Gorgeous Little Things

The Internet Is Forever

2011-05-24T07:00:00.000-07:00

Remember Friendster? I used to have an profile there until sometime in 2006, when I deleted the account in favor of the Myspace profile I had set up sometime in 2005. I deleted that account sometime in 2007, when I set up my Facebook account.

Anyway, back when Friendster was the thing, I used to use the blog feature of the account. At one point, I moved all of my Friendster blog posts and archived them on this Blogger account when I started Gorgeous Little Things. When I put the blog to rest a couple of years ago, I assumed all of those old posts were gone forever.

I was wrong. Last week I started getting notifications of comments on my Friendster blog. WTF?, I thought, when I tried (and failed) to log into my still-deleted Friendster account. Most of the old posts existed in some sort of Friendster zombieland. I'm in the process of sorting through them and re-archiving most of them here. But let that be a lesson, kids: The Internet is Forever. (ETA: I contacted Friendster and they deleted the old blog.)

It's the Little Things

2011-05-17T18:15:00.000-07:00

It's funny the little rhythms in the neighborhood that I get stuck on. There will be a thing that I see almost every morning as I walk to the subway. When I see it, I feel like my life is in balance; when I don't I feel let down.

Right now my thing is a neighborhood dog. He's a huge, black Newfoundland and his owner walks him as she walks her kid to the school down the street from the subway entrance that I use. He looks like such a good-natured, gentle giant of a dog, with a slow, bouncy gait and a lolling pink tongue. He seems popular with the kids at the school; if he and his family are at the schoolyard when I pass by, he's usually getting hugged or petted, and it looks like he's loving the attention as much as the kids love seeing this big bear of a dog.

It makes me smile every damn day that I see this dog and I feel like something's missing when I don't. Part of me wants to contrive a way to start a conversation with the dog's owner, but another part of me likes having a little bit of a private magic moment to look forward to every morning.

Just Like Starting Over

2010-02-28T16:17:00.000-08:00

I forgot that I had deleted the previous incarnation of Gorgeous Little Things.

Lipstick Vogue

2006-10-03T19:30:00.000-07:00

I don’t often get excited about makeup. I try to be above such piffle so I can focus on more important things (mostly music, boys, and celeb gossip). But I am completely thrilled with some lipstick I bought yesterday.

I’ve always loved how a little color on the lips can pull your face together, and make it look like you aren’t half-asleep; I’ve always hated how quickly lipstick fades and how often it needed refreshing. I’d tried long lasting lipsticks years ago, which while staining my lips, left them puckered and cakey. I decided it was high time to see if makeup technology had progressed in the past decade. It has.

I bought Maybelline Superstay Lipcolor (774, Cinnamon, a neutral medium beige-pink). With these new long lasting colors, you get two fun bits in one package (I think the Cover Girl version is similar, as is probably Revlon, L’Oreal, etc.). First you apply the color with a spongy wand. It has a distinctly Bonne Belle lip gloss smell, which is probably a deliberate ploy to nab my demographic, who tend to light up nostalgically at the scent. After the color sets, there’s a lip balm at the other end that helps seal the color and keep your lips soft. Then you are free to eat, drink, kiss, whatevs for hours, without having to reapply.

Oh how I feel liberated from frequent lip checks and reapplications! I’m not exaggerating at all when I say that this will give women the freedom to take over the world, looking fabulous.

23. Bitchfest: Ten Years of Cultural Criticism, Lisa Jervis & Andi Zeisler, eds.

2006-10-01T19:31:00.000-07:00

Bitchfest was an impulse purchase I made a few weeks ago. I’ve never been a reader of Bitch magazine, and only a sporadic visitor of its Web site, but it should be pretty obvious that I’m firmly in their demographic and supportive of their ideas. I was pretty excited to curl up with a compendium of essays from the past ten years.

Surprisingly, the essays can be a lot to take in one swoop. Though I mostly agreed with what I was reading, at times I felt I was being chastised for somehow being a "bad" feminist. For example, sometimes I casually say "you guys" when referring to a mixed group of people, but if I would happen to do that in front of Audrey Bilger, I would be soundly corrected for my patriarchal wielding of language. While intellectually I understand her point that seemingly small things can have a chaos-theory-like effect on society, I’d rather spend my energy on larger corrections (health care, the environment, reproductive rights, etc.), and believe that kind of po-faced finger-wagging—the kind that hair-splits, judges, and yeah, nags—is part of the reason that so many young women today are reluctant to define themselves as a feminist. Maybe some would rather maintain a radical, activist core and view people like myself as squishy, Girl Power sellouts. I’d rather live in a world where words like "liberal" or "feminist" were adjectives, not epithets.

Anyway, there are loads of other, funny, touching, thought-provoking essays that examine feminism and womanhood (and race, class, gender, leadership, and more) from unexpected angles. There’s lots of examination of how these issues are played out—whether they’re celebrated or undermined—in pop culture. By the end of the book, I’d thought about all the facets of my self: my Jackass lovin’, Austen readin’, horny, crafty, what-my-bikini-area-grooming-says-about-me worryin’, often foul-mouthed, list-makin’, liberal, feminist, self.

Musings of a Jetlagged Brain

2006-09-28T19:24:00.000-07:00

It’s almost 4:30 a.m., and I’m only just now getting ready for bed. That’s what happens when you spend a week staying up until 1:30 a.m. in Pacific Standard Time and suddenly find yourself back in the Eastern Standard Time zone. More about the trip will come, as will pictures. For now, I am too tired to create a narrative to do justice the fun week I’ve had.

I am glad, though, that I’d thought ahead to take off the day after I got back. There’s always so much to wind up and unwind: time-zone re-acclimation, restocking groceries, catching up on mail and e-mail, whatever, etc.—things that would otherwise loom as I tried to get back into the swing of the working week. It’s good to have a buffer between vacation life and regular life. It’s the built-in luxuries that make such a difference.

It is at times like these that you realize the city does in fact sleep, and that for the moment, you are not among the slumberers. It’s so quiet, I feel as if I have half the world to myself, and I relish it, even as I long for the heaviness of sleep. It’s as though I can’t decide which is the more privileged condition: that of the late-night thinker, or the late-night dreamer.

New York to Eugene: 15 Hours of Adventure

2006-09-27T19:17:00.000-07:00

(Adapted from notes scratched along the way)
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
9 a.m.: Wake up. Go for run (in preparation for a week of marionberry pie and general sloth).
9:45–11:00 a.m.: Shower, dress, finish packing.
11:00 a.m.: Board F train at 7th Ave., determined to be a fiscally responsible and environmentally conscious citizen by taking public transportation to airport. Route: F to 34th St., transfer to N or W train, switch from N (or W) to M60 bus at Astoria Blvd. The M60 stops at LaGuardia’s terminals. This, in addition to the run, makes me feel slightly smugly virtuous.
12:30 p.m.: Board M60. Am suddenly reminded that buses stop every 10 inches to let off old, fat, slow people. Realize that this very frustration is the reason that I always take a cab or a car service to the airport. Oh, well.
12:50 p.m.: Check in at the United Airlines terminal. (Circuitous route to Eugene OR: LaGuardia to Denver to Portland to Eugene.)
1:05 p.m.: Have cleared security. Am always amused that they still do the show thing—it’s so 2003.
1:07 p.m.: Notice that lipstick and lip gloss are no longer carry-on contraband. Silently curse that I’ve packed them in my checked luggage. Debate getting a snack before hitting my gate, as I have not yet eaten today. I have 20 minutes until boarding. Nah, I can wait.
1:30 p.m.: Have boarded plane. Nice to be on a real plane for once, rather than a regional jet. Still, I wonder how people who are taller than me deal with the lack of legroom (I’m 5′2 1/2").
2:05 p.m.: "Engine trouble" announced. Mechanics allegedly on the way. Silently curse LaGuardia Airport.
2:50 p.m.: Flight 407 is cancelled. Everyone deplanes. All of our luggage is transferred to flight 409 to Denver. I join the line of people needing to transfer from 407 to 409 or other flights.
3:05 p.m.: Take time while on line to call aunt (who I am visiting). A travel veteran, she gives me tips on how to work the situation.
3:45 p.m.: Am assigned a standby position for flight 995 to Denver, which leaves about an hour after 409 and my luggage (does the TSA know about this?). At least it connects directly to Eugene. Am starving. Grab horrendously unhealthy and gross tuna wrap at Au Bon Pain ($6), and a coffee (not having had coffee by this time of day should be criminal). Remember that I hate Au Bon Pain’s burnt-ass coffee, but drink it anyway. I forgot to add milk, but am too frustrated to walk 50 yards back to do that. Bleargh.
4:40–4:55 p.m.: 995 is fruitlessly overbooked, owing to the cancellation of my original flight. I am going to get screwed with the number of connections I need to make. Unfortunately, the United terminal area is woefully understaffed by confused people. I realize that if lucky, I will end up spending the first night of my vacation in a hotel near the Denver airport if I don’t play some hardball.

I begin to form alliances with fellow standbys. There’s a pair of business travelers headed to Boise, a handful of business travelers headed to Denver, and a pilot who refuses to take the jump seat (greedy bastard). At least two of the business travelers have some sort of elite status, but for some reason the United staffer is reluctant to bump anyone up to the last two seats, which are in first class.

Meanwhile, flight 409 hit bad weather and has now returned to get more fuel. Am sure this level of incompetence will be the end of at least one of these Denver flights.
5:10 p.m.: United staff begins processing standbys onto other flights.
5:15 p.m.: Inform the United staffer that I know that there is a late-arriving America West flight to Eugene, and that I want to be transferred to that, and not stuck with an overnight layover in Denver. I know they don’t want to eat the cost of losing my fare, and would probably rather bump me to first than lose me entirely. This move seems to leverage me ahead of people whose final destination is Denver.
5:40 p.m.: 995 is still on the ground. I think they are still juggling seat assignments. I hope that someone with a close connection in Denver will get off. Suddenly I am plucked for the flight. I don’t ask questions, but realize that my standby ticket for the flight was already shredded. Am given a vague seat assignment and slip onto plane as United staffer, flight attendant, and another passenger discuss seat trades.
5:42–5:50 p.m.: Realize that seat I am told to take does not exist, so I take the only one that doesn’t seem to be occupied. So I’m on a plane with no ticket and my luggage on another flight. Convinced I am headed to Gitmo. Nearly have a heart attack when a flight attendant approaches me, but she seems to have been filled in.
6:20 p.m.: 995, originally scheduled to leave at 5:11, takes off.
6:45 p.m.: Snack boxes, our in-flight meal-buying opportunity, have sold out. Am given a granola bar and a free wine. Score!
7:45/6:45 Mountain Time: Have finished book, wine, and granola bar. Due to the inconveniences (schedule, no food) passengers are given vouchers for $25 in travel certificates.
8:15–8:40 p.m.: Land in Denver. Nice airport. Return a few calls, give my aunt the update, and check with gate to make sure I actually am on flight 6665 to Eugene. (I am.) Pop into Hudson News for an Entertainment Weekly and a tube of Blistex ($6). Head to hang out in gate area. Crowd is much more "Eugene" looking than "New York" looking. Hee!
10:00 p.m. Pacific Standard Time: Near the end of the flight a heated debate breaks out between two people: one has obviously just read People’s History, and another who does not read and gets all their info from Fox News. Ah, to be a college freshman again, eh?
10:30 p.m.: Land in Eugene, meet up with aunt, and figure out that my luggage has made it as far as Portland and will join me tomorrow. Amused to know that if I’d gotten on that "earlier" flight, it’d have taken much longer than the crazy way I took. Sometimes the easier way is the harder way, I guess.

Tolstoy Said It Best . . .

2006-09-13T19:26:00.000-07:00

Now that summer is winding down, I can already feel the dread and pangs and longings of the holidays like I can feel the slight chill in the air. What am I going to do about the holidays—in particular for Christmas? Sure, Thanksgiving has its own pressures, but enough people stay in town that a respectable party can always be made. So not too big of a deal. Have pie, and all is well.

But Christmas is the holiday for which everyone assumes you are happily going home. For me, however, owing to certain complex family dynamics that I don’t want to get into (it involved me, ending up by myself, checked into a hotel I didn’t ask for), I can’t get down with the prospect of spending the holidays in Ohio. I haven’t been there since Christmas 2004, which means that each year I look for alternative plans. Last year I hosted my parents here in New York. We had a great time: I took them out to a Broadway show (Their first!) and cooked them a great Christmas dinner. So tonight I thought, Why not invite them out for a second round?

The problem was, they turned me down. They said they’re old and they don’t feel like traveling on the holidays again. Not to chilly New York in December, and not my backup suggestion of spending a week in a warmer climate. So I said the only thing I could honestly say: I didn’t think it was a good idea for me to come to Ohio for Christmas.

Even thought they immediately said they accepted my choice, I felt like such a shitty and hurtful child. It’s not as though I want to hurt them, and I told them that it wasn’t them, but rather the elephant in the attic. At the same time, however, I don’t think it’s fair to make myself miserable in the process of trying to make my family fit some Norman Rockwellian mold that just doesn’t cut it.

You know, sometimes I’m envious of people for whom spending family time is something to look forward to and that recharges them. I really, really hope they appreciate how lucky they are, and don’t think badly of those of us for whom it’s just not that fucking easy.

I long for the same love and comfort that others take for granted. I haven’t exactly rejected my family, nor they me, but it hurts me to know that we are by and large not a good fit. It’s a strange middle ground to be in. A purgatory.

It makes me doubt things about myself: My capacity to love and be loved, or even whether it’s a good idea for me to consider having kids. (And obviously it’s not something I can really talk to them about.) I worry that people will judge me. Say that I’m ungrateful, or that I’m too dark and damaged to one day become part of another family, or whatever. It’s a sort of pressure of having to define and explain myself—to myself as much as to other people—against the templates of Family that I see around me.

It’s times such as these that I heartily appreciate the notion of chosen families: Friends, lovers, and yeah even a few blood relations here and there.

Grocery Porn

2006-09-07T19:27:00.000-07:00

Now that the weather is beginning to cool, I am drawn back into the kitchen. I can’t wait to roast a chicken with some sweet potatoes, or make macaroni and cheese, or bake a batch of molasses-gingerbread cookies. But it’s not that cool yet.

I made a tentative step back in the other day. I made my curried chicken salad. It’s a semi-healthy lunch/grazing food that keeps me happy for a few days. First I de-skin, bone, and shred a whole rotisserie chicken (to cut corners, plus it’s only like a buck more than starting from scratch). Then I cut up some green apple, red onion, red pepper, slivered almonds, and whatever dried fruit I happen to have on hand, usually dried apricots or currants, or golden raisins. Then I mix some chutney, garlic powder, ginger, and madras spice mix into some low-fat plain yogurt (healthier than mayonnaise and it adds a tang) and fold it all together. Voilá, lunch that won’t drive me to the pizza counter.

This week I also began to do more inspiring grocery shopping. Last night I picked up some great stuff at Trader Joe’s. I’ve been going there for the Three-Buck Chuck for a while now; we all need a cheap "kicking around the house" wine, and you often do much worse at twice the price. Last night I braved the rush hour grocery crowd and picked up a few fun things. I was impressed with the prices. Most grocery stores in New York are expensive and mediocre. TJ’s, by cutting out the middle man and selling mostly house brand stuff keeps their prices relatively low and the quality relatively high. They also seem like they treat their workers better than do other chain stores. I don’t know it for a fact, but no one that works there is surly and borderline sociopathic like they are at say, Duane Reade. TJ’s employees are California perky. It’s weird, but nice.

Anyway, back to the food. This amount of stuff only cost me about $27!
* 1 bottle of Charles Shaw shiraz (not great, btw)
* 1 bottle of Charles Shaw chardonnay
* 1 package Thai chili-lime peanuts
* 1 jar of chipotle salsa (v. impressively spicy)
* 1 bag of organic tortilla chips
* 1 block of cheddar cheese
* 1 wedge of asiago cheese
* 1 can of vegetarian chili (not bland like most vegetarian stuff)
* 1 jar of "mojito" simmer sauce
* 1 package (about a pound) of dark chocolate covered espresso beans

I was like a little kid putting all this stuff away, tasting the peanuts and coffee beans. And yes, I made nachos for dinner and served them with a glass of shiraz. Trashy, but fun.

I’ll definitely have to keep going back for pantry stuff and snack foods. It’s totally out of my way—a seven-minute walk from the office and forty minutes on the train—but definitely worth it for quality novelty foods.

22. In Cold Blood, By Truman Capote

2006-09-06T19:28:00.000-07:00

I’ve had In Cold Blood on my mental reading list for years. I loved the Breakfast At Tiffany’s novella (much grittier than the movie, and no Mickey fucking Rooney shitting up the joint), and both the memoir and play versions of A Christmas Memory. I was reminded of my love of Capote’s prose from last year’s film Capote, which includes a scene of a reading from In Cold Blood.

It’s amazing to realize that In Cold Blood is the first of its kind: a true-crime nonfiction work constructed like a novel. Devil in the White City probably couldn’t exist without Capote’s antecedent.

The book does a lyrical job of humanizing without morally acquitting a pair of murderers. Their histories of abuse and undiagnosed mental illnesses don’t explain away their crimes, but neither do they. However one can’t help but find nuance in their squandered human potential, and wonder how close one’s own life has ever slid towards such perversions. So too are the victims briefly brought back to life as whole people, not saints. They had lives, interactions, and quirks that are explored through the prism of the town that knew, and buried, them.

Capote’s gimlet eye works from both sides to bring about the horrific convergence on November 15, 1959. He follows the murderers on the run, and the investigation that captures them. He traces the fallout the murders bring to the town, and to the long process of levying a death penalty.

Running through the book is a sense of humanity and innocence: celebrated, defiled, and lost. The hard lesson is the senselessness of senseless crimes: that no place is innocent, no person is immune, but that life always and has to continue within and around it.

21. Lies My Teacher Told Me, by James W. Loewen

2006-08-26T19:08:00.000-07:00

I’d heard of Lies My Teacher Told Me a long time ago, but I’d never read it. Partly because I know most of those American history textbook lies—as would any reasonably inquisitive person, and partly because anything I learned was sure to be depressing.

Loewen’s main complaint is that American-history textbooks leave out conflict—be it racism, sexism, classism, etc. This leaves the books as dry compendia of facts (of course disputes about facts are hardly ever noted) tied up into everything’s better now feel-good endings. Worse, they tend not to draw connections between events, for example linking the failure to guarantee civil rights for African Americans after Reconstruction led to a disastrous decline in race relations, which helped amplify the call to arms for the Civil Rights movement in the 20th century.

The books also deify famous Americans, removing their contradictions and stripping them of their imperfect humanity. Thomas Jefferson, a Renaissance man surely, but also a conflicted slave-owner (as were most other Revolutionary-era leaders, with varying degrees of conflictedness about it). Sure, Woodrow Wilson won the Nobel Peace Prize, but he was also a big fucking racist.

That takes the "story" out of history, and misses opportunities for teachable moments about various "isms" and how cultural attitudes have changed through time. It leaves kids ill equipped to draw parallels between history and current events. It also probably helps make apathetic (and acquiescent—ahem!) citizens who believe that racism/classism/sexism has nothing to do with their lives now, since all the "isms" have been neatly taken care of.

Loewen’s recommendation for changing how history is taught is not that the "antidote to feel-good history is . . . feel-bad history but honest and inclusive history. . . . Conflict would then become part of the story, and students might discover that
the knowledge they gain has implications for their lives today." (p. 97) I didn’t always agree with him as to how early and how explicitly that honesty should be taught. However, I think age-appropriate honesty is what kids deserve.

But of course that can be tough when dealing with textbook approval boards. If you have never dealt with children’s nonfiction, you should know this is another factor in what ends up in textbooks. Basically, two of the biggest states, California and Texas, choose a small selection of textbooks to be used statewide. If your textbook gets chosen by one of these states, you’re going to make pretty good money (and be adopted by a few smaller states who will follow the lead of the big states); likewise, if neither of those states adopts your textbook, you’re fucked. So textbook authors and editors work wisely to play to this audience and go out of their way not to offend their sensibilities. You’ll hardly hear a bad word about Junipero Serra or the U.S.–Mexican War, because that would be financial suicide to a textbook.

I’m glad I waited to read this book until I’d had experience editing elementary-level books, and dealt with the constraints and limits that are more state-curriculum standards than limits of fourth-grade minds. Loewen makes a crack that an editor tells him that you can’t show cow udders in children’s books. He’s not kidding. It’s that kind of "moral" thinking that demands primary source images, but then wants them sanitized if it depicts blood or breasts. I feel like I have an understanding of why textbooks are the way they are from the inside.

If there’s a new edition forthcoming, I hope Loewen addresses the "No Child Left Behind" mandates and how they affect new textbooks. If I had to hazard a guess, I would say that the program makes textbooks even less flexible, because it’s made teaching less flexible, since "No Child Left Behind" is essentially just teaching to the exams. This is a method that Loewen points out renders information boring, meaningless, contextless, and doomed to be forgotten. Any of us that have crammed bullet-pointed lists of information we didn’t care about can attest to that. What hurts is knowing what sort of consequences that doomed forgetfulness has on our present lives.

