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Monthly Archives: November 2013

• The Week Before

  Posted at 3:27 am by kayewer, on November 25, 2013

  Everything seems to be in chaos the week before Thanksgiving. I was in New York City yesterday, where the decorations are going up and some stores are playing the usual holiday songs, but nobody seems ready to accept the fact that the most hectic shopping season is about to descend. It certainly was cold enough to be late November.

  Along with the mass of humanity in Times Square (among whom I also count the dozens of costumed characters struggling to stay warm to get their pictures taken with their throngs of fans), I was freezing in spite of my outerwear choices. What warmed the spirit were the lights on Broadway, the heat emanating from the big box attractions, and passing by the occasional chestnut cart.

  I didn’t see Rockefeller Center this trip; I intend to wait until I go back later on for that. I’m sure they’re putting the tree together and priming the various performers and support teams for the upcoming holiday hoopla. The spirit hasn’t taken hold of everybody yet; I had a disinterested associate on my visit to McDonald’s for dinner, who didn’t even crack a grin when I made a light joke about an extra dollar bill which got stuck to its wallet mates. What saved the encounter was the fact that, after years of not making shakes a part of my meals, I got a chocolate shake and found they offer whipped cream and a cherry on top. That’s a new one for me. Wendy’s doesn’t do that, and I haven’t had one of their beverages for a while either.

  Maybe it’s because of the difficulties associated with wishing people a good holiday that makes it hard to get into the mood for the rest of the year. Over the past decade or so, lots of information has come out about what our holidays mean: the truths, the lies and the controversy about all of it. I won’t go there this time, but I don’t think that all the despressing factoids about the holiday season should get in the way of people being nice to each other. We still have a few days until the start of the shopping and general mayhem of the season gets started. Let’s decompress now and gird our loins, as it were, and not forget that, good or bad, time will tick on and we will look behind this time of year all to soon in the future. Enjoy what is good about it now.

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• An Ode to Blockbuster (Apologies to the Bard)

  Posted at 3:04 am by kayewer, on November 17, 2013

  Alas, poor Blockuster! I knew them, Horatio; a video store of infinite variety, of most excellent selection. They hath entertained me a thousand times, and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is to know that they go into the void, having closeth 300 stores and posting videos by mail to my doorstep no more. My gorge rises at it: I am thereby compelled to ally myself with another bearer of videos. Here in my purse hangs the membership card that I used I know not how oft. Where be your online presence now? your gambols? your songs, musicals and horror festivals pressed into shiny digital orbs? your flashes of merriment that were wont to set all in a room on a roar? Not one now, to mock your own customer service smiles? quite chap-fallen? Or perhaps that was Charlie Chaplin? or the movie “The Fallen.” I know not.

  My heart grieves for the passing of Blockbuster. I remember happier times when such merchants worked in harmony. I oft visited Movies Unlimited, Erol’s and Blockbuster itself, with its blue and yellow banner proclaiming its presence. What now to say of empty shops and goods priced to go indignantly into greedy hands, with shorter profits in a dying business’ coffers? What can one say to such disgrace, prithy tell me?

  I shall see the red envelopes of NetFlix at my doorstep, but forget Blockbuster I wilt not.

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• Arriving Early

  Posted at 3:57 am by kayewer, on November 10, 2013

  So I just came from the Walnut Street Theatre’s new production of “Elf.” Yes, it’s a musical version of the hit movie. Yes, this is just the week after Halloween. And yes, some audience members around me felt that we were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  It’s bad enough that we spend seven months out of the year with our clocks set one hour ahead, but Christmas ads started cropping up the day after Halloween. Sure, some people like the holidays and can’t wait to start celebrating; they decorate starting on Labor Day. So do the holiday food processing plants. Just keep your eye on a box of holiday wrapped candy in your local department store and watch it sit there from September until somebody desperate for something to put under the tree grabs it up. Also makes you think about the preservatives going into that lunchmeat log on display in a cooler in the middle of the mall.

  But I digress.

  It’s not that I don’t have any holiday spirit; it’s just that it’s TOO  #@&#! EARLY!

  Remember when the Thanksgiving Day parade was the measurement of when the holiday season started? Santa Claus used to clinb a ladder into Gimbel’s to set up the toy department overnight for the kids (and their parents) for Black Friday. Now Santa takes up early residence in the mall while the Halloween store is closing out its costumes two stores down the hall.

  Now I never saw the movie “Elf.” I only watch one or two holiday films every year, “Christmas Story” being one of them. At least there is a story beyond little Ralphie’s hankering for an air rifle. Now that I’ve seen the musical, I can honestly say I’ve heard enough Christmas music for the season, and it was something other than the twelve standard songs rehashed by countless singers over generations. The songs were great, the dance numbers perky and the plot s simple joy to watch. None of us was ready to think about Christmas this early; it was like going down the shore in a swimsuit. Just bad timing.

  Ask me about all of this on December 26th, when I’ll be in a better frame of mind to look back on it all.

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• NaNoWriMo Hooks Me Again

  Posted at 1:26 am by kayewer, on November 3, 2013

  Every year I have tried to participate in National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo for short. Every year something has blocked my efforts. Not this year.

  The object is to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days, using the month of November as the time clock. Writing begins on the first and ends on the last day of the month at 11:59 PM. Somebody wrote a column noting in error that the event required only 30,000 words. Some veterans would probably consider that child’s play, but for writers like me who work on the fly with no home computer (it’s a long story: longer than 50,000 words), writing at all is a privilege fought for and agonized over at the same time. It does force a writer to focus on getting time to write, though the tradeoff can be pages of garbled snippets of mis-matched ideas. Fortunately participants are encouraged to edit the results in the spring.

  So far I have managed to nearly get the required 1,666 words per day down in my difficult Microsoft Word Windows 8 environment, with few typos but lots of dangling idea threads. If I had to pause to structure, nothing would go on the page. I have about 200 left to do today, and I will get them done after I tell you I’m doing so. Bye for now.

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