Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in A.V. Phibes' LiveJournal:

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Friday, June 26th, 2009
4:39 pm	You should go see this play. Seriously. Oh gentle reader, there was a time when I used this journal to plug a lot of things. Some of them were worthwhile...but...some of them were not-so-worthwhile and I was simply obliged to promote them because I or my friends were involved in some way. I feel like this may have damaged the trust in our relationship, but, baby, I've changed and I want you back. When I tell you that you have to go see the off-Broadway play Cocktails at the Center of the Earth please believe that I mean it, girl, and I always will. Yes, you may be suspicious, based on the fact that I and my friends are involved in this play, but I am not promoting this play because I have to. It's because I want to. I want you to want to see this play because it will give you pleasure. Your happiness is my #1 priority. It was written by ravenface who is, in all honesty, probably the best writer I know in real life. His imagination and deft wordplay never fail to delight. Check out his Livejournal and see for yourself. This play is a comedy that will make you laugh. Don't you like laughing? Let's laugh together. This play features steampunkery, high-society shenanigans, a robot who makes puns and a song about Jazz Hands. What more do you want? I'm not superman.  I'm just a girl, standing here in front of a computer monitor, asking you to go see a play. Reserve your tickets post-haste. Current Mood: jacked up on amphetamines (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Tuesday, January 20th, 2009
3:49 pm	The baking of an American President I actually made this cake for an election night party, but I'm posting it now in honor of the inauguration. Now, first off, I'll admit, it took me awhile to drink the Obama kool-aid. He was my pick to win from day one (I was 99% sure...I would have bet money on it), but I was actually supporting Giuliani, who I knew didn't have a snowball's chance in hell. I wanted to support John McCain, since I wanted the republicans to start moving to the center again, but his campaign was so badly run (and since Obama was an ace in the hole anyway), there didn't seem much point in it. Also, I finally just succumbed to the irresistible pull of Obama's charisma and air of cool-headed intelligence and went Obama-happy with everyone else. And how do I express support? By making a cake. ( and here's how that went... ) (20 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, January 7th, 2009
6:04 pm	2008 year in review So, in much the same trend as the previous two years, my first inclination was to say that 2008 sucked ass. Again, it would seem that even a suck-ass year is still a pretty good year for me. I decided to take the pursuit of mental health more seriously as the year progressed and so things should be looking up. I got to travel around a bit. I got to go dogsledding in Quebec, swimming in the Hamptons, wine-tasting in Napa Valley and gallivanting in the Pacific NorthWest. I played tourist here in New York all summer and learned a lot about the city history. I got to eat a lot of good food. I also got to be in a very fun off-broadway play. Unfortunately, I did not win the lottery, but considering last years resolution to "be more incognito," even if I did win the lottery, I wouldn't tell you. Speaking of last year's goals, I think I managed to nail about half: 1. Be more incognito. I managed to avoid being on national television three times (for three completely different things), but didn't avoid being in the New York Post. This lead to getting smack talked a bit on the internet, but I did not participate or get involved. Overall, I think I managed to not have much of a public image for the past year, so I'll consider this a win. 2. Talk less smack. This was a challenge and a struggle. It seems that, at heart, I'm kind of a hater. While I tried to be more diplomatic and not participate in slagging sessions, I would occasionally slip up. For example, I was at a benefit party one night and was introduced to a woman with whom I proceeded to make small talk. I said to her "Wow, this DJ kinda sucks, right?" and she said "That's my husband." Which really summarizes why I shouldn't talk smack: Because when it bites me in the ass it's super awkward. I think I neither entirely succeeded or failed at this. We'll call it 50/50. 3. Travel to a continent other than North America or Europe. FAIL! The only other country I went to was Canada and that barely even counts as another country. 4. Become knowledgable about wine. This I would call a success. I read a book, started keeping a wine journal, took a four week class and did some tastings. I managed to get my terminology down (all this time I had "dryness" confused with "tannins") and while I'm no sommelier, I can go into a wine store or look at a wine list and make selections based on criteria other than price and wild guessing. While I still can't seem to guess wines in blind tastings, I'm proud of the fact that I am even able to make educated guesses ("this oaky, buttery white must be a California Chardonnay! Wait... it's not? Well, at least I know that California Chardonnays are typically oaky and buttery!"). Since the point of learning about things is typically to enhance one's enjoyment of them, I would say that this endeavor was both successful and beneficial. 5. Read 30 books. WIN! I read 32 books, although several of them were pretty short. 6. Get a reservation at El Bulli. FAIL! I thought I was really on the ball with my ninja timing this year, but I still failed to get a reservation. The last legend I heard was that there are now 2 million people vying for the 7,500 reservations every year. So, since I couldn't get a reservation to "the world's best restaurant," I got a reservation to the best restaurant in the Americas instead and went to the French Laundry for my birthday. And now, Goals for 2009! Unfortunately, my top three goals are secret and I can't tell you what they are. So: 1. Secret! 2. Secret! 3. Secret! 4. Get in shape and drop my weight back down to 54kg / 120lbs. Although I initially blamed my boyfriend for my weight gain, I think "middle age spread" and general lethargy is also at fault. I'm not sure what I weigh right now, but I presume I have 10-15 lbs. to lose. I'd like to go down a pants size and no longer look like I'm in the early stages of pregnancy. 5. Read 30 Books It worked last year, it can work again! 6. Revamp Evilkid.com Definitely time for a redesign. I've already been working on it. Have to actually execute. 7. Travel to a continent other than North America and Europe. I'm just gonna carry this one over from last year. (18 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, December 7th, 2008
