I Can Give You My Book For Free Thanks To A Man Whose Name I Don't Know

One of my Twitter followers is buying 5 copies of my book, either the paperback or the Kindle version, so he can give them to you, prisoners of my blog.

All you have to do is email me at suzysoro (at) gmail (dot) com so I will have your email address to forward to the man with no name. I spilled his Twitter handle ON Twitter and he didn't want it mentioned so he wouldn't appear "self-serving." I'm sorry, but that kind of generosity from someone I've never met? NEEDS TO BE MENTIONED.

So if you want a book? Email me!!

I tried to upload a picture of my book but Blogger is being a bitch and won't let me. Very helpful.

How Did I End Up On A Website About Men?

This interview appeared on the website The Man Faq by my friend Tony Castleberry, who is one of their columnists. Where better to end up than on a website dealing with the one thing I know nothing about: men.


TC:   Is “You’re funny” the greatest compliment of them all?

SUZY:   For a comedian, yes. For a mortician, no.

TC:   I read your book in a week. Thoroughly entertaining and insightful. Have you had many (any) celebrity run-ins since the book came out?

SUZY:   No run-ins since the book launched. Instead, friends who’ve read it are letting me know which celebrity encounters I omitted. These are the same people who can’t remember what time to meet me for lunch yet are now suddenly hooked up to sodium pentothal drips. So it appears I left out the incidents with Sharon Stone, Tyra Banks, and Mary Hart. I saw a friend over Christmas and he said, “Why didn’t you write about the time you met Julie Andrews and Blake Edwards? Remember how embarrassed they were after that stupid thing you did?” So I guess there will be a sequel and also, how have I not been arrested?

TC:   Your interactions with stand-up legends like Richard Pryor and George Carlin were particularly interesting to me because I once waited for nearly an hour after a Doug Stanhope show -- without my date, who bailed shortly after Stanhope's set -- for an autograph and a photo, both of which Stanhope happily gave me. Have you found that comedians are more approachable than other entertainers?

SUZY:   I think anyone who is in show business and isn’t famous, which is about 99.9% of us, is approachable and likes the attention, including comedians. I’ve never met a comic, famous or otherwise, who didn’t take the time to talk to someone who approached them. Of course this always ends with one of them telling the comedian a story about their crazy family or their wacky office and how we can “use that if we want to.” Meanwhile, Modern Family and The Office beat them to the punch(line).

Famous entertainers are trickier, as evidenced by my run-ins with Diana Ross and Lucille Ball. I assume they’re tired of people telling them how great they are, or of hearing how big a fan someone is. It’s a shame because without those fans, those celebrities wouldn’t be celebrities. And those stars were lucky, they had longevity. Today the statistics claim a pop star gets roughly three years of fame and a newcomer to TV or film gets less than that. Obviously I’m not talking about reality stars. Those people will haunt us forever. I’m looking at you, Snooki.

My philosophy is that if someone has paid good money - or even bad money - to see me perform, I feel like a timeshare and that they’ve temporarily rented out a piece of me. Not a good piece, like an arm, but maybe an earlobe. I just ask that they laugh in all the right places if they want their deposit back.

TC:   The sidebars and Amazon reviews that appear often in Celebrity sTalker are informative and funny. Since it is obviously a unique way to write, did you ever second-guess those ideas or wonder if they would work?

SUZY:   I’m a big fan of TV shows with judges and lawyers. I love the part when the judge calls the attorneys to the bench and says something that can’t be heard by the rest of the court and is referred to as a sidebar. It’s always slightly relevant to the case but in reality I assume the judge is just asking them if they know a good place to get sushi. I’d been using the word ‘sidebar’ to separate paragraphs in my blog posts for many years even though the sidebar is actually the long column on the side of a blog. So it was a natural progression to put them in my book. The preferred way to mention an interruption between paragraphs in a blog post is to refer to it as a ‘side note.’

Sidebar: I’m very stubborn. Who knows a good place in LA to get sushi?

As to the fake Amazon reviews at the end of each chapter, I wanted to mock the real ones, which are often cruel or stupid or both. It’s always the person calling out another reviewer for having bad grammar who spells grammar with an e. I also hid something in the reviews but so far, no one has figured out what that is. After my sister read the book I asked her if she liked those parts. She demurred and finally admitted she didn’t know me as well as she thought because I was taking the criticisms “really well” and that “people who didn’t even know me were incredibly mean.” I told her the reviews weren’t real and remembered she could deconstruct calculus but couldn’t figure out the reviews were fake? Where are my parents now, when I can point this out to them and make my sister wrong?

