47. I'm thankful it's my blog, my rules, my reputation and I don't have to write all the way to #91 if I don't want to.
48. I'm thankful that I can write all the way to #91.
49. Or even #191 if I had to.
50. I'm thankful for approximately one-trillion baseball practices and ten-trillion days of showing up at the office where I learned 99/100ths of the battle is showing up.
51. I'm thankful for my curiosity.
52. And my drive to slake it.
53. And my curiosity which refuses to be slaked no matter how strong my drive to slake it.
54. I'm thankful I never bought the party-line.
55. I'm thankful I never worked and will never work for an agency of holding company that makes as their goal that they want to be ______ of the year.
56. I'm thankful that I never worked on an ad just to win an award.
57. I'm thankful I knew the difference between working to make something good and effective and working to make something award winning. It's akin to the difference between consensual sex and rape.
58. I'm thankful that no one's yelled at me for those last two sentences. Yet.
59. I'm thankful that I don't feel the need to proclaim my intense affection or disdain for the Oxford comma.
60. Likewise daylight savings time.
61. I'm thankful for a memory that lets me type daylight savings time and immediately think of Blossom Dearie's "(There Ought to Be A) Moonlight Savings Time."
62. I'm thankful I've learned that 92-percent of writing a good headline often comes down to taking a normal and making it a strange--like going from Daylight Savings Time to Moonlight Savings Time.
63. I'm thankful I've learned the power of surprising readers.
64. I'm thankful that I like walking in the rain.
65. And accordingly, I've learned the importance of proper rain gear.
66. I'm thankful that I'm nearly finished writing my biography of the Frenchman who invented sandals. Phillippe Phillopp.
67. I'm thankful for those few who read long enough to get the joke above.
68. And who don't hate me for it.
69. I'm thankful I don't back down.
70. Even when people can beat me up.
71. I'm thankful that my academic training prevents me from calling anything under two-or-three generations-
old "a classic."
72. Similarly, I'm thankful I'm turning 67 in a month and have never described something as iconic.
73. I'm thankful that every once-in-a-while I don't say what I think.
74. Even so, I'm thankful that discretion and restraint don't come easy to me.
75. I'm thankful for the one or three old-fashioned bakeries in the world that haven't been gourmet-ized and thereby fetishized out of existence.
76. I'm thankful I was never the least bit curious about cronuts.
77. I'm thankful that if I ever again go to a baseball game, I'm sure I'll eat nothing but a) a hotdog, maybe two. b) a bag of peanuts in the shell. And c) a cold beer in a paper cup with a head.
78. I'm thankful when I was a kid and started going to bars I actually went, with regularity, to a bar called "Kelso's." Beer tastes better in a bar called Kelso's.
79. I'm thankful my head itches when I try to wear a wool knit cap. That stops me from wearing wool knit caps.
80. I'm thankful I feel no drive whatsoever to wear a t-shirt with a slogan that says something like "Be Kind."
81. I'm thankful I've never felt compelled to make a "duck face" selfie.
82. I'm thankful for my stamina.
83. I'm thankful that even after 83 of these I can keep going.
84. I'm thankful for people who are no longer here but who I loved and they loved me. Fred. Nancy. Even Tom.
85. I'm thankful I learned how to handle curveballs without backing down.
86. I'm thankful for Ernst Lubitsch's "Ninotchka." Especially when Greta Garbo chides Melvyn Douglas for flirting.
87. I'm thankful for my near eidetic memory for great movie scenes.
88. I'm thankful for the homeless man at 111th and Broadway once asked me for a handout and called me "Slim." When you're big, that's much more intrusive than being called "Big Guy."
89. I'm thankful that early-on my mother taught me that nothing is free.
90. I'm thankful for the next few days off and for having 19 clients to finish the year strong and start 2025 even-stronger.
91. I'm thankful that I learned this about the great Jazz singer Anita O'Day. Her given name was Anita Belle Colton. She took the name O'Day as Pig Latin for Dough which was slang for money.
92. I'm happy for these words from Dashiell Hammett's "The Maltese Falcon," by way of director John Huston and actor Sidney Greenstreet.
93. I'm thankful I have the ability to over-deliver.
94. I'm thankful this is over.
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