Out-eating Godzilla

2006-08-25T19:10:00.000-07:00

For our penultimate summer Friday, John, Greg, and I went to an all-you-can-eat sushi buffet in midtown. The place was bananas big, at least 50 feet of sushi, sashimi, hand rolls, salads, soups, and hot sides. Plus another smaller spread of tiny cakes and cookies and fruit.

As soon as we were whisked past the yellow blobby mascot to our table, we set about making the most of the $13.95 deal ($18 after tax and tip). Being an indecisive sort, my buffet strategy is to take tiny pieces of millions of things. That way I could try all of these dishes: clam-casino type shell, gyoza, a tempura squash, beef teriyaki (yum! really well marinated and medium rare), a piece of deep-fried California roll (!), crab Louis salad, jicama salad, eggplant, cucumber-mango salad, and a kinds of sushi (spicy tuna roll, eel, salmon, shrimp roll, fluke, etc.) For dessert, I had a sliver of honeydew melon and a bunch of tiny cakes–they were little 1-inch cubes. The sushi wasn’t the best—most was just a little better than what you’d get at the deli. I think sushi quality suffers a bit under the volume in which a buffet needs to be made and also with the pressure to produce that kind of volume. But the teriyaki and gyoza were yummy, and the tuna nigiri was great (if you’ve got a good piece of tuna, slap it on some rice and let it do its job), as evidenced by its speedy disappearance every time some was laid out. Needless to say, I had fun, got my money’s worth, felt the pain of sushi rice expansion quite keenly, and the thought of eating kind of grosses me out.

Terrible girl secret: I totally weighed myself when I got home, even though I know it would just make me feel a little bad if it was outside the normal daily weight range. It wasn’t, considering I’d just out-eaten Godzilla, but I hate that I do that, knowing it’s bound to defeat my self-esteem for the next few minutes. Just goes to show that even otherwise sane women who aren’t eating disordered are fucked up about food, weight, and their bodies. It’s something every woman you know is fighting, to some extent. I’ve learned to do my best to be a one day at a time girl about it.

Entropy and Dust

2006-08-20T19:11:00.000-07:00

For some ungodly reason, I had the urge to clean today. I am a tidy and clean person, but normally I am desultory about vacuuming and dusting. I hate moving things around to clean, and usually I don’t. When I undertake a full-service cleaning, I am inevitably slightly disgusted. Who knew my snow globes wanted shining, or dear Lord, what bunnies were lurking behind the couch?

Part of the disgust is being confronted with what lays under the surface of things. You think that corner of the room is clean, and then you find pine needles from Christmas hiding in the gaps of your hardwood floors. You are reminded that dirt and decay and entropy are coming to get you, not just your moldings. And so you rage against the dirt like it’s the dying of the light.

After the cleaning, I was ready to relax. I showered and ran a few errands in the neighborhood and returned home to make dinner. One thing I relish on Sundays is making a lovely dinner for myself. It’s a nice way to unwind and a good way to remind you to treat yourself well. Tonight’s menu: tortilla crusted tilapia filet (I cheated and bought a store prepped fish), chipotle and lime zest roasted yam, salad tossed with homemade lime vinaigrette, and chilled fumé blanc wine. If I have room (doubtful), there are also fresh strawberries for dessert.

Enough Is Enough!

2006-08-19T19:11:00.000-07:00

Get a group of friends, have a couple of drinks, and find the rowdiest theater you can and see Snakes on a Plane! That what I did with a bunch of friends last night, the first night this made-for-camp movie dropped like a pheromone-laced lei.

To be sure, there are a couple of draggy parts, a ridiculous exposition, and sometimes the movie’s self-awareness kills a joke, but as a B-grade action-disaster-sploitation movie, it mostly hits its marks. The title alone tells you what you’re in for, and if you expect more, that’s your problem.

You know going in you’re going to get: lots of snakes, on a plane, snakes jumping out from unexpected places to make you squeal, gory snakebite carnage, slightly tweaked disaster-movie stock characters who unite for the snake war, and Samuel L. Jackson being a bad motherfucker. And you know, when you give something a great title it kind of writes itself. Like Snakes on a Plane or War and Peace.

I’d been anticipating this movie since I heard the title and that Samuel L. Jackson was going to be the regulator of reptile ass. I was worried that the months of hype would leave me disappointed; if I had seen it in a sedate setting, or at home on DVD, it might well have. This is the kind of movie that’s all about having a group experience. We had such a great time. The audience was awesome, cheering and hissing with the action, waving rubber snakes in the air like they just didn’t care, and we all left feeling like we got out of the movie what we came for.

20. Bridget Jones’s Diary, by Helen Fielding

2006-08-12T19:14:00.000-07:00

Continuing in my summery chick-lit vein, I decided to reread Bridget Jones’s Diary after I bought a copy from a local stoop sale ($.50!). It’s always interesting to reread a book, and see if your perspective has changed since the last time you read it.

I have to say that as frothy as it is, Bridget Jones’s Diary takes on a different resonance when read in one’s thirties. I really identify with someone who is trying to balance their professional life, love life, social life, inner life, and their weight, with wildly fluctuating degrees of success. I think one major thing that the book has over the movie is giving a feel of dissonance between how Bridget perceives herself and how others see her. She feels like she’s a fat, bubbleheaded spinster, but you can feel how much she is really liked by everyone around her. I realize as a 31-year old that the inner critic both pushes you and cuts you down–and that it’s pretty common, and how important it is to be surrounded by supportive people to help you gauge your reality.

When I first read the book, I was 24 or 25, and I thought Bridget was a little boy-crazy or panicked about relationships. ("God, just relax!" I said.) Six years later, I feel more of the inner and outer pressures that Bridget feels, so I identify with her worries. I mean, it seems like they put out "dating panic", "marriage panic", and "procreate now!" articles than they used to, doesn’t it? And by 31 I’ve had a few people tell me I should be looking for love (Shit, why didn’t I think of that?!). No matter how well your intellectual side tells those articles and those people to fuck off, that you’re living a life you like and are open-minded to relationships and all but are letting it fall into place organically, there’s that niggling voice in the background wondering aloud if you’ve gone off the rails somewhere along the line. So on the reread, this passage in particular jumped out at me:

When you are partnerless in your thirties, the mild bore of not being in a relationship–no sex, not having anyone to hang out with on Sundays, going home from parties on your own–gets infused with the paranoid notion that the reason you are not in a relationship is your age . . . and it is all your fault for being too wild or willful to settle down in the first bloom of youth.

You completely forget the fact that when you were twenty-two and you didn’t have a boyfriend or meet anyone you fancied for twenty-three months you just thought it was a bit of a drag. (p. 123)

(Actually, the editor in me would prefer if Fielding had reversed those two paragraphs. It would have made the progression of the thought more logical.)

Anyway, as much as I identify with her panics, overall I am comforted by my reread. It reminds me of what I often forget to tell myself: that normal people are flawed and they can bumble their way to improvement, that triumphs as well as setbacks are things to learn from, that there’s still wine and cute guys up for grabs, and that in all likelihood I won’t die alone and be eaten by Alsatians.

19. I’m with the Band, by Pamela Des Barres

2006-08-06T19:15:00.000-07:00

I knew going in that I’m with the Band would stir up conflicted feelings in me. On the one hand, I love juicy insider gossip—in this case it’s rock bands passing through L.A. from the late 1960s through the mid-1970s—on the other hand this gossip comes at the expense of the writer’s objectification, use, and disposal by men who are savvier, more powerful, and more cynical than she.

One thing that surprised me was hearing a first-hand account of how people negotiated "free love," and how it seemed to differ from the sort of casual sex that my generation knows. It was hard for me to wrap my head around the notion that one would get emotionally involved with a fling—sending each other mushy notes, etc.—when you’re only going to spend a couple of days a year with them. To my cynical, postmodern heart, it seems like a lot of emotional trouble to go through, no matter how good the sex is.

Anyway, Pamela’s story starts with her in high school, and being typically boy-crazy and Beatles-obsessed. She flings herself headlong from crush to crush, swooning from high to low at the drop of a hat. (I’m sure if I’d saved my journals from 1990 I’d see some similar cringe-inducing stuff.) She starts getting really heavily into music, and in fact one of her high-school friends is a cousin of Captain Beefheart, who helps introduce her to the L.A. music scene and, later on, to Frank Zappa. She starts to really project her love of music onto the guys who play it, idolizing them: and thus a groupie was born.

Pamela spends most of the next decade projecting love onto musician after musician, some of whom she seeks out, some of whom find her. Though she loves music, she doesn’t do much to create her own. Zappa puts together the GTOs, comprised of Pamela and a handful of other super-groupies; they make an album and soon fall apart (drugs, marriages, etc.). Miss Pamela doesn’t seem to have the right combination of ambition, talent, and self-confidence to make a successful go of it on her own, and the reader can sense that part of the reason is her wanting to remain available to whichever guy(s) over whom she was obsessing.

I don’t mean to paint a pejorative picture of Pamela. There are points at which my 20-year-old self identifies with liking inappropriate, unavailable guys and being too available, clingy, and desperate to be loved by them. She makes a lot of the same rookie in love mistakes we all have made: she just made them with Jimmy Page, and not some guy from your comparative literature class.

There are many issues brought to my mind by this book. Why do we place such a high value on celebrity? Why is it that it’s more admirable to fuck a rock star than Comparative Lit Guy? They’re both just people, after all. What is it about Pamela that kept relegating her to L.A. fling/L.A. girlfriend and not the full-time girlfriend/wife status she so desperately wanted? Was it her availability, her lack of focus in life (i.e. not having her own "thing" outside of being someone’s girl), or was it because she’d crossed that invisible double-standard-driven "slut" line? Why is she so desperate to distraction for love, anyway? Does it have something to do with the Daddy she seems to love over and above his actual presence in her life?

Des Barres doesn’t answer any of these questions. She provides lots of letters and journal entries and gushy commentary on their sometimes squealy, sometimes hilariously 70s-L.A.-cliché language. While this is at turns annoying and entertaining, it seems to allow her to avoid really digging deep into herself, which—aside from juicy details—is something I look for in a memoir. I do love that she has no regrets: she had a lot of fun; she had highs and lows and lived to tell. She seems like a sweet and honest—if not too bright—gal, who through her writing has in some way humanized a few long-gone rockers who were in danger of being embalmed in rote idolatry. Perhaps that, in the end, was Miss Pamela’s true calling, whether or not she knows it.

18. The Devil Wears Prada, by Lauren Weisberger

2006-07-29T18:40:00.000-07:00

For a trashy summer read, I figured The Devil Wears Prada would certainly fit the bill. It’s the kind of book where the subject matter (bitch boss, fashion goss) trumps the writing style. That’s more or less what I wanted, and pretty much what I got.

To put it plainly, Lauren Weisberger is not as good a writer as she thinks she is. She does a lot of telling in place of showing; for example, she often alludes to what was discussed in what should have been plot-propelling conversations, rather than troubling herself to create them. What she provides in bitchy details, Weisberger deprives in the dynamics of what we are to assume are the once-great, now-strained relaionships between Andrea and her friends and family. When you take into account that most of the juicy stuff probably didn’t need much authorly embellishment, then only fluff is left behind, and written in the clunky voice of a narrator who is woefully unequal to her New Yorker dreams.

That narrator, Andrea Sachs—even before her fashionista concessions—is harder to like than Weisberger intends. For all of her purported smarts she is shocked (shocked!) to discover that entry-level jobs suck and won’t put to use her knowledge of a villanelle’s structure. Andrea cops an entitled superior attitude pretty much throughout, assuming that people who are into fashion are shallow and dumb and not worth learning from (obviously they went to clown college, unlike Andrea with her B.A. from Brown and her Nine West flats). Andrea has a smug simp of a boyfriend and a Rayanne Graff of a best friend who get pushed away as she gets sucked into her servitude to Miranda Priestly, the editor-in-chief of Runway magazine.

I couldn’t help it. I loved bitchy, powerful, Miranda Priestly. Yes, she’s an unreasonable harridan who runs people ragged, and she had to shed her skin like a snake to get where she is, but you don’t put out a top magazine (or become the editor-in-chief of a top magazine) by being nice. She’s fascinating and you can’t help but smirk at her cutting remarks that knock Andrea down a few pegs. She is the tornado that propels the book, and I came away respecting her for that.

Plotwise, everything roman à clefs the way you’d expect it to. Girl gets first job, enters a strange new world, tries to adapt, pushes people away and strains relationships but Eventually Does the Right Thing, and finally begins to forge her own path. Weisberger, true to her writing skills as they were mentioned above, forges no new territory and for much of the middle of the book more or less rinses and repeats the same few points with little variation.

In the end neither Weisberger nor her alter ego adds up to as high a sum as either one assumes. Both owe much more to the queen bitches that provided such rich material than to any inherent talents. Whether either will learn that lesson is anyone’s guess.

Spending Money Like the Way It Likes to Rain

2006-07-27T18:41:00.000-07:00

It’s amazing how a relatively modest windfall can make you feel buoyant.

A little while ago, I found out that I had built up five weeks’ worth of vacation. I’ve been with the same company for several years, where unused vacation days roll over, and where you get more vacation based on senority; apparently I’d been operating under the idea that I had less time than I did, thus the nest egg. I hatched an evil plan: I asked if I could cash out a couple weeks of vacation and they let me.

My thinking on doing that, rather than say "Smell ya in September, suckas!" was that with an extra "free" paycheck, I could afford to do a bunch of cool stuff. Here’s what I’ve done so far:

* Bought a plane ticket to Oregon. My favorite aunt lives in Eugene, which is a quaint college town (if I remember correctly). We’re going to spend a week relaxing, hanging out, eating, shopping (we have scarily similar taste), taking day trips to Portland and either the mountains or the coast–weather deciding, and eating.

* Bought myself lovely salads for lunch every work day.

* Haircut. Gotta maintain that cute new ‘do!

* Bought a digital camera and a memory card. I haven’t owned a camera for years. It was time.

* Shopping!
- Skechers metallic sneaker/ballet flats
- New work-out clothes (wind pants, yoga pants)
- Calvin Klein intimate apparel
- Lounge pants
- DVD (28 Days Later)

* Renewing my passport (still need to get the pic sorted so I can send everything in).

I still have some more damage to do. I wanted to get more clothes and shoes, but either everything was ugly
or the humidity made me too cranky to want to paw around. This is just a week’s worth of craziness, anyway, so I want to pace myself. I have to say though that even just a little bit of shopping without wracking yourself with guilt or worry about it is very liberating. I guess they call it "retail therapy" for a reason

Take Your Momma Out

2006-07-16T18:43:00.000-07:00

Yesterday Charles and I hit up the music blogger’s semi-paradise: the Siren Festival at Coney Island. We had decided to make a day of it, and armed ourselves with SPF 45 and stomachs ready for an onslaught of seaside junk food, sleazy carnival attractions, and sweaty people. (We only saw three acts, all told).

By the time we got down to the shore, we needed to eat. Fried clams. Oh, baby, yeah. Sure there were sides and a hard lemonade, but I was pretty much all about the clams. After that, I took a preemptive bathroom break at Nathan’s, because last year a crazy homeless woman at Popeye’s recommended them to me, and I don’t think she’d steer me wrong. (And you know, they aren’t bad for public bathrooms near a beach that crazy homeless people from Popeye’s use.)

The first band we caught was the last few songs of Man Man’s set. I saw them open for Arcade Fire a while back, and was sort of annoyed by them, but I think that was more of a situational thing of the protracted waiting at that show. Anyway, Man Man sounds kind of punk/olde-tyme dance hall with a lot of energy. Also, there is some great mustache-ing going on with those guys.

Once they were done, we strolled the boardwalk down to Brighton Beach. Halfway down the walk everyone becomes Russian, and it’s cool to see the transition. On the way back it started t sprinkle a bit, which was just the excuse we needed to pop into the infamous Cha Cha’s. There was some great people-watching in there, a mix of locals, day-beachers, and Siren people. I was particularly enamored of a tall slice of cute in a plaid shirt, who had a book in his cargo shorts’ pocket and didn’t seem to be in the company of a lady. Charles begged me to go chat him up and threatened to do so himself, but my grubby outfit, no makeup, and pigtails self felt too shy about that prospect.

When the rain stopped we headed over to check out The Stills, who are cute and Canadian and make dreamy music. And ohmygawd, Slice of Cute was there, too! Totally fate. I declared that he was my new secret boyfriend, and we kept an eye on him throughout the show to see if he was rude in a crowd or a smoker, because in either case we’d have to break up. He passed.

I wasn’t too keen on riding the Cyclone again, so after the Stills we rode some other spinny ride at Astroland. The ride went on for ages—those guys really gave us our $5 worth—and there was great music: bhangra that segued into Franz Ferdinand? Sure!

I’ve never been to a sideshow, so we decided our next move should be to check out the Sideshow by the Seashore. (In true carnie fashion, it seems they were charging an extra $2 during the festival.) It’s a continuous show in a stifling auditorium and presents all the sideshow classics: your person who hangs bowling balls off his ears, your snake dancers, and your fire-eaters. It’s pretty cool in that sorta-swindle, sorta-feat kind of way. I also couldn’t help but think about how the trajectory of your life changes once you start tattooing your face. (Don’t get me wrong, I like a good tattoo and have a secret lust for dirty rockabilly-looking guys. I’ve never gotten around to getting one myself, though: the permanence makes me feel more indecisive than normal; it’s got to be well designed and not cliché, well placed, and superbly executed, otherwise my picky sensibilities would be offended.)

We had some time to kill before the Scissor Sisters went on, so the lovely Charles, who is always up for eating, suggested we grab some Nathan’s hot dogs. I got a chili and cheese one. I know people like these dogs, but the casing snap grosses me out. All of those years as a vegetarian developed my taste for tofu pups and turned me off most regular dogs.

We were about 10,000 miles back at the Scissor Sisters show, but we had a great time hagging and dancing and scoping people out. There were some technical difficulties and they played a few more downbeat songs than I would have expected, but they pulled out the stops for the ending and we left satisfied.

Since everyone was pouring out to the trains, we decided to grab some boardwalk pina coladas that come in plastic sexy mermaid glasses. Sadly, they were oversweet and weak, and a very overpriced $12. We took our drinks for a walk towards the parachute jump tower, because it was a nice night and it looks like open container laws don’t count on the boardwalk, since we passed several cops along the way.

We walked out on the pier to see the night ocean and the nighttime view of Coney Island. The pier was full of people fishing and having late picnics. On the way back in, I noticed a wonderful smell. A man was selling fresh fried arepas for a buck! We couldn’t resist. It was fucking divine.

After that, we were pretty full and tired and we headed home full of food, music, and amusement. Not bad for a day at the beach.

17. In Her Shoes, by Jennifer Weiner

2006-07-09T19:03:00.000-07:00

In Her Shoes is about sisters, sibling rivalry and reconciliation, and (of course) shoes. Weiner sets up the rivalry in typical fashion: Maggie is beautiful but an irresponsible mess, Rose is plump and practical—both wear the same size shoes, which Maggie keeps borrowing and from her sister and messing up, while Rose sighs and martyrs about it until she gets fed up enough to kick Maggie out of her life. (See? They’re so different, but complimentary, and soon there’s going to be more to their common bond than their shoe size. Just wanted to make sure you got that.)

Cliché set-up aside, Weiner then sets out to describe how the sisters got locked into these roles and how their estrangement kicks that symbiosis up the ass and forces them to break out of their ruts (and, eventually find some tentative common ground). Both sides of the beauty myth card are played as one of the ways to show how the sisters got to this point. Rose’s weight makes her feel inadequate in her skin, so she shuns anything connected with fashion and beauty (except shoes) and sort of retreats from life and into her career and whatever she feels are her duties. Maggie, already dyslexic and feeling stupid, seemingly unable to hold a job, feels that no one cares what’s in her head when they can look at her tits, and so concentrates on the superficial: clothes, makeup, fleecing acquaintances and family for money, a place to crash, and the next obliterating "good time." Neither woman really knows herself and both find the need to take time away from their lives to discover their buried strengths and passions. Once this is done, the path is set for their redemption arcs to collide.

There’s some pretty good storytelling going on in what one would approach as a fluffy chick-lit novel. Weiner writes a lot of non-plot-driving scenes that give the reader insight into the three main characters—Maggie, Rose, and their grandmother, Ella—and this use of multiple narrators helps to enrich the story. For example, I loved the scene describing Rose’s obsessive watching of A Wedding Story. She sees all kinds of imperfect people—poor, bad skin, bad taste, crummy grammar—finding love and getting married; at the same time that it heartens that love comes in many unexpected forms, the snob in her bitches that those people managed to do it, but not her. (Confession: I am very much guilty of similar uncharitable thoughts about couples I see on the subway: Them? They’ve found someone? But I haven’t? What the fuck?!) It’s also nice to see older people as fleshed-out characters who help along the plot. There is also a beautiful use of poetry (by Elizabeth Bishop, Rainer Maria Rilke, and e. e. cummings) that underscores the opening of Maggie’s world and to add resonance to her emotional growth. My one complaint about Weiner’s writing is her moderate case of thesaurusitis (referring to a house as a domicile without any apparent irony?). I don’t want to get all E.B. White on her, but that kind of diction sticks out and feels clumsy to me. I want to reassure her that I don’t think her book is too chick-litish, that I’m finding humor and pathos and enjoying the story, so quit mucking it up with words people only really use on the SATs and in crossword puzzles.

Anyway, I enjoyed this as a summer read with a bit of punch and a slightly different perspective than your typical girly book. I also realize that I may owe my own sister an e-mail . . .

