As soon as I spotted The Child That Books Built by Francis Spufford in the paper catalog provided by Slightly Foxed (http://www.foxedquarterly.com/), a quarterly periodical devoted to the pleasures of reading and the vast discoveries that come with it (It came with my order of the current issue and the second issue of its existence), I ordered it. I wanted to read about the journey of Spufford's childhood reading, what he found, what he latched onto, what nourished him, what made him curious about all kinds of things in the world. I might have gotten that if I decided to read past page 50, or I might have not, because skimming through the rest, being that I didn't want to read the rest, I found more of Spufford tangling with research he had done on the word formations of very young children, how they don't associate words with certain meanings right away, a gradual process. For many, many pages in the first chapter, he spent so much time with others, analyzing their works that explained all that, that I was waiting and waiting for him to get back to himself, to tell me more of becoming a reader. When I'm flipping the pages of the second chapter to see how far along I have until the third chapter, when there seemed to be more promise of what I was looking for, what the book seemed to have predicated itself on, that's an iffy sign.
In the car on the way to Woodland Hills today, I decided I had had enough of trying to get to what made me want to read Spufford's book, and switched to that second issue of Slightly Foxed, summer 2004. But one passage in Spufford's book remained in my mind:
"I'm thirty-two years old as I do my little performance in the bookshop, which means I've been reading for twenty-six years. Twenty-six years since the furze of black marks between the covers of The Hobbit grew lucid, and released a dragon. Twenty-six years therefore since the primary discovery that the dragon remained internal to me. Inside my head, Smaug hurtled, lava gold, scaly green. And nothing showed. Wars, jokes, torrents of faces would fill me from other books, as I read on, and none of that would show either. It made a kind of intangible shoplifting possible, I realized when I was eleven or so. If your memory was OK you could descend on a bookshop--a big enough one so that the staff wouldn't hassle a browser--and steal the contents of books by reading them. I drank down 1984 while lotering in the O section of the giant Heffers store in Cambridge. When I was full I carried the slopping vessel of my attention carefully out of the shop. Nobody at the cash desks could tell that I now contained Winston Smith's telescreen chanting its victories, O'Brien's voice admitting that the Thought Police got him a long time ago. It took me three successive Saturdays to steal the whole novel. But I have not ceased to be amazed at the invisibility I depend on. Other people can't see what so permeates me, I accept that, but why can't they? It fills me. The imbalance between what's felt and what shows means I carry the sensory load of fiction like a secret. Perhaps like all secrets it leaks in the end, but while I'm still freshly distended with my cargo of images, while I'm a fish tank with a new shoal in me, with one aspect of myself I enjoy the power of being different behind my unbetraying face."
I've done what Spufford did. Mom generally spends enough time in Target that back in June, I spotted Medium Raw by Anthony Bourdain in the books section. I read an excerpt of Kitchen Confidential back in March in Best Food Writing 2000, edited by Holly Hughes, and felt like I had been violently shaken and slapped around, and I wanted more. I was hooked on Bourdain after that, picked up Medium Raw, and began reading it as we walked through that Target. On the next visit to Target, not long after, I got to within 30 pages toward the end. I decided not to finish it, hold it until the next time, since Mom and Meridith were done looking around, and I didn't want them to wait any longer. Bad timing, because the next time we were at Target, it wasn't there anymore. And not the time after that either. I was ticked because I had only those 30 pages left in that wonderful trip through Bourdain's experiences. I was entranced by his profile of the fish-portioner at Le Bernardin, who receives the fish that's going to be used in the kitchen and portions it out for cooking, in a room all his own with a metal table and equipment all his own. The touching climax comes when Bourdain invites the man to eat in the restaurant he's only served from his place below.
I doubt Medium Raw will reappear in Target, but on the off-chance that we go to Barnes & Noble again for whatever reason (and dammit, I should have thought of it when we went a few weeks ago!), I'll find it and finish reading it there. Or I'll wait until we arrive in Henderson and I get my Henderson and Clark County library cards.
Monday, October 3, 2011
Sunday, October 2, 2011
Where I Go When I Write
"Funny how you could be in one place and, a split second later, be in another place entirely, I thought, pushing my hands deeper into my pockets as I picked up my pace." - Lindsey, The Opposite of Me by Sarah Pekkanen
When I read books in middle school, I wasn't in Atlanta at the time of Gone with the Wind nor in any of the locations set forth by other novels. Inexplicably, in my mind, I was always at the P.E. fields at Riverside Elementary in Coral Springs, Florida, where I attended the second half of second grade to fifth grade. There was the kickball field at the back, the basketball courts next to it, separated by high chain link fencing with an opening in the middle, and miscellaneous fields near the outdoor area that had concrete flooring, with a roof over it. If this was an office building, that area would have been the loading dock. Behind that building was the playground with tetherball poles and monkey bars.
In high school, all that was gone. When I got into a book, I was wherever the characters were, whatever the author was describing. I imagined it all.
The quote from The Opposite of Me by Sarah Pekkanen is Lindsey thinking about where she's gone in her life, from being fired by the prestigious advertising firm she worked for in New York City to being one-half of a dating service with a woman named May, intent on making her a full partner so she can travel to India as she's always dreamed. Lindsey is obviously thinking about the split-second impact of life, going from the life you thought you were supposed to have, to a life you never even envisioned. But for me, that quote is about where I am in my head when I'm writing. Not like I am now, but when I'm deep in my writing projects, working to hopefully be published again by the time I'm 30.
When I co-wrote What If They Lived?, I was always on the second floor of the now-formerly-named "M" building at College of the Canyons, the media building, near the door to the screening room that served many film classes, especially when I was writing my James Dean essay. I think that was because even though I enjoyed those film classes that I took only for credit (and which were always easy A grades), I was always on the outside, being that most of the movies shown were ones I had already seen many times, and when the teacher (who was also the golf coach for the girls' team) left for the period after putting on the movie, I left for the library, preferring to spend my time amidst worlds I didn't yet know.
So now I'm thinking of where I want to be in my head with the writing projects I have stacked up, and especially a new one that cropped up over the past week, which will tap into what I partly learned about the machinations of the studio system while writing What If They Lived?, but examined differently. I need a place that's full of good memories, that is relaxing all the time, that puts no pressure on me. A safe haven, where I can just walk around in my head, unsnarling problematic passages, mulling over what I've found in my research, figuring out how best to tell the stories that I've thought about.
And I've hit upon it. Before it was known as the 9th grade campus of Flanagan High, the campus of portables in Pembroke Pines, Florida (near the condo I lived in in Grand Palms) was home for a time to the 7th grade class of Silver Trail Middle before the school was fully built. We were there for the first half of the school year and then, over winter break, Dad and the rest of the teachers moved everything necessary into their new classrooms on the permanent campus. I spent part of my winter break with Dad doing exactly that, so I got a preview of the campus and knew where all my classes would be before the other kids arrived for the second half of the school year and tried to figure out where everything was.
But my fondest time in those portables was in 9th grade. Flanagan High had the 9th graders there because the main campus was overcrowded. In my first weeks as a 10th grader there, I thought I saw parts of the buildings bulging.
