nancynall.com » On Juno’s…whatever.
«
»

On Juno’s…whatever.

First, a lit­tle light house­keep­ing: I’m adding some Google ads to the site. From time to time over the years, peo­ple have asked me whether I’d con­sider host­ing adver­tis­ing here, and my answer was always baf­fle­ment: Who in their right mind would adver­tise here? In the six years I’ve been wast­ing time on this lunacy play­ing around with this blog, I’ve never really strayed far from the orig­i­nal idea, which is: Daily life, with links. That’s all. If peo­ple want to stop by and read, or par­tic­i­pate in the dis­cus­sions, I’m flat­tered to pieces, but really, if there was ever a blog about noth­ing, this is it.

How­ever, even noth­ing has its read­ers. I added Google ads to my poor, neglected Grosse Pointe Today site when I launched it last fall. Even with hap­haz­ard updat­ing and con­stant excuse-making from its pro­pri­etress, I checked my account sta­tus the other day and dis­cov­ered I’d made, lord almighty, $19. Why, that means NN.C could con­ceiv­ably make, oh, $60 in the same time period. As my friend the Other Alan used to say, “If you saw $60 lying on the ground, would you pick it up?” Of course I would. Google ads are text-based and unob­tru­sive and do not fea­ture danc­ing sil­hou­ettes or punch-the-monkey games or, my new bete noire, those rollover-and-it-speads-like-a-stain things.

So we’ll see how it works out. Trial basis. Etcetera.

Con­tent will remain sta­tus quo. As tempt­ing as it might be to become Perez Hilton.

Another house­keep­ing note: I’m going to start lim­it­ing the time I spend writ­ing here, and dammit, there’s noth­ing you can do to make me feel guilty about it. All that means is, I’m lim­it­ing myself to 45 min­utes a day to put together a main entry, and if noth­ing good emerges in 45 min­utes, then I’m going to go bake brown­ies or some­thing. “But Nance,” you might be ask­ing. “Fre­quently I read what you post here, and it’s noth­ing good. Are you say­ing you spend more than 45 min­utes on it? If so, what a waste of time.”

I’m say­ing it’s none of your damn busi­ness. Just that I have to devote more time to pay­ing work, exer­cise and keep­ing the dust bun­nies from tak­ing over the liv­ing room, not to men­tion my oft-laid-aside fic­tion writ­ing, which is this year’s do-it-or-drop-it long-term project.

Per­spec­tive. It’s all about per­spec­tive. I actu­ally con­sid­ered tak­ing a hia­tus, and then real­ized that’s prob­a­bly not doable, either. For what­ever rea­son, I seem to need to write this thing more than any­one wants to read it.

OK, then. Blog­gage: Fans of this week’s On the Night­stand pick will want to read the NYT’s inter­view with Jim Har­ri­son today. The pic­ture alone is worth the click-through; if I can live like he does and look no worse at age 69, I’d say that was a fair deal.

TV time. Who’s watch­ing “Rome” this sea­son? (Silence.) Thought so. So let’s start the one-sided discussion!

There’re a lot of nits you can pick with any depic­tion of ancient Rome. Some aren’t worth pick­ing any­more — I’m fully will­ing to believe that every­one in the eter­nal city spoke with a British accent — and some still have some life in them. I’m puz­zled, watch­ing this show, as to how they could spend a nine-figure sum and still not have one scene with more than 20 actors in the frame. (I guess they blew their pro­duc­tion bud­get on that silly glad­i­to­r­ial con­test between Titus Pullo and six or seven unfor­tu­nate would-be exe­cu­tion­ers last sea­son. Although HBO prob­a­bly could have financed that entirely by sell­ing T-shirts with “XIII” on them in its imme­di­ate aftermath.)

The cen­tral sto­ry­telling trick of the show — two fic­tional sol­diers who wan­der, Zelig-like, through the well-known his­tor­i­cal events of Rome — is still amus­ing, never more so than in the episode deal­ing with the birth of Cleopatra’s son by Cae­sar. Cleo’s back this sea­son, press­ing her case for the boy to be legit­imized, lay­ing the ground­work for the seduc­tion of Mark Antony, which should be about as dif­fi­cult as falling off a log; Antony’s the King of Goats and Cleo’s about as hot as hot­ties come. I’m notic­ing the pro­fan­ity has been upped in this sea­son, which is sort of dis­ap­point­ing, but it’s given me a whole new oath to swear by, thanks to the King of Goats: “on Juno’s c*nt.” And Atia’s whis­pered part­ing shot to Cleo is a keeper: “Die scream­ing, you pig-spawned trol­lop.” It’s a lit­tle strange to see Lucius Vorenus turn­ing into Al Swearen­gen crossed with Tony Soprano, but I guess even high-quality HBO series have to have a lit­tle syn­ergy with one another.

Is my 45 min­utes up? It is. Time to walk the dog and hit the shower, in that order. Hope I don’t meet any­one impor­tant on the first errand, although it is about 18 degrees at the moment — it’s pretty unlikely.

Posted on Thursday, January 25th, 2007 at 10:24 am
in Housekeeping, Television.

Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

13 responses to
“On Juno’s…whatever.”

  1. John said on January 25th, 2007 at 10:38 am

    “Hope I don’t meet any­one impor­tant on the first errand”…hmm, look­ing to get lucky on your second?

