Elfriede Jelinek having already had her moment in the sun, fashion journalists turn to JSF & Kunkel for their next generation of inappropriate comparisons:

Maybe a better explanation for his decision to base his collection on high school life, and to give it a dark cast, is that a number of young novelists, like Benjamin Kunkel and Jonathan Safran Foer, have created an agitated, post-Holden Caulfield generation of characters.

Here, by the way, are the photos of fashion designer Marc Jacob’s “agitated, post-Holden Caulfield generation of characters.”

Note the “gold lamé evening pajamas with an organza hem.”

As reported in my right-hand column, 2004’s Rhodes Scholars have been announced … reminding me there’s nothing harder to relate to than success.

Wen Shi

Degree: Johns Hopkins University: B.S., Biology, 2004
Proposed Oxford Subject: D.Phil., Medicine
Career Aspirations: Physician-scientist



After emigrating from China to the U.S. in 1999, Wen Shi initially attended classes in English as a second language. By the time he graduated from high school in 2001, he had excelled in ten Advanced Placement exams, including AP English, and had won numerous awards in national and state math and science competitions. In his three years at Hopkins, Wen has finished his Bachelors degree with Phi Beta Kappa honors and has completed all core courses for Ph.D. candidates in Biology. Outside the classroom, Wen has taught other immigrants English, volunteered at Hopkins Hospital AIDS clinic and responded to medical emergencies on campus. Wen co-founded an organization through which Hopkins undergraduate and medical students teach sex education to incarcerated youth. As Vice President of Alpha Phi Omega Service Fraternity, he organized 3,800 student-hours of projects in 2002-2003. Wen received the President’s Student Service Award for his leadership in campus and community events. He facilitates diversity roundtables and serves on the Hopkins Diversity Leadership Council. Wen has also become a regular guest on Voice of America, telling his immigrant success story to a world audience. Since freshman year, Wen has conducted research at the Hopkins School of Medicine on the cardiac toxicity of cancer drugs, work that has earned him Howard Hughes and Woodrow Wilson Fellowships and a Goldwater Scholarship. He will pursue a career in academic medicine, “dedicating myself to the conquest of cancer.”

Continue reading "(I Do, However, Respond to My Own Medical Emergencies Occasionally.)"

Including, “Dickheads,” “Anals of Congress,” “The New Pinochio Effect,” “Getting Behind Bush,” “Blue Balls,” “Rod Steward,” and some pun relating to “Hung Like a Donkey.”

RNC photo courtesy of Gawker

In Italy, I downgraded from Marlboro Mediums to Lights, since each drag of Italy’s Mediums was like sucking down a bowling ball of smoke.

Back in the States, though, I’m buying Mediums again. And, in NYC, Marlboro’s offering a 2-for-1 special on its Medium brand. The one catch: the 2-for-1 packs replace the classic red and white design with an apocalyptic horseman, bucking on a steed of death. I can usually avoid reading the Surgeon’s Warning, printed on a pack’s side; but I can’t avoid thoughts of blackened lungs and cancer when the pack’s front and back ghosts a violent horse over flames and brimstone.

A quick visual guide to Malrboro Medium’s cultural iconography:

Continue reading "Product Watch, Entry No. 1"

—R.I.P. Julia Child. I love the title of this obit: Late Cooking Diva Julia Child Loved Red Meat, Gin.

—I was totally fascinated by Maud yesterday, particularly the interview with her defamation law professor, Lyrissa Lydskey. Definitely a must-read for bloggers.

—In my incessant surfing to try to become a better newbie blogger, I came across Bitch Ph.D via Crooked Timber. In particular, this post about “feminist marriage” was hilarious.

—For a former San Franciscan like myself, this article about EBay purchasing a stake in Craigslist was interesting. Wonder where they’ll go with that? I hope nothing changes the Missed Connections section. No better way to procrastinate, I say.

—New poet laureate announced. Some poems to read: here and here.

—Some books for the boys. And some for the ladies, too (day pass required).

—New blog about promotions techniques for authors and publishers from M.J. Rose, formerly self-published author. Brand-spanking new, so you may want to give it some time (via Publishers Marketplace).

—Interesting article on Salon about Moveable Type from Farhad Manjoo, who’s covered a bunch of blog and tech-related stuff in the past.

—Wow, those cell phone companies think of everything.

—For those who don’t live in these parts, an introduction to Mister Nouse, who works at Prairie Lights and provides book recommendations to the whole of Iowa City. Good ones, too—he can tailor them based on what you like, and he always comes up with things I’ve never read.

Favorite Childhood Film:
Annie, Goonies, Flight of the Navigator — It occurs to me that these are all movies about children who are forced to overcome adversity without the help of (or in spite of) the adults in their lives. Is that what all children’s movies were about in the ’80s, or were those just the ones I was drawn to?

High School Haiku:
Mistook bookishness
For punk rock, hair dye for cool
Oh unhappy girl

Pre-MFA Profession:
Malcontent, wage slave

Public (But Not Political) Figure You Suspect is V. V. Evil:
Ray Liotta

Most Irrational Fear(s):
Ray Liotta

Worst Literary Trend(s):
Retaliatory spitting and fisticuffs

Currently Reading:
Wuthering Heights, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay

This week, chez Chicha, we’ll be celebrating Sam’s first piece in The NY Times Magazine.

I gave up the notion of healthy living years ago, but those still pursuing it have my sympathy.

From “The Whole Soy Story: The Dark Side of America’s Favorite Health Food” (via SixDifferentWays):

• “Soy is one of the top eight allergens that cause immediate hypersensitivity reactions such as coughing, sneezing, runny nose, hives, diarrhea, difficulty swallowing, and anaphylactic shock.”

• “Soy now lurks in nearly 60 percent of the foods sold in supermarkets and natural food stores. Much of this is ‘hidden’ in products where it wouldn’t ordinarily be expected, such as fast-food burgers and Bumblebee canned tuna.”

