Yesteryou Chapter 23

23.

While waiting for nighttime, Tess and Molly sat in the hotel room smoking pot and bonding over the fact that they dreamed similar dreams.  Richard and George were downstairs, drinking in the hotel's bar.

"I always dream about peeing, and dramas occurring in bathroom lines at school and stuff like that.  I mean it!"

The two girls were rolling with laughter side to side on their backs, Molly lying on the bed, and Tess on the floor, passing a strong joint back and forth between them.

"That's' too funny!," Molly howled, "because I do too.  I have like the world's smallest bladder so I always have to pee when I'm asleep, and so yeah, just like you were saying, I dream that, like, I share a big house with all these other girls and all of us literally fight, like fist fight, over who gets to use the only toilet, and then the toilet overflows of course, and that's l the dramatic climax of the whole dream!"

"No fucking way!  Me too!  It's like we're twins or something!" screeched Tess.

"But what I dream about most," Molly felt suddenly sad, "Is that my vision is bad, my breathing is bad, my nose is too plugged up to breathe through my nostrils and it doesn't get better when I  blow my nose, and them my legs don't even work, they are too weak to walk on, you know?  I dream that I'm completely, totally powerless."

"Aw, Molly," Tess said, "You poor girl.  You'll be alright."

Yesteryou Chapter 22

22.

Tess called her ex-boyfriend Tim,  who'd brought Vivienne/Beth with him to the party the night before, and he explained that Vivienne would be busy all day.

"Busy doing what?"

"I don't know, Tess.  She's a photographer, I guess she works on that." 

"Well, I mean, how long have you known her?  Have you been to her studio?"

"I just met her, actually.  I think she works out of her apartment.  Why?" 

Tess explained about meeting Molly, and Molly thinking that her missing mom was in Philadelphia. 

"God, you know what?  There's something really strange about Vivienne, like very secretive.  And she doesn't know anyone here, she just moved here.  I met her from talking to her at the coffee shop I go to, she started going there every night like a month ago, and she told me she likes to go there because it's one of the only places she knows how to find yet it the city."

"Which coffeehouse is it?  Does she still go there a lot?"

"Yeah, almost every night.  It's the one on Fairmount and 4th.  Hey, if you and this girl are going tonight to see if Vivienne is this girl's mom, can I come with you?"

"Of course not, Tim.  Jesus, this is someone's life!"

***

George, Richard and Molly found a neighborhood George had read an interesting article about in the New York Times, called Northern Liberties, and they walked listlessly up and down its streets all afternoon, each one commenting on the difference between this city and Los Angeles.  In particular, they were unused to seeing long-abandoned, brick-built industrial buildings next door to nice houses, and the cemetery full of gravestones engraved only with Irish last names. 

"I’m sorry, you two, I feel too anxious about Beth to absorb any of this," George said. Richard and Molly agreed.  They walked around for awhile longer, but no one noticed the new buildings and trees and streets which surrounded them.

***

"What did you like about me when we first met?," he asked her on their wedding night, and she answered, "Um, you're handsome, and nice," and both of these were true, but she was also embarrassed for him, because she didn't really like anything, anything in the whole world sometimes, and she wasn't sure why she'd agreed to marry-- maybe just to see what it was like. 

"I liked everything about you.  I saw you looking around for that stray cat in the dirt, with your long black skirt dragging around in it and everything and I wanted to marry you immediately," he said.

"Shit, that's so touching," she replied, and she meant it.

She gave up trying to be equally responsible in their relationship almost right away, and when she agreed to get pregnant, he mistakenly took it as a sign that she was beginning to settle into her life with him, but this wasn't what she had in mind at all.  She imagined how gratefully full she would feel to be responsible for a miracle, and that is what she planned for Molly to be.  Molly would be a miracle, and would be all hers, or so she thought.

are these reviews?

I have been incredibly depressed.  To put as blasé a spin on it as I can, since that seems the most apt tone for a blog no one reads, I’ll just say I’m going through a 1/3 life crisis (and/or I am between effective anti-depressants).   Accordingly, I have been treating myself with kid gloves, which primarily entails letting myself go balls-out in indulging my constant need for entertainment, even though this indulgence is inconvenient for a fulltime worker, attentive mother, and sometimes mean but always well-meaning wife like me.  Yet, I’ve somehow managed to squeeze in many, many plotlines these days.  

