Great to see classmate and friend Jonathan Katz as cover photo and (classy) centerfold in the new issue of the Medill alumni magazine. If you haven't been following along, Katz won the 2011 Medill Medal for Courage in Journalism for his reporting on the Haiti earthquake. Katz was the only U.S. correspondent in the country when the quake hit.
You can read some of his acceptance remarks (speaking with another old friend of this blog, Marcel, author of its '10 classic "Clearly, he's a danger") in The Daily story, and see the full event on YouTube. Seven years ago, Katz and I looked at being roommates in an apartment in Rosslyn. Journalism and I are grateful he decided not to settle down.
I read that phrase recently and liked it very much. Then some related things floated by this week, and they needed capturing. On dwelling…
On dwelling in our consumption:Friend and colleague Max has a nice post quoting old-school Aeneid translator Johnny Dryden (last seen in this blog seven and a half years ago). "A poet cannot speak too plainly on the stage; for volat irrevocabile verbum [in a Horace poem-letter, "A word spoken is past recalling," Max explains]; the sense is lost, if it be not taken flying; but what we read alone, we have leisure to digest," Dryden writes in his intro. "There an author may beautify his sense by the boldness of his expression, which if we understand not fully at the first, we may dwell upon it till we find the secret force and excellence."
Max's addition: "I think he'd feel the same way about the internet. It's like a Barnes & Noble minus the cozy chairs. I'm probably losing brain cells left and right because of the constant carnival barker barrage of information; so in exchange, give me a quiet corner or two. For some quality excellence dwelling." Early this Saturday, I can't agree more.
He starts us with, "Writing with a pen or pencil on a piece of paper is becoming an infrequent activity, even for those who were once taught the rigorous rules of penmanship in grade school and hardly saw a day go by without jotting down a telephone number or a list of food items to buy at the market on the way home, and for that purpose carried with them something to write with and something to write on." Simic then gets into how we still can practice this activity today, and I'm a fan. Just last weekend, cleaning a closet, I ran across one of the tiny notebooks I carried with me everywhere the year just after college.
On dwelling in our food: That essay makes me think of one Simic did a while back, one that's been sitting in my bookmarks a while. "Thinking about it the other day, I realized that most of what I learned about my family members and their lives I heard over family meals," he writes to us. Yes, to us! Part of what I love about Simic's essays is how warm is he toward his reader, something modern essayists often neglect but our Aeneid-writing pal Virgil and his crowd knew well. "More than that," continues Simic, "some of the stories I still tell my friends I first heard some relative or family friend relate over a long dinner or Sunday lunch more than sixty years ago." I had one such story exchange last night and expect to have several more this weekend. They feel fortunate.
This kind of rain, the variety that comes and goes, it makes you want to race. As gray as the sky stays, as awkward as crowds of umbrellas make the subway, as many puddles as you step into as dusk arrives steadily earlier each evening, you know this kind of rain doesn't have consistency… and maybe you do. The storm comes and goes, rolls in and drifts out. A tornado warning or flood watch feel random, the spin of a wheel. Today, at this hour, this weather is yours. The cloudburst five minutes ago is a lottery win, no big payoff but a decent scratcher, a chance meeting, letter in the mail, leaf in your hair, bantam surprise. You expect the drops. When they fall, the validation puts you ahead.
What do you do, in front of the rain? You admire the sky and give it a nod, and you're down the street and moving. Even when you are still, you are down the street and moving. You reach the station, the office, the bar, the apartment door, the shower, the bedroom, the dreaming, the morning before the sky can even return acknowledgment. You're beneath the drops, but you're faster than the fall from the gray to the ground. Or you're simply dancing around them. Who knows how body A or body B might move through the rain and not get wet. This kind of weather spits and whines. But you stride and stand like you mean it.
You tell yourself as much as the rain comes down and the occasional lightning threatens to blast a transformer into darkness. You find your favorite hungry band covering summer pop, slow and with seasonal intent. You hope to be quicker and more firm in stride tomorrow. You sit down, drying, and get out what you can before the lights go out.
I'm happy to be on top right now, but parity has its way of being itself.
My fantasy football history:
2003. Jimmy Sandwich. Eight losses to start. Finished 10/11.
2004. Too Angry for Soccer. Lost in championship game. 2/12.
2005. Used Your Toothbrush. Champions. 1/12.
"If you've never done it before, this is a great year to start. After all if Coop can win it all with the NFL knowledge of an effeminate-tending sock-puppet, then surely you've got as good a chance as anyone." –Commissioner Adam, August 2006
2006. AnyGivenSockPuppet. Champions. 1/14.
2007. Gridiron Engagement. Live, die with Brady. 4/14.
2008. Vote Touchdown. Lost in the semifinals. 3/12.
2009. Didn't play. For the life of me, I can't remember why.
2010. NationalPublic Smash. Great year, bad playoffs. 4/6.
2011. Imaginary Touchdown. We shall see.
In a great mood last night, can't sleep. Finally pass out around two. Wake at seven, half an hour before the alarm. Series of meetings on future projects. Full rewrite on a proposal. Chasing daily fixes. Quick dinner to talk digital and music with friend Randy. Then train, home.
