The Sofa and the Kindle

"I'm not a literary genius...I was not an orphan. I have never blown anyone for coke or let other people do coke off any part of my body. I have never struggled with addiction and I was never molested. Tragically, my life has only been moderately fucked up. I'm not writing this book to share wisdom or to inspire people." 
 -- Sarah Silverman, The Bedwetter: Stories of Courage, Redemption, and Pee

I am seventeen percent of the way through Sarah Silverman's new book on my new (to me) Kindle Wireless Reading Device, Free 3G, 6" Display, White - 2nd Generation. I think that's right.

Today was a big, big day in that I was lovingly handed down two of my favorite friends' two most cherished possessions. One handed down his kindle, and one handed down her Arhaus sofa (the kind with the down cushions that you squish into). They both seemed a little wistful to see these things go, but I reassured them that this is an Open Adoption. I'll send pictures. They can visit any time they want, confident in the knowledge that these treasures have a home just as loving and appreciative as their own. They won't drive by and see the kindle tied up in the yard, or the sofa sitting on the front porch. 

My quest for the perfect sofa has been in overdrive since I moved last Spring, because I refused to move the old one into the new place. There wasn't anything wrong with it, but I stopped liking it, and I refused to move it.

This has meant a long summer of guests literally sitting on the floor (utterly without complaint...at least not to my face), but I have stuck to my guns. The Big Ass Chair seats two at the most -- and even that requires a certain romantic commitment... not to mention an embrace of certain principles of yoga.

The rule is if I don't love it, it can't live here. I'm not all snooty about it -- I'm happy to go without until the right thing presents itself. I have made one exception for a lamp I like that has an ugly shade, because it seemed a little extreme to light the living room with a bare ass bulb. I can picture the shade I want, but I haven't found it yet.

My bud Ian says my problem is champagne tastes on a beer budget -- and that's part of it -- but that isn't precisely true. I just have very, very specific taste, which I have a very difficult time articulating. I wasn't born speaking Dwell Magazine, I'm learning the vocabulary one painstaking mistake at a time. For a long time when I tried to describe "contemporary," I was saying "modern," and ended up with some terrible Jetsonian errors.

Harriette in her Kitchen

I do know my friend Harriette's house in the country (our bleugrass Hamptons) is perfect, so at least she gives me a jumping-off point, but it's a point of inspiration-only. I know her sofa is a magnificent B & B Italia and that if I had it, the general response would not be "wow!" (as it is when you see Harriette's), but rather "who does she think she's kidding?" It's Art, and I'm not sure I can pull off a room where you sit on the Art.

Luckily, I can read all about it in all the Design Magazines I plan to subscribe to on the new Kindle.

Today is the first time I ever touched one, and yes, I do realize I am several years late to the party. I wasn't boycotting them -- as some writers do -- it was just on the list of things I hadn't gotten around to. I've never had a "sky is falling" philosophical opposition to them "replacing" books. I won't be hauling the kindle to book club. There are books I want to keep and physically annotate and look at on my shelves so I can go back to them over and over again, but honestly, not all that many. I've never been much of a book hoarder.

I am, however, both a compulsive reader, and an insanely fast one. On any given weekend, I can power through a half dozen new releases that have piled up on my desk during the week. If they're good, I try to force myself to slow down because I want to make them last, but I never can. Factor in the insomnia and I constantly run out of things to read in the middle of the night, long after the bookstores are closed and amazon isn't shipping.

The kindle strikes me as a perfect remedy for that. The new Sarah Silverman is a good example. She is way, way too scatological for my taste in humor. Sometimes I think she's funny, and sometimes a little repulsive. I wouldn't take down a tree for this book, but I am happy to read it. Midway through, I did have to text Michael and ask him if the Kindle lit up, or if I was expected to turn on the lamp like a goddamn animal. I can see myself reading it by kerosene during the next Ice Storm.

