Yesterday, my honor was challenged (negligibly—but “it’s a slippery slope”) when I recounted a part of a dream I had; this dream seemed too fantastic, I suppose, to have been actually dreamed. To defend my honor, and put that fantastical dream in context, here are partial accounts of some dreams I have had this week, and one “classic” dream I had several years ago.
In my dreams:
2/29/08 – You say to the photographer that in the end, you’d agree to do what she had said you should—that if she died, you would look in on her mother at the nursing home and visit occasionally—but that, “like most guys, it left me wondering why you picked me.” She doesn’t respond to this but says she thought it had been settled before, that it needed no formal acceptance, but you insist that you had come to the point of laying out the terms but not accepting them. The whole conversation is a farce, but a highly amusing one.
2/27/08 – In a house with a walkthrough (short hallway between two main rooms), three horses run across from one room to the next, the third horse striking a small white rabbit with its hoof, trampling the rabbit’s hind leg. The rabbit cries out.
I wait for the horses to clear and shout for someone else to “call Animal Control” because I think the rabbit must still be alive. I get latex gloves and go over to the rabbit, careful not to step in or touch the gore left by the horse’s hoof, but when I try to pick it up to assess its injuries, it tries to jump away, so fearful that I think it will die if I continue. I stop trying, and when it eventually seems to calm down, I can see that flies have swarmed its injury and are eating away not just the bad flesh, but the good as well.
I am transported outside (in that way that dreams have of just dropping you elsewhere), next to a bush, and I lay the rabbit down next to it. It is night, and the brown spot that had been on the rabbit’s back has disappeared completely, leaving the rabbit completely white and smaller than it had been. The rabbit dies, and I am frustrated by my inability to save it from the hive mentality of the flies and maggots.
2/26/08 – All in Simpsons style animation: I am staying with the Simpsons, who live in Connecticut, and have just learned that a disease is turning people into werewolves. In response to this, the mayor of Hartford, Daniel Negreanu, declares amnesty for all prisoners, and I look out the window of 742 Evergreen Terrace and see dozens of animated black men running down the street.
2/24/08 – I go to Boston, being invited, and then to DC. I get lost at night but am rejected by Metro-train ticket sellers who say they’re “on break” and tell me to “go get popcorn” instead. I can’t find the popcorn, so I look for a car but ultimately cannot remember how I got there to begin with.
Later, I am a social worker with a fourteen-year-old girl who tells me how she’s fixed all the problems in her home life. Her story is convincing, so I leave to go to a conference. An African-American social worker and Ellen Muth give a presentation in which the black woman pretends to hate Ellen but as she moves her own student-desk, she pulls Ellen’s along as well. Ellen has a keyboard and plays self-composed music as their desks whirl around the room. “It’s a metaphor and a presentation at the same time,” I think (absurdly).
2002 – A commercial in the middle of my “regular” dreams, entirely from the perspective of a “camera,” 70’s soft-lens: A slow pan from the ceiling, out of focus, down to an oven door, shut, on a side angle. An oven-mitted hand reaches in from the right and draws down the door, another hand reaching in and pulling out a cookie tray. The shot freezes as chicken fingers are revealed on the tray, and a (deep) voiceover announces “None of these chicken fingers was found guilty in a court of law.” This happens two more times, with “Only three of these chicken fingers” found guilty on the second tray.
Friday, February 29, 2008
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
PHILISTINES
That's what these people are. Gah. I'll be surprised if I can even form a coherent sentence amid the sputtering.
I've had an evaluation report from a third job I took on, edited, by special editing staff at the DMR (now DDS). If they were good at being grammar-nazis, that would be one thing, but they are not. OH, how they are not!
I'd give you a precise example--in fact, I will, next time I have the "edited" report in front of me and haven't cast it away in disgust--but suffice it to say, it's terrible. And I mean TERRIBLE--correcting sentences that actually had meaning in English to sentences that do not, and never will.
As in: adding the conjunction "xxx; because, xxx" WHICH IS NEVER CORRECT and is even less correct in this case, if that's possible; using four-syllable words where a two-syllable one works just as well; ADDING THE PHRASE "IN ORDER TO" AS THOUGH THERE WERE A QUOTA OF "IN ORDER TOS" NEEDING TO BE FILLED.
OMG. WHAT IS THEIR PROBLEM. (That's not a question, really, and so doesn't require a question mark.)
Okay, deep breath. I think I can survive this, if only because they hold back some of your pay on this job until you send the report in (knowing that most people will end up never writing it, they say, but now I suspect it's because most people know what the "editors" will do to it), and because it's not, by any stretch of the most fertile imagination, a work of art.
Still: Philistines.
(While I search out exact details on the grammatical atrocities committed against my report, go here and be appalled by the photos of babies in weird-o outfits a la Anne Geddes, who's always freaked me out, and in baskets and whatnot--looking as shocked and horrified to be there as you are to see them there. I don't understand why anyone would hire this photographer on the basis of these photos, no matter what the Maritime Fall Fair Photo contest says.)
I've had an evaluation report from a third job I took on, edited, by special editing staff at the DMR (now DDS). If they were good at being grammar-nazis, that would be one thing, but they are not. OH, how they are not!
I'd give you a precise example--in fact, I will, next time I have the "edited" report in front of me and haven't cast it away in disgust--but suffice it to say, it's terrible. And I mean TERRIBLE--correcting sentences that actually had meaning in English to sentences that do not, and never will.
As in: adding the conjunction "xxx; because, xxx" WHICH IS NEVER CORRECT and is even less correct in this case, if that's possible; using four-syllable words where a two-syllable one works just as well; ADDING THE PHRASE "IN ORDER TO" AS THOUGH THERE WERE A QUOTA OF "IN ORDER TOS" NEEDING TO BE FILLED.
OMG. WHAT IS THEIR PROBLEM. (That's not a question, really, and so doesn't require a question mark.)
Okay, deep breath. I think I can survive this, if only because they hold back some of your pay on this job until you send the report in (knowing that most people will end up never writing it, they say, but now I suspect it's because most people know what the "editors" will do to it), and because it's not, by any stretch of the most fertile imagination, a work of art.
Still: Philistines.
(While I search out exact details on the grammatical atrocities committed against my report, go here and be appalled by the photos of babies in weird-o outfits a la Anne Geddes, who's always freaked me out, and in baskets and whatnot--looking as shocked and horrified to be there as you are to see them there. I don't understand why anyone would hire this photographer on the basis of these photos, no matter what the Maritime Fall Fair Photo contest says.)
It Killers Me Every Time
Fill in this blank:
Yeah, I know. But the answer, somehow, is "chest."
I suspect it's a clever joke.
Now they’re going to bed
And my stomach is sick
And it’s all in my head
But she’s touching his _______
Yeah, I know. But the answer, somehow, is "chest."
I suspect it's a clever joke.
Highly Cultured
I could be cultured, I think. I have potential.
But other than my ownership of a few Mozart CDs, there’s not much I can brag about beyond sheer potential. I haven’t been to the symphony in years, and even then, I went with free tickets and friends who thought “dressing up might be fun” (though it never is). I went to see Maynard Ferguson when he came to Southington in the 90s and scrunched myself up over the agony of the high notes his second trumpet was hitting (as a fellow trumpeter, I experienced his pain the way I imagine husbands experience sympathetic labor), but have not repeated the experience in the new millennium.
And yet, it’s not that I’ve had too little experience. I’ve been to plays, including a terrible version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream put on by the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-on-Avon. I’ve eaten fancy dinners out and remembered the rule about starting from the outside when selecting utensils. I’ve worn my share of eveningwear, despite its many encumbrances, and shucked my nylons at the end of the night like any debutante returning from a gala.
I’ve even faked, though exceedingly poorly, a British accent.
Why, then, do I remain the Eliza Doolittle to the cultured world’s Henry Higgins? Surely some of this high culture should have worn off on me as I partook of it. Surely I should have digested some of the many lessons offered me from, as it were, the silver spoon. And yet the reason I own I Pagliacci is that I heard Kelsey Grammar sing the aria in the guise of “Sideshow Bob” on The Simpsons.
I am an educated woman. Yet I would rather sit down in front of the DVD version of The Reduced Shakespeare Company’s Complete Works of William Shakespeare: Abridged, with a mini pizza and a bathrobe than do any of these “cultured” things.
It may be that I’m lazy, and that high culture activities — and “fancy” things in general — are more work than their popular culture counterparts. Perhaps I lack the strength of will, stamina or fortitude that sitting through Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights requires. Maybe it’s a lack of imagination that causes me to drift constantly away from Food and Wine’s “Lebanese Chicken Mixed Green Salad” and toward my two-dollar, heat-in-bag chana masala. It may be an unattractive stubbornness that makes me eschew makeup or earrings in favor of having the time it would take me to put them on, and proper etiquette in favor of practically no manners at all.
Calling me lazy, unimaginative, unmannered or stubborn (or, in a particularly nasty mood, unattractive) may seem like the obvious choice had I never attempted any of the activities I describe — except that I have done all of them. I have done them with and for my friends. The problem is not that these activities are intrinsically boring, but that they do not stand out — among the many options — as primarily social activities.
High culture, if it ever did, no longer lends itself to community. The purpose of a cocktail party seems to have evolved from “an intimate evening with friends”—"intimate" here meaning "very polite"—to “a networking opportunity.” The symphony hall and the playhouse, once the only places to see performances, have been replaced by the mosh-pitted concert hall, the movie theater, and increasingly, the home entertainment center. A night out, which may have once meant dinner and the foxtrot, has become “clubbing.” People are congregating elsewhere because the focus in leisure time is to be social, a fact not often taken into account when planning or executing “high culture” activities.
Where are the tailgating parties for the symphony? What provision have foxtrot aficionados made for large crowds with pop music sensibilities? When will gown makers design something that’s comfortable to “chill” in? Which playhouses allow viewers to clap or jeer or throw things at the action onstage as it happens? (Perhaps more importantly, where is the overpriced popcorn with extra butter ooze?)
I want to like these high culture activities — I do — but my first priority is sharing experiences and face-time with friends. Is it my fault that I don’t want to spend my leisure time in formalwear, staring straight ahead and not talking?
Perhaps it’s high culture’s fault for being so snotty and difficult to get along with, like the stuck-up cousin you’re forced to invite to your birthday party.
But give me a social reason to go, and I would. I might even enjoy myself. Underneath this casual exterior, after all, I have a high-class heart of gold; like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman, I’m just waiting for some john to pick me up and take me to the opera.
But other than my ownership of a few Mozart CDs, there’s not much I can brag about beyond sheer potential. I haven’t been to the symphony in years, and even then, I went with free tickets and friends who thought “dressing up might be fun” (though it never is). I went to see Maynard Ferguson when he came to Southington in the 90s and scrunched myself up over the agony of the high notes his second trumpet was hitting (as a fellow trumpeter, I experienced his pain the way I imagine husbands experience sympathetic labor), but have not repeated the experience in the new millennium.
And yet, it’s not that I’ve had too little experience. I’ve been to plays, including a terrible version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream put on by the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-on-Avon. I’ve eaten fancy dinners out and remembered the rule about starting from the outside when selecting utensils. I’ve worn my share of eveningwear, despite its many encumbrances, and shucked my nylons at the end of the night like any debutante returning from a gala.
I’ve even faked, though exceedingly poorly, a British accent.
Why, then, do I remain the Eliza Doolittle to the cultured world’s Henry Higgins? Surely some of this high culture should have worn off on me as I partook of it. Surely I should have digested some of the many lessons offered me from, as it were, the silver spoon. And yet the reason I own I Pagliacci is that I heard Kelsey Grammar sing the aria in the guise of “Sideshow Bob” on The Simpsons.
I am an educated woman. Yet I would rather sit down in front of the DVD version of The Reduced Shakespeare Company’s Complete Works of William Shakespeare: Abridged, with a mini pizza and a bathrobe than do any of these “cultured” things.
It may be that I’m lazy, and that high culture activities — and “fancy” things in general — are more work than their popular culture counterparts. Perhaps I lack the strength of will, stamina or fortitude that sitting through Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights requires. Maybe it’s a lack of imagination that causes me to drift constantly away from Food and Wine’s “Lebanese Chicken Mixed Green Salad” and toward my two-dollar, heat-in-bag chana masala. It may be an unattractive stubbornness that makes me eschew makeup or earrings in favor of having the time it would take me to put them on, and proper etiquette in favor of practically no manners at all.
Calling me lazy, unimaginative, unmannered or stubborn (or, in a particularly nasty mood, unattractive) may seem like the obvious choice had I never attempted any of the activities I describe — except that I have done all of them. I have done them with and for my friends. The problem is not that these activities are intrinsically boring, but that they do not stand out — among the many options — as primarily social activities.
High culture, if it ever did, no longer lends itself to community. The purpose of a cocktail party seems to have evolved from “an intimate evening with friends”—"intimate" here meaning "very polite"—to “a networking opportunity.” The symphony hall and the playhouse, once the only places to see performances, have been replaced by the mosh-pitted concert hall, the movie theater, and increasingly, the home entertainment center. A night out, which may have once meant dinner and the foxtrot, has become “clubbing.” People are congregating elsewhere because the focus in leisure time is to be social, a fact not often taken into account when planning or executing “high culture” activities.
Where are the tailgating parties for the symphony? What provision have foxtrot aficionados made for large crowds with pop music sensibilities? When will gown makers design something that’s comfortable to “chill” in? Which playhouses allow viewers to clap or jeer or throw things at the action onstage as it happens? (Perhaps more importantly, where is the overpriced popcorn with extra butter ooze?)
I want to like these high culture activities — I do — but my first priority is sharing experiences and face-time with friends. Is it my fault that I don’t want to spend my leisure time in formalwear, staring straight ahead and not talking?
Perhaps it’s high culture’s fault for being so snotty and difficult to get along with, like the stuck-up cousin you’re forced to invite to your birthday party.
But give me a social reason to go, and I would. I might even enjoy myself. Underneath this casual exterior, after all, I have a high-class heart of gold; like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman, I’m just waiting for some john to pick me up and take me to the opera.
Monday, February 25, 2008
The email arrives.
Dear alicia
think you for the Email .
yes I did have funn wih carilin.
and im sorry i mist pizza hut with you .
Well I hop you Get this email
alicia your the best
from j----
I hop you Get this.
by alicia
j----
j----
Well, A Person Can Dream
Observed: A teal Toyota Celica GT, CT license plate, with the word "MUSTANG" spray-painted on the rear bumper in burgundy.
My job.
My girl and I went out to find a fax machine this morning, since I needed to send in my timesheet. We went to Staples in Southington and she stood by as I struggled to understand the machine. Two attempts later, it printed out a sheet announcing the number was busy, and we stopped by the cashier to ask for an employment application.
“They’re all online,” the cashier says. “We don’t have any paper copies in the store.”
“We’ll go to the library and fill it out,” I say to my girl, and we leave. I turn right out of the parking lot, thinking it will be faster, but am wrong. I turn on the radio to mask the mild panic coming over me as we get to the Bristol line.
“That’s an elevator tower,” I tell her, pointing to the Otis Elevator building. “They build elevators there.” But the knowledge doesn’t help me to know where we are. Eventually, I figure, we’ll have to get to Route 6 or 72, and I can get to where we’re going from there.
We do, and I do, and we stop at the library to check our email. She opens an email I sent her last week, and turns to me.
“How do I write back?” she asks, and I point out the “reply.”
When she’s finished writing, she tells me to check my email, but her reply hasn’t arrived yet. We leave for a different library, one with a pay-by-page fax machine.
“Let’s go for a walk first,” she says when we arrive, remembering that I had said we would start out by walking when she got into the car this morning. This is significant—it means that whichever personality had been listening to my morning itinerary had resurfaced, and was willing, even eager, to listen.
My girl has been diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder (formerly Multiple Personality Disorder) and Schitzoaffective Disorder, meaning that she cycles through personalities, and talks to people who aren’t there. It’s a difficult and, I think, atypical combination. The medications she takes slur her speech and cause her to drool, a fact which frustrates her, since she can still understand what it was like before. She remembers when people could understand her, read her writing, relate; I struggle to hear the first time but find myself asking “What was that?” more often that she’d like. Still, when her pleasant selves are out, she is patient and even affectionate. Today she has only ignored me once, and I can usually snap her out of this behavior by saying her given name.
Every moment is new for her. We walk for twenty minutes, and I can repeat myself four times without her noticing. I make sure to point out where we are and what we’re doing every five minutes or so, to keep her oriented; I can’t tell when she’s switched, and she most often replies with “Oh—I didn’t know that!” or “I forgot,” the hallmarks of what I think are two separate personalities.
I am talking to myself as we walk, whispering, as though having a conversation with someone who’s not there. I catch myself doing it and half-laugh. This is a good sign. It means I am comfortable. But it reminds me of what Josh, another job coach, said of a male client I used to work with: “He’s crazy, you know that, right? He’s absolutely nuts. He talks to himself, making those little noises? That’s not the Touretts.” I had let this slide by without comment, declining to admit to my own one-sided rambling.
