Humor Archives - Jane Heller

My New Motto: Life Is Too Short to Finish Books and Anything Else That Doesn't Satisfy

September 17, 2015

I must be getting wiser in my Medicare age. I used to feel compelled to finish virtually everything. I used to sit there watching movies that were boring me or annoying me or giving me no pleasure or escape. I used to at least try to eat everything on my plate in restaurants even if the food wasn’t especially good simply because I was paying for it. And I used to finish every book I bought – 100% of the time. I’m a writer. I felt it was a courtesy to my fellow authors to finish their work – the work I’m sure they’d labored over just as I labor over mine.

Not anymore. If I find myself saying, 50 pages into a book, “I’m not relating to these characters” or “This story is going nowhere” or “This writing leaves me cold,” I put the book down and move on to the next one in my queue. What a feeling of liberation!

Broadening this approach, I’ve also figured out that I don’t have to like everybody and everybody doesn’t have to like me – and I’m not talking about Facebook “likes.” I had a very disagreeable phone conversation with one of my new neighbors recently. At first her attitude stunned me. And then I said, “F*^k it.” I’m learning that even a pleaser like me doesn’t have to befriend everyone. Time is not to be wasted on people who are negative and, in the case of the neighbor, downright nasty. And friends who no longer behave like friends – people who aren’t supportive when things are going well or when they’re not – have no place in my life and it’s O.K. to let them go. I don’t love getting older, but I do love being able to say, as the writer Dominique Browning put it in her terrific piece in The New York Times, “I’m too old for this.” She was speaking primarily of our constant criticisms of our appearance, but the piece resonated with so many people that it was one of the top-viewed Op-Eds the week it ran. Here’s a look.

Fashion & Style | First Person
I’m Too Old for This

By DOMINIQUE BROWNING AUG. 8, 2015

There is a lot that is annoying, and even terrible, about aging. The creakiness of the body; the drifting of the memory; the reprising of personal history ad nauseam, with only yourself to listen.

But there is also something profoundly liberating about aging: an attitude, one that comes hard won. Only when you hit 60 can you begin to say, with great aplomb: “I’m too old for this.”

This line is about to become my personal mantra. I have been rehearsing it vigorously, amazed at how amply I now shrug off annoyances that once would have knocked me off my perch.

A younger woman advised me that “old” may be the wrong word, that I should consider I’m too wise for this, or too smart. But old is the word I want. I’ve earned it.

And let’s just start with being an older woman, shall we? Let others feel bad about their chicken wings — and their bottoms, their necks and their multitude of creases and wrinkles. I’m too old for this. I spent years, starting before I was a teenager, feeling insecure about my looks.

No feature was spared. My hairline: Why did I have to have a widow’s peak, at 10? My toes: too short. My entire body: too fat, and once, even, in the depths of heartbreak, much too thin. Nothing felt right. Well, O.K., I appreciated my ankles. But that’s about it.

What torture we inflict upon ourselves. If we don’t whip ourselves into loathing, then mean girls, hidden like trolls under every one of life’s bridges, will do it for us.

Even the vogue for strange-looking models is little comfort; those women look perfectly, beautifully strange, in a way that no one else does. Otherwise we would all be modeling.

One day recently I emptied out an old trunk. It had been locked for years; I had lost the key and forgotten what was in there. But, curiosity getting the best of me on a rainy afternoon, I managed to pry it open with a screwdriver.

It was full of photographs. There I was, ages 4 to 40. And I saw for the first time that even when I was in the depths of despair about my looks, I had been beautiful.

And there were all my friends; girls and women with whom I had commiserated countless times about hair, weight, all of it, doling out sympathy and praise, just as I expected it heaped upon me: beautiful, too. We were, we are, all beautiful. Just like our mothers told us, or should have. (Ahem.)

Those smiles, radiant with youth, twinkled out of the past, reminding me of the smiles I know today, radiant with strength.

