Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Subway Spotting: Tie Skirts
Posted by Sharon on Wed, Aug 27, 2008 at 11:00 AM
It must be turning into fall, because the girls are starting to bring their craft projects onto the subway. I'm used to seeing stuff like knitting, or maybe the occasional crocheted scarf. But on the F train this morning, I watched a woman embroider a tie skirt in her seat. I just spent 20 minutes looking for a picture of a Blossom-era Mayim Biyalik to properly illustrate this post with 90s magic, but I can't find one, so you'll have to imagine it and instead appreciate her flowered hat and man-shorts. Which, I must say, am now totally respecting as a pretty decent homage to Annie Hall. Did Blossom like Woody Allen? I can't remember, although I do recall she was fairly neurotic about, um, everything.
Anyway, tie skirts: making a come-back?
U.S. Out of My Pants
Posted by Mark on Wed, Aug 27, 2008 at 9:00 AM
Except that the bill is also worded so broadly/ambiguously as to "protect pharmacists, doctors, nurses and others from providing birth control pills, Plan B emergency contraception and other forms of contraception, and explicitly allows workers to withhold information about such services and refuse to refer patients elsewhere."
(So, basically, doctors who object to abortion, or to birth control, would be, I guess, "protected" not only from providing this care but also from even referring women to other doctors who would provide them with the kind of medical care they're seeking.)
Aside from the dubious premise — that is, using government money to compel private healthcare providers to respect the right of their own employees to not provide healthcare — there is also the sadly old-news matter of the anti-abortion movement trying to crowd out basic family planning necessities. You'd think, given that contraception and family planning and sex ed are the most effective methods of preventing unwanted pregnancy — and thus abortions — that anti-abortion activists would be more in favor of all that than pro-choicers are. Which leads us yet again to the conclusion that the anti-abortion movement cares less about dead babies than sexual morality.
So anyway. Go to PlannedParenthood.org right the fuck now and give them all your money, or some of it, as they work on mounting a challenge to the ruling (and also continue with their work of doing more for women's reproductive health than any other organization in America).
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Close Your Eyes, Make a Wish [for a space for free music in Brooklyn]
Posted by Mark on Tue, Aug 26, 2008 at 4:47 PM
Boyz II Men said it best: "It's the end of the road… You belong to me, I belong to you" — "you" being in this case an emptied, dilapidated pool and "me" being the thousands of New Yorkers that have made JellyNYC's free concerts at McCarren Park Pool a part of their summer ritual for the past three years. It's no secret that this past weekend was one of the last go arounds at McCarren before Bloomberg's posse fills ‘er up with water, and the good people at Jelly pulled out all the stops. Yo La Tengo headlined. We had to rub our eyes and look again to believe it, but it happened. And then there was Titus Andronicus and Ebony Bones, who went wonderfully, appropriately insane, serving as a reminder just how much we're going to miss these shows.
Here's the thing though: They don't have to end. JellyNYC has set up a petition encouraging the city to provide a space in the forthcoming Bushwick Inlet Park for the concerts and other cultural events to continue. They're aiming for 10,000 signatures, and as of right this second, while writing this here blog post, there's only 335. That's pathetic considering how many of us have packed the pool every Sunday. It takes just a few seconds to type your name. You'll also be asked for your home address to ensure you're not acting as multiple people and making up names (names like Hugh Jass and Al Coholic, haha, that would be hilarious, right?). Community board member Evan Thies says the space could be ready by next summer if everybody gets a move on it, so get with it people. Click here, type your name, save the world.
Music Taste T.I.'s Pain (And Listen To His New Song!)
Posted by Sharon on Tue, Aug 26, 2008 at 3:51 PM
"That's some bullsh--," T.I. told MTV News last weekend of the song's premature leak. "I'm beating down the Internet as we speak." This explains the funny pain in my knees...although it could be early-onset arthritis.
Oh, and T.I. is still upset. It's not enough that we taste his pain, we should feel bad! And sorry!
"Don't ruin the event," he lamented. "Wait till the cake comes out the kitchen before you eat it. That's like a kid who sees his toys before Christmas; it takes away from me and I think it takes away from the fans as well. When it's time, I'mma give it to you. They leaked my record with me and The-Dream ["Like I Do"] too. Leakage is never a problem I have had. I'm not used to it."Meh! You may be new, but get used it it, bub. We Internet people LIKE having all of our surprises ruined for us. It helps us plan ahead And now, to hide in fear.
