I have it on good authority that this is the next big thing. I don’t know, I’m not sold. To humor the good authority, I’ll give it a shot. Stay right there.

Wait a minute, this is much more fun.  Look at Caitlin What’s-her-face with 31!  Hee, hee. 

RIGHT NOW

The Diary of Anais Nin: Vol. 1, Anais Nin (Research)
How To Date in a Post-Dating World, Diane Mapes (Research)
Mr. Field’s Daughter: A Novel, Richard Bausch (I’m on a Bausch kick, I don’t remember why)
Calamity Something, Marissa Peshl (all the fuss, and now I can’t get into it. Moved to bottom of pile)
December Elle (Highlights: “Make Sure Your Party is the Coolest”, “Plastic Surgery Baby-steps”)
How to Kick the Asses of People Who Back Out of Buying Your House, Me (Ha ha, kidding)

JUST FINISHED

Torch, Cheryl Strayed (Read a page while in library, and someone caught my eye in cover blurbs, can’t remember who)
Night Watch, Sarah Waters (Booker Prize nominee. Fantastic.)
November Elle

On Hold at Library

Family and Other Accidents: A Novel (Saw at Powell’s, like the title)
The Secret River, Kate Grenville (Man Booker nominee, I was trying to read them all)
Cutty, One Rock: Low Characters and Strange Places, Gently Explained; August Kleinzahler (a memoir, in essays, from a poet, of growing up in New Jersey. I wanted it for a passage I read that had to do with the art of cursing in Fort Lee)
Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, Alison Bechdel (Read the reviews, looks utterly gripping)
Things I Didn’t Know: A Memoir, Robert Hughes (Read an excerpt where Bob writes of his drug-addled, sex-crazed first wife Dani, and was hooked)
In The Night Season: A Novel, Richard Bausch 

OVERDUE (2 days)

Baby Einstein: Birds
Beezus and Ramona
Fold Me a Poem
Frantastic Voyage (Franny shrinks herself, gets sucked up in her dog’s nose, survives)
 

 … He is the most overrated, self-indulged, deluded writer of our time. 

If you can #1, make it all the way through this, and #2, find one coherent thread, I’ll give you a Cheerios box with a book.  Then after that we’ll play a drinking game — a shot for every time he writes “tribe”.  After we’re snockered, we’ll change our lives with drunk calls! 

(Maybe we can call New York mag and make them promise to never, ever bother us, their delicate readers, which this sort of insufferable slog again.  Jeesh.)

 … It’s National Children’s Book Week and Cheerio’s put books in 5 million boxes.  That’s a lot, isn’t it?  Can you tell which ones have books by shaking?  I’m going to go check it out.  Right after I pick up the new Ed McMahon Autobio where he reveals he’s had sex with 7 women, and also upgrade my cable package to get Fox so I can find out how OJ would have killed his wife, if he were the killer.  (Italics mine.) 

I’ve been dying to know. 

 … I’m reading Cosmo UK this morning (research, for a project, I swear!)  Pure delight.  First find, three couples come clean about how cash affects their relationships.  Selina Spencer, 26, foots all of unemployed deadbeat Vijay’s bills.  Here’s Vijay:

“I never imagined I’d be relying on Selina to support me but if the situation was reversed I’d share my wages with her.  I feel bad but I’m not just sitting at home.  I’m actively looking for a job in the film industry and doing unpaid work to get contacts to help me achieve my dream.  I believe other things are more valuable than money … cash alone doesn’t complete you.  I’d rather stay in with Selina than go out.  My friends understand — we’ve even started making our own homebrew!”

Homebrew!  Nice.

Then I found “5 Sizzling Sex Upgrades” (Old Trick — Reverse Cowgirl; Upgrade — Spinning Cowgirl), but both pale next to ”A Drunken Phone Call Changed My Life” (p. 189).  Jessica started her own business, Briony moved in with a backpacker, Sarah applied for a reality show (“Drunk Dialing With the Stars”).  I’m so inspired I’m getting some vodka after work, and a phone, and I’ll just see where it all leads.  Stay tuned!

.. Keys to a smash-up dinner party: Hearty casserole, full glass, stay sober until the cheese.

