365 True Things: 1/The Start

I've been wondering all day if I really want to do this 365 nonsense. Well, what the hell—I'll give it a shot. No one but me will know if I follow through.

And who knows, maybe I'll learn something about myself. Or something about the world, generally. And who knows too, maybe after sufficient time has passed, I'll decide to publicize this blog. If I think I'm doing it right. By which I mean . . . something about packaging, concision, organization—insight maybe; wisdom; thoughtfulness at the very least.

By way of preparation—this being a new start—I looked up the day I was born to see if anything happened. Besides me. And I found one thing: The first Burger King was opened in Miami.

I also found an issue of the New Yorker from that momentous day, weighing in at 244 pages: the Christmas issue (lots of ads for Scotch; no table of contents). The two movies given short write-ups were The Last Time I Saw Paris, starring Van Johnson and Elizabeth Taylor, and An Inspector Calls, starring Alistair Sim, both of which the reviewer, John McCarten, panned. (Pauline Kael did not start writing for the New Yorker until 1968, when she was 49—though she'd been writing film reviews for other magazines since 1953.) The 12/4 issue is delightfully punctuated by those short takes that have since disappeared—making sport of published faux pas or oddities, often categorized and with caustic comments appended. Such as:

THE MYSTERIOUS EAST

[Adv. in the North Japan American News,

Sendai, Japan]

SOUVENIR SHOP

You shall be sear ched for the Japa-

nese splendid presents surely. Then to the

rare commodities are too many.

EBISUYA SHOP!

Tel—5366

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So: something true about me . . . Although I have subscribed to the New Yorker most of my life, I rarely sit down and read the feature articles or short stories. But I always check the movie reviews. I suspect I would have opted not to see The Last Time I Saw Paris or An Inspector Calls.

I recently renewed our lapsed New Yorker subscription. I would like to resolve to sit down and read the short stories and feature articles, at least one per issue. I'm not going to lay any bets, though.