A Winner: Stewed Chicken

G made Stewed Chicken: Kota Kokinisti tonight before he left for work. The whole kitchen smelled delicious. The chicken was so tender it fell off the bone. I can't wait to have the leftovers for lunch tomorrow. Mizithra is a Greek cheese; he found it at Your Dekalb Farmer's Market. There are a lot of strange cheeses in our refrigerator now. I'm eager to eat what's coming next.

Possible Side Effects Verdict

Possible Side Effects was hilarious. I laughed out loud several times. Augusten Burroughs' stories are wickedly funny while poignant and disturbing at the same time.

In one story, a 9-year-old Burroughs gets into a truck with a strange man who promises to show him a litter of puppies. As it turns out, there really are puppies and Burroughs ends up adopting one. Everything in the story turns out OK. Burroughs even ends the story by literally saying that everything is fine. And like all his stories on the audiobook, it ends with a cheery little musical bit.

But we know from reading Running With Scissors that things do not turn out fine for Burroughs. His mother's mental illness and his parents' neglect put him in dangerous situations that have serious, long-lasting negative consequences. He reminds us several times throughout Possible Side Effects that he is permanently damaged. It's that edge of danger and anger that make Burroughs' stories so interesting and his humor so dark.

Stunned Into Niceness

I chatted today on Facebook with my friend Rich. We hung out together in high school and still keep in touch. He's very smart and funny, often sarcastic and sometimes acerbic, so watch out. Remind you of anyone?

He said he had given his niece the address of my blog, and she may be in touch. I'd certainly love to hear from Rich's niece, or anyone's niece for that matter. I have nieces of my own, and they are pretty, clever people. But why would Rich's niece want to get in touch with me? He said it's because she's an aspiring writer and she should learn from the best! Well, you know Rich does not hand out the compliments so freely. So, I just melted like butter. Acerbic comments of the past all forgotten. Slate wiped clean.

So anyone who wants to send a niece to my blog to get some writing advice, go right ahead. I'm a college professor and I teach writing to students all day every day (except weekends, major holidays, most of December, the entire summer and one week in March) so I actually have lots of words of wisdom. All I need is someone motivated enough to listen. Take advantage; I'm not always so nice. But it isn't every day I get a compliment from my friend Rich.

For dinner tonight, Gerard outdid himself with horseradish and garlic prime rib with wild mushroom sauce and leftover Gerard rice on the side. Dinner was late, so he made me a martini. Smirnoff vodka and garlic stuffed olives.

What is the best compliment you've ever received or one that you didn't expect? Send your comments. Let's get a dialog going about how wonderful we all are and drum up some positive energy.

Book Club

Soon I'll be reviewing The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson, because that's the book I'm reading for my next book club meeting. My friend Cheryl chose this book because it's the 2010 Man Booker Prize winner. I've read other Man Booker Prize winners and liked them: The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga, Life of Pi by Yann Martel, The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy come to mind.

It's tricky to choose a book for Book Club. You hope most of the people, or at least a vocal minority, will like it. You remind yourself that you didn't WRITE the book, you only chose it, so if they don't like it, it's nothing personal. You can't please everyone; you know that going in. At least one member of our group doesn't like any books that are popular. Some like short stories. I don't like short stories. As I said in an earlier post, if I'm going to commit to a relationship with a character, I want it to be long-lasting.

I suppose you could say Possible Side Effects is a series of short stories, or essays. But Augusten Burroughs is in all of them, so my relationship with him remains intact. In fact, getting to know him better makes his essays even funnier. When he likes the bitter-tasting, hole-producing Nicorette gum (see post from 12/13/10) it's not only funny because that's a surprise, it's also funny because that is so him.

As I write this, Gerard is hard at work in the kitchen. He's making oven-roasted lamb shanks with roasted tomatoes and toasted orzo. Drool.

All About the Eyeballs

My blog has hit the big time. I have an advertising deal. A tiny advertising deal, but a deal nonetheless. I think this is how CNN got started. I'm going to receive a product from CSN Stores and then review it. CSN Stores is a Boston-based company comprised of more than 200 websites, including everything from luggage stores to furniture and bookshelves.