The Typo Eradication Advancement League
Posted by Sharon on Tue, Aug 26, 2008 at 1:58 PM
The New Yorker's Book Bench just alerted me to the saga of a pair of typo vigilantes who journeyed cross-country with nothing but the clothes on
their backs, their own righteous indignation, and an unlimited supply of Wite-Out. So romantic.
The traveling grammarians--two Dartmouth alums--were recently banned from all national parks for a year, after they were caught defacing a hand-painted sign at the Grand Canyon that was more than 60-years-old. Except it was basically for nothing, because they left the misspelling of "emense" alone. Jeff Deck, 28, said he was "reluctant to disfigure the sign any further...Still, I think I shall be haunted by that perversity, emense, in my train-whistle-blighted dreams tonight." Cut the crap, Deck! I think you're a bit too self-congratulatory to be a properly stringent copy-editor. From the sound of that quote, it sounds like what you actually want to do is write!
Well, whatever, you know you're going to get a book deal. But really, you should have gone all the way! Emense. Emense. Blech. It hurts just knowing it's still there.
Of course, the Book Bench drowsily admires the duo's ardor," and finds "charm" in their willingness to get in trubs for the service of good public punctuation. I'm just disappointed they're now legally unable go back and fix what they started. Also, that their blog is down.
Film / Special Events Tonight's Summerscreen Finale: Rushmore
Posted by Mark on Tue, Aug 26, 2008 at 11:00 AM
Music My Favorite Homemade Cover Songs on YouTube
Posted by Mike Conklin@thelmagazine.com on Tue, Aug 26, 2008 at 9:57 AM
M.I.A. -- Paper Planes
Hey, girl in the back, it's no big deal... we all come to a point in life when we have to make all new friends 'cause the ones we had when we were kids were talentless.
American Pie -- Don MacLean
I won't ruin this for you, but I do not understand how you can perform this song and not do the one thing he doesn't do. (Hint: It has nothing to do with his tube socks or his decision to sit indian style.)
Avril Lavigne -- SK8er Boi
I don't know why, exactly, but I have an incredible amount of respect for this girl.
Belle and Sebastian -- Judy and the Dream of Horses
He botches a few lines here and there, but I cannot wait until this dude tours with Jens Lekman and Sondre Lerche.
Weezer -- Butterfly
It's not very nice of me to post this, but I felt better about nakedly mocking him after he got to the part where he wouldn't even say "bitch." Also he's wearing a heather grey sweat suit.
Mountain Goats -- This Year
More indian-style sitting, this time without tube socks. When you look this much like John Darnielle, is there really any other kind of YouTube video worth making?
Moldy Peaches -- Anyone Else But You
Of all the versions of this song on YouTube, this is my favorite, by far.
Film Hilarious Woman for Hire
Posted by Jesse on Tue, Aug 26, 2008 at 9:00 AM
You may have noticed, as some other blogs did, that the reviews for the new comedy The House Bunny have heaped a lot of praise on its star, Anna Faris, even when dismissing the movie itself. I myself actually paid to see The House Bunny this weekend, willingly and even sort of excitedly, as the culmination of the Anna Faris fandom that I now see has been building across the critical nation, not just in my sad little brain. Realizing your slow-building personal obsession has been occuring simultaneously to literally dozens of other people is one of the best-worst things about this more accessible critical community. I have to wonder how many other critics watched Mama's Boy, a stillborn Jon Heder/Diane Keaton picture that went direct to DVD in this country, this past weekend just to get a few more moments with Faris (she plays the love interest). Anyway, I understand it: people can see the woman's talent, find her endearing, and want to spread the word.
I don't have much experience with the most widely-seen work of the Anna Faris career arc: the Scary Movie franchise (I saw Scary Movie 3 all the way through; the rest in bits on TV or that time I fell asleep watching a Netflixed, and very terrible, Scary Movie 4) and her recurring role on a later season of Friends. But I did notice, at some point, her bizarre two-pronged attack of scene-stealing in personal, largely very good indie-ish movies (Lost in Translation; Brokeback Mountain; May) and broad, largely quite bad full-on comedies (Just Friends; My Super Ex-Girlfriend). Those paths eventually converged on the barely-released and mostly hilarious broad indie comedy Smiley Face; it played for a few weeks at the IFC Center in January before hitting DVD. In it, Faris plays Jane, a layabout actress who eats an entire batch of cupcakes and has to navigate an errand-packed day while very, very stoned. It's a necessarily meandering movie, which makes the actress's achievement -- namely, making Jane not just funny, but sympathetic and weirdly fascinating -- all the greater.
