Judd Apatow says in some interview that “The Larry Sanders Show” is about people going to desperate lengths to be loved. Like seeing the arrow in the FedEx logo, once you watch the show that way, you can never watch it another way. Poor Larry, poor Artie, poor Hank.

I am working in a coffee shop on the final paper of my grad program. In front of me is a table of teenage girls ranging from maybe 15 to 18, two of them with their moms, and they are all signing up with a beauty pageant consultant.

One girl isn’t wearing makeup. I think she’s the youngest, she’s wearing a tie dye t-shirt and camp shorts in place of the others’ V-cut cheerleader jerseys, and she’s clearly the most bookish of the bunch because she pointed out a typo in their contract. She’s also the most ambitious—like she’s gonna win this fucking shit or else. I heard her assure the consultant that she bought “different makeup that softens my features, because: ugh.” Also, she says gravely, “I have dreams that I forgot to do my crunches before bed.”

The other girls wear self-tanner and thick makeup; I would have sworn that one of them is 25, but she’s talking about last weekend’s senior prom.

- - - -

So, one, in that they want to appear like something other than they are, I pronounce this scene a bummer.

Two, what is at stake for them? They are seeking new ways and venues in which to perform for others’ affirmation. “The good news is that we’re renting a dance studio in a shopping center down the street where we can practice your talents!” 

They look awfully like the “Larry Sanders” characters, putting their might into getting people to tell them they’re lovable (or desirable or gifted or whatever form it takes). There is a vulnerability and a neediness floating above the table that feels heartbreaking.

Not heartbreaking because of some judgment about beauty pageants and not even because of these specific girls, but because the scene makes me think about ways that I have tried to get love; because their story is my story is your story, though you and I happen not to use self-tanner. The self-tanner throws it into starker relief.

For “Larry Sanders Show” DVD extras, Garry Shandling recorded personal visits with guest stars who had appeared on the show. What differentiates the one with Sharon Stone is that he and Sharon Stone were once very close and, until this video was shot, had not spoken for a while. Some reasons it caught my attention:

- He is committed to the idea that exposing the intimacies of your life is inherently interesting, even if it turns out not to be interesting, which I agree with/support.
- Their regrets and pains—as former lovers—are pretty close to the fore. They talk a lot about not having gotten married.
- It is strange to see “entertainers” act this way, acknowledging themselves as real humans; but it is strange to see real humans act this way, too.

Together they watch a scene that they filmed for the show in 1994. Her reaction to that footage (begins around the 16:30 mark) is sweetly gracious toward him and also herself, and she says some things about aging and self-possession that are no less insightful for being obvious.

Most striking is that they talk like people whose affection for each other is being thwarted by larger sadnesses, which happens all the time in real life but is rarely captured even in good art.

This morning on NPR a listener called in and referenced our “corporate overlords.” That corporations control our government and our culture is a pretty mainstream idea now—mainstream enough that you can get elected to office on it. Even my mom and dad will acknowledge it, and they are far from skeptical/activist types.

If most people understand that it’s bad to have corporations controlling us, though, why doesn’t anybody do anything to change it? You have Adbusters and assorted liberal and hippie types, but they just talk to themselves. They are not talking to my mom and dad, and probably not your mom or dad, and probably not you, either. So although everyone has this low-level concern about corporate control of our government and the commercialization of our national culture, few people are having a conversation about it. What specific actions could begin pushing back against it?

Also this morning, I was talking to a professor about how, until the 70s, stores were closed on Sunday. The day off was timed to the Christian sabbath, but everybody got a break, Christian or not. When grocery stores in upstate NY began opening on Sunday, he organized against it because it was obvious that the poorest, lowest-wage-earning workers would be forced into working a sixth or seventh day of the week; either employers threatened to fire them if they didn’t work on Sunday, or they needed the money too desperately to say no. Either way, it is inhumane to make people work seven days a week (especially for so little money)—but we come not to bemoan.

The sabbath concept is that you do not work, and you do not induce others to work. Subtract the religious associations for a minute; imagine that you did not do any shopping this Sunday, and you did not even go out to eat. What would you do with that time? Your brunch date would come over to your house to eat. You would find a way to spend two hours other than strolling through stores. To go back to my family: I don’t know what yours is like, but when I am visiting home and we are bored, we go to Target. It’s a tantalizing idea to me—what if we dropped out of being consumers for one day each week? We would have to find different ways to spend our time, different ways to relate to each other. It would be great if some profound effects came from that weekly event, but just as importantly, it would give a lot of people a fucking break.