1:12 pm	If Twilight the Book was WTF, Twilight the movie was FTW Okay, so I went to see "Twilight" the movie the other night and my humble opinion is that it schooled the fuck out of the book. I'm not saying it's a great movie - there were definitely some scenes that were a cheese casserole - but I liked it. I wheedled one of my friends into going to see it with me, with her threatening to make me refund her ticket price if it sucked too bad, but (maybe because her expectations were set so low) she actually liked it. Also, Robert Pattinson's portrayal of Edward made me love him as an actor, but I'll get to that later. There are four reasons I thought a movie of Twilight would be better than the book and all of them proved to be true: 1: The time constraints on a movie would cut out all the repetitious, rambling, empty filler in the book and get straight to the meat of the story. 2: A picture is worth a thousand words and since a thousand of Stephanie Meyers' words were "glare," "gorgeous," "perfect" and "chagrin," I figured the story could only be vastly improved by showing instead of telling. 3: Since Meyers' idea of character development doesn't seem to go beyond describing what people's hair looks like, I thought actors would be able to give the characters a little more substance to grab onto. 4. A movie would get the story out of Bella's first-person narrative so we could watch the story without it being filtered through an impenetrable veil of "OMG EDWARD IS TEH HOTT!!!1!" See, I started out reading Twilight genuinely wanting to like it. I wanted to go on a fantasy adventure and fall in love with Edward Cullen and make him mix tapes and gay out on some vampire high-jinks, but I felt like I was thwarted at every turn. Every time a new character or intriguing question or potentially interesting conflict was introduced, it was never really followed through or fleshed out or given any interesting insight. As a reader, I felt constantly blueballed (and not just because there was no sex.) Never has a book made me so badly want to write fanfic, if only because I wanted to fix everything wrong with it. I got the feeling that the filmmakers felt the same way, because everything that the movie changed from the book made the story better. New York Magazine did a whole slideshow thing on why the movie is better than the book, which I mostly agree with. Everything in the movie that was funny on purpose? It wasn't in the book. You have the screenwriter to thank. I was optimistic about Catherine Hardwicke as director because I thought Thirteen was a compelling and believable movie about teenagers, so I thought she could take the one-dimensional Twilight characters and real 'em up a little. I think she did the best job she could. Bella's high school friends were all much more fun in the movie than the book and Bella seemed realer and smarter. Mostly, though, I left the theater loving Robert Pattinson TO THE MAX for what he did to Edward. While the book relentlessly emphasizes how suave and gorgeous and perfect and dazzling Edward is, Robert Pattinson plays him as kind of an awkward, twitchy weirdo who's borderline psychotic and occasionally a whiny little bitch. What this tells me about Pattinson, as an actor, is that he really put some thought into the character. I mean, Stephanie Meyer was trying to make him this ultimate romanceturbation hero who she keeps trying to tell us is nonstop dreamy 24/7, but (as many have pointed out) a lot of the stuff he does in the book is kinda creepy, stalkerish, self-loathing, condescending, crazy-mood-swingy and borderline abusive. On top of that, he's a guy who's been 17 for 100 years and never had a girlfriend... and then he starts liking a girl who he is fighting a primal urge to kill every time he's around her. Honestly, that guy would not be suave. That guy would be an awkward, twitchy weirdo who's borderline psychotic and occasionally a whiny little bitch. It's like Robert Pattinson "got" the character more than it's own creator did. This performance helps the story somewhat by reminding the audience that there actually IS a conflict in the Bella/Edward relationship: That Bella is attracted to Edward even though she really shouldn't be because he is genuinely dangerous. So it makes it feel a little more like a tragic good-girl-falls-for-bad-boy romance than the book is willing to let it be because book Edward is all "yeah, I could theoretically kill you but instead I'm going to give you butterfly kisses and spoon you because I love you like whoa." and Bella's all like "you can do anything you want, no matter how creepy, because I love you and you're perfect and the possibility of you tearing me apart with your teeth and injecting me with excruciatingly painful vampire venom doesn't scare me because yr hot." The sense of danger is never really tangible. Unfortunately, although the movie did the best it could, I still find myself not 100% buying the romance. I'm still just not quite feeling it. And, for the record, after I saw Twilight, I saw" Zack and Miri Make a Porno" which I thought WAS romantic and made me feel all mushy and want to go home and cuddle my boyfriend. Still, if someone hasn't read Twilight the book and been like "WTF," I'm not sure they could appreciate the movie for improving on it. I'm sure all those people who actually loved the book and thought it was good will be like "boo! this movie sucks! It changed stuff and left out tons of stuff that was vitally important!" And people who have never read the book at all will be like "are you fucking kidding me? Sparkly vampires?" So maybe there is really no winning. (17 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, December 4th, 2008
1:02 pm	If I could review "Twilight" (the book) in three letters, they would be "WTF" So I'm sure at this point everyone has heard of this hit book Twilight and the movie thereof. While I have not seen the movie, I have just finished the book and the thought that kept coming to mind throughout was: Are you fucking kidding me? Look, this book is bad. Shockingly bad. But it's bad in that epic, unselfconscious sort of way that makes me kind of obsessed with it, in the same way I'm obsessed with Showgirls and Trapped in the closet. Although it's bad, it's not that surprising that it's popular. It's full of romantic grandiosity and shoots straight to the heart of teenage girl fantasies about being special and unique and being loved madly by a dreamy bad boy. But... oh god... IT'S SO BAD! First off, I feel like I need to clarify that I'm not some McSnobbersons who sniffs disdainfully at anything that's not Lit-rah-chah. I heart good writing, but I'm not ashamed to get down with a little popular entertainment. I thought the Harry Potter series was delightful, and in my early 20's I devoured Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles and loved every minute of it. But, for reals, Stephanie Meyer make J.K Rowling and Anne Rice look like Nobokov and Dostoyevsky. See, a lot of times I evaluate entertainments on the "could I have done that?" scale. And, honestly, The Harry Potter series and the Vampire Chronicles were pretty detailed with lots of characters and multi-layered plots, and I'm not sure I could pull something like that off. "Twilight," however, I'm pretty sure I could have written piss drunk, typing with my nose. If someone had told me that this book was written by a 15 