Stephen Sondheim’s writing habits

Pencil and paper, but not just any pencil or paper:

For those who like me are curious about a writer’s habits: the pencils I write with are Blackwings, a brand formerly made by Eberhard Faber but alas, no longer. Their motto, printed proudly on the shaft, is “Half the Pressure, Twice the Speed,” and they live up to that promise. They utilize very soft lead, which makes them not only easy to write with (although extremely smudgy) but also encourages the user to waste time repeatedly sharpening them, since they wear out in minutes. They also have removable erasers which, when dried out, can be reversed to resume their softness and which are flat, preventing the pencil from rolling off a table. The pad I write on is a yellow legal pad with thirty-two lines, allowing alternate words to be written above one another without either crowding or wasting the space. These pads are hard to find, as most legal pads come with fewer or more lined spaces. Having been warned by Burt Shevelove, a stationery aficionado, that stationery supplies are frequently discontinued, I had the good sense to stock up on them as well as the Blackwings before they disappeared, and now have a lifetime supply.

Some people write sitting at a desk, some standing at one; I write lying down on a couch (except when I’m at the piano), for the obvious reason that it allows me to fall asleep whenever I encounter difficulties, which is often.

Finishing the Hat: Collected Lyrics (1954-1981) with Attendant Comments, Principles, Heresies, Grudges, Whines and Anecdotes (New York: Knopf, 2010).

[“They utilize very soft lead”: utilize? Well, as Elaine observes, he’s not writing lyrics.]

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Hitting the sauce

As a half-Italian kid, I regarded sauce as a mystery. (It was always “sauce,” never “gravy.”) My grandma made sauce in her kitchen. We took large amounts home with us in Tupperware. End of story.

Now, with a little help from my wife Elaine, I’ve started making sauce. It is ridiculously easy to do. Sauce from a jar? Not in my kitchen, as a commercial once said. Here’s my recipe:

1 28 oz. can Cento Tomato Puree
olive oil
1 medium onion, finely chopped
3 cloves garlic, smashed and finely chopped
2 tsp. dried basil
2 tsp. dried oregano
1/4 tsp. sea salt¹
20 turns of a McCormick Black Peppercorn grinder (between 1/8 and 1/4 tsp.)
20 turns of a McCormick Italian Seasoning grinder (between 1/8 and 1/4 tsp.)²
1 tbsp. sugar
3 oz. red wine (Cabernet Sauvignon, says I)

Brown onions in oil. Add garlic. Add basil, oregano, salt, pepper, Italian seasoning, and sugar, and stir. Add wine and stir.³ Add the tomato puree and stir. Reduce heat, cover, and let simmer for one hour, or two, or more.

Thank you, Elaine, for encouraging me in this adventure in cooking (and for everything else). Yes, today would be a good day to hit the sauce.

[January 2023: I’ve made minor revisions, doubling the salt and adding optional hours to the cooking time.]

¹ This recipe has a fraction of the salt found in jarred sauces. You won’t miss the extra salt. Promise.

² If you choose a different brand of Italian seasoning, make it one without basil and oregano. The McCormick grinder is mostly rosemary, black pepper, and red pepper.

³ It’s Elaine who suggests adding the wine after adding the spices, for maximum distribution of flavor.

Rosanne Cash, John Boehner

Roseanne Cash to John Boehner: “Stop using my dad’s name as a punchline, you asshat.”

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Five sentences about clothes (Carhartt!)

Semi-mysterious J.D. Salinger Boxed Set (Nothing new after all)

David Foster Wallace on voting

David Foster Wallace:

In reality, there is no such thing as not voting; you either vote by voting, or you vote by staying home and tacitly doubling the value of some Diehard’s vote.

“Up, Simba: Seven Days on the Trail of an Anticandidate,” in Consider the Lobster and Other Essays (New York: Little, Brown, 2007).

[In context, these sentences concern young adults and primary elections. I am taking these sentences out of context to suggest the urgency of voting in any and all elections.]

“I Can’t Find My Phone”

More fun that using a landline (assuming you have one): I Can’t Find My Phone.

(Found via Coudal)

200000

Elaine and I detoured to a country road so that we could stop safely and take a picture. Hooray for our 1996 Toyota Corolla.

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Virginia Heffernan on the telephone

Virginia Heffernan mourns the disappearing analog telephone call:

You’d endure the long brrrings with a pleasant stirring of nerves, a little stage fright. As many as 10. To give the household a chance to rally. On “Hello?” you’d identify yourself and ask after the person whose voice in your ear you, having waited, now profoundly desired. In the absence of the grammatical spasm of “This is she,” you’d learn whether your friend was “in” or “out” or somewhere in between (weird parents sometimes said “indisposed”), while your patience was casually requested (“Hold on a sec; she’s in the den”). You’d express thanks for the answerer’s good offices. More waiting. Offstage noise. Voilà. Up would come the voice.

A telephone memory of mine, c. 1969–1970: spending hours on the line with my friend Chris, trading particularly ludicrous bits of commercial art from the Yellow Pages: “Page 347!” “Page 562!”

Mmm . . . arm

[Somewhere in east-central Illinois. Photograph by Michael Leddy.]

Happy Halloween.

Wooden phone booths

Long may they stand: wooden phone booths, from Ephemeral New York.