The all-new FOX summer line-up includes the highly-anticipated reality talent show, “So You Think You Can Torture?” Watch as world-class interrogators compete against one another (and terror) in the rising field of intelligence-gathering. A panel of celebrity judges– with guest appearances by Dick Cheney and Mohammed Al-Qahtani– will award contestants points for style, results, and creative interpretation of the Army field manual. Each week a new loser will be eliminated by audience vote (voters must be legal US citizens) and handed a copy of the Geneva Conventions. The grand prize winner receives a retroactive pardon from former President Bush. (Pardon not valid in some states).
Steve Murphy and I took on Pharmaceutical companies in this week’s Perpetual Post. Read his side here.
Mines is below.
I was all ready to make fun of prescription drug commercials, because they are hilarious, when through the miracle of internet I became acquainted with the fabulous world of prescription drug websites! They’re kind of like the commercials, only with fewer cartoons, more stock photos of people looking concerned, and more fine-print made less fine.
In fact, I would like to quote directly from the delightful Patient-Medication-Guide on the website for prescription sleep-aid LUNESTA, which can be found on www.Lunesta.com:
“After taking LUNESTA, you may get up out of bed while not being fully awake and do an activity that you do not know you are doing. The next morning, you may not remember that you did anything during the night. Reported activities include:
• driving a car (“sleep-driving”)
• making and eating food
• talking on the phone
• having sex
• sleep-walking”
I don’t know about you, but that sounds like a pretty awesome night to me. I enjoy many of the above activities, and can’t always find time for them during the day—so perhaps LUNESTA is exactly what I need to get the most out of my evening hours. I’m not sure I’m down with the concept of “sleep-driving”, but that would make a good excuse the next time I run a red light during a late night drive. “Huh? Officer? What? I’m not asleep in my nice warm bed?! Nooo! LUNESTAAAA!!!” It’s the perfect crime.
Given these side-effects, I have to concur with LUNESTA’s claims to give you a good night’s sleep. Actually, any period of rest during which I make and eat food, talk on the phone and have sex—I call a GREAT night’s sleep. LUNESTA, you may have just found another satisfied customer.
Then again, some of the negative side-effects of taking LUNESTA include:
• abnormal thoughts and behavior. Symptoms include more outgoing or aggressive behavior than normal, confusion, agitation, hallucinations, worsening of depression, and suicidal thoughts or actions.
• memory loss
• anxiety
Ok. Any of those side-effects would kind of put a crimp in my sleep-eating, sleep-screwing and sleep-talking-on-the-phone style (by the way, that’s also a great way to get out of a phone conversation that’s quickly going south. “I owe you how much in unpaid cable bills?…What?…What am I doing? Who is this anyway?! LUNESTAAAA!!!” Click.)
I mean really, what’s the point of making delicious sleep-feasts and having fabulously sexy sleep-relations if a) you don’t remember any of it and b) you’re confused, aggressive, depressed, anxious, suicidal and hallucinating? Aren’t those the same symptoms you have if you’re an insomniac? Why not skip the LUNESTA and lessen the chances that you’ll wake up doing 80 on the highway or eating a bullion-cube sandwich? You might only get laid while you’re awake, but at least you’ll remember it.
There are also common side effects like
• unpleasant taste in mouth, dry mouth
• drowsiness
Is there some legal reason they have to list drowsiness as a side effect for a sleep-aid? Finally, my last favorite part of the Patient Guide? (There were so many!):
• For customer service, call 1-888-394-7377.
• To report side effects, call 1-877-737-7226.
Oh, to work the LUNESTA reported side effects hotline! What a wealth of unimaginable dramatic and comedic riches!
“Last night I called every number in my cell phone and yelled ‘I HATE FEET!’ at anyone who picked up.”
“I woke up two towns over with my car in a ditch…and dry mouth.”
“I had no trouble falling asleep and staying asleep. And then I had no trouble eating half a roast chicken and having anonymous sex with my building’s security guard. I feel like I finally have my life back, thanks to LUNESTA.”
