I don't know if you've heard this in the media news already, but my company was hit with layoffs on Thursday, as a result of the Huffington Post merger. My team was hit pretty badly -- I lost almost my entire editorial team, of two associate editors. (I have one half-time staffer left.)
I don't feel comfortable discussing my feelings about this here, since it is, after all, a public forum. If you'd like to know, please reach out to me directly. Otherwise, suffice it to say that it's been a rough few days.
But even in the midst of chaos, I cling to the rare bright moments when my team (such as it is) and I can manage to produce something great. And this was it -- an Oscars-type 'In Memoriam' tribute to Corey Haim (he was snubbed from both the Oscars and Globes montages), who died a year ago this week. On top of that, we got Corey Feldman to narrate our video.
I'm intensely proud of this video, which made me tear up -- granted, the emotional state I was in may have contributed to that -- and also made me want to watch 'Lucas' again. Oh, that kid. Rest in peace, Lucas.
Layoffs tomorrow at work. I'm not going to lie: I'm kind of sick to my stomach right now. Not necessarily because I'm afraid I'm going to lose my job (I've been through a ton of layoffs, and I've been laid off twice -- either way I'm prepared for this), but because layoff days are awful, and I'm worried about the effect this will have on my team and the people around me.
And that's about as confessional as I get around here.
I will conclude by saying that tonight's Top Chef was pretty great, and I could watch that Quickfire Challenge ten more times, because I love Stephanie and Michael Voltaggio and seeing them again made me swoon. (Particularly Michael Voltaggio.) Hosea and Kevin, not so much.
As I said last time, I've gotten a little overly fixated on looking at wedding dresses. I'm pretty sure I'm more into this search than the bride is.
Well, another friend of mine is also getting married soon -- weddings are in the air! -- and she hasn't started looking for a dress, either. Her only stipulation is that the dress has to have pockets. I think that's kind of awesome, because I love dresses with pockets. A wedding dress with pockets? BONUS.
I guess I must be more bored than I thought, because at work today I mentioned this whole dress-with-pockets thing to some coworkers, and they got all excited, and one of them suggested I start a Tumblr.
So I did. I present to you: One Hand in My Pocket, your one (among many) source for dresses with pockets. Like kangaroos, but prettier.
I have no doubt this one will go the way of the last Tumblr I started (it's still hanging out there, a little lonely -- lonelier than this blog, and that's saying something), but this one was kind of fun for the entire 60 minutes I devoted to it. If you have any pictures of dresses with pockets you'd like to upload to the Tumblr, I'd be happy to give you access, or post it myself. Just ask.
Because who doesn't love dresses with pockets? Communists, that's who.
I took an Ambien, and it made feel all wobbly and unable to type, yet my symptoms are lacking that one essential element: the ability to sleep. I only took half a pill, but I fear taking the other half because the last time I did that, I fell down my front stairs.
So this weekend, you are going to think this very creepy and unstable of me, but I kind of got into shopping for wedding dresses. My friend Andrea is getting married and isn't much for traditional wedding gowns so hadn't started looking yet, so Hannah and I peer pressured her into making an appointment at the Bridal Garden, a non-profit whose proceeds go to charity. You go up several flights of a dingy-looking building, open the nondescript grey door, and ... DRESSES!
This ain't no boutique. No one serves you champagne or picks out dresses for your body type. You dig through the racks like you're at Loehmann's, , then haul out a dress (those suckers can be heavy) and put it aside.
Then, if you're a friend, you sit back and watch the show. Which really is fun, and I say that as a person who has no desire to buy a wedding dress -- possibly not even if I ever got married. It's just, how many chances do you get to shop for something so pretty, so romantical, so fabulously over the top -- and to help out a friend who not only looks charming in everything but also needs to get a decision made?
We didn't buy anything, but got some good ideas, like this one from Ulla Maija, the one "dress with a poofy skirt" we made her try on (it's not to her taste and I don't think she's going to buy it, but i loooove the skirt).
And then, because Hannah and I spent the evening being silly and drinking a lot of wine (and laughing at bridesmaids dresses in the Bride magazine we bought), I spent Sunday lying on my couch, watching 'Gilmore Girls' and ... researching wedding dresses. I couldn't stop!
And then I felt entirely too girly so I started researching my fantasy baseball draft.
Clearly I am bored and in need of projects. Got any for me? In addition to helping Andrea buy a wedding dress, I will be picking one ginormous hardcover book off my shelf to read (either The Corrections or Infinite Jest), finally putting my apartment into shape -- especially once the headboard arrives, and researching my fantasy baseball draft. More ideas?
