"A city so nice, they named it twice!"

A friend of mine is visiting NY and sent me this picture from his hotel window:

In the spirit of the city where one of my top 5 favorite films takes place, this picture made me make the "Sally Noise," when it opened in my email. And I wasn't faking.

Thank you for the gift A!

What is the point of honesty?

“But hidden drawers, lockable diaries, and cryptographic systems could not conceal from Briony the simple truth: she had no secrets. [. . .] Nothing in her life was sufficiently interesting or shameful to merit hiding; no one knew about the squirrel’s skull underneath her bed, but no one wanted to know. None of this was particularly an affliction; or rather, it appeared so only on retrospect, once a solution had been found.” —Ian McEwan, Atonement Like most of us with the writing impulse, I fear total exposure and hope for nano-flashes of profundity, but if I did confess my deepest secrets here, like Briony's squirrel skull hidden under her bed, I doubt anyone would care. Yet here I am. What, however, is the point, anyway of all this honesty, as a much-older Briony asks at the end of Atonement? Who does it benefit? Why do it at all?

Never a Bridesmaid!

A friend of mine was asked to be a bridesmaid. Keep in mind she is not close friends with The Bride. Then The Bride asked her if I could be a bridesmaid too. I have met The Bride maybe three times and have never had one moment of extended life-affirming-sharing interaction with her.

WTF?

Is the wedding a Cecil B. DeMille production and she needs extras? Does she not have friends?

See the dress:
http://www.davidsbridal.com/bridesmaids_detail.jsp?stid=1575&prodgroup=110

Now that you looked, aren't Brides crazy? Normal rational people are turned insane by wedding planners, mothers, Bride Magazine. It's a conspiracy that many a liberated woman has fallen and will fall prey to.

All except my best friend who got married on the volleyball court @ a friend's house (the epicenter of the burgeoning lust/love). The owner of the v-ball court became a minister through the Internet just to perform the ceremony. (The newly-minted padre has taken to wearing a Roman collar at some formal occasions but that's a subject for another entry.) The Bride wore a corset, the groom--leather pants! They were rock stars!

We drank before the ceremony, there were no bridesmaids' dresses, and the party at a nearby restaurant ended with a bar tab that was the most expensive thing bought for the wedding! But before you assume that my friend's wedding was all gloss & no substance, they wrote their vows and had their close friends and family there. Every moment was planned and considered for its spiritual and communal significance.

So . . . why the need in most "conventional" weddings for bridesmaids, and especially those in ugly dresses? So The Bride can be the prettiest woman standing up there? Are we still in high school where "getting the guy," or better getting The Dress, then finding the guy (or some guy) to take us out in Said Dress should also involve metaphorically elbowing other women out of the way?

Standing up for my friend at her wedding didn't involve me donning an ugly/expensive dress (my friend was too kind for that), although for her I would have. Once again I owe her for getting me out of this latest expensive dress and allowing me an escape from standing up for someone I don't even know.

Maybe that's the real kicker. Homophobics & Bible-thumpers aside, overall many straight people still oppose gay marriage, and they use the "sanctity" argument.

Yeah us straight people have done such a bang-up job on protecting that "sanctity." No, it's all about The Dress and not about the commitment or the community. How else can someone ask a near stranger to support her and bear witness on the day she is making a pledge before God?

It's all about The Production, Baby. No sweat; Maybe it's her "starter marriage": http://www.startermarriage.com/

Pamela Paul writes that this trend of the trial or starter marriage is a bellwether for the end of the traditional concept of marriage, and it comes from our "matrimania culture," [where] weddings, marriage, and family are clearly goals to which most young Americans aspire. Why are today’s twenty- and thirtysomethings—the first children-of-divorce generation—so eager to get married, and so prone to failure? Are Americans today destined to jump in and out of marriage? At a time when marriage at age twenty-five can mean a sixty-year active commitment, could 'serial marriages' be the wave of the future? "

Matrimania. So there you have it: This Bridesmaid's dress isn't just an expensive and irritating costume; it is a sign of the cultural breakdown. If the Beast is slouching toward Bethlehem, I'm sure it is wearing an ugly dress.

Luddite Confessions of a Post-vinyl Gal

When I bought Sting's Nothing Like the Sun, how was I to know that would be my last album I would buy? When I got an Ipod this past June I surely didn't know it would still be in the packaging come mid-January.

For someone who loves music, why this hesitation? Why not the next step?

In part it's my clinging fondness for vinyl. There are albums in my collection I have never been able to bring myself to replace. The CD version of Welcome to the Pleasure Dome leaves off songs from the original album, and that just ticked me off. First you change the format and then you change the album. Thanks. But the experience was changed even if the original songs remained; they became more sterile. Gone are the snaps and pops that formed part of the soundscapes of Sgt. Pepper's and The White Album. And now with each technological advancement the covers are becoming smaller and even virtual. No more can I have an experience akin to the initial pleasure of seeing and holding the bold pop art of Remain in Light or unfolding The Wall.

Gone also is the experience of standing in an honest-to-God independent record store and discovering at eighteen that there was this sub-culture, this "bohemian" place where people spoke and traded in the language of music--what they were listening to & what they wanted to share with me, who influenced whom & if I like this I'd love that.

Oh, there have been some great used CD stores in my time. One in Knoxville practically saved my life during the year-I-do-no-count when lived in a small East Tennessee town, and taught at a private Baptist school that didn't have "dances" but "foot functions." (Raise your hand if you know why all you Southerners!)

