Wednesday, April 13, 2005
Hare-brained scheme #1
So, educators are finally realizing that middle school is a terrible, awful time and that maybe we as a nation should do something about it. Some are proposing school reform while others advocate anti-mean girl therapy, but, really, they could relax if they adopted my not-quite-patented-but-sure-to-be-revolutionary plan for dealing with middle school.
I like to call it "put 'em all on a boat."
I know what you're saying, "You can't put all the middle school students in the country on a boat." Or "That would have to be a big boat," but hear me out.
First of all, middle school is pointless. I'm sorry, all you devoted middle-school-teachers who faithfully read this ever day, but I really don't remember learning very much. Until 8th grade, when we got to Algebra and some cool American history stuff, 7th grade was a lot like 6th grade was a lot like 5th grade. Besides, there will be teachers on board. As the boat sails from country to country, the students can totally learn stuff . . . like navigation and geography -- see how awesome this is? Which brings us to . . .
Second of all, middle school is miserable and self-pitying. Way too much time thinking about self and whether self should start shaving legs or lifting weights or kissing boys or sniffing glue or whatever. And way too much time thinking about whether self is taller/shorter/fatter/thinner/pimplier/more developed/less developed than "normal." Once the middle school students in my plan get on the boat, they travel to different countries. They meet people who are different from them. They get the whole obsession with "normal" out of their pointy little heads because they see so many different types of life and home and culture that "normal" doesn't matter as much. Plus, perhaps seeing people living in a less luxurious manner than we're used to would help get rid of the "Ohmygod, I just want to die because you won't let me shop at Limited Too!" phenomenon. But, you say, they'll still have their boat rides to focus obsessively on themselves. But no! Because . . .
Third of all, they will be joined by the only group capable of rivaling them in stubborness and self-absorption: old people! Now look, old people (or, as I've learned to say, "senior citizens") can be wonderful, kind, funny, awesome folks. And so can 12-year-olds. But, as a group, they tend to be a little, shall we say, whiny and demanding. And what would be better to make them stop obsessing about themselves than giving them a bunch of obnoxious middle school students to fight with (sorry, I mean "learn from")? And how about showing them different countries and cultures? We're always saying, "Oh, in the US, we don't value our elders' wisdom like they do in other societies [to which I always say, look at the average age of a Supreme Court justice, but that's getting a little off track]" What better way to check out how other societies view those on the either end of adulthood than by visiting them?
In conclusion, I'd like to offer a few quick practical tips for any of you thinking of implementing this strategy:
No, they don't all have to be on the same boat. I'd say maybe 25 seniors and 25 middle schoolers per boat.
Trip duration? I'm advocating 9 months, the typical school year. Let 'em slot right back into high school when they're done. Or even come back for 8th grade and just miss 7th.
Boat staff? Well, you'd want someone willing to have a kind of crappy job in exchange for seeing a lot of the world and doing some community service. Sounds to me like a job for a recent college graduate. You could even set it up like AmeriCorps and forgive their student loans.
Anyway, I feel like I've done all the hard work here coming up with this scheme. Now, I just need a billionaire with some spare boats to help make it happen . . . any leads?
I like to call it "put 'em all on a boat."
I know what you're saying, "You can't put all the middle school students in the country on a boat." Or "That would have to be a big boat," but hear me out.
First of all, middle school is pointless. I'm sorry, all you devoted middle-school-teachers who faithfully read this ever day, but I really don't remember learning very much. Until 8th grade, when we got to Algebra and some cool American history stuff, 7th grade was a lot like 6th grade was a lot like 5th grade. Besides, there will be teachers on board. As the boat sails from country to country, the students can totally learn stuff . . . like navigation and geography -- see how awesome this is? Which brings us to . . .
Second of all, middle school is miserable and self-pitying. Way too much time thinking about self and whether self should start shaving legs or lifting weights or kissing boys or sniffing glue or whatever. And way too much time thinking about whether self is taller/shorter/fatter/thinner/pimplier/more developed/less developed than "normal." Once the middle school students in my plan get on the boat, they travel to different countries. They meet people who are different from them. They get the whole obsession with "normal" out of their pointy little heads because they see so many different types of life and home and culture that "normal" doesn't matter as much. Plus, perhaps seeing people living in a less luxurious manner than we're used to would help get rid of the "Ohmygod, I just want to die because you won't let me shop at Limited Too!" phenomenon. But, you say, they'll still have their boat rides to focus obsessively on themselves. But no! Because . . .
Third of all, they will be joined by the only group capable of rivaling them in stubborness and self-absorption: old people! Now look, old people (or, as I've learned to say, "senior citizens") can be wonderful, kind, funny, awesome folks. And so can 12-year-olds. But, as a group, they tend to be a little, shall we say, whiny and demanding. And what would be better to make them stop obsessing about themselves than giving them a bunch of obnoxious middle school students to fight with (sorry, I mean "learn from")? And how about showing them different countries and cultures? We're always saying, "Oh, in the US, we don't value our elders' wisdom like they do in other societies [to which I always say, look at the average age of a Supreme Court justice, but that's getting a little off track]" What better way to check out how other societies view those on the either end of adulthood than by visiting them?
In conclusion, I'd like to offer a few quick practical tips for any of you thinking of implementing this strategy:
No, they don't all have to be on the same boat. I'd say maybe 25 seniors and 25 middle schoolers per boat.
Trip duration? I'm advocating 9 months, the typical school year. Let 'em slot right back into high school when they're done. Or even come back for 8th grade and just miss 7th.
Boat staff? Well, you'd want someone willing to have a kind of crappy job in exchange for seeing a lot of the world and doing some community service. Sounds to me like a job for a recent college graduate. You could even set it up like AmeriCorps and forgive their student loans.
Anyway, I feel like I've done all the hard work here coming up with this scheme. Now, I just need a billionaire with some spare boats to help make it happen . . . any leads?
Thursday, March 31, 2005
The baby's real, Larissa!!! The baby's real!!!
Maybe it's like this for everyone. Maybe having someone who's in a field you know about profiled automatically renders you incapable of enjoying their in-depth New Yorker spread. Were news anchors everywhere up in arms after the Dan Rather bio? Perhaps. And as far as I know, chefs everywhere go crying into their delicate greens when the Food Issue comes out.
What I do know for certain is that Larissa MacFarquhar's profile of Edward Albee is totally and completely lame. Lame to the point of almost not being worth reading, except that I happen to believe in the cleansing power of the truly awful to remind us what goodness is. Anyway, it's utterly stupid and pointless and shoddy and makes me want to kick her in the face. No, strike that, it makes me want to send Marian Seldes to her home to eviscerate her with withering glances and scabrous asides. Or maybe scabrous glances and withering asides . . . Anyway--
How can it possibly so lame, you ask? Well, we'll start with the big picture and move to the smaller details. Biggest big of the big picture being that I'd be willing to bet nontrivial sums of money that Ms. MacFarquhar has never seen an Albee play produced. I love reading plays more than your average bear, but even I will admit that plays are written to be performed. They are not fully alive until they are performed and, in particular, it is very hard to tell exactly what is going on, particularly in plays (like Albee's) where people lie all the time. Without a production, everyone's lines are just sitting there, and their "truth" is pretty up for grabs. Or, in this case, up for the grabs of a dingbat journalist who picks and chooses moments from Albee's plays to pair suggestively with details from him life. Such as:
In 1965, in the middle of the "Tiny Alice" fiasco, Albee received a phone call from his parents' secretary telling him that his mother was ill and lonely. (His father died four years earlier.) He went to see her, for the first time since he left home. "I hear his voice and it all floods back, but I'm normal," A, in "Three Tall Women" says of this meeting. "Well, hello there, I say. Hello there to you, he says. Nothing about this shouldn't have happened. Nothing about I've missed you, not even that little lie . . . There are no apologies, no recriminations, no tears, no hugs; dry lips on my dry cheeks; yes that."
No A bloody doesn't "say of this meeting." A wasn't there! She's a fictional character! Bad Larissa! Based on his mom, sure. Inspired by his mom, fine. But it's not the same thing.
Do you know how big of a fucking temper tantrum I would throw if anyone ever tried this with me? Some playwrights, yes, they're autobiographical and they say so (although I still think that kind of sneaky elision is crap), but Albee is not a one-to-one correspondance writer. Or, as David Finkle put it in his Theatre Mania review, "Albee is on record as maintaining that he doesn't write crypto-biography. . . he recently claimed to interviewer Leslie Garis, "This play ['The Play About the Baby'] has nothing to do with me at all, except my theory that everybody's reality is determined by their need."
Which brings us to the two central flaws of this piece. Overall, it's poorly researched and redactive for days, but on some big deep level, the writer just doesn't "get it" -- not what Albee's doing and not who he is. As evidenced by Flaw 1:
What I do know for certain is that Larissa MacFarquhar's profile of Edward Albee is totally and completely lame. Lame to the point of almost not being worth reading, except that I happen to believe in the cleansing power of the truly awful to remind us what goodness is. Anyway, it's utterly stupid and pointless and shoddy and makes me want to kick her in the face. No, strike that, it makes me want to send Marian Seldes to her home to eviscerate her with withering glances and scabrous asides. Or maybe scabrous glances and withering asides . . . Anyway--
How can it possibly so lame, you ask? Well, we'll start with the big picture and move to the smaller details. Biggest big of the big picture being that I'd be willing to bet nontrivial sums of money that Ms. MacFarquhar has never seen an Albee play produced. I love reading plays more than your average bear, but even I will admit that plays are written to be performed. They are not fully alive until they are performed and, in particular, it is very hard to tell exactly what is going on, particularly in plays (like Albee's) where people lie all the time. Without a production, everyone's lines are just sitting there, and their "truth" is pretty up for grabs. Or, in this case, up for the grabs of a dingbat journalist who picks and chooses moments from Albee's plays to pair suggestively with details from him life. Such as:
In 1965, in the middle of the "Tiny Alice" fiasco, Albee received a phone call from his parents' secretary telling him that his mother was ill and lonely. (His father died four years earlier.) He went to see her, for the first time since he left home. "I hear his voice and it all floods back, but I'm normal," A, in "Three Tall Women" says of this meeting. "Well, hello there, I say. Hello there to you, he says. Nothing about this shouldn't have happened. Nothing about I've missed you, not even that little lie . . . There are no apologies, no recriminations, no tears, no hugs; dry lips on my dry cheeks; yes that."
No A bloody doesn't "say of this meeting." A wasn't there! She's a fictional character! Bad Larissa! Based on his mom, sure. Inspired by his mom, fine. But it's not the same thing.
