Debra Galant Explains the Universe

Let's go back in time....

...to Sunday. Here's my returning warrior, the chief bat lugger and e-mail sender of the TNT softball team. With the sepia tone and "antique vignette" photo edge provided by my photo software, you can almost imagine yourself back in the Weequahic section of Newark, circa the Philip Roth years, as memorialized in Portnoy's Complaint:

On Sunday mornings, when the weather is warm enough, twenty of the neighborhood men (this is in the days of short center field) play a round of seven-inning softball, the stakes for each game a dollar a head. The umpire is our dentist, old Dr. Wolfenberg, the neighborhood college graduate—night school on High Street, but as good as Oxford to us. Among the players is our butcher, his twin brother our plumber, the grocer, the owner of the service station where my father buys gas. ‘The Mad Russian’ Biderman, owner of the corner candy store (and bookie joint), Allie Sokolow, prince of the produce market. I think of them only as ‘the men’….In the on-deck circle, even at the plate, they roll their jaws on the stumps of soggy cigars. Not boys, you see, but men. Belly! Muscle! Forearms black with hair! Bald domes! And the voices they have on them—cannons you can hear go off from our front stoop a block away. I imagine vocal cords inside them thick as clotheslines! Lungs the size of zeppelins! And the outrageous things they say!

Still seven innings, still the bald domes. Only now they play in Livingston, not Newark. And they're not candy store and produce princes; they're in journalism, theater, Wall Street, PR. And no cigars. God forbid. But the outrageous things they say! They are funny. There's something about middle-aged Jewish men with bats, balls and gloves, getting up early on Sunday mornings, taking to the field, living out their childhood baseball fantasies, kibitzing on the bench. And the boys for whom they are gods.

"Did you win?"

And always the same answer, usually prefacing the news of defeat. "You know, honey, it's not about winning or losing."

All dressed up and nowhere to go

When you set yourself up as a Universe Explainer, you do have to expect a question or two from the little people. So in my mailbox today comes this query from a new blogger who is trying to start a meme -- actually two memes at once *sigh* -- and wants my help. How is such a thing done? What's the etiquette? Can we explain the TrackBack?

Of course she must be referencing my wildly successful "My Mother Was Right" meme, which wound up on, hmmm, maybe two other sites. Or maybe she came to me because of the "Declare Your Blog Letter" idea. (No, maybe not.) On the other hand, Jo and I did have some success with "International Blog Comment Day." And I was in fairly early on the "Joogling" deal. So maybe Elizabeth is not so much barking up the wrong tree.

And I think, actually, that Elizabeth's idea may have legs. Here is what she wants you to do, Ladies and Gentlemen:

If you could have a dinner party and the only limitations were a) total number of people including you could not exceed 12 b) you cannot invite more than 1 person that you actually know and all your guests must be alive today.

Who would you invite? And what would the seating arrangement be?

I do question why we must only have live guests at this dinner party since, after all, it's merely hypothetical. I mean, the Marquis de Sade might be a very interesting dinner companion. And there are a few people I actually knew, who passed away, who I wouldn't mind having back for the occasion. My old Dow Jones pal John Liscio, for example, was always a hoot.

But rules are rules, and this is Elizabeth's parlor game, not mine. So we will try to obey.

I am not bothering with the seating arrangements, because we tend to entertain fairly informally around here. Assuming that my charming son and I are the hosts (Noah points out that he is forced to stay in his room for actual dinner parties, so why can't he be the co-host of this make-believe one?), who would our 10 other guests be?

