Julie and Julia

Do you think Julie Powell has a Le Creuset? I bet she does now that she’s a famous author. I’m pretty sure she has one in the movie version. But a prop on a movie set does not a gourmet chef make.

Julie, Julie, Julie. What am I to do with you? The truth is that I wanted to read this book after the piece you wrote about how you were depicted in the movie version of your book, which is a blog-turned-memoir for those of you living under a rock. She has a point, I thought, as I read her words about what can be conveyed and what can’t and what must be changed for Hollywood standards. Poor Julie Powell, I thought. Although I saw the movie and had kind of liked her. But maybe it was my penchant for all things Amy Adams. So, I thought after reading the article, she must be a SAINT in the book!

Let me tell you a little something, Julie Powell, the way you were depicted in the movie is WORLDS above how you depict YOURSELF in your book. I liked ya. I did. I wasn’t so interested in the scenes concerning you, what with the distraction of Meryl Streep as Julia Child, but I didn’t think you were whiny or annoying or self-obsessed like some of my friends.

But oh ho ho, Julie! In the book, which YOU yourself wrote? You’re a flipping nightmare, woman!

The thing that is so wonderful about writing, and more specifically blogging, is that a writer can create a version of herself that is flawless. I’d imagine for most people it happens without even trying. It’s like internet dating. You say the best stuff about yourself. You turn on the charm via text and phone conversations. The person doesn’t get to see how you get bloody noses on a daily basis or how you walk uphill like a duck. Sometimes I read what I’ve written on this blog and think, “Damn, I’m cool!” I’m not. I’m lonely and kind of a loner and I let the dust bunnies build forts in the corners of my house. When I told the story of Eight to my friend, it went something like this:

“He was a Catholic! He was coming home from a youth ministry trip! It was really uncomfortable and weird.”

The truth is that I am terrible at telling stories out loud. I second guess myself, I worry whether or not the other person is enjoying themselves, I tell myself I’m not funny and no one is listening and why don’t you just sit down and shut up and stop fucking rambling already.

The point is sitting in front of my little silver computer is safe. I can make my life sound amazingly entertaining and uproarious. I can sound smart and funny and sassy, when really I’m sitting around in black yoga pants and a grey Red Sox sweatshirt that I bought for an old boyfriend that he returned to me when we had terrible makeup sex. An old boyfriend who just happens to be married with a child now. An old boyfriend who I just happened to have a dream about last night in which we were at a baseball game and I asked him whether or not he would ever cheat on his wife and he looked at me with his sweet blue and brown eyes and was totally skeeved out.

But this isn’t the version of myself that I show in my blog. I show the funny 104, the smart 104, the sassy 104.

So here is my gripe with the Julie in the book: she is awful to her husband (“’No, no, no. I have aspics. I have to bone a whole duck. Can you even conceive of boning a duck? Of course you can’t. Your brain’s too consumed with the NewsHour and FreeCell to waste time on something just because it’s of all-consuming importance to your wife’”); she is childishly and needlessly perverted (“I was feeling very cook-y in general, actually, cool and collected, until I got to ‘forming the ribbon.’ This sounds like some ancient Asian euphemism for kinky water sports” [um, no it doesn’t]); she is an admittedly bad friend (she includes anecdotes that are completely off topic and unrelated about her friends’ love lives only, I can imagine, to make her flat book a little more lively); and she uses some of the most obscure and unclear imagery in the world. If this is the cleaned up and polished version of herself that she wants to show to the world, the version that is most appropriate for public consumption, she must SUCK BALLS in real life.

That is all. One star. I can’t muster any more.