January 1, 2019, 9:04 PM. Vacation is officially over, though I'm hanging on to the holidays with a nice glass of red wine. I don't mind going back to work. I worked a bit during vacation, so I don't feel completely overwhelmed. And i like my job.
But I'll miss the leisurely mornings. I don't sleep later than 7:30, even on days off, but the rest of my family does like to sleep late, and I love the quiet early morning with the sun streaming in through the windows and the luxury of a second cup of coffee. I'll also miss reading. Well, I read every day, but I'll miss reading for more than 15 minutes at a time.
*****
Speaking of reading, it's time for a new year and a new book list, soon to be handwritten in the back of my 2019 planner. Here's what I read in 2018. I thought that I read more books than this. Maybe I did, and just forgot to write them down. Well, if it's not documented, it didn't happen, so I'll only include the books that I remembered to write down. And they are:
Fire and Fury, Michael Wolff. Ha ha ha ha ha! Who knew that this was the good old days, amirite? In January 2018, Michael Wolff had no idea that shit hadn't even begun to get real. Ha ha ha!
Hillbilly Elegy, J.D. Vance. I wrote about this one here, and have not given it much thought since. That's not a criticism of the book so much as an admission of my tendency to become completely absorbed in something while I'm doing it and then to forget it completely the moment I walk away. I envy gnats their attention spans.
Is It Just Me? Miranda Hart. I wrote about this in the same post, and even found a way to connect Miranda Hart with J.D. Vance. They are both members of very small and exclusive clubs.
Textbook Amy Krouse Rosenthal, Amy Krouse Rosenthal. This was also covered here. I don't think there will ever be another writer like AKR, may she rest in peace.
Slouching Towards Jerusalem, Joan Didion. I am standing by my original post about this one, including my strong objection to "towards" rather than "toward" in the title. It's a small but important distinction.
The White Album, Joan Didion. Briefly reviewed here, almost a year ago.
Miranda's Daily Dose of Such Fun, Miranda Hart. I follow only four celebrities on Instagram: Katie Ledecky, Michael Phelps, Alexander Ovechkin, and Miranda Hart. I'll watch Miranda in just about anything, but I still can't believe that I wasted two hours on this silliness. I mean, it's not terrible or anything; it is just extremely uneven. Some of the daily tips are genuinely funny and original; many of the others read as if the author was facing a looming deadline and had to just get words on the page, no matter the words.
Going into Town, Roz Chast. Really wonderful. Not quite as good as Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant, but that's a high bar, even for Roz Chast. Going into Town is about New York City, past and present. It's both a practical guide to living in the city (where to eat, how to find an apartment, how to get from Point A to Point B), and an illustrated memoir of Chast's life there. Roz Chast grew up in Brooklyn and spent her young adulthood in Manhattan, drawing cartoons for The New Yorker. She moved to the suburbs when her children were young and wrote Going into Town for them. I hate calling any book or movie a "love letter" to a city, but the book's subtitle is "A Love Letter to New York," so I guess it's appropriate in this case. You should read this if you are one of those people who can't understand why people love New York so much. You should really read this if you love New York. I love New York, and I love Roz Chast. This was one of my 2018 favorites.
Bergdorf Blondes, Plum Sykes. So silly, and that's not even why I didn't like it. I like silly as well as (more than!) the next person. And I sneer at critics who dismiss any novel written by a young woman as "chick lit." But this book is ridiculous. I, however, am even more ridiculous; because apparently, I read it twice. I mean really.
A Gentleman in Moscow, Amor Towles. This list is in chronological order (not by date of publication, but by date of reading), which is the only reason that this book doesn't appear at the very top. It was my very favorite book of 2018; and in a year that included Joan Didion and Roz Chast and Graham Greene and Maeve Brennan, that is an accomplishment. I wrote about this one here and here and here. No, you don't have to read all of those posts; I mention them only to demonstrate that this book was special enough that I couldn't stop thinking about it, even when the Capitals were playing in the Stanley Cup final. I cannot recommend it highly enough.
13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl, Mona Awad. I was certain that I mentioned this book at some point last year, but a search of my blog by the terms 13 and thirteen yields nothing. And now I don't remember very much about the book, other than the clever title, a play on title of the Wallace Stevens poem "13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird." You might think that a person who spends a third of her life reading and writing would be devoted to poetry, but you would be wrong, because I don't really like poetry very much. But I like this poem, and I liked this book.
Imaginary Friends, Alison Lurie. I mentioned this one here and here. And I never did finish it.
Leaving Home: Reading, Writing, and Life on the Page, Lynn Freed. This one was not on my handwritten list, but I remembered it when I was pulling old posts for this list. I wrote this post in Montreal, after driving past dozens of vacation trailers bearing the Je Me Souviens license plate.
Entering Ephesus, Daphne Atlas. I mostly hated this book, but I forgave it on account of a few great passages, including one about linoleum and Soviet Russia. You had to be there.
Lina and Serge, Simon Morrison. More Soviet Russians, some luckier than others. I don't have a strong opinion about the musical works of Serge Prokofiev, but I know for sure that I wouldn't have wanted to be married to him. Lina brought a handbag into the gulag. A woman after my own heart.
The Collected Stories of Louis Auchincloss, Louis Auchincloss. No Bolsheviks in this one, but still worth reading.
To the Barricades, Alix Kates Shulman. A so-so biography of an insufferable subject.
The Clancys of Queens, Tara Clancy. Another memoir, which I liked very much. After I read this, I saw a video featuring Tara Clancy and her mother and many of the friends she wrote about in the book. She asked the group why there are so few stories about working-class women, and her mother said that it was probably because they're too busy working to write about their lives. I also heard part of an interview on NPR, when Tara Clancy explained that she named her first son "Ray" knowing that people would automatically assume that a boy named Ray Clancy would be tough. There should be more boys named Ray.
Evita, First Lady: A Biography of Eva Peron. John Barnes. Another so-so biography of an insufferable subject. This was a coincidence, not a literary theme that I selected in advance. Eva Peron reminds me of someone. Who could it be?
The Long-Winded Lady, Maeve Brennan. Really, really good. I wrote about it here and here, and I don't think I'm done with it yet.
It Can't Happen Here, Sinclair Lewis. Well of course it can. Like most of Lewis's novels, this was considered very important and serious. And like most of his novels, it's not very good. Sinclair Lewis might have been an even worse misanthrope than Evelyn Waugh, and he wasn't nearly as good a writer. But the premise--that the United States could descend into totalitarianism after just one election--is entirely valid. This was published in 1935.
My Paris Dream, Kate Betts. My almost-last book of 2018. I was halfway through another book on December 31, but I think I'll count it for 2019.
*****
I wrote half of this after two glasses of wine, and the other half at 4:45 in the morning (I couldn't sleep). Maybe I should have noted this right at the beginning, as a disclaimer. I'll write more semi-literate book reviews for you in 2019. Happy New Year, and don't say you weren't warned.
Thursday, January 3, 2019
Monday, December 31, 2018
The End of the Year
Thursday night: I’m at my sister’s house right now and cannot remember the WiFi password. She’s asleep, so I won’t bother her. Thank goodness for offline Google Docs. I can still write even when I can’t get online. Because wouldn’t it be the greatest of tragedies if you couldn't read this bilge? Too much to contemplate, I know--too great a potential literary loss.
Meanwhile, just about a year to the day after I wrote this, I found myself at the Gateway Pharmacy, once again singing along to Chicago ("Searching So Long") and contemplating the purchase of several different types of fancy soaps. I think I go there just for the music. And the soap, of course. I bought several, and I’m looking forward to a very clean January.
It's hard to believe that the holidays are drawing to a close. Every year, right around December 14, I panic at the rapid and inexorable approach of Christmas, just 10 or 11 days away, with so much of my shopping and baking and decorating yet to be done. And then it’s December 27, and mid-December seems ages ago; nowhere near Christmas. It’s still holidayish, especially here in the Philadelphia suburbs, where holiday nostalgia is a way of life. But the magic is wearing off. The post-Christmas sales already look ragged and picked-over and children are a little frantic, desperately wringing every drop of fun out of their waning Christmas vacation.
*****
Friday: We finally made some decisions on the Ireland trip; most importantly, what place other than Dublin to visit. Our original proposed itinerary had us in five different places in six days, and since I can barely manage to force myself out of the house most days, I suggested that we limit it a bit and try to minimize the driving and checking in and out of hotels and spend more time just being wherever we are. So we have a compromise.
The place other than Dublin is Kerry, and now there’s an additional layer of confusion because it appears that Kerry and Killarney might be the same place but I’m not 100% certain and I don’t want to be the person who asks. Later this weekend, I'll have an in-depth chat with Google and settle the matter. Meanwhile, I’m up to my eyeballs in picturesque Irish names and I’m feeling like I just can’t. I steered us away from a trip to Bunratty Castle because I object to the name Bunratty. That name conjures crowds of Boston and New York and Philadelphia tourists, festooned with claddagh jewelry and sentimental about their Irish roots. Not to mention the two rodents in one name. No thank you. I'm sure we will find another Irish castle. They have a lot of them in Ireland.
Saturday: We're back home now. Our house still feels very festive and Christmas-y, and we still have way too many snacks and treats. Just a few minutes ago, I was looking for another snack. I found a half-empty bag of tortilla chips from last weekend, when we had friends over to watch the sad sad Redskins game. The bag has a clear window in the front, and the words "Great at Parties," with an arrow pointing toward the window.
I thought about that little arrow. Was it meant to prove that there are, in fact, chips in the bag? Or that these particular chips have a special quality that makes them better for parties than other chips? Maybe the consumer is meant to watch these chips in action, on their best party behavior, vying for attention. "Invite me to your party," a chip will exclaim, "and I won't ask to take over the music selection!" A second chip will chime in. "Invite me to your party! I won't say ONE WORD about Trump." Then a third. "Invite me to your party! I won't double dip. I won't even single dip. I'm a chip. I stay away from dip altogether."
I don't make New Year's resolutions, but as I listened to the imaginary chip chatter, I realized that I'd better at least resolve not to eat everything that doesn't move, as I've been doing for the past few days.I put the chips away, and got some carrots instead. Carrots are quiet. They keep to themselves.
Sunday: I suppose I do make resolutions. I resolved to stop eating junk; and then I also resolved to stop spending so much money. Five minutes later, I spent $150 at Ikea's post-Christmas sale. I went there for a lamp.
I just finished a book that I liked much better than I expected to. My Paris Dream, by fashion writer and editor Kate Betts, is kind of a memoir of Paris in the late 80s and early 90s, but it's more the story of Kate Betts' life and career, told through fashion. My Paris Dream is very different from The Long-Winded Lady, another memoir of a city. Kate Betts takes a broad view of Paris. She doesn't describe much, though the passing details that she does share are vivid and memorable. Her Paris is alive with characters and personalities, and her life there was so fast-paced and achievement-driven that she didn't have time for close observation of physical detail.
