And By God, I Really Tasted Something Swell

2009 was rough, there's no denying it. But as it comes to a close, remember this:

You got through it.

Here's to the next.

(via 1000 Awesome Things)

(This Year's Gonna be a Good, Good Year)

This Time Last Year...

Disgruntled usher: I swear by every god of Jupiter that these are your seats.

--The Ambassador Theatre, 49th & Broadway

(via Overheard in New York)

The Judge Who Allows Everything

Comedy Central Park	Watch more
John Mulaney - Law & Order
http://www.comedycentral.com/
Joke of the Day Stand-Up Comedy Free Online Games

The Miracle of Life

From Gothamist:

If you were thinking about giving up coffee in the new year: think again! The Wall Street Journal declares it might be saving your life. Seriously, they say if you drink two cups a day you'll even be less suicidal. Other scientific facts include: those drinking up to four cups a day are 25% less likely to develop Type 2 diabetes; men who drink at least six cups a day have a 60% lower risk of developing advanced prostate cancer; five cups a day can lower your risk of Alzheimer's by 65%... and so on. And all you're left with is a life-long addiction, and probably the shakes.

"You deduce that by removing your sunglasses to the strains of a Who song?"

No joke, I am really craving Velveeta Shells and Mac now.

This Must Be Tried

A way to make Yorkshire pudding without also having to make a roast? Sign me up.

Clearly, I Need a Trip to the Shore

I have been slow to investigate and (as is inevitable) embrace MTV's Jersey Shore but this video may have sealed the deal.

The REAL Situation (Feat. MTV Jersey Shore's The Situation, Snooki, and Pauly D) - watch more funny videos

Guess what I'm doing over Christmas?

Did You Miss Me?

(via explodingdog)

It's Friendship, Friendship...Just the Perfect Blendship...

Of genuine affection and creepy stalking. Or, at least, in Facebook's case.

In light of the new "privacy" settings, Gawker has provided a useful little guide to getting some control back. Definitely worth a look.

Goodbye, England (Covered in Snow)

It's snowing in London today. Let's mark the occasion:

Today is Clearly Going to Be About Clothes I Can't Have/Wear But Covet Immensely

Like so. That dress is fantastic. The shoes...those I can live without.

Fact: I Hate Posh Spice...

....but damn.

Most of all, I want those shoes. And the ability to walk in them.

(Via Jezebel)

Maddow v. Cohen

Rachel Maddow and Richard Cohen, author of Coming Out Straight, a book being cited by proponents of the bill in Uganda to allow for the execution of gay people.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

All the Single Ladies (All the Single Ladies...)

Oh, man.

Five Pictures

Been relying too much on the word, lately and not enough on the image. Working off of today's photograph of a routemaster, here are five pieces by my favorite non-photography artists.

1. Georges Seurat, Au Concert Parisien

Sadly, this is not my favorite Seurat drawing. That would be one of a lone figure walking down a street under a streetlight that I saw as part of a visiting exhibition at the Peggy Guggenheim when I was 12. being 12, I didn't take the time to right down or commit to memory the name. Fie on me, I say. But this give you the general picture...the blurry edges, the figures barely coming out of the dark, and this one even has a theatrical element!

2. Edward Hopper, Rooms for Tourists

I think, at this point, it's pretty well established that (without necessarily being a particularly sad person), I do quite like sad things. This may be why Edward Hopper is my favorite artist. His pictures tend to be bright, bold and simple and yet somehow also lonely and heart breaking. They also are so rich with story, it's insane. Even this quiet house, I feel, has a story behind it, and I love wondering about what that story is.

3. William Hogarth, Marriage a La Mode- Scene II: Shortly After Marriage

Speaking of stories! William Hogarth is the man. Painting in the 18th century, he's pretty much one of the first serial cartoonists, making series of paintings that tell often cynical and scandalous stories about terrible people leading terrible lives. It's like fine art as a reality TV show. I saw an exhibit of his work in London and it's just...awesome. Every picture is incredibly rich in detail and they read almost like mini-plays. This print is the second in a seven-part series detailing a marriage of convenience that devolves into death, madness and all kind of adultery. Good times! As you can tell from the black dot on the tired man, he already has syphilis.

4. Van Gogh, Vase of Roses

The problem with Van Gogh is that I don't think his painting photograph remarkably well because part of what makes them so fascinating is their texture. This is a man who, in between cutting ears and going wonky, really liked to lay on paint, and when you stand in front of one of his pieces it's hard to resist the urge to run your hands over them. This is a painting that's in the Met and, I think, a particularly good example of what I'm talking about. Next time you're in New York, go investigate.

5. Rene Magritte, Empire of Light

Settling on the last picture was rough (what about Vermeer? Renoir? Sundry others?), but I love love love this picture. It has an element of a children's book about it, and yet is still so simple and elegant and I love the juxtaposition of night/day. What you can't see in the picture here, and can only really see in person, is that there are things in the dark. To the right of the house is a gate that leads into a garden, and it's impossible to explain how you can see that, but you can. you wind up kind of falling into this picture, and accepting the reality it creates.

Now on to less artistic endeavors...

(good morning)

Routemaster by essexdiver via the Londonist Flickrpool.

And You Can Quote Me - Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie (Peter Breaks Through)

"All children, except one, grow up."

"You always know after you are two. Two is the beginning of the end."

"The way Mr. Darling won her was this: the many gentlemen who had been boys when she was a girl discovered simultaneously that they loved her, and they all ran to her house to propose to her except Mr. Darling, who took a cab and nipped in first, and so he got her."

"He was one of those deep ones who knew about stocks and shares. Of course, no one really knows, but he quite seemed to know, and he often said stocks were up and shares were down in a way that would have made any woman respect him."

"When you wake in the morning, the naughtiness and evil passions with which you went to bed have been folded up small and placed at the bottom of your mind; and on the top, beautifully aired, are spread out your prettier thoughts, ready for you to put on."

"Of course the Neverlands vary a good deal. John's, for instance, had a lagoon with flamingos flying over it at which John was shooting, while Michael, who was still very small, had a flamingo with lagoons flying over it. John lived in a boat turned upside down on the sands, Michael in a wigwam, Wendy in a house of leaves deftly sewn together. John had no friends, Michael had friends at night, Wendy had a wolf cub forsaken by its parents; but on the whole Neverlands have a family resemblance, and if they stood in a row you could say of them they have each other's nose and so forth. On these magic shores children at play are forever breaching their coracles. We too have been there; we can still hear the sound of the surf, though we shall land no more."

Staying Out of Trouble Abroad

I'll admit it, this Amanda Knox thing has got me a bit wigged. I haven't been following the trial very closely, so I don't know what kind of evidence she was convicted on, but I can't help but feel a sense of "there but for the grace of God..." when reading about her accounts. Not so much because the drug and orgy aspect, but because she was an American student studying abroad and may, in fact, be innocent. Who knows? The idea of getting in legal trouble in a country not my own terrifies me, so good thing Gawker posted this handy list of ways to avoid such a predicament.

Words to live by.

