let’s just raise a glass to nachos, here is an unglamorous photo of some i made for the nephews, i hadn’t made them in 15-20 years, but let me tell you — STILL SOLID.
slice-of-life: my friend told me that she’s been working out super hard (who talks about this kind of thing? you know my feelings about talking about exercise) (BORING) and anyway now she has six-pack abs (cool? i guess?).
now every morning when i work out (baby workouts, almost like sleeping while moving), i’m picturing her abs and then looking at my non-six-pack abs and feeling BLUE. i know i’m never going to have such a thing, because i just don’t care enough about them, or necessarily subscribe to that beauty philosophy, and yet…her words echo in my ears. and echo and echo and echo.
i’m reminded of this quote from aminatou sow’s latest newsletter:
YES, TRUE, THE END, THE SCAM IS REAL
been watching pretend it’s a city in the background and this gem stayed with me:
“No one young enough to be in school is aware that they will lose their looks, OK? This is something that doesn’t happen until you do. Because if I see someone that I haven’t seen in a long time, I think, ‘What the hell happened to you?!’ And I realize that they’re thinking the same thing about me! Right? And the only reason I don’t think that about me is that I see myself every day. Although as briefly as possible.”
Fran Lebowitz, Pretend It’s a City
it’s so true, your whole face goes to shiz and it’s like WELP and then you see other people and you’re like WELP and just — well, life.
from “Sawing Someone in Half Never Gets Old. Even at 100” about the magic trick of sawing people in half:
Jules Olitski, “Fatal Plunge Lady” (1963)
(via ny times)
from an interview with fran lebowitz from august 1978:
Lebowitz: I was a behavior problem as far as talking. I talked out of turn, I talked too much, I talked in class, I made jokes during the lessons, I whispered to other children. I wasn’t an interesting behavior problem. I wasn’t glamorous and rebellious. I just talked too much. My first school punishment was sitting in the corner in kindergarten wearing a Band-Aid over my mouth and holding up a sign that said “I am a chatterbox.” That was my first run-in with authority.
i keep laughing about this — being an adult and doling out this punishment — making the sign, applying the band-aid — is bananas. (full disclosure i was also a chatterbox as a child.)
i’m prideful, dreamy, and intuitive (not wrong?).
also john sent me this compilation of fran lebowitz on david letterman and it’s kinda great, mostly the early interviews, where dave is so funny and disarming and light on his feet.
no disrespect to the dead, but i recently saw a clip of james dead in giant, and he was NOT good. he IS handsome and he IS full of emotion, but he IS NOT a good actor. through full disclosure i may have had a poster of him in my room when i was a pre-teen/teenager. i can’t remember but it sounds familiar. (“if sound warehouse sold it, i probably bought it”)
in other news, i loved this essay about newsletters, which really gets to something great about the web and blogs and newsletters and the beauty of stories about “break-ups and coffee beans.” one especially real note:
All I know is that the web today is not made for us. It’s no longer made for people to send charming bits of texts to strangers. Instead, I see the web as this public good that’s been hijacked by companies trying to sell us mostly heartless junk.
damn this poem
wanda coleman, “wanda why aren’t you dead”
discovered here; more info here
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