Though the books are quite different, My Paris Dream reminded me of The Long-Winded Lady. Unlike the Paris that Kate Betts wrote about, Maeve Brennan's New York seems a very lonely place, populated only by strangers whom Brennan observed from a distance. But Brennan was very intimately acquainted with her tiny corner of the city, and makes the reader share her feeling of loss every time a building comes down or a restaurant closes or a quiet residential street is taken over by office buildings. Both My Paris Dream and The Long-Winded Lady were written by women who crossed an ocean to find the city that would shape their lives.
After Paris, I was at loose ends, deciding what to read next. I'm now three stories into Graham Greene's 21 Stories, and I'm completely absorbed. Our Man in Havana is the only other Graham Greene I've ever read, and the stories aren't quite as good as that, but they're very good.
It's the last day of the year, so this will be my last book for 2018, and my last blog post, too. This post isn't really finished yet, but I don't want to start a post in one year and finish it in another. Happy New Year.
Meanwhile, just about a year to the day after I wrote this, I found myself at the Gateway Pharmacy, once again singing along to Chicago ("Searching So Long") and contemplating the purchase of several different types of fancy soaps. I think I go there just for the music. And the soap, of course. I bought several, and I’m looking forward to a very clean January.
It's hard to believe that the holidays are drawing to a close. Every year, right around December 14, I panic at the rapid and inexorable approach of Christmas, just 10 or 11 days away, with so much of my shopping and baking and decorating yet to be done. And then it’s December 27, and mid-December seems ages ago; nowhere near Christmas. It’s still holidayish, especially here in the Philadelphia suburbs, where holiday nostalgia is a way of life. But the magic is wearing off. The post-Christmas sales already look ragged and picked-over and children are a little frantic, desperately wringing every drop of fun out of their waning Christmas vacation.
*****
Friday: We finally made some decisions on the Ireland trip; most importantly, what place other than Dublin to visit. Our original proposed itinerary had us in five different places in six days, and since I can barely manage to force myself out of the house most days, I suggested that we limit it a bit and try to minimize the driving and checking in and out of hotels and spend more time just being wherever we are. So we have a compromise.
The place other than Dublin is Kerry, and now there’s an additional layer of confusion because it appears that Kerry and Killarney might be the same place but I’m not 100% certain and I don’t want to be the person who asks. Later this weekend, I'll have an in-depth chat with Google and settle the matter. Meanwhile, I’m up to my eyeballs in picturesque Irish names and I’m feeling like I just can’t. I steered us away from a trip to Bunratty Castle because I object to the name Bunratty. That name conjures crowds of Boston and New York and Philadelphia tourists, festooned with claddagh jewelry and sentimental about their Irish roots. Not to mention the two rodents in one name. No thank you. I'm sure we will find another Irish castle. They have a lot of them in Ireland.
Saturday: We're back home now. Our house still feels very festive and Christmas-y, and we still have way too many snacks and treats. Just a few minutes ago, I was looking for another snack. I found a half-empty bag of tortilla chips from last weekend, when we had friends over to watch the sad sad Redskins game. The bag has a clear window in the front, and the words "Great at Parties," with an arrow pointing toward the window.
I thought about that little arrow. Was it meant to prove that there are, in fact, chips in the bag? Or that these particular chips have a special quality that makes them better for parties than other chips? Maybe the consumer is meant to watch these chips in action, on their best party behavior, vying for attention. "Invite me to your party," a chip will exclaim, "and I won't ask to take over the music selection!" A second chip will chime in. "Invite me to your party! I won't say ONE WORD about Trump." Then a third. "Invite me to your party! I won't double dip. I won't even single dip. I'm a chip. I stay away from dip altogether."
I don't make New Year's resolutions, but as I listened to the imaginary chip chatter, I realized that I'd better at least resolve not to eat everything that doesn't move, as I've been doing for the past few days.I put the chips away, and got some carrots instead. Carrots are quiet. They keep to themselves.
Sunday: I suppose I do make resolutions. I resolved to stop eating junk; and then I also resolved to stop spending so much money. Five minutes later, I spent $150 at Ikea's post-Christmas sale. I went there for a lamp.
I just finished a book that I liked much better than I expected to. My Paris Dream, by fashion writer and editor Kate Betts, is kind of a memoir of Paris in the late 80s and early 90s, but it's more the story of Kate Betts' life and career, told through fashion. My Paris Dream is very different from The Long-Winded Lady, another memoir of a city. Kate Betts takes a broad view of Paris. She doesn't describe much, though the passing details that she does share are vivid and memorable. Her Paris is alive with characters and personalities, and her life there was so fast-paced and achievement-driven that she didn't have time for close observation of physical detail.
Though the books are quite different, My Paris Dream reminded me of The Long-Winded Lady. Unlike the Paris that Kate Betts wrote about, Maeve Brennan's New York seems a very lonely place, populated only by strangers whom Brennan observed from a distance. But Brennan was very intimately acquainted with her tiny corner of the city, and makes the reader share her feeling of loss every time a building comes down or a restaurant closes or a quiet residential street is taken over by office buildings. Both My Paris Dream and The Long-Winded Lady were written by women who crossed an ocean to find the city that would shape their lives.
After Paris, I was at loose ends, deciding what to read next. I'm now three stories into Graham Greene's 21 Stories, and I'm completely absorbed. Our Man in Havana is the only other Graham Greene I've ever read, and the stories aren't quite as good as that, but they're very good.
It's the last day of the year, so this will be my last book for 2018, and my last blog post, too. This post isn't really finished yet, but I don't want to start a post in one year and finish it in another. Happy New Year.
Thursday, December 27, 2018
Process improvement
Saturday: Process improvement is a big part of the work we do on our government contract. That's actually the case on most government contracts. The Feds love nothing more than to have people tell them what to do, and how to do it, so that's what we do all day. It pays the bills.
Naturally, I have been thinking about how I might apply process improvement principles to other areas of life--cookies, for instance. If I, with limited knowledge, can help to improve IT management processes, then why can't I improve cookie baking, a process about which I know quite a bit? Yes, it's cookie-making day; and if you have been hanging around here for any length of time, then you know how I feel about cookie-making day.
Back to the process improvement. Last night I thought that it might be a good idea to make the dough (the worst part of cookie-making) and refrigerate it, so that I'd then have only the baking part to do today. That was one of the best ideas I have ever had. Then, on the recommendation of my cousin, I bought a melon-baller to scoop out the cookie dough. Genius! I had also already bought additional cooling racks, and two of the largest cookie sheets I've ever seen. They just fit into the oven, and can easily accommodate 36 cookies each, so I can put 6 dozen cookies in the oven at one time. So with pre-made dough, a kitchen full of cooling racks, giant baking sheets, and a melon-baller, baking time was just about two quite painless hours. The last batch is in the oven now. See you next year, cookies. Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.
*****
Sunday: It's December 23; or Christmas Adam, as we like to call it. I'm on vacation now, kind of. I still have some work to do, but I won't actually return to the office until January 2. I hope that the shutdown will be over by then; but if not, I hope that the President is stuck in Washington for the whole week. Vindictive, aren't I?
I overindulged in cookies yesterday, so I'm sticking with fruit today. Actually, I only ate two cookies yesterday, but I ate the equivalent of at least a dozen more in cookie dough. The CDC says that I should avoid cookie dough like fentanyl or second-hand smoke, but what do they know?
Maybe we SHOULD shut the government down. I mean, really.
So today, I'm substituting clementines for cookies. I love clementines. They're very Christmas-y to those of us who grew up at a time when certain fruits were only available in season.
When I was very young, I lived in a tiny apartment in my hometown of Philadelphia. I worked for a printing company at 9th and Arch, right around the corner from Reading Terminal Market, where we often went for lunch. I used to go there after work, too, to buy fruit and Italian bread and cheese that I would carry home on the subway, feeling very grown-up and independent with my gourmet groceries.
Clementines were new to me. At that time, they were only available in December and January, but we never had them at home. It was the early 80s, and neighborhood supermarkets didn't have much variety in produce. Iceberg lettuce, broccoli and corn, white potatoes, carrots and onions, and fruit--oranges, apples, bananas, and grapes, with strawberries and peaches and cherries in the summer. The Reading Terminal Market clementines in their cute little wooden crates were a novelty. I hated winter then just as much as I do now, and clementines tasted like warmth and sunshine. Plus, I had leftover teenage acne that persisted into my twenties, and I was convinced that clementines had an astringent effect.
*****
It's Christmas Eve, and we have no real plans other than Mass at 6 PM and an 8 PM showing of "Vice." We like going to movies on Christmas Eve, and this was the only one that we could all agree on. Needless to say, the J-Lo sexy middle aged lady romantic comedy was not among the options. Zero stars.
I worked this morning, though I was technically supposed to be on vacation. Now, I'm going to just eat another clementine, and maybe a cookie or two, and watch "The Family Stone," another of my favorite bad movies. Tomorrow, we will open presents and eat ham and sit by the fire and stuff ourselves with cookies and do everything else that 21st century middle-class Americans do to celebrate the birth of the Savior.
*****
Wednesday: It was a lovely Christmas. Now it's December 26, and we're deep into Christmas vacation mode. I worked again this morning, but only for a little while. Then we went to the Renwick Gallery, and walked around President's Park and the Ellipse. We hadn't been to see the National Christmas Tree since 2014 or so, but we used to go every year when our children were little. "This is the most nostalgic thing ever," said my 17-year-old as they posed for the obligatory picture.
It was a beautiful day, sunny and winter-mild; just chilly enough that I needed a coat (because I always need a coat) but not so warm that it was too hot to walk around wearing it. The streets were crowded with other families on Christmas vacation, visiting museums and drinking coffee from holiday-themed Starbucks cups and taking pictures in front of the White House fence. We walked to Chinatown for a late lunch at our favorite pub, and then came home after dark. It's 10:30 PM now, and we just finished some leftovers in front of "Good Will Hunting" on Netflix.
We have been working very hard lately. Even on days off, we're very busy. Even on vacation, we tend to stick to a routine. A few days of actual stay up late, eat whatever (and whenver), go places just for the sake of going, watch bad movies, bona fide vacation is exactly the thing.
Next week, I'll return to waking up early and sticking to the plan and improving the process. Hopefully, the government will come to its senses and reopen the parts that are closed. But that's next week. Right now, I think I'll have another cookie.
Naturally, I have been thinking about how I might apply process improvement principles to other areas of life--cookies, for instance. If I, with limited knowledge, can help to improve IT management processes, then why can't I improve cookie baking, a process about which I know quite a bit? Yes, it's cookie-making day; and if you have been hanging around here for any length of time, then you know how I feel about cookie-making day.
*****
Sunday: It's December 23; or Christmas Adam, as we like to call it. I'm on vacation now, kind of. I still have some work to do, but I won't actually return to the office until January 2. I hope that the shutdown will be over by then; but if not, I hope that the President is stuck in Washington for the whole week. Vindictive, aren't I?
