Haunting November 7, 2009

This is the only known film of Anne Frank, which was posted recently to the Anne Frank Museum website:

This piece from The Smart Set (AKA my new favorite website, after Seed) articulates what is moving about it so much more clearly than I ever could:

“The more you watch the clip, the more you see only Anne Frank, even in the 15 seconds when she’s absent. Everything happening in the center of the frame is haunted by one peripheral moment of … wait, there’s Anne Frank, is it really — there she…! Nope, she’s gone. The clip stops, and you watch it again. Twenty seconds of impressionistic filler starring a window and a ghost in the shape of a girl.

It’s funny how ghosts always appear at windows. They’re always trying to get in, peering out, or — seen from outside wandering back and forth — floating in and out of the window’s frame. Think Catherine in Wuthering Heights, Peter Quint in Turn of the Screw, the charming maiden in The Deserted House, Poe’s The Haunted Palace…the list is long. Nothing represents longing and loss like a window, especially a haunted one. It’s no wonder that the word “haunt” has its roots in the word “home.” Ghosts are always trying to find their way home, or find themselves lost in a home where they are unwanted. Even when they are in a home, they never feel “at home.” Ghosts are permanently homeless. They live in the space between inside and outside, between home and not home, like a window. Lurking about a window, the ghost hopes to see and be seen, aching to be free. But ghosts are by definition in limbo, and therefore never free. Anne Frank probably spent many hours at the window of Merwedeplein 37, caught in the limbo between being a 12-year-old girl who must stay at home, and a dreamer, a natural flâneur forced to wander the streets of Amsterdam in her imagination.”

The Monster At the End of This Post November 6, 2009

The Google headers from the past few days have been cheery, apparently it is the 40th anniversary of Sesame Street.

A blogger I know named Dawn posted this classic Grover moment:

And then I saw this video of Big Bird on Jimmy Kimmel which includes a clip from the FIRST Sesame Street:

Which inspired me to search for THE MONSTER AT THE END OF THIS BOOK. And it turns out (I’m sure this is illegal, but I’m linking to it anyway) that you can look at the ENTIRE book online. (Actually, it might not be illegal because it was posted by the illustrator himself…it still could be, but I think it is ok to link to).

Happy Birthday Sesame Street!

Catch Up on 30 Rock November 5, 2009

I am a huge fan of 30 Rock, especially of Tracy Morgan. Watch out because it is ENTIRELY possible that EVERYONE is getting a copy of his memoir for the holidays this year. So, I’m really excited about this listing of Tina Fey’s favorite moments, courtesy of The Daily Beast.

This is still my favorite moment though:

Landscape Art November 4, 2009

It seems that now that I am writing 1,666 words per day, my energy for blogging has decreased. So here are some images you might like, courtesy of FFFFOUND!

(This makes me think of the “dugout” in ON THE BANKS OF PLUM CREEK but obviously fancier and with less white washing)

British People Are Funny November 3, 2009

I stumbled upon this piece today about a book that probably won’t translate entirely to America called AM I ALONE IN THINKING: UNPUBLISHED LETTERS TO THE EDITOR. Most of them aren’t totally clear to me, but these two gave me a chuckle:

The advantages of retaining a manservant
SIR – I find it intensely humiliating to be asked by airport security staff if I have packed my own bag. This forces one to admit, usually within earshot of others, that I no longer have a manservant to do the chore for me. Gentlemen should be able to answer such questions with a disdainful: “Of course not! Do I look like that sort of person?”
Arthur W. J. G. Ord-Hume, Guildford, Surrey

SIR – Please stop publishing letters from my husband, Robert: after three in less than a fortnight, he is insufferable and has now taken to reading the Letters page online at 2am in order to get his oar in first. Enough is enough, especially as there are still lawns to mow, leaves to sweep and logs to split.
Anne Warner, Aston, Oxfordshire

It makes me think that we should all be reading more PG Wodehouse, or at least WAKE UP, SIR by Jonathan Ames.

Go, Vikings! November 2, 2009

Great Achievements in Sports (from the last week) November 1, 2009

I swear I heard announcers say these things, or I read them…but I don’t have references for all of them:

Brett Favre became the first football player ever to beat all 32 teams in the NFL AND is tied with Dan Marino for throwing the most 4 touchdown games ever.

