Pete headhunts with Duck.
Abe gets stabbed, stabbed — in the heart.
Don and Bets, in bed.
Haiku: Mad Men, Season 6, Episode 8 – The Crash
Tap-dancing Cosgrove.
Little Whitman, deflowered.
Speedy hallway sprints.
Haiku: Mad Men, Season 6, Episode 7 – Man with a Plan
Bob’s polished white lie.
Draper, master and servant.
Ted and Don, in flight.
Novel #2: Love Love
Since my Modern Love essay came out on Thursday, a few people have asked about the recently-completed second book. Here’s the pitch.
Love Love
by Sung J. Woo
A novel about art and athletics, family and adoption, remembrance and forgiveness – and Judy and Kevin, sister and brother.
Judy Lee’s life has not turned out the way she’d imagined. She’s divorced, she’s broke, and her dreams of being a painter have fallen by the wayside. Her co-worker Roger might be a member of the Yakuza, but he’s also the only person who’s asked her on a date in the last year.
Meanwhile, Kevin, an ex-professional tennis player, has decided to donate a kidney to their ailing father — until it turns out that he’s not a genetic match. His father reluctantly tells him he was adopted, but the only information Kevin has is a nude picture of his birth mother.
Told in alternating chapters from the points of view of Judy and Kevin, Love Love is a story about two people figuring out how to live, how to love, how to be their best selves amid the chaos of their lives.
Modern Love @ The New York Times – Overfed on a Mother’s Affection
Happy Mother’s Day weekend! To begin the celebration early, check out the essay I wrote for the Modern Love section of The New York Times. It’s online now; the print version will appear in the Sunday paper.
Overfed on a Mother’s Affection
By SUNG J. WOO
My mother held out a Tupperware container of chicken thighs and drumsticks, roasted with kimchi, bell peppers, onions and scallions. It’s a great dish, one of my favorites.
“No,” I said.
My mother and I don’t fight often nowadays, because I’m 41 and she’s 72 and we lead separate lives. I see her once every two weeks. She makes me lunch, we shop at Costco, she makes me dinner, then she sends me off with grocery bags full of her cooking.
We’ve been on this schedule for the last eight years, since my father passed away. But on this evening, near the end of my visit to her senior apartment, I could tell we were going to argue.
“Just take it,” she said.
“I can’t.”
“It’s just one more.” There was an edge to her voice. “Why are you being difficult?”
Haiku: Mad Men, Season 6, Episode 6 – For Immediate Release
Only “I” in Don.
Goodbye Jag, hello GM.
Peggy’s two bosses.
Broadcast on WNYC FM and AM Today
The podcast and the essay are already out there, but the actual broadcast of my essay is happening today, sometime between 6 and 9 am and then again between 4pm and 8pm on WNYC, via 93.9 FM and AM 820. So if you the type to listen to the radio live, tune in!
Haiku: Mad Men, Season 5, Episode 5 – The Flood
Death of MLK
makes a history lesson
of an episode.
At WNYC – Six Months After Sandy: Sandy, You Were Delicious
The good folks at WNYC News ran “six months after Hurricane Sandy”-themed programs yesterday, and they were kind enough to invite me to contribute.
Here’s the truth: I kinda sorta miss Sandy. Not her destruction of beloved homes and property, no, of course not, nor the inconvenience of driving around an hour for a viable gas station. And don’t get me wrong – I love hot showers. And cable TV. And the Internet. Everything about the modern world, I love.
But at the same time, didn’t it feel like we were all in this big, horrible mess together? That we were in a crisis, and people were going out of their way to be extra nice? Take my neighbor, for example. Great guy, but waving from afar is pretty much our relationship. And yet there he was, knocking on my back door after our neighborhood blacked out, offering the end of a very long extension cord that ran from his generator. His mother-in-law lives next door, so he had to share his juice with her, too, but that didn’t stop him from gifting us with a few sparks of his electricity.
Haiku: Mad Men, Season 6, Episodes 1-4
It’s been so long that I forgot I used to do these after each episode of Mad Men…
Episodes 1-2: “The Doorway”
Megan the soap star.
Aloha, death and affairs.
Draper’s inferno.
Episode 3: “The Collaborators”
Beans versus ketchup.
Pete beds the wrong girl, again.
Whitman slides and sits.
Episode 4: “To Have and to Hold”
Peggy versus Don.
Joanie’s empty partnership.
Sylvia wants peace.