Spinach: One of My Favorite Things

My favorite Muppets are Statler and Waldorf.

My favorite Disney movie is "The Love Bug".

My favorite thing to wear is a suit-- preferably a dark blue one, three-piece, like they used to wear when fine clothes were fine.

My favorite nickname for my wife (and I have LOTS) is "Buddy", even though it was Richard Nixon's favorite nickname for Pat. He may have been an asshole, but she was his buddy, and I like that.

My favorite thing to watch on YouTube are old outtakes of Tim Conway busting up Harvey Korman. That's real kooo-ala.

My favorite thing to do in the middle of the woods on a secluded hike is sing Gilbert & Sullivan patter songs with Mrs. Apron at full tilt.

My favorite songs are sad-- without exception. Folk songs, tunes that are mournful and revolve around loss or despair or death-- ships sinking, people dying, lovers who cannot be together.

My favorite blog posts to write are introspective, and quiet. It feels like less of a performance. Not that I'm not funny. I am, I guess. It's just that bringing out that part of me feels like work. And nobody likes work. That's why people play the lottery.

My favorite American musicals, “Assassins” and “Into the Woods” were written by Stephen Sondheim. I think he's a genius, and most Americans who write musicals, well, aren’t.

My favorite people, mostly, all died over a hundred years ago. I don't know what it is about people, but they seemed to be much better before we started videotaping them all the time.

My favorite television personality is Andy Rooney, but I haven't watched "60 Minutes" in years because I'm scared that, if I do, he's going to die. And I don't want Andy Rooney to die. He once wrote that he only hoped immortality for two souls, his mother and his dog. How can you not love that guy? He's all acerbic, but I'll bet that's just work. He's just a big mushpot, like me.

I once wrote Andy Rooney an email, in 2004, seeking his advice on how to become a writer. You know, a real one. I was astonished when I opened my email later that day to see he'd written back. It had a fair amount of typos, so I knew he'd written it himself, on a computer, which he hates. He likes typewriters, like me. Here's what he wrote:

"Advice is spinach. It doesnt help. People who give it enjoy doing it butusually dont know what theyre talking about. When I was trying to make aliving writing magazine articles, I read a lot of magazines to see what sortof thing they were using and took my cue from that. I sold a lot of magazinearticles but Id write one Id hope to sell to The Saturday Evening Post for$1500 and it usually ended up in something called PAGEANT or CORONET for$300. Thanks for yout good letter. Sorry I cant help."

The thing is, of course, he did help.

"Thanks for yout good letter."

That helped.

I got praise from Andrew Aitken Rooney.

I may not have become, and I may never become a professional writer-- if that is indeed something I still want. But that's okay. Because I have lots of eccentric tastes, like writers do. Lots of odd preferences and likes and proclivities, and they all congregate around me to help make me who or what I am. Whatever that is.

Oh-- and that email is one of my favorite things, too.