fresh-cut grass!

It's about 61 degrees out now (1:44 PM), but it feels warmer in the sun.  I just took a nice stroll around the neighborhood, walked around for about an hour.  On Gravesend Neck Road, right around East 1st Street, there was a strong scent of fresh-cut grass, certainly the first time I've smelled that this season.  I've seen a crocus or two, but this really smelled like spring.

I'm home today on "Independent Job Search" -- which requires a midday walk in the spring sun.  I had an interview yesterday and I feel 98% sure I'll be hired -- possibly because she kept saying, "I am going to hire you."  She said it about three times.  I think what happened is that I asked for a little more money than she was planning to pay, and had to talk to her accountant about it.  But I think I did convince her that I was worth my $35K asking price:  even though I had limited experience in the jewelry field, I had a lot of administrative experience, and it was clear that I'd learn her business very quickly.  Stay tuned.

I have no idea exactly what happens on the public assistance front if and when I get a job.  Do I still have to go to the daily grind until I start work?  what happens to our benefits?  (I do know that Medicaid will be good for the next six months no matter what.)  I'm going to try to see my job counselor tomorrow morning, because I may well have an offer very soon.

I'm seeing Lily tomorrow, which is a big event because she is insanely busy with school and internships and work these days.  We're going to have lunch, since we get released from Back-to-Work around 12:30 on Fridays.

Also -- someone else who did me a good deed:  my former boss Ken (the good boss who hired me at Penguin, not the bad one who got rid of me).  He sent me a St. Patrick's Day card with a $25 Starbucks gift card in it.  I very, very rarely hear from him, although he's one of my job references.  He's a quiet person; I don't think he'd disagree if I said he's shy.  But he's tremendously goodhearted, and one of the very best bosses I've ever had.

Ken really believed in me and was always willing to give me a chance to tackle something.  I came to his department as a temp, and temped there for three or four months before I finally managed to get hired (there had been some terrible hires in that department over the past couple of years, and Ken and I had to really work at it).  One day when I was still a temp, Ken was overwhelmed by calls he had to make, or maybe there were a bunch he didn't want to do.  I think it was following up with some media that had received galleys (this was in book publicity, by the way).  I volunteered to do it, telling him, "I'm really good on the phone."  So he said, "Go ahead," and stood by to listen as I made the call.  A minute or so later, he gave me a thumbs up and walked away.

Once I was on permanently and had my own book assignments -- well, let me go back for a minute.  I actually had my own book right before my permanent hire.  There was a certain author that Ken couldn't stand dealing with, and I volunteered to make a call to this author.  I figured out how to deal with the guy pretty quickly, and told Ken that I would handle any contact with this author if he wanted.  So he was actually my author before I was hired.  I guess because it was my first assignment, and at first, my only one, and maybe also because I realized how different and interesting the book was, I worked my ass off on it.  In all fairness, the author did get a few major publicity hits set up before I got started (a piece in Rolling Stone, an appearance on The Colbert Report).  It was a big home run, both in hardcover and in paper, and it really made me at that job.

But once I was hired, Ken would pretty much assign me to any book I got very excited about.  He figured out pretty quickly that I pushed really hard for a book I really believed in, even if it was a "big" book that wouldn't normally go to the most junior publicist.  (This was very untrue of his successor, who kept every single big book for herself.)  That's how I got to do the David Lynch book -- the second I heard about it, I ran into Ken's office and said Please Please Please.  (The new boss was there when the Lynch book came out in paperbook, and made a screwface about my being the publicist.  I was already in with the Lynch crew and she really couldn't do anything about it.  Very early on, she and I went to a Lynch event together, and when David came up and kissed me on the cheek, I think she knew she couldn't take the book from me.  As Emily Litella would say, "Bitch.")

One more story about Ken's generosity:  he represented an author I liked a lot, and loved the book, and I believe we had already arranged that I would do the paperback, or maybe it was that I took over a bunch of work on it a bit after publication.  Anyway, I was involved somehow, and Ken and I were both invited to a launch party that a friend of the author's threw (in an amazing little townhouse in Harlem).  Ken was both editor and publicist for the book, but when we were heading up to the party, he told me to tell people that I was the publicist.  It certainly made me feel more comfortable in a group of writers and book people who were strangers to me.  Ken actually looked fairly uncomfortable at the party, but as I said, he's shy.

I'm still on the mailing lists of both the difficult author and the author I liked, but not with the Lynch camp any more.  I had been closely in touch with his right-hand guy (I wasn't close enough to contact David directly), but he sent me a very snappish e-mail one time, and I never replied.  If it had just been a bad mood, he never made amends; I never heard from him again.

I've been thinking about setting up a little shop on Cafe Press to sell tee shirts and what-have-you with old advertising images on them, mostly, I think, beverage labels.  Like so:

Do we like these?  I also have some smashing foreign ones, and beer as well as soda.  I was playing around with some of the images this morning...they tend to get a little blurry when I enlarge them.  Maybe I need to scan some at a higher resolution -- these are actually images I downloaded, although I do own these labels and many others.

