The Shallow Brigade

new uses for old vices

2012-01-05T15:06:00.011-06:00

Real Simple ran an incredible article in its January 2012 issue called “New Uses for Old Vices.” It’s a New Year’s-themed takeoff on the magazine’s monthly “New Uses for Old Things” feature, which is like a DIY column for really industrious hoarders. The idea is to repurpose household items in an innovative way. While it’s meant to feel modern, the vibe is more like how frontier ladies might appropriate 21st-century objects—stuff like using a toothbrush to clean ears of corn and how to shine your shoes with vegetable oil. I, for one, find it weirdly depressing. I suppose one lady’s trash is another lady’s treasure, but who among us really wants to use an empty TP roll as a holder for hair bands?

Just looking at this makes me feel poor. (All images in this post via Real Simple.)
With that in mind, I was curious to see what these sad thrifty pilgrim people consider a vice. The list did not disappoint, with eight vices that include:

• Eating candy
• Smoking
• Gambling
• “Filling landfills”(?)
• Watching TV
• Playing poker
• Drinking beer
• Drinking soda

I like the idea that the Real Simple demographic breaks down such that fully one-fourth of this article is devoted to gambling. I'm imagining an editors' meeting where there’s a whiteboard covered with phrases like “eating candy” in loopy cursive. And then, like, one tough broad in the back puts her feet up on the conference table and is all, “What, we ain’t gonna address the elephant in the room? What about gamblin’?” And the lady at the whiteboard is like, “You’re right. This is Real Simple, and we're not afraid to tackle the tough stuff.”

Judging from the rest of the list, another quarter of readers—the smokers and beer drinkers—seem pretty normal. Presumably, the remaining half is Mormon? The diversity of this audience seemed absurd until I remembered that I myself subscribe to Real Simple even though I sort of hate it.

While the vices are good for a chuckle, the real joy of the piece is in the “new uses” part, which include:

• Using plastic bottle caps as a contact-lens holder
• Hiding $100 bills in an old remote control
• “Corral[ling] some clutter with that poker caddy”

Judging from the accompanying photograph, the latter works only if your clutter happens to be colored pencils.

This is just a picture of some normal clutter that someone organized in her poker caddy.
Then, above all, there is this tip, which is hands-down the best thing I’ve ever read in a women’s magazine:

Quit smoking? Fill that (clean!) old ashtray with soy sauce instead. The notches make a handy rest for chopsticks between bites of spicy tuna.

Good idea. Just repurpose your old toilet as a punch bowl and it's a PARTY!

I also loved this:

Cut down on drinking? You can still start 2012 off with a bang—or at least a rattle. Drop a dozen coins into a clean, empty beer can and seal the opening with tape. When the clock strikes 12, shake some noise.

…which ran next to this photograph of an open can of Pabst.

I choose to believe the Real Simple photo editor has an awesome sense of humor.
Still, I wonder if there’s something to the idea of finding a new use for an old vice. I have to applaud the underlying sentiment, anyway. Sure, it’s obnoxious to suggest that people with a gambling problem might find the same satisfaction in organizing their colored-pencil collection as they would in blowing the kids’ college fund on card games or whatever. But what if we really could find a way to transform our faults into something positive and productive?

One of the things I admire about my imaginary best friend, Jeff Lewis, the OCD designer of Bravo’s Flipping Out, is how he managed to build a lucrative career upon pure pathology. Morrissey changed my life with his vanity and his self-loathing. And Louis C.K. has built an empire on exploiting his own flaws. And that’s just off the top of my head.

I was thinking about a new use for my own crippling self-obsession when I remembered that I’m a writer. Hopefully this will be my year to capitalize on that shit. So I'm grateful, I guess, to the sad thrifty pilgrim people at Real Simple. It’s 2012, and feeling bleak has never looked so bright. Plus what with all the drinking I should have plenty of noisemakers come next NYE.

real talk: holiday gift guide

2011-12-11T14:01:00.025-06:00

Oh man, I love a good holiday gift guide. But all too often they’re as useless as they are ubiquitous. For one thing, they perpetuate outdated gender codes the likes of which one rarely sees outside baby stores. I’ve had it with these butch “For Him” guides filled with tool sets and grilling accessories. I don’t know about you, but my male friends can’t fix shit.

Then there’s the budget issue. This year, the NYT gift guide featured a rickshaw from Anthropologie that cost more than 2k. The Anthology magazine gift guide included a MacBook and a Leica camera. Are these really the kind of gifts that normal people give and get? Half the time the only thing I can afford on those lists is the obligatory cheap thrill. This year it seems to be artisanal pancake syrup.

Then there are delightful gift guides that are cagey about costs and sourcing, the guides that are unbearably gimmicky, the guides filled with things that are out of stock or out of season…I could go on, but why bother?

As someone who has spent a disproportionate amount of time thinking about what makes a good gift, I thought it might be nice to write a gift guide that wasn’t filled with whiskey cologne, novelty socks, and box-set reissues. Unfortunately, as you might have guessed, the market for gift guides that use the F-word is rather limited. And anyway, the sites I had my eye on ended up publishing a gift guide featuring an $875 record player and a $475 steak-of-the month club. Riiiight.

So, here you go: a gift guide with 48 really great gifts, all thoroughly unisex, and all (except for one) under $100. Or, you know, you could go with the rickshaw. Up to you.

For Creatives: Shopping for these super special snowflakes can be tricky. Here are a few ideas.

Tiny letters ($9 ea) The World’s Smallest Postal Service will transcribe your personal message onto tiny stationary and mail it with a magnifying glass! Brothers Grimm fairy tales (around $26) This new collection from TASCHEN Books has really pretty vintage illustrations. MAKE documentary ($10 for the download or $15 for the DVD) Help your flaky artist friends count their blessings by suggesting they’re not as far gone as the Outsider artists in this film. Tattoo-It-Yourself note cards ($18 for a pack of 5) Tattoos and stationary! Worlds be colliding. UPPERCASE magazine (about $80 for a one-year subscription) No one wants to pay for a pricey quarterly, but everyone should subscribe to this magazine. Fix something for once. Charley Harper canvas for needlepoint ($94) A thoughtful gift for artist types who aren't necessarily talented, since needlepoint doesn't require much skill.

For Intellectuals: Impress your brainy friends (or flatter the feeble-minded) with gifts that appeal to their grey matter.

Ballpoint pens ($20 ea) Are brilliant minds attracted to brilliant colors? Or is that just babies and old people? These are really cool, in any case. Warby Parker gift box ($95) Everyone knows that glasses make people look smarter and hotter. This gift card comes with five sample frames to try at home—fun for everyone, since at least one pair is bound to look silly. Verilux HappyLite Deluxe Sunshine Simulator lamp (about $150) Smart people tend to be pasty, reclusive, and unhappy. Studies show this gift might help with that third thing. Field Notes ($9.95 for a pack of three) are good for deep thoughts, grocery lists, etc. Customized rubber address stamps (starting at $18) Most intellectuals are elitists, which means they like to feel classy. And nothing says “classy” quite like pretending you still correspond via snail mail. F. Scott Fitzgerald books with cool covers (about $16.50 ea) look good so readers won’t care if they already own some other edition. A single volume looks fine on its own if you don’t want to splurge on the set.

For Gadget Lovers: Sure, everyone on your list would like an iPad or a fancy camera. But you know what? Fuck them. Here’s some cheaper stuff.

Fitbit ($99.95) is a souped-up pedometer thing that turns each step into a data point that it beams wirelessly to your computer. For people who hate exercise, it also tracks how well you sleep at night. Pivoting power strip ($30) solves that problem where the plugs never fit. Why didn’t you think of that? Soda Stream (about $80 at Bed Bath & Beyond with one of those stupid coupons) uses a CO2 cartridge, which dorks dig. iPhone movie peg (starting around $5) props up the phone as you cook or whatever. Mini iPad! Kindle e-readers ($79) are best-in-class and affordable. BlueLounge cable clips (starting at $10 for six smalls) are good-looking, practical, and cheap. Just like you.

For Homebodies: People don’t like to leave home in the winter. Gild your friends’ filthy nests with these pretty presents.

Corked teapots ($68) for Earl Grey or bottling a message for the outside world. Totem cups ($65) stack when you’re not using them so they look fearsome and take up less room. Scented drawer liners ($25 for six sheets) look glam and they smell like Jasmine and bitter orange. Dip cups ($32) are pretty, but not prissy, because they’ve have been dipped in yellow rubber. Fetish dishware! Bud vase ($28) There’s a charming little lady on the other side. Heirloom pastry cutters ($70) are perfect for the cook who has everything.

For Anyone: Some people are just hard to buy for. These gifts should work for those bastards.

Blunt Lite Umbrella ($42.25) is ergonomic, cool looking, and durable in windy weather. Alessi juicer ($96) This creepy-in-a-good-way spider juicer will appeal to both health nuts and boozers. Lighthouse oil lamps (starting at $85) Scandinavian design works well for people with different kinds of taste because the aesthetic is modern and clean without feeling cold or clinical. Sufjan Stevens Songs for Christmas box set ($15 for one, $25 for two, or $30 for three) If you find someone who doesn’t love this charming boxed set, banish that jerk from your life. Zoku single ice pop maker ($24.95) makes up to three pops before refreezing for the times you’re super hungry. Charitable donation at heifer.org (starting at $20 for a flock of chicks) Admittedly, any normal person is going to prefer a real gift to a charitable donation. But only the coldest heart would begrudge this nice lady a llama.

For Kids: If you know a child, no doubt you’re obligated to give them some sort of holiday present. These are all good ones.

Temporary tattoos ($8) include animals, monsters, dinos, and robots, so you've got pretty much all your bases covered. Tell Me a Story game ($35) includes handmade dice, a writing pad, and a laminated index sheet for aspiring writers and storytellers. Binth matching game ($24.95) Even as a child, I was a true-blue neurotic, so I found memory games really stressful. Normal children should be okay with it, I’m thinking. Matchbox Mice ($25 each) are cute, though they could backfire if the child prefers matches to stuffed mice. Crystal crayon set ($8) Consider asking the child to color you a picture. It’s like Outsider art without the T&A. Wildwood Chronicles, Volume 1 (about $11) Colin Meloy wrote a children’s book! That makes sense.

DIY Presents: Nothing says you care quite like a gift made by your own two hands. Sure, you may end up shelling out more for obscure supplies than you would have spent buying a present in the store like a normal person, but at least it’s all in good fun. Sort of.

Tiny Polaroid magnets are way cooler than any craft project has the right to be. Snow globes are nifty, though you know what they say: glitter is the herpes of craft supplies. These mini piñatas are just like the ones Mary and Joseph made for Jesus back in Jerusalem. Crocheted sea creature patterns, including this handsome gentleman prawn, are available for download for just $3.50 each. Pantone chip cookies Each year I like to usher in the holiday season with a psychotic baking project. I’ve got my eye on these cookies for 2011. Tiny pie lollipops were my psychotic baking project last year!

Stocking Stuffers

Tea tins ($2.45 ea) are cheerful as is, or you can dump out the contents and hide a surprise. Vintage matchboxes ($9 for a set of three) are filled with hot pink matches. Prize ribbons ($10 ea) Stage your own county fair and name the cat Best in Show! A gingerdead men cookie cutter ($6.99) will liven up any holiday party. Totem pole ornaments ($24 for a set of four) double as bookmarks. Reusable shopping bag ($8) are sold in every shade of awesome.

hot holiday superhits

2011-12-10T10:36:00.003-06:00

I think my original Hot Holiday Superhits mix dropped back in 2007. I updated and expanded it last year, so technically that makes this Hot Holiday Superhits 2010. But this year I have the technology to share it with you! Well, okay, I also had the technology last year, but I guess it didn't occur to me at the time.

what’s in my bag: tgiving family reunion survival edition

2011-11-21T19:58:00.004-06:00

• zombie novel
• werewolf novel
• vampire novel
• David Lynch’s Crazy Clown Time
• American Horror Story episodes 2-6
• Excedrin (in case Diet Coke access is restricted)
• echinacea
• leftover pain pills from when I had my teeth whitened
• sleep mask
• 2011 agenda (artifact to serve as reminder of real life)
• small notebook for field notes

touching spiders

2011-11-12T12:52:00.019-06:00

One of the many things about life I have learned from comic books is how often someone’s greatest strength and worst weakness are paradoxically one and the same. When I realized that mine is sensitivity, it was something of a disappointment. Basically, if my life were a comic, I’d be Captain Pussy.

On one hand, being sensitive is definitely a superpower. I think it’s my greatest strength as a writer. Self-consciousness, emotional honesty, depth of feeling: these are some of the things that make me good at what I do.

On the other hand, that heightened sensitivity can be a crippling disability (cf. Elijah Price, Powder, and Poe). It means I have a really thin skin—so thin that sometimes I worry it’s permeable. Ugly things don’t bounce off as easily as they should; they spit in my eye and clutch at my heart. It can be a real bummer.

One of the things that makes it difficult to talk about depression is that there are so many different kinds. There should really be hundreds of words for it, like the myth about Eskimos and snow. Depression is like love or the color red or tiramisu—concepts that are universal enough that we all know it when we see it, yet we’ve each encountered countless variations, some less pleasant than others.

Exhibit A: Cheesecake Factory tiramisu

Some depressions are chemical and some are situational and some seem valid and some seem dumb. Some are mild and some are bad and some are worse. I’ve had numbing self-destructive ones and slow-burn stress-induced ones and short acute hurty ones. A few years ago I had one so bad it was like a physical condition, where the only thing that made me feel better was to sit in the sun like an invalid. That one was the real deal, the kind where something so simple and necessary as getting out of bed or replying to emails requires the kind of Herculean effort of a stroke victim relearning how to walk and talk. You realize there is no part of daily life that’s so automatic or banal that you can take it for granted.

I think the one constant with depression—apart from feeling like shit, obviously—is that it’s intensely personal in a weird way that’s sort of obsessive and masturbatory and isolating. Allie Brosh over at Hyperbole and a Half recently posted an incredible meditation on that self-destructive cycle where you feel awful and then you feel awful about feeling awful. This process is particularly grueling when you decide that your own sadness seems invalid and dumb. Unfortunately, that is my specialty.

All images in this post belong to Allie Brosh at Hyperbole and a Half.

I think it stems from a disconnect between the head and the heart, a kind of soul dysmorphia wherein how you think doesn’t match up with how you feel. Just as an anorexic might look in the mirror and see a fat person, sometimes I feel like a fucking loser. It's a distortion. And while you might think the knowledge that I'm not actually a loser would make me feel better, instead it somehow becomes just another weapon to turn against myself. My brain becomes a big bully.

I mean, I realize this is sounding sort of melodramatic, which is ironic given how boring it is to be sad for no real reason. Like, it’s hardly a horror movie. It’s much more like watching golf.

Allie describes the turning point in her depression as a sort of anti-epiphany she had upon encountering a judgmental lady at the video store.

It reminded me a lot of my own breakthrough with shame loss, when all the things that used to make me feel ashamed lost their hold over me. It's empowering.

I find it incredibly encouraging that Allie’s breakthrough stemmed from her burning need to re-watch Jumanji. Most of the important realizations I’ve had in my life have come down to something similar.

Every depression is different, and I’m not yet sure what form this one will assume. So far, it’s been like one of those nightmare zits that you are somehow aware of well before it ever reaches the skin’s surface. I felt it coming. Now that it has finally shown itself, will it just go away or will it get infected? Only time will tell. The only comforting thing about having had ’em before is the certain knowledge that they always go away.

Oh, Kevin. If only we could cover it with a bandaid.

Meanwhile, there is only patience. It’s like settling in for a long arduous flight or a blizzard. I’ve pulled my most complicated cookbooks with an eye toward making some really elaborate meals as a distraction. When those dishes fail, as they inevitably will, I want to teach myself to make proper omelets. Then I’ll throw them away and have peanut butter crackers with cheap wine instead. Insomnia? Why, that’s a rare opportunity to catch up on my stories! And if it gets to the point where the only thing that makes me feel better is sitting under the sun, I guess I'll have to break down and get one of those gay sunlight happiness lamps. I'll pretend like I’m an invalid by the sea, just taking the waters while I flip through mindless lady magazines.

And one day soon, who knows? Maybe I’ll touch a motherfucking spider.

imaginary German words

2011-11-08T14:31:00.005-06:00

One time I caught myself in a flagrant act of plagiarism when I was watching a rerun of The West Wing.

Some months prior I had written a meditative passage about how there should be a word for when people paradoxically surprise you and meet your expectations at the same time. Do you know the feeling I’m talking about? It’s equal parts willful ignorance and stupid optimism, with an undercurrent of deep subconscious dread that you recognize only in retrospect.

Listening to President Bartlet hold forth with a somewhat pithier version of “my” idea (when he was explaining how he felt about Toby’s betrayal, in case you’re wondering), I felt a powerful meta form of willful-ignorance-stupid-optimism-hindsight-dread. And then it was like, oh shit, there should also be a word for when you realize that all your Deepest Thoughts are probably just regurgitated episodes of Dawson’s fucking Creek.

It made me worry that every smart thought I’ve ever written down was actually someone else’s.

This anecdote is a comment on two things, really. One: in my darker moments, one of which I confess is happening right here right now, I worry that life is just a series of shitty non-surprises and unoriginal thoughts. And two: I have no idea what to do about it, except sit here and type one word after another until I feel a little bit better.

Yeah. Anyone got a good joke?

circle of shame

2011-08-30T22:06:00.038-05:00

It’s not as though I thought I would be good at Brazilian dance aerobics.

I’m no fool. I knew it would be difficult and embarrassing, but I imagined it would be in a fun-loving kind of way that would make exercise seem less boring.

I thought it would make me laugh.

I went with a friend who swore she’d never tried it, thinking it would help me feel less intimidated. I figured we’d be in the same boat, stumbling through some tough moves, but emerging on the other side having enjoyed a good workout.

I did not know then there is no such thing as an ally in Brazilian dance aerobics.

A few minutes into the class,when we’d already hit levels of motor skill and humiliation that exceeded my expectations with this move where you had to wave your arms and shake your ass while performing a grotesque sort of limbo, I looked over at my pal, fully expecting to see my suffering written all over her face. Instead, she was dancing that dance like it was her job, by far the best one on the floor.

(After class, when I confronted her about being a lying liar, she nonchalantly said, “Oh, well, years ago, I used to study Haitian and African dance. I guess there are a lot of similarities!”)

As I watched my friend earnestly grind her way through my nightmare, it dawned on me that I had made a terrible mistake. I began to panic, and from there things went downhill quickly. Like a horse smells fear, the instructor sensed my weakness and tried to build me up with well-meaning encouragement that only made everything worse.

“Keeeem, you gotta move your heeeps!” she said, shaking her own hips suggestively. She did not seem to realize, despite the compelling evidence miserable and slumping before her, that I possess neither the physiological nor the emotional capacity to create that kind of movement.

“Keeem, you gotta stand up straight!”

“Keeem, you’re gonna learn the dance and find a husband!”

It wasn’t long before the supportive comments devolved into frustrated, but friendly, commands.

“Keeem, no, here, watch how I do it.”

“No, Keeem, the wave goes through your body and you tuck in the stomach.”

And finally just: “KEEEM! HEEEEPS!”

There were drills up and down the length of the room. There were intricate routines that required you to move each appendage to a different beat. There was a goddamn hippie in a hemp skirt. I pressed on through it all, fueled by hate and despair and the certain knowledge that, eventually, it had to end.

The class concluded with a mandatory dance circle.

No humiliation—including those I experienced during the first 87 minutes of Brazilian dance aerobics and the countless others I’ve endured during the 33 years of near-constant mortification that led up to it—could have prepared me for what I would feel as I “danced” within that circle.

I guess I was still in denial when the teacher stepped in the ring, but when the first student ducked in after her, I had to admit to myself that the worst was happening. I gripped the sweaty hands of the ladies standing next to me and wished myself dead with an urgency I haven’t felt since my photo shoot at the Sears Portrait Studio.

Student One flailed about with abandon, not showing any hint of irony or self-loathing.

Student Two, a girl of no more than 20, decided to take things to the next level with a dance of seduction. She rolled around on the floor in a way that would have made me deeply uncomfortable if I’d had the capacity to feel anything in that moment apart from my own dread.

Student Three, an older lady of size, followed suit, running her hands suggestively up and down the length of her body. All too soon she was beckoning me, the next dancer up, like she was Patrick Fucking Swayze.

As I stepped into the circle, I told myself to just go with it. I knew that acting self-conscious would only draw attention to my own ridiculousness. And anyway, who cares, right? Brazilian dance aerobics is practically Jazzercise; it’s not like anyone there was trying to be cool.

Unfortunately, “just going with it” proved to be physically impossible. Instead, I sort of stood in the center of the circle, bopping my head ever so slightly while everyone looked on in pity. It was among the worst moments of my life.

Days later, when I recounted this story to a friend, she asked why I didn’t just break the circle and leave. The truth is the idea didn’t even occur to me. It goes to show that you never know exactly how you’re going to react when you’re going through a trauma, like that time I yelled at my muggers and they ran away.

Anyway, now I’m doing zumba, which is a lot more fun. Zumba class, if you’ve never tried it, is comprised of zippy little dance routines that last only the length of a single song. Probably the best thing about it is that some of the songs are proprietary, and for those there’s always someone in the background yelling “ZUMBA!” in, like, a fake Jamaican accent.

The second-best thing is that you mostly perform the same routines week to week, which really appeals to my autistic tendencies.

That is not to say zumba does not have its drawbacks. Probably the worst part for me is the inevitable moment when I realize that everyone else in the world is better at zumba than me. This happens every class. I often spend my time before we begin sizing up the other ladies, which tends to make me feel overconfident. Typically, they are older or heavier or both. One is a blue-hair who wears those creepy shoes that look like feet. All of them can totally out-dance me.

The other bad part is the shame I feel in front of the zumba instructors, these beautiful paragons of fitness who never break a sweat. Even their simplest movements are full of flair and grace. Each step has a certain bounce. I have to imagine they are really good in bed. And as I throw myself around the room, sweating like a hog and moving just a little bit behind the beat, I can’t help but wonder what they think about me.

Other zumba issues are instructor-specific. For example, my Monday class is taught by a lady who can't commit to facing forward or backward. I have some sort of brain tic where I have trouble mirroring people, so the constant switching back-and-forth means that I’m always moving left when I should be moving right, etc. This exacerbates my feelings of inadequacy and occasionally leads to full-on collisions.

Thursday class is my favorite even though one of our regular routines has a freestyle segment. (By now, you might have inferred I am thoroughly unequipped for, and maybe even fundamentally incapable of, freestyle zumba.) The first time it happened, I stood stock still, watching in abject horror as all the other ladies cavorted around me like Beyonce.

My favorite time was when the instructor—this tiny lady with a huge ponytail who always wears a visor even though the class is indoors and at night—looked at me during the freestyle portion of the routine and yelled, “Come on, girl, we KNOW you go to the club!”

I wanted to be like, “Oh, I think we know that I don’t.” But I’m a dancer now, so instead I expressed my emotions through the movement.

Tim LaFollette, Often Awesome

2011-08-24T02:07:00.006-05:00

Today I logged on to Facebook and learned about the death of my friend Tim LaFollette.

I knew it was coming. I saw the signs on his Wall, where well-wishers had been waving goodbye as Tim spent the last few days shuffling off this mortal coil. No thought or feeling you’ve ever had about science-fiction or postmodernism—and I’ve had a few—can prepare you for what it’s like to scroll through hundreds of messages like that. It was scary and sweet and surreal and sad and comforting and chilling. Probably the Germans have a word for it.

I never knew Tim very well, but we grew up in the same Tennessee cow town and then happened to go to the same liberal arts college in Greensboro, North Carolina. We had some of the same friends and went to some of the same parties and liked some of the same bands. We talked a few times. That is all.

Yet, like a lot of people who knew him a little, I’ve found myself thinking a lot about Tim over the last few years as he’s battled something called Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), which most of us know as Lou Gehrig’s disease.

Tim was diagnosed with ALS in April 2009, at age 29. His foot had been dragging since a minor biking accident, but he was otherwise symptom-free at the time. Fast-forward to just over one year later, and he had lost his ability to move and breathe on his own.

Think about that for a minute. Imagine, a year from now, being a prisoner inside your own body, unable to walk, or eat pizza, or scratch your nose.

The Often Awesome Army was founded by close friends that leveraged Facebook, Paypal, and other web-based technology to help Tim and his wife sort through the expensive logistical nightmare that is terminal illness. They organized his daily care. They held fundraisers that ranged from quilting bees to punk rock shows, from silent art auctions to tattoo parlor benefits. They picked up his prescriptions and brought him DVDs and sat by his bedside while he slept so he didn’t wake up and feel alone.

Over the last few years, the Often Awesome Army has expanded from a tight-knit group of caregivers to reach into the Greensboro community and beyond. The last count I saw was 1,400+ members. These people care for Tim with a fierceness that makes me kind of jealous. The most I dare hope for if I become incapacitated is that someone out there loves me enough to smother me with a pillow.

The story of Tim and his army is documented in an award-winning web series that is also called Often Awesome. It was born out of Tim’s fervent desire to educate people about his disease. To date, there are 33 episodes. I strongly encourage you to check them out. This one is my favorite.

