descending on diane from all quarters.
There is literally no such thing as an idea that cannot be expressed well and articulately to today's voters in 30 seconds.
Public television should be more than English people talking and animals mating, occasionally interrupted by English people mating and animals talking
Today: 5.3 miles.
Yesterday: 3.5 miles.
It suddenly dawned on me this morning, as I read an entry from Columbine, what the difference between Darin and everybody else is: Darin does not suffer from Impostor Syndrome in the slightest. Darin knows what he knows and what he can do. He is quite comfortable both in knowing this and in telling you about it. Not egotistically. He could care less as to whether you believe him or not, whether you're impressed or not. It's simply a fact, like "Today the sun is shining": "Today I am doing really great programming."
Most everybody else feels like an impostor, however.
- writers: They're going to find out I can't write!
- models: They're going to find out I'm not really beautiful/I'm really fat!
- actors: They're going to think the other guy is better! Okay, that was mean. Actors probably suffer the worst from Impostor Syndrome, because the reasons they get picked for roles often seem totally arbitrary or unfair: they get chosen on the basis of their looks, not their talents.
But not Darin. He doesn't have an inflated sense of ego; he's just very honest with himself. No false modesty for this boy. He doesn't waste time soothing his ego--he just gets back to work. Which is part of the reason why he can knock off at the end of the day and say, "I'm done now." Because he knows he can get back to it.
Of course, part of the reason he has this damn fine self-image is that he wakes up every morning and says, "Today I am going to do great work!" and he gets himself all psyched up about doing it. That kind of self-talk really works. I should start doing it, eh?
We have visitors this weekend: Steven, 5 and a half; Andy, a half; and their parents Jim and Lisa. It's weird to have a house full of people. For those of you more familiar with my, shall we say, retiring traits, you would imagine correctly that I'm just a little freaked out by this.
Jim is a friend of Darin's from growing up together in Highland Park. The last time Jim and Lisa came to visit us, Steven was Andy's age and while at our condo discovered the joy of crawling backwards. Andy evidently learned to crawl right before their visit here. Basically, visiting Darin==mobility.
Darin is really great with Steven, keeping him amused and making himself Steven's new best friend. I'm not doing so well with it. I talk to him some, but I can tell Steven thinks I'm one of those horrible grownups who are nervous around children, and I am.
This afternoon our guests went off to a party some of their relatives were having, and Darin and I went off to one of the Writers Bloc presentations. This time it was a conversation between Sandra Tsing Loh and Julia Sweeney. Ostensibly Sweeney was supposed to be interviewing Loh, but Loh assumed the mantle of interviewer pretty quickly, which was good.
Because Loh, as hysterical as she is in her spots on NPR and in her writing (such as the extremely funny Depth Takes A Holiday), she's a terrible extemporaneous speaker. So many times she would begin to say something and then say--literally--a minute of filler phrases and noises as she tried to figure out what she was going to say, and then never get to the point anyhow.
Sweeney, on the other hand, is a marvelous improv artist (she's a former Groundling) and is more comfortable being "herself" (or whatever persona she puts forward in public) in front of an audience. She talked some about her one-woman Broadway show God Said Ha! and her family, but mostly she and Loh talked about what it was to be a woman in Hollywood, particularly an over-30, non-"fuckable" woman. Sweeney and Loh didn't use the word "fuckable," but that's the term that's actually used in Hollywood, folks. Nice, isn't it?
Sweeney played off of Loh so well that Darin and I were in stitches for most of the 90 minutes. At $15 each, that's pretty darn good value. Sweeney could make anything funny, including her intro to what she thought would be a dull anecdote (it wasn't, of course): "This is neither funny nor interesting, so prepare yourselves."
On rec.arts.mystery I read about a British mystery series starring a slightly outré sleuth, sculptor Sam (short for Samantha) Jones. I ordered several of the novels from Amazon UK--damn you, Amazon and your global reach, damn you--and have been enjoying them thoroughly:
- Dead White Female: The first one. A friend of Sam's from art school turns up dead at a party at a co-op house, and as Sam investigates more people buy it. Not that she cares much.
- Too Many Blondes: I haven't gotten this one yet, because Amazon UK says it isn't available. Waterstone's says it is. Guess who got my order.
- The Black Rubber Dress: Now available in the US. Of course. This is much better than Dead White Female, if only because the look at London's social scene fits into the crime better, and Henderson has a better handle on Sam's cynicism.
- Freeze My Margarita
- The Strawberry Tattoo
The mysteries are pretty good, but the draw of these books is their descriptions of modern-day London, particularly hip London, particularly relentlessly hip London. People are delineated by their postal code, and the clothes and facial characteristics of the characters are described in such detail I feel as though I should be taking notes or making shopping lists. (I get the feeling that Henderson does this to extremes to make fun of it the way Bret Easton Ellis did in American Psycho, but I could be wrong--this could be what Londoners fixate on the most.)
Sam Jones is the archetypal cynical single female, on the prowl for excitement, cocaine, and men (and not necessarily in that order) through the London nightlife. People she knows keep turning up dead. You know how it is. Like most mysteries, there are too many contrivances and some things are too easy--if you needed to run a trace on a license plate, would you know where to turn?--but Henderson's voice is great and the descriptions of the people and places in London are fab.
The biography of author Lauren Henderson is pretty amusing:
Born in London in 1966, Lauren Henderson read English at university and then worked as a journalist for -- among other publications -- the New Statesmen, Marxism Today, the Observer and Lime Lizard, a much-mourned indie music magazine.
Lauren now divides her time between Italy and London and, when not eating pasta, writes full-time.
I think this is why I want to be an author. No, not for the fame or the money (koff, koff), but so that I can divide my time between two different domiciles. US authors apparently divide their time between "New York and Miami" or "Los Angeles and Aspen." European authors get to divide their time between different countries. (Even though the overall distance is probably a lot less than from Los Angeles to Aspen.)
"Oh yes, Darin and I will be flying to the Paris apartment this weekend. Do ring us. But not right away."
Actually, I'd like to divide my time between San Francisco and New York, and, you know, I lose nothing by deciding that's what I want.
|
|
|
|
Copyright 1999 Diane Patterson
Send comments and questions to diane@spies.com