trying...

I'm working on getting in the habit of writing more, with the goal of writing here every day, which is Step One. I've more or less decided that the only thing I want to do for a living is write, which involves a lot of kinds of work. As far as fiction or memoir, this is Step One.

I also need to take some action about freelance work, starting with re-contacting the editor of Blues Music Magazine; I recently did a review for them.

I don't want to work in an office again. One of the advantages of my last job was that I wasn't sitting all day. (I can still work there part-time if I want, to bring in a few bucks.)

politics and the test

If you've read a selection of my posts, you probably know that I'm not a very political person. I always vote, but to be honest, I don't do much research about the local candidates. I do browse their newsletters when they come in, read the campaign material, but I tend to make decisions on whether they're doing things I like. (When I say "local candidates," I don't include the mayor. Mayor of New York City is a very important office to anyone who lives here.)

But the presidential election this year really has me very interested and attentive. We have one candidate who is really liberal and awesome and amazing, and one who is a wealthy, lying racist using deplorable tactics against his opponents. (I'm kind of sorry that Ben Carson is out of it, because he was entertainingly crazy.)

I'm a liberal and a Democrat, and most of the people I know and like, and the ones I'm related to, are one or both. It's what I'm used to; I don't think twice about commenting on some idiotic thing Donald Trump said.

But...it turns out that I work with some really conservative people! Just about 3/4 or them are orthodox Jews of varying stripe, and for some reason, those folks are kind of right-wingy. I'm told that most orthodox Jews are, but I really don't know why. (I learned that this is also true of many hispanic people - when my Dominican then-boyfriend told me he was...a Republican!)

Don't get me wrong - I adore almost all of the co-workers. And the few I don't adore, I still admire for doing this work. As one of my best friends there said to me the other day, "This is not a workplace - this is a family." This might be the best group I've ever worked with.

But man...early in the Trump campaign, one of the guys said to me casually, "I think Trump has some really interesting ideas." I shuddered. I mean, I knew what a piece of shit Trump was before he was running for president, and pretty much everything he had to say, from the beginning of the campaign was pretty dreadful, and got worse.

For a while, I kept my mouth shut at work. It's really natural for me to comment on some piece of news about the candidates, but "Did you hear that horrible thing about Trump not wanting to let any Muslims into the country!" would probably be met with looks reading "...and your point is?"

But we also have a WhatsApp discussion group, and a couple of people posted "funny" political jokes with themes like "we shouldn't pay for lazy people on welfare," anti-Obama stuff, like that. The first one that was posted, I did hold my tongue and simply suggested, a few days later, that we keep politics out of the group.

That worked for a while, until the same person posted a joke - I couldn't remember it well enough so I looked up the post, and here it is: "Breaking News: The Muslim Brotherhood has officially warned the United States that if the United States continues meddling in Syria, Egypt, Libya, Iran and Afghanistan, they intended to cut off America's supply of 7-11 and Motel 6 managers. If this action does not yield sufficient results, cab drivers will be next, followed by Dell, AT&T, and AOL customer service reps. Finally, if all else fails, they have threatened not to send us any more presidents. It's gonna get ugly, folks."

This is a huge steaming pile of prejudice and idiocy. It's kind of all the ugly right-wing nonsense all put together. (Well, except for the Gun Lobby.)

This post got some nods of agreement. Then I posted (this is not verbatim), "I think the people who are thinking about are Indians and Pakistanis, not Arabs. Most Pakistanis are Muslims, but most Indians are Hindu."

Then someone asked me, "But don't you think it's a big problem to get those people coming over here?"

I said, "That's what they said about the Jews." He actually apologized to me. And I said, "It kind of upsets me to see this kind of sentiment in a group called 'Where We Help Everyone.'"

So everyone kind of shut about it since. I think they don't want to offend the "house liberal" just as much as I don't want to offend the conservatives. I'm not even sure how many are seriously conservative - but yesterday, senior counselor had a pile of magazines he'd brought from home, and said, "This one's for Jennifer!" It was Rolling Stone with a picture of Bernie Sanders on the cover. I've never told anyone there that I support Sanders, but I guess they figured it out. (And I actually found it kind of funny, when he gave me the magazine. It wasn't disparaging at all.)


I got drug tested today. We heard a few weeks ago that there was going to be a round of random drug tests, and that someone in the organization had tested positive and was immediately fired.

Of course, Little Miss Liberal does not approve of drug testing at all, nor does her spouse, Mister Liberal. But I kept my mouth shut. I let the young-hippie-guy step up to the area coordinator and ask a few hostile questions and say, "I'm not changing my lifestyle for...this! And what if someone is taking something that's prescribed by a doctor?" This guy is pretty bold because he's mid-twenties and not looking to make a career of this at all. It wouldn't break his heart to get fired. But I need my job, and have made a point of being able to submit a clean test. When I first heard about it, I mentioned it to a few other people I felt might find it useful to know. Drug testing is a huge denial of civil liberties, and embraces that hypocritical line between alcohol and non-alcohol mood-changing drugs (the latter generally known as "drugs").

So I took care of business and anticipate no  problem. But it's also true that when I was looking for work, I consciously avoided the kinds of large companies that would test. I would never consider working for a bank or for a big finance form of any sort, for other reasons; but the stand against testing also blocked me from things like entertainment networks and hospitals and a host of other places where it's not OK to smoke some pot on your own time, but is OK to get as drunk as you want when you're not at work.

The laws concerning marijuana are inching along toward a more liberal consideration, but it's kind of haphazard and fuzzy; things like it being legal to sell medical marijuana but not to grow it for legal sale, and suchlike. Marijuana laws right now are where they should have been 20 years ago. The Nixon administration commissioned a study on marijuana, and when the findings that it was not in any way harmful were presented to President Nixon, he glanced at it and threw it in the trash. (You could look it up. I'm getting kind of hungry.)

Go, Bernie!

P.S. One of my co-workers said to me today, "You used to be a writer, right?" That "used to" should not be correct and I am taking measures.

now we're talking tablet

After consulting with Tamsir, Cnet, Ebay, and a cheap-computer site called cowboom.com, I've decided that if I'm going to buy a new device, it should probably be a tablet. I was really sold on the Nexus 7, but too many consumers said that the screen break very easily. So I decided that a used Galaxy Tab was the way to go, 7", 8.9", 10.1", 8 or 16 gig storage - whatever was affordable. Cowboom had a lot of decent used goods but most were without chargers or manuals, though they did have cheap warranties. Ebay's prices were a little steep compared to Cowboom. And then I walked into an electronics store near my office, where they have the Galaxy Tab 7, 8 GB, refurb, for $175 - complete with all accessories, 90 day store warranty, and one-year manufacturer's warranty. It's also the kind of place where I can probably walk in with $150 cash and make a deal. So all I'd need to do is buy a case.

For Valentine's Day, Barry is going to give me some money toward the purchase, so I will have a decent chunk of money left over from the $200 I allocated, even after buying a case. I believe I will buy myself a bottle of cologne, and some other girl things like new eyeshadow primer and re-up on the Phillip Thomas Roth face bar I love so much.

Hey, stupid spammers! Blogger is BLOCKING YOU - your comments are not being posted to this blog. So why don't you leave me the hell alone?

Oh...and I wrote four pages of my book tonight. When I complained to my analyst about not being able to focus my creative energy, and mentioned that I'd always wanted to write a book, she said, "Why don't you go ahead and do it?" After some more thinking aloud, I decided on a memoir. After thinking about it for a week, I decided to go with little segments on particular topics, more or less chronological. Three sections into it, about an hour's work, it wasn't really painful and I think I'll go back to it.

I used to meet with my favorite writing teacher, the late Bill Decker, and tell him all kinds of story ideas. He'd say, "Write it. It doesn't exist until you write it, and you can't make it any better until you do."

too much to do, not nearly enough time

My crafts fair success, plus the fact that a first-rate photographer has offered to photograph my work, means I'm going to open an Etsy store. I was going to set up my own website, but started poking around online to find out about web hosting and web hosting software, and felt like I was drowning. Etsy is much easier, to start. Eventually, I want to sell OAK (one of a kind) items at Etsy, and have a website with my basic designs which people can custom-order in different stones and lengths.

But I have to make quite a bit of new jewelry, since I sold a lot of my best pieces at the crafts fair and after. Also have to make holiday gifts for Judy and Lucie.

Also - someone planted the idea of reselling beads in my head. My idea here is to do it on Ebay, to specialize in fancy cuts and hard-to-find stones. I've been checking Indian bead websites, and there's some pretty eye-popping stuff that can be broken down into smaller lots and sold at a profit. I think I'll start my selling some of my own overstock - I have a bunch of big rhodochrosite tabs and have never figured out what to do with them. And since I got a very generous bonus from work, I have some seed money for starting to buy from overseas.

And I'm also getting closer to knuckling down and writing the novel that's been floating in my head for a few years. My problem with writing a novel is to come up with a plot which is not too embarassingly close to my own life. I've been floating an idea with a couple of characters based on people I've known (and one kind of like me), but a plot very dissimilar to my actual connections with those people I've known.

