I saw Notes on a Scandal last night and it might be one of the best movies ever. So awesome and weird and ominous and pervy and you never know where it's going.. Joi told me it was like a Patricia Highsmith novel and it was exactly like that. I am ashamed however to say that I thought the 15 year old boy Cate Blanchett has an affair with was extremely sexy and I did not blame her one bit. THE SHAME!

To keep my mind off of things this long weekend I am wandering through parks, writing a short story about Sleeping Beauty, revising my children's book, working on my noir, watching 8 Women and Don't Look Now, reading the Patricia Highsmith novel This Sweet Sickness, and finishing the Ursula Le Guin novel A Wizard of Earthsea, which is the first book I have ever read with WIzard in the title and a large ascending dragon on the cover.

The blurbs for novel 2 are already pouring in!!!!

"GODMOTHER raped my mind, pushed me to the floor, threw five bucks in my face and said 'keep the change.'"
-Anton Strout, author of DEAD TO ME

Many exciting things are happening with novel 2 and as I wait for a resolution I am incapable of doing anything in any way useful.

Thus I have spent the last few days doing the following:

1. I attended a Victoria Day party thrown by my lovely friend Christine who is--sadly, graspingly--determined to celebrate her French Canadian heritage. The fact that said party was in an Irish bar I believe speaks for itself.

2. I elegantly watched the riveting finale of THE BACHELOR: AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN with Tink and her dad and her baby Aoife whilst drinking a glass of Irish Mist. Aoife once again pretended to sleep in my arms while secretly hatching plots.

3. I met my friend David and we wandered around downtown and bought books and read for a few hours in Tompkins Square Park and had wine in a cafe.. When he suggested going to "the park" I asked what park he was referring to and when he said "Tompkins Square" I gasped (delicately) in horror and thought of rats and pigeons and dirt and junkies with shopping carts, but it was actually quite lovely and I spent a long time staring up at the trees and leaves and the birds that kept flapping up under them. I also read an Ursula Le Guin book and looked effortlessly fashionable. I also bought a book about whips.

4. I met my friends Massie and Rob and we wandered around Union Square and we bought visors at Duane Reade and we all put them on and pretended we were from Denmark, and we sat and drank tea and ate chocolate Twizzlers as (I thought) birds chirped and rustled in the grass behind us but I'm afraid they were dueling RATS and then we went and saw GEORGIA RULE as we had heard it was the WORST MOVIE EVER MADE and I am here to tell you that that was no lie. Unfortunately for the one other patron in the theater, we all laughed maturely through the whole thing--through our tears, that is. I will need many years development as a writer before I can begin to capture the horror of the scenes that passed in front of our eyeballs.

5. Tonight I am meeting Joi at the ALGONQUIN, where we will drink frou frou drinks in curved glasses before going to a reading and possibly a punk show, that is if I haven't passed out yet from sheer ANXIETY and GORGEOUSNESS and a terrible sense of IMPENDING DOOM.

The end.

So tomorrow night Andrea Portes is reading from her new book HICK at the W. Village Barnes & Noble (6th Ave and 8th Street) AT 7:30. I haven’t read it yet but look at this first line:

“You know why you keep losing, cause, guess what, you’re a fucking loser.”

Also: yesterday I went to Belmont Park for the horse races with my friend Rob. Despite my ingenious and fail-safe strategy of betting on the horses with the best names--Talking Flirt, Wild Gams, Prom Shoes, Samantha O (kinky!), etc.--I LOST 21 dollars and did not even win one time. We also witnessed a strangely dressed man holding a horn approach the people next to us and start discussing baseball. I only really paid attention when the following line floated from his mouth, into the world at large, and then landed in my once-innocent eardrums:

"As sure as I'm a Jew in a fox hunt costume with a 5-foot horn, the Red Sox won't be ten games up come the end of the summer."

We also witnessed a man with the following elegant proclamation on his sweatshirt: "I hit two good balls today. I stepped on a rake."