• “Scientists who have studied the use of soy protein in animal feeds over the years have discovered a number of components in soy that cause poor growth, digestive distress, and other health problems.”

• “More than 70 years of human, animal, and laboratory studies show that soybeans put the thyroid at risk.”

• “Although scientists discovered only recently that soy lowers testosterone levels, tofu has traditionally been used in Buddhist monasteries to decrease the libido, and by Japanese women to punish straying husbands. Humans and animals appear to be the most vulnerable to the effects of soy estrogens prenatally, during infancy and puberty, during pregnancy and lactation, and during the hormonal shifts of menopause. Of all these groups, infants on soy formula are at the highest risk because of their small size and developmental phase, and because formula is their main source of nutrient.”

A couple thoughts on this ‘icle:
1. Apple continues to hemorrhage copywriters’ brains with lowercase-titled products.
2. Given the frequency with which our notions of Hell include very bad music, looped indefinitely, I’m looking forward to seeing how Hell Week incorporates the new gadgets.

Otherwise, Duke’s plan sounds Christmas-stocking-wonderful:

Duke to Provide Freshmen With IPods

Since its introduction in 2001, the iPod has taken off as the trendiest gadget for storing and playing digital music. IPods can store other kinds of data as well, and Duke students will receive models stocked with school-related information, including freshman orientation details, the academic calendar, campus tours and even the school’s fight song.

The university also will create a Web site modeled on the Apple iTunes online music site from which students can download songs and course content from faculty, including language lessons, lectures and audio books.

Lisa Merschel’s Spanish class will use the iPods to listen to textbook exercises and Spanish songs. Sally Schauman plans to have students record field interviews on the ethics and science of urban water conservation.

The university will spend $500,000 on the project, which also includes hiring an extra technology specialist, giving grants to faculty, and studying the outcome. The program is a one-year experiment, but could be renewed.

Most magazines don’t make it. Thank God.

Update: This landed in my inbox this morning:

Thanks for your support on my new magazine. Are you a lesbian or just a plain ol’ bitch?

If you play your cards right, I’ll shoot you nude for a cover…

Signed,

Editor of Magazine You Judge Before You’ved Even Read It Or Found Out Who’s Behind It.

Why write parodies when you can live them?
On that note: what this project really needs is a reality TV crew.

A couple months ago, I did something I swore I’d never speak of. But, since shame powers all my mental activities, an oath of secrecy usually predicts a long confession. So, here goes: Two months ago, sometime in May, I saw the Olsens’ got milk? ad and realized, to my horror, that Mary-Kate (left) was wearing my ideal vintage-styled jacket. My fashion sense had somehow aligned itself with the tween aesthetic; at 24, in grad school, I was dreaming of dressing like an Olsen twin.
So, I tried to forget about the jacket. But, at 5’ and 94 lbs, it’s hard to find clothes that fit — especially clothes that I like — and I knew Mary-Kate was similarly petite. So, shamefully: after googling the ad, reading through a dozen threads on Olsen message boards, and finding no useful info, I logged onto the twins’ official fan site and emailed the webmistress, asking about MK’s got milk? jacket.

But, despite that email’s creepy, upbeat, fan-impersonating tone, it didn’t win any reply; and, over the next two months, my brain relocated the memory of writing it to a rural neural pathway. The past two weeks, though, magazine covers of MK have dredged up the shameful little memory; and, now, I know for sure that my email, which compared my body size to MK’s, will never get a response.

And then, there’s this AP report:

NEW YORK — Out of “sensitivity to their current situation,” the “got milk?” magazine ads featuring twins Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen have been retracted …

…The magazine ads featuring the Olsen twins, each with the trademark milk mustache, began running May 7 and were to continue to the end of July.

When the advertising campaign was announced, Mary-Kate said in a statement, “We wanted to appear in this ad because we love the campaign and we want to help make sure our fans are healthy like us.”

The ad makes what is probably its last appearance in this month’s Elle Girl, which went to press before reports of MK’s eating disorder hit newstands. Incidentally, on the page facing the ad, the teen mag has a cut-out of MK’s head, floating next to ad text for ellegirl.com, where you can “get your least favorite celebs behind the ball—literally… Serve up Mary-Kate’s head in our not-so-friendly tennis match” and “score big by playing head games.”

“Forget the convertible. A boob job is the latest must-have on your teen daughter’s graduation list.” The NY Post continues, “Popular, well-endowed teen idols, like Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan, as well as reality-TV shows like ‘Extreme Makeover’ and ‘The Swan,’ have made some girls dislike their own bodies, experts said.” I’m waiting for the OED to catch up with this new use of “expert.” (Noun, cheerleader for the banal and obvious; dismantlers of inequality in the distribution of knowledge.)

Articles about teenagers are as painful to read as the teenage years are to live. And if, as a teen, I found most of my classmates absurd, I find it even more absurd when an adult journalist takes teens seriously — studying their habits with an ethnographic vigor, and treating their confessions as accurate source material. Those two impulses are, in some sense, the same: journalists can only be so naively credulous of teens’ blustery confessions if they treat teen culture as foreign — intuitively understood by its natives and, so, best visited using native tour guides.

But, this Other-ing of teenagers, studiously pursued in magazines and newspapers, takes teens seriously only to the extent that their “foreign” or

A Side Point
What’s the real meaning of the article’s accompanying photo (shown above)? Is half-on, half-off, a metaphor for puberty? Are the nuzzling feet meant to represent two friends “with benefits”? Is the Converse a stand-in for fake innocence, and the sockless foot a stand-in for teens’ newly-uncovered (thanks, NY Times!) sex lives? Or, is the sockless foot a simple signifier of unprotected sex?

“unfamiliar” behavior can be portrayed as seriously alarming. The media reduces teens to the function of push buttons — triggering parental anxiety (or, in a cyclical fashion, assuaging the anxieties encouraged by the preceding month’s articles).