In professional media, advertisers pay for everything. Writers entice readers (or viewers, in TV) to look at the content. The more looking, the more seeing the ads, the more money. It's all about the eyeballs.

Opposite Day

One of the things I like best about Augusten Burroughs' "Possible Side Effects," and all his books really, is that when faced with a choice he often does the opposite of what I would do. So then I get to see what that would be like. A good example is the chapter in which Burroughs describes his introduction to Nicorette gum.

He wants to quit his three-pack-a-day smoking habit. Already the opposite of me, because I have never smoked a cigarette. Causes cancer, smells bad, costs a lot of money... I just don't get it. So he buys nicotine patches and gum and throws away all the instruction materials without reading them. Obviously, I would have read all the materials. After all, there could be, you know, possible side effects. He applies two patches and puts two sticks of gum in his mouth.

He starts to chew the gum and senses a chemical taste. He keeps chewing and it starts to burn like pepper. He keeps chewing and starts to feel something in his stomach that he describes as a buildup of acid or a hole forming. He keeps chewing. He gets the hiccups and exclaims, "I LOVED the gum!"

That reaction made me laugh out loud because it was a surprise. I'd have viewed it as a calamity, possibly calling for medical attention. It would have probably shocked me into quitting smoking cold turkey. I admire the creativity of someone who looks at the world in different and unexpected ways. On the other hand, Burroughs becomes addicted to Nicorette gum.
---
What my husband is planning for dinner tonight:
Chicken breast Tuscany with baby peas
"Gerard Rice" which is a rice risotto with mushrooms, peppers and onions

Conclusion

I finished The Hemingses about a week ago, but have not had time to blog because of Senior Capstone presentations, final exams, Hanukkah and holiday parties occurring all at once. Today I had no appointments all day besides carpool. So, time to catch up.

I thought the Hemingses was a great story, and a very important one to tell. They were possibly the most privileged slave family in the U.S. and still their lives were tragic because of their enslavement. How could they not be, under such circumstances, in which human beings are owned by others as property. One of the saddest truths is that the book was much more about Jefferson than about Sally or the other Hemingses, despite the title. This is because no records of the Hemingses' lives were kept, as they were thought to be insignificant. So they can be known only through the study of Jefferson and their relationship to him. And even there, much is lost because Jefferson's descendents destroyed all references to Sally among his letters and papers.

Now I'm reading Possible Side Effects by Augusten Burroughs. I thoroughly enjoyed Dry, in which he chronicles his struggle with and recovery from alcoholism. It was dark and hilarious. I'm listening to this book, of course, as I finish out the semester commuting to Piedmont College. I especially enjoyed hearing about Burroughs' visits to his grandparents' house in Lawrenceville as I passed the Lawrenceville exit along my drive.

A couple of Burroughs' observations made me laugh out loud. One was his analysis of CNN International vs. CNN domestic, which was more apt than even he probably knows. This is while he was visiting London:
     "After this I watched a little CNN. CNN is very different in the United Kingdom than it is in America. For one thing, there's more global coverage. They even gave the weather forcast for New Delhi. That would never play in America because people would e-mail CNN headquarters and say, "Who the fuck cares about fucking India? Give us more missing coed stories."

His comments about Jewish women also cracked me up. He and a lesbian friend were discussing her dating prospects. She said she had always wanted to date a Jewish woman because she heard they were loyal and good shoppers.

Burroughs reads the books himself, and this is a treat. I listen to a lot of books on tape, and usually prefer the professional readers over authors. A lot of time, authors don't enunciate well, especially dropping consonants at the end of sentences, and it's hard to catch every word. But Burroughs is an excellent reader and his personality comes through, adding another dimension of hilarity to his mini-memoirs.

Why I chose to read this book:
I read Running With Scissors a long time ago, then recently read Dry. The combination of Burroughs' sense of humor with his serious subject matter is thought-provoking and very funny.

How I first learned about this book: Browsing on Paperback Swap

Where I got it: Paperback Swap

What format I'm reading it in: Audio CD (8 discs)

What my husband Gerard made for dinner tonight: Curried chicken and rice