Five Problems with 'Dollhouse'

Virginia got a healthy dusting of snow on Saturday, which gave me an excellent chance to catch up with Joss Whedon's 'Dollhouse.' The show is in its second season, but has been cancelled, and now Fox is burning through the remaining episodes two at time to get it all over with as soon as possible. Having seen many, many episodes of 'Buffy' and being a diehard lover of 'Firefly,' I don't feel 'Dollhouse' lived up to either of these previous projects. Here are five things I would have changed:

1. Eliza Dushku. This is both the most obvious problem and the biggest, in my mind. Dushku may be hot, but she's also horrible. I know she's a Whedon favorite, but why oh why? She's like Sci-Fi television's Mariah Gale. The girl can't act. And this is especially problematic/apparent in a show whose premise is based on a) the fact that the characters become completely different people each episode and b) the character of Echo/Caroline is supposed to have a mystic draw when it comes to all of the other characters (see point 2). To make matters even worse, Enver Gjokaj is just hands down AMAZING (troublesome RP accent aside), and any time Victor and Echo share an episode, Dushku's failings become even more apparent.

2. The Ballard/Caroline dynamic. Tiresome. Whedon kind of likes to mess with his audience, which is why the savior complex Ballard's ex-FBI agent feel towards Echo is given such a creepy undertone (which, though a clever angle, I don't think is taken far enough), but even that isn't enough to satisfactorily distract from the fact that this central through line is so incredibly done. I was over it the moment Ballard got a photograph and a name, and it was extra frustrating when paired with the genuinely intriguing Mellie relationship. This is much like the Enver/Eliza contrast...Whedon gives us something worthwhile, but makes it secondary to something tired, vaguely cliched and far more mainstream. Of course, if you had a more compelling actress playing Echo, it could have worked out well, but I find Dushku to have all the charisma of a Canal Street handbag, and so that someone should fixate on her is, to me, completely unbelievable and makes that through line feel even more like a kind of tried-and-true gimmick as opposed to an organic relationship between the characters.

3. Lack of humor. If you watched 'Firefly' you know that Whedon is more than capable of balancing intrigue and danger with laugh out loud funny ("I swear by my pretty little bonnet I will end you."), but the world of 'Dollhouse' is far too earnest and takes itself far too seriously to allow for such a balance, it seems. Not to say the show doesn't have it's funny moments, but they originate almost entirely from the neuroses of the chief programmer, Topher (if you saw the second of last week's episodes you will probably agree with me that the Tophers were among the best things ever, and further proof that Gjokaj is just phenomenal), or from some kind of neurological mix-up (Topher and Adele's deep discussion of brown sauce, Gjokaj's hilarious accidental turn as Kiki). When the humorous moments come, they are a joy, but there is also something obvious about them, as if Whedon realizes he owes us a few laughs. They don't always feel natural and there aren't enough of them. I understand this is not a "funny" show, but I don't know that the truly serious episodes are strong enough to stand on their own (with the possible exception of Epitaph One), especially when they are anchored around...you guessed it, Eliza Dushku. Seriously, so much could be fixed if she wasn't the anchor.

4. Epitaph One. This is a tricky problem to get into, and I know I probably stand alone, but Epitaph One really came close to ruining the second season for me. Released as DVD extra, there are 'Dollhouse' watches who have never seen this episode, and I envy them. As a stand alone, it is pretty phenomenal, and I love me some Felicia Day, but to release it ahead of the second season was, I think, a mistake. It takes place in the future and gives us a picture of what the Dollhouse's technology has done to our planet and society. Fascinating stuff, but the fast-forward ruins the suspense of the second's seasons episodes since we see the end result of all of the characters relationships. True, we don't know how they got there, but I don't know that I particularly care. It strikes the journey as hollow, like knowing the final score of a sporting event. Sure, there may still be exciting plays, but they lose a lot since you know the outcome.

Victoria loves the episode because she likes seeing the clues to the future and knowing where they lead to, and maybe that's most people. For me, I much prefer to be kept in the dark and try to figure out myself untile all is revealed, and then go back and look for the hints I missed the first time around. Had there been no second season, Epitaph One would have been a great way to answer questions and provide a stop to the series. Instead, it takes the fun out of it.

5. All of the above. I know, this sounds like a total cop-out fifth problem, but let me explain. This show has incredible promise. There are episodes that leave me totally floored (who else totally freaked out when the phone rang and Adele's voice calmly proclaimed 'There are three flowers in a vase. the third flower is green."? Blew my mind) and, despite my problems with the second season (see previous point), they are really getting interesting with the ways to screw with Echo (Echo as a mother and the serial killer episode were both incredibly cool). Adele is a kick-ass woman, Mellie was a welcome addition to the "I look like a real person" stable of television actresses and the secondary characters are incredibly interesting/compelling (Enver Gjokaj! I can't say that enough). But, I have not recommended it to a single person. Because, for all of it's potential, it doesn't come together. I find the holes just too big, and to get to a place where you do become interested and invested is more of a commitment than I think is worth it. I would say, at this point, at least a quarter of the episodes I could do without, most of which come from the first season and the complicated nature of the plot makes it vital you watch them all.

It was a cool premise, and sometimes succeeds, but too much of the good is too far undermined by the bad. When it goes off the air in January, I can't say I'll be crushed. I certainly won't be surprised.

It's That Time of Year

Usually, I add this to my AIM profile, but since the advent of Gchat, I'm never signed on any more. But! traditions must be followed and thus, my feathered friends, the 'Love Actually' profile lives on in blog form...

With any luck, by next year
I'll be going out with one of these k i d s.
But for now, let me say
Without hope or agenda
Just because it's Christmas
And at Christmas you tell the truth
To me, you are perfect
And my wasted heart will love you
Until you look like this.


Merry Christmas.

The West Wing Didn't Go Away, It Just Got Elected

A brilliant Jezebel.com commenter sees the Salahis through a Sorkin lense:

It would open with Toby and Sam holding a copy of the Washington Post with the
partycrashers pictures on the cover.
Toby: "Do you see what this is?"
Sam: "That would appear to be a very blonde lady in a Sari with the Vice
President."
Toby: (louder) DO YOU SEE WHAT THIS IS?
Sam: (peering
closer) Party crashers? Here? (more to himself) I didn't even know that was
possible.
Toby: PARTY CRASHERS. AT THE WHITE HOUSE.
Sam: (still to
himself) How'd they get past the secret service?
Toby: That's what everyone
is going to want to know. GINGER!

-cut to Leo's office with Sam and
Toby-
Toby: Leo, have you seen this?
Leo: Seen what? It's earlier Toby.
-Toby hands over paper-
Leo: Is this what I think it is?
Sam: It
depends what you think it is.
Leo: IS THIS WHAT I THINK IT IS?
Sam: If
you think it's two reality tv show wannabes who managed to slip past 4 layers of
secret service security to crash the state dinner, as the kids are saying these
days, then yes.
Leo: -withering look- MARGARET!

I feel like it would
be one of President Bartlett's good days - where the staff would be all atwitter
and freaking out and Leo would be yelling at people like crazy to figure out
"how these LUNATICS got past the people who are not even supposed to let a
SPEEDING BULLET get to the president and have prevented 32 assassination
attempts this year alone!"

