The UnTexan

BOB DYLAN MEETS FORMER FAT GIRL STEPHANIE KLEIN

I don't believe much of anything is sacred, but there are things that just shouldn't be messed with. There are some things that are just wrong. I know them when I see them and I just saw one. Somebody has Bob Dylan flogging books for former-fattie-turned-bloggerina Stephanie Klein! Say it ain't so, Bob!

I'll admit it. I have been a Bob Dylan fan for as long as there have been Bob Dylan words and music to listen to. And I have disliked Klein and her fluffy flock ever since I first stumbled across them a few years ago. They are part of the tepid trickle of shallow water that threatens to drown us all.  We have a history. So you can see why this ad might push me over the edge.

The French writer Stendahl said this about writing: "A novel is a mirror carried along a main road." Dylan has always been a mirror-toter and every time our paths cross, I see myself in there. Lots of us have been seeing ourselves in Dylan's mirror since we were young. That's because Dylan showed up like the Pied Piper and stole all the children away (not that we weren't ripe for stealing). Stephanie Klein doesn't carry her mirror down the road. She is more like one of those women who used a hand mirror to look at her vagina a long time ago and never got over what she saw down there. She has developed a readership among those who like to look at hers, and theirs too (or look at hers instead of theirs). Klein and her readers remind me of another Stendahl quote: "The shepherd always tries to persuade the sheep that their interests and his (in this case hers) are the same." Klein's nothing but another Bo Peep with a blog.

Klein writes about herself and her relationships. Yesterday, for instance, she wrote about her relationship to her husband's relationship with his penis. Her blog readers eat this stuff up. Now she has written a book about her life as a young fat girl at fat camp. It is due to be published in a month or so. I will deal with the book when I see it. But this ad (bearing an amazon.com logo) is painful to watch. It is a travesty. Books don't sell books; authors sell books. That's what people in the book biz believe. Why can't Stephanie Klein sell her own damned books? Nobody ever said anything about Bob Dylan selling books. I wonder if he knows he's doing it?

____________________________________

Note: When I visited Klein's blog today, it was for the purpose of doing a bit of research. An email showed up in my in-box from a woman in Greece by the name of Georgia, a serious-seeming woman who says she is a lawyer. She had written a comment for Klein's blog. It was skeptical, political, challenging but might have brought a bit of depth to the proceedings. She figured it would stir a good discussion among Klein and her faithful flock and was looking forward to it. It didn't. In fact, it was never posted to the site. Georgia was disappointed. So she sent it to me in an email under the subject line "A tale of me & Stephanie Klein" in which she voiced her disappointment. "I always disliked SK because of how superficial & egocentric she was, but acknowledged the fact that she wasn't afraid to post even the meanest comments and then reply to them, thus provoking interesting online debates. Now I am truly disappointed. The woman is, apparently, only capable of discussing oral sex, beauty products and the so called 'art'  she thinks she is producing. This is indeed very very tragic and not at all Greek." I told Georgia I would look into it. So, I went to Klein's site looking for answers. I found Bob Dylan instead. I will get back to Georgia's letter in more detail in due time, along with our subsequent correspondence, but for now I can only let her know that when it comes to thinking, Klein and her readers prefer not to.

STEPHANIE KLEIN UN-HILTONED

I saw a nifty new verb in something I read recently. I think it was in a response to a story somewhere about the ongoing travails of Britney Spears. Or was it the ongoing death of Anna Nicole Smith? It was something about one of those lightweights the media overburdens us with. The writer suggested the the media "Hilton" both Spears and Smith. After a bit of checking around, I understood what the writer meant: "forget about them." Thus, the verb is: to Hilton: a conscious decision not to write about certain people (in this case Paris Hilton) for doing nothing. This seems to have grown out of an Associated Press decision not to write something about Hilton for a week. And lickety-split, a new verb was born before anybody could say Tori Spelling. I think we should lowercase hilton and welcome it to our ever-evolving English language. To hilton. Ain't language a wonderful thing?

Which brings me to bloggerina Stephanie Klein (not that she does anything particularly wonderful for the language or for evolution either). A while back, after writing several pieces about Klein and her flock of Me-Gulls (her prattling legion of sycophants),  I lost interest and moved on to writing about things like Britney Spears, love, death, dreams. Stephanie had her book, her pregnancy, her marriage, her preemies (and her ongoing whining and complaining). The Me-Gulls keep on clucking, no matter what anybody says. So, I hiltoned Stephanie Klein.

