Longtime readers know that many years ago, I opened an envelope in my mail that contained a hastily handwritten letter and a small, poorly Xeroxed photograph of Ed McMahon. Unlike other mysterious envelopes that came in the mail along these lines, I was not promised millions of dollars. Indeed, money was never one of the promised options — at least not immediately. But there was the promise of a mysterious potato salad recipe and guitar lessons. Both of these promised to be of a very special nature that would win me friends, further my career, and earn me more invites to BDSM parties than a teenager’s libido could possibly handle. The latter was a particularly ideal prospect, because, as the letter put it, the party invites would mean getting the opportunity to place many local political figures in sexually humiliating positions.
For all this to happen, all I’d have to do is meet a thin, cadaverous man at a crossroads and continue to mention any news involving Jonathan Ames on these pages. Well, I showed up at the crossroads in question. And the man never showed up. But being a man of my word, here is the latest piece of Jonathan Ames news.
A few years ago, Jonathan Ames did not meet a man at a crossroads and, to this very day, does not know how to make potato salad. But he did shoot a TV pilot called What’s Not to Love? And Showtime will at long last be airing this on Tuesday, December 18th at 11:30 PM, as well as on Showtime Showcase on December 19 at 1:25 AM and Showtime Too on December 20 at 4:30 AM and December 26 at 3:15 AM.
In other words, Showtime has decided that the ideal audience for Jonathan Ames’s pilot are speed freaks and insomniacs. So if you don’t have a sleeping problem or you’re not sitting on a Sudafed stockpile for ideal home brew, be sure to set your TiVo options if you have them!
The Call by Yannick Murphy: The always interesting author of Here They Come and Signed, Mata Hari returns with a novel that whips up a worldview from a rather quirky set of limitations: namely, the call logs that a veterinarian maintains as his son is unexpectedly put into a coma and an unforgiving economy denies him work. What emerges is a surprisingly optimistic, often funny, and very moving account on how one family uses acceptance and forgiveness as a way to atone for hard knocks. (
Birds of Paradise by Diana Abu-Jaber: Forget Franzen and Eugenides. If you're looking for a social novel that counts, Diana Abu-Jaber is the author you're looking for. Building from the free-form exploration of consciousness and identity in Crescent and the gripping procedural structure of Origin, Abu-Jaber's latest novel is her finest, equally fluent with gutterpunk culture and smarmy real estate men. It has been suggested by The Washington Post's Ron Charles that you will likely gain some pounds while reading this novel. This is certainly true. Abu-Jaber's description of food is so precise that it often made me want to do more cooking. But I very much admired the way in which Abu-Jaber presents all her characters as unwitting victims of rough capitalism, which permits them some dignity even as they perform terrible acts.
The Last of the Live Nude Girls by Sheila McClear: This memoir isn't so much about the decline of the Times Square peepshow, as it is about one young woman's efforts to pull herself up by by her bootstraps when presented with few economic options. Filled with self-introspective candor and a quiet dignity, McClear's story is one that might befall any of us in these volatile times. While McClear does get back on her feet, her book leads one contemplating the terrible fates of other young women now moving to New York and falling into deadlier vocations. (