When I get a spare moment at work, since I take my lunch at my desk, I have been reading the novel David Copperfield by Charles Dickens, which I downloaded from the free ebooks (for classics) website Project Gutenberg.  This is really a great book.  I usually gravitate towards contemporary fiction, but since I discovered the Project Gutenberg site, I have gotten myself to read several classics, and it’s been comforting to step outside of time.  David Copperfield has a worthily famous opening; the first chapter is called “I Am Born” and starts: 

Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show. To begin my life with the beginning of my life, I record that I was born (as I have been informed and believe) on a Friday, at twelve o'clock at night. It was remarked that the clock began to strike, and I began to cry, simultaneously.

How great to start at the BEGINNING like that. 

For further proof that I have been keeping myself heavily distracted, here is the list of DVD’s I have watched in the past week: 

Brave (2012)

Bored to Death Season 3 Disc 1 (2011)

Mad Men Season 5 Disc 4 (2012)

It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia Season 7 Discs 1 & 2 (2011)

Ted (2012)

Ted and Brave are completely disposable, and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia is hard to write about, because part of me doesn’t approve of this show.  Its sense of humor is very ugly and mean.  However, somehow the creators are able to convey the fact that they are not mean or spiritually ugly themselves, and though any snob could rightly call this show asinine, I think it’s so funny.  It has cute little absurdities in it, too, like my favorite character Charlie lie-bragging that he’s an expert in “bird law.”  People from my birthplace and current home of Los Angeles have asked me if people are really that bad in Philly, where I lived for 2 years, and I have to break it to them that nope … they are WORSE.  I have never let my bitch flag fly as much as in Philly, because I had so many unpleasant encounters there that I couldn’t even begin to spin to myself as an “oh well, I’ll never see this person again, best just to pick my battles and walk away from this one”-type pep talk.  One time in a Dick’s Sporting Goods (aptly named) I was treated so rudely that I made it to the cash register before creating a scene that started “This store is BULLSHIT!”  Oh boy did I exorcise a lot of swears in that fucking shit-hole of a city.  I am more direct since living there though, and I think that’s an asset.  There is a lot of hemming and hawing in California, and I try to cut to the chase more now.  Anyway, I watched both discs of season 7 in a row on a day when I was too depressed and with too strong of a migraine to go to work, and it sort of cured what ailed me, so I give it a good review. 

Bored to Death is a great show.  The concept of bromance is sort of played out, but when it’s examined in this show, it is still totally “aw…that’s so sweet”-inducing.  There is one scene where the 3 main characters, a young-ish unsuccessful-ish writer, his best friend and their older mentor/father figure, are all sharing a king size bed in matching pajamas, it’s a little slumber party, and it looks so nice, I bet there are a ton of men who wish they had a couple close friends like that that they could just truly be taken care of by and unravel with for a night – what a nice break that’d be from everyday life.  It also made me feel envious and wish I had a couple good friends I could be that comfortable around.  In general I think it’s harder for men to share their feelings and get close to other men, and I feel sorry for them for that, but I also think it’s just a bad side effect of being a grown up of either gender -- it gets hard to make friends.  It’s true that I’m able to be much more open about my feelings than most men I know, sort of without batting an eyelash, but that ability doesn’t necessarily lead to friendship.  Anyway, Bored to Death is a great show and you should all watch it.  It’s so funny and smart and its quirkiness isn’t obnoxious.

Now I come to one of the best things I have seen in a long time, and that is disc 4 of season 5 of Mad Men.  HOLY SHIT.  Matthew Weiner really outdid himself this time.  It’s funny because Disc 3 isn’t currently available from Netflix so we have skipped several episodes of this season, since we went straight from Disc 2 to Disc 4, but even with that hiccup, I was wholly engrossed in every episode, and I really can’t describe how well done these episodes are, and really haunting.  I wonder what Weiner’s influences are (not aesthetically ---- everyone knows the show has a great Danish Modern etc aesthetic, but that’s beside the point), but creatively.  Episode 12, “Commissions and Fees” has a plotline with Sally Draper that feels very Salinger-inspired.   

xoxo robin

craft corner: Birdman Purse

Birdman Purse $21 slightly negotiable + shipping

I don't know how practical this purse is, because of its length and narrowness, but I feel proud of myself for the little ruffle design and I like the diversity of color and the vibrancy.  this is the description of it from my etsy shop:

eye-catching, one of a kind. 12.5 inches horizontally, 8 inches vertically. multicolored shades of blue ruffle obscure the bright orange stripe at the top of the front of the purse. the purse's back is a color combination of pea green and white. the purse's dark blue strap hangs 12 inches from shoulder to purse body., this is one of my favorite pieces. lined with a cute yellow cotton fabric that has little black and white circle patterns on it.