It was amidst those portables that I met Sara Mangan, who was my first serious crush. She was more mature than a healthy majority of the girls on campus, and I was impressed by that. She was incredibly smart, and I could sense a fellow voracious reader, and it was no wonder that there were many others during that year who gravitated to her. Unfortunately, she let me down easy when I got to the point where I thought I could let her know how I felt, because she was in a long-distance relationship that she wanted to stick with. It was worth the hug, though.
Nevertheless, we remained friends, still are, and she's a most trusted voice when I'm batting around writing project ideas. Currently, she's in her first year of law school at Florida State University, looking to fight human trafficking, and I think she's going to be one of the greatest lawyers the profession has ever witnessed. In a recent e-mail, I asked her what jurisdiction cases were, since she mentioned on her Facebook profile that she was studying them in class, even as the "FSU plague" made its way around the school (Colds and all), and she explained it so clearly to me that it was as if I was taking the same class alongside her. Back in late August, she sent me the first page of a story she's writing, a hobby to keep during the "madness that is the first year of law school," as she expressed it, being told that it's important to keep hobbies during that time, and I want more of that story. What better inspiration to have as a writer than a fellow reader and writer? I also remember her friend Stacey (or Stacy) back then, who let me borrow her VHS tapes of Tomorrow Never Dies, which introduced me to James Bond and set me on a course of the entire series becoming my Star Wars, and Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, taking much of its comedic inspiration from the Bond series.
But it's not only those events that make me go back to that campus with this new project and the other projects still in play. It's because of the peace I found there, of those wide-open fields, of those walkways between clusters of portables. There, I don't worry about what books have already been written about the subjects I want to cover (I don't worry about them anyway, but they are something to consider, finding what wasn't answered and attempting to answer it on my own through what I find), I don't think about my goal to be published again by the time I'm 30, I don't think about anything dealing with the book business. I just set about writing the book I want to read, which is possible since I have much more fun editing than writing. I enjoy writing, but I love playing around with words while editing, moving sentences around, deleting what doesn't work and replacing it with new words, sentences or paragraphs. I find an all-encompassing peace by being on that campus again in my head. My world is wide enough as it is right now, but it's even more vast over there again. I stroll over those walkways often, thinking about what I've written, wondering what more I can add, or what I don't need in my book. It's a constant inspiration.
And this is coming from someone who partly grew up going to Walt Disney World every weekend and sometimes during the week just for dinner.
When I read books in middle school, I wasn't in Atlanta at the time of Gone with the Wind nor in any of the locations set forth by other novels. Inexplicably, in my mind, I was always at the P.E. fields at Riverside Elementary in Coral Springs, Florida, where I attended the second half of second grade to fifth grade. There was the kickball field at the back, the basketball courts next to it, separated by high chain link fencing with an opening in the middle, and miscellaneous fields near the outdoor area that had concrete flooring, with a roof over it. If this was an office building, that area would have been the loading dock. Behind that building was the playground with tetherball poles and monkey bars.
In high school, all that was gone. When I got into a book, I was wherever the characters were, whatever the author was describing. I imagined it all.
The quote from The Opposite of Me by Sarah Pekkanen is Lindsey thinking about where she's gone in her life, from being fired by the prestigious advertising firm she worked for in New York City to being one-half of a dating service with a woman named May, intent on making her a full partner so she can travel to India as she's always dreamed. Lindsey is obviously thinking about the split-second impact of life, going from the life you thought you were supposed to have, to a life you never even envisioned. But for me, that quote is about where I am in my head when I'm writing. Not like I am now, but when I'm deep in my writing projects, working to hopefully be published again by the time I'm 30.
When I co-wrote What If They Lived?, I was always on the second floor of the now-formerly-named "M" building at College of the Canyons, the media building, near the door to the screening room that served many film classes, especially when I was writing my James Dean essay. I think that was because even though I enjoyed those film classes that I took only for credit (and which were always easy A grades), I was always on the outside, being that most of the movies shown were ones I had already seen many times, and when the teacher (who was also the golf coach for the girls' team) left for the period after putting on the movie, I left for the library, preferring to spend my time amidst worlds I didn't yet know.
So now I'm thinking of where I want to be in my head with the writing projects I have stacked up, and especially a new one that cropped up over the past week, which will tap into what I partly learned about the machinations of the studio system while writing What If They Lived?, but examined differently. I need a place that's full of good memories, that is relaxing all the time, that puts no pressure on me. A safe haven, where I can just walk around in my head, unsnarling problematic passages, mulling over what I've found in my research, figuring out how best to tell the stories that I've thought about.
And I've hit upon it. Before it was known as the 9th grade campus of Flanagan High, the campus of portables in Pembroke Pines, Florida (near the condo I lived in in Grand Palms) was home for a time to the 7th grade class of Silver Trail Middle before the school was fully built. We were there for the first half of the school year and then, over winter break, Dad and the rest of the teachers moved everything necessary into their new classrooms on the permanent campus. I spent part of my winter break with Dad doing exactly that, so I got a preview of the campus and knew where all my classes would be before the other kids arrived for the second half of the school year and tried to figure out where everything was.
But my fondest time in those portables was in 9th grade. Flanagan High had the 9th graders there because the main campus was overcrowded. In my first weeks as a 10th grader there, I thought I saw parts of the buildings bulging.
It was amidst those portables that I met Sara Mangan, who was my first serious crush. She was more mature than a healthy majority of the girls on campus, and I was impressed by that. She was incredibly smart, and I could sense a fellow voracious reader, and it was no wonder that there were many others during that year who gravitated to her. Unfortunately, she let me down easy when I got to the point where I thought I could let her know how I felt, because she was in a long-distance relationship that she wanted to stick with. It was worth the hug, though.
Nevertheless, we remained friends, still are, and she's a most trusted voice when I'm batting around writing project ideas. Currently, she's in her first year of law school at Florida State University, looking to fight human trafficking, and I think she's going to be one of the greatest lawyers the profession has ever witnessed. In a recent e-mail, I asked her what jurisdiction cases were, since she mentioned on her Facebook profile that she was studying them in class, even as the "FSU plague" made its way around the school (Colds and all), and she explained it so clearly to me that it was as if I was taking the same class alongside her. Back in late August, she sent me the first page of a story she's writing, a hobby to keep during the "madness that is the first year of law school," as she expressed it, being told that it's important to keep hobbies during that time, and I want more of that story. What better inspiration to have as a writer than a fellow reader and writer? I also remember her friend Stacey (or Stacy) back then, who let me borrow her VHS tapes of Tomorrow Never Dies, which introduced me to James Bond and set me on a course of the entire series becoming my Star Wars, and Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, taking much of its comedic inspiration from the Bond series.
