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July 2nd, 2009
03:48 pm - The Great God Pan
Sigh, another thing I should have read when I was younger.
Stephen King thought this was one of the greatest horror stories ever written? Really? Not just in historic context? My ex boyfriend was *deeply disturbed* by this quaint preLovecraft novella?
Can anyone today really read something to the effect of 'a horror too great for a man's mind to behold and remain sane' or 'things terrible beyond a man's imagination' without giggling a little?
As someone living post Holocaust, to paraphrase Han Solo, I can imagine quite a lot.
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June 23rd, 2009
08:39 am - In The Future It Always Rains
Or, 'It can't rain all the time.' Or any one of a number of Blade Runner/Crow-esque homages. Throw in a nice Ray Bradbury/Venus reference, too.
Things are getting out of hand in New York City.
It's little things.
There are buckets everywhere. Seriously--I think at least a third of the stores/schools/public places I've been in have had quietly attended-to leaks. Mops standing in the corners of fancy boutiques.
And everybody talks about the weather. All the time.
New Yorkers don't use the weather, generally, as small talk. They will talk about fare hikes on the MTA, the Yankees, Fourth of July plans, the latest restaurant in the David Chang empire.
But lately everyone--and I mean EVERYone--I talk to, from close friends to the guy who picks up our drycleaning, is discussing weather. Will we see blue sky today? Will another weekend be ruined? Is it just rain this afternoon, or will there be a thunderstorm?
"Cloudy is the new nice," my husband quipped.
It's true. A day that it doesn't *actually* rain, just threatens to, is cause for celebration.
Sigh. Some summer.
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June 22nd, 2009
11:33 am - I know I missed a lot when I was pregnant...
I was sick constantly, throwing up hourly, exhausted by four P.M...
...but Steve Wozniak was on Dancing with the Stars?
*The* Steve Wozniak? The Woz? Really?
This isn't some weird joke perpetrated by my sister and my husband?
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June 17th, 2009
01:15 pm - Infernal Devices
Check Out My Sister's Boyfriend's Band!
Infernal Devices
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June 4th, 2009
May 11th, 2009
07:36 pm - I Finally Saw The Finale
LIZ May 11 2009 1:50:56 PM
Re: Battlestar. "Really?"
SABRINA May 11 2009 2:18:36 PM
Dude, I know.
LIZ May 11 2009 2:20:00 PM
I mean, REALLY?
SABRINA May 11 2009 2:22:12 PM
So retarded
LIZ May 11 2009 2:24:20 PM
So if Hera is our mitochondrial 'Eve,' that means the cylons/fleet people ATE everyone else on the planet. You know, the natives.
SABRINA May 11 2009 2:27:09 PM
No they FRACKED them.
LIZ May 11 2009 2:28:32 PM
You know, D. Adams was right. Our ancestors were loser telephone sanitizers and joggers.
SABRINA May 11 2009 2:30:44 PM
Yes i have a full riff prepared. I'll call later.
LIZ May 11 2009 2:33:39 PM
Yeah we totally have to talk.
SABRINA May 11 2009 2:37:05 PM
Hows the baby any more contractions?
LIZ May 11 2009 2:40:15 PM
No, going to have to try some labor inducing techniques. But after Tuesday--I got Star Trek imax tix.
SABRINA May 11 2009 2:44:02 PM
Dude
SABRINA May 11 2009 2:47:12 PM
So retarded
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May 5th, 2009
05:15 pm - Scaring the Tourists
At the Cherry Blossom Festival at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens on Saturday, Scott sneezed loudly.
"Bless YOU," a tall midwesterner drawled, equally loudly.
"It's ok," I said. "It's not the swine flu. It's allergies."
*He* laughed. But the rest of his posse must not quite have heard everything I said.
"What'd she say?" his wife whispered frantically as I walked away. "Did she say something about swine flu? What was it?"
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April 29th, 2009
09:05 am - Things I Do When I Am Not Writing
Or watching really, really bad shows like Castle.
(Scott: "Lizzy, Nathan Fillion is not reason enough for our dvr to tolerate this cr@p."
Me: "Not all who wander are lost."
Scott: "But this show is. Really, *really* lost.")
