Background
Markoe was born in New York City.
(Lisa Roberty is a successful screenwriter with an impover...)
Lisa Roberty is a successful screenwriter with an impoverished social life who’s enduring a demoralizing job at the mind-numbing sitcom You Go, Girl. Grant Repka is an obscure indie rock musician who, in his forties, finds his career surprisingly resurrected with the success of his comic operetta about the doomed romance of Tommy Lee and Pamela Anderson. When Grant and Lisa meet after one of his shows, sparks don’t immediately fly—but e-mail addresses are exchanged. A my-book-for-your-CD trade and a couple of e-mails later, Lisa tells Grant that she enjoys his song “My Psycho Ex,” but warns him that where psycho-exes are concerned, she’s pretty sure she “could drink him under the table.” Little does she know that this will become the opening salvo in an epic e-mail battle dubbed the Psycho Ex Game, a storytelling competition in which horrific tales of dysfunctional love and living with lunatics are volleyed with glee. The rules are simple; the point system, unique: the experiences that would normally leave someone running for the therapist’s office (humiliation, degradation, and complicity in psychotic behavior) just might win match point in the Psycho Ex Game. Now it’s Grant vs. Lisa as the wretched tales of his ex, the Junkie Queen of Darkness, vie with the woe inflicted by her ex, a tantrum-throwing actor/director widely known as Mr. Summer Box Office Record-Holder. As the correspondence evolves, it surprises Lisa by offering her the kind of intimacy she has never shared with a man in the same room. Before long, what started as a friendly competition becomes a road map to an unlikely couple’s growing involvement, leaving both Grant and Lisa secretly wondering, “If we were to get involved, which one of us is potentially the next Psycho Ex?” Written in alternating he said/she said chapters, The Psycho Ex Game is shot through with the acerbic humor of Merrill Markoe and the mordant observations that have made Andy Prieboy a literate voice in rock. The Psycho Ex Game is a hilarious dissection of injuries sustained on the front lines of romance—and the careful nursing that gets us battleready once again. From the Hardcover edition.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0812969057/?tag=2022091-20
Markoe was born in New York City.
She attended the University of California, Berkeley, receiving a Bachelor of Arts in Art in 1970 and an Master of Arts
Her family moved several times including stays in Miami, Florida and San Francisco, California. in 1972. Her first job after leaving the university was teaching art at the University of Southern California. After auditing scriptwriting classes and doing research for the head writer of Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, Markoe was hired as writer for the 1977 revival of Laugh-In, joining a team that included Robin Williams.
She and Letterman were also involved romantically from 1978–1988, after which Markoe moved to California to pursue a writing career.
She wrote about the relationship several years later in essays in the book Cool, Calm, and Contentious, giving him the pseudonym "Bobby". She has also written for television shows such as Newhart, Sex and the City, and Moonlighting.
She appeared on-camera as a lifestyle reporter at KCOP-television in Los Angeles, then for Michael Moore"s National Broadcasting Company show television Nation, and worked on other magazine shows such as Lifetime Magazine. In the early 1990s she wrote and directed a number of Home Box Office and Cinemax comedy specials.
She appeared in two episodes of Space Ghost Coast to Coast from 1997–1998 as the unwilling subject of the eponymous late night talk show host"s affections.
In 2005, Markoe was a regular panelist on Animal Planet"s Who Gets the Dog? She has had a number of columns and written for many periodicals including Rolling Stone, Time, New York Woman, New Woman, United States News and World Report, United States, People, Esquire, The Huffington Post, Glamour, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Weekly, Real Simple, et cetera She appears in episode 2 of Friends as irritable museum curator Marsha and can be seen in the movie EDtv as a panelist, as well as in the cast of The Aristocrats. Markoe lives in Malibu, California with musician Andy Prieboy and four dogs.
(Lisa Roberty is a successful screenwriter with an impover...)