The clock ticked past midnight ten minutes ago. You find me sitting in the dark of the junk room, perched in front of the Mac with a mug of coffee while Joni Mitchell sings “Both Sides Now”. Scratch that. Tony Bennet is now crooning his way through “The Way You Look Tonight”.
I’ve always loved music from the 50s and 60s. Not the early pop music – more the “easy listening” Jazz ballads. Tony Bennett, Frank Sinatra, Miles Davis…
I just switched to “On Green Dolphin Street” – from Miles Davis “Kind of Blue” album. It’s become a late-night go-to of sorts. It somehow teleports you to the New York of Woody Allen movies – quiet back streets in the rain.
A fellow late-night internet escapologist recently asked about my late night blogging escapades – where I write, what I write about, why I do it… and I referred back to Norah Ephron’s article in the Huffington Post back in 2006 – the source of “kind of like an exhale”. She had such a way with words.
If you’re wondering who she is or was, she wrote When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle, You’ve Got Mail and more. She was an amazing journalist throughout her career too. She was married to Carl Bernstein for a time (the same Carl Bernstein of Watergate reporting fame along with Bob Woodward).
A few years back there was a TV mini-series about the group of female writers that sued Newsweek in the 1970s for sexual discrimination. I think it was called “Good Girls Revolt”. Norah is portrayed in the series as one of the writers – played by Meryl Streep’s daughter Grace. It’s worth looking up – it was very good.
Talking of unexpectedly good TV shows, I started watching “Palm Royale” earlier this evening – set in the late 1960s – starring Kristen Wiig as a social climber that moves to Palm Beach and finds herself rubbing shoulders with the ridiculously wealthy, and predictably horrendous stepford wives that occupy it’s private members clubs.
John Coltrane is going off on a tangent with his saxophone at the moment. If my late father-in-law was still around, he would no doubt have disappeared off to rummage around for albums I might be interested in. He was a life-long jazz fan, and collected enormous numbers of vinyl jazz records.
Anyway.
It’s getting late. Time for me to stop typing, hit publish, and go brush my teeth. I just looked at the clock – how on earth is it 1am already?