1. Like Elizabeth, I have to pick Jon Stewart
2. Charlie Kauffman, from whose fertile imagination came "Being John Malkovitch," "Adaptation" and "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind"
3. Ira Glass
4. P.D. James (heard her on Lenny Lopate's "Survival Kit," and she sounded quite charming. Besides, a great accent and we are short on women)
5. Someone ex-Bush administration like Richard Clarke to give us the inside dope on that shipwreck
6. Hmmmm, we're still short women. Thinking, thinking.... and Katherine Hepburn is dead. How about J.K. Rowling?
7. And while we're on female authors, Diane Johnson.
8. Noah wants Kiefer Sutherland, and while we don't know whether he can really hold up his end of the conversation, for sheer stubbly good looks, we'll have him.
9. Lauren Bacall (she's still alive, right?) for her stories about Humphrey Bogart, and because she can't be so good looking as to make for a huge inferiority complex
10. And do we want Mia Farrow for her dish on Woody Allen? Or Julia Child? I did mention this was pot luck, didn't I?

But wait. Maybe we'll drop J.K. or... Mia. I mean, do we need dish on Woody? How about Judith Martin of Miss Manners fame? We seem to be having a lot of fun adopting her smug tone of voice and we're sure she could amuse us with all kinds of tales about the louts who send her questions in the mail. Besides, she'd be such a help setting the table.

And come to think of it, we'll have to bump somebody else in order to invite The Soup Lady.

Well, Elizabeth, darling, I've done my best. I would send you a BackTrack, but I don't see a TrackBack code on your site. Dear, dear. I guess I'm not such an expert after all. I'll just have to send you and old-fashioned e-mail instead.

Number one: Don't Panic

My Canadian friend Ray at Van Ramblings wakes me up this morning with this frightening headline : Tech Week in Review: The Internet Is Vulnerable To Collapse? — Or Not — Depending On Whom You Believe

I don't want to panic, but HOLY MOLEY!!! What am I supposed to do when I get a thought! How will I find out what movies are playing? Let alone check my Technorati numbers????!!!!

Luckily, The Toque, also of Canada, has this emergency checklist:

Here are some examples:

6. Turn On A Television Or Radio

Televisions, strange boxes that sit in your parents' living rooms, were once used to provide entertainment, long before DVDs and Playstations were invented. Televisions have the capability of broadcasting streaming information similar to the content on multimedia websites. With a "remote control," a wireless device that is like a small one-handed keyboard, you may be able to surf a limited number of "channels," while you deal with the loss of your connection. Unfortunately, television is only a one-way media.

In ancient times, radios were also used to entertain. A radio allowed you to listen to news, sports, and music, much the same way that you listen to live streaming audio on a Shoutcast server. Like the television, a radio will only have a limited selection of listening stations, and no video. Hopefully your separation from the Internet will be brief.

7. Read

Yeah, right.

If the internet goes down, I mean really goes down, fellow members of the Blogosphere, we all drink the Kool-Aid.

Shuffle your mind

I just figured out why I was so confused at BloggerCon last week, in Jay Rosen's session on "Is Blogging Journalism?" Maybe that's not even what he was asking, but it seems like it was what everyone was talking about. Well I just got back from seeing "The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," and now I understand. Asking if blogging is journalism is like asking: are movies journalism? Are dreams journalism? Is life journalism? I mean, why should it be?

Sure, blogging is publishing. And journalism is part of publishing. But so are novels. And we don't ask of novels that they follow the rules of journalism. We don't say novels are inferior to journalism because they're not properly "sourced" or because their authors are not "trained" in the practices of journalism. That would be silly. I do know some people who never read novels, because they think that anything but nonfiction is a waste of time. But I know more people who believe that the real truth, the real writing, the real craft lies in novels. I know more journalists who strive to become novelists than the other way around.

The point is that blogs (like most novels and films) concern themselves not with the public agenda (which is the realm of journalism) but the social agenda, the important question of: what is life like? What is consciousness like? And this was the subject of "Eternal Sunshine." What is memory? What is love? Why are people so charming when we fall in love with them, and so annoying when we live with them for a while? What's bravery? What's cowardice? Will the boy get the girl? Is it cool to have blue hair?

What I see in Blogville is a real divide between the kinds of blogs, almost as big a divide as between fiction and non-fiction, but without the labels. There are the serious blogs, which concern themselves with politics and breaking stories, with Bush and Iraq and the FCC, and for this kind of blog the question "Are blogs journalism?" makes some sense.

