She may be best or at least first known for her stint as "Polly Esther", cutting the edge of blog before anyone had one on the now defunct www.suck.com. "Suck" published a cartoon called "Filler" that Havrilesky wrote and Terry Colon drew, which racked up 40,000 weekly readers before dying its dot.com death. Luckily, she still writes "rabbit blog", which you can find daily on the similarly unique-named www.tinylittlepenis.com and where you'll read cerebellar treats like Tuesday April 8th's entry, "Tuesday, you Whore!", which begins:
"Let's just admit it: Tuesday is a whore. Monday? Sometimes good, sometimes bad. But Tuesday is dust and dribbled milk and spider webs and dry skin patches and birds flying into windows like they're risking their lives to tell you something."
Good stuff, huh? Her mainstream gig, though, is with on-line journal Salon, writing about music, TV, politics - whatever strikes her (or her editor's) fancy. She has a snazzy, jazzy, snap, crackle and pop way with words and it's delicious in print. Anyone can be disaffected and pissed off - Havrilesky's that and a song.
For instance, take "What's Wrong With the Oscars" (Salon, March 22, 2002).
" ... I'll tell you who you're forgetting: me. The viewer at home. The average American, slumped on the couch, inhaling cheese doodles and taking in the spectacle. You're forgetting me, all lumpy in my sweatpants, unimportant in the big scheme of things, but gleefully giddy in my self-righteousness, pointing and jeering and stuffing my face and loudly proclaiming my disdain for all those silly Hollywood monkeys from the throne of my shapeless couch. I'm skeptical of their worth as humans, yes, but I'm also ready to weep piteously at the drop of a hat -- all it takes is one reference to an endlessly encouraging spouse or a beloved, deceased parent. Imagine how I feel, eating up your every word, leaning in to feel your emotions with you, substandard, faceless, unsavory human that I am, leaning in like Aqualung, thirsty for a taste of the glory, my fingertips coated in a fine, iridescent-orange dusting of fake cheese."
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