MALAISE MAY BE some terrible wisdom.  I gardened, sort of, the other day and was amazed at the difference it made.  Outdoor exercise, in all weathers, is essential.  But it’s not just moving around; it’s locating an animal appetite, an unwisdom–not foolishness but an absence of knowing better.  So go outside, to a real outside, like the river or Central Park, and just walk around thinking how insipid the advice is and what you could better be doing with your time, and maybe you’ll feel some irrational lift. It is March which matters. Be well.  Bad things are every bit as temporary as good things.

Zooey “Zoetrope” Rouss – Canine, Bovine, Simian, Friend.

FACEBOOK GROUP: The Transspeciated Canine Society

CATEGORY: Common Interest – Pets & Animals

DESCRIPTION: Prof. Shannan E. Rouss, BA, MFA (Founder, Director; Chief Lepidopterist) and Prof. Martin J. Marks, BA, MA, MFA; (Co-Director; Head Marine Biologist) started this group as part of their efforts to study and isolate the impact of Transspeciated Canine Disorder (TCD), a terrible affliction that affects nearly one out of every 500,000,000 dogs worldwide.

“In the short time that I’ve lived with Zooey,” says Prof. Marks, “this poor doggie’s been alternating between the delusions that she’s a spider monkey, a carrier pigeon, an Irish wolfhound, a porpoise, an aardvark, a honeybee, a bull shark, a Shetland pony, and a boa constrictor.”

Prof. Rouss, under the visible emotional strain that affects the families of TCD sufferers, pumps her fist into the air, onto which Zooey perches (she now thinks she’s a falcon), before tearfully declaring, “You don’t think it’s real until it happens to you, until this terrible disease strikes one of those closest to you. Oh fate most cru-el! Oh unhappy world!”

Indeed, besides the high emotional toll of TCD on its sufferers and their families, the expenses of the disease alone prove to be exorbitant. “Nobody really understands the monetary impact on a family,” explains Prof. Marks. “We have to keep the fridge stocked with bananas, honeysuckles, live krill, bales of hay, baby mice, chum, and Veuve Clicquot. About a month ago, Zooey spent an entire week convinced that she was a penguin. We had to rent a Zamboni to ice over the living room, and I missed three days of work protecting her from a sea lion which was, in fact, the Yorkshire Terrier in apartment #8F, another sufferer of TCD.”

Please join this group to support the efforts of Professors Marks and Rouss (who is not only the Society’s founder but also – perhaps further adding to the confusion – Zooey’s mother) to alleviate the suffering of TCD victims, their friends and families. With your support, we will one day cure the world of this disease. We will one day be able to see young Zooey Rouss frolicking through some golden meadow, happily declaring, “Arf! ARF!” as she jumps up and catches a Frisbee.

Monetary donations may be sent via paypal to mydogthinksitsahedgehog@gmail.com. Non tax-deductible. The Transspeciated Canine Society of America is not covered under IRS Section 501 (c)(3).

This one requires a bit of planning, and a very messy friend. You’re at your messy friend’s apartment. Somewhere towards the end of the night, you notice that he’s so messy, he hasn’t made his bed. Taking special care to sneak into the bedroom, lock the door behind you. Then, make his bed. But don’t just make his bed. Make his bed like they would at a hotel, taking extra special care as to the uniformity of the folds of the sheet, the plumpness of the pillows, etc. Then, place a mint on his pillow. This is perhaps one of the most baffling pranks you will ever commit.

Very Important Business at the other end of the room.

At a crowded holiday party, notice a friend standing at the opposite end of the room. Make eye contact with him, and urgently begin to beckon him over. Once this friend has spent a good ten to fifteen minutes getting to your position, pretend to forget what you wanted to talk to him about, or else shrug and say “Oh, never mind… It’s not that important.” Then, once he’s back at the other end of the room, do this again. Repeat five or six times, or until you’re punched.

Doppelganger

This trick works best if you 1) have strong prescription glasses, and 2) have had three or four drinks. (If you have glasses, remove them. If you don’t have glasses, squint really hard.) At a crowded party, scan the room for somebody who looks remotely like somebody else that’s famous. For example, your grandfather could be Henry Kissinger. Your aunt could be Meryl Streep. Your best friend could be Chace Crawford. Then, make a very big deal about this, proclaiming quite loudly while pointing “Oh my WORD! It’s Henry Kissinger!!” Be very insistent, asking questions about his work with China during the Nixon administration, even if he insists that he is not, in fact, Henry Kissinger.

THOUGH I’M NOT ONE who spends a lot of time surfing (or, judging from my output of late, writing for) the interweb, I’ve been fairly obsessed with Richard Haines’ illustrated style blog What I Saw Today for quite a while. His sketched portraitures—capturing street-style ephemera from subways to runways, drawn on notepads, envelopes, even walls—reveal an eye seeing a world for all of its dapper glory. And even though we were co-Hamiltonian tastemakers, I had never met Mr. Haines in person. This changed several days ago, when, while browsing the aisles of Soho’s Uniqlo, I ran into the man himself. A few days later, a wonderful drawing of this particular Half Reader of Great Books (as seen above and found here) appeared on his blog. It’s an honor and a privilege, to say the least.