Yesteryou Chapter 21

21.

There were many different ways to perceive Tess, because she was so moody.  For example, she’d been personable and silly as Johnny Carson the night before and now, waking up on the couch in the hotel room at the Sheraton, she felt painfully shy of these new people.  Still, she did want to get in touch with Vivienne/Beth for Molly, not only out of kindness but out of curiosity -- what if this interesting woman her ex-boyfriend Tim had introduced her to had invented her identity, perhaps on the spot, for the sake of Tess and the guests at the party?  But she also craved a smoke in solitude and a couple hours just to watch a DVD on her own television in her own bedroom.

Ah well, she would just have to try not to act too sullen towards these people, whom she'd already formed an attachment to.  This resolution proved immaterial once Molly awoke, because of how sullen Molly was herself.  She watched Molly knock on the bathroom door and heard a man who wasn't Richard answer, "Molly, is it you?  You can come in."  Then Tess overheard a snatch of their conversation.

"I know it's mom, George.  What will happen when I go with this girl Tess to the coffeeshop and find her today?  Maybe you should go, George, what do you think?  Mom really only trusts you.  I don’t – I don’t know what I am, but I know that I am not trust-inspiring."

If Yesteryou was the song that expressed George's laments at the inevitable tide of a life, Molly's song was one she'd first heard in a movie a few years ago; it was sung by a deep-voiced tragedy-monger of a woman, long-dead, and it expressed Molly's regret at the way she was letting life pass her by.  The singer in the song goes, "I went out walking, I don't do too much talking these days.  These days I seem to think about all the things that I forgot to do, and all the times I had the chance to."  In high school, she'd been the person whose creativity others commented on and admired, and this had filled her with a false hope of some sort of extra reserve of magic, an imperviousness to the mundane that other adults would lack, when she herself became an adult.  But creativity is a word used in school; the importance behind the word, the urgency of creating, doesn't translate well to adulthood.

Maybe Molly could be living with roommates her own age in one of the hipster parts of Los Angeles and maybe be in a band, designing furniture made with recycled materials.  But she didn't see the point, though she wished she could.  She was already twenty five, which felt old.  She saw the point in noticing beauty but not the point in recording it.  She lived with Richard and worked at an office she hated as much as people in sitcoms always hate their office jobs, but she didn't see the point of changing.  She enjoyed the company of Richard and George.  George saw so many movies, and read so many books, and from his high regard for all these stories (all these other peoples' stories) she learned what she considered a trick, of learning other lives.

craft corner

polka dots bracelet $7 + postage

more nineties riot grrrl nostalgia

This was a sheet of either flyers or stickers I made in high school, little advertisements for my zine Sweetheart and for girl power. 

and these:

were stickers that my old friend Rhani and I made one night when she slept over.  I used to think she was a poseur so even though we had all these classes together and liked all the same music and stuff, I was always sort of reserved with her.  Then, when my first band, Lime Rickey, played our first show, I was beaten the shit out of afterwards, and most every "friend" of mine who'd been there had bailed long ago, but my mom, my old friend Matt Harrison, and Rhani, were 3 heroes who actually jumped into the middle of things to try to protect my body, and dear Rhani actually managed to cover my head from kicks for a few seconds, before she was pulled off of me and beaten up a little bit too, and after that, well -- fuck, i knew she was amazing.  obviously there weren't going to be any more Lime Rickey shows, and i was seriously traumatized that night, but Rhani really wanted to start another band with me, and I consented mostly because I thought it'd amount to nothing, and the day we came up with this name Foxfire was the day we made these stickers, which show only 2 girls.  We never started actually writing any songs until our friend Andrea joined though, and I had connections with adults in the music scene who were into supporting a teenage girl band, some of them for the novelty of it, somefor the amazingness of it, so we were actually offered a lot of really good opportunities of venues and bills to play.  I was terrified to get back on stage though.  but nothing bad ever happened to me like the attack again.  instead, my foxfire years were sort of charmed.  we had such a supportive audience, got to play w/ such great bands, and it was really an important part of my life.  anyway, these stickers are just a little bit of Foxfire ephemera.

Yesteryou Chapter 21

21.

"Why do you love me so much?" Beth asked George once, and he was so irritated by the question that he was tempted to pretend he hadn’t heard.  The question had so little to do with what effect his love for her had on him; she was really just asking him to tell her about herself.  It was so selfish.  But oh, how could he not give in to this request.  It was the innocence at the base of her selfishness that was one of the most irresistible things about her.