Young(er) women, take this to heart: Why waste time and energy on insecurity? I have no doubt that when I’m 80 I’ll look at pictures of myself when I was 60 and think how young I was then, how filled with joy and beauty.

I’m happy to have a body that is healthy, that gets me where I want to go, that maybe sags and complains, but hangs in there. So maybe I’m too old for skintight jeans, too old for six-inch stilettos, too old for tattoos and too old for green hair.

Weight gain? Simply move to the looser end of the wardrobe, and stop hanging with Ben and Jerry. No big deal. Nothing to lose sleep over. Anyway, I’m too old for sleep, or so it seems most nights.

Which leaves me a bit cranky in the daytime, so it is a good thing I can now work from home. Office politics? Sexism? I’ve seen it all. Watching men make more money, doing less work. Reading the tea leaves as positions shuffle, listening to the kowtow and mumble of stifled resentment.

I want to tell my younger colleagues that it doesn’t matter. Except the sexism, which, like poison ivy, is deep-rooted: You weed the rampant stuff, but it pops up again.

What matters most is the work. Does it give you pleasure, or hope? Does it sustain your soul? My work as a climate activist is the hardest and most fascinating I’ve ever done. I’m too old for the dark forces, for hopelessness and despair. If everyone just kept their eyes on the ball, and followed through each swing, we’d all be more productive, and not just on the golf course.

The key to life is resilience, and I’m old enough to make such a bald statement. We will always be knocked down. It’s the getting up that counts. By the time you reach upper middle age, you have started over, and over again.

And, I might add, resilience is the key to feeling 15 again. Which is actually how I feel most of the time.

But I am too old to try to change people. By now I’ve learned, the very hard way, that what you see in someone at the beginning is what you get forevermore. Most of us are receptive to a bit of behavior modification. But through decades of listening to people complain about marriages or lovers, I hear the same refrains.

I have come to realize that there is comfort in the predictability, even the ritualization, of relationship problems. They become a dance step; each partner can twirl through familiar moves, and do-si-do until the music stops.

Toxic people? Sour, spoiled people? I’m simply walking away; I have little fight left in me. It’s easier all around to accept that friendships have ebbs and flows, and indeed, there’s something quite beautiful about the organic nature of love.

I used to think that one didn’t make friends as one got older, but I’ve learned that the opposite happens. Sometimes, unaccountably, a new person walks into your life, and you find you are never too old to love again. And again. (See resilience.)

One is never too old for desire. Having entered the twilight of my dating years, I can tell you it is much easier to navigate the Scylla and Charybdis of anticipation and disappointment when you’ve had plenty of experience with the shoals and eddies of shallow waters. Emphasis on shallow. By now, we know deep.

Take a pass on bad manners, on thoughtlessness, on unreliability, on carelessness and on all the other ways people distinguish themselves as unappealing specimens. Take a pass on your own unappealing behavior, too: the pining, yearning, longing and otherwise frittering away of valuable brainwaves that could be spent on Sudoku, or at least a jigsaw puzzle, if not that Beethoven sonata you loved so well in college.

My new mantra is liberating. At least once a week I encounter a situation that in the old (young) days would have knocked me to my knees or otherwise spun my life off center.

Now I can spot trouble 10 feet away (believe me, this is a big improvement), and I can say to myself: Too old for this. I spare myself a great deal of suffering, and as we all know, there is plenty of that to be had without looking for more.

If there can be such a thing as a best-selling app like Yo, which satisfies so many urges to boldly announce ourselves, I want one called 2old4this. A signature kiss-off to all that was once vexatious. A goodbye to all that has done nothing but hold us back. That would be an app worth having. But, thankfully, I’m too old to need such a thing.

My Friend Died, and It Sucks

August 4, 2015

Michael and I were living in Florida, about to move to LA, when I got an email from a woman named Laurie Burrows Grad. She said she was chairing a Penn Women Author Event to commemorate 100 years of women at the University of Pennsylvania, where I attended the Annenberg School of Communications. She asked if I’d be willing to participate. I wrote back thanking her for thinking of me but explained that I was overwhelmed with my imminent move to Los Angeles. She wrote back that she lived in LA and that if I needed anything when I got there, I shouldn’t hesitate to call her. “And you’ll come for dinner and meet my husband Peter,” she added.

