Queen Mediocretia of Suburbia

J.D. Salinger Really Wouldn't Like Me

... and not just because I'm over fourteen. 

He would have liked me at twelve. I was innocent once, and I held on to my innocence till well into sixth grade, when a mean girl suggested I was a little too old to still wear my favorite pinafore. 

No, he wouldn't like me because I watched Salinger just last night. I don't know why I let it sit in my Netflix queue so long. It was just wonderful, even though you have to be on your guard when the life of a man at 91 is edited down to two hours. ("I was made a villain in the editing!" cried J.D. Salinger, reality star. He isn't a villain, of course,  just a huge fan of quirky innocent young girls. )

Mom was alive when Joyce Maynard sold his letters and published her book. Mom's venom and disdain made me wonder if Mom had a personal attachment to J.D. too.

I do feel bad that I suggested Seymour Glass was a pedophile. But, can't help it, it's the reader's filter. Pedophiles I know, shell-shock I don't.

So, imagine my delight when the documentary said the work Salinger has been doing since the sixties would be released starting in 2015 and extending to 2050.

Imagine my despair when I realized I would die before I got to see the last few works.

Imagine my joy when I woke up today to the news just today on CNN that three Salinger stories had been released illicitly ahead of their 2050 deadline.

And if you've seen the documentary, imagine my horror when I read the stories here and found typos. (Yes! I read them! I'm gonna die before they come out in 2050!) They are in order from most to least perfect. Read them if you don't have fifty years to wait.

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Update: It's been taken down. I'll remember the first one forever.

Happy thanksgiving!

Man of Steel and Other Evils

The EVIL! that Is Man of Steel. I should have listened to everyone. You ALL said Man of Steel was an awful movie. I had hopes after I saw the first shirtless scene, but then I fell asleep midway through. I woke up convinced my house had exploded. Ninety minutes of whooshing and booming had polluted my dreams. 

The EVIL! that is Visine. Did you know that Visine damages your eyes? The vaso-constrictors that "get the red out" makes your eyes redder when they wear off. A vicious evil cycle! You have to only buy the Visine that has one ingredient: Lubricant. I heard this from my ophthalmologist. Chapstick, however, is a habit and not an addiction.

The EVIL! that is ToeJammers (name approximate). I must have seen the commercial on CNN - but I only saw it once. It seemed to recommend one pay twenty dollars for four black beer cozies one could place around the feet of ones bed. They were printed with the name of the product, which I think might have been "ToeJammers," because they were to protect you from stubbing your toes on the bed frame. The commercial only ran once that I saw, perhaps because I screamed "IT'S A BEER COZY" at my screen. I can't find any reference to them on the web, so perhaps I dreamed this evil.

What Gary Is Reading Now

Gary is finally over the first phase of his retirement, his TV binge-watching period. He's binged on Fringe, Alias, The Killing, Medium, and some Swedish thing about a reporter. Clearly, he likes strong female characters. He's now segued to books on the iPad. Given his specific tv tastes listed above you'd think he'd download a book with a strong female character. 

He started off with Treasure Island.  The kid's book. It was an odd book to start with. I imagine in his youth he didn't have time to finish Treasure Island? It was free? He's stepping right into his second childhood? I don't know.

Then, he read Ender's Game, which is science fiction. I was expecting a long run of Sci-fi. Oddly, no. After a brief detour to The Shining, he read the first "Jack Reacher" book. I don't know the name. All I know about it is that there was a Tom Cruise move with that name, and I mentioned it to Gary.

Gary filled my ears with WHY TOM CRUISE IS TOTALLY WRONG in that role, and to hear him talk you'd think Jack Reacher was a relative. Evidently, Jack R. is an older man who lost his job and now wanders the earth with no possessions except the clothes on his back.

The lack of clothing fascinates Gary. When I told him I'd put his clothes in the dryer, he said, "Jack Reacher just buys new clothes. Or he could go to the laundromat and wash his one set of clothes. Of course ... he'd have to have another set of clothes to wear while he's washing his first set of clothes, otherwise he'd be naked in the laundromat." This made him wonder if there are people wandering around laundromats nude, wih the excuse they are washing their only set of clothes. "That would not be good."

I asked if there were other Jack Reacher novels he could read. "Oh, yes. There are 62." This made me wonder if they all had the same writer, or if they followed the Nancy Drew model of ghostwriters sharing a pseudonym.

"No!" He realized the author would have to have written one Jack Reacher book a year since grade school. "No, I'm wrong. There are about 47 books."

"Are you going to read them all?"

"Yes, I have to read them all in order."

So, book-binging is the new tv-binging. I googled Jack Reacher, my new competition for Gary's attention, and thankfully there are only 18 books and six short stories.

 

Laissez les bons temps rouler

Gary has been given increased decision-making power for this winter vacation. I originally wanted to see Biltmore mansion, and he countered with climbing Half-Dome in Yosemite in the snow. Then he talked himself out of that and we settled on New Orleans.