As I’ve watched, I’ve been blown away by Tim’s bravery in the face of something so difficult and frightening and unfair. In episode 1, he looks into the camera and tells you what it’s like when a doctor tells you that you’re going to die a really nasty death. In episode 14, in a confessional reminiscent of the Blair Witch Project, he tells you how scary it is to lose movement in your arms. In episode 19, he tells you what it’s like to get a tracheotomy, his voice reduced to a permanent whisper.

The profit-driven realities of the pharmaceutical industry mean that there isn’t nearly enough research on ALS, which affects a tiny percentage of the population. What that means in practical terms is that no new treatments have been developed since the disease killed Tim’s mom 30 years ago. That is not to say progress hasn’t been made—in fact, researchers at Northwestern recently identified the cause. But the best hope for a cure is for us to give ALS (or, as Tim called it, “America’s best-kept secret disease”) a voice.

I am writing today, on one level, as my own small effort to raise public awareness of a horrible disease that ravages its victims in obscurity. But the hard truth is that there are a lot of terrible things in the world to be aware of, and sometimes it’s difficult to keep track of them all.

So the other reason I’m telling you about Tim and Often Awesome is I think they represent something larger than Lou Gehrig’s disease. Watching the selfless testimonials of the Often Awesome Army as they describe the logistical challenges and emotional hardships and invaluable rewards of coming together to lift up Tim at the end of his life has given me hope that I will someday overcome my own Tyra Banks-level solipsism. It helps me believe in something bigger—sort of like religion, but with people instead of god.

It’s one thing to live your life, and it’s another thing to make it matter. For many (if not most) of us, the former is all we can manage. I am grateful to Tim for mattering so hard with such a great sense of humor. It has made me a better person.

In a sense, writing these words is a sad and impotent act. Even more sad and impotent was the context in which they originally appeared, a Facebook note I wrote for my friends. It was like shaking my fist at the universe while the rest of the universe played FarmVille. Tim is dead. Bill is now friends with Becca Walton and three other people, Sharon is making a joke about the earthquake, and Tim is dead, and pretty soon they will all be buried in my newsfeed and I will click that I like a picture of someone’s baby or vacation or cat. It would be depressing if it weren’t so fucking inane.

At the same time, I’m writing with lungs full of breath and a heart full of hope that all of us here are connected by something more than Facebook or the inevitability of death or our collective dislike of the cast of Jersey Shore, and for that I feel almost unbearably grateful.

About a year ago, when Tim lost his speech, he learned how to talk with his eyeballs. A special computer tracked his gaze so he could crack wise with a wicked cool robot voice.

Now he has a whole host of new voices. He has the Often Awesome Army, which is, in its own way, controlled by his gaze. He has a legacy of love plain to see in his friends and his family. And he has me, here, whispering his story in your ear. Please pass it on.

imaginary jobs I would be so good at

2011-08-17T00:33:00.002-05:00

1. Assessing the believability of fake Southern accents in television and movies
2. Picking out the best shades of red nail polish
3. Ironing things until I feel less nervous
4. Using my fancy education to analyze mass-market paperbacks
5. Betting on the horses with the best names
6. Tchotchke curator
7. Proofreading menus at ethnic restaurants
8. Cat namer
9. Karaoke consultant
10. Professional Balderdash

looking ahead

2011-08-12T14:46:00.004-05:00

It’s no secret that I have a stupid heart. Like many other smart women, my romantic history is rife with inappropriate choices and poor communication.

It’s funny how long it took me to figure that out. You spend a lifetime trying to balance the need to rise above what you read in women’s magazines with the intense self-scrutiny that is required to be a thoughtful citizen of the modern world, only to realize you’ve inadvertently spent the better part of your adult life loving a bunch of jerks.

That was the epiphany I had a few years ago when my friend Z and I were sizing up the contestants on the television program Survivor. (Apparently all my epiphanies occur during conversations about Survivor.) There was this one guy who was sort of funny, but also really mean-spirited and egotistical. His personality showed clear markers of sociopathy, yet I found him compelling.

“I don’t know why I like Tyson on Survivor,” I said, “but I do.”

“Well, that’s hardly a surprise,” Z said. “We all know you’re into assholes.”

Gah!

While he is a skillful logician, I hardly expected Z to turn our conversation about reality television into a platform for hardcore Truth Telling. But there it was: BOOM. I was like, well, jeez. I guess I’m going to stop thinking so much about all the complexity and hypocrisy surrounding my identity as a woman in the 21st century and just try to focus on not liking assholes anymore.

As it turned out, I didn’t like anyone very much for almost two years. Part of it was a conscious effort to spend some time figuring out why I had been making so many bad decisions. Part of it was the kind of sheer disinterest in other people that you feel after someone breaks your heart. And part of it was that one time, right around the midway point when I felt the faintest glimmer of interest in someone, I puked my guts out at the end of an otherwise enjoyable evening we spent getting to know each other. It was stomach flu, but I took it as a sign from the universe that I wasn’t ready for anything quite yet. Maybe ever.

After dedicating a truly embarrassing amount of time and analysis to figuring out WTF my problem is, lo, I found myself capable of liking someone who’s not a jerk at all. (Feminists everywhere are so proud, I’m sure.) But what I have found to be the legacy of romantic apocalypse--even after I moved on and even after I had taken the critical (but totally fucking excruciating) step of accepting personal responsibility for it--is an unhealthy amount of worrying about what is going to happen with future relationships. More specifically, what is going to happen if things go nuclear. Which is, needless to say, a sort of toxic mindset when you’re going about the strange and delicate business of starting to care about someone.

I’ve told you that I wonder if writers fetishsize the idea of The End. In any narrative, a writer is working towards it. The End is always the goal, and you have to hunt and slay all the story’s possibilities before you can reach it.

I’m so tired of thinking about endings.

Remember the Choose Your Own Adventure series, those books that made reading a game where you got to make decisions about what happened next at critical points in the plot? You might be presented with two choices on page 12:

Do you want to fight the sea monster or run away?

I was the kind of child who would flip ahead and read both outcomes before committing one way or the other. I knew that reading ahead went against the spirit of the books, but I couldn’t help it. I was too worried about not choosing the best adventure to let myself have any fun.

I often found that those stories let me down. They inevitably petered out into a single sad thin paragraph that never lived up to my expectations. Still, there was this magical moment just before I looked ahead that I recognize now as the thrill of possibility. I experienced it, just for a second, before I snuffed it out with my neurotic urge to analyze both outcomes and decide which one was better.

I think I would tell a robot that possibilities feel like a chest full of fireflies: all buzzy and lovely, but ephemeral.

Now I’m going to repeat myself a little, because there’s an idea I’ve been trying to articulate here for a long time.

My idea is about transience, the natural ways in which people move in and out of our orbits.

I think if you’re lucky, you’ll meet a handful of people in life who thoroughly delight you. It’s not just about whoever they are; it’s who you are with them. They’re these faceted creatures that cast new light on the tired old world, and on your tired old self.

As you get older, you learn more about the ways in which facets turn to fissures and you grow leery of that fragility, its implied threat. And when you have a stupid heart, it’s hard not to become your own nervous father, demanding that every suitor pledge his honorable intentions.

I have been fighting that urge. I guess I’m trying to relax!

Meanwhile, I’ve written you a love story.

Once upon a time, you had a chest full of fireflies, but they flew away, one by one, when you weren’t looking.

Now all that’s left is just one little loner, and you can tell it’s preparing to leave.

You cup it in your palms. Its light shines through the cracks of your fingers.

You won’t want to let it go. But you will, eventually.

You’ll watch as it drifts away, flickering like a streetlamp in a movie just before the light fails and something bad happens.

You realize that’s the best and worst part: the privilege of holding it in your hands before you bury it in your heart.

hello again

2011-07-12T22:59:00.002-05:00

First of all, let me say that, had I known I was going to abandon this blog for several months, I might have chosen the topic of my last post a little more carefully. As it stands, the fact that I’m a filthy boor living in a nest made of flies was impressed upon anyone who found themselves here over spring and early summer, I’m sure. So update #1 is that all my cooking sherry traps got the job done and my place has been fly-free for a really long time. Pinky swear!

Update #2 is that I just returned to my fly-free apartment after spending two months in Scotland (and a few other places). I had every intention of getting some serious writing done while I was away. I mean, the house where I spent most of my time had furniture with paw feet. Paw feet! Like, I’m pretty sure that all the writers’ lairs in Sim City are filled with paw-foot furniture and Scotch, so I don’t know what went wrong. I guess I was busy.

I think if I tried to craft a single post about my time away I’d have to abandon blogging for good. And here we run into something of a Catch-22 because I can’t abandon blogging for good until I write a post that’s not totally unflattering and self-deprecating, yet I can’t imagine writing a post that’s NOT totally unflattering and self-deprecating. Looks like I’ll just have to continue with the Sisyphean task of making light of my faults, one post at a time.

So the new plan is to share a few stories from my travels here over the next weeks. These stories will not involve tiny flies. Believe!

ratt fink

2011-04-23T02:50:00.008-05:00

Having spent a week at home in Tennessee, I returned home to Chicago to find that clouds of tiny nightmare flies had taken over my kitchen and bathroom.

I think (hope) this was a result of having not taken out the kitchen trash, even though the trash is in a sealed stainless steel receptacle.

Appalled, I googled “kill the tiny flies” and rigged a number of DIY death traps, which included two oversized bowls filled with water, vinegar, sugar, and dishwashing liquid.

Other sites I consulted recommended putting out glasses of wine covered in saran wrap and poked with tiny holes. But I didn’t have any wine, and frankly, if I had, I would have downed it there and then, straight from the bottle, fruit flies be damned.

So I improvised. Now my apartment is littered with half-filled glasses of cooking sherry, Miss Hannigan-style, plus several large glass bowls filled with home-brewed fly poison, all of which contain a rather alarming number of insect corpses. Each morning, I rise and dump out various stinking receptacles filled with dead bugs. That’s just a thing I do now, upon waking.

The first morning I also found a whole colony of fruit flies in the kitchen sink, which I sprayed with Raid until I felt so faint I had to go have a lie-down.

Which is all bad enough, really, but at least that was a private sort of shame. Unfortunately, the whole sad sorry affair went live in the public sphere when I went to a party Friday night. There, as we drank beer in the kitchen, my friend A killed not one, but TWO, fruit flies that were ORBITING MY FUCKING HEAD, Pigpen-style.

Hi guys! This is me now!

After A had slain the second fly, overcome by a fit of despair and intense self-loathing, I confessed my situation to everyone at the party. The hostess, a kindly woman, assured me they were in fact her fruit flies, but who can say, really.

The amazing part is that this post thus far is a just a prelude to one of the best stories I’ve ever heard, as told by the kindly hostess, a woman who spent most of her twenties living in, like, the Omar Little district of B-more. I think it was an elaborate attempt at trying to make me feel better.

So this one time, in her kitchen, she found a foot-long rat gnawing at her spice rack. (I love the idea that the rats of Baltimore are like giant gangster Ratatouilles, with the kinds of noses that can smell saffron buried beneath many millimeters of laboratory-grade glass.) Deeply shaken, my friend called her brother, confident he would murder this rat. Full of machismo, he made fun of her over the course of his 45-minute drive to her home—he on his cell phone, she barricaded in her bedroom with thick towels stuffed under her door.

Eventually, her brother arrived and let himself in to stalk the rat. His weapon of choice? A butcher knife.

At this point in the story, despite the fact that flies were circling my person as though I were a starving child, I just had to butt in. I mean, I would have to think for a long time about how I’d kill my own rat in that situation. Probably, I would bludgeon it, but in any case, I can tell you with complete confidence there would be no sharp objects involved. Judging from her brother’s choice of weapon, it seemed clear to me this fellow was not very serious about killing rats. He might as well have been killing a rat in a parody of a bad horror film.

“So what did your brother suppose he was going to do with that butcher knife?” I said. “Stab this giant rat to death?”

“Well, yes,” she replied. “But when he found the rat behind the spice rack, he dropped the knife and ran upstairs to my bedroom.”

Fortunately(?), her brother brought along some sort of varmint-eating dog who devoured the rat in the night.

Really, come on. Stab a rat with a butcher knife? I never.

a photo of the box that contains the family cat's cremains, which my mother has displayed on the World Book shelf, posted without comment

2011-04-20T06:45:00.006-05:00

under construction

2011-03-27T14:46:00.007-05:00

Most of you know I’m a freelance writer. I work in a lot of industries, but everything I write for money is very different from the stuff I post here—mostly things like press releases and reference book articles and trade magazine articles and technical manuals. For a year or so now I have been trying to break into the world of consumer magazines so I can publish something interesting that you can actually buy at a newsstand. The way one goes about this is by e-mailing story ideas (pitches) to magazine editors. These pitches take a lot of time to craft, so I don’t have time to put them together all that often. Also, the whole process is sort of depressing because, while I’ve gotten a few nice replies here and there, for the most part these e-mails just disappear without comment into the ether, making the whole endeavor feel like a big waste of time.

So I’ve decided to try something different. I’ve been reworking some of the essays from this blog and sending them to publications that accept personal narratives. The good thing about magazines that accept essays is that they prefer to read the whole thing instead of a pitch because an essay is the kind of thing that’s difficult to summarize in an e-mail. And I think that evaluation process might give me a better shot because my essays are probably more compelling than my professional clips or my credentials.

The first iteration of each of these essays appeared here on the Shallow Brigade. They have since been reworked and expanded and scrubbed of the f-word, and hopefully they’re better for it. I recently decided to take down the original versions—three so far—from the blog to make the new ones more saleable.

This process has been surprisingly painful because I have a lot of affection for this blog even though it's silly and it has a very limited audience. (Seriously, I love it a lot.) I think part of that pain is straight-up vanity because I am removing the posts that I believe to be my best, and eventually when someone new comes across this space all that will remain are the entries where I talk about TV shows or wild turkeys or whatever.

Oh well, that’s life. And eventually, if I find I can’t hawk these things in the real world, I’ll post them here again in all their revised glory. Meanwhile, I know that some of you are very talented writers who are much more prolific and creative than me, so if any of you ever want to trade thoughts on works-in-progress, well, feel free to give me a shout. (Or, if you’re not in the mood to trade but you’re interested in playing editor, that works, too.) I’ve always wanted to join a writers’ group, but the sad truth is I’m way too self-absorbed and shy and lazy. But recently I realized that my dream is to parlay all my worst faults into BIG BUCK$ so I can stop writing all this other shit that’s not about me.

Fingers crossed.

KO

my very first time

2011-03-18T14:14:00.006-05:00

A semester abroad is a magical time in the life of a college student. Some kids savor the opportunity to study another culture up close, which mostly involves learning about the strange things that foreigners put on their sandwiches. Other kids focus on meeting new people by getting drunk and boffing locals.

Some kids speak with embarrassing fake accents, which makes patriots like me marvel at the mysteriousness of a universe in which someone can be so self-conscious, yet so oblivious to their own ridiculousness, at the same time. With each stilted syllable, they seemed to say: even one-dimensional nightmare people contain multitudes. Believe.

The world becomes wider, and in taking it all in, we learn new things about ourselves.

My own semester abroad was just such a reflective time. It was, for example, the first time it occurred to me that I might be a sociopath.

That autumn in London was my first real taste of urbanity. I was twenty years old and deeply impressed with my own savvy. I took the train to my internship at a film studio’s outpost, where I sat around and watched movies. I shopped in grocery stores with ethnic foods. I smoked Silk Cuts and paid for household goods in an unfamiliar currency, a real international woman of mystery in my own mind.

I also learned about beggars. (In the South, I guess homeless people are too dignified to beg.) I think, before that, I imagined the homeless were like modern-day Dickens characters--dirty and mischievous and charming. And the real ones were dirty, all right, but also really fucking annoying. Homeless people are one thing in the abstract, when they have some kind of story; they’re quite another when you’re stepping over a huge steaming puddle of hobo barf when you’re running late for class.

The thing is, in London, many (if not most) beggars have pet dogs. Sweet sad tired-looking dogs that plead with their eyes from the depressing cardboard nests they share with these unpleasant humans. To me, their canine despair was much more stirring than the human variety. Deeply moved, I would watch these blighted creatures eat debris from the sidewalk and dream about ways I could help them have a better life.

I remember devising a plan to hand out bags of supplies to all these homeless dogs. My college boyfriend, who was more compassionate than I, raised the question of helping their owners. What about the other creature in that cardboard nest?

It’s bad enough that it didn’t even occur to me that handing out special treats to homeless dogs while expecting their human companions to continue to subsist on actual trashcan garbage was sort of fucked up. What’s worse is that even after this oversight had been called to my attention, I really didn’t give a flip. It was very similar to the way I feel about sports--on an intellectual level, I understood it was something that people care about, but in the place where my heart should be, I couldn’t make myself feel it too.

Of course, back then I was in college, so instead of admitting my faults I revised my (totally imaginary, it should be said) Feed the Homeless Dogs of London campaign to include, like, cheese sandwiches for the dogs’ human counterparts. Which didn’t really convince anyone of my humanity, except maybe me.

These days, opportunities to reflect on my own sociopathy arise with alarming frequency. But I have come to believe it’s more of a spectrum than an all-or-nothing affair. (For one thing, I’m pretty sure that True Sociopaths don’t worry about that kind of thing overly much.) Some years ago I realized I might be a little autistic. More recently I have started to accept that I might be a bit of a sociopath. Basically I am a super special nervous cranky snowflake.

It’s hard to say if this is just the autism or the sociopathy talking--or maybe it’s just the old misanthropy flaring up--but I also believe that my place on those spectrums is not only a bad thing.

Also, I stab hobos.

But seriously, part of what has me thinking about all of this has been watching all the footage from the disaster in Japan and finding myself especially moved by this video:

To some degree, I can trace that reaction to a different set of causes; namely, that footage of the tsunami looks so much like CGI that there is a certain unreality to it. Did anyone else feel that way as you watched the wave roll in? Like the fact that the water was on fire made me feel like I was watching a movie. Basically, The Day After Tomorrow has killed my capacity for empathy, and now all the most terrible things in the real world feel like another thing I’m watching on TV.

(That is an exaggeration, obviously. Truly, I am very sad and worried for the people of Japan, and I would very much like to give them all lots of cheese sandwiches.)

The truth is that there are a lot of terrible things going on in the world, and there’s nothing more emotionally exhausting than thinking about them too much. So now, whenever I feel sorry for a dog, I’m going to assume that’s how I actually feel about people somewhere beneath all the static.

upgrade

2011-03-06T13:41:00.022-06:00

It’s hard to know if things are getting better or getting worse. You know, in general. On one hand, as my idol Jacob Clifton wrote somewhere, it is always better to live in the future. My new iphone is better than my old iphone, etc.

On the other hand, we have what I have come to think of as the Charlie Sheen Theory of Devolution, wherein we’re all pretty much thisclose to mopping up prostitute blood just to become an Internet meme.

Given my constitution, very many of my posts are about the Charlie Sheen Theory of Devolution. But occasionally I think about other things. And I have, in fact, started to write posts about some of those things, but I often leave them unfinished for one reason or another.

So what we have here is a round-up of all the things I have discovered in the recent past that are totally awesome.

Ten Totally Awesome Things that Will Improve Your Life

1. Any book by Jennifer Egan

Well, at least some of her books. I’m still working on the new one and I haven’t yet read her short stories, but I’m guessing those are awesome, too. The ones I’ve read--Look at Me, The Invisible Circus, and The Keep--are fantastic in very different ways. Look at Me, my favorite, is just beautifully written, filled with the kind of sentences I would write on a piece of paper and post on my bedroom wall, were I still in high school. Jennifer Egan, you're the best.

2. Kindle

I never really seriously considered buying a Kindle until Amazon released the $139 wi-fi version. The price was right, but I still wasn’t sure if e-reading was for me. Also I had this vague notion that e-readers are going to kill my profession, so it seemed sort of traitorous--like a guy at the Ford factory falling in love with the robot who replaced him on the line. But all of those concerns went out the window when I learned that they sell Kindles at Target, where you can return things simply because you don’t like them. That made buying one more like a risk-free trial than a commitment.

And, oh my god, I could fill another post with all the reasons why I love this thing so much. Obviously, it doesn’t work for cookbooks, art books, or anything else with a design element--all of which I read with some frequency. But it works really well for almost everything else. Especially for trashy vampire novels you should be ashamed to read in public.

3. Soda Stream

I suspect there are two types of people in the world: those who think that owning their own seltzer water maker sounds exciting, and everyone else. If you fall into the latter category, it will probably sound sad when I tell you that the Soda Stream is one of the best things that has ever happened to me. But if you like drinking seltzer at all, this thing will change your life.

A friend recently gave me my Soda Stream as a thank-you when she was my houseguest for a week. I haven’t used it to make soda because, you know, barf. Also, if I could make homemade Diet Coke, I doubt I would ever leave my apartment again.

4. mint.com

I started using mint.com a few months ago and, boy, is it awesome. It lets you store all your financial information so you can track your bank accounts, credit card accounts, etc. all in one place. It is also one of the best designed websites I’ve ever used. Oh, and it’s free!

5. Internet Television
Recently I cut my cable and went full Roku. I was very nervous about doing so, mostly because I don’t want to be perceived as one of those people that doesn’t believe in television. (I really like television. A lot.) But with my DVR and HBO subscription, my cable package alone was more than $150/month, and I felt like the only thing I ever watched was, like, the second half of Top Chef--a show I don’t even like anymore.

My new configuration involves the mid-level Roku box, a 3-disc a week Netflix subscription (which includes unlimited Netflix Instant), a Hulu Plus subscription, and the occasional supplement from Amazon Video On Demand.

And lo, not only do I not miss the cable (at all, ever), I actually prefer being off the grid. Now, instead of flipping through the digital listings to find something tolerable, everything I watch is something I’m excited about. My latest television project is FX’s Damages, a show that has become THE ONLY THING THAT MATTERS as though it were a drug problem or my firstborn. Seriously, I can’t even believe I’m writing this now instead of watching Damages.

6. Internet Desserts

(image via Smitten Kitchen)

Lately I have been finding some great desserts on the Internet. The first is a recipe for yellow birthday cake from one of my favorite food blogs, Smitten Kitchen. This is one of the most delicious cake recipes I know, and it’s very, very easy to make. Here’s a link. Please thank me in cake.

Note: I don’t make it with her sour cream frosting because, frankly, WTF. Flavorwise, I’m intrigued by the idea, but I don’t want to make sour cream frosting for the same reason I don’t want to make buttercream frosting: because the thought of slathering my cake with a container of sour cream or four sticks of butter makes me want to yak.

So I use chocolate ganache frosting instead:

Chocolate Ganache Frosting
1 cup heavy cream
8 ounces semisweet chocolate, chopped

Boil the cream and pour it over the chocolate in a mixing bowl. Cover with foil and let stand for five minutes. Whisk until smooth. Chill for an hour or so, then beat with a whisk attachment until fluffy.

Also around xmas I found this recipe for Peanut Butter Biebers. Admittedly, they aren't very classy. They are, however, next-level delicious. Basically you make peanut butter cookies in mini muffin tins, then press mini Reese's Cups into their middles. Then you pop them like bonbons while you're watching your stories.

7. Tieks flats (Sorry, fellas, this one is for the ladies.)

Maybe you’re thinking it sounds stupid to pay $135 for plain old flats. But what if I told you they are magical flats from the FUTURE that collapse so they’ll fit into the tiniest of purses? And that they come in all the awesomest colors? And that they are often available at a hot 30% discount? That's, like, way less than $135, and trust me, they're worth it. Tieks flats are the only reason that high heeled shoes haven't crippled me (yet).

8. Turkey Cocktails
I am notoriously bad at mixing drinks. Like, if we were at a party together, and you asked me to make you a drink, I would pour four kinds of liquor in a cup and hand it to you sheepishly. You’d be like, “Are you trying to rape me?” and I’d be like, “Nah, I just make terrible drinks.”

Lately I have been making more of an effort, so I’ve developed a small stable of simple cocktails are actually very good. The best one I’ve found is called the Frisco, but I renamed it thusly because I make them with Wild Turkey (and first served them at Thanksgiving).

Turkey Cocktail
1.5 ounces rye or bourbon
½ ounce Benedictine liqueur
½ ounce lemon juice
Combine and shake over ice.

Be very careful, as more than two of these will get you hospital drunk.

9. Hyperbole and a Half

Probably you know about Hyperbole and a Half because it’s easily the best blog ever. But I myself didn’t know about it until about six months ago, so I decided to mention it just in case there’s anyone left in the world that is as unhip as me. The fact that this weird and wonderful blog has a zillion readers is maybe the best proof I can think of that things are getting better.

This explains why Allie Brosh is my soul twin.

10. Warby Parker glasses

I just ordered my first pair of Warby Parker glasses and the process was a pleasure from beginning to end. The concept: vintage-looking frames with prescription lenses for $95.

That’s right: $95. Well, actually it's $125 if, like me, you have to order the special blind-people lenses. Still, that is maybe a third of what my blind-people lenses ALONE have cost me in the past.

Warby Parker’s website has a nifty tool that lets you upload a picture of yourself so you can “try on” different frames. (I found that this was key, as it eliminates the unpleasant business of feeling like a boob at the eyeglasses store.) Then you choose your five favorites and they send sample frames to your house—for FREE—so you can check them out in real life.

