Ted, Akie and I took on James Franco’s General Hospital appearance in this week’s Perpetual Post.
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I was all set to take James Franco down a peg or two about his heavy-handed foray into the world of performance art, particularly since it’s coupled with a pet peeve of mine—an article he wrote for the Wall Street Journal discussing the ways in which performance art is ‘enjoying a moment of validation from the art world establishment’. The editorial, which EntertainmentWeekly.com snidely noted “probably got a B+ when it was first handed in as university coursework”, was peppered with references to other performance artists and their work, which he referred to as “trippy stuff.” Now, if I want to learn more about the history of performance art, James Franco and the Wall Street Journal are two of the very last sources I’m going to turn to. In fact, the idea of James Franco writing an editorial in the Wall Street Journal about performance art sounds suspiciously like performance art itself.
Still, I’m not made of stone. I went to Bard College, after all, which abounded with students who did silly, stupid and awesome things in the name of art. They experimented; they took risks, they threw themselves passionately into creative works. Even when they irritated me, which they mostly did, I generally respected their moxie, and in that regard I don’t want to discourage a mainstream Hollywood actor from bringing a little weirdness into the world. It’s quirky, it’s unexpected, it’s fearless. At least he’s not making a cookie cutter romantic comedy about going home to meet his girlfriend’s parents for a weekend only to discover that they’re dinosaur vampires. He’s trying new and different things, and for that, I applaud him.
That said, I do think that Franco’s project was poorly thought out, mainly because its premise is flawed. In his editorial, Franco explains that by starring in a 20 episode arc of General Hospital, “I disrupted the audience’s suspension of disbelief, because no matter how far I got into the character, I was going to be perceived as something that doesn’t belong to the incredibly stylized world of soap operas. Everyone watching would see an actor they recognized, a real person in a made-up world…My hope was for people to ask themselves if soap operas are really that far from entertainment that is considered critically legitimate.”
Now, Franco claims that he wants people to ask themselves if soap operas are more ‘critically legitimate’ than we think. Yet by engaging in this experiment he has already labeled soap operas as less valid than other, more ‘legitimate’ entertainment. By claiming that viewers would be disrupted from their soaps by seeing ‘an actor they recognized’ on their show, or ‘a real person in a made-up world’, Franco sets apart the made up world of General Hospital from the made up world of Spider Man 3. When Tom Cruise—also an internationally recognized celebrity—plays a secret agent in the Mission Impossible movies, he is also asking us to suspend our disbelief while watching a ‘real person in a made up world’. It’s called acting—just like they do in soap operas! Assuming that his presence on a soap may ‘disrupt’ those particular viewers is being pretty patronizing of those viewers.
Not only that, but soap opera viewers are used to having characters get replaced all the time by completely different actors and actresses. They’re used to watching a character die in a sky-diving accident and then reappear three seasons later haunted by an evil twin. Susan Lucci has been on All My Children for going on forty years now—and still looks exactly the same. Talk about disrupting your suspension of belief! Trust me, soap opera fans can roll with the punches.
Still, I know your heart is in the right place, James Franco. You’re into some neat stuff, and you’re enrolled in film school, and you’re thinking, and you’re pushing boundaries, and you have a heartstoppingly beautiful smile and rock-hard abs. I’m willing to go easy on you this time. Just don’t let it happen again—at the very least, the next time you feel like doing a performance piece, how about showing up on my doorstep wearing a leather kilt and holding a plate of butter? Honey, you can break my fourth wall any time.
Publishing at midnight tonight, Jillian, Akie and I wrote about the trials and tribulations of pen ownership and lending in this week’s Perpetual Post. I’ve also written a couple other pieces you can find over there in the last few weeks. Busy busy!
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I do understand that it is important to be prepared, which is why I carry eye drops, lip gloss, Advil and a packet of tissues in my purse at all times. And sometimes a pen. Or not. When it comes to pens, I belong to the school of thought believes that the next pen is always just around the corner. Because you see, stray pens can often be found lying around on desks and counters, just waiting to be temporarily used by people like me. And when that is not the case, it is not that difficult to borrow a pen, even from a stranger—which is not true for most other things. Try asking a stranger on the bus if you can borrow their eye drops and you’ll see what I mean.
