Dancing Brave

A Dark And Creepy Memory Lane

This post about Christopher Pike books -- on a blog that also does hilariously scathing reviews of Sweet Valley High, complete with quotes --  totally brought back a flood of memories, and also made me realize how terrible my memory is these days.

When I was in junior high, I was hooked on Christopher Pike. I read and re-read just about all of the ones he published, from Remember Me -- my favorite, I think -- to the Final Friends books to the weird one where the girl is possessed by voodoo and turns into a hawk, or something. I don't know. I remember thinking they made high school seem SO sexually mature and crazy and dramatic and villainous. Way more so than my actual high-school experience. And there were a lot of body parts broken and bleeding and mangled to a pulp, either while heroes struggled through them to try and LIVE DAMMIT LIVE, or on behalf of the bad guys, who were being banged up in a hellacious final act. And he wasn't even afraid to kill the good guys, either, as evidenced by the one about the girls who go on a Greek vacation only to realize they are reincarnations of feuding Greek goddesses, and the nicer of whom figures out the truth only AFTER she has eaten a sandwich made of powdered glass -- which the other one gave her -- that is eating away at her insides. Good times. So soapy. So far-fetched. It should come as no surprise that I grew up to love Passions.

I dog-eared and rumpled every copy of every Pike book I owned. Most of the time they were in stacks under my bed so I could pore over them at night and in the morning with greater ease of access. I liked R.L. Stine, but Pike's were just creepier and cooler to me. Of course, the comments on that post are an awesome walk down memory lane, but they also make me realize just how shabby my recall truly is -- seriously, I had forgotten names and plot details completely until I read all of what people chipped in to say, and now I wish I still had all those books so I could check them out anew. My mother probably gave those away several family moves ago -- an act which makes COMPLETE sense, and yet is not helping my packrat tendencies, as I'm afraid to throw away anything on the offchance I will miss it terribly later in life.

I guess this is why library cards come in handy. I'm going to have to get over my aversion to the smell of libraries. Oh, yeah, that's right, I said it: I hate libraries. Not in concept -- they are marvelous, fantastic things for people of all ages, especially kids -- but I don't like actually GOING to them, using them, standing in them, smelling them, reading books that belong to them. I don't know where this came from but it's always been the case. Unless there was a microfiche machine involved, I didn't want any part of a trip to one if I could avoid it.

So there you go: I love reading, hate going to libraries. This is why Barnes & Noble does a mean business from me. Clearly I need to confront this aversion so I can have a torrid affair with my old Christopher Pike books without having to try and buy them all again, which would be ridiculous. Also, I'm 30. I need to GET OVER IT. In the meantime, though, it's fun just remembering that the books even exist -- I guess the fact that my favorite was Remember Me is kind of ironic, huh?

Amazon Is My Crack

After months and months of a six-figure sales rank on Amazon -- which we know doesn't mean a whole lot since the book isn't out yet and we weren't publicizing it -- today has been kind of a heady and exciting one for me and Jessica.

We did a post about the book on GFY, and our sales rank shot up to #385 overall, #8 in humor (we're on the same page as Stephen Colbert!), #2 in fashion (we're ahead of Posh and Rachel Zoe! Suck on that, Zoe!), and #2 in history and criticism (above the Norton Anthology of English Literature, Vol. 2 -- TAKE THAT, Norton People!).

I should clarify that I know this number is not the be-all, end-all. It will drop again once the early frenzy of our first post about the book dies down, it may never go back up again, and it certainly doesn't mean people like the book, being as they haven't read it yet. And many of those other books I joked about us triumphing over have been out for a long time, obviously. But checking in on that damn page was already so addictive, I can't help but be thrilled to see the digits drip off. If it doesn't ever go this high again, I want to enjoy it while it lasts.

Although I'd trade the sales rank for people enjoying the book. Seriously, that's what matters most to me, and in that sense higher our Amazon number inches the more terrified I get.

UPDATE: #235! Woo!

Larry Røtter and the Lively Shallows

The other day I came upon a random 2003 story on Slate about knockoff Harry Potter books published in other countries. Clearly, I need to get hold of some translated versions, because two of them sound like corkers.

