Song of the Secretly High Maintenance

I appreciate your efforts to help me.  I really do.  But if you could just wait for me to ask, you could actually be helpful as opposed to the hinderful to thing that I am now trying to untangle.

Waiting in line

I waited in line with a carton of milk, some plums and some nectarines behind a man holding a coconut.

Just that.

City Rhythms

I stepped outside my door Monday and limped two blocks down and two blocks back to run some errands.

On this journey of not so many steps,

- I walked by a young boy who looked exactly. like. Harry. Potter. anxiously waiting for his parents to pick him up.
- I returned a book to the library only to pick up another and remain in book debt.
- I visited at the ATM.  I spend money like water, apparently, always.  Even when mostly housebound.  One would think that they charge me to use the bathroom around here.
- I went to the grocery store.  You might think that 3:30pm on a Monday would be a great time to go to the grocery store.  Nope.  That is when they restock things on all the shelves and cases in all the aisles.  And the aisles were packed with mothers.

Mothers with kids, mothers with baskets, mothers with carts, mothers with babies in slings, mothers on the go, mothers with lists, mother who peruse, mothers who are fed up, mothers who sigh loudly.  Mothers of all kinds.  Wow.  They don't mess around.  I suppose they can't.  But it made limping in their midst seem potentially perilous.

Added to that the older folks pushing their personal carts which serve both as a means to transport and a means to enable transit, gripping the handle with both hands, for dear life, leaning heavily or carefully.

All of us grumbling at those who insist of traversing the aisle against the flow of shoppers, spawning salmon fighting our directional current in search of frozen plantains or imitation crab sticks.  We shake our heads.  This is not the way.  This is not how things are done at this grocery.  Everyone should know that.

This Monday I was the making of a stop motion short.

On gathering my goods, I salsa'd and shambled gratefully home and had broccoli.

A Tonic for Broody Thoughts

I started thinking about my life.  Then I started thinking about the last time I thought I knew what the hell was going on.  Then I started thinking about high school.  Then I started thinking about how sure of things I was in high school how that was a delusion and how ridiculous that seems now, looking back.

Which led to a lot of gloomy and bleak places.  There's only one thing for that ...

A Dancing Snoopy!

All was not lost

I am very fond of my Facebook feed.  I am lucky to be acquainted to with many brilliant, insightful, well-read, curious and hilarious people.  So many interesting thing to read and absorb.  But it all flashes by so quickly.  Months later, if I try to recall something from an article that a friend posted on Facebook and if I want to refer to the article to refresh my memory - how do I find it?

Can I remember which friend it was?  Can I recall how long ago it was posted?  Did I "like" it?  Can I find this "like" amongst a sea of other "likes"?  Did I share it?  Did I send it to someone?  Did I bookmark it?  Did I save it in a file?  Did I paste it into an email?

Facebook does not care.  Not in the least.  Their pathetic excuse for search makes me furious.  I curse and try scrolling back through time, through my timeline, my news feed.  Every time the damn thing updates, the scrolling gets messed up if I pause.   And then I am back to leaning on the down arrow key or the END key or the PGDN key.  Hoping that things won't scroll by so quickly that I miss it.  This does not always work.  Sometimes, the post I want is not displayed because Facebook assumes that it is not of interest to me.  And sometimes, Facebook craps out on me and refuses to scroll back any further in time.

Twitter is at least as bad, perhaps worse.

These sites are punchline / headline sites.

I was looking for a particular blog tonight, a blog that I had read several posts from in June.  Those posts had lead me to this site, which I found really interesting.

I started to lose hope but then, I found it.  I found it through my Google Chrome history triangulated with a few emails and gchats about a different website that this one led me to discover.

The blog is a bit different from what I remember.  Still, I am thrilled to be reunited.  To know that all was not lost.

But I've got to stop relying on them for information and start hanging out with more reputable sources.

Too Many Dates

Now that I have cleared the big box of wine, the next challenge is dates.  My parents in a classic act of love mailed me two containers of neglet noor dates.  Each container is about two pounds.  They are pitted, dry and very, very sweet.  Too sweet to eat straight.

So I am trying to figure out what to do with four pounds of dates.

