previously
I’m listening to “The Swimming Song” by Loudon Wainwright, which I swear is just about the greatest song ever. It is Friday, and tonight I have to go out and be a girl, and feign interest in something that I already know is just not going to work. When really, I just want to go home and watch Erin Brockovich on TBS. And play with my brand new Print Gocco! I’m so excited about this thing. I have visions of semi-mass producing lots of art and selling prints on cool paper for cheap. But I guess I can do that on Saturday too.
New York magazine profiles Chan Marshall:
Many artists with stage fright avoid the stage. So, why does Chan travel the world performing all the time? “That’s something I can’t answer,” she says. “I don’t know what else to do. In a perfect world, I would be in love and have children and have a reason to stay in one place and not do this anymore.”
I finally read Linda R. Hirshman ’s piece in the American Prospect that Patricia Cohen wrote about last weekend. Even if her emphasis on the elite class and fancy jobs is irritating and the way she defines success almost exclusively in terms of capitalism makes me cringe, the article really is pretty much as great as some people are saying (what a recommendation, right?):
In interviews, women with enough money to quit work say they are “choosing” to opt out. Their words conceal a crucial reality: the belief that women are responsible for child-rearing and homemaking was largely untouched by decades of workplace feminism. Add to this the good evidence that the upper-class workplace has become more demanding and then mix in the successful conservative cultural campaign to reinforce traditional gender roles and you’ve got a perfect recipe for feminism’s stall.
Seriously though. Go read it and then we can fight about it.
And, I want this woman’s job.
Trying to get back to work and not get caught by one of the overly earnest kids freezing their asses off standing out on the sidewalk trying to get people to give money to Children International or CARE or the Northshore Animal League or some other deserving organization that I don’t have $120 for, even if that’s “just ten dollars a month.” I really don’t know how these people get anyone to pledge money on the street like that, especially when the weather is this shitty. The worst is when they say things to you like “Excuse me, do you have a minute for gay and lesbian rights?” It crushes my heart. Today I had to half-hide behind a mailbox and then duck underneath some construction awning to avoid a Children International guy who had staked out the doorway to my office building. Another guy standing right outside smoking a cigarette nodded at me like, “Nice maneuver.” I don’t actually feel guilty not giving them money, but I do feel self-righteous about it sometimes and then that makes me feel like shit. Like, “I work at a non-profit! Give me a moment’s peace!” Occassionally I’ll get sucked in to talking to them, and then I try to ask them things that I genuinely want to know, like do people actually give them money? Then I’ll tell them that I’ve spent my share of time knocking on doors and standing out on sidewalks shoving leaflets into people’s hands and begging them to sign things or pretend to care, so see, I understand that their job sucks. But that isn’t enough. They still try to sell me on the plight of homeless kittens or hurricane victims or starving children and what pisses me off is their guilt trip, as in, you CAN give $10 to this cause. You KNOW you can. If you don’t, you are a heartless loser. I guess they have to convince themselves that they believe in it in order to withstand the elements and lots and lots of jerks who say things like “I hate animals” as they walk by. And I’m probably one of many people they talk to every day who tries to empathize with them while still not writing a check, and this is maybe even more annoying than the people who just ignore them or pretend to talk on their cell phones (I’m one of those people, too). I’m just glad that they mostly wear brightly colored nylon jackets so they’re easily idenifiable, and that I’ve perfected my laser vision so I can see where they are even a block away.
Also: If I read another interview with Jenny Lewis where she’s asked about her acting career and/or her former relationship with Blake Sennett, I am going to scream. You might even hear it, wherever you are. I am looking forward to “Rabbit Fur Coat” though.
Is anyone else disturbed by the photos that go along with this review of the latest anti-feminist polemic Women Who Make the World Worse: And How Their Radical Feminist Assault Is Ruining Our Families, Military, Schools, and Sports? Betty Friedan looks like she has a headache, Jane Fonda’s smile looks plastic and painful, and Gloria Steinem is falling asleep. Are these the faces of feminism? I think not. At this point, anyone who writes a book attacking these women is just lazy. And check out this side-by-side comparison of Ms. magazine’s latest cover alongside an issue of Ladies Home Journal. The design similarity isn’t the end of the world – it’s just really really lame – but why the fuck is Jane Fonda on the cover of this magazine instead of about a million other more interesting and relevant women and men? It’s not that there aren’t other great zines and magazines out there, but to see Ms. still hanging out on the newsstand, looking so clueless, really makes me cringe.
Anyway, Ana Marie Cox (late of Wonkette, now a Times It Girl with the publication of her first novel) makes short work of debunking Kate O’Beirne’s oh-so-inspired book:
[O'Beirne's] salvos against such dusty icons as Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, Jane Fonda and Catharine MacKinnon do all these women the enormous favor of making them relevant again. And, surely, anytime anyone recalls the deeds of Bella Abzug, an angel gets its wings.