Oh, and for every pair you buy, they donate a second pair to poor people. Winning. Duh.

choose your own adventure

2011-02-14T22:51:00.011-06:00

There’s something sort of feline about the weird ways in which we humans balk at change.

I don’t know if it’s fear of death, lack of imagination, or straight-up laziness. Maybe it's habit. Whatever it is, it’s the force that compels people to buy houses and maintain the same haircuts for years after they are no longer flattering. At some point, change starts to feel more like a threat than an opportunity. It seems sinister and difficult instead of fun and exciting, and so you become this impotent docent in your own life, guarding something that never really existed.

If you’re lucky, you’ll meet a handful of people in life where your meeting is followed by this glorious time when you’re almost blinded by their brilliance. They’re faceted creatures that cast their light on the tired old world. Something opens up.

Then maybe as you get older, you learn more about the ways in which facets turn to fissures and you grow leery of that opening—its fragility, its implied threat.

I think one of the hardest things about being a writer is the tendency—the necessity—of working towards The End. The End is always the goal, and it weighs on you. You learn to think about stories in terms of teleology. Possibilities are uncomfortable problems to be worked out.

Let’s just get this out of the way: what I’m about to say might sound stupid.

Some years back, I had an out-of-town fling during the death throes of a toxic thing I had going on back home. It was the type of experience that was more symbolic than significant in itself, if that makes sense. It helped me see that my life was wide open in a way that I had forgotten about after years of what I now recognize was unhappiness.

I have this vivid memory of being very hungover in a taxi on the way to the airport, trying not to barf. It was an impossibly bright morning, and I had the kind of headache where it seemed like the whole world was throbbing in time with my pulse.

Half asleep, I leaned my head against the window. And I was thinking about this fling with some fondness, considering how the rest of the story might unfold. Maybe he’d call and we’d talk like old friends. Maybe I’d given him the wrong number. And so on. Who knew?

We’d have an adventure. We’d let it lie.

And there was this moment as I was drifting off when each of these possibilities—just because it existed—seemed as bright and open as the stretch of road that streaked past my window.

And through that bear of a hangover, I experienced what I can only describe as this Walt Whitman-style feeling of oneness with the universe—like everything within and without was lit with these possibilities. They buzzed through my chest like fireflies. They were the sun that warmed my cheeks. Then they were the bright spots morning burned behind my closing lids.

And then I spent an hour or so throwing up at the airport.

My point is, I’m a writer. I overanalyze my own narrative. Sometimes I worry about The End before I’ve worked through the beginning. Sometimes possibilities feel like uncomfortable problems that need solving.

I’m trying to find the fucking fortitude to hold them in my hand before I bury them in my heart.

Happy Valentine’s Day, you guys.
KO

you have got to be fucking kidding me

2011-02-09T00:02:00.055-06:00

Sasha Frere-Jones, pop-music critic for The New Yorker, I have long wished you ill.

I have wished you ill as you have referred to yourself as a "musician," as though appearing on your own mixed tape in the early 1990s counts.

I have looked down on you because you are an inflammatory "intellectual" that throws around words like "miscegenation" in your article about the Arcade Fire. As though race had anything to do with that band.

I have looked down on you as you insulted Stephin Merritt, who is my king. And, with interest, I watched you take it all back when you were interviewed for the Strange Powers documentary. No defense, eh? I was only surprised that you admitted you were wrong.

I have looked down on you as you compared Pavement and Nirvana. As though those two bands made sense together in a single sentence.

Sasha Frere-Jones, I have long thought you were a cunt and a fraud. You have never once made sense to me, a casual fan of music. For a long while, I gave you the benefit of the doubt because I know far less about your "expertise" than many of the other departments in the magazine you write for. Such is the power of a respectable title.

Is that what you're counting on, S F/J? So much so that you feel like it's okay to write these blatantly misogynistic (and also RETARDED) things about PJ Harvey?

First, he writes off Harvey's album White Chalk, which actual humans know is really rather good:
"[It] was strictly an eyes-closed affair. At some point, she stopped singing from her viscera and brazenly swinging her guitar, and turned into a a wispy poet with little more than a piano, a falsetto whine, and a story from everywhere and nowhere--mostly the latter."
God, I hate it when she sings in her girl voice without swinging her guitar-dick.

Then there's this remarkably tone-deaf take on female sensuality in S F/J's analysis of Harvey's album Dry:

"You're not doing it for me, mister--and we haven't even met"
Seriously, New Yorker, are you kidding me? These are black-and-white words printed in a magazine that I myself pay money to receive in my mailbox.

S F/J goes on to explain that Harvey's

"stripped-down tour" of "her favorite topic: desire" was the "highlight of [his] concert-going experience" because of her "tiny red dress, enormous red lips, and a voice that sounded like an ambassador for the libido itself."
And just wait for Frere-Jones's insightful analysis of Harvey's performance with Bjork, whose career choices are "no more predictable than her hair."

BJORK, mind you. That last quote was about Bjork. Is that the least predictable thing? HER HAIR?

Well, at least Bjork is "thrilling." Harvey, on the other hand,

"has less luck reinventing herself, possibly because she got it so convincingly, punishingly right the first time: she does blunt force and sex like nobody else."
I am sick and tired of Sasha Frere-Jones. I am sick and tired of his (generously) FIVE-YEARS LATE reviews of relevant musicians and his MISINFORMED and MISOGYNISTIC reactions to "current" music.

O Sasha. My eyes are closed. My hair is unpredictable. I'm touching myself with my guitar from 1992. I am thrusting it in your direction as I whisper: Fuck you, Sasha Frere-Jones. I hate you and I HATE YOUR ASS FACE.

one man's trash = one crazy lady's treasure

2011-01-28T19:03:00.010-06:00

I've spent the better part of this afternoon cleaning out my storage closet. So far I've removed about a third of the closet's contents and strewn them all across my office. I'm leaving in an hour or two for drinks with friends, so I guess my work here is almost done. History suggests that things will remain this way until the next time I invite someone over, at which point I will collect the debris and stuff it back into the closet.

This is an exercise I put myself through every year or so. Invariably, the storage closet forces me confront all my worst flaws as well as my inability to do anything about them. First comes the delusional optimism, which is my idea that this time, really--no seriously--I'm going to throw away all the stuff I don't need and turn the closet into a well-organized space where I can keep all my cleaning supplies and hide my trashy vampire novels. Then comes the phase where I have to confront the fact that I am in fact in the first stages of hoarding. By the time I reach 40 I will probably just sleep in a nest made from old tax forms and bubble wrap.

My m.o. goes something like this: (1) I pull something out of the closet I very well know to be trash. Then I either (2a) come up with an unlikely scenario in which I would need the item (usually this involves an unspecified Halloween costume or craft project) or (2b) remember how much I paid for it and (3) decide that there is really no need to part with it now.

The other thing I like to do is get caught up in pointless, time-consuming activities such as reading through spiral notebooks that I inevitably decide to keep because they have three or four blank pages left in, like, the middle of the book. Today I unearthed a journal I kept in 2001, back when I was just out of college and living in London. Most of it made me want to murder-suicide with my younger self, because holy shit, I was sort of unbearable. But there were two things I found in there that I would like to share here, since I really am trying to throw things away this time around.

This first entry goes out to my friends J & V. I had just been laid off from my job and was desperately trying to find a way to stay in the UK.

2 September 2001

Today I spent the afternoon doing career workbook exercises. Yes, that is how desperate my life has become. To give myself some credit, I only bought the book to get ideas for how to conduct a better job hunt (ha!). But a paragraph toward the beginning of the book reeled me in--something about how most people spend more time choosing what car to buy than on their career development. "My god," I thought. "I am so shallow. I will dedicate myself to the exercise in this book and have some really introspective moments!!"

My initial enthusiasm eased off when I found the first exercise was to design your own personal crest. The thoughtful author even included a drawn out shield, divided into quarters in which you were meant to draw little pictures representing your achievements. At the bottom, there was a sash on which you could write your personal motto. Needless to say, I could not bring myself to do this exercise.

On to the next one, which the author prefaced with, "You may find this one a little morbid, but it really can help you determine your career path!" How morbid can a career workbook exercise be? Oh, how naive I was.

Turns out the exercise was to write your own obituary; well, obituaries, actually, as you had to write one as if you died yesterday and one as if you died ten years from now. For god's sake, as if it's not depressing enough to be unemployed without having to write your own obituary!! Instead of closing the book and tossing it in the bin (as any normal, self-respecting person may have done), I took a deep breath and decided to go ahead with it. I figured that I would never have a career-related epiphany without putting up with a few dopey exercises.

This was all fine and good until I found myself completing sentences like, "Kim will be survived by...her cat Tippy" and I got so depressed that I had to have a lie-down. I really do miss Tippy.

The next one was much shorter and a welcome surprise as it came smack in the middle of 20 pages of soul-barf regarding some guy I was seeing at the time.

3 October 2001

Today my housemate Darren opened a phonebook. He inhaled deeply and let out a small exclamation of joy. "It smells of Christmas presents," he said. It was one of the best things I've ever heard anyone say. I just wanted to write it down so I'd never forget.

On second thought, maybe it would be okay to tear out that last page to help line my sleep nest.

friends and fauxs

2011-01-24T16:33:00.007-06:00

This morning, as I stared at a photograph of my Facebook friend’s children in blackface, I found myself wondering just who in the sam hell these “friends” of mine are, anyway.

Click to enlarge.

I took this in with at least three layers of incredulity.

1. These children think that painting their faces black makes them spies? Sounds fishy, but I’m going to give them the benefit of the doubt so I can bear to carry on living.
2. My Facebook friend, an adult, thought it was okay—nay, hilarious—to post this picture of her children in blackface on Facebook? Seriously?
3. RE: all the LOLs and the person who thought it was “clever” in the comment thread—are they really that racist or just unfathomably stupid? And which is worse?

For all of Facebook’s little delights, it is a marvel that I spend so much time on a website where I have to restrain myself from typing YOU ARE A NIGHTMARE AND I WISH YOU ILL so many times a day. For example, in addition to the blackface pics, that same session on FB yielded the following:

• High school classmate’s note on “saving the unborn”
• High school classmate’s photo album dedicated to proving how much her small daughter looks like Shiloh Pitt (number of photos in album: 82)
• An inspirational quote from high school classmate’s yoga teacher
• Extensive status updates RE: high school classmate’s decision to dreadlock her hair

One of the most active people on my Facebook feed is my retarded high school classmate. I don’t wish him ill or anything, but I do find some of his posts sort of puzzling. Most of them revolve around high school basketball games and some TV show called America’s Dirtiest Jobs, but today I guess he has been feeling philisophical:

question of the day-- if beef comes from cows & rabbits eat carrots then what animal is most connected to potatoes??

I know he’s retarded and all, but what does that MEAN?

This is all to say that the different ways in which people connect on Facebook is interesting to me. I think some people create profiles just to monitor when they’re tagged in pictures. Others use it to collect and catalog acquaintances like they’re filling an imaginary case with popularity trophies. Some people restrict their networks to friends they actually know and like.

And then there’s me. I am a sort of weird hybrid user, I guess, in that I really like Facebook a lot—and actively use it—yet I’m pretty lackadaisical about seeking people out to friend. As a result, my FB kingdom consists mostly of high school classmates who I wasn’t really friends with ever, much less now.

Sometimes I like imagining what these people, in turn, think of the things I post. What might they make, for example, of the pictures I posted from my recent trip to the suburbs, which show me and my mean-spirited friends posing with the ridiculous house deejay at an arcade? Do they pray for me when I post about being hospital drunk?

Then, of course, there’s this. I think I'm gonna get meta and post it on FB as a little experiment.

the other woman

2011-01-16T00:44:00.006-06:00

I have googled pretty much everyone I’ve ever met, not out of any real interest in their lives per se, but because I suffer from clinical procrastination. (If you’re reading this and you know me, there’s a very good chance I am an expert on your Internet footprint.) Most people I know are pretty boring, but every once in a blue moon I hit PAYDIRT. Probably my best find was some years ago when I uncovered my estranged uncle’s karaoke website. Then there was the time I learned all about how my college boyfriend married a chubby girl with crazy eyes who was described in their wedding announcement as the granddaughter of a Confederate general.

Heaven help the people I know with profiles on Internet dating websites, because that’s the type of shit my sister and I read to each other over the phone in funny voices.

Now it’s one thing to admit all this to you here where I can describe my actions in context. But sometimes I worry that when I’m perusing, say, my middle school classmate’s myspace page, there’s some sort of Big Brother function tracking my every move. Given that Amazon sends me follow-up e-mails about the humidifiers I browsed a few days ago, I can only imagine that there’s some sort of red blinking light that goes off in so-and-so’s room in his mother’s basement. “System breech,” a computerized voice might say. “Your middle school classmate is making fun of your poetry.”

I don’t know, maybe my Googley-eyed habits sound crazy. But I’d like to think I approached the investigation of my ex’s new girlfriend with a something more like boredom/scientific interest than unhinged stalker syndrome.

I am old enough that I still marvel at the personal information people post on the Internet. If I wanted, I could reconstruct this lady’s schedule over the last few years down to how often she gets her nails done. Of course, by the same token, maybe she has been reading this blog. She’s like, “I can’t believe this bitch is so afraid of birds.”

Based on this person's first name only—tap-tap-tap, without even trying—I located her Facebook profile, which was blocked. Still, I had access to all of her photos, a veritable treasure trove of images taken during her cruise ship vacay and various dreadful looking ladies’ nights. I also found her Twitter feed, where I learned the following by reading this past week's tweets:

• She is 24 years old. (Note: 7 years younger than ex!)
• She works in insurance.
• She burns pumpkin-scented candles.
• She wears her tights tucked into her bra. (What does that even MEAN?)
• She uses the word “fergalicious” in conversation.

Paints a pretty complete picture, wouldn’t you say?

All of this led to some intense speculation on my part RE: what in the world this says about my ex and, more importantly, me. Because I'd like to think this girl is my polar opposite. Everything I know about my ex suggests to me that he would hate anyone who said “fergalicious.” In fact, I'd go so far as to say that one of the reasons we ever got together in the first place was our mutual distaste for people like that.

I mean, this is a woman (um...child?) who liked the movie Country Strong.

What does it mean? I see only two possibilities:
• I never really knew my ex and he spent our entire relationship secretly masturbating to pictures of Miley Cyrus.
• I am actually a lot like his new girlfriend but I just can’t see it.

The former is troubling because it gestures to the impossibility of ever understanding what is within another human’s head or heart. But, because I am shallow, the latter is the prospect that frightens me most. Because even as I clicked through about 5,000 pictures of this lady holding TGI Friday’s cocktails in every conceivable shade of pink, there was a dull but chilling sense of recognition. There is a picture of Mr. George Michael. There are the several references to Doctor Who.

I am starting to confront the possibility that I am not the special snowflake I imagine myself to be. When I start my Pandora Maroon 5 station, we’ll know for sure.

the terminal

2010-12-23T11:21:00.007-06:00

For some people, unhappiness has become so much a part of their being that they lose perspective on how miserable their lives might sound to other people in casual conversation.

I was thinking about this recently when someone I know, a mother of two, told me that her best Christmas in recent memory was when she had a terrible sinus infection because it gave her a little alone time. “It was great,” she said. “I mean, I was seriously ill, but I actually got to lay on the couch and read a book.”

“Wow,” I said. “That’s sort of amazing.”

And it really was. Not just because of the content of what she was saying, but in that a throwaway comment can be so revealing.

Of course, now that I’m here in the Detroit International Airport in the middle of the night, I’m starting to see what she meant. I have been here since approximately 8p, and it is now almost three in the morning. Why? Because my new nightmare flight leaves at 6a and the only accommodation Delta would offer me was at some dodgy Best Western. I took one look at that voucher, whipped out my iphone, and immediately discovered three important facts:

1. The cost of a room there is $69/night. Now, I know this is Detroit, where you can buy real estate at the dollar store, but for $69 I have to assume that hotel is the scene of some grisly sex crime(s).

2. It has tanning beds (PLURAL) on site ($6 for 15 min.).

3. Some rooms have hot tubs.

Nope!

(Later in the evening, mom sent me these reviews she found on Trip Advisor, which had me LingOL for 20-some minutes. Delightful.)

Anyway, I thought tonight would be terrible. And, admittedly, things got off to a rocky start given the 15 minutes I spent crying bitter tears in the ladies because of Leslie, the Delta employee who screamed at me. I mean, this lady literally screamed in my face. I have some sort of hormonal problem that makes me cry when I’m angry, and there is nothing more frustrating than seeming weepy and weak when what you want more than anything else in the world is to bare your teeth and intimate violence.

I wanted to say, it may not seem like it now, LESLIE, but I am one of those people who will actually write a letter of complaint and then follow-up on that letter with 10 levels of corporate lackeys to deal with the likes of you. And you know what, Leslie? While I may not be good at having you scream in my face, I am very fucking good at writing letters.

Oh Leslie I wish you ill.

But I’m getting off track here (I hate you LESLIE, you’re stupid LESLIE), because now I’m actually having a great time. The scene here is something like generic apocalypse meets my lifelong fantasy of being locked in the mall. There is something illicit and cool and endtimes-y about being in an emptied-out place that’s normally busy. But mostly I’m just enjoying having some downtime.

I mean, there have been a few hitches.

CONS:
• Detroit International Airport sells only Pepsi products. For me, this is something like putting diesel fuel in an unleaded tank.
• Everything shut down here at 9p, which is hard knocks when you see a Wendy’s sign and think you’re about to eat a delicious Frosty.
• It’s freezing. I just noticed the guy asleep on the chair across from me has donned gloves.

But by and large, it has been pretty awesome.

PROS:
• The employees are starting to come back in and one of them has gifted me with a blanket.
• The vending machine sells Pizzeria Pretzel Combos. I can’t believe these still exist!! I’m on my second pack.
• I have a Kindle loaded with special treats I wisely downloaded for myself last night. Right now I’m reading Jennifer Egan’s Look at Me. It’s really good!

Best of all is the enclave that has served as my quarters. In addition to the magical vending machine stocked with 80s-era snacks, it has side tables and cushy ottomans and comfortable leather armchairs. I’ve made myself at home down here, just reading and talking on the phone and popping Combos.

I’d really like to explore the rest of the airport, but once they turned off the escalator it became clear that wasn’t happening. (Too lazy.) But I have gone over every inch of the enclave, and I have seen many interesting things.

This shot just doesn't do these Prime Rib Beef Tender Cuts justice.

Weave watch is back!

Also, I don’t know if our lizard brains are drawn to each other’s heat signatures in desolate places, or if this guy sleeping across from me is just a big ole creep, but as you can see, I have company.

Enhance.

Notice the gloves.

At one point, we were three, but the other guy left a few hours ago. My favorite thing is when one of us stands up, packs up everything, and then walks the 15 feet or so to the bathroom like a blighted donkey. Seriously, if they took away the Combos and gave us shopping carts and a thick layer of ash it would basically be The Road down here.

And yet, this experience is certainly far better than every other airport shantytown I’ve been a part of. You see, this type of thing happens to me pretty much every time I go home. Traveling to northeast Tennessee is like trying to reach a remote island that’s accessible only by a ferry. (A ferry run by the town drunk. On Tuesdays only.) This is the second year in a row this journey has turned into a two-day travel odyssey.

And the fact that I’m enjoying it is sobering in that it makes me realize how little time I’ve had lately for the good things in my life. So, here I sit, tip-tap-typing away on my poor neglected blog—very tired, oh yes, but also very content.

what the brochure won’t tell you

2010-11-27T20:14:00.006-06:00

Having your teeth professionally whitened is sort of like a cross between getting probed by aliens and giving an epic blowjob to your nemesis.

It all starts innocently enough. A nice dentist lady lures you into the back of her office and performs a quick, painless exam. Things take a turn for the worse when she introduces you to Juan, the teenager with a cold sore and a dirty mismatching sweatsuit who will perform the procedure. Of course you’re not one of those people who thinks you can catch AIDS from the toilet seat or whatever, but Juan’s face herp is just not setting the right tone for this experience. You begin to feel the first pangs of regret.

In preparation for the treatment, Juan unpacks an arsenal of equipment with the impressive ability to seem both totally ridiculous and incredibly sinister at the same time. Cheek retractors make you pull an unnatural, yet weirdly appropriate, face. Various mouthparts are slicked with industrial-strength SPF plaster that “seals the barrier.” Gums are packed with cotton and teeth are painted with bleaching compound. An uncomfortable plastic tongue guard is carefully rammed down your throat. Last, but not least, you are given a pair of fetching orange sunglasses to don before the white plastic cobra laser thingie beams blue light at your bared teeth.

As he works, Juan explains that there are pores in your teeth that remain open for days after the whitening. Clearly, he considers this a fun fact, but you are so creeped out that you start to sweat profusely. It reminds you of those tumors that have teeth, and you find yourself wondering if tumor teeth also have pores. You try to stay cool but you are starting to gag a little on your tongue guard. You are hoping this is almost over.

It’s not until Juan turns off the lights and sets a timer that you realize that the prep he’s been performing for the last 45 minutes doesn’t even count toward the treatment time, which you know to be one full hour. You try not to panic. You take deep breaths through your nose and set about learning how to swallow in your new nightmare world. Every five minutes, when Juan asks how you’re doing, you issue a strangled gurgle and give him the thumbs-up sign, which makes you feel like a douchebag.

You try to focus on the soundtrack to distract yourself, which is a mistake. When that god awful song Jewel wrote when she lived in her car is followed by “Baby, Baby” by Amy Grant, you start to wonder how much, exactly, you must hate yourself to have paid hundreds of dollars to have someone do this to you. You reflect on why you couldn’t have been born into a society where yellow teeth are beautiful. You think about how, for the rest of your life, you will subsist on vodka and saltine crackers so you never find yourself in the terrible position of having stained teeth ever again.

When you finally stagger out to the street, you start to feel a strange pain deep in your teeth. It is ancient and ugly. You realize that heaping tablespoons of drool are pouring forth from your mouth, and that your plan to do a little xmas shopping is absolutely out of the question. As you hail a cab, you understand all at once why cats go off on their own to die.

The pain caused by professional whitening is very specific. It is a scary kind of pain, even though you know it is a normal side effect from a cosmetic procedure. It is sort of like if someone scratched a thousand chalkboards into your ears while running an icy finger up and down your spinal column—but in your teeth.

And y’all, if that last bit sounds sort of trippy—and I’m just going to drop the second person because I just can’t think that hard right now—it’s because I’m high as balls due to spending the better part of the afternoon and evening taking double the recommended dosage of Vicodin. About two hours after my appointment, when my teeth starting throbbing with some kind of alien pulse, I took my dentist up on her offer for something “to take the edge off.” When she mentioned it in the office, I was like, “Nah, that’s fine.” About two hours later I was on the phone, like, where are my pills PLEASEJESUSGIVEMETHEFUCKINGPILLS.

Thus, I have spent the last five hours lying on my bed in a narcotic haze like something out of Requiem for a Dream, coming to every half hour or so in a growing pool of drool and a progressive state of undress. And while I think I've had a couple of low-grade hallucinations, I’m pretty sure my teeth actually glow in the dark now.

the shame-loss phenomenon: a primer

2010-11-19T23:56:00.004-06:00

When I was a girl, I dreamed of the day I would become a grown-up. I thought it would happen suddenly, emphatically, and for no particular reason, like hiccups, and I looked forward to it more than Christmas morning.

This conviction stayed with me all through my twenties, though at some point I started to look forward to it less. I still didn’t feel like a grown-up, but I wasn’t too worried. Adulthood is sort of like falling in love, I reasoned. You spend all this time wondering how it will feel until it happens and then there it is, inexplicable yet plain as the nose on your face.

But as I approached age thirty without the marks and milestones of what I had been raised to think of as an adult life—getting married, buying a house, and having children—I began to wonder what exactly would fuel my transition into full-blown maturity. I watched my age bracket migrate to the suburbs from the bird’s eye view of my third-floor walk-up, puzzling over how I should go about feeling my age in the absence of those external cues.

It felt good…just different.

In fact, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that growing older was nothing like what I expected. Take, for instance, my diminishing capacity to feel shame, an unsettling development I have come to call the shame-loss phenomenon. My self-consciousness has steadily eroded so that things that might have embarrassed me in the past no longer matter.

The shame-loss phenomenon caught me off guard because it was in direct conflict with my childhood ideas about aging, which then had an air of glamorous—almost mystic—sophistication. My understanding was that growing up involved wearing lip gloss and eating oysters, along with a certain je ne sais quoi. One grew out of one’s awkwardness and into one’s rightful life.

Instead of outgrowing my awkwardness, I just stopped worrying about it. At first, this was troubling. I firmly believe that shame plays an important role in our society. Without it, we would all be like my uncle, who farts in public, wears plastic bags over his shoes when it rains, and insists upon holding hands and praying before meals in restaurants.

On the other hand, I recognized that the shame-loss phenomenon could be liberating. I am from the South, where shame is passed down through the generations like a well-preserved quilt. I was basically hard-wired to feel bad about myself. And, as any Southern lady worth her salt will tell you, feeling bad about yourself is very hard work.

