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Farewell, LiveJournal!
Sep. 10th, 2020 02:55 pmI haven't posted here in years but it's time to kill the account. I think. It's actually hard to pull the trigger. This place meant a lot to me once.
some days are better than others
Sep. 7th, 2020 10:48 am[deleted some whining. Apartment hot, hard to sleep, need to change diet and maybe avoid wheat forever. Possibly should cut drinking down to one a week or something. Not thrilled about any of it.]
**
Twitter remains absolutely baffling to me. I wish I'd stayed off it but now I find it engaging in certain ways and less aversive since I developed some ability not to respond to stuff. Anyway now I'm following some gays in their 20s and 30s and they just are such space aliens. They post nekked pics with their faces in them, or just sorta "gosh, I took off my shirt, I'm so pale, I bet I look really bad!" bizarro humble-brag thirst-trap stuff. I'm glad that they're so liberated and so willing to show me and the universe their junk but also feel like the ones I'm finding have nothing else apparently going on unless maybe just a slightly funny version of the universal Twitter sense of humor that I generally find grating. Usually involves those dialog jokes that involve the phrase
"Me: "
It's better than big Extremely Online Left arguments, though. Whatever their other faults and virtues, these young, hairless exhibitionists don't seem to spend a lot of time weighing in on who is "problematic."
I think what I'm doing is just following people and then following people they interact with until I find the seven people on twitter who do not feel like space aliens to me.
**
WB is going to stay, did I mention this?, in the back yard "casita" of friends who live in a small town in Colorado, for three weeks, probably leaving Saturday. I can't go and don't really want to, but I'm feeling weird about three weeks alone and anxious-attachment-styley about him wanting to go away for three weeks. I have a weird time on my own after 7 years of cohabitation. I enjoy it some and feel crazy some. I should think of stuff I can do while he's gone like play harpsichord more without feeling like I'm making an inescapable racket. I think I'll set up some zooms with friends even though zooming with friends is inherently awkward and unsatisfying. We could do a big former LJ zoom and look at each other in terror.
**
Twitter remains absolutely baffling to me. I wish I'd stayed off it but now I find it engaging in certain ways and less aversive since I developed some ability not to respond to stuff. Anyway now I'm following some gays in their 20s and 30s and they just are such space aliens. They post nekked pics with their faces in them, or just sorta "gosh, I took off my shirt, I'm so pale, I bet I look really bad!" bizarro humble-brag thirst-trap stuff. I'm glad that they're so liberated and so willing to show me and the universe their junk but also feel like the ones I'm finding have nothing else apparently going on unless maybe just a slightly funny version of the universal Twitter sense of humor that I generally find grating. Usually involves those dialog jokes that involve the phrase
"Me: "
It's better than big Extremely Online Left arguments, though. Whatever their other faults and virtues, these young, hairless exhibitionists don't seem to spend a lot of time weighing in on who is "problematic."
I think what I'm doing is just following people and then following people they interact with until I find the seven people on twitter who do not feel like space aliens to me.
**
WB is going to stay, did I mention this?, in the back yard "casita" of friends who live in a small town in Colorado, for three weeks, probably leaving Saturday. I can't go and don't really want to, but I'm feeling weird about three weeks alone and anxious-attachment-styley about him wanting to go away for three weeks. I have a weird time on my own after 7 years of cohabitation. I enjoy it some and feel crazy some. I should think of stuff I can do while he's gone like play harpsichord more without feeling like I'm making an inescapable racket. I think I'll set up some zooms with friends even though zooming with friends is inherently awkward and unsatisfying. We could do a big former LJ zoom and look at each other in terror.
Happens to the best of us
May. 10th, 2020 08:21 pmYep, friends only, or anyway friends mostly. Leave a message here if you're knocking on my door.
ETA: I wrote this post years ago and dated it unimaginably far in the future which is now of course not that far in the future. LJ died and maybe came back a little. Hi.
I don't post that much about what I'm reading because I'm often half heartedly reading a little of this and that and I'll never finish any of them.
I am currently reading Find Me by Andre Aciman, the author of Call Me By Your Name. I read Call Me By Your Name, at the recommendation of a friend, in two sittings, which I do not do because I'm a slow reader. I found it gripping, devastating, etc. It was shocking that this straight guy had written the great gay love story. I liked the movie a lot, only in part because Armie Hammer is SO HOT, and then read with some disdain that director Luca Guadagnino (possibly not spelled like that!) said he was going to make a sequel or a bunch of sequels. Partly because there were a few annoying things about the movie in with the good; partly because the book pretty well resolves what happens later.
So like two weeks ago I saw that the sequel to THE BOOK was coming out a week later, and was super excited, and pre-ordered a copy immediately. And it got here. And it is BAD. No big spoilers here that aren't evident from the first page, but at least half of the book is from the point of view of Elio's Dad. Fine, I guess--I don't really care about Elio's dad. He's a good secondary character. Don't need to know his whole thing. But beyond that, it's just...it's like incompetent. It's actively badly written, and sort of gross about some stuff, and I just can't believe it. I'm tempted to include one sentence under a cut because it was so staggeringly awful but maybe that's a bit much.
It shares one thing that is maybe a problem about the first one, which is the upper middle class lifestyle/travel porn. But I just can't...maybe I'll write another entry when I finish and put stuff under cuts in case anyone is going to read it. I don't feel confident that the last 100 pages are suddenly going to be wonderful. How did this happen? CMBYN wrecked me.
I am currently reading Find Me by Andre Aciman, the author of Call Me By Your Name. I read Call Me By Your Name, at the recommendation of a friend, in two sittings, which I do not do because I'm a slow reader. I found it gripping, devastating, etc. It was shocking that this straight guy had written the great gay love story. I liked the movie a lot, only in part because Armie Hammer is SO HOT, and then read with some disdain that director Luca Guadagnino (possibly not spelled like that!) said he was going to make a sequel or a bunch of sequels. Partly because there were a few annoying things about the movie in with the good; partly because the book pretty well resolves what happens later.
So like two weeks ago I saw that the sequel to THE BOOK was coming out a week later, and was super excited, and pre-ordered a copy immediately. And it got here. And it is BAD. No big spoilers here that aren't evident from the first page, but at least half of the book is from the point of view of Elio's Dad. Fine, I guess--I don't really care about Elio's dad. He's a good secondary character. Don't need to know his whole thing. But beyond that, it's just...it's like incompetent. It's actively badly written, and sort of gross about some stuff, and I just can't believe it. I'm tempted to include one sentence under a cut because it was so staggeringly awful but maybe that's a bit much.
It shares one thing that is maybe a problem about the first one, which is the upper middle class lifestyle/travel porn. But I just can't...maybe I'll write another entry when I finish and put stuff under cuts in case anyone is going to read it. I don't feel confident that the last 100 pages are suddenly going to be wonderful. How did this happen? CMBYN wrecked me.
the heart I guess
May. 10th, 2019 06:16 pmI met these really interesting people in a dream and right between sleeping and waking when you're starting to get the gist that a dream is a dream experience poignant regret about not being able to keep in touch with them.