Do you know how big of a fucking temper tantrum I would throw if anyone ever tried this with me? Some playwrights, yes, they're autobiographical and they say so (although I still think that kind of sneaky elision is crap), but Albee is not a one-to-one correspondance writer. Or, as David Finkle put it in his Theatre Mania review, "Albee is on record as maintaining that he doesn't write crypto-biography. . . he recently claimed to interviewer Leslie Garis, "This play ['The Play About the Baby'] has nothing to do with me at all, except my theory that everybody's reality is determined by their need."
Which brings us to the two central flaws of this piece. Overall, it's poorly researched and redactive for days, but on some big deep level, the writer just doesn't "get it" -- not what Albee's doing and not who he is. As evidenced by Flaw 1:
- She is way too willing to believe. The best sentence to illustrate this point is the alarmingly stupid one from page 71, "Albee was pampered but unloved." WHAT???!!! This is a biography???!!! Who in the hell are you to ever pass judgment on whether someone is or is not loved? Was he loved in the way that would have been best for him? Looks not. Was he given the kinds of attentions he wanted as a child? Doubtful. But unloved? Come on now, that kind of summary of a childhood belongs in A Series of Unfortunate Events, not a supposedly nuanced biography of a real person. And it's not even "Albee felt unloved" or "Albee believed himself to be unloved" but just a "was." Wanna ask Mrs. Albee about that one?
Which brings us to Flaw 2
- She is not nearly willing enough to believe, which we see in a sustained summary of what she believes to be the "single theme that runs through Albee's work . . the importance of being open to a full consciousness of life, with all the social and emotional risk that that entails." Big Marian Seldes eyebrow raise to that one, but moving on to how she proves it. Brief capsules of the "illusions destroyed" in Albee's major works, including this one:
Man and Woman, in "The Play About the Baby," destroy Girl and Boy's fantasy that they have a baby.
No, no and again I say no! The baby is real, Larissa!!! Don't believe me? Didn't get to actually, ya know, like, see a production with a pregnant woman and a baby onstage? God, that's so time-consuming, I know! Well, how about turning to the man himself who said, "It is about a real baby who by the end of the play ceases to exist." The baby is real. And what's also real (and what makes the play so horrifying) is so is the human tendency to trick ourselves to avoid pain. Or, as that guy, what's his name, oh yeah, Albee, put it: "We lie to ourselves. We invent things. We deny things according to what we can tolerate, and this play is another extended metaphor of that."
MacFarquhar is so invested in the story that, ahem, she wants to tell (about the sad little boy who likes to destroy big, bad illusions) that she can't look at the facts (of Albee's life or his work) the way they are. She denies what she can't tolerate and writes a lame-ass profile whose last line unwittingly undermines her entire approach and its simplistic conclusions. Quoting Albee, who said "Once I figured out who I was, whatever care or interest I may have had in where I came from vanished completely--I was indifferent to my past."
Is he "telling the truth" and therefore negating MacFarquhar's entire autobiographical line of reasoning? Or is he "lying" and perpetuating a delusional fantasy that needs to be destroyed, thus negating her other thread? You tell me, Larissa, you tell me.
Thursday, March 24, 2005
Good Friday
So it's almost Good Friday, and I've been a pretty mediocre observer of Lent. I mean, heading into the last stretch of Holy Week beaming w/ pride would have been a little weird, but I'm pretty far off the wagon. [total and complete non sequitur: when I was in middle school, I decided that the French translation of "off his/ her rocker" would be "loin de sa chaise" and I still find this uproariously funny.] Anyhoo -- I'm going to try to make it to church tomorrow at noon, but it'll be the first time in longer than I care to admit.
Last weekend was Palm Sunday and I was up in NYC for the production a play I wrote, Burned Over. Seeing the production was wonderful, if exhausting, and I owe Beloved Fiance big time for how much he helped (and is helping out). Actually, let me rephrase that: I pretty much owe every single friend, acquaintance, family member, and colleague/spouse/friend of friend out there. So thank you. A lot. The hope is that this will keep happening (productions . . . plays . . .), and I'm going to ask you all to show up again, so enjoy your free weekends while they last. But, asides aside, I was staying in Brooklyn and the church I would have wanted to go up to was in Washington Heights, and I got to bed at 4:30 in the AM, so, long story short. I went frondless. I'm hoping to do better this weekend, and actually make it up to one-hundred-and-sixty-whatever-the-hell-it-is and attend my dear good friend's church with her. Pray for me and for the subway, and I might have a shot.
This spring is turning out to be so much about rebirth and change as to be almost cliche, but I think if I'm about to head off into some big new self-definining phase in life, it couldn't hurt to check in w/ God on the most important holiday first. Plus, I could maybe wear a pretty dress if the weather holds.
Last weekend was Palm Sunday and I was up in NYC for the production a play I wrote, Burned Over. Seeing the production was wonderful, if exhausting, and I owe Beloved Fiance big time for how much he helped (and is helping out). Actually, let me rephrase that: I pretty much owe every single friend, acquaintance, family member, and colleague/spouse/friend of friend out there. So thank you. A lot. The hope is that this will keep happening (productions . . . plays . . .), and I'm going to ask you all to show up again, so enjoy your free weekends while they last. But, asides aside, I was staying in Brooklyn and the church I would have wanted to go up to was in Washington Heights, and I got to bed at 4:30 in the AM, so, long story short. I went frondless. I'm hoping to do better this weekend, and actually make it up to one-hundred-and-sixty-whatever-the-hell-it-is and attend my dear good friend's church with her. Pray for me and for the subway, and I might have a shot.
This spring is turning out to be so much about rebirth and change as to be almost cliche, but I think if I'm about to head off into some big new self-definining phase in life, it couldn't hurt to check in w/ God on the most important holiday first. Plus, I could maybe wear a pretty dress if the weather holds.
Monday, March 14, 2005
I know U R, but what M I?
Beloved Fiance is out of town (side effects include: more frequent blog posting and no food in the refrigerator), but I'm doing all right, mostly because I've got somebody new to occupy my thoughts and dreams: Isabel Briggs Myers. Sigh. As part of Week 1 of Pre-Cana BF and I had to take the Myers Briggs personality Indicator. I did this once already in high school, as part of a leadership seminar or some such thing (I ran the gay club, which, if I were more of an egomaniac really would have been called "Friends of Dorothy" . . . but I'm getting ahead of myself here). Back then, I was an ENTJ (Analytical, logical, and objectively critical but w/ danger of becoming abrasive and dictatorial). As such, I took the test and was mostly annoyed at the implication that I was supposed to use it to help get along with those inferior to-- I'm sorry, I mean "differently-personalitied than"-- me.
But now, softened by getting kicked around a little in a university and spending the past three years of my life working with little kids, old people, and teenagers, I have emerged as an ENFJ. Feeling now trumps thinking and I'm (ya know, according to the test) warm and imaginative with a tendency to worry, feel guilty, and doubt myself (again, I'm just saying what the test booklet tells me.)
Due, I believe to a combination of my F (feeling) and N (intuition) sides, I now love the Myers-Briggs test. I read the booklet every morning at breakfast. Having long since memorized my own description and that of BF (a "sensitive, introspective, and complex" INFP), I'll just sit and read about other personality types. Do I know any ISTJ's? How about ENTP's? I've tried to back-diagnose my family and friends and will start using these descriptions in regular conversation. Actual transcript from talking at work w/ a friend today: "Yeah, I mean, and I'm not much of a J, but I'm more J than P, you know." This was about buying a washing machine.
Anyhoo . . . I'm certifiably nuts about this whole thing. But, you know, it's probably just because I'm "highly attuned to others." Right?
But now, softened by getting kicked around a little in a university and spending the past three years of my life working with little kids, old people, and teenagers, I have emerged as an ENFJ. Feeling now trumps thinking and I'm (ya know, according to the test) warm and imaginative with a tendency to worry, feel guilty, and doubt myself (again, I'm just saying what the test booklet tells me.)
Due, I believe to a combination of my F (feeling) and N (intuition) sides, I now love the Myers-Briggs test. I read the booklet every morning at breakfast. Having long since memorized my own description and that of BF (a "sensitive, introspective, and complex" INFP), I'll just sit and read about other personality types. Do I know any ISTJ's? How about ENTP's? I've tried to back-diagnose my family and friends and will start using these descriptions in regular conversation. Actual transcript from talking at work w/ a friend today: "Yeah, I mean, and I'm not much of a J, but I'm more J than P, you know." This was about buying a washing machine.
Anyhoo . . . I'm certifiably nuts about this whole thing. But, you know, it's probably just because I'm "highly attuned to others." Right?
Saturday, March 12, 2005
Baby Mama Drama
Listening to too much radio yesterday because of driving too many places, I probably heard Fantasia's song "Baby Mama" at least three or four times. "B-A-B-Y M-A-M-A." If you've heard it, it's in your head now. On WKYS, my favorite radio station in DC, the song was almost always preceded with call-ins from local single mothers, expressing their thanks to Fantasia for performing the song, and I got to hear a bit of an interview with her, explaining why she chose to sing it. And, I can't decide if I like it or if it creeps me out or both.
Urbandictionary defines "baby mama" as "The mother of your child(ren), whom you did not marry and with whom you are not currently involved." In all of their sample sentences, it's a word to be used solely by men. In the tradition of "queer" and some other words I don't feel comfortable typing, Fantasia's reclaiming a word for a group traditionally used to demean them. Instead of the phrase"my baby mama" coming from a man's point of view, she sends her song "out to all my baby mamas." What's more, the song's encouraging -- offering sympathy for the limits of paternity support and the difficulties of being a single parent. So far, so cool . . . and yet. . .
Here's when I kick in to being a horribly conservative Daniel Patrick Moynihan/ Dan Quayle knockoff. I mean, I don't clearly. For one thing, no bowties. But I can't completely get behind a song that says, "Nowadays it's like a badge of honor/ To be a baby mama." I want to be supportive of everyone and their choices, and I'm certainly not recommending we bring back the Scarlet A, but it's tough shit to be a single mother. Or to be raised by one.
The stats are depressing. The majority of black children in this country now live outside of two-married-parent families. And, without trying to explain why or finding somebody to blame, I think that's got to be hard and that it's a problem. Not impossible, not set up to fail, and of course, not worse than living with a terrible husband. But it's hard.
Reading plays last month for the Young Playwrights' Theatre contest, I couldn't help but notice that the vast majority of the plays written by high school students in DC were about mothers and fathers who did not live together. Some were from the perspective of children of divorce, who shuttled between their mom's and dad's house. Some were from the perspective of children who never knew who their fathers were, until one day they dropped by to visit. And some were about teenagers, who had children outside of wedlock and were figuring out how to share parenting. The phrase "baby mama" came up more than once. The prospect of getting married was raised only once in one play, as a joke.