The NY Times Magazine’s current cover story — Friends, Friends With Benefits and the Benefits of the Local Mall, an examination of the rising popularity of casual sex and “hook ups” amongst teens — is a case in point. The writer, Benoit Denizet-Lewis, introduces adults to “foreign” expressions (”friends with benefits,” he explains, are “basically, friends you hook up with regularly”) and accepts teeenagers’ accounts of their sexual exploits without any second-guessing (“When [Adam] lived in Florida last year, he lost his virginity to a friend who threw a condom at him and ordered him to put it on.”).

And so, a strange, symbiotic relationship emerges. On the one hand, we have a cultural anxiety about teenage sexuality that is often either 1) a PR stunt on behalf of “family values,” or 2) a thin excuse for constant, voyeuristic accounts of sexual behavior. And then, on the other hand, we have insecure high school sophomores trying to make their sexual exploits worthy of the NY Times. It’s mutual masturbation; both hands get sticky. Teens desperately want to tell stories about their sex lives, and journalists desperately want to believe them.

Among the results: a breed of articles freakishly immune to fact-checking. According to the NY Times,

[A] college girl online … invited Emcho and a friend over to a party at her apartment. ”I was online writing my senior paper,” Emcho said, ”and this girl instant-messages me and says, ‘Hey, I saw your picture on facethejury[.com].”’ She invited Emcho over that night. They had sex in her bathroom, Emcho told me, and met up a few more times, but he says he cut it off when she started talking about wanting to date him.

I imagine that even high school gossip has stricter standards for inclusion.

Here, some choicer quotes from the article, loosely grouped according to my personal opinions:

High school boys are both pathetic and very scary.

• ”Down in Key West, high-school girls are crazy,” Adam said. ”Girls were making out with each other on the beach. Lesbians are cool!”
• A soccer player with shaggy blond hair and a muscular body, [Adam] likes to lift his shirt at inappropriate times (like now, to the Hooters waitress) and scream, ”I’ve had sex!”
• Brian, a 16-year-old friend of Jesse’s, put it this way: ”Being in a real relationship just complicates everything. You feel obligated to be all, like, couply. And that gets really boring after a while. When you’re friends with benefits, you go over, hook up, then play video games or something. It rocks.”
• As Haris put it, ”City girls are cool, but suburban girls are crazy cool!” (Meaning, Haris explains, that suburban girls are ”easier.”)

Never go down a slippery slope.

• “A lot of guys get in relationships just so they can get steady [expletive],” Haris told me. ”But now that it’s easy to get sex outside of relationships, guys don’t need relationships.”
• As one Boston teenager told me, ”Who needs the hassle of dating when I’ve got online porn?”

Girls get tricked by modesty into giving blowjobs.

• According to Jesse, Caity set the ground rules. ”Caity told me, ‘Adam knows he’s not going to get in my pants, but I might get into his.’”
• ”People assume that if the guy’s older, he’s the one making all the moves and using the girl,” Ashley told me. ”But trust me, I was definitely the aggressor. I got into his pants. He didn’t get into mine.”

What does it mean to say, knows “better”?

• Many of the teenagers I talked to told me that no one they know uses condoms during oral sex, only during intercourse.

Articles are, much more than novels and stories, about their reasons for existing. They explain the importance of events to confirm their own importance, or prove a trend to prove their right to space and ink. So, the more tenuous or inconsequential a new trend is, the more desperate articles about that trend become — as demonstrated by today’s NY Times piece on Hill staffers and their BlackBerries. The article loads each sentence with nicknames and catch-phrases, as if hoping we’ll think stupid-sounding terms only get invented in response to big, encroaching trends.

Here, a run-down of the terms the NY Times is reporting or encouraging:

Berries
Ex. “Once the Hill staffers got the Berries, the social dating scene was revolutionized,” said Jano Cabrera, the spokesman for the Democratic National Committee.

Berrying
Ex. The chipmunklike thumb action associated with “Berrying” is now as readily observed in smoky bars on late nights as it is in Congressional hearings.

Berry Overture
Ex. And many users testify to the effectiveness of the late-night Berry overture — a short, apparently innocuous inquiry (“What are you up to?” or “Where are you?”) sent at an hour when calling might seem too forward.

Drunken Berrying
Ex. Drunken Berrying — like drunken dialing — can be dangerous, or at least regrettable.

Drunk-Berry
Ex. “It’s actually worse than drunk-dialing,” she said, “because at least they know you are drunk. But if you drunk-Berry, they’re not so sure.”

Digital Courage
Ex. Never mind liquid courage: this is digital courage.

CrackBerries
Ex. In Washington and elsewhere, the devices are referred to as “CrackBerries” because of their addictive quality.

Blirting
Ex. Philippe Reines, a 34-year-old Democrat who works on Capitol Hill (and who coined the term “blirting,” for BlackBerry flirting), said he went through severe withdrawal after finding that Martha’s Vineyard lacked BlackBerry reception.

On a different note: should articles about dating be allowed to use “Throbs” in the headline?

USA Today profiles Coke’s latest, Orwellian, “sweepstakes” technology:

Consumers who find the winning cans activate the technology to call a pre-programmed hotline. They then must agree that Coke “search teams,” using the GPS tracker, can surprise them anyplace, anytime up to three weeks to deliver the prizes, which include a 2005 Chevy Equinox SUV, a chance on $1 million through Harrah’s Casino, Disney vacations and home entertainment systems.

The technology tracks cans to within about 50 feet anywhere in America, and winners must carry the cans at all times until one of five prize teams around the country shows up to exchange the prize for the can. “It’s all about the surprise,” Schiller says…

…A sweepstakes ad begins May 17. In it, two teens at a summer job are caught making out in a storeroom. A Coke team in helicopters and CIA-looking vehicles delivers an Equinox to the guy, who had his Coke can at his side while nuzzling his co-worker.

