Category: blog

With Malice Toward Some

Today I want to introduce an old friend of mine — the book, not the writer, whom sadly I never met. Margaret Halsey published With Malice Toward Some in 1938, based on letters that Halsey (an American) wrote to her family when she and her husband lived in England.

The book is a fond, acerbic, bemused and sometimes who-are-these-people look at the English of the late 1930’s. I’ve probably read this book a dozen times, and I still laugh out loud. I like that it is often pointed but never mean-spirited: I hate the irony of our current days in which something must be hurtful in order to establish the writer as a person of “wit.” There’s enough real contempt and diminishment of others in the world, why should anyone make a career out of it?

And Halsey’s a good writer: concise, observant, a wonderful sense of rhythm, and the ability (that I especially prize in writers) to be particular; to create moments that feel alive and immediate seventy years later. She fell in love with the English countryside and many of the people. She hated the food, marveled at the social customs, and found herself constantly surprised by the reality of a culture whose differences were far greater than she had expected. The Peg Halsey of this book is a vibrant, funny woman, curious and open and adventurous. She’s alive in her world, and it’s fun to be there with her.

My plan over the next little while is to occasionally share some of Halsey’s pithier moments with you, just because I like them and hope they will please you. It’s no bad thing to start a Monday with a smile.

June 7th
While Henry has gone to buy chocolate bars and reading matter, I am sitting in the waiting room of the Southampton station of the Southern Railway. My eyes, I am afraid, are going to fall right out of their sockets before the end of the day — I have been looking at everything so strenuously. It took a long while to get off the boat, and involved a great deal of standing in line and filling out cards and blanks. There is something about filling out printed forms which arouses lawless impulses in me and makes me want to do things that will have the file clerks sitting up with a jerk, like putting in
 
RELIGION……Druid…..
 
Today, when one of my blanks said OCCUPATION, I wrote down none, though I suspected this would not do. A severe but courteous official confirmed this impression. So I crossed it out and wrote parasite, which, not to be too delicate about it, is what I am. This made the official relax a little and he himself put housewife in what space there was left. “Be a prince,” I said, “Make it typhoid carrier.” But he only smiled and blotted out parasite so that it would not show.
 
— from With Malice Toward Some by Margaret Halsey

And this one’s for Nicola, who had remarkably similar experiences from the other direction when she first visited America. Ask her sometime about the salad dressing. Or the vinegar.

June 8th
Today Henry and I and some of the faculty from the college lunched at an Exeter restaurant. It was a bad lunch, half cold and wholly watery, and in order to keep body and soul together, I asked for a glass of milk. The waitress was staggered.
 
“Milk?” she said incredulously.
 
“Why, yes,” I replied, almost equally incredulously. “A glass of milk.”
 
She wheeled off in the direction of the kitchen. In three minutes she was back again.
 
“Please,” she asked, “do you want this milk hot or cold?”
 
I blinked a little and said I wanted it cold. The Englishmen who were with us looked amused. “You Americans,” one of them said, with a spacious tolerance. We resumed our conversation, and in a short space the waitress made a third appearance. She had a hounded expression.
 
“Do you,” she inquired desperately, “want this milk in a cup or a glass?”
 
“Just roll it up in a napkin,” I answered thoughtlessly, and then was sorry, seeing how embarrassed and confused she was. I started to make amends, but she suddenly bolted and I never saw her again. Another waitress came to take the dessert order, and the milk project was tacitly abandoned.
 
— from With Malice Toward Some by Margaret Halsey

Enjoy your day.

Box of bees

Which is what I am busier than today… so I aologize that you have wandered all the way over here only to be told that there’s nothing to see.

But I’ll be back tomorrow. And coming soon, posts on a delicious 1938 book, my Sunday-paper reading, how the playground never truly leaves us, and quite possibly some Frank Sinatra music…

I hope you’re enjoying your weekend.

Jukebox

Today’s theme is:

emo kid

I am sorry to say that I don’t remember who sent me this image, but it’s just perfect. I was that emo kid sometimes (sadly, sometimes I still am. So much for being a grownup). Today it’s possible to do a cheerful post about All Things Emo because I’m not feeling like painting my room black and then crawling under the bed with my headphones turned up to 11. But I’ve had those days. Haven’t you?

I don’t do this music every day: I prefer my angst a little rougher and in full howl (can you say Nine Inch Nails? I knew you could). But today’s songs get into the part of me that still sometimes goes off into the corner to be a weepy emo kid; and that’s very useful for particular kinds of writing. Much of what I do is about big feelings, and often I use emo to encourage those feelings to come out and play.

