My new sofa.
I have this couch that I pretty much hate. I’ve never hated a piece of furniture before, but there you have it. I got it for maybe $75 off Craigslist, the main feature being that the guy who was moving would drop it off and help me carry it upstairs.
For years now, I’ve been twisting my neck and feeling all crooked and hurt-y whenever I watch TV. I assumed it was because the couch was perpendicular to the TV, right? But a few months ago, I got Comcast to move my cable outlet to the wall directly across from the couch, and discovered it didn’t really help — this couch has no support at all. (You should see the assorted pile of pillows and props I shove behind me when I sit on the thing.) It is the classic Piece of Shit. It does not do the thing for which it is designed.
So I made a plan.
The plan involved putting money away from my freelance work until I had $300. There were a couple of setbacks along the way when I had to zero it out for car stuff, but this week, I finally got there.
Then I began scouring Craigslist. It had to be a quality brand name, and from one of the yuppified areas so I knew they took care of it. Yesterday I struck gold: An $1800 Pottery Barn sofa in beautiful condition, for only $250. (That, and $50 to the guy with a truck who’s going to bring it here.)
I never understood about quality couches until maybe 20 years ago, when I got an insurance settlement. At the time, I’d just been diagnosed with what a specialist told me was “99.5% likely” advanced paranasal sinus cancer, which would eat away at my brain, make me go blind and kill me. I thought, “Goddamn it, if I’m going to waste away and die, I want a comfortable couch to do it on!” So I went to Macy’s and spent $800 to get a really fabulous couch. (My son still talks about how he got the best sleep ever on it.) As it turned out, I didn’t have paranasal sinus cancer (they were plain old mold tumors) and got to enjoy that couch for many years, until finally it didn’t fit into one of my apartments. So I gave it to a friend, who still has it.
Anyway, I am hopeful that the new couch and I will have a similarly fulfilling relationship. The owners were selling it because they’re having another baby and need to turn the den into a nursery. The wife said her mother was upset because she slept on it when she visited and much preferred it to the Mitchell Gold sectional in the living room.
Then their three-year-old started to cry because he didn’t want the couch to leave. I tried to tell him I would take good care of it, but he ran off crying to his room. “He’s just tired,” his mom said. But I prefer to think that he has superior taste in furniture, and took it as a good sign.
“Advanced paranasal sinus cancer”………you really should let someone else begin to choose your doctors for you. As for your new couch. I sure hope that crushing that poor little boys spirit won’t cause you any discomfort as you enjoy his old sofa. Maybe you and he can set up couch visitation days to ease his trauma?
Damnit, Suze……………..I had no idea that you invented the term “couch potato”…………….
SHIT, I’m getting so old now that I’ve even forgotten how to spell curse words!……………………….
That’s my sofa! Even the same color, I got it about 10 years ago. It is called the “Allandra”. Google it. I remember seeing it at a higher end independent sorta pottery barn type place in the gayborhood of San Diego for $1500 or more. Then I found a low end store a mile away that could order it for me for like $725.
Sorry to burst your bubble on the price savings. But it is still a super awesome comfy sofa, and I think it is pretty perfect (although I wish I’d gone for a lighter color).
This one’s the Pottery Barn Greenwich model, with the label to prove it. Yours might be a knockoff. But we both have great taste!
Nice couch, good price, and (Bonus!) delivered right to your home.
Cool gig with Mark Thompson yesterday afternoon, although I wish Mark would give a whole lot less time to the trolls and a whole lot more time to you. After all, you appear for one hour per week. Accordingly, how about “Damn the Fn Trolls!” for that one hour, and let Susie work her magic?
Yesterday afternoon some dude yammered on incessantly, burning up airtime about the “fiat money” ZIRP crap, as if that means anything in the day-to-day context of what we’re all up against. Is it an issue? Of course. Is it in the top 50? Um…I’m pretty sure it ain’t. But that’s just me. Anyway, keep doing what you’re doing, sans trolls.
And on a related note, here’s hoping Governor Corleone Christie doesn’t make it to the end of his term. Unfortunately, the legal and investigative process works so glacially slowly, that I’m not so sure he can’t weather the storm, thus permitting him to waddle gracelessly away at the (technical) end of his term. What I’d LIKE to see happen, however, is the prosecutors forcing him to step down or face prosecution to the fullest extent of the law on everything, up to and including the bridge crap, the egregious mismanagement of the state’s economy, the (probable) civil, maybe even criminal violations of state and federal laws by playing fast and loose with Sandy money, and who knows what else. This guy is dirty, and anyone who’s followed him as closely as you have for all these years knows it very well. (As an aside, I’d like to see Cuomo sucked into the miasma, as well. He’s a very dirty sonofabitch, as well.)
OK, I’ll shut up now.
Best.
Post Script:
If you haven’t heard some of the comedy bits on Jimmy Dore’s radio show, I recommend them.
http://www.jimmydorecomedy.com/jimmy-dore-show/the-jimmy-dore-show-podcast-may-9-2014
http://www.jimmydorecomedy.com/
I find that some levity at the expense of demonstrable oligarch assholes (and their enablers) to be cathartic, if not even energizing. Some great bits on Christie in the archives, as well as Ted Cruz, Rick Perry, Luke Russert and a host of other public halfwits.
OK, now I’ll shut up For Real.