TiVo Lady

An Amazing Book

It's not often that I read non-fiction, and even less often that I stand back in awe of an author of non-fiction.  (With the exception of Jared Diamond, the Fabulous.)  But let me say that (Boomer) Alan Weisman has written a work of fine art in The World Without Us.  The genius here is two-fold:  First, the idea itself, to imagine the Earth totally without people, exactly as it is this moment, but with all of the human beings vanished.  And then to let the geological clock run, and see what would happen to the planet.  But the second part of his genius is the way in which he's gone about depicting this horrifying, yet intruiging notion.  Weisman studies the problem scientificially, interviewing hundreds of experts--everybody from bridge engineers to builders to plant biologists--to figure out exactly what would fall apart, what would grow, which species would flourish and which would die out.  (As to the latter, he claims that cockroaches would be gone without our garbage to feast on and our heated apartments to warm them in winter.)  He is somewhat dispassionate, but curious, as if he were an alien being studying a lovely and lush little planet, one devoid of human beings, with which he's only vaguely familiar.

The notion is positively, and utterly, Biblical.

He writes about what would happen to Manhattan, for instance, in a way that is pure poetry.

"Ruins of high-rises echo the love songs of frogs breeding in Manhattan's reconstituted streams, now stocked with alewives and mussels dropped by seagulls.  Herring and shad have returned to the Hudson, though they spent some generations adjusting to radioactivity trickling out of Indian Poiont Nuclear Power Plant, 35 miles north of Times Square, after its reinforced concrete succumbed. . .Rising water, tides, and salt corrosion have replaced the engineered shoreline, circling New York's five boroughs with estuaries and small beaches.  With no dredging, Central Park's ponds and reservoir have been reincarnated as marshes.

Great idea, great writing:  pure intellectual fun.

On his website, you can watch primitive but cool graphic images of how your house would be taken over by nature--125 years to fall apart, about 400 years to vanish completely.  Or, you can watch Manhattan disintegrate:  two days for the subway tunnels to flood, five years for the city to burst into flames, 500 years for most of the buildings and bridges to fall into almost complete ruin.

This shouldn't be satisfying to think about, but oddly, it is...

Me on "Today"

So, if I can figure this out, you can watch my "Today" show segment here.

If not, you can't.

Take a look...

On another note, while travelling near Boston, I saw this headstone.  This guy could be a Boomer Hero  for Our Time, if only he hadn't been dead for so long!

Too bad nobody saved his DNA!!

TiVo Interlude

What with the Week of Book Promotion upon me -- Beyond the Mommy Years is launched -- I've been neglecting my TiVo.  But my TiVo has not been neglecting me, no siree.  Just when I think my TiVo may never quite figure me out (as in, "I don't speak Spanish, TiVo dude!), it records a charming movie that I've never seen before.  A tiny little reward for my patience.  (I quietly do three red "Thumbs Down" every time it records a movie in Spanish. Sometimes I yell at it about this, but to little effect.) 

My TiVo presented me with Aeon Flux this week, a sci-fi thriller starring Charlize Theron as a future-y ninja lady/deadly assassin/clone.  The plot doesn't quite hold together, but the visual effects and ideas about the year 2415 are stunning.  Everything is future-y and cool:  the clothing is mono-kini-ish and exotic; the glasses pour clear liquid that turns fizzy and yellow, then dark; the grass and trees and fruit becoming killing weapons; and a Gal Friday type-ninja lady has her feet modified to become hands. Also, Charlize gets an imprint on her arm that's a map;  her ear rings when someone wants to speak to her, I mean her actual ear lights up and rings like a phone, and then she processes the voice in her head;  she gets a message she has to drink;  and there'sa giant flying jellyfish that flies over Bregna, which is the last city on Earth.  Everything has the look of a sleek, knowable future -- though the future will always be unknowable, so our guesses are only as good as the present can make them.  Frances McDormand (Boomer, born 1957) shows up as a remote Boss Lady, who appears only as an ESP-type message in the brain:  she's got pulsating red hair, for some reason.

My standards have apparently gone way, way down this summer.  Okay, the movie is silly--but I just love this kind of future-y stuff, parts of the world to come that I will never get to see.

Big Love's final episode, "Oh, Pioneers," this week.  Creepy as ever, of course, with Nicki getting all the best lines.  Like this one, when Margene announces that she really does want to become a surrogate mother for a neighbor, in front of Ana, the waitress who'd been wooed by Bill, who's already got three wives.

