Multitaskaholic

John Waters Makes a Fabulous Funeral Director

2007-01-19T07:20:00.000-08:00

Do you watch "My Name Is Earl"? Neither do I, but my sister does, and she told me last night's episode involved a funeral. So I checked it out.

The premise of the show is that a redneck loser named Earl lands a big lotto windfall and decides karma is telling him to make restitution to all the people he's ever hurt in his life. It turns out this is a loooong list. (Think about your own such list sometime. Mine is endless. I was a teenaged beeyotch.)

Anyway, every episode involves Earl picking one such former victim and trying to somehow make up the wrong. Yesterday's episode involved a guy Earl once locked in a trunk. Only when he arrives at his apartment, he finds the guy dead. He tries to do the right thing and give him a funeral. Only this funeral home run by John Waters--yes, the director--who specializes in "creative" funerals. He props the cadaver up in some situation that showcases what he loved to do--so like there's a dead guy in a recliner watching football with a bowl of chips on his belly and such.

Earl tries to throw him a more traditional service but it all goes awry when his pals crash for the free booze. My favorite lines:

EARL: "The coffin is not a bar!"

EARL: "The coffin is not a trash can!"

In the end he goes for a creative service, and it all works out much better. Karma is appeased. Check out the episode for free on the NBC web site.

New York Times introduces "The Last Word"

2007-01-19T07:13:00.000-08:00

"I'm Art Buchwald, and I just died."

So begins a video obituary of the great humor writer on the New York Times' web site. It's a new feature called "The Last Word" in which famous people are interviewed before their deaths--a longstanding practice at the NYT and other publications. The 2007 twist is that their obits are now produced as video documentaries which one can view online.

I watched the Buchwald obit, and I have to say I found it kind of hard after a while. He was 81 when he died, and by last July, when the interview took place, he was, well, 81. He's still witty and sharp as a tack, but he speaks very slowly and the audio quality makes his gravelly voice kind of choppy. The black-and-white photos that intercut the interview break it up nicely, but to be honest I would have liked to see more clips of Art in his prime.

If I ever get that famous, I don't know that I want my last days videotaped for all to see. I think this is why families publish photos of their loved ones in their younger days alongside their death notices. At my Uncle George's funeral the other week, my Aunt Pat propped up framed photographs of her husband in his Army uniform from his days as a World War II medic. She loved him through thick and thin, but I think maybe she wanted us to remember a day when his only proximity to a wheelchair would have been pushing a soldier in one.

I have a new blog at Time.com--please check it out

2007-01-19T07:04:00.000-08:00

It's been a long time--two months, in fact--since I've posted. In that time, I've started a new blog. It's called "Work In Progress," and it's about life on the job--and the job of life. What the heck does that mean? Great question. I didn't write the tagline. What it is is a lively, fun, daily blog about the workplace. Some entries I like:

href="http://time-blog.com/work_in_progress/2007/01/unhappy_with_your_paycheck_try.html">
"Unhappy With Your Paycheck? Try Levitra"

"Google's Cafeteria Is Better Than Ours"

"I Hate My Aeron Chair"

Please check it out when you're tired of reading about funerals.

When illness knocks you down

2006-11-04T12:06:00.000-08:00

Let me start with a disclaimer: here follows my most TMI posting, an attempt to explain my whereabouts—or wabs, as we call it at Time—for the past posting-free month.

Here's the thing about promoting a book. It's stressful. I can't blame the book, of course, not solely anyway, for my chronic, stress-related illness: ulcerative colitis. It's an illness I've had for 15 years. Although I'd been in remission for almost two years, the sucker flared up again in August, just as I was mid-book-publicity frenzy.

What is ulcerative colitis? Here, from the web site of the excellent Crohn's and Colitis Foundation of America:

"Ulcerative colitis is a chronic (ongoing) disease of the colon, or large intestine. The disease is marked by inflammation and ulceration of the colon mucosa, or innermost lining. Tiny open sores, or ulcers, form on the surface of the lining, where they bleed and produce pus and mucus. Because the inflammation makes the colon empty frequently, symptoms typically include diarrhea (sometimes bloody) and often crampy abdominal pain."