Cut to Donna pacing frantically outside
Josh's office, and when he finally looks up to ask her what's wrong she rushes
in and just word vomits all over him:
Josh: Yes?
Donna: So you know how
my sister's cousin's veterinarian's brother had that polo association?
Josh:
No, but go on.
Donna: Well... they contacted me a couple days ago but
getting an invitation to this party and I told them that I didn't have any say
in it but I could try to finagle them an invitation and-
Josh: DONNA.
Donna: Yes Josh?
Josh: I'm going to hope I'm getting this wrong, but are
you telling me that you invited this couple to the party?
Donna: No! That's
what I wanted to tell you! I told them I DIDN'T have an invitation for them but
they showed up anyways!
Josh: Uh - okay. Just - just go do something and let
me figure this out. Get me Toby.
Donna: Josh?
Josh: Yeah Donna?
Donna: Are you mad at me?
Josh: I'm - no. Just - Just get Toby.

Toby: It was DONNA?
Josh: It was Donna. Rather it wasn't Donna, but
it was Donna.

As Josh is leaving (wrapping his scarf around his neck) he
runs in Danny Kincade walking out.
"Danny, walk with me."
"What's going
on Josh?"
"This party crashers story - is this still going to be big
tomorrow?"
"Well, considering how everyone's going to be talking about how
the secret service let someone gatecrash the party? Yes."

Something
MAJOR happens though (like a speech on Afghanistan? Repercussions from another
charming side story? A legislative healthcare battle prominently featuring
Abby?) and this gets brushed to the side, just checking in on staff every now
and then to remind us of this storyline.

And then at the end of the
episode, President Bartlett would come in from a charming weekend with Abby in
Vermont, in his dad jeans and a sweatshirt, put on his reading glasses and get
briefed, look over them at the person who's getting most of the blame (my guess
would be Donna) and say, "You - have you learned your lesson?"
"Yes Mr.
President"
"Good. Next time make sure no more weasels get in. We have enough
Republicans crawling around this place. Has the Secret Service been interviewed?
Have security policies been overhauled?"
"Yes Mr. President."
"Good. Now
I don't want to hear another word about this nonsense. We have a country to run,
and the situation in Izbekistan isn't going to resolve itself. You're dismissed.
Leo - you stay."
"Yes Mr. President?"
-laughing-"They actually crashed
the White House State Dinner?"
"Yes, Mr. President."
"Well, why aren't
you laughing, Leo?"
"Because Sir, this is a serious matter! You could have
been killed or worse!"
"Leo... if these (waves hands around with reading
glasses) fameballs got their 15 seconds of fame, I don't want to give them
anymore. Let the secret service deal with them. I'm going to bed - and you
should get some sleep to. Tell Mallory we expect to see her for Christmas."
"Yes sir, Mr. President, Good night Mr. President"

Maybe We Don't Give Jimmy Fallon Enough Credit

Because then he does something like this:

Face Palm

More from Mudflats' recapping of Going Rogue.

Page 217
“I didn’t believe in the theory that human beings – thinking, loving beings – originated from fish that sprouted legs and crawled out of the sea. Or that human beings began as single-celled organisms that developed into monkeys who eventually swung down from the trees…” (Wow.)

Steve Schmidt felt a little uncomfortable with this part of the discussion. Imagine that. “I had just dared to mention the C-word: creationism. But I felt I was on solid factual ground.” (Wow.)

Page 225
More of McCain’s introduction of her. It struck her as ironic that Obama had captured the theme of “change.” After all she’s the one who came up with it first. She wondered how she could interject that into the campaign – that she was for change “when change wasn’t cool.” (Wondering how many other political campaigns have had change as a theme. Probably every single non-incumbant. Nice try.)

Page 236
The McCain communications team learned that she was the VP pick the same day everyone else did so they were completely unprepared and had no idea who she was.

So when the avalanche of press inquiries tumbled in, the national media folks had zero information. What they did report, patchy factoids cobbled together from the Internet and a few left-wing Alaska bloggers was usually wrong. (Woooo! “A few left-wing Alaska bloggers” shout out!)

The national media, referred to as the “black-suited, laptop-toting flatlanders” (Flatlanders?) apparently drove around Wasilla trying to find out where Sarah Palin bought her liquor, and talked to: “a defeated former opponent” (Andrew Halcro), “a maniacal blogger” (Heck, that could be any of us, but probably Syrin), “the falafel lady” (political watchdog Andree McLeod) and “the Wasilla town crank” (presumably Anne Kilkenny).

Page 258
Tracey tried to do good, but her hands were tied by “headquarters.”
Even though the campaign was instructed to ankle tackle her if she tried to open her yap to the press on the plane, she sent the kids back to talk to the press. I guess that was so the press would stay away from her kids. Piper handed out heart-shaped stickers to reporters that said, “Vote for Piper’s Mom.”

Five Things From My Google Reader

Just returned from another one of my ill-advised-but-so-worth-it epic theater road trips, driving over 1000 miles in 56 hours to catch Punchdrunk's 'Sleep No More' (and a minor cold). Show was fantastic, the company was fabulous and the cold didn't kill me. A successful weekend.

Now, 56 hours, is really not that much until you come home and log-on to the interwebs for the first time since gleefully leaving work early on Friday. 487. That's the number of posts Google Reader had waiting for me and, I am proud to say, I have finally gotten through them all! So today's Five Things will be culled from those offerings. In no particular order...

1) Via Joy, I give you the automatic packing list. I just tried it out for my upcoming weekend jaunt to New York, and while it seems pretty straight-forward it DOES save you the hassle of thinking for yourself. And in this day and age, who doesn't love that?

2) Remember, back a bit ago when Obama offered to write a little girl at one of his speeches a note for missing school? Maybe he got the idea from one of his predecessors. It seems another awesome president, this one by the name of Lincoln, once took time out from saving the Union to write a note to a little boy to confirm the child's story about meeting him. If you can't read it, it says "To whom it may concern: I did see and talk with Master George Evans Patten, last May, at Springfield, Illinois. Respectfully, A. Lincoln."

You can find the original story over The Daily Dish.

3. You know what else you can find at the Daily Dish? A baby otter. But I will save you all that tiresome clicking and just give it to you here:

4. It's only been a week but I'm already experiencing post-Mad Men malaise. This video of Roger Sterling's best one liners did a bit to cheer me up, but they left out three of my favs! A big ol' "Good for you" if you can guess the missing lines:

5. There are a lot of things that disturb me these days (previous posts), and The Disney Channel ranks pretty high up there. Through baby-sitting and my sister (who is for the record, 19) I have wound up seeing at least one episode of the following: Hannah Montana, Jonas, Sunny With a Chance, The Wizards of Waverly Place and, the subject of this Slate article, The Suite Life of Zach and Cody. None of it makes me feel great about the future. Where's Beauty and the beast when you need it?

I Read Mudflats' Recap of Going Rogue So You Don't Have To

Seriously?

Seriously.

This is about as close to reading the book as I'm ever going to get, unless I suddenly have the urge to become a model and need a quickie crash diet/bulimia plan. Eegads, i hate this woman. I would say why, but I will let the following selections from Mudflats' blogging of the reading experience clue you in instead.

Page 30-31
Her Dad was the coach of many of her teams. He made her work harder than the other kids. She would be hurt because he was nicer to them than her. But there were advantages. He knew she hated playing in the pep band after a game, which was required for everyone. So he’d tape her fingers together and she’d lie and say they were sprained so she didn’t have to play the flute.

