So I Have a Crush on Liz Phair, What Do You Care?

An astute reader of Holy Hullabaloos who was at my Brookline Booksmith reading last week suggested to me that he thought my whole motivation for writing the book--the two years of research and writing, the agonizing self-promotion, even possibly the ten previous years of teaching church/state law to position myself as someone who could publish a book--has been basically to infinitesimally increase the chances that Liz Phair might notice me.  Now, this person has known me for many years and knows of my crush on Liz Phair and was even randomly at the same show with me at the Paradise last fall when I tried, unsuccessfully, to throw my boxers on the stage at Liz (this, by the way, is quite a difficult task to accomplish, with all the shoe-removing and jeans-pulling-down and security guard involvement and what not, which might explain why men don't do this little manuever very often).  And, yes, to some degree my friend is certainly correct.

As I write in the book (on page 112), when I was in Austin for my trip to visit the Ten Commandments monument that was challenged all the way to the Supreme Court by Thomas Van Orden, a hilarious and brilliant homeless lawyer, I was sitting at some bar in the South Congress neighborhood one evening when "I kept drinking beer after beer in the hopes that the stunning woman two tables away really was Liz Phair, the Chicago indie rock queen whom I've had a crush on for years and who I thought might--well, I don't know what I thought, maybe that she'd suddenly stand on the table and start giving me a private concert or something."  I'll spare you the version of that sentence which appeared in the first draft of the book.  Anyway, it probably wasn't her, although Austin would be a place where she could conceivably be and she was with a big hairy guy who resembled "Dino," a guitar player/boyfriend (maybe ex-boyfriend, I'm not sure) who pretty much ruined the first show I saw of Liz's by getting really irritated at his amplifier and cursing it throughout the entire concert.  Incidentally, that show was also generally a letdown, I think because it took place during a period of 8 days in a row of rain when everyone was so fucking sick of the weather like they are now that everything we saw or read seemed to suck (like I imagine this blog post will seem).

Now, of course, yes, I'm married, but as I've pointed out previously on this blog, Liz is one of the two women on the list that couples typically either have or don't have of people they could have "relations" with if ever presented with the opportunity (the other being WCVB weather-goddess JC Monahan (I should point out that a good number of people have arrived at this blog by searching for Ms. Monahan, though not as many as find me by looking for an image of Sue Ellen Ewing, my childhood TV crush)).  I'll also reiterate here how my wife's list only has one person on it, and he's dead (Heath Ledger). 

(It occurs to me that a good plot for a movie or a short story or other work of fiction might involve a married guy or lady who actually does somehow get the chance to sleep with someone on this kind of "free pass list" and what happens to the relationship afterward as they argue about whether such a list really exists or whether it's just a joke; has there already been such a story or movie--please let me know?=).

Anyway, back to the point of the post, so what if my motivation for writing Holy Hullabaloos wasn't really to explain church/state law to general readers or to evaluate the Supreme Court's religion clause jurisprudence or to suggest that we might achieve some modicum of social peace if we started talking about religion and government with some levity but instead was just to increase infinitesimally the chance that Liz Phair will notice me?  Does that make the book any less fantabulistic?  In other words, so I have a crush on Liz Phair, what do you care?

Liz: call me!

 

Comments

[Andrea]

There's an episode of Entourage where Vince meets this fabulous girl at a bookstore, and he totally falls for her because she's hot and not enamored of his celebrity, and then she sleeps with him, and then right after, he asks her out, and she laughs and says, "Oh that's so sweet, but I'm getting married this weekend." Vince gets all upset and offended and she says that her fiance agreed that if she ever had the chance, she could sleep with Vince. And I think maybe she calls the fiance and the fiance thinks its hilarious that it actually happened, and Vince is hurt.

So maybe you should think about Liz Phair's pain when she finds out you're married.

[Dave]

Now that you're becoming a famous author, what if you're on someone else's list? Could you have coitus with that person, if that person is not already on your list? Is there some kind of immunity that attaches there, or like what is the precedent there?

Although, how awesome would it be if you were on the weather lady's list too? That would be really awesome.

[Jay Wexler]

There should be a "list" registry where people can go and make their lists public and then you can go check and see if you're on anybody's list. Mmmm, lists.