Lucky Stars Read Online Free PDF Page A

grating.” USA Today didn’t mention me, and part of me was grateful.
    “I’d like to give that New York Times guy a kick in the pants,” said my mother, my fiercest defender as well as my toughest critic. “How dare he call my daughter ‘grating.’ I’ll give him ‘grating.’ I'll write him one of my complaint letters.”
    I smiled. My mother was renowned for the letters she regularly fired off to people, corporations, any unlucky soul who needed to be reprimanded, in her opinion. For instance, when she bought a box of All-Bran that turned out to be only three-quarters full, she wrote to Kellogg’s, declaring that she would never buy their products again unless they apologized. They not only apologized but sent her coupons for twelve boxes of All-Bran.
    “Thanks, Mom, but I’d rather you didn’t write to him,” I said. “He might hold it against me the next time I’m in a movie. Besides, he only gave me an adjective’s worth of ink. Hardly a real review.”
    “All right, dear,” my mother agreed grudgingly. “If you’re sure. Now, it’s almost nine o’clock. I’ll turn on Good Morning, Hollywood and we’ll see what that rascal Jack Rawlins has to say about you.”
    I cringed at the mere thought. Good Morning, Hollywood was a weekly half-hour television show devoted to show business goings-on, sort of a highbrow Entertainment Tonight. Its host, Jack Rawlins, was a total gasbag—a know-it-all whose reviews always created a buzz within the industry, I suspect, because he was a Harvard grad and spoke in multisyllables and looked, not like those blow-dried studly types you see on the other entertainment shows, but like some tweedy young college professor who has all his female students in heat. He was handsome, in other words, with blue eyes framed by tortoiseshell glasses and reddish-blond hair that curled around his ears and a long, straight nose that tilted up at the end and a very generous mouth, out of which spewed some very ungenerous words on occasion. Personally, I thought he was an effete snob whose sole purpose in life was to impress people with his wicked wit. What particularly galled me was how tough he could be on up-and-coming actors and how his comments could literally torpedo a budding career. Don’t get me wrong, he could be hard on the big stars, too, but they weren’t as vulnerable to his criticism, given their established fan bases, and they managed to stay on top whether he damned them or praised them. No, it was the strugglers like me who were really defenseless against him. For instance, he once said about my former roommate, after she’d given only her second performance in a film, “Watching Belinda H anson is like swallowing an Am bien. In fact, she induces sleep better than any pill I’ve ever taken.” Poor Belinda didn’t work again for a year. At least, not as an actress. Everywhere she went, people made snoring sounds.
    “Here he is, dear,” said my mother, turning up the volume on the television set.
    I leaned in, prepared myself for Rawlins’s review of Pet Peeve. I was sure he would loathe the movie, given his preference for serious art-house films as opposed to broad comedy intended for the multiplex crowd. The question was, would he loathe me or even mention me?
    “Opening today in wide release is the new Jim Carrey vehicle Pet Peeve, ” he began. Then he chuckled, which was not a good sign. Not the way that guy chuckled. “Of course, I use the term ‘vehicle’ loosely. Webster’s Dictionary defines ‘vehicle’ as a conveyance—something that transports. Well, Pet Peeve doesn't do much transporting, unless you enjoy being carried off into a world where a toilet overflows, a hamster receives CPR, and a plate full of spaghetti lands in the lap of the Queen of England.”
    “ I found the movie very amusing,” sniffed my mother.
    “Pay no attention to him,” I said. “He has zero sense of humor.”
    We listened as Rawlins proceeded to rip the movie,