Hello, just posted the summary for “The Dinner Party.”

In this episode, Jonathan references his M.A. thesis, with hilarious results. I knew that Jonathan earned his M.A. in English from Concordia in 1999, but I never considered what it was on. Nerd confession: I looked it up, and in spite of what he confesses in this episode, it appears that his thesis was merely the beginnings of his book, Lenny Bruce is Dead.

Look at the listing! Here’s what it  says:

TITLE: I found your address in a fortune cookie.

ABSTRACT:

I Found Your Address in a Fortune Cookie is a short novel documenting a man’s life from childhood to death-bed. It is structured as a series of fragments that, while not strictly chronological, play off one another to create an emotional landscape. The narrative voice shifts between the first and third person. Although going about his life with the semblance of routine, Joshua, the protagonist, is thirsting for something unnamable. His desire runs from mundane, sensual pleasures like lying in bed or drinking coffee to desires for which there are no easy names, like the desire to escape the body. The novel is composed of a series of romantic relationships that span Joshua’s early adolescence to his middle age. Approaching death, he withdraws into a dream world in which the messiah has arrived; but even salvation offers little in the way of providing a bottom line to existence. The messianic age proves only to be a continuance of the mundane.

 

Groovy to the max. You can buy a pdf of the thing for $39, which I’m not sure I’m going to do, since you can buy the book for something like $10.

HEllo I’m back from vacation. And I missed TWO Jonathan Goldstein National Post articles. Here’s how the latest one begins:

Monday. With school finished, Zouzou has decided to keep busy by writing a screenplay for a horror film. It’s about vampire babies who live in the sewers and attack through people’s toilets.

“The only problem,” she says, “is that I have to keep stopping writing because I start to scare myself.”

“That would be great for the trailer,” I say. “Get ready for a film so terrifying that the writer was too afraid to write it.’”

“And maybe it’ll have no ending!”

“And instead of an ending,” I add, getting into it, “they could just have words flash across the screen: ‘Leave the theatre and go back to your regular lives, for that is the scariest ending of all.’ Then they could have footage of people stuck in traffic and late for work. Getting an expensive mechanic’s bill. Stuff like that.”

Zouzou shakes her head.

“There’s fun scary and then there’s unfun scary,” she says.

“Like roller coasters are fun scary and the dentist’s office isn’t?” I ask.

She nods her head. Then she grabs her pen, inspired.

“I’ll have a scene where the vampire babies do root canal on someone while riding the roller coaster. No one will be able to tell that the patient’s screams aren’t fun screams until it’s too late.”

“I can’t remember the last time I fun-screamed,” I say wistfully, and Zouzou suggests I go check the mailbox for coupons.

These should be read in their entirety by everyone, every week.

When your email thinks you’re going soft from July 8, 2008 (???? A TUESDAY?) feat. Zouzou and Josh (in reference)

and

The soft bigotry of used couches from July 2, 2008 feat Jon Tucker and Buzz Goldstein

Oh, also, while I was on vacation I re-read Lenny Bruce is Dead for the 4th time and realized that it’s spelled Dina Goldstein. Not Dyna.

I have some clerical errors to fix.