(no subject)

One of my more sedentary and peculiar hobbies of old age is keeping an eye out for The Last Hot Summer Night of the Year. Though I'm not in general a big fan of summer, I do love summer nights, all soft and fragrant and velvety and full of crickets. We usually have a heat wave, sometime in late August or early September, and even though it's getting dark earlier, along about 8:15 or so, the warmth hangs on into the night, and I sit with all the windows open and the fans running, sipping a beer and listening to the crickets thrumming away. Any one of these nights could be the last one; soon, very soon, we'll start getting down into the 50s at night, and then the 40s, and even though we might still have the odd sweltery day in September, summer will be over. But this one, right here, right now, is still a summer night.

At this point in typing, I got a phone call from my beloved tazlet and we had one of our wonderful wacky conversations, about funerals and Oregon and families and Queer Eye and buying shoes on eBay. At one point I was talking about the heady experience of buying a velvet-and-sequins strappy floor-length dress to wear at Club Vivid and dancing--dancing in public!-- for probably the first time in 25 years, and quoting Carson's comment from some QEftSG episode or other about how after 50, you can resume wearing sequins. And--yes, we agreed, why not? Because--at our age, if not now, when?

I should be dyeing my hair right now, because I have a quarter-inch of silvery roots and look like a bag-lady-in-training. Instead, I've been reading Mimi Smartypants, a constant source of delight. I sometimes think that she is a Chicago-dwelling avatar of eliade; for example,

THE WEEK'S READING
The Day I Turned Uncool: This book thought it was much more funny and clever than it actually was. (Oh, the thin ice Mimi skates on---I am sure there are legions of people who think that I think that I am more funny and clever than I actually am---and if you can pluck apart what I just said, like a shoelace knot of hideous self-consciousness you deserve a medal. Now do you see why I have to drink? Some people can probably just say things, without anticipating and deflecting the criticism on and on in an endless loop. Not me.)

or:

Vanity Fair, the issue about inbred royalty: my secret shame. There was almost nothing worth reading in this one, but sometimes a girl just has to look at page after page of obfuscated-signifier gender-troubled Prada ads.

or:

In my recent list of things I want to be other than human, some readers questioned the predominance of inanimate objects. I was surprised at their surprise---doesn't it seem preferable? Doesn't the animal/vegetable kingdom seem a bit ridiculous, all these cells dividing, all this matter flailing about under its own power? Sometimes I would rather be something dignified, something solid, something like a stapler or fried egg. A still life. With stapler and fried egg. If you paint that for me I will love you forever.

And now I should go to bed, given that at an early hour tomorrow I must deal with my brain-injured student who has extensive and complicated issues. ::yawning::