Why can I not figure out how to create a hyperlink in my blog so that I can link to the story about Eric (Houdini) Schwarz being exhumed by his heirs from his grave in Queens? Maybe it's the universe telling me not to disseminate things I think are ridiculous. If he was murdered, which will be determined by excruciatingly high-tech forensics, are we going to exhume his murderer too?
POSTSCRIPT: Figured it out. Blogger doesn't like Explorer. Here's the link. I hope.
Saturday, March 24, 2007
Monday, March 19, 2007
Nostalgia for Garrison
i like nostalgia. In measured doses with some good archival photos, it's a way to BANAL CLICHE HERE honor the past. For about five seconds. Before you decide whether to go to Bread & Co. or Dishes for lunch. I'm sad that CBGB closed. I wish we hadn't torn down the old Penn Station. SoHo WAS better before the megastores moved in. But Garrison Keillor's grumpy Salon article stereotyping gay parents really just cemented my feeling about him as beyond recovery. I bet I'm like a lot of people in that I used to love him but now I'm just so disappointed. I have nostalgia for him.
There's already been gajillions of annoyed responses to him (Dan Savage went postal, others more measured. The thing that drives me batshit about his nostalgia is that it doesn't acknowledge any bad in the Beautiful, Golden-hued, All-White, Gas-Guzzling Past. It was all safe and warm and smelled like puppies and freshly-baked cookies! Yeah, if you were WHITE and STRAIGHT. And being MALE doesn't hurt.
It would help a lot if he acknowledged that he was gilding like a mofo. One little "I'm hardly the one to point fingers, I've been married three times," or a "granted, the era that I'm romanticizing was also the era of Selma, homophobia, the Korean War, the Cold War" would go a long way to making him less patronizing.
There's already been gajillions of annoyed responses to him (Dan Savage went postal, others more measured. The thing that drives me batshit about his nostalgia is that it doesn't acknowledge any bad in the Beautiful, Golden-hued, All-White, Gas-Guzzling Past. It was all safe and warm and smelled like puppies and freshly-baked cookies! Yeah, if you were WHITE and STRAIGHT. And being MALE doesn't hurt.
It would help a lot if he acknowledged that he was gilding like a mofo. One little "I'm hardly the one to point fingers, I've been married three times," or a "granted, the era that I'm romanticizing was also the era of Selma, homophobia, the Korean War, the Cold War" would go a long way to making him less patronizing.
Cake for breakfast
As I write there is a pan of brown rice and broccoli sauteing on the stove. I'm going to crack an egg in it in a few minutes for a healthy morning scramble. I am coming off a weekend spent in Rabelaisian mode, eating (Lupa, Craftbar, Cookshop TWICE) and spending about a thousand dollars on clothes (but these ballet flats are the cutest things you have ever seen). The new austerity starts today.
I'd like to get more comfortable in my body between now and June 1. Notice I'm very carefully not calling it a diet or putting a number on the pounds lost goal. It used to be that I'd say "I need to lose 40 pounds" but that's the kind of goal that I'm sure psychologists have a special DSM number for. It's difficult to achieve and therefore can be used to beat myself up when I don't achieve it. It's always good to have a few unachieveable goals in reserve so that I can always be sure of having something to beat myself up with.
The truth is, I'd really rather have cake for breakfast. If it weren't the worst thing ever, I'd eat frosting three meals a day. Buttercream, specifically. I'm going to a bar mitzvah with Kperl this weekend and I'm sure it will be a Festival of Food, but I hope if I'm conscientious this week I'll feel less blimpy when I meet his massive, sprawling family.
I'd like to get more comfortable in my body between now and June 1. Notice I'm very carefully not calling it a diet or putting a number on the pounds lost goal. It used to be that I'd say "I need to lose 40 pounds" but that's the kind of goal that I'm sure psychologists have a special DSM number for. It's difficult to achieve and therefore can be used to beat myself up when I don't achieve it. It's always good to have a few unachieveable goals in reserve so that I can always be sure of having something to beat myself up with.
The truth is, I'd really rather have cake for breakfast. If it weren't the worst thing ever, I'd eat frosting three meals a day. Buttercream, specifically. I'm going to a bar mitzvah with Kperl this weekend and I'm sure it will be a Festival of Food, but I hope if I'm conscientious this week I'll feel less blimpy when I meet his massive, sprawling family.
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
Week 7 recap
One of my weekly pool team recaps, always written after midnight and a testament to the adrenaline rush of competition.
