The General Situation

"I Think the Water Here Is Turning My Mouth Red"

Melissa, a friend from college, recently mailed me this postcard that she and her friend Paige had written for me when they went to Italy, oh, almost 20 years ago (they never got around to sending it). It made me giggle, and it made Adam giggle, even though he doesn't know Melissa or Paige. It also made me nostalgic for postcards—not just ones sent from travelers, though I miss those, too, but also postcards sent to/from friends. When I was younger, I loved sending random postcards to all sorts of friends. Now I think it would seem like I have too much time on my hands, or like I need to grow up. And maybe I do, on both counts. Anyway, I'm grateful to Melissa for sending it, though she probably should've sent it to Paige. Paige was a firecracker back in the day. (Click on the image to enlarge it.)

Brace Yourself for Periscope Jokes

What I learned in the New York Times during the month of September....

9/1: Agreements have been reached to buy the last pieces of land for a memorial to United 93, which crashed on 9/11. Plus: Some people develop tonsil stones. 9/2: New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg has given at least $1 million to Franklin & Marshall College in honor of a deputy mayor, Patricia Harris. 9/3: Consumers can buy green-screen technology that allows them to insert themselves into certain movie scenes. 9/4: Parents in Houston don't want their kids to listen to a speech by President Obama out of fear that he'll indoctrinate them; the speech is about the importance of hard work and staying in school. 9/5: The White House will release its visitor logs "for the first time in modern history." 9/6: News websites in China, complying with secret government orders, are requiring that users log on under their true identities to post comments. 9/7: The U.S. military is looking into whether troops should be taking dietary supplements used by weight lifters to increase muscle mass. 9/8: The TSA limit for carry-on liquids is 100 milliliters (which is 3.4 ounces, not 3.0 ounces). 9/10: Roger Federer reached his 22nd consecutive semifinal at a major tournament, more than doubling the previous mark (10, Ivan Lendl). [9/11–20: Vacation in Italy.] 9/21: Canada is being stingy with the amount of time it's allowing foreign athletes to spend at 2010 winter Olympic venues in Vancouver. 9/22: Coal-fired power plants are testing pumping carbon dioxide into the earth instead of the air. Plus: The MRSA germ is turning up in pets—particularly cats—which are transmitting it to humans. Plus: There's a periodical called The Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. Plus: Many Russians think eating melons cleanses their systems. 9/23: The tensile strength of silk from a golden orb spider of Madagascar is five to six times stronger than steel by weight. 9/24: Data from three spacecraft indicate the widespread presence of water or hydroxyl molecules on the moon. 9/25: Using a metal detector, an unemployed British man discovered $1.6 million worth of Anglo-Saxon treasure probably dating from the seventh century. 9/26: A Kuwaiti man was the 30th Guantánamo detainee to be ordered released after a federal judge reviewed the evidence justifying detention (she called it "surprisingly bare"). 9/27: The U.S. Navy is considering allowing women to serve on submarines. 9/28: Former New York Times op-ed and "On Language" columnist William Safire was a college dropout. 9/29: "Outside" cats are decimating songbird populations. 9/30: China's state-controlled mobile service company has changed customers' ring-back tones to a patriotic song, "Guojia" ("Country"), sung by Jackie Chan.

Walking Down Duane Street...

Woman: How old is pug person?

Me: [Thinking, "Almost 40, thanks for bringing it up"]

Woman: How old is pug person?!

Me: Oh, three.

Woman: And what is pug person's name?

Me: Howard.

Woman: And who was pug person Howard named after?

Me: A doorman I once had. He looked like a pug.

Woman: Not Howard Hughes? [makes a guttural, exclamatory laugh, like "heh heh heh" but much rowdier; then she sticks her tongue out, not at me so much as if she were at the doctor] Go on, honey!

Always Working

A rebate I received for buying a big-ass bottle of Tanqueray.

That's My Dog

I'd Rather Direct Anyway

I received an email today from a friend—all it said was "Dude you are a superstar." I'm assuming it was about the HSBC commercial.

