Emily Blunt was recently out promoting her new film The Young Victoria and she went on one of those “I am a most serious ac-tor” rambles that you occasionally hear from entertainers for whom success came way too early and way too easy.

It’s just never been important to me to make a big splash and I don’t care for it.

You studied acting but the size of your audience is irrelevant? Okay, whatever. You’re an idiot. I can’t stand it when entertainers turn their success into a burden.

Singer Nora Jones (All of her songs sound exactly alike. Boring.) said of the meteoric success of her first album:

On the first record I was everywhere, and it was, like, the worst time in my life.

Nora is also an idiot. Then that little punk Michale Cera (Plays the same character in every film. Boring.) said:

I don’t really want to be famous, and I’m kind of scared that might be happening.

Then why did you get into acting?! Another idiot. I think Emily and Michael and Nora should all be loaded aboard a rocket ship pointed towards obscurity and failure. I volunteer to press the ignition button.

Last month I posted this quote from Brad Pitt:

It’s so tough being an actor. Sometimes they bring you coffee and sometimes it’s cold. And sometimes you don’t have a chair to sit on.

See the difference?

My most recent fortune from a fortune cookie:

That’s what I’m afraid of.

Sunday is the 20th anniversary and 450th episode of The Simpsons. I have never watched an episode of The Simpsons. It’s not something I avoided and I’m not trying to sound like I’m above that sort program. I just never got around to watching it.

I have also never seen Gone With the Wind, The Sound of Music or an episode of The Wire. But I did see Laurence of Arabia at the Zigfield in Manhattan, which has a monster screen. That was pretty cool.

I accidentally alighted onto the Lite Rock radio station here in New Jersey and was serenaded with this horrendous melody by ’70’s cowboy dullard Mac Davis:

Girl, you’re a hot-blooded woman-child
And it’s warm where you’re touchin’ me
But I can tell by your tremblin’ smile
You’re seein’ way too much in me
Girl, don’t let your life get tangled up with mine
’cause I’ll just leave you, I can’t take no clingin’ vine

Baby, baby, don’t get hooked on me
’cause I’ll just use you then I’ll set you free
Baby, baby, don’t get hooked on me

Baby Don’t Get Hooked On Me
Mac Davis

That, my friends, was a #1 hit. Davis also starred with Ted Nugent in the film Beer for my Horses.

Sickened by that, I punched the button for the Classic Rock station and got an ear full of this shit:

If I leave here tomorrow
Would you still remember me?
For I must be travelling on, now,
‘Cause there’s too many places I’ve got to see

‘Cause I’m as free as a bird now,
And this bird you can not change.

Freebird
Lynyrd Skynyrd

That was also a huge hit and became an anthem.

How can you women stand being in the same room with men? In a not-so-subtle way, these songs, and hundreds of other hits just like them, are saying, “Hey, baby, first I’m gonna fuck ya and then I’m gonna dust ya off my shoulder like a speck of dandruff. So geeet ready!”

Men don’t understand that, for the most part, if you sleep with a girl, she’ll assume that you have some feelings for her and that you’re open to the idea of being with her for a long, long time.

Women don’t understand that men can sleep with someone and afterwards feel absolutely nothing more than the need for a nice, long nap.

This is the Great Misunderstanding between the sexes.

I’ve mentioned this before but I’ll repeat it for the benefit of those who haven’t heard it. I am trying to steer The Daughters into a gay lifestyle. Men are pigs and I want to spare them this anguish. I don’t want some punk greasehead pulling into my driveway in a beat-up Trans Am that leaks oil, laying on the horn because he doesn’t want to come in and meet me and expect Daughter to run out to him.

I am sorry to report that even though one daughter is only 8 and the other 3.5, I am failing miserably, as they both already have boyfriends (Ian and Luke, respectively).

On the other hand, in Saul Bellow’s novel Herzog, the protagonist, Moses Herzog, says he “…will never understand what women want. What do they want? They eat green salad and drink human blood.”

And I think there might be some truth there. So there’s that to consider.

While the rest of the world is glad that the holidays have finally come to an end (and justifiably so), I am in a terrible funk that Christmas/New Years is over. At the end of A Christmas Carol, Dickens says of Scrooge:

…and it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge.

Well, I came out of the birth canal with that attitude about Christmas. I didn’t need to be haunted. I think I drive Mrs. Wife a bit crazy, but The Daughters seem to be an appreciative audience for my holiday mania. I can’t help myself. If you saw New York City all tarted up for Christmas you’d be moved too. 20+ years of the Rockefeller Center tree and the Bryant Park skating rink and Macy’s lights got under my skin so now I look forward to Christmas with the calm maturity of a 7-year old.

There is some bad voodoo in the ether here in Unbearable land. It’s not the kind of thing that’s fit for public airing. The holidays were the perfect tonic for it, but now that the celebrating and good cheer is all behind me, I have to figure out how to fix things. It’s upsetting.

You can take it in stride
Or you can take it right between the eyes
Suck up, suck up
And take your medicine
It’s a good day, it’s a good day
To face the hard things

Take Your Medicine
Cloud Cult

The loneliness of the long-distance commuter.

This passageway leads out to 42nd Street. It’s one of those you do what you gotta do photos. Grand Central Station looked a lot more festive around the holidays, but now it’s back to the grind. For everyone.