darlin', you give literature a bad name

As I said in an earlier post, we moved out here right around this time last year, when northern California was under water. Our son's new school opened a week later than it was supposed to after Christmas break (or whatever it's called out here - Religiously Neutral Holiday Vacation?) because of flooding and the subsequent Hazmat removal of simultaneously-discovered asbestos in the classrooms. The local library was another casualty of the floods, and since the town was already in the thick of a budget crisis and cutbacks to "non-essential" departments like the library, the beautiful old historic building was apparently really foundering. So, later in the year local writer Anne Lamott and a friend about whom she writes frequently, the amazing storyteller Neshama Franklin, held a fundraiser. (It was a cool thing to do, and I like A.L.'s writing. So don't think that I really think she gives literature a bad name, okay? I just think my choice of title is clever. Of course it won't be to those of you who weren't hair band fans in the 80's, but I'll just have to take my chances.) Though I tire more easily than I used to of having to endure Lamott's ideological rants in order to read her work, there's still something magnetic about both her prose and her person. For one thing, she's got the dry wit thing down pat. For another, she knows her audience and plays to them with flawless timing. So I suppose the onus is on me to understand that I'm likely to get less literary inspiration and more fawning over Ted Kennedy than I'd like when I read her work or attend her readings. And I'm not trying to pick on Lamott, by the way. My aversion to ideological ranting applies to writers and entertainers no matter what their political stripe. If you can protest in a way that brings something new to the intellectual table, I'm all eyes and ears. But just repeating your hatred for George W. Bush (or John Kerry, or Hillary) in the same way over and over again makes me want to - as Anne Lamott might say - stick a pencil in my neck (no matter how funny some of your other lines are). Now, Jon Bon Jovi bypasses this political proselytization tendency nicely, as my husband and I discovered during his Have a Nice Day tour back in February. There were no politics at the HP Pavilion that night - just tens of thousands of thirty-something rockers with their rocker children (and one enterprising guy in the lobby wearing an "I Love Hot Moms" t-shirt). I didn't even know JBJ was a card-carrying member of the Vast Left Wing Conspiracy until I saw a clip of his Oprah spot - and then again on Larry King. Which is fine - have at it when you're on the talk shows. Just remember that when I purchase tickets to your concert, I'm not looking to you for your political views. I'm looking to you to ROCK. ME. OUT. Which he did. And nicely, I might add.Follow @nicole_mcinnes