Dear Fiery Furnaces . . .

2006-07-09T19:02:00.000-07:00

Dear Fiery Furnaces,

This is hard. First off, I need to say that I really, really like a bunch of your songs. You have really cool production: lo-fi you aren’t. I think that’s a great thing to have in this crazy world. "Tropical-Iceland" amuses me. I loved "Single Again" from EP so much that I included it on my Valentine’s Day Counter-Programming Mix. But you knew that. That was a great time, wasn’t it? Eleanor, I admire your detached yet interesting voice and think you have really cute hair and clothes. (Are you still going out with Alex Kapranos of Franz Ferdinand? I hope so. He’s so cute!) Matthew, I’m sure you’re nice, too. You’re quiet and seem like a solid, positive force. A girl is always happy to see that in a man.

A few weeks ago I found myself obsessing on "Benton Harbor Blues" from your new album, Bitter Tea. I know your music is sometimes described as "difficult"—that whole grandma album song cycle Rehearsing My Choir—but it seemed like I had enough evidence (songs liked) that the time was right for me to take the plunge and get the whole album. So I got Bitter Tea and gave it a whirl.

I have discovered about myself that I have limited patience for tack piano breakdowns. (I looked it up, since I couldn’t quite identify the instrument. It’s a piano that’s had its hammers altered, so that it creates a sound like a hybrid of a harpsichord and slightly de-tuned upright piano). See how silly that sounds? That’s because it is. Bitter Tea has a few. It’s got Moog/keyboard freakouts, too, which are a little easier to get behind. I said a little.

Anyway, "Teach Me Sweetheart" and "I’m Waiting to Know You" are nice, and the Benton Harbor songs. I’m really having trouble with the rest. I want to like it, but I start to get an itchy iPod finger about halfway through most of the songs. Which may be more accurately described as “song suites,” and I’m not sure how I feel about that.

I can’t tell you how to live your lives, or how to write your songs—who am I to say that verse-chorus-verse is best?—but it’s not fair to either of us for me to go through the motions of pretending to like things that I don’t. None of us is at fault, none of us is a bad person; we’re just different, and that’s OK. I mean, I feel comfortable telling you all this, so that’s a good sign, right? I want to be a fan, but I don’t think I can make that commitment right now: buying all of your albums, going to your shows—that’s what you deserve from someone that calls herself a fan, and I don’t think I can give you that with my whole heart. I hope you understand. I hope you can think of me as a casual listener, with no expectations and no ill will. We tried to make it work, and that’s what counts. Even though it didn’t work out for us, I feel like we both grew a little, and maybe we learned a little something about life from it.

I wish you all the best,

Jennifer

Overall, a Highly Satisfying Weekend

2006-07-03T19:05:00.000-07:00

It’s been a fun and somewhat busy weekend. I’ve had the apartment to myself, but I feel like I’ve hardly been home.

On Friday after work I met up with Ginny and we went to Williamsburg. That started with an errand that involved our hoofing it to Bushwick. (Note: I am not badass, I am not a "neighborhood pioneer." I equate "up-and-coming" with "might get stabbed once night falls." The Slope has spoiled me.) After that we had a lovely lunch at DuMont. At the expense of looking like dorks, we both ordered the steak salad with radishes, greens, blue cheese, and a light vinaigrette and white sangria. Refreshed, we did a little shopping and a lot of gossiping before parting ways.

Later on Friday Kallie, Jeff, and I went to the Voxtrot/Matt Pond PA/TV on the Radio show in Prospect Park. We enjoyed both the people watching and the music. Well accept for the part where the hipster baby next to me kept molesting my earrings. But that family soon left, probably still oblivious to how selfish and annoying they were being to the people around them. Anyway, Voxtrot was great. They have been buzzed about lately and were recently signed, so I was exited to see them on the ground floor, as it were.

On Saturday Greg had a sushi dinner party at his house. It was fantastic. Full of great food, interesting people, and beer and sake. It more than made up for the long commute there and back (Brooklyn to Queens on a holiday weekend with construction can be frustrating).

Against my better judgment I went on a third drinks-date with a guy on Sunday. I was tired and PMS-y, but for some reason I felt obligated to put forth the effort. Maybe I felt that the red flags I had perceived in him were just my being judgmental as a way to avoid intimacy (I worry, you know). You know how they say your gut instinct is usually right? Well, it is. Over the course of a couple of hours, I realized that I’m not much for po-faced, possibly-alcoholic, academics, and that he was not "slightly negative as a comic bit" but rather kind of a drag. So that was a long walk to my front gate. I gave him the handshake-kiss-without-hug as a goodbye gesture to hopefully seal the end without having to spell it out. (I mean come on; my gay boyfriends get a sexier goodbye than that!) I salvaged the evening with an immediate change into pajama pants, an ordering of obscenely fattening takeout, and HBO Sunday programming.

Since my office didn’t give us Monday off, I used one of my many (many!) accrued vacation days. Today was a day spent alone, in only the best way.

First I went for a run in the park; I ran about 1 1/4 miles, walked the other 2 miles because I am a baby about the heat but I like being out and about listening to music and waving at people’s cute dogs. After a cool shower I had a short flop on the couch. (Tip: for the ultimate cool-down, leave a glass of ice water in the freezer while you take a shower; by the time you retrieve it, it’ll have a thin skin of ice on the top and feel sooooo good going down.)

Then I set about a few neighborhood errands I hadn’t gotten to for awhile. I popped into Barnes & Noble and picked up my next read, In Her Shoes by Jennifer Weiner. I needed something frothy after the last book I read. This is about sisters and shoes, so I think that’ll fit the bill nicely. Next I hit D’Agostino’s—which I hate because it is overpriced, but it was hot outside and that is the store that was on my way—and got some basics (for me): tortilla chips, cheese, pesto, schmancy pasta, fruit & veggies (bag o’ greens, tomatoes, onions, jalapeno, limes, avocados, cilantro, apples–the strawberries looked too sad) burgers, cheese, and a couple of Portuguese rolls. I picked up a bottle of cheapish white wine at the wine shop on the next block and lugged everything home.

Once I got home I did a little prep work. I made guacamole and replenished my homemade vinaigrette. Tonight’s menu is shaping up to be Cali-Mex burgers with cheddar and guacamole, chips and guac, a tomato and greens salad with homemade vinaigrette and the mismatching white wine. I’ll be kicking back either with some movies or by reading my girly book. I haven’t worked out the details yet.

16. Under the Banner of Heaven, by Jon Krakauer

2006-07-02T19:06:00.000-07:00

Under the Banner of Heaven is part true-crime, part history lesson. Krakauer takes a look at the 1984 double murder of a woman and her infant daughter, committed by two of the woman’s brothers-in-law, who were fundamentalist Mormons who said they were acting on a revelation from God. Krakauer looks into the underlying circumstances of the case, and investigates the brothers’ migration from mainstream Mormonism to fundamentalism. (The LDS constantly takes pains to stress that there is no such thing as a Mormon fundamentalist and that they have no connection to the official church. Whatever. You have to call these groups something, and if they are breakaways from LDS, and it’s what they call themselves, just go with it.) And since most people who aren’t from Utah/Idaho/northern Arizona aren’t that familiar with Mormonism, Krakauer also weaves in the roots of the LDS movement, its beliefs, its growth, its persecution, and its part in the United States’ history.

The Latter-Day Saints are one of the few religions that have developed under the media’s glare. As such it doesn’t have the patina of centuries of careful grooming, or the passage of time to perform the cover-ups that help smooth a religion into respectability. Its every oddity and scandal and schism can be laid bare to whomever cares to research. The book and everything else I’ve read gives me the feeling that the LDS hates that and is very defensive to any word that is not glowing praise. That oversensitivity to criticism (couched in a persecution complex) raises my hinky flag even more than my general distrust of organized religion. When the book moves from explaining mainstream beliefs to exploring the fundamentalist culture it really makes your hair stand on end.

In the fundamentalist culture, you’ve got people living on isolated compounds, in thrall to the whims of their sect’s prophet. (Strangely, these prophets all seem to get revelations from God that tell them that they should get the most, prettiest, and youngest wives, and that the people on the compound should shun information from the outside world. Boy that doesn’t sound anything like a cult.) There’s lots of isolation, sexual predation, ugly prairie clothes, oppression of women, and the understanding that sometimes blood must be spilled when "water will not do" to cleanse wrongs. That’s where the murder comes in. The murdered woman in question was an uppity college graduate, who’d had the gall to have a career before she’d gotten married, and who’d had the temerity to encourage a brother-in-law’s wife to leave her increasingly erratic and abusive husband. Thus the brothers-in-law’s revelation that her throat needed to be slit to atone for the wrongs committed against the family.

This book was a page-turner, of the sort that you’ll be muttering "No fucking way!" every few pages. I have to admit that I was almost as skeeved out during the mainstream bits as I was reading the rest of the book. So-called "revealed" religions kind of freak me out, because you can justify all manner of things by claiming that God told you (so any earthly challenge is apostasy); to me that sounds like a recipe for religious war (both small- and large-scale). It’s an odd thing confronting your own prejudices, even ones you didn’t know you had. It’s a good thing to be reminded that open-mindedness is a continuous process that requires constant prodding, challenging, and examining.

She’s Crafty . . .She’s Just My Type!

2006-06-17T18:29:00.000-07:00

Saturday I went to the Renegade Craft Fair in Brooklyn. It’s a sort of market for indie-crafty things, lots of local stuff and a surprising number of vendors in from out of town. Kallie, her visiting sister, and I made an early start. Early for weekend me, anyway: I was sunscreened up (I play sunsmart, kiddies) and ready to go by the crack of noon.

I wasn’t in the market for any major purchasing, so I shied away from the beautiful leather and vinyl bags and super hand-built clothes. After a mini-tool around, I had to break the shopping seal so I could get the "buy something" bug out of the way so I could dig in for the long haul. I got a cute shirt—white with puffy sleaves and pink and brown dots—from citizenjane.

After a couple hours of shopping, we swung out of McCarren Park and down Bedford to The Read to have a quick bite and some iced coffee and rest a bit in the back garden. Huge mistake. In our want of a snack and a drink, we ignored warning signs about the place’s flakiness. It was the kind of place where there’s maybe three people ahead of you in line, but it takes 10 minutes before your turn to order comes off. (The cashier floats around and gets the drinks, the people in charge of bringing food around wander around haplessly mumbling the diners’ names and wear stocking hats in June.) It took nearly an hour for our sandwiches to arrive. One befuddled staff member kept alluding to the fact that they were waiting for the stuff to be plated. (Were they out of plates? Who the hell knows.) We bonded with our fellow frustrated comrades. The sandwiches (2 bacon/avocado/cheddar and 1 bacon/canteloupe/goat cheese) were actually damn tasty, but I don’t think I could put myself through that trauma a second time. It’s true when they say that negative reviews get around more than raves, huh?

Anyway, towards the end of our wait, we were joined by Ginny and Elana. We returned to the park, where Kallie and her sis and Ginny, Elana, and I peeled into two groups for more shopping. I ended up (finally!) getting a set of my very own knitting needles; I didn’t buy any yarn, because the vendors that were selling had super-artisinal shit—like one booth had a proprietress working the spinning wheel—and my skills aren’t quite worthy of something expensive yet. I nearly bought a pair of plastic strawberry earrings at another booth before I decided I’d rather have cherry earrings (much more retro-tart) and having two pairs of plastic fruit earrings is a bit Tropical Drag Queen. My new mission is to score a not-too-big, not-too-dainty pair of cherry earrings.

When we tired of shopping, we retired to Surf Bar (possibly called "Hurricane Hopeful") on N. 6th for cocktails and food. Ginny and I stumbled across this place a couple of weeks ago when we were looking for a different bar. It’s super-beach kitsch—including sand on the floor!—and has a really lovely back garden. Oh, and they have seafood and fun drinks, too. This time around, I had a couple mojitos and a spinach and strawberry salad. Ginny had a salad with squid and pina coladas and Elana had a radish/fennel/salmon salad (she had biked over so no drinkies!) Jeff joined us after he’d finished up at the fair and we walked around a bit and checked out a garage full of vintage sundries—I bought a stretchy silver Western-style belt, thus ending Ginny’s mocking the fact that until then I had but one belt—before catching the G train and heading home.

Once I arrived home (no sunburn!) and scrubbed my filthy dusty feet, I was greeted with some of the fruits of Kallie and her sister’s cooking. After I fixed myself a quick cucumber, tomato, and greens salad with some shaved parmesan (with a simple improvised dressing of the leftover dollop of sundried-tomato pesto mixed with some balsamic vinegar), I was plied with beer and homemade strawberry shortcakes with topped fresh whipped cream. We hung out and talked for a couple of hours, until we started to feel a bit dozy from the food, shopping, and the long warm day. So you know, basically a nice way to pass a Saturday . . .

Insomnia Makes Me Freak Out a Little, Sometimes

2006-06-14T18:31:00.000-07:00

Have you ever had one of those nights where, even though you were sort of tired, you couldn’t fall asleep because you could feel your frustrations crawling over you like an itchy second skin? That’s how I feel tonight.

Lying in bed around 12:45 a.m., I begin to wonder if I’ve done it all wrong. Paths taken or not taken. Jobs pursued or declined. Relationships consummated or broken off. Education going this way or that.

On the one hand, I just want to go to sleep. On the other hand, I want this feeling to kick my ass and give me the confidence—or at least the "fuck it" balls—to unleash my something. I don’t know what that is exactly, or its form or shape or size, but at times like this I can feel it, and I don’t want to ruin it with doubt or let it suffocate in quiet desperation. (They should make shamans for these kinds of situations, peyote optional.)

Sometimes I feel like I got in the wrong lane somewhere along the way, and now I’m watching as others pass me by. Sometimes I feel stalled. Sometimes I get so frustrated that I can’t realistically set in motion all of the things I want to change—because a lot of those things depend on the caprice of outside forces. Sometimes I worry that thinking so damn much is tending towards paralysis. Sometimes all I want is to be able to peek at the last page and be assured that everything turns out OK, somehow. I’d be satisfied with that. At least for a night.

15. Riprap and Cold Mountain Poems, by Gary Snyder

2006-06-13T18:32:00.000-07:00

I’m not the biggest reader of poetry, so I’ll admit that much of what I know of Gary Snyder is entwined with his thinly disguised appearance in Jack Kerouac’s The Dharma Bums; there he is sweet proto-eco hippie Japhy Ryder, a friend that serves as a bodhisattva along Ray Smith’s (i.e. Kerouac’s) path to enlightenment to Buddhism and the awe of nature. The way his character is drawn there, and what little I have read of the actual man, has since formed a little soft spot in my heart for him.

Riprap and Cold Mountain Poems is a bundling of a Gary Snyder poetry collection and his translations of some of the reclusive Chinese poet Han Shan’s poems. I always marvel at how Snyder’s writing stands out from—and in its way complements—the writing of his Beat peers. It can be jarring to switch from reading declaritive poems about city life, drinking, and fucking women (which reminds me of the "unique" poetry of my Tormented Rock Poet boyfriends in college) to reading more ruminative poems about spirituality, nature, and humankind’s tiny but often beautiful part in it. Snyder was hugely influenced by his studies in Asia, and it shows in his subject matter and in his poetic diction.

"Goofing Again" is one of his more lighthearted efforts, illuminating the cause and effect of indulging in the important task of fooling around (a philosophy I can definitely get behind):

Goofing Again

Goofing Again
I shifted weight the wrong way
flipping the plank end-over
dumping me down in the bilge
& splatting a gallon can
of thick sticky dark red
italian deck paint
over the fresh white bulkhead.
such a trifling move
& such spectacular results,
now I have to paint the wall again
& salvage only from it all a poem

T.V. Party Tonight

2006-06-12T18:34:00.000-07:00

How fucking awesome is Henry Rollins?

Although I’ve never been much a fan of either Black Flag or The Rollins Band, I’ve been following the general concept of Rollins for nearly 15 years. In high school my friends and I obsessively watched and listened to his spoken-word performances on video, tape (remember those?), and CD. Over the course of a few years, he found his spoken-word niche of semi-comic anectdotes peppered with increasingly focused and aware political rants. (Let’s leave his poetry out of it, shall we?) As the only girl in this group of Henry fans, I have to fess up that there was also a smidge of my teenage sexual awakening in the mix. The caffinated intensity, the self-deprecation, the tattoos, the punk-rock history. Hell, in retrospect I’m sure there was some crushing on the part of my straight guy friends. Look at the man’s fucking neck! Can you blame them?

The Rollins memory that looms largest for me was a failed attempt to see his spoken-word in Columbus my senior year of high school. There was this guy named Erik who sat in front of me in Sociology class. He was one of those fun guys who’d softened his hardcore and heavy-metal edges by developing actual social skills and being broadly read. We used to talk during class about the books and music and stuff that we were into, and making fun of each other when one of us needed the piss taken out of them a bit. There was probably also a little bit of unexplored sexual tension, ’cause you know, we were 17. Anyway, he was a fan of Rollins through Black Flag, so we would kind of fill in the blanks for each other (remember this was the early 90s, before the Internet had taken over).

When we heard about Rollins doing a spoken word show at the Newport, we made an after-school trip over to Threshold to get tickets. [Note: while racking my brain, using the aforementioned Internet to tease the name of the store from my memory, it looks as though this store has closed. That's a shame. I fondly remember Threshold from my teenage years. It was a stereo store, but they also sold records, tapes, posters, etc., and it was one of the few Ticketmaster outlets in my shitty hometown, and the only one that would buy your CDs for resale (with delightful disdain at the prospect of trying to move yet another fucking used copy of Temple of the Dog). I spent a lot of money there.] When the day of the show arrived, so did a blizzard, and I-70 was closed. But Henry, ever the man of work ethic, went on with the show anyway, and thus we could not return our tickets. You can probably distill several broad narrative arcs of stifled youthful transgressions from that one thwarted mission.

Back to Rollins. I love how much The IFC Channel adores and trusts Henry. They’ve given him two shows so far: first Henry’s Film Corner and now the more expansive Henry Rollins Show. The good people at IFC learned that having him talk about only cinema and movies just once a month wasn’t enough Rollins. I mean, what if Henry wants to talk about current events, like gay rights, the war, or celebrity culture? He’s honed his interviewing skills a bit, but what if he wants to bring on a non-film media figure, like Chuck D? What if he wants to have Sleater-Kinney play a couple of songs? IFC knew what to do: Give the man a new talk show! Check it out if you haven’t already.

p.s. Henry, you look great for 45. The Neck is still in force. You are a testament to clean living. Huzzah!

14. Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, by David Sedaris

2006-06-05T18:36:00.000-07:00

You can’t fool me. I know you’ve probably already read Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim. You’ve probably read most of David Sedaris’ books. It’s a function of our demographic. It’s inevitable.

If you haven’t read this (or the others), it’s pretty much what you’d expect: monologue-like essays about the mundane absurdities of family and everyday life. There are more stories about The Rooster, Hugh the Boyfriend, and the high and low insanity of the Sedari. After several books, I still go back and forth between seeing them as merely kooky or genuinely fucked-up. I’m starting to lean more towards the latter, and it makes me feel some small measure better about my family’s particular spin on that old Tolstoyism.

While some pieces are classic Sedaris ("Six to Eight Black Men", "Put a Lid on It", "Repeat After Me"), a few read like English 101 personal essays ("Possession", "The End of the Affair"). None quite approach the convulsive snorting laughter caused by "You Can’t Kill the Rooster" from Me Talk Pretty One Day. But damn if you aren’t going to blaze through it on a rainy afternoon anyway, so there.

13. The Time Traveler’s Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger

2006-06-02T18:38:00.000-07:00

The Time Traveler’s Wife is Clare DeTamble, wife of Henry DeTamble: Chicago librarian, punk afficionado, and involuntary time traveler (chrono-displaced, if you will). The novel is told joinly through Clare and Henry’s recollections, and roughly follows the timeline of Clare’s life, with several diversions, of course.

Stress can trigger one of Henry’s episodes, but he has no control over where or when he goes. His subconcious frequently pushes him to revisit his own past and his love for Clare pushes him to visit her childhood to better understand her—and to get the fullest lifetime of knowing her, I believe.

At times I found myself pitying Clare, waiting like a sailor’s wife of yore, but at other times was quietly envious of her great love. Henry could have been fully frustrating, since his condition makes him an undependable person—almost a metaphorical manifestation of stereotypical male behavior, but overall his lack of control made me more sympathetic to his baser behaviors.

From a philosophical perspective, Niffenegger examines love, free will vs. determinism, vs. chaos, how we percieve ourselves across our lives, and how being forced to travel through time affects a person’s opinion about those things. Henry tends to see free will within fate, that one’s personality and choices "can only work towards what has already happened" (p. 75). Though most of us wish to have clearer hindsight (foresight in the time-traveler’s case?) Henry often feels trapped by his prescience, saying "If you know things [you] feel trapped . . . If you are in time, not knowing, you’re free" (p. 145).

Niffenegger impressively wields the complex narrative and timeline into a philosophical love story. Over the course of the book the conceit of time travel becomes less of a trick, and coupled with the dual narrative, the unconventional structure helps both to forshadow and to recolor scenes from different angles. After finishing the book in a burst of holiday-weekend reading, I was almost compelled to reread parts to better savor these shadings and forshadowings. However, I felt a bit confined by my knowledge of how everything plays out, and determined that I would remain satisfied with one trip through the story.