“How nice is that?” I said to Michael. “They don’t even know us.”

Laurie and I continued to email and we discovered we’d soon be neighbors, that the Beverly Hills duplex Michael and I had rented was only blocks away from her house. She offered yet again to have us over for dinner and we looked forward to it.

On our first night in our Beverly Hills rental, friendless and furniture-less, since our stuff was on a Mayflower van making its way across the country, Michael and I were surprised by a knock on the door. It was Laurie and Peter with shopping bags containing goodies to eat and drink and little battery-operated lights we could put on the floor by our air mattress until our lamps arrived.

“How nice is that?” I repeated to Michael.

Laurie was beautiful inside and out, I discovered, and Peter was hilarious with the ability to mock you in such an endearing way that you didn’t mind being mocked. (The first time he saw me, he nicknamed me “Bones.” Normally, when people joke that I’m skinny or scrawny or bony, it makes me mad, but Peter? I loved that he had a special name for me, just like he had special names for all his close pals, because he said it with such affection.) Both he and Laurie had huge hearts, and the word “generous” didn’t begin to describe them. (And I’m not just talking about the fact that they’d raised millions of dollars for the Alzheimer’s Association as a result of their “A Night at Sardi’s” benefits.) Oh and one more thing: they adored each other. You could see it in their eyes, in the way they treated each other, in the way they touched each other. When you were around Laurie and Peter, you were thrilled to be in their orbit.

And we were definitely in their orbit. Laurie and I would talk on the phone forever and then email right after. Michael, who doesn’t make friends easily or often, couldn’t get enough of Peter. While Laurie and I would be in her kitchen kibbitzing, he and Peter would be downstairs watching porn channels on TV and laughing like idiot boys waiting for their mothers to scold them. We’d go out for dinner. We’d go to the movies. We’d spend New Year’s Eves together and Oscar night and all the rest. And when they said, “We’re staying at a friend’s on the beach in Santa Barbara for the weekend. Want to come?” we not only said yes but became so enamored of Santa Barbara that we moved there.

I was emailing and texting with Laurie this past weekend while she and Peter were on their annual trip to Vail. She was telling me what a good time they were having and I was telling her the latest about CT, where Michael and I had bought a house in April to spend more time with my mother. I missed the Grads now that I was on the East Coast again, but we’d recently had lunch with them when they came to NYC and we pledged to spend more time together when we flew back to CA over the winter.

Then came a terrible phone call on Sunday morning: Peter had died.

Just like that. While I was sleeping. While I was completely in the dark.

I woke up assuming they were enjoying their last day in Vail and instead Laurie was dealing with the loss of her beloved Petey. How could this be true? How could someone who’d been so alive, so vital, be here one minute and gone the next? I couldn’t fathom it. With one big exception, I’d been remarkably lucky in the friend department when it came to good health. Yes, I had just turned Medicare age, but all my buddies were fine, a few aches, pains and prescription drugs aside.

Not Peter, apparently.

No one didn’t love Peter Grad. No one. He could walk into a room and charm even the crabbiest person. He could play a round a golf with Joe Schmo and the President of the United States and put them both at ease. He could elicit a laugh even on your gloomiest day and then order you a pizza or grill you a steak. (No one made eating as much fun as Peter. With him, food was entertainment.)

Laurie is bereft, naturally, and I feel helpless that I can’t take her pain away. I wish my mother didn’t have dementia so I could ask her what her friends did or said that most comforted her after my father died.

I only hope that the outpouring Laurie’s getting from people will ease her grief a little. She did have the good fortune to be married to the love of her life for a very long time. May the gift of that sustain her.

RIP, Petey.

