Wendy McClure

Author and Professional Obsessive.

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Whisper while you work

June 8, 2006 by Wendy

Of course I don’t know what kind of voice you hear in your head when you read these entries of mine, but for this particular entry, it needs to sound something like Demi Moore’s voice, a little raspy, since I’m getting over a cold. People always say, oh, but that sounds sexy! And maybe it does, if you’re a few feet away, but when it’s right between your own ears it sounds complicated and fuzzy, like the tuner knob on your radio is just a little off. I don’t enjoy it. This weekend it was much worse, and sometimes I had to whisper, which would have been fine if I’d happened to see dead people, or else wanted to say things like “not our class, darling,” but for everyday life it did NOT suffice. And I know it’s been only a week since it started, but my morning cough has become depressingly second-nature, like it’s something I do to ward off predators.

But I’m better, and I almost sound like myself again, and tomorrow Chris and I will be driving to Michigan, because there is nothing like ditching two apartments full of half-packed boxes for a short road trip. Maybe we will go to Cereal City and mess with people in trademarked-character costumes. Who knows?

I am counting the days until the move, when my morning commute will no longer include having to stare at this billboard, with its unsettlingly straightforward headline (it’s a Sean Paul lyric; it’s a product slogan; it’s both!), and the grim specter of Sean Paul’s head, which is huge enough to be in a zone all its own, hence the slogan (and the song). Every day I sit in traffic and consider the Zone of Sean Paul’s Head. Clearly it’s a zone in which one can legally have a first name as a last name. I suppose there are worse zones (i.e., construction, demilitarized, Dottie’s Weight Loss), but I can’t wait until I don’t have to look at this dude’s great big crunk face at 8:35 every morning.

You may have read over at Jen’s blog about how our heads were in the zone Saturday night after our event (though I am proud to say Smirnoff Ice was NOT involved one bit, and it was a fine time indeed. And yes, we had sashimi at the Four Seasons, and yes, it was a very bad idea. Because (and Jen is too kind to mention this), not long after I took a bite it occurred to me that the contents of my stomach were wanting very much to be in the same zone as my head, if you know what I mean, and I think you do. So I had to excuse myself, though I didn’t tell Jen what I had done until she confessed she needed to go home to do the same thing. We ladies of the Penguin imprints, we sure do* it up!

*and by “do,” I mean “throw.”

Filed Under: Chicago, personal, popcult

Mayflies when you're having fun

May 16, 2006 by Wendy

Tomorrow night I’m going to be giving a talk for Chicago Women in Publishing, who helped me get my first job in Chicago a really long time ago. (They’d held one of their networking parties and instead of networking like a proper person, I accosted some lady in the elevator, which sort of horrifies me now, but it’s all good, you know?) So you should come. Also, Chicago Women in Publishing is not exclusively for women or publishing, though, obviously, it helps to be in a similar neighborhood, so to speak. Like you have to at least be wordy and in touch with your feminine side. Oh no, I’m making this sound very emo, which is not what I meant to do at all.

I have many more things to report, such as my trip to New York, which included an all-too-brief meeting with Mr. and Mrs. Comics Curmudgeon; my impending (short-distance) move; my ongoing obsession with VC Andrews (I just finished re-reading Petals on the Wind, people), and whatever else I can think up sometime when I have more than twenty minutes to update this site. I’m sorry I’ve been spending the past month being all PLEASE STAND BY, like a stupid test pattern.

If you’re still waiting for a book or another prize from the Make the Mackerel extravaganza, I haven’t forgotten you, and I’ll get them out by or before next week.

And thank you all for your impassioned commentary on gauchos. Against the advice of about 99% of you, I bought a pair of skirty black knit Loco Pantalones, which I plan to wear shamelessly.

Finally I’m going to be missing the America’s Next Top Model finale in order to give this talk tomorrow, and since I’ll be watching it on TiVo Thursday night, I’m going to impose a silly little ANTM media blackout for Thursday, during which time I will NOT read any reader comments in case somebody says, “Oh, I’m so glad ________* won!” and gives it away.

*That said, I think it’s gonna be Joanie. Don’t you? Though we love Danielle too and have this fantasy that she’s going to show up at judging speaking like Dame Judi Dench AND THEN THEY’LL HAVE TO GIVE IT TO HER.

Filed Under: Chicago, meta, misc, popcult

Aw, you guys.

April 27, 2006 by Wendy

You’ve kept donating. And now we’ve raised nearly a thousand dollars. I am speechless. Does someone want to pledge an early Saturday morning wakeup call so I can get out to Naperville in time next week? I think your money would still go to the cause if I overslept, but as a matter of principle, I would like to, you know, walk the walk.

