Love's Baby Soft

I have an array of fancy perfume to wear--and what have I been wearing all summer long? Love's Baby Soft. Yup. That early high school favorite that smells sort of like a slightly sweeter version of baby powder. I'm obsessed with it. It's so light and soft-smelling--the perfect thing to wear when it feels like its a thousand degrees out. I'm having a hard time spritzing myself with anything else.

The Black and White thing...

The black and white thing is rampant in NYC this summer and I say bravo! It looks cool and chic and is really difficult to mess up. Yet. People manage (they always do somehow, don't they?). This is what I saw as I was trugging through the incredibly hot Times Square Subway Station this past Monday as I was switching from the 1 to the R to go downtown. Picture it--lovely blonde lady, early 30s, hair pulled back into cute pony tail (it was quite the humid day yesterday), fabulous full skirt, just below the knee, black and white large floral print, paired with a fitted black cap-sleeved jersey knit t-shirt and matching cartigan over her shoulders. And then there is the kicker. Her kickers. She's wearing red pumps. Red pumps--"Okay," you're saying to yourself, "black and white outfit, what's wrong with making it a little fun with red pumps?" Nothing, I'd normally say, if she hadn't been carrying a giant fushia handbag! I mean come on! One or the other. Fushia bag, black or white shoes. Red shoes, black, white, hell, even gold or silver handbag. But to throw red and fushia together (not even pink mind you--fushia--like the cheap trannies wore that used to walk 12th Ave. after midnight before the city was turned into Disneyworld by Gulianni)--it's beyond me. Maybe she's colorblind and got the labels mixed up, because honestly, I cannot fathom how such a gross fashion mishap could happen to such an otherwise throughly pulled together outfit.

It should read: You, Me, & Dupree...

I hate when people misuse punctuation. I especially hate it when it done for what promises to be a piss-poor movie and the title is on billboards all over the damned place. The movie title is missing a serial comma. You know, that nifty little punctuation mark that helps indicate a pause or separate items in lists, which is exactly what this title is. It's not "You (pause) Me & Dupree." It's "You (pause) Me (pause) & Dupree." As in all those mentioned are part of one group. If you leave the last comma out, it means that the first item is separate and distinct from the other two items in the list--which would be fine if the voice-overs in the commercials read it like that. But they don't! Why are they pausing if there is no comma?! Why?! Idiots.

How did they let this happen? I refuse to believe that someone didn't suggest/advise/notice that the comma after "me" was missing. Doesn't anyone have a grammar book out there in movieland? Didn't any of the people making this movie go to college? And didn't any of those people pay attention in their freshman English class? If they would have had me as a teacher they would have remembered. All crap like this does is help reinforce an already grammatically depreciated society's poor writing skills. Thank you Hollywood.

Work craziness is finished!!!

Every year, from February to mid-July, my boss and I go absolutely out of our minds trying to produce our fall catalog of books. There aren't all that many of them, (we have 12 this fall) so it shouldn't be so much stress. Except that it is usually just the two of us. He does the graphics, design, layout; we share scheduling; I do all the editing (on the production side), proofing, routing covers, and maintain one in-house freelancer and work with a small group of off-site freelancers (the number of people I use as freelancers has drastically slimmed in the last year because I've gotten more and more anal retentive). The thing is, one of those books is a huge directory that is primarily stats, poured from a data base, and then copy edited by myself and around 4 other poor souls you should really pity. That bad-boy weighed in at 1,600 pages this year. I almost suffered from a hernia trying the lift the passes of the damned thing. It’s huge. The other books range from 300 pages (easily do-able) to 800 pages (much more difficult), with all the normal run of the mill crap that goes on in publishing—editorial not delivering stuff on time, the occasional freelancer melt-down, and the higher-ups occasionally making me chase them down for weeks for cover-copy approval—but with only 2 full time people and 1 part time person working on them, it’s hectic. Very, very, very hectic. Which is why I tend not to read, write, craft, create, socialize, work out, or do any of my normal activities—I’m too damned exhausted from staring at page proofs and computer screens to want to do anything besides go home and veg. By the time I get there, my mind is usually close to an oatmeal consistency.
BUT, no longer! The busy season is over, so I will commence catching up on all the “me-stuff” I haven’t been doing, including driving my friends crazy with lots and lots of blogs. I hope you’re ready people. ;-)

Em-dash Nazi

You know you are a grammar nerd when you are harmlessly perusing the new contestant bios on the Project Runway website and you come across a type-o that is so glaringly annoying (first paragraph, five lines down; check the HTML codes! It should be an actually em dash, not labeled "emdash" yeash!) that you take the time to e-mail the webmaster to let them know what a piss-poor job they did of copyediting the page, and then you check it the next day and it is STILL THERE!!! Not to mention that apparently they've never heard of serial commas and they use the annoyingly highbrow way of spelling theater; you design costumes for theater, major in theater; you work at the Majestic Theatre. One is not a proper noun, the other is not.

Here is the aformentioned webpage type-o:

Project Runway Bio for Jeffrey Sebelia

I'm sitting here sputtering because it annoys me so.