Because big feelings aren’t nearly as sophisticated as we like to pretend when we put on our Grownup Boots. I know so many people who intellectualize their feelings, codify and categorize and parse them to their molecular levels, trace the psychology, and consider them “solved” because they have been explained. And meanwhile all those wild inconsistent inexplicable messy feelings are still running and tugging and clawing those rational brains, those controlled bodies, sometimes trashing the joint just because they can. Making us ecstatic, or bitter, crushed or gutted or overcome by any number of desires that roll over us like waves. Sometimes we are simply a big hungry mouth that just wants to be filled. And you want to explain that? Don’t talk to me about rational.

When I write, the irrational hungry space is where I often need to go. Music always helps me with that; it’s my native guide to the I-can’t-breathe-now misery of rejection; the adrenaline rush when someone you’re hot for looks right at you; the moment when we want to hurt someone bad because they don’t love us back, when they become a thing to be broken so that they can’t fuck with us anymore. And you know, at least so far, those things feel pretty much the same at 48 as they did at 14. I have more reference points: I can say oh, it’s you again, and sigh, and sit with it until it’s ready to move on. But recognizing it, knowing it inside out, never makes it stop coming back around.

So if you’re feeling like the big drama of big sad find-yourself-a-corner feelings, here’s a playlist for you.

“The Secret’s in the Telling” by Dashboard Confessional is iconic emo. I listened to this about seven million times when I was writing the middle eight of Dangerous Space, the sadness and rage between Mars and Duncan.

“Think Twice…” by Groove Armada is a song that caught me completely off guard when I first really listened to it — I was standing at the sink in our old house, washing dishes, and I began to cry. There was a window over the sink that faced directly into the kitchen window of the house next door, and I’m sure our neighbor thought I was experiencing some particular personal grief: and it was grief, but without a particular source. Just… well, I don’t know, that’s emo for you. Sometimes feeling just is.

“In a Lifetime” is from the Irish group Clannad. Beautiful stuff, and this song is my favorite of theirs for its passion and its edge of desperation; the wildness within us.

And then there is the spiritual mother of emo, Suzanne Vega, singing “Some Journey” in her delicate voice that gets right to the heart of the road not taken. Surely we’ve all met someone in our life about whom we’ve wondered What if?

Have a great weekend, with no sadness except the musical kind.

Edited to add: I’m sorry to say that I don’t have enough server space for all my audio, so most jukebox playlists become inactive after a few months. This is one. Very sorry. But the music is worth seeking out, it’s great!

To use the E-Phonic MP3 Player you will need Adobe Flash Player 9 or better and a Javascript enabled browser.

Ready for your close-up?

If you’ve always wanted to star in a movie, these people just made it easier for you.

This is pretty amazing to me. Digital editing of this kind — substituting images, etc. — has been possible for a long time. But this is the first real mass-market mainstreaming of the tech I’ve seen: an affordable price point, all the equipment you need, plug-and-play, with starter scenes provided and the promise of more to come.

Right now I’m guessing the scenes are carefully chosen for ease of insertion-of-you without disrupting the flow. I’m also guessing that a logical next step is to increase the complexity so that we’ll be able to put ourselves in groups, not just in front of them; in action, not just still. And surely we will get to the point where we can simply record an image of ourselves and have it so seamlessly morphed into whatever scene we wish, into whatever character, that the possibilities will be endless.

And yet, although I’m stone in love with movies and am breaking my heart and my back to write one, I find I’m not ready to put Yoostar on my wish list. Not because it’s bad — I think it’s very cool, will jazz a lot of people, and may open all kinds of doors to new ways of thinking about how we interact with pop culture and visual media. I think we’ll see a new kind of political/social commentary/protest media grow from these seeds. I predict a new wave of school projects, blog entries, and astonishing mash-ups and vids. I imagine that so many people will make a dream come true to see themselves on the screen.

I’m delighted for all those people: anything that gives a person joy without hurting someone else is a Big Win in my book. But for me this would be a record of an experience that I haven’t actually had. I don’t want to see myself in a movie, I want to live it. I want the experience. I only know two ways for me to get that: act, or write. At least until there is f-tech in the world…

Shake it in the summer

Yesterday we test-drove an Adult Summertime Ice Cream Beverage, otherwise known as a Roasted Pineapple Rum Milkshake. Extremely tasty. The recipe is from
Bobby Flay’s Burgers, Fries, and Shakes by (wait for it) Bobby Flay.

I am so All-American in this way. I think a really good burger is a thing of beauty and a joy forever. I can eat my body weight in french fries. And when I was a kid, I went through a period where I absolutely refused to eat any traditional breakfast foods: no eggs, no pancakes, no cereal (not even Froot Loops or Cheerios, which pretty much made me an alien in the eyes of my community), nothing… except chocolate milkshakes. My parents called the pediatrician, who chuckled and said, Well, if it’s all she’ll eat then drop an egg in it and give it to her. So every morning, my very patient father got up and made me a chocolate milkshake for breakfast (*blows kiss to father through the internet*).

