And I'm going to turn to this new book,
Lucifer at the Starlite, and that's L-I-T-E as in Starlite
Lounge.
So, the book's sort of structured
as Satan walks into a bar.
And so it's broken up sort of into sections that recreate
a night at the bar.
So, the first one is "Happy Hour."
Second one is "Jukebox."
The third is "Dance Floor" and the fourth section
and last section is "I'm Going To Have To Take Your Keys."
So, I thought, well what would happy hour be for Lucifer?
And it would be all the things that are going on
on the world stage.
Yeah, I shouldn't talk too much.
We don't have much time.
Oh, and I forgot to start the stopwatch
so I'm really fucked now.
[AUDIENCE LAUGHTER]
All right, well, all right.
I'll just read them.
This is called "November 11th 2004"
and it's got a lot of exclamation points
at the end of it that you will hear.
"Oh, everyone's dead and the rain today is marvelous.
I drive to the gym.
The streets are slick.
Everyone's using their wipers.
People are walking with their shoulders hunched wearing
hoods or holding up umbrellas.
Of course, of course, it's all to be expected.
Fantastic!
My mother's friend, Annie, her funeral's today!
The writer, Iris Chang, she just shot herself!
And Arafat, he's dead too!
The doctors refused to say what killed him.
His wife is fighting with the Palestinians over his millions.
The parking lot of the gym is filled with muddy puddles!
I run 4.3 miles per hour on the treadmill
and they're dead in Baghdad and Fallujah, Mosul,
and Samarra and Latifiya, Nadia and Surayah, Nahla
and Hoda and Noor.
Their husbands and cousins and brothers
dead in their own neighborhoods!
Imagine!
Marine Staff Sergeant, David G. Reese, 29, Clark, Washington,
killed!
Army specialist Quoc Binh Tran, 26, Mission Viejo, California,
killed.
Army specialist, Brian L. Freeman, 31, Lumberton,
New Jersey, same deal!
Marine Lance Corporal, Jeffrey Lauren, 22, New York,
you guessed it!
Oh, I could go on and on for as long as I live!
In Africa too they've been starved and macheted.
The morning paper said the Serbs apologized for Srebrenica.
7,800 Muslims murdered in 1995.
I know it's old news but hey, they're still dead!
I almost forgot my neighbor's niece.
16 and puking in Kaiser Emergency.
The cause a big mystery until the autopsy.
Toxic shock syndrome, of all things.
I thought that was history too, but I
guess girls are still dying.
Who knew!
I run for two miles.
My knees hurt and my shins.
I step off and stretch for a bit.
I go back outside into the rain.
It feels chilly and good.
It goes on all day, unending and glorious.
Falling and filling the roof gutters,
flooding the low lying roads."