Do not invite Miranda July to your barbecues
I have been reading Miranda July’s book, No One Belongs Here More Than You. Her style is…well, here - this is how I imagine Miranda July would react to a barbecue. Draw your own conclusions.
I arrive at the barbeque with my cold potato salad, that isn’t really my cold potato salad, but a cold potato salad I am holding at the moment. If someone were to ask me what it was it’d have to say “It’s my cold potato salad” because I made it, and I am holding it, but secretly I don’t want to claim it as mine, a part of me, because it is only potato salad. I also can’t call it “My Famous Potato Salad!” because no one has heard of it or written about it in any magazines.
As I go inside, I wonder if these people think of this place and time as a “Barbecue” or a “BBQ”, or just a “cook out”. I think that cook outs sound unforgiving, and BBQs are more hopeful, like a cloud or a sock. If anyone asks me where I am, I will say “Why, where do you think, of course! A BarBeCue” - just like that, with each syllable stressed. But I know that no one will ask, so I hide the syllables under my tongue like a penny.
On a table there is a hot dog, glistening with sweat or steam or grease. It looks so lonely all by itself, surrounded by hamburgers and open bags of bread. I take the hotdog and put it down my shorts. It is warm and slick and I wonder how it feels being so close to my crotch. I know that it cannot really feel anything, but I still wonder. And what would it say if it could talk? “Thank you” I imagine, like a whisper. I whisper it aloud to feel what it sounds like.
Slowly the hotdog starts to slide, like an ice cube on a warm plate. I feel it sliding around inside of my shorts and think “Oh no you don’t, mister!” but I don’t say it. Then I think about the plates on the table, and how warm they must be under the sun. Suddenly I feel very cold, even though this morning I thought it was too warm for culottes. I take one of the plates and press it to my face, and I whisper “I’ve been missing you.” Then I start softly singing it, because it sounds like a song. As this happens the hotdog slides away and falls out of my pantleg onto the ground. “Be free” I thought, and then ,”I’ll be missing you”.
March 18th, 2008 at 3:28 pm
perfect.
March 18th, 2008 at 3:40 pm
It sounds interesting, like she’s in her own little reality. I often say; “perception is reality” …well, not actually say it, but I think about saying it… Anyway, I like the part about the hot dog.
March 18th, 2008 at 3:56 pm
I’ll go ahead and say I have no idea who this woman is, but this blog entry cracked me up.
March 19th, 2008 at 8:43 am
Ha, dead on! So does that mean you like her writing, or not?
March 19th, 2008 at 9:25 am
You have a knack for this, and mimicking an author every week could be interesting.
March 19th, 2008 at 7:00 pm
You should send this to McSweeney’s or whoever publishes brilliant mimicry of popular authors these days. I seriously can’t stand her writing or her movie but when I met her I thought she seemed nice but now I realize that she was probably just smiling at me because she had a hotdog in her culottes.
March 19th, 2008 at 9:18 pm
In the immortal words of my dear pal Tim Miller: “Wait…….WHAAAAAAT?”
March 20th, 2008 at 7:14 am
Even though I know nothing about Miranda… this is brilliant. (Now I’ll have to find out.)
March 23rd, 2008 at 11:50 pm
even if this weren’t just some kind of parody, i’d still find it pretty engaging. it wasn’t until the last paragraph that i was able to decide whether this was something you wrote, or something she wrote. and even still i’m not really sure. you should narrate this to a video collage, and install it somewhere.
and i’m still going to invite miranda july to my rock’n sock’n bluestown BBQ in july. you’ve not dissuaded me.
March 24th, 2008 at 10:12 am
I promise I will never put 4 paragraphs written by someone else on my blog. Especially not without making it clear that it’s a quote.
April 4th, 2008 at 1:20 pm
Eliza, brilliant.
April 17th, 2008 at 3:04 pm
I watched You, Me, and Everyone We Know (I think was the title) and this struck me as dead on.
Just discovered the blog, and love it, btw.
December 7th, 2008 at 5:21 am
That was excellent