And then you throw into this world, a song about baby mamas on the one hand and an article about celebrating the pregnant bride on the other, and I don't know what's helpful and what's harmful. Fantasia said in the radio interview that 13-yr-old mothers come up to her at concerts and tell her thank you for making the song. Which I guess is good, and it's good that she's a role model of successful single motherhood, but still . . .
In the end, I think Fantasia gets the last word. Quoting Nietschze, she tells all her baby mamas,
"Remember: What don't kill you can only make you stronger/ My baby mama." True? Perhaps. But nobody should be satisfied with a childcare situation that gets compared favorably to murder. That's not saying a hell of a lot.
Urbandictionary defines "baby mama" as "The mother of your child(ren), whom you did not marry and with whom you are not currently involved." In all of their sample sentences, it's a word to be used solely by men. In the tradition of "queer" and some other words I don't feel comfortable typing, Fantasia's reclaiming a word for a group traditionally used to demean them. Instead of the phrase"my baby mama" coming from a man's point of view, she sends her song "out to all my baby mamas." What's more, the song's encouraging -- offering sympathy for the limits of paternity support and the difficulties of being a single parent. So far, so cool . . . and yet. . .
Here's when I kick in to being a horribly conservative Daniel Patrick Moynihan/ Dan Quayle knockoff. I mean, I don't clearly. For one thing, no bowties. But I can't completely get behind a song that says, "Nowadays it's like a badge of honor/ To be a baby mama." I want to be supportive of everyone and their choices, and I'm certainly not recommending we bring back the Scarlet A, but it's tough shit to be a single mother. Or to be raised by one.
The stats are depressing. The majority of black children in this country now live outside of two-married-parent families. And, without trying to explain why or finding somebody to blame, I think that's got to be hard and that it's a problem. Not impossible, not set up to fail, and of course, not worse than living with a terrible husband. But it's hard.
Reading plays last month for the Young Playwrights' Theatre contest, I couldn't help but notice that the vast majority of the plays written by high school students in DC were about mothers and fathers who did not live together. Some were from the perspective of children of divorce, who shuttled between their mom's and dad's house. Some were from the perspective of children who never knew who their fathers were, until one day they dropped by to visit. And some were about teenagers, who had children outside of wedlock and were figuring out how to share parenting. The phrase "baby mama" came up more than once. The prospect of getting married was raised only once in one play, as a joke.
And then you throw into this world, a song about baby mamas on the one hand and an article about celebrating the pregnant bride on the other, and I don't know what's helpful and what's harmful. Fantasia said in the radio interview that 13-yr-old mothers come up to her at concerts and tell her thank you for making the song. Which I guess is good, and it's good that she's a role model of successful single motherhood, but still . . .
In the end, I think Fantasia gets the last word. Quoting Nietschze, she tells all her baby mamas,
"Remember: What don't kill you can only make you stronger/ My baby mama." True? Perhaps. But nobody should be satisfied with a childcare situation that gets compared favorably to murder. That's not saying a hell of a lot.
Saturday, March 05, 2005
The Interview
So, as maybe most of you, maybe most of you who are out there (Are you out there? Hello? Am I an exhibitionist or a hermit? Maybe a hermit with a glowing neon sign saying "Hermit Inside" on the front of my grotto.) Anyway, where was I? Right. As maybe most of you know, I had an interview at a scary, prestigious drama school this week for their MFA playwriting program.
I was a bundle of nervous nerves the whole month beforehand (I have, I'll admit, a pretty bad case of "I know I failed THAT math test"-itis), but the day was finally here. I'm leaving Tuesday afternoon on the 5pm Vamoose bus, only to find out at 2pm that Vamoose has conveniently cancelled its 5pm bus. So, I change to a 6pm Chinatown bus -- so far, so okay. Beloved Fiance offers to meet me at the bus station with a sandwich because he's wonderful like that and I make it onto the bus. Bus unexpectedly stops in Philadelphia, adding another half hour or so to an already-delayed trip. But that's still not too bad . . . I get off in Chinatown, walk to the subway and make it up to 168th St by around 11pm. Have some cold pasta and bounce off the ceiling with anxious energy with Catherine and her friend Heather until around 1am at which point everyone retires to bed, couch, or floor to sleep. Except that I don't sleep. At all. It's not too bad because I'm not unhappy, just totally wound up and incapable of sleep. I think of lots of different things and eventually start to notice the way the sunlight comes into the room in early morning. I am not a(n?) habitue of early morning. Get out the door by 7:30am, enjoy the morning rush to school and work and make my way to Grand Central Station. Where the one train that I am taking is the one train whose gate is not listed. With coffee and doughnut in hand, I wander from sign to sign, from computer to mechanical wooden lists and nothing. Finally find an information booth and inquire as to which gate I need. Make it on the train and luckily someone has left a Wall Street Journal, which is secretly my 2nd-favorite newspaper, aboard. Score! Read the Journal, make it to New Haven, and make it to a delightful lunch w/ two friends from college. One of whom spends lunch telling me his take on difficult admissions decisions: "Basically, they should just take the top 25 people and have a lottery. It's not like getting in means anything about your being more qualified than anyone else." This is both comforting and discomfiting.
Go to interview which is fine, I think, but it's an interview and you can never tell and what did that last thing he said mean and maybe I shouldn't have talked about exhibitionists on the corner in trenchcoats and prostitutes and reading the Bible cover-to-cover (all true). Have tea w/ a couple friends before leaving town, everyone is super-sweet and understanding and hand-holding to me, and I'm feeling good, if starting to get chilly, when my cab pulls up to the train station 5 minutes before my train takes off. I reach for my suitcase. And it's not there. Just not there. I let the cab go and then run dementedly after it, wondering if my suitcase might be in another part of the backseat. The cabbie finally stops and lets me check. There's not another part of the backseat. It's just, you know, a backseat, and my suitcase simply isn't there. So I run back to the train station, calling the restaurant where I just was on my cell phone. I check the departures list and make it onto the train, while trying to orchestrate the successful retrieval of my possessions. Take a deep breath and call BF to tell him about suitcase fiasco. As we're talking, the conductor comes to take my ticket. And he looks at my ticket. And tells me that I'm going in completely the wrong direction. I have missed the 5:45 train to Washington, DC and am now heading north to Old Saybrook on the commuter line.
It is at this point that I start to cry.
Around 6:30 we pull into Old Saybrook, a town, I would like to point out, whose train station does not sell a single magazine or newspaper (my book, of course, being in the suitcase left at the restaurant). At 7:45, the next train to Washington, DC pulls into the station and, with no books to read and only a copy of the Amtrak magazine "Arrive" (whose title mocks me from its little string holdy-case -- "If only I could arrive, 'Arrive!' If only I could!") I pass the hours until 2am. At which time, the train pulls into Union Station. Beloved Fiance comes to pick me up, and I get a good 5 hours sleep until Thursday morning when I have to wake up and teach my 3-5th graders how to write a play.
This story is either a sad story or a funny story. I didn't know which one until yesterday; now I know it's funny.
I got into the grad school.
I was a bundle of nervous nerves the whole month beforehand (I have, I'll admit, a pretty bad case of "I know I failed THAT math test"-itis), but the day was finally here. I'm leaving Tuesday afternoon on the 5pm Vamoose bus, only to find out at 2pm that Vamoose has conveniently cancelled its 5pm bus. So, I change to a 6pm Chinatown bus -- so far, so okay. Beloved Fiance offers to meet me at the bus station with a sandwich because he's wonderful like that and I make it onto the bus. Bus unexpectedly stops in Philadelphia, adding another half hour or so to an already-delayed trip. But that's still not too bad . . . I get off in Chinatown, walk to the subway and make it up to 168th St by around 11pm. Have some cold pasta and bounce off the ceiling with anxious energy with Catherine and her friend Heather until around 1am at which point everyone retires to bed, couch, or floor to sleep. Except that I don't sleep. At all. It's not too bad because I'm not unhappy, just totally wound up and incapable of sleep. I think of lots of different things and eventually start to notice the way the sunlight comes into the room in early morning. I am not a(n?) habitue of early morning. Get out the door by 7:30am, enjoy the morning rush to school and work and make my way to Grand Central Station. Where the one train that I am taking is the one train whose gate is not listed. With coffee and doughnut in hand, I wander from sign to sign, from computer to mechanical wooden lists and nothing. Finally find an information booth and inquire as to which gate I need. Make it on the train and luckily someone has left a Wall Street Journal, which is secretly my 2nd-favorite newspaper, aboard. Score! Read the Journal, make it to New Haven, and make it to a delightful lunch w/ two friends from college. One of whom spends lunch telling me his take on difficult admissions decisions: "Basically, they should just take the top 25 people and have a lottery. It's not like getting in means anything about your being more qualified than anyone else." This is both comforting and discomfiting.
Go to interview which is fine, I think, but it's an interview and you can never tell and what did that last thing he said mean and maybe I shouldn't have talked about exhibitionists on the corner in trenchcoats and prostitutes and reading the Bible cover-to-cover (all true). Have tea w/ a couple friends before leaving town, everyone is super-sweet and understanding and hand-holding to me, and I'm feeling good, if starting to get chilly, when my cab pulls up to the train station 5 minutes before my train takes off. I reach for my suitcase. And it's not there. Just not there. I let the cab go and then run dementedly after it, wondering if my suitcase might be in another part of the backseat. The cabbie finally stops and lets me check. There's not another part of the backseat. It's just, you know, a backseat, and my suitcase simply isn't there. So I run back to the train station, calling the restaurant where I just was on my cell phone. I check the departures list and make it onto the train, while trying to orchestrate the successful retrieval of my possessions. Take a deep breath and call BF to tell him about suitcase fiasco. As we're talking, the conductor comes to take my ticket. And he looks at my ticket. And tells me that I'm going in completely the wrong direction. I have missed the 5:45 train to Washington, DC and am now heading north to Old Saybrook on the commuter line.
It is at this point that I start to cry.
Around 6:30 we pull into Old Saybrook, a town, I would like to point out, whose train station does not sell a single magazine or newspaper (my book, of course, being in the suitcase left at the restaurant). At 7:45, the next train to Washington, DC pulls into the station and, with no books to read and only a copy of the Amtrak magazine "Arrive" (whose title mocks me from its little string holdy-case -- "If only I could arrive, 'Arrive!' If only I could!") I pass the hours until 2am. At which time, the train pulls into Union Station. Beloved Fiance comes to pick me up, and I get a good 5 hours sleep until Thursday morning when I have to wake up and teach my 3-5th graders how to write a play.
This story is either a sad story or a funny story. I didn't know which one until yesterday; now I know it's funny.