It’s always fun to call conservatives on their shit, but it also seems like a waste of energy and column inches. Patrica Cohen also tackles “choice feminism” in the Week in Review.
If you’d like to see the literary scandals of last week turned into a rather snotty, completely serious, yet still pretty interesting intellectual type essay that manages to compare James Frey’s fictions to Holocaust deniers and the Bush administration (and who doesn’t?), go see what everyone’s favorite literary critic Michiko Kakutani has to say. And click here if you want to read Mary Karr’s more insightful Op-Ed about the same situation. It’s possible that I’m officially sick of this topic. Sick, yes, but still totally fascinated.
One of the questions I had to answer in my grad school admissions essay was what publications I read. My list was insanely, stupidly long, and it’s only getting longer. The New Yorker is what really pushes me over the limit. I knew as soon as I got a subscription that it would bury me. I even probably knew it would happen so soon (I’m only on my forth issue). It’s one of those things I feel like I should keep on top of, but every time I open my mailbox there’s a new issue when I haven’t even started the last one.
If you haven’t picked up Kitchen Sink yet, you should. It’s a quarterly magazine based out of San Francisco – with the tagline “for people who think too much” – and every issue is full of short-ish essays about art and music and politics, along with fiction and comix. What makes KS different is that the editors really make it a point to contextualize the things they’re talking about: to never just review a book or movie or album, but to write more personally and in-depth about their own takes on those things. It makes for much more honest and interesting reading, and the result is a whole lot less masturbatory than a lot of the usual arts writing. KS is also blessedly short on interviews.
My weekend was pretty laid back, which is how I wanted it. Katie and I braved the sleet on Saturday night and had dinner at Pukk, this trendy (green flourescent lights, every surface including tables covered with round white tiles) but surprisingly cheap and delicious vegetarian Thai place. I did some laundry. I ate some cake. I did a bunch of reading. I read Manstealing for Fat Girls, by Michelle Embree, which looked promising because it was published by Soft Skull and had an awesome title. It was also blurbed by some writers I really like, including Michelle Tea and Poppy Z. Brite. But it was only (and barely, really) okay. The teenage narrator was pretty true to life, but there were enough over the top moments and characters to kind of kill things. Everything in the book was pretty bleak – as high school is – but eventually, I just couldn’t care about the characters because I didn’t believe in them. If you’re going to have characters do a lot of drugs and beat up on themselves and form unrealistic friendships, it should at least feel like there’s a reason behind it. There were points where I actually rolled my eyes. The best high school period piece I’ve read in a long time is still Joe Meno’s Hairstyles of the Damned. That was such a solid, great book. I was hoping Manstealing might be a kind of girl driven version. Oh well. I also read Self-Made Man, by Norah Vincent (non-fiction). It was pretty much another disappointment, with Vincent (a lesbian) going undercover as a man in various social situations to try and get some insight into what men’s motivations and actions. It didn’t really reveal much that most of us don’t already know or suspect, I think.
I did watch the FOUR! HOUR! PREMIER! EVENT! of 24 last night and tonight, though tonight I couldn’t handle giving it my full attention. Man, that show is just so bad. I’m not sure I can stick around to see how terrible and cliched its going to get, but its also kind of amazing to see what new ridiculousness they manage to offer up with a straight face week after week.
And now, off to figure out what I can wear to work tomorrow that will make me feel capable and smart, but not too much like a grown up. This is a nearly impossible balance. A cup of coffee, always too full and dripping onto my hand as I rush into the office anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes late, is the one consistent thing about my appearance 5 days a week. There’s something comforting about this though. If I think about it, I’m glad I haven’t managed to really get it right.
Everyone is talking about this recipe for mac & cheese that was the #1 emailed article from the Times online for like a week. Everyone I talk to has read it, and salivated over it, and some people have actually made it. Anyone want to have a mac & cheese party? I am dying to make this. It’s basically just pasta, butter, milk and about a million pounds of cheese, baked. The problem is that I honestly don’t know if my oven works. Yes, I’ve lived in my apartment for a year and a half, and made so little use of the oven that it’s not just that my oven doesn’t work and I haven’t gotten it fixed, but that I don’t even know if it works. This is probably something I should figure out. I would actually like to know if baking is even a possibility in my kitchen, should I ever decide to shock everyone I know by giving it a try. I even have cookie sheets, which were a housewarming gift after I whined loudly enough about wanting to have some “just in case.” Sometime last year I optimistically bought some Pillsbury sugar cookies, but the stick of dough is still in my fridge. Do those things expire?