A friend from Brown just sent me a link to this ridiculous, but true, Boston Globe article:

Ivy chic? Try Brown

Providence campus wins plaudits for its hip couture

Harvard may have the most money, and Yale corners the market on presidential contenders, but students at Brown University can hold their heads high: They’ve got the best outfits, according to Women’s Wear Daily, the fashion industry bible.

The publication, based in New York City and known to style-minded readers as WWD, ranked the fashion savvy of the eight Ivy League campuses in its annual college issue last week. The results turned the Ivy universe topsy-turvy, with Brown on top, followed by Columbia and Cornell, Princeton in the middle, and Harvard and Yale stuck in the bottom spots on the list.

“It’s a rare situation in which a Harvard student isn’t at the head of the class,” the magazine opined. “But when it comes to matters of personal expression and style, these Cambridge smarties are strictly conservative prep.”

Harvard students may write dazzling papers, but their wardrobes are less imaginative, with boring brown loafers, pressed jeans, and barn jackets in heavy rotation, according to WWD. The fashion editors were more impressed on their visit to Providence, where Brown students won high marks for creativity, attributed in part to the close proximity of the Rhode Island School of Design. At Brown, looks on campus range from “downtown New York hipster” to “stiletto-clad sophisticates” and “patchworked bohemians.”

News of their victory in the rankings was slow to reach Brown students, with copies of WWD hard to track down in local bookstores. Told about the outcome, few students took the findings very seriously. But neither did they object to beating Harvard — no matter how vapid the contest.

“It’s a silly competition, but we’ll take our school pride where we can get it,” said Jesse Finkelstein, a senior at Brown, where stylish alumni include John F. Kennedy Jr. and Alex von Furstenberg, son of fashion designer Diane.

Harvard Undergraduate Council president Matthew Mahan defended his school yesterday against the charges of frumpiness. Because winters are so harsh in Cambridge, students “have their overcoats on half the year,” giving an edge to campuses in the milder climes of New York and Rhode Island, he said.

“I wish you could see me today,” Mahan lamented in a phone interview. “I’ve got a suit on, with a really snazzy tie.”

“Snazzy” is such a Harvard word. But the Brown girls pictured in this article look putrid.

Jannemiek Sonneveld, 27, turns her left eye to show the latest thing in body fashion, the Jewel Eye, in her hometown Driebergen, the Netherlands April 7, 2004. The eye jewel, made of platinum and available in the shape of a heart, a star or circle, is implanted under the cornea of the eye and is not visible unless the eye is turned. The procedure costs 500 euros.

Today’s Word.A.Day is resistentialism:

resistentialism (ri-zis-TEN-shul-iz-um) noun

The theory that inanimate objects demonstrate hostile behavior against us.

If you ever get a feeling that the photocopy machine can sense when you’re tense, short of time, need a document copied before an important meeting, and right then it decides to take a break, you’re not alone. Now you know the word for it. Here’s a report of scientific experiments confirming the validity of this theory: http://www.uefap.co.uk/writing/exercise/report/clatri.htm

Related: Paranoia, the blog.

My question: Do they look that way because they’re not getting any, or are they not getting any because they look that way?
Or, am I missing the point?

In NY Magazine: “A Dying Trend: Suicide as a Fad”

In the NY Times: “New Way for Teenagers to See if They Bounce”

courtesy of the Onion:

-Remember, online dating is not for everyone—only the desperate and pathetic.

-Dates like to know that they’re appreciated. Go the extra mile and send that special someone an e-card or virtual flowers.

-For best results, try whichever dating service happens to be advertised to the right or left of this chart.

-If you decide to break up with your online mate, for God’s sake, have the decency to do it over the phone.

-If you’re a man who prefers younger women, but you only seem to get responses from older women, take heart: Older women can give birth to younger women.

Brian Price writes on the experience of preparing inmates’ last meals for Legal Affairs:

Buxton, the 38th prisoner executed in Texas since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1982, had been sentenced to death for killing a supermarket customer in the course of a robbery. For his last meal, he requested filet mignon, pineapple upside-down cake, fruit punch, tea, and coffee. I hadn’t had much experience cooking steaks but it was important to me to give Buxton the last meal he wanted. To my surprise, the kitchen provided me with a T-bone steak in place of Buxton’s preferred filet mignon. I had always thought that condemned inmates received exactly what they requested for their very last meal on earth. But I did the best I could, grilling the steak to well done and arranging the items on Buxton’s dinner tray, which I wrapped in plastic and covered with butcher paper to keep warm. When my task was completed, I prayed over the meal.

Later, as the hour for Buxton’s execution approached, I found myself wondering whether or not he liked his meal. Though I’d never met Buxton and knew little about him, I felt a sympathetic bond to this man as his life drew to a close. The next day, my emotions were compounded when I was told by my supervisor that Buxton had sent a message of thanks to me through the prison chaplain. Buxton had said that he enjoyed his meal and appreciated the care that went into its preparation. After that cold February day, I volunteered to cook all of death row’s last meals.

I found the essay moving, but less so when I learned it’s an excerpt from Price’s forthcoming book, called Meals to Die For. Just because irony is possible, doesn’t mean it’s advisible.

Yesterday, Gawker posted a short quote from Peter Carlson’s Washington Post article on the new “catazine” Cargo:

Cargo might be the worst idea for a magazine in human history. It’s certainly the worst idea for a magazine since December 2000, when Conde Nast launched Lucky, a shopping magazine for women.
The apparent idea behind Lucky was simple: Women are too dumb to read magazine articles. They just want to look at pictures of shoes and makeup and handbags and hairdos. The idea was profoundly insulting to women, and women responded by enthusiastically embracing Lucky, which now sells 900,000 copies a month.