Lovely, huh?

I tried my usual course of treatment, of which I'll spare you the details. My main goal was to avoid steroids. I've been on prednisone twice before, and it made me a) hideous and b) crazy. I relented in late September. Then I took that ill-advised trip to California to speak to all of a dozen very nice ladies at the WomanSage conference about my book.

I wound up a couple days later in the ER. Two hospitals, five roommates, half a dozen IV lines, not nearly enough painkillers, and 16 days of absolutely terrible food later, I was home and flare-up free. The massive dosage of IV steroids did not work but have left me looking and acting like Jabba the Hut's not-cute sister. At the second hospital they found an immunosuppressant that has convinced my body not to recect my colon. So for now the surgical removal of my colon—the only cure for colitis—remains a dark daydream.

As November unfolds, I am wobbly and not myself but thrilled to be home. It's crazy how hospitals will sap your health: I am still weak as a noodle after just over two weeks (my account of hospital horror follows). I think of my mom in and out of the hospital for a year and think she must be some insane battery-powered freak.

Sadly, the book is but an afterthought for now. At Englewood Hospital, my first asylum, there was a patient-use computer, from which I sadly retrieved e-mails from editors and producers trying to set up publicity. The steroids and immunosuppressants make me unfit for any sort of public appearance. It breaks my heart to think of all the work I put into this book, only to have to bail on promoting it so soon after its birth.

I hope people won't forget "Remember Me."

Erin Brockovich told me to get a life

2006-10-02T12:12:00.000-07:00

I'm just back from an ill-advised cross-country trip out west. Ill-advised, that is, by my doctor. TMI alert: I have a chronic illness that flares up now and again, and right now it's flaring like those fireworks at Disneyland that kept me up all Saturday night. Even my agent told me not to go. They were both right: it's no fun trying to flog a book while delirious with fever and racing to the bathroom.

But I'm still glad I went to the WomanSage conference, which was a gathering of about 700 mature ladies in Anaheim, Calif., this past weekend. The women who attended were smart and informed and eager to talk about the issues that affect their lives now: retirement and sex and mature marriages and, yes, even death.

But here's the real reason why I'm glad I went. Erin Brockovich was the keynote speaker. I sat not 15 feet from her as she gave her motivational schpiel. The basic message: You can't control the circumstances presented you in life, but you CAN control your response.

I'm one to sneer at motivational speakers. I find them manipulative, phony and empty. But Erin Brockovich's motivational speech actually motivated me.

I can't control my illness, for the most part. But I can control how I respond to it.

I can't control my book sales. But I can plug on and talk about it and write about it and urge book groups to read it.

I can't control these seismic changes shaking journalism, my industry. But I can control how I shift my shape to adjust.

Thus I'm starting a new blog at Time.com. It'll be about jobs and careers and office trends and the work-life juggle. I hope it'll be up by the end of the month. Please check it out.

I've been wondering why we write books

2006-09-17T12:02:00.000-07:00

Really. Why? Why do we bother to write books anymore? Does anyone read? And if few do, is it literally a tree falling in the forest? How many trees do 15,000 hardcover copies eat up? And if no one buys them, will I have to carry that karmic burden to my (eco-friendly) grave?

The only thing that allays my angst is unsolicited reader feedback. I attended a book club the other day at which a member asked, "Do you still get chills seeing the book?" Well, no. But I am still totally surprised and delighted when someone who isn't my relative--okay, even my relatives--say they've read the book.