I never second-guessed using both the sidebars and the reviews. I’d never seen anything like them in any other books; especially humor ones, so I thought I was pretty clever. This wore off after six weeks of writing and became, “Dear God, why did I ever think I was clever?”

TC:   What kind of feedback have you gotten since the book's release?

SUZY:   The book has been out for three weeks and so far, I’ve received only positive feedback. The only negative comment came from my mother who said, “I think the cover’s too busy,” so I asked her to show me the cover of her book so we could compare.

And that conversation, as they say in Hollywood, was a wrap.

My Book, Celebrity sTalker, Is Out

My memoir, Celebrity sTalker, is out today, Friday the 14th of Dear God What Was I Thinking.

Anyone who calls writing a book a labor of love is lying. It's hard. It will wake you up in the middle of the night when you suddenly discover a better word for *the* and MUST write it down immediately. Only after you write it down and go back to bed you think, I should probably just open the file and type it in. And after you do that you realize you should pull out the jump drive and back up the file because the odds of your computer breaking down now that the book is done ARE VERY HIGH.

But I digress.

This is one of the pictures that didn't make it into the book because I forgot I had it. It's me and Larry David, from Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm, taken in 1988 at Caroline's Comedy Club in New York. I have no idea what we were laughing about but it probably had something to do with me trying to kiss Larry on the lips and him also wanting that to happen. Never.

But Larry himself made it into the book and I talk about the many times I worked with him. I will always be grateful to be included in one of the most iconic TV shows in the history of television. My best friend, Dennison Samaroo, and I often talk about how it doesn't matter if whatever we do outside of show business is forgotten because we're in IMDb.com and will live on forever. We should probably apologize for that, but won't.

The paperback ($12.99) is here and it's also on Kindle ($4.99) or you can buy one directly from me ($700). Now don't those Amazon prices look like a bargain?

The Back Cover Is Done!

The ISBN number is fake so don't look for it anywhere!

Sometimes You Have A Perfect Day

My parents started dragging my sister and I to museums before we were teenagers. The Corcoran and the National Gallery in Washington D.C., also the Smithsonian. I studied art history in Paris and went to the Corcoran School of Art in D.C. in my junior year. Once someone left a joint in my art box. I'd heard of this devil marijuana and how it was a gateway drug to ice cream sandwiches, but had never smoked one. I gave it to Betsy, one of my roommates, who promptly smoked it, got high and proclaimed me very Un-Cool, like that was even possible. By the time I smoked pot, two years later, I wanted to go back in time and make Betsy cough up that joint.

I have many favorite museums, the Frick and the Guggenheim in NY, The Musee D'Orsay in Paris and now The Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, California. Mr. Simon started collecting art when he was 40.  I started collecting bad boyfriends at 40. Twins!

Mr. Simon died in 1993 and what he left behind boggles the art lovers' mind. One of the largest collections of French painter Edgar Degas, including this beauty: Little Dancer: Aged 14.

I've seen this in a million (maybe 7) art books but never saw the original. The tulle skirt is real, albeit tattered and dirty. Degas put it on her in 1878. The $10 entrance fee to the museum was recouped immediately upon realizing this beauty was here in California.

This is a side view of Little Dancer: Aged 14.  The bow in the dancer's long braid had to be replaced as it was touched  by so many art lovers it fell apart. The skirt probably suffered the same fate but didn't fall off. If you get too close to this bronze, a net drops over you and you're sent to Gitmo.  I have no idea why people always tell me I exaggerate. GITMO I TELL YOU. My mom and best friend are in the background. Mom is a notorious "toucher" so I made Dennison watch her like a hawk.

This is by the glorious Mexican painter Diego Rivera. It is so breathtaking in person that no picture can do it justice. I now understand why fellow Mexican painter Frida Kahlo was so in love with him.

An Alberto Giacometti with the Diego Rivera in the distance. This is another piece I've seen in a million art books (maybe 5) but never had the fortune to see up close.

The Norton Simon Sculpture Garden. Mom took one look at it and said, "It's Monet's Water Lilies." The gardens are filled with pieces by sculptors Henri Moore, Jacques Lipchitz and Aristide Maillol. And 2 live ducks.



