There are many perks to being an author. I bet J.K.Rowling would tell you that the only down side to a bookstore appearance is achy cheeks from smiling at so many well wishers. Steven King is probably tired of the hand cramps from signing so many books. But for a lesser luminary…oh, who can I use?  For the sake of a handy example, let’s just say me… things are rather different. And when I use the word ‘rather’ I mean it in the sense of the word “vastly.”

The truth is that ever since I first made an appearance at a book store where very few people showed up, even book stores where I have never been asked to appear seem to hold nerve wracking future memories. I am talking about the kind of commonly scheduled event for a newly published book in which an optimistic store manager has gone to the trouble of making an enormous sign bearing the author’s name. The sign I’m thinking of may have been big enough to have been visible from the surface of the moon.

Of course everything about being asked to speak anywhere is an honor. After all, during the writing process, every author hopes for some kind of acknowledgment and validation eventually. He or she is probably imagining groups of the kind of interesting people they would be honored to have as friends.  They are certainly not  hoping to one day drive in to a completely empty parking lot, then gingerly tip-toe thru the tumbleweed in a completely empty store,  the haunting sounds of a lone harmonica echoing in the distance, as they find their way to a carefully arranged unoccupied seating area just in front of the afore mentioned enormous personalized sign .

Now the self recriminations begin as I realize that if I had acted more aggressively, weeks before, this moment might have been averted. My other author friends all have the right combination of smarts and ego that pushes them to send out high pressure invitations to relatives and acquaintances, insisting they attend .But I am always too uncomfortable with the idea of inconveniencing busy friends in the middle of dinner so I am relying on maybe some actual fans? Good luck to me!

Usually I begin the process of adjusting to the unnerving scenario that awaits me by taking cover behind a bookcase, where I can have some privacy while I calculate the right moment to ask if its okay if I cancel. While I am trying to figure out how to make a facial expression that looks relaxed and at the same time preoccupied by more important things,  I am drowning in waves of terrible memories from junior high school about being forced to attend an after school social event, only to find myself trapped and standing around all dressed up, never getting asked to dance. The paralyzing unpleasantness that this feeling awakens is  so intense I can hardly breath as I  carefully weigh which are my best  options for an excuse that will get me sympathy: a sudden onset of the flu, a sudden death in the family, or  a sudden onset of the flu due to a death in the family (from the flu.)

But sometimes, before I can make this move and exit the premises, two middle aged women, dressed in down parkas and wearing knit caps, carrying a million paper bags, sit down in the front row.  By start time, they have been joined by a balding man in a too tight plaid shirt who looks pleased to be sitting anywhere at all, period. Is it possible they are here to see me? I suppose they could be three fans. But if that’s the case, why is no one smiling or saying hi or even looking up from their I phones when I walk in to the room?

“Have some perspective.” I start to remind myself, “Nothing awful has happened. Its not like you’re trapped under a collapsed building in an earthquake in Turkey or have been kidnapped by The Taliban in Iraq.” Though even as I’m thinking this, it is also occurring to me that both of those things would have generated a lot of great publicity for my book.

Now a story told to me by the novelist Elinor Lipman comes flooding back: about a friend of hers who, facing a 2 person audience, rose to the occasion. She bravely delivered her best reading ever , size of the audience be damned, until mid-way in  when a policeman led the whole two person audience away in hand cuffs. For a few minutes, they’d assumed they’d found the perfect place to hide out from a chase.

So I take a deep cleansing breath, knowing that others before me have survived this, and say hello to the cheery store manager who tells me how honored she is to meet me and apologizes for the small turn out. This of course makes me feel even worse. If only she had just said something like “This time of year, even Elizabeth Gilbert doesn’t draw a crowd.” But no, she simply shows me to a small podium on which is mounted a microphone so large I think I recognize it from the famous photograph of Pres. Roosevelt declaring War on Japan in his day of infamy speech. “Thank you,” I say to her,  realizing that before I have even tried to speak in to it, the mic is creating noisy feedback.  So now I must deal with stadium miking in order to speak to three people who are 14 inches away.

Anyway, obviously a new outlook for this situation seems to be called for. I will probably have to appear at a bookstore again. But next time I will be prepared with a whole new approach.

 My New Speech for the three people who come to see me at a bookstore.

“Hello! Hello! Hello!!” Yes! That’s right! A very special personal hello to each of you! You know, you’re probably going to think I’m exagerating but I swear to you: This very morning,  I said a prayer that only a hand full of special people would attend tonight. So you three are actually a literal dream come true for me!

