| thursday august 31 2006 |
****Movie Review: Snakes on a Plane 
If one thing should be said about Snakes on a Plane, it's that it lived up to the main thrust of the hype: There were snakes, and they were on a plane. But beyond that, well...
The NYTimes is reporting that Snakes on a Plane is a box office disappointment (here), which doesn't surprise me. It's an R-rated B-horror movie. We can all titter about the movie's stupid name and premise, but how many people will commit $10 and 90 minutes just to hear Samuel L. Jackson deliver his money phrase in context, with Shakespearean-like intonation:
"Enough is enough! I have had it with these muthafuckin' snakes on this muthafuckin' plane!"
The main problem with Snakes is that it's campy, with a throw-away plot and stereotypical characters (the flight crew has a sexist pilot, a slutty stewardess, a flaming flight attendant) but not consisently campy. It tries to tug your heart strings, to inspire, to make us care.
The first half-hour is agonizing, but necessary in creating a plausible scenario where multiple species of poisonous snakes would be not only on a plane, but attacking the passengers, seemingly always on the face or genitals. When the action really gets going, it's violent and gory and sort of kills the fun. How can we laugh at snakes on a plane when they're horrifically killing everyone on it?
The worst part of the movie was either the opening montage of hardbodies on the beach (I almost left) or repeated camera shots from the "snake" perspective.
Still, it was purposely a cheesy horror that reminded me of my beloved zombie genre: The unexpected, absurd menace... the frenzied scrambling and sudden demises... the heroes that step up to face the mounting crises. I'm glad it lived up to its billing, if not its hype. But I will only see the sequel if it's called what SLJ has suggested: Mo' Muthafuckin' Snakes on Mo' Muthafuckin' Planes.
| wednesday august 30 2006 |
****Cosmic Joke
In high school, I worked at the King of Prussia Coffee Beanery with a giggly, plump girl named Margot. Whenever our female boss or a lady customer acted bitchy, Margot would say: "She's just jealous of our youth." I thought Margot was being her usual bubbly self, but now realize she was cruel and wise beyond her 18 years. Even the cultured, successful women who drank lattes in 1995 despaired over the only thing we had that they didn't: Teenaged skin.
Approaching the age of 30, make-up is not just to accentuate natural youthful desirability. Instead, it covers the dull sheen of shifting hormonal priorities, distracts from imperfections wrought by the passage of time, and reshapes facial features that have sagged out of their original spots. To my horror, make-up is becoming a telling gender cue.
I never received any formal cosmetics training, so when a friend gave me a voucher for a free 20-minute make-up counter consultation at Macy's - ("I'm not trying to hint anything. Just go for the free samples") - I figured maybe it's time to learn how to use expensive products to maintain a semblance of self-confidence about becoming a crone.
I stumbled into Macys ten minutes late, gnawing on a bagel with only a dusting of facial powder and a coat of lip gloss on my face. Kristie ("Cosmeotology Consultant") is about ten years older than me and abides by eighties hair-feathering techniques and green eye shadow.
She sized me up in five seconds: "You like the natural look," she purred as she steered my face in circles with a hand on my chin.
"I don't wear a lot of make-up," I admitted. "I'm scared if I were too much at once, I'll look like a clown."
She laughed, like You schmuck. "Well, that would be too much, wouldn't it."
To my horror, she suddenly came at me with an eyelash curler. Straight away, with nary a hello. I flinched. "Your eyelashes are non-existent without mascara," she said as I tried to prevent my reflexive spasms from rendering my eyelashes truly non-existent. She released my eyelashes and began pontificating about mascara. I could feel my eyes glaze over, like whenever programmers start talking about Java classes and struts. Kristie showed me about ten mascaras that apparently are all somehow different but would all be perfect for me.
"Wait, what's the difference between these two?" I asked, testing her.
"This one is more for daytime use. It's lightweight and won't smear as easy if you rub your eyes. This one is more evening and coats better..." The more she talked, the more I hated her for her passion over beauty products.
Kristie flattered me all the while making me insecure about publicly baring my face without every distinct feature coated in products: "Make-up should accentuate what you already have... Your lips are thin, but a perfect shape for lip liner... this concealer is perfect for under the eyes, for the bags and discoloration... If you only use powder and not foundation, you're not doing everything you can to prevent photoaging... Mineral foundations sit lighter on your skin... See what I'm doing? I'm mixing nude, peach and mauve... If you only have time to apply one thing, it should be mascara, foundation, and lip makeup."