Round one,  Crackle-top Gingerbread Date Cookies
www.yummly.com/recipe/Crackle-top-gingerbread-date-cookies-303998
The recipe uses a cup of dates.  It wasn't as many dates as I hoped it would be.  But it's a start.

Am I dying?

I have heard people say that "We are all dying."  When a person says this, most of us laugh, nod or grin ruefully.

But, it's not exactly true.  We are all locked in a process that ends in death.  But unless something happens to us that accelerates the process.  It is more correct to say that we are aging.

The Pony, RICE and frozen peas

I injured myself while doing the pony in dance class last week.

If you have never done the pony, let me offer a couple of video examples:

Teenagers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVwQDbB3Uns

This woman is going for it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_W4TMkG6fI

While doing the pony, I felt a massive cramp in my left calf, a pop to the right, and unspeakable pain.  I had to stop and took a cab home.  The cabbie took the longest way and charged me as much as he could.  He even tried to short me on the change.  I asked him for $3 and he tried to give me just $2.  But I was in no position to argue.  Illustrating why I loathe riding in cabs.

I limped and shambled like a zombie that night, in much, much pain.  God bless frozen peas and Advil.  I had no ice but I had a bag of frozen peas.  CK and I spent a good amount of time on the phone running through the worst case scenarios.  The worst of which involved surgery and a recovery time of 3-4 months.  Or a muscle that never recovers.

Being sufficiently freaked out by then we moved on to the advised treatment.  The recommendation is RICE - Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation.

Unfortunately, all of my close friends live in Manhattan and all of my doctors have their offices there as well.  I barely know anyone in my neighborhood.  Fortunately, despite my alienation from it, my neighborhood rocks - I have access to the greatest car service in Brooklyn and the internet (grubhub.com!).  I live 2 blocks from a walk-in clinic, 3 blocks from a CVS and 2 blocks from a grocery store.

The Dr. at the clinic was underwhelmed by my injury.  I was not bleeding, screaming in pain, nor did I have a broken bones.  He sent me to get an ultrasound of my leg to be sure there were no blood clots.  He said that if I were not improved in a week, that I should see a specialist and get an MRI and shooed me on my way.  Unimpressed.

CK came to visit yesterday.  She was looking forward to seeing me do my limpy zombie shamble and was a little disappointed by my little ambulatory dance.  She bought and brought me crutches.  A lot of people set store by bringing balloons and flowers, perhaps candy.  But I've got to tell you, crutches are a fantastic thing to bring.  We got burritos at a taco joint literally kitty-corner to my place - another reason that my neighborhood rocks.

It hurts less when I move with my knees bent and so I have been doing a pseudo salsa step as a means of transit.  The overall hurt has lessened.  But now the pain comes when I put weight on my left calf at certain angles.  Mystery angles.  I have not quite figured out all the angles.  So there is uncertainty and surprise jolts of pain.

I envy every old person with a walking cane that I spy.  I have had to rethink my impatience when walking behind people who are very slow.  I have had to rethink how I perceive people who have difficulty walking as I wonder how people are perceiving me as I limp along.

There is so much taken for granted in life.  The body is fragile.  But it finds a way to keep going.  And I do too.

Shuffling about uncertainly in salsa fashion, I feel grateful that I can move at all.  Here's hoping that RICE works for me and that I can get back to that pony.  That's what you do when thrown off a horse, even one so small as a pony.

My Infinite Box Wine

Today, I drank the dregs of a box of wine. I bought it in July 2012.  Yes, I have had this box for over a year.  The last sips were about the same as the first ones, near as I could tell.  A mellow, mild, fruity red, slightly sweet.  Pretty innocuous.

I got it in NJ.  The Fella, MLQ and I had been invited to an engagement party in Marlboro, NJ.  It's not easy to get to Marlboro from Brooklyn by public transit.  It requires subways, a train and at least one bus.  So the Fella hired a Zipcar.  We piled in and made our way through familiar yet foreign lands.

We got lost a few times.  The NJ highway system can be tricky to decipher even with two people staring obsessively at their cell phones the whole time.  (NJ, are you aware of your signage problem?  At the very least, you could trim the bushes back so that they don't obscure what signs you have, overgrown Garden State. )

With our detours, we made a few retail excursions; one of these was the Wine Academy.

