Submission #1!!!!!

And it only took a day! The first entry in Hifalutin's mind-bendingly exciting Postmodern Poll comes to us from the distinguished author of Sex On Christmas, who has not updated since he blogged a visit to Taco Bell and whose only comments were: "Radopticon? No. Signature Event Righteous."

GAY FLORIDA: your Governor's gettin' hitched!

On December 12th, in St. Pete! That's awfully uppity of him, considering he doesn't think you deserve the right to do the same. Would you like to show up and bring an off-registry gift, or make an off-color toast, or maybe just protest the shit out of the whole event? The valiant editors of impossibly-named Gay Fort Myers have got the information you require. Did I mention I love my hometown? The property values are plummeting, nobody has a job anymore, and falling down is apparently twice as deadly to the elderly as in any other part of the state, but you can always count on the gays of Lee County to keep it together. 239!

William Logan is the new Chuck Norris.

Ahahahaha. Obviously I have some facts to contribute.

14. William Logan made fun of my GRE scores.
15. Poets have attempted to burn him in effigy, but always fail, because images of William Logan don't burn.
16. William Logan never listened to your mixtape.
17. If you strike down William Logan, he will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.
18. William Logan knows what happens to a dream deferred.
19. Every poet who makes fun of William Logan secretly prays to one day make it big enough to be panned in a William Logan review. Except me. Fuck that shit! Right, guys? Guys?

"There is no uncontested short definition."

Over dinner at Virgil's last week I was complaining about some douchebag's characterization of Heraclitus' fragments as "strikingly postmodern," because how unnecessary is that honestly, when Adam sweetly brought it to my attention that I don't know what postmodern means either. And as I consoled myself with pulled pork and peanut butter pie, I also consoled myself with the knowledge that very few people I've ever encountered seem confident they can define the term. But as literature scholars we are legally obligated to use it at every possible opportunity, and since the definition is so amorphous the word "postmodern" has lost all meaning. It's elusive, seductive, a chimera. It is different things to each of us. So listen, monkeys, I know that all of you have said this word at least once without being entirely sure that it actually applied - that's why I need you to take part in my fancy Postmodern Poll! Read on:

Comment or email with your definition of postmodernism.
THE RULES:
1) Your submission may not exceed 300 words.
2) Your submission may not bore me.
3) Your submission may not come out of a textbook.
The winner will have their submission posted in Highfalutin and Lowdown as the blog's OFFICIAL DEFINITION and will also receive the privilege of writing a guest entry. Try not to pee your pants too much, I know. The deadline is January 8, 2009. Anyway, so far I'm pretty sure I'm winning, but if you can top this, BRING IT ON:

Jam of the week, installment 1.

The beginning of a weekly feature here at Hifalutin - letting all you creepy internet spiders inside my head and my iTunes every Saturday because what is writing if not the most socially acceptable form of egocentrism. This one's for Lexi, whose phone calls I'm really going to return when I have the twelve hours I want to spend talking. They won't all be this laden with meaning, but I'll forever associate this with the secret computer lab in the Social Sciences building, watching "The Office" on tv-links while there was still tv-links, walking around the west side of campus in March when everything smelled like orange blossoms and gliding home along empty highways with orange streetlamps in the liveoaks. Thanksgiving is over, but Lexi trust me, every day I am thankful for you and Freddie Mercury:

Doubleplusgood!

The systematic infantilization of the English language continues full throttle, and now it's Milton's turn, bitches! Stanley Fish is indignant, but that is hardly a surprise to anyone. Anyway, this blogger could not be happier - go for it, Dennis Danielson, Oldspeak is for unpersons! It's so the right time for somebody to get rid of all that pesky poetry standing in between the readers and that thrilling narrative to which none of us know the ending.

1, 2, 3, swoon.

Hey! Hey everybody! Guess what? Our new President fucking reads! Books! Like that book he's holding right there! Everybody already knows that Obama's a poet, but did any of you take Ben Lee's class on Contemporary Poetry and Identity in 2005? Is that why the book looks familiar? (Note the helpful arrows!) Because it's the collected work of Nobel-winner Derek Walcott and your adorable soccer-playing married poetry professor made you write papers about "A Far Cry From Africa" while you tried to figure out how to write him love notes on your eyelids, and your boyfriend who sat next to you underlined your favorite passages? And the book sat on your shelf until you gave it away during the insane breakup six months later, drunk on Green-Apple Bacardi, but you saw it again at a Barnes & Noble in downtown Chicago shopping for a housewarming gift for another boy you liked but who, well, lived in Chicago? And then you decided to apply to grad school after finding out that Derek Walcott taught at Boston University and were thanked for your application but roundly rejected anyway?

Right. Walcott's collected has more or less been the bane of my existence. His motto is, "No You Can't." But, Oh!Bama, I don't care, just read aloud to us from the volume sometime on one of your fancy YouTube addresses, okay? You can make Michelle hide her copy of Somebody Blew Up America until the taping's over.

British Crown Cedes Control Of Laureate To Masses!

What the hell, England? You like to slaughter the innocent tea-drinking inhabitants of your trans-Atlantic colonies all day long, wearing fashionable scarlet outfits and just bayoneting the shit out of everything, because they asked you politely to lift the tax on Being Alive. And yet you allow your subjects at home to have opinions about poetry? THESE ARE NOT BEST PRACTICES FOR GOVERNANCE. Especially since as it turns out, the Poet Laureate of England has actual responsibilities - compare to our primitive colonial appointee, whose job has historically been to eat lobster in hot tubs and speak to roomfuls of elderly ladies and write a poem sometimes. Of whom will the British public collectively glance up from their porridge and signal their approval, as the shackles are clamped on their hands and feet and they are led in grimy single file to debtor's prison? Hifalutin will report on this story as it develops!

This one is on the house. This one is better than ever.

There's another more, uh, sane-sounding post coming on this subject (thankfulness) soon, but I'd just like to say this holiday season that I am giving thanks because my friend John, one half of the (former?) sarcastro-noise hot-pants-wearing musical miracle Wolf Wolf, started these shenanigans. It promises to be fucking epic. I hope all of you mutants had wonderful Thanksgivings. I sincerely mean that. Each and every one.

The line it is drawn, the curse it is cast.

I love Bob Dylan. Not everyone I know loves Bob Dylan. The reasons are numerous and always interesting. 1) He can't sing. You've definitely got me there. He has more or less always sounded like a male goat in early adolescence, who has just been rejected from goat chorus at goat high school, because his voice is breaking and he is unbearably awkward. 2) His lyrics are nonsense. Well, yeah, he was usually pretty drunk. 3) His lyrics are too polemic. But he did throw Phil Ochs out of a cab one time, calling him a "singing journalist". 4) He should have stuck to folk and he never returns my calls. Is that you, Joan Baez?

