Of course I realize it could get annoying receiving an e-mail every day from me. But maybe you'll get used to me knocking on your door, popping my head in. You don't always have to answer the door. I'll just move along. I'll be pleasant. I might have a story or a joke.
Today I listened in on our Salon company meeting where Joan Walsh announced she was stepping down as editor in chief and Kerry Lauerman is stepping into her mules. So that was sort of newsworthy. She's writing a book.
I decided to write this letter as a nice way to transition from writing the column to being back in the world. And also as a way of staying in touch, because if I don't do something every day, next thing you know it's been a month.
It's good to have a transition. After I finish the column, I'm kind of spent for a while. I don't know what to do with myself. I could turn on the TV and watch Keith Olbermann. Is he back yet? Dumbass. There's rules. They might be stupid rules but there's rules. You don't give money to candidates if you're a journalist. It just ain't right.
Maybe I'll go out back and sit in the sun and meditate? That would be good. Norma's taking the dog out. She's taking one dog out and leaving the other dog. The other dog is getting old. He's just lying here.
I'm looking for a new guitar, probably a Martin or a Taylor. It'll be my first grownup acoustic guitar. I've had the same Yamaha FG-300 for 40 years. It's beat up. It has a big, ringing sound but I want an acoustic cutaway with electronics. I was a pretty serious guitar player there for a while. Then something happened, some rupture with the musical self, some creative confusion having to do with drugs and ego and social self and who knows what. Band breakup x 100. Now the musical self is slowly coming back.
I went to see Damion Searls on a panel Sunday talking about "Comedy in a Minor Key" by Hans Keilson, which he translated into English from the German. It's a cool book. He's a really good writer and translator.
I also enjoyed hearing Joshua Cohen read from his novel Witz and ended up buying all 800 some odd pages of it and reading it when I got home. It's the kind of novel I like, all long impenetrable sentences full of weird images. I told him how much I liked his reading. He said thank you.
I wish I did have some smarter things to say. But I figure if I'm going to do this every day you'll get used to me not always being Mister Dazzling Prose, not that I ever am anyway. Today I'm like your dull, slightly annoying neighbor who drops in and sits there in your kitchen and says dull, slightly annoying things and you're like, you should come with material!
But your kitchen is not a talk show, he says. It's just your kitchen.
And it's the end of the day and time to slow down and take it easy. Tomorrow's another day. Maybe tomorrow will be dazzling.
Maybe the gift of the dull neighbor is that by comparison you feel positively sparkling.
I hope so.
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 what else? tonight's column?
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