I first noticed the symptoms of shame-loss one night while I was watching one of my favorite television programs, Survivor. Let me pause here to explain that I belong to a generation that measures a person’s worth according to the television programs she watches. We carefully catalog our favorite series on our Facebook profiles and fill our Netflix queues with defunct HBO dramas. Reputations have been built upon well-timed quotes cribbed from a beloved character on Arrested Development or anything broadcast on the BBC. In such circles, reality shows like Survivor are frowned upon, and so for many years Thursday night primetime was my shameful secret.

But somehow this, the night of the three-hour season finale, felt different. I had been looking forward to it for weeks and had even been so bold as to mention it to a friend who had invited me to the movies, as though it were a legitimate scheduling conflict. The special lasted longer than most movies and just about as long as an entire disc of The Wire. I had dinner delivered and erected a makeshift camp in front of my television.

It was an emotional night. I held my breath through critical immunity challenges. I laughed. I did not cry; however, two hours in, when the winner was announced, I sat on my couch and clapped—at length and with feeling—even though the contestant I was rooting for lost.

And that was the exact moment I knew I was a grown-up: instead of feeling ashamed, I thought my own lameness was a real hoot. I laughed and called my mother. “Oh, that’s nothing,” she said. “I don’t even watch Survivor, but I burst into tears when the winner was announced.”

We laughed about that for a while, but my mirth was immediately followed by a sobering realization: growing old might also mean that stupid shit like Survivor will move me to tears.

Soon after that, the telltale signs of shame-loss started creeping into my public life. One afternoon at Borders, I found myself buying a vampire novel. It had glitter on the cover. On the way home, I read the glitter novel on the train even though I was seated next to someone reading The Economist. And then, finally, I did something unprecedented: I danced, in public, without protest. In fact, the dancing was my idea. My friends, many of whom who had watched me suffer from the sidelines of wedding dance floors for close to a decade, looked at me as though I had lost my mind.

But I hadn’t lost my mind; I had lost my dignity. I was casting off my shame with every poorly executed dance move, and I was having the time of my life.

Of course, my transition has not been easy for friends and family members who have not yet bathed in the sweet light of the shame-loss phenomenon. Take, for instance, my thirtieth birthday celebration, when I demanded some friends join me for a long night of Elton John sing-alongs. We rented a room in a karaoke place that sold cocktails and potato chips from a card table in the lobby. The photographs that my shame-free friend A took say it all. The people who have been through The Change are the ones waving glow-in-the dark tambourines. The ones who are grimacing and clutching plastic cups filled with liquor still have their youth.

I guess it’s different for everyone, but that’s what adulthood means to me: realizing there’s only so much time to dance badly and sing George Michael songs. By gum, I intend to make the most of it.

nobody likes a sad bieber

2010-11-11T21:54:00.002-06:00

Perhaps there is no flavor of existential despair so bitter and so deeply felt as the kind you experience when you’re unhappy with your haircut.

I say this as someone who is intimate with pretty much every iteration of ED. I know all too well the subtle shades of emotional crisis that distinguish, say, the Regrettable Text Message variety from the Ill-Advised Tryst type. (If we had all day, I could outline the full spectrum of romantic trauma-related ED, which stretches all the way from plain old bad decisions to Projectile Vomiting in Public.)

What am I doing?

It's sort of like the difference between the specific shade of despair I feel after a reality television binge versus the one I get from reading the news.

Why are we here?

But it wasn’t until yesterday, when I received a Locks of Love-grade nightmare haircut that robbed me of some 12 inches of hair, that I truly understood the power of Bad Haircut ED.

Who am I? Really?

I thought I had a plan. It was a plan that included a folder of celebrity photographs that I printed up special, even though it made me feel like a stalker. My stylist pretended to look at the pictures, then cut-cut-cut until all that remained was this sort of sad hair helmet. As she worked, I tried to distract myself from my growing horror by focusing on not throwing up. I turned a rather alarming shade of purple from the effort, but I really thought it was working until she said she was finished. That was when I started to weep like an unstable lady on a makeover show.

Mortified, I excused myself to the bathroom, where I cried bitter tears for 15 minutes or so until I came to the horrible realization that, at some point, I was going to have to leave. I fluffed my helmet and drank about a gallon of sink water before coming out like nothing was wrong, la la la. The final blow came when my stylist asked if I wanted to keep my folder of stalker pics. Somehow this insult was the gravest of all. I mustered my dignity and asked her to recommend a styling product that would make me look less like a lesbian.

I had made plans to meet the members of one of my imaginary bands around the corner for pizza, so I was forced to debut the new look immediately.

“Oh, wow, you really went for it,” said the ukulele player.

The sink water churned.

“It will be fine,” said the fiddler. “It’s already almost fine.”

It was not almost fine.

At that point, the suicidal ideation was pretty intense. I wanted nothing so much as to sit in a dark corner and rock if off. Instead, I sulked like a brat and got really drunk. Which was all well and good at the time, but less than ideal this morning, when I rolled out of bed looking like undead Justin Bieber.

I mean, it’s hair. I know it’s going to grow back, so I’m keeping my chin held high. If there’s anything worse than looking like Bieber, it’s looking like a sad Bieber. Mama always told me that nobody likes a sad Bieber.

often awesome

2010-11-01T17:19:00.012-05:00

For the longest time, I figured I’d just lay down and die when the inevitable zombie apocalypse comes.

I am feeble, apathetic, and lazy—in other words, excellent zombie material.

Once, when I tried to explain this to a friend of mine, he revealed that he keeps a special survival pack in the trunk of his car, a portable bunker in case of emergency. It is stuffed with all the essentials. I would list those items here (just to be useful), except I have no idea what they are. My survival pack would have some magazines, a bottle of Wild Turkey, and some Diet Coke. Maybe cookies.

Having watched a number of films about the end of the world, I have always been perplexed by humankind’s desire to carry on through the end times. It puzzles me that people are willing to push their shopping carts across the husk of our planet, you know? Me, I’m not convinced that a life sustained by tinned peaches and powdered milk is a life worth living.

An acquaintance of mine, Tim LaFollette, is going through his own personal apocalypse. He has a disease called Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), and boy, is it awful. To help fight it, he has gathered an army some 1,400 soldiers strong. They call themselves the Often Awesome Army (after Tim), though as far as I can tell, he’s pretty much always awesome. I guess he’d be embarrassed if they called themselves the Always Awesome Army. Tim seems very modest for a figurehead.

The thing is, I don’t really know Tim, even though we grew up in the same Tennessee cow town and went to the same small liberal arts college in Greensboro, North Carolina. I’m friends with some of his friends, I’ve seen his band, and that’s about it. Like thousands of other people who know him a little, I have been watching Tim and his wife, Kaylan, battle his illness on the award-winning web series, Often Awesome. I strongly encourage you to check it out.

His story is pretty simple: in 2009, at age 29, Tim was diagnosed with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease). He has some sort of super strain that has progressed rapidly, so he lost his ability to move—to breathe on his own, even—in just over a year.

Think about that for a minute. Imagine, a year from now, losing your ability to walk, or eat pizza, or even scratch your nose.

Many of Tim’s friends, like him, are young artists. (You might have even heard his music; he co-wrote and sang the theme song for the Savage Love podcast.) Some of them have limited resources, so they’ve had to find ways to support him other than straight cash dollars. All of them love him with a fierceness that makes me kind of jealous. The Army was born out of their urgent desire to help him out with the logistical nightmare that is his terminal illness.

What the Often Awesome Army has accomplished is flat-out amazing. Members have used their DIY prowess to organize fundraisers that range from quilting bees to punk rock shows, from silent art auctions to tattoo parlor benefits. They’ve produced the aforementioned award-winning web series to raise awareness for his disease. They’ve leveraged Facebook, Paypal, and other web-based technology to pull off real feats of project management, including the establishment of an around-the-clock care team and the purchase of a wheelchair-accessible van.

They have grown from a tight-knit group of friends to well over 1,000 people, and now Tim’s whole community (including total strangers who have been moved by his story) has rallied around his bedside in a culture where, all too often, people who get sick shut themselves in, alone, behind closed doors.

Not that I blame them, the shut-ins. Being sick sucks. I pretty much take to my bed like a lady from a bygone era if I so much as think I have a cold. To me, being sick on camera seems very brave.

I remember the episode where Tim and Kaylan honeymooned in Scotland. It was the first time I really started to notice the effects of Tim’s illness. I guess up until then he was usually seated on camera, so I hadn’t realized the disease was progressing so rapidly.

There’s this harrowing bit where Tim is alone talking into the camera about losing movement in his arms. He’s really raw and honest about being afraid and it is just Blair Witch-grade scary shit. In the same episode, as Tim and Kaylan discuss a two-gallon bedpan-type thing of urine (damn, Tim!) and doing it in his wheelchair, I was just blown away by their honesty and relentless awesomeness in the face of something so difficult and frightening and unfair.

I am writing today, on one level, as my own small effort to raise public awareness of ALS, a horrible disease that ravages its victims in obscurity. But the hard truth is that there are a lot of terrible things in the world to be aware of, and sometimes it’s difficult to keep track of them all.

So the real reason I want to tell you about Often Awesome is because I think it’s about something much larger than Tim or even Lou Gehrig’s disease. You see, sometimes I worry there’s something deficient and uncharitable about my age group’s relationship with sincerity—that irony and cynicism eat at our hard little hearts like a cancer. Watching these lovely, selfless testimonials from the members of Often Awesome helps me escape, if only for a few minutes at a time, my own Tyra Banks-level solipsism. It helps me believe in our world as a place where we’re all connected by something that isn’t inherently awful like fear or our collective dislike of Paris Hilton. It makes me believe in something bigger—sort of like religion, but with people instead of god.

I’m going to be honest: at first, watching those videos felt like watching someone die. But over time, I came to realize that the whole point is that Tim is emphatically not dying; he is living. And it’s not just the pushing-a-shopping-cart-through-a-valley-of-ash kind of living. What he’s doing transcends survival.

It’s the kind of thing that makes you want to fight those zombies with everything you’ve got.

It’s one thing to live your life, and it’s another thing to make it matter. For many (if not most) of us, the former is all we can manage. I would like to thank Tim, a virtual stranger, for mattering so fucking hard with such a great sense of humor. It has made me a better person.

And while he has lost his ability to speak, he still has a voice. (A very cool voice that makes him sound like a robot, actually.) He also has the Often Awesome Army, which you can learn more about here and here. And he has me, here, whispering in your ear. Please pass it on.

on sufjan stevens

2010-10-22T11:09:00.035-05:00

I. The Age of Adz
Sufjan Stevens loves a good concept album. Some years back, he famously declared he would make one for each of our 50 states. Much like that movie about Joaquin Phoenix, journalists decided to treat the claim as though it was real even though it was totally preposterous. The fact that Sufjan didn’t see it through says a lot less about him than it does about how the whole world is bad at math.

His new album, The Age of Adz, is loosely based on the life and work of outsider artist Royal Robertson, a troubled schizophrenic in backwoods Louisiana who communed with aliens, hated women, and pounded out a whole lot of lovely, disturbing paintings, like the one on the cover of the album:

via Asthmatic Kitty

Robertson’s work is so beautiful and playful that it’s only slightly oogie to contemplate how most of his paintings were about him killing his ex-wife in his thoughts. You look at something like that long enough, and you think, well, maybe that ex-wife was kind of a bitch. (And THEN you look at some of his magic marker drawings of T&A and realize, wait, no, definitely crazy.)

For now, let’s not worry about what motivated Sufjan's conceptual shift from topography (i.e., shared landscapes and American mythology) to interiority (i.e., the feverish nightmare mind of one lonely wackadoo). Let’s just agree that it happened.

II. Concept Vs. Content
In 2001, I attended the most terrible concert in the history of the world, a Sonic Youth show at Royal Albert Hall.

It really stung because (a) Sonic Youth was one of my favorite bands in high school and (b) at that point, I had been living in London for a while and I was looking forward to seeing an American band with special excitement. (When you’ve been abroad long enough, you get patriotic about weird stuff. It’s very creepy.)

So you can only imagine my disappointment when it became clear that Sonic Youth had no plans to play any Sonic Youth songs. Instead, the concert was a special tribute to 20th-century avant-garde musicians, which is to say it was two excruciating hours of Kim Gordon screaming Yoko Ono “songs.” It was gutting, yet my affection for Sonic Youth was such that I was ignoring primal, physiological flight-or-flight impulses to get far away from those terrible sounds as quickly as possible.

Instead, I tried to talk myself into liking it. I remember thinking, well, this is what they came from. These are the ideas that made Sonic Youth who they are! Isn’t that neat? And then I thought, ugh, on the other hand, what could be worse than a tribute to avant-garde anything? Doesn’t the very concept go against the spirit of avant-garde?

It only became clear to me that this inner-debate was entirely beside the point when some guy in the audience was like PLAY TEENAGE RIOT and I was like, for the love of god, what he said.

In art, the concept is never enough. Art that’s heavy on concept has a reputation for being pretentious because critics like to talk about framing devices (or gimmicks, if you’re being uncharitable). It's easy to forget that art has to make it past the beefy bouncers in our lizard brains before our higher faculties can be called upon to talk pretty about it.

With Sufjan Stevens, as in all good art, the concept is always secondary. The first thing you should know about The Age of Adz is that it’s bloody good.

III. Jazz Odyssey
That is not to say that I’m not sympathetic to people who get nervous when their favorite musicians decide to focus on material that is wildly divergent from whatever it was you came to love them for.

And, yeah, his October 15 performance at the Chicago Theatre was in many ways Sufjan Stevens Mark II.

“Hello, my name is Sufjan Stevens. I hope you enjoy my new direction.” (via Denny Renshaw/Asthmatic Kitty)

I mean, there was vocoder!! There was dancing!!!

There were also many, many bleeps and bloops from special robot instruments, dueling drummers, a horn section, two back-up singers, some sort of light show that almost gave me a seizure, and an ever-changing backdrop of Royal Robertson images (mercifully light on T&A, but heavy on End Times/thought-murder themes.) I liked the album going in, but I was surprised by how dark and affecting it was in person.

Apparently, Sufjan has been interested in breaking out from the “easy listening” category for some time. And, as much as I liked Mr. Strummy-Strum (and BTW, way to go, NYT, for flashing a sense of humor for the very first time in the history of you), I am glad he wanted to rock out a little, because my lizard brain really, really likes it.

So, all of that said, WTF are we to make of indie rock’s favorite son making a concept album about outsider art? Time to talk pretty.

IV. Lyricism
Around the time of the world wars, there was a huge shift in the lyric tradition. Lyric poetry, in case you care, is the kind that it is told from a personal perspective. It’s not about the faerie queen or whatever. It’s a song of the self.

The twentieth century made lyric poetry sort of problematic insofar as, you know, mass genocide and the constant threat of apocalypse sort of takes its toll on a person. It makes them sing sad songs.

That kind of dark landscape also complicated the very notion of the lyric “I”—of you, of me. The self became fragmented: difficult, complex, and (as the decades wore on) increasingly inscrutable.

The question for poets became: How does one sing about oneself under these circumstances? That crisis of identity became a crisis of form.

Which is, I suspect, part of what's going on with Sufjan Stevens. With The Age of Adz, you hardly have to do a close reading to sense the author has been through total personal apocalypse. I know it when I hear it. As they say in US Weekly: the stars are just like us.

V. The Perpetual Self
The touchstone for the conversation we’re having about 20th-century poetry is The Waste Land. For a lot of reasons, that poem was the root of an unfortunate misconception that still confuses a lot of people: that a poem must be all head or all heart. My favorite living poet, Michael Palmer, favors something called the analytic lyric, a mode that suggests that good poetry is always necessarily both. I like how he bridges the divide.

In graduate school, I wrote about one of Palmer’s poems, “Sun,” which was sort of a critique of TWL. And while Michael Palmer does not excel in talking about the heart of his work, woo boy, he's GREAT at blathering on about his own big fat head. (It remains an endless source of disappointment and delight that Palmer is just as—if not more—priggish and douchey as Eliot was. Seriously, those guys are jerks.)

But one thing Palmer said that has stuck with me is that he had a difficult time erasing the lyric beauty from his poems, even when he tried his darndest to make them sound really, really priggish and douchey (paraphrase).

For a quick and dirty illustration of the conflict one faces when singing under duress—because really, I swear to god this essay is actually about Sufjan Stevens—let me refer you to the poetry of Paul Celan, a Jew who wrote very, very beautiful horror-barf poems about losing his family in the death camps.

That’s what it means to be a poet these days: finding beauty in dark places. Even (and perhaps especially) in the bright and haunting images plucked from the mind of a schizophrenic man, say.

Sufjan Stevens has been tamping down the twee, roughing himself up a bit. Because he’s a musician who has built his career on the creative writing dictum to “write what you know,” The Age of Adz is a very disturbing record in that it’s a repudiation of self. It’s kind of dark and crazed. Sufjan Stevens Mark II has, like, a Sharpie and he’s blacking out the eyes on a picture of himself in those butterfly wings, you know?

But in the end, of course, wherever you go, there you are. It’s hard to hide in the light.

And that’s the second thing you should know about The Age of Adz: while Sufjan has gone to great lengths to erase himself from these songs, he’s still right there, if you listen. I think the “new direction” that’s got everyone in such a tiz is really pretty superficial.

VI. The Stars Are Just Like Us
All these observations have been colored by my experience of being in the very center of the very front row at Sufjan's show at the Chicago Theatre, which totally freaked me out. Before the show, I was joking with friends that I would be like this:

Thing was, people were actually like that, plus WAY WORSE. As soon as he walked on to the stage, someone unleashed their inner Steve Stark, shrieking I LOVE YOU! in the way I imagine ladies used to yell at Elvis. And do not even get me started on the man who was sobbing in his seat down the row from me. Sheer proximity had me worried that I might have some sort of serious personal problem.

I’ve never seen anything like it, and that’s including the dozen or so times I went to Tori Amos shows in high school and college, where desperate people were clutching, like, bags of their own hair to give Tori as twisted tokens of their undying affection.

Now, I can only speculate as to how creepy superfans make Sufjan Stevens feel, but I can tell you with certainty they made me feel very uncomfortable there in that fraught front row.

For me, at least, the same sensitivities that fuel my creative life are also at the root of an affliction I have come to think of as Clinical Cringe. It’s like this crippling empathy that makes it very difficult to, say, watch reality television or sit next to nightmare fans at concerts. Or, for that matter, to watch Sufjan Stevens look like he might die of embarrassment when some lady calls out that she wants to have his babies.

(I mean, maybe I’m just projecting. But don’t you think my special edition of the Stars Are Just Like Us would be kind of amazing? They scare themselves silly by googling weird diseases! They’re afraid of birds! They don’t like driving!)

Somehow this fellow has clung on to his humanity despite the kind of popularity that makes Pitchfork go all TMZ by publishing a rumor that he was breeding with his backup singer.

I’m guessing that kind of exposure can make you feel like an outsider—distancing you from everyone, really, but worst of all from yourself.

Whew, is anyone still with me? Thanks for listening, you guys. And, seriously, go buy The Age of Adz. It is so, so great.

we all need to fucking relax

2010-10-08T01:46:00.003-05:00

That’s the title of my imaginary self-help book: We All Need to Fucking Relax.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the ways in which we size ourselves up, superimposing our own trajectories against imaginary (yet deeply felt) graphs of medians and modes, measuring our own progress like nightmare parents plotting baby’s every drool and gurgle against Known Milestones.

(Probably the real cause of autism is all those nervous parents staring at Junior wishing he had sorted out tummy time 6.25 days sooner. Honestly, I’m too retarded about children to even construct a viable metaphor, here. What I’m trying to tell you is that each of us is a unique special snowflake who will roll on our bellies when we damn well please. Or when the barefoot photographer at the Sears Portrait Studio tells us to do so.)

I wonder if the “Am I measuring up?” mentality has something to do with age. If the twenties are the me decade—and for me, at least, that stretch of my life was just sheer Tyra Banks-level solipsism—then maybe the thirties are about understanding other people…insofar as they relate to me. Maybe at some point deep in the forties I’ll be capable of a paradigm that is not me-centric.

It’s interesting, because, on one hand, I’m not too worried about Keeping Up with the Joneses. Nor are my friends, because obviously that kind of thing is gross. Yet, to illustrate the kind of thing I’m talking about, I can tell you I have taken serious self-inventory, like GRE-level psychic Cosmo quizzes, about whether or not I’m a sociopath because I’m one of maybe three ladies I know in my age group who isn’t married. Such is the weird, powerful experience of being an outsider in your own demographic.

I worry about lots of other things, too. What are my professional goals? Do I save enough money? Should I start driving again so people stop thinking I’m epileptic, an alcoholic, and/or agoraphobic? Do I read enough books? Is it weird to be so uninterested in home ownership? Does not liking children mean I’m missing some sort of lady chip? Does calling it a “lady chip” make me a She-Dexter?

Here’s the thing: this excruciating (and endless) exercise in compare-and-contrast is, ostensibly, about figuring out, you know, how you’re doing. Just in general. But I think it actually preempts and prevents any real reflection about your life as it’s lived. Are you worrying about the right things? Are you measuring up to your own standards? Because, listen, if the twenties taught me anything, it’s that what really matters most is what you, your own self, thinks.

There are no milestones. There are no norms. There is no median and there is no mode.

There is only me. And you.

clearly, I peaked at seven

2010-09-26T12:51:00.001-05:00

"Well HELLO. Welcome. I’m so glad you could come. Are you prepared for our journey? First we must duck behind this thick sheet of spider silk that hangs at my back. Some say it is the veil that separates the living from the land of the dead. Others insist it is a curtain that hangs in the living room of the oppressors, my parents. Hush, there’s no need to be afraid. As you can see, I am super.

Here, take my hand.

What’s that you ask? These socks? These thick cotton athletic socks, the short kind, like a lesbian volleyball player might wear? Look more closely. More closely still. There. Yes, you see? The pink rim is the glue that ties this outfit together. And also, let’s be honest, these marvelous purple jellies make my feet sweat.

Dare you—DARE YOU—mock my hair? Well then, mock away, but know this: the last person who mocked my hair paid with her life. That is her blood you see smeared on my cheeks."

sm + spiral stairs

2010-09-15T01:34:00.013-05:00

I am so incredibly grateful that I lived long enough to see Pavement rock as hard as they rightfully should.

The sad truth is that most reunion tours are little more than a depressing reminder of your own mortality. The band members stand up there like harbingers of your inevitable decline. They are bloated, less attractive versions of their former selves (your former self). Do they seem tired? They seem tired. Something you once loved has been reduced to a symbol of how, in the fullness of time, we all become kind of lame.

But Pavement, much to my delight and surprise, was exponentially better than the last time I saw them ten years ago. Granted, it’s impossible to say if their super-awesome show in the year 2010 is more indicative of my own oblivious embrace of mediocrity (a phenomenon my friend C calls “slouching towards Applebee’s”) or of Pavement’s late-blooming ability to rock out, but one of the benefits of aging is that such questions no longer matter.

It’s hard to explain exactly what Pavement means to me. Because, first of all, Stephen Malkmus’s whole purpose in life is to not mean a whole lot. You know how grammar nerds parse can parse gibberish sentences because they vaguely sound like English language? That is sort of like Pavement’s relationship to human feelings.

(Malkmus’s lyrics, at their best, sound like something Morrissey might pen after a stroke. I mean that in the best possible way. Like Morrissey, Malkmus is full of sass, cleverness, complexity, and calculated distance. The difference is that he shellacs the emotional core of his songs with nonsense instead of ego. He’s also a lot more laid back, but that’s just a product of geography.)

And yet, for all their resistance to meaning, Pavement has meant so very much to me. Westing (By Musket and Sextant), along with Tori Amos’s Little Earthquakes, are the two albums that have most shaped my life. On the surface, I guess they’re an unlikely pair, but the more I think about it, the more similar they seem. Both taught me something about having a sense of humor under duress. Both cut through the crippling solipsism of teenage angst and revealed the possibility of belonging to a dissatisfied community.

Above all, every song on those albums was like a little love letter to being weird. As a very unhappy young lady growing up in a Tennessee cow town, those songs helped me dream of a life worth living. They gave me perspective. They helped me grow up.

It’s a little weird to love a band like that and find their live shows totally lackluster. They toured a lot when I was in college, and it was a major letdown every time I went to see them. You know your favorite band must really suck live if the highlight of their show is a Velvet Underground cover. Still, I went to see them often, because Pavement on a bad day is still more awesome than most things.

Fast-forward to the present day (well, last night), to their outdoor concert in downtown Chicago. First of all, Millennium Park is just a great place to see a band. Usually, at an outdoor venue, I stand around thinking things like is that actually a dead animal, or is that what pot smells like now? or are those short-shorts ironic, or is that an honest-to-pete sex pervert? But listening to Pavement at Millennium Park last night, I could have closed my eyes and sworn I was 16, night-driving with all my windows down and the radio all the way up.

Secondly, not having any new material meant there wasn’t some new nightmare reunion album they had to focus on. The band played a nice cross-section of their catalog with gusto, including fully three-fourths of Watery, Domestic. What a treat!

Finally, there was the band itself, who remain, for the most part, untouched by the ravages of time. They all look like they’ve been bathing in the blood of virgins except for poor old Scott Kannberg, who, on top of the indignity of being a poor man’s Lee Ranaldo, has aged into a poor man’s Stephin Merritt.

