Fragments and reminents of a book launch event, or "did anyone get the number of the Sav. Blanc truck "

Anointed was birthed, kicking, screaming and telling bad jokes, into the world this past Saturday night, and as the publicist for the book (and the author, but mostly just the book really), it was pretty much damn required of me to finish an entire bottle of Charles Shaw Sauvignon Blanc by myself in an hour.

Ok, in under an hour.

Ok, in like fifteen minutes.

What's important to note, though, is that the following brief and mostly pictorial recap of the night focuses less on author/client of mine Zachary Steele and more on...

...the insanity that was this opening "discussion"/"debate" held between myself and a former colleague/current friend who won't be named because, um, he hates it when he uses the "internet" to "read things about himself". That said, I probably could name names, because his idea of "the internet" involves "logging on" via a graphing calculator, so he'd never know. But for the sake of (avoiding any) argument, I'll respect his wishes.


There were several topics of discussion in this debate, the sole purpose of which was to amuse Zach on the night of his first novel's debut. See, this aforementioned "colleague" and I have a history of barbed, sarcastic banter that very rarely takes place in private and has been known to be supremely publicly offensive...and also greatly entertaining. Our points of contention tend to revolve around historical fiction (I hate it, he loves it), food (I've been a vegetarian for about 13 years now), author pin-up Marisha Pessl (that link takes you to my interview with her for my old work blog, I'm eventually going to port it over here), and, well, one of us being right and the other being stupid.

Now, I thought my preparation- opening remarks involving my reading the Websters definition of "right" from the dictionary, my beginning every answer to each question with a "before I answer your question" reframing, my bringing an annotated copy of Pessl's Special Topics In Calamity Physics to read from when the topic of her either being brilliant or flash-in-the-pan inevitably arose-would at the very least put me ahead in terms of sheer "prop" factor in the debate.

But oh, no.

Granted, I managed to work in my reading from Special Topics



but there was absolutely no way I could win when my formidable opponent arrived with the following pieces of propaganda:



Yes, folks, that is a hybrid MARISHA (I excuse my opponent misspelling her name here ONLY because I was too drunk to call him on it at the time) and Sarah Palin...

and






Suffice to say, I didn't win the debate. "Crushed by a damn landslide" was the term I think I recall Brett, Zach's editor on Anointed, using. I drowned my sorrows in brownies and cheap wine that night, indeed I did.

Oh, and oh yeah-the rest of the evening? A cheap wine-induced blur of hilarity, good times, and me seriously wondering about the phallic nature of those sausages on the "Russ Needs Meat" poster.