My girl is walking beside me, her arm slipped through the crook of my elbow. We reach the corner and a dump truck rumbles by, a yard from where we stand. Her grip tightens like a blood pressure cuff around my arm; I feel both protective and protected.
“You’re my best friend,” she says. “I know sometimes we get on each other’s nerves, but you’re my best friend.”
“Everyone gets on each other’s nerves sometimes,” I say.
“I get on your nerves sometimes?”
“Only when you’re ignoring me. That’s frustrating.”
“Yeah, see. I get on your nerves. You look young.”
“I’m older than you,” I say.
“You’re in your twenties?”
“Yes.”
“See? You’re younger.”
“No, I’m at least three years older than you. You’re in your twenties, too.”
“Oh, yeah. I want your job,” she says.
“You want my job? Taking yourself around every day?”
“Yeah, it would be kind of fun. Going to the park, to the mall…No smoking, though. I saw a show on TV about smoking yesterday. Do you smoke?”
“No.”
“Good. Don’t start.”
“I won’t. You can get diseases from smoking.”
“I didn’t know it was that bad,” she says.
We return to the library, I fax my timesheet, and she eats her lunch. I check for the email.
“Nothing yet,” I say. “How was your lunch?”
She gives me the thumbs up, one purple-painted fingernail bending backward, farther than mine could go. I had asked her why she painted only one hand, and she had said she couldn’t do the other hand; I neglect to ask why one of her “friends” didn’t help. It’s best never to acknowledge their existence—or non-existence. Instead, when she speaks to them, I step into the space where they stand and ask her a question. More often than not, this works. Today, as most days when we are alone and job-hunting, her friends do not come out.
She gets up and chooses a magazine, then sits in the comfortable chairs that make up the reading area at this library. I can see that she’s falling asleep but will let her, for now.
We will look up the Staples online application later, and I am hoping that it does not include the personality test that CVS’s application did. It was twenty pages long, and impossible to decide what to put for each question: Should I answer for her? For which version of her? Could she understand the consequences of answering inconsistently, insufficiently, without an awareness of being judged? They’ll never call her back, if the test is worth anything as an indicator of mental disorder. Frustrating.
What we really need is a Flowers for Algernon-type situation — a mom-and-pop shop that will take her on out of loyalty and personal interest, where she can be herselves. What we’ll most likely get is a placement in a corporation required by law to hire a certain percentage of disabled employees. She’ll come up against the inflexible rules of these types of companies and be let go, in the end, though with the kind of corporate regret that always accompanies firing someone who might consider suing.
And we’ll be here, doing this, again.
“They’re all online,” the cashier says. “We don’t have any paper copies in the store.”
“We’ll go to the library and fill it out,” I say to my girl, and we leave. I turn right out of the parking lot, thinking it will be faster, but am wrong. I turn on the radio to mask the mild panic coming over me as we get to the Bristol line.
“That’s an elevator tower,” I tell her, pointing to the Otis Elevator building. “They build elevators there.” But the knowledge doesn’t help me to know where we are. Eventually, I figure, we’ll have to get to Route 6 or 72, and I can get to where we’re going from there.
We do, and I do, and we stop at the library to check our email. She opens an email I sent her last week, and turns to me.
“How do I write back?” she asks, and I point out the “reply.”
When she’s finished writing, she tells me to check my email, but her reply hasn’t arrived yet. We leave for a different library, one with a pay-by-page fax machine.
“Let’s go for a walk first,” she says when we arrive, remembering that I had said we would start out by walking when she got into the car this morning. This is significant—it means that whichever personality had been listening to my morning itinerary had resurfaced, and was willing, even eager, to listen.
My girl has been diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder (formerly Multiple Personality Disorder) and Schitzoaffective Disorder, meaning that she cycles through personalities, and talks to people who aren’t there. It’s a difficult and, I think, atypical combination. The medications she takes slur her speech and cause her to drool, a fact which frustrates her, since she can still understand what it was like before. She remembers when people could understand her, read her writing, relate; I struggle to hear the first time but find myself asking “What was that?” more often that she’d like. Still, when her pleasant selves are out, she is patient and even affectionate. Today she has only ignored me once, and I can usually snap her out of this behavior by saying her given name.
Every moment is new for her. We walk for twenty minutes, and I can repeat myself four times without her noticing. I make sure to point out where we are and what we’re doing every five minutes or so, to keep her oriented; I can’t tell when she’s switched, and she most often replies with “Oh—I didn’t know that!” or “I forgot,” the hallmarks of what I think are two separate personalities.
I am talking to myself as we walk, whispering, as though having a conversation with someone who’s not there. I catch myself doing it and half-laugh. This is a good sign. It means I am comfortable. But it reminds me of what Josh, another job coach, said of a male client I used to work with: “He’s crazy, you know that, right? He’s absolutely nuts. He talks to himself, making those little noises? That’s not the Touretts.” I had let this slide by without comment, declining to admit to my own one-sided rambling.
My girl is walking beside me, her arm slipped through the crook of my elbow. We reach the corner and a dump truck rumbles by, a yard from where we stand. Her grip tightens like a blood pressure cuff around my arm; I feel both protective and protected.
“You’re my best friend,” she says. “I know sometimes we get on each other’s nerves, but you’re my best friend.”
“Everyone gets on each other’s nerves sometimes,” I say.
“I get on your nerves sometimes?”
“Only when you’re ignoring me. That’s frustrating.”
“Yeah, see. I get on your nerves. You look young.”
“I’m older than you,” I say.
“You’re in your twenties?”
“Yes.”
“See? You’re younger.”
“No, I’m at least three years older than you. You’re in your twenties, too.”
“Oh, yeah. I want your job,” she says.
“You want my job? Taking yourself around every day?”
“Yeah, it would be kind of fun. Going to the park, to the mall…No smoking, though. I saw a show on TV about smoking yesterday. Do you smoke?”
“No.”
“Good. Don’t start.”
“I won’t. You can get diseases from smoking.”
“I didn’t know it was that bad,” she says.
We return to the library, I fax my timesheet, and she eats her lunch. I check for the email.
“Nothing yet,” I say. “How was your lunch?”
She gives me the thumbs up, one purple-painted fingernail bending backward, farther than mine could go. I had asked her why she painted only one hand, and she had said she couldn’t do the other hand; I neglect to ask why one of her “friends” didn’t help. It’s best never to acknowledge their existence—or non-existence. Instead, when she speaks to them, I step into the space where they stand and ask her a question. More often than not, this works. Today, as most days when we are alone and job-hunting, her friends do not come out.
She gets up and chooses a magazine, then sits in the comfortable chairs that make up the reading area at this library. I can see that she’s falling asleep but will let her, for now.
We will look up the Staples online application later, and I am hoping that it does not include the personality test that CVS’s application did. It was twenty pages long, and impossible to decide what to put for each question: Should I answer for her? For which version of her? Could she understand the consequences of answering inconsistently, insufficiently, without an awareness of being judged? They’ll never call her back, if the test is worth anything as an indicator of mental disorder. Frustrating.
What we really need is a Flowers for Algernon-type situation — a mom-and-pop shop that will take her on out of loyalty and personal interest, where she can be herselves. What we’ll most likely get is a placement in a corporation required by law to hire a certain percentage of disabled employees. She’ll come up against the inflexible rules of these types of companies and be let go, in the end, though with the kind of corporate regret that always accompanies firing someone who might consider suing.
And we’ll be here, doing this, again.
Sunday, February 24, 2008
Every Breath You Take (I've Been Watching You)
I am cyber-stalking you, and I know all your secrets.
(Unless you’re someone I’ve never met, in which case, welcome to my blog.)
I found your secret other family in Nashua, and photos of that time you sacrificed 14 Guatemalan children to the Incan sun god, for instance.
Wait to hear from me, re: instructions for bribe drop-off.
But seriously, I did a bunch of practice runs for internet research I plan on attempting, a few weeks ago. First I looked up those of you I know by sight online, but that was too easy; I moved on to people I didn’t know as well, and though it was indeed more difficult and thus theoretically more helpful, the whole process of stalking-people-for-practice left me feeling embarrassed—so much so that I didn’t tell anyone that I had done it. (Until now.)
It has occurred to me recently that though “practice stalking” is a worthless and dorky activity, enlisting help in finding the actual information that I want, may not be. So I’m going to tell you what I’m looking for, and if you have interest in solving my mystery, you can help directly instead of being the unwitting victims of my research. (Except for the ones with the secret family and the Guatemalan sacrifices. You still owe me hush money.)
Like everyone, I have a father. Like many people, I don’t know much of anything about him; I last saw him twenty years ago, in Baltimore, in one of two lifetime visits, where I also met my paternal grandmother (didn’t like her much) and great-grandmother (loved her—lots of cats, and the same birthday as me…but she was 78 at the time, so is probably not still living).
My father, whose name is Thomas W. Magaha (I think his middle name might be “Wilton”), married another woman and had two other daughters after me, named Deana and Rachel. (I can’t guarantee the spelling of “Deana.”) I don’t know the name of the woman he married—he was never married to my mom, and my last name is her maiden name, which I’ve always thought was a nice little matriarchal twist. There’s no telling whether his ex-wife would have taken his last name or not, or whether they were even ever officially married. The only thing I know about my father is that he chewed tobacco, though what good this information will do or whether it’s even still accurate or not, I can’t guess.
I would like to know something about these people, but without necessarily contacting them.
If you come up with anything, let me know.
(Unless you’re someone I’ve never met, in which case, welcome to my blog.)
I found your secret other family in Nashua, and photos of that time you sacrificed 14 Guatemalan children to the Incan sun god, for instance.
Wait to hear from me, re: instructions for bribe drop-off.
But seriously, I did a bunch of practice runs for internet research I plan on attempting, a few weeks ago. First I looked up those of you I know by sight online, but that was too easy; I moved on to people I didn’t know as well, and though it was indeed more difficult and thus theoretically more helpful, the whole process of stalking-people-for-practice left me feeling embarrassed—so much so that I didn’t tell anyone that I had done it. (Until now.)
It has occurred to me recently that though “practice stalking” is a worthless and dorky activity, enlisting help in finding the actual information that I want, may not be. So I’m going to tell you what I’m looking for, and if you have interest in solving my mystery, you can help directly instead of being the unwitting victims of my research. (Except for the ones with the secret family and the Guatemalan sacrifices. You still owe me hush money.)
Like everyone, I have a father. Like many people, I don’t know much of anything about him; I last saw him twenty years ago, in Baltimore, in one of two lifetime visits, where I also met my paternal grandmother (didn’t like her much) and great-grandmother (loved her—lots of cats, and the same birthday as me…but she was 78 at the time, so is probably not still living).
My father, whose name is Thomas W. Magaha (I think his middle name might be “Wilton”), married another woman and had two other daughters after me, named Deana and Rachel. (I can’t guarantee the spelling of “Deana.”) I don’t know the name of the woman he married—he was never married to my mom, and my last name is her maiden name, which I’ve always thought was a nice little matriarchal twist. There’s no telling whether his ex-wife would have taken his last name or not, or whether they were even ever officially married. The only thing I know about my father is that he chewed tobacco, though what good this information will do or whether it’s even still accurate or not, I can’t guess.
I would like to know something about these people, but without necessarily contacting them.
If you come up with anything, let me know.
Cheryl Eubitch
As I watched out of my third-floor window in Columbia Heights, Washington DC, July, approximately 1 a.m.:
Young woman, maybe mid-20s, shrieking out third floor window: Cheryl! Cheryl, you bitch! Cheryl, go away!
Another young woman, presumably Cheryl, stands just off the curb in the street, waiting.
YW: Cheryl, I told you to go!
Cheryl stands there, steps up onto the curb.
YW leaves window, curtains flailing behind her, and appears in first floor doorway.
YW: Cheryl, I told you to go! [Attempting to get a hold of herself, but speaking loudly through gritted teeth] Cheryl. We all talked about this. You have all of your stuff. It’s right here. [Gestures to piles of stuff on porch]
Cheryl says something too quiet to hear.
YW: No, you can’t come in. This is all your stuff. Cheryl! You’re unbelievable! You aren’t coming in!
Cheryl stands on sidewalk, says something too quiet to hear.
YW: Cheryl, you’re such a bitch! You bitch! No! No, you can’t come in! This is all your stuff, Cheryl! It’s right here! [Kicks blanket]
Cheryl puts a hand on chain-link fence, says something too quiet to hear.
YW: CHERYL! GO AWAY! HERE’S YOUR STUFF!
YW picks up blankets and throws them over the side of the porch, into the bushes.
YW: HERE’S YOUR STUFF!
YW throws a box out into the front yard. Cheryl takes a few steps down the street, puts her hand to the top of her head, says something too quiet to hear.
YW: CHERYL! YOU BITCH! GO AWAY! THIS IS ALL YOUR STUFF! THERE ISN’T ANY MORE!
Cheryl begins to walk away, down the street.
YW slams door, appears again in third floor window: DON’T YOU COME BACK, YOU BITCH! THAT’S ALL YOUR STUFF! [Slams window.]
Young woman, maybe mid-20s, shrieking out third floor window: Cheryl! Cheryl, you bitch! Cheryl, go away!
Another young woman, presumably Cheryl, stands just off the curb in the street, waiting.
YW: Cheryl, I told you to go!
Cheryl stands there, steps up onto the curb.
YW leaves window, curtains flailing behind her, and appears in first floor doorway.
YW: Cheryl, I told you to go! [Attempting to get a hold of herself, but speaking loudly through gritted teeth] Cheryl. We all talked about this. You have all of your stuff. It’s right here. [Gestures to piles of stuff on porch]
Cheryl says something too quiet to hear.
YW: No, you can’t come in. This is all your stuff. Cheryl! You’re unbelievable! You aren’t coming in!
Cheryl stands on sidewalk, says something too quiet to hear.
YW: Cheryl, you’re such a bitch! You bitch! No! No, you can’t come in! This is all your stuff, Cheryl! It’s right here! [Kicks blanket]
Cheryl puts a hand on chain-link fence, says something too quiet to hear.
YW: CHERYL! GO AWAY! HERE’S YOUR STUFF!
YW picks up blankets and throws them over the side of the porch, into the bushes.
YW: HERE’S YOUR STUFF!
YW throws a box out into the front yard. Cheryl takes a few steps down the street, puts her hand to the top of her head, says something too quiet to hear.
YW: CHERYL! YOU BITCH! GO AWAY! THIS IS ALL YOUR STUFF! THERE ISN’T ANY MORE!
Cheryl begins to walk away, down the street.
YW slams door, appears again in third floor window: DON’T YOU COME BACK, YOU BITCH! THAT’S ALL YOUR STUFF! [Slams window.]
President Bush: God's Choice
Evangelicals have been claiming since day one of our current commander in chief’s presidency—and even before—that President George W. Bush is God’s choice for the U.S. Are they right? Let’s look at the evidence.
Evangelicals spoke up loudly when the vote recount went on for week after week in 2000, praying and saying that Bush would sit in the White House come Jan. 20, 2001. They cheered just as loudly when the Supreme Court, in a landmark decision—especially significant because the ability to make it was apparently self-bestowed—declared George W. Bush the winner. Surely, God was listening.
Finally, a president for us, they thought. Now we can stop being persecuted and get on with living godly lives. And they went home and dusted off their fetus-picture placards and “God Hates Fags” signs, ready to go back to work.
It seemed, then, that the evangelicals and fundamentalists left the presiding to the president, content to let him, and those fat cats down in Washington, worry about the running of the country and the world. President Bush took vacations. (But that made sense, because who didn’t love Texas?)
Then Sept. 11 arrived, freaking everyone out, not least of all the evangelicals. Jerry Falwell commented on the legacy of feminism, among other factors, that led to the fall of the towers. Evangelical leaders decried the immorality of the country and the evil religion of Islam. Suddenly there was a lot more shouting to be done, and a lot more finger-pointing. When they weren’t busy consuming, consuming, consuming (because otherwise, the terrorists would win), evangelicals took on many of the responsibilities of assigning blame. The rest of the country huddled together in fear and shock.
Through it all, President Bush was the man of the hour. Even Democrats had to agree that in a time of crisis, President Bush gave a pretty good speech.
And from a pulpit, no less, thought the evangelicals.
This was sweet, sweet vindication. President Bush, faced with a terrorist attack on U.S. soil, had risen to the occasion and proven God right. Surely everyone would see that.
Time passed, and Al Qaeda operatives were still at large. The war in Afghanistan began and ended. President Bush, God’s choice, told the U.S. that war with Iraq was necessary, and evangelicals backed him. Saddam Hussein was found and executed. Still, the war went on.
President Bush continued to prove God right. Surely, surely everyone was seeing that.
In the meantime, Democrats complained about the environment (Bush refused to adhere to the Kyoto Protocol and wanted to drill in ANWR), the reliance on oil (cars run less efficiently in the U.S. than in China, and Republicans resist legislation requiring minimum mpg for even the largest SUVs), the economy (a record deficit replaced the surplus from the end of the Clinton era), taxes (decreased for the rich), education (No Child Left Behind creating only paperwork, not progress), the erosion of freedoms (the Patriot Act apparently allowing phone-tapping of citizens, gag-ordering of presidential aids, and waterboarding of prisoners) and the United States’ global image (international goodwill destroyed by unilateral action in Iraq on the basis of bad intelligence contradicted by that of the UN). They just couldn’t stop complaining, it seemed. What was their problem?