But it's not only those events that make me go back to that campus with this new project and the other projects still in play. It's because of the peace I found there, of those wide-open fields, of those walkways between clusters of portables. There, I don't worry about what books have already been written about the subjects I want to cover (I don't worry about them anyway, but they are something to consider, finding what wasn't answered and attempting to answer it on my own through what I find), I don't think about my goal to be published again by the time I'm 30, I don't think about anything dealing with the book business. I just set about writing the book I want to read, which is possible since I have much more fun editing than writing. I enjoy writing, but I love playing around with words while editing, moving sentences around, deleting what doesn't work and replacing it with new words, sentences or paragraphs. I find an all-encompassing peace by being on that campus again in my head. My world is wide enough as it is right now, but it's even more vast over there again. I stroll over those walkways often, thinking about what I've written, wondering what more I can add, or what I don't need in my book. It's a constant inspiration.
And this is coming from someone who partly grew up going to Walt Disney World every weekend and sometimes during the week just for dinner.
Saturday, October 1, 2011
Rosh Hashanah and Furlough Days Off - Day 3: I Didn't Know Sweden Was a Dictatorship
Dad was antsy enough yesterday that he and I ended up going to Vons, Ralphs, and Albertsons to pick up many things, including six bananas at Ralphs, in anticipation of a promise to go to Sprouts by Sunday (where the really good bananas are) and ice and bread for Mom at Albertsons. It took up most of the afternoon, but didn't compare at all to today.
I woke up to Kitty on my second pillow, a pink ribbon bow on her collar. She and Tigger had been picked up by the groomer to be taken to her house, groomed and brought back, as it has been for a few years now. Dad and Meridith saw them out when the groomer arrived and picked them up, and Mom and Meridith were outside when they came back. It was the first time in a few months that I had been sleeping when the groomer came.
And then my day began. Not long after Tigger and Kitty got back, all groomed and Kitty especially happy at spending time being pampered, Mom decided she wanted to go to Fry's in Burbank to see if there were decent clock radios there. The one she's had for a time stopped working and so far, it's been a fruitless search to find a reliable one. And this tied right into my desire to go to IKEA for Swedish meatballs, since we'd be nearby. In fact, it was decided that that's where we would go for lunch.
The Fry's in Burbank has a 1950s alien invasion theme, with some of the ceiling over the TVs being the underside of a landed spaceship. Aliens in spacesuits are all around, shooting at soldiers, and there's a huge alien in the computer department. This is also the Fry's where Bill Prady, the co-creator of The Big Bang Theory, shops often, so as Mom, Dad, Meridith and I walked to the entrance, I told Meridith that I hoped he'd be there. I know what he looks like, and though I didn't bring either of the first three seasons on DVD for him to autograph, just to meet him would be an honor.
I like Fry's for the store design, but the major reason I like it is for the DVDs. They charge market prices for many of the DVDs, like Barnes & Noble, but the selection is far better than what Barnes & Noble offers, much more fun to look at than what Best Buy has. You sometimes find movies you haven't thought of in so long, or didn't think they'd sell because you and maybe three other people know about it, but there it is. I didn't have that experience this time, but once Meridith and I got to the DVD aisles, and we looked through TV DVDs first, I looked for anything of Jack Webb and Dragnet. Webb was very plainspoken, and episodes of Dragnet only conveyed the most essential information to understand what was happening. That was it. It's a style I admire and study not because I want to emulate it, but because it teaches me to just get in there and tell whatever story I want to tell.
I found Dragnet 1968: Volume One, 10 episodes of the second season of Dragnet in the late '60s, co-starring Harry Morgan as Sergeant Joe Friday's partner, Officer Bill Gannon. $6.99. Reasonable. I found the full second season DVD set for $33. Too much to refamiliarize myself with Jack Webb and his historical television work. But 10 episodes from this later Dragnet series was a good start.
In the comedy section, I found Morning Glory, which I had really liked when I first saw it, and considered whether I should buy it. $14.99 made me stop short. Did I really like it that much? I don't normally buy single DVDs at that price. But I decided to hold on to it, carry it around with me while we were there.
We walked Fry's front and back and left and right many times. Dad wanted to look at power managers for the main computer, Mom looked at the clock radios, and told Meridith of the small mp3 speakers she'd seen, so we looked at those too. And we looked at the magazines stocked there, and the bargain bins, and it was tiring. It wasn't because of all of that activity, all of that walking that I decided to get Morning Glory. It seemed to meld into me, and I remembered how sunny Rachel McAdams had been in it, how this contained one of Harrison Ford's best roles, and how Ty Burrell of Modern Family showed that he could be a strong supporting player in feature comedies, making so much entertaining sleaziness and smarm out of his relatively small role here. You cannot find Phil Dunphy. Burrell's got the knack.
And I also thought of the movies I'd seen this year. I'd looked forward to the remake of Arthur because I like Russell Brand, and I laughed in parts during it, developed a film-length crush on Greta Gerwig, and admired Helen Mirren for performing the roles that she apparently liked. But a few days later, a few weeks later, now? I didn't, and don't, remember a great deal from it. I don't have the fondness for it that I do of the original Arthur, starring Dudley Moore. Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides fell far short of what I had hoped for after the bloatedness of At World's End: A more streamlined, more fun adventure. Not much of that, with 3D not contributing much to it. Larry Crowne, starring Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts, and co-written/directed by Hanks, was a nice, warm comedy, but I don't feel the fondness that I did for it when I saw it, beyond seeing it with Sy Richardson, who had a part in it as one of Crowne's fellow employees at that big box store, and I hope his scenes are included in the deleted scenes section on the DVD.
We left Fry's without a Bill Prady sighting, with Mom's clock radio, my DVDs, a few candy-related items near the registers (and why in the hell, with such a wide path to the line for the registers, do people stand behind us, assuming that we're in line when there's such a huge space between us and the line up ahead? They have eyes, and yet they don't lose them. Their brain doesn't connect in those moments. Six people did exactly that), and stopped at Office Depot, right near IKEA, because Mom wanted to look at pens and Dad wanted to look at power managers there. I'd eaten breakfast towards 11. It was 3 p.m. Now it was my turn to be antsy. I wanted to get to those Swedish meatballs, to that lingonberry sauce and that lingonberry drink. And we were in this Office Depot again, as we had done the last time we were in Burbank.
We finally arrived at IKEA, and the line for food was long, but fortunately, as Mom and Meridith looked around at one of the remodeled areas, Dad found a table and sat there. I went for the Swedish meatballs with mashed potatoes, the gravy and the lingonberry sauce, and spinach and cheese crepes. Mom and Meridith got their Swedish meatballs with macaroni and cheese, and Dad got his with mashed potatoes too, along with chocolate cake. I found an almond cake torte with chocolate buttercream and a few other attractive details that I've forgotten by now, but they were good enough for me to want a slice. And after collecting the dishes, and putting them on trays that were in a tray cart we were rolling around, I was thinking about the roll I usually get in order to mop up the rest of the gravy and the lingonberry sauce, but then found that they had garlic toast. First time in all the times we've been to IKEA. I wanted that!