Another exciting thing about borrowing a pen from someone is that a small percentage of the time they tell you to just keep it. And that’s exciting! It means that you have another pen that you can take home and leave lying around somewhere.
You pen-lovers know who I am, and you despise me. I’m the person who thoughtlessly wanders away with one of your prized pens. I’m the pen-shunner who never has one of my own and is always asking to borrow yours and after I use it it never writes quite right again. To all those who treasure your pens, keep them safe and are loathe to lend them out to people like me, I am sorry. I didn’t take your fancy pen on purpose (usually). I’m sorry I rewarded your generosity with theft.
A very dear friend of mine insists on carrying at least five pens, two mechanical pencils, one highlighter and a sharpie marker or two with him at all times. Even in his own home, which is already stuffed to the brim with jars of pens on every surface, he keeps his pockets fully stocked with pens and ready to go. On occasion we’ll find ourselves sitting on the couch and watching TV, and I’ll notice that a half dozen or so pens are falling halfway out of his pants pocket, so I’ll take them out for him and put them on the coffee table for safekeeping. This genuinely disturbs him. “Please don’t do that,” he’ll say. “I might forget to put them back in my pocket when I get up, and then I won’t have a pen when I need one.” (Or ten!)
I feel that this terrifying scenario is unlikely to happen to him. I’m fairly sure he keeps several pens strapped to his ankles and one lone sharpie duct-taped to the middle of his back in the case of a dire emergency. For his sake, I almost hope that someday I am proven wrong—for example, that someday a small army of people will gather around him and express their desperate, burning need to scribble, highlight, and otherwise record data on paper, all at the same time! At that point his seemingly overflowing reserves of writing implements will be joyfully distributed among the grateful, pen-less masses while I look on, agog. I know how much he will enjoy it if my comeuppance ever comes in this way. Until that day comes, though, I will mock him mercilessly, even as I borrow his pens. The world is a cruel place.
I did it! 50,000 words in 30 days! And actually, it was more like 18 days, because I really didn’t start writing until the 12th!
Yay! NaNoWriMo!!
I want a t-shirt. Too bad all the sizes are sold out. Make more shirts, NaNoWriMo!
Man, writing is the best. I’m so glad I did this. It’s really made me remember why I love to write in the first place.
Just in time for Thanksgiving, the Perpetual Post plays host to a truly EPIC discussion of the ultimate battle between Pie and Cake. And we’ve got some strong opinions. Below is my pro-cake argument, but don’t miss the equally compelling arguments for pie, cheesecake, ice cream, and an amazing anti-cupcake rant you have to read to believe. Find it all here!
I bristle when someone says that I don’t appreciate pie just because I haven’t had a good pie. It’s the same feeling I get when I’m being told by a sleazy co-worker to ‘relax’, because that’s why I’m not enjoying the unwanted backrub he’s giving me. Don’t sneeze on my arm and tell me it’s raining. I know what good pie is, and I know what good cake is, and I know that good cake is better than good pie any damn day.
Look, I’m not going to say that I dislike pie. I enjoy pie! Pie is adequately delicious. I appreciate the fact that pie can be eaten when still warm from the oven, whereas cake generally needs to cool before it can be frosted and consumed. A piping hot piece of pie with a scoop of ice cream on the side is delightful, and if you put it in front of me, I will eat it. But if you put a piece of pie and a piece of cake in front of me, I will put the plate of cake on top of the plate of pie to get it ergonomically closer to my mouth while I eat it, and then wander off in search of more cake. Why? Because cake is a treat. You never know when you’re going to have cake, and you never know when your next cake might be around the corner! Cake is a celebration food, while pie is a signal that the meal is almost over, because hey, suddenly you’re eating pie, and don’t you wish it were cake?