Another popular truism is that community is important; the scenario in that last paragraph looks to me like it does a lot to enable community formation. It also gives individuals a chance to catch their breath once a week and get practice at being people whose identities are not built up from being a consumer/user/connoisseur/collector/savvy shopper/etc. A weekly vacation from our corporate overlords. The challenge seems somewhat annoying or difficult now, but my guess is that after a month or six weeks, there wouldn’t be much challenge left in it. You find a different way to be.

Be clear that I am not advocating a legalistic sabbath practice—like I’m going to come to your house and slap the grocery bags out of your hand if I see you carrying them on a Sunday. I’m just thinking about what taking a day off could mean and what it might open up. As for myself, I am going to try not spending money on Sundays for a while. At worst, I will have cleared some corner of my life from the corporate overlords, at least until they come back over the next day.

Arthur Russell, “Nobody Wants a Lonely Heart”

[I wrote this last week, before my birthday, which is 9/18, AKA the one-week anniversary of 9/11.]

28 does not feel old to me, not since I began differentiating between capital-A Ages like 35 and 40, breaking them down into actual possible years rather than some floating gray mass over the horizon. It is true, however, that 28 feels old if I think back to 22 and take in how much opportunity was squandered. But I can forgive myself for it, because I didn’t know better, and it’s hard now to see a way that I could have done differently.

Recently I diagnosed myself with an addiction to wistfulness. (I don’t know how else to justify the constant stream of “Office” reruns playing in my apartment for the past 18 months. Or the Garrison Keillor stuff—I acknowledge that’s really weird.) Part of wistfulness is displacement, because you lament where you are compared to where you once were; you look tenderly at where you were and bittersweetly at where you are; part of you wishes that you were somewhere else and that part is, indeed, somewhere else.

I am comfortable with displacement to the point of seeking it. At school I have become skilled at avoiding associations, avoiding personal obligations, a ninja at slipping through cracks. Of course it is a lifelong practice, not something mastered overnight. Here is an Eddie fun fact: This one time, I labored under the notion of being in love with a girl who lived in another place, and I used that notional love to distance myself from actual girls whom I was actually dating. And this “one time” lasted for six years, ha-ha!

Events in the summer caused me to look squarely at this constant wistfulness and get some self-awareness about it. Suddenly I thought, Why would you want to be here but not here? Why would you want to let that have so much power over how you feel and how you treat people?

And so I began identifying instances of my tendency for wistfulness. The music I listen to is heartsick with it. The fiction I read fetishizes it. Certain relationships are constructed specifically to perpetuate it. Even the way I dress could be construed as an expression of it, because I am always wearing ties or jackets but in this sloppy way that says, “I probably care more about being somewhere else.”

Illustrative anecdote: My program at school has us go to one session with a voice coach. I went yesterday to a small office and read aloud a paper while a lady videotaped me. I did a crappy job. She asked what I had thought about while I read; I said that I thought about how I didn’t like the paper and so couldn’t “sell” it convincingly. Here is what she said. “Focus on the connection being made with the people who are listening. Don’t back away from what you’re reading; commit to it.” She did not realize that she would be supplying the moral lesson to my Livejournal entry. I read the paper again and got high marks.

First there is my glamorization of this wistfulness and heartsickness, and then there is my allowing it to forge a basic personality trait. Why would I want to be marked by heartsickness? I take as a sign of hope that my identifying it is coupled with a desire to (1) explain how it became so deeply rooted, (2) show compassion toward it, and (3) change it. For me that change looks like committing to experiences and people, standing with two feet on the ground instead of fidgeting from one foot to the other.

Broad strokes are made of small lines, and I am unsure about changing some habits. It might be beyond me, for instance, to love the horrible, fast Otis Redding songs in place of the good, slow, sad ones. Also I am actively trying to make a friend in New Haven who has cable TV so that I can see new episodes of “The Office.”

If my new refrigerator is too small to accommodate a pizza box, does it mean that I am poor?

If I am poor, will some organization give me money to help buy pizza?

My refrigerator is small; buy me a pizza.

Watching a movie online, and the scene ends, and the screen goes black, and now you are just looking at yourself, and you are eating.

