Funny Strange is Lori Culwell's blog

A Little of This, A Little of That, and a Little Seal and Heidi Speculation

Well well well, here I am again!

First of all, no, I did not watch the SAG Awards (Stephan likes to call these the “Saggies,” which I think is super funny).  I know, it would have been fun if we had live-blogged it like we did the Golden Globes and like we’re going to do for the Oscars, but  I was a nerd and mostly worked all weekend, then watched 10 minutes of that new pilot “Luck,” and fell asleep (no offense to Dustin Hoffman, I was just really tired from all that working).   I have several big announcements coming soon!

Here are a few highlights of stuff that happened last week:

--I spoke at Digital Book World on Monday and Tuesday.   If I met you there, hi!  Yes, please email me!    One of the presentations (the one I did with Iris Blasi from HMI, who is awesome) was live-Tweeted, which you can see by going over to my Twitter feed:  http://twitter.com/loriculwell

--I answered “Five Questions” for my hometown newspaper, The Desert Sun.   Have I mentioned lately that I love my hometown, and that my hometown newspaper is so awesome and has been a great supporter of my writing career, and that my new YA novel is set in the desert?  Well I do, and they are, and it is.  So there!  

--My novel was reviewed by Books with Bite, and they liked it (I know you don’t think I would tell you about a reviewer who didn’t like my books, right?).  

--Stephan and I went skiing for the very first time.  My cousin Ian went with us to make sure we didn't die.  Since skiing was on Stephan's "Shit That Scares Me" list and I was just tagging along for the ride, I will direct you over to his write-up of the day, which is very detailed and funny.

(Totally unrelated to books or my career in general)

— Last week I became increasingly baffled and bothered by this weird Geico commercial I keep seeing.    Stephan asks the good question—why, with one of the biggest advertising budgets out there, does Geico keep making ads like this?

 

 

My main objection to this ad is that I can’t tell that the guinea pig is saying “Row.”  It just sounds like he’s grunting in a suggestive way, until the guy says “It took me six months to train the little chubby one to say ‘Row’.”  You’d think that since “Row” is such an integral part of the joke, they would make it a little more clear, because up until the moment when he explains it, this commercial (to me, anyway) is just a hot mess of a grunting guinea pig and a container of water being placed too close to all those electronics for comfort.    This commercial goes into “Funny Strange” territory because it actually made me stop what I was doing and go “WHAT IS HAPPENING HERE?” the first time I saw it.   Also, he is making the guinea pig boat power his computer and internet access, but he can't even buy them some pants?  Seems unfair, and like we need to call some kind of guinea pig labor union.

Also, and also totally unrelated to the other above topics, is anyone else bummed about Seal and Heidi Klum breaking up?  I would like for them to please tell us that this was all some kind of weird publicity stunt for his new album, because I want to believe in them as the ultimate “Beauty and the Beast / Hollywood Happily Ever After,” don’t you?    To this end, I did purchase and obsessively consume both People Magazine and US Weekly on Friday so I could see what they dug up as far as relationship scoop, and then was sorry I did.  Seal is moody and dark, and yells at Heidi?  Nooooo!  He’s the “Kiss from a Rose” guy!  Come ON!  

Wordpress, and SEO, and Books—oh MY!

This is just a quick FYI—if you are at all interested in the subject of book marketing, or you have questions you’d like to ask me about Wordpress, or SEO (including keyword research and that kind of stuff) or books or marketing in general, I am the guest this afternoon on the #bookmarket Twitter discussion which is happening from 4-5 Eastern time.  Come on over and Tweet me up!

To get there, you would of course just go to Twitter (http://twitter.com), log in to your account, search the term#BookMarket, and (as they say) join the conversation!

Seriously, come on over.   

OOHHHH!

I have recently been pulled over again for what you would call a “Fix it Ticket.”   As you’ll recall, in our last episode of “State Troopers Jam Me Up Over Trivial Shit,” I spent a week trying to get one single taillight fixed so I could get the COURT CASE DISMISSED involving this egregious automotive error.  This time, I appear to have violated some kind of “Car Inspection” law that I didn’t even know about, and which is very poorly indicated by the sticker they put on your car, if I can give the state of New York some usability feedback.

