Laurie Sandell's Blog, page 368

Girls! Girls! Girls! All-Nude Revue

[image error]Tonight is my last NYC reading, at KGB Bar in the East Village, at 7:00 P.M. I hope my attention-grabbing headline and drawing will be enough to lure you to the event. Full disclosure: There will probably be no disrobing. I can't speak for my co-reader, Jeff Sharlet, though. Anything can happen when it comes to Jeff. (He's reading about a cult.) Come on out and enjoy some drinks, and some mercifully short readings, followed by an author Q/A that we're going to do together. I'll hang out for a...

Tomorrow night: Reading at KGB Bar

[image error]Welp, this is it: My last New York City reading. I'll be reading in Chicago on Oct. 1st and in Portland, OR on December 10th, and sometime in Miami in November, but New York is cashed, finito, dunzo. So if you're curious about my oral stylings, come to KGB Bar tomorrow night at 7:00 PM and help make the room look as crowded as this one does.

I'm also doing my next big Glamour interview tomorrow during the day, and it sucks that I can't talk about it at my reading, cause those stories are...

Have you seen the movie The Cove?

[image error]I guess I've been sticking pretty close to Brooklyn; this is the first time I've seen the new and improved Washington Sq. Park (that's me, standing at the entrance). Paul and I met there today; then had brunch at an adorable restaurant on Greenwich St. called Gottino. (The type of place where oranges are spilling out of baskets and the garden is surrounded by ivy-covered walls.) But I couldn't enjoy my typical meat-eater's meal of bacon, or sausage, or anything with a face, because last...

RIP Daisy Simpson

[image error]I found this story about Jessica Simpson's dog, Daisy, getting snatched by a coyote really upsetting. First of all, she's the last person I profiled for Glamour; you can read that interview here. I hadn't seen her in about five years, when I last interviewed her. Back then, she was living in Calabasas, California, and still married to Nick. She was being followed around by six carloads of paparazzi. (We were sitting in a coffee shop and they were pressed up against the window.) She was young ...

I am a bad Jew

[image error]This morning I e-mailed my friend Paul, to see if he wanted to see a movie with me tonight. He wrote back, "Umm…it's Rosh Hashanah. Don't you have plans?" Not only do I not have Rosh Hashanah plans, I had no idea it was Rosh Hashanah. He then reminded me that fellow author (and fellow Jewess) Lucinda Rosenfeld and I planned a joint book party on Yom Kippur, completely unaware of the fact that we were meant to be atoning for our sins. Our non-Jewish friends alerted us to that fact. As if he...

Slackers and screenplays

[image error]On very little sleep (I had a small bout of insomnia last night), I heroically dragged myself to yoga this morning, then went over to Carole's to brainstorm screenplay ideas. I'm already working on a spec screenplay adaptation of my book, and because my particular form of procrastination manifests through the desire to start new, alternative projects, I thought it might be a good idea to start several screenplays at once, finishing none of them. To my credit, I am a very productive...

Dueling readings by and about exes

[image error]This is so funny. Tonight, my good friend Michelle Fiordaliso is in from L.A. to read from her new book, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Ex. She'll be reading at the Barnes & Noble on 6th Avenue; info is here. Also tonight, my actual ex-boyfriend, Paul Bravmann (check out his portrait from the "Rogue's Gallery" of exes in my book), is reading from his untitled novel at Lolita Bar; here's the info. Paul and I dated for just under two years–my God–10 years ago, now? And I maintain...

Last New York City Reading! Sep. 22nd @ KGB Bar

[image error]Unless my publicist tells me otherwise, this will be my last New York City reading for a while. So come on out to KGB Bar in the East Village on Tuesday, September 22nd, at 7:00 PM, for "Non-Fiction Night." I'll be reading with Jeff Sharlet of "Killing the Buddha" fame. Even if you've heard me read, you haven't heard Jeff read, so I encourage you to slip into the reading after I'm done, pretend you were sitting there all along, and listen to Jeff do his thing. And by the way, KGB is a great p...

Tonight: Hannah Tinti reads at Book Court in Brooklyn

[image error]

Hannah with her dog, Canada

If you would have told me when I was younger and an aspiring writer that I would someday rub elbows with my literary heroes, I wouldn't have believed you. But the publishing world is small in New York, and when you regularly attend readings, writer's colonies, and publishing events, you start to see the same people over and over. Tonight my friend Hannah Tinti, who I met years ago at Blue Mountain Center, will be reading from the paperback version of...

Have people stopped going to the movies, too?

[image error]Friday night, Paul and I went to see My One and Only (which I loved) at the Cobble Hill Cinema, and we were the only people in the theater. Here's Paul, motioning to me frantically as if it might be difficult for me to spot him in the crowd. Last night, I went to the opening of The Boom Boom Room at the Standard Hotel, courtesy of my friend Carole. Let's see if I can do this place justice. The room is enormous; as one patron put it, "It feels like the grand ballroom on The Titanic." There's a...