Memo to Julie Powell of "Julie & Julia" - by Sybil Adelman Sage

Everyone has heard of you -- the blogger who set out in 2002 to prepare every recipe in Julia Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking," which was turned into a book and then released as a movie. On your blog you assert that you are returning from the red carpet opening in Los Angeles to Queens with the intention of reclaiming your pre-Julia lack of stature. I have bad news. Obscurity is like virginity: they're irreversible...even in Long Island City, where there are not all that many celebrities to share the limelight with you. Also, I hate to remind you that Long Island City is closer to the Hamptons than the upper East Side.

Trust me, I'm a certified nobody. I was prescient and had the good sense not to come up with the Sybil/Mina Project, dedicated to my deceased mother and her incomparable borcht, brisket, schav, sour pickle and blintzes recipes, thereby retaining the rights to my nobodyness in perpetuity. Unlike you, I knew that Meryl Streep would be cast as Mina Adelman (a role Meryl could have played with her hands tied behind her back even while rolling dough to outdo Mina's sister-in-law, Clara, in their lifelong knish showdown), assuring me that the blog/book would become a major motion picture.


You can return to Queens, but you'll be bringing amenities from your corner suite at the Four Seasons Hotel. We nobodys stay at the Out of Season Hotel, and our travel arrangements aren't booked by a publishing house or PR firm. We use Priceline. And we don't have Q & A's at Borders. The only question asked of us in a book store is, "Do you have another credit card? This one isn't working."


The reality, Julie, is the ship has sailed. You can't go back to being a nobody...certainly not while the movie is in theaters and you're awaiting the release of your next book, which could be double jeopardy as you have the added risk that Meryl Streep, with an almost unparalleled range of talent) will be cast as the butcher you apprenticed for and you'll have yet another huge box office hit to interfere with the normal life you crave.