I overindulged in cookies yesterday, so I'm sticking with fruit today. Actually, I only ate two cookies yesterday, but I ate the equivalent of at least a dozen more in cookie dough. The CDC says that I should avoid cookie dough like fentanyl or second-hand smoke, but what do they know?
Maybe we SHOULD shut the government down. I mean, really.
So today, I'm substituting clementines for cookies. I love clementines. They're very Christmas-y to those of us who grew up at a time when certain fruits were only available in season.
When I was very young, I lived in a tiny apartment in my hometown of Philadelphia. I worked for a printing company at 9th and Arch, right around the corner from Reading Terminal Market, where we often went for lunch. I used to go there after work, too, to buy fruit and Italian bread and cheese that I would carry home on the subway, feeling very grown-up and independent with my gourmet groceries.
Clementines were new to me. At that time, they were only available in December and January, but we never had them at home. It was the early 80s, and neighborhood supermarkets didn't have much variety in produce. Iceberg lettuce, broccoli and corn, white potatoes, carrots and onions, and fruit--oranges, apples, bananas, and grapes, with strawberries and peaches and cherries in the summer. The Reading Terminal Market clementines in their cute little wooden crates were a novelty. I hated winter then just as much as I do now, and clementines tasted like warmth and sunshine. Plus, I had leftover teenage acne that persisted into my twenties, and I was convinced that clementines had an astringent effect.
*****
It's Christmas Eve, and we have no real plans other than Mass at 6 PM and an 8 PM showing of "Vice." We like going to movies on Christmas Eve, and this was the only one that we could all agree on. Needless to say, the J-Lo sexy middle aged lady romantic comedy was not among the options. Zero stars.
I worked this morning, though I was technically supposed to be on vacation. Now, I'm going to just eat another clementine, and maybe a cookie or two, and watch "The Family Stone," another of my favorite bad movies. Tomorrow, we will open presents and eat ham and sit by the fire and stuff ourselves with cookies and do everything else that 21st century middle-class Americans do to celebrate the birth of the Savior.
*****
Wednesday: It was a lovely Christmas. Now it's December 26, and we're deep into Christmas vacation mode. I worked again this morning, but only for a little while. Then we went to the Renwick Gallery, and walked around President's Park and the Ellipse. We hadn't been to see the National Christmas Tree since 2014 or so, but we used to go every year when our children were little. "This is the most nostalgic thing ever," said my 17-year-old as they posed for the obligatory picture.
 |
| They're wearing Christmas presents. |
We have been working very hard lately. Even on days off, we're very busy. Even on vacation, we tend to stick to a routine. A few days of actual stay up late, eat whatever (and whenver), go places just for the sake of going, watch bad movies, bona fide vacation is exactly the thing.
Next week, I'll return to waking up early and sticking to the plan and improving the process. Hopefully, the government will come to its senses and reopen the parts that are closed. But that's next week. Right now, I think I'll have another cookie.
Friday, December 21, 2018
Hello, Mexico? Yeah, this is Accounts Receivable...
Monday: As I've mentioned before, I don't write movie reviews. Only sometimes, I do. And here's a review of a movie that I have not seen and plan never to see. Not only am I not going to see this movie; I'm not even going to look at any reviews or plot summaries. I'm judging it entirely on the TV commercial that I saw yesterday. "Second Act" gets zero stars out of whatever number of stars my rating scale would have, if I had one.
My opposition to "Second Act" has nothing to do with the fact that it looks like a bad movie. As I've written before, I have a special place in my heart for lots of bad movies. And I don't object to Jennifer Lopez, either. She's fine. What I do object to is the kill-me-now boring "I am middle-aged-but-still-sexy-woman-hear-me-roar" trope. Tiresome. So so so so tiresome.
The idea of a woman entering her "second act" (what the fuck) just as beautiful and sexy as she was at age 25, but with all the wisdom (whatever) of middle age is supposed to be liberating and "empowering" (OMG, kill me) but it's exactly the opposite. It's not enough for a 50-year-old woman to be accomplished or wise or kind or nurturing or powerful or successful or all of the above She also has to be beautiful; and I don't mean the kind of beauty that older women who know how to live radiate from within. No, I mean Maxim magazine (does that still exist?) MILF hotness.
Gag.
And you know what else? There's no corporate job interview scenario in which a person can fake a Harvard degree. It's 2018, and anyone who is interviewing Harvard graduates, real or fake, has access to the Internet. I mean really.
Zero stars. Zero.
*****
Tuesday: The carpet people are coming tomorrow. One more day of living in a construction zone; one more day until I can return my house to its customary orderly state.
I'm quite happy about the carpet, but quite sad about the untimely death of my favorite Instagram cat. Yes, I know. But this was an especially cute cat, who had a cat stroke at only four years of age. This cat's Instagram feed was one of the funniest things online, and created for the best reason--because the cat's owner thought her cat was amusing, and she wanted to share the fun.
There are lots of reasons to worry about the meanness and emptiness of the social media landscape, but an Instagram community built on shared enjoyment of a mischievous cat and his hilariously captioned silly photos and videos strikes me as a great use of the Internet. I'll miss him.
*****
Wednesday: Question for a person who is reshelving books: Among a pile of books of similar size, which book's authors (other than Muriel Spark, who already has her own shelf) might be worthy to share a shelf with Flannery O'Connor?
A. Evelyn Waugh
B. Nathaniel Hawthorne
C. Penelope Fitzgerald
Trick question. The answer is no one.
Reshelving books is like solving a puzzle, and I'm terrible at puzzles. I should taken a picture before I cleared off the bookcases, but the books are all back on the shelves now, in the bookcases that are back where they belong, because my house is back in order again.
This was actually an extra-good day because I also won my company'e Employee of the Year award. I felt like SpongeBob. That's my face on the wall, twelve times in a row.
*****
Friday, December 21. Four days before Christmas and here we go again.
You know what? I think they should give him his stupid wall. There's nothing inherently wrong about a wall. If a border between countries is reasonable, then why not secure it with a wall? Lots of countries do it.
I think we should be much more generous to refugees and asylum-seekers and really almost everyone else who wants to come to this country. We're the richest country in the world. We can share. So build the wall, and then use it to manage the influx in an orderly fashion.
It would be nice if it was that simple, wouldn't it?
My work friends and I are off the hook for this one. I'm on vacation next week, and even if it continues past New Year's Day, our project is funded, so we can continue working. About 25% of Federal contractors, who don't get back pay after the shutdown ends, are not so lucky.
Maybe they'll figure this out quickly. Or maybe Mexico will open its mail--they might have missed our last bill.
Meanwhile, Merry Christmas.
My opposition to "Second Act" has nothing to do with the fact that it looks like a bad movie. As I've written before, I have a special place in my heart for lots of bad movies. And I don't object to Jennifer Lopez, either. She's fine. What I do object to is the kill-me-now boring "I am middle-aged-but-still-sexy-woman-hear-me-roar" trope. Tiresome. So so so so tiresome.
The idea of a woman entering her "second act" (what the fuck) just as beautiful and sexy as she was at age 25, but with all the wisdom (whatever) of middle age is supposed to be liberating and "empowering" (OMG, kill me) but it's exactly the opposite. It's not enough for a 50-year-old woman to be accomplished or wise or kind or nurturing or powerful or successful or all of the above She also has to be beautiful; and I don't mean the kind of beauty that older women who know how to live radiate from within. No, I mean Maxim magazine (does that still exist?) MILF hotness.
Gag.
And you know what else? There's no corporate job interview scenario in which a person can fake a Harvard degree. It's 2018, and anyone who is interviewing Harvard graduates, real or fake, has access to the Internet. I mean really.
Zero stars. Zero.
*****
Tuesday: The carpet people are coming tomorrow. One more day of living in a construction zone; one more day until I can return my house to its customary orderly state.
I'm quite happy about the carpet, but quite sad about the untimely death of my favorite Instagram cat. Yes, I know. But this was an especially cute cat, who had a cat stroke at only four years of age. This cat's Instagram feed was one of the funniest things online, and created for the best reason--because the cat's owner thought her cat was amusing, and she wanted to share the fun.
There are lots of reasons to worry about the meanness and emptiness of the social media landscape, but an Instagram community built on shared enjoyment of a mischievous cat and his hilariously captioned silly photos and videos strikes me as a great use of the Internet. I'll miss him.
*****
Wednesday: Question for a person who is reshelving books: Among a pile of books of similar size, which book's authors (other than Muriel Spark, who already has her own shelf) might be worthy to share a shelf with Flannery O'Connor?
A. Evelyn Waugh
B. Nathaniel Hawthorne
C. Penelope Fitzgerald
Trick question. The answer is no one.
Reshelving books is like solving a puzzle, and I'm terrible at puzzles. I should taken a picture before I cleared off the bookcases, but the books are all back on the shelves now, in the bookcases that are back where they belong, because my house is back in order again.
This was actually an extra-good day because I also won my company'e Employee of the Year award. I felt like SpongeBob. That's my face on the wall, twelve times in a row.
 |
| Suck it, Squidward. |
*****
Friday, December 21. Four days before Christmas and here we go again.
You know what? I think they should give him his stupid wall. There's nothing inherently wrong about a wall. If a border between countries is reasonable, then why not secure it with a wall? Lots of countries do it.
I think we should be much more generous to refugees and asylum-seekers and really almost everyone else who wants to come to this country. We're the richest country in the world. We can share. So build the wall, and then use it to manage the influx in an orderly fashion.
It would be nice if it was that simple, wouldn't it?
My work friends and I are off the hook for this one. I'm on vacation next week, and even if it continues past New Year's Day, our project is funded, so we can continue working. About 25% of Federal contractors, who don't get back pay after the shutdown ends, are not so lucky.
Maybe they'll figure this out quickly. Or maybe Mexico will open its mail--they might have missed our last bill.
Meanwhile, Merry Christmas.
Sunday, December 16, 2018
Where's the Tylenol?
You know what's a bad idea? I could give you a million, at least 100,000 of them born of personal experience; but here's one in particular. Ripping out carpet and installing new carpet two weeks before Christmas is a bad idea. A bad, bad idea.
In and of itself, of course, carpet installation is not a bad idea. Carpet is a one-day job, assuming that all goes according to plan. It's that "assuming" part that's complicated; that, and the "all going according to plan." Because you never know for sure what's under the old carpet until you rip it out.
You see where this is going, don't you? Remember when I wrote that I'd write again when my house was clean? Oh, the naivete. Right now, I have no carpet and no floor other than concrete in half the house, and the furniture is all jammed into the kitchen and two bedrooms. It's cold and dusty and cluttered. We can't even get to our beds.
Long story short(er), there was a problem with the old parquet that was under the carpet, so we had to rip it out. That was an easier job than I expected. But now we have to clean up the dust and glue and broken parquet, which is another day's worth of work. And the carpet installer is telling me that they can't come back until after Christmas, which I am supposed to host. I know that there are bigger problems than this, but this one seems bad enough right now. I don't like dirt and disorder and disruption and I'm neck-deep in all three. It's Christmas Vacation, and Cousin Eddie just pulled up in the RV.