No More Caregiving from 3,000 Miles Away

May 22, 2015

I haven’t spent my May 2nd birthday with my mother in many years. I’ve been living in California and only visited her in Mt. Kisco, in New York’s northern Westchester County, in the summers. After Mom turned 98 on her birthday in January and her cognitive abilities deteriorated further, it became very clear that talking to her on the phone and getting reports from my New York-based sister Susan and from Sandy, Mom’s live-in caregiver and majordomo, that I wanted to be close by; that I needed to be close by. There were other good reasons to move back to CT but Mom was the primary one. Celebrating my birthday with her, as I did in the photo above. was a treat.

What I’ve discovered spending time with her is that she’s holding her own in many ways. She still has an amazing vocabulary, still has her sense of humor, still remembers plenty. But she doesn’t remember plenty too. Gone are the anecdotes about my childhood. Gone are the anecdotes about her two husbands, my father and stepfather. Gone are the anecdotes about her friends, most of whom she has outlived.

But just when the sadness of all this creeps into my head, I remind myself to find the silver linings in Mom’s dementia. My book, You’d Better Not Die or I’ll Kill You, was all about finding the silver linings in caring for a loved one with a chronic or progressive illness. I not only wrote about the humorous side of being married to a man with Crohn’s disease, but I encouraged the other caregivers I interviewed (a mother whose son is autistic, a wife whose husband has MS, a son whose two parents had Alzheimer’s, etc.) to find humor in their situations too. Being able to find the positives in even the darkest times – and laughing about them – keeps us sane.

So….what are the silver linings with my mother?

For one thing, she’s no longer estranged from her older sister. As I wrote in The Huffington Post a while back, she forgot she was mad at my aunt after ten years of their not speaking to each other, picked up the phone one day and called her. The conversation was friendly and cheerful as if there’d never been an angry word between them. (My aunt, who’s 100 now, has the same level of dementia as Mom.) They’ve been good buddies ever since. How that’s for an upside of dementia.

For another, every time I come to the house to visit Mom now, it’s a pleasant surprise to her. “Nobody told me you were coming!” she exclaims as soon as I walk in the door, even though I’ve spoken to her only minutes before on the phone to let her know I’m on my way. “This is such a wonderful, wonderful surprise! I can’t get over it!” See? Another upside: my mother is always really, really happy to see me.

But the most personal upside by far has been the fact that my mother’s dementia has changed the way she feels about my writing career. Let me back up and explain.

During a recent phone call, she said, “What’s new, dear?”

“Just taking a break from writing to say hi,” I told her.

“Writing?” she said.

“I’m working on a new novel,” I said.

“You write novels?” She sounded flabbergasted. “Nobody told me that!”

I thought I’d misheard her. A former college professor of Greek and Latin, she values words and had never forgotten that I earned my living through words. It was as if she’d suddenly forgotten who I was.

“Why don’t you walk over to the bookshelves across from your bed,” I suggested trying not to show how shaken I was. “You’ll see a lot of books with my name on them.”

She put down the phone, went to look, and came back on the line. “Oh my goodness! I can’t believe my daughter writes novels! I’m so impressed, dear, and so proud. I bet they’re the best novels ever written.”

Well, now she had done a complete one-eighty. I write romantic comedies – novels that have hit bestseller lists, been translated all over the world, and sold to Hollywood. Most mothers would be thrilled to have a daughter who was a successful author, and Mom was thrilled. She called me her “little celebrity,” woke up early to watch me on the “Today” show, and planted herself in the front row at my bookstore signings where she bought multiple copies and had me autograph them. Naturally, I’d assumed she read the books too. I was wrong. She didn’t read them, certainly not all the way through. And the fact that she didn’t – I discovered this after I’d just given her the galley proofs of a forthcoming novel and minutes later found her combing my library for “something good to read” – was like a stab in the heart.

