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Esquire is kind of the Scott Fitzgerald among glossy monthly magazines, this strange marriage of ultra liberal politics and consumerism pitched to feverish intensity. Don't ask me how it ended up as part of my morning RSS feed, but there it is – glitzy homages to overpriced Dobro boots and Canali suits, furtitive dreams of smoking Thanksgiving turkeys for men whose Thanksgivings will almost certainly consist of sitting alone in front the various Bowl Games on the tube with a six-pack and a turkey Lean Cuisine, and the invariable celebrity profiles.
This morning's celebrity profile was of Elon Musk, interesting to me only because his first wife Justine used to have an LJ in which she wrote engagingly and with surprising candor about how to market yourself effectively as a midlist author and what it was like to be married to a billionaire.
I used to write celebrity profiles once upon a time. The formula's pretty simple. You get five minutes access, max, and in that five minutes, you have to memorize everything you possibly can so you can spin the details into some illusory net of best friendship to fling over readers who, presumably, will study your copy to figure out why you were invited to the party and they weren't.
Celebrity profiles are always cautionary tales. There's a sameness about them, of course; but more than that, there's an inevitability about their subjects. In the Elon Musk profile, for example, we learn that Musk's destiny as a captain of unlikely industries – electric cars and manned spaceflights to Mars – was cemented the instant that sperm met egg. Luck and propinquity had nothing to do with it. He was just… destined for greatness. Those who are destined for greatness are very different from me and you.
The most interesting thing about the article was the throwaway intelligence that NASA is apparently partnering with SpaceX as a federal government cost shifting move. I actually approve. The private sector, I suspect, is far more efficient with large initiatives. They have economies of scale on their side.
###
For the first time this morning I noticed frost on my morning jaunt, and a wind – not a breeze – whipping the fallen leaves into an elegy to the end of yet another seasonal cycle.
I have been brooding a lot on the Mantle of Protectiveness – not only can't I save Sabine, but I also can't save Cassandra who is struggling so hard over all sorts of things, and I also can't save Ben with whom I text throughout most days – about the weather, and politics and the various TV shows we both watch (those last two things being more-or-less interchangeable – but not about his health situation, which I suspect is deteriorating.
I got the kids through childhood. That was major. Maybe that was as far as my magical powers extend. Max got fired from his job about six weeks ago, but since he hated the job and it was absolutely wrong for him in every conceivable way, and he was going to quit on his next birthday, it's not the disaster it might have been. It was essentially a sales job. Max is not cut out to be a salesman. He paid off all his student loans, and saved up over $10,000 so the wolf isn't howling outside his door.
Following his dismissal, he took an unpaid gig as a campaign manager for a guy running for Monterey County supervisor. His candidate lost, but in the meantime it strengthened Max's resolve to go to law school. He's now studying for the LSAT. He seems to think he's a marginal candidate for the top schools but with Stanford and Deep Springs on his resume, I think he's got a good shot.
RTT is absolutely fucking blooming at Syracuse U, and has thrown himself so ferociously into his hard science curriculum that I think he's got a great shot at going to med school – which was his original ambition before the Little Store collapsed and life went south.
I did my damndest for those kids though I won't go so far as to claim any credit for them. That's only what a responsible parent should do, right? I mean, do the best you can so they can push up.
###
My Churchill studies have taken be back to that strange parallelogram in upper New York state, boundaried by Ithaca at its extreme south and Palmyra to the west. This is the region, saturated with terrior, that gave us Mormonism and also dozens of inventors and entrepreneurs – including the strange, unworldly George Eastman who invented the word "Kodak" on a Ouija board he was playing with his mother and who later committed suicide despite his worldly success. Somebody needs to write a novel about George Eastman.
It also gave us the financier Leonard Jerome, Winston Churchill's grandfather, who was born in Pompey, just outside Syracuse. You gotta love those strange little towns in upstate New York, all named after the half-remembered remnants of somebody's distant classical education.
