Abraham Lincoln
Category: Art and Photography

Arguably our most introspective, introverted, and nuanced president, could not possibly win the general election if he were on the ballot in November 2008. What has happened to our nation in the last century and a half?

8:38 AM - 2 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

Writing New Songs
Category: Music

... is hard, particularly when you're not trying to take the piss. Satire=easy, sincerity=hard.

1:42 AM - 1 Comments - 1 Kudos - Add Comment

Pernicious Stupidity
Category: Movies, TV, Celebrities

That's what my mother calls Spongebob Squarepants. And she's probably right, although I'm not sure that the show is exacly "pernicious." That would imply malevolence on some level. My daughter has accidentally discovered this show. I don't know how, as we don't allow her to watch Nickolodeon, mostly because the shows make her insane and I hate the marketing to children and subsequent demands from Madeline for Cocoa Puffs. But as much as my mother hates this show, she has allowed Madeline to watch it daily. Madeline keeps trying to get my mother to watch it with her. I overheard this the other day:

 "I love Spongebob, Dodo."

"I know. What's wrong with you?"

But the conversation ended there. So our attempts to change the channel are fruitless, because the little roach has no king for about six hours every day. Madeline has been watching the Spongebob marathon for about four hours. And here's the thing: I have been laughing out loud at Spongebob. In fact, as I write this, Madeline is screaming, "No, Daddy pleeeeese!!! Please don't do it! I don't want you to do it!!!!" And I'm pretty sure he's turning off the television. Which, after four hours of banality, is good. But I have to admit I'm disappointed. That Patrick cracks me up.

5:30 PM - 4 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

In Search of Things Past
Category: Travel and Places

No one I know particularly enjoys using public restrooms. Everything about it is distasteful: waiting for your turn, for example, broadcasts to the world that you have to use the toilet. Sometimes you're just waiting to spot-clean the coffee stain from your shirt, but it doesn't matter. People still look at you knowingly.  Add to this unpleasantness the adjunct activity of exiting the restroom and meeting - or, in my case, avoiding - the gaze of the person next in line. This is why I tend to limit my visits to these facilities to two minutes or less. If the patron outside is already feeling self-conscious or annoyed, my taking forever will only increase her irritation and make the inevitable walk-by awkward. I like to think that I am a pretty considerate person in this respect. My feeling is that, if you have to attend to something that requires more than five minutes in a public lavatory, you're better off just going home, and I am diligent in applying this standard to myself. But today I was reminded that many people are quite unbothered by the bathroom visit, to the extent that they lounge around inside as if they were preparing a decadent Saturday night bubble bath. I waited so long today that I expected the woman to emerge in a negligee holding a pair of champagne flutes. When she finally did reappear, I couldn't help but notice that she was not wearing a negligee and didn't look refreshed; instead, she scurried past me and shinnied up against the wall, her eyes averted and her face a mask of terror and shame. I stepped into the restroom and discovered the reason for her furtive escape. The air was heavy with stench, and I think the temperature in the tiny room was ten degrees hotter than outside in the hallway. I tend to avoid inhalation in every public restroom, but the miasma was so pernicious that even the cessation of breathing couldn't mask it. My instinct was to flee, but I'd drunk too much coffee, and so resigned myself to a minute of torture. I became consumed with the desire to run out into the busy coffee shop to find that woman, put my finger in her face and, in my best Marat impression, shout, "J'accuse!" Really, I wanted to go right up and ask her what the matter was with her, who did she think she was, and explain the proper etiquette. Once I was out of the bathroom, I avoided scanning the room so that I could look pointedly in her direction, which was all I'd be able to muster. And anyway, I forgot about the whole thing pretty quickly. But still. I mean, come on.

5:06 PM - 5 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

I KNOW funny!

Here’s what I know. I know about comedy. I screamed at a kid today that he didn’t know funny because he didn’t like my idea.

I also figured out that comedy lives in my shoulder. Know how I know that? Because I have severe stabbing pains in my shoulder that I thought were caused by poor weightlifting technique. Cuyler said it’s ’cause my funnybone is in the wrong place. Then I realized that he was wrong. Know why? Because my funnybone is SO precise that it grew all the way up my tibia or whatever and pierced my rotator cuff tendon or whatever it’s called. How come it did that? Because I have funny IN my bones now, where most people have just one, separate bone.

10:18 PM - 5 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

Give me a job.
Category: Sports

Anyone. Please. Preferably one in which the salary is commensurate with my ability to be entertaining at dinner parties after a glass of Rioja, and that doesn't involve my moving around at all.

But I'll settle for anything, really.

9:38 PM - 4 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

It’s not just me. so there.

My friend Jake emailed me this and it had the unfortunate effect of validating my last blog. Here's your RESEARCH. Sheeeyoot.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/07/dining/07note.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

3:46 PM - 6 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

It’s very important

That people stop telling me to "enjoy" stuff. I don't need that kind of aggression in my life.

Currently listening : Essential Leonard Cohen By Leonard Cohen Release date: 22 October, 2002

7:31 PM - 2 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

The Secret 2, Electric Bugaloo

The Secret advises You (author's caps, not mine) to speak only your desires aloud, and the Universe (their caps, again) will respond.

Try the fun things I've been doing for a couple days now:

Announce aloud, "I eat whatever I want and am my ideal weight," in between mouthfuls of chimichanga.

Announce to your partner frequently, "See that clear lane of traffic/green light/image of St. Francis of Assissi in tire grease? I manifested that."

Assert that everything you want is on its way. When someone asks "When?", remind him or her that the Universe doesn't recognize time. This works especially well if you are in the service industry.

10:28 AM - 5 Comments - 3 Kudos - Add Comment

The Secret
Category: Religion and Philosophy

The Secret, a self-empowerment book that's being flung about in book circles and touted as nothing short of miraculous, was gifted to me. Not to be left out of a trend, I've been trying out some of the suggestions. One passage suggests that, before sleep, I replay all the events of the day and, "If any events or moments did not got the way you wanted, replay them in your mind in a way that thrills you." Here are some events from my day that I thought might could use a rewrite:

1. In an effort to get through a restaurant meal with a tired 4-year old, I would not have succumbed to the hot judgment of the woman at the adjacent table and her three silent children and, when my daughter refused to stop dancing in the aisle and eat her damn burrito, I might have given her a little pat on the head, rather than dragging her into the bathroom and threatening to burn all of her toys.

2. During a Rockwellian moment of drinking coffee and humoring my mother by reading aloud from Robert Pinsky's America's Favorite Poems, I would not have taken her bait and entered in a heated argument about home decor. In this conflict, I implied that the four paintings she demanded I hang in the living room were painted by a no-name ass clown and would serve the decor best if they were mounted in the following locations: beneath the litter box, in one of the toilet tanks, on the ceiling of the guest bathroom, and on the topmost branch of the tree in the backyard, respectively. I haven't thought of an alternate ending for this one.

12:52 AM - 7 Comments - 6 Kudos - Add Comment