But I have decided to un-hilton her.

Why? Well, I noticed an uptick in the number of people reading my pieces on Klein. There have always been a few readers a day from here, there and everywhere, but in the past 10 days or so their numbers have increased from a few to a few hundred. They came searching the Net, typing in "hate Stephanie Klein" or "Stephanie Klein hate" or "anti Stephanie Klein," etc. Now, I don't hate Stephanie Klein, but I was certainly curious about what triggered it all.

So, I clicked on Greek Tragedy, Klein's blog, and found out that she had published two pieces within nine days about people who are critical of her, etc., etc. And how she always takes the high road etc., etc. when it comes to her critics (not entirely true in my experience). How can this woman contrive to sound smug, arrogant, superior, self-righteous, self-indulgent AND whiney all at the same time? And, of course, her Me-Gulls were flocking around and clucking reassurances all over the comment section. Stephanie's husband Phil does not always take the high road in responding to Steph's critics; I know that from experience too; he loves to talk about other people's "small lives" and once asked me somewhat puzzlingly if I "had a mirror in my home." Well, Phil chimed in again yesterday to tell the world what a wonderful person Steph is and blah, blah, blah, and how she tries to "live like God is in the room." If that is true, when Stephanie engages in her various sexual forays, she must assume God likes to watch. But then that's the point isn't it? Stephanie Klein assumes everybody likes to watch. So, why not God, the father, son and holy voyeur? The problem is that Stephanie has a really hard time when people don't like what they see.

Why did I un-hilton Stephanie Klein? Not because I hate Stephanie Klein. I don't. I simply think she is dishonest. She is a self-righteous, manipulative, hate-baiter, tossing out her why-do-they-hate-me-aren't-I-wonderful-for-taking-the-high-road tidbits like breadcrumbs to her hungry flock. And they take the hate-bait along with all the other bait she shovels their way. They always take the bait because they actually believe she is being honest with them (and that is the most dishonest part). "Poor Steph," they say. "Oh, yay," they say. And they gather round to stroke her ego. Stephanie Klein gulls her gulls and they love her for it. Sometimes they even pay her to do it. What are they thinking? Not much. And Stephanie Klein knows it. She doesn't miss a trick. She already has her inner fat girl that she is getting ready to pimp out in her next book.

I bet the Gulls will love it.

CRAP

Here in Texas, they say water runs uphill toward money. Here in Austin, money runs uphill too. And that is where you will find Marie Antionette-ly blogger queen Stephanie Klein. The following was written in response to Klein's blog entry today in which she gushes about her new house (5,000 square feet with room for a nurse and a nanny) in Austin, where she (pregnant with twins) had the the existing children's playscape torn out to replace it with a swimming pool ("as I cannot survive in Austin without a pool," she says). Stephanie Klein's got it and when she flaunts it her needy faithful lap it up like pack of shit eatin' dogs.

One of her Me-Gulls wrote after looking at snapshots of Klein's house: "The bathroom is so authentic and gorgeous! What fun!"

What is an "authentic" bathroom? What in the hell does that mean? Can anybody tell me?

'I': A POEM FOR STEPHANIE KLEIN

(The following is constructed from fragments of reader responses to a single Stephanie Klein blog post entitled double negatives about not being pregnant – again. Most of them depend on the word “I” as most responses to S. Klein do. And the red wheel barrow? It just depends.)

SK IS NOT PG

Every time I read your posts about pregnancy...

I can’t help but understand you…

i know it doesn't help you...but i understand.

I always get this from your blog, and from other readings of yours

 

I've only ever commented once before and it was the same thing I'm going to say now.

But like I and others have said before,

I have to reiterate

because I read your blog all the time

and what you write always makes my day feel I've felt

-- interesting.

I can identify with your feelings and nothing irritates me more

 

Will you ever cease bitching and garnering sympathy from strangers?

You've been pregnant before. You'll do it again.

Believe me -- I do it on a monthly basis!

 

I’m sorry –

I’m trying to say, I understand

I’ve felt a millimeter

(My husband and I are "repoductively challanged")

 

Have you tried one of those electronic ovulation predictors?

