Take It Easy
from Wednesday, April9th of the year2008.
I’ve learned how to deal with London, I think; the basic strategy is the inverse of dealing with New York. In New York, you make as many appointments as humanly possible, run around like a crazy lady, and 
then descend into a fog at the end of the day. In London, you make one appointment per half-day, and Keep Calm and Carry On. The city does not reward those who rush! It punishes you with thirst, confusion, and apologies! I managed to avoid the guaranteed litany of apologies attendant to flying into the busted-ass Terminal 5 by calling up the airline and using miles to (a) change airlines to what they lingo-erotically called “My Codeshare” and (b) get myself bumped up into American Airlines’s new Chiropractorally-informed Business Class, where my chair reclined nearly flat and where I ill-advisedly watched the first nine minutes of a Nic Cage movie (National Treasure: Book of Secrets? Something something? Benjamin Franklin something something) before switching it to Júnó, which was actually kind of great. My doctor is suspicious of me, so, I am attempting to achieve international travel without Ambien; perhaps National Treasure is meant to be the multimedia equivalent?
I am reading, as is my wont, a whole new pile of mass-market books about autism. I think I have read most available novels that feature autism in any fashion, and am now working through all the available memoirs. There’s a new one out in England, called A Friend Like Henry by a woman called Nuala Gardner. While I don’t recommend it per se, it does have many many chapters of what it’s like to be British and try to navigate the healthcare system to get a diagnosis of autism. Good train reading.
I ate last night in what from the outside looked exactly like the restaurant Dressler in New York. It then later turned out to be sort of my vision of what happens if you give gay people £1,000,000, put them in an office chair, get them drunk, and spin them around until they’re dizzy. Then say, “decorate a restaurant!” Let’s just say that there was a statue with a boa on it, shirtless men on the business cards, and a surprisingly decadent burger. Highly recommended, if you go in for that sort of thing.
Housekeeping! I have noticed that literally nann person has commented on my post about programming new music. Click here and read it and get sassy!
11 Comments
April 9th, 2008 at 9:47 am
“My doctor is suspicious of me, so, I am attempting to achieve international travel without Ambien; perhaps National Treasure is meant to be the multimedia equivalent?”
I can only assume you hadn’t seen the preview for that movie, or you would have avoided it. Every time I saw it in the theater my friends and I would guffaw at the ridiculousness of the “plot.”
You should check out Bistroteque while you are there. David, Jackie and I went while were on tour and had a great time.
April 9th, 2008 at 10:43 am
Apparently Glenn Gould had Asperger that is a sort of autism. As monads (cf. Leibniz, never thought I would write cf Leibniz in a commentary…) we are all autistic, in some level.
April 9th, 2008 at 12:19 pm
And slightly dislexic too, inverted the order and posted my email instead of my name…sorry.
April 9th, 2008 at 2:18 pm
Interested to know the source of the interest in autism!
April 9th, 2008 at 2:51 pm
You gotta be kidding. I’ll take the Freemason adventuring of National Treasure over maudlin Juno any day of the week. The last song in Juno almost sent me back to the psych ward.
“The pebbles forgive me, the trees forgive me
So why can’t, you forgive me?
I don’t see what anyone can see, in anyone else
But you
I will find my nitch in your car
With my mp3 DVD rumple-packed guitar
I don’t see what anyone can see, in anyone else
But you
Du du du du du du dudu
Du du du du du du dudu
Du du du du du du dudu duâ€
Puke Puke Puke Puke Puke
Puke Puke Puke Puke Puke
Puke Puke Puke Puke Puke
Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo
Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo
Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo
Nico responds: haha! This is funny. That’s totally how that song went. Point taken.
April 9th, 2008 at 4:50 pm
The opera: The man who mistook his wife for a hat, maybe? Where music and neurology once met.
April 10th, 2008 at 12:35 am
Since we’re talking Britain and autism, might as well mention Born on a Blue Day by Daniel Tammet.
April 10th, 2008 at 4:41 am
sorry i suck at hot-linking, but this by Tim Page on Asperger’s was quite interesting. .
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/08/20/070820fa_fact_page?currentPage=all
LOL re: National treasure= media equivalent of Ambien.
SHOULD your doctor be suspicious? 🙂
April 10th, 2008 at 4:41 am
Hurray-your site did it for me—thanks!
April 10th, 2008 at 2:01 pm
wasn’t the point of Juno that you shouldn’t get an abortion if your underage and pregnant, you should find a really beautiful rich lady like Jennifer Garner and give her your baby and not have any lasting scars or emotional angst, just get back together with your adorable if feckless boyfriend and go back to being a total wise-ass with no worries whatsoever and really understanding parents?
i felt as if james dobson was seriously involved in that movie.
also, i cried at the end, despite the icky music.
people are hard to understand.
April 10th, 2008 at 11:22 pm
You might add to your list a novel written from the perspective of an autistic child, ‘The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime’.