So last time I blogged it was to wax effusive about my schoolgirl lit. crush on a certain Mr. David Foster Wallace. It was half in jest, half 100% serious (I seriously would have had a million of his babies if he had asked me to.) A few days ago I was re-reading it. In the passing of a month's time, the embers of my passion for DFW have, needless to say, cooled off a bit , and in retrospect I found the post's sprit to be a bit cloying and, erm, dorky. To employ some Infinite Jest argot, DFW probably would have gotten the howlin' fantods if he stumbled upon my post while Googling himself. I didn't want to give my future husband a case of the howling fantods. I decided to delete the aforementioned post BUT got occupied by something else. I'm glad I did not delete because now my story has some semblance of continuity.
The other night I received a text at about 3 in the morning from my friend Natalie telling me she was sorry about David Foster Wallace (note: he commit suicide this week at the age of 46.) She knew from my blogospheric ramblings that I wanted to not seriously (but seriously) have his babies. Before I even knew the details of what had happened, I had an immediate physiological response. The one where you feel like your stomach is a balloon that has just been sat on hard by a five year old boy. I knew instinctively what had gone down. And felt sick.
We go through life indifferent to about 90% of external stimulae so when a work of art ACTUALLY manages to penetrate it's effect is internal and irrevocable. A catalytic change takes place and we are reminded that (hooray) not everything leaves us feeling cold. We want to see more, hear more, and read more. A personally resonant piece of art can defeat isolation better than many interpersonal relationships can. This is because a work of art just plain old exists and doesn't have the ability to withdraw into itself or hide behind affectation. The resonant work of art touches us on the most naked plane (I feel like this should be read in a loopy Drew Barrymore voice.) It touches the parts of our psyche that defy intellectualiziation because they're so fucking primordial. It stirs up the psychic pulp.
It's a strange and distinct brand of loss -- the mourning of an artist. This is a person who I don't actually know (seperated as we are by a material work with it's very own life/history) yet he (perenially trapped in sad, austere, Times New Roman 11 point text like a fly in amber) has touched me on a more intimate plane than most people I do know in the formal sense. We shared inside jokes. He made me laugh. He made me think. I curled up next to him many a night and listened to him go on and on and on and on about crazy shit as diverse as the philosophy of tennis and avant garde film. I feel abandoned. It's an odd relationship -- that between the artist whose work is disseminated en masse to the public, and the faceless consumer whom said work manages to actually touch on a really important defenseless level. From the artist's perspective the fans must glom together into a nameless faceless cloud. These individual admirers all feel connected to him/her and romanticize the artist to be the messianic "one who knows" -- the eye of the proverbial hurricane.
This must be absolutely daunting and damaging to anyone with even the slightest case of self-awareness/self-doubt (artists are historically hyper self-aware and hyper self-doubting. DFW was hyper hyper hyper both.) Imagine millions of people feeling deeply connected to you. It's beautiful/absolutely terrifying/a total mindfuck. Although chances are I never would have actually met Mr. F Wallace I feel devastated that our dialogue (one-sided as it may have been) had to end on such tragic terms. Sad that he couldn't defeat isolation for himself. Sad that so many people (me included) recognized a uniquely ripe mind and like flies to a juicy peach probably sucked it dry -- overwhelmed it with pressure. Or maybe his mind just exhausted itself. Perhaps the true plight of the artist, after all ,is that making so many people feel as if they are less alone leaves him/her just that -- alone.
---- mar
16 September 2008
09 August 2008
But aren't we all Mad?
After the season two premier of Mad Men, I began wondering why we're all so crazy about this early 60's period series—and why now? The simple answer is that the aesthetic is spectacular, the acting is superb, and with lines like "I’d like to dip you in bronze and mount you on the credenza," and "When God closes a door, He opens a dress," who wouldn't love it? Maybe it's also that we can relate to the characters on some level—they're all so lovably and despicably human. But that kind of gray-character humanity is timeless; we've been falling in love with those types since storytellers recognized the redundancy of purest good and evil. And besides, it doesn't tell us why Mad Men works just at this moment.
I think—and tell me if this crazy—we're in an era that in some ways parallels the early 60's. First, there's a loosening of sexual mores: Joan's on the pill, Peggy gives birth to an illegitimate child AND she's promoted to junior copywriter (in one episode!). Now gay marriage is in the mainstream; there are more stay at home dads; and women… well, who can tell what's going on when we almost had a female Democratic presidential nominee, BUT women are disproportionately laid off because of the crappy economy and everyone says they CHOSE to be full-time mommies.
