Lian of Pasadena
Humorist Lian Dolan affectionately sends up her hometown in her first novel, Helen of Pasadena.
By Mandalit del Barco 11/01/2010
On this sunny Pasadena day, we find the hilarious Lian Dolan trying to keep a straight face while standing at the corner of Orange Grove and Colorado boulevards — immortalized by TV cameras filming the Rose Parade. She wears a sparkly crown and waves regally to the passing traffic.
“Elbow, elbow, wrist, wrist, wrist,” she says, imitating the choreographed hand gesture of every Rose Parade queen she has admired for the past 17 years. A few truckers exiting the freeway even wave back.
Dolan — blogger, podcaster and novice novelist — confesses that it has been her secret fantasy to preside over the annual parade in her adopted hometown. She even timed her 1993 wedding so guests could attend official Rose Bowl events. “I don’t know why the maximum age is 19,” she says with a sigh, playfully bemoaning the queenship that will never be. “I was hoping they would raise it to 47.”
The Rose Parade shtick is part of the online promotional teaser for her just-published first novel, Helen of Pasadena (Prospect Park Books), a send-up of a 40something mom who finds herself suddenly widowed, broke and forced to reinvent herself… before meeting a sexy archaeologist. The book satirizes fixtures of Pasadena culture like the yoga-devoted “neutron moms” who fret about getting their children into the right private schools.
Helen works at the Huntington Library while raising a teenage son. Her late, philandering husband had a Pasadena pedigree and her old-money mother-in-law, Mitsy, is “tall, Minoan, skinny, always tan…always in a tennis skirt, frosted lipstick, a helmet-head hairdo,” says Dolan, 45. She based Mitsy on a college friend’s mother, she adds, but her real-life mother-in-law and husband are nothing like the fictional characters. The author does, however, have something in common with her witty heroine. Like Helen of Pasadena, Dolan says, she’s a “serial volunteer,” loves ancient cultures and studied classic Greek and Latin in college.
Dolan’s sister Liz kids that it’s good Lian was able to use “all that vaguely useless material” to write the book. “Lian jokes that the only other job you could use a classics degree for is working in a Greek restaurant,” she says.
Dolan is no mysterious historical figure à la Helen of Troy. On her blog and weekly podcast, The Chaos Chronicles, she describes herself as a “mother, wife, writer, talk show host and chronicler of everything that goes on in a house with two boys, one man, one big dog and so much laundry.”
Add to that resumé, professional sister: Three hours a day, six days a week, for more than 10 years, Dolan has exchanged snappy banter with four of her older siblings on The Satellite Sisters show on radio and online. From Los Angeles, Oregon, Dallas and sometimes as far as Moscow — where the various siblings have scattered — Lian and her sisters have dished about working women, motherhood, news, politics, entertainment, arts and more. “We didn’t want to go on the air and whine and moan,” says Dolan. “That wasn’t our style.”
Instead, the Satellite Sisters ask listeners (and each other) such hard-hitting questions as: Have you ever been a fashion victim? Would you rather win a Nobel Prize or an Academy Award? Which is worse — a week in North Korea or a root canal?
After moving from public radio to commercial ABC, the popular prize-winning show ended in 2008 following the network’s merger with Citadel Broadcasting. “It broke our hearts when we didn’t get our contract renewed and we kind of got lost in a corporate merger,” says Dolan.
But the Satellite Sisters’ conversations are still going strong at satellitesisters.com, a website, blog and weekly podcast that draws more than 100,000 pageviews a month. In addition, Dolan produces her own podcast of The Chaos Chronicles (chaoschronicles.com), which evolved from its start as a humor column in Working Mother magazine. She doles out advice on everything from conquering “mommy brain” to surviving extreme dental work; she even offers beverage news: “To Pom or Not to Pom.”
On top of that, she has made solo appearances on Today and The Oprah Show. And she is working on two more novels. “People are, like, where’d you find the time?” Dolan says with a laugh. “I’m, like, well, unemployment really frees you up!”
Dolan grew up the youngest of eight children in Fairfield, Connecticut. Being the baby of the bunch apparently helped hone her wit. “Lian used to practice her material before coming to the dinner table,” Liz says, “because she knew you can’t just go to dinner with ‘I had a math test today.’ Everyone’s already had that math test; they don’t care. Nobody wants to hear about your math test. She had to take normal life and punch it up.”
Dolan says she went on to forge her own path. Miserable in her first job at a New York ad agency, she quit and moved to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, to become a “ski bum.” But being so far from Bloomingdale’s finally got to her, she wryly explains, so she moved to New Orleans and Portland, Oregon, before landing in Pasadena to study at nearby Pomona College. For a time, she produced music videos of athletes for Nike, the National Football League and the National Basketball Association. But marriage, motherhood and independent multimedia productions beckoned.
Liz says her little sister has always been opinionated, energetic and funny. “Lian is a serial over-committer; she knows that about herself,” she teases. “Her sisters have almost had to conduct interventions. But being engaged in her kids’ schools and the community is very important to Lian.”
So is Pasadena, which Dolan describes as “Connecticut with palm trees.” She says she appreciates the city’s sense of tradition and civic pride, with generations of families in the same schools, clubs and organizations. She married a Pasadena native — commercial real estate analyst Berick Treidler — and they live with their two sons in walking distance of the Rose Bowl.
Dolan spends almost every day cheering at soccer games, exercising with friends or walking her dog near the Rose Bowl. And this is where she and a small, low-budget crew are videotaping the first scene of her promotional book trailer. She beckons soccer moms and joggers with ridiculous props: a giant foam finger and pink Bedazzled cowboy hat. The mission of her woman-on-the street interviews: to give a freshly minted copy of Helen of Pasadena to a flesh-and-blood Helen of Pasadena.
“Is your name Helen?” she asks several somewhat bewildered strangers.
“Would you consider changing your name to Helen?”
No such luck.
“Maybe you have something in common with Helen: Are you a mother? Were your parents fiber artists? Any chance you majored in classical archaeology? Is your husband having an affair with a news floozy? Do you think at any time in the future your husband might be run over by a Rose Parade float?”
By now, Dolan has made it to the Rose Bowl, and finding no Helens of Pasadena there, she moves on to Old Town. Outside Tiffany’s, she dons an even more humiliating get-up: an oversize sandwich board she made by hand with foam core and colorful ribbons. (Those crafting skills came in handy!)
“What’s your name?” reads the front of the sign.
“Ask me about Helen of Pasadena,” reads the back.
When these classic marketing techniques invite only giggles and funny looks, Dolan changes her signage and waddles down the street.
“Seriously, is no one named Helen anymore?” reads the sign draped over her body, from neck to ankles.
And finally, in desperation: “free kitten.”
There seems to be no limit to Lian Dolan’s antics when it comes to self-promotion, but the fledgling author seems pleased with a job well done. “I’ve been watching a lot of book trailers lately and the standard is fairly low,” she says with a mischievous smile. “So I think we’re meeting it.”
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