Americans re-elected Bush, anyway.
Then economists began to use the “R” word. Consuming was no longer the answer it had seemed to be—it wasn’t helping. And there was other evidence that the terrorists were winning. Americans were still getting killed in Iraq, being underinsured, and worrying about what to do in their old age. Maybe the Democrats had a point.
The evangelicals thought back to the time they had asked God for a leader, and remembered how they had received Bush.
Surely, they thought, concern beginning to furrow their brows, surely Bush was God’s choice?
Judge for yourself:
I Samuel 8:4-5, 10-19, 22
“So all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel [the prophet] at Ramah. They said to him… ‘now appoint us a king to lead us, such as all the other nations have.’”
“Samuel told all the words of the Lord to the people who were asking him for a king. He said, ‘This is what the king who will reign over you will do: He will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses, and they will run in front of his chariots. Some he will assign to be commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and others to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and still others to make weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves and give them to his attendants. He will take a tenth of your grain and of your vintage and give it to his officials and attendants. Your menservants and maidservants and the best of your cattle and donkeys he will take for his own use. He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his slaves. When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, and the Lord will not answer you in that day.’
But the people refused to listen to Samuel.”
“The Lord answered, ‘Listen to them and give them a king.’”
Evangelicals spoke up loudly when the vote recount went on for week after week in 2000, praying and saying that Bush would sit in the White House come Jan. 20, 2001. They cheered just as loudly when the Supreme Court, in a landmark decision—especially significant because the ability to make it was apparently self-bestowed—declared George W. Bush the winner. Surely, God was listening.
Finally, a president for us, they thought. Now we can stop being persecuted and get on with living godly lives. And they went home and dusted off their fetus-picture placards and “God Hates Fags” signs, ready to go back to work.
It seemed, then, that the evangelicals and fundamentalists left the presiding to the president, content to let him, and those fat cats down in Washington, worry about the running of the country and the world. President Bush took vacations. (But that made sense, because who didn’t love Texas?)
Then Sept. 11 arrived, freaking everyone out, not least of all the evangelicals. Jerry Falwell commented on the legacy of feminism, among other factors, that led to the fall of the towers. Evangelical leaders decried the immorality of the country and the evil religion of Islam. Suddenly there was a lot more shouting to be done, and a lot more finger-pointing. When they weren’t busy consuming, consuming, consuming (because otherwise, the terrorists would win), evangelicals took on many of the responsibilities of assigning blame. The rest of the country huddled together in fear and shock.
Through it all, President Bush was the man of the hour. Even Democrats had to agree that in a time of crisis, President Bush gave a pretty good speech.
And from a pulpit, no less, thought the evangelicals.
This was sweet, sweet vindication. President Bush, faced with a terrorist attack on U.S. soil, had risen to the occasion and proven God right. Surely everyone would see that.
Time passed, and Al Qaeda operatives were still at large. The war in Afghanistan began and ended. President Bush, God’s choice, told the U.S. that war with Iraq was necessary, and evangelicals backed him. Saddam Hussein was found and executed. Still, the war went on.
President Bush continued to prove God right. Surely, surely everyone was seeing that.
In the meantime, Democrats complained about the environment (Bush refused to adhere to the Kyoto Protocol and wanted to drill in ANWR), the reliance on oil (cars run less efficiently in the U.S. than in China, and Republicans resist legislation requiring minimum mpg for even the largest SUVs), the economy (a record deficit replaced the surplus from the end of the Clinton era), taxes (decreased for the rich), education (No Child Left Behind creating only paperwork, not progress), the erosion of freedoms (the Patriot Act apparently allowing phone-tapping of citizens, gag-ordering of presidential aids, and waterboarding of prisoners) and the United States’ global image (international goodwill destroyed by unilateral action in Iraq on the basis of bad intelligence contradicted by that of the UN). They just couldn’t stop complaining, it seemed. What was their problem?
Americans re-elected Bush, anyway.
Then economists began to use the “R” word. Consuming was no longer the answer it had seemed to be—it wasn’t helping. And there was other evidence that the terrorists were winning. Americans were still getting killed in Iraq, being underinsured, and worrying about what to do in their old age. Maybe the Democrats had a point.
The evangelicals thought back to the time they had asked God for a leader, and remembered how they had received Bush.
Surely, they thought, concern beginning to furrow their brows, surely Bush was God’s choice?
Judge for yourself:
I Samuel 8:4-5, 10-19, 22
“So all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel [the prophet] at Ramah. They said to him… ‘now appoint us a king to lead us, such as all the other nations have.’”
“Samuel told all the words of the Lord to the people who were asking him for a king. He said, ‘This is what the king who will reign over you will do: He will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses, and they will run in front of his chariots. Some he will assign to be commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and others to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and still others to make weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves and give them to his attendants. He will take a tenth of your grain and of your vintage and give it to his officials and attendants. Your menservants and maidservants and the best of your cattle and donkeys he will take for his own use. He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his slaves. When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, and the Lord will not answer you in that day.’
But the people refused to listen to Samuel.”
“The Lord answered, ‘Listen to them and give them a king.’”
The Art of Shame
I am home, after breakfast out with my mother and brother, because it is her birthday. The dread I had felt before—because our last phone conversation had been cut short by her sullen “Fine, whatever,” when I had said I didn’t know when I’d be stopping by next, and because her sullenness wears off of her but not off of me—dissipated during the pleasant breakfast, only to be replaced by a new one.
My grandmother went last week to be with her nephew, who tried to commit suicide for the third time on Valentine’s Day. His wife is leaving him and he can’t imagine his life without her. She wanted to pray the demons of death away from him, she said, but wasn’t sure what responsibility he would have to keep them away—if they came back, they would return with seven more, according to Scripture. She called the pastor to find out. I didn’t listen for the answer.
Grandpa is home by himself this week, as he was last week. He’s nearing eighty, nearing the point when his irritation seems more confused and irrational and his head for numbers has begun failing him. I save him a seat in church every week, finding this the only connection we can establish—the only connection we’ve ever established. I should go sit with him, this lonely week especially; I should be leaving right now.
I can’t. I can’t wish to go. I can’t wish to sit and sing and listen, though these are my family. Even for my family, I can’t go.
I sit until the time the service starts, in my apartment, justifying myself to a god I know must have been an invention. I can’t do this, either. I get up, collect my things, and go to the car.
Anyway, Mom will be watching out the window of her house a block away, waiting to see my blue Geo pass by and turn left. Sometimes she calls me just to see where I’m going.
It would be an offense to avoid her on her birthday, and the gift I ordered didn’t come on time, so I’m already one behind on her internal scorecard. Church is a reason to be away from her, something she accepted about me a long time ago, and I can’t spend time with her now; I’m too pensive, too inward, and this is something she has never accepted. My week has been spent in this state, thoughtfully, and I have relished time spent away from requirements.
Today is a day of requirements. I start my car and pull out.
Maybe I will go somewhere else, I think. Maybe I’ll stop and never make it to church. I’ll tell Grandpa I went to a different service, or that it was Mom’s birthday. Mom will think I went to church. I’ll stay hidden, safe. I’ll be myself, not responsible for anyone else.
I sigh.
I pull onto West Main St, hoping to be brave enough to pull into the Starbucks near the strip mall, though I hate Starbucks. I prepare to turn, but can’t—perhaps I can go somewhere else, take a walk or a hike or go to the park, so I continue.
At the intersection where I must turn to get to church, I do, exhaling in frustration. Grandpa might be at the service already. He might be trying to save me a seat. I can’t stand to think about this.
I try to turn away but fail, and arrive at the parking lot of the sprawling contemporary warehouse-style building that used to be a New England brick Swedish Baptist church.
If there are no parking spaces, I don’t have to stay. I bargain with god and myself as I always have, superstitious because of guilt.
I pull around the first leg of the parking lot, seeing a half-space where snow had been pushed back, but not enough. God can’t expect me to park in that: so far, so good.
Around the corner, there’s a space right near the front.
Shit, I think, but don’t pull in.
I go around to the front of the building, thinking to look for Grandpa’s car. He may have gone to the earlier service, actually, leaving me almost completely guilt-free. There’s another space right at the front.
Shit.
But I don’t pull in, again, and I don’t pull into a third one. As I am turning out of the parking lot, I see what I think might be Grandpa’s car in my side mirror.
Fuck. But I don’t turn around. I turn out, away, others pulling in, probably assuming that I had gone to the earlier service. This is important to me, that they think so. It is important that they not know.
Maybe I don’t hate secrets. Maybe I just have too many of them to keep, I think.
I drive toward Berlin center, thinking the library might open at noon on Sundays, that I might sit there until church would be over. It doesn’t open until 1, and it’s only 11:30 now. I turn around, though I wish I were driving away, anywhere flat and clear and fast—toward Pennsylvania, maybe, and past, into the plains, Nebraska, Utah. But I have work tomorrow, and it’s my mother’s birthday, and anyway, I don’t have the money for that sort of thing. I drive into New Britain.
I pass the road that would have taken me over the hill we rode the wagon down, when it was just me and Mom and one brother and we walked from our house to Laura’s in Newington. I pass the funeral parlor that had outraged me as a child, because it replaced a stand of trees that had punctuated the gas stations and auto-body shops of South Main St. I pass the Tae Kwon Do studio where my then-best-friend Kelly had taken classes and earned bruises that I envied. I pass Buell St., the first place I can remember living—number 49, third floor—where our Polish landlord would give us maroon-dyed eggs for Easter, which we would hide in the bottom of our baskets. I am driving toward the center of town, hoping to be soothed by the echoes of how I used to feel and be but knowing I will not find what I’m looking for. I turn away before I can be proven right.
As I pull onto the highway, headed back home, it occurs to me that I had never decided to go to church or not to go; I only drifted, struggling with myself until it was too late to decide anything.
How many decisions have I avoided?
I decide to go to the Starbucks in Southington.
I order a “large hot chocolate,” a small rebellion against the ubiquitous, commercial presence of a coffeeshop that warps people’s language into “tall, grande, and venti.” This is not enough to justify my presence here, but corporate guilt is familiar to me, and comfortingly universal. I will not use their internet—I will go to the Southington library and sit upstairs, at the table where the strange girls accosted me. I will stay for one hour, maybe one and a half, and I will purge myself of this wounded self-immolation.
I will buy my mother a pre-made birthday cake that will have to defrost for an hour, and I will return to her house as my youngest brother gets off work.
This will be your spiritual act of worship.
I will call my grandfather and explain that I did not go to church, and ask how he is. He will tell me about coupons he’s clipped and meals he’s eaten with male friends over the week, and give me the update on Grandma and her nephew, and he will kindly end the conversation after less than ten minutes.
This will be your reasonable act of worship.
I will love other things more than certainty and shame. I am trying. I will try.
My grandmother went last week to be with her nephew, who tried to commit suicide for the third time on Valentine’s Day. His wife is leaving him and he can’t imagine his life without her. She wanted to pray the demons of death away from him, she said, but wasn’t sure what responsibility he would have to keep them away—if they came back, they would return with seven more, according to Scripture. She called the pastor to find out. I didn’t listen for the answer.
Grandpa is home by himself this week, as he was last week. He’s nearing eighty, nearing the point when his irritation seems more confused and irrational and his head for numbers has begun failing him. I save him a seat in church every week, finding this the only connection we can establish—the only connection we’ve ever established. I should go sit with him, this lonely week especially; I should be leaving right now.
I can’t. I can’t wish to go. I can’t wish to sit and sing and listen, though these are my family. Even for my family, I can’t go.
I sit until the time the service starts, in my apartment, justifying myself to a god I know must have been an invention. I can’t do this, either. I get up, collect my things, and go to the car.
Anyway, Mom will be watching out the window of her house a block away, waiting to see my blue Geo pass by and turn left. Sometimes she calls me just to see where I’m going.
It would be an offense to avoid her on her birthday, and the gift I ordered didn’t come on time, so I’m already one behind on her internal scorecard. Church is a reason to be away from her, something she accepted about me a long time ago, and I can’t spend time with her now; I’m too pensive, too inward, and this is something she has never accepted. My week has been spent in this state, thoughtfully, and I have relished time spent away from requirements.
Today is a day of requirements. I start my car and pull out.
Maybe I will go somewhere else, I think. Maybe I’ll stop and never make it to church. I’ll tell Grandpa I went to a different service, or that it was Mom’s birthday. Mom will think I went to church. I’ll stay hidden, safe. I’ll be myself, not responsible for anyone else.
I sigh.
I pull onto West Main St, hoping to be brave enough to pull into the Starbucks near the strip mall, though I hate Starbucks. I prepare to turn, but can’t—perhaps I can go somewhere else, take a walk or a hike or go to the park, so I continue.
At the intersection where I must turn to get to church, I do, exhaling in frustration. Grandpa might be at the service already. He might be trying to save me a seat. I can’t stand to think about this.
I try to turn away but fail, and arrive at the parking lot of the sprawling contemporary warehouse-style building that used to be a New England brick Swedish Baptist church.
If there are no parking spaces, I don’t have to stay. I bargain with god and myself as I always have, superstitious because of guilt.
I pull around the first leg of the parking lot, seeing a half-space where snow had been pushed back, but not enough. God can’t expect me to park in that: so far, so good.
Around the corner, there’s a space right near the front.
Shit, I think, but don’t pull in.
I go around to the front of the building, thinking to look for Grandpa’s car. He may have gone to the earlier service, actually, leaving me almost completely guilt-free. There’s another space right at the front.
Shit.
But I don’t pull in, again, and I don’t pull into a third one. As I am turning out of the parking lot, I see what I think might be Grandpa’s car in my side mirror.
Fuck. But I don’t turn around. I turn out, away, others pulling in, probably assuming that I had gone to the earlier service. This is important to me, that they think so. It is important that they not know.
Maybe I don’t hate secrets. Maybe I just have too many of them to keep, I think.
I drive toward Berlin center, thinking the library might open at noon on Sundays, that I might sit there until church would be over. It doesn’t open until 1, and it’s only 11:30 now. I turn around, though I wish I were driving away, anywhere flat and clear and fast—toward Pennsylvania, maybe, and past, into the plains, Nebraska, Utah. But I have work tomorrow, and it’s my mother’s birthday, and anyway, I don’t have the money for that sort of thing. I drive into New Britain.
I pass the road that would have taken me over the hill we rode the wagon down, when it was just me and Mom and one brother and we walked from our house to Laura’s in Newington. I pass the funeral parlor that had outraged me as a child, because it replaced a stand of trees that had punctuated the gas stations and auto-body shops of South Main St. I pass the Tae Kwon Do studio where my then-best-friend Kelly had taken classes and earned bruises that I envied. I pass Buell St., the first place I can remember living—number 49, third floor—where our Polish landlord would give us maroon-dyed eggs for Easter, which we would hide in the bottom of our baskets. I am driving toward the center of town, hoping to be soothed by the echoes of how I used to feel and be but knowing I will not find what I’m looking for. I turn away before I can be proven right.
As I pull onto the highway, headed back home, it occurs to me that I had never decided to go to church or not to go; I only drifted, struggling with myself until it was too late to decide anything.
How many decisions have I avoided?
I decide to go to the Starbucks in Southington.
I order a “large hot chocolate,” a small rebellion against the ubiquitous, commercial presence of a coffeeshop that warps people’s language into “tall, grande, and venti.” This is not enough to justify my presence here, but corporate guilt is familiar to me, and comfortingly universal. I will not use their internet—I will go to the Southington library and sit upstairs, at the table where the strange girls accosted me. I will stay for one hour, maybe one and a half, and I will purge myself of this wounded self-immolation.
I will buy my mother a pre-made birthday cake that will have to defrost for an hour, and I will return to her house as my youngest brother gets off work.
This will be your spiritual act of worship.
I will call my grandfather and explain that I did not go to church, and ask how he is. He will tell me about coupons he’s clipped and meals he’s eaten with male friends over the week, and give me the update on Grandma and her nephew, and he will kindly end the conversation after less than ten minutes.
This will be your reasonable act of worship.
I will love other things more than certainty and shame. I am trying. I will try.
Saturday, February 23, 2008
DEAR ABBY: "Take a Hint, Dammit!"
“For an excellent guide to becoming a better conversationalist and a more attractive person, order 'How to Be Popular.' Send a business-size, self-addressed envelope, plus check or money order for $6 to: Dear Abby Popularity Booklet, P.O. Box 447, Mount Morris, IL 61054-0447.”
Ed Psych
There are two ways to learn something new:
1. Books/classes
2. Immersion/obsession
I choose obsession.
Obsession is not for everyone. Luckily, I have a natural gift for focus, drive, and physical insensitivity to awkward sitting positions.
I have no corresponding gift for balance—of anything. I am clumsy (and in fact, despite years of hurling myself to the floor in gym class, have never successfully completed a cartwheel). I tend to choose a topic or author or director and then talk about/read/watch only that thing.