Emails like that—and all sorts of acquaintances bringing up that they saw me on TV (or in the TVs that are in cabs! And even on movie screens!) have softened the blow of the fact that my superstardom is coming to an end. I learned yesterday by calling Talent Partners—the payroll company that administers my residuals—that I have most likely received my last check. "Once it goes to Internet and industrial [cabs, supermarkets, etc.], it's over," said Linda, the Talent Partner representative who kindly broke the news to me with zero sugarcoating. In fact, she explained it to me twice. "I get it," I said. "Thanks."

For a few minutes, I felt like Ben Curtis. 

It was a good ride, though, and while I've done a bit of TV as a "travel expert," there was something about being in a commercial that really impressed people. In some ways, as odd as it seems, I think it's more legitimate than, say, being on CNN. While the money was good—let's just say it was enough to make me forget sweating all day in an unairconditioned Serbian church—the most satisfying thing about the entire experience was hearing people express how shocked they were to be going about their lives and there I'd be, magically appearing, like a leprechaun, helping them become more comfortable with the changes brought by technology.

At some point, I suppose, I had no choice but to realize what everybody already knows: There's only room for one superstar in this family.

This Week's Floral Obsession

"I Talked to Myself"

I was looking through my poetry folder—all the cool kids have one—and I came across this. It's from the June 2008 issue of Poetry. I'm not sure why I didn't post it at the time. I must have been saving it.

For Adam
by Michael Hofmann

In that aftertime
I wasn't writing. I never wrote,
I didn't know what the aftertime was for.
I felt little, collected nothing.

I talked to myself, but it was boring.

OMG I'm Turning into Larry King

One time I was yapping to a friend about something I had written about on my blog, and she said, "I didn't see it. Was it in one of the sidebars? Because I don't read those." Fine, then, here are a bunch of the entries from the "I'm Just Saying..." sidebar, because it's getting far too long and I'm an anal-retentive editor. Cutting is what I do. (These don't really have anything in common other than I thought them and I didn't think they warranted more than a line or two.)

• If you own quirky underwear, get rid of it. Because one day you'll have no other clean underwear left, and you'll put it on, figuring no one will see it anyway. Later, when you drop trou in the gym locker room, you'll realize that you were wrong.

• I still can't believe that I went to an elementary school, John H. Eader, where the mascot was the Beaver. We were the Eader Beavers. (It was later changed to Eagles.)

• I may have to go back to work if only to stop people from using two headline clichés. The first is deploying "Inc." to indicate that the story is about the business of a subject ("Oprah Inc.," "Marijuana Inc."). The other is adding "Oh My!" at the end of a series of three, riffing off The Wizard of Oz ("Zombies and Aliens and Darcy—Oh My!").

• The instructions for McCann's steel-cut oatmeal include "Do not overcook."

• Whenever the recent Star Trek movie got a little tedious, I found it entertaining to imagine it with dogs instead of people.

• Skip intro. Always.

• If you're not 100 percent certain of a loved one's eye color, don't bring it up.

• Today, while walking the pug, I inadvertently made eye contact with Christy Turlington—until she looked away. Couldn't handle it.

• Upon a second viewing, Woody Allen's Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex was a truly awful movie.

• Have you tried to find a small bag of tortilla chips lately?

• Cinnabon is a lovely name for the right kind of girl.

• "She has a dirty mouth, a smoker's voice, and a closet full of Armani." —The New Yorker's Lauren Collins on Nora Roberts.

• Heard at a dinner party: "Richard Widmark loved all my brother's dogs, but especially the Pomeranian, Gidget."

• I used to think that it would be a shame if someone asked me to act in his movie because I would have to say no, what with my job and all. Now that I'm available, however, no one is asking. [Ha!]

And I'm the "Travel Expert"

Me: The flight arrangements looks great! Though are the Atlanta–Nashville times correct? (That's just an eight-minute flight.)
Stephanie: You're going from the Eastern time zone to Central.
Me: Doh!