My mother, who takes half a damn hour to do every fool thing, just tried to sign my *seven days* guestbook, but Bravenet was fucking up, so when she was finished, it got screwed. Dammit.

Today I had a lot of factchecking to do at the magazine; we're revising our restaurant guide and basically Ted and I have to call every restaurant in Atlanta. It was like when Jasmine was updating files and had to call people like, "Excuse me, sir, are you still at 666 Bumblefuck Road?" only you aren't supposed to ask leading questions like that. I also talked to the chef at Sotto Sotto who had a mild, sexy Italian accent.

In the meantime I got Mari to get a diaryland and join the clique. I "met" Mari, who lives in Brazil, because of the Wallflowers; we bonded over the fact that we were born mere hours apart. I turned her on to Jump and have sent her all of their CDs so far, including Rosebud, and a birthday card signed by everyone I could find at the Licorice Tea Party. Once I sent her a pic of Ward holding a sign saying HI MARI. Quit laughing.

So I finished that book about the Bay City Rollers. Those groupies were fucking pathetic. I mean, for real. Think of the lamest Jump fan you know and multiply it hundredfold. The BCRs, for lack of a better term, sucked dogs for quarters musically and were unattractive jerks to boot; the fans rarely got to talk to them and yet their lives revolved around the band. The author and her friends, often broke, bought plane tickets, staked out the band's hotel rooms, made calls trying to find out where the band was, and were far older than the other fans; they also were into the band longer than the band was, I think. At times I could recognize what the author felt; other times I was baffled and depressed. The author does have a nicely broad vocabulary and did rip off a few good barbs here and there. But all in all it was not much fun. It did make me feel substantially less like a nut, so if you need that, go for it.

Here are some quotes:

"The idea of sleeping with Leslie [the lead singer] -- oh, those knowing eyes -- was so overwhelming that I can recall the painful longing as if it were yesterday."

"The first priority of any fan was to get to the band, and the second was to stop other females from doing so."

"Up till that moment, I'd nurtured a vague idea that if something was desirable enough, it was attainable."

"Each encounter with them was painfully intense, and the more we saw of them, the more perversly depressed we were afterward."

"As we saw it, loving the Rollers was strictly a she-thing. Who wanted guys around? Joey and the other boy in his bunch, Barbarino, weren't even gay, they just liked the Rollers, which struck even us as too bizarre for words."

"We were desperate to join the sexual revolution but our potential schtupees were thwarting us by being unattainable. We were at the peak of our youth and were squandering it on men who barely knew we existed."

"Always, my encounters with them had been informed by the tension of wanting to impress and mean something to them....I never felt I quite measured up to what they expected of a girl -- even if I never quite knew what they did expect."

"Say what you wanted about him, he could certainly wear a pair of pants."