Sunday Sundries, 199

1. AOTW: The other night--driving back from Aurora to Hudson via Old Mill Road (which, for those of you who don't know, courses through Tinker's Creek State Park)--lovely, but narrow roads, some hills that make passing dangerous--thus, double-yellow lines most of the way. The speed limit is 35 mph. (We were going 39.) I don't like to go too fast on Old Mill--lots of wildlife (we hit a deer there last spring), cyclists, etc. But the AOTW, roaring up behind me, had no such ... reservations. Around me he went--double-yellow line be damned!--lots of noise from his car. I smiled to see him still waiting at the stoplight on Ravenna Rd. when we arrived there. If I'd had the AOTW Award with me, I would have knocked on his window and presented it right then and there. But, alas, I didn't, so here it is, AOTW--and well-deserved it is!

2. Last night (Saturday), Joyce and I drove over to the Kent Cinema to see Christopher Robin, a film that had me in tears the first ten minutes or so (as they visually rehearsed portions of the books): Joyce and I had read them to our son decades ago, but the memories are fresh. (To be fair: Joyce read them more often than I did.)

It was fun to watch the film--and I especially loved Pooh himself and Eeyore (the donkey). There was no real plot surprise--I mean, you know how it must resolve itself (C. Robin is not going to reject his childhood, his wife, his daughter, and snarf opiods the rest of his life). But ... still ... very affecting ... (Link to film trailer.)

3. As I posted on Facebook yesterday, I have (finally!) uploaded Frankenstein Sundae, my memoir about chasing Mary Shelley around for decades. I serialized it on this site over a three-year period, but when I finished that, it was not in any kind of shape to publish separately. Too much repetition, etc. So ... I spent the last year trying to get it all sorted out and am going to have to settle for what I uploaded yesterday. Time has marched on (hell, it's raced on), and I'm finding less and less energy to do any big sort of writing project. I'm afraid that Frankenstein Sundae is the last. I hope I'll be able to do some shorter, less physically demanding projects in the future, but Father Time and Mr. G. Reaper? I think I just saw them down the street. Sniffing. Looking. Sneaking. I'm hiding for the nonce, but they are a determined couple of hunters. Merciless, too. Anyway, Here's a link to the book on Amazon/Kindle.

4. I finished reading one book this week, Rachel Kushner's 2013 novel, The Flame Throwers.

I'd not read any Kushner until recently--not until her new novel, The Mars Room (2018), got such great reviews. So I read it ... really liked it ... then, as is my wont, went back and began reading her other books (there are only four so far): Telex from Cuba (2008--I've already posted about it here) and Flamethrowers. Remaining is a story collection, The Strange Case of Rachel K. (2015), which I hope to order/read soon.

What so much impresses me about Kushner: Each book deals with an entirely different world. Telex was about Americans living in Cuba in the 1950s; Mars was about a girl working in a night club; Flamethrowers is ... geez ... so much: World War I, motorcycles, the New York art scene (a few decades ago), men, women, relationships, identity, status, revolution (of all sorts--including street violence), Italian history, flamethrowers (of all sorts). I was just stunned by the research she had to do to write such a volume.

The final sentence is a dazzler: "Leave, with no answer. Move on to the next question" (383). The narrator--a young woman nicknamed Reno (she's from Nevada)--rides motorcycles, hangs out with new artists in NYC, gets involved with an Italian art-star, has several BFs. At the end, she is in Chamonix, France (where is set one of the key scenes in Frankenstein), where she's waiting at the bottom of the ski lift for the return of her BF from his run ... but ...

5. Thanks to Joyce for this cool discovery: daylights (as in, It scared the daylights out of me). Joyce discovered via the OED that the term dates back to the 18th century--and means ... eyes, which, are, come to think of it, our "daylights." I love it ...

6. Last Word--a word I liked this week from one of my online word-of-the-day providers ...

     - couch potato (COUCH puh-tay-to)

noun: A person who leads a sedentary life, usually watching television.

ETYMOLOGY: Why a couch potato? Why not a couch tomato or a couch pumpkin? The term was coined after boob tube, slang for television. One who watches a boob tube is a boob tuber and a tuber is a potato. According to the Bon Appétit magazine, the term was coined by Tom Lacino. Yesterday’s couch potato is today’s mouse potato, spending time in front of a computer screen, surfing the web. Earliest documented use: 1970s.

USAGE: “Brooks Koepka went from US Open hero to a depressed overweight couch potato last year.”

Euan McLean; "Koepka so Happy to Shape up"; Daily Record (Glasgow, UK); Jun 13, 2018.