Etcetera. The weirdest one though, and I've heard this from a few people, is He's not relevant anymore. As in, listening to Bob Dylan is anachronistic. As in, he no longer applies. As in, history has clearly pronounced its judgement on impassioned, outraged, hopeful folk music - hope lost, meaning lost, what's relevant now is Amy Winehouse. And I really like Amy Winehouse. But I think this is sort of silly. There are different kinds of art, that are called for in different situations. Sometimes art is fashion. Sometimes art is ego. Sometimes it's confession, or prayer, or plea - just, hear me, I want to talk to you, all of you, I need to say this, please. And sometimes it's prophecy:




I have been listening to this all weekend. Today Barack Obama spoke in my home state. Tomorrow night he will be president. It's true, there's still no such thing as a good political poem, and I am being way more earnest than usual, but isn't it funny how timeless this is, a song about how the times they are a-changin?

I will be back to my normal snarky self sooner or later. Just watch it and be moved, buttheads.

Oh, and the reading?

Was weird. And there was no beer. But people seemed to like what I read. Thanks for all the support. <3

What am I, the answer man? Just vote for me!

Hi Internet! Who else was unable to tear themselves away from the television last night, despite being unbelievably exhausted, because they didn't want to miss a single sighing breathy giggling inflammatory whiny McCainy crazy promise moment? There were some classics! Mavericky maverick John McCain is frankly not buying this "women's health" baloney, for instance. He accused Barack Obama of class warfare and wanting to "spread the wealth around"! Right after proposing that the emphatically NOT SOCIALIST United States government buy up 300 billion dollars worth of toxic mortgages, because sometimes the free market just needs the state to own everything in order for capitalism to work! Also, John McCain was deeply hurt by Congressman John Lewis' comments that the creepy racists at McCain rallies are creepy racists but he also insisted on his right to call Obama a terrorist supporter of voter fraud. That is just how these debates work.

It was actually honestly kind of amazing how much Barack knocked it out of the park. Throughout the entire thing he was calm, thoughtful, engaged, and polite, while John McCain just sort of had a stroke for ninety minutes. Maybe the race is all wrapped up already? Or maybe McCain watches the Simpsons as much as I do: character assassination, crazy promises, and having a stroke onstage totally worked for Homer Simpson when he ran for trash commissioner, even though he was running against Steve Martin! I know there's only two weeks or so until the election, but do you think it's too much to hope for that Sarah Palin will sing a song based on "The Candy Man Can" for the American people before this is all over? It's not like she's inexperienced or anything.

72 minutes of poetry tonight at SLC.

Yeah. So. I'm part of the 6x6 Poetry Reading at Sarah Lawrence College tonight. I AM SORT OF WORKED UP ABOUT IT. For anyone who lives near or within Metro-Northing distance of Bronxville, it should be a cool event - 6 grad and 6 undergrad students each reading for 6 minutes. 8 p.m. in Slonim Living Room. There is usually free booze, but no promises.

Christopher Buckley + Obama = <3<3<3

Because all the literary news I feel like posting seems to be political today. Sorry dudes, only a few more weeks of this and then it'll be back to the usual posts about kittens or critical theory or whatever - at least until I finish this article I'm writing (Toward A New Theory of Kittens). That is, unless the Republicans take the election, in which case there will be no more blog because I will be imprisoned for assassinating them myself. Ha ha ha! Am I kidding? Anyway, via Wonkette:

Not that it matters, because the modern Republican fat-ass troglodyte with a sixth-grade education and a dollar-forty in the bank is not exactly spending a lot of time reading books, but talented conservative author and essayist Christopher Buckley is now officially in the tank. He is voting for Barack Obama. (Yes, Christopher B. is the son of William F. Buckley, the founder of both the National Review and mid-20th Century conservative intellectualism, which is 100% dead forever now.)

American poets witty, apt.

Charles Bernstein declares poetry bailout! There are just so many lolz herein:

As we know, lax composition practices since the advent of modernism led to irresponsible poets and irresponsible readers. Simply put, too many poets composed works they could not justify. We are seeing the impact on poetry, with a massive loss of confidence on the part of readers. What began as a subprime poetry problem on essentially unregulated poetry websites has spread to other, more stable, literary magazines and presses and contributed to excess poetry inventories that have pushed down the value of responsible poems.

Then he sat back down and tried to stop imagining a future where most Americans use Best American Poetry 2008 for kindling.


And, ha, you should probably donate some dollars or hours or syllables to the American Center For Sarah Palin Inspirational Limericks. This is a nascent genre that (please God) only has a month or so to live, and when the campaign is over you might not have your buttons or t-shirts or lipstick anymore, but you will always have the rhymes:

If Biden's emotions cause you to panic,
just re-apply your tactical lipstick.
Remember the mantra
your handlers taught'cha:
maverick, maverick, maverick.

Wizened Space Lizard Perplexed By Earthling Young

Alternatively, here is a blog devoted to photographs of babies in the arms of the Republican's human opponent. We all needed this after the unbelievably infuriating week of news we just OH WAIT IT'S ONLY WEDNESDAY.

We can line up to buy it with paper bags on our heads.

Okay Pyn-tards, it's official: there is a new Thomas Pynchon book. It is, quote, a "noir detective story set in the 1960's.""With lots of psychedelia in the background." "Around 400 pages." This is huge because, as everyone who follows his career knows, Pynchon prefers not to begin a book until six hundred generations of PhDs have written their doctoral theses on his previous one. Speculation can only intensify as the novel nears readiness for publication, but it's nice to know that a) you might have a chance of finishing this one before your children reach adulthood, put you in a home and can no longer afford to buy your reading glasses and b) Thomas Pynchon is writing about intrigue and paranoia for a change.

Speaking of intrigue and paranoia, as I mentioned in a previous entry, I did make the colossal blunder of going to see "Blindness" by myself this past weekend and the only bright spot of those three hours was a trailer for the film adaptation of "Doubt" - a brilliant, critically acclaimed play that I declined to see at the Sarasota Asolo Theater this spring because I liked it too much. Philip Seymour Hoffman and Amy Adams (!) star alongside what looks like a truly harrowing Meryl Streep. Trailer for the least trite-looking film of award season yet after the jump.

Disco at the end of the world.

I am annoyed. I have been annoyed since the summer of 2007, when Gawker did my alma mater the gross injustice of excluding it from the running for Most Annoying Liberal Arts College In America. I am annoyed because Bennington made the list, and when I first read Bret Easton Ellis' The Rules of Attraction there were enough similarities to get me thoroughly creeped out. I became convinced that New College of Florida in the twenty-first century was channeling Bennington in the eighties. Right down to our twin, perpetual obsessions with retro- and apocalypse-themed revelry, which was fun while it lasted but also something I thought I'd left there.

