The Finest Eating Joint in Texas, Part 2

...We entered the restaurant in all its magnificence. Even though we had a reservation, our table wasn't yet ready, so we perused the extremely classy gift shop. Want your own longhorns for your Cadillac? They're $400 at The Big Texan gift shop. Want a Frisbee that looks like a cow paddy? Check! The visiting warehouse people were impressively captivated by the Texas-sized array o' crap.

And in case you might believe that the crap was confined to the gift shop, let's talk about the interior of the restaurant. Here's what a patron encounters as soon as s/he enters the building: The stuffed bear, the slot machines, the random flag-type stuff shoved in already cluttered areas, the ad for Elvis Impersonator Night--classy. And lest you think that Smoky the Bear was the only taxidermied beast in The Big Texan, think again. I think that they might even stuff anyone who takes the 72 ounce steak challenge and then suffers a terminal coronary in the process, at which point they preserve the dead glutton, prop him against a wall, and proceed to neglect dusting him for about twenty years. The place was covered in carcasses and the carcasses were covered in dust. That elk on the wall? That's not chin hair. That's a dust-covered cobweb. And because Valerie reserved a table upstairs looking down on the main floor, we were eye level with the corpse of Bambi's mom for most of our time in the restaurant. Did I mention that Gianna is a vegetarian? I don't think that The Big Texan's decorating choices swayed her from that path.

As we sat down, nine of us from the publisher present, with the two people from our account running late but expected to join us shortly, we ordered a smattering of appetizers--fried jalepenos, fried mushrooms, and potato skins with brisket on them--and our cowboy-dressed waiter, Trevor, took our drink orders. Chris, the bottomless stomach, ordered a 36 ounce beer, and most of the members of our table likewise ordered beer in large steins. I don't know their thinking, but I wouldn't have been surprised to discover that they were hoping that alcohol would distract them from the roadkill all over the walls. Brenda (the children's book rep) and Gianna were sitting on the far end of the table from Valerie, Brenda's boss Alan, and me, and the folks from our operations/warehouse staff plus the two empty chairs for our guests were in between. I found out later that Brenda ordered a margarita, it being the official cocktail of Texas. I was worried about triggering a migraine, having not slept for about four days and feeling a little loopy already, so I ordered a Diet Coke. Now, I understand that some restaurants stupidly accept the Pepsi incentives for carrying their products over Coke products, but here's the thing: Diet Pepsi is NEVER a suitable alternative to Diet Coke. I know that some people are polite and will settle for Diet Pepsi, but no one ever prefers Diet Pepsi to Diet Coke. And I am not one of those polite people. I suggested to Trevor that he send one of the limos to pick up some Diet Cokes from a convenience store and I'd wait, but I think Trevor knew that with a party of eleven his gratuity was included in the bill and he didn't seem willing to go the extra mile (literally) to help a junky out. I settled for water, and I think the restaurant itself gasped in disbelief that a diner wasn't choosing a beer that came in a mug that was twice the size of my fish bowl (I once kept a beta named Elvis Fauntleroy IV, until I acquired Zorro the cat and Zorro liked to drink Elvis's water). I don't think I fit in with the Big Texan mystique.

...Next, the meal, or, "Sorry we're out of (blank)."

The Finest Eating Joint in Texas, Part 1

I am not a foodie. I'd just as soon eat at Sonic (bless the Sonic) as any place that features cloth napkins. Gianna, too, isn't snooty in her cuisine choices, and she's a vegetarian, so when we're on road trips together the restaurant choices are pretty low brow. Recently I drove from Houston to Austin, picked up my fellow rep, and then we drove to Amarillo, and three days later we reversed the trip--roughly 22 hours of driving total. On this four day trip that spanned the entire state of Texas, we ate at classy establishments like the Olive Garden in Abilene, the Subway in Amarillo, and we really splurged on lunch at the Taco Bell in Lubbock. My monthly credit card statement must appall my colleagues in New York, but we tend to go with fast over haute dining. I have as many saved phone numbers for various Macaroni Grills on my cell phone as I do members of the Sullivan clan, and generally I prefer the Macaroni Grill to my family. The car-side servers are more polite generally.