One of the people I plan to borrow from is W., and I don't think I've ever discussed him here, and that will take another chunk of time, when I get around to it.

I'm madly excited about getting service on my new phone on Saturday, I've already started to enter some contacts. I'm just happy every time I turn it on, and look forward to being a textin' fool, getting a cool ringtone, taking pictures, and so on. (I'm going to try to do the bead photography on my own.)

I recently read an amazing book, Swimming Home by Deborah Levy, and recommend it wholeheartedly. I wish I still had that Amazon widget or could figure out how to get it back. I'm definitely confused with all aspects of "monetizing" my blog, although I guess I do have some ads on here. I doubt I've made a dime, but that's not what I'm here for.

the insomniac ramble

It's almost one-thirty am. I went to bed at midnight. Cannot sleep. I had a lot of trouble with insomnia and sleep disturbances right after I got sober (nearly 26 years ago), but I've basically had it licked via (safe) prescribed meds. One of them, an antidepressant with the side effect of sleepiness, is the one that permits me to stay asleep through the night once I've fallen asleep. That's the lifesaver. If my mind is so busy that I will have trouble falling asleep, I add a (safe) prescribed anti-anxiety med. Nothing worked tonight,and I am following one of the anti-insomnia rules of getting out of bed.

I did have a busy mind, but the med did not put a dent in it. I sort of mentally narrate to myself some events of my life that I feel the need to revisit. I'm not sure if these narrations are writing (though some of the topics will subsequently turn up in this blog or something else I write) or imaginary therapy sessions (would that I could go more than once a week!).

Oh, hello, some of my newer friends...did I mention that I'm in therapy and suffer from depression and occasional anxiety? I wonder if the boom in treating mood disorders in the US isn't somehow related to the increasing complexity of life here. It's kind of what it's like when I spend a weekend in Pennsylvania and then come back to New York - it's a lot of effort to live here, pretty hard work. You always have that near-unconscious routine of noting suspicious or oddly acting people, handling cash discreetly when you're in public, and so on. It eats up quite a lot of energy, negotiating a crowded sidewalk. It's actually pretty calm where I live, but when I get off that train and them am launched into Penn Station (which is built under Madison Square Garden making things even more hectic), then a block of midtown street, then the subway. And a lot of people outside NYC have cars and their own houses, which also brings oodles of stress and bad financial surprises.

Our parents kick us out of the nest as soon as possible, so we don't have the support of mother, siblings, grandmothers on a daily basis. I admire the way Indian families live. (The Chinese also keep the generations close.) My remaining parents (father and stepmother) are very remote, not welcoming and generous. My mother was the exact opposite, but she died when I was 22; and my stepfather had no intention of complying with her wishes, so there was no more emotional support, no "home" to go back to, and not even the security of a few extra dollars.

My father has been so adverse to spending an extra dime on my brother and me that he actually makes excuses when he and my stepmother do things like go to Bermuda for a week. I guess the idea is that if we know he has enough money for a vacation, HE SHOULD GIVE US SOME. So he'll say things like, "You know, we booked this three months ago and got a very good deal, and we haven't gotten away in a year, and some friends of ours are going to be there..." C'mon, just say "We're going on vacation." I promise not to ask you to buy me something or take me along.

Actually, I did sort of do it recently. They were going on a Caribbean cruise, and I asked them if they could pick me up some larimar stud earrings set in silver, if they were not insanely expensive. Larimar, which is a little whiter than turquoise and has chatoyance (cat's-eye quality), is only found in the Dominican Republic, and is hard to find and pricey over here. I really did stress that the cost might be too high and they should only get something very reasonable. (I was thinking about something dead simple, like studs in a 3 or 4mm round cab, or similarly small in an oval, in a plain silver bezel, period.) What they came back with were BIG heart-shaped studs, really substantial pieces of larimar, and a story. They found the earrings in the very last store on the very last island on the very last day; they had a hard time finding any anywhere. But this store didn't take credit, so they had to scrape every last cent out of their pockets to buy them. This was a rare act of real generosity, and I think Mary really drove it.

My relationship with Mary has improved immeasurably, believe it or not, because of the internet. She speaks in a kind of acerbic, non-warm ways; so when she makes a joke about something I've mentioned, it always seems as if she's making fun of me in a mean way. She just has that affect. But when she and I started emailing, she was extremely nice, and I started to see her as truly affectionate and sweet. I think I finally became 100 percent sure that she didn't dislike or resent me in some way, after 30-plus years.

And back to jewelry...I have two other pieces of larimar. One is a big old pendant, roughly pear-shaped, that was given to me by an old boyfriend who had family in the DR. The second is a silver wire bracelet with a small oval cab near the clasp (it's a design called the "Cruixian Hook," with a hook clasp worn on top). I bought that in St. Croix in 1995. I also have about 40 larimar beads (faceted rondells, 4mm I think), which I've been hoarding for years. (There are some beads I sit on for years, waiting until I think of a design that does them justice. Some beads just demand it.)

I actually started working on a pretty elaborate pair of earrings today, the first piece for the crafts fair in November, but I ran out of thin enough headpins. I had more headpins, but they were a thicker gauge and wouldn't go through the stones I was using. I almost never let this happen, and it's really frustrating.I'm going to have to go back to them and get myself to that same level of concentration and careful work. I'm capable of working fast, but these pieces will have pretty healthy price tags, and they've got to be just right and not sloppy in any way. The price of silver has become murderous, so I always dread running out of headpins, wire, clasps, earring hooks, and so on. (I've actually broken up some old pieces to reuse the clasp.)

One of these days, I will come up with some way to photograph my jewelry properly. Or have someone else do it.

I think I'm gonna try bed again. Good night, and thanks for keeping me company.

reading and writing and publishing and publicity

Roger Ebert tweeted today with a link to a little piece on Ray Bradbury by Junot Diaz. It is well-known that I'm crazy about movies and music, but I think writers are my real rock stars. (And let's remember that my all time favorite rock musician, Elvis Costello, writes some of the finest lyrics on the planet.)

I come from a family of bookworms. My dad was a journalism major and aspired to be an old-school Broadway lyricist. My uncle Howard is easily the most serious bookworm among us. From when he was in college, he only ever worked in bookstores and libraries, and his last two jobs before he retired was as head librarian in a couple of nice, small New Jersey communities. When it became clear that I was also a mad reader and reading way above my grade level, Howard fed me books, even though he lived in Philadelphia. I would say that I was reading what is now called "young adult" books when I was six or seven (they were a little cleaner back then), and started reading adult books at eight or nine.

So get this: I'm around nine, in the school library, reading Black Boy by Richard Wright, which was a gift from Howard. I pretty much understood it, but there was a word I didn't know and could figure out. The drill was to ask the school librarian, who flatly refused to tell me what "whore" meant. (I pronounced the "w.")

Howard probably gave me my first Ray Bradbury book around that time. I adored him, and read his books over and over. I wasn't and didn't become a huge sci-fi fan; I had about half a dozen authors I liked and read extensively. I never read sci-fi outside that group until I was past 40; I had a very close friend (broke with her some years back) who was a publisher of sci-fi and (shudder!) fantasy.

I loathe fantasy; it's one of the genres I truly hate. Any book or movie, once there's magic or a wizard or an elf or any of that shit, that's it for me. I am proud to say that I saw "Lord of the Rings" in a theater and fell asleep.

However, after getting by for a few years with never reading any of my friend's books, she pressed me very gently. I had to. And the first thing she recommended very highly was a fantasy series of five thick books (I just checked two of them on Amazon: one was 600+ pages and the other was 900+). They were not too wizardy and awful, and the guy writes well, but after a while, it was more of a task than a pleasure. I read all five, and a few of her other authors who were more sci-fi.

So what I mostly loved about Bradbury was the way he wrote. I haven't reread him in many years, but I remember the feeling of welcome about his writing, a warmth and simplicity and clarity.

The other sci-fi-writers I enjoyed: Robert Silverberg, Robert Shockley, Arthur C. Clarke, Larry Niven & Dave Pournell. Robert Heinlein.

And: when I was, I believe, in middle school, in 1971...and I don't tell this to a lot of people...I attended the first-ever Star Trek convention. I was devoted to the original series, and I went with a bunch of my friends. Back then, kiddies, it was a huge big deal to watch the uncut episodes on a big screen with no commercials, since mostly what we had all seen were the edited reruns on WPIX. But the really big deal was that I met Himself, Isaac Asimov, and he signed my copy of I, Robot. (No, I no longer have it, another fucking heartbreaking loss of a material possession.) He made all of the girls give him a kiss on the cheek before he would sign a book. I took a photo of him. (I may still have one of my Star Trek Con pictures, but the Asimov pictures are also no longer with me.)

When I worked at Penguin, it was very exciting to me to meet or even see some very famous and wonderful authors, and I acquired quite a few signed books and personally signed books. (Some I still have, some not.) I'm not much of one for autographs - Barry likes them much more than I do - but I love a signed book.)