And you know what? The shitter is full. The shitter is all the way full.
*****
It's the next day now, the next day being Wednesday. So yesterday was Tuesday. It's all a blur. We still have concrete floors in half of our house and furniture in places where God never designed it to go, but things are looking up a bit. My husband took today off and cleaned the floors, which were covered with dust and debris from yesterday's parquet removal adventure. We moved some furniture around, just enough that we can get in and out of the bedrooms. And the kitchen and family room are almost normal, so we have a little oasis of near-order and almost-calm. It's not my ideal household state, but it's a marked improvement over yesterday. Meanwhile, I'm working on gently persuading the carpet installers to try to find room for us in their busy busy schedule. I'm pretty persuasive; and what I lack in persuasion power, I make up for in persistence. I don't know when my house will be back to normal again, but I think it will happen before Santa shoves his fat white ass down the chimney.
*****
So it's Thursday now. I still don't have carpet but they might be able to move our installation date to next week. It's not tomorrow but it's not the day after Christmas either. It's an improvement. It's a move in the right direction. Progress.
I'm writing this on my phone as I stand in the main hallway at Rockville High School, waiting for the auditorium to open. It's concert night and the place is abuzz. Clusters of parents are chatting while young people in black concert dress zip back and forth, instruments in hand and sheet music trailing behind them. The snack bar is selling chips and soda and holiday treats and the booster club is selling raffle tickets. Prize: A Christmas wreath. I bought a ticket. I like wreaths. The auditorium opened, so I looked for my son's name in the program while the lights were still on, and then I found a seat.
It's Saturday now, 10 days before Christmas. After weeks of unseasonable and unreasonable cold, it's in the 50s, which would normally be a very good development. And I'm definitely happy not to be cold. But it's also pouring rain for the second day in a row and it's supposed to rain again all day tomorrow. Everything feels damp and the whole world looks gray and dirty and ragged around the edges. Not Christmas-y at all. Blah. Humbug.
Meanwhile, my house is still a flaming hot mess. I never realized before how much energy I get from being at home. Some people get their energy and creativity come from the outside world. But mine comes from family and familiar surroundings. Orderly surroundings. I woke up this morning and didn't know how to organize my day. Everything seemed out of sorts and it made me tired. Thank goodness for high school swim meets--part of the day was already planned for me, and all I had to do was to get up and out to where I needed to be. And the rest would sort itself out.
We have been sleeping in the spare room, which doesn't sound bad and it actually isn't. The dresser in there is piled high with books and the bed is hemmed in by bookcases and dressers and rolled up area rugs. You have to tunnel your way to the bed but once you get there it's quite cozy. I have been sleeping unusually well. The fortress of furniture makes the room darker and more conducive to sleep. But it's also because the unaccustomed disorder has left me more tired than usual. I'm a hothouse flower. A tired one.
It's Sunday now. I had hoped that the rest of yesterday would sort itself out, and it did. An unexpected last-minute babysitting request from my sister-in-law was just the thing. Toddlers are full of Christmas spirit. And we managed to reschedule the carpet installation, for Wednesday. So I only have to live amid chaos for a few more days. We're going to put the place back together and buy a Christmas tree and and have the hap- hap- happiest Christmas since Bing Crosby danced with Danny fucking Kaye.
In and of itself, of course, carpet installation is not a bad idea. Carpet is a one-day job, assuming that all goes according to plan. It's that "assuming" part that's complicated; that, and the "all going according to plan." Because you never know for sure what's under the old carpet until you rip it out.
You see where this is going, don't you? Remember when I wrote that I'd write again when my house was clean? Oh, the naivete. Right now, I have no carpet and no floor other than concrete in half the house, and the furniture is all jammed into the kitchen and two bedrooms. It's cold and dusty and cluttered. We can't even get to our beds.
Long story short(er), there was a problem with the old parquet that was under the carpet, so we had to rip it out. That was an easier job than I expected. But now we have to clean up the dust and glue and broken parquet, which is another day's worth of work. And the carpet installer is telling me that they can't come back until after Christmas, which I am supposed to host. I know that there are bigger problems than this, but this one seems bad enough right now. I don't like dirt and disorder and disruption and I'm neck-deep in all three. It's Christmas Vacation, and Cousin Eddie just pulled up in the RV.
And you know what? The shitter is full. The shitter is all the way full.
*****
It's the next day now, the next day being Wednesday. So yesterday was Tuesday. It's all a blur. We still have concrete floors in half of our house and furniture in places where God never designed it to go, but things are looking up a bit. My husband took today off and cleaned the floors, which were covered with dust and debris from yesterday's parquet removal adventure. We moved some furniture around, just enough that we can get in and out of the bedrooms. And the kitchen and family room are almost normal, so we have a little oasis of near-order and almost-calm. It's not my ideal household state, but it's a marked improvement over yesterday. Meanwhile, I'm working on gently persuading the carpet installers to try to find room for us in their busy busy schedule. I'm pretty persuasive; and what I lack in persuasion power, I make up for in persistence. I don't know when my house will be back to normal again, but I think it will happen before Santa shoves his fat white ass down the chimney.
*****
So it's Thursday now. I still don't have carpet but they might be able to move our installation date to next week. It's not tomorrow but it's not the day after Christmas either. It's an improvement. It's a move in the right direction. Progress.
I'm writing this on my phone as I stand in the main hallway at Rockville High School, waiting for the auditorium to open. It's concert night and the place is abuzz. Clusters of parents are chatting while young people in black concert dress zip back and forth, instruments in hand and sheet music trailing behind them. The snack bar is selling chips and soda and holiday treats and the booster club is selling raffle tickets. Prize: A Christmas wreath. I bought a ticket. I like wreaths. The auditorium opened, so I looked for my son's name in the program while the lights were still on, and then I found a seat.
*****
Meanwhile, my house is still a flaming hot mess. I never realized before how much energy I get from being at home. Some people get their energy and creativity come from the outside world. But mine comes from family and familiar surroundings. Orderly surroundings. I woke up this morning and didn't know how to organize my day. Everything seemed out of sorts and it made me tired. Thank goodness for high school swim meets--part of the day was already planned for me, and all I had to do was to get up and out to where I needed to be. And the rest would sort itself out.
We have been sleeping in the spare room, which doesn't sound bad and it actually isn't. The dresser in there is piled high with books and the bed is hemmed in by bookcases and dressers and rolled up area rugs. You have to tunnel your way to the bed but once you get there it's quite cozy. I have been sleeping unusually well. The fortress of furniture makes the room darker and more conducive to sleep. But it's also because the unaccustomed disorder has left me more tired than usual. I'm a hothouse flower. A tired one.
*****
Monday, December 10, 2018
Domestic affairs
Thursday: I worked from home yesterday. The federal government was closed for the Bush 41 day of mourning. So I worked on my couch, with Bush's funeral as background noise.
It was interesting to watch the first row. Much has already been written about the cold reception that President Trump received from most of the the other members of the club, now down to five members. I guess it's no better than he should have expected, but I'd have liked to see the others take the high road and welcome him with open arms. The magnanimous gesture would have been lost on him, of course, but that's not the point. The Obamas were polite, at least.
Aside from the Trump vs. everyone dynamic, it's always interesting to see former and current Presidents and First Ladies and other high-ranking people at events such as these, stuck in the rare position of having to sit and wait for something that has nothing to do with them. Trump arrived just before the service was to begin, but even he had to sit and wait for ten minutes, without fidgeting, without looking at his phone, without anything to do but to sit and try to look solemn and serious. I actually felt sorry for him. But none of the others looked comfortable either, except for Jimmy Carter, who at 94 has reached the point at which he no longer cares what anyone thinks, and no longer has enough time to waste on grudges or politics. Carter sat reading the program, looking calmly around, and waiting patiently for the service to begin. He seemed quite at ease.
*****
Friday: It's been a very busy week. I had planned, after I finished my work for today, to watch the first episode of the second season of "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel." And then I found out that "84 Charing Cross Road" was on TV, and I had to stop what I was doing to watch it.
"84 Charing Cross Road" is based on the book of the same title, which I have never read. Helene Hanff was a freelance writer and publisher's reader who also loved books. During the years between 1949 and 1969, she wrote letters to the London bookshop that shipped books to her in New York. During those 20 years, she became close friends with the shop's staff. They exchanged letters and photos; and in the early years of their friendship, Helene sent them care packages of food and nylons and other luxuries that were extremely scarce in post-war England.
I love almost everything about this movie. It was made in 1987, a trash year for movies. Anne Bancroft stars as Helene Hanff, with Anthony Perkins as Frank Doel, the shop's manager. The costumes and sets are mid-century perfection; colors that are muted and bright all at once, and book-lined apartments, and beautiful wool coats and suits; and New York and London and the Queen. I wish people dressed like this still. I wish people acted like this still. I won't spoil the (sad but happy) ending. It would have helped me to know, in 1987, that such a beautiful and true friendship between a man and a woman was possible, and I wish I'd seen this movie then. But I'm glad I know about it now.
*****
Sunday: Yesterday, I refereed a high school swim meet in the morning, and then spent all afternoon Christmas shopping. Then I was just too tired to write anything; hence the skipped day.
I got home just as the light was fading. I love being home at that moment, no matter what time of day it occurs, but especially in the winter. I slept on the couch for a bit--only half an hour or so, but it was the kind of blackout sleep that feels like an entire winter night distilled and condensed into a few minutes. When I woke up, it was dark.
Then we went to a Christmas party. It's a Christmas party that we go to every year, where we see people whom we almost never see at any other time. And it's nice to see them, and after over 10 years, we joke that it's not Christmas until we see each other. It's the kind of party where the coats and handbags are piled on a bed, and the dining room table is spread with the same snacks and treats that the hosts serve every year, and the coolers of beer are on the deck, and people congregate in the kitchen and the partly finished basement where additional snacks and drinks await the guests who are in the know. It was a nice time. I'll see everyone next December.
*****
Monday: Well, the whole operation is a shambles right now. We're getting new carpet tomorrow, and you have to move stuff around to make room for the carpet layers. Because of the carpet installation, we're also a little later than usual with our Christmas tree. It's a mess, and I'll be breathing into a paper bag until this place is back in its customary order.
I have to work from home so that I can direct the proceedings. Fortunately, the room that I work in is not affected. I've never had carpet installed before, so I don't know what to expect other than a bunch of guys and some carpet and some furniture moving hither and yon. They're professionals, so I assume that they know what they're doing.
*****
I'm not going to have time to turn this into something readable, or to tie it together with any unifying theme. Last week, a state funeral was background noise for my workday; tomorrow, it will be carpet-laying sounds, assuming that carpet-laying has any distinctive sounds. I'll write again as soon as I have a clean house.
It was interesting to watch the first row. Much has already been written about the cold reception that President Trump received from most of the the other members of the club, now down to five members. I guess it's no better than he should have expected, but I'd have liked to see the others take the high road and welcome him with open arms. The magnanimous gesture would have been lost on him, of course, but that's not the point. The Obamas were polite, at least.
