I was listening to Terry Gross of NPR interviewing the guy who wrote and did the voices for Beavis and Butthead. I never watched that show and this was the first time I learned anything about it at all. Apparently its appeal was in how stupid these guys are. She played some recordings of the shows and I got an earful of their humor.

Well, the show survived several seasons (go figure) – personally, I didn’t even smile as I listened to their repartee. Terry and the writer thought that those who had criticized the show “didn’t get it” – the “it” being poking fun at stupidity. I got it. I got it but, how can I say this? I don’t like wallowing in “stupid” anymore than I like looking at a pile of shit. I know it’s gross, why dwell on it?

Furthermore, I think there is a whole generation out there who didn’t get it and were actually affirmed by this show and that’s what’s dismaying. They didn’t know they were watching themselves.

Speaking of adolescent “humor”, I also never understood why Steve Martin’s early stand-up routines made him such an icon. An arrow through his head – oh, hilarious. I like him more now, but he will never be as funny as Mort Sahl or Lewis Black or Brett Butler before she crashed and burned, or Paula Poundstone, or any number of others … endearing, maybe, but not roll on the floor hilarious.

On so-called literature …

Recently I’ve read a couple of chick books … the heroine is anguished, she worries too much, she’s anxious, anxious that her children will get hurt and fusses and frets and panics; she’s emotionally devastated when she learns about her straying husband, she can’t trust anyone anymore, the wonderful guy she meets is kept at arm’s length because she wants to protect herself. Also, in the other book, the same distress but she is childless and there is the years long effort to have a child at any cost – must, must, must be a mother. I find the whole idea of you are not a person until you have conceived, anathema. (Well, they always lose me on that one.) Anguish, anguish, anguish. Oh, get a life. Am I alone in being extremely tired of women who are always doubting themselves and their choices?

And if anyone cares, I never doubted myself on personal relationships -- good or bad or destructive or stupid, I always jumped in. And then I got myself out. See? Simple.

I gave up on the chick books and got a couple of mysteries but I can’t seem to find one I can really be involved in. I don’t know if it’s the writing, or something is going on in my psyche that lately prevents patience in following a plot line. There seems to be a lot of writing that is diversion (the more pages, the better the advance) and, to my mind, interferes with the plot. Get on with it, I want to say to the author.

Anyway, I am not easily amused by professionals these days, but I laugh a lot at things I see every day. There was a blasé egret on the pier today and he(?) didn’t even fly away when I walked by him, contenting himself to just leap up to the banister. My kinda bird and I waved and threw him a kiss.

Leeanne and her sister, Linda, are coming for lunch today – I stocked up on fruit salad, cottage cheese, low fat yogurt and terribly interesting little snack crackers -- but they can have grilled cheese if they want.

Ed will be volunteering at the Chamber of Commerce (go away he says to visitors, but spend money first) so I thought it would be a good opportunity to have a girls’ afternoon. Also Linda wants me to play for her. Oh boy, an audience.

Finally, a remembrance from my days at Harper & Row (now Harper-Collins) -- a prominent cop wrote a book to rival "Serpico" -- but he was a major neurotic who did very little and the book was shamefully thin. After the manuscript went down to Production, the head editor called me and I told her, "don't worry about design, when you finish, we plan to phone it in to the bookstores."

xx, Teal