me, miranda, and lots of people i don't know

Every once in a while, the right person gets famous. Like Dave Eggers. Or Beth Lisick. Or Nick Hornby. These are people who you feel speak directly to -- and for -- you, like they were one of your own friends, even though they aren't (unless you're Ajax, in which case they are, or at least Beth is).

Miranda July is one of these people, at least for me. I'm sure there are plenty of people who absolutely hated "Me, You, and Everyone We Know," but I walked out of that movie so happy to be alive. She's just quirky and funny and thoughtful, a little bit sad maybe, and so very creative. She reminds me a lot of Ryan.

Anyway, she was reading this week at Modern Times from her new book of stories, No One Belongs Here More than You. The store is a decently sized, except that there were something like 400 people there to see her. It was hella hot, so hot that I could feel the sweat beads snake their way down my back. So crowded that she had to go up on the ledge above the books to read. Here she is, right next to a massive sign reading "Hella Gay." I bet a lot of ladies were wishing it were true.


Apparently, it was pretty dusty up there, and then they turned the fan on her to help with the hotness, and it blew a ton of gunk onto her. Can you imagine getting up in front of 400 people (including your mom and brother) in your cute little 60s outfit and then getting sprayed with muck? The whole audience gasped.

But then she told us about a game she played with her brother as a kid when they would get dragged to boring readings. They would pick out words from bookshelves and try to make sentences with them. Like one would say, "Third shelf, fourth book from the right, third word in title, added to sixth shelf, first book, second word" and it would spell something out. She said they did it at home too, and they were always trying to use the book "The Golden Ass."

See if you can spot me here.


She read three stories, each of them quirky and funny and a little disturbing. Here's an excerpt from "The Man on the Stairs":

"Generally, people don't like each other very much. And that goes for friends too. Sometimes I lay in bed trying to decide which of my friends I really care about and I always come to the same conclusion: None of them. I thought these were just my starter friends and the real ones would come along later. But no. These are my real friends."

I used to feel like this, back in the early '90s. Now I look back and think, "Who were those people?" They were indeed my starter friends.

Anyway, after the reading, she answered a bunch of questions, including one about her "creative process" which I felt was very appropriate. She said something to the effect of "I'm like everyone else: one day I say I'm going to work before reading my email, give myself a little reward for working, and it goes really well, so I do it the next day and then it's bad so I throw out that method and start all over again."

I didn't buy her book, because it was just too crowded. I'll buy one later, I promise. But by not doing so, I missed out on the chance to say I know her friend Yuri, or say I know the guy who inspired the creepy dude writing messages to the little girls in her movie, or say I interviewed her for Kitchen Sink during the SFIFF a couple years ago and I felt embarrassed that my shirt was unbuttoned during our talk and also that the piece never ran, or say that I had invited a woman on a date to the reading because I thought it would be the perfect place for a suitably awkward, possibly exciting first date but that she couldn't make it because she was feeding people who had AIDS.

As I looked around the room, I was kind of in awe of the crowd. It was like that Monster Art Drawing event, where pretty much every woman there was cute, quirky, and hip. I wished Miranda would do what Dave Eggers did after one reading, and take everyone out for a beer so they could mingle.

But she didn't. So I went home and watched the series finale of the Gilmore Girls.

How embarrassing is that?