I'm the same way about mysteries as I am about sci-fi: I'm not wild about the genre, but I have certain authors I like. I swallowed by timidity and barged in on the late, great Robert D. Parker, who was sitting in a conference room signing stock, turned into (as V. used to put it) a gushing fangirl, and asked him to sign a book to me. It was kind of uncool to bug another imprint's authors (he wrote for Putnam), although sometimes an imprint will set up an in-house signing. But I simply could not miss the chance to shake hands with Robert Parker. Putnam had a lot of those bestselling authors like Tom Clancy and John Sandford and Sue Grafton.

Other mystery writers I like: George S. Chesbro, Lawrence Block (he was very big with the AA set), Jonathan and Faye Kellerman, and a few others I'm not remembering. Elmore Leonard. Do not like British mysteries at all.

Other authors from whom I had personally signed books at Penguin: Paul Rusesbagina  (the "Hotel Rwanda" guy), Kim Edwards (The Memory Keeper's Daughter). I spotted a few celebrity authors when I worked there and said hi: Lorraine Bracco (Doctor Bronx herself!), Ellen Burstyn, Morgan Spurlock, the Rev. T.D. Jakes.

And a couple of authors I represented; I've probably mentioned David Lynch a million times already, but there was also Daniel Pinchbeck, who wrote 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl. This was really the first big 2012 book (non-fiction), and my first-ever author. (My boss actually passed him onto me when I was still a temp, although I was in the process of trying to get hired full-time for the job.) I have to say that Daniel's two biggest publicity hits were his own doing: The Colbert Report and Rolling Stone, but I knew exactly who and where his audience was, toured him the right cities, and the book did amazingly, unexpectedly well in the mind-body-spirit category (The Genre Formerly Known As New Age). It made the very bottom of the New York Times' extended bestseller list one week. (The extended portion, which I think is positions 20-35, is not published and your are not permitted to call the book "a New York Times bestseller. But still.) It charted in San Francisco and Portland and Seattle.

It made my imprint, Tarcher, very happy to have hired me. I was brought on by the wonderful editor and publicist and writer Ken Siman. Ken taught me and trusted me. I was the most junior of three publicists, and of course least likely to get the most important authors; but when I heard we were doing a book by David Lynch (I will stop dropping that name some day), I ran into his office and said "ooh, ooh ooh!" and he gave me the book. Ken figured out very early on that when I got excited about a book, I got right into the zone.

When he left and his successor came on, she didn't like me one bit, and kept all of the good-looking books for herself. Once I had one that was small but I was very excited about, and she horned in, put herself on the team with me, and flat-out wrecked it. She was the anti-Ken. At the time she started, the Lynch book was about to come out in paperback, and if a publicist had the hardcover, they had the paperback, period. It simply killed her that I had the Lynch book, especially since it was about TM (transcendental meditation), and she grew up TM in a TM family in Fairfield, Iowa, which is TM Central, where the TM university was. The best part was when she came with me to the first NYC Lynch event, and David came right over to me and kissed me on the mouth. (This was nothing flirty or improper; we had just had a really nice working relationship on the book.) I believe that this was when she knew that I absolutely could not be taken off the paperback, and probably nothing she could do to improve the publicity campaign.

Of course, David generated his own publicity, layering project over project. During the book publicity, he was also promoting the David Lynch Foundation (funding TM training for at-risk kids), his own brand of coffee, and his movie Inland Empire. David got publicity just for being David Lynch. All I really had to do was to point the book at the right audience.


If you twisted my arm for my all-time favorite fiction author, I would have to go with John Irving, with Marge Piercy close behind. Favorite non-fiction is probably the classic essays of E.B. White. When I studied writing in the early 80s, my favorite professor, Bill Decker, taught me how to write more simply and clearly by pointing me to White.


I'm a washout as a fiction writer; I am no damned good at writing outside my own experience. I wrote one good short story and a handful of shitty ones, a few of which were published in what they used to call "little-literary" magazines, which generally pay in copies. I had more success in similar publications with my poetry, but I don't think I've written one in 20 years now. (And I no longer have a copy of any sort of the best one I ever wrote, which was published in a little-literary, called palm sunday, coney island, which I wrote on the subway.) I've never written a theater or film script. But I can write.

I learned to write by keeping a journal (and later, of course, blogs) since I was eight, and reading voraciously for my entire life. Being self-taught, I took my first writing class when I was about 25 because I had absolutely no idea if I wrote well or not. I had zero training in the rules of grammar, punctuation and the like; I pretty much had it all right, but never knew the names for any of it. (This is what happens when you go to a progressive, avant-garde, experimental school for gifted children: you read Moliere in French at 12, BUT YOU NEVER LEARN THE RULES OF ENGLISH GRAMMAR.) Bill shaped and directed me a bit (one course in writing, one in editing, and an independent study), and this is where I ended up. I'm very, very happy with my level of writing and editing skills, and they help me immensely every day of my life.


OK, after the long way around, we're coming home.

My cubicle at Tarcher was right in front of Ken's office, which was right next to the office of a publicist for the literary imprint Riverhead. A bookcase of our books was right next to the Riverhead publicist's office. One day, a damned good-looking young dude was waiting to see the Riverhead publicist, looking at our books, a grinning. I said, "Are you laughing at our mind-body-spirit books?" And he said, "No, I just had no idea there were books about some of this stuff."

The next time I saw the handsome guy, I kow-towed, because I had read his book, The Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, and the handsome guy was Junot Diaz.

That's Junot bein' handsome. Not shown: that he is one of the finest, most amazing authors of our time, genius. And he loved Ray Bradbury too.

see comment #9

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/11/times-readers-recommend-their-favorite-baseball-books/

I've published quite a few magazine articles in my day, even contributed articles to two books, got an honorable mention in a New York Magazine competition, had a letter to the editor printed in Esquire...but I do believe this is the first time I've been in the New York Times. Pretty big deal in my world.

Also, I finished watching Mazdoor, and thought it was quite wonderful. Dilip Kumar was great, as was Raj Babbar. And I liked the labor-vs-owner theme - but like most Indian films, they heap on extra plots, so there was a whole love-triangle thing that was kind of stale. But it was a well-acted, earnest film. As a former union member, I wholeheartedly approve.

And...new Ram Gopal Varma/Amitabh Bachchan movie, Department, opening next month. can't hardly wait!

books, movies, tee shirts...and movies again

First off, I'm sorry about that shitty review of My Week With Marilyn. I don't mean that I trashed the movie, but the writing isn't very good. Sometimes I get self-conscious about people reading what I write, and end up writing something with a pretentious tone and pretentious language. My favorite writing professor said not to use a two dollar word when a fifty-cent one will do. Then he told us to read a lot of E.B. White.

It's daylight savings time, it's warm and sunny, and i think winter pretty much passed us by this year. Boo global warming, yay mild winters.

So I was strolling around at lunch hour today (rather than running out and grabbing some hot soup to take back to my desk), and walked into Forbidden Planet, at Broadway and 13th Street. Forbidden Planet is basically a big comic book store, aimed at serious collector-types with some loot in their pockets. I read a lot of DC Superman comics as a kid, "underground" comics as a teen, and a handful of indies about ten years ago ("Action Girl" was a particular favorite), but I guess I was never a big fan of comics in an ongoing way. Even if I loved the art, it was never enough reading bang for my buck.

But I strolled into Forbidden Planet anyway. And as I was browsing the indie comics, I heard two guys in the next aisle - one said, "...did you watch it yet?" and the other said, "No, I was watching The Dark Backward last night." So I went into the other aisle, and one of the clerks there said, "Can I help you?" I said, "No, I just wanted to see who was watching The Dark Backward." It was yet another clerk, talking to a third. Then a fourth clerk said to me, "Have you seen our Basket Case tee shirt yet? It's a limited edition design." I feigned interest in the shirt, wondering exactly how he got there from The Dark Backward. But never mind.

The Dark Backward is very obscure and very bizarre, and I'm actually not sure I'd ever met anyone else who's seen it. I made Barry watch it once but it was too disgusting for him. It's not disgusting in a blood-and-guts way, but simply by virtue of being set in a bizarre fictional town where everything is filthy, rotted, slimy, and ugly. And then someone grows a third arm out of his back. The three-armed accordionist (played by Judd Nelson) is pitiable, and everyone else is greedy and nasty. And then the show-biz types arrive. It's ickily wonderful. If you look closely, there are signs and posters within the movie for all kinds of dreadful-looking products (mostly involving pork or pig) from a fictitious company called Blump's; I believe that one was pourable bacon, one was Pig Newtons, etc. When I lived in Manhattan, the film was released, and my neighborhood was covered in fake Blump's posters as advertising for the movie. I so wish I had one.

