The Subject Was Donuts

Dinner last night with Dr. Theresa, Melissa Ginsburg, Bess Reed-Currence, and Jon Langford. OF HIS OWN VOLITION, with absolutely no prompting from me, Jon brought up his childhood love of Bob Hope movies (causing me to recall that I once watched a Bob Hope movie with another Mekon, Sally Timms - and their album OOOH has a song on it entitled "Bob Hope and Charity." Surely this is a subject for further study!). Jon also claimed that a Krispy Kreme brand donut left on a wooden table overnight cannot be pried from the surface by any means. He did, however, recommend Tony's Donuts in Portland, Maine. I believe it was during the donut discussion that Melissa used the phrase, "there was a brief period of macaroons," which gave me the idea for my next novel, a sweeping multi-generational saga called A BRIEF PERIOD OF MACAROONS. Melissa also said, "It's hard to make an apple brown betty in prison," which gave me the idea for my bestselling self-help memoir IT'S HARD TO MAKE AN APPLE BROWN BETTY IN PRISON AND OTHER LESSONS FROM A LIFE WELL-LIVED. Everything Melissa said was a book title. The apple brown betty remark came during a roundtable discussion of Martha Stewart, by whom I found all four of my dinner companions completely fascinated. I guess I never thought I'd hear Jon Langford of the seminal punk rock band the Mekons talking about Martha Stewart with such avid pleasure. Dr. Theresa described a key scene in the TV movie MARTHA BEHIND BARS (pictured), which she and Bess watched as research back when Dr. Theresa was working on her dissertation. Martha Stewart makes an apple brown betty out of contraband items she has scrounged together but she doesn't get to enjoy it because a prison snitch turns her in. "That b*****," said Melissa. With some force! I never did get the conversation back around to Bob Hope.