Spring Break

This spring break I did kind of a lot of reading. In addition to Judges in the Poisonwood Bible, I read:
- Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
- Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs
- Dry by Augusten Burroughs
- Shopgirl by Steve Martin

I also started a bunch of other books. I had a lot of time on my hands. Now I’m kind of an Augusten Burroughs freak, and I was always a David Sedaris freak. They both write memoirs. Augusten Burroughs’s are a bit more depressing, whereas David Sedaris’s are more humorous. This made me start thinking about all the people they are writing about. Usually, writing a memoir about someone, especially these kinds of memoirs, usually means that they are particularly laughable. Even if you change the names and places, these people definitely know that they are being made fun of. Even the people who look the best in them are usually called fat or stupid or something, and people tend to pick out the bad things against the good ones. I guess picking that kind of a career can mean offending a whole slough of people on your way to fame.

I recorded a show on my DVR called October Road. It’s a new show on ABC, and I recorded it because the girl from That 70’s show is in it. The point is, it’s exactly about what I’ve been thinking about. This guy leaves his hometown and writes about all his friends back home and makes most of them look bad, and ten years later he comes back. A lot of people hate him because of what he said about them, and some people were offended because they weren’t in it at all.

Then I thought, maybe some of these people deserve it. Hey, if you’re going to call a guy a pickpocket and say he smells bad on the subway because you don’t realize he speaks English, maybe you deserve to have the world know what a prick you are. Maybe if you end up in rehab for being a creepy sex addict, you should be prepared to have millions of people know all about it.