One of my favorite people on the planet, my cousin Nicole, is five months pregnant and she had a sonogram on Wednesday and found out baby is a bambina!!! I'm absolutely thrilled and grinning from ear-to-ear. Boys are fine and all but girls are better!
I can't quite wrap my head around the fact that my cousin, who is only three years older than me and who I've always been close to, is going to be a mom. But I'm not going to wrap my head around it-- I'm going to leave it unwrapped!
So here's where you come in...now commences the great name think-up! Mommy is Italian-American; Daddy is Brazilian-Argentinian-American. If you can think of any adorable names for a baby girl from one of those ethnicities, or any other that seems applicable, do pass them along! My vote right now is for Isabella. But they're just getting started...
7/31/2004
7/30/2004
lord knows I can't change
we are who we are, right? and my blog is what it is. I tried to change to a snazzy new design, but I lost total control over the HTML script and don't have the time or patience to get ahold of it in that new format designed by one of the blogger dudes. so I'm sticking with this template because it's comfortable and because I know how to organize my links sidebar. next project: figuring out how to host pictures on my blog... I know there's a way to do it using some program affiliated with blogger called "hello," but hello! "hello" seems only to be compatible with those bloggers operating on a Microsoft platform. Um, 'scuse me, some of us be working wit' Mac Panther X, yo...we be fighting the power and shit... trading in one corporation for another younger hipper prettier one, know what I mean? so where's my photo hosting company that will run on a Mac? where are all the advantages of being a Mac user hiding out? Although I switched from PC to Mac back in Februrary, I'm still waiting for something to improve in my computing experience....
well, that's not entirely true... my iBook is so much prettier than my IBM ThinkPad!
Anyway, so stay tuned for the pix. And Emily is supposed to be sending me a CD with the rest of our UK trip pix on it so I'll put those up too, in case you care. There is something to be said for the voyeuristic rush produced by checking out strangers' vacation photos. I will do my best, as ever, to provide you with said rush.
well, that's not entirely true... my iBook is so much prettier than my IBM ThinkPad!
Anyway, so stay tuned for the pix. And Emily is supposed to be sending me a CD with the rest of our UK trip pix on it so I'll put those up too, in case you care. There is something to be said for the voyeuristic rush produced by checking out strangers' vacation photos. I will do my best, as ever, to provide you with said rush.
7/28/2004
Help, I'm suffering from a surfeit of jouissance!
Consequently, I changed my template.
Consequently, I can't figure out where in the HTML script to put my links sidebar.
Consequently, the links sidebar is MIA.
Consequently, you will be temporarily unable to access the wealth of references with which I ordinarily furnish you. Looks like you're on your own for now.
Consequently, I can't figure out where in the HTML script to put my links sidebar.
Consequently, the links sidebar is MIA.
Consequently, you will be temporarily unable to access the wealth of references with which I ordinarily furnish you. Looks like you're on your own for now.
7/27/2004
Thomas L. Friedman is on vacation
...and thank the lord for that, because Barbara Ehrenreich gets to take over his space for an op-ed on abortion rights and class prejudice.
Not that I don't have an abiding affection for both Tom and his moustache-- but he'd been getting a little random lately, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has calmed down of late (date I attribute it to the fence? yes, I do dare, though that's probably a bit reductive [ed.--hoo boy, I should get some comments for that statement!]).
Not that I don't have an abiding affection for both Tom and his moustache-- but he'd been getting a little random lately, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has calmed down of late (date I attribute it to the fence? yes, I do dare, though that's probably a bit reductive [ed.--hoo boy, I should get some comments for that statement!]).
7/26/2004
dept. of miscellany
had to share:
Today's Quotation (from Today in Literature.com)
"...we grisly old Sykos who have done our unsmiling bit on alices
when they were yung and easily freudened...."
James Joyce, in "Finnegans Wake"; Carl Jung, who was born on this
day in 1875, once attempted to help Joyce's daughter, Lucia,
through sykos-on-alices
Today's Quotation (from Today in Literature.com)
"...we grisly old Sykos who have done our unsmiling bit on alices
when they were yung and easily freudened...."
