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Some good things of late . . . -- Gelato within walking distance. Two scoops: hazelnut and tiramisu. -- The Will and Grace retrospective. Not the actual season finale, which was pretty dumb if you ask me, but the retrospective with the bloopers and what not. I am such a sucker for a good blooper. -- Seeing the actresses who play Shane and Lara on The L Word in Art School Confidential even if the rest of the movie was pretty uneven and strange. -- The piano music in The Beat that My Heart Skipped even though the rest of the movie was too violent for me and I fell asleep during a good third of it. -- Running for twenty minutes without stopping. I made it through the dreaded week five, day three. The one that struck fear in my heart since day one of the program. I went to the gym, got on the treadmill, did my brisk 5-minute warm-up to Ben Harper's "Steal My Kisses." Then I started running and I think I was able to succeed because of the following: (a) being inside in an air-conditioned room rather than outside in the sweltering heat (b) being on the treadmill rather than on the pavement (c) having great songs -- such as "I Get Along" by the Libertines, "Get Up" by Bleu, "Are You Gonna Be My Girl" by Jet, "The Way We Get By" by Spoon, and so forth, all courtesy of a great mix made by my boyfriend last year when I was still driving home from his house pre-dawn and needed upbeat tunes to help me keep my eyes open. "Get Up" might be the best running song of all time. I also think I just kept going because I figure I haven't quit on any of the running segments before, so why quit now? The final four weeks lead you up to running thirty minutes at a time, but I'm going to have to shoot for longer than that because there's no way I can run a 5K in thirty minutes. That is hilarious to even contemplate. Anyway, instead of thinking "Ow, ow, ow, ow. Ow. Ow," with every step yesterday, mostly I just thought, "I am proud of myself. I am proud of myself." I try to tell myself that I don't care for Oprah anymore and that her show is ridiculous and that she is a phony but then I tune into the damn Legends Ball special and cry nonstop from start to finish because I'm so moved that I can't even stand it. I cried when Denny died. I cried when Dana got her head shaved. I cried for miles upon miles when someone almost ran me off the road recently. I've been crying a lot lately, it seems. I wouldn't have guessed I had any tears left for a goddamn Oprah special. But I guess I did. First it was the reading of the poem where the women repeated "We Speak Your Names, We Speak Your Names," then it was seeing them all break down one after another, then it was the gospel service at the end. THE GOSPEL SERVICE. And how it started off kind of sedately but then the microphone was passed to Chaka Khan, to Shirley Caesar, to Patti Freakin' LaBelle, and everyone just lost it. I laughed through my tears when Oprah made fun of how the white people were sitting there kind of stodgily and trying to feel the spirit and all but just being very white about it. I cried when watching all of these people completely lose their shit and start waving their hands in the air. I just cried and cried. I cried in gratitude that Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes apparently thought better than to desecrate that part of the weekend with their stupid Scientologist presence. Say what you will about Oprah, but she seems to be taking her money (all the money in the world that exists, it seems sometimes) and doing some good things with it. Clearly nobody can do it on the scale she does with the fanciness and the roses and the diamonds, but the concept of not waiting until an amazing woman in your life dies to shower her with praise and adoration and appreciation, of doing it now, of letting her actually hear you say thank you and how much she has shaped your world and dreams . . . doing it now. I need to do that with my mother, with my sister, with my friends. I wish I had done it with my grandmothers. I wish I could stop crying. God. Fucking Oprah. I don't even know what to say. Bright's about to crash through that window and I'm really not prepared to cry even more tonight. I will never, ever see Scott Wolf as anyone but Bailey Salinger. Just as I will never see Bradley Whitford as anyone but Josh Lyman. I don't even know what else to say. I hope you saw the damn Legends Ball special. It was special. It really was. I sort of hate myself for becoming so verklempt over it, but there it is.
About this time in ...
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