Yeah, yeah, eye of the beholder, whatever

Cecelia Ahern, daughter of Ireland's prime minister, has been nominated for Ireland's version of the Pulitzer Prize for her novel PS I Love You.

Did anybody on the committee actually read this book?

Because I did, and let me tell you, that book shouldn't be nominated for anything this side of Glamour magazine's annual list of Best Mindless Beach Reads. It's chick lit, and not even very good chick lit at that.

The premise? A woman's husband dies of cancer, and leaves behind 12 sealed envelopes with instructions for her to do one nice thing for herself each month. In one, he's purchased plane tickets for her and her friends. In another, there's a gift certificate to buy a new dress. Anyway, the bereaved widow learns to Take A New Chance At Life, aided by her generic and interchangeable cadre of girlfriends, and eventually appears to be Taking A New Chance At Love.

Now, the premise, I'll admit, is on the ambitious side for chick lit, but it never really hits home. I don't feel the heroine's bereavement, I don't root for her, I don't laugh at the (intentionally) funny scenes or feel relief when catharsis allegedly occurs. The widowhood part feels tacked on in places, as though the premise is an excuse to navigate a character through a few zany antics.

For Christ's sake, people. This book should not be on this allegedly distinguished list alongside Tom Wolfe or Isabel Allende or Ha Jin. (And I'll be the first to admit that the only other book I've read on the list of nominees was My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult, which isn't very far above chick lit, but it was still MILES better than PS I Love You.)

Then again, Cecelia Ahern has managed to do something I myself have not yet managed to do - finish a novel - so maybe I'd better shut up now.

I scream, you scream...

This is basically a third- or fourth-hand anecdote, but it's too great an example of life imitating art for me not to share it.

A friend of one of my coworkers had a favorite branch of Tasti D Lite. She swore the frozen dairyesque dessert products at THIS particular Upper East Side location were miles better than the ones at any other. Finally, one day, she went into the store and spoke to the owner. She had to know what made the treats at this Tasti D Lite so good.

"I have a secret," the owner said. "I'll show you." He then opened the top of the machine and poured in a large carton of heavy cream.

Aaaaaandersonnnnn, my aim is true...

(Okay, that's TOTALLY not how the song goes.)

Here are some miscellaneous things I have found and enjoyed today:

• Japanese Seizure Robots
  
• My fourteen-year-long crush on Anderson Cooper has just gained a fresh burst of fervor. Good God, y'all.
  
• Virgin Mobile has created a series of hilarious yet mildly offensive Chrismahanukwanzakah e-greetings.
  
• And finally, ants infest a woman's eye socket and devour her brain. Sweet dreams tonight, kiddies. Don't let the bedbugs bite.

I have a READING tonight. 8 p.m. sharp. Come hear me read! Pretty please?

Coming Attractions

Just wanted to let you all know about a couple of things going on this weekend, which, if you're local to NYC, you are going to definitely want to attend.

First off, the lovely Nicole Steinberg is graciously allowing this non-grad student to crash her Earshot Graduate Reading Series this Friday night. Click here for all the scrumptious details. Admission is six bucks, but you get your first beer free. If you saw me read at Barbes last month, you probably heard me read chapter one of the novel-in-progress. You can hear chapters two and three (in a slightly rough but nevertheless existent format) on Friday.

And then on Sunday, Nicole is graciously reading at my series (well, mine and Robyn's, anyway), at Barbes. All our readers are awesome on Sunday. To wit:

Nicole Steinberg is a native of Queens, New York and a current MFA student in poetry at The New School. She was recently nominated to appear in Best New Poets 2005 and her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Narcolepsy Arms, Half Drunk Muse and others. She is the founder, curator and host of the Earshot reading series in downtown New York City, works as a publishing assistant for BOMB Magazine, and writes a music column for idothisidothat.com. In her off hours, she enjoys amaretto sours, retail therapy, and Law and Order: SVU.

Mitch Levenberg has published short stories and essays in such journals as Fiction Magazine, The Common review, New Delta Review, The Cream City Review, Fine Madness and The St. Anne's Review. His collection of short stories, "Principles of Uncertainty and Other Constants," will be out some time this winter. He teaches writing at N.Y.U. and St. Francis College.

Joel Keller likes to write while he's bored at work, which means he writes all the time. He passes time by making attempts at writing humor, by throwing his opinion around to any editor who will publish him, and by eating at greasy spoons and writing about them. His writing has appeared in Salon, The Black Table, and The Village Voice. It's also appeared in The New York Times, but since it was the New Jersey section, no one at this reading has seen any of it. Lately, he's been writing about TV for the blog TV Squad, so he hopes to one day be able to write a big-screen flat-panel TV off on his taxes.

And as always, there will be cookies. Oh yes there will.

Girl scout's honor - bittysoda headquarters will get a thorough housecleaning this weekend.

A Many-Splendored Defacement

In New York City, one is constantly encountering graffiti. The vast majority consists of tags that have no meaning to your average random passerby but have some larger meaning within the community of spray-can-wielding delinquents. Some of it takes the form of gigantic, elaborate murals that are baffling both in their artistic convolutedness and their seemingly impossible-to-reach locations. And some of it is just weirdly charming, like the work of James de la Vega, whose surreal little cartoons and sayings are occasionally scattered on the sidewalks of the Upper East Side on weekday mornings.