I am not an early adopter (remember, I insisted writers bring me their stories on disk for years because their stupid attachments wouldn't open and I really didn't see "that whole email thing catching on"), but I'm not a Luddite either. My cousin and I had a long talk yesterday where I explained to him the fax machines of yore with the curly paper, and he made fun of the days when I tied my columns to the ankles of carrier pigeons and dispatched them throughout the city.

Disdain for technology is a luxury for folks way higher up the literary food chain than I am. It's fine to adore Wendell Berry and all, but it's equally fine to remember that his lovely wife types all his manuscripts. I don't have a wife. I have facebook. And if somebody shows me something that makes my life easier and better, I am happy to take them up on it. I love information and I love knowledge (two different things, I realize) and I'm glad to improve my access to both.

As I was typing this, however, I got a voicemail from my BFF that says, "I am calling you on the Gmail."  She said I could call her back on it too. I have no idea what that means, but apparently, somebody has now replaced telephones. Perhaps she will read this blog crudely fashioned from twigs and berries and call me back. Last Thanksgiving, I talked to her on The Skype while she was in Siberia, so if she says phones are over, we'd best believe her.

Between you and me, I suspect It's Like Havin' a Dove Field.

From the Archives: Aug 5 2004, Martha Stewart's paint

This is "Howard" from Ralph Lauren's "urban loft" series.

I have a long relationship with paint.  I usually select palettes that range from what some have called "ambitious" to what others have called "brave," in a tone that's clear they don't mean it as a compliment. I tend to use Ralph Lauren and MarthaStewart for color inspiration, maybe a little Farrow & Ball, but I am a diehard old-fashioned Porter girl when it comes to what goes on the walls. I am not afraid to paint, and I'm not afraid to repaint if it doesn't turn out. (See also: my current dining room. Right finish, wrong color.)

In the ongoing quest to re-populate the lost archives, I ran across this today.

FROM THE ARCHIVES: August 5, 2004

A Good Thing

 "Her kitchen is dense with Stewart touches: 48 gleaming copper pots hang above the stove, hundreds of antique dishes fill the glass-fronted cabinets, and the dishwashing liquid is decanted into a glass cruet beside the sink. Still, I said, it’s a pretty small room to produce much food. Not to worry, she replied, smiling. ‘I have 18 burners in an annex out back.’

—Jeffrey Toobin’s New Yorker interview with Martha Stewart February 3, 2003

Just because she's headed to the big house, doesn't mean Martha Stewart’s influence is really going anywhere—a rude awakening that I’ve come to in the weeks post-sentencing—a realization that I’ll never really be free of the standards she's set. She'll be back. Mark my words. And she will crush everyone who crossed her.


This first came up when I started getting my house ready for my Mom to move in as my roommate for a few months here, a few months there while she undergoes medical treatment nearby—treatment we all frequently refer to as “rehab”—which has had the unforeseen effect of lots of people thinking my mother has substance abuse issues (which she obviously doesn’t, because God knows if she did, I’d have written about them long before now).

So when the facelift at the house started, it was pretty easy to attribute all this renewed zeal for home and hearth to the impending arrival of my mother—whose standards for keeping an impeccable house far exceed my own.

But while there’s no denying she is the very epitome of the charming, southern, Episcopalian hostess (at least that’s the Mom everybody knows NOW, refusing to sympathize even remotely with the incredibly CRUEL version of her that I remember from childhood—the one who repeatedly sent me to bed without Chico and the Man for the most MINOR infractions)—I must finally acknowledge that it was the spectre of something far more insidious that has long since permeated my house.


I came to this conclusion when I recently painted my kitchen (after having my new upstairs bedroom painted…three times, along with the dining room).

After the bedroom and dining room, I discovered that the kitchen (formerly a charming periwinkle) now clashed with the ENTIRE house.

I had screwed up the first two color selections so badly that I realized it was time to just admit the obvious and go to theMartha Stewartcolor palette. C’mon. It’s a kitchen.