In fact I have to confess, I am instantly so comfortable with you that I’m going to take you in to my confidence; Its really not my nature to gossip about people behind their backs. But from what I have heard, quite a few of the people who didn’t show up here tonight are dicks. I heard from a reliable source that one of them is just finishing book four of the Twilight saga. I mean, come on! Anyone who made it through 2,000 pages of that crap couldn’t keep up with people like us.

So let’s begin! Just as soon as that guy hovering by that book shelf in the back either commits to sitting down or gives up and leaves the store. I can tell he’s trying to decide if he knows who I am. Sir! Do you need me to tell you who am I? You have an I phone…go on my website and  read my resume! We’ll wait! Uh oh. You’re leaving us? There he goes! Never trust a man wearing a radio station free giveaway shirt.

Listen, before I start over again: How about if the three of us make a pact? Next person who sneaks in late, when I clear my throat, can we please all turn in unison, then break into a big hollow smile and, all at the same time say,“Welcome! We’ve been waiting for you!”. After that we’ll just  keep smiling and staring and smiling and staring for like two or three more minutes! Come on! How great would that be? I’ll videotape it and we’ll put it on You Tube! It’ll get a ton of hits. I’ll title it “Creeeeeeepy!!!”

Actually since its  just us three…does anyone mind if I  skip the reading  and…lets have a show of hands! How many of you have been hypnotized? I haven’t had any hypnosis training but the fact that you’re here on a Wednesday night at dinner time in the dead of winter tells me you have a limited choice of destinations. So if you’ll all just play along, and when I snap my fingers, we’ll all count backwards from fifty. Then somewhere around 30 , you can just drop your heads forward and close your eyes. It’ll make me feel really powerful. And then when I tell you that you’re a bantam rooster, get up and strut and make crowing noises for a few seconds.You’ll never see me again. You have my word: I’m never coming back to this city. And after the enormous hit my ego has taken this evening, I really need you to give me this moment. Then immediately afterward, I will take the  three of you out for coffee and pie and you can show me whats in all those bags.

Then I’ll go back to my hotel room and drink.

By they way, my new book is for sale here and lots of other places. Buy one and save me from having to go out and read.

Obviously we humans love our holidays. In ancient Rome they had 159 publicly funded holidays a year. Three a week!  The ancient Romans were so busy packing and unpacking decorations and lights and preparing special meals for family that they forgot to notice their empire was crumbling. Maybe we like holidays so much because we rely on them for a formal excuse for celebration. As if there weren’t a million reasons to celebrate anyway! And I can think of no better example than this  catalog I got in the mail yesterday;  a perfect reminder not to overlook the simple, mundane things in life that bring us joy. Like bras. Because a woman grows up wearing one every day from about age 11 on,  it becomes so routine, she can forget about all the merriment.

So kudos to the genius who put this catalog together. He or she had the soul and the heart to remind us how nothing is more fun than a bra!  Why, you no sooner put one on then you get so giddy, you just can’t restrain yourself from clowning! Next thing you know, you’ve made yourself a bowl of cereal so enormous, there’s nothing to do but throw it in the air!  Then you eat two popsicles at the same time and follow it up with two cannolis! Why? Because one thing about hanging out in your bra: You don’t feel self conscious at all about your belly fat. Part of the magic of a bra is the way it makes you want to sit down and eat a stack of 17 pancakes (after you examine a fork full you stole from someone else, since as far as I can tell in that photo,she hasn’t touched a single one of her seventeen yet.) Or order a bucket of chicken designed for a family of 12. Then you start spearing fruit! Yep! That’s what a great bra will do for you: energize you so much you practically turn in to a fruit ninja!  Before you know it,  you’ve got a book on your head and you’re using cup cakes for glasses!                                                           So…thank you bras…for all the years of wacky hilarity. Of all the underwear, you’re like the second funniest. After underpants.

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PS: Perhaps you would like to buy my new book! Here: Read review.

For sale wherever fine books are sold. And other kinds of books.

Last year I did one about just the guys.

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P.S.

I have a new book out. You can read reviews for it under BOOKS on this very website. AND you can buy it here. You should so totally buy it.

If there is one thing I do even less than watch sports, it is enter contests. At least not since  I was eight.  Even then, it has seemed like an exercise in exploring  Fran Lebowitz’s comment about entering The Lottery (“I figure you have the same chance of winning the lottery whether you play or not.”).  Nevertheless, for some insane reason  in 2009, when I saw that there was a contest that offered  a prize of  a million dollars for making a Dorito commercial that was supposedly going to air on The Superbowl, I had a momentary brain white out and decided to enter.  ”No way I can be the worst person entering this contest.” I said to myself, I said, I said, ” And who knows? Maybe I will be one of the best!”

