RIP, JDS

As if losing Howard Zinn wasn't enough, J.D. Salinger died today. J.D. Salinger is probably my favorite American author, ever. Franny and Zooey has been my favorite book since high school, to the point that Lee bought me a first edition copy for our first Christmas together. When Amy told me she had a rare collection of his short stories when I was staying with her and Duck this summer, I stayed in all night and read them in one sitting. My brother and I spent about twenty minutes this afternoon texting back and forth with oblique references to the Glass family. (He said I was a Buddy and not a Seymour, which is one of the nicest compliments I've received lately because I've always kind of worried that I'm most like Boo Boo. Also, it reassures me that he does not want me to shoot myself in the head.) I feel like it shouldn't be as sad when your favorite author hasn't been writing for decades, but this was a total bummer. RIP, JDS.

"An artist's only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else's."
- J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey

Ow, Eating Sand Hurts

Because I was gone for Emma's birthday on Saturday, we did a makeup birthday date tonight at Cafe Gitane in the Jane Hotel. (If you're ever looking to dodge a birthday fail, I highly recommend it - it's really quiet and kind of beautiful inside, and the food was tremendous.) I wasn't super hungry, so I ordered the couscous, which turned out to be made in kind of the same way that children make sandcastles with buckets - like, a giant mound of couscous with vegetables mortared inside, with like two cups of hummus lumped on top and a sprig of something jammed into it and a moat of pesto and oil around it. It wasn't until the last quarter of it collapsed and filled my plate that I was like, oh, God, this is like four dinners worth of couscous, and right about then it expanded in my stomach and I was so full I could barely move.

Obviously, this did not stop me from splitting a piece of Monkey Cake with Emma at Amy's Bread. She hadn't had cake for her birthday yet! I would have been a terrible friend for saying no.

Dork-Off

Well, this weekend's dorkiest moment is a tie between turning into a shy five year old in front of Kathleen Sebelius at Eastern Market and getting super excited because I found original copies of Pleasure and Danger and Families We Choose for a grand total of $3.66 at Lambda Rising. (We went to their last day of business like two months ago, but they were somehow still open and promising that they were closing this weekend. Mostly the visit was handy for jacking copies of Metro Weekly, which ran our op-ed this week. And because they reliably play the Glee soundtrack on a loop, and I am not above forcing the other four people with me to stay just so I can listen to Don't Rain on My Parade. The dorkiness may be a three-way tie.)

Oh, Meryl

I'm really glad that Meryl Streep beat Meryl Streep for the Golden Globe (thereby proving scientifically that it takes three Meryl Streeps to give any other actress a fighting chance), but her acceptance speech totally played into last night's SNL:

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(Clearly, the fact that I've spent the past two days holed up in the library with Maria and Kameron in our struggling PhD support group means that I've felt totally justified vegging out in front of SNL and the Golden Globes. Also, I would like to point out that I claimed the nickname 'T. Bone' literally fifteen minutes before Meryl Streep did. I'm going to let her have it, though, because she could easily destroy me.)

Finian's Rainbow!

I just saw Finian's Rainbow and it was SO GOOD. The music is beautiful, and the cast was uniformly excellent. Terri White is fantastic, and Cheyenne Jackson gives me the vapors. (The plot is totally insane and could plausibly have been written by playing Boggle drunk, but that weirdly does not detract from the experience at all.) It was even better because I saw it with Maria, who is in from Oxford for a week. We already spend all of our time looking for innuendo and problematizing fairy tales, so seeing a musical about racism and immigration and free markets was pretty much a goldmine. When they made a reference to red propaganda, we were the only people who were like, "oops!" and cracked up laughing as the old people around us just looked befuddled. And then afterwards, we got dinner at Room Service and talked about how the leprechaun and deaf ballerina were basically a fucked-up Pygmalion story, and I was like, Jesus, I have missed you.

It is basically a multicultural acid dream, and I mean that in the most positive way possible. If you're in New York, you should totally try to see it before it closes on Sunday. (Also, my friend Lauren is in it. Shameless plug!)

Calm Down, Courteney Cox

I should start watching mid-season TV shows more often. I was too lazy to get up to avoid Cougar Town after watching Modern Family tonight, and I was like, "Courteney Cox looks upset. Who is that man? Since when do they have a baby? Why is the bar empty? How are these characters related? Is this a dream sequence? I don't understand what Courteney Cox is so upset about." It was like going to a movie with an elderly person. I'm grateful that Brady did not murder me in my chair.

Survival of the Dullest

David just went back to DC to start the spring semester, and this sucks for two reasons. One is that David is in DC to start the spring semester. The other is that David is my excuse to postpone things that I know I should be doing. I've spent the past month being like, "I have some work to do, but I can do it tomorrow if you want to go ice skating and then find someplace with vegetarian duck." Or "I should clean the bathroom, but I cannot do that knowing that you have never seen Season Two of Sex and the City." Or "I was thinking of spending the weekend working on my dissertation, but then I thought that it would be fun to smash and devour our entire gingerbread house while splitting a bottle of wine and watching Weeds. I already found a hammer."

You know what I did tonight? I steamed vegetables and spent two hours working on journal articles at Fordham, and now I'm going to do sit-ups. I don't care if long distance is a kind of subconscious survival strategy on my part, it is pretty fucking boring.

Good Night, Moon

I don't know whether I'm alarmed or thrilled that I could picture a number of people in my life being this man. But this is excellent.

Never Trust a Man With A Mustache

First, North Dakota lost the world's tallest structure to Dubai, and now we lost Byron Dorgan, who's like the only other thing we're known for. (Also: the movie Fargo, which actually mostly takes place in Bemidji. But that's not going anywhere because Marge Gunderson is untouchable.)

I'm bummed about this, but I am so ridiculously excited about the prospect that Heidi Heitkamp might run for Senate. I was like a diehard fan of hers when she ran against John Hoeven for governor when I was fifteen (because I was a dork that way!) and that has not changed. She is classy, and John Hoeven has a mustache. You do the math.

Wheel of Misfortune

I had a really long day and was like, ugh, I just want to go home and watch old people television with my wife, and so David and I made dinner and sat down to watch Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune. Somehow ALL THREE PEOPLE on Wheel of Fortune managed to get "Regis Phil_in and Kell_ Ripa" wrong, including by guessing "Regis Philmin" and getting EVERY LETTER before managing to mispronounce Kelly Ripa's last name. And then we were like, ugh, old people are so stressful and so we watched Sex and the City reruns because David has never seen it before and Emma lent us Season Two.

I realized that the easiest way to explain the show was to tell David that Carrie is the Dorothy, Miranda is the Sophia, Charlotte is the Rose, and Samantha is the Blanche. During a particularly racy scene, David was like, "...this is like Golden Girls Gone Wild," which I think would be a pretty awesome Before and After.

Happy New Year's!

"Oh, it's just like you're a family. I mean a pretend family, under the laws of the state of New York."
- Brady