You can't run away forever

Aw, I started a page in my notebook for Golden Girls quotes, and only wrote down one while going through two seasons of DVDs in April. Maybe someday I'll add more to this.

"I'm going over there to kill her. I'll be back in time for Wheel of Fortune."

Looking through my Moleskine book where I write down quotes and ideas, I actually wrote down this entire end passage from Alice in Wonderland a couple of months ago for some reason.

"So she sat on, with closed eyes, and half believed herself in Wonderland, though she knew she had but to open them again, and all would change to dull reality- the grass would be only rustling in the wind, and the pool rippling to the waving of the reeds - the rattling teacups would change to tinkling sheep-bells, and the Queen's shrill cries to the voice of the shepherd boy - and the sneeze of the baby, the shriek of the Gryphon, and all the other queer noises, would change (she knew) to the confused clamour of the busy farm-yard - while the lowing of the cattle in the distance would take the place of the Mock Turtle's heavy sobs."

Man, reality IS dull. Screw you, reality. I choose insanity and imagination.

I'm reading The Late Shift, about the Letterman/Leno battle for the Tonight Show back in ye olde 90s. I can't stand Leno. I've wanted to read this book for years, but due to my inability to tolerate Leno (would the medical term be Leno-intolerance?), I long put it off. I finally decided to give it a go.
I'm almost 50 pages in and it's given a bit of biography backstory for both Dave and Jay. I've found some musings on Jay amusing, even if they were not supposed to be. Like this:
When Lassally would sit in his office talking to Leno, he could see that the comic had trouble expressing his feelings. To Lassally, this necessarily limited Jay as a host because it made his comedy material more mechanical and his interviewing style stilted. Lassally had worked in television a long time - more than twenty years for Carson - and he felt he had developed a true eye for talent - as well as for people. Lassally spent a lot of time with Jay looking for the real person inside to emerge; but he could never find it.
Jay is described as writing, writing, writing jokes all the time. And also mentions how he initially managed to use up all his good material when he was a guest on Carson in the 70s VERY quickly after only a few stand up appearances - material deteriorating in quality worse and worse each time until after like 5 shots, he wasn't invited on anymore. It really just hammers in how inhuman Leno is. With his standup, he worked hard not to offend people. I think that just makes him a bland creep, who cares about nothing except for working and cars. And rudely stealing shows from Conan O'Brien.
As for how this all makes him 7,000 times more creepy to me than Letterman - who it's mentioned was a philanderer in his early days as well, I don't know. I love Letterman.

Some more passages of interest to myself:
For all his outward warmth with people and his easy approachability,Leno seemed to distance himself emotionally from everyone around him, even close friends. He even disdained the idea of having emotions. If people complained about being under stress, Jay said 'what does that mean, stressed? I've never been stressed.' When a comic friend, Carol Leifer, was going through a tough period in her life and told Jay she was depressed, she asked Jay what he did when he got down. 'Down?' Jay
asked, as though the word belonged to a foreign language. 'I've never been down.' A Tonight show staff member said 'there is no term describing a psychological state that Jay relates to. He's not in touch with his
emotions at all.

...
Listed among Conan O'Brien's limited performing experience "a few appearances in industrial films on behalf of a company selling musical instruments"
i know conan is into the music man and all but... lol. I want to see these, they must exist somewhere.
At Saturday Night Live "O'Brien pestered Lorne to use him in sketches" <3
Matt Groening on Conan's time as a writer at the Simpsons, and his potential as a performer "He can keep a roomful of seething, self-hating, resentful comedy writers laughing for minutes on end, he does a lot of schtick and runs around the room. It first makes you laugh, then gets annoying, then exasperating, and then comes full circle and makes you fall out of your chair."
About Conan's audition for Late Night "O'Brien noted that he didn't get to talk to that many attractive women. He said he lived upstairs from a model and that the extent of their relationship was his leering at her.
When Rogers talked about posing for Playboy and said she had done it in a "classy way," Conan replied "So you're wearing a top hat and reading The New Yorker?"
During a press conference before Conan took over the show "When someone asked how it felt to get such a prominent job as a 'relative unknown', Conan said in mock outrage 'Sir, I am a complete unknown!'"

Irony... Jay talking about the situation vs. Letterman "It's so odd for me to wind up being the bad guy in a situation"
...
"Jay himself is the problem. These critics said Jay frequently failed to maximize the comedy material. They reported that the writers were frustrated at times because Jay didn't present the material as written. He had a habit of messing up the premises for some material so that the jokes that followed couldn't possibly pay off fully.
...
Some of the writers whispered to some Burbank executives that all comedy material beyond the monologue had to be simplified so that Jay wouldn't get an element twisted and undo the joke."