Summer Music

2006-05-29T18:24:00.000-07:00

While flipping through my Brand New Bag playlist on my iPod, I was once again confronted with my terrible habit of downloading songs from my favorite music blogs, and then allowing them to languish undiscovered by my ears. Somehow it makes me feel like I’m letting good music go to waste. Other times, I look at them as secret gems that lie in wait to burrow into my ears. These two songs did just that—totally hijacking my speakers for the long weekend. They definitely need to be shared:

"Love Train" by Wolfmother. With this song, I re-discover that damn, I am an easy mark. If you make a a big stupid stomp-y Zep-ish riff, I will fucking eat it up. (Right + click/option + click, s’il vous plait.)

"My Electric Underwear" by Whirlwind Heat. Again, I’m a simple girl with simple needs. Give me something garage-rockish with a twist, and I will dig it. Garage rock with Moog? Hell yeah. (Right + click/option + click, por favor.)

I’m working on putting together a Summer 2006 Rock mix. A go-to collection of white sangria for the ears. Until I finish, here’s what I compiled for Summer 2005 (which kind of skews to calcified favorites):

1. The Jam - "The Modern World"
2. Wilco - "Heavy Metal Drummer"
3. The Stone Roses - "Fools Gold"
4. Sebadoh - "Rebound"
5. The Smoking Popes - "Need You Around"
6. Elastica - "Stutter"
7. Sonic Youth - "Silver Rocket"
8. The Pixies - "Debaser"
9. Le Tigre - "Deceptacon"
10. Devo - "Uncontrollable Urge"
11. Fugazi - "Waiting Room"
12. The Breeders - "Cannonball"
13. The Clash - "Train in Vain (Stand by Me)"

Ac-cen-tu-ate

2006-05-24T18:25:00.000-07:00

Things I’m loving today:

* The coming long weekend. I don’t have plans, but am itching to start making my favorite summer treats: guacamole, crazy chicken salads, pesto, Thai(ish) chicken skewers with peanut sauce (best on the grill, but broiler works, too).

* The Raconteurs' Broken Boy Soldiers. Sure, I’ve had half the album downloaded for months (Don’t rat me out to Jack!), but it’s always a different animal when you can hear a work in its entirety. It sounds old, but in a broken-in jeans way. It reminds me of being seventeen and speeding down winding Ohio back roads to a boyfriend’s house while singing at the top of my voice.

* My new haircut. Shaggy in a Tegan-meets-Klute way, but softer. Plus it styles like a breeze (good because I am lazy and incompetent at hair styling).

* The Time Traveler’s Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger. I put my foot down and made the executive decision that this would be the next book club read. It’s a fun read, but also sad and sweet. I can’t wait to discuss the ways in which "time travel violates the laws of time travel" with John.

* My summer reading list. A mix of trashy and less trashy. I’m with the Band, Under the Banner of Heaven, Rip It Up and Start Again, The Group are just a few that I have tentatively lined up. Any suggestions? What I really want to read is Coal Miner’s Daughter, but it’s out of print! That should be a crime. The Strand didn’t have it, either.

* The Lost season finale tonight. Maybe something will be explained—they have two hours! Of course tomorrow I’ll probably still be wondering what the fuck happened to Flight 815.

12. Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience, by William Blake

2006-05-17T18:27:00.000-07:00

I majored in English Literature. Within the major I concentrated on Romantic and Modern British work. So I was all about Thomas Hardy, D. H. Lawrence, the Brontës, Austen, and that crazy synesthetic painter and poet William Blake.

Blake’s melodramatic poems really spoke to 20-year old quasi-goth me. A whole set of poems that are knotted up with the juxtaposition of innocence and corruption, hope and despair? Sign me up! (This may also explain the string of lapsed Catholic boys I dated around the same time, I suppose.)

Anyway, I remember this as one of my favorite poems from the collection:

A Poison Tree
I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe;
I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I water’d it in fears,
Night & morning with my tears;
And I sunned it with my smiles
And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright;
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine,

And into my garden stole
When the night had veil’d the pole:
In the morning glad I see
My foe outstretch’d beneath the tree

Advertising Looks and Chops a Must

2006-05-14T18:21:00.000-07:00

It’s amazing how your outward appearance affects your psychology. I’d been dragging my heels about getting my hair cut, and the overgrown-ness was weighing me down and making me depressed, or exaggerating any PMS or depressive tendencies I may have. For example, for the past few weeks, I haven’t really wanted to go out on dates, because how could someone like the dowdy-haired me. I hadn’t been wearing my new contacts or favorite outfits, kind of in a sense that I didn’t want to "waste" them or the effort when my hair was just going to look crap anyway. I knew I had to put an end to this spiral as soon as I could.

Today at the crack of noon, I dragged my ass to Le Chandelier on Park Slope’s 5th Avenue, on the off chance they could squeeze in a walk-in client. I got right in and consulted with a stylist who knew the sort of look I was going for: kind of a Tegan and Sara meets Klute-era Jane Fonda, but slightly softer and less emotionally-numb hooker. Yes, I had pictures of the styles my idea was based on, but as it turns out Klute was one of the stylist’s favorite movies. I joked that I look to Turner Classic Movies for my style inspirations, since last year I’d based a style on The Apartment-era Shirley MacLaine. Anyway, I walked out with a cool, slightly rock ‘n roll shag that’s easy to style and works with my fine hair. And you can’t beat a $35 haircut in New York.

After that I walked up 5th to Beacon’s Closet to see what sort of spring stuff was in, and bought some cool earrings. I had some shirts picked out, but nothing knocked my socks off in the dressing room. I must say I never bother trying on jeans there because cast-offs of the rocker girls make me feel hugely fat. I wince just looking at the thighs on the drainpipe skinny jeans, or the super-tight cap-sleeve shirts that will make my upper arms look like hams. It’s completely sick, I know I’m on the petite side, but even when you’re a size 2 or 4 you still blame yourself when something doesn’t fit or looks bad.

I usually head off this bad juju at the pass by pre-rejecting clothes that won’t work, thanks to Trinny and Susannah from BBC’s What Not to Wear (not really a fan of the TLC version). They believe that there’s beauty in everyone and that there are life-affirming qualities in encouraging people to do their best to bring it out in a way that works for their personality and their lifestyle (even if it means breaking them down a bit, boot-cam style). They’re very explicit about telling people the styles and colors that suit them best, and the life-saving qualities of proper foundation garments. They added a wrinkle of spending a day in that person’s shoes, which I think helped them get more constructively in the head of their subjects, since they started doing themes based on various life stages— just starting a career, post-divorce, mid-life crisis, over-70s. I have to admit if you catch me at the right time of the month, I can get verklempt watching this show, because of how far they will go to convince people they can and deserve to look good. There was one girl who hated her body so much (she was an athletic soldier who didn’t think she "deserved" to have such a good-looking husband). She had a similar build to Trinny, but younger and tighter, and said something to the effect that she couldn’t possibly look as good as Trinny in clothes. At which point Trinny dropped her trousers, exposing her thong, and showed her the flaws her clothes minimized: flat ass, short legs compared to her torso, cellulite, cankles. I got all choked up thinking she’s probably a good friend, considering she’d do that—on camera—for a makeover subject.

Diversion aside, I spent the rest of the afternoon with a spring in my step. I felt lighter and sassier and wanting to meet the world head on. And all it took was a little snipping.

11. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, by William Shakespeare

2006-05-10T18:24:00.000-07:00

This is one of my favorite of Shakespeare’s plays, so I thought it’d be nice to revisit on the cusp of summer. I’ve always loved the poetry and wordplay and the intricate logic of its plotting (while staying loose enough that you don’t have to obsess over details unless you want). It’s much funnier and cleverer than a first read hints at. I also have a personal connection to the play, which the rereading brought flooding back to me.

In the summer of 1995, I played Hermia in a hometown production. It was cool to get experience performing a play outside, at sunset in an ampitheatre (bug spray essential). Demitrius was played by one of my good friends from high school. We had been theater geeks together—there was even an improv troupe involved—so it was a lot of fun to be able to bounce off each other again.

Quite literally in Act 3, Scene 2. If you remember, that’s the scene where the misunderstanding of the four lovers—Hermia, Helena, Demetrius, and Lysander—comes to a head. Due to a Puckish interference the boys are both now in love with and fighting over Helena rather than Hermia. Hermia is confused and Helena thinks it’s all a cruel joke and blames Hermia. Hermia doesn’t take kindly to this and has a go at Helena and Demetrius. It was great fun playing the sassy, short one, and admittedly not too much of a stretch for me.

How low am I, thou painted maypole? Speak!
How low am I? I am not yet so low
But that my nails can reach unto thine eyes.
- Hermia, III, ii, 296–298

O, when she is angry, she is keen and shrewd.
She was a vixen when we went to school,
And though she be but little, she is fierce.
- Helena speaking of Hermia, III, ii, 323–325

Since nearly all of our scenes were with one another, the four of us bonded during the rehearsal period. It was beautiful getting to be outdoors at sunset every evening and feeling the bonding that a shared creative effort brings on. Some evenings we were a bit bad and concocted a cocktail of vodka, cherries, and cran-cherry juice to "beguile the lazy time." (I also made out with Lysander a few times. This was bad because he was only 17—I was 20—and I think he may have had a girlfriend. Chalk another one up to reckless youth.) During one of our performances (indoors due to rain thankfully, so I wasn’t wearing a mic pack) Demetrius dropped me during the fight scene, knocking the wind out of me with a sickening thud and exposing my panties to the gasping audience. The show must go on, though, and as much as it pained me I got right back up and finished the scene. I had to avoid Theseus—a sleazy local chiropractor, Hedonism tee shirts and all, who wanted to give me a backrub—for the rest of the show.

It was a summer of the show must go on. Acting in that play was a welcome distraction for many of us. In my downtime, I was working a shitty summer job at a local KMart that was going out of business; I was still recovering from a serious bout of depression I had suffered that spring. I felt helpless as Demetrius lost his mother to a long illness that summer. I’d known him for years and I never remember his mother not being sick, but this was different, the final corner was being turned. I remember riding in his car when he was carrying funeral clothes home from the dry cleaners’. I remember his insisting that none of the shows be cancelled, if only to carve out the smallest space of something normal in a time of huge stress and sadness. I don’t know where or how he found the strength to perform so well and to put so much life into something that could be seen as so frivolous, but I always, and still, admire him for it. And so this play became charged and bittersweet, stamped in time to me; every time I reread it I sit down as I would with a photo album and page through the memories.

10. Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen

2006-05-06T18:26:00.000-07:00

Pride and Prejudice was such a delight of a read that I took my time with it, to drink it all in. It’s funny though, with works that are this well-known, you’ve absorbed so much of the plot and characterization that you can’t remember if you’ve read it before or not. I mean, surely I have read this before, I just can’t place when that was. I’ve also recently seen both the BBC and the Keira Knightly move adaptations, so I’m sure that’s part of the aching familiarity, too.

Anyway, you know what it’s about. Sisterly relationships, meeting cute rich guys so you don’t become homeless when your dad dies, etc. For something written nearly 200 years ago, there’s really a breezy quality to it, a lightheartedness you don’t often see in early 19th century literature. It’s definitely a less dense and more cinematic read than Sense and Sensibility, which was published only a couple of years before Pride and Prejudice.

People often make the innacurate interpretation of Elizabeth as a "modern" woman (see: Knightly, Keira). She remains very much of her time in her standards and behavior, just not as the usual interpretation of it. Her lively wit, honesty, and backbone (though initially prejudicial) are what make her a catch, rather than her family connections and her useless gentlewoman "accomplishments". I think it’s her insightfulness that seems modern to us, rather than her actual comportment. She knows herself, and her family, and her community, and sees the cause-and-effect that people’s behavior has on each other. That level of thoughtfulness was only just coming into the writing of the time, and is what keeps Elizabeth so fresh and so resonant to the modern reader.

My favorite element of the book—aside from all the squeeable love stuff—is the closeness between Elizabeth and her sister Jane. Their love and concern for each other leaps off the page. Of course this makes the other sisters pale in comparison. Aside from the scandal that is Lydia, you could pretty much scrap Kitty and Mary (their essential uselessness also shows in the movie versions); the only reason for those two in my mind is to have the added pressure of having to marry off five daughters instead of three. (Ooh, and Lydia’s ending in the book is meaner than even the BBC version.)

Austen writes as much about sisterly relationships as she does romantic ones. They definitely stand as a bulwark and a comfort against romantic disappointment and the untenable ideal of an idle gentry. (That’s a whole other essay of worms, though.)

Sirk-alicious

2006-04-16T18:04:00.000-07:00

Oh my Lord, how much do I love the Douglas Sirk version of Imitation of Life? My mom and I always squeal with glee when we hear it’s going to be on. I always drop everything whenever it pops up on Turner Classic Movies. Anyway, it’s fabulous. I love it.

It’s such a cheesy melodrama, full to the brim with delicious characters: single-mother and ambitious actress Lora (Lana Turner), her daughter Susan (Sandra Dee), the actress’ saintly bestest African American friend—also a single mother and Lora’s maid, of course—Annie (Juanita Moore), and Annie’s daughter Sara Jane, who is desperate to "pass" (Susan Kohner—trivia alert: she’s the mother of the Weitz brothers, who directed About a Boy and In Good Company). And oh yeah, if you don’t cry when Mahalia Jackson sings at Annie’s funeral, you have no soul.

Summer’s What You Make It

2006-04-15T18:11:00.000-07:00

While doing my periodic browse of music blogs this week, I noticed that it’s that time of year again: time to announce the summer lineups in the city’s parks. I try to catch as many of these as possible. It’s great cheap outdoor entertainment. For example, Battery Park, Castle Clinton, City Hall Park, Rockefeller Park, South Street Seaport, Wagner Park, and the World Financial Center are all part of the deliciously free River to River Festival. Hudson River Park has events at Pier 54 (near where Kallie and I went kayaking last summer).

Central Park SummerStage hasn’t been as forthcoming withh the free of cheap events, but whatareyougonnado (take a lovely epicurean picnic to the free opera nights, that’s what)? I am the most partial to Celebrate Brooklyn events at the Prospect Park Bandshell, not the least because it is about a block from my apartment. Outdoor movies, music, Two Boots pizza, that’s what I’m about. Plus Yo La Tengo Wilco are coming (pricier benefit shows, but still)! So I’ve got to get to planning and writing down all these events to ensure a pleasure-filled summer. We’ll see what we can do about other the more physical pleasures while we’re at it, too. Ahem.

Anyway, today was one of the most undeniably beautiful spring days so far. I woke up early and seized the day. I even went for a run around Prospect Park. (I can still call it a run if I walked about half of it, right?) After I cleaned up, I did some browsing in local stores; I turned out not to be in a mood to like things enough to follow through and buy them. I fed a vacationing friend’s cats. later on I went to a wine tasting at my favorite local wine shop and picked up a couple bottles—some Alsace blend that was one of the tasting wines and my old reliable Wolf Blass shiraz. Then I swung by the grocery to pick up groceries for tomorrow’s dinner. I went in open minded and came out with tuna steak, salad fixin’s, and other nibbly things.

After all this, however, it’s gonna be delivery or "out" for dinner.

Peer Gynt at BAM

2006-04-14T18:16:00.000-07:00

Last night a group of us went to see Robert Wilson’s staging of Ibsen’s Peer Gynt at BAM. It was four hours long, in Norwegian verse (with supertitles, giving it an operatic feel). Peer Gynt is a sort of picaresque look at the life of a changable antihero who spends his life simultaneously trying to "be himself" while trying to escape from the trappings of himself. Oh, and there are trolls, too.

As a performance piece the production looks really really cool. Robert Wilson has a super-stylized vision he imposes on productions, giving them a minimalist bizarreness. As it says in the New York Times review linked above, "If everyone onstage looks like a vampire and acts like a sleepwalker, Mr. Wilson is probably in charge." (Hee!)

As a production of a play however, Wilson blurs the distinction between fantasy and reality, which impedes conveying the meaning and insight of the work. I mean something is lost when a mountain village is as whacked out as a troll kingdom and madmen and village elders are essentially pulling the same physical contortions. Wilson’s aesthetic for Peer Gynt (considering what I think I’m supposed to get out of Ibsen’s work, which I had never read) ends up being more trickery and hinderance than a zesty interpretation of a classic play. Although I enjoyed the visual spectacle (and Michael Galasso’s scoring), the dissonance between Ibsen and Wilson ended up blunting the poignancy of Peer’s fifth-act scramble for redemption.

Hair Hopper

2006-04-11T18:19:00.000-07:00

I have reached the irritation point with my hair. I’ve got that late-afternoon floppy hair thing going on. All I want is to push it all into a ponytail or something, but damn it I don’t have my just-in-case hair accessories because I changed outfits at 8:48 a.m. (menstrual fashion anguish and cussedness) so the needed emergency rubber band and clips are nestled in the pocket of a pair of jeans laying across my bed. Ugh.

I’m way overdue for a haircut; I think I last went in late January. I’ve been growing my hair out for awhile. Last year I chopped most of it off when I got a style I modeled on Shirley MacLaine’s circa The Apartment. Loved it. But short-short hair is hard to maintain. You have to be on top of regular haircuts (and I am woefully slack). Harder still is growing out short-short hair. It’s an extended dance remix of strategy and awkwardness. I managed to aquit myself pretty well this time—after having survived the Elastica (with black dye-job!) grow-out of 1996.

Anyway, I am a total hair-hopper-salon-slut. Sadly, I’ve never developed the sort of salon fidelity that would provide the reassurance and guidance that I need. I cite the expense of NYC salons and my general dissatisfaction with most places as the main reasons behind this twitchiness.

Right now I’m in one of those "Where am I going with my hair?" places. It’s kinda shoulder-length, with some layers (Some choppier than others, as I always feel the need to DIY a bit when the stylist has been too neat—seriously, fuck it up a bit or else my superstraight, babyfine hair will go all Soccer Mom on me and make me sad.), and long, heavy bangs. I’m in the mood to stay with a medium length, but not too heavy for summer, or so long that I’d just pull it back all the time. I want something kind of indie-rock chick, you know kind of Tegan and Sara-y, but slightly less of a slappable offense. How does one even begin to convey this, and to whom? I need help! I’m ready to embark on a sass overload—my contacts have just come in—but I need some hand-holding.

So Make a Pass At Me Already!

2006-04-05T18:20:00.000-07:00

I went to get fitted for contacts today. Most of you know how vain I am about wearing my glasses. I wear them only under duress, when I can no longer fake that I can see the world around me. When the squinting and the guessing from context fails, I nerd up. My gay boyfriends are convinced that my blindness is what keeps me from meeting fellas when I’m out and about: that I am in fact being checked out, but that I can’t actually see to assess the situation (and the squinting isn’t sexy, either).

Why the cussedness when it comes to wearing glasses? Well, I’ve been wearing specs since I was five years old. That means that my mother picked out my glasses for me. My mother, she of the function-over-form, choose my first sets of glasses from the bargain-section of frames. They were fugly brown plastic squares that sat slightly askew on my childhood face, magnifying my eyes to Margaret Keane-like proportions. (Surely this was abuse.) It doesn’t matter that the glasses I wear today are super-sleek Calvin Kleins with the highest, least-owl-making lenses available. When they are on my face, I feel haunted by my whole ugly-duckling childhood. If that’s vain, so be it.

Anyway. It’s been a while since I’ve had a check up (3 years–eep!) and even longer still since I’d last had contacts. I was curious to see what sort of innovations had been cooked up. The optometrist had an amazing array of machines that measured the dimensions of my eyes and spit out the results. It was quite a long roll of paper, but I wasn’t sure if I needed to worry about that.

It turns out that I have to get gas permeable lenses (i.e. not disposables like most of you) because of my blind-ass prescription and level of astigmatism. They’re made out of some sort of special plastic that, if I remember correctly, was formed with cinnamon and moonbeams (sorry, I tuned out the science part). I used a major chunk of my tax return to pay for all of this, and I think it was well worth it. They’re being alchemied as I type. So I’ll be in business within a couple of weeks. Flirt away, boys.

Dilemmas, Appetites

2006-04-01T18:22:00.000-08:00

Oh, the wonder of luxury dilemmas! I fret over each new addition to my iPod (18.2 of 20 GB filled, around 3,200 songs). When I was ripping my CD collection, I decided I couldn’t add something if I hadn’t listened to it in 5 years (e.g. Cranes! Boy that one takes me back.) I even undertook some culling recently (definitely not sorry about losing shit like Coldplay or the Killers, although Oasis got to stay for nostalgic reasons) to keep the collection well-rounded. So it took me bloody forever to make some eMusic selections today. I ended up with The Gossip’s Standing in the Way of Control and Low’s Things We Lost in the Fire. Fast and slow, yin and yang, etc.

In other news, I’ve been recovering from the flu all week. I’ve progressed from languishing on the couch (Saturday–Monday afternoon), to sore throat (Monday–Wednesday) to the cough of the Romantic poet (late Wednesday–present). In spite of these lingering symptoms, I’ve been functioning at about 88% capacity. I do notice though, that my energy peaks and troughs more radically than normal; I’m fine most of the day, but add in some lunch-hour shopping and by 5 I’m all "Lord, no" about evening activities. (It is, however an excuse to be a lazy bastard, should you feel the need to have excuses to be one.)