year old who'd never kissed a boy, I would have said "well, that makes perfect sense. The tone and writing level is pretty much what I would have done when I was a 15 year old who'd never kissed a boy." It's the fact that it was written by a grown-up mother of 3 with an English degree that amplifies the WTF factor. What? How? It made me want to travel back in time, find my 15 year old self and force her to drop out of school, get her GED and start cranking out overwrought fantasy romance novels. If you have not read the book, here is the plot: A girl (Bella) leaves her flaky Mom and moves to a small, rainy town to live with her dad. There's a really hot boy (Edward) who keeps giving her mixed signals that make her obsessed with him. He saves her from a car crash. She finds out he's a vampire. She decides she's in love with him. He starts being nice to her and he's in love with her too! But, uh oh! her blood smells delicious and he wants to kill her! But he controls himself and they kiss! Yay! Not a lot going on, right? THAT'S 350 FUCKING PAGES OF THE BOOK! The last 150 pages consists of a bad vampire who decides he wants to kill Bella for sport and she has to run away with the help of Edward's hot vampire family, but bad vampire tricks her into meeting him at a dance studio and beats her up and OMG Edward saves her just before he kills her. Then they go to Prom. The end. OH OH OH... and the bestest part of all: The reason vampires can't go out in the sun? Because they're sparkly. Yes, sparkly. REALLY. I'm going to extrapolate from this that they also ride unicorns and crap gumdrops. I had to put down the book at that point and crack up. Seriously. 500 pages. Of course, if they cut out Bella's tedious run-throughs of her daily class schedule and the ten million ridiculously adjectivey descriptions of how hot Edward is, the book would probably be a pamphlet. And don't presume that those extra pages were used on extraneous things like, say, character development.. ha ha ho... you wish! There isn't a character in this book who has more depth than a kiddie pool, and the protagonist, Bella, is probably the most spot-on example of a Mary Sue Character since Mary Sue. But here's the thing... I was kind of looking forward to this book being page-turning popcorn, but at about the halfway mark I started feeling this strange, undefined feeling of frustration that went beyond the fact that there seemed to be no plot. I couldn't put my finger on it... and then, it hit me: The book was written in the style of erotica and I was waiting for the sex. So that part of my brain that likes to spank it to bad literotica.com stores... or, you know, that WOULD if I were into that sort of thing *cough*... was impatient to get the show on the road. Subconsciously, my mind was saying "GET TO THE FUCKING ALREADY!" and once my conscious mind figured that out, I was like "This book was written by a Mormon. There will be no fucking." And then, admittedly, I was a little annoyed. I almost wanted to write the sex scenes myself. They would probably go a little something like this: I gasped as Edward unzipped his gorgeous, godlike pants, revealing his smooth, white, marble cock. He glared at me with his burning topaz eyes as my fingertips brushed his cold, sparkling, granite dick. My heartbeat quickened. My breath caught. I didn't deserve this. How could I, clumsy, ordinary, plain, clumsy Bella Swan who was only asked to the dance by 3 different lovestruck boys, be so close to a cock so gorgeous, scintillating and godlike? It was like the pale marble cock of Adonis. In a quick, graceful motion, Edward turned and glared at me. "Don't you see Bella?" he said as he held me in his strong grasp and dry-humped my thigh with annoyance, "I'm a danger to you! You should have nothing to do with me! Every moment you're risking your life!" "Edward" I gasped "I love you. I will love you forever!" I was in agony thinking of losing him and never again touching his pale, white, cold, gorgeous, sparkling, marble, granite, dazzling, godlike, scintillating Adonis cock. How would I live? He was my life. He glared at me again with his dazzling, golden eyes and told me with his gorgeous, pale lips "There's something I haven't told you. Something else about my kind." "What Edward?" I asked breathlessly, "I will love you no matter what. Forever." He brushed his cold, gorgeous, marble lips close to my clumsy, ordinary ears and whispered "We..." "What, Edward? I love you. Forever. You can tell me anything." He gave me his crooked grin and said, "We ejaculate rainbows." ...and so forth. You get the idea. But, considering how little substance was contained in the 500 pages of Twilight, I figured I could just read the wikipedia synopses of the subsequent books in the series and I could get the rest of the saga without missing anything. Of course, now I feel like I have to go see the movie which I have heard is bad, but I refuse to believe it could possibly be as bad as the book. Also, Robert Pattinson kinda looks like my boyfriend's brother (which was pointed out back when he played Cedric Diggory) which may be funny or awkward, I'm not sure which. (231 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, September 24th, 2008
12:22 pm	Uplifting subway poster grafitti One of the things that I love about New York subway advertising is that the posters are right there on the walls, unobstructed, making it ridiculously easy for people to write on them. I remember feeling disappointed when I was in San Francisco to see that the subway posters are posted inaccessably across the tracks from the commuters, robbing them of the enjoyment of the "subway advertisement dialogue." I like to think of New York subway advertisements and their inevitable grafitti as a delightful collaboration between media and the public it wishes to woo and influence. The observer is allowed to call "bullshit" or use the media as a springboard to a statement of their own. Results range from the lowbrow (drawing penises going into every open mouth) to the highbrow (scathing indictments of consumerism or sexism). Results are sometimes thought-provoking, sometimes hilarious. I can't say that in my reckless youth I was never alone in a subway station drunk with a sharpie pen and let one thing lead to another. My personal style was generally more silly. Putting word bubbles with nonsensical catch-phrases, or adding satiric labels with arrows, pop-up-video style. I even once had the rare joy of having someone quote one of my own subway graffiti's back to me, not knowing that it was mine. All that was a long time ago, but I still like to stop and read what people write on posters. Yesterday, however, I saw some graffiti that surprised me because it was a "genre" I don't think I've really seen before. There was a poster advertising new waterfront high-rise condos with extensive writing on it, which I stopped to read, assuming it would be a cynical tirade about gentrification and class. Much to my surprise, this is what it said: "Having a 2-bedroom apt in Brooklyn right by the water with an amazing view is the best! The question is how to you get a 2-bedroom apt in Brooklyn right by the water with an amazing view?? Answer: Just make it happen!!!" Then there was an arrow pointing to the building saying "You R here!" The thing that made it surprising was that one rarely sees subway graffiti that is so, well, positive. A statement that is, in fact, almost giddily upbeat. I looked at the adjacent ad for Dunkin Donuts flatbread sandwiches and the same person had written on it: "Life is 2 short. If you want to eat a egg flatbread sandwich EAT IT!!! Just eat 1 every so often-N-your life will be smooth!!" I thought: "Who are you, deliriously happy subway vandal?" And walked away amused and cheered. (10 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, September 23rd, 2008
