Happy Veteran's Day!

Last year at this time, I had just a few readers, so odds are you haven't seen this post about my favorite vet. It's adapted from my book, so if you've read it, you already know about Paul.

Happy Veterans Day and thanks to all who have served and currently serve our country.

When you’re laughing your ass off, nobody cares how big it is

One of my dearest friends turns 51 tomorrow. I met Kathy in 1976 during her freshman year (my sophomore year) when we were students at the State University of New York at Plattsburgh and since then we’ve had a million beers and as many laughs together. You know how some people get after they get married, have kids, and work a professional-level job--all boring and grown up? Not Kathy. She’s a friggin’ blast.

Over the years, we’ve taken countless “girls’ trips” to places like Lake Placid, Montreal, Newport, Burlington, New Orleans, Las Vegas, to name a few. On our last trip we spent a fabulous weekend in Sedona with our fellow Plattsburgh friend, Maggie.


One of my all-time favorite things to do is to drink beer and shoot pool with Kathy in a dive bar with a great classic rock band, and that’s exactly what we did when we raised hell in the biker bar last year at the Connor Hotel in Jerome, AZ. I can picture her now, grinning broadly with her eyes closed, playing air drums (not air guitar like most people). Goddamn! Just having that image in my mind makes me so very happy! We had so much fun, laughing our asses off. You know how sometimes you have those “life-gasmic” moments when you could simply burst with joy?

Kathy is so freakin' awesome and she's the most loyal friend on earth. But oh, I didn’t tell you... Kathy is overweight. I'm sure that's what the charts would say.

But it doesn’t matter.

I'll say it again: it doesn’t f*cking matter. The whole goddamn universe is overweight. My mother, my sisters, three-quarters of my BFFs... So what?

When you’re laughing your ass off, nobody cares how big it is.

One of my favorite friends at work has lost 80 pounds over the past year. I’m thrilled that no doubt she’s at a healthier weight and she must be enjoying quite a boost to her self-esteem, but seriously, I can’t say her sarcasm is more entertaining or her smile more endearing since the weight’s been off. Everything I adore about her now was there a year ago, too; she hasn’t suddenly become a more worthwhile or valuable person.

I’m telling myself this as much as I’m telling you. I'm not even overweight and I bitch about it. And God knows I’ve wasted half my life fretting over my fine, thin, shitty hair. But seriously, do you think any of my beloved friends loves me an iota less because of it? It’s a pretty safe bet that no one at my wake is going to say, “Linda would have been so much more awesome if it weren’t for that crap on her head.”

Let’s stop this, huh? Let’s stop being so hard on ourselves; let’s not treat every goddamn imperfection like it’s the end of the world. Nobody cares. It doesn’t matter.

Although Jesus H, can you imagine if I actually had beautiful, long hair? Can you imagine how full of myself I’d be then?

And BTW, Kathy has gorgeous thick hair.

Happy Birthday, Katter!

I used to think I was a female Larry David, but now I think I'm a female Ricky Gervais. Either way, I'm being awfully complimentary to myself...

... but that's nothing new.

Did you happen to see Ricky Gervais on Letterman last Friday night? He was talking about how the older he gets, the more he's annoyed by everything and I was like, "YES!"

He said, for example, he gets annoyed when he's in an empty restaurant and the waitress sits people right next to him and he has to listen to them chew, and how every other little noise drives him insane (short trip), but the best was when he talked about his intolerance for people who are late. He said something like, "I'm always 20 minutes early, so when someone shows up 10 minutes late, they've kept me waiting for half an hour."

[Picture me sitting on my couch with the stains from my kids' beer parties shouting "Amen, brother!" like a black person in church. (How's that for a stereotype?)]

And then he said something like, "I just can't imagine why people wouldn't want to rush to see me," at which point I turned into an octogenarian in an assisted living home and yelled, "BINGO!"

