Week In Perspective

If intern Mike brings me sugar instead of Splenda, I get grouchy.

A lot of people ask me what we do around the MG offices all day (nobody asks me this). Besides doing research for my writing, watching reruns of The Hills on mtv.com, and ordering Intern Mike to go buy me more Fat Free Vanilla Jello Pudding Snacks (60 calories and 0 guilt—so why am I always crying?), I also spend time throwing out pieces that just aren’t working. Realizing it’s time to let go of a joke or idea is one of the sad but important parts of writing. In an earlier draft of what you are reading now, there was even a joke right here. Most recently I said goodbye to the piece that started the whole idea for this site in the first place, The time the guy I was hooking up with hooked up with my foul ex-friend Violet, by Henry James.

Initially, it was fun to experiment with the Henry James voice and figure out how he would write about a trivial college story. It started:

In the small American town of Middletown, Connecticut, named for the place it inhabits between the cities of Hartford and New Haven, there is a university, as there are in many such towns in New England, full of trees and house parties, and, as we are often warned, young men of a particular type, who feel entitled to particular things, and sneak about with a very particular type of girl, girls that other girls feel it is in their best interests never to speak to again, try as they might to get back in their good graces.

However, I soon I realized it made me look cray-to-the-crazy insane and sad and alone and bitter and fat. But so much of the MG experience has been about James and I being honest with each other, and just like I told James that I honestly thought his sweater looked like something a blind baby with no hands who was raised by wolves had knitted, he told me that honestly this piece was way too long and overall a huge mistake, both in the writing and its intentions. So I’ll just think about how much I hate her and her fugly pleather Steve Madden imitation Christian Louboutin shoes, instead of writing about it on the internet.

Oh wait.

PS Speaking of me being famous, here's what that week in Ikea was about (ME!!!). Don't forget to visit friend of the site Mark Malkoff's page at Marklivesinikea.com.