At first, you'll be cheering for the kid in the yellow and black, cause he's nasty...but that's before you've ever seen a 6 year old girl do a headspin...
3.21.2013
3.18.2013
3.15.2013
coffee rings
mom asked for more personal stuff on my blog.
here are some things I'm excited about today:
old coffee rings
a daffodil tray
standing up straight
that last, despite crying myself to sleep from the pain caused by a twinge in my back that I got from yoga - one too many deep back bends, not enough forward compression. sometimes, it's better to go rogue in class, even though it's hard to break the training of doing what you're told instead of doing what you need to do in that moment...
here are some things I'm excited about today:
old coffee rings
a daffodil tray
standing up straight
that last, despite crying myself to sleep from the pain caused by a twinge in my back that I got from yoga - one too many deep back bends, not enough forward compression. sometimes, it's better to go rogue in class, even though it's hard to break the training of doing what you're told instead of doing what you need to do in that moment...
3.13.2013
Bachelor Update: If you have to ask, the answer's no
I was so fraking bored by the first two episodes of Sean's search for true love on this recently wrapped season of the Bachelor that I haven't seen a single scene since then. Out of curiosity, I kinda watched the finale...
One thing that strikes me as being unquestionably inane about the whole Bachelor premise is that, on the eve of asking someone to marry you, you're so undecided that you need help choosing between two people.
Yeah, it already involves a voluntary suspension of disbelief:
- you can find love in 9 weeks (really, if anything, that's the most believable part)
- you can fall in love with one person while dating several other people
- you can expose your real feelings on TV
But, falling in love with two (or more) people at the same time? Inconceivable!
As the show evolves, I wonder if they'll really need to stick to the original format. The permission phrases, the roses, the elimination process...in another couple seasons, won't the participants know the process so well that they'll self-impose rules and do the work of packaging themselves for a particular role on the show? Frak it! A behind-the-scenes of the Bachelor show is the best spin-off ever!
One thing that strikes me as being unquestionably inane about the whole Bachelor premise is that, on the eve of asking someone to marry you, you're so undecided that you need help choosing between two people.
Yeah, it already involves a voluntary suspension of disbelief:
- you can find love in 9 weeks (really, if anything, that's the most believable part)
- you can fall in love with one person while dating several other people
- you can expose your real feelings on TV
But, falling in love with two (or more) people at the same time? Inconceivable!
As the show evolves, I wonder if they'll really need to stick to the original format. The permission phrases, the roses, the elimination process...in another couple seasons, won't the participants know the process so well that they'll self-impose rules and do the work of packaging themselves for a particular role on the show? Frak it! A behind-the-scenes of the Bachelor show is the best spin-off ever!
3.12.2013
CODE PINK! Disney's City Girl
Offended reader Mama B. Ottergroundie sniffed out the stink of this insult to people with brains via the internet and forwarded it so we can all share in the hilarious horror.
I present to you, Disney's "City Girl". A not-even-scathing-enough article about it appeared in Gothamist, which is really as close as you want to get to the real thing.
Hey, at least you start out as a college grad. That's something, right?
I am fabulous...
SO fabulous, in fact, that the game invites me to spend ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS (Best Value!) TO GET GOLD.
Long, long ago, my interest in games was reinvigorated by an article about Second Life (yup, that long ago), in which a player paid over $100,000 ACTUAL POUNDS to purchase an island. Or maybe it was Eve Online...
My point is that Pliny the Elder got it right: value in the form of gold is the first, and worst sin against humanity. I'm not sure whether virtual gold is even a single step beyond that cognitive leap, or the same leap into a different chasm. After all, when the systems of the world collapse, what good is gold?
I present to you, Disney's "City Girl". A not-even-scathing-enough article about it appeared in Gothamist, which is really as close as you want to get to the real thing.
Hey, at least you start out as a college grad. That's something, right?
SO fabulous, in fact, that the game invites me to spend ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS (Best Value!) TO GET GOLD.
Long, long ago, my interest in games was reinvigorated by an article about Second Life (yup, that long ago), in which a player paid over $100,000 ACTUAL POUNDS to purchase an island. Or maybe it was Eve Online...
My point is that Pliny the Elder got it right: value in the form of gold is the first, and worst sin against humanity. I'm not sure whether virtual gold is even a single step beyond that cognitive leap, or the same leap into a different chasm. After all, when the systems of the world collapse, what good is gold?
