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Monday, May 5th, 2008
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5:17 pm - Realizations
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I need to start dressing better. Yesterday a shopclerk asked me if I was from the Midwest.
Also, I'm a bit confused about this NYT article. It's ostensibly about the three women who star in the new, hideously-titled Broadway show Boeing Boeing, but it seems to be much more fascinated by the fact that all three women are eating than about anything to do with their personal lives, thoughts, or the French farce they're appearing in. Is it that weird that women enjoy ribs sometimes, especially when someone else is footing the bill?
I saw the play in previews and it was really disappointing: broad, obvious, and unfunny. What a waste of Christine Baranski and Bradley Whitford!
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| Thursday, February 28th, 2008
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12:55 pm - Review Swarthmore!
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(x-posted to the Swat community too)
ByStudents is the first entirely student-written series of college guidebooks and we want to hear your opinions about Swarthmore. Sarcasm and sincerity are both encouraged, as is creative use of the word "paradigm." Whether you’re a current student or an alum nostalgic for Sharples or still pissed about those Honors exams, take fifteen minutes and help shape the image of Swarthmore for millions of high school students.
Review Swarthmore!
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(comment on this)
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| Monday, February 11th, 2008
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12:45 pm - short poll
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How interested would you be, on a scale of 1-5, in listening to a podcast called "Gay Jews Read Revelations"?
1 = I'd rather listen to Limbaugh
5 = SIGN ME UP, BABY, SIGN ME UP
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(9 comments | comment on this)
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| Monday, November 19th, 2007
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3:17 pm - is reading dead?
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it's kind of ironic that Amazon's ipod-for-books, the Kindle, is coming out at the same time as this study about how no one reads anymore, not even the backs of cereal boxes, not even warning labels. in fact, you're not reading this right now; you're actually watching television and idly thinking about voting Republican.
it's too bad because i have enormous, embarrassing dorklove for books. currently i'm dipping into three novels and an issue of the New Yorker as well as the NYT magazine from last weekend. literature is what separates us from the bonobos. also, i'm on Amazon's side. i want them to succeed like i want Google to succeed, though i acknowledge that everyone's suspicions of how Google wants to take over the world are probably warranted.
on the other hand, with TV dead and Broadway dark, maybe it is the ideal time for Amazon to unveil an entertaining gadget. we can rely on the fact that book writers, at least, will never strike.
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| Wednesday, November 14th, 2007
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9:50 am - an intelligent take on maureen dowd
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KILL! MAIM! DEAD!
Seriously, I can't stand that woman. It's her tone I hate, mostly, that snide, snarky, condescending way she has, and her transparent desire to be one of the boys. Fuck the boys! Seriously, M.Dowd, this isn't 1940 anymore. You're not the only woman around with brains. Look at Gail Collins in the office next door, chatting on the phone with her White House sources. (Hi, Gail!) Then look at David Brooks in that other cubicle trying to figure out how to set up a MySpace page. You'd really rather class yourself with that pink-shirt-wearing doofball, just because he has doofballs?
M.Dowd has always raised by (otherwise low) blood pressure. Remember when she said Michelle Obama was emasculating her husband by making jokes about him in public? I don't even know Michelle Obama and I'd trust her to rear my children. "Emasculate," for Christ's sake. That's a word that should have gone the way of "miscegenation."
But today she pushed me over the edge again, choosing to comment on a doofball study that appeared in Slate last week about a bunch of economists studying the phenomenon of dating. The study showed that -- wow! -- sometimes, some people conform to your expectations. That's like running a study where boys who like trucks and girls who like dolls are put in a room together with trucks and dolls on the floor and noting that a lot of boys pick up trucks and a lot of girls pick up dolls.
The "study" took place in a bar near Columbia. Some people go to bars either to pick up someone or to be picked up, and that's fine, but those people do not make up a representative sample of EVERYONE IN THE WORLD. Yet the study never takes into account that the people who go to a typical place to meet a sexual partner are people who enjoy the typical male-female mating dance. It follows that other less typical people can be found elsewhere engaging in less typical behavior (viz., Savage Love). But the "study" isn't interested in the people who might prove it wrong.
