Entry 10:

Hi Meghan,

The only news I feel obliged to pass along is this: The post-Mardi Gras trash tally backs up New Orleans Mayor Marc Morial's claim that this year's crowd "was bigger than ever." The total as of midyesterday, reports the Times-Picayune, was 1,520 tons--count 'em--of garbage, an impressive rise over last year's 250 tons. For reasons that aren't clear to me, this story does not seem to be on the paper's Web site, but there is this one, which runs down the various Mardi Gras related "riots" in other cities (Philadelphia, Austin, Fresno) and quietly gloats that things never get quite so out of control down here, or at least not in precisely that way. Also, it is the birthday of Ron Howard, who is 47. Happy birthday, Richie!

The Love Boat-ish reality show, so far as I know, is a real thing, though I don't remember where I read about it and have no additional details. The same piece must have mentioned Boot Camp because I've heard about that one also. I don't have an idea for a new reality show to match Medical Residents, but I do have one thought about spicing up the reality format as it, inevitably, runs out of steam. Specifically, I think that Survivor ought to add a new element to the end-of-show ejection: fiction. Everything else on the show would remain "real" (or within the current definition of real that these shows use), but at the end, when a cast member is voted off, that cast member should be murdered. Not really murdered, of course, but "killed off" in an exciting, action-packed way, using the very best special effects. The narrative form would switch, in other words, for just those last two minutes from the look and pace of a reality show to something more like a Tarantino movie. It could be done a different way every week. Host Jeff Probst could stab the loser to death one week; another week, the ejected person's fellow tribe members could stand up en masse, produce Tec-9s from nowhere, hold them sideways, and unleash a hail of bullets in agonizing slow motion. Or the reject's biggest rival on the show could engage him or her in a Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon-like surreal martial arts battle to the death. And so on. The next morning, of course, the "slain" contestant would still show up to talk to Bryant Gumbel or whatever, and everyone would be relieved.

I'm perfectly happy to let go of further discussions of sorrow and marriage and so on. The truth is--as my lame response yesterday made painfully clear--I have no worthwhile contribution to make on either subject. I should have relied on my Theory of No Opinion, which holds, basically, that sometimes the best opinion is no opinion at all. This dates back to that movie with Demi Moore and I forget who else that was supposed to "provoke" the viewer into asking: Would I sleep with someone, or encourage my significant other to sleep with someone, for $1 million? Or something like that. Surprisingly, people really were going around asking each other variations on that question for a while. I found that for me it was quite a relief to be able to say, simply and with finality, "I have no opinion on that."

So there's that. What else? Well, I don't see any need to raise the level of discussion, but I am still interested in the meeting Nebraskans question, which I will add to. You have a book coming out, and while I obviously haven't seen it, I gather that a lot of what's collected in it are essays that deal with fairly personal things. Not Temptation Island-level personal, but still. Does this ever result in your meeting people who know a lot about you, and is that creepy? And do you think you'll send a copy of the book to Ivy League grad Tom?

Finally, this: Yesterday my friend David, another New York refugee now living abroad (as they say), just sent me a book called Leaving New York: Writers Look Back, edited by Kathleen Norris. I wasn't familiar with it, but it looks interesting. It's from 1995. Familiar with it? OK, gotta go.

rw