I CANNOT SEND NUDE PHOTOS TO THE PRESIDENT OF HARVARD

I don’t actually send nude photos, except in this email, maybe, you will have to get to the end to find out.

I am having a rather large problem with what used to be a moderate sized blog that ballooned over night and I must save before the Mail Chimp Nazi deflates it.

Crib notes – I have a core group of fans.  I am expanding my base in preparation for the publication of my first book in January.  My darling husband Glenn Horowitz, with the help of my assistant Allison merged his oh-so-high-brow mailing list with my personal list. I have some very impressive people, but I don’t have much correspondence with the crème de la crème of academia.

I spent twenty years writing romantic comedies for Hollywood.

I am to be blamed as I did not do do diligence and ask who we were sending it out to. I’m editing a book and publicizing a film and trying to write these blogs so I paid zero attention.

When we inflated this list I was so thrilled Paul Rudnick didn’t ask to be removed I can’t tell you. Ditto, Simon Doonan and David Patrick Columbia, who had reason to but did not unsubscribe.

And for the number  we sent out we didn’t get that many “Don’t send agains.”

However, neurotic that I am one no, overrides two hundred yeses.  I started checking names.  I was floored.

“What is Tom Friedman doing on this list?”

“He’s on Glenn’s list”  Allison said while busily wrangling the chimp.

“Well, take him off.”

I have to take a moment out and say not for my own sake, but to show my gratitude as a lot of really smart, literary people follow this blog. I am not going to “out” them. But they do. I get emails from people, as does Glenn and I’m quite astounded that they read it, much less like it.

But I am comedy writer – I’m not an intellectual and I will shrivel and die under the microscope of academia. Or they will all unsubscribe  and we will be shut down by the Chimp.

Either way I will ultimately have to stop blogging or take my list back to it’s roots.

I make typos. Sometimes I do blog about lingerie shopping with photos, not always, once, but it happens and I’m sure it will happen again.

I am not a dummy, my friend Ti-Grace Atkinson who taught philosophy at Harvard and Columbia for years and is one of the founders of the second generation feminist movement is teaching me about Marx and Hegel.  With her help I will get  smarter. I want to know more. Dummy is when you confuse Lenin and Lennon.

In fact her words to me as I left for the weekend were ‘ “Take Marx to the Hamptons.”

I didn’t, I brought the new Bill Clegg book instead. Though I promised her I would take Marx to Beverly Hills with me next week. Beverly Hills or the Hamptons? I’m sure it’s all the same to Karl. And Ti-Grace is very patient with me. That is me being an intellectual. It’s as far as I go.

So yesterday after channeling my inner Scott Rudin and making about ninety calls to Allison on a Friday night, something I have never done; I decided I had to cull this list down myself.

I sat Glenn down, gave him a scotch and said we are not getting up until we go through every name in Mail Chimp and you tell me who they are and what they do.  All the Joyceans, Poundians, Jamesians, (actually I have a few Poundians who read me) I’m more shocked than you are. I said they all have to go.  Provosts, heads of schools, libraries and any scholars.

“What about Pulitzer Prize winners?” He really wanted to watch baseball.

“Depends on the person, depends on the category and if I know them. “Mark Strand can stay. Oscar Hjuelos, OK. Don’t you understand – I’m happy with Paul Rudnick?”

We went through a hundred people in two hours.  By the time we got to the President of Harvard I shrieked “ Have you lost your mind?  I can’t send nude photos to the President of Harvard.”

“Take her off the list, but you’re funny and adorable.”

You think so;  you’re married to me. I can name forty people who think I’m a pushy, big mouth, fifty-two year old who they wish would just  shut up.”

“ So take her off the list.”

“ I have to take everybody off your list.”

But the problem is many people on his list did not ask to be taken off.

And I don’t’ want to lose people just because I don’t think this should  be sent to Tom Friedman or the President of Harvard.

The truth is I don’t really blog much about lingerie.  But I can’t really be put into any category. I blog about life, mostly mine. I blog about parents and kids and fucked up family dynamics or is that redundant? I blog about whatever catches my fancy that day.

I did a blog last week that was about my erotic relationship with iPad. It was very popular.   It ran on HuffPo.  The most popular piece I have ever done was about Cameron Douglas and why he should go to jail. I do have opinions though they are often littered with typos.  If you can’t bear typos, please send me the X email today.

Sometimes I blog about human interaction – I do a lot of that. And when I travel I blog about that.

We went to visit Ezra Pound’s family in the Southern Tyrol; that is when I posted the only semi nude photo of myself.

I was  in a hot tub totally covered in bubbles, with my ten year old over looking a beautiful valley with snow-capped mountains in the background.  It fell somewhere between a Calgon ad and a nature shot.

I blogged my eyelift for an entire week, it was rather gross though many liked it.

I went to Milan, and spent days shooting photos of hot guys in purple sweaters, this was popular too.

I am about to publish a comedic book about aging. The next six months will be devoted to a lot of topics that have to do with that.

It will be funny – it will be honest, but if you did not like this and you are a friend of Glenn’s and you ended up here without asking.

You can send me an email at

TraceyDJackson@gmail.com with an X in the subject and you will be taken off the list today.

Just please don’t click Unsubscribe on the site as that is what pisses off the Chimp and will close us down.

If you read all this you get the photo.