This is occasionally obscured by my rapidly rotating through topics/authors/directors, which makes me appear to be more balanced than I probably am. It is also punctuated by periods of what I described in “Apoplectic, anorectic” (but don’t bother reading it—it’s not that good), in which I completely lose interest or investment in something that should be necessary or good: like eating, or reading anything at all, or watching movies or TV, or work of any kind. I’m pretty sure I’d be on jihad right now if it weren’t for that natural circuit-breaker.
But there’s this point in obsession, when you’ve absorbed all you can of whatever the topic or activity, when you can break through into understanding; the whole world snaps into place, somehow. It happened to me in China, after two months of not understanding a word of what the Chinese were saying to me…suddenly, I understood everything. It wasn’t because I had been studying. It was because I had been saturated with the everyday movements, gestures, laughter and doubt and way-of-being of the people, and my point of view had shifted. I could understand them even without vocabulary or grammar; I felt I could understand their way of thinking.
It was as dramatic as when the optometrist clicks the next lens into place and asks “Okay, one…or two? One…or two?” and your prescription is finally, literally, clarified.
I heard myself respond to questions I couldn't understand with words I didn't know I knew. I had to translate into English based on how I had responded to the question in Chinese, to get back to what the original question had been. Often, I would have entire conversations with shopkeepers or waitresses or hairdressers and later realize that I could not explain to other Americans what we had talked about because I didn't know the individual meanings of words -- only the meaning intended to be conveyed. I could not remember whether films I watched had been subtitled or dubbed, my memory of the content was so vivid. It was as though I were learning a new mother-tongue.
This perspective-shift can happen with book-learning, and I’ve experienced it with a particularly good book’s explanation of principles or characters or an especially revelatory scene in a movie — but it feels less then like I’m changing, and more like my understanding has changed.
Still, this is how I teach, or how I try to teach and learn: to the break-through point, not to a test. Tests are worthless -- I think most teachers would agree -- and in a perfect world, they would do nothing but distract us all from the business of learning. As it is, I can count on my hands the number of historical facts I learned in twelve years of public school: The Magna Carta was signed in 1215; Chief Pontiac of the Ottawas was indirectly responsible for the Proclamation of 1763; Kay invented the flying shuttle in 1733; the Bismarckian system of alliances is unfathomably complex; forty percent of British went to the movies twice a week in the 1940's.
I learned differently in China. I learned a lot more.
My second year in China, while in the lao cheng (Old City) in Yinchuan with my best Chinese friends — three girls, my students — I walked ahead, breaking through the crowd as we aimed for another large market, and I noticed that people were staring as they passed us. I turned around, trying to discover what was fascinating them, and looked for a second before understanding dawned: They were looking at me, a foreigner (with huang se tou fa, “yellow hair,” freckles and blue eyes). I laughed and said to my girls “Sometimes I forget that I’m a lao wai ('foreigner').”
They looked at me, startled for a second, and I saw understanding hit them the way it had me — they laughed, too.
“Sometimes, we, too” they said. “You are like a Chinese to us. You are just Alicia.”
1. Books/classes
2. Immersion/obsession
I choose obsession.
Obsession is not for everyone. Luckily, I have a natural gift for focus, drive, and physical insensitivity to awkward sitting positions.
I have no corresponding gift for balance—of anything. I am clumsy (and in fact, despite years of hurling myself to the floor in gym class, have never successfully completed a cartwheel). I tend to choose a topic or author or director and then talk about/read/watch only that thing.
This is occasionally obscured by my rapidly rotating through topics/authors/directors, which makes me appear to be more balanced than I probably am. It is also punctuated by periods of what I described in “Apoplectic, anorectic” (but don’t bother reading it—it’s not that good), in which I completely lose interest or investment in something that should be necessary or good: like eating, or reading anything at all, or watching movies or TV, or work of any kind. I’m pretty sure I’d be on jihad right now if it weren’t for that natural circuit-breaker.
But there’s this point in obsession, when you’ve absorbed all you can of whatever the topic or activity, when you can break through into understanding; the whole world snaps into place, somehow. It happened to me in China, after two months of not understanding a word of what the Chinese were saying to me…suddenly, I understood everything. It wasn’t because I had been studying. It was because I had been saturated with the everyday movements, gestures, laughter and doubt and way-of-being of the people, and my point of view had shifted. I could understand them even without vocabulary or grammar; I felt I could understand their way of thinking.
It was as dramatic as when the optometrist clicks the next lens into place and asks “Okay, one…or two? One…or two?” and your prescription is finally, literally, clarified.
I heard myself respond to questions I couldn't understand with words I didn't know I knew. I had to translate into English based on how I had responded to the question in Chinese, to get back to what the original question had been. Often, I would have entire conversations with shopkeepers or waitresses or hairdressers and later realize that I could not explain to other Americans what we had talked about because I didn't know the individual meanings of words -- only the meaning intended to be conveyed. I could not remember whether films I watched had been subtitled or dubbed, my memory of the content was so vivid. It was as though I were learning a new mother-tongue.
This perspective-shift can happen with book-learning, and I’ve experienced it with a particularly good book’s explanation of principles or characters or an especially revelatory scene in a movie — but it feels less then like I’m changing, and more like my understanding has changed.
Still, this is how I teach, or how I try to teach and learn: to the break-through point, not to a test. Tests are worthless -- I think most teachers would agree -- and in a perfect world, they would do nothing but distract us all from the business of learning. As it is, I can count on my hands the number of historical facts I learned in twelve years of public school: The Magna Carta was signed in 1215; Chief Pontiac of the Ottawas was indirectly responsible for the Proclamation of 1763; Kay invented the flying shuttle in 1733; the Bismarckian system of alliances is unfathomably complex; forty percent of British went to the movies twice a week in the 1940's.
I learned differently in China. I learned a lot more.
My second year in China, while in the lao cheng (Old City) in Yinchuan with my best Chinese friends — three girls, my students — I walked ahead, breaking through the crowd as we aimed for another large market, and I noticed that people were staring as they passed us. I turned around, trying to discover what was fascinating them, and looked for a second before understanding dawned: They were looking at me, a foreigner (with huang se tou fa, “yellow hair,” freckles and blue eyes). I laughed and said to my girls “Sometimes I forget that I’m a lao wai ('foreigner').”
They looked at me, startled for a second, and I saw understanding hit them the way it had me — they laughed, too.
“Sometimes, we, too” they said. “You are like a Chinese to us. You are just Alicia.”
In Which I Am an Idiot
In deference to the age of my car, I try to play only music tapes produced before 1995 when traveling; this isn’t difficult, since that’s around the time everyone stopped making cassettes, anyway. Recently I picked up a few tapes at the Goodwill, including the eponymous Collective Soul album, Fine Young Cannibals' The Raw and the Cooked, and Peter Gabriel’s So.
If you’ve read my earlier posts, you can probably guess that I’ve been listening to Peter Gabriel lately—in fact, obsessively and manically would be other apt adverbs. I knew practically nothing about Gabriel, personally, before popping this tape into my car stereo, but that doesn’t excuse the level of ignorance to which I’m about to confess.
When I heard “Red Rain,” the first song on the album, my immediate reaction was “Wow, this sounds like something Phil Collins would produce.”
Yeah. It does. Maybe because Peter Gabriel was the frontman for Genesis, Alicia. Maybe because Phil Collins was the Genesis drummer. Maybe that’s why.
At least I heard the link, though—that might count for something when I get to the chic-but-not-too-chic gates of hipness heaven.
Post-script: I can't get over "Red Rain," actually--I keep having to listen to it despite only owning it on tape and being forced to listen on the ugliest, most lazily-assembled "casette personal stereo" on the planet--especially the part at the end where he sings "I'm begging you": I'm like, Peter, you had me at "I cannot make a single sound as you scream."
If you’ve read my earlier posts, you can probably guess that I’ve been listening to Peter Gabriel lately—in fact, obsessively and manically would be other apt adverbs. I knew practically nothing about Gabriel, personally, before popping this tape into my car stereo, but that doesn’t excuse the level of ignorance to which I’m about to confess.
When I heard “Red Rain,” the first song on the album, my immediate reaction was “Wow, this sounds like something Phil Collins would produce.”
Yeah. It does. Maybe because Peter Gabriel was the frontman for Genesis, Alicia. Maybe because Phil Collins was the Genesis drummer. Maybe that’s why.
At least I heard the link, though—that might count for something when I get to the chic-but-not-too-chic gates of hipness heaven.
Post-script: I can't get over "Red Rain," actually--I keep having to listen to it despite only owning it on tape and being forced to listen on the ugliest, most lazily-assembled "casette personal stereo" on the planet--especially the part at the end where he sings "I'm begging you": I'm like, Peter, you had me at "I cannot make a single sound as you scream."
PT Cruisers are among the ugliest cars ever made.
Others include the Honda Element and the Ford Sport Trac.
Movie Review: Oldboy (Korean)
An idiomatic expression whose meaning is revealed in one of the final scenes of the film (so I won’t tell you here), “Oldboy” also causes me to compare the hero of this South Korean flick to old classic-epic heroes: Odysseus, for instance. Oh Dae-su goes through as many challenges before reaching the end of his quest as Odysseus did—with the difference that Oh Dae-su does not come out virtuous and unscathed.
In fact, the main reason this film seems so epic is Oh Dae-su’s driving sense of revenge, fueled by fifteen years of unexplained imprisonment. It isn’t Dae-su’s sense of wronged innocence so much as an outraged confusion that compels him, on his return to the world, to seek out his captor and exact revenge. (That, and a threat by the captor that Dae-su must seek him out.) His motives and his methods are messy. In fact, not much in this movie is “pretty”—but that’s what makes it epic.
In one scene, for instance, shot brilliantly (and digitally, if I’m not mistaken), Dae-su takes on the typical gang of martial artists you’d see in any Bruce Lee movie. Normally, the staging of this scene would have our hero in the center with a circle of bad guys surrounding him, waiting their turns to attack, and the hero would dispatch each with efficient ease, barely breaking a sweat (or, if so, breaking a sexy sweat that causes chest muscles to glisten and gleam, etc). Dae-su, however, is in a narrow hallway, and has enemies coming at him from both sides; he fights desperately, as though he has nothing to lose; he is stabbed, but barely acknowledges it. Sweat flies everywhere, and Dae-su has to take a second to breathe in between wild kicks and punches he likely invented himself. It is as difficult to turn away from this scene as the ones in which Daniel Day-Lewis wields a butcher’s knife in Gangs of New York, with the difference that you really don’t want to.
Oldboy is an almost unceasingly brutal movie, and in the end, it is revealed to be even more brutal than you had thought.
What saves this movie from being only sickening, blood-spattered Jerry Springer-type material are the efforts of the director and director of photography. The hallway scene, for instance, is shot as though a cross-section had been done of the hall; this allows us to see all the action, but keeps us out of it at the same time. We are voyeurs, not participants—and by this point (unlike on an episode of Jerry Springer), we sympathize with Dae-su. We can be drawn into the action without being overwhelmed or threatened by it. The movie also uses a framing device that allows us to enter and exit the story conclusively (though confusingly, in the first viewing).
Still, the end is sickening. After so many trials, Dae-su gets his answers, and they are likely not what we (or he) expected. The sense that he must now live with these answers is more stifling than the fight scenes; what stretches ahead of him now may be more challenging than what had come before. And yet, the acute initial trials after being set free have prepared him for this new challenge. There is hope that he can rebuild and live in peace, even with the answers he received.
Oldboy is not for everyone, but if you’re in the mood for Korean martial arts epic, this is your winner.
Now if only I could find some good cold noodles.
In fact, the main reason this film seems so epic is Oh Dae-su’s driving sense of revenge, fueled by fifteen years of unexplained imprisonment. It isn’t Dae-su’s sense of wronged innocence so much as an outraged confusion that compels him, on his return to the world, to seek out his captor and exact revenge. (That, and a threat by the captor that Dae-su must seek him out.) His motives and his methods are messy. In fact, not much in this movie is “pretty”—but that’s what makes it epic.
In one scene, for instance, shot brilliantly (and digitally, if I’m not mistaken), Dae-su takes on the typical gang of martial artists you’d see in any Bruce Lee movie. Normally, the staging of this scene would have our hero in the center with a circle of bad guys surrounding him, waiting their turns to attack, and the hero would dispatch each with efficient ease, barely breaking a sweat (or, if so, breaking a sexy sweat that causes chest muscles to glisten and gleam, etc). Dae-su, however, is in a narrow hallway, and has enemies coming at him from both sides; he fights desperately, as though he has nothing to lose; he is stabbed, but barely acknowledges it. Sweat flies everywhere, and Dae-su has to take a second to breathe in between wild kicks and punches he likely invented himself. It is as difficult to turn away from this scene as the ones in which Daniel Day-Lewis wields a butcher’s knife in Gangs of New York, with the difference that you really don’t want to.
Oldboy is an almost unceasingly brutal movie, and in the end, it is revealed to be even more brutal than you had thought.
What saves this movie from being only sickening, blood-spattered Jerry Springer-type material are the efforts of the director and director of photography. The hallway scene, for instance, is shot as though a cross-section had been done of the hall; this allows us to see all the action, but keeps us out of it at the same time. We are voyeurs, not participants—and by this point (unlike on an episode of Jerry Springer), we sympathize with Dae-su. We can be drawn into the action without being overwhelmed or threatened by it. The movie also uses a framing device that allows us to enter and exit the story conclusively (though confusingly, in the first viewing).
Still, the end is sickening. After so many trials, Dae-su gets his answers, and they are likely not what we (or he) expected. The sense that he must now live with these answers is more stifling than the fight scenes; what stretches ahead of him now may be more challenging than what had come before. And yet, the acute initial trials after being set free have prepared him for this new challenge. There is hope that he can rebuild and live in peace, even with the answers he received.
Oldboy is not for everyone, but if you’re in the mood for Korean martial arts epic, this is your winner.
Now if only I could find some good cold noodles.
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Carte Blanche
In order to encourage use of the blog comments (rather than calling me, which is fine, except that then I answer on the blog anyway), I hereby give you carte blanche to ask whatever question you'd like. I will answer it.
As Spiderman on Family Guy would say, "Everybody gets one."
As Spiderman on Family Guy would say, "Everybody gets one."
Turn on all women with VPXL wesi
As you can imagine, I was excited to receive this email, which had such a generous promise as its subject, from "Janie Beaver" today. I'm not in the business of turning on women, but insofar as I am a part of womankind, I'm grateful to know that there are things that bind us all together, such as universal turn-ons.
In the spirit of building a community around the aphrodisiac "VPXL wesi," Janie had included five other email addresses in the "to" line of the email--I assume, just in case we wanted to contact each other and discuss the sex appeal of said "wesi."
At least it wasn't an ad for cheap Viagra, enlarging my penis, or most bizarrely, replica watches, none of which I'm currently interested in.
What could it be? I wondered. A great sense of humor? Being considerate? James Spader in "Dreamlover"? Maybe it will be something I hadn't thought of as "sexy" before, like instant oatmeal, or a tracheotomy, or being stuck on a Ferris Wheel in high winds.
It was none of these things. (Thank god it wasn't that last one.)
In fact, the email seemed to favor a scattershot approach to appealing to all women. It announced "Bigger p e n i s, better s e x!" then followed with a link to funladiesnow (which makes the email inclusive of lesbians and thus cannot be dismissed), and finally ended with this:
Good luck, men.
In the spirit of building a community around the aphrodisiac "VPXL wesi," Janie had included five other email addresses in the "to" line of the email--I assume, just in case we wanted to contact each other and discuss the sex appeal of said "wesi."
At least it wasn't an ad for cheap Viagra, enlarging my penis, or most bizarrely, replica watches, none of which I'm currently interested in.
What could it be? I wondered. A great sense of humor? Being considerate? James Spader in "Dreamlover"? Maybe it will be something I hadn't thought of as "sexy" before, like instant oatmeal, or a tracheotomy, or being stuck on a Ferris Wheel in high winds.
It was none of these things. (Thank god it wasn't that last one.)
In fact, the email seemed to favor a scattershot approach to appealing to all women. It announced "Bigger p e n i s, better s e x!" then followed with a link to funladiesnow (which makes the email inclusive of lesbians and thus cannot be dismissed), and finally ended with this:
Somewhere in there, my lady friends, is the key to your wildest fantasies.olaf dearie opec agee.
biotic !!! oliver.
Good luck, men.
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Sick and Tyrad
The local paper printed a front-page article this week about a New Britain man who went on The Tyra Banks Show and made some stereotypical comments about different names that were suggested to him (i.e., "Juanita" was a hot Mexican girl). The article did not specify what all the comments were, as the show had yet to air, and the guest's agenda was apparently to clear himself of all charges of racism. (As Isaiah Washington learned, repeating what you said is not the way to go if you're looking for exoneration.)
The man stressed that he had been pushed to say what he said, but that he had not gone as far as the other "guests," who he implied were also actors. He claimed that he himself was an actor, although The Tyra Banks Show representatives claimed otherwise. It's more difficult to decide who's telling the truth here than it seems, since an out-of-work actor may think of himself as an artist--while most of us think of him as a waiter. (See Mamet's Edmond for further, gruesome and troubling elaboration.)