I will reluctantly acknowledge that there is perhaps an unfair stigma attached to sub-par cake, as I think it is encountered much more often than lousy pie. This is because too many of us have been subjected to tasteless, uninspired store-bought cakes at gatherings. Office birthday parties, bake sales, baby showers—there are far too many types of events where people no longer take the time to bake a true Cake, and instead pick one up at the Food Lion on their way. With their garish colors, overly-sweet icing and chemical taste, these cakes are not worthy of the name; they should be called something else. Kakes, perhaps, or Fakes. Because store-bought pies are even more terrible than store-bought cakes, the pies you encounter are more likely to be to be homemade—or at least, bakery-made, which means that their quality of ingredients will be higher, and you can taste the love baked into their sufficient crusts.
But oh, should you be lucky enough to stumble across a real, home-baked cake that has been made from scratch, mark my words, you will join me on team cake.
There’s a lively debate going on over at the Perpetual Post on Public Transit: NYC vs. DC vs. London vs. Boston. I hope I accurately represented Beantown in my portion of the discourse, below. Check out the others over on the Perpetual Post.
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Don’t get me wrong, I love Boston. It’s like my second, not-as-good home away from home. There’s great history there, and lots of character, and the letter “R” is pronounced “AH” by natives, who like nothing more than to glare at you from under their Red Sox caps. What’s not to like? Oh, right. The cold. And the high cost of living. And all those college students. And the godforsaken T.
Having lived in Boston for 5 years without a car, I think I can say with authority that in when it comes to public transportation, Boston is like Toon Town. First of all, the subway lines don’t have names, or even letters or numbers—they have COLORS. Could they possibly simplify that any further? Except then, to complicate it, some of the trains of one color line (the green line) branch off and go into vastly different directions. So, on the green line, you have the B line, the C line, the D line, and the E line. Could they have possibly picked four letters that didn’t sound exactly the same when announced in a noisy T station during rush hour? There are other letters in the alphabet that have different tones—like H! Or M! There are also other letters that don’t look very similar when they’re displayed on what looks like a defunct Lite-Brite on the front of a rapidly moving train. (And don’t get me started on Lite-Brites and Boston for that matter, thanks to a little show called Aqua Teen Hunger Force.) In any event, so you’re standing at Park Street (or PAHK Street) waiting for the E line, and here it comes along—but wait, is that an E or a B? And it’s on the C tracks?! And the doors on the side where you’re standing don’t seem to be opening! AND you paid $2 for this lousy T ride! What the hell!?
Still, you are given something of a sporting chance, particularly at Park Street, because the trains don’t move ALL that quickly. In fact, there was a recent incident in which a drunk girl fell onto the T tracks in Boston, right in the path of an oncoming train, and she was saved by heroic bystanders who waved at the oncoming train to get it to slow down and stop in time. And it did stop in time. So, we’re not talking about super fast transport here either.
Also, way the T system is set up, is like spokes radiating from a hub in the center (more or less) of the city. As a result, there are many situations in which you need to take the T all the way into that center hub in order to take it all the way out in another direction, to get not that far away from where you started from. So there are places that take 15 minutes to drive between, but they take an hour to take the T between. I lived in Somerville at one point, and my younger sister lived in Jamaica Plain, and it took us about an hour and a half to get to one another’s houses on the T. And Boston, don’t flatter yourself; you’re not that big.
There are also situations in which you could conceivably transfer between different 3 trains in order to go exactly two aboveground city blocks. Ridiculous!
And don’t forget the bus! Boston is also home to a fabulous bus network that has become more easily navigable in recent years, but at one point there was practically no way to find out where buses stopped without taking them. Bus schedules consisted of random-looking online .pdfs which were never shown in relation to actual streets. Since those early days, Boston wised up and began printing up actual bus schedules, and sometimes if you are lucky, you will actually find the schedule you are looking for in the display tree at your local T station. I don’t think they have ever managed to print them in a way that corresponds with demand—there were always nine thousand schedules available for the ubiquitous #1 bus, and I have NEVER seen a living schedule for the elusive #94.
