Tag Archives: Woody Allen

Best 50 Books I Read This Year

1. Keeping Secrets from Yourself – Freud

2. Confessions – by Augustine

3. Confessions of a Self-loather – by Mordecai Hussein

4. Schiksa – Woody Allen autobiography

5. The Shining – movie by Stephen King

6. War and Peace – by Russia

7. Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man – back cover

8. Ulysses – first and second pages

9. “Motherhood for Men” – article in Men’s Health

10. “A Brief Analysis of your Urethra” – UTI pamphlet

11. “How to Fight a UTI” – WebMD

12. “The Death of Postmodernism: We Found God in a Tunnel” – CERN blog post

13. “Doomsday: Actually, We’re All Gonna Die” – editorial Christian Science Review

14. “Teaching Your Teen Abstinence” – Dr. Phil

15. “Teaching Your Teen Hygiene” – Dr. Phil

16. Teenagers on My Mind – novel by Dr. Phil

17. Infinite Jest – parodic blog

18. “Buy More! Now!” – billboard

19. “Barn Party and Coke” – Coca Cola ad

20. “Coke Party in a Barn” – same ad ten minutes later

21. Lost – all 5 seasons in order of disappointment

22. “Avert Your Eyes” – interview with Pam Anderson

23. “Avert Your Eyes Pt. II: Look Away, I’m Hideous” – ibid.

24. The Art of Balding – essay by Larry David

25. To Bald or Not to Bald: No Choice – essay by Larry David

26. Insomnia – memoir by Eli Wiesel

27. Fear of Failure – non-fiction novel I’m working on right now

28. Fear of Flying –Philosophical Review

29. Fear of Germophobia – Kosher Psychology Quarterly

30. Agoraphobia: Adventures in Central Park – manuscript found in trash can on 72nd and Central Park West

31. Nichomachean Ethics – by Aristotle (Ch. 1)

32. Nichomachean Ethics – (Ch. 1 again)

33. Nichomachean Ethics – (Ch. 1 halfway through, eventually abandoned)

34. Discipline and Punish – Foucault

35. Discipline and Punish Me – Dr. Phil

36. Discipline and Germophobia – Heiddeger

37. Women Love Nice Men – Steinbeck (actually read in 6th grade)

38. Chicks Dig Me – Hemingway

39. Chicks Like to Travel with Me – Hemingway (bought but didn’t read)

40. Traveling with Chicks Kills My Buzz – essay by Hemingway

41. Changed My Mind: Chicks Are Life – short story by Hemingway

40. Traveling Gutter Punks – Kerouac

41. Sound and the Fury – Faulkner

42. Sound and the Fury – plotsummary.com

43. A Fiction Writer’s Guide to Lying – James Frey

44. @DollyParton – following on twitter

45. @AshtonKutcher – the twittiest tweeter on twitter

46. Politics and the Secret Language – CIA pamphlet found in my mailbox

47. Putin’ the ‘Mafia’ in ‘Russian Mafia’ – Putin’s self-censored autobiography

48. Billion’s Not Enough – memoir by David Koch

49. How to Secretly Control Everything – Koch Industries for Dummies

50. We Run This B*tch – manifesto co-written by Charles and David Koch

1 Comment

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Ambition

Dear Woody / To Whom It May Concern:

Is it who or whom? It is I, or is it me? Shall I or will I get the job? These are the things about which I am concerned. I am a perfectionist: I seek out the undotted, uncrossed, uncomma’d, unimportant imperfections that could perfect a manuscript or land a major publisher.

My last job was ghostwriting a ghost story, which truly characterizes my career ambition. I aspire not to be a writer, but a ghostwriter. The fact that my employer, the author of the ghost story, was my father, does not mean I was hired due to nepotism. I did a good job, though the story was never finished.

You consider yourself a comedian, and I agree. You can be very funny, in a way, at times. I have not seen many of your films, but I have heard all about them from my father. Comedy ghostwriting is not my forte, but I am willing to try new things. The idea you have for this particular manuscript needs some tweaking, in my opinion. You have a doctor, a lawyer, and a writer sitting around a table at a kosher diner, sharing their wildest sexcapades, romances and existential crises. My question is, does the diner have to be kosher? You may risk deterring your gentile (myself included) readership.

I want this job, because I love city culture—the food, the smells, the people, the languages. I speak roughly four languages, in other words, I speak four languages very roughly, but if you ever need a letter written in German, I am an experienced Google Translator. I live on Long Island, so I speak Yiddish as well as anybody else would a dying language.

I am very excited to hear back from you. I check my email about fifty times a day. Please don’t leave me hanging.

Sincerely,

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