RIP Paul Newman

I'm so very sad to say goodbye to Paul Newman today...a king among men, who loved and lived with passion and gusto and reminded us all that the world is only as good as we make it.  

Rest In Peace, you handsome devil.

How Did I Miss This?

I usually don't miss Maureen Dowd...both because she's awesome in her snarkiness and because I envy her gorgeous hair. But somehow...I missed her on Saturday, when she and the ever-so-brilliant Aaron Sorkin teamed up to make the conversation I have fantasized about for 18 months a reality.

Yes. Barack meets Bartlet. O. M. Gee.

OBAMA Wait, what is it you always used to say? When you hit a bump on the show and your people were down and frustrated? You’d give them a pep talk and then you’d always end it with something. What was it ...?

BARTLET “Break’s over.”

Obama...get CJ and Josh and Sam together and knock it out, for god's sake!

----
Other musings you might enjoy...

Bartlet for President
The Farnsworth Invention

Bizarre Fact of the Day...

Michael Madsen's wife used to be married to Brian Setzer. Yes. That Brian Setzer. Huh.

Friday Funnies...Talk Like A Pirate Day Edition

Via Friendfeed & Savagechickens.com

cupcakes have magic powers...

anyone who knows me knows that i really really like cupcakes. way more than big cakes. they're special, individual bits of sugary sweet love! you can have your own (helpful if you're a red velvet girl married to a chocolate guy)! and you can eat them in their entirety without feeling too guilty. cupcakes are a special new york thing. in other places, people make them for kids birthday parties and school events and bakesales. here, cupcakes are a religion. there are a few amazing cupcake bakeries here (we're talking about places that ONLY bake cupcakes. that's how serious they are: there's the most famous, magnolia bakery; the one with the prettiest cupcakes, cupcake cafe; and my favorite, Sugar Sweet Sunshine. As you can see, cupcakes are a serious business to me. :)

well, eric got invited ages ago to the IgniteNYC Cupcake Decorating Championship, which happened this week, and he FORGOT to tell me! Whaaa? I only discovered that this happened today, when the fantastic bre pettis posted some awesome photos of the event this morning! It looks SO fun...hosted in conjunction with the Cupcakes Take the Cake blog...you should rush over to flickr and check out the photos of all the entries...and the winners (The Biltons by Nick and Danielle)!  They look fun and silly and yes...even yummy.  

I vow I shall not miss this next year.  At least, not unless Eric forgets to tell me again!  

---

Other musings you might enjoy:

The Chocolate Wars

uhm...caption please?

Ok...this morning i groggily stumble out of bed (oh, how i loathe you, saturday appointments) and check CNN for news of Hurricane Ike. I spent the lion's share of last night watching my boyfriend weather the storm in Houston, and wanted to make sure he's ok. (Yes...I know...Eric says it all the time... "Sarah, a major storm is ruining people's livelihood and you're concerned for the safety of the rich, white prettyboy." Whatever. I like Chuck Bass too.) But I digress.

No sooner does the page load than this photo appears:



With NO CAPTION!!!

Uhm...correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't this seem like a caption-required photograph? Let's leave aside for a moment that if this man is FLYING through the AIR, the photographer must be a) extremely heavy, b) in an above ground bunker, or c) Aquaman (But Spiderman had the lock on photographer by day, so I think it's more likely that it's a or b). But who is this guy? Why is he flying through the air? Why is he out in the middle of a hurricane wearing a muscleshirt and birkenstocks? and perhaps most importantly, WHY IS THERE NO CAPTION ON THIS PHOTO???

Ugh. C'mon, CNN. What are we, amateurs?

in which the author crushes on a scotsman.

well, a former scotsman. current american. craig ferguson's 9/10 monologue is awesome. it's about the political yammering that's going on...and about why you should vote. yes. YOU.

if you don't have time for the whole thing...start at 6:30. that's where the money is.

Funky Friday

So, a coworker and I just basked in the awesome of the theme from Shaft. Which is oh so full of tremendous...but made me reminisce about one of my first boyfriends, who had an unflagging love of Curtis Mayfield. Here's your funky fly Friday love, readers.



C'mon, weekend!

September 11, 2008

Author's note: I wrote the following on September 11, 2002, and I reread it every year. This year, I share it with you.

so much happens in a year. and they go so fast. and it's funny...most people count their years by specific dates...birthdays. anniversaries. another 365 days. another long, languorous rotation around the sun. my how things change and how they stay the same.

and it gives me pause, because i think about those people whose birthdays and anniversaries fall on september 11th...and i wonder how they feel to have that day taken from them. and i think about the people who have the other kind of anniversaries on september 11th. the kind of anniversaries that you don't want to celebrate. my how things change and how they'll never be the same again.

and there aren't any answers. there weren't answers a year ago, and there aren't any now. and that makes me crazy, although i'm getting used to it. god i was angry then. i felt hatred for the first time in my life. i wanted vengeance. vengeance is such a fascinating word...it has such rich connotations. and it's not a word i'd ever have used before. but that's what i wanted then. i hated them, and i was thrilled when they were given a name and a face, and i could direct that anger. i hated god; i went to church because it seemed like it was the place to go—all that catholic schooling pointed to god for answers. i didn't get them. i hated people; i wanted to scream my throat raw when people who weren't here said that they "knew it was going to happen" and that they "felt like they'd missed seeing a movie that everyone else had seen." i was angry and when i think back, i can still feel it in the pit of my stomach. i'm not as angry now...but i still have my moments.

sometimes i feel like a fraud. i think about that morning and how very removed i was from it. i think about the fact that i was 60 blocks away. and no one i knew was hurt. and no one i loved was there. and i see that look cross people's faces when i refer to that day. that look that says "why is she so sad? it's not like she was *really* there." and when i see that look i think, maybe they're right. maybe i shouldn't be so sad. maybe the thought of it shouldn't make me tear up. maybe there's no really good reason why i grieve.

