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Breadloaf Blues
Looking for a summer vacation 30 years ago I went to Breadloaf Writers Conference with a canister of Alice B. Toklas Gingersnaps in case things got boring.
“What happened next?” asks Memphis Earlene.
“I came home with an empty canister, and I don’t remember the rest,” I tell her.
“I came home with an empty canister, and I don’t remember the rest,” I tell her.
“How you got to be so old and be such a damned fool astounds me.” Memphis Earlene says.
“Me too,” I say, because there isn’t any defense.
“Me too,” I say, because there isn’t any defense.
What astounded me? How white the place was. One black woman contributor, one black guy on fellowship. Also how male dominated. Two thirds of the contributors aka Paying Customers were women, two thirds of the famous writers were men. A certain casting couch atmosphere obtained.
Not that there wasn’t lots of fun to be had (more about that some other time) but for a place to style itself the foremost writers conference in America and still be so white and male in 1981 struck me as parochial.
Which is why, in 2013 I keep track of the numbers of women whose books get reviewed in the New York Times Book Review. More ethnic diversity, same gender imbalance as Breadloaf 1981. 
ON the other hand, my Alice B Toklas ginger snaps are legal in California if you’ve got a note from your doctor.
New York Times Blues
New York Times Blues
“In today’s New York Times Home section there’s a $2,340.00 desk lamp for sale at a store called Design Within Reach”, I say “Target’s Design Within Reach. Maybe Design Within Reach is meant to be irony.”
I am quivering with moral outrage that merits larger targets than the New York Times Home Section but the Supreme Court is out of reach.
Memphis Earlene rolls her eyes. Clearly not interested but she’ll humor me.
“No one puts a gun to your head and makes you read the New York Times,” she points out. “You still read that fat old Sunday Times every Sunday regular, like some people go to Church. “
“Bullseye,” I say because Memphis Earlene nailed it.
“You still believe it’s all the news that’s fit to print shit?” she says ” That’s like expecting the Pope to endorse birth control.”
I have no hope for the pope, but I still have faith . Before senility sets in, I expect to complete the Sunday Crossword Puzzle. Hint: Swedish movie star in 4 letters is Elke.
Posted in France
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Blues Entitlement
Yes, there’s a difference between the blues and plain old self-pity.
You have the right to sing the blues if you work for Wal-mart.
You have a right to sing the blues if you ain’t got no home in this world
You have a right to sing the blues if you are literally homeless, and living in a shelter.
For purposes of Blues entitlement, Memphis Earlene assures me, it doesn’t matter that you’re living in bourgeois comfort so long as you’re suffering hard enough.
“Suffer more, suffer harder,” says Memphis Earlene by way of encouragement.
Buy and read Blues for Beginners: Stories and Obsession. Only 99 cents on Amazon . Also on Smashwords.com, if you don’t have a Kindle.
Very funny stuff and sure to break your heart.
Seriously.
Posted in Blues, Book, Humor, Literature, mental health, women
Tagged Blues, Book, Heartbreak, Humor, nhl, Self-Pity
3 Comments
DMV Blues Part Deux
Tough love from Blues Legend Memphis Earlene was yesterday. Today it’s time for Franco-Therapy.
Everything’s better in France, especially if you’re an Older Woman, according to Scarlett, my fashion consultant. Everything improves when translated into the French version.
She’s back in town, after spending winter in the Bad Girl’s Trailer Park, an exclusive afterlife hangout with branches in Palm Beach, Venice Beach, and France.
” You can’t sing the Blues in French,” says Scarlett. “We have L’existentialism instead.”
She takes one look at my new hideous drivers license ID.
“Pretty ugly, ” I say.
She corrects me.
“Jolie Laide, ” she says, and tells me what to wear.
After a winter in blue jeans, boots, and and big gray sweaters it feels strange to be wearing a skirt, ballet flats, and one of those ladylike cardigans.
“I look like a housewife,” I tell her.
“A French housewife, ” she says. “Imagine you’re Isabel Huppert and God is Francois Truffault.”
American housewives run errands, clean house, and engage in self-improvement or community betterment.
French housewives take lovers and go to the market to buy French bread. They are already perfect, like cats, and this is the best of all possible worlds.
“Tres jolie, ” Scarlett says. “It’s Spring, after all. This is the closest Washington comes to Paris. Renoir painted this sky.”
Posted in Blues, France, Humor, mental health, women, Writer
Tagged american housewives, Blues, French, isabel huppert, mental-health, modern fashion
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DMV Blues
‘I went down to the Department of Motor Vehicles/ To get my license renewed…..”
The official line is I get better with age, like good whiskey, but tell that to the camera. Getting a new photo ID is like being confronted with ghosts of Christmas future, and it’s never pretty.
“You could have renewed online,” Memphis Earlene reminds me.
“I wanted a new photo ID. One that didn’t make me look like an aging Soccer Mom with Chipmunk Cheeks.”
Memphis Earlene corrects me.
“Soccer Grandma” she says. “So what?”
Blues women are proud, not vain. I’m not there yet.
“Soccer Grandma died of fright while sucking on a jaw breaker,” Memphis Earlene says when I show her my new photo ID. Then she laughs.
Blues women don’t need license to do anything. Blues women prefer to leave the driving to their chauffeurs. Not all suffering is blues worthy.
“But I look so O-O-O-ld. And my birthday’s coming up,” I say.
“Plenty of dead people wish they had your troubles,” says Memphis Earlene, who stopped counting when she hit 100. “Now snap out of it. You’ve got e- books to sell.”
