11D

The 5 Best Wedding Gifts

Trust the New York Times to come up with laughably, ridiculous wedding gifts. I don't know many people who can afford a $609 espresso maker as a wedding gift. I don't know that many people who really need a $609 espresso maker. Here's my list of the best wedding gifts:

1. Cash. It never goes out of style. I'm Italian, so this is what we do. $100 if you don't go to the wedding; $150-200 if you go to the wedding. I'm not a big fan of the tradition of the wedding couple walking around the room to collect the checks in a silk bag, but money is always good.

2. The Gift Registry. People put stuff on the list, because they really need it. Get it for them. You can throw in something small of your own to add creativity. A couple of my friends bought us sheets off the registry then added candles and some Al Green tapes.

3. Pots and pans. 11 years later and we're still using our set from the wedding.

4. An excellent set of knives. Still using them.

5. Wine and martini glasses. There have been casualties, but there are still enough in circulation.

Harry b had a good post at Crooked Timber a while ago on this.

Much more HERE.

Oversharing

Emily Gould, the former writer of Gawker, writes about her online experience:

But is that really what’s making people blog? After all, online, you’re not even competing for 10 grand and a Kia. I think most people who maintain blogs are doing it for some of the same reasons I do: they like the idea that there’s a place where a record of their existence is kept — a house with an always-open door where people who are looking for you can check on you, compare notes with you and tell you what they think of you. Sometimes that house is messy, sometimes horrifyingly so. In real life, we wouldn’t invite any passing stranger into these situations, but the remove of the Internet makes it seem O.K.

Gould writes about getting pummelled by Kimmel over the Gawker Stawker section of Gawker. I actually show this clip in my Media class. Students love it.

All the dirt here. Wow. I'm very tempted to nuke this blog.

UPDATE: The NYT had to shut down comments on this article. 727 people wrote in to question why this article was worthy of the magazine cover.

Pop Culture Women and Politics

Yesterday morning, I had a 10 pound ham and not much clue of what to do with it, so I googled "ham glaze" and ended up at Martha Stewart's website. She had pages of tips of how to score the ham, what to do with the skin, and how to mix up a lovely brown sugar/cognac glaze. After printing out those pages, I got distracted clicking on other things on her website.

She had a warts-and-all scrapbook of her life, which included mention of her divorce and pictures of her entering court for the insider trading scandal. There's a picture of her leaving prison wearing a poncho that a fellow inmate made for her. Martha is oddly comfortable documenting the bad things in her life.

I've always been fascinated by Martha Stewart. I had a subscription to her magazine years ago. I've got a bunch of vintage dishes in my cupboard that Martha told me to buy. I liked the scrubbed, organized lifestyle that she painted, even as I was wearing black and hanging out in dark bars in the East Village.

Several years ago, Steve and I were at the Pier Show visiting a friend who sells antique glass. Jonah was a toddler sitting on Steve's shoulders as we browsed the mid-century furniture and artwork. We saw Martha in running clothes roaming around, too, so we stalked her for a while.

Martha is a fascinating political subject. Is she a feminist? On the one hand, she preaches a lifestyle that involves women doing painstaking cooking and sewing. She added several steps to the baking of the Easter ham. When my sister in law saw me removing the skin of the ham and scoring the fat in a crosshatch design, she said that there's no way that she would do all that work. If one really wants to live the Martha lifestyle, one must make it a full time job.

On the other hand, Martha has become a very wealthy, powerful woman from knowing how to correctly score the fat of the Easter ham. She may have backed the wrong horse in the Clinton-Obama fight, but she's a mainstay in New York Democratic politics.

There are a few other pop culture women that have a foot in the area of politics.

Angelina Jolie has the philanthropy and foreign-policy angle. I also think she's interesting for putting a dent in the traditional image of motherhood.

Oprah Winfrey certainly gave a boost to Obama's campaign, demonstrating more political strength than Ted Kennedy.

There are several other pop culture women, who have gone beyond the glossy magazine covers to make a real political impact. Their large followings and money have a huge impact on gender politics, the women's vote, and in politics in general. Judge Judy might be one of them. Who else should I add to that list?

Culture Vultures

Last Sunday, Steve and I got all dressed up for Fancy Date in New York City Night. We have these super special nights that involve lots of expensive babysitting time about as often as leap year, so we were very excited. We had tickets for a hot play and dinner reservations. Steve even took it upon himself to call the babysitter and line her up. Go Steve. Yes, the hours of complaining that it's always ME who calls the babysitter did work. Now we can move on to complaining that it's always ME who dusts the pictures. Not that I really do that, but whatever.

We saw August: Osage County. It's a lovely, heart-warming tale of a family that comes together after the father commits suicide. The mother is a chain-smoker, hooked on pills, and suffers from mouth cancer. She rips into her daughters and other family members until they leave the stage in tears. An soon-to-be uncle molests his 15 year old niece. The aunt confesses that she had an affair with the dead husband. Her son is having an affair with his cousin, but it really turns out that they are brother and sister. It was great.