Aside from the Trump vs. everyone dynamic, it's always interesting to see former and current Presidents and First Ladies and other high-ranking people at events such as these, stuck in the rare position of having to sit and wait for something that has nothing to do with them. Trump arrived just before the service was to begin, but even he had to sit and wait for ten minutes, without fidgeting, without looking at his phone, without anything to do but to sit and try to look solemn and serious. I actually felt sorry for him. But none of the others looked comfortable either, except for Jimmy Carter, who at 94 has reached the point at which he no longer cares what anyone thinks, and no longer has enough time to waste on grudges or politics. Carter sat reading the program, looking calmly around, and waiting patiently for the service to begin. He seemed quite at ease.
*****
Friday: It's been a very busy week. I had planned, after I finished my work for today, to watch the first episode of the second season of "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel." And then I found out that "84 Charing Cross Road" was on TV, and I had to stop what I was doing to watch it.
"84 Charing Cross Road" is based on the book of the same title, which I have never read. Helene Hanff was a freelance writer and publisher's reader who also loved books. During the years between 1949 and 1969, she wrote letters to the London bookshop that shipped books to her in New York. During those 20 years, she became close friends with the shop's staff. They exchanged letters and photos; and in the early years of their friendship, Helene sent them care packages of food and nylons and other luxuries that were extremely scarce in post-war England.
I love almost everything about this movie. It was made in 1987, a trash year for movies. Anne Bancroft stars as Helene Hanff, with Anthony Perkins as Frank Doel, the shop's manager. The costumes and sets are mid-century perfection; colors that are muted and bright all at once, and book-lined apartments, and beautiful wool coats and suits; and New York and London and the Queen. I wish people dressed like this still. I wish people acted like this still. I won't spoil the (sad but happy) ending. It would have helped me to know, in 1987, that such a beautiful and true friendship between a man and a woman was possible, and I wish I'd seen this movie then. But I'm glad I know about it now.
*****
Sunday: Yesterday, I refereed a high school swim meet in the morning, and then spent all afternoon Christmas shopping. Then I was just too tired to write anything; hence the skipped day.
I got home just as the light was fading. I love being home at that moment, no matter what time of day it occurs, but especially in the winter. I slept on the couch for a bit--only half an hour or so, but it was the kind of blackout sleep that feels like an entire winter night distilled and condensed into a few minutes. When I woke up, it was dark.
Then we went to a Christmas party. It's a Christmas party that we go to every year, where we see people whom we almost never see at any other time. And it's nice to see them, and after over 10 years, we joke that it's not Christmas until we see each other. It's the kind of party where the coats and handbags are piled on a bed, and the dining room table is spread with the same snacks and treats that the hosts serve every year, and the coolers of beer are on the deck, and people congregate in the kitchen and the partly finished basement where additional snacks and drinks await the guests who are in the know. It was a nice time. I'll see everyone next December.
*****
Monday: Well, the whole operation is a shambles right now. We're getting new carpet tomorrow, and you have to move stuff around to make room for the carpet layers. Because of the carpet installation, we're also a little later than usual with our Christmas tree. It's a mess, and I'll be breathing into a paper bag until this place is back in its customary order.
I have to work from home so that I can direct the proceedings. Fortunately, the room that I work in is not affected. I've never had carpet installed before, so I don't know what to expect other than a bunch of guys and some carpet and some furniture moving hither and yon. They're professionals, so I assume that they know what they're doing.
*****
I'm not going to have time to turn this into something readable, or to tie it together with any unifying theme. Last week, a state funeral was background noise for my workday; tomorrow, it will be carpet-laying sounds, assuming that carpet-laying has any distinctive sounds. I'll write again as soon as I have a clean house.
Wednesday, December 5, 2018
SIng with me
Friday: Last night, my sons and I were driving home from dinner and I found myself singing along with Aerosmith's "Dream On." This is a song that was already old when I was a teenager, and my snotty 18-year-old self would not have been caught dead singing along with it or any song like it, even if dead people could sing.
In fact, I am so completely not a fan of 70s classic rock that I wasn't even sure if "Dream On" was an Aerosmith or Led Zeppelin song, though I was pretty sure that it was one of the two. So I looked it up, and found that this question is a pretty common one. Go ahead and Google "Dream On Aerosmith." The suggested auto-fill options will include "Dream On Aerosmith or Led Zeppelin."
I sang along with my sons, wondering if the song is actually good, and I just never realized it before; or if I'm just developing a new appreciation for the things of my youth. I'm pretty sure it's the latter.
*****
Saturday: Did you know that Charles Mound, elevation approximately 1,200 feet, is the highest point in Illinois? The mountain range closest to Chicago is the Great Smoky range, over 500 miles distant. Have you ever looked this up? If so, was it because you were watching "Christmas Vacation," and you wondered how far the Chicago-based Griswolds would have had to drive to cut down a tree in the mountains?
No? Just me?
*****
It's December 1, so we're watching "Christmas Vacation." It's not my favorite Christmas movie, but my teenage sons love it so much that it's entered my top ten. I sing along to "Mele Kalikimaka," while my younger son whistles. He is an exceptionally good whistler, and I can carry a tune, so we sound pretty good. It's cozy here, and I have to say that we're the jolliest bunch of assholes this side of the nuthouse.
*****
Diane Ladd played Chevy Chase's mother in "Christmas Vacation." They are eight years apart in age.
*****
Monday: Diane Ladd had to fake old ladyhood in "Christmas Vacation," but my Nana is the real thing. Nana looks very much like Aunt Bethany; though unlike poor Aunt Bethany, my grandmother is still as sharp as the proverbial tack. She might wrap up a cat and give it as a gift, but she'd do it on purpose. And you can trust me that if someone asked my Nana to say grace, she wouldn't confuse it with the Pledge of Allegiance, or with anything else.
She'd be quick about it, too. Like most Catholics of her generation, my grandmother is devout, but she doesn't waste time on long, flowery prayers. And she doesn't waste a lot of time on the phone, either; partly because she doesn't hear too well anymore, and because she doesn't like long phone calls. This is a sentiment that I share. I just spoke to Nana, to wish her a happy 95th birthday. It was a five-minute call.
*****
When you're 95, you watch as your spouse and siblings and friends and contemporaries die, one by one. My grandmother is lucky; she hasn't outlived her children, and her health is as good as a 95-year-old can expect. She had to give up driving about 10 years ago (and about five years after she should have); and she can't read any but the largest print anymore. And now she's outliving all of the greatest figures of her generation.
George H.W. Bush was born a few months after my grandmother. They lived very different lives, but they shared the experience of having been very young, but very grown-up, during a time of war. Like Barbara Bush, my grandmother married very young (18) and then waited for her husband to return from the war. Unlike the Bushes, my grandparents were ordinary, working-class people. Neither George H.W. Bush nor my cranky, Trump-supporter (yes) Nana led perfect lives, but they did the best they could and that's all anyone can ask. They are among the last of a generation that lived during a time when their country was almost totally united.
I wasn't a Bush supporter. I didn't vote for 41 or 43. But today was still a sad and solemn day. Maybe it's just nostalgia. Maybe President Bush is like an old Aerosmith song, and I like him now because he's a thing of my youth.
No, it's more than that. Politics aside, there's no hypocrisy in recognizing George H.W. Bush's greatness, as a public servant and as a human. Politics aside, there's no way that a reasonable, feeling person could fail to be moved at the sight of 95-year-old Bob Dole assisted from his wheelchair to give a standing salute to his friend. An era has ended. The past is gone.
In fact, I am so completely not a fan of 70s classic rock that I wasn't even sure if "Dream On" was an Aerosmith or Led Zeppelin song, though I was pretty sure that it was one of the two. So I looked it up, and found that this question is a pretty common one. Go ahead and Google "Dream On Aerosmith." The suggested auto-fill options will include "Dream On Aerosmith or Led Zeppelin."
I sang along with my sons, wondering if the song is actually good, and I just never realized it before; or if I'm just developing a new appreciation for the things of my youth. I'm pretty sure it's the latter.
*****
Saturday: Did you know that Charles Mound, elevation approximately 1,200 feet, is the highest point in Illinois? The mountain range closest to Chicago is the Great Smoky range, over 500 miles distant. Have you ever looked this up? If so, was it because you were watching "Christmas Vacation," and you wondered how far the Chicago-based Griswolds would have had to drive to cut down a tree in the mountains?
No? Just me?
*****
It's December 1, so we're watching "Christmas Vacation." It's not my favorite Christmas movie, but my teenage sons love it so much that it's entered my top ten. I sing along to "Mele Kalikimaka," while my younger son whistles. He is an exceptionally good whistler, and I can carry a tune, so we sound pretty good. It's cozy here, and I have to say that we're the jolliest bunch of assholes this side of the nuthouse.
*****
Diane Ladd played Chevy Chase's mother in "Christmas Vacation." They are eight years apart in age.
*****
Monday: Diane Ladd had to fake old ladyhood in "Christmas Vacation," but my Nana is the real thing. Nana looks very much like Aunt Bethany; though unlike poor Aunt Bethany, my grandmother is still as sharp as the proverbial tack. She might wrap up a cat and give it as a gift, but she'd do it on purpose. And you can trust me that if someone asked my Nana to say grace, she wouldn't confuse it with the Pledge of Allegiance, or with anything else.
She'd be quick about it, too. Like most Catholics of her generation, my grandmother is devout, but she doesn't waste time on long, flowery prayers. And she doesn't waste a lot of time on the phone, either; partly because she doesn't hear too well anymore, and because she doesn't like long phone calls. This is a sentiment that I share. I just spoke to Nana, to wish her a happy 95th birthday. It was a five-minute call.
*****
When you're 95, you watch as your spouse and siblings and friends and contemporaries die, one by one. My grandmother is lucky; she hasn't outlived her children, and her health is as good as a 95-year-old can expect. She had to give up driving about 10 years ago (and about five years after she should have); and she can't read any but the largest print anymore. And now she's outliving all of the greatest figures of her generation.
George H.W. Bush was born a few months after my grandmother. They lived very different lives, but they shared the experience of having been very young, but very grown-up, during a time of war. Like Barbara Bush, my grandmother married very young (18) and then waited for her husband to return from the war. Unlike the Bushes, my grandparents were ordinary, working-class people. Neither George H.W. Bush nor my cranky, Trump-supporter (yes) Nana led perfect lives, but they did the best they could and that's all anyone can ask. They are among the last of a generation that lived during a time when their country was almost totally united.
I wasn't a Bush supporter. I didn't vote for 41 or 43. But today was still a sad and solemn day. Maybe it's just nostalgia. Maybe President Bush is like an old Aerosmith song, and I like him now because he's a thing of my youth.
No, it's more than that. Politics aside, there's no hypocrisy in recognizing George H.W. Bush's greatness, as a public servant and as a human. Politics aside, there's no way that a reasonable, feeling person could fail to be moved at the sight of 95-year-old Bob Dole assisted from his wheelchair to give a standing salute to his friend. An era has ended. The past is gone.
