A blog about New York City, my books, and my cats. Mostly.
It looks like it may not have been me, the thing with all the comments disappearing. Unfortunately, if you’ve tried to add a comment in the past day or two it didn’t go up. I’m looking into it. Ack. Meanwhile, a picture of Buddy, who doesn’t have a care in the world. Actually, I’m sure he has plenty of kitty-cares.
I think I accidentally deleted all the comments I’ve ever gotten. All that history, gone. Just gone. Oh. I just can’t bear it. I know when it happened, too. I thought I was deleting all my spam, and I obviously hit the wrong delete all.
Oh God. Kill me now. I am too stupid for this world.
Sigh. I need time to recover.
Had a great lunch with the ITP girls, Red, Sharleen, Marianne and Kate. And then came home to discover the devastation of my own spazatude. Oh well. Live and freaking learn. Damnit, damnit, damnit. All the Aly comments!! Oh, it’s too much.
Think about puppies. And kittens. And a possible Buffy movie. The hot new doctor on Grey’s Anatomy. My book coming out. And someone maybe making a movie out of it. The endless good food to be had in New York City. Friends.
Ha, notice the distance between puppies and friends. It doesn’t mean anything! I passed by a window full of puppies on my way home so it was the first cute thing to come to mind. Kittens naturally followed puppies, and so my list evolved.
Thank you movie Santa! Unless you are a stalker, in which case, what movies??
But if you are not, that was very sweet, thank you. This story is one of the best redemption stories. Scrooge gets a do-over! (Someone sent me the Mr. Magoo and Alastair Sim versions of A Christmas Carol, my favorite holiday movies.)
Except this part always bugged me. We still have to die (damnit). “I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach. Oh, tell me I may sponge away the writing on this stone!” [Sorry. Not a chance, Ebenezer.]
Oh! I love this line: Darkness is cheap, and Scrooge liked it.
I saw you in the dead boy’s room
You were wearing the traditional black guitar.
In the spring of 2001, Aly asked me to write these liner notes because Aly, David, and Robin were thinking again about the Leisure Units music, and trying to get a CD together based on the master tapes.
Like so many other things in the Leisure world, this didn’t happen. But now that Aly is gone too, really, it should. When I dug the CD out from under the pile of my 7 year old daughter’s Jonas Brothers/Hannah Montana/Avril Lavigne collection and played it for her, she was soon dancing wildly around, singing, CaCaCaCaroline!
That’s got to be worth something.
On the way over to the memorial gathering for Aly, I remembered an extended joke from the Leisure era. It was a comic marketing ploy–I don’t remember whose idea it was originally, but I remember hysterically laughing at it (OK, maybe there were other things involved in the laughter, I don’t recall).
It was when things were falling apart (the first time), and it was an idea for a late-night infomercial of the kind you might see on the USA Network: A clear blue sky, a small plane spinning downward out of control, a crash, then headshots of Michael, Aly, David floating above the flames. A sepulchral voice (Michael’s of course) intones: You never got to know them in life! Now, after their tragic death, you can learn to love their music!
It seemed hilarious at the time. Now, with Aly gone too, it seems funny/sad. Sort of like life.
RIP Aly.
We miss you.
SP
2008
(Pictures of Aly as a boy and then a young man courtesy of Rachel de Cordova.)
I’m talking to the weather there. It’s been threatening rain all day. So, I was downtown, helping with the tours of the WTC site. As always, I took a few shots. Here are people inside the Winter Garden, looking out onto the site.
But if you turn around, you see this! You can’t quite tell but it’s strands and strands of lights. Very pretty.
Another view.
The last stop on the tour is the memorial American Express installed for the 11 employees they lost on 9/11. Water drops intermittently from the ceiling, representing tears. (It’s called Eleven Tears.)