Here's an impromptu e-mailed review from a lovely reader named CJ Couper, who agreed I could publish it here:

"Remember Me is a well-written, thought provoking and engaging look into everyone's final journey. While death has been our constant as living, mortal beings, our views of death both culturally and individually have undergone much transition due to everything from our ever-changing knowledge of science to our religious and cultural beliefs. Lisa takes us on a journey, along with her baby Mika, allowing us to peek into worlds most of us will likely never experience first hand... from the belief in cryogenics, to the idea of a "green burial," to the sanctity and ritual of a Hmong funeral. Lisa's writing style is pleasant to read and allows to reader to slip in next to Lisa on her various travels Lisa presents each chapter in a thoughtful and non-judgmental manner, allowing the reader the opportunity to form his or her own opinions along the way. Cullen's writing style is enthusiastic, personal and enjoyably readable. Similar to a banquet table, Lisa's book lays out a lovely table filled with color, delicious food, candlelight and good company... and the reader is the guest of honor, invited to come, sit, eat and fellowship. Rare would be the reader who left the table wanting for more, and frequent would be the reader who, after enjoying such a meal, wouldn't want to come back to this author again and again. Highly recommended."

Being blogged about is weird...

2006-09-02T14:22:00.000-07:00

This post is about my adventures as a guinea pig in the publishing industry's new push into digital book marketing.

Let me begin by reminding you this is my first book, and thus I had only ignorant and TV-inspired notions about the book-publishing experience. Among the many myths of authorship I have so far had slashed:

a) Every author gets a fabulous book party, a la Carrie on "Sex and the City."

b) Every author gets a national book tour consisting of stops in places like Columbus and Boulder at which said author trundles from local public radio station to dusty bookstore to read from her work and sign copies for adoring crowds of senior citizens.

c) Every author is an authority on how well (or not) her books are selling.

The virtual campaign for my book took me by surprise. The traditional publicity campaign I had vaguely been expecting was tossed aside by Collins, my imprint, which decided to go new age. This involved launching what I have to admit is a spectacular web site , complete with really cool if somewhat baffling bells and whistles (like e-cards featuring pictures of cemeteries I visited). E-ads for my book appear on mediabistro.com and bookseller sites.

More importantly, Collins' newly hired online marketing chief, Felicia Sullivan, blasted copies of my book to the murky but apparently vast network of bloggers who write about books.

Look, it's weird enough to have a book reviewed. As a journalist, I am on the whole far more comfortable writing about than being the subject. I've been pretty relieved at the niceness of the reviews, but still, it's weird.

It's really, really weird when the blogger reviewer admits he has never read your book. And instead writes about how your publishing house is trying to get him to review my book. And when most of the review is about your author photo.

Last week, during my daily Google sweep for new mentions of my book, I found a blog posting titled, "Review of a Free Book I Got." The blogger gloats about receiving said free copy of my book, and gleefully proceeds to take my imprint to task for its naked play for free PR in the sacred blogosphere. He discourses on my author photo, and my tragically missed career as a "Sears, or maybe Nordstrom" lingerie model.

He divines my pub's real reason for the gift--a gushing blurb, which he nails: "Cullen's seminal work is both a pleasure and a delight to read and will inspire readers for decades to come." (Hey, I'd use that.) What's more, his posting attracted attention from other book bloggers, who piled on about "flogging vs. blogging."

Once I got over the weirdness--and the hiccups from laughing--I grew fascinated by this teeming, cantankerous, often talented world of book bloggers. I don't know how many are out there (do you? please tell me), but considering Technorati figures there are 50 million-plus blogs out there, I'm guessing those devoted to books are in the thousands at least.

Book publishers like mine are only beginning to discover them, but it seems the economics of the industry are such that it can't lose by embracing them. The hug is received rather more warily by the bloggers, who started their online reviews as labors of love (and, really, what's more of a labor of love than a book blog), and who must now wring their hands about their integrity as critical readers vs. swag recipient.

Leonard Lopate is really well read

2006-08-25T17:12:00.000-07:00

...this week's brush with fame: a taped interview with NPR's Leonard Lopate, journalistic icon. He looked exactly as I expected—a distinguished gentleman with silver hair, a close-cropped beard, spectacles.

"Well, are you ready?" he said, looming over me in the hallway, where I waited as he wrapped up a live interview with a guy who sells pickles in Brooklyn. But he said it in his patented silky voice, so it sounded more like an invitation than a threat.

As we settled in the studio, he took a stab at my Japanese name, nailing it on the first try. Then he went on to say that his favorite authors were Japanese, listing three illustrious writers of whose work I've read not a word.

"Uh," I said.