SPOM: Nicholas, the first
I know I've posted about my grandfather(s) before, but mom has made it an effort to track down proof of Nicholas Satterlee's existence. I'll forget it if I don't put it all somewhere:
This is the sort of touch I recognize as Nick's contribution to modernism - a functional whimsy that invites life, especially nature and beauty, into a building hemmed in by the realities of resource limitations and imminent need.
(although, caveat: I know nothing of DC's modern architecture scene except what I've looked at over the first 20-odd years of my life; I don't know from some blueprint somewhere that he added this piece; I'm going on instinct; also, pretty sure I posted a link to Capitol Park II before)
Grand-pere Satterlee was partners with Chlothiel Woodard Smith for part of his career, and I'll bet anything that a creative partnership with a woman who was an influential architect in the 50s and 60s had its political and personal frustrations. I'm still going to use her name for a character at some point.
(Don't worry Grandpa dear, the fictional Chlothiel will be a real c*nt, too.)
(although, caveat: I know nothing of DC's modern architecture scene except what I've looked at over the first 20-odd years of my life; I don't know from some blueprint somewhere that he added this piece; I'm going on instinct; also, pretty sure I posted a link to Capitol Park II before)
Grand-pere Satterlee was partners with Chlothiel Woodard Smith for part of his career, and I'll bet anything that a creative partnership with a woman who was an influential architect in the 50s and 60s had its political and personal frustrations. I'm still going to use her name for a character at some point.
(Don't worry Grandpa dear, the fictional Chlothiel will be a real c*nt, too.)
3.10.2013
Pay not attention to the man...
I'm not really sposed to be here, but I have a ton of writing to do today and might as well stretch the proverbial neurons...
Just some instant hits on Oz:
James Franco was predictably awesome and perfectly cast - the fact that he can't quite escape that wink-and-nod with the audience that lets us know he's in on the joke of all this fakery that acting/celebrity/media cultism is...well, since Richard Pryor is dead, then there's nobody better to play the lost anti-hero.
Mr. Fuzzykins felt - rightly, I think - that Oz as a horny scoundrel (with the vim and vigor to at least metaphorically frak all the females on-screen) took it a little over the top...I mean, this is no deep-character-development kind of a film, but still. He's already a narcissistic child, no need to make him a dog, too.
Really, though? Three powerful, politically intelligent women fall for the same dude-who-just-happens-to-be-there?
We all take the one who shows up, I guess.
And one thing I really liked about Franco/Oscar/TGAPOz was that once he found himself at a moment of choice, he decided to show up. In a way, it doesn't matter that his motivations are selfish, because everyone prays to a false god, whether it's gold or beauty or love or whatever. It's actions that matter to others.
At least Rachel Weisz/Evanora/Wicked Witch of the East knew what was really going on: why waste your time mourning for/waiting for a king, when the throne is right there? Take it!
But what does it say that women have to get evil to get the throne? Because wanting power is more corrupting to women than to men? What's even funnier is that, minus this whole argument about a king, these three women have been capably running Oz since the king died...why not just divide Oz into three states and have a three-witch ruling council?!
I kind of love Mila Kunis...she over-enunciates certain consonants in a way I find utterly endearing. But, Mila/Theodora/Wicked Witch of the West, what's with this whole "I turned green and evil because the man I wanted was into somebody else"? Can I get one woman onscreen to represent the thousands of us who - when we get dumped, especially for someone else - get mad, and then get the frak over it! Move on! Don't waste your life on hatred, girl!
At least in Wicked she's born that way. Which actually makes me love that book even more in retrospect...too bad McGuire just spun it out into a stupid gimmick.
One last thing: all three women in this movie have really round, childlike faces. Even the mature-and-stern Weisz is cast from the same plump-cheeks-and-wide-eyes mold. And Franco looks puffy and bloated from too many munchies. What with the peculiarities of CGI acting and enhancement, these cartoony faces make for an oddly anime take on a stereotypically Western myth.
I might go see this again - 3D IMAX is better from the back of the theater. I left feeling like the moisture had been sucked from my brain...thanks third row.
Just some instant hits on Oz:
James Franco was predictably awesome and perfectly cast - the fact that he can't quite escape that wink-and-nod with the audience that lets us know he's in on the joke of all this fakery that acting/celebrity/media cultism is...well, since Richard Pryor is dead, then there's nobody better to play the lost anti-hero.