The saddest part of being sick for me is feeling indifferent to food and eating. People who know me know I am not feeling well when I shrug my shoulders at mealtime. Now that I’m feeling better, I’m kinda in the mood for a gorgeous meal. Steak frites at Moutarde, or a vindaloo curry with lots of naan & raita on the side (and papadum!), or Grimaldi’s pizza with a trip to the Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory for dessert, or shrimp in white wine & garlic sauce and other tapas delights at Xunta . . . I could go on, but my appetites have come roaring back and now I’m hungry.

9. Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro

2006-03-31T17:38:00.000-08:00

Never Let Me Go was my office’s latest book club selection. It’s a book in which the slow revelations should be enjoyed, not pushed, so I’ll try not to be spoiler-y. I must admit that I am a spoiler-whore, which rarely hampers my enjoyment, since it frees me to really get into the structure of a book and peel back deeper meanings. Although I knew what most of the initially obscure elements were before they were uncovered, although Ishiguro is a master of withholding. This annoyed me during the first few chapters (the spoiler-whore thing), and I worried that the plot elements I did know about would lead the novel into dystopian sci-fi territory—far, far away from the beloved upstairs-downstairs drama of The Remains of the Day, which I loved.

I needn’t have worried. In Never Let Me Go, Ishiguro continues to explore themes of wasted lives and thwarted loves in restrictive environments. In structure, Never Let Me Go often reminded me of the gothic or Romantic-era novels—Jane Eyre, for instance. Near the end of the book, there is a big reveal of the metaphorical rumblings in the attic. While it can be frustrating waiting for the last of the backstory to fall into place, the slow reveal gives the reader a chance to get to know the characters, which in turn gives Ishiguro a chance to hit the reader with full impact of horror.

This makes the revelation scene and the denoument devastatingly effective.

I really can’t say much more without telling too much. I don’t trust myself. That speaks volumes I guess, because if the book had annoyed me in any way I would have ruined the whole thing by spoiling the whole book. So: recommended.

8. Actual Air, by David Berman

2006-03-26T17:42:00.000-08:00

Actual Air is a re-read; I read and loved this compilation for the first time about six years ago. (I ruled a 5-year statute of limitations on re-reads for the 50-Book Challenge.) You may know Berman from the band The Silver Jews; I got into them through their album American Water, and bought this book soon after because I liked that album so much. The album contains lyrical pearls such as "All my favorite singers couldn’t sing" and "In 1984 I was hospitalized for approaching perfection."

Anyway, I thought I’d share "Imagining Defeat," one of my favorite Berman poems that isn’t "Self-Portrait at 28" (That one is great—however it’s kind of a long poem for blogging. Now I’ve just remembered that I first read it at 25, when 28 was in the future rather than in the past. Hm.)

Imagining Defeat

She woke me up at dawn,
her suitcase like a little brown dog at her heels.

I sat up and looked out the window
at the snow falling in the stand of blackjack trees.

A bus ticket in her hand.

Then she brought something black up to her mouth,
a plum I thought, but it was an asthma inhaler.

I reached under the bed for my menthols
and she asked if I ever thought of cancer.

Yes, I said, but always as a tree way up ahead
in the distance where it doesn’t matter

And I suppose a dead soul must look back at that tree,
so far behind his wagon where it also doesn’t matter.

except as a memory of rest or water.

Though to believe any of that, I thought,
you have to accept the premise

that she woke me up at all.

© 1999 Open City Books

“I Am Your Secretary!”

2006-03-21T17:45:00.000-08:00

I was watching Secretary last night (Yes, my Super Saver Shipping order came that quickly!). Maybe it was the glass-and-a-half of shiraz I’d drunk, and maybe it was the horomones, but I’d forgotten how sweet and romantic this movie is . . .

It’s about two people finding a perfect fit in one another: Lee pushes Edward out of his shame at his sadistic urges, while Edward shows Lee that she can find release by rechannelling her urge to cut herself into masochistic play (which he doles out with a strange tenderness). There’s also enough emotional repression, hesitation, and longing for the English major in me to enjoy.

While I’m not into BDSM myself—though who doesn’t deserve a spanking or need to be held down sometimes?—I like the way it’s treated here. The narrative arc is Lee’s coming of age: discovering what she doesn’t want (Peter, her vanilla suitor), and becoming determined about what she does want (Edward, and on terms where they can live their roles 24/7). And as she becomes more determined to be his submissive, she gains confidence and a sense of self, and a better wardrobe.

I mean if these two crazy kids can make a go of it, there’s hope for us all, right?

“It’s a Strange World”

2006-03-17T17:46:00.001-08:00

Further signs that I am either too old for this shit or too wise for this shit: I have absolutely no desire to go out on St. Patrick’s Day. Eight, ten years ago, the crowds and the jostling seemed energetic and exciting for me. Now however, I either head home or someplace that is as un-St. Paddy’s as possible. Fuck the puking Long Island teenagers, the daytrippers and the cable-knit sweaters they rode in on. Amateurs. My disdain for the "Everyone is a little bit Irish on St. Patrick’s Day!" sentiment can be summed up nicely by the photograph below.

In happier news, the Trader Joe’s at Union Square opened today. I haven’t gone yet (waiting for the madness to die down a bit) but I am eager to stop in and pick up fun, healthy snacks and prepared foods at reasonable prices. Hopefully the Trader Joe’s wine store will open soon so that we New Yorkers can get our mitts on Two Buck Chuck. Damn blue laws.

Speaking of blue, I caught Blue Velvet on it’s last night at the Film Forum. I mentioned earlier that I originally rented this with my parents. I remember being embarrassed at all the sex and nudity and swearing and violence, but separately, if you know what I mean. Fifteen years on, it’s the sado-masochistic binding of violence to sex that jolts me; that and Jeffrey Beaumont’s (Kyle MacLachlan) epiphany that the world—including himself—may not be as milk-and-cookies as he had believed, and the corrosive results of kinks left to fester. And dear God, Dennis Hopper was awesome playing the completely corrosively kinked psychopath Frank Booth. Every time he entered a scene, I felt myself tense up as if I were in the room with him. I also can now appreciate the aesthetics and common themes from my familiarity with David Lynch’s other work: fire, small towns, innocence versus corruption, a fascination with everything strange in the world, and so on.

7. 100 Selected Poems, by e. e. cummings

2006-03-14T17:48:00.000-08:00

My pickled ginger over the past couple of days, cleansing my reading palate, has been 100 Selected Poems, by e. e. cummings.

Some of my favorites in this collection i like my body when it is with your, in spite of everything, somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond, if everything happens that can’t be done, and when serpents bargain for the right to squirm. Here, though, is one that seems about right for almost-spring:

Spring is like a prehaps hand
(which comes carefully
out of Nowhere)arranging
a window into which people look(while
people stare
arranging and changing placing
carefully there a strange
thing and a known thing here)and

changing everything carefully

spring is like a perhaps
Hand in a window
(carefully to
and fro moving New and
Old things,while
people stare carefully
moving a perhaps
fraction of flower here placing
an inch of air there) and

without breaking anything.

6. Somerset Maugham: A Life, by Jeffrey Meyers

2006-03-12T17:57:00.000-08:00

In the past few years, I’ve really gotten into reading biographies. I love history and 19th- and early-20th century literature, so it wasn’t too unexpected that I would get around to checking out Somerset Maugham: A Life. I’d enjoyed the delightfully snide Cakes and Ale last year, so I was eager to learn more about it’s author and his times—especially given that Maugham lived a long life, from 1874 until 1965.

Meyers does an admirable job setting up the historical context of Maugham’s early life in the opening chapters. The book follows Willie (as he was known to those close to him) from his shy and lonely childhood, through his long adult life as a highly educated, well-traveled, successful writer.

Maugham does not glide easily through life, however. He stuttered all his life and found himself ensnared into an unpleasant marriage. He fought internally with himself over his sexuality; though he once fell in love with a woman—not the one he married, mind—he was primarily attracted to men. For most of his life "gross indecency" between men was a felony, so Maugham alternately tried to stay one step ahead of the law or to repress his desires into affairs with women, which explains some of the misogyny (and general misanthropy) that flared up in his character. He wasn’t blind to the roots of his unhappiness, and said of himself, "I was a quarter normal and three-quarters queers, but I tried to persuade myself it was the other way round. That was my greatest mistake."

Anyway, I intend to read at least a couple more of Maugham’s books—hey, maybe even this year!—so I enjoyed getting some context on his writing, and some background on the people on whom he’d based his characters. I’m not as eager to have him over to tea as I would the subjects of other biographies I’ve read; this is one of my few experiences of liking a person a bit less the more you know about them, all the while appreciating a bit more what made them tick.

“Runnin’ With the Devil”

2006-03-11T17:59:00.000-08:00

I went for a run for the first time today (so there, Charles). I ran the Prospect Park circuit—which is 3.35 miles, if you’re wondering. I had rockin’ music, and that made me forget about pacing myself. I’d run through Van Halen’s "Panama", Heaven 17’s "Temptation", and Franz Ferdinand’s "Do You Want To?" (nearly 10 minutes and a little over a mile) before I realized I probably wouldn’t be able to stick to that pace for another half hour. So I switched to a two-songs running, one-song walking format and I was fine after that. Unless I die in my sleep tonight, in which case, my bad.

This made me remember how important music can be as a motivator. With 80s-gay-synth-disco playing, I can zone into the beat and take my mind off the fact that I’m doing something athletic. When the iPod shuffled to something slower or more complicated, I suddenly thought "This is madness! I want nachos!"

I was surprised that I seem to be in pretty good cardiovascular health despite being a lazy bastard. I definitely wasn’t huffing and puffing and getting stiches in my side like other people were. (Maybe I should know this, as I regularly get withering looks when I blithely dash up the stairs from the F train at 7th Ave. and 9th Street.)

I guess part of it is I still see myself as a chubby, bespeckled, be-permed kid. Gym and athletics were things to avoid then. The Bataan death runs. The joke of attempting to climb the rope. I would play the outer-outfield during baseball. And playing volleyball with those bitches led by my ex-friend Stacie Bixler? Fuck that noise.

It’s only in the past few years that I’ve really been able to get beyond all that. I dip in and out of various dance and yoga classes, eagerly try kayaking on a whim, or go for long walks and hikes. I’m still working on making exercise a more everyday part of my life, and I’m slowly getting better about it. I’d like to say it’s purely soulful, or for the health benefits, but honey, I’m 31 and I need it to keep my ass-size in check. As much as it pains me, I can’t live on beer and blue-cheese burgers and sit on my ass and stay a size 2 like I could when I was 21. Something had to give, and if you know me at all, you’d know it wasn’t going to be the food.

A Recharged Mood

2006-02-26T17:06:00.000-08:00

The weekend finds me recharged and in much better spirits.

Friday night I had a lovely stitch n bitch session at Ginny’s. She made some "change into your eatin’ pants" chili nachos. I got better at knitting, though I am still fuzzy on purling, but I’m sure that another time it will fall into place (I need to shop for fluffier beginner’s yarn and needles). We played with her excitable little puppies, which was almost as exciting for the humans as it was for the canines.

Since I knew today was going to be windy and cold, I spent a chunk of Saturday afternoon in Prospect Park, listening to new albums on my iPod. These included Jenny Lewis with the Watson Twins’ Rabbit Fur Coat, Destroyer’s Destroyer’s Rubies, and Cat Powers’ The Greatest. It’s odd how I sometimes feel the need to set aside time to keep up and get to know my new music; that’s so much different from when I was an underemployed student.

I spent the late afternoon strolling the neighborhood and picking up groceries. I’d decided I wanted to make fish on Saturday, and soup on Sunday. I bought a beautiful tuna steak, chicken breasts, ginger, mixed greens, lemons, carrots, celery, onions, yams, potatoes, a bottle of Chardonnay, and some chicken stock (I apologize to my friends *cough Ginny cough* who are offended by use of store-bought stocks and broths). Last night I seared a marinated tuna steak (no-frills marinade: pepper, lemon, garlic, olive oil) and a tossed mixed greens salad with lemon vinaigrette and relaxed with cheesy movies and a couple glasses of wine. Tonight I plan to make some sort of soup involving chicken, carrots, ginger, sweet potatoes, and maybe peas or whatever else isn’t nailed down.

I had the chance in the early evening yesterday to finish my weekly task of reading the New Yorker. This week’s short story was by John Updike, whom I always enjoy reading. Like his past few stories in the New Yorker (if I am remembering correctly), this story is about an older man looking back on his life, and the arc of his relationships with his parents, his wife, and his wife’s parents. This story contained a some well-turned writing that has stuck to me. One passage was the stickiest, and it’s kind of a thoughtful note to leave on, "It is easy to love people in memory; the hard trick is to love them when they are there, in front of you."

Fed Up, In That Estrogen Way

2006-02-24T17:17:00.000-08:00

I went to the doctor for my annual checkup yesterday. I learned a couple of important things. One: don’t eat chocolate-chip pancakes and tater tots for dinner the night before you need to get weighed at the doctor’s (also don’t be PMS-bloated, but I couldn’t control that). I feel terribly misrepresented that I had to get weighed on a fat-pants day. Two: apparently I am not now, nor have I ever been 5′2 3/8" tall (which I have always rounded up to the 1/2" mark). I’m really only 5′2 1/4". This 1/8" discrepancy totally got me down.

Actually, this week has been full of ups and downs; it should be noted for the record that I work in an office which is 3/4 female—which means that all week the estrogen tension has been swelling into a perfect storm of menstrual synchronicity. This is in addition to the general thrum of career anxiety I have been trying to work through.

I honestly can’t read one more career-related article that advises you to find something you love and work becomes like play (and dance as if no one is watching . . . vomit!). Not to be totally cynical, but that’s a fucking luxury solution. Most people aren’t good enough (or let’s face it duckies, well-connected enough) at what they love to get paid a living, thriving wage to do it; the world can support only so many interpretive dancers, you know. I count myself as lucky that for the last several years I have liked my job and my working environment. I felt like I was learning and I worked with lovely people. Nowadays . . . I work with lovely people.

It’s times like these when I get fed up with and worry about all aspects of my life: not just the career trajectory, but also creative/hobby pursuits, getting with the program of eating better and exercising more, and wondering why I just have not clicked at all with anyone I have tried to go out with out with lately . . . basically I’m tired of pursuing all of this stuff, I feel like I should be in a place where I can relax and enjoy the fruits of my labors. (And to abuse the metaphor, I sometimes see the bruises on the individual fruits and not the accomplishment of having the orchard.)

One of my continuous challenges is to be more Zen with myself and to pry myself away from the should-bes. Because, yes, there are wonderful and beautiful things about where and who I am right now, just as I am, thank you Mr. Mark Darcy. It’s kind of a type-A Capricorn thing where if I see things that can be improved I want to take care of them right now. (Rome would damn well have been built in a day if Capricorns had been in charge!)

Tonight is a much-needed stitch-and-bitch. I will unwind, drink wine, and hopefully learn to purl. Most important though is being in the calming company of my girlfriends (and their puppies).

5. Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson

2006-02-20T17:24:00.000-08:00

Gilead, which also happens to be my office’s current book-club read, totally stymied the flow of my 50-Book Challenge. I found that I neither loved it so much that I was compelled to blaze through it, nor was it so terrible that I had to abandon it. It’s not bad, there’s nothing wrong with it, parts are really well-written prose, (it won a Pulitzer, for what it’s worth). On a gut level, for me it was just kind of there. I guess it’s just not particularly my taste in terms of pacin and plotting, and I’m alternately bugged and intrigued that I can’t place my finger on a more exact critique.

Basically the book reads as a memoir or a letter from John Ames—an elderly, Iowan, middling Congregationalist pastor—to his young son (from a late second marriage) and draws out various relationships between fathers and sons with major theological detours.

Alternatively, if you’d like my snarky rendering of the book: "I’m an old preacher, you are my son. I am about to die, so I am going to write a bunch of random things about my life, my father’s life, and my grandfather’s life for you. They were good men, remarkable preachers all of them. Each had a different approach to religion and God, and I hope my renderings do them justice, and I hope you can learn something from them.

No matter where we lived, life was hard. It very rarely rained enough, so we appreciated it when it was obliged to do so. It was remarkable. Read into any of my many mentions of rain and water as metaphors for baptism and purification. I hope you find this history useful. I’ll be long dead by the time you read this, so this may be an exercise in futility, but I appreciate the act of having written it all the same.

Also, I totally think my best friend’s son is an utter bastard, even though my rendering of his bastardy is anti-climactic; I get all pissy with him on several occassions for no good reason because I think he’s a dick, but we eventually kinda-sorta work it out (kinda like my old man and his old man)."

In my opinion, since the book is in the form of a long letter (and not even an exchange of letters, which usually gives the epistolary format some blood), the lack of plot drags the novel down in places. As a personal taste thing, the wide-eyed appreciation of the God in the everyday made me roll my eyes after three or four appearances. My black, dead heart can only take so much rhapsodizing over fucking dew on a blade of grass, you know? Much of the book reads like that part of church when the fun singing part is done, and the pastor is all about loving the sound of his voice, and you’re simultaneously sleepy and squirmy and you are just wishing the benediction at the end of the tunnel would appear so you can hit the buffet table at Frisch’s.

So basically my next book needs to be a punchy palate-cleanser.

The Valentine’s Day Counter-Programming Mix

2006-02-13T17:25:00.000-08:00

Even when I’ve been in the throes of romance with a lovah-man, the cheesy sentimentality of Valentine’s Day has always kind of bugged me. Oy with the rose petals already, you know?

I know I’m not alone in this (I hope). So to that end I spent most of the evening obsessing over the sequencing of this mix–gotta have a narrative thread, duh. Much like running Steel Magnolias during the Superbowl, I give you:

The Valentine’s Day Counter Programming Mix (annotated for extra nerd points)

1. "Passive Manipulation" - The White Stripes
"Women: Listen to your mothers! Don’t just succumb to the wishes of your brothers. Take a step back, take a look at one another–you need to know the difference between a father and a lover."
2. "Single Again" - The Fiery Furnaces
"[W]hen I was single, my pockets did jingle . . ."
3. "You’re No Rock ‘n Roll Fun" - Sleater-Kinney
For that rare occasion when you’ve dated a guy in a band who is boring. "[W]hen the evening ends we won’t be thinking of you then. Even if your song is playing on the jukebox!"
4. "Set You Free" - The Black Keys
Because you can’t celebrate all that is not lovey-dovey without bluesy rock sung by guys who want you to leave that trifilin’ guy and have a bit of rock ‘n roll fun. "Let him go. Walk out your door, And come to me. I’m gonna set you free." (Unfortunately, these guys kind of have faces for radio.)
5. "Don’t Break My Heart" - The Dirtbombs
‘Cause turnabout isn’t fair play. Also, I’m gearing up to see them at Southpaw on Saturday. I’ve described the Dirtbombs as the kind of band you’d have play at your house if you hated your house (that’s a compliment).
6. "Kill Yr Boyfriend" - Bis
Sometimes there’s just no other option, especially if he’s "easily angered and crap in bed." Plus this EP reminds me of dancing around in the radio station at college.
7. "Cheating On You" - Franz Ferdinand
Another good-natured, fantastically spiteful Scottish breakup song.
8. "Goodnight, Goodnight" - Hot Hot Heat
"I’ve given up on social niceties. I threw ‘em out when I threw out your keys (along with all your records I can’t stand)." When someone messes with a record collection, you know it’s beyond over.
9. "Who’ll Be the Next in Line?" - The Kinks
Because who isn’t venomously curious in the wake of a breakup? "Who’ll be the next in line? Who’ll be the next to watch your love fade? All your affections finally fade away."
10. "Twist and Crawl" - The English Beat
For that feeling you get when you see an ex out at a bar, and you feel weird, but act all brave. "Are we really happy, or maybe just pretending? I can’t tell the difference. Twist and crawl, twist and crawl, twist and crawl!"
11. "Mad Dog 20/20" - Teenage Fanclub
Now if you’re going to mope about a girl and think of her as "the best wine I ever had" make sure to do so in a sloppy indie-pop way, OK?
12. "I Don’t Want to Get Over You" - The Magnetic Fields
We’re all beset by minor setbacks when trying to get over someone, but I think if you’re in a place where you can "smoke clove cigarettes and drink vermouth like I was 17" you’re on the self-parody trail back from the edge. As soon as you wipe off that stupid Cure makeup, that is.
13. "Dead Flowers" - The Rolling Stones
It’s sort of sweet (yet creepy) that your ex would like you to know that he "won’t forget to put roses on your grave." It’s always nice to hear an ex has fond feelings about you, even when he likes heroin a lot more. It’s kind of like getting a Valentine’s card from your grandmother, in a weird way.
14. "W-I-F-E" - Old 97’s
You also can’t celebrate unlovey-doveiness without taking a detour into alt-country and country. When you’ve got a wife, other women, and whiskey vying for your affections, the obvious thing to do is to ditch the first two, right? At least whiskey doesn’t have a smart mouth. Usually.
15. "My Heart Is Broken" - Ryan Adams and the Cardinals
Don’t worry about the maudlin title, Mr. Prolific Pants owns up to this one. "If I hadn’t cheated while you were gone, the well that we’d been drinkin from wouldn’t a dried and turned cold."
16. "Gone for Good" - The Shins
This is one of the ultimate I’m Just Not That Into You songs. The lyrics are awesome the whole way through, but this about sums it up: "I gotta leave here my girl, get on with my lonely life. Just leave the ring on the rail for the wheels to nullify."
17. "Handle with Care" - Jenny Lewis with the Watson Twins
A little too nervy to be considered a coupled-up song. Thank George Harrison’s songwriting (in the Traveling Wilburys) for that. "Been beat up and battered ’round; been sent up, and I’ve been shot down. You’re the best thing that I’ve ever found. Handle me with care."
18. "I’m Lonely (But I Ain’t That Lonely Yet)" - The White Stripes
Just one final reminder from our bookenders, The White Stripes: you might be lonely or on the rebound, but you gotta have standards! "I roll over in bed looking for someone to touch. There’s a girl that I know of who don’t ask for much. She’s homely, and she’s cranky, and her hair’s in a net, and I’m lonely, but I ain’t that lonely yet."