Mom and I had always shared a very close bond. She was my anchor after my father died when I was six. I followed in her footsteps in college and majored in Greek and Latin. I graduated Summa Cum Laude, as did she. I earned a Phi Beta Kappa key that she wore on her charm bracelet. We were smarty-pants women together, rolling our eyes when grammatically challenged people said, “Between you and I.” So imagine my hurt to learn that my novels weren’t up to her intellectual standards, that my work was the sort of facile, mass entertainment she dismissed. The knowledge of her disapproval created a breach in our otherwise loving relationship that was always lurking beneath the surface, unspoken.

And yet now, during our phone call, Mom had just validated the work I had spent my adult life laboring over. In her cognitively impaired state, she had uttered the magic words at last: “I bet they’re the best books ever written.”

So yes, caring for aging parents with dementia can be a struggle and there are times when you long for your parent the way he or she used to be, but when there are silver linings, we have to grab them with both hands. I grabbed my mother’s compliment about my books and will never let them go.

Now Playing on My Kindle: "This Is Where I Leave You"

March 14, 2014

Somehow, Jonathan Tropper’s NYT bestselling novel, This Is Where I Leave You, had escaped my notice, or at least until recently. I started reading about the movie version, which Tropper adapted and which opens in September, and I figured I’d better get on this. The movie stars Jason Bateman, Tina Fey and Jane Fonda, among many others.

But back to the novel. Tropper has managed to craft a story that’s a true comedy-drama. It’s so funny at times, particularly the dialogue, and so painfully poignant. Not easy to pull off for any author, but I’m now a huge fan of Tropper’s. I loved this book. Loved. It.

It’s the story of the Foxman family, a crew of non-observant Jews who find themselves sitting shiva after the family patriarch dies. The narrator is Judd, one of the Foxman sons, whose wife Jen has been having an affair with his boss, a shock jock in the Howard Stern tradition. His world rocked by both Jen’s infidelity and his father’s death, Judd trudges off to spend a week with his mother and siblings with whom he doesn’t exactly get along. His older brother Paul holds a lifelong grudge against him. His younger brother Phillip is a charming liar who can never be trusted. And his sister Wendy slings one-liners at him like nobody’s business. And then there’s their mother, a sexy author of parenting books who has a secret love life that stuns everybody.

Along the way there are old friends and girlfriends who resurface and neighbors who show up to pay condolences and Jen, Judd’s perfidious wife, who announces she’s pregnant with his kid.

Oh, the complications.

There are so many twists and turns in this story and Judd takes us through all of them with his uniquely sardonic voice that’s both screamingly hilarious and heartbreakingly sad.

Publishers Weekly said of Tropper in its review, “he has the ability to create touchingly human characters and a deliciously page-turning story.” Yup, he does and he did. I’m already on to his latest, One Last Thing Before I Go.

Holiday Sale on Ebooks!

November 27, 2013

Starting December 3rd, the ebook editions of the following 11 of my novels will have a new lower, very sweet price just in time for Christmas, New Year’s and into 2014! They’re going from $4.99 to $2.99 in an effort to make them more affordable for a wider audience. I do love these stories and I continue to hear from readers who are discovering them for the first time, as well as from those who go back to them for a re-read whenever they need a smile.

So….on 12/3, look for price reductions at all e-tailers (Amazon, B&N, Apple, Kobo) on Best Enemies.…

Clean Sweep….

The Secret Ingredient…

Female Intelligence…

The Club…

Sis Boom Bah…

Princess Charming…

Name Dropping…

Infernal Affairs...

Crystal Clear…

Lucky Stars.

The novels aren’t part of a series and they aren’t the stuff of serious literature, but they’re smart, sassy romantic comedies with an element of suspense (sometimes there’s a murder, sometimes not), and they’re all about relationships, whether between a couple in love, a pair of sisters or a mother and daughter. And they’re all meant to take readers away from their daily grind and offer up some laughs. There’s never been a better time to try one!

Such A Deal: "Infernal Affairs" Is About To Be 99 Cents!

September 16, 2013

For the past few months we’ve been doing special promotions on the ebook editions of my novels, and this week the ebook getting the spotlight is my third novel, Infernal Affairs.