"I don't like blush," I told her when she came at me, brandishing an enormous brush covered in pink dust. I was getting feisty and resistant. "I never use it."
"Blush is not mandatory, but it adds a multi-dimensional glow to the foundation," she explained.
"Like a clown?" It was the second time I had referred to clowns. From her venom-filled expression, I could tell we finally hit that moment of mutual hatred. No one can aggravate friendly sales folk like I can.
I felt obliged to buy something, so I picked out a lipstick. I didn't like the garish pink shade that she had chosen for me, so I selected a dark red shade with brown undertones.
"I would not advise any brown for you," she said earnestly, resting her hand on my shoulder, willing to impart some wisdom despite having her time wasted for a lousy lipstick. "It's too severe. It ages."
Oh, that wretched word: Ages. I will take the pink.
| tuesday august 29 2006 |
****Snores from the Commuter Rail
My new commute is: An 8-minute walk to West Natick station, a 30 minute (express) or 48 minute (local) train ride, and a 5 minute walk from South Station to the office. Although it still involves a train, it is quite different from the Red Line. I expect a dearth of prime Tales from the T material. The prevailing mood of the commuter rail is bored and somber. Wackiness rarely ensues.
People ride the Red Line for lots of reasons, but recreational use is not sufficient reason for the commuter rail's existence. It is functions solely as transport for suburbanites to and from urban offices. Standing on a woodsy commuter rail platform with scores of unmoving smartly-dressed professionals fiddling with their Blackberries and WSJs is vaguely uncomfortable. It underscores the train's purpose, and we are like ants marching towards sustenance, and then marching back to our anthills to enjoy the windfall.
| monday august 28 2006 |
****Netless
Waiting for the cable guy, who is expected between the hours of 8am and noon. It's 11am, so he could be here any moment. Like... now. Or... now.... now.
I periodically pick through yesterday's NYT, but I fiend for factoids. I want to ravage hypertext headlines with nonsequitor clicks. I want the news that isn't fit to print: Animal maulings, celebrity babies, Cinderella lottery winners... goddamnit, it's the season for hazing horror stories from football camp, and I'm missing it.
****New Rule: Only Live with People You Love
Friday was the last day at my old apartment. I boxed up my remaining possessions, disassembled Ikea furniture, and agonized over last-minute Goodwill donations. Both of my roommates are staying, and one of them picked my last day to tackle all the chores procrastinated since before I moved in: Cleaning and organizing the pantry of untouched cookware and cans of food; removing the large pots of barren soil from the living room; and, of course, cleaning the kitchen garbage can in the bathtub.
It was a Heart of Darkness moment: Entering the bathroom and seeing that garbage can standing in the shower, with years of dried-up condiments and mold plied to the walls and bottom of the tub. The Horror, the Horror! I have seen unspeakable things during my 20 months of living with that bathroom, a pestilent sewer of hair, grime, mildew, and dozens of dusty bottles of personal hygiene products (the toilet tank was used as a make-up counter), with the occasional shocker like: Bloody underwear. Shitty toilet seat. Garbage can in the shower.
But how fortunate that I could relax, laugh, and snap a picture, because I had already taken the last shower I'll ever take in that apartment. What a nice souvenir of my internment! I will call it "Craigslist Roommates."
| friday august 25 2006 |
****Less Taped
Before humans learned agriculture and animal husbandry, we were nomads. We moved with the seasons, following the wild plants and game. Hunter-gatherers, you know. Imagine: Time to move to Florida, it's citrus season.
Nomads gradually became industrialized out of existence. It's largely unnecessary to travel from place to place, and quite more practical to settle down so you can raise a family and acquire possessions by means of steady employment. Nomads do exist, but we call them migrants, transients, RV-ers, and tax evaders.
Having never lived in any one apartment for more than two years since I started college, I'm somewhat of a nomad, except I can't readily carry all my possessions as I transverse Massachusetts. I have to pack everything up in boxes. Scores of boxes. Many things are sentimental: Pictures, posters, letters, postcards, knick-knacks, diaries, notebooks, ticket stubs, museum guides, clothes from a time when my clothes were an expression of myself.
And good lord, cassette tapes. I haven't listened to a cassette in more than a year, and I doubt the urge to dig through my tapes to listen to degraded music (rewind, fast-forward, don't accidentally press record) will strike anytime soon. Nobody wants tapes, so I picked out the mixes given to me by other people and ditched hundreds of tapes on the curb for the trash. And life continues.
| wednesday august 23 2006 |
****Oil! Losing My Mind! Oil!
Packin', movin', packin' some more.
