frequent flier ills

my friend, Rob, just got a very funny piece published in the New York Times no less.

Click here to read.

happy birthday Plaza!

100 years old today!

(photo: The plaza on it's opening year, 1907.)

And tonight she's having a huge 100 year birthday party in her front yard (central park and 5th Avenue) with fireworks and everything. People will be singing "My Way" to her. And then hanging a huge, gigantic sign in lights around her neck — "100" — announcing her age to the whole wide world.

They have even made her a special birthday cake.

Guests will eat a meticulous scale model replica cake of herself (who else at 100 would ever want such a thing? And what guest would eat it? Even if you have had so much work done on you.)

The cake will have a façade flavored with nutmeg, cinnamon and ginger and windows of crystallized sugar.

The Plaza's first ever guest was Alfred Gywnne Vanderbilt. Back then a room went for $2.50 a day ($4 with bath).

Other famous guests were Truman Capote (1924-1984) (who threw his black and white ball there in 1966 to celebrate the success of In Cold Blood) and, of course, Eloise. And Kay Thompson (1908-1998).

typesetting & punctuation

this, it has to be said, is a rather off-putting title for a blog—particularly following on the heels of the much more fun you tube clips. but it's really not as full of rules or nearly as bossy as it sounds. it might even be interesting or helpful. Or both.

it's fitting too. as you may or may not know, it was in fact "National Punctuation Day" (September 24th)—I steered well clear of it myself—(who can begin to imagine what manner of torture might be involved in such a day?)

punctuation, it seems to me, is one of those tricksy things that the more you think about it the more you can't do it (except if you're brilliant and J R R Tolkien and then you know everything anyway so you don't count).

i once found myself lost in the middle of a huge manuscript, two days before the final deadline, re-punctuating everything because i'd convinced myself I needed to get more semi-colons in. don't ask me why. i don't know—it's insane (and i don't even like semi-colons)—it had a lot to do with thinking semi-colons are what clever people use. And because a critic who lives inside my head says horrid things, like "ah yes, what a shame. and it would have been such a lovely book if only she'd... (fill in the blank)."

if you find yourself in a Punctuation Bog like this, all i can say is, you need to GET OUT of there right this instant, run into the fresh air and the sunlight and talk to a sensible friend and only come back to your manuscript when you're fully in the real world and back in your right mind and have just stopped it.

and once you've done that, read something like this—a very helpful old typsetting saying:

"Set type as long as you can hold your breath without getting blue in the face. Then put in a comma.
When you yawn, put in a semicolon.
When you clear your throat, put in a period.
When you want to sneeze, that's time for a paragraph"

and here is a completely beautiful piece of typesetting to close this punctuation posting with.

funny old women

well, it's very silly but it has sent some of my friends into complete hysterics, so I bring it to you, too as a nice way to begin your Thursday

Seagull thief in aberdeen

He waits until the shopkeeper isn't looking and then ...

the hardest instrument to play

Leonard Bernstein was once asked which instrument was the most difficult to play. He thought for a moment and then replied, "The second fiddle. I can get plenty of first violinsts, but to find someone who can play the second fiddle with enthusiasm — that's a problem. And if we have no second fiddle, we have no harmony."

The Ying Tong Song - The Goons

now for something insane, silly and very irreverent. What can I say? It's the goons. The masters of silly--before Monty Python even. if you're a dreadfully serious person sitting in your office doing frightfully important things you may not like this. or you might. particularly if you open your doors and put the sound up too loud...

inspiration and plumber's block

"I write when I'm inspired, and I see to it that I'm inspired at nine o'clock every morning." — Peter De Vries, quote in The Writer, June 1994.

Reminds me of something else someone said: that writing is magical but it isn't magic. I love this because it gets rid of the preciousness and the idea that you must feel inspired to write. Writing only requires sitting down in front of the computer (or piece of paper) and showing up. Whether you feel like it, or not.

It also keeps you with a correct perspective — and reminds you you have a job to do — just as a plumber has a job to do. Nine to five. Five days a week. And the best thing about that? Well, as Phillip Pullman points out, no one's ever heard of a thing called plumber's block, have they?

Peter De Vries (1910–93), by the way, was the one who came up with such clever stuff as, "Nostalgia isn't what it used to be" and "Deep down, he's shallow," and was, according to Kingsley Amis, "the funniest serious writer to be found on either side of the Atlantic."


"But," Amazon tells me, "De Vries's life and work was informed as much by sorrow as by wit."

His classics are Slouching Towards Kalamazoo and The Blood of the Lamb. First published in 1982 and 1965 respectively.