I got into the grad school.
Monday, February 28, 2005
Tim McGraw, Master of Paradox
At first glance, Tim McGraw seems pretty comprehensible. Big hat, blond wife -- the country equivalent of Nick Lachey minus the reality show (for now). But the dude's complex, and I think the forces that are fighting for his soul represent the conflicts in country music today. Perhaps even the conflicts at the heart of America! (see how easy that was? Everyone should have a blog. Oh wait . . .) Back on the soapbox: Do we move forward into an unfair and ambiguous world or do we romanticize the troubled past? Only Tim knows for sure.
Exhibit A: Tim McGraw's unbelievable song "Red Rag Top." I've only heard this song on the radio once, in the car this fall, driving through Rock Creek Parkway on the way from one job to another, and I almost had to pull over in the parking lot because I was sobbing so hard. This is the single best pop artifact I've ever heard about abortion (take that, Ani DiFranco), and it's even more amazing given the strident and uncompromising language that usually characterizes the pro-choice/pro-life debate. In brief: the narrator of the song recounts how he was a teenager and got his girlfriend pregnant. As he puts it,
I was out of a job and she was in school
Life was fast and the world was cruel
We were young and wild, we decided not to have a child.
And that's how it goes. They don't descend to a fiery hell-pit. They aren't even consumed with horrible regret every moment of their lives. They are very young and take one of the options available to them. And it's a really hard choice. And their relationship doesn't survive it. From everything I know personally about teenage couples who choose abortion, this seems pretty damn accurate. Best decision in a hard place? Maybe. Gonna mess with your emotions? Let's hope so. This is pretty much the same position taken by Hillary Clinton in her January speech, which, btw, was lauded as revolutionary. It's now being echoed by Andrew Sullivan. And Tim McGraw said it first. (I also have a long and fairly boring thesis involving a close reading of the visual imagery in the title, doing my best imitation of a New Critic, but this post is too long already. Basic point = this song is genius.)
And now that we see what complex heights Mr. McGraw is capable of, I bring you to Exhibit B: "Back When," his current hit song (played about 100 times a day on the local station) a dismal piece of pap that snuggles up way to closely to racism for its popularity to make me comfortable. The general gist of "Back When?" Well, it's that the narrator misses a simpler way of life, before life got so "complicated." So far, so understandable, if a little boring, given the surge in this kind of nostalgia in country these days. And then we get to the chorus:
Back when a hoe was a hoe
Coke was a coke
And crack's what you were doing
When you were cracking jokes
Back when a screw was a screw
The wind was all that blew
And when you said I'm down with that
Well it meant you had the flu
I miss back when
Let's parse a little, shall we? What, exactly, bothers this narrator? A series of double-entendre slang words, most of which come from and/or pertain to what we now like to call "urban" communities. Is crack really a problem for you, sir? Crystal meth, I'll believe, but crack? I doubt it. And ho's? Well, did you object "back when" they were called hookers? Finally, come on, "I'm down with that" -- at best you're a curmudgeon, Narrator-Man, and at worst you're pining for a world in which your vernacular (and, by extension, your worldview) was white, white, white. It's not too far a mosey from "I miss back when" to Trent Lott's infamous remarks about Strom Thurmond. Why can't we just avoid the problems we're having now, McGraw's song asks, why can't we go back to that simpler place in time (when, you know, segregation was legal)?
In conclusion: Do I think all Southerners/ country music fans are racist? Hell no. And I'll hurt the face of anyone who says so. Do I think Tim McGraw is racist? I highly doubt it, and not just because of his hypnotizingly repetitive duet with Nelly. Which is exactly what pisses me off about this song -- it's pandering to a base, in the worst way. Selling one thing by tacit inclusion of another, especially for someone who's as capable of complex emotion as I'd like to believe Tim McGraw is . . . well, it's a big, stinkin' cop out. The wind is not all that blows, sir. Your song does, too.
Exhibit A: Tim McGraw's unbelievable song "Red Rag Top." I've only heard this song on the radio once, in the car this fall, driving through Rock Creek Parkway on the way from one job to another, and I almost had to pull over in the parking lot because I was sobbing so hard. This is the single best pop artifact I've ever heard about abortion (take that, Ani DiFranco), and it's even more amazing given the strident and uncompromising language that usually characterizes the pro-choice/pro-life debate. In brief: the narrator of the song recounts how he was a teenager and got his girlfriend pregnant. As he puts it,
I was out of a job and she was in school
Life was fast and the world was cruel
We were young and wild, we decided not to have a child.
And that's how it goes. They don't descend to a fiery hell-pit. They aren't even consumed with horrible regret every moment of their lives. They are very young and take one of the options available to them. And it's a really hard choice. And their relationship doesn't survive it. From everything I know personally about teenage couples who choose abortion, this seems pretty damn accurate. Best decision in a hard place? Maybe. Gonna mess with your emotions? Let's hope so. This is pretty much the same position taken by Hillary Clinton in her January speech, which, btw, was lauded as revolutionary. It's now being echoed by Andrew Sullivan. And Tim McGraw said it first. (I also have a long and fairly boring thesis involving a close reading of the visual imagery in the title, doing my best imitation of a New Critic, but this post is too long already. Basic point = this song is genius.)
And now that we see what complex heights Mr. McGraw is capable of, I bring you to Exhibit B: "Back When," his current hit song (played about 100 times a day on the local station) a dismal piece of pap that snuggles up way to closely to racism for its popularity to make me comfortable. The general gist of "Back When?" Well, it's that the narrator misses a simpler way of life, before life got so "complicated." So far, so understandable, if a little boring, given the surge in this kind of nostalgia in country these days. And then we get to the chorus:
Back when a hoe was a hoe
Coke was a coke
And crack's what you were doing
When you were cracking jokes
Back when a screw was a screw
The wind was all that blew
And when you said I'm down with that
Well it meant you had the flu
I miss back when
Let's parse a little, shall we? What, exactly, bothers this narrator? A series of double-entendre slang words, most of which come from and/or pertain to what we now like to call "urban" communities. Is crack really a problem for you, sir? Crystal meth, I'll believe, but crack? I doubt it. And ho's? Well, did you object "back when" they were called hookers? Finally, come on, "I'm down with that" -- at best you're a curmudgeon, Narrator-Man, and at worst you're pining for a world in which your vernacular (and, by extension, your worldview) was white, white, white. It's not too far a mosey from "I miss back when" to Trent Lott's infamous remarks about Strom Thurmond. Why can't we just avoid the problems we're having now, McGraw's song asks, why can't we go back to that simpler place in time (when, you know, segregation was legal)?
In conclusion: Do I think all Southerners/ country music fans are racist? Hell no. And I'll hurt the face of anyone who says so. Do I think Tim McGraw is racist? I highly doubt it, and not just because of his hypnotizingly repetitive duet with Nelly. Which is exactly what pisses me off about this song -- it's pandering to a base, in the worst way. Selling one thing by tacit inclusion of another, especially for someone who's as capable of complex emotion as I'd like to believe Tim McGraw is . . . well, it's a big, stinkin' cop out. The wind is not all that blows, sir. Your song does, too.
Snu Part Deux
It's snowing again, outside the window in the dark, discernable only in the streetlights and by the windshield wipers of cars.
It's been going on most of the day, and I think it's supposed to continue into the morning. No matter many years it's been since I had a real, for-real snow day (8 I think), I still get excited by the thought that snow automatically brings the promise of undeserved escape, a last-minute pardon by a celestial governor because, well, he felt like it. Although now that I teach a couple days a week, I can still get out of going to school, if not work. The Montgomery County annoucement goes up at 5am tomorrow -- I don't think I'll be checking it that early.
Had a really good yesterday. Except for the skipping out on church part, I actually did all of the things I think you're supposed to do on Sunday. Like, the ideal Monday involves a really good breakfast, and the ideal Friday involves doing something crazy with friends, the ideal Sunday would be my yesterday . . . well, there wasn't a newspaper. Okay, with a newspaper and minus the UNBELIEVABLE INSANE TOOTH AND CLAW PANDEMONIUM THAT WAS THE LAUNDROMAT, the ideal Sunday would be my yesterday.
Today, not bad, not great. Work was totally fine -- snow seems to make things less urgent, if not less necessary. But then I got my first rejection letter tonight from a grad school, and I'm still sort of processing it. I knew this would happen -- I had certainly prepared to be rejected from some if not all of the schools I applied to. But still. Ouch.
Character building, right? Of course right.
It's been going on most of the day, and I think it's supposed to continue into the morning. No matter many years it's been since I had a real, for-real snow day (8 I think), I still get excited by the thought that snow automatically brings the promise of undeserved escape, a last-minute pardon by a celestial governor because, well, he felt like it. Although now that I teach a couple days a week, I can still get out of going to school, if not work. The Montgomery County annoucement goes up at 5am tomorrow -- I don't think I'll be checking it that early.
Had a really good yesterday. Except for the skipping out on church part, I actually did all of the things I think you're supposed to do on Sunday. Like, the ideal Monday involves a really good breakfast, and the ideal Friday involves doing something crazy with friends, the ideal Sunday would be my yesterday . . . well, there wasn't a newspaper. Okay, with a newspaper and minus the UNBELIEVABLE INSANE TOOTH AND CLAW PANDEMONIUM THAT WAS THE LAUNDROMAT, the ideal Sunday would be my yesterday.
Today, not bad, not great. Work was totally fine -- snow seems to make things less urgent, if not less necessary. But then I got my first rejection letter tonight from a grad school, and I'm still sort of processing it. I knew this would happen -- I had certainly prepared to be rejected from some if not all of the schools I applied to. But still. Ouch.
Character building, right? Of course right.
Wednesday, February 23, 2005
NYC . . . is the worst song in "Annie"
Still recovering from a whirlwind trip to New York this weekend. It was all for the good . . . I was there to see the first read of my play Burned Over and it was great to meet the actors and hear everything read out loud. If a little (no, a lot) freaky. When stuff works well, it's hard to remember that I wrote it (I finished my final draft about 6 weeks ago, I think) and when stuff doesn't work so well, it's hard to know if it's something endemic to the script or just the jitters of the first read process. Anyhooo. . . the cast is amazing, but I can't help but feeling like I dropped my developmentally disabled 4-year-old off at a summer camp for prodigies and any day now, they're going to send her back home, with a well-meaning note pinned to her chest. I also wish I was able to be in the room for more of the rehearsal process. In some ways, it'll be good for me to come see it cold and have all kinds of moments of surprise at things I didn't know were there, but still. I think I could learn a lot of valuable stuff by listening to actor questions and director answers. And verse vica.