Ellen Willis died. She was director of NYU’s cultural and reporting program and I’d never heard of her until today when Maud Newton said she died. Maud links to a Willis critique of Joan Didion’s Political Fictions, and also her “Freedom From Religion” essay in The Nation, 2001; Willis’ argument about the critical importance to our democracy of preserving a secular state:

one that does not fun or otherwise sponsor religious institutions or activities; that does not display religious symbols; that outlaws discrimination based on religious belief, whether by government or by private employers, landlords or proprieters — that does, in short, guarantee freedom from as well as freedom of religion. Furthermore, a genuinely democratic society requires a secular ethos: one that does not equate morality with religion, stigmatize atheists, defer to religious interests and aims over others or make religious belief an informal qualification for public office.

(Italics mine.)

I’d argue the same of the church. Quit talking about politics during the homily, Fr. Tom, I mean it. I’m there to hear about Luke and John and and sit in a room for an hour without talking to anyone. Also, I do not have nearly enough cocaine.

Okay, now off with you, I’ve a tea party to plan: jam sandwiches, cherry Kool-aid, rainbow-colored goldfish and Teddy Grahams. I’m trying to stay sober ’til the cheese.

We have always been obsessed with symmetrical faces (Washington Post).

We are all big babies (Telegraph, UK).

POTUS nicknames the new dems (The Morning News).

Thank you, A. for cleaning my car! 

from The Week, Erik Larson’s (of Devil in the White City) reading list. 

He says of Cynthia Ozick’s Puttermesser Papers,  ” … her language rushes you on a wild ride; her unlikely metaphors spit fire.  Who else (maybe Marquez) could fashion a girl golem out of dirt from the flowerpot and get her elected mayor of New York.”  I agree.  Loves the Ozick.

Three things happened this weekend, and this will seem like a sad post but it’s not. And the order of the three is not particular, except that I did save the best man for last.

First, Bill, my parents’ neighbor for 30 years (and mine for some) fell off his ladder. He fell off Tuesday, I think, and they flew him here right away; it was a bad fall. He’s 92, he was cleaning his gutters.  Yes.  92.

Anyway, we went to see him tonight, and … you couldn’t hear that, but I just took a very, very long pause. Very. Because I was hoping my thing I was thinking would come to me in articulate form, which I could then type. That particular feeling you get when you see someone in hospital — not young people with silly kneecaps, but people there for good reason like Bill.

I wanted to figure out a way to say that it was a really good feeling I had when I left, not a sad one. Selfish, sort of. For one thing it was probably the longest I’d ever talked to Bill in our 30-years, or not really, but the most substance. Remember when George went to his girlfriend’s uncle’s funeral on Seinfeld, and Kramer said it bumped him up, like 10 dates?

Well it was a little like that, and that sounds silly, but you meet so many people, and you know them, and then you say “Hi!” a million times and linger there at that second date forever, for the rest of your lives sometimes and that just feels bleh.

So this felt good, I guess, because Bill didn’t seem uncomfortable or self-conscious, and because the nurse said “here’s your family!” and those moments like that, they’re rare but what else is it? They’re intimate, familiar, personal … and because of that a privilege, I guess. Yes, maybe that’s what it was, I felt privileged … that he let me in, that he invited me into that, with no fanfare at all, that it was a given that I would be there. Rats, I wanted to say it all better; bungled it.

Second was Ed Bradley. The 60 Minutes guys paid tribute tonight. It was Brandford Marsalis, though, who got me. He said (I’m paraphrasing) “Ed wouldn’t want us crying, we talked about funerals once. He said he liked how they do them in New Orleans to music, with one sad line, and then a tambourine in the next.” And then Branford closed the piece with the most beautiful, simple, pure trumpet medley. Just him, no mutes no mikes no display. Shoot, I think I bungled that, too, but if you’re looking for a common thread so far, I think it’s sincerity, which is a gem.

Third, A.’s uncle Benny. He passed away late August and friends and family flew to Melbourne, Florida this Saturday for his memorial. Florida because he retired there a few years ago, but his soul most certainly rests in New York.

I don’t dare try to capture him. In his great, vivid life I knew him for barely a whisper; enough to tell you he had the charm of a movie star, the finesse of a diplomat, the heart of a lion. He commanded a room even when he was completely focused on one person in the corner, making them think they had the most interesting thing to say … others will have to do that now.

From the Italians: Quest la vita e qui il gioire, un’ ora di abbrezzo e poi moire. (“This is life and this is joy: an hour of embracing and then to die.”)

Okay, here’s something completely unrelated from my cousin Judy. A song. Click right here.