Further, both periods exhibit changes in the methods of advertising and patterns of consumption. The Mad Men ad men begin to dispense with testimonials and expert opinions about products. They use negative space, like the full page Volkswagen ad with a tiny Bug in the center, and slogans that are all about style instead of substance: It’s Toasted! They are beginning to realize that an ad is not about a product; rather, it’s about the way we interact with a product and what it symbolizes, what the product says about the consumer. Now advertisements have shifted even further away from their products, growing subtler, more enigmatic, and entertaining. The Geico Caveman TV series tanked, but isn’t it conceivable that another advert show could actually make it? And think of all those iPod ads that have shuttled unknown music artists like Fiest and the Ting Tings to near stardom. Great ads promote multiple products, often without our conscious knowledge of it. Our love affair with products that started in the 60s has matured into a life- affirming relationship. What we consume defines who we are—and if you don’t believe me, just look at your Facebook profile listing your favorite books, movies, music and TV, depicting the places you go, and publicizing the events you attend—a pastiche of products telling the whole world who you are.
There’s also that Obama- Kennedy parallel. In the season two premier, our characters spent Valentine’s Day glued to their screens as Jackie O. gave a televised tour of the White House. Both Obama and Kennedy are these young savior types. They have the magical enigmatic quality of the leader who doesn’t quite belong: both are religiously or ethnically different, erudite and forward thinking, and handsome, amiable incarnations of hope.
Mad Men works because it’s really just us in vintage clothing, experiencing the same types of unexpected and often uncomfortable social changes. Everything seems to be tossed up into the air; nothing is certain, and we can’t quite put our finger on what has changed between yesterday and today.
- shoshi
I think—and tell me if this crazy—we're in an era that in some ways parallels the early 60's. First, there's a loosening of sexual mores: Joan's on the pill, Peggy gives birth to an illegitimate child AND she's promoted to junior copywriter (in one episode!). Now gay marriage is in the mainstream; there are more stay at home dads; and women… well, who can tell what's going on when we almost had a female Democratic presidential nominee, BUT women are disproportionately laid off because of the crappy economy and everyone says they CHOSE to be full-time mommies.
Further, both periods exhibit changes in the methods of advertising and patterns of consumption. The Mad Men ad men begin to dispense with testimonials and expert opinions about products. They use negative space, like the full page Volkswagen ad with a tiny Bug in the center, and slogans that are all about style instead of substance: It’s Toasted! They are beginning to realize that an ad is not about a product; rather, it’s about the way we interact with a product and what it symbolizes, what the product says about the consumer. Now advertisements have shifted even further away from their products, growing subtler, more enigmatic, and entertaining. The Geico Caveman TV series tanked, but isn’t it conceivable that another advert show could actually make it? And think of all those iPod ads that have shuttled unknown music artists like Fiest and the Ting Tings to near stardom. Great ads promote multiple products, often without our conscious knowledge of it. Our love affair with products that started in the 60s has matured into a life- affirming relationship. What we consume defines who we are—and if you don’t believe me, just look at your Facebook profile listing your favorite books, movies, music and TV, depicting the places you go, and publicizing the events you attend—a pastiche of products telling the whole world who you are.
There’s also that Obama- Kennedy parallel. In the season two premier, our characters spent Valentine’s Day glued to their screens as Jackie O. gave a televised tour of the White House. Both Obama and Kennedy are these young savior types. They have the magical enigmatic quality of the leader who doesn’t quite belong: both are religiously or ethnically different, erudite and forward thinking, and handsome, amiable incarnations of hope.
Mad Men works because it’s really just us in vintage clothing, experiencing the same types of unexpected and often uncomfortable social changes. Everything seems to be tossed up into the air; nothing is certain, and we can’t quite put our finger on what has changed between yesterday and today.
- shoshi
05 August 2008
Reason #80231 I want to have David Foster Wallace's baby
So these days I'm trying the literary world on for size by working at a literary agency. My motives for wanting to ingratiate myself into the domain of the the sad, the young, and the literary are not pure or simple by any means (friends, my motives are rarely pure and never simple.) This new career aspiration has inked up because, sigh, I've fallen in LUV4evs. I've loved David Foster Wallace a little bit before but not with this brand of flagrant intensity. He's an old flame that's metamorphosed into the Towering Inferno after being doused with gasoline and whiskey. A few years ago I read Broom of the System and Brief Interviews with Hideous Men and really admired his piece "Consider the Lobster" for Gourmet magazine. But after five years of constantly getting preoccupied and putting it down I've officially finished Infinite Jest --DFW's tres important, ambitious, and prolix piece de resistence of over 1000 pages. I was left thinking "this man's mind could sink the Bismarck," and "he makes my ovaries ache a little." In case you don't know who DFW is, he's the long-haired enfant terrible of post-modern gen-x literary bad boys. He makes those losers Martin Amis, Douglas Coupland, and Dave Eggers want to burn their MacBooks and throw their Van Der Rohe chairs out the window. I strongly urge everyone to go out and buy Infinite Jest. The rewards are generous. It's the best thing to come out of 1996 since Pulp's This is Hardcore, and that means a lot coming from me.