Later, as Rob and I drove through all of Queens and most of Brooklyn to get to Joi's, Rob assualted my already injured eardrums with the classic "Kites are Fun" which features the following lyrics accompanied by flute:

See my kite
It's fun
See my kite
It's green and white

I am now traumatized for life.

I meant to mention earlier how I spent a very lovely and intense evening with Lana the week before last, after she gave me an enviable and multi-hued coif, eating obscene pommes frites and drinking sangria and talking about many many things including her experiences with suspension, which I personally can't imagine and which I find completely fascinating. After, I went back to this photo I love, and I just think it's just such a gorgeous image. By Circle 23. One wire laced through her body that felt like "buttered spaghetti." She felt like she was a carousel, she said. Is this not completely beautiful? I showed my one friend and he thought it was so disturbing, even called me right after to discuss. It's strange how one thing can provoke such different, and intense, responses. I love this.

So I don't think there is ANY way I can do justice to last night, but.. it was just one of the most beautiful nights, just sheer pleasure and a gorgeous wood-floored fireplace-filled-with-candles room in a bistro in Soho, just 4 long tables all up on each other and everyone so happy, so overwhelmed and emotional and elated to be there.. and I could go on and on about the fascinating people I met and how much I completely adored the men I was sitting next to, just fell so in love with them and laughed for hours and exchanged stories, but the best part was when Shax and Eric stood in the middle of the room and Anna Deavere Smith conducted a ceremony that had me and I think almost everyone in there crying, talking about Eric and Shax in the most loving, beautiful way, weaving the story of their first meeting to how they ended up here, and weaving back again, and talking about love and friendship and using all of these stunning images and the two of them so beautiful in front of her, and then Eric and Shax had each written vows in letter form to each other and sealed the envelopes, and they exchanged them and read the other's words out loud and were so overwhelmed and emotional when they were reading, and it was so pure and sweet and true to who they are and they were laughing one second and choked up the next, and I had tears streaming down my face and just felt like it wasn't possible to be in a room with more love in it than that. And their parents! Both sets of parents hugging each other and making these beautiful toasts, so proud and happy... It was one of my favorite nights ever.

Today I am off to the horse races and then to Joi's slutty no-good garden. I hope I don't get lost in it, or snatched by one of the carnivorous vines, but it IS Brooklyn, so...

So I am very very excited because this evening two of my best, loveliest friends, Eric and Shax, are getting married in a sweet, charming, intimate little ceremony in Soho. The wedding will be performed by Anna Deavere Smith, and all kinds of wondrous people will be there, including many many of their friends I've heard all about but haven't had the chance to meet, and their parents and siblings, but mostly I just can't wait to see the two of them up there saying their vows.. !! Plus there will be a fireplace and cocktails and a gorgeous dinner.

I could not be more happy for them. Look at how beautiful they are. I can't wait to see the announcement in the NY Times tomorrow, too!



Before I go off to get manicured and pedicured in glamorous preparation, I must mention a few things I have loved lately:

1. REGINA SPEKTOR
The other day I met my friend David and he made me listen to this song "Fidelity" that at first I didn't like.. then about four seconds in I started thinking it was not so bad, then when she goes into the chorus I laughed out loud, it's so cool and weird, and by the middle of the song I was actually crying. Later I downloaded it and have been listening obsessively. He also played me Stina Nordenstam, which I thought was so ethereal and lovely, and Joni Mitchell. This was all in the middle of a thunderstorm, too--it is always best to hear new music when it is storming outside! And I gave him Dante and Boccaccio and discussed my love for America's Next Top Model. It is important to be well rounded. And Natasha, by the way, was ROBBED!

2. M WARD and THE STRANGE DEATH OF LIBERAL ENGLAND
Then warren_ellis generously sent me many new songs, all of them ecstatic and mind-expanding, music that makes the world seem enormousenormousenormous if you know what I mean, and I fell madly in love with "To Go Home" and "A Day Another Day" and have been playing those non-stop as well.

