You Mean I Wasn't Supposed to Laugh?

A friend tweeted this today.

A satire taking its cue from this amazing restaurant review for Guy's American Kitchen and Bar in The New York Times.

But what do you do when people write like this (Mikla) and are dead earnest?

I guess you mine it for those beautiful, I-could-never-make-this-stuff-up phrases like phantasmagorical tentacles; or euphoric visual and palatal counfoundment*; or the ‘Birdshit’ ice cream.

I guess in the spirit of transparency I should mention I interviewed with The Guide İstanbul - and well, let's just say I did not get the job. You are all bright people, you do the math. Also, in the spirit of transparency, this was the first review I clicked on. I don't believe it was just dumb luck. Fortunately, the 'birdshit' ice cream looks yummy and if I weren't deathly allergic to pistachios I might even try it.

*confoundment, maybe? And maybe that's not just my palatal;-)

Rakı, The Knockout Champ

I believe every tourist visiting İstanbul should get a card when they land. On that card should be the saying my wise friend and bff, Ezgi, coined about rakı. A glass of rakı is like a breast – one is too little, three are two many. (Implying, of course, that two are just right.) Now I know all across İstanbul Turkish men are saying two? Really? Two? Yes, more than that and you’re in trouble. (Goes for breasts too. Take my word for it.)

The first time I had rakı was in Beyoğlu, somewhere around the Nevizade. My Turkish ex, who wasn’t much of a drinker, called and asked me to meet his friends. I lived high on a hill in Yıldız then and was already in my pajamas. It was raining. Hard. What can I say? I heard the siren call of l… meze, those sexy little plates. Who could resist? When I got there my ex filled my glass. Rakı, water, ice – something like that. I was too busy looking at the meze – or something like that. I had one glass that night. It was a taste I knew well.

Italians and Italian-Americans both have an anise-flavored drink. The Italians have Sambuca, a sophisticated little cocktail usually served with three coffee beans floating on top that are called mosca (fly) signifying health, wealth and happiness. Sambuca is typically associated with Rome and is known as the Eternal City’s favorite drink. If Sambuca is a sexy Italian in mirrored aviator frames and a smile that can light up Piazza di Spagna, then Anisette is your old, bald grandfather in a dark grey suit and bow tie. (Just like mine was.) Anisette is found in every Italian-American home. It is usually served as an addition to espresso – the Italians would call it caffe’ corretto, corrected coffee, meaning that somehow the coffee on its own was terribly wrong – or, in a small liqueur glass alongside the espresso, usually after a large Italian meal and at least one shouting match. These were the anise-flavored liqueurs that had prepared my palate.

But they did not prepare me for the first time rakı knocked me out. Because, you see, rakı is the champ. There may be others, but there is only one rakı, the knockout champ. One, two, three and you don’t know what hit you. Let me tell you about the first time rakı knocked me out. My roommates and I were leaving our beautiful Barbaros Bulvari apartment. It was my dream apartment. The Bosphorus as far as the eye could see. A terrace as far as the eye could see. It also had black mold as far as the eye could see. We decided to have a little going away party - meze, of course, and rakı. How many? Well, who counts when you are chatting and reminiscing and you don’t have to worry about getting home, just down the hall to your room. Here’s what happened the next morning. I got up and went to the bathroom. As I walked to the kitchen, it was the strangest thing, Istanbul was somewhat crooked. Everything was off by 45 degrees and as soon as I bent at the waist 45 degrees everything was ok. But when I stood up straight again, all of a sudden İstanbul started to spin, the floor began to rock like a ferry on the Bosphorus, and everything else was moving too. So I threw myself on the couch and stayed there 8 hours staring at the blank TV screen. My arms were too heavy to lift up the remote or even to cover my ears because the dust was falling so loudly. The next night I felt somewhat better.

So you can say I had learned my lesson and when my friends came from New York, Ezgi had a new saying for all of us. Did I listen? I wanted to. Really, I did. I had two glasses, but we needed to finish the bottle. I had about a quarter of a glass more. I was fine until I got home to Yeniköy and got into bed. Round and round went my bedroom. Up and down went my stomach. I closed my eyes. Rakı had knocked me out again, because that’s the way rakı rolls. I’ve warned you now. Don’t say I didn’t. When you get into the ring with rakı, remember make it only two rounds or you’re going down, baby.

Now if I had mad skillz (yeah, skillz), I would change it to say 'Gonna Fall Now - The Theme from Rakı', but you can imagine that for yourself, right?

Dear Copyeditor,

It’s time we had a talk. As you know, I have been writing a blog since May. That makes ten months that I have been struggling with your “work”. When I write a blog piece, I give it all I have. I want to make it funny and interesting and fun. Writing gives me a lot of pleasure and I hope it gives my readers pleasure as well. I also want my writing to be the best it can be. I check what I write, then I double-check it and triple-check it for mistakes. After all that, I send it off and you “edit” it. It’s not gone well.

In my second piece, The Secret Garden, you decided what I had written needed quotes and you added them. Unfortunately, you added them haphazardly, using quotes in the first part of my piece and not in the second.

