‘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.

Art:21 – Jeff Koons

As much as anyone, Jeff Koons is the current definition of celebrity artist, which of course means that outside the insular world of art, no one’s ever heard of him. Visit any contemporary or modern art museum, and don’t be surprised to see a piece by Koons.

Even though I’ve seen several of his works over the years, I had never seen the man himself. Art:21, the PBS series about visual art in the 21st century, solved that problem.We’re introduced no only to the artist but to the machinery that produces his works. He comes up with the ideas, but then a small army executes the deliverance. He employees dozens of artists (presumably) to move his visions into the plane of material existence. (I love writing in art-speak.)

For all this, Koons creates some crazy stuff. Here’s a taste. More after the jump.

Michael Jackson and Bubbles

Greenwood Is on Fire

My old neighborhood is slowing burning to the ground.

For two years between 2005-2007, my wife and I lived right in the heart of Seattle’s Greenwood neighborhood. After moving back to Austin, I still like to keep up with various Seattle news and notes. Imagine my surprise when I started to see articles like this. There’s a firebug on the loose. The three latest arsons have upped the total to 14 since the summer. Fourteen arsons! Most have been relatively small, but the big one happened a few weeks ago when a three-alarm fire burned down a foursome of business.

The blaze was started at the Green Bean Coffeehouse. I had been in this place a few times. It had a Christian vibe, which was very much not the norm in Seattle. There were posters illuminating the suffering going on around the world, and one time I overheard someone say that everyone who worked there was a volunteer. Turns out they were run by a church that met at the theatre next door. Seattle has a lot of coffee shops, but you hate to lose even one.

The great culinary loss in this fire was the Szechuan Bistro. I was weary of this place for a few months, but once I went, it was my go-to Chinese place in the neighborhood. Most of the dishes had some sort of spicy red Szechuan ingredient in them. I have no idea how authentic it was, but let’s just say my English wasn’t always understood first time around. I’ll miss you, Mongolian Beef. I hope you had insurance.

I’m always a sucker for nostalgia, but I didn’t think I’d be reminiscing about these places so soon. A felony or two has a way of moving things right along.

A map of the fires

Bill Simmons: The Book of Basketball

“It might be cool. I don’t know, and if it’s not, I don’t care. Bill Simmons works for ESPN. He’s also named the Sports Guy, and he writes a comical sports column. He must be a popular dude. It’s got a real dirty sound, like a rusty steak knife cutting through a well- aged steak.”

The preceding is the intro to Bill Simmons’s podcast, which I listen to far more often than I read his columns. You see, Simmons writes long columns. LONG columns. Like 7000-word columns. I call this the Modest Mouse phenomenon. If they have a maximum 72 minutes on a CD, they’ll fill all 72 minutes. Maybe there’s only 40 minutes of good music, but hey, why not? Personally, I don’t have a problem with this. They’re going to charge the same amount anyway, so why not fill it up? I think Simmons has the same idea. He’s not constrained by print inches in a newspaper. There’s no 500-word limit. He could theoretically write forever. Here, I have a problem. I just don’t read long pieces online. I will sometimes print something out and read it later, but anything beyond one screen worth tests my patience, and I’ve never felt like printing anything related to sports.

I love the podcast though. He does them from his house, has a good selection of guests, and puts out several per week. I rarely miss one. Now, he has a new book. Sure, he’s promoted it a million times on his show, but I still took the bait.

Attempting to Learn from a Culinary Giant

That the New York Times would have a feature article on Thomas Keller is no surprise. He is widely considered to be the best chef in the United States, and his flagship restaurant, the French Laundry shares that same lofty regard. When I first learned of that eatery’s eponymous cookbook, part of me wanted to give it a shot. It’s a good thing I waited; that could have been my kitchen waterloo. Trying to recreate items like the one pictured would surely have sent me back to Hamburger Helper. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.)

As someone still new to cooking, I’m susceptible to false promises. Occasionally, I see a cookbook that looks like it might be the Holy Grail: detailed instructions, fancy but not too fancy, and as comprehensive as possible. When I saw Ad Hoc at Home, I thought I had nailed it. We’ve got Keller on the one hand, and “down home cooking” on the other. What could be better?

The book is now in my hands, and my initial review is mixed. I was lured in by promises of Chicken Pot Pie and Pineapple Upside Down Cake but shouldn’t have been surprised to see Braised Oxtail & Mushroom Tartine and Fig-Stuffed Roast Pork Loin. Heck, the word “verjus” comes into play three pages in. I have no idea what that is!