There is a scene in the movie Tin Men where a guy considers believing in God after going to a smorgasbord.  I can't offer a video clip, only a transcription of the scene.  I bring this up because this is what the Wine Academy was like for me.  I walked down aisle after aisle of glorious booze.  So much.  And so many different kinds. In this magical land of spirits, I got a box of this:



It's a humble trophy from a place so grand.  In a fit of nostalgia, what I wanted was a box of wine.  When I was a wee grad student the best part of the summer was having BBQ and a box of Franzia with friends on a hot summer day.  We drank from plastic cups, complained about our lives and mocked each other mercilessly.  Boxes of wine, like sheet cakes are not really an NYC thing.  These things are not classy.  They are big and unwieldy.  They are shared at big parties and with large groups of people.  It helps to have a car when transporting them.  And here I was, in a car.

I have not had Franzia in a long time.  Back in the day, they didn't have a Chillable Red.  Seemed worth a shot.

I got the box and took it home.  It took up a big slice of my tiny fridge.  Between that and a giant jar of kimchi, there was very little room for perishables in my fridge or my life.  Being a single hermit girl, I mostly drank the box alone.  On rare occasion the Fella would join me for a glass.  I felt comfortable breaking the rules of wine etiquette while drinking it at home alone.  Sometimes I had it mixed with seltzer or with a few ice cubes.  Turns out I don't drink a lot at home and drinking at home alone does not inspire me to do so copiously.  But it was nice to come home and fuzz out a little with a glass of chilled red.

It would wink at me when I looked in the fridge.  "Wanna drink? Drink? Drink?"  "Hi.  Hi!  I am still here.  Wanna drink?"

It would pout reproachfully at me when I came home from a night of drinking.  "What am I, chopped liver?"

It would companionably observe that I might want a glass of wine with my giant bowl of popcorn and that the popcorn could probably do with a little more melted butter.  Both were often true.

Some days, I would pick it up and give it a little shake.  Confirming that there was clearly something there, ever present, justifying its continued fridge residency.

On most days, I would try to ignore it.  I stacked yogurt cups or leftovers on top of it.  Sometimes things would fall behind it.  Some were recovered quickly, others were discovered only just today.

I started to wonder if I would ever reclaim my fridge from it.  What if I had a never ending box of red wine.  What if little elves were coming in at night refilling it while I slept.  Should I open up my home so that other people could bear witness to this marvel?  Pilgrims carrying their own little plastic cups, queuing before my fridge for their share of the infinite?

But it did have an end and I have reached it.  I have liberated myself from this box of wine by drinking it.  It is, if not a miracle of infinite abundance, still a miracle of finite abundance and modern retail, no.  To have so much at my disposal at such apparent minimal cost and effort is remarkable.

There is only the need to earn, acquire, and consume.  Often the earning is considered the challenge.  But in some cases consuming, beyond the initial instant gratification and thrill of possession can present its own challenges.

But now I can turn my attention to the question of what else I could be besides a box wine owner and drinker.

Kicking It Old School

Me: Saturdays are great for talk radio. There's Radiolab and then This American Life and then The Moth.

C: Oh. How do you listen to the radio at home?

Me: ... I have two radios.

She expressed surprise that I could listen to a radio without a car. Truth be told, I only recently remembered that I owned devices that could act as radios.

Thoughts on weekend waking

The realization that it was Saturday and not Friday.
The realization that the sun is shining and I can lay in bed all day if I want.
The realization that I could go back to sleep if I wanted or that I could stay in bed and keep reading the fun novel next to my pillow.
The pleasure of curling up in cozy, comfy blankets and the delicious illusion of endless glorious time.

On a Fine Sunday

I am lazing around reading a novel about Zombies, eating pretzel shells and listening to Frank Sinatra on the radio. It has too long since I have passed the day suchly. It is delicious. Perhaps later, I will have a glass of lemonade.

Sometimes

When I am very tired and working late, I get the passing sensation that someone is hugging me when alone at my desk. It's a great comfort. But I hope it doesn't indicate that I am losing my mind.