It isn’t as easy as it sounds because there were roughly 8172 colors to choose from (color number 8172 is, by the way, “buttercup” if you’re interested.

I narrowed the field to Lawn Frost, Fen, and Rubbed Sage.

I toyed with Gull, Sourdough, and Otter Point—but honestly, they were just out of my league.
I am not the kinda woman who can pull off “Gull…” It’s the sort of subtle (yet slightly breathtaking) shade that—upon one look—would have visitors muttering under their breath, “Who the hell does she think she’s kidding?”

Overcome with an uncharacteristic insecurity, I solicited reams of advice—making it very clear that I wanted “discernibly green, but subtle.” I was adamant after the first version of the bedroom turned out to be “Vietnam,” despite its pleasant sounding label of “hearth.”

A committee of close friends and advisors agreed on Lawn Frost.


Next up, I had to find a painter—because frankly, I was too embarrassed to call the first crew back.

After asking around, there was a consensus that “Jimmy” worked fast and cheap (I think that’s his real name, but if he has a last one, I don’t know it). He’s not in the phone book or anything. You just have to leave a message with his brother-in-law. Hey, I was desperate (what with the clashing periwinkle and all).

So Jimmy arrived at the appointed time and I headed out to Farmers’ Market to give him some time and space.

I interrupted him briefly, later on, to put away some produce—whereupon he asked, appropos of nothing in particular (or so I thought), “you don’t care if I’m a beer drinker do you?”

I responded with a generous "No, of course not," thinking it a largely rhetorical/theoretical question.
To be honest, I detest it, and while I don’t personally drink it, if I developed any real moral objection to beer, my social circle would dwindle to even smaller ranks.

And then I went about the rest of my Saturday chores—without a single debate on the merits of say, foreign vs. domestic (or even cans vs. bottles), because this is just one area of taste where I really couldn’t care less.

It was only when I went to empty the trash and noticed an inordinate amount of clanking aluminum that I realized his question had been logistical, rather than theoretical, as I sorted an astonishing surfeit of empty Keystone cans into the recycler.

And so here’s the thing—something I really should’ve learned after multiple, painful, expensive, heart-wrenching lessons—contractors don’t really deal in the “hypothetical.” They tend to require excruciating degrees of specificity.

Instead of saying I had no objection to beer, it would’ve been prudent to follow that up with a disclaimer about how I think it’s an ill-advised beverage to consume when trying to complete most ANY task. (And here I’m trying not to be rigid. I’m trying to give folks the benefit of the doubt… but …. No, I can’t think of any job performance that would be improved by the consumption of beer. Particularly none that are scheduled for TEN O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING.)

In the end, it didn’t matter.

Aside from paint all over the flooring (which needs to be replaced anyway—at least that’s the philosophical, zen-like response I’m going for), the quality of the work turned out to be irrelevant.

Because “lawn frost” is actually “off-white” once you get it on the walls.

True, it’s not as bad as periwinkle, but it’s sure as hell no “Gull” either.

I’m now debating Fen versus Rubbed Sage, and in the meantime, just trying to stay out of the kitchen.

It’s just as well, after I completely WRECKED the last meal I made.

After spending an ungodly amount of time picking a selection of the 13 varieties of basil I grow in my kitchen garden to make the perfect pesto (a passé 80s trend that’s happily making a culinary comeback—it’s the new black), the entire dish was RUINED when I couldn’t find handmade fresh pasta and settled for some equally over-priced, annoyingly precocious brand that was supposed to be just as good.

Well. It wasn’t. It had all the taste and consistency of library paste (not that I was a kid who ate that stuff, but I heard the reviews).

Not content to suffer alone, I complained endlessly, ensuring that my Insignificant Other couldn’t enjoy his meal either —despite the fact that he generally has the palate of a 13-year-old and would likely eat anything I put in front of him, in peace, up to and including the aforementioned paste. (Since he lives out of town—where NO one cooks—and travels constantly for work, anything above truckstop fare gets a rave review from him.)