"Oh Beth, he replied, "I don't know, you're just special," and then what he'd never actually said to her before, "I really do love you."

Now, he brought the bedside phone into the bathroom so as not to wake the three gently sighing sleepers in the hotel room, and he dialed Beth's home number, just in case.  No answer.

Craft Corner

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Yesteryou Chapter 20

20.

The hostess’s name was Tess.  She and her own mom were incredibly close (not in a way that warms the hearts of witnesses, though; they accepted each other wholly and had unquestioningly relied on each other as a matter of survival at times, but neither one was expressive of affection, or enjoyed completely the traits of the other).  Therefore, she could not empathize with Molly’s situations, of searching for a mother's whose whereabouts were unknown.  Throughout her young life, Tess had had many friends who’d run away from home (a couple not surviving their adventures), and that was a narrative she instinctively understood; a child seeing no way to become important except by prematurely asserting what little personality the young person has so far developed.  Consequently, she couldn’t help but treat Molly like a mother who’d been fled from, and it made her feel sorry for her.  The awkward way Richard flirted made her feel protective towards him as well, so she spent most of the rest of the party taking bong hits with them and making plans for the next day, when she would call her ex-boyfriend who'd invited the possible Beth over, and then finding the possible Beth, Vivienne.  "I wish we were sisters," Molly told Tess at one point in the pretty, wrecked dawn of a summer day in Philly, apropos of nothing.  It was sweet to hear a thing like that.

In the morning light, George awoke, sore and depressed, and felt further saddened to see a stranger asleep on the couch, because he correctly guessed that Richard and Molly had met her last night and she would be helping them find Beth.  He wanted the event of finding her to occur in an environment of quiet and seriousness, without anyone peripheral to witness the rescue.

sadness

me and mom

yesterday i spent at least an hour encamped in my doctor's bathroom, shitting, throwing up and crying out a panic attack, a few minutes in a cab ride to the emergency room where i was born, had heart surgery and gave birth, and several hours lying down in an emergency room staring close up at the wall and waiting for imaginary dangers and real ones to duke it out inside my body.  as usual, today i feel more embarrassed than anything else.

more high school high art

there's something so embarrassing about these doodles of mine from junior high and high school that i've been posting on here lately (like the melodrama and how I made it look like this one was copyrighted in the title square), but sometimes i see some other girl's art from when she was  a teenager and it has so many similarities to things i've done, it makes me feel like "aw!  that's sweet and funny" or when i'm in a less charitable mood, feel jealous that i didn't share my similar thing w/ the world first. 

Yesteryou Chapter 19

19.

"Maybe she was my mom," Molly blurted out to the hostess.  "The lady that was here with fireworks.  Maybe it was Beth." 

"Oh, honey," Richard reasoned, "I don't think so."

"What, why not?  Isn't that why we're here, because you though she might be in Philly?  She loves fireworks.  She let me set them off," something Molly never would have thought to ask Richard for permission for.

"Wow," interjected the hostess, "You're tying to find you mom in Philly?  It could totally be this woman.  She kind of looks like you, actually.  Her name was Vivienne, I think.  Is it her?"
            "My mother's name is Beth, but she'd probably make up a name like Vivienne for herself.  What does this woman look like?"

            "Sweetie, she doesn't even have the same name, and I don't think she'd say she was from L.A.  Your mom hasn't lived in L.A. for few years now, she'd probably say she was from Arizona.  You're from L.A.  You're my little Angelino."

            But Molly sensed that her mother had been in this place earlier tonight, she could picture her looking at the animals on the mannequins' apron pockets.  She told Richard, "Dad, she's probably totally out of her mind right now, she's probably lying about stuff to people because she's going crazy," and to the hostess she repeated, "What did the woman look like?"

Yesteryou Chapter 18

18.

George, Beth and Molly bought a box full of fireworks one weekend years ago, the weekend before the 4th of July.  It was illegal to set off fireworks in L.A. County because of the potential for fires in such a draught-ridden tinder box of a city, so they went to a town right outside the county line to buy the fireworks, and they bought a lot:  Flying Spinners; Fountains Cones that shot up green and pink sparks; Ground Bloom Flowers; Parachutes; Roman Candles; smoke grenades. They ended up not using more than a few sparklers the night of the 4th, though; they just weren't in the mood.  But a few months later, Josie was spending a Saturday night over at Beth's with Molly, and the three of them were feeling particularly exhilarated that night.  It was a deliciously warm night, and each girl, woman, felt particularly young, immortal practically, and Beth burst out happily, "Shit, Molly!  We have fireworks!"  She could be so really charming sometimes. 