Spittin’ image

I think it took the advent of the Jicks for me to appreciate how everyone in Pavement has an important job. The almost unbearable cool of Stephen Malkmus is perfectly balanced by the unbridled enthusiasm of Bob Nastanovich, who is either awesomeness incarnate or a high-functioning autistic, depending on how you look at it. Watching Bob jump up and down for a solid hour, playing everyman “instruments” like the tambourine, the cowbell, and the glockenspiel, I liked pretending he was a Pavement superfan who got to join the band for one night. (He tuckered himself out so thoroughly that he had to sit through the last few songs.) And the pothead vibes you get from Mark Ibold are exactly the right answer to the misery radiating off of poor old Kannberg, who, to give him his due, is probably the one who keeps the band from sounding too frivolous.

(Mark Ibold, incidentally, is my top celebrity pick for who I’d want to hang out with if the world were ending. I drove to Winston-Salem to interview him when I was a manager at my college radio station, and I’m a little surprised the universe didn’t implode then and there due to me, the most nervous person on earth, trying to have a discussion with someone who couldn’t have given less of a flying bahooey in the nicest possible way. I love you, Mark Ibold! I hope you never cut your hair.)

Funny how Pavement is still teaching me lessons after all these years. They helped me come of age, and now they’re showing me it might be okay to get old. Or, at the very least, that even as it becomes more familiar, this world of ours still holds some nice surprises.

9.11: We all remember. Now let’s reflect.

2010-09-11T17:46:00.006-05:00

I dream a lot of bad dreams. I think it’s because I drink so much Diet Coke. It’s not enough that the aspartame is giving me rat cancer; the caffeine is now attacking my subconscious.

I had a real doozie last night, a nightmare that was intensely weird and repetitive. Have you ever had one like that? I think most dreams have a real narrative, like a movie, but sometimes mine are like pressing rewind and watching the same scene over and over. Like someone’s showing me something.

This one was in two parts. Part one: I’m in a rapidly descending plane. It’s clear we’re about to crash. Then, just as the plane hit the ground, but before you could actually feel the impact, I was back in the air. Falling fast. Again. Again.

Part two: I’m running through a huge grassy field with a few other people. Planes are crashing around us. There are many different kinds—old-fashioned ones with propellers, huge passenger planes, and futuristic fighter jets. They arched up in the air before nose-diving to the ground, like someone had catapulted them over an invisible wall. I remember thinking, they’re using these planes like bombs.

Then I woke up, gave myself a little Keanu Reeves-style whoa, cracked a Diet Coke, and got on with my day.

It was only later, when I logged onto Facebook and saw all the 9.11-related status updates, that I realized today is September 11. Which, first of all, I freely acknowledge reflects poorly on me, because (a) yeah, I read Facebook before I read the news and (b) I’m a little out of touch with the whole space-time continuum. What can I tell you? My phone beeps at me whenever I’m supposed to do something.

But anyway, the gravitas of all the NEVER FORGET statements was somewhat undermined by their positions between, like, updates on Katie’s garage sale and what Amanda had for breakfast. Like, I’m sure the ghosts of the World Trade Center appreciate these heartfelt, if occasionally misspelled, status update memorials. No doubt people are sacrificing the animals of Farmville in tribute to the their memories. Above all, I’m sure they appreciate the strange icons people post, such as this dramatic popsicle-stick sculpture depicting that terrible day when the three(?!) towers fell:

So I just want to say: Relax, Facebook. I can assure you that no one who lived through that day is going to forget 9.11. It’s a muscle memory akin to a kick in the stomach. I think about 9.11 every time I’m in downtown Chicago, when I look up at the sky and worry that a plane is flying too low. I think about 9.11 every time I read about the misguided hatred of Muslims that is eating through our country like some sort of retarded cancer. Sometimes I think about it when I’m eating grilled cheese or doing laundry or digging through my bag for keys, because it’s just memorable like that.

It’s the kind of thing that haunts the dreams of someone as apathetic and snarky as me.

So maybe instead of trying so hard to remember, we should reflect. Reflect on the crimes that have been perpetuated in the names of the people who died that day. Reflect on what we can do to promote peace going forward. And, above all, reflect on the relationship between loving your country and loving the rest of this wide world.

:-(

2010-09-08T02:39:00.005-05:00

If there’s one thing I find more distasteful than religion, it’s bigotry. I mean, both rank right up there with Pepsi, YouTube, and the entire catalog of The Eagles in terms of manmade atrocities. Global blight, stock your bunker, etc.

I know I’m far from alone in feeling surprised and appalled RE: the ever-devolving ground zero mosque situation. Every morning I scan the headlines and kill a thousand hobos in my thoughts.

I feel foolish that it’s taken me aback. I’m from the South, so I thought I was used to people scraping the soles of their shoes and calling it belief. My uncle uses the word nigger in e-mail forwards that he sends to his entire address book. I shake my fist at the computer every time I see it, but it’s sort of like objecting to death or taxes: there it is, no matter how bad you wish it were different.

Yet there is a difference, however superficial, between having dinner with my stupid bigot uncle and being at a party with an educated person who says there’s no such thing as racism in modern-day America. One has two heads and the other has two assholes, but in the final analysis they’re both scary freaks.

For me, this issue was thrown into relief a week or two ago during a friend’s birthday dinner, when a self-identified liberal member of our party held forth on her views on the controversial mosque.

“I don’t know if you know this about me,” she said, “but I worked at the World Trade Center.”

[Long pause for emphasis]

“So, you know, my feelings have been all over the place.”

Already, we had reached an impasse. A regular bigot is one thing, but a bigot who leverages a national tragedy as though it’s some sort of doctor’s excuse for her repulsive, cancerous hate? I’m not a fucking lawyer but I’m pretty sure that’s some kind of Latin-named logic mistake.

The conversation went downhill from there. This lady, a Jew, was talking about her Orthodox friend’s “menstruation tent” like it was totally normal, la-la-la, in one breath before denouncing all of Islam as backwards in the next.

I wanted to be like, hmm, sounds like your misogynist OCD nightmare god has an awful lot in common with the misogynist OCD nightmare god of your nemesis. Fetishizes virgins, gets mad when you eat stuff on certain days, prefers the devout dress like doofs, candlelight dinners, and walks on the beach, right? Now, if only you spent more time hating yourselves instead of each other, the world might be a better place.

But, you know, acquaintances. Bite your tongue and try not to gag on your $35 fish.

That dreadful experience helped me hone in on what has been perhaps the most upsetting aspect of this whole sick sorry affair, which has been the tone set by the people who should be fighting the good fight. Mayor Bloomberg and President Obama often couch their support of the mosque in terms of Constitutional rights, which frames the argument in a manner not unlike Newt Gingrich’s analogy of putting a “Nazi sign” next to DC’s Holocaust museum.

Yes, yes, they have the right. But here in America, historically, as surely even someone as limited as Newt Gingrich knows, “having the right” has approximately not-a-whole-lot to do with winning the battle of public opinion.

It hardly takes the cold stare of a heathen (i.e., me) to figure that Muslims didn’t fell the Twin Towers. And if you think for a minute the devil done blew them down, well, the devil’s also busy blowing up abortion clinics and singeing crosses and touching Catholic children where they shouldn’t be touched.

The NYT has filled its pages with reports on fears of Manhattan’s Muslims. It makes me wonder what a historian 100 years from now might make of it.

Most recently, we have General Petraeus’s reckless statement that those wannabe book-burning go-tards in Florida should hold off because the evil Muslims might murder American soldiers in the name of I-don’t-know-WTF, like, Middle Eastern Ray Bradbury?

Because, you know, the Taliban holds strict standards in terms of what news footage it uses for brainwashing purposes.

And even if what Gen. Petraeus said is true, which it almost certainly isn’t, what an irresponsible thing to say. Because (a) it perpetuates the conflation of Muslims and terrorists and (b) it makes that “pastor” and his “congregation” look like patriots if they back down. Which: no and no. NO!

The first rule is you don’t argue with crazy people. You can’t. It just makes them believe they have a side.

Upward Over the Mountain

2010-07-02T00:20:00.011-05:00

Every night we tuck ourselves in as though it’s a given we’ll wake to an unchanged world.

Vulnerable in first light, we turn to ritual. We stagger and brew coffee. We eat toast. We brush teeth. We attend to headlines, familiarity a feeble talisman as we read about a world barreling toward an end that’s uncertain only in its particulars.

Over days and weeks we fall into certain rhythms, and we sentimentalize them as though they matter. As though they’re something. And if we suspend them now and again, we also return to them eagerly, like old friends. No matter what happens, a day will come when you’ll wake up and say, I think I’ll go get the dry cleaning. And they will say, good, she feels better.

Under this thick layer of static, we reel and lurch like we’re on a three-day drunk. Some of us notice and some of us don’t.

And every night, as though fueled by uneasy dreams, the inscrutable world shifts and bends a little at a time until one weird morning we wake to a stranger.

***

Two years ago, when someone broke my stupid heart, I became interested in the idea of transience.

First of all, w/r/t my stupid heart, please know I’m not trying to be melodramatic or charmingly self-deprecating (though I am often both of those things). Unfortunately, my heart is actually retarded. If e-Harmony were to assess my 29 dimensions of compatibility, it would probably just spit out the addresses of correctional facilities so I could go ahead and start courting prison boyfriends. I frequently fall for people who are peculiar, unstable, and/or totally inappropriate. Also, I really like writing letters.

Secondly, w/r/t the breakage, let me assure you this story isn’t about the whither and why. (Lord knows I have learned the hard way those particular topics aren’t all that interesting.) It is less about someone dropping out of my life suddenly and more about the weird realization that event led to, which was that everyone in my life is a transient. They’re all just passing through.

I mean, sure, some people hunker down and stay for a while, but you never know how long someone—anyone—will be around. I don’t mean that in the we-all-die-alone-sob-sob-barf sense. But we have all had friends, family, and paramours who were, at one time, important people in our lives before they were demoted to lesser roles due to distance or circumstance. People are fickle: they die or marry or move. They have kids or they get divorced. They have drug problems or demanding jobs or bad moods or clinical depression.

They have fights.

Losing someone can be a gradual process, like high school friends who grow apart over time. Other times, we lose people under duress—someone important is ripped from your life so abruptly it borders on violence.

Either way, more often than not, in the fullness of time, someone who once meant something to you will one day become a stranger who stares up at you from a pile of old photos like someone off the back of a milk carton. It’s sad and a little unsettling.

That strange sense of clinical remove is the reason I can now comfortably adopt a breezy tone through the next part of this particular case study, which was total personal apocalypse. It felt like a death. And, because we were in the unfortunate position of sharing both a neighborhood and a group of friends, he was like the Ghost of Bad Decisions Past haunting my entire miserable life.

Whoo boy, I was bummed. I was also furious with him for being a dick, disgusted with myself for acting like a solipsistic teenager, unhappy with my friends for staying friends with him, and a more than a little mad at the whole darn indifferent universe. And, you know, above all, I was literally sick with grief. I had a case of insomnia that lasted for about a year. It felt like choking.

Let’s just say it took a long time for this fellow to make his way to the back of the milk carton.

The point is he got there eventually. Everything ends. That fact made me sad two years ago, but it’s also what helped me feel better. And not to get all Philosophy 101 (dude, what if our BRAINS are in VATS?!), but isn’t it weird that the same principle that gives our lives meaning is also the one that takes it away?

I have thought a lot about this pervasive impermanence and the strange structures we build on its shifty base.

I have thought about the stories we tell ourselves and the ways in which we assign the people in our lives certain roles. It’s human nature; it helps us understand and manage our own narratives. It helps us feel in control.

People can change roles within our lives at alarming speeds. The course of a single conversation can transform someone from a hero to a villain. But they don’t have to be one or the other.

Letting go of those categories takes a lot of effort, but the process is what gives our lives texture and depth.

Remember high school? You read The Catcher in the Rye and thought, “This is my life.” Then you read The Stranger and you thought, “No, wait. This is my life.” I think you become an adult in the moment when you realize you’re glad those books aren’t your life.

That’s when you start to learn.

***

Once upon a time, we used to sweat through long summer nights in a stuffy dive bar, cooling ourselves with pitchers of watered-down beer. At home, we sat with glasses of melting ice, listening to muggers do their work a few streets down. Their voices filtered through the screens of our half-open windows, diffusing their menace.

In winter, sometimes we drank stronger stuff. There were days when the short walk to the bar felt like an arctic expedition, the kind with reindeer jerky and a thermos of coffee. I tottered down the sidewalk in a puffy down coat I broke down and bought my second year here, when vanity yielded to grim utility.

It’s funny how all these memories are tied to bad weather. In the months before I moved to this town, it always annoyed me when people went on about Chicago winters.

“Gee, it sure is cold there,” they said.

“Yes,” I replied. “It seems like I have heard something about that.”

Then I would quietly hate them for their small talk and worry that no one ever discussed anything interesting, much less important, in the way you worry about things when you’re 23 years old.

What I’ve since learned is that, in Chicago, matters of the heart, like everything else, are inextricably tied to the weather.

Other things come to mind—the angle at which he held his cigarettes, the way some of his sentences went up at the end, like a Brit—but I remember most his big homely coat or the particular way he pressed his palm against his brow. Here, the weather stamps itself on our most intimate characteristics and maudlin memories, and now I’m too old to worry that mine is nothing more than small talk after all.

For a while I wanted to take to my bed like a lady from a bygone era.

The first summer I ran into him all the time. I stifled the urge to scamper from door to door like a rat. On good days, I’d imagine running up and kicking him in the shin. By winter, I surprised myself by skulking past old haunts, actually hoping for the chance to strike.

Long after he moved back east came that painfully bright spring day I thought I saw him a few blocks away and raised my hand as though to wave.

***

I think the worst part about betrayal is that one moment can color all the years that came before it. Suddenly, your own happiness seems like a thin fiction. It’s sort of like getting robbed. Or finding out you have been fucking Santa Claus.

And, yeah, I believed in something that never existed. For a long time, that made me feel foolish and angry. I felt sad and, worse, I felt stupid for feeling sad. But how important is historical accuracy, really, when it comes to our lives? Just because something isn’t real doesn’t mean it isn’t true. Think about a novel. Fiction can be moving, even when it’s far-flung or farfetched or far out. It can make you cry or get you into trouble. Occasionally, it can change the world. And it can even change us, if we let it.

So that’s how I learned that the glass is never half empty or half full; it is always both. Eventually, the villain in this story transcended his role. He was good. He was bad. But, above all, he was just passing through.

We’re all transients, despite our best efforts to fix each other with pins.

This life, it won’t be contained. It squirms against your grasp. It trembles. It peeks through your fingers. It’s fickle; it licks then it bites.

One of these days it’s going to slip your greedy clutch and shine its light right through the cracks.

It will turn to bright spots that morning burns behind your closing lids.

The thing is, you get to hold it in your hands before you bury it in your heart.

toilet naps

2010-06-16T14:21:00.002-05:00

A long time ago, when I was in college, I spent a summer temping at a dreadful company that sold car insurance or something. One of my fellow temps was a young woman named Donna, who was one of the funniest people I have ever met.

Donna was basically my idol. She was an excellent conversationalist, mostly because so much of what she said made absolutely no sense. Every conversation I ever had with Donna ended in exactly the same way--viz., with the sentence, "Cuz I've got a husband." It was unclear whether she was proud of this husband, or if his existence implied some other meaning or threat. The interesting thing was that the anecdotes themselves rarely, if ever, involved her spouse; yet, inexplicably, there he was at the end of every story: "Cuz I've got a husband." When she said it, she would draw out the first syllable of the last word. She would wag her finger and nod, for emphasis. "Cuz I've got a huzzzband."

As great as that was, my favorite thing about Donna was that she liked taking naps in the ladies' room. It was a habit she picked up back when she pregnant and working at a bank. She'd lock herself in the stall, take a seat, and snooze until she felt like she could carry on with her day.

I mean, in one sense, I thought it was pure genius. Toilet naps are kind of in that same untouchable zone as calling in sick with diarrhea: no one wants to ask any follow-up questions. Probably your boss isn't going to confront you about why you're spending so much time in the bathroom.

Of course, on the other hand, you're taking a NAP in the BATHROOM like some sort of hobo while all your co-workers are busy blasting out that specific type of public bathroom fart that sounds vaguely prehistoric. (Seriously, ladies, WTF? I suffer from shame-loss but I would kill myself if I let something like that loose in the public sphere.) Gross!

Some years ago I was telling this story to one of my girlfriends, who didn't even think it was weird. She was like, "What? I've totally slept in the bathroom at work." I mean, toilet naps made a certain amount of sense for Donna (being crazy is exhausting, after all), but to think they might be a thing regular world? The mind reels.

freedom blog

2010-05-29T13:57:00.002-05:00

I love you, Memorial Day weekend. To me, you’re High Americana, shot through with just enough melancholy to keep things from getting too cheesy. While the Fourth of July is all about the tacky machismo of, say, losing an eye in a firecracker injury, you’re more about feeling nostalgic for something that never existed.

I’m all for emo patriotism.

I want to peel off a hundred dollar bill

and slap it down on the counter.

You can pick out a dress. I’ll pick out a tie: polka dots

spinning like disco balls. Darling let’s go

two-stepping in the sawdust at the Broken Spoke.*

Memorial Day weekend offers a sense of expansiveness, a certain generosity of spirit that I admire in others but have never quite managed in myself.

Let’s get hitched in Nevada. Just you, me, and Elvis.

We could sell cheese curd in Wisconsin.

We could rent the sky in Montana.

I could pay off my bills.

There’s this sense that anything’s possible.

This weekend, I want to make mudpies with Walt Whitman. I'll teach him to hum rock songs and he'll teach me not to be so afraid of birds.

I want to drink real Coke and watch old movies with Frank O’Hara. (And I don’t even like old movies. Or real Coke.)

I want to take a road trip with Sufjan Stevens and stare at him the whole way to California.

I want to have my beastly way with Matthew Dickman at one of the rest stops. Then we'll drive to some weird hotel in a state that I’m too dumb to find on the map.

We’ll walk to the community theater and invite the cast out for drinks after. We’ll sing Billy Joel songs at a bar that doesn’t believe in irony.

(Basically, I’m a gay man in my secret heart.)

You are everywhere, sweet Carolinas.

You’re my boss, Tennessee, you honeysuckle.

Sadly, my real life doesn’t have the plot of a quaint porno. So instead of doing those things, I’m going to hunker down on a patio somewhere and drink some beer, which also sounds pretty good.

America, let’s put our feet in the water! Let’s tie a rock

around our waist and jump in. The river

is rolling by. Tom Petty is singing about a girl from Indiana

and I am buying you another drink. I am trying to take you home.

Outside it’s the kind of warm where your skin feels charged after a spell in the sun. Maybe you’ll glow like a lightstick when it gets dark.

Summer is starting and your heart is so fucking full that a few lazy afternoons might make up for the unfairness, the pity, that we're not allowed to hold these fleeting gifts in our grubby human hands.

*All excerpts are from “All-American Poem,” by Matthew Dickman.

o hammond!

2010-05-04T20:26:00.008-05:00

While there may be few things sadder than a neglected blog (sigh, time to dust off the old hairshirt), I can speak the True Name of at least one of them: the Horseshoe, an Indiana casino, circa Monday night.

Pre-Monday, I had never in my life been to a casino because, you know, I have no desire to live under a bridge. For one thing, I’m bad at math. For another, I associate casinos with Las Vegas, a city near the top of my list of places in which I have no interest whatsoever. I just can’t understand a town where the cultural touchstones are Hunter S. Thompson, Elvis impersonators, Barry Manilow, and Siegfried & Roy.

Casinos have this weird sensibility that I can only describe as...drag queen machismo? It’s sort of like a check-cashing facility meets the most depressing gay bar on the planet.

Now, all of that said, I was super-excited to go to the Horseshoe, mostly because sometimes I like to pretend that I live in a Bruce Springsteen song.

I suppose the first sign that the whole experience would be more depressing than I could have imagined was the sign in the elevator that informed patrons that it’s illegal to leave children alone in the parking garage. I mean, that’s impressive, and I’m from Tennessee.

But that fascinating little reminder was nothing compared to the epiphany I had upon walking onto the casino floor, which is when every futuristic dystopian novel I’ve ever read suddenly seemed less like preachy NPR fan fic and more like war-zone reportage. The pleasing pings and hypnotizing lights were interrupted only by my (not infrequent) observation that polyester short-shorts and lace-up corsets aren’t really a great look for most of the cocktail waitresses of Indiana.

Was the Horseshoe casino, as its website purports, the “ultimate gambling experience?” As a first-timer, it’s hard for me to say. If the ultimate gambling experience involves an empty back room with five-dollar slot machines, plus a lot of disabled people at penny slot machines, well, it was definitely up there.

If you think I’m being judgmental, I hasten to add I can vouch for the surge of dopamine that shoots through one’s addled brain when one wins, let’s say, three dollars at the slots. The same machine that celebrates a one-nickel gain like it’s 1999 is diplomatically silent when you’re on a losing streak. You pump these machines full of dirty dollars (not a bucketful of quarters, much to my disappointment) and they return your winnings on small slips of paper that resemble receipts.

Which, I suppose, they are—receipts for whatever price you’ve paid (around $30, for me) to inhabit an unreal city for a while, to be taken in by its soothing bleeps and bloops before you’re spit out into the sobering sprawl of a concrete parking garage that seemingly goes on for miles. We staggered to the car like overstimulated toddlers, all disoriented and dizzy. I saw spots. Here now, a day later, I’m still blinking extra hard.

peep this

2010-04-04T12:10:00.019-05:00

Welcome to The Shallow Brigade, your trusted source for hard-hitting peep diorama news. Once again, we're providing head-to-head analysis of the original contest (sponsored by The Washington Post, now in its fourth year) and the ripoff version (sponsored by The Chicago Tribune, in its second year).

As usual, D.C.'s winner is absolutely impeccable. Here it is, a rendering of the house from the movie Up:

Meanwhile, here in Chicago, the contest took a disturbing turn:

WTF, Chicago? I mean, a classic theme in these dioramas is the peepification of iconic scenes from violent movies, as we saw in the Post's 2007 Psycho diorama:

But these new blood-spattered scenes are clearly the product of untreated mental illness.

Speaking of mental illness, check out Chicago's Jersey Shore-themed diorama:

which was clearly constructed by someone who believes in giant rat people.

Like last year, certain scenes were recreated in both contests. Those were kinda boring, though, so instead I'll just show you my favorites. In Chicago, what this Doctor Who diorama lacks in execution it makes up for with the idea to create a Dalek peep:

And here's what I believe to be Chicago's rightful winner, this adorable Frankenpeep:

Over in D.C., I loved this awesome Super Mario Bros diorama:

And I thought that "Peeps & Prejudice and Zombies" was great:

Thank you, crafty disturbed people, for another delightful Easter.

the prestige

2010-03-28T00:30:00.005-05:00

As I approach my 32nd birthday, I am forced to face certain facts. Tonight, watching a movie with friends, I realized just how much I become more like my mother with each passing day. One of my mother's core characteristics is that she does not understand films. Any films. At all. So this is the first of what I suspect will be a series of posts continuing her proud tradition of just not knowing WTF happens in a given movie.

This is all to say that, four years past the 2006 release date of The Prestige, I have some pressing questions:

1. I gather David Bowie plays the real-life rival of Thomas Edison, Russian Ricky Gervais. Why would you put a treasure like David Bowie in your movie and make him look like this?

This is Bowie to Bowie: you look like a puffy twat.

2. Why does Christian Bale seem extra hot when he's all fat and talking like somefing off the estate?

3. Is it still okay to find Christian Bale hot after that whole thing where he beat up his mum or whatever?

4. Whoa, Wikipedia tells me Gloria Steinem is Christian Bale's stepmother! So maybe it's okay to think he's hot?

5. So...Russian Ricky Gervais creates a teleportation machine?

6. Oh, wait, it's a clone machine?

7. And all Hugh Jackman clones must be murdered? Or somefing?

I feel like every Christopher Nolan movie ever is basically a psychotic pissing contest. And, you know, that's awesome, but it's just not enough.

imaginary end times

2010-03-24T23:54:00.013-05:00

A very strange thing happened a few hours ago.

I was standing in my kitchen cooking dinner when, without warning or discernible cause, my electricity died. It was 9 or 10p, and the power was out all down the block, so it was very dark. So dark, in fact, that I had to light a kitchen match to blaze a path to my cell phone, the sickly glow of which I planned to use in lieu of a working flashlight. (I say working flashlight, by the way, because I own several flashlights that do not work.) When I found my cell, it was dead. I've been testing iPhone apps for a magazine article and evidently they are a huge drain on my feeble 1G battery.

From there, I lit four or five more matches as I looked for a wee candle, a lone tealight, that I knew was around here somewhere. This felt both ridiculous and like something out of the kind of movie where there's a girl in a basement or a cave or a cupboard below the stairs lighting matches because she's alone and afraid and THEN, just as her last little flame is extinguished, the baddie appears. NOM NOM human flesh rape murder death kill bear-trap-mask!!

Or, in my case: tealight!

After that, I retired to the couch and waited for the lights to be restored. I mean, I couldn't do much by the dim glow of my tealight, and both my mobile and landline (a portable phone) were dead. So I just sort of sat there for a bit.

