Isn't that...SPECIAL?

[Edited to add: I don't really think a jeweler's statement can be considered "confirmation" of an engagement, however, the photo confirms yet another embarassing tee-shirt choice.]
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In Touch is reporting Jon Gosselin proposed to his 22-year-old girlfriend, Hailey Glassman, during a recent holiday weekend in France. Gosselin reportedly presented Glassman with a $180,000 engagement ring featuring a skull surrounded by four black diamonds.

Because, you know, nothing says love like a skull.

The report of this engagement is being met with skepticism all over the interwebs. However, if Jon's recent arrested development fashion choices (above) are any indication, I suspect skull love isn't too far off the mark.

Read the whole story here.

(Interesting aside: I think Glassman resembles Kate Gosselin in the looks department. Just sayin'.)

A Wolf at the Table

I don't know about you? But when I read "Running With Scissors", I couldn't help but wonder what family situation lead up to poor Augusten getting abandoned at his crazy mother's crazy psychiatrist's house to be reared. What, I had to ask myself, in the world, had the poor boy been used to up to that point? Was it all Ozzie and Harriet?

"A Wolf at the Table" is the book that answers that question. Answers it thoroughly. Answers it emphatically. Answers it without pity. Answers it without blinking. (And I really, really wished he would have blinked a couple of times).

Poor Augusten Burroughs, ya'll. Unless you were actually sired by a rabid dog? You undoubtedly enjoyed a better childhood than Augusten. I am sorry to inform you that the years preceding his parental abandonment (chronicled in RWS) were absolutely no better than the ones that followed. And I don't give away any plot points by telling you this. "A Wolf at the Table" is not about plot. It's about survival and cruelty. Period.

The marriage of Augusten Burrough's mother and father was, to put it mildly, troubled. John Burroughs, Augusten's father, was a philosophy professor at Amherst cursed with unusually rotten teeth, a twisted mind, and the world's worse case of psoriasis. Oh, and did I mention the arthritis? He possessed, according to Augusten, the psychological make-up of a serial killer and may or may not have acted on those impulses. Augusten was a child either terrorized or completely ignored by his, at best distant, and at worst, mentally and physically abusive father. He grew up a neglected little boy in a small moldering house in the woods scrounging for everything from food to love to veterinary care for the family pets (he seldom succeeded on any of these counts). Eventually, Augusten would come perilously close to murdering the man he, ironically, called "Dead" (according to Augusten this pronounciation was the result of his New England accent mixing with the word "Dad". Creepy.)

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With "A Wolf at the Table" Burroughs officially finishes chronicling his entire (exhausting) childhood; with "Dry" his struggle with alcoholism (Burrough's father was also alcoholic...surprise!). If you are wondering why anyone would bother to immerse themselves in such grim works, you need only to read the first couple of pages of any of these books to be sucked in to Augusten's spare, muscular writing style not to mention addicted to sticking around to see what fresh hell awaits the man. There's plenty to go around.

In "A Wolf at the Table" Augusten recalls the effects of his childhood after he has broken away, trading on his talents to get a job in advertising:

I was an associate creative director at an ad agency in Manhattan. At the office, I was funny and people seemed to like me. I'd worked with the same art director for many years and we traveled together from agency to agency as a creative team, so she assumed she knew me well. A few times a day I would go into the men's room, close myself inside a stall, sit on the toilet, and block my ears with my hands. I would stay that way for a few minutes, trying to calm myself. I had the feeling that my home life, my real life, my dirty life, was leaking out, showing through. I had the feeling that people at the office could see something rotten and disturbing and insane poking through me.

It's no wonder. What is a wonder is that Augusten survived it at all. With (seemingly at least) so many of his gifts intact.

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Keep up with Augusten Burroughs here at his website. Read his blog otherwise known as a "blob" here.

The Great Gatsby Pre-Review

I stumbled across a reference on an internet back road today about a Martin Scorsese version of The Great Gatsby and my head almost fell off from shock. Turns out, what I read actually referred to this season's HBO show Entourage in which the Gatsby/Scorsese project is a fictitious production written into the plot of the show. Entourage, with its savvy finger-on-the-pulse of Tinseltown sensibility may or may not have contributed to the development of projects before. For instance, a movie about notorious Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar that may or may not be directed by Joe Carnahan (Smokin' Aces) when his current film, White Jazz wraps. Read more about the Entourage phenom here.

But I digress.

My point is that this set me Googling Gatsby, one of my favorite novels ever. I have read this work countless times. It's one of those books I turn to like an old, impossibly soft pair of jeans or a warm blanket straight out of the dryer on a cold night. For me, when I'm down, there's no literary comfort like Gatsby:

"And as I sat there, brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby's wonder when he first picked out Daisy's light at the end of his dock. He had come such a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close he could hardly fail to grasp it. But what he did not know was that it was already behind him, somewhere in the vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night."