but i do. i grieve for the firefighters who went up the stairs when thousands could think about nothing but getting down them. i grieve for the wives who waited for husbands to come home and never stopped waiting. i grieve for rescue dogs who were depressed because they couldn't find survivors in the rubble. i grieve for doctors who lined up to treat patients that never came. i grieve for the men and women who worked in the newsstands and delis at the base of the tower...no one seems to talk about them. i grieve for men and women who held hands and jumped into the sky to escape a fate worse than a 110 story drop. i grieve for this city, with whom i've had a love affair for 20 years, which lost an immovable piece of its skyline. i grieve for all the new yorkers who look at that skyline and see "a kid missing its two front teeth," as someone so eloquently said to me in the days following the disaster.

and then there's the selfish part of me. the part that grieves for me. for what i knew of the world then, and what i know of it now. for what i missed. for the fact that i didn't take a last look at them. for the fact that i'm forgetting just where they stood, and just how they looked. for the fact that "my" new york is forever changed...and something there will always be just out of place. for the fact that there will always be a before and an after. i grieve because i never got the chance to say goodbye. because all of a sudden, i was thrust into uncertainty with nothing to do but aimlessly wander down fifth avenue. because i've had no choice but to reconcile myself with this new world that i hadn't been prepared for. i grieve for the part of me that used to take things as they came. and i have moments of severe distaste for the control freak that i've become—but now and then i feel her fade, and i have moments when i sense that the old me is coming back.

of course...there are silver linings in this cloud. there is a year that has changed my life. there are stories of hope. and there are things that ease the sadness. there are moments (that come more frequently now) when i know that there is an innate good in humanity. last night, there was a car service driver who explained how he put on his turban right after he explained how he felt about this strange, unhappy anniversary. several months ago there was a doctor on a train who took my pulse while a woman i didn't know handed me saltines. there are traffic cops downtown who don't just give you directions, but escort you to the brooklyn bridge. there are neighbors who offer to help if you ever need anything. there are new friends and old ones, who call just to check in. there is love, found before the dust could settle. and there is faith in humanity that is far more powerful than faith in god ever was.

i will light a candle today. and i will think about what is gone. i will spend the evening with my closest friends. and i will be thankful for what is here.

OMG! A Review!

I just had the best surprise...an email from Melissa over at Kidliterate telling me that she just posted a review of THE SEASON! Woot! How excited am I? Even better...she liked it! Of course, I'm not surprised, because it appears that Melissa and I are somehow separated at birth...she apparently also likes cupcakes, lip-balm, Aaron Sorkin and Julia Quinn, and I, too, enjoyed THE SEASON. ;)

Kidliterate is a great book-review blog...one for the feed reader, for sure. And don't miss her recent review of THE FOREST OF HANDS AND TEETH by the lovely and fantastic Carrie Ryan--a fellow 2009 Debutante!

Sir Ian McKellen Rocks My Socks

It's time for fun video clip of the day! This time...from Extras. LOVE IT.

"How do I act so well? What I do is I pretend to be the person I'm portraying in the film or play."
"Yeah."
"You're confused."

Via dogorwizard.com hehe. yes. you read that right.

palindrome bob

we've all seen bob dylan's video of Subterranean Homesick Blues, where he stands in an alley with an armful of cuecards and flips through them as he sings. It's a video that has been knocked off, homaged and pointed to as inspiration from dozens of other musicians...who could forget the classic INXS video for Mediate?

Well, today I give you the greatest knock off of Subterranean Homesick Blues...by none other than Weird Al Yankovic. I'm embedding it below...but first, for anyone who says Weird Al isn't brilliant, consider this. Every line in this song is a palindrome. 

Are you kidding me?

bartlet for president

confession: i think aaron sorkin is a genius. when crafting a list of writers i admire, he's at the top of the list. i know that literary purists will laugh at me, claim that i'm somehow less of a writer myself because of it, but it's true. he has a gift for dialogue that i covet with white hot envy--he's the only writer who can use repetition in dialogue to an advantage without making it seem like a device to lengthen a scene or add a few seconds before a commercial break. his characters are vivid and deep. his ability to make hour-long drama out of a few people locked in a room the whole time. the way he weaves history into everything he writes, deftly coloring his own stories with little-known figures and stories in history without making it heavy handed and unpleasant. the way he thumbs his nose at standard expectations of entertainment and tells the story he cares about. not the story that will naturally sell. let's face it...he's about the only person who could get me to care about the story of facebook.

i met sorkin with the american president and a few good men, but i didn't really get to know him until sports night, which i honestly believe is the greatest half-hour television show ever. and then there was the west wing, built from outtakes of the american president, a show that gave me hope in our government and made me believe that presidents could be not simply egomaniacal, but really GOOD. Bravo is currently playing blocks of the west wing, i assume their programming department is capitalizing (like so many companies) on the nation's current election fever.

Here's the thing...the last season of west wing is more about the battle for the white house than it is about the bartlett administration, but it throws into stark relief the issue of life imitating art and vice versa. It's eerie to watch this season on the eve of our current election, with references to vice presidential candidates "a heartbeat away from the presidency" and a republican nomination all shored up while the democratic battle becomes more and more heated (while concern of getting to the convention without a confirmed candidate throws the party into chaos). and the funny thing is, sorkin created two characters in Vinick and Santos (played brilliantly by Alan Alda and Jimmy Smitts, respectively) who actually seemed reasonable, livable, and not so bad--even though you can't manage to quash your wish that Bartlett would have stayed for a third term.

if only life could imitate art on that one.