At first, it was relaxing. Then I felt sort of disconnected and alone. And then someone outside started playing a saxophone(?) and things started feeling very apocalyptic. I thought: the world could be ending and I wouldn't even know it. Maybe I should fill the bathtub?

And then, with a degree of calm I almost admire myself for, I thought: OR...maybe the giant rat people are coming.

Now, granted, I have been watching a whole lot of Doctor Who. (In fact, I had to cut back after I caught myself thinking in a British accent.) And while I haven't actually seen any giant rat people on Doctor Who, giant rat people definitely represent a sort of Doctor Who-influenced, like, waking dream logic.

Or, you know, I just had my first schizophrenic episode.

just because something’s not real doesn’t mean it’s not true

2010-03-09T23:35:00.008-06:00

When you’re a musician who’s around long enough, eventually you’ll be criticized for whatever it is you do best.

So it goes with the so-called sociopathy of Stephin Merritt, the caustic frontman of The Magnetic Fields. I’ve been trying to convince my friend Z to go see the band at their next stop in New York (having myself just seen them twice at Harris Theater, possibly the nicest place to see a sit-down show in all of Chicago). Z told me that he finds their music sort of sterile and cold, which surprised me more than it should have—it’s a fair impression, before you get to know them.

What’s more surprising to me is that sentiment seems to be shared by people who should know better. In Pitchfork’s recent review of Realism, the band’s new album, Matt LeMay wrote:

“Those hoping to find anything even remotely autobiographical or directly emotive on Realism will be sorely disappointed.”

To which I say: um, DUH. I mean, who would expect that? I guess LeMay was warning people not to read too much into the “folk music” theme the album has been marketed under, but does he really imagine a fan would expect Stephin Merritt to suddenly start sounding like, say, Lou Barlow?

Even weirder, LeMay accused Merritt of “defiantly withhold[ing]” any “emotional gratification,” before declaring that “Realism is Merritt’s most cold and distant-sounding record to date.”

That last bit seems especially strange to me considering the album opens with what might be one of the band’s most expressive and beautiful songs, “You Must Be Out of Your Mind.”

You Must Be Out of Your Mind -...

Memo to Matt LeMay: You must be out of your mind, son.

Did that sound cold and distant to you?

The Pitchfork piece is just one example among many. I was really surprised to learn of the one-dimensional treatment the press has given Stephin Merritt. Even a cursory review of his Internet footprint will leave you with the impression he is (at best) super grumpy and/or (at worst) cruel for sport. Pretty much every published interview in the history of Merritt-dom at some point devolves into a solipsistic piece about how stupid the writer was made to feel over the course of the conversation. Evidently, he even made some poor lady at Time Out Chicago cry.

I mean, listen, I firmly believe that you shouldn’t make journalists cry. That’s just plain mean and unnecessary. That said, many (if not most) journalists are terrible, terrible interviewers. Interviewing and writing require very different skill sets, and believe me when I tell you that one must really fucking work at interviewing to get any good at it. Now that I’ve read a fair number of interviews with Stephin Merritt, I can report here that he has spoken with more than his fair share of lazy interviewers (and bad writers, for that matter).

In any case, the weird thing is that Stephin Merritt seemed mostly polite in many (though not all) of the interviews I read. He strikes me as a contrarian—so many intellectuals are—which can come across as being an asshole.

Anyway, in most of what I read, there was this overall tone of just not getting it. I think that Merritt is very committed to his grouchy persona, which seems to have confused a lot of people. So far as I can tell, he has scowled in every single portrait made of him post 69 Love Songs.

I mean, has it occurred to no one but me that this might be, to some degree, posturing? The whole thing makes more sense when you consider Merritt’s ‘tude in light of his friend and collaborator Daniel Handler (aka Lemony Snicket), who is celebrated for his playful, mock-gothic tone.

Save a Secret for the Moon - T...

NB: This song is actually called "Don't Look Away." Lala mislabeled it.

Maybe Morrissey is an even better model. Consider this very astute analysis of Morrissey, which was offered by Colin Meloy in 2004 in an interview with The Believer:

“I think of his [Morrissey’s] literary allusions, the flaws of his characters, his self-referential tone, and how well he treats that. That’s one of his strongest traits and it’s also what he gets a lot of criticism for: his being this sort of egomaniacal character in songs when in fact there’s heaps and heaps of irony there—I’m talking strata upon strata. Like there is that egoism, but it’s defending a very, very sincere fragility, but also poking fun at that at the same time—poking fun at shyness and introvertedness.”

Similarly, people accuse Merritt for his total lack of sincerity, which is so weird to me. For heaven’s sake, this is a man who writes songs about unhappiness while sitting alone in gay bars. Since when do song lyrics have to be literal or strictly autobiographical to be considered sincere? I have written at length about The Sincerity Problem, which is my theory that true irony is at least a little bit emo; you have to be both vested and disgusted for it to really work. True irony is artifice, but it is also built around something real.

I Don't Really Love You Anymor...

It seems like, in interviews, the sincerity question has been raised more often in light of the new “folk-concept” album. Says Merritt:

“I don't believe in sincerity in music. I don't understand what it would mean. It's the same as with cooking or any form of art really; sincerity has no meaning. Folk is a marketing category rather than a musical one.”

Here, I think, he’s being willfully obtuse. Anyone who has been to open mic night at a coffeehouse knows full well that sincerity exists. Probably a better word is “earnestness,” and I don’t just mean that in the pejorative sense. Maybe you could say it’s a spectrum of attitudes that ranges from the literal (say, Tori Amos turning her rape into a song) at one end to mutable (say, The Cure’s playful misery) on the other end.

But the concept of sincerity in music becomes more slippery when you’re talking about a band with an interest in artifice. Merritt’s songs are known for their famously fluid POV. (No doubt someone out there is writing a dissertation on sex and gender in The Magnetic Fields catalog.) People point to this as conscious artifice—as though Merritt has carved out the lyric “I” from his songs like a serial killer, totally erasing himself from the fictional world of a given song. I totally disagree. In fact, if anything, I’d say Merritt’s arbitrary narrators seem more honest than Morrissey singing as though he’d ever come within spitting distance of a vagina.

I Don't Believe You - The Magn...

Across albums, you can pick out a certain voice I believe to be Merritt’s own: witty, wounded, and thoughtful, with an Englishman’s knack for self-deprecation. He’s right there, if you listen.

You know, I think even his facility with words is misinterpreted. People mistake his intellect for emotional distance and his cleverness for an intellectual exercise. His music has been described as stylized and literary, which seems wrong to me. When I think of stylized and literary, I think of The Decemberists and Belle & Sebastian, both bands who write 200-word songs that are better than most novels. The Magnetic Fields may be named after a Surrealist novel, but Merritt’s lyrics are very much rooted in the tropes of, like, cheesy music from the mid-twentieth century. He sings about love. He sings about the moon. His lyrics are often built around clichés, as in two of my very favorite songs, “All the Umbrellas in London” and “All My Little Words”:

All The Umbrellas In London - ...

All My Little Words - The Magn...

In both songs, Merritt subverts clichés—all the umbrellas in London, all the tea in China—so they mean something again.

It just bugs me that this band, a national treasure, seems to be so misunderstood, even perhaps by the very people who like them. Whereas The Magnetic Fields are often admired, I think they should be loved. If I were king, I’d make Stephin Merritt follow me around with his ukulele. I’d probably be too nervous to talk to him, but we could just sit around and roll our eyes at each other.

perspective

2010-02-26T19:22:00.005-06:00

So I was having one of those perfectly pleasant Friday nights, a laid-back evening sandwiched between an especially challenging work week and a much-anticipated visit from far-flung friends. It's cold outside, and I'm a little sniffly from what is either an imminent cold or a burgeoning allergy to secondhand marijuana smoke, so it felt like a good night to stay in, make some soup (butternut squash with spicy sausage), try a new cocktail from my special new recipe book, and put some serious hours into my new television project (Doctor Who).

But then...you know how sometimes your TV ends up on some random channel after you've been watching your DVR? Well, I guess mine was on whatever retarded station broadcasts America's Funniest Home Videos, which (a) still exists and (b) is no longer hosted by Bob Saget. I was marveling at these facts as I walked through my living room when something happened to change my perspective on this Friday night at home: a video clip of a German Shepherd farting in a bathtub.

If farts could talk, I think the German Shepherd's would have said something like this: Welcome to Friday night, straight-up thirties style.

meet my nemeses: the neighbors

2010-02-21T18:43:00.005-06:00

I'm not sure I've ever faced nemeses so fierce as my stupid fucking hippie neighbors, whose apartment has, in the two-plus years I've lived here, alternately smelled like cat pee and pot. I don't know if they've lost their jobs or come down with cancer or what, but lately their place smells so strongly of weed that I find myself longing for the halcyon days of eau de cat pee.

Listen, I truly believe it's everyone's god given right to smoke pot once in a while. I mean, I never really cared for those days when the hall smelled like a dorm, but whatever. There are certain concessions one must make when one lives in an apartment building.

Over the last few weeks, though, it hasn't been just the hall. I smell it in my own apartment now all the time. (This on the third floor, while my nemeses are two floors down!) And the frequency has increased from just a few nights a week to every blessed day, even in the MORNING. This not only makes me crazy but, worse, it has been giving me headaches and making me nauseous. And since I work from home it is relentless.

So, you guys, help me out. I know I sound like a big jerk but I'm going crazy here. Does anyone have any advice for how to deal with this situation? I'm at my wit's end.

fuck the olympics

2010-02-15T15:51:00.002-06:00

You guys. I have spent the last few days in the suburbs visiting my great aunt and some other relatives who are in town to see her. As it turns out, the “hotel room” my aunt and uncle booked for me is in fact a studio apartment in her assisted living home.

This may be uncharitable (even for me), but the simple truth is that I’m afraid of old people. Here on my ward in the assisted living home, there’s this whole nightmare vibe of, like, zombie dormitory meets Eli Roth’s Hostel. I mean, wild-eyed seniors staggering through the halls is one thing, but whatever is going on behind some of those doors is quite another.

In addition to praying in restaurants, one of my family’s favorite activities seems to be watching the Olympics. Just when I thought there wasn’t anything worse than watching sports, NBC goes all Faces of Death and airs the footage of that poor luger. WTF? Who wants to watch that?

The answer, evidently, is most people.

The worst part is that I think Bob Costas’s snuff film is an apt symbol for the whole sick sorry affair. Listen, I’m not trying to be contrarian or cute. I’m not even exaggerating. I think the Olympics are totally grotesque. I know the consensus is that these elite athletes have accomplished something, but as far as I can tell they are monomaniacs who are willing to sacrifice everything for...what exactly? Olympic athletes are very, very good at one thing, and very, very bad at the rest of life.

They all have different versions of the same story. Sally Olympian has had three knee surgeries just this year. Her mom worked three jobs so she could pay for lessons or whatever. She works out at least eight hours every day. She is doing something so unnatural with her body that she will probably be crippled by middle age.

Um, Sally? Maybe you shouldn’t do that! Also: maybe people shouldn’t admire you for doing that! You’re kind of a freak!

I’m sorry, America, but maybe some guy who skates around in a circle for 12 hours a day like some kind of douchey Rain Man shouldn’t be our next national hero. Besides, body dysmorphia and soul patches are so 1992.

hello kevin thrasher

2010-01-23T17:01:00.014-06:00

I don’t believe in fate or determinism, but I do believe that when you’re born with a surname like Thrasher, you have a certain obligation to society to do something cool with your life. Had I been born a Thrasher, I might have formed a death metal band or dabbled in Mexican wrestling (as things stand, I’m fulfilling my own destiny as a writer who really likes whiskey), but my friend Kevin Thrasher chose to become a photographer. Right now he’s finishing up his MFA at Mass Art in Boston. You should check out his website.

Perhaps you know it can be a delicate business, having an Artist Friend. We all have at least one. As much as we’d like to imagine we’re super special snowflakes, the truth is our social networks are all populated by the same types. Joseph Campbell waxed lyrical on the hero with 1,000 faces, but who will sing the praises of the Frugal Friend, the one who pulls out a calculator when the restaurant bill comes? Or the Asperger’s Friend that talks too loud and embarrasses you at parties? Or the Artist Friend who covers Indigo Girls songs on open mic night and/or e-mails you his poetry?

“Now, wait a minute, missy” you’re thinking, “are YOU not my Artist Friend?” Well, yes, but I’m the polite sort of Artist Friend who’s not going to ask you to read my novel. (Also, I'm probably already busy being your Bitch Friend.) I remember talking about writing once with my friend M, one of those rare birds who is somehow simultaneously totally ironic and painfully sincere without coming off as a huge twat. (He makes me wonder if god is really, like, Robot Wes Anderson.) Once M told me a cautionary tale about his friend who wrote a really bad novel. “We were really proud that she finished this thing that was hundreds of pages,” he said. “On the other hand, there were fairies with clipped wings.”

His ambivalence, I believe, just about sums up the normative feelings one has for an Artist Friend—a sensation composed of equal parts cheerleading, pity, and intense secret shame. I imagine that looking at an Artist Friend's work is sort of like watching a retarded child at a talent show. Like: Yay! That’s so good…for you!

When I was in New York last summer, Kevin and I went to the New Museum to see the “Younger than Jesus” exhibit, which featured fifty under-33s who are definitely somebody’s Artist Friends, if you know what I mean. I left the museum with two important takeaways: (1) Even though I’m old, I’m still younger than Jesus. YES! (2) My generation kind of sucks at art. There were a few cool things and an awful lot of soulless video art starring people in bad wigs reading dictionaries by the light of, like, glow-in-the-dark dildos.

Later that afternoon, at a bar, I thumbed through a stack of Kevin’s recent prints and thought about how much better they were than almost everything we’d seen at the New Museum. His little collection seemed so well balanced—technically good without being so polished that it’s boring. His work is beautiful but never precious. It’s clever without being gimmicky, thoughtful but not overwrought. He offers a point of view without ever being obvious or didactic, which, as any artist younger than Jesus can tell you, is really, really hard to do.

Kevin has a painter’s eye for color, a way of teasing out saturated greens, rich browns, and pretty blues from landscapes that are recognizable, but somehow heightened, as though you’ve gone on a hike with a fever. It’s all shot through with this amazing electric earthy orange that’s like red clay mixed with blood—a charged palette befitting his rural settings, which are anything but tranquil.

I believe Kevin has taken some of the best elements of the Southern Gothic aesthetic—the gritty beauty of the opening sequence from True Blood, the sinister weirdness of those Boys for Pele-era Tori Amos portraits with creepy farm animals and dirty mattresses, the fire in the gut of a Flannery O’Connor character—and made them wholly his. His “Gap Creek RD” series showcases the menace and melancholy and unease and wit that are hallmarks of a Southern sensibility: a shed at the end of a lonely path, Bud Light boxes filled with disembodied deer heads, a solitary bone lying on a rocky bank.

Kevin works in the tradition of what I’m going to call found-object photography, meaning that his subjects are happened upon in real life rather than conceived of and created. (There is probably a real word for this, but you get the idea.) I admire his knack for imbuing these unstaged scenes with such a strong sense of narrative and mystery. He has an eye for story, a real gift for being suggestive in a way that never seems forced or contrived. Like a cat that drops a dead mouse at your feet as a present, his pictures are offered honestly and without fanfare.

I think it is that sense of openness, of speaking plainly, that helps him convey a sense of wide-eyed wonder without letting things get too twee. Some of my favorite images are what I think of as his fairy tale photographs. Glimpsed through heavy foliage, a white horse might be a mythical creature; a concrete sidewalk makes a gnarly tree seem like a relic from some forgotten civilization.

He has a keen eye for subjects that seem somehow incongruous with their own contexts. It’s a really interesting take on magic, like he’s collecting forensic evidence of the unseen world.

But what I like most about Kevin’s work is what I like most about Kevin himself: his awesome sense of humor. Just when you decide he must a little cynical re: the whole man v. nature theme:

Cormac McCarthy meets M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening

he shows he can have a sense of humor about the whole nature reclaiming the earth thing:

Apocalypse with a wink

This last picture, one of my favorites, is charming and depressing at the same time—a worldview that’s pretty spot-on, if you ask me.

shame-loss phenomenon exhibit #294: watching 24

2010-01-18T23:38:00.003-06:00

Some years ago, I watched the first four seasons of the television program 24 on DVD within a span of, oh, maybe five weeks. This was back in the days when the show was still totally awesome. At a time when George Bush was president and it felt like the world might end at any second, what could be more entertaining than gory torture scenes punctuated with the dulcet tones of President David Palmer?

Because the show was so intense and exciting (or maybe because it’s unnatural to watch five episodes of anything in a row), whenever it was time to get a snack or hit the loo I would run up and down the length of my hallway in a manner reminiscent of my family’s West Highland Terrier, Emmy (RIP), who had a funny habit of running in circles until she tired herself out. Then I would return to the couch and literally clap in anticipation of the next epi.

Around the time I started watching the show on Fox in real time, it started to suck. My theory is that the show peaked around the time that Tony Almeida started drinking booze from a Cubs mug and things went downhill from there. It’s very difficult for a show to improve once it starts to rot, but the good thing about 24's compressed schedule is that it gives viewers about seven months in between seasons to forget how awful it has become. I guess that’s why I (along with the rest of America) have continued to watch.

But lo! Season Eight started last night and, much to my surprise, it looks like it’s going to be most excellent. There is a Russian crime syndicate (always good); Starbuck(!); Thumbhead Herc from The Wire; Freddie Prinze Jr.(?) (whatever); saucy Brit Sark (yesssss!); and a mysterious menacing redneck who reminds me a lot of my high school boyfriend.

So basically I’ve spent the last two nights pumping my fist like some sort of crazed patriot and yelling “JACK BAUER!” just about every time it goes to commercial. And, let me tell you, when you catch yourself doing this, you know, every 12 minutes, you start to sense you’re approximately one liquor-mug away from total fucking loserdom.

out of sight/mind

2010-01-11T20:01:00.003-06:00

Urban living will dispel every romantic notion you’ve ever had about snow. In the city, snow is not beautiful, sparkly, or even white. In New York, for example, snow looks like nothing so much as mounds of wet ash; it turns grey almost as soon as it hits the ground, giving the landscape a vaguely apocalyptic air. It’s even worse in Chicago, where snow serves as a blank canvas for pissing dogs. The day after a serious snowstorm, you’ll see an unhealthy looking yellow patch every two-and-a-half feet or so, and let me tell you—it’s disgusting.

Usually, the snow piddlers favor Pollack-style splashes, though occasionally you’ll see a more controlled pond-type formation. But earlier today, during my afternoon constitutional, I passed a particularly heavy patch that stretched on for about 15 feet. I will spare you the particulars, but it was one of the weirdest and grossest things I have ever seen in my life. For several blocks after that, I tried to imagine what sort of creature could do such a thing. I’ve pretty much decided it was either a dragon or warring packs of dogs that, like, bleed urine.

So basically, here in Chicago snow does nothing so much as highlight the fact that our city is covered in pee. I find this extremely depressing. It’s hard to explain, but when you’re walking around looking at all that animal waste, you start feeling very literal about the whole life is shit thing. It reminds me of the e-mails my mother routinely forwards me with the breaking news in the battle against fecal matter at public eateries. (Like, you would not believe how many times Good Morning America has found that the lemon wedge in your water glass is a glorified turd.) And actually, I feel the same way about all that as I feel about this urine-soaked world of ours—I don’t much mind as long as I don’t have to see it.

I don't like being so negative. Heaven knows I’m full of vinegar, but even a sourpuss like me longs to gaze upon sweet baby 2010 with a modicum of wary optimism (denial?). This seems like an impossible task upon realizing that, within the last 24 hours alone, we learned Sarah Palin is practically a news anchor, Elizabeth Edwards is a bitch, Conan has been demoted, and Blago has brought further shame upon himself and the state of Illinois. It’s enough to get a girl down, so I’ve been baking cookies and buying flowers and reading vampire books in an attempt to keep this big bad world at bay.

And while the bright side is not my forte, I can tell you this much: even when I feel like the elements are holding me hostage here at home, at least the snow looks white from my window.

holiday newsletter: xmas in the crick 2009

2009-12-29T01:07:00.006-06:00

Dear friends,

Holiday greetings from here in Tennessee! I guess I can deem the season a success since I have thus far managed to avoid the Sears Portrait Studio. Still, it just wouldn’t be Christmas without my parents driving me batty. As soon as my dad rolls into town for the Holiday Proper mom comes down with sympathy deafness and they just sort of yell at each other all day. They're not even that old yet! I fear it doesn’t bode well.

Luckily, extended family obligations have been minimal due to uncle B’s well-timed adultery scandal (well done, sir!), so there has been plenty of time to make merry. Two nights ago I found myself in this bar in a chain restaurant with my friend W, her brother J, and three tables worth of children who work for J’s store at the Johnson City Miracle Mall. The other patrons were (literally) a retarded alcoholic, a fat lady reading a book, and a table of people who played Kid Rock songs on the jukebox. Two of the girls were pregnant and I suspect that all of them were Juggalos.

I didn’t think much of it when they gave me and W the stinkeye when we played the Misfits, but I was a little surprised when one of them marched up to me as they were making their exit. Much to my surprise, she said, “The next time you want to talk shit about my sister, you’d BETTER NOT!" Then she ran out the door before I could say a single word.

You guys, I was burning with unanswered questions. First and foremost: WTF kind of sentence construction was that? I mean, I’m not trying to be a pedant in the middle of some bar filled with children, pregnant ladies, and a drunk re, but it was totally a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma squeezed in the fugliest flannel shirt you’ve ever seen in your life. Q2: If I'm parsing it correctly, that was an implied threat involving a (highly unlikely) hypothetical situation based on an event that never happened in the first place, right? Q3: Or perhaps she’s a mind reader who could just tell I was *thinking shit* about her sister? I was definitely thinking shit. Q4: Really?

But those fascinating questions were nothing compared to my urge to yell, “Fuck you AND your sister! Whatever! I do what I want!” and maybe ordering a round of paternity tests for her companions. On one hand, anyone who knows me has heard my rant re: how the Dumb Southerner is the last acceptable stereotype among people who are otherwise politically correct to a fault. On the other hand: OMG my hometown is teeming with dullards. And on the third hand: because I myself am a redneck in my secret heart, I wanted nothing more than to pull that lady’s hair.

So that was awesome, but the night before was even better. Let me pause to explain that having a blog is weird and fascinating and creepy and delightful in so many unexpected ways. For instance, it has resulted in a handful of saucy solicitations, most recently from one reader, a Facebook friend, who sent me a really nice message about ze blog which eventually devolved into him asking me to send him a photo of myself topless(!). Before I explained to my Gentle Reader that I’m only hot for nerds, I seriously considered sending him a pic of some Internet strumpet’s hoo-ha. Of course, I quickly realized that I (a) didn’t actually want to troll the web for crotch shots and (b) fervently wish to avoid a future in which my mother googles me and conjures someone else’s cybercunt. All the same, I was pretty impressed with myself since I basically just invented ironic sexting. Let me tell you, it feels great to close out 2009 with this important contribution to society.

Believe it or not, though, solicitations are not my favorite thing about blogging. No, my favorite thing is the very particular look of panic in my friends’ eyes when they realize they are participating in something that might become blog fodder. Due to advanced shame-loss, I live a life that involves a daily diet of silly and ridiculous acts for which I actively recruit any and everyone. I guess that explains how I convinced my dear friend R to shake it for hours in the subterranean dance floor in the bowels of the bar where we were drinking, a place that may or may not be known to locals as “The Boom Boom Room.” The BBR was populated by some really skanky lesbian grinders, me, R, and two guys with long hair embroiled in a strangely solemn dance-off that involved some sort of modified Vogue moves.

Oh, and it was Christmas, which is when we gather for that time-honored tradition of Drinking Away the Family. (Which, due to alumni at said bar, seems to have spawned a sub-tradition called Dancing Away My High School.)

After one too many R. Kelly songs, I approached the deejay to make a request. “Do you have any 80s hits?” I asked, suggesting Madonna as a nod to the dance-off fellas.

“That’s not really my thing,” he said, but I was not ready to give up. “It doesn’t have to be 80s,” I said. “How about you just play some Lady Gaga?”

I think he took a shine to me, because the next thing I knew I was in his booth scrolling through his list of a dozen of or so pop songs. The rewards were rich: Michael Jackson, Cyndi Lauper, and “Bad Romance.”

I believe it was during the latter, perhaps as I was stomping in a circle around R like some kind of crazed gypsy, when she gave me The Look and said, “Oh my god, you’re going to write about this on your blog.”

Just thank your lucky stars I don’t have a Flip, sugar. I’m thinking about getting one to better document year 32.

Kiss kiss,
KO

update: oh dear

2009-12-17T03:46:00.002-06:00

Hey there, guys and gals! I know that many of y’all who have already soulmated are living vicariously through the sexy stories on my blog. The Shallow Brigade is nothing if not the story of a swinging single. Remember how I yacked all over the public sphere and hid it from my suitor a few weeks ago? I know most of you were reading that in your nightshirt and cap thinking that was 2 HOTT 4 U.

I mean, that was an awesome thing that happened that did not force me to consider murder-suicide at all, not for one single second.

