Florrie Fisher, are you my mother?

Sometimes I wonder if -and desperately hope- I am related to Florrie Fisher, famed user, boozer, and loser, and artistic muse of Amy Sedaris. I felt kind of betrayed the first time I saw this:

Clearly, Florrie Fisher is incredibly awesome, and without someone like Jerri Blank of Strangers With Candy to inhabit her memory, she would be lost in the annals of after-school-special history forever. My sense of betrayal came from the realization that Jerri Blank wasn't completely fashioned from Sedaris' twisted and brilliant mind. Now, I'm a jerk for Jesus. I understand that art isn't created in a vacuum and it never was. Does the fact that Jerri Blank was not an entirely fictional character mar Amy Sedaris' comic worth or ability? The answer is no, of course, and furthermore I'm genuinely glad that Florrie was the precursor to everyone's favorite 46-year-old high school freshman. In many ways, her existence makes Jerri Blank better, because now she is not a fantasy. My only remaining hope is that Florrie is my long-lost mother, and that as a baby she traded me for a guitar, or better yet, a pitcher of beer.

Notes on Camp

"I am strongly drawn to Camp, and almost as strongly offended by it...That is why I want to talk about it, and why I can...the essence of Camp is its love of the unnatural: of artifice and exaggeration...Camp rests on innocence. That means Camp discloses innocence, but also, when it can, corrupts it...The hallmark of Camp is the spirit of extravagance. Camp is a woman walking around in a dress made of three million feathers." - Susan Sontag
Random example of an item that is part of the canon of Camp: Joi Lansing in her classic Scopitone "Web of Love." Watch the video:


I found Sontag's "Against Interpretation" in the book dumpster two years ago. What a precious resource it has been. As I skimmed "Notes on Camp" today and considered what I see in the magazines, on the billboards, and on the faces of others, I asked myself: Has our entire culture has become a campy parody of itself?

A Jerk for Jesus

Everyone knows by now that self-publishing is where it's at. If it weren't, why would Time magazine tell us so, and slap a mirror on the cover for Person of the Year? It's the new pamphleteering. Well I'm new on this beat, but I'm here to stay. Welcome to my Blog, everyone. I'm a jerk.