Nicki:  "This is certainly not a matter to be discussing between a wife and a wife and a wife and a new friend, especially with family visiting. . . Our husband will have strong feelings about this matter."

Later, to chastize Margene's growing sense of empowerment, Nicki scolds her again.

Nicki:  "You're the youngest and the shiniest and the newest, and arguably, somewhat attractive.  You don't get to have those things and have more power over us."

Chloe Sevigny delivers these delicious lines with her eyes squinched up in suspicion, her lips pursed, her mouth in a gnarly scowl.  She's perfect.

The lynchpin of the show, though, is Bill Henrickson, he of the three wives, played by Bill Paxton, a very well-aged Boomer (born in 1955).  The problem, though, is that he has become so venal, so morally corrupt and greedy and vindictive, that it's getting more and more difficult to sympathize with his bizarre polygamous plight.  He's also fairly blind to the many ways in which his life is falling apart all around him.  In this Season Finale, for instance, his precious 17-year-old daughter has given up her virginity to her scrawny, 26-year-old boyfriend; Alby Grant has engineered the arrest of his father, Roman, after the Plan to Poison the Patriarch failed; his demented mother, Lois, is trying to persuade the even nuttier sister-in-law, Wanda, to poison Roman with anti-freeze;  and his first wife, Barb, is onto his wooing of a potential fourth wife.  BIll's creepiness grows with each episode:  still, I can't turn away.

Definitely Not the "Today" Show

What a difference a week makes.

Today, I did a four-minute appearance on a local cable television show.  About the same as the spot I did on NBC's "Today" show, but nothing else was the same.  This show is so local, by the way, that if it were any more local, it would be broadcast from my house, and would be available only to the homes on my block.

First off, I had to drive there.  No limo from cable.  Second, I had to buzz myself into the unmarked door,  where a guy muttered "Daytime?" at me, and pointed down a dingy hallway.  When I got to the "Green Room," I saw a small, brightly-lit room with two shabby stained chairs, and an equally filthy couch.  I mean this was scary dirty, like I didn't want to sit down.  No food, of course, but there was a Gevalia machine with cartridges for decaf--Yay!  Also, there were 14 different varieties of tea.  Go figure.  The make-up area consisted of a large mirror, and a table surface, covered with magazines.  Oh, and an unplugged hairdryer.  I'd put on my own make-up, and worn my trusty pink suit, so I was uber-ready.

A guy comes and leads me to the set, where two young-ish women are reading news off a teleprompter.  Incredibly local news, like what Joe in Yonkers had for breakfast.  A well-meaning, plump anchor girl comes over and tries to befriend me, advising me to look at her, and not into the camera.  There are no camera operators around at all; the cameras are moving on their own, they are robotic, computer-operated cameras, apparently.  I take some shots of myself on the set, just like I did on the "Today" show, but the tech guy gets really upset.  He tries to take my camera away from me!  I refuse.  Here's a shot I took of part of the set.  Note the roll of toilet paper.  Classy!

I do my three minutes, blabbing over the girl's silly, pointless questions ("When kids leave the roost, it's really tough, huh?").  I manage to wedge in my Website, with correct spelling, www.DrCarin.com.  Good for me.

Radioland

Sunday was inauguration day for local publicity for Beyond the Mommy Years. That means getting up at 6:20 a.m. on Sunday to do a radio interview.  In Philadelphia.  Thankfully, I don't have to go there, I just have to wake up, drink some juice, and go wait by my telephone until the guy from Philly calls. 

So, the guy calls.  His questions were along this line:  "So, what else did you find?"  Hmm.  I could answer this question just about any old way.  "Well, let's see.  I found that mothers become ravenously hungry when the children leave and spend all of their time eating greasy potato chips on the couch."  If I'd given that answer answer, he'd have said, "Great, and what else?"  I felt kind of as if he were taking a nap while I answered each question at length.  He'd revive himself into consciousness when I ran out of stuff to say, then ask another generic thing like, "So, how do moms feel when their children leave?"  I learned early on that it really doesn't matter what you say in radio interviews, only how you say it. Really, you could almost read the phone book, as long as you sound perky and emphatic and intensely upbeat.  That's all you need.  By the way, I wanted to ask him this question:  "How many people are awake at this ungodly hour listening to talk radio in Philly?  And will even one of them be motivated to buy my book?"  Mine is not, however, to wonder why.  Mine is simply to be interviewed, then sigh.

