still somewhat short on time

The TV is now 100% hooked up. We get the best possible quality from our Verizon box (and can watch 3D movies on demand), we're connected to the internet by wi-fi so we can watch Netflix, and we're wired into the computer so we can watch DVDs from the computer's player, movies from my hard drive, and pretty much anything else you can put on the computer. Saturday we watched "A Very Harold and Kumar 3D Christmas" (pretty funny) and "Django Unchained" (excellent). Please don't ask me how I managed to watch "Django" at home. Suffice it to say that a lot of awards screeners are floating around the internet, and one floated onto my computer.

Other than that, I've been eating up back episodes of Nip/Tuck on Netflix. Such a great soap opera with nifty guest stars. Now I dream about handsome plastic surgeons instead of "Dexter."

As I walk around with my great new phone, I'm figuring out what's most useful to me and what I like best. I text with a few people, though I'm still one-fingering the keyboard. What I'm really loving right now, apart from being able to take and send pictures, is bringing the phone with me at bedtime and listening to Pandora. Pandora is a music-streaming service that will create a channel around an artist you suggest (in addition to having standard category channels like Delta Blues, 50's Blues, 50's Oldies, 80's Oldies, Bollywood Oldies, etc). So I have Roy Orbison Radio and Lyle Lovett Radio and Adnan Sami Radio. But my current favorite at bedtime is Django Reinhardt Radio. (It remains to be seen if Barry will tolerate that one, since he's a real jazz-hater.)

I'm going away this weekend to visit my aunt Joyce (my uncle Howard's first wife) in the Poconos. I haven't seen her since my wedding, 12 years ago. She's only about seven years older than I am, around Barry's age, so we've always been pals. (I also adore my uncle's second wife, who recently brought me a mess of Venetian glass beads from...well, from Venice.) I'm somehow not as anxious as I usually am when traveling, which seems like a good thing. I'm looking forward to getting caught up with her, to being out of the city, and to being in the Poconos - I was last there about 15 years ago, just a couple of months before I met Barry.

I'm into bracelets lately, knotted on silk. The top one is white keshi pearls, which I'm keeping for myself and wearing right now. The 4th, 5th and 6th down from the top were given away as holiday gifts (they are grey "dot" pearls, tan pearls with vintage Swarovski crystal, and Peruvian pink opal). The amber (bottom) is going to be remade as a double strand, to order. I'm still hoping to start on Etsy around the end of the month.

when I can sleep, I dream...

Something rather peculiar has been happening for a few weeks now. On Sunday nights, I am generally glued to the TV, since almost all of my favorite shows are on Sunday nights: Boardwalk Empire, Homeland, Dexter, Treme, Shameless, Girls, Mad Men, Hell on Wheels, Breaking Bad...luckily they don't all have the same seasons. Treme and Boardwalk Empire just ended, and Homeland and Dexter are still on. These are all quality shows, and all on cable or premium cable. (The only shows I watch regularly on network TV are CBS Sunday Morning, 60 Minutes, and Fringe - Fringe being the only one that isn't on a Sunday.)

Dexter is a totally unique program, and both the character and the lead actor (Michael C. Hall) are amazing. And although I don't have ay sort of crush on either the actor or the character (and in fact, I think most of what he wears on the show is pretty unflattering), I find that I dream about him frequently on Sunday nights. The man in my dreams doesn't seem to be either Dexter or Michael C. Hall, but it's that guy, that face and that body. I don't remember much about the dreams except for the one last night - he was my lover, and dead sexy. Last night we were involved in some sort of caper, working in a team on some sort of scam. Part of it was in a casino. I actually have quite a few dreams where I'm in some sort of casino or an old-school yet pristine arcade (the sort with pinball and skee-ball, not video games).

I also have a lot of dreams where I'm either in a caper or hiding and escaping from someone or something. In these dreams, I'm sometimes in the story, and sometimes watching it as if it's a movie or show.It's always kind of vague and yet very emotionally charged.

And tonight, I couldn't fall asleep. I see my therapist on Tuesdays, and she's requested that I not take Atavan nor the "herbal relaxant" the night before. I generally take an Atavan before bedtime, which quiets down the racing thoughts that often prevent me from falling asleep; the herbal makes me sleepier.

I guess I'm a little jazzed up because the goods from my online shopping spree are starting to arrive. The TV came some days ago, but we have to get rid of the 100-lb. tube TV before we can set the new one up, which involves getting someone to take it down two flights of stairs. Barry's going to get a couple of local guys to do it this weekend, since it's way beyond our abilities. But the big prize came today: my new phone.

My new phone is a Samsung Galaxy S Lightray 4G, which I bought very slightly used on eBay for about half of the retail price. Although I may not be able to pay for service until the middle of the month, I turned it on, fiddled with it a little, changed the wallpaper. It is so beautiful. I expect it to be a life-changer, one of those extremely useful tools like the internet or my beloved Kindle. I'm far from being a techie, but I learn very fast when something can be useful or make me more productive. (All of the shopping I did with my crafts fair money was online.) I don't use my current "feature phone" much, since it's a bottom of the barrel phone that I got free when I was on public assistance. You have to use the phone-button keys to text, which is a huge pain in the ass. The only use I really get out of it is to call Barry when I'm in transit ("do you need me to pick anything up on the way home?"); the only advantage to it is that it's entirely free, and I use it for long-distance calls (due to an old debt of Barry's, we can't get long-distance service on our landline, and have to use a phone card).

My feeling is that I'll be doing a lot of texting with the new phone; also, it has a very good camera with flash. (It even has a second camera to make video calls.) Plus I expect it will replace my mp3 player. I really wanted to get something that wouldn't be outdated in a hurry, and although I really wanted a Galaxy iii, I ended up with a Galaxy ii, which I'm pretty sure is only one notch down from top-of-the-line. I'm not a fan of Apple, and don't use any of their products (my mp3 player is a Sansa Fuze, which is excellent and has served me well).

The TV also has all of the bells and whistles I could get for under $400; it has wireless internet connectivity, which I believe means that I can put anything on the TV that's on my computer - I know I'll be able to use Netflix streaming, and I hope I can use the DVD player on my computer, since we haven't had a DVD player for a while. I hit a bit of a wall when I was researching the TV; some of the tech was a little over my head.

When I bought this computer, a desktop, I did my homework - though rather than deep internet research, I consulted Tamsir. But I did make sure to get a fairly gigantic hard drive; even with 200+ movies and thousands of music files, it's only about 2/3 full after three years.

Only the Kindle is fairly basic, and only about three years old. I don't have much interest in a laptop or tablet, but I would like to upgrade to a Kindle Fire at some point.

But for now, I think I'm pretty content with my tech. It's kind of mind-bending, the things that have been created in my lifetime. I was born about a year before Alan Shepard became the first American in space, and watched Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, on a fuzzy black-and-white TV. My aunt worked for IBM for many years, and when I was a child, I visited her at work and got to see the "electronic brain," a computer that filled an entire room; in the 80s, I used CPM computer at work, with a tiny monochrome display, and then and IBM PC. I used the internet when it was only text with no pictures, and then finally had a color monitor and a mouse and a Mozilla browser. I briefly used a big clunky cell phone around 1998. I remember how thrilling it was to have a wireless home phone, after all those years of dragging wires around. I remember going from a manual to an electric typewriter. I remember my first VCR. It's all been so exciting. Such an amazing time to live through and in.

