No Intention of Moving

My ears are still ringing, and instead of finishing my last physics quiz of the semester I'm looking at pictures of East Harlem apartments on Craigslist. My lease isn't up until August, and I have no intention of moving.

The muted funk in which I find myself is the result of last night's Apes & Androids show at Studio B. I stood near the back for most of it, jerking my hips around intermittently in a way I hoped would pass for dancing, and in my drunken, sound-addled state came up with what I knew would be the best description of the Apes & Androids sound ever.

I found myself so irrepressibly clever that, despite the stunning decibel level, I turned to Gabe and screamed "I've got it!" He smiled indulgently, even though he definitely had no idea what I was saying, and I took that as a cue to yell "They're the Disco Biscuits meets Boston meets---" and then I forgot the punchline. Who else did I imagine them meeting? Maybe it was Lightning Bolt? Is that too easy?

All of this is to say that I thought the show was super. I drew the analogies simply to illustrate the exact style in which Apes & Androids played too loudly, for too long, with incredible passion. Also there were puppets. And the music was great! I used to love swaying to the Disco Biscuits, I am currently crazy for Boston and, in a Pitchfork interview from last December Brian Chippendale shot down one of the interviewer's questions about "music celebrity art shows" by informing him that he "really shouldn't open Artforum. It's meant to be on your table when you are photographed for things."

Outdoing Myself

Remember how good I was at even calling myself racist? Well, it didn't take me very long to do better. I wish Rush Limbaugh were a housing development outside of Aspen. Then we could Earthfirst his huge, huge ass.

Swooning Idiocies

I'm still a college student, which means that (despite two years of a life that was acutely real), my principle concerns rotate on a semesterial schedule. Currently, they revolve around rape, war, trauma and sub-atomic physics. The final one is simply the unhappy result of a core curriculum, but the first three are the title of one of my seminars. We've studied Rwanda, and Bosnia, and Bangladesh and Japan, among others, and probably haven't covered half of the war-time rape systems that have been documented. This afternoon, though, we talked about the Columbia student who was tortured and repeatedly raped & violated at her apartment last week.

(Brief glimpse into real life and realer life colliding: I was dancing--bopping, shuffling, and also looking sideways--after a comedy show last Wednesday and wishing that the allegedly tasteful and inarguably confident man holding the iPod would put on something other than Outkast when someone cute asked me how I spent my time. I told him where I went to school, and he grinned at me. I grinned back, as he was pretty cute indeed. He said "I hear you've got yourselves a rapist up there!" And then one of us kept smiling).

Part of the conversation in class had to do with the fact that the man charged in last week's rape was black. His conduct was so atrociously inhumane that I'd assumed everyone would see him simply as a psychopath, but someone else in class said that she'd been concerned that his photograph plastered on warning posters all over campus would only exacerbate existing prejudices. Despite the fact that I see racism just about everywhere, I didn't really buy her argument--we had to know what he looked like. He was a completely dangerous maniac. Her fears were relevant, though, in that almost everyone in the class acknowledged that we feel differently about walking through Harlem at night than we do through Morningside Heights or the Upper West Side. Everyone looked at me weirdly when I yelped "I walk through Harlem at night! I have to get to the train!"

In my family and maybe among my friends, I'm kind of an infamously a reckless risk-taker, like how I went alone to Champerico after all these Guatemalans I knew had been robbed there at machete point and how I liked to walk home to Fort Greene after parties in Bushwick in the summer. Not like I'm tough, or exceptional, but I don't like to feel inhibited, especially by fear that I think is socialized, subjective, and frequently gendered and racist. (See? I even found racism in my own blog. Someone, please, pay me to be an antiracist! Please).

I'm reckless because I like proving points. I like proving points even to the extent that I may put myself in danger. But my class this afternoon and a dinnertime conversation that I had with my favorite mom of one of Young Max's friends last night made me want to wise up.

As dinner was ending, right before she paid for my delectable ceviche, Maya asked me about my neighborhood. I told her and she apologized for not asking before, because she's usually very careful about where women live? I hadn't really heard that before. She told me that when she was my age--the era of the Central Park jogger and, I imagine, a palatable St. Marks and an unembarassing Bedford Avenue--women would never go home alone. One time she'd been jogging--in Central Park, yes--and dusk had settled. She'd just run up to a male jogger and asked if she could run next to him.

