Alan Horn's diary

Dear Readers.....

I almost wish I had never been invited to the Jay-Z/Beyoncé wedding last week.

Sure, it was glamorous, exciting, and rather exclusive. But with all the fuss I ended up neglecting this diary for a couple of days, and when I had a chance to turn back to it I found--after nearly a hundred daily entries--that I just wasn’t in the mood anymore.

I realize it’s unusual for a blog to suddenly peter out like this, but I hope you understand.

Alan Horn

April 1, 2008

I know that April Fools' Day is an old tradition and a lighthearted one, but that doesn’t mean it may not also be a dangerous one.

In this age of Jayson Blair and James Frey, of novelists pretending to be transsexual teenage hustlers and memoirists pretending to be former street-gang members, I think it is time to stop sending the message that fraud is a frivolous matter.

February 17, 2008

Told my analyst, Dr. F., about an entry I was thinking of posting here today.

I was going to reference the arrest this morning of a man charged with the recent meat-cleaver attack on two Upper East Side therapists that left one dead and the other near death. Then I was planning to write something like: “Police say the suspect spent fifty minutes hacking up the victims, then checked his watch and said with a sneer, ‘Let’s pick up here next time.’”

Dr. F. (after a pause): Is that all?

Me: Yes. (two minutes of silence) I know you’re thinking this is about yesterday.

Dr. F.: What about yesterday?

Me: When I complained about the way you always say “Let’s pick up here next time” at the end of every session.

Dr. F.: (consulting notes) And I asked you why you felt that way, and you said it sounded like a cliché.

Me: Not just a cliché. You say it every time. Whether I’m at a point that’s worth picking up at or not.

Dr. F.: And that makes you angry.

Me: Yes, because you don’t really mean it. It’s insincere. It’s just something you say. (pause) But that’s not what it’s about.

Dr. F.: What what is about?

Me: The entry. Or the hostility expressed in the entry.

Dr. F.: So what is it about?

Me: This is what I think, anyway, that it’s about the way, each time after I tell you about an entry I’m working on, you always wait a few seconds and then say, “Is that all?”

Dr. F.: (writing) Yes?

Me: And I’m not sure if that irritates me because, even though I know it’s against the rules, I’m always hoping for a chuckle, or because that phrase Is that all? relates, you know, to my toilet-training memories.

Dr. F.: That’s interesting. Let’s pick up here next time.

February 11, 2008

Many times I’m asked what my process is for writing these diary entries. Do I type them directly into TypePad, or do I write them out in longhand first?

It may sound old-fashioned, but the truth is I do write everything out beforehand. Like the Russian-émigré novelist Vladimir Nabokov, I prefer to compose on a series of ruled index cards (but using the unruled sides only) while standing at a lectern. A single entry can take up anything from one to nine cards. I always do the first draft in red pencil, going over it in blue ink for revisions.

I write every morning after breakfast, starting at around 7:45 and breaking off in mid-sentence at 11 a.m. sharp. (If I should happen to have just completed a sentence when it turns 11, I hastily add the word The to start a new one.) The rest of the day I devote to fencing, boxing, entomology, and minor household chores, and the next morning I simply pick up where I’d left off.

January 18, 2008

It’s been 18 days now since this diary first went online and so far the page-view statistics have not been meeting expectations, leading me to consider changing the motto appearing at the top of the page from “De omnibus dubitandum” to “J. Lo’s ass.”

The assumption that more search-engine users are typing in the latter phrase than the former, leading more of them to stumble across this diary if it were prominently included there, seems a safe one. Going strictly by my own experience, the numbers should favor “J. Lo’s ass” by something like 145 to one.

This is not to say that such a change would not raise some troubling questions. In particular, I have been wrestling with the possibility that J. Lo’s ass may not be what it used to be, either as a physical specimen or as a topic of general interest.

The first of these issues I’m unfortunately not in a position to resolve at first hand, and authorities on the matter disagree among themselves. About the second one, however, concerning the level of interest the ass in question arouses, I can claim some insight, and it's hardly promising. Again speaking personally, it has been months since I last did a search for “J. Lo’s ass,” and I think I can consider myself representative in this regard.

So I hesitate, lest by reflexively changing the site’s motto to “J. Lo’s ass” (or her “fat ass”--I can’t decide on the wording) in place of some happier alternative that has not yet occurred to me I should limit my potential readership to a relatively smaller and, let’s face it, probably older demographic.

Is there a newer, more popular ass out there that I am overlooking? I will be keeping an eye out.

January 5, 2008

Before blogs, back in the 1990s, there were zines (pronounced as spelled): homemade magazines that that people would photocopy and distribute by mail. The term is a misspelling, possibly deliberate, of the last syllable in the word design, since the most painfully obvious feature of these publications was that they were wholly designed by their authors.

The origin of the word blog is often debated. Some people think it comes from the blocks of text that compose these electronic journals. I have even heard it suggested that the term is a jocular comment on the typically humdrum or “blah” character of their contents. But in fact it comes from the French blague--a little joke.

January 2, 2008

Many people have been asking about the motto of this diary, “De omnibus dubitandum.” It is taken from Descartes by way of Karl Marx. Marx once listed it as his own motto in answer to a personal questionnaire he filled out with his family and some friends, something people did for fun in Victorian England. It means, “Question everything, especially on the Internet.”

January 1, 2008

Alex Ross, classical music critic for the New Yorker, wrote in a recent article, "Like many people, I started blogging out of an urgent need to procrastinate."

Procrastination is a bad habit that too many of us fall into. Once established, there is no cure, but the tendency can be managed using a simple method first proposed by Robert Benchley.

You start by making a list of the four or five most pressing tasks in front of you. Just getting these down on paper is often helpful.

Next, carefully review your list. Are all the items equally urgent? Pick one as your main goal.

Your natural inclination will be to do anything but the task you have selected. This allows you to get started on some of the other items on your list.

Starting a blog is no small undertaking. Most pen-and-paper diaries, resolutely begun on the first of the year, trail off around January tenth, but at least when that happens there’s no one looking over your shoulder. When the blogger lapses, the eyes of the world are on him. Running a successful blog requires a kind of commitment and discipline that few possess. I know I don’t.

So, pace Alex Ross and per Robert Benchley, I have set the regular updating of this blog as my main goal for this new year in order to finally get some work done.