Also - my workplace had its holiday party on Saturday night, which was pretty fantastic. It was in Lucie's unspeakably beautiful home, a classic brownstone in Park Slope, tasteful and comfortable and just right. Barry actually came with me, enjoyed himself, and made a good impression. The pickled salmon I brought for the potluck went over big. We also had a silent auction, and Judy decided we'd bring our traveling crafts fair, and I sold over $100. (I've sold about $500 since the actual crafts fair.) About 50 people came to the party, and it was a big success. (The silent auction, which had a couple of high-ticket items, brought in a pile of money.)

Since the fundraising chairperson resigned, Judy's been the acting chair, and she pretty much indicated the other night that she and I and the wonderful Board member who coordinated the silent auction are pretty much going to be the fundraising team. I've been pointing myself at fundraising, and doing some good and hard work, and so have moved up. It's surprisingly pleasant and fulfilling to work diligently at this job - even more than when I was in book publicity. Some parts of book publicity were wonderful, but there were elements I didn't care for and wanted to avoid; there were days when I didn't want to go to work, especially after Ken left and was replaced with that witch. But nothing is dreadful at this job; nothing scares me or puts me off.

Interestingly, it seems that Barry is having a similar experience at his job. In fact, some of the people at the party were very impressed by what he does. (Even though it doesn't require much in the way of skills and experience to be hired, it's difficult to perform well; I think the job title, Client Care Counselor, sounds very impressive and both boosts Barry and also sounded very good to the people he spoke to on Saturday - our faculty and students are probably 85% from a social work background, and many of the students work in that field.)

Now, to attempt sleep once more.

no Super Bowl content whatever

I really have to remember that no matter how much I love reading Amitabh Bachchan's blog and even leaving comments, most of the commentors (the "EF") are totally insane.  Or some are totally insane, many are partly insane.  Anyway, I am often stupid enough to let some of them bother me, and often it's an issue of snub or neglect rather than attack.  Still, I let someone get to me over the weekend, and I let it make me feel lousy.  And then -- whoop, mood swing! -- I saw something this morning on Facebook that tickled me no end.  Only takes one nice person to counter a dismal mood.  I'm lucky enough to have a lot of nice people in my life, so the nasty ones can just take a hike. I only have to remember not to let myself be bothered by them.  I'm so oversensitive sometimes.

I made one more of the Village Scandal necklaces this weekend:  8mm lapis beads, with dangles in white "rice krispie" pearls, 4mm round blue agate, 4mm lapis barrels, 4mm iolite saucers.  (For those of you scratching your heads:  dark opaque blue, white pearls, translucent medium blue, dark opaque blue, transparent dark blue.)  The blue and white looks very fresh.  I think the third one will be pink and light green, which is pretty much my favorite spring color combo.  I have some round 10mm faceted cherry quartz that's been sitting around for a while, and I have insane numbers of all kinds of green beads.  And I think some little pink pearls.  For some reason, I have way more green and yellow/orange stone beads than any other colors.  Way lower on the pink/red, blue, and purple.

I did make the move to silver-plated headpins.  It didn't hurt too much.  They're sooo much less expensive, and they look fine.  And it's really nice to work with material where I don't have to feel stingy.  I bought 500 headpins for around $8.

It looks like my PPSC holiday jewelry sale is going to go ahead, except it's been morphed into a crafts fair, which means I'll be alongside other sellers.  It'll be small, so there won't be other jewelers, but there may be a potter, a painter, etc.  I'm slightly disappointed, because I really wanted (and expected) to have the showcase all to myself; and I'll certainly earn less money.  But it's a big vote of confidence and a great opportunity, even a little diluted; the Board of Directors voted to go ahead with it on Friday, so I really have no cause for complaint.  The Board rocks, really.  I used to take minutes at the Board meetings at NYU Law School, and man, that was a dull group and a dull meeting (although the lunches were pretty good).  The PPSC Board is smaller and way less formal, plus I can even make some suggestions or comments and it's OK -- sometimes even very much welcome.

The people at PPSC...well, we all understand that they have professional training that I don't, but no one uses that to put themselves above me.  They all act as if we're all talented and useful, just in different areas.  No one assumes that I don't know things.  When I worked at Tarcher, the editor-in-chief, Mitch, was (and is) a very bright guy, but he tended to assume that other people were not, especially people in lower positions than he was (like me).  Once we were coming out of a sales meeting, and he said, about a sales guy in the meeting, "You know, Hal Fessenden's brother is this really crazy avant-garde movie director."  I said, "He's Larry Fessenden's brother?"  And Mitch said, "How do YOU know about Larry Fessenden?"  Pardon me, but fuck you, Mitch.  No one would ever do anything like that here...not only that, but they're always quick to give me credit, and always welcome new info and new ideas.  It's not just that I'm a little older now and not someone's kid assistant; the people here don't really have anything to prove, and they're mostly pretty warm, kind folk.

I guess I'm counting blessings right about now.  Financial need has been twisting my life in a truly miserable way over the past year, with no end in sight.  But I work for and with nice people, and I have some very wonderful people in my life.

Apart from making that necklace, I spent a lot of the weekend watching Downton Abbey.  Highbrow and addictive.  I watched the entire first season on Netflix over a couple of weeks, and then totally cheated and downloaded the entire second season and have now watched all of it.  So they'd better hurry up and make that third season!  I'm reserving my opinion on HBO's Luck; so far, a lot of good actors, and a whole lot of horse-racing jargon.  That guy Gary Stevens is in it, an actual jockey who was also in Seabiscuit.  In fact, looking at the IMDB, it seems he won the George Woolf Memorial Jockey award in 1996 before playing George Woolf in Seabiscuit in 2003.  You can't get much better trivia than that!

Although...speaking of trivia...I've kind of come late to the game concerning LMFAO.  I guess Party Rock Anthem was a huge hit last summer, but I've just discovered it.  Those guys are awesome.  And here's the cool trivia part: not only are they uncle and nephew, but they're the son and grandson of Berry Gordy! 

So I guess I must...


http://youtu.be/KQ6zr6kCPj8

http://youtu.be/MBg1SxfCCM8

http://youtu.be/HnhGU-J5MxE

I know you are, but what am I?

I used to have a VHS copy of Pee Wee's Playhouse Christmas Special (1988). I watched it many, many times.  I loved Pee Wee's Playhouse, but the Christmas Special pretty much had all of the characters and bits in it, plus a ton of wonderful and bizarre guest stars.  I downloaded a copy a couple of days ago and just watched it again.  Holds up pretty well after 23 years.  Plus a lot of the guest stars are no longer living or no longer performing.


Let's see if I can name them all:  Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello, Oprah, Cher, Charo, Whoopi Goldberg, Dinah Shore, Grace Jones, k.d. lang, Little Richard, the Del Rubio Triplets, Joan Rivers, Magic Johnson...I'm probably forgetting a few.  And then the usual suspects, including Laurence Fishburne as Cowboy Curtis, William "Blacula" Marshall as The King of Cartoons, and so on.


My two favorite lines:
1 - Pee Wee:  "Look, it's Little Richard On Ice!"
2 - Magic Johnson:  "Magic Screen and I are cousins!"