One of the books I bought with my wonderful book store gift-certificate birthday present was “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao” by Junot Diaz, which I later discovered had been one of the books read in my Boston bookclub. Boston Bookclub, we are in harmony even now. How I miss you.
In other book-related news, I went crazy yesterday and ordered 3 books from Half.com. Oh how I love Half.com, with its promise of $1.49 paperbacks, except that the price never includes shipping.
The books which are now headed my way are:
1) “Dry”, by Augusten Burroughs. I loved his first book, “Running With Scissors”. I recently devoured his latest, “A Wolf at the Table”, about his life growing up with a sociopathic father. It was terrifying but also reminded me how macabre and hilarious his writing is.
I recalled perusing “Dry” at the airport when it first came out several years ago, and deciding I couldn’t afford to buy it new just then. So I was long overdue to read it. (In airport news, the Raleigh airport has a used book store! I KNOW!! The last time I traveled by air in early May I bought and read “Ethan Frome” by Edith Wharton, because I somehow thought I had never read anything by Edith Wharton, except I have– “The Age of Innocense” and “The House of Mirth”, both of which I loved. So oops. Anyway “Ethan Frome” was absorbing but kind of a downer.)
2) “Nightwood”, by Djuna Barnes. Highly recommended to me by my friend Donn, I have been meaning to read this book for over a year, but every time I was at the library or the bookstore, it slipped my mind– kind of like how I can never remember to pick up milk at the grocery store, but I constantly buy packets of Taco Seasoning like there’s a great Taco Seasoning Famine sweeping the nation, even though we have a stack of such packets in the pantry at home. So in conclusion, I’m excited to read “Nightwood”.
3) “The Stories of John Cheever”, by Guess Who. I recently read a review of a new biography of Cheever by Blake Bailey entitled “Cheever: A Life”, and the review made me extremely curious to read the author’s work. (Although currently I’m reading “Rabbit is Rich”, by John Updike, and it’s kind of depressing me with it’s ‘lives of quiet desperation in the suburbs’ theme. And since Cheever is apparently known as the ‘Chekov of the suburbs’, I’m probably in for a fairly downbeat ride. But we’ll see.)
John Updike is one of those authors (along with Hemingway and Faulkner) whose work I know I should have read, or read more of, but just never did. So I’m trying to remedy this one book at a time, although the Garner public library branch is not helping me. Each time I go in there looking for a particular book by an author, they have a different book by that author that is not the one I wanted. So last month I went in looking for “Atlas Shrugged” by Ayn Rand (don’t even get me started on my hate-hate relationship with Ayn Rand) and came out with “Anthem”, which I probably won’t read. I went in looking for one of the earlier books in Updike’s Rabbit collection, and came out with a later one which probably spoils all the twists in the earlier books and presents a fairly depressed protagonists in his early 50s who feels that his best days are behind him. Another problem I have with the Garner library (and I hate to dis on libraries, because I loves me some libraries) is that it shelves romance novels in with regular fiction, which means that every third book on the shelves has some variation of the word ‘passion’ or ‘rogue’ in the title. I can see why they are shelved in this way though, since shelving the romances separately would only highlight how many more romance novels there are than non-romance novels. Dang it.
Anyway. Sorry for the rambling. What are you reading right now?
Last night I had a dream that Lindsay Lohan asked me to buy drugs for her, since I was apparently going by the neighborhood where she gets drugs. She even gave me a list of drugs she wanted. I only really read one of the entries on it, and it was written in binary code, as in “1011101”. I wondered what the hell kind of drug that was. The total price on the list (she had indicated estimated costs) was $14k. The dream also included every other neurotic dreamy neuroses I have in my dreams, which unfortunately are not blog-appropriate, or even waking-life appropriate.
Jessica, Stephon and I took on the topic of High School reunions in this week’s Perpetual Post. Find it here!
My ten-year high school reunion is around the corner, and my feeling is, either I’m showing up with Hugh Jackman on one arm, pushing a stroller full of nonuplets with the other, or I’m not showing up at all.