James Joyce, in "Finnegans Wake"; Carl Jung, who was born on this
day in 1875, once attempted to help Joyce's daughter, Lucia,
through sykos-on-alices
7/25/2004
me too
watching "y tu mama tambien" is making me want to take a roadtrip through mexico. who's with me?
(ps you have a better shot if you're cute, male, rambunctious, good company, and speak spanish. I'm willing to negotiate on any one of those points, but no more than one.)
(ps you have a better shot if you're cute, male, rambunctious, good company, and speak spanish. I'm willing to negotiate on any one of those points, but no more than one.)
7/23/2004
jacques derrida can't spell
I rented "Derrida" the other night, which seemed (and was) a perfectly legitimate method of studying for the comps. For those of you out of the loop, "Derrida" is a documentary which attempts to convey some sense of the man behind the myth (Derrida being one of the most important philosophers of the last fifty years). The film was well done, and it was pretty funny to see how much the man couldn't stand co-producer Amy Ziering Kofman. Every time she asked him a question he would look at the camera in exasperation and blink rapidly while he tried to think of a reply to her inanity (e.g. "what are your thoughts on love?").
The best interview of the film (other than those with Jacques himself) was with Avital Ronell, another theory superstar and professor at NYU. She recounted a celebration that she and his colleagues threw for him when the word "differance" was added to the Petit Robert, which his mother attended. On learning what they were celebrating, she allegedly said, horrified, "Jackie, you didn't spell 'difference' with an 'a,' did you?"
The best interview of the film (other than those with Jacques himself) was with Avital Ronell, another theory superstar and professor at NYU. She recounted a celebration that she and his colleagues threw for him when the word "differance" was added to the Petit Robert, which his mother attended. On learning what they were celebrating, she allegedly said, horrified, "Jackie, you didn't spell 'difference' with an 'a,' did you?"
7/21/2004
Dude, Where's My Reliable Symbolic Order?
No but seriously-- I urge you to take a look at the article I linked to below in The Believer by Gideon Lewis-Kraus about MLA 2003-- I had only read the first half of it when I linked to it yesterday, but now I've finished it and I have a renewed sense of purpose. Seriously.
The writer refers to an article published last year in the Chronicle of Higher Education by Scott McLemee-- a parody of pseudo-hip conference paper titles (like the one above). The basic issue at hand here is how do academics--English professors in particular--defend themselves against accusations of social irrelevancy? The answer: they don't indulge such pointless questions. But that doesn't mean they like to be teased about it.
check out the Chronicle article Lewis-Krause refers to, Signifyin' at the MLA. No really. you have to read this. Here, I'll give you an amuse-bouche:
'...the Award for Transgressive Punctuation honors Yvonne K. Atkinson of California State University at San Bernardino for the daring and innovative use of multiple apostrophes in her paper "If I'm Lyin' I'm Flyin' and I Ain't Seen a Bird All Day: Signifyin' Theories."
Honorable mention goes to the panel "'She Must Be Raggin'!': Children's Literature and Menstruation."'
good stuff, right?
The writer refers to an article published last year in the Chronicle of Higher Education by Scott McLemee-- a parody of pseudo-hip conference paper titles (like the one above). The basic issue at hand here is how do academics--English professors in particular--defend themselves against accusations of social irrelevancy? The answer: they don't indulge such pointless questions. But that doesn't mean they like to be teased about it.
check out the Chronicle article Lewis-Krause refers to, Signifyin' at the MLA. No really. you have to read this. Here, I'll give you an amuse-bouche:
'...the Award for Transgressive Punctuation honors Yvonne K. Atkinson of California State University at San Bernardino for the daring and innovative use of multiple apostrophes in her paper "If I'm Lyin' I'm Flyin' and I Ain't Seen a Bird All Day: Signifyin' Theories."
Honorable mention goes to the panel "'She Must Be Raggin'!': Children's Literature and Menstruation."'
good stuff, right?
7/20/2004
Dale Peck, Hatchet Man
I’m going to take a break for a minute from reading and writing about authors and critics who are mouldering in their graves to consider a critic who is mouldering in the post-industrial smog of the East Village. Much ink has been spilled of late over the by-now notorious book critic Dale Peck, whose collection of book reviews, appropriately titled, Hatchet Jobs, has just been released in New York. I have personally only read a couple of his reviews when they’ve appeared in their original form—I believe I read his now infamous review of Rick Moody (in which he called him “the worst writer of his generation”), as well as Peck’s addendum to that guy from The Guardian [whose name escapes me]'s hatchet job of Martin Amis’s recent Yellow Dog.