This show was the first time I ever saw k.d. lang.  I seem to remember saying to my brother, "There was this weird person on the show who looked like a guy in a cowgirl dress."  He said, "k.d. lang, dyke country singer."  ("Dyke" was just shorthand -- my brother is a great friend of many, many lesbians.)


The Christmas Special is not available from Netflix but is available from Amazon.  (I swear, I recently reinstalled all of those links from this blog to Amazon, and it's still not working.)

how I got this way -- post-childhood influences: MST3K

I wrote a very detailed version of this post last night, with much windy text and many clips.  It took me about two hours, and then Blogger ate it when I was trying to post.  This one will be less ambitious -- probably less text and more clips.

I've been running an occasional feature called "how I got this way," featuring the cartoons that I watched endlessly as a very young child.  But I've had plenty of TV obsessions as an adult...I believe I once went on at great length in this blog about Friday Night Lights.  But I've also gone crazy for Ren & Stimpy (the first John K ones), and never stopped watching SNL.

I was an insane fan of Mystery Science Theater 3000, often known as MTS3K.  I taped episodes and watched them over and over and over.

The premise of the show, like the show itself, is pretty silly.  Two mad scientists shoot their janitor into space, placing him on a ship called the Satellite of Love.  To ease his boredom and loneliness, he builds himself a few robots (actually puppets).  Unfortunately, without the parts he used to make the robots, he can't fly the ship to return to earth.  To make things worse, the mad scientists force him to watch awful old movies. These are referred to as "experiments," though what the scientists, known as "the mads," are attempting to discover is pretty fuzzy.  (The theme song deals with the overall fuzziness this way:  just repeat to yourself, it's only a show, I should really just relax.)

Joel and "the 'bots" respond to the bad movies like many people do:  they talk back to the screen and make fun of the movie.  So most of the show is a terrible old movie, usually sci-fi, with the silhouettes of Joel and two robots in the lower left-hand corner, riffing on the movie.  There are also "host segments" which sometimes relate to the movie and sometimes not.  Early on, there was an "invention exchange" with the mads on every show, taking advantage of the real Joel's early career as a prop comic.  (The character is named Joel Robinson and the creator/actor is Joel Hodgson, and both are usually referred to as Joel.)

Even when it went from being a local show on KTMA in Minneapolis-St. Paul to a well-liked show on Comedy Central (and later on the Sci-Fi channel), it still had a kind of DIY look and feel to it, and it continued to be produced in the Twin Cities.

First, a very young Joel doing his stand-up/magic/prop comic act.  (I hesitate to even use the term "prop comic," since it conjures images of the awful and terrifying Carrot Top.  But hang in there -- Joel is terrific.)




Here's a little clip reel from three of the earlier "experiments."




I am particularly fond of the host segments where a particularly stupid scene from a movie is parodied by Joel and the 'bots -- especially if it involves a song.  This is from Pod People, not my top favorite episode, but one of them.  But I think it's my favorite host segment.  This clip shows the original song and then the host parody, complete with reaction from the mads.




Pod People actually had *two* really great host segment parodies.  Here's the movie clip, and the parody, of Trumpy, the pod person in Pod People:







Favorite episode, hands-down?  Manos, the Hands of Fate.  Here's a chunk that includes the bizarre Torgo with his creepy theme music.  Unfortunately, the final host segment, involving a faux-Torgo delivering pizza to the mads, has been sliced neatly in half between segment 9 and segment 10.  I'll post 10, the end of the Torgo/pizza bit, which also includes the closing credits.  You can see that pretty much everyone on the show did two or three different things, including occasionally appearing in a skit.

For instance, the guy who plays one of the mads also plays one of the robots and something else, maybe some design thing?  Joel did half of the jobs on the show. The whole cast is on the writing staff.   And Mike Nelson, the head writer who played Torgo in the last skit, took over as host after Joel left the show.  Mike's married to one of the other writers who occasionally does a skit.  And one of the other writers played a new mad scientist after one of the others left.  There's more cool stuff, but I'm sure I want you all to know what an incredible MST3K dork I am.  (The correct word for me and my ilk is "MSTies," pronounced misties."






HE TRIED TO KILL ME WITH A FORKLIFT!




Strangely enough, I couldn't find a clip of just the opening theme. This is the beginning of Pod People, which for some reason is not embeddable.  The theme is chock-full of exposition and low-rent props.



If you love this, it's available through Netflix, and apparently also in ten-minute segments on YouTube.  YouTube sure does rock, as I'm sure I said before.    (There are also MST3K shorts on YouTube, which are also pretty great.

never thought I'd see the day

Sometimes when I watch TV, especially commercials, I'm amazed at what they show, things I never thought I'd see as a kid.

There is, of course, the music on commercials. I never thought I'd see companies using the Beatles, the Stones, the Who to sell products, and Donovan is all over the place. One night, late at night, I saw a commercial for a vibrator followed by one for a penis pump.  Oh, and those Exzyte commercials, for penis enlargement.  At that stuff to enhance "female pleasure."  Tampon and condom commercials.  Commercials that say "diarrhea" and "hemorrhoids" a lot. 

But the ones that always get me, for some reason, are the Mucinex commercials with the little mucus family that moves into someone's sinuses.  People, that is talking snot right there on your TV set.  Walking and talking snot.  And this isn't South Park, which after all, featured a talking piece of shit.  This is a TV commercial you can see on primetime.  It's like something I would have giggled about as a kid:  "What if there was a commercial for cold pills and there was talking snot, like little people made of snot, and the cold pills would kill them?  HA-HA-HA-HA-HA!"  This is the kind of stuff that one of my old friends (no names, please) and I would laugh hysterically over when we were bad teenagers and indulging in herbal remedies.  Talking snot.

I wouldn't have remembered -- shouldn't have, really -- that yesterday was V's birthday, except that we share some Facebook friends and everyone was wishing him a happy birthday.  Barf.  I can't tell you how much trouble I used to go through for his birthday every year:  a selection of carefully selected gifts, cards, a couple of pints of my homemade sorbet and once I even cooked him dinner when Mrs. V was on a business trip on his birthday.  When I turned fifty, he blew off my party at the last minute, and then sent a gift, which was an unwrapped, damaged book with no card. Actually, the only time I ever got a birthday gift from him was one year that I helped him out with the internet -- he really didn't know how to use eBay, and I spotted a collectible there that he really wanted.  I told him about it, and he told me how much he wanted to bid, and I took care of it for him.  It was actually a lot of two identical items (I had a collection of the same item he did), and I announced that the second one would be his birthday present to me.  He was a really bad friend in many ways, but he had me so snowed with his wit, intelligence, and goofy charm that he got away with it for years.  He still gets away with it with a lot of people.  None of those people wishing him happy birthday have any idea that if you're not useful to him, he's not interested.  His fans, of course, are useful, to a point.  I'm not even a fan any more.  After 36 years, I gave it up.  I'm still not happy at being thrown away the way I was, of that passive-aggressive thing of pretty much ignoring me until I got upset enough to be the one to break it off.  I think I still feel hurt, and it did leave a certain empty space in my life.  But I'd rather have it empty than have him in it again.  Barry always thinks V. and I would, maybe should, reconcile; V. &  I knew each other for something like 32 of the 36 years I was a fan.  But it would never be fun again.  It would just be me, waiting for the next time my feelings would be hurt.  No more, no more.