Thursday, November 29, 2018
On an island and under the sea
I'm reading The Long-Winded Lady, a compilation of essays by Maeve Brennan. She was an Irish writer who for many years published short pieces in the New Yorker, under the pen name of The Long-Winded Lady. It's hard to describe her writing. They're not really essays at all, just little bits of observation, almost all about a very small piece of New York City where Brennan lived. She writes about the same handful of restaurants where she ate lunch and dinner almost every day, and about the series of hotel rooms and apartments where she lived (never, it seems, for more than a few months at a time), and about the passing scene on the city blocks where she lived and worked.
There's almost no dialogue in these essays. She writes about people, but from a remote observer's perspective. I'm about halfway through the 500 or so pages, and I don't think she wrote anything about anyone whom she actually knew. Only descriptions of strangers--their clothes (she seemed to love fashion and was knowledgeable about cuts and fabrics), their manners, their restaurant orders.
People say that big cities are the most provincial of places. I don't know who those people are, but I know that someone said that, and it wasn't me. Anyway, Maeve Brennan's New York is not so much provincial as just tiny and self-contained. She writes with great sophistication about sophisticated people and places but she seems not to have strayed beyond an area of 16 or so square blocks, except for occasional theater visits.
Because the essays are so sparsely populated, mostly with people whom Brennan didn't seem to know, they have a very lonely quality. If you have ever been in New York City (or any other big city) on a Sunday in August, you will have an idea of what it feels like to read The Long-Winded Lady. Still, the book is not sad or depressing. She writes so little about herself--even when she tells us where she had dinner, she doesn't tell us what she ate--that the reader senses that there's a lot more to this woman than she's sharing. It's like you're looking into the wrong end of a telescope, seeing a compressed and constricted view of a landscape that would be enormous, if only you could see it through the right side of the telescope.
*****
As good as The Long-Winded Lady is, it's not a completely original and groundbreaking work of art. If you've read Louis Auchincloss or Mary McCarthy or any other upper-class mid-century New York writer, then you already know something about Maeve Brennan's New York.
*****
Here's what was completely original and groundbreaking:
I used to tell friends that I didn't know what I'd do when my children grew up, because then I wouldn't have an excuse to watch SpongeBob anymore. Fortunately, they like him just as much now as they did when they were toddlers, wide awake at the crack of dawn on Saturday morning. Only a visionary artist could have imagined an undersea world populated by cheapskate crabs, megalomaniac plankton, cynical squids, idiot starfish, bottom-dwelling squirrels; and hard-working, relentlessly cheerful, fun-loving sponges. Bikini Bottom is a world unto itself, completely original, populated by characters who are unalterably themselves in every circumstance
SpongeBob SquarePants is hilariously funny, and that would be enough. But it's much more than that. Almost every episode offers wise and compassionate insight into humanity (well, so to speak) in all its beauty and stupidity and strength and weakness and joy and bitterness. Does that seem a little much for a cartoon? Watch "Tentacle Acres" or "Band Geeks" or "The Algae's Always Greener" and you'll see what I mean. Or just watch "Sailor Mouth" or "The Inmates of Summer," and laugh your head off.
SpongeBob will live forever; but Stephen Hillenburg, his creator, died this week. I hope he knew how special SpongeBob is, and how much he means to so many people. I hope he rests in peace.
There's almost no dialogue in these essays. She writes about people, but from a remote observer's perspective. I'm about halfway through the 500 or so pages, and I don't think she wrote anything about anyone whom she actually knew. Only descriptions of strangers--their clothes (she seemed to love fashion and was knowledgeable about cuts and fabrics), their manners, their restaurant orders.
People say that big cities are the most provincial of places. I don't know who those people are, but I know that someone said that, and it wasn't me. Anyway, Maeve Brennan's New York is not so much provincial as just tiny and self-contained. She writes with great sophistication about sophisticated people and places but she seems not to have strayed beyond an area of 16 or so square blocks, except for occasional theater visits.
Because the essays are so sparsely populated, mostly with people whom Brennan didn't seem to know, they have a very lonely quality. If you have ever been in New York City (or any other big city) on a Sunday in August, you will have an idea of what it feels like to read The Long-Winded Lady. Still, the book is not sad or depressing. She writes so little about herself--even when she tells us where she had dinner, she doesn't tell us what she ate--that the reader senses that there's a lot more to this woman than she's sharing. It's like you're looking into the wrong end of a telescope, seeing a compressed and constricted view of a landscape that would be enormous, if only you could see it through the right side of the telescope.
*****
As good as The Long-Winded Lady is, it's not a completely original and groundbreaking work of art. If you've read Louis Auchincloss or Mary McCarthy or any other upper-class mid-century New York writer, then you already know something about Maeve Brennan's New York.
*****
Here's what was completely original and groundbreaking:
 |
| Even Squidward is smiling. Kind of. |
SpongeBob SquarePants is hilariously funny, and that would be enough. But it's much more than that. Almost every episode offers wise and compassionate insight into humanity (well, so to speak) in all its beauty and stupidity and strength and weakness and joy and bitterness. Does that seem a little much for a cartoon? Watch "Tentacle Acres" or "Band Geeks" or "The Algae's Always Greener" and you'll see what I mean. Or just watch "Sailor Mouth" or "The Inmates of Summer," and laugh your head off.
SpongeBob will live forever; but Stephen Hillenburg, his creator, died this week. I hope he knew how special SpongeBob is, and how much he means to so many people. I hope he rests in peace.
Friday, November 23, 2018
Holiday
It's Thanksgiving weekend; Friday to be exact. I didn't have to cook dinner this year, other than mashed potatoes, so yesterday was a pretty easy day, but of course, now I don't have a refrigerator full of Thanksgiving leftovers, either. There's always a price to pay.
*****
Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. I like the food, I like the thin sunlight streaming through the nearly bare trees on Thanksgiving morning, and I like seeing the happy mothers reunited with their college children for a weekend. I like the overstocked grocery stores and the busy restaurants on the Monday and Tuesday of Thanksgiving week, as people rush around collecting their groceries and avoiding their kitchens until Thanksgiving day. I like the simplicity. No one expects more than to eat a little bit too much, and then to lounge with their families around the fireplace or the TV, waiting for the food coma to set in.
I usually watch AMC's Thanksgiving Godfather marathon as I cook. My husband teases me. "This again?" he says. "Haven't you seen this movie like a hundred times?" This is a ridiculous exaggeration. I've seen The Godfather and The Godfather II no more than twenty-five times each. Thirty at MOST. My husband, however, watches football nearly every Sunday, and for a good part of Thanksgiving weekend every year. If anyone wishes to explain to me how every single football telecast is not EXACTLY like every other football telecast, I'll listen with polite interest. Only after you're no longer in the room will I roll my eyes and say "whatever" as I reach for the remote to turn the Corleones back on.
*****
We host a neighborhood get-together on the Saturday of Thanksgiving weekend, so I shopped for food today. It's much colder than usual this Thanksgiving weekend, but that only enhances the cozy atmosphere. Other than potatoes, I didn't cook yesterday. And other than breakfast eggs, I'm not cooking today, either. I'll finish readying the house for the party, and we'll eat some takeout, and then we'll go to the movies. I have to work a bit on Sunday because proposal deadlines wait for no one. I don't know why government contracting officers set proposal deadlines for the Monday following a holiday weekend, but I know better than to ask people about their business. But it's OK. A little work will make me feel a little less spoiled and over-privileged, a little less embarrassed by this embarrassment of riches. Happy Thanksgiving. Leave the gun, but take the cannoli.
*****
Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. I like the food, I like the thin sunlight streaming through the nearly bare trees on Thanksgiving morning, and I like seeing the happy mothers reunited with their college children for a weekend. I like the overstocked grocery stores and the busy restaurants on the Monday and Tuesday of Thanksgiving week, as people rush around collecting their groceries and avoiding their kitchens until Thanksgiving day. I like the simplicity. No one expects more than to eat a little bit too much, and then to lounge with their families around the fireplace or the TV, waiting for the food coma to set in.
I usually watch AMC's Thanksgiving Godfather marathon as I cook. My husband teases me. "This again?" he says. "Haven't you seen this movie like a hundred times?" This is a ridiculous exaggeration. I've seen The Godfather and The Godfather II no more than twenty-five times each. Thirty at MOST. My husband, however, watches football nearly every Sunday, and for a good part of Thanksgiving weekend every year. If anyone wishes to explain to me how every single football telecast is not EXACTLY like every other football telecast, I'll listen with polite interest. Only after you're no longer in the room will I roll my eyes and say "whatever" as I reach for the remote to turn the Corleones back on.
*****
We host a neighborhood get-together on the Saturday of Thanksgiving weekend, so I shopped for food today. It's much colder than usual this Thanksgiving weekend, but that only enhances the cozy atmosphere. Other than potatoes, I didn't cook yesterday. And other than breakfast eggs, I'm not cooking today, either. I'll finish readying the house for the party, and we'll eat some takeout, and then we'll go to the movies. I have to work a bit on Sunday because proposal deadlines wait for no one. I don't know why government contracting officers set proposal deadlines for the Monday following a holiday weekend, but I know better than to ask people about their business. But it's OK. A little work will make me feel a little less spoiled and over-privileged, a little less embarrassed by this embarrassment of riches. Happy Thanksgiving. Leave the gun, but take the cannoli.
Monday, November 19, 2018
Cahier d'affaires
When I was in Montreal this past summer (oh, summer--how I miss you), I bought a French-language day planner for 2019. Now I'm not so sure about it. It's fine that it's in French; I know the days of the week and the months of the year. It's the format, and the tiny font. I can't see it. I don't want to talk about my eyesight right now. But it's not so good.
I started shopping for a different planner, but there are way too many to choose from. So many formats. So many "dashboards" (a candidate, along with "metrics," for most overused business word ever). I'm not sure how a paper calendar page, no matter how complex its layout, can be called a "dashboard," but that's a question for another day. Meanwhile, I'll probably just stick with the planner that I bought. C'est bien.
Anyway, French or English, a planner is necessary because I have a lot of stuff to keep track of. I'm busy morning to night, and I don't want to stop. I get anxious when I stop moving. So I keep moving.
*****
The early 50s are an interesting age to be. I have friends who are just a few years older, and they're winding down. They're not quite ready to retire, but they're planning for it, and not just in a vague, pie-in-the-sky, "someday when I retire" way. They're making concrete arrangements, and picking the actual dates when they'll just stop working.
Sometimes when I'm tired, I think that it would be nice to just retreat from the world; and I wish, just for a moment, that I was also winding down. Then I think about the implications of not having enough to do, and not being needed every day, and the whole idea of leisure loses its charm. I see the TV commercials with the soon-to-retire couples (the woman always appears to be a decade younger than her husband) meeting with their financial adviser and planning for 30 or so years of travel and gardening and boating and beach-sitting and all of the other things that people are supposed to want to do during retirement, and I just can't imagine myself embarking on a life of full-time rest.
*****
via GIPHY
Well, maybe.