Relying on the cigar-chompin' wisdom of tycoon J. Paul Getty to see me through:
"Formula for success: Rise early, work hard, strike oil."
"The meek shall inherit the Earth, but not its mineral rights."
"Oil is like a wild animal. Whoever captures it has it."
| tuesday august 22 2006 |
****The JonBenet Scale: How Crap Is Your Media?
If the recent developments in that perennial tabloid favorite story of JonBenet are the Big Story... if your newspaper or news website of choice splashes pictures of that creepy confessor all over itself... if his airplane dining menu was headline news... if it appears that all those crises in the Middle East just sort of stopped... then, I'm sorry, but your media is tres crap.
****The Baby Rabbits
I was talking to my father on the phone last week. He had built a treehouse behind his garden for his grandson-in-law. "Remember the treehouse you had?" my father said, and in a flash I did: A spacious, sturdy two story construction with hard wood floor finishes, a ladder, and views of bustling Egypt Road and my father's strawberry patch. Amenities included a nearby tire swing, a sprinkler in the summers, and, for a while, a rabbit hutch.
One day I headed out to the treehouse and peeked inside the hutch to see my rabbit Fluffy eating her freshly-born babies. She stopped nibbling on the small white sacks and looked at me with that vacant haunting rabbit stare. When my father mentioned the treehouse, the memory of gore in the rabbit hutch came flooding back to me. I was 6 or 7 years old, yet I can recall every single pixel of Fluffy, neck deep in the blood of her babies.
"They were born dead and that's how rabbits bury their babies," my mother told me, an entirely suitable explanation for a child. Rabbits lack a maternal instinct. Even the ones who don't chow on their young are grudging mothers, characteristic for an animal that can have dozens of offspring in one season.
But little human girls are born with a keen mothering instinct, and I with my Barbies and love for playing house and school was no different. I would be bustling around my treehouse, preparing meals of leaves and "meat" (tree bark), and I'd glance over at Fluffy's hutch, contemptuous of my cannibalistic neighbor. I've hated rabbits ever since, and I was relieved when the neighbor's dog mauled them. We soon got 2 male kittens, who grew up to also eat baby rabbits.
Indeed, the world has it out for baby rabbits. I knew a man once who ran over a nest of baby rabbits with his lawn mower. He said they didn't make a sound. How do we reckon dead baby rabbits? Why care about something we never would have cared about unless meted a climacteric fate?
| monday august 21 2006 |
****Dinner and a Movie Review: Overlord and
Sandrine's Bistro 
I want very much to see Snakes on a Plane and Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, so I feel pretentious to be discussing Overlord, a 1975 WWII drama about one soldier's journey to the beaches of Normandy. It contains an impressive amount of real stock footage woven into the storyline, including Nazi newsreels, British propaganda films, and films of Allied troops practicing for D-day. Overlord was never officially released in America, but its reputation has earned it screenings at festivals and in arty film houses like the Brattle.
Boston's Restaurant Week - which is actually two weeks and no Fridays or Saturdays - is in full swing. Scores of upscale eateries are offering prix fixe menus - $20.06 for lunch, and $30.06 for dinner. Not exactly cheap, but you can breath easier during the meal knowing that all those $14 apps and desserts won't result in an eye-popping check and subsequent indigestion. It's a good excuse to go to special occasion places like Sandrine's Bistro (here) in Harvard Square, even if the only special occasion is Restaurant Week.
Overlord, which was the code name for the hush-hush D-day plans, centers around a young British man named Tom who is "called up," a fate he accepts with nervous resignation. From the day he leaves his doting parents to become a soldier, he has recurring, fatalistic dreams of getting killed during battle. At boot camp, there are the typical "getting yelled at a lot while navigating obstacle course" scenes. He has a sweet, shy encounter with a young woman at a dance. He polishes his shoes in the barracks with the other privates while the drill sargeant yells at them some more: "Why do we polish our shoes? TO IMPRESS THE FRENCH."
Sandrine's is a French restaurant with a bar, hence it is a cozy yet gorgeous bistro. The cook hails from Strasbourg, and since we had just been there in June, Mr. Pinault and I were delighted to see paintings of the town all around the restaurant. Sandrine's Resturant Week appetizers are a little chinzty: Soup (Chilled Cucumber Vichyssoise) or salad (Sheep's Milk Feta Curds with mesclun greens)? Compare this to their "normal" appetizers, seductively listed on the prix fixe menu as upgrades: Crab Gazpacho (add $8), Escargot (add $10), and Fois gras (add $15). I resented Sandrine's for tempting me to deviate from the prix fixe menu. The salad was tasty and fresh, but its plainness seemed to emphasize that I was depriving myself of fois gras. What if I die tomorrow, and I chose salad over fois gras to save $15?