Lyric for the day

"Ransom my heart, but baby don't look back. Cause we got nobody else "
- Pat Benatar, Shadows of the Night 

The day after the party

Sometimes it feels like loving someone in this City will only result in creating a situation in which they feel free to not only reject you but to express utter contempt for you.

More than some of the time, much of the time, most of the time.

People in this City are not looking for love.  They are too in love with themselves to care about anyone else.

It would follow from this that living and dating here means that I am looking for love in the wrong places.

Or falling in love with the wrong kind of person over and over again.

But, I would need to admit to myself and everyone else that I am looking for love in the first place.

Food from heated rollers

It sounds much better than it is in practice.

But the woman behind the counter was all for it.  On a cold, windy night, curling up on the couch and watching movies while scarfing down taquitos that have been warmed all day for you by 7 / 11 is just another way to describe living the dream

I have had a fixation on corn in recent months.  Some nights I have corn chips for dinner.  Or popcorn.  Corn, I adore you, but you are so filling.  I get bloaty and then a few mintues later, I feel like I have swallowed a boulder.

I have also had a fixation on celery.  Celery is delicious.  For a while I was eating stalks and stalks of it.  I might have to pick up a bunch tomorrow.

Besides that, I have not really been thinking of food.  I just eat poorly.  But how can you resist food on heated rollers served with sour cream and spicy guacamole?

It was that or deep fried breaded cubes of macaroni and cheese.

Listage

1.  People have been asking me what my type is.  I used to think that it was boys on bicycles, physics majors, tall blonde guys, bass players, short muscular stocky dudes.  Today, I think it might be Irish-Jewish guys.  So if you know any between the ages of 28 and 48, send them my way.

2. Day drinking is so painful.  How ever did I manage to survive it all this time?  And how did day drinking go from being a secret shame to the hot social thing to do.

3. I saw the Cirque du Soleil show, Totem.  My very first Cirque du Soleil show ever. WOW.  They had a human disco ball.  It is inspiring to see what a human can accomplish.  Magical and impossible things.  You have to see it so that you can believe it.

4. I am encountering menfolk of late who refuse to use soap, shampoo or deodorant.  They think that personal hygiene products are a scam.  They trust in the natural oils that their bodies produce.  They think that said personal hygiene products smell weird and artificial like plastic.  I wish they would reconsider so that I could stop holding a perfumed handkerchief to my face.

5.  People keep asking me if I am still making music.  I am not.  I'm not exactly sure why.  But I am completely blocked.  I've been trying to articulate why to myself and to other people and can't come up with anything.  I don't know why I have not.  Perhaps because I am unhappy in love.  But that does not make sense.  Firstly, I am not in love.  Secondly, it used to be that when I was unhappy in love, it was excellent motivation for making music.  Not avoiding it.

6. I went to a reading of novelizations.  If you don't know, a novelization is a book that is created based on a movie that was not based on a book.  I have not read a novelization in a very long time.  But I remember reading a handful of them as a kid.  Fame, Pretty in Pink, and my absolute favorite, Desperately Seeking Susan.  I actually count the novelization of Desperately Seeking Susan (by Susan Dworkin) to be at least as central to my formative years as Pride and Prejudice, the TV show Fame, and the movies: Singin' in the Rain and Meet Me in St. Louis.

The readings were done in a highly dramatic and hilariously mocking style.  The organizers described the audience for such books to be for people who were too poor to be able to buy a VCR, who didn't have cable TV.  They forgot one extremely important demographic.  Teenagers who were too young to get in to see rated R movies.

7. Wearing an corduroy A line dress in chilly, windy weather without tights will give you a sense of what it would be like to walk around half naked, because you are, literally, walking around not wearing pants.

Catching up with old friends

“In my twenties, I pretended I wanted a long-term relationship but just kept picking wolfmen by mistake.  In my thirties I thought my marriage phobia was something chronic I needed to get cured of, like back pain or herpes, but now that I‘m almost fifty I suspect freedom is a secret pleasure girls born in the sixties won’t fess up to.”
 - Pam Houston, Contents May Have Shifted

I was introduced to Pam Houston by a friend named Pam many years ago.  Having recently decided that I need to spend more time reading books and ran into a new novel by Ms. Houston.

