October 10, 2003

Today is the day to sweat in weird places.

Go Opium!

My boyfriend introduced me to today's interviewee, as he pointed out her first book, Idiot Girls' Action Adventure Club , and said "Here, you'll like it, she's funny, and she's from Phoenix!" (He is from Phoenix; otherwise, I wouldn't care.) As you might know, I can be a bit suspicious of certain kinds of female writers, but this book was cool; you felt like you wanted to sit and have a beer and a cheeseburger with her, instead of trying to hold in your stomach and drink a Cosmopolitan (which nobody really likes, anyway), with her. Plus, she gives excellent readings, if you have the chance to see her in person. Here she is, graciously, after I pestered her way too much to send in this interview.

The Laurie Notaro Interview: Slightly Less Than Twenty Questions

So you've got a new book"new book out, don't you? What's it about?
It's about being the Idiot Girl that I am, getting married and then trying to deal with sharing my personal space with someone else (In a nutshell). But there are 40-50 different pieces, slice of life sort of things, so it's difficult to pin down one basic, general sentence what the book is about.

What's life like on a book tour?
It's just like being Led Zeppelin but without the bodyguards, drugs, groupies, catered food, sleep, multitudes of fans and playing guitar, although I do usually end up singing quite a bit.

Do you meet scary fans?
Sometimes, but you have to be nice to everyone. I was in the middle of a reading when I looked up and saw that a man in the front row had his fly waaaaaay open, and I burst out laughing, then had to pretend that I was laughing about something else.

How did you come to have a newspaper column for the Phoenix republic?
Very long story, but briefly, I was a columnist already for seven years in Phoenix before I went to work at the Republic. I started as a columnist at my college newspaper, then kind of worked my way around town to different magazines and publications, and then finally the newspaper.

One of my favorite stories in The Idiot Girls' Action-Adventure Club was about being Dumb and being Smart. Do you have any recent examples of being Dumb and Smart?
Sure. Two weeks ago I thought I had the flu, and I was sick for a week with high temperatures, no sleep, throwing up, etc., and finally I made my husband call the doctor. He made us come down right away when he heard my temperature was 103, and once I got there, I essentially passed out on him. So he promptly sent me to the hospital, where I spent a couple of days on an antibiotic drip because I did not have the flu; I had a really bad kidney and liver infection. They thought I had hepatitis and the nurses wouldn't give me anything stronger than Tylenol, kept checking my pupils. Finally it dawned on me that they thought I was an IV drug user, and I just thought to myself--just get me the hell out of here so I can go home and take four Advil!!

Do your friends and family members ever mind you writing about them?
Sure, sometimes, mostly my mom, but she'll never come out and say it. She'll tell my sister, who will then tell me. Basically, she doesn't want me to write about all the shit she buys on QVC because she doesn't want my dad to know. Generally, though, my friends and family don't care--I don't make stuff up, so whatever happens in the columns happened
in real life. There are some events that I don't write about, however to avoid someone getting pissed at me. For example, my husband's family is completely off limits, although there's a wealth of material there.

What about your ex-friends and boyfriends?
I don't really have any ex-friends; my friends who were my true friends are still my friends today--and those are the people who are in the book. I don't really ever write about people I don't know well. And boyfriends--well, especially the ones I write about DESERVE to be outed as EVILDOERS. Someone has to warn the women out there!

Who are some of your favorite female authors and comedians?
Dorothy Parker, Janeane Garafalo, Ellen Degeneres.

So what advice do you have for Idiot Girls about to attend their high school reunion?
If you're going to a high school reunion soon, expect to be forced to watch a poorly developed Power Point presentation on honoring the war in Iraq, even if no one in your class is over there. People were CRYING at my reunion watching this, especially the person who put it together. No one really appreciated my comments of "87 billion dollars. 87 BILLION dollars. Hey! Hey! I see a weapon of mass destruc--no, sorry, that's just a lamp in a bombed out house. Sorry. Sorry."