There's also a media hierarchy in how much effort interviewers put into their work when they interview authors.  Here's how it goes:

1. Television anchors, on national shows like "Today": Never, ever read the book.  Somebody else reads the press release about the book, interviews the author, and then writes the questions for the anchor.  The anchor reads the questions off the Teleprompter, just as they are written.  If the anchor has any personal experience with the topic, he might insert his own comment, usually having nearly nothing to do with the book or with what the author has to say.

2. Television anchors, on local shows:  Don't read the book, either.  But they don't have the staff to do the grunt work of actual thinking that the national shows have.  So somebody gathers the press materials, looks it over, jots down some questions based on a three-page summary of a 328-page book.  Eventually, questions get asked on air, but are often so off-base and just wrong, that the author has to answer the questions that should have been asked, instead of those that were.  (More on this tomorrow, as I report on my adventures on cable television.)

3. Radio interviewers:  They skim the book, maybe, and they read the press materials themselves.  That's because there's nobody else to do it.  Radio show producers find authors to interview, but there's too much material and too little time for anybody connected with radio to do any actual reading of books.

4. Newspaper/Print interviews:  Hallejulah!  These guys read.  Books even.  They are most likely to have actually read the book, or at least several chapters of it, before interviewing an author.  It's not only flattering, but it makes for a much more enjoyable experience to talk to somebody who understands what you are talking about, and responds appropriately.  Like, let's say Time magazine sent somebody to interview me about Beyond the Mommy Years.  That guy would have read the book.  This is highly unlikely, however.  This week, though, I am being interviewed by a reporter from our very very local newspaper (no, not The New York Times, alas).  She has already told me that she wants to finish reading my book before we talk:  Hooray!

Note to Kay, who commented on my Spook Country blog, a book I really did read, though not with the enormous amount of background knowledge that she has.  Kay says that Rize is a real drug, clotiazepam, though not for sale in North America.  Clearly a William Gibson fan, Kay appreciated the finer nuances in the book that seem to have sailed Right Over My Head!

Self-Promotion

If I can't promote my book here, then where??

In the abstract, it sounds cool to write a book and get it published, right?  Well, yes.  Sort of.  So, you write the book, wait one year for it to gestate (as in go through the agonizingly-slow process of getting the book into print), and it's born.  Then, various strangers review it.  They pass judgment on it.  They tell other people if it's likeable, or not.  This is kind of like being pregnant and giving birth, then having your de-umbilicized infant wrapped up and handed over to a cold-hearted panel of judges.  They pass the babe around the table, and tell you that his lips are a bit thin, his hair is too fuzzy, his nose is overly smushed.  He's okay, they tell you, a barely-acceptable infant, but nothing special.

"Wait!" you'd want to scream.  "He's my lovely perfect boy, how dare you insult him like that?"

I'm girding myself to such harsh criticism.  Or, equally horrible, is that nobody will review my book.  No one.  It will be as if the baby had never been born.  Vanished into the ether.

Hard to say which is worse.  I guess I'll find out. . .

Meanwhile, this is helping me understand why, when I write kind things about books I like right here, I receive grateful e-mails from authors who've clearly Googled themselves or their book titles.  When you've spent a year or three or ten writing a book, any compliment, however gentle or barely noticed, is gratefully appreciated.

I get it.  Now you get it.

Next week:  Get ready for Adventures in Radio Interviews.. .

Wackiest TV Show Ever

Someday, maybe even soon, I'll be able to post a video clip of my "Today" show appearance.  Or, maybe not. 

Meanwhile, I'm fairly embarrassed to be watching most of the TiVo I'm watching this summer, except for Big Love, which has the wackiest, craziest, most insane script of any television show ever written in any galaxy.  Think I'm exaggerating?  How about this week's episode, "Take Me As I Am," when Ben, the son of first-wife Barb, tells his mom, "These are my girlfriends, Susie and Penny."  (See, they're identical twins, and he's thinking of "living the principle," she he gets to date multiples, kind of as practice for having multiple wives, I guess.)

Earlier in the show, Niki, the somewhat-demented, morally-compromised second wife, scolds third-wife Margene, who has just announced that she may want to be a surrogate mother for an infertile neighbor.  She shrieks, quite witchily, that Margene can't possibly even think of doing such a thing.

