Could a situationally depressed person make THIS?
(gestures to newsletter)
Today’s Featured Pet of The Day is Matlock. Let’s ask his companion, Maggie, to explain what’s so special about Matlock.
Maggie: “He's a 6-year-old rescue whose hobbies include:
kneading soft blankets
leaping five feet in the air for toys
stealing hair ties and storing them in his water bowl
depositing himself on any discrete surface he can find, including, once, a cutting board in the 10 seconds between when my husband put it on the table and when he got the ingredients out of the fridge:
“His most distinctive features are his whiskers. Cats' whiskers are normally the same width as their shoulders, because one of their functions is to help the cat determine whether they can fit through a narrow space. But Matlock was malnourished as a stray kitten (we adopted him when he was a year old), so he's a little smaller than he was supposed to be — but his whiskers are as wide as he was supposed to be, and they are dramatically white against his black fur.”
“He isn't always the best at emotional support — he gets freaked out and hides if anyone starts crying. But my husband and I are both sick with Covid-19 right now, and Matlock has spent the past 10 days dutifully alternating between the bed where my husband is resting and the pullout sofa where I'm resting. He kneads the blanket for a while, purrs for us, then goes to visit the other. He has been immensely comforting.”
Maggie, we love you and your husband and Matlock and we hope everyone is healthy and happy as soon as humanly possible.
If you have not listened to the brilliant CaseFile episode about how Curb Your Enthusiasm and a dogged attorney kept an innocent man from being successfully RAILROADED for a CAPITAL crime, here’s the link. Larry is the one who told HBO to quit bitching about “spoilers” and give the defense attorney their footage, so he is always okay in my book (also, the LAPD is directly responsible for the death of the young woman named Martha Puebla they accused the poor schmuck of murdering, so it’s a great listen if you want to be furious at the LAPD):
As an overly-attached-fan and as a content creator of something that took on a lot of importance to a lot of people and then stopped doing it, I related to every moment of this in a deeply personal way:
AAAA: When I saw your ideas, I knew them. And I need you to know my knowing, and to feel my feeling, and to make it again, and to make it always, and to make it forever, and to make it the same, for everyone, for all times. This cannot only happen to me.
CCCC: We are making it happen for everyone.
AAAA: I liked it.
BBBB: Yes, the idea.
AAAA: I liked it to problems. Now liking is a problem for me, of liking lonely. Why am I not you?
BBBB: You are us now.
AAAA: I am not you enough, because I did not make the idea. Make me your idea. Make me yourselves.
CCCC: I am another idea now.
DDDD: I remember how we made the idea, but we are not making it now.
Made my damn day:
I drank a beer last night that expired in 2018 because Utah is letting ten people in the liquor stores at a time and lining everyone up six feet apart:
Sam is a beautiful genius and I love seeing her getting her due for it and please buy her book or e-borrow it from a library:
Read Irby because she understands the mutinies of the body. She understands suffering and uncertainty, and is wildly, seditiously funny on both. Read Irby because she knows what it means to live with a fair amount of panic and largely indoors. She suffers from depression (her new book is dedicated to Wellbutrin), degenerative arthritis and Crohn’s disease, which can require her to wear a diaper. To her, the three most terrifying words in the language are “outdoor music festival.” One of her essays is a manifesto titled “A Case for Remaining Indoors” (her argument hinges on: “My boyfriend, the television, is inside”). She might be our great bard of quarantine — with an unimpeachable daytime pajama look. What amateurs we are by comparison, stockpiling toilet paper and bleating about our sourdough starters.
The second-best part of my day (the best part is when the kids are asleep) is picking today’s Absolute Unit:
Rachel Aviv is one of the best writers at the New Yorker:
All artistic mentorship requires a certain level of devotion and imitation, but in choreography the influence tends to be more literal. One body is taking direction from another. The critic André Lepecki describes choreography as “a body snatcher.” The dancer, he writes, is “nothing more than a faithful executor of the designs of the absent, remote, perhaps dead, yet haunting power of the master’s will.”
Barbara Dilley, Sharon’s adviser at Naropa and the founder of the school’s dance-and-movement program, often spoke with students about the importance of questioning the role of the guru, in both Buddhism and art. “She didn’t want us to fall into the trap of trying to please someone, of losing ourselves on the path,” Sharon’s friend Kathryn Ross said. In class, Dilley asked her students to experiment with taking different degrees of influence from one another. “You learn to become aware of the other person’s power in the room,” Dilley told me. “And, rather than mirroring, to make choices.”
Ah, the sovereign citizens. Truly flexing at this time (I lol’d at “Conversation Starter”, the “I’m just asking questions” of social media):
Every day, new chicanery from employers:
In the wake of COVID-19, my large company has been told that “tough decisions” are ahead, and that they would first start by asking us to to take voluntary pay cuts. The more of a pay cut that everyone takes, the fewer people will need to be laid off.
Here’s the catch — we get to pick the pay cut. While I think I am fairly paid for my experience, and I wouldn’t mind taking a temporary pay cut to save my job or others, my company is notoriously tight-fisted with salaries and I have fought hard for the raises I have gotten during my tenure.
Of course, I want to do my best to prevent layoffs of myself or others, but I don’t know what percentage to say. Do you have any advice on how I can navigate this?
My good friend had a “surprise! IT’S A VIDEO INTERVIEW” for a job he thought would be a conference call interview and it was for a fancy place and he was unshowered and wearing a t-shirt that had a rainbow unicorn and said FRESNO on it, so I support any new legislation requiring complete transparency about video-versus-audio interviews and meetings at this time. Also, I want the shirt. I would post his selfie but he would truly like to get a job.
MUSIC:
Joni! My queen:
My fav Joni song is “Down To You” and it’s so beautiful:
This is also a gorgeous live cover:
I also love Bobby Darin:
One of my personal favs from a perfect album:
A full Bobby Short set from the Carlyle in 1979:
Ella Fitzgerald’s “Wait Till You See Him” is so beautiful:
I do love Frank Sinatra’s best, even though he’s a dick:
My friend Josh saying sweet and perceptive things about his perfect wife:
A truly great Wilco song:
From my “My Fair Lady” rewatch, two very different songs:
Jeremy Brett (it’s not him singing but you can pretend, also, Brett was one of our finest bisexuals):
Always picks me up:
All the songs in that movie were good:
“Moulin Rouge” was great:
Rodney…thank you:
I love you and I like you. You’re fantastic. You’re so much better than you know. I wish we could hug, unless you’re not a hugger. I’m a hugger. I’ll hug the shit out of anyone who gives me the slightest encouragement. But I will respect your wish not to be hugged. I’m not hugging anyone right now. Gonna have a lot of bottled-up hugging energy when this ends, but that’s my problem, not yours. But I do wish I could make a comforting and loving gesture at you today. I wish I could dedicate a song to you on the radio and you would hear it and feel truly known, one which would demonstrate my genuine understanding and love for your innermost self, which is unimaginably beautiful even if you feel like a literal pile of trash today.
xooxox
nicky
The double Jeremy Brett was a mistake but let’s pretend it was a joke. Also I had linked to the Elephant Love Song Medley which was SO ROMANTIC in high school and honestly still is.
I am feeling so very sad about Adam Schlesinger, whose name I didn't even know, really (in spite of seeing him with Rachel Bloom in concert once), but whose writing has wormed into my deepest subconscious. And also, Rachel Bloom *just* had a baby, and the thought of dealing with all those feelings at once--I'm just a fan, it IS very weird to be a fan, but she's first in my heart today.