1) A Chinese author put J.K. Rowling's name on this one even though she knew nothing about it:

Harry Potter and Leopard-Walk-Up-to-Dragon, in which Harry encountered sweet and sour rain, became a hairy troll, and joined Gandalf to re-enact scenes from The Hobbit.

2) A Russian writer has made this into a four-book series that rivals Rowling's for popularity:

"Tanya Grotter and the Magic Double Bass [in which] Tanya rides a double bass, sports a mole instead of a bolt of lightning, and attends the Tibidokhs School of Magic."

3) And lastly, the Belarussian entry:

"In Belarus you'll find Porri Gatter and the Stone Philosopher. In something of a departure, Harry's Belarussian clone wields a grenade launcher and re-fights the White Russian wars."

Of course, I'm sure a lot of them are not translated into English. Plus, most of them, it seems, have been stamped out by copyright lawsuits -- well, except for Tanya Grotter, bless that bass-riding child. Who, also, I wish rode a bass as in the FISH, and not as in the musical instrument, but maybe somebody from a Scandinavian country can get on that one for me.

Regardless, though, in my dream world -- the one in which last night, I combined details from the His Dark Materials books and the Thursday Next series into a whole new mindtrip -- I would be able to acquire these and laugh and laugh and laugh, and also of course learn something about the White Russian wars. Presumably they didn't involve kahlua.

Getting Smashed

I don't completely remember the first time I got drunk. And not because of a blackout or anything -- mostly, it just didn't occur to me to make a lasting mental note, and therefore, I'm not sure which time was my first.

Here's what's definite: I was 15. That's how old I was when we moved to Calgary, and with an 18 drinking age, it's even easier for high-schoolers to get their hands on booze. The rest is all a guess. I was probably at a party at my friend Jon's house, and almost certainly drinking bottles of Molson Special Dry. It's possible my friend Leigh and I were sharing a six of green Bacardi Breezers, or a pack of bottled Long Island Iced Tea. But I'm pretty sure my first party in Canada was an MSD-fueled one. It was my beer when I was 15 (later replaced by Labatt Blue and the occasional can of Kokanee, which regrettably you can't get here). The first time I drank it, my friend Ian bought the six-pack and rationed me three, since I'd never gotten through even one before. When I cracked open my third bottle, I ran up to Ian and shouted, "I AM DRINKING MY THIRD BEER!" He was very proud of me.

I was very proud of me. It felt like a great coming-of-age thing. I had never been to an actual high-school bash with actual drinking. I'd never before needed to know whether a mickey of rum would be enough to split with Leigh, or if we'd need a larger bottle. I had definitely never needed to call poison control because my friend took a sip of floor cleaner ("It smelled like orange juice!" she slurred) before we realized what she was doing. I'd never funneled beer or done shots of tequila or yakked in a rain barrel at my PE teacher's house in the country because his daughter was throwing an outdoor kegger and I had just guzzled something called "lemon gin" that I believe was just powdered lemonade mixed into straight gin. I'd never slept in my friend's minivan after an all-nighter in a giant open field that belonged to one friend or another who lived on a farm. I'd never thrown a beer bottle onto the ground in a fury because I overheard people who were supposed to be my friends talking shit about me, because I had the gall to be upset that being the last to turn 18 meant all my supposed best pals stopped making plans that legally included me, and only under duress starting throwing me thoughtless bones: "Oh, between bars, we're going to stop off at a party at Joel's friend's house for like 15 minutes, if you want to meet us there for a bit." I had never had to stop my friend from climbing into my clothes dryer, or cover the Bar Billiards table with a tarp so we could do shots off it without ruining the felt, or learn how to gauge my gag reflex so I could make it to a toilet safely (my record is almost perfect on this, except for when I followed up the rain barrel by puking in my hand outside my gym teacher's bathroom, some of which spilled onto the floor. Fortunately, I cleaned it up).

I learned, or did, all that stuff and more when I was in high school. And I loved it. The first year I was in Calgary it was really hard for me to shake off the shackles of my own paralyzing shyness. I still tend to fall quiet when I'm nervous, or when I feel pressure to be witty and charming. But that first year, I felt a lot like I was tagging along to people, without a proper group of my own. Being at parties was the only common bond I had with anybody. It's the great equalizer. Get stuck in a lab with a cute guy who intimidates you, and saying, "Wow, I/you/your girlfriend got so trashed last weekend at Mickey's party" opens up all kinds of lines of conversation. It made me feel like I had friends. Which eventually, I did.