I would wear tee shirts with these images on them.  (Cafe Press, by the way, is set up so that you can sell with no set-up costs; last I checked, the seller uploads the images and chooses what kind of goods to use -- tee shirts, coffee mugs, etc.  There is a price for making each item, and the seller chooses how much over that to charge; the items are made to order.)

happy thursday

Well, I'm not so sure what's happy about it, but it's not a bad one.

I went to the farmer's market at Cadman Plaza (Brooklyn), and while it's not as big as the Union Square one, I managed to score some nice stuff: arugula, heirloom tomatoes, nectarines, kirbys, a red pepper, and some colby cheese from the Amish.  The tiny plums and the peaches were kind of hard, and we're due to get some basil from the landlord's garden.  The landlord has a little garden in the backyard, which is off-limits to the tenant, but a guy who lives downstairs is kind of in charge of distributing the overage.  We got some fresh figs today...I wait all year for them.  I can see the fig trees from our bedroom window.  What's better than fresh figs?

After the market, I took a nice stroll down Montague Street.  I mostly grew up in Brooklyn Heights, when it wasn't entirely obscenely expensive.  Most of the old-time stores are gone, of course.  But what's a drag is that when I was there a couple of years ago (serving jury duty at the court that's right behind the farmer's market), there was a wonderful used book store in what used to be Kleinman's Pharmacy (where I bought my first tampons and first make-up).  The bookstore guy and I were convinced that we knew each other, but couldn't figure out from where.  Anyway, the bookstore's gone now.  Shit.  We do have a good used bookstore on Coney Island Avenue, near Kings Highway (it's called Here's A Bookstore, which I love), but I hate to see a used bookstore go out of business.

I listened to my mp3 player the whole way there and back, and am particularly enjoying songs from the new Los Lobos album, Tin Can Trust (I downloaded it from Amazon).  Also loving this song:



I'm not sure I've heard anything else by this band, but I love love love this song.

My uncle and his wife are coming in from New Jersey (they live near Princeton) on Sunday, to try a brunch spot in preparation for a big family get together in October, for my dad's 80th birthday.  We're going to Colicchio and Sons...I'm psyched about seeing Howard and Tina, and also about eating at C&S.  I haven't eaten at any upscale restaurants since Penguin -- we occasionally went to Blue Ribbon for a birthday or an author lunch. 

And of course there was the famous private-room luncheon at Gramercy Tavern when David Lynch was in town the first time, with some Penguin sales reps and buyers from Barnes & Noble and such.  The food was amazing, and let's face it, just having lunch with Lynch was amazing.  He was easily the most fascinating of all of the authors I worked with, though not necessarily my favorite.  He was certainly one of my favorites, along with John Strausbaugh and Marc Hartzman and Martha Frankel.

My uncle is certainly one of my very favorite blood relations.  He's actually closer to my age than to my father's -- my father is 15 years older than Howard, and Howard is 13 years older than I am.  He's very intelligent and very well-read, which my father is as well, but also very generous. 

My brother is not in touch with anyone, and we're all kind of pissed and scratching our heads.  We're not even sure if he's coming to dad's 80th birthday.  I wouldn't mind so much...my brother's been more and more distant since he got married, and even more so since he moved away.  But I basically have no contact with my nephew, with whom I was hoping to have a close relationship.  They had already moved to Riverdale when he was born, which was enough of a hassle, but now they're in Providence, RI, and I've basically missed Walter's childhood.  He's eight now, and we've never been invited to visit in Rhode Island, not once.  Family can be a huge pain...sometimes a pleasure, sometimes a huge pain.  Barry's family was at least nice enough not to move away from where they all lived and grew up.  Mine all left Brooklyn or Manhattan.  (My uncle grew up in Philly and lived there for many years, until he and Tina moved to New Jersey, which is actually a good deal closer to us.)

Well, I think the brunch should be great fun, anyway.

I've changed the template for this blog, and I think it's more attractive and easier to read.  All comments welcome.

the blogs

I subscribe to about 80 blogs; I just checked the number today, out of curiosity. It's crept up quite a bit. Pretty eclectic mix, too. I confess that a good handful of them involve kittens, generally the blogs of nice people who foster litter after litter, like the Itty Bitty Kitty Committee. I also subscribe to a lot of music blogs, some personal blogs, a bunch of food and restaurant blogs, and one design blog.

I force myself to read the design blog because I am SO not-interior-design-minded and thus do not maintain an attractive interior in my home. This is something I consider a major flaw. I like to think I tend toward the aesthetic in a lot of ways -- I make jewelry, for God's sake! -- but I have no home design chops at all. This is partly because I've always lived in rented spaces which never felt permanent, and so I didn't want to put in much effort or money, and often did not have the money anyway. The apartment we're in now is way the hell too small, in case I haven't mentioned that a thousand times before, and I guess I'm not inclined to beautify it because I hate it. In fact, I heard that one of the front apartments in this building might become vacant, and I might want to make the move, even though it's no bigger, because the light is better. But what I really want is "out", not "here decorated." We've had to make some improvements to get the place a little tidier, but I don't think it will ever be sufficient or nice.