Ahem, but back to me.
http://www.greenpointnews.com/entertainment/points-for-greenpoint-a-neighborhood-nerd-off
I am treasurer--yes, just like in high school--of the Friends of Greenpoint Library. We raise money for the library, try to get people who would normally avoid it to sign up for library cards, and generally yell go team go for our local library.
It's just that instead of tea and cookies and formal luncheons, we do things like trivia night in local bars.
(oh, that's me in the Flashdance-era off-the-shoulder black thing that's hiding my current humongousnes)
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April 24th, 2009
08:03 am - Yesterday I Saw A Guy's Wang: Other Things About Living in NYC
Actually, seeing a random dude's junk happens more than occasionally in this fair town, be it a flasher or not-really-homeless pee-er in the park (or on Bleecker, or Ave A, or anywhere near a Path train as the night wears on), or just plain crazy man on the subway.
Yesterday I walked into the--unlocked--bathroom of the Dean & Deluca at Rock Center and there was a tourist peeing, his member grasped firmly in hand.
At one time, I would have almost knocked myself out in embarrassment fleeing the scene, apologizing and exeunting omnes as fast as I could.
I don't know if it's being eight and a half months pregnant, but *this* time I first looked to see if there was a working lock on the door--there was--and *then* left, slowly, shaking my head in disgust.
At one time, I would have decided not to use the bathroom and just left, doing everything I could to avoid the man and any eye contact.
*This* time I waited with arms crossed until the guy came out. "Try *using* the lock next time," I snapped. He hurried past me, eyes wide with shock and face flushed.
Which is more than I can say about the state of the can that he left.
I think I am successfully on my way to being one of those hardassed old New York ladies who yell at people for letting their dogs urinate on trees and whack flashers with their umbrellas. Maybe I'll take my newfound powers down to Century 21 and get some *real* shopping done.
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April 22nd, 2009
10:20 am - The Ups and Downs of Living in New York City
Up:
Yesterday a robin moved into the neighborhood. The morning call of a robin is the only, and I mean only, thing that can wake me up before six with a smile on my face. I don't mind it at all. And while a robin may be an every day occurrence in the burbs or the country, in Brooklyn, in the part where I live with no pocket parks nearby, it's a bloody miracle.
Down:
Yesterday I received an email from my son's preschool announcing a special seminar about college admissions.
Let me repeat, in case--especially for those of you without kids--you missed the point.
An email from my son's *preschool* announcing a seminar about *college admissions.* No, his school doesn't go through high school, nor are they affiliated with a school that does. And it isn't a nice, free service for older siblings. It is exactly what it sounds like: what parents need to know about the college admissions process so that for the next 13 years they can make the right choices for their kids.
(I mean, if you've ever wondered why such a shockingly high percentage of Ivy Leaguers are from the tri-state area, there it is: money and parents' psychotic focus on their children's education for decades at a time)
My husband and I fall somewhere between naivete, lassez-faire, and parental snobbery: we assume our children will be bright, and if they want to go to a great college, they'll figure out a way. We'll do everything we can to help.
(right now A. wants to be a zookeeper, but only at a zoo that has cows; he hasn't entirely given up the idea of being a farmer. While I haven't researched which colleges offer the best animal husbandry programs, I will admit that we are picking up half a pound of worms today so we can practice vermiculture at home)
Starting with first grade, my son will be going to a P.S.(public school), just like his parents.
I'm pretty sure it won't offer seminars on college admissions.
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April 16th, 2009
04:13 pm - Overheard at Otto's
A patron on her way out, defensively to her friend:
"It's not like we're *really* breaking Passover. It's *thin crust* pizza, after all."
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March 30th, 2009
08:34 am - Things That Make Me Crack Up This Week
I am a reasonably intelligent person who went to the kind of school that graduates you with phrases like 'patriarchal hegemony' and 'without niotony, we'd all be radially symmetric, sessile filter feeders' rolling off your tongue.
And yet museum placards, descriptions, and exhibition guides have always made me feel stupid. I read them four or five times and still don't understand their funny letter words.
Then a few years ago, I began to have a sneaking suspicion that maybe they were just poorly written, with au current arty catchphrases thrown in to make them sound deep. ('skewering' or 'transforming' 'notions of the traditional' is a popular one)
Today at last I had my confirmation.