I have a friend in Chicago I rarely see.  We actually met when he was in a band that did some gigs with V. in New York.  (I did meet a lot of worthwhile people through V, I must say.)  I'll call him Matt.  Matt and I met around 92 or 93, and had a huge and constant correspondence, all on paper, maybe four or five letters every week.  We fancied ourselves in love for a bit, but that didn't come to anything.  He was brilliant, an amazing writer, and amazing songwriter and singer.  He was also painfully shy and not very socially adept.  In other words, he was one of those brilliant and peculiar guys I tend to adore.  Anyway, about a year after I got married, he met someone and they got married.  We couldn't make it to the wedding, but i was very moved by how he wrote about her and by his obvious love and admiration for her.  Our correspondence dwindled, of course.  The last I heard from him was maybe a few years ago, and he included, rather proudly, a program from one of her roller derby games (which she did even though she was rather old and heavy for the gig).  He was really enthralled. 

He's not really an internet dude, but I had the idea the other day to look for his wife on Facebook.  We hadn't met but knew of each other, and I really thought she was cool.  I found her Facebook page and saw that she lived in Kentucky, which struck me as odd, but maybe they had moved there.  I decided to look at her blog before sending a friend request, and I found they were divorced, maybe a couple of years, and it seemed to have been her idea (a feeling-trapped, different-goals thing).  I felt very sad for him, did not friend her, and wrote him a long letter.  Some things end, I guess:  marriages, friendships.  And some of them change.  But I do hope to reconnect with Matt, who is a truly sweet and wonderful person.

good news at last

I'm starting my new job on Monday.  I will be working for Stephen Dweck, ordering beads and stones, and following up and logging everything in and hitting deadlines and so on.  I had a job interview where I was asked to identify the beads in three necklaces!  (and I thought the interview at that test-prep place was a great interview...)  I was hired about fifteen minutes after the end of my interview. 

I'm not sure I've written about being a serious jewelry crazy since about the age of -- well, I dunno.  Begged to have my ears pierced at 9; my mother agreed, but prohibited dangles until I was twelve.  (Younger people: this was a big distinction at the time, between wearing posts and wearing dangles.)  I think I managed to push that deadline a little.

I always had some jewelry: a gold heart with my initials (still have it), a little chai (ditto) bracelets with small blue-on-white enameled tile charms that my aunt bought me from Holland (also a small wooden shoe pendant in the same blue-and-white enamel, which I no longer have), a small birthstone (topaz)  ring (lost).  I loved to look through my mother's jewelry box, even though she didn't have a ton of stuff.  (A chai is not spiced tea -- it's that little Jewish charm that looks like an "n".  It's considered lucky and means "life," though it also means the number 18, which is my birthday.  Jewish people often give a gift or donation of $36, which is called "double chai.")  Actually, she had a fair number of nice pieces, but always pretty much wore one of two pair of earrings (I didn't learn until she died that the little gold hoops she always wore were not real), the same watch, a couple of pins, maybe some costume beads for a necklace.  She rarely wore the beautiful set of garnets my father gave her when I was born, her diamond engagement ring, any pearls (she gave me my great-grandmother's pearls when I was 21, and I'd never seen them before -- of course I still have *those*).

Jewelry always had a lot attached to it on my mother's side of the family, things like passing on my great-grandmother's pearls.  When my grandfather died, my grandmother and my aunt had his gold watch chain cut into three, set with diamonds and made into bracelets for themselves and my mother.  Kind of fetishy about those things.  Especially my aunt, who had *tons* of nice jewelry.  She worked at IBM for something like 35 years, made a good living and never got married, so she bought a lot of clothes and jewelry and went on a lot of cruises.  She now has most of my mother's and my grandmother's jewelry, a lot of it locked away (though she does wear my grandmother's beautiful opal ring, and the necklace my grandmother had made from my grandfather's Masonic pin...get the idea?). 

When my mother died, I was almost 22, and my grandmother died three years later; my aunt deemed me insufficiently mature to own any of it.  That was probably a blessing, since I was still an active alcoholic and addict.  I'm 53 now, sober 24 years, and it's almost all in my aunt's safe deposit box.  Just sayin'.  Before my brother got married (about twelve years ago), I called my aunt and said that I wanted my mother's "good pearls" for the wedding.  (Jewelry crazies, or maybe just Jewish women, are very clear about what is "good" jewelry, and that basically means real gold, real stones, high-quality pearls.)  After my parents split up, my mother dated a man for four years who worked in a nice jewelry store, and the big pearls were in lieu of an engagement ring.  (They never ended up getting married because he was a chronic cheat.)  So my aunt got me the pearls, and threw in a gold-and-garnet bangle of my great-grandmother's.  (Jewelry crazy plus family jewelry fetish.)  However, she claims not to have seen either my mother's garnets nor her engagement ring from my father.  I do also have a signet ring my father gave my mother when they were dating (his initials in marcasite), and her high school ring (Tilden HS, Brooklyn NY).

So I kind of grew up as a jewelry crazy.  My dad got me a big turquoise ring for my 16th birthday, which I think is the best present he ever gave me.  He's actually given me other jewelry -- Dad gets the girls-and-rocks thing, and has pretty good taste.  But the turquoise was very of-the-moment, and the stone and setting are stunning (and yes, I've still got that one).

For a time in the 90s, I really wanted to go to gemology school, because I'd fallen in a big way for expensive stones (also for antique jewelry).  But it was not affordable; I think it was a one-year full-time program, at a year-of-college price.  (I'm talking about the GIA, which is basically *the* place to study gemology.)

I started making jewelry so fast, like zero-to-sixty, that I had forgotten for a while just how I started (about eight years ago).  But I recently remembered that I'd bought a beautiful bead from a Tibetan store.  It was a big coral bead with silver end caps, like attached bead caps, which had small turquoise and coral stones set in it.  I just fell in love with it and bought it (I think it was $10).  I'm pretty sure that I started because I didn't know what to do with that big bead.  (I still have it, though I've never made anything out of it.  It's The Bead.) 

But I can't remember looking for and finding a beading store, what I initially bought and how I started.  I remember that early on I used base metal findings and glass and fire-polished (fake crystal) beads.  I only made earrings at first because I was intimidated by attaching clasps with crimp beads.  I know that I taught myself from a beading book (the little pink one that most beginners buy) and beading magazines.  I've only ever taken two classes:  one on knotting (because I had a lot of trouble learning this from articles and the book and diagrams), and the one I took recently on making wire rings.  Otherwise, I'm totally self-taught.

Once I started using stones, I somehow felt the need to know exactly what materials I was using.  I had to know the name of everything.  This was part jewelry fetish, and partly because I planned to eventually sell my work, and wanted to be able to tell those future customers exactly what the jewelry was made of.  I learned a lot of this by browsing bead stores and and browsing the net.  After a while, there was exactly one sales clerk at one of the Sixth Ave/37th St bead store who knew more about stones than I did, and luckily he worked in one of my favorite stores, a huge one.  If I couldn't identify something there, I had Roberto.  If he wasn't there, or I was in another store and didn't recognize a stone, good luck.

