In The Family Stone, a movie that Jimmy and I saw together and (dis)liked differently, the Luke Wilson character exhorts the straight-laced Sarah Jessica Parker character to fly her “freak flag.” Yeah, I loved that. I also cried when the Diane Keaton character died.
In praise of freaks of all kinds (and aren’t you, whether secretly or openly, one too?), I offer a brief list of some 2008 favorites.
Book: No One Belongs Here More than You, Miranda July.
Musical artist: Ida Maria.
Essay: “Mine Is Longer than Yours,” Michael Kinsley, New Yorker, April 7, 2008.
Sitcom: The Office. (I almost picked 30 Rock, but there have been fewer surprises there this season.)
Blog written by someone I don’t know: David Byrne Journal.
Tears of joy and relief: Reading this transcript, while watching a video of the speech, on the morning after.
Clothing: Anthropologie.
Siblings: my four. All strange, in their own ways.
That’ll have to do.
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p.s. Thanks to my always surprising friend James, who got me to do this. And to Lydia, who heeded the call first and thereby inspired me.
leaf stitch word 
I finished No One Belongs Here… last night. I’d started it months ago but got busy with other stuff. The stories are odd yet familiar, or maybe it’s the characters who are familiar. The writing is terrific; I learned a lot.
Yeah, I learned a lot too, reading it.
There’s something about her writing that seems both so free and so, um, mastered. Like, July is able to both explore where the story takes her, and shape it.
I wonder what writing feels like to her.