About the exhibition 'Protect, Protect': "XX's pioneering approach to language as a carrier of content..."
No sh*t Whitney, huh? Language as a carrier of content? What an awe-inspiring idea. Let me get on the horn to all of my writer friends and let them know immediately. We have so been doing it wrong. So much for our whistles, honks, and random smearing of icky substances on the ground.
Then again...maybe language as a carrier of content *is* a pioneering concept to whatever schlubs museums hire to write up the catalogs and websites.
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March 16th, 2009
10:54 am - Evolution Sucks
All right, t-cells and platypi are kind of cool.
I have nine weeks to go before this computerloving, pill-popping, uber-cerebral why-can't-I-have-a-jack-installed-behind-my-right-ear-right-NOW 'earth mother' cracks open and lays a baby human.
I'm huge.
I'm cranky.
My abdomen is so tight it feels like I'm wearing a corset.
Depending on what the fetus decides it's doing and where she has positioned herself, I either can or cannot pee.
I seriously miss: runny egg yolks, rare meat, dangerous cheeses, scotch and nyquil.
I sleep nine to ten hours a night BADLY, then have to sleep another hour and a half during the day if it's possible.
Because of the sleeping and my hugeness, my back hurts. A lot. And advil is a big no-no. So instead I wait fretfully for the delivery of a fifty dollar pillow that is supposed to make everything easier but looks like a corpse.
Yes, I'm doing all of that real earth mother cr@p. Organic foods, yoga, sessions in the pool, visualization techniques, lamaze, practicing breathing. I'm also eating nutella out of the jar with a giant spoon, not cutting out the diet coke, up to a cadbury cream egg/day, and seriously enjoying Charlie Huston.
(There's nothing like a drunk and reluctant hit man beating the tar out of someone's kidneys with the handle of a Saturday Night Special (it takes longer) to make a pregnant lady feel all rosy and comforted. 'Cause when I see other pregnant ladies, glowing in their organic cotton outfits and serene smiles, I want to beat someone in the kidneys too.)
Anyway, screw all this 'oh, I'm an amniote, I'm so damn superior' bs. If I ever breed again I'm laying an egg in a specially designed bathtub the way rich frogs do.
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March 11th, 2009
12:19 pm - What I'm Doing Right Now, The Untwitter Version
From time to time people--sometimes even my parents--express a curiosity about what writers *do.* Every day. During the day.
Right now I am laboriously reading the same four chapters over and over, slowly coming to the conclusion that the grand rewriting eureka decision I made last week, ie, to move a chapter from part one into part four, was, as we literary types say, totally retarded. I will have spent the last two hours going back and forth, and finally putting it back, a hundred pages earlier.
While making this awful redecision I have checked my email, posted this livejournal, had some crackers and chevre, looked over photos I have recently taken, stared at the clock, thought about how I am wasting my life, wondered what we're going to have for dinner, asked a fellow author a Scrivener formatting question, remembered the laundry I was supposed to do, and ate some more cheese.
I don't know if Tolstoy managed to concentrate solely on the page in front of him, or engaged in Olde Timey versions of twitter (shouted out a window: "Hey! Alexander-Sovrenko-known-as-Misha, what's the good word on that totally off the hook hottie I saw you with at Mme Liszt's last salon?").
All I know is I definitely need some more cheese.
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March 5th, 2009
10:48 am - Mrs. Wachman
My old piano teacher died.
It sounds weirdly banal, a sad dismissible thought or line like all off the sad clichéd lines that accumulate as we get older and more crap happens to us.
People think of things automatically when you say piano teacher: ancient, possibly spinsterish ladies, skinny with fat knuckles, a whip and a metronome in her arsenal.
She wasn’t any of these things, though her fingers were slender. She had a big family and quiet, grand presence. She was one of those people that in my inappropriate way I pause, thinking if nice is what she was exactly when my mom says she was the nicest woman she knew. Yes, she was nice. She also had a sharp wit and a perfect impatience for idiocy. Her sotto voces were rarely quiet and always hilarious.
