Author Archive | Alison Rosen

THIS JUST IN: Should you find yourself near a television set at say 2am Eastern or 11pm Pacific tonight do tune in to Red Eye on the Fox News Channel because I’ll be on it and I’ll be talking about stuff so important you’ll kick yourself forever plus infinity if you miss it. You may now return to googling yourself. Thank you.

Is one allowed to blog from jury duty? They didn’t give us any instruction on the matter, so I’ll assume it’s okay until I’m told otherwise. So here I am, Day One. I just sent an e-mail to my podmates updating them about the excitement nonpareil (that’s excitement made out of chocolate and rolled in those hard little white balls) that was this morning when it dawned on me that perhaps you, the judiciary-minded readership, would like to also be in the loop. And so you shall! Here is the e-mail, lovingly reprinted for your punitive ease. Am I just throwing legal-sounding terms around? You bet your fiduciary I am! Now recuse this legislation and make it gubernatorial, prosecution!

Here is the e-mail:

Hi! I’m at jury duty. I watched a filmstrip about the judicial process and learned that in olden times they used to stick a person’s hand in boiling water and if it healed, they were innocent. I think this is one of the suggested methods. Now I’m sitting in cramped room near a watercooler, so I have to move out of the way when anyone tries to get by. I had a plum seat earlier but I accidentally forfeited it when I went to the bathroom. Apparently, leaving my pen and copy of Time Out didn’t adequately mark it.

Now, I think the most interesting thing here is to note that even out of the office I’m toting the magazine around, as if I myself am an extension of the brand, though Learning Annex has yet to realize this. But really it’s because I was paid a personal visit by Adam Feldman yesterday, who took umbrage with my suggestion that cryptic crosswords were anything other than pure jouissance. Naturally he didn’t present it to me this way; instead he gave me a cryptic-crossword lesson and then offered to go through each clue with me. It certainly seems to have paid off though, because after staring at the puzzle for about an hour this morning I think I figured out exactly one clue. What was I saying? I don’t know, I’m very distracted by the actions of the people around me. Perhaps I’ll get into it in a later post.

Have you been making music with various parts of your body for years now? Are you particularly proud of the things you can do with “Yankee Doodle”? But do the people around you seem to not really get it? Instead of smiles and dates are you greeted with pained grimaces? Almost as if they barely tolerate you? Or worse, they actively dislike you? All artists are ahead of their time, Mozart, but today the planet is really in your wheelhouse and the stars are in your hen house and the Sun and the Moon are smiling on the house of representatives because it’s Make Music New York day! Bring your wax comb and empty raisin box!

WAIT WAIT WAIT!!!!!!!!!!!! It appears that I was hasty in my appraisal of the situation. Sorry, sailor. This is a citywide free music fest involving music made by other people. Although you just know there’s a hippie noisemaking circle somewhere that you can drag your jug basin to. Just follow the corn nuts.

So I never ever post here anymore however I was googling myself tonight and don’t pretend you don’t do it too because you so do and anyway I found this clip of Best Bets from WNBC’s Weekend Today in New York. This is exciting because usually the clips online are from weekday shows or other channels where I’m a little less free-ranging than I am on Best Bets which is the segment I do weekly at a quite early time.