Tonight's Meatless Dinner was pasta with tomato sauce and a fried egg on top. Lunch was romaine lettuce, tomato, egg, potato and avocado. Once again I got hungry at exactly 4:00.
I am thinking of changing Meatless Monday to "Meatless with an Egg On It Monday."
I had a fabulous post up on my screen for several days, and I thought it would auto-save, but I guess it didn't. I wrote it so long ago, I don't actually remember what it said. It was probably the best thing I ever wrote. Sad.
Oscars were this Sunday (and if you want to know what I thought of them go here and here), which means awards season is finally over, which means I can take a tiny bit of a breath again. (But not much of a breath.) And for some reason I'm overcome by a bit of melancholia. I'm not entirely sure why -- whether I've been so consumed with constant work stress and the distraction of other events (my parents visiting and helping me set up my apartment; dealing with my landlady about a potential leak in the roof and her refusal to let me put up shelves; buying a coffee table and a headboard and a [freaking expensive] duvet cover set; SausageFest) that the momentary lull is leaving me feeling empty, or whether I'm tired after being up until 4 am working on Oscars, or whether it's the build-up of a bunch of rough weeks, or whether it's just one of those nights.
But we're all entitled to a little unexplained melancholia now and again. We'd be untrustworthy fools if we were chipper all the time. And so my mind wandered, and for some reason, this song came into my head:
Which made me think, randomly, that might would be nice if Simon and Garfunkel got back together. Wouldn't it? Of course, I used to think that about The Police, and swore that if they ever got back together I'd go see them. That was until their comeback tour tickets fetched $500 apiece or whatever it was, so I sat at home while Abby went to the concert with her friend in L.A. and they held up their phones so that I could hear Sting singing 'Can't Stand Losing You.' Sweet. Painful, but sweet.
That Simon and Garfunkel song -- 'The 59th Street Bridge Street Song' -- is tonight, in my melancholia, reminding me of the summer that I learned it. I was studying at Explo, a summer camp for high schoolers on the Wellesley campus in Massachusetts. It was my first time away from home by myself, unless you count the time I was 2 and my parents left me and my brother in Peru for a couple of weeks, and by the time they returned, I, according to legend, no longer spoke English and greeted them with a glib sentence about my aunt having made me a dress that I wouldn't be able to utter today without stumbling.
My memory is often not particularly good, but I remember a fair number of things from that Explo summer, when I was, I believe, 16 years old. Though I cried on the plane flight over, I eventually made friends, and all summer I played a running Canasta game with two other girls. At the end, we had to buy the winner ice cream as her prize; we all traded earrings so that we each had one from the other two. I even wore mine for a good while, mismatched, one bronze and long and the other silver and short. One of those girls is now friends with me on Facebook and posts status updates about her child and her mothering group; the other one I barely remember. Adrienne something. And I don't remember how to play Canasta, either.
I took a dance class in which we learned a clumsy routine to INXS's 'Need You Tonight,' and, once on stage in the final show, completely froze until our counselor barked out orders ("5, 6, 7, 8!") to get us back on track again. I took "playwriting" with a vaguely good-looking English guy named Robert whom I ran into years later in New York, at a Unitarian party of all things; and seeing him sitting on the floor in this small dark apartment, instead of at a table in a sunny classroom teaching me about plays, made him seem really small. Not fair, but there you have it.
There was this bearded, older-seeming (though who knows, I bet he was 23), wild-haired counselor there named Gary who would have philosophy rap sessions under a tree and would ask things like, "If God is all-powerful, can he make a rock so heavy he can't lift it?" Stuff like that was heroin to a 16-year-old back then, well, if heroin weren't already heroin to a 16-year-old today. No adult had ever talked to us like that before. It all seemed so grown-up and deep.
Gary had a guitar, and he would sit under a different tree and play songs while we sang along. I seem to recall he passed out lyrics, too. I would memorize them at night, until by the end of the summer I knew the words, by heart, to 'American Pie,' 'The Piano Man,' and 'Feelin' Groovy.' In retrospect I'm not sure what kind of sick joke Gary might have been playing on us. 'American Pie' and 'The Piano Man,' two of the longest songs in the history of popular music? Derided by piano players everywhere as sheer torture to play? He might as well have thrown 'Free Bird' in there. (Wait, maybe he did.) But maybe it was just the lack of irony of the age, but 'American Pie' and 'The Piano Man' became two of my favorite songs -- as did 'Feelin' Groovy.' Sitting there having a hippie play you this bright little ditty about being OK ... well, let the morningtime drop all its petals on me. Avast, melancholy! Feeling groovy.
Dappled and drowsy and ready to sleep ... more organized thoughts next week, I half- sort of promise.
