Syllabus #175

Hello I am one thousand years old. Last night, in a dimly lit restaurant, I struggled like an Old to find that sweet spot in my depth of field where I could read the menu with both eyes.  If I don't dial it in just right, I end up having to close one eye or deal with double vision.  I have a headache all the time and I am nearly driven to a murderous rage by the frustration It's fun!

Enjoyed this interview with Kevin Wilson, one of my favorite authors of the last few years.  I've read everything he's written so far, and am stoked to learn he has a new book out on Tuesday.  AND we are going to Parnassus Books on Monday to hear from the man himself.  I can't wait.  Andy is indifferent.  I'm sure he would love Wilson's books, but he's only going because he feels bad for me that I can't drive at night until I get new glasses.  

Moving photojournalism.

Heidi Klum's worm costume has been tunneling through my brain, making dirt, all week.  Unsettlingly Grotesque is the new Sexy.

I started watching Weird, the Weird Al mock bio-pic starring Daniel Radcliffe.  The first 25 minutes were so perfectly, hilariously stupid.  I mean that as the highest complement.  It is a sincere and gentle and dumb sendup of the parody master, even while the movie itself is an absurd parody.  I want to finish watching it ASAP.  

We need to do this Natchez Trace Parkway drive sometime.

Oprah's Favorite Things hits so much different in print.  I miss it so.  I guess it's marginally more convenient to have a fully linked version available, but I long for that fat, glossy periodical full of aspirational products arrayed just so on the page.  By the time my eye traveled from upper left to bottom right of the spread, I had experienced the full spectrum of emotions:  indifference to the gardening tools, disgust at the thought of paying money for a stale-ass pie made by a stranger to be sent to you in the mail (homemade pie or GTFO forever), envy and desire for the luxurious skincare items, and complete rage at the suggestion that I spend three figures on a candle, which is literally lighting your money on fire.  

Analog Reading:

Finished Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates.  Woof to reading that in the aftermath of the Supremes (the mostly shitty kind, not the Diana Ross kind) overturning Roe.  Also woof to a book about 30 year olds having mid-life crises.  Not a knock on the book, though.  It was superb.  The characters were so real to me that I found myself wondering what they were doing now in the days after I finished the book.

Reading The Regrets by Amy Bonnaffons.  It is unlike any book I've ever read before.  Not to say that it's completely unique, but it seems very of-the-moment and young-Millennial in terms of cultural references and sex-forwardness within the plot.  Also, it's about banging a guy who's technically dead but didn't die correctly so he's lingering on earth until the afterlife is ready for him?