"Daughter of Destiny: Benazir Bhutto, 1953-2007", by Christopher Hitchens

Hitchens provides a multi-strand analysis of Bhutto's complex tenure, exile, return, and assassination. From today's Slate:

http://www.slate.com/id/2180952/

When I was a kid and my mom would listen to Dolly Parton, my reaction was...

...usually "Mo-ther!" Throughout my pre-pubescent years and then junior high and high school, I loved Donna Summer and Elton John and then the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and the Who and then the Police and R.E.M. and Bob Dylan and could not figure out what my mom heard in this big-haired lady who was even more voluptuous than either of us. (I developed at ten. Yeah, I know.) Of course, as an adult, I've come to appreciate the lilting, soulful twang of Dolly's voice and songs and the warmth of her singular persona. Much like I did with my dad regarding Frank Sinatra, I retroactively apologized to Mom regarding Dolly. (I should note here that I have one of the few moms who pushed her kids to read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas when they were in college and, obviously, she was spot-on with that one, too. Mom's artistic radar is finely tuned.)

As I wrote a few weeks ago, I would be fine if it were already January 2nd. It's not that I'm holiday-averse, but in recent years I've become holiday-neutral. I enjoy sending and receiving cards and reconnecting with loved ones, but I haven't put up a tree since '04 and could do without the incessant carols and forced cheerfulness. However, this brief holiday greeting from the tinseled Ms. Parton is tastier than sugar cookie icing licked straight from the bowl and should warm even the frostiest heart:

http://www.dollypartonmusic.net/site.php?content=splash

Happy holidays, all!

Much love,
Litsa

If you're having a shit-laden day, I suggest reading...

...this piece on "locked-in syndrome" (total body paralysis, except for controlled eye movement) and the new breakthroughs that are turning thoughts into speech. The developments lend genuine hope, are scientifically invigorating, and shift garden variety crapitude into perspective. If I ran the world (and who's to say I won't?), Dr. Phil Kennedy, Dr. Frank Guenther, and their research peers would receive the kind of salary that (fuckwad) Alex Rodriguez apparently found insufficient.

From today's CNN.com, "Scientists seek to help 'locked-in' man speak":

http://www.cnn.com/2007/HEALTH/conditions/12/14/locked.in/index.html

Though I can think of a few he left off:

I often agree with Bill Maher's larger points--years ago in Salon he wrote one of my favorite political essays, excoriating the South for not supporting presidential candidates from the rest of the country, and telling them, essentially, to get the fuck over the Confederacy--but I think he's reflexively self-congratulatory, lacking in introspection, and seemingly, a bit of a douche. (Does anyone else remember when he mocked developmentally disabled kids on a segment of "Politically Incorrect"?)

Still, his new piece for Rolling Stone, "Dickheads of the Year: My Picks for the Biggest Assholes of 2007", should be added to school curriculums nationwide:

http://www.rollingstone.com/photos/gallery/17538811/dickheads_of_the_year/photo/1/large

Three new interviews worth your time and money:

1) Ricky Gervais talks to New York Magazine's Adam Sternbergh about the end of Extras, concocting the funny, and his loathing for those who perpetuate mediocrity:

http://nymag.com/arts/tv/features/41525/



2) In Blender's cover story, Jay-Z and Chris Norris discuss how the film, American Gangster, inspired Jay-Z's disc of the same name, why the instantaneousness of mp3s creates a disposable musical culture, and how money can blunt the power of racism:

http://www.blender.com/guide/articles.aspx?ID=2962



3) My gifted and cherished friend, Eric Spitznagel, interviews Tina Fey in the current issue of Playboy, pages 47 through 54. (I'd provide the link, but it's print-only.) The result draws more blood than a drunk wielding a staple gun and unveils the kind of insight rarely seen this side of mukti.

Two of my favorite quotes:

"Will Ferrell tried to stab me once. We had been up all night writing skits for the guy from Dawson's Creek--James Van Der Beek. And you know, it was SNL, so we were all hopped up on goofballs, out of our minds on quaaludes and horse antibiotics. I foolishly made a disparaging joke about Will's skit. I was like, 'Really, dude? A hat salesman who's afraid of hats? That's the best you can come up with?' And he lunged at me with a letter opener. I remember thinking, This guy's a genius. It would be an honor to be killed by him."

And:

"It's this weird fetish with ladies who look like erasers. Holes is holes, as I like to say, but I don't understand the cultural obsession with these weird mental children with orange skin and bleached-out Barbie hair and boyish hips and big fake choppers. They're so close to being trannies. I sometimes feel like, Who are these creatures? And they certainly don't exist only in this magazine. They're everywhere, and that's a reflection of our culture. It's like the difference in our food since the 1970s. It has become overprocessed with all the trans fats. Maybe we need to get organic with these ladies."