So imagine my surprise last night when I found myself at an End-Of-The-World party sponsored by Absolut! On an evening when the market had just finished terrifying everyone with no end to the plunge in sight, scores of lovely glittery partiers lined up outside historic 583 Park to smoke, primp, and ask each other whether we'd all be living in caves three months from now. Thankfully we didn't have to have these conversations sober for very long; the non-red-carpet doors opened just after eight, letting the crowd flow in over the steps like chilled vodka over the memories of a stock portfolio.

And inside? Absolut had provided absolutely everything a person could need to properly celebrate the world catching fire. Tattooed girls in daisy dukes with pigtails and on roller skates? Check. Half-naked men entirely covered in silver body paint? Check. Peach bitter cocktails with edible flowers, champagne cocktails with strawberry puree? Check. Models in blue-and-chrome tutus (courtesy of Patricia Field, also in attendance) and a mezzanine from which to leer at them? Amanda Lepore? Check, check, check. It was a fabulous time. I drank a lot. And since Absolut does provide for a staple of human existence that can only get more popular as our financial crisis worsens, I'm eagerly looking forward to Absolut Disco 2009. I just hope my lack of memories can hold me over til then.

The town's sundial will be useless!

It's getting on toward winter, my first real one with snow and giant Christmas trees and Macy's rioting and if I'm very very very lucky, elves. I've been fascinated since high school, when I first read David What's-His-Name's obscure little essay on the real, grown-up adult people who voluntarily wear furry hats and jingly shoes and work at Santaland because they need to buy groceries or a place to live or whatever. You won't have heard of him. (Will we see an upsurge in former Wall Street employees this year, looking for a change of pace, a place to get out of the cold, or just the chance to ask Santa for their careers back? Regardless, I'm sure they have a lot to say. The coming months will likely find me wandering about the department store, a Muji notebook in my hand, doing my best to guess which elf will win NPR's random annual drawing to become an international celebrity essayist.)

But before we can have elves and blinky lights we have to have fall! That is, from what I've gathered, how seasons work. And fall is, again from what I've gathered, a time of year marked by the complete disintegration of systems and objects that were whole and functioning not a month and a half prior. Since the equinox two or so weeks ago, here are some things that Saturnus has felled with his sickle and gathered unto himself for his grim harvest feast:

1) my laptop
2) our foundationally sound economy
3) everyone's immune system
4) the entire fucking sun

So yesterday with the sun-blocker securely in place and harvest festival plans nixed due to plague I went alone to see "Blindness" (bad move) and then with some Californian MFA colleagues to Westville East (whose website is down, THANKS FALL), where we lamented what we missed about living near or below the equator and compared inabilities to choose appropriate footwear. This evolved into an idea for some type of weekly Sarah Lawrence dining club devoted to trying new cuisines and complaining about our stupid, stupid classmates. Next week is either a dinner party at someone's apartment or Ethiopian food and I think the plan is to talk about people who don't use punctuation in their fiction. I'll keep you posted.

SoFla blogs it like nobody does.

Let's face it, "Highfalutin" wouldn't be possible if it weren't for all of the conscientious people on the internet and elsewhere who lovingly hassle me to update every chance they get. But dear readership, did you know that some of these have blogs of their own? It's true! Time for me to give something back:


e'er so gently. So far there is only one entry, something the blog's author has promised to remedy. I hope he does because he will not be wheelchair-bound forever and will soon be able to write about things he can't just see from his balcony and Shia LaBoeuf will not play him in the shitty remake! Also anyone familiar with the concept of a "New Yorker-induced nap" will LOL.





/. I can't say enough good things about this blog. The writer is scary brilliant and completely awesome at calling out that "liberal" "progressive" "forward-thinking" gradeless pretentious Florida hippie college I graduated from. From which I graduated. They weren't heavy on grammar. She's also awesome at calling me out when I write glib pieces of feminist pop-snark that don't address any real issues. All I can think to say as a criticism is the entirely hypocritical statement that I wish she updated more. Update more!




If any of you other dudes have blogs that you haven't told me about, come forward and I'll love on you a little bit too! From what I hear people maybe sort of read this sometimes, and aren't you even a little bit curious to see what image I swipe from Google to put next to your blurb?

UPDATE: Irritating L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Poet Has Read Homer And Apparently My Thesis

Nothing lights a fire under my blog-neglecting ass faster than scholar-poets who have the audacity to claim that their work is political. It's like what I told my redneck jock tennis champion little cousin the last time we spoke and he more or less accused me of bringing shame upon the Aryan race: some black people may hate white people but that doesn't make you a victim of racism. You can only be a victim of racism if you do not benefit from it as an institutionalized framework of our culture. Eat your turkey leg, I'm audi. Similarly, Bob Perelman, don't call your poems political unless enough people outside the academy read them for it to make a goddamn difference. But please, by all means, keep giving interviews where you say shit like this:

it occurs to me that iambic pentameter is a little bit like the current Republican regime: the best that they can do is to try to disguise what they are doing. A good Bushista tries to mouth centrist sentiments while doing his nefarious, extremist reactionary things. I'm being a little tongue-in-cheek here. But it seems to me that the better iambic pentameter that has been done in the twentieth and the twenty-first centuries is iambic pentameter that doesn't draw attention to itself. That seems really odd, actually. So if that's the good iambic pentameter — the iambic pentameter that doesn't draw attention to itself— and the point of it is to mime natural speech but somehow to be obeying the rules in a clandestine way, that seems fairly odd to me.

OMG FASCIST PENTAMETER! This is funny because, as some of you might recall, I spent a whole 9 months of my life birthing a 108-page demon-baby on innovations within the sonnet genre and named it "Form or Fascism?" - a title an equally sleep-deprived Jess immediately praised for its catchiness - and explained to a tribunal why it should be allowed to live and then I won at college, hooray. The analogy to the Bush administration is cute, and prompts me to point out that some of us should remember Billy Collins was Laureate during the first two years of the Bush administration and while he isn't a meter freak or anything he did mainly write about Traveling by train, lying on a beach, and listening to jazz on the radio. Billy Collins you are the father of lies! Just sayin'.*

Anyway, with regards to content, there really is no such thing as a good political poem. I defy you to show me one. Stop trying, you can't, okay? It's just impossible. Poetry is successful when it shows us a new way of thinking, not when it tells us what to think or tries to shock us into just emoting. That's why meterical subversion is actually political and Allen Ginsberg is nightstand decoration. So good job L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets! You bug me, but you are smarter than basically everyone else who publishes poetry. Just stop writing poems about Derrida and then complaining that no one pays attention to you.

*Billy Collins you will always make a million dollars every day and eat lobster in your hot tub no matter what I write about you and I need to acknowledge that now, because as far as American poetry is concerned you are a fucking GANGSTER. Okay? Respect.

And with royalties.

