the biggest little christmas
Yesterday's drive across the Sierra Nevada made me feel about 12. We played car games and at some point my sister came up with a song:
Macho, macho me
I want you to be macho like me
It's the stupidest song ever and it will not leave your head. In other news, I was introduced yesterday to a sinister new purveyor of pork in the form of HoneyBaked Ham®. My mother had called their 800 number and ordered a ham from a computer via the touchtone phone. The computer gave the ham a confirmation number, as if it were an airline ticket. We retrieved the ham at the HoneyBaked outlet itself, which was a medium-sized emporium with a tiled floor and expensive-looking counters, decked out with soothing lights and glossy photos of hams in attractive settings, playing world music versions of Christmas carols through the ceiling. In all ways it screamed "yuppie chain." Basically, it's Starbucks for ham.
On an impulse, I picked up Salon's Reader's Guide to Contemporary Authors while I was supposed to be buying presents for other people. I'm amused by what they say about Ethan:
In the 1980s, when hip, young writers proclaimed themselves avatars of the drug-propelled, angst-ridden, media-savvy moment, Ethan Canin was the old geezer of his generation, and proud of it.
But mostly, the book reminds me how little I've actually read. There are times when I resent being 22.
Politicians and their moms. This article is entertaining largely because it refers to Lyndon Johnson as a "great flapping bird of ill omen."