"Holy fuck, mom!  That is the best idea ever.  We have to set off every firework in that box right now, or I'll burst!” 

"You guys," Josie chided gleefully "we'll totally get arrested!  This is only like year one hundred of the great Los Angeles drought, fireworks are even more illegal than usual; remember all those ads about it around the 4th?  No way we're doing it.  The cops'll show up and we'll have to lie and say we didn't do anything, and it'll be embarrassing.  I hate shit like that!  I hate having to lie to authority figures."

            "No you don't!" teased Molly, tackling her, and Beth said, "Come on, you two lesbos, help me find the fireworks.  This shit's going down tonight!"

They set off every firecracker in that box, all the little cardboard tanks with the fuses at the end that, when you lit them, made the tanks shoot forward on their plastic wheels and spew wild sparks, all the cones that shot out sparks and the black cats and the Catherine Wheels, and when a police helicopter began circling overhead, the three women found the situation almost unbearably funny. 

"Well, promise to visit me in prison," Beth joked, but when there was an aggressive knock on the front door a moment later, they were all still feeling amused and excitable, but now also worried about getting in trouble.

"Yikes.  Um, you guys get in bed.  Close the bedroom door, though, promise.  I'll be bad at lying, if it's the cops, if I know you guys are listening in.  It'll make me nervous."

The knocking started again, and a deep male voice boomed "Hello?!"  It was a police officer, which actually surprised Beth, who though it was probably just her neighbor the unemployed alcoholic contractor, who she had sex with, only once, on a night when the Santa Ana winds and the brush fires in the hills nearby had made her restless, aroused.  But it was a cop who stood outside the door now, who told her that he’d received a complaint regarding something that sounded like fireworks being illegally set off, possibly in her back yard.     

            "Well, it wasn't me," she said indignantly, "Jesus, officer, I'm a grown woman, why would I play with firecrackers?" and of course he had no choice but to take her word for it.  Once the door was closed behind him, Josie and Molly jumped up from where they'd been crouching, in the narrow space between the wall and the living room couch, and simultaneously shouted "Boo!", scaring the hell out of Beth and making her laugh so hard, tears came to her eyes.  "I knew you guys weren't in bed like I told you to be, I just knew it.  I could practically hear your hot little breaths about to explode in laughter and get me arrested!"

God it was funny.  It was like one of the funniest things ever.

A Brief Interview with Writer Lesly Arfin

A young Lesley Arfin (some time in the 90's)

In the 1990’s, before the internet was a thing, first and second generation Riot Grrrls read reviews of zines written by other Riot Grrrls who lived on the other side of the country (or sometimes even in England or Canada), and would sent their $1.25 + 2 stamps price to order these zines, and 9 times out of 10, this (losing) business transaction led to a penpal relationship.  It was amazing.  A lot of the RG rhetoric at the time waxed poetic on the concept of a “girl army”, and while these penpal relationships may not have been a tool of some militant action towards gender equality, it was a very wonderful and amazing network that could not have existed without Riot Grrrl.  I still remember how exciting it was to get the mail everyday (I did a zine with a fairly large readership, called Sweetheart, from around 1993-1997), just how special it felt to have my dad hand me all these wildly decorated envelopes from around the country.  I don’t romanticize my youth much, because it was too rocky to idealize, even through the powerful, distorting lens of nostalgia.  But when I think of all that Riot Grrrl mail, goddamn do I miss those tacky 1990’s and that rocky youth.

Anyway, that is how Long Island NY Lesley Arfin and Playa del Rey CA Robin Crane came to know each other, as penpals connected through zines.  Of course, the friendship faded eventually (they all did, but that was okay – it was sort of part of the whole thing).  

Cut to the mid-2000’s and me perusing one of husband’s issues of Vice Magazine.  I love/hate Vice Mag, but the hate part of that equation is much stronger – I hate their whole Terry Richardson/Richard Kern girl-humiliation aesthetic, all the photos of barely legal models doing private things like pooing or putting on panty hose, purposely humiliating imagery like that, which runs absolutely rampant in that mag.  The thing that I happen to love about Vice, though (or the old Vice anyway, with the original staff), is that the art and writing contributed by the female staff is as disgusting as that of the men.  There’s no expectation for the womens’ work to display any more humanity or tenderness than that of their male counterparts – a gender equality gross out. 