*****
When Social Security and the idea of retirement as a lifestyle were invented average life expectancy was pretty low compared to now. The idea of Social Security was that if you survived past 65, then you probably wouldn't be strong enough to keep working, and there should be some sort of safety net that would allow you to spend your last few years in relative comfort and security. And I'm all for this. I'm human, so I like comfort and security. I also like travel and beach-sitting as much as the next person,. But I don't think that we're meant to spend so much time idle. People live into their 80s now, but they still retire in their 60s. Beyond the obvious strain that 20-plus years of retirement puts on a system that was designed to support two to five years at most, there's the larger question of what we as human beings were created for. As much as any person might enjoy decades of carefree downtime, it's probably not what we're meant to do.
*****
I like working. I like having something to do every day that's important and meaningful. I like making money. I like making friends with the people I work with, and having people to commiserate with when things go badly, and to celebrate with when things go well. I like taking care of my family. I don't want to stop doing those things now or any time soon.
Plus, I have a kid starting college next year.
*****
This started with something about a planner, didn't it? I don't know how it turned into a manifesto for delayed retirement and productive old age. I almost included a side trip into the (real, I promise you) world of food nostalgia. That's a whole post in itself. Something to look forward to, n'est-ce pas?
I started shopping for a different planner, but there are way too many to choose from. So many formats. So many "dashboards" (a candidate, along with "metrics," for most overused business word ever). I'm not sure how a paper calendar page, no matter how complex its layout, can be called a "dashboard," but that's a question for another day. Meanwhile, I'll probably just stick with the planner that I bought. C'est bien.
 |
| There's a lot going on on this page, isn't there? And it's all in French, and too small to read. |
Anyway, French or English, a planner is necessary because I have a lot of stuff to keep track of. I'm busy morning to night, and I don't want to stop. I get anxious when I stop moving. So I keep moving.
*****
The early 50s are an interesting age to be. I have friends who are just a few years older, and they're winding down. They're not quite ready to retire, but they're planning for it, and not just in a vague, pie-in-the-sky, "someday when I retire" way. They're making concrete arrangements, and picking the actual dates when they'll just stop working.
Sometimes when I'm tired, I think that it would be nice to just retreat from the world; and I wish, just for a moment, that I was also winding down. Then I think about the implications of not having enough to do, and not being needed every day, and the whole idea of leisure loses its charm. I see the TV commercials with the soon-to-retire couples (the woman always appears to be a decade younger than her husband) meeting with their financial adviser and planning for 30 or so years of travel and gardening and boating and beach-sitting and all of the other things that people are supposed to want to do during retirement, and I just can't imagine myself embarking on a life of full-time rest.
*****
via GIPHY
Well, maybe.
*****
When Social Security and the idea of retirement as a lifestyle were invented average life expectancy was pretty low compared to now. The idea of Social Security was that if you survived past 65, then you probably wouldn't be strong enough to keep working, and there should be some sort of safety net that would allow you to spend your last few years in relative comfort and security. And I'm all for this. I'm human, so I like comfort and security. I also like travel and beach-sitting as much as the next person,. But I don't think that we're meant to spend so much time idle. People live into their 80s now, but they still retire in their 60s. Beyond the obvious strain that 20-plus years of retirement puts on a system that was designed to support two to five years at most, there's the larger question of what we as human beings were created for. As much as any person might enjoy decades of carefree downtime, it's probably not what we're meant to do.
*****
I like working. I like having something to do every day that's important and meaningful. I like making money. I like making friends with the people I work with, and having people to commiserate with when things go badly, and to celebrate with when things go well. I like taking care of my family. I don't want to stop doing those things now or any time soon.
Plus, I have a kid starting college next year.
*****
This started with something about a planner, didn't it? I don't know how it turned into a manifesto for delayed retirement and productive old age. I almost included a side trip into the (real, I promise you) world of food nostalgia. That's a whole post in itself. Something to look forward to, n'est-ce pas?
Thursday, November 15, 2018
Highlights
I just finished Wallflower at the Orgy, and it turns out that Nora Ephron is just as honest about herself as Joan Didion. Maybe even more so. In an essay titled "Makeover," she writes about the women's magazine makeover craze of the 70s and 80s, and her personal experience with plastic surgery and high-fashion hair and makeup, and her disappointment with the results on herself. As a woman who learned early how to be funny because I wasn't going to get attention any other way, I completely understand her reaction to a makeup artist's claim that he can make any woman interesting if not beautiful:
"But I am interesting. It's beautiful I want to be."
Yeah, Nora. I know.
*****
Nora Ephron knew about interesting at the macro and micro levels. She writes about the famous and influential people of the time--Helen Gurley Brown, Bill Blass, James Beard and Craig Claiborne, Jacqueline Susann--and in a sentence or two you understand something essential to their personalities; and then in just another sentence or two, you see how they turned their particular preoccupations into hugely influential cultural trends. For better or for worse (it's hard for me to think of Helen Gurley Brown's influence as anything but disastrous, though I believe that she sincerely thought that she was helping young women), Ephron's subjects shaped the popular culture in which I came of age.
This has always been an interesting topic to me. With unusual prescience that allows them to see a shift in tastes or beliefs just before it materializes, some people just know what will be in or out a few minutes before the rest of us catch on. Or by sheer force of personality, they make a trend happen, instead of just predicting it. I'm a quiet person most of the time (what Helen Gurley Brown would have called a "mouseburger") and I also tend not to notice things until they're utterly impossible to miss. A stylish person can explain to me why a particular look is good or bad, and I'll understand; but even if I had the ability to envision and create a new fashion or a new literary trend or a new direction in American cuisine, I don't think that people would follow my lead. And that's OK. Cultural icon status is too much responsibility for one person to bear.
*****
Now it's Veterans' Day; another unearned gift of a day off . At 4:38 PM, it's almost dark. It's cold and heavily overcast, so I can't see the sun setting; just the light gray solidly cloudy sky with an etching of dark gray almost-bare trees. The weekend is pretty much over, but that's OK, too. I squeezed as much out of the three days as I could, and now it's time to work again.
*****
Wednesday night. I'm watching hockey; the Washington Capitals (of course) vs. fucking Winnipeg. An uneventful game thus far. Not so the weather. It's November 14 and we're already bracing for the dreaded, God-forsaken, bane-of-the-Northeast's-existence "wintry mix," my least-favorite two-word combination other than "password reset." It's going to be a long winter. Snow in November is neither interesting nor beautiful.
*****
The Capitals lost. They're very inconsistent this year. It's Thursday now. Icy pavements and sleet tapping on the windows and temperatures hovering just below freezing. I'm not ready for this dead-of-winter nonsense in the middle of November. The January inertia is descending and it's not even Thanksgiving.
On the other hand, the weather forced cancellation of an evening meeting that I hadn't been looking forward to, and now I'm finished everything I needed to do today at the delightfully early hour of 8:30 PM. Even winter has its consolations. I'm awash in free time, so I'll find something new to read. If I don't have anything coherent to say next week (because why should next week be different from any other), then at least I'll have book reviews, weather reports, and sports highlights. You've been warned
"But I am interesting. It's beautiful I want to be."
Yeah, Nora. I know.
*****
Nora Ephron knew about interesting at the macro and micro levels. She writes about the famous and influential people of the time--Helen Gurley Brown, Bill Blass, James Beard and Craig Claiborne, Jacqueline Susann--and in a sentence or two you understand something essential to their personalities; and then in just another sentence or two, you see how they turned their particular preoccupations into hugely influential cultural trends. For better or for worse (it's hard for me to think of Helen Gurley Brown's influence as anything but disastrous, though I believe that she sincerely thought that she was helping young women), Ephron's subjects shaped the popular culture in which I came of age.
This has always been an interesting topic to me. With unusual prescience that allows them to see a shift in tastes or beliefs just before it materializes, some people just know what will be in or out a few minutes before the rest of us catch on. Or by sheer force of personality, they make a trend happen, instead of just predicting it. I'm a quiet person most of the time (what Helen Gurley Brown would have called a "mouseburger") and I also tend not to notice things until they're utterly impossible to miss. A stylish person can explain to me why a particular look is good or bad, and I'll understand; but even if I had the ability to envision and create a new fashion or a new literary trend or a new direction in American cuisine, I don't think that people would follow my lead. And that's OK. Cultural icon status is too much responsibility for one person to bear.
*****
Now it's Veterans' Day; another unearned gift of a day off . At 4:38 PM, it's almost dark. It's cold and heavily overcast, so I can't see the sun setting; just the light gray solidly cloudy sky with an etching of dark gray almost-bare trees. The weekend is pretty much over, but that's OK, too. I squeezed as much out of the three days as I could, and now it's time to work again.
*****
Wednesday night. I'm watching hockey; the Washington Capitals (of course) vs. fucking Winnipeg. An uneventful game thus far. Not so the weather. It's November 14 and we're already bracing for the dreaded, God-forsaken, bane-of-the-Northeast's-existence "wintry mix," my least-favorite two-word combination other than "password reset." It's going to be a long winter. Snow in November is neither interesting nor beautiful.
*****
The Capitals lost. They're very inconsistent this year. It's Thursday now. Icy pavements and sleet tapping on the windows and temperatures hovering just below freezing. I'm not ready for this dead-of-winter nonsense in the middle of November. The January inertia is descending and it's not even Thanksgiving.
On the other hand, the weather forced cancellation of an evening meeting that I hadn't been looking forward to, and now I'm finished everything I needed to do today at the delightfully early hour of 8:30 PM. Even winter has its consolations. I'm awash in free time, so I'll find something new to read. If I don't have anything coherent to say next week (because why should next week be different from any other), then at least I'll have book reviews, weather reports, and sports highlights. You've been warned
Sunday, November 11, 2018
Auto-didact
I finished the Evita book, and learned more than I needed to know about the Perons and the whole sorry history of 20th century South American dictatorships. After Evita died, Argentina's political climate shifted so abruptly that exile for Juan Peron alone wasn't enough. Evita's body was also exiled, hidden in a graveyard in Italy under a false name, where it remained for nearly 20 years. Eva and Juan Peron were both objectively terrible people, and yet they inspired fanatical devotion among millions of followers. It was an instructive read.
*****
Anyway, I'm working my way through the Excel course, and it's also very instructive. I'm learning a lot. For example, did you know that you can turn an Excel rectangle into a square, or an oval into a circle? I don't know why you can't just start with a square or a circle. That's a question for Bill Gates.
I am a person who writes and thinks in mostly words. I look at a graph or a map or a diagram, and I have to methodically work my way through it before I can actually understand it. A quick glance at a picture doesn't help me to grasp an idea, unless I think backward step by step, relating each color or shape to the information that it represents.
I realize that this is just the opposite of what is supposed to happen and that many people find it very easy to absorb information when it's presented in a visual format. They're the same people who never get lost, and who can always cut the right-size sheet of wrapping paper just by looking at the gift they need to wrap. They're the people who always say that a picture is worth a thousand words. And maybe it is. But I like a thousand words.