Starting tomorrow, September 17th, and continuing through September 24th, the price for Infernal Affairs will drop from $4.99 to 99 cents. The idea is not only to make the ebook even more affordable than it’s been but also to reach readers who may be new to my novels and want to give this one a try without too big an investment. And what author doesn’t love watching her books jump to the top of the rankings on Amazon and BNN? It’s fun!

So is Infernal Affairs, if I do say so myself. Actually, I’m not the only one who said it. People magazine called it “smart-mouthed fun.” And Kirkus Reviews called it “campy, over the top, down-and-dirty and a whole lot of fun.” Others liked the humor. Booklist: “fiendishly funny”….Library Journal: “very funny.”

What’s the story about? A Florida real estate agent who’s down on her luck. She can’t sell a house. She’s gained weight. And her husband’s just dumped her for the local TV weatherperson. She goes outside during a thunderstorm one night after too much wine and rails at the heavens to help her – only to find that it’s the Devil that’s been listening. Yup, she’s made an unwitting pact with the dark side and now she has to figure out how to get out of the deal. Her unlikely ally is the guy she’s despised since high school. They’re aided by an adorable Labrador retriever, but that’s enough about the plot. The point is there’s romance, suspense and some very wacky goings on.

Ellen DeGeneres and Disney optioned the novel back when it was in manuscript, but the movie never got made, sadly. It was re-optioned a few years later for a TV movie but that, too, didn’t go anywhere. I still think it would be a very commercial comedy, so maybe someday…..

Meanwhile, it’s only 99 cents, people! Go download it!

All This Week: "Sis Boom Bah" For Just 99 Cents!

July 11, 2013

People magazine called my novel about two bickering sisters “a delightful summer read,” so I figured why not do a special deal on the ebook edition this summer? Starting today and all week long, until July 17th to be specific, the novel has been marked down from $4.99 to 99 cents at all e-tailers (Amazon, BNN, Kobo, iBooks/Apple), so I hope people will take advantage of the discount and dive in.

There’s a full description of the plot, some reviews, my inspiration for writing the book, etc., on the book’s page on this site, but the short version is that it’s about Deborah and Sharon Peltz, who’ve never gotten along and who go through periods of estrangement. When their mother has a heart attack in Florida, they vow to get along for the sake of Mom’s health – only to find that they both fall for her cardiologist. Not good – especially when the philandering doctor gets murdered and they’re both at the scene.

I loved writing “Sis.” I was living in Stuart, FL where the book is set and used a lot of local color to flesh out the story. It was optioned for a feature film by Julia Roberts’ production company back when it was first published. I sure wish somebody would give it another shot at the big screen. It’s a whole lot of fun if I do say so myself. Check it out!

Being the Best of Something

December 17, 2012

No, I’m not talking about winning an Oscar, although Hollywood’s awards season is here and I’m busily trying to see all the films that’ll be nominated as well as those that should be.

This is about me. I’ve never won an award or even been named the “best” at anything. (Well, let me amend that. I won the “best in tennis” award when I was in summer camp, along with a “most improved” in swimming.) But that changed today when I got an email telling me that one of my articles for Huffington Post/50 (the section for those of us in mid-life) was among their top 20 blog posts of 2012. Was I ever flattered!

So in honor of me, here are Huff/Po50‘s top 20 blog posts of the year. Check them all out, because they’re really good, but smile especially wide when you read mine.

Birthdays Are To Be Celebrated, Period

October 24, 2012

That’s my pal, Melodie Johnson Howe, mystery writer extraordinaire and the proud celebrant at last night’s birthday dinner for her at Montecito’s Tre Lune. (She’s holding a piece of their yummy tiramisu.) I have friends who say, whenever a birthday approaches, “Oh, I’ve stopped counting,” or “I’m not doing anything for it,” or even “Don’t you dare tell anyone I’m another year older.”

I get that none of us wants to grow old(er). I get that once we reach a certain age, the giddy excitement we experienced as kids at birthday time is no longer giddy. And I get that age can signal an end rather than a beginning.

