For a long time, I lost this reference, and so now I am holding it here so that I can always find it when I need it.
“Indeed, the disciples of Rabbi Nachman of Breslov used to set aside an hour a day known as the Dead Hour, in which all business would cease and nothing structured was permitted, allowing the repressed soul to come to the fore and be free.”
So I had to tell Joyce Wadler, who wrote the genius NY Times article that started the whole thing, and here is her response:
ID,
What a great idea!! So often people who are dead to us are long gone before we have the pleasure of telling them. These cards would take care of that. Hope you sell a million. And congratulations on getting the go ahead from The New Yorker, a magazine I could not do without.
Joyce
My brother IS sent me the most hilarious article in the Times the other day entitled “Unfriending Someone, Before Facebook.” Below is an excerpt:
Nor were your choices in those days only friend or unfriend. There were levels of unfriending culminating in that magnificent big gun, “dead to me,” a phrase my family wrapped their mouths around with a relish other people saved for steak.
Dead to me was not achieved with a cowardly little click on the keyboard under cover of night. Dead to me took nerve, it took strength. It also wasn’t for children. You had to be an adult with a house and a job. You cleared a space in the conversation when a certain name came up – let’s use Marvin; waited three beats to make sure you had the attention of the house, and then, and only then, did you say, “He is dead to me.”
I have no choice here but to return to the master of the form, my mother. There came a time when she and her younger brother came to a fork in the road regarding religion, hers being our ancestral one, which eschews pork and enables us to write television comedy, my uncle’s newly adopted religion involving ringing doorbells and giving people pamphlets on Sundays. As he had moved to Los Angeles, this switch might have gone unnoticed but regrettably, one of his converts, returning home after visiting, was 13-year-old me.
My mother’s screams on the phone after she made this discovery are still remembered in Greene County. It remains one of the most powerful denunciations I have heard in my life.
“Aaron,” my mother said, “I never want to hear another word from you. You are dead to me.”
He remained dead to my mother for the rest of life, about 40 years, and from what I could see, she took great satisfaction from it. This was another reason unfriending someone before Facebook was so much better. You didn’t dispatch someone once and move on; you had a lifetime of satisfying moments in which you could unfriend them over and over again.
“So, Milli, what do you hear from your brother Aaron?”
“Dead to me.”
“Your brother still married to that nice woman?”
“Dead to me.”
“I was going out to L.A. and I thought maybe I would look up Aaron, you know we were in the Army together –”
“Dead to me.”
—
I enjoyed it so heartily that I began to imagine what weird, profile-less hermits like IS and I could do in lieu of “unfriending” and my mind turned to a company called Set Editions, which makes the beloved “Stop Talking” business cards, among other funny things.
I hand out at least once a day.
So I’ve written to Set Editions to ask them to consider making a DEAD TO ME card. Here is my email pitch:
To Whomever Receives This Email:
I’m an enormous fan of your merchandise –– at the moment, I’m coveting just about everything on the site –– and a proud owner of the “Stop Talking” cards, which it seems are quite popular. I have a small idea for you based on the below article, which is hilarious and short and should go down easy:
(I put the link here but I’m not going to do it again because that just seems excessive.)
I think it would be great to create a little card that says “YOU ARE DEAD TO ME” or, more succinctly, “DEAD TO ME.” There also could be something in the idea of unfriending –– i.e. THIS IS ME UNFRIENDING YOU –– but I myself am partial to the “dead to me.”
Anyway, if this idea appeals to you at all, what I’d ask for in return is just one set of cards!
Again, big props. You guys are hilarious.
Best,
Itinerant Daughter
—
Oh my, oh my, I DO hope they like the idea!
UPDATE: They did! The woman behind Set Editions wrote me the below:
ID,
Thank you so much for taking the time to write with your idea. I get to hear many ideas in the course of doing business, most of which are categorically not hilarious, but “Dead to me” is right up my alley. I will work on it and I promise to let you know if it comes to pass. I suspect it might. You’ll be the first to effectively kill off your friends if it does.
Thanks again. Set Editions is really just me at the end if the day and it still gives me huge pleasure that other people even notice.
Best,
AR
Yay! I’m off now to inform Joyce Wadler of the Times. While you’re waiting for these cards to come out, everybody support Set Editions and buy me these good grief glasses!
Get it?
GUYS.
Guess what.
This is my 800th post.
I’ve had a lot of anxiety about it, actually, because while there have been a bunch of things that I wanted to post about, none of them seemed “special enough” for this milestone. Then I thought maybe I should just let it pass unmentioned, and finally I settled on revealing my anxiety so as to preemptively soften the judgments of my critical readers. It’s this type of psychological gymnastics that keep me going, folks.