Now comes the flip side to that coin: The House Bunny, her first non-Scary studio lead. Here she plays Shelley Darlington, a Playboy
bunny (though not a centerfold) who gets kicked out of the mansion and
starts a new life as the house mother to a misfit sorority. As many
have pointed out, it's a concept not too far-removed from Legally Blonde, only Shelley is a real (albeit sweet-natured) ditz, not an overachiever with Valley Girl camo.
Monday, August 25, 2008
Bloggers, blogging! With laptops! About Politics!
Posted by Sharon on Mon, Aug 25, 2008 at 5:30 PM
I find it terrifically amusing that the Times' Style section is unable to run one of their many stories about bloggers--who blog!--without photographing said bloggers posing in front of their shiny laptops. Like we won't quite understand the FULL implication of what they do for a living unless we see them. Typing. Or pretending to.
It would be better if they captured them in their natural environs, which is to say unshowered and pajamaed, probably shoveling bacon bits in their faces and hooking themselves up to a Red Bull drip of some kind. Which, by the way, is very, very dangerous. Right, Gray Lady? Blogging could totes kill you someday. Whoops!
At least the dude on the right managed to worm his puppy into the shot. So daring.
Domestic Bliss, Part II
Posted by Sharon on Mon, Aug 25, 2008 at 4:50 PM
Also, I feel pretty badly for Jennifer Aniston right now. Not only did the two most beautiful creatures in Hollywood just pop out twins, they've got this spread, shot in Chateau Miraval in the South of France--I'm thinking matching black swimsuits and lots of moody perfume-ad-esque beach snaps--and she's got painful memories of J-May's trademarked guitar face. Ew. As if breakups weren't already heinous enough.
Music Hello, my name is ___.
Posted by Sharon on Mon, Aug 25, 2008 at 2:12 PM
Sharon. Don't worry. I'm not here to replace anyone... because that would be impossible. But, I am going to sit at one of the empty desks at the L HQ, and, you know, keep some inherited office supplies from falling into disuse. I'll be here on your Blog About Town as well, posting items about various cultural phenomena. Except for sharks. Out of respect for your Dear Departed One, I'm going to abstain from any and all shark posts. I think she would have wanted it that way.
Since it's my first day and all, I come bearing YouTube gifts. Click, please! Can life get much better than a Spanish cross-dressing midget impersonating Senator Clinton, dubbed over the effusive pop stylings of one Hilary Duff's "To The Beat Of My Heart"? It's possible, although, for today, very unlikely.Sex Advice From a Goose: Biology Is Destiny
Posted by Gary on Mon, Aug 25, 2008 at 1:09 PM
Dear Audrey Gary,
I read your column from a while ago about sex during your period. I'd always been told that since the cervix is dilated during menstruation, you shouldn't have sex because you're at a greater risk of getting an infection. Is that true?
Well, being a goose, this isn't really something I have much experience dealing with. Maybe ask a human sex advice columnist next time.
Dear Audrey Gary,
I know all about "size doesn't matter," blah blah blah. But as a guy, I'm a little intimidated by the sizes of most dildos for sale out there. Not that I'm in the market, mind you. However, I'm now thinking that dildo-length probably has something to do with the fact that you ladies have to grab the bottom part of it, and so you need a bunch of gripping space for your hand. Is that true? Or wishful thinking?
I am only a humble goose, sir, and also I am made out of wood and am not technically a sentient life form, so take my opinion merely for what it is worth and no more, but "not that I'm in the market, mind you" sounds to me like one who doth, as they say, protest too much.
Also, more to the point, I studied for several years at the London School of Economics and can say that, in a market as saturated as the dildo market is, every brand must do something to stand out, and so the more venerable, "mom and pop" makers of merely average-sized, quality, utilitarian dildos have been unable to sustain a market share necessary for their operations, in the face of so much buyer choice.