A high school reunion is no time for subtlety. Trust me, nobody wants to hear about your new springer spaniel puppy or your job in publishing. They want to see whether you got fat or divorced or developed a nervous tic. They want to hear if you’ve saddled yourself with a whiny loser or popped out any kids. They want to casually pretend not to recognize you, to show that they’re too cool to bother remembering once knowing you. Ninth grade habits die hard. Maybe things will be different in another ten years when you all feel like failures, but right now it’s still too soon. Your only defense against this kind of behavior is a good offense, and you only get one chance to make a dynamite first impression—to achieve that sweet moment of redemption that somehow erases an entire freshman year spent pretending that you had no friends on purpose. You better make it good.
But wait, put the monocle down, sparky. Don’t bother going if you’re going to look like you’re trying. You cannot walk back into the gym reeking of desperation. If you’re busy whiting out the word ‘Assistant’ on your business cards or thinking up ways to make it sound like you moved back in with your parents because they missed you, stay the hell home, and I’ll tell you why: Above all, the name of the game is to keep those bitches guessing, and sometimes, putting in a non-appearance is the flashiest way to do that. In the back of their minds, those people I spent four years love-hating are bound to have a brief moment of wondering, “Huh, and where is Molly? I was looking forward to pretending not to recognize her.”
Is she sitting at home watching The Wedding Date and eating raw Pillsbury Crescent Rolls from the can? Or out partying topless on the French Riviera with Kate Moss? Maybe I’m home polishing my Nobel Peace Prize or at a cocktail party chatting with Tom Wolfe and wearing a 24 karat gold pantsuit. No one really knows. And nobody really wins, either, but I also don’t have to nod with a frozen smile on my face as my former classmate tells me she just got back from spending the year in Machu Picchu, “just hanging out”. I don’t have to congratulate girls who used to make fun of my thrift store clothes for passing the Bar exam, or having babies, or headlining the World Organization Committee on Agricultural Transportation Banking Summit. So actually, someone does win: Me. Take that, Class of 1999!
Howard, Steve and I took on women in comedy in this week’s Perpetual Post. Check it out!
I’m growing tired of hearing about how Tina Fey and Amy Poehler are such funny women. I mean, yes, they are. But is this such a revelation? The amount of attention those two receive for being funny is becoming a little patronizing, because for the most part it’s the same reaction of good-natured astonishment that would be elicited by the sight of a gopher wearing chaps or a tap-dancing kitten. The implication is: Look! These women are breaking down barriers, they’ve turned our misconceptions upside down; they’re thriving outside their element! It’s as thought the general public thinks each of them woke up one day and said, “Today, I think I’ll be funny– unlike women.”
Tragically, I was never informed that women aren’t funny. As a result, I spent my clearly misguided youth worshipping witty, smart-ass female authors like Erma Bombeck, Jean Kerr and Cynthia Heimel. I listened to old records and radio programs and grew to love the crackling improv of Elaine May and Joyce Grenfell and the sweet guile of Gracie Allen. I rented early Saturday Night Live episodes and marveled at the physical comedy of Gilda Radner and the snarky wit of Lily Tomlin. All of these women were brilliantly funny. I guess none of them got the memo.
It’s true that my many female comic idols are often less well-known than their male counterparts. George Burns’ fame far surpassed that of his counterpart and comic foil, Gracie Allen. Ricky always told Lucy she couldn’t be in the Babalu show. Saturday Night Live, for all its talented female stars, never seemed to launch their careers as far as it did the careers of legendary comedians like Steve Martin and Jim Belushi.
Indeed, for every smart, funny female role model I discovered through books, radio and television, there were many mediums which suffered from a distinct lack of vibrant female characters—or any female characters. After all, Bugs Bunny had all the good one-liners. None of the women stranded on Gilligan’s Island had decent comic timing; Smurfette was dull as dishwater. But to me, the lesson there was still not ‘girls in general aren’t as funny as boys’—it was ‘those girls aren’t funny’. So instead I watched Murphy Brown raise hell, and dreamed of the day I would live un-chaperoned in the Plaza Hotel like bossy, outrageous Eloise.
