viernes, octubre 31, 2003

As Per Request...



It's the Dave Ramsey shout ouuuuut!!







miércoles, octubre 29, 2003

Really?

I read, from a verifiable source, (by "verifiable" I mean an ad for Dunhill Watches in the November issue of British G.Q.) that James Joyce would always carry a pair of lady's bloomers with him, which he "waved in the air to demonstrate approval."

Approval of what exactly remains unclear. A hasty Internet search has turned up nothing. In my head I imagine Joyce in a number of situations, being served a delectable dinner of potatoes or perhaps enjoying a gorgeous sunset or a quality work of cinema, waving his lady's bloomers in approval.

The ad uses it as a measure of eccentricity, as in "You know you're eccentric when..." (this is another one) "... You change your name to Captain Beany, claim to come from the Planet Beanus, and run for Parliament in 2001 wearing a Lycra superhero outfit" This attributed to "Aspiring parliamentarian, Barry Bean."

How about: You know you're eccentric when you spend an entire workday afternoon perusing British GQ and giggling at the titty photos of women playing with stuffed animals.

martes, octubre 28, 2003

Pen Pals!!! Oh boy!!!

I found a copy of Don Diva magazine at my work. Intrigued by the cover photo of a woman manufacturing crack, I then read a really good article called "Kings of Crack: Inside a Detroit Empire." Other good articles: "Men Cheat: Deal With It" (this one had a really awesome photo of a woman scorned holding a butcher knife), and "Five Essential Things to Know About a Criminal Case" (including a call to write your congressmen about supporting the Second Chance of Ex-Offenders Act, which I actually plan on doing). Then, I went to their web site, dondivamag.com, and they have at least 20 web pages of profiles of incarcerated people that want pen pals. It's a little nebulous because you don't know whether you would be writing someone who is in for murder or just someone unlucky who is locked up on a bullshit Rockefeller drug law. But still.

jueves, octubre 23, 2003

We Can Walk Across the Brooklyn Bridge Anytime You Want Sweetheart

Once Adam and I got lost in the jungle on an island off the coast of Brazil. We had no food or water. He wanted to scale the steep cliffs and travel back around the island beachwise. I almost started to cry and wanted to go back and find the trail. We went back, and found the trail, and then arrived at an amazing little isolated beach where I happily paddled around until realizing it was full of sea urchins and potentially stinging jellyfish. I have very pretty photos of this experience.

Now, Adam is in Addis Ababa. First you should look at his Friendster photo because it's the cutest. Ever. Second, since you'll probably never go to Ethiopia, you should read his weblog. The two French girls named Cecile in his dream used to be my roommates.
So sad... Read Elliot Smith's obituary here.

miércoles, octubre 22, 2003

Good Fun

Hee hee, now you can pornolize
my weblog.

P.G.O.A.T.s, etc.

From Filmmaker Magazine, the syllabus for the literature class taught by David Foster Wallace at Pomona College (spring 2003 semester): The Man Who Loved Children, by Christina Stead; Play It as It Lays, by Joan Didion; The Moviegoer, by Walker Percy; The Golden Notebook, by Doris Lessing; Desperate Characters, by Paula Fox; Giovanni’s Room, by James Baldwin; In Watermelon Sugar, by Richard Brautigan; Nightwood, by Djuna Barnes; and Speedboat, by Renata Adler.

I just read Play It as It Lays, and I'm pleased to report its influence (purely conjectured but undeniable) on another marvelous depiction of Los Angeles vapidity and decadence by a young Bret Easton Ellis. I used to think that Richard Brautigan's writing reflected the inside of my head particularly in A Confederate General from Big Sur. Now I'm not so sure. But the other books I haven't read and many I haven't even heard of. Is this the password into DFW's brain? Is this reading list the key to narrative breaks in Infinite Jest? Will the man behind the ellipses suddenly congeal into a human manifestation through hybridization of James Baldwin and Walker Percy? Please report any insights on the matter.

In other news, everyone who recommended Portnoy's Complaint, I hate you. Really, I'm so tired of reading about balled up kleenex and vaseline. You have no idea.

lunes, octubre 20, 2003

Okay. My office is next to someone who recruits new clients. He's in his seventies and has retired about three times only to come back because he gets bored. I hear him making phone calls all day. As I write, he is talking to someone with a fake British accent telling them he is calling from his "ship off of the U.S. Virgin Islands." I already heard him yell at a receptionist on speaker phone because she connected him with someone's voicemail. He was like, "I told you this is a ship-to-shore call!!! Don't connect me with anyone's voicemail!!!" (all in a fake British accent.)

?? ?...

viernes, octubre 17, 2003

I Want to Kill Myself

"He now jokes about the Internet as “the vortex of self-hatred” because of how it can turn mere diversion into a self-destructive act: “I’ll have a ton of papers to grade, but instead I’ll be like, Let’s jerk off to the Internet first. So I go online, but then I despise myself. I look up, and my computer says I’ve been online for 47 minutes and I’m like, What the hell have I been doing?!”

“It was like a drug,” Dan says. “I just started to feel so bad about it. I’d think about how these girls I looked at were being exploited, but then I still couldn’t stop. It was totally screwing with the way I thought I should be seeing women.”

