I can never decide if I am (a) jealous of, (b) in awe of, (c) wanting to be friends with...C.S., the writer about whom our shared writing prof Tobias Wolff said, "She's the only writer I've ever known--well, besides Jay McInerney--who did it right on the first draft." He got kind of dreamy when he talked about her. Terrible, huh?

Some days I think I hate her, other days I think she should move to L.A. and hang out with me at coffee shops.

I was talking to this guy I know, Merrill.

He was saying he doesn't need to know what time it is, because that's besides the point--he usually doesn't even know what day it is.

This morning I got myself in big trouble b/c I never know what date it is--trouble I knew I would get into for exactly this reason--and I'm kind of clinging to Merrill's problem. Because maybe it's not, okay, well I am the world's flakiest, stupidest, air-headedest person, but maybe it's a writer thing, you know. We're just not trained to know what day and date it is. We live in worlds of our own construction in which it can be ANY DAY WE WANT. Sadly, the rest of the world does not love this about us.

Anyway, thanks Merrill.

Salon.com Books | The inner W.: "Frank, who considers Bush to be 'an intelligent person whose access to his intelligence [is] hampered by his disabilities' (he suspects attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and dyslexia),"

As the sister of two dyslexics, and the daughter, niece and granddaughter of dyslexics, all I have to say, is "Heck yeah." The way GWB parses words and sentences screams (SCREAMS!) of the kind of lexical disorders my siblings and mother face. The word starts out one way and ends up another (subliminable, misunderstimate, etc.) and the moments when he just stops short, those are the moments when his brain freezes up, like a computer, as it runs too many programs (word access, panic, fear, verbalization, etc.) at once. Dude: Retire and get a tutor. Come back when you have a triumphant tale of conquering your disability.

In the interests of keeping the world fully apprised of celebrity doings, several friends and I compiled a list of every famous person we saw at the Fahrenheit 9/11 premiere, plus a few we read about in news reports (thank you kindly ticket guru, note taker Amy, Variety, L.A. Times, Rush and Molloy by way of Salon.com, and, uh, the Academy?). Not including usual suspects like Harvey and Moore.

SCREENING 1 at the Acad Theater

Drew Barrymore (E.T.)
Michael Bay (devil's spawn, friend of Jerry)
Josh Brolin
Larry David
Ellen DeGeneres and anonymous girlfriend
Danny DeVito and Rhea Pearlman (Danny & Lisa Kudrow [see below] were chatty)
David Duchovny and Bony Tea Leoni
Nora Ephron
Jodie Foster
Troy Garity (Hayden + Fonda =; white guy in Barbershop)
Melissa George (hot Australian chick from Alias)
Sara Gilbert (sister of Melissa, Roseanne)
Tom Hayden (supreme soviet of the people's republic of santa monica)
Peter Horton (late of thirtysomething and Michelle Pfeiffer)
Arianna Huffington (tall!)
Spike Jonze
Lisa Kudrow (with fabulous new brown bob!) and husband
Diane Lane
Norman Lear
Kelly Lynch (tall! but you knew that!)
Camryn Manheim (chatting with Gilbert, see above)
Michael Mann
Leonard Maltin (and what appeared to be a movie critics posse)
Viggo Mortensen (mmm...Viggo...)
Julia Ormond (preggers!)
Sharon and Kelly and Jack Osbourne
Rob Reiner (chatty with Meg at afterparty)
Gary Ross (Seabiscuit director, looks disturbingly like James Brolin)
Meg Ryan (still awesomely cute, but needs to start taking Diane Keaton's jobs)
Tom Shadyac (Bruce Almighty director, has unnatural fondness for bucket hats)
Martin Sheen (Hollywood's POTUS, with krazy hair)
John Singleton (sitting down in front)
LeeLee Sobieski (more with the tall!)
Aaron Sorkin (Oh, Aaron. Aaron, Aaron, Aaron--what are we going to do with you?)
Gregory Smith (Ephram Brown on Everwood, slunk into the afterparty)
Kevin Smith (dude!)
Marisa Tomei (foxy!)
Mark Wahlberg (Mark, your mother called. She wants you to sit up straight.)
Ed Zwick (Once & Again, Legends of the Fall director)
& a guy who looked suspiciously like Leo's dad, George

SCREENING 2 at Laemelle's (sp?) across the street

Jessica Alba (foxy!)
Wes Anderson (director, Rushmore)
Jack Black (It must be nice being Jack Black--you never have to wash your hair.)
Leonardo DiCaprio (See above, re Jack Black)
Billy Crystal
Orlando Jones (apparently with an entourage far out of proportion to his actual fame)
Ashton Kutcher
Bill Maher (with an iman/beverly johnson-lookin' chick)
Demi Moore (allegedly with Kabbalah dude in tow)
Catherine O'Hara
Matthew Perry
Chris Rock (signed autograph for a fan, just in case you judge celeb decency by that kind of thing)
Sharon Stone
Ben Stiller & Christine Taylor
Patrick Whitesell (Matt & Ben's frighteningly-white-toothed agent)

In the immortal words of my senior-year English prof, "You look like you've been in a fight with some cats."

i made three new friendsters today. it was exciting.