Again at Amsterdam, a pool hall with all the excitement and energy of your parents' basement. Bad food, watery drinks, ugly carpet, and a soundtrack that consisted of five hours of Jimi and Janis. At least in your parents' basement you could smoke pot or make out or listen to 2 Live Crew. Our opposing team was perfectly nice, even though the captain, Diego, was the epitome of uptight pool nerd, using a well-thumbed copy of a pool instruction manual as the backboard for his score sheet. It was worrisome at first--was he going to be an unbearable rule sadist? No, just a nervous tightass who became a little cuter as the night went on.
Jane won her first match handily, and then I lost mine (against a 4; I didn't have the mojo I had last week. Perhaps because Kperl was not there? And because I hadn't had a lovely practice session first?) Then Lisa, fueled by her nutritious dinner of martinis and olives, lost to Galan (Garlan? Gerlan?) and it has to be said that the Shot of the Night Award goes to Garlan who managed to get the cue ball around a seemingly impenetrable block; it defied nature, really. Doug dispatched his opponent, a 3, in his usual hill-hill nailbiter fashion (although I never doubted for a second) and Shelby played a strong but ultimately doomed game against another 3. We finished 2-3, which I think will leave us solidly in the middle of the pack, in the middle of the season (we have 8 more weeks of play).
Talking points:
> I seem to have acquired a fan in Garlan, which I'm a little concerned about. Kperl, if he stalks me, we may have to instigate some kind of "hostile boyfriend" plan.
> The fact that we're older now, and automatically uncool to teenagers, is somewhat distressing to Shelby.
> Lisa should not be allowed to take a drink into the women's room, but it was incredibly generous of her to pick up the bar tab, and wonderful to see her, and Carrie, as always.
Next week we are at home, thank god! But I will not be there as I have a birthday dinner, which leaves us down two players (Patty will still be in Asia). I can pick up the sheets on Sunday and messenger them to whomover on Monday, and Jane has Patty's cue.
See you!!
xoxo
Again at Amsterdam, a pool hall with all the excitement and energy of your parents' basement. Bad food, watery drinks, ugly carpet, and a soundtrack that consisted of five hours of Jimi and Janis. At least in your parents' basement you could smoke pot or make out or listen to 2 Live Crew. Our opposing team was perfectly nice, even though the captain, Diego, was the epitome of uptight pool nerd, using a well-thumbed copy of a pool instruction manual as the backboard for his score sheet. It was worrisome at first--was he going to be an unbearable rule sadist? No, just a nervous tightass who became a little cuter as the night went on.
Jane won her first match handily, and then I lost mine (against a 4; I didn't have the mojo I had last week. Perhaps because Kperl was not there? And because I hadn't had a lovely practice session first?) Then Lisa, fueled by her nutritious dinner of martinis and olives, lost to Galan (Garlan? Gerlan?) and it has to be said that the Shot of the Night Award goes to Garlan who managed to get the cue ball around a seemingly impenetrable block; it defied nature, really. Doug dispatched his opponent, a 3, in his usual hill-hill nailbiter fashion (although I never doubted for a second) and Shelby played a strong but ultimately doomed game against another 3. We finished 2-3, which I think will leave us solidly in the middle of the pack, in the middle of the season (we have 8 more weeks of play).
Talking points:
> I seem to have acquired a fan in Garlan, which I'm a little concerned about. Kperl, if he stalks me, we may have to instigate some kind of "hostile boyfriend" plan.
> The fact that we're older now, and automatically uncool to teenagers, is somewhat distressing to Shelby.
> Lisa should not be allowed to take a drink into the women's room, but it was incredibly generous of her to pick up the bar tab, and wonderful to see her, and Carrie, as always.
Next week we are at home, thank god! But I will not be there as I have a birthday dinner, which leaves us down two players (Patty will still be in Asia). I can pick up the sheets on Sunday and messenger them to whomover on Monday, and Jane has Patty's cue.
See you!!
xoxo
Monday, March 12, 2007
Hello, it's me.
This is one of my favorite of me taken recently by Leana, who I work with. I look saucy, yet serious. Intelligent, yet not toooo annoying. Or at least that's what I choose to believe today.
Crap Management
When I worked at W magazine, the beauty editor was a woman named Dana Wood. Dana was (is) petite, blonde, curvaceous and extremely salt of the earth. At first I was terrified of her and then (as frequently happens) we became really good friends. In fact, this cycle has repeated itself so often that I now see being terrified of someone as a portent of an ecstatic friendship.