“I was the kind of girlfriend who was up for anything sexually,” says Jill, who is 25, has hazel eyes, and works in PR. “When we were having sex, he’d call me his porn star, and I thought that was hot.” In time, this changed. Kyle would sometimes e-mail her links to sites “he thought were really hot,” which made Jill more than a little uncomfortable. Sometimes, she’d drop by his house for a surprise visit and he’d have already “exhausted himself” with the computer.

All of which raises a question: How much is Internet porn screwing with the way a generation of young men view women?"

[This makes me so depressed, because it's all so true... "exhausted himself" indeed]
Read more...

miércoles, octubre 15, 2003


Last pre-Simpsons public appearance.

Tyrone Slothrup sez...

Go look on Nathalie's web site and read about how Thomas Pynchon's voice is going to be on the Simpsons (his unphotographed face featured under an animated paper bag.) www.nchicha.com/cupofchicha

Last night I got on the wrong train going home from Williamsburg and got sucked in some sort of Brooklyn vortex of blurry men in reflective vests carrying lanterns and rainy empty streets under construction in unknown neighborhoods. All because I got on the W instead of the Q. I ended up taking a cab from DeKalb after riding on like 4 different trains in a variety of directions. As it was very late at night, the entire netherworld experience took 2 hours, which must break some sort of record.

All this after the Cubs game, which should have at least filled some sort of stupid mistake quota for the evening. I heard Billy Crystal say that it's better if the series isn't the Cubs vs. the Red Sox because then nobody would win.

This week:
Kill Bill = Thumbs Up
The Fortress of Solitude = Thumb to the side
Astor Place K-Mart = Thumbs Down

Weblogs are so embarassing.

jueves, octubre 09, 2003

Oh Yo-ko...

"I have decided to be a cockroach for a day, and see what is happening in this city through its eyes. Since we can easily say that New York City is the cultural center of our society, I have taken various pictures of the city's corners and presented them from a cockroach's point of view. Through the eyes of this other strong race, we may learn the true reality of what our dreams and nightmares have created. I invite you to join me in this odyssey--

Odyssey Of A Cockroach"

Ladies and Gentlemen, Yoko Ono's latest installation. Who is coming with me to see this? On display at 18 Wooster Street until November 1st. I wonder if my kitchen will be heavily featured.

Since this is all I've been doing...

This week I read American Pastoral by Philip Roth and Everything Is Illuminated by J Safran Foer. I just bought Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem in hardcover because I couldn't wait.

American Pastoral was not necessarily predictable (because that would be unfair; the whole plot is laid out on purpose in the first twenty pages) but somehow... expected? Like any novel on the sixties as the decade when American utopianism officially rolled over and died.

Everything Is Illuminated made me cry a couple of times. It was good, but not my new favorite book. But good.

In high school I went through a phase where it seemed like everything I read was about African-American women overcoming sexual trauma (Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, Edwidge Danticat). Now everything I read is about Jewish men interrogating their identities. Are there any books like these but with Jewish women? What genre does a 1/2 wasp, 1/4 catholic and 1/4 jewish female write in? Is that like Joyce Carol Oates? Please say it isn't.

martes, octubre 07, 2003

One More Thing

Ahmet Zappa posts bulletins for parties at The Viper room. The password? Gary Coleman.

Two women got in a big fight on the subway this morning because one got the other's coat "dirty." Of course it was on the long stretch of no stops between Brooklyn and Manhattan. Of course the train was rush-hour full. Of course it kept having to stop for delays. Tension was so thick other people started reprimanding the upstarts. One woman was yelling, "This is New York! Of course I'm going to kick your face in!" I've never been so happy to see Bowling Green in my whole life.

The company-policy good morning by the building's security guard felt a little more heartfelt today.

lunes, octubre 06, 2003

This just in

Ahmet has approved your request and is now in your friends list.

You and Ahmet can view each other's pages and each other's friends.

I read shitty magazines at work

US Weekly reported that Ahmet Zappa announced his engagement to Selma Blair via Friendster Bulletin. I'm connected to Ahmet via two degrees of separation and have asked him to be my friend. Thanks to Friendster, Ahmet Zappa will soon be announcing his engagement to me, and all of you will soon know me as Emily Zappa.

Ahmet Zappa has 415 friends.

Sorry I haven't posted in a while. I hate to disappoint my faithful readers. And by this I mean Dave.

jueves, octubre 02, 2003

Boa Viagem

I learned today that Hemingway was once a copywriter. I wonder if he wrote junk mail as well.

Yesterday marked the last departure of friends to another country. Now my nearest and dearest are scattered -- in Addis Ababa, London, Sao Paulo, somewhere in China, Istanbul, Minneapolis, Providence, Buenos Aires, Iowa City, the Bay Area or on various rock and roll tours across America. One can only imagine where they go from there.

Maybe because I left high school for a year in Chile, then left Minneapolis for Providence, then left Providence for Brazil, it seems a little mundane to be in New York now. But I plan on being domestic, and keeping house, and looking off piers for approaching ships. Ex-pats are wierdos, which is precisely why I thought I might someday become one, red-faced in a tropical shirt with a harem of underpaid servants. Or maybe just a resentful cranky foreign correspondent. Neither here nor there.