Portia and Ellen: WTF?

"What do you mean I 'look like Lady Elaine Fairchilde'?"

For the last month I've been seeing rumors about the impending divorce of Sonic Youth-loving actress/author Portia de Rossi and her tuxedo-wearing, not-funny other half, Ellen Degeneres.

I've never been surprised by these rumors, and, while they're very consistent and damning, they just keep stretching on and on and on.

I need to know if they are true. Anyone?

In the meantime, I would like to say for the record the same thing my now-deceased mother once said about now-deceased Whitney Houston and still-living Bobby Brown when I asked my mother's opinion of their relationship status: "She needs to get away from him and stay away from him!" ("She" being de Rossi in this case, and "him," of course, being Degeneres. [Though, also for the record, my late mother loved Ellen with the light of ten thousand smartphone camera flashes.])

Maria Popova, Professional Show Off,* Turns 30

I've been reading the Brainpickings blog for several years, now, and rarely find a post on it that doesn't interest me on some personal or intellectual level. I have it in my RSS feed, I follow it on Twitter (which I never look at) and I have "liked" it on Facebook.

This is where I found out that the creator of Brainpickings, Maria Popova, has turned 30 years old today.

That seems so young, now, but I'm not so ancient that I don't vividly remember a time when I thought someone turning 30 was probably just a few steps from the grave.

That's how your mind works in the middle of your life. These days, I work with people who are in their 70s, 80s and 90s; they view the point at which I am in life in the same spirit that I view Popova: with calculated wistfulness and distanced affection based solely on how far she still is from shuffling off this mortal coil.

Popova chose "the 7 most important things [she] learned in the past 7 years of reading, writing, and living" on the occasion of her 30th birthday. Below are my 7 favorite posts of past years.

The Daily Routines of Famous Writers

Bohemians: A Graphic History of Creative Mavericks

Against Positive Thinking: Uncertainty as the Secret of Happiness

The Breathtaking Love Letters of Violet Trefusis and Vita Sackville-West

Albert Camus on Happiness and Love, Illustrated by Wendy MacNaughton

The Artists’ & Writers’ Cookbook: A Rare 1961 Treasure Trove of Unusual Recipes and Creative Wit

Fixed vs. Growth: The Two Basic Mindsets That Shape Our Lives

* - I mean "show off" in the nicest way possible.

This is What the Internet is For

I saw in the New York Times today that some egghead has received a grant to prepare a publicly accessible archive of the oral histories compiled by Studs Terkel during his writing career.

Imagine being able to listen to the voices Terkel transcribed and put together in books like Working, Hard Times, The Good War, etc.

I'm pretty sure some asshole Congressman will complain at some point about spending the taxpayers' money on venerating the life's work of Terkel and his left-leaning, Commie-loving bullshit.

That's what they always want to say about the National Endowment for the Humanities, and that's a significant part of what makes them assholes.

A Beastly Realization

You know what I just thought about the whole 50 Shades of Grey series of books and the forthcoming movie release?

It's kind of like that 80s TV show "Beauty and the Beast" for the current generation of sexually dissatisfied straight women, isn't it?

Except, you know, all the women who read that trilogy of books and watched "Beauty and the Beast" back in the 80s because they were sexually dissatisfied? They probably never did meet the right beast; if they did, those guys probably left them during midlife crises.

I am serious. What is wrong with this world?

Nothing New Walking the Street

It's often said "there's nothing new under the sun." This applies to most areas of living and the experiences gained thereby, especially when it comes to romance.

Shakespeare knew it in the 17th century. Goethe really, really drove the point home in the 18th century. And Jane Austin reminded everyone of it in the early 19th century, while George Gissing let it be known in the late 19th century.

(I guess most of us know that nobody could shut up about it for even ten minutes during the 20th century, regardless of two world wars and the torment we endured at the hands of USA for Africa when they released "We Are the World.")

I think about the sameness of love in a changing world all the time, but it was a quote by Gissing from New Grub Street that caught my eye today:

"Man has a right to nothing in this world that he cannot pay for. Did you imagine that love was an exception? Foolish idealist! Love is one of the first things to be frightened away by poverty."

If the phrase "sad but true" means anything, this is one of the saddest things I've ever heard.

This Blog is Called Hijinks

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