I never really think much about how much, or why, I drank back then. Certainly, I've always been someone who appreciates the punitive nature of the spins, because they tell me to stop. I've never had the kind of blackout where I woke up somewhere strange and had no idea how I got there, and if I've ever forgotten things from a night out, they were usually only short conversations I had amid a louder, more aimless social whirl. I'm lucky in that regard. Lucky that I'm a stickler for rules, and being so drunk I couldn't get to wherever I was supposed to sleep that night would have been a huge violation of that. Oh, sure, I got just drunk enough that I once thought it was a good idea while taking a shortcut to another bar to follow my friends -- all climbers -- over a fence topped with barbed wire, which ripped my jeans (and mercifully, somehow, not my skin) from knee to mid-thigh... and then, I thought it was a good idea to do it again several yards later, at which point I almost made it over but ripped the back and swung from there while my friend J.J. laughingly caught me and unhooked me. I still wonder how I came out of that without bleeding.

But, of course, a lot of what prompted me to reflect on those times was reading Smashed. Not because it was such a life-changing read or anything, but because it's the kind of book that's impossible to read without aligning the author's experiences and emotions with your own. It's not deliberate, or rooted in any desire to find a moral to her story that teaches you something about yourself. It's just the familiarity of some of what she says that prompts a comparison to your own life. Like, "Did I ever do that?" or "Did I ever feel that?" or "Could that have been me?" She talks about how she was seduced into it because it loosened her tongue, relaxed her, made her feel popular, made her feel fun. Those are hit close to the vest for me. And it becomes a totally selfish reading experience, because it all turns into, "There but for the grace of God go I."

She knew every detail of her first rendezvous with alcohol. She admits that she took care of and fetishized that memory more than of most her other firsts. So of course, that's when I reached my mind back to try and dig up mine, to see if I had it there in any kind of comparable detail. I don't. Which is good, I guess. But the book ultimately left me with an unsatisfied feeling, not necessarily because of the story or the writing, but because reading it made me a person who determines how messed up she is, or was, based on somebody else's problems. There's something so unsavory about saying to yourself, "Well, thank God, at least I wasn't as bad as she was."

I suppose we all have to look for parameters -- retroactively or in the present -- wherever we can find them, but it sucks to catch yourself doing it at someone else's expense.

Not Sure How I Got Here From There

The best part about getting to travel is catching up on some reading. I'm somebody who gets completely panicked about not having enough entertainment to carry me through a flight -- I can't rely on sleeping, and my worst nightmare is sitting staring at the tray table with my hands on my lap, nothing to do but wait for the minutes to tick away and wonder whether the wing is supposed to wiggle like that.

Usually, I like fluffy reading for planes -- something readily digestible, but engrossing enough that it's not a strain to keep turning the pages. Especially with our delay flying back (we appeared to be holding the plane for latecomers, in addition to leaving late anyway because of slight weather issues), I needed my mind to run off elsewhere. Thank God Jess was buzzing through books, too, because when she finished one, it went into my stack of Contingency Entertainment, a.k.a., How To Have Enough To Do That No Matter How Long You Sit Here On The Godforsaken Tarmac You WILL NOT RUN OUT OF STUFF.

Jennifer Weiner's Goodnight Nobody was decent. It's not my favorite of her books -- my guess is that she never really settled on an end to the mystery until she absolutely had to -- but I respond well to her writing style and her sense of humor, so that works for me even when I'm not totally enamored of a character or a story. Madeleine Wickham's Cocktails For Three (Wickham is also Sophie Kinsella) was also only okay; it was the type of book where I'd sussed out one character's arc for the book after the first chapter, and I was already frustrated with it in advance, and indeed neither of the other two ended terribly surprisingly either, but still I read it cover to cover. Don't rush out and buy it, necessarily, but I'd loan it out as beach reading.

Then I tucked into Prep, which I had heard about ages ago but forgot to read then; somehow, the details of the story, as I read them in reviews, had slipped through my head. So I was expecting it to be a much frothier confection about high-school cliques and politics, and was surprised both by how bleak it could sometimes be, and by its bare honesty and much I related to a lot of it. Granted, I've never gone to a boarding school, but I've been a new kid plenty of times in my life, and although some parts of it get easier, some parts of it never do. That's why, when the main character's head roiled as it always did with frank and unattractive self-analysis, a lot of it resonated for me. When you're new, you feel so exposed, so out in the open, uncovered. So you make your own shields.