Street Stories NYC: "When I look too good I don’t get any help"
Posted by Mark on Mon, Aug 25, 2008 at 11:17 AM
What are you reading? (He has a magazine in his hand.)
The New Yorker, latest issue. I just finished reading Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky for the third time. Now I'm reading Henry James, The Cage. I'm a bibliophile.
What are you doing out here?
The company I worked for went under. I went to receive my benefits and I found out my family was using my social security number to collect whatever they could. So it looked like I as working while I was receiving benefits and that's not good.
I worked for a limousine company for well over 16 years. I was doing well. The last company I worked for didn't recover after 9/11. Then my fiancé died.
What happened?
She was sicker than I realized, she had a nervous break down and the medicine required for her, she would have reactions to it. It was just, she was sicker than I knew at the time. Between the stress of me losing my job and everything and I was taking care of us and my family, I always took care of my family.
My friends always warned me, ‘They're using you.' But I said, ‘You don't understand, we're family, this is what we do for each other.'
How long have you been out here?
2 years.
How have you been surviving?
I go to the drop-in centers for food and showers. If it wasn't for taxi drivers I'd die out here.
I was selling my artwork on the street and thanks to the NYPD they
constantly, constantly were throwing out my art supplies and my work.
I've been arrested for it and threatened for it. Some of these young
people out here think it's a freedom of speech issue. It's not; it's a
business issue. They want the 15 cents on the dollar.
I'm supposed to wear an eye patch and they threw away my medicine for my eye.
I came back one day and my girl was crying because they threw
everything away. I'm not looking to go to Rikers for stealing corn
flakes and a box of tampons. You know? A guy's down on his luck, at least I'm trying to do the right thing.
What about the shelters?
I really try to avoid them if at all possible. Out of six maybe seven shelters I found one that was tolerable. The ones in midtown, the Open Door and whatnot, those places are madhouses, they're dangerous, jailhouse mentality is rampant. My girl almost lost her eye in there. There was one I had to go and get drunk and claim I had a drinking problem just to stay there. You have to have a problem to go there. I'd get help right now if I was a drug addict or alcoholic. When I look too good I don't get any help.
What I can't stand is the sign-in. Wake up — sign in. Breakfast — sign in. Go out — sign in, Come back — sign in, Lunch — sign in, shower — sign in, towel — sign in. They have you sign for every little thing because they get money for every signature. We are not human beings out here, we're numbers and those numbers translate to dollars. What will they benefit from putting me in housing where I can't sign any more?
Idiot me, I'm following because I think I'm going to get what I deserve before I wind up being that toothless crack addict on the corner ‘cause I'm really going nuts here.
When I was living at the shelter I'd still volunteer. One of the things I did was pick up the extra food and clothing donations from the corporations. By the time it got back to us — let me put it this way, there'd be three trays of sushi and I'd say, "Do you think since I went to get it I can have some of that?" and they'd say, "Oh, no it's not safe to eat."
And with the clothes I'd say, "Do you think since I went to pick that up I could see if there's an extra pair of pants?" Because I know there was more in those boxes besides a couple Frankie Says Relax and Bart Simpson t-shirts and some old shorts.
This is it for me. It's turned me into a person I don't like and physically it's killing me.
Film / Special Events Tonight's Summerscreen: Blue Velvet
Posted by Mark on Mon, Aug 25, 2008 at 9:00 AM
So then we'll see you tonight, at McCarren Park Pool, for the penultimate night of Summerscreen, our free outdoor summer film series. We'll expect you promptly at 5:30pm, when the gates open, because we are lonely and want company, and also because it just makes sense to sit out on a blanket and enjoy the food and drink and live music before the movie starts, about when it gets dark.
The movie, of course, Blue Velvet:
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Saturday, August 23, 2008
Friday, August 22, 2008
And Now, a Message from Clint Eastwood, Sexual Cowboy
Posted by Mark on Fri, Aug 22, 2008 at 3:30 PM
He adds, "Heidegger yes, Wittgenstein no."
Tales from the Fringe: That Dorothy Parker
Posted by Mark on Fri, Aug 22, 2008 at 1:21 PM
Carol Lempert worships Dorothy Parker, and, to fully appreciate her one-woman show inhabiting and glorifying the Constant Reader, it's best if you do, too. Following the many details of Parker's life that are packed into the 90 minute show (hirings, firings, marriages, breakups, etc.) is easiest if you already care what happens to her, or if you harbor a deep-seated nostalgia for the Algonquin Round Table and the heyday of the New York media luminary. If not, there are a few opportunities for a nap between the famous quips and the Spanish Civil War.