Love,
Mar Mar
Love,
Mar Mar
04 August 2008
A&F gives me scurvy
Cor blimey. So today I had to go to the Verizon Wireless store at the mall to get my Blackberry fixed (turns out if it dies you need to plug it in for at least 30 minutes before it responds. My bad.) These days I try to avoid the mall at all costs. This is because I suffer from a pretty treacherous condition known as post-traumatic Abercrombie and Fitch stress disorder (PTAFSD for short.)Everytime I walk by that store and smell that God-awful cologne (which smells like sixteen year olds giving blow jobs on Daytona Beach, sorry to be crass mom) and hear that heart cockle-shattering complaint house music I get a migraine for the rest of the day. This is not only testament to my being old and uncool. You see, when I was 17 years old I sold my soul and worked at Abercrombie and Fitch for the worst month of my life. The whole debacle started when I skipped school to go shopping one fateful day (cue horror movie B minor chords.) I was minding my own business, stocking up on BRUNETTES ARE HOTTER t-shirts, when the visual manager approached me and started kvelling over my outfit. The visual manager was gay as a window, had Bauhaus aspirations, and couldn't wait to leave his job as a smut peddler and become a true artiste. Obviously love at first sight. He asked me if I'd ever modeled before and if I would like to work at A&F because I had "a look." In retrospect, what a terrible A&F visual manager he was. I'm about as all-American as a pagoda and nearly had a coronary when I heard that black clothing was banned on the premisis. At 17 years of age, however, you'll sell out to the first person who tells you that you're blossoming into something. The chance to be a jailbait sex symbol? Hells yeah. It wouldn't be too long before I was in a boathouse on Lake Minnetonka running down a line of chaps with deltoids bigger than their heads doing fuzzy navel shots off their abdominal muscles. Hah. right.
At orientation I was introduced to Kurt. If anyone fit the bill for being "the worst" Kurt had to be it. He had blonde spiky hair, called everyone bro, and probably drank a lot of Miller Hi-Life in Seaside Heights on the weekends. He vaguely referred to being in med school at one time which means he was probably shtupping a med school student at one time. I like to think of him as the Iceberg Slim to my baby prostitute. He was the store manager and his job was to transform me from outsider child ruffian (like Oliver!!) to tanned half-naked Abercrombie goddess. His claim to fame was that he once refused to sell Lauryn Hill a jacket because it was pinned onto the mannequin. The golden rule at A&F is that you kill yourself before you sell any merchandise that is "property of the visual department." I promised that if Lauryn Hill came in I would sell her ten jackets off the mannequin. Girl killed in Sister Act 2.
My tenure at A&F was spent folding sweaters and opening up dressing room doors. On the job I had to exclusively wear Abercrombie and Fitch clothing, keep myself perma-tan, and pretend that this was a lifestyle that I really dug subscribing to. I also had to withstand the noxious noxious fumes of A&F cologne all day. I would find myself trying not to pass out on piles of torn baseball hats after holding my breath for minutes at a time. The residual smell would burn in my nostrils and keep me up many a night tossing and turning (that is, if I wasn't having a recurring nightmare about Kurt taking me boating on the pretense of getting tan together and then locking me up in his Igloo cooler a la Cherie on Punky Brewster.) I was promoting a lifestyle that was the antithesis to everything that I am. What a phony I was! I don't like boating, I don't like football, I don't like playing soccer, and I don't hang out in wooded areas in Michigan.
Every month or so the employees at the store would send half-naked photos of themselves to A&F headquarters (a cultish sort of place in Ohio presided over the Charles Manson of sexyhipcool Americana -- Mr. Mike Jeffries) hoping to be included in one of the catalogues or ads. This really fucks with the mind of a freshly minted 18 year old puppy. Working at a place that is so insistent on this uber-sexualized ideal of aesthetic perfection is a helluva lot of pressure for a young girl. I didn't like fraternizing with Kurt and his steroidal comrades. I didn't want to stand in my underwear outside of the store. I hated folding sweaters. And worst of all -- the smell of Abercrombie and Fitch cologne was giving me nosebleeds. I bolted and never set foot in that God awful place again.