So maybe the perfect man does exist for me. Yeah, he's a short, pudgy, pasty little guy who obviously dyes his hair and has fang teeth... but he does have a killer sense of humor and an English accent. And as you know, I can overlook a lot for that.

Bastard Husband newsflash and the crap on Facebook (literally)

GREAT NEWS! Thursday night I met with Joe Lowers, my comic friend who runs the showroom at Alexis Park, where I had my book launch party. He’s encouraged me to create a one-woman show around my book and he wants to produce it. We’re looking at opening mid-January.

A one-woman show has been in the back of my mind for a while. It's something I think I'd really like doing--more than stand-up. We still have a lot of details to work out, but the concept is on its way to becoming a reality, and like everything else, I just have to take the steps to get there, one foot in front of the other.

I’m very psyched. And what a great motivator to get back in shape—years of sitting on my ass at the keyboard is really starting to take its toll.

Of course, if you’re a Bastard Husband: A Love Story Facebook fan, you’ve already heard this big news. Did I tell you I love Facebook? I used to love MySpace, too, but like a lot of people, I’ve given that up since there’s only so much of that social networking stuff you can possibly do without having it consume your life. It seems most people these days are on Facebook, so Facebook is it for me now. Twitter can still kiss my ass, and earlier this week I deleted my Linked In profile. I just decided I don’t want to play the corporate game anymore; it’s not a ladder I ever wanted to climb in the first place. And my sarcastic updates like, “Linda is busy writing TPS reports” simply couldn’t be helping.

One of my friends at work poo-poos Facebook, saying, “I don’t need to hear from former classmates and others from my past. I didn’t care about those people then, why would I care about them now?” I’m the exact opposite. I love to hear from people from my past! I love hearing about their lives and what they’re up to. People mean a lot to me, even if I haven’t seen them in years. This morning I heard from a girl I knew since first grade who wrote to tell me she’s enjoying my book. Yesterday I got the sweetest message on Facebook from the daughter of my best friend from high school—it was the highlight of my day.

And of course, Facebook makes it easy to catch up with my brother and sisters. Like earlier this week when my sister Stacie posted this:

Stacie is not in the mood to potty train.

Her subsequent comment:

The diaper was off for about 10 minutes and she shit on the rug and I stepped in it and I cried. I’ll remember this for a while.

Then:

Can you wait at least until tomorrow to admit to laughing? It happened about 4 minutes before I had to get Charlie from the bus and I still haven’t gone back to clean it up yet. I’m thinking of just throwing it out instead. I never did like that rug.

So that little exchange prompted my sister Lori to send me this message:

Can you believe Stacie left the shit on her rug? What if a robber comes in and thinks she shits on her rug?

I was like, I know! That’s exactly why I make my bed every morning, even if I’m running late for work—what if a robber comes in and thinks I’m the type who doesn’t make my bed? And if the robber has to take a shit, I hope he uses the guest bathroom since no boys are allowed in mine.

Are you, too, thoughtful when it comes to robbers? Any special accommodations?

Which social networking sites do you frequent? Are you on MySpace anymore? Can Twitter kiss your ass, too?

And can you believe this little angel would shit on the rug?

Hey, you know what today would have been? My thirty-second wedding anniversary.

Yep, back on November 5, 1977, my first husband, Chris, and I got married up in Plattsburgh, NY, where we were going to school. We had a small wedding with just immediate family and friends in a church on Lake Champlain, just steps away from our favorite dive bar on Royal Street, the Deliri.

Man, we had a lot of good times in that place. And the night before our wedding, Chris had way too good a time. A bunch of guys took him out for one last night on the town before settling into married life and OMG, I don’t know what they did to him, but he was so friggin’ hung over the next day—to this day I’ve never seen anyone hurting like that.

Chris was literally shaking as we said our vows and he could hardly move or speak. Believe me, I was pissed! We were totally in love, but I remember thinking, “If I weren’t six months pregnant, I would NEVER marry you.” Ha!


