Sunday, August 31, 2008

Resemblance?




Maybe I am trying too hard to connect two of my greatest pop culture loves, but I swear to God I see it...

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

The Most Important Literary Journal of Our Time

is craigslist. I've had theories about this for a while, but today they were pretty much proven.

Of course craigslist is great for all the unintentional humor of some poor soul, known to history only as fateiswithyou@aol.com, trying to sell his pet hairless rats. The Best Of section, though, is full of posts that are pure creative energy, written for no actual useful purpose. (Ok, lots of them lame jokes and rip-offs of previous entries...as with thrift shopping, one must love the hunt).

This is one of my recent favorites:

who put the dead bird in my mailbox? - w4m
Reply to:
Date: 2008-04-20, 12:56PM

a) how did you get into my mailbox in the first place, it is locked
b) did you kill the bird
c) it died horribly, that much was clear
d) you're psycho
e) do I know you
f) if I do know you I don't want to know you
g) if I don't know you, what did I do to inspire you to put a dead bird in my mailbox
h) I don't know how to disinfect a mailbox from a dead bird, I'm worried about diseases and have used five different kinds of cleaner but still feel like the bird's still in there still and like my bills and my catalogues and my coupons have dead bird on them
i) it was a hummingbird, I looked it up - they don't even live in New York - this is so f*ing psycho, I can't believe this
j) are you the mailman?
k) I'm always nice to the mailman
l) the super didn't care when I told him what happened
m) the neighbors didn't care either
n) do you have some kind of problem with birds
o) don't put anything else in my mailbox
p) unless it's an apology
q) no, I take that back, I don't even want an apology
r) what am I supposed to do with this bird - it's in bubblewrap in a bag in a shoebox in the freezer right now - am I supposed to bury it - where? how? in a construction site where they've jackhammered through the concrete - where is a person supposed to bury things in this city?
s) I could drop it in the Gowanus canal, but that seems undignified
t) I could drop it in the ocean, but the ocean is so big and it is such a small bird
u) I could drop it in the toilet but it would probably get stuck
v) I hear this whirring around my ears every time I go to the mailbox and I'm pretty sure it's ghost bird, and I'm all "it wasn't me that killed you, bird!" but still the whirring doesn't go away until I get to the stairwell
w) am I supposed to eat it - maybe you were trying to feed me - don't you know I'm a vegetarian
x) if this was Ricky, I'm gonna beat your ass, mama told you stop bothering the zoo
y) if this was Gina, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, how many times I gotta say I'm sorry
z) I could drop it off the roof, maybe it will reincarnate while falling and I can start reading my mail again

It kind of breaks down at the end, but I guess the author really wanted to go with the alphabet thing. Based on the fact that the location is listed as Crown Heights in Brooklyn, let's assume that this was written by a young artsy type who accessorizes well and perhaps has ambitions. Now, back in aught-one or -two, such a person would have been submitting their cryptic short pieces to McSweeney's Internet Tendency (oh heyyy... did i just do that oh yes i did). It's an interesting trade-off between prestige, such as it is, and sheer number of people who might read the anonymous thing you wrote -- the CL fact sheet claims it's the 8th most-read English language website, with 40 million users per month. Not exactly the community forum for furries and nerds that it once was.

Today I saw something while browsing the Missed Connections that I hadn't seen before -- a bald-faced attempt to get in the Best Of, written by some Carnegie Mellon "grad student" that I highly suspect is actually a freshman or sophomore. (Then it would confirm my thesis that pretentious 18 year olds are the most direct cultural barometers.)

It isn't exactly comedic gold, but made me snort in the library today and half-consider sending the guy an email, out of air mattress solidarity if nothing else (though I have in fact obtained a real bed, my back has yet to fully recover). Maybe his post will make it to the Best Of, and then I will email him and ask how it feels, and why he stayed up til 2 in the morning writing such a thing, and why does anyone write anything, and why is reading craigslist more interesting than 90% of short stories I've tried to read lately...

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Rancho Relaxo

It seems I am not the only one fascinated by the Divorce Ranch. On the one hand, we have an absolutely God-awful looking remake of The Women, the 1939 film that first brought the D.R. to my attention. Eva Mendes is purty an all, but she is no Joan Crawford. And then on the other hand we have this mysterious Sevigny/Deschanel vehicle, which at least will entail some interesting red carpet ensembles at the premiere, I’m sure.

