Author: Gil

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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.

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Dead Comics Society

My one and only visit to the Friars Club was in 1998, for a cosmetic packaging company’s press event. I think they were receiving an award or presenting one or something. Anyway, I was with our ad rep, who was around my age. He ooh-ed and aah-ed over the portraits of the old comedians who comprised the club’s members.

Then, shortly before the event began, he looked in the doorway of another room at the club, and exclaimed, “Oh, my God! That’s Alan King!”

I believe this was the only time in history that those words were ever spoken.

So that’s why I’m glad that the Friars Club has made an effort to get younger, according to this awesome NYTimes article. Because, as Jeffrey Ross put it, “Look at this place. I’ve seen younger faces on cash.”

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What It Is: 11/29/10

What I’m reading: The Odyssey, some goofy Johnny Ryan comics, and a ton of magazines I needed to catch up on, like Monocle, New York, Fantastic Man, GQ, Esquire, and Interview.

What I’m listening to: Barking, The Lady Killer, High Violet, This is Happening, and Ain’t Nobody Worryin’.

What I’m watching: The Promise, Alice in Wonderland, Moon, About a Boy, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, and some more of season 1 of In Treatment.

What I’m drinking: G&T with Ethereal gin, from a little distillery up in the Berkshires.

What Rufus & Otis are up to: Being cute for our Thanksgiving guests, going on a colder hike at Wawayanda. I’d share the specs with you, but I updated the GPS app on my iPhone and now it doesn’t work correctly. Yay. Thanks, Motion-X!

Where I’m going: I’ll be in Puerto Rico next Sunday-Tuesday for a mini-biz trip. It’ll be my first JetBlue trip, and my first flight from Newburgh Airport, up near Herriman. Continental’s rates were absolutely exorbitant, esp. since I was booking late, so I’m going to break with my rule of not flying direct on this trip. I have a 6 a.m. flight back home on Tuesday (via Orlando), but I don’t think I’m capable of staying up all night and rolling straight into the airport, as I once did.

What I’m happy about: Getting some errands done during my week off, managing to get $500 in trade-in value for my 1st-generation MacBook Air from Tekserve in NYC, and spending a little while comic-shopping with my pal Mark. Also, I was happy to have a long conversation about men’s fashion with a clerk at the Club Monaco store in SoHo. It sounds superficial, I know, but it was nice to chat with someone who took one look at me and recognized that I didn’t dress by accident.

What I’m sad about: Some punk-ass kids smashed my mailbox over the weekend, prompting me to buy and install a new “vandal-proof” one.

What I’m worried about: That my inability to get into LCD Soundsystem is a sign that I’m an old fart.

What I’m pondering: A good quote about my heart for the website of my wife’s pal Nicole’s blog. I’m thinking of coming up with something from here.