Smallville theme song in my brain ALL THE FREAKIN’ TIME, because Fred watches as many episodes of it as he can when he gets home (and puts together his jigsaw puzzles while watching it), so I feel like I’m hearing the theme song constantly.
It’s not a bad song, but DAMN. I’m ready to have some other song – ANY other song – bouncing around in my head.

Currently
reading:
The Breakdown Lane, by Jacquelyn Mitchard.
Recently finished:
The Last Time I Saw Paris, by Elizabeth Adler. Possibly if I had ever been to France, I might have enjoyed the blow-by-blow description of every single morsel of food the protagonist and her lover ate while they were visiting France, but it got really really tedious and I ended up skimming a great deal of the book thinking “Yeah, okay, the food in France is good. CAN WE MOVE ON?”
* * *
Speaking of books, I finally got around to watching the Larry King Live episode with James Frey on it. There was an awful lot of dancing around and non-question-answering going on during that interview, wasn’t there? I think that I’d have a lot more respect for Frey if he’d just said, straight-out, “Yeah, I exaggerated some things and I made up a few things. I suck, and I’m sorry if anyone was hurt by my actions.” The thing is, if you’re going to go onto a national show to talk about allegations that were made against you, either answer them or get OFF the show. For god’s sake.
And that said, I do have to say that I still think that
A Million Little Pieces was a book worth reading, which I know a lot of people disagree with. His writing style annoyed the hell out of me at first, but I got used to it. I found it interesting, and like I’ve said, it does give you some idea of what addiction feels like.
Like
Copper-Top does, I find James Frey’s personality a bit annoying. I think it’s important to him to be seen as a badass and I don’t think he’s nearly as much of a badass as he’d like to be. His voice is like nails on a chalkboard to me (he sounds exactly like a high school boyfriend, which is probably why), and I wish I’d marked down how many times during his appearance on Larry King he started a sentence with “You know” and stuck an “I mean” in random places, because he did it a LOT.
My favorite part of the interview, however, was when Larry King repeatedly referred to Frey’s other book as My Best Friend Leonard. For the record, it’s just
My Friend Leonard, no “Best” in there. It reminded me of the episode of Oprah, when she had Wally Lamb on her show, and she kept calling his book I Know This Much To Be True, rather than the correct
I Know This Much is True.
You better bet that when Oprah makes my first novel an Oprah Book Club pick and she gets the title of it wrong, I’ll be all “Oprah. Please. You’re making me twitch. It’s
How Much Shit Could a Dipshit Dip if a Dipshit Could Dip Shit?, not How Much
Dipshit Could a Dipsit Dip. PAY ATTENTION!”
I found Jacquelyn Mitchard’s
post on the topic an interesting read.
* * *
I think I took my first steps toward being an adult yesterday. I was sitting at my desk eating lunch (
roasted asparagus, yum!) when the doorbell rang. I glanced out the window and didn’t see a UPS or Fedex truck, so I walked over to the window and looked to see if there was a vehicle in the driveway, thinking that maybe Fred’s mother had stopped by. I didn’t see a vehicle, and I couldn’t see who was at the front door, and I thought about just not answering the door, but I thought it might be one of the neighborhood kids or a neighbor and I didn’t want to seem rude, so I finally just answered the damn door.
It was a woman – a tiny woman; I swear she couldn’t have been much over 4 1/2 feet tall – and she was with some company that builds sunrooms, and she immediately handed me a flyer and started with her sales spiel.
Now I, personally, would LIKE to have a sunroom on the back of the house, but if we’re going to put the house up for sale in a year or so it would be utterly ridiculous to build a sunroom now. Even I can see the ridiculosity of such a thing.
So I stood there, and I thought to myself “I have two choices here. I can listen politely to her spiel and tell her to come back and talk to my husband, or I can just interrupt her and say we’re not interested.” Now, to those of you who have already reached grownuphood, the choice would be easy. But I’m a big chicken – I know not why – and it’s always been my practice in the past to listen to the sales spiel and then make up some transparent excuse, like “I was just about to leave the house” or “Oh, we already have a sunroom” or “You need to come back and talk to my husband” until they leave.
But yesterday, I thought to myself “My asparagus is getting cold!” and lickety-split, I smiled and said “We’re not interested.” and she thanked me and went along her way. She didn’t insist that I listen to her speech, she didn’t try to force her way into the house to show me exactly where a sunroom would look good, she didn’t bonk me upside the head. She just THANKED ME and WENT ALONG HER WAY.
Amazing. Dare I suggest that this means I don’t have to be scared to answer the front door anymore?
Oh, who’m I kidding? I doubt I’ll ever answer the front door again.
* * *
Pet store kitty pics from Monday are
here.
* * *
::URRRRRRRRP:: “Oh! ‘Scuse me!”
“Bahahahaha! That was LOUD! Good one, Tommy!”
“Hee! Thanks! I’m the burpin’ KING!”
All of today’s uploaded pictures are
hither.
* * *
Previously
2005: Who the fuck knew?
2004: A Kitchenaid mixer!
2003: “My ass. Please let him go for my ass, and not my throat or my eyes, I’ve got plenty of ass to spare.”
2002: No entry.
2001: No entry.
2000: Double ear infection, thankyouverymuch.]]>
Damn, woman. Could you make me sound any dorkier?
So I googled around a bit. Turns out Remy Zero is from Alabama (Birmingham). Obviously, this is why I like the song so much.
Being a Superman fan has nothing to do with it, I’m sure.
