Did I Wake You? is a haiku collection, a humor book, a self-help book, and an anti-self-help book all rolled into one little whimsical-and slightly hostile-package. Easy reading for difficult people. It’s funny, surprising, inspirational, world-conscious, and deeply personal.

Beth started writing haikus to read at “Say The Word”, a monthly reading series that's part of Beth's Un-Cabaret show where Emmy-winning writers like Cindy Chupack, Michael Patrick King, Merrill Markoe, Peter Mehlman and Alan Zweibel read true stories about their own lives. The haikus immediately caught the imagination of the other talent and lifted the spirits of audiences. Beth continues to read her Haiku (which she cvalls Haikuzzi) at the Un-Cabaret, the legendary comedy show that Rolling Stone called, “a comedy be-in”, where audiences responded immediately to the material.

Did I Wake You? is part of the pop poetry movement. Like Def Poetry Jam, and the poetry slams all over the country. “Haikuzzi”dusts poetry off and plugs it in, making it exciting and relevant to today’s audience. It's nano-technology in a book. They take only seconds to read, but they’re engineered to stick with you a long time afterwards. Read them at your desk, in your bed, on the stairmaster, on the toilet. Jerry Stahl has dubbed Beth’s book “quick-shit lit."

Beth Lapides is a writer, artist, and comic revolutionary. Various reputable media outlets have called her, "unforgettable", "outrageously funny", 'brilliant", "wild", "provocative", "sublime", "seriously funny", "a performance art princess turned comedy revolutionary", and "the High Priestess of Alternative Comedy".
Beth is a commentator for NPR's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED and the 'Self Help Consultant' for ABC RADIO's Satellite Sisters. Her work has been published in periodicals including the Utne Reader, The Realist, LA Weekly, Premiere and FreshYarn.com. She has also been featured on many TV & radio shows including THE TODAY SHOW, POLITICALLY INCORRECT, NBC’s DATELINE, E! TRUE HOLLYWOOD STORY, & MORNING EDITION.

Beth may be the only artist in America who received several performance & art grants from the NEA, subsequently performed at over 100 comedy clubs (including Carrow's Family Restaurant in West Covina), then launched a revolutionary ‘alternative comedy’ movement and finally came full-circle to play a performance artist on “SEX AND THE CITY”.

She is the creator and star of UN-CABARET. A legendary live comedy show in Los Angeles since 1993, Un-Cabaret has been produced by COMEDY CENTRAL TV, SIRIUS Satellite, Comedy World Radio, where Beth also hosted her own daily talk show, and HBO’s Comedy Arts Festival, among others.

Her company, UN-CABARET MULTI-MEDIA has produced five critically-acclaimed comedy CD's, an award-winning website (UNCABARET.COM), comedy festivals, live events, and ongoing shows including SAY THE WORD – a monthly reading series at the Skirball Center, and THE OTHER NETWORK - a runaway hit screening series of the best un-aired TV pilots ever made. Through these shows, Beth and her friends have re-claimed comedy as an art form and reinvigorated the genre for a whole new audience, proving that there is a large, and growing market for entertainment with depth, that literature can be funny and relevant, and that the off-beat can often be on target.

Beth is outspoken and politically-active, including producing & performing in a TV project for the ACLU and benefit CD with the Drug Policy Alliance. During the 1992 Presidential election, she ran a guerrilla campaign to make First Lady an elected position and was featured everywhere from CNN to INTERVIEW and PEOPLE MAGAZINE. She got as many electoral votes as Ross Perot and spent millions less.

Beth's visual art has been exhibited at the METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART LIBRARY, many downtown New York galleries, and she recently had a one-person show at GHETTO GLOSS GALLERY in Los Angeles.

From Chapter Three:

“I like my car so
much I want to go outside
and fuck it right now.”

Hold Everything sells
things that can hold all the
catalogues they send.

“My wife’s an artist,”
says my car salesman. “She
paints. Mostly Van Goghs.”

Good shopping today.
Bought a fancy ass bag
to get a life for.

“Decorate, but don’t
spend too much, you’ll move again
soon - or you’ll die.”

“You don’t have money
for a flag but you do for
water,” he accused.

Corn or tomatoes?
Can't bear to decide. Nervous
breakdown on aisle nine.

A sign that we have too
much stuff: it’s falling on our
heads and killing us.

From Chapter Five: A NUN @ THE GYNOCOLOGIST’S

“Lolita” poster
in Agnes B. Kids. Kind of
inappropriate.

Never read Proust but
feel I have - have read Sartre but
feel that I haven't.

I fell in love with
a girl, a girl fell in love
with me. Different girls.

I visit Christmas
like a foreign country where
I know a few words.

When I miss you I
watch the weather channel. What’s
it like where you are?

I am curious
what would it feel like to be
not so curious.

Bad for my skin to
sit in the sun but good to
be kissed by a star.

Analyzing my
want, I found it was wanting.
But not wanting me.

He thought in numbers.
She thought in words. It was
a classic divorce.

Don’t think of “pain”. Think
of “sensation”. OK, yeah,
painful sensation.

The fake fireplace
demanded attention – then
delivered nothing.

Boss called me in, said:
“It’s not over yet.” Which meant:
It is over now.

“I thought I was a
poppy seed guy but I'm not,
I'm so sesame!”

In New York City
pink’s not a color so much
as a question. “Pink?!”

"You don't have to tell
us everything - from now on -
nothing about sperm."