After Forbidden Planet, I walked down to The Strand at 12th Street, a shrine to the printed word. It's easily the best used-book store anywhere, and so was very important to me at one time. Enormous, stuffed with overstocks and out-of-prints and rare books, as well as half-price reviewers' copies of new hardcovers (the latter used to be a great attraction). I looked at some of the sale racks outside the store - one, two, three-dollar books. And I thought, What on earth would I do with that huge thing? I suppose I've become a die-hard eBooker. I'm keeping some books that are out-of-print and not likely to be eBooks any time soon, books that are personally inscribed to me by the authors, picture books, and cookbooks. Other than that, it's on my Kindle. Or if it's new and too costly as an eBook, I take one out from the library. I just don't need to own those big dusty decaying bricks any more...and I used to have so, so many, and held onto them like they were gold. Things change.

Sometime this week, I'll head over to The Village Scandal, and get the verdict on my jewelry: sold or not. I have two new necklaces ready if she wants more - and if not, I'm keeping the earthtone one (mostly mookite jasper, tan and burgundy).

I'm finally putting my lack of money where my mouth is, and have volunteered to work at the Mermaid Parade this year. The $35 to join Coney Island USA is a mite steep for me, and the gala fundraiser at Webster Hall this month is way too steep. so I'll take a sunburn for the team, if they'll have me. It's going to be summer before you know it.

a couple of American films

I guess movie criticism has become a big part of this blog.  Some years ago, I had a lot of back trouble and had to spend a lot of time in bed on my back, which was when I bought my first VCR.  I watched so many movies that I felt I had to justify all of that time spent, and starting writing reviews for the NYU Law newspaper (I was working there at time, not studying).

I'm not sure why I felt guilty about spending so much time watching movies, but I suspect it was AA.  I'd been sober for about six months before I hurt my back, and the way I spent my time had become very careful and deliberate.  Taking life as it came had caused me to be drunk and high, as I understood it, and I had to relearn what to do with myself.  I walked on eggshells for those first few years sober, and I guess it was a good way to get into better habits.  Make no mistake -- AA was the best and the only thing I could do back then.  Later on, I found it stifling and way too closed.  (This is a little on my mind since an old sponsor just got back in touch.)

Yesterday's films were The Ides of March and Moneyball.  The former was directed by George Clooney, starring Clooney but mostly a showcase for Ryan Gosling, who has grown into a marvelous actor.  A lot of good character actors in it, too:  Paul Giamatti, Phillip Seymour Hoffman.  It involved secret dealings within a Presidential primary. Well done and interesting for American viewers, probably a little difficult for others.

Same with Moneyball.  Mr. Bachchan tweeted yesterday, "Life is too short to explain cricket to Americans."  Explaining baseball to Indians is probably just as tough.  (And no one, as yet, has been able to explain football to me.)  Moneyball is a true story about the general manager of the Oakland A's in 2004, who adopted the mathematical statistical analysis of Bill James to rebuild a team which was staggering from the loss of three key players.  He didn't win the playoffs, but did break an MLB record when the team won 20 consecutive games.  It was a really nice performance by Brad Pitt, who's starting to remind me a bit of Robert Redford.  Also nice work by Jonah Hill.  And what do you know -- Phillip Seymour Hoffman again. 

Hoffman and John C. Reilly are two actors I can watch in almost anything, and I tend to think of them together because I saw both for the first time in Boogie Nights.  (Which was one of my favorite movies, and I recommend it wholesale if you can handle even more sex than in the usual American movies.)

As much as it's not a good thing when we have computer trouble at work, it does mean I'll get a visit from Tamsir, who is one of the nicest, coolest, and most interesting people I've met in a long time.  He actually showed up with flowers for me yesterday, since we hadn't seen each other since before the holidays; totally unexpected, and it made a big impression on me.  I know he does read this blog occasionally, so if you're reading this -- thanks again.  I'm so glad to know you.

I take it back/how did you all get here?

That woman who was driving me crazy?  I'm just going to let it be.  Sometimes I'm a little oversensitive and see a slight or attack when none is intended.

I love to read the "stats" on this blog, although I'm not really clear on what they all mean or indicate, especially the part about "referring sites" and "referring URLs" and "traffic sources."  It's frustrating, because the part I can't quite get is how people are getting here.  They don't seem to keep stats for my keywords.  But I can say this:  I seem to be getting read more.  Double-digit daily pageviews (say that ten times fast) are new.  I absolutely don't get how or why I'm getting readers in Russia -- but hello, people in Russia!  And especially hello, people in India!  Considering that I've had a passion for Bollywood for all of two months, I think it's way cool that I'm attracting even a teeny-tiny bit of attention in India.

I can't figure out how to get people to this blog, although I've done better with this than getting people to follow me on Twitter.  I used to send my email with a signature file that had the web address of this blog, but I realized that I email quite a few people whom I don't really want here (e.g., my dad and stepmother).  It's listed on Facebook and Twitter (although the Twitter link led to the disastrous recent event of my oversharing being read by exactly the wrong person).  I know that a few of my personal friends do come here (hello, personal friends!); and then there was the friend I met through this blog who turned out to be my wife-in-law!  (Hello, Harriet!)  Anyway, you are all very welcome here, and I appreciate your taking the time to visit and read...since I'm kind of over-thinky and neurotic and obsessive.  But hey, we all have our shit.

why difficult online people? maybe try art

I wrote about this privately tonight; in fact, I wrote in great detail for my anonymous blog, but still felt shy about publishing it, so I kept it private.  I recently joined an online community where I am feeling ill at ease, mostly due to a snub by one person, and some posts by her that I felt were directed to me in a hostile way.  But I think she probably makes everyone uncomfortable, not just me.  Still, it's all making me a little queasy.  Bad drama, and with someone who does not have to be a player in my life.  I'm trying to hang in; I'd like to stay.  (I had an overt conflict with some very mean people in an online community some years back, and it was a very unhappy time.)

And something good:  I've been making jewelry again.  I do wish I knew how to photograph jewelry well enough to post pictures.  I have a digital camera that I think is as hopeless as my ability to do digital photography.  I've never taken a good photo of any of my work.

But I started again recently, mostly because I wanted to give some holiday gifts.  And although I have a great deal of perfectly lovely jewelry already made, I sometimes feel like I'm cheating if I don't make something specifically for a certain person.  As if a piece of handcrafted silver and gemstone jewelry, made by me, isn't a good enough gift on its own.  Geez.

Yeah, so I was thinking about making something like eight new pieces of jewelry, which was so not going to happen.  I ended up making only three new pieces and only gave away one of those.  Everyone else got perfectly lovely jewelry that I'd already made.

Part of it was that I was beginning to make a new style of earring, which means that the pieces I was making would be slow, and would evolve and improve.  Which is what happened and is still happening.  I made the fourth one today, the first pair that I felt was harmonious with my style.

The idea I had was this:  a wire piece like an inverted V, only with a loop at the peak to attach to an earring hook.  At the bottom of each stem of the V would also be a loop, with a short length of chain attached in-between, like a bridge.  Then beads attached to the chain.  It's a pretty labor-intensive style; plus I was doing it the hard way until I made the piece today.  I was beading the chain after it was hooked in to the wire, instead of beading it and then attaching it.  Trust me, it made a difference.

So I had to fabricate the piece with wire, which takes a lot of patience and a little more precision than I usually need.  I measured and cut the wire, then coiled it on something called a jig, a little pegboard.  The pegs are the guides around which you bend the wire, to get a uniform shape.  It's still tricky to get it right.  I had to use the softest silver wire, called "dead soft," and then hammer the shape to harden it.

Then I had to decide on the type of chain and number of links.  And then the color and shape of beads to use.

First pair: eight links of chain, one round 4mm light amethyst on each link.  This was most like the one I'd seen which had inspired me.  (My wire skills are so far behind the piece I saw that it would be a joke to call mine a "copy.")  The next one had a bigger link of chain, and four purple rice pearls; that pair I gave away.  The third had soft garnet nuggets, maybe around 4 or 5mm, also eight links, one bead to each link.  I wanted to give those to a blonde woman from work, but she had said she had trouble with heavier earrings, so I ended up giving her a different pair with garnets.  (She's an absolutely delightful student who brings me coffee and always stops to chat.)

Today, I went for eight links, with a 4mm carnelian cube on each link, then added a bright-orange rice pearl to each of the six inner links.  I like working with those colors a lot, the translucent carnelian worked perfectly, and the double-beaded links have some of that cluttered look characteristic of a lot of my pieces.  I've made a lot of bracelets and some necklaces that were lengths of chain piled up with beads, often many varied sizes and colors.  I also do a lot of necklaces on wire links where I add beads to the connections.  It's a lot easier when you're not making two pieces that have to match, plus everything is much smaller with the earrings.  I usually bead chain with beads averaging 8mm.

This is probably a foreign tongue even to other jewelers.  I actually did make a little drawing a tried to scan it so I could upload it here, but either my scanner or my scanning software seems to have conked out.

But the point is that these two sessions of jewelry-making required a lot of time and concentration, and everything else just kind of fell away.  There isn't a lot of creative bliss in the rest of my life; I work hard and concentrate and take a lot of time when I write, but that's just about the opposite of mental peace.  Making jewelry is very centering; there's something so present about creating something for use and adornment, and so restful about trading verbal for visual.  It's good to get away from words and onto color and shape.  It's good to work with my hands.