This is cute. Former Gawker editor and recovering neurasthenic Emily Gould evidently took some literary theory courses, and she'd like you to see how smart she is in addition to feeling sorry for her: she's written an essay about how we should all stop blogging because the internet is, like, totally fascist. Since it seems to have been easy enough for her to do, I guess I can overlook the untidy detail that she, um, published it on the internet. Also? Being told to stop blogging by Emily Gould is like Robert Downey Jr. sitting you down for an intervention. Though the man has done some great work lately! Maybe Emily should take some notes? I am absolutely not calling anyone retarded.

Anyway, if you don't know her story, the deal is that she shared lots of personal details about her life and relationships in her own blog and in her Gawker posts, in true Stuff White People Like style, documenting the ensuing difficult breakup and writing a mea culpa for the Times. Now that some time has passed, she'd like to apply Walter Benjamin to the situation, using her own experience as a microcosm of the larger digital alienation at work in our culture. And actually, awesome for Emily Gould! She's come a long way since being visibly reduced to a stammering college freshman on CNN by Jimmy Kimmel.

It would just be so much easier to take her seriously if she weren't misinterpreting Benjamin! Not in the it's-a-complicated-essay-and-she-missed-a-debatable-nuance way. In the reading-it-exactly-fucking-wrong way. According to her, Benjamin finds reproducibility of artistic images problematic because it "clears the way for fascism." Actually, the entire point of the essay is that reproducibility of the image detracts from its elements of aura, ritual, and mystery. We no longer feel awed or overwhelmed by the image, which Benjamin feels can help us resist fascist governments. Nor does Benjamin employ the term "simulacra," as in Emily's amusingly alliterative "simulacra of social connection, facsimiles of friendship." I think she's thinking of Baudrillard, which is an honest mistake since they are both taught in crit theory courses and do both begin with 'b'.

Okay, okay. The people who produce our current consumable culture are smart and educated and they're going to show it (today I was delighted/horrified to learn that "Gossip Girl" namedrops Thomas Pynchon in an episode from last season). And as the writers of Stuff White People Like will tell you, there's a well-documented history of privileged white girls using fascist movements as metaphors for their own personal tragedies. Ach, du, Emily, it's just that Benjamin really is relevant to your situation, in a far different way than you realize! The aestheticization of the everyday inevitably leads to an aestheticization of politics, which means, for Benjamin, that we begin to find war beautiful. It becomes our art, in a sense, and you're one of the biggest profiteers in the game. Not everybody can shame the world for its online soullessness while making a killing from it in print. At least we are assured that she does it honestly and wryly.

Happy thoughts, bitches.

It's been a busy week: my mom was in town and I almost destroyed my boss' website. I'm pretty sure these are unrelated incidents, and she and I had fun regardless - we explored the Natural History Museum and took the Metro-North to have a look around Bronxville/Sarah Lawrence, which is, I discovered, entirely made of gingerbread. We had an amazing dinner at Community Restaurant, eating sourdough bread with spring garlic confit at communal tables next to three opinionated and voluble gay Columbia students who may or may not have been talking about wanting to fellate Barack Obama. I got her to try Pinkberry and she got me to watch "The Mummy." We visited Times Square, ate lunch in Bryant Park and, once closer to home, ate the very best cupcakes on the Upper West Side.

Trouble is, now she's gone, and work has become a more highly evolved form of babysitting and there are some days when it's really hard not to answer the phone with, "Dunder-Mifflin, this is Pam." If you, too, have constant unsupervised internet access at work and are missing your family who live across the country, here are some of the things that have been making my days a little sunnier:

George Orwell has a blog now.
Surrealist paintings and surrealistic painted Polaroids.
Penny Arcade's contribution to the ongoing iAppliance craze.
And Chris Onstad in the New Yorker Online yet again.

Literature majors do it with dead white guys.

HFL's List of Literary Cocktails
a work in progress
"because alcoholism is just like writing: it's a disease."

The Billy Collins
Two shots each of four non-complementary liquors. Shake well and serve. Done correctly, the drink should (like the paradelle, the inspiration behind it), evoke both hilarity and déjà vu.

The Bukowski
Three parts vodka, one part lighter fluid, one raw egg. Serve in an ashtray and start a fist-fight.

The Dylan Thomas
25 shots of anything. Remember, you can only have this drink once.

The Emily Dickinson
Basically a Shirley Temple made in a to-go cup. The recipient must leave the gathering at once and drink the cocktail alone in her bedroom.

The Thomas Pynchon
To be made by the drinker, not the bartender. Receive a bottle of scotch and a one-way ticket to San Jose from a man on a streetcorner in a raincoat. Take the flight and be met at the airport by a mysterious and beautiful woman. Move into her apartment and cohabitate for sixteen months, until you realize that love cannot truly exist in the postmodern era. Move out and take one of her tumblers by mistake. Bring the tumbler to your first appointment with a new psychiatrist, as a symbol of the overwhelming impossibility of ever truly knowing anyone. Ask the doctor for two ice cubes and pour yourself a small glass. Do not, under any circumstances, drink it.

As has been mentioned this is a work in progress and might become a zine someday. There is just no way of knowing! Suggestions and contributions are always, always welcome.

"Am I to become profligate as if I were a blonde?"

Well. That is the last time I share my idea for a blog post with another blogger before I write it. This is a sign, I'm sure: I have a blog now, and as I wrote a few posts back I have not been all that vigilant about caring for it, and if I do not shape up it will probably die of exposure. TLV has it right, I was offered an assistantship at Gainesville and seriously considered it for a week or so until I spoke to William Logan on the telephone. Whatever I might have thought of his poetry or criticism or teaching ability prior to that conversation became more or less immaterial afterward; the highlights included his excessive merriment over my GRE scores and shameless slandering of Derek Walcott. Reading his review of the new selected Frank O'Hara, written with all the taste and class of a disappointed and moderately talented Modernist, offered ample reassurance that I made the right move turning UF down.

So yes, it was delightful to see Frank O'Hara get a shout-out on the return of my favorite fictional advertising agency, though it's possible that I might have gotten a little too wasted beforehand to really take everything in. Whatever, though, it's more inappropriate not to watch "Mad Men" with a cocktail in hand, and as last Sunday marked the end of my first week at my new job a face-melting fizzy trifecta of Pimm's, Cointreau and dry ginger beer was just the thing.

Speaking of my new job, the first thing I'd like to address about my old one is that management types at Urban Outfitters are filthy, filthy liars. Do not work there. They will promise you 40 hours a week and give you 13. They will make you bring a doctor's note if you call in sick. Your co-workers will have names like 'Jazz' and 'Gigi' and they'll send you to nonexistent corners of the store to find fictional dresses and sweater sets. They will put you "on call" for closing shifts and make you spend half an hour off the clock dragging trash outside at 2 a.m. Do not work at Urban Outfitters if you can possibly avoid it. It would have been nice to use my discount once, though.