"Because our purpose is to bring superior souls into this family, not to give them away to every barren Sue, Jane and Sally on the block."

This week, the driving plot-point was the wedding of Barb's estranged mother, played by Ellen Burstyn (pre-Boomer, born in 1932), who hadn't actually invited Barb to the ceremony or party.  The entire Henrickson clan eventually crashes the party, under the withering and disapproving stares of just about all the guests.  At the table, an evil-eyed 10-year-old cousin turns to our Hero Patriarch, Bill of the Three Wives, and asks him this:

Cute Little Niece:  "Uncle Bill, can you really say that your apostacy has brought you serenity and joy?"

Bill:  "Shut up."

Ah, True Bill peeks out!

And, finally, my favorite line of the night popped up during an intense, emotionally-draining  confrontation between Barb, played by the always-perfect Boomer, Jeanne Tripplehorn (born in 1963), and her mother, played by Burstyn.  Barb is begging her mother to speak to her "in this life," since she confesses that she's not sure they'll be together for eternity in the afterlife.  (What with this second marriage business, and Barb being in a polygamous marriage, could be there are different after-life facilities for  families with two-plus wives.)

Barb's Mom:  "I can't just tolerate you.  You're my daughter.  I'm responsible for your eternal salvation."  (Cue tears.)

Radio Spots and Speeches

I'm beginning to think that my "Today" show appearance, however nervous I was about doing it, was the easiest part of the Book Publicity Parade I have joined to promote BEYOND THE MOMMY YEARS.  On my schedule for one day next week:  13 radio interviews.  Most are live, between 10 and 30 minutes, and in places like Grand Rapids, Michigan, Montreal, and Bloomington, Illinois.  I'm supposed to be funny and entertaining and mention my book as often as possible.  Which I most certainly will:  I'll also mention www.DrCarin.com as often as possible. (Note to self:  remember to do this.)

Actually, I don't mind doing radio interviews because: 1. I don't have to get dressed up (or dressed at all, since I'm doing them all from home), 2. I can go to the bathroom while doing them (all except the flushing part, probably), 3. I can cheat by looking in my book for the answers.  Hey, I wrote this thing a whole year ago, and I'm a Boomer with a somewhat-porous brain, so there's no guarantee that I can remember any of it, even though I'm the one who wrote it.

I also have to give a speech next week, at a university near Boston.  A 45-minute speech.  Do you know how many words that is?  Well, I don't either, really, but I know it's a lot of them.  And I haven't written the speech yet.  Plus, I'm pretty sure I have to get dressed up to do this.  And I'm also fairly sure that the "Today" show Hair Lady will not be putting in an appearance in my hotel bathroom on the day in question.  How could she let me down like this???!!!

I'm still reading other people's books, of course, while I try to flog my own.  William Gibson's new book, Spook Country, is a rare example of a plot set in the present that seems incredibly futuristic.  Here's his description, for instance, of a car called "a Brabus Maybach."

"'If you were riding in back, you could watch for locative art on the monitors in each front seatback.  There's MWAN and a fourplex GPRS router.' ...The seats back there, upholstered in that gunmetal lamb, obviously reclined, becoming beds, or possibly chairs for high-end elective surgery."

It's a simple story about three groups of people whose odd trajectories converge at the end.  We expect them to be involved in a terrorist plot, or something equally diabolical, but what they're doing is really something that's, well, oddly off-kilter and kind of charming, though certainly illegal.  And it's completely surprising and wonderful.  Gibson is spot-on perfect in the way he portrays modern life, too.  He describes Manhattan's Union Square of 20 years ago as "a place of broken benches and litter, where a corpse might go unremarked amid the huddled and unmoving bodies of the homeless."  I lived on West 14th Street several decades ago, and that's precisely what it was like there.

Or take the way he describes "Rize," a fictional Japanese version of Ativan, the anti-anxiety tranquilizer.

"There was something about Rize, Milgrim decided . . . that reminded him of one of the more esoteric effects of eating exceptionally hot Szechuan. 

"Not just hot, but correctly, expertly seasoned.  Hot like when they brought you a plate of lemon slices, to suck on as needed, to partially neutralize the burn."

This is a small, tightly-focused novel, but it's worth reading.  Also, there's something about the way Gibson writes that makes me feel unbearably hip to be reading him.

