२६ डिसेंबर, २०२०
"As retro as a shelf of books might seem in an era of flat-panel screens, Books by the Foot has thrived through Democratic and Republican administrations..."
The criterion is, of course, whether or not it gives you a thrill of pleasure when you touch it. Remember, I said when you touch it. Make sure you don’t start reading it. Reading clouds your judgment. Instead of asking yourself what you feel, you’ll start asking whether you need that book or not. Imagine what it would be like to have a bookshelf filled only with books that you really love. Isn’t that image spellbinding?... [F]orget about whether you think you’ll read it again or whether you’ve mastered what’s inside. Instead, take each book in your hand and decide whether it moves you or not. Keep only those books that will make you happy just to see them on your shelves, the ones that you really love.... There’s no need to finish reading books that you only got halfway through. Their purpose was to be read halfway. So get rid of all those unread books....
Imagine touching a book "by authors like Hillary Clinton, Bill Maher, Al Franken and Bob Woodward" and feeling "a thrill of pleasure." I don't have to touch these books to know I would not be thrilled! I can't even imagine another person who could be thrilled. It's a difficult feat of imagination, and I cannot do it.
"All of a sudden, Ms. Duke, a vocal critic of 'mommy wine culture' and a member of the Sober Mom Squad, a virtual community created during the pandemic, was fielding questions..."
Hard-driving New Yorkers do not drink at an hour many consider the afternoon. Cocktails at 5 o’clock is for Cheever stories. In New York, the custom was to knock back later. If you were drinking at 5, it was probably at 5 in the morning, when you finished your shift. But the pandemic changed our sense of time, especially in the early days of winter and again now when the light fades so early.
How the word "how" has become the most deceptive word in the history of headlines.
I'm sure some "how" headlines sit atop articles that really explain how to do something, but I must cry out against the infestation of "how" in headlines.
I'm seeing headline after headline that would be more accurate if you just crossed out the "how," because the article isn't really going to tell you how X happened. It's only going to tell you that X happened.
I've been meaning to rail about this for quite some time. What pushed me over the edge this morning was this, in Rolling Stone: "How Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’ Brilliantly Mingled Sex, Religion." No, you don't know how he did it! You only know that he did it. Or, at best, the manner in which he did — i.e., "brilliantly."
Just keep an eye out for "how" headlines. That's all I'm saying. Sometimes they are good, and I'm guilty of deploying "how" to lure readers, but as a reader, I am among the potential victims, and I'm trying to heighten my distaste for bait.
"At French Resorts, Skiing Has Become an Uphill Sport/The government closed ski lifts, fearing they might spread the coronavirus. The skiers came anyway."
“When you go out skiing in the cold, the first thing that happens is your nose starts to run,” said Miles Bright, an English mountain guide based in Chamonix. “And what do you do? You wipe your nose. So your gloves are covered in snot, you join in the lift queue, you touch things.”“I just can’t see how it can be hygienic, getting in and out of the ski lifts,” he added. “But for the nation’s health, I think it’s absolutely essential.”
Bright, like the rest of skiers on the mountain, was ski touring — ascending the mountain using skins attached to his skis, then detaching them to descend normally. He estimated it would take him four times as long to go up than to ski down.
Will you ever think about a ski lift the same way again?
"Every day these people would wake us up. At first, I was polite and asked them to please be quiet. Then after a few days I was shouting, and my husband was like: 'Stop it! You can’t do that.'"
"It would be nice if the wall-to-wall marathon showings of A Christmas Story on TBS and TNT led to a rediscovery of Jean Shepherd's other work..."
Shepherd's oral narrative style was a precursor to that used by Spalding Gray and Garrison Keillor. Marshall McLuhan in Understanding Media wrote that Shepherd "regards radio as a new medium for a new kind of novel that he writes nightly." In the Seinfeld season-six DVD set, commenting on the episode titled "The Gymnast", Jerry Seinfeld said, "He really formed my entire comedic sensibility—I learned how to do comedy from Jean Shepherd."...
Shepherd was an influence on Bill Griffith's Zippy comic strip, as Griffith noted in his strip for January 9, 2000. Griffith explained, "The inspiration—just plucking random memories from my childhood, as I'm wont to do in my Sunday strip (also a way to expand beyond Zippy)—and Shep was a big part of them."