Apparently Nevada had divorce laws just as lax as the marriage ones for which it is famous (google legwork courtesy of ben f). I had never considered the relative restrictiveness of such state laws, but in most places it must have been a lot harder for a woman to be granted a divorce back then. However if one were to establish Nevada residency, which took a mere 6 weeks, the state would sever one’s marital ties with no questions asked. Which is why the beleaguered wife played by Norma Shearer ends up on a Divorce Ranch in Reno during the second act of The Women, along with assorted other broads with similar intentions. Cue catfight with Rosalind Russell!

There must have been a real moral panic surrounding the Divorce Ranch, because the last three old movies I’ve seen have a common theme of Re-Marry Your Ex-Husband, No Matter What He Did To You.

All three films present divorce as the woman’s (irrational, impulsive) choice. In The Women, the unseen husband had an affair with Joan Crawford. In The Philadelphia Story (1940), Cary Grant was an alcoholic. In His Girl Friday (1940), Cary Grant…was a smartass? I forget Rosalind Russel’s reasoning for that particular trip to Reno -- oh right, too devoted to work. All three husbands accept their wives’ decisions to kick ‘em to the curb unhappily and then are ready to renew vows when the silly ladies come to their senses.

So, we’ve got 2 out of 3 that show or mention the fateful trip to the Ranch (in The Philadelphia Story all we see is Hepburn throwing Grant out of the house and breaking his golf club, and then him shoving her to the floor. Classy!). 2 out of 3 with Cary Grant smarming around as the ideal mate. 2 for 3 also feature this girl as the sassy-but-moral voice of reason (a little schmaltzier as the daughter in The Women, a little snappier as Katherine Hepburn’s kid sister in The Philadelphia Story).


Was she the only working child star that year or something? The Dakota Fanning of 1939?

The Women is the most interesting as a movie, I think. First there’s the whole all female cast thing, and also the insane, totally gratuitous Technicolor fashion show plonked down halfway through. Rosalind Russell exhibits a genius for physical comedy (whereas in HGF the laughs are more in the dialogue and the amazing speed with which she delivers it). And at the end of the day, I’ll usually take a melodrama over a romantic comedy, "screwball" though it be. But of the three, it has the most explicit and depressing message: “A woman in love can never have any pride!” cries Shearer as she walks towards the camera in a soft-focus haze, arms outstretched to receive her man. Fade to credits. I’m not really opposed to loveless marriages maintained for financial/social reasons -- whatever works, eh -- but let's call a spade a spade instead of "love and devotion."

His Girl Friday is the easiest to read as at least somewhat feminist -- Rosalind Russell’s character is actually rewarded rather than punished for her desire to have a career. She and Grant aren’t just a couple but a crack team of reporters, so their reunion actually makes sense. There’s also the whole exonerating the wrongfully accused guy on death row thing, which maybe makes the movie more engaging if you’re bored by the romantic plot. I have to admit though, this one’s supposedly filled with witty/sexy banter but they talk so damn fast I missed half of it.

I was really expecting to like The Philadelphia Story, but found it the most infuriating/befuddling of all. Part of it might be that I rented it in a fit of insta-nostalgia, thinking it would actually have something to do with the city of Philadelphia. But all the actions takes place in a mansion somewhere on the Main Line (Merion maybe?). Katherine Hepburn is awesome, true, because she’s basically awesome by definition, but Grant is not half as appealing as in HGF. He doesn’t really do much except hire Jimmy Stewart and his girlfriend (a tabloid reporter and photographer, respectively) to ruin Hepburn’s wedding, and sit back and laugh at her the whole time. Ok, so obviously she’s not going to marry her fiancĂ©. But then she gets weirdly involved with Jimmy Stewart -- turns out he’s a novelist, she loves his book, they get drunk and kiss and “go swimming” the night before her wedding. I totally thought she would get with him, and his girlfriend and Cary Grant would run off together. But after Hepburn’s fiancĂ© dumps her for being a lush-- and oh no there is a whole crowd of people there and "Here Comes the Bride" is playing, what to do? -- Stewart proposes and she is like, “Oh hell no, you are from the working class,” and trots down the aisle with Grant.

Stewart’s girlfriend, Ruth Hussey (who also has a bit part in...The Women!), has been standing aside, smoking cigarettes and looking kinda pissed this whole time. Presumably she takes him back.



Sucks to be you, lady.