Blues for Beginners: Stories and Obsessions by Judith Podell—-available on Amazon.com and Smashwords.
Posted in Blues, Book, Humor, mental health, women, Writer
Tagged cars, chipmunk cheeks, transportation
2 Comments
Blues for Beginners: Rousing the Sales Force
“Woke up this morning,…..and went back to sleep”
That’s the lyrics to Epstein-Barre Blues, written by Memphis Earlene Gray before she turned commercial on me. She wants her place in Wikipedia, if only as a footnote.
She needs a sales force that’s more blues resistant. Instead she has me.
Memphis Earlene: “We’ve fallen to 378,037th place on Amazon. Get out of bed and start selling our e-book.”
Judith: “Wake me when we hit the seven figure zone. I’m resting up for the anual AWP Clusterf*ck”
Woke up yesterday morning and rolled on my Kindle Now it’s dead. This never happens when you sit on a book.
Blues for Beginners: Stories and Obsessions. Available on Amazon for $2.99. Also on Smashwords.com, if, like me, you don’t have a Kindle.
Posted in Blues, Book, Humor, Literature, mental health, Writer
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Boots, Roots, and the Blues.
Her age? Timeless.
Ethnicity? Bluish.
Memphis Earlene Gray is an Avatar of the Boogie Gods.
And she’s way cooler than I’ll ever be.
“You don’t choose the Blues, they choose you,” Memphis Earlene reminds me. “They chose you when you were real young.”
“I’ve always felt unworthy of the election,” I confess. “My life’s awfully tame.
Self destructive impulses are limited to caffein abuse and buying shoes on e-bay. The last disaster was a pair of blue lizard cowboy boots in two shades of blue that I would have worn anyway if only they’d fit.
“Most blues begin woke up this morning,” Memphis Earlene reminds me. “How did you feel when you woke up this morning?”
I am not a morning person. It takes lots of caffein to get the motors running.
“The usual. Like I woke up on the wrong side of bed,” I tell her.
She smiles, like she’s my first grade teacher. I came up with the right answer and she’s gonna give me a big gold star.
“Respect your life as Blues worthy,” Memphis Earlene says. ” Now, get out there and hustle our book.”
Blues for Beginners: Stories and Obsessions. Only $2.99. Available on Amazon and Smashwords.com
Blues for Beginners: The Publication Party
You can now buy Blues for Beginners: Stories and Obsession by Judith Podell on Amazon for $2.99. Also on Smashwords.com, if you don’t have a Kindle.
Welcome to our Virtual Publication Party, which is off to a rocky start.
All my writing life I’ve had this fantasy of being interviewed for the front page of the Post style Section. The interviewer would ask questions that would make it easy for me to sound cool. Maybe she’d start out by saying “I love your shoes.”
Memphis Earlene: “Where do you get off charging $2.95 for such a short book? It’s only 20,00 words.”
Judith: (miffed ) “Those are 20,000 well chosen words. You wouldn’t expect anything blues influenced to go on at length like Tolstoy or David Foster Wallace, for crying out loud.”
Memphis Earlene: ” Someone woke up this morning with a bad case . What’s got into you?”
Judith: “Not enough coffee. We could continue the interview in Starbucks. ”
Starbucks? Might as well suggest a day at the beach to a vampire.
Coffee is not a blues beverage. Especially not a triple venti mocha with whipped cream on top.
A blues woman gets all the caffein she needs from Coca-Cola.
My license to sing the blues is temporarily suspended.
Posted in Blues, Book, Humor, Literature, Writer
2 Comments
Blues for Beginners: The Book
Publication date? Bacon Press Books is shooting for mid January!!!!!
In preparation for the Virtual Book Tour, Memphis Earlene has graciously agreed to interview me.
Memphis Earlene: Let’s start with your title, Judith. No offence, but Blues for Beginners sounds like a self-help manual. What’s the connection between you and the blues.”
JP: When I was 16 I taught myself how to play Cocaine Blues on the guitar after listening to a Dave van Ronk record. That was when the world started opening up to me. The Sixties. Greenwich Village in the Early Seventies. Years later some universal laws about the Blues were revealed to me and I wrote them all down. It was kind of like Joseph Smith and the Angel Moroni, on a smaller scale, no offence.
Memphis Earlene: You call yourself a comic writer, but you’re not David Sedaris funny.
JP: (offended) So sorry to disappoint you.
Memphis Earlene: What I mean is you write lots of lines that are LOL funny but your stories themselves are poignant and moving. They’re more like real life blues, only with more punchlines.
JP: These are stories about searching for love and meaningful employment between 1963 and 1998. Real life single woman blues. A guy who was breaking up with me compared my writing to TV sit com without a laugh track. He didn’t mean it kindly but he may have been on to something. Because a situation comedy in real time with no laugh track, well that’s a good description of life.
Memphis Earlene: Did you really have an affair with a married man when you lived in Greenwhich Village? Did you really have sex in a fallout shelter? What about those marijuana cookies ?
JP: If I wanted to stick to the facts I’d write memoir, not stories. I’ve never been in a fall out shelter, for instance, but I once went to an NRA reception. And I did spend a lot of time in therapy. The old fashioned kind, psychoanalysis, where you lay down on a couch four times a week.
Memphis Earlene: Aren’t you afraid of being accused of navel-gazing? Self-absorbed? Being whiney?
JP: No.
(long pause)
Memphis Earlene: You’re sounding a little defensive. Do you want to talk about it?
Posted in Blues, Book, Humor, Literature, Writer
Tagged blues books bookstores Baconpressbooks, entertainment, literature, memphis earlene gray
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Memphis Earlene 