The exception to the quick, boring schlock upon which we regularly dine arises when that obligatory anomaly pops up--the work dinner. While in Amarillo, several members of the publishing universe we inhabit descended from our central offices and warehouse to discuss operations with our Amarillo account. One cannot stroll through the Rick Husband/Amarillo "International" Airport (they fly to Mexico) without seeing advertisements for The Big Texan, the home of the 72 ounce steak. One cannot drive from the airport to downtown Amarillo without passing the actual building in its yellow-rose-of-Texas color scheme and gaudy aesthetic offensiveness. The Food Network even featured the establishment in one of their programs that promotes oddity over quality (Man Vs. Food, I think). There's even a classic episode of one of my favorite TV shows ever, King of the Hill, in which 13 year old Bobby Hill eats a 72 ounce steak at a Big Texan-type restaurant to tweak his nose at his vegetarian ex-girlfriend. The Big Texan is an Amarillo and Texas landmark.

In spite of the alluring tackiness that would normally tempt someone with my love of absurdity (particularly because The Big Texan has a terrifically absurd gift shop), I had never stepped into the building. Gianna is a vegetarian, after all, and because of throat problems and general taste issues, I can't and won't swallow beef except in hamburger form. We'd never been there, and more tellingly, the people we called on in Amarillo never wanted to go there. However, one of our colleagues flying in for operations meetings last week desperately wanted to experience The Big Texan. Our boss Valerie, a great organizer and the type who can juggle personalities skillfully while indulging the crazy guy who wants huge slabs of cow, arranged for a group of us--eleven people in total--to dine at this Texas institution. She even arranged for the Big Texan limos to pick us up at our luxurious Hampton Inn accommodations. In case you were wondering, yes, there are longhorn antlers on the front of the limos. Guessing from all of the talk of alcohol consumption, I figured that I wasn't the only person feeling ambivalent about this dining experience. But I do love the spectacle and the ridiculous, and as we rode to the restaurant I snapped pictures.

A note about the limos--they weren't nice. They reeked, and the upholstery was missing from the side of one of them, and I'm pretty certain that our little party is the only group ever to ride in the limos and not ask to visit a strip club after our meal. I would bet that we're one of the few groups not to vomit in them. Moving on to dinner.

One of our visiting colleagues, a guy named Chris, is one of those high metabolism guys like the hotdog eating champion Kobayashi--wiry and twitchy with energy. I suspect that he may have driven his second grade teacher to the nervous hospital back in the day. Chris had talked big about eating the 72 ounce steak before boarding the plane from the East Coast to the Texas Panhandle, but after eating a big burger for lunch he chickened out. He, by the way, was the one who had seen The Big Texan on the Food Network and I mostly blame him for this excursion. Other people present included other warehouse/logistics staff/publishing supply geniuses Kathy, Annette, and Flo (sounds a bit like the names of phony receptionists on infomercials from my childhood, when every single person with a headset was named "Nancy"), children's rep Brenda and her boss Alan, Gianna, Valerie our boss, me, and two members of the book team from our account in Amarillo, Matthew and Sylvia.

We walked into the restaurant after fifteen minutes of inhaling the aromas of our pimpin' limos...

...more to come shortly...

Road Hazards

So my thought that I would update the blog from my vacation obviously went kaput. Sorry. The quick recap--eight days in California, four baseball games, one totally surreal version of the "Star Spangled Banner" from this guy: Grandpa Elliot, who wailed out that song for over five minutes, effectively icing the Dodgers' bats. It was awesome. For ballpark enthusiasts, PETCO Park in San Diego is ideal, but I was surprised by the experience at Angels Stadium in Anaheim. It's a great place to watch baseball...too bad that American League baseball is fairly strategically moronic. I did indeed visit Disneyland, and unlike my last trip to Disney World, I wasn't asked to leave any buildings at this version of the happiest place on earth. The most surprising experience of the whole trip involved elephant copulation at the San Diego Zoo, but attempting to keep this blog PG-13, I won't include the photos of the elephant with two trunks (wink, wink). Here's one of a giraffe with two heads instead. I did have a great vacation and escape from the hot hell of Texas in the summer.