After paying for all of this and getting our drinks, Dad, Meridith and I sat down and a question immediately came to mind: When did Sweden become a dictatorship? When did we, as customers of IKEA, lose the right to have the tray cart right at our table? An employee came to our table and took it away, along with the empty trays that were on it, which we would have used to put our dishes back on there and wheel the tray cart over to where the trays are placed on racks for employees to wheel to the kitchen once they're full. What was so wrong, so vile about having the tray cart right there? It wasn't blocking anyone. The people at the table next to us were facing the soda dispenser, silverware, and condiment area anyway, so they had no problem. And yes, it was busy, but it was still our tray cart and there were more than enough tray carts for other people. I have hands, so I didn't mind carrying the dishes over to those racks with the trays on them, but it was nice to have the cart there as a matter of convenience. I don't think it's worth writing to IKEA about because we don't go there often anyway (The last time we went there, the Swedish meatball dish was $3.99 and this year it's $2.99), and by the time we got out of IKEA with a few things Mom bought, including towels, I just wanted to go home.
But that wasn't all. Sprouts was next after we got back to Santa Clarita, and so I got the bananas I want, along with my favorite lemon yogurt, Casacade Fresh lemon chiffon. I eat the Yoplait Greek blueberry and peach yogurts from Walmart and other stores because it's what's there, it's what we can get, since we also don't go to Sprouts very often. But when I can get that lemon chiffon yogurt, I go for it, as I did this time, buying four of them, even though I have five Yoplait Greek yogurts in the fridge.
And then the Walmart on Kelly Johnson Parkway, which overlooks Six Flags from the parking lot, and I spotted two noticeable worklights at Superman: Escape from Krypton, being that they are building Lex Luthor: Drop of Doom on both sides of the Superman tower. Or they seemed like worklights anyway. I'm not sure how far along they are to the beginning of construction at the sides of the tower.
Mom got another Dial pear foaming handwash for mine and Meridith's bathroom, and Meridith got small compartmenalized tray of apples, cheese and caramel dip. I found one with grapes instead of the dip, and got that too, but as to whether there was anything else besides those three things, I don't remember. I'm completely worn out. I'm not dragging as much as I was when we got home, but I'm hoping to make it through at least two episodes of Dragnet 1968 before I conk out. But still again, in order to do anything different in Santa Clarita, you have to leave for the day.
I woke up to Kitty on my second pillow, a pink ribbon bow on her collar. She and Tigger had been picked up by the groomer to be taken to her house, groomed and brought back, as it has been for a few years now. Dad and Meridith saw them out when the groomer arrived and picked them up, and Mom and Meridith were outside when they came back. It was the first time in a few months that I had been sleeping when the groomer came.
And then my day began. Not long after Tigger and Kitty got back, all groomed and Kitty especially happy at spending time being pampered, Mom decided she wanted to go to Fry's in Burbank to see if there were decent clock radios there. The one she's had for a time stopped working and so far, it's been a fruitless search to find a reliable one. And this tied right into my desire to go to IKEA for Swedish meatballs, since we'd be nearby. In fact, it was decided that that's where we would go for lunch.
The Fry's in Burbank has a 1950s alien invasion theme, with some of the ceiling over the TVs being the underside of a landed spaceship. Aliens in spacesuits are all around, shooting at soldiers, and there's a huge alien in the computer department. This is also the Fry's where Bill Prady, the co-creator of The Big Bang Theory, shops often, so as Mom, Dad, Meridith and I walked to the entrance, I told Meridith that I hoped he'd be there. I know what he looks like, and though I didn't bring either of the first three seasons on DVD for him to autograph, just to meet him would be an honor.
I like Fry's for the store design, but the major reason I like it is for the DVDs. They charge market prices for many of the DVDs, like Barnes & Noble, but the selection is far better than what Barnes & Noble offers, much more fun to look at than what Best Buy has. You sometimes find movies you haven't thought of in so long, or didn't think they'd sell because you and maybe three other people know about it, but there it is. I didn't have that experience this time, but once Meridith and I got to the DVD aisles, and we looked through TV DVDs first, I looked for anything of Jack Webb and Dragnet. Webb was very plainspoken, and episodes of Dragnet only conveyed the most essential information to understand what was happening. That was it. It's a style I admire and study not because I want to emulate it, but because it teaches me to just get in there and tell whatever story I want to tell.
I found Dragnet 1968: Volume One, 10 episodes of the second season of Dragnet in the late '60s, co-starring Harry Morgan as Sergeant Joe Friday's partner, Officer Bill Gannon. $6.99. Reasonable. I found the full second season DVD set for $33. Too much to refamiliarize myself with Jack Webb and his historical television work. But 10 episodes from this later Dragnet series was a good start.
In the comedy section, I found Morning Glory, which I had really liked when I first saw it, and considered whether I should buy it. $14.99 made me stop short. Did I really like it that much? I don't normally buy single DVDs at that price. But I decided to hold on to it, carry it around with me while we were there.
We walked Fry's front and back and left and right many times. Dad wanted to look at power managers for the main computer, Mom looked at the clock radios, and told Meridith of the small mp3 speakers she'd seen, so we looked at those too. And we looked at the magazines stocked there, and the bargain bins, and it was tiring. It wasn't because of all of that activity, all of that walking that I decided to get Morning Glory. It seemed to meld into me, and I remembered how sunny Rachel McAdams had been in it, how this contained one of Harrison Ford's best roles, and how Ty Burrell of Modern Family showed that he could be a strong supporting player in feature comedies, making so much entertaining sleaziness and smarm out of his relatively small role here. You cannot find Phil Dunphy. Burrell's got the knack.
And I also thought of the movies I'd seen this year. I'd looked forward to the remake of Arthur because I like Russell Brand, and I laughed in parts during it, developed a film-length crush on Greta Gerwig, and admired Helen Mirren for performing the roles that she apparently liked. But a few days later, a few weeks later, now? I didn't, and don't, remember a great deal from it. I don't have the fondness for it that I do of the original Arthur, starring Dudley Moore. Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides fell far short of what I had hoped for after the bloatedness of At World's End: A more streamlined, more fun adventure. Not much of that, with 3D not contributing much to it. Larry Crowne, starring Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts, and co-written/directed by Hanks, was a nice, warm comedy, but I don't feel the fondness that I did for it when I saw it, beyond seeing it with Sy Richardson, who had a part in it as one of Crowne's fellow employees at that big box store, and I hope his scenes are included in the deleted scenes section on the DVD.
We left Fry's without a Bill Prady sighting, with Mom's clock radio, my DVDs, a few candy-related items near the registers (and why in the hell, with such a wide path to the line for the registers, do people stand behind us, assuming that we're in line when there's such a huge space between us and the line up ahead? They have eyes, and yet they don't lose them. Their brain doesn't connect in those moments. Six people did exactly that), and stopped at Office Depot, right near IKEA, because Mom wanted to look at pens and Dad wanted to look at power managers there. I'd eaten breakfast towards 11. It was 3 p.m. Now it was my turn to be antsy. I wanted to get to those Swedish meatballs, to that lingonberry sauce and that lingonberry drink. And we were in this Office Depot again, as we had done the last time we were in Burbank.
