Stacy Horn

5:30-ish: My couch really is red too, we just happen to be currently lazing about on top of a nice big, fluffy white comforter. Buddy, who used to be so camera-shy, is now completely at ease with the camera. He’s so photogenic, too.

Finney isn’t here at the moment because the spot he chose was on top of the keyboard, and that wasn’t working for me, hello, typing here.

I’ve got the E! pre-show turned on, but it’s still way too early. For the past half an hour they’ve been talking about what people wore last year. No stars have arrived yet, apparently.

I’ve got a bunch of reading to do, so I’ll be back when something actually happens.

7:00-ish: I’ve been remiss, I know.  Cliff notes:  All the Glee girls own the red carpet, each of them looks just beautiful, I love all their dresses, and January Jones, va-va-va-voom.  That’s it so far, haven’t really been watching.  Oh! Scarlet Johansson’s hair looks like the Bride of Frankenstein.

When their representatives want to do something like repeal healthcare? Please don’t do this. “The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that repealing the reform law would drive up the deficit by $230 billion over the first decade and much more in later years.”

“For all his claims of fiscal rectitude, John Boehner, the House speaker, immediately dismissed the budget experts’ report as ‘their opinion.'” Imagine what their response would have been had the Budget Office found differently. The author brings up that whole thing on Jon Stewart the other night, about how the republicans “have exempted the repeal bill [and everything else they want] from their own rule that any increase in spending be offset by cuts in other programs.”

The Golden Globes are on tonight. I am so in the mood to lay on the couch, checking out outfits and hairdos and jewelry, and who looks great and who isn’t aging so well. All while eating some Cheeto-like substance.

FYI: They are marshaling their forces. Close all windows and flues.

What do they want??

If I forget to mention it over the coming months, the Ralph Vaughan Williams piece I’m working on, A Sea Symphony? It’s Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis all over again. This thing moves like a freaking bat out of hell, and in this case the bat is also on meth and being chased by much scarier bats. Not only is it impossibly fast, the time signature changes constantly. 3/2, no, 4/2, no 3/2, okay, I’m just messing with you, it’s really 4/2. No, 3/2! He’s like Lucy with a time signature football.

I need … puppies! Here boys! In truth, the combination of this lush, exciting Ralph Vaughan Williams music and text from Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass is thrilling. Robert Shaw called it “the most beautiful piece of choral music written in the 20th century.”

I’m planning a day off for next week and I want to include a movie and there are no movies out there that I’m just dying to see. I remember I used to go to everything, regardless of how good it might be, I just loved going to the movies so much it was worth it even for mediocre films. Three times a week I’d go. Now, I want something … special.

What should I see?

Behold! An orange Christmas tree! Okay, that rhymes, not on purpose, and the rhythm is off.

Another day at the dentist. I still spare you the details. I was thinking I’d treat myself to a trip to the Municipal Archives to find this photograph that has been haunting me for years.

It was a picture of a man in a shack, taken around 1915, and he was clearly living the most wretched existence, everything about it said pain, misery, screwed-over by life. I swear I saw it over ten years ago and I still think about it from time to time. How everyone gets a certain amount of luck, and varying degrees of intelligence, talent, looks, love, friends, wealth, and so on, but he didn’t get any. He was living at the bottom of the barrel on every level. I know it’s bizarre that I would consider this a treat but I want to confront this photograph. I’ve never been able to get it out of my mind.

That reminds me. There was a picture of a baby standing up in a hallway in a tenement in Part Three of Ric Burns’s New York Documentary. I think it was a Jacob Riis photograph. I immediately wondered if Mark Helprin saw this photograph and if it was the inspiration for a child in his novel Winter’s Tale. (Love that book.)

I took this while walking to the dentist yesterday. It’s like nature tried to save me and did everything it could to prevent me and my dentist from getting to the office.