Lisa Scottoline writes a column, Chick Wit, for The Sunday Inquirer's Image section. She.is a New York Times best-selling author of 14 novels, all set in the Philadelphia area, and a former trial lawyer and law clerk. Winner of the Edgar Award for suspense writing, Scottoline teaches a course called "Justice and Fiction" at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, her alma mater. She is a Philadelphia native who lives in Chester County with her daughter and four dogs.
Recently I had the great thrill of receiving an honorary degree from Drexel University, and so I stayed up all night before drafting a speech for Commencement Day. I tried to write something meaningful and profound, because you can't joke around in a commencement speech. It calls for loftier sentiments, and though I'm not incapable of same, I love to get laughs. So I was aiming for meaningful laughs.
I give up. I admit it. I flunk multi-tasking.
Here's when I figured it out, finally:
I was in a hotel room watching MSNBC, as political pundits massaged an endless loop of the same election news. And at the bottom of the screen there were white banners with short phrases, evidently intended to explain the obvious, like OBAMA SPEAKING TO C
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My mother and brother were getting ready to fly from Miami for my daughter's graduation when trouble broke out in paradise. It began when I got a text from my brother, which read:
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I'm a big fan of information. At least I was, until somebody invented the spoiler alert. I first noticed spoiler alerts on an e-mail list I get about new mystery books. I didn't know what it meant, people writing SPOILER ALERT and then telling the ending to a mystery. I used to read the entire spoiler until I finally figured it out. Nothing like knowing whodunit before you know what they dun.
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My daughter, Francesca, is graduating from college, and I spent the last hour trying to figure out her school's incredibly complicated commencement schedule. According to the Web site, there are three separate commencement exercises, and the main one will be attended by "approximately 32,000 people." The gates open at 6:45 a.m., and not everyone will get a seat, so the Web site advises me to get there in advance.
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I may have detected another difference between men and women, in addition to the one you're thinking of. Before I begin, the credit for this observation goes to my best friend, Franca. She told it to me the other day, and I agreed. That's the great thing about having a best friend. We agree on everything. In fact, I can't recall the last time we disagreed ab
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Sad news, and this time it's no joke. My old dog Lucy, who was happily recovering from tetanus, just passed away. This time her heart failed, and she died the day after my column about her amazing recovery appeared. I got home from the vet hospital, without her, in time to pick up my Sunday paper.
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I just finished my next book, which means that I finally have time to tackle my list of Things To Do. It takes me a year to write a book, so I had 293,773 Things To Do. I started doing them on Saturday, but I got only one Thing done.
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Insurance is fun. I don't mean health insurance, because health insurance is never fun. But for some reason, car insurance is a laugh riot.
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I just lived an episode of Emergency Vet. Tune in. The star is Lucy, my old golden retriever, who is still rockin' after 13 years. Her eyes, brown as bittersweet chocolate, remain bright, though her step has slowed and she scuffs around on dust-mop paws. Her fur, which used to be a thick russet color, never grew back after a shave last summer, so her coat sprouts in crazy patches, like onion grass. Lucy's a Bad Hair Dog.
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These are confusing times to be alive, biologically speaking. All manner of shenanigans are going on at DNA level, so many I can't keep up with them all. I rely on People magazine to keep me abreast of the latest science news, and I was amazed by its recent article on the pregnant man.
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I'm two months from getting the house painted, but I'm already fantasizing about paint colors. If the real estate classifieds are porn, paint chips are a kinky subculture, the S&M of home decor.
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