So today, I identified rose quartz, smoky quartz, agate, and Russian amazonite.  I think the Russian amazonite got me halfway to being hired; that was the ID that really seemed to impress Edmond.  (He's the brother I've dealt with through the whole application process.)  There were two other stones I didn't know and guessed at (one I now realize was amazonite of another type), but the guesses were pretty smart.  I thought the amazonite might have been an opaque aquamarine, and there was a lumpy white stone that I thought might be undyed howlite or possibly some sort of artificial ivory.

I was interviewed and told about the job by a woman named Divia, and Edmond ran in and out.  He was going to come in to finish the interview, but he was too busy.  So I walked home, and five minutes after I came in the door, he called and offered me the job.  Divia had asked about my availability, and I said I could start Monday, which was just a way of saying that I was very available.  But they asked me to start Monday.  For any other job, I would have asked for a week before starting, but they're kind of backed up and it was my first act as part of the team to start right away.  There are no orders to place just now, but I have to learn some software and get up to speed on the ordering and receiving system.  Apparently I'm also going to have to create some Excel spreadsheets, since my predecessor didn't have great computer skills.  I'm pretty sure that I was hired largely because I knew the stones (and also was familiar with Dweck's work), and had good administrative/office skills. I feel like the job was made for me.

I feel that at times, I haven't been the most disciplined employee.  In fact, if I don't work full-tilt for the entire workday, I feel guilty and like a serious fuck-up, and I've rarely been able to work full-tilt all day.  I've also had a bad habit, on and off, of sometimes not wanting to deal with something confusing or unknown or a task I didn't like.  But I think that will be very different with the new meds I'm on.  I've noticed a change in my personal life; I've become a lot more responsible about housework and cleaning (speaking of tasks I don't like).  I get a lot of satisfaction from doing it thoroughly rather than brushing it off or doing it half-assed.  If I'm doing dishes, I do them all and then clean the sink.  (My darling husband, for some reason, hates washing silverware and will do all of the other dishes and leave the silver.  He will also leave any pot or pan that would require even minimal scrubbing "to soak.")  I wipe the bathroom sink numerous times every day.  I sweep.  I organize things.  I throw out junk mail right away.  (I'm not supposed to say "junk mail" since my father worked many years in direct marketing, but you all know what I mean when I say "junk mail.")  This is all pretty new for me.  I've become mighty efficient and much neater.  I think this will follow me to work.

On a totally different subject -- I've been watching reruns of Friday Night Lights on the bizarre ABC Family channel.  They began showing it from the start five days at 6 PM, and I'm enjoying it while waiting for season 5 to start.  Barry watches with me some of the time.  There's a character named Tim Riggins who is a wildly handsome high school kid (and on the football team which is the center of the show), and as of the start of season two, has gone through three girlfriends.  Barry started joking about how Tim Riggins sleeps with everyone in town.  It's very silly, but it cracks us up.   The same actor (Taylor Kitsch) who plays Riggins was in the movie Wolverine, and it was on a few nights ago.  We said that Riggins would sleep with Hugh Jackman and Liev Schreiber.  It's not about something like Riggins being bi -- I think it's more about Riggins being irresistible to everyone.  We also wanted Tim Riggins to turn up on Glee, where there would be lots of people for him to sleep with.  Oh, here's a picture of old TR:

The first picture is with Sat Nite Lights costars Jesse Plemons and Scott Porter.  (To emphasize how football-crazy the town is, Plemons' character is named "Landry."  Barry calls him "Clamtree," and claims that he's slept with Tim Riggins, of course.)

What I really like about Taylor Kitsch, or about Tim Riggins, is that he's handsome in the way that handsome boys were handsome when I was in high school.  I would have had a mad crush on him when I was fourteen, and did have mad crushes on boys of that type.  And TK/TR is seriously cute.

I refer to the show as "Coach," as in, "Turn on the set, it's time for Coach."  Because while the football team is the center of the show, it's heart is absolutely the team coach, who is a wonderful father (both to his kids and the players), a wonderful husband, a very moral guy, strict but kind-hearted...and also very handsome.  Big time.  Let's see if I can find a pic of him:

The actor is Kyle Chandler: quite the looker.

OK, time to stop drooling over TV boys.  It's late.

new glasses, the old neighborhood, and former family...and maybe more

I have wanted new glasses forever.  I have been running around for somewhere around nine years in a pair I have grown to hate.  I'm not crazy about wearing glasses anyway, and don't wear them much indoors, since I'm just a little nearsighted.  Anyway, I got a 2-for-1 coupon from Pearle Vision and I decided to go for it, get new glasses and prescription sunglasses.  So I had an exam with an optometrist (who pronounced my eyes to be very healthy and my prescription unchanged), and picked out two frames, and chose the types of lenses.  I got kind of of-the-moment soft rectangular frames in a dark color for my regular glasses, and my sunglasses are a little larger and more square, sort of PoMo Wayfarers.  I spent $688 and saved $464.  It was pricey but a good bargain.  I could have spent $688 for just one pair.

The eyeglass store was in my old neighborhood, Brooklyn Heights.  I lived there from when I was about nine until I went to college (just shy of 17).  I also lived there for about a year, back in my parents' apartment, when I was twenty.  I don't think I really appreciated how beautiful and peaceful it was around there.  I really took it for granted.  It could easily be the nicest neighborhood in the whole city, along with parts of the West Village (though that section is much smaller than the Heights).  It's insanely expensive to live there any more, though when I was a kid, there were still reasonable rentals.  At this point, I think you'd pay around $2200 for a studio -- what Barry likes to call "tuchas gelt" (this literally means "butt money," and perhaps means something like "you'd have to have money coming out of your ass," which is pretty much how he uses it). 

I think a lot of the apartment buildings have probably gone co-op.  The last building we lived in went co-op, and my folks couldn't afford to buy it.  They borrowed enough money to make a down payment at the "inside price," and flipped it for much more.  They made $80,000.  My mother died soon after -- she had told my stepfather that she wanted to make a will, and he said, don't worry, I'll take care of the kids."  Guess who never saw a cent?  And when my stepfather died a few years later, he apparently left major insurance money to his sons, but nada for my brother and me.  It's many years since then, and there's nothing that can be done, but I was always sad that my mother was duped and my brother and I were ripped off.  We had gently approached the stepbrothers after their father died (one of them had just bought a co-op and one a new car, so they most have gotten tons of insurance), and said that we realized we were not legally entitled to anything, but we felt that we had a certain moral entitlement to something that might remain.  According to them, in the three years after my mother died, he had spent all of the 80K except for $1200 that remained in an estate account.  They agreed that we could split that, except that there was one medical bill still pending, which would have to be paid out of the fund if insurance didn't cover it, and they were waiting on the insurance company.  I believe they fronted my brother a few hundred dollars before the insurance claim was settled, but no more than that, and I never saw a dime.  And I haven't seen or heard from either stepbrother in almost 30 years.  Unlike certain people with whom I hope to eventually reconcile, I don't really want to know either of them.  The inheritance thing was only the last in a series of slights and nasty behavior.  (And for the record, my mother was wonderful to them, and they and any friends were welcome to show up for dinner any night -- the two of them even had keys to our apartment.) 

