News that the "Queen" has parachuted in to the stadium to open the London Olympics left no doubt that the British will do a great job at hosting this year's games.
It's a foggy Friday night in this town. One son is traveling a few hours north with friends; another is out with friends in the city; my daughter has a friend spending the night, after they wrapped up their latest week as junior counselors at the SPCA.
Giants pitcher Tim Lincecum and his girlfriend stopped by yesterday, looking at dogs. All the kids giggled and strained to see him. My daughter said he seemed a bit "grouchy, maybe because he lost the game yesterday [Wednesday]," in her estimation -- or maybe like most celebrities, he tires of always being mobbed by fans giggling and straining to see him.
The few celebrities of one stripe or another I've known well enough to hang out with in public all had their own form of "grouchiness" for sure.
The late Yippie activist, Jerry Rubin, and I went to a cafe in North Beach years ago when I was editing one of his books. A guy came up to our table and said, "Aren't you Jerry Rubin?"
"No, I'm not," he said sharply and the guy retreated, now doubting his own eyes.
Jerry wasn't exactly hard to recognize.
Jane Fonda was driving me to the airport in Santa Barbara one time when we had to stop at a gas station. She asked me to handle everything, so she could remain in the car. "Otherwise, it will be a pain in the ass," she told me.
The basketball star Bill Walton and I met in a cafe in Berkeley on one occasion. "How often do people recognize you," I asked the 7' redhead.
"Basically everyone recognizes me," he said. "I can't go anywhere igcognito."
Igcognito. What a word. My 17-year-old used it today: "Alice has gone igcognito. I'm not sure if that is the right word, but I just wanted to say it," he told me.
I explained that MIA might be a better option, but that igcognito has enough flexibility to serve his purpose at the time like that.
It's funny for writers how often people ask us about words, not just kids either. It's also flattering.
Of course we are usually acutely attuned to the nuances and shades of meaning that separate words one from another. Choices is what writing is all about, particularly in English.
Choices and rhythm.
The music of language.
But many people when asking my help actually are worried about making mistakes, so they are concerned about misspellings and grammatical errors.
Writers don't care much about grammar. We leave that to others -- librarians, fussbudgets, and the extremely detail-oriented folks who always show up whenever they find a "mistake" in our work.
The truth about most writers is we make grammatical mistakes on purpose. We break the rules. We take the basic structure of language and manipulate it to our own ends. How else could we ever amuse, outrage, entertain, or shocken you?
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