He did not, however, put any liquor in it. It took Bobby Flay to bring me to that particular aha! moment. I am also finally going to learn to make proper french fries All By Myself, and there are several burgers I’ve got my eye on. I am sure that many of them will go nicely with a lovely bottle of rioja (grin).

Here’s the recipe. It supposedly makes four milkshakes, to which I say *snort* — I made a half-recipe to serve two, and could easily have drunk it all myself.

Some tips: use premium ice cream with a high fat content and no thickeners like food starch or guar gum. And take the time to actually roast the pineapple, it’s worth it.

Enjoy.

Bobby Flay’s Roasted Pineapple Milkshake, adult version…

Makes 4 (if you are a munchkin or an anorexic supermodel, otherwise it makes 2)

1/2 small ripe Golden pineapple, core removed, cut into wedges (3 cups)
1/2 cup pineapple juice, chilled
1/4 cup lemon sorbet
10 ounces premium vanilla ice cream (about 1-2/3 packed cups)

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.

2. Combine the pineapple and 1/4 cup of the juice in a small roasting dish and roast in the oven, turning once, until golden brown (about 15 minutes). Remove from the oven and let cool completely. (Kelley’s shortcut: stick the wedges in a bowl and put them in the freezer for about 5 minutes).

3. Set aside 2 or 4 (depending) pineapple wedges for garnish. Put the remaining cooled roasted pineapple, any juice from the roasting dish, and the remaining 1/4 cup pineapple juice in a blender. Add 2 ounces (1/4 cup) dark rum. Blend until combined, about 7 seconds.

4. Add the sorbet and ice cream, and blend until smooth (about 10 seconds). Serve in chilled glasses and top each with a pineapple wedge.

Just leave out the rum if you’re giving it to your kids for breakfast. Getting your kids drunk will not make them get better grades or clean their room more often, and Child Services really will get grumpy, and how are you going to enjoy your own rum milkshakes in the slammer?

Sherlock Holmes

I know there’s been a lot of video around here lately. What can I say? It’s that time of year, and besides, I love the movies. If I had a Big Pile of Money, we would have one of those little theatres in our house, with proper seats and footrests and a popcorn machine, and soundproofing so I could watch movies in the wee hours without disturbing Nicola.

Sigh.

But until then, we just have to do this the old-fashioned way, with air-conditioned movie theatres and Netflix and embedded trailers from YouTube. *snort* Is it just me, or did the definition of old-fashioned change while I was blinking? I remember riding five miles on my bike to go to the movies, back in the day when the seats weren’t that comfy and the film was always scratched by the time it got to Tampa. I don’t even remember there being a lot of trailers on TV, so many of the movies were just a big mystery. Sometimes I miss that frisson of pure discovery; but I like the trailers, the chance to put my imagination to work in the weeks while I wait, the anticipation, the payoff.

And so I am anticipating this, in which Robert Downey, Jr. is not your mama’s Sherlock Holmes. Purists will perhaps deplore the sheer testosterone of it all; but I’ve always thought there’s room for more ideas about Holmes than just the thin effete braniac slightly-Aspbergery guy. So we’ll see how it goes. I’m already imagining…

Enjoy.

 

Prez can has cheezburger!

President Obama went out for a burger yesterday.

If you are rolling your eyes now and wondering Is this news?, well, mileage varies, of course. But it matters to me that the President of the United States actually paid money out of his own wallet for cheeseburgers from his local burger joint (twice this month, so far). He placed his order, took a number, stood in line, waited, and took his lunch home in a brown paper bag. He talked to people eating burgers on their lunch break and people who drain french fries and put pickles on buns for a living.

He runs around on the lawn with his daughters and his dog. He plays basketball with his staff. And he dances with his wife like he means it.

It matters to me that Barack Obama takes time out from leading the world to actually live in it every once in a while. I don’t/won’t always like the choices he makes as President — but I will always think the cheeseburger choices rock.

——————

And if “can has cheezburger” means nothing to you, cruise on over to the Lolcats website and find out what it’s all about (there are Loldogs there too, for those of you of a different orientation).

Playing for (more) change

In December I posted the first Playing for Change video of musicians around the world playing/singing “Stand By Me.” Take a look if you haven’t seen it. It’s a wonderful video: so powerful to see the song come together from around the world, people applying their individual skills to a common idea.

Here’s another.

Whatever else we may be, we’re all human; and I love the ways we find to connect with each other.