You answer this question on your website, but for people who haven't seen it, what's your advice for people trying to get a book published?
My advice is please don't send me your book, ask me for my agent's phone number or my editor's name. I get those requests on a daily basis, and I just can't do it, my agent and editor would stop speaking to me. Aside from that, you need to grow some pretty thick skin and if you really believe in what you're doing, don't give up.

After reading your story All Sex and Perverts, it struck me. What is it about moms that within a week takes them from being terrified of email to being obsessed with it?
I decided it was age and the technology generation gap, because now, that affliction has struck me: I cannot figure out how to set up my voice mail on my cell phone and am terrified at the prospect of trying to do it. It's just too overwhelming and is filled with potential hassles. What I did instead was get to the point where I could figure out how to record the outgoing message to read: "This is Laurie. Don't
leave a message, I don't know how to get it. You're just going to have to call me back."

What are some of the jobs you've been fired from?
Magazine, newspaper, magazine, non-profit organization, doctor's office, optical place. The others I forget.

Most people I know from Phoenix don't have many good things to say about it. So what's good about living there? It's a shithole, plain and simple. I hate it here.

According to Booklist, The Idiot Girls' Adventure Club achieved 'cult status.' What exactly does that mean?
Hell if I know, I laughed when I saw that. I have no idea--but if there's a possibility of starting my own church and being tax-exempt, I'm totally into it.

Tell us why you wanted to make your husband fat, and what your method was for that (unless you're just going to tell us to buy Autobiography of a Fat Bride?)
Ah, go buy Fat Bride.

This is a pretty general question but after what you've learned as a writer and publishing your books, what advice can you give to authors who want to make a living off their writing?
You won't be able to really make a living off of writing immediately unless you have a journalism degree and get a job at the newspaper, unless you win some fabulous writing award in college and get a nice monetary prize. If you're freelancing, it takes a while to get to the point where you have enough outlets to exist on that as your sole income. It's very hard. Most people I know who make a living writing are
full-time employees of some publication.

How is it possible for a dog to 'make doody' in her sleep?
Chigger was very old and incontinent, and it would just happen--slowly, her back legs became paralyzed and she had no idea of what she was doing, it was just her body at work. She was the best dog I ever had, and I loved her very much.

Tells us about Planet Magazine. What about it made it the most fun and the most miserable experience of your life?
Well, it was something I helped start from the ground up, and my friends and I actually made a magazine that was pretty good and people liked. That part of it was incredible--being really proud of what you've done and working really hard. We all believed very much in what we were doing. The sucky part was financial--it's hard for magazines to make money, and eventually, half of the staff wanted to turn the magazine
into a different direction--a less savory one, shall we say--to generate more ad revenue; the other half wanted to keep it the way it was and go down fighting if we had to. My half lost, we were fired and the magazine changed direction, got a little seedy, gasped a couple of last breaths and died anyway. I lost the magazine, my job, and a couple of my best
friends. That part was miserable.

Is it true that David Letterman is optioning The Idiot Girls Action Adventure Club for a sitcom? What's to come of that?
Well, World Wide Pants is optioning Idiot Girls, which is different than David Letterman; I'm sure he has no idea who the hell I am. It's his production company that I'm working with. We'll see what happens--we're working on pitching
the networks now, but television is very iffy and chances of getting something on the air and keeping it there are really slim. It's a combination of a strong team, timing and luck.

What projects do you have in mind post Fat Bride?
I just finished the first round of edits of the third book, I Love
Everybody and Other Atrocious Lies of Loud Mouth Girl, and that will come out in July of 2004, and I'll start on a new book in the next couple of weeks. [Editor's note: Don't forget to check out her serialized story in USA Today, as well.]

How does it feel to be the 76th person interviewed for Zulkey.com?
I'm tired of typing and I have to go to the bathroom.
But thank you, this has been delightful.