But now that I'm learning more about how to use Excel, I'm seeing that a particular type of visual display can actually change the way you understand something, You'd think I'd have known this already, but I didn't. A histogram or a tree map or a pareto chart or a pie chart or a column and line chart all illuminate data in different ways. I thought that one chart vs. another was a stylistic choice--flats or high heels; a dress or a skirt and sweater. But it's more than that. It's more like the difference between wearing shoes and not wearing shoes-- you'll understand your feet differently shod or barefoot.
*****
With Evita and the crazy Peronistas out of my hair (and good riddance), I needed something new to read. So I'm reading Nora Ephron's Wallflower at the Orgy. It reminds me of what I thought my life was going to be when I was young.
The first essay is about the first generation of what were once called "foodies," and it made me remember a line from "When Harry Met Sally," when Carrie Fisher tells Bruno Kirby "Restaurants are to people in the 80s what theater was to people in the 60s;" and of course the reason that I remembered that line was that Nora Ephron wrote it.
Before this, I'd never read Nora Ephron's work. It's tempting to compare her with Joan Didion, and there are definitely parallels. But when you read Nora Ephron, you feel that she was fully immersed in and engaged with the world that she's writing about, the world of well-educated and attractive and stylish young people in New York City in the 1970s. She can claim to be a wallflower, just blending into the background, but there's nothing distant or disengaged about her writing.
Didion, on the other hand, remained at a cool and impenetrable distance and even though she was also fully immersed in a very rarefied and stylish world, she seemed removed from it somehow. But she is mercilessly honest about herself in her writing. I haven't read enough of Nora Ephron to know if she's as brave, but I'm looking forward to a visit to New York and Los Angeles in the 70s and 80s, when people believed that a regime like Peron's was a relic of another time and another place and could never happen here. It should be instructive.
*****
Anyway, I'm working my way through the Excel course, and it's also very instructive. I'm learning a lot. For example, did you know that you can turn an Excel rectangle into a square, or an oval into a circle? I don't know why you can't just start with a square or a circle. That's a question for Bill Gates.
I am a person who writes and thinks in mostly words. I look at a graph or a map or a diagram, and I have to methodically work my way through it before I can actually understand it. A quick glance at a picture doesn't help me to grasp an idea, unless I think backward step by step, relating each color or shape to the information that it represents.
I realize that this is just the opposite of what is supposed to happen and that many people find it very easy to absorb information when it's presented in a visual format. They're the same people who never get lost, and who can always cut the right-size sheet of wrapping paper just by looking at the gift they need to wrap. They're the people who always say that a picture is worth a thousand words. And maybe it is. But I like a thousand words.
But now that I'm learning more about how to use Excel, I'm seeing that a particular type of visual display can actually change the way you understand something, You'd think I'd have known this already, but I didn't. A histogram or a tree map or a pareto chart or a pie chart or a column and line chart all illuminate data in different ways. I thought that one chart vs. another was a stylistic choice--flats or high heels; a dress or a skirt and sweater. But it's more than that. It's more like the difference between wearing shoes and not wearing shoes-- you'll understand your feet differently shod or barefoot.
*****
With Evita and the crazy Peronistas out of my hair (and good riddance), I needed something new to read. So I'm reading Nora Ephron's Wallflower at the Orgy. It reminds me of what I thought my life was going to be when I was young.
The first essay is about the first generation of what were once called "foodies," and it made me remember a line from "When Harry Met Sally," when Carrie Fisher tells Bruno Kirby "Restaurants are to people in the 80s what theater was to people in the 60s;" and of course the reason that I remembered that line was that Nora Ephron wrote it.
Before this, I'd never read Nora Ephron's work. It's tempting to compare her with Joan Didion, and there are definitely parallels. But when you read Nora Ephron, you feel that she was fully immersed in and engaged with the world that she's writing about, the world of well-educated and attractive and stylish young people in New York City in the 1970s. She can claim to be a wallflower, just blending into the background, but there's nothing distant or disengaged about her writing.
Didion, on the other hand, remained at a cool and impenetrable distance and even though she was also fully immersed in a very rarefied and stylish world, she seemed removed from it somehow. But she is mercilessly honest about herself in her writing. I haven't read enough of Nora Ephron to know if she's as brave, but I'm looking forward to a visit to New York and Los Angeles in the 70s and 80s, when people believed that a regime like Peron's was a relic of another time and another place and could never happen here. It should be instructive.
Tuesday, November 6, 2018
Not a review
I don't write movie reviews. This partly because I'm not visually oriented, and partly because I don't have much to say about most movies other than "it was pretty good, I liked it." But every so often, I feel that my vast reading public is eager to know what I think about the latest cinematic offerings, and I do hate to disappoint.
So I saw "Can You Ever Forgive Me" a few days ago. I don't have a star- or thumb-based rating system, so I'll just say that it was really really good. Really good. I love Melissa McCarthy. Her performance in "Bridesmaids" was one of the funniest things I've ever seen in a movie, and my kids and I never tire of repeating funny lines from "Spy." Yes, I know. I'm the mother of the year.
As anyone who saw "Bridesmaids" knows, Melissa McCarthy is afraid of nothing. She looks genuinely unattractive through most of that movie, and I don't mean movie star unattractive--you know, when a beautiful actress wears very little makeup and a plain hairstyle and baggy clothes, but her perfect skin radiates with light and her plain hair shines like the sun and the baggy clothes draped over her broad shoulders and long legs make her look like the damn Statue of Liberty. No. I mean just plain, dumpy, badly dressed, stringy hair, splotchy skin unattractive.
Movie critics used to write about actors losing themselves in a role. You know what that means when you watch Melissa McCarthy in "Bridesmaids," and now in "Can You Ever Forgive Me." She plays physically unattractive women in both movies. In the former, she is brazenly confident, not for one moment acting as if she's unworthy to occupy space, like the world expects plain women to do. In "Can You Ever Forgive Me," she's very different--plain again, but her character shrinks into herself--not because she's ashamed of her looks but because she's depressed, and every movement outside the small shell that contains her expends far more energy than she has. Both characters-- the coarse, joyful, energetic Megan; and the exhausted, angry, desperate Lee-- are actual human beings.
I read a few reviews of "Can You Ever Forgive Me" before I actually saw it. The reviews all praise McCarthy for not compromising her performance to make the character more appealing. I suppose that the viewer isn't supposed to like Lee Israel, and I understand why. In addition to being a criminal, she's also worn down with anger and exhaustion, too tired to even get out of her clothes before falling into her unmade bed. Her apartment is disgustingly dirty, and her clothes are dingy and frayed. Her career is in ruins and she has no friends, only a cat. She's bitter and all but ready to give up, and not likable at all, except that I did like her. She's not the kind of person that I'd seek out as a friend, and I wanted to shake her and tell her to snap out of it, but I liked her.
Even though I'm not visually oriented, I do notice some details. When I was young in Philadelphia in the 1980s, I spent a lot of time in New York. My friends and I liked dive bars and vintage clothing stores and used bookstores. I think that the movie captured that part of New York in the 1980s. It takes place in 1991, but that's more the 80s than the 90s. That, in fact, is really key to the story, which happens in the very last moments before the Internet changed everything. The events depicted in the movie could not have happened a few years later, when people could look things up online and easily spot a forger.
*****
And here's another reason why I don't write movie reviews: I started writing this on Saturday afternoon, and it's Monday morning now, and I still have no idea where this is going.
*****
It's Tuesday night now. I voted, using a paper ballot that I marked with a pen. Yes, the ballot was then scanned by a machine, but the actual vote was written in ink on paper. It's only been 25 years or so, but no one trusts the Internet anymore.
I still have a nagging feeling that this little movie review post should also be a comment on something else, something bigger. But this is all I have right now. It's 9:50 PM on election night, so it's too late to go out and vote if you haven't already. You can watch the returns. Or you can see a movie.
So I saw "Can You Ever Forgive Me" a few days ago. I don't have a star- or thumb-based rating system, so I'll just say that it was really really good. Really good. I love Melissa McCarthy. Her performance in "Bridesmaids" was one of the funniest things I've ever seen in a movie, and my kids and I never tire of repeating funny lines from "Spy." Yes, I know. I'm the mother of the year.
As anyone who saw "Bridesmaids" knows, Melissa McCarthy is afraid of nothing. She looks genuinely unattractive through most of that movie, and I don't mean movie star unattractive--you know, when a beautiful actress wears very little makeup and a plain hairstyle and baggy clothes, but her perfect skin radiates with light and her plain hair shines like the sun and the baggy clothes draped over her broad shoulders and long legs make her look like the damn Statue of Liberty. No. I mean just plain, dumpy, badly dressed, stringy hair, splotchy skin unattractive.
Movie critics used to write about actors losing themselves in a role. You know what that means when you watch Melissa McCarthy in "Bridesmaids," and now in "Can You Ever Forgive Me." She plays physically unattractive women in both movies. In the former, she is brazenly confident, not for one moment acting as if she's unworthy to occupy space, like the world expects plain women to do. In "Can You Ever Forgive Me," she's very different--plain again, but her character shrinks into herself--not because she's ashamed of her looks but because she's depressed, and every movement outside the small shell that contains her expends far more energy than she has. Both characters-- the coarse, joyful, energetic Megan; and the exhausted, angry, desperate Lee-- are actual human beings.
I read a few reviews of "Can You Ever Forgive Me" before I actually saw it. The reviews all praise McCarthy for not compromising her performance to make the character more appealing. I suppose that the viewer isn't supposed to like Lee Israel, and I understand why. In addition to being a criminal, she's also worn down with anger and exhaustion, too tired to even get out of her clothes before falling into her unmade bed. Her apartment is disgustingly dirty, and her clothes are dingy and frayed. Her career is in ruins and she has no friends, only a cat. She's bitter and all but ready to give up, and not likable at all, except that I did like her. She's not the kind of person that I'd seek out as a friend, and I wanted to shake her and tell her to snap out of it, but I liked her.
Even though I'm not visually oriented, I do notice some details. When I was young in Philadelphia in the 1980s, I spent a lot of time in New York. My friends and I liked dive bars and vintage clothing stores and used bookstores. I think that the movie captured that part of New York in the 1980s. It takes place in 1991, but that's more the 80s than the 90s. That, in fact, is really key to the story, which happens in the very last moments before the Internet changed everything. The events depicted in the movie could not have happened a few years later, when people could look things up online and easily spot a forger.
*****
And here's another reason why I don't write movie reviews: I started writing this on Saturday afternoon, and it's Monday morning now, and I still have no idea where this is going.
*****
It's Tuesday night now. I voted, using a paper ballot that I marked with a pen. Yes, the ballot was then scanned by a machine, but the actual vote was written in ink on paper. It's only been 25 years or so, but no one trusts the Internet anymore.
I still have a nagging feeling that this little movie review post should also be a comment on something else, something bigger. But this is all I have right now. It's 9:50 PM on election night, so it's too late to go out and vote if you haven't already. You can watch the returns. Or you can see a movie.
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