We finally arrived at IKEA, and the line for food was long, but fortunately, as Mom and Meridith looked around at one of the remodeled areas, Dad found a table and sat there. I went for the Swedish meatballs with mashed potatoes, the gravy and the lingonberry sauce, and spinach and cheese crepes. Mom and Meridith got their Swedish meatballs with macaroni and cheese, and Dad got his with mashed potatoes too, along with chocolate cake. I found an almond cake torte with chocolate buttercream and a few other attractive details that I've forgotten by now, but they were good enough for me to want a slice. And after collecting the dishes, and putting them on trays that were in a tray cart we were rolling around, I was thinking about the roll I usually get in order to mop up the rest of the gravy and the lingonberry sauce, but then found that they had garlic toast. First time in all the times we've been to IKEA. I wanted that!
After paying for all of this and getting our drinks, Dad, Meridith and I sat down and a question immediately came to mind: When did Sweden become a dictatorship? When did we, as customers of IKEA, lose the right to have the tray cart right at our table? An employee came to our table and took it away, along with the empty trays that were on it, which we would have used to put our dishes back on there and wheel the tray cart over to where the trays are placed on racks for employees to wheel to the kitchen once they're full. What was so wrong, so vile about having the tray cart right there? It wasn't blocking anyone. The people at the table next to us were facing the soda dispenser, silverware, and condiment area anyway, so they had no problem. And yes, it was busy, but it was still our tray cart and there were more than enough tray carts for other people. I have hands, so I didn't mind carrying the dishes over to those racks with the trays on them, but it was nice to have the cart there as a matter of convenience. I don't think it's worth writing to IKEA about because we don't go there often anyway (The last time we went there, the Swedish meatball dish was $3.99 and this year it's $2.99), and by the time we got out of IKEA with a few things Mom bought, including towels, I just wanted to go home.
But that wasn't all. Sprouts was next after we got back to Santa Clarita, and so I got the bananas I want, along with my favorite lemon yogurt, Casacade Fresh lemon chiffon. I eat the Yoplait Greek blueberry and peach yogurts from Walmart and other stores because it's what's there, it's what we can get, since we also don't go to Sprouts very often. But when I can get that lemon chiffon yogurt, I go for it, as I did this time, buying four of them, even though I have five Yoplait Greek yogurts in the fridge.
And then the Walmart on Kelly Johnson Parkway, which overlooks Six Flags from the parking lot, and I spotted two noticeable worklights at Superman: Escape from Krypton, being that they are building Lex Luthor: Drop of Doom on both sides of the Superman tower. Or they seemed like worklights anyway. I'm not sure how far along they are to the beginning of construction at the sides of the tower.
Mom got another Dial pear foaming handwash for mine and Meridith's bathroom, and Meridith got small compartmenalized tray of apples, cheese and caramel dip. I found one with grapes instead of the dip, and got that too, but as to whether there was anything else besides those three things, I don't remember. I'm completely worn out. I'm not dragging as much as I was when we got home, but I'm hoping to make it through at least two episodes of Dragnet 1968 before I conk out. But still again, in order to do anything different in Santa Clarita, you have to leave for the day.
Friday, September 30, 2011
Rosh Hashanah and Furlough Days Off - Day 2: Screw World Peace! I Want Decent Plumbing!, or: Who The Hell's Been Eating Big Slabs of Pork?!
(Warning: The following post is vastly different from what I usually write, but being that my parents and sister have experienced, and complained about, the exact same thing, this is the next best place to vent.)
When I was vastly overweight, I blocked toilets. There were very few instances in which I actually examined what I was eating. It had cheese, it had some kind of meat, it was either nachos or quesadillas or occasionally fettucine alfredo, or it was deeply unhealthy for me, but I loved it and I wanted more of it. And because of that, what ended up in the can at times seemed bigger than the can, making me take hold of the plunger just in case it wouldn't go down yet again. We have crappy plumbing here in Saugus, but back then, I also contributed to it.
Now, being a much thinner me, my business back there isn't as big. I'm still happily losing weight, so there is some result of that, but it isn't as bad as it once was. And yet, today, what in hell happened?! I didn't even give that much for the demon toilet to be blocked yet again. I flushed what little there had been, but while I was washing my hands, I didn't hear the comforting sound of it fully flushing out. I opened the lid, and the water in the bowl had risen up to a level that first made me freeze and think, "Oh shit. Not again!", before realizing that I probably should reach behind the bowl and cut off the water supply to it.
Now what? Find a cup of some kind that we don't need ever again and start bailing it out? I didn't want to do that because I was planning to get in the shower after I shaved and I didn't want toilet water in the tub. Plus, my first plunging attempt had splashed water on the carpet, and I need to explain this: The previous owners of this house, an elderly couple, had carpet installed in the bathrooms, presumably so they wouldn't slip like they probably would on tile. Folks, this is why tile should be law in bathrooms. Water rests on tile. It doesn't soak into it. You don't need to press toilet paper deep into it in order to soak up spilled water. You simply wipe it up. I used about a quarter of a roll to soak up what had splashed onto the carpet around the toilet. Yes, I am a moron in plunging when the water's that high in the bowl, but I just wanted a shower, and doubly moronic because had I bailed the water out into the tub, I could have just run the bath water on hot for over a minute, shepherded it back to the drain, and continued on with my cleanly intentions. But there I was, using toilet paper that has turned out to be much stronger than the tissues we use. We don't keep tissues on hand in our bathrooms anymore because toilet paper does a lot better work in nose-blowing too.
As I was soaking up the carpet as best I could, I heard a heavenly sound coming from the shut-off toilet. It was a slight draining noise, and the water in the bowl was slowly, slowly going down. As the water reached the halfway point, I realized I could plunge, and with enough thrusts, it could go down faster. I could turn the water supply back on, it would spread into the bowl, I could flush again, and things could go back to normal. Except the carpet for the moment.
So I did exactly that, holding the handle down after I turned the supply back on so the water would go fully down and then come back up, and it all eventually stopped. Water in the bowl where it should be. And I thought about how much I hated this, how we had lived with it for these 7 years (we spent our first year in this valley in an apartment in Valencia with plumbing that never gave us this much trouble, mainly because those overseeing the apartment complex actually gave a damn), how one day your plumbing works fine, and the next, you're hoping that it goes down, even though you put nothing more than a strip of toilet paper in after wiping yourself.
This extended to when I had cleaned up everything around the toilet and started shaving. The last time I shaved a few days ago, the water in the sink was nearly nil. It had collected around the drain, but that was about it. It kept going down as it should. When I shaved today, the water was a quarter of the way up the sink and growing a bit more than that. I wondered if my portly next-door neighbor had been eating pork or something equally greasy and that's what had stopped up the plumbing, because our set of houses (Ours, his, and the two next door to us) have plumbing that's connected. So if someone happens to be flushing weed for whatever reason (I'm just guessing; I know nothing about my neighbors beyond the big guy) or had a bad reaction to Mexican food, we all know about it because it screws up our plumbing.
This experience darkened my mood a bit when I got in the shower, because I just wanted to shave and get in the shower, and enjoy that refreshing, renewed feeling that comes from standing under warm water spraying on you. Eventually, I regained my equilibrium, but then when I got in the shower, I was reminded of the water still in the carpet, stepping on a section that still produced some, and so I soaked up more with more toilet paper. When the day comes that we finally move, and arrive at our new place in Henderson, I'm going to walk to each bathroom and flush each toilet with a wide smile on my face, grateful that I don't have to put up with this crap anymore. That dream is nearly at the top of my list of Henderson dreams. It's a long list.
