Рассказ (не мой)

[rainguard]

Я рылась в папке Text , и нашла любимые книги моего погибшего брата Артёма...

И прочитала один рассказ, совершенствуя свой английский. Напряжение при чтении на иностранном язяке высокое, но развивает...

И рассказ мне ОЧЕНЬ понравился.







MY JEN-ERATION



by Amy Dickinson



Call me a nut, call me old fashioned, but sometimes I like to turn off the TV, shut off the phone, and, you know, read a real good book. Fortunately, I'm not alone.



In that sense, anyway, I'm just like Jenny McCarthy. You know Jenny, the former Playboy Playmate of the Year, MTV hostess, and now lead actress in "JENNY!" her own soon-to-be-cancelled sitcom on NBC.



That Jenny.



Turns out, Jenny is crazy for books, just like me. Why, she even wrote her own book, about her own life, and it sure is interesting! It's called, wait a minute, let me get this right, "Jen-X". The Jen is short for her name, Jenny, so you'll be sure not to forget it, and the X is for her generation. Because Jenny is twenty-four years old, and that means she gets to have her own generation, with its very own letter. Of course, sometimes it's hard to remember the letter, what with it being so far back in the alphabet, and all.



You may think that twenty-four is a little young to have your own autobiography out there in the bookstores, but you would be wrong. Because Jenny spent a year of her life touring the better malls of this country as Playboy's Playmate of the Year, then went to Los Angeles and got herself a small part in a really fine movie, "Eight Things To Do in Denver When You're Dead," then went on MTV and straight on to NBC.



So, as you can see, if you're Jenny, you've done plenty of living, and you've picked up a thing or two along the way, and well, it would be grossly unfair to, you know, keep these things to yourself.



The thing I love about Jenny's book, and other books by celebrities and movie stars, is the way they make you feel that they are just like you, only...smart, good looking, and lucky. Like while they are up there orbiting the solar system, you are leading their parallel anti-life down here on the planet.



Naturally, I see myself in each of these compelling accounts of real-life drama, but with Jenny and me, there are so many similarities between the two of us that, well, it's positively uncanny.



For instance:



JENNY: Bravely had plastic surgery at 18 years old, which left her with "the bowling ball sized breasts I'd always dreamed of."



AMY: Had an unsightly mole removed and left the surgeon's office with a free sample of Minoxodil.



JENNY: "My way of escaping the stress of growing up in a chaotic household was to make up an imaginary world in the bathroom, where I could be alone with made-up pals. The toilet paper, the shower curtain, the wall were my friends. When I was six, I would sit on the toilet and just talk to them."



AMY: Me Too! I'll never forget all those moments spent discussing my most private thoughts with my bestest friend in the whole world: Skippy the toilet roll dispenser.

.

JENNY: Had her tongue painted like the American flag for the cover of "George" magazine.



AMY: I try and always remember to brush my tongue, along with my teeth, as a way of maintaining good oral hygiene.



JENNY: Accidentally wore her Valentino dress backwards to the Academy Awards.



AMY: I have a pair of sweat pants which look good inside out.



JENNY: Likes to talk about how she farts, barfs, and has chronic diarrhea.



AMY: My cat keeps missing the litter box.



JENNY: Thinks Pamela Anderson Lee is totally lame.



AMY: Me too!!



Paul Olsewski, who is a publicist for Harper Collins, publisher of Jen-X, sounded kind of mad when I got him on the phone and asked him about Jenny. "You're obviously not Jenny's audience," he said. And who is? "Young boys and girls. She gives them advice about their bodies ... and dating," he said. (See Jenny's super interesting chapter on dating - "Rule #1: Fart immediately."



Harper Collins printed 80,000 copies of Jen-X. And at $19.95 a pop, that's a lot of Jenny. But don't catch yourself thinking that Jenny is crassly cashing in on her little corner of celebrity, or, you know, exploiting herself for a buck.



Jenny is taking us along on a voyage of self-discovery, and it's all about growth and maturity, sure to be followed by lots of interesting sequels and tasteful pictorials.



It just like Jenny says, right there on page 11: "At age twenty-four, perhaps I'm finally ready to accept that being Jenny, the real Jenny, is, at last, good enough."



You go, girl.