What’s more insulting, of course, is the idea that Carlson wants us to read the articles in women’s magazines. But my favorite line in the piece goes like this: Each non-purchase of Cargo will “strike a blow against … the wimpification of America — while at the same time showing that men are less shallow than women.” Because, men, if you don’t strike a blow, wimpification will attack you. And, the deeper you are, the more you realize one’s depth is measured solely by the interest one takes in clothes and surpassing women.

Dear Yahoo!:

If you are pregnant is the Atkins Diet okay?

Tara
Greenville, Texas

On a whim, I bought Marie Claire while waiting for a train at Penn Station. A couple years ago, I swore off women’s mags, but I had (and have) a cold, and my other reading option was The Magic Mountain, which I suspect may be for the sick what Macbeth is for actors: a curse of mimesis, an infectuous story.
But TB isn’t as evil, as unhealthy, as bloody awful, as Marie Claire, especially Marie Claire, “The Body Issue.” In her monthly column, editor Lesley Jane Seymour reflects on the April issue’s theme: “In high school I felt like an outsider, ‘dieting’ to gain weight — guzzling cans of disgusting weight-gain liquids hoping they might make me look less like a boy. So the truth is, no one escapes ‘the body issue.’” In other words: “While, in earlier issues, we’ve tried to suppress only fat women’s self-esteem, we now recognize the economical short-sightedness of our strategy. This issue proves no body type is immune to criticism, because Marie Claire believes in equality; fat or thin, you’re all in dire need of doubt and self-improvement possibilities.”
And Marie Claire isn’t only introducing new body types to be ashamed of. It’s also introducing new body parts. For ex., on p. 222: “If your nipples are pale, make them rosier with a lip and cheek stain.” And, body parts may be wrong in ways you haven’t previously considered. Page 78: “Does your hair make you look fat?” One way to change that: “Stop straightening.” “‘Pin-straight hair might as well be pointing down to your hips,’ says [hair stylist] Brocato. If your hair is extremely flat, your body will look bigger by comparison.” The companion “before & after” pics show Jessica Simpson with straight hair, in a baggy, off-the-shoulder shirt, and then with wavy hair, in a skin-tight tank. The captions: “thin” and “thinner.” (Thin is for losers. But you can never be too thinner.)

These complaints probably aren’t original. I don’t care. A different object of complaint pertaining to MC: the wheeled-in Ph.D., always a professor of psychology and author of a best-seller. In the case of Judy Kurlansky on p.140, the best-seller is The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Dating. And Kurlansky’s MC-assigned subject: “why we love cradle-robbing celebs.”

Celebrities — with their looks, money, and power — can clearly date whomever they want. So why all the recent fuss over star couples with a decade or more between them? It’s because women are suddenly the ones raiding the nursery, says Judy Kurlansky, Ph.D. “The older male celebrity is a cliché,” she explains. “But now that Demi Moore has turned the tables, younger, hipper celebrity women [think Cameron Diaz, Gwyneth Paltrow] are following in her path.”

Right, because trends dictate our life partners. If not: they should. Continuing:

The payoff for us mortals? The trend gives us permission to date outside our decade, too. According to the AARP, one-third of unmarried women in their 40s to 60s are dating younger guys.

Well, hell, according to Jerry Springer, that “path” was cleared long before Demi by a caravan of mobile homes.

But MC is a little behind the times; take, for ex., its “Women to Watch” feature, which introduces readers to “stars-in-the-making.” Among the stars who haven’t made it yet, according to MC: actress Rosario Dawson, singer Ashanti, director Sofia Coppola, and the under-publicized Keira Knightly. I assume that means, for the time being, they’re still mortal. But—hey you, Keira! Question: why be thin, when you can be thinner?

———————————-
Related: lines I read while composing this post.
-“Compared to Mann’s masterpiece, War and Peace is like the soap that runs down the crack of your butt in the shower.” (source)
-“After her surgery [for her ‘cross-eyed condition’] Demi used her looks to earn some money modeling in Europe (after dropping out of high school), and put her now trademark raspy voice to work as a collection agent.” (source)

George Washington Bridge – Not a good choice. Sure, it’s high up and it’ll do the trick (you’ll probably black out before you even hit the water) but it’s also possible you’ll end up on the New Jersey side of the river. It’s bad enough to kill yourself. But it’s only worse if it takes place in New Jersey. And you’ll probably end up at the morgue in Fort Lee which is uncool and will require friends and family to travel to claim your remains.

New Yorkish explains NYC suicide etiquette.

Some captions to start it off:
[take a] hit and run
why you shouldn’t take the high road

(image via grow a bain’s links stash)

WINTER HAVEN, Fla. (AP) — A dispute at the salad bar turned into a food fracas at an upscale retirement home, with a man taking a bite out of another’s arm and other residents suffering minor injuries.

Police said resident Lee Thoss, 62, of the Spring Haven Retirement Community was picking through the lettuce, which disgusted 86-year-old William Hocker, who was standing in line behind him…

…Thoss’ mother, Arlene, in her 80s and also a Spring Haven resident, jumped in to break up the fight and ended up with a cut arm. Harry Griffin, 92, was standing at the salad bar and cut his head when he was knocked to the ground. [more>]

From the Hudson Valley Sudbury School FAQs (via Mefi):

Where will the school be located?

We are in the process of building our permanent building on our land which is located on 67 acres in Woodstock.

Does the school offer a high school diploma?

Students who wish a diploma must prepare and defend a thesis. The thesis must explain how the student has taken responsibility for preparing him/her self to be an effective adult in the larger community. Experience at other Sudbury schools throughout the country have shown that this diploma is acceptable for entry into college.

How do students get into college?

Largely through the interview process. The students demonstrate their maturity, their ability to express themselves, their persistence and their passion. They are exceptionally clear about their desires. Most colleges are looking for those students who stand out and Sudbury students are definitely unique. Some students choose to study for and take the SATs.

Do you have any real teachers?

