Wordless Wednesday

On The Road Again

Come Thursday, I'll be a traveling fool once again.  I'll be living August all over again, hitting the road on a 6 am flight to Chicago on Thursday morning then turning around to come home Thursday night. 

Then I'm on a SIX-FREAKIN-A.M. flight to Los Angeles on Friday -- please, someone rub my entire body really hard with super-gritty sandpaper and mist me with iodine instead? This will be the third birthday in a row that I spend in Los Angeles.  The first was in 2008, and my sales rep Mark ignored me and went off to play golf or something. Last year, Judy took me up to Malibu, where we ate lunch with Pierce Brosnan and then we went to the Getty Villa and to The Hump for the best sushi I've ever had.  I wrote about all that.

This year, my birthday is on Monday (isn't Monday the most depressing day to have a birthday?) and I will more likely than not be sitting in the pressroom doing round-the-clock okays for the entire weekend. Some fun.  I'm SUPPOSED to fly back on Tuesday, but we'll see how that works out...

All this kvetching aside, I have nothing in my life to complain about.

Well, my bank account is perilously low -- we're talking "Erin Brockovich in her rant to Aaron Eckhart" low -- but it's only money, right? There's enough cat food to get us to next payday and I have a refrigerator full of food, a roof over my head, and clothes to hang on my back.  So no, there's nothing to complain about.  The IRS and the State of New York are getting paid the money that I owe them, I'm on a slow path to getting straight with other debts -- I know it's slow, but it'll get done, and hey, I got myself up this tree, now I'm slowly backing myself down.  Sure, I'd prefer a winning lottery ticket that would bounce me into a waiting trampoline (cue bear falling out of tree video), but oh well.

Anyway, I've been feeling like I won another kind of lottery lately.  The important kind.  See, I asked the universe to send me something four years ago, then completely forgot what I asked for.  last night I opened a silver box at my bedside that I hadn't touched since then, and I saw with wonder that everything I asked for has been given to me. And not in tiny little dollops.  Lots and lots, heaps, great, big, giant ladlefuls of all this good stuff.

Right here, right now, I am replete.

RANT: On Philip Roth, American Writers, and Literary Muscularity

"Roth's reputation, especially when it comes to stuff like doing publicity, is daunting. He is severly smart. Suffers fools badly. Parries, rather than answers, questions.


True, true, and true. Roth has the mien and bearing of a man in charge by dint of brainpower alone. He is tall and thin, hawkeyed, comfortable in silence. He takes words in -- visibly takes their measure -- with no more than a cock of an eye or a narrowed brow. Say something particularly insipid and he may purse his lips.


And how else would anybody but a fool meet the world? This is no celebrity. This is a poker-faced novelist, a man who tasted fame, gagged, and spit it out, the same man who two-plus decades back told an interviewer, "I am very much like somebody who spends all day writing.""

Scott Raab
"Philip Roth Goes Home Again"
Esquire, October 2010

Man, why are there no articles like this in women's magazines? Is it any wonder I prefer "Esquire" and "Vanity Fair" to "Vogue" and "O -- The Oprah Magazine?"

The writers who do great long-form general journalism -- with just a little Gonzo thrown into the mix -- the Scott Raabs, and Chris Joneses, and Bethany MacLeans, and Maureen Orths... Do they propose their stories to Vogue and Elle and O and get polite "doesn't meet our needs at the current time" rejection letters?
I just don't understand it. Surely I'm not the only woman who counts one of these two magazines as her favorite for the quality of the writing.

Take "Esquire." Ostensibly, it's a men's fashion magazine, and yet it won a National Magazine Award for an article that Chris Jones wrote ("The Things That Carried Him," May 2009, I think, the story of a dead soldier's journey home from Iraq. I blogged about it back then -- too lazy to go find the link right now -- because it was the best piece of journalism I'd read in years -- fact-fact-fact-fact-fact, dispassionate and yet moving, not mawkish, heartfelt without being sentimental. Jones presented the story without frippery, and I remember having to close the magazine and turn my face to the airplane window because I was crying so hard when I finished, while at the same time thinking, "God-DAMN I wish I had written that!" And then thinking, "This article should win some kind of award." Which it subsequently did, ahem.)

During the financial meltdown of 2008 and 2009 "Vanity Fair" had its writers dissecting the villains of the financial crisis, with at least one long-form article in every issue peeling back the curtain behind which the so-called Wizards of Wall Street were hiding. It was a beautiful thing.