So, the bus system in Boston has improved—but so has the price increased. When last I lived there a year ago, I regularly took an express bus that took me from outer Medford to Downtown Boston in about 20 minutes, and cost $3.50. That’s right, per ride. And no, this bus did not offer door-to-door service, free coffee, a complimentary newspaper or a lapdance. Sometimes it didn’t even offer a seat. And yet, $3.50?! I ask you. For three times that price, I could take a bus to NYC.
Lastly, let’s talk about hours of operation. Boston is a well-known college town with a fairly young demographic and a pretty active nightlife—and yet it’s stuck with a transportation system that keeps cranky old people hours. Trying to catch a T or a bus any time after midnight, you have about a 50% chance of being SOL and having to take a cab or walk. And in a city known for a negative wind chill factor in winter, walking is kind of risky sometimes. You could end up dead in a snowdrift between two parked cars.
Also, it is almost impossible to get a cab in many areas, because either a) there are NO cabs, b) no cabs will stop, or c) a drunken frat boy elbows you out of the way and takes your cab. And few things are more frustrating than stumbling out of the club after a night (well, half a night, since it’s only 1am) of dancing, wearing a miniskirt in fifteen degree weather, and stumbling to the curb to catch a quick taxi—only to be passed by dozens of empty cabs who refuse to even look at you because presumably they are off-duty. Why cabs choose to go off-duty late at night when they have become the only game in town, I will never know. In fact, I once hailed a cab and watched the cabbie stop his cab, light a cigarette, glance up at me, and then speed away. It was enough to make me weep and gnash my teeth with rage. And I’m no shrinking violet.
Boston, you’re a tough town. But I’ll always have a soft, angry place in my heart for you.
Howard, Akie and I discussed the early closing of the lauded production in this week’s Perpetual Post.
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One shouldn’t shell out $80 a ticket for just any theater experience. I like to make sure I’m getting the most for my money. Before I consider buying tickets, I tend to ask myself certain questions—questions like, ‘are there puppets in this show?’ and ‘does the title contain the word ‘urine’?’ This is just one way to make sure that a Broadway show will be worth its weight in all the other shows you’ll need to Tivo while you spend an entire evening out of the house and not wearing sweatpants.
I’ve also found that if a show is at least three times removed from its primary incarnation– for instance, if it’s based on a videogame that was made into an action-figure that became a mini-series—you’re bound to at least know what you’re getting into. And if there’s one thing I’m fond of entertainment-wise, it’s the comfortingly familiar.
Celebrities I’ve seen on television and in the movies also help to add a sense of familiarity to a stage play. Fortunately the website Broadway.com allows you to filter your search for shows by the category, “Celebs on Stage”. Throwing Jude Law or James Gandolfini into a performance also gives me something to actually talk about at work the next day. Trust me, none of my coworkers want to hear about my evening spent watching Brighton Beach Memoirs when they can hear about how I saw Harry Potter’s magic wand in Equus.
Brighton Beach Memoirs in particularly is very family-unfriendly. It may be the story of a young boy who comes of age, but it’s certainly not for children, who will be unable to focus on the storyline and characters without a commercial break every few minutes. Plus none of the characters are cartoons or talking animals, and there are no straightforward and educational messages to be gleaned like, “don’t talk to strangers” and “brushing your teeth is fun”.
In fact, don’t even think about bringing your kids to a Broadway show if it doesn’t have performers dressed up like giraffes, gamboling through the audience on stilts, or if the title lacks the phrase ‘-on Ice’. By the time your kids stop whining about how you made them silence their cell phones, it will be intermission and they’ll be begging you for an $8 KitKat. If you thought movie theater refreshments were expensive, wait ‘til you get a load of the concession stand at the Gershwin. Plus, while most musicals have at least a few souvenir T-shirts and other merchandise, very few plays have gotten the memo that people don’t rely on their memories anymore—they rely on buying things that will remind them of experiences they’ve had. Did you even SEE Wicked if you didn’t leave the theater clutching an $18 witch hat keychain? I think not. Brighton Beach Memoirs, if I can’t buy a lunchbox with a picture of your cast on it, you’re wasting my time even more.