Page 53
Named Track because it was track season. If it had been wrestling season – Mat. If it had been basketball season – Court. Hockey season – Zamboni.

Page 86
Everyone else was “be-bopping” all over the state raising money and she only had $40,000. She didn’t like asking for money. “There were times when I thought, You know what I could really use? A wife."

Page 103
“There was a longing inside me that winter, a sense of purpose hovering just beyond my vision. Was it ambition? I didn’t think so. Ambition drives; purpose beckons. Purpose calls.”

Page 114
She found it amusing when Barack Obama “one of whose senior advisors (come to think of it) – had roots in Alaska – adopted the same theme. Yes folks, you read that right. She is insinuating that Barack Obama stole HER idea to run a campaign on “change” via Pete Rouse. I bet nobody in political history EVER ran a campaign with a change theme before.

...more to come as Mudflats continues. In the meantime, I have some drinking to do.

Must You Pistol Whip Everyone, Emmett?

Upon a scan through the annals of the blog, I am horrified by the number of times Twilight has been mentioned. As it is, this is the third one today, but the only joy I have received form those books is the ability to read things like Growing Up Cullen (extensive IM conversations imaging the life of a 108 year old male teenage vampire virgin) and be in enough on the joke to find them hilarious.

Possibly we will move on to more substantive material tomorrow. More likely, I will have some very important thoughts to share on the finale of 'America's Next Top Model,' and thus my shame continues.

Twilight Means Never Having to Say You're Kidding

Are we sensing a theme in today's posts?

Claire was kind enough to pass on a kind of Twilight-plus-Mormanism recap of the four books, which I highly recommend reading in lieu of the books themselves. I found myself laughing through the tears over these, enjoying the mockery and wit being displayed while also mourning the subject material exists in the first place, much like my experiences with anything Wonkette writes about Palin or Beck.

But that's besides the point. For your reading pleasure, I give you the Twilight series (I refuse to call it a saga) as it was meant to be experienced...

Twilight
New Moon
Breaking Dawn
Eclipse

** EDIT: I totally switched the titles of the last two books. The links are in the correct order, though. Honestly, I'm kind of relieved. I don't know enough about Twilight that I can correctly order four books! There's hope for me yet.

Low and High

Two things I felt were worth sharing this morning:

1) I admit it, I've read the Twilight books. Yes, yes, all four. And no, I don't get a pass for the fact that a) they were my sister's and b) by the time I was 20 pages into the fourth I was making audible sounds of pain, the terrible plot and name "Renesme" still burned into my brain and haunting my dreams. And I really, really don't get a pass for having rented the film on iTunes while packing for America. I gave them legal tender, and thus helped enable this terrifying juggernaut of teenage angst and pining. No amount of regret can reclaim those two hours of my life or two dollars of my wallet, and I feel that in itself is punishment enough...I have said it many times, and will say it many times more-- the way the "Twilight Saga" makes me feel is identical to the sensation you get when you are hooking up with someone and then you realize you don't really want to be any more. Awkward, embarrassed, shameful, a little unclean, palpably uncomfortable and longing for selective memory loss. You can walk away from the encounter, but the flashbacks live on.

So I felt a little better once I read A. V. Club's Twilight edition of their I Watched This on Purpose feature. It helped explain to me things I didn't even fully understand myself about why I actually went through with the whole crushing experience. It didn't give me that time or money back, and it didn't restore my dignity, but I think it has helped give me the tools to move on and put this whole incident behind me.

2) You know what also helps clear away my rueful haze? Reflecting on things that are NOT terrible. Like Sherlock Holmes. The real Sherlock Holmes of Conan Doyle's books, though. I will reserve my judgement on this whole Downey-Law-Ritchie thing, but I CAN say that, even if the movie is terrible, it's still going to make Holmes a very popular cat this season, and that's cool. Because then you get things like Londonist's map of Holmes' London. Seriously, these people are more obsessive than even I am, and that's why I love them.

Five Sonnets

I am feeling that generally lovey feeling that comes with the onset of the Christmas season (seriously, I think this is the most romantic time of the year) and the creation of a Fred Astaire Pandora channel. Why not keep it going with some poetry from a guy who knew a thing or two about love, my main man Mr. Billy Shakes? Thus, today's Five Things is dedicated to five of the Bard's sonnets (in order of personal preference).

1. Sonnet 30
When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste:
Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow,
For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,
And weep afresh love's long since cancell'd woe,
And moan the expense of many a vanish'd sight:
Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er
The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,
Which I new pay as if not paid before.
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restored and sorrows end.

1. Sonnet 29
When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state
And trouble deal heaven with my bootless cries
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possess'd,
Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

3. Sonnet 27
Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed,
The dear repose for limbs with travel tired;
But then begins a journey in my head,
To work my mind, when body's work's expired:
For then my thoughts, from far where I abide,
Intend a zealous pilgrimage to thee,
And keep my drooping eyelids open wide,
Looking on darkness which the blind do see
Save that my soul's imaginary sight
Presents thy shadow to my sightless view,
Which, like a jewel hung in ghastly night,
Makes black night beauteous and her old face new.
Lo! thus, by day my limbs, by night my mind,
For thee and for myself no quiet find.

4. Sonnet 128
How oft, when thou, my music, music play'st,
Upon that blessed wood whose motion sounds
With thy sweet fingers, when thou gently sway'st
The wiry concord that mine ear confounds,
Do I envy those jacks that nimble leap
To kiss the tender inward of thy hand,
Whilst my poor lips, which should that harvest reap,
At the wood's boldness by thee blushing stand!
To be so tickled, they would change their state
And situation with those dancing chips,
O'er whom thy fingers walk with gentle gait,
Making dead wood more blest than living lips.
Since saucy jacks so happy are in this,
Give them thy fingers, me thy lips to kiss.

5. Sonnet 109
O, never say that I was false of heart,
Though absence seem'd my flame to qualify.
As easy might I from myself depart
As from my soul, which in thy breast doth lie:
That is my home of love: if I have ranged,
Like him that travels I return again,
Just to the time, not with the time exchanged,
So that myself bring water for my stain.
Never believe, though in my nature reign'd
All frailties that besiege all kinds of blood,
That it could so preposterously be stain'd,
To leave for nothing all thy sum of good;
For nothing this wide universe I call,
Save thou, my rose; in it thou art my all.

The Last One?

The 2009 World Series

A great recap from ESPN.

Three Videos of Three Great Guys

Three of my boys were on Letterman last night. Need I say more?

27 is One Goddamn Sexy Number

The embedding isn't working, but if you want to see your 2009 World Series Champions celebrate like school boys (in the best possible way), clickety click!

Five Things I Am Loving Right Now

1) These pants. After weeks of trying to find a pair that fit me, Gap finally came through. I am wearing them now and they are pretty much the most comfortable things I've ever put on. I'm serious, it's like wearing pajama pants to work except these have nice detailing and no drawstring. I am probably going back this weekend to get another pair in navy. They are to die for.

2) Northern Lite Turtle Lattes. I'm not even sure what flavor "turtle" is, but I know it is delicious and sugar-free. Not sugar-free (but also worthy of love) is Swiss Miss' new Pick-Me-Up hot cocoa, which has all the caffeine of a cup of coffee. Somebody has a direct link to my brain, it seems.