I am, and certainly was, a fairly regularly shy person without a terribly optimistic view of how I'm perceived. I hated participating in most of my classes -- except for math, when I was pretty much always right, because numbers I really got; numbers were just another kind of puzzle waiting to be solved, and they weren't personal, and there was no opinion to stick to or defend or argue. Numbers either are, or aren't. With almost anything else I was always afraid to offer up the wrong perspective, the thin analysis, or the yes-it-exists stupid question. And, similarly terrified of embarrassing myself in social situations, I coped with a lot by pasting a smile on my face that belied everything I felt. Be pleasant, be friendly, be careful. That's how I got through my entire grade 10 year, and a good chuck of the opening days of grade 8.

The main character in Prep isn't necessarily doing the exact thing I did on the outside, but inside she had a lot of the same self-doubt. For instance, she would talk about avoiding second encounters with people after the first had gone well, because she was afraid she'd never live up to any expectations borne of that conversation. Until I got comfortable with my surroundings, which really did take me about a year, that's exactly how I felt -- and sometimes I still do; I am terrible at small-talk, or at least I think I am, and once you become aware that it's a hard thing to fix. The other thing she did that I also have: If she saw someone coming she wanted to avoid, out of sheer nerves and pressure to perform, she'd stop and pretend to be rooting very studiously through her backpack. She felt like it would make her invisible. I can attest that this strategy does work. Sometimes I still do it. If I encounter someone I faintly recognize, like at the mall or in Barnes and Noble, I am not always the type of person to seek them out and strike up a conversation. Instead, I tend to hide. I don't know why. I'm sure it's from a life of wanting to wait to have an encounter until I am fully prepared for it. Not that I script myself; it's more that I tend to swallow my tongue too often, and we get right back to that old fear of making an idiot of myself. Better to run.

I don't mean to paint a picture of someone who lived her life in a corner, watching everybody else. I adapted. In fact, I was really social. For the most part (sometimes I like a night or two alone in my head), I still am. One skill I did develop -- if you want to call it a "skill," which implies something I should be proud of, and I don't think this is, particularly -- is: I learned to be one person on the outside and another inside. I don't mean that I was dishonest, so much as I probably watered down a lot of my emotions and reactions in front of most people. It didn't seem right to let anyone have that much of me, and I wonder how many people who went to school with me ever actually knew me that well at all. They might think they did, but there's a lot I kept to myself. So the book struck a chord -- it's this idea of just how big a divide there can be between how people see you, and how you see you; how you know yourself versus how you let the world know you. How much you protect yourself because you'd rather be safe than brave.

Today (and even then, to a degree), once I'm comfortable around people, most of this stuff tends to disappear, but certainly in new situations I still feel social pressure that brings it all back again. Don't we all bear stamps from how we were in high school? One if my biggest is, I try to project an aura of being a cool customer: "It's all good." "No worries." "I'm fine, it's no big deal." When my feelings are hurt, I have a hard time confessing it to whomever did it. Because that feels like rocking the boat. That's something you can't undo. Put it out there, and it stays. It's fact. It's history. But what if it turns out I was wrong? I always say that people shouldn't ever apologize for their emotions because they can't help them, and they're honest, they're true to who you were in that second you had them. But at the same time, sharing them opens a door I'm not always ready to unlock for more than a few people. There's a courage gene in people who can lay it all out there, who can be so utterly themselves at all times that new situations don't faze them. I don't have it. Certainly I don't mean that being confrontational all the time is my behavioral ideal, but I let an awful lot of things go unsaid.  What if the other side of the story makes you realize you spent all this time on one feeling, only to find out it was misdirected? I'm obsessed with the other side of the story, I think. I'm always certain there's something I'm not thinking of, something that would invalidate my initial reactions. And so I juggle all that internally, letting it out in private, or writing it out, or confessing things to Kevin at night when we're talking before we fall asleep.