I had fallen away from it because my workspace is small and disorderly, not very inviting, and also because I don't know how I will be able to replace any silver I consume.  Silver is much more expensive now, and I am much more broke.  I probably have enough beads to work with for years, but the silver is a problem.  Still, I can't let the future stop the present.  You can quote me on that one.

good...and bad

Well, "bad" is my ongoing concern with privacy and money.  I did decide to keep a second blog where I can rant and rave anonymously about those things that are both bothering me and attracting me too much.  And I have a second, private email address, and have been making use of "private browsing" at home, as not to leave an electronic paper trail.  Never thought I'd have to be so cautious about privacy as regards my spouse, but apparently he likes to look in on what I do and to take things the wrong way.  Really, really not good, as far as marriage goes.  I'm sure a lot of people have a lot of different points of view on this, but I think everyone needs some privacy even married couples.  For the record, I don't think I'm doing anything wrong that I require privacy, at least not at the moment.  But perhaps some thoughts and ideas should be kept private.

The money situation got a little worse because Barry fucked up on paying Verizon (which provides our phone, internet, and TV).  I let him pay the bills, which are three per month (Verizon, gas, and electric), and generally total around $300.  I knew he had not been paying Verizon in full (which I don't like -- I had been encouraging him to pay a little more than the minimum to eventually get the bill paid down to zero).  He assured me that he was paying the minimum to keep our service -- except he wasn't.  So I got home on Wednesday and the phone, internet, and TV were all turned off, and we had to cough up around $400 to get them back.  This is about the worst unexpected financial hit we've taken since I had to replace the dead computer, and it happened right at payday.  So I have to look forward to an entire month of not having enough.  Had to cancel New Year's with Jannah ($60 in train fare), any hopes of seeing a doctor ($30 co-pay), and may have to quit therapy, at least for now.  I tried to cancel dinner with Robin tonight but she said she'd pick up the tab.

The good news is this:  with all of the running around on Twitter etc, @astroshiva recommended this blog as a good source of Bollywood info, which is very flattering to me.  I consider myself a rank beginner.

So I ought to say something about the first half of Yaarana, which I watched last night.  (It's so hard to watch any more than half of a three-hour movie on a weeknight!)  I had been anxious to see this for a bit -- Netflix had it, but the subtitles were off by about three lines (that is, the title would come on three lines later than the bit it was translating), so I had to stop.  I ended up having to buy a DVD.  And it was well worth it.  For one thing, Kishore Kumar and Mohammed Rafi do the singing.  Also, I liked the themes of solid friendship and wicked family, and the fact that Amitabh plays both a country bumpkin and a talented singer.  (He really is wonderful at playing a bumpkin.  I'd like to see him do more comedy, though he has done some awfully funny TV commercials in recent years.)  I like Amjad Khan as the friend-for-life. And although I wasn't sure that the tag from my old friend, Go Meera Go, was from an actual song, it seems it is:  Sara Zamana from Yaarana.  There you go.  So now I know all four songs from the medley, and where each one comes from. Kaike Paan Banaraswala" from Don, "Pag Gungru" from Halak Namaal, "Rang Barse" from Silsilla, and "Sara Zamana" from Yaarana.  So maybe I do know a thing or two about Bollywood -- at least about Amitabh and about Hrithik Roshan's weird thumbs.

I really need a subtitled copy of Sholay.  Have not been able to find one online, and it's not a good month to buy one on eBay...which I might do anyway.

I am honestly not finding a whole lot of friendliness so far in the BW fan community, and that's a shame.  Maybe I'm still too new.  Someone reached out on Twitter to see if I was the same person from the blog, and I responded, then didn't hear from her again.  You'd think the other nice Jewish girl from Brooklyn would like to do the secret handshake, but no.  Maybe she's not so nice. Maybe she doesn't like not being the only one of her kind.  Can't say -- it's in her head, not mine. But I never do like feeling snubbed.
I think this will be a weekend to make jewelry -- not just for holiday gifts, but for some piece of mind.  I do need to be creating again.

When I start to follow, say, a certain actor, it's not just about appreciating someone his art, it's about growing my own.  It's about being inspired.  So, let's check out that inspiration this weekend, shall we?

is this working?

I find I am frustrated with this blog.  Since it is not anonymous, the amount of self-censorship I feel I need to do is enormous.  Even the story I recently told about my dad trying to shut my uncle out of the luncheon with the cousins seemed a little dicey.  There's some huge stuff going on involving my family that I can't get into at all.  Although it's extremely unlikely that my husband would ever read this blog (he doesn't really like to read, and most of his online activity involves music), I don't feel I can talk about my marriage.  Can't talk about sex.  Can't really talk much about work; I don't have anything bad to say about this job, but there are some annoying people here and there.  Can't get too specific about money.  I can only write a fraction of what I (still) have to say about V.  And on and on.

Before this, I had a blog on Xanga which was 100% anonymous -- in fact, I think it was closed except to other Xanga members -- and I was able to fly with anything that was on my mind, although I did change the names.  I had a small but devoted readership and they left a lot of comments.  But I couldn't share it with anyone who knew me.

I don't know what kind of in-between there might be.  I do subscribe to the wisdom that you shouldn't post anything that you wouldn't want even one person to read, but maybe I'm being overly careful.  I don't believe my entire name appears anywhere in here, but there's enough personal information that at least one person was able to identify me (though to be fair, she did have an inside track: she used to be married to my husband).  I don't worry that much about being read and identified by my actual family members, co-workers/bosses, or friends/ex-friends, but I am concerned that people who know them will read something and mention it.  I even had this problem to some extent with the anonymous blog, concerning V. -- many actual details about him would have made him immediately recognizable to anyone who knew him or even knew of him, and as I recall, I put him in a different line of work.

I feel less engaged with this blog, maybe because it seems somewhat superficial compared to the old one.  It seems to me that my entries are either too dull or too light.  Does anyone really want to read about my welfare benefits or my peculiar MST3K and Bollywood obsessions?  I hope the various YouTube clips are at least enjoyable.

The best solution I can think of would be a second, anonymous blog, although the idea of writing two blogs seems like a lot to take on.  I did email Xanga to retrieve my username and password, since it's been a very long time since I've been there.  I'd at least like to reread some of the old blog, and maybe start writing there again (in addition to here), or possibly start a new second blog.  I think it would make me feel a little more comfortable with keeping this one focused on entertainment and media.  Even though I realize I'm a little embarrassed to be so focused on movies and TV and music, the truth is that I'm a big consumer of those things, and I actually know a pretty fair amount about them.

birthday season

Welcome to birthday season.  There have always been a lot of people in my life with November and near-November birthdays, and of course I'm one.  Robin is one too, and so is my uncle Howard.  And my aunt Marion.  There are other people who have been in and out of my life who also have those birthdays, which is why the borders of the season are a little wavy.  There are some former boyfriends, an old girlfriend I'm not in close touch with, and, actually, V. as well.  V. was always fun to birthday shop for.  He wasn't that into birthdays but he loved presents.

But this was a big year for Barry:  he turned 60.  The big surprise that I was too paranoid to post about here was that I arranged a surprise jam session.  He plays drums, if I haven't mentioned that lately -- he was in two bands when I met him.  Now he doesn't play in a band but has started to go to a couple of blues jam sessions.  It took me about a year to go to one with him.  He was meeting a lot of people I knew from my blues days some years back, and I got to see them, and I got to meet some people he had met.  I've written about this.  I got a fifteen minute crush on a guy at one of those jams -- I'm sure I mentioned it.

Anyway -- I had an idea this summer to rent a few hours of studio space and get a bunch of his musician friends to come and then have him go there and be surprised.  I floated the idea past a couple of his friends during the summer and they loved it.  Then I had to investigate the whole business of renting a studio and what it cost and how big and what comes with the rental (amps? keyboards?).  And I touched base with more guys, and more or less decided on the date, and so on.  I realized that I would have to tell him to bring drumsticks, so it wouldn't be a surprise that he'd be playing, and he knows the block where a bunch of studios are (30th Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenue), but he wouldn't know who would be there. 

Some people couldn't make it, but he ended up with exactly enough:  Felix Cabrera (vocals and harp), Evan Wagner (bass), Chuck Hancock (tenor sax and vocals), and Arthur Neilson (guitar).  Felix is Barry's bestie; Barry used to play with Evan in a couple of Brooklyn bands; and Chuck is one of my old pals who Barry also met at the jams.  These are all people who have some other income source.  Arthur is kind of a notch up; he's the guitar player for Shemekia Copeland, who's pretty much the top female contemporary blues artist at this moment.  He's also in the house band for the Monday night jam.  I'm personally in touch with some of these people through Facebook, but Arthur isn't on and he and I have only met once.  I had to have Felix ask him for me, and was absolutely stunned that he said yes.  Barry was also somewhat stunned that Arthur came, because they don't know each other very well.  The deal with Arthur is that he's one of the nicest guys ever, and we got lucky that he wasn't gigging or on tour.  It was a very big deal.

