AWAKE! but not like a Jehovah’s Witness

1. The FDA is going to approve the first over-the-counter weight loss drug. This drug is going to be a smashing success, money-wise. It blocks the absorption of fat; you shit it out, instead. Little ten-year-old girls are going to be taking this. My friend who I didn’t take to the airport (I <3 you but am not your limo service; you must give me advance notice) has this joke about Mayim Bialik, the girl who played Blossom, who is now fat: “Some fat girl ate Mayim Bialik!” and then imagine your whole life is like that. You take the Xenical.

2. My second-oldest (or second-youngest, Debs, however you want to play it!) sister got stuck in the South today, confronted by hurricanes in Tennessee. She and her husband powered through it. Their dogs have been farting in the car. I believe this is karmic payback for when I’d visit her in San Francisco and she’d lock the windows of her BMW and fart. A lot. The trip I’m thinking of, all we listened to was Digital Underground and Machines of Loving Grace.

3. Lunar Park was GREAT. I see how one could dislike it, but I thought it was killer. I could go into more detail as promised but I don’t want to. However: here’s a recent interview with BEE that you can read after you finish the book. The great books of my generation are possibly Strong Motion, Hard-Boiled Wonderland at the End of the World, maybe a few others, and yes, American Psycho. It’s so clear, not over-long, and yet utterly unlike anything else. I read it in 1998 in a hotel room in Boston from 11pm to 4am; my flight to somewhere was delayed, and the airline had put me up in this room and I’d bought the book on impulse in a W.H. Smith on the way out of the terminal. It may have special meaning to me because my brother is an investment banker in M&A – nothing, nothing like Bateman, but what I saw of his New York did match up in crucial ways. Before he got married, he would have the buttons of his custom suits done in bone.