I had forgotten what it's like to commune with a poetic soul and to observe and describe the details of your life as a thing of beauty.  What the hell have I been doing with my life that would allow this to happen?

Added to that, it made me laugh out loud on my morning commute.  Which hasn't happened in a long time.

It was like swapping relationship war stories with a long lost friend  who, thankfully, has not changed in the ways that matter and has survived the years whole-souled.

Listorama

1. There is a street in Brooklyn that crosses Atlantic Avenue called "Hendrix Street" which is pretty badass.  It is not full of butterflies and zebras or castles made of sand or purple hazes, at least not yet.  Perhaps someday, someday soon.

2. When flying from the States through Heathrow airport to another destination or through Heathrow back to the States, be sure to arrange for a 2-3 hour layover.  I had to take a bus or a tram to switch terminals, run/speed walk long corridors, go through a security check, have someone inspect my passport, my boarding pass or get a boarding pass issued.  I made it.  But I was winded, sweaty and more than a little anxious.  I did not get to get snacks or a bottle or water or go through any of my usual travel rituals.

3. Is it just me or does the movie Wreck It Ralph seem like something cooked up by a bunch of 40-something stoners?  That being said, it was extremely enjoyable.

3. I finally saw Les Mis.  It's possible that Russel Crowe and the person who cast him should both be horse whipped.  Wolverine's performance was uneven but very passable.  The music is just so good, it makes up for a lot.  Amanda Seyfried sang really high.  Whoof.  Cosette is a tough role, in that her role is to be the object of love and devotion.  She doesn't have an awesome song of her own once she is grown up and she is never allowed to express much in the way of meaningful emotion or personality once she is grown up.

Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter did a fine job.

Anne Hathaway TORE IT UP.    Wow.  The shots from the trailer for the movie were amazing but the extended section that is in the movie is intense.  I can't believe that she could sing like that while crying.  I actually hope that the actual sound on the film set was not what was used in the soundtrack. Because if not, it makes me ill to think of how much vocal control she had while singing.  Makes the whole movie worth it.

My friends have massive crushes on Eddie Redmayne.  But I've got it for Aaron Tveit who looks mighty fine with longer hair.

It kinda bothered me that everyone had a British accent.  If they can't have French accents, the very least they could do is come up with something not British to say.

As I watched Russell and Wolverine wail at each other, I kind thought, I would really like to see an all African American cast perform Les Mis.  I think because I would love to watch an all black cast sing "Red and Black" and "Do You Hear the People Sing."

Both human but not the same sort of animal

The quote was "I was already drunk before I met you."

He may have assumed that this was said by me as a prelude to sleeping with someone new.  He replied with his own quote: "Most people start new sexual relationships while they're completely drunk. But you wouldn't shop for a toaster that way."

If that was his assumption, he was mistaken.  It was a comment made by a very charming new acquaintance met at a very enjoyable dinner outing.

My reply was that I would probably have bought a much prettier and nicer toaster had I bought my toaster while drunk.

I did not say, "If you are suggesting that something lurid happened, enough with your stupid, insulting assumptions and insinuations, you judgmental ill-informed prick."

When I finally build that time machine, I will be ever so busy.

Besides which, were it not for drunken sex, some of us would have no sex at all.  I suspect that human race would have gone extinct eons ago.

Rarely also potatoes

There are things and behaviors in the world that should have a name beyond their description.  They linger blurring and elusive under the layers of your mind until someone gives it a name.  They tell you about it as a recurring thing that they too have encountered and it comes into sharp focus.

There is a thing called the Irish Good-bye.  An Irish good-bye is where you get up from a social situation and walk out without telling anyone where you are going.

Good-bye can be a long and involved process.  Good-bye can be a painful process.  Or a lovely one.  Certain things won't get expressed until you are leaving.  They don't occur to a person to say or the timing just isn't right until then.  Parting can be in its way inspirational and motivational.

But sometimes you just want to leave.  You need to and without ceremony.  I have had a few such occasions recently and now I know what to call them.


The Irish Good-bye.  It does not involve leprechauns, whiskey or potatoes ... well ... maybe sometimes leprechauns and whiskey but rarely also potatoes.

