And the Governor Generals take the lead! GGs-15, Pulitzers-14. So, I should be going to sleep soon, I have a doctor's appt. tomorrow to discuss this pesky problem known as insomnia that I've been battling around for the past at least month and to get to the bottom of my persistently crimson cheeks. My mother thinks that they may be related and that I've got some kind of life-threatening illness, but as usual, I think she's overreacting...It's not like I decided to forfeit law school and piles of money to become a penniless pastry chef who likes girls...Oh wait.Hmmm...Speaking of people who lead radically bizarre lifestyles, I just finished Paul Quarrington's Whale Music. Now everyone knows I'm great with linking non-sequiters, so sit back...I'm going to link together two seemingly unrelated topics, but soon you will realize that they are indeed related! Or at least in my mind they are. Hee hee. So, I'm pretty sure there's only two people who regularly read this drivel: Kate and Keren. Kate, I'm going to make you laugh because I'm going to remind you of something funny we've discussed on multiple occasions. Keren, I'm going to make you laugh because of something humorous that happened to me and inadvertently Kate and still makes her chuckle every once in a while. So...once upon a time a sometime college student wanted to read a book by Evelyn Waugh. Why? Who the fuck knows. So, this sometime college student(i.e. me) went to the bookstore and picked up Scoop. It was proclaimed on the back of the book to be "uproariously funny." Well, I read it. Political satire it was, something like the recent film Wag the Dog, but certainly not "uproariously funny." And, we all know that I have no problem laughing at pretty much anything...this proved to be a grave disappointment in the humor department...but wait! So, Kate and I go to the bookstore talking about Evelyn Waugh and all of her books(this may or may not have been before I read Scoop, my mind is blurry from all the literature I've consumed in the past oh I don't know 25 years of my life), and how she's kind of weird and why no one talks about her in literature that much even though she appears to be relatively prolific...I pictured, too, in my brain a sort-of Agatha Christie-type meets Margaret Thatcher, but wait! Kate and I start to read backs of more of her books and realize that HOLY SHIT! EVELYN WAUGH IS A MAN! Now, who in their right mind would name a boy Evelyn? Wow, you're just signing them up for social hell. Why don't you just name the kid "Hey there, come kick the shit out of me!" So picture Kate and Em, doubled over in Barnes & Noble laughing their asses off because they realized Evelyn Waugh was a man and how no one had ever bothered to correct us before...etc. Hey it was pretty "uproariously funny" then. That's the only thing I can think of that's "uproariously funny" about Evelyn Waugh. Now, Whale Music didn't even promise to be "uproariously funny" and it was terrifically humorous. (Maybe that's what you have to do, not hype yourself up before your reader actually gets to your novel...here's a clue Evelyn...hee hee.) In fact it actually WAS "uproariously funny." I think it's based loosely on the Wilson brothers who founded the Beach Boys, but if you don't know that much about their bio, and I don't really(despite all of those hours spent binging on E! True Hollywood Story), I'll give you a better, more apt description that appeals to recent times. Picture Ozzie Osbourne. Do you see him? Wandering around his house appearing aimless but probably he has some motive that you can't figure out? He stops and looks while the apparently un-housetrained pooches he has pee all over his floor. He scratches his head. He adjusts his glasses. He perhaps wonders when exactly his once functional brain seeped out his ears. Now, imagine Ozzie writing a book from his point of view, entirely. Welcome to Whale Music. It's a hybrid of now blended with memory told from the point of a very mentally fried former rock star who's trying to create his great artistic masterpiece: a collection of songs dedicated to whales using what he believes is their style of music. It is at once sad, introspective and fucking hilarious. (God, this book project is great! I never would have read this book otherwise not even ever having heard of it before, and yet again I am astonished!) As per usual, I have some quotes that I particularly loved...mostly because they are quirky, show a bit of the book's style and because as we all know, I love words and how people manipulate them differently from one another fascinates me to no end. Here goes:
"A piano keyboard is, to me, a beautiful thing, the doorway to an orderly and rational universe. I can slip through when baffled by this sorry world we live in" (Quarrington 28).
"'And when I hear people talk like this, I get mad. I think, hey, slime bucket, if these sea gulls are so bad, why did God make so fucking many of them? Don't you think He knows what He's doing?'"
'He makes a lot of everything,' I point out. 'That may be His way of compensating for engineering and design flaws'" (Quarrington 63).
"I know all about this Jesus fellow. You are dealing with a man who is constantly on the prowl for salvation, a stupid fat tomcat climbing into holy trashcans. One night, I was seated in front of the TV, the drugs had conspired to keep my eyeballs popped open, and suddenly there was Tammy Faye Bakker exhorting me to invite Jesus into my heart. It seemed like a good idea at the time. I dropped to my knees, weeping every bit as profusely as Tammy Faye, and I invited Jesus into my heart. He peered into my heart from the stoop, decided that the place was too messy. That's the last I heard from Him" (ibid 92).
And this one is extremely apropos, given my current situation:"You have no idea, really, how big a deal bed-going is in our society. It's a sad thing when a person's normalcy is established upon the regularity with which he/she scurries under the blankies and launches into never-never land, but sad things abound. If you eat three squares a day and clock in the requisite eight hours nightly, why then, you could collect shrunken heads and no one would bat an eye" (ibid 122-123).
The last one, which I just thought was a funny saying, and might just implement into my vocabulary is Elvis Presley talking to the narrator's brother, during a memory of when they all met at Graceland:"'My, my,' chuckled Presley. 'Now don't be letting your mouth write no checks your ass can't cash'" (ibid 141).
Shit, I've got to get a move on to sleep myself...I've got to be at work early(well early for me-1 pm) to make sure I assist Kayvon in NOT destroying the sugar piece he's been working on forever, so that it can take its rightful place at the head of the walkway to the theatre. Tomorrow night's(or I guess later on this evening, since it's after 2) theatre buyout is the IACP(International Association of Culinary Professionals) dinner...It's a big one in terms of profile(not that financially huge, unfortunately), a lot of celebrity chefs are going to be there...the room will be filled with chefs, instructors, food writers, food photographers...If we weren't already on the map, we would definitely be now...and as long as we don't fuck it up, it can really boost the restaurant's reputation. I just have to make sure Kayvon's fed, his sugar is nicely heated, I do what he says, and I listen to his rambling, inserting a "yeah, uh huh" every once in a while(wink wink) and everything should be sunshine and flowers...I hope.:) Doctor's, library, work...busy busy.