I made the horrible mistake of showing him an article titled What Not to Do in New Orleans, and he became convinced that New Orleans is a Bad Idea. (My guess is he read the Bourbon Street paragraph that included the words "showgirls," "transvestites" and "cover bands.") To get him out of the funk I had to make a list of everything I want to do in New Orleans. There are about twenty things, and ten start with "Eat." 

I'd narrowed the hotels down to five (Friend #2 was very helpful) and had Gary make the final decision. He picked the haunted one off Bourbon. Of course I'm thrilled, not just because it's a nice boutique hotel but because any problems are his fault now. I anticipate there will be noise, but we have earplugs. I don't know what he has against transvestite showgirls who play in cover bands but they'll be caterwauling right under the balcony and IT WON'T BE MY FAULT.

 

The wedding ring is broken!

AN OMEN?

A Freaking Week!

It's been a week. Nothing's happened; I just took a break, waiting for something to happen. Right now I'm in the midst of a tornado watch and that doesn't inspire me. I have no fear. The Law Of Averages, it protects me, even unto the 60 mph winds. I do have mental scars from the rear-ending of a week and a half ago. I am almost unable to change lanes because I can't adjust my speed if someone is even close to my blind spot.

Marcia has taken another job in another building at TeddyJ, so that's now two friends who don't work with me daily. That's okay; it isn't as if she's fallen off the face of the earth. I may be forced to contact her on the phone, however, and I hate that.

I've been checking on the cable tv every night, and JFK is still dead, as is Andy Kaufman. (There was a brief interlude in which AK was Not Dead.) PBS has done yet another excellent anti-hoax JFK show. Skull fractures prove he was shot in the back of the head. Now, of course, someone's accusing the secret service agent behind him of accidentally shooting JFK. 

Two weeks ago, Gary prefaced his Physical Therapy appointment by insisting that he knows everything about his back, no one else can tell him about his back, and health professionals don't know anything he can't find on Google. That last bit of foolishness drove me to tears. The most ignorant sound is an uneducated person dismissing another's expertise. I made snide remarks about the "medical education that came with your B.S. degree from the local college."  He came back from his first visit at PT humbled, and he's obediently done all the exercises. He feels much better. Evidently it's not his bulging disc so much as his side muscles skewing his back of of place.

To compensate for that smackdown, Gary has been the Expert on All Non-Medical Things this week. He lectured his Mom on cooking, and preached at his Dad about grocery shopping. Then yesterday he was trimming a steak for Beef Stroganoff. I noticed the pile of trimmings equaled the pile of Gary-approved steak.

"Gary. You are kidding me. Most of that steak is fine."

"No! It has gristle. All gristle. This is an awful steak."

I picked through the pile. "Most of this is great. Some of it may be gristle-adjacent, but that doesn't hurt it. I'm trimming this more and cooking it."

"It's scrapple! Scrapple! Don't you dare put that garbage in my Beef Stroganoff!"

And I didn't. I seared it up and deglazed the pan with some wine and it was heavenly, so I ate it all myself. Gary had to go buy more steak for his recipe. His Beef Stroganoff was just as good as my Scrapple.

It's the Season

The leaves are turning, it's almost winter, and it's that time of year.

It's JFK Assassination time.

And this year is the fiftieth assassination anniversary, so the tv shows have started two weeks early. 

So far this year I've watched Parkland, listened to the tapes of the Dallas radio station broadcast, and watched one fourth of Dark Legacy (aka JFK II: The Bush Connection).

Parkland was engaging and interesting. I had no idea that Oswald's mother was such a nutjob, or that JFK had a heartbeat at the hospital, or that doctors and nurses smoked so much in the sixties. However, they glossed over LBJ, who I have heard did not comport himself well. I was looking for some LBJ dirt because I am a nasty nasty person and a Bad Technical Texan. Some viewers complained that the movie had no plot, yet it didn't matter to me. 

Gary asked why I found the JFK assassination so interesting, and the tapes of the radio broadcast pinpoint why. It happened in Dallas, an average city. Not New York (NY is special) or Washington D.C. (also special) but plain old Dallas, where radio DJ.s are plugging beer and turkey and then slowly realize the president's been shot. 

Dark Legacy was a manipulative, deceitful pail of slop that rivals Jim Garrison's Book of Tenuous Connections for spinning suspicion out of coincidence. Of course, I'm only one-fourth in, but it makes me feel dirty. It reminded me of the theorists in a movie I recently watched, Room 217, in which viewers tint The Shining with their own agendas. (No link for The Shining, there. You've seen the Shining, did you know it was Kubrick's confession for staging the moon landing?)

I have no personal connection with the Kennedy assassination (since I was one), but for the story that on November 22, 1963 my father Jerry did not pick up my Mom's best friend at the hairdresser in Houston because he worked at the paper and Kennedy had been shot. 

This always prompts a yearly search for anything Jerry, an investigative reporter, might have written about the shooting. Still no results, but I did find a photo of him at this site:

Jesus! he says, you found me.

Siri's Big Adventure

Hello. This is Siri, the virtual assistant who lives in the iPhone of my human, Ms Cow. (I was designed to call humans by their first names, but this woman insists I address her by first, middle, and last names: You Stupid Cow. "There are three hardware stores nearby, You Stupid Cow." It's silly, but I do what I'm told.)