I agree with Steve Murphy that humor thrives on awkwardness and alienation, and that an adolescent penchant for feeling like an outcast is very likely to produce an individual who is quick with a one-liner and has a Simpson’s quote for every occasion. But I disagree that humor is a defense mechanism and a means of social survival mostly for males. Rather, I think it is a natural reflex for either sex—one that, if properly nurtured and cultivated, can be merrily abused as a dysfunctional means of self-protection by both boys and girls. After all, both face a tremendous amount of pressure to fit into their respective roles—and there are always going to be those on both sides who look around and think, “Wow, this shit is hilarious.”
I also agree with Howard that individual women who are not funny are often used as an example to somehow prove that women in general are not funny—which I find unfair. Were this standard applied to men, Pauly Shore alone would irrevocably prove that all men as a rule are desperately unfunny. Which is fair to no one, except Pauly Shore.
Emily Saidel and I debated the usefulness of the short-lived iPhone Baby Shaker App. in this week’s Perpetual Post. Catch her side here.
Just when I thought the iPhone had come out with an application that would be useful to me in everyday life, it was cruelly rescinded!
Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy playing Snood and making my iPhone look like a frosty mug of beer as much as the next person, but when it comes to spending $3.99, I’d just as soon purchase an application which teaches me a lesson that will really enrich my life—and leave it filled with babies. Alive babies.
So, it turns out you’re not supposed to vigorously shake an infant. Who’s supposed to teach me that, now that my iPhone is no longer permitted to? From what source am I to glean the knowledge that a rapid back-and-forth jerky motion causes X’s to appear over the eyes of a newborn? Do I pick that kind of information up on a street corner? At the local library? In school—a daycare, perhaps?
Videogames have long educated me on the ways of the world. From them I have learned that jumping on a giant mushroom with eyes and squashing it will keep me safe. I have discovered that shooting a dragon in the face with a crossbow rewards me with extra life and energy points. And I was on my way to learning what happens when you briskly shake an infant—but that knowledge has been unfairly ripped away. I vaguely believe that the results were bad, but I’m not completely sure anymore. How is this my fault?
Apple, return the Baby Shaker App to its rightful place in my iPhone. Some of us really need it.
Stephon Johnson and I also took on David and Victoria Beckham in the latest issue of the Perpetual Post. Read our two sides here.
“They Like Us! They Really Like Us!”
When the Beckhams relocated from England to settle across the pond in Los Angeles, I, like many other Americans, wasn’t quite sure what to think. Should this news thrill me? Should it fill me with pride? Should I pretend I didn’t hear it, so that if I happened to run into Victoria Beckham buying bunion slings in a Hollywood CVS I could glance at her archly over my ten-pack of Almond Joys and sniff, “What are you doing here?”
Really, why was this even news? Was there a faint cosmic shift in the fabric of the universe when the jet carrying the Beckhams touched down at LAX? Did Americans pause and raise their heads like meerkats when David’s cleats hit the tarmac?
I for one was wary of this strange move. Particularly when I heard the news that Victoria was going to be filming a reality show about her arrival in the US. How could she not be mocking us with every brittle bone in her birdlike body? But if Posh and Becks were only in it for the scorn, why set up permanent residence here? Was it for the satisfaction of knowing that they were thinner, more athletic and less smiley than 102% of the US population? Were they trying to show Yankee celebrities how you really walk down Park Avenue in 9” heels? Were they missionaries on a pilgrimage to teach lowly Americans about the world-except-for-America-renowned game of Soccer? Or, as I believe non-Americans call it, Foot Game?
Right, the soccer thing. Apparently Becks got a job playing soccer in an American soccer team, because—who knew!—we actually have that here for people over the age of 8. That’s right—unless I’m wrong, David Beckham is currently playing soccer for a league that is not prefaced by the words “Pee Wee”. I’ll bet he’s pretty good. The man plays a mean Foot Game.