All of these guys are first-rate, make no mistake; there are a lot of amazing musicians out there who have day jobs.  Felix is woefully underemployed.  Chuck works, and has toured internationally, but I'm not certain if he works regularly with any one band.  Evan has a day job and is still young enough to have the energy to play with a band.  (When I met Barry, he played with two bands and had a day job.)

Barry, when he played with two bands.  This was taken at one of his gigs in late 1997, very soon after we started seeing each other.  Were we not adorable?

Anyway, the surprise jam was a rousing success.  They had the studio for three hours, then Evan took Barry out for a bite to eat.

Friday night, which was Barry's actual birthday, I couldn't get off early to do anything about cooking (had to take minutes at a Board meeting until 4:00).  So we ordered in, although I did buy a dozen tiny, two-bite cupcakes from a placed called Baked by Melissa.  They were a big hit.  Saturday was the jam, and Sunday evening Elise (and her sibs Evette and Marty) took us out for dinner.  Marty's wife Laurie was also there, Evette's husband Freddie was not, niece Lindsey was nephew Ross and girlfriend Margaret were not.  The Taub/Singer/Levy clan is pretty hard to get together.  We went to a nice dairy (kosher) place (I had a salad nicoise with fresh grilled tuna, a big fave of mine).

The only thing bad all weekend was at the very end:  we came home after dinner, and most of our neighbors were in the first floor hallway.  No one had seen our front-apartment neighbor Johnny for a couple of days, and he wasn't answering his phone or door.  He had some health problems and seemed a little more wobbly of late, and as we feared it turned out he was dead in his apartment.  Johnny was kind of the mayor of our building, which is a big deal in a six-apartment building.  He helped the landlord (let Con Ed into the basement, washed the hallways, kept an eye on the trash & recycling), and all of us (took packages for people, distributed the overflow from the landlord's backyard garden).  He was just a nice, kind, sweet guy, and we were all really broken up.

I am extra broken-up that his funeral is tomorrow afternoon...the same tomorrow afternoon when my (Providence, RI-dwelling) brother and sister-in-law and nephew will be in New York and available.  I haven't seen them in two years.  We have all been too poor to travel back and forth, and my brother is pretty much not speaking to my dad, so he doesn't come for Thanksgiving...so it's been two years.  I feel terrible that I can't go to John's memorial, but anyone who knows me -- and now you all know too -- knows that I love my brother to pieces.  We have at times been almost smotheringly close.  There was a time when we both worked at NYU Law, across the street from each other, and averaged one lunch and two two-hour phonecalls a week, just crazy.  We've had friction here and there.  Part of it may be that for a really major seven-year chunk of our young lives, it was just the two of us and our mother living together, and she's gone.  He's just one click closer than anyone else I'm related to.

So, I'm stupidly excited about seeing my brother -- and this is even without taking into account my eight-year-old nephew Walter, who is kind of a junior Danny.  Very smart and very friendly and very adorable.  (Pictured: tiny baby Walter, and 2010 Walter.)  (Note my 2002 slobby dressing and grooming.  Oddly enough, I am just now wearing the exact same tee shirt.  But I'm knocking around the house, not out in public.) (This is also one of my favorite pictures of Barry.  He looks very handsome and very sweet.)

I also love my sister-in-law Jane, who is a very good mother and as smart and funny as most of our family seems to be.  Is.  Jane is also the one who was brave enough to take the last name Zogott, which made me feel a little better about kicking it to the curb two years later, when I married Barry.  There are actually only six or seven Zogotts at present in the US, all related to me; Howard's first wife, Tina, uses "Zogott-Onsted", so she's the #7.  I use it as my middle name, so people can find me who knew me as Zogott, but for all intents and purposes, I'm a Levy.

And by the way, this is my birthday weekend -- in fact, today is my birthday.  I got a lot of cards and a lot of Facebook messages and flowers and a potted orchid and a fancy lunch out and a fun dinner in.  Barry gave me a much-needed and much-wanted gift:  a new everyday watch.  The last one he gave me pretty much gave out recently, after 13 years.  That's a pretty good run for an everyday watch.  And he really nailed the style:  dial, numerals, about the size of a nickel, black leather band...and Indiglo!  I like a very simple, neutral, classic, hard-working, old-school watch, and I got me a new Timex.  (Indiglo, BTW, is when you press the stem and the face lights up with an excellent blue light.  I know other watches light up but Timex Indiglo rules it.)  I LOVE my watch. 

I do indeed have other watches.  One I would call "dressier," but it's vintage and tends to need pricey repairs once a year, so it hasn't been in rotation for a while.  The others I have are on the silly side, and some need batteries and one needs a strap.  Some of those are promotional, linked to movies, gifted to me by John Jorge when he worked at MCI/Universal.  One is Badz-Maru.  (You can Google that one yourself, if you're not a Sanrio maven.)

I've found myself a few Bollywood co-fans.  Marty Taub is one.  And also a recent Facebook friend, someone I was involved with many years ago when it was wildly age-inappropriate.  (Can't really talk about all that, but he's still very funny and a smart smart guy.)  And not only that, I have a new Facebook friend who is a Bollywood fan -- and he lives in Mumbai!  He must have seen me on an Amitabh Bachchan fan page, and sent a friend request.  So it's really my first interaction with a Bollywood film fan who not only lives in India, he lives in Mumbai, which is...well, Bollywood. 

(For those of you who don't have the Bollywood religion, the Indian film industry is centered in Mumbai, which used to be called Bombay -- which is how the Indian film industry came to be called "Bollywood."  See?)    I'm really a beginner with Indian film, very enthusiastic, but still inexperienced.  I'm somewhat limited by not knowing Hindi, along with often finding that my ill*gally d*wnloaded movies don't have subtitles.  I may actually have to break down and buy some DVDs (used on eBay). 

I did finally nail a copy of Bbhuddah...Hoga Terra Baap (I think I spelled that right) with subtitles; I believe it's Amitabh's most recent film, certainly his most recent starring role, from this past summer.  I've watched some, but I have to admit I've had trouble getting past the first big song/dance scene, which I've probably watched six times already.  It's a pisser.  Oh, wait a minute...

Not exactly up to what he did in Kabhi Alveda Naa Kehna in 2006, but the music is great and he is way cool.  Though I've noticed that in everything I've seen him in, with the exception of Kabhi Alveda Naa Kehna, he is dressed horrendously.  Be it the 70s or the 00's, he is wearing absolutely godawful crap. 

Anyway, he's the coolest, we all know that.  And his newest grandchild was born two days ago (here's another November birthday).  He has two from his not-acting not-famous daughter, but the new granddaughter is from famous-actor-son Abishek and his famous-actress-and-world-famous-beauty daughter-in-law Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, so the media there is insane over it, and this baby girl will most likely be blindingly attractive, whether or not she chooses to be an actress (it tends to be a family business over there). (You can look up pictures of them too, I've done enough tonight.)

I'm not writing as often as I should, because I don't have the time, or am not making it.  I don't have nearly enough personal time during the workweek -- or, like money, not enough so that I can be careless with it.  If I decide to spend two hours watching Bollywood videos on YouTube, that's two hours that I'm not writing.  AB blogs every day, bless his heart, and tweets as well, but I'm no good at brevity.  I need some wide-open time and space to write. 

And since I can't keep anything in order at all at this point, I did also have a birthday-eve dinner with Robin yesterday.  We ate Indian food (and -- new tradition -- Starbucks after).  She gave me three of what I like to call "hair toys":  two velvet headbands and a French hairclip.  There used to be a store in Soho that sold French goods, and over the years, she gave me four hairclips from there.  They're pretty much my favorites.  Then the store closed.  But unknown to me, she found another store in the city that carries the same make of hairclips, and so I now have five of the amazing hairclips!

Since I wore short hair for the majority of my life (see above photo), hair toys are still a pretty big deal for me.  (Please ignore the horrible scrunchy in the other above photo.)  Well, I find that in general I'm a bit of an accessory slut since I started actually dressing myself decently.  I think I somehow crossed over at some point from not wanting to be seen or noticed to wanting to be seen and noticed, connected to a whole change of  dress and hair and wearing makeup.  Not to be too jargony, I think I started to own who I am and what I look like, and I turned out to be more attractive than I thought.  Yay for me!  But I can't quite figure how or why it happened.  Life: mysterious.

I am mostly crying

Honestly, I think I'd rather be in desperate financial straits on my own.  That wasn't how I felt before this past weekend.  I thought that Barry was helping: looking for bargains, making dinner, even running to food pantries (which is how bad our situation is).  But now I have to wonder how much money he was siphoning off for things we can't afford:  cigarettes, chips, soda.  Maybe our finances aren't even that bad; maybe he's just been misspending too much money.  But it's exhausting to have to police him on top of everything else I do.  Plus, I don't really trust that he's doing that much as far as job hunting.  First and foremost, he absolutely needs to be working, whether or not I leave or kick him out.

