kid you gotta get a gimmick

i'm simone, i live in new york city & i have an rss addiction.

- books in '08
- project 365
- twitter.

here are some things i write about a lot: broadway, tv, feministing, books,
quotes, new york city, & real life

email me - gettingagimmick[at]gmail[dot]com

“ around this time my precious work ethic began to atrophy in earnest and - truth be told - it has never returned. a basic affinity for office work may appear expendable to most. but i was a good girl from the suburbs, where self-worth was color-coded and bound and crazy-glued into a diorama. yet when the phone in ursula’s office would ring, i would run to the bathroom to avoid picking it up. ”

-

sloane crosley

in an essay in which she describes how working as an assistant for a crazy boss killed her work ethic. i know how she feels. actually i think she summed up my life. i wish i could tape the phone conversations i have with my boss. they are far crazier than any of the e-mails. harder to capture though.
“ Team Jacob is comprised of bitter whiners who hate love, and would probably have wanted Juliet to end up with Paris, and Mr. Darcy to take up with his sickly cousin. ”

-

Let’s have a ‘Twilight’ debate: Team Edward or Team Jacob? | PopWatch Blog | EW.com

Team Edward. There is no other option.
52books: #33: Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire Wicked was just about everything I hoped it would be. It was epic, funny, dark, and thoughtful. I knew nothing of the story beforehand and was surprised by the weaving tale of the land of Oz. When I was reading, I had to think back to the movie to try to put together the pieces of the puzzle before me. Maguire is able to create a fictional world that seems as real as the one before us and at the same time as magical as anything we could dream up. This is an excellent read for anyone looking for a little bit of imagination this summer! Oh, and if anyone knows how to get a cheap ticket to see the musical on Broadway please let me know. get a bunch of friends to help you lotto. (2 and a half hours before every show) tickets if you win are $25 for front row. the only way to boost your chances of winning is to bring ‘ringers’ who will give you the tickets if their name is called. alternatively, they sell side orchestra partial view tickets for $55. the view isn’t that partial and you can buy in advance. enjoy!

52books:

#33: Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire

Wicked was just about everything I hoped it would be. It was epic, funny, dark, and thoughtful. I knew nothing of the story beforehand and was surprised by the weaving tale of the land of Oz. When I was reading, I had to think back to the movie to try to put together the pieces of the puzzle before me. Maguire is able to create a fictional world that seems as real as the one before us and at the same time as magical as anything we could dream up. This is an excellent read for anyone looking for a little bit of imagination this summer!

Oh, and if anyone knows how to get a cheap ticket to see the musical on Broadway please let me know.

get a bunch of friends to help you lotto. (2 and a half hours before every show) tickets if you win are $25 for front row. the only way to boost your chances of winning is to bring ‘ringers’ who will give you the tickets if their name is called.

alternatively, they sell side orchestra partial view tickets for $55. the view isn’t that partial and you can buy in advance. enjoy!
“ if you do not generally live a tidy life - putting things back in place when you’re done with them, implementing an underwear organizational system, stocking up on supplies long before they run out - then in all likelihood you won’t have a deeply tidy room, and there is only so much you can do about it in the short term…it takes consistent and persistent behavior to have a deeply tidy room. but a hurried hour, or even a day or two of tidying can produce at best, only a tidied room. no matter how hard we try, many parts of our personalities are simply irrepressible. ”

- sam gosling, snoop: what your stuff says about you
Marisha Pessl, Special Topics in Calamity Physics Has anyone read this? I finished it last night on the subway, filled with more questions than answers. I’m dying to talk about it with someone. [I plan to corner my friend who gave me the book at dinner - but that’s hours from now]

Marisha Pessl, Special Topics in Calamity Physics

Has anyone read this? I finished it last night on the subway, filled with more questions than answers. I’m dying to talk about it with someone. [I plan to corner my friend who gave me the book at dinner - but that’s hours from now]
#
“ the latin poet wrote ‘amor vincit omnia’ or ‘love conquers all.’ he did not write, ‘love frees all’ or ‘liberates’ all, and therein lies the first degree of our flagrant misunderstanding. conquer: to defeat, subjugate, massacre, cream, make mincemeat out of. surely, this cannot be a positive thing. and then he wrote ‘conquers all’ - not exclusively the unpleasant things, destitution, assassination, burglary, but all, including pleasure, peace, common sense, liberty and self-determination. and then we may appreciate that virgil’s words are not encouragement, but rather a caveat, a cue to evade, shirk, elude the feeling at all costs, else we risk the massacre of the things we hold most dear, including our sense of self. ”

- marisha pessl, special topics in calamity physics
“ The most important things are the hardest things to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them - words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they’re brought out. ”

- Stephen King: Different Seasons

change

Harper: In your experience of the world. How do people change?

Mormon Mother: Well it has something to do with God so it’s not very nice.

God splits the skin with a jagged thumbnail from throat to belly and then plunges a huge filthy hand in, he grabs hold of your bloody tubes and they slip to evade his grasp but he squeezes hard, he insists, he pulls and pulls till all your innards are yanked out and the pain! We can’t even talk about that. And then he stuffs them back, dirty, tangled and torn. It’s up to you to do the stitching.

Harper: And then up you get. And walk around.

Mormon Mother: Just mangled guts pretending.

Harper: That’s how people change.

Angels in America, Part Two: Perestroika

sometimes i forget how much i love angels in america. and then i remember.

“

we are more likely to generate a positive and credible view of an action than an inaction, of a painful experience than of an annoying experience, of an unpleasant situation that we cannot escape than of one we can. and yet we rarely chose action over inaction, pain over annoyance, and commitment over freedom.

the processes by which we generate positive views are many… these tendencies make it easy for us to explain unpleasant experiences in ways that exonerate us and make us feel better. the price we pay for our irrepressible explanatory urge is that we often spoil our most pleasant experiences by making good sense of them.

”

-

daniel gilbert, stumbling on happiness

i read this on a recommendation from lee - and i found it really enjoyable and utterly fascinating.

note, it’s the furthest thing from a self book about how to be happy. it’s about the things we think will make us happy, and why those thoughts/predictions don’t always make us happy. it has a lot more to do with brains and psychological / human behavior studies. 

“

messrs. strunk and white don’t speculate as to why so many writers are attracted to passive verbs, but i’m willing to; i think timid writers like them for the same reason timid lovers like passive partners. the passive voice is safe. there is no troublesome action to contend with; the subject just has to close its eyes and think of england, to paraphrase queen victoria.

i think unsure writers also feel the passive voice somehow lends their work an authority, perhaps even a quality of majesty. if you find instruction manuals and lawyer’s torts majestic, i guess it does.

”

-

Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

i was re-reading ‘on writing’ this weekend - it’s a book i really enjoy. i think king is a better writer than people give him credit for being and this is one of those books that really showcases it.

also especially when i was just starting out writing my thesis, and i felt i wasn’t qualified to say anything - i was a chronic passive voicer user. my writing and my confidence got better at just about the same time.

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