December 2011
34 posts
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New Year's Eve 2011: looking backward
Here we are, standing in the ashes of another year. How the hell did 2011 pass so quickly? The years all begin to look alike, after you’ve seen fifty or so of them. It took me a minute to recollect the notable / memorable things that happened this year: - Partner and I took some nice trips, twice to Cape Cod and once to Orlando (Disney / Universal, naturally). ...
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Burning down the school
I do not make efficient use of Facebook, I think; I just sort of mooch around and look at this and that. I only have about thirty friends, which (my student employees tell me) is completely pathetic. The other day I was looking through my various Facebook affiliations, and I noticed that, a long time ago, I’d joined a group called “Battle Ground High School Alumni.” I looked in,...
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All my (useless) gadgets
I have a box – no, two boxes – of cords and connections belonging to various computing devices. The devices themselves are long gone. How does this happen? Last year I bought a cheap ($40) Kobo Literati e-reader at Bed Bath & Beyond. I liked it, but it was slow and balky. Barnes & Noble had an online sale for reconditioned Nooks, so I bought one ($80), and...
art2chokehearts asked: Very glad to hear that! And thank you, I'll continue taking pics and writing! I was reading on your blog about Buddhism, and it is a very interesting religion. I first got into it through the writings of Noah Levine (author of "Dharma Punx) which lead me to works by his father. It can be a little demanding and really requires some commitment. At the very least though I've found...
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Christmas: the light and the dark
Simon Schama, the British historian, wrote a nice piece in last weekend’s Financial Times about Christmas and Hanukkah. Some years back, he took heat for daring to comment that the emphasis on lights in Christmas (all those twinkly bulbs on the tree!) and Hanukkah (all those candles!) was just a holdover from the very traditional celebration of light at the Solstice. Hm. Is there...
art2chokehearts asked: Thank you by the way! How were your holidays? Well, aside from what you wrote :-)
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A fine secular Christmas
Neither Partner nor I practices any particular religion. I spent a couple of years in the mid-2000s trying to recapture my Catholicism, but found it ultimately futile. Partner and I talk about Buddhism a lot, but I am uneasily aware that Buddhism is easier to talk about than practice. (For those of you who use “Zen” as an adjective, I recommend a wonderful and very acerbic book called...
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For Hanukkah: Jewish superheroes
Speaking as a Gentile, of all the Jewish holidays, I like Hanukkah best. Fine, it’s not a High Holiday, it’s an observance. The gifts are bush-league: chocolate coins, colorful pencils. Maybe, if you’re lucky, you get a shirt and pants. But the candles are pretty. And it’s eight days long. And who doesn’t like potato pancakes? Or playing dreidel? But I was especially...
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For Christmas: Sus, pastoureu di mountagno
Even as a nonbeliever, I like Christmas carols. (As Lisa Simpson, the vegetarian, said once about meat: “Hey, I still like the smell.”) I like unusual carols, and especially folk carols that have a whiff of pagandom about them. This tune is from the early 17th century, from Avignon in southern France. It’s in Provencal, so don’t worry if you can’t...
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Christmas Eve
You know I usually present something unusual and/or different for holidays. Well, this is Christmas Eve, and for weeks I tried to think of something, but I kept coming up blank. And then I think I finally realized why. Christmas Eve was pretty much the only holiday my whole family celebrated consistently. We were semi-dysfunctional: not really Dr. Phil material, but with lots...
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Showing disrespect at Christmas
It is the Christmas / Hanukkah / Kwanzaa season, which means giving stuff to people. I like this, actually. I like getting stuff (although it makes me feel all blushy and humble), and (when I’m flush) I like giving things away. When money’s tight, however – as in the present economy – I try to be frugal. I am cheap in any case. Apollonia asked how much I give my newspaper...
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For the winter solstice: Lincoln Chafee's holiday...