My money is on the local man, not because I think he's more honest, but because I just don't want to find myself on the Tyra Banks Show bandwagon.
Tyra Banks, who was nominated for a daytime Emmy, spends almost her entire show making her guests cry and then turning the conversation to herself. You can see this tendency in her other show, America's Next Top Model, which is onto its tenth cycle, where she and two or three other judges sit in...well, judgement, over the young women hoping desperately to win a chance to model. She wheedles her way under the tough exteriors of these girls, many of whom have experienced some hidden trauma and are heart-breakingly ready to confess it all; congratulating them for having finally become better, more self-aware people; and then dumping their asses. Top Model requires contestants to be both vulnerable--to the photographer and the creative director's suggestions, as well as the suggestions of the judges--and "fierce," meaning impervious to criticism and willing to stab each other in the back when necessary.
But we accept that on Top Model because, hey--that's modeling, right? It's reality TV, and that's the reality of the industry. Her ability to smell blood in the water is Tyra's greatest talent on this show; she is able to exploit any vulnerability the girls might exhibit, and crack them. She is able to prove to viewers that potential-model-X needs to go home, for some particular reason, which is quite a feat for a show based in an industry that relies so heavily on split-second impressions. Tyra makes us feel, as much as we can feel, that the show might be an actual contest rather than a farce with a foregone conclusion. She gives us a plot.
But the same quality of being able to bring women to tearful confession on Top Model somehow becomes a liability on The Tyra Banks Show; she cannot "cut" guests from her show following their dramatic revelations. She has to talk to them. And this is where disaster sets in.
Tyra seems to have little sense of proportion, and often compares the struggles of her guests with her own personal experiences. This type of empathizing makes her good at "girlfriend" chatting--though the segments in which she sits with her personal girlfriends and dishes about skin care are awfully self-congratulatory--but terrible at trauma. If you had run over and killed your two-year-old grandson because he was kneeling behind the car as you shifted into reverse, which of Tyra Banks' stories could possibly help? The one about when she felt fat? The one about when she broke up with her boyfriend because he was mean? (Or even abusive?) The answer is that none will help, because Tyra is not the point, and by telling her story, she is acting as though she is. Equally useless are the questions in this type of situation: How do you feel about running over your grandson? Do you feel guilty? Why do you feel guilty? And so they continue, circling the guest's pain like a buzzard, but always unable to strike.
I should mention that there was one time I saw Tyra do something remarkable on her show: She stopped a confession. The topic was trashy, almost Maury-esque--lovers who cheated and wanted to come clean to their partners (on national television)--and I'd like to believe that it had already been making Tyra and her crew a little queasy. Tyra spoke at length with the cheater, discussing what effect this confession would have on the marriage and the spouse, and reacted to what she heard. She stopped the cheater from devastating the spouse (on national television) and suggesting that they go to actual marriage counseling instead--the spouse was spared!
Until, of course, the show aired, at which point the spouse almost certainly found out anyway, and Tyra received viewer accolades for her self-sacrifice in letting the spouse grieve in private.
I admit that I've seen only a few patches of the show, and on only one occasion (Aug. 9, 2006) did I watch the majority of the hour-long program. Unlike every other time I flipped past Tyra (or found my housemate watching in rapt attention), the hostess was not gouging into the personal horrors of one guest or another; she was spending a significant amount of time doing what she does best, which is giving advice to women about womanly things. (And not making them cry.)
She stood in the center of her stage and announced that she would tell us all the secret of bra sizes. I was as eager to know this information as I would be to know all the varieties of North American garter snakes, so I leaned forward in my chair in anticipation.
Here's what she (and the show's web archive) had to say:
Interesting information, right? (Except for the spelling and grammatical errors, which are irritating.)
Tyra explained this, and then she demonstrated.
"I'm a D," she said, brightly but confidentially, as if we didn't know this already. (As if we didn't know this.)
I sat back in my chair.
Well, I thought. At least now I know we have nothing in common at all.
Post-script: Women everywhere have written in to Tyra asking for more information, or clarification on the measurement rules, but so far, the show has not responded. Eventually, representative of Just My Size seemed to take on some of the women's questions with product ads.
Luckily, I am one of the 20% of women who wear the correct bra size.
Or so I suppose.
The man stressed that he had been pushed to say what he said, but that he had not gone as far as the other "guests," who he implied were also actors. He claimed that he himself was an actor, although The Tyra Banks Show representatives claimed otherwise. It's more difficult to decide who's telling the truth here than it seems, since an out-of-work actor may think of himself as an artist--while most of us think of him as a waiter. (See Mamet's Edmond for further, gruesome and troubling elaboration.)
My money is on the local man, not because I think he's more honest, but because I just don't want to find myself on the Tyra Banks Show bandwagon.
Tyra Banks, who was nominated for a daytime Emmy, spends almost her entire show making her guests cry and then turning the conversation to herself. You can see this tendency in her other show, America's Next Top Model, which is onto its tenth cycle, where she and two or three other judges sit in...well, judgement, over the young women hoping desperately to win a chance to model. She wheedles her way under the tough exteriors of these girls, many of whom have experienced some hidden trauma and are heart-breakingly ready to confess it all; congratulating them for having finally become better, more self-aware people; and then dumping their asses. Top Model requires contestants to be both vulnerable--to the photographer and the creative director's suggestions, as well as the suggestions of the judges--and "fierce," meaning impervious to criticism and willing to stab each other in the back when necessary.
But we accept that on Top Model because, hey--that's modeling, right? It's reality TV, and that's the reality of the industry. Her ability to smell blood in the water is Tyra's greatest talent on this show; she is able to exploit any vulnerability the girls might exhibit, and crack them. She is able to prove to viewers that potential-model-X needs to go home, for some particular reason, which is quite a feat for a show based in an industry that relies so heavily on split-second impressions. Tyra makes us feel, as much as we can feel, that the show might be an actual contest rather than a farce with a foregone conclusion. She gives us a plot.
But the same quality of being able to bring women to tearful confession on Top Model somehow becomes a liability on The Tyra Banks Show; she cannot "cut" guests from her show following their dramatic revelations. She has to talk to them. And this is where disaster sets in.
Tyra seems to have little sense of proportion, and often compares the struggles of her guests with her own personal experiences. This type of empathizing makes her good at "girlfriend" chatting--though the segments in which she sits with her personal girlfriends and dishes about skin care are awfully self-congratulatory--but terrible at trauma. If you had run over and killed your two-year-old grandson because he was kneeling behind the car as you shifted into reverse, which of Tyra Banks' stories could possibly help? The one about when she felt fat? The one about when she broke up with her boyfriend because he was mean? (Or even abusive?) The answer is that none will help, because Tyra is not the point, and by telling her story, she is acting as though she is. Equally useless are the questions in this type of situation: How do you feel about running over your grandson? Do you feel guilty? Why do you feel guilty? And so they continue, circling the guest's pain like a buzzard, but always unable to strike.
I should mention that there was one time I saw Tyra do something remarkable on her show: She stopped a confession. The topic was trashy, almost Maury-esque--lovers who cheated and wanted to come clean to their partners (on national television)--and I'd like to believe that it had already been making Tyra and her crew a little queasy. Tyra spoke at length with the cheater, discussing what effect this confession would have on the marriage and the spouse, and reacted to what she heard. She stopped the cheater from devastating the spouse (on national television) and suggesting that they go to actual marriage counseling instead--the spouse was spared!
Until, of course, the show aired, at which point the spouse almost certainly found out anyway, and Tyra received viewer accolades for her self-sacrifice in letting the spouse grieve in private.
I admit that I've seen only a few patches of the show, and on only one occasion (Aug. 9, 2006) did I watch the majority of the hour-long program. Unlike every other time I flipped past Tyra (or found my housemate watching in rapt attention), the hostess was not gouging into the personal horrors of one guest or another; she was spending a significant amount of time doing what she does best, which is giving advice to women about womanly things. (And not making them cry.)
She stood in the center of her stage and announced that she would tell us all the secret of bra sizes. I was as eager to know this information as I would be to know all the varieties of North American garter snakes, so I leaned forward in my chair in anticipation.
Here's what she (and the show's web archive) had to say:
- Band Size: place your measuring tape just below your breasts and around your body. Once you have determined that measurement, add five to that number. If you get an odd number, round up. That new total represents your band size.
- Cup Size: place the measure tape across the fullest part of your bust and around your body. Don’t pull the tape tight, leave it a little loose across your breasts. Subtract this number from the Band Size figure. The difference determines your cup size as follows: Less than 1 inch = AA, 1" = A, 2" = B, 3" = C, 4" = D, 5" = E or DD, 6" = F or DDD, etc.
Interesting information, right? (Except for the spelling and grammatical errors, which are irritating.)
Tyra explained this, and then she demonstrated.
"I'm a D," she said, brightly but confidentially, as if we didn't know this already. (As if we didn't know this.)
I sat back in my chair.
Well, I thought. At least now I know we have nothing in common at all.
Post-script: Women everywhere have written in to Tyra asking for more information, or clarification on the measurement rules, but so far, the show has not responded. Eventually, representative of Just My Size seemed to take on some of the women's questions with product ads.
Luckily, I am one of the 20% of women who wear the correct bra size.
Or so I suppose.
In Which I Discuss the Merits of Billy Joel's RIVER OF DREAMS
I can't believe you fell for that one.
There aren't any.
There aren't any.
Oh, Bitchuary.
As I racked and unracked magazines at the Kmart and CVS today, with one of my girls, I chatted with another job coach who was shadowing me for the day. We commented on the covers of the magazines, especially the ones that were borderline Enquirer-and-"legitimate-magazine," such as Star, US, and OK. Britney Spears was featured on, I would say, a majority of these covers, though I did not do a statistical analysis.
"You know, the AP has already prepared her obituary," the other job coach said, and I would have gaped in surprise if it had been at all unexpected.
The AP, and the rest of the media, like to be prepared, sure--but if there's an office pool going around for the day Brit buys it, those guys are cheating. They'll know exactly when the day will be, because they'll have caused it to come.
I'm not speculating that Britney Spears' life would have been happier without superstardom, nor am I blaming the media for what are obviously her choices--marrying K-Fed comes to mind as a particularly stupid, or at least silly, choice that BS made all on her own--but the celebrity-worship culture she's become a part of is now influencing the choices that she has available to her, and that's not funny. The feedback loop of "Look what stupid thing Britney's done now! And to her kids! And she's a psycho!" is beginning to consume itself, but no one can manage to break free.
If the obvious desperation of her actions weren't enough ("She bought a laxative at the drugstore!" one magazine proclaims, and shows an insert picture of Correctol. My. The things of which scandals are made), her recent single "Piece of Me" should serve as notice on her state of mind:
I’m Mrs. 'Lifestyles of the rich and famous'(You want a piece of me)
I’m Mrs. 'Oh my God that Britney’s shameless'(You want a piece of me)
I’m Mrs. 'Extra! Extra! This just in'(You want a piece of me)
I’m Mrs. 'She’s too big now she’s too thin'(You want a piece of me)
In response to this obviously last-ditch defensive attack--and, in my opinion, the most substantial contribution she's made to pop music since her accidental-S&M debut "Baby One More Time"--I heard one radio DJ respond with "Come on, Britney: When did anyone ever call you too thin?"
Come on, Mr. DJ: When did anyone ever tell you it's a good idea to cannibalize those who make up your livelihood? (Or is Clear Channel putting you all up to this?)
When did celebrity "news" become news? When did the antics of a few people driven to distraction by the extremes of attention they experience become noteworthy? Shouldn't we rather be saying, as we might say of lab rats bombarded with constant stimulus, constant access to food, and constant flashbulbs, "Well, it's no wonder they went crazy"? Shouldn't the effects of this kind of life be obvious, not newsworthy at all?
Beyond the contents of the headlines, though, lies their tone, and this is what causes me to despair for Britney. Outside of comments made by well-meaning "family friends"--such as Dr. Phil or Barbara Walters--there has been an unceasing stream of vitriol coming from the media, aimed directly at the Spears' personal life, and often in the guise of disinterested concern.
It is not disinterested, and it is not concern. It is willful and rapacious obsession with our own superiority.
Is this why all magazines, everywhere--and radio shows and talk shows and other "entertainment" options--have become a sanctuary for bitching? I mean not just regular complaining, but the snarky kind of constant complaint that never leaves room for personal error and never gives an inch to a response, and which usually has as its topic something that everyone appears to agree on, anyway, obviating the need to register the complaint in the first place. Do we really need to prove to ourselves over and over again that, had we been her, we never would have been such screwups?
Yes, Britney Spears is publicly devolving into a sad morality tale. But maybe we should find another place to get our lessons, so that she can have what she most needs: to be left completely alone.
I'm doing my part. I've never been a fan.
"You know, the AP has already prepared her obituary," the other job coach said, and I would have gaped in surprise if it had been at all unexpected.
The AP, and the rest of the media, like to be prepared, sure--but if there's an office pool going around for the day Brit buys it, those guys are cheating. They'll know exactly when the day will be, because they'll have caused it to come.
I'm not speculating that Britney Spears' life would have been happier without superstardom, nor am I blaming the media for what are obviously her choices--marrying K-Fed comes to mind as a particularly stupid, or at least silly, choice that BS made all on her own--but the celebrity-worship culture she's become a part of is now influencing the choices that she has available to her, and that's not funny. The feedback loop of "Look what stupid thing Britney's done now! And to her kids! And she's a psycho!" is beginning to consume itself, but no one can manage to break free.
If the obvious desperation of her actions weren't enough ("She bought a laxative at the drugstore!" one magazine proclaims, and shows an insert picture of Correctol. My. The things of which scandals are made), her recent single "Piece of Me" should serve as notice on her state of mind:
I’m Mrs. 'Lifestyles of the rich and famous'(You want a piece of me)
I’m Mrs. 'Oh my God that Britney’s shameless'(You want a piece of me)
I’m Mrs. 'Extra! Extra! This just in'(You want a piece of me)
I’m Mrs. 'She’s too big now she’s too thin'(You want a piece of me)
In response to this obviously last-ditch defensive attack--and, in my opinion, the most substantial contribution she's made to pop music since her accidental-S&M debut "Baby One More Time"--I heard one radio DJ respond with "Come on, Britney: When did anyone ever call you too thin?"
Come on, Mr. DJ: When did anyone ever tell you it's a good idea to cannibalize those who make up your livelihood? (Or is Clear Channel putting you all up to this?)
When did celebrity "news" become news? When did the antics of a few people driven to distraction by the extremes of attention they experience become noteworthy? Shouldn't we rather be saying, as we might say of lab rats bombarded with constant stimulus, constant access to food, and constant flashbulbs, "Well, it's no wonder they went crazy"? Shouldn't the effects of this kind of life be obvious, not newsworthy at all?
Beyond the contents of the headlines, though, lies their tone, and this is what causes me to despair for Britney. Outside of comments made by well-meaning "family friends"--such as Dr. Phil or Barbara Walters--there has been an unceasing stream of vitriol coming from the media, aimed directly at the Spears' personal life, and often in the guise of disinterested concern.
It is not disinterested, and it is not concern. It is willful and rapacious obsession with our own superiority.
Is this why all magazines, everywhere--and radio shows and talk shows and other "entertainment" options--have become a sanctuary for bitching? I mean not just regular complaining, but the snarky kind of constant complaint that never leaves room for personal error and never gives an inch to a response, and which usually has as its topic something that everyone appears to agree on, anyway, obviating the need to register the complaint in the first place. Do we really need to prove to ourselves over and over again that, had we been her, we never would have been such screwups?
Yes, Britney Spears is publicly devolving into a sad morality tale. But maybe we should find another place to get our lessons, so that she can have what she most needs: to be left completely alone.
I'm doing my part. I've never been a fan.
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Songs That Lloyd Dobler Would Have Been Better Off Playing, If It Had Been Me
“Here Comes the Flood” by Peter Gabriel (Technically the version I know wasn't out until 1990, but my favorite choice.)
“Kyrie” by Mr. Mister
“Time After Time” by Cyndi Lauper
“Opportunities (let’s make lots of money)” by Pet Shop Boys
“Days Are Numbers (The Traveller)” by Alan Parsons Project
For a remake:
“I Grieve” by Peter Gabriel
“Rest” by Skillet
“Mad World” by Gary Jules
“Birdhouse in Your Soul” by They Might Be Giants
“The Old Apartment” by Barenaked Ladies
“Last Beautiful Girl” by Matchbox Twenty
“Cannonball” by Damien Rice
“Galileo” by The Indigo Girls
“Fair” by Remy Zero
“All Over You” by Live
For the foreign, dubbed versions:
“Dui Mien de Nu Hai Kan Guo Lai” by Richie (Trans: “Look at me, pretty girl over there”)
“Cowboy Virtuel” by Roch Voisine
“Inevitable” by Shakira
“Kyrie” by Mr. Mister
“Time After Time” by Cyndi Lauper
“Opportunities (let’s make lots of money)” by Pet Shop Boys
“Days Are Numbers (The Traveller)” by Alan Parsons Project
For a remake:
“I Grieve” by Peter Gabriel
“Rest” by Skillet
“Mad World” by Gary Jules
“Birdhouse in Your Soul” by They Might Be Giants
“The Old Apartment” by Barenaked Ladies
“Last Beautiful Girl” by Matchbox Twenty
“Cannonball” by Damien Rice
“Galileo” by The Indigo Girls
“Fair” by Remy Zero
“All Over You” by Live
For the foreign, dubbed versions:
“Dui Mien de Nu Hai Kan Guo Lai” by Richie (Trans: “Look at me, pretty girl over there”)
“Cowboy Virtuel” by Roch Voisine
“Inevitable” by Shakira
Confessions, II
I eat applesauce out of the jar the way one might drink milk out of the carton.