There’s a video of the song on this page (“Save Me” is the title), for those who don’t know what it sounds like. If I know my cities, it looks like it was filmed in downtown Birmingham.
One guilty pleasure: I get a thrill when my gmail notification tells me that Bitchypoo has posted.
Another guilty pleasure: Reading Bitchypoo at work
Yet another guilty pleasure: The thrill I get when I see this sentance at the end of Bitchypoo: “All of today’s uploaded pictures are hither.”
More kitty pictures! Yeah!
Thanks for brightening my day.
Robyn, do you think Fred would just forward through the opening credits if the song had no affect on you, or is it just me who has people in her life that take amused pleasure in my discomfort?
You must be a Psychic Friend! I was just about to look up your roasted asparagus recipe this morning and you saved me the trouble. Asparagus is on sale this week and I can’t wait to try it. Thanks Robyn! 🙂
Well Crap. Now that you brought it up, I have the Smallville song in my head–Thanks a bunch!
And the only thing dorkier than putting together puzzles while watching Smallville is wishing that you had a jigsaw puzzle to put together while you were watching Smallville this evening (yes, it’s going to be another wild Friday night at my house!).
I appreciate you linking to the Mitchford post about Frey’s book. She said exactly what I’d been thinking. While his lies may not change how good the book was to read- they do matter. It matters because the book wasn’t fiction and quite frankly- it should matter to him to want to keep it real. It disappoints me beyond belief when people talk about this book and say that the lying doesn’t matter.
Yeah, it does.
Oh Jesus- now I’m like freaking Oprah and Larry King getting stuff wrong- MITCHARD not Mitchford.
Robyn–did you notice that Gmail FINALLY added the “delete” button at the top of the screen? It is about damn time. The drop down menu was a pain.
Lanna: Hmm. Maybe “Proud to be your guilty pleasure” should be my tagline! 🙂
Cindy: I don’t think he’s doing it on purpose… but then, he might be! At least he’s got less than a season left to watch, so maybe he’ll move on to something with a less brainworm-y theme song.
Catie: Hee! Mitchford! I was sitting here staring at the monitor thinking “Crap. Is it Mitchford? Have I been getting it wrong all along?!”
Diane: I did! I actually had two delete buttons this morning, because I’d downloaded the extension someone wrote last year to add a delete button. Now that the delete button is imbedded in Gmail, I have to go uninstall the extension! 🙂 I agree with you, it’s about damn time!
Robyn – I can’t wait until your done reading “The Breakdown Lane”. I came across it on Amazon – and have been thinking about buying it. I have recently been diagnosed with ms (One yr in March). I can’t wait to see how many stars you post for it – to see if it is a good read or not! I hate spending money on crappy books! The last few I have picked have not been the best. Usually – I look at your reading list to see what you have liked before I pick up a book!
I don’t answer the front door if I don’t know the person standing there. Besides everything you read tells you not to buy anything from a door-to-door salesperson anyway.
Hi Robyn!!
While buying anything from anyone at your door is bad business …adding a sunroom will double to triple the value you spent building it. After my dad passed away, my mom moved to (ahem) a smaller house. The house wasnt really smaller …just the property and her cats had to become ‘indoor’ cats. She moved from 5 acres to basically a grassless lot. Anyway …she wanted the cats to enjoy some sunshine …so she built a sunroom. For them. Yes thats right. She had a sunroom built for two cats. It cost her approx $10,000 but because of it and of course a rising house market …the value jumped by $40,000. That extra usable square footage really does add value above and beyond the price it cost to build it.
Just thought I might give you a different take on it.
Tommy’s tongue looks like an itty bitty road! Heh!!
God, I love those kitty pictures and your always hilarious captions!
You know what? As assertive as I am, I wouldn’t answer the door if I couldn’t see who it was and I was home alone. It’s just not safe. I would say “who is it” loudly, through the closed door, and if whoever thought I was a big scaredy-cat weirdo, well, that’s just too bad.
Have you read “The Gift of Fear?”
Yeah, ’cause you need more to worry about. Sorry.
I hit that milestone a few years back (hey, when I was 38!). If someone calls trying to sell me something I cut them off and say “No thanks, bye!” Same with the door thing. It really beats the old way of hiding or listening to the entire damned spiel before making a lame ass excuse. Besides, think of it as doing them a favor, you are not wasting their time. Now if they would just STOP phoning and dropping by…
when people knock on my door and i’m not expecing them, i don’t answer it. it’s my right! once i was at home and didn’t open the door to two large middle aged evangels. they actually jiggled the door to see if it was locked. i went out after they were safely gone. but fuck, what if my door had been unlocked? how many unlocked doors did they find that morning. i went and did a drive-by to the address that was on the pamphlet they had left on the doormat and it was a bunch of buses and a storage sheds in a ratty looking pieces of woods. freaking hillbilly cults!
Robyn, thanks for posting that Mitchard link, I hadn’t read it until just now, very interesting.
LMAO @ your tiny lady experience. Lucky you it was only a sunporch, the last time I opened the door to a tiny lady she was a religious being, crusading to get my soul into heaven. I tried telling her I was Catholic but she didn’t seem to like THAT road to heaven lol!
Cafe the kitty is just beautiful! Sure wish I could adopt from out of state…..
How Much Shit Could a Dipshit Dip if a Dipshit Could Dip Shit? Priceless!
OK – I laughed outloud at the dipshit comment.
RE: Frey, there was a very good article on this in Slate:
http://www.slate.com/id/2134214/
Loved the picture of the lighthouse!