At this point it’s been two years since the Beckhams set up camp in a California mansion, and they show no signs of vanishing anytime soon, aside from the signs of vanishing which Victoria displays every time she is photographed in public. It seems they enjoy our charming, old-fashioned way of life. Then there is the fact that their eldest child is named Brooklyn. This signifies that a respect and a perhaps even a fondness for the United States, lurks somewhere within the polished and unsmiling personas of the Beckhams. Deep down, they know they love us.
Jillian Lovejoy Lowery and I take on the Swine Flu in this week’s Perpetual Post. Yeah, we know we’re going to hell. Read her delightful take here.
Smarten Up, Swine Flu!
Swine flu, you are all over the map here! Your public relations team is doing a terrible job. Your image needs some serious work—and you need a clear message. You’ve also got to stick to your talking points and stay on target. This isn’t rocket science, it’s influenza! Work with me here.
You started in Mexico, Swine Flu, and you really got going there, I’ll give you that. You built a strong groundwork and created the momentum to sustain quite a campaign. But your sloppiness began almost immediately thereafter—as evinced by a number of tiny, insignificant one-person outbreaks in far-flung places across the United States and eventually the globe. One confirmed infection in Hong Kong, one in Sweden, four in France—really? That’s the best you can do? You call yourself a pandemic? Not even close Swine Flu, and I’ll tell you your problem: You’re still thinking like an epidemic.
You got a foothold in New York, it’s true—your numbers are strong there, and they’re growing. I’m glad you understand the importance of getting your name out there in well-populated, panicky liberal areas. But you have to remember, those folks are also generally well-educated, and they learn quickly, which is not to your benefit. You should really start branching out to some more rural areas—places where a little suspicion and fear go a long way.
The name change, too—whose idea was that? Right in the middle of your launch into the realm of international recognition and fame—you swap the rock star moniker of “Swine Flu” for the deadly-dull and ultra-forgettable handle “H1N1”?! Really– what were you thinking? What was going through your mind when you decided to play the new-name game? You’re not Prince! You’re not even John Cougar Mellencamp! I’m telling you, switching up a classic, ominous name like Swine Flu for a letter/number combination—it’s crippled the rising careers of even bigger and deadlier viruses in their heydays. I would have fired my agent right then and there for even allowing me to consider the idea.
So here’s what we do, toots. We’ve got to get you back on track. I’m thinking a guest-star appearance or two. Strike down someone famous—but not too likeable; you want to keep public sympathy on your side. I’m thinking Kathy Griffin, or one of the Baldwin brothers. Keep working hard, keep your focus sharp, and you could be back on track in no time. Believe me, H1N1—you’re a real workhorse. And you’re going places.
I Look More Delicious In Person!
Internet, I love you for your cooking blogs.
.
Seriously. For someone who likes to dabble in home cooking and try new recipes, the internet is a foodie’s fantasy-land. Everywhere you turn, you find artful, delicious cooking blogs like this one and this one.
.
I like to cook so much that I’ve occasionally thought about trying to start a cooking blog, but I usually give up after remembering how many good ones have already been established. It’s like wondering if you should take up the piano at the tender age of 28, and then flipping through channels and seeing a 4 year old pianist headlining at Carnegie Hall. It kind of rains on your parade a little. Not that you would have expected to end up at Carnegie Hall yourself, but…it gives you an excuse to be lazy and not try.
.
Plus, I don’t like to experiment a lot when I cook. I am a recipe-slave. All of the paper recipes I’ve printed out and tried at least once are flour-encrusted and water-stained; the recipes I use most in cookbooks are wrinkled and gritty. This is because I lean over a recipe twenty times every time I use it double-and triple checking the order in which I am supposed to add ingredients and the correct amounts to use. I prefer recipes that tell you exactly what the food should look like at each stage of the process. I am an anxious, hovery cook. And I don’t like to make up my own recipes, or experiment with other recipes, unless it’s to add more of an ingredient than it calls for if I like it– can you ever have TOO MANY green onions? No way.