"Studies" that "show" that whatever foregone conclusion or societal assumption in the researchers' minds is "borne out by the facts" make me grind my teeth.
But the sentence of M.Dowd's that really got me has nothing to do with this "study." She pulled in her favorite punching bag, Hillary, to see how this un-peer-reviewed, fluffy-ass, essentialist bullshit could be applied to her. After quoting the researcher's faux-sorrowful admission that "yes, the stereotypes appear to be true," M.Dowd follows up with this: Hillary Clinton, who is trying to crash through the Oval glass ceiling, may hope that we’re evolving into a kingdom of queen bees and their male slaves. But stories have been popping up that suggest that evolution is moving forward in a circuitous route, with lots of speed bumps. Now, I work on textbooks for a living -- or, I do for the next couple weeks anyway -- that try to teach college students to pick apart an argument and examine its constituent parts. Let's do that, shall we?
Subject: Hillary Clinton, who is running for president despite her lack of doofballs.
Thesis: Hillary thinks she can be a female leader but the world isn't ready for that yet, which we know because we've read a summary of an un-peer-reviewed, fluffy-ass bullshit study of bar activity near Columbia.
Subtext: Hillary is a power-hungry manhater, a Pharoah in the making who will throw your male children in the river if you vote for her!
Subtext II: There's been a lot of stuff about bees in the paper lately.
Proof for any of this: ?????
Who else would be so gleeful about the idea that America isn't ready for a female president? Who else would be so casually malicious about a candidate? "Hillary may hope we're evolving into a kingdom of queen bees and their male slaves." What a fantastic piece of fear-mongering slander. Bravo, M.Dowd. You are truly in a league of your own.
Reb. W. tasked me to write about my gender identity. Off the bat, I'd say mine is NOT MAUREEN DOWD.
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| Wednesday, September 26th, 2007
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10:06 am - gak!
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| Sunday, September 16th, 2007
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8:55 am - a new year, apparently!
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despite my best efforts to break my wrist getting it caught between two very fierce doors, ben and i had a fantastic last day in japan yesterday. we're in tokyo now, capping off the trip the same way we started it, except not really: when we first got here, we stayed at a tiny room that stank of cigarettes in this hole-in-the-wall business hotel in ueno, a funny, half-sketchy neighborhood, because that's how we roll, baby!
but for our last couple nights we decided to go all out, american-style, and our current digs provide: free internet in the room; CLOSE to fluffy towels; a huge bed with attached reading lamps; free snacks in a lounge whenever we want them; a view of the sprawling city; complimentary bad wine; and a buffet breakfast lavish enough to make you weep if you too had mostly been obtaining breakfast from local convenient stores.
after eating our fill, we set out to asakusa, an old/new neighborhood that we hoped would be a contrast to shibuya, shinjuku, and rappongi, neighborhoods that demonstrate what would happen if 42nd street and las vegas had demon, tourist-attracting spawn, where we'd been poking around cuz that's what you do. asakusa was different! totally charming -- open air markets, temples and gardens cheek by jowl with an amusement park crammed into one city block, antique stores, and tiny noodle shops. even street vendors, upon which the japanese usually frown. (you're supposed to consume your food sitting down and focusing solely on it.)
after browsing, we hopped over to Toyko Dome City, where we had tickets to watch the Tokyo Giants clobber the -- ready? -- Hiroshima Carp. because that's a battle between equals. ben and i both felt a bit guilty rooting against Hiroshima; as ben put it, it's like rooting against the Jews. haven't they been through enough?
but the baseball game was a fantastic experience, which I will detail when I have more time ...
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| Tuesday, September 4th, 2007
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5:16 am - o-tokyo
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I tried to blog this but the funny lobby computer of my Japanese hotel won't let me. Also this is a Japanese keyboard so please forgive any glaring typos.