9:40 am	An interesting case of female perfectionism So, awhile back I read the book Play Like a Man, Win Like a Woman, which attempts to present different ways in which women operate and are perceived in a business environment. One of the interesting points the author presents is that, while men are more comfortable jumping into a situation half-cocked and sorting things out as they go along, women generally want to be completely prepared before entering a situation. I imagine this is the combined result of women in male-dominated situations getting more flak if they screw up or appear incompetent, and the fact that women are generally more sensitive about getting said flak and take it worse, emotionally, than a man would. The downside is that this would seem to lead to women seeming more timid or not seizing opportunities as quickly as a man would. The possible upside, however, is that this implies that when such a woman does seize an opportunity, she is probably much better prepared to tackle it. I thought of this recently when I was reading some interesting stats about eating gigantic steaks. I'm sure most of you have heard of the Big Texan 72 oz. steak challenge, wherein patrons of the Big Texan steakhouse can take the challenge of eating a 72 oz. steak, salad, potato, roll and shrimp cocktail in one hour (without puking). If they succeed, they get the meal for free and bragging rights for life. So according to the Big Texan stats, approximately 50,000 people have made the attempt since 1960, and only 8,500 have succeeded, making the success rate around 17%. BUT, among women, the success rate is 50%. There are also considerably fewer women who make the attempt. Only about 4-5 per year. What this implies is that, while men will more likely do it on a lark, women probably don't even try unless they actually think they can do it. I'm sure not all women are like this, but I would say that I probably am. If I were planning to go to the Big Texan and take the 72oz. challenge, I'd be, like, training for six months. I wouldn't just go in there and "give it a try." I don't even know if my crippling fear is of failing or being criticized for failing, but either way, it's not entirely healthy and has undoubtedly held me back in life. Still, though, if I tell you I'm going to the Big Texan, you can probably safely bet that I'm going to eat that whole steak. (10 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, July 30th, 2008
2:03 pm	Overheard conversation between two young men in the subway guy1: My hands are bisexual, because I'll hit men OR women. guy2: Your hands are what? guy1: Bisexual, because I'll hit men or women. guy2: What are MY hands, then? guy1: Well, do you hit girls? guy2: No, I only hit guys. guy1: Then your hands are straight. guy2: But if I only hit guys, aren't my hands gay? (7 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, February 28th, 2008
2:15 pm	I guess this has been making the rounds, but I'm posting it anyway. So my downstairs neighbor just told me to check out the Stuff White People Like blog, and, as a white person, I can vouch for the fact that it is totally accurate. (23 Comments |Comment on this)
11:33 am	Winning the Lottery So as I've stated before, it's a goal of mine to win the lottery. We all have to figure out at some point what we want to do with our lives. And so we're instructed to make lists and collages and meditate on what our true desires are and what we want our futures to look like. And so, after bouts of soul searching, I keep coming to the conclusion that I pretty much just want to be the idle rich. I'd like to spend my days traveling, gardening, reading books and writing wordy blog posts about what I hate about popular culture. Oh sure, you could say that I do that already, but it's always with the nagging specter of work looking over my shoulder. And so, in this culture where we are all told that it is our sacred duty to "follow our dreams" this leaves me few career choices. I could try to be a trophy wife, but that would pretty much be like a midget deciding they wanted to play pro basketball. And so I'm looking into the career option of "lotto winner." I'll admit, there was a time I thought I was above it. I thought to myself that the lotto was really for people who could never get rich any other way... not for people like myself with marketable skills and reasonably high IQs and respectable social networks who could probably get rich of our own accords. Perhaps I had romantic visions of lotto winners quitting their jobs of backbreaking manual labor, buying homes and sending their children to college. Good for you, lucky poor person! But then I read an article that said that 2 out of 3 lotto winners spend all the money within 3 years and suddenly my mental image changed to that of some guy saying "I jes won this here lottery! I'm gonna buy me ten mercedes, then I'm gonna buy a big ol' monster truck and drive it over 'em! Then I'm gonna buy mah wife some big ol' titty implants and then the kids is eatin' Domino's pizza ever night! Not just special occasions no more!" and I decided that I was no less qualified to play the lottery than anyone else. In fact, perhaps it was my moral obligation to win the lottery to keep riches out of the hands of yahoos. So far, however, it's just not panning out. Is the American Dream dead? Where is my "rags to riches" story? Of course, you might be saying "rags, my ass!" but at specific points in my childhood I lived in a house with no indoor plumbing and ate squirrel, so we'll just focus on that and omit the whole part where I live in a luxury condo and do cushy "creative class" work. Nobody loves a "moderate riches to bigger riches" story. (12 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, February 27th, 2008
