Yo

I was trolling the internet the other day and came across this great picture of a young, naked Tony Danza. It was, like, the third picture in Google Images when you search for “Tony Danza.” I didn’t even specify that I wanted Tony Danza to be naked. But then, a few days later, when I went to look for the picture–because I’d talked about it to anyone who would listen–it was gone.

Rest assured that if I find it, I’m posting it up here immediately. Rest assured.

Update

No frozen white bread has been et, because I broke my bad internet habit.  Since posting my resolution worked like gangbusters, I’m going to try another one.  I realize that nothing is more tedious than reading about other people’s plans for self-improvement.  But this blog has to be good for something, and if that something is forcing me to stick to my plans because I’ve declared them to my vast international readership, so be it.  So here’s another: only two drinks from now on.  Two drinks, then switch to delicious water.  It has been written.

I confess that I have been reading Julia Allison’s blog and I promise never to do it again.

Hey. Those of you who still check this moribund site may not have any idea what I’m talking about when I say, “I confess that I have been reading Julia Allison’s blog and I promise never to do it again.” And I’m sorry about that. But I’ve got to do something here.  I’ve got to do it for myself. I’ve got to do it for my time. I’ve got to do it for my work. I’ve got to do it for my brain, my soul, for all my teeth and cells. I’ve got to do it for the mitochondria in my cells.  Here goes:

I’m never going to look at this again.

What is this crazy stuff, and how did I even come to it?  I’ll chalk it up to my old job in publishing.  It’s weird: I decided I didn’t want to continue in that realm partly because I never liked the insiderey, shmoozy stuff a person has to do to succeed; didn’t like the striving and the business and the doing deals and the being cool. (Mind you, photocopying manuscripts at 7:30 pm was not “being cool,” but to gain some prominence, it was clear that you had to play along and go to some parties and know some people and talk about the same subjects that were–how odd–cropping up in various media outlets in succession.)  So anyway, yeah.  It was paradoxical that, right around the time I started to detach myself from my job out of the desire to escape that stuff, I started reading Gawker all the time. Which plunged my head into that very same insiderey media world that I referred to earlier, although, granted, allowed me to experience it at more of a remove. 

Anyway, one of the targets that they, characteristically, both mocked and glorified was this person.  Let me just quickly define her as some sort of a celebrity pundit/dating columnist hybrid.  I wanted to write “mongrel.” My awareness of her has only been a toxic force in my life.  No–that’s an exaggeration.  But, when I think about all of the embarrassingly many times I’ve clicked on her blog, I’m ashamed at all the minutes, if not hours, that I’ve wasted. I’m ashamed that I could have been doing something else–anything else.  I could have made 7,000 hard-boiled eggs, one by one, and fed them to squirrels, and still felt that my time had been better spent. I could have peed on a subway platform, gotten cited by the cops, fulfilled the requisite hours of community service, and still have spent that time better.  I could have even eaten 9,000 loaves of frozen white bread, and there’s nothing I hate more than frozen white bread.  But still, still.  It would have been better than allowing my mindspace to be occupied by Julia Allison.

So why did I even read her shit? By the way–in case it wasn’t clear–I’m writing all this as a binding promise to myself that I will never do it again.  I guess I found her to be a familiar type–irritating, false, “successful,” highly invested in “femininity” while at the same time incoherently professing some superficial, apolitical brand of feminism. I mean, I realize that I sound like a hater.  And I suppose that’s because I am.  And that’s okay, really. 

I think there’s something more meaningful to say here about fascination with celebrity as a means of avoidance and distraction, but I’ll spare you.

In conclusion: if I ever visit that blog again, I will have to eat one loaf of frozen white bread for every click.

Gabriel Byrne’s smoldering Oirish eyes

A couple of years ago, I saw Gabriel Byrne in Ozzie’s coffee shop in Park Slope. It was pretty incongruous to see him there, among all the would-be writers and carefully dressed lassies angling to inspire “Missed Connections” on Craigslist.  He was probably the most unassuming dude in the place.  Come to think of it, that’s a quality I’ve always appreciated in his acting as well, the reserve that masks the intensity.  Even when he played Shelley Long’s doctor in that movie where she fatally choked on a bone and her kooky sister brought her back from the dead–even in that ridiculous (but endearing) film, he was able to create the impression of someone who thinks thoughts all the time, and conceals most of them.

Gabe is one of the reasons I gave “In Treatment” a shot–along with Dianne Wiest– despite having serious reservations about watching a show on therapy. For one thing, I expected it would just make me nostalgic for the crackle/drama/intelligence of the Melfi-Tony sessions.  Also, the subject of therapy lends itself pretty easily to sentimentality and unrealistic excesses, and I can’t deal with that.

 So, imagine my pleasant surprise at the show’s restraint.  Byrne’s reticence works really well here–it’s what he doesn’t do and say in the sessions that makes him convincing as a therapist. His facial expressions are muted and he’s mostly silent, except for the occasional incisive question. (In my experience, the patient-to-therapist talk ratio is 90-10.)  The writers also deserve credit for holding information about the patients’ characters back.  Patients don’t spill their guts to their therapists, they fool themselves and conceal things until careful questioning and continuous conversations chip away at their delusions.

I had a major problem watching Laura, one of Byrne’s patients, who’s maddeningly self-absorbed and provocative and poorly related.  I didn’t like how her sexual attraction to Byrne–which she announces to him mid-session–is treated with an air of legitimacy.  This character has an obvious personality disorder. Why, when Byrne’s taking to his own therapist (Wiest) about Laura, doesn’t he call a spade a spade and diagnose her, classify her, put her in her place, in some way? 

Final thought: the segment with the (possibly suicidal) teenaged girl is the best. It’s the most arresting and worrisome, in a way. That kid can act.