In an interview with New York magazine, Steely Dan's Donald Fagen says that the eponymous figure from his solo album The Nightfly was based on Jean Shepherd.
Though he primarily spent his radio career playing music, New York Top-40 DJ Dan Ingram has acknowledged Shepherd's style as an influence. An article he wrote for the March–April 1957 issue of MAD, "The Night People vs Creeping Meatballism", described the differences between what he considered to be "day people" (conformists) and "night people" (nonconformists).
A few days ago, in conversation on Facebook, I reconsidered my lifelong policy of averting my eyes from the film version of "A Christmas Story." Just to present my own comments:
I've never seen "A Christmas Story" because I am too devoted to Jean Shepherd and the original story as told over the radio....
I know [you hear Shepherd's voice-over narration in the film], but I don't want to see the ideal replaced by a literal acting-out of the story by human actors. The adult's voice creates the kid feeling. I don't want to see a real boy acting out the emotions for the camera. It's radio, the ultimate in radio, and not film...
I think I need to change my position. "A Christmas Story" is a deviation from Shepherd's usual show, because he was reading a story — not riffing in real time — that had been published in a book and a magazine (Playboy). So it wasn't the pure radio ideal that I'm so staunch about. It is not one of his stories about his own youth, because he says before reading the story that the boy is *not* him.
So did I finally watch the movie? No. Not yet, anyway. But I was motivated to listen to a random old show — something about midwestern drug stores. Nothing to do with Christmas, but I was listening on Christmas.
I don't think of Shepherd as Christmas-y, and it annoys me a bit that so many people do. The radio show should be much more important that that one film version of a story he used to read on the radio. Should be, and perhaps is, as its influence is deeply woven into many things we actively enjoy today. It's baked into this blog.
Here's the podcast where I found my random old show yesterday. Here's a webpage with a lot of the old shows.
२५ डिसेंबर, २०२०
At the Christmas Café...
... you can write about whatever you want. And I hope you got whatever you wanted.
"Our vaunted capacity for abstract thought often gets us (or others) into trouble. We may be the only species to pursue scientific inquiry..."
Christmas TV.
ADDED: Speaking of British TV:Instead we are now watching the Twilight Zone where Art Carney is the drunk Santa.
— Ken Jennings (@KenJennings) December 25, 2020
My answer is always when it's British TV.Ok I’m deeply curious about this, how often do you use subtitles on your TV?
— caitie delaney (@caitiedelaney) December 25, 2020
Except most of those things we can't do right now, Bob....
A Christmas Message from Bob Dylan:
— HarryHew (@harryhew) December 24, 2020
"If you got the holiday blues, I feel for you. I know life is hard. But you don't need anyone to tell you how to feel better. ... What you gotta do is go out and help someone more unfortunate than you." pic.twitter.com/2szVpc147Y
Happy Christmas!
— #RingoStarr (@ringostarrmusic) December 25, 2020ADDED: From Craig Brown's "150 Glimpses of the Beatles":
Alone of all the Beatles, Ringo possessed no talent for composing. But one day, in a sudden flash of inspiration, the germs of a song entered his head, as if from nowhere. He worked on the song for three hours, and presented it to the other three the next day. After an awkward silence, they felt obliged to point out that it had already been written and recorded by Bob Dylan.
Brown doesn't say what Dylan song this was. But what song could it have been? It would have to have been something simple. But what? I try to think of a simple Bob Dylan song from the 1960s, and I think "I Want You," because that's a simple sentiment: "I want you/I want you/I want you/So bad."
I have somewhere else I want to go with this post, but writing out the chorus like that, I'm smacked in the head with the realization that a non-Ringo Beatle did in fact write — and record — that very song originally written by Bob Dylan, same title and all: "I Want You." Lyrics: "I want you, I want you so bad."
Did no one feel obliged to tell John Lennon that Bob Dylan had already written and recorded that song? No, obviously not. And it's not as if Lennon fleshed out the song. His "I Want You" hardly has any lyrics. It's just "I want you so bad/It's driving me mad" repeated.
Originally, I was going to say that Ringo couldn't possibly have believed he'd written "I Want You" because it has complicated Dylanesque lyrics: The guilty undertaker sighs/The lonesome organ grinder cries/The silver saxophones say I should refuse you... But Lennon's "I Want You" shows how Ringo might have done it. Just use the chorus. The chorus is perfectly simple.
