I’ll be on the GREAT BOB EDWARDS show today, Friday, 7/31/09 and tomorrow  Its on XM 133 or Sirius 196. It first airs from 8-9 AM. Then it re-runs 9-10 AM, 10-11 AM, 4-5 PM, 8-9 PM, and 10-11 PM. Then on Saturday from 9-10 PM, Friday’s show will repeat.

THANKS, MR. EDWARDS!

Thank you, Brooke Allen!

Please Excuse My Daughter B&N Review

Two recent women’s memoirs have caught my fancy. The first is Please Excuse My Daughter by Julie Klam (Riverhead Books). With wry humor and a pleasing way of combining self-criticism with a genuine forgiveness for her feckless younger self, Klam describes her upbringing as an overindulged and overprotected Jewish-American Princess in the wealthy WASP enclave of Bedford, New York.

Klam’s glamorous mother raised her only daughter to be the kind of pampered wife she had been herself, constantly dragging her away from school for shopping sprees at Bloomindale’s and Bergdorf’s. Well-dressed but painfully unprepared for the world, Klam floundered for years after leaving college until marriage, motherhood, and real financial responsibility forced her at last to grow up. Klam is sweet and charmingly self-deprecating — one suspects that she was never quite as much of a loser as she claims — and by the time I finished the book I felt as though I had a new friend.

If you know me at all, you’ve heard me talk about   Notes From The Underwire: Adventures from my Awkward and Lovely Life by Quinn Cummings which comes out TODAY  from Hyperion.  Let’s be clear, I loved this book.  This, my friends, is a voice you’ve never heard. The book at once hilarious, honest, insightful, and did I mention hilarious? Recently Quinn offered to answer a question or two that I could then share with my blog readers (reader?) and I jumped at the chance.

In my former life I might have been interviewing her for some magazine, let’s say The New York Times Magazine. The piece would start as all pieces do with a set up the scene, Quinn and I enjoying her great Grandma Hattie’s recipe  for sasparilla mint juleps  on the veranda of her home in the deep South(ern California) or Quinn and I at NASA where Quinn is training with Lance Bass to go on the shuttle mission or maybe we were at Steven Speilberg’s Malibu home that Steven gives to Quinn to use for important interviews like for The New York Times and every so often Steven walks through and makes a comment to me about how he’s going to direct a script I wrote. Then suddenly Quinn is gone and it’s me and Steven and big piles of money…

That’s probably why I stopped interviewing people. At any rate, here is Quinn’s intro, my question, and Quinn’s answer. (You can AND MUST read more at Quinn’s kick-ass and finely-maintained blog The QC Report

Ladies and Gentleman, MISS QUINN CUMMINGS.

The effervescent and inimitable Julie Klam (Her book Please Excuse My Daughter is now in both hardcover AND paperback. In case you’ve missed out so far, it’s frisky and funny and just about the perfect companion at the pool as long as your partner has vowed to watch the kids in the water because the baby will try to sneak into the deep end.)

In your unbelievable fantastic, people-you-must-buy-this book, there is a scene where two women are horrifically rude parading you around their party like some kind of circus animal. That said, anytime I mention your book to someone they say, “OH I LOVE HER!” And then they start talking about you in The Goodbye Girl or Family… I wonder how you feel about that. For me, when I first saw you had a book I was so happy to hear you were around and well because I, too, loved you in the Goodbye Girl (and as a kid wanted to be your best friend) and also, my aunt took me to that movie in 1977 in a theater on 57th Street and they had homemade brownies -so I do connect you with NYC and brownies both of which I love. What was the question?

The question was Quinn, when did you become a vegetarian? I was fourteen. No great moment of horror when I realized that used to be a sweet frolicking lamby on my plate. Never liked meat. Don’t miss it, except for bacon. Bacon is the one thing the soy industry is still working on getting right.

Actually, the question was how I feel about being a public figure for things which happened three decades ago. I’m certainly pleased I was involved with things which made people happy (beats the heck out of “Quinn, why did you write on the dining room table?”), but being Quinn Cummings isn’t quite as novel for me as it is for some other people. I do try really hard to be polite, though.