Besides that, I'm on page 177 of The Opposite of Me, Sarah Pekkanen's first novel (I read her second, Skipping a Beat, and really liked it), and am anticipating her third novel, which will be published next year. If she keeps writing like this, one book a year, and if Barbara O'Neal of The Secret of Everything (Her best novel, and my favorite novel out of the three she's written so far) has another one out next year, I won't have any trouble finding any modern-day reads. I'll be deliriously happy each time.
In the mail, I received Distortions by Ann Beattie, owing to my writerly crush on her after reading in "The New Yorker" an excerpt from her Mrs. Nixon: A Novelist Imagines a Life that'll be out in November. I want to read everything by her, and my order from Daedalus Books (http://www.daedalusbooks.com/) includes The New Yorker Stories, a collection of every short story she's written for "The New Yorker" from 1974 to 2006. I like her writing because it's about all of us, about our lives, our loves, what we want, what we try to avoid, what shakes up our lives, what makes them whole again. When you find a writer you want to read more of, it's the clearest, happiest courtship you can ever have. You want to explore every part of them. That's the feeling I get with Ann Beattie.
We didn't go out anywhere yesterday, and with some rain coming in later tonight, probably not today either. Definitely tomorrow. Dad's getting antsy, as he doesn't like to be in one place too long. I don't mind it. I've been in the house all week, I've had my books, and it doesn't bother me, particularly because we've been everywhere that there is to go in this valley and in other Southern California cities. There were times we drove to San Diego for Sea World and Legoland. Those are necessary only once. In Henderson, I'll think differently. But here, I have my books, so I'm satisfied.
When I was vastly overweight, I blocked toilets. There were very few instances in which I actually examined what I was eating. It had cheese, it had some kind of meat, it was either nachos or quesadillas or occasionally fettucine alfredo, or it was deeply unhealthy for me, but I loved it and I wanted more of it. And because of that, what ended up in the can at times seemed bigger than the can, making me take hold of the plunger just in case it wouldn't go down yet again. We have crappy plumbing here in Saugus, but back then, I also contributed to it.
Now, being a much thinner me, my business back there isn't as big. I'm still happily losing weight, so there is some result of that, but it isn't as bad as it once was. And yet, today, what in hell happened?! I didn't even give that much for the demon toilet to be blocked yet again. I flushed what little there had been, but while I was washing my hands, I didn't hear the comforting sound of it fully flushing out. I opened the lid, and the water in the bowl had risen up to a level that first made me freeze and think, "Oh shit. Not again!", before realizing that I probably should reach behind the bowl and cut off the water supply to it.
Now what? Find a cup of some kind that we don't need ever again and start bailing it out? I didn't want to do that because I was planning to get in the shower after I shaved and I didn't want toilet water in the tub. Plus, my first plunging attempt had splashed water on the carpet, and I need to explain this: The previous owners of this house, an elderly couple, had carpet installed in the bathrooms, presumably so they wouldn't slip like they probably would on tile. Folks, this is why tile should be law in bathrooms. Water rests on tile. It doesn't soak into it. You don't need to press toilet paper deep into it in order to soak up spilled water. You simply wipe it up. I used about a quarter of a roll to soak up what had splashed onto the carpet around the toilet. Yes, I am a moron in plunging when the water's that high in the bowl, but I just wanted a shower, and doubly moronic because had I bailed the water out into the tub, I could have just run the bath water on hot for over a minute, shepherded it back to the drain, and continued on with my cleanly intentions. But there I was, using toilet paper that has turned out to be much stronger than the tissues we use. We don't keep tissues on hand in our bathrooms anymore because toilet paper does a lot better work in nose-blowing too.
As I was soaking up the carpet as best I could, I heard a heavenly sound coming from the shut-off toilet. It was a slight draining noise, and the water in the bowl was slowly, slowly going down. As the water reached the halfway point, I realized I could plunge, and with enough thrusts, it could go down faster. I could turn the water supply back on, it would spread into the bowl, I could flush again, and things could go back to normal. Except the carpet for the moment.
So I did exactly that, holding the handle down after I turned the supply back on so the water would go fully down and then come back up, and it all eventually stopped. Water in the bowl where it should be. And I thought about how much I hated this, how we had lived with it for these 7 years (we spent our first year in this valley in an apartment in Valencia with plumbing that never gave us this much trouble, mainly because those overseeing the apartment complex actually gave a damn), how one day your plumbing works fine, and the next, you're hoping that it goes down, even though you put nothing more than a strip of toilet paper in after wiping yourself.
This extended to when I had cleaned up everything around the toilet and started shaving. The last time I shaved a few days ago, the water in the sink was nearly nil. It had collected around the drain, but that was about it. It kept going down as it should. When I shaved today, the water was a quarter of the way up the sink and growing a bit more than that. I wondered if my portly next-door neighbor had been eating pork or something equally greasy and that's what had stopped up the plumbing, because our set of houses (Ours, his, and the two next door to us) have plumbing that's connected. So if someone happens to be flushing weed for whatever reason (I'm just guessing; I know nothing about my neighbors beyond the big guy) or had a bad reaction to Mexican food, we all know about it because it screws up our plumbing.
This experience darkened my mood a bit when I got in the shower, because I just wanted to shave and get in the shower, and enjoy that refreshing, renewed feeling that comes from standing under warm water spraying on you. Eventually, I regained my equilibrium, but then when I got in the shower, I was reminded of the water still in the carpet, stepping on a section that still produced some, and so I soaked up more with more toilet paper. When the day comes that we finally move, and arrive at our new place in Henderson, I'm going to walk to each bathroom and flush each toilet with a wide smile on my face, grateful that I don't have to put up with this crap anymore. That dream is nearly at the top of my list of Henderson dreams. It's a long list.
Besides that, I'm on page 177 of The Opposite of Me, Sarah Pekkanen's first novel (I read her second, Skipping a Beat, and really liked it), and am anticipating her third novel, which will be published next year. If she keeps writing like this, one book a year, and if Barbara O'Neal of The Secret of Everything (Her best novel, and my favorite novel out of the three she's written so far) has another one out next year, I won't have any trouble finding any modern-day reads. I'll be deliriously happy each time.
In the mail, I received Distortions by Ann Beattie, owing to my writerly crush on her after reading in "The New Yorker" an excerpt from her Mrs. Nixon: A Novelist Imagines a Life that'll be out in November. I want to read everything by her, and my order from Daedalus Books (http://www.daedalusbooks.com/) includes The New Yorker Stories, a collection of every short story she's written for "The New Yorker" from 1974 to 2006. I like her writing because it's about all of us, about our lives, our loves, what we want, what we try to avoid, what shakes up our lives, what makes them whole again. When you find a writer you want to read more of, it's the clearest, happiest courtship you can ever have. You want to explore every part of them. That's the feeling I get with Ann Beattie.