Back at work, back to the adventures of selling books. As hopefully you are already aware, Kathy Griffin, comedic genius and fame whore, has a new book coming out this fall called Official Book Club Selection. Gianna managed to get tickets to Kathy's show in Austin and I joined her and a few booksellers at the performance. Why do I love Kathy Griffin? Reason #1: she'll make fun of Michael Jackson within two weeks of his death. She glided onto the stage in full moonwalk to start the show. Reason #2: In shameless and brilliant self-promotion, she handed out fans with the book jacket printed on them before the show started. Reason #3: she'll mock her aging, boxed wine-chugging, "Law & Order SUV" watching mother in front of millions of people. I make fun of Attila, my mother, all the time, but my audience never really exceeds the tens. I didn't even hesitate to drive the three hours to Austin for an 8 pm show, even knowing that I would have to drive back to Houston after the show because I needed to help with an event in Houston the next morning. I am a road warrior. I am also an insomniac. "Getting home at 1:30 in the morning isn't so bad," I thought. "I'm up anyway at that time so I might as well be driving," I thought. "It'll be a quick trip, there and back," I thought. Sigh.

I neglected that I am Liz, and part of the deal with fate when I was born was that nothing would ever be simple or hassle-free. After dropping off a bookseller at her house, I hit the road at 11:15, which would have placed me walking through my apartment door in Houston at 2 am. And then half a mile from that bookseller's house, my car suddenly sounded like a Harley Davidson in need of a tune-up and I struggled to steer or accelerate. I pulled over into the parking lot of the Victory Christian Center, the karmic oddity of the location not lost upon me, and jumped out to examine the exterior of my car. Flat tire. On the one hand, at least I was still in Austin and not somewhere between cities on the side of the road. On the other, it was 11:20 and I was in a vacant parking lot at one of the busiest intersections--I-35 and Hwy 183--in Austin and alone. Because I drive a Random House fleet vehicle, I have 24 hour roadside assistance, and I found my paperwork and started calling people. Three calls and Dave from Pop-a-Lock was on his way, but I had time to kill. I sat under a street light and tried to read manuscripts for the upcoming spring season on my Sony Reader, but was mostly distracted by shadows and cars and possible threats. My favorite, though, was when the sherriff's deputy drove by TWICE without stopping to see why some random woman was sitting in the parking lot of the Victory Christian Center at midnight. I felt well-protected.

Dave showed up and changed my tire. As soon as he turned over the flat it was obvious why my car sounded like a Harley--a metal shard was hanging out of the tire. Every time I drove over the metal bracket it dug into the pavement, making a terrible clatter. Dave the tire-changing guy was helpful and fast, and I was on the road again, but it was then 12:45 am and I still needed to drive 3 hours. I set off down the road, but about 20 minutes on down the road my cell phone rang. It was 1:07 in the morning?! It turned out to be a computerized survey to rate the quality of my roadside assistance. I'm driving, it's dark, I'm tired, and I'm trying to punch in numeric responses to the computer voices commands, but Eunice (my name for the generic compu-woman's voice) absolutely would not accept one of my answers, to the question of "What time did your assistance arrive?" I entered 11:45 pm, but Eunice snarkily informed me that time had not yet occurred. Thoughts of time warps entered my mind as I retyped it, then again, and then I thought about throwing my phone out the window. It took me far too long to realize that it was after midnight and thus a new day. I entered 12:01 am and thought that would be the end of the call. I was driving, after all, and should have been focused on the herd of deer on the side of the highway looking at my headlights. "What you like to take a short survey to rate overall satisfaction with the service provided?" ARGH! NO!

