What It Is: 12/13/10

What I’m reading: I sorta defaulted into reading Black Swan Green, by David Mitchell. I was feeling kinda meh one evening this week, and it was on my Kindle, and I thought, “What the heck?” I’m enjoying it, but I’m waiting for the bizarre structural trick that characterizes Mitchell’s novels. Since this one seems to be a novel about his childhood and his stammering problem, it’s possible there’s no pomo wackiness to it. I don’t want to look it up to find out, preferring to let the book unfold itsowndamnself.

What I’m listening to: Listen Without Prejudice, Vol. 1, We Are Born, The Lady Killer, and the Monocle Weekly (from Helsinki!)

What I’m watching: More In Treatment (almost done with season 1), and Ric Burns’ American Masters documentary on Andy Warhol. It wasn’t as good as Andy Warhol: The Complete Picture, which I caught on PBS a year or two ago. There were a few problems with Burns’ doc: it grinds to a halt when it covers Warhol’s filmmaking (much as Warhol’s films were exercises in inertia), it has to mess with timelines for its segment on “casualties of the Factory,” it overemphasizes Edie Sedgwick and her death, and it spends about 15 minutes (of a total of 4 hours) on the post-shooting Warhol. After reading Bob Colacello’s book on the post-1968 era, Holy Terror, I think that phase of his career is immensely interesting, but Burns gives it pretty short shrift. That other doc I mentioned also does a better job of showing Warhol’s relation to his family, and the sheer weirdness of his mother living with him in NYC for 20 years. Anyway, the first half of Burns’ doc is pretty good, but I felt that it lost its way from about 1965 on.

What I’m drinking: Nyquil. Not for recreational purposes.

What Rufus & Otis are up to: Posing for Christmas pictures.

Where I’m going: Nowhere!

What I’m happy about: An old pal got in touch with me for general shooting of the breeze on Friday. It was great to just catch up with her.

What I’m sad about: The way this year’s just whirled by.

What I’m worried about: Getting most of my year-end 500-page issue done by Friday.

What I’m pondering: Whether I’ll finally get around to writing that “favorite books of the decade” post that I delayed since January.