Do we need a special acknowledgement of the solstice? I suppose so. There was an irruption of the whole stupid “War on Christmas” thing here in Rhode Island this year: the governor, an innocent (and rather dense) Independent named Lincoln Chafee (who’s a very nice guy, and for whom I voted), called the state tree a “holiday tree.” (Now, to be fair, this was thick-headed of him. As...
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David Lynch's "Dune"
Yesterday morning Apollonia greeted me with: “Ah! Third-level Guild Navigator! Have you just folded space from Ix?” I smiled serenely. “Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam!” I said. “Did you bring your little box of pain?” And then we both cackled demonically. Now, if you know what the above gibberish means, I give you a gold star. You are probably laughing too. ...
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Television preview: "RuPaul's Drag Race," season...
I am in withdrawal right now: RuPaul is on hiatus until next month, when Drag Race resumes. RuPaul’s shows are delicious, and funny, and entertaining, and enlightening, and I will tell you why. Drag, for some, is just peculiarity: people dressing up, outrageously; men dressing as women, women as men, et cetera. But it is so much more. As we have seen on past seasons...
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Losing things
Apollonia was inconsolable the other day. She’d lost her new hand cream. “I’m really unhappy,” she said. “It had – precious ingredients. It’s not the money, mind you. It’s just the idea that it’s gone.” “I understand,” I said. “Beauty aid, right? You can’t afford to lose one of those.” “I can’t believe,” she said, ignoring me, “that someone would take it.” “What...
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For Beethoven's birthday: Sonata in F-sharp major,...
____________________________________________________________________ Beethoven celebrated his 241st birthday this last week. Nobody’s quite sure of the exact day; some people say it was the 16th of December, others the 17th. Remember Schroeder in “Peanuts”? He always commemorated it. Here’s my commemoration: the remarkable first movement of the op. 78 piano sonata...
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Talking to myself
The other day I was getting up from my office desk to get an eleventh cup of coffee while muttering to myself. Just as I got to my office door, a co-worker passed by and glanced at me, and I was pretty sure she could see my lips moving. Embarrassed, I laughed explosively. “I was talking to myself,” I said to her as we walked down the hall, “and you caught me. I’ve always been afraid...
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Nearsighted at Christmastime
When I was just a kid, and my nearsightedness had just manifested itself (I had German measles around the age of eight, which apparently damaged my eyesight), Christmas was wonderful. The lights on the Christmas tree were dazzling: swirled together and blurred slightly, as if filmed through a Vaseline-coated lens. It made “Christmas magic” seem like a real thing. I haven’t thought...
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Personal fragrances; or, How to become popular by...
Partner and I both cultivate a palette of personal fragrances. He has a variety of favorites: there’s a Halston fragrance he likes, and a L’Occitane, and sometimes he branches out (I found a bottle of Sean John’s “Unforgivable” on his shelf the other day, and was very impressed that he’s branching out into hip-hop). I am faithful to my favorite L’Occitane fragrance, called simply...
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Appreciation: Van Heflin
It is now mid-December, and Turner Classic Movies is showing its annual “TCM Remembers” video, which commemorates all of the Hollywood people who have died over the past year. I always find myself going “Oh!”, remembering that Farley Granger, and Dana Wynter, and Len Lesser, and Betty Garrett, and Kenneth Mars, all died this year – and then seeing the long procession of other people of...
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Gigolos
Parental warning: this is a review of a completely hair-raising show which leaves nothing nothing NOTHING to the imagination. Read on at your peril. Okay? “Gigolos” is a Showtime reality show (now in its second season!) about a group of expensive male escorts – they insist on calling themselves “gigolos,” thus the title – in Las Vegas. No, it’s not what you think; they...
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Playing cards are the work of the Devil
I have been selling a few odds and ends on eBay lately. One item was a nice quirky deck of Tarot cards; I got a neat ten bucks for it, and raced to the post office to mail it off to the buyer. I can never remember the rules governing Media Mail, and I was shy to tell the lady behind the counter what was actually in the package, so I told a white lie. “Playing cards,” I said. “So...
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For Advent: Elvis Costello sings "(What's So Funny...