And the thing is, neither of us even really LIKES pasta, but based on the handful of occasions a year that I serve it, I still impetuously concluded that a pasta-maker would have to be purchased and lessons taken.

Then I spent the rest of the evening banging around in the kitchen, taking out my rage on cleanup and the dishes (which are most definitely HIS jobs).

Nobody’s gettin’ leftovers either.
Reviewing the debacle, it’s clear that there’s only one person to blame and that’s Martha Stewart—because while I was raised by two great cooks with perfectionistic tendencies, NEITHER of them taught me that there’s any dish that would necessitate 13 varieties of basil. We certainly didn’t have a “kitchen garden,” we had a FIELD. It definitely wasn’t “staffed”—it was a weed-infested, chigger-ridden corner of hell that served as the bane of mine and my brother’s existence.

And if you asked any of the actual farmers in my lineage to distinguish between lawn frost and rubbed sage, their response would most certainly include some unenlightened aspersions about homosexuality.

--August 5, 2004. Archive.

Still More Things That Are in My Stomach

If it's Memorial Day weekend, it must be time to play Things That Are in My Stomach right now.

Are there any dark-chocolate pecans?

Yes.

How about Mingua Beef Jerky?

Of course.

Any Sour Apple SourPatch Straws?

You bet. 

Wasabi cashews?

I can't imagine why not.

That's just a small sampling of the Smugglies Rachel and I stuffed our purses with, prior to her hosting a girls and gays night out for Sex and the City 2 --attendance at which has become the sort of thing one has to justify and explain. (Though from what I read on Facebook, Paul Rieckhoff was seeing it at the exact same time I was, so I'm not apologizing.) A 40-something single woman writing about Sex & the City? Why not just slap some Cathy cartoons on the fridge and adopt a houseful of cats?

As reluctant as I am to devote space to it, the backstory  is pretty simple: I started writing a column around 1991 [here is where a click would indeed be helpful, and if anybody figures out a way to read those old floppies, I'll be sure to post it]. My column, then and now, wasn't really about anything, per se, but providing a "Single perspective" was one of the reasons I was asked to write it. Candace Bushnell started writing the Sex & the City column circa 1994 (no shortage of links there). I still occasionally get asked if her column inspired mine, and I always assert the timeline defensively.

Somewhere around 1998, HBO kicked off the series, hewing fairly close to the source material, and season one was abysmal -- self-conscious and contrived. By season two, the writers had switched from a "based on" to an "inspired by" approach, which is when the show sharpened up. (Favorite episode: Season 4, My Motherboard, Myself, not just because I lived through it. )

The first movie was not exactly Oscar-material, but the central theme of heartbreak and healing was at least a little beautiful -- Samantha spoon-feeding Carrie because she hasn't got the strength or will to eat is a universal moment in the lives of girlfriends. Everybody takes to their bed at some point; everybody recovers.

The sequel is more of a trainwreck. It's culturally insensitive and out-of-touch, but Michael Patrick King has always been those -- somebody has usually just been around to rein in his drag show tendencies. In this, nobody did. It's not always good to be King. What Sex & the City 2 misses most of all (in addition to an Editor) is The City. The series took road trips too -- to L.A. and at the end, to Paris -- and those episodes were jarring. You can take the girls out of the city but you should never take the City out of the girls, as those episodes did (and as the new movie does).

In the sequel, each one of them is written as a caricature that takes the character's limits to the most absurd conclusion. Always the most trying of the group, Samantha is now the saddest -- she's not amusingly outrageous, she's just crude and vulgar. The series used to know the difference. Poor Aidan is reduced to a plot device who no longer sounds (or acts) like himself. Carrie is the cliched defensive 40-something who doesn't want kids,  but has to preface every answer to that inevitable question with "oh we love children, butttt....." Why? It's perfectly ok to not want kids and to not like kids. At all. (A quick glance at Charlotte's crop is ample justification for admitting that a lot of children -- like a lot of grownups -- are just assholes. And usually, they're stickier.)