Home arrival time: 3:45 am. Number of times I heard a Taylor Swift song on the various radio stations between Austin and Houston while driving home: 8. Amount I dislike Taylor Swift: my loathing is like the sands of the Sahara. Number of expletives uttered on the trip home: possibly under 100, but not by much.

I solemnly swear to update this blog more frequently, or make Gianna throw in a piece about hiding from a tornado under an overpass or working an event with Buzz Aldrin. But more soon, I promise.

Breakfast Not Included

Last week I took my final trip of the selling season, and for the first time I actually remembered to grab my camera. Sure, I could have taken pictures of the scenic Texas Hill Country as Gianna and I drove out to Fredericksburg, or I could have photographed the wildlife, but really I love what makes a place unique (and even better if that diversity includes a bit of absurdity). Gianna and I were visiting a book distributor in Fredericksburg, Book Marketing Plus. We arrived in town about 20 minutes before our appointment, so instead of cruising the touristy areas of historic Fredericksburg with the peaches and the Germans, we wandered around the back roads and came upon this gem of a sign for accommodations. In this age of cost-cutting and recession, I'm a bit surprised that no one seemed to take advantage of this great offer. Sleep five for $39 a night and fully furnished? Is the "no breakfast" the problem? As we pulled forward to the property, though, we realized that "beautifully furnished" might be a bit of a stretch. Granted, we did not go inside (or even get out of the car), but Gianna kindly leaned out of the driver-side window and snapped a picture of the beautiful exterior. Even more impressive was the recreational area outside between what turned out to be two mobile homes. Never mind that mowing (scything?) wasn't part of the rigorous maintenance provided by the people living in the white house on the corner. I wonder how long that table has rested on its side? Decades?

As I mentioned before, I grew up in the boonies, and I confess that I have some low brow tastes. I'm not classy. I think that Tremors is one of the three best movies ever made. I asked for a Snuggie last Christmas and didn't get one, so I'll be asking for one again this year, in the maroon color because it looks most cultish. I prefer Sonic Drive-Ins to Ruth's Chris Steakhouses. Actually, I prefer Sonic to just about every restaurant there is. I even worked at Sonic as a carhop one summer during college. So I feel like I show a greater appreciation for rural treasures like the Bed & No Breakfast than I would if I'd grown up going to places like malls and libraries and museums and bookstores. For that same reason, though, places like the Bed & No Breakfast make me love the unique nature of independent business--you'll notice I haven't posted a single photo from the assorted Hampton Inns I frequent regularly. Sure, it's an eyesore that would destroy the property value of the house across the street (if there were a house across the street), but it's also adding character and depth to a town that has become such a tourist Mecca that it might as well be Branson with peaches. I guess I like the stuff that makes a town distinct, even if it is absurd. Do you think you'd have to give a vehicle description to the concierge when checking in at the Bed & No Breakfast?

I am officially on vacation this week. My sister and I are flying to California (if ever a state straddled the territory of majestic and absurd), and then working our way through the Major League Baseball stadiums there for a week. Like the mobile home-as-hotel accommodation, the baseball parks add character to towns. I stopped by one of my Houston bookstores last week and overheard a conversation between a customer and a bookseller about the Astros versus the Pirates. When the bookseller offered sympathy for the customer's support of the Pirates (who haven't posted a winning season in about 14 years), the righteous customer flew into a (good natured?) rant about how PNC Park in Pittsburgh is at least a "real" ballpark, as opposed to either the Astrodome or Minute Maid Park in Houston. I would have been all, "I have two words for you: World Series, so I'll take my ridiculous ballpark" but to his credit the bookseller didn't break into open taunting. He's right, though. The quality of the ballpark weighs into the appreciation of its location, and the Houston park sold corporate sponsorship of the foul poles, for crying out loud.

