Across the River...and into the Oven

A few days ago, two ’60s icons passed away: Betty “The Feminine Mystique” Friedan and Al “Grandpa on ‘The Munsters’” Lewis. They wound up on the same NYTimes obit page, and it seems they had a lot in common. Both were long-time New Yorkers, both were politically active, both spoke up for the downtrodden (desperate housewives and Death Row inmates, respectively) and both favored the same makeup techniques, judging by the photos of a young Betty in a vampish pose and a youngish Al in his vampire costume. Their resemblance only grew stronger with age. You can’t tell me those pics weren’t a deliberate choice by the Times’ layout editor.

Speaking of death, I now understand why Sylvia Plath wanted to take a nap in her Hotpoint. After publicly launching the Website for ACROSS THE RIVER, I had to publicly admit it had at least two major glitches. 1. AOL’s browser will not transfer the Feedback form data and sends a blank E-mail from anyone with an aol.com account. Can’t figure out to fix that beyond suggesting that AOL customers copy and paste the questions with answers into the E mail and send them that way. How annoying. 2. Chapter 1, the excerpt on the site, is in three sections. Some folks didn’t realize a link at the bottom of the first two scenes would let them read more. Even worse, Scene 3 was mis-linked, so NO ONE was able to read it. I created the site, so I have only myself to blame; that’s why people hire professional Web designers, to have someone else to blame. This has been fixed now, but only fuels my suspicion that those who sent such lovely comments about the chapter were only being polite.

But just when I started thinking of firing up the Amana range, I thought of Oprah. She admitted HER mistake in front of MILLIONS, whereas I only look like an idiot to maybe a couple hundred. So what can I do for complete redemption? WWOD? (What Would Oprah Do?) Maybe dump some of the blame onto James Frey.