MEN: CAN'T LIVE WITH THEM, CAN'T SEND EM TO THE STORE FOR THE QUICKER PICKER UPPER
One of the hot novels out there right now is about...oh, you know what it's about. Overwhelmed working mom retreats from high pressure job, finds love and happiness in the country with Sam Shepard...oops, nope, sorry, that was another 80s flashback. Ahem. Anyway, one of the things the author of this book said about her husband was, and I paraphrase because I am too damn lazy, is that while he is very "evolved," he has no clue where paper towels come from.
Now why is that, I wonder?
IT'S THE GUNS, STUPID
Well, they appear to have caught the D.C. sniper. Appear being the operative word. And already the talk about gun control is being subsumed into the chatter about his personal story--his religion, his psychological history, his military record. It's absolutely true, crazy people can and do kill their victims with their bare hands. (On one of the t.v. movies I worked on, the murderer killed his wife with a dumbbell, then drove her body many miles, and finally buried her near a bird shelter--because she "liked nature.") But they can't do it as efficiently as crazy people armed with high-powered rifles.
MY FAVORITE SHORT SENTENCES OF THE DAY
The truth, of course, is that New Yorkers take no interest in the things tourists crave. We want to know where our chiropractor buys his mangoes. ~Tim Geary
MY FAVORITE SHORT SENTENCES OF THE DAY
Try and bring home thoughts by actions and incidents. Don't make everything said. This is the inestimable value of the Cinema to novelists (don't scoff at this as a cheap epigram it is really very true). Make things happen... Whatever the temptation, for God's sake don't bring characters on simply to draw their characters and make them talk. Fit them into a design. --
Evelyn Waugh
SISTERS, SISTERS
Sister number 3 was briefly in the hospital a couple of weeks after giving birth to niece number 2. And Sister number 2 lives in suburban Maryland, where her kids, apparently, are feeling okay so far. This is a day when I don't like it that we're all spread out. I miss them, and I want them to be safe: the impossible dream.
WHY NEW JERSEY SHOULD BE CALLING ITSELF 'THE POETRY STATE'
1. We have a soon-to-be-ex-Senator named "the Torch."
2. We have a possibly soon-to-be-ex-poet-laureate named "Amiri."
3. Our favorite Hoboken son has written a memoir, and his nickname is Joey
Pants.
ANOTHER TOWNHOUSE IN TUNISIA
My dad was a jazzophile. When he was a kid, on the day that the magazine Downbeat came out, he would run to the music store to be the first in line to buy it. Later, he started a high school jazz band, and continued with it into college. Charlie
Parker was his ideal. Dad liked to brag that he'd seen Parker fall off the stage not once...but twice. I can remember very few artists my dad admired who didn't fall off the stage, either literally or figuratively. Dad loved the edge, and edgy people. I never remember him loving someone like Anthony Trollope, for instance. Dark and twisted were his mainstays.
NOT EXACTLY REAL LIFE, BUT
Bruce Paltrow, father of Gwyneth, died of pneumonia, related to complications, they say, from a recurrence of throat cancer. He was over in Rome celebrating his daughter's 30th birthday. I never met him, but one of my friends befriended him. (This is the same friend who also managed to befriend Dennis Miller, Donna Hanover, and Mary Pipher---and work for Misterogers, to boot.) This friend visited the St. Elsewhere set several times, and always raved about Paltrow's...niceness. St. Elsewhere was my favorite show for a while, and was the spawning ground for my evil writing crush, Tom Fontana, who Paltrow mentored. One of the Times' obits refers to him as "a mensch."
This is pure blather. My dad died much the same way, though his cancer was no sudden recurrence. What a rotten thing.
MY LIFE IN LETTERS
Finally finished an essay I began a year ago about my in-laws, and sent it off to Mr. Beller's Neighborhood. It feels great to finally get it done, and get it out there.
It also looks like I'll have a letter in a local periodical next week, and if it happens, I'll post it. I'm beginning to realize that my natural literary style is fueled by a basic crankiness.
MAYBE I NEED TO GET OUT MORE
I've begun to use a meditation tape/relaxation tone CD thingie over stereo headphones which supposedly forges new neural pathways in your brain, while giving you a deep meditative trance. Don't know if any of that is true, but I do know, after using it, that I feel quite like the way I felt when I used to float in a floatation tank regularly: rested, alert, peaceful. It was almost impossible to rile me in the first few days after a float. It's a shame it's so hard to find a good tank in New York City; back in my funky Brooklyn days, I actually could walk down the street a block and book an hour for 15 dollars in a tank in this woman's brownstone: one of my few extravagances during the year my dad was dying and I was broke. Things I miss from the 80s: 15 dollar floats, Peoplexpress. Things I don't: Ronald Reagan.
So this CD seems like a solution, new neural pathways or not. I like it so much I've tried it out on the dog, and she seems much calmer on her walks post-CD. The only problem is that the headphones are built for human heads, and so I have to arrange the two ear buds around her midjaw. Jeff and I were discussing this this morning, and he actually said, "Faith needs her own headphones."
And I thought: there it is, my million dollar idea: dog headphones.
DOGS EAT FREE
When Jeff and I took Faith to the Jersey shore last week, we stopped at an ice cream store. Before we could get out of the car, the proprietor was springing out the door, a small plastic dish of vanilla in his hand. "Dogs eat free!" he said.
Faith gobbled it down...then barked at him.
THINGS I'VE LEARNED IN THE LAST WEEK
During the Depression, my grandfather Sam baked bread to make extra money. He charged 25 cents a loaf, and my mother delivered it.
My mother wanted to work as a reporter on the docks for the Transit Authority, but people told her it was too dangerous.
My mom is not entirely sure how long she knew my dad before they got married, only that he did not want to discuss their wedding "during tax season."
HAPPY OCTOBER
I have a little theory that if you look at what you were obsessed with during early adolescence, you will find traces--or even big fat hunks--of it in your life right now. Those hormones were also a kind of body/brain preservative, for good and for ill.
Take astrology. I'm an atheist now, and in awe of science. But I can't help but think, "Goddamned Mercury in retrograde." Because, when I was 13, along with "The Scarlet Letter," "Macbeth," "The Fountainhead," and "Steal This Book," I was reading, over and over, "Linda Goodman's Sun Signs." Memorizing my own qualities, and the qualities of those I would soon be in love with. (Oh Libra boy, you never knew.)
I've mostly broken myself of the habit of checking my horoscope, except for Rob Brezsny, because he is a wonderful, right-brained writer, and I love the idea of Free Will Astrology. But I can tell when I'm feeling vulnerable because I start turning into this doom-obsessed gothchick before there were gothchicks. And blaiming my printer's demise on the stars.
I also am captivated by the Pet Psychic, who I would love to introduce to our dog.
Yup, can't wait until Mercury is out of retrograde and I become a rational person again.