That said, a bad movie can still make for a fun night out. I met new girls and gays. I got quality time with my own girls and gays, and my BFF. The bar, as usual, ran out of most of the food we wanted (prompting one order revision along the lines of  "Crab cakes." "We're out of those." "Then I'll have a Woodford Manhattan.") Pink panties were passed around the table, and I'm relieved to report, they weren't mine (one Mom was returning them to another Mom, after her three-year-old son had apparently charmed the other one's daughter out of them). It was too hot and too crowded and my feet hurt, but I was still where I wanted to be -- which is the absolute best thing I can say about being single -- I usually am right where I want to be, right when I want to be there. I like it like that.

That's my unidentified thigh crammed into the booth.  What wine goes with watermelon sour patch kids? I don't know, but something about the salt in a margarita offsets the tang nicely.

In real life, of course I have my own Big and my own Aidan (probably every girl does), but I was happy to leave them both at home (separately) in favor of some all-too-rare girl time. In real life, the now ancient question -- "which Sex and the City character are you?" -- is as frayed and cheesy as the franchise, which is somehow showing an almost Vaudevillian, burlesque warp and wear. The long-held critical wisdom, going all the way back to The Simpsons, is that the four women really add up to four sides of one gay guy. The one guy happens to be Michael Patrick King, who apparently has an affinity for the old Bob Hope road movies, and "comedy" so dated it would make the borscht-belt circuit sound cutting edge. It's been described as farce and/or satire, but that's giving it too much credit for being in on the joke, when it doesn't seem to be.

The series (and now the movies) took a lot of criticism for lack of realism, but as far as I know, it was never meant to be a documentary. The size of the apartments?! The cost of that bag with those shoes?! Who cares.

The biggest fantasy element to me was the idea that four girls kept making time to be girlfriends even when marriage, kids, and careers intervened. I have not always been that lucky -- and when I am -- I try to take time to be appropriately appreciative.

The Tao of Craigslist

I hate my old sofa. It's a good sofa; it probably has a million years of wear left in it, I just don't like it anymore. It was my first grown-up furniture purchase, about 20-some years ago. Up until then, I furnished everything via the design school of "Want this?" which meant my apartment was where all the relatives' cast-offs went to die. So buying the sofa was a big deal -- a proud moment.

At the time, I liked antiques. About 15 years ago, my taste shifted to contemporary. Not crazy-modern, just something you'd see in Dwell or Metropolitan Home (before it went out of business), as opposed to say Southern Living (not that there's anything wrong with that). It's hard to find something simultaneously insanely stylish, dog-resistant, and movie-night-comfortable. This is for the TV room (the living room furniture can afford to just look pretty -- but the TV room is where everybody hangs out most...after the Kitchen.) I've been actively shopping for this dream sofa for at least a decade, but I haven't been able to commit. It's like porn, I can't define it -- but I'll know it when I see it.

This Graham and Green number is nice, for example -- and it'd be great for the parlor -- but this isn't how I dress to lie around and read books in Howard the Home Theater. Also, it was ID'd as a sofa, but I'm pretty sure it's a loveseat, or else she's a GIANT. Although as demonstrated by the BigAssChair purchase, I clearly don't know the difference between the two.

I finally realized that as long as I kept the old, loathed sofa, the law of inertia would keep me from getting a new one. (Or as my Mom put it, I needed to "fung the shway" in this place -- nothing new comes in til something old goes out -- not that she would approve of getting a new sofa when there's still life in the old one.) Maybe sitting on the cold wood floors would be a motivator. So my pals Phoef and Dave dragged the old sofa to the office, and then I posted it on craigslist. (I just saw on the news where somebody got killed when a robber came to his house to buy his craigslist diamond ring -- which is where I feel compelled to point out: I do not have any diamond anything. I don't even have a sofa for chrissake. Keep it movin' pal...nothing to see here.)