I was also blessed with the best spur-of-the-moment digs in all the boroughs, so thank you so muchly, o beautiful & inexpensive house in Brooklyn. If you must belong to someone who is not me, thank goodness you belong to someone who will let me sleep there.
Saw Boozy on Saturday night and was reminded of hours spent in improvised musicals about Chairman Mao. Too bad nostalgia's for suckers.
And, finally, experienced the famous Gates on Monday, which were there in all their no-of-course-it's-orange-and-not-saffron-for-Christ-sakes glory. This and this are way better takes on them than I can do, but suffice it to say, it's an amazing spectacle to see everyone out in the park, and each individual gate looks, well, pretty lame. Also my feet were soaking wet and freezing (as were Beloved Fiance's), so we had a less transcendent time than we would have in proper rain attire. We were also stuck in front of a very intense conversation about competitive dog shows.
In conclusion, Vamoose bus gets you there more or less on time and with hokey tearjerker movies. But you do get to buy your tickets from a guy with peyos, who shouts "Vamoose! Vamoose!" as you approach the bus. Oh, the big city.
I was also blessed with the best spur-of-the-moment digs in all the boroughs, so thank you so muchly, o beautiful & inexpensive house in Brooklyn. If you must belong to someone who is not me, thank goodness you belong to someone who will let me sleep there.
Saw Boozy on Saturday night and was reminded of hours spent in improvised musicals about Chairman Mao. Too bad nostalgia's for suckers.
And, finally, experienced the famous Gates on Monday, which were there in all their no-of-course-it's-orange-and-not-saffron-for-Christ-sakes glory. This and this are way better takes on them than I can do, but suffice it to say, it's an amazing spectacle to see everyone out in the park, and each individual gate looks, well, pretty lame. Also my feet were soaking wet and freezing (as were Beloved Fiance's), so we had a less transcendent time than we would have in proper rain attire. We were also stuck in front of a very intense conversation about competitive dog shows.
In conclusion, Vamoose bus gets you there more or less on time and with hokey tearjerker movies. But you do get to buy your tickets from a guy with peyos, who shouts "Vamoose! Vamoose!" as you approach the bus. Oh, the big city.
Saturday, February 19, 2005
Million Dollar Bullshit
[SPOILER ALERT -- if you live under a rock and don't know the end of this movie, for Pete's sake, don't learn it from me]
All right, I'm admitting from the beginning that I haven't seen the movie. And, usually, I have negative patience for dimwit nimrods who pontificate upon works of art they have not yet experienced. (For example, having strongly dismissive opinions of Jane Austen, based on only reading the Calvin Trillin criticism, as in Metropolitan. Or that guy in section. I hate that guy.) But, all the hooplah about Million Dollar Baby was making me many different kinds of angry, and I had to do something.
So I went into Borders and read the short story that the movie was based on. And now I will pontificate. Consider yourselves warned.
Pontificating point 1: O pundits, how easily ye be swayed by your punditry. Folks on the right (and handicapped activists) have been freaking out about the fact that the film ends with a paralyzed person being killed because she no longer wants to live. Rush Limbaugh calls it the "Million Dollar Euthanasia Movie" and decries its "liberal propaganda." Meanwhile, folks on the left are mystified as to why this could bother people and mock the outrage. Frank Rich puts it up there with the faux-outing of SpongeBob. Now, again, haven't seen the movie and maybe there is a big chorus of cheerleaders saying "Kill, kill, kill!" but, based on the book, I doubt it. To say it's "pro-euthansia," to the point of advocating that all handicapped people be killed seems like stretch. F.X. Toole, in the story, makes a point of mentioning that the other people in the facility where Maggie lives are "happy" and want to keep living. Just not her. On the other hand, would it destroy Frank Rich to say that, yes, killing is in fact wrong? Really wrong. Like, not okay it's so wrong. Cultural relativism, schmultural relativism -- killing people = wrong. If we're still arguing over this, we can call the 2008 election now.
Pontificating point 2: Have a practical system in place to back up your outrage. If you're an anti-euthanasia, pro-life Republican, what the fuck are you doing cutting the funding for social programs that will take care of the handicapped and children? Pro-life and anti-Head Start just makes my head spin. Likewise, pro-euthansia, pro-choice Dems, have some sympathy for the fact that not everyone who's worse off than you would rather be dead or not have been born at all. There's a pamphlet in the back of the church where I went for Ash Wednesday labeled "Planned Parenthood's campaign to kill black babies." Do I think it's true? Of course not. But I think focusing only on how oppressed the oppressed people are isn't working. And it's offensive.
Pontificating point 3: Has no one noticed they're all Irish Catholics? This is a religious movie! The writer, the girl boxer, her grizzled old trainer -- all Catholic. Clint Eastwood, with that name, somehow I doubt it. But the story has pretty explicit religious themes down to the point of having the trainer visit a priest to discuss his plan to kill Maggie. He goes to confession knowing he is about to commit a mortal sin. And then he commits it. Maybe I'm just a fruitcake, but this seems to be the simplest explanation of the fight that the pundits are having. Rush is saying "But killing people is wrong!" and Frank is saying "But he just made a choice and who are we to judge?" And the story says, simply, he sinned. And, as best as we can tell, he would do it again. Whether there's a heroism to sacricing your mortal soul to follow your friend's wishes is a debate I'm really not going to get into until I see the movie, but I think it's a hell of a lot more interesting than the debate that's going on.
All right, I'm admitting from the beginning that I haven't seen the movie. And, usually, I have negative patience for dimwit nimrods who pontificate upon works of art they have not yet experienced. (For example, having strongly dismissive opinions of Jane Austen, based on only reading the Calvin Trillin criticism, as in Metropolitan. Or that guy in section. I hate that guy.) But, all the hooplah about Million Dollar Baby was making me many different kinds of angry, and I had to do something.
So I went into Borders and read the short story that the movie was based on. And now I will pontificate. Consider yourselves warned.
Pontificating point 1: O pundits, how easily ye be swayed by your punditry. Folks on the right (and handicapped activists) have been freaking out about the fact that the film ends with a paralyzed person being killed because she no longer wants to live. Rush Limbaugh calls it the "Million Dollar Euthanasia Movie" and decries its "liberal propaganda." Meanwhile, folks on the left are mystified as to why this could bother people and mock the outrage. Frank Rich puts it up there with the faux-outing of SpongeBob. Now, again, haven't seen the movie and maybe there is a big chorus of cheerleaders saying "Kill, kill, kill!" but, based on the book, I doubt it. To say it's "pro-euthansia," to the point of advocating that all handicapped people be killed seems like stretch. F.X. Toole, in the story, makes a point of mentioning that the other people in the facility where Maggie lives are "happy" and want to keep living. Just not her. On the other hand, would it destroy Frank Rich to say that, yes, killing is in fact wrong? Really wrong. Like, not okay it's so wrong. Cultural relativism, schmultural relativism -- killing people = wrong. If we're still arguing over this, we can call the 2008 election now.
Pontificating point 2: Have a practical system in place to back up your outrage. If you're an anti-euthanasia, pro-life Republican, what the fuck are you doing cutting the funding for social programs that will take care of the handicapped and children? Pro-life and anti-Head Start just makes my head spin. Likewise, pro-euthansia, pro-choice Dems, have some sympathy for the fact that not everyone who's worse off than you would rather be dead or not have been born at all. There's a pamphlet in the back of the church where I went for Ash Wednesday labeled "Planned Parenthood's campaign to kill black babies." Do I think it's true? Of course not. But I think focusing only on how oppressed the oppressed people are isn't working. And it's offensive.
Pontificating point 3: Has no one noticed they're all Irish Catholics? This is a religious movie! The writer, the girl boxer, her grizzled old trainer -- all Catholic. Clint Eastwood, with that name, somehow I doubt it. But the story has pretty explicit religious themes down to the point of having the trainer visit a priest to discuss his plan to kill Maggie. He goes to confession knowing he is about to commit a mortal sin. And then he commits it. Maybe I'm just a fruitcake, but this seems to be the simplest explanation of the fight that the pundits are having. Rush is saying "But killing people is wrong!" and Frank is saying "But he just made a choice and who are we to judge?" And the story says, simply, he sinned. And, as best as we can tell, he would do it again. Whether there's a heroism to sacricing your mortal soul to follow your friend's wishes is a debate I'm really not going to get into until I see the movie, but I think it's a hell of a lot more interesting than the debate that's going on.
Thursday, February 17, 2005
But will it make The New Yorker?
From yesterday's New York Times corrections dep't:
A pop music review in some copies on Monday about the Grammy Awards broadcast misstated the title of a song performed by Alicia Keys. It is "If I Ain't Got You," not "If I Can't Have You."
A pop music review in some copies on Monday about the Grammy Awards broadcast misstated the title of a song performed by Alicia Keys. It is "If I Ain't Got You," not "If I Can't Have You."
Tuesday, February 15, 2005
You can be the president, I'd rather be the pope
Another Valentine's Day come and gone with the usual griping about the greeting card-industrial complex, and the usual quite nice exchange of said greeting cards. The best thing about this Valentine's Day, however, may happen to be a present I bought for myself. I finally purchased Prince's Greatest Hits, Vol. 2 and have been deliriously happy ever since (although our upstairs neighbors might be wondering what happened to the all Fat Day and Mountain Goats). I had been avoiding purchasing the album for a couple years now, despite knowing how fantastic it is (vastly superior to Greatest Hits Vols. 1 and 3, for those keeping score), but this Sunday in the Atlanta airport, I succumbed to the lure of the AltiTunes. (I also got my mom The College Dropout. Mom, if you're reading this, go put your CD on. I promise you'll like it).
Anyhow, I was weirdly cagey about buying Vol. 2 because way back in college, I had borrowed it from a then-boyfriend and held onto it in a weirdly talismanic way as we struggled through a pretty disastrous breakup. As I recall, I finally gave the CD back to him at the end of the year, as I was packing up my stuff for summer storage, but it still felt somehow like "his CD." Not that we had a whole montage of poignant relationship memories set to "Raspberry Beret" (we didn't) but that he had introduced me to the breadth of the Prince oeuvre and it felt like cheating somehow to hold onto that knowledge after our relationship was over. A little-discussed question in the etiquette of twentysomething break-ups is whether or not you get to keep your ex-boyfriend's taste in music. Unsure of what Carloyn Hax would say, I opted for no.
But there I was in the AltiTunes store and there Prince was in all his paisley glory. Maybe it was the fact that I'm getting married in 7 months. Maybe it was just generally growing older and having college fade into the background. Maybe it was the approach of Valentine's Day. Whatever the reason, it was suddenly okay to own the sweet, raunchy fabulousness of Prince.
