Friday, August 10, 2007

I wish I were as amusing as Patricia Marx

Last month I read Him Her Him Again The End of Him, by Patricia Marx. It's a pretty recent book, as I was reminded this evening when I was looking through my Google Reader and came across a Q&A she did with New Yorker writer Nancy Franklin.

Marx cracks me up. She is funny is a very understated way. Where you realize how funny something is a second or two later. Some highlights:

Q: Did you know there is actually a pop star named Patricia Marx in Brazil?
A: I do know and I’m so happy, because if anybody ever Google-Images me, they’ll think that I’m a beautiful Brazilian pop star.
Patricia Marx
(the Brazilian Marx)

How she is like my interns: I just loved [SNL]. I had never lived in New York; I loved that. I loved being there twenty-four hours a day. If there had been two hundred and forty hours in a day, I would have loved staying there those hours, too. I especially liked the fact that there was Diet Coke in the refrigerators that you could have for no money. It was summer camp.

On not liking her name: My mother said to me the other day, “Why does your name have to be Patty? My friends say, ‘How’s Patty?’ and I think they could be saying, ‘How’s Jane? How’s Anne?’ ”

So I've become a Marx fan. A Marxist, you could say. But that's just one example of how I'm not as funny as she is.

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