I have friends that swear by them.

I have a love/hate feeling for those kinds of dreams.

All I can do is offer a sympathetic ear

 

I found out I was pregnant about a week after my husband and I went on a wine tasting tour.

And I happened to be much tighter at the beginning of my pregnancy.

Worked for me twice

That's how I got my Tukey Pie.

That's how I got my Tukey Pie.

 

When I stop obsessing

(I could

I am

I like

i got

I'm sorry

I only read

I can

I have been

I have

I guess

I missed

I'm just curious

I wish

I hope

I know

I am)

My reasons are sound

 

When I stop obsessing about something

that's when I get what I want

without telling my mother

although. Everything is relative.

my mother

your father

my Tukey Pie

the Period Fairy

a red wheel

barrow.

 

I've never taken a pregnancy test

I could never decide which one was best.

it's no consolation.

 

DELETED

Stephanie Klein deleted me. Then I received an email note calling me a self-promoting meany and a troll. I know she had a difficult blog day yesterday. And I would like to think that it was partly my fault. But why delete me and then call me names?

It all started when she published a little piece she called “Drivel,” which involved a long ride on a dark road (the name of which seems to be in some dispute), feeling rejected, not holding hands, the Da Vinci Code, avoidance, blown oral sex opportunities (as it were), changing the subject, “the Suitor” in bed in his underwear with the remote and her dog (“who is now our dog, but really, loyal to me, more,” she said churlishly), Mary Magdalene, women, men, more men, etc., and ends with the (unfathomable, what-the-fuck-does-this-mean) sentence, “We’re animals, surviving, in the pupils and the nerves of what we cannot fake.” (And people profess to just love this woman’s writing.)

Unfortunately, Stephanie decided to open this little piece with a long whine about “sorry lame-ass people” who “devote their time to hating me.” The unfortunate part is that it launched a string of pro-Stephanie and anti-Stephanie comments (109 so far, at least the ones that have not been deleted) that is still going on more that 24 hours later and has stretched far enough to include her book editor (defending her work ethic), her boyfriend (who rattles on about “absurdity” before describing how he will fill his own day with working out, time at the pool, trendy food, driving with his top down, all before he comes home to his beloved, who will be watching the Tivo-ed final episode of “Top Chef” more than once and “cheering out loud for Harold” – absurdity is as absurdity does, I suppose), one reader who thinks we should all be more concerned about a horse with a broken leg than about Stephanie and her blog, Stephanie critics of every stripe, and a few people who (to quote one of them), “admire and appreciate the fact that Stephanie doesn’t exercise her ‘delete’ powers.”

Before the Myth of Stephanie is inflated with any more hot air, I would like to dispute one little detail. Stephanie does, despite claims to the contrary, exercise her delete powers. Not only that, she (or someone she lets do this) calls people names (out of sight of her regular readers, of course). In the comment section on her blog, there were people calling her names, calling her fat, resenting the hell out of who she is and what she does all day, attacking her, defending her. I did not do that. And, despite her whining, I do not hate Stephanie Klein. That would mean I actually care about her and I don’t. It is the cultural phenomenon of shallow water and those who want to walk on it that interests me. I did however resent the fact that she seems to believe anyone who criticizes her is a miserable, unhappy, underachieving self-loather, which I addressed in my comment last night.

Here is what I said: “I am a happy critic, sometimes appalled, but happy.” I also admitted being puzzled by the fact that, “The Me-Gulls flock, but they never squawk. Not one peep.” That’s it. The end. No more.

I was deleted, which I laughed about. And when I received an email entitled “Terms of Service Stephanie Klein Blog,” that was okay too, and I chuckled about it. Until I reached the following note at the bottom of the email, which I suppose was by way of explanation: “Your comment was self serving to promote your blog only and to be mean to other people. If you would like to add to the discussion, please post a comment which is specific to the post. No trolls allowed. Thank you for playing nice. Please be respectful of others.”

I call Stephanie’s readers “Me-Gulls” on my site and have for months, but I certainly did not mention the site in my comment. Some other person called them “Steph-ettes” and didn’t get deleted. Somebody else referred to “ass-licking” Stephanie fans. Neither do I see how what I said could be construed as “mean to other people” (not as mean as the ass-licking crack -- and I could make a mean joke about bikini waxing here, but I won't). I was on topic (happy critic as opposed to self-loathing lame-ass, as Stephanie would have it). And, finally, I am not a troll (Internet, garden, bridge-guarding or otherwise).