3) Yankees Playoff Baseball. OMFG, are you watching this team?!?! Three- THREE- come from behind wins to clinch the ALDS in three and now up 2-0 in the ALCS. A-Rod is having a clutch post season, pitching has been stellar, the games have been close (Saturday's game: 2-2 from the fifth on and tying it back up 3-3 in the ELEVENTH? Scoring on an error in the THIRTEENTH?! Are you kidding me with this?)...my god, I love this team.

4) October. It is cold! And almost Halloween! And all of this is just tip-toeing us ever closer to my favorite red-cupped holiday...

5) Anyone I have seen in the past month. For serious, I am having the BEST time with the old crowd. I am being completely and utterly spoiled by my wonderful, amazing friends.

The Lost Art of the Movie Poster

One of the many, many things I like to whinge about is the art of the movie poster. I think teaser posters tend to be vastly more interesting because they're more psychological and subtle. For example...is a great poster. Simple, deliciously creepy, gets a lot of the movie in a single eerie image. Whereas, in my mind, this...

leaves me kind of cold. There's too much going, it's somewhat in elegant and...I don't know. I'm a snob, I guess, but I have kind of a problem with posters using photographs of people...even photography in general, sometimes. I'm a fan of bold, clean, simple graphics for movies that can double as art.

Which is why I highly enjoyed this posting featuring 25 re-imagined movie posters that are entirely graphic. No photos! All art! I would hang any of these on my wall. Here is my favorite of the bunch...

So. Cool. And yes, I did use a 'Dark Knight' poster at the beginning of this post to illustrate a 'good' poster, I still think that this is a really awesome alternative. They both achieve different things, I just wish we saw more of the second!

Step Away from the Computer

A sure sign I spend too much time on the computer? Last night's dream, which centered around the tragic car crash that (in my dream) Chris Lehman and David Rosenthal.

Who are these people?

Chris Lehman used to write for Congressional Quarterly (I think) and is married to Ana Marie Cox. I follow them both on Twitter.

David Rosental is the husband of a girl who was two years above me in high school and who I haven't talked to in years. The reason I know who her husband is? Facebook.

Yeah. Maybe I need to cut back a bit.

Why Charlie Fink Needs a Girlfriend

I am a big, big Noah and the Whale fan, so I was super stoked to get their new album The First Days of Spring. I had high hopes considering how utterly awesome Peaceful, the World Lays Me Down was and I have to say, though not disappointed, it's not what I was expecting. The main reason I like them is that, if you listen to Peaceful, it's not really a happy album. Even '5 Years Time' acknowledges the possibility of today's happiness disappearing, and '2 Atoms in a Molecule' is really just a meditation on the inability to be with someone else. But the key is that these songs sound happy. They reflect my own personal cynicism without making me want to kill myself. FTW.

But Spring doesn't really do that. Spring is just straight up sad. The girl is gone, the boy is alone, if things ever do get better...it will be a long time from now.

And it's for this reason that having Spring be my main soundtrack for this past weekend's endless road tripping would have been a horrible idea WERE IT NOT for one key track. 'Love of an Orchestra' still contains the pessimistic lyrics I tend to love ("if you gotta run, run from hope") and is based on the idea that one doesn't need people, really, because music is just as good, but it lays all of this out over a totally infectious string-driven base that makes me grin and lunge for the repeat button.

Here, check it out:

On the actual album, the track before it is actually an extended instrumental intro which I recommend incorporating into your daily listening. Really, just go get the album. Sad or not, it's still pretty great.

You've Come a Long Way, Baby

Yes, women are still often underpaid, discriminated against and generally have not yet reached the perfect equality with men we strive for. That doesn't mean we haven't come a long way! Case in point? This 1943 hiring guide for women, via Claire (or Qlayre, if you're using her reality TV pseudonym).

If the promise of truly hilarious (and yet terrible) sexist employment guidelines doesn't lure you to take a peek, here's a preview:

3. General experience indicates that "husky" girls - those that are just a
little on the heavy side - are more even tempered and efficient than their
underweight sisters.

Oooooh yeah. It's that good.

Things I Listen To and Where They Came From

For no rason other than I am at work, need to pass the time and haven't had quite enough caffeine to begin slogging through more Shakespeare annotations, I will now record for your reading pleasure a random list of the music I rock out to and where said music was discovered:

1. A Fine Frenzy
Sound: laid back female piano rock
Found: in the September issue of Vogue
Key Track: 'Almost Lover'

2. The Weepies
Sound: pretty, layered chill out music; good for driving home at night in a quiet mood
Found: JC Penny Christmas commercial
Key Tracks: 'All That I Want,' 'Slow Pony Home,' 'The World Spins Madly On'

3. Johnny Flynn and the Sussex Wit
Sound: British traditional meets American twang
Found: in the program notes of a production JF was acting in
Key Tracks: 'Brown Trout Blues,' 'The Wrote and the Writ'

4. Frank Turner
Sound: guy-and-a-guitar but with a harder edge and more profanity
Found: by listening to Radio Caroline, a British station broadcast off a boat
Key Tracks: 'St. Christopher is Coming Home,' 'Photosynthesis,' 'Long Live the Queen'

5. Noah and the Whale
Sound: peppy songs of heartbreak with a kind of electronic filter vibe
Found: opening for JF&tSW at the Lock Tavern
Key Track: '2 Atoms in a Molecule'

6. Bob Dylan
Sound: oh, you know
Found: everywhere, but most recently rediscovered on an episode of 'Mad Men'
Key Tracks: 'Don't Think Twice, It's Alright,' 'It Ain't Me, Babe,' 'Simple Twist of Fate'

7. Ingrid Michaelson
Sound: female singer/songwriter; more talented than Jewel, warmer than Ani
Found: opening for Matt Nathanson in CT
Key Tracks: 'The Chain,' 'The Hat,' 'You and I'

8. Jack's Mannequin
Sound: Something Corporate changes it's name and rocks a wee bit harder
Found: through SoCo, which is turn was found through mix cds my friends made me in high school
Key Tracks: 'I'm Ready,' 'Hammers and Strings (A Lullaby),' 'Into the Airwaves'

9. The New Amsterdams
Sound: The Get Up Kids' more melodic and less electronic side project
Found: Vagrant records sampler purchased during my Hot Topic glory days
Key Tracks: 'All our Vice,' 'Spoils of the Spoiled,' 'Turn Out the Light,' 'Idaho'

There should be 10, because that would make it a nice, rounded list. But you know what? Life isn't like that. That, and I'm indecisive.

Coffee has kicked in. Illyria, here I come.

A Collection of Things

New temp jobs, new opportunity to post random thoughts that meander through my brain. Let's begin.

1. If there are lots of empty seats on a train or bus, including many that are next to each, don't sit next to me. Why would you do that? Don't you want a seat to yourself?

2. From Slate.com: "I didn't know how much I wanted to see Don Draper vault over a bar and chat up a Southwestern stranger while mixing an old-fashioned (with rye) until I saw him do it in this scene." Yes.

3. Is it weird that most of the new music I discover these days comes from television? And, more often than not, commercials?

4. As much as I love Vogue, there is something perverse and profoundly dillusional about any publication that shows you &490 hats as "bargain buys." On a similar note, it was just downright cruel for Real Simple to feature a $2,000 Prada bag on the cover of their 'Dress for Less' issue. Totally not okay.