Please note that this is only a working list. A fuller diagram may soon follow, given that I have enough drive to think/draw/scan one up. In the interim, feel free to use the comment box for any examples (be sure to include the appropriate category number), additions, or confessions.

“[The] ‘how busy I am’ [New York Fashion Week] Facebook status update—perhaps the only thing more annoying than the ‘how fabulous it is’ Art Basel Miami update.”

—Martin Marks, “Under the Big Top.”

For those of you attending Art Basel: Miami, the above should serve as a brief reminder as to the etiquette of your status updates. On a related note, I’ve always wanted to quote myself, and would like to thank the attendees of last year’s Art Basel: Miami for making this possible.

From the Lincoln Tunnel to the Mountains of Colorado, a gallery, featuring:

• Vast expanses of open road,
• Bear-Tornadoes: the worst tornadoes of them all, 
• Lots of moo-cows,
• Entire fields filled with sunflowers,
• The back of the “Welcome to Oklahoma!” sign, and,
• Most of Oklahoma herself.

Venture forward to see these images…

During my more formative years, I spent a lot of time in British schools, meaning that while you guys were learning about the geography of this fine nation of ours, memorizing the fifty states and whatnot, I was learning about the Regency Crisis of 1788, and the governments of William Gladstone and Benjamin Disraeli. This led to a lot of peculiar thinking about the layout of the US of A….

For instance, I had no idea that Maryland bordered Pennsylvania. When I learned about the Civil War, my most common thought was, “No wonder the Confederacy lost the war! They had to march from Maryland THOUSANDS of miles north to Pennsylvania,” which, at the time, I believed to be somewhere in mid-Canada.

So, up until Sunday, anything that didn’t have to do with America as 13 British Colonies didn’t really have to do with me. I referred to everything north of 168th Street as “Connecticut” and everything west of the Hudson as “Ohiowaoklahoma.” And when Andrea suggested that we visit her house in Aspen, which I believed to be somewhere on the other end of the Holland Tunnel but somewhere before Los Angeles (which, as we all know, is only 6 hours away), I thought it’d be a swell idea to hop into her Mercedes SUV and drive all the way.

But Andrea made me promise one thing. “Martin, Honey, you’re not allowed to look at a map till we make it to the second rest stop.” She kept saying things like “Trust me,” and “It’s a straight shot from Manhattan to Aspen.” 

The trip got off to a bad start when Andrea had her car burgled on 32nd and 3rd, and we ended up delaying our trip by a day so some shady characters in the Bronx could fix her car. And so, on Sunday we finally hit the road, and when we got to that second rest stop, my jaw dropped. “Oh. My. God. We’re not going to make it there alive!!”

But alive we are, and the trip went off swimmingly, with little boredom (or sleep) had by anybody. I kept the trip rolling with a Prussian sense of efficiency, while Andrea insisted we run a “Super Size Me”-like experiment on our bodies, only eating McDonald’s or Subway for most of the voyage. This trip would fall under the category of what Andrea’s father would call “some crazy white people shit.” Also falling under the category of “some crazy white people shit” is bungee jumping, skydiving, dirt-bike racing, and cage diving with great white sharks, or any combinations thereof (skydiving into a shark cage, etc.).

But I’ve learned a great many thing about this nation of ours from the journey… In a Pizza Hut in Brownstown, Missouri, I finally understood why GW Bush won the election. Waitresses in certain central states will, quite shockingly, pat a person on the shoulder as a display of affection, and will call perfect strangers such things as “Darling” or “Hon.” Tornadoes are things that don’t just exist in movies (as we experienced in Kansas!).

I have now traveled through nine, count ‘em, NINE, of our fair central states, including such exotic locales as Missouri and Kansas, and suggest that everybody do the same. And now, after four days of travel, I’m safe and sound in Aspen.

There is no television or internet here, and my cell phone died somewhere in Missouri. I am going to fish and hunt, to sit on pool decks and take hikes, to travel in hot air balloons and ride aging ponies, and to get through the massive stack of papers that have been on my desk for months. Tomorrow, I’m going down to the creek (there’s a creek!) and gets to fishin’ me some salmon.

Photos of me with caribou, elk, trees, grizzly bears (which, I hear, are as affectionate as porpoises once you get to know them!), winding streams, mountainsides, hillsides, etc., soon to follow!

xoxo-M.

Dear Great Book Half Readers,

We apologize for the shortage of posts, though not without a brief albeit somewhat unsatisfactory explanation. For the past several weeks, we’ve been in the process of packing up the Fictionarium on Union Square West, in anticipation of an extended stay down in sunny South Florida, and, alas, the usually tranquil months of July and August have brought with them boxes, boxes, and more boxes. And so, we exercise our right to engage in the cheapest blogging trick of all, namely, to recycle content that has already been written. Some funny &. good stuff, but recycled stuff nonetheless. While packing, we did notice – quite serendipitously – that this week appears to be the third anniversary of a road trip I took across a large part of this nation. Thus, the second full week in August officially becomes GBHR’s Road Trip to Aspen Anniversary Week. So, click, comment, and enjoy as we pack, re-pack, and unpack our way through these next few days. As always, we remain humbly,

Yours,

GB,HR.