"He said of course I could." I must have looked incredulous. "He knew!"

I wasn't surprised that he'd known, I was surprised that she'd asked. I find yuppie joggers just as intimidating and loathsome as, I don't know, any other strange man except one who's wearing thick glasses and Chuck Taylors and corduroy, but that's just my personal swooning idiocy.

Who do we trust? Everyone or no one at all? I'm not even sure where I fall on that question. But I did go running tonight. Around Prospect Park. And I have a pedometer. I ran 2.8 miles, and about 2.5 of it was in the dark. I don't know. I wasn't scared. I wasn't brazenly Champerico defiant, but I wasn't scared.

And then I got home in the middle of the seventh, no score, and Shawn Green has been really serving us well tonight and Gary Cohen just taught me that Willie Randolph puts six pieces of gum in his mouth before each game. I'm drinking a Brooklyn Lager, and I'll probably make some cheesy toast later. Things are okay. I'm just still not scared.

Unfair Trade, Unfree Range

What will I do about the politics of carnage? What?

I Made My Bed; Now?

Fatty Sow, Part II.

You thought this post was going to be a continuation of my much celebrated opening weekend review of Fette Sau. Not true! Not true at all. What do girls really like to talk about? BOYS! So, ladies, have I got a story for you. Max and I had such a fight this afternoon!

Lucky for you, readers, we're not geriatric, so it was on Gchat. (NYT Modern Love, here I come). To wit:

Max: I wonder what I'll do for dinner.
me: I can't wait to find out
Max: I'm thinking some pulled pork
me: oh seriously?
from where?
Max: both the alan richman AND calvin trillin books refer to carolina chopped pork
So I've been craving it.
Pies n Thighs
me: that's one of my top meats, babe
on the list of meats I will eat
Max: This sandwich is the way to start.
me: sandwich?
I would just want it plain
or with okra or collard greens
or cornbread
that's how I'd want it
Max: Stop fronting.
me: no joke, babe
I don't think I'd like it in a sandwich as much
Max: Why not?
With cole slaw and a pickle and hot sauce?
Mmmm.
me: sandwiches need to have very tidy things on them
or else I have to take them apart
Max: These are not tidy.
me: to fully enjoy each component
Max: They fall apart in your mouth.
NO
NO
NO
me: yeah exactly
Max: You're making me mad. Stop it.
me: really?
Max: Sort of, yes.
Not mad. Disappointed.

Disappointed?? Shit. In the grand spectrum of how people feel about me, I prefer them to remain consistently clustered around the marker labeled "impressed." That's pretty far away from disappointed. Another confession? I super like looking hot. At a party the other week, I had a conversation with a (hot) young lady about how she gave up her vegetarianism following a freak car accident several years ago. Her boyfriend at the time took advantage of her "sprain of the buttocks" to feed her a hamburger, and she hasn't gone back.

I nodded and smiled while she told me that her recovery was quick, she feels good, WHATEVER, but then:

"And my parents?"
"Yeah?"
"They say I look much, much healthier. You know, parents are always worried, too skinny--" I decided it was time to get to the point.
"Do you think you look better?"
"Definitely."

I believe her! She had shiny hair, a woolly gray cardigan, tight little pants--honestly, that's all I remember. But my mom has been telling me that I look "wan" ever since I started smoking pot in high school. And moms are basically the arbiters of truth, especially when it comes to their offspring's appearances.

File this under the "things that are not true" tab, will you?

News You Really Must Know Now: NY Newsday

Hey! I was going to talk about how effing freaked out I am that New Jersey Governor Corzine broke his leg and a bunch of ribs and his face, too, while he was trying to prove to kids, once and for all, that not wearing a seatbelt doesn't pay, but then I read this Newsday article and I realized how inappropriately focused my concern had been.

I'd initially been thinking about New Jersey's budget shortfall, the on-going corrpution investigations, the precarious national Democratic Senate majority and the governor's responsibility to appoint replacement legislators in the case of an emergency or resignation. However, following my enlightenment by Long Island's finest journalistic minds, I've found a better cause for alarm: Corzine is the third consecutive elected New Jersey governor to break his leg in office!

