Hi, friends!
I hope the day is going well! We haven’t had a recommendations post in a hot minute, wondering if folks have questions or neat things they want to talk about.
Has anyone started the Wednesday Addams series on Netflix? I’ve been tempted but haven’t gotten around to starting it.
Also I highly recommend Penzey’s Cake Spice as a super convenient blend that makes pretty much any baked good better without you having to actually to think about it.
I just saw the Wednesday series was available last night. My wife and I agreed to put it on the watch list. Trynna watch Andor but it’s moving s l o w l y. But I heard good things, so I’ll keep going.
Just finished episode two of Wednesday. Apparently I am experiencing a teenage goth girl phase, I like it!
Letters from Switzerland and Travels in Italy by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. English translation available completely free for download from Project Gutenberg:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/53205
I read Travels in Italy years ago and it’s great. Goethe was interested in so many things, and you realize in those days if you had the money to be independent you could easily do so many deep dives into subjects with no distractions. There are a few modern writers with bestsellers who can pull it off, but there are also even more hacks who are incredibly shallow and careless thinkers.
Although maybe it’s the case that we just don’t know about all of the hacks from Goethe’s time because they’ve been forgotten by now.
The New Yorker is now a good source of this hackery. Adam Gopnik’s “dispatches” from Paris started this trend thirty years ago, I think. The faux-naiveté (to use a French term) must have appealed to the readership then who booked the occasional long weekend at an upscale Parisian hotel along with a spouse who had a French minor from one of the Seven Sisters.
Oh, the 90s, when magazine budgets were flush with cash from advertisers and the Internet was thought to be a passing fad…
Is Christina Ricci (one of my girlfriends) in it?
She is indeed, wirh blonde hair.
I have something that will make you jealous.
In the mid-90s Christina Ricci, who weighed abut 100 pounds and is a foot and a half shorter than I am, lived with her mother and her huge, uncontrollable dog near me in Chelsea (NYC). At least part-time anyway. Dad, I gather, was out of the picture.
One day when my dog and I were innocently strolling the neighborhood her dog put the make on my dog, so we had to untangle leashes. It was very early in the morning, April I think, and I had no idea who she was. There was no one else around and in the course of gabbing away post-mating canine attempt she told me that she was an actor without revealing her name. That was fine, I know plenty of unknown actors, this didn’t surprise me.
After we parted ways I soon came across a dog-park “friend” whose name I never knew and she didn’t know mine but our dogs knew each other. She and her dog had been half a block behind us at the end o this casual rendezvous and said, “Do you know who you were talking to?” “No, some actor, they’re a dime a dozen aren’t they? She seemed kind of young to be an actor. I think she’s just a local kid who–”
“THAT WAS CHRISTINA RICCI.”
That same year while out on a walk one of William Wegman’s famous Weimaraners stuck his snout up my (female) dog’s butt and was going to go for it, my dog was kind of slutty in her prime, though she was “fixed,” same thing happened, untangling of the leashes, apologies all around, but this time I happened to be with a friend and her well-behaved dog. She said a couple of minutes later,
“DO YOU KNOW WHO THAT WAS? THAT WAS WILLIAM WEGMAN!”
Then there was the time when my dog got into a fight with Debbie Harry’s little Pomeranian or Chow or whatever it was and she threatened to sue me. I said, reasonably enough, “You should learn how to control your dog. It came after mine, and I have a witness.” [Better Half was with me on this stroll]. He said a couple of minutes later,
“DO YOU KNOW WHO THAT WAS? THAT WAS DEBBIE HARRY!”
I miss living among celebrities, even if I am terrible at celeb-spotting, exiled as I am in the nether regions of Manhattan. Although I was once at a party with wheelchair-using David Dinkins (RIP) and a rickety Charlie Rangel and there was a rumor that Al Sharpton might show up. This wasn’t a fundraiser; it was a neighbor who knew them all socially. Still, I’d give five Charlie Rangels for another opportunity to untangle leashes with Christina Ricci who went on to do The Ice Storm, one of the finest movies ever made.
I wish I had the time to write a post about Borje Salming in a timely manner, but I don’t. Eventually, I will write one…I feel I have to.
The Leafs honoured him just last week…worth the watch even if you’re not a fan of hockey. Especially if you like crying happy tears (LOOK AT DARRYL SITTLER OMG):
The King is dead.
Fuck ALS!
#RIPKing
He was one of the greats. Talented and tough.
He, along with Darryl Sittler represented what was good with the Maple Leafs as opposed to owner Harold Ballard.
I’m listening to an audiobook of Georgette Heyer’s The Black Moth, narrated by Gabrielle de Cuir. I love Heyer, but hearing the narrator do all the drawling, upper-crust, Georgian English accents is pretty hilarious. There are multiple audio versions, but this one was my favourite.
Money Heist is worth watching… But I am late to that train.
Watched two Quebecois films, one is on Netflix, the other on Prime.
1987, a coming of age film.
The Guide To A Perfect Family which I get having dealt with a Tiger Mom.