11 ways we cheer up
1. Lip dub videos.
2. Medill's alum listserv grows busy on Wednesday. A member tries to unsubscribe by sending an e-mail titled "UNSUBSCRIBE" to the listserv. This message goes to the entire distro and does not unsubscribe him. This mistake has happened once a month or so for years. But this time someone replies to the full list — "NO try again." This is somehow the best bluntness you've read all day, and you send it to a friend. That night, an hour after your unexpected break-up, as you hope and wait for her call, the phone buzzes. You race to it but have to laugh when your unknowing friend/universe's txt simply declares, "No. Try again."
4. "The iPad as a writing coach's dream." A blog finds a writer using a Bluetooth keyboard with his iPad. A quote from him has a simple but amazing sentence: "For longer writing, there's a sort of freedom that comes from not even looking at the screen while you type." There are stories of taking wireless keyboards to other rooms and typing. While my keys are wireless, my typing isn't that cool. But I admire it so much.
5. Watching the best Grey's Anatomy in years with three friends, one of whom was there for you days earlier when you had a premonition, one of whom out of the blue and not knowing your wrecked week says he likes your blog and one of whom sends you a link she thinks you'll like with the subject "Blog that will rock your face off." I now owe Evan a post: "If I worked at Seattle Grace during the shooting, I would…"
6. Remembering last weekend when Friday was rain.
But how that Saturday was sun and the Farmer's Market.
That Sunday was where things went wrong. I thought by Monday I'd learned my lesson. The week had more to teach me. But before that.
7. The existence of In the Wee Small Hours. I'm on the record here that it's one of my top 50 or top 25 songs of all time, and it's come up more than once here, even making me finally come around on Louise Gluck. The song has received tens of thousands of words in its life, so I can't say anything fresh about it now. But I'm not a good memorizer, and I can still stumble through all the words in the song. Never happens.
8. Journalism movies from other eras. Somewhere towards four in the morning Thursday, TCM was running 1952's Scandal Sheet. A tabloid editor in a circ war accidentally kills his wife and covers it up. His star reporter, played by John Derek who managed to marry Ursula Andress, Linda Evans and Bo Derek and photograph all three for Playboy, and a features reporter, played by a fantastic-looking Donna Reed, begin to dig without knowing their boss' role. All the mugs are great. Headlines include "WILD TEEN-AGE PARTIES REVEALED." People say things like, "Get her in here, we have to be at the ballroom at 8. No time for face powder." Of course, the reporters date, but it never goes anywhere.
9. Casey choosing Thursday of all days to post Robyn's Dancing on My Own. "With nothing left to lose," he writes. Agreed. Video follows.
10. Thursday night's dream. My family starts to cross outside the mall. Someone still with me on the packed corner yells for them to get back, traffic's coming. When they retreat, someone else on the corner makes a quiet joke at their expense. A man closer to them hears and repeats it loudly. Yet another person calls out the joke stealing, but the woman next to him disagrees. I jump in and ask her if she really wants to take that side. Do you really want to spend your life calling out strangers in the street? She says no, and we get to talking… I ask what she does. She says she's in communications and is also a Redskins cheerleader. Turns out she's applying for a job with the county. As she has to head to her car and me to my own, she mentions a little about how she just got a role as a journalist in a local play. I laugh. She volunteers to give me her number unless I have other situations. She smiles. I wake up.
11. "You can make yourself hear that heat, if you want." It's NYT music critic Ben Ratliff writing about Exile on Main Street late this week. "Exile can seem like a unity of sound, place and time; much has been made of the fact that one of its greatest songs, Ventilator Blues, was inspired by the discomfort of the basement studio at Nellcôte, Mr. Richards's rented mansion on the French Riviera, with its one small air vent," he writes early on. "You can make yourself hear that heat, if you want."
August 27th, 2010 at 9:02 AM
[...] to his brother's vows, I'd like to thank Casey for introducing me this summer to Robyn's Dancing on My Own and the Scissor Sisters' Running Out. Both have lent beats for [...]