11:34 am	Contemporary feminism, the ideals of Ayn Rand and why I love "Veronica Mars" Since I've been hating on the current cultural hotness in my last few posts, I figured I'd switch it up a little and say how much I've been loving on something. That something being the (now, tragically, cancelled) teen show "Veronica Mars," which I just finished watching all the way through from the beginning. "Veronica Mars" is a pretty tight, fun, engaging little detective show full of soapy plot-twists, but I think I love it for more than that. I feel, though, like I can't start delving into my love of our savvy, mystery-solving teen heroine without first talking about contemporary feminism. Contemporary feminism is so chaotic as to be almost impossible to get a grasp on. The old Onion article Women now Empowered by Everything a Woman Does is becoming less satire and more the commonly accepted truth. Still, there is this pesky logic that if feminism is defined by a woman choosing her own destiny, then any destiny a woman chooses- no matter how banal or degrading- upholds the ideal of feminism. And so, in this postmodern age, feminism is just a mad-lib that every woman can fill in to her own liking. "When a woman chooses to [verb] or feels [adjective], then she is [adjective], which promotes the strength of women by [verb]ing our [noun]." And so, nowadays, when I've just come to accept that everything from pole dancing to buying expensive shoes is a celebration of our female spirit and independence, I feel almost thrown for a loop when I encounter a female in pop culture (fictional or non), that seems to embody something loftier than what seems to be the ultimate contemporary feminist ideal of self-indulgence. If I had a daughter (which in the chaos of contemporary culture, frankly, terrifies me), I would want her to be like Veronica Mars. The irony, though, is that the character of Veronica Mars is completely unrealistic. She is far more savvy, smart, clever, focused and ethical then any teenager (or even adult) probably ever was or will be. And so here is were I bring Ayn Rand into the discussion. I read some essay by Ayn Rand somewhere down the line where she posited that art and culture had a responsibility to show an idealized view of human potential rather than celebrating mediocrity for the sake of populism. So maybe she was a crackpot who wrote overwrought romance novels about capitalist philosophy, but I have to say I kind of agree with her on this one. I, personally, would rather believe in the potential of an exemplary-yet-unrealistic character than rally around one who has the same weaknesses and foibles as myself. Of course now we get into some trickiness. Is "Veronica Mars" actually a feminist show, or is it secretly undermining? It was, after all, created by a man. And is Veronica's strength, drive, intelligence and value system the ideological equivalent of the stick-thin fashion model giving girls an unattainable and unrealistic standard of what they ought to be? Over the course of just the first season of the show, Veronica gets raped, abandoned by her alcoholic mother and has to deal with the murder of her best friend. Any one of these things are a carte-blanche for a real-life woman to become a self-destructive, socially maladroit ball of whimpering and/or misanthropic jelly. Is the fact that Veronica's core values of justice, loyalty and egalitarianism are forged and strengthened by these events admirable or ridiculously implausible? Did they just take a heroic masculine ideal and put it in the body of cute teenage girl? Call me a hopeless romantic, but I want to believe in a world where women have such strong value systems to guide them and ground their actions. "Values" get such a short shrift nowadays in our moral-relativist world. We get told a lot to "be true to yourself" but this is almost laughable when identities are as interchangeable as lip gloss shades. In the metaphorical websites of our lives, we're all focusing on the cool flash intro instead of the site map. We do whatever we feel like and then construct moral rationale around it instead of choosing our actions based on an set morality. Me? I'm a mess. I have only the vaguest idea what my values are. But I wish I was more like Veronica Mars. But enough of my meanderings about "meaning." Let's get back to talking about the TV show. First off: It's a travesty that it was cancelled. A travesty! It wasn't even on long enough to start sucking! I mean, "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" (which clearly was a sort of template for "Veronica Mars") had pretty much jumped the shark by the time we said goodbye to it, but this show was cut short in it's prime. Honestly, I think after the end of season three when I heard it had been cancelled, I was in denial and thought they'd come around and bring it back, but no dice. I have reached the stage of acceptance, now, but I'm still annoyed. This is what I get for liking shows with low ratings. And can we talk for a moment about Jason Dohring? That kid has "heat." I'll admit, when I started watching the show, I was like "this bland young-Ed-Norton-looking guy is supposed to be the sexy bad boy? Gimme a break." But I stand corrected. He smolders. Every time he kisses a girl, I get flustered. When he first kisses Veronica in season 1, I was like a southern belle with the vapors having to fan my blushing face. You hear talk about actors paired as love interests having "chemistry," but Jason Dohring just has chemistry, period. I feel like you could pair him with a dust mop and it would be totally hot. I don't know what he's doing now that the show is cancelled, but I'm curious to see what becomes of his career. The guy who plays Duncan Kane, however...yawn. (16 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, February 26th, 2008
11:03 am	Fuck or fuck not. There is no "try." So I'm trying to empty out my email inbox and I'm deleting all the spams, when I see a porn spam with the headline "Two men fuck in the ass a teen." And my immediate impulse is to laugh and say "This porn site is run by Yoda!" And then I realized that I'm a nerd. (10 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, February 25th, 2008
3:47 pm	My Diablo Cody issues So you may or may not have heard of this new screenwriter Diablo Cody, who wrote this acclaimed indie movie "Juno" and is now the toast of Hollywood and just won an Oscar. I have issues with this that are many and varied. First, however, I'll say what I thought of the movie: "Juno" was a movie that I 80% loved and 20% hated. Starting off, the dialogue was so affectedly and self-consciously "hip" that it felt like fingernails on my psychic chalkboard and I didn't know if I could tolerate a whole movie of it. The "look how clever I am!" non-sequiturs were also pretty obnoxious. Like the whole bit about "pork swords." That line was totally irrelevant and was just shoehorned into the script for the sake of saying "pork sworks" (oh man, could you just DIE! the kids are gonna think this is HIGH-larious!), and it FELT shoehorned into the script. So many lines seemed to be there as some sort of "ta-da! this script is CLEVER! SEE!" Once the movie got rolling, though, it eased up, got into a groove and was cute and fun to watch with plenty of laffs and a pretty deft ending that managed to be simultaneously sweet and believable. It managed to strike that hit-making balance where it was quirky enough to be "indie" but could still play to middle america since it was, at it's core, a feel-good pro-life movie about love and family. This leads to an interesting observation I've made when talking to people about this movie: Young people seem much more likely to think that it was "trying to hard" and "overrated," while