But hold on a sec. Melodie’s a great example of why all of the above is only part of the story. The other part is that there’s plenty to celebrate no matter how many candles are on the cake. She just published a book of short stories called Shooting Hollywood. She just sold a new novel to a major New York publisher. She just got all these fabulous blurbs for the novel from other critically acclaimed mystery writers. And she just made a deal to publish her earlier novels, The Mother Shadow and Beauty Dies, in their first ebook editions. An end rather than a beginning? I don’t think so.

A former actress in feature films and television, Melodie has a cameo in YOU’D BETTER NOT DIE OR I’LL KILL YOU. She appears in Chapter 7: How to Wait Out Waiting Rooms. During one of Michael’s surgeries in 2010, she sat with me in the waiting room at Cottage Hospital in Santa Barbara and kept me sane. She even managed to make me laugh – something she does often. And when the surgeon came out of the O.R. to discuss how the surgery went, she was right there to ask questions, listen, support me. Why wouldn’t I want to celebrate her birthday? We caregivers should treasure those friends who stick by us in sickness and in health and make sure they have their tiramisu and more.

Beware "Bachelorette"

September 9, 2012

Having loved “Bridesmaids” and being a proponent of female-centric comedies, even raunchy ones, I was eager to see “Bachelorette” despite the mixed reviews. Some of the critics praised the fact that the characters remain unlikable throughout the movie and that the tone is a bit darker and more challenging than “Bridesmaids.” Others found the story a ripoff of “The Hangover.” This critic? I just didn’t think the movie was funny. At all.

Three grown women who are still nursing grudges from high school can be amusing, but these three? One’s a prom queen type (Kirsten Dunst) who tries to control everything and everybody. Another is pathetic and depressed (Lizzy Caplan) because the guy who impregnated her as a teenager has seemingly moved on. The third (Isla Fisher in a retread of her “Wedding Crashers” turn) is the “stupid one.” All three do a lot of coke and either laugh hysterically or run around trying to repair the bride’s wedding dress.

I realize there’s a trend toward showing “realistic” women in their late 20s and early 30s with their anxieties and insecurities front and center, but enough already. I want to see smart women on screen. Funny, sympathetic, smart women. Is that too much to ask?

Four More Novels Go Digital!

July 17, 2012

Last week, I had the pleasure of reporting that six of my backlist titles were finally available in ebook editions. Today, I’m here to announce that four more novels have been converted and are available at e-tailers: Lucky Stars, The Secret Ingredient, Name Dropping and Princess Charming.

That leaves only Female Intelligence, which should be joining the others in a few weeks.

Very exciting for me to have these books in their new editions with their colorful covers and reasonable prices. Spread the word!

My Heart Is Breaking Over Nora Ephron's Death

June 26, 2012

I was on Twitter late this afternoon when I saw a tweet from the New York Times with the breaking news that Ephron, my idol, my heroine, the woman who inspired me to become a writer in the first place, had died of leukemia at age 71. I didn’t even know she was sick. I was devastated. The obituary by Charles McGrath was wonderful, and I have no doubt that Ephron herself would have applauded it. But still. I just can’t believe she’s gone.

How do I count the ways I loved her?

I’ll start with the books. From her early collection of columns and her autobiographical novel Heartburn to her more recent books about aging, I Feel Bad About My Neck and I Remember Nothing, her writing had a major influence on me. She taught me that women could be smart and funny and truthful – the heroines of their own stories, never the victim of them. She made writing look easy enough that I felt emboldened to try it, even as her short, simple sentences were the essence of perfect comic timing. She had a unique way of saying something caustic and cynical even as she allowed us to see what a romantic she was. I’ve re-read all of her books so many times that I can practically recite her words from memory.

And then there were her films. I admired how she came from the print world – the journalism world – and yet plunged headlong into screenwriting with Silkwood and, soon after, hit her stride with When Harry Met Sally. She became the queen of writer-directors, never failing to carry the torch for stories about women. Sleepless in Seattle and You’ve Got Mail were as charming and sweet as they were witty and sly, and nobody’s written a romantic comedy since with her level of sophistication.