Now I work here, and my office has a view of the Empire State Building and it is indeed within walking distance of Madison Avenue, making my continued love affair with Sterling Cooper & co. all the more apt and enriching. The dress code is pretty casual, but I have to confess to a growing interest in up-dos and pencil skirts, even though no one drinks rye or smokes Luckies in the conference room. True, I may have called that prematurely. We'll see what week three has in store.

Before the dawn.

That's when the night is always darkest. I've been here nearly two months and there have been a lot of ups and downs and there are a lot of people who helped me through, whether they were very close or very very far away. I'm not naming names, but you've all been invaluable, and for that, I'd like to tell you to see "Dark Knight" immediately.

(Un?)Fortunately for you, you won't have the pleasure of sharing a train ride to the theater with a starry-eyed, toothless Haitian man who held a 100-block-long conversation with no one in three different languages about the sweet tea from McDonald's - to be fair, it really is a bargain. And I have seen more ridiculous things since I came to New York City: a man walking down the street hand in hand with his girlfriend wearing a shirt that read "I got 99 problems but a bitch ain't one," for instance, or a guy and a girl stopping their car in the middle of Broadway to drag out the front seat passenger and beat him senseless and drive on. But something about the timing of this particular lunatic sighting made it absolutely perfect, his shining gums limned with the evening sun as the 1 train climbed above ground to 125th Street, my favorite stop on the track. I was very sorry to go when my stop came.

As for the movie, it's late, and I'm not going to ruin anything for anyone, so all I'm going to say is that Harry and I left the theater literally incredulous at how much we had just enjoyed ourselves. Everything about it is perfect: the pacing, the performances, the score, the message, and it was exactly what I needed. Tomorrow I start my new job, which I'll blog when I get home, but for now I need sleep while the night is still dark.

The PLOTUS Eaters.

There's a new Poet Laureate, and it's Kay Ryan. Now if we can just manage to avoid electing John McCain come November, I think the United States can get itself back on the right track.

Honestly, this is really excellent news. While almost anyone would have been an improvement over Charles Simic, the appointment of Ryan is going to take the post in an entirely new direction, regardless of whether Ron Silliman thinks she's a "Poet of Quietude" or not. Seeing new poems of hers in Poetry is basically the only reason I bother to buy that publication any longer, and I can't imagine why The New Yorker's poetry editor chooses to print her work so often seeing that it runs directly counter to the magazine's apparent goal of killing its readers with boredom or American poetry with inanity. But I'm at least 80% sure I didn't start a blog to be mean to people I don't have to see in real life (check the previous entry, there are still some kinks I'm working out.) Anyway, Kay Ryan can do more with four four-word lines than Simic can with twenty - I'm in perpetual admiration of her economy, intelligence, and perceptiveness.

There are a lot of writers out there, however, who are dissatisfied with the decision because they don't feel Ryan is experimental enough, and Silliman spends some time dissecting the media's designation of her as "outsider" on his blog. As someone who really does operate on the fringe, I guess it's his prerogative to take issue. But could we be more mature about this, please? The problem with the School of Quietude/Post-Avant dichotomy isn't just that it's a crude and meaningless apparatus for understanding contemporary American poetry, or that it falls apart entirely when applied to individual poets. It's that it turns contemporary poetics into a battlefield instead of a discussion, a place where you have to pick sides, where there's a right answer and a wrong one. Nerds and jocks. I think Silliman writes very well, and he definitely maintains one of the best poetry sites in the blogosphere. But give me a break:

This places Ryan into an interesting situation. Expectations could hardly be lowered any further. The task before her is not simply to find new and useful ways to promote the diversity of American poetries, but to rehabilitate the office of PLOTUS itself. She can begin by presuming that she represents all of the poets & poetries of the nation, not just the same little clique that’s clung to the job since 1937.

Seriously, this is starting to sound way too much like high school. Anyone willing to claim that Robert Penn Warren and Gwendolyn Brooks belong to the "same little clique" obviously hasn't looked farther than the shallowest formal resemblances, but it's just easier to make a blanket statement about the entire 71-year-old position because Penn Warren taught Robert Lowell who was friends with Elizabeth Bishop and they all knew Cleanth Brooks! It's a peculiar trait of experimental poets, that they guard their fringe status ferociously but seem relentlessly preoccupied with the mainstream. Like how Rayanne and Angela would get into those enormous fights almost every episode of "My So-Called Life" but would always work it out because, secretly, they wanted to be each other? I'm not suggesting a poetry beyond schools. But maybe I am? I just think it's dumb not to admit that you'd like to have Angela Chase's nice family or be adventurous and devastating like her best friend. That's how poetry evolves and things get better. When you don't do that, there's no way you can grow, and there's a character in the show for you too: his name was Brian Krakow.

The Life Vicarious gets low-down.

To my blog -

Being both nascent and neglected, you bear a lot of unfortunate resemblances to an unwanted child. I know I haven't always been the best mother or given you a lot of stability. I wrote a whole essay on critical responses to "Sex and the City" and then left you to fend for yourself for days. I allowed Anthony Lane to come up twice over the course of twelve entries. I can't decide how I want to raise you - whether you're going to be about my life in New York City or literature, and it worries me that I feel I have to choose. What's worse, I don't feel like I know who you are at all. Are you confessional? Snarky? Highbrow? Lowbrow? Some bastard confluence of all four? Parenting is hard, but I want you to know that I always always wanted you.

So many thanks to The Life Vicarious for babysitting on Thursday with a rewrite of the July 14th entry:

Everyone is yelling at us for neglecting this blog like a dumpster baby. We didn't even know anyone we know valued such things (websites, developing human life, both major time wasters.) But now like a deadbeat dad who didn't see the money-making potential a well-disciplined child could produce through corporate sponsorship, we say give us back our baby so we can paint it!

Sometime very soon we, I mean I, plan to return the favor. Just now I and my dumpster baby have a tanning salon to visit.

Okay, I'm the girl who sucks.

Everyone is yelling at me for neglecting this blog. I didn't know that many people read it! I have things to write about and things to think out by writing about them and all of it, but they will have to wait until this evening. In the meantime, entertain yourselves with Chris Onstad's interview in The New Yorker online. A gem, in which Chris asks the question that's been on every New Yorker reader's mind for a while now:

Onstad: I haven’t seen much Malcolm Gladwell lately, and I wonder if that’s because he’s busy running more social experiments centered around his haircut. Also, I thought it was lame that Anthony Lane acted like he didn’t care about the Rolling Stones. That is ridiculous, not to care about that band in a really heavy way. Is he (originally) from space?

And spoonbills.

This week has been way too crazy to process in any other fashion besides itemization. I'm not sorry, and you'll have to deal with it.

Wednesday (last week): Hit the nadir of my homesickness and big city blues, proving to myself and everybody around me that I am tenderhearted like whoa - and affirming the observation of a friend who would know that applying at Momofuku would have been a pretty bad idea. Ate a truly awful slice of pizza at a restaurant owned and staffed by the truly well-meaning in Jersey City. Spent the rest of the day back in Manhattan, bumming around Lincoln Center and pretending to be interested in spa promotions so vacationing hippies would keep talking to me. Yeah, more than 8 million people live here, and yeah, it really gets that lonely.