"And some of my favorite filmmakers are Japanese, too," he said, listing a few, including Kurosawa, whose name I'd at least heard of, even though I've never sat through more than a few minutes of any of his classics.

"My tastes run more toward Hollywood," I finally mumbled.

He peered over his spectacles at me as he adjusted his headphones. "Huh," he said.

So much for bonding.

But the interview went well, or so I thought. I thought I was just keeping up with his barrage of questions—he is nothing if not prepared, I thought—but after we wrapped he said I was speaking so fast he had to pull them out of his hat. I am not sure if this pleased him. But then he did tell his producer he thought it went great. "That was great, wasn't it?" he said.

He's still my journalistic icon.

Anyway, the producer says it's to air Labor Day.

By the way, this is my diaper-wearing assistant

2006-08-19T06:33:00.000-07:00

Her name is Mika, she's two, and she takes dictation terribly. Photo by the fabulous Mark Edwards Chesnut, photographer, editor and writer supreme (http://www.markchesnut.com/).

Book par-tay

2006-08-18T17:19:00.000-07:00

I read--for the first time ever--at Rocky Sullivan's pub this Wednesday. For those of you not in the know, Rocky's has a vaunted Wednesday night reading series featuring the likes of Frank McCourt and Edna O'Brien. So far be it for Lisa Cullen to actually read. Instead I summed up some stories from the journey--notes from the dead beat--in my laryngitis-shredded voice.

From the top, here are my friends:

* Bill Fallon, the American Airlines pilot who has a side business (www.Last-Wish.com) in ash scattering, who detoured from LaGuardia to hang at the pub. This here's a great end-trepreneur.

* my friend Mirjana from the Daily Targum at Rutgers!

* My colleagues Deirdre, Ty, Hilary and Jessica from Time.

* From left, my cousin and the sculptor Gregory Ryan (www.gregoryryan.net), his girlfriend Jen, and my bozo brother George, a bond schlepper at Nomura (buy Japanese securitzed debt!).

* Beverly Goodman (senior editor at SmartMoney), Angie Lee (marketing goddess at Collins), me and my uber agent Theresa Park (www.parkliterary.com).

On Brad Pitt, adult orthodontia and Deadwood dialogue

2006-08-13T11:23:00.000-07:00

I was in People this week!

Forgive me for sounding a little over-the-top excited. Dragging in to work on Friday, I stopped to pick up my free copy of People magazine. This is a weekly ritual every single person who works at Time Inc. not only engages in but deeply enjoys. Some scuttle up to the stand by the elevators where they hand out the copies and pretend to be looking for the supposedly higher-brow EW or Life, which are distributed on the same day, feigning disappointment as they "settle" for the celeb weekly. These are the same people who snort and rant when the stands run out of copies, as they frequently do. Some staffers sneak stacks of copies, claiming they have to distribute them to various colleagues upstairs.

I personally am usually (deeply) satisfied by my one copy of Lindsay Lohandom. Today, though, something urged me to grab three issues when I thought the stand minders weren't watching. I'm not sure why--I just had the sixth sense that somewhere in these pages, between Brad Pitt before he was famous (when he wasn't afraid to wear girly hair) and Jennifer Aniston's cascading locks (hmm, cosmic connection?), was a picture of me.

And there it was.

Let me describe to you how it feels to open up a copy of a magazine you read religiously and finding your face among its pages. I opened it on the elevator, unable to wait for my office, somewhere between ground floor and one. I saw my face. Then I slapped the pages shut.

Then I opened it again, and saw my face again. Then I slapped it shut and began to hyperventilate.

I can't say I was ecstatic, exactly. What ordinary person feels good with their mug in such close proximity to the likes of Jessica and Angelina and Scarlett? The photo is actually a nice one, shot by the photographer Nina Subin, who is really talented and professional (www.ninasubin.com). I'd had professional makeup and hair done by some overpriced dragon lady who chatted in Korean the entire time with her friend who sat three feet away in the empty salon drumming her fingernails. "We go golf soon as you done," the friend lady said to me at one point, with a pointed smile.

