As Laura just mentioned, she and Benji — her six-year-old son and sometimes incompetent media escort — got in the car and headed south last Thursday for Laura’s reading at Politics and Prose in Washington, D.C. Instead of making the drive in one day, which is what Laura usually does (she’s weirdly macho about her ability to drive really long distances without needing to stop longer than a Mario Andretti-type pit stop), she decided to split it up — stopping in Montclair, NJ, to see her good friend Ivan and his wife and their three children. Ivan has a big job in publishing, and their other friend Julie has a big job in publishing, but when they first met they were all assistants together at Random House way back in the mid-1980s. Somewhere along the way they started referring to each other as Goobs, or Goobers, and sometimes it gets really confusing when the “goobs” or “goobers” start flying and all the personal pronouns disappear:

Example: Let’s say Ivan wants to join Julie and Laura for dinner. This is what it would look like if Ivan emailed Laura:

Goober:

Goober told me that you two goobs were having dinner tomorrow but I can’t come because Mrs. Goober has plans and Stay-at-Home-Dad-Goober has to be home to watch the little goobers. When I asked the goob if we goobs could switch the date to Thursday, the Uber Goober said no.”

Translation:

“Goober (Laura):

Goober (Julie) told me (Ivan) that you two goobs (Julie and Laura) were having dinner tomorrow but I can’t come because Mrs. Goober (Ivan’s wife) has plans and Stay-at-Home-Dad-Goober (Ivan) has to be home to watch the little goobers (his children). When I asked the goob (Julie) if we goobs (Ivan, Julie, and Laura), could switch the date to Thursday, the Uber Goober (Julie, Boss of the Goobs) said no.”

Anyway, despite the torturously long though blessedly traffic-free ride from Boston to New Jersey, Laura and Ben really enjoyed their side trip visit. Ivan’s kids could not have been cuter and it seems now that they are under the mistaken impression that Ben is a long lost cousin. Ben would be really happy and excited if he understood what that actually meant, but he doesn’t, so he isn’t, though he is desperate to go back to have another sleepover with the boys and play with them and all their toys in their giant playroom.

One of the things Laura was hugely excited about when she started her brant was the idea that she could plug people and places and things that she really likes. Which is why this post about the interview she did with the nationally syndicated radio show “The Good Stuff” is going to be so fun to write.

You see, Laura’s sister-in-law (Laura’s husband’s brother’s wife) Colleen Dealy is one of the hosts of “The Good Stuff” which, as I may have just mentioned, is now nationally syndicated on the Lifestyle Talk Radio Network. The other host of the show is Colleen’s friend Taylor Purdy, and together they make a great team. Back before the show went national, when Colleen first had the idea for the show and when they first started taping the one-hour show once a week in a local Greenwich, Connecticut radio studio, Laura would sometimes agree to be on the show — either in studio or by phone — when they were desperate for a guest. Sometimes she would even listen to the show from her computer (don’t ask her how she did it, because at a certain point she couldn’t anymore and she didn’t know why she couldn’t because she’d never quite figured out how why she could) and call in with a question to make it seem like someone was out there, all the way in Boston, listening and engaged enough to call in with a question or a comment.

Laura always felt like she was saving the day when she did these enormous acts of kindness — helping these poor radio hosts, with no guests and no listeners, out of the goodness of her heart. But the real reason she did it was because Colleen is one of Laura’s favorite people in the whole world and someone Laura can never do enough for because Colleen has helped her out (let her stay over in Greenwich and save $$ on hotels) and saved her (watched Benji while Laura went into the city for meetings or lunches or anything else that had to do with the publication of her new book) a gazillion times. This is why Colleen’s name is on the dedication page of Piece of Work. (Not that that can even begin to pay Colleen back for all the enormous favors she’s done for Laura. But it’s a start.) Of course now Laura can barely get booked on the show and has to have her publicist call and beg for an interview. (OK, that’s a lie, but you know what she means.)

What she means is that now the show is an actual show, two hours long and five days a week, part of an actual radio network, and rapidly gaining affiliates. Laura desperately wishes she could upload the fantabulous photo of her fantabulous sister-in-law Colleen and her friend Taylor but she thinks she shouldn’t bother trying and instead should just post the links to the show and be done with it. After all, “The Good Stuff” is getting plenty of attention without Laura plastering Colleen and Taylor’s blond hair all over her brant.

