Monday, April 11, 2022

Syllabus #147

Hello a day late, not from the curiously windowless hotel room in Memphis where I tried to compose and post this missive on my customary Sunday morning.  While our last-minute accommodations lacked views and functioning wifi, it had much to offer in other departments.  For instance, our room boasted convenient proximity to the ice machine, and came with a surprise bonus of lipstick smeared on the toilet lid.  Not to mention the older couple I overheard while I was waiting to check in, giving the front desk an inventory of items stolen from their room.

Never mind that we were supposed to be in New York City this weekend until Delta was like, 'Hey guys, wouldn't it be funny if we canceled your flight but just didn't tell you until like 3 hours before the flight?  April Fool's!  Good joke, right?'  And we were like, 'Nah, dawg, that was last Friday, nice try though.'  

We already had pet-sitting paid for, and I'll take any excuse to let someone else deal with Charlie for a day or two.  Memphis seemed like a good idea, and it wasn't not fun to visit, but I feel like 24 hours was plenty.  I now have but one question for Memphis:  Does anyone live there?  Seriously.  Outside of Beale Street and the Civil Rights Museum, there were like 5 people in the whole city, and one of them was a kid who approached us in two different places, Saturday night and Sunday morning, asking us to "sponsor his football team."  I felt like somehow reading the last page of The Stand in the car on the way to Memphis pulled me into an alternate timeline where the super flu really happened and Andy and I were the only two people alive in all of Shelby County.  





Always timely advice as we move into Abuse of Air Conditioning season.  Let me just say, once and for all, that the point of air conditioning is to prevent you from actively sweating your tits off while you are passively doing nothing.  It is to prevent high levels of humidity from allowing black mold to proliferate inside your home.  It is NOT to artificially create the conditions of another season in which it is appropriate to wear long sleeves and pants.  It is NOT to trigger a flare-up of your wife's Reynaud's Syndrome in the middle of June so you can wear a hoodie while you're watching TV.  It is NOT to force your wife to have to sleep under multiple blankets and a bathrobe while wearing fleece pajamas in July.  And look, it goes both ways!  The purpose of heat is not to allow me to wear shorts and t-shirts in December.  I'll Jimmy Carter the shit out of the cold months before I crank the heat above 68 degrees.    


I love literary food porn.  This is a great roundup of meals in literature, and I'll add a few of my own.  Say what you will about Hemingway but anytime he mentions food or drink I can't help but salivate because he was a man of appetites who could appreciate the hell out of a cold drink on a hot day, or a simple meal of bread and cheese.  Also, if you want to read one long extended gustatory rhapsody peppered with the drama of a complicated gay relationship, Brian Washington's Memorial  is your guy.  


A new David Sedaris essay in The New Yorker.  Imagine a world where David walks around immersed in his iPhone like 99% of us, and courts exactly none of the delightfully weird encounters he shares with us.  Be like David.


Ben Franklin, what a guy.


Analog Reading:

I can finally lay down The Stand.  Thank the sweet merciful lort, or, as my favorite character, Tom Cullen would say, "Ooh lawsy me, M-O-O-N that spells this book was too goddamn long."  I'll say it again, Stephen King needed to get down off his high horse and let somebody edit that sumbitch.  I started the book on February 27th, took breaks and read two other books, and finished it on April 9th!  This book spanned three months of my life.  Forty-two days.  Over 1,300 pages.  I can't say I didn't enjoy it, and I can't say I won't read another Stephen King book, but I'm gonna need a prolonged separation before I'm ready to enter into another long term relaysh with one of his books.

Now I'm finally getting around to John Darnielle's Devil House and so far, so good!  It's a little unfair that someone can be so multi-talented, fronting one of my favorite bands of all time and wielding the pen so deftly, but I'll allow it.

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