How would you go about recapping a year of your life? The gist of mine: helped Dad deal with \/ recover from heart surgery; proposed to Amy; read Proust; walked around a near-empty city.<\/p>\n
There are plenty of other details, many of which you longtime readers have been subjected to: bought her a ring; gained new perspective on 9\/11; bought a giant TV; saw a world of comics-geeks; moved this blog to a new provider, then a new platform; visited Cracker Biodome; watched Ric Burns’ 8-part documentary about New York City; read plenty of other writers. There’s more for a recording angel to catch up with, but there’s only so much room for memories. Sez Marcel:<\/p>\n
If the name, Duchesse de Guermantes, was for me a collective name, it was not so merely in history, by the accumulation of all the women who had successively borne it, but also in the course of my own short life, which had already seen, in this single Duchesse de Guermantes, so many different women superimpose themselves, each one vanishing as soon as the next had acquired sufficient consistency. Words do not change their meaning as much in centuries as names do for us in the space of a few years. Our memories and our hearts are not large enough to be able to remain faithful. We have not room enough, in our present mental field, to keep the dead there as well as the living. We are obliged to build on top of what has gone before and is brought to light only by a chance excavation, such as the name Saintraille had just opened up.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
All of which isn’t to say much but Happy New Year, everyone. Live well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
New Year’s Eve is usually a time of reflection and drunkenness, dear readers, and I hope you all engage in plenty of both tonight. I’ll do a little reflecting right now, but no drinking, since it’s morning and I allegedly have standards. The official VM fianc\u00c3\u0192\u00c2\u00a9e & I are heading over to Caf\u00c3\u0192\u00c2\u00a9 Matisse tonight … <\/p>\n
Continue reading “Slap-Happy New Year”<\/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-781","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\/s4C7K-781","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1752,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/nba-preview-part-2","url_meta":{"origin":781,"position":0},"title":"NBA Preview, Part 2","author":"Gil","date":"October 30, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"The Virtual Memories 2007-08 NBA Preview is complete! It's got profiles of all 30 teams, season honor predictions, and gratuitous comics and pharma references galore! Many thanks to all of the contributors who helped out with this year's edition! We'll now return to my regularly scheduled incoherent rants.","rel":"","context":"In "basketball"","block_context":{"text":"basketball","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/sports\/basketball"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1057,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/bush-saves-new-orleans","url_meta":{"origin":781,"position":1},"title":"Bush Saves New Orleans","author":"Gil","date":"July 30, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Last night, we had CMT's Hee Haw Weekend Marathon on while Amy worked up a dose of Emeril's spicy tomato glaze. My parents didn't watch Hee Haw much when I was a kid, although my dad developed an unhealthy attachment to Willie Nelson in the 1980s (unhealthy inasmuch as he\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":990,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/measure-for-mermaid","url_meta":{"origin":781,"position":2},"title":"Measure for Mermaid","author":"Gil","date":"June 15, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"If you're in NYC and got a hankerin' for some Shakespeare, former VM buddy John Castro (not-so-long story) is launching his new theater company tonight with Measure For Measure. Dates, times, location, tickets, etc. are at the Hipgnosis Theatre site. I'm not planning on being there, for a variety of\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":2228,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/good-night-sweet-mr-3000","url_meta":{"origin":781,"position":3},"title":"Good Night, Sweet Mr. 3000","author":"Gil","date":"August 9, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Bernie Mac died last night at the age of 50. We'll probably watch Bad(der) Santa tonight in his memory. Longtime movie & TV producer Bernie Brillstein died Thursday. So Bernie Kopell better keep a low profile, is all I'm saying. . .","rel":"","context":"In \"bernie brillstein\"","block_context":{"text":"bernie brillstein","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/tag\/bernie-brillstein"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":654,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/memorial-day","url_meta":{"origin":781,"position":4},"title":"Memorial Day","author":"Gil","date":"September 11, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Last month, one of my best friends asked me what I plan on doing on Sept. 11. I told her that I was trying to write a longish piece on the Twin Towers and NYC, but the last two weeks have made it pretty tough for me to concentrate on\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":861,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/update-7","url_meta":{"origin":781,"position":5},"title":"Update","author":"Gil","date":"March 3, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Sorry I've been out of touch, dear reader. We're closing in on the wedding date (March 12!), and this has necessitated a ton of work at the day job, preparing the April issue of the magazine so that my associate editor can handle what I'm leaving behind. This will necessitate\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/781","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=781"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/781\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}