popplers

Brookline Booksmith. Brookline Booksmith. Brookline Booksmith.

On Wednesday, I raced home from work and drove to Brookline for the second time in a week. Unfortunately, there was lots more traffic this time around. The parking gods smiled upon us and we were rewarded with a parking spot directly in front of Finale. By the time we arrived at Booksmith, there were no seats left, and David Rakoff had already started reading. We stood in the back as he read a few selections from Don't Get Too Comfortable, including a very funny piece about the movie Rent. (Powells.com has an excerpt from Love It or Leave It, and vidlit.com has a multimedia piece that is read by Rakoff.) From Love It or Leave It, wherein our protagonist gives up his Canadian citizenship and becomes an American:

There are about fifty of us waiting for our interviews. Many people are in their best clothes. I wonder if I've adversely affected my chances by having opted for comfort in Levi's and sneakers, but so long as the Russian woman in her early forties is across from me, I have nothing to worry about. She wears painted-on acid-wash jeans, white stilettos, and a tight blouse of sheer leopard-print fabric. The sleeves are designed as a series of irregular tatters clinging to her arms, as if she's just come from tearing the hide off of the back of an actual leopard. A really slutty leopard.

My name is called, and Agent Morales brings me back into her office. From her window I can see the Brooklyn Bridge, hazy under a humid sky the color of a soiled shirt collar. Agent Morales's desk is crowded with small plaster figures of cherubic children holding fishing poles, polka-dot-hankie hobo bundles, small wicker picnic baskets, etc. The walls, however, are almost completely bare. Perhaps it's bureau policy, but all of those typical examples of office humor — that in other work environments might get their own piece of paper, perhaps with Garfield or Dilbert saying them — have all been printed onto the same 8½×11 sheet and listed like bullets in a PowerPoint presentation. There are old standbys like "You don't have to be crazy to work here, but it sure helps," along with some gags that are new to me: "Chocolate, coffee, men: some things are just better rich" and "I'm out of estrogen and I have a gun!" — the latter which frankly seems to push the envelope for acceptable discourse in a government office.

While we were there, I also picked up a used copy of Fraud and asked him to sign it. (The line was a lot shorter than at the John Hodgman reading a week ago. We were at Jae's Grill by 8:30, enjoying sushi, pad thai, and a seafood mixed grill topped with a mango salsa-type thing.) More lit fun— Wellesley Booksmith is sponsoring an "Unfortunate Event" on October 16: a double-bill with Lemony Snicket (author) and Brett Helquist (illustrator) in Natick.