I sometimes wear my socks two days in a row.
When I was a teenager, I ate plain Cheerios or whole shredded wheat for breakfast; now I eat Cocoa Krispies or Fruity Pebbles.
I sometimes wear my socks two days in a row.
When I was a teenager, I ate plain Cheerios or whole shredded wheat for breakfast; now I eat Cocoa Krispies or Fruity Pebbles.
Phrases So Out of Proportion That They Are Never Appropriate
As with phrases that never help, phrases so out of proportion that they are never appropriate can be funny, under the right circumstances. I use them in my everyday life whenever I encounter a minor difficulty, which is the only time that they will be funny to the speaker. These phrases are always funny to a listener with an ear for irony and/or little investment in the situation at hand, but may be exasperating to a listener who feels the speaker is being serious—and cares.
The following are examples of such phrases, each with a discussion of fictional situations in which they might conceivably become appropriate, and instruction on their use as jokes in everyday life.
"All is lost!"
Fictional situations in which it might become appropriate: Nuclear holocaust, after which you are one of two survivors and the other survivor is blind and has asked what you see; while standing on the bow of the last available warship as a giant squid pulls it under; as a “Lost & Found” clerk, when answering the question “Where’s the ‘Found’ department?”
Instructions on its use: As melodrama goes, "all is lost" is top-notch. Unfortunately, it's difficult to pull off farcically in person, unless you have a flair for faking a mounting hysteria. Even then, it can be off-putting to those who are annoyed instead of amused by hysteria.
My advice is to deadpan this one. Keep a straight face and use a monotone voice, with perhaps a hint of irony. You may want to elaborate for impact, adding “oh no, oh no” or “we’re all going to die.”
"We're NEVER going to get there/finish this!"
Fictional situations in which it might become appropriate: [in dismay] On the way to X location, you get stuck in a sinkhole and are being rapidly sucked into the earth, and your one regret is that you will never arrive at X; [in shock] on the sudden realization that you have been cursed by the gods to push a stone up a hill all day and chase it down all night, or are trapped in the movie Groundhog Day.
Instructions on its use: This phrase must be whiny in order to be effective—but any joke that involves whining should be used sparingly, and with discretion, since fake whining is often just as annoying as its real counterpart. Still, there are two scenarios in which this out-of-proportion phrase could be used successfully.
First, there is the short whine, in which you, the speaker, say the phrase one time in order to mock your own impatience. Tone is key for the short whine; you may want to overdo it a bit to make it clear that you are not serious. Then drop the subject.
Second, there is the remedial, or corrective whine. As with the short whine, this should be used only to mock your own impatience, specifically when you realize that you have been actually whining and are annoying the listener. Pushing your whine up a notch and then laughing should release the tension of the situation (which has built as the listener wishes you would stop whining) and allow the listener to gracefully dodge the need to lie (i.e., “No, I WANT to hear what you have to say. You’re not annoying me at ALL”).
“I might as well be dead!”
Fictional situations in which it might become appropriate: On discovering that the afterlife is exactly the same in precisely every way, as this one.
Instructions on its use: As with all phrases so out of proportion that they are never appropriate, this phrase is best used when the stakes are so small as to be, literally, laughable. Some examples of this type of situation include receiving a minor injury (very shallow paper-cut, stubbed toe, broken nail), acting like an idiot in front of someone you “like,” or having to wait in a long line at the Home Depot. Again, use this hyperbole sparingly, as it becomes less funny the more it’s used.
The following are examples of such phrases, each with a discussion of fictional situations in which they might conceivably become appropriate, and instruction on their use as jokes in everyday life.
"All is lost!"
Fictional situations in which it might become appropriate: Nuclear holocaust, after which you are one of two survivors and the other survivor is blind and has asked what you see; while standing on the bow of the last available warship as a giant squid pulls it under; as a “Lost & Found” clerk, when answering the question “Where’s the ‘Found’ department?”
Instructions on its use: As melodrama goes, "all is lost" is top-notch. Unfortunately, it's difficult to pull off farcically in person, unless you have a flair for faking a mounting hysteria. Even then, it can be off-putting to those who are annoyed instead of amused by hysteria.
My advice is to deadpan this one. Keep a straight face and use a monotone voice, with perhaps a hint of irony. You may want to elaborate for impact, adding “oh no, oh no” or “we’re all going to die.”
"We're NEVER going to get there/finish this!"
Fictional situations in which it might become appropriate: [in dismay] On the way to X location, you get stuck in a sinkhole and are being rapidly sucked into the earth, and your one regret is that you will never arrive at X; [in shock] on the sudden realization that you have been cursed by the gods to push a stone up a hill all day and chase it down all night, or are trapped in the movie Groundhog Day.
Instructions on its use: This phrase must be whiny in order to be effective—but any joke that involves whining should be used sparingly, and with discretion, since fake whining is often just as annoying as its real counterpart. Still, there are two scenarios in which this out-of-proportion phrase could be used successfully.
First, there is the short whine, in which you, the speaker, say the phrase one time in order to mock your own impatience. Tone is key for the short whine; you may want to overdo it a bit to make it clear that you are not serious. Then drop the subject.
Second, there is the remedial, or corrective whine. As with the short whine, this should be used only to mock your own impatience, specifically when you realize that you have been actually whining and are annoying the listener. Pushing your whine up a notch and then laughing should release the tension of the situation (which has built as the listener wishes you would stop whining) and allow the listener to gracefully dodge the need to lie (i.e., “No, I WANT to hear what you have to say. You’re not annoying me at ALL”).
“I might as well be dead!”
Fictional situations in which it might become appropriate: On discovering that the afterlife is exactly the same in precisely every way, as this one.
Instructions on its use: As with all phrases so out of proportion that they are never appropriate, this phrase is best used when the stakes are so small as to be, literally, laughable. Some examples of this type of situation include receiving a minor injury (very shallow paper-cut, stubbed toe, broken nail), acting like an idiot in front of someone you “like,” or having to wait in a long line at the Home Depot. Again, use this hyperbole sparingly, as it becomes less funny the more it’s used.
"Cat blogging"
Dear Patrice,
By now you’ve noticed the cage on the floor, wrecked, door ajar. You’ve probably seen the feathers.
I don’t know what to tell you, Patrice, except that whatever came over me was stronger than I was; remember that time with the catnip, when I accidentally tore the curtains down looking for another one of those toy mice? This was worse.
I understand if I’m not welcome indoors anymore. I’ve left for the time being, for both our sakes.
If you decide to take me back, I’ll be staying in the cardboard box behind the garage.
With regret,
Mittens
By now you’ve noticed the cage on the floor, wrecked, door ajar. You’ve probably seen the feathers.
I don’t know what to tell you, Patrice, except that whatever came over me was stronger than I was; remember that time with the catnip, when I accidentally tore the curtains down looking for another one of those toy mice? This was worse.
I understand if I’m not welcome indoors anymore. I’ve left for the time being, for both our sakes.
If you decide to take me back, I’ll be staying in the cardboard box behind the garage.
With regret,
Mittens
Un Buen Dia
Today I went with Carl to the Dia:Beacon museum. The charge was $10, flat, with no “suggested donation” signs, which was refreshing to me (since “suggested donation” always actually means “enforced charge”).
There were a few particularly interesting installations. Everything was minimalist—for instance, the only paintings we saw were a room of painted-white canvases, for which the point was the installation process and gallery setting rather than the paintings themselves; a set of paintings from a series started in 1968 by an artist who paints the date (now in Futura font) in white paint on a blue/black background, but destroys the paintings on days when he doesn’t finish by midnight; a series of paintings done by a woman who left painting to build an adobe hut in the mesa and study isolation for ten years, and which were mostly two pastel panels, each—and most was sculpture.
The Richard Serra Ellipses were effective. When we entered the room (a giant warehouse room) where they were kept, I felt the forms were huge and, frankly, meaningless. Walls of apparently rusted steel rose up in front of you and curved gently to one side or the other, but the scale of the sculptures compared to the room was strange, making the room feel just wrong—exactly too big or too small for these four Ellipses, which crowded each other, but not quite enough to make a point.
To my delight (but not my surprise), Carl knew about these sculptures already and mentioned that you can walk into some of them. We went around one, found the “door,” and followed the paths to the center. The curving of the walls, which from the outside had seemed meaningless to me, became an expanding and contracting of the path we walked; the center had the feeling, as Carl said, of a ritual space. The height of the walls made perfect sense from the inside; this must have been what it felt like to stand in the keep of a castle or some other fortified structure. The rest of the room ceased to exist, though sounds were actually louder inside the Ellipses. The clacking high heels of one viewer, for instance, made me fear a collision as we followed the path out, long before we could see her, let alone bump into her.
The interior of Serra’s Ellipses reminded me of looking for the lee of uprooted trees or large rocks, as a child. (I used to plan where my brothers and I would live if our mother were ever finally taken away, unwilling to consider being placed in a group home or foster care, and my plots always involved living outside—usually near Willow Brook, where we could find fresh water and some protection from the weather. I know now, of course, that these were ridiculous plans. Still, I think: What a relief it would have been to know that something like Serra’s sculptures could have held us, safe, in its center.)
When we were leaving the room, I looked back at the four Ellipses huddled in the warehouse room.
“They look smaller now, from the outside,” I said, and Carl agreed.
The Ellipses--different ones, of course--are also showing at MoMA, but I'm glad to have seen them in Beacon.
There were two photo series, but only one of them was any good. The photos of factories—interior and exterior, from Europe and the US—by Bernd and Hilla Becher were striking black and white shots with no apparent art to them. I say “no apparent art” with a great deal of respect; bad compositions are obvious, and often, good ones are invisible. None of these compositions were bad, and many of them were fascinating. One photo featured the outside of what appeared to be a water tower, with a spiral metal staircase ascending up the center. It looked nice on the wall, but Carl and I both reacted to it as though we had been asked to climb those interminable stairs (“I wouldn’t want to climb those,” Carl volunteered, and I had been thinking the same), which I think is a sign of its strength as a photo.
Plus, I love old factories. (Love.)
Bernt and Hilla Becher have been photographing old industrial sites, exclusively, for forty years.
The exhibit that most appealed to me on a “I wish I could make that” level was a room of sculptures by John Chamberlain. Most of the sculptures, including a ribbon-like “wall” that looked to me like seaweed rising from a lake or ocean floor, were made out of old car parts. The information card informed us that Chamberlain had let his students and apprentices work on his art as well, encouraging them to twist and torque the metal into new and interesting shapes. Each “ribbon” of metal that rose toward the ceiling had been individually painted, usually using what the card called “raucous” colors, and in an almost tie-dyed style.
The exhibit also included a sort of teepee-looking sculpture made of boats, and an entirely black sculpture entitled “Norma Jean”—which referenced the notorious black-dress moment for which Marilyn Monroe is still famous.
If any single thing was annoying about the Dia: Beacon, it was likely not the museum’s fault. Most of the information cards, which were (cleverly) laminated and able to be carried about the exhibit, gave pertinent and interesting historical information about each artist—for the first two paragraphs. Beyond the second paragraph, language began to lose meaning as experts or the artists themselves attempted to give a justification for their work; Sol LeWitt, especially, whose work was extensive and on “series,” seemed unable to articulate why he felt the need to explore every single permutation of cubes and cube openings in a display that looked like a kindergarten cubby room (though I’m sure there was a good reason). The contortions of language that LeWitt, and other artists, used were amusing at best and frustrating at worst, and at times served more to obscure the art than illuminate it. The effect was similar to attempting to read the description of Scent of a Woman off the back of a Chinese bootleg DVD.
But overall, a good and worthwhile museum, and an excellent day.
There were a few particularly interesting installations. Everything was minimalist—for instance, the only paintings we saw were a room of painted-white canvases, for which the point was the installation process and gallery setting rather than the paintings themselves; a set of paintings from a series started in 1968 by an artist who paints the date (now in Futura font) in white paint on a blue/black background, but destroys the paintings on days when he doesn’t finish by midnight; a series of paintings done by a woman who left painting to build an adobe hut in the mesa and study isolation for ten years, and which were mostly two pastel panels, each—and most was sculpture.
The Richard Serra Ellipses were effective. When we entered the room (a giant warehouse room) where they were kept, I felt the forms were huge and, frankly, meaningless. Walls of apparently rusted steel rose up in front of you and curved gently to one side or the other, but the scale of the sculptures compared to the room was strange, making the room feel just wrong—exactly too big or too small for these four Ellipses, which crowded each other, but not quite enough to make a point.
To my delight (but not my surprise), Carl knew about these sculptures already and mentioned that you can walk into some of them. We went around one, found the “door,” and followed the paths to the center. The curving of the walls, which from the outside had seemed meaningless to me, became an expanding and contracting of the path we walked; the center had the feeling, as Carl said, of a ritual space. The height of the walls made perfect sense from the inside; this must have been what it felt like to stand in the keep of a castle or some other fortified structure. The rest of the room ceased to exist, though sounds were actually louder inside the Ellipses. The clacking high heels of one viewer, for instance, made me fear a collision as we followed the path out, long before we could see her, let alone bump into her.
The interior of Serra’s Ellipses reminded me of looking for the lee of uprooted trees or large rocks, as a child. (I used to plan where my brothers and I would live if our mother were ever finally taken away, unwilling to consider being placed in a group home or foster care, and my plots always involved living outside—usually near Willow Brook, where we could find fresh water and some protection from the weather. I know now, of course, that these were ridiculous plans. Still, I think: What a relief it would have been to know that something like Serra’s sculptures could have held us, safe, in its center.)
When we were leaving the room, I looked back at the four Ellipses huddled in the warehouse room.
“They look smaller now, from the outside,” I said, and Carl agreed.
The Ellipses--different ones, of course--are also showing at MoMA, but I'm glad to have seen them in Beacon.
There were two photo series, but only one of them was any good. The photos of factories—interior and exterior, from Europe and the US—by Bernd and Hilla Becher were striking black and white shots with no apparent art to them. I say “no apparent art” with a great deal of respect; bad compositions are obvious, and often, good ones are invisible. None of these compositions were bad, and many of them were fascinating. One photo featured the outside of what appeared to be a water tower, with a spiral metal staircase ascending up the center. It looked nice on the wall, but Carl and I both reacted to it as though we had been asked to climb those interminable stairs (“I wouldn’t want to climb those,” Carl volunteered, and I had been thinking the same), which I think is a sign of its strength as a photo.
Plus, I love old factories. (Love.)
Bernt and Hilla Becher have been photographing old industrial sites, exclusively, for forty years.
The exhibit that most appealed to me on a “I wish I could make that” level was a room of sculptures by John Chamberlain. Most of the sculptures, including a ribbon-like “wall” that looked to me like seaweed rising from a lake or ocean floor, were made out of old car parts. The information card informed us that Chamberlain had let his students and apprentices work on his art as well, encouraging them to twist and torque the metal into new and interesting shapes. Each “ribbon” of metal that rose toward the ceiling had been individually painted, usually using what the card called “raucous” colors, and in an almost tie-dyed style.
The exhibit also included a sort of teepee-looking sculpture made of boats, and an entirely black sculpture entitled “Norma Jean”—which referenced the notorious black-dress moment for which Marilyn Monroe is still famous.
If any single thing was annoying about the Dia: Beacon, it was likely not the museum’s fault. Most of the information cards, which were (cleverly) laminated and able to be carried about the exhibit, gave pertinent and interesting historical information about each artist—for the first two paragraphs. Beyond the second paragraph, language began to lose meaning as experts or the artists themselves attempted to give a justification for their work; Sol LeWitt, especially, whose work was extensive and on “series,” seemed unable to articulate why he felt the need to explore every single permutation of cubes and cube openings in a display that looked like a kindergarten cubby room (though I’m sure there was a good reason). The contortions of language that LeWitt, and other artists, used were amusing at best and frustrating at worst, and at times served more to obscure the art than illuminate it. The effect was similar to attempting to read the description of Scent of a Woman off the back of a Chinese bootleg DVD.
But overall, a good and worthwhile museum, and an excellent day.
Candied
Did Voltaire name his satirical manifesto on how we live in “the best of all possible worlds” Candide on purpose?
Or was it an accidental pun?
Or was it an accidental pun?
Welcome to my blog, you stupid pig
Additional blogging sins I intend to commit:
Blogging about, or from the perspective of, a pet
Blogging ad infinitum about my political views, in a way that makes yours sound stupid and that doesn’t go into enough detail to allow refutation
Self-contradiction
Irritating consistency that implies simple-mindedness
Use of slang that causes me to seem like an old fuddy-duddy
Using my public blog as a personal journal and then getting overly offended when anyone comments or tries to give me advice
Using my blog as a confessional
Complaining incessantly about my status as a single person (“so lonely, want to die,” etc.), and possibly later, about dating (“significant other is so annoying, want some space,” etc.)