Did I mention I turned my therapist into a clinical supervisor? Not with a magic wand or anything, just at some point I mentioned needing to find a private supervisor and he more or less volunteered and it seemed like a great idea because he's smart and good. Today, though, hilariously we discussed my coworker whose voice I cannot tolerate and I mentioned feeling bad about being unfriendly to her and he suggested somehow just acknowledging to her that her voice makes me want to run screaming into the sea. NEVER EVER GOING TO HAPPEN. But really, I like him a lot.
This was on fb. It's one of those old memes except it's supposed to be less aimed at 19 year olds. I haven't done one in years so here we go. I don't remember how to do an LJ-cut plus it's probably not called that here. Sorry. Oh wait it looks like you just type
( Read more... )
26. Your most used emoji:
The heart I guess.
Did I mention I turned my therapist into a clinical supervisor? Not with a magic wand or anything, just at some point I mentioned needing to find a private supervisor and he more or less volunteered and it seemed like a great idea because he's smart and good. Today, though, hilariously we discussed my coworker whose voice I cannot tolerate and I mentioned feeling bad about being unfriendly to her and he suggested somehow just acknowledging to her that her voice makes me want to run screaming into the sea. NEVER EVER GOING TO HAPPEN. But really, I like him a lot.
This was on fb. It's one of those old memes except it's supposed to be less aimed at 19 year olds. I haven't done one in years so here we go. I don't remember how to do an LJ-cut plus it's probably not called that here. Sorry. Oh wait it looks like you just type
( Read more... )
26. Your most used emoji:
The heart I guess.
1 week off facebook. I feel a real sense of relief about some things (boy have I gotten annoyed by everyone's opinions, including my own. You know what facebook is great at getting us to splatter all over one another? Opinions) but don't quite feel like I'm doing what I meant to do by shutting down my account.
Coincidentally, I started doing this thing called Growing Gills, a writer names Jessica Abel's book/program for figuring out why you're not making time in your bullshit life for the creative things you say you want to do, and the first task is a log of how you spend your time, and mine remains internet internet internet. Other things whoosh in to fill the void. I've even been spending a little time on Twitter, which I hate.
I guess what I've been clumsily using the internet for, lo these 25 years, is the same as a lot of people: to not feel lonely in the kind of adult lives we have, which are isolating and sad. It's a half-assed tool for that and I remain convinced there must be some other response to that kind of distress that leads me to type "f" in the browser window (whereupon facebook comes up since I typed facebook thirty million times before) but I honestly, truly don't know what it is. What is it that's satisfied by exposing my brain to uninteresting, often grating superficial human contact, and what is a way to do that same thing that is less stupid?
It should be things like work and reading and writing, but today is a great example: all those things seem unrealistic to impossible right now. Brain is too itchy.
Well anyway. It's good not to be on facebook. I maintain that this is so.
Coincidentally, I started doing this thing called Growing Gills, a writer names Jessica Abel's book/program for figuring out why you're not making time in your bullshit life for the creative things you say you want to do, and the first task is a log of how you spend your time, and mine remains internet internet internet. Other things whoosh in to fill the void. I've even been spending a little time on Twitter, which I hate.
I guess what I've been clumsily using the internet for, lo these 25 years, is the same as a lot of people: to not feel lonely in the kind of adult lives we have, which are isolating and sad. It's a half-assed tool for that and I remain convinced there must be some other response to that kind of distress that leads me to type "f" in the browser window (whereupon facebook comes up since I typed facebook thirty million times before) but I honestly, truly don't know what it is. What is it that's satisfied by exposing my brain to uninteresting, often grating superficial human contact, and what is a way to do that same thing that is less stupid?
It should be things like work and reading and writing, but today is a great example: all those things seem unrealistic to impossible right now. Brain is too itchy.
Well anyway. It's good not to be on facebook. I maintain that this is so.
And this week we're talking about Providence. Which is another slightly out of left field choice (as all things will be, since the three towns we feel strongly enough about to have discussed much seem to have features one or both of us can't get past) and not somewhere I've ever had strong feelings about. I don't know what its sense of place is, like how LA has old Hollywood and New York has every literary thing ever and SF has some people did some drugs there once.
Providence I don't know. But it's close enough to Boston we could maintain active friendships with Boston friends and close enough to NYC I could have a sort of friendship with New York friends and easily spend weekends to go to theater and opera. The big selling point is: it's cheap and near stuff. The question is whether it's worth moving somewhere that has no strong draw of its own.
One thing I think would be nice about living there is New York could be magical again the way it stopped being, for me, about two years before I left. As a comment on here reminded me, it's nice to miss places. It would be a pain and a half to get to Austin, but no worse than from here.
So anyway.
I'm listening to more podcasts. Sewers of Paris seems to be hit or miss. I listened today to a long interview with a guy I am two degrees from in all kinds of ways, about being gay and Mormon, mostly. I should figure out some other ones. BBC In Our Time is great but maybe too much for the morning. You Must Remember This was perfect but I listened to about a trillion episodes of it. Maybe there's a theater one.
Gave up on The Magicians tv show because it's occasionally gory and I hate the characters, but stumbled upon the first book at a used bookstore and it's significantly more fun.
Knitted a hat for a friend with cancer but it turned out HUGE because I secretly never take gauge so hat: Take II.
I'm not sure how I feel about the LJ revival. Here is a gross admission: I mix up some of the new people I added because there are no faces and I added maybe too many people at once.
Providence I don't know. But it's close enough to Boston we could maintain active friendships with Boston friends and close enough to NYC I could have a sort of friendship with New York friends and easily spend weekends to go to theater and opera. The big selling point is: it's cheap and near stuff. The question is whether it's worth moving somewhere that has no strong draw of its own.
One thing I think would be nice about living there is New York could be magical again the way it stopped being, for me, about two years before I left. As a comment on here reminded me, it's nice to miss places. It would be a pain and a half to get to Austin, but no worse than from here.
So anyway.
I'm listening to more podcasts. Sewers of Paris seems to be hit or miss. I listened today to a long interview with a guy I am two degrees from in all kinds of ways, about being gay and Mormon, mostly. I should figure out some other ones. BBC In Our Time is great but maybe too much for the morning. You Must Remember This was perfect but I listened to about a trillion episodes of it. Maybe there's a theater one.
Gave up on The Magicians tv show because it's occasionally gory and I hate the characters, but stumbled upon the first book at a used bookstore and it's significantly more fun.
Knitted a hat for a friend with cancer but it turned out HUGE because I secretly never take gauge so hat: Take II.
I'm not sure how I feel about the LJ revival. Here is a gross admission: I mix up some of the new people I added because there are no faces and I added maybe too many people at once.
oh, LJ friending thing
Dec. 24th, 2016 08:53 amJust in case.
Me: I've been on LJ since 2004ish. I'm a 43-year-old Jewish (atheist, obviously) homosexual functional neurotic social worker with cats. I have lived in Texas, Oklahoma, Kentucky, Texas again, NYC, the Bay Area, Chicago, NYC again, the Bay Area again. Texas (Austin) and NYC are the only ones on that list I have kind things to say about.
My active interests these days are...wow, I don't have a lot anymore. Sacred Harp music, playing the banjo though I've slacked off, burritos, photoshopping my cats into stuff, and old movies. Dormant interests include opera, sometimes reading things, languages, and train travel. Things I don't like include: kids, airplanes, and smugness.
What I post about the last couple of years is mostly professional distress and my sometimes fair, sometimes unfair disdain for the region I live in. Also regret. I write about regret a lot.
