July 1, 2003
"I'm not really great with money. I never have been," writes former TV producer Bosnak, though she's an old pro at spending it: on clothes and accessories, a personal trainer, furniture, a tony address, nightlife.
By the time she loses her job, she has amassed $20,000 in credit-card debt. But she has optimism (in fact, she's relentlessly chirpy and hungry for your laughter) and an idea: Internet panhandling, through which she emerged from the red. Here she chronicles the call-and-response of her seriocomic website—she admits she was a fool and is asking others to pay for it—which she keeps lively with daily postings of her hard-bitten frugality. There are brief excursions into questions of self-
esteem, obsession-compulsion, and superficiality, though Bosnak is more comfortable sending what she considers zingers back to the numerous lewd e-mails she receives:
"If you'd like to see what I smell like, I'd rather send you my flip-flops than my panties."
The bilious irony is that she's made a bundle on film rights for overspending on "a bunch of designer crap."