Overlord was not quite what I expected. Because of moviemakers like Steven Spielberg - who must have seen this movie - I imagined a "storming the beach" scene with mass death and carnage. But this movie manages to scale the largest-ever military offensive involving over 3 million men to concern only one man, Tom, who is only ever certain of one thing: He will die.
The Seared Loin of Tuna with seasonal vegetable macedoine and spicy rouille was not quite what I expected. The tuna was done perfectly, with a quarter-inch of cooked meat flanking the otherwise raw steak. It melted in my mouth. However, the macedoine turned out to be a glorified potato salad with carrots, and the rouille was, I believe, an orange sauce that was dripped sparingly on my plate and offered little hint of spice with which to goad the mild-tasting tuna.
The documentary stock footage is deftly weaved into Overlord; indeed, the filmmaker reportedly worked around the archive footage that he found. It is jarring footage: London is burning amid the Blitz, then occupied Paris, with Hitler peering out of an airplane at the desolate landmarks. One of the most incredible scenes is when the Allies are testing a wheel that is launched into the water to clear land mines and create a fog. When the focus of the film moves back to Tom, I felt a tad impatient. Like most humans, I wanted to film to focus of the "grand scheme of things," not the life and death of one man. And this is exactly the tragic aspect of war that the filmmaker emphasizes. Ulimately, one soldier's death means nothing. We know, the military knows, and all the self-proclaimed "cannon fodder" sitting in their amphibuous vehicles on their way to the beaches of Normandy knows.
I struggled in my dessert choice, but Peach Tatin won out over the Chocolate Creme Caramel. It was a wise decision. To think how many men died on the beaches of Normandy so that peach tatin could endure. We are indebted to them.
| saturday august 19 2006 |
****Goodbye to the Laundromat
Barring any explosive aberration in my bodily functions, today is the last day that I'll haul dirty laundry on my back to the laundromat. Next weekend, a washer and dryer will be at my disposal in my private residence, a decadent luxury after 10 years of laundering in a communal space.
I will stop squirreling quarters. I won't coordinate laundry day with the weather forecast. I won't navigate sacks of dirty laundry down narrow sidewalks and be stared at by immigrants, shocked to see a white American engaging in menial chores.
The voyeur in me will miss the laundromat. I like observing other people's laundry habits. I love the bachelors who empty garbage bags into the washer - socks with sweaters, boxers with permanent press. I love the women who scrutinize every label and dutifully add fabric softener to everything. I love the old pros who can fold a bedsheet by themselves in mid-air.
But humans adapt to convenience splendidly, and I will not miss sniffing my clothes and shoving my underwear into a bag amid all the fascinating launderers.
| friday august 18 2006 |
****No. 13 Baby
CNN Money published their annual Best Jobs in America list (here). Amazingly, I'm at number 13 (Technical Writer, 23.22% job growth, average salary $57,841. Um, I'm gonna print this out and have a talk with my boss...)
I have to admit, if you like offices and don't like having the fate of a project resting on your shoulders, if you can string a sentence together, edit your work compulsively, and think software engineers are cool (they're #1 on the list, incidentally), then technical writing is an okay jig. Better than jobs like fur processor, castrato, match girl, stevedore, and assistant crack whore.
The list shows white-collar bias under the premise that a job must be well-paying and have potential for growth in order to be a good job. It doesn't take into account things like whiling one's life away in a cube. Number 25 is "Writer." One day, I will be demoted.
| thursday august 17 2006 |
****One Less Dish to Pack
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I bought this bowl the very week I moved to Cambridge seven years ago. One week out of college, and I had secured a technical writing job at a Cambridge software company and moved into a tiny studio in Harvard Square... 300 square feet, but I didn't have much. The studio was $950 a month, and I spent most of my graduation money on my deposit and first month's rent. I didn't have a bed or a couch, so I bought a futon. No dresser, so I assembled a system of cardboard boxes. No desk, so I put my desktop on the floor and typed while propped up on my elbows, laying on my stomach, ruining my lower back. Moving in, I didn't have any kitchen ware except for coffee cups. I turned the pantry shelves into a bookcase. I had a saucepot for pasta, a frying pan for eggs, a coffeemaker, some glasses, and a single matching ceramic plate and bowl. You can't tell from the picture on the right, but on a relative scale of quality, the bowl and plate were the nicest things I owned. All of the practical, daily-usage possessions from that tiny studio have disappeared during these seven years of continual material upgrade except for a Denny's coffee mug, a stapler, and the ceramic bowl and plate. And now the bowl is gone. I rested it on the ledge of the sink for a second and BOOM (can't wait to have a kitchen counter). So I will head to Natick with my only ceramic plate as a remembrance of my salad days, when I was green in judgment, cold in blood. |
"Salad Days" |
| wednsday august 16 2006 |
****Funny Money
"Some fucker slipped me a Canadian quarter," I announced to Mr. Pinault as we approached a toll booth on the Mass Pike. Excuse the harsh language, but when I discover that I've been shortchanged with Canuck money, I feel screwed.