5. 'Julie & Julia' is a great movie, mostly because Meryl Streep as Julia Child is a treasure and Amy Adams is just so likeable she makes it reasonably easy to ignore how dislikeable Julie Powell is. Also, was excited to see Kacie S. in it. I know people who know her!

Almost time for lunch, where I will drink another Diet Coke and savor the feeling of my teeth rotting from the inside out.

A Twist on the Movie Title Game

Slate, inspired by Transformers, ran a contest for movie titles based off of toys?

My favorites? He-Man and the Infinite Sadness and Night of the Cabbage Patch Kids—This Time, Your Vegetables Will Finish You.

Snark Attack 2

I wanted to get my thoughts out before I read any other reviews of Lear, specifically The Washington Post's, since I knew they were pretty much universally complimentary.

Sure enough, WaPo practically (to use a slighly vulgar term picked up from Victoria) licks the production. You can read it here.

I understand that my own thoughts are catty and harsh and come imbued with a certain "I know better" tone. I don't know better and I certainly don't think I could do better, but the problem is I care passionately about how Shakespeare is both presented and perceived today, and I think there are problems. And I get riled up. And then I get bitchy.

Basically, I just wanted to let you all know I recognize that. And that I don't think I am the be-all and end-all and that I know these are talented people working on these productions I shred. It's just that, because I know they are talented, I expect more, which leads to great disappointment.

Um...that's it, really. Just wanted to apologize for sounding like a crazed militant. I kind of am, but that doesn't make it less obnoxious.

And if you see Lear, I want to know what you think of it! Especially if you disagree. Maybe I'm just not getting something.

Snark Attack

I'm trying to write a reasoned, well-structured and snob-free review of the production of King Lear I saw last night, and it's proving incredibly difficult, both to structure and to sanitize. To get it out of my system, I'm going to vent about it here, and then maybe a) I won't feel the need to be so cruel and b) I can have a starting point from which to edit my thoughts. Huzzah.

First, a confession. Well, two confessions. The first is that, while I firmly believe Shakespeare is meant to be performed, I vastly prefer reading the tragedies to seeing them. They are very, very difficult to perform in a way that sustains interest, or so I am led to believe by the productions I have seen. Second confession is that I have seen less Shakespeare than I should at this point in my Shakespeare-loving career, and as a result this is only the second Lear I've encountered. The first was the superb and all around sublime RSC production with Ian McKellen. That production proved that the play is capable of being performed in a compelling and nuanced fashion, but so that I don't come across as a total snob I'm going to try and refrain from referencing it in my thoughts on the STC's.

Ugh. Where to begin? This production was set in 1990's Yugoslavia, which immediately presents a difficulty since so much of the action of the play is driven by letters being intercepted or going astray. Lear's daughters can afford luscious fur coats but not land-line telephones? Questionable. A minor detail such as this could be forgiven in a stronger production, but when so many problems pile up it just gets added to a very long list.

My major complaint is that the production violated what should be the cardinal commandment of Shakespeare: Thou shalt not be boring. It draaaaaaaaagged through its three hours, devoid of any spark or energy that such a wonderfully complex play is capable of. I asked Gracie, if this was the way you were introduced to Shakespeare, would you want to see more? Her answer was "not really," and that cannot be excused from a company like the STC. You are placing yourself as a premiere company for Shakespeare performance,! You have a responsibility!

Furthermore (and I've ranted about this before), you are doing a straight-forward production. Okay, so you have lots of sex and violence and cars and white body bags (oh, we will get to those my friends). That doesn't mean you are being particularly creative, it just means you have a big budget and a poor editorial eye. It is my strongly held opinion that, if you are doing a traditional (in terms of story telling) production of any Shakespeare play, then you better damn well do a good job of it because you are not saying anything new. We already know that Lear is about war, and destruction and bad things happening to good, bad and generally neutral people. That can't be your "in." The "in" is making those things resonate in a way we haven't or didn't expect to feel, and this production did not do that. It rested on its body bags and oral sex and eye-frying and then gave itself a big ol' pat on the back for being cutting edge, without actually making any audience impact at all.

And it's Lear, for God's sake. It's all there for you! Sex, violence, madness, humor, disguises, war, betrayal, duplicity. Yes, it's a dense play and yes, it's one of the more difficult. In my mind, that doesn't give you a pass. I'm looking at YOU, Robert Falls. You decided to pick one of Shakespeare's most difficult plays, it was your job to live up to the material. You'll get no "A for efforts" from me.

And I'm not even sure what effort was put into this. Two years ago, I saw the Rupert Gould directed Tempest, which took place in the Arctic and featured a walrus, bear skins and Ariel as a trash-can-dwelling ice vampire. I did not like, but still respected Gould's vision because he had one, it was clear and he was committed. I may not have agreed with the world he created, but I saw where his choices came from and how they fit into his overall conception. Falls gets no such respect. His bloody Balkans setting may have been consistent, but his style was not. A choreographed dance after the storm scene? A random god-mic voice over for the last lines of the play? But it was a painfully overwrought 10-minute tribute to his props department's ability to make human figures out of bed sheets that broke me. Clearly wanting us to get the already obvious WAR IS BAD message, he broke what little momentum the second half had accumulated by having members of the ensemble stagger out and pile casualties around Glouscester. It. Took. Forever. And the booming Republican scare music only underlined how melodramatic and ridiculous the whole segment was. Just when I thought it had ended, and was getting over my disappointment that the figures were NOT positioned to spell out "Lear," two army nurses came out and began to, also exceedingly slowly, pitch the dummies into the large trap at the front of the stage. Memo to Falls: I GET IT.

Aaaaand another thing. Shocking moments aren't shocking if you don't give a fig about the people involved. You want to stuff Kent into tires, douse him with gasoline and light him on fire? Go right ahead. You want to pluck out Gloucester's eyes, fry them, and stuff them in his mouth? Eh, it probably won't taste good, but don't let that stop you. Oh, you want to rape your treacherous wife from behind? Okay, but use a condom; you don't know where she's been. To incite true horror or disgust or concern or any emotion about any of these things, you have to establish some kind of emotional connection. Otherwise it's just sadly obvious that you are trying to shock me as a bid for adding "edge" to your production.

The staging is clearly Falls' fault. The lack-luster performances...I don't know who to blame. I didn't feel anyone in the production committed to any kind of character narrative, so all interactions felt superficial at best, especially among the sisters. The moment with the most potential to be affecting was the deaths of Goneril and Regan, but it could have had a lot more punch if there had been a clearer relationship built up between them. As it stood, we only saw they were close at the beginning and not at the end, and that was pretty much the extent of any relationship. Points A and Z and nothing in between.

Keach's performance, I thought, only really got going when he lost his mind, and maybe that's because madness requires no real narrative and inherently prevents connection with those around you. Until the "reason not the need" scene, I felt like I was watching the Macy's Santa reciting Shakespeare quotes at an employee's holiday party. And he was the best! I enjoyed Jonno Roberts as Edmund as well, but that's because Edmund is a sexy part and I'm prone to like him, not because I thought the performance was particularly captivating.