You know you are in for a memorable evening when the waitress at the sushi restaurant requests that you move to a bigger table, because you have ordered more sushi than will fit on the table for two that you were originally seated at.
And then she adds, “Nobody has every ordered this much sushi before. We are going to have to serve it on a special platter.”
Aw, yeah. That’s us.
Akie and I discussed the state of the female musician in this week’s Perpetual Post.
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There’s something missing from the women of mainstream American music today. I don’t want to generalize and say ALL of American music, because I know that’s not true. But among those females whom fate or luck or talent has elevated to the heights of fame and fortune, I feel that there is a distinct lack of a certain je ne se quoi that for simplicity’s sake I’m going to refer to as SWAGGER.
Where are you, crazy rock goddesses? Where is your cheerful destructiveness, your wild and devil may care ‘go fuck yourself’ attitude? Your MOXIE?! Why, when I want to live vicariously through a rough and ready rock musician, does it STILL always have to be a man—and one who is usually over fifty, to boot? Who is going to step up and take the torch of the ass-kicking, take-no-prisoners rock star away from Keith Richards, before he smokes it down to nothing? And why can’t it that person be a woman?
I’ve endured so many disappointments during my search for a smart, self-assured female musician with flinty eyes, awesome hair and staggering talent who doesn’t take shit from anybody. In the beginning I had high hopes for Amy Winehouse, but then she started losing weight and doing drugs and that went nowhere fast. Pink piqued my interest for a little while, but there’s still something kind of manufactured and by-the-numbers about her. Britney Spears is a puppet; Christina Aguilera is a ghoul. Lady Gaga is a pretentious twit. Katy Perry is like the Hello Kitty of pop music. Fergie can be kind of a bad-ass in her own right, and there’s something a little crazy and half-baked about her; she might be the closest thing I can find to what I’m looking for, but I’m still unsatisfied. She’s no Pat Benatar.
And don’t come at me talking about Beyonce or Miley Cyrus. I’m not looking for a diva, or a child. Rihanna either; the kind of icon I crave would have eaten Chris Brown for breakfast. Bjork is borderline; she’s half out of this world, although she doesn’t seem to give a shit what anyone things of her, which I appreciate. Modern female pop stars on the whole, though, lack the charisma and charm of Cyndi Lauper; the poise of Stevie Nicks—not to mention the steely, hungry ambition that has made Madonna a force to reckon with for going on thirty years.
So-called ‘girl groups’ are also a whole lot of nothing. You could replace each member of the Pussycat Dolls or Danity Kane with a different person, and I’d bet you 75% of their fans wouldn’t notice right away. Each member of those bands is carefully crafted and coiffed and insultingly counterfeit. At least bands like the Spice Girls knew they were a fluffy, manufactured joke—and they were in on it.
Hugely successful all-female bands didn’t used to be cotton-candy assemblages. The Go-Go’s, the Bangles—these were bands whose members played their own instruments and even wrote some of their own songs. Instead of being cobbled together from soul-shriveling auditions filled with aspiring models and actresses, they sprang organically from hard-working and talented female singers and musicians. Somehow we managed to go from, “Hi, I’m Kathy Valentine, and I’m out of my fucking mind and having the best time ever.” to “Hi, I’m the Blond Pussycat Doll, and these are my tits.” Is the genre de-evolving?!
Maybe it’s the times we live in. Maybe it’s difficult for celebrities of any kind to be reckless and raw and learn lessons the hard way anymore. Maybe by the time you attain a certain level of fame in the music business these days, you’ve already got publicists and stylists and handlers and an image to uphold. Or maybe I’m wrong! Am I forgetting someone? I’m throwing down a gauntlet here, but I’d be ever so pleased to be schooled in the world of female musicians who are actually inspiring to either females or musicians. Please, PLEASE, give me some hope. Hit me with your best shot.