* * * * * * * * * *

There's been a lot of stank in the literary press lately because Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Weiner have been out there whining about all the fuss being made over Jonathan Franzen's latest, "Freedom," (which I'm dying to read btw, and can hardly wait until the trade paperback is out, hello everyone, my birthday is coming up, not that I'm hinting or anything, but I'm just saying).

Seems JW and JP are annoyed with all the hype Franzen has gotten over his latest big, sweeping American-Family novel, which is being compared mostly-favorably to "The Corrections," a novel which was, simply put, a masterpiece. They want to know why it's always the male writers who get all the glory, wah wah wah, why isn't anyone paying attention to US and taking US as seriously? They created a false gender inequality literary strawman, and I'm sad to say, the media has bought into it.

I'm sure there are undiscerning readers of the suburban-mom ilk (I can see them, too, for some reason in my mind, they all have Kate Gosselin's short hairdo, carry Vera Bradley bags, and wardrobe themselves from Chico's, but then again, I'm one-a them snotty East Coast elitist types so what do I know about the real 'Merrka?) who have jumped on that you-go-girl fake-femiinist bandwagon and picked the latest Picoult or Weiner for their "book clubs" (they've gotten through the whole "Twilight" series, you see, and "Eat, Pray, Love" is sooo 2008), thereby driving sales and ensuring another Mercedes coupe for both writers.

I've said this before, and I'll say it again, and I'll add to it: They don't get no respect from Michiko Kakutani because they write crap. And the Jonathan Franzens and Richard Russos and Michael Chabons of the writing world aren't churning out crap. Even when they write something I don't love, I at least get the sense that they're trying to produce a quality work of fiction that addresses some universal theme.

Unlike Weiner and Picoult, who put their finger in the air and say, hmmmm, how can I sell as many books as possible? Is there a school shooting I can exploit, or, you know, no one's written about a college friend reunion weekend that goes bad because one of the reunionees suddenly remembers that she was raped by one of the others' boyfriends. Or worst of all, the "city girl" who spends 200 pages trying to win her a Man. Blah blah blah.

Hey, I got nothing against writing crappy books to make money, people have to make a living. If I thought I could make a million doing it, I would. (Maybe I still will, but I won't use my real name :))

But please, don't put a McDonald's Happy Meal in front of me and get mad when I say I ordered sirloin. And sometimes I'll even eat the Happy Meal -- but it's with the full awareness that I'm eating crap that isn't going to nourish me. You got my money, now shut the fuck up and go sit on your bags of cash in your mansion on a golf course outside of Atlanta or wherever it is you live.

My point being -- what was my point? Oh, yeah. there are still people who want to read quality writing, and we don't care who writes it. I just did a drive-by of my bookshelves and next to Richard Russo and Michael Chabon and John Steinbeck and Richard Price I see Patricia Highsmith and Iris Murdoch and Joan Didion and Barbara Kingsolver and Jane Fucking Smiley, so there. Quality writing is quality writing, and JW and JP seem to think that "sold lots of books" equals "must mean it's good."

No.

It just means that Americans' taste in reading material is a lot like their taste in everything else -- they don't want complex layers of flavor in their characters and plots, they want simple and easy-to-swallow prepackaged, sugar-packed junk. Then they wonder why their minds are as flabby as their oversized American butts and they can't grasp a concept deeper than "I want my country back!"

In a word, I like writing that's got some muscle. That shows me something about humanity, whether it's lovely or hideous (ever read Pete Dexter?), and that fills me up with something I didn't know I wanted.

"The madness of an autumn prairie cold front coming through. You could feel it: something terrible was going to happen." -- Jonathan Franzen, the first two sentences of "The Corrections."

Like that.

I want writing that throws me down on the bed, rips open my shirt with buttons flying around the room, stands over me with its hands on its belt buckle, smiles a little, and says, "And now, I am going to fuck you. And you're going to like it."

I submit.

I Concede Defeat

All right, kids, I hang my weary head in shame and admit that I have consumed the Kool-Aid.

It's grapey and delicious.  Next I'll pour it into ice cube trays and make little popsicles.

Still stupid.  But it is a good place to unload the snark, isn't it?

Precognition, Premonition, Presentiment

I posted this on August 3rd on Comic Book World.  Lyrics are over there if you want them.

I just went back there, and listened. And listened again. And then again.