And thus did I throw myself in to this delusional headwind,  and spend one crazed weekend making a theoretical Dorito commercial.   I should add at this point that I didn’t prepare for my task by studying existing Dorito commercials  to make sure that I was playing the correct ball park. No no….None of those creativity restrictions for me. So, that wasn’t smart. I should have done my research. But instead, inspired by my own idea, I just leaped forward.  And I did this despite the fact that I don’t even like Doritos. Where salty snacks are concerned, Doritos have never been in my top twenty.  Looking back, that probably didn’t work in my favor either.

Still, I very much liked the idea of winning a million dollars.  So come with my now to the golden year of 2009 as we look at my hypothetical theoretical Dorito commercial . . CommericalDorito Commerical

Come on…you have to give it up for my Dorito trees!

I carefully waded through many bags of Doritos in order to select just the ones with a big loopy fold so I could organically drape them over my plants.  Proving once again that you can take the girl out of the art school, but you can’t take the art school out of the girl.  In fact, since I’m reviving this whole memory for my own humiliation, I’d like to now  re visit some highlights of my Dorito plants.  Andy (who also supplied the voice over) thinks that we would have won if we had  referred to the raw, still-to-be-picked fruits of the Dorito plant as “DORTS”.

I could be wrong, but somehow I don’t think this would have changed anything.

dorito trees

ALSO: Ahem…BUY MY BOOK. BUY MY BOOK.

Read reviews here on this very website.

Here’s the cover! Looks great, right?

It IS GREAT. You should definitely buy it.

It started because I like to inspect the neighborhood Christmas decorations every year and Mr. Dylan has a house in my neighborhood.  I grew up worshipping Mr. Dylan. Not too many artists had more impact on my development than he did. And now I believe the same holds true for his Christmas decorating style. Let us examine his approach. There is much to learn.

Of all the outdoor decorating styles on display in my neighborhood, year after year Mr. Dylan’s is  the most low key. It appears casual to the point of almost seeming unplanned. At first glance it may look thrown together without much forethought. Yet when we examine his efforts in years past,his astonishing consistency reveals the stylings of a very specific Christmas artist at work.

First: a brief trip down memory lane.

Here is Mr. Dylan’s decor in 2009.

Here is Mr. Dylan’s Christmas offering in 2010.

And now behold, The Dylan Christmas of 2011:

This year we see a variation on last year’s theme as he repeats his signature lack of formality. He has again hung the lights in what can now be referred to as a prototypical Dylanesque style.There is resistence to symmetry, the avoidance of an obvious pattern or design.  In the detail below we see the return of a classic Dylan touch: the low hanging loop, which some call ‘Dylan’s Necktie’. Others prefer to call it ‘The Crutch’.

Also this year the lights are higher up on the bushes than  in previous years, perhaps indicating  a more spiritual intention. Then again, they may be providing a comment about  the hopes of the common man in an economic downturn.

As with all of Dylan’s best work, ultimately we are left with more questions than answers.

Yet tears well up and there is a quiet joy. Or something.

Happy Holidays everyone. From me. And from Bob.

PS: No matter what the copy on the page reads, my new book is in stock again now. They just restocked them. Buy one, won’t you?

Amazon

Barnes and Noble

So this is a little PR wrap up of a few my recent book promotional attempts…at least the ones that I thought went well.  If you have come to this site looking for current data on me, this stuff might be it.

First, here’s the WTF podcast I did with Marc Maron. I f you’re not familiar with WTF, you should google it. Marc does absolutely great interviews with people who work in, around, and near comedy. Marc is a brilliant comedian himself and he is one of a kind.

Then I went on The Daily Show. That was fun.Me on The Daily Show

Then I wrote a post about it on Regretsy.

So…that a lot of stuff! Think I’ll quit while we’re both ahead.
But first let me update you on the book. The Daily Show appearance kicked sales in to a gear that the book company was apparently not prepared for. They sold out of the first printing but they tell me there will be more books next week some time.(Despite the fact that Amazon has a disparaging note that sounds like you will never receive a book in this or any other lifetime.) So if you order it, you will too get it by Christmas! While you are waiting, you can re-enjoy this video I made of my dogs fetching the book out of the pool. One other hilarious bi-product of this whole brouhaha is visible today (Dec.7) on Amazon. Although I am told there might be new books for sale AT REGULAR PRICES there tomorrow, the used book market vultures have already made a desperate attempt. Check out these bargain prices. At least they’re supposed to be in pretty good shape. HAA!

I realize that this promo does not offer a lot of information about the book. But it DOES have TWO endings, both involving pretty fancy footwork on the part of my dogs. I am at work on ANOTHER promo that will offer more information. But come on. I had to post this one. TWO pieces of reasonably good dog action, from MY dogs. That’s a lot, considering the cast. You just don’t get that kind of action and excitement and opportunity for choice with the Zombie people.