Mr. Pinault wanted to sneak the worthless coin to the toll-taker, but the back of the quarter caught my eye: Three child stick figures, holding hands. "What is this?" I asked Mr. Pinault, who is a Canadian citizen and shrugged it off as "Hey, it's Canada."
Obviously it is a special edition, but why would Canada, a country already self-conscious about being America's Dopey Little Sister, mint a coin commemorating this? Generally I like Canadians, except when they assert moral supremacy over Americans because they are passive socialists, and when their quarters infiltrate my wallet.
Are the customer service associates near the border simply not vigilant against this foreign menace of alien currency? Or could someone be eking profit off the exchange rate? The vending machine at work once dispensed a Canadian quarter. I then unsuccessfully tried to use it in a future snack acquisition, meaning that they sneak Canadian money in vending machine change!
Luckily, Canadian quarters are easy to ger rid of. I target cashiers in take-out lunch places, who in turn dispense their fair share. Once I noticed a cashier at Au Bon Pain had snuck me one. "Excuse me, this is Canadian,"I said, holding it out to her. But she slammed her drawer shut and called "Next please," daring me to be the jerk who holds up the line. Accept defeat and move on. It's only a quarter.
| tuesday august 15 2006 |
****Heavenly Bodies
Today the head of the International Astronomical Union called for universal agreement among astronomers for what constitutes a planet: "People have to be able to agree on a terminology that's used to describe things in the universe...We don't want an American version, a European version and a Japanese version" (here). The world will finally have a global mythology rooted in Science: the religion inspired by logic, ruled by physics, prophetized by geniuses, and preached by nerds.
The assemblage of scientists is divided on what constitutes a planet, and their decision will determine if Pluto, with its eccentric orbit and small mass, will remain a planet. Call me Orthodox Science, but they can't just revoke Pluto's status as a planet. I learned 9 planets in grade school, and to suddenly have 8 would erode my faith. What other empirical lore will they disavow?
But the tenements of Science are not etched in stone; human interpretation affects it as in all beliefs. One faction contends that if Pluto is a planet, then the newly-discovered Xena should be deemed a planet, as well as 50 or so other bodies of mass in our solar system. Zealots. Another faction puts forth that we should sub-divide the classification of planets, with "gas giant planets" and "ice dwarf planets." Radicals.
| monday august 14 2006 |
****First Day
"And this is Meredith. She's in charge of our user documentation," a VIP boomed as he lead a new employee around the office.
They paused at the entrance to my cubicle. I stood up, flashed a grin, and shook hands. "She's also a graphics whiz."
The words hung in the air. Graphics whiz? I've made maybe two dozen graphics at work. I am an untrained imitator who uses too much text and just learned how to align shapes diagonally. People's mouths hang open when they stare at my Visio handiwork.
But a smile gamely clung to my face. I even swelled with pride that I was called a whiz to a man important enough to be introduced to people outside his department. Whiz, as in wizard. Magic-maker.
After a pause long enough for us to blink twice at each other, they moved to the next cube. Luckily, like all office workers on his first day, he'll only remember the ones who took him out to lunch.
| sunday august 13 2006 |
****Bait and Tackle
A perfect August day in Boston: Sun, breeze, no humidity. The banks of the Charles River were crammed with joggers, cyclists, tourists, dog-walkers, and sunbathers. As Mr. Pinault and I enjoyed a light sandwich picnic on a bench, we took horrified glances at a thonged man tanning. We giggled childishly. What is so natural in Europe seems so eccentric in America. More mirth ensued when a fully-clothed man with a cane and a fishing pole approached the thonged man, hovering over the sac of bait like a wide-mouthed bass.