“That’s the thing about depression: A human being can survive almost anything, as long as she sees the end in sight. But depression is so insidious, and it compounds daily, that it’s impossible to ever see the end. The fog is like a cage without a key.”
-Elizabeth Wurtzel

"Sometimes your circumstances suck but life doesn't."
-Andrew McMahon

“I believe that everything happens for a reason. People change so that you can learn to let go, things go wrong so that you appreciate them when they’re right, you believe lies so you eventually learn to trust no one but yourself, and sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together”
-Marilyn Monroe

“A lot of what people say about you has much more to do with them than you.”
-Hillary Clinton

"Go be that starving Artist you're afraid to be. Open up that journal and get poetic finally. Volunteer. Suck it up and travel. You were not born here to work and pay taxes. You were put here to be part of a vast organism to explore and create. Stop putting it off. The world has much more to offer than what's on 15 televisions at TGI Friday's. Take pictures. Scare people. Shake up the scene. Be the change you want to see in the world. You'll thank yourself for it."
-Jason Mraz

"Don't be afraid to fail. Be afraid not to try."
-Michael Jordan

"It's not so much how busy you are, but why you are busy. The bee is praised. The mosquito is swatted."
-Mary O'Connor

This is amazing.
http://conalogue.weebly.com/
So many memories.

“I don’t care anymore about the handsome wealthy boys who come into the living room to take out the girl they thought would look nice in an evening cocktail dress. I said I wanted to go out with them to meet new people. I ask you, what logic is there in that? What guy you would like would see the depths in a girl outwardly like all the other physical American queens? So why go places with guys you can’t talk to? You’ll never meet a soul that way—not the sort you want to meet. Better to stay in reading than to go from one party to another. Face it: unless you can be yourself, you won’t stay with anyone for long. You’ve got to be able to talk. That’s tough. But spend your nights learning, so you’ll have something to say. Something the ‘attractive intelligent man’ will want to listen to.”
—Sylvia Plath

"Not living in fear is a great gift, because certainly these days we do it so much. And do you know what I like about comedy? You can’t laugh and be afraid at the same time—of anything. If you’re laughing, I defy you to be afraid."

"I like damaged people. And I am certainly damaged."

"I would say laughter is the best medicine. But it’s more than that. It’s an entire regime of antibiotics and steroids. Laughter brings the swelling down on our national psyche, and then applies an antibiotic cream... Obviously, it’s a challenge to make light of the darkness but, um, it’s better than crying about it."

"Don’t be afraid to be a fool. Remember, you cannot be both young and wise. Young people who pretend to be wise to the ways of the world are mostly just cynics. Cynicism masquerades as wisdom, but it is the farthest thing from it. Because cynics don’t learn anything. Because cynicism is a self-imposed blindness, a rejection of the world because we are afraid it will hurt us or disappoint us. Cynics always say no. But saying yes begins things. Saying yes is how things grow. Saying yes leads to knowledge. "Yes" is for young people. So for as long as you have the strength to, say yes."

"I teach Sunday School, motherfucker."

I'm so down emotionally over what's happening to Conan, even though I am not Conan, and all that I have done is touch his hand when I was not supposed to, and say 4 words to him. In attempting to put a positive spin on my negative emotions that have nearly spiraled out of control, I'm going to list the good things about this network shakeup:
* Finally, everyone has as much animosity for Leno as I always have...
* I'm really, really hoping that Conan can start a new show, back where he belongs, in New York. Though I'm not sure how fast he'll be able to get out of his NBC contract and how much of his material he'll be able to do......
Dammit. On the second point, I already started venturing down the path of pessimism. Oh well. Optimism was fun while it lasted.

“This song is about falling in love, and then falling out of love with that person, and then killing everyone in Manhattan.”
— John Flansburgh, about the song “I’ll Sink Manhattan”

“We’re also playing material not written for kids, like ‘Particle Man.’ I always think about how I’m singing, ‘Is he depressed or is he a mess?/Does he feel totally worthless?’ to a room full of smiling children, and it seems incongruous, but they’re just as into that as anything else.”
— John Linnell

Flansburgh: We’ve concocted a song… in the style of the big ’80s.
Linnell: We’re talking about the 1780s.
Flansburgh: This song was written by Pachelbel’s grandson. It’s called “Pachelbel’s Gonna Fuck You Up.”