I think that was taken with one of those cameras with the rotating flash cube. Look how fat my face is--and I bet I weighed all of 120 pounds.

After the ceremony a bunch of us went out to dinner and Chris was still so sick, he couldn’t get out of the car. Somebody at the table told the waitress we were celebrating my wedding, and I remember her looking at me all pregnant and all, and saying, “Well, where’s the groom?” with this quizzical look on her face. I was like, I am so gonna kill him.

Chris is awesome, though, and as I’ve said before, I couldn’t ask for a better father for my kids. I always enjoy seeing him when I go back to Albany, and I wish every divorced couple could have the mutual respect for each other that we have.

Here are a couple of other old pics I dug up. This one was taken at a wedding we went to. I think it was April 1977.


I loved that gown and I loved those shoes!

This was taken at Chris' parents' house; I remember I was on really good behavior. It might have been Easter 1977. It was some kind of holiday.



Man, the passage of time is pretty damn scary, don't you think?

Not just ranting, I actually did something and you can, too

Hey, remember my rant last week about those lousy banks and credit card companies?

As you know, Congress passed a law earlier this year that would put an end to their abusive tactics -- including raising interest rates on our card balances for no goddamn reason -- but the reforms don't go into effect until February. In the meantime, those rat bastards have been hiking interest rates, adding new fees and doubling our minimum payments.

Yesterday I came across the Consumers Union's money web site, www.creditcardreform.org, and filled out a simple online form that sent an email to my rep in Congress saying they need to make this law effective immediately -- we can't afford more months of the banks' F-ing with our credit cards. I also suggested a class-action suit for retroactive repayment to those of us who've already been fucked over (doesn't hurt to ask!)

I'm hardly an activist, but you know this pisses me off. It literally took 2 minutes to send that message. It's worth a try.

Chicken Soup Gone Wild -- the new mega-series

I don't think I ever told you that I once had the big idea to come with a Chicken Soup for the Soul satire, a collection of demented tales mixing spirituality and debauchery. Well, that idea lasted all of about half a week. But Saturday's post, where I ranted about the co-founder of the series, inspired me to dig up this little gem, the only story I wrote for my tongue-in-cheek project.

Note to Mom and any future employers (ha!) (as if): THIS IS FICTION. It's probably the only piece of fiction I ever have written or ever will write. Though some parts are clearly rooted in reality. Seriously, I am not a pothead. You know my drug of choice is Guinness, Young's Chocolate Stout, or Moose Drool. Or Bailey's.

So here it is--my anti-Chicken Soup story:

"We Met in the House of (Fermented) Spirits"

Every once in a while you experience a special type of drunkenness, a buzz that expands your awareness and opens you to appreciate the perfection of everyone around you. If you’re lucky, you may cross paths with other souls vibrating at the same level of inebriation, recognizable by the alcohol-induced twinkle in their eyes. Those of us who are students of spirituality refer to that as “synchronicity.”

I could tell Ozzy was special by the way his aura lit up the bar. “Can I buy you a drink?” he asked.

“Why, yes, thank you. Guinness for me, please,” I said, graciously accepting his offer. The universe is indeed abundant.

I watched him sip his Bud Light and observed a familiar sense of judgment arise from within. Remember, Linda, I said to myself, God is not thinking, “Ozzy certainly has shitty taste in beer.” And so I vowed to look at him through the eyes of the Almighty and forgave him for his pedestrian choice of beverage.

We engaged in some small talk and I was entranced by Ozzy’s delightful English accent. Then ego reared its ugly head and I began to question my self-worth. What would a guy with such an attractive verbal inflection possibly want with me? Fortunately I tapped into the goddess within and reminded myself that, yes, I deserve to be with a man who sounds like Ozzy.

“I don’t show these to just anyone, but I’d like you to take a look.” Ozzy said. He then presented me with a few pictures of the biggest, juiciest marijuana buds I’d ever seen.