So now I can't go to any malls because the smell of Abercrombie eu de vomit triggers a panic reaction. To be young and neurotic! -- mar mar
At orientation I was introduced to Kurt. If anyone fit the bill for being "the worst" Kurt had to be it. He had blonde spiky hair, called everyone bro, and probably drank a lot of Miller Hi-Life in Seaside Heights on the weekends. He vaguely referred to being in med school at one time which means he was probably shtupping a med school student at one time. I like to think of him as the Iceberg Slim to my baby prostitute. He was the store manager and his job was to transform me from outsider child ruffian (like Oliver!!) to tanned half-naked Abercrombie goddess. His claim to fame was that he once refused to sell Lauryn Hill a jacket because it was pinned onto the mannequin. The golden rule at A&F is that you kill yourself before you sell any merchandise that is "property of the visual department." I promised that if Lauryn Hill came in I would sell her ten jackets off the mannequin. Girl killed in Sister Act 2.
My tenure at A&F was spent folding sweaters and opening up dressing room doors. On the job I had to exclusively wear Abercrombie and Fitch clothing, keep myself perma-tan, and pretend that this was a lifestyle that I really dug subscribing to. I also had to withstand the noxious noxious fumes of A&F cologne all day. I would find myself trying not to pass out on piles of torn baseball hats after holding my breath for minutes at a time. The residual smell would burn in my nostrils and keep me up many a night tossing and turning (that is, if I wasn't having a recurring nightmare about Kurt taking me boating on the pretense of getting tan together and then locking me up in his Igloo cooler a la Cherie on Punky Brewster.) I was promoting a lifestyle that was the antithesis to everything that I am. What a phony I was! I don't like boating, I don't like football, I don't like playing soccer, and I don't hang out in wooded areas in Michigan.
Every month or so the employees at the store would send half-naked photos of themselves to A&F headquarters (a cultish sort of place in Ohio presided over the Charles Manson of sexyhipcool Americana -- Mr. Mike Jeffries) hoping to be included in one of the catalogues or ads. This really fucks with the mind of a freshly minted 18 year old puppy. Working at a place that is so insistent on this uber-sexualized ideal of aesthetic perfection is a helluva lot of pressure for a young girl. I didn't like fraternizing with Kurt and his steroidal comrades. I didn't want to stand in my underwear outside of the store. I hated folding sweaters. And worst of all -- the smell of Abercrombie and Fitch cologne was giving me nosebleeds. I bolted and never set foot in that God awful place again.
So now I can't go to any malls because the smell of Abercrombie eu de vomit triggers a panic reaction. To be young and neurotic! -- mar mar
23 July 2008
Musings on Jo and Slade
Between “Sex and the City” re-runs the other night, I managed to catch a couple of new reality TV shows, “Date My Ex: Jo and Slade” and “Must Love Kids.” I really feel like I’m slumming it when I watch these shows, but now that I work full time as a cog in the well- greased capitalist machine—actually, cogs have more creative freedom than I do—all I want to do is watch so-bad-it’s-good television and forget I exist.
In spite of the proletarian doldrums, Jo and Slade set this cog rolling. In depicting hetero sex and dating, TV and movies have lately swayed towards the “guy indefatigably pursues girl” schema—like all those WASPy skirt-chasing executive frat boys in “Mad Men” (oh, how I love them!). Obviously, there’s nothing new about the concept of men pursuing women—it just caries a different set of meanings now. For a long time it was all about equality (Nora Ephron movies) or women pursuing men (all Axe commercials, action movies, “The Bachelor”) or nebbishes pursuing women (Woody Allen’s films/ life). But fresher crops of pop culture works have been dealing with matters of the heart (and ‘nads) rather differently.
In “Date My Ex,” Jo, a former “Real Housewife of Orange County” (not so real, she was only a fiancé) who left Slade to pursue a career singing nauseous pop music and getting spray tans, goes on dates with four men desperately trying to bed her, or in Jo’s words, sweep her off her feet. Slade plays host to all his ex- fiancé’s suitors, which allows him to tighten the leash of any guy he doesn’t like, but also causes him distress when he watches Jo’s live, uncut and unrated dates (poor Slade!). All the “Date My Ex” advertisements emphasize the awkwardness of being set up on dates by an ex. Yes, its weird, but mostly it just seems cheap. I don’t even know what Slade is doing there; he just watches in silent agony as his ex- lover compliments another man’s fine behind. It’s like watching a freak show—gruesome, uncomfortable, and highly entertaining.