(Note:  this photo was finally uploaded on 12/31/06.)

Even though this is out of sequence — that is, Laura should first be writing about her first event, a reading and signing at Newtonville Books — she’s going to start with her trip downtown to do a Comcast Cable TV entertainment-news show mainly because she has photographs and wants to try out all the cool brant-improving features now available to her.

Some might consider “Backstage with Barry Nolan” the poor man’s “Entertainment Tonight” but it’s produced by Comcast for Comcast (she thinks people “in the business” call that “original programming”) and it’s national and it gets real live celebrity guests — but Laura’s getting ahead of herself once again.

Anyway, on Thursday night Laura and her media escort, Benji, left the suburb of Newton, Mass., and drove their Volvo station wagon down Commonwealth Ave. past B.C. and toward B.U. where the Comcast Studio is located. (Laura assumed an actual driver was going to chauffeur her in a plush black sedan so she could sit in the back seat and read a magazine or talk on her cellphone with the little high-intensity lamp on the way she always sees businessmen doing on the highway when they’re being driven to and from the airport, but obviously her publicist screwed up.) It was dark, and since her escort couldn’t drive — much less read, since he’s only 6! — matching the streets up with the Mapquest directions she’d printed out earlier was pretty stressful for Laura since she’s one of those people who can get lost coming out of her own bedroom. Her lack of a decent sense of direction (especially in an area she grew up in) notwithstanding, Laura was able to find the Comcast building and get there on time. Which, for the former publicist that Laura is, means an hour and ten minutes early.

Once Laura and Benji entered the building (it was kind of annoying because Laura The Author About To Be Televised had to open the door for Benji The Child-Escort, but she remained professional and courteous and did not pitch a hissy-fit the way she could have under the horrendous and humiliating circumstances and which would have been entirely justifiable), they were brought to the Green Room to wait.

Having thought ahead, Laura had suggested to Benji that he bring something with him to do while they waited, so he brought a shopping bag filled with train tracks and trains which he then proceeded to spread out all over the floor of the tiny Green Room. Laura was afraid someone was going to complain, but the only other person in the Green Room was a woman who did Reiki (alternative healing) and she didn’t seem to mind one bit.

Waiting in the Green Room was super exciting for Benji! Good thing they’d gotten there so early and had so much extra time to kill! Clearly Benji couldn’t wait to tell everyone the next day how exciting waiting in the Green Room was and how cool he felt hanging out at the local cable tv studio even though he looked really really bored and tired. In fact, the only time Benji seemed to perk up was when they watched on the Green Room’s large flat-screen TV John Stamos being interviewed from the set of “ER” (actually, that was the only time Laura perked up, too.)

Anyway, after about 40 minutes Laura went to the make-up lady’s room, and the shortly after she returned a young man from the show came and gave her a mic to thread up her sweater and clip onto the neck of her sweater. (Laura always gets uncomfortable doing this since most of the time the young men who are helping to thread the mics up people’s shirts or sweaters are about half her age and she doesn’t want to scare them.)

As it turned out, Barry Nolan was not there (he allegedly “had the night off” and “was out on assignment” which made it obvious to Laura The Nobody’s Fool Author that someone was lying), so instead Laura was interviewed by veteran entertainment reporter Sara Edwards. Sara is blond, brassy, sassy, and a true professional. Sara was also just a little bit older than Laura which made Laura feel better about how old she felt around the young mic-person. Benji was even allowed into the studio and got to sit on a high swivel chair while Laura endured the grueling interview. Three or four minutes later, the interview was over, and Laura led Benji out of the Comcast studio.

Unfortunately, Benji was hungry, and so at almost 9:30 p.m., Laura took him next door to a small pizza parlor that was still open and got him a slice. While she watched Ben eat (and while she wiped cheese off his chin, and opened his bottle of water, and got him more napkins, and offered him the shaker jar of grated cheese, and ate his crusts, and threw away his greasy paper plate), Laura couldn’t help but feel proud of herself. Despite their roles being ridiculously reversed — Ben was supposed to wait on Laura hand and foot but Laura was the one who’d ended up waiting on Ben hand and foot! How unfair was that?! — she’d remained professional and polite even under extreme duress. Being a guest on cable tv wasn’t easy but Laura refused to be one of those impossibly difficult celebrity-divas who complained about everything – just like the hasbeen, Mary Ford, in the book she was promoting!