But at the moment I’m reading John Leonard’s review of Peck in this past Sunday’s New York Times Book Review.
He begins with a reference to the nineteenth century poet Robert Southey, who to date has been the recipient of the most scathing review ever written. The hatchet job in question was performed by a Mr. Richard Porson, and the offending lines about Southey’s poems ran like this: ''They will be read when Homer and Virgil are forgotten, but -- not till then.''
Isn’t that a funny story? What’s funnier is that it was recounted very recently in “The New Yorker,” in a review of a new biography of Southey. This happens quite frequently, that I read something in TNY and then a couple of months later I read about it in NYTBR. I can’t figure out if TNY is really ahead of the game or if NYTBR is way behind. Does Leonard not read “The New Yorker”? I find that hard to believe. He must just not care that he’s reproducing a stale anecdote. This is why he’s where he is and I’m where I am—because I get tangled up in needing to be original. He just forges ahead. Does he lose any sleep over it? And I needlessly anal about the originality of my references?
From reading the pundits, it seems that most people don't like Dale Peck. Nonetheless, he has presented a wonderful opportunity for really good critics, like Leonard and others like Laura Miller, Daniel Mendelsohn and Heidi Julavits, to share some of their methodologies and ethics with the rest of us apprentice-critics. I’ve received quite beneficial object lessons in the last couple of weeks from l’Affaire Peck. I’ll quote Leonard for you (but do check it out for yourselves via the link above):
“First, as in Hippocrates, do no harm. Second, never stoop to score a point or bite an ankle. Third, always understand that in this symbiosis, you are the parasite. Fourth, look with an open heart and mind at every different kind of book with every change of emotional weather because we are reading for our lives and that could be love gone out the window or a horseman on the roof. Fifth, use theory only as a periscope or a trampoline, never a panopticon, a crib sheet or a license to kill. Sixth, let a hundred Harolds Bloom.”
What’s more, the Peck thing has gotten my mind working in a productive manner. I wrote above that I paused in my consideration of critics past to think about a present critic as if there were an actual continuum between the two. I’m not entirely sure this is true. It accords more distinction than is necessarily warranted to critics like Peck. How do we know the man knows what he’s talking about? Why does anyone listen to what he has to say about books? What are his credentials?
You see, I always struggle with these questions, because it seems to me that it would be a lot more time-efficient and lucrative for me to simply be a book critic than to actually finish my Ph.D. If someone who hasn’t been anointed with those three letters can wield that much power in the book world—or at the very least, have his voice heard—then why do we toil in anonymity and (relative) poverty? Why are we killing ourselves to get our voices heard in a black box theatre full of our friends and acquaintances when we could be playing to sold-out crowds at Madison Square Garden? Is there truly nobility in obscurity and erudition? And what is that line from “Good Will Hunting” about getting a Harvard education for sixty-five cents in late fees at the local library?
The reason I stick with it, the reason I stay in academe, is that I love the work I do. But more fundamentally, I believe that at the end of the road, I will have more right than Dale Peck to pass judgment on Martin Amis. I think that rather than letting him get under their skin, the publishing world ought to look to Peck’s more well-informed compatriots inside the ivory tower.
This suggestion raises a whole new set of problematics which I won’t go into here. But I would like to consider at further length the reasons why trade publishers don’t engage with academics as much as they could or ought to. But note Leonard’s reverence for Harold Bloom. Bloom is the original crossover artist—forget Shania’s move from country to pop; first there was Bloom’s move from academic to mainstream. Bloom is the bridge. Are there others following in his path?