Anyway, the really interesting thing about this show is that each episode, four men—not including Slade, who’s apparently still in love with Jo—compete for one woman. If the format is successful (there was a “Bachlorette,” but didn’t it tank?) it may bespeak a man-as-hunter dating fantasy bubbling up from the depths of our culture. Maybe I’m just projecting onto society my deep- seated desire to get a date without exerting myself, but if you add it all up—“Date My Ex;” “Must Love Kids,” featuring a handful of hungry men trying to snag a single mom; “Mad Men,” with all its skirt chasing and the sexual harassment that could almost be considered a capital offense; “Sex and the City: The Movie,” in which Big pursues Carrie, compared with the show, in which he strings her along—it makes sense.
And that’s just pop culture. There’s also the economic downturn keeping men from bringing home the turkey bacon, threatening their sense of self-worth, and maybe even catalyzing a desire to be Men in other ways, if not financially. And we can see it in the way Hillary Clinton was treated during her run: she was criticized for her cleavage, portrayed as a castrating bitch, and the only time any one could stand her was when she cried. Maybe it represents a lurking misogyny. Maybe in rejecting Clinton’s shoulder pad feminism we just tacked on another “post-” to the ideology (where are we now, post-post-post- feminism?). Maybe men are just feeling a little threatened and want to reassert their power by chasing women. Or maybe a lot of women (myself included) quit chasing men because it just isn't worth the effort (usually not even close).
It’s impossible to say if all this will tend towards the offensive skirt chasing, the romantic gestures, the Jo De La Rosa sweep- me- off- my- feet- (wink, wink), or something completely different. Let's hope the sleeze will be confined to reality TV.
-shoshi
In spite of the proletarian doldrums, Jo and Slade set this cog rolling. In depicting hetero sex and dating, TV and movies have lately swayed towards the “guy indefatigably pursues girl” schema—like all those WASPy skirt-chasing executive frat boys in “Mad Men” (oh, how I love them!). Obviously, there’s nothing new about the concept of men pursuing women—it just caries a different set of meanings now. For a long time it was all about equality (Nora Ephron movies) or women pursuing men (all Axe commercials, action movies, “The Bachelor”) or nebbishes pursuing women (Woody Allen’s films/ life). But fresher crops of pop culture works have been dealing with matters of the heart (and ‘nads) rather differently.
In “Date My Ex,” Jo, a former “Real Housewife of Orange County” (not so real, she was only a fiancé) who left Slade to pursue a career singing nauseous pop music and getting spray tans, goes on dates with four men desperately trying to bed her, or in Jo’s words, sweep her off her feet. Slade plays host to all his ex- fiancé’s suitors, which allows him to tighten the leash of any guy he doesn’t like, but also causes him distress when he watches Jo’s live, uncut and unrated dates (poor Slade!). All the “Date My Ex” advertisements emphasize the awkwardness of being set up on dates by an ex. Yes, its weird, but mostly it just seems cheap. I don’t even know what Slade is doing there; he just watches in silent agony as his ex- lover compliments another man’s fine behind. It’s like watching a freak show—gruesome, uncomfortable, and highly entertaining.
Anyway, the really interesting thing about this show is that each episode, four men—not including Slade, who’s apparently still in love with Jo—compete for one woman. If the format is successful (there was a “Bachlorette,” but didn’t it tank?) it may bespeak a man-as-hunter dating fantasy bubbling up from the depths of our culture. Maybe I’m just projecting onto society my deep- seated desire to get a date without exerting myself, but if you add it all up—“Date My Ex;” “Must Love Kids,” featuring a handful of hungry men trying to snag a single mom; “Mad Men,” with all its skirt chasing and the sexual harassment that could almost be considered a capital offense; “Sex and the City: The Movie,” in which Big pursues Carrie, compared with the show, in which he strings her along—it makes sense.
And that’s just pop culture. There’s also the economic downturn keeping men from bringing home the turkey bacon, threatening their sense of self-worth, and maybe even catalyzing a desire to be Men in other ways, if not financially. And we can see it in the way Hillary Clinton was treated during her run: she was criticized for her cleavage, portrayed as a castrating bitch, and the only time any one could stand her was when she cried. Maybe it represents a lurking misogyny. Maybe in rejecting Clinton’s shoulder pad feminism we just tacked on another “post-” to the ideology (where are we now, post-post-post- feminism?). Maybe men are just feeling a little threatened and want to reassert their power by chasing women. Or maybe a lot of women (myself included) quit chasing men because it just isn't worth the effort (usually not even close).
It’s impossible to say if all this will tend towards the offensive skirt chasing, the romantic gestures, the Jo De La Rosa sweep- me- off- my- feet- (wink, wink), or something completely different. Let's hope the sleeze will be confined to reality TV.