On another topic entirely:  there's a commercial on TV, I think it's local, for a lawyer named Roni Deutsch  who specializes in IRS problems.  She appears on her commercials and talks in a loud and abrasive way.  She yells, "Is the IRS calling you and asking for money?!  Do you owe thousands of dollars?!  Want to get the IRS off your back?!" and so on.  When she tells of the terrible things the IRS can do to you, like put a lien on your house, one of the terrible consequences she lists is "attack your paycheck."  The first time I saw this, I figured she misspoke. but when titles flashed on the screen with her list, it said "attack your paycheck."  Now I've had the IRS do just that to me, so I'm pretty sure, positive in fact, that the expression is "attach your paycheck," not "attack."  I'm guessing that *someone* associated with the making of this commercial noticed it, but was afraid Roni Deutsch would yell at them for correcting her.  I have to hope that not everyone on that shoot was too stupid to know that.  And you have to wonder about ol' Roni...do you really want a tax attorney who doesn't know the proper expression for when the IRS takes money out of your pay?  If *I* know that, she sure as hell ought to.

I also saw an infomercial recently -- I wish I could remember what it was for.  They showed it twice in a row.  The first time, the voiceover was done by Gilbert Gottfriend (talk about a loud and abrasive manner of speech!), and the second time, it was done by a woman who probably had a normal voice, though it seemed really soft after Gilbert.  Infomercials seem a little lost now that Billy Mays is gone.  Say what you want about Billy, but he was absolutely the best at what he did.  I'm kind of fascinated by infomercials.  I was flipping through a bunch late the other night, and came upon a local one for what seemed to be a voodoo church with several locations in the city.  They were talking Christian stuff, but also doing things like blessing glasses of water and driving evil out of someone by getting the persons shirt and twisting it, I guess to wring out the evil.  Also, the two guys were Haitian, which is why my first thought was that it was voodoo-ish. 

I met a really nice young man recently, although I'm reluctant to say how we met on this blog.  (Especially when job-hunting, I'm very aware of anything I post here or on Face-ity Book-ity.  So let's say that it involves an herbal remedy which is legal in some states but not (yet) in this one.  We had been getting some that was very ordinary, and had visited someone recently who had something amazing, which they get delivered.  I had heard about these delivery services, and that people usually learned about them by word of mouth, but the person who had it was a friend of a friend, so we didn't really feel we could ask to be put in touch.

I remembered hearing that a certain online bulletin board thingie had coded listings for these services, and had looked at them once or twice -- you find them by searching for a certain three-digit number which is generally associated with this remedy.  So we decided to give it a shot, and responded to a few ads; they generally ask you to e-mail your phone number.  One in Brooklyn responded, but wouldn't deliver to our part of Brooklyn (and his was two far to get to), but I realized he didn't advertise a premium product anyway.  A couple didn't call back, but one finally did, and he couldn't deliver but said that I could meet him in Manhattan, so we made arrangements.  (Barry was a little shy of being involved in this so I pretty much took the lead.  Both parties take something of a risk in this kind of thing, but it's fairly equal.) 

So the dude who met me is my new pal.  Our minimal size transaction went swimmingly, so we've now done two more of a larger size.  What he has is extremely great, the kind of thing that has names, of a superior quality.  And the guy is really sweet.  We've been meeting in a little deli, and the first two times, he asked if I wanted to get something to eat, and I begged off both times, mostly because it's a substantial trip back and forth. 

But I realized that he was being friendly, which I just didn't expect from a guy maybe in his late twenties.  Guys in their late twenties generally look at me and see old and fat -- actually, my face looks pretty young, but my hair is gray.  I'm not bad-looking but I'm certainly not thin.  Guys in their twenties look through me.  And men in New York are incredibly looksist in general -- men in their thirties and forties looked through me when I was thirty or thirty-five, because I was not thin and not tall and not bosomy (though my hair was dyed).  Outside of New York City, I am often the belle of the ball, especially among old hippie types.

Anyway, when I made my latest transaction, I sat down and had a coffee with this guy.  We talked about the usual New York junk, various neighborhoods and real estate, subways and buildings (he lives near an area where I once lived), my job hunt and his pending divorce and his kids.  We also talked a bit about Coney Island, and he'd never heard of the Mermaid Parade, and I told him about it and said I'd send some pictures.  He was a very nice guy to talk to and I was glad I'd stayed.

So I e-mailed him a link to some Coney Island stuff, and he sent back an e-mail thanking me, and all of this kind of love-and-peace stuff.  Thank God there are still young hippies.  And I guess it's nice to know each other a little, since I'll probably continue to see him now and again.  It makes me a little sad when younger people act as if or think that I'm irrelevant, since I don't think of myself as old to the point of being out of touch.  In fact, I still feel pretty young between my ears, which I guess is not uncommon.  My body's certainly older, but my mind is pretty fresh.  I think.

I still have not heard from the collectibles place, but I've kind of decided that this is what I'd like to do, regardless.  I've taught myself about a lot of these things, mostly on-line.  I know advertising collectibles fairly well, especially early-mid 20th century, and especially soda collectibles.  I know banana stickers and roller rink stickers. I know a lot about certain 1950s modern china.  I like modern a lot, fifties and sixties.  And I love old restaurant china.  I know a fair amount of entertainment memorabilia and also sports memorabilia.  But I think I need to know more about jewelry and watches, which is a bread-and-butter area.  And even some costume jewelry, and Mexican silver jewelry, which I adore.  And certain types of vases and other ceramics.  My specialty(ies) will eventually make themselves clear.

I guess the idea is to start buying items from flea markets and selling them online for a profit, and maybe eventually have my own online or even brick-and-mortar store.  I can't even imagine how much I would love doing this for a living.  I'm realizing that I know a lot more than I knew I knew, and that it's one of the things that I most enjoy.

I recently bought a used copy of Kalki, which I adored when I was young.  Also the second Stieg Larsson, and a Marge Piercy I haven't read.  Yay for buying used books at Amazon!

not a bad day

I had lunch with Lily in the Village today, first time I've seen her in a bit. She was a little insane with an internship this summer. She is just burning her way through a really smart education plan. She wants to be a librarian with a specialty in museums, so she just took her M.S.L.S. (Master's of Science in Library Science -- a lot of schools just call it an M.L.S., but I guess Pratt likes the long way). In August, she's starting an M.A. in Art History at Hunter. Smart, smart, smart. Smart plan and smart woman. I'm not saying she doesn't sweat her way through it -- she certainly does, and gets stressed out, and all that. I've never asked her about grades, though I'm sure they're excellent. I admire her unwavering focus. Even in the toughest times, I doubt she ever considered changing course. And I've worked with her, and have rarely seen that kind of work ethic. Everyone likes her. When I was temping at Penguin in another department, she was probably the friendliest person I encountered, even though we had no work connection at all. (Coincidentally, in my third stint as a temp at Penguin, she was my supervisor.) I'm really lucky, because it's often hard to make new close friends after 40 or 45 or whatever, but I've made two wonderful friends in the past ten years (Jannah's the other).

