December 2009
23 posts
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The scene: My parents’ annual Christmas buffet. I am on the porch, seated across from the woman we’ll call “Nervous Newlywed.” She is balancing a plastic plate of food on her lap, glancing nervously over her shoulder through the sliding glass door at the party in progress.
Nervous Newlywed: Where’s my husband?
Me: Inside. I believe.
NN: I don’t like...
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It is possible, that after attending a birthday party for a friend of a friend, and after that dropping by a freelancer holiday thing, I accidentally crashed the staff Christmas party of a hotel. It is possible that this happened because Wingfield wanted to go to a place where she could “meet men,” and I looked out the window of the Irish pub we were at, where the freelancers were...
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Wait, so this is an analysis of David Bowie’s teeth, and their effect on his career? They maybe held him back, for a time, when they were fangy? I would love for these talking heads to tackle Shane MacGowan’s grotty chompers.
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Tonight is the return of Boston Market Christmas. It began as a sort of low-budget holiday party organized by my friend KJ wherein we would meet at the “market,” grab some food, and commandeer the downstairs dining section to eat and do a gift exchange. As an annual event, it petered out due to scheduling conflicts and some, er, light health code violations. (I swear I was fine until...
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The Guardian’s Books Blog, on the problem of acknowledging the best, while ignoring the worst, books of the decade:
To remember only achievement and worth is to ignore the vast majority of our cultural experience. It helps create that strange cultural telescoping that makes us think that the past was always better; that odd warping of collective memory that enables us to recall even the...
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I take the smallest comfort now that when on the rare shopping trip, as everything style-wise it seems is shrunken and skinny, that some clothiers, some labels, have developed clever branding for a more generous cut of shirt or pant, like the Classic fit say, or the Heritage fit. It is reassuring when trying on clothes and feeling I’m having a “husky day.” As I alternate...
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Oh, wow. This is from The 12 Days of Christmas by Britain’s poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy. (Did you know she is, according to Wikipedia, “the first woman, the first Scot, and the first openly bisexual person to hold the position”? I did not. Fantastic!)
1 On the first day of Christmas, a buzzard on a branch.
In Afghanistan, no partridge, pear tree; but my true love sent to...
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The British laureate gets a “butt of sack” (about 600 bottles of sherry) and is called upon to compose verse for national occasions. (Former laureate Andrew Motion whipped up poems for Queen Elizabeth’s 80th birthday and the late Queen Mum’s 100th.) The U.S. poet laureate’s job, as described by the Library of Congress, is to serve as a “lightning rod for the poetic impulse of...
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