And now there are online message boards, web sites, MP3 files, all these new means of sharing music. Now the musical world can be my oyster, as Frankie say. But the brick-and-mortar independent record store, the one that most mid-size and even some small towns had is the place that I miss. Now I have to travel to far places for a good (or any) record store, and vinyl aficionados have become their own elite club (thus warranting the label "aficionados") and as I said I don't even own a turntable anymore, so my nostalgia is really not for the store, or the vinyl, it's for that time in my life when my music and my lifestyle were inextricably intertwined.

I thought all these feelings were because I was tired of learning yet another new technology and having yet another music collection become obsolete.

But it signals something more, I realized today. A concert I want to see is this coming Tuesday night in a city over 2-hours away. I have to be at work the next day at 8AM. Time was the lies I'd have to tell, the sleep I'd have to miss, came easily. Now? I'm afraid this coming Tuesday evening Mr. Manson will be short at least one office drone hoping to recapture her feeling of being eighteen, twenty, or even twenty-five, immersed in the tribal abandonment of yelling lyrics that for at least two-hours are truth.

With that off my chest, maybe now I can open that iPod and that big heavy box, and find myself a turntable.

Love, American Style

Last Thursday as I was pulling out of my driveway on my way back to work, just after the Best Buy truck had left my house, I had an epiphany.

A real epiphany.

I like nice things.

This epiphany was not fleeting, and it was quickly followed by a second bit of insight: I may be domestic.

Best Buy didn’t deliver and install a sexy new 48” screen HDTV or a Bose surround-sound system; they delivered and installed a washing machine.

But what a sexy machine.

Just before I went to visit my family this past Christmas, the night before I left town in fact, the agitator in my old machine wouldn’t, well, agitate. I stood there disbelieving that this workhorse I had since graduate school, no longer would, well, work.


A month earlier it had been leaking, and I had feared like Old Yeller, it was a sign it might have to be put down, but the local repairman, Russell, promised all it needed was a new pump. “Seen it before on these Kenmores. Twenty-seven dollar part. No problem.” he said. Of course he failed to tell me until the work was done that the twelve-minute installation visit would be another $60. Ah small town life, where the nearest Sears is 40 miles away.

Now the night before the-Christmas-drive-to-the-parents, I was faced with a second sign that Old Yeller may not last. Fearing that the agitator may be connected to broken belts and thus another much more expensive repair visit from Russell, I consulted my eco-friends, my fiscally responsible parents, and the Bible of all big-ticket purchases, The Consumer Report, and made the decision to buy a new machine.

After I found what I wanted and where to get it, since I live in the middle of almost-nowhere, I decided to order it online, saving the drive. Was this the first step into an exotic, dare I say kinky, new experience? Weird as it was, without going to a store, through computer, phone & fax, I ordered and had delivered and installed my new machine, and my old machine was taken away.

It was love at first sight.

Three days later I have completely fetishized it. While not a designer color (I didn’t get too crazy), it’s a white LG Tromm, Consumer Report-endorsed, front-loading, dual-drive, silent motor, energy/water efficient baby, and since its delivery on Thursday I have done maybe 7 or 8 loads of laundry. I can’t seem to stop! The promise of something different, the early blush of infatuation is turning into something more. For the last three days I have become like one of those actress/models in a 1950’s Maytag commercial, lavishing attention, even stroking my new state-of-the-art-machine. Worse, I even tell friends how great it is:

“You just won’t believe how quiet it is. It even has this cute little chiming beeper to let you know when a load is done. The length of the cycles depends on the washing cycle I select & the weight of the load!”

Luckily I made most of these comments over the phone so I couldn’t see my friends rolling their eyes. I can’t believe it myself.

But love is often irrational.

I had a step stool stored in my laundry room that I often used to rest my laundry basket. Now I can sit on it if my back is bothering me from bending over, as I unload the washing machine and load the drier. The real pleasure, however, has been sitting on the stool this morning with my coffee, watching my laundry as it quietly tumbles.

This is, at the moment, better than TV.

The pleasure of the item itself is magnified by my surprise at this discovery about myself. I’m an educator; I like books. If I wanted to make money, I would’ve gone on to law school or gotten a corporate job. My mom still has the same drier that my parents bought—before I was born. I don’t like to spend money, think of myself as materialistic, or particularly girly-domestic.

What illusions we hold of ourselves, right? Through the consumer mirror darkly of the first luxury household item I have ever bought, I’ve discovered what the big deal really is when it comes to owning “nice things.” Maybe I’ve always known this and have repressed it. Maybe that’s why my love for this washing machine has sprung forth as a 9 & ½ Weeks orgy of laundry and domestic bliss.

For now, I will fix another cup of coffee, take a deep cleansing breath, and think about what my best friend told me: “Repeat after me; It’s OK to like nice things.”

The List

Yes:

1. Philip Seymour Hoffman (even in Boogie Nights . . . I think, OK maybe, no)
2. David Duchovny
3. James Spader
4. Adam “Not being Billy Madison” Sandler
5. Billy Crystal (City Slickers & When Harry Met Sally)
6. Paul Bettany
7. Russell Crowe (A Beautiful Mind, not bashing people with telephones)
8. Clive Owens (especially mid-season Second Sight)
9. Sean Connery (OK cliché, I realize)
   
   
   

Maybe:

1. Jude Law
2. Christian Bale
3. Jonathan Rhys Meyers
4. Jared Leto
5. Russell Crowe (Gladiator—OK that’s an almost-gimme)
6. Woody Allen (only a consideration as of yesterday)

No:

1. Brad Pitt
   
2. Tom Cruise
   
3. Without the Legolas weave--Orlando Bloom (only one word for hell: Elizabethtown)
   
4. Harrison Ford (after the third Indiana Jones)
   
5. George Clooney
   
6. Probably anyone named People Magazine’s “Sexiest Man Alive”