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Monthly Archives: November 2008

Things To Do Instead of Smoking, Part 2

While everyone suggests that you take up lollipops, hard candies, or breath mints, try and fail to get this song out of your head: Also: is it just you, or does France Gall’s sucker get bigger every time they cut back to it? Probably it is you.

Things To Do Instead of Smoking, Part 1

Consider how this PJ Harvey song stands in response to this poem by D.H. Lawrence. Look, here’s a YouTube clip so that you can listen to it from this page: (I tried to find a live performance, but no luck. There is a clip of a woman singing it to her baby! EMBARRASSING.) Anyway, here’s […]

I Have a New Favorite Blog

I think “The Hills” actually comes from this weird confusing right wing place where sex is considered degrading to women, because women are giant babies (e.g. Sarah Palin). On one hand, it’s a way to keep the show apolitical and generally appealing (how could Lauren Conrad have a stance on abortion rights when she’s probably […]

Linking Time! Also: I Will Bring Shame Upon My Family

This morning, I woke up full of dread and shame. Bleary and haggard, I stumbled toward my computer screen. “No,” I muttered. “I didn’t do that. I would never do that. I must have dreamed it.” But I was wrong. There, before my eyes, was a pale-blue Safari window, glowing with menace. “Holy fuck,” I […]

Valley of the Dolls: Thrilling Climaxes

If I am going to tell you about Valley of the Dolls – and I am going to tell you about it, believe me – I have to tell you how I found it. After a friend’s great-aunt died, I was asked to take part in clearing out her attic. This attic: it was amazing. […]

Hey! Want To Hear About Jean Claude Van Damme’s Liquid Creamy Seed?

Well, TOO LATE. The attractively-named Sarah Ball of Newsweek has the goods for you. Mr. Van Damme begins: I really opened myself up in “JCVD.” I peeled back the skin of the fruit, cut the pulp and then took that very hard seed. In this film I cut that hard seed, and inside that seed […]

Helps Me Find… Brecht! Helps Me Find… Chandler! Helps Me Find… James Joyce!

She always makes the right choice! In April 2007, 24-year-old William Hallowell was accused of sending salacious and threatening emails to Robin Bernsen, his former boss in the library at the Riverdale Country School in the Bronx. Bernsen had sent an email to address that was similar to Hallowell’s email address (but it wasn’t Hallowell’s), […]

Places That Are Better Than My Apartment: An Ongoing Series

You know, it’s not often that I feel nostalgic for the days before suffrage. Today, however, it occurs to me that, were I living in that day and age, I could at least have an apartment in Manhattan – namely, the Trowmart Inn. According to Ephemeral New York (and this article, thanks for linking, guy) […]

My, What An Interesting and Exciting Day!

For people whose memories of the ’80s and early ’90s largely involve being driven to and from various functions in the Chevy trucks of their metal-enthusiast stepfathers, on those few occasions when the stepfathers in question were not asleep or working the night shift at Big Bear!* First we have this fine piece of reporting, […]

Ladies and Gentlemen: The Backlash Generation

Voters reject the term and the category of being a “feminist,” with only 20% of women willing to use that word about themselves. Nor do they want their daughters to become feminists—only 17% of voters said they would welcome their daughters using that label. But while “feminism” seems to connote a radicalism out of the […]