Me: I've been on LJ since 2004ish. I'm a 43-year-old Jewish (atheist, obviously) homosexual functional neurotic social worker with cats. I have lived in Texas, Oklahoma, Kentucky, Texas again, NYC, the Bay Area, Chicago, NYC again, the Bay Area again. Texas (Austin) and NYC are the only ones on that list I have kind things to say about.
My active interests these days are...wow, I don't have a lot anymore. Sacred Harp music, playing the banjo though I've slacked off, burritos, photoshopping my cats into stuff, and old movies. Dormant interests include opera, sometimes reading things, languages, and train travel. Things I don't like include: kids, airplanes, and smugness.
What I post about the last couple of years is mostly professional distress and my sometimes fair, sometimes unfair disdain for the region I live in. Also regret. I write about regret a lot.
imaginary holidays
Dec. 23rd, 2016 12:36 pmI guess Jewish Christmas has been a thing forever but now people call it Jewish Christmas, right? Like it's more solidly thingified. It used to just be you were bored and hungry and Jewish and nothing was open except Chinese restaurants and movie theaters.
~10 years ago, when I was ovo-lacto-fried-chicko postvegetarian, I was edging toward eating red meat again because once you're eating birds and fish it's sort of shruggy why you'd not eat other animals unless it's for health, which it wasn't (I was 30 and in ok shape) and I had just kind of lost any attachment to my reasons for not eating stuff. Boris, my bf at the time, was excited to have a carnivore partner-in-restaurant-eating so on that holiday in spring when a guy supposedly came back from the dead, we went for hamburgers and thus was Beefster born at a humble cheeseburgery on 9th Avenue.
I still try to have a hamburger on Beefster, but if you have too many imaginary holidays, people maybe start to think you're nuts, and Beefster has faded a little now that I have Partonnukah, more fully Syncretic Dolly Partonnukah, a festival of lights commemorating the time the spirit of Dolly bestowed upon us a street corner used turntable and an excellent Smithsonian 10 LP set of country music dating back to whenever for a dollar at the junk store. Traditionally you light hannukah candles some nights (including the forth night on which the prayer of course as you light each one is "Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene") and other nights if you don't feel like it, you light tea lights in the glass candle holders that looks suspiciously like ample bosoms. I am fond of Partonnukah. It has regional variants such as Mow the Lawnukkah, I hear.
I think now, though, Jewish Christmas has taken an official place as my favorite holiday. The reason for this is that New Year's was my lifelong favorite holiday and every year people said "oh New Year's is always so disappointing" and every year I said "sure is!" but secretly still loved it, and then we moved far away from most of our friends, to a place where our few friends were mostly early-to-bed sorts, and New Years became indeed a sad little nothing, or some spell was broken and I saw it for what everyone had been insisting it was. Giving it up is like saying goodbye to a friend, or perhaps even abandoning a friend, but I just can't fake it anymore I don't think.
Jewish Christmas, on the other hand, still feels festive. The Chinese restaurants are filled with other yids and the religiously unaligned who think Jewish Christmas is fun. The movies are mobbed because people are done with regular Christmas anyway. They always release dumb shit that is often enjoyable dumb shit. The paradigmatic Jewish Christmas movie of recent years, I would say, was, oh, that thing with Cher and Christina Aguilera. Burlesque? I don't even remember. It was sweet and stupid and fun.
I will miss the good old New Yearses. One year there was my first Winter Musicale (the party in Austin where everyone plays or sings and the musical selections get more surreal and ridiculous as the night goes on) and two or three in Philadelphia with WB's friends on the rooftop with champagne at midnight and of course the childhood ones with my cousin who I had a complicated relationship with for most of thirty years and who I no longer talk to. Farewell certain years, as the saying goes.
But I think I have enough happy Jewish Christmases now to form a bank of nostalgia. The most fun ones (including Burlesque) were with my work wife Jen in NYC, who also loves good ol' JC. Those were at Grand Szechuan in Chelsea, which was simply bursting with Jews. We'd have the crispy fried tofu, which ought to be the Christmas ham of Jewish Christmas. I think I have childhood JC memories, though, going to Chinese restaurants in Dallas that probably we'd find a little gross these days (but look, we weren't urban sophisticates. I still like oversweet Americanized Chinese food as its own thing.)
It's just rainy and chilly here, so it doesn't have that kind of physical memory of what any holiday is like, but I'm enjoying a last few days off before starting a new job, and the cats are happy about it, and....I dunno. It's fine. It's nice. General Tso bless us, every one!
~10 years ago, when I was ovo-lacto-fried-chicko postvegetarian, I was edging toward eating red meat again because once you're eating birds and fish it's sort of shruggy why you'd not eat other animals unless it's for health, which it wasn't (I was 30 and in ok shape) and I had just kind of lost any attachment to my reasons for not eating stuff. Boris, my bf at the time, was excited to have a carnivore partner-in-restaurant-eating so on that holiday in spring when a guy supposedly came back from the dead, we went for hamburgers and thus was Beefster born at a humble cheeseburgery on 9th Avenue.
I still try to have a hamburger on Beefster, but if you have too many imaginary holidays, people maybe start to think you're nuts, and Beefster has faded a little now that I have Partonnukah, more fully Syncretic Dolly Partonnukah, a festival of lights commemorating the time the spirit of Dolly bestowed upon us a street corner used turntable and an excellent Smithsonian 10 LP set of country music dating back to whenever for a dollar at the junk store. Traditionally you light hannukah candles some nights (including the forth night on which the prayer of course as you light each one is "Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene") and other nights if you don't feel like it, you light tea lights in the glass candle holders that looks suspiciously like ample bosoms. I am fond of Partonnukah. It has regional variants such as Mow the Lawnukkah, I hear.
I think now, though, Jewish Christmas has taken an official place as my favorite holiday. The reason for this is that New Year's was my lifelong favorite holiday and every year people said "oh New Year's is always so disappointing" and every year I said "sure is!" but secretly still loved it, and then we moved far away from most of our friends, to a place where our few friends were mostly early-to-bed sorts, and New Years became indeed a sad little nothing, or some spell was broken and I saw it for what everyone had been insisting it was. Giving it up is like saying goodbye to a friend, or perhaps even abandoning a friend, but I just can't fake it anymore I don't think.
Jewish Christmas, on the other hand, still feels festive. The Chinese restaurants are filled with other yids and the religiously unaligned who think Jewish Christmas is fun. The movies are mobbed because people are done with regular Christmas anyway. They always release dumb shit that is often enjoyable dumb shit. The paradigmatic Jewish Christmas movie of recent years, I would say, was, oh, that thing with Cher and Christina Aguilera. Burlesque? I don't even remember. It was sweet and stupid and fun.
I will miss the good old New Yearses. One year there was my first Winter Musicale (the party in Austin where everyone plays or sings and the musical selections get more surreal and ridiculous as the night goes on) and two or three in Philadelphia with WB's friends on the rooftop with champagne at midnight and of course the childhood ones with my cousin who I had a complicated relationship with for most of thirty years and who I no longer talk to. Farewell certain years, as the saying goes.