She seemed like a quiet, refined woman—who would suddenly bark out with the most harsh, unladylike laugh at things she found genuinely funny. I really liked her.
I took a different bus to go to her house on Tuesdays, and it was dark and damp—like many houses in my home town—crowded by pine trees, and smelled nicely musty. I had a snack in her kitchen and then waited, alternately admiring and spooked out by the 70s décor contributed to by her various kids, all of whom were older than me, and one of whom I thought was cute.
I never really practiced. I sucked. Seriously. I was a lazy as all get out.
She didn’t just teach teach playing well, she taught a hell of a lot of theory. Everything I know about music today, even if I forget the Italian words, is because of her. My lasting (but eventually put on hold) desire to revive the Great American Musical (don’t ask) was inspired by what I learned from her and what makes a tune a pleasing one.
When I saw her from time to time in the years that followed college I still felt guilty for being such a terrible student.
And then, when my son was born, out of the blue she sent two marvelous and well-thought out gifts. I insisted we visit her the next time I was home and my mom, my son and she spent an incredibly pleasant afternoon talking about New York, and babies, and stuff.
Now that I’m pregnant again I think about her from time to time and think how I’ll have to visit with both babies next time I’m in town.
Ok, enough of the eulogy.
Now to the part which pisses me off.
She was in the hospital THREE WEEKS before she passed away, and no one told my mom.
Storrs is a small town. My cousins grew up across the street from her, my mom and she were in the same book club and same congregation. What the hell is the point of living in a small town if you don’t get news like this?
The funeral is today. I could have maybe gotten it together and hauled the hundred and twenty miles or so. But… There will be a lot of mourners and well wishers. Aside from my own personal and selfish reasons—saying goodbye—I doubt there’s any comfort just another old student of hers could have brought the family.
No, the time I when I could have done some good was when she was sick. Maybe she was too sick for visitors. Maybe it didn’t matter. Maybe another thing of flowers would have sent her over the edge (see above, re: impatience). But maybe not,
And it’s weird, kind of like September 11th, when as I read the email from my mom I kept thinking wait, no wait, just wait, just turn back the clock a minute, let me fix this, just this once, it’s so dumb, I want to make her happy for just a minute. Let me be another boring, tiring visitor and well-wisher who might amuse her for a half hour.
There was this Scrubs episode. It was all about death, a man dying in bed at the hospital and asking the two main character doctors about what they thought of death. And in the end, his last words were “That was a good beer,” and Zach Braff says maybe that’s all there is, a last nice thought before death. Maybe that’s all you can hope for.
And while it is the cereal box philosophy of a dumb sitcom, it definitely rang with me. She doesn’t give a hoot whether or not I’m at her funeral. That does nothing for her now.
I just really, really wish I could have made her as happy as our sudden reconnection two years ago
made me, when she came back into my life again.
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March 4th, 2009
01:20 pm - We Can Revive Manga By Selling it to the Edwardians/An Intellectual Leap, Lizzy-Style.
I am so retarded.
This is my brilliant, politically incorrect way of saying something along the lines of 'it is a wise man who admits to knowing nothing.' Or, 'Shoot. I thought I could write. I am now just learning how to write.'
After reading a heck of a lot of cr@p lately--and some Charlie Huston, but that stuff rocks--I finally gave up and turned to the classics: A Passage to India. And then, about five minutes after I was done, A Room with a View. They're called classics for a reason, and it doesn't necessarily have to do with snob-appeal literary brilliance per se. They are good yarns and well written.
E.M. Forster's particular talent is for capturing a person's personality through a thousand little gestures and expressions, and his main characters are real, multidimensional people.
(Because his characters are the insanely repressed and highly nuanced well-bred folk of early 20th century England, the uber-nuances and multiple meanings drive me up the wall like badly written shojo manga. "Did he mean what he said when she didn't say that thing about the Subject to which they could neither allude?"
But hey, they were the people he lived with and he did an amazing job analyzing them. Wonder how his Bonfire of the Vanities would have gone.)
I think I could use a lot of improvement in that department.
Sometimes the help I need is ridiculously physical: I often have problems distinguishing words if there's a lot of background noise, and resort to saying things like, "Hey Scott--what are those two people over there talking about?" 'Cause, you know, the observation thing means paying attention to the world around you. Especially in diners.