TNB on KERO TV:

It's a Catch 22 whenever writers publicly discuss the impetus to write, the psychological effects of isolation, and the mechanics of the publishing industry. For the most part, those who don't write won't understand because they can't. And while I think it's wise to acknowledge the obstacles in any field, I think it's just as unwise to focus on them. So I don't agree with all the opinions expressed therein, but I'm delighted to see the The Nervous Breakdown getting the attention it deserves. Well done, Mr. Belardes!

Nick Belardes reports from Los Angeles for ABC affiliate, KERO Channel 23, on the literary site my compadres and I write for, The Nervous Breakdown:

http://www.turnto23.com/news/14784755/detail.html

Perhaps the most disturbing thing about the new allegations against Senator Larry Craig...

...is that members of both genders seem willing to let him route around their privates. Unless he smells like lilacs and sweats money, I don't understand how this transpires.

More:

http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/story?id=3946314&page=1

Or if I wore a shirt that says, "HELLENIC IN A HANDBASKET":

I snagged fresh egg rolls at the QFC deli and just popped them in the oven, drizzled w/ sesame and olive oils and surrounded by a julienned red pepper.

As I was about to toss the packaging, I noticed the brand logo (see above) and that the label proclaimed said contents, "ASIANTIZERS".

Admittedly, this is an 11 on the Obvious Scale and I'm on an important deadline and a bit punchy, but there is something so delightfully ridiculous about all of this that I could only be happier if Ronzoni deemed its noodles, "ITALIANDINNER".

"Good night, Mr. Bronson! Sleep tight!"

A commenter posted this clip on Jezebel today and while I've never really gotten into YouTube and think Jezebel, unfortunately, might be past its expiration date, this '70s Japanese commercial Charles Bronson did for the cologne, Mandom, might be the apotheosis of nut-studded cheeseball goodness:

I happen to be reading (and for the most part, enjoying) Jon Krakauer's...

...Into Thin Air, so I was pleased to discover that Chris Elliott has spoofed ITA and other outdoor adventure tomes with his new "novel", Into Hot Air. He elaborates in an interview with the Seattle Times' Mark Rahner:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/books/2004028288_chriselliott25.html

Is it January 1st yet?

Just checking.

Disparateness:

1) I wrote "Fifty Questions for God" during the summer of 2003, when I was incredibly sick and it seemed as if I'd fallen out of time. It was originally published in the literary journal, The Kitchen Sink, in June 2005 and I posted it last week, in a slightly tweaked form, on The Nervous Breakdown:

http://www.thenervousbreakdown.com/litsa_dremousis/2007/11/fifty-questions.html

2) About once or twice a week, someone lands on this blog after Googling "CFIDS". It's worth noting that in recent months, my mom (who has an acute form of fibromyalgia) and I have benefited from taking coenzyme q10 once daily. We're still symptomatic to the degree that we usually are, but we're able to do more within the course of the day. Detailed info on coenzyme q10 from the Mayo Clinic:

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/coenzyme-q10/NS_patient-coenzymeq10

And because I had to explain CFIDS again this week to someone who really ought to know better by now, how about a refresher course from the Centers for Disease Control?

http://www.cdc.gov/cfs/cfssymptoms.htm

http://www.cdc.gov/cfs/cfsbasicfacts.htm

And from the CFIDS Association of America?

http://www.cfids.org/about-cfids/fact-sheet.asp

3) As everyone with an intact cerebellum knows, Mr. Alexie deservedly won the National Book Award last week. I raise my iced single soy mocha in cheer! Extra baklava forthcoming.

4) And this morning I discovered one of the more prescient quotes in recorded human history:

"In certain trying circumstances, urgent circumstances, desperate circumstances, profanity furnishes a relief denied even to prayer."--Mark Twain

New York update:

As some of you know, I received extremely good news the third week of August, just as I was getting ready to move.

The truncated version is that within a week of one another, an agent at Linda Chester read one of my short stories, Googled me, read more of my work, discovered I'm writing a novel, asked me to send the first two chapters, then an agent at Levine Greenberg read one of my essays and did the exact same thing. I explained to my Esquire editor that I would need time to focus on my book and he sweetly replied, "We're like Motel Six. We'll keep the light on for you."

All meetings in New York last week went extremely well. I'm not being cryptic, but there is so much left to do and this isn't the forum in which to discuss it. As I've told TJ, Eric, and my mom, as I hard as I think this is going to be, it's going to be harder. I feel ready, though.

(Shhh, don't tell anyone: the bunnies write every word.)

