You're Doing It Wrong

#1 – I just checked my gmail account — which I never use for anything other than a typepad blog I was playing around with for about 3 weeks and then pulled the plug on. I had 18 spam. Where could they possibly come from? Those 3 weeks? Geez. Also I have a few gmail invites if you want one. What a genius approach to make something available only by invite so it seems so special and then flooding the market with invites.

#2 – I went to yoga last night which means I was downtown on Fat Tuesday which means there were lots of people and even more police everywhere you looked. The thing is, all the masses of people I saw were young — barely drinking age, if that. They looked like high schoolers. And they hung out in packs and pretty much every guy was wearing dark knit hat. Is this some kind of uniform?

#3 – Bob and I watched Some Kind of Monster this weekend which is the documentary about Metallica. This film is unbelievably riveting. True, I am a fan of the band. (I own Ride the Lightning on vinyl.) I can’t believe they filmed some of this stuff. It’s an intense look at these super successful people trying to hold it together and it’s fascinating. And, not too much music for the metal non-lovers although I’ve had Seek & Destroy stuck in my head all week.

Hey, put your name in the Baby Name Wizard.

The Baby Name Wizard's NameVoyager is an interactive portrait of America's name choices.

It makes a graph of the name you type in — showing its popularity over the years. It’s really cool.

I am reading Nick Hornby’s The Polysyllabic Spree which I mentioned before. It’s a collection of his columns from The Believer magazine and every column starts off with a list of books bought and a list of books read. The lists generally aren’t the same.

For the most part, he writes about books I’ve never heard of and even after hearing about them, most would not make it to my list. My list is extensive, trust me. I appreciate hearing about them in this book, thus my data field is expanded without me having to take action.

In one essay (Oct 04), Hornby talks about Gabriel Zaid’s book So Many Books (Jesus Christ it’s hard to find a link to a book that isn’t pure commerce, that’s what the Internet has reduced us to: lumps of meat that buy things.) Hornby sets forth Zaid’s basic question as “Why bother?” Zaid estimates it would take 15 yrs. to read a list of all the books ever published. And while a person like me would despair at this. I despair walking through Powell’s — just the fiction section — Hornby says, “I was actually rather heartened.”

Getting back to the books bought v. books read. I find I am always wanting to pick up huge collected story volumes such as the Mavis Gallant and Alice Munro books both sitting in my “to read” annex. (The main “to read” pile is by the bed. The annex is specific shelf in the bookcase.) I think I have flipped through both books a half dozen times but don’t think I’ve ever finished a story in either one.

Today, I read the NYT book reviews and saw the review on Carol Shields Collected Stories (593 pages!) and quickly jotted it down for my list. This in addition to the Paul Bowles collection and the Kate Chopin collection and the Mary McCarthy collection (actually essays) that I expect to add to the pile some day.

Because, yes, I completely intend to read them.

Bob brings his lunch to work in — they actually aren’t Tupperware — they’re Pyrex things with plastic covers. He tends to bring them home with food still in them and often doesn’t tend to them immediately resulting in a stinkfest and if I haven’t mentioned it before, I have the nose of the bloodhound and hate all things remotely smelly so he usually hides this from me.

Recently there was a situation … either he left in the car a long time or else it was something that decomposed at an alarming rate. I came home from work and stepped into the room and immediately frowned: “Something stinks.” This wasn’t a light stink, this was like something died and crawled into our kitchen.

“Yeah, I’m working on it,” he said. Bob ran the lid through the dishwasher and soaked it in a solution of baking soda and water. (On his own, no advice from me on this one.)

After dinner tonight he rinsed it off and took a big whiff and then there was a terrible gurgly gag, a pause and another full-body retch — but he kept his dinner down.

We threw it away.

Do you ever find yourself liking an especially cheesy pop song?

There was a stupid Hillary Duff song something about the rain coming down that I would involuntarily hum along with when it came on the radio. And a generation earlier was a Backstreet Boys song about how I want it that way that I’d sing to in the car. And then the generation before that there was a Spice Girls song that I’d nod my head to. I like sugary, thumpy pop-songs, what can I say? 80’s heavy metal and cheesy pop songs. I’m not even being ironic.

I like some good stuff too, like Paul Westerberg and Bob Mould.

Recently there’s been a cheesy pop song on the radio and I was horrified to learn that it was by one of those dreadful American Idol people. After all I’ve admitted, I was ashamed by American Idol.

[Every time I run the blogger spell check it gives me one word: “undefined” I don’t think it works. Why do none of bloggers special features work for me?]

I went and saw Million Dollar Baby on Friday. One of the main reasons I made it a priority was spoilers. I HATE HATE HATE spoilers. I hate when a movie reviewer tells you “I don’t want to give anything away but … the ending will SURPRISE AND AMAZE YOU” or whatever. I knew about The Crying Game because someone let it slip. I knew about The Sixth Sense because a reviewer referred to it as an homage to another movie where the protagonist was in a similar condition. (I’m being purposefully vague in case you haven’t seen it.)

I started to see items on Million Dollar Baby that were giving something away and I didn’t read them so I didn’t know exactly what would happen or what characters were involved. Some people can’t resist a secret. What is it? An ego thing? A power thing? An “ooh look how special and important I am” thing?

So as soon as the movie went wide I dropped everything to go see it. I’m not a huge Clint Eastwood fan. I find his directing cold. I didn’t think Unforgiven was worthy of nomination much less an Oscar and Mystic River didn’t impress me either. But I liked this movie. Way more than I expected. You can see the formula showing through but it’s a good story and I think Hillary Swank makes the whole thing. Clint and Morgan Freeman are great too, but Swank makes the picture. It’s worth seeing.

I’ll also mention that I am totally opposed to women boxing. I think it’s a crime against nature for women to be violent for competition. But let me tell you, I LOVED watching Maggie (Swank’s character) kick the living crap out of her opponents. I’m surprised by how much I enjoyed it.