But I think I have enough happy Jewish Christmases now to form a bank of nostalgia. The most fun ones (including Burlesque) were with my work wife Jen in NYC, who also loves good ol' JC. Those were at Grand Szechuan in Chelsea, which was simply bursting with Jews. We'd have the crispy fried tofu, which ought to be the Christmas ham of Jewish Christmas. I think I have childhood JC memories, though, going to Chinese restaurants in Dallas that probably we'd find a little gross these days (but look, we weren't urban sophisticates. I still like oversweet Americanized Chinese food as its own thing.)
It's just rainy and chilly here, so it doesn't have that kind of physical memory of what any holiday is like, but I'm enjoying a last few days off before starting a new job, and the cats are happy about it, and....I dunno. It's fine. It's nice. General Tso bless us, every one!
brain change
Apr. 17th, 2015 06:37 pmLanguages used to be the easiest thing in the world to me. In high school I would look at a list of Russian words for a vocabulary test, right before the test, and then know them for good. Maybe in retrospect I learned them a certain way, like I memorized them rather than learning to use them, and then that happened later. Definitely learning things through writing caused the speech/understanding to lag, but not that much.
Now today. Last week I decided to stop shall I say wasting? yes wasting my time listening to NPR on my commute and went to the public library and got Pimsleur's Remarkably Expensive If You Buy it Mandarin Course. It's old fashioned, no mixed media here, just hear it/say it drills. I took a semester of Mandarin in college and remember maybe a hundred words but.
It is hard. Very hard. Like a tongue twister and a game of Simon and a round of Name That Tune rolled into one. I daresay I am bad at it. It's a different way of learning a language than ever I did but man, do I not feel like I'm catching on. Actually I feel like all the other people in my language classes who were like "Spanish is confusing" while I sat there like "gurl, please."
Sometimes I wonder if my brain is drying up more generally. I've been paranoid about it since my friend R forgot a few words and then fast forward a year and he's dead of glioblastoma. I don't think I have that or I'd be dead already but...I'm tempted to ask my mother when my father started forgetting names and pointing at things at the dinner table (it's not a degenerative thing, never progressed, keinahora) because I feel like that. I'm sure I'm psyching myself into it but someone will walk off from a conversation and I'll go blank for a minute on their name.
Saturday crossword is harder than ususal? I must be on the downward spiral!
Possibly I am just not that hot at tone contour languages, like a lot of people, but that aural pickup used to be my easy street.
I'd kind of like to think I'm just learning in a new way, casting aside visual training wheels and learning to do, as above, rather than learning a rule sheet and then painstakingly applying it to a million possible situations. It's like learning piano, which I keep comparing things to, but it is. I'm no longer trying to read sheet music. I'm trying to learn to play. It requires a kind of letting go that you can't talk yourself into because once you're thinking about it, you clutch up, and then you're REALLY not doing it.
The library was missing CD 4 out of 10, so I just had a serious ice bucket over the head with CD 5. Possibly I am doing these faster than I am supposed to be. At some point I'll have to do the only actual language test which is try to speak to someone. Way not yet though. Um there are also two more sets of 10. I hope the world really works like Splash where Darryl Hannah watches tv all night then speaks perfect fluent idiomatic English!
Now today. Last week I decided to stop shall I say wasting? yes wasting my time listening to NPR on my commute and went to the public library and got Pimsleur's Remarkably Expensive If You Buy it Mandarin Course. It's old fashioned, no mixed media here, just hear it/say it drills. I took a semester of Mandarin in college and remember maybe a hundred words but.
It is hard. Very hard. Like a tongue twister and a game of Simon and a round of Name That Tune rolled into one. I daresay I am bad at it. It's a different way of learning a language than ever I did but man, do I not feel like I'm catching on. Actually I feel like all the other people in my language classes who were like "Spanish is confusing" while I sat there like "gurl, please."
Sometimes I wonder if my brain is drying up more generally. I've been paranoid about it since my friend R forgot a few words and then fast forward a year and he's dead of glioblastoma. I don't think I have that or I'd be dead already but...I'm tempted to ask my mother when my father started forgetting names and pointing at things at the dinner table (it's not a degenerative thing, never progressed, keinahora) because I feel like that. I'm sure I'm psyching myself into it but someone will walk off from a conversation and I'll go blank for a minute on their name.
Saturday crossword is harder than ususal? I must be on the downward spiral!
Possibly I am just not that hot at tone contour languages, like a lot of people, but that aural pickup used to be my easy street.
I'd kind of like to think I'm just learning in a new way, casting aside visual training wheels and learning to do, as above, rather than learning a rule sheet and then painstakingly applying it to a million possible situations. It's like learning piano, which I keep comparing things to, but it is. I'm no longer trying to read sheet music. I'm trying to learn to play. It requires a kind of letting go that you can't talk yourself into because once you're thinking about it, you clutch up, and then you're REALLY not doing it.
The library was missing CD 4 out of 10, so I just had a serious ice bucket over the head with CD 5. Possibly I am doing these faster than I am supposed to be. At some point I'll have to do the only actual language test which is try to speak to someone. Way not yet though. Um there are also two more sets of 10. I hope the world really works like Splash where Darryl Hannah watches tv all night then speaks perfect fluent idiomatic English!
Ok, that settles it. I'm hateblogging Love, Actually upon the occasion of it being ten years since Hollywood shat it at us.
It's been years since I saw it so honestly I don't remember it in great detail except the worst scenes.
Is the voiceover Hugh Grant? It sounds like him. When he gets down in the dumps, he tells us, he thinks of the arrivals gate at Heathrow. Love is always there, he (or someone) is telling us, husbands, wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, though as I recall this movie, nobody of the same sex, because we are not part of the whole love extravaganza. Which is fine. Anonymous bathhouse hookups vs. love as it is portrayed here? I know which I like better! Meanwhile, did he really go there about 9/11? Romantic!
So first of all there's the plot line about the aging rock star which is the least emetic plot line.
Then there's Colin Firth leaving to go to a wedding. "Did I mention that I love you?" Colin Firth says to a red shirt, in Star Trek terms, who is his wife. "Yes, you did!" WRITING.
Emma Thompson is a sensible mom! They ruin an actually funny line "there was more than one lobster present at the birth of Christ?" with the kid responding, "duh!" You're too young for that sarcasm, and besides, it went out with Mrs. Fiske.
Some guy who is funny looking but I would definitely fuck him is delivering food to people in an office with commentary, and they all want him to shut up and hand over the food, which is his job so you can't blame them.
Martin Freeman is pretending to fuck a blonde woman up the ass. They're like lighting stand-ins for a porn film or something. Meet cute! Actually it's a slightly funny idea. Let's see how they ruin it. I don't remember! It might have been less cloying if they had been actual porn actors. Fuck, Actually.
Now we're at a wedding. I missed what the one guy said to the other but it seems like a lot of trouble to rewind.
Hugh Grant runs England! English politicians: generally that good looking for sure. I think we're about to get to one of two plots about someone fucking the help and it leading to true love without any silly power imbalance causing problems, but I might be wrong. British people cursing, automatically funny, and scene.
Oh hey, hard-to-spell-name is marrying D&D-player's-wet-dream. Who is at their wedding? The person who least belongs in this movie, fine and lovable actor Laura Linney. Well, we all need a paycheck. Also you won't believe this, but someone set up a flashmob for their wedding in the form of a soul-deadening church-friendly arrangement of "All You Need is Fuck." (Sorry, just decided I'm changing every instance of "love" to "fuck" for the duration of this hateblog.) What a piece of luck that 3 of their friends play trombone! Good looking guy who I can't place high-fives the priest, because it's going to be that kind of movie.