Obviously the topic of Divorce Ranches On Film requires more research. I haven't even begun to explore Norma Shearer's pre-Code career of playing a more adventurous sort of divorced woman. (Hysterical trivia fact from Wikipedia: Joan Crawford used to bitchily call her "Miss Lotta Miles," referring to her stint as the spokesmodel for Springfield Tires.) If nothing else, hopefully putting all these older movies in my Netflix queue will make them stop listing "Erotic Foreign Films" as my preferred genre. I rent one Catherine Breillat movie and look what happens, jeez.

Monday, August 11, 2008

A Very Long Book

Last night around 1 a.m., I joined the small and pedantic club of People Who Finished In Search of Lost Time. Alex suggested I share my thoughts. Would I recommend this feat of endurance to others?

Well, only if you enjoy feats of endurance. I myself have been known to watch an entire Ken Burns documentary in a sitting and attend bikram yoga classes in the hideous Philadelphia summer (not to mention personal quests of the "I will drink this whole bottle of wine and NO ONE CAN STOP ME" variety). For what it's worth, yoga classes are a much, much bigger waste of time and money than Proust. Seriously, let this stand as my public vow not to spend money on yoga ever again. It's just stretching. Christ.

So assuming you like to set long-term goals: Yeah. Do it. Read the book. It's kind of...awesome.

For starters, it is gay as hell. It's so fascinating to me that this book isn't ghettoized in some Special Interest section in Borders, you know? I suspect this has a lot to do with the fact that not so many people make it past the first couple sections, and homosexuality doesn't become a major theme until Sodom and Gomorrah. Sure, everyone knows the author was gay, and there are all those theories that Albertine = Albert, gasp, whatever. But seriously: it's kind of incredible that the work is considered a major pillar of modernism first and of queer literature second. Nearly every male character besides the narrator turns out to be a homosexual (or "invert" in the book's lingo) sooner or later; Marcel's whole obsession with keeping Albertine captive is based on his fear that she sleeps with women -- a fear which turns out to be thoroughly justified. Proust's meditations on the life of a gay man in pre-war Paris high society are interesting enough on their own to merit a stab at reading.

But interest in that theme -- or any other particular theme that strikes your fancy, like the study of aristocratic society and its fluctuations, or French anti-semitism, or the nature of art -- isn't gonna get you through several thousand pages, because there are bound to be huge sections about nothing but precisely what doesn't interest you (for me: reallllly long dinner party conversations about contemporary political/academic affairs, the Dreyfus stuff sometimes excepted). I advocate skimming. You have to be willing to go with it though; as a friend of mine who somehow read the whole thing in high school and several times since has put it, it's sort of like living an entire life along with someone. Life is boring sometimes, and doesn't that just really mean we are sometimes conscious of time passing?

Proust doesn't really spell it out til the end (and when he does, it's a bit strange, to have read so many many pages and then have his views on literature laid out so succinctly and the whole story wrapped up in an and-then-I-wrote-the-book-that-you-now-hold-in-your-hands sort of convention), but in a way the characters are the least important part. As he puts it, "in a book which tried to tell the story of a life it would be necessary to use not the two-dimensional psychology which we normally use but a quite different sort of three-dimensional psychology...the mighty dimension of Time which is the dimension in which life is lived."

So yeah, according to the Internet there are over 2,000 characters in In Search of Lost Time, but you only need to bother remembering the names of a dozen or so. And it's only how they change over time in relation to each other that really matters. And Albertine -- the more you read about her the less you know. She only becomes increasingly fragmented and increasingly internal to the narrator, until she's not a person at all but an infinitely multiplying memory: "In order to be consoled I would have to forget not one, but innumerable Albertines. When I had succeeded in bearing the grief of losing this Albertine, I must begin again with another, with a hundred others."

It's the exact opposite of what any self-respecting fiction teacher would say -- they want characters to emerge slowly, to become whole through your masterful writerly observations. But here the characters disintigrate! This book is crazy!


Well. Goodness I've been prattling on, although long-windedness is appropriate enough here. And it's not like I can exactly bring this stuff up in casual conversations with all the new Pittsburgh friends I hope to make. It'd be like tattooing I AM AN ASS on my forehead. Let me just say, as soon as I finished, the first thing I thought -- and I realize this may be some form of literary Stockholm Syndrome -- was "I want to read it again."


next time: DIVORCE RANCHES!!

Update!

The illustrious Michelle, freshly relocated to Pittsburgh, will soon be guest/co-blogging in this space. So GET READY.