Mr. Fuzzykins felt - rightly, I think - that Oz as a horny scoundrel (with the vim and vigor to at least metaphorically frak all the females on-screen) took it a little over the top...I mean, this is no deep-character-development kind of a film, but still. He's already a narcissistic child, no need to make him a dog, too.
Really, though? Three powerful, politically intelligent women fall for the same dude-who-just-happens-to-be-there?
We all take the one who shows up, I guess.
And one thing I really liked about Franco/Oscar/TGAPOz was that once he found himself at a moment of choice, he decided to show up. In a way, it doesn't matter that his motivations are selfish, because everyone prays to a false god, whether it's gold or beauty or love or whatever. It's actions that matter to others.
At least Rachel Weisz/Evanora/Wicked Witch of the East knew what was really going on: why waste your time mourning for/waiting for a king, when the throne is right there? Take it!
But what does it say that women have to get evil to get the throne? Because wanting power is more corrupting to women than to men? What's even funnier is that, minus this whole argument about a king, these three women have been capably running Oz since the king died...why not just divide Oz into three states and have a three-witch ruling council?!
I kind of love Mila Kunis...she over-enunciates certain consonants in a way I find utterly endearing. But, Mila/Theodora/Wicked Witch of the West, what's with this whole "I turned green and evil because the man I wanted was into somebody else"? Can I get one woman onscreen to represent the thousands of us who - when we get dumped, especially for someone else - get mad, and then get the frak over it! Move on! Don't waste your life on hatred, girl!
At least in Wicked she's born that way. Which actually makes me love that book even more in retrospect...too bad McGuire just spun it out into a stupid gimmick.
One last thing: all three women in this movie have really round, childlike faces. Even the mature-and-stern Weisz is cast from the same plump-cheeks-and-wide-eyes mold. And Franco looks puffy and bloated from too many munchies. What with the peculiarities of CGI acting and enhancement, these cartoony faces make for an oddly anime take on a stereotypically Western myth.
I might go see this again - 3D IMAX is better from the back of the theater. I left feeling like the moisture had been sucked from my brain...thanks third row.
3.09.2013
3.07.2013
Girl Rising!
Today is the premier of Girl Rising!, a documentary about the work of 10x10, an organization empowering girls around the world through education and opportunity.
I feel an immense sense of excitement and satisfaction when I see other people doing things in the world that I wish had the time, skills, energy, and compunction to do, especially when said effort is so completely aligned with my own thinking and intentions. It's a real GO TEAM! kind of sensation, because we're all trying to get to the same place, in our different ways. And the more of us there are, the faster and more conscientiously we'll get there.
Action is awesome.
(Thank god I can't see it today...way, way too much inspired weeping for a cold and not-so-snowy Thursday.)
I feel an immense sense of excitement and satisfaction when I see other people doing things in the world that I wish had the time, skills, energy, and compunction to do, especially when said effort is so completely aligned with my own thinking and intentions. It's a real GO TEAM! kind of sensation, because we're all trying to get to the same place, in our different ways. And the more of us there are, the faster and more conscientiously we'll get there.
Action is awesome.
(Thank god I can't see it today...way, way too much inspired weeping for a cold and not-so-snowy Thursday.)
3.06.2013
SPOM: Ride to Inwood, Sail the Isle, Flamenco
Latest NYC activity recommendations from mom, who lives in DC but keeps a far more interesting social calendar than me and Mr. Fuzzykins:
A bike ride to Inwood to check out the very weird, very industrial, very gentrifying Columbia U sports complex.
And a sail around the Manhattan island, which I am actually super excited about. Where else can you see the epoch changes in our relationship to water? I'm already shopping for an adequately matronly sunhat.
You know where we'll be Friday nights (in our fantasies)! Because post-30-and-giving-a-shit I'm so exhausted by Friday night that our plans are more often chinese and netflix. But eventually we'll get motivated...
(If you recognize these images, thanks @NYTimes via @ CathSatterlee)
A bike ride to Inwood to check out the very weird, very industrial, very gentrifying Columbia U sports complex.
And a sail around the Manhattan island, which I am actually super excited about. Where else can you see the epoch changes in our relationship to water? I'm already shopping for an adequately matronly sunhat.
3.04.2013
An argument for F2F IRL, from Jack White
This month's missive from Third Man Records:
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3.01.2013
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