Thankfully, I'm totally fine with my friends and with Kevin. I'm thrilled to say he is the healthiest relathionship I've ever been in, simply because there's nothing I want (or or feel I need) to keep from him emotionally. He knows me, knows me well, better than anyone ever has; I talk to him, and it's free and safe, and I wish I could be like that more. When I'm in a room with him, or the girls, none of the barriers are up and I can just relax and nothing matters. Slowly, too, the fear that I'm boring the socks off everyone else around me is waning. Sure, the old fears still bubble up and choke me sometimes; I'll draw a total blank in front of people at exactly the lest opportune times. But I'm learning to unclench when I'm in a room with people, and figuring out how to stop myself from judging my own conversational skills.

I'm not sure how I got here from writing about Prep. I guess I'm always curious about the things that shape us, that have shaped me, and whether we ever really pop out of the high-school womb. I know at times that I'm just as insecure as I ever was, but I also know I'm so much better. At what? Better at being me, maybe. Better at recognizing when I'm being a bit too shy, or a bit too placid. Better at catching myself in the act. And some day, maybe, better at not committing the act at all.

Bright Lives... For Now (Don't Spoil Me If You Know Anything)

Okay, so Bright doesn't fall through a window until next week's Everwood. The bastard WB network decided to go out with an explosion of misleading promos. Thanks, Frog. I'll be worrying for another week and wondering who else but Bright they could kill in the little time they have left.

I'm somewhat relieved that TV season is over, although I'd like to try and remember to pick up The Closer in June, as I've heard good things about it and a girl could use one summer drama. Mostly, though, it'll be good for me to catch up on a bajillion movies I haven't ever seen, including the half-bajillion that remain on item 101 of my list, and I can pick up more books. That was one of the best things about the honeymoon -- I was reading constantly, even if what I was reading wasn't always top-drawer.

Colors Insulting To Nature was really good, though. I recommend it. Cintra Wilson turns a mean phrase; I admire her a lot. The main character's trevails are varied and occasionally so insane as to be trying to the reader, but in the end I don't care because her sentences are so vibrant and funny and clever. The caliber of the writing was enough. And that undid some of the intellectual atrophying that came from reading back-to-back Spice Girls autobiographies (Geri's is a bit juicier because she did more pre-Spice, but Posh's has a lot more stalking in it and more Joan Collins sightings (one); both are sad because they talk about anorexia and infidelity, respectively, that they have each had to deal with again since publishing the memoir). Their accounts of Geri's abrupt departure from the band vary as well, although it's possible Posh's is different through omission. I can't tell. Posh claims they were blindsided and Geri claims she'd been making noise about leaving for a while and that she ran when she did -- and how she did -- because she was unable to do a charity thing she wanted to do and it somehow pushed her over the edge. I'm not sure which I believe but for some reason I am inclined to believe the others, as Geri's smacked a little bit of revisionist history and things she thought were obvious that she may have said at the time in a more subtle way but which she is now remembering as overt conversations. Anyway, they're totally amusing and they both come with photos, which I always love, although seeing Geri's naked chest so proudly on display from her glamour-modeling days was unexpected.

I also got caught at LAX's newsagent picking up two titles I HAD to buy on account of where I was headed -- Honeymoon, a terrible sex thriller that had me wondering how the hell James Patterson is so lauded, and Something Blue, which was great chicklit. Those bastards who stock the shelves at airports totally know how to hook a newlywed.

I have so many movies to watch, it's daunting. Fortunately, Kevin loves movies and has begun egging me on to get through more and more of the classics, so I'll have a little taskmaster here. But next up -- in a departure from my AFI list movies -- is Grizzly Man, the Werner Herzog documentary about the guy who lived with bears until one of them ate him. Apparently they might even have the mauling on tape, or parts of it, but evidently don't include that in the film. I suspect that was the correct choice. I don't like my reality that real.

HP Glee

Lauren's been re-reading the Harry Potter books in anticipation of the release of the sixth, and I decided she was onto something, so I decided to pick up (for the third time since it came out... sigh) the fifth in the series -- The Order of the Phoenix.