"Our songs remind you of songs you’ve never heard.”
-John Linnell

“It’s hard to tell a shallow person that they should care more about the feelings of the awkward and the alienated.”
-John Flansburgh

LOL! NaNoWriMo pep talk was just sent out by the author who wrote the book I'm currently reading. Only I am amused by this. But I AM amused.

Um, I just discovered the most awesome punctuation mark of all time, the interrobang. Apparently someone thought it up in the 60s but it never caught on to become a standard punctuation mark. I wish it had. Because it's AWESOME and I would use it ALL THE TIME in place of my excessive pairs of question marks and exclamation points.
CHECK THIS BABY OUT
‽




‽‽‽‽‽‽‽‽‽‽‽‽‽‽‽‽‽‽‽‽‽‽‽‽‽‽‽‽‽‽‽‽‽‽‽


Ohhh yeah!

Also, apparently at some point in time, an irony mark was also invented for ironic or sarcastic sentences.
؟
Not as awesome as the interrobang, sorry.

"You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you."
-Ray Bradbury
LOL I love it.

"There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside you."
-Zora Neale Hurston
Felt this 100% with one of my unfinished novels. Still feel it.

"An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way."
- Charles Bukowsi

"A writer, or, at least, a poet, is always being asked by people who should know better: “Whom do you write for?” The question is, of course, a silly one, but I can give it a silly answer. Occasionally I come across a book which I feel has been written especially for me and for me only. Like a jealous lover, I don’t want anybody else to hear of it. To have a million such readers, unaware of each other’s existence, to be read with passion and never talked about, is the daydream, surely, of every author."
-W.H. Auden

"Writing is making sense of life. You work your whole life and perhaps you've made sense of one small area."
-Nadine Gordimer

"The coroner will find ink in my veins and blood on my typewriter keys."
-C. Astrid Weber

"Fiction is a lie, and good fiction is the truth inside the lie."
-Stephen King

"Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it."
-C. S. Lewis

"No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction, and a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others."
-Martha Graham

"The person who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing, is nothing."
-Anonymous

"We're not really taught how to recreate constructively. We need to do more than find diversions; we need to restore and expand ourselves. Our idea of relaxing is all too often to plop down in front of the television set and let its pandering idiocy liquefy our brains. Shutting off the thought process is not rejuvenating; the mind is like a car battery— it recharges by running."
-Bill Watterson

Wow, I was behind and said I had to catch up, and I actually caught up instead of falling behind, running out of ideas and crying. Bizarre. I guess that's coming up later in the month.

BAD NaNoWriMo day today. Gotta catch up.

For my own reference. Or for you to view if you want to watch an old commercial with Conan.

Rock legend Bob Dylan was treated like a complete unknown by police in a New Jersey shore community when a resident called to report someone wandering around the neighborhood.
Dylan was in Long Branch, about a two-hour drive south of New York City, on July 23 as part of a tour with Willie Nelson and John Mellencamp that was to play at a baseball stadium in nearby Lakewood.
A 24-year-old police officer apparently was unaware of who Dylan is and asked him for identification, Long Branch business administrator Howard Woolley said Friday.
"I don't think she was familiar with his entire body of work," Woolley said.
The incident began at 5 p.m. when a resident said a man was wandering around a low-income, predominantly minority neighborhood several blocks from the oceanfront looking at houses.
The police officer drove up to Dylan, who was wearing a blue jacket, and asked him his name. According to Woolley, the following exchange ensued:
"What is your name, sir?" the officer asked.
"Bob Dylan," Dylan said.
"OK, what are you doing here?" the officer asked.
"I'm on tour," the singer replied.
A second officer, also in his 20s, responded to assist the first officer. He, too, apparently was unfamiliar with Dylan, Woolley said.
The officers asked Dylan for identification. The singer of such classics as "Like a Rolling Stone" and "Blowin' in the Wind" said that he didn't have any ID with him, that he was just walking around looking at houses to pass some time before that night's show.
The officers asked Dylan, 68, to accompany them back to the Ocean Place Resort and Spa, where the performers were staying. Once there, tour staff vouched for Dylan.
The officers thanked him for his cooperation.
"He couldn't have been any nicer to them," Woolley added.
How did it feel? A Dylan publicist did not immediately return a telephone call seeking comment Friday.
http://tinyurl.com/mmd5zj

Oh, 80s. I miss you. Why am I not currently in that decade.