Category — Anthologies

My mom called the other day to tell me, “You should be like Julie Powell.”

She had just seen the movie “Julie & Julia.”  And she loved it. It was awesome.

She proceeded to give me the full summary of the movie and the real-life back story of Julie Powell, the writer, for the next fifteen minutes…

“It’s about Julia Child and Julie Powell, the writer. She’s a girl who had a boring day job — just like you! — and she started blogging. Do you know how to blog?”

“Mom…”

“So she started cooking and she started blogging. And then she started blogging about cooking…”

“Mom…”

“You should do that. You could start a blog. You could be famous.”

“I know, Mom. I know who Julie Powell is.  She was in the anthology I edited, remember?  She wrote the funny one about ‘Rubber Chicken’? About how everything at her wedding tasted like rubber chicken?”

Crickets.

“Well…you could still do that.”

Anyway, if you’re a Julie Powell fan, you should check out her essay, “Rubber Chicken” from Altared: Bridezillas, Bewilderment, Big Love, Breakups, and What Women Really Think About Contemporary Weddings. 

Here’s an excerpt

“Rubber Chicken” by Julie Powell

Though I was young, I was already something of a foodie, by which I mean that I had developed a cluster of firmly held culinary prejudices, a mishmash of New York snobbery and reactionary regionalism that, considered together, added up to a telling, not altogether flattering self-portrait.

…I abhorred every meal I’d ever eaten at a wedding or benefit.  I was better than that.  This was to be the first night of the rest of my life, my first night as a hostess and wife, and the food served on that rented china atop those be-tableclothed tables under the live oaks was going to be the proving ground for a lifetime of hospitality, grace, and good taste.

What I didn’t realize was that I was messing with a law as immutable as entropy or gravity.  Hundreds of guests + unreasonable expectations + catering - billions of dollars = rubber chicken.  Hubris, that was my problem.

Now, go buy it so I can be rich and famous like Julie Powell.  (Kidding, sort of.)

BUY THE BOOK:

Altared: Bridezillas, Bewilderment, Big Love, Breakups, and What Women Really Think About Contemporary Weddings
Price: USD 11.16

85 used & new available from USD 0.10

Altared: Bridezillas, Bewilderment, Big Love, Breakups, and What Women Really Think About Contemporary Weddings
Edited by Colleen Curran

I was engaged for three years before I got married. Fearful of the process and confused by what it meant to plan a wedding, I began to contact other women writers to find out how they dealt with their “big day.” How did they get married? What happened? Did they elope? Did they have big splashy affairs? How did they make their weddings work for them?

The result is Altared: Bridezillas, Bewilderment, Big Love, Breakups, and What Women Really Think About Contemporary Weddings, or, in other words, 27 Women Writers on Their Big Day.

Anyone who is intimated by the prospect of planning a wedding will laugh, cry and take solace in the never-before-published personal essays in Altared where:

• Dani Shapiro tell us that: “At your ten-year anniversary, not a soul will ask you who your caterer was.”
• Curtis Sittenfeld vows to attend every wedding she is invited to and learns the real meaning of the guest list.
• Jacquelyn Mitchard writes about her second wedding to her sexy, young carpenter.
• Meghan Daum illustrates the purgatory of the “singles table”
• Lara Vapnyar writes about her search for the perfect wedding dress on a tight budget
• Amy Sohn details her family’s fights over the wedding bills
• Rory Evans writes about her pre-wedding mental meltdown
• And more writers tackle everything from dealing with divorced parents at a wedding to modern-day wedding etiquette.

From planning it to doing it (or not going through with it after all), Altared explores what women really think about the modern wedding in this heartwarming, thought-provoking and deeply funny collection.

—————————–

BUY THE BOOK:

Altared: Bridezillas, Bewilderment, Big Love, Breakups, and What Women Really Think About Contemporary Weddings
Price: USD 11.16

85 used & new available from USD 0.10

Originally published as “LDR” (acronym for “long-distance relationship”) in the anthology Dictionary of Failed Relationships.

Bad Boyfriends
Dictionary of Failed Relationships

My boyfriend told me he won’t hold his breath for me.  Like that’s a surprise.  He’s in Chicago, I’m here in New York.  It wasn’t always this way.  I said, “Oh, yeah, okay.  That’s fine.  That makes sense.”  I hung up the phone and just stared at it.   This doesn’t have to be so serious.  It doesn’t have to be a big deal. 

I actually told him I wanted to marry him.  Don’t ask me what I was thinking.  I heard about girls doing that, on the third date spilling their guts about how their time’s running out and how they want a family and how they want a house and that they think this is love and how they never felt this way before and how you sir, you are the one, you are the love story they’ve been waiting for all these years.

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