Lempert's obvious adulation serves her well: she embodies Parker fully from mid-Atlantic accent to cocktail-brandishing braggadocio without resorting to caricature, simultaneously filling the otherwise-unpopulated stage with the ciphers of Alexander Wolcott, Ernest Hemingway and Harold Ross. The undertaking is enormous, but Lempert wrote the part for herself (which helps to explain the show's anecdotal overabundance). Period-perfect costumes and scratchy jazz aid in the transformation of the Soho Playhouse to midtown speakeasies, with the war in Spain tearing into the hazy, gin-soaked reverie just as it did in Parker's life. That Dorothy Parker is a loving look back, a giddy nostalgic escape for the right audience (and for the wrong audience, but with more sighing and watch-checking).
That Dorothy Parker
Fringe Festival Venue #7: The SoHo Playhouse
Remaining Performances: 8/24@NOON
Stuff I'm Reading: Spring Snow, by Yukio Mishima
Posted by Mark on Fri, Aug 22, 2008 at 12:15 PM
You can tell by the way he describes a sunset that Yukio Mishima was a bodybuilder:
The sunsets were especially beautiful. He imagined that as each one approached, every cloud knew in advance what color it would take on — scarlet, purple, orange light green, or something else — and then, under the strain of the moment, that it paled just before turning to its new shade.What Mishima is talking about here, and what he was demonstrating (along with mere narcissism) with his body sculpting, is the conflict between individual agency and the course of nature — the "he" here, young Kiyoaki Matsugae, is imagining that individual will can shape the course of events.
It's a theme discussed throughout Spring Snow, in long, in dialogue and monologue, and in the language of Western rationalism and Eastern spirituality, about will and chance, and the nature of the flowing of time and karma. (The passage immediately preceding the sunset is about clouds, which seem consistent from moment to moment but look — it's sort of a foreshadowing of the vision of the universe put forth in the final pages.) The book, about Kiyoaki's love for a childhood friend betrothed to an Imperial Prince, is written in ornate, heavily descriptive, prose, creating a sense of an ordered world (Michael Gallagher's translation seems to carry the sculpted space between each word over to English intact.) Kiyoaki is disrupting this world — shaping this sunset — with his pursuit of his desires; when his lover becomes (spoiler, sorry) a nun in a Buddhist order, he loses her. In other words, he can disrupt manmade but not cosmic order. (Because the descriptions are so lovely and the love story so ultimately tragic, I wonder if readers don't overlook the essential emotional violence and roughness of Kiyoaki's singlemindedness.) This is the first book in a tetralogy, in which Kiyoaki's best friend grapples with notions of time's continuity — do we move the clouds, do the clouds move randomly, or do the clouds move us? — and the philosophical conversation Mishima is conducting is present in every sentence of his prose.
I should say, too, that partly my reading of Mishima's philosophy of self-fashioning is informed by Paul Schrader's fantastic 1985 biopic Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters, recently out on a gorgeous Criterion Collection DVD.
I should also also say that Yukio Mishima is the subject of the best entry in all wikipedia. And yes, that picture is of him.
Friday Addendum To Thursday's List: Awful Vodkas You Have Drank. Or Drunk.
Posted by Mark on Fri, Aug 22, 2008 at 11:00 AM
By something vaguely resembling popular demand following yesterday's list of awful vodkas I have drank, here are more cheap, awful vodkas you credited with all the fun and hilarious black spots in your memories of college, and the scorch marks still scarring your esophaguses (esophagi?). Testimonials are more than welcome in the comments, for serious.
Popov
Many, many people requested that I pay tribute to Popov. For whatever reason, this is not really one that I encountered in college, for which I have no one but myself to blame.
Says the repository of all human knowlege: "It is a popular drink amongst college students throughout the United States, due to its low price and high alcohol content." I have a theory that most wikipedia entries reveal more about their author(s) than their subjects. Just sayin'.
Kamchatka
This vodka is named after a key territory in Risk. It connects Asia with North America! No wonder it was Ohio's most popular alcohol in 2001.