!!!JAPAN!!! -- that's what it's like here. lots of exclamation points, neon ones, surrounded by others, and katakana that it takes forever to decode and turns out to mean 'karaoke.' Karaoke is the one word I can definitely recognize at this point. we have not tried it yet BUT we have gotten some amazing things done:
1) talked to other foreigners. everywhere, all the time. we have no compunctions about striking up conversations with strangers.
2) the fish market! imagine Reading Terminal Market except three times as big and ten times as confusing, filled with fish carcasses and men with swords and other men smoking cigarettes while racing around on motorized carts and everywhere buckets of smaller fish that aren't quite dead yet and are thrashing about in a pathetic way. our first morning here we woke up at 5:30 and decided to make the most of it, so we got to see the market in all its wet, bloody glory.
3) fresh sushi for breakfast, post-fish market. this was one of those unforgettable experiences that we just stumbled on, having left the fish market. we saw a line and we queued up, figuring why not? and indeed, we were not disappointed. a chef served us sushi like we'd never had before, sushi that was only Mostly Dead, sushi from his hands to our mouths, sushi that it turned out cost $70 (7000 yen total) which was a problem when it came time to pay because we only had $28, or 3000 yen.
so what did we do? naturally i surrended myself and became a hostage, sitting on a stool in the corner of this tiny sushi bar, trying to be inconspicuous, as poor mr. ben raced around for an hour and twenty minutes trying to find an ATM that took international credit cards. not in japan 24 hours and we already created our own video game!
eventually i was redeemed. it was great.
4) walked. walked walked walked and walked some more. my legs are tired all the way up to my hips. yesterday when mr. ben and i both reached that stage we took a break and got cheap tickets to watch one act of traditional kabuki. because this is how we relax.
5) bought tickets to a japanese baseball game! for someone who is utterly uninterested in sports, i am totomo excited for this-des. that means, I cannot wait.
6) shrines, temples, park with huge lake covered in lotus taller than i am.
this is all very scattered but more soon. tomorrow morning we leave for the Hokkaido leg of our asian adventure. whee!
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| Saturday, July 21st, 2007
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2:33 pm - SPOILERS
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After I finished the last Harry Potter book, I was overtaken by a kind of euphoria. Initially I opened up my laptop, thinking I'd check in with the world; then I decided the smarter thing to do would be to go bouncing outside into the sunshine, enjoy my giddiness, and be content with my own opinions about the book before letting them get (inevitably) molded by other people's.
My opinion? It was wonderful. This review sums it up well, as does this one, from Salon. Laura Miller's review points out many of the parallels between Rowling's story and the great fantasies of English literature. She misses one thing: the similarity, in some respects, between a Patronus and a daemon in Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials. Both creatures stem from the same idea, namely that a person's essence can be personified as well as summed up by an animal.
I even found this installment pretty well-written, and the writing has always been my least favorite part of the HP saga. Rowling seemed to be a better teller-of-stories than composer-of-sentences (although her dialogue has always been spot on). In this book, that's less clear. I'm in such awe of her ability to put the whole narrative together and pace it well and keep me in such suspense and make me laugh and then put down the book for a few minutes to cry and then laugh again.
I wish it were possible to call the woman up and thank her. Not only have I been enraptured by this crazy world she's conjured up for eight years, I've been able to feel connected to mainstream America for that long too. It's so nice to have one's tastes validated.
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| Tuesday, April 17th, 2007
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4:38 pm - Status reclaimed!
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| Monday, April 2nd, 2007
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12:52 pm - why buy the cow?
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or something ...
did y'all see this? low-fat yogurt as birth control? THAT must be why my mom's fed it to me every day since i was a kid: According to data gleaned from the Nurses Health Study at the Harvard School of Public Health and published earlier this year in the journal Human Reproduction, women who consume ice cream at least twice a week have a 38 percent lower risk of ovulation-related infertility than those who indulge a mere once a week. What’s more, the piously health-conscious — women who eat two or more servings of low-fat dairy products, particularly yogurt, a week — are twice as likely to have trouble becoming pregnant as those who eat less than one serving of the skinny stuff. excellent! i recommend brown cow, stonybrook farm, and trader joe's varieties. i wonder if soy yogurt has similar benefits?
the idea that i am "piously health-conscious" makes me giggle, or would, if i weren't so full of phlegm. i'm so sick i'm home today, despite the huge amounts of stuff i have to do at the office. it's a vicious cycle, actually: i think the work-stress made me sick. saturday night, i took some NyQuil and fell into the following dream.