I am a big fan of the idea of bookstore tourism, too, and bookstores helping to define the character of a place. Is Oxford, Mississippi, the same place without Square Books occupying three buildings around the courthouse square? Isn't visiting the Tattered Cover one of those "must do" destinations when spending time in Denver? When my family took a vacation to Oregon several years ago, my father asked me what I would like to see. The only request I made was "Powell's." It seems to me that the successful bookstores are the ones that distinguish themselves in some way--as tourist destination, as cultivator of great book groups, as premier experts in a field, as passionate readers who know how to talk about books, as local leaders in community organization. Great bookstores add depth to their neighborhoods and towns.

My sister and I fly out tomorrow morning. I hope that I'll be able to update the blog a few times along the journey, as I drag her to bookstores and she drags me to the beach.

Rural Reading

I grew up in the sticks and I rep places like Texas, Mississippi, and Oklahoma, so I think I'm a little touchy about the fine line one must walk when writing about rural America. I once got in an argument with a coworker about the, in my mind ridiculously inaccurate, representation of East Texas by an author who claimed to know the area but exaggerated the idiosyncracies for "comedy." You know how you can disparage your family all day long until someone else takes a crack and then you're ready to kill? That's the way I feel toward rural areas.

Still, books that manage to capture life in remote areas and small towns without sensationalizing make me extra happy and become favorites, like Bastard Out of Carolina or The Liars Club. I also loved childhood classics that typically involved dead pets as well--Old Yeller, Where the Red Fern Grows, and my favorite, The Yearling. I recently read a novel that's coming out in paperback this August (and is available now as a hardcover from Poisoned Pen Press) called Sweeping Up Glass. Good? Yessiree. It starts with a woman and her grandson trying to stop the slaughter of a pack of wolves and to figure out who--and why--these wolves are being killed. Then the story flashes back to the woman's childhood, and there are echos of Scott Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird in her, Olivia's, adventures in town and with her veterinarian father growing up in rural Kentucky. Olivia's mother is absent in her early years, sent to a mental hospital, but returns to antagonize the girl through the rest of her life. There are sinister workings within the town as well; shady dealings, injuries, and deaths that are on the periphery of Olivia's life but hovering in the background, waiting for attention. The characters in this book are truly special--warm, hardworking people who are flawed and full of humanity. The author, Carolyn Wall, teaches creative writing to children in Oklahoma, and she's working on her second book now. That's a book I look forward to.

After finishing Sweeping Up Glass, I started reading another first novel, this one called Bloodroot and set on the side of a mountain in Tennessee. I am a couple hundred pages into it now and think it could be big. Telling the story of several generations of people living on the side of this mountain, this is rural fiction at its finest--full of big characters, folklore, humility, humor, and tragedy. This book is scheduled to come out in spring 2010. I don't know why I'm suddenly finding myself inundated with Appalachian lit, but for now it's a good place to be.

Traveling--Last week I visited Dallas and Oklahoma to sell fall books to my stores there. I found myself intrigued by the town of Edmond, Oklahoma, on this trip, even though I've visited Edmond half a dozen times now. Edmond is the home of gymnast Shannon Miller, for starters. I fully admit I'm a nerd, and I do follow my gymnastics for the same reasons I follow figure skating (the horrific flops and crashes--it's my NASCAR). I never was much of a Shannon Miller fan, preferring Kim Zmeskal...not for much of a reason really; I just liked the name Zmeskal. Oh, and because I always had the impression that Shannon Miller was probably a whiney cryer I'd endlessly torment if we'd attended high school together. She looked a little like the whiney cryer in my class. Anyway, the road I usually take to my store in Edmond is under construction, so I found myself driving through town for the first time. I turned onto a road called "Boulevard," and it is indeed a boulevard, but the name of the road is just Boulevard. No, Jackson Boulevard, or Edmond Boulevard, or even North Boulevard, or Boulevard Street. Just Boulevard. That's weird, right? I mean, what if it were something like Boulevard Lane, or Boulevard Road, or even Boulevard Boulevard? When I asked the booksellers at my store they couldn't explain the street name, but they did give me directions back to the highway that didn't involve taking Boulevard back. It might have been deliberate. I have decided I like Edmond, though, because I found this place called Eileen's Gigantic Cookies. I now kneel before Eileen, whoever she is. Bless her.