We ate at a place called Otarian, which I'd read about in a food blog.  It's a vegetarian place (Lily's veg), and kind of leads with its conscious effort to leave a low carbon footprint and then tell everyone about it, over and over.  I like that it's locavore, for non-carbon-footprint reasons.  There have been some complaints that the food isn't too good or that the prices are too high.  It's about the most upscale, sparkling clean, friendly fast-food place you'll ever see.  It makes Chipotle look like McDonalds...oh, wait, Chipotle is McDonald's...  anyway, I had a vegetable biryani and a creme brulee (no egg in the creme, though), and they were just fine, and with a bottle of water (perhaps too big a carbon footprint), it ran me around fifteen bucks, no tip required.  I liked the fact that the portions were not enormous, because you could get two (even three) things without getting stuffed.  Lily had a portabello burger and a tomato/mozzarella/avocado salad.  The biryani tasted good and was mildly spicy.  I'm getting adventurous about hot spices lately.  The creme brulee was actually bruleed, but the non-custard custard was a little weird, maybe because I *always* have brulee and custard.  (Forget that I should be eating none of this.)

Here's the healthier part:  after lunch, I went to the Union Square Greenmarket.  I love that place, but it always seems like such a schlep from home, especially since I can't possibly carry everything I'd like to buy.  But if I'm going to Manhattan for something else, and it happens to be a Monday, Wednesday, Friday or Saturday, I'll bring a tote bag or two.  Let's see if I can remember everything I bought (only one tote bag today):  many heirloom tomatoes.  pea sprouts.  cucumbers the size of almonds (their cuteness compelled me).  watermelons the size of grapefruits.  a bag of teeny plums.  a couple of not-too-hot hot peppers.  three heads of garlic.  and, yay, Beth's Farm Kitchen was there with their jams and chutneys!  I'd forgotten that they always have open jars of many of the products, popsicle sticks in each, and little its of bread to try them on.  I bought a jar of Zapricot Chutney (mainly apricots, with chipotle), and Cranberry Horseradish (Beth ought to get a Nobel Prize for that one).

I had taken out ground meat for dinner tonight, which is something we call "Sloppy Spoots."  Please don't make me tell you "Spoot" signifies, but Sloppy Spoots began as a personalized version of Sloppy Joes.  Barry made them with ground meat and salsa, or maybe ketchup, or maybe both, and usually ate it on a roll.  (Around here, "ground meat" can be turkey, beef, veal or pork, but mostly turkey, followed by veal; ground lamb would also be in rotation if I could ever find it anywhere.  Jannah once made burgers that were half-beef and half-lamb, and I nearly swooned.  I'm a bit of a lamb slut.  And don't get me started on lobster.)  Anyway, on my watch, Sloppy Spoots were eaten with rice instead of on a roll, and of course seasoned with a little more effort than opening a can of salsa (though I admit, not bad if it's good salsa, and I have a jar-of-salsa chicken dish, so I shouldn't point fingers). 

So this is what I did tonight:  half beef, half turkey.  Softened onions, shallots, garlic, bell pepper, and hot pepper in vegetable oil (all Greenmarket stuff).  Boiled some red potatoes (non Greenmarket, alas), drained and diced them.  Added the meat to the vegetables, added recaito (Latin-American seasoning paste, mostly cilantro), basil (opal basil from the Greenmarket that I dried myself), salt and pepper, and cooked until the meat had lost most of its color, then added the potatoes and cooked a bit more.  Then I decided it needed a can of tomato sauce, so I put that in.  Since I put in the potatoes no other starch was needed.  Barry ate it with ketchup; I ate it with both chutneys.  It was good.  I guess it's something of a homemade Hamburger Helper.  It's a relatively plain dish but you can do a lot with it.

My jar of salsa chicken recipe:  brown four boneless skinless chicken breasts in a skillet.  Add a jar of salsa.  Cover and simmer for about twenty minutes.  Eat with rice.  This is a nice way to make boneless skinless chicken breasts that are not dry.

There was a job nibble the other day...but then I was told that the hiring was on hold, and I'd be recontacted if anything changed.  So I'm just plowing on.  I still get a fair number of scams in response to ads I answer on Craigslist; I've pretty much figured out the signs of scam-fishing in the ads, but I don't catch all of them.  But when the scams come, I always know just what they are.  If I have the time, I usually like to screw with the person a little.

I got a really bizarre one today, purportedly from a woman who signed herself as working at something like JobSearch.com (that's not the exact name).  She said the job I had applied for had been filled, but I was invited to look for more jobs on -- and here there were two links I was supposed to click.  I moused over them, and the domain names sounded like job search sites (though none was JobSearch.com), but they were also not home pages of these sites.  The web addresses were something like administrative job dot com blackslash name backslash +78 backslash -- and so on.  I also punched up JobSearch.com, and that looked like an employment site of some sort, but it actually said nothing.  One page of it had a kind of boilerplate "how to have a successful resume" thing, but nowhere did it have anything like a list of clients, places to click "for employers" or "for job seekers," certainly no list of openings or application or services.  There was a contact e-mail, which was info at Jobsearch.com, and a phone number and street address in Hicksville, New York.  (No reason for an employment agency in Hicksville.)  It also seemed weird that the e-mail didn't have a link to the "JobSearch" site.  Also that it came from the "HR Director" of JobSearch.

ALSO...there was a file attached called something like "Jennifer_Resume_something," which I did not open.  For one thing, that's not the name of my resume file, and for another, why would an employment counselor be sending me my own resume?

Last point:  the woman's e-mail had two "P.S."es.  One said something like, "I see it is 77 degrees in New York.  It is 77 degrees here in our offices in Hicksville, New York.  Nice weather."  The other one said, "What do Hulk Hogan, someone else, and someone else have in common?  Today is their birthday!"  WTF, right?

So I did write back and screwed with her/him/it a bit.  Said that I'd like to know what company she represents, since the websites she asked me to click on were not JobSearch.com websites.  Asked why she had sent me my own resume.  Asked her about the JobSearch.com website, and what kind of employers they represent, and what kind of jobs they specialize in.  And then I said that I thought her P.S.es were extremely inappropriate, that I've never seen anything like that from an employment agency, especially at first contact; I actually wrote, "Is that how you would want me to behave at an interview?"

I'm not sure what the scam is there -- a virusy or scam website when you click, a virus or trojan in the attachment, or both. 

I'm also not sure why I'm not using the actual name of the alleged job site; on the off-chance that it's not as insanely illegitimate and fraudful (new word) as it seems, I don't want to buy myself the headache it could be if anyone actually read this blog.

Yesterday, I researched all of the CUNY and private colleges in New York, went to their websites,  looked at all the jobs, and applied to the ones that seemed possibilities.  This was a useful piece of research, since I'd really only been looking at NYU and occasionally at CUNY (though the administrative employees there probably had to be dragged out feet-first, since I imagine it to be something of a civil service-type paradise).  I'm not bothering with Columbia, firstly because it's easily the most competitive of all of the city's private universities (most offer free tuition, but only one offers free tuition at Columbia); the other reason is that the commute is just too ridiculous from south Brooklyn.  But I've now dropped a few applications at places like Julliard and The New School.  Considering that so much of my work experience was at universities (mainly NYU, plus a short stint at Fordham-Lincoln Center, and a long-term temp job at Columbia), I could possibly be an attractive candidate for a university job.  Let's hope.