The thing about Peck is, I really support his determination not to stop at established opinion but to reevaluate writers according to his own set of standards. I don’t think we need all kowtow to writers like Toni Morrison or Don DeLillo every time they publish something new purely on the basis of past achievements. Writers are human—and not everything they produce is operating at the same level of brilliancy. However, I do believe in a little respect where respect is due, which is certainly true in the case of Morrison and DeLillo. Peck’s mission becomes a foolhardy one when he calls Joyce’s Ulysses "a mere diarrheic flow of words." I don’t think it’s possible to overrate a novel that completely revolutionized the way novels are written after 1922. Then again, we can’t lose sight of the other contributors to stream-of-consciousness and interiorized narrative like James and Woolf. We have to be meticulous in our placing of Joyce in the canon. Peck’s summary judgment of Joyce is laughable in the face of all the critical inquiry devoted to the question he settles in one sentence. He’s not outré in his dismissal of Joyce; he’s laughable. You want to pat him on the head and say “it’s ok, Dale, everyone has trouble reading Ulysses, just stick with it. You want me to buy you the Cliffs Notes?” The man really does not know what he’s dealing with. He’s sadly out of his league. His requirements for a good novel amount to this: he criticizes Thomas Pynchon (Pynchon, for godssake!) because in ''a 30-year writing career [he] hasn't produced a single memorable or even recognizably human character.''
Oh! That’s what this is about. Peck wants realism. He wants a tune he can leave the theatre humming. Okay.
I’m sure somewhere there are writers lining up to give Peck what he wants. As for me, I’ll stick witch Pynchon.
see also: The Walrus Magazine
and from the horse's mouth itself: Peck in Maisonneuve (a magazine close to my heart since I'm fresh off a lovely trip to montreal)
and now for something completely different (and really funny): The Believer covers MLA 2003 7 months after the fact.
But at the moment I’m reading John Leonard’s review of Peck in this past Sunday’s New York Times Book Review.
He begins with a reference to the nineteenth century poet Robert Southey, who to date has been the recipient of the most scathing review ever written. The hatchet job in question was performed by a Mr. Richard Porson, and the offending lines about Southey’s poems ran like this: ''They will be read when Homer and Virgil are forgotten, but -- not till then.''
Isn’t that a funny story? What’s funnier is that it was recounted very recently in “The New Yorker,” in a review of a new biography of Southey. This happens quite frequently, that I read something in TNY and then a couple of months later I read about it in NYTBR. I can’t figure out if TNY is really ahead of the game or if NYTBR is way behind. Does Leonard not read “The New Yorker”? I find that hard to believe. He must just not care that he’s reproducing a stale anecdote. This is why he’s where he is and I’m where I am—because I get tangled up in needing to be original. He just forges ahead. Does he lose any sleep over it? And I needlessly anal about the originality of my references?
From reading the pundits, it seems that most people don't like Dale Peck. Nonetheless, he has presented a wonderful opportunity for really good critics, like Leonard and others like Laura Miller, Daniel Mendelsohn and Heidi Julavits, to share some of their methodologies and ethics with the rest of us apprentice-critics. I’ve received quite beneficial object lessons in the last couple of weeks from l’Affaire Peck. I’ll quote Leonard for you (but do check it out for yourselves via the link above):
“First, as in Hippocrates, do no harm. Second, never stoop to score a point or bite an ankle. Third, always understand that in this symbiosis, you are the parasite. Fourth, look with an open heart and mind at every different kind of book with every change of emotional weather because we are reading for our lives and that could be love gone out the window or a horseman on the roof. Fifth, use theory only as a periscope or a trampoline, never a panopticon, a crib sheet or a license to kill. Sixth, let a hundred Harolds Bloom.”
What’s more, the Peck thing has gotten my mind working in a productive manner. I wrote above that I paused in my consideration of critics past to think about a present critic as if there were an actual continuum between the two. I’m not entirely sure this is true. It accords more distinction than is necessarily warranted to critics like Peck. How do we know the man knows what he’s talking about? Why does anyone listen to what he has to say about books? What are his credentials?
You see, I always struggle with these questions, because it seems to me that it would be a lot more time-efficient and lucrative for me to simply be a book critic than to actually finish my Ph.D. If someone who hasn’t been anointed with those three letters can wield that much power in the book world—or at the very least, have his voice heard—then why do we toil in anonymity and (relative) poverty? Why are we killing ourselves to get our voices heard in a black box theatre full of our friends and acquaintances when we could be playing to sold-out crowds at Madison Square Garden? Is there truly nobility in obscurity and erudition? And what is that line from “Good Will Hunting” about getting a Harvard education for sixty-five cents in late fees at the local library?
