Meg asks, “Why not vacation in France?”
I can think of quite a few reasons.
Category: Personal (Page 22 of 25)
When I was 18 I was down the Jersey shore and walked by this ridiculous airbrushed T-shirt of Gene Simmons of Kiss, all made up with a silly tongue that extended down and twisted around like a pretzel. It was $40, which was a fortune for a T-shirt to a high school senior in 1991.
After staring at it for a few minutes, my friend Adam said to me, “Buy it. If you don’t get it now, you’ll always wish you had.”
So I bought it; spent the forty bucks and worried the heck out of myself whenever I put it on. I’ve worn it a total of three times in 13 years.
The most recent time I wore it was to a Kiss meet-and-greet at a club in Manhattan in 1997. Each member of the band stood in a row onstage, and fans got to walk down the row and shake hands with the band members. The rules were strict: keep the line moving, no posing for photos around the back of the podium, autographs on albums and papers only.
Every member of the band loved my shirt. Paul Stanley: “Nice shirt!” Eric Singer: “Great shirt, man.” Bruce Kulick: “Love that shirt,” then, turning to Gene Simmons: “Hey, Gene, check out this guy’s shirt.”
When I got to Gene he gave me a great you-and-me-pal smile. He pulled me aside, leaned in close, autographed the shirt in permanent marker and gave me a firm handshake, nodding knowingly.
I’m not that star-struck but that’s about as fun as music fandom has ever gotten for me. I came home, sprayed the shirt with some sealing solution, and haven’t worn it since. It took six years for it to pay off, but in the end, my decisiveness led me to a singular event with a unique memento.
Any time I’m on the fence about something I think about that shirt, and how my greatest wisdom is often the one in my gut.
Why do people give up weblogs?
Regular readers of this site (hi, Mom) know that my blogging goes in cycles. I can go weeks without a post at times, and ramp up to daily postings or more at others. I retain the Ideapad, in all its pre-Movable-Type, non-RSS, aging-design glory, because it remains my outlet for creative thinking and personal writing, not to mention the occasional critique or clever thought: an ideapad as originally writ.
All of the opinions expressed in “Why do people give up weblogs?” are shared by me on occasion: no time, no interest, wrong audience, wrong focus, unimportant. At the end of the month, though, I do like to look back and see what I’ve been thinking. That compels me, even in dry spells, to keep this site going, long after I first thought of shutting it down.
In related news, I turn 31 today, a rather insignificant birthday on a rather insignificant day. I will have steak tonight with my wife, and it will be lovely, and later this week I will find something else to write about, like how my wife’s friend’s friend’s future mother in law was the bethonged older woman videotaped in Bloomingdale’s earlier this month. And the Ideapad, like my age, marches proudly on.
Just gloating. Back Friday.
“Hello?”
[breathy] “Hi!”
“Hi.”
“Hiii, Dave! How are you?”
“I’m fine, thank you—”
“It’s so good to hear your voice! Whatcha been up to?”
“Not much. …”
“So, what’s up?”
[pause] “I’m sorry, but who is this?”
“This is Lucinda! You know, your cousin Matthew’s friend, remember?”
[pause] “Who?”
“C’mon, don’t give me that!”
“Whose cousin are you again?”
“This is Dave, right? I’m Matthew’s cousin, you know, Matty?”
“I’m sorry, but I don’t have a cousin Matthew.”
“No, seriously.”
“You know, I think this is the best wrong number I’ve had in a long time.”
“You’re Dave, right? I’m Lucinda, you know, Lucy? Remember how I used to call you Dee and we would play in the park and run in the sprinklers?”
“Nope, not me.”
“Come on. Don’t you like hotties all dressed in leather who like to smack you with their titties?”
“I’m sure I would, but you definitely have the wrong guy—!”
“I really want to get with you.”
[click]
My wacky ear problem is long gone but my tinnitus remains, as it has pretty much continuously since 1995.
I recall two particularly good moments over the past nine years: one, in the late ’90s, before the Matthew Sweet concert that pushed the tinnitus farther into permanency, when I was taking the bus and walking to work every day instead of using the PATH train, and the ringing quieted down tremendously; and two, during the evil diplacusis phase, when I had a deep tissue massage on my neck, shoulders and chest, and for 24 hours I literally had no ringing in my ears. I unwisely chalked that up as an anomaly, didn’t return to the spa where I got the massage, and haven’t experienced that since.
This issue comes about because of a friend’s encounter with Bob Mould, who has a nasty case of tinnitus himself.
From the same page, the lyrics to U2’s “Staring at the Sun,” which supposedly chronicles Bono’s encounters with tinnitus:
There’s an insect in your ear
If you scratch it won’t disappear
Its gonna itch and burn and sting
You wanna see what the scratching brings…
Waves that leave me out of reach
Breaking on your back like a beach
Will we ever live in peace?
Poor Emerson is getting lonely.
I began work as a freelancer at FCB yesterday. The welcoming folks at FCBi treat my joining as they would any full-time staff member, giving me a cubicle, computer, and corporate email.
Most FCB employees’ addresses are first initial, last name, at fcb.com. I, however, am dawertheimer instead. The dwertheimer address apparently belongs to Davina Wertheimer, a True North employee in South Africa. Small world.