*sigh* In general, the evening left me depressed. This is the best we can do? This? And everyone loves it? Loves it so much that they felt it had to be done again, as opposed to another production that might have said something about something?

And we wonder why Shakespeare is trouble.

I Read Vanity Fair So You Don't Have To (And Other Stories)

If this were a conversation, rather than a blog post, it would be continuously and spontaneously interrupted by my bursting out with random lyrics from Taylor Swift's 'Love Story' since that song is now inexplicably embedded in my brain. Luckily for you, it IS a blog post and I don't have the energy or investment to interject my thoughts with typed out lyrics. Consider yourselves blessed.

While Alec, and others of a higher intellectual capacity than myself, go to New Yorker for their high-falutin' magazine needs, I have developed a deep love for the one-rung-lower Vanity Fair. I've always had some sort of affection for the 'zine, mostly built around its stunning photographs of Hollywood stars and the true crime writings of Dominic Dunne, but I've recently found myself reading it cover to cover and enjoying every bit of it. The most recent issue is especially good, which is why I'm now going to indulge in a little recap and reflection.

What's a Culture Snob to Do? by James Wolcott Possibly my favorite article of the issue was the first one I read, a look by Wolcott at how the digitization of things like books and music is changing how we define ourselves and how we telegraph that definition to others. His first example is the New York City subway as travelling library, where you can judge those reading Twilight and simultaneously show off your Strand purchased copy of The Sound and the Fury (or whatever it is that passe for intellectual these days). An on-again-off-again New Yorker myself, I 100% understand where he's coming from. I often would take stock of my fellow passengers and their reading material while on the 6 and, yes, I also developed insta-crushes on any male in my age bracket caught reading something I deemed crush-worthy (which, if you know me, is almost anything...reading is sexy, guys, keep doing it). Seeing someone read a book you just finished or completely love, even if you don't talk, is a way of making an insta-connection in a city (and, increasingly, a world) where it's easy and acceptable to cut yourself off. Likewise, brandishing a tome of your own is a way of inviting conversation, albeit a somewhat passive aggressive way. It's putting a little bit of yourself out there, and I like that.

Wolcott goes on to examine music and DVDs. Here, again, I am guilty. Despite owning everything as an MP3, I try and eventually grab all of my music in hard copy form as well, mostly because I like the way they look and I like a scan of my music collection says about me as a person. In this case, it's less about conveying that message to others, since I don't think anyone (save my mother or my sister searching for a pilfered CD) has ever seen my music in its non-computerized form, but I like it. Ditto with DVDs. As egotistical as it is, I like surrounding myself with reflections of myself. In moments of doubt I can look around me and say "Well, I don't know what I'm doing with my life, but I do know I'm the kind of person who has both "The Royal Tenenbaums" AND "The Care Bears Movie," and so I think I'm doing okay." It's totally weird and doesn't make any difference in the long run, but I like it.

Which is Wolcott's point. What would give me that feeling if I didn't have these collections of things as touch stones? In myself? In some higher, more cerebral way would I still be able to define myself? They are interesting questions, and, having had only a few hours to process them, I don't have the answers yet. But I will enjoy puzzling.

No, Prime Minister by Christopher Hitchens A two-page sketch of the "Nixonian" monster British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has become. I admit, my Anglophilia has not quite gone so far as to absorb their politics (I'm only now engaging with ours on any real level), but it was illuminating insofar as that I had no idea he was so nutty.

Politico's Washington Coup by Michael Wolff Politico became my gold-standard website for election coverage last fall. I mourn the loss of the GOP/Dem blogs now that the campaigns are done, but I still check in occasionally to see what's going on down the street, so I enjoyed the look at how Politico both came and continues to be. The ultra-specific/ultra-general dichotomy between Politico and large media outlets like The Washington Post is interesting and makes me regret even more the failure of TIME magazine's experiment in personalized news (sadly, the name of that publication has already slipped my memory).

I worry about the death of print anything, in part because of the issue presented by Wolcott, but also because I just genuinely prefer words on a page rather than words on a screen. It was reassuring, then, to find out the Poltico website gave birth to the publication as opposed to vice-versa, but I still worry. The sheer immediacy is what makes the website and the blogosphere exciting, and, because of that immediacy, information is parsed out in bite-sized morsels. If you're working a temp job, that's invaluable for entertainment and time-killing reasons, but in the real world? Does that help or hurt? Not sure. Furthermore, the accusation that Politico feeds into insider-only atmosphere of Washington is valid. The campaign was different because everything led back to two (or four) main players, but now the site has become are more obtuse, for better or worse.

The Last Days of Heath by Bruce Weber I'm still upset by the death of Heath Ledger. Nothing in this article is really new or ground breaking, save maybe for further insight into his last movie, but it does remind you that we lost someone of incredible promise.

Of course, there's a part of me that questions why we still need to be talking about it, or why any celebrity's death garners the attention it gets. I didn't know this man in any way and any further discussion seems to border on voyeurism. As a co-worker of mine just pointed out RE: The Michael Jackson memorial, he was a talented guy, but what about the seven soldiers killed in Afghanistan yesterday? Why don't we hear about them? Why do I know Heath Ledger's massage schedule but not their names?

And yet, I read the article. So I guess there's the answer right there.

It Came From Wasilla by Todd S. Purdum This is it! The one! The profile of everyone's favorite bat-shit crazy wingnut pitbull in lipstick we've all been hearin' tell about, you betcha! And...I don't know that we learn anything new, though there was this delightful tidbit:

More than once in my travels in Alaska, people brought up, without prompting,
the question of Palin's extravagant self-regard. Several told me, independently
of one another, that they had consulted the definition of "narcissistic
personality disorder' in the Diagnostic Manual of Mental
Disorders...and thought it fit her perfectly.When Trig was born, Palin
wrote an e-mail letter to friends and relatives, describing the belated news of
her pregnancy and detailing Trig's condition; she wrote the -mail not in her her
own name, but in God's, and signed it "Trig's Creator, Your Heavenly Father."

Also illuminating was the fact that she basically blew off any kind of interview or debate prep they attempted to give her and she basically doesn't seemed engaged with any issue whatsoever.

In case you haven't picked up on it, I am not a Palin fan. To speak truth, I loathe the woman. Loathe. The site of her brings with it a rising of bile and (occasionally) an audible sound of disgust mixed with strangled rage. Her nomination acceptance speech brought tears to my eyes that not only did I share citizenship with this woman, but I lived in country with people who thought her fantastic. If I ever wound up in the same room as her, I would have to leave. I see her as a real-live Dolores Umbridge only so much worse and it is my fervent prayer her stepping down from the governor's office means she she can crawl back into her polar-bear-pelt-lined cave of ignorance and self righteousness and never bother us again. But, alas, I fear it is not to be.

I often preach hearing out the other side and trying to see the best in people, but that woman drives me to a place no other being can.

...oh, but the article...yeah. It's good. Go read it.

//

And I haven't even gotten to my responses on Julia Child, the Tim Burton "Alice" photos or the 1930's film portfolio! Do you see why I love this magazine? It's fantastic.

There were also some musings on health care reform I was going to get into (I can sense your disappointment from here), but I feel I'm already pushing the limits of your patience and attention span. Best to quite while I'm only slightly behind. Besides, there's a whole three days more of temp job excitement. Can't waste all my insights now, can I?