Colin Firth comes home early from the wedding and his brother is there looking guilty and makes a stupid excuse for being there with CF's wife who didn't want to go to the wedding. Colin Firth is not exactly a genius. Wife shouts something sexual that I guarantee no living being has ever shouted. "Hurry up big boy, I'm naked and I want you at least twice before Colin Firth gets home!" or words to that effect. I know I'm aroused. Anyway it's years before anyone will invent the awkward turtle, so nobody does that.
Weird Looking Cater Waiter I Would Fuck walks into an awkward comedy trope, insults a woman, then says he's worked out that he can't date because English women are stuck up. As I recall, this later turns out to be TOTALLY TRUE AND AMERICAN GIRLS ALL WANT HIM IN THEM. It looks like he's mostly a tv actor.
Liam Neeson, crackin' jokes at his wife's funeral. As you do. There's a montage of slides with music by the Bay City Rollers. As there is. At a funeral. Nobody actually sheds a tear. She must not have been that attractive.
Cute guy is named Andrew Lincoln. Gay panic = comic relief. Laura Linney's ugly boss shames her for being in love with a colleague and tells her to ask him out. "Think about it. For all our sakes. It's Christmas." Ok, sure. You can put those words together. No rule saying you can't.
The Bill Nighy scenes really do fail to suck as much as the rest. The scenes with Hugh Grant do not. It's sort of his personal assistant that he's in fuck with. (He knows literally nothing about her, of course, beyond what neighborhood she lives in, but is so mad for her he can't deal and has her transferred, hopefully to a different movie. But I'm getting ahead of the, er, "plot.")
I feel like you can very slightly see Martin Freeman's cock in this scene.
Is Laura Linney's ugly boss Alan Rickman? I always forget what he looks like.
Emma Thompson says to Liam Neeson "get a grip. People hate sissies. No one's gonna shag you if you cry all the time." Thanks Emma Thompson, how's your career lately? Liam Neeson has trouble talking to his son. Me, I can't blame him. The kid is 3 or 7 or something. Under about sixteen and what the hell can you say to them? It turns out his son isn't upset about his mother's death but is acting weird because he's in fuck with some girl in his class. Sociopath. "Worse than the total agony of being in love?" he asks his dad in response to something I missed because I don't care.
Hugh Grant takes a break from running England, which doesn't actually look that taxing, to hit on his assistant in the name of not being elitist. She leaves the room and he asks a portrait of Margaret Thatcher "did you have this kind of problem?" and the portrait is like "no, I was mostly pretty busy destroying the future."
Inappropriate Possible Alan Rickman is Inappropriate. His creepy secretary very clearly wants to do bondagey things with him. I wish they'd get it over with.
Cuckolded Colin Firth is maybe a novelist, but the kind with a little cottage on the continent, with staff. More fucking the help! She's Portuguese, the maid, and it looks like mostly she doesn't clean; the job description was more like "must have references and be willing to be a nonsensical plot device." He doesn't speak Portuguese. She looks really unhappy, maybe because she doesn't want to be a maid, or has an intuition that a guy whose wife just fucked his admittedly cuter brother is going to find her wonderfully non-threatening, but also possibly fleetingly so when it turns out she's a person. He keeps trying with the Portuguese and seems put out when she doesn't immediately undress to celebrate his effort.
This is maybe the dumbest but not the worst scene in the movie: He's typing out by a lovely lake and, unimaginably, a wind blows, and half of his book blows into the lake. We know he's a good writer because he's so soulful he's writing on a typewriter so oh well, no more book! She undresses in languid camera-friendly gestures and jumps into the pond, then he jumps in, and absolutely the worst music is playing, she says "who the hell doesn't make copies!" in Portuguese and he says "I really must make copies!" in not-Portuguese and it goes on like that and....and...could this be fuck? Are they falling in fuck?
Oh so this scene. Keira Knightly stops being in Arthurian softcore for long enough to drop by cute guy's house and barges in and says "oh hey, I know you stare at me all the time so I assume you hate me, but could you try to be nice to me?" and he's like "derp" and she grabs a tape (2003? VHS?) of her wedding and the music sounds for a second like Spiegel in Spiegeln which would be hilarious but it's not, and then the video is a grillion shots of her face and RUN, KEIRA KNIGHTLY! RUN AS IF YOU WERE BEING CHASED BY AN ORC IF THAT'S SOMETHING THAT CAN CHASE PEOPLE AND NOT SOME KIND OF TREE SPIRIT OR SOMETHING! She sorta slowly puts it together and actually it's the first part of the movie that evokes any emotional response at all in me, because unrequited love really does suck, but also RUN FAR FAR AWAY! HE WANTS TO HAVE YOU STUFFED AND MOUNTED!
Oh ugh. I forgot about this scene. Liam Neeson and his peculiar looking son watch Titanic and reenact the stupid iconic scene. Why god doesn't strike them dead, I don't know.
Colin Firth and his maid keep talking to/at/near each other even though neither of them understands a thing the other is saying. This is cute? They can only show it for like one minute at a time because otherwise both actors would just walk away and find new careers, because nobody would ever, ever do that.
Now Laura Linney gets her plot I think. The hot guy asks her to dance at the...maybe it's an office holiday party? It's hard to tell. There are large pictures of naked people. Maybe he has an art opening? Well, whatevs. There's dancing and it switches to a slow song right as they start dancing, wouldn't you know it. It's like Nora Jones or something because 2003. He takes her home. They're gonna fuck. He's so pretty he's not hot. Laura Linney keeps answering the cell phone when her mentally ill brother calls because she's a decent person, which isn't hot, so her trick hits the road and Laura Linney never gets laid again because she isn't a disembodied vagina. This is truly the most miserable part of the movie.
Ok there's an hour of this fucking shit left. Maybe I'll watch the rest tomorrow.
It's been years since I saw it so honestly I don't remember it in great detail except the worst scenes.
Is the voiceover Hugh Grant? It sounds like him. When he gets down in the dumps, he tells us, he thinks of the arrivals gate at Heathrow. Love is always there, he (or someone) is telling us, husbands, wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, though as I recall this movie, nobody of the same sex, because we are not part of the whole love extravaganza. Which is fine. Anonymous bathhouse hookups vs. love as it is portrayed here? I know which I like better! Meanwhile, did he really go there about 9/11? Romantic!
So first of all there's the plot line about the aging rock star which is the least emetic plot line.
Then there's Colin Firth leaving to go to a wedding. "Did I mention that I love you?" Colin Firth says to a red shirt, in Star Trek terms, who is his wife. "Yes, you did!" WRITING.
Emma Thompson is a sensible mom! They ruin an actually funny line "there was more than one lobster present at the birth of Christ?" with the kid responding, "duh!" You're too young for that sarcasm, and besides, it went out with Mrs. Fiske.
Some guy who is funny looking but I would definitely fuck him is delivering food to people in an office with commentary, and they all want him to shut up and hand over the food, which is his job so you can't blame them.