Here is what I wrote to my editor D1 at the time:

I see that The Secret Garden is now live and I have posted it to my Facebook profile. Unfortunately, I am not very happy because I see that quotes were added to the story. As I have mentioned it is important to me to see any changes to the story before it goes live - even if it is a matter of quotation marks, first of all because there are several errors that your copy editor [sic] made in using the quotation marks. And even more importantly, these are errors I would not as a writer/editor have made if I had decided to use quotes.

I prefer that you remove the quotations marks that were added, but if you decide to keep them in please be aware that when using quotations marks within a quote that those quotes that are enclosed within the quote now have single marks, as shown here:

"You go alone because if you go with someone they will say, 'Look at this.' 'Look at this.' You just go..."

And by the logic of adding quotes to my piece, then this line should also be in quotes:

"This moment makes me real, but just this moment not before or after."

Also, it would not be necessary to have each individual paragraph have an opening and close quote, since quotes can actually be more than one paragraph long.

I am not averse to having my work edited because as an editor I know the importance of having another set of eyes on the work. As a professional I understand that, and I have asked to see the edits because it is important that my work look professional, especially since it has always been throughout the many years I have worked online.

I knew that these kinds of mistakes did not bode well for me. My editors, both D1 and D2, allowed me to approve the edits before they went live. At one point, I got so frustrated with your “work”, I asked that my work go on the site unedited. I was told when I signed my blogger agreement I gave the company permission to edit my posts. While this is true, editing means you catch my mistakes and fix them, not add your own (as you have consistently done with your “edits”, which is a point I have had to make to both D1 and D2). Here are some mistakes I made in Turkish is Hard that you did not catch:

1. A comma should be added OUTside the single quote of 'smile and point',

2. A comma should go after the parenthetical phrase büyük and küçük (do you really want to know?),

3. The commas after heels-over-head and masa should be taken out since my usage earlier in the piece does not follow the serial comma format - and the standard journalistic form is usally [sic] not to use a serial comma. (AP Stylebook)

Recently, I discovered that you are, in fact, a native English speaker. Believe me, for all these months I had assumed that English was your second language. This information makes your mistakes all the more grievous. You need to do better.

I’ve looked you up on social media. I’ve looked at your LinkedIn profile and from that alone I know you are not qualified to be a copyeditor or an editor. It’s true that you are young and we all have to gain experience. Unfortunately, you do not have a grasp of the basic rules of English. Any third grader can find the mistake in this sentence describing your work: “Edits breaking news content for the publications website.” A more experienced reader would take issue with your inconsistent and whimsical use of hyphenated adjectives throughout that page. This is how you present yourself professionally.

That is why it is so galling to have this sentence:

On that card should be the saying my wise friend and bff, Ezgi, coined about rakı.

changed to: On that card should be printed the saying of my wise friend, Ezgi, coined about rakı.

and then to: “On that card should be printed the saying of my wise bff, Ezgi, coined about rakı.”

And have you insist that it is grammatically correct. (Not so, check here.)

It’s been ten months of this kind of thing and I am tired. I write because I am a writer and I have a passion for writing. I am not paid for the work I do. I do it because one day I want to be paid for the work I do. Honestly, it’s been a struggle. I know I am good and have worked very, very hard to get to where I am. I’d like to have an editor who helps me look better. I cannot catch all my mistakes and I would like to look damn-near perfect in print. I have something to say. I want to say it well and in my own voice. When I looked you up on Twitter your quote says that you are a “[m]ultimedia journalist traversing the world, sharing the stories of those whose voices are struggling to be heard.” I find that really hard to swallow along with your inept “editing”.

Because when I write a line like:

Use that thing your anne gave you.

and you change it to:

Use that thing your mom gave you.

It tells me two things. One, that you have no ear for voice and two, you have a tin ear for the vernacular as well.

I am frustrated, I’m very angry and I am tired of doing my job (writing), then editing my own pieces, and then editing and correcting your mistakes. Does that seem fair to you? I’m not getting paid for this, but you are. That’s why I am telling you, you need to do better. You need to step up or step out of copyediting. Learn the rules of grammar and punctuation, check and double-check your work and be consistent. If you don’t know something, look it up or ask someone more experienced. You have a lot to learn. I suggest you start today.

The Poetry of Little Things: Mr. Tarçın Man

Ever since I discovered that you can make hot oatmeal from Lifalif cereal, I have been on an oatmeal kick. When I make it, I like to sprinkle in a little cinnamon and that was getting messy from the package. I usually had two tablespoons of cinnamon in the pot and it was getting ridiculous. So off I went to buy a shaker. I wanted an big, old-timey, diner-type salt shaker - but you know me and shakers, right? Never what I plan. That's how I found Mr. Tarçın Man. In the picture above he looks happy. Here is his more usual look.

It's the little things that make me happy. The little gestures, the little day-to-day poetry of the ordinary that stay in my heart and make me mindful of life and all it's gifts. Mr. Tarçın Man makes me happy every day.

