frey fray

okay. i read a million little pieces. not having had much experience with alcoholics, drug abuse, and ciminal activity, i figured that it was at least mostly true, if a bit exaggerated. i read it in one day. i stayed up until all hours of the night. i couldn't put it down, and i loved it.

(this, by the way, had nothing to do with oprah's book club--thanks to benji for his very thoughtful christmas present.)

then i read on the smoking gun that, actually, it was mostly not true. so, okay. do i really care? mmm... not so much. it was a good read! yes, part of the appeal was the idea that a real person had really had a real root canal, really without anesthesia--but in the grand scheme of things, who gives a shit?

and then, larry king live does an interview, like there aren't more pressing world issues that need our attention. oprah phones in to support her buddy james--cool, i like that she stands by her recommendations. jimmy basically tells the smoking gun to go to hell, which is really not the best idea when they're spot-on with their criticism... whatever.

after some more drama, oprah gets jimbo back on her show with his publisher and just lays into him, saying she felt betrayed yadda yadda yadda. he apologizes (when oprah's mad at you, you're really in the shithouse), feels really bad about it, but stands by it as a memoir. i figure, thank god this stupid controversy is over so we can stop hearing about it.

ah. how silly of me.

Late Friday afternoon, plaintiff's attorney Marc Bern said he filed a lawsuit against Random House and its Doubleday imprint in U.S. District Court in Manhattan charging that the publishers misrepresented that book as nonfiction. His client, California resident Karen Futernick, alleges in the suit that she purchased "A Million Little Pieces" on that basis but that the defendants "failed to conduct a reasonable investigation or inquiry regarding the truthfulness or accuracy" of the material. Mr. Bern said that he will seek more than $50 million in damages for the plaintiffs. "Nobody can get away with profiting with a product that you represented as something that it is not," says Alan Ripka, another partner in Napoli Bern Ripka LLP, the New York City law firm that filed the suit.

$50 million dollars.

nice.