I’ve always had a soft spot for Tiffany cause basically she was a little girl shoved into this position of playing redhead Valley Whore to Debbie Gibson’s upscale East Coast Virgin. Did you know that Debbie Gibson wrote, sang, played the instrumentals on AND produced all her own music at age fourteen? No shit! What a fuckin prodigy!

Meanwhile, Tiffany was a low-class mallrat who clearly could not afford piano lessons, much less saxophone. I remember my mom being like, “Can’t you listen to Debbie Gibson instead?” Cause despite Tiffany’s superior voice, she just seemed poor, and by extension kinda slutty and dangerous. I mean, this person was literally a child.

In my own old age I’ve come to have an appreciation for Debbie Gibson as well, but Tiffany’s music has so much more pathos, plus she has the greatest hair. In this obscure B-Side she makes a contribution to the venerable tradition of Boyfriend in Jail music, which Debbie never ever would have done.

(Also note that other than the words, the song is basically identical to Don Henley’s Boys of Summer.)

In which I respond to charges of homophobia →

i mean, i know it’s unseemly to pay attention to bad reviews but this one really bothered me.

Using Mrs. Johnny Depp to drown out the oldies station playing in this cafe. (Could anything be worse than TWO FACES HAVE I?)

Bon in the Oven →

Emily had me on her new internet cooking show to make Cinnabons and talk about The Blonde of the Joke. I’m actually too self-conscious to watch it but you should!

You should come to this! I’ll be reading from The Blonde of the Joke or maybe something else, depending on my level of caprice on Saturday.

meltzer:

“We bought a bottle of mineral water for four euros to celebrate my deliverance from the limbo of unacceptable bathroom conditions. The lady who sold us the mineral water thought we were weird because we didn’t also want glasses. In France I learned that they are wild for glasses. No one drinks out of a bottle or can there. You always get a plastic cup with every single thing you drink. I think this is totally effed up, obviously, but it was as difficult to not get a plastic cup with your drink in France as it was to get workers in a Japanese bakery to not wrap your piece of bread in six sheets of decorative paper, secure each layer with a different cartoon sticker, put the whole bundle into a paper sack, roll the paper sack up, staple it shut with staples with cartoon characters on them, and then put THAT sack into another, slightly larger sack, roll THAT sack up, and staple THAT sack closed. At some point you just start saying ‘thank you.’”

Ritchey went on a surprise honeymoon and speaks the truth about international travel.

So I have another event coming up in September and this one should be excellent. It’s at Housing Works with:

• Frank Portman
• MC Chris
• Mr. Dream
• ME
• Paul Ford
  
• Natalie Standiford
• Maybe some other people.

Frank Portman’s KING DORK was completely LOL as you must know by now, and I’m sure his new ANDROMEDA KLEIN is going to be great too. Natalie Standiford is the Kim Gordon of young adult writers in terms of glamour, talent, general cool-cucumber demeanor and bass skillz. Her HOW TO SAY GOODBYE IN ROBOT might be my favorite YA book of the year. It’s definitely the only book this year to feature a reenactment of Dawn Davenport’s Christmas cha-cha heels disaster en Français, which now reminds me of the time that I portrayed Ricki Lake in an 11th grade French class skit and coined the phrase “Parlez a la main parce que le visage ne comprend pas.” (I still got an F :( )

I have no idea what the other people are going to be doing. (Music maybe?) But I’m sure it will be good. I also heard a rumor that Mr. Dream and I have a former boss in common, so we’ll have that to discuss in the dressing room.

It’s Friday, September 18 at 8:00 PM at the Housing Works Bookstore Café. (126 Crosby Street, NY NY)

Please come! There will be booze, which always makes any reading 20x better. It’s $5 at the door, but it’s for a good cause so don’t be a cheapo.

(via threeframes)

Blonde #4

Hey everyone! My new book, THE BLONDE OF THE JOKE, comes out today! I would really like it if you bought it. The topic of the book is skanky teen shoplifters searching for the Holy Grail at a dying suburban shopping mall.

In celebration of the day I was originally going to record a generous charity single  called DO THEY KNOW IT’S PUB DAY? (To benefit Mary Gaitskill’s Fresh Air Fund children.) But it was going to involve a lot of elaborate costumes, and I never got around to it. So you will just have to buy the book without the enticement of a lolish video with me singing in different wigs. (The performance art piece in which I portray various castmembers from THE HILLS is still online, though, for those interested in such things.)

The dirty secret of PUB DAY is that it’s supposed to be a big celebration but in fact it’s usually kind of depressing because nothing actually happens, including your book might not have even made it into stores yet. Some people I know spend the day of their publication traveling around from bookstore to bookstore in hopes of a sighting; those people are called gluttons for punishment. Right now I’m halfway through a bottle of my mom’s cheapo Chardonnay. If you want to call that a celebration you can feel free. But what would really be gr8 is if you everyone in the world bought the book and made me rich and happy!

If you don’t yet feel ready to make a purchase— well fuck you! But you can preview the first sixty or so pages here. And those who don’t trust their own taste can read some complimentary excerpts from the official reviews here.

Famous author and internet personage Matthew Gallaway wrote a nice thing about it here, and famous author Jo Knowles wrote nice things about it here.

Elsewhere on the internet, a person named “Ealandroi” insinuated that The Blonde of the Joke might push already-depressed teens toward suicide. A person named Hollie gave it one star and called it “Trashy right from the first page!” but that’s actually a good way of describing it so I don’t care!

It does not yet have any reviews on Amazon, but at this very moment it is ranked #50 in the category of Teens: Social Issues: Being a Teen. SUCCESS!!

Okay will you buy it now?

[Mary Gaitskill] looked pretty much like a witch who’d just come out of the woods; indeed, she had just come back from a mistaken trip to Yaddo or somewhere, and it was like she was in a psychic bubble, privately living out a hybrid of her own private Kate Bush video and The Blair Witch Project.

— Why The Awl is the best web site of our times. (And PS I did indeed sob basically the whole way through the insane Mary Gaitskill thing, but maybe I was just overtired.)