It is something like 57 degrees out, and I didn’t even wear my coat today. I just got back from picking up some prints at this amazing photo lab across the street from my office. You have to walk up this weirdly industrial flight of stairs to get to it, and then the whole floor smells like photo chemicals. Mmmmm. It is such a trigger for my brain. Yesterday when I went to drop off contact sheets and put in our order I got back to work in a really bad mood. At first I couldn’t figure it out, but then realized that for awhile now I’ve gotten this displaced feeling when I’m in a photo gallery or a lab. Less so with the galleries, since I love looking at that kind of art on a lot of different levels, and my experience of it isn’t always related to my own work (or lack thereof). But being in a lab is a lot more emotional. And being in a lab like this one, where people are crouched over lightboxes and waiting for their stuff to process, and thumbing through binders of negatives and marking up contact sheets makes me feel disconnected. And duh, I am. It’s easy not to think about the fact that I don’t do photography anymore when I’m not in the middle of it, but when I’m there, and I can’t answer the guy’s question about whether we were getting our prints done by machine or by hand I get defensive and really, I feel homesick. Homesick for the darkroom, whichever one, any one. For that kind of process. But I don’t feel this way all the time.
So now I have these gorgeous 5×7 work prints that cost a lot of (not my) money because a machine didn’t just spit them out, and the edges of the paper are a little rough from where it was cut, and the idea that someone else made them is digging at me. I mean, these are just basic head shots of my organization’s executive director for using in this year’s annual report, but it’s this weird look at what I could be doing, or what I almost decided to do, and then didn’t, not quite on purpose. I’m not sorry (and yes, I know it’s never too late). But it still kinda sucks.
And then there’s this news:
Ouch.
ain’t it the (sad) truth…
The NY Observer notices that 2005 may not have been a great year for women’s movie roles:
“We should be writing more great roles for women, period,” said Ms. Witherspoon’s Walk the Line director, James Mangold, also on that red carpet on Sunday. “Another problem is that movies are generally made for 14-year-old boys—and 14-year-old boys want to watch 25-year-old action heroes. So the truth is, any movie, like all the ones being honored here tonight”—he gestured vaguely in the direction of Ang Lee and Philip Seymour Hoffman—“that makes it into reality, is a movie that made it despite the system that’s really built almost predominately and universally to make movies about comic-book heroes.”
Here’s what JT Leroy confidante Mary Gaitskill said back in 2001 about the then-distant possibility of a hoax:
Bookslut also pointed to another article this morning about the Leroy “revelations” (if you want to call them that), this time on Salon. The article was by Ayelet Waldman, and I read it, and it was okay. But then I clicked on “read all letters on this article,” you know, to see what the word on the street is about Leroy and partner-in-literary-scandal James Frey today. Here is what I mostly found:
Why does Salon insist on publishing drivel from a half-baked, modestly talented mystery writer? Simple: a)she’s a woman and b) if Salon didn’t publish Ayelet Waldman, we’d be stuck with another overwrought, self-absorbed female writer like Anne Lamott.
AND
Congratulations, Waldman. You successfully saved face by proving you knew he/she was a phony before everyone else. Your former support of Leroy won’t be embarrassing to you now because you knew it was a hoax….Oh, and also, congratulations for having a famous author for a husband. Because lord knows you wouldn’t be able to publish mastabatory crap like this without his name attached to yours, and stories of trips with him to Rome within the content to remind your readers of your viewpoint’s validity.
AND
You should listen to your husband more often. He is the sane one in your family.
AND
Congratulations on leading with an article so solipsistic, content-free, and unframed that it would do any teenager’s first blog proud. Kindly give Mrs. Chabon* a LiveJournal account and spend my Premium member money on someone who can write.
* Normally I detest the Mrs. appellation, but in this case I suspect it’s only because she is Mrs. Chabon that she’s so often welcomed to contribute her maunderings. Which makes it all the more painful that Salon published a lead piece about one hoaxer with celebrity connections conning another.
Hmmmmm.
And now I’ll stop posting about this shit. Maybe.
It’s funny how movies you don’t like sometimes leave much more of an imprint in your psyche than movies you love.
Noel Murray and Nathan Rabin talk about Woody Allen’s Match Point over at The Onion’s AV Club.
Andrew Bujalski (writer/director of Funny Ha Ha), has a new movie coming out, called Mutual Appreciation. He’s profiled in the Times:
[Bujalski's protagonists] are the most unassuming of existentialist heroes, slouching toward not epiphanies but the tiniest shifts in perspective. Both [Funny Ha Ha and Mutual Appreciation] are slow-burning comedies about the fear of adulthood made by someone who isn’t yet inclined to sentimentalize or belittle these threshold years.
…[T]he start-stop chatter in Mr. Bujalski’s films is less arbitrary than it seems. A master of the mixed message and a veritable sculptor of dead air, he’s deft at showing how inarticulateness can serve as defense tactic and passive-aggressive weapon.