What is it about the last name Notaro and hilarity?
On Tuesday, Anne, Boolia and I went to see Laurie Notaro on her book tour to promote her latest work of fiction, Spooky Little Girl. Instead of reading from the book she was promoting, because she feels excerpts out of a novel are awkward, given that if you haven’t started from the beginning, you aren’t familiar with the characters or any of the significant plot points, she read an essay from the non-fiction book she’s currently writing–about the time that she convinced her best friend to dress as Blanche from “What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?” for Halloween, the lies it takes to rent a wheelchair, and how she, dressed as Baby Jane, ended up trying to give the heimlich maneuver to Blanche, whose wheelchair kept trying to escape said heimlich maneuver by rolling all throughout the house and ended up looking like a scene of onscreen abuse brought to life.
Not familiar with Laurie Notaro? Here is an excerpt from “Autobiography of a Fat Bride”:
“It’s not you!” he shouts one last time. “It’s me!” That’s enough to make me stop dead in my tracks. “Really?” I ask as I spin around. “Are you sure it’s you? Because that would make my day, just knowing that it was YOU and NOT ME, especially after I caught you in the middle of an escape attempt. Is it you? Is it really you, Ben?” “Well, I guess it’s me a little bit,” he stammers as Dog Girl peeks an eye out from behind the purple curtains as one of her hair ornaments chimes. “But, well, if you really want to know, I’d say that yeah, it’s mostly you.” “Mostly me?” I reply. “It’s mostly me that’s forced you into this scene from Children of the Cornrow? God, it looks like Stevie Wonder and Bo Derek jumped you in an alley and gang-braided you!” He stands quiet for a moment, thinking, then nods his head. “Actually, it’s pretty much all you,” he adds with a sigh. “I don’t think it’s me at all. No, no, it’s you. All you. It’s not me, because the feeling I’m getting in my chakras is that it’s definitely you.”
As if I needed confirmation. I’ve seen that play It’s Not You, It’s Me before, and as a matter of fact, I’ve played the lead in that scenario since before I had boobs.
My role is “Super Idiot Girl,” the kind of female who searches out the most alluring sociopath to date, who never learns that if you see a tornado coming, especially one that works in a record store and displays no ambition outside of making mixed tapes from bootleg Grateful Dead shows, duck under the nearest table until the roar passes.
It all started in fifth grade, when my mother bought me a box of Valentines from Kmart. I searched out the perfect Holly Hobbie valentine, a little farmer boy in overalls milking a cow, for the boy I wanted to move into sixth grade with. Only a few days earlier, he had passed me a note, chunkily folded into the shape of a football, that said “Whats your shampew? Gee, your hair smels terrifik.” It absolutely declared the love that was to guarantee me perfect happiness for the rest of my life, or at least until summer vacation. In my best cursive handwriting, I signed the back of the valentine, “To Paul, I use Breck once a week. Luv, Laurie,” and, to add a sense of female intrigue, dotted the i’s with puffy hearts to let him know I was all lady, all right.
I can understand now how that kind of message would be chilling enough for a boy to shy away from the love of an oily-headed, prepubescent girl, but I still don’t think it reached the proportions required for him to stand up at lunchtime and loudly scream “I am NOT your boyfriend! I like Melissa Crow because she can sit on her hair and has horses!”
Clearly, this woman is my soulmate. I gushed at her and made her fear for her life a little, I think, but she was gracious enough to not betray her fears that I might attempt to wear her like a dress out of the store. She signed my book, signed Lanny’s book, and got to hear the story of the Christmas at which Anne vomited on the table after dinner and then promptly signed her book with the word ‘Hottenfoyzingoux’.
On Friday, Carrie picked me up for a girls’ night out–we went to dinner at Boom Noodle in Bellevue, charmed the wait staff as usual (making one laugh until he snorted), and then we went to Laughs to see the inimitably deadpan-hilarious Tig Notaro.
We laughed until our stomachs hurt, and then laughed some more, and each picked up a ‘No Moleste’ shirt–I am going to wear mine on the bus as a clear message to all the guyliner-wearing psychopaths that I’m only interested in dinner and nothing more.
Afterward, we went back to Carrie’s place to watch Sherlock Holmes, and I’ve got to say, that while it was probably the booze impairing my ability to follow what was going on at ALL, it could have also just been incomprehensible and the longest movie of all time. I say this because we started the movie around two in the morning, and when I woke on the couch at 6:30, it was still running.
I should say I was woken at 6:30; it’s not something that happens to me naturally at that hour. Oh no. You know the creepy moments in Paranormal Activity when the girl gets out of bed and just stands over her husband, staring at him, for hours, and how freaky it was? I woke up to Carrie’s roommate’s daughter standing over me in just the same way. To my credit, I only shrieked and flailed a little, but I still shrieked and flailed, waking up approximately three city blocks and perhaps even an ex-boyfriend who lives just down the street.