middle aged people all seem to think it's fantastic and brilliantly written. To be honest, I'm not 100% sure why this is, but I have a theory: Young people are hip enough to know hip and be critical of things that are trying to be hip, which they are judging within the context of hipness. Middle aged people are not so hip, so they are judging outside the context of hipness and therefore just think "oh, those kids are so clever!" But my issues, for the most part, do not revolve around Diablo Cody or "Juno," so much as they are focused on the hype surrounding the aforementioned. The hype, I'll admit, is torturing my soul. Firstly, the hype about the writing... People are talking about this like it's brilliant, genius, amazing writing. The hottest new writer to hit hollywood! This tortures me for two reasons: First is the fact that I think this overestimation is the result of hollywood stupidity...the same hollywood stupidity that gives people acting oscars for wearing makup instead of for acting. It's mistaking showy writing (in the form of all those "ta-da! I'm clever!" lines) for good writing. The frustrating thing for me is that the good writing in the movie was the stuff that wasn't showy, but the showiness (which I considered the flaw in the writing) is being mistaken for genius. It was a good screenplay, but I think it's being mistaken for a brilliant screenplay for the very reason I think it's not brilliant. When I took costume design in college, I was taught an important lesson which I never forgot: "If you go to a play and all you notice are the costumes, the costume designer did a bad job." And so I feel like if you go to a movie and all you notice is the writing, the writer got a little overzealous. But unfortunately, everybody else seems to not notice if something is good if there's not a sign hung on it. But really, let's get beyond my abstract opinions of "quality" and get to the personal issues... My personal issues started when I read a big article about Diablo Cody in some magazine prior to the release of "Juno." The article was long and fawning. Get a load of this: Diablo Cody has tattoos! and Hangs out in dive bars! And she wrote a blog! and she was a stripper...but she's actually smart and snarky! Can you believe what a stunningly unique voice she is? And so I'm sittting there gape-mouthed thinking "Has nobody in hollywood ever heard of a hipster?" This shock was then followed by a rush of indignation that the scores of women I know who are smart, snarky writers with dive-bar-going, tattoo-having, blog-writing proclivities and racy pasts have suddenly been dismissed wholesale as nonexistent, because Diablo Cody is a "unique" voice. It's the same weird feeling I get when mainstream media treats Dita Von Teese like the beginning and end of contemporary burlesque, which is, in fact, a thriving worldwide community of hundreds of talented people. it's the chagrin of seeing someone treated like a unique daisy picked from a barren desert when they are, in fact, just the daisy in the daisy field that got picked. The style of Diablo Cody's writing is more or less the style that young women of a more ironic bent have been putting out for the past decade. In fact, one of the first thoughts I had watching "Juno," was that many of her witty turns of phrase reminded me of various contemporary young woman authors, (and several livejournalers!) And there was even a moment when, because of the ridiculous nom de plume, I actually thought "'Diablo Cody'...haha very funny...who is this really? It must be someone I know, right? I know way too many clever women who fit this bill..." And then my issues turn to a feeling of helpless envy...why wasn't it one of us? Of course, I know why it wasn't ME. Because I never wrote a screenplay, or, for that matter, ever thought it would be a good idea to write a screenplay and, if I did, I don't know that I ever would have finished it. And so, as I read the many accolades for "Juno" and see it win the acadamy award for best screenplay, I'm sitting here filled with dumbfounded angst, thinking: "That's all it took? That's what Hollywood wanted all along? Why didn't I write a screenplay? Why didn't I change my name to 'Tucson Chupacabra' and go make a million dollars? WHHHHHYYYYYY???" Of course, with Hollywood being as trend-driven as it is, it would seem that now would be the time for snarky young women to sell screenplays. So let's get on it, ladies! GO GO GO! (67 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, February 7th, 2008
10:27 am	Lessons I learned from anti-depressants and why I didn't like "Eat, Pray, Love." So you may or may not have heard of this bestselling memoir called "Eat, Pray, Love" which is supposedly an inspiring tale of an unhappy woman who goes on a world-spanning quest to find spiritual balance, inner peace and herself. It was on Oprah and is rapturously fawned over by many women as an "inspiration." But I stand up and call shenannigans, because this is what I saw when I read the book: A bourgeois pathological narcissist--with mental issues that clearly needed to be addressed-- went on a year-long luxury vacation consisting entirely of navel-gazing and whining about her problems to anyone who'll listen, got a new boyfriend and then acted like all her problems were solved when it seems like she actually learned nothing. One of the reasons I was so exasperated with our intrepid author was that she seems just like how I was in college (OMG, I'm like SOOOO upset about this guy who broke up with me because I think he was my soul-mate, you know, and like, I think he'll totally realize that I am totally the one for him but I know I have to take my mind off of it, but first let's, like, talk about it in detail for, like, another five hours because I'm so totally totally devastated and this is like the WORST thing that ever happened, EVER!) But she's MY AGE! I would've hoped that a woman in her mid-30's would be a little more level-headed. But then, she is decidedly not level-headed and she tells us so. She tells us that she can't sleep at night and stays up for hours on end crying and feeling hopeless and desperate. She has sudden panic attacks when she's alone and contemplates suicide. In other words, she is pretty much the textbook person who really, really ought to take anti-depressants. But this is the part of the book that kind of profoundly bothered me the most: She gets all up on her high horse about NOT taking anti-depressants and never learns the most valuable lesson that one can learn from anti-depressants and, therefore, will probably never escape her problems, (although she TELLS us at the end that everything is a-ok, but I'm very very skeptical.) Our author says she tried taking anti-depressants for a little while, but she apparently did not learn what I think is the important lesson one should learn from taking anti-depressants: That not all your feelings are legitimate. That, in fact, some of your feelings are totally irrational and crazy and should not be indulged. That your mind does, in fact, play tricks on you and you can start to recognize when it's lying to you. And