I think that as a general rule lonely people give other lonely people money a lot.

"I'm not saying that I ever expect you to toe the line or anything as insubstantial and conformist as that; I hope that you will do quite the opposite and question everything--teachers, coaches, priests, lawmakers, prime-time television shows, magazine ads, top-forty deejays, and any intellectual analgesic that could numb the senses and lure you into rote compliance like it has done to the vast, flimsy-minded flock of sheep that is America."

I guess I just have a thing for the Rapp brothers.

That is a piece of a letter that Peter wrote to his little brother Jamie (aka Punkzilla). In the same letter, Peter goes on to tell his fourteen-year-old brother that he has cancer. Jamie, desperate to see his big brother before he dies, has to get from Portland, Oregon to Memphis, Tennessee.

And when Jamie starts his journey, he's still feeling the meth from last night.

This novel is written in letters that aren't necessarily in order, but they are all dated. Jamie doesn't have the best syntax or punctuation, but he has the most beautiful thoughts sometimes, and he writes down every single one of them.

As a sucker for the Rapp boys and epistolary narrative style and stream of consciousness writing, I had no chance to escape this one.

This week my son thinks he's the Supremes. All of them. So we can scratch "straight" off the list.

I never had a chance to dislike this book.

My Most Excellent Year: How do I love thee? Let me count the ways:

1. Musical theatre--I will put up with a lot of nonsense for a good musical theatre reference. I'm glad this did not have to be one of those times.

2. Epistolary narrative style--I'm a sucker for this stuff. It's the characterization and the raw beauty of stream of consciousness thought. I know that sounds strange coming from the punctuation fiend, but I can appreciate something that stirs empathy (Faulkner and e e cummings both have crazy punctuation, too, and I still love them with all of my heart and soul).

3. Diva of the week--Liza? Angela Lansbury? This is such an excellent idea that I may steal it from him. I think I'll start with Idina.

4. This quote--"And while I was tucking him in, I realized that we'd never had the "I'm gay" conversation. Has this generation finally made it superfluous? If only."

Basically, this book is a ton of fun. It's super cheesey most of the time, and it's far too happy...

...but we all need that once in a while, right?

A bit for fellow procrastinators to consider

I found this on a site that I'm loving called Good Reads. You can connect it with your Facebook account, and they have a system of book reviews, quotes, authors, other book-nerdy stuff. I highly recommend that you check it out!

"Who has never killed an hour? Not casually or without thought, but carefully: a premeditated murder of minutes. The violence comes from a combination of giving up, not caring, and a resignation that getting past it is all you can hope to accomplish. So you kill the hour. You do not work, you do not read, you do not daydream. If you sleep it is not because you need to sleep. And when at last it is over, there is no evidence: no weapon, no blood, and no body. The only clue might be the shadows beneath your eyes or a terribly thin line near the corner of your mouth indicating something has been suffered, that in the privacy of your life you have lost something and the loss is too empty to share." --Mark Z. Danielewski, Author of House of Leaves

Without You: a Memoir of Love, Loss and the Musical Rent

"What? I thought that this was a blog about literature...isn't he some actor on Broadway? He was in that one show...what's it called...Rent, right?"

Yes. He is an actor on Broadway--an AMAZING actor, singer and playwright on Broadway. He is also, as most do not know, an author. His brother, Adam Rapp, is an author and is more well-known in the literary world. Anthony has only written one book, Without You: a Memoir of Love, Loss and the Musical Rent. I still have about twenty pages left, and have for quite some time. Basically, I can't stand for it to end. It is one of the most beautifully written memoirs I've ever read. Don't take my word for it; here are some of my favourite parts.

As they were working on Rent, Jonathon Larson brought in a friend of his, Cy O'Neal to talk about the organization Friends in Deed. The scenes depicting the Life Support group in Rent were based on this group, so Jonathon felt it was necessary for them to grasp the concept of the real organization.

* "Well," Cy began, "at Friends, we come from the point of view that, in life, there are no accidents. It's all okay. There is nothing really ever wrong. Everything in life is exactly the way that it should be, very simply because that's the way it is. There is no other way that it can be."
...
Intrigued and stirred up, I raised my hand and asked, "If you're saying you come from the point of view that nothing's ever wrong, that everything's always okay, what do you do with anger and sadness and grief when something bad happens?"
...
"There's nothing wrong with grief. It's an entirely appropriate response. Of course we feel grief. The trouble is, in our culture, there isn't always a lot of permission for people to grieve. And so we think that we shouldn't go through it, and we stifle it down, because it's not allowed. And that's when we get into trouble."

This is by far the most real and devastating descriptions of death that I have ever encountered. Anthony's mother died moments before his flight left New York to go home. He asked his aunt to leave the body so that he could have a chance to say goodbye.

* My hand gripped the doorknob and quickly closed the door behind me. A sound began to emerge from my throat, from my gut, from my chest, a moan I had never heard myself make, a low sound, a horrible, frightening sound, and though I had already shed so many tears, there were fresh ones, streaming down my face, uncontrolled, unbidden, wet and wet and wet, and there was Mom, or rather there was her body, her shell, beautifully laid there on the bed, in a simple white nightgown, under her simple white quilt, a simply white rose resting on her chest. It was clear that she had been tenderly settled there by Robert or Terry, and I was so grateful that they had taken such care, and I was grateful to get the chance to see her one more time, and at the same time, I was more certain than I had ever been that we are not contained in our bodies; there was nothing left of my mother in that shell on that bed, that impossibly pale body that only slightly resembled Mom. It was far, far too pale and still and, well--dead, yes dead, she was dead, dead dead dead--and I would have given anything at all to have one more chance, one more moment to tell her I loved her--even though I knew she knew it--and to hold her hand, and then I reached over and touched her hand, and my fingers felt her cold and rubbery dead dead dead skin, and there was no life in that skin, no sense of her, no possible way that all of who she was--all of the love she had, all of the life she lived, all of her mistakes and all of her energy and all of her friends' and family's love for her--there was no way that all of that was contained in that body, that empty dead body.
...
Then the door opened and Adam poked his head in. "Are you okay?" he said.
I wanted to say of course I'm not okay I'm not at all okay I'm in agony I hate this more than anything I've ever hated before in my life, and all of that time I was waiting for her to die, all of that time we spent laughing about it and hoping for this moment, all of that time, I would give it all back ten thousand times over to not have to go through this right now, what I'm going through right now, I hate myself for ever having said or thought those things, no I'm not okay. But instead I caught my breath and said, "Yeah."

e e cummings

I admit it--I love this man with all of my heart and soul. He embodies all things beautiful in the English language. Unlike most English lovers, I am an advocate for grammar experimentation, particularly through punctuation, much like that for which my friend Edward Estlin is often acknowledged. Here are a few of my favourite bits from his poems:

* and eddieandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it's
spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful

* every finger shall have its ring
and there won't be a single place dark or unhappy

* what's beyond logic happens beneath will;
nor can these moments be translated: i say
that even after April
by God there is no excuse for May

* why then to Hell with that: the other; this,
since the thing perhaps is
to eat flowers and not to be afraid

* since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things

* for life's not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

* down above all with love
and everything perverse
or which makes some feel more better
when all ought to feel less worse

* may my heart always be open to little
birds who are the secrets of living
whatever they sing is better than to know

* I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance

* deeds cannot dream what dreams can do

* eyes
know if a
lit tle
tree listens

* i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

That's just the ones I have on me. God, his words and his lack of words are just...utter bliss.