Sometimes the problem is overthinking a character: instead of growing a real, live, flesheating--I mean fleshed out--person I go out of my way to make a character not cartoony. There's no Tao to that. Sometimes complex people do stupidly predictable things.
Anyway, it's something to chew on. I think I may have discovered I know little about human nature.
Thank goodness I live in a city of 8 million of them. Maybe I'll get a chance to watch some.
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February 23rd, 2009
09:26 am - Something I Thought I'd Never Live to Say...
...but am so glad it's happened.
"ALEX! Stop dropping popcorn on the rug! You're just making more work for the robot!"
Now, where's my frakking jet pack?
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February 9th, 2009
09:05 pm - Comic con!
This year I thought I would actually bring a camera and document my trip. I would find the weirdest thing there and get my picture in front of it.
The thing below is not the weirdest thing there.
Because, like Alice through the Looking Glass, the weirdest things keep getting weirder just a few steps out of your reach.
I *didn't* get a picture with Phil Foglio.
(ok, he's not that weird, it was just surprising to turn a corner and see a childhood idol just standing there at a booth, selling books and smiling genially)
I *didn't* get a picture with Colin Baker.
(6th Doctor...?)
I *didn't* get a picture with the life-size standee of David Tennant in the booth next to Colin Baker.
('cause that just would have been mean)
I *didn't* get a photo of myself with an excellent Joker and Harley, both casually sipping Starbucks.
(but my friend Jean did--see if you can find it over at www.comicmix.com.
I *didn't* get my photo with an adorable chibi Predator.
I *didn't* get a photo of myself with an equally adorable box of Geektastic candy.
(the pocket protectors were all gone. Barry? Please get on that)
I *didn't* get my photo with a lot of other, weirder things. I *did* have a great time, chatted with a lot of old friends, bought far less than I wanted to, and crashed the Del Rey after party where I actually pogo-ed to the Ramones. Which is hilarious, 'cause I'm 6 months pregnant.
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February 2nd, 2009
12:34 pm - Coffee Grams!
One of the cafes where I regularly work--Grumpy's--is having coffee-grams for Valentine's Day. All of the regulars are getting polaroid potraits which will be then posted on a board and numbered. For $5 you can send a secret note to a fellow freelancer--er, I mean coffeedrinker--with a card valid for one coffee.
Intriguing!
I don't have any secret crushes, or if I did, I sure as hell wouldn't mention it on a public blog my husband reads. But I *do* have burning curiosity about my fellow regulars. There's one guy who keeps almost the same schedule as I do, and same cafe circuit. He sort of looks like the lead singer of Keane, has an expensive computer, and plays chess. I can't tell if he's a grad student or independently wealthy. And there are a bunch of folk who seem like they might be writers too (a lot grumpier and poorly dressed than the graphic designers), but I've never been able to figure out for sure. There are also a lot of strung out rock star types, but they tend to frequent Eat Records.
Yeah, I *could* strike up a conversation. But that would mean I would have to greet him or her each time we saw each other, and social interactions, and... You know. Talk. Brrr.
(it is telling that the other people I think might be writers, and have known by sight for almost a year and a half now, also do not strike up conversations. We will do the 'nod,' but that's it)
Anyway, I love the idea of coffeegrams. Back in high school--this is a true story--various clubs used to sell candygrams around Valentine's Day: for twenty-five cents you could send a note and a candy to someone in their homeroom. Of course the more popular you were, the more candy you got.
My best friend and I used to send each other candygrams as if they were from secret crushes, so at least we'd get one or two. Typically, she would keep track of who got what from whom, and I would keep track of the candy. And eat whatever no one wanted.
(props to green apple jolly ranchers!)
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January 29th, 2009
01:26 pm - A Brilliant Collection of Priceless Advice for Writers
SF Signal has an amazing post from famous writers about 'What's the best writing advice you ever received and who gave it to you?'
It's all science fiction, speculative fiction, and fantasy writers answering, but much of the advice is sooth cross-genre.
http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2009/01/mind-meld-shrewd-writing-advice-from-some-of-science-fiction-and-fantasys-best-writers/
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