२४ डिसेंबर, २०२०
"Now Ann has baited me into promiscuously spiking my anxiety stew with carnalized onions..."
"I’ve honestly started wondering if this is just how men’s minds actually work in real life and now instead of being uncomfortable about passages like these, I’m uncomfortable about life."
A comment at the subreddit menwritingwomen.
The commenter is reacting in general to snippets of writing that have been posted in that group and specifically to this one:
Of course, the NYT "loves" this... if love includes loving the virality of something so clickable and sharable.
Click and reclick the image to read the full comment that begins "It all depends on your attitude."The New York Times loves this comment
— Joe Gabriel Simonson (@SaysSimonson) December 22, 2020
In early lockdown, I spent most evenings in the front room of my mother’s house, drunk, staring at a computer, reeling at the prospect of my body being deprived indefinitely of touch.... Only weeks earlier, I was in New York for an extended visit, recently single and pleasantly crazy with the desire to date far and wide. My romantic and sexual value seemed higher then and there than it had ever been anywhere else.... [One man] looked fondly down at me in a hotel room and inexplicably exclaimed, “I love New York!” at the sight of my body.
Inexplicably.
And then in March came the shutdown. ... I was urgently trying to recast the concept of pleasure as something that could occur without other people.... I made the mistake in this period of suggesting in a Facebook post that single people, especially those living alone, could not be expected to go an unlimited amount of time without socializing or close contact. Some people reacted to this as though I had proposed an orgy on every street corner, pandemic be damned, but that wasn’t what I meant. What I meant was that human beings can’t be expected to endure the sudden and total loss of social comfort....
The coronavirus pandemic has brought out a nasty puritanism in some people.... One doesn’t even need to actually break a rule to earn their disgust, only to express dismay over things they consider unimportant or, worse, hedonistic. To even complain about what it feels like to live alone and not be able to date right now is regarded as unseemly, dismissed as trivial....
Most of society does not really believe that casual, nonmonogamous encounters can actually hold meaning, rather than simply serve as crude ways to blow off steam. I know that they can. Living as a purposefully single and promiscuous person was one way to know others, one way to find joy in the world, and it’s gone for now. Single people have lost something important, and should be allowed to bemoan it.
This is a very well-written and impressive statement of a point of view that should be part of the discussion! She's not saying her desire for physical love is more important than children going to school and elderly people staying alive. She's saying the interest in living real life is important too.
Now, Nolan invites attacks by calling other people names. Her antagonists are puritans — and nasty ones at that. And she makes their argument easier by using the word "promiscuous" to describe the interest she wants us to take seriously.
Back to the comments. I see this from Low-Notes-Liberate, who says he's a musician and thus "supposed to be wildly frivolous in general." But he prefers "long-term intimacy."
After the initial hide and seek of bodies is, for me, when the real adventure begins. Who is this person, who am I, who are we together. It is perhaps more a journey into the mind through the body. Not to say that love simmering like carnalized onions in an iron skillet, animal nature is incredibly sexy.
Carnalized onions!
But I like the journey taken over time. That said, I can easily relate to the horrifying ten months of deserted island sexuality many of us have endured. I was happy to see this article because it needs to be discussed and out in the open. What is a life of masturbation? Videos? Amazon brown boxes arriving with the hopes of a new variation on the same old theme?
२३ डिसेंबर, २०२०
"The combination of half-listening and overdramatization of the facts by the media creates an anxiety-driven stew."
"I was 12 years old in the 9th grade - younger than my classmates, and (as you may possibly be able to imagine) pretty awkward, shy and nerdy.
John McWhorter calls bullshit on civility.
Overall, the social media universe must hear this. I am no longer a whipper-snapper. I am a jaded 55, and if you diss me where I can hear it, it's your ass. I will no longer be polite.
— John McWhorter (@JohnHMcWhorter) December 23, 2020
A perfect storm of gender privilege + celebrity privilege.