Oh, and in case you were wondering...I did in fact finish I am Charlotte Simmons yesterday. It did nothing to change my overall feelings towards the book and only wound up irritating me more. It seemed Wolfe suffered from "I have to get this finished so I will wrap it up without any real detail" disease (much as I am doing now) and while I appreciated him giving her life some ambiguity, the whole thing was too nicely wrapped up to leave me satisfied.

So. That's that.

I am NOT Charlotte Simmons

I am currently about 5/7 through the enormous Tom Wolfe tome that is I am Charlotte Simmons, and while it is probably more...journalistically acceptable? to wait until I've finished the whole thing before writing my thoughts on it, I'm too impatient and my reactions are too strong. Which is, I guess, a good thing, this eliciting of strong response, but I'm not sure that's enough to calling it a good book. Because despite being highly readable, I also find it loathsome in many ways.

These two ways can be divided into the micro and the macro, so we'll start with the micro first: the actual character of Charlotte Simmons.

For those of you who don't know the book (it came out four years ago t much media attention, but I'm unsure how much it actually entered the collective consciousness), it tells the story of young Charlotte Simmons from the little mountain town of Sparta, North Carolina, coming to the prestigious (and fictitious) Ivy League Dupont University for her freshmen year of college. While the story focuses on Charlotte, we also follow tangentially a frat boy named Hoyt, a basketball player named Jojo and a brainiac named Adam. That's really all you need know.

Back to Charlotte. She, just like the book, bothers me on both a micro and macro level and, like my overall thoughts on the book, we'll start with the micro here, too. Wolfe, it seems, gave Charlotte a (population: 900) small town background so as to distance her as much as possible from the version of her generation she encounters at Dupont. This is probably smart from an authorial stand point because Tom Wolfe is a 70-something white man and also far outside the universe of the 20-something collegiate, so Charlotte's own discomfort and unfamiliarity can parallel his own and give him a way in. Fine. And, I have to say, I don't think that he does a bad job with it. Charlotte is obnoxious, to be sure, but that doesn't make her necessarily untrue. ..to a point.

Besides being small-town and gorgeous (and we'll address this later), Charlotte is also supposed to be a genius and former high school track star. These two things make the level of her naivete, in my mind, completely implausible because they take away the security blanket of small-town sheltering. We see through the book that, yes, she really is a genius. She knows pretty much everything about everything and has huge exposure to the world in terms of books. This shouldn't give her social skills, but it should give her the awareness that people are somewhat rough and tumble. And as for the track thing, it means she's been in contact with other teenagers, other high schools. That doesn't mean she shouldn't be overwhelmed by college life, but having a minor internal freak out because her roommate says the word "shit"? Really? You're telling me that four years of high school, during which she routinely was around other high schools (and therefore, other teenagers with varied upbringings) she never heard the word "shit"? I find that hard to believe. It's that level of doe-eyed innocence we're talking about, and I don't quite buy it.

Now before I get into the macro, I want to point out that I am sure most or all of what I'm about to say can be said about guys as well. I'm not trying to take up the "media expectations" banner for females alone. It's just that a) I am a girl and b) I'm particularly concerned about the female character (if I start writing about the males in the book, I'll wind up with a book of my own). So understand that all that is about to follow is written about girls, but not with the assumption that you guys don't deal with it, too. Okay? okay. The macro.

Charlotte, as previously mentioned, is supposed to be gorgeous. Fine, I can live with that. Why we can't have an average girl as a heroine, I don't know. Why we can't even have just a pretty girl instead of model-beautiful is also beyond me, but I guess it makes for good copy. But there are, according to this book, lots of model-beautiful girls on campus and certainly many, many attractive ones. And I'm guessing that, in this fictional world, a lot of those girls have vastly superior social skills to those of our Ms. Simmons, not to mention a better fashion sense (the Prairie-Home-Companion nature of her outfits is commented on repeatedly). So why why WHY does every single guy she meets fall for her? I get that a gorgeous girl, even one awkward and poorly dressed, can attract attention, but inspiring full-on pursuit? Fights? I don't buy that. I hate this idea of "the" girl, the one that everyone wants and has to have in some way and will stop at nothing to get. I accept those girls exist, but I don't accept that Charlotte Simmons is that kind of girl. She is prissy and self-righteous and awkward and whatever charms her "innocence" has is not enough, in my opinion, to overcome the impatience it seems anyone who meets her must eventually feel. And I could buy the one frat brother looking on her as a challenge, or a game, but not everyone she ever meets possessing a Y-chromosome. That's not real, not in the way Wolfe is presenting it.

And that's what bothers me. We hear a lot about the pressure put on girls to look a certain way by the media, and I think it's there, though I also think male reaction to the media is really what drives it home. Making Charlotte gorgeous feeds into this because it seems the only reason any guy wants her, really, is her looks, which serves the double purpose of saying a) guys will want you if you're hot and b) being hot excuses a multitude of personality flaws. Neither of which I like, but neither of which bother me as much as her personality, which is presented as somehow being attractive as well. She's annoying, she's obnoxious, she's self-righteous, painfully (neigh, stupidly) naive and she's weak-willed. Yet somehow, this is attractive? This is what I should want to be, because even though I hate it, the guys eat it up? Or this is what I can be, if only I'm really really hot? Either way, I hate the implication.

I was going to go on about the personality pressures put on girls, but I'm running out of steam and I haven't even gotten to why the book really bothers me. So, onto that.

As I think I mentioned, I'm finding the book highly readable. It's almost 700 pages and I've been blowing through it and, for all of my issues with the main character, I haven't been tempted to throw it across the room like with the Twilight series (no judgments, it was a cultural phenomenon, I had to stay up-to-date). And, I have to say, save for the aforementioned (I love that word) qualms about the plausibility of Charlotte herself, I find a lot of it to be quite accurate, save for one thing: the inevitability of it all. There is a driving sense that this is what happens at college, period, the end, no discussion. If you are 18 and female and going into freshmen year, you will become a tragic example of peer pressure gone awry, unless you instead become a slut or a militant loser. As for you boys, you will either be hot and have shit-for-brains and stone-for-heart OR be average looking and capable of having a conversation. There is no other alternative. And don't even think about doing homework or caring about anything besides getting laid or getting revenge on the guys that picked on you because you will be ridiculed and destroyed.

We are not like that, not all of us, and I absolutely resent the implication otherwise. That there is no other alternative, that this is how it is. My generation has more to offer than that. There's drinking, there's sex, but the pursuit of one or both doesn't come at the exclusion of everything else. We work for things, we care about things, we make connections based more on looks and one-upmanship, and that Wolfe doesn't show even an ounce of that is infuriating to me. When this books came out there was a lot of emphasis placed on how this is what was really going on on campuses these days. This i what your son or daughter was really up to, this was the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. And yes, it is true, but it's not the whole truth and it's not the last word, and I feel especially coming from an author such as Tom Wolfe it does get this aura of credibility and infallibility it just doesn't deserve. We are worth more than this book implies! The destruction of our souls, morals and ambitions is not inevitably linked with that college acceptance letter!

I'm sure there's more I want to say on this subject, but I'll let it rest for now. Have any of you read this book? Do you have thoughts? Am I totally overreacting, as I am wont to do? Talk me down.