To get started, I’ve made an initial list of about a dozen things I’m going to try from this cookbook. I’ll need to be persistent if I’m going to make any headway. If that Chicken Pot Pie is as good as I think it’s going to be, that’s shouldn’t be a problem.

Ad Hoc at Home

This American Life: Infidelity

Is there any action more worthy of the metaphor “shoot yourself in the foot” than cheating on one’s significant other? To call infidelity one of my pet peeves is to sell it short. I have no sympathy for people who engage in this behavior, and I wish them all the worst. The only way one of these stories ends well for me is if the antogonist endures piles and piles of misery. We should suffer for this kind of mistake.

The latest episode of This American Life explored infidelity. The most jarring part of the hour came at the beginning of Act II. Host Ira Glass, whose mother was a psychologist specializing in couples with an unfaithful partner, cited several statistics:

50% of couples will have one or both partners cheat. (Most are never detected.)

56% of men and 34% of women who cheat are happy in their marriage.

How do these figures jibe with my vitriol in paragraph one? Am I wishing hurt on a large segment of our society? Is it such a common occurrence as to change how we should feel about it? I suppose we all do things we regret, even though we know better. Human nature has its base side, but indulging that shouldn’t be a default. Infidelity is one temptation that hurts so many, so deeply that we have to hold ourselves to a higher standard. Go ahead and have too much cheesecake, and smoke a pack of Camels if you need to, but let this one err on the side of caution.

This American Life – Season One

Do We Really Need a Remake? ‘V’ v. ‘V’

I always found the original V (the first and second mini-series as well as the one full season) to be depressing. This didn’t fully occur to me for a long time, though I always felt it. Beyond the coolness of the spaceships and the distraction of the action, this was standard 80s MOTW fare. Ultimately though, the overall feeling was that of hopelessness. What could be done against such evil occupiers, especially with some humans crossing over to help them?

The hit-you-over-the-head allegory is to Nazis and the Holocaust. That historical episode is about as depressing as it gets. The subplots all flow from there.

The Resistance: This is where we see the beautiful people fight the lizard people.

The Youth: Power is given to impetuous young people who in turn abuse their power and rat people out to the Visitors.

Inter-species love: Jungle fever gets a new meaning. Sexual attraction can permeate the human/reptile barrier. This is all well and good until labor and delivery. The results are terrifying. I wish I could unsee that lizard tongue shooting out of that baby’s mouth. But I can’t.

Honorable Defectors: Some Visitors know their species is up to no good and try to help. Thanks for nothing, skin jobs!

Vaccines: Yeah, I know, but seriously. The way the humans finally get the upper hand is to pollute the air with a chemical that kills only the Visitors. In order to survive in the Earth’s atmosphere, they must get regular injections, booster shots if you will.

Sympathizers. You gotta go along to get along. Some of the humans sell out to the Visitors when they see who’s winning the battle. Naturally, media and corporate types are well represented.

The new V looks to replace the Third Reich with Al Qaeda. There even looks to be a little They Live thrown in for good effect. This will surely affect some of these strands, but I bet most will survive intact. Without them, what kind of a remake would it be?

V – The Original TV Miniseries

Depths of Debauchery – Sex Edition

There are so many ways to live a miserable existence. The possibilities are nearly endless, and it seems that Dr. Drew can help with any of them.

While in college I, like most people my age, watched Loveline on MTV. I even got sucked into watching the first season of Celebrity Rehab. Sure, it was tawdry reality television, but it got very real, very fast. Addiction is intriguing, and I think part of the reason is its ubiquity and universality. A celeb junkie is dealing with the same things as a guy living on the streets. Addiction: the Great Equalizer®.

Now on Sex Rehab, Dr. Drew is exposing “the hidden addiction.” Eight celebrities of varying degrees of fame check into the Pasadena Recovery Center to deal with their addictions to sex in all its forms. I won’t get too graphic here, but the entire gamut of sexual experience is represented, from three-hour bubble-bath sessions to all-day computer porn jerk-a-thons.

It will surprise no one to learn that it’s not really about the sex. As one of the female inmates says through hot, salty tears, it’s about the inability to make connections with others. Irony alert: The most intimate experience a human can have is abused as a way to keep others at bay. They all just want to be loved, but their fornication keeps getting in the way!

I’m not sure I’ll stick with this show to its conclusion, but I might. Sadly, watching somebody deal with an addiction is about the only time we can see anyone on television be a real, reflective human being. That’s the unfortunate state of things in a world full of Bachelors and Biggest Losers.

Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew, The Complete First Season