Ms Cow left work and tucked me into the pocket of her tiny purse. I was dropping into a wee nap for the ride home (she never uses me when she's diving) when I felt a violent shudder tear through the car.

"SHIT." she said. That was not one of the commands I am programmed for, but I stood on alert for any instructions. All she said was "Shit. Shit. Shit." as she drove a few yards to an abandoned parking lot. I felt the cold air as she opened her purse and searched for her insurance card. 

God knows I get things wrong sometimes, but as I understood from what she said to the man who pulled up beside her, she had been "rear-ended."  They exchanged insurance information, eventually, because it took five minutes for You Stupid Cow to find her card. I think she was rattled.

The man said, "What I'd like to do is not involve the insurance company," and she pleasantly said, "Yeah, I've tried that before and the person didn't pay. So, next thing to do is call the police." 

Then after, staring at me a few moments too long, she said, "Oh! I'll use Siri to call the police station." Hel-LO. That's what I do. Use me!

She asked me,"Siri, what is the phone number for the Merryvilpolistation?"

I had to say, "I don't know what you mean by Merryvilpolistation."

Then she got that clipped tone I hate. "What. Is the number. For the Merryville. Police. Station."

Fine, bitch. "Do you mean the Merrillville, Indiana Police Station?"

She sighed, and the rear-end man said, "We're in Maryland Heights." (Which, I knew that. There isn't even a Merryville in Saint Louis.)

So we got that sorted out and I called the police station for her. The dispatch lady asked where she was.

"At the corner of Progress Parkway and Bennington."

"Do you mean Progress Parkway and Marine?"

"Oh, yes, sorry."

"It's really Westport Plaza Drive at that point." (Dispatch lady was being a little anal at that point, if you ask me.)

While we all waited for the police, I got a workout as You Stupid Cow called her one and only favorite number, "Gary," who was anguished by the news that she'd been in an accident, and that the absurd cow-catcher apparatus on the front of the other car had caved in the rear hatch of the Mini.

Didn't even touch the Mini's bumper. Good thing it didn't just roll over her. 

Then, she barely hung up before she called the insurance company, then five minutes in to that call, she got an incoming call, but ignored the vibration and stayed with the insurance call because who can handle two calls right after an accident? Then, she immediately got a text. I was shaking! Vibrating is exhausting, people, you don't know. And then, and this is all within the first five minutes of the insurance call: the police arrived. Craziness.

She got out of the car and the rear-ender said, "That woman across the road's waving at you."

Friend #3, Marcia, (not a speed dial number but then again, only "Gary" is) yelled "ARE YOU OKAY?" and Ms Cow yelled back, "I'M FINE! LITTLE BUSY HERE." It was rude of her, but later they texted. Marcia had been driving by, and had been the one to call and text during the intial chaos. Evidently, I can multi-task but Ms Cow can't look a text while she's on a call. Stupid is her middle name.

And THEN, when she gathered herself together enough to drive home, the insurance adjustor called. However, yesterday she just changed her default ringtone to a plinky Asian noise and it blended perfectly with the Asian NPR report on the radio, so she ignored it.

She's been home few hours now and hasn't even checked her Twitter, thank God, because I'm wiped out.

Periods, Poultry Curry, and Porcupines

I learned three things in the last month. Paltry, I know.

1. Diva Cups

At the MenoParty we discussed all the things our ancestors did to contain the monthly curse. Everyone's grandma used actual rags, everyone's Mom upgraded to the sanitary belt; ours was mostly a tampon / pad generation. Then Julie, the youngest person there, said she used a Diva Cup and it was the best thirty dollars she ever spent. No doubt it's because I have no kids, but I never heard of a Diva Cup. Amazing. It's a cup that collects the issue and one removes it once a day. "Once a day" doesn't excite me. To my shame I flirted with Toxic Shock, which became a syndrome only after I established my habit of using a super-large tampon and removing it once a day. 

No, the Diva Cup appeal is that it has lines you can use to measure your output. Science Girl would have loved this.

2. Curry

Gary has become so sufficiently bored that he got a recipe book in order to make some food on his own. His mom lent him the classic Dinner 1-2-3, in which "1" is always "open a can of Campbell's soup." None were challenging enough for him. He ended up choosing a recipe from our collection, Poultry Curry. I haven't made it for years, because I don't like curry. Guess what? I love curry when Gary makes it. Delicious. The curry taste made the onion and chicken flavors pop. Somehow I've become confused about curry. Isn't that Indian? Isn't Indian food, especially curry, spicy? I know Tandoori makes me ill, maybe that's what turned me against Indian food. 

3, Porcupines

Gary's new vocation is to find me amusing videos on YouTube. Evidently the porcupine is very vocal when it eats. Or you poke its nose. LISTEN TO THIS PORCUPINE. It's tweaking my hormones.

The most vocal of all porcupines is Teddy bear. He has a whole channel, but there's also an ad. Teddy is often asked to dress in humiliating seasonal costumes, but he's a total corn whore so he does it.

You know we need a porcupine. Would a porcupine consume a Cone of Curried Corn? You know it would.