I would have blinded her with hairspray if I weren't so tired. I'd hoped the layers of pancake would cover up my loss of sleep, courtesy of a certain toddler who'd decided that this would be a good night to begin to have nightmares.

As a result, I look EXHAUSTED in most of the many, many photos from the three-hour shoot. I guarantee Nina did everything humanly achievable to make me look awake. But in most of the photos I look cross-eyed with fatigue.

We chose the one photo where I am full-on grinning, mainly because when my eyes were squinty they didn't look crossed.

I had told Nina from the get-go that my face looks far more normal when arranged in a smile, but she thought given the subject matter of my book I ought to look more serious.

I tried to tell her it is a book about death, but it is not a serious book about death. I am not a serious person. I have one of those faces that look ridiculous attempting seriousness. I could never negotiate peace in the Mideast or give a eulogy, because likelier than not I would burst out laughing.

And notice I say nothing about the actual review, which I didn't actually get around to reading until after I spent 15 minutes ruminating on the wisp of hair across my forehead and wondering if I ought to consider adult orthodontia.

But here it is, below. It's really nice:
"Ashes to ashes, dust to...diamonds? Transforming cremains into bling is one of the wacky trends chronicled in Cullen's bouncy - and often quite funny - account of shopping-after-death options. The TIME writer discusses possibilities such as 'green burials' of unembalmed bodies (as featured on Six Feet Under), caskets carved to look like everything from a bottle of beer to a 1958 Corvette, and plastination - which basically turns a corpse into a mannequin. A chapter dedicated to the traditional Japanese funeral of her own grandfather in '04 mixes humor and sadness. Ultimately, this quick, lively study reveals a deep truth: that death and its rituals 'can make the living appreciate the here and now.' 3 stars." —People Magazine

Isn't that nice?

***

Best line from the Deadwood episode we just watched even though it ran weeks ago because we are now so cool that we have DVR:
"Perhaps events have not yet revealed all that I am."

David Milch rocks.

Listen to Cullen rant about the book on Digital Cafe

2006-08-07T07:16:00.000-07:00

This being my first (and, depending on how things go, possibly my last) book, I had little notion of what constitutes the book publishing experience. Little did I know that one of the world's oldest industries had gone digital. Evidence A: my web site, for which I can take no credit, as it was created by Collins Web Goddess Felicia Sullivan (www.lisacullen.com). Evidence B: HarperCollins' Digital Cafe, for which I sat in an empty office at the publisher's last week and ranted into a digital device about how and why I reported this book. Please check it out. And please bear in mind that audio adds 10 pounds. I sound much more sane in person.
http://www.harpercollins.com/books/9780060766832/Remember_Me/index.aspx?HCHP=TB_Remember+Me

Cullen in D.C.!

2006-08-01T18:58:00.000-07:00

Here I am standing in the middle of a busy road to snap a picture in our nation's capital. The 100-degree heat must be further tinkering with my sanity. Today I talked about human diamonds and New Orleanian rites with the lovely Andrea Roehm of WUSA. Then I spent an hour at the Diane Rehm show on NPR with the insightful Susan Page of USA Today, who was sitting in for Diane. Her board lit up with callers, among whom was a nurse who recounted washing and dressing her father's body before his service, and a skydiver who revealed that ashes are best mixed with flour when scattered from 7,000 feet (it drifts better that way). Fascinating!

You can download Diane Rehm show podcasts at
http://www.wamu.org/help/podcasts.php.

P.S. This photo of me about to get run over is taken by my pal Jessica Smith, a talented radio producer who earlier did a segment on my book at the tango funeral of Bette Runge in D.C. The piece ran on American Public Media's Weekend America: http://weekendamerica.publicradio.org/programs/index_20060506.html

Headin' for D.C.

2006-07-31T11:15:00.000-07:00

For an hour-long conversation about death, funerals, burials and pigeons, please tune in tomorrow to the Diane Rehm show on NBC (via WAMU in D.C.: download the podcast on http://www.wamu.org/help/podcasts.php). If you're in the area, call in!

Also check out the USA Today review on the front page of the Life section: http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/reviews/2006-07-30-remember-me_x.htm