Not to brag, but I'm so totally intellectual enough to be murdered by fascists. 😂
But I'm going to have to put down the Deleuze and comment on Gerry...
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Hello, Lovelies, How the hell are you?
You know, it gets boring being right all the time.
I did pick the wrong restaurant last weekend. That one I’ll cop to (it was lousy) and next time we should just spring for burgers at Wayfare, and I’ve made a couple of other serious whoppers, but this whole Gerry the Golden Bachelor thing really burns my bacon. Welcome to our Doofus of the Week.
Maybe I’m being petty, but don't you feel like Gerry owes the whole fucking zeitgeist an apology for having wasted our time? And for being such a murky ne’er-do-well during this incredibly slow apocalypse, one in which we are so bereft of meaning? Bear in mind, that I’ve never actually watched the show. I don't do reality television as a rule as it makes me want to take too many showers which can be over-drying for midlife skin.
But it’s as though Gerry should be required to give back all the hours of heartfelt emotive juju to America's older ladies like a wedding gift because he just took the very concept of happiness in their golden years and took all their collective faith and squashed it like that TV-remote-sized cockroach in your New York City living room. The kind that makes you want to move back to the country and deal with bears like our bear Gwyneth (note to self: do not leave pies to cool in the window or soon there will be no windows. Or pies.)
And everyone was SO READY to give Gerry the benefit of the doubt and explain away their reasoning for not living together. To say… “What if she just doesn't want to deal with the primordial squelch of his bowels? How EVOLVED to send him home to poo in his own domain!”
But alas, another oily, unrepentant charlatan. Teodora is miffed AF.
So, we're jumping straight to one more ridiculous doofus because I am under a romcom book deadline and this is no ordinary deadline. This is the Universe commanded you to do it, so get it done now along with a set of TV pilot changes so that everyone can eat, which means I'm going on the Danielle Steel Plan for the next two weeks and writing 20 hours a day in my nightie while living on candy (swapping in protein bars to prevent any diabetic comas, tra-la-la). That 75-year-old authoress eats burnout for breakfast, so who am I to complain?
Doofus Honorable Mention for Total Self-interest:
Prince Philip… who could always be relied upon to find the positive in life.
Eamonn Holmes, the Irish broadcaster, revealed last week that the Duke of Edinburgh once told him “this climate change thing” was “bloody marvelous”. When Holmes asked why, he responded: “We’re getting so much more grouse at Sandringham!” Never mind the extinction of whole species…
And now for some marvels…
Perfect Days
The most wonderful film from Wim Wenders in ages. I met him at the Cannes Festival a million years ago, and it was completely by accident. I’d been at a lunch where Milos Forman had hit me in the head with his cane while acting like a total schoolboy. And by way of apology, invited us all to this bonkers party hosted by Wim Wenders in a castle and so I went and it was loads of fun and he was just lovely and this film is even more gorgeous and not at all set in a castle, but rather a toilet. You’ll see what I mean... Thanks to B. for bringing it to my attention or I would have missed it altogether while writing in my nightie.
The Secret Tunnel of Nob Hill
One other fabulous thing about researching a book about San Francisco is that you can get your hands on incredible maps that pre and post-date the 1906 earthquake and show the crazy history of the secret tunnel, the affairs, and the dramas that took place. It makes for marvelous inventions in your stories. This one even mentions my own building. If my Tech Bros landlords only knew how much history they had on their hands, they would want to protect and preserve it until the end of time.
Crying Myself to Sleep on the Biggest Cruise Ship Ever
If you don’t know
, you must rush out and read all of his books. Our Country Friends will make you laugh out loud while tearing up with genuine loss. And his recent piece in The Atlantic so vividly captures the absurdity of the current popular imagination made manifest…“The ship makes no sense, vertically or horizontally. It makes no sense on sea, or on land, or in outer space. It looks like a hodgepodge of domes and minarets, tubes, and canopies, like Istanbul had it been designed by idiots.”
Everybody Loves a Do-over
We said farewell to Larry David, my spirit, animal last week.
David Remnick summed it up quite adroitly. If the show had an animating impulse, it was Larry’s profound vexation with all social conventions. At every turn, he prodded (and burnt to the ground) the countless linguistic and social niceties that supposedly hold civilization together. He insistently interrogated everyone’s most shameful secrets (a woman rumored to have a “big vagina,” an elderly Japanese man who is alive because he chickened out, at the last minute, of a kamikaze). He will ask any question, press on every tender bruise, and conclude the inquest with his high-pitched barking “Huh!” or “Interesting!”
In life, as on the show, he is insistently himself. He calls on the details of his actual biography for the show. As a child, his mother had hoped he might someday get a job delivering the mail. He was thrown out of Hebrew school, but before he could enjoy his newfound liberty the rabbi changed his mind. Said David, “My mother went to the school and blew him, I think because they took me back two days later.”
But the one thing Larry wasn’t going to do to America was Seinfeld them again—so how perfect was it for Jerry to show up and say... no jail, this time, you’re coming back to you where you belong... to the land of botoxed nepo-babies, overzealous, sex musk city council women and asshats… Because isn’t that the fundamental, founding myth of America, and American comedy? Everybody treasures the do-over.
We live for the effing rewrite.
Stay safe, Lovelies, and know that I’m thinking of you. You’ve still got some lightning in you—just enough for a do-over. – xoxo, gotham girl
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"If my Tech Bros landlords only knew how much history they had on their hands, they would want to protect and preserve it until the end of time." Or, y'know, jack up the rent. Shhh... just don't tell them. LOL Like you, I've never watched those dating shows. The only reality shows I watched were "So You Think You Can Dance" and "World of Dance" (notice I didn't mention "Dancing with the Stars". That was just lame). When I heard they were doing a Golden Bachelor, I just rolled my eyes. The younger ones can barely stay married so how was THIS show going to be any different? Turns out, it wasn't. LOL It was like the quickest divorce ever, right? I don't remember the deets.
I didnt watch the Golden Bachelor either but I totally agree with everything you said. Also, the picture alone of that monstrosity of a cruise ship makes my heart start beating super fast. Nightmares of COVID and norovirus floating through the air...