so this woman does the thing that many narcissistic creative types do and says that she doesn't want to take anti-depressants because she doesn't want her personality altered or her feelings numbed...because narcissistic creative types want to believe that all their feelings are totally valid and totally important because they are such special, sensitive, deep people who people don't understand because they are not as sensitive and deep. How dare anyone suppose that their incredibly profound feelings might not be real! I mean...this is who they ARE! And so I, the reader, get dragged through this book by this woman who, rather than working through her feelings, seeks out every human being she can find along her path to whine to so they can validate her feelings. She talks about how she makes friends wherever she goes, which means she never REALLY learns to be emotionally self-sufficient since she still has her constant external validation. You get the feeling that the reason she can't get over her divorce and the breakup of her post-divorce affair is just because she lost her validators...which is, of course, why the book ends happy when she finds a NEW validator. This is why I had the dubious feeling at the book's end that she learned nothing. That all her world travel and all her transcendental meditation was not her path to a better life and understanding of self, but just the interim lark between boyfriends who would assure her that she was good enough and smart enough and doggone it, people like her. (And, of course, now she has Oprah and legions of fans to tell her the same thing.) Books like this always make me kind of downtrodden about the state of my gender and our need to rally around our own weaknesses and try to twist them around to make us heroes. Are we women too in love with hugging each other while we cry to become strong people? Are we afraid of being actually strong because only victims get hugs? (32 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, February 6th, 2008
12:23 pm	Don't take advice from... So I've been compiling a "Don't take advice from" list, which is pretty much common sense, but, remarkably, these wily crocodiles of bad advice constantly rear their heads from the swamp. The list is like: Don't take financial advice from poor people. Don't take relationship advice from single people. Don't take career advice from people who haven't had successful careers. Don't take business advice from people who haven't run a business. Don't take "what to do with your life" advice from anyone under 25. and so on...you get the idea... Now it's not like this advice is always useless, sometimes people give you good "what NOT to do" advice. But it's amazing how many people seem to genuinely think they know a great deal about things they clearly don't. Hey, I am holding up my hand and admitting that I am guilty. How many times did I give people relationship advice back when I couldn't get a boyfriend if you shot one at me out of a cannon because I was too busy kissing mirrors to contend with the real emotional needs of another person? Lots! Of course, my advice was usually for people to dump whoever they were with, which could be perceived as me giving them advice on NOT having a relationship, which I was fairly expert at. Still, any other advice I gave was probably a crock of shit. I've also given people lots of career advice of varying degrees of misleadingness. I've mostly just advised based on what worked for me, which may or may not work for anyone else. There was definitely a time when I was very confident that I knew what I was doing, but more and more I just tell people "There are things you can do and steps you can take, but whether or not you succeed is mostly a matter of dumb luck." Still, everyone seems to think they know the magic formula. Hard-working people tell you that success comes from working hard. Talented people tell you that success comes from being talented. Smart people tell you that success comes from being smart. Scheming people tell you that success comes from scheming. Socially connected people tell you that success comes from being socially connected. And so forth. They all may be right in regards to themselves, but perhaps totally wrong in regards to anyone else. But what does all this mean for the youth of america? Well, advice is good, but one should bear in mind that the giver of advice may not actually be right. One should also not stray too far from one's better instincts, no matter how emphatic an advice-giver may be. But if you took to heart anything I said previously, you will not take my advice because I probably am full of shit. But how do you not take the advice of someone who tells you not to take their advice without taking their advice, which you shouldn't take? PARADOX!!! (18 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, January 30th, 2008
10:24 am	International Delete Your Myspace Account Day So today is International Delete Your Myspace Account Day and so I deleted both my myspace accounts (my personal one and the "business" one I set up and then never touched again). I have to say, it feels great. My attitude toward myspace has ranged from mild annoyance to boiling rage, but I felt like I had to keep the account for the few friends who I actually kept in touch with that way. Still, this event has galvanized me into action. I don't even check my mypace anymore! I just have a message up on my page telling people I never check my myspace and to just send me an email. Here is my deal with Myspace and it's so-called social networking: Imagine that you are at a huge party full of people, except that most of the people are actually robots who will repeatedly urge you to download free cell-phone ringtones or look at porn. Then they will stick ads to your body which you will have to peel off. Then, wait! There's someone you actually know! A friend! But it's a pain to actually socialize with them at this party because of the crowds and noise. Also, occasionally, you will see someone you know or someone who you'd like to be friends with, so you approach them and, without speaking, they proceed to unrelentingly throw event fliers at you. So if people are on myspace just for self-promotion, more power to them, but I don't want to be at a party where everyone's an advertisement. Even from a the perspective of advertising MYSELF, I don't find it very effective to advertise to other advertisements. So if you also hate myspace, or never use it anymore, delete your account today! (15 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, January 8th, 2008
12:31 pm	*The repetition of the sound of a vowel Micki: I joined a new gay site called dudesnude.com Alia: Ooh! Assonance! Alia: I'm going to start a gay site called assonance.com (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, January 4th, 2008