Anyway, as beauty editor, Dana used to get bags n bags n bags of dumb shit from companies. It's part of the ecology of that world, that little bags with tissue paper, press releases, and absurd complicated boxes go flying out from the various mother ships--and yes, I know I am mixing my metaphors--every day. Dana would devote a good 20 percent of her time to what she called "crap management," which went like this:
One: cut a hole in the bag. Oh no wait--wrong.
Anyway: open bag, remove fluff, glance cursorily at product, toss bag, add press kit to pile, put lame product in giveaway box. Repeat six or seven times daily. Two months later, give lame product to co-workers who will fall upon it as if they were starving and eye cream was pizza.
I experienced it directly when I went to Paris and became a beauty editor. I'd get up from my desk, go to the bathroom, out on the balcony to have a smoke, and come back to my desk. In my absence, at least three bags would have appeared on my chair. Like tribbles. I grew to hate product and more specifically, the misguided extremes that beauty companies would go to to package this product. Die-cuts and plastic containers and specially-molded boxes to hold the harnesses that held the packaging that contained the vial of precious fluid. I mean COME ON people, THIS is what we're sacrificing the rain forests to? Special editions of Gaultier Male?
Anyway, today I had two instances of severe crap management/overpackagaing. I don't want to dis the companies by name because they're both generally devoted to good design, but one involved a placemat sized piece of rigid plastic that will do nothing but go into the garbage, and the other was a color-wheel sort of thing that I struggled with impatiently before it joined the aforementioned placemat. I could start my own little Fresh Kills at this rate.
Anyway, as beauty editor, Dana used to get bags n bags n bags of dumb shit from companies. It's part of the ecology of that world, that little bags with tissue paper, press releases, and absurd complicated boxes go flying out from the various mother ships--and yes, I know I am mixing my metaphors--every day. Dana would devote a good 20 percent of her time to what she called "crap management," which went like this:
One: cut a hole in the bag. Oh no wait--wrong.
Anyway: open bag, remove fluff, glance cursorily at product, toss bag, add press kit to pile, put lame product in giveaway box. Repeat six or seven times daily. Two months later, give lame product to co-workers who will fall upon it as if they were starving and eye cream was pizza.
I experienced it directly when I went to Paris and became a beauty editor. I'd get up from my desk, go to the bathroom, out on the balcony to have a smoke, and come back to my desk. In my absence, at least three bags would have appeared on my chair. Like tribbles. I grew to hate product and more specifically, the misguided extremes that beauty companies would go to to package this product. Die-cuts and plastic containers and specially-molded boxes to hold the harnesses that held the packaging that contained the vial of precious fluid. I mean COME ON people, THIS is what we're sacrificing the rain forests to? Special editions of Gaultier Male?
Anyway, today I had two instances of severe crap management/overpackagaing. I don't want to dis the companies by name because they're both generally devoted to good design, but one involved a placemat sized piece of rigid plastic that will do nothing but go into the garbage, and the other was a color-wheel sort of thing that I struggled with impatiently before it joined the aforementioned placemat. I could start my own little Fresh Kills at this rate.
Wednesday, March 7, 2007
The Secret
Tonight Team ESL came ohsoclose to beating one of the Amsterdam Billiards teams. They were smug and joyless and it would have been thrilling to add up the scores and say,"Oh. You....LOST, dincha?" The two most exciting things were that I introduced Kperl to the familyoopsteam, which went well. And that I beat a player ranked much higher than me. I did this by regaining my mojo, and I regained my mojo by repeating the phrase, "I am going to beat you. I am going to beat you," and visualizing all the balls dropping into the pockets with that beautiful THUD. I was feeeeeling the win. Thank you, Esther Hicks.
Tuesday, March 6, 2007
Everybody posts
Even babies. This is one of the funnier baby POVs I've read. Betty doesn't take things too seriously.
Mmmmm, television
I don't have a TV, which doesn't prevent me getting addicted to shows. For a while it was Battlestar Galactica, now it's Veronica Mars. I'm extremely late to both of those parties, but when you're getting your addictions through WOM, there's a delay. Now I'm spending stupid amounts of money downloading third season VMars to catch up. I'm over BG; having Starbuck fly into the vortex was a little shark-jumpy for my taste. I want Adama and the President to get it on, though. EJO is just....umfh. That's not a clever acronym, it's the sound of deep sex appeal.
Kperl, my sweetie, has now afflicted me with Family Guy. Damn him.
Kperl, my sweetie, has now afflicted me with Family Guy. Damn him.
No more signs of the apocalypse
Not as a blog, anyway. I decided that was way to dark a place to spend a lot of time, so I renamed. I promise to blog more here.
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