Successful, divorced Upper West Side single mothers vie to date Mark Bittman, food columnist for the New York Times.
I’m just saying, I would watch.
I Had A Nightmare About IQ84 Last Night and Other Romances
I may have to change my brand imaging from “The Gates” to “Over the River,” which has now been approved!
Another Wednesday, another “Fox in the Snow” day in Denver.
Next time you find yourself caught up and frustrated trying to get something perfect on the first try, take a look at this early iteration of Twitter.
Success is born out of failure.
and I felt no fear/I felt no fear
“Never was an age more sentimental, more devoid of real feeling, more exaggerated in false feeling, than our own.”
— D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley’s Lover
For those who don’t know why Kim Kardashian is famous, the answer is: she’s very good at being famous. When creatively famous people go on reality TV, the results are often dreadful because acting and being filmed are two different verbs, with two different skill sets. While both are about being seen, acting isn’t necessarily about being watched. Kim Kardashian doesn’t mind people watching her life, which makes her TV show compelling.
Kim Kardashian allows herself to be watched in multiple media—not just on her show, but also in the tabloids and directly from her twitter feed. So you can learn about the break up now on E! New Daily, or later on Keeping Up With the Kardashians, which will also be on E! And since people who work in media are also interested in the creation and manipulation of media, the Kim’s wedding and subsequent break-up, become news.
Halloween means the end of “The Witches” month on my Roald Dahl calendar.
Welcome to the future, everything is extraordinary and nobody cares.
To paraphrase David Brooks, we chose convenience over space travel.
Favorite Denver Ride
Spirits from Prospect Hill Cemetery may haunt the place, but there’s no better spot for grass in all of Denver. And with all the irrigation, the park has the smell of water drying on cement, which even in the fall, smells like spring.
Related, I started a tumblr for BikeDenver. Check it out: bikedenver.tumblr.com
It Can Be As Simple As Reading, Music, and Cats
I knew what I loved. I loved to read; I loved to listen to music; and I love cats. Those three things. So, even though I was an only kid, I could be happy because I knew what I loved. Those three things haven’t changed from my childhood. I know what I love, still, now. That’s a confidence. If you don’t know what you love, you are lost.
Edith Wharton on What Led to Occupy Wall Street
But perhaps the New Yorkers of that day were unconsciously trying to atone for their culpable neglect of state and national politics, from which they had long disdainfully held aloof, by upholding the sternest principles of business probity, and inflicting the severest social penalties on whoever lapsed from them.
I’m reading Edith Wharton’s autobiography right now, and it’s filled with fantastic quotes like the one above, and my favorite, “I was always vaguely frightened by ugliness."
Coincidentally, my favorite bluegrass band includes many of my favorite friends.
The Keeps in Union Square
Freedom Speaking
Like If You’re Feeling Sinister, the Belle & Sebastian album that played behind my sophomore year of college, Freedom brings back a very specific, if not too distant, time.
It’s not the details of my life I remember, but the feeling that there was a writer on the cover of Time Magazine. Everywhere I went, people were talking about a book. That New Years, I went to a party with a lot graduates from Connecticut colleges. Before we got there, I bet my date that everyone he would meet will have read Freedom. I won. As someone who is in favor of reading, I was favor of this.
Tonight, I’m seeing Jonathan Franzen speak in Denver. And the thing about hearing an author speak—it’s not like a show or an opening or a game. People aren’t dragged to readings. No, the people who go to hear an author speak are excited to hear an author to speak. I’m excited to hear Jonathan Franzen speak tonight, and I’m excited to be in a roomful of people who agree.
I’ve Been Spending A Lot of Time Meeting Strangers on Craigslist, or Notes on Furnishing My New Apartment
About a year and a half ago, in Brooklyn, I decided it was time for me to own a couch. My apartment didn’t need a new couch, but I needed one, as a commitment to my space. I’ve never been into fashion retail therapy, but decorating therapy made sense to me. Along with the usual endorphins that come with consumption, there is also a clear result: the new couch did make my apartment feel more like a home.
When I moved to Colorado, I gave up that couch, and in Denver, I found that any home furnishing could take on that sense of stability I found in my old couch. For instance, last week, I bought my first bed. In New York, my bed was a hand-me-down, but I don’t have anyone to inherit a bed from here. So symbolic! Last week, I realized I hadn’t been in my own bed since June 25. For three months, I slept on the beds and couches of others: it was quite a summer.
I don’t just have a bed now, I also have bookshelves, end tables, lamps, and even a good set of pots and pans. Most of this stuff came from Craigslist. In fact, most of my dealings with people in Denver originated on Craigslist.
And I know Craigslist has been around since before an @aol email addresses lost its cache, but its reach still amazes me. Anything I could want is met by someone with an equal and opposite desire to sell the same thing. I suppose this is how capitalism works. I go into a store looking to buy a milk; the store is looking to sell milk. Still, there’s something different about connecting to a person online, being shown their home, and then taking part of it to furnish my own.
A song to listen to on your way to buy a bed/The song I did listen to on my way to buy my bed.
Next Year, Ft. Tilden, NY
A few years ago I went to Jacob Riis Park with my Aunt, and when I came out from playing in the surf, she said to me, “I just realized, you didn’t grow up with the water.” This struck me as absurd, as I grew up in Westchester, and I grew up with most things. But she’s right that until recently, I didn’t think of the ocean at all, and I had let many summers go by without visiting the beach. But last summer, the manager of my running store would ask all the children who came in if they had swum in the ocean yet, and I realized that being in the water was a pleasure that, like seeing fireworks or riding a rollercoaster, must be taken in each year.
What I like about being at the beach is what I like about hiking: there’s no cell phone service and ultimately, it’s about hanging out outside with friends. But there’s something about the ocean—maybe the power of the waves or the mystery of what lurks beneath the water—that the mountains just can’t replace. And while I love the view from Denver, I’ll miss those days at Ft. Tilden.
Analyze and scrutinize are synonyms. Does the New York Times know a visual synonym for microscope?
Sunday night easy listening.
I always think about how I’m in my room alone writing it, and eventually most people listen to music alone. … So there’s actually a quiet little direct line between writing and listening. It’s a strange bubble of solitude, because you’re linked, but you don’t know each other, yet you’re communicating.
Feist’s new album is coming out on October 4. I can’t tell which I’m more excited for: the record or the profiles of her talking about art.