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****Tax Holiday
Citizens of Massachusetts flocked to the stores to take advantage of the annual Sales Tax Holiday Weekend (here). All personal product purchases are not charged the 5% sales tax, except for "all motor vehicles, motorboats, meals, telecommunications services, gas, steam, electricity, tobacco products and any single item whose price is in excess of $2,500." You know, basically anything that is a necessity that isn't already exempt from tax.
Who doesn't want a sound rationale to go on a shopping binge? Think about it: You save $5 for every $100 spent. I purchased about $80 in furnishings for my new apartment's second bathroom. That's $4.00 in my pocket instead of in the state's coffers! Is this a holiday or an all-expense paid vacation to the laundromat?
| thursday august 10 2006 |
****Dirge for the Cambridgeport Saloon
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An infrequent watering hole for me, |
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| wednesday august 9 2006 |
****In the News: Headlines You'll Never See in America
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| tuesday august 8 2006 |
****Knit Pick
In anticipation for my move in a few weeks, I'm starting the cleansing process of getting rid of clutter and unused possessions. I found my meager clutch of knitting supplies, which has been untouched for more than year after I dropped out of my knitting class. I decided to sell it on Craigslist... but how much to charge? And what Classified category do handicraft supplies belong to? Stumped and feeling philanthropic, I posted an ad in the "Free Category:"
The deluge of responses was immediate. So many knitters out there, monitoring Craigslist for free stuff! I suspect many people are not knitters, and hope to resell the supplies and make a profit on my lazy goodwill. A mere sampling of the responses I received in less than 12 hours:
Hi! The knitting supplies? I'm so interested!
I am interested. Is it still available? Would love
to knitting again.
I'm a newish knitter (1.5 years now) and am very
into it. I make sweaters mostly, some bags.
i want to try out knitting! have wanted to for
ever.
I am headed to my weekly knitting night
tonight - I'd be happy to distribute your unwanted knitty treats.
Am I the "Lucky Winner"?
The lucky winner was, in fact, a woman who wrote three whole paragraphs about her knitting circle:
We need sweaters for Appalachian children who have none. Some people wonder why we knit for them when there is other ways to get sweaters for them. Like the Salvation Army. But the difference is that when it is hand knit the children know that someone wants them to keep warm when they are cold.
Damn, this knitter's dexerity at manipulating goes beyond yarn and needles. The winner!
| monday august 7 2006 |
****Tales from the T
It's tourist season in Boston, and with the heat ebbed, they're actually leaving their hotels and taunting office workers with their shorts and tank tops. Every cities' tourists look the same. It's like there's a country called Tourisma, and all the Tourists wear clean comfortable clothes, talk loudly, possess no sense of direction, and plump with age.
Southerners are common visitors to Boston. To escape oppressive summer climates, they study a US map and pick the northern-most city with a hub airport. We also attract Holy types who want to be scandalized by liberal hedonism: Boozy Catholics, drinking whiskey on their way to mass. Gay people, running around with wedding rings. Kennedys.
South Station, Red Line, 4:45pm: Descending the stairs to the platform, I could hear a Red Line train arriving. My sprint-instinct kicked in, but blocking my way was a slow-moving couple who took each step at their leisure. I conceded the missed train and wound up sitting next to them on a bench. They were in their early 60s. He was at least 6'5" with a respectable heft beneath his jeans and stitched buttoned-down shirt, and a white Stetson hat above his jowled, mustachioed face. She had ridiculous hair, streaked blond, teased and held high on her head by a motionless ponytail. Her heels were too high, jeans too tight, and butt too big to allow for natural movement. When the train came, she rose with a squeak.
The doors opened and they rushed the near-empty train, shoving past a young Indian man who sought to egress. They took three seats to accommodate their respective thigh girth. So exotic and foreign, I couldn't keep from covertly staring. With drawls lazier than a cud-chewing cow, they discussed whether to take a cab or the subway to a restaurant that night. "A taxi would be easier," she kept saying.
"This is fine. What's hard about this?" He smiled and flirted like a man who spent the afternoon drinking bourbon.
"It's just... I want to relax. I'm on vacation. I don't like all this... public transportation." Her face, slightly mummified with age and make-up, scrunched up into a sob, and she cried "You said if we didn't rent a car, we'd take taxis. And we've only taken one god-forsaken taxi since we've got here!"
"We got here this morning!" he protested, laughing, obviously finding her public discomfiture to be adorable. I found it to be pretty cute myself. Sometimes, Tourists can be a fun reminder that places like Tourisma exist.
| sunday august 6 2006 |
****Happy Valley Weekend
"Vertigo." On the humble summit of Mt Hitchcock in the Pioneer Valley.
"Bald Spots." (I'm going to get in trouble for that.)