-shoshi
22 July 2008
God, I miss camp
Yesterday at Barnes and Noble I bought this book which is a compendium of peoples' stories and pictures from camp (primarily Jew camp.) Gosh I miss camp. If anyone ever attended camp they should buy it. It's called Camp Camp and it rules. I remember before I left for my first real sleep-away experience my wise older brother told me "Enjoy camp while you're young. I wish I could go but I'm too old. And don't touch any boys' weiners." I asked him where old people go for fun. "Vegas."
I was thirteen years old and had gone to day camp my whole life. The camp that I attended was targeted towards autistic (my mom told me "artistic") kids so you could spend the whole day in arts and crafts making book marks and tie-dying pillowcases if you so chose. I really liked it there because I stayed clean and air-conditioned. Also, if you're open-minded, autistic kids have a lot to bring to the table. Sleepaway camp, on the flipside, was a whole different dirty animal. I'm a textbook Taurus -- a creature of luxury and comfort. I have no time for dirty animals.
I was thirteen years old and had gone to day camp my whole life. The camp that I attended was targeted towards autistic (my mom told me "artistic") kids so you could spend the whole day in arts and crafts making book marks and tie-dying pillowcases if you so chose. I really liked it there because I stayed clean and air-conditioned. Also, if you're open-minded, autistic kids have a lot to bring to the table. Sleepaway camp, on the flipside, was a whole different dirty animal. I'm a textbook Taurus -- a creature of luxury and comfort. I have no time for dirty animals.
When my dad ran into the owner of the camp he attended as a crewcutted boyscout back in 1956 and got all torqued up on his Leave-It-To-Beaverish nostaligia I suddenly and unwittingly found myself signed up for four weeks of fun in beautiful Marshalls Creek, PA. I did NOT want to go. I really didn't want to go. Especially when the sleazy camp owner came to our house, told me I looked "hot in my bellbottom trousers," and showed us the camp video. He reeked of charlatanism (which I imagine smells like Drakkar Noir.) Everyone in the video was wearing INXS t-shirts and ripped jeans! The film quality could best be described as 1982 cable access or UHF bootleg. "But mom and dad, everyone there looks like they're from 1985! " I protested. "Well, at camp they don't have hairdryer outlets so that's why all the girls have big hair. I'm sure they're very nice and unsuperficial. You're being intolerant" my mom reasoned. I found out later that the camp video was indeed made in 1985 and had not been updated because the owner was too cheap. And that most of our time at camp was spent in the bunk coiffing.
I arrived in Marshall's Creek, Pennsylvania in my snazziest new bootie shorts from Gadzooks ready to conquer the joint. I was imagining it would be like Footloose and I would introduce those backward, follically-challenged campers to the glamorous modern world of hairdryers and dance. Jesus, was I in for a gloriously rude awakening.My camp was a veritable wasteland that had not been renovated since 1956. The basketball courts were piles of rubble. There were snakes in the lake. There were maybe five campers wandering around who looked like they were straight out of Appalachia. The camp owner, who legitimately was on crack (sorry, last sidenote: he brought a prositute and her dog back on the bus from our New York City outing to be a bunk counsler. She slept with him at night), told my dad not to fear for his little princess's comfort -- he had a brand new roll of linoleum that he was going to put down in the bathroom of my bunk. To prove that he wasn't fooling around he fetched a roll of linoleum from his office and told my dad to feel it. It was luxurious. Things would be A-okay. My parents didn't want to leave me there but I told them I needed to spread my wings and fly. Even if it meant spending four weeks in apocalyptic Pocono hell.
That very same night I had my first makeout sesh. I had left New Jersey a wee starling who equated summers with quadruple reverse barell stitch, basket weaving, and Aspergers. I liked my innocent summer fun. In Marshalls Creek, PA I became a woman. Things started out inauspiciously enough. At dinner a wad of gum flew out of my mouth and got stuck in my hair. That sucked and I was ready to call my dad and have him pick me up. The head counselor had to tell me to stop being such a cunt and to CHILL OUT. She had short hair and birkenstocks and could probably fling me into orbit if she got mad enough. Nothing puts a 13 year old primma donna in her place like a militant lesbian with a whistle around her neck and Indigo Girls in her ears. Luckily I stayed though. Maybe I knew subconsciously that romance was in the cards.
At evening activities I met Teddy. Teddy had a shaved head, wore a chain, and smelled like a Polo Sport factory vomited all over him. He spoke in ebonics, had a lisp, and was from Florida. All in all, 13 year old girl bait.He told a girl in my bunk that he had a crush on me and that he wanted to be my boyfriend. His first words were "will you be my girlfwend?" I didn't know what to do. I couldn't go off into some long-winded diatribe about how "Gee Teddy, we don't really know each other but I'm sure you're a great guy. Can you cook eggs?" I said yes. He put his arm around me and we walked around like that for awhile not saying anything because that's what boyfriends and girlfriends do. I was wondering if and when I would touch his weiner and if it would be romantic. I told myself that I would wait at least a week and do it at a campfire or something so it would be extra special. Somebody suggested that a group of us play truth or dare.