So, Ex-Boyfriend, thank you for sharing Prince. Thank you for pointing out the song "Pope," knowing that it would appeal to me, as I do, indeed, want to be the pope. Thank you for letting me keep your CD until I was ready to say goodbye. And Happy Valentine's Day, wherever you are.
Anyhow, I was weirdly cagey about buying Vol. 2 because way back in college, I had borrowed it from a then-boyfriend and held onto it in a weirdly talismanic way as we struggled through a pretty disastrous breakup. As I recall, I finally gave the CD back to him at the end of the year, as I was packing up my stuff for summer storage, but it still felt somehow like "his CD." Not that we had a whole montage of poignant relationship memories set to "Raspberry Beret" (we didn't) but that he had introduced me to the breadth of the Prince oeuvre and it felt like cheating somehow to hold onto that knowledge after our relationship was over. A little-discussed question in the etiquette of twentysomething break-ups is whether or not you get to keep your ex-boyfriend's taste in music. Unsure of what Carloyn Hax would say, I opted for no.
But there I was in the AltiTunes store and there Prince was in all his paisley glory. Maybe it was the fact that I'm getting married in 7 months. Maybe it was just generally growing older and having college fade into the background. Maybe it was the approach of Valentine's Day. Whatever the reason, it was suddenly okay to own the sweet, raunchy fabulousness of Prince.
So, Ex-Boyfriend, thank you for sharing Prince. Thank you for pointing out the song "Pope," knowing that it would appeal to me, as I do, indeed, want to be the pope. Thank you for letting me keep your CD until I was ready to say goodbye. And Happy Valentine's Day, wherever you are.
Saturday, February 12, 2005
Yeah, about small towns in the South . . .
My grandmother's still in the hospital. My mom and I flew down Thursday night to visit her and have been checking in during visiting hours ever since. Yesterday morning, she was doing great. Today a little less so. Her wrists are restrained because otherwise she pulls out the tube going down to her stomach, but she's not too happy about the confinement. Have I mentioned yet that she's fiercy independent? Fierce like she got into a fistfight with the nurse when she tried to change my grandmother's bandages. Fierce like she doesn't think we should be staying at the hotel we're in and was busy trying to get us to move. Fierce and almost 90 years old and not keen on being tied down. Hopefully, the restraints can come off soon.
The most amazing thing about being down here isn't the hospital though, or the doctors and nurses, or even the bizarre task of filling a day in a waiting room. It's the people who have come to take care of her. To put this in perspective, my grandparents moved to this town about 35 years ago, and I have been getting phone calls ever since we showed up from people offering to help. Folks have been coming by her room, visiting, and some family friends drove in this morning for a 24-hour visit from 2 states away. None of these people are family; none of them have any particular "obligation" to her, but yet here they are. One man called yesterday and said, "Your grandparents were so kind to us 30 years ago, and I just want to be able to help out." What?
I know this town isn't paradise, and if Alabama elects Roy Moore as governor it may cease to qualify as a democracy, but I can't help but be touched by people's kindness. Would I stick my neck out to help an old woman who once did me a favor decades ago? I don't know. Where do my boundaries of helpfulness end?
I guess the answer is to keep on doing people favors now and hope at least some of them remember.
The most amazing thing about being down here isn't the hospital though, or the doctors and nurses, or even the bizarre task of filling a day in a waiting room. It's the people who have come to take care of her. To put this in perspective, my grandparents moved to this town about 35 years ago, and I have been getting phone calls ever since we showed up from people offering to help. Folks have been coming by her room, visiting, and some family friends drove in this morning for a 24-hour visit from 2 states away. None of these people are family; none of them have any particular "obligation" to her, but yet here they are. One man called yesterday and said, "Your grandparents were so kind to us 30 years ago, and I just want to be able to help out." What?
I know this town isn't paradise, and if Alabama elects Roy Moore as governor it may cease to qualify as a democracy, but I can't help but be touched by people's kindness. Would I stick my neck out to help an old woman who once did me a favor decades ago? I don't know. Where do my boundaries of helpfulness end?
I guess the answer is to keep on doing people favors now and hope at least some of them remember.
Wednesday, February 09, 2005
Smudgy
I promise the next post will be about fashion week or something, really. Marc Jacobs is the Wes Anderson of clothing and I'll explain why in 250 words or less, but right now, meh, it's Ash Wednesday, I've got a smudgy forehead, I've been fasting, and have had an emotional rollercoaster of a past 2 days.
The combination of some very good news (on a totally personal front) and some pretty bad news (grandmother in hospital, should come out fine, but still scary, esp. as she's in Alabama w/ no immediate family nearby) has left me quite woozy. Like I got drunk on emotion or something and now I'm left with the headache and regret.
You gotta love the Ash Wednesday reading, btw, if only because they tell you right up front to be guilty about what you're doing. Entire point of Gospel reading: "Don't go around parading the fact that you're doing good or that you're suffering. If you really want God to like you, deprive yourself in secret." Day's entire activity: "Get smudged by a priest so you can broadcast to everyone you bump into, 'Hey, I'm a practicing Catholic and I'm repenting today! Dig it!'" Absolutely unreconcilable. Especially on a half-empty stomach, that I'm actually not even supposed to be talking about.
Awesome.
The combination of some very good news (on a totally personal front) and some pretty bad news (grandmother in hospital, should come out fine, but still scary, esp. as she's in Alabama w/ no immediate family nearby) has left me quite woozy. Like I got drunk on emotion or something and now I'm left with the headache and regret.
You gotta love the Ash Wednesday reading, btw, if only because they tell you right up front to be guilty about what you're doing. Entire point of Gospel reading: "Don't go around parading the fact that you're doing good or that you're suffering. If you really want God to like you, deprive yourself in secret." Day's entire activity: "Get smudged by a priest so you can broadcast to everyone you bump into, 'Hey, I'm a practicing Catholic and I'm repenting today! Dig it!'" Absolutely unreconcilable. Especially on a half-empty stomach, that I'm actually not even supposed to be talking about.
Awesome.
Tuesday, February 08, 2005
Darwin loves me, this I know
So I was reading Arts & Letters (like you do) and came across this piece by Natalie Angier talking about raising her daughter to be an atheist. And it seems that in a very Takoma Park way they're having a lovely time in their atheist household, and I have no plans to walk the 15 minutes it would take me to get to their doorstep and try to convert them. Freedom of religion includes freedom for the lack of religion and I think atheists should raise their children whatever way they want. In fact, I'd probably side with a passionate atheism over lukewarm "I guess we should go to church now that we have kids; here have an Easter bunny" religiosity, but the piece got on my nerves and I may have finally figured out why.
Now, to her credit, poor old Natalie is on the defensive. Raising your kid to be an atheist in this day and age has got to be difficult at times, even in Takoma Park. But in order to bolster her point that you can raise a great, atheist kid, she quotes her own 8-yr-old daughter on subjects like death and God. Here's a sample:
First I asked her if she believed in god. She crinkled up her nose at me like I had mentioned something distasteful, like spinach and liver, or kissing a boy, and said, No! I asked her if she was sorry she’d been raised as an atheist, and she said no, she liked it. I asked why. First, she said, you don’t have to waste Sundays going to pray. Also I’d rather do things myself than have somebody else do them for me. If somebody gets sick, I wouldn’t just pray to god he or she gets better, I would try to buy some medicine for them, to help them get better.
Cool. Great. Totally logical. Have we mentioned that the girl is eight years old? Eight year olds believe in the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus (if they're raised to) and the totemic power of Hillary Duff (even if they're raised not to.) The fact that your 8-yr-old thinks God is like spinach proves exactly NOTHING about the benefits of raising an atheist child as compared to a religious one. Certainly not, as Angier argues, that "raising a child as an atheist, or a committed secularist, is the right thing to do." Not "a right thing to do," mind you, but "the right thing to do." Slow down a minute on your tolerance wagon, there, Natalie.
Now, to give her credit, those of us who believe would probably say God is sometimes a lot like spinach, and sometimes a lot like kissing a boy. And sometimes like none of the above.
I don't fault Natalie Angier's daughter for thinking this way about God, but I'm annoyed (or maybe by now just bemused) at the credence Angier assigns these words. I shouldn't be surprised anymore by things like this, but the whole piece reminds me of nothing so much as ministers who quote their children on Sunday. "Little Johnny once asked me if the money we take up in the collection plate goes to God so He can buy things," the preacher says and the congregation all goes "Awwwww." The mystery of belief becomes easier through a child's eyes, and so, apparently does the project of atheism. Angier says:
When I tell my daughter why I’m an atheist, I explain it is because I see no evidence for a god, a divinity, a big bearded mega-king in the sky. And you know something – she gets that. She got it way back when, and I think once you get it, it’s pretty hard to lose it.
I don't know how hard it is to lose atheism. All I know is how hard it is to keep faith. Oh yeah, and that eight-year-olds are, um, children, and will keep wrestling to find answers to the big questions no matter what their parents tell them. My prediction, for the record, is that the kid turns out Ba'hai.
Now, to her credit, poor old Natalie is on the defensive. Raising your kid to be an atheist in this day and age has got to be difficult at times, even in Takoma Park. But in order to bolster her point that you can raise a great, atheist kid, she quotes her own 8-yr-old daughter on subjects like death and God. Here's a sample:
First I asked her if she believed in god. She crinkled up her nose at me like I had mentioned something distasteful, like spinach and liver, or kissing a boy, and said, No! I asked her if she was sorry she’d been raised as an atheist, and she said no, she liked it. I asked why. First, she said, you don’t have to waste Sundays going to pray. Also I’d rather do things myself than have somebody else do them for me. If somebody gets sick, I wouldn’t just pray to god he or she gets better, I would try to buy some medicine for them, to help them get better.
Cool. Great. Totally logical. Have we mentioned that the girl is eight years old? Eight year olds believe in the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus (if they're raised to) and the totemic power of Hillary Duff (even if they're raised not to.) The fact that your 8-yr-old thinks God is like spinach proves exactly NOTHING about the benefits of raising an atheist child as compared to a religious one. Certainly not, as Angier argues, that "raising a child as an atheist, or a committed secularist, is the right thing to do." Not "a right thing to do," mind you, but "the right thing to do." Slow down a minute on your tolerance wagon, there, Natalie.
Now, to give her credit, those of us who believe would probably say God is sometimes a lot like spinach, and sometimes a lot like kissing a boy. And sometimes like none of the above.