Martin Freeman is pretending to fuck a blonde woman up the ass. They're like lighting stand-ins for a porn film or something. Meet cute! Actually it's a slightly funny idea. Let's see how they ruin it. I don't remember! It might have been less cloying if they had been actual porn actors. Fuck, Actually.
Now we're at a wedding. I missed what the one guy said to the other but it seems like a lot of trouble to rewind.
Hugh Grant runs England! English politicians: generally that good looking for sure. I think we're about to get to one of two plots about someone fucking the help and it leading to true love without any silly power imbalance causing problems, but I might be wrong. British people cursing, automatically funny, and scene.
Oh hey, hard-to-spell-name is marrying D&D-player's-wet-dream. Who is at their wedding? The person who least belongs in this movie, fine and lovable actor Laura Linney. Well, we all need a paycheck. Also you won't believe this, but someone set up a flashmob for their wedding in the form of a soul-deadening church-friendly arrangement of "All You Need is Fuck." (Sorry, just decided I'm changing every instance of "love" to "fuck" for the duration of this hateblog.) What a piece of luck that 3 of their friends play trombone! Good looking guy who I can't place high-fives the priest, because it's going to be that kind of movie.
Colin Firth comes home early from the wedding and his brother is there looking guilty and makes a stupid excuse for being there with CF's wife who didn't want to go to the wedding. Colin Firth is not exactly a genius. Wife shouts something sexual that I guarantee no living being has ever shouted. "Hurry up big boy, I'm naked and I want you at least twice before Colin Firth gets home!" or words to that effect. I know I'm aroused. Anyway it's years before anyone will invent the awkward turtle, so nobody does that.
Weird Looking Cater Waiter I Would Fuck walks into an awkward comedy trope, insults a woman, then says he's worked out that he can't date because English women are stuck up. As I recall, this later turns out to be TOTALLY TRUE AND AMERICAN GIRLS ALL WANT HIM IN THEM. It looks like he's mostly a tv actor.
Liam Neeson, crackin' jokes at his wife's funeral. As you do. There's a montage of slides with music by the Bay City Rollers. As there is. At a funeral. Nobody actually sheds a tear. She must not have been that attractive.
Cute guy is named Andrew Lincoln. Gay panic = comic relief. Laura Linney's ugly boss shames her for being in love with a colleague and tells her to ask him out. "Think about it. For all our sakes. It's Christmas." Ok, sure. You can put those words together. No rule saying you can't.
The Bill Nighy scenes really do fail to suck as much as the rest. The scenes with Hugh Grant do not. It's sort of his personal assistant that he's in fuck with. (He knows literally nothing about her, of course, beyond what neighborhood she lives in, but is so mad for her he can't deal and has her transferred, hopefully to a different movie. But I'm getting ahead of the, er, "plot.")
I feel like you can very slightly see Martin Freeman's cock in this scene.
Is Laura Linney's ugly boss Alan Rickman? I always forget what he looks like.
Emma Thompson says to Liam Neeson "get a grip. People hate sissies. No one's gonna shag you if you cry all the time." Thanks Emma Thompson, how's your career lately? Liam Neeson has trouble talking to his son. Me, I can't blame him. The kid is 3 or 7 or something. Under about sixteen and what the hell can you say to them? It turns out his son isn't upset about his mother's death but is acting weird because he's in fuck with some girl in his class. Sociopath. "Worse than the total agony of being in love?" he asks his dad in response to something I missed because I don't care.
Hugh Grant takes a break from running England, which doesn't actually look that taxing, to hit on his assistant in the name of not being elitist. She leaves the room and he asks a portrait of Margaret Thatcher "did you have this kind of problem?" and the portrait is like "no, I was mostly pretty busy destroying the future."
Inappropriate Possible Alan Rickman is Inappropriate. His creepy secretary very clearly wants to do bondagey things with him. I wish they'd get it over with.
Cuckolded Colin Firth is maybe a novelist, but the kind with a little cottage on the continent, with staff. More fucking the help! She's Portuguese, the maid, and it looks like mostly she doesn't clean; the job description was more like "must have references and be willing to be a nonsensical plot device." He doesn't speak Portuguese. She looks really unhappy, maybe because she doesn't want to be a maid, or has an intuition that a guy whose wife just fucked his admittedly cuter brother is going to find her wonderfully non-threatening, but also possibly fleetingly so when it turns out she's a person. He keeps trying with the Portuguese and seems put out when she doesn't immediately undress to celebrate his effort.
This is maybe the dumbest but not the worst scene in the movie: He's typing out by a lovely lake and, unimaginably, a wind blows, and half of his book blows into the lake. We know he's a good writer because he's so soulful he's writing on a typewriter so oh well, no more book! She undresses in languid camera-friendly gestures and jumps into the pond, then he jumps in, and absolutely the worst music is playing, she says "who the hell doesn't make copies!" in Portuguese and he says "I really must make copies!" in not-Portuguese and it goes on like that and....and...could this be fuck? Are they falling in fuck?
Oh so this scene. Keira Knightly stops being in Arthurian softcore for long enough to drop by cute guy's house and barges in and says "oh hey, I know you stare at me all the time so I assume you hate me, but could you try to be nice to me?" and he's like "derp" and she grabs a tape (2003? VHS?) of her wedding and the music sounds for a second like Spiegel in Spiegeln which would be hilarious but it's not, and then the video is a grillion shots of her face and RUN, KEIRA KNIGHTLY! RUN AS IF YOU WERE BEING CHASED BY AN ORC IF THAT'S SOMETHING THAT CAN CHASE PEOPLE AND NOT SOME KIND OF TREE SPIRIT OR SOMETHING! She sorta slowly puts it together and actually it's the first part of the movie that evokes any emotional response at all in me, because unrequited love really does suck, but also RUN FAR FAR AWAY! HE WANTS TO HAVE YOU STUFFED AND MOUNTED!
Oh ugh. I forgot about this scene. Liam Neeson and his peculiar looking son watch Titanic and reenact the stupid iconic scene. Why god doesn't strike them dead, I don't know.
Colin Firth and his maid keep talking to/at/near each other even though neither of them understands a thing the other is saying. This is cute? They can only show it for like one minute at a time because otherwise both actors would just walk away and find new careers, because nobody would ever, ever do that.
Now Laura Linney gets her plot I think. The hot guy asks her to dance at the...maybe it's an office holiday party? It's hard to tell. There are large pictures of naked people. Maybe he has an art opening? Well, whatevs. There's dancing and it switches to a slow song right as they start dancing, wouldn't you know it. It's like Nora Jones or something because 2003. He takes her home. They're gonna fuck. He's so pretty he's not hot. Laura Linney keeps answering the cell phone when her mentally ill brother calls because she's a decent person, which isn't hot, so her trick hits the road and Laura Linney never gets laid again because she isn't a disembodied vagina. This is truly the most miserable part of the movie.
Ok there's an hour of this fucking shit left. Maybe I'll watch the rest tomorrow.
Emergency vet
Aug. 24th, 2013 11:31 pmI am at the 24 hour vet. Dora is super sick, or looks like it to me. I wouldn't be surprised if I am going home alone. She has had what I think is called peripheral neuropathy where her back legs are weak ever since she's been diabetic. It got a lot better after she went on insulin and then started getting worse again.
Last time she was at the vet, they said her blood sugar was pretty normal. Then she started getting very skinny, her back like a xylophone. They hadn't caught her diabetes until it was really late so at this point I don't have a lot of confidence in them. I upped her insulin and she seemed better though her eating was still a little off.
