SquawkRadio

Okay, so now that I've taunted you guys with my life this weekend, I shall tell you what I did. I spent Saturday down on the river in the bitter, bitter, BITTER freaking cold, watching airplanes and fireworks. We have this little thing in my part of Kentucky called The Kentucky Derby. Perhaps you've heard of it. It's two weeks away. Which means for two weeks, this city is going to be overrun by all manner of "Get the Tourist Dollar" activities. Except that what they haven't figured out is that the tourists don't get here until just before the Derby (you can tell when they arrive by driving past the airport and seeing all the private jets parked there), so most of it winds up being "Get the Local Dollar" activities. They got plenty of this local's dollars over the weekend, lemme tell ya. And "Thunder Over Louisville" is just the beginning. Soon there will be bed races, rat races (literally--for a tiny trophy full of Froot Loops), waiters racing with glasses of wine (the Run for the Rose--wine, I mean, since that last e should have an accent, but I'm too 'puter challenged to figure out how to do it), parades, hot air balloons being lit up, celebrity-packed parties, you name it. And I'm going to go to ALL of them. (Well, okay, for the celebrity-packed parties, I'll be in the crowd of fans roped off to the side who are star-gazing, but that's beside the point. It IS.)

Cool girl indeed.

Holy cow, you guys were busy with the blogging this weekend while some of us (i.e. ME) were off having a life. Thanks for carrying the load. (And I'll be polite and not say anything about what it was a load of.)

I, too, have to laugh at this concept of "cool girls," since I was the library aide in high school and worked on the yearbook staff and never wore the right shoes or listened to the right music. (The first 45 I ever bought was the Archies' "Sugar, Sugar" and the first album I ever bought was Barry Manilow. 'Nuff said.) In junior high, I was the one being thrown into the showers by the cool girls at the end of gym class and had to go to Spanish all soaking wet. So if I'm with the "cool girls" now, someone, for God's sake, help me find the exit. And even now, my glasses prescription is so thick (even with the lightweight lenses) that my optha...opta...oppo...my eye doctor once told me, "Wow. If you'd been born a thousand years ago, you would have been the village blind girl." My date to the prom was a guy I barely knew who had broken up with his girlfriend two weeks before the prom and was trawling for a date with ANYone (and two weeks before the prom, I was still date-free). On prom night, he ended up hooking up with one of my best friends, and they're now married with two kids.

So let's just put that "popular, cool" thing right out of our heads, shall we? It's pain that makes artists good. In this company, I think it's safe to say we've had more than our share. Come all ye acne-ridden peasants to our feast. We'll have much to talk about.

Elizabeth Bevarly

Cool?! I was one of the high school newspaper editors, fer chrissake. Never even went to prom-- and the mortifying thing was that I would have gone in a heartbeat had someone, ANYONE, asked me. They didn't.

Now that I think about it, it was at about this time that I started populating my imagination with sardonic, masterful heroes who realized how ravishing nerd-girls could be.

And if anyone should mistakenly think that somewhere in the interim I segued in cooldom-- here's a picture taken of me this afternoon. Caught napping at the Minnesota Arboretum. I know, I know... beyond cool.

Does anyone besides me remember just how awful high school was? Sometimes I get a fleeting sense that someone is intimidated by talking to me (Shakespeare professor, New York Times bestselling writer, bla bla bla). This always surprises me because I had the ego so thoroughly kicked out of me in school that I just don't see myself as the least intimidating.

Back then I was plump, miserable and sported a red afro. Both boys who showed signs of dating me in my senior year, including the boy who took me to the senior prom, are now out and gay. Has anyone read the book FAT GIRL? I just finished it, and while the author had much greater and more tragic reasons for her misery, that book came the closest I've seen to depicting just how ungodly it is to be a young person who is not physically perfect in this country.

Many of us got email expressing concerns about the purpose of Squawk Radio, and there was a great riff on one of the bbs which said it best. A reader suggested that we were like the the cool-girl clique who sat at their own table in high school. She asked if she came over, would she feel like acne-ridden freshman who sits at the cool-girls' table and they stop talking, really talking, and get polite?

Eloisa, Teresa and I responded in much the same way: wow, you mean we're the cool girls?

Eloisa said, "Can I just say that I grew up in a small town in Minnesota (population 2000), and I was plump, red-haired, too weird and unpopular for words...and I LOVE the idea of being at the cool-girl table? Can we keep this up, guys? Eloisa....finally made it, umpteen years too late."

I added, "Here's the thing -- if you don't come over to talk to us, we're not the cool girls, we're the nerds with the pocket protecters and the taped glasses. And may I say, in my former life I was a drafter and I have already worn pocket protectors and taped glasses. I also know how to use a protractor and both an engineering and architectural scale. Does that make you comfortable enough for you to drop in on us ... or will you never come over now because you don't want to hang around with the dweebs?"

And Teresa said it best, "Honey, if you think we're like the cool-girl clique in high school, then you've obviously never seen our yearbook photos *g*. Someone once said that behind every writer is a weird little kid and that is so true! If you comment, will I be nicer to you than I will to Connie, Eloisa, Christina, Lisa or Elizabeth? Um, probably. But that's only because I've had a few years to practice being rude and disrespectful to them. And I know they love it! Our goal with the blog is simply to have fun and to discuss some fun things and some serious things and to have a place to vent when one of us is just dying to verbalize an opinion and our families and friends are giving us that glazed look that says, "Go away, you weird little kid." Hope you'll pop in. You can sit at my lunch table anyday! Hugs, Teresa "Harriet the Spy" Medeiros"

I'm sure our other three Squawkers may have had similar experiences. (Guys?)

So Connie has fixed it so everyone can comment and until we're hit by spammers, you'll be able to add your insights so that everyone can enjoy them. This is a learning experience for us, so stick with us and we'll get it figured out!

Okay, one last post before I go off-line for a week. I totally agree with Christina that I won't be trashing anyone's specific books or reputation on this Blog. Mostly because if you're a non-writer, I would never come to your place of business, stand in the doorway of your office, and shout, "You suck! You should go split rocks for a living!" (Anybody see the SEINFELD episode where Jerry went to the office of the woman who heckled his show and heckled her???) There are plenty of sites and message boards on the web where readers can dish honestly about books without a bunch of neurotic writers (ie. Christina) hanging over their shoulders.

But I would like to reserve the right to recommend books if I read something wonderful. Even if it's not written by us. Even if my friend didn't pay me to recommend it. But if you want to pay me, that's cool, too. Just send a sack of unmarked bills in a plain brown wrapper c/o Teresa Medeiros to...oh... never mind...I forgot where I was for a minute...

See ya next week, my little chickadees!

We also won't trash other writers or their work. There is no way you're going to read my blogs and know which authors I don't care for either personally or because of their writing and none of the rest of us are going to let that slip, either. We will give our honest opinions about books and trends and husbands and dogs and I'm building a house which has unfortunately taken over my life (except for the writing) and Eloisa lives in Italy part of the year so she can make us deeply envious of her lifestyle and we can retaliate by saying really insightful stuff like "Nanner nanner boo boo." In other words, we won't say stuff behind anyone's back.