A second installment in an ongoing series which harrowingly suggests that the Weekend edition of the Globe & Mail, specifically the seventy-two square inches devoted to a pneumatic navel-gazing bitchy blonde columnist, is the crux of my entire life. So, as mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I saw Leah McLaren hoovering up duMauriers in a bar only to find her column the next morning to be about how she'd quit smoking. The nerve, the nerve etc. etc. So later that week I told Frank magazine. Apparently they weren't interested because there was nothing about it in the current issue. The Frank magazine snub was still on my mind, I guess, as I fell asleep last night because I had a dream about getting a job at the Globe & Mail (the offices of which took the form of a trying-too-hard middle-to-upper scale Italian restaurant where everybody was falldown drunk), only to find Leah McLaren hanging off my arm, unwilling to let go. Everywhere we went she kept running into people she knew (notably a woman named "Collie" and a woman named "Sully") and they were all visibly and audibly disgusted with her. She didn't seem to notice and kept chirruping and grinning at them. Despite all these people, including myself initially, looking at her as though she were a turd hovering under their noses, she was always warm and affectionate. It was really sad. Then I woke up.
Here is today's L-Mac column.
It was terrifying; I obviously have some kind of hard-wired psychic link with Leah McLaren. Leah McLaren and I clearly share something special. I think in my Leah McLaren dream, I was recognizing this thing that we share and acknowledging my own inner Leah McLaren. These suspicions were confirmed upon reading the Leah McLaren column. No longer will I snipe at Leah McLaren; from now on I will hold a special Leah McLaren torch, held aloft vigilantly for Leah McLaren. Where I here people saying nasty things about Leah McLaren I will interject with pro-Leah McLaren arguments and slogans. Leah McLaren, I salute you. Leah McLaren, I love you.
Her mention of Toby Young is interesting. T.Y. wrote that book, that i paged through, at the bookstore, on my lunch some years ago, basically how-to-become-a-pariah. Something about pissing off the New Yorker. Anyway - i'm interesting in this notion of being a pariah, and remaining afloat, maintaining the ability to stay employed, to keep up a condo - that sort of thing. Also, is being a pariah the key? In what circle is L-Mac-L not a pariah? Is it those people who goto clubs like Indian Motorcycle Club? Is it these kinds of people, who don't count?
Posted by: Spancan on Marzo 20, 2004 09:13 PM .It wasn't the New Yorker, it was Vanity Fair; I never read the book but I read an exerpt about how he pitched some really shitty idea about a story supposedly by Jay McInrenerenerrenerny or BdoubleE but rather than be all like out on the town, they would be really restrained and modest and like go to the library and be in bed by 8. Shitty.
I love Graydon Carter; he's the Robert Evans of magazines. Sort of.
Anyway, Leah McLaren has buckets of friends. Or buckets of people who are nice to her face and nasty behind her back.
I just wanted to further explain how disturbed I am by the dream I had; so I'm inexplicably paired up with someone who I vocally despise and then over the course of the dream I start to feel sorry for Leah because everyone hates her and eventually I end up being totally fine with the idea of being with her romantically. I'm even enthusiastic about it, telling myself that it's one of the best things that's ever happened to me.
Then I fucking wake up.
Are my feelings still legitimate? Do I have to hold myself to them? What the shit?
Posted by: TheDiscourse on Marzo 20, 2004 09:53 PM .I don't really give a shit what happens in a dream. It's entertainment - it's Dean R. Koontz - talking about it too much gives me this bad feeling.
That's right, Vanity Fair. Toby Y's thing was with Tina Brown. Another pariah. For a moment i thought Tina Brown was at the New Yorker.
Robert Evans is always in Vanity Fair. Last year there was a picture in the hollywood portfolio of Evans and his new very young wife along with his butler, Alan Selka. The wife is half in the pool. Evans always wears bolo ties (sp?). Not good, but all that cocaine had to damage something.
Posted by: Spancan on Marzo 21, 2004 11:14 AM .No no, you're still wrong; Tina Brown WAS at the New Yorker before she started TALK. She's not really a pariah though.
Posted by: TheDiscourse on Marzo 21, 2004 12:19 PM .Clearly all my "specific" facts are wrong but my spirit is true. I thought she was a pariah among those who thought a Brit was taking over American institutions. Maybe pariah is too strong. She's no Sean Young. Still, i'm nervous asserting anything right now, so i'm done for the weekend.
Posted by: Spancan on Marzo 21, 2004 08:35 PM .Holy Shit I'm wrong; first Tina Brown became editor of Tatler magazine (before that she was an award-winning teenage playwright or some shit) then she went on to Vanity Fair, then she went on to the New Yorker then she started Talk magazine which collapsed like a flan in a cupboard and now she has a tv show and contributes to the Washington Post Style section. Martin Amis dated her while they were at Oxford together and I think she dumped him but they stayed friends and that explains why, if you'll remember (as I do), he reviewed Thomas Harris' Hannibal for the first issue of Talk and also did a profile of John Travolta I think for Van Fair when she was there. A-HA!
Posted by: TheDiscourse on Marzo 21, 2004 08:53 PM .But! Toby Young's thing WAS with Graydon, not Tina.
Also, fine, talking about dreams too much is flakey but this dream specifically felt like my subconscious was violating itself or something. Pair that with the column that followed less than an hour after waking up from that dream and you can't help but be a bit preoccupied. It's more Harold Pinter than Dean Koontz...
Posted by: TheDiscourse on Marzo 21, 2004 08:57 PM .No no TheDiscourse, talk freely and unselfconciously about your dreams. It's fine. Linking the way you did was ok. I've just, in the recent past, these marathon sessions of being trapped w/ somebody talking about some dream where they were flying, into the stars or some shitty place, w/ no linking. The dean koontz thing is good. i liked his books in grade 8, and i reread them when i was doing my thesis because i needed not to think for a while. i liked them again.
ok good, about tina. because i had associations w. her at VF and at the NewYorker...but i knew this in 2001 or so, and the information faded. i used to have a real job and at lunch i'd walk over to the chapters at yonge and eglinton, or the indigo, and read for a bit. and i read toby young's web site. oh shit who cares.
Posted by: Spancan on Marzo 22, 2004 12:23 AM .