Even her opinion pieces in newspapers, magazines and blogs were knowing and clever. She had a gift, plain and simple. I’m so damn sad that there won’t be more coming from her fertile mind.

I think I’ll celebrate her life tonight by pulling out my dogeared copy of Heartburn – for the 7,000th time.

Being A Pirate

June 6, 2012

Here’s how I spent the afternoon recently: posing as a pirate with my friend Tim at the Ventura Harbor.

I don’t love my hat – it looks like something the ladies wore at Queen Elizabeth’s Diamond Jubilee – but I’m rocking the hook and the belt.

Before the picture-taking, four of us went to Brophy’s for lunch at my suggestion. I’d had good meals at the branch in Santa Barbara so I figured the Ventura restaurant would be just as good. Wrong. My friends got their clam chowder at the same time as their entrees, my shrimp was undercooked, and Michael’s fried shrimp platter was bland and the consistency of cardboard.

The moral of the story? Not all Brophy’s are created equal.

Prince Charles Makes "The Ridiculist"

May 23, 2012

I cracked up tonight when Anderson Cooper announced that the subject of his “Ridiculist” was the one and only Princes Charles.

For starters, doesn’t Chuck look like he’s either dying for a cocktail or had a few too many?

And hasn’t he ever heard of sunscreen? Or is it high blood pressure that causes the flush?

In any case, it’s good to see him “loosen up,” if that’s what he’s doing.

A Farewell to Kristen Wiig

May 20, 2012

I didn’t stay up to watch Mick Jagger and the SNL gang bid farewell to cast member Kristen Wiig last night, but I watched clips this morning. I have to say that I’ve always hated it when my favorite comedians “graduate” from the show to pursue their movie careers; it makes me feel abandoned. But I’d do the same thing in their position. The grind of doing a weekly show must get old after awhile, so why shouldn’t they leave?

And Wiig so deserves the success she’s sure to find with a broader audience. She’s so talented, whether she’s doing an impersonation of a well known figure or creating a character out of whole cloth. She’s even funny when she’s reading bad poetry.

But her breakout role was, of course, the one she wrote for herself in “Bridesmaids.” I still laugh every time I see her in this scene.

I’ll miss her on SNL, but I’m a fan and can’t wait to see what she does next.

Oopsie, Bloomberg News Woman

May 14, 2012

A few weeks ago, one of the female reporters on the local Santa Barbara news channel, KEYT, was caught stuffing her blouse into her skirt when the camera went to her for a story. I guess she had just come from the bathroom and didn’t have time to pull herself together.

But then things often go awry at our little TV station. Take this clip, for instance.

I just take it for granted that there will be slip-ups here, because we’re a small town. But when I heard about the Bloomberg News thing today, I really laughed. The expression on the poor woman’s face is priceless. She does a great job of covering though – literally.

http://youtu.be/jMg5EWN749I

Sat Night TV: White House Correspondents' Dinner

April 28, 2012

I never watch CSpan, but I actually recorded the dinner tonight. Why? I thought Obama killed it last year and I’m a fan of Jimmy Kimmel, so I figured this year’s event would be worth a look.

So many good jokes, as well as plenty of misses.

Loved the setup with the open mic when Obama was off stage. The toilet flushing was hilarious.

Loved the Prez’s delivery – from his jabs at himself to his lines about his GOP rivals. (The bit about Kim Kardashian, on the other hand, was unoriginal; she’s an easy target these days.)

Loved Kimmel’s jokes about Obama’s ears, the Secret Service, the dog eating, Michelle’s diet and health initiative. But he was talking way too fast, as if he was either really nervous or really worried about the clock. The host of these shindigs should take a more leisurely approach, in my humble opinion.

Mostly, what I enjoyed was seeing the journalists who cover politics get their due – from the parties to the awards. They work hard – whether in broadcasting or print – and tonight was their night to shine.