Days gone by

There were nights when we were lying in bed and I was so tired but also so eager to talk to you.  I would fall asleep in mid sentence and then wake myself trying unsuccessfully to figure out where I dropped off and what I had been wanting to say.

Ping Me

AZD asked on the Facebook what it means to "ping" someone.  She said that many people over the age of 35 seemed to be asking her to do so, of late.  To which I replied that her old friends were nerds and posted the link to a wikipedia article without any further explanation.  It was an overly curt response making me come off as an insulting jackass.

Some were embarassed.  Some thought I was rude.  One person disagreed with me, saying that pinging is the same as IM'ing.  That it's a term from the dialup days and that traders use it too.

Rather than explain myself further there, I started to unpacking the whole concept.

First, it's not a terrible thing to be old and a nerd.  If you are enough of a nerd to remember the "ping" utility by firsthand experience, you have come by your internet access by authentic and legitimate means.  Massive cool points to you.

Second, it's possible that for a lot of people pinging is IM'ing.  For this kind of person to ping someone is just to speak to them by text over IM or other device.  Communication received not through speech.

This does not begin to unpack the feeling, the flavor, or the intention of the request when I make it.

Obvious Disclaimer: this is not the exact truth, only my take on it.

Essay: What Ping Means To Me

Back in the day, if you wanted to send something from one machine (computer) to another, you needed confirm that there was a live connection and that the other machine was on, functioning and able to receive what you wanted to send.  It would be a shame, a waste to send it all only to have it be lost because you did not check first.  Perhaps a tragedy.

Ping is a very small program written to send the smallest message from one machine to another.  It asks, "Hey, are you there?", waits for a given amount of time for an answer, and then let's you know.  With a positive response, you have a level of confidence that your next message will get through and be safely received.

Ping acknowledges that in communication the attention and receptivity of the receiver is essential.  That listening matters and is an active part of the equation.  That responding matters.  That this shared agreement matters.  That communication requires an active channel in both directions.

It is pragmatic.  It is courteous.

Sometimes people get mad at me for not knowing something because they sent it to me by text or email or chat. Sometimes I get mad at people for the same reason.  But the thing is.  We cannot assume that everyone on the planet lives their life waiting to hear from us.  Sometimes they are.  Especially now that so many of us carry so many networked devices with us.  But carrying it doesn't mean that the other person is or should be glued to it.  They might be eating a strawberry or making love or watching a movie.  They might be taking a much needed nap or working or savoring a moment of silence.  They might be talking to other people, face to face.  They might be basking in sunlight.

Ping them.  Make sure that they are there and can pay attention.  Make sure that they are in a state where they are receptive to communication and can respond.  Establish that agreement and then proceed.

Note to Self

I forget that people who tell you their problems are rarely interested in solutions.

And there are lots of people who get more pleasure from shooting down your ideas and making you out to be an idiot for daring to try to understand and help.  Best to stay home with a book.

Dietary needs

I have eaten corn tortilla chips for dinner two nights in a row.  The second night with industrial nacho cheese.  This cannot be good.

An oversimplification for all of us lonely people.

There is nothing wrong with wanting to be loved.  Nothing.  It's perfectly natural.  Everyone wants to be loved.

But it's not simple.

The problem is that you can't just whip up a plan of action for how you are going to get that to happen.  It often seems that the more effort you put forward in trying to get specific people to love you, the weirder things get.

Perhaps the best approach is to focus on loving the people in your life and who you meet.  Perhaps the best approach is to not get overly fixated on figuring out how to be loved by a particular person.

Even then, that is not the whole story.

You might need to recognize not just that you want to be loved but also that you are, in fact, lovable and that it is possible for others to love you.  It's possible for you to have this thing that you want.

Easier said than done.  Consider it a challenge.

You might need to recognize when someone is not being loving to you.  In your desire to be loved you will be vulnerable and might encounter people who will not be careful and respectful.  You have options.   You could draw their attention to this and ask them to stop or you could leave.  Recognize that staying in such a situation might cause you injury and scarring.  This will make it that much harder for you to love and receive the love of others.


Part of the challenge is recognizing that you perceive the love of others in a specific way, perhaps unique to you and won't always recognize love if it is not expressed to you on your terms.  Someone might be expressing love to you now.