Identity Issues

It's eerie how often Gianna and I agree on books. Considering that we barely knew each other a little over two years ago (she actually walked up to me at Book Expo several years ago before I worked for Random House and I didn't have a clue who she was until she reminded me that we'd met before), we nonetheless seem to love many of the same books. We'll have these discussions where she'll call me and ask if I've read a book that I haven't thought about in years and I'll remember that I loved that book, and it turns out that she loved it too. So when Gianna recommends that I read a book, when she's so enthusiastic that she's sputtering with delight, I KNOW that I must read that title. She doesn't steer me wrong.

Back in January we began to find out what titles Random House planned to publish for this coming fall, and it's a phenomenal list to say the least. Gianna found out that there will be a new book from Dan Chaon, so she called me to see if I had read his previous books, AMONG THE MISSING and YOU REMIND ME OF ME. Of course I had, and of course I loved them. Chaon is one of the best writers out there and in a just world he would be a literary superstar and I would read about him on my cousin's Facebook posts instead of...the gagging drivel she reads and claims is "profownd" (sic). The new book, Gianna told me, was called AWAIT YOUR REPLY. Because it was on her side of the company, and because I needed to read about 15 other books before sales conference, I refrained from diving into the new Chaon book, the dessert to my meal of books that I would actually sell myself. Gianna kept teasing me, though. She sent me the first page of the manuscript, and she constantly asked, "Have you started it yet? You need to read it. I need to talk about it. Read it, read it, read it...."



So finally I read it. Holy crap! I love this book. The early comparisons among the sales force are authors like Patricia Highsmith (Talented Mr. Ripley series) and Flannery O'Connor, and in the acknowledgements Chaon mentions writers who've inspired him such as John Fowles and Joyce Carol Oates. AWAIT YOUR REPLY contains elements of all of these masters of fiction. The novel focuses around identity and what it means to exist (or not) in this world. The opening page Gianna sent me? Let me set the scene for you. A son is cradling his arm and drifting in and out of consciousness. His father is driving the car and trying to reassure the kid that they'll make it to the hospital. And sitting between them in an ice chest is the boy's hand, cut off at the wrist. AND the boy isn't convinced that his father's even taking him to the hospital. Who doesn't want to keep reading a book that starts this way?

There are three stories swirling around each other through AWAIT YOUR REPLY, and what Gianna didn't tell me when she kept harassing me about reading the book is that one story line focuses on a set of twins. Twins are freaky and weird and a bit of an obsession for me and I'll read just about any book that features the multiples. It makes lots of sense that twins feature prominently in Chaon's book, too, since the theme is identity. Without giving away too much of the story, how do you know who you are? Say you don't have your name. Are you the same person? What if I weren't named Liz? Wouldn't I be a totally different person if I went by, say, Stephanie? I would have missed out on all of the elementary school "lizard" names. And people named Liz, in my experience, are smart asses. Nice, vapidly sweet Elizabeths are usually shortened to Beth. I am not a Beth. So twins further complicate self-identification. Here's your carbon copy(if you're identical, but to a lesser extent the same holds true for fraternals), yet you are two distinct people. At the same time, though, you cannot separate your identity from that of your twin. Twins know each other before they even meet their mother and they grow up with a mirror image of themselves against which to measure. Your life is a jumbled mess of identity politics. It's fascinating...and weird...and perfect for Chaon's book.

So, confession, I am a twin. I sometimes hate it, but I cannot imagine my life otherwise, and I hate to think of a world in which my twin no longer exists. I look at her and marvel that we're even siblings (she's an aerospace engineer) and I try to imagine what I would be like if I had followed her course in life. I still respond to her name when someone calls it because growing up people constantly confused us even though we're fraternal and she's friggin' blonde for crying out loud. More often we were just "the Sullivan twins." So I personally related to the parts of AWAIT YOUR REPLY that deal with twin brothers on different paths, seeking each other and running away. What if my twin were a hustler, or a Broadway singer, or Lindsey Lohan? Wouldn't I have a different identity if she were someone else? (The answer is yes.)

