Bust Your Kneecaps
The most adorable song about a broken engagement I have seen yet.
Get Smiley
You can opt out of reading this but I would advise you to OPT IN to the New Optimists because it is a good club to be in. And I’m serious about the contest. The Demi-Opts need an emoticon — or a lead singer.
From the driver’s mirror I winked at them in solidarity.
They observed it was tricky to identify an adult optimist. I said they’re scarce: it’s not easy, and you can’t be a fool. They asked me to be their advisor.
For fun, they said they like to smile at people who aren’t used to being smiled at. I said this sounded like a good idea for starters, but that one had to be careful. A smile could mean many things.
We speculated about developing a new icon for optimism — perhaps an emoticon? — and optimistic swag (buttons, t-shirts, you name it) to promote their agenda. We talked about how it’s good to look up, but not so much that you let the door slam in someone’s face who is right behind you.
We decided to survey the competition and assessed that existing optimists’ clubs are not enticing to us.
For one thing, there are too many pictures of people smiling. It gets on your nerves. For another: too much happy sounding talk. Also annoying. There has to be a way to capture the modern optimist: understated, ready to smile but not in-your-face, with a touch of budding irony — crisp, wry, like a cracker. Forgive me, I’m getting carried away. So now it is a contest: to coin the emoticon that captures the spirit of the modern optimist, and makes everyone — even the ornery — want a piece of the pie.
On Facial Treatment for Ladies
I am going to a party tonight and it is not every day I go to a party to which I will wear — or as the young people say, rock — a velvet dress. As it happened I am reading Ovid (The Erotic Poems) and stumble on his prescriptions for beauty. Lucky me. Now you might say: Ovid! What are his creds? to which I say Ovid is a lover of women and as such, he makes it is business to get all up in our business, including our complexions. That’s his niche. Let’s give a big shout-out to Ovid for his take on staying foxy:
Let me show you how, when you first wake in the morning your face can be bright and fresh. Take imported Libyan barley, strip off its outer husk and chaff, measure two pounds of stripped grain, and add an equal measure of vetch steeped in ten raw eggs. Let this mixture dry in the air, then have your donkey grind it slowly, taking the rough quern round; prepare two ounces of powdered hartshorn, taken from a vigorous stag’s first fallen antlers; stir this well into the powdery meal, then sift the mixture, at once, through fine-meshed sieves. Take twelve narcissus bulbs, skin them and pound them (Use a marble block); add them in, with two ouncees each of gum and Tuscan spelt-seed, and a pound and a half of honey. Any girl who uses a face-pack according to this prescription will shine brighter than her own Mirror.
The donkey is grinding my vetch right now.
‘Valentine’ by John Ashbery
Like a serpent among roses, like an asp
Among withered thornapples I coil to
And at you. The name of the castle is you,
EI Rey. It is an all-night truck stop
Offering the best coffee and hamburgers in Utah.
It is most beautiful and nocturnal by daylight.
—John Ashbery,
Valentine (1975)
Like this:
Heartbreak Relief
Friends,
It only seems fair that since this column first appeared during a particularly festive time in December and may have lost its poignancy amid the cheer, I relaunch my campaign for heartbreak relief on Valentine’s Day, the heart’s most treacherous holiday. More hearts have been broken in between one Valentine’s Day and another, they hardly seem worth counting. But the damage is real, and friends, you can help.
I’ve not read all the fine print about the health care bill, but I say if nothing else it should cover heartbreak. You heard me right. Heartbreak is a killer, and we’re all expected to recover from it BY OURSELVES, with no help from the government? Come on.
Here is my special section for which I ask nothing but to be the first patient: the Heartbreak Relief Plan. Under my plan, victims of heartbreak will be identified immediately and transported by helicopter to a special tent in the desert, where they will spend days lying in beds they could never otherwise afford as they are caressed by mild breezes and soothed by inoffensive music, custards and the occasional palm of a nurse on the forehead. Every American has experienced heartbreak once or twice in his or her lifetime and if he or she hasn’t, he or she is either a freak or an inflictor of heartbreak for whom I have devised a system of retribution that will be the subject of a future bill.
How long patients will remain in the Heartbreak Tent depends on the severity of the condition, but I’m thinking at least three days. This is not an outpatient procedure. Still, I believe we can achieve an economy of scale, given the sheer number of patients we will have to accommodate. Aside from state-of-the-art private rooms for the most afflicted, the look and feel of this center will most closely resemble a Civil War field hospital complete with rows of beds filled with patients wailing softly, the cacophony of weeping melded with the soft murmuring of nurses who – by the way – will be wearing uniforms evocative of an earlier time, sections of which float and lift nicely in the desert breeze.
When you are ready to be released you will receive a certificate to frame and put on your wall. If that is not enough, there will be no charge for return visits should a mild heartache overtake you, though you may be asked to take the train. As an otherwise proud citizen I have cleared away my tears long enough to draft this appeal, so that all Americans in this wretched state will receive the comfort they are due.
Diamonds Kiev
Listen, friends. Some stories need to be posted twice. I’ll draw the line at thrice because that is just cheap. That’s like trying to stretch porridge and I would not do that to you. We are approaching the first anniversary of the Mayor of Kiev’s daughter’s jewelry heist and that is no small occasion. Here’s how it was a year and one week ago:
I’ve decided to break with my habit of not following the news and occasionally read the local paper, which is peppered with scandals far and wide. It’s the world in an acorn.