Even if you do recognize that love is being expressed, if it's not in a way that fills that space in you, it might not be enough.  You might have to translate it for yourself.  Or you might have to ask for  what you need and recognizing that they might not be willing or able to give it to you.  Are you okay with accepting love as they express it or do you need for it to be expressed your way?

There is no right or wrong in this.  It might even be context dependent.  It's just useful to understand.

Love, we all want it and we all do it, surely at some point we can get what we want from the person we give it to.

Or you could get a dog.  By "you", I mean me and you and him and her and all of us.

Then again, what do I know?

Square 1 - NYer Quote

"You would think that by then I would have developed some confidence in  writing a new story, but I hadn't, and never would.  To lack confidence at the outset seems rational to me.  It doesn't matter that something you've done before worked out well.  Your last piece is never going to write your next one for you.  Square 1 does not become Square 2, just Square 1 squared and cubed."

John McPhee, The New Yorker, January 14, 2013
The Writing Life
Structure
Beyond the picnic-table crisis

Danish TV - NYerQuotes

Excessively charming quotes from a New Yorker article on Danish TV, taken out of context to be savored:

The second thing that revolutionized Danish television was a trip to America.  In the mid-nineties, DR [Denmark's public-service broadcaster] sent several of its top executives and producers to Los Angeles,where they visited the sets of "N.Y.P.D. Blue," "L.A. Law," and "24."  They returned to Denmark with new concepts: writers' rooms, showrunners, multi-episode series ... Gjervig Gram [writer for "Borgen"] explained, "We said, 'We're going to do it the American way,' but it took some year to find the Danish way to do it the American way." 

Lauren Collins, The New Yorker, January 7, 2013
LETTER FROM COPENHAGEN
Danish Postmodern
Why Scandinavian TV has so many fans

"... I think we sometimes have to look in the mirror and think, We're not always cozy, we're not always Hans Christian Andersen," [Soren] Sveistrup [writer for "The Killing"] said.  "Lego, Tivoli - that's our P.R., that's how we lure you to come here, but we're just as corrupt and power-sick as everyone else." 

Lauren Collins, The New Yorker, January 7, 2013
LETTER FROM COPENHAGEN
Danish Postmodern
Why Scandinavian TV has so many fans

On the benefits of being married to a youthful looking woman

People ask me if your Mom is my daughter.  I tell them, 'No, she's my third wife.'
- My Dad

Lincoln in the House

Dear Republican Party,

I saw the movie "Lincoln" over the holiday.  Once upon a time you guys were AWESOME.

What the hell happened?

Sincerely,

Ergo

Paying for content

My parents bought me a gift subscription to the New Yorker.  The whole paying for the written word - it's unheard of.

I find that despite my best efforts and intentions, I cannot keep up with this subscription.  No matter how diligently I plow through an issue, another one crops up waaaay before I am done with the one that I have been slogging around.

There are stacks of them everywhere.  I tell myself that it's okay to throw them away, but it's not.  Trees have died.  My parents spent part of their hard earned retirement to give me access to the kind of writing that they feel their daughter, the aspiring New Yorker, should have access to.

I tell myself that it's okay to start skimming them.  Skipping the articles that don't grab my interest.  This is not working either.  Because there are a lot of things in this world that I don't know a thing about.  More often than not, I run across something that does grab my interest there.  Often in a piece that I would not ordinarily force myself to read.  At one point I was reading a book review which I found very difficult.  When I complained to my mother about this she said, "Those are the ones that you have to finish.  They do the most for you."  Lo and behold she was right.

With the New Year, I am trying to read current and past issues of the magazine.  I was telling SO about this and he made a comment about how the New Yorker is very dense.  I hadn't thought about this, but it's true. I recently bought an issue of Mental Floss and read it really, really quickly.  Back in the day, I never had a problem zipping through an issue of Entertainment Weekly.  The New Yorker is another animal entirely.

It could be worse.  Many, many years ago my parents got me a subscription to the New York Review of Books.  The NYRB can be pretty damn amazing but I am grateful to have been spared that agony this year.

It's a word eating race and I am really not holding up my end.  But I will press on.