3. UNDER THE SAND
I have wanted to see this film for a long time but I rarely rent movies anymore. Last week I joined Netflix and this movie is SO BEAUTIFUL and moving and sad. And Charlotte Rampling! My god. That is one stunning woman. In the film, she and her long-time husband go to their vacation home and to the beach, where he just disappears. He heads to the water, she lies back dreamily in the sun and goes to sleep, and when she wakes up... he's not there anymore. The whole movie is what she does after. I keep thinking about it. And there is this one scene of her on a bed.. which is one of the most moving, cool scenes I've ever seen. Like the scene in Birth with Nicole Kidman at the opera. Just devastating and strange and beautiful..

4. WAITRESS
Eric and I went and saw this a couple of weeks ago and as much as I'd loved Adrienne Shelley in the Hal Hartley movies, I hadn't been able to get through the first film she directed and really just went to this for Eric. But it's awesome. Totally weird and hilarious--this one scene between Andy Griffith and Keri Russell made me laugh so hard I almost had an asthma attack in the theater, which was quite glamorous of me--and sad and just.. It's rare to see a vision that is just so authentically unique and quirky, and I felt a real grief afterwards that Adrienne Shelley can't write and direct more movies..

5. AOIFE KENNEDY
Tink's baby is SO CUTE. I have a mad crush on her. The other day she slept in my arms with her fingers laced together and her mouth pooching out. Her lids kept fluttering open and closed and I'm pretty sure she was only pretending to slumber. Less than three weeks old and already up to no good!

So Jennifer Belle's reading last night was hilarious and charming and packed with people, and a man walking down 6th Avenue stopped and mooned the whole crowd and Jennifer turned around and took a photo and Joi and I had adventures with JT Leroy, and the party after involved many many pitchers of sangria and large silver platters of Spanish meat and fried things and, later in the evening, Anton, Joi and I pondered the mysteries of the universe. Two seconds after this photo was taken my eyes rolled back in my head completely and I passed out and had a divine revelation, but unfortunately I have forgotten it.

I should also like to point out that Anton's astonishing new website is up. This website is so astonishing that I'm pretty sure it was somehow connected to the aforementioned divine revelation but I cannot be sure. Still, you should make sure there is something to faint onto before you visit it, and some smelling salts nearby. You will also note that now that Anton has a TWO BOOK DEAL WITH ACE BOOKS AT PENGUIN AND AN AGENT AT ICM AND A GORGEOUS BETROTHED WHO HAS PEEPERS LIKE MELTING CHOCOLATE, he is dressing more sharply. Has he given up his horn-having, devil-worshipping ways? Only time will tell.....

So this Thursday Jennifer Belle will be reading from her new novel, Little Stalker, at the Chelsea Barnes & Noble (22nd St and 6th Ave) at 7pm. As this novel is quite hilarious and moving and as Jennifer is quite mad and stunning, it is obviously IMPERATIVE THAT YOU GO. Plus I will be there and I might wink at you.

My amazingly talented and ingenious and well coifed friend Massie is working on an extremely brilliant large fiber art installation and needs your help. If you can, please send her your definition of feminism along with your first name and age. Also, if you could forward this along to anyone and everyone you can, you will probably be rewarded in the next life, and maybe the one after that. Please respond to massiemu@yahoo.com.

If that isn't enticing enough, please note that Massie has vines on her back. Thank you.

So I am very excited because I am now going to go to FLORENCE ITALY for 2-3 weeks in November with my friend Joi, both to research my fourth novel, by which I just mean become intimately familiar with the city in a gorgeously Dantesque fashion, and to be generally jetsettingly fabulous. We are going to find a crumbly b&b that is overhung with plants and haunted by ghosts, with whom we will commune in both Italian and Latin, and we may also take a short trip to VENICE, as well as spend a day or two in SICILY, and even possibly wing our glamorous way to BERLIN, which I believe is a city after my own heart. We may also rent a car for a day and wrap scarves around our heads and commune with nature, not to mention find abandoned farmhouses filled with secrets and ancient wine cellars. My father was going to come but his trip to Austria was postponed and so now my mother, father, sister and I are going to take a big Italy trip next May, at which point I can tearfully and dramatically reunite with the many paramours whose hearts I will have broken in November. The end.