Wonderful. There's an undercurrent (overcurrent?) that runs through Fitzgerald's writing that is hopeless and haunting. Doomed. I love it. "Gatsby" is the grandaddy of them all. It is filled with hopeless nostalgic longing. Gatsby never fails to comfort me in that, if nothing else, it assures me this is the human condition.

It is the nostalgic quality, I think, that makes the Gatsby story so hard to pin down in a film. If it were music, it would be a heartbreaking single violin solo. The 1970s version of "The Great Gatsby" starring Mia Farrow as Daisy, Robert Redford as Gatsby, Sam Waterston as Nick Carraway, Bruce Dern as Tom Buchanan, and Karen Black as Myrtle Wilson, in my opinion, could not possibly have been more perfectly cast. (Not to mention scored: "What'll I do?") I see these actors in my mind in those roles when I read the book to this day. Still, the movie somehow didn't quite work (though I still watch it now and then) and I can never put my finger on precisely why. It is technically remarkably faithful to the book. Each scene is played as written. Unlike the book, however, the sum of the movie's parts do not add up to anything greater.

What I learned today is that Australian director Baz Luhrmann is taking a crack at it. The movie is in the impossibly early stages, is not yet even cast. This MTV blog post speculates that Luhrman might collaborate again with Leonardo Di Caprio who, in my opinion, would make an excellent Gatsby. He's the right age (maybe even plus a few years) with the right acting chops to do the job. (Let's hope!) The buzz, however, indicates Luhrmann may be favoring Di Caprio for the role of Nick Carraway (so wrong!)

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Okay, I'll just go ahead and say it, what they may be very likely thinking is Brad Pitt as Gatsby and Di Caprio as Carraway. A choice so monumentally wrong, so utterly stupid, that it makes my stomach roll. Brad Pitt is a cute guy. He provides plentiful excellent sperm for skank-ho turned international goodwill ambassador, Angelina Jolie. He did an okay job in a few movies. He has never, ever done anything outstanding. He is absolutely one-hundred percent NOT. JAY. GATSBY. DO YOU HEAR ME BAZ LUHRMANN?

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We must also note, Luhrmann's most recent work, "Australia"? Floptastic. On still other hands, Moulin Rouge and Romeo + Juliet. Both innovative and successful. If "Gatsby" is going to work, it's going to take someone with some nerve. I'm going to go ahead and hope for the best.

But I suspect it's doomed. Utterly, impossibly, hopelessly.

Doomed.

Design Star Season 4 (And a Hint of Things to Come)

You won't want to miss the premiere of Design Star Season 4 on HGTV (tomorrow) Sunday, July 19 at 9 p.m. (CST). Sunday's show will feature 13 designers 3 of which are "semi-finalists". Two semi-finalists will be eliminated on tomorrow's episode. Check out all the contestants here. Not sure I'll have time for episode recap as I did during the Summer of Fun, but I'll definitely be along for the ride. I love this competition show; it's second only to Project Runway in my book.

The action takes place this year in Hollywood where the competing designers will share this fabulous Hollywood house:

Not many words these days, but I will tell you to watch out for a Very Special Post coming up right here next Tuesday.

Dinner at Jasmine

Circumstances conspired to prevent me from attending opening night at Jasmine (Thursday), but I managed a visit tonight and, boy, was it worth the wait. I cannot, CANNOT recommend it highly enough. Especially if you can get Nikki May to go with you and stay until passed closing time like we did tonight. Here you see Nikki w/her "Saki-tini" staying in touch with The World through her iPhone. It was quite a relief to dine with someone you don't have to apologize to for obsessively checking your e-mail, updating your Facebook status, and grabbing your phone like Pavlov's dog every time it twitches. We are obsessed...OBSESSED I tell you!

Round 1: In the foreground, my "Tom Kah" soup, a mixture of tomatoes, mushrooms and shrimp in creamy coconut milk, lime juice, red curry paste and Galangal root, garnished with cilantro (I'm a little misty now just thinking about it). In the background is Nikki's very pretty appetizer: chopped avocado, tomato, and spicy ahi tuna. It was delicious too.

Main course: Basil stir-fry: chicken, red pepper, green pepper, cucumber, onion in a hot spicy sweet basil-garlic sauce. Heavenly.

Jasmine in general, looking very un-Paducah-like toward the end of the night. Snapped from my seat at our table. Nikki and I noted how also un-Paducah-like the crowd looked. Oddly, the majority of those dining were wearing black and white strangely matching the Lowertown artwork hanging on the walls. It was all very reassuring.

The George-Wilson 20 Year Anniversary

The George-Wilson Literary Club is a family group that has been meeting, more or less, once a month for the past 20 years. The club is named for my Grandfather ("Wilson"), now deceased, and Grandmother (maiden name "George"). Members share original writings, photos, music, read from work they find interesting, or recently, even original video. Of course, there is also delicious food involved at every get together. The meetings rotate from member house to member house and are usually held on Saturdays. It was far from a full crew today, but we nevertheless still celebrated the milestone with our usual enthusiasm.