We know very little about Leonard Jerome until he moved his law practice to New York City and began speculating in the then unfamiliar world of stocks. He lost several fortunes. Losing the fortunes never seemed to bother him. There were always more fortunes to be made.
Enough blithering. To work.
This morning's celebrity profile was of Elon Musk, interesting to me only because his first wife Justine used to have an LJ in which she wrote engagingly and with surprising candor about how to market yourself effectively as a midlist author and what it was like to be married to a billionaire.
I used to write celebrity profiles once upon a time. The formula's pretty simple. You get five minutes access, max, and in that five minutes, you have to memorize everything you possibly can so you can spin the details into some illusory net of best friendship to fling over readers who, presumably, will study your copy to figure out why you were invited to the party and they weren't.
Celebrity profiles are always cautionary tales. There's a sameness about them, of course; but more than that, there's an inevitability about their subjects. In the Elon Musk profile, for example, we learn that Musk's destiny as a captain of unlikely industries – electric cars and manned spaceflights to Mars – was cemented the instant that sperm met egg. Luck and propinquity had nothing to do with it. He was just… destined for greatness. Those who are destined for greatness are very different from me and you.
The most interesting thing about the article was the throwaway intelligence that NASA is apparently partnering with SpaceX as a federal government cost shifting move. I actually approve. The private sector, I suspect, is far more efficient with large initiatives. They have economies of scale on their side.
For the first time this morning I noticed frost on my morning jaunt, and a wind – not a breeze – whipping the fallen leaves into an elegy to the end of yet another seasonal cycle.
I have been brooding a lot on the Mantle of Protectiveness – not only can't I save Sabine, but I also can't save Cassandra who is struggling so hard over all sorts of things, and I also can't save Ben with whom I text throughout most days – about the weather, and politics and the various TV shows we both watch (those last two things being more-or-less interchangeable – but not about his health situation, which I suspect is deteriorating.
I got the kids through childhood. That was major. Maybe that was as far as my magical powers extend. Max got fired from his job about six weeks ago, but since he hated the job and it was absolutely wrong for him in every conceivable way, and he was going to quit on his next birthday, it's not the disaster it might have been. It was essentially a sales job. Max is not cut out to be a salesman. He paid off all his student loans, and saved up over $10,000 so the wolf isn't howling outside his door.
Following his dismissal, he took an unpaid gig as a campaign manager for a guy running for Monterey County supervisor. His candidate lost, but in the meantime it strengthened Max's resolve to go to law school. He's now studying for the LSAT. He seems to think he's a marginal candidate for the top schools but with Stanford and Deep Springs on his resume, I think he's got a good shot.
RTT is absolutely fucking blooming at Syracuse U, and has thrown himself so ferociously into his hard science curriculum that I think he's got a great shot at going to med school – which was his original ambition before the Little Store collapsed and life went south.
I did my damndest for those kids though I won't go so far as to claim any credit for them. That's only what a responsible parent should do, right? I mean, do the best you can so they can push up.
My Churchill studies have taken be back to that strange parallelogram in upper New York state, boundaried by Ithaca at its extreme south and Palmyra to the west. This is the region, saturated with terrior, that gave us Mormonism and also dozens of inventors and entrepreneurs – including the strange, unworldly George Eastman who invented the word "Kodak" on a Ouija board he was playing with his mother and who later committed suicide despite his worldly success. Somebody needs to write a novel about George Eastman.
It also gave us the financier Leonard Jerome, Winston Churchill's grandfather, who was born in Pompey, just outside Syracuse. You gotta love those strange little towns in upstate New York, all named after the half-remembered remnants of somebody's distant classical education.
We know very little about Leonard Jerome until he moved his law practice to New York City and began speculating in the then unfamiliar world of stocks. He lost several fortunes. Losing the fortunes never seemed to bother him. There were always more fortunes to be made.
Enough blithering. To work.