What I’ve opted to do is make a little list about the number 800 and pretend that, because it’s a list, there is some interesting interconnectedness to all these random facts. Very Harper’s Index of me, I know. Anyway, let us begin:
800 is a Harshad number. A Harshad number, or Niven number in a given number base, is an integer that is divisible by the sum of its digits when written in that base. Harshad numbers were defined by D. R. Kaprekar, a mathematician from India. The word “Harshad” comes from the Sanskrit harṣa (joy) + da (give), meaning joy-giver. The Niven numbers take their name from Ivan M. Niven from a paper delivered at a conference on number theory in 1997. All integers between zero and n are Harshad numbers in base n.
800 is the first year that the Anno Domini calendar became the dominant year-numbering system in Europe. 800 AD was a leap year that began on a Wednesday, and on Christmas of that year, Charlemagne was crowned Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire.
In numerology, the number 800 carries the energy of 8 only, which possess the following “energies”: material possessions, abundance, authority, leadership, cosmic awareness, self-motivated, prosperity, and infinity.
1-800-222-1222 is the toll free number for every poison control center in the US.
In some Biblical Gematria shit… well, I can’t think of how to segue, so here’s an excerpt from the Bible Wheel Archives:
The historic Christian Church has traditionally associated the Number 8 with the entrance into the Covenant of God. This understanding comes from God Himself who commanded Circumcision – the Sign of the Covenant – to be performed on the Eighth Day. God used the same language – אות ברית (Ot B’rit, Sign of the Covenant) – when He gave the Rainbow (Genesis 9.13):
I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth.
Genesis 17:10f
The word “rainbow” (קשת, qeshet) used in this verse sums to the Number 800 which also is the value of the Greek words “Lord” and “Faith.” It also is the value of the final letter of the Greek alphabet, Omega (cf. Eight and the Resurrection below). This is the essence of Faith – trusting in the Lord who will see us through to the very end, signified by Omega. This lifts us above our present state to behold our Shepherd who is Lord above all.
Given the extreme significance of Circumcision as the Sign of the Covenant, it is no wonder that the Rabbi’s have long expounded on the spiritual significance of the Number Eight and its relation to God’s Covenant. For example, on page 134 of his book Alef-Beit, Rabbi Yitzchak declares:
The Torah prescribes that the circumcision of a male child take place on the eighth day from birth. These eight days always include at least one Shabbat, the seventh day, which corresponds to the experience of perfect harmony with nature. The eighth day of circumcision represents the power of the soul to contact that light which totally transcends nature. Through circumcision the Jew is given the power, throughout his life, to overcome all the obstacles nature may seem to place in the face of his service of G-d.
The transcendence associated with the Number Eight – recognized by both Jews and Christians – ultimately manifests in the everlasting New Beginning found in the Resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ.
For the Olympics this past year, the London-based design firm BarberOsgerby designed a torch that was 800mm heigh, weighed 800grammes and featured 8,000 perforated circles representing the 8,000 torchbearers who would carry it on its journey.
A random urine osmolality should average 500–800 mOsm/kg.
No social security numbers with an area number [first three numbers] in the 800s or 900s, or with a 000 area number, have been assigned.
The Book of Kells is generally thought to have been created ca. 800.
In Wolof, a language native to the peoples of Senegal, Gambia, and Mauritania, 800 is pronounced “juróom-ñetti téeméer.”
In California, the interim statewide Academic Performance Index target for all schools is 800.
The gardens of Versailles cover approximately 800 hectares of land.
In regard to the LIBOR scandal of earlier this year, the number Barclay’s fiddled with is used as a benchmark to set payments on about $800 trillion-worth of financial instruments, ranging from complex interest-rate derivatives to simple mortgages.
In the Dewey Decimal system, 800 numbers are Literature, English Literature, American Literature, Rhetoric and Criticism.
And last but not leasts (as you’ve probably realized, this could go on for 800 mind-numbing years), in order to get your tickets to the annul Faerie Festival, please call 1 800 922 TIXX. The 2012 festival featured “I-Knew-the-Maharishi-First” Donovan, Tricky Pixie, and what seems to be the incongruously named “Heavy Hammer.”
WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?
As I’m into Hasids, I’m also into Hasidic architecture in a so-bad-it’s-good way. I was thinking that this would somehow figure into my Religion PhD program, but it turns out there isn’t a whole lot of information out there about Hasidic architecture, perhaps because it’s not really a subject worthy of study but also maybe, just MAYBE, no one has thought to look into the ways the architecture reflects the faith –– until now. There is, however, one blog that I stumbled upon in my searching for topical resources that is just. fucking. hilarious. You can find it here. Below are some selections:
L
O
L
Z
Unfortunately this blogger went the way of many others in the -sphere and abandoned his great works. I thought of contacting him and asking him to relocate his faith, if you will, but I figured the email address he gave –– fudgepacker [at] yourmom.com –– was likely fake.