And then there are the blogs that concern themselves primarily with the vague, fleeting ideas and images we understand as life. This is why on days like today, when the weather is as sublime as it was awful during the winter, I post a picture of the view from my front porch. Or when Noah and his pals are being silly, pretending to meditate, I snap that and post it. Some of these slice-of-life blogs are marvelous for their writing. I think especially of The Prop and Pops, whose words are so idiosyncratic and precise that I sometimes think they are 21st century reincarnations of Mark Twain and Will Rogers. And then there's Jo, whose spirit is irrepressible and who covers her life as thoroughly as a wire service covers the news, updating us 8, 10, a dozen times a day.

But even though I admire a few for their brilliant wordsmithing, I believe that it's the aggregation of all these fleeting interpretations of reality that's important. To borrow from a popular meme -- what are the top 10 songs on my iPod today? -- I think that blogs, linked by happenstance and many small communities, which transcend space and even time, together form an altogether new art form not unlike those shuffled iPod playlists. An art form that resembles mosaic. Or quilts. A communal form, joining thousands of little snippets of reality in an constantly-updated global quest for meaning -- and a few laughs.

Boys will be zen

My Spring office

Pull up a wicker chair and join me.

Precious cargo

Click here to see this, and 360 other images of American casualties in Iraq being "processed" at Dover Air Force Base, which were obtained through a Freedom of Information Request by The Memory Hole. These were the pictures the military didn't want you to see, but I guess the FOI still works. The Memory Hole, which I'd never heard of, asks readers to "Send us material! All insiders, whistle-blowers, researchers, journalists, and others are encouraged to send us important, sensitive documents. You can remain anonymous." Which brings to mind Tom's recent post on anonymous sources.

I'm sure The Memory Hole, with its aim of collecting the material "they" want hidden (including these photos), is a publicist's nightmare. But, anonymous sources or not, I'm sure about glad it exists.

Thanks to VanRamblings for alerting me to this.

I've said it once

I'll say it again.

But nobody could say it better than Pops. If you read nothing else today, read this. Here's a true meme, better than cheapskate one I offered before in the interest of humor and better Technorati numbers: Why not follow Pops' lead, and sometime between now and the Day of Mothers, write something real about your mother?

Self-indulgence edition

After frying my brain working on three major projects this week, I have come to the realization that the mental cache just ain't there, boys and girls. No more work until... well, until at least tomorrow.

I'm now in some robotic pleasure seeking mode, and so far I've:
1. Eaten two packages of sushi while sitting in my car in Brookdale park.
2. Begun to pour a bubble bath.
3. Started a Netflix queue. Waiting to be sent out:

--"24" Season 2, Disc 5 (for Noah)
--Bartleby
--Magdalene Sisters

This is my answer to everybody who lists their iPod tunes.

First time I've ordered through Netflix and boy is it fun. Rate this movie, rate that movie, if you liked "Best in Show," you'll love etc. etc.

I'm waiting for the software that will tell me, if you spent last Saturday at Bloggercon and last Sunday seeing Ira Glass in Princeton, this weekend you would love to __________________ .

So far as I know, the software hasn't gotten that personal.

Gotta go. The bath awaits.

Mother's Day: covered

I've got Mother's Day covered -- all done, over with, bingo bango, no need for flowers, candy or jewelry. Because my mother reads my blog (yay, Mom!), and because I said she was right.

She called up to see how my back was, and even told me: that's it, you're covered for Mother's Day.

And by the way, sending this out to Roz, my mother-in-law, you were right too. What about, it doesn't matter. Does it?

So for all you bloggers out there who want a cheap way to get through Mother's Day, and give them something they really want, just post somewhere on your blog that your mother was right.

She's sure to like it better than this. (By the way, if you want this bouquet, or anything else 1-800 flowers sells, click on the picture below. But otherwise, stay away. Their website won't let you out!)

UPDATE: (or how I've avoiding real work) Here's the easy clip-and-paste version for your own website.