The reason I stick with it, the reason I stay in academe, is that I love the work I do. But more fundamentally, I believe that at the end of the road, I will have more right than Dale Peck to pass judgment on Martin Amis. I think that rather than letting him get under their skin, the publishing world ought to look to Peck’s more well-informed compatriots inside the ivory tower.
This suggestion raises a whole new set of problematics which I won’t go into here. But I would like to consider at further length the reasons why trade publishers don’t engage with academics as much as they could or ought to. But note Leonard’s reverence for Harold Bloom. Bloom is the original crossover artist—forget Shania’s move from country to pop; first there was Bloom’s move from academic to mainstream. Bloom is the bridge. Are there others following in his path?
The thing about Peck is, I really support his determination not to stop at established opinion but to reevaluate writers according to his own set of standards. I don’t think we need all kowtow to writers like Toni Morrison or Don DeLillo every time they publish something new purely on the basis of past achievements. Writers are human—and not everything they produce is operating at the same level of brilliancy. However, I do believe in a little respect where respect is due, which is certainly true in the case of Morrison and DeLillo. Peck’s mission becomes a foolhardy one when he calls Joyce’s Ulysses "a mere diarrheic flow of words." I don’t think it’s possible to overrate a novel that completely revolutionized the way novels are written after 1922. Then again, we can’t lose sight of the other contributors to stream-of-consciousness and interiorized narrative like James and Woolf. We have to be meticulous in our placing of Joyce in the canon. Peck’s summary judgment of Joyce is laughable in the face of all the critical inquiry devoted to the question he settles in one sentence. He’s not outré in his dismissal of Joyce; he’s laughable. You want to pat him on the head and say “it’s ok, Dale, everyone has trouble reading Ulysses, just stick with it. You want me to buy you the Cliffs Notes?” The man really does not know what he’s dealing with. He’s sadly out of his league. His requirements for a good novel amount to this: he criticizes Thomas Pynchon (Pynchon, for godssake!) because in ''a 30-year writing career [he] hasn't produced a single memorable or even recognizably human character.''
Oh! That’s what this is about. Peck wants realism. He wants a tune he can leave the theatre humming. Okay.
I’m sure somewhere there are writers lining up to give Peck what he wants. As for me, I’ll stick witch Pynchon.
see also: The Walrus Magazine
and from the horse's mouth itself: Peck in Maisonneuve (a magazine close to my heart since I'm fresh off a lovely trip to montreal)
and now for something completely different (and really funny): The Believer covers MLA 2003 7 months after the fact.
7/15/2004
flaming laundromat
I made the most unsettling discovery the other day when I went to my friendly neighborhood laundromat.
first of all, let me just say that there's nothing like stuffing all your laundry in a big backpack, strapping it on your back, walking down four flights of stairs, and schlepping it across four lanes of traffic to make you feel like you're 20 again. Cause the last time I did something like that was when I was 20, living all bohemian-like in Paris.
this is the first time in 5 years then that I've lived in an apartment building that doesn't have a washing machine in it. I feel so boho.
anyway, so tuesday found me at the laundromat, stuffing quarters in the dryer. I pushed the "start" button with gusto. The clothes began to tumble, very slowly, and then stopped. I pushed the button again, with more gusto. Same thing; flopping and stopping. After a couple of tries it took off-- and then I noticed, through a slit in the metal near the top of the industrial size machine, there was a flame. A big old flame. I got very worried very quickly. I must have pushed the button too hard and started a fire! I panicked and ran over to the man in the booth at the back of the store. He was in the middle of a conversation, which I interrupted. "Um--there's a flame--the dryer seems to be on fire--" I stammered.
"what?" he didn't comprehend.
"Um-- the dryer--you might want to come look at the dryer." I was trying not to draw attention to myself or alarm the other people in the laundromat-- but I was also very concerned about the fire in my machine.
He came over and looked and laughed an avuncular laugh. "It's supposed to be like that! To dry the clothes!"
"you need a flame to dry the clothes??" I was shocked. "That's alarming."
So apparently medieval era technology is very much still in use, up here on 108th and Broadway. Do all dryers have flames inside of them? Was it naive of me to think that electricity operates without the use of flames? Wasn't electricity supposed to replace fire to a certain extent?