No shit! Seriously, no shit. I can't even believe it. Thank you, Newsday. Also, thank you for your website's consecutive headings, under "About Newsday," that offer first, a "History of Newsday" and second, "Newsday History." If I hadn't just absorbed such a glut of helpful information, I might even have the energy to read both of them.

Seven Days in the Two Weeks Too Late

My roommate, Kyle, works for Knopf, and as such, amazing things happen on our kitchen table. (I mean, collard greens make us both a little kinky, but I speak of grander events). They include the appearance of free (plundered? donated? perked? I've never asked) copies of the new Leni Riefenstahl biography, Jane Smiley's sexy and relatively inconsequential "Seven Days in the Hills," and assorted other titles of general interest.

As far as I'm concerned, though, the best part of Kyle's job is that she gets to bring home a copy of the NYT Book Review a week before it's published. Before I was informed, probably at a hip party and most definitely snidely, that just about everyone in the publishing world enjoys such a delight, I thought we were about the most fortunate people in the outer boroughs. When I went to friends' houses on Saturday and read their paper, I made a point of explaining why I could skip the book review. Kyle told me that she would read it on the subway, keeping the front cover visible, waiting for someone to exclaim about her amazing ability to know the literary future. Truthfully, no one really cared. But I keep loving and reading the Book Review two weeks in advance, which means that this post is woefully tardy and painfully irrelevant.

NEVERTHELESS, dear readers, I would like to make an announcement regarding the April 8, 2007 review, written by Kate Roiphe, of A.M. Homes's new memoir "The Mistress's Daughter." In the book, Homes discusses the experience of being contacted by her birth mother, who gave her up for adoption after she was impregnated by her older, married boss.

Roiphe's review is entitled "Two Mommies." This was an obvious allusion to "Heather Has Two Mommies," the children's literary sensation that swept San Francisco and certain high-rent neighborhoods of Manhattan off their well-shod feet about ten years ago.

That was a dumb title for a book review, especially given the options. If we're going to make dated references and show a modicum of effort to recognize the darkness of much of Homes's work, we need to search farther afield for titular inspiration. What did Homes have, especially in 1997?

Mo' Mommies, mo' problems.

One Man's Lapdog

You can, obviously, understand a lot about a neighborhood by looking at its trash. That's if you happen to have that selective kind of blindness where multi-paned windows, wrought-iron railings, and purebred lapdogs are imperceptible.

(Do you know the trouble I just had with imagining what one would see in a nice neighborhood? I do not live in a terribly crummy place, but was forcing myself to recall exactly the block of East 79th, between Madison and 5th, where a boy I made out with once lived. He'd, like, not gone to Yale in order to hike around Nepal, so I'm pretty sure his house was the fanciest I've entered.)

Anyway, it's clear that I can't paint the word picture, so your first assignment is to go visit the aforementioned young man and take a gander at his surroundings. Then, and only then, will you be able to proceed:

I bet the trash on that block, and the surrounding blocks, is pretty refined. Organic dog food containers, leftovers from the East Side equivalent of Citarella, Frédéric Fekkai shampoo bottles, tags ripped off the Marc Jacobs spring line--things I would throw out if I were richer. (What do you do with them now, Emma? I KEEP THEM. FOR EATING).

And then there are other neighborhoods, where you'd find cans of Pathmark brand tuna, Pathmark brand laundry detergent bottles, tiny containers of Pathmark brand apple juice, coupon circulars with all the good offers snipped out--the things my family threw out when we were poorer.

But I was walking through Gowanus yesterday, and passed a really interesting quality of trash. My neighborhood is, undoubtedly, going through a transition, and perhaps its proximity to Home Depot (and Pathmark!) makes it particularly appealing to handy house-improvement type folks. For years, though, the area was the province of old people whose families had moved away, the kind who still sometimes peer at Young Max and I through their lace curtains & grimy windows. Now the new, richer families are throwing out their stuff, and on Wednesday nights the streets are awash in all kind of linoleum furniture, puce and mauve accoutrement, and the occasional desiccated Italian grandfather.