(5) It's Monday, and it's time to talk about Taylor Swift. Have you noticed what an effective song "I Wish You Would" is? This is, like so many other TS songs, a statement about ambivalence. "What a crooked love; we're a straight line down." "Makes you want to run and hide, but it made us turn right back around." "You gave me everything and nothing." A lesser writer would present an all-or-nothing scenario: Either the ex is awful, or he is a lost treasure. But in TS's hands, the ex is BOTH awful AND a lost treasure. I love this lady. Just had to say that.
(4) Here are your true crime stories for the week. Two Dutch ladies went missing in Panama a few years ago. Then their bones were found: pelvic bone, foot in boot. It was thought they'd simply injured themselves and then starved to death. But why weren't there marks of animal teeth on the bones? The other story: A small kid falls off a balcony in California and dies. A few days later, his dad's girlfriend is found bound and hanged; black paint is on her nipples; a nearby door says, inexplicably, "SHE SAVED HIM, CAN HE SAVE HER?" The death, though clearly a murder, was ruled a suicide, in part because murder-by-hanging is fairly rare. But it's possible, also, that a well-connected family didn't want the cops looking too hard--and some strings were pulled.
What really stuns me in these cases: the sloppiness of various investigating bodies. The Panama government, the California police, the people assigned to the Jovin case: There's so much error. There often seems to be money behind various calculated bad decisions. I'm told I'm too exacting; I expect too much of the human race. These true crime cases make me think I'm an alien on this planet.
(3) Jacob Bernstein's HBO love letter to his mother, Nora, is worth viewing. This is a portrait of Nora Ephron: "Everything Is Copy." NE was determined not to fail, and so she developed a hard shell, which was maybe an affectation. Whether or not she was as tough as she seemed, her persona propelled her through life. You slipped on a banana peel? Write about it. Like Joan Rivers, you can mock anyone, as long as you're as ruthless with yourself as you are with the rest of the human race.
Thinking about NE led me to borrow "I Remember Nothing," which is really a shameless pamphlet in the shape of a faux-book. But NE was dying at that time. She writes about the sloppiness of movie theaters in NYC, and I'd like to nominate the Court St. UA theater as Sloppiest of All. The broken escalators, the elevator from 1356 AD, the erratic projectors, the listless staff, the chaotic atrium, where Brooklynites fight to the death to gain admission: I will not rest until the Court Street UA is destroyed.
(2) Among NE's last pieces was a list of things she planned to miss once she had departed from the world: "Pie, my kids, crossing the bridge to Manhattan, etc." In that spirit, I'd miss: my husband and dog, and particularly their playtime on Sunday mornings; a retired librarian friend who recently wrote to me to say Nabokov preferred Dickens to Austen (just happy to know someone out there is thinking about that); the Best Actress from "The Grifters"; the Best Supporting Actress from "The Grifters"; my nieces, and one niece's burgeoning efforts to become a poet-journalist; and the Ida Lupino series at Film Forum, a thing I didn't even see, but a thing whose existence I'm grateful for. Not that I'm dying. Just feeling thoughtful. More later.
(1) NE also says you should have your final meal LONG BEFORE YOU DIE, because who knows if your actual final meal will be something you can enjoy? So: my final meal. It will be a burger, fries, and a shake from Shake Shack. And maybe a Shackmeister Ale. I promise I'll get on that--maybe next week.
(4) Here are your true crime stories for the week. Two Dutch ladies went missing in Panama a few years ago. Then their bones were found: pelvic bone, foot in boot. It was thought they'd simply injured themselves and then starved to death. But why weren't there marks of animal teeth on the bones? The other story: A small kid falls off a balcony in California and dies. A few days later, his dad's girlfriend is found bound and hanged; black paint is on her nipples; a nearby door says, inexplicably, "SHE SAVED HIM, CAN HE SAVE HER?" The death, though clearly a murder, was ruled a suicide, in part because murder-by-hanging is fairly rare. But it's possible, also, that a well-connected family didn't want the cops looking too hard--and some strings were pulled.
What really stuns me in these cases: the sloppiness of various investigating bodies. The Panama government, the California police, the people assigned to the Jovin case: There's so much error. There often seems to be money behind various calculated bad decisions. I'm told I'm too exacting; I expect too much of the human race. These true crime cases make me think I'm an alien on this planet.
(3) Jacob Bernstein's HBO love letter to his mother, Nora, is worth viewing. This is a portrait of Nora Ephron: "Everything Is Copy." NE was determined not to fail, and so she developed a hard shell, which was maybe an affectation. Whether or not she was as tough as she seemed, her persona propelled her through life. You slipped on a banana peel? Write about it. Like Joan Rivers, you can mock anyone, as long as you're as ruthless with yourself as you are with the rest of the human race.
Thinking about NE led me to borrow "I Remember Nothing," which is really a shameless pamphlet in the shape of a faux-book. But NE was dying at that time. She writes about the sloppiness of movie theaters in NYC, and I'd like to nominate the Court St. UA theater as Sloppiest of All. The broken escalators, the elevator from 1356 AD, the erratic projectors, the listless staff, the chaotic atrium, where Brooklynites fight to the death to gain admission: I will not rest until the Court Street UA is destroyed.
(2) Among NE's last pieces was a list of things she planned to miss once she had departed from the world: "Pie, my kids, crossing the bridge to Manhattan, etc." In that spirit, I'd miss: my husband and dog, and particularly their playtime on Sunday mornings; a retired librarian friend who recently wrote to me to say Nabokov preferred Dickens to Austen (just happy to know someone out there is thinking about that); the Best Actress from "The Grifters"; the Best Supporting Actress from "The Grifters"; my nieces, and one niece's burgeoning efforts to become a poet-journalist; and the Ida Lupino series at Film Forum, a thing I didn't even see, but a thing whose existence I'm grateful for. Not that I'm dying. Just feeling thoughtful. More later.
(1) NE also says you should have your final meal LONG BEFORE YOU DIE, because who knows if your actual final meal will be something you can enjoy? So: my final meal. It will be a burger, fries, and a shake from Shake Shack. And maybe a Shackmeister Ale. I promise I'll get on that--maybe next week.
Comments
Post a Comment