I am from Chicago, as you must know, and have lived long. This is because I have always treated those hot dogs with the respect you would give a loaded gun. Today, knowing what I know, I would not touch one with a barge pole. Of course if you delete the weenie, you get.....veggies!

So you can read them before they come out.

Most of my characters and readers are not of marriageable age, so I don't think there is much specifically about it. Maybe something along the lines of having the clergyperson or officiator dress up as a fat man from space? Anyway, I wish you both happiness.

I have considered writing a diet book, but I can't for the following reasons: Diets don't work, so I would be perpetrating a fraud. Also I don't want to be lumped in with all the frauds, conscious and unconscious, who write those books. However you express a desire to lose weight, and I have an idea how it might be done, so I will write the diet book right here and now:

The Un-Diet Book

by

Daniel Pinkwater

Chapter One

Diets never work, because a diet is something you go on. Later you go off. Also diets are always about taking away things you like, and who wants that? So don't go on a diet.

Chapter Two

So what can you do if you want to take off weight? Well, not a diet, obviously. If you are not on a diet, you can eat whatever you want. If you want to lose weight, instead of taking things away....add things! Here are things you can add: big salads, fresh vegetables, home-made vegetable soup, cooked vegetable dishes. Eat LOTS of these. For example, one year we started making a big pot of vegetable soup every week. It had no less than 12 or 15 different fresh veggies in it, and I had a bowl of it at the beginning of lunch and also supper, and often as a snack, and sometimes for breakfast. I lost about 100 pounds. See, the veggies are great nutrition, and if you fill up on soup you will not want the second pork chop, so you will lose weight. If you want a slice of cake, go ahead--you're not on a diet and can eat anything you want--but remember if you do that very often you won't lose weight. Which is ok too. It's your choice.

Chapter Three

But I hate vegetables. No, you only think you do. If you eat tons of them for a couple of weeks you will be surprised to find that you start to love them, and love the way they make you feel. You may start to feel like being more active, because of the superior nutrition you're getting, and that is said to be good for you too.

The End

Short book, isn't it? Tell your parents it is too late for me to run for President. I should have been President the time before this. I knew what to do, and he didn't.

You would do better to ask a librarian or bookseller.

All I can suggest at this time is that you make recordings for your personal use of certain books of mine from the Pinkwater Podcast archives on this very website, and listen to them while biking and legoing. In time, the books you particularly want to hear may be added to this archive--meanwhile there are the others, which you may enjoy.

Sorry, no plans at present for recordings of The Yggyssey or Adventures of a Cat-Whiskered Girl. This could possibly change. Try reading the books?

Thank you for being such an inventive and tasteful teacher. Did you know there is a sequel (of a sort) to Fat Men from Space? Slaves of Spiegel, (which is the third of the Magic Moscow trilogy, The Magic Moscow, and Attila the Pun being the first two), has the Spiegellian space pirates make a return. All are of similar length and mindlessness.

And this is more or less the reason I wake up smiling every morning.

Schtoom's the word!

I hope, for his sake, that Rabbi/steward Pinkwasser is not related to me. If he is, it would mean he is related to the Pinkwaters I am related to.

I could not have done it without Jill to illustrate, Webmaster Ed to help with Yiddish, and nice readers to read enjoy it.

You never know. She might find it in a subsequent book.

I remember the name, but I'm unable to remember which bar it was. See, Prohibition was ignored in Hoboken, and as a result River Street was pretty much nothing but bars from one end to the other, patronized by people who came over from New York. There were additional bars on adjacent streets, also on Hudson Street and Hudson Place, and also some on Washington Street, and on street corners scattered throughout the mile-square city. After repeal, Hoboken still held an edge for drunks, as closing time in Manhattan was something like 2:00 AM, and in Hoboken nominally 4:00 AM, so the ferries would be crowded with the still-thirsty. There weren't quite as many bars when I lived there, but still a disproportionate number. If Abbey favored the places that still offered the free lunch, we might have been in the same one at the same time. I liked the place where Charles Dickens, Stephen Foster, and Ernest Hemingway were known to frequent, but not all at once. (Now you've got me remembering: Glass of beer 15 cents, clam broth, pickles, onions, bread, beans, scrag ends of corned beef and pastrami--gratis. For the affluent, a bowl of steamer clams was, I think, 75 cents, buck and a quarter for a pot of them. Throw the shells on the sawdust floor. Yum.)

I checked Shelf Check. I am pleased you mentioned me, but I think you should have had me appear as a character in the strip. I am easy to draw, using a compass, or the bottom of a cup or glass to get my general shape--then you put a smaller circle for the head, and two even smaller circles for the eyeglasses--and there you have me!