I don't mean to get all freaky and rama-lama-ding-dong and stuff, but every now and again, I'll get a... vibration from the universe. Just a little "bzzzzt" in my ear.  Sitting still a lot helps me to pay attention to those little rumbles.  I think maybe this might have been one of them.  It's a good thing I was paying attention. A really good thing.

Maybe I was picking up on one of those vibes when I chose to post this song.  (I do remember I was sitting in the Hotel Monaco in Portland, OR, late at night, confused about my own whereabouts after a week and a half of traveling, maybe slightly tipsy from having wine with my vendor, and probably feeling quite lonely and ungrounded from not having been home for so long.) 

So I chose, as usual, a much-loved song to settle myself.  Music hath charms and all that...

Thought it was worth posting again.

Wordless Wednesday

Chewchewchewchewchew

Gristle.

Sometimes ya gots ta gnaw right through through the gristle.

Appendix A

Oh, and this one?  Just as I suspected, she's a little hoor. 

I mean, look at her! All sprawled out with those come-hither eyes and that exposed belly.

She pretends to be all shy and retiring, but when the right person comes along, suddenly she's all, "Oh, and what did you say your name was again, Person Who Opens Cat Food?"

Slut.

Steak and Potatoes

I know.

After the massive brain/heart data dumps that I was doing a little while ago, where the heck have I been?

Now, it's not that I'm sitting here thinking my double fistful of readers is out there fretting over my whereabouts, but having a private blog that hasn't been updated in a really long time is sort of like inviting people over for cocktails, then ignoring them while you go off to watch television.

So I apologize, dear guests. Usually I'm a MUCH better hostess than this.

Canape? Freshen your drink?

Work has been absolutely breathtakingly, mind-bottlingly crazy, first of all. I've been cross-country three times in as many weeks, which put a serious kibosh on my socializing for most of the month of August, not to mention I had a ton of underwear to wash when it was all said and done.

I've been so busy this season that I wasn't able to take a single one of my Summer Fridays until last week, when I ganged up three of them and made a vacation week out of it. Usually I save them up and take long weekends in August, but -- well, the fuck? What happened to August? Already it's mid-September, it's turned chilly and rainy (the weather suspiciously like LA was in August, almost as if it got hooked on the tail of one of my eastbound 757's and dragged into New York, sorry, everyone!)

My complexion went into some sort of time zone/no sleep/doesn't know what to make of the strange water in whatever city freakout and for a little while, I looked like a thirteen-year-old having her first period.

It's a good thing I like working for the Major American Designer and that I'm friends with all my vendors, because frankly, they were getting all the good Aileen stuff, not my friends here in the city.

Well, until recently.

Remember when I talked about the Beautiful Thing a while back? Well, it's still a Thing, and it's still Beautiful, and I'm still really enjoying the fact that the Universe threw us a bone. Well, no, I take that back. 

The Universe threw us a steak. Medium rare, a little bloody. With mashed potatoes and creamed spinach on the side.

And so far, it's freakin'-A delicious.

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow...

So, I actually own this Blue Dog serigraph. Paid a pretty penny for it, too. It's in my friend's garage right now. I miss it, especially now that it's tripled in value, according to the art websites. Wow, something I did that DIDN'T turn to shit.

Who Was That Guy?

Playing the black guitar on the Sixth Avenue L platform at nine o'clock on Saturday night?

Up to that moment I was feeling fussy and resentful, because I was spanked by the MTA so many times that day that my ass had handprints. All I wanted was to come home, and when the F train I was on suddenly went express, and I missed the announcement, and bypassed 14th Street and sped on to 34th Street, I nearly cried.

I think I might be winding myself up a little bit, for I will be entertaining a gentleman caller who arrives tomorrow. I have *things* I need to do and I wanted to be doing them Right Now.

Black guy in a black t-shirt, medium length afro, sloe-eyed and soulful and sad looking, until he smiled, and his face became the sun. Sitting low to the ground, slouched against the wall as if he was waiting for the next L train and had decided to simply plop down, take out his guitar and start playing, there on the platform.

Just your basic singer-songwriter major chord stuff. Bada bing bada boom. No big, right?

Then he started to sing. I spun around as if I had been poked, and just stood there, openmouthed, and suddenly every cell of my being felt, I don't know, replenished. It was a tenor voice, so raspy and scratchy, but so honest and real. My throat filled, and my vision got swimmy.

Beauty does that to me sometimes. (Remember "The White Roses.")