DREAM, SCENE 1
ESTER sits at her computer at the office, looking at one of several multi-colored Excel spreadsheets.
FIRST VOICE whispers: Ester, go to sleep!
SECOND VOICE replies: She can't. She's collating.
FIRST VOICE: I am the almighty God NyQuil and I DEMAND she go to sleep!
SECOND VOICE: Fuck off, NyQuil, you powerless woodland sprite -- can't you see she has work to do?
REALITY, SCENE 2
ESTER wakes up in the midst of a panic attack. Takes some xanax, manages to calm down, falls back asleep. No voice dares go up against the demon lord Xanax.
To make things worse, of course, Passover starts tonight. Nothing says health, happiness, and recovery like 8 days of matzoh. On the other hand, I'm kinda looking forward to the horseradish.
AND I did my taxes over the weekend, while unable to do anything actually fun. I owed the IRS just under $1200. Excuse me for wanting to crawl under a couch somewhere and make like a dust bunny.
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| Sunday, March 4th, 2007
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8:48 pm - disquisition
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I just saw Glengarry Glen Ross for the first time and it confirmed for me a feeling I'd held since first reading American Buffalo lo these many years ago: I'm not crazy about Mamet. Like Scorcese, he certainly has something to say about masculinity in America, and, like Scorcese, his material brings out the best in his actors. But his plays don't keep me interested. In the case of GGR, it's clear from the beginning who the winners are and who the losers are; everyone's role is clear and static. Why bother watching everyone do what they're destined to do?
GGR's greatest line belongs to Alec Baldwin, whose one scene as an alpha lion shaking up the pack is the movie's most memorable part. One of the losers asks him his name, and Baldwin responds: "My name? Fuck you, that's my name!"
You kind of have to hear it delivered.
Sadly, most of the script isn't that clever, and it relies on profanity to keep it lively. As I see it, the word "fuck" is like coriander: in the right context, it's perfect; but would you go sprinkling it on ice cream, watermelon, pancakes? No, of course not. Some moviemakers simply can't help themselves, though. They shake that coriander bottle until it's empty. Most of the movies on that last, you'll notice, are from the last ten years; before 1995ish, which is to say, in a pre-Pulp Fiction world, apparently people had more self-control.
Also? Not a coincidence that the best Mamet movie is State and Main. Very little coriander in that but it tastes great.
My favorite judicious cinematic usages of the word "fuck" include:
from SOUTHPARK: BIGGER, LONGER, AND UNCUT
Terrance and Phillip: Shut your fucking face, Uncle Fucker/
You're the one who fucked your uncle, Uncle Fucker/
You don't eat or sleep or mow the lawn/
You just fuck your uncle all day long!
from THE BIG LEBOWSKI
Narrator: But, dude, do you really have to use so many cuss words?
Dude: (honestly curious) What the fuck you talkin about?
Narrator: Have it your way, dude.
Spike Lee's rants are also things of beauty. In general, thought, such rampant and unselfaware overuse leaves me somewhat depressed about the state of language use in this country, and very much in the mood for Indian food.
current mood:  amused
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| Sunday, February 25th, 2007
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9:40 pm - Silly oscars
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It only took until 9:39 for me to turn the sound off. The Will Ferrel / Jack Black / John C. Reilly musical number was actually funny, and the buzz I got from laughing is, I think, what got me through the subsequent forty minutes. That and watching Abigail Breslin. She's so cute! Do you think, since Alan Arkin snagged the Oscar from Eddie Murphy, she'll pull a tiny, adorable upset as well?
Thoughts as they occur:
I feel conflicted about Ellen. Her hair looks great and she seems to be having a good time, but I would love for someone to break the Lesbian = Pantsuit connection.