Not Quite Beyond the Mommy Years

I'm over my "Today" show high.  It's a major jolt of adrenaline to the self-esteem system to go on live national television and not make a stuttering idiot of yourself.  I've been zinging along that self-induced chemical highway for the past few days.  But it's over.  Psssssssssssssssssssst.  Like letting air out of a balloon.

Meanwhile, although I am gearing up to promote Beyond the Mommy Years, and to sneak in surreptitious plugs for my marriage survey, I'm caught up in anxiety-provoking real-life mothering.  The kind I thought was behind me.  My son has been suffering from terrible, chronic migraines for the last month or so, and I have been dragging him from expert to expert, but he's gotten almost no relief.  He's also constantly nauseous and dizzy, and has been mostly suffering in silence while sitting at home.  He was supposed to go back to school tomorrow, to be a peer leader for an incoming-freshman program at his school.  He had worked hard on the application for this non-paying job, and was quite proud when he was selected for the program.  He has been looking forward to this week all summer long.  But yesterday, he had to call the director to say that he wasn't physically able to participate.  It was a mature decision, but a wrenching one.  And I felt his disappointment as keenly as would have if he were nine years old, and cut from baseball team tryouts.

Oddly, he views all this as his problem, not mine, and can't understand why I'm upset.  Beyond the Mommy years, indeed.  The joke's on me.

"Today" Show Fallout

This is the last post about the "Today" show:  I promise.

I took this shot from the "Green Room," a room which has no green whatsoever.  These head shots are of the real "Today" hosts, from the real weekday show.

Here's what happens when you appear on live national television in the Internet age.  (Footnote: I've done lots of national television shows, but all of them were before viewers had the ability to watch and go online instantly.  In those days, the only people I ever heard from were people I knew.) 

1. You hear from old high school friends, some of whom you remember, and others of whom you have no recollection whatsoever.  Mindy S., for instance, was a good friend, and I was thrilled to hear from her.  She claims she was on her exercise bike while watching "Today"--funny how some people need a good "excuse" to be watching a morning news show!  But Adam G., well, I have absolutely no clue who he is.  He knew the name of my high school, and various other relevant details, but I could swear I never knew the guy.  Ever.

2. You hear from strangers, who comment on your looks.  Here's one such email from Ronda, which she called "Today Show Hair": 

"I saw your interview on The Today Show this morning. Here's a question for you that you probably aren't expecting, but I would really like to know "What products do you use on your hair?" It looked fabulous! I am continually looking for product to smooth my frizzy hair! Could you help a girl out and reveal how you get  your hair to look so gorgeous?

Well, I'm flattered, really, but I had to tell her the truth.  Which is this:  my hair just wasn't, isn't, and will never be, frizzy.  More important, the hair stylist for the "Today" show did a blow-dry on my dry hair that I will never be able to duplicate, ever.

Moral:  TV is not real life, even when it comes to hair.

3.  Strangers feel free to criticize pretty much everything.  I had several emails from people who didn't like my marriage survey.  Some examples:

"I found your survey to be quite age-specific, and therefore I was not able to participate.  I am not certain that that demographic was intentional."  This complainer is a woman who is 70, and in her third marriage (!) to an 82-year-old minister.  She couldn't answer the question about income, either, because "we're on Social Security and we have pensions  from previous work, and the question seems to be about earnings," she said.

"I'm curious why you are not interested in the opinions of single/divorced women and their feelings," another wrote to me. 

Actually, there's a lot in my book about single moms, but it's 400 pages long, and I had three minutes to summarize the whole thing.  As for my other survey, on www.WhoDoesMore.com, that one is for and about husbands and wives, so single women just aren't on that agenda.

4. You hear from people trying to cash in.  One guy offered to sell me a DVD or a VHS cassette tape of my appearance for $175.  Geez.  Doesn't he know that I'm TiVoLady?  I TiVo'ed myself, saved it, transferred to tape, got a DVD, and plan to beg NBC for the video file they posted.  (A great MSNBC link, but I have no idea how long it will work.)  I hope this guy has a another day job.

This television/radio/newspaper/Internet circuit is what it takes to sell books.  The book itself is irrelevant:  it's pimping the book that counts.  Because it is my job to sell BEYOND THE MOMMY YEARS, I'll be doing radio shows at 11 p.m. (really, on WOR in New York) and at 7:30 a.m. on a Sunday (really, on a Philadelphia station), and on whoever else will let me make my book pitch.  Also, if I'm really lucky, I may get another chance to do national television.  But maybe not.

Whatever.  I had fun.