So I’d like to know what the mayor of Kiev’s daughter was doing with $5.5 million dollars worth of jewelry that got stolen while she was riding in (what else?) a luxury car in Paris.
Just the other day I was giving my daughter a lesson in what is Communism because she got these wire-rimmed glasses that made her look like a young Trotskyite. Adorable. With the braids, all she needs is a little tunic.
I told her about the czar and how the family got ousted because they were crazy rich and everyone else was desperately poor and they did not seem to care. I forgot to mention Anastasia who reputedly survived the execution because the diamonds sewn into her bodice deflected the bullets.
I editorialized a little: I said it was very sad that they were killed, and that things did not improve much anyway but that was history. And now this.
Like any good journalist I decide to check my facts. Who IS the mayor of Kiev these days, anyway, and how did his daughter wind up with so much frippery? Here is what I find at the BBC:
Kristina Chernovetskaya said she had 4.5m euros-worth (£4m) of jewels stolen as she drove into the city from Charles de Gaulle airport.
She was being driven along the motorway in a luxury hire car when the thief struck, she told police.
They were stuck in traffic in the northern suburbs when a man wrenched open a car door and made off with her handbag, said Ms Chernovetskaya.
She said the bag contained jewels, rings and earrings with a value of more than $6m.
Her chauffeur gave chase but the thief got away, says the BBC’s Hugh Schofield in Paris.
I must know more about the mayor of Kiev, so I turn to the sometimes disreputable but omnipresent Wikipedia, and find a clue:
Mayor of Kiev (Ukrainian: Київський міський голова) is the mayor of the municipality of Kiev, the capital of Ukraine. The current mayor is Leonid Chernovetsky, who has held the position since March 26, 2006.
As of December 2006, the rating of Chernovetsky decreased to 8%.[citation needed] That is mostly due to his betrayal of those who elected him, most notably through his increasing of the price of household services (such as hot and cold running water and gas) by 340%.
I decide to look further, and come upon a report in the Taipai Times which reports that the theft occurred, the French police confirmed it was the Mayor’s daughter, and the Mayor’s office laughed, saying Kristina Chernovetskaya was in Kiev that day.
Somewhere between Hollywood and Kiev, phones are ringing off the hook.
That’s what I call continuous improvement, Russian-style.
My Shining Moment
It’s February: time to remember all the great scenes of desperation set in winter, like Jack typing his manuscript in the hotel hallway.
After reading Elmore Leonard’s Rules of Writing I stripped this tale of all two adverbs and am reposting the new, austere version.
When it comes to my nieces, I pick up where their parents leave off. Like, I’m the person who tells them about The Shining. Isn’t that what aunts are for? ”Our dad didn’t want to tell us about it. He just said it was a really scary movie and that one day we’d see it.” My 12 year-old niece is looking down at the table, trying to conceal what could be a small tear or a little smile. At this angle I can’t tell. “Oh he did, did he?” I turn my fork over and draw a pattern on the tablecloth, considering.
We are in New York having a mischievous time. This is when I realize the power I wield as an aunt to shape young minds. It’s up to me! Either I oblige, giving them a moment to treasure and putting one small dent in their innocence, or I make them talk about — say — the Sound of Music. Then I hand them back to their parents.
I’m caving in, so they get extra quiet. But there’s another aspect to the telling: it can’t just spill out. They have to pry it out of me. I turn the butter knife over in my hand and pan slowly from one sweet, upturned face to another. “It’s a scary movie,” I say. “I mean, one of the scariest.” They look up, all excited. ”I don’t know if your parents would want me to tell you about it.” They fix their bright eyes on me like I am Santa coming down the chimney. I’ve never felt so loved.
The thing is, I can’t remember the movie. I chew on a bite of fish, hoping a scene will come to me. ”Okay,” I say. “But not the whole thing.” They clap like a couple of little seals. “No, not the whole thing, not the whole thing! Just a part!”
I zero in on the one scene I know they will love, the telling of which — if it makes its way back to their parents — I’m pretty sure will not strip me of my privileges as an aunt. “So they’re stuck in a hotel in winter, this family, the father’s writing a novel, and” (spoken in a loud whisper) “ALL HE DOES ALL DAY is sit at a typewriter and work on his novel. Until one day his wife walks by while he’s typing and asks: ‘How’s it going, honey?’ And she picks up a sheet of paper from the pile that’s sitting there to read it, and ALL IT SAYS, over and over, is ‘All work and no play make Jack a dull boy.’”
There’s nothing like telling a really good story in a crowded restaurant. I pause, taking another bite of fish, to let the horror sink in. ”She sees he’s crazy, he knows she knows he’s crazy, plus now he’s mad at her, and there’s no escaping. They’re stuck in the snow.” The girls gasp and lean back in their chairs, impressed.
“And after that he chases after them?”
I’m kind of sad the scene is over. It was so quick. “Yes, girls, after that he chases after them with a knife through a garden maze.” My timing is perfect. Just as I forget what’s about to happen next, the dessert menus arrive and it’s a good thing the desserts here are swell enough to make them forget what they just heard, because that’s all they’re gonna get.