Every time the camera flashes to Abigail Breslin, seriously, I just melt. The Fug girls say I'm not alone, that everyone's biological clock is moving forward at the sight of her. I walked out of Little Miss Sunshine proclaiming that that little girl was my hero, and it's even more true now.
Bald Jack Nicholson is even scarier than regular Jack Nicholson. Helen Mirren, on the other hand, is about thirteen times hotter than Cameron Diaz. Look at those breasts!
Al Gore is not hot at all, especially when next to Leonardo DiCaprio. How on earth did those two become friends? What do you suppose they talk about as they ride about in their supermodel-filled hybrids?
Ugliest Dress Award So Far goes to Anne Hathaway. She needs a lesson or two from HM on how to rock the rack.
Dude! Costume designer winner lady is as inarticulate as she is badly dressed. I can't understand a word and I'm weirdly fixated on her skinny bow tie. Did she just dedicate the award to Kubrick, "my great master?" Yikes. And on that note, ladies and gentlemen, Tom Cruise! ... Huh. I've forgotten how normal he can look.
Oops, gotta go turn the sound off again. It's Tribute Time.
D'you think anyone will attempt a Clinton/Obama/Geffen joke? Bets?
ETA: I have three liveblogging windows open -- WP chat, the Fug girls, and Defamer -- and I'm still insufficiently amused. Then, for my sins, CELINE DION. Watching the snow fall might be more interesting than this.
ETA 2: The Dreamgirls number woke me from my coma. Jennifer Hudson doesn't just sound amazing, she also looks great in a Jessica Rabbit-type sparkly dress. Why isn't that what she wore on the red carpet? Beyonce, by contrast, looks seems to be wearing fake hair and a dress that makes her look huge. It doesn't even match Hudson's. What gives?
current mood: amused
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| Friday, February 9th, 2007
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3:19 pm - a few choice words about "Norbit"
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ahrghhhhhhhhh can't this movie rot and die and go to hell where it can be stomped on by angry dead civil rights leaders for eternity wearing cleats and singing "la bamba" i fuckin hate eddie murphy you hear me eddie HATE
okay! that was fun.
i don't know why this movie has gotten under my skin the way it has. i'm not asian; nor am i a black woman, a fat woman, or a fat black woman. but when i see the celluloid-dimpled thighs of Rasputia, the movie's high-femme domineering monster who dares to consider herself attractive, i think of every time i looked at a mirror in some state of despair.
PEOPLE. IT IS BLACK HISTORY MONTH. (this is the sound of my mind boggling.)
someone attempted to explain why eddie murphy does this self-disrespecting shit by trotting the "he's gay so he hates women" pony out of the stable. it doesn't saddle, though. according to his IMDB page, he has seven children by three different mothers -- two girlfriends, one ex-wife. if he's gay, he's doign a good and, i imagine, costly job of hiding it.
someone else said simply, "i guess he doesn't like fat people very much."
that's so painfully true that one can only wilt.
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| Thursday, November 9th, 2006
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10:47 am - another reason to be happy
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Some stranger stumbles on the Apple Valley Review, where a couple of my poems were recently published, and he likes me! Who'd have guessed.
What a dizzy couple of days. I have a bottle of champagne in the fridge I was given almost exactly two years ago by a friendly Voice Over actor. Through anniversaries, birthdays, and an engagement, it has gone unopened; but with the Democrats finally in power and things beginning to go well all over, maybe this weekend is the time.
Anyone who'd like to share in the bubbly is more than welcome. Let me know!
current mood: Giddy?
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| Wednesday, November 8th, 2006
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7:29 pm - biggest sigh of relief EVER
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Did y'all see this? The press conference Bush WISHED he could give. Hee!
Man, I'm giddy. Not only did we take the House (and maybe the Senate) by knocking off Santorum and various abusive/creepy/corrupt Republican incumbents and installing my newest best friend Claire McCaskill; AND defeat the evil anti-abortion ballot initiatives in South Dakota; AND get the majority of the governorships; AND force the Republicans to be all humble & accomodating for the first time in memory. We -- and by "we" I mean the oh-so-beleagured democrats -- get to be WINNERS. We get to glow, for once, and not with radioactive disappointment.