Mariano Rivera has appeared in 23 World Series games and has eclipsed Whitey Ford for the record.

In the first game of the World Series, Chase Utley set a MLB record by reaching base safely in his 26th consecutive postseason game AND was the first person since BABE RUTH to hit two solo HR’s in a World Series game.

Now you know what I’ve been watching on TV for the past week…our other teams that we watch–Ole Miss, VT, the Giants (not that they SHOW their games here…) stink after starting their respective seasons with promise and hope. So we don’t need to speak about them.

Voting in a new place October 30, 2009

Maybe New York politics is weird. Or maybe I was just a bit more tapped into it, but when I lived in New York, I always seemed to know who was who, what was what.

Now that I live in Virginia, I’m just confused. I see these signs all over the place and other than the race for Governor, for which I voted in the primary and therefore know who I support, I have NO IDEA who anyone is.

The commercials give NO INDICATION what party anyone runs from or what they believe in. All they do is cite really obscure newspapers that have endorsed the candidates and say things like “That Other Candidate Tells LIES. ALL LIES.” But it doesn’t even say WHAT the lies are so I can tell what the situation is.

Even now that I live SO FAR AWAY, I know more about the New York Mayoral Race than I know about who I should want for the town council of Blacksburg or the attorney general of Virginia. And I listen to (and financially support) local radio (speaking of which, WHERE is my travel coffee mug?!), I watch the local news, I even occasionally peruse the Roanoke Times.

And I think in general Virginia is a state a lot like New York, there’s an urban area in one corner and a lot of rural-ness for the rest of it. The voting patterns are similar. So I don’t know why it’s completely unclear to me what I should do on November 7th.

I am suspicious of local political parties because in my hometown, Republicans are actually Democrats and vice versa. So you can’t vote party line. You actually have to KNOW something about the people you’re voting for. And here it’s just hard to find that stuff out. I can’t explain why. It just is. Anyone who can clarify for me would really help me out. Thanks.

Good interviews with writers you like. October 29, 2009

And you don’t even need to unmute your computer.

• Mavis Gallant: “I think everyone should hide their private life. Do you walk around naked in the streets? Do you pee-pee in public? Do you offer your heart on a platter?”
• Dan Chaon: “You don’t necessarily realize you’re obsessed with something until you’ve written about it in fifteen ways. Identity. Also the idea of what makes somebody who they are. What creates a human personality and whether there’s fate involved or not. I guess fate is a big issue for me, how much control you have over how things turn out.”
• Phillip Roth (sorry, I lied about the unmuting): “I do the same kind of rewriting in the short books as I do in the long books, that is, a lot…I write my way into my novels.”
  

NaNoWriMo October 28, 2009

I know, it looks like a jumble of letters. But it stands for November is National Novel Writing Month. Every year for the past I don’t know how many years (ok, I checked, since 1999), this website http://www.nanowrimo.org/ challenges people to write 50,000 words in the month of November. This is 1666 words per day for the mathematicians among us.

For those of you following such things, I am SUPPOSED to be revising my existing novel right now. Which I am doing in fits and starts. But it WOULDN’T hurt to have a draft of another one just in case this one doesn’t work out or whatever. (Always have a backup plan, people.)

I have about 10,000 words of two different new projects, neither of which has gotten beyond the 10K mark…which I generally THOUGHT was the mark which indicated if the book has legs or not, so I might need to up that mark to 20K.

ANYWAY, it might be nice to generate another 50K of rambling for one of those projects. Of course, I have gone down this crazy NanoWrimo road before and failed MISERABLY (like on day 3). There are a number of roadblocks in the way, first of which is that November is generally a SUPER crazy month at work and there’s Thanksgiving at the end (not that I ever made it that far) looming like a big fat place where one would obviously NEVER write a word. (I guess you could think of it as 2 days off from work when you COULD write a lot, but with traveling and eating and all that it never happens). ALSO, I am going to Richmond next weekend another time when I won’t write anything.

So, I’m not FULLY committing to this process, but I am going to try to write 1666 words a day for as many days as I can in November. If only to prevent foot tickling.