Howard and I wrote about the Baby Einstein recall in this week’s Perpetual Post.
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When did television become ‘educational’? When I was a child in the 80s, it was pretty much understood that TV was a free babysitter. It was not how you taught your kids how to read. It was how you taught them how to stay out of your damn way while you made dinner.
These days, programs like Baby Einstein encourage parents to teach their infants about the world through the magic of passively watching television. After all, is there a better way to learn about shapes and colors than by watching shapes and colors on a TV screen? Why explore the world around you when you can watch a DVD in which someone else shows it to you? The ‘Baby’s First Impressions Head to Toe’ video, found on brainybaby.com, even claims that “your child will enjoy watching other children on screen demonstrate how a hand can do many things, like hold, touch or clap.” Now, why didn’t I have a video to teach me how to do things with my hands when I was a baby? How did I even make it this far in life? (Also, since when can a hand clap by itself? Maybe these DVDs are a little philosophically advanced for the zero to three month age group).
It gets better. There’s another program called “Your Baby Can Read”, which teaches frighteningly tiny infants to memorize flashcards. Flashcards! They’re not just for older students with motor skills anymore! Somehow the idea that you should be forced to memorize a flashcard when your first instinct is still to put it directly in your mouth is unsettling. A video on the website, YourBabyCanRead.com, shows 9 month old Andy raising his arms in the air after being shown a flashcard that says ‘ARMS UP’. This is exactly the sort of young overachiever they look for at Yale. (As long as Andy doesn’t burn himself out by the time he is eighteen months old.)
Baby Einstein videos are now receiving negative publicity because studies have shown that infants who watch television early in life end up with a shorter attention span than those who have limited or no screen time before the age of two. They also have smaller vocabularies and are less verbal — although this fits nicely with the irony that as a baby, Einstein himself was a little slow on the uptake. Perhaps this was intentional on the part of the creators of Baby Einstein.
Across the board, baby DVD websites also tout the idea that watching a video fosters ‘interactions’ between parent and child, and encourages them to spend quality time together. Somehow I doubt this. Let’s face it, television is not ‘interactive’. Watching television together does not encourage socializing and intimacy. If it did, my boyfriend and I would know each other a lot better than we do. Television encourages staring, mouth-breathing, and drooling—all of which babies instinctively know how to do. No $15.99 DVD necessary.
Even though I hate the idea of a baby watching television (after all, she’s got her whole life ahead of her to spend staring a screen, especially if she ends up with a desk job!), if they’re going to have educational DVDs, they may as well encourage our children to develop useful skills. Instead of teaching your baby about shapes and animals, teach them how to play Scrabulous, or help them create a profile on Facebook. You’ll be building skills they’ll be improving upon for their entire lives. They’re not really social skills, but by the time those kids are in grade school, they’ll be the only skills anybody has.
Today I ran 7.5 miles on the treadmill in 70 minutes.
WHAT.
Granted, I was watching VH1’s “Best Songs of the 80s” during that time (and got through approximately songs 45-28, to be exact). So that helped the time go by. But still. That was a lot of miles to run (the most I’ve run ever!) and a lot of minutes to keep running during. Now my legs really hurt. I am worried that I am turning into one of those people who runs a lot and trains to run more and is always saying things like, ‘I am training to run a half marathon’ because I sort of am. Maybe. I might do that.
The dog has a cone on his head right now from a minor surgery he had last week, and he’s bashing it into everything in our apartment multiple times a day, especially my legs. There is nothing quite so irritating as having a cone bashed into your legs every thirty-seven seconds that you are at home. Even though it’s by the dog, so it’s being done with love.
Sad Coneheaded Dog.
Oh, and Happy Halloween everyone! Can you guess who I went as?
It's very difficult to keep the line between the past and the present.
No fair if I already told you. =)
I Heard Tell 