More rewrites going on now. I just tried to remember what I had for lunch today, and it took a couple minutes (barbecue and got soaked getting it). But still in a nice mood. There's usually a song now, but I can't think of one. Kind of lost in thought, tired, but in a good way.
A colleague and I were talking yesterday afternoon about absinthe. I was explaining how the liquor, near mythological but oh so real, put a glow on everything. As cool as that effect was, what I had forgotten in conversation was what was cooler: experiencing the effect on its own.
Without a sip, a cool, humid night does the work, flaring the lights. The rain hesitates. You cross a bridge home, and the whole city is glowing.
When you love a TV show, you love the making of that TV show — the writing process, the creative forces, the influences, the way scene slips to screen. Just like August's Slate analysis of one of Community's best episodes, Wired's story on the show's boss, Dan Harmon is a fun read.
It’s 4:45 in the afternoon at Community’s LA headquarters, and inside an airless writers’ room, Harmon slugs down a five-hour energy drink, picks up a near-drained tumbler of vodka, and stares at a text-jammed whiteboard. He and a half-dozen writers are stuck on a scene in which one of the Community regulars goes head-to-head with guest star John Goodman. The scene is just two guys talking, but nobody can figure out how the conflict should play out.
Harmon begins pacing the room, slowly launching into a discourse that’s part Socratic inquiry, part one-man improv show. He lists examples of anything in the culture that might show how powerful men treat the weak: Goodfellas, Neil LaBute films, Freudian theory, even the actorly essence of Goodman himself. The whole spiel is immensely entertaining—like hearing a version of Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire” that’s been rewritten by a semiotics-obsessed video-store clerk—and it concludes with Harmon reenacting Ned Beatty’s famous monologue in Network.
A worthy sidebar: How they fact-check the show. "There have been times when we'll actually rent movies and then we'll re-approach the story after everyone has seen it. With the 'A Fistful of Paintballs' [a classic] episode last year, we spent half a day watching [a classic as well, and if you haven't see it, go rent it right now] Fistful of Dollars."
Also, go watch Network. The Beatty scene, one of the greatest ever.
No Depression has a started a series where readers ask questions of famed musical people. Lots of pubs take questions from readers, but ND curates with greatness. This exchange with T Bone Burnett, asked about "the greatest lyric couplet of all time," is bound to bring a smile.
In my view the best lyric couplet of all might be from this verse:
She lit a burner on the stove and offered me a pipe "I thought you'd never say hello" she said "You look like the silent type" She opened up a book of poems and handed it to me Written by an Italian poet from the thirteenth century And every one of them words rang true and glowed like burning coal Pouring off of every page like it was written in my soul from me to you Tangled up in blue
I’d take maybe:
“She opened up a book of poems and handed it to me Written by an Italian poet from the thirteenth century”
Or the next couplet.
Then there is:
Long Tall Sally she’s built for speed She got every thing that Uncle John need
Then he quotes lines from Cold, Cold Heart and others.
Friend Jeff, whom I met at the picnic before the start of kindergarten, back when Chevy Chase Playground's most beloved attraction was a massive, tipping, iron-and-steel, sun-broiling, grounded ball with only chain-link caging underneath to stop us from a pulverization (or from tipping the ball hard enough to break free from its moorings and roll away, past one's parents, through the playground fence, down a hill and into 41st Street traffic — either way the most legendary death a child in our neighborhood in 1985 could imagine), is getting married.
The bachelor party was Saturday night. His brother James organized. New brother-in-law Wes drove down from Pennsylvania. Friend Mike threw open the doors at Ceiba. We saw our Caps. RFD performed a miracle with never-ending crab pretzels and beer. Many toasts were made. There was no possible way you could repay a guy for being a great friend for so very many years. But hopefully he got the picture.
What my phone brought back:
Occupy DC passes. "What's that? They're chanting, 'Jeff, don't do it…' "
Amid tequila, the picture most representative of the night as a whole.
"If we asked the mascot to give Jeff a lap dance, it'd say no, right?"
The bachelor and his brother, the best man, mission accomplished.
And Caps win! (In OT!) Everyone leaps up. A winning night all around.
… of best songs to play when you wake up before the weekend sun.
If you haven't heard Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit's Here We Rest, it's worth your time and your Sunday morning. Codeine's one of my favorite songs on it. Friend Meghan came away a Jason person the way I came away a Patterson person after we saw the Drive-By Truckers doc, and she sold me on Jason's post-Truckers work. He and the band visit D.C. in a couple weeks. But if you can't catch them then, check out the rest of the KEXP session from which this video comes (via No Depression).