The teachers, or staff members as we refer to them, are not necessarily certified. The qualifications for staff members at the school are life experience, the ability to work with kids of all ages, sharing their knowledge and areas of expertise, the ability to model healthy and appropriate behavior, mentor students, and of course, to understand and commit to the philosophy of the school. We believe that the ability to successfully work with students of all ages is of utmost importance.

What happens if a student doesn’t do anything?

It is actually impossible to do nothing. I think what most people are concerned about is students doing what looks like nothing; for example playing video games, playing magic cards, reading all day, etc. The truth is that everything the students do has value. Take video games for example; this “teaches” reading skills, social skills, the ability to concentrate and focus, and, depending on the game, history, strategy, math or science.

How does a student learn an “unusual” subject?

There is a good example of this in the Sudbury Valley School literature. It talks about a student that knew from an early age that he wanted to be a mortician. What they did was to help the student learn as much chemistry and biology as they could and then they found the student a mentor. The mentor was a pathologist in the area who agreed to allow the student to watch and learn - basically to act as an apprentice. By the age of 17 the student was helping perform autopsies. He was a mortician at age 21.

My child has been diagnosed with ADD/ADHD; what about him or her?

Experience at other Sudbury model schools indicates that this is not a problem. They find that when children are allowed to expend their excess energy through play, they can then focus. According to John Holt in “Learning All the Time”, there has been research done by specialists in the area of learning disabilities that links so-called perceptual handicaps with stress. The research showed that when students with supposedly severe learning disabilities were put in a relatively stress free situation, their disabilities soon vanished.

Some of the things that bother me about this:
1. Woodstock.
2. Colleges don’t give a shit about interviews.
3. the words “not necessarily” coupled with “certified”
4. “magic cards” in the same paragraph as “social skills”
5. kids knowing what morticians are at an early age
6. no one talking kids out of being morticians
7. commas outside quotation marks in a sentence addressing learning disabilities

Why is PETA wasting time protesting the tastiness of cow bits when there’s shoes like these, giving antisocial boys all kinds of new ideas?

If you could attend one cultural event, highbrow or lowbrow, that’s taking place this summer, what would it be?

From “The Moment in Fashion: Eccentric”:

The woman [Robert Burke, the fashion director of Bergdorf Goodman] had in mind is one who does not mind raising eyebrows, even relishes the thought. At a time when movie stars employ battalions of stylists to help achieve a bland perfection that passes for good taste — an exception, Ms. Nickerson said, being the singer Bjork — such eccentricity is rare…

…”I really wish they would banish the red carpet,” [Nickerson] said. “When a person insists on being photographed looking glamorous but conventional, it kills experimentation, and fashion cannot move forward.”

---

Sophie Harrison, a first-year medical student, writes the London Review of Books Diary:

The skin has already been cut for us, a neat bloodless line across the base of the neck and another straight down the chest to the top of the abdomen. The students opposite me put their gloved fingers into the cut and pick up their side of chest and fold it back. The dermal layer is as thick as a slender paperback, and, without blood, the same beige as old paper. It sits neatly folded over the cadaver’s arm as though he’d slung it there himself.

---

Amy Benfer analyzes Sweet Valley High books, “The Training Bras of Literature”:

At first, it seems liberating to have your sympathies split between two very different heroines. But eventually it becomes clear that the twins thing reinforces the principle lesson of these kind of novels: personalities are fixed, and you are either one kind of girl or the other; there is no room for ambiguity. Thus you can be either sincere or manipulative; earnest or playful; dependable or flighty; a hard worker or a party girl.

---

From a 2002 interview with Morrissey, “The man with the thorn in his side”:

Who is his best friend? He laughs derisively, ‘My best friend? At the age of 43? My credit card!’ Not even a cat? ‘No. My best friend is myself. I look after myself very, very well. I can rely on myself never to let myself down. I’m the last person I want to see at night and the first in the morning. I am endlessly fascinating - at eight o clock at night, at midnight, I’m fascinated. It’s a lifelong relationship and divorce will never come into it. That’s why, as I say, I feel privileged. And that is an honest reply.’

You’d think I’d be more popular.

“It’s rare for sisters to be so close, like best — ” Lindsay had almost completed her thought when Ali broke in.

“Nobody is lacking,” she started to say.

“At least nobody is a nerd,” Jessica concluded triumphantly.

Certainly not. The triplets were home that night from new jobs — Jessica works for Sola, a fashion accessories showroom, Lindsay for the clothing store Intermix, and Ali is a page at “The Late Show With David Letterman.” They are well into their second month in the apartment, the search for which sounds like the pitch for a new reality television show: Can triplets, a boyfriend or two, and their parents find the perfect apartment?

“It had to have three bedrooms, three bathrooms, pass the lobby and hall test — Ali and Lindsay had a thing about lobbies and halls — and not be on a two-way street, because Lindsay doesn’t like two-way streets,” said Doug Kenner, a rental and sales broker at Citi Habitats. “It had to have a doorman, rent for around $4,000 and be in a building that would accept guarantors. From the first showing, which Jessica liked but Lindsay didn’t, I realized I had a fun group.”

No, they do not sound fun. “Certainly not,” though, just conjures a stiff-lipped journalist, listening to them go yah-blah-yah-sorority-Miami-Arizona and pretending to take notes but instead furiously drawing bullets trailed by dashes, heading towards coiffed-with-upside-down-Vs stick figure triplets. Occasionally, the reporter writes an observation or speech balloon: not nerds, unlike those journalism majors! … concluded triumphantly … Certainly not! … [full article]

Slate’s Explainer answers the question, “With prices for a dress running from $15,000 to over $100,000, how do designers make money selling haute couture?”

Ironically, many people will buy a $150 bottle of perfume to participate in the lifestyle suggested by the $15,000 couture dress they cannot afford, while in reality the dress was produced in large part to seduce them into paying too much for the perfume.