So far: not one nibble. Nobody seems to want my old sofa (though it has come in handy a few times at the office, and that will probably end up being its permanent home).

I headed over to craigslist this morning to check out my competition, and I was embarrassed I hadn't done a better job of "selling" it.  Because every sofa (but mine) has a story.

One guy writes elaborately, in defense of his sectional, "I am recently divorced and honestly [would]  just rather have a futon for my place. No other reason I am getting rid of them." (I find myself wondering if he's protesting a little too much? What are the "other reasons" someone might infer? Somebody died on it? Somebody was born on it? Something worse?)

Another owner of a "nice sleeper" discloses,  "There is one small burn hole on the left arm of the sofa but we do not smoke in the house. It's really no big deal." (Points for the correct spelling of It's, but that seems a little antagonistic -- it's probably up to the buyer to determine whether or not burn-holes and smoke damage are "a big deal.") They add, "Also, we have dogs so the couch will need to be vacuumed." OK, I can see that (but I do wonder why they don't just vacuum it themselves?)  They close helpfully with, "The color in the picture looks a little weird but it's just the lighting and the fact that it was taken with a cell phone camera."

Apparently, no one's satisfied with the quality of their cell. Another ad points out, "The pictures make the chairs look worn down. They are not worn, it's just the type of fabric. Kind of like what suede does when brushed different ways?" Fair enough.

The chairs look pretty good actually.

But I wouldn't give $100 bucks for 'em. 

Harriette's Kitchen

Ian took this photo in Harriette's Kitchen this weekend. Harriette has my dream kitchen, and my dream house -- which she and her late husband designed and built around a subzero and viking stove they found at an Auction. Her house looks like it would be more at home in Seattle than here, and would fit right in on the pages of Dwell Magazine.

If she were anybody else, I'd probably be consumed with bitter, bitter envy -- but Harriette is who I want to be when (and if) I grow up, and a picture here and there just reminds me it's good to have goals.

I'm posting a few more photos I took on the way to their place in the woods in a driving rain during this past Fall's Flood Season. High Water is on my list of phobias (I can't help but flash on poor 1970s anchorwoman Jessica Savitch drowning in her car, in a ditch, with her dog, who died too), but if you're lucky enough to get invited to The Woods, you go.  (You just don't watch The Strangers for awhile after you get back.)

The pictures don't do it justice. (Well, my pictures don't anyway. But I'm working on my photography skills -- for which Chef Tom has prescribed thyroid medication, because clearly, I come down with the shakes everytime I'm behind the lens.)

BackDraft, or HellHoles I Have Lived In

 "I was moving again. This time because of the neighbors. 'Oh no,' my mother said. 'They're not to blame. Let's be honest now.' She liked to take my problems back to the source, which was usually me. Like, for instance, when I got food poisoning, it wasn't the chef's fault. 'You're the one who ordered the lomain." 

--David Sedaris, Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim

I got through college and grad school the way most everyone else did -- with an endless cycle of rotating roommates splitting rent and utilities. After I finished my master's I had one of those "as God is mah witness, I'll never live with another human being ever again" moments, and I've stuck to it, save the occasional boyfriend here and there in the 90s, but those were more de facto camp-outs, not true live-ins.

My first experiment was admittedly pretty modest -- about all I could afford working for an engineering firm in communications (/making coffee). It was my quarter-life crisis.  I was stuck in the wrong job; I was stuck with the wrong boyfriend I'd inexplicably planned to marry; and where I lived seemed like the one thing I had a little control over. With a little paint and a lot of castoff furniture (a little something we call "early American, Want This?" in my family), it wasn't so bad.... (Oh what am I saying? It was a hellhole...with no air conditioning and no dishwasher.)