We didn't go out anywhere yesterday, and with some rain coming in later tonight, probably not today either. Definitely tomorrow. Dad's getting antsy, as he doesn't like to be in one place too long. I don't mind it. I've been in the house all week, I've had my books, and it doesn't bother me, particularly because we've been everywhere that there is to go in this valley and in other Southern California cities. There were times we drove to San Diego for Sea World and Legoland. Those are necessary only once. In Henderson, I'll think differently. But here, I have my books, so I'm satisfied.
Thursday, September 29, 2011
Rosh Hashanah and Furlough Days Off - Day 1
Since the school district Dad and Meridith work for does not give days off for Rosh Hashanah, as in schools being closed (Apparently not enough of us in this valley), they took today and Friday off. And since Monday and Tuesday are furlough days, meaning that schools are closed and no one's getting paid, in an attempt to save whatever money's left, they'll be home with Mom and I for the next six days. For me, there is the hope of going out to a few interesting places, and the trend of spending money on furlough days, as has been done many other furlough days.
My major desire is to go to IKEA again in Burbank for Swedish meatballs, which doubles as a bonus of getting out of this valley, because in order to do anything different, it can't be done here. I'll push for this over the next day or so.
So far, their time off has given me the opportunity to watch movies in the morning again, since I don't get up early enough when they're at work to do it, and I much prefer reading. Actually, I don't watch movies a great deal anyway, but I'm watching First Monday in October, starring Walter Matthau and Jill Clayburgh, ahead of the Supreme Court's next term on Monday, and I received in the mail yesterday the Ma & Pa Kettle Comedy Collection, containing all 10 Ma & Pa Kettle movies, starring Majorie Main and Percy Kilbride, beginning with The Egg and I, which had them as vastly entertaining supporting players to Fred MacMurray and Claudette Colbert. This set is unique because The Kettles in the Ozarks and The Kettles on Old Macdonald's Farm, the 9th and 10th films in the series, have previously only been available for purchase exclusively on the Turner Classic Movies website, never on the previous sets Universal released. I'm looking forward to possibly watching all 10 films during these different days. Unless of course we go somewhere interesting in the morning hours, in which case I'm in and these can wait.
Naturally, I'm satisfied enough with my books, and my days as they are are just fine, but different perspectives would be nice, different locations. We've been everywhere there is to be in Southern California over these past 8 years, so nothing is truly different, but outside of this valley, it's at least a welcome change.
My major desire is to go to IKEA again in Burbank for Swedish meatballs, which doubles as a bonus of getting out of this valley, because in order to do anything different, it can't be done here. I'll push for this over the next day or so.
So far, their time off has given me the opportunity to watch movies in the morning again, since I don't get up early enough when they're at work to do it, and I much prefer reading. Actually, I don't watch movies a great deal anyway, but I'm watching First Monday in October, starring Walter Matthau and Jill Clayburgh, ahead of the Supreme Court's next term on Monday, and I received in the mail yesterday the Ma & Pa Kettle Comedy Collection, containing all 10 Ma & Pa Kettle movies, starring Majorie Main and Percy Kilbride, beginning with The Egg and I, which had them as vastly entertaining supporting players to Fred MacMurray and Claudette Colbert. This set is unique because The Kettles in the Ozarks and The Kettles on Old Macdonald's Farm, the 9th and 10th films in the series, have previously only been available for purchase exclusively on the Turner Classic Movies website, never on the previous sets Universal released. I'm looking forward to possibly watching all 10 films during these different days. Unless of course we go somewhere interesting in the morning hours, in which case I'm in and these can wait.
Naturally, I'm satisfied enough with my books, and my days as they are are just fine, but different perspectives would be nice, different locations. We've been everywhere there is to be in Southern California over these past 8 years, so nothing is truly different, but outside of this valley, it's at least a welcome change.
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
This Is Me
This is me. All me. I cannot describe myself better than this reader has described her reaction to a book:
"I just spent the last 40, maybe 50 minutes, crying over a book. I haven’t even finished this book. I started crying about halfway, and it just kept getting more and more emotional and. I don’t mean just, tearing up and feeling sentimental.
I mean snot running down my face and dripping onto my shirt, body-shaking sobs, wails, whines, panicked strangled pleas, headaches, stinging eyes, raw cheeks and a puffy face because even though it is physically hurting me to keep reading, I need to be able to try and see the pages.
I had to, with shaking hands, force myself to put it down, not because I need to go to bed (though I do, badly), but because I do not have the strength now to keep reading. I need to calm down. I don’t want to, but I need to come back to a reality that I seriously do. not. want. to.
And that’s why I fucking love books.
I can’t trust people who don’t react to books this way.
I can’t love someone who doesn’t react to books like this."
Amen! A-holyshitthisissotrue-men! Find the original post here.
"I just spent the last 40, maybe 50 minutes, crying over a book. I haven’t even finished this book. I started crying about halfway, and it just kept getting more and more emotional and. I don’t mean just, tearing up and feeling sentimental.
I mean snot running down my face and dripping onto my shirt, body-shaking sobs, wails, whines, panicked strangled pleas, headaches, stinging eyes, raw cheeks and a puffy face because even though it is physically hurting me to keep reading, I need to be able to try and see the pages.
I had to, with shaking hands, force myself to put it down, not because I need to go to bed (though I do, badly), but because I do not have the strength now to keep reading. I need to calm down. I don’t want to, but I need to come back to a reality that I seriously do. not. want. to.
And that’s why I fucking love books.
I can’t trust people who don’t react to books this way.
I can’t love someone who doesn’t react to books like this."
Amen! A-holyshitthisissotrue-men! Find the original post here.
My Inspiration is Retiring
I was 8 and 9 when I knew 60 Minutes to be a repository for luxury car commercials every Sunday night. I knew of Morley Safer, Ed Bradley, Lesley Stahl, and a little bit of Andy Rooney, though I didn't watch much of it. When I was 11, I only knew Andy Rooney.
I watched his commentaries in awe. He talked about tools in his workshop at home, of receiving letters, of life in winter, of pens, of various trends that befuddled him, and I was amazed. I could write about all this and talk about all this, with the same attention paid to novels and biographies? I just thought everything he talked about is what happens in daily life and you just live it and move on. I didn't think it could be talked about and written about at length. Not that there's any law against it, but I thought words were mainly reserved for what I thought at the time to be deeper thoughts. And yet here was Andy Rooney, talking about my life, your life, their life.
In that same year of being 11, my family and I want to a large thrift store to look around, one that had long racks of clothing, rows and rows of them. In glass cases, there were video games for sale. And in my favorite part of that thrift store, there were bookshelves bulging with books, threatening to make the shelves explode with the weight of them. And it was within those bookshelves that I found The Most of Andy Rooney, a 761-page compilation of three of his books: A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney, And More by Andy Rooney, and Pieces of My Mind. I don't remember how much it was, I imagine it was probably over $5, but I bought it. I wanted to study Rooney's thoughts, to understand how one goes about writing about the average day-to-day things in life.