The world is a different place to me now.
first of all, let me just say that there's nothing like stuffing all your laundry in a big backpack, strapping it on your back, walking down four flights of stairs, and schlepping it across four lanes of traffic to make you feel like you're 20 again. Cause the last time I did something like that was when I was 20, living all bohemian-like in Paris.
this is the first time in 5 years then that I've lived in an apartment building that doesn't have a washing machine in it. I feel so boho.
anyway, so tuesday found me at the laundromat, stuffing quarters in the dryer. I pushed the "start" button with gusto. The clothes began to tumble, very slowly, and then stopped. I pushed the button again, with more gusto. Same thing; flopping and stopping. After a couple of tries it took off-- and then I noticed, through a slit in the metal near the top of the industrial size machine, there was a flame. A big old flame. I got very worried very quickly. I must have pushed the button too hard and started a fire! I panicked and ran over to the man in the booth at the back of the store. He was in the middle of a conversation, which I interrupted. "Um--there's a flame--the dryer seems to be on fire--" I stammered.
"what?" he didn't comprehend.
"Um-- the dryer--you might want to come look at the dryer." I was trying not to draw attention to myself or alarm the other people in the laundromat-- but I was also very concerned about the fire in my machine.
He came over and looked and laughed an avuncular laugh. "It's supposed to be like that! To dry the clothes!"
"you need a flame to dry the clothes??" I was shocked. "That's alarming."
So apparently medieval era technology is very much still in use, up here on 108th and Broadway. Do all dryers have flames inside of them? Was it naive of me to think that electricity operates without the use of flames? Wasn't electricity supposed to replace fire to a certain extent?
The world is a different place to me now.
7/09/2004
silly tourists
an anecdote about marcel duchamp's "fountain" (1917) that I just read and had to reproduce here:
In June 2000, two Chinese artists entered a gallery at the Tate Museum in London, approached Marcel Duchamp's "Fountain" (the simple urinal which he famously declared to be art) and urinated in it.
Far from being shocked, the crowd, thinking it was part of the show, enthusiastically applauded.
(found at http://www.anecdotage.com/index.php?aid=11708)
In June 2000, two Chinese artists entered a gallery at the Tate Museum in London, approached Marcel Duchamp's "Fountain" (the simple urinal which he famously declared to be art) and urinated in it.
Far from being shocked, the crowd, thinking it was part of the show, enthusiastically applauded.
(found at http://www.anecdotage.com/index.php?aid=11708)
7/08/2004
badly drawn boy
I've been listening to him a lot lately-- could have been inspired, perhaps, by my wanderings throughout england. but if you don't know his music at all, you could start with the soundtrack to "about a boy," which nick hornby and hugh grant convinced him to do. I'm walking around singing "above you, below me" today. It's a very practical assessment of the odd politics of relationships. it's catchy, too.
His earlier album, "Hour of Bewilderbeast" is great, but he has a new one that's just been released in the UK called "One Plus One is One." I didn't buy it over there cause it was really expensive--and I keep hoping I'll figure out a way to download music for free without getting caught (call me paranoid, go ahead, I don't care).
today, at the hungarian pastry shop, I noticed something nice scribbled on the bathroom wall along with all the anti-semitic crap about Israel:
"and you tremble against me
Like the moon on the water."
verdict? good, bad, indifferent? I kind of liked it.
His earlier album, "Hour of Bewilderbeast" is great, but he has a new one that's just been released in the UK called "One Plus One is One." I didn't buy it over there cause it was really expensive--and I keep hoping I'll figure out a way to download music for free without getting caught (call me paranoid, go ahead, I don't care).
today, at the hungarian pastry shop, I noticed something nice scribbled on the bathroom wall along with all the anti-semitic crap about Israel:
"and you tremble against me
Like the moon on the water."
verdict? good, bad, indifferent? I kind of liked it.
7/07/2004
before sunset
I finally, finally, finally got to see it today and it was so, so, so good. I saw it with my friend helena, who is a romantic whereas I am an unabashed sentimentalist. at one point, an hour and twenty minutes in, she started whispering "end here, end here." and she was right. it was exactly the right place for the film to end. but I still sat there wailing "no, don't be over, don't be over...." and it ended right there. she jinxed it. I won't ruin the ending for you by giving anything away, but all I will say is that I. Wanted. More.
