still cleaning out my photos and watching nba games — found this bit from anderson cooper:
On processing the past: “I’m the last one left from this sort of interesting family that existed,” he said. “I just find it sort of haunting this idea that everyone just disappears.”
How has living with A.L.S. changed your outlook on life?
I want to tell everyone how lucky they are. I tell my friends that they can talk to me about their problems, but just to always be aware that if you can walk down the street and you’re healthy, you have everything. I’m never going to complain again.
i can’t believe i never wrote about jonathan gold, the amazing food writer (nicknamed “Nervous Cuz” by dr. dre and snoop dogg!!!), who “wrote ‘to try to get people less afraid of their neighbors'” and won a pulitzer for criticism in 2017. gold passed away in 2018 from pancreatic cancer, and his obituary is a wild ride:
With cello proficiency in his favor, he attended the University of California, Los Angeles. Although he got his degree in music history, in 1982, he had a sideline in art; he took a class with and worked as an assistant for the guerrilla performance artist Chris Burden. For a brief time, Mr. Gold thought of himself as a performance artist, too. “A naked performance artist, to be specific,” he told an interviewer.
His materials for one piece were two bottles of Glade air freshener, a pile of supermarket broiler chickens, a live chicken at the end of a rope and a machete wielded by Mr. Gold, who wore only a blindfold. The chicken survived, and may have come out of the ordeal in better spirits than Mr. Gold, who later said, “The few minutes after an art performance are some of the most depressing in the world.”
Mr. Jones at Robert Moses State Park on May 27, 1993, preparing to begin his 50th summer as a lifeguard. Credit…Vic DeLucia/The New York Times
Albert Reginald Jones was born in Manhattan on April 8, 1927, to Mary Kate and Adam Jones, Irish immigrants, and grew up on Long Island. As a wrestler at Baldwin High School, he won a Long Island championship in 1944.
That same year, his son said, he began lifeguarding at Jones Beach to escape working at his father’s gas station.
“He never had a formal swimming lesson, but he was so strong he could have passed any test,” the younger Mr. Jones said. “Once he got the job, he said, ‘Valhalla, I have arrived.’”
We headed home around 9 p.m. to change and walk the dog. On our way home, I told Nick that if he wanted to go out to Walter [their friend], he couldn’t let me sit down or else I’d lose momentum. We had to get in and get out. We took Doris around the block and then decided to give ourselves a moment to drink a beer before going out again. I took about three sips from my can of Modelo with my feet up on the couch and it was game over. Nick woke me up to give me a kiss at midnight and I instantly fell back asleep.
I love beauty stuff as much as the rest of the world, but damn there’s so much bad in the world — shaming us about our (perfectly lovely, if older!) necks is such bullshit. i mean good grief.