I have so many things to plan right now it’s making me twitch. And yet I’m compelled to babble about the following:

America’s Next Top Model: Clearly Jade is some kind of emotional Rasputin, able to withstand repeated attempts to kill her gargantuan ego week after week. I am starting to admire that. Also, I hope Danielle’s new teeth don’t change her accent. Also, Sara is tall and needs to be reunited with her own kind, pre-law majors. And Furonda is skinnininninny.

I keep reading all this stuff and thinking: why do we want seventeen-year olds to publish bestselling novels anyway? Why can’t we just amuse ourselves by training dogs to say “Ri rove roo” and leave the kids alone? (I have a way longer rant against the notion that anyone younger than twenty should be published, but it’s for another time.)

Tomorrow is Chris’s birthday and I bought us tickets to see the Comedians of Comedy show tomorrow night. I think it’ll be fun, considering the last time he was at a comedy show on his birthday he had a few drinks and hit on one of the performers, and they totally wound up dating the whole next year. And then some.

Filed Under: Chicago, misc, personal, popcult

Long live all that Venus/Mars stuff

February 22, 2006 by Wendy

I’ve mentioned Chris a couple of times here recently, and in the comments for my last entry someone speculated that before long I’d have “something sparkly on my left hand.”

Chris told me the first thing he thought when he read the comment. “A sparkly glove?” he wondered. “Like Michael Jackson?”

This is why we’re together, you know.

Filed Under: personal, popcult

The shocking truth

November 7, 2005 by Wendy

There is something I need to tell you. I mean, you’re going to find out anyway, but I thought I’d tell you first: I’m really Tyra Banks in a fat suit.

Yes, I know that all this time you thought I was just a chubby white girl. I’m sure it sheds light on a lot of things, such as my inexplicable personal happiness. Well, now you know I’m happy because, hello! I’m Tyra Banks! I have my own production company! And here you thought I was just happy because I ate all the pies!

No doubt it all makes sense now. You’ve probably wondered how I managed to ever accomplish anything, what with all the obese-person stuff I have to do every day, like shuffling sadly down the street, getting my big fat feelings hurt by store clerks, and being rejected by dull little metrosexual men. I’m glad I’m Tyra Banks and don’t have to do those things all the time. Well, except for eating KFC. I’d do THAT all the time! Ha ha!

(You know, it’s only okay to laugh because I’m Tyra Banks and I have a syndicated talk show (check your local listings!). If I was a real fat person the laughter would HURT. You know that time I made the girls on ANTM wear stiletto heels two sizes too small? Like that, but in the soul.)

I know it comes as a shock to learn that I’m Tyra Banks wearing a fat suit, but I hope it makes America aware that really, everyone afflicted by obesity has a beautiful person wearing him or her, too, and that deep down, they all feel real supermodel feelings. Who knows who you might find inside an obese person? Maybe Naomi Campbell, who’s actually quite pretty though hardly the household name I’ve become, is trapped inside an obese person’s body. Or maybe she really is obese now. I would like to state for the record, as an honorary obese person, that either way would be fine with me.

That’s all for now. Don’t miss Drag Queen Makeovers on Tuesday! Love, Tyra.

Filed Under: Body, popcult

Warning! Penguin Plot Points REVEALED!

August 17, 2005 by Wendy

So we saw that penguin movie. I know how all this sounds, after not updating for two weeks: it sounds like I completely just slacked off this whole time and then went and saw the penguin movie, me and that whoever-it-is-I’m-totally-slacking-off-with-person, who, since I’m such a slacker, hasn’t even been introduced by his official privacy-protecting online nickname (which would be “Chris”), when the reality is that I had four articles to write, and I spent much of the past couple of weeks imagining my head was like a heroin’s addict’s arm, like something I had to repeatedly smack smack smack just to get a vein of coherent thought to come up.

And then came the nod, so to speak. And then it was time to see the penguin movie.
[Read more…]

Filed Under: personal, popcult

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Recent Press and Links

  • Essay: A Little House Adulthood For the American Masters documentary on Laura Ingalls Wilder, I contributed a piece to the PBS website about revisiting the Little House books.
  • Essay: The Christmas Tape (At Longreads.com) How an old audio tape of holiday music became a record of family history, unspoken rituals, and grief.
  • Q & A With Wendy McClure Publishers Weekly interview about editing, Wanderville and more.

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Where else to find Wendy

  • Candyboots Home of the Weight Watcher recipe cards
  • Malcolm Jameson Site (in progress) about my great-grandfather, a Golden Age sci-fi writer.
  • That Side of the Family My semi-secret family history blog
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