It was so awesome though. Like catching up with "the one that got away." Not that there's any one specific guy who "got away"... what got away from me is just the hopefulness and naivete that I had when I first saw "Before Sunrise." And I thought I was jaded then! But I guess that's the point of the film.
It was wonderful to revisit with that particular affair; "Before Sunrise" meant something important to me back in the late nineties, and, without getting too maudlin or personal, "Before Sunset" is important at this point in my life.
And the sequel is set in Paris! It was so perfectly synchronic. Am I totally pathetic if I see it again?
It was so awesome though. Like catching up with "the one that got away." Not that there's any one specific guy who "got away"... what got away from me is just the hopefulness and naivete that I had when I first saw "Before Sunrise." And I thought I was jaded then! But I guess that's the point of the film.
It was wonderful to revisit with that particular affair; "Before Sunrise" meant something important to me back in the late nineties, and, without getting too maudlin or personal, "Before Sunset" is important at this point in my life.
And the sequel is set in Paris! It was so perfectly synchronic. Am I totally pathetic if I see it again?
7/06/2004
acceptance
we all want to be accepted. it's human nature. here is the french version of acceptance:
"Vous êtes autorisée à vous inscrire en DEA (III Cycle) à l’université de Paris-Sorbonne (Paris IV) pour l’année universitaire 2004-2005."
When I was little, someone told me that someone had "studied at the Sorbonne." For some reason, I understood the Sorbonne to be a type of wall that you could climb up on and sit on while you studied. I don't know what it was about the way the expression is constructed-- "to study at the Sorbonne"--perhaps it was the article placed in front of the name of the school, as opposed to simply "Penn" or "Queens College"--either way, it sounded like a very special place to study, and I resolved that one day I too would study on that wall.
Beginning in October I will be getting a degree at that hallowed institution. An important one-- an advanced graduate degree. Now, it's no Ecole Normale Supérieure, but the name "Sorbonne" still has a certain caché. It's silly, but I know my younger self would be proud of the way things have gone.
"Vous êtes autorisée à vous inscrire en DEA (III Cycle) à l’université de Paris-Sorbonne (Paris IV) pour l’année universitaire 2004-2005."
When I was little, someone told me that someone had "studied at the Sorbonne." For some reason, I understood the Sorbonne to be a type of wall that you could climb up on and sit on while you studied. I don't know what it was about the way the expression is constructed-- "to study at the Sorbonne"--perhaps it was the article placed in front of the name of the school, as opposed to simply "Penn" or "Queens College"--either way, it sounded like a very special place to study, and I resolved that one day I too would study on that wall.
Beginning in October I will be getting a degree at that hallowed institution. An important one-- an advanced graduate degree. Now, it's no Ecole Normale Supérieure, but the name "Sorbonne" still has a certain caché. It's silly, but I know my younger self would be proud of the way things have gone.
7/05/2004
michael moore and donuts
I saw the movie everyone's talking about the other night. What I really wanted to see was "Before Sunset," but since I was stranded on Long Island for the weekend, and "Before Sunset" was only playing in the city, I had to settle for my second choice.
It was well worth seeing, although I think I've had enough Michael Moore to last me for awhile...but something tells me he's not going to take a vacation after the runaway success of "Fahrenheit 911." No, he's going to come back swinging. I just hope he doesn't ever go after Israel. God knows there's enough sketchy doings in the way Sharon is running the show, and with AIPAC enlisting the support of some very unappealing US politicians, it seems to beg for a Michael Moore documentary. But I think that would push the limits of my tolerance for him as a filmmaker.
Nevertheless, "Fahrenheit 911" was not as blatantly propagandist as I feared it would be. I don't disagree with Moore's politics or his message; in fact I support them wholeheartedly. However, I do think he goes a bit too far, which only undermines his legitimacy.
So while I'm sure you'll go see it with or without my endorsement, I endorse it all the same.
A tangent: I told my conservative ex-boyfriend that I went to see it, and he replied "oh my god! that's so cool. I heard michael moore reveals that he eats a box of donuts for breakfast every morning!"
The truth hurts!