1. Celebrity privilege — Sorvino openly states the belief that she is different from other ladies: If only Pete knew she was Mira Sorvino, a famous person, he would get how sweet and kooky and funny it was for her to "stalk" and "sidle" up to him in a car.We just saw Pete Davidson on the highway and my daughter and I stalked up until we could sidle up next to his car and screamed we love u Pete!! He obliged with a slightly strained smile- Pete hope someone tells u that the crazy lady was only me and we meant it! @nbcsnl
— Mira Sorvino (@MiraSorvino) December 23, 2020
Credit/blame for saying the right/wrong number.
Why should it have mattered what the president said he wanted? What should have mattered is what the Democrats demanded.
— Marianne Williamson (@marwilliamson) December 23, 2020
२२ डिसेंबर, २०२०
"We've been educated, we've got liberated/And had complicating matters with men.../Oh we burned our bras and we burned our dinners/And we burned our candles at both ends..."
"The man and woman never did settle in, and as Flight 462 began to taxi out to a runway, the man stood up, ignoring a flight attendant’s order to sit, saying that he had post-traumatic stress disorder..."
"I wish I could make it so that people were more thoughtful and kind toward each other. It’s something that I think about a lot as I move through life."
"I thought it was delicious. Is that because I love McDonald’s too deeply? Or is something wrong with my taste?"
२१ डिसेंबर, २०२०
"Across the United States, many areas with large populations of Latinos and residents of Asian descent, including ones with the highest numbers of immigrants, had... a surge in turnout and a shift to the right, often a sizable one."
"What item of clothing was the emphasis on? What is the most risky piece of clothing?"/"Underpants... The insides, the crotch."
Toxicologists consulted by CNN say that if applied in granular form to clothes, the [lethal nerve agent] Novichok would be absorbed through the skin when the victim begins to sweat....
"The standard does not appear necessary to ensure that the product meets consumer expectations, and the F.D.A. has tentatively concluded that it is no longer necessary to promote honesty and fair dealing in the interest of consumers and may limit flexibility for innovation."
The dressing was originally a simple vinaigrette made of oil and vinegar, but it gradually became the gooey, sweet, tomato-inflected dressing we recognize today, [said Paul Freedman, a professor of history at Yale, and the author of “American Cuisine: And How It Got This Way"]. Unlike the French, who tend to relegate sugar to dessert, the dressing reflects Americans’ love of all things sugary, from honey mustard to bacon slathered in maple syrup, he said.
"Among jurists I have encountered in the United States and abroad, Shirley Abrahamson is the very best."
Maybe just do the same thing but with a pseudonym.
Ok it’s a long story but I need a pseudonym. Which one of these is your fave?
— Tom Rosenthal (@tomrosenthal) October 11, 2020
Comedy story. @adrianbliss asked me to do a cover of ‘Home’ by Edward Sharpe for a video in 2015. My cover went viral on TikTok last week. Many asked me to release it on Spotify but don’t want covers on my Spotify so say hello to @EdithWhiskers my pseudonym. Song out tomorrow! pic.twitter.com/fLl8iwTyTG
— Tom Rosenthal (@tomrosenthal) October 15, 2020
Seems a fairly appropriate 2020 thing that a woman who doesn’t exist is currently 🥈 on the global viral charts on Spotify. pic.twitter.com/FofrE7oQIZ
— Tom Rosenthal (@tomrosenthal) November 14, 2020
What a strange life this is. https://t.co/0YHJ1hgNEo
— Tom Rosenthal (@tomrosenthal) November 26, 2020
२० डिसेंबर, २०२०
"Have you ever heard of 'pronoid'?" — I ask.
"I grew up in the former Soviet Union and in a late, flaccid, totalitarian state, the idea that 'the road to hell is paved with good intentions' was particularly obvious."
"Once You Get The COVID-19 Vaccine, Can You Still Infect Others?"
There’s a hypothetical mechanism that could allow this to happen biologically, said Deepta Bhattacharya, a professor of immunobiology at the University of Arizona. And that mechanism is … well … it’s boogers and phlegm.“So, the virus enters in through the upper respiratory tracts, either through your nose or your throat. And those are protected by a mucous layer. And so that mucous layer is good at slowing things down from getting into you. But it also acts as a barrier for things like antibodies, and certainly for cells from getting out and meeting the virus as it comes in,” he said.
[Your immune cells] might not be able to neutralize the ones resting in your nose, on the other side of your mucous barriers. Those COVID-19 viruses wouldn’t hurt you, but they still might be able to replicate and shed — coughed back out of your nose and mouth....