That first book, from 1981, begins with a preface by Rooney, stating, "The writing in this book was originally done for television." And it was. "Mr. Rooney Goes to Washington" is made up of interview transcripts that had obviously been broadcast. Same with "Mr. Rooney Goes to Work." But it was page 42, "Mr. Rooney Goes to Dinner" that inspired me the most.
Rooney starts the piece talking about eating, and then says, "There are 400,000 restaurants in the United States and if you ate three meals a day in restaurants for seventy years, you could only eat in 76,000 of them." (This was broadcast on April 20, 1976, by the way)
"Obviously I haven't gone to all 400,000 restauranted in the United States to make this report. Chances are I didn't go to the one you like best or least. I didn't even go to the one I like best. My job may seem good to some of you . . . but I've got a tough boss. Several months ago he gave me an order. "Travel anywhere you want in the United States," he told me. "Eat in a lot of good restaurants on the company . . . and report back to me." I took money, credit cards and a lot of bad advice from friends and set out across the country."
He did. He ate at a "Scandinavian smorgasbord" place called Copenhagen with Walter Cronkite. He visited J.B.I. Industries in Compton, California which specializes(ed?) in making restaurants look like anything. A pirate ship design was on display. $6,000. Then he goes to McDonald's:
"Workmen were finishing a new plastic replica of an old airplane to ship to a McDonald's opening in Glen Ellyn, Illinois. We were curious about how a hamburger would taste eaten in a plastic airplane, so a few weeks later, after it had been installed, we went to Glen Ellyn.
ROONEY (to cashier):
Same price whether I eat it here or in the airplane?
CASHIER:
Yes.
ROONEY:
I guess I'll eat it in the airplane."
After reading that piece, I wanted to do what Rooney did. I wanted to write exactly like he did, talking about the previously-mundane happenings in one's life. And I tried. I got out notebook paper a couple days after I finished reading the entire book, and I began writing about the view outside my window, about my neighborhood, the pool, my bedroom, and school. But I couldn't. It didn't gel as well as his words did, and I realized that Rooney taught me about writing style. I couldn't write like him because I wasn't him. I was me. I was 11 years old, in 5th grade, a native Floridian. I hadn't been a journalist during World War II like Rooney, I wasn't interested in woodworking, and I certainly hadn't lived through the winters he talked about. I knew what I liked, what interested me every day, what I was learning in school, and that's what I had to write about if I wanted to write what he wrote about. My words had to include me.
And yesterday, I learned that Rooney, the great man who made me become a writer, is retiring from 60 Minutes this Sunday evening, which will feature a career retrospective interview with Morley Safer, his 1,097th essay, and the announcement of his retirement. I'm getting choked up because he was there for all those weeks of my life since I decided to become a writer. I watched him every week, always in awe of what he talked about, how he was funny, witty, incisive, never ranting angrily at anything. He was a master at quiet, contemplative bemusement. He taught me that you could write about anything in the world, as long as it comes from you first and foremost and embodies everything that you are. I proudly live his writing beliefs every day.
Thank you, my writing teacher.
I watched his commentaries in awe. He talked about tools in his workshop at home, of receiving letters, of life in winter, of pens, of various trends that befuddled him, and I was amazed. I could write about all this and talk about all this, with the same attention paid to novels and biographies? I just thought everything he talked about is what happens in daily life and you just live it and move on. I didn't think it could be talked about and written about at length. Not that there's any law against it, but I thought words were mainly reserved for what I thought at the time to be deeper thoughts. And yet here was Andy Rooney, talking about my life, your life, their life.
In that same year of being 11, my family and I want to a large thrift store to look around, one that had long racks of clothing, rows and rows of them. In glass cases, there were video games for sale. And in my favorite part of that thrift store, there were bookshelves bulging with books, threatening to make the shelves explode with the weight of them. And it was within those bookshelves that I found The Most of Andy Rooney, a 761-page compilation of three of his books: A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney, And More by Andy Rooney, and Pieces of My Mind. I don't remember how much it was, I imagine it was probably over $5, but I bought it. I wanted to study Rooney's thoughts, to understand how one goes about writing about the average day-to-day things in life.
That first book, from 1981, begins with a preface by Rooney, stating, "The writing in this book was originally done for television." And it was. "Mr. Rooney Goes to Washington" is made up of interview transcripts that had obviously been broadcast. Same with "Mr. Rooney Goes to Work." But it was page 42, "Mr. Rooney Goes to Dinner" that inspired me the most.
Rooney starts the piece talking about eating, and then says, "There are 400,000 restaurants in the United States and if you ate three meals a day in restaurants for seventy years, you could only eat in 76,000 of them." (This was broadcast on April 20, 1976, by the way)
"Obviously I haven't gone to all 400,000 restauranted in the United States to make this report. Chances are I didn't go to the one you like best or least. I didn't even go to the one I like best. My job may seem good to some of you . . . but I've got a tough boss. Several months ago he gave me an order. "Travel anywhere you want in the United States," he told me. "Eat in a lot of good restaurants on the company . . . and report back to me." I took money, credit cards and a lot of bad advice from friends and set out across the country."
He did. He ate at a "Scandinavian smorgasbord" place called Copenhagen with Walter Cronkite. He visited J.B.I. Industries in Compton, California which specializes(ed?) in making restaurants look like anything. A pirate ship design was on display. $6,000. Then he goes to McDonald's:
"Workmen were finishing a new plastic replica of an old airplane to ship to a McDonald's opening in Glen Ellyn, Illinois. We were curious about how a hamburger would taste eaten in a plastic airplane, so a few weeks later, after it had been installed, we went to Glen Ellyn.
ROONEY (to cashier):
Same price whether I eat it here or in the airplane?
CASHIER:
Yes.
ROONEY:
I guess I'll eat it in the airplane."
After reading that piece, I wanted to do what Rooney did. I wanted to write exactly like he did, talking about the previously-mundane happenings in one's life. And I tried. I got out notebook paper a couple days after I finished reading the entire book, and I began writing about the view outside my window, about my neighborhood, the pool, my bedroom, and school. But I couldn't. It didn't gel as well as his words did, and I realized that Rooney taught me about writing style. I couldn't write like him because I wasn't him. I was me. I was 11 years old, in 5th grade, a native Floridian. I hadn't been a journalist during World War II like Rooney, I wasn't interested in woodworking, and I certainly hadn't lived through the winters he talked about. I knew what I liked, what interested me every day, what I was learning in school, and that's what I had to write about if I wanted to write what he wrote about. My words had to include me.
And yesterday, I learned that Rooney, the great man who made me become a writer, is retiring from 60 Minutes this Sunday evening, which will feature a career retrospective interview with Morley Safer, his 1,097th essay, and the announcement of his retirement. I'm getting choked up because he was there for all those weeks of my life since I decided to become a writer. I watched him every week, always in awe of what he talked about, how he was funny, witty, incisive, never ranting angrily at anything. He was a master at quiet, contemplative bemusement. He taught me that you could write about anything in the world, as long as it comes from you first and foremost and embodies everything that you are. I proudly live his writing beliefs every day.
Thank you, my writing teacher.
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