‘Girl Culture’ – Serious Business

Some time after the new year, my wife and I will bring a little girl home. As we prepare to expand our family, advice comes from all corners. This week it came unexpectedly from a photography lecture.

The Austin Center for Photography has brought several big names to town for its Icons of Photography series. I’ve enjoyed all of them, and this week was no exception.

Lauren Greenfield has made name for herself as a professional photographer and is best known for her work examining the world of young people and most especially girls. As far as the advice she gave, it’s fair to call it more of a warning, a sign of what it means to grow up in these times in America.

Her book Girl Culture (the cover of which is shown in the above thumbnail) explores the way the body is the primary vehicle for expression in our society. Honestly, just go look at the pictures; they speak more eloquently than I do. (Some images NSFW.)

Women are reaching higher and higher levels of achievement in our society, yet still feel compelled to conform to culture that is sick in so many ways. Having a daughter navigate this jungle is going to be hell.

Girl Culture

Poutine – What’s not to Love?

Poutine: A dish of Canadian origin made with french fries topped with cheese curd and covered with gravy. When I first heard of its existence, my first question was, why is this not in my belly right now? Oh, 42nd Parallel don’t be so cruel. With all the culinary delights available to me (I can go buy a dish of Cantonese chicken feet right now!) why is this one so hard to come by.

That was then, this is now.

This week The New Yorker published a piece by Calvin Trillin trying to explain the appeal of this concoction. (The New Yorker Out Loud podcast has an interview/sample tasting with Trillin, too.) Poutine is now available across the U.S., mainly in hipster-filled restaurants.

First a few clarifications. Don’t get thrown off by the word “curd.” Just think cheese in little blocks. Not really all that flavorful, but it does the job. Gravy to those in the American heartland means white gravy, unless it’s Thanksgiving or there’s a pot roast involved. Here, gravy means brown, ostensibly of beefy birthright.

I feel like my entire culinary history has led me to this food.

2012 – An Exercise in “Too Far”

Marc Savlov of the Austin Chronicle put it best. “Big. Dumb. Fun.” That’s what we want from summer blockbusters, even when they don’t come out in the summer.

There’s a direct line leading to 2012. Let’s call it the Roland Emmerich-continuum. Remember that scene in ID4 when the White House gets all blowed up? Well, Rollie got hooked. He needed more and more. He tried to off the whole world in The Day After Tomorrow, but he couldn’t go all the way. He still had an itch that needed to be scratched.

Consider it scratched.

2012 is dumb as hell. Everything takes place in a “Saved at the last second” fashion, and false heroism rules the day. There all so many things that don’t make sense, but in the end, that’s fine. What’s important here is the destruction: beautiful, mind-numbing destruction. Emmerich lets his imagination go wild as a crack in the sidewalk turns into a broken house turns into a gaping maw in the earth. Highways and cities and mountains all fall before his mighty hand.

Here’s the catch: There’s no going back. With Independence Day, all that had to happen was a simple dispatchment of the aliens, and life could go back to normal. There is no normal after the events of 2012. The social-psychological ramifications of this are buried under a third-tier romantic subplot. We can’t be bothered with what comes next. Once the carnage ends, we’re outta there.