UPDATE 10/20/11: Here is an advanced review I just got from Book Page.

I’m going in chronological order…This is a picture of the set during a rehearsal of Dave’s MORNING show…which preceded the night show. It was on the air live 90 minutes a day at 10 in the morning on NBC for 19 weeks before it got cancelled.It was a lot like the night show but, if you can imagine it, even weirder. It had “a family”…many of them funny cerebral comedian character writer/performers.(The brilliant hilarious Valri Bromfield, Edie McClurg, Wil Shriner and Rich Hall, to name 4). The guy sitting with Dave is comedian Bob Sarlotte, who was supposed to be a kind of a side kick. He moved all the way to NYC, only to have the whole show up end in just a few months. When the show was cancelled two good things happened. We won an Emmy. And we got this cool telegram from Martin Scorcese. That was certainly very nice of him!

Here is what the host and one of his guests looked like during year one of the night show.  By the way, in case it is not obvious to you…that guest is Mr. Leno.

And this is what my assistant Chris Elliot , who was about 13 at the time, looked like. I had to get his mother’s permission to take this picture. No No. I am kidding. But he was about 19. The photo beneathe this one is what he looked like playing a LifeGuard in a ‘fun in the summer’ special.

Now for some writers. This is a scrapbook page I didn’t want to dissemble. Starting top left, the young Steve O’Donnel,(who went on to headwrite the show for many years)  then Jim Downey talking to  “not sure”…who MIGHT be Sandy Frank. (but still not sure.) They are in Tom Gammill’s office, as you can see by the signature Gammill painting on the wall. Tom has a cartoon strip called The Doozies. (Google it, sit back, pour yourself a beverage and make an evening of them.)  Below on the right is my dear pal George Meyer,(more recently of The Simpsons). In this photo he is pretty much right out of college. He is on the site of a science fair that we covered for the show. Unless he was one of the exhibitors. And below on the left is the always funny and fantastic Hal Gurnee, who was our director. Here is the young Tom Gammill on the cover of an in-house news letter he and his partner Max Pross were writing and distributing to the staff.

Next is my old friend Gerry Mulligan, who stayed at the show until a couple of years ago when he retired! But this photo is taken of him when the show first started.And ladies and gentlemen, the hilarious Andy Breckman, who later in life became the creator of MONK.

Here is Paul  Shaffer holding a photograph of Hal Gurnee’s dog Burt. For reasons of his own, Mr. Gurnee was obsessively photographing everyone who came on to the show holding this picture. Somewhere there are HUNDREDS of these. Not sure why I have this one.

And here I am in a segment for the first anniversary show called Stupid Writer’s Tricks. I am doing a scene from a theoretical sit-com I wrote for myself called My Little Merrill. In the scene, my husband has told me that the boss is coming for dinner. But oops. Darn. In my hurry to get everything perfect I dropped a 100 lb. weight on  the dining room table and broke it in half.

This certainly proves I haven’t changed as much as I thought.

Which brings us to Dave and the Grateful Dead. And with that we conclude this portion of the jpeg assortment. But wait…wait…one more thing.

A word from our sponsor. We hope you enjoyed this pointless trip down memory lane. We (and by we I mean ..uh…you know…) are so hopeful that we (I) would like to take this opportunity to (coughing fit. Excuse me.I’m sorry. I can’t stop coughing. Oh. Where was I again? Ah yes.) Ahem. I have a new book coming out November first. It’s a book of funny personal essays. Its called Cool Calm and Contentious and if there is any chance you can be talked in to pre-ordering one, you can do it HERE (amazon) or HERE (Barnes and Noble.) Thank you. Now back to our regularly scheduled programming. Not that there is any.

FALL 2011 has a message for us. And it is this. Nothing shows off a great new outfit like PEASANTS!

Maybe its the simplicity of their life styles or their primitive old-world mismatched clothing choices. Maybe its the way they’re so cooperative even if you only have a few dollars budgeted to pay them. Whatever it is, peasants are a memo from another time and place where money still means a lot. (Though I doubt they need as much of it as we do because look at how they live and all!)

The important thing to remember is that peasants make the rest of us look elegant yet sensible this fall! And they’re so much shorter and heavier than we are, which helps show us off to our best advantage.Plus they have scarves and chickens and buckets and weird hats, which are all like totally amazing! So when you think it about it, what better accessories for confusing times like these (when big salaries and gigantic bonuses are not fashionable) than PEASANTS? PS:

I…um…(clearing throat)have a new book coming out in November. You can pre-order it at(coughing) Amazon or Barnes and Noble or maybe somewhere else that you like better but I didn’t think of. Thank you. Plus I will send you a handwritten thank you card.You never get that kind of thing from the vampire people.