Well, it’s the third Sunday of Advent. I gave up Catholicism for Lent a few years ago and feel much lighter and less burdened as a result, but I respect some of the old traditions. So: here’s a nice song in the spirit of the season. And, by the way: Elvis is king! 09_(What’s_So_Funny_’Bout)_Peace,_Love_&_Understanding.mp3 Listen on Posterous
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Good florists and bad florists
This is another cranky-old-man story. Please stop reading now if you’re sick of these. Still with me? Okay. Here we go: I wanted to buy flowers for a memorial service that took place on Friday, November 11: Veterans’ Day. I called my favorite local florist, A New Leaf, a not-for-profit which employs people with psychiatric disabilities; they do lovely arrangements and are...
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BatWorld
At nightfall I like to watch the bats wheeling and swooping over the housetops. Except that Partner says they’re not bats. “They’re birds,” he says. “Look at them!” I say. “Birds don’t fly like that! Also, most birds don’t fly in the dark!” He shrugs. It’s one of those disputes we’ll keep having even after we’ve been put away in the old ladies’ home. It’s late autumn...
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The Providence Public Library
The Providence Public Library is a grandiose pile of masonry on the corner of Empire and Washington downtown. I went in a few times in the late 1970s, but it seemed very hoi polloi to me. (What a nasty little snob I was in those days!) Also, I was entering that phase in my life in which it was important that I own books rather than just borrow them. Thirty-five years have...
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Charitable gifts
Looking for holiday gift ideas? So am I. It’s only December seventh, and I’m already worn out. For Partner, and for friends like Patricia and Apollonia and George and Joanne, it’s easy. I know them all well enough to know what they’d like and what they’d appreciate. For the bottom-of-the-list people – the ones you have to buy something for – there’s always candy and...
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Herman Cain and Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan
As of last weekend, the Republican presidential primary race lost a contender: Herman Cain dropped out. It wasn’t his fault, blah blah blah, it was the media, those women’s accusations were just a distraction, blah blah blah, you will be hearing more from him soon. Yes, of course, whatever. The Ed Show last night had a nice mini-documentary on the Cain mini-campaign: 99.9...
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I am a pathetic nerd
Last summer, my student assistant Noah and I went down to the mall bookstore; he wanted to buy something, I forget what, and I just wanted to browse. He came up empty, but I came up with an old DC Comics World’s Finest anthology, with Superman and Batman in color on the cover. I could tell Noah, when he saw me holding it, was withholding judgment. (Do I need to tell you that he was...
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Sunday offering: "Have A Little Talk With Jesus,"...
I mentioned Mary Kay Place a few weeks ago, and her stint as the wannabe country singer Loretta Haggers on “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman.” She actually cut an album in the late 1970s in character as Loretta, called “Live At The Capri Lounge”; she sings a couple of songs from the TV show, but she also sings a variety of country / gospel numbers, and she actually has a pretty good voice. ...
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Economics: fitting together the pieces
We got back the other day from a Cape Cod vacation, and I was reading over the last few issues of the Financial Times to make sure I didn’t miss anything important. And I had the odd impression that I was actually catching on to something. Articles about Yemen, Germany, Bahrein. An article about the Durban summit on the environment (heard much about that in the American news,...
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Movie review: "55 Days at Peking"
When nothing else on television will do – when there’s no RuPaul or Graham Norton or Cupcake Wars – I switch over to Turner Classic Movies. I will accept almost anything that Robert Osborne, in his eternal wisdom, chooses to give me. The other night it was something unidentifiable: Ava Gardner and Charlton Heston, wearing vaguely Victorian-looking clothing, entering a Chinese temple...
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Saints
Catholics have an entire pantheon of saints to cover just about every contingency. The attributions get pretty comical at times. My name-saint, Lawrence, for example, was burnt to death on a gridiron; he is, therefore, usually shown holding what looks like a barbecue grill, and he is the patron saint of cooks and chefs. Isn’t that lovely? Then there’s Joseph of Cupertino,...