Rerun from He Wrote She Wrote: Bob Drives to Boston, April 5, 2006:

~ Jenny

BOOK TOUR 2006 SIX
Wednesday, April 05, 2006

SHE WROTE:

Help.

I am trapped on the highway in a rental car with an insane person. No internet last night because my apartment was in the basement, none this AM because we had to go see Meg again and then pick up the rental car, at which point my rational partner, Bob, went insane. I’m now safe in a Panera on Rt. 90, but sooner or later I’m gonna have to get back in that car, and I’m telling you, it’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Bob.

This is a guy who patiently holds doors for little old ladies, but put him behind the wheel of a car in Manhattan with a green light and an elderly woman with one foot SLIGHTLY off the curb, and he’s snarling, “DON’T TRY IT, LADY!” It’s like the buried Bronx broke out. “So I think our next move,” he says, in a completely sane voice, “is GET OUT MY WAY, I’M DRIVIN’ HERE, MORON! to concentrate on doing more serious blogs. We need to WHAT D’YA THINK, YA JERK, YA OWN THIS ROAD? give back more to Cherry Bombs. Which one of them LADY, YOU WANT TO GO THAT SLOW, GET IN THE RIGHT LANE, GODDAMMIT thought of that, anyway? We should thank her. You got the map?”

I’m a nervous wreck.

And don’t get him started on Elizabeth Bishop, who’s been DEAD since 1979, but some guy in the NYT says that she changed the course of American culture, and Bob cannot get past that. “HOW did she change the course American culture? I’ve never even HEARD of her, she’s a poet, for Christ’s sake–MOVE OR LOSE IT, YOU DUMBASS–just tell me HOW she changed the course of–”

“Let it go, Bob.”

“I’m over it. But, jeez, the ENTIRE course of American–BUDDY, YOU WANT TO FUCK WITH ME HERE?–culture? I don’t get it.”

Okay, actually, I’m not a nervous wreck, I’ve been laughing my ass off since we left the Village. Mr. Bob, the Badass.

We may make it to Boston, but if we don’t, it’s because Bob took on an eighteen-wheeler and we lost. On the other hand, I’m learning a whole new set of people skills.

HEY, MORON, I’M BLOGGING HERE, GET THE F OUT OF MY WAY.

See you in Boston.

2020 Note: More He Wrote She Wrote Reruns are here.

20 thoughts on “Rerun from He Wrote She Wrote: Bob Drives to Boston, April 5, 2006:”

  1. The HE WROTE SHE WROTE posts from your book tour are still my favourite blogs of all time. So sad that they’re no longer up – they gave me deep belly laughs at a time when I needed it most (my relationship was imploding and every day sucked for a long time). THANK YOU for this blast from the past! Seriously, every post was amazing.

    1. You know, they really weren’t. I was e-mailing with Bob earlier this week, and he says he’s changed a lot since we did the writing posts. But the stuff we wrote about the book tour was funny because it was so awful doing that tour. We did forty cities. It’s a miracle we didn’t kill each other. Remember the B&B That Hates Us? I found one that was about writing sex scenes for Don’t Look Down, so I’ll put that up tomorrow. I’d forgotten that completely, and it’s actually about writing, not about Bob and me fighting. Well, that too.

      1. YES! The B&B story was gold. I didn’t remember the scope of the tour though – FORTY CITIES!

        My favourite post ARGH post is probably about the shared interview with Susan Elizabeth Phillips. Thank you for keeping the archives!

  5. I can’t believe I was dumb enough to take a sip of hot chocolate as I started reading.

    Off to Google Elizabeth Bishop.

  6. Ha ha ha! Love it. I’ve read this one so many times, but it has been a long time. It always makes me laugh until my eyes water. Thanks so much for the treat, Jenny. Wish I could have been in that back seat.

  7. I love this. Thank you. This did trigger an earworm of Please come to Boston tho.

    1. Oooh. Dropkick Murphys Shipping Up To Boston, thanks to Rizzoli and Isles opening sequence.

      This was ridiculously funny.

  8. I’m so sorry I missed the He wrote, She wrote posts. Thank you for posting this – although I am now consumed with curiosity on what Bob had to say about this part of the tour.

    1. I can’t post Bob’s stuff, it belongs to him. And he won’t enable comments on his blog so you can’t harass him for his stuff.

      I was curious so I went back and looked and he ignored the whole thing. So nothing.

    2. If you have the old urls, you could check to see if they got saved on the Wayback Machine.

  10. THANK YOU!

    There used to be a way to get to an archived copy of these blogs, but since there were hundreds of comments on the posts, it was taking me a while and it quit working before I made it all the way through. I have always regretted not downloading the whole thing, because I missed the last third, and it was so-darned-funny.

    Any time you want to throw us another one, feel free.

  11. I actually liked the writing stuff… I always though it was taken down because it was going to be a book or something. I am pretty certain I had some of this saved but it went on a Zip drive. Then I never put them on a CD so I can’t even read them. So it goes…

    Digital data storage obsoletion. How do we keep our stuff now…

    Thanks for the laugh!

    1. That might have been was the plan. Bob and I imploded at one point. We’re fine now, but the chances of writing any book together are very low. He’s still fun to talk to in e-mail, and I still learn a lot from him, but we’ve calmed down considerably. Well, it’s been fifteen years, that’ll do it. Every now and then I’ll get a “We’re doomed” e-mail. Very comforting.

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