Hi. As some of you know, I write a newspaper column called “Media Shmedia.” Writer’s Digest has an annual writing competition, and they determined it wasn’t shit. Woo to the hoo.
Here is the column in question, if you’re curious.
The droll and diminutive humorist has written an article about Presidential elections for that normallly overblown magazine that I normally don’t like because it’s normally so pretentious. But back to David Sedaris, my favorite part is his metaphorical evaluation of the choice between these two candidates:
To put them in perspective, I think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. “Can I interest you in the chicken?” she asks. “Or would you prefer the platter of shit with bits of broken glass in it?”
Writitude is an occasional gratitude list of resonant writing, sometimes found in unexpected places. Like TV.
1. Mad Men (AMC), because it’s both subtle and stylish in its uncomfortable insights.
2. The Ex List (CBS), because it’s adorable, and benefits from careful listening.
3. Chuck (NBC), because it’s extra adorable, along with being super-spy-ish.
4. Life on Mars (ABC), because it’s deep and sly at the same time. And they used Sweet’s “Little Willie” during an action sequence.
5. Eli Stone (ABC), because it’s not afraid of the inexplicable, and has lines like, “You’re one of those people for whom ‘normal’ is a failure of potential.”
I watched this miniseries, The Starter Wife, which I liked, and it ended with this quote, which I loved:
You will travel through the valley of rejection,
You will reside in the land of morning mists…
And you will find your home,
Though it will not be where you left it.
No offense to the writer of The Starter Wife, or anything, but this feels like it’s “from” something, and I’m not accomplishing anything in the Googling. Can anybody verify the name of who wrote this?
As if I didn’t feel dirty enough just having done my first recap of that inferior dancing show, my blog is apparently now overrun with Republican sex addicts.
My visitor counter allows me to see the path that readers took to get to this site. Apparently, Yahoo has listed me as a source for viewing b*ikini photos of S*arah P*alin. (The reason I’m asterisking things is because I don’t want to provide even more grist for the Google mill.)
So today I am somewhat inundated with people who have arrived looking for small-swimsuited Evil-Governor hypocritical soccer pitbulls. With lipstick.
If you saw the entry in which I posted that photo, you’d know it was an ironic gesture. (And no, I’m not linking back to it. Stop that.)
Normally, I’d optimistically hope that all visitors — coming here for whatever reason — might check out a few pages and decide they like it here. But I’m profoundly doubtful that those longing for gun-totin’, Alaskan-Mama cleavage are going to be fascinated by the real tone of this site. Sigh.
I am on a campaign. I’ve been on this campaign in my head for several years, and now I’ve decided to let you hear the voices. Well . . . one of ‘em.
We, as a collective English-speaking entity, need to stop doing something: “is is.” I can really only find fault with one thing about Barack Obama, and that’s the way he occasionally lapses into “is is.” There is a minister I enjoy listening to, and her message is usually quite resonant — but peppered with the intermittent “is is” to be the chalk on my spiritual blackboard.
Without meaning to sound pedantic or ranting (too late?), here is the thing:
“What the thing is, is bad language.”
“The thing is, just freakin’ stop it.”
Both of the above are correct. You can only have “is” twice when you have “What” at the beginning. Period. The thing IS, so many otherwise eloquent people are throwing extra izzes into other constructions. Just STOP it! The thing is, is is is it’s wrong. And if you really looked at it, you’d see that it makes no sense to put another “is” after the phrase “The thing is,” because after “The thing is” you’re just supposed to describe the damn THING.
Have we all got what the thing is now?
Yahoo! News shouldn’t put its “Odd News” on the front page, where I will stumble upon it and be made distraught. I just went there to do a search, and this headline caught my eye:
The first question you might reasonably ask yourself is, Where was the bear riding the bicycle? The answer is two-fold: No, and Missoula, Montana.
An occasional gratitude list of writing that makes me glad.
1. Mad Men, season 1, episode 9 — in which Betty, the beautiful housewife, hoists a shotgun and takes aim at the neighbor’s pigeons.
2. Mad Men, season 1, episode 12 — which defines what it is to have an American identity, as expressed in “simpler” times.
3. The book of She Loves Me, the musical — whose music and lyrics (by the Fiddler on the Roof guys) are lovely, but whose book (by Joe Masteroff) is surpassingly unsentimental in its sentimentality.
4. Satan’s Alley — the “trailer” in Tropic Thunder for the faux film about two gay priests, courtesy of Robert Downey, Jr., Tobey Maguire, and Ben Stiller. You couldn’t have given your Brokeback Monastery a funnier title.
5. One Life to Live — I don’t know where they’re going with their Back-to-the-Future-on-steroids storyline, but I’m fascinated. And impressed.
So here’s the dealio. This show I’m in — while it will be playing fifteen minutes away from where I live — is currently rehearsing an hour and a half away. And I have to step in for someone I’m understudying today, and I don’t have a clue about his part yet. And we had to put my mom into an assisted living place last night.
I just bring this all up to let you know that I’d be here posting if I weren’t a complete deranged out-of-my-mind wall-to-wall overscheduled foo’. Just for the record.
In the meantime, I’m listening to more car stereo these days. Sergio Mendes and Brasil ‘66 was a seminal influence on my childhood and my musical tastes. I even learned to speak Portuguese just to sing Bossa Nova music. And there’s a Brasil ‘66 CD in the car shuffle, the one that has “The Look of Love” on it.
For the record, I love most everything on this album, especially “Look Around.” But this version of “The Look of Love” — while the one that most people sample when they want to make you think of ’60s hipness — isn’t my favorite. Last night, driving home in a dead exhaustion, the radio started playing the version of this song that I subconsciously kept wishing would come up on the Sergio CD . . . the one by Dusty Springfield.
Damn, that’s a good song.
I guess if I were going to be constructing these gratitude-lists-for-good-writing in official Oprah fashion, I’d continue making lists of five. But today calls for a little singularly focused love.
1968 was a big year, even though I was a little kid. I won’t go into all the historical events, but on the after-school front I had become addicted to Dark Shadows since its premiere. In those days you had to warm the TV up a little bit, and in 1968 a new show started airing in the slot before Dark Shadows. I was no fan of soap operas, but this one had a rich girl who split off into a gum-snapping trollop. I didn’t really understand what trollops did, but I loved the whole . . . Multiple Personality . . . aspect to the story. (Did you see how I did that? Connected my blog title right in there? Was that good?)