Show me the guts …
My MONEY magazine subscription came with an article on how to marry a billionaire. I don’t know. Color me new-fashioned, but shouldn’t MONEY be telling me how to make my own money, not latch on to someone because of his?
Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not averse to dating men with money. And I’ve dated more than a couple in my lifetime. I’ve dated rich men with their own major domos, to well-off men with waterfront homes and Porsches in the driveway, to men who simply made some really good cake and could afford to live comfortably if not extravagantly.
I’ve also dated men on the opposite end of the money spectrum — guys so broke our dates consisted of long walks, moon-gazing, used bookstore haunting, and mutual navel-gazing over endless cheap coffees. Our big nights out would come if somehow one of us scored free tickets to Fenway or had a friend bouncing the door at some hot new restaurant opening where free food and a single complimentary drink would tide us over ’til an all-you-can-eat Sunday brunch. (more…)
The perfect relationship
Last year, a really nice man I had met at a holiday party invited me out for a drink. I met him, we chatted; we parted after an hour. He called me the next week to invite me for dinner and I had a choice: tell one of those oxymoronic “white lies” or tell him the truth. (more…)
Last night … Socrates and Sex steamed up the Sarasota News & Books!
Here are my notes from last night’s talk at Sarasota News & Books … I also spoke extemporaneously a bit about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan … but the text below is the gist of what was discussed. (more…)
Got a Question for MC?
This Thursday, July 23, I’ll be speaking, reading, and taking questions (and of course, signing copies of my book Sideways in Sarasota) from the audience during a book event at Sarasota News & Books. The shindig begins at 7 pm — I, along with another Creative Loafing contributing columnist — Theresa Rose — will be introduced by Cooper Levey-Baker, editor of CL.
Even if you already have my book … feel free to come and listen to me spout off on a new topic I’m ranting about this week — never previously written about (by me) and so esoteric it just might bore your pants off. It’s also your chance to ask, live and in person, all those questions you’re burning to ask but to shy to ask over this blog (as if).
And, if showing up in person to ask a question is just too, too hard, feel free to submit a question here and I will answer your question on this blog. Just be aware, your question will appear here in a separate “answer” blog, not in the responses section of this blog post — but I won’t identify the person asking a question — not even the aka name.
I’ll take questions between now and noon on Thursday, July 23 — answers will be posted on the 24th — that is, if anyone even asks any ….
Sovereignty, self, and suicide
Sir Edward Downes, 85, one of Britain’s most distinguished orchestra conductors, and his wife, Joan, 74, who was ill and dying, assumed sovereignty over their own mortal beings as their ultimate right when they chose recently to end their lives together via assisted suicide. But they had to leave their UK homeland, where such suicide is not legal, to find that sovereignty in a Switzerland clinic.
Albert Camus wrote, “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.” (more…)
Boomer and the butterfly
And all men kill the thing they love . . . — Oscar Wilde, the ballad of reading gaol
Tonight, the story of Boomerang and the Butterfly.
I was walking Boomer, as I always do. Taking him out for his evening air, his nightly stretching of the legs, sniffing of the air, the remembrance of his life before adoption by the woman who keeps him inside. Away from his beloved nature.
And he did, and does, love his nature. When he was wild, he would sit a few feet away from me as I worked in the yard pulling weeds or digging up old tree stumps. He’d go to the pond nearby and try to catch turtles. He’d climb trees. He even killed baby birds in those months before I moved him indoors. (more…)
Blacklisting blackberry-heads and canceling cell phone companions
The next time a client or an editor or a so-called friend, or god forbid a man who has asked me out, or anyone who is sitting at a table or barside with me for whatever reason even THINKS about answering a cell phone (at the table) or even MAKES A MOVE toward a frickin’ Blackberry, I will get up and walk out. (more…)
Feeling warm and fuzzy for Father’s Day? Um, not so much.
Somebody asked me today if Father’s Day was difficult for me since I don’t really have one. “Nah,” I replied, “Not really.” (more…)
The day the media died
American Pie is just about the most perfect song ever written or sung. So, it’s with a bit of trepidation that I watched the following video — hate to see such next-to-godliness blasphemed. But honestly, I think maybe this little ditty does AP justice in some perfectly perverse 2009 way.
And just for the record. I hate, hate, hate everything about YouTube and I’m equally disdainful (go ahead and hate me) of its ubiquity and of my friends when they say “Oh, you’ve got to see this thing on YouTube” — in general, I think I’d rather throw up.
However, I’m making an exception for this exceptionally literate piece of propaganda (?). Watch it, and weep, all your printed page lovers out there. Just one rule: watch this baby through to the end.
Sarasota firemen rescue MC and her cats!!!
Two kind of drop-dead, gorgeous, sexy, and sweet firemen just left my house.
MC (in the middle) with firemen in Boston (during a city-wide scavenger hunt that just happened to involve getting a photo-op with firemen. Yes, I was the mastermind behind the scavenger party!)
Okay, they left my driveway, but still … it was very close. (more…)