I didn't even wait for the train to come along or for him to finish his song. Eight bars in and I had thrown money into his bag. He looked me in the eye, smiled that smile, and nodded his thank you. I wanted to ask him what's your name and where are you playing out next and that girl you're singing about? She doesn't know what she lost. She's a fool.

The train came while he was playing, so I never did find out his name. But my spirits had done one of those minor shifts, and the night was different.

I sat down and pulled out my blackberry to write this, and was so intent on what I was doing that I didn't surface until I heard the automated train lady voice say, "The next stop is Montrose Avenue," and I looked up as we glided out of my station.

I had to backtrack to get home, but I didn't mind one bit.

The Voice, or, The Story of My Life as Currently Lived, as Told By James Kaplan about Frank Sinatra

The Voice -- might as well start capitalizing it here -- was simply working its spooky subliminal magic. Did it help that the singer was clearly in need of a good meal, that his mouth was voluptuously beautiful, that his electric-blue eyes were attractively wide with fear and excitement, that he knowingly threw a little catch, a vulnerable vocal stutter, into his voice on the slow ballads? It helped. It whipped into a frenzy the visceral excitement that his sound had started. But the sound came first. There was simply nothing like it.

Don is Back!

Yay!  Don is back!

We missed you, Don.

Love,
The Don-ettes

Wordless Wednesday

30 Days

No reason for posting this photo other than it's a picture of Jordan Staal after he took a puck to the face, broke his nose, and kept playing. (I would require brown liquor and maybe something of the prescription variety) 6 foot 4 of hot Viking skating boy.  What can I say?  I'm cheap that way.

Just wanted to give you all a heads up -- the regular NHL season starts on October 7, 2010, which means that all of this feeling stuff may diminish somewhat, as I become a zombie to Versus, daydream over Sidney Crosby's kissable, corruptible pout, curse the day Alex Ovechkin was born while loving him at the same time, and wonder how Glen Sather still has a job unless he's blowing Jim Dolan.

My Pens play the Rangers at the Garden on November 29th, February 1st, and February 13th, and I intend to be there in my full obnoxious glory so everyone around me can chant "Crosby Sucks!" when I'm cheering.

Hooray for Hockey!

And I've got something much, much more exciting happening in a mere 7 days.

Labor Day

It's Labor Day. The end of summer. Back to school time.

Death and taxes, taxes and death. It's been a doozie, that's for sure, and I do mean that in... not exactly a good way, but not quite bad, either. Just -- wow.

Pithy, right?

I guess you could say my summer got rolling on Easter Sunday, five whole months ago, when someone tried to animate me like a bloggy monster come to life, but when the monster turned out to be a real live human made of emotions and girlflesh, he turned tail and fled like a mad scientist whose creature had gone amok in the lab.

This laid me out pretty thoroughly, for the month of June and part of July, right up until he sent me an email like fists, and though he thought he was describing me, what it actually did was paint a picture of him. Apparently my use of metaphor scared him so much that he hasn't been seen -- anywhere --since.

I've since come to realize that he never intended for me to be real.

No matter. I'm still here, still living, still breathing, and as an old friend's song reminded me, it's only round five, I'd better get up, better find my swing.

So I did.

Out of it, I made some new friends in a way that I didn't think was possible, said goodbye to my favorite old fur person, racked up many frequent flyer miles, lost a bunch of weight, lost my mother, and through it all, and with the best tools I had at my disposal, I tried to stay as naked and exposed and open as possible.

This summer should have sent me under the porch. I'm not sure why it didn't, just that I'm still here, black-eyed and bloody-knuckled and smiling a victor's smile.

Like Duncan Keith, I coughed out the teeth that were knocked into my throat, skated to the bench, and came back to skate the last period.

And do you remember what Duncan Keith got to do after taking that slapshot to the mouth, and being down on the ice on all fours with blood dripping from his broken face?

He got to lift the Stanley Cup.

He won.

Call me a weirdo, but I thought it was hot when Keith took that puck in the face and skated the rest of the playoffs with no teeth. Dude is just bad-ass.  He's actually pretty cute with teeth..  Maybe someday I'll bother publishing a picture of him wearing them.

Peeyess

It's a beautiful nine-eleveny kind of day.

Am I allowed to say that?

The Beautiful Sunday I'm Too Hungover To Deal With It Blues

It's the ugly truth and I'm just gonna say it:

I am so hungover right now I feel like I could die.

