{"id":188,"date":"2004-03-05T11:32:07","date_gmt":"2004-03-05T16:32:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vmalt\/?p=188"},"modified":"2005-12-30T08:07:40","modified_gmt":"2005-12-30T13:07:40","slug":"simple-things","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/simple-things","title":{"rendered":"Simple Things"},"content":{"rendered":"

Doesn’t take much to make me<\/em> happy. The other day, my publisher and I were leaving a Thai restaurant in Nyack, NY, where we had pretty tasty lunch. We passed a little indy record store. My publisher stopped and looked in the window. “Hey! Hootie & the Blowfish Greatest Hits!” he said.<\/p>\n

“Ooh!” I replied. “A new Zero 7<\/a> record!”<\/p>\n

I hurried in to buy it. My publisher looked over the Hootie record and was disappointed to find that, of the 14 tracks, 8 of them came from the first album.<\/p>\n

I, meanwhile, beamed over the prospect of hearing new music<\/a> from Zero 7. Their first album<\/a> is one of my faves of recent years, with a song that has muscled its way onto the non-permanent roster of my favorite songs ever (like the UN Security Council<\/a>, 5 songs have a permanent membership, while another 10 songs get a temporary place on the list).<\/p>\n

So pardon me if I chill out for a while.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Doesn’t take much to make me happy. The other day, my publisher and I were leaving a Thai restaurant in Nyack, NY, where we had pretty tasty lunch. We passed a little indy record store. My publisher stopped and looked in the window. “Hey! Hootie & the Blowfish Greatest Hits!” he said. “Ooh!” I replied. … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Simple Things”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4C7K-32","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":50,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/see-you-in-the-funnies","url_meta":{"origin":188,"position":0},"title":"See You in the Funnies","author":"Gil","date":"August 7, 2003","format":false,"excerpt":"Sorry I haven't written. Been busy with the magazine, the book, housekeeping, and the barest vestiges of a social life.Things are mostly squared away with my printer. My rep is trying to get me 5,000 color postcards of the cover as a make-good for messing up on the cost of\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4759,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/man-out-of-time-music","url_meta":{"origin":188,"position":1},"title":"Man Out Of Time: Music","author":"Gil","date":"December 31, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Introduction | Music | Movies | Comics | Sports | Books I think music is the one field where \"the decade\" really is a delineator. I try not to extrapolate broader trends from my own experience, but this is one case where I think I'm just part of the new\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Music"","block_context":{"text":"Music","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/music"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=virtualmemories-20&l=as2&o=1&a=B00005N8CQ","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2586,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/dyn-o-mite","url_meta":{"origin":188,"position":2},"title":"Dyn-o-mite!","author":"Gil","date":"October 1, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Horace Engdahl, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy and the lead judge for the Nobel Prize for literature, believes American writers are small-minded boobs: \"The U.S. is too isolated, too insular. They don't translate enough and don't really participate in the big dialogue of literature,\" Engdahl said. \"That ignorance is\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "literature"","block_context":{"text":"literature","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9480,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/episode-157-dan-cafaro","url_meta":{"origin":188,"position":3},"title":"Episode 157 – Dan Cafaro","author":"Gil","date":"February 29, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Virtual Memories Show #157: Dan Cafaro \"The reality of this marketplace is that true professional writers aren't being recognized.\" Dan Cafaro, publisher of Atticus Books and the Atticus Review, joins the show to talk about indy publishing, building a writers' community, taking on the diversity challenge, making the transition from\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "literature"","block_context":{"text":"literature","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature"},"img":{"alt_text":"dan-cafaro1","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/dan-cafaro1-330x440.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1006,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/good-thing-ian-didnt-bring-up-his-navy-record","url_meta":{"origin":188,"position":4},"title":"Good thing Ian didn’t bring up his Navy record","author":"Gil","date":"June 28, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Last December, Amy & I stopped in on one of the hotels in New Orleans where we were planning to reserve a block of rooms for guests at our wedding. The place was still under reconstruction, but one of the upper floors had just been refurnished, the desk clerk told\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "New Orleans"","block_context":{"text":"New Orleans","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/travel\/new-orleans"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3719,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/the-0-fer-intersection","url_meta":{"origin":188,"position":5},"title":"The 0-fer Intersection","author":"Gil","date":"April 1, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Many years ago, when I was a micropress publisher, the first book I put out had an introduction written by Samuel R. Delany. This was a coup, because Delany had built a significant fan-following over his years in publishing, first in science fiction and then in the high-brow world of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "0-fer"","block_context":{"text":"0-fer","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature\/0-fer"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=virtualmemories-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0966599802","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=188"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}