A recent favorite of mine is the anonymous love-struck spray-can wielder who decorates walls and dumpsters with a simple yet elegant "i love you".

Normally, as far as graffiti goes, there is surprisingly little in the way of obscenity. Which is why it was doubly jarring to walk by one of these "I love you" installations in Park Slope last weekend to find that someone had made their own response to the statement, to the effect of "fuck love, you motherfuckers." (I should go photograph this before someone paints over it.)

Guess someone got burned. I hope it wasn't the person who painted the "i love you" in the first place. That would be tremendously heartbreaking.

Things I Enjoy Right This Second (and, in some cases, all the time)

1. The Brawny Man, who's sort of like the non-sleazy lumberjack version of The Continental. (What most of you probably don't know is that while Christopher Walken made the character a part of our pop culture lexicon, this isn't something he invented. His Continental skits on SNL are based on this program, which aired in the 1950s and starred an Italian dude named Renzo Cesana.)

2. Arizona Pomegranate Green Tea. Once they start making it in a sugar-free version, I will purchase a beer hat so that I may never be far from one again.

3. The San Diego Zoo PandaCam. Right now the cub is just sleeping, so it's not very exciting, but sometimes she gets up and moves around. Her name, by the way, comes from the Chinese for "a little bit of something very cute," which is, I think you'll agree, damn appropriate.

4. Crispy Noodles.

5. New glasses. Is this what I'm supposed to be seeing? Wow, I've been missing out on a LOT.

6. Having a Gawker Media comment ID. Not that I've actually said anything, but the point is, I have one and therefore feel awesome.

Video Is Available (if you want it)

Hey, remember that post I made about a month ago when I volunteered to be the location supervisor for a music video featuring that dude from The Used?

Well, you can get a sneak peek at the video if you click on over to the Warcon Records website. The song, again, is a cover of John Lennon's "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)," and it's by the Street Drum Corps featuring Bert McCracken. This video was filmed on location at several sites in New Jersey, and St. John-St. Matthew-Emmanuel Lutheran Church in fabulous Park Slope, Brooklyn. The song is available on the "Taste of Christmas" compilation from Warcon Records, now available wherever awesome music sold.

Enjoy the video now, before the song starts getting heavy airplay on whatever your version of K-Rock is, and before it makes it into the rotation on your mall's Muzak. In other words, before it turns you into Ebenezer Scrooge and/or makes you want to claw your eardrums out. Because I guaran-damn-tee you, it's going to be ubiquitous.

It IS a pretty good cover, though. Lennon is a hard guy to do justice to, and I think they manage it.

Alive and Well and Living Happily in the Year 1885

Okay, I know, I'm a bad blogger. Here I was supposed to be entertaining the masses, and I'd be willing to bet anybody who was checking in regularly has stopped bothering.

So in a bid to make this blog a fun place to stop by, I'm going to make some changes. Said changes may involve a little recycling of content, so those of you who syndicate this blog from ...that other site may see a little repetition, though I'm going to continue to put all of my various writing updates in here, along with announcements and reports of various readings.

That said, we had what I think might have been the best Barbes reading thus far on Sunday night, featuring Tara McCarthy, Devorah Rose, and Nichelle Stephens. Three very lovely ladies read from three very different (yet equally awesome) pieces. It was a nice little bit of synchronicity that I was able to introduce Nichelle's piece, because when I did my first reading ever (also at Barbes, a little over a year ago) she introduced me. I think if you google me, her photos from that reading are still on one of the first pages that comes up.

Tara gave Robyn and me copies of her book, Love Will Tear Us Apart, which she very graciously inscribed. I finished the book last night, and it is absolutely fantastic - witty and quirky and heartfelt, with well-developed characters and a bizarre premise that could only come from a very sharp imagination. (I'm particularly amused by the fact that the main characters have a website: sparkssisters.com.) To put it in perspective, the reading took place on Sunday night and yesterday, of course, was Monday.

So you should go read this book. In fact, you should click on the above link and order it from there. Why? Because I get a commission from Amazon. It's just a few pennies, but it adds up, especially since they pay me in store credit. In fact, said commission bought me a DVD of Network last quarter, which is on its way right now. (I can't wait to do the "Mad as Hell" soliloquy at Movieoke.) Plus, by purchasing the book you're supporting Tara, whose work definitely cries out to be read and enjoyed.

Anyway, Barbes, by all accounts, continues to be a success. (How could it not - Barbes even RHYMES with "success," fools!!) Please drop in on November 20th, when our readers will be Nicole Steinberg, Mitch Levenberg, and Joel Keller. Fantastic writers, all of them.

Incidentally, I'm reading at Nicole's series that same weekend. You can catch me at the Earshot Reading Series on Friday, November 18th. Yes, there's a small cover charge (six bucks), but your first beer is free. This is going to be a big one for me, so I can definitely use all the support I can get!