Excerpt
"Mother. She is a gaunt woman with strange ideas about nutrition. She is obsessed with vegetables-broccoli in particular. Apparently if you eat enough of it you will live forever and have beautiful skin."
ANDREW (A TO Z)
"I'm having trouble exercising. I've been doing sit-ups, push-ups, and deep knee bends for some time now, but lately I find myself being lured away from my regimen by the pleasures of the bottle. Is this a sign that I've started to concede something? As I have fewer and fewer days left to me the idea of seizing them has gotten more attractive. If no one comes to the end wishing they'd spent more time at the office, neither do they come to it wishing they'd done one more set of jumping jacks."
TWENTY-EIGHT DAYS
"First find a painter. It's not as easy as you might think. Ask your artist friends if they know anyone. They won't be offended that you haven't asked them-they are abstractionists and performance whatnots and clearly dozens of isms beyond this sort of thing. Be persistent. Eventually someone will admit to knowing someone who will admit to knowing someone who will admit to knowing a figurative painter. Get this painter's name. Talk to him. His political opinions will be appalling-the neanderthalic excrescencies of talk-radio-but his artistic judgments astute. Visit his new show."
HOW TO HAVE YOUR PORTRAIT PAINTED