Obviously the first dare was "Marlo and Teddy -- make out." We played tonsil hockey (oh, how 90's girl mag of me) for about three minutes and then it somehow came out that it was my first real kiss. He patted my back and got all concerned and serious and was like "awwww boo. are you okay?" then felt me up over my shirt since we were now intimate. I was basking in the love. My mouth devirginator! My Rudolph Valentino! Teddy Mercer! At the end of the night he told me that I was a flyyyy girl. It was all so romantic. Then a girl told me that Teddy had mouth herpes and spread it around camp the summer before. He didn't deny it. I wish she hadn't told me that. We broke up two days later. The girls in my bunk did a lunch cheer dedicated to Teddy telling him IT WAS OVER. I never touched his wang. -- marlo
I arrived in Marshall's Creek, Pennsylvania in my snazziest new bootie shorts from Gadzooks ready to conquer the joint. I was imagining it would be like Footloose and I would introduce those backward, follically-challenged campers to the glamorous modern world of hairdryers and dance. Jesus, was I in for a gloriously rude awakening.My camp was a veritable wasteland that had not been renovated since 1956. The basketball courts were piles of rubble. There were snakes in the lake. There were maybe five campers wandering around who looked like they were straight out of Appalachia. The camp owner, who legitimately was on crack (sorry, last sidenote: he brought a prositute and her dog back on the bus from our New York City outing to be a bunk counsler. She slept with him at night), told my dad not to fear for his little princess's comfort -- he had a brand new roll of linoleum that he was going to put down in the bathroom of my bunk. To prove that he wasn't fooling around he fetched a roll of linoleum from his office and told my dad to feel it. It was luxurious. Things would be A-okay. My parents didn't want to leave me there but I told them I needed to spread my wings and fly. Even if it meant spending four weeks in apocalyptic Pocono hell.
That very same night I had my first makeout sesh. I had left New Jersey a wee starling who equated summers with quadruple reverse barell stitch, basket weaving, and Aspergers. I liked my innocent summer fun. In Marshalls Creek, PA I became a woman. Things started out inauspiciously enough. At dinner a wad of gum flew out of my mouth and got stuck in my hair. That sucked and I was ready to call my dad and have him pick me up. The head counselor had to tell me to stop being such a cunt and to CHILL OUT. She had short hair and birkenstocks and could probably fling me into orbit if she got mad enough. Nothing puts a 13 year old primma donna in her place like a militant lesbian with a whistle around her neck and Indigo Girls in her ears. Luckily I stayed though. Maybe I knew subconsciously that romance was in the cards.
At evening activities I met Teddy. Teddy had a shaved head, wore a chain, and smelled like a Polo Sport factory vomited all over him. He spoke in ebonics, had a lisp, and was from Florida. All in all, 13 year old girl bait.He told a girl in my bunk that he had a crush on me and that he wanted to be my boyfriend. His first words were "will you be my girlfwend?" I didn't know what to do. I couldn't go off into some long-winded diatribe about how "Gee Teddy, we don't really know each other but I'm sure you're a great guy. Can you cook eggs?" I said yes. He put his arm around me and we walked around like that for awhile not saying anything because that's what boyfriends and girlfriends do. I was wondering if and when I would touch his weiner and if it would be romantic. I told myself that I would wait at least a week and do it at a campfire or something so it would be extra special. Somebody suggested that a group of us play truth or dare.
