Two misc gift suggestions for anyone stuck in retail hell this weekend: Bialetti Moka Pot and a handheld steamer.
Swapatorium’s 1932 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade photographs.
Please Don’t Leave a Facebook Comment on My Birthday
I’m trying hard here to word this in the right way, without sounding exasperated or too demanding, because it’s not the worst thing in the word — but it is unfortunate there is no Emily Post for our generation, spelling out why and how we might best celebrate birthdays. The “happy birthday” comments on my social network pages get a fraction of my attention, as it took a fraction of the attention of the 
person who wrote it. Perhaps it wouldn’t trouble me if it didn’t seem a substitute for presence or substantial communication.
First there is the question of why it matters anyway. Aren’t we a little too old for birthdays? It’s true, some are indifferent to the annual “special day” but most of us just out of habit are not. It’s the one day of the year to receive special attention without doing anything to earn it: our personal New Year in order to reassess the paths we’ve taken and expect to take.
Plus, we grow up demanding this attention. It’s the best day in a child’s life, and one she waits for all month. For children, going to someone’s birthday is almost as fun as having your own. Becuase there will be cake and an inflatable castle in the backyard, or, at the very least, a slip-n-slide.
In college, replace “drinks” with “cake.” You ask the seniors to “buy” for you and get drunk in the dorms. But sometime, once school is done, a birthday is too much of a hassle to celebrate. For the birthday person, it’s a little awkward to send an email out: “Hi friends, please pay tribute to me at this sushi restaurant. By the way, I’m not one of those people that expects gifts but it would be nice to see you all.” For the invitees, well, sometimes they feel they have other priorities.
A text message, “Can’t make it tonight sick/busy/tired,” is an everyday disappointment, but on one’s birthday, it’s difficult not to take it personally. I thought I was the only one who got upset about this, until I went out with my friend, at the club he was DJing the night of his birthday. There was only the lightest shower just before he started playing, but he received text message after text message, “I’d go out, but it’s too rainy.”
Friends of mine, five years or more older, who actually have the sort of responsibilities one would assume might cut into their social time, never seem to do this, but with friends five years younger — forget it. Were there a Getting Things Done-style book for keeping up with friends, well articulated methods how not to alienate ourselves from the people we like best, no one would read it anyway. A shame, as I find so much of my email consists of messages back and forth from friends on why one or the other can’t meet up on this or that day. We all over-extend ourselves, because we can. But what it seems to bring about is what, T. S. Elliot called the “sty of contentment.”
And so you get the Facebook and Myspace comments instead. Both applications allow for no one to forget your birthday. But, here’s the thing, it requires nothing of a person to type and post two words and an exclamation point on a page. This is all part of the problem of time and attention, and also of priorities. I don’t know anyone too busy to watch The Wire or Man Men, but somehow we get too busy to meet up with friends.
Images by Laurie Simmons. The first a still from The Music of Regret
The Best Fireworks Display is Seen From a Plane Flying into LAX Sometime Between 9 – 10pm
Independence day is my favorite holiday. Partly because it’s not in the winter, so there’s no seasonal affective disorder. Another reason is you don’t need to celebrate it with your family. It is the first guaranteed easy day of summer. Plus it means my birthday is just a few weeks away.
Last year to the day tomorrow, I was flying into Los Angeles. The cheapest flight I could get was on the 4th in the evening. I thought I would be missing the parties, but what I got was so much more.
From my window I looked at the beautiful infinite motherboard of lights that is the city as seen from the air. And just above it, little ripples of hundreds more colored lights. The firework explosions were all so tiny, and yet I could see them go off above every city subdivision. And all of it was happening at once.
There was the Glendale fireworks and the Long Beach celebration over there. You could see another firework show above Malibu and Culver City, and Westwood, and everywhere else. A firework show for every neighborhood, and from my vantage point, I could see them all at once. It was one of the most beautiful and amazing things I’ve seen in my life; made even more special by that fact so few people will have the chance to experience it.
If this were a short story or a better crafted essay I might have played up my disappointement in missing all the Independence Day barbeques, or emphasize that the day has some sentimental significance to me besides what I’ve already written. But it is just a blog post so I’ll state the point here more directly, and even use a tired cliche to finish this post: the best things come when you least expect them.
Enjoy your holiday!
Images by Yoon Lee.
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