These amendments are effective immediately.
Blogging about, or from the perspective of, a pet
Blogging ad infinitum about my political views, in a way that makes yours sound stupid and that doesn’t go into enough detail to allow refutation
Self-contradiction
Irritating consistency that implies simple-mindedness
Use of slang that causes me to seem like an old fuddy-duddy
Using my public blog as a personal journal and then getting overly offended when anyone comments or tries to give me advice
Using my blog as a confessional
Complaining incessantly about my status as a single person (“so lonely, want to die,” etc.), and possibly later, about dating (“significant other is so annoying, want some space,” etc.)
These amendments are effective immediately.
Saturday, February 16, 2008
Sexcess comes to those who wait
There’s a billboard partially responsible for my previous post, “I don’t want your X-K for now,” and which was recently featured in the local newspaper.
It reads, in Spanish and English, “Success comes to kids who wait to have SEX,” with the final word being significantly larger than the others.
Comments on the street, paraphrased, ranged from “It’s a positive message” to “It’s confusing because the word SEX is so big.” Well, yes. That is confusing. No more confusing than Dr. Phil describing on his show, in lurid graphic detail, some act of sexual abuse perpetrated against a child, perhaps; no more confusing than the ham-fisted jokes identified as “funny” by the laugh track on Two and a Half Men; and certainly no more confusing than associating appealing, bikini-clad women with sports cars so small you’d be lucky to fit one average-sized person inside—but confusing, nonetheless. It is one confusing message among many.
Add to this the fact that I had to read the sign four times before realizing that it did not say “Success comes to kids who have SEX.”
I, for one, think that what this billboard needs is some disambiguation. Tell a teen that they’ll achieve “success” if they wait for sex, and all they’ll see is the giant word plastered at the end. Kids who care about abstract concepts like “success” are already neurotic enough to be careful.
Tell a teen they’ll be paid $500,000 and a Ferrari (complete with bikini-or-Speedo-clad model) for every year they remain virgins, and you might get a few takers.
It reads, in Spanish and English, “Success comes to kids who wait to have SEX,” with the final word being significantly larger than the others.
Comments on the street, paraphrased, ranged from “It’s a positive message” to “It’s confusing because the word SEX is so big.” Well, yes. That is confusing. No more confusing than Dr. Phil describing on his show, in lurid graphic detail, some act of sexual abuse perpetrated against a child, perhaps; no more confusing than the ham-fisted jokes identified as “funny” by the laugh track on Two and a Half Men; and certainly no more confusing than associating appealing, bikini-clad women with sports cars so small you’d be lucky to fit one average-sized person inside—but confusing, nonetheless. It is one confusing message among many.
Add to this the fact that I had to read the sign four times before realizing that it did not say “Success comes to kids who have SEX.”
I, for one, think that what this billboard needs is some disambiguation. Tell a teen that they’ll achieve “success” if they wait for sex, and all they’ll see is the giant word plastered at the end. Kids who care about abstract concepts like “success” are already neurotic enough to be careful.
Tell a teen they’ll be paid $500,000 and a Ferrari (complete with bikini-or-Speedo-clad model) for every year they remain virgins, and you might get a few takers.
Phrases that Never Help, II
Again, below are instructions on how to use these phrases effectively as a joke, and why and how to avoid them under other circumstances.
“Stop obsessing.”
As a joke: You can say this as the culmination to a series of unfounded accusations that the mockee is obsessing over person X or event Y, which is effective particularly if the supposed object of obsession is you, the mocker.
For real: By definition, an obsession is all-consuming, and rare is the two-word-combination that can stop it. (“I do” and “fuck off” are likely exceptions.) The person obsessing is likely in actual distress, but probably does not realize or will not admit it—the state of obsession seems natural and good to them.
Do not attempt to mock the obsessed—who have proven that they have enough focus and drive to take you out if they choose—directly; instead, ascribe the obsessed’s actions to the object of the obsession, i.e. “I bet person X is writing his first name with your last name on every page of his notebook right now, too”; “Person X probably followed you home tonight and rifled through your trash to see what you had for dinner”; etc.
You may also consider inventing your own parallel obsession, countering each of the obsessed’s revelations of minutiae with your own: “Person Y read four out of five of the ‘Humor in Uniform’ stories in the bathroom today.”
It’s possible that through this the obsessed will recognize their personal excesses, but more likely that you will simply be amusing yourself.
That’s all right. It’s important to take time out for yourself in the midst of a crisis.
“Stop worrying.”
As a joke: Similar to “stop obsessing,” though on the whole, less funny.
For real: Telling a worrier to stop worrying will have the opposite of the intended effect, since you’ve now shown them that you are not willing to share the necessary work of preventing disaster through worrying it away. Now they’ll have to do your part of the worrying, too.
The only way to unclench a worrywart is to beat them at their own game. For every new anxiety they mention, respond, eyes wide with concern, “I know—we’re probably all going to die! Probably from this!”
If they object, up the ante until they give up: puppies will be born with grotesque birth defects; well water everywhere will be poisoned; “owls will deafen us with their incessant hooting,” etc.
“Chill out.”
Var. “calm down”—see previous entry.
“No offense, but…”
As a joke: You can use this phrase in select company when you are sure the listeners are in agreement with you, against a third party who is not present, if you follow with something obviously offensive. This is only funny when it is directed at a famous figure for whom none of you have much sympathy, such as the president or Pat Robertson; otherwise, it is cruel.
For real: You will never fail to offend if you begin your remarks with this phrase. Whatever its original meaning, it has now become the verbal equivalent of throwing down the gauntlet; you are signaling your intention to offend while indicating that you refuse responsibility for the offense, which is offensive in itself. Upon hearing it, listeners will immediately begin being offended. This phrase, which is supposedly meant to disarm, is additionally annoying because it’s disingenuous.
Instead of feigning respect for the person to whom you are speaking, then, you might try some refreshing honesty: “I was just thinking something rotten about you and wanted to let you know” or “I feel an obligation to the world at large to tell you to take a bath/discipline your child/go to hell.”
Or you could just keep your mouth shut.
“Stop obsessing.”
As a joke: You can say this as the culmination to a series of unfounded accusations that the mockee is obsessing over person X or event Y, which is effective particularly if the supposed object of obsession is you, the mocker.
For real: By definition, an obsession is all-consuming, and rare is the two-word-combination that can stop it. (“I do” and “fuck off” are likely exceptions.) The person obsessing is likely in actual distress, but probably does not realize or will not admit it—the state of obsession seems natural and good to them.
Do not attempt to mock the obsessed—who have proven that they have enough focus and drive to take you out if they choose—directly; instead, ascribe the obsessed’s actions to the object of the obsession, i.e. “I bet person X is writing his first name with your last name on every page of his notebook right now, too”; “Person X probably followed you home tonight and rifled through your trash to see what you had for dinner”; etc.
You may also consider inventing your own parallel obsession, countering each of the obsessed’s revelations of minutiae with your own: “Person Y read four out of five of the ‘Humor in Uniform’ stories in the bathroom today.”
It’s possible that through this the obsessed will recognize their personal excesses, but more likely that you will simply be amusing yourself.
That’s all right. It’s important to take time out for yourself in the midst of a crisis.
“Stop worrying.”
As a joke: Similar to “stop obsessing,” though on the whole, less funny.
For real: Telling a worrier to stop worrying will have the opposite of the intended effect, since you’ve now shown them that you are not willing to share the necessary work of preventing disaster through worrying it away. Now they’ll have to do your part of the worrying, too.
The only way to unclench a worrywart is to beat them at their own game. For every new anxiety they mention, respond, eyes wide with concern, “I know—we’re probably all going to die! Probably from this!”
If they object, up the ante until they give up: puppies will be born with grotesque birth defects; well water everywhere will be poisoned; “owls will deafen us with their incessant hooting,” etc.
“Chill out.”
Var. “calm down”—see previous entry.
“No offense, but…”
As a joke: You can use this phrase in select company when you are sure the listeners are in agreement with you, against a third party who is not present, if you follow with something obviously offensive. This is only funny when it is directed at a famous figure for whom none of you have much sympathy, such as the president or Pat Robertson; otherwise, it is cruel.
For real: You will never fail to offend if you begin your remarks with this phrase. Whatever its original meaning, it has now become the verbal equivalent of throwing down the gauntlet; you are signaling your intention to offend while indicating that you refuse responsibility for the offense, which is offensive in itself. Upon hearing it, listeners will immediately begin being offended. This phrase, which is supposedly meant to disarm, is additionally annoying because it’s disingenuous.
Instead of feigning respect for the person to whom you are speaking, then, you might try some refreshing honesty: “I was just thinking something rotten about you and wanted to let you know” or “I feel an obligation to the world at large to tell you to take a bath/discipline your child/go to hell.”
Or you could just keep your mouth shut.
New England
The thing about New England is the winters. I say this as a native of Connecticut, which is southern New England and so has slightly less claim on the terrible blizzards of Vermont, New Hampshire, or Maine. But even Connecticut gets enough snow and ice to be thought of as difficult wintering.
The other thing about New England is the Puritans. The South may have Walker Percy and Flannery O’Connor, who write languidly about the failures of man (and woman) as a fact of life, and William Faulkner, who did the same, never bothering to stop and punctuate. New England’s quintessential texts are Ethan Frome and The Scarlet Letter. Lack of punishment is the equivalent of godlessness. It cannot be endured.
I suspect that the peculiar character of native New Englanders—known as hard workers, but sarcastic and cold—comes from the combination of these. Harsh winters drove Puritans indoors and left them with not much else to contemplate but an equally harsh and punishing divine will. It made them neurotic and resulted in a kind of collective post-traumatic stress that many of us have yet to escape.
Being a New Englander is like being a lapsed Catholic; you may fight against it your whole life, but it will always be that that you’re fighting against.
The other thing about New England is the Puritans. The South may have Walker Percy and Flannery O’Connor, who write languidly about the failures of man (and woman) as a fact of life, and William Faulkner, who did the same, never bothering to stop and punctuate. New England’s quintessential texts are Ethan Frome and The Scarlet Letter. Lack of punishment is the equivalent of godlessness. It cannot be endured.
I suspect that the peculiar character of native New Englanders—known as hard workers, but sarcastic and cold—comes from the combination of these. Harsh winters drove Puritans indoors and left them with not much else to contemplate but an equally harsh and punishing divine will. It made them neurotic and resulted in a kind of collective post-traumatic stress that many of us have yet to escape.
Being a New Englander is like being a lapsed Catholic; you may fight against it your whole life, but it will always be that that you’re fighting against.
Friday, February 15, 2008
Kids These Days
I'm sitting here at the library, doing stuff, and I slowly become aware that I'm being watched. I turn toward the stacks behind me and notice, huddled with the memoirs, two pre-teen girls. They stand up and instead of running away, giggling, as I expect them to (having been found out), they walk over to the table where I'm sitting with my laptop and things as one of them says, cryptically, "There are stalkers among us."
They sit down at my table. Okay, I'm thinking. They're bolder than I assumed.
They say hello and ask if I'm working.
"Yes," I say, lying. Maybe they sense the lie.
"I like your glasses," says the cryptic one.
"I like your laptop," say the other one.
I thank them, twice, then ask what they're doing today.
"We want to do something," says the cryptic one (and I'm thinking you want to give me something or beat me up or run away giggling?) "I could type that for you."
I fake a laugh and say "No, that's okay."
"You got some movies," the other one says, referring to the movies I'm returning to the library, which are in my purse. She emphasizes "movies" as though she means to imply that my life will be in danger if I don't hand them over.
They keep sitting there, and one of them finally says "Don't mind us."
"Well, it's hard not to," I say mildly.
"We'll be going then," says the cryptic one. "Good-bye for now, best friend."
She says this in a way that indicates that "best friend" is some sort of code-word for "person against whom we intend to do mischief" or at least "person we intend to confuse with our erratic behavior."
Well, mission accomplished, girls. Mission accomplished.
They sit down at my table. Okay, I'm thinking. They're bolder than I assumed.
They say hello and ask if I'm working.
"Yes," I say, lying. Maybe they sense the lie.
"I like your glasses," says the cryptic one.
"I like your laptop," say the other one.
I thank them, twice, then ask what they're doing today.
"We want to do something," says the cryptic one (and I'm thinking you want to give me something or beat me up or run away giggling?) "I could type that for you."
I fake a laugh and say "No, that's okay."
"You got some movies," the other one says, referring to the movies I'm returning to the library, which are in my purse. She emphasizes "movies" as though she means to imply that my life will be in danger if I don't hand them over.
They keep sitting there, and one of them finally says "Don't mind us."
"Well, it's hard not to," I say mildly.
"We'll be going then," says the cryptic one. "Good-bye for now, best friend."
She says this in a way that indicates that "best friend" is some sort of code-word for "person against whom we intend to do mischief" or at least "person we intend to confuse with our erratic behavior."
Well, mission accomplished, girls. Mission accomplished.
Phrases That Never Help
I often think it's funny to say things that are never helpful--it points out how useless saying them really is. But be careful. I've found that a dry sense of humor can make an attempt at a joke into an awkward moment for everyone, while your listeners try to figure out if you're serious (and a social dimwit) or joking. By the time they get the joke, it's usually not funny anymore.
The following are instructions on how to use these phrases effectively as a joke, and why and how to avoid them under other circumstances.
"Calm down."
As a joke: You can say this to someone who is sitting quietly, reading a book, or otherwise not bothering you in any way. This is especially effective used on someone who is never excitable, such as an entymologist.
For real: Either the person you're saying this to is actually upset about something, in which case your saying "calm down" will almost certainly fail to have the desired effect, or they don't perceive themselves as being worked up and you've succeeded in pointing out their embarrassing volume level.
Perhaps instead, you could say "You're being loud and embarrassing me, which is just as important as the fact that Brian left you pregnant at the altar on the day all your kittens died. Have a little self-respect!"
That'll shut them up.
"You're not ugly."
As a joke: Never use this as a joke. Under certain circumstances, it may be used as a drastic understatement, but be aware that many models have fragile egos and cannot be counted on to detect the irony.
For real: This reassurance is especially useless when it is unsolicited. If someone is sitting there, minding her own business, and you look over and say (as though you'd been thinking it over and reached a conclusion) "you're not ugly," you're implying that you had been thinking that she was. The fact that you've now seen the error of your ways is not enough to redeem this remark; the implied end of the sentence is "but you're not pretty, either." And anyway, who asked you.
It is also useless to say this to someone fishing for a compliment. In fact, there are really only two ways to deal with someone complaining "I'm ugly/fat/an alcoholic": The first is to go over there and say, if you can say it honestly, "Not to me. To me, you're beautiful/exactly the right size/a moderate social drinker."
The second, which is the one I usually choose, is to sit back and say "Well, I'VE always thought so."
"Really?"
As a joke: You can say this in order to point out that whatever has just been said is obvious. Take care to select the proper "sarcastic voice" for this, or people will think you're legitimately offended. Maybe you should practice this first.
For real: The trouble with this word is that it implies a lack of belief in what has just been said, and is ultimately an accusation of liarhood against the speaker.
At some point, though, all of us, however diligently we struggle to avoid it, will be surprised by some fact or statement and blurt out "really?" in response. It's best to try to cover up the slight of the word by immediately following it with what we really meant, i.e. "I'm surprised!" or "That's crazy!" or "What do you mean a telephone pole has fallen on my car?"
More phrases that never help as I come across them.
The following are instructions on how to use these phrases effectively as a joke, and why and how to avoid them under other circumstances.
"Calm down."
As a joke: You can say this to someone who is sitting quietly, reading a book, or otherwise not bothering you in any way. This is especially effective used on someone who is never excitable, such as an entymologist.
For real: Either the person you're saying this to is actually upset about something, in which case your saying "calm down" will almost certainly fail to have the desired effect, or they don't perceive themselves as being worked up and you've succeeded in pointing out their embarrassing volume level.
Perhaps instead, you could say "You're being loud and embarrassing me, which is just as important as the fact that Brian left you pregnant at the altar on the day all your kittens died. Have a little self-respect!"
That'll shut them up.
"You're not ugly."
As a joke: Never use this as a joke. Under certain circumstances, it may be used as a drastic understatement, but be aware that many models have fragile egos and cannot be counted on to detect the irony.
For real: This reassurance is especially useless when it is unsolicited. If someone is sitting there, minding her own business, and you look over and say (as though you'd been thinking it over and reached a conclusion) "you're not ugly," you're implying that you had been thinking that she was. The fact that you've now seen the error of your ways is not enough to redeem this remark; the implied end of the sentence is "but you're not pretty, either." And anyway, who asked you.
It is also useless to say this to someone fishing for a compliment. In fact, there are really only two ways to deal with someone complaining "I'm ugly/fat/an alcoholic": The first is to go over there and say, if you can say it honestly, "Not to me. To me, you're beautiful/exactly the right size/a moderate social drinker."