Mom sitting in the Sculpture Garden. Probably thinking up ways to steal my essence. 

No Kidding

I'm very excited to announce that publication of the book No Kidding, an anthology due out next year, has been moved up. It's a series of essays from women who decided not to have children. It was due out Mother's Day but maybe that publishing date was too ironic when it came right down to it.

I'm in it with some extremely talented and funny women like Merrill Markoe, (best selling NY Times author), Laura Kightlinger, (writer from Will & Grace) Henriette Mantel (web series The Middle with Kevin Meaney) and Nancy Shayne, (Louie) among others. As soon as I get the art work I'll post it.

I've been MIA because I'm finishing up Celebrity sTalker, my first memoir. It will be out at Christmas.

L.A. Sign Of The Times #104

Endeavor flying by my balcony.

When It's Too Painful To Talk About

My sister Lindy got up at 7 a.m., like she does every day. She walked into the living room and opened the curtains then slowly made her way to the dining room to open those curtains.

A pair of doves nest in a fern my sister has hanging on her balcony. A bright green and beautifully lush fern. Twice a year the female lays eggs in it. She sits on them and waits for the male to return with food. If the male thinks she's in any danger, he flies quickly to the balcony railing to stand guard. I've seen him come zooming in from out of the blue if I stare too long up at the nest. They know my sister. They don't know me.

The doves have been coming to her balcony for many, many years. Lindy thinks they bring her good luck and is always excited when they finally appear. One year they didn't come, they'd gone to a nearby apartment instead. Lindy spent that year waiting for bad luck to strike. It didn't. But she held vigil anyway. The doves always have two or three babies and they hop around the balcony before they finally take flight as young adults.

The doves aren't perturbed by my sister watering her plants. They even tolerate her dog Yoshi, who is so fat he'd have a hard time lifting his head to locate them.

When Lindy opened the dining room curtains on Friday morning she saw a man lying on the terrace outside her third floor condo and thought, “How weird that Mel is trying to get some sun this early in the morning.”

And then she saw the blood.

She was in such shock she called the front desk instead of 911.

They called 911.

Mel had thrown himself off his 10th floor balcony and landed in front of Lindy's dining room windows.

Two days before National Suicide Prevention Week.

Lindy cried and cried and when the police came, and spent four hours at the scene, they suggested tenants talk to counselors. Others, as it turned out, also saw Mel lying on the terrace.

This happened last Friday. I didn’t hear about it until yesterday. My sister is like my late father, and my mother. They are not divulgers of painful feelings. For them, it happens and then you move on. For me, it happens and then you dwell on it for years.

A therapist who lives in her building opened her doors to all the residents. Lindy went. The therapist diagnosed her with PTSD. A tenant gave her some Klonopin. She's been on it since the suicide.

Lindy told me this is the worst thing that’s ever happened to her. That she discovered the body of a friend who died violently. I believe her.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”
"Mel wasn't liked in the building. He made trouble for the condo association. They called him a dissident. I liked him and everyone knew that."

Lindy likes everyone.

“People are avoiding me; I ended up not wanting to tell everyone else.”
“I’m not everyone else. I’m your sister.”

Silence.

Like I said, everyone in my family leans towards taciturn in events of the heart.

Mel left a suicide note. He was bipolar. He was 77. He was divorced. His wife lived in the same building, but in a different apartment.

The day that Mel jumped the doves left their nest. Three days went by and they didn’t return. Lindy anxiously checked the fern for signs of their slim grey tail feathers, which stuck out from the fern when they were in residence.

Nothing.

On Tuesday Lindy got up on a stool to look inside the nest. That's how convinced she was they were still there. There was a lone egg in the fern. Cracked open. The baby dove lay in the jaws of the broken shell.

Dead.

The Final Book Cover

I Got A Book Deal!

I'm on deadline as the book is due in 6 weeks.

I won't be posting much.

You can thank me later.

L.A. Sign Of The Times #103

Target shopping carts docking at the Mother Ship.

Getting Another Ganesh

Ganesh 2.0 came in the mail today. I heard from lots of people who emailed to say they also had a Ganesh stashed either in their home or outside it. Never underestimate the power of the Hindu Gods. Or any other Gods. Or Cheetos.