I did take the time this morning to post another comment that stated simply: “But we know you do exercise your delete powers, don’t we? Are you going to tell them about it?” This comment was posted without explanation. So now I have explained it. And I think this should serve as a cautionary tale for the Me-Gulls. Sometimes Stephanie Klein comes down off her pedestal long enough to exercise her delete power. But she is sneaky and snarky about it.

And I AM a happy critic, sometimes appalled, but still happy. And the Me-Gulls do flock and never squawk in Stephanie’s defense. Not one peep (though Stephanie herself sent a comment once).

GUCCI-COOCHIE-COO

Blog queen Stephanie Klein has moved to Austin and she needs some help from her readers (she loves to get her little Me-Gulls squawking). At least that is what she said on her blog yesterday (“Directory”). She wants somebody to point her to: “An Honest Margarita,” with mango puree (How dishonest is that? Ruining perfectly good tequila with mango puree); “An Eyebrow Threader” (some sort of I-feel-pretty gimmick for the perpetually insecure); she is also looking for “A proper Manicure & Pedicure” that involves making toes into “small jewels;” “An Exceptional Shoe Store” (it is unclear whether she seeks exceptional shoes or simply an exceptional store); and “Tennis Lessons,” group lessons because, “We’re not ready to join a tennis club, because that’s a major commitment monetarily, and we need to make sure we’re staying in Austin first." (Stephanie has ongoing commitment issues).

But there is one thing on the list that I must quote in its entirety because this seems to be what people mistake for honest talk from Stephanie. It is item number three, falling just after mangoes and eyebrow threading, and just before toes, shoes and tennis. The poor girl needs, “A Thorough Bikini Waxer: someone who knows how to spread your ass and dig in the cracks with a waxy stick. Someone who takes out tweezers when she is done.”

I single this one out because there is a sort of recurrent bikini-waxing, hair (down there)-challenged motif in Stephanie’s blog of late. Just a few days ago, she wrote what could have been a rather charming little piece about her boyfriend (The Suitor) doing something nice for her (he bought her a Gucci clutch purse because she had had to borrow one from Amy and, “I want you to have everything you ever wanted.”). It was called “Who’s Your Daddy?” But where did the piece begin? In Stephanie's hairy crotch of course: “I was in the bathroom, commenting through the door that I didn’t have time for a bikini wax while in New York (she went east for Mother’s Day). “‘Do you care?’ I asked.” Then she blathers on: “I mean you really care if (sic), what it looks like.” And blah, blah, blah until the Gucci purse is produced for our prickly heroine and, “He, in that moment, became everything I wished for.” A sort of wishy-waxy pedundal visionary (it must be important to him, she’s still trying to get the damned thing waxed) giving away Gucci purses. What more could a girl want?

Maybe “Who’s Your Daddy?” was the appropriate title for this piece. There is something creepily fatherly daughterly about doing this waxy-plucky stuff for the kind of guy who likes his women looking like girls down there, as snappy and unused as a brand new purse. A more grownup guy would probably prefer the "exceptional shoes."

One helpful reader asked Stephanie if she had ever gone “bare” for the Suitor. Stephanie didn’t respond. Maybe she knows that "going bare" doesn’t simply (or originally) mean you’re as bald (waxed or otherwise) as a six-year-old between your legs (imagine the guy who might get turned on by THAT). It means working without insurance coverage, like a doctor with no malpractice insurance. Sometimes Stephanie Klein is like one of those pools of water in a Wal-Mart parking lot after a warm spring shower: shallow and tepid. But I bet she knows about  covering her ass (waxed or not). Even  if  it means being somebody's baby.  Gucci-coochie-coo.

 

STEPHANIE KLEIN AND HER FLOCK OF ME-GULLS

Stephanie Klein, that bloggiest of girly bloggers, is “all slippery” inside and looking for love (well, not necessarily love). She thinks she is OH MY GOD! (or OMG! as we say in bloggerland) ovulating! Or about to. Or maybe she is going to. Anyway, she is “all slippery” inside (“I know that I now associate my discharge with ovulation…”),  and besides she has this ovulation kit to prove it, with two lines that are not quite the same intensity yet but getting there, etc. and her loyal readers (I like to think of them as Stephanie’s flock of “Me-Gulls”) are at full squawk.