Anyway, my advice for everyone is to eat chocolate, drink wine, and take advantage of yourself later on.

Snow Day!

2006-02-12T17:27:00.000-08:00

Oh, how I love a good Nor’easter! I love how they are usually kind enough to fall over a weekend to ensure a promising fun to inconvenience ratio. That means I can play in the park today, but that everything will be mostly cleaned up by tomorrow morning.

At least my mom no longer calls me the day before the storm, asking if I’d "stocked up" (on what–beer, tortilla chips, mac & cheese ingredients?–she’s never clear). I’m not a panic buyer. Also, there’s a bodega on the corner, like 100 feet from my front door. I’m generally not much of a panicker (worrier about neurotic minutiae, however, yes). So, you know, if you find yourself facing some low-rent Checkpoint Charlie while running contraband for the Resistance, by all means, ask me to be your Girl Friday.

Snowstorms tend to bring out the sort of hearty Midwestern "deal with it and make some lemonade" attitude in me (with a side of mild, loving disdain for those who can’t or won’t deal). My roommate (from Wisconsin) and I (from Ohio) are both in kind of a gleeful trudging-around-and-then-nesting overload. Right now I’m thawing a batch of chili and she’s making split-pea soup. We’re drinking coffee, tea, beer, and eating lots of cookies and cheese.

I got all woolied up and went out for about an hour and a half earlier today. It was still snowing like crazy. (No thunder like early this morning, though. That woke me up and I was confused, thinking perhaps I was having another of my crazy dreams, but I wasn’t.) My landlord was firing up his snow-blower. I should mention that he’s got maybe 40 square feet, tops, to clear.

Prospect Park was busy in all the places you’d expect them to be. I’m never not disturbed by the teenagers sledding down this one super-steep hill that’s pretty wooded; I have the scar to justify that fear, too. There were lots of dogs, kids burying each other in drifts, and people cross-country skiing on the park roads. I tried to find some of the less-beaten trails so I could see the undisturbed snow and the waterfalls and everything. It was beautiful and peaceful; damn, I wish I’d had a camera with me, though I added a picture from flickr below.

After about an hour or so I start making my way back to my home side of the park. After swinging a bit wide and staying tight along the pond fence, I realize I’ve painted myself into a corner in terms of finding one of the paths that go up the hill toward the bandshell and out. I can see the drive and the exit, but I’ve managed to find myself in an area where there a path up the hill has not been broken for like 30 yards on either side. I could do that, but I want to get out faster because of course I have to pee. I always have to pee. Not wanting to make like a husky, I embark on a great glute and cardio workout, if you can imagine sort of jogging uphill in two feet of snow.

So now I have cookies and chili to look forward to, and probably some bad movies and beer to wind down. The only thing I despair of is a nice snuggle. To that end (well, not) I’m working on my Valentine’s Day counter programing mix. You know how High Fidelity I am about those, so of course I’ll keep you posted.

“Gettin’ in the Wisdom in the Back of Your Tooth”

2006-02-08T17:28:00.000-08:00

I have a lot of crazy dreams, when I can remember them. I usually find them pretty entertaining with a side order of meaningful, and like to retell them to help me remember them and to tease out interpretations. (Although even I thought that last week’s "island of the cannibal supermodels" dream was a little too fucked up to share widely. Apologies to those with whom I shared the details.)

Anyway, in my dream last night I was visiting a version of my childhood home. At some point during the visit, I found my old retainer and wore it to bed. In reality I threw the damn thing out the day I turned eighteen and my parents and orthodontist couldn’t boss my teeth around anymore.

When I woke up the morning after wearing the retainer, I realized I’d caused a terrible shift in my front teeth–creating a huge gap between the front two. I pulled off the retainer and tried to see if my teeth would wiggle back into the correct position. Alarmingly, the front four came out and my mouth began to fill with blood.

I ran to the living room to ask my parents to call the dentist to make an appointment and to ask him what to do in the meantime. He told me (through my parents) to push the teeth back in as best I could to "keep the sockets fresh and open" and to come to his office. He said that he’d either be able to fix the teeth or if he couldn’t, he would give me dental implants or make a bridge. I insisted that he had to fix my teeth, because I was completely traumatized (on top of the loss and the blood and all) at the prospect of having fake teeth, because I associate them with old, broken-down people.

One of my friends picked me up to take me on some errands before my dentist appointment. I couldn’t drive myself because attending to "saving" my teeth was a two-handed, full-attention job. The friend was reassuring, even though I was embarrassed to be in public in that state. The dream ended with us on the way to the dentist and left me with a sense that even though things were messy, there were several ways in which my teeth situation could be fixed, though it might not be within my power to enact my first choice.

I never much thought about common thematic elements in dreams until I saw the "Test Dream" episode of The Sopranos. When I saw Tony’s teeth falling out, a shock wave of recognition washed over me. In talking about and reading about the episode I learned that teeth are the most common symbolic elements in people’s dreams. Apparently they can represent many things, such as anxiety about appearance, anxiety about your public perception, anxieties about failure, powerlessness, frustration, or status. The manifestation of any combination of these fears and anxieties as teeth is a way to take them out of the abstract so that you can confront them and hopefully feel more assertive and self-assured in your waking life. I don’t put all my chips on the quid pro quo aspects of dream interpretation; however, I do think there are enough common threads of meaning within one’s culture that certain objects just are loaded with meaning and that our minds work on multiple levels even when asleep.

With this in mind I thought about a few of the things that jump out:
1. The retainer. Could this represent a sense of restraint (or of feeling restrained)? I notice that removing the retainer leads to the situation that the rest of the dream seeks to resolve. (Maybe it also ties in with my teenage perception of adulthood?)

2. The teeth involved are my frontmost teeth. The most obvious interpretation is I feel anxious about either my appearance or other immediate aspects of my identity (career, etc.)

3. Trying to fit the teeth back in. This leaves me with a sense even though it seems the easiest way, that I shouldn’t try to retrace my steps, or to follow a path that I’ve already laid. I was upset by the alternatives, but they represent different ways the same goals can be accomplished. I think the prospect of a dental bridge also symbolizes a degree of unease with growing older.

4. Asking for help. I notice that in this dream I have to ask others for help. I can be kind of self-contained and often find it difficult to ask anything of people. It’s a very Midwestern, "Oh, I don’t want to be a burden" thing. I think this aspect of the dream shows me that it’s OK–and sometimes necessary–to ask for help, and it can be a way to find comfort and to find alternative solutions to problems.

5. Overall sense. I was left with the overall sense of moving from anxiety to assurance about issues including my career and getting older, of opening up and feeling comfortable asking for help when a problem seems overwhelming, and of accepting unexpected solutions to problems.

Basically it’s safe to say this was a very timely dream. And now I have The White Stripes’ "The Denial Twist" in my head, because it’s the first song that references teeth that I thought of (hence the title of this entry).

Shallow Shit

2006-01-31T16:52:00.000-08:00

It’s a crappy day out (rain, wind), but it is payday. This means I should treat myself to a little shopping. I’ll probably hit Filene’s Basement, so I can wander through a few departments and increase my chances of finding something that tickles my fancy: Cheapish silver jewelry? Slouchy cowboy boots? Kicky new purse? Of course after I paw through the fun departments, I have to work the practicality that if Filene’s to pick up boring things: Will they have non-horrible socks? Adidas wind pants in a small size? (The latter I like to lump into a category I call "athletic-people clothes" because it makes me sound like Monty Burns. I might hike or run or do yoga, but I sure as shit ain’t gonna read a magazine about it or anything.)

It would also be a good day to get makeup and other girly shit. This is something I tend to let fall by the wayside; I currently have only one tube of lipstick, am nearly out of liquid-to-powder foundation, and my eye makeup is of a certain age. It’s not that I think I need makeup (nor am I anti-makeup), but sometimes little things can help you feel fresher and more put-together. Which helps me shift into the sassy, kick-ass gear you all know and love.

Not to lay blame on my family, but I think it explains a lot to mention that my mother is staunchly in the "plain and practical Midwesterner" camp. You know the drill: $10 beauty-school haircuts, store-brand everything, you’re-only-paying-for-the-name-so-you’re-getting-Palmettos-not-Guess-jeans-missy. She once semi-accidentally shamed me out of buying a gorgeous cashmere sweater with my Christmas money by gasping at the $70 on sale price tag. With that one inhalation I knew that if I bought that sweater, I would never fully enjoy wearing it, because I would feel that I was being wasteful and ostentatious and vain for having bought myself something so frivolous.

I try not to be too materialistic or fixated on surfaces, but I guess I see both of these little shopping jaunts as a way of being good to myself. It reminds me that I am smart and pretty and deserve the effort and deserve to be treated well. I think treating the outside well reminds me to do other, more significant things, too. Like eating healthfully, taking vitamins, going in for check-ups, keeping up with friends and family, exercising, writing, and on and on (with bad parallel structure). I’m not proud that I need reminding, but I think we all need a little nudge sometimes.

Pizza, Cussedness, and Checker Fuel

2006-01-29T16:54:00.000-08:00

John’s mother and stepfather are in town. They’re a hoot (as you can imagine, if you know John), so I was more than happy to join them, Charles, Sloan, and Lindsay for dinner last night. We’d talked about it earlier in the week and had decided that John’s of Bleecker Street would suit our party size, stomachs, and attitudes quite nicely.

Dear Lord, and how! John’s is some of the best pizza-eating in the city. Especially if you get combinations involving sausage, meatballs, pepperoni, mushrooms, and onion (we got three pies). And pitchers of beer. (Although they did earn some boo points for no longer having Yuengling. Betrayal!)

After stuffing and beering ourselves, it was time to head over to Marie’s Crisis to sing some show tunes. John’s mom was way excited to sing out some old Rodgers and Hammerstein numbers; it was cute. I had a bit of a headache, so Charles and I popped into a deli so that I could get some Alleve and a Diet Coke to help things along and to perk me up.

Marie’s was jammed when we got there. Well, it was 11 p.m. on a Saturday night (as opposed to our usual 7:30 p.m. Tuesday outings). We were barely in the door before we were hustled upstairs to check out coats and bags. Don’t get me wrong, it was a good idea with the crowding and all, I’m just saying there was a bit of a collective eyebrow twitch at the attitude with which the request was delivered. In the interest of being easygoing we all politely obliged (though I can safely say the attitude was noted and filed).

We hung back for a song or so while our party trickled back down from the coatcheck and we started determining who wanted what and if we were standing in the best possible place. Soon though, a waiter came to take our drink order. Actually by "take our drink order" I mean "inform us of the one-drink minimum and demand that we order up post-haste in a brusque manner."

Now I’m usually fairly laid back but I do not respond well to pushiness. It brings out a level of cussedness that is either hilarious or infuriating depending on which end you’re on. In the current example even if I had been about to order right that second that waiter’s attitude made me determined not to order anything from him. Ever. Nor am I alone in this sort of obstinancy. It’s fair to say that John is a man after my heart; between the two of us you could feel the drop in air pressure. I think if his parents weren’t there and our coats weren’t checked one or the both of us would have led the charge straight out the door, leaving the waiter a withering, thunderous silence in our wake.

Ahem. As it was we took a couple deep cleansing breaths and very pointedly (to us anyway) ordered drinks from the bar. The potentially foul moods dissipated and we settled in and sang, attracted some freaks (Sloan and the Leaning Man, me and Silk Shirt Man) and generally had a nice time.

After we’d worn out Rick and Laurie and put them in a cab, we headed over to one of our favorite semi-trashy drinks places with great guacamole, The Caliente Cab Company. On the way I accompanied Charles to get cash so that I might inquire of the man at the magazine shop whether or not he had any copies of Sweet Action (naked hipster boys magazine). They didn’t. The porn section had Swank and other permutations of naked women, so I thought it couldn’t hurt to ask sweetly whether they might have porn for a girl like me. Charles and I see this as a humorous way to make a statement about erotic parity (and you know if they’d had it–score!). Or something. Our half-drunk porn quest thwarted, we headed into Caliente to belly up for some Checker Fuel and get full-drunk.

Checker Fuel, a sort of amped-up piña colada, has supplied many a Summer Friday afternoon with a means to a debauched end. Last night though, among the NYU kids and the wedding disco music (you know the dozen or so songs I’m talking about at the mere mention of this neologistic genre) the drink served as a kind ofshorthand. The mere mention of "Checker Fuel" triggered a series of shared inside jokes and experiences among a group of friends before the drinks were even poured. As I rode back to Brooklyn I thought about the other "Checker Fuels" in my life and half-smiled to myself as they lined up in my mind. Of course it could have just been the rum.

3. The Year of Magical Thinking, by Joan Didion

2006-01-25T16:56:00.000-08:00

I’ve been procrastinating writing this for a few days. It’s not at all that I didn’t enjoy the book, nor that I don’t feel like writing about it. It’s more that the book speaks quite eloquently for itself, both as a meditation on grief and mourning and as a memoir of Didion’s specific experience of it.

Didion shuns easy sentimentality, and I felt she gave real insight into how us "cool customers" process loss. People who feel deeply with both their hearts and their minds but who play it close to their chest (in my case I suppose it’s a Midwestern Gothic sense of not wanting to be a bother to people) are often tarred with the notion that they are aloof. In this memoir, she reveals the introspection and roiling bereavement that lay beneath her coping surface.

As you probably know, The Year of Magical Thinking spans one year in Joan Didion’s life, from December 2003 through the end of 2004. In the week between Christmas and New Year’s Eve of 2003, Didion’s daughter, Quintana, has been induced into a coma following a serious illness and her husband of 40 years, John Gregory Dunne, suffers a fatal heart attack. Didion’s memoir follows her through all levels of her life, from dealing with the practicalities to working towards incorporating loss into her life. In between however, she finds herself at sea in thoughts that she simultaneously knows are unhinged but yet wholly believes. She comes to call this twilight awareness "magical thinking."

Although the book mainly follows Didion’s path, there are a few diversions into the general concepts of death, grief, and mourning. Like many writers and readers, she uses books to clarify the world. This allows her to examine death, grief, and mourning through such diverse prisms as Emily Post, poetry, and medical journals. She meditates on how death is looked at in modern west, how our convenient detachment from death (due to longer healthier lives that tend to end in hospitals and funeral homes, rather than dying at home in bed and being prepared on the house’s cooling board) interrupts how we deal with death. Death becomes seen as abnormal and something that needs to be dealt with, compartmentalized, and moved on from, and that to do otherwise would be unseemly. When that containment gets troublesome, Didion finds herself drifting into a place of magical thinking that she calls calls "the vortex."

The vortex to Didion is the black ice of memory. Any simple thing can set off a web of memories that pull her back to the center of her loss and overwhelm her. This leads her into a complicated proscription of her daily life, avoiding whole sections of cities to avoid falling into the vortex.

Later in the year, Didion comes to understand the transition between grief and mourning: that grief can end, that mourning is continuous but can be enfolded into life. As she enters mourning she is better able to draw out her feelings, and she feels the vortex and the magical thinking loosen their grip. As the year comes to a close she comes to fee that, "if we are to live ourselves there comes a point at which we must relinquish the dead. . . . Let them become the photograph on the table." (pp. 225-226)

2. What’s the Matter with Kansas?, by Thomas Frank

2006-01-18T16:59:00.000-08:00

As you probably know, we live in an America where adjectives such as "liberal" and "intellectual" have become pejorative terms and enjoying high-falutin’ things like lattes is pretty much enough to indict you for treason. I’ll come out as proudly liberal, nerdy, and as epicurean as an editor can afford to be. I am also a "lesser of two evils" Democrat who is pretty pissed off at the party. So it’s inevitable that Thomas Frank’s at times witty bestseller makes it into the 50-Book Challenge.

What’s the Matter With Kansas? examines the 1990s rise of super Republicans and uses the example of Frank’s home state of Kansas as a microcosm of this trend. He ask how the party that traditionally serves the interests of the wealthy got the working class vote. He amusingly describes the right as " . . . a negative and depressing movement culture. To be a populist conservative is to be a fatalist; to believe in a world where your side will never win; indeed, where your side almost by definition cannot win. " (p. 125) The movement has "the glamor of authenticity, combined with the narcissism of victimhood" (p. 157), which feeds the thrilling sense of righteous indignation in which "persecution" is criticism, or even just asking the tough questions.

This self-destructive coup has helped systematically dismantle things that help working people–unions, welfare, business regulations–by cynically exploiting social issues. This has allowed corporations such as ConAgra and Wal-Mart run roughshod over small businesses and small towns, yet somehow in the face of this the push to the right remains unyielding. Frank wonders how the Republicans convinced people that they are salt of the Earth working folks while Democrats busy themselves drinking lattes while sodomizing each other in their Volvos. That, people, is the Great Rock n’ Roll Swindle.

Unsurprisingly, the whys lay on both sides of the red-blue divide. Sprinkled throughout the book, Frank touches on ways in which Democrats, especially during the Clinton years of the 1990s, moved the party to the center–a rightward shift–to minimize the friction with the Republicans and to position themselves as more pro-business. This nullified the heart of the traditional Democratic platform, which had been pro-union and had tried to represent the interests of the working class. After this traditional platform had been sold out, issue by issue, Americans were left with two parties that were pretty similar on economic issues, but with one party that presented a more united front, a party that was a squeakier wheel on social issues (whether or not they could reasonably be delivered on). Guess what happened next?

In my opinion, Frank really hits his stride in the epilogue, where he finally expands on what the fuck is wrong with the Democrats, what that means for the country as a whole, and what can be done about it. Sure, the so-called celebrity "limousine liberals" can come across as condescending and shallow and have had a hand (though the size of that hand is debatable) in tainting the reputation of the party’s rank and file. I can’t say that I don’t get that; I don’t want Tim Robbins telling me what to think when I agree with him. The bigger problem though is that there hasn’t been a major calling out of how the Democrat Party has systematically abandoned blue-collar economic interests. The big sell out was part of an effort to better line the party’s coffers by courting the vote of the socially liberal wealthy by courting their economic concerns. The problem with this strategy is that the new cohort they were trying to recruit was much smaller than the cohort they abandoned. The result is that the Democrats have lost Kansas (and a big chunk of America) as much as the Republicans have won it over.

In closing, just so we don’t forget: David Brooks is a smug prick and Ann Coulter is a cunt.

1. Cash: The Autobiography, by Johnny Cash

2006-01-09T17:02:00.000-08:00

So far, so good. I’m still on schedule with the challenge. Sure, it’s only nine days into the year, but let’s take what small victories we can, okay?

It was interesting to read this book in context of having read Dylan’s Chronicles: Volume One last autumn. Like Dylan’s, the book is written in a nonlinear, conversational style, as though you’d sat down for a long evening of really listening to and getting to know one of your older relatives. Unlike Dylan, Cash exposes the interior of his life more than he does the songwriting experience. This means you get a little of everything: the struggles with sobriety, with God, and with the music business, the last of which culminates with his writing a song called "Chicken in Black" and insisting on making a video wherein he wears a chicken suit.

Cash mostly has a good feel about how to tell a story, of how to convey a lot without getting too bogged down in the Pepys-ish blow-by-blow. In a few places he spends too much time cataloging or endorsing various people or things without weaving anything around it. It gives the last chapter or so, while a warm wrap-up, a choppy feel, as though it’d come back from his editor that he was 2,000 words shy of his mark.

His story is organized as a tour through his life, making pit stops at his many homes, past and present. He travels at will through the tour he was on as he wrote the book, his childhood, his music-career beginnings in Memphis, his career ups and downs, his struggle with addiction and the guilt that chases it, all the while never forgetting to check in with his two grounding forces: his wife, June, and his faith. (As an agnostic, I am pretty leery of Jesus-talk. Cash though, does not view himself as a proselytizer, merely as a stater of facts about himself. It’s interesting to me from an almost anthropological point of view, to have a peek inside the heart of someone whom I respect, but in many regards am totally the opposite.)

The memoir ends in 1997 and includes a selected discography (possibly leaving off the album where "Chicken in Black" appears). It would be nice if someone—perhaps Patrick Carr, who helped him write the book—would add an appendix covering Cash’s final six years (I mean they did reprint the cover to tie in with Walk the Line—I’m just sayin’). Yes, I know that’s why they have biographies, but I’m just a completist that way.

Christmas Wrapping (Up)

2005-12-28T16:32:00.000-08:00

So I left off with the night I took my parents to the theatre. The next day was of course Christmas Eve. I invited Mom and Dad to come down from their hotel and stay the night in Brooklyn so they wouldn’t have to slog down Christmas morning.

