Our New Yorker finally made the arduous trek from the Conde Nast building and across the high Sierra mountains to our little hinterlands mailbox, exhausted. We opened it up, and to our shock, it featured our little burg in an article! (Article is not online, of course). The piece is an excerpt from the book "Oh For The Glory Of It All," by Sean Wilsey, a McSweeney's editor.
OFTGOIA is a tell-all memoir about Wilsey's mother, San Francisco social butterfly and society columnist Pat Montandon; his evil stepmother and A-lister Dede Wilsey; various shenanigans with his family and the Traina-Steeles'; and his own delinquency. San Francisco socialites are set to be scandalized, with Armistead Maupin saying, "there hasn't been a wicked stepmother like that since Cinderella." Yikes!
But what's intriguing to us, firmly ensconced on the San Francisco Z-list -- is that Wilsey confirms that his mother, Ms. Montandon, is the basis for the character of Prue Giroux in Maupin's Tales of the City! No way! Like Prue, Montandon was a daffy society columnist who gets all new-agey, seems a little psychotic, and then goes on a number of vaguely dippy save-the-world crusades, with poor Sean in tow.
Anyways, the articles are pretty entertaining (though not entirely in the good way), and worth a read. Though Sean -- geez, love your mom much? Paging Mr. Oedipus Rex, extension 333, paging Mr. Oedipus Rex.
Mary Kay Place as Prue Giroux in the Showtime Tales of the City movie