"I am Joe Eszterhas."

"Showgirls" For the Knitting World

No, I'm not responsible for "Showgirls", or "Jade", or even "Basic Instinct", but it has occurred to me that I do have an alarming similarity to the man writes "as if he was throwing crap at the wall and hoping some of it would turn into Laura Ashley wallpaper".

Joe Eszterhas, of course, is the obscenely paid Hollywood screenwriter responsible for such gems as this snippet of dialogue between two women career women:

Crystal Conners: You've got nice boobs. I like nice boobs.
Nomi Malone: I like having nice boobs.

All right, so the actual word in the movie wasn't "boobs", but I have a rather rarified reading audience, and I'd hate to be the internet's only "R" rated knitting site.

It seems that Joe, bless his little heart, has mastered the art of low-concept, high-budget soft-core porn. There are few in Hollywood, with the possible exception of Roland Emmerich, who have done more with less. Joe is the Dr. Seuss of Hollywood: give him 25 words and he'll write a million-dollar screenplay, given that 10 of those words are synonyms for "breast".

It is then, with a combination of shame and perverted delight that I have realized that I am the Joe Eszterhas of the knitting world. Two years ago, a friend taught me how to knit and purl with circular needles, and 50-odd hats later, I don't think I've really done anything new. That didn't stop me, mind you, from trumpeting what little I can do into a very extensive web site, but my lack of skills didn't become apparent until I received a package yesterday.

One of my new favorite people, let's call her "Elizabeth", just sent me a hat in the mail. "You'll love it!" she claimed. "You can make it into a toessel!". I believed that initially, until I really looked at the piece that she had sent me. It had stitches going up, down, to the left, backwards, inside out; it was quite an endeavor.

At that exact moment, softly weeping as the Hat-Of-All-Trades sat atop my troubled head, I realized I was truly a hack, a man of considerably few talents, who excels solely in self-promotion.

Of course, Basic Instinct grossed 352 million dollars worldwide.

I guess I'll have to raise the price of these things.