They come down in the late morning, and we go to my favorite diner in the neighborhood (Purity Diner). They are easy to please and they enjoy their omelettes. We make the plan for the rest of the day. To my dismay, all the restaurants in the neighborhood are closing around 5 p.m. (I know, Christmas Eve, but even the Chinese place!), so we have to pop into The Most Expensive D’Agosgtino in the World to get stuff for dinner.

We spent the afternoon chatting and eating cookies. I introduced them to Curb Your Enthusiasm. I made a simple dinner of pasta, Italian sausage, and salad (Gotta make the folks eat their vegetables!).

The next day I did the full-on Christmas dinner thing. I roasted a turkey (stuffed with lemon, onion, and garlic and slicked up with a galic-sage-rosemary-thyme compound butter), stuffing, baked sweet potatoes, a potato-apple-onion au gratin, garlic green beans, and cranberry-orange-ginger sauce. I popped on my Christmas Mix and made my mom relax and not do anything, which she said was the first time in 50 years she hasn’t had to work on the dinner. I stuffed them full of food and they were again super impressed with the scale and quality of the meal. I can’t help but wonder whether they were bowled over or if they had set the bar too low.

The day after Christmas we indulged in a bit of shopping. I spent the money they gave me on the world’s softest robe. Dad bought something or other for his camera. After dinner, I let them have an early night so they could be bushy-tailed for their flight the next morning.

Now I have the rest of the week off to slack, watch Under Blackpool Lights in my robe, and watch the needles fall off the tree.

The Lights Are Bright

2005-12-24T16:38:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I took my parents to see the tree in Rockefeller Center. I’d forgotten what a labrinth the underground shopping center was. Then I gave them my gift, which was to see a matinée of The Producers. They were thrilled—even my dad, who’s not always into stuff—it was the first time they’d seen a Broadway show. They both really loved it, and laughed and clapped the whole way through. That made me feel good.

After the show we went out for steaks. It took some doing to find the right place. The place I had intended to take them had gone full-on sword-serving churrascaria, where there is no proper menu and they bring you meat until you beg for mercy; my mom is a picky eater, so I told the waiter we had to jet. The other thing was that even though it was early, it didn’t occur to me to take into account the pre-theater crowd and make reservations, so the other restaurant we tried, Joe Allen, could only fit us in for just over an hour. I don’t like having to eat on the clock, so we cabbed it back to Niles, the mod-looking restaurant in my parents’ hotel.

Anyway, after dinner we decided that to make things easier, they should come down today and spend Christmas Eve and Christmas Day in Brooklyn. We don’t have any solid plans, but I figure since it’s nice out (50 degrees!) a stroll, brunch, window shopping, maybe a movie and ordering in a pizza should work out. I have to see how late places are open today, so we don’t end up having to eat TV dinners later! I think Mom really wants to jump in on my turkey tomorrow, but I am determined to make her relax and do it my way. I’ll let you know how that one works out for me.

Oy! to the World

2005-12-22T16:40:00.000-08:00

For the past couple of days I’ve been watching NY1 obsessively, and not just for Pat Kiernan’s snarky "In the Papers" segment. They’ve had constant, up-to-the-second updates on the transit strike situation. My parents are coming into town for the holidays, so this thing is kind of a snag.

I thought maybe it’d be a good idea to have them come to my place in Park Slope first, instead of going straight to their hotel up by Macy’s. (See, both locations are by the F train, which until Tuesday was convenient.) I missed catching them at home, because they like to get to the airport eleventy hours before their flight, so I thought "no problem, I’ll call Dad’s cell." Well wouldn’t you know it, but he must only turn the damn thing on when he wants to make a call, not so that other people can contact him. I left a message which I am pretty sure he’ll never get, because he seemed a little fuzzy on what that ‘little envelope picture" means and how to make it go away. Of course if he gave people besides me the number, and turned the phone on once in awhile, he’d be a little snappier about the world of cell phone usage.

I’ll try again around the time their plane is supposed to land. It looks as though the strike may be over soon, at least soon enough that it doesn’t fuck up my plans to take them to see The Producers. They may still need to cool their heels in Brooklyn, possibly overnight.

I’ve never had my parents stay at my house, so it’s unleashed a Freudian load of neurosis. Like, what if they sleep on my bed, where I have sex, I mean obviously they would have to know that, but please let’s run with the denial m’kay??? Or, what if they get frisky on my bed, I mean I know they haven’t done "it" in nigh on 31 years, but just the notion is extremely squicky and I don’t want to have to burn my bed because I really like it and it was expensive??? Deep cleansing breaths, assess the liquor situation.

Otherwise the house is prepared. I’ve made cookies (oatmeal-chocolate chip and molasses sugar), a cheeseball (another Grandma Snelling recipe), put up a tree and lights and candles, bought a turkey (currently thawing) and all that crap. OK, back to obsessing over the news.

Edited to Add: My father did not check his "little envelope picture," and so never heard my entreaty to come to my place first to figure stuff out. Although the strike ended while they were flying in, everything will probably be fucked up until the morning. There weren’t any unoccupied livery drivers to bring us together for a reasonable price (and let’s face it, an hour or so of traffic agita) so we agreed to keep their fucking phone on and we’ll meet up tomorrow sometime before the play. I also made my mother promise never to let Dad live down his crummy cell phone habits.

Cruisin’ for a Scroogin’

2005-12-21T16:42:00.000-08:00

Today I am bustling around getting the last-minute Christmas groceries and cleaning the apartment, as my parents will be getting in sometime tomorrow afternoon. They sent me a pressie from my Amazon wish list last week (a first for them). When I went to put it under the tree, I discovered that they hadn’t gift wrapped it. (They didn’t know there was a special box to tick for that—how cute are they?) It was the DVD of Under Blackpool Lights. How they know I’m a huge White Stripes fan I’ll never guess. . . .

I’m officially on vacation now. I took yesterday off because I honestly couldn’t be arsed to walk for 2+ hours to do the light amount of work I had left to do. Obviously I’m one of the millions of "Fuck you, MTA and TWU!" people. Anyway.

If the strike keeps up, which it looks like it may, it may be more efficient to have my parents stay at my apartment rather than at the hotel they’ve booked. I can’t win for losing with my Christmas plans the last couple of years, maybe next year I’ll just skip it. Ugh.

The Most Important Mix of the Year

2005-12-05T16:45:00.000-08:00

I had a pretty productive weekend. The most important part of which was that I put together my sorta-annual Christmas Mix. If you’ve read High Fidelity, you’ll know that in creating a good mix there are many rules. If you know me, you’ll know I completely nerd out about it. Using iTunes has made the course of mix-making a smooth-running dream. (No more mathing out the song lengths—don’t forget to time the pauses and the transitions! No more agony of changing your mind about the song order!) What’s the method to my madness? Glad you asked! First I dump everything I might possibly want to include onto a playlist, then I examine for the through-line: is there a secret concept, a story, a sound, or are my selections eclectic enough that I can blow your mind with my choices and the daring—yet compelling—way in which I have sequenced them? Then I pop on the headphones, cull the herd, find the opening and closing tracks (if I hadn’t known them going in) and build toward the center. Once I have a CD-length set, I have to beta-test. Anything not working together? Something not standing up to multiple listens? When I’ve finalized, then I burn and pass along. Take that, T-Bone Burnett!

Here’s what made the cut this year:
1. "Christmas Time Is Here (Vocal)" - Vince Guaraldi
2. "Come On! Let’s Boogie to the Elf Dance!" - Sufjan Stevens
3. "The Christmas Song" - The Ravonettes
4. "Just Like Christmas" - Low
5. "Christmas At The Zoo" - The Flaming Lips
6. "Little Drum Machine Boy" - Beck
7. "Soulful Christmas" - James Brown
8. "Blue Christmas" - Johnny Cash
9. "To Heck With Ole Santa Claus" - Loretta Lynn
10. "Candy Cane Children" - The White Stripes
11. "Oi! to the World" - No Doubt
12. "Christmas Time" - The Darkness
13. "It’s Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)" - U2
14. "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" - Bruce Springsteen
15. "Thanks for Christmas" - XTC

This is the classic, hard-act-to-follow mix:
1. "Fairytale of New York" - The Pogues & Kirsty MacColl
2. "Father Christmas" - The Kinks
3. "Merry Xmas (I Don’t Wanna Fight)" - The Ramones
4. "Jingle Bell Rock" - Neil Diamond
5. "Blue Christmas" - Elvis Presley
6. "I Saw Momma Kissing Santa Claus" - The Jackson Five
7. "Xmas in Hollis" - Run DMC
8. "Christmas Wrapping" - The Waitresses
9. "Last Xmas" - Wham!
10. "Do They Know It’s Christmas?" - Band Aid
11. "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)" - John Lennon
12. "Merry Xmas Everybody" - Slade

Final note: If you see a copy of James Brown’s Funky Christmas, BUY IT! You will not be sorry.

Perchance

2005-12-02T16:49:00.000-08:00

I haven’t been sleeping well this week. I’m sure it’s a confluence of things: a couple of drinks one night, worrying about making Christmas dinner another night (I know it’s barely December, but: neurotic!), whatever. Whenever I can’t sleep I feel fidgety and hyper-aware, it sucks. But when I do fall asleep, I have some of the craziest dreams, usually with celebrity stuntcasting. Last night was no exception.

In the dream I was in my early 20s and living in a big crumbly old house, sort of like the one I lived in on Fountain Avenue junior year. It was sort of broken up into three houses–one on each floor–within it, but was basically communal, maybe a dozen people lived there.

Anyway, Jack White (also returned to his early 20s) was one of the housemates and we were friends, and I think we lived on different floors. We come back to the house late one night, it’s late fall, possibly November. I’m not sure where we had been, but we’re kind of drunk and are finding everything hilarious. You know how that is.

So we’re crashing around in the kitchen, where he’s mixing up some drinks and I’m making nachos, and there’s this commotion in the side yard. We scramble out the door to see groups of terriers and dachshunds chasing around rats. Tons of rats. I slam the door shut when I see them start to run towards the house. But then there’s noise overhead.

Some sort of pipe has burst in the ceiling and now water is running into the kitchen. Jack shouts upstairs to get everyone’s up so we can bail out the kitchen and try to get a temporary fix on things. We back out of the way of a falling piece of plaster and fall into a chair (one of those bucketlike 70s chairs) so I’m kind of on his lap, which is really nice and we have a sort of nonplatonic moment. But then you know there are rats being chased by small dogs outside, we’re kind of sitting in a puddle in the chair and being rained on inside, and the pipe thing is kind of a hassle, and we’re still drunk and we just bust out laughing.

Our other housemates come into the kitchen, see the mess and us laughing and kind of blame us, so we volunteer to search the house for the source of the leak. I think we may have been sneaking off to make out, but I was still kind of freaked out by the rats thing.

I don’t even want to know what it all means.

Hack

2005-11-23T16:29:00.000-08:00

My name is Jennifer, and I am a hack writer.

I know some of you knew that. I’ve been writing and rewriting books for the company for which I work for years. I've never been reviewed by Michiko Kakutani; I've never never any hotly negotiated advances. (Most of the payouts for the books I have written would cover a weekend in a sleazy motel in this fair city. Just.) Rewriting a book is more often than not a work of unpaid silent drudgery born out of reverence for concepts such as "fact" and "grammar." Ideas that are sometimes foreign to a work-for-crap-pay author. I try not to have such conflicted pride in my work, but there you go.

Anyway, I only mention this because today I was complimented on both kinds of handiwork. First, an editor praised (and relayed the praise from a consultant) the book about comets I had magicked up last weekend, after the original author had fallen through. Then not an hour later, a copy editor commented on the improved clarity and smoothness of a book about maps, which I had taken upon myself to ghost-rewrite after the author’s original draft had proved too muddled to live. In both cases, not only was my ego flattered, but my worry about the accuracy of my scientific/technical writing for kids was allayed. It’s no Pulitzer, but you take what you can get on a Wednesday.

So it was a good day for this full-time editor and sometime hack.

Pancake or Death?

2005-10-28T19:07:00.000-07:00

Last night New York smelled like maple syrup. It was strangely pleasant to go home dreaming of pancakes instead of smelling bum piss. In the morning of course I began to worry that it was some sort of delicious terrorist gas. There hasn’t been any explanation yet, which is weirder than any explanation that may come.

In more straightforwardly happy news, my beloved White Stripes are releasing a studio version of the Tegan and Sara song, "Walking with a Ghost", that they have been covering on their tour. It’ll be packaged with the Get Behind Me Satan album for a limited time, and then sold separately as a single with 3 live tracks, and also will be available on iTunes. I downloaded it already, natch. It’s awesome. Jack’s voice has really improved in the past year since he cut down on the smoking (not to be a mom, but he has stated himself he quit to help preserve his voice); he’s able to do all these odd vocal swoops in the song without cracking.

And finally, just because I am a sucker for "just for fun" quizzes–especially on Friday afternoons–I tacked on my answers to one that was going around today:

1. What is your occupation? Editor, Rosen Publishing.
2. What color is your underwear? Black boyshorts.
3. What was the last thing you ate? Emmi black cherry yogurt.
4. Do you wish on stars? No, Jiminy Cricket, I do not.
5. If you were a crayon, what color would you be? Brick red or Maroon.
6. How is the weather right now? Lovely and crisp.
7. Who was the last person you spoke to on the phone? I think Mike D., last night. There was a mix-up at the bar.
8. Do you like the person who sent this to you? Sure.
9. Would you say no and send this back to them? Never! I’m nice.
10. How old are you today? 30.
11. Favorite drink? Alkie: shiraz, Hot: Latte Cold: Tart lemonade, mineral water with lime wedge. I’m such a fucking yuppie!
12. Favorite sport to watch? Bleah, no.
13. Have you ever dyed your hair? Only the cashier at the drugstore knows . . .
14 Do you wear contacts or glasses? Specs.
15. Pets? I wish, but alas.
16. Favorite month? October.
17. What is your favorite food? Nachos & various things with melted cheese on them/in them (cheesesteak, pizza, mac & cheese, you get the idea).
18. What was the last movie you watched? Theater: The Squid and the Whale DVD: Spinal Tap.
19. Favorite day of the year? My birthday: That’s when I’m a princess!
20. What do you do to vent? Go for a bitchy walk with John.
21. What was your favorite toy as a child? My Fisher-Price record player–I used to play "radio station" and record my "shows".
22. Hugs or kisses? Hugs are a basic need, especially if you count spooning as drawn-out sleepy hugs, then hugs win by a landslide.
23. Favorite clothing item? Docs. Low-cut shirts that show off my boobs. Kicky red plaid skirt.
24. Cherry or Blueberry? Cherry.
25. Want your friends to email you back? Yes, because I love attention!
26. Who is most likely to respond? I’m terrible at predicting these things.
27. Who is least likely to respond? It’s always a surprise though, isn’t it?
28. When was the last time you cried? I tear up at movies and TV shows all the time. I probably had a cry, cry last time I had PMS.
29. Books or movies? Depends on my mood. Books usually, but movies to relax and unwind.
30. Who is the friend you have had the longest? John. 11 years.
31. What did you do last night? John and I went out to hang out for "one" drink, I "supervised" his boyfriend’s haircut; they got Wendy’s, we had a group hug, then I went home. New York smelled like pancakes last night; it was weird.
32. What are you afraid of? Poverty. Never falling in love again. Death–actually I’d be more afraid of a permanently incapacitating illness or accident than death.
33. Plain, cheese or spicy hamburgers? Medium-rare with bleu cheese (and bacon if I’m feeling sassy).
34. Favorite car? I don’t really care about cars, but if I had a car it would probably be a Prius or an old skool boxy Volvo–I am the anti-Cribs.
35. What is your favorite dog breed? I like general shaggy mutt & retriever types, Boston terriers. I like all dogs in general (ask anyone who’s ever gone on a walk with me), except for the purse-sized kind, which kind of freak me out.
36. Number of keys on your key ring? 3, 4 if you count the mailbox key.
37. How many years at your current job? 5, nearly 6. Jesus! I’ve worked in two departments at three different jobs with 3 or 4 promotions mixed in.
38. Favorite day of the week? Sunday: the day of brunch and laziness.
39. How many states have you lived in? Only 2: Ohio and New York.
40. Who is your favorite Muppet? Beaker. Meep!

Find Me and Follow Me . . .

2005-10-18T19:19:00.000-07:00

Charles and I went to the Franz Ferdinand show at the MSG Theater last night. Charles is my favorite concert buddy. He sees the value of making an event of things–even on a school night–with drinks, dancing, and semi-coordinated outfits.

To my surprise the show started promptly; perhaps I’m still burned by the thousand hours I stood around at Webster Hall waiting for the Arcade Fire show to start. Anyway, the MSG Theater apparently takes no mess and does not run on "rock and roll time." Franz Ferdinand went on at 9, following two opening acts, the first of which had only begun an hour or so before! Hooray for prompt delivery of music, but unfortunately this meant that we had just missed TV on the Radio even after slipping out of the post-reading chat for John’s reworked Abomination, quickly knocking back Jacks on the rocks at the cute corner bar and cabbing it uptown. Dammit.

We danced throughout the set, even though space was limited in the theater seats (we must go to the Tiswas dance party sometime so we can really let loose) and the audience around us were kind of young but sedate. This tires the legs more than you would think. Also some young pup spilled beer into my purse.

It was a fun snappy show, like a pair of deliciously tight pinstriped trousers. The sound and the lighting were good and their sort of Russian Constructivist via Glasgow School of Art look carried over pretty well from small clubs to larger venues. They played all the highlights from both of their albums and finished the encore with a
rollicking "This Fire." Alex was a bit drunk I think, but still on form. Bob is totally cute. Hell, they’re all really cute. Cute girls (and boys) like me (and Charles) like to dance to their music. Mission accomplished, boys.

My Home for the Holidays

2005-10-06T19:24:00.000-07:00

It’s official: My parents are coming for Christmas.

They totally called my bluff. I was trying to be sly about getting out of going to Ohio this year. (Last Christmas was a fiasco. It’s a long story and I don’t want to get into at the moment. If you know, you know. If you don’t know, be thankful for whatever level of functionality your family has, is all I’m saying.) I hadn’t made solid plans yet for the holidays: John had invited me down to Virginia to celebrate with his family, and I was also considering taking a trip on my own or just totally Scrooging it for a year. I was talking to my parents a few weeks ago and mentioned that they should think about coming to New York for Christmas, it would be good for them to get away, and fun, yadda, yadda, yadda. They e-mailed me yesterday with their itinerary.

Any donations of alcohol you can make would be greatly appreciated.

Don’t get me wrong, I love them, this will be less stressful to me than going to Ohio, and I’m actually looking forward to doing up a cracking Christmas dinner for us. It’s just weird being the big-girl host for a major holiday. I’m sure it will be very blog-able, to say the least.

But seriously with the alcohol thing. Now.

“A Hint of Fall”

2005-09-28T18:37:00.000-07:00

I’m so happy there is, as one of my friends says, a "hint of fall in the air." FINALLY! This is my favorite time of year. The great, gradually cooling weather puts me in a happy mood. I love breathing in the earthy smell of leaves on the ground. I get all schoolgirl motivated and start daydreaming of chilly nights, woolly sweaters, boots & tights. I also start get excited about cooking again.

When the weather starts cooling, and the thought of going into the kitchen for something besides ice no longer makes me whimper, I begin making mental notes of things I want to cook. On a slightly dreary fall day, I really take pleasure in making soup, or marinara, or baked apples, etc., etc. I also go through phases where I fall in love with a certain dish or ingredient (shut up, chipotle still rules!) and work out variations nearly worthy of Alton Brown until I devise my personal recipe. Last year my obsessions were minestrone soup, mac and cheese, beef Stroganoff and a fucking amazing chili (which I am definitely making soon–with chipotle).

Anyway, I’ve got some soups I’m rarin’ to make, but what we’re looking at now could well be the Autumn of Risotto. It’s fairly easy, adaptable, impresses passerby, and can be done simply or all fancy-like. If risotto had a personal ad, it would say it was "as comfortable at the opera as it is at a dive bar." Thankfully it doesn’t, or I wouldn’t eat it.

Fortunately my roommate is into cooking (even more than me, actually), so she understands these sorts of fixations, and sometimes sweetly indulges my need to browbeat others into consuming my creations. Because food is love. Which is why I like inviting friends over to cook and/or eat in a slightly more grown-up style of Poor Man’s Nights. So I’m looking forward to doing that, too. Because once you’ve go food, a bottle of wine, movies, and conversation, you’ve got yourself a fun evening, guaranteed.

Little Brothers, Big Sisters

2005-09-26T18:40:00.000-07:00

Charles and I saw the White Stripes at Keyspan Park in Coney Island on Saturday. Because we are who we are, we decided to make a whole day of it to make it special. First we got dressed up in our cute clothes. We both have cowboy-type shirts that are in the Proper Colors. I also have a pair of black satin boots with red skull-and-crossbones, so I took it to the next level. (I know! $10 at Trash and Vaudville–how could I not?) We had kind of a Goth cowboy Death of the Sweetheart thing going on. As Little Edie Beale would say, "It was the perfect costume for the day."