Calvin and Hobbes Snow Art Gallery!
[caution: it’s an angelfire site.]

I hate linking to any article that uses the phrase “angst-ridden,” but here’s an update, or non-update (downdate?) on Spalding Gray. It also provides more information on his depression and treatment:

Gray - a manic depressive who has twice attempted suicide - had tried jumping off a ferry in September but was stopped by a friend, sources said.

Gray was last heard from around 9 p.m. Saturday, when he called his TriBeCa loft and spoke to 5-year-old son Theo “and said he just wanted to say he loved him,” Newman said.

Gray’s disappearance has taken his wife by surprise because the worst of his depression seemed to be over, Newman said.

“He was in comparatively good spirits, all the signs were good,” she said. “His therapist said he was doing better. He was looking forward to things for the first time in a long time.”

Last week, I mentioned Spalding Gray’s depression and shock therapy. Today, he’s been reported in the NY Times as missing.
Choire writes, “If you see a slightly deranged-looking older man ranting on the streets of Soho, please don’t throw nickels at him; society wants this one back.”

The New Year’s begun, and now’s the time for resolutions, predictions, and recollections. But, most importantly: recollections of predictions. January 2004 brings, along with the beginning of another year’s monotony, the first opportunity to safely review the accuracy of psychics’ public predictions for 2003. Were the predictions an accurate representation of 2003, in spirit if not in fact, or were they a time capsule for the sickening brain phlegm of 2002?

Continue reading "pre-cognitive"

I hope someone got fired.

In the NY Times Magazine this week: an article about online high schools. I was born ten years too late. But, I wonder, how do you get college recommendation letters? Or, friends?

(Not that you need friends when you have alcohol and internet access, but how do you get booze when you’re under 18 and living at home?)

Japan SAQ (Seldom Asked Questions).
Excerpt:

Q. What is the origin of the Japanese superstition which says that if you cut your nails at night, you will die young?
A. This superstition has two versions. One says  that if you cut  your nails at night, you will die young (Yoru ni tsume o kiru to  hayaji ni suru) and another that you won’t be with your parents when they die (Yoru  ni tsume o kiru to oya no shi ni me ni aenai), i.e. you will die  before them. There are two reasons for these superstitions.  One is that during the Edo period,  cutting one’s nails at night was dangerous because of the lack of  light. The second reason is that the Japanese word ‘Yotsume’ (cutting  your nails at night) sounds like ‘Yo o tsumeru’ which means to cut  short a life.

I’ve often tried to explain my deep disgust for fingernail polish (or, oh god, no, polished toenails), but I always fail. Either that signifies a real phobia, or my explanations just aren’t long enough.
Today, I’ll start with an archetypal cartoon image: the ugly alien girl. Stout, green, lots of warts. Her brain-sucking lips are painted red. Where there should be hair, the top of her head splits into five wiggly green appendages. On some of these appendages, she’s attached girly, flouncy ribbons.
The visual joke is that the more the alien tries to pretty herself up, the more her looks become obscene. In my opinion, nail polish is the human equivalent of ribbons in alien hair. If an alien were to visit us, he’d wonder why women (and sometimes men) draw attention to the dead hard shells that erupt from soft flesh. And maybe our fingers would look like tentacle-hair: the cohesive aesthetic of arms and hands suddenly interrupted by ten stiff snakes.

Of course, at least most people trim their nails:
-Andrea on Lena and Terry’s long nails
-short video (mpg) of nails
-(implicitly? explicitly) sexual animated gif
-These guys, unfortunately, seem to be getting some.
*-This guy’s got problems

Also: a new invention. Digital nail color.

Remember reading the statistic that (making up the numbers here) 60% of men, by the age of 18, have lost their virginity, compared to 45% of women? And then you think, huh, I guess that 45% got around?
Well, I’ve noticed that 95% of brothers-in-law are investment bankers or stockbrokers or some other kind of MBA-certified asshole. Given that these professions only make up, um, 5% (sound about right?) of the country’s jobs, we must infer our brothers-in-law are polygamists.
But what’s more offensive? Their polygamy, or their mangling of the English language?

“Anyway I quit writing spam headers when it became clear that Josh didn’t appreciate my work.”

According to Catharine, a comp. lit grad student at Princeton, Princeton undergrads have an annual tradition called “State Day.” On “State Day,” they dress up like students at public universities.
I tried to find more information online and in the archives of Princeton’s newspapers, but they wisely don’t report on it. Does anybody know more about this?

Every year, Finland hosts the Sauna World Championships.

The rules are strict:

The competitors will have to sit in the sauna with buttocks and thighs on the seat. Posture must be erect; elbows must stay on the knees and arms have to be in an upright position. Touching skin with hand is forbidden.

The temperature is hot:

The organizers will take care of the steam (=throwing water on the stove); temperature 100-110oC, in every 30 seconds approximately half a liter of water will be thrown on the stove.

That’s about 220 degrees Fahrenheit. Grueling competition. I wonder what kind of thoughts a heated brain comes to.

Thanks for the link goes to Sam.