I don't know what it is about the books, but count me in as one of the slavish fans who can't seem to get enough. Even when Harry is at his most adolescent and stubborn, even when the villains are at their most infuriating, even when Hagrid is at his most irritatingly dense, and even when new characters (Grawp, anyone?) annoy me a bit too much, I love the books. Love them. I love that she's not afraid to give her hero, Harry, some of the ugly characteristics that any normal person would embody. I love that he's well-rounded -- he's not the one who's the perfect wizard, he's not the one with all the answers all the time, and he's not the one who always charts the right course of action, because what he thinks is right and what he should be doing, while borne of the same ideas of good and evil, aren't always the same thing. I like that she doesn't gloss over ordinary growing-boy-or-girl problems even while there are extraordinary situations and circumstances around them.

I love rereading the books, because I start to look forward to diving in and out of them -- kind of like slipping on a favorite pair of pants, or shoes, or planning to eat your favorite meal on a certain night, during which you allow yourself to luxuriate in every bite. It's just somehow comforting to get back in with these characters.

It's not that I'm arguing that she's the most brilliant writer in the world -- I just think she's adept at creating situations tand people that are layered, complicated, and intriguing. And I'm a sucker for her wordplay, even though they're not complicated and a few of them I never think about until one day they just hit me (like, Kreacher = "creature", or that the name of the Patronus charm that protects against Dementors is borne of "patron," as in, a protector, guardian, or supporter -- like the concept of a patron saint). None of that stuff is terribly complicated; it just makes sense that the wizarding lingo would have sensible Latin roots. As for the Kreacher thing, it's there, but you also aren't smacked over the head with it while reading unless you're really looking for it. You can get engrossed without finding it all too twee.

I love worrying about the characters, especially as a new book release inches closer. I love being surprised by characters or my reactions to them, like my pride when sad-sack Neville became great at the Dark Arts, or the stab of pity when she described Snape being mocked and tormented by Sirius and Harry's father during their school days together. I love that the villain in the last book, Dolores Umbridge ("dolorous umbrage," maybe? She is indeed a miserable offense of a person), is so horrible that I almost feel queasy reading about her even though by now I know she doesn't win.

Problematically, I'm racing through the re-read of the fifth book, so I'll be done with it almost too soon. At least we're really in the final countdown to the release of the sixth book. I hope it's as good. She hasn't let me down yet.

Hug A Weasely

Given that she's pregnant again, it's always nice to have confirmation that J.K. Rowling is at least working on the next Harry Potter book, even if that confirmation comes in the form of the predicted yet still sort of upsetting "Somebody will die" press release.

It's the kind of thing that makes me expect a dead Weasely, even though I think most people suspect Dumbledore will kick it at some point in the series. And I don't want to think about dead Weaselys. I love the Weaselys. Hug your local Weasely today.

I'm far too attached to some of these characters, which is a kick when you think about the fact that I resisted reading any of these books until months after the fourth one came out. But, hey, like I said, I'm just happy she's working on it.

Amusingly, Rowling either had to or thought to confirm that Harry lives to see book seven. Which... of course he does. The series is called Harry Potter and the.... You can't kill him before the seventh book. What would it be called? Harry Potter and the Haunting of Hermione? Harry Potter and the Coffin of Harry Potter? Harry Potter and the Giant Nothingness? That would be good -- 800 blank pages.

They Lied To Us Through Song

Those crazy TLC girls. First Lisa Left-Eye tries to burn down Andre Rison's house; then Chilli dates and publicly dumps Usher the Little Angel Sex Addict Who... That Cheats, on account of his tragic illness that prevents him from keeping his zipper sealed and his junk exclusively in her trunk; and finally, today T-Boz files for divorce from rapper Mack 10 because he committed adultery... oh, yeah, and also allegedly threatened to kill her. But -- adultery!

It would seem, then, that despite the life-affirming message they're sending you through song, those TLC girls DO want some scrubs, and a scrub is a man who CAN get love from them. Pretty soon one of them will be hired as co-host of The Swan so she can go on the record that fixing your nose and buying all the makeup that M-A-C can make actually does cure any internal grief over your self-image. At which point she will promptly announce her intent to join the U.S. Olympic waterfall-chasing team.

This weekend, I idly picked up Lauren's freshly ordered copy of Janice Dickinson's new book, Everything About Me Is Fake, And I'm Perfect, and learned that if I stop eating and start moisturizing, have lots of sex, bitch out my man, get fake breasts, and stop eating some more, I too can be perfect. This is such a relief -- here I was, sitting around thinking that it would be really difficult to achieve flawlessness, when the formula was so simple that it was staring me in the ugly, desperately-in-need-of-a-lift face.