For a bit of pre-game, we headed over to Popeye’s to line our bellies. Afterward, we strolled over to Cha Cha’s (aka Hepititis Clam Shack I) for the real pre-game of Jack and ginger. It was so busy and full of concert-goers that even smooshing my boobs all up on the bar couldn’t get us faster service. Insulted, we huffed over to Ruby’s (aka Hepititis Clam Shack II). They were also slammed (and apparently earlier customers included a skinhead wedding party–eek!!), but we were able to forge a bit of rapport with the bartender, ahem.

We got to Keyspan Park just as the Shins started their set. Neither Charles nor I realized that there were "field" tickets and "bleacher" tickets. We were the latter, and soon realized there wasn’t any way to sneak onto the field, thus thwarting my panties-to-Jack fantasy. Damn.

The Shins were pretty good. The weather was great, and the sun was slowly sinking. As they ended their set with a couple of my favorite tracks from Chutes Too Narrow, we amused ourselves by taking pictures of one another with Charles’ camera phone. (Send, please!)

The White Stripes were just . . . GAH! Really, a lot of energy, lots of playfulness and back and forth between Jack and Meg. I liked how certain song sequences were arranged like medleys. "Passive Manipulation," which is kind of "eh" on Get Behind Me Satan is effectively used to bookend a set of songs. Highlights for me included "Jolene" and "Ball and Biscuit" (Twice! Once as part of the end of the main set medley, the second time full-on balling. I was dying a million little deaths, if you know what I mean—and I think you do!)

Charles and I had chosen the section in the stands behind second base. The stage was blocked a bit by the sound tent, but hell, how much can I see at 200 yards without glasses, right? It was a great call on our part because not only were we in the sweet spot for sound, we had plenty of room to dance. And we danced and sang along to the whole show, really joyfully and unselfconsciously. We even had an appreciative round of applause from our section neighbors (nothing to do with my ripping off my outer shirt during "Ball and Biscuit," to be sure) as well as an offer of pot (we demurred).

After the show, we returned for a round of Bud in cans at Hepatitis Clam Shack I, followed by a midnight snack of hot dogs and fries on the boardwalk. And what trip to Coney Island would be complete without sneaking onto the beach? (No nudity this time, however.) After a short walk on the sort-of deserted beach we made the journey back.

Here’s the set list:
Black Math
Blue Orchid
Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground
Passive Manipulation
Jolene (Aahhhhhhh!! Dolly Parton cover)
My Doorbell
Cannon/John the Revelator
Screwdriver
Passive Manipulation (reprise)
The Nurse
Forever for Her (Is Over for Me)
Death Letter (Son House cover)
Hotel Yorba
The Hardest Button to Button
I Think I Smell a Rat
Walking with the Ghost (Tegan and Sara cover)
Ball and Biscuit
Hello Operator
The Union Forever (the last five songs were done as a sort-of medley)

Encore:
I’m Lonely (But I Ain’t That Lonely Yet)
Red Rain
In the Cold Cold Night
Let’s Shake Hands
We’re Going to Be Friends
Little Ghost
Ball and a Biscuit (Oh fuck, YEAH!)
Seven Nation Army
Boll Weevil (trad.)

JAS Hands

2005-09-22T18:48:00.000-07:00

The week I have been obsessed with the 23rd Street JAS Mart. I came for the dollar rice balls (which took my clumsy gaijin hands a few tries to master opening); I returned to keep trying new, unfamiliar things. “I have no idea what that is, but it’s 99 cents and has a picture of a monkey on it!” I must confess I didn’t really like the red bean filled um, thing I got on Tuesday, but hey, 99 cents. After making my selections, I get a few minutes to bop to the Japanese pop music they pipe in as I wait in the inevitably long line snaking through the cramped store–it’s like being transported into Gwen Stefani’s head without having to become one of her Harijuku slave girls.

Now I have a place to get my Men’s Pocky fix. And Toro hand rolls for like a buck sixty. I can’t believe I used to get shit deli sushi when this place was better and cheaper and right there. (23rd Street can be annoyingly clogged, so I usually avoid it during the lunch rush–that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it) My one complaint is that they could really use a redesign to make better use of space, or even expand.

Play Ball!

2005-09-02T18:49:00.000-07:00

Last night was my office’s Summer Outing. The past couple of years we’ve had a Booze Cruise, but this year they rented the party deck at the Brooklyn Cyclones stadium. I can’t tell you much about the game, other than it was Floppy Hat Day, but the weather was lovely. The drinks were nice, but the food (except for the cookies) wasn’t.

It was a classic trip to Coney Island. First off, we rode the Cyclone, which I had never done before. It was much scarier than lots of more modern roller coasters I’ve been on. You really get thrown around and since it’s an old wooden coaster, you can reeeally feel the give. Modern roller coasters are sleek and smooth and the force of the ever-impressive first drops force you into your seat. Not so on the Cyclone: I could feel myself semi-sliding out as we dipped and dropped and winged around corners. That was the other big difference–the Cyclone seemed to last a long-ass time compared to other coasters. That it kept going on just when you thought surely it was over was another great fright factor. After riding once (and having forced poor Kristen into this mess) we headed out of the midway, vowing to return sometime soon–possibly over the long weekend.

After the game, a few beers the braver, we headed to Cha Cha’s, one of the boardwalk bars. One of those beachside places I affectionately call Hepatitis Clam Shacks. And actually after using their rest room I applied the name in utter seriousness. There was a great dog there, sitting on the roof watching over the festivities. I think he was the owner’s dog.

Having finished a quick round, a small group of us F-train returnees peeled off from the crowd to wend our way back. It was such a beautiful night, and the water was so black and still we looked at it a bit longingly, not quite ready to head to the trains. Since we were on the boardwalk already, we decided we needed to sneak onto the beach for a brief wade in the ocean. As the sensible among us took off our shoes and rolled up out pants and padded down to the water, one of us–insensible–streaked by for a skinny dip. He soon realized that this was not going to devolve into a group swim. Slightly chagrined, he sort of modestly crawled back up out of the water. Of course we took pictures.

This sort of built up an appetite in us, so there were only two more logical places to go. Nathan’s and Popeye’s. Mr. Insensible bought the largest chicken bucket I’ve seen in a while and we all tucked in. Once we’d had more than our fill of chicken, biscuits, and fries, we donated the rest to a homeless woman, who advised us that Nathan’s bathrooms were pretty nice. She was right–especially after having been to the Hepatitis Clam Shack's bathroom.

Bladder preemptive strikes undertaken, water for the journey bought, we sat wearily and waited for the train to head back (Oh how soon one forgets how long trains sit at terminus stations!). Happily for me, the Park Slope stop came mercifully soon and I dragged my tired ass home.

But Will There Be Karaoke?

2005-08-23T19:16:00.000-07:00

Happy pre-Birthday to Lisa! 32 big ones, baby. I’m sure tonight will be an understated and classy affair, as always. Right? Like on my birthday when you kept me out until 4 a.m., you naughty minx! Is it wrong that I love karaoke so much? Not more than I love Lisa, of course, but I really enjoy belting out "Coal Miner’s Daughter," dammit. By the way: anyone knows of a place that has some of Loretta’s other songs–"Rated X" say, just not any of those cheesy Conway Twitty duets–please tell me!

Some of my favorite karaoke tips (learned from experience, naturally):
* Don’t sing "Moon River" ever.
* Or "I Will Always Love You."
* "Ironic" bad is just "bad," especially when it’s a ballad.
* Look, just don’t sing slow songs anyway. It kills the mood.
* No rapping!
* AC/DC will be sung.
* So will "(Hit Me Baby) One More Time" and "Since U Been Gone."
* Japanese businessmen really like it when drunk white chicks sing "Our Lips Are Sealed."
* If John tries to steal the mic, just elbow him aside and keep singing. The show must go on!

ETA: I got carded at the bar! I mean, it was a bit dark, but God bless.

Until

2005-08-10T19:25:00.000-07:00

I hadn’t been through my old e-mails for a while, but today, I was thinking of a talk I’d had last night with good friend about her recent breakup. I was looking through my e-mail folders for her new e-mail address when I happened upon a bunch of old e-mails. Somehow this made me remember all the e-mails that weren’t there anymore. The e-mails of exes.

It was only after a breakup a few years ago that I realized I am an e-mail pack-rat. I have no idea why, but I almost never delete e-mails–I read them, do what I must with the information (respond, call, meet), then transfer them to a folder where they remain forgotten until . . .

I think this habit stems from some vestigial organ in me that misses "real" correspondence. I’ve always loved getting and writing letters; it was never a chore to me. Throughout my life, I kept boxes upon boxes of letters, postcards, and Christmas cards from friends and family–most of which I kept until I moved to New York after college. (That ream of 9th-birthday crayon and scented-marker drawings made by my third-grade classmates in 1984? Yep: kept it more than a decade. If only an archivist had had an interest in my childhood . . .)

What made me hoard that stuff like a sentimental fool? On some level there was guilt, as if by throwing out old birthday cards I was somehow discarding the sender’s sentiment, rejecting their love. I couldn’t seem to define the boundary of the correspondence’s expiration: to read and immediately trash a birthday card would be horribly insulting to the sender. Would it be better to wait a few days? How much better? How much time should pass? So then, you know, this is why all the boxes of stuff. sterile.

When the situation came up years later in the context of a breakup. Now there was a whole new set of considerations. What did I want to remember and how? If I purged letters, would it be an insult to all the fond memories, or a dishonest "editing" of my history? If I kept them, would it be insulting to future loves and provoke their jealousy, or would it prevent me from moving forward? In the end, sadly, living in New York forced my hand: it was just too much stuff to keep around. After one last, long, tearful evening of reading, I got rid of it all. (Yes, sometimes the guilt-ridden pack-rat in me still regrets this.)

As I moved through my twenties and e-mail overtook letter-writing, the physical space of correspondence became less of a consideration. After a breakup, however, the folder of a now-ex’s e-mails posed its own daily virtual scab-picking. At the same time, though, I couldn’t bear to delete the folder outright–it seemed too antiseptic. And so I developed a post-breakup e-mail purge ceremony similar to the one I’d performed to get rid of the letters. I sat down one evening with a glass of red wine and read everything in the folder, from beginning to end.

I used to rail against the rise of e-mail at the expense of "real" mail. I’d point out the casualness, the carelessness inherent in e-mail. Maybe it was the wine, but in reading years’ worth of everyday e-mails in one go, the mundane began to take on a power. "Let’s go to the movies tonight." "Yes, you snore when you have a cold, but in a cute way."* No, these e-mails weren’t flowery and grand declarations, but they captured the small moments that might have gotten overlooked in a letter, and that I was happy to have been reminded of them again, however briefly. At least that’s how I explained feeling completely shattered as waves of old e-mails were opened, read, and deleted.

* = These are composites drawn from many e-mails from different exes, not actual samples.

Who Loves the Sun?

2005-08-09T19:29:00.000-07:00

I had a great weekend-warrior day Sunday: I made a day trip out to Fire Island. I’d never been out there before, so I was curious and excited to tag along with some friends to visit some real live grownups who’d rented a house for vacation.

To make the most of the day–to be able to hit the beach by 11 a.m. or noon–we had to get an early start. That meant getting an 8 a.m.-ish train from the Atlantic Avenue LIRR station, to catch a 10 a.m.-ish Fire Island ferry. In addition, we needed to allow time to hit the Atlantic Center Pathmark (open 24/7!), so that meant a 6:30 a.m. wake up, give or take for a couple hits of the snooze button. (I am not a snooze person myself, but through the years have learned to tolerate–if not internally smirk at–this habit in others. Really, it’s not them, it’s me: I can’t "snooze" for 8 minutes. I kind of lie there and anticipate the next round of alarm boops. it’s a neurotic thing and I know it–my solution is to get the hell up or reset for a more manageable wake time.)

Anyway, we made it there without a hitch (excepting one record-breaking bladder hold) and were suited up and beer-in-handed by noon. The weather was absolutely perfect and the area where we were was beautiful and quiet. You really appreciate the lack of traffic, noise, and pollution the second it’s gone. Nearby there is an area called Sunken Forest, which begs for exploration. Here are just a few things we witnessed in the course of the day: a man and his adorable son telling a confused Russian (I think) couple their life story on the shuttle to the ferry, an eccentric older man who really likes his bicycle bell, the best dog ever swimming in the ocean and playing fetch for hours, and a naked toddler in water wings (at times riding the "best dog ever" in the water!).

Since the Midwest was in the house, when we took a break for food, it was all about beer and brats (I am still not clear on what the "brick cheese" someone mentioned was, and I’m not sure I want to know); since it’s summer, it was also about yooge tomatoes and melons.

The non-eating, non-drinking portions of the afternoon were spent playing Frisbee, which I don’t think I’ve done for ages. Jumping, diving, fumbling, and running for a big part of the afternoon left me delightedly exhausted and not a little sore. Apparently the best way to get me to work out is to disguise it as laid-back fun. I loathe jogging and going to the gym, but will chase a Frisbee over sand and through knee-deep water for hours on end. I felt like a little kid again. By the next morning, however, my legs and arms were back to feeling 30 with a vengeance.

In other aftermath news, I think I truly need SPF 80 sunscreen–I mean how is it possible to burn when you use SPF 45? Does this mean my sun tolerance is 14 seconds? I probably should have re-applied the sunscreen more often (and yes, it’s my fault for not "counting" the periods when I was sitting on the deck drinking beer/drawing sheep as being in the sun). I spent the evening topless, eating ice cream and cake, and slathering myself in aloe vera gel. It’s not as erotic as you’d think.

Now the burn is fading (dare I dream of winning a hint of color from my suffering?), the sand is cleaned out of the bedsheets, and the swimsuits are rinsed and drying, I’m almost ready to hit the beach again, possibly somewhere closer to home. The great thing about Summer Fridays is that if I can rally my friends, we can make a relaxing, if slightly rowdy, afternoon of Coney Island or one of the city’s other beaches. True, organizing more than a couple friends to do stuff is like managing a bag of cats, but if pulled off could make a legendary day.

Other Bits:
1. Dukes of Hazzard: Yeah, I saw it. I am dum [sic]. Look man, I just wanted to see cars fly and blow up, and watch not-so-guilty-secret-crush Johnny Knoxville, and check out Jessica’s yams, and see Willie Nelson tell jokes worthy of a middling episode of Hee Haw! Also, showings for Broken Flowers weren’t convenient enough (Haaaaaate the Angelika! Why aren’t you playing at BAM?!).

2. Over the weekend, I was talking about a Slate article that discussed ranch dressing, its rise to popularity, and and how it’s a symbol for everything that’s wrong with America. Ranch dressing is vile.

“Are you in, or are you out?”

2005-08-05T17:31:00.000-07:00

Remember that scene in High Fidelity? Rob Gordon looks up his ex-girlfriend Charlie under the pretense of catching up. We know what he really wants: to consider the path not followed, to examine "what if?" and "what went wrong?" both with he and Charlie, and with life in general.

Charlie’s a smart gal, she has Rob’s number. When she gets him alone, she demands to know "So, are you in or are you out? . . . Do you want to be friends or are you having one of those ‘What-does-it-all-mean’ things? There’s been a rash of them recently. I find it a little unnerving. . . . Do all men go through this?"

I guess it’s because we’re all turning 30, but I’ve had quite a few of these encounters over the past year (they’re even starting to infiltrate my dreams!). Although it’s never unwelcome, I never know what to make of it. Sometimes it’s pleasant, sometimes unsettling, sometimes surprising, usually it’s a queasy cocktail of more than one of the above. A few of these reconnections were brought about by lingering mutual connections, so, you know, fair play. Others however, I suspect were wrought by a bit of drunk Google/Friendster/Myspace stalking. (Don’t judge. It’s like masturbation: we all do it, we just don’t usually discuss it in polite company.)

So what’s on my mind, and what’s on their minds when these things crop up? The blush of when we first met? Our relative innocence then? The fond memories? The stupid dramas? Things we should have taken back or the things we should have said aloud? The unasked questions: How do you remember me? Do you still think about me? What if? What went wrong? Another queasy cocktail, I suppose.

I bet some people might read this and think I’m writing about them; other people may think they know who I’m really talking about. You’re both absolutely correct and completely off base. Truth is always in the in-between.

To round out this ruminative mood, I could do worse to sum up past loves–the sweet, the bitter, and the bittersweet–than with a few words from Bob Dylan:

"[G]oodbye’s too good a word, gal,
So I’ll just say fare thee well.
I ain’t sayin’ you treated me unkind,
You could have done better, but I don’t mind,
You just kinda wasted my precious time,
But don’t think twice, it’s all right."

Road House Rules

2005-07-28T18:37:00.000-07:00

I don’t know if you know this (I certainly didn’t until last night), but Road House–starring Mr. Patrick Swayze–is a horribly awesome movie. Its transcendent incompetence is a thing to behold; it fails on so many levels–plot, dialogue, acting, even technical stuff like hiding wires and miscalculated stunts–that it takes something that could have been just bad and dull and made it bad and laughable.

Allow me to summarize the "story." (If you don’t want to be spoiled on a terrible 16-year old movie, skip this part.) Our man Patrick Swayze (who’s "not as big as you’d thought") is Dalton, a famous bouncer on the road house circuit. (The things you learn: there are preeminent bouncers!). Not so fast, he’s more than that; he’s a "cooler"–he can make the roughest ol’ honky-tonk respectable. What’s his secret, you ask? He has a degree in philosophy! (How else would he come up with koans like "Pain don’t hurt" and "Nobody ever wins a fight"?) Plus he learned the trade from the excellent Sam Elliot, who plays the elder-statesman of bouncers. Apparently being a cooler/bouncer pays shitloads of money, because Dalton drives a Mercedes. (I knew I’d gotten into the wrong line of work! Time to go back for that philosophy degree.)

So, Dalton’s doing his thing in some inexplicably rough yuppie bar, where men in pleated white pants and moussed hair tussle. He gets recruited by some guy to clean up his bar in Missouri. It’s the kind of place where throwing bottles at blind musicians isn’t necessarily frowned upon, full of people who are probably banned for life from the Holiday Cocktail Lounge. Tables get busted every night (yet they still serve their patrons glass bottles)–no wonder this guy’s going out of business. The town itself doesn’t seem to have any cops, so it’s pretty much up to the bouncers to regulate.

It only gets less believable from there. Kelly Lynch is a doctor, Patrick tries to cry (or not to cry, I couldn’t really tell), a stuffed polar bear falls on a fat guy (my favorite part), there’s even a fucking monster truck. A bunch of stuff happens, and Patrick’s Mercedes blows up. And scene.

I had trouble falling asleep afterward because every time I closed my eyes, I kept seeing Patrick dodging beer bottles and spears that were whizzing by on fishing wires and I had to stifle a maniacal giggle fit. Hats off to director Rowdy Herrington, his dramatic failure was a comic slam-dunk.

Edited to Add: Behold the master, Roger Ebert!

Pills, Thrills, & Bellyaches

2005-07-15T18:57:00.000-07:00

I have a dorktastically thrilling weekend lined up. Today John and I (and I assume some lovely others) are going to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I’m so excited to see crazy Johnny Depp and some creepy kids and a chocolate river! With Bollywood musical renditions of Roald Dahl’s songs!

Since we are into the visceral thing (splitting a bottle of terrible pinot noir after Sideways, eating Big Mac Value Meals before Super Size Me, Drinking Long Island Iced Teas before Mean Girls), we’ll probably have to load up on some of that awful candy-by-the-pound the they sell in the lobby. You really haven’t been to the movies with John and me until you’ve felt slightly grossed out afterward.

Saturday is Harry Potter Day. No, I’m not lining up at midnight or anything, but yeah, I’m totally buying this on tomorrow. Our little group at the office has reread books 1 through 5 in anticipation of this release, discussing our deep English-major thoughts about the series and making predictions about this one. If you know anything about me, it’s that I am an utter spoiler whore, so it was hard not to have my predictions be colored by the alleged spoilers. So I kept my yap shut on that, lest I give something away to those with a shred of self-control. The fact that everything about the book is on lockdown makes it even more irresistible to me. The thing is, it doesn’t ruin it for me to know stuff–I still like to savor and let things unfold, I still like surprises, I also just like the challenge of finding out Super Secret Stuff before I’m supposed to know.

I think I’ll be skipping the Siren Music Festival this year, though. I’ve been a few times, and it’s just ultimately disappointing. I mean, I’ve been in the general area of some bands I really like but . . . OK sometimes I hate my demographic. Well, specifically the younger, smellier members of it. Patchouli is not a shower! Bleargh. There are just endless numbers of hipster doofuses milling about, I can’t hear or see, I’m turkey jerky on the hot pavement–it adds up to no good.

Don’t get me wrong: I like Coney Island. I love Totonno’s pizza, the Russian places over in Brighton Beach, dancing on the boardwalk, and being the best-looking person on the beach. I just can’t hang with the crowds at this fest. Now that I’m 30 and nearly a decade older than the scummers on the boardwalk, I know I can pay $15 to see The Dears if I want to.

Does that mean I haven’t worked out my schedule? Oh hell no. If I could guarantee that I could see/hear/endure being on my feet for hours on end, I’d hit up: Ambulance Ltd. on the Main Stage at 2, The Dears on the Main Stage at 3, Diamond Nights on the Stillwell Stage at 4:30, VHS or Beta at 6:30, and Spoon on the Main Stage at 7:30. (Gee, ya think that one will be crowded?) Sorry Brendan Benson, but I’ll be seeing you open for The White Stripes in September–again in Coney Island.