Oh -- three more TV shows that I forgot because they're out of season.  30 Rock.  Easily the best network sitcom since Seinfeld.  Brilliant cast.  Big Love.  An hour-long drama on HBO about a Morman-fundamentalist family that practices polygamy.  Sounds awful but it's great, wonderful acting.  Also, Fringe, which is kind of X-File-ish, but benefits from some superb acting, including a wonderful Australian actor named John Noble, who plays a somewhat eccentric professor; Lance Reddick (taller and skinnier than I generally like my men, but still extremely hot); Blair Brown (always Molly Dodd to me); and the occasionally appearance by the *real* Mr. Spock.  (That whore Shatner will take any job, but Nimoy is discerning and clearly picks and chooses his roles with care.  Just kidding about calling Shatner a whore.  Which he is.)  there's a fourth show, The Human Target, which is actually a pretty stupid-ass show, but I watch it solely for Jackie Earle Haley.  In case I haven't mentioned it, Barry refers to him as Jackie Pearl Bailey.  I had an ex-boyfriend who had silly names for everything, way more than Barry.  Annoyingly so.  Barry's not that bad. 

Hey. I just figured out how to put pictures and stuff on here!  Apparently the New Post button defaults to the HTML view, and I've just discovered the much more attractive Compose view, where you can do things like post pictures.  Now I have to decide if I really want to do that.

TV and some movies

I've always been a big reader, and a movie fan, but I also love TV. Here are the shows I watch regularly:

Real Housewives of New Jersey/Real Housewives of Atlanta (reality). I particularly love the Jersey ones because they're all hilariously clueless, except for Dina and Caroline Manzo.

Scrappers (reality). This one just started last night, about guys who collect and and sell scrap (mostly scrap). I enjoyed it because it's set here in Brooklyn -- in fact, I learned about it from posters in the windows of several local Italian eateries (the guys are mostly or all Italian). Also, the guys are so dumb that they make the Jersey Housewives look like rocket scientists.

Man v. Food (travel/food). I think I've already written about how much I adore Adam Richman, also a Brooklynite.

No Reservations (travel/food). I also adore Tony Bourdain, snarky as he is.



The Deadliest Catch (reality). This one is about crab fishermen in Alaska. I'm not sure why I like it so much, because the characters aren't that compelling. But I cried when Captain Phil Harris died.

Ice Road Truckers (reality). Also set in Alaska, this one is about truckers who drive a road that are only passable in the dead of winter, mostly to bring supplies to oil drilling workers. It's pretty treacherous work. This has a lot of compelling characters, including a (rare) female driver. The show kind of makes a fake competition about which trucker drives the most loads during the season (they get paid per load and the pay also depends on the weight and size of the load). My fave is Alex, who is a low-key, sweet guy with 11 kids back home. I also like Jack, who is the absolute expert on oversized loads. Apparently, they're going to show a second program in the fall about truckers in the Himalayas, and I will definitely watch that.

Louie (comedy). I've already written about how much I admire Louis C.K.

Hot in Cleveland (comedy). I watch it for Betty White.

My Life on the D-List (reality/comedy). Because Kathy Griffin is hilarious, as is her 90-year-old mother.

Entourage (comedy). I stopped watching it for a while but recently started again because they have great guest stars and because Jeremy Piven and the guy who plays Lloyd (I think his name is Rex Lee) are very funny. Oh, and Kevin Dillon.

True Blood (drama). This isn't really a favorite of mine, but I watch it with Barry, who loves anything with vampires in it. This season is sucking (no pun intended) big-time, though.

Top Chef (reality/competition). Cut-throat competition between some great chefs; I also have a mild crush on co-host Tom Colicchio.

Locked Up Abroad (true crime/reality). Mostly people who have the bright idea to smuggle drugs, and end up in foreign prisons. They recently did a show on Billy Hayes, the "Midnight Express" guy, who told some parts of his story that were censored from his book, and some that were misrepresented in the movie.

Friday Night Lights (drama). Even though I loathe football, the actors are amazing, especially the ones who play the coach (Kyle something) and his wife (Connie Britton).

Treme (drama). Amazing show about post-Katrina New Orleans, largely focused on musicians. Great guest musicians (Elvis Costello, Allen Toussaint, Dr. John, Steve Earle). Awesome acting from Clarke Peters and Wendell Pierce, both of whom were criminally overlooked for Emmy nominations. Also has Melissa Leo, a favorite of mine since Homicide. This show is from the same team responsible for Homicide, Oz, The Corner, The Wire, etc. -- all brilliant shows.

Mad Men (drama). Period piece about the advertising business in the early 60s. Features the wonderful Elizabeth Moss, and Robert Morse (a favorite since I was a kid).

Saturday Night Live (comedy). I never stopped watching it, even during the truly lousy seasons/casts. And the fact that it's live makes it very exciting; anything can happen. Best casts were the original, and the late 80s (Phil Hartman/Will Ferrell/Jan Hooks/Dennis Miller). Even the crappier seasons had people like Eddie Murphy and Julia Louis-Dreyfus.

Curb Your Enthusiasm (comedy). Because very few people are funnier than Larry David.

Weeds (comedy). Mary-Louise Parker, Kevin Nealon (much funnier than he was on SNL), Elizabeth Perkins and Andy Milder -- all hilarious.

I also have a sweet tooth for true crime shows like City Confidential. A lot of them are on I.D. Discovery, which we refer to as "the murder channel." It's pretty much my default channel if I want to watch and nothing else is on.

Barry's default channel is called Blackbelt TV, and it's mostly martial arts. Yuk. The only martial arts film I really like is Enter the Dragon, because Bruce Lee is so cool, John Saxon's hair is really funny, and Jim Kelly wears the most outrageous early-seventies outfits. Well, I also like the unintentionally funny oeuvre of Jean-Claude Van Damme. I always like the ways they come up with to explain his accent. In an early one, he has a brother with an American accent, and Van Damme says something like "Too bad I was raised in Europe with father and you were raised with mother in America," to which the brother replies, "Yeah, they never could get along." There was another one where Van Damme plays twin brothers, one who's a kind of sleazy underworld dude, and one who runs a gym in LA. The advertising line was "One packs a piece -- the other packs a punch!" I once saw a poster defaced in the subway to read "One packs a piece -- the other packs a lunch!"

Which kind of reminds me...when my brother and I were kids, we had a neighbor across the hall who split up with his wife and went to Hollywood to make movies. My brother and I laughed our asses off when we saw a subway poster that said "Keep on telling yourself -- it's only a movie, it's only a movie." The movie was Last House on the Left, which makes our former neighbor Wes Craven. It always killed me because so many horror flicks feature a babysitter in peril, and I used to sit for Wes' kids. His ex-wife married singer-songwriter Tom Chapin; much of his family also lived in our building.

We even have favorite commercials these days. Barry likes the Dos Equis commercials featuring "the most interesting man in the world."

I'm partial to a new DirecTV commercial with a very nouveau-riche type Russian dude, who has a tiny pet giraffe (cat-sized) that he kisses on the lips at the end of the commercial. (Unfortunately, YouTube doesn't seem to have this one yet.)

Shows I love that are no longer on the air: St. Elsewhere. All of the Tom Fontana/David Simon shows I mentioned under Treme. Pitchmen (which will have a second season, but won't be the same without the late Billy Mays). Fridays (with young Michael Richards and Larry David). And speaking of Larry David, Seinfeld. There must be others that I can't remember. I probably watch too much TV, but I never go to the movies any more, and don't go to too many concerts, so it's a big source of entertainment.