During the intermissions, Steve and I scanned the actor bios in the Playbill, because we were too horror-struck to talk to each other. The first one was in some Steppenwolf production (didn't see it), the next one played Hamlet in some fancy theater (didn't see it), another was in some Tony award winning play (didn't see it). We got to the bio of the actress who played the 15 year old pothead/molestee (is that a word?). Turns out she was the voice of JoJo on JoJo's Circus. We were really impressed with her.

Who Made Huckabee?

Steven Colbert, Conan O'Brien, and Jon Stewart are having an on-going fight over who made Mike Huckabee.

I would like to offer the final answer to this fight. I, in fact, made Conan O'Brien who made all others. How did you, some lousy D-list blogger, make the supreme Conan, you ask. Well, let me tell you a story.

Many, many years ago. I was at a party in Park Slope getting sloppy on beer, when a friend introduced me to a cute guy who said he was at a writer for some new show, the Conan O'Brien show. This was in the Before Steve years and he was cute and interesting. So, what did I do to impress Mr. Cute and Interesting? I said, "boy, your show is really tanking, isn't it?" In that quick second, I accomplished two things. One, I instantly got Mr. C & I to make some flimsy excuse for more dip in the kitchen, and I retained my pariah status. Two, I gave the Conan show my double-backward hex. All other failing shows and political candidates should come to me for similar early death pronouncements. Sure winners all of them.

Freeze Tag

Green Materialism

Watch me offend SUV-owners, Hummel collectors, eco-moms, rich people, and pretty much the whole green consumer movement. Not my most tactful blog post ever.

Update: Russell Arben Fox makes me feel smarter by tying my rant to "pioneer truths." I'm going to come back to this debate next week. I want to address one of Doug's comments.

Fashion and Art

Fashion photography is like the trailer park cousin of the art world. It's not taken seriously and usually for good reason. However, sometimes fashion photography deserves a closer look.  Check out Leibovitz's photographs of Penelope Cruz in Vogue this month.

11D's Sexiest Men Alive

Inspired by People's Sexiest Men Alive list, Salon has put together their own sexy man list. I endorse about half of Salon's list. How genius is it that they recognize that Owen Wilson is sexier after his suicide attempt?  He wins for sexiest man (still) alive. They also added Anthony Lane and Anderson Cooper. Big thumbs up from me. But still some cuties have been forgotten, and I feel the need to give the shout out to some of my favorites.

All the Guys On Lost, Except For Matthew Fox

yes yes I'll take two, please. Nah.

Those first three are tormented, dangerous, and misunderstood.  Andrews has those amazing hooded eyes. And you could rock climb up Kim's cheek bones. Holloway is almost too obvious, but his reading glasses nudge him into the sexy category. Matthew Fox is rather disappointingly unsexy in this show. I loved him in Party of Five, because he had that martyr thing going on. Martyrdom is always sexy. In Lost, he's a little boring. Although in the last episode, he looked like he was becoming a bit unhinged. That improved his stock somewhat.

Spartans

300 of the best abs and hairy eyebrows that you've even seen.

 

 

 

Sucre and Scofield

Michael Scofield (real names don't matter) is a humorless, driven, smart guy, but with a full sleeve of tattoos. The comment boards on the Fox website are full of women ready to bear his children.  And Sucre is, as his names suggests, the sweetest Latino on TV.

Pop Songs

In our morning check-in phone call, Steve noted that David Brooks did not steal his column from this blog today. We've been joking that Brooks is hijacking ideas on this blog for his column.

Today, Brooks has his social conservative hat on and is analyzing pop song lyrics from Pink and Avril Lavigne. He says that these songs are entirely new.

If you put the songs together, you see they’re about the same sort of character: a character who would have been socially unacceptable in a megahit pop song 10, let alone 30 years ago...

Now young people face a social frontier of their own. They hit puberty around 13 and many don’t get married until they’re past 30. That’s two decades of coupling, uncoupling, hooking up, relationships and shopping around. This period isn’t a transition anymore. It’s a sprawling life stage, and nobody knows the rules.

Once, young people came a-calling as part of courtship. Then they had dating and going steady. But the rules of courtship have dissolved. They’ve been replaced by ambiguity and uncertainty. Cellphones, Facebook and text messages give people access to hundreds of “friends.” That only increases the fluidity, drama and anxiety.

The heroines of these songs handle this wide-open social frontier just as confidently and cynically as Bogart handled the urban frontier. These iPhone Lone Rangers are completely inner-directed; they don’t care what you think. They know exactly what they want; they don’t need anybody else.

Of course it’s all a fantasy, as much as “The Big Sleep” or “High Plains Drifter.” Young people still need intimacy and belonging more than anything else. But the pose is the product of something real — a response to this new stage of formless premarital life, and the anxieties it produces.

In America we have a little problem with self and society. We imagine we can overcome the anxieties of society by posing romantic lone wolves. The angry young women on the radio these days are not the first pop stars to romanticize independence for audiences desperate for companionship.

Maybe. Or maybe this songs are for strong girls. Ones that are rebelling against the pink explosion of Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, and the Olson twins. Pink is a big boned girl who snarls at the camera. She's more Billy Idol than Barbie. Avril Lavigne wears neckties and sweatbands rather than push-up bras and babydoll dresses. And both of them are married.