April 2013
1 post
March 2013
3 posts
“That’s why the more you like the Judy Garland film, the more you might appreciate Oz the Great and Powerful. Appreciate. Enjoy. Admire. Be glad to see. Have fun with … But as for love - well, love will be harder to come by.” - Mick LaSalle on Oz the Great and Powerful and also on all the men in my life.
May 2012
4 posts
I catch myself saying to this or that ex, “where can I get one of these stupid little hats?”
2 tags
Men in Black 3: A Review
Call me crazy but, even after all these years, my favorite Will Smith movie is still Six Degrees of Separation.
3 tags
All Lies
I’m getting together for coffee tonight with an ex to “catch up,” but mostly just to retrieve books I left at his house.
I’m going to tell this ex that I’ve quit smoking and drinking and that I’ve started running and working out and that I’m getting married.
“Jacob and his fiends had prospered in school, and most of all at the university,...”
– Delmore Schwartz, “The World Is a Wedding” (via suitablesubstituteforwit)
April 2012
1 post
4 tags
$0.00
Today at the office they asked me, “Have you ever made a budget?”
“No,” I replied. “I don’t think that would interest me very much.”
I am not good with money. I do not have anything in my savings account. In fact, I am so reckless with my spending, I often unknowingly swipe my credit card by accident when clocking in at work.
March 2012
4 posts
Lena Dunham: Unwatchable in the Best Way by Lorrie... →
First Lorrie has a new story in The Paris Review and now this!
3 tags
Ignorance is Bliss.
Today, I exhausted my twenty free articles on both NYTimes.com and LATimes.com on all of my devices - my computer, my iPad, and each of the desktops at work. So, don’t ask me about Syria, Trayvon Martin, Health care reform, Rick Santorum, or anything else. I simply won’t know.
For the next four days I will actually be as uninformed as I appear to be.
1 tag
New Lorrie Moore! →
4 tags
A Disturbance
Today, my LA Times horoscope read: “You will really get the conversation going once you become aware of the difference between a monologue and a dialogue.”
How insulting! How presumptuous! Do I not already know the difference? Am I self-absorbed? To my mind, I may be long-winded when I speak, but in every circumstance, in friendships, in relationships, and in business, I can hardly...
February 2012
1 post
8 tags
My dumb, bitchy thoughts on WSJ's Dear Book Lover... →
“I would go a step further: Chekhov is a writer for patient adults who are indifferent to action, color and finality in their fiction.”
So wrong, except the finality part. Lives don’t end when a short story ends, they keep going.
“Nor did Chekhov write stories to inspire or buck up: “Helplessness, hopelessness, misunderstanding and defeat are chief among his...
January 2012
3 posts
3 tags
3rd and Main
$6.95 to schedule a pick-up? No thanks. I’ll take my chances flagging down a UPS truck on the side of the road.
4 tags
Monday Problems
To drink, or not to drink - that is the question.
7 tags
Living “paycheck to paycheck” is no longer a possibility for me.
I’m living paycheck to Sunday to paycheck.
December 2011
3 posts
3 tags
3 tags
A Disappointment
These gold-rimmed Stella Artois glasses I stole from work do nothing to make this Tecate taste better.
November 2011
1 post
1 tag
Yes, I am.
Today I had a meeting with a representative from Google. She started the meeting by asking me if I was familiar with Google.
October 2011
2 posts
6 tags
4 tags
Occupy LA slogans.
Sign outside City Hall: “The most important thing in life is Life.”
Life with a capital L.
Whatever the hell that means.
September 2011
0 posts
6 tags
ADHD.
Add it to the list of things I don’t believe in, behind liquid calories and headaches.
3 tags
I've only had one cup of coffee today.
Just another record personal low I’ve set this week.
August 2011
8 posts
#depressing.
Last night I fell asleep on a couch.
It was my own couch, but a couch nonetheless.
Some Men.
He doesn’t move on. He moves in.
3 tags
New Standards.
I won’t sleep with just anybody anymore. Now I have to be attracted to them sexually.
1 tag
2 tags
I wish I had said something, anything, else.
July 2011
1 post
“This ride on the metro left me with the recollection of a great sadness. The...”
– Maurice Blanchot, Death Sentence (L’arrêt de mort; trans. Lydia Davis)
June 2011
4 posts
2 tags
Alice Munro. New fiction. →
2 tags
Carpe Diem
I don’t have the energy for a whole day. Instead, I will seize the hour.
2 tags
When my life becomes too stressful, and there does not appear to be anything else I can do about it, I try, in my mind, to recite the serenity prayer.
“God grant me serenity…” is as far as I’m able to remember, which just makes me more stressed.
April 2011
2 posts
4 tags
Today my father asked me, “Didn’t you move to Los Angeles to work in the movies?”
“Yes,” I replied. “But all the Blockbusters have closed.”
Here I am, not very informed and hardly interested.
March 2011
4 posts
No, Monday will not work. Why, you ask? Mondays are my dark days. They are the days I contemplate serious things, like whether to take out the trash or not.
3 tags
1 tag
On last night’s Ally Mcbeal, Ally said, at the beginning of the episode, “I don’t much feel like going to work today” and so she didn’t. She was not in the rest of the episode.
4 tags
This morning, on my way to work, I saw the sun rise. Oh, I thought, I wish I had missed this.
February 2011
3 posts
1 tag
“In your life there are a few places, or maybe only the one place, where...”
– Alice Munro, “Too Much Happiness”
“Something strange was happening to him. His neck, round which soft, fragrant...”
– Chekhov, “The Kiss” (via 30prufrock)
Last night I color-coordinated the clothes in my closet. It made me feel rich to have a closet that looked this way, until I stood back, looked at the small, crowded closet and remembered the labels.
January 2011
1 post
“I do not want people to be agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them.”
– Jane Austen
December 2010
3 posts
3 tags
2 tags
There is not a Blockbuster in Los Angeles that carries Ally Mcbeal.
Not one.
November 2010
4 posts
1 tag
At Last
My bus stop (the 2 or the 4, or the 302 if I’m lucky, which is rare) is right outside the Guadalupe Wedding Chapel in downtown Los Angeles.
As I wait for the bus every day the chapel plays Etta James’ “At Last” on a loop on their outdoor speaker system.