"The Sunken Library." When I was a student at UMass, people earnestly claimed that the library was sinking because the architects didn't figure in the weight of the books. The pervasiveness of this rumor at colleges all over the country is shocking (here).
"Chinese Mysticism." After lunch at Amherst Chinese, Mr. Pinault cracked open his cookie to find three fortunes. "That's very lucky," the waiter told him. Two of the three: "Handsome is that handsome dose."
"Mobocracy Fortune." Mine... somewhat chilling coming from a cookie.
| saturday august 5 2006 |
****Official Websites of Unfathomably Famous People
Star Jones
The Flash intro is a glamour-shoot montage of Star Jones from her six months as a thin person. Her personal motto displays on the fixed top frame: I am the author of the only dictionary that defines me. (here) Can someone get Star Jones a thesaurus? An email address is required to view the site in earnest. I entered "todd@yahoo.com." Sorry, Todd, whoever you are. I hope you don't get Star Jones-oriented Spam.
"Her knowledge of the law and talent for television has won her critical acclaim as a news and legal correspondent." Wait, is this the same Star Jones on the hormonal hen panel The View, discussing hemorrhoids and slimming hair styles? Other Star facts: She has a Maltese puppy named Pinky Michelle Reynolds. She was the "Chief of Consumer Style" for PayLess shoes. She is a "complete devotee of Pilates." The site heavily promotes Star's book, Shine. It also has a link to her infamous wedding website, starandal.com. She had 15 bridal attendants and 6 pre-wedding events, and a "fantasy" honeymoon in Dubai and the Maldives. Why are you famous, Star? Why you? Symbolically, on both sites, if you try to turn off the music, the song just restarts.
Nicole Richie
I almost screamed when the page loaded (here): A dashboard of widgets amid a picture of Nicole with searing black eyeliner that sets off the stark whites of her eyes. The gallery has over 6000 images of Nicole shopping, partying, and flaunting her skeletal body draped in designer clothes. The gossip forum is filled with overwrought speculation on the status of her feud with Paris Hilton, who actually deserves the fame that she so carefully orchestrated.
Louie Anderson
A video message on the home page (here) shows a pallid Louie thanking everyone for their support after his recent surgery ("I had part of my colon removed, a foot. It was my dad's foot.") His fleshy white face is plastered all over the site. So chumpy and Midwestern, like a corn muffin. Clips of his stand-up offer veritable proof of his unfunniness, as he moans about airline baggage and slow drivers, and ponders the mindset of a deer in headlights.
Leah Remini
I have no idea who this woman is, but I saw her in People commenting that yes, Suri Cruise exists: "She looks just like Tom and Katie." The excessively purple website initially offered no enlightenment as to why she's in People. On the Charity page (a celebrity website requisite, unless you're Nicole Richie), Leah says "I wanted to put this on my web site as I am a firm believer in helping others where you can. I think as you get older you start wondering, "What the hell am I doing on this planet?" You don't know either?
After reading the extensive FAQ, I determined that she is on the show "The King of Queens" and that she's a Scientologist, making her worthy enough to lay eyes on Suri and deserving enough to have a photo gallery filled with pics of Leah, all fat-lipped and unsmiling.
Melissa Rivers
The opening Flash montage says it all: "Charming... Funny... Fabulous... Melissa Rivers" (here).
| thursday august 3 2006 |
****Bovines Beset Boston
CowParade is currently in Boston. This self-proclaimed "world's largest public art event" (here) involves local artists rendering 100 fiberglass cows as "art objects," and strategically placing them in gentrified and commercial neighborhoods. At the end of the summer, the cows will be auctioned off to benefit charity. Past CowParades in Chicago and New York have yielded averages of $18,257 per cow. Talk about prime rib!
I am notedly repulsed when it comes to cows or any ruminants, but the Cash Cow (below), who grazes in the Financial District, has grown on me. I like that it's a ten-dollar bill instead of a 20, 50, or 100. It implies Bostonian thrift and shrewdness while still hinting at vast lucre. Plus, it's green. Maybe I'd like real cows if they were green.
| wednesday august 2 2006 |
****Ice Cream for Breakfast
I wanted to jog in the morning, before it hit triple-digits, but it was 82 degrees (feels like 87) at 6 am. No need to unnecessarily sweat during a muggy Bostonian heat wave. Instead, I walked along the Charles River as moist runners huffed past me, feeling lazy but also smug at how they broiled for their endomorphin compulsion.
