whatchamacallit

my uncle sent me this ad from our high school newspaper — audrey, co and i were on the lancer staff and had to go model the dresses. i feel like our whole vibe is MORTIFIED. what a name for a store, too? different times (1991 or 92).

bits

• the time of trying the see’s st. patrick’s day potato has at last arrived. also the reviews are AMAZING (“Real Potato Bliss”)
• ross and i ate at cattleman’s steakhouse in fabens last weekend — what a trip. it was PACKED at 4:45pm, had no salad bar, in fact no salad on the menu at all — except for “pineapple slaw” — so baked potato it was. followed it up with the queen of sheba dessert (“heavy whipped cream with chocolate wafers,” an icebox cake in a cup, no regrets).
• saw an article that referred to trump’s policies as rapacious, which really sums it up
• never seen this athletic training strategy so clearly illustrated
• the exact problem, as described by rayne fisher-quann in an essay about the free press and kat rosenfeld: “It’s an interesting choice, although maybe not an intelligent one, to search for understanding not through outward inquiry or research but solely within your private repository of what you already believe.”
• saw marty supreme and it wasn’t for me, though it did get me thinking about class, race, religion, and this bit in the atlantic especially struck me: “…the director [josh safdie] portrays the nightmarish baggage that comes with fighting to achieve victory outside the mainstream.”
• also read this ages ago on cup of jo but it really is awesome: “Sometimes I think about the vicar’s description of my grandmother at her funeral, and I wish it for all of us: ‘She wasn’t perfect, but she was WONDERFUL.”

extremely good look

paul klee

the best present I have ever received????

UGG SLIPPERS?!?!

a little more nonsense

ok so like i’m still in dental hell (broken tooth? TMJ? stupid back? stress, who knows anymore), heating pad wrapped around my neck and back, cranked to the max, calling the dentist AGAIN tomorrow, and meanwhile…

• watching a bunch of basketball, remains the best, the agony and the ecstasy every day
• dying laughing that f1 was nominated for best picture. didn’t hate it but best picture!? it was both interesting and boring at the same time — a rare combo that i must applaud. i did like seeing the F1 world, but like…what else really happened? old guy triumphs, young cool engineer woman falls in love with him, young upstart comes around, something like that, i think i fell asleep at one point.
• did you notice that i’m typing on my computer again?! TSA sent back my computer and WTH it’s a miracle
• thinking more and more about the el paso skateboarding scenes in one battle after another
• maybe i’ll watch song song blue tonight?

THE END / BORING

imbricated

learned a new word in this review of the pitt!!!!

“(of scales, sepals, plates, etc.) having adjacent edges overlapping” — honestly dope use of the word

more and more muted every time

this is a wild article. two highlights:

To be clear, I take fandom seriously, but I have rarely been caught up in it myself. Don’t get me wrong. I write about culture for a living, and there are things that I love: I’m a Bruce Springsteen completist, and the first nonassigned short story I ever wrote, in 10th grade, was a kind of fan fiction about the song “Thunder Road.” I got really into Taylor Swift a couple of years ago, but everyone did. Sometimes when the Knicks are having a great season, I think about them a lot and wonder if they hang out when they’re not on the court.

but this — bolding my own:

Maybe the answer is that B is 8 and I am 50, and what B doesn’t know is that as they get older, there will be fewer things to love like this. That it will come along when it does, if it does, but it will feel more and more muted every time, so that by the time you find yourself feeling it again, by the time you realize that it is great to mellow with age but that before the process is complete you will panic, because you can feel what you’re missing and know that one day missing it won’t even bother you anymore. And right now I am in the gloaming of all that — in the perimenopause of all my passions, a time when I still remember what it is to want, but from the shoreline. This might never happen again to me, I want to tell B. It’s a surprise it happened at all. Hasn’t anyone told you yet, B? It becomes rarer and rarer to be struck in the heart by something that consumes you, and one day you forget that it used to happen at all.

the losing end

neil neil neil

I looked out the window, and it was a painting.

looking through old New York Times Sunday magazines and happened upon this wonderful article (and drawings) by Tamara Shopsin:

After my brain surgery, life was heightened. Food not tasting rotten was a gift. I looked out the window, and it was a painting. I felt the sun on my arm and cried.

Life-affirming! Read it please!!!!