Slightly OT: Perfection Wasted

Today would have been my dad's birthday, so he is very much on my mind, as he was for every entry here at the end. Here's an Updike poem (so even more apropos) he had read at his memorial service:

Perfection Wasted

And another regrettable thing about death
is the ceasing of your own brand of magic,
which took a whole life to develop and market --
the quips, the witticisms, the slant
adjusted to a few, those loved ones nearest
the lip of the stage, their soft faces blanched
in the footlight glow, their laughter close to tears,
their tears confused with their diamond earrings,
their warm pooled breath in and out with your heartbeat,
their response and your performance twinned.
The jokes over the phone. The memories
packed in the rapid-access file. The whole act.
Who will do it again? That's it: no one;
imitators and descendants aren't the same.

And The Fair Land

The Wall Street Journal has its Thanksgiving traditions, and I have mine:





There's also something hilarious to me that this song is about not having a Cadillac, yet the video here shows nothing but Cadillacs. I don't think that's balm for the wound of not having one, especially not one with the TV antenna in the back.

Still, happy Thanksgiving y'all. This has been a lean, sad year for me in many ways, but I can still read and type and enjoy the cooking smells.

Another Harvard classic

Full prank here.

The arrears continue

Father Knickerbocker understands.

I'm sorry to get these things up so late but that's the price I pay for working these days. And I may not get to today's reading because I want to watch the World Series on Tivo. Don't tell me in comments who wins!

OT: The Green Fields of the Mind

The famous part of A. Bartlett Giamatti's essay, told in baseball cards. (Though when you're an O's fan, your heart comes pre-broken.)

Via Deadspin.

Holy Geez

I forgot to post! I've read it and everything. I'll try to get to post-bedtimes. In the meantime, please enjoy Look Around You:

OT: You know you're in Los Angeles when

1. You get mail from the "Gregory Peck Reading Series" from the LA Public Library.

2. You open the envelope and the top third of the mailer says "Presents Robert Wagner and Jill St-John"

3. You unfold the mailer and it says, "Reading from A.R. Gurney's Play "Love Letters."

But of course. I can't help thinking that there are two random actors checking a book out of the L.A. Public Library right now who you'd rather see doing this; and besides, I think of "Love Letters" as something you see a poster for at a playhouse in a summer resort, with people from, like, "Law & Order" in one or both of the roles. It's actually kind of surprising it hasn't been made fun of in passing on "The Simpsons."

I confess to knowing nothing about the play, however. Is it any good? Why don't you ever see it done with a gay couple? Wouldn't more people show up if "Love Letters" was being read by George Takei and, say, Richard Chamberlain? Is it because the plot hinges on something like, I don't know, breast augmentation? (I've been in Hollywood too long.)

So many questions. So little interest in looking up the answers myself.

OT: George and Ira Eliot

So Beche-la-mer over at Two Cents (a blog that linked here, thanks very much) notes that it's both George Gershwin's and T.S. Eliot's birthday today. She wrote this:

One of these mornings
You're going to rise up singing,
Then you'll spread your wings
And you'll take to the sky.
Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song,
Sweet Thames, run softly, for I speak not loud or long.

And I reply thusly:

I'll build a stairway to paradise
At the first turning of the second stair
With a new step every day
I turned and saw below
I'm going to get there at any price
The same shape twisted on the banister
Step aside, I'm on my way
Under the vapor in the fetid air
I've got the blues, and up above it's so fair
Struggling with the devil of the stairs who wears
Shoes, come on and carry me there
The deceitful face of hope and despair
I'll build a stairway to paradise
At the second turning of the second stair
With a new step every day.

One could do this all day.

All the untidy activity continues

Awful but cheerful.

OT: My other free writing

Can be accessed, today, right here.

UPDATE: Permalink here.

OT: Still life with children

My one-year-old niece is staggering around while the grownups try to put themselves in the same condition. Gin-vermouth is 5:1, to those scoring at home.

Way OT: Yacht Rock

While checking my Ramones reference for the last post, I found a link to Yacht Rock, which is one of those things I think I enjoy out of proportion to how funny it is. Nevertheless, I'm FUTUREPOSTING a sample (the one about Steely Dan and "FM"):

Update: I think I should start a museum

In this post, I mentioned that I had decided against putting in a picture of a woman with a rolling pin in her hand, and now I find that my friend Julia Ruchman has sent me the following (entitled "Angry Wife Has Doctor On Standby"):

I think this might be the beginning of a collection. But why have the doctor there? Maybe he's prescribing her steroids.