They are wishing her luck, giving her pregnancy tips, asking her not to start a “mommy blog” (a guy said that), looking forward to reading her “pregnancy blog” and her “mommy blog” (a woman said that), celebrating Stephanie’s honesty for talking about things like “panty liners” (“And I will read whatever Stephanie writes about. Mommy issues, kotex, anything,” says one Me-Gull after telling us how much she loves her own panty liners), debating the use of the word “discharge,” and on and on. One reader who identifies herself as “michelle” says: “a friend of mine who was trying to get pregnant swears by robitussin ... apparently it loosens things that need to be loosened,” though she does not explain how the robitussin is employed in the process. Stephanie herself chimes back in to say “silky” is the way she feels. Not all slippery, silky.

Stephanie has a slippery way of feeding the Me-Gulls just what they need, doesn’t she? (Or maybe it’s “silky,” though “slippery” seems a far better way to describe it, just like it is a more honest word to describe what is going on with her body.) The last time I wrote about Stephanie Klein (see “Neurotics, Poetics and Stephanie Klein” below) I received a comment that Stephanie “has something about her that women my age can relate to, we are a me me me generation.” I have to assume that means women around Stephanie’s age. Which would mean 30-something-year-old women for whom being part of the “me, me, me” generation has not worked  out all that well so far -- though they are too blinded by the self-centered me-me-me-ness of it all to see the light. Stephanie Klein has seen the light, however, and she knows it is illuminating the way to the future (well, to her future anyway). She is cashing in on it big time. She knows them, but she is not one of them, not really, not any longer. And she counts on their gullibility to make it work. “Talk to me about panty liners and ovulation and discharges and I will follow you anywhere,” the Me-Gulls cry out. And Stephanie heeds their call. How slippery (er, silky) is that?

The Carpetbagger: And now Stephanie Klein is bringing her panty liners and her ovulation kit to Austin, Texas. The deal on the McMansion she wanted to buy fell through, so she will be setting up shop in a rental unit (a very nice rental unit in a gated community) for six months to see if she likes it here (the Me-Gulls are having their say about the upcoming move, too). I tried to warn her about how NOT New York Texas is. I even joined the flock of Me-Gulls trying to get her to listen to me in the comment section of her blog. Then I realized it probably doesn’t matter whether she is in New York or Austin or Omaha; the Me-Gulls are everywhere. I wrote one more message: “But seriously, who needs New York? There will be lots of people just like you here in Austin. I am not sure that says a whole lot, but you will recognize them when you hear the familiar cry of, ‘Me!Me! Me!’ somewhere in the night.” Somewhere outside the gate, I should have said.

(See: NEUROTICS, POETICS AND STEPHANIE KLEIN in the February archive)

NEUROTICS, POETICS AND STEPHANIE KLEIN

Stephanie Klein is a queen bee among the bloggerettes. Her blog is among the top 1 percent in the world in terms of the number of hits it receives. There are more than 13 million blogs and there are only approximately 2,100 that get more inbound links than Stephanie’s, according to an outfit that ranks blogs. That is a lot of hits. And the ever-entrepreneurial Stephanie has parlayed the whole thing into a half-a-million dollar book deal, a tv deal, all kinds of deals. I know most writers are whores, but I got to wondering just what kind of blog site would prompt a publisher to put up that kind of dough. So I logged on. I’ve been reading it for a while.

My assessment: People used to learn to read from books featuring fun with Dick and Jane. They don’t do that anymore. Now they log on so they can read about fun with dick and angst – and Stephanie, of course. And where can a Stephanie sort of girl, looking for love, find so much dick for poking and pondering, angsting and blogging about? New York City. Of course.

(But hasn’t this been done already? Wasn’t it a tv show? A book? Isn’t it in reruns already?)

