Tabs open in my browser

Some enjoyable things I've been reading on the internet. 

Filming locations of Annie Hall (a movie that belongs in any Top 5 NYC film list) as part of a nifty Scouting NY features that compares the NYC of classic movies to NYC today. 

An article from the Wall Street Journal about celebritieswho have tried (and tried and tried) to win the The New Yorker’s caption contest.

An interview with Alice Munro in the Paris Review.

back to school

Allergies are killer…my sneezes are becoming more and more of a comedy routine in the way that only multiple sneezes can be.  People on the bus were staring at me with a curious pity last week (as opposed to a contagious horror…the signs of a ragweed culprit were pretty evident).  Today, they’re better.  It’s the upside of being a writerly shut-in. 

I’m taking a class through Continuing Education, so I am entering into the back-to-school feeling more than ever.  New beginnings!  The beginning of September is better for resolutions than January, and probably almost as good a contender as May Day, for those of us who have been to school (or have worked at schools) for most of our lives. 

And the campus is flowing with students, which is both bad (all my quiet library nooks will be overrun) and good (all the cafeterias are open again).  It’s always fun to see the trends made manifest by thousands of twenty-year-olds.  All I can say is that a whole generation is going to have fallen arches from all the flipflops out there. 

In other news, it’s Election Day.  I voted, and if you’re in Quebec, you should, too.  Who doesn’t love voting?!  And if you’re one of those people who doesn’t vote, consider yourself soundly scolded. 

celebrate!

So I sent in the latest version of my novel draft! 

On the outside, an unshowered writer in sweatpants looking mildly pleased. On the inside: this!

Previous post-editing celebrations have included getting tipsy and watching installations of the Twilight saga (which, as far as I can tell, is the exact opposite of editing a novel), but last night I increased the crazy-partying-quotient (hold your hats) by eagerly unpacking a moving box and putting things away.  The more decadent part of the celebration was based around having a glass of wine along with a leisurely Lush-bubble-bar-bath and the latest issue of the Walrus, but it turns out the hot water tank at the new chez nous was not quite up to the task.  The bath was lukewarm and therefore brief.

Brief, too, is this period of celebration, alas.  I have a freelance piece due tomorrow (mostly completed yesterday, but I still have 100 words to cut), and an essay to shorten before mid-month.   And wedding thank-you notes to write.   And yet more boxes to unpack. 

But as my friend E. pointed out today when we ran into each other: there is rarely a moment when life is fully settled.  There are always things to be done, changes taking place, and life is still happening in the meantime. 

So…let’s not wait for things to be perfect before we dive in. 

a consumerist lament (or, don't go a-changin' on me)

Here is a list of all the things I regularly use (or semi-regularly...let's face it, I am way too time-pressed to wear much makeup) that have been discontinued or tragically reformulated over the last year.  Also, they are ALL by different brands/companies, so it's not as if some sudden bankruptcy or merger or weird new company direction is to blame. 

- shampoo
- conditioner
- leave-in conditioner
- exfoliant
- foundation
- concealer

It would almost be funny if it weren't so goddamn disastrous.

Also, it is possible that this list is actually even longer.  These are only the things I have gone out to buy or replace.  

It's like the universe has conspired to undermine any attempt at a beauty regime.  

Nine out of nine, plus links

I’ve been reading Nine Stories on the metro lately, which I always thought I’d read before, but apparently I only ever read the first one.  In "Teddy," the last one, I encountered this sentence last night, which I really enjoyed: 

“His smile was not unpersonable, but it was social, or conversational, and related back, however indirectly, to his own ego.”

There’s so much great writing that doesn’t strictly abide by the show, don’t tell principle, especially on a sentence-by-sentence basis.  This exuberant kind of writing that doesn’t skimp on the descriptors lends itself to comedy much better, I think, than its spare counterpart, and the mere abundance of words doesn't (IMO) make it any less literary.  Of course, it's Salinger we're talking about, and as always, anyone really good can break any kind of rule set out to help the rest of us mere mortals along. 

Another thing I’ve been wondering about Salinger as I’ve been reading this…what, exactly, does kittenish mean?  Or what did it used to mean at the time he was writing?  I always thought it meant something along the lines of weak and cute, but I’ve seen it in a few sentences where it appears to be otherwise.*

And.....I like this list of "books to savour" from Flavorwire – not least because I have been savouring two of them for months now.  Bleak House (which I’ve read before) is the go-to book on the Kindle app on my phone for reading before bed.  And Gilead by Marilynne Robinson is one of several books I’ve been reading while doing my edits…both the last round and this round....which gives you a clue of just how slowly I've been savouring it.  Gilead in particular is not a book with a ton of forward plot momentum (and therefore perhaps maybe not the best thing to be reading while trying to cobble my ending back together…hmmm).  But it is full of rather wonderful passages like this:

"A great part of my work has been listening to people, in that particular intense privacy of confession, or at least unburdening, and it has been very interesting to me.  Not that I thought of these conversations as if they were a contest, I don't mean that.  But as you might look at a game more abstractly---where is the strength, what is the strategy?  As if you had no interest in it except in seeing how well the two sides bring each other along, how much they can require of each other, how the life that is the real subject of it all is manifest in it.  By "life" I mean something like "energy" (as the scientists use the word) or "vitality," and also something very different.  When people come to speak to me, whatever they say, I am struck by a kind of incandescence in them, the "I" whose predicate can be "love" or "fear" or "want," and whose object can be "someone" or "nothing" and it won't really matter, because the loveliness is just in that presence, shaped around "I" like a flame on a wick, emanating itself in grief and guilt and joy and whatever else.  But quick, and avid, and resourceful.  To see this aspect of life is a privilege of the ministry which is seldom mentioned."

I think you'll agree that it's not exactly action-packed, in the usual sense.  Very easy to enjoy...and put down...and pick back up without needing to remember what has already happened.  (So far: nothing really <-- awesome!)