Dan Chaon is a terrific writer. I can't emphasize this point enough. This book works on so many levels--literary exploration, character study, thriller--and both Gianna and I are giddily anticipating the publication in August. AWAIT YOUR REPLY may be the best book I read this year.

Babes in Fur Clothing

On the road again! Gianna and I headed off like Thelma and Louise today, driving from Austin to Amarillo in order to sell books to our pals at Hastings. What is there to see as one drives across this part of Texas? Roadkill, mostly. Towns with mockable names (Bangs, for example). Plenty of places to dump a body. Good times.

We drove Gianna's car on this trip because her newer model vehicle has the Sirius Radio, and there are huge, gaping holes in tolerable radio in places like Goldthwaite, Zephyr, and Lomena. We don't have cell signals either for much of this drive, ruling out staying in touch with accounts through our phones or Blackberries. Gianna and I share a fondness for absurdity, and "schadenfreude" is my favorite word. Satellite radio is a dream come true for those of us who love the human train wrecks that are the publicly dysfunctional individuals who call in to talk shows. Pure delight.

Before we stopped at this fancy little bistro known as The Olive Garden for lunch in Abilene, we were reveling in the awe-inspiring skills presented on a call-in show known as Animal Intuition. Check it out--a pet psychic. This woman named Sonya Fitzpatrick, who sounds like Mrs. Doubtfire with an ever-so-quaint English accent, takes calls from pet owners and "communicates" with the kitties and pooches. Apparently she has a show on Animal Planet too. According to her website biography, this woman talked to the animals at her house growing up in Merry Old England, but "turned off" her ability to chat up the critters when her father slaughtered three of her friends (geese) for a family feast. Heh. And I don't follow psychics, but is it normal (using "normal" exceedingly loosely, given the context) for a psychic to switch on and off her powers? Seems weird to me. Anyway, goose-free young Sonya became a fashion model, the career of choice for all shut-down pet paranormals I'm sure, but when she moved to these United States and ended her modeling career, she took up her pooch patter once more. Really, her story is the American Dream. She throws in lots of cute British expressions and refers to callers as "Dahhhhhhling." She described a caller's five dogs "babes in fur clothing." It was magic. Every pet loves his or her current owner, about half of them have changed their food at some point, and dogs can't tell us how old they are because they've never attended school and therefore can't count. (I would argue that most of the people from my hometown did attend school and can't count either.) My favorite caller told Psychic Sonya that her dog was nervous going on walks and asked why, and Psychic Sonya said--are you ready for this?--the dog was scared of something. Most excellent.

What could top a couple of hours of mindless pet drivel? How about multiple hours of the Dr. Laura Schlesinger Show?! Oy vey. She yelled at the callers, and I mean every single one, and not one single caller was correct. Her show is brilliant in a warped Woody Allen sort of way. Only people looking for abuse would want to talk to her seriously (as opposed to Gianna's and my desire to call her ironically), so it's alright for Dr. Laura to belittle her callers because they are screwed up. Dr. Laura yelled at a woman whose mother was dying, she yelled at the woman who didn't want to divorce the husband who spent too much time with his friend, and she yelled at another woman who complained about her husband spending too much time with his friends since she didn't want to support her man. It's horrible and sad, but we listened to the nonsense for hours.

I would love to listen to a blend of the crazy pet psychic woman and the crazy pseudo-shrink verbal abuse of Dr. Laura. Can you imagine a woman calling in to figure out what her cat is thinking, only to have "the cat" scream at her for not standing by her man and not buying the right kind of kibble? I would listen to that...but only if I'm on a road trip where Lubbock is a high point. And I can just imagine what my cat would have to say to me through Dr. Laura as the medium.

Bless the Sirius Satellite Radio. I can't wait to hear the offerings during our drive home.