Anyway, I excitedly noticed that Lesley wrote a column for Vice, “Dear Diary.”  Then, in 2007, this column was put into book form, also called Dear Diary, and is a totally fun read, especially for people in our age group.  Since the publication of that book, she's been a contributor and editor of some blogs (see http://lesleyarfin.com/ for a complete picture of her creative career), a staff writer for seasons 1 and 2 of the HBO show Girls, contributed to several blogs, and currently, a writer for season 3 of the MTV show Awkward.

Lesley and I got back in touch recently when I came across an old photo of her  that I wanted her to see.  She agreed to be interviewed, so I emailed her some questions, and voila.  One thing I learned though is that it is a little flat to interview through email -- in the future, and/or if I were more tech-savvy, I think an ideal method of interviewing would be through Instant-Messaging, so, live and learn, but I find Lesley important to the current (counter)cultural landscape and am glad she submitted to being email interviewed, and here it is (I'm calling myself SR for "Sweetheart Redux" and her answers are indicated by "LA", her initials, natch):

SR: There was a ton of controversy surrounding your racial comments (about black people) when you and the other writers of Girls were being questioned about the lack or black actors or even extras in a show that takes place in the racially diverse NYC.  Can you explain your philosophy about the dialectic of race?  In one interview, you said that you loved the power of the word “nigger” and you couched this comment in a discussion of how powerful words are in general, but obviously you knew you were making a controversial statement when you said that.  I feel it was a deliberate decision of yours to answer that way, but can you explain your aim with such a response?  What was your goal with stirring up all this controversy, instead of taking steps to prove that you are not racist in all these debates that came your way?  And in retrospect, are you glad with how you handled things? LA:  [no response]

SR:  Tell me about the show you’re writing for, season 3 of Awkward.

LA:  It's a teen show about an awesomely awkward girl that airs on MTV. If you want to know more you can search it through Wikipedia.  

(editor's note:  so I wikipedia'ed it.  Here is the paragraph about the show's plot:  "The series is based around social outcast Jenna Hamilton who, after receiving a "carefrontation" letter, has a legitimate accident, though it appears as if she tried to commit suicide. By making changes and embracing her misfortune, she becomes well-known to her peers through her blog. After losing her virginity to the popular Matty McKibben, Jenna continues a secret relationship with him due to his embarrassment of her. Jenna later begins to develop a relationship with Matty's best friend, Jake Rosati. Jenna ends her relationship with Matty to be with Jake, and both eventually agree to not tell Jake about it. Jake falls in love with Jenna oblivious to her lingering feelings toward Matty and his best friend's feeling towards his girlfriend. Towards the end of the second season resident mean girl and Jenna's nemesis, Sadie, exposes the relationship to Jake who then breaks up with Jenna. Matty goes to Jenna's house to comfort her and they end up kissing. Jake, realizing he had made a mistake breaking up with Jenna, also goes to her house and witnesses the kiss. What then follows is a public fist fight between Matty and Jake later at school and their eventual make up and a decision to force Jenna to choose between them.")


SR:  In your book Dear Diary, you often speak directly to your family (your dad, in particular, as I recall) – did the publication of the book, or the fact of your parents reading it, change your family dynamic at all, and if so, what’s it like now? 

LA:  I don't know how, if at all, my book changed my family dynamic. My parents have and always will be incredibly supportive of me and my endeavors.  

SR:   Is it hard to maintain sobriety?  How important is it to your life?

LA:  It is hard and it is the most important thing in my life. 

SR:  Favorite:  movie/book/actor/director/actress/food

LA:  Movie: Poltergeist

       Book: The Secret History

       Actor: Leonardo DiCaprio

       Director: Nicole Holofcener

       Actress: Cate Blanchett

       Food: Bread 

SR:  Do you have celebrity crush and if so, who?  And why!

LA:  Leonardo DiCaprio because he is so hunky and talented and I love him in every movie he's ever made.  

SR:  Do you still identify as a feminist, and if so, explain your particular take on feminism?

LA:  Yes I'm a feminist. My particular take on it is less talk more rock.  

SR:  If you could be anything in the world including something magical like a wizard from Gryffendor house, what would it be? 

LA:  That's so broad! I guess I'd be a magical Bodega cat.  

SR:  Who is your hero?

LA:  Joan Rivers/I don't really have one. 

SR:  Does your Judaism have any bearing on your life or identity? 

LA:  Yes of course. I am Jewish. I can't imagine being any other way and wouldn't want to be.  

the end.

Lesley in a parallel universe as a bodega cat