3:01 pm	2007 year in review Interestingly, last year my inclination was to declare 2006 "a total loss" in spite of it being somewhat eventful. Likewise, my first impulse is to say that 2007 was another wasted year that I spent mostly "dicking around" although that, too, on closer inspection would also be false. This year I got my dream cat who fills my days with whimsy and delight. I traveled hither and yon, although I only went to one of the places (Texas) that I said I specifically wanted to go to. I became an employee/shareholder of Neu Industries, which did their limited product launch on New Years Eve, leading to far fewer New Year's hangovers after my party. Over the summer, I got invited to speak on an art licensing panel at Pratt, which was fun. I got to stress to the attendees the importance of registering your copyrights, which turned out to be an amusing coincidence, since the next day I discovered I was being copyright infringed by a large company leading to a lawsuit being filed by year's end, which I'm trying not to discuss on the internet. As far as my own business is concerned, some of my stickers were carried in Target this year, which was kind of a breakthrough, and Hot Topic finally carried a Sad Kitty product. As I said I would last year, I shut down my web store. Not only because it was a pain in the ass, but because it created the misconception that the store WAS my business and not just a time-consuming sideline that never really turned a profit. Also this year I realized that the best way to bore the hell out of people is to talk about my business. Anyway, on to last year's resolutions: I stated last year that "I'd just like to make more money than last...and hit the lotto jackpot so I can quit all this nonsense once and for all." I did not make more money than last. I also-- shockingly! -- did not win the lotto jackpot. Don't those random numbers KNOW who I AM? I am renewing this resolve for the new year. 1. Never, under any circumstances, agree to do any freelance illustration for anyone, ever. I did freelance jobs nonetheless, got all morose about it, then later modified my resolve into a more specific list of what freelance jobs I'll do so I don't get morose. 2. Streamline my life. This means selling or otherwise getting rid of all my possessions that I don't use or have a place for (I have designated the month of february for ebaying). Career-wise, this means ONLY doing one or two projects at any given time and phasing out everything that is a time/money drain. I actually did a bang-up job of this. I got rid of half my clothes, almost all my CDs, almost all my store inventory and any device in my office whose purpose is to make objects to sell, since I, personally, no longer sell objects (I make art that other people put on objects and sell for me). Still, I think when I made this resolve last year, I thought it would be done by February and I was kind of depressed that it pretty much took the entire year. 3. Actually decorate my condo nicely so it doesn't look like hobos and college students live here. I would say that most of the condo does not look like hobos and college students live here. 4. Garden. This was fun and educational. Hopefully I've learned from my mistakes and my garden will be better this year. 5. Read 50 books. Well, this is embarrassing... I only finished reading 17 books, and most of them weren't even particularly challenging. 6. Have people over more often. I am very satisfied with the number of people I had over in 2007. 7. Stop playing computer games. I went cold turkey for awhile, now I've learned how to play in moderation. Then I made the mid-year goals to write my resume, which I did, and to not take forever to answer my emails. The iphone has helped me improve with the email, but I suppose I could still do better. And now...GOALS FOR 2008! 1. Be more incognito. I need to cook up a new pseudonym or two which are in no way linked to me as a person. In my wild fantasies, I'd write a best-selling book and nobody would know I wrote it. In my even wilder wild fantasies, I would write two best-selling books under two different names on wildly divergent topics (as a non-pertinent example: one a vampire thriller, one an inspirational story of life lessons I learned from my Golden Retriever), and nobody would know that I wrote either of them. While these wild fantasies will probably not apply to the upcoming year, I basically am swinging in the completely opposite direction of the "branding yourself" model of creative business toward a "let the product be whatever people want it to be without my personality ruining it" model. 2. Talk less smack. When I originally stated this as one of my new year's resolutions, the people I was with were all "NOOOOO!" because talking smack about people seems to be a popular form of bonding. Still, I find that smack talking is kind of bad for people. Not even the people being smack-talked, but for the smack-talkers. Not only are they dwelling obsessively on the very people they should be NOT dwelling on (people who annoy them or have hurt them), but then it creates these kind of dull, repetative loops where smack talking seems to monopolize conversations that could be about more fresh and pleasant topics. So I hope to talk less smack and encourage less smack-talking in others. 3. Travel to a continent other than North America or Europe. I did one of those online maps where you put a little dot in every city you've been to and my map was a big cluster of dots on the US and it's surrounding areas and a big cluster of dots in europe. I need further flung dots! 4. Become knowledgable about wine. Considering how frequently I drink wine, I am only very minimally wine-knowledgable. I would like to be able to go into a wine store and select a wine based on some more pertinent criteria than price and how cool the label is. 5. Read 30 books. Clearly, 50 was too many, but I think I can do better than last year. 6. Get a reservation at El Bulli. For those who don't know, El Bulli is considered one of the best restaurants in the world and they only take 7,000 reservations a year in spite of allegedly having over 100,000 requests. Basically, if you don't get your reservation in as quickly as humanly possible when they open the next year's reservation list in october, you're screwed. I tried for a reservation last year, but didn't get one because I may have been a day off (all they'll tell you is that reservations open in "mid october" so I shot for the 15th, only to hear later that it may have been the 14th. This year I need to figure out the exact date.) (17 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, December 10th, 2007
3:04 pm	Never have I seen my state of mind so neatly encapsulated in comic strip form (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, December 8th, 2007
5:40 pm	An open letter to J&R Computer World Dear J&R computer world, As a citizen of New York, I would like to offer up my sincerest thanks to you for purchasing the full-page ad space on the back page of The Onion. Because of you, I have, for the past two weeks, been spared the irritation of having to look at a picture of some skanky, coked-out hipster's ass hanging out of the latest piece of hideous, 70's-inspired knit-wear from American Apparel. This is a beautiful holiday gift that will not soon be forgotten! Your new loyal customer, A.V. Phibes (7 Comments |Comment on this)