Book signing, Cringe Wednesday

Cringe is this Wednesday, May 7, at 8:30 pm. Before Cringe, there will be a book signing for the Dooce fatherhood anthology at Soda Bar, from 5:30 – 7:30. I will be there with Heather Armstrong, Alice Bradley, Greg Allen and Doug French. I will be the one signing books as John Grisham and V.C. Andrews.

Soda is just a five minute walk from Freddy’s, so I hope people can make it to both events. I personally hope I can make it to Freddy’s in time to save myself a seat for my own reading.

Cringe Reading Night
Wednesday, May 7, 8:30 pm
Freddy’s Bar and Backroom
485 Dean Street (6th Ave. & Dean), Brooklyn
2/3 to Bergen, any train to Atlantic/Pacific
More directions
Cost: as always, free dollars

What I Think About on the Subway

I wish I had a button on my keychain that I could push whenever the world is a bit too much with me, and I would immediately be dropped slow-motion into a warm swimming pool while the first bars of “Crimson and Clover” played all around me.

Things I Learned About My Dad: He Rules

I have an essay in the book that Heather edited, Things I Learned About My Dad (in therapy). I haven’t read what I wrote since I turned it in last fall, over a month late, so it will be almost as much as a surprise to me as it will be to my father.

When Heather asked me to contribute, I said yes immediately, before even considering the subject matter, because Heather Armstrong has been supportive of me since my website was less than a month old. I have no idea how she found it, back when it was just a tiny orange blogspot blog that no one read but my friend John and me, but she sent me an encouraging email, demanding more content, and that led to more emails and phone calls and finally real-life bourbon drinking and air mattress sharing. I know that girl is a lightning rod for controversy, and sometimes people think it’s cool not to like her or her site, but let me tell you something: Heather Armstrong is one of the nicest people I’ve ever met, not to mention one of my favorite writers, and it is a real honor to be involved with her first book.

I’m also in very good company in this book, with essays written by so many of my other favorite online writers, and I’m really looking forward to reading everyone else’s piece -- especially Jim’s, because Heather told me in San Francisco in February that his essay was so good it would bag him a book deal. I hope so, because I’m ready to read that book on the subway.

You can buy the book online at several places, including Amazon, where they’ve bundled it with the Cringe book, which warms my cold dead heart.

In a funny turn of events, my dad actually met Heather in November 2006, at the Cringe pilot taping, and has since started reading her website, and will occasionally email me a link to an article about her in the Wall Street Journal with the note, "Tell your friend congrats!" This also warms my cold dead heart, which, I guess I have to admit, is not very cold or dead these days.

Snow into rain

Yesterday I saw my old secret train boyfriend at the grocery store. I haven’t seen him since I quit my job last year and disrupted our little morning commute schedule. I have to admit, when I recognized him on the street corner, my heart lept a little, like seeing an old friend, albeit an old friend whom you secretly imagined kissing but never actually spoke to. My pulse quickened when I realized he was walking into the grocery store like I was, but at that moment I looked down and noticed the wedding ring on his left hand. Well I guess SOMEBODY had a busy year. I was actually a tiny bit let down by this development, mourning the future we never had a chance to pursue, until I saw him in the checkout lane next to me, buying nothing but a giant box of kitty litter. It would have never worked out between us.

CEO of Hart Industries

I would like to thank whoever mailed me this glossy black and white 8×10” photo of Jennifer and Jonathan Hart. I would also like to apologize for not knowing who sent it. I hope you are a cute guy so we have a great story to tell our grandchildren someday.

I showed the picture to my roommate when I opened it, and she said, “Who is that?” and I said, “It’s Jennifer and Jonathan Hart,” and she looked at me blankly so I went on, “From the ‘80s TV show Hart to Hart. They were glamorous jetsetters who fought crime.” It used to come on TBS on weekdays at one when I was in college, and several times I skipped my two o’ clock class so I could find out who did it. Then I’d feel bad about that decision, at least until Banacek came on next.

So my roommate said, “Well, who have you talked about Hart to Hart with lately?” and I came up with at least four names, so maybe I should just apologize to everyone I know. Starting with my roommate, because I want to frame this and hang it in the kitchen.

The Portrait Outtakes

special, originally uploaded by Sarah Brown.

My grandmother was an artist. She painted beautiful landscapes, but her real talent was portraits. She painted most of the our family members—my mom at age five, my mom at age seventeen, her mother, her father—and she painted strangers too. I remember walking into the student loan office at my college to see a giant portrait on the wall of the man the building was named after, and I did a double-take because my grandmother had painted it. She once traded a painting for my dollhouse, which was pretty sweet, but the portrait I remember best is the one she painted of me, when I was five years old.

It all came about while my grandmother and my mom were going through a cedar chest and found a pair of red velvet slippers that my mom had worn when she was a little girl. They had me try them on, they fit, and then, because my mother and grandmother were Texan women, we had to go buy a dress to match the shoes, and then once I had the whole ensemble I looked so damn fine they decided they had to paint me in the outfit, possibly right that moment. This is how it is for me every morning when I get dressed.

My grandmother hired a professional photographer to come to my parents’ house and take a billion pictures of me, hoping one would be the shot she would blow up and hang next to her easel and use as a guide for the portrait. I’d still have to spend many afternoons sitting for her, but she was smart enough to realize even the nerdiest, best-behaved five year old couldn’t hold a pose for as long as she’d need.

The photographer did a good job, but kept asking me to do totally lame things, like play with these fancy antique toys I never played with, or read my own blank diary, or touch a plant questioningly, like I’d never touched a damn plant before. If a five year old thinks you’re being lame, you are hopeless. But I was a good sport, at least for the first few hours, until I got sweaty and bored and crabby, which you are about to see.

The winning pose didn’t come from this photo session. It came from another photo, on another day, with a completely different background. Which she abandoned and instead created her own fake background. When she finished, she called us to her studio to view it, and my mother made her black out my missing bottom tooth she’d painted in. My mother, she likes the gritty realism, as you can tell by her outfit in the above picture.

Anyway, while I was home last month, I found the box of outtakes from this photo shoot, and this provided my family with an entire evening of cheap laughs. Especially my brother, who if my grandmother had lived long enough to paint, would have surely been captured thusly.

I give to you: The Portrait Outtakes.

I know all you’re going to do is talk about my mom’s hair because that’s all you people ever do.