What happens when you get three funny ladies in the same room? Knock-knock joke about kittens, tampons, and feelings? Nah, more like Julie Klausner, Julie Klam, and Sascha Rothchild -- three writers of the XX chromosome who gave an audience a complete core workout (suck on that, Ab Belt!) when they read from their memoirs during a joint reading for the Miami Book Fair yesterday afternoon.
First up was Julie Klam who read from her canine-themed book You Had Me at Woof. During her reading she describes the joys of taking an "Animal Communication" seminar in which the first lesson is to sit outside and interpret what crickets are, well, cricketing about. As the group - who Klam describes as looking like audience at a Grateful Dead concert - listened to the insects jam banding, the blonde author with clean comedic timing, humorously recalls many of the group member's translations. "One cricket is mad that he missed the season finale of Home Improvement."
Then there was Julie Klausner, a saucy redhead who's memoir I Don't
Care About Your Brand: What I Learned from Indie Rockers, Trust Funders,
Pornographers, Felons, Faux Sensitive Hipsters and Other Guys I've
Dated is in the process of becoming a new HBO series starring Lizzy Caplan (AKA Janis Ian a al Mean Girls). The book covers Klausner's many experiences dating men of the Peter Pan variety back in her 20s.
In the chapter she shared aloud, she explained the roots of her
loser-lust. Successfully mixing clever metaphors about her father,
rejection, and musical theater, Klausner's audible except came full
circle but not without a few funny lines ("I was wrong, wrong like
Hitler was wrong") and her childhood reasoning for why she should've
gotten the title role in a community theater production of Annie,
dammit! I mean, the girl's a natural red head! And really, as Klausner
so eloquently put it "Who wants to put a wig on a kid without leukemia?'
Last, but certainly not least, was Miami native Sascha Rothchild
who read a chapter entitled "Buy New Fangs And Do Cocaine Every Sunday"
from her memoir How to Get Divorced by 30: My Misguided Attempt at a Starter Marriage as
her parents sat proudly in the audience. Rothchild's reading (which was
our personal fave) dealt with weight issues, vampire obsession, and
doing cocaine at 13 in which Rothchild describes as "like a Bat Mitzvah"
or right of passage for any Magic City kid.
Funniest thing out of her mouth? An offhand remark from her middle
school diary after trying blow for the very first time: "Oh, and I tried
cocaine! It's the coolest fucking thing on earth! I think I'm addicted.
Oh well."
Here's hoping Rothchild comes out with a series of pre-teen literature
in the near future: "Hello God, it's Me, Mary-Jane."