“Wow!” I exclaimed. “Are these yours?”

He beamed with pride. “Yes, I’m growing them in my basement. I’ve been studying hydroponic gardening—I’m quite good at it.” Catching himself, he added, “Sorry, I don’t mean to brag.”

“Oh, no,” I said. “By all means, take ownership of your God-given talents.”

Of course, I know well enough to stay in the present moment, but when I saw the size of his illicit crop, I couldn’t help myself and immediately projected into the future. I envisioned cuddling together on the couch listening to the Grateful Dead, watching Animal Planet with the sound muted, sharing a bag of Cheetos. If he turns out to be my soulmate, I thought, I’ll never have to buy pot again. I silently thanked the universe for sending me this incredible connection.

“I’m going to submit these photos to High Times,” Ozzy told me.

“Good for you,” I said, impressed by his lofty ambition to submit to such a prestigious national publication. Though I doubted High Times would accept unsolicited Poloroids, I suppressed my skepticism—never try to crush a person’s aspirations with your own limited thinking.

Fast forward in time and, well . . . life doesn’t always unfold the way you think it’s going to. You enter a relationship believing your beloved is a mellow toker and he turns out to be an intolerable sot. I don’t think Ozzy intentionally led me to believe he was more of a stoner than the boozer he turned out to be.

And so I learned that first impressions are sometimes wrong; you see what you want to see. And to be fair, maybe I didn’t exactly present my authentic self either—between my dyed hair, contact lenses, artificially whitened teeth and perky cleavage courtesy of Victoria Secret’s bra technology. Perhaps the lesson is, the Law of Attraction works both ways.

And the universe always unfolds in divine order.

Writers beware: Author 101 rip-off

Yesterday I attended the first day of a two-day Author 101 conference. I was looking forward to it, not only because it would get me out of a day of work, but because the focus was supposed to be on marketing, which naturally appealed to me.

What a rip-off. Instead of offering strategies that would be helpful to authors, the whole focus was on how to write a book in 30 days (imagine the quality?) and then sell that piece of crap through the Internet using the get-rich-quick techniques they’ll tell us if we enroll in their very expensive future seminar. (And, of course, there was plenty of “Enroll today and get…” bullshit.) With the exception of one speaker named David Hancock, who actually seemed to know a little about the writing world, it was essentially a day-long infomercial; the author’s equivalent of sitting through a timeshare presentation.

I’ve been around the writing circles long enough to know there are plenty of people out there preying on writers, and every writer should research Predators and Editors before querying agents, signing contracts with publishers, or enlisting the services needed to self-publish. So I ended up walking out during one of the afternoon speaker’s pitches for blah, blah, blah… and the guy at the registration desk could tell I’m a bitch on wheels, so I supposedly will get a refund. I’d better. But even though I’ll get my $179 (!) back, I’m still pissed as hell.

You can’t rip people off in this economy. You just can’t—it’s immoral. And I’ll tell you what really burned my ass (to use my mother’s expression) was that one of the offenders was Mark Victor Hansen, the co-creator of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series. He spoke for about 45 minutes, 44 of which was a pitch for a $2000 workshop he’s offering next month. He told us all about what we’d be learning… next month. But hello, guess what? We all paid good money to learn something TODAY.

On top of that, every two seconds he’d tell us to do something, like “Touch your heart and say, ‘I can do it!’” and “If you agree say, ‘Yeah!’” like goddamn Simon Says. I’m not kidding, that guy annoyed the crap out of me. I really felt he was totally full of bullshit, even when he was speaking about all the charity work his organization does, and don’t even get me going about how he’d pepper his infomercial with spiritual overtones and abundance-speak. Really, the nerve of him spouting that shit while he’s ripping people off.

