the StoryCorps van was parked outside of our office in Kentucky for a few weeks back in 2012

When we lived in SF, every Friday I would catch NPR’s StoryCorps on my way to work.  It always happened as I was pulling into the driveway of our office, it always made me cry, and it always ruined my makeup.

This morning I am flying solo — no Paul, no kids (more on that later) — and I woke up to no milk and no coffee in the house.  But instead of that being the freaking HUGE DISASTER it would normally be, I just threw on a sweater, jumped in the car, and drove to the store.

Small miracles.

As I pulled into the parking lot I heard the familiar dah dah dah dah DAH duh DAAAAAH StoryCorps intro music and braced myself for the tears.

But what followed was this gem, which totally made my Friday morning.  Do yourself a favor and listen.

Enjoy.

P.S. The dad in this is COMPLETELY ON POINT with the hardest thing about being a dad (or parent).

Hey there.  It’s been a minute.

The past few months I kind of lost my mojo, my motivation to do much of anything.   It was a combination of a number of things, including (but not limited to): election/inauguration hangover/adjustment period; the fact that at least one person in our house has been sick every day for the PAST 3 MONTHS; and that baby #3 will be joining us in the fall and this one was really into morning sickness.  Surprise!

And in spending hours on the couch hating life, I discovered something.

Turns out if you type in “(any ailment at all) during” into Google search, one of the very first autofills will inevitably be “pregnancy”.

Sometimes you don’t even need the “during”.

You can even misspell your ailment and it will still autofill for you.

It’s a fun game.

It also gives you a sense as to just how many f**king things go wrong with your body.  Or how much pregnant women like to search their symptoms.  Or both.

Aren’t you glad we’re back?

I feel like I’ve spent the last year listening nonstop to political podcasts and reading the WSJ and watching historical documentaries trying to understand, contextualize, and come to terms with what is going on.  All to no avail.

And on Tuesday, January 31, at 11:16am PST I hit a wall.  I couldn’t take any more.  I knew if I heard the word “emoluments” one more time something very, very bad was going to happen.

So I did what I do when things get really bad.  I turned to one friend that I know will always be there for me:

Bravo.  Bravo understands me.

It approaches real life problems in a way that makes sense to me.

I love Bravo so much that I am pretty sure it’s the primary reason Paul really pushed for us not to have a TV in the house.  Because he really, really hates it.

I have no idea why.

So instead of working to expand my knowledge of the world while I wash the dishes, fold laundry, or do whatever other menial tasks I spend my afternoons doing, I try to kill as many brain cells as possible.

But sometimes when things feel overwhelming, I find it comfort in immersing myself in a world where the biggest drama involves who was invited to so-and-so’s birthday party and where (white) men have a “braid guy”.

And we wonder how we found ourselves in the current political situation.

Also, I have a Bravo GIF problem.  But how can you not.

AND THEN, because wasting 45 minutes of my life isn’t enough, I go and read vulture.com‘s recaps, which are incredibly lengthy and detailed and use phrases like “the after picture of Ursula the Sea Witch if she lost 100 pounds and did a testimonial for a late-night exercise infomercial” to (accurately) describe one of the women on the show.

…and this is where we are.

Thank you, WordPress.  I’d been hoping to snag that domain for a while.

This book is the story of Edie Sedgwick, the socialite turned Andy Warhol It Girl.  Told as montage of personal account of various people who were close to Edie and those in her circles, this book was a huge hit when it came out in the early 1980s and serves as an oral history of the pop art world of the 60s.

Going into this book I knew virtually nothing about Andy Warhol and that scene.  I read Just Kids when it first came out (so good, highly recommend), but that was it.

Obviously the major draw of this book is the glamour.  Even with my limited knowledge I recognized a lot of names.

It’s an interesting period and super glamorous scene, and the story of a girl making her way from a wealthy, traditional, aristocratic family into Andy Warhol’s world in New York parallels ideologies that largely defined that generation.  The rebellion, the breaking of tradition, the exploration, the escape.

And of course in addition to that there is the ugly underbelly–family secrets, dysfunctional relationships, a beautiful girl’s descent into the world of addiction that ultimately leads to a fatal drug overdose at 28.

A lot of people complained about the format of this book, how it was too disjointed, labor-intensive, and intentionally “Warhol-esque”.  It didn’t bother me.  In fact, in one of her books Gloria Steinem said, “No wonder oral history turns out to be more accurate than written history.  The first is handed down from the many who were present.  The second is written by the few who probably weren’t.”  For that reason alone I found the personal accounts to be more engaging than a straightforward narrative.

Plus the book has pictures, and they are great.

The overarching narrative is the same tragic story we’ve heard a million times. Glittery celebrity on the outside, addiction, pain, self-destruction on the inside.

Actually, now that I think about it, in some ways this book is kind of like an extended, special edition 1960s issue of Us Weekly (which I love, despite the fact I firmly believe that this type of media contributes heavily to the degradation of society…now more than ever.  And yes, I realize I am part of the problem.)   The difference, of course, being that instead of stories about the Kardashians and Real Housewives, you have icons like William Boroughs, Patti Smith, Truman Capote, Lou Reed…she even dated Bob Dylan briefly.  Which makes it feel less trivial.

But the bare bones are still the same.  And even though the actual narrative can be shallow, even boring at times, for some reason watching that inevitable descent of these larger than life people in such a “fabulous” world makes for an addicting story.

…but doesn’t it always.

“The tragedy was that along with their happiness, and their incredible appetite for life, the forces of darkness were always there, although you would never have known it: the surface looked so good.  So it was a life of extremes — paradise and paradise lost.”
~Saucie Sedgewick, Edie’s eldest sister