No one I talked to today was entirely comfortable with the feeling; people were almost bewildered that they were allowed to be happy. Give us time.
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| Tuesday, October 17th, 2006
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8:41 pm - things to enjoy
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Autumnal things that aren't all bad.
The farmer's market down the street from me in Brooklyn Heights sold me the most perfect apples I've ever had. Seriously! I'd forgotten how good apples actually can be in the fall when they've recently and locally been picked off of TREES.
Oh, modernity.
And I've now seen two really good movies in the theater in a row. First, 49 Up, and then, more recently, Shortbus. One character, surveying the idealized Brooklyn sex club that gives the movie its name, summarizes it, exclaiming, "It's like the '60s, only with less hope!"
The whole movie is beautiful and sad, except for the ending, which delivers a musical montage of false/fleeting happiness so that you don't have to walk out crying. I was okay with it, frankly, because who needs all that weepiness. The characters have a lot of sex -- with each other, with themselves -- and it's not pornographic, interestingly, perhaps because it's in context and the characters were clearly focused on each other. It's not even hot, really.
The end is hot. A little. When people seem momentarily happy. What's hotter than that?
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| Monday, October 9th, 2006
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3:26 pm - the boy ain't go no cultya
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Fall pisses me off, generally. It's not consistent: today it's 78 degrees while on friday I was shivering in my winter coat and then listening to Ben complain about how much he hates my winter coat.
The silver lining though is that culture starts up again. Whee, culture! In order of how much I want to see them, here's what I want to see in the immediate future:
Little Children
Shortbus
the Queen
Volver
Half Nelson
Sherrybaby
and then the Departed. Maybe. I am tired of Jack Nicholson, though.
It's funny to look at that list and think, that's $50 right there! More, really. Stupid NYC theater prices. I'll prolly end up just Netflixing half of them.
TV's been pretty good too. Does that count as culture? Even without cable, I've found shows to get attached to. A few are rollovers (Gray's Anatomy, America's Next Top Model) but I'm also enjoying Ugly Betty and, to a lesser extent, Studio 60. If only Aaron Sorkin would work a little bit, coming up with new ideas instead of recycling old West Wing ones and being pompous, I'd enjoy it more.
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| Saturday, September 30th, 2006
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7:48 pm - titles, part deux
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The key takeaway from the last entry seemed to be, Title the book "the Kingmaker."
The problem with that? Voici. Hmm.
"Kingmaker" by itself seems to be better. Only a little, though.
Damn. I don't want to be mistaken for an Atari video game!
"Eli on Wednesdays" makes me really happy as a title. Unfortunately it doesn't mean anything in the context of the book. There is a character named Eli and that's about as far as it goes.
On the flip side, "Jay Applebaum," by itself, is just a hair under 50%. And "the Brooklyn Angels" has a whopping 63.7% chance at greatness and success. Neither option has a pre-existing doppelganger.
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| Friday, September 29th, 2006
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4:57 pm - i heart experts
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This Lulu titlescorer is one of many tools the internet offers to let you pretend to glimpse into the heart of chaos and see order.
It works thusly: you enter a title and it tells you what that title's chances are of being a bestseller. I wish it gave a rationale too cuz I feel like I'm flailing. Here's how titles I am considering stack up:
MOST BEST (72.5% chance)
Eli on Wednesdays
STILL WOW (63.7% chance)
America's Children
The Kingmaker
PRETTY STRONG (59.3%)
Shoelessness
Faith
MIDDLING (35.9% chance)
Applebaum, Agent of God
The Agent and the Angel
Agent of God
EH (20-some% chance)
Bless You, Mr. Applebaum
Til They Were Whole
WORST (10% chance)
On Holy Ground
Man, "Eli on Wednesdays" as a title is why I wrote this book. I KNEW it was foul-proof and generally awesome. Trouble is, the book as it developed has nothing to do with that title ...
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