2024 in Pop, Pariahs, Paris, and Politics

My custom here at Vertes’Verities is to conclude a year of blogging by notating a few mostly forgotten events and some personal trivia.

January

E. Jean Carroll, a gutsy journalist I briefly worked with years ago, was awarded $83 million in damages. Environmental activists threw soup at the Mona Lisa, which I would see again later in the year. E. Jean Carroll will most likely never see her damages. 

Chinese Screen (detail)

I attended my Uncle Mark’s 92nd birthday party and admired a Chinese screen that belonged to my grandmother. Two days later, my uncle called to tell me he and his wife Christina were gifting me the screen. This family heirloom now flanks my desk, and I think of my generous uncle, aunt, and mother’s mother whenever I go to my home office to write.

Gag Me: Madonna in Cleveland

February

In deference to Joe’s abiding and insistent Madonna fandom, I suppressed my better judgment, and we went to see the old girl play to a bunch of Boomers here in Cleveland on the 8th. Madonna may have more than a hint of Norma Desmond about her these days. She’s ready for her closeup.

In spreadable news, after years of “should I or shouldn’t I,” I took a daring plunge and decided to leave the butter on the counter instead of refrigerating it. Game-changer.

March

Joe’s annual birthday trip to a warm weather climate took us back to the Caribbean. A full-of-it tour guide in Guadeloupe BS’d his way through our tour and almost stank us out of the bus as he told us where to get a "traditional ice cream." I have been wracking my brain ever since, trying to determine what he meant by "traditional," as opposed to non-traditional, ice cream.

April

Juiced

OJ Simpson died of cancer on the 10th. I, along with the rest of America, remembered where I was—at a bar in Montauk, New York—on June 17, 1994, during his televised flight from LA police. I was in a CVS drugstore when I learned he had been acquitted of murder.

Family Lunch

On the 13th, Uncle Mark, Christina, my sister Missy, and brother-in-law Mike came for lunch. I drank too much iced tea, and we traded stories about my parents. I learned that my father, Vic, would take my uncle on medical rounds with him in the 1960s and present him as “Dr. Schumann.” Those were the days.

May

I met with old friends Vincent, Josephine, and Courtney in New York at a noisy, subterranean Soho eatery. Old friends are the best friends.

And no longer wanting to be a slave to watering my summer garden, I reduced the number of annual pots by 8, bringing the new total to 16—still quite a lot, but not as many as last year.

June

Jagger at 81

Seeing Mick Jagger and the other Stones perform live on the 15th was the ultimate “gas, gas, gas.” Jagger at 81 was a far cry from Joe Biden at 81, as evidenced in the president's campaign-ruining debate against the ultimate con man.

I admitted to myself and to others I had a TikTok problem.

Sweet Xander convalesces

Xander, our Coton de Tulear, suffered a spinal cord injury, and we had to cancel a trip to the Greenbrier to nurse him back to health. Joe slept with him on an air mattress for a month and developed back problems.

Elsewhere, it was Brat Summer. Brat was good. Brat was cool. Brat even had its own shade of green.

July

I was toying with the idea of taking the rust off my French in anticipation of three days in Paris later in the year. Within moments, I got served an ad for foreign language instruction site Babbel and encountered an Op-Ed encouraging everyone to “have a foreign language love affair this summer.”

Babbel taught me valuable phrases like “My brother is not a vegetarian,” “I don’t eat a very balanced diet,” and—very French—“He never washes.” (I could have used that last phrase to describe our tour guide in Guadeloupe.) I advanced to even more useful sentences like “My parents never wear red,” “Ceville isn’t allowed to clean herself,” and “Do you know how to dance the can-can?”

August

At Stephen King's Home

We traveled to Maine to visit our dear friends Matt and Artur and did out-of-character things, like enjoying nature and going on a lobster boat. We made the pilgrimage to Stephen King's former home in Bangor.

Xander was mostly recovered but refused to mount the stairs, and we wondered if he would ever ascend them again. (He hasn’t.)

The 2024 election heated up as much as the earth did. Kamala Harris’s ascent to the top of the Democratic ticket brought hope where once it had been lost.

September

I unwittingly ordered a $300 steak on a random Tuesday night. 

Joe started drinking mushroom coffee.

The scorching summer temperatures persisted, even after the official first day of fall on the 22nd. Talk about endless summer. Thinking wishfully, I argued with Missy and Joe that summer had ended after Labor Day. A fall-lover, I wanted summer to be over.

October

The month started with a literal bang when I misjudged the bottom of the stairs not once but twice while visiting family in Columbus. During my nocturnal wanderings, I landed on my keister at 2 and 4 a.m.

We joined my sister and brother-in-law in London to celebrate my niece Sarah’s graduation from the Condé Nast School of Fashion and Design. 

The trip included another trip—on a curb at London's Borough Market while attempting to walk and read my phone simultaneously. Major ouch. Joe joked about getting me one of those “I’ve fallen, and I can’t get up” panic buttons to wear around my neck.

The de-souped Mona Lisa

Joe and I then spent three days in Paris, our first visit since 2007. The Louvre was maddeningly packed, and I doubt I will ever want to return. 

November

Trump won. The rest of us lost.

December

Oh, Mary! curtain call

During my annual birthday week trip to New York, we saw three remarkable shows: the vulgar, hilarious Oh, Mary!; a stunning revival of Gypsy that remade what many consider the greatest musical of all time; and another stunning revival that completely reinvented one of the worst musicals of all time, Sunset Blvd. Former Pussycat Doll Nicole Scherzinger made an unforgettable Norma Desmond, second only to Madonna's (see: February).

Judge me if you will: I marked almost a year of not going to the grocery store, opting for home delivery instead. I can’t say I missed the store one bit.

America, as Jimmy Kimmel pointed out, “went nuts” over a murderer's abs. Said abs forced a tense national conversation about the corrupt health insurance industry.

The list of greats who died this year was staggering. It included the novelist Paul Auster, whose themes explored identity and absence. I remembered attending an intimate dinner at Auster's Brooklyn home in the 1980s, during which he was, fittingly, absent. 

Unidentified drones flew above New Jersey. Santa flew above Moreland Hills. And the year—as years do now—simply flew by.

Looking back on 2024, my camera roll image of a waiting cup of tea at the commencement of our London trip symbolized the promise of things to come. As you prepare to take sips of 2025, I wish you all good things.

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