I received a notice for penis enlarging pills from Mrs. Nicole Diver, of Tender is the Night. I’ve never been so tempted to click on the link.
Highbrow SPAM
August 4, 2014Pullman vs. Paxton
August 3, 2014While on vacation with my family in Bermuda, I inadvertently came up with the most genius game since Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon: Pullman vs. Paxton! Up tonight, level one––basic IMDB info. Which Bill P. was in the flick? Score yourself below.
Let’s play!
1. Spaceballs
2. Lola Versus
3. Titanic
4. The Grudge
5. Mighty Joe Young
6. Boxing Helena
7. The Terminator
8. Brokedown Palace
9. True Lies
10. Newsies
DON’T PEEK!
Answers:
1. Pullman, 2. Pullman, 3. Paxton, 4. Pullman, 5. Paxton, 6. Paxton, 7. Paxton, 8. Pullman, 9. Paxton, 10. Pullman
Between 0-3 correct: Steerage Class
Sorry, you’re just not ready for the Paxton vs. Pullman big leagues just yet.
Between 4 and 7 correct: Pizza the Hut
Well done! Grab yourself another wife.
Between 8 and 10 correct: You’ll Be Back
Wowee, you really know your stuff! Advance to the next level, “Who Said It: Quotes by Bill P.”
Boston
August 1, 2014I’m on leg three of a four-leg journey––a tour, if you will––up in Boston researching a piece on Anne Sexton. Today, I visited McLean Hospital, Sexton’s old house in Weston, and a school I was obsessed with when I went through my “free education” phase in high school (this was mainly because I was jealous of kids who didn’t have to take science.) Finally back in my weird B&B––the proprietor is trying so hard to make it charming New England, but it has a slight edge of trailer park––I’m thinking again about how writers, or at least this one, can’t go to therapy. I mean, they can, but in my brief return to therapy earlier this year, I realized about how often I would notice my therapist’s face blanch when she realized I was about to talk about my writerly problems again. What I need is a mentor, an older, professional writer who can advise me as to when to press editors and when to back off, what topics are bankable and which ones aren’t, when productivity is good and when you’ve exhausted your audience for the moment, and so forth. If someone can do this for me, all I can offer is to pay it forward, and provide such a service for a young upstart once I hit a nice stride. I’m guessing that will be in, oh, twenty to thirty years.
A Tweet
July 31, 2014Why doesn’t it rain Barnes & Noble gift certificates instead of water?
Family Vacation
July 25, 2014IS: brb casually twerking in pink visor and one piece bathing suit
(Side note: what does a casual twerk look like, versus a fancy twerk?)
Extra Money
July 23, 2014Dear Maria Bamford,
A friend of mine sent me the profile of you in the New York Times with a note that read, “So I’m not sure if you’ll take this as a compliment, which is how I mean it, but this article totally reminded me of you.” I did, in fact. I also note with glee the following passage, and would like to offer up my services
“She has a thoughtful and friendly demeanor, but it’s edged with a certain nervousness. The verbal acrobatics that pump energy into her monologues, you soon realize, are not flashes of spontaneous genius but rather the product of huge amounts of time spent in focused rehearsal. (When she’s developing new material, she will pay friends $75 an hour to listen to her practicing bits over the phone.) In casual conversation, words come less easily. Bamford often appears to rethink her sentences midway, leaving many of them unfinished. Some of this may be attributable to Depakote, the mood stabilizer she takes daily. It’s one of a number of concessions she has made in the name of stability. Thanks to the medicine, she also now needs at least 10 hours of sleep each night, she says, “and also another hour to nap.”
Think about it, and if you’re down, email Siobhan for my direct line.
Love,
ID
Titling
July 22, 2014Giving things names is hard, no? I used to have a very easy time titling pieces, but now I can’t do it for the life of me (not that it would matter, because the editor would change it anyway!) Today my friend told me of a restaurant in Manchester called The Good Wife, with an attached bar called The Other Woman. I might hire that dude to name my children.
I Fucking Hate NYC
July 18, 2014I’m so over it. Newest blow: the most adorable little house in the world, at 121 Charles Street, is probs going to be torn down to make room for an ugly glass bougie panopticon-esque highrise of some sort.
So teeny!
In addition, Maeve Brennan, whom I borderline idolize (both sartorially and artistically), wrote a very charming piece in her New Yorker column about monitoring this house’s move from uptown to downtown. An excerpt, which I had to dig through the TNY archives for (you’re welcome):
“Tonight, Sunday, March 6th (1967), I heard on the radio that a two-hundred-year-old wooden farmhouse was moved this morning from Seventy-first Street and York Avenue all the way down to Charles Street, in the village–-a five mile journey. The move was a rescue. The farmhouse was about to be demolished, because it was in the way of a new building plan. [Editor’s note: I guess everything has always sucked] I live in the Village, and I thought I’d walk over and see the house––see how it was standing up to its first night away from its birth site… But when I stepped up on the sidewalk on the northeast corner of Hudson and Charles Street I saw the house. It was up in the air, a ghost shape, at the end of the block, on the northeast corner of Charles Street and Greenwich Street. The eastern wall of the farmhouse is painted a dark color, but the front wall, facing Charles Street, is white, and as I approached it I got a sidewise glimmer of it that defined the whole tiny structure. It was a very tiny house––much smaller than I had expected. That must have been a very small farmer who built it.”
I actually heard this extract when I was on a walking tour of Maeve Brennan’s Greenwich Village one afternoon when I was dead tired and my fingers were covered were grease from McDonald’s fries. As they say: nothing charming stays. But on the other hand, an article in NY Mag recently covered the “co-buying” trend, so if a very tiny family would like to team up with my very tiny family (two people and two cats) and purchase this little abode at the bargain price of $20 million, contact Siobhan––she’ll know what to do.
Dwarfed!
You Know You’ve Come to the Right Library
July 16, 2014… when the woman next to you asks if she can consult your DSM for a minute.
The Shining Twins
July 14, 2014on their way to their joint wedding.
Come and marry us, Danny.