But seriously, because I’m neurotic, I’m not one of those people who can just shake off their puke date. To counteract the shame-loss, I make it a point not to lie to myself. So instead of telling myself, “Hey, champ, it’s okay,” I try to keep it real. And, at the time, my realistic assessment of the situation was that things couldn’t get much worse.

Of course, that was before I might have inadvertently started dating a retarded person.

Remember how I wrote that mean-spirited post about my mentally retarded Facebook friend?

Not so long after that, I worried he might actually happen upon that post after I FB linked to this blog re: the gift shop. But then I remembered that res can’t read good, etc., so I wasn’t all that worried about it.

Then, last night, as though conjured by my cruelty and half-hearted concern, the re sent me an instant message (“Hey girl”) after I logged off Facebook that I didn’t receive until this morning. And I was like, whew. I just wasn’t in the mood to have another IM convo with this retarded person. I mean, we’ve already talked about his nephew(?) and everything. Plus, I don’t like res.

Today, I was out xmas shopping and didn’t log on to FB until evening. Immediately, I received another “Hey girl” from the re. I wouldn’t have thought anything of the timing until, a few back-and-forths later, he ASKED FOR MY PHONE NUMBER. Which, coming from a retard, I’m pretty sure is like asking for worn panties.

A struggle ensued. On one hand, I am barely nice enough to IM the retarded; I’m hardly capable of talking to one on the phone. On the other hand, I really didn’t want to hurt his feelings. As a compromise, I gave him my landline with the caveat that “I don’t like talking on the phone.”

So, basically, he’s retarded, we’re together, and I’ll post any voicemail messages to that effect right here just as soon as they surface.

before & after

2009-12-13T18:00:00.042-06:00

So most of you know I'm a writer in real life. Most of you also know that, for a variety of weird reasons, I spent the better part of this year also working as a consultant for a gift shop near my hometown in Tennessee. It was the most fun I've ever had working, but there were certain challenges that stemmed mostly from the sad fact that I had to start from scratch. To wit: here is what you would have seen had you walked into the gift shop last March:

BEFORE: The old shop was basically a stuffed animal crypt with lots of fake flowers and shocks of decorative pipe cleaners.

AFTER: Cutting the clutter made the space feel less like an attic and more like a shop.

In the beginning, I saw myself as the store's buyer. And I was--I shopped my little heart out online, at trade shows, and up & down Chicago AND New York looking for products that were made in small batches by human hands. And while it's true that robots and Chinese children made a few of the things I ended up buying, I am very pleased to report that most of the shop's merch was made by individuals I met in person, over the phone, and right here in virtual reality. Woo boy, that part took a lot of time and energy.

What I didn't realize was how many OTHER things would be involved. To take just two examples, I had to work with an interior decorator to spruce up the skeleton and a designer to create a new logo and marketing materials. Maybe some day I'll write about what it was like to do those things, but for now, I want to tell you about what it was like to be a visual merchandiser for a day (well, a few weeks) as I struggled to figure out how to display all the pretty things I picked out.

So that's what this post is about: a before-and-after photolog of the shop I put together this past September. (Let me apologize in advance for all the pictures that look as though they were taken by a drunk person. Maybe one of you lot can teach me how to use my camera someday.) You can even click on the very best/worst ones to see them in their full glory/misery, as the case may be. In fact, I insist; the good ones look way cooler that way.

One of the challenges in putting together the displays (apart from, you know, my profound lack of formal training in visual merchandising) was dealing with the shop's fixtures, which are mainly built-in bookcases. Not only is it difficult to fit things on the shelves (many of which are out of most people's reach); it's also hard to make them visually interesting.

BEFORE: A woozy view of the three bookcases that line the right side of the shop.

AFTER: The same three bookcases, post-makeover.

Let's take a closer look, shall we?

AFTER: One way I coped with the bookcases was to organize them roughly by theme and color. On the left was the nature-inspired case, which had a lot of wood and glass.

AFTER: The right-side bookcase was the case of many colors. I framed some of the Berkley Illustration! animal portraits with cheap matting from the craft store and pasted them at the top of the case. I also played with the levels of the shelves to keep things interesting.

AFTER: The middle case, which was inspired by ghost stories, was my favorite. It was as close as I could come to my fantasy of making a curiosity cabinet. Plus I got to build a shadow puppet theater!

AFTER: These nifty cards teach you how to make shadow puppets.

AFTER: The photographer cut off the top of the display, which was made from things we sell in the shop: a chalkboard sticker and antique light bulb sculptures.

AFTER: And here's a detail shot of the awesome silhouette plates, one of my favorite things in the shop.

We used a little paint here and there to make some of the other fixtures look better.

BEFORE: The shop was overwhelmed by the oogie soft sage color you see on the walls and in the hutch.

AFTER: The walls went pale yellow. Black in the back of the hutch makes the merchandise pop.

AFTER: (detail shot of hutch) I chose a garden theme for the hutch--egg-shaped birdhouses and sidewalk chalk, seed packets that look like matchbooks, bird calls, etc.

I also tried to create displays that had a museum exhibit-feel, esp. for the art we sell.

BEFORE: The boom box really made this display, don't you think?

AFTER: The same area with handmade birdhouses by Tamar Mogendorff.

AFTER: One of the pleasures of buying merchandise was the chance to support some of my favorite local artists. (This map is by Dolan Geiman, who is here in Chicago.) We used placards like the one you see in the bottom right to give the shop a museum-like feel; my writing skillz came in handy for the text, which I used to tell the stories behind featured artists and products.

It was important to me to have products that tied in with the identity of the non-profit the shop is associated with.

BEFORE: Random (expired!) food products didn't have much to do with the organization's mission.

AFTER: These funny vegetable people replaced the old food. I took advantage of the natural light in that same area for glassware. I don't know why the photographer made me prop up those plates for this dippy shot.

Elsewhere, the funereal fake flower display was chucked in favor of art by Blanca Gomez.

BEFORE: Yikes!

AFTER: Plush puppets were corralled in the shelf just below this display.

Another aspect of this epic project was creating branded merchandise. I worked with a designer to create our own line of t-shirts, which I also wrote about here.

AFTER: We sold out of the shirts I designed! We had to reprint them.

AFTER: I wrote a little story to go with each of archetypes we used for the shirts. This is the text for the villain.

The children's area required soooooooo much work.

BEFORE: Pretty much the only children's products we offered were stuffed animals and plush puppets.

AFTER: The same area reimagined, including paper robots and vintage-inspired toys.

AFTER: I heart the Friend Brigade!!

AFTER: I tried to make the children's area look happy.

AFTER: Here's the top of another bookshelf & a detail shot of another favorite, maps of imaginary places.

I used tabletops to display paper goods and other office supplies.

AFTER: I ordered lots of letterpressed cards and vintage-inspired stationary.

One of best parts about working on the shop was having a tangible final product for the world to see. All I have to show on most days is a stack of empty Diet Coke cans and a Microsoft Word document or two.

good turkey

2009-11-27T17:14:00.010-06:00

Today I am considering baking a post-Thanksgiving pie. Yesterday I baked a Thanksgiving-Thanksgiving pie, an apple-cranberry number that I'm moving right into permanent rotation (a rotation that might begin, say, tonight). The dessert was my token contribution to a glorious full-throttle no-strings dinner put on by C&A (great food! board games! a $1m idea for a line of stretchy eating pants!), and now I want another one to eat all alone like a crazy person. This strikes me as the kind of binge an morbidly obese person goes on just before they're confined to bed or schedule the date for gastric bypass surgery but, as they say on Springer, Whatever! I do what I want.

Baking the pie reminded me of last year's Thanksgiving, which I spent with my sister here in Chicago. It was my first time cooking the big meal, and I'll have to say I prefer being the other end of the process (i.e., the eating part). We ate at like 11:30p after a grueling day of Internet shopping (for H) and dealing with how to butter the turkey without ending up with a creepy turkey skin glove (for me). By the time we finished, we were sort of drunk and punchy. I guess that's how we ended up taking so many magical Polaroid pictures of one another? I don't know, it's unclear.

I do remember we conceived of the shoot as a series of advertisements for different items on the table. (This is the kind of thing my people do when left to our own devices.) The concept evolved into a contest wherein we took pictures of each other "selling" the same item to see which was better. These pictures were for our pie advert:

H was a seasoned pro. Notice the smooth hair, the sweet smile, the subtle "weather girl" stance. She sure is selling that pie!

Mine didn't go nearly so well. Notice the palsied claw, the unruly pigtails, the unhinged expression, the bared teeth. You may eat pie, it suggests, but I eat PEOPLE.

We still laugh about these pictures one year later. My sister is the best. I miss you, H!

bad turkey

2009-11-26T02:32:00.002-06:00

Sometimes I’m such a bad person. I don’t recycle even though I drink like ten cans of Diet Coke each day. I am woefully out of touch with the news of the day and I couldn’t care less. I rarely give people the benefit of the doubt and my default mode is mockery.

I mean, I worry about the world. I buy thoughtful gifts for my loved ones. I even help little old ladies across the street (literally—just the other day!) (though honestly it made me VERY uncomfortable). But I’m just terrible in so many ways. A big ole ball of bitch, you might say.

I have mostly come to terms with my own awfulness, but every so often, something happens that makes me confront it with fresh eyes. Much like helping little old ladies across the street, it’s an uncomfortable process.

Basically, what I’m trying to tell you is that I feel sort of bad about how often I laugh at my mentally retarded Facebook friend.

Let me back up for a minute to explain that I went to a public high school, which means I had classes with pregnant girls, homeless people, and retards. Of the latter, those who were really bad off (biters, helmet-wearers, etc.) were corralled in their own special class, but this fellow (my Facebook friend, that is) was sort of a floater. So he was in, like, “normal” PE classes? Or maybe regular American Government class? The truth is, at my high school, there was a fine line between retarded and regular kids.

Anyway, this particular re wasn’t one of those sunny sweet people with Down Syndrome. He wasn’t one of the self-flagellating autistics either, but he was always sort of melancholy. One of his great tragedies was his undying and unrequited love for my friend W. He colored her pictures and wrote her misspelled notes in crayon asking her over for romantic Spaghetti-O dinners at his grandmother’s house. Sometimes, for holidays, he’d tuck in a crisp dollar bill. W, who is a much better person than I, was always so gracious about it. I was never cruel to him, but I’m not going to say those invitations went by without remark.

Fast-forward some 13 years to the day I received his Facebook friend request, when I called my most mean-spirited friend (Z) to share highlights from the re’s profile (references to Jesus, AM radio(?), etc.). Z went to a progressive private school where everyone could read, so he was too hung up on the strangeness of high school res to properly appreciate the whole story.

Of course, all that was nothing compared to the first time the re IMed me. It was short and sweet—something like “Hey girl, how r u?” (me: Hey, I’m really good!)—but I was laughing like crazy because I’m such a big jerk. Some time later came our second (totally amazing) conversation, which went something like this:

High School Re: hey
Me: hi
High School Re: how are you
Me: Good. How about you?
High School Re: good I have a nephew take a look @ the pic
Me: awesome, that must be fun
Etc.

I didn’t actually look at the picture because I was worried that “nephew” was some sort of re code for penis. I don’t know where I’m going with this. I guess I’m thankful I’m not retarded?

Oh well! Happy Thanksgiving!

bloody hell

2009-11-21T01:47:00.002-06:00

Like most people in their right minds, I have a crippling fear of the dentist. It all started with several unfortunate incidents courtesy of my childhood dentist, who instilled in me sort of generalized dread and despair with regard to my mouth. My anxiety became more acute in my early twenties, when some sadistic bitch spent an hour or so sticking my gums with a glorified pin to see how much I would bleed. That’s when I learned that my genetic destiny is to live life with the gums of an octogenarian. My mouth is basically a big lump of necrotic tissue.

As a result, I’ve spent the better part of my adulthood trapped in this terrible, retarded, self-destructive cycle where I don’t go to the dentist for a while because I’m freaking the fuck out and then, when I muster the courage to go back, terrible things happen because of the hiatus. That’s why, earlier today, I went through a gruesome procedure called periodontal scaling, which is where you pay someone thousands of dollars to give you a dozen or so numbing shots and maul you with some sort of supersonic screeching device of doom.

About two hours in, when I found myself staring at a glittering scraper covered in gore like someone out of an Eli Roth movie, I thought surely things couldn’t get worse. But the worst moment actually came after the appointment when, following an epic survivor’s nap, I tried to resume a normal life by baking a pineapple upside-down cake. I was chopping fruit when suddenly my mouth felt very strange. Imagine my surprise and horror when I spit up two teaspoons of blood followed by what I believe to have been a giant repulsive scab.

You guys, it was soooooooooooooo grody.

You know you’ve had a bad day when all the world you want is to treat yourself to a nice cleansing horror-barf but choke it back out of fear that it will make your teeth will fall out.

taxonomy of FEAR

2009-11-19T16:38:00.009-06:00

Like most members of my generation, Jim Henson was an important influence during my formative years. The Muppets and Sesame Street brought me a lot of joy. They taught me how to spell and sing and eat cookies—vital skills that continue to enrich my adult life.

But, like most things in my nervous existence, the muppets were also a near constant source of fear and anxiety. For every googly-eyed charmer, there was some crazed monster that sounded as though his tongue had been cut out.

Ten Most Fearsome Muppets
10. Bruno Even as a child, I sensed Bruno was what we in Tennessee call a sex pervert.

9. Two-headed monster I somehow found their horns more upsetting than their two heads.

8. Frazzle Clearly eats people

7. Sam the Eagle The bird phobia started early.

6+5. Dingers & Honkers Freakish mutes, excepting Ernie (obviously).

4. Swedish Chef There was always something sort of sinister about his enthusiasm.

3. Yip Yips I’m feeling better about the Yip Yips these days, thanks in part to this swell video.

2. Sweetums Haunted my dreams as a toddler

1. Beaker TERRIFIES ME STILL

notes from the sickbed

2009-11-12T15:27:00.005-06:00

Let me just say right off the bat I feel a little uncharitable writing about how disappointed I was with Where the Wild Things Are. I liked the idea of this movie so much that it seems mean to say anything bad about it. You know how The Believer was founded on the idea of praising the things you like instead of panning the things you don’t like? I feel the same way about that as I feel about this film: the premise is nice, but it’s ultimately an exercise in self-indulgence.

I bring up The Believer, that tiny corner of the Dave Eggers empire, because I am genuinely puzzled that he was one of the brains behind this relentlessly bleak movie. How could Eggers, someone who is well known for his generous spirit—someone who has, in fact, built an awesomely original charity by adapting the McSweeney’s idiom to the weird world of children—have written this tone-deaf screenplay? I’m so confused.

Don’t get me wrong: I don’t object to the fact that this wasn’t a movie for children. I object to such a joyless adaptation of a book that, in my own childhood, inspired a strong sense of excitement and wonder. It is one thing to romanticize a rough-and-tumble boyhood, which I believe the book does. It is quite another to make your protagonist a biter—as in a biter who bites people—who tells his mother grim little stories about vampires whose teeth are falling out. I think the movie means to suggest that childhood can be a bit dark, but movie Max seems genuinely disturbed. What are we meant to make of the part when he stands on the counter and shouts, “Woman, feed me!” at his mother? And then bites her?

That said, young Max was very well played by child actor Max Records, who had perfectly flushed cheeks and a very fine wolf suit. But I have to ask: do you think that Spike Jonze, a person with a silly made-up name he gave himself, shows favoritism to actors with silly made-up names? And is Max Records the love child of, like, someone’s zine and a performance artist? Are 12-year-olds allowed to have made-up names now? Also, check out this fun fact, via IMDB: “At the age of 8, [he] led a protest for vegetarian options at his school cafeteria.” Whew boy. Good luck with life, Max Records.

Did Spike Jonze inspire Max Records to renounce his slave name?

Anyway, movie Max bites his mom and is then transported through the power of imagination to the land of the wild things, who are almost as disturbed as Max is. The wild things are sinister, cynical, and probably clinically depressed. Max’s best friend is the volatile and violent Carol, who is immediately flagged as the wild thing with the biggest behavioral problems since he is voiced by James Gandolfini. For me, recognizing Gandolfini’s nasally whine was another red flag. Should the Land of Pure Imagination really be populated with the likes of Tony Soprano? At that point, I half-expected Jigsaw to crawl out of a cave in a bear-trap mask.

“Hello, children! MURDERSODOMYBEARTRAPMASKSBLARGHHHHH!”

Another red flag was raised when Max was introduced to the special friends of wild thing KW—two sweet-faced owls, Bob and Terry. Poor Bob and Terry are flying by when KW heaves big rocks at them and knocks them right out of the sky. Then she tells Max that the owls like being knocked out of the sky with big rocks. I know that Jonze and Eggers took some liberties with the source material but WTF was that? It was this weird depressing detail that didn't even make sense. “She hits them because she loves them” seems like a weird message to send...anyone.

Just when I was sure Max and Carol were ready to murder-suicide, Max takes his boat back to the land of the living and is rewarded with a big piece of chocolate cake. I think the last shot of a tired single mother watching her disturbed child snarf dinner was supposed to be heart-warming? I guess Warner Brothers cut the bit where Max bites her nose off and feeds it to the dog.

love in the age of irony

2009-10-30T20:15:00.002-05:00

For me, Halloween has always been the most charming holiday. I can’t say that it’s my favorite holiday, since there are no presents and I don’t like candy, but I like that it offers so much delight without strings. It has costumes, games, binge drinking, and (critically) no family obligations. It is also the holiday that best suits my idiom—weird and maybe a little dark—plus there’s the attendant awesomeness of Dia de Los Muertos, Halloween’s cooler cousin.

In honor of the most charming holiday, this year I wanted to post something delightful in its honor. I squandered this gem on Facebook, but the pumpkin head dancer reminded me how great (and rare) it is to love anything with sincerity these days.

I mean, obviously, I love irony. I love clever irony (Morrissey, McSweeney’s). I love nostalgic irony (90210, Journey). I love peculiar irony (Wes Anderson), pretentious irony (Pitchfork), wholesome irony (Gilmore Girls), and magical irony (Gob Bluth). But occasionally I tire of viewing all my generation's shared cultural references through jaundiced eyes. I don’t know if it’s a product of growing up in the 80s, when most things were ridiculous, or what, but sometimes I worry there’s something deficient and uncharitable about my age group’s relationship with irony.

So the task I set for myself was to write something sincere that not only captures the simple sense of delight that Halloween inspires in me, but also stirs up that same fuzzy feeling in you, my readers. Upon reflection, I realized there is at least one topical shared cultural reference for which I suspect we share a deep and pure love: Michael Jackson’s music video for “Thriller.”

Back when I wrote my MJ eugoogly, I talked a little about what it meant to be obsessed with “Thriller” at a time when the Internet did not yet exist. I think that anyone who was alive in 1983 can recall the exact circumstances under which we had ready access to “Thriller.” For me, it was when my family made the trek to Uncle G’s. That Betamax video was the highlight of our frequent visits to his house in Florida. This was way back in the days when families traveled around in loaded-down cars like a slightly more modern version of Oregon Trail, and the only thing that made those interminable rides bearable was the prospect of “Thriller” on-demand. I have very fond memories of sitting on the floor about two inches from the TV with Pinball, my uncle’s glorious Irish Setter (RIP), shifting only every so often when it was time to reach up and press rewind.

My favorite part of the video then, as it is now, is the zombie line dance. I am not sure if there’s anything that unites my generation more than our love of dancing that dance. (Nothing demonstrates this universal truth more powerfully than those Filipino prisoners in that viral video.) For me, “Thriller” mania peaked a little too early to be performed on my slumber party circuit (which was in full swing around the advent of “Smooth Criminal”), but I do remember recreating the choreography in a dance class I took at summer camp. Basically, our version involved staggering around with what I can only call jazz claws. In retrospect, we looked rather more palsied and terrifying than the lithe undead in the music video, but I’m not sure I’ve ever had more fun before or since. It was grand.

Some years later, the “Thriller” aesthetic inspired the dead prostitute costume of my middle school years. I can’t even fathom what my parents made of that one. Nothing makes you worry there’s something wrong with Esther quite like watching your pre-teen undead slut trot around the Bible Belt collecting candy. That year must been an interesting transitional time for me, because the Halloween before that I went as Madonna. On the other hand, I wonder if that was really such a big leap?

Anyway, I would love nothing more than for you to leave your own memories of “Thriller” for me here in the comments.

Happy Halloween with love, like, or kind regards,
KO

learning the computer

2009-10-28T17:56:00.006-05:00

On this day in the year 2009, I finally mustered the will to back up my data like a responsible adult. This led to a two-hour odyssey in Office Depot trying to choose a unit that can accommodate both my macs. As an Apple enthusiast, I spend most of my time feeling superior to the PC plebeians, but I'm still made to feel like a fucking deviant whenever I need software or a peripheral device. Steve Jobs needs to get a team together and build a better geek because I'm sick and tired of shopping in the back room, you know?

Of course, I still haven't managed to back anything up since this stupid device is inscrutable. In lieu of software or instructions, it came with a diagram of how to plug it into the USB port. That much I could manage without a diagram, but now what? Do I have to drag all of my stuff piece by piece onto this thing? I thought maybe I could just click on some kind of "Back It Up!" icon and get 'er done. Looks like I need more lessons on The Computer.

Where's the Video Professor when you need him?

The best part was when I went to the manufacturer's support site, which has all manner of PDFs purporting to be manuals. I downloaded three titles and every fucking one was the same diagram that shows how to plug it into the USB port. You know, I used to work as a technical writer for a software company, and even though I knew BLOOSEY-SQUAT about technology, I managed to bang out user manuals that reached past the plugging-it-in phase. Plus, that's when I lived in England, so I was drunk.

For shame, Seagate Tech Comms people. For shame.

Fortunately, I also bought a new shredder during today's excursion, and nothing soothes my troubled soul quite like destroying junk mail.

embrace the mystery

2009-10-26T17:15:00.003-05:00

Yesterday was so strange. I went to see A Serious Man, the new movie from the Brothers Coen. I’m not sure how to describe it, exactly. Maybe it was a Jewish parable about boredom? That seems about right.

Or maybe it was a series of really boring parables that happened to be about Jews? That seems right, too.

This much I know: it was really fucking boring.

A number of reviewers have called A Serious Man the Coen brothers’ most personal film. I gather they say this because it’s a quiet sort of movie centered on a Jewish family in a Midwestern suburb—a milieu that is certainly familiar to the filmmakers, who grew up in Minnesota. But can a “personal” movie be populated with so many caricatures? Misguided critics have criticized the Coens by more or less calling them self-loathing anti-Semites. Obviously, that is stupid, but I can tell you that the film regards the human body with a very strange gaze, finding its subjects somewhat sinister (the shiny Kubrickesque full frontal nudity of a sunbathing neighbor) to totally grody (a backwards brother who is forever draining his neck cyst.) Make of that what you will, but "personal" it is not.

Moreover, parables are exactly the opposite of personal; it’s a form that focuses on the universal by way of signs and symbols. See, I wasn’t kidding about the movie being a series of parables. In fact, the opening scene, which unfolds entirely in Yiddish, is what I can only describe as a folksy ghost story set in a grim shtetl. (This is exactly when I knew I was in trouble, by the bye.) Its deliberate Henry James-style ambiguity sets the tone for the rest of the movie, which is filled with little mysteries that feel like they should mean something. The film’s central trick, of course, is that none of it means anything at all.

Soon thereafter, the movie shifts from old school Eastern Europe to 1960s suburbia, where we are introduced to the blighted main character, Larry, a cuckolded mathematician who searches for the underlying equation behind all his (considerable) troubles through a series of increasingly desperate meetings with lawyers and rabbis.

Notice this theme of secular (lawyers) versus spiritual (rabbis)—the film breaks down into a neat series of similar dichotomies. I was impressed by the Coens’ thoroughness, actually: they managed to probe religion’s most essential mysteries and the world’s more mundane puzzles (chaste romantic affairs and impotence) with a distressing symmetry.

The Coens carefully confront every question—from the spiritual (the ghost story, or a weird little anecdotal parable about a dentist haunted by the Hebrew inscriptions on his patient’s teeth) to the secular (a dispute over a midterm grade) with at least two entirely plausible yet contradicting perspectives. The real answer, they suggest, is beside the point. This is never more clear than the widely praised bar mitzvah scene (TOLD you this movie was boring), which contrasts the points of view of a stoned 13-year-old and his very proud parents. Whether you’re a blasphemous pot smoker or getting by on blind faith, everyone is headed down the same bleak path.

The central message of A Serious Man, I think, is that the world’s most essential mysteries are both ineffable and meaningless—sort of a soulless and deeply bored (and boring) brand of agnosticism. It’s so puzzling to me when people with interesting faiths see their own traditions as boring. I say this as someone who was raised as a Presbyterian even though my father was Catholic, so I always felt cheated that I didn’t get to experience the theater, spectacle, intrigue, and the culture of molestation surrounding my father’s more glamorous faith.

Had there been any Jews in Johnson City apart from my pediatrician, maybe I would have aspired to Judaism instead. Jews have a similar sense of drama and theater, plus really good deli food. Perhaps then I also would have more of a comfort level with parables. As things stand, having been raised a Gentile, I am extremely mistrustful of the parable form. My people tend to take them literally, which is sort of missing the whole point. Folks from my part of the world read parables and their takeaway is that Jesus is magic. And then there are the Freudian rednecks whose exegeses always somehow suggest that gay marriage is wrong.