The second, which is the one I usually choose, is to sit back and say "Well, I'VE always thought so."
"Really?"
As a joke: You can say this in order to point out that whatever has just been said is obvious. Take care to select the proper "sarcastic voice" for this, or people will think you're legitimately offended. Maybe you should practice this first.
For real: The trouble with this word is that it implies a lack of belief in what has just been said, and is ultimately an accusation of liarhood against the speaker.
At some point, though, all of us, however diligently we struggle to avoid it, will be surprised by some fact or statement and blurt out "really?" in response. It's best to try to cover up the slight of the word by immediately following it with what we really meant, i.e. "I'm surprised!" or "That's crazy!" or "What do you mean a telephone pole has fallen on my car?"
More phrases that never help as I come across them.
Thursday, February 14, 2008
And Now, A Word From Our Sponsor
Ahem.
You may be wondering--you may even be asking me on the phone--why it appears that I have written nothing on some days and several things on others.
The answer is, obviously, that appearances can be deceiving.
And: I am a complicated and mysterious person.
By which I mean, of course, that I don't have the internet at home and have to wait until I get to the library to post anything.
Sorry for those who wish they had something to read every day and who also binge on seven-post-readings when I finally get to posting stuff. Think of this as an opportunity to learn moderation. Or something.
You may be wondering--you may even be asking me on the phone--why it appears that I have written nothing on some days and several things on others.
The answer is, obviously, that appearances can be deceiving.
And: I am a complicated and mysterious person.
By which I mean, of course, that I don't have the internet at home and have to wait until I get to the library to post anything.
Sorry for those who wish they had something to read every day and who also binge on seven-post-readings when I finally get to posting stuff. Think of this as an opportunity to learn moderation. Or something.
Movie Review: Monster's Ball
I saw Monster’s Ball recently, after having avoided it since it came out five or six years ago. My hesitation had been caused by a general distaste for “regional” films, especially “Southern” ones; my desire to hold onto a shred of hope that Halle Berry had won her Oscar through talent, not politics, and my belief that seeing the movie would kill that hope; my lack of respect for the Oscars, even in the case that they do reward talent; and the reviews I had heard or read from others who criticized the movie, mainly for being gratuitously explicit.
Monster’s Ball proved each of my reasons for delay meaningless. The fact that the movie is set in the South does not make it either the indictment or glorification of Southern culture that so many annoying films are. Halle Berry did an excellent job in her role, and though I still have no respect for the Oscars, I do not fault the Academy for picking her. As for the objection that the movie was too full of sex and not enough substance, this view can only be held by those whose purpose in watching a movie is to police its content for a moral message—and that is not the point of this movie.
In some ways, this film could be considered a part of the recently popular “theme of significance” drama genre, the edges of which are described by The Butterfly Effect or Sliding Doors (one small circumstance alters the rest of one’s life), Garden State (apathy gives way to empathy), Little Miss Sunshine or Napoleon Dynamite (relatively unimportant events lead to an apparent, but also meaningless, resolution). The main characters of Monster’s Ball experience apparently meaningless tragedies in their lives—meaningless because they are unexplained, because they did not have to happen, or because they are the results of small, discrete actions that the characters had taken, compounded over years.
The two main characters' reactions to the deaths in the film, and in some cases the deaths themselves—I would argue that there are, metaphorically, four, including Hank’s father—are the result of a misapprehension or inability to make direct contact with the world on the parts of Hank and Leticia. Hank is unable to love his son, and is unable to realize that he does not, until confronted; as Hank wakes up to the reality of how he functions in the world, he realizes that he is not what he had assumed himself to be. He cannot continue as a corrections officer. He cannot continue to support his harsh, racist father. Leticia does not seem to be so divorced from her feelings, but she distracts herself from her husband’s execution (with alcohol), and she expresses her anxieties for her son through nagging about his weight. Their indirect approaches to dealing with themselves and the contents of their lives connects this movie to others that deal with questions of significance, and specifically the significance of everyday life.
But there Monster’s Ball departs from the thematic genre of in/significance. Things happen in this film—big things—and they happen unexpectedly. The death of Sonny is emphatic and startling because it is unexpected; the death of Leticia’s son is the same, though not to the same degree. The sheer body count of this movie vaults it from quotidian drama to the level of tragedy.
And yet, the tragedy does not devolve into a City of Angels melodrama, precisely because of its grounding in the everyday, insignificant details of life. Each decision Hank or Leticia makes is both ordinary and deeply rooted in their emotional realities; this is what makes the depiction of intimacy necessary and not gratuitous. They encounter one another on a visceral level—a painful one, reinforced by hard edit cuts instead of the typical soft-focus lens of bittersweet nostalgia—almost exclusively in these scenes. The rest of the time, they appear to be ordinary people attempting to manage ordinary circumstances.
As well they should. Death is both ordinary and traumatic. Any depiction of this level of loss should admit that.
The ultimate triumph of Monster’s Ball on this count can be credited to its score, which refuses to add a single falsely cheerful note. Most composers would emphasize triumph over adversity through grand, sweeping runs and excessive instrumentation. (Cue characters looking to the horizon, where dawn is breaking, “looking to a new day”…ugh.) Instead of this, the three collaborative composers of the Monster’s Ball score wrote music that seems to come up through the middle of a scene, such that the viewer accepts its effect as a natural extension of the story—as another method, even, of story-telling. It conveys a sense of exploration rather than resolve—that hollow resolve of romantic comedies attempting to tie everything into a “happily ever after”—and, in its floating above the action of the film, sympathizes with the viewer rather than the actors. The gentle, coming-alongside nature of the music pulls the viewer into a film that might otherwise have been off-puttingly difficult to watch.
In the end, Monster’s Ball is a tragedy that succeeds in rising above the mawkish and the mundane, both. Despite the number of deaths and their attendant complications, and despite the quotidian focus of the characters’ (especially Hank’s) transformation, despite the difficulty of the material at hand, Monster’s Ball artfully and sensitively portrays what feels like a true story.
Monster’s Ball proved each of my reasons for delay meaningless. The fact that the movie is set in the South does not make it either the indictment or glorification of Southern culture that so many annoying films are. Halle Berry did an excellent job in her role, and though I still have no respect for the Oscars, I do not fault the Academy for picking her. As for the objection that the movie was too full of sex and not enough substance, this view can only be held by those whose purpose in watching a movie is to police its content for a moral message—and that is not the point of this movie.
In some ways, this film could be considered a part of the recently popular “theme of significance” drama genre, the edges of which are described by The Butterfly Effect or Sliding Doors (one small circumstance alters the rest of one’s life), Garden State (apathy gives way to empathy), Little Miss Sunshine or Napoleon Dynamite (relatively unimportant events lead to an apparent, but also meaningless, resolution). The main characters of Monster’s Ball experience apparently meaningless tragedies in their lives—meaningless because they are unexplained, because they did not have to happen, or because they are the results of small, discrete actions that the characters had taken, compounded over years.
The two main characters' reactions to the deaths in the film, and in some cases the deaths themselves—I would argue that there are, metaphorically, four, including Hank’s father—are the result of a misapprehension or inability to make direct contact with the world on the parts of Hank and Leticia. Hank is unable to love his son, and is unable to realize that he does not, until confronted; as Hank wakes up to the reality of how he functions in the world, he realizes that he is not what he had assumed himself to be. He cannot continue as a corrections officer. He cannot continue to support his harsh, racist father. Leticia does not seem to be so divorced from her feelings, but she distracts herself from her husband’s execution (with alcohol), and she expresses her anxieties for her son through nagging about his weight. Their indirect approaches to dealing with themselves and the contents of their lives connects this movie to others that deal with questions of significance, and specifically the significance of everyday life.
But there Monster’s Ball departs from the thematic genre of in/significance. Things happen in this film—big things—and they happen unexpectedly. The death of Sonny is emphatic and startling because it is unexpected; the death of Leticia’s son is the same, though not to the same degree. The sheer body count of this movie vaults it from quotidian drama to the level of tragedy.
And yet, the tragedy does not devolve into a City of Angels melodrama, precisely because of its grounding in the everyday, insignificant details of life. Each decision Hank or Leticia makes is both ordinary and deeply rooted in their emotional realities; this is what makes the depiction of intimacy necessary and not gratuitous. They encounter one another on a visceral level—a painful one, reinforced by hard edit cuts instead of the typical soft-focus lens of bittersweet nostalgia—almost exclusively in these scenes. The rest of the time, they appear to be ordinary people attempting to manage ordinary circumstances.
As well they should. Death is both ordinary and traumatic. Any depiction of this level of loss should admit that.
The ultimate triumph of Monster’s Ball on this count can be credited to its score, which refuses to add a single falsely cheerful note. Most composers would emphasize triumph over adversity through grand, sweeping runs and excessive instrumentation. (Cue characters looking to the horizon, where dawn is breaking, “looking to a new day”…ugh.) Instead of this, the three collaborative composers of the Monster’s Ball score wrote music that seems to come up through the middle of a scene, such that the viewer accepts its effect as a natural extension of the story—as another method, even, of story-telling. It conveys a sense of exploration rather than resolve—that hollow resolve of romantic comedies attempting to tie everything into a “happily ever after”—and, in its floating above the action of the film, sympathizes with the viewer rather than the actors. The gentle, coming-alongside nature of the music pulls the viewer into a film that might otherwise have been off-puttingly difficult to watch.
In the end, Monster’s Ball is a tragedy that succeeds in rising above the mawkish and the mundane, both. Despite the number of deaths and their attendant complications, and despite the quotidian focus of the characters’ (especially Hank’s) transformation, despite the difficulty of the material at hand, Monster’s Ball artfully and sensitively portrays what feels like a true story.
"In your FACE, space coyote!"
When I started working at the paper, I started reading it. Most days at home I just do the standard browsing, checking out the main stories from each section (except sports) and whatever smaller headlines catch my attention. On occasion, I look at layout and fonts, etc. Mainly I save that level of attention to detail for days when I’m actually sitting in the newspaper building.
The first day I really looked over the newspaper (and the days since), I read everything in it, including my horoscope. The vague pronouncements of what I could expect to encounter that day seemed to fit adequately, as they always do (on account of being so vague). I didn’t test the results at the end of the day to make sure they fit, because I simply didn’t care enough to bother.
(An aside: The woman who predicts your days’ and years’ events has the first name “Holiday.” This seems strange to me for a person meant to feel that each day is different or special and can be specifically forecast on a daily basis—why not “Christmas” or “Halloween” or “Festival of Lights” [“Festi” for short]? Surely the fact that these holidays occur in different signs of the zodiac would make a difference in how she would view herself? As it is, her name—like her occupation—is vague and strange and leaves one wondering what her parents were thinking.)
In fact, I would like to challenge Holiday to a duel of psychic energies. Like my opponent, I can only offer bizarre coincidences to shore up my case; but unlike my opponent’s coincidences, mine are specific and irrefutable.
This week’s newspaper as a whole seems to be geared toward revealing my past life. On Wednesday, the front page featured (in part) an article about a regional food bank’s delivery truck making stops in New Britain; I interned at that food bank, and only that food bank, after graduating from college five years ago, and I rode on that truck. On Tuesday, the front page of the paper showed a photo of a bus crash in Plainville; the crash happened on the corner where my family used to live, and my brother’s girlfriend was on the bus (but she’s fine). These are normal coincidences, I’ll grant you, but here’s the clincher: on Sunday, the paper ran a full-page story about the Beguines in Leuven, Belgium. Their beguinage has been there for hundreds of years and is now a dormitory for religious university students. The narrow cobblestone ways snake through row after row of small-bricked buildings punctuated at the corners by icons and face-worn Virgin Marys, and the doors to the rooms swing wide and are wooden. I know this because I’ve been there, to Leuven, specifically to see the beguinage.
But who’s ever heard of Leuven? Had the article featured Brussels, or Bruges (which has been recently featured in a Colin Farrel movie, as my friend pointed out), that would have been one thing: Brussels has NATO, and Bruges was the Cultural Capital of Europe some six or seven years ago. But Leuven? We had to take a student commuter train to get there, then find the beguinage, then run back just in time to jump on the final train of the night, encountering a man who spoke only Flemish and a woman who pointed us to the train station, on the way. Maybe Leuven is more famous than I thought—but I’m betting, in this case, on my psychic influence over the newspaper, instead.
And it’s not just the newspaper that bends to my psychic will—it’s the NFL as well. Consider this: every year that I have been out of the country, the Patriots (I’m from New England, so technically my home team) have won the Superbowl. Every year I’ve been stateside, they’ve lost. That upset against the Giants this year? My doing. I was home in the US, cleaning my apartment at the time. This happens despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that I don’t really care about football.
I don’t have anything personal against Holiday, and I can understand people’s desire to be told that they’re doing the right thing, or to get advice from someone who won’t nag later if they don’t take it, who will always reassure and never challenge.
But if you’re looking to effect change, it seems you’d better come to me instead.
The first day I really looked over the newspaper (and the days since), I read everything in it, including my horoscope. The vague pronouncements of what I could expect to encounter that day seemed to fit adequately, as they always do (on account of being so vague). I didn’t test the results at the end of the day to make sure they fit, because I simply didn’t care enough to bother.
(An aside: The woman who predicts your days’ and years’ events has the first name “Holiday.” This seems strange to me for a person meant to feel that each day is different or special and can be specifically forecast on a daily basis—why not “Christmas” or “Halloween” or “Festival of Lights” [“Festi” for short]? Surely the fact that these holidays occur in different signs of the zodiac would make a difference in how she would view herself? As it is, her name—like her occupation—is vague and strange and leaves one wondering what her parents were thinking.)
In fact, I would like to challenge Holiday to a duel of psychic energies. Like my opponent, I can only offer bizarre coincidences to shore up my case; but unlike my opponent’s coincidences, mine are specific and irrefutable.
This week’s newspaper as a whole seems to be geared toward revealing my past life. On Wednesday, the front page featured (in part) an article about a regional food bank’s delivery truck making stops in New Britain; I interned at that food bank, and only that food bank, after graduating from college five years ago, and I rode on that truck. On Tuesday, the front page of the paper showed a photo of a bus crash in Plainville; the crash happened on the corner where my family used to live, and my brother’s girlfriend was on the bus (but she’s fine). These are normal coincidences, I’ll grant you, but here’s the clincher: on Sunday, the paper ran a full-page story about the Beguines in Leuven, Belgium. Their beguinage has been there for hundreds of years and is now a dormitory for religious university students. The narrow cobblestone ways snake through row after row of small-bricked buildings punctuated at the corners by icons and face-worn Virgin Marys, and the doors to the rooms swing wide and are wooden. I know this because I’ve been there, to Leuven, specifically to see the beguinage.
But who’s ever heard of Leuven? Had the article featured Brussels, or Bruges (which has been recently featured in a Colin Farrel movie, as my friend pointed out), that would have been one thing: Brussels has NATO, and Bruges was the Cultural Capital of Europe some six or seven years ago. But Leuven? We had to take a student commuter train to get there, then find the beguinage, then run back just in time to jump on the final train of the night, encountering a man who spoke only Flemish and a woman who pointed us to the train station, on the way. Maybe Leuven is more famous than I thought—but I’m betting, in this case, on my psychic influence over the newspaper, instead.
And it’s not just the newspaper that bends to my psychic will—it’s the NFL as well. Consider this: every year that I have been out of the country, the Patriots (I’m from New England, so technically my home team) have won the Superbowl. Every year I’ve been stateside, they’ve lost. That upset against the Giants this year? My doing. I was home in the US, cleaning my apartment at the time. This happens despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that I don’t really care about football.
I don’t have anything personal against Holiday, and I can understand people’s desire to be told that they’re doing the right thing, or to get advice from someone who won’t nag later if they don’t take it, who will always reassure and never challenge.
But if you’re looking to effect change, it seems you’d better come to me instead.
Confessions
Here are some ways in which I have failed the universe.
I enjoy the movie “Ever After,” despite its ridiculous plot and Drew Barrymore’s even-more-ridiculous attempt at an accent. I assume that this is due to some sort of flaw in my character but do not bother to try to correct it.
I once (unthinkingly) used Chinglish to call someone “a fascist pig,” using the Chinese word for pig, zhu, which is pronounced, roughly, “jew.” I therefore ended up saying something like “you fascist Jew.”
I once quoted (or tried to quote) Homer Simpson saying “Sure I’m stupid…stupid like a FOX!” in front of a man named John Fox, who was not familiar with the Simpsons, nor with me. He thought I was calling him stupid.
That’s all for now.
I enjoy the movie “Ever After,” despite its ridiculous plot and Drew Barrymore’s even-more-ridiculous attempt at an accent. I assume that this is due to some sort of flaw in my character but do not bother to try to correct it.
I once (unthinkingly) used Chinglish to call someone “a fascist pig,” using the Chinese word for pig, zhu, which is pronounced, roughly, “jew.” I therefore ended up saying something like “you fascist Jew.”
I once quoted (or tried to quote) Homer Simpson saying “Sure I’m stupid…stupid like a FOX!” in front of a man named John Fox, who was not familiar with the Simpsons, nor with me. He thought I was calling him stupid.
That’s all for now.
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