I'm now one of those people who turns into a tipsy bon vivant after two glasses of wine or a single finger of Maker's, so the bottle of wine and handful of beers I drank with Nancy last night are kicking my ass in a completely deserved and righteous way.

I tried two cups of coffee, but all that did was make me wide awake and hungover. Took a scalding shower and drank a giant bottle of water. Tried to nap, but see above: coffee. Wide awake AND with the spins, not to mention the stupid cat wanted under the blanket, then out from under, and merely succeeded in slithering back and forth over my body from shoulders to feet while meowing loudly the whole time. Thought laying on the living room floor might help. Don't ask, I don't know why, either. Played the Seal song "Waiting For You," a couple of times and danced barefoot in my kitchen while singing along (have you ever noticed that when Seal sings, he makes everything sound so *urgent*?) Then I tried to reach that note in "I have been waiting, I have been WAIT-ing for you" with my injured I-smoked-a-million-cigarettes-last-night voice and I had to put both hands on the top of my head to keep it from exploding. So, shhh, no singing either, even though I'm
sorta liking the extra rasp I've got going on. Have resorted to scavenging a smoothie out of what's here, bananas and frozen blueberries and yogurt and granola and milk and orange juice and flax seed. Not many blueberries in the house, so it's not the rich purple I like but more -- purplish. Wish I had some Vita Coco in the fridge. Damn.

Barely managing the liner notes on this CD, and then this:

"But hey, that's life!...Isn't it? You allow yourself to be backed into a corner by the rejection, the adversity. You allow yourself to fall from grace and then you feel again. You re-ignite the senses, you re-evaluate the gift of being able to make someone happy and then...You strike! The frustration, the self-doubt, the all time low, the anxiety and the disappointment. You gather them and then you strike with the might of it all. You let it hurt you, maim you and even disgrace you. But you NEVER let it kill you. You let it get you down but then you get back up again and you strike!...with the might of the peaceful warrior." (Seal, 2003)

Present and Accounted For -- And Trying to Be Human

I'm trying to stay present, folks, while at the same time a big part of me is stretching its peripheral vision, looking for a bolt-hole.

I just need to do the next thing, and try to keep the lines of communication open between my out-of-practice heart and the outside world, instead of retreating to my oversized left brain and analyzing the hell out of every damn thing.

A warning: "We haven't made any promises to each other." I forgot that I was the one who said it first, flippantly, and yes, it's true.  But still, as the words were repeated back to me, the bartender slid a fear cocktail with a chaser of here-we-go-again across the bar and leaned conspiratorially on one arm, his face close to mine, his lips twisted in what might be a smile or a leer.

"Taste this," he says, "It's full of all the things you know."

I am staring down that drink and taking deep, nourishing breaths.  Keeping my hands loose at my sides, fingers gently fluttering, and giving my shoulders and arms a shake and a roll.  Staying on the balls of my feet with slightly bent knees -- just in case.

Cheri Huber says that fear is a sign that you're heading in the right direction, and that you should step on the gas.

So I think I'll take a big swallow of that fear cocktail.  It has not killed me yet, has it? Thinking back to when I was afraid and did it anyway, those were the moments when I shone like gold.

It's probably just V8 and Grey Goose anyway.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

I may be starting another round of travel-travel-travel in a couple of weeks, and the thought of it makes me want to lay on the floor and scream and thrash like an oversugared 5-year-old in a Wal-mart candy aisle. What I really want is to sleep in my own bed for 60 days, knocking around in my funny little apartment, and rattling around in my funny little life.

Last night, I heard a song that my mother loved on the radio ("Oh, that '1-2-3 You're A Lady' is such a nice song!"), which triggered a sudden stormy cry behind closed doors.

You guys, my mother died.  (I just have to say it to myself again and again, to make it real.)

I worked late and decided to walk my city for awhile.  I haven't been able to walk very much this summer because it's been so crazy here at the Farm and oh, yeah, it's hot as hell. Who wants to walk around when it's 95 degrees and the entire city feels like Satan's armpit? Yecch.

But it was nine-ish when I left the office, and there was a good breeze, no doubt driven by Hurricane Earl off the coast, and I dunno, there was a lot of energy in the air.  A lot of folks were feeling festive and holidayish because it was the start of the long holiday weekend.  The pretty girls were going out in force, in their little flowered frocks and high heels, with brown shoulders with that perfect end-of-summer tan, smelling like little gardens as they walked past me.  I smiled as I remembered being them, with that excited, anticipatory look of another night of possibilities.

