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Who We Are and Why We're Doing This |
| Introduction: Brandon
Stahl and Cheryl Solimini began emailing back and forth when Cheryl, an
otherwise successful author,
lost an unfortunate bet and was forced to submit an article to LostBrain.com.
The correspondences that took place between the two turned out to be almost
as funny as Slate's
Breakfast Table, so we decided to violate Cheryl's privacy and publish
them.
From: Brandon Stahl Every email from you is guaranteed at least two to three laughs. Would you write my obituary? So, just out of curiosity I typed in Cheryl Solimini in google (you
know, standard background check done three weeks after you've written
for us) and it turns out you're a publishing
goddess. I suddenly felt so inadequate when compared to your five
(count 'em) five published books and three gagillion published articles.
It's going to take awhile for my inferiority complex to handle this. -Brandon
From: Cheryl Solimini Though I sure do like that goddess label, what does my glorious publishing history mean, when I've been living a lie? It's amazing what a person will do to keep a roof over her head, food in her fridge and a life-size replica of the Indianapolis Speedway on her front lawn. I'm not proud of what I've done, but I just hope it's not too late to make amends. And damn it! You have your own Website! You're an editor, an publisher, an entrepreneur. [That "an" with "publisher" was deliberate, by the way-not a typo.] And as Ann Landers would say, nobody can make you feel inferior without your permission. (That Annie is an old gasbag, isn't she?) Have a superior weekend. Please spend part of it figuring out how I can make $money$ by writing entertaining E mails in my spare time from my own home. P.S. I went to see Modern Humorist Live at The Knitting Factory in NYC Wednesday night. The only time I laughed was when the waitperson told me my Diet Coke was $6. And that laugh was bitter.
From: Brandon Stahl "Indubitubuly old chum. Quite right," I respond. "Their
take on humor doesn't seem to be modern at all, but stuck
From: Cheryl Solimini I saw David Sedaris Live only three Sundays ago at the John Harms Center in Englewood, NJ. (No reason for all that detail except as an exercise in warding off Alzheimer's. HE did not suck. I laughed heartily even during the question-and-answer period. I already have a gay boyfriend, but perhaps it's the France part that's the charm. If only the French didn't live there as well. (I'm not sure why I have this hatred of the French. Maybe it's because of their arrogance in not pronouncing anything that comes after the first syllable of a word. As if we should all just KNOW what they're trying to say. Oh, yeah. Now I remember. That's why I hate the French.) Actually, perhaps we should just publish our E mails and see if anyone knows what we're trying to say. One of my earliest memories (before this Alzheimer's thing started kicking in) was sneaking "The Groucho Letters" out of the adult section of my local public library. (I guess I was underage, though at the time I looked 32 and still the librarian carded me.) It was a compilation of correspondence between Mr. Marx and his....correspondents, one of whom was T.S. Eliot. The literary world is ready for something like that again. What does this have to do with us? Depends on which one of us is Marx and which one is Eliot. I think I could pass for either, under the right fluorescent light. (I was just showing off that I could spell "fluorescent" without looking it up. Which I just did, and I was right.) Forgive me. I'm getting bronchitis and I haven't been able to score any Zithromax. That's the best excuse I could come up with for this E mail. (Please don't include it in the compilation.)
-Brandon Stahl |