is a blog by Brendan
“It sounds like your girlfriend reads a lot of ‘women’s publications.’ I have worked for women’s publications. We make up those sex tips so that people who read sex tips are terrible at sex, and those of us who read William Gibson novels are astounding at it.”
I know I already freaked out about her two weeks ago, but I need to emphasize that Julieanne Smolinski is completely invited to my birthday party.
Carrie Fisher blogs, apparently, and the evidence suggests that she’s been doing a bit of back-and-forth with the Internet in her own defense. Basically, people think she doesn’t look like she did in 1983. I will allow you a moment of shock.
On my west’ard migration a year and a half ago, while I was bumming around San Francisco on my own, someone–Sumana?–suggested that I take a night and go see a play. By happy coincidence, I was in town at the same time as Fisher, who was doing her show Wishful Drinking at the Berkeley Rep. So I got a ticket and went.
I learned a great deal about Fisher that evening (I hadn’t even known she was married to Paul Simon), and in the process saw probably the only good one-person show ever. I also laughed a lot. How can you avoid laughing at the image of Cary Grant calling up a teenage girl, at her parent’s slightly deranged request, to lecture her soberly about the dangers of LSD–twice? Or at a still from the bridge of the Death Star about which she noted that “I weighed about ninety pounds here, eighty of which I carried in my face?”
It’s one thing to know somebody is a writer; it’s another to see her perform in a self-written multimedia showcase that includes jokes about her own electroshock therapy. I liked Carrie Fisher before then, almost as much for her guest spot on 30 Rock as for Star Wars (and that was all before I knew she tried out for Han Solo). After that show, like became admiration, and she was elevated to the selective ranks of people who have secured my loyalty pretty much for good. Even if her blog posts are littered with unnecessary punctuation.
(In case you’ve noticed that I started dating a short girl with a screenwriting degree, a taste for wine and a sardonic sense of humor within months of moving to Portland: shhh.)
It’s not as if I think the people reading my blog are among those going “oh no how did princess lea get fat :(.” But I feel the need to state this anyway: Carrie Fisher rolls with my crew. And before you write a word against her, consider the fact that fuck you forever, and die in a hole.
Shitcock.
Recent invitees to my birthday party: Kari and Grant.
OKAY LISA, my first Flickr set is up. Apparently I do not have very steady hands!
Rob Thomas has been invited to my birthday party since 1998, of course, but I’m a little surprised myself that Jason Dohring is the first actor from Veronica Mars to be invited. Okay, that’s all. I’m done! I promise not to post about Veronica Mars anymore, even though it’s ALL I THINK ABOUT WHERE ARE THE NEW EPISODES WHERE WHERE
Also, added “my birthday party” to the War on Clarity.
To invite you to my birthday party is to hold you in high esteem. If you are reading this, you are a person of discerning taste, and are almost certainly invited to my birthday party. Michelle Kwan is, as previously mentioned, invited to my birthday party; so is Mindy Kaling, neé Chokalingam. Vincent Baker and televison’s Rob Thomas are invited to my birthday party. Maria and I watched P.S. last night, which has restored Laura Linney’s invitation to my birthday party, after a brief revocation involving The Mothman Prophecies. Tom Peterson of LEO Weekly is invited to my birthday party. Kelly Link and Emily Watson are each invited twice.
The obvious corollary is that mere joy or sexual allure are not enough to score an invitation–but being disinvited is not necessarily a slight. Hackers is not invited to my birthday party; it would spill soda on the ponies. M. Night Shyamalan has had his invitation taken away and put in my desk drawer until he makes a movie without a twist. The casts of Arrested Development and Firefly are invited to my birthday party, but only one at a time. We don’t want to lose focus.
The metaphorical birthday party we’re discussing here is not to be confused with my actual birthday parties, which are pretty much just like Tuesday Night Basketball except I get to go “whoo!” and think about death.