Tonight I came home from dinner and she was dragging herself around. She could barely move. I waited half an hour to see if it was some weird passing thing but it wasn't. Her stomach has been kind of bloaty looking and she doesn't let me pick her up anymore but this time she raised her paw to scratch me when I touched it at all.
I struggled with the carrier which doesn't go together easily. I asked around for a 24 hour vet. (Big surprise, they are far from me.) She was sick enough she got in the carrier without any protest and didn't make much noise going out to catch a cab.
The place is in a desolate corner of the Upper East Side. They seem nice. She's back with the doctors. They had me sign something agreeing to stabilize her for $400-600. Who knows after that. Maybe she's gone. Maybe she's ok but I'm going to spend all my money keeping her around.
The timing, let us just say, is not so good.
I brought a klonopin. I haven't taken it yet though I'm upset and very apprehensive.
If she goes, she's had a pretty nice time and has been a very good little friend. If she doesn't, I am even more upset about her having to travel for a full day. A 15-minute ride finds her drooling an biting my finger if I put it in the cage. I can't imagine putting her through 10 hours (transit to airport, layover in Houston) and without me (can't remember if I mentioned, Dad is being very nice and flying her.)
I am not having an easy time of it right now.
too early to wax elegaic but fuck it
Jul. 18th, 2013 11:46 amThings are about to change a lot. I'm going to be 40 and I'm leaving all my friends and I might leave my field. This is mostly making me feel terrified and unequal to things, so once in a while I try to redirect.
I'm thinking about my favorite days in New York after a conversation about those days where everyone is happy and together, and also about how they are infrequent.
A hard thing to give up, in preparing to move, is your history in a place. Another hard thing to give up is your fantasies of what your life was going to be like in a few more years in that place, even if they're totally unrealistic. (I was going to live in a neighborhood I like some day, and with enough space that I didn't feel like a gerbil. THIS WAS NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN. New York will always stay ahead of you.)
Oh but so yeah. Favorite days.
-Far Rockaway, must have been two summers ago. I managed to get on the same train out as WB and our friends going from Brooklyn. We walked through some still pretty shabby looking turf (Far Rockaway: middle class Jewish suburb, then disastrous site of poverty and neglect, then burgeoning beach scene with some problematic gentrification vibes, then hurricane bait. This was during the beach scene period) and got to the bungalow B & E were renting for two weeks. I had brought vodka I infused with grapefruits. C grilled a bunch of stuff. We went to the beach and floated around in the waves and got pecked at by these weird tiny transparent jellyfish. Back to the house to sit on the porch and bullshit. B & E are urbane and good hosts. We waited forever for the train home and talked about the guy who became locally famous for posing as a subway conductor. There are pictures of all of us on the porch looking remarkably relaxed. There's a picture of our feet around a subway pole, unless that's from a different beach day.
-Brooklyn, three summers ago. I would spend Saturday nights at WB's place in Gowanus and then we'd go somewhere for lunch and sometimes meet C, and then I'd go home. Except this was during the World Cup, and we sat at Brooklyn's one true Tex Mex joint for hours watching the game and drinking orange/cinnamon margaritas, precisely a thousand of them, and then we were all terribly drunk. We went to Park Slope's lesbian bar and drank until we realized we really had to stop drinking. God knows what we were talking about at that point. By evening, it suddenly seemed inevitable that we should go to Brighton Beach, so we got on the F train and did that. C and I ran into the ocean in our underwear because it seemed funny to do so right then. We had pelmeni and Russian beer at Tatiana or Volna or one of those beachside cafes and C and WB argued about which of them was an anarchist, or something, but it wasn't very serious. I was just too worn out to say anything, plus I'm definitely not an anarchist.
-The night the junior Times critic, who read my blog, saw that I wasn't going to opening night of Gluck's Iphigenie because I was sick of sitting in terrible seats and offered me his +1. Later on I would sit in good seats a lot, but I hadn't yet, and I was sitting near Baryzhnikov and Isaac Mizrahi and it was frankly as glamorous a thing as I'd done in New York. The production was beautiful and the singing was world class and I had a sense of belonging to a scene, however ridiculous. After that there were fun post-performance drinks on a number of occasions where everyone seemed awfully witty, and everyone seemed to think everyone else was awfully witty. At one, D and I ended up laughing uncontrollably when someone asked us how we knew each other, because it's a woeful tale of obsession and deceit.
-My first night at Marie's (the piano bar where everyone belts along) with Boris. We must have stayed 'til 2 and Boris is a terrific singer and I can't say how giddy I felt.
Well, those are a few.
I'm thinking about my favorite days in New York after a conversation about those days where everyone is happy and together, and also about how they are infrequent.
A hard thing to give up, in preparing to move, is your history in a place. Another hard thing to give up is your fantasies of what your life was going to be like in a few more years in that place, even if they're totally unrealistic. (I was going to live in a neighborhood I like some day, and with enough space that I didn't feel like a gerbil. THIS WAS NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN. New York will always stay ahead of you.)
Oh but so yeah. Favorite days.
-Far Rockaway, must have been two summers ago. I managed to get on the same train out as WB and our friends going from Brooklyn. We walked through some still pretty shabby looking turf (Far Rockaway: middle class Jewish suburb, then disastrous site of poverty and neglect, then burgeoning beach scene with some problematic gentrification vibes, then hurricane bait. This was during the beach scene period) and got to the bungalow B & E were renting for two weeks. I had brought vodka I infused with grapefruits. C grilled a bunch of stuff. We went to the beach and floated around in the waves and got pecked at by these weird tiny transparent jellyfish. Back to the house to sit on the porch and bullshit. B & E are urbane and good hosts. We waited forever for the train home and talked about the guy who became locally famous for posing as a subway conductor. There are pictures of all of us on the porch looking remarkably relaxed. There's a picture of our feet around a subway pole, unless that's from a different beach day.
-Brooklyn, three summers ago. I would spend Saturday nights at WB's place in Gowanus and then we'd go somewhere for lunch and sometimes meet C, and then I'd go home. Except this was during the World Cup, and we sat at Brooklyn's one true Tex Mex joint for hours watching the game and drinking orange/cinnamon margaritas, precisely a thousand of them, and then we were all terribly drunk. We went to Park Slope's lesbian bar and drank until we realized we really had to stop drinking. God knows what we were talking about at that point. By evening, it suddenly seemed inevitable that we should go to Brighton Beach, so we got on the F train and did that. C and I ran into the ocean in our underwear because it seemed funny to do so right then. We had pelmeni and Russian beer at Tatiana or Volna or one of those beachside cafes and C and WB argued about which of them was an anarchist, or something, but it wasn't very serious. I was just too worn out to say anything, plus I'm definitely not an anarchist.
-The night the junior Times critic, who read my blog, saw that I wasn't going to opening night of Gluck's Iphigenie because I was sick of sitting in terrible seats and offered me his +1. Later on I would sit in good seats a lot, but I hadn't yet, and I was sitting near Baryzhnikov and Isaac Mizrahi and it was frankly as glamorous a thing as I'd done in New York. The production was beautiful and the singing was world class and I had a sense of belonging to a scene, however ridiculous. After that there were fun post-performance drinks on a number of occasions where everyone seemed awfully witty, and everyone seemed to think everyone else was awfully witty. At one, D and I ended up laughing uncontrollably when someone asked us how we knew each other, because it's a woeful tale of obsession and deceit.