BubbleShare: Share photos - Play some Online Games.


(Lord knows, we hate to have our picture made.)

Click the photos for larger versions and captions at Bubbleshare.

Impressions of The Michael Jackson Funeral

[Updated to add: Also notably absent from the funeral: Lisa Marie Presley, wife #1, who, as I've belatedly learned, not enough of you realize wrote a blog post on her My Space (barf) page that is reproduced, in part, here by US magazine. Debbie Rowe, wife #2, and surrogate and/or biological mother to two of MJ's children.]

You've seen the clips and coverage by now.

The Jackson brothers all in matching black suits, white shirts, yellow ties, yellow boutonnières, and sunglasses seated front row in a dimmed Staples Center before a crowd of twenty thousand. Countless millions more in the viewing audience worldwide across most all major networks. The spotlit gold casket presumably holding the remains, sans brain (as relentlessly reported), of MJ. Magic Johnson talking about Kentucky Fried chicken. Kobe Bryant. Usher laying a hand on, and singing to, the casket. The Reverend Al Sharpton to Michael’s children, “Wuddn’t nuttin’ wrong with yo Daddy.” The children of Martin Luther King, Jr. (or the junior juniors as I’ve come to think of them). Jennifer Hudson, Brooke Shields, Lionel Richie, Queen Latifah, Stevie Wonder, John Mayer, Mariah Carey. Texas Congresswoman Barbara Lee reminding the audience (lest they’d forgotten) one is “innocent until proven guilty”. Smokey Robinson as emcee, who looked freshly nip-tucked for the occasion.

Yet all this pales in comparison to the finale when the Jackson brothers and Janet and La Toya (both sisters clad entirely in black, sunglasses and black hats) took the stage en masse, along with Michael’s children: Prince Michael, Paris, and Blanket. Various Jackson brothers took the microphone and briefly dissolved into cringe-inducing, random remembrances. And then endless uncomfortable moments of silence and fumbling as the Jacksons struggle to lower the microphone to little Paris Jackson’s level so she could choke out a heartbroken,

"I just wanted to say ... ever since I was born, daddy has been the best father ... you could ever imagine. And I just wanted to say I love him…so much.”

(Scripted or spontaneous?)

While Paris’s remarks were a convenient and undeniably heart rending punctuation mark finale to the funeral fiasco, who can forget the lengths to which Michael Jackson went to shield these same children from the press? To protect them from the notoriety, from the freakish fame he himself could never escape? The veils, the masks.

If anyone. Was ever. Going to spin in their casket? This would have been the time. And Michael Jackson would have been the guy.

Notably absent: Liz Taylor who tweeted, “I said I wouldn't go to the Staples Center and I certainly don't want to become a part of it. I love him too much.” Also not in attendance, Diana Ross, who Michael named as a secondary guardian of his children should Kathryn Jackson be unable to fulfill the role. Legendary record producer Quincy Jones. Liza Minelli, presumably a close friend; MJ (along with buddy Liz Taylor) was famously part of the wedding party at what I consider to be (thus far) biggest freak show of the century: Minelli’s ill-fated and ridiculously extravagant NYC wedding to David Guest in 2002.

I am, in exactly equal parts, drawn to and repelled by this story/spectacle and others like it and fear this extravaganza has ushered in a new phenomenon:

The Variety Show Funeral!!!

[Cue up-tempo version of “Taps”]

Starring….

The Body!….

The Mourners!...

And special guest star…Unexpected Latest Performance Competition Show Winner!!!!

(We’re so doomed.)

Change your pulls...change your life.

I've spent the better part of the long weekend finishing up the majority of my Geography course work. I've procrastinated on taking my region tests unmercifully; Friday I had eight tests to go. As of now, I'm down to three. And these I'm determined to finish tonight. Even if it takes all night. Sociology begins Tuesday and, though I technically have until the end of the month, I do not want this work hanging over my head along with whatever homework torture Sociology will soon rain down upon me.

Otherwise, I also managed to address another task in the unending home improvement list. This one, however, was a major pleasure. You see above the old cabinet pull (left) juxtaposed with the new. I've always hated those old pulls, I mean hated them with a passion. For years. I'm not sure what color they are supposed to be...bronze? Brown metal? Gold? And the style...oxidized early American nightmare? The new Dark Granite paint color only served to reemphasize their already startling inadequacy and so, when, on an excursion to Tar-jhay, I happened upon some brushed nickel pulls (value packs!!) of the exact right size to fit the existing screw holes (no use reinventing the wheel here), I jumped at the chance to rid myself of the crappy pull plague once and for all.

As a bonus, it was but another happy opportunity to employ the smooth, brute power of the Bosch 10.8 Volt Litheon I-Driver. For approximately the cost of a can of good paint and 45 minutes (if that) of my time, I corrected a style wrong in my kitchen that's been driving me crazy for years. So good!

[An aside...I have the old pulls and screws bagged in a freezer bag. What does one do with these things? Have a use for them? E-mail me and they're yours.]