It was well worth seeing, although I think I've had enough Michael Moore to last me for awhile...but something tells me he's not going to take a vacation after the runaway success of "Fahrenheit 911." No, he's going to come back swinging. I just hope he doesn't ever go after Israel. God knows there's enough sketchy doings in the way Sharon is running the show, and with AIPAC enlisting the support of some very unappealing US politicians, it seems to beg for a Michael Moore documentary. But I think that would push the limits of my tolerance for him as a filmmaker.
Nevertheless, "Fahrenheit 911" was not as blatantly propagandist as I feared it would be. I don't disagree with Moore's politics or his message; in fact I support them wholeheartedly. However, I do think he goes a bit too far, which only undermines his legitimacy.
So while I'm sure you'll go see it with or without my endorsement, I endorse it all the same.
A tangent: I told my conservative ex-boyfriend that I went to see it, and he replied "oh my god! that's so cool. I heard michael moore reveals that he eats a box of donuts for breakfast every morning!"
The truth hurts!
7/02/2004
disco inferno
went to yet another wedding last night... and had to endure the evils of disco over and over and over. "why aren't you dancing?" my mother asks me. "I don't do disco," I answer. she was piqued because some kid kept asking me to dance. my loathing of all things disco was and is sincere, but also a convenient way to get out of dancing with him. To be fair, he was like 4 years younger and about a foot shorter than me.
I don't understand the persistance of disco as the dance music of choice at so many family events. Of course the seventies are not the only decade guilty of prodiving us with so much musical trash; there's the ever-hideous "shout"-- not to be confused with the equally annoying "twist and shout," which nevertheless is redeemed by its affiliation with the parade scene in "ferris bueller's day off." But far worse is a room full of aging baby boomers imitating john travolta in "saturday night fever." I hereby declare a moratorium on disco music at weddings, or at least at the weddings I'm forced to attend. The gaunlet has been thrown down. Burn, baby, burn.
I don't understand the persistance of disco as the dance music of choice at so many family events. Of course the seventies are not the only decade guilty of prodiving us with so much musical trash; there's the ever-hideous "shout"-- not to be confused with the equally annoying "twist and shout," which nevertheless is redeemed by its affiliation with the parade scene in "ferris bueller's day off." But far worse is a room full of aging baby boomers imitating john travolta in "saturday night fever." I hereby declare a moratorium on disco music at weddings, or at least at the weddings I'm forced to attend. The gaunlet has been thrown down. Burn, baby, burn.
7/01/2004
reading rainbow
back in NY! had a great trip to england-- brilliant, just brilliant. but now it's, as they say, "back to life...back to reality"... so much shit to take care of, with france in september and teaching at the end of july and comps to study for and oh, isn't it wonderful to come home after a long vacation? no, I mean that... it's good to be back, rejuvenated, raring to go!
did a whole lotta reading on this trip... cause that's the kind of wild and crazy girl I am... some of it was total crap, but Politics (Adam Thirlwell, british wunderkind) was halfway decent, as was The Floating Opera (John Barth, so po-mo it hurts). Art and Freedom basically sucked and I'm giving it a very mixed review in Consciousness and the Arts. But I'm 3/4 of the way through Stasiland (Anna Funder) which is absolutely amazing. You must read it immediately. That is, if you're interested in eastern europe and the fall of soviet communism and all that, (which I am). I know it's all hip and cool to wear adidas jackets with CCCP on the back. but if you own a jacket like that, reading this book may make you think twice about your heightened sense of irony.
Ok... off to politely rip Art and Freedom to pieces.
did a whole lotta reading on this trip... cause that's the kind of wild and crazy girl I am... some of it was total crap, but Politics (Adam Thirlwell, british wunderkind) was halfway decent, as was The Floating Opera (John Barth, so po-mo it hurts). Art and Freedom basically sucked and I'm giving it a very mixed review in Consciousness and the Arts. But I'm 3/4 of the way through Stasiland (Anna Funder) which is absolutely amazing. You must read it immediately. That is, if you're interested in eastern europe and the fall of soviet communism and all that, (which I am). I know it's all hip and cool to wear adidas jackets with CCCP on the back. but if you own a jacket like that, reading this book may make you think twice about your heightened sense of irony.
Ok... off to politely rip Art and Freedom to pieces.
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