Apparently you have to get your car inspected every year, not every two years, and if you don’t, you get a ticket that (again) you have to fix and then go to court to get dismissed.  COURT, people.  With nice pants, and a judge.   Oh, and also?  The court is so backed up, my date for this latest infraction is at the END OF APRIL, folks.  April.    I was also given a pamphlet on a six-hour “safe driving” course that I may choose to take to improve my driving record and my car insurance rate, only I don’t know if they’re going to cover things like “car inspection” and “taillights” in the course unless they have a section on
“trivial trumped up bullshit.”

Maybe it’s just because I’m getting pulled over for these nit-picky things, but I do want to point out that each and every time I am being written up, there are people to my left and right going 125 miles per hour like they’re in Tokyo Drift.  Some of them are undoubtedly smoking crack and are in fact zombies.  When I again pull out onto the highway, I immediately start being tailgated by a semi being driven by that liquid metal guy from the Terminator, and yet none of these things seem deserving of the state trooper’s attention.   No joke, when I went to COURT to plead “NOT GUILTY” for my car inspection violation that I had already had fixed, I asked them if there was a “Crazy Driver” hotline that I could call when I see people violating numerous traffic laws, speeding while texting and swerving into my lane, and tailgating bad enough to give me high blood pressure.   In response, the court lady gave me a blank stare, slid a small business card under the bullet-proof glass and said “I guess you could call the main number of the highway patrol, but by the time they put you through, the person will probably be gone.  Also, don’t use your cellphone while driving.”

I guess what I’m trying to say is, go ahead and break all the laws you want on the highways and byways of New York and Connecticut, but make sure that your taillights and car inspection are in compliance, because if they’re not, THAT’S when the real trouble starts. 

Also, and this is just a side note—I would like to designate my “fine” money to go toward the completion of the George Washington Bridge interchange, which (I kid you not) they have been working on since we got here.  Probably what they’ll do, though, is put it in the pot for what Stephan and I have come to refer to as “Cones and Arrows,” which is when, on the east coast, they do road construction in the middle of the day for absolutely no good reason other than to have union guys standing around directing traffic.  That’s right, I said it.  UNIONS.   We have a running joke where we think the “Cones and Arrows” guys have a contest going to see how many miles they can get traffic backed up, and where they give each other pointers as to how to get traffic down to one single lane, and where they brag about their accomplishments, like “Oooh, you only got ‘em backed up to the Bronx?   I had ‘em at a standstill over the Verrazano and into New Jerseu—that’s two states, baby!  King of the Cones!  OOOHHH!”

By the way “Ooooh” must be said in your best Pauly Walnuts voice.  If you need help on proper usage and intonation of this word, please see this instructive video clip.   

 

Golden Globe Live Blogging: Here's the Transcript!

Happy Monday!

Did you watch the Golden Globes?  If you did, and you were on Facebook last night, you probably noticed that Stephan and I did our annual "awards show mockery schtick" during the broadcast.  Some people found this very entertaining and said as much, and some people unfriended me, so I guess that gives us about the same track record as Ricky Gervais.

I think it loses something if you're not watching it live, but if you'd like to read at least my commentary, I will direct you over to my Twitter feed.   In case you're wanting to see our commentary on the Oscars, which is usually even snarkier, we are setting up a more sophisticated delivery system (ok, it's a Tumblr blog) and will point you over there soon.  But again, if you think that kind of thing is annoying, go ahead and unfriend me now and save us both some grief, because awards show snark is kind of the distillation of my very being.   It is, as Heidegger would say, the selfless of my self-- the thingness of my thing.

Stephan's note:  aww, snap!  A Heidegger reference in the Golden Globes post.

I think Stephan's commentary was even funnier than mine, but to see that, you will have to be his friend on Facebook.   If you are, and you missed it, I would highly recommend going over there now and getting caught up.  He was, if I may say, en fuego.

Also, in case you are so inclined, please go over to the Escape in a Book blog and read my guest post and their review of my YA novel!  

What is going on here?