romance or detract from it? Did you know that Radio Flyer wagons are now built in China? They were the staples of Dick and Jane; they were as American as the Cubs and hot dogs; and now they’re built in China! Are you gonna drive your American kid around in an ersatz Radio Flyer? I’m not really a jingoist: chances are you’re raising a multi-racial, multi-cultural kid, and it’s really a great thing, so an international wagon ought to complement the rest of the ensemble, but…
Well, I don’t know yet; just "but" and some ellipsis.
The Gillmore Girls are spilling over into the stuff I’m doing for the "BookBuilders"—hereinafter referred to as the "BookBuilders," because that’s what we do on Wednesday afternoons, and their parents actually pay good American currency for it, which is another thing that sounds like Jingoism, but it’s actually a complaint, because 100 Euro’s would be a shitload better than 100 dollars, wouldn’t it? Yes, they are BookBuilders; I invented the name, and yes it is copyrighted. Indulge me in a paranoid moment, because I need a new car, and I cannot tempt fate and theft with throwing my cleverest stuff up for grabs. Okay, maybe it’s not all that clever, but it’s the best I got, and it’s kinda catching-on. Like "Wal-Mart" is all that genius?
Every time I go to the school, I feel like I’m walking onto the set of "Desperate Housewives." If only I had a nice tan, some great abs, and some slightly more telegenic good looks; mothers would sign-up their children for BookBuilders just so that they would have excuses to talk to me in Albertsons and meet me for coffee in spite of my declaration that I have given-up Starbucks so that I can go on paying my gym membership; in truth, I just gave-up paying for Starbucks. If an Eva Longoria look-alike wants to buy me a venti, I think it would just be rude to decline; and, of course, there is so much to discuss about little Rico and Gabriella—whom I just invented. "Your kid’s illiterate in both languages, Eva," I would think to myself as I praised the little bastard to the skies. "El niño magnifico, señora. Verdad." Good thing I’m not a regular classroom teacher. These kids are destined to be the captains of industry and all, and I’d just be a little cloud on their otherwise unblemished horizons. So little truth tolerance in public education. "Yes, Eva, little Rico probably is gay and destined to be a serial killer, but I’m just his writing teacher. If he can punctuate, it’s all good. Does he know any adjectives besides ‘fuckin’?"
[at this point, the writer went to print all his stuff for the BookBuilders, and he got distracted by discussion with his daughter about whether or not more cleavage would increase her tips enough to make it worth the exposure and risk of degradation and objectification. Then, he got distracted by another conversation about literary theory and the difference between the way a writer reads literature and the way a reader reads literature. Yes, there is a radical difference which six years of post-baccalaureate education barely began to reveal. When these conversations finished, and they took considerably longer than the Gilmore Girls would have taken to deliver the same number of words—how do they do that without tying their tongues in knots?—the writer had pretty much lost his oomph. He set the printer to go on printing all night, and he retired to one last cigarette and the drone of CNN, his personal lullaby.]
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