Goodwill to All
After a time the bin contents blurred into a single substance the color of meat hash. I grew up with food insecurity and unlivable housing, and the deep misery of poverty is always accessible to me.
By Sacha Mardou
Represent Yourself Before Others Can Represent You
Never ask your children or close friends to name or represent you. My son, taking his cue during our conversation from trash bins at the curb, said my classical-poet name could be Bald Trash Can. Later, a friend of thirty years said it should be Dirty Worn-Out Apartment Dweller.
Tom Smothers, a Lesson in Modernity
As a child of an ironic, counter-cultural age I had to find my way through comic appearances to serious intent and personal bravery. Tommy Smothers was maybe the first entertainer I understood in this respect.
The Eternal Christmas Tree
A real tree is a sacrifice, a once-living being nailed to its stand, bleeding sap, a star on its crown. The artificial tree has no smell, no bark, no particularity. It never faced a north wind or nurtured a cardinal.
Helping My Friend’s Garden Grow
Rocks and stones are reality agents, signifying only their own existence. Irreality stems from perception, thought, and language. In this respect, stones are easy; people and their choices are hard.
Found Objects: Curb Chairs
Some chairs are sons of bitches, of course, and deserve what they get. But so many chairs say, “Rest in me, weary one. Rest your back against mine.”
The Holdovers is a New Holiday Classic
Paul Giamatti, who won and has been nominated for dozens of awards in his career, was passed over by the Academy Awards for his work with Alexander Payne in “Sideways.” The similarity of the role in “The Holdovers” will make it interesting to see if he is nominated this time.
Oscar Nominee The Taste of Things is Abundant with Passion
“The Taste of Things” has so many set-pieces of cooking that it feels like a dare to override the conventions of drama, which might seem to require that the meal get cooked, served, and eaten so the difficulties of relationship can be ennacted.
Cartoonist Roz Chast Finds Herself in the Midwest
Chast was sweet and grateful but prone to trying something else. She insisted we go on, she would be fine in the chilly dark outside the massive locked building, which we ignored, no doubt to her discomfort.
Jerry Seinfeld Hates Everything, but He Is Good at It
Seinfeld said when his sitcom “bombed” originally, appearing in a bad slot midweek after Unsolved Mysteries, St. Louis was the one market that kept it alive long enough to become a huge success.
Time as the Spooky Thing
Even without tricks, time is spooky. Things move in its medium, are changed, disappear as if never formed. We acknowledge this uncanniness with a holiday at the end of the growing season devoted to ancient fears of death and magic.
Disappointment and Horror
We expect to get our way and often think we will get away with cheap and easy and quick. Nowhere is this more obvious than with food.