In a recent piece called “Bored,” Stephanie wrote: “I need to put on some boots and a skirt without underwear, just 'cause. 'Cause I'll know, and then somehow I won't feel as bored.” Now there is a sentence to make a publisher sit up and write a $500,000 check, don’t you think? And later in the  same piece, poor Stephanie says: “When I share now, it is misconstrued into ‘manipulation’ and ‘trying to control me,’ so I bite down hard and say ‘have fun’ with a smile. Inside I feel alone. I'd feel this in any relationship. It's not him. Why do I need so much? What am I not giving myself? I cannot think of a thing. I will live this, sometimes more than others, for the rest of my life. And I'm scared to admit any of this; it's exactly why I will.” As Edie Brickell said in that song a few years ago: “Shove me into shallow water before I get too deep.” As someone else said: “Gag me with a fork.” Damn. The woman used some variety of the pronoun “I” 13 times in the few sentences quoted here. Somebody should do an “I” census. But now the big bucks are understandable.

Stephanie Klein writes for the legions of voyeuristic neurotics (and there are clearly millions of them) that she knows (and her publisher knows too) will come out of their nooks and crannies all along the information highway, buy a copy of her book, take off their underwear (“…just 'cause. 'Cause I'll know…”) and line up to get her to sign it (“…and then somehow I won't feel as bored.”).

Stephanie’s readers clearly eat this stuff up, but it is not always clear from their comments and responses that they always understand just what they are chewing. People even like to watch Stephanie watch. And they love to respond (and Stephanie sometimes ends up grubbing around in the comments section of her own blog, adding, subtracting, explaining). In a recent blog entry, Stephanie writes about going alone to a movie on a Thursday afternoon. She went to see Nanny McPhee and she was almost the only person in the theater (almost being the operative word). But, lo and behold:

“Part-way through the movie, out of the corner of my eye, just as the screen lit up when Nanny McPhee's first wart disappeared, I saw a quick steady movement. I'd seen something like this frantic action before. This time though, it was not a hand. The she of the couple seems to be bobbing for apples on the lap of the he of the couple. Holy shit.  She's going down on him at a kid's movie. I don't know what my obsession is with my camera, but immediately, all I thought--okay, not all--was, I have to take a picture of this so someone believes this.  I couldn't do it.  Instead I texted The Suitor, ‘I am at movies and there is a couple near me lying down.  She's going down on him.’  To which he responded, ‘I'm jealous.’"

Of course, our heroine decides this calls for some public sex of her own and drags her fiancé (always referred to as “The Suitor”) to another movie later the same day. He sits to her left. She moves her engagement ring to her right hand. “Then, with my left hand, I reached toward his groin area. I felt something hard. It was his wallet.” (Actually, it was his cell phone.) “I could also sense he wanted no part of my public play….” (As Mae West might have said: “Is that a cell phone in your pocket or are you just glad to see me?” Seems like Stephanie’s Suitor made the answer pretty clear: “It’s a cell phone, Steph. Move your hand.”)

And how did the loyal legions respond? There were 23 responses (actually 22 because Stephanie wrote on to clear up the wallet/cell phone confusion). Nearly every response had “I” in it, most of them several times. Some people got the whole public sex deal, but others said things like (you try to figure out which one is the guy): “I love being the only person in the theatre. It makes any movie good.” “I would never condone (sp?) that type of act in a children's movie EVER! Sickos!” “I'd have second thoughts about a Suitor who keeps his wallet in his crotch.” “I LOVED Nanny McPhee, it is my new favorite movie. I went with my friend Erin and her 4 year old step-daughter. THe little girl slept through the whole thing!” “I forgot to say also, the mouth is a MUCH under-rated good time to have also.” “Emma Thompson is married to that hot actor from Sense & Sensibility and they have a kid; Colin Firth is married to an Italian woman and they have kids.” “I would have done the same thing...reached for my camera and texted everyone I know. Awesome.”And my personal favorite: “You have the most random events occur around you- i love it. lol.” Whatever the hell that means.

At least I figured my world was safe from Stephanie Klein, her neurotics and their poetics.

So you can imagine my horror when I saw this on Stephanie’s blog:

“…we're leaving on FRIDAY for AUSTIN, TX. for a visit and a bit of house hunting. We'll be in AUSTIN for a week! Photos and updates to come. If you live in AUSTIN, come meet us at a bar one night! Just email me!”

NEXT: The Untexan finds himself in Stephanie’s comments section as Stephanie Klein does Austin, but doesn’t do the Alamo.