Knowing one's place on the food chain and very old as opposed to recently dead bodies:

1) I watched an interview with Senator Joe Biden earlier today and while I generally like him, I couldn't help but notice he imbues each of his words with quasi-weighty melodramatic undertones. It's like he's Blake Carrington's heretofore undiscovered younger brother, Buck, and he's returned to to Denver to claim his rightful place in the clan. You can almost hear him intoning, "Damn it, Alexis, don't talk to me like I'm a ranch hand!" He insisted during the course of the tete a tete that he will be the nominee and that he won't accept the Vice President slot, but that, of course, is crap because almost no one besides his mom and eight other people views him as presidential and being one lodged piece of Beef Wellinton away from the top spot is better than playing craps with Harry Reid and Chris Dodd for the the rest of one's life.

2) From a scientific standpoint, the new pictures of the unmasked King Tut are fascinating. But they have been all the fuck over the news for the past 24 hours and while none of us would be okay with viewing photos of someone's neighbor lying in the morgue, we seem to be fine with looking at the Boy King's mottled flesh over our phad see ew and spring rolls because, after all, he's been dead a really long time. I feel like I missed a meeting on this one.

[I get on a plane in eight hours. Yippee!]

Because tales of coitus-induced seizures never grow old:

I resurrected a short essay first published on The Black Table for The Nervous Breakdown. Originally called, "Seizure Sex", now in its slightly different form, it's titled "Halloween, 1993":

http://www.thenervousbreakdown.com/litsa_dremousis/2007/10/halloween-1993.html

"I'm not going to be happy until every human being on the planet has read something I've written"

Two years ago I interviewed Sherman Alexie for the second time. The interview was going to be a centerpiece of a theme issue for a magazine that I had written for a number of times before. The editors decided to scrap said theme and the interview hung in limbo for nine months before the managing editor killed it.

I've interviewed dozens of individuals from Wanda Sykes to Ron Jeremy and Alexie remains among my favorites, both because his art impacts my life and because he is boundlessly intelligent. He sends my mom the sweetest thank you notes when she sends him baklava, plus, he is the only person who's ever had the balls to write her and say, "Could you please send more?"

Alexie's new book, the autobiographical young adult novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian, was just nominated for a National Book Award. What follows is the introduction to and an excerpt from the interview that never ran. It went up this morning on the literary site I write for, The Nervous Breakdown:

http://www.thenervousbreakdown.com/litsa_dremousis/2007/10/by-litsa-drem-1.html

Pop culture mysteries from the past 24 hours:

1) Why does each vocalist--male or female--featured on the soundtrack to any given episode of Grey's Anatomy sound like Dave Matthews with an estrogen patch?

2) How many of Satan's loads did Dane Cook have to swallow before he got booked into Seattle's massive Key Arena for his upcoming show?

3) Aaron Sorkin is one of the most astute writers in any medium, so why did no one associated with the marketing of his new play, The Farnsworth Invention, kill the um-yeah-no-shit tag line featured in its ads, "The turning point of the 20th century wasn't on television. It was television."?

4) Might we all agree that Carrie Fisher's guest star appearance last night on Tina Fey's wickedly brilliant 30 Rock indicates the possibility of a wise and loving God or universe? (This isn't a "mystery" so much as a question underscoring the potential commonality of all sentient beings.)

"If goodness is assured an ultimate victory over evil, we are in a comedy, and I must say it is an ugly farce...

...considering how we suffer in the course of the contest."

Norman Mailer is interviewed by Michael Lennon in New York Magazine regarding their new book, On God:

http://nymag.com/news/features/38961/

Insightful comments my father made recently that touch, in part, on smoking

1) "Being a writer is like being a smoker. Deep down, you either are or you're not. And either way, you know it."

2) "I like that people in this neighborhood [Capitol Hill, where I recently moved] are unapologetic about smoking. You don't see them crouched and sheepish about it."

[Note: Dad quit smoking in 1974. Safe bet, however, that his version of an afterlife includes Kents.]

I wonder who the dead woman was and why no one claimed her:

From Reuters via Yahoo!:

Notorious Dr. Crippen wrongly hanged, scientists say

Excerpt:

By Michael Kahn

LONDON (Reuters) - It was sensational stuff that riveted a nation: A mild-mannered American doctor poisons then dismembers his unfaithful wife, flees England in disguise with his mistress -- and is caught, tried and hanged.

The problem is that the poisoned corpse that sent Dr Hawley Crippen to the gallows in London in 1910 was not that of his wife, according to new evidence found by U.S. researchers.

A team led by John Trestrail, head of the regional poison centre in Grand Rapids, Michigan, took mitochondrial DNA -- genetic material passed on through the mother -- from a tissue sample from the corpse kept in a London museum.

They then compared it with samples from three of Cora Crippen's female descendants, found after a 7-year search.

"That body was not Cora Crippen's," said David Foran, a forensic biologist at Michigan State University. "We don't know who that body was or how it got there."

More:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071016/sc_nm/science_crippen_dc