Friday we went to the Gateway to see The Persian Version – happy that the theater is still showing the occasional non-mainstream movie – and before the show had dinner with our friend Joe at the Greek restaurant next door. It was the first Greek restaurant I’d ever been to that had entrees in the $40 range, and crabcakes on the menu but no moussaka.
Going over recent events, Joe expressed amazement at all the press given to the death of Matthew Perry. “I bet Jimmy Carter is lying around thinking, ‘If I don’t get at least half of this attention …’” He also regaled us with his evening spent using ChatGPT. Joe being Joe, he gave it some unusual tasks, one of which was “Create a knock-knock joke about Pol Pot.”
The movie was delightful.
A recent starred review in Publishers’ Weekly of a work of fiction quoted two lines from the book: The first, a racist comment from a peripheral character and the second, another character’s statement about the prevalence of racial hatred. And I wondered: Do writers win points these days simply by citing the currently approved obsessions? Wouldn’t readers be more impressed by the sharing of some telling observation from the author, a brilliant apercu perhaps, or an unusual or interesting use of language?
Gifts this year included essays, travel books, a biography and, weighing in at 15 pounds, a two-volume collection of New Yorker cartoons. (Rarely has anything so light been so heavy.) This last present was courtesy of our neighbors Charles and Claudine, who also distinguished themselves by presenting me with three bandannas imprinted with the covers of my books.
One of the pleasures of posting a cartoon on social media is reading the list of people who like it and then imagining a party where they all meet.
One of my best freelancers when I was at the Sun-Sentinel was a woman named Pamela Petro, who has now published three books, with a fourth one coming out next year. Recently, she’s expanded her repertoire to include comics, one of which is currently on the website of The American Scholar. It’s occurred to me that, were I still at the paper, I could put out an issue of the Travel section containing nothing but Pam’s comics and my cartoons. I would make history before getting fired.
I saw a long-silent friend’s name in my inbox and eagerly clicking on it found, instead of news, an invitation to connect on Alignable.