I picked it because if you really squinted, it was a little bit Mary Tyler Moore's apartment in Minneapolis/ and a little bit "Mare Winningham-in St. Elmo's Fire" when she has that soliloquy about how "I made myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and I realized it was my apartment and it was my peanut butter and jelly sandwich and it was the best peanut butter and jelly sandwich I ever had." Or words to that effect (that's how I remember it).

I tried to love it, I really did.... but then the noises started.

I lived on the second floor, and every night, at 11 pm sharp, I could hear this... chanting, for want of a better word. It was more like a half-chant, and a half moan that built to a high-pitched whine -- it was the noise you imagine a tomcat might make if it were being strangled with a piano wire. It would go on for about 15 minutes, and then it would stop. And I mean: every night.

Even then, I was an occasional insomniac, who had to get up for work by 6 (engineers like their coffee hot, and early), so I finally got up the nerve to do what I thought I had seen Mary Tyler Moore do -- I took a broom and banged the handle against the ceiling.

Yeahhhhh..... That was a mistake.

I heard this frantic scutter, scutter, scutter, a loud crash as the attic door slammed open, and then the ominious sound of running as the upstairs neighbor thundered down the stairs... and then hurled his not inconsiderable weight up against my door. It gave a little, but held. I just sat there in the dark and held my breath till he got tired of pounding on the door and left. I called the landlord from the office the next morning and he chuckled, not-at-all-reassuringly, "yeah, the guy's ...eccentric." (That is not the word I would have used.)

Great. Now I was a hostage. Creeping in and out of my apartment under the cover of dark, trying not to make any noise that would rouse the beast. I didn't know what to do next. I didn't think he was doing anything criminal enough to call the cops. The landlord was no help. And I had no intention of taking matters into my own hands. Even in my 20s, I prided myself on trying to lead a drama-free life, and white trash screaming matches with a neighbor --inevitably involving law enforcement and camera crews from what I'd seen so far of Life in the Big City -- struck me as a good way to get off to a bad start.

A few nights later, I was lying on the floor in front of the windows wearing boxers and a wife-beater trying unsuccessfully to catch a breeze, when I heard sirens outside. Powerless from the heat, I just stared up at the ceiling where I halfheartedly noticed the lights were flashing red (fire, not police), too exahusted to investigate.

The next thing I heard was a loud CLANG -- which turned out to be a metal ladder banging into a brick wall -- and the next thing I saw was the top of a fireman's helmet peeking over my windowsill. He had come to "escort" me from the building, which was, apparently, on fire. Reassuringly, it was a very small fire -- originating in the attic (it hadn't spread, and none of us even smelled smoke) -- but the marshall had to kill the power and kick us all out for a few days while everything was investigated.

But they knew instantly what had happened, and one of the more loquacious firefighters was happy to fill me in.

As we stood outside, where it felt suddenly felt surprisingly cool in boxers and a wifebeater, he put his big coat over my shoulders and steered me over to the sidewalk where I could get off the broken glass that was grinding into my bare feet (beer bottles always littered the yard there). "Listen," he said.... motioning me a little closer. I leaned in.

"Do you know that guy...that guy who plays ...Mr. Edwards?" he asked, almost conspiratorially, clarifying helpfully, "the guy on Little House on the Prairie?" (It had been off the air for years by that time, but of course I knew the reference).

"Sure," I said. "You mean Victor French? I think he was on Highway to Heaven too," (I had never even seen that show, but suddenly, I was a gameshow contestant.)

"Yeah, well" (the implication being 'whatever') "your ol' neighbor upstairs has this, like, ALTAR built with that guy's picture all over it. And there are candles everywhere, so I guess he was like, praying to him or something."

It was the candles that had started the fire, he added, almost as an afterthought (and that was, admittedly, the least interesting detail of the whole conflagration).

A shrine?
To beloved character actor Victor French?
Of course.
The moaning. The chanting. The subsequent fire.
I probably should've suspected as much.