Daily Archives: February 26, 2008

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Cheating on your diet while you’re sleeping

I have given up alcohol for a little while, but last night I chugged two glasses of vodka and Crystal Light lemonade in my dream. I woke up feeling hungover and ashamed, but luckily I am not a sleepwalker.

A book review of The Ministry of Special Cases in four parts

1. A SYNOPSIS OF NATHAN ENGLANDER’S THE MINISTRY OF SPECIAL CASES

Your only son was probably drugged and thrown out of an airplane. And yet you know you will never see a confirming body, because it’s disappeared with the rest of the victims of Argentina’s Dirty War. And your wife alternatively visits morgues, searching for her son’s face, and stares out her apartment window, waiting for him to walk around the street corner. And while your son is both living and dead – the most painful characteristic of the desaparecidos – you still have to work your day job knocking Jewish names off gravestones. You still have to walk through the cemetery, the cruel reminder that bones should always belong to someone and that someone should always belong to bones. Meanwhile you don’t feel guilty that the last time you saw your 18-year-old son, right before he was taken away by the secret police, you told him that you wished he’d never been born. You know that in the intervening days of torture chambers and one-way flights, he has grown up enough to know that you didn’t mean it. And so you walk around with part of yourself erased. Half your nose is missing because a plastic surgeon lopped it off to pay a debt. Your son has your nose, and he wanders with it somewhere, like a character in Gogol. You have exhausted all means of seeing your face again.

2. GREAT INTERVIEWS WITH NATHAN ENGLANDER

Englander and Rivka Galchen:

At some point, early on, I decided I liked the speed of pen and paper. It slows me down. I like the way it looks. And that doesn’t mean I won’t write the next novel on computer. I just might. And I just might do it in six weeks. And it just might be called The Big Booby Car Chase and contain one sex scene, one fiery car chase, and end with the bad guy shot in the eye, and the hero in love.

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Someone help me cut this sandwich diagonally

Actress Brittany Murphy is causing problems on the set of her new movie, according to Page Six.

“She’s extremely difficult. When she gets to the set, it comes to a grinding halt. She’s so hot and cold, you never know.” According to our sources, Murphy insists on having diagonally cut peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with the crusts removed. “She needs one every hour. It’s painstaking – her assistant takes about a half an hour making each one,” said one crew member.

I’m not a gourmet chef, but I calculate that I could remove the crusts from a sandwich, slice it diagonally, and probably even add a toothpick garnish in less than 30 minutes. I might even be able to accomplish the feat in under 30 seconds. This tells me that I should move to Hollywood, where sandwich-making standards are at rock bottom, and then I could amaze everyone with my godly talent. After I have impressed the celebrities with my de-crusted peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, I will further blow their minds by sticking a straw into a juice box.