I don't fault Natalie Angier's daughter for thinking this way about God, but I'm annoyed (or maybe by now just bemused) at the credence Angier assigns these words. I shouldn't be surprised anymore by things like this, but the whole piece reminds me of nothing so much as ministers who quote their children on Sunday. "Little Johnny once asked me if the money we take up in the collection plate goes to God so He can buy things," the preacher says and the congregation all goes "Awwwww." The mystery of belief becomes easier through a child's eyes, and so, apparently does the project of atheism. Angier says:
When I tell my daughter why I’m an atheist, I explain it is because I see no evidence for a god, a divinity, a big bearded mega-king in the sky. And you know something – she gets that. She got it way back when, and I think once you get it, it’s pretty hard to lose it.
I don't know how hard it is to lose atheism. All I know is how hard it is to keep faith. Oh yeah, and that eight-year-olds are, um, children, and will keep wrestling to find answers to the big questions no matter what their parents tell them. My prediction, for the record, is that the kid turns out Ba'hai.
Sunday, February 06, 2005
Pretty pretty Princess
You know when you have those hunches that no one else understands, and you're left talking about them using only dream logic and the language of synesthesia? "Doesn't this car commercial remind you of marshmallows?" or "Wouldn't it be amazing if people had dorsal fins? And the other kind of fins, too?"
Anyway, I feel this way all the time about people reminding me of other people and am usually greeted with blunt denials -- "No, he doesn't" -- or dubious humoring -- "I can kind of see it. Around the eyes." Yesterday, however, I emerged victorious after venturing that a very good friend whom I haven't seen in several years (isn't it bizarre that I'm old enough to write that?) reminded me of Princess Ann Claire from Love is in the Heir. I was greeted with squeals of approval, nods of recognition, and even a few rounds of "Exactly! I thought the same thing!" Very Good Friend herself has not yet seen the show, but, after having been compared repeatedly to a princess, I hope she starts watching.
By now the "I'm ashamed to admit it, but I have this reality show that I love" confessional has gotten pretty worn out, but I have to throw one last log on its smoldering embers. Love is in the Heir is a great show. Really. And I'm not just saying that because my friend looks like the princess. See, it's about this princess (who, although the show doesn't dwell on it to the point of not mentioning it at all) is fascinatingly half Iranian and half British. And she lives in LA, where she speaks with a hard-earned American accent, although she still throws in Britishisms unawares. And she has this personal assistant, who's totally preposterous (except for in that one episode where she had two personal assistants, and one of them was named Baz. That one was the best.) And she is allegedly kind of dating her former personal trainer, Ritchie, except he has probably the worst hair I've ever seen and seems markedly uninterested in her. The Ritchie stuff is pretty terrible. But the best part of all is that she wants to be a country singer.
Some people (such as my Beloved Fiance) have pointed out that this show might be what they call "fake." And I'll admit that some of the gambits probably weren't entirely the participants' ideas. But I do believe wholeheartedly that
Anyway, I feel this way all the time about people reminding me of other people and am usually greeted with blunt denials -- "No, he doesn't" -- or dubious humoring -- "I can kind of see it. Around the eyes." Yesterday, however, I emerged victorious after venturing that a very good friend whom I haven't seen in several years (isn't it bizarre that I'm old enough to write that?) reminded me of Princess Ann Claire from Love is in the Heir. I was greeted with squeals of approval, nods of recognition, and even a few rounds of "Exactly! I thought the same thing!" Very Good Friend herself has not yet seen the show, but, after having been compared repeatedly to a princess, I hope she starts watching.
By now the "I'm ashamed to admit it, but I have this reality show that I love" confessional has gotten pretty worn out, but I have to throw one last log on its smoldering embers. Love is in the Heir is a great show. Really. And I'm not just saying that because my friend looks like the princess. See, it's about this princess (who, although the show doesn't dwell on it to the point of not mentioning it at all) is fascinatingly half Iranian and half British. And she lives in LA, where she speaks with a hard-earned American accent, although she still throws in Britishisms unawares. And she has this personal assistant, who's totally preposterous (except for in that one episode where she had two personal assistants, and one of them was named Baz. That one was the best.) And she is allegedly kind of dating her former personal trainer, Ritchie, except he has probably the worst hair I've ever seen and seems markedly uninterested in her. The Ritchie stuff is pretty terrible. But the best part of all is that she wants to be a country singer.
Some people (such as my Beloved Fiance) have pointed out that this show might be what they call "fake." And I'll admit that some of the gambits probably weren't entirely the participants' ideas. But I do believe wholeheartedly that
- Princess Ann Claire is actually a princess and her family is actually royalty of some sort.
and that
- She does actually want to be a country singer and wrote all those lame country songs herself.
And that's enough for me to care about the show. She really, really wants to be a country pop star, enough to drag herself off to Nashville and make a huge, horrible fool of herself in front of all these music executives. Maybe this is just coming from a particularly insecure place in myself, or maybe I'm just sick of watching people's heroic rises to the top, but there was something beautiful in her pure, hopeful mediocrity that spoke to me.
I think, perhaps, at the end of the day, that's what America has to offer. We don't have dynasties or Crown jewels or Cinderella balls, but we are a country where any schmo with a couple spare million dollars and a dream can parade around on television chasing it. Would I let someone make a TV series called "American Playwright Idol" about my quest, banking that the exposure would be more valuable than the inherent exploitation? Probably not. I can't stand to watch videos of school plays from 5th grade, so I don't think I'd do so well on TV. But something makes me respect those who are willing to put themselves out there for a shot at greatness.
Godspeed, Princess Ann Claire. And you, too, Very Good Friend. May your dreams come true, with or without the Pahlavi dynasty to back them.
Friday, February 04, 2005
Whose cow?
I told a good friend about this blog (raising the age-old and raised-to-death question: if a blog falls in the Internet and nobody reads it . . . well, you know) and she wanted to know who Gotomo was and why I had his cow, which makes me feel like I should explain the title a bit more. So here goes:
Senior year of college, I directed a production of Three Sisters, which now strikes me as unfathomably bold or extraordinarily stupid. But, at the time, I was obsessed with the liminal state in which the three sisters found themselves and the degree to which they brought it upon themselves with all their educated angsting. Fast forward 3 years and I'm cozily ensconced in my own self-inflicted threshold and looking to stay there for, well, at least a few more months. I've applied to grad school, but am dour about my prospects of getting in, and overeducated, immobile angst fills at least 20 percent of my daily mental space. Hence, "I want to go to Moscow!"
We had t-shirts made for the Three Sisters cast and crew (marketing is one of the things about this show that I remain proud of -- especially the ads featuring the girls of Full House and The Brady Bunch) that said "Are we there yet?" on the front pocket, and that's sort of how I feel these days. I know I should appreciate each day as it happens, and there's actually quite a lot of great stuff going on in my life, but still, I'm itching to know what happens next. When I was younger, I would always make my mom explain the plots of movies before we watched them: I couldn't handle the stress of not knowing how the story would end. Once I knew the end, however, I could kick back with the popcorn and actually enjoy the show. (Full disclosure: I still try to make Colin do this if we're watching a movie he's seen before. He refuses, though. Something about "ruining the end" or some such nonsense.)
And that's pretty much what's going on with my brain these days. I bug Colin and my mom and my friends to tell me how it's going to end, convinced that once I know what's going to happen in June I'll be way better equipped to handle February, and they say "Shut up and watch the movie."
Senior year of college, I directed a production of Three Sisters, which now strikes me as unfathomably bold or extraordinarily stupid. But, at the time, I was obsessed with the liminal state in which the three sisters found themselves and the degree to which they brought it upon themselves with all their educated angsting. Fast forward 3 years and I'm cozily ensconced in my own self-inflicted threshold and looking to stay there for, well, at least a few more months. I've applied to grad school, but am dour about my prospects of getting in, and overeducated, immobile angst fills at least 20 percent of my daily mental space. Hence, "I want to go to Moscow!"
We had t-shirts made for the Three Sisters cast and crew (marketing is one of the things about this show that I remain proud of -- especially the ads featuring the girls of Full House and The Brady Bunch) that said "Are we there yet?" on the front pocket, and that's sort of how I feel these days. I know I should appreciate each day as it happens, and there's actually quite a lot of great stuff going on in my life, but still, I'm itching to know what happens next. When I was younger, I would always make my mom explain the plots of movies before we watched them: I couldn't handle the stress of not knowing how the story would end. Once I knew the end, however, I could kick back with the popcorn and actually enjoy the show. (Full disclosure: I still try to make Colin do this if we're watching a movie he's seen before. He refuses, though. Something about "ruining the end" or some such nonsense.)
And that's pretty much what's going on with my brain these days. I bug Colin and my mom and my friends to tell me how it's going to end, convinced that once I know what's going to happen in June I'll be way better equipped to handle February, and they say "Shut up and watch the movie."
Wednesday, February 02, 2005
The Enemy Attacks!
That's the title of one of my playwriting students' plays. The Enemy Attacks! How great is that? Just in case you're not sold yet, it's about a piece of broccoli, a piece of celery, their respective imaginary friends, and the evils of veggie dip. And it ends in a wedding performed by a tomato who's also a priest (or a priest who's also a tomato, depending on your perspective).
Typing up all of these (what I'm avoiding right this very minute, thanks) is making me want to do nothing so much as add in narrators, vegetables, animals, time travel, and dream sequences to whatever I write next. Not that it'll be as good as my students' stuff, but as their teacher, I should at least be giving them a run for their money, right?
Really. They're all geniuses. Narrators! Who knew?
Typing up all of these (what I'm avoiding right this very minute, thanks) is making me want to do nothing so much as add in narrators, vegetables, animals, time travel, and dream sequences to whatever I write next. Not that it'll be as good as my students' stuff, but as their teacher, I should at least be giving them a run for their money, right?
Really. They're all geniuses. Narrators! Who knew?
Tuesday, February 01, 2005
Pitchforks are for Devils
So, if everybody's a critic these days, we might as well populate the cottage industry that is critiquing the other critics. Pitchfork's list of the 100 Top Songs is just lame. And bad for relationship harmony, as it will necessarily cause long fights that ultimately resolve in "Oh, I guess I just didn't like that song as much as you did. Sorry."
Anyhow, in the interests of greater harmony and better snobbery, Beloved Fiance and I are now presenting the First Annual Inaugural "Holy Shit, I'm So Happy They Put That on the Radio in the Last Five Years" Awards. Now, you know where to put the pitchforks, people.
Key:
Dorothy
Colin
"Stan" -- Eminem
When I first heard this song, I literally had to get off my treadmill. The real kind of treadmill that you run on. Because I was so freaked out at the juxtapositions -- wispy British vocals, suicidal protagonist, and the unbearably post-modern worldview posited: "My rapping character is a creation of symbols. Whither reality?" Eminem was being fought by a lot of different people when this album came out. With this single, he not only defeated his critics, he shamed them. Derrida's heir, dude, Derrida's heir.
YOU SAID THE D WORD.