I’m pretty sick right now, and just slogged through a three day novel contest (and yes, wrote a novel –– more accurately, a novella –– in just three days!) so I’m not really in a place to be educating or writing or operating heavy machinery, metaphysical or otherwise, so here’s a little video clip of the first part of the episode of This Is Your Life featuring Frances Farmer. If you don’t know who Frances Farmer is, please review the following:
1. Any nutshell biography of Frances so you get the foundation
2. Frances’ award-winning essay, written when she was just 17, titled “God Dies” (published both on this blog and elsewhere)
3. The film Frances starring Jessica Lange and Sam Shepard in a role which is enormously grating (he still looks good, though)
4. The song “Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge on Seattle” by Nirvana
Then watch the below, and report back to me. (Still searching for the show Frances did –– post-lobotomy? –– called “Frances Farmer Presents,” but YouTube doesn’t seem to have it. Paley Center, here I come!)
“When he was on the board of the Danvers Preservation Commission, Mr. Archer, who seems to have a finger in every artistic and architectural endeavor in town, fought to save the Danvers State Hospital. A mental institution built in the 1870s, it was not merely a Gothic masterpiece as far as Mr. Archer was concerned, but ‘a testament to the human condition no less formidable than the Hermitage or Buckingham Palace.’
“The fight to preserve the building failed and much of it was torn down, but Mr. Archer paid $6,000 to remove a turret and have it hauled over to his place, along with bricks, hunks of granite, window frames and other odds and ends. (The rumor that he also managed to salvage a lobotomy machine is false, he says, as lobotomies were done with needles, but yes, he does have some of those.)
The turret lay on his lawn for a few years, until earlier this summer, when he was finally able to transform it, with the help of Robert D. Farley, an architect in Ipswich, Mass., into what he calls the Danvers wing. That was about $225,000, a figure that includes the walkway to the music room.”
— From an article entitled “Scrap Mansion” in the NYT four days ago. DANVERS 4 EVA!
When I was a kid, my family and would often go up to Mackinac Island, a tiny little isle that sits in the place where Lake Huron and Lake Michigan meet (kind of). Mackinac was enchanting to me as a child because it existed in kind of a time bubble –– there were (and still are) no cars on the island, the most prevalent type of establishment is fudge shops, and the homes are these enormous Victorian palaces that seemed like they must have housed the wealthiest and most sophisticated of fur traders. I was always most intrigued by two things about Mackinac: the first was that there were actual people who lived their all year round (how many? I guessed maybe 60, but according to the 2010 census, it’s actually 492) but the lives of those who made their homes on wind-swept, isolated dots of land surrounded by water fascinated me regardless of specific Island. The second reason was the Grand Hotel, a 385-room white tank of a building on the hillside, a testament to WASPy days-gone-by, complete with the world’s longest porch (reputedly), high tea every day, uniformed ethnic maids and a shrine to the Christopher Reeves movie Somewhere in Time, which was filmed there, in the lobby.
My beloved boyfriend was sweet enough during this last visit to indulge me on a $10 (a person!) self-guided “tour” (read: entrance fee, and that’s it) around the Grand Hotel. As we wandered the halls looking at the art –– which fell into one of two categories: “chintzy” or “satirical” –– I came across the below article, framed:
October is Unicorn Questing Month
In search of a one-horned medieval symbol of purity
by Mark Abley
The Gazette
“Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,” a poet once called it. Today we know it was a month of pumpkins and red trees, Thanksgiving and the World Series.
But October has other meanings, too. Just ask Bill Rabe.
A retired public-relations man, he lives in Sault Ste. Marie, Mich., just a stone’s throw away from Canada. At 70, he’s reached an age when a lot of men slow down.
Not Bill Rabe. For him, January brings Dancing Cuckoo Week, June means World Sauntering Day, and July had the Mackinac Island Stone Skipping Tournament.
But Rabe’s year is crowned by October. For on Mackinac Island, not far from Sault Ste. Marie, October is Unicorn Questing Month.
Be warned: a quest is not the same thing as a hunt.
“Only thing you can hunt on the island is a squirrel,” Rabe says. “Of course, a deer will swim over from the mainland sometimes.”
And couldn’t deer be related to the fabulous unicorn?
“Not at all,” Rabe retorts. “Deer have got too many horns.”