Thursday: Got my hair cut by a sweet Californian Aveda student at their Spring Street campus, which I have to say was probably the best $20 I've spent in recent memory and definitely the best $20 I've ever spent on my hair. I haven't worn a bob since fifth grade; I've never had a short haircut that didn't make my head look like a triangle. Rachel, if you're reading, you did really excellent work. I was so inspired by this haircut that I walked 40 blocks down Broadway, applying for job after job after job. Rachel, I wish you could cut my hair all the time, but we both know that is not how Aveda works.

Friday: Took a walk through Central Park with Jeremy and ended up at the Met, an odd choice since his ex girlfriend works there, but I think he wanted to take me someplace with a little class after sending me to Brooklyn and calling to cancel our lunch date while I was on the train. Anyway, good times were had despite being on the lookout for a brunette with green eyes and a taste for boys' hearts - we saw the Superheroes exhibit and then debated about the difference between art as ritual and art as abstraction while trying to decide which New Guinean mask terrified us more. Then it was up to the roof to see the cocktail drinkers, the Koons exhibit, and the sunset (listed in order of amusement afforded). Following that we met up with some folks in Chinatown for dinner at Nice Green Bo, where the scallion pancakes and crab/pork dumplings were completely worth waking up with night sweats from all the MSG. Seriously, go there. You will be sorry, but you will not learn your lesson.

Saturday: Dinner with Harry at Ruby Tuesday's in Times Square, where all the plates are rectangular and the entire waitstaff is about to be the next Broadway sensation. Harry really likes Ruby Tuesday's. I guess I see his point, but did they have to add a gratuity to our check? It would have been nice to decide for myself if I wanted to give our waiter %18, no matter how sculpted his arms or how much gel he had in his hair. The night got way better, though, as we made our way over to Gramercy to see some friends of Harry's in a ballet-butoh fusion performance where girls danced with hand puppets and desecrated the flag. Girls wearing wedding dresses and red, white, and blue face-paint.

Sunday: Went out for The Hold Steady at the first of JellyNYC's Brooklyn Pool Parties this summer. Made awkward conversation with a very polite Swedish man who had never heard of The Hold Steady but had been sent to the concert by a host who was too busy to entertain him. He and I lost track of each other, though, when it started completely fucking pouring. J Roddy and the Business were high-energy but repetitive and of course The Hold Steady kicked ass, but the real heroes of the afternoon were The Loved Ones, who played through the rain despite the risk of imminent electrocution. Being surrounded by sweaty, drunk, soaked moshers and crowd-surfers made me feel 14 again. It barely even mattered that The Loved Ones play slightly less interesting music than Good Charlotte.

Monday: The Fancy Food Show! Basically what happened is that I posed as a journalist, having been invited by a real journalist, and ate until I could barely breathe. Best food sampled? Lobster mac and cheese. Most randomly ubiquitous? Aloe vera juice (being offered for some reason by five different countries on both levels of the convention center). Biggest letdown? Freesecake. Most amoral? Vosge's chocolate-covered bacon. There were also shortbreads, barbecue sandwiches, flavored honeys, and exotic potato chips in abundance, all of which made me very happy.

Tuesday: Digesting.

Wednesday (yesterday): Incidentally the one-month anniversary of my arrival in New York. Group interview at Urban Outfitters. I know, I know. It was bizarre on too many levels to enumerate and I'll probably write a separate entry just about that, but for now let's just say that we sat in a circle and answered questions about our favorite bands. It was like a casting call for an Upper West Side season of "The Real World". Everyone in attendance had a Dream. There were two dancers, one rapper/model, a jazz pianist, a med student, and a Guns n' Roses fan working on his first novel.

I was nervous, I'll admit it, but the people in charge decided I was hip enough to work there. Which is really pretty amazing. In the span of a week I have evolved from a jobless wreck who would get all teary-eyed for hours at the Florida birds exhibit in the Natural History Museum to one of the city's pre-eminent purveyors of cool, and someone who can afford groceries at that! I even get discounts. But I won't lie to you; I will probably still spend my time staring at stuffed egrets.

Revenge of the Quotidian.

Holy shit, serendipity rules! Sometimes I wonder if there actually is a guiding force in the universe, but I'm always proven to be an idiot for having doubts. For instance, this morning The Life Vicarious and I had a more or less civilized discussion about quotation marks in blogs (which I maintain are no more or less correct than italics as long as the choice is consistent throughout the text), which made me think of Jessica's and my favorite billboard on 41 when I still lived with her on 35th street next door to the firehouse playground/crack dealership. It was a pro-recycling ad by the city insisting that 'Together we "can" keep Sarasota beautiful.' (The Trash Dude pictured at right is the campaign's mascot, and may or may not want you to talk to him). Clearly this was the result of some junior copywriter's murky comprehension of the mechanics of punning, but we couldn't help but read it sarcastically. Then tonight I discover there's an entire blog devoted to this sort of thing! Like Engrish, Spoonerisms, and Yogi Berraisms (not to mention the entire sub-genre of humor that's sprouted up around George W. Bush's public speaking career), Unnecessary Quotes might only be funny to grammar dorks. All I can say is that I was laughing so hard my roommate had to come see if I was all right, and yeah, I said I was "fine," but I'm pretty sure I was being sincere.

"Dennis surfed. I couldn't surf. I never learned how."

All right, it's been a while. I haven't felt inclined to write much, but am updating if for no other reason than to assure Katie that I haven't died of stabbing or hairspray inhalation.

Everyone who knows me well knows that when I get bummed out I hide, which I've found to my horror is easier to do in New York City than basically anywhere else I've ever been. Supposing you can face the world long enough to leave your apartment for half an hour, anything you could want from Indian food to "designer" sunglasses is within walking distance - even in Washington Heights, an area described by a friend as filled with so much testosterone that I feel like if someone looks at me too long I'll get knocked up. (This is actually a pretty accurate assessment of my neighborhood).

But if you really want to coddle your inner hermit and hole up in the most antisocial way possible for a few days, all you need are a laptop, working wireless, and (maybe) a cell phone. There are any number of groceries, restaurants, and drug stores that deliver, of course, and most of them allow you to place your order online (for when speaking to another human being is just too much to handle). Did you know, though, that you can have DVDs delivered to you? And cupcakes? And Jacques Torres chocolate? And wine and/or liquor from the Artisan Wine Company? In under an hour? Really. I'm convinced that the exorbitant cost of living is the only reason New York isn't inhabited by several million post-SMiLE Brian Wilsons, all peering through their curtains for the delivery cars and courier bikes that have become the city's only street traffic. But that's a thought I'll have to finish later; right now I have leftover Papa John's in the fridge.