Obviously the first dare was "Marlo and Teddy -- make out." We played tonsil hockey (oh, how 90's girl mag of me) for about three minutes and then it somehow came out that it was my first real kiss. He patted my back and got all concerned and serious and was like "awwww boo. are you okay?" then felt me up over my shirt since we were now intimate. I was basking in the love. My mouth devirginator! My Rudolph Valentino! Teddy Mercer! At the end of the night he told me that I was a flyyyy girl. It was all so romantic. Then a girl told me that Teddy had mouth herpes and spread it around camp the summer before. He didn't deny it. I wish she hadn't told me that. We broke up two days later. The girls in my bunk did a lunch cheer dedicated to Teddy telling him IT WAS OVER. I never touched his wang. -- marlo
20 July 2008
Welcome to the Dollhouse
So the day has descended like a black cumulus on my humdrum suburban town (I’m obviously listening to The Smiths as I write this.) Alas, my narcissism hath boileth over and here I am -- ready and raring to enter the nefarious world of blogging. So, hi, I'm Marlo. On this blog (lovingly named in honor of the Bill Murray/Wes Anderson vehicle I never saw), I hope to share with you all the various mind-blowing and despicable and mind-blowingly despicable things I learn on a daily basis. Hopefully this whole thing will be classier than a Livejournal. HOPEFULLY. -- mar mar
A teleology of the writing life
I’m writing in search of an edge, an angle, a certain keenness and acerbic wit. It’s what I might have called “my literary voice” if it was 1985 and I wore draping black dresses with shoulder pads and scribbled brooding poetry in diners that borrowed their décor from the Q train. I never thought I’d blog, but I suppose, like writing in general, it’s just something I resisted until it became undeniably clear—it may just be the thing. If I wanted to do something out of character and be really optimistic, I could think of myself as some kind of writing superhero, born with a pen in my hand and fated to save humanity one snarky (but incredibly poignant) article at a time. It goes like this:
My earliest memory of writing is of the time I procrastinated on a book report in first grade. Actually, that’s when I learned the word procrastinate and it’s a tenet I’ve ascribed to ever since. Evidently, by the following year I was a dedicated short story writer. I have no recollection of this at all—I only found out several years later when I bumped into my second grade teacher, Mrs. Burns, who asked if I was still writing (I wasn’t, I wanted to be biologist and cure cancer). Fast forward to junior year of high school, when I took AP Chem and AP English and worked after school in a solitary beige vascular lab pulverizing aneurisms and growing arterial cells in flasks. I really enjoyed English; I felt psychically connected to Kafka, not to mention real fuckin’ cool for memorizing passages from Shakespeare. And I hated acids and bases and counting moles. More than that, I couldn’t stand all those overachievers with their veins full of liquid nitrogen. I usually spent chem class hyperventilating in the first row.
And still, I didn’t put it together. There I was, sixteen, angsty, romantic and trite (ah, my salad days!), worshipping the Beats and Maureen Dowd, sure that I’d become an MD/PhD. Eventually I realized that any science that didn’t appear in the Times on Tuesday was dullsville, so I decided to study anthropology in college. I really liked it for long time, but, again, I came to hate the idea of locking myself in an ivory tower and throwing away the key. The turning point came when I studied in Tel Aviv about a year ago and, inspired by all the male beauty running around on the beach in its underwear—er, natural beauty of the Holy Land—I started writing again. Still, it’s slow going and torturous, like bleeding onto the page—in a good way, of course.
So I’m blogging to make up for a life of denial and misplaced ambition. Maybe it’s a sort of penance, but I’m hoping it won’t be as much of a drag as all that. I’m hoping it’ll make me a little sharper, get the juices flowing. Mostly, I hope it’ll be a good read, maybe even good enough to distract five or ten people procrastinating at work.
- shoshi
My earliest memory of writing is of the time I procrastinated on a book report in first grade. Actually, that’s when I learned the word procrastinate and it’s a tenet I’ve ascribed to ever since. Evidently, by the following year I was a dedicated short story writer. I have no recollection of this at all—I only found out several years later when I bumped into my second grade teacher, Mrs. Burns, who asked if I was still writing (I wasn’t, I wanted to be biologist and cure cancer). Fast forward to junior year of high school, when I took AP Chem and AP English and worked after school in a solitary beige vascular lab pulverizing aneurisms and growing arterial cells in flasks. I really enjoyed English; I felt psychically connected to Kafka, not to mention real fuckin’ cool for memorizing passages from Shakespeare. And I hated acids and bases and counting moles. More than that, I couldn’t stand all those overachievers with their veins full of liquid nitrogen. I usually spent chem class hyperventilating in the first row.
And still, I didn’t put it together. There I was, sixteen, angsty, romantic and trite (ah, my salad days!), worshipping the Beats and Maureen Dowd, sure that I’d become an MD/PhD. Eventually I realized that any science that didn’t appear in the Times on Tuesday was dullsville, so I decided to study anthropology in college. I really liked it for long time, but, again, I came to hate the idea of locking myself in an ivory tower and throwing away the key. The turning point came when I studied in Tel Aviv about a year ago and, inspired by all the male beauty running around on the beach in its underwear—er, natural beauty of the Holy Land—I started writing again. Still, it’s slow going and torturous, like bleeding onto the page—in a good way, of course.
So I’m blogging to make up for a life of denial and misplaced ambition. Maybe it’s a sort of penance, but I’m hoping it won’t be as much of a drag as all that. I’m hoping it’ll make me a little sharper, get the juices flowing. Mostly, I hope it’ll be a good read, maybe even good enough to distract five or ten people procrastinating at work.
- shoshi
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