-My first night at Marie's (the piano bar where everyone belts along) with Boris. We must have stayed 'til 2 and Boris is a terrific singer and I can't say how giddy I felt.
Well, those are a few.
(no subject)
Dec. 28th, 2012 05:08 amI am awake feeling quite awful in a very vague way. This is my squeak of anxiety. Maybe it is just anxiety in fact. I am trying to breathe my way through it. I got a sore throat, the tense rather than scratchy kind, several days ago so there's some element of sickness here but I didn't feel at all feverish until getting the chills hours ago. Also my stomach is bothering me. I am aware I sound like the Undergroud Man. I'm just not doing well right now. My feeling bad is usually more familiar, so I tend to assume this is fatal, it goes without saying. And I have to go to Boston in a few hours. So extra anxiety about whether I will wreck that by feeling too ill to travel. Mostly I would like this not to be strep please. Or anything fatal.
Squeak.
Squeak.
(no subject)
Dec. 23rd, 2011 12:22 amWell so what was 2011 about?
I learned to knit and made many nice things.
I had a second anniversary (when you haven't had any very long relationship, you measure from the first date. Gays do it anyway, I think, because of the whole "only recently and locally allowed to marry" thing.)
I got superficially involved with and deeply interested by Occupy Wall Street, went to some general assemblies and demonstrations, left my bank for a credit union.
I saw the Met premiere of Nixon in China and the lovely Broadway revival of Follies, Anna Netrebko's first opening night (as Anne Boleyn) and a bunch of other stuff. Movies I loved this year were Tender Mercies, The Red Shoes, A Letter to Three Wives, Easy A, and in the theater, The Descendants.
I got into Harvard's 1-year mid-career MPA program and couldn't go because $.
I paid a fuckton of money to figure out that my cat is diabetic. She's doing way better. I think she was kind of on death's pet door.
I went to my grandmother's 90th birthday. She may well make it to 100, keinahora.
I had a couple of important friends move out of the area, which on the heels of WB's absence, was a little bit crushing.
I took an improv class, which did not change my life or anything but was a thing I wanted to do.
I had an old friend with whom I have not really been close in five or six years get glioblastoma, an aggressive brain tumor. It's on my mind because I finally was brought up to speed about it tonight by a mutual friend, who let me in on the fact that he won't be with us probably more than another nine months. My odd reaction with this particular friend was to want to go and make all our old inside jokes because within a year, there will be nobody that gets them. Nobody will laugh at the one about Carnie Wilson and Guernica. Nobody will laugh at the phrase, uttered in a New York Jewish accent "so I SAYS to Guyatri..."
I mad a good friend in the neighborhood. He's moving next year, academic job market, but I hated my neighborhood way less when there was someone to whose house I could walk and eat a slice of pizza and shoot the shit and go home without ever looking at my watch and factoring in the fact that I live in Maine.
I found a piano teacher and just barely started taking piano. Between this and some work on my own during the summer, I can now look at a familiar tune in a fakebook and plod my way through a very foursquare account of it. Currently I can play "Ten Cents a Dance" without any trainwrecks. This is absolutely thrilling.
The things I want to do in 2012. Mostly they're the same things I want every year, but you have to have some arbitrary date on which to attempt to be serious about them:
Exercise and lose 20 lbs.
Somehow disable my home internet access.
Do some version of the incredibly strict diet I imagine would stop my digestion from being so fucked up. (The most extreme version being: no fried food, no spicy food, way less dairy, no wheat, probably less meat, way less sugar.)
Be warmer toward my family.
Do something new career-wise. I'm three months from five years at the Lemonade Society and I'm doing terrible work because I'm so bored. It's time. Nowhere is going to offer the same insane amount of time off and free metrocards and stuff, and I wonder if anywhere else will have as many smart and interesting people, but what can I do? The other day I was on the way to jail to see a client I hadn't met and I said to a friend "so here's what his story is going to be" and made a list of ten details, eight of which turned out to be true. I feel numbed and sometimes hostile and not at all effective. It's time.
I miss this place but it is no more. Couldn't resist a year-end entry.
I learned to knit and made many nice things.
I had a second anniversary (when you haven't had any very long relationship, you measure from the first date. Gays do it anyway, I think, because of the whole "only recently and locally allowed to marry" thing.)
I got superficially involved with and deeply interested by Occupy Wall Street, went to some general assemblies and demonstrations, left my bank for a credit union.
I saw the Met premiere of Nixon in China and the lovely Broadway revival of Follies, Anna Netrebko's first opening night (as Anne Boleyn) and a bunch of other stuff. Movies I loved this year were Tender Mercies, The Red Shoes, A Letter to Three Wives, Easy A, and in the theater, The Descendants.
I got into Harvard's 1-year mid-career MPA program and couldn't go because $.
I paid a fuckton of money to figure out that my cat is diabetic. She's doing way better. I think she was kind of on death's pet door.
I went to my grandmother's 90th birthday. She may well make it to 100, keinahora.
I had a couple of important friends move out of the area, which on the heels of WB's absence, was a little bit crushing.
I took an improv class, which did not change my life or anything but was a thing I wanted to do.
I had an old friend with whom I have not really been close in five or six years get glioblastoma, an aggressive brain tumor. It's on my mind because I finally was brought up to speed about it tonight by a mutual friend, who let me in on the fact that he won't be with us probably more than another nine months. My odd reaction with this particular friend was to want to go and make all our old inside jokes because within a year, there will be nobody that gets them. Nobody will laugh at the one about Carnie Wilson and Guernica. Nobody will laugh at the phrase, uttered in a New York Jewish accent "so I SAYS to Guyatri..."
I mad a good friend in the neighborhood. He's moving next year, academic job market, but I hated my neighborhood way less when there was someone to whose house I could walk and eat a slice of pizza and shoot the shit and go home without ever looking at my watch and factoring in the fact that I live in Maine.
I found a piano teacher and just barely started taking piano. Between this and some work on my own during the summer, I can now look at a familiar tune in a fakebook and plod my way through a very foursquare account of it. Currently I can play "Ten Cents a Dance" without any trainwrecks. This is absolutely thrilling.
The things I want to do in 2012. Mostly they're the same things I want every year, but you have to have some arbitrary date on which to attempt to be serious about them:
Exercise and lose 20 lbs.
Somehow disable my home internet access.
Do some version of the incredibly strict diet I imagine would stop my digestion from being so fucked up. (The most extreme version being: no fried food, no spicy food, way less dairy, no wheat, probably less meat, way less sugar.)
Be warmer toward my family.
Do something new career-wise. I'm three months from five years at the Lemonade Society and I'm doing terrible work because I'm so bored. It's time. Nowhere is going to offer the same insane amount of time off and free metrocards and stuff, and I wonder if anywhere else will have as many smart and interesting people, but what can I do? The other day I was on the way to jail to see a client I hadn't met and I said to a friend "so here's what his story is going to be" and made a list of ten details, eight of which turned out to be true. I feel numbed and sometimes hostile and not at all effective. It's time.
I miss this place but it is no more. Couldn't resist a year-end entry.