Like, sitting at the kids' table on Thanksgiving.

It's raining. Torrentially, downpouringly, sweetly, like an answer to somebody's prayers. Since I got the rest of my books back I've been re-re-re-reading my copy of James G. Frazer's The Golden Bough, which is a source of enormous sentimental as well as inspirational value since it's the first thing I bought during my first day of orientation at New College four years ago. The purchase took place at the now-defunct Pelican Man Thrift Store on N. Tamiami during a search for something appropriate to wear to a 70's retro rollerskating party and I spent the whole time talking about Joseph Campbell to impress a guy who later that night hooked up with my neighbor Frank. So the book is dear to me for a lot of reasons, in particular as a symbol of the weird, irrational, ridiculous things people (I) do (did) when they just don't have a clue what's going on.

The rain-making section has been my favorite for years. Frazer notes that there are as many different rituals for bringing rain as there are magical cultures: Macedonian Greeks would sing songs while drenching a flower-bedecked virgin who leads a parade, while in New Caledonia the custom was to exhume a dead body and shower the bones with water. In a tribe from New South Wales, Frazer observed a ritual that involved a sorcerer breaking off a piece of quartz and spitting it at the sky. And this is possibly one of my favorite passages in any written work anywhere: "In Zululand women sometimes bury their children up to the neck in the ground, and then retiring to a distance keep up a dismal howl for a long time. The sky is supposed to melt with pity at the sight."

In my neighborhood the ritual is opening the fire hydrants. Basically every kid on my block was out in a bathing suit during the recent heat wave, and since the forecast for the next few days is rain in amounts of one inch or more, it seems to have worked out all right. Coming down from a margarita-drinking contest at the Times Square Dave and Buster's, I listened to the rain and supinely watched CW11's 10 o' clock broadcast and coincidentally got really, really nostalgic.

Oh, Florida, I love you so much. A guy in Deland (where else?) tried to rob a store with a palm frond! Tampa developers are, um, dangling a nude pool in front of reluctant condo buyers to beat the dismal market! Florida, the FDA even thinks you might have poisoned the rest of the nation! Not only that, but today alligators were found in a Tennessee drain pipe, a family pool in LaGrange, NY, and the fucking Chicago River. Please, please, please keep this up, Florida. I may have my ups and downs adjusting here, but it does me much good to know you'll always be the United States' retarded cousin.

The beer and ice cream cure.

To treat homesickness, flu, and lady problems all at once:
1. Do it up Sarasota-style. There's no Shell station, but there are tons of corner stores and most of them are open late.
2. Breyer's All-Natural Strawberry Ice Cream.
3. Grolsch Premium Lager.
4. TV on DVD.
5. Soft blanket.
6. Two warm cats.

Works like a charm.

Where nobody knows you and nobody gives a damn.

There's a new Wolf Parade release and it's fucking awesome. Listen to it here. And watch more awesome below.

"Yo, dude, like... I think we're the band!"

Maybe I compromised my health with too much thinking about "Sex and the City." I hear it happens. But this is New York. It could have been anything: bad hot dog, inhaling too much smoke at the Big Apple BBQ Block Party last week, or inhaling too much, uh, baseball at Yankee Stadium. It could have been the suspense of waiting for UPS to show up with the rest of my shit (it came today! Now I have, among other things, an iron, the complete first season of "The Wire", and two big boxes full of packing peanuts.) But to tell the truth, the walk from Smith St. and 9th to Ikea Plaza in Red Hook last night during a wind/rain/dust storm is probably what did me in. Everything's a tradeoff, so I shouldn't be surprised that my free blue and yellow umbrella came with a terrible, terrible cold. Fucking Swedes.

Whatever, I'm happy to suffer a little for a good deed, especially since I hear no one is allowed to leave for more than ten minutes and the bathroom situation is pretty grim. Though for all the coverage this campout has been getting, I'm actually amazed the blogger in question hasn't made this connection. Maybe the Beastie Boys don't look Swedish enough?

Anyway, over here it's been a day in, watching old Simpsons episodes and waiting for the box-man. Meanwhile, I've been perfecting my summer mixtape, which, thanks to Jillian, has given me even more amusement than seeing two sherpas drag Homer up the Murderhorn. In case you're stuck inside too, whether in your house or a blue and yellow tent, here's the mix and my response.

A SONG...

1. for the last day of school Jackson 5 - "ABC"
2. by a teenager Bright Eyes - "Oh You Are The Roots That Sleep Beneath My Feet And Hold The Earth In Place"
3. for a summer fling Iggy Pop - "Fall In Love With Me"
4. to air guitar to The Kinks - "You've Really Got Me"
5. ROAD TRIP! Mirah - "Million Miles"
6. that says "fuck you! i'm fucking awesome" Dar Williams - "As Cool As I Am"
7. that feels like summer of 5th grade The Mountain Goats - "California Song"
8. like a saturday morning cartoon intro George Gershwin - "Novelette In Fourths"
9. to build sand castles to Josh Ritter - "To The Dogs Or Whoever"
10. for the silly Atom & His Package - "Upside Down From Here"
11. exactly 2 minutes, 1 second long Beat Happening - "Drive Car Girl"
12. about or mentions flowers Janis Joplin - "Flower In The Sun"
13. to lose your virginity to Nina Simone - "I Want A Little Sugar In My Bowl"
14. that would play during the end of summer kiss Modest Mouse - "Polar Opposites"
15. with an alliterative title Neko Case & The Virginians - "Honky Tonk Hiccups"
16. for kool-aid on the porch/stoop Scout Niblett - "So Much Love To Do"
17. that top charted summer of the early 90's Ace Of Base - "The Sign"
18. to accompany an ice cold beer Tom Waits - "In The Neighborhood"
19. for day tripping... Wilco - "What Light"
20. YEAH! SUMMER! Mates Of State - "Ha Ha"

Files to be posted when the NyQuil wears off.

Sexism in the City? Sort of.

Actually, I've been writing this in my head for a few days, but Caitlin made me promise to write it on the internet. This one's for you, Caitlin. And yesterday was Father's Day, an appropriate occasion to write about patriarchy (yes, I called my dad, and no, he did not oppress me). Plus I got rained out of seeing Vampire Weekend for free in Central Park Saturday afternoon and had ample opportunity, on the soggy, Tokyo-esque rush hour subway ride home, to study Anthony Lane's review in the New Yorker. After all, once I was on the train I couldn't move my arms enough to hold the magazine any further than two inches from my face. And if there's a better distraction from wondering how much Aquanet you can breathe without dying or who keeps jabbing you in the kidneys and why, I haven't found one yet.