La Quinta Inn — Mescaline

Econolodge — Crack

Holiday Inn Courtyard — Viagra

Knights Inn — Opium

Extend-a-Stay Suites — Methadone

Howard Johnson — Rohypnol

Travelodge — Morphine

*Key to selected answers
Viagra because the business man has accrued airline miles redeemable for a room there;
Methadone because you just need a few weeks to get your shit together, ok?;
Rohypnol because that’s where you’re accompanying your son’s little league team on their away trip;
Morphine because you only had $24 left for a hotel room after buying this lethal dose of morphine

An old friend asked me to recommend some books.

One particular book, I said, broke me out of a phase where I couldn’t finish a novel.

My friend is precious and hopeful and took it to mean that I finished writing a novel. Actually the phase was one in which I couldn’t finish reading a novel, because reading is hard to do for sustained periods, because I would rather Tweet reviews of frozen pizza.

But she is excited to read this novel that I’ve written, and I am excited to be thought of as someone who wrote a novel, so I’ll wait a while before responding.

Bill Callahan, “All Thoughts Are Prey to Some Beast”

How should one act after a break-up? I do not hear the question asked very often; people are nursing their own feelings, or sometimes people are bitter and would just as soon hurt the other person as consider their feelings.

Let’s shoot higher: What is the kindest way to act after a break-up? Or even, How can you act to shorten the other person’s unhappiness?

This song comes at the end of a break-up album. I thought, Isn’t this what you want to hear after a break-up—that your new ex is considering moving out of town, that they are wracked with anxiety or sadness, that they are pacing around chanting “Sweet desires and soft thoughts, return to me” like a crazy person?

It’s easier for one person to move on if the other person seems sad. We want to believe that we were important enough to leave an impression, and if we can keep that sense after a break-up, then we can move on with confidence and self-assurance. If we suspect that we failed to make an impression, however, then we have to ask self-doubting questions about the relationship and ourselves, and the spiral begins.

The it’s-easier-if-they’re-sad theory holds water for me because the messiest break-ups I’ve witnessed occurred when one participant emerged totally unfazed. That’s the shit that drives people nuts and makes them leave a bunch of drunken voicemails and then one night show up at your apartment at 5 a.m. crying and waving some burned, hanging forearm flesh in your face while your neighbors come out to see why the fuck somebody is moaning and banging on your door at 5 a.m. (uh, theoretically).

One tough part is that sometimes you don’t care about them anymore at the point of breaking up, and it’s hard even to fake it. Probably this is a moment at which doing what is theoretically right is more important than doing what feels natural, and expressing sadness is a nice gesture to say, “You mean something to me.” Note that I am not advocating that you fake it too well, lest you begin leading them on, which daytime television hosts, self-help books, and ex-girlfriends agree is harmful. Anyway, why do you have to work so hard to fake your feelings, like some kind of sociopath? Maybe you shouldn’t be dating anyway.

It seems, then, that the kindest way to treat someone with whom you’ve just broken up is to let your actions hint at sadness, yet not in a way that elicits pity (passive aggressive), and not to a degree that leaves them confused about why you broke up in the first place. Such an M.O. may rule out trying to cause jealousy, acting happy about getting away from them, or immediately dating someone else—things we are prone to do because we feel badly, too.

If we got married, on the spur of the moment as if for a reality show, how long would it last? Could we make it a month? I think you just want to dance. You won’t like my jokes. I won’t want to hear what you talk about after work. We will never win the $500,000.

Maybe Twitter peaked

“Dear Joanna Newsom,

“After two years, do you still think ‘I’m on a Boat’ is funny? What about that ‘Dick in a Box’ thing? Did you make a pun about that the first time you had sex?

“Have you ever stopped to wonder what ‘Only Skin’ would sound like if Andy Samberg sang on it instead?

“Half your new album sounds like you tried to overdose on sleeping pills then stayed up until 2 pm writing it.

“You wear stupid hats.

“Neil Michael Hagerty thought you were an idiot. He said he always expected you to start telling him his horoscope.

“Once I was in line at Whole Foods and saw Andy on a magazine. I pointed to it and said to the woman behind me, ‘Look, that magazine put someone with Down syndrome on the cover.’

“When it doesn’t work with Andy, I heard that Frank Caliendo is looking.

“Know what else, fashion plate? I got this Australian lesbian haircut because I knew you’d hate it.

“My jaw is clenched,

“Bill”

Chaunte

Damien Dante

Damon

DeeDee

Dwayne

Kim

Kyla

Marlon

Shawn