The amazing thing is not just that the Stan character is more fucked up than Slim Shady (saying alot after the previous track "oh god now he's talking about raping his own mother, snorting coke, abusing whores, and we gave him the Rolling Stone cover?"). Stan's is also really human, which makes this song still really scary. And remember when Eminem performed the song on stage at the Grammys with Elton John? Dude went a long way in a few months, and sadly I don't know when he's coming back. "Lose Yourself" is killer, but everything since has been meh, though he's still good at the confessional/realism thing (like the new Toy Soldiers song--bad production, amazingly vulnerable words).
"H.O.V.A." -- Jay Z.
Can't really say what about it. Maybe the introduction. "...You could be anywhere in the world..." I should be smarter if I'm going to write about it. The whole tune is in the pocket. And was a revelation to me--I didn't know acting totally gansta would get sold so well. But damn does this song sell it. Best moments with this tune: played over halftime at a international soccer match in Gillette Stadium. Ticos from Nueva York and literal soccermoms from Duxbury, heads bobbin' everywhere.
"Gossip Folks" -- Missy Elliot
With her rapping on this song, Missy proved that she could get away with anything.
"Cry Me a River" -- Justin T. et al
Alex Ross did it first and did it better, so I'm left with a world of ditto, but suffice it to say that when the pretty-boy frontman of an Orlando pop band suddenly shows up with a soaring string section, a vindictive chorus, and sludgy-yet-hummable production by Timbaland, well I consider it worldview-shattering. Add the backstory about Britney and that man-slut Wade the Choreographer, and get even more zeitgeist splinters.
I like this song, I'm sure, but I kind of get bogged down when I think about what to "say" about lil JT. This entry can represent my favorite things about JT in the past 2 years: the fact that he personally pulled off Janet Jackson's boob-cover and yet seems to not be remembered in that incident (but when will we hear "Rock Your Body" on the national scene again?), and his amazing impersonation of the beardless 1/3 of the Bee Gees.
"Chop Suey" -- System of a Down
How freaking weird is System of a Down? How did anyone put them in the same camp as Limp Bizkit?
One day they will fulfill the promise of the "Jesus Christ SuperSatan" midsection of this piece and perform a full-length rock opera about the Armenian Genocide. Until then, we can only sit back and do what our tapeworms tell us to do. Pull the tapeworm out of your ass! Hey!
"Travelin' Soldier" -- the Dixie Chicks
Most of the time, when I hear a song on the local country station that involves soldiers, I turn off the radio and bang my head soundlessly into the steering wheel. But this song actually dares to tell a story, and tell a sad one. Granted, it was written before we went back to war, and it takes place during Vietnam, but it can put a boot in Toby Keith's ass any day of the week and twice on Sundays. It's a sad, sweet love song about a girl and her soldier, but the most haunting image is also the most shocking. In the final verse, the heroine finds out the boy is dead with the line "and one name read and nobody really cared." After all, this is a boy who writes to this girl, not because they're dating but because, as he put it, "I got no one to send a letter to." So, there's the fiddle break and the delicate harmonies we come to expect from the Dixie Chicks, but buried in there is a message way more threatening than "I'm ashamed to be from Texas": when you're killed in a war, maybe no one will care.
Wow. I never have heard that song. It sounds really good and sad. PS--don't tell MediaUnbound, Inc. that I never have listened to that song.
"All Falls Down" -- Kanye West
Why oh Why do would most critics rather talk about Slow Jamz? Yes, that song was funny, but this song is about something. I think it's the flagship song on the album. No gimmicks, not even the Jesus gimmick. Dorothy's going to be better at this than I am. Buckle down, because I'm sure it's going to be... uh... thorough...
Communism's dead. Socialism's flagging. And those skinny weirdos who put up the LaRouche signs aren't accomplishing much of anything. But somehow, under everybody's noses all at once, a Chicago producer released the most lucid and bracing critique of contemporary consumerist society and in particular tied it to three centuries of racism and the legacy of slavery. THIS IS TOP FORTY RADIO, PEOPLE! Nobody, and I mean nobody, has made these points (linking the desire for flashy consumer goods to a lack of sense of self than comes from being historically 3/5 of a person) more trenchantly. Not scholars, not newspaper columnists, not Al Sharpton, and not Spike Lee. Oh yeah, and the song's three minutes long. And it's funny. And it rhymes. Switching from a fictional female character (who "couldn't afford a car, so she named her daughted Alexis," for those of you not quite as obsessed with this song as I am) to the collective "we" (who are "trying to buy back our forty acres") and then back, self-depricatingly to himself ("we're all self-conscious, I'm just the first to admit it"), Kanye West exposes and explores purchasing as a necessary form of ersatz self-esteem. And people were singing along to it in clubs for months solid. Larry Summers fired Cornel West for releasing a rap album. If he had any brains in that puffy head of his, he'd hire Kanye West for the same offense.
Other entries not yet discussed include "Why" (Jadakiss) and "Ms. Jackson" (OutKast).
Perhaps more will come later.
Perhaps.
Anyhow, in the interests of greater harmony and better snobbery, Beloved Fiance and I are now presenting the First Annual Inaugural "Holy Shit, I'm So Happy They Put That on the Radio in the Last Five Years" Awards. Now, you know where to put the pitchforks, people.
Key:
Dorothy
Colin
"Stan" -- Eminem
When I first heard this song, I literally had to get off my treadmill. The real kind of treadmill that you run on. Because I was so freaked out at the juxtapositions -- wispy British vocals, suicidal protagonist, and the unbearably post-modern worldview posited: "My rapping character is a creation of symbols. Whither reality?" Eminem was being fought by a lot of different people when this album came out. With this single, he not only defeated his critics, he shamed them. Derrida's heir, dude, Derrida's heir.
YOU SAID THE D WORD.
The amazing thing is not just that the Stan character is more fucked up than Slim Shady (saying alot after the previous track "oh god now he's talking about raping his own mother, snorting coke, abusing whores, and we gave him the Rolling Stone cover?"). Stan's is also really human, which makes this song still really scary. And remember when Eminem performed the song on stage at the Grammys with Elton John? Dude went a long way in a few months, and sadly I don't know when he's coming back. "Lose Yourself" is killer, but everything since has been meh, though he's still good at the confessional/realism thing (like the new Toy Soldiers song--bad production, amazingly vulnerable words).
"H.O.V.A." -- Jay Z.
Can't really say what about it. Maybe the introduction. "...You could be anywhere in the world..." I should be smarter if I'm going to write about it. The whole tune is in the pocket. And was a revelation to me--I didn't know acting totally gansta would get sold so well. But damn does this song sell it. Best moments with this tune: played over halftime at a international soccer match in Gillette Stadium. Ticos from Nueva York and literal soccermoms from Duxbury, heads bobbin' everywhere.
"Gossip Folks" -- Missy Elliot
With her rapping on this song, Missy proved that she could get away with anything.
"Cry Me a River" -- Justin T. et al
Alex Ross did it first and did it better, so I'm left with a world of ditto, but suffice it to say that when the pretty-boy frontman of an Orlando pop band suddenly shows up with a soaring string section, a vindictive chorus, and sludgy-yet-hummable production by Timbaland, well I consider it worldview-shattering. Add the backstory about Britney and that man-slut Wade the Choreographer, and get even more zeitgeist splinters.
I like this song, I'm sure, but I kind of get bogged down when I think about what to "say" about lil JT. This entry can represent my favorite things about JT in the past 2 years: the fact that he personally pulled off Janet Jackson's boob-cover and yet seems to not be remembered in that incident (but when will we hear "Rock Your Body" on the national scene again?), and his amazing impersonation of the beardless 1/3 of the Bee Gees.
"Chop Suey" -- System of a Down
How freaking weird is System of a Down? How did anyone put them in the same camp as Limp Bizkit?
One day they will fulfill the promise of the "Jesus Christ SuperSatan" midsection of this piece and perform a full-length rock opera about the Armenian Genocide. Until then, we can only sit back and do what our tapeworms tell us to do. Pull the tapeworm out of your ass! Hey!
"Travelin' Soldier" -- the Dixie Chicks
Most of the time, when I hear a song on the local country station that involves soldiers, I turn off the radio and bang my head soundlessly into the steering wheel. But this song actually dares to tell a story, and tell a sad one. Granted, it was written before we went back to war, and it takes place during Vietnam, but it can put a boot in Toby Keith's ass any day of the week and twice on Sundays. It's a sad, sweet love song about a girl and her soldier, but the most haunting image is also the most shocking. In the final verse, the heroine finds out the boy is dead with the line "and one name read and nobody really cared." After all, this is a boy who writes to this girl, not because they're dating but because, as he put it, "I got no one to send a letter to." So, there's the fiddle break and the delicate harmonies we come to expect from the Dixie Chicks, but buried in there is a message way more threatening than "I'm ashamed to be from Texas": when you're killed in a war, maybe no one will care.
Wow. I never have heard that song. It sounds really good and sad. PS--don't tell MediaUnbound, Inc. that I never have listened to that song.
"All Falls Down" -- Kanye West
Why oh Why do would most critics rather talk about Slow Jamz? Yes, that song was funny, but this song is about something. I think it's the flagship song on the album. No gimmicks, not even the Jesus gimmick. Dorothy's going to be better at this than I am. Buckle down, because I'm sure it's going to be... uh... thorough...
Communism's dead. Socialism's flagging. And those skinny weirdos who put up the LaRouche signs aren't accomplishing much of anything. But somehow, under everybody's noses all at once, a Chicago producer released the most lucid and bracing critique of contemporary consumerist society and in particular tied it to three centuries of racism and the legacy of slavery. THIS IS TOP FORTY RADIO, PEOPLE! Nobody, and I mean nobody, has made these points (linking the desire for flashy consumer goods to a lack of sense of self than comes from being historically 3/5 of a person) more trenchantly. Not scholars, not newspaper columnists, not Al Sharpton, and not Spike Lee. Oh yeah, and the song's three minutes long. And it's funny. And it rhymes. Switching from a fictional female character (who "couldn't afford a car, so she named her daughted Alexis," for those of you not quite as obsessed with this song as I am) to the collective "we" (who are "trying to buy back our forty acres") and then back, self-depricatingly to himself ("we're all self-conscious, I'm just the first to admit it"), Kanye West exposes and explores purchasing as a necessary form of ersatz self-esteem. And people were singing along to it in clubs for months solid. Larry Summers fired Cornel West for releasing a rap album. If he had any brains in that puffy head of his, he'd hire Kanye West for the same offense.
Other entries not yet discussed include "Why" (Jadakiss) and "Ms. Jackson" (OutKast).
Perhaps more will come later.
Perhaps.
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