Wayne Joseph “is of Creole stock and is therefore on the lighter end of the black color spectrum… And like most other black folk, Joseph grew up with an unequivocal sense of his heritage and of himself.” So, “when Joseph decided on a whim to take a new ethnic DNA test he saw described on a 60 Minutes segment last year, it was only to indulge a casual curiosity about the exact percentage of black blood; virtually all black Americans are mixed with something, he knew, but he figured it would be interesting to make himself a guinea pig for this new testing process.” But the test results were staggering.
link via mefi

Once in a while, I buy a magazine that doesn’t really include me in its demographic. I like the obsessive insulation of niche markets: doll collecting, cosmetic surgery, wedding planning. So, yesterday, wanting to buy a magazine but already having subscriptions to most of the ones I read, I bought, on a whim, Modern Bride.
There are some things I’ve always defined my personality in opposition to: Los Angeles, feet, the Olive Garden (rated Iowa City’s best Italian restaurant), and big white weddings. I idolize the efficiency and privacy of city hall. (“The most important day in a girl’s life”? That’s the day I win the Pulitzer, National Book Award, Nobel, etc.)
But I do have respect for any attention to detail, especially in the realm of clothing (in this case, bridal gowns) and food (the reception dinner). I didn’t really plan on making fun of the magazine’s enthusiasms, but I also didn’t expect the enthusiasms to be so tacky and indulgent.
For example, Modern Bride rounds up a “collection of the best star-powered weddings from 2000 and beyond.” (Beyond? Can they see into the future?) “To make it onto our list, these girls had to be 100% ‘modern brides.’” Here’s an excerpt from the list:

Jennifer Aniston
Why She’s a Modern Bride:
Before tying the knot, Jennifer and Brad went to a Beverly Hills salon to get matching highlights in their hair.

Catherine Zeta-Jones
Why She’s a Modern Bride:
She went all out for her vision. Rolling hills at New York’s Plaza Hotel? No problem. She had actual sod installed on the floor.

Kate Hudson
Why She’s a Modern Bride:
Kate’s nuptials had an unusual spiritual element. A Ute shaman conducted the ceremony, which took place in a tent lit by fire.

Kristi Yamuguchi
Why She’s a Modern Bride:
Kristi’s satin Vera Wang gown was embellished with the couple’s initials on the back.

At Slate, Seth Stevenson is reporting on one Japanese cliché a day. From Monday’s column on “Wacky Food”:

It seems that in some restaurants, they will put live baby eels in a large bowl of water with a big block of tofu at the bottom. The bowl is heated, and as they become uncomfortably hot, the baby eels burrow down into the cooler tofu. There they are cooked alive, and served like an olive loaf.

(Mmm. This face in your olive loaf.)

The Atlantic Monthly, competing against U.S. News and World Report, has introduced its own ranking of U.S. colleges. Brown finally cracks the top ten!

I don’t usually post NSFW content, but I know many of my readers admire Monica Bellucci, and I believe in promoting the beauty of brunettes. Especially curly-haired ones who smoke.

Lately, I’ve seen lots of blogs linking to Nerve’s Unsexy List, and dismissively thought they were linking to the so-last-month Sexiest Unsexiest list. But I was wrong. The Unsexy List (fifty gential-retracting people, places, and things) is better, bigger, and better; subjects include tannings beds, Denise Richards, teenagers, and LiveJournal.

Could you have sex with her? Get to know her at a party? Fall in love with her? Buy her drinks after work? Mistake her for a maid-android, a slutty student, a girl with oily skin or cheap foundation? Get in on a threesome? Introduce her to your children as their new mommy? Dream of her at night?
More, more, more.

A True Mirror does not reverse images. That is, if you hold writing up to it, you can read what the writing says. In it, you see yourself as you really are. It is something few people have ever seen before… …The introspective use of the True Mirror can be an important boost towards your own self-acceptance and greater self-esteem. This happens by authenticating your own actual image and expressions as you exist in real life, and as your are seen by everyone else. The incorrect view of yourself you see in a traditional mirror can be major source of self-doubt and self-criticism - simply because it is not the “real you” when your eyes meet in the mirror. How can you understand yourself when there is such distortion?

If you’re in NYC, you can check out the “real you” at the the True Mirror gallery on 43 E. First St. You can also buy one for about $150, but, really, how can you put a price on authentic self-acceptance?

Given that the “distortion” that normal mirrors display is dependent on facial assymetry, and symmetry is often thought of as the golden standard for hotness, I can’t help but think that True Mirrors were created by and for the ugly.

(One related article abstract — on how the right side of women’s faces is often more attractive than the left — is note-worthy for its great title: She is not a beauty even when she smiles: Possible evolutionary basis for a relationship between facial attractiveness and hemispheric specialization.)

*Update: Sam informs me that there’s a True Mirror in the bathroom at the Pink Pony on the LES. “It was disturbing. I wouldn’t recommend it,” he says. You come out “with a horribly diminished sense of your own attractiveness. One of my eyes was the wrong size. It’s like looking at a word in reverse… totally absurd.” So, if you’re hoping that your new true self will be more acceptable and pretty (the True Mirror boosts “self-acceptance” and “self-esteem”), consider this option instead.

The Psychic Kids Homepage is “in loving service to intuitive, spiritually-awakened, profoundly aware, clairvoyant, clairsentient, multi-sensory & multi-dimensional children, i.e. Psychic Children, Star Kids,  Rainbow, Crystalline, Blue Ray, Indigo children and ALL people of all Soul Rays!” Send your kids to Intuitive Camp (no, not the title of a Ben Marcus story), and learn the secrets of Meta-Parenting.

Hoping to make large classes more interactive, a growing number of professors on large campuses are requiring students to buy wireless, handheld transmitters that give teachers instant feedback on whether they understand the lesson — or whether they’re even there. [more>]

-Oh dear. Where are the eggs?

-Dragoncon 2003

-Body in Mind has always been dedicated to admiring female beauty, and our purpose is to establish the moral goodness in it, as well as the moral value of the beautiful women out there who share it with all of us - women like Carmen Electra, who has been betrayed, along with all women who are benevolent and brave enough to let us admire them, by the cover of this month’s FHM, which depicts Miss Electra half naked with the words BAD GIRL! as caption.

Toe-shortening surgery may sound a bit macabre to the average pump-wearer, but it’s not an original idea. According to the unsanitized Grimm Brothers fairy tale, Cinderella’s stepsisters hacked off pieces of their feet in attempts to fit into the famous slipper. Today’s procedures are usually more successful. [more>]

via spitting image

“I hope the ad helps to reveal the naked truth about the horrors that elephants in Thailand are forced to endure,” says [model Imogen] Bailey.
link via spitting image