At least on my own, I would know exactly who was handling money well or fucking it up.  I would not have to discover that someone who was allegedly helping me was actually doing harm.  I felt a lot of love in pitching in together in this very bad situation, and absolutely heartbroken that he was actually working against me.  And it's not just the cigarettes or the money or the lying:  it's also that I'm the one who would get to nurse him through emphysema or lung cancer.  It's spending money we don't have on something very harmful.  I quit a cigarette habit twice as bad as his -- I smoked twice as much -- and it's been six years.  I'm not asking for something I wouldn't and didn't do myself.

I was really, finally feeling settled into this marriage, feeling a lot of love and appreciation despite a lot of lacks and problems (like no sex for many years), but now I really want out.  I want to be responsible for myself, period.

Of course, the big problem here is that there's no way to separate.  We have one reasonably priced apartment and one job.  I'll be trying to set aside money to move, although it's really not my preference, but he has no income and can't really stay alone or move.  (I'm not close to being that mean.)  So we're stuck together for the time being, which is really awkward.  I might even consider staying together in the apartment if he gets a job, and has some of his own fucking money to waste.

Barry is in denial.  He met me at the subway yesterday, which he had been doing some in better times, and I asked, "What are you doing here?"  He said, "I came to meet you.  What's wrong?"  I said, "I'm trying to decide whether or not I can continue to live under the same roof with you."  So he turned and walked home, then got into bed.  Didn't get up to make dinner or anything else.  He takes to bed when there's something he doesn't want to deal with.

I guess there's not much else to say at this point.  I'm going to Jannah's for a weekend a week from tomorrow.  All of these discussions with St. Ann's people are depressing me dreadfully.  Some of them want to meet.  But as much as they share the problems they had at the school and their feelings of worthlessness, they're all achieving now and I'm not.  These are not friends I want.  I don't need any help feeling bad about myself.  And I really wish they would all stop asking if I still write poetry.  Considering the fact that Emmett Jarrett, the teacher who edited the literary magazine, only saw fit to publish one of my poems in all those years (and it wasn't even one I considered one of my best), I can't imagine how these people identify me as someone who wrote poetry.  Everyone wrote poetry at that school, and a lot of them still do.  It's been many years since I even tried...in the early 90s, I may have tried my hand at some song lyrics, but that went nowhere.

here's what

lipstick vogue

When the weather got warm, I started wearing fuchsia lipstick.  I bought two shades, one a little darker.  I usually wear something very subtle, a mauve or light wine or something almost natural.  But there was a time when fuchsia was very popular, maybe in the early 80s, when I wore it, and it looked good on me.  It's a lot more extreme than anything I ever wear, but it actually suits me.  Anyway, I like it.

Even though it was a four-day week, it was a bear.  There was a lot to do and to keep under control, and the days went by fast, and the stress level (that I put on myself) was kind of high.  Like I said, they appreciate and respect me a lot there, and I want to make sure I continue to deserve that.

I slept badly last night.  I woke up around 2:20 to pee, and then I couldn't get back to sleep.  I was actually thinking about the novel I'm kinda sorta writing.  It was originally around a woman and two men, one of whom had made three kids' record which she adored as a child, and the other one his peculiar brother.  She meets them and has intense but very different involvements which each in turn.  I kind of have the three personalities down, and I know that the odd brother shows up from the midwest and moves in with his brother.  The original idea was that she gets she gets involved with the kids-records guy and he dies, then she gets involved with the peculiar brother.

But last night, I came up with some details about her involvement with music, movies and books that could end up being more of the focus of the book (the one I'm not sure I'm writing), with the brothers as characters but not central.

What I've written so far, what I thought was the beginning, was a description of the brothers, then a flashback to the woman as a little girl, getting her first record player.  The kids' records are called something like "Weird Records for Weird Little Kids," "More Weird Records for Weird Little Kids," and "Strange Songs for Young'uns."  The idea was that they were kind of hip, mildly subversive albums, kind of a kid version of Tom Lehrer or Lenny Bruce, and that mostly they were given to smart, cool kids of smart parents.  One part that's been there since almost the beginning are her kid names for the three albums:  "The Red Album, The Blue Album, and the Striped-Shirt Album."  So that section would be, or would have been, her attachment to that musician as a kid, and rediscovering him (presumably now playing adult music) twenty years or so later.

It's a shame that I'm thinking about totally changing the format.  This is why I've written a lot of beginnings of novels but not too many middles or ends.  Anyway, I'd hate to throw out what I wrote, because it's pretty good, and I even have a title that I'd have to change if I took the focus off the musicians (who are actually both weird and peculiar).

Of course, another reason that I've never finished a novel is that I tend to write about writing it rather than just writing it.  But even though I've written very little so far, the idea has been rolling around in my head for a while, and keeps growing in ways that surprised me.

I recently reconnected with an old friend after about ten years; we had worked together in the 90s, when I was around my mid-thirties and she was around her early twenties.  I told her that I remembered when her girlfriend broke up with her and she was terribly upset, and came into my office crying, explaining that the "roommate" she always talked about was actually her girlfriend and that they'd just broken up and she was very upset and should she tell Winnie (her other supervisor, besides me, though she did mostly work for Winnie).  She was surprised that I remembered.  How could I have forgotten?  I felt so terrible for her and so moved that she came out to me...and more than a little amused that maybe she thought I hadn't figured it out like two minutes after I met her.  Lipstick, she's not.  But she's smart and funny and talented.  She did invite me to several of her birthday parties, but I felt a mite self-conscious, being both older and straight.  But hey.  Like all of the assumptions and hierarchies in high school, it just kind of slips away when you get older.

The reason I felt moved to get in touch just now is that there a Lucille Roberts (gym) in the building that I work, and her "roommate" used to teach aerobics there.  She was also surprised that I remembered that.  My short-term memory is starting to suck, but my long-term memory is still freakishly good.  I only know that because people are always shocked by what and how much I remember.

School year over means I'll get to see Lily again soon.  She had a terribly difficult and painful semester.  We e-mail pretty often, but I do miss seeing her.

publicly assisted

I haven't written much because I'm still getting used to the public assistance thing and there was a period of jumping through a lot of hoops.  Going to the Coney Island HRA (Human Rights Administrator) and waiting hours to see our caseworker.  (I've never had a "caseworker" before.)  (And the upside of the wait is that I read a big chunk of "The Story of Edgar Sawtelle," which I can't recommend highly enough.)  Presenting many documents.  Getting more documents.  Getting a letter from our landlord.  Going to the job center in downtown Brooklyn to get excused from orientation to keep an appointment with an HRA office downtown to prove who we are (showing yet more documents).  Then we had to go back to Coney Island, I can't remember why.  (Believe me, this is not the fun part of Coney Island.)  This brings us up to yesterday (the rest was maybe the preceding five business days).  I went to my first-day orientation at the job center, but Barry had a bad stomach and stayed home.  I had to call him at home and tell him that he had to bring -- guess what? -- documentation today.  He needed a doctor's note even though he hadn't seen a doctor -- or he'd be "FTC'ed."  This is about the worst thing that can happen at the job center, and we are often told that certain things -- like not presenting the right documents at the right time -- will get us FTC'ed.  FTC is Failure to Comply, and if you get it twice, you get kicked out of the job center program, which means no cash benefits.

If you want to get cash benefits (rent and/or cash assistance), you have to do the job center, which is five days a week, 9-4.  If you don't, you can apply separately for food stamps and for Medicaid, but you can't get money.  (They don't call any of this "welfare" any more, but that's what they used to call the rent and cash benefits.)  Our caseworker suggested that the job center "might not be for you," but that we should at least try it for a few days.  I guess he was implying that we had enough skills and experience to job hunt alone.  My thinking was that if we hated it, we could quit and just get Medicaid and food stamps, and if neither of us had a job a month from now, we could go back into it.  Unfortunately, it takes 45 days from the time your case opens until you see a dime, and if we don't have at least one job in a month, we will not last 45 more days.

So Barry brought in his doctor's note today, and he had his orientation while I had my first day in a classroom.  And by the way, they give you plenty of papers in orientation and in class.  The papers and documents get a little dizzying.  I am constantly walking around with a purse full of paper, and every night I check very carefully to see what I need and do not need the next day.  Tomorrow I need to bring proof of a job interview on Tuesday, and of a home visit on next Friday.

"Home visit" kind of freaks me out the way "caseworker" does.  If they were still saying "welfare," I would be crying my eyes out.  Mostly I manage to see the whole thing as something that will help us out until we have a decent income again, but I have those moments of "I can't believe we're going on welfare."  I was brought up to think that was only for poor people...and then I remember that now I'm poor, too.  I was never rich, but I was also never poor before.