    I will be very happy with the daily dose (45 min­utes of your time). You are a much bet­ter colum­nist than any avail­able in my local paper and I do appre­ci­ate you for it!

  2. brian stouder said on January 25th, 2007 at 11:04 am

    Juno doesn’t have teeth there, does she?

    See — HBO just ain’t Sundance

  3. Connie said on January 25th, 2007 at 11:09 am

    Hav­ing read Harrison’s book on his love for gourmet and exotic food, “The raw and the cooked : adven­tures of a rov­ing gour­mand ” I am sur­prised he is alive at all. I have heard that he lives in the area of our Sleep­ing Bear cot­tage and is known to par­tic­i­pate in the win­ter Tues­day evening artist’s and writer’s potluck at Art’s Bar in Glen Arbor.

  4. nancy said on January 25th, 2007 at 11:16 am

    Har­ri­son left Michi­gan two or three years ago, although I think he still returns reg­u­larly. He fled the increas­ingly turista-infested Lee­lanau penin­sula (and the U.P. cot­tage) and built a house in Mon­tana. (Both his daugh­ters live there, and he has grand­chil­dren he wants to be closer to.) He spends win­ters in south­ern Ari­zona, as the NYT story points out.

    But yes, I’m amazed he’s alive at all. He wrote a fairly insuf­fer­able col­umn for Smart mag­a­zine for a while in the ‘80s, where much of “The Raw & the Cooked” first appeared. He described a meal at Jack Nicholson’s house that included an enor­mous bowl of pasta dressed with a pound of bel­uga caviar and a cup of heavy cream. It sounded repul­sive, and I’m not a girl who objects to a big meal.

  5. Dorothy said on January 25th, 2007 at 11:42 am

    Most days you are my daily dose of san­ity, Nance. I’m grate­ful for what­ever time and insight you are able to grant to us! Keep on keepin’ on!

  6. brian stouder said on January 25th, 2007 at 12:57 pm

    So pre­sume­ably the $19 google-bucks was remit­ted to NN-enterprises because of click-throughs, or some other track­able brows­ing, eh?

    Some­what amaz­ing, really. If a daily news­pa­per could har­ness dol­lars that way, then the Sen­tinels and J-Gs and USA Todays that lay around in every Burger King and McD (etc) in Fort Wayne would be lit­tle cash cows!

  7. Maryo said on January 25th, 2007 at 6:55 pm

    OK, Rome it is. My favorite line of the sea­son (OK, it’s still young, but still) is Bru­tus, after killing Cae­sar and fac­ing his allies and mother tor­ment­ing him about now going to kill King of Goats, turns to his mother and says, “You, too, Mother?”

    That was priceless.

    The thing that keeps me going is watch­ing the tag team of Pullo and Lucius. They play off each other so well.

    And Atia. What a broad. I want to be like her when I grow up.

  8. joodyb said on January 25th, 2007 at 7:07 pm

    wow. she really is pretty. doesn’t look like tv mate­r­ial.
    why can’t i get on board with “Rome”? i love the sub­ject mat­ter. i loved “Dead­wood.” i do find the accent thing very dis­tract­ing. beyond that, the dia­logue is not inter­est­ing to me. espe­cially when you have to strain past the non­cred­i­ble brit. but maybe i should give it another shot.
    Did any­one watch “Dex­ter”? i saw lit­tle press on it. it was good and creepy. and such a crime-based show is not my cup of tea, either. i liked Hall very much in Six Feet Under; maybe that’s why i attached. Was a huge fan of “Dead Like Me.”

    i would like to echo the daily dose com­ment above.

  9. Scout said on January 25th, 2007 at 7:28 pm

    45 min­utes of you is bet­ter than hours and hours of most any­one else… so thanks for what­ever spare change you can toss our way, whilst com­pos­ing the mag­num opus.

  10. Bill said on January 25th, 2007 at 8:01 pm

    My favorite from last week’s Rome: Mark Antony tells Cleopa­tra: “Your son will eat sh** and die before I make him legal.”

  11. nancy said on January 25th, 2007 at 8:08 pm

    My all-time favorite “Rome” line was Titus Pullo’s, as he’s nego­ti­at­ing the prostitute’s price for young Octavian’s deflow­er­ing. It is, of course, very high, and he hes­i­tates a moment, then pays it and says, “All right, but she’d bet­ter f*ck like Helen of Troy with her ass on fire, or I’ll know the reason.”

  12. Dagmar said on January 26th, 2007 at 11:33 am

    My favorite is when Atia is prepar­ing to send over the well endowed slave to Servilia, remarks to her daugher “Every­one appre­ci­ates big penis”.

  13. Jason said on January 26th, 2007 at 1:38 pm

    I know what you mean about feel­ing com­pelled to write. Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, writ­ers gotta write. Or as Tom Lehrer sang, “Sharks gotta swim, bats gotta fly.”

    The 45-minute rule is a good one. I try to do some­thing sim­i­lar — oth­er­wise, you can spend your life pol­ish­ing a blog entry that pays you not at all.

    I know you’re a big fan of James Lileks (ahem), and he writes some­thing he calls “egg-timer” posts — he writes for 15 min­utes, and at the end of 15 min­utes, he quits.

    Hmmm … have you thought about writ­ing noth­ing except entries about old post­cards, film noir, the war on ter­ror and vis­its to Tar­get with your daughter?

«
»