I ended up walking all the way from 59th Street to Union Square, and the strange energy seemed to trail me off the subway.  I crossed Bushwick Avenue and as I passed under a streetlight, it winked out over my head.  "So, that's how I am," I thought to myself.

It was after ten when I got home, and even though my long walk had cleared my head somewhat, the residual tendrils of sadness were still floating around me, wisps of smoke around my soul.  Got on the phone for a little while with someone who was in a different, more impish mood ("dickish" was his word), which I was ill-prepared for and not sure how to read. Sometimes I need a face in front of me to read what is behind the words. Maybe if that face had been in front of me, I would have been jollied instead.  As it was, I sat silently for a time, then spoke in a completely normal voice, with tears rolling down my face and soaking the neckline of my shirt.

This has been a strange and difficult and challenging and changeful time for me, and without sounding too much like Dorothy waking up after the twister, some of it has been terrible, but most of it has been beautiful, too.  I am dedicating myself to seeing both, discounting neither.

Because I see that now I contain all that terrible and beautiful stuff.

I'm joy and sadness.

I'm fear and bravery.

I'm wisdom and naivete.
I'm everything and nothing.

I belong everywhere and nowhere.

I am no way and all ways.

And that is just fine by me.

Random Thought As I Trawl Through Other People's Links

Not for nothin', but does anyone else miss Don?

I'm glad he's off doing Burny things and everything, and I'm sure he's going to come back full of good anecdotes and tall tales and ribaldry, but damn, I must be far too addicted to my strolls through my bloggy neighborhood in the morning and at lunchtime if I'm tweaked by a fellow blogger going on vacation!

******

Apropos of nothing, and not related to me missing Don's blog, I would really, really like to have some human contact, if you know what I mean. I mean with a real live human being, the kind made of skin and muscle and hair and man.

Just Say "Thank You"

Most days I look in the mirror and I'm fairly pleased with what I see.

I think I'm a reasonably attractive person.

Am I the prettiest girl in the room? No way.  The thinnest girl in the room? Not by a long shot, buddy. But there's certainly enough to merit a second look or two which, even at my advanced age, I do occasionally get (Spanish guys seem particularly taken with me, which I can't explain, but it may be the reason I've had two half-Puerto Rican boyfriends).

I almost never attribute it to the roll of the DNA dice that arranged my features a certain way. (If that were the case, if life were really fair, I would've gotten Mom's nose instead of Dad's, and his ass instead of hers.)   This helps, but good genes can only do so much. (We're not talking about models here, people. They're genetic anomalies, freaks of nature, and anyone who buys into that crap about "models make women feel bad about themselves," has bigger problems that I'm not qualified to address here.)

I think it's really because I try to go through life looking interested. This is nothing more than a defense mechanism, since I am after all, a New Yorker, and the spacey and unengaged may as well walk around with a flashing arrow pointing at their head with "VICTIM" written in neon letters next to it.  "Interested" is just code for "paying attention," as in, "yeah, dude, I see you walking toward me, and I am totally reading your body language and I just watched you shift your posture slightly toward me, and if you think you're getting my handbag, think again."  Spacey and unengaged got my purse snatched, for the record.
Anyhow.

I don't understand why so many women do not acknowledge their own beauty out loud. For some reason it's unseemly to like your whole package, and it's "ladylike" or "feminine" to say "oh, pshaw," when someone compliments you.

To you I say, when someone compliments you, pay attention to what your trained reaction is. So many women will take a compliment and then, without prompting, turn it around and insult themselves.

"Those new jeans look really good on you."

"Thank you. They make my thighs look big, though, don't they?"

"You look really pretty today."

"Thank you. The humidity is making my hair one big ball of frizz, though."

"You did a really great job on that project."

"Thank you. I wish I had remembered to include that one detail about xyz."

Okay.  Ladies?

I want you to stop it.

Listen, when someone is paying you a compliment, it is because they have noticed something about you that is pleasing to them, that they like. Every compliment is a little gift. When you turn it into an insult to yourself, you're not being becomingly modest, you're taking that gift and throwing it on the floor.

Practice doing this for one day:  take every compliment you are given, even the backhanded ones, and just say, "Thank you!"

After you've done it for one day, try doing it for another day. Then a week. Then a month.
See if it doesn't make you feel better.

Oh, and one more thing?  Stand up straight, and look interested, for God's sake.