I was glad to see that the classroom is by in large a relaxed atmosphere and not very strict (except about arrival time and documentation for absences, duh).  Oh, they're also pretty serious about dress code.  No jeans, no sneakers, no hats.  In warm weather, no sleeveless shirts, no flip-flops, no shorts.  (Basically, you have to be dressed as if for an interview, though not necessarily a formal one. Lots of guys in chinos and a button-down shirt, no tie.  People chat and leave the room to see a "job developer" or work in the computer room, or just to stretch their legs.

You get assigned to one of four or five classrooms, and each one has an instructor.  Mine is pretty amazing.  Very smart, very funny, and very perceptive about the people in the room.  She picks up on someone's attitudes and characteristics very fast.  I think she knows quite a bit about me already.

The other folks -- there are about 30 in our classroom -- are more varied than I'd expected, quite a few well-educated and talented people and people who have held pretty serious jobs.  Most of them are very friendly and I met and had nice talks with quite a few. The instructor noticed the publishing experience on my resume and asked if should could introduce me to a guy in the class who had written a novel and was trying to get it published -- maybe I could tell him something about the process.  I said sure, and the guy was really nice, took me to lunch and we talked for a couple hours, mostly about publishing, writing, and his book.  I haven't really talked about that stuff with anyone for a while, and it was great fun.  I offered to help with his query letter and I asked to read the ms.  (He e-mailed it to me, and I realized that I could use this to convert it from .doc format to .mobi, and put it on my Kindle.  Have I mentioned that I love my Kindle?)

I'm going to Jannah's on Friday evening, and staying over through Monday (the center is closed for President's day).  Unfortunately, because of the holiday weekend, she and Linda couldn't gather "the girls" for a jewelry party, which is a bit of a bummer, since I was hoping to come home with a few hundred dollars.  But I'll get to hang out with her, take a break from everything going on here, let Barry have a little time to himself.  (Luckily, we are not assigned to the same classroom at the job center.)  Jannah even bought me a ticket to see David Johansen in Bordentown, and we're going with John and Linda, which will be a blast.  We're going to try again soon to either do another jewelry party or for me to do a Sunday sale at her shul.  I love Jannah's shul.  ("Shul," I think, is Hebrew rather than Yiddish, and I'm not sure how it differs from the English "temple."  I think that "temple" refers to the building itself, and "shul" means the building and the congregation, the synagogue (same as temple) and its community, but I might be dead wrong.  Jannah's shul is reconstructionist, which I'm not explaining now, but I'll say it's a branch of Judaism like reform, conservative, and orthodox.  I describe it as "reform reform."  As someone once said (I'm tired and forgetting names), You could look it up!

who do you write like?

I write like
David Foster Wallace

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

I guess I ought to read some David Foster Wallace, huh?

a bad work situation (from the past)

At a recent job interview, I was asked to describe a difficult work situation and how I handled it. I was caught off-guard, and talked about the challenges of obtaining reviews and interviews about new books at my last position. But I've been thinking ever since about the situation I should have described, which was this:

I was writing freelance for a national music magazine. I had gotten the gig because it turned out that the editor and I had some mutual friends, who vouched heartily for me; I had never done this type of writing before. The editor was very pleased with the work I produced, and he began to favor me. I got a lot of good assignments and he was very friendly. (He was not in any way hitting on me, because he had a wife at home upstate and a girlfriend in New York City; it was very clear that he was not attracted to me.) He told me that in about a year, he would be able to hire more full-time staff, and I would be the first one hired (only he and the assistant editor had staff jobs at the time). He also said that the next summer, which would fall roughly around the one-year mark, he would be sending writers around the country to cover festivals, and that again, I would have favored status. He was also talked about starting his own magazine and bringing a number of writers along with him, including me.

After a year had passed, I approached him, very nicely, about the staff position, and his response was, "We can't do that." He did not say, "maybe in another six months," or explain what was going on in any way. Soon after, I asked him about the plans for festival coverage in the summer, and he said, "I can't afford to send anyone to festivals." I didn't complain in any way about either turndown, did not show disappointment, and did not press him.

Soon after, he stopped giving me assignments, started cutting my profiles and longer pieces. In addition, he had asked me to develop a monthly column; he had approved the topic, and I had worked long and hard on putting together my first/sample column. After I submitted it, he told me that the column was being canceled, that the publisher had made the decision. I sent a very nice e-mail to the publisher (everything was very decentralized -- the editor was in upstate New York, and the publisher was in West Virginia), saying that I understood he had canceled my column, and I asked if he would reconsider, explaining why I thought the column would be useful and informative to the readers. (It was a column on internet resources for the particular type of music the magazine covered. At the time, the middle 90s, graphical browsers and web use were still relatively new, and Google did not yet exist, so there was a real need for the type of column I had proposed and prepared.)

The publisher responded, also very nicely, and said that he did not make any editorial decisions, and that any decisions about what to run in the magazine would have to come from the editor. I was absolutely shocked. I went back to the editor, and I don't remember what his response was, but it wasn't clear or satisfactory. He had become very cold and uncommunicative, and I had no idea why.

I sent him a carefully composed e-mail asking him what was going on. I said that I noticed his attitude toward me had changed, asked if I had done anything to offend or upset him, and said that I would do anything I could to make it right. He denied that anything had changed or that he was having any difficulty with me. But he continued to cut my assignments and the column never ran; neither did a lengthy musician profile he had requested and I had written.

Finally, I wrote another long e-mail, saying that it would be a help to me to know what the problem was, so I could correct it or avoid making the same error in the future. I also said, in a very nice way, that it would benefit both of us to clear the air. But he continued to deny that anything was wrong.

Because he was giving me no work, I started my own little local newsletter, covering the same type of music but on a local New York basis. The magazine covered national acts playing the same type of music, and I covered little local bands. My newsletter was quite small and dinky, I didn't use any of "his" writers, and it was distributed free; it was clearly not in competition with the national magazine. But the editor used it as an excuse to fire me, adding that no national magazine would have me because of my local project. (A second national magazine took me on immediately, and even promoted my local magazine.)

My solution to the difficult situation in this scenario was to confront the editor in the nicest possible way, clearly and without anger or finger-pointing, even after he had lied to me about the column and the "reason" for cutting so many of my pieces (he had claimed that the magazine was changing over to a higher grade of paper and so would be running fewer pages, which was not the case at all). And when he would not engage in a dialogue about it, I had to accept that he was going to continue to deny any difficulty and that I would never learn from him what had really happened. I didn't resign, but maybe I should have, although I moved on by starting my own publication and moving to another magazine when he let me go.

Later, I spoke to another staff writer, who opined that I had fallen from favor because I had believed the editor about being put on staff and being sent to festivals, when these had actually been empty promises. I hadn't considered that he had lied to me from the start.

Soon after, he was fired from the magazine. One of the editors of the new magazine I wrote for asked me to write some articles for a guide he was writing to this type of music, so I was included and credited in an actual book (I had also contributed to another, similar book). My magazine failed for financial reasons, and the second magazine I wrote for went out of business. My former editor apparently never started his new magazine, nor wrote any of the books he claimed to be writing, and has basically vanished from music journalism without a trace. After he left the first magazine, I wrote for them again in the late 90s, and once again more recently (under three different editors all together), and was treated quite well; I've only stopped writing for them because they haven't met their payment commitments. Apparently, they're not able to pay anyone, not even the editor, but I just can't work for free at this time. I already have plenty of writing credits and have considered myself a professional for quite a few years; this is why I dropped the Examiner column (which was paying based on traffic, but it was only pennies a day for a lot of work), and turned down another music magazine when I found out that I was expected to write for free (I would get a copy of the CD, DVD or book I was reviewing, which is standard, but no money).

Being a supervisor or an employee is a lot of fun when things go well, when there is clear communication and the work is satisfactory. It gets tough when there's a problem. I learned what not to do from the editor; when I briefly edited my own publication, I had to confront a couple of writers who were not doing satisfactory work, even though they were working for free (they were absolutely novices). I did this without being angry or unpleasant, and tried to be clear about what I needed and how they were not meeting expectations. This is the difficult part of being a boss. I've been an employee a lot more than I've been a boss, and I have no respect for a supervisor who sidesteps the tough part of being in charge, of communicating clearly and appropriately with an employee who is not pleasing them for whatever reason. I consider bosses who lie to their employees, like that editor, to be the lowest of the low. And I hate to say it, but that's not the only time it's happened to me. There's absolutely no way to correct a problem if I don't know it exists or don't know what it is.

That all being said -- I still hate that fucking editor. He is both cowardly and a prick.

I just Googled the dude, and he's still apparently doing nothing. There are a few items that say he's writing a book with one or another musician, some of which are fifteen years old with no book in sight. He's also down as manager for a few musicians with whom he was always tight, but haven't been heard from much; one of them is stone cold insane. There was another mention on the website of a musician indicating that he was associated with the editor and that he would soon be writing for the magazine (this is from around the time that I was writing for this editor), but the musician never did write for this publication. There are also a few credits for liner notes and reviews he wrote many years ago. Ironically, there is a mention of him in an interview with the former associate editor who worked under him, about a book which she wrote; apparently she's able to follow through and complete her projects. He's also on Facebook, which makes me want to puke.