So it was an interesting inversion to watch the Coen brothers offer the exact opposite take on the parable form—i.e., that any given story is multivalent. It’s like they have invented a new form: the anti-morality tale. They go to all this trouble to wring different levels of meaning from any given scene, then suggest that the very act of doing so is foolish and pointless. The Coens’ parables all sort of end with a shrug. And, DUDE, guess what? Their suggestion that the ultimate bankrupt parable is our meaningless existence in this totally bleak worthless world is a conclusion I don’t find very interesting at all.

* * *

My day leading up to the movie was a similarly meaningless parable, like the universe was sending me an urgent message composed entirely of gibberish. I met a friend for brunch at a restaurant in the South Loop. When our food was served, I noticed that our next-door diners were two fellows I had met at my neighborhood bar a week ago.

Rewind to last Friday night, when I was stuck in one of those situations where I was obliged to entertain the companions of some guy who was hitting on the friend I was with. There were two of them. One was a bald banker with earrings (dream job: “autocrat of a small country”—mordant fucking wit, this guy) who, at the end of the evening, shook my hand and leaned in close to tell me how much he liked my boots in a really unsettling way. The other was a ponytailed writer (work in progress: “pretentious literary novel”) who is unemployed and living with his parents. “Shivering Jemmy is also a writer!” my friend said. “You guys will have so much to talk about!”

She was partly right: he really did have a lot to talk about. (Me, not so much.) We sat at that table for three hours while Ponytail held forth on his novel, his writing habits, the sushi dinners he has with his (potential) publisher (who “fucking loved” his manuscript, even though she has asked him to rewrite it), and how much he misses living in the glorious squalor of New York, the Chosen City of True Writers.

I was so impressed, you guys.

My favorite part of the evening was when Autocrat asked what we were talking about. “I’m trying to give advice,” Ponytail said, “without sounding condescending.” To which I replied, “Advice is sort of inherently condescending, don’t you think?” (As it turns out, one type of advice I find especially condescending is the unsolicited kind, particularly when it’s about, you know, the word-count spreadsheets you use for your imaginary novel-writing job.) Unfortunately, I don’t think either fellow picked up on my own mordant wit, and from there the night continued to unfold like an extra-long episode of Sex and the City, with me trying to mask my grimace long enough for my friend to get drunk enough to find the third guy attractive.

Back to brunch. Let me pause here to say that Chicago is like a small town in so many weird ways. I always expect to run into some high school classmate when I’m out in JC, but here it always catches me off guard. On a fairly regular basis, I run into childhood friends and college classmates that I didn’t even realize were in the area. And so I was surprised, but also not surprised, when I found Autocrat and Ponytail dining so close I could reach out and tap them on the shoulders, even though I was eating in a very large, somewhat obscure restaurant in the middle of the damn day.

I kind of waved to get their attention even though I sensed they already knew I was there. “Hi guys,” I said. Autocrat sort of squinted at me and said, “Have we met?” I looked over at Ponytail for, I don’t know, identity verification, and for the first time in our short association, he sat silent and still. Then they both gave me withering looks! The whole exchange was really rude and honestly pretty creepy not only because am I dead certain they were lying, but also because—as crazy and paranoid as I know it sounds—I’m not entirely sure it was a coincidence that we ended up in the same corner of that restaurant, Chicago small town-phenomena notwithstanding.

I just have a weird feeling about it.

I have no idea what that was all about, but I’m going to embrace the mystery. Much like the Coen brothers’ god, d-bags are often inscrutable. I only wish they had forsaken me a little sooner.

xoxo

2009-10-13T15:56:00.003-05:00

In the words of my friend Z, lately it seems as though the world has conspiring to delight me. At long last, the frozen yogurt trend has made its way to the bloated city of Chicago. Shambo and her mullet are pushing the boundaries of awesomeness on my favorite television program, Survivor. Yesterday, I bought a very pretty blue dress. Two good friends are stopping through Chicago this week. And finally, finally, in the year 2009, there is an abundance of readily available feather accessories that toe the line between tasteful and tranny in just the way I like.

I think my age group is finally rising to power, as it seems like some of the best things from my youth are cropping up in unexpected places. On one hand, it’s sort of depressing because it makes me feel old and maybe a little square; on the other, I get to hear Pavement playing while I shop at J Crew and watch Kim Gordon marry Lily and Rufus on Gossip Girl. Probably, if these things had happened before I turned 30, I would have been like, “Ew, gross.” As things stand, I’m totally rocking out.

But the way I really know the world is conspiring to delight me is because of something that happened last Friday. It wasn’t the road trip to IKEA, where we spent hours browsing cheap furniture and eating Swedish meatballs. It wasn’t playing Boggle with D. It wasn’t even winning that game, an exceptionally rare occurrence since D is savant-levels of ace at Bog.

No, it was watching Conan O’Brien and Jeff Garlin eviscerate my d-bag college classmate on national television.

Allow me to set up the clip.

This fellow, Zack, lived on my dorm floor when I was a freshman in college. I think he had some form of low-grade OCD that caused him to suck the fun out of everything. For instance, he went around the dorm with this weird music game he invented, basically a mixed tape with three seconds of popular songs from the 60s, 70s, and 80s where you had to guess what the songs were. (Let me tell you, three seconds is just long enough to be infuriating instead of fun.) He also founded the Scrabble Club, only to memorize every fucking word in the Official Scrabble Dictionary so that no one else ever had a chance of winning.

Evidently, since college the low-grade OCD has evolved into a faux career and (from what I can tell) a rather real cocaine addiction. My understanding is that his father is some sort of media mogul who has facilitated his “job,” which is basically catching a million baseballs, which is more than anyone has ever caught before or something.

Since college, this guy has been on TV a few times…I’m not even sure how I was aware he was doing the baseball-catching stuff; it seems like maybe I saw him on David Letterman a few years after graduation. So I was flipping through the channel guide on Friday, where the Conan description read something to the effect of: “Tonight’s guest: baseball catching d-bag college classmate.” And I was like, no way. This guy is still catching baseballs? And now he’s on Conan? Ugh. It was even worse than seeing my nemesis published in The New Yorker.

But then something special happened: Conan and Jeff Garlin were really, really mean. Like, really mean. Which is weird because I can’t remember ever seeing Conan be a bully; his humor is generally sort of self-deprecating instead of mean. All I can figure is that Conan sensed this guy sucked and just went for it.

If you don’t feel like watching the entire clip, I recommend you start at 5:00. But truly, the whole thing is wizard magic.

Y’all, it was like god was talking to me through the television, letting me know he’s on my side.

falling

2009-10-03T00:03:00.001-05:00

I’ve told you before that talking about the weather becomes your second job when you live in Chicago. Famously, we don’t have much of a spring or a fall. Twice a year, when the season changes, it’s this fraught two-week period that marks the transition from summer to winter (or vice versa)—a weird window between two extremes that always feels a little like getting ready to go to war.

Like any good warrior, I am sitting wrapped in a blanket on-demanding all the episodes of Project Runway, etc. that I missed as I’ve toiled in the gift shop, which I will no doubt write about here soon and at length. (Gird your loins.) All I know is there is some lady called “Shambo” on this season of Survivor who is making the Isle of Samoa more awesome by the second. She makes me want to quit my life to wear tie-dyed t-shirts, grow a mullet, and join the armed forces.

But also I’m making the necessary mental adjustments that are required before the real preparations for winter begin (laying in all sorts of distressing supplies—venison jerky, hobo sweaters, etc.). I always feel this same sense of dread, this worry that I’m just not ready.

In general, I try to see change as a positive force, but it’s so hard to resist the impulse to buck and bray.

freak accidents

2009-09-14T01:56:00.002-05:00

Whoo boy, bad week. It began Tuesday night when I ran into my neighbor wearing only his briefs. WTF x 1,000,000.

Allow me to set the scene: My neighbor, who I’ve run into maybe three times in the two years I’ve lived here, is really creepy and weird. He has long, lank hair and extremely limited social skills. We share a small back porch with a big Oscar-style trashcan in the middle, in which he deposits tiny plastic grocery store bags filled with waste approximately once every two months. And then this one time someone tied a string across my porch door, barricade-style. I’m pretty sure it was him, but why? This question haunts me to this day.

Anyway, I always look out of my porch door window before I go out there because of a pigeon incident earlier this year...just scoping things out, making sure the coast is clear, etc. So, as always, I checked the window on Tuesday before venturing out with the trash. I guess in the time it took me to unlock the door, my naked neighbor positioned himself in his own doorway, (I think—nay—hope) preparing to take out his own trash. It was dark and he was in profile, giving the whole incident a seedy Red District peep-show vibe. I have no idea if he noticed me, since I immediately shut the door and called half the people I know to discuss whether he simply feels comfortable taking out the trash in his underwear (despite the chill!), or if he was somehow trying to, I don’t know, show himself to me.

I think he’s just weird, but JEEZ.

Things took a turn for the worse on Wednesday, when I heard from a friend whose sweet pet met her untimely end after accidentally pitching herself from the window of a high-rise. (That’s possibly the most horrifying sentence I have ever typed.) Evidently the world is such a miserable place that even happy border collies are inadvertently committing Harry Caray.

Even I didn’t suspect life could be that mean.

Southern lady that I am, I was up that whole night wondering which comfort foods pair best with straight vodka. Probably someone somewhere has written about the traditions surrounding grief and gifts of food, but I have to wonder how many concerned people just thought it might help soak up the booze.

I guess horrifying freak accidents are pretty much the only times that I, a godless person who doesn’t really like hugging, can be an asset in a consolation-type setting. When something terrible happens for no reason, believing in nothing suddenly becomes a useful philosophy. These are not the times when people want to hear about a benevolent god or a world wherein everything happens for a reason. Better to have someone who can sit with you to marvel at a universe propelled by its own blind brute force.

It’s not that I can’t see why people believe in god, but to me religion has always been like trying to solve a puzzle that never existed. So I’ll make my friend a casserole (or its urban equivalent). This is all we can do: make things with our hands to help fill the space of that which goes away.

not stalking evan ratliff p. 2

2009-09-02T00:03:00.003-05:00

The "hunt" for Evan Ratliff continues.

I say "hunt" because (a) this thing is fucking ridiculous and (b) I am not myself "hunting." On one hand, it's too creepy; on the other, it seems really hard.

That said, I became an inadvertent...follower?...after my last Evan Ratliff-related post, which Real Evan commented on, like, a few hours after it went live. And while I'm sure that "being on the run" turns vanity googling rituals up to 11, I was also looking over my shoulder and under my desk, totally impressed by his ubiquity.

I'm easily impressed, y'all.

Fortunately, I am also easily amused. Wired magazine has a special blog where they post "clues" about Evan's whereabouts. A typical Wired blog "clue" looks something like this: ALERT!! ALERT!! Evan is going to buy a certain book...somewhere where you can buy books...sometime in the next three days. 0100001110001001010

Either people are much smarter than I give them credit for, or that is the damn dumbest thing I have ever read.

Ever the optimist, I watch the Wired blog hoping that some sad 15-year-old tracks Evan using...special spy code-cracking techniques? I don't know. Something clever. Something respectable. I want people to be smarter than I give them credit for.

Sadly, that's not the way the wind's a-blowin'. Because my very favorite type of post on the Wired blog (by a hair*) is the Private Investigator Interview. As a die-hard fan of Veronica Mars, I have read them all with interest. They go something like this:

Q: So, theoretically, how would you go about looking for Evan Ratliff?

A: Phone and computer alone is not going to do it. For example, they’re looking for one-shot, one-kill solutions like trying to grab credit bureau records and tracing his social security number. But when they only come up with Evan’s address history, they’re moving on instead of canvassing everywhere Evan has ever lived, where he hangs out, where he drinks coffee in the morning, has drinks on the weekends, the gym he attends, etc.

Q: If you were going to hit the bricks today to find Evan, what are the first five steps you would take?

A: I would go after everyone who is a known associate or family member of Evan’s. You can’t interview family members under Wired’s contest rules, but I would still do some kind of surveillance and I would interview neighbors, local shopkeepers, landlords and so on.

Oh, did you think I exaggerated that exchange for dramatic purposes? Because those were the actual creepy quotes from some guy with a broken nose. Or perhaps that's just a clever disguise. Probably Steve-O is also ubiquitous/under my desk. Maybe soon I'll have a chance to ask him about it.

So, on one hand, I don't know. Do people really have the time and resources to truly track Evan? My sense is that you would have to have a lot of those things to seriously pursue him.

Or, you know, moxie.

*My second favorite thing on the Wired blog, in case you're wondering, is this post, which offers up this analysis of a video clip that features someone who might be Evan**:

One person she chatted with looks quite a bit like missing writer Evan Ratliff (disguised with dyed hair, a goatee, and glasses). More important, he talks and twitches like him. (my emphasis)

01100000110101111010100010OMG LOL0101011110001011110010100000!

**Looks like Evan has gone full douche.

this aggression will not stand, man

2009-08-30T12:07:00.008-05:00

Dear America,

We need to protest Hollywood’s attempt to make Bradley Cooper a leading man. Between The Hangover, All About Steve, and that time he fucked Jennifer Aniston, his star is clearly on the rise. This is unacceptable.

Don’t get me wrong. I liked Bradley Cooper as nerdy Will Tippin on the television program Alias. (Shame-loss alert!) But since when do television actors successfully transition into film stars? It goes against the rules of the universe.

Notice how his face is a bit skeletal? How his complexion is nearing that Lindsay Lohan-shade of toxic orange? Do you see what’s happening here? An inappropriately tan leading man becomes Hollywood’s go-to d-bag?

Bradley Cooper has taken over for Matthew McConaughey.

Like a bad movie, THEY'RE THE SAME PERSON!
But why? Did McConaughey get blacklisted after the naked drum circle incident? And before he was caught, was there anyone in the world who didn’t assume that McConaughey was involved in some sort of naked drum circle? For heaven’s sake, his BFF is Lance Armstrong, the King of the D-bags. That’s what they do in Lance’s kingdom: exercise and play drums in the nude. Maybe smoke some pot to ease the ’roid rage. They’re just predictable like that.

I never thought I’d be saying this, but here we are: Bring back McConaughey! He is the One True Douche.

Better yet, let’s just have Matt Damon play McConaughey.

Now that’s acting.

friday night flight

2009-08-28T21:33:00.002-05:00

So I’m finally starting to understand why so many people lock down a spouse while they’re in their twenties. (J/k, I don’t actually understand that.) I remember a time not so long ago when I looked forward to the weekend’s social activities like a school kid waiting for summer. Not so lately. I guess Friday night flight started a few years ago, when I noticed that many of my friends were drinking less and going to bed earlier. While I was like: woo-hoo! Let’s drink from the bottle, sing to each other, pass out, and reconvene over brunch to discuss who we texted.

I mean, I still do that (too much?). But I’m definitely doing it far less. My weekends lack a certain rigor. Like, now I’ll go out for one thing and think, whew. Time to get back home and start a new television project.

Seriously, I tend to think about my free time now in terms of television projects. Having recently finished my Battlestar Galactica project, I’m entertaining the idea of a Freaks & Geeks project. Meanwhile, I’ve been chipping away at a studied review of The Wire Season 5 project.

I’m about two steps away from the suburbs, basically, so I can see the benefit of having secured a partner before you become too old to muster the will to bring someone home for a nice evening of non-television projects.

As I’ve been typing, I’ve also been watching an episode of Austin City Limits featuring the Swell Season, which really has been sort of swell. But during the last paragraph poor old Daniel Johnston waddled onto the stage with shaky hands and a dirty shirt followed by...a dozen smiling children(?). Which: not to be a jerk, but when you’re a big fat mentally ill man, performing with a chorus of little kids is sort of creepy. On the other hand, it’s a pretty good song and, hey, at least I’m wearing a clean shirt. Back on top!

where is evan ratliff?

2009-08-23T12:35:00.003-05:00

My mediabistro membership came with a free subscription to Wired magazine. I've been getting it for a while now, and from what I've gathered it is basically Maxim for nerds. It is filled with d-bag pranks ("put Mentos in your friend's Coke to make his drink EXPLODE!!"), DIY projects for losers ("how to fold the world's best paper airplane") (okay, I might try that one), and a write-in netiquette column for people who need help with their i-Social skillz.

Beneath all this is a certain tragic machismo (see: the Inglorious Basterds-themed issue) (BARF) that makes it almost unbearable to read. It's impressively smug.

Of course, a quick look at the masthead or the letters to the editor will tell you that this isn't exactly a magazine for the ladies, if you know what I mean.

All of that said, the latest issue had two very interesting articles. One was about how the founder of craig's list is basically a Luddite. The other explores the (im)possibilty of disappearing in the digital age, an article that is framed with the story of Matthew Alan Sheppard, a guy living in Arkansas who tried to fake his own death.

The most interesting thing about the latter is that Wired has put together a contest called "Find Evan." You can read more about it here, but basically the article's author, Evan Ratliff, is "on the lam" for the next month, and the reader who tracks him down will win $5,000.

Now, while the "Find Evan" contest seems really contrived, there is also something compelling about it. I think it appeals to that teenage fantasy everyone had of becoming a glamorous, clever FBI agent. And I'm sure it's also sort of fun for Evan, because anyone who has seen a movie knows that going on the lam is super-exciting.

On the other hand, consider the Wired Mystery Issue, which was basically a big puzzle for crazypants. To give you some idea of how bananas this thing was, it involved the television show Lost, false ads, ASCII codes(?!?), encrypted messages, Braille, something called transaddition, and many other things I've never even heard of. Figuring out, like, how to work the puzzle (much less solve it) involved quitting your life and joining the Knights Templar.

Not only did loads of readers rise to the challenge, many of them ended up solving puzzles that the editors didn't even know they had included. There was no prize.

With that in mind, my question for Evan Ratliff is this: Given that Wired's readership has demonstrated its capacity for obsessing over weird pointless puzzles that offered no prize, do you really think it's a good idea to invite said readership to stalk you for a reward of $5,000? Especially at a time when many of these obsessive stalkers might be unemployed?

Just sayin'.

prep school punk

2009-08-20T17:43:00.014-05:00

I read lots of design blogs, and I am forever bookmarking new sites and printing up pictures for the my big gay inspiration board. Now that I'm stocking a gift shop and putting together its displays, I have a whole new outlet for ideas that might have otherwise gone nowhere, which is totally, totally awesome.

Anyway, most design blogs have a particular point-of-view or style, and I have always been jealous of their ability to articulate a certain way of looking at the world in both words and images. Design*sponge, for instance, has been described as happy modern; decor8 is decidedly bohemian chic; and poppytalk feels modern vintage.

This afternoon, I was thinking about some images I've been collecting and products I've recently purchased and came to the conclusion that my own aesthetic is prep school punk. Here are a few examples of what I'm talking about:

1. Weird embroidery via Historically Inaccurate:

2. Luxe neon packaging via Anthropologie:

3. Stripey mohawks on vintage arrows via poppytalk:

4. Unexpected rugby stripes on a chaise via Absolutely Beautiful Things:

5. Saucy ostrich feather hairclip via J Crew:

6. Ephemeral looking clothing with steampunk trappings via Oh Joy!:

7. Not particular preppy or punk, but check out this charming picture from the same storefront, shop 518 in Brooklyn:

8. Baggu's reusable shopping bags:

9. Cool leather clutch via Oh Joy!:

I think I'm most drawn to beautiful objects that feel just a bit off.

imaginary friends

2009-08-19T18:03:00.005-05:00

I have mixed feelings about the comedian Louis CK. Sometimes I think he’s so funny. Other times I think he is depressingly unoriginal in that so many of his jokes are built around tired clichés. I mean, he spends at least half his time lamenting the fact that his wife won’t fuck him. What? You mean to tell me that married people don’t have sex? It seems like I’ve heard something about that.

Anyway, Louis has this great bit where he describes how every poor person has his whole fantasy life as a rich person planned out. This, I think, is a topic close to everyone’s heart. Certainly I have spent a lot of time planning fantasy vacations, shopping for fantasy shoes, and evaluating fantasy real estate.

Another important part of my personal rich person fantasy is ready access to celebrities. Some people have fantasy football teams; I have a fantasy friend group. I want to drink tea with Tori Amos and sip whiskey with Tom Waits. I want to spend my afternoons shopping with Austin Scarlett and touring the Mutter Museum with David Sedaris. Most of all, I want to tell Bill Maher to fuck off.

(Obviously, I also have fantasy enemies.)

But if I could befriend just one celebrity, it would be Jeff Lewis, the star of Bravo’s Flipping Out.

Jeff Lewis, my fantasy BFF

Seriously, this man has it all: good taste, awesome employees, and a fluffy smushy-faced cat called Monkey.

Just watch this and tell me you don’t want Jeff Lewis to be your best friend. The good part starts around 0:45:

I think he might be the most awesome person in the whole world.

love this

2009-08-16T16:45:00.001-05:00

iFaux

2009-08-11T15:38:00.005-05:00

Have you seen the new commercial for the iPhone? Apparently, if you don't mind fist bumping with total strangers like a big douchebag, then your phones will exchange your contact information.

How long until these things are sentient?

Perhaps one way you know that you've reached your thirties is when technology starts seeming like total wizard magic. At least once, I've watched an ad for an iPhone application and genuinely couldn't tell whether it was real or a spoof. Then again, I've always been sort of gullible. I think it's actually because I'm really open-minded; I genuinely believe that almost anything is possible...which is probably a good thing in general, but occasionally makes me look kind of stupid.

Earlier this afternoon, on the El, I was considering several innovations I would like to contribute to the next generation of iPhone apps. (Apple products are so intuitive that it seems like maybe if I just think about an app hard enough, it will become a real boy.) I'm thinking it will be a line of guerrilla apps geared towards people who use public transportation. Here's what I've got so far:

1. Delayed Stranger Texting: Using its Spidey sense, your iPhone will hone in on an intriguing stranger. Type in your message (e.g., "You should know that smells bad" or "Is your dermatological disorder contagious?"). Then, once the stranger is safely out of range, your text will be delivered.

2. iShame: Your iPhone will use special laser technology to determine the lamest song in your fellow passengers' iTunes library. Then it will make that song their ringtone.

3. The Silencer: Using its supersonic hearing, your iPhone will be activated whenever someone else's phone conversation exceeds a pre-determined decibel level. Then, using its military-grade scrambler, it will terminate the offender's call.

death metal roundup

2009-08-08T19:38:00.002-05:00

So I’ve been doing some research in preparation for the launch of my new imaginary band, an a cappella death metal duo. And let me tell you, after an extended break from my many faux music projects, it feels good to stretch my total lack of talent into this exciting new realm.

A band name is extremely important for any group but, as you can imagine, it is especially important for those that don’t actually exist. In the absence of any real music, it is critical that the name of your imaginary band really captures what you’re all about.

But between the desert heat and the excitement surrounding Shark Week, it has been hard to think straight. Probably I should order this for inspiration:

Fifteen dollars seems a little steep for a book is simply a list of metal band names. Perhaps it is written in the blood of virgins?

Meanwhile, I found some pretty awesome death metal band name generators. I like this one best because in addition to your band name, it provides the title and track listing for your first album. Obviously, my duo is way too awesome for a canned band name, but it’s a nice tool if your fake band is full of posers.

transience

2009-08-05T02:54:00.002-05:00

It’s funny that I’m writing another entry about books given that I haven’t been reading enough lately. As a writer, I live with the vague sense that I should only ever read the complete works of Proust or something translated from the Russian. But as a lazy person, I like nothing more than to curl up with a vampire novel with a pretty glitter cover.

The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger falls somewhere in between, making it the perfect summer read.

On the most basic level, it is a love story. But its central gimmick, as you may have gathered, is that the leading man is an involuntary time traveler who is pitched backwards and forwards in his own chronology. As a 25-year-old, he might, say, visit himself (or his wife) at age eight, or maybe age forty.

The interesting thing is that the novel is not really about time travel at all. It raises few, if any, questions or discussions surrounding determinism, free will, or fate. I mean, Niffenegger uses time travel as a technical device in that there’s a certain amount of mindfuckery surrounding who knew what when; she employs a fairly clever timeline. But in this novel, the world of time travel is a closed, tidy universe in that is governed by clearly drawn rules. Free will and determinism—these aren’t really the ideas Niffenegger is interested in.

And despite what the previews for the upcoming film might have you believe, I’m not really sure that The Time Traveler’s Wife is about enduring love, either.

I think it’s is about that universal fantasy of knowing your partner—really knowing them—and the sheer ridiculousness of that project. In every romantic coupling in the history of monogamy, who among us has not felt the impulse to become a scientist of our loved one’s head and heart? I think the book suggests that you can never really understand what another person has lived through, even if you travel back in time and, like, take crazy stalker notes on that shit.

No, you can never really know another person, and what I like most about Niffenegger is that she suggests that our utter inability to do so is actually a good thing.

Because while the book explores the fantasy and folly of all-consuming romantic mind meld, I think it also provides a really lovely metaphor for how the people who matter impact our lives in ways we’re not even aware of...and how sometimes they linger long after they’re gone.

This line of thinking is of particular interest to me as it intersects with some of the themes I’ve been considering as I slog away at my own Great Work, which is about transience and fragility. And, you know, prison boyfriends.