(It is I, mistress of getting sidetracked!)

Anyway, the two consistently funniest blogs I read are Regretsy and Old Jews Telling Jokes.

Regretsy basically finds weird or ugly things on Etsy, which is kind of the artsy-craftsy eBay, and makes comments about them or makes fun of them in some other way. (One of the mottos of the site is "Handmade? It looks like you made it with your feet!") I guess it particularly tickles me because I'm artsy-craftsy too, and somehow find bad or tasteless crafts really funny.

Maybe that's the same reason I like Old Jews Telling Jokes -- I'm also one of them. But it's more than that -- the site and its daily videos are beautifully designed and produced, down to the theme music (I'd like it even if it weren't produced by my old friend Henry Sapoznik), a bouncy Dave Tarras klezmer ditty. They also get a really interesting and cool assortment of people to tell the jokes, mostly retired (anything from a dentist to a former president of MGM), the occasional well-known face (the actress Suzanne Shepherd). They are all very, very funny. And even the jokes I haven't heard before are clearly classics. Also, if you like to tell jokes, you may have a favorite joke that you've told many, many times over the years. And you kind of experiment and hone it and get your timing down. That's what this site is like -- people who have made their favorite jokes perfect after telling them for 40, 50 years.

I like to tell jokes myself, and have actually retold a few that I heard on OJTJ. I always tinker with it, same as I do with recipes and jewelry instructions. But many of the ones I've been telling for a lot of years are Jewish jokes, some of which were told to me by my mother. (She could tell a mean joke, usually not dirty, but often involving cursing.) There's one I love that has slightly outdated references to Golda Meir, Abba Eban, and Moshe Dayan -- and, come to think of it, a second one that also references Moshe Dayan. Oy vey. I can only tell it to other old Jews. My favorite non-Jewish jokes tend to be animal jokes, which never age. Here's one that doesn't suffer from being read rather than heard: What do you do if an elephant has three balls on him? Walk him, and pitch to the giraffe. (This is actually both an animal joke and a baseball joke, which has to be extra points.)

Well, my entire family is/was frustrated show-biz types of various stripes. Actors, directors, book-and-lyricists, opera singer -- none of us every pursued it hard enough or if we did, never succeeded. So we tell a lot of jokes and stories.

Which reminds me -- there's a comedian named Louis C.K. whom I think is absolutely brilliant. I recently saw a stand-up show that he did a couple of years ago, and in fact watched it twice in two days. His timing, and his movements are so spot-on, so practiced and so skillful -- and yet so subtle that you feel like you're just listening to a guy talking smack. I have to say, his act is extremely vulgar (which is a plus for me, maybe not for everyone), but he is so charming that you kind of don't mind. At least I don't. He's the first stand-up I've seen in many years who's made that kind of impression on me.

OK, one more pop-culture sorta thing, though it's also a personal thing. Last week, we were watching The Cleveland Show (and just shut up if you don't think a woman over fifty should be watching cartoons, just leave me alone), and there was this character who was on for a very short time, with kind big hair, and when he spoke, I said to Barry, "That was David." He said, "What?" I said, "That was Lynchie, that was his voice." Then I forgot about it, but we just watched Sunday's episode tonight, and there he was again. I watched the credit, and sure enough, it was he. Him. I mean, how cool was that, David Lynch on The Cleveland Show? Much cooler than being on The Simpsons (which everyone's done) or even Family Guy. Go David!

I cooked dinner tonight for the first time since I hurt my foot some weeks ago. I think we were both happy to eat home-cooked food again. I made broiled wild salmon with teriyaki and ginger; sauteed zucchini, baby pattypan squash, and spinach with a lot of garlic and basil; and a mesclun salad with avocado (I've been using a Bragg's ginger salad dressing that is just fine with everything). Teriyaki salmon is always a winner around here, and even though Barry shies away from certain healthy things (whole grains, whole grain bread, broccoli and cauliflower), he likes salads, most greens, and even tofu. He eats fish that is boneless and not too fishy (salmon, sole/flounder, and red snapper filets), and also squid and shrimp. (Our local fish store is kosher, so no squid or shrimp there, but sometimes one of us goes down to a Chinese supermarket that has great fish and grabs some shrimp there).

It's just been nice getting the kitchen up and running again. I cooked myself breakfast this morning (Barry went out early to his job-counseling place), and enjoyed that a lot. Going through a few weeks of take-out was of course expensive, and sometimes healthier than others. We ordered quite a few times from a very nice Kosher/vegetarian place nearby. They serve fish, but the emphasis is on vegetable dishes. They do a killer Southeast Asian Stir Fry with brown rice, that kind of thing. And a great grilled tuna wrap. (I've heard that certain kinds of tuna are not sustainable, but I'm not really up on the should- and shouldn't-eat fish, for which I feel guilty. I don't eat that much fish, but that's not a good excuse.)