Book news
Can’t take a joke?
Comedian Jerry Seinfeld says he was just kidding around when he called “Sneaky Chef” author Missy Chase Lapine a “wacko” for claiming his wife plagiarized Lapine’s book.
In court papers asking a judge to toss out the suit against Seinfeld and his wife, Jessica, the funnyman says he was just doing his shtick last October when he trashed the “vegetable plagiarism” suit Lapine lobbed at his wife.
Appearing on David Letterman’s late-night show, Seinfeld said Jessica’s book, “Deceptively Delicious: Simple Secrets to Get Your Kids Eating Good Food,” was an original.
Seinfeld also cracked that other people with three names — like Mark David Chapman and James Earl Ray — turned out to be assassins.
“Jerry Seinfeld made overstatements of opinion for comic effect,” his lawyers said in papers filed in Manhattan federal court.
Still, Seinfeld had no apologies for calling his wife’s accuser a “wacko.”
“Wackos will wait in the woodwork to pop out at certain moments of your life to inject a little adrenaline into your life experience,” Seinfeld told Letterman.
Lapine didn’t appreciate the joke and accused Seinfeld of tarring her as a “mentally unhinged celebrity stalker.”
First line
“At our end of the island, far from any noisy taverna or buzzing scooter, two owls hold a nightly conversation in the treetops by the sea. They start around midnight, hooting back and forth like village gossips while the landscape stands at attention. The only interruption is the slap and sigh of the Aegean, a timeless incantation that seems to whisper of myth and fallen heroes.
“I like to imagine the owls are offering a sort of predator hotline, with frequent updates on the whereabouts of targets in the shadows below. After all, they’re the professionals at that sort of business. Maybe that’s why I was listening so closely on the night in question. Break their code and I’d learn which creatures were at risk — Freeman Lockhart, power broker of the local animal kingdom, beneficent warlord of meadow and brook.
“Obviously I failed. Because nothing in their tone caused me the slightest alarm, yet shortly after the hooting stopped, three predators in gray tracksuits crept into our bedroom, and later I realized that every creature but me must have detected a warning. Even Mila, shivering at my side until they took me away, bruised and bleeding, had noticed the fellows earlier that day on the ferry from Piraeus.”
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