New Years' Yum

I haven't blogged of late - mostly because the end of 2012 was challenging for me. Life was so life-like - full of to-do's and to don'ts and did I mention the challenges? I have turned the corner now. We all have. I think 2013 will be very lucky. I have been calling it 2000lucky13. My horoscope seems to suggest that earned money will be rolling in - I say let the good $$ roll! On New Years' Day the waiter spilled some of my tea in the saucer - he told Tülin to explain to me that it meant my luck was overflowing.

"Maşallah and teşekküler!" (May it be the Divine's will and thank you!) I answered because it was all good.

I haven't been writing a lot (I know, stunned silence) and I hope to say one day that life's challenges don't throw me so easily off-track - at the moment they do. I hope to reach that place one day soon. It's not happened in the last month - this month, I am doing better. And it also has helped me figure out a lot of things. I can write articles and blog posts and all manner of things competently and well and I get a lot of satisfaction and enjoyment from it. I love writing, but the writing I most love to do isn't like this - it isn't chatty and hey-let-me-tell-you-something. I want to write stories - long or short, it doesn't matter. Stories full of signs and subtext, poetry and heartbreak, that might be tinged with memoir, full of soaring realizations and wide horizons even if it is found in a tea cup. So I guess what I want to tell you at this late stage is that I am an artist, that I want to create something that no one has ever done before, that it should be beautiful and true - that it comes from my soul and fills my heart.

Wow! Really? I had no idea this post was going to go this way. I thought I would write about - or eventually get to - how I had friends in town from New York. How much I loved seeing İstanbul through their eyes and how my friend Deborah (who many years ago hired me for my first important job) told me I should write about food. The following evening we met a journalist friend of a friend named Tom who also suggested I do the same - but that advice came with a precaution - if I loved it too much I shouldn't because I would have to think about it. (Instead of just enjoying it was the subtext I got from that advice.) I am an analytical kind of chick even on a good day, so I think I can do it.

One of the writers that shaped me was M.F.K. Fisher and she wrote truly and beautifully about food. One of my favorite stories is "I Was Really Very Hungry" so much so that I lived a similar experience. I think few writers hold a candle to M.F.K Fisher in any genre, and she has set a bar for me - as with all things, I want the bar to be very, very high. So in this new year expect more food writing from me, expect me to drop out and not explain, expect the unexpected (from me and from life) and most of all enjoy it all. (Interested in M.F.K Fisher? Go big with The Art of Eating) Afiyet olsun!

Snow Day in İstanbul

I've had a challenging month. And today it's snowing, it's cold and I'm cranky. Last week I could not remember what Planck's constant was. It bothered me. Tally-ho, the internet to the rescue.

Alrighty then.

Bang, Bang, Vroom, Vroom

The first time I saw Daniel Craig on the Skyfall set as James Bond he was coming out of a metallic Land Rover in a silver-grey suit firing a shiny gun. He was very sexy, surprisingly short and wearing very tight pants. For days my Facebook status was all about Daniel Craig’s tight pants. To be fair, the tight pants were part of a tight suit. I guessed Brioni (the suit just felt Italian to me), but I was wrong, very wrong. It was, in fact, Tom Ford. (And just an aside: Can Tom Ford do no wrong? I think probably not.)

The suit looked amazing on Daniel Craig’s James Bond. The silvery steeliness reflected something in his eyes and in his persona. The suit seemed to dance on his body, the fabric caressing and releasing his thighs as he walked. To me the suit seemed to balance the essence of James Bond – a loaded gun and a sensual lover.

I have been thinking a lot about fashion and style of late – how fashion is about desiring something and (your) style is about defining something, claiming something, saying it’s yours and that you are somehow what you are presenting. I don’t think the suit was a casual choice – how could it be? For me, it was a perfect choice and not only because I was crouched down only a couple of feet away from those pant legs. The suit gave structure to Daniel Craig’s beautifully muscular body, enhancing it in a way jeans and a t-shirt would not have done. It gave him a context too. I am not a crazy man firing into a crowd – I’m a man in a suit. I’ve got a job to do. Bang, bang, I am doing my job. Vroom, vroom, off I go.

I’ve also been thinking a lot about the difference between men and women. Why is it that women don’t write more about masculine beauty? (Ok, sure, romance novels, but I mean, c’mon.) Seriously, women, look at this.

I know the first impulse is not to write about it (maybe not even the 192nd impulse.) I also know women are not as visually driven as men, but really, look at that man’s back. And also, c’mon, write about it. (This Bond Girl looks for cigarettes and some Scotch.)

It’s all about beauty and desire, so back to the tight pants. I think every man should have a great suit and a pair of tight pants. For the record, Skyfall’s costume designer Jany Temime called the look ‘body conscious’. Yes, very. You may not want to go underwearless like James Bond – (there is a really slight chance he was wearing whisper-thin boxers, but I doubt it – I was crouched down by his legs a long time. I looked. I saw everything. I’m just not debriefing you on everything I know. So sue me.) But for the record, gentlemen, when you do get your tight pants, just make sure when I see you I immediately think bang, bang, vroom, vroom. Thanks.