For about two miles, two woman behind me made lively, drunken conversation in labored breath. One woman was big into mimicry, where she'd be relaying a story and start imitating people's voices: Kids. men, an uppity waitress, her Pilates instructor, Jerry Seinfeld. Since I'm still without my iPod shuffle, I kept accelerating my pace to escape the mindless natter. I assumed they were middle-aged walkers with an eternal 15 pounds to lose. I couldn't understand why they got closer and closer when I was speed-walking to the point of looking ridiculous. Then I realized they were running... slowly, with some difficulty... so I slowed to a normal gait and allowed them the victory of passing a walker.
Why is it perfectly acceptable to walk around at 8am lugging 32 ounces of Coolatta, but I get freakish looks for eating a Klondike Bar? It's 85 degrees at 8am! A bagel is not doable.
I stayed cloistered in my cubicle for much of the day, thankful to be busy. It was so hot when I left at 4:30 that I anticipated the profoundly smelly commute. Not entirely because of me, either. On the Red Line, I listened to a transferring Green Line passenger describe how a woman passed out in the crypt-like Copley station after waiting 15 minutes for a train. "She fell like a sack of flour," he claimed to the only woman who responded to his initial public-service announcement of "There was a medical emergency because the stations aren't air-conditioned." AC on the Green Line? That would be like putting a roof on a house before the superstructure is finished.
But it's cooler now, and the past two days of salad, bread, and cheese stirred a longing for a hot meal. I decided to treat myself to Indian takeout. I never get take-out, so I perused my roommates' thick stack of takeout menus before settling on what I thought was the Indian place down the block (as opposed to one of Central Square's half-dozen other Indian joints). When I arrived, the host said they received no take-out orders, but tried to fetch me vindaloo and naan nonetheless. How cut-throat, these Indian restauranteurs! I left and tried another possible Indian place that I may have ordered from. They had my feast ready, and I gratified myself on it while watching an old Curb Your Enthusiasm. I didn't leave room for ice cream, but that's okay, because I had ice cream for breakfast.
| tuesday august 1 2006 |
****In the News
Brer Mitt
Lippity-clippity Republican Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney apologized for describing the Big Dig as a "tar baby," claiming he was simply describing a "sticky situation" (here). Obviously one as calculating and cautious as Mitt would not risk political suicide by knowingly using a derogatory term, but in today's soundbite-oriented political landscape, "tar baby" may prove to be Romney's tar baby.
New Englanders are familiar with Mitt's moronic ad-libs, but how will Mitt handle damage control on a national level? I am reminded of the scene in Clerks II, when Randall, after repeatedly saying "porch monkey" in front of African-American customers, protests that he had no idea it was a slur, and then decides to "take back" porch monkey as a non-racial term. This may be Romney's only alternative: Take back Tar Baby. Explain the delightful history behind the Uncle Remus stories (po' white man makes mint off of African-American folk tales) and demand that this folkloric figure no longer be taboo in modern parlance.
DIY Liposuction
In Framingham, a 24-year old Brazilian woman died after paying $3,000 to undergo liposuction in a condominium basement (here). The "doctor" and his wife/"nurse" regularly make trips from Brazil to Massachusetts in order to service the immigrant community with cheap, illegal cosmetic surgery. Win-win!
Liposuction is considered the easy way to rid the body of unwanted fat, but when it involves getting sliced open in the basement of a condo building to have 10-15 pounds of flesh sucked from one's body... well, doesn't a sustainable regime of thoughtful eating and daily exercise sound easier?
Comandante: Resting Comfortably
Fidel Castro is in stable condition after undergoing surgery to stop intestinal bleeding caused by the rigors of being a Communist dictator (here.) However, the doctor who performed the surgery is now experiencing intestinal bleeding caused by the rigors of performing surgery on a Communist dictator.
Meltdowns
The big story in the news is how Israel is gearing up to wipe Lebanon off the face of the Earth (here). I am deeply disturbed by this latest Middle East crisis, not only because Israel is killing a lot of civilians and Iran is getting riled, but because most Americans still blindly, unquestionably support Israel (here).
But I digress. No need to get controversial, for I suspect that I lost a chunk of my readers after yesterday's erotic tomato poem. So let's focus on a subject we can all rally around: Mel Gibson's meltdown and subsequent public pillory. During a DUI arrest, Gibson reportedly said "Fucking Jews - the Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world" (here). After sobering up, he claimed he "said things that I do not believe to be true and which are despicable." Can rampant alcoholism really make one anti-Semitic? Or is another case of a mega-star simply losing touch with all reality? One thing is for sure: The Jews that run Hollywood are not amused.