I haven't read her first book yet, but this one was quite enjoyable. It's a tad weird getting advice on looks, maintenance, and behavior from someone whose life embodies the kind of excesses and self-denial in which I'd never dabble, and whose personality is shaped by a disarming but disturbing frankness and a belief in emotional power plays that I can't completely comprehend.

Janice is so entertaining. I love how gossipy she is, completely unafraid to write about everyone and anyone who crossed her path (Justin Timberlake is sweet and smells good; Vin Diesel has body odor; Sly Stallone is insane; Robert Duvall just wants a younger bit of stuff, etc). Even when she's saying insane or rude things, or positing an idea you find wrong or abhorrent, there's something appealing and admirable about someone who is so wholly herself. She may say or do things people think are outlandish and offensive, but she's completely Janice at all times, and not many people can claim that. Her sense of self may be strange, but it's also strong. It can't be easy to be that way, especially when you're an aging woman in a youth-driven industry. Changing her appearance through multiple surgeries oddly only underscores how very much herself she really is, because she's totally unapologetic about reshaping her face and body. She recognizes why it happens, she's not afraid to admit it to people, and she's not hiding behind it. Nor is she excusing anything.

As offensive as it is to hear her talking about how plus-size models should go the hell away and stop eating so damn much, there's also a bizarre sanity behind her madness. She's insensitive about stuff like that, but it comes from her feeling really strongly that models represent a certain aesthetic, and they do so for particular reasons. And after feeling pressured to starve herself to stay thin for so many years, I can sort of see why she'd resent the plus-size trend, in the sense that she wasn't given that same sort of physical leeway when she was coming up through the ranks. There's a shot of brutal truth to some of what she says, and I tend to read it and think, "Wow, I hate myself for it, but I can sort of see where she's coming from." I don't want to give anyone the impression that I agree with what she's saying; I just enjoy chewing on her reasoning.

What appealed to her about modeling seemed to be the impossibility of it all, and her book is about that quest for perfection and how it drove her ever since she was a teenager. She seems to get off on trying to achieve the impossible -- the supermodel physique -- and she thinks the industry has become less and less of a mystique-driven profession. Yes, the stick-thin aesthetic is unhealthy for the average girl, but Janice's point is that modeling and the accompanying body and lifestyle most definitely isn't for the average girl. It's art -- high-fashion and high-concept, and it represents a rarefied unreality that's not intended as something for young girls or women to aspire to be, any more than the Venus de Milo is. So she sees the advent of the plus-size model as a loosening of the standards and a departure from the things modeling is meant to represent. And she views these models as undisciplined because of that -- she thinks they encourage people to be less fit, because the plus-size push has come hand-in-hand with the world's supermodels becoming personalities. They're more relatable and tangible and real, maybe too much so. They've come off their pedestals, which Janice doesn't seem to like. Underneath it all, I feel like Janice isn't thrilled with what modeling has become, but is probably also upset that it's become something she might have liked even better if she were young and starting fresh again.

When it comes to the plus-size thing, I don't agree with her. I enjoy wrapping my brain about what might be her logic for having the position she does, and trying to find depths amid the shallows, but it's purely because I am someone who likes understanding the other side of the argument. To a fault, I like to delineate and talk out the other person's side, even when I disagree. And I do here. I think it's anyone's choice to play into the modeling industry's hands, especially when it comes to binging and purging or simply denying oneself any food at all beyond a piece of toast. Janice made that unwise choice on her own. So even though I can comprehend the point she's making, I definitely feel that Janice is wrong to think plus-size models are an affront to the industry; it comes across as thinly veiled distate that the industry has changed since her years of struggling to live and work within it. And it's not even that it's changed for everyone -- there are certainly plenty of girls who are afflicted with disorders and drug problems that they probably developed while trying to conform to a certain image. That problem's never going to go away, no matter how many models in the world do or don't weigh more than 115. But the fact that any of them are allowed to clearly rankles Janice in that elsest-sibling kind of way -- where older children get angry that the rules they lived by were stricter than those applied to their younger brothers or sisters. It's not anyone's fault; it's just how things change. And it's not fair to expect parents to stay rooted in all the protective instincts they had with their first child, especially when they're onto child number three and they've learned to give a little and change the way they see things.