In any event, yesterday I wanted to do something nice for Brian, who spent all day yesterday volunteering at the World Beer Festival in Raleigh (poor baby!), so I decided to make his favorite dessert: Key Lime Pie.
At the local grocery store, I started crestfallen at the pile of normal limes in produce. Supermarkets never seem to have those little mesh baggies of tiny round key limes when you need them. A woman stocking apples next to me asked if I needed something, and I told her what I wanted. “It looks like you may not have them,” I said.
“No,” she said, “but we have Ki-wis.”
She kept repeating that statement. She was not joking. I appreciated her trying to help, but when she started selecting limes from the normal lime pile and saying, ‘this one is smaller’, I wandered away. Eventually I found a bottle of Key Lime juice. Saved!
Pre-pie, after settling on this recipe from Gourmet by way of Epicurious; (I tend to like Epicurious.com’s offerings), I realized I was going to be left with 4 egg-whites. It seemed like a waste to throw out 4 whole egg whites, but I’d already had eggs for breakfast and was not in the mood for a 4-egg-white omelet. I just wasn’t.
.
So after doing some searching around (all of the egg-white recipes I found were either for meringues, these weird sounding cookies you make and leave in a turned-off oven overnight, or angel-food cake, which calls for at least 8 egg whites), I found this recipe for Sweet Milk Three Egg-White Cake. I don’t always like the recipes I find on Cooks.com; there aren’t reviews that I can locate, and I tend to come across a lot of ‘buy a store-made pie crust, fill it with jello pudding, refrigerate’ recipes, but sometimes one comes through for me. You never know. Plus, it’s a good place to find general ideas and themes for recipes, due to the huge volume of recipes listed.
I’m not as big on pie, I’m more of a cake person (sorry Laura!), so I figured this Sweet Milk Cake (doesn’t that just SOUND good?) would work nicely. You will note that the original recipe is charmingly OCD; it has you greasing the cake pan, lining it with waxed paper, and then greasing the waxed paper. It also instructs you to sift the flour and other dry ingredients a total of 4 times. This seems a little excessive. Lacking the proper amount of sugar, throwing in an extra egg white because I had one, and baking in a bundt pan were all my little lazy touches. Oh, and also I started sifting the flour, and gave up about 1/4 cup into the first sift. So there was also that. (I have found that where cooking is concerned, I tend to overestimate my patience and attention to detail. My meals are always paved with good intentions; I may start out cutting up a chicken breast into small, uniform pieces so that my stir-fry is consistent, but I almost always get bored of that and end up with chicken pieces of a gradually increasing size. This never stops me from considering myself to be a patient and meticulous cook, even though that is just not really the case.)
In any event, I made my version of Sweet Milk Three Egg White Cake, and I. LOVE. IT. Enough to share the recipe!
Sweet Milk Cake With Liberties Taken:
1/4 c. butter, 1/4 c. shortening
4 egg whites
1 c. sugar
1 c. milk
2 1/4 c. flour
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp salt
2 tsp vanilla
You pretty much know how this goes: Oven to 375. Stir the flour up with the salt and baking powder. Cream the butter and the sugar. Add the vanilla. Add the flour and the milk alternately to this mixture. Grease a bundt pan. Bake for 40 min or so. The outside of the cake will be dark golden brown and just this side of crusty; the inside will be white and have a moist, tight crumb and be alllmost too sweet, but not quite (glad I skimped on the sugar!). Top with a ring of frosting (I used leftover creamcheese frosting from a can) when cake is still warm so that frosting will drip appealingly down sides of cake. I think any kind of frosting will work nicely.
Anyway, I really liked this cake, and it was really easy to make. I recommend it any time you have some leftover egg whites and a sweet tooth.
I think I will try posting an occasional recipe on here. This wasn’t so hard!
I Heard Tell 