Shiny and New

Look everybody, it’s a new design! I’m so excited, I even pulled from my precious store of exclamation points. I realized a few weeks ago, that I haven’t touched the design since 2001. Apparently, I fear change.

As you can see, the new site has photos, and comments (on occasion), and a recent photo of me in which I’m not wearing the glasses that I sat on in 2002. It also has ads, which I hope will not annoy you, and which will definitely not annoy you if you use an RSS reader. Many thanks to Thor of Rubyred Labs, who spent much more time on the redesign than he should have, because he’s committed that way.

I hope you like it, because I love it. If you don’t like it, I suspect you’ll have the decency to pretend that you do. You’re good to me like that.

Perfect

What went right:

-We woke up early, got dressed, and went outside.
-It was sunny and warm for the first time in ages, and the New York Times was on the stoop.
-We climbed in our little orange car, and drove for breakfast in the Mission.
-There was a metered parking spot right out front.
-We didn’t have to plug the meter, because it was Sunday.
-There was no wait for the table.
-The coffee came right away.
-There was melted cheese.
-In amongst all the grape jellies, there was one strawberry left.

The Little Things

I’m with Sarah on the annoying nature of the “Up with Grups” cover story in New York magazine. It’s not that I care whether 35 year olds buy expensive jeans, or own iPods loaded with Cat Power, and the Drive by Truckers, and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. I don’t even care if they’d rather raise their kids on a steady diet of They Might Be Giants and dress them in tiny ironic tees.

It’s more how the article keeps insisting that adults wearing cool clothes and listening to current music somehow “erases the generation gap.” Oh no, honey. If you’re not twenty, people know that. You know who knows it most of all? The twenty year olds. They can taste it on the air.

And though urban adults listen to the same music, and wear the same clothes, and buy pot from the same dealer, very few of them are trying to hang with the undergrad set. We may be at the same concert, but please. We have completely different Dodgeball lists.

What the Kids Are Calling Them

I am asleep and having a sex dream. It is Girls-Gone-Wild-esque, save one key element. Everyone in the dream, including me, is a mathematician.

I am amongst a handful of bikini-clad girls standing atop a boat. We are laughing and holding small white boards. The guys in the crowd are raising their beer bottles and screaming, “Show us your solutions! Show us your solutions!”

Osso and Buco

From this week’s New Yorker Magazine, the poem “Sixtieth Birthday Dinner” by Michael Ryan:

If in the men’s room of our favorite restaurant
while blissfully pissing riserva spumante
I punch the wall because I am so old,
I promise not to punch too carelessly.

Our friend Franco cooks all night and day
to transform blood and bones to osso buco.
He shouldn’t have to clean them off his wall
or worry that a customer gone cuckoo

has mashed his knuckles like a slugger
whose steroid dosage needs a little tweaking.
My life with you has been beyond beyond
and there’s nothing beyond it I’m seeking.

I just don’t want to leave it, and I am
with every silken bite of tiramisu.
I wouldn’t mind being dead
if I could still be with you.