In contrast David Hancock, the one good speaker I heard, talked about how authors must be at the service of their readers and encourage personal contact. It’s important to develop a relationship, he said, and to give readers much more than they expect. Mark Victor Hansen was obviously there to serve himself and I sure as hell didn’t expect a 44 minute pitch session. My opinion: there's something sleazy about this guy. Just my opinion.

I did learn from him, though—what not to do. Violating your readers’ trust is unconscionable, and I want my readers to trust that whatever I have to offer is of the highest quality I can possibly produce. Okay, some of my blog posts are total vile, crude and tasteless shit, but you're not paying for this and I can tell you with all my heart that my book is funny, poignant, and well written. And if you don’t agree with me, send it back and I will be happy to refund your money.

I’m a Chicken Soup contributor, you know.

I feel kinda dirty.

... and Happy Halloween!

I snagged this picture from my sister Lori's facebook page. This is not me, it's MY MOTHER on her way to a Halloween party circa 1985.


No, that's not her real hair; it's a Halloween wig. HA-HA-HA!

GREAT book launch party!

OMG you guys, I cannot even begin to tell you how much fun I had at my book launch party! Everything went so smoothly—like all the planets were in perfect alignment. If only life could go like that all the time!

I had a great turnout—I counted 57 people, but there could have been more that I just don’t remember. Mom and Stepdaddy came down from Idaho, my high school friend Kevin Bacon and his wife were there, lots of my friends from work, friends from previous jobs, friends from the Henderson Writers Group, the facilitator from the divorce support group I joined when I first got here, Mike, my old boyfriend Tim, my old boyfriend Dr. Jim (yeah, I know--all in one room)… it was so totally all about me, at one point I felt like I was at my own wake—except good news!—I didn’t have to die or anything. Awesome!

Those of you who read my book will recall a scene at the DMV where I make a new friend who looks like Jerry Garcia’s younger brother. Look! I haven’t seen him in like five years, but even he showed up! I was so psyched.


We started off in the lounge area, where everyone socialized while I signed books, and then at 7:00 we moved into the showroom that my comic friend Joe Lowers so graciously offered to me for the night. My blogging buddy Hurricane Mikey and I did a hysterical Spinal Tap re-enactment in the backstage area trying to find the right doors and curtains that led to the stage. Did I tell you I have no sense of direction? It was pretty funny.

Once we got oriented, Mikey went out first and gave me a wonderful introduction—thank you, Mikey!


Thank God it was one of those times when I was totally in the zone. As you know, stage fright has always been a problem for me (believe it or not), but the first hour in the lounge was so busy, I didn’t have a chance to let the anxiety build—all of sudden it was time to get up there.


After a little stand-up schitck, I read a few pages taken from here and there from my book, with some anecdotes and general b.s. thrown in as well.

Often when I'm on stage I have an underlying feeling that I can't wait for the experience to end. But that night, I was actually enjoying myself up there. Maybe because I knew that everything I said is the God's honest truth--it's always so much easier that way, in the spotlight and especially in real life.


Afterward, we all went back to the lounge for drinks and boy, was I happy to see not one, but two Guinnesses in front of me (I never drink before I go on stage), courtesy my wonderful friends. By 9:00 almost everyone was on their way, but the hardcores stayed for Joe Lowers' comedy show. Great fun! (And picture me sitting at a table between Mike and Tim... It's all good!)

Joe's a doll--I can't thank him enough for letting me use his showroom--and if you've read my book, you know that from day one here in Las Vegas he's always been so helpful to me, my comedy mentor. The next morning I got an email from him with the subject title "Wow."

Great job! I thought what you did on stage was great. I love how it worked and I think you should think about a one-women show around your book. I know where you could do it!!!

Encouragement to put together a one-woman show with an offer of a room to do it in? That's certainly worth consideration. One more thing for my To-Do list...

It was simply a fantastic, perfect night and I thank everyone who came to support me from the bottom of my heart. And of course, thanks to all of you beloved readers from all over the world who've sent kind sentiments of support.

Thank you, thank you, thank you!