A unicorn, you’ll remember, has only one horn, growing proudly in the middle of its pale forehead. Unicorns have been rumored to exist for millennia – the Bible contains a few references to them – but nobody ever suceeded [ed. note: sic] in capturing one. In the Middle Ages, the unicorn became a symbol of purity, often linked to virginity.
Unicorns also were a symbol of truth: “If you stood in front of a unicorn and you were guilty,” Rabe says, “he would shish-kebab you.”
Now in the forests of Mackinac Island, during the first 11 days of October, Unicorn Questing Season is reserved for people with bows and arrows. At other times, Rabe’s official licenses say, questing devices may include general levity, iambic pentameter and sweet talk.
The season culminates in Unicorn Follies, a weekend of revelry at the Grand Hotel. A four-storey building, built in 1887, it lives up to its name: the hotel has more than 300 rooms and 500 staff.
The follies begin with a cocktail party at which questing licenses are issued, new members welcomed, and everybody listens to a tape of the Irish Rovers droning on about unicorns. When enough rusty nails and brown cows have been imbibed, in walks a fair maiden with a unicorn on her arm.
“The unicorn is my son James,” Rabe explains. “He’s 22, and he’ll do anything to wear a tuxedo. So he gets dressed up in a white tie and tails, and then he puts on a rubber unicorn mask.”
James Rabe and his rubber mask reappear at the costume ball. One year a bush and quail showed up; another year, two people came disguised as Hershey bars.
“At the bottom of her costume,” Bill Rabe recalls, “the woman wore a little sign: NO NUTS.”
To wash down the drinks, there’s a lavish buffet, for which the hotel chef carves a meter-long unicorn out of ice. You don’t have to worry about drinking and driving, because Mackinac Island has no cars.
When the guests have dispersed, Rabe returns to Sault Ste. Marie. But he doesn’t just wait for Dancing Cuckoo Week; all year long, he does publicity for the unicorn.
Since the Unicorn Questers were born 21 years ago, Rabe has given out more than 80,000 licenses. A unicorn also appears in the seal of his Sons of the Desert Society.
The Sons of the Desert, in case you were wondering, are devoted to Laurel and Hardy films. In Rabe’s mind, if no one else’s, they’re associated with Hush Labels, which produces silent records.
Back to the unicorn. “It’s a symbol of the impossible dream,” Rabe says. “It’s a symbol of why man is here. It’s a symbol of the meaning of life.”
And what is the meaning of life?
Well, if you want to join the Unicorn Questing Society, you have to swear the following oath: “I was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world is mad.”
************************************
This year’s edition of Unicorn Follies has been sold out for weeks. If you’d like to go next year, be ready to fork out about $500 U.S. a couple per weekend.
For more information, write:
W.T. Rabe, 1204 Davitt, Sault Ste. Marie, Mich. 49783, U.S.A.
—
So my task now is to write to the above address (though I fear Bill Rabe has expired?) to inquire about this year’s festival, and, failing that, to contact the Mackinac newspaper. I want to attend and write something about it. Or maybe just attend. Whatevs.
Interestingly enough, this is one of at least two nonsensical holidays born at the Grand Hotel. World Sauntering Day, another of Rabe’s faves, was created “to remind us to take it easy, smell the roses, to slow down and enjoy life as opposed to rushing through it.”
“Tino Seghal makes what he calls ‘constructed situations.’ He uses the raw materials of voice, language, and movement to build pieces of art. For ‘This Progress’ (2010), he filled the rotunda of the Guggenheim with a corps of ‘interpreters’ –– children, teen-agers, baby boomers, octogenarians –– who, according to a set of rules devised by Sehgal, engaged each visitor in a conversation, delivering him to progressively older interlocutors as he spiralled up the museum’s ramp. The piece, which made intimates of strangers, was exhilarating. Visitors shared such confidences as, ‘The smaller the diamond, the better the marriage’ and ‘Mr. Hitler ruined my childhood.’ Some of them left in tears. (The critic Jerry Saltz pointed out that it was the only work of art he’d ever encountered that could cry back.) ‘This Progress’ reflected Sehgal’s desire to redefine art as the transformation of actions rather than of things. ‘What my work is about is, Can something that is not an inanimate object be considered valuable?’ Sehgal said recently. He is, in a sense, an architect of interaction. His works are collaborations, new builds on human turfs.”
— New Yorker article entitled “The Question Artist”
So now I have to write to Tino Sehgal and offer myself up as an “interpreter” (for a nominal fee) for his next NYC-based project. Here’s to hoping I have more luck with him than I did with Ms. Abramovic.
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