In this sense, Janice is the bitter older sibling who's understandably pissed that the rules have changed and that curfews are later and later, and the car's more easily borrowed. But that doesn't mean she's correct in being upset; it just means that she hates that the industry is shifting away from what she thought defined it in the first place.

Which is to say, away from Janice Dickinson.

Hopefully not too far away from the woman herself, though, because she may be a lot of things, but she's certainly not boring. The comments on the plus-size trend are really just a blip in an otherwise fast, funny, dishy read.

Someone got here by searching for: hypnotized Jennifer Aniston Reading: Everything About Me Is Fake, And I'm Perfect, by the self-proclaimed Alpha Dog (she's nuts). Watching: The premiere of the show I wrapped a year ago, which airs tonight at 10 on NBC and settles into its regular time slot tomorrow night with a new episode at 8 p.m.

Plagiarism

When I got the job recapping "Band of Brothers," I decided to buy the book on which the Tom Hanks/Steven Spielberg miniseries was based. I read along with each episode so that I had the pertinent facts -- spellings, locations, et al. -- and could note where TV deviated from or embellished upon the tome.

Stephen Ambrose's writing captivated me -- it's simple yet effective, unadorned but stunningly evocative. The series worked as a companion to his well-done historical text about the brave men of E Company in the 506th Regiment of the U.S. Army's101st Airborne Division. My sister, devotee of all things history -- especially military history -- was impressed that HBO had the good sense to pick up a miniseries based on the work of one as renowned as Ambrose.

Today, Ambrose faces more charges of plagiarism. A week ago, Ambrose was forced to admit that his new bestseller contained passages lifted almost verbatim from the work of another historian. He confessed without delay, without bitterness, showing that he'd credited the source in a footnote but neglected to encircle copied sentences with quotation marks. The author from whom he plagiarised released a statement saying that he greatly appreciated the dignity and class of Ambrose's confession, and his movements to remedy it.

Then two more books came under fire. Experts call it sloppy work -- in the rush to churn out yet another book, and Ambrose is a prolific historian, it's possible he cobbled together his research so quickly that he lost memory of what words belonged to him and him alone. That may be true. But it's sad that an author of his skill should be sinking into this pit of plagiarism -- the dirtiest word in writing, the gravest sin of the craft.

Once, I fired a columnist for copying without credit. He lifted an entire, florid sentence from a newspaper article, and an anonymous person sent me copies of both pieces with the proof highlighted in bright, searing yellow. We gave the writer a chance to defend himself. He said he got careless. He felt sorry, but didn?t seem to feel shame. The editorial board voted unanimously to end his column.

And if they hadn't, I'd have overturned the vote and axed him anyway. Because at an independent paper that's completely run by students, you have to work hard for any modicum of credibility on campus, especially among the professors and personnel you use as sources. If our anonymous tipster saw the man's column in our pages, he or she might think the paper spurned journalistic ethics. And this mistake might not have been the first, and might not be the last.

That, and as a writer, his error grieved me -- he copied the sentence by hand onto a page of his column notes, then typed it right into his column, claiming he'd forgotten that it wasn't his own thought. How do you DO that? Writers are supposed to cherish words and feel fiercely proud of their own innovation. This wasn't some boring "Joe walked into a bar" sentence, this was a carefully constructed, lyrical description. It's hard to imagine forgetting where you found something like that, hard to imagine looking at it and saying, "Oh yeah, sure, I remember having that epiphany -- better put it in my piece."

But yet here I am, thinking that I'll still read Stephen Ambrose's books, simply because I enjoyed "Band of Brothers" so much. Technically, I should fire him and never look back, because he violated the same principle that my old columnist did. He got complacent, perhaps. He definitely got careless.

The conclusion I'm reaching is that unless my personal reputation is at stake, I apparently don't care about plagiarism. That bothers me a bit; I don't want to be lax with my standards. Maybe I'm being too hard on myself. He's just an author. I could read the books from which he plagiarised instead, but there's a reason Ambrose is so well-known -- it's his facility with the language, his compilation of research into a fluid whole. Should I care about lost quotation marks? He did at least footnote the source of the passages, even if he didn't put telltale marks around certain phrases. That's more than our columnist did.

So maybe that's what separates the cases. Or did I just give myself a moral loophole?