First things first. Anthony Lane, who broke up with you? When did it happen? Are you okay? Do you want to talk about it? I can tell you're upset, but comparing Sarah Jessica Parker to Audrey Hepburn isn't going to make anybody feel feel better. A lot of people have been calling you out on writing a sexist review, and they aren't wrong (even if they are dumb, but I'm getting to that part). The misogyny is blatant enough that even journalists with only the most rudimentary understanding of feminism are able to write whole articles on it - but like I said, I'm getting to that part. Aside from the much-quoted "hormonal hobbits" quip and the cringeworthy discussions of Kim Cattrall's unattractiveness on the big screen (deftly deconstructed at Jezebel), there are a thousand tiny things about the piece to demonstrate contempt, not only for these four fictional women but an entire idea of womanhood in the 21st century. Anthony Lane, you could probably even have gotten away with calling them hobbits if you hadn't addressed the actors in absentia as if you were speaking to a waitress who had brought you an overcooked steak:

“When Samantha couldn’t get off, she got things,” Carrie says. Look at the beam in your own eye, sister. ... When the wedding hits a bump (look out for Kristin Davis screaming “No! No!” at Chris Noth like a ninth grader auditioning for “The Crucible”), and the bridegroom veers away, our heroine’s reaction to the split is typical: “How am I going to get my clothes?” What, honey, even the puffball skirt that you wear to the catwalk show—the one that makes you look like a giant inverted mushroom?

Even then, it still might have been o.k.! Like I mentioned earlier, these women aren't real, and they are, to be fair, thoroughly annoying. But the worst parts of the review happen when the sneers are directed away from the screen, toward the women in the audience: an area that I've always assumed to be outside the film critic's jurisdiction. It's one thing to put down Carrie Bradshaw and her enormous shoe closet, but quite something else to slam the women who like that closet, even if it is bothersome that they're having fun while you're miserable:

The creepiest aspect of this sequence was the sound that rose from the audience as he displayed the finished closet: gasps, fluttering moans, and, beside me, two women applauding. The tactic here is basically pornographic—arouse the viewer with image upon image of what lies just beyond her reach—and the film makes feeble attempts to rein it in.

Decidedly uncool, Anthony Lane. As Ramin Setoodeh points out, the New Yorker review is one of many, many, many more vitriolic responses to the movie, and it does indicate something ugly about how we perceive women, and I am glad he spoke up! I just wish he were smarter. Telling every man who reads Newsweek and didn't like "SATC" that he only hates the movie because he's threatened by women about matches Lane's condescension to his female fellow viewers. And, if we truly can "all imagine" a lunch between Hillary Clinton and Carrie, then I think I know why she lost. But what's most troubling about Setoodeh's rebuttal is his fashioning of the franchise into a haven of sisterhood and female empowerment, a place where "women can love each other, and need each other, more than they do men" (this from Newsweek's print version) - placed side by side with Senator Clinton's campaign and the apparent unfairness with which she's been treated.

Lane overreacted, but I think I know what he was responding to, even if it was hard for him to articulate. It's the Third Wave's conflation of empowerment with entitlement, its insistence that women be heard, not because they have anything to say but because they are women. And that should be enough. If it isn't? Cry sexism, something Third Wavers like Setoodeh have done so often over so much banal bullshit that the word has lost all meaning. This is a feminism in dire need of radical rethinking. For one thing, it's created embarrassing, false, and by now mostly indelible (thanks Candace Bushnell) associations between femininity and consumerism, femininity and the barely clothed embodied, femininity and unreason. It's utterly depressing to think of Alice Paul going to prison so women could be free to get all teary-eyed over Sarah Jessica Parker getting teary-eyed over shoes. Also, people should be aware that this is a specifically privileged feminism, one for white middle-to-upper class Western women, who still haven't achieved wage equity but are unlikely to suffer from patriarchy by, say, receiving involuntary clitoridectomies.

But beyond that, it's this entanglement of frivolous victimhood with our consciousness of patriarchy. No, sexism isn't fair, and neither are a lot of things people are saying about both Senator Clinton and Carrie & co. Sadly, yelling foul isn't the way to win elections or anyone's respect - especially not when you bill a movie about weddings as emblematic of female empowerment. Not to get all Anthony Lane or whatever, but think this through, ladies. Otherwise we're headed some pretty stupid places. Here's some help:

I just get so flustered when he starts in on U.S. foreign policy!

How to show up ridiculously late for two really good poetry readings in the West Village:

Wednesday. Be introduced to Time Out New York by a concerned roommate who has noticed that you divide most of your energy between talking to your cats and that scarf you're knitting. Take her advice to heart when she tells you, with the politesse New Yorkers have made famous, to "get your ass out there." Decide on a free reading by Zachary Schomburg, at the New York City public library on 6th Ave. Take the B train to West 4th, but avoid getting off there through negligence and absorption in the latest Newsweek! (To be addressed in a later post.) Instead, ride the train to Brooklyn. Look up from Fareed Zakaria, notice you're crossing a bridge, and realize that something is wrong.

Thursday. Go to Brooklyn on purpose this time, for Peter Gizzi, Cathy Park Hong, and others at the A Public Space poetry reading in the magazine's Dean St. office. Change your mind at the last minute because details about APS are sketchy and there's a reading at the Cornelia Street Cafe, where the names aren't as big but there is alcohol. Take the B train, but throw yourself a nice little curveball by taking it in the wrong direction. Get off at Prospect Park and practice your cursing.

So I arrived at both readings with basically enough time to see them end, which was all right regardless. Seeing Ron Singer on Thursday night was more casual - bar atmosphere, a room full of poets who know each other. His work is humane and articulate, gently comical and full of enthusiasms (who knew that his reading would feature a brief lesson on how to say "Batman" in Spanish? It's Hombre Chiropteran.) But Zachary Schomburg the night before completely blew me away. His book, The Man Suit, features a blurb calling him "one of the sincerest surrealists around," and that's pretty much dead-on. It's rare to find an author who can, say, make you care about a love story between a lung and a haircut, or pull off a trick like introducing two islands to each other at the north pole. Dead Presidents, victims of repeated stabbing, animals in people clothes, lumberjacks and opera singers all coexist here in a delicately balanced symbiosis. Plus, he is extremely nice and still autographed my copy even though I came in late! Some of the book is amateurish; a few endings are too pat, a few reaches too obvious. But that shouldn't alter your enjoyment of it a single bit, and I'm going to prove it to you right now.

The Things That Surround Us

The entire world was there. The magnetic north pole was there. Prince Patrick Island was introduced to Prince of Wales Island and these were not the only islands being introduced to other islands. One room was completely filled with the space around all the islands.

When you asked me if I was an island, I told you that I was not. When you asked me to join you in the drawing room, I told you that I could not, that I was in fact an island and I couldn't join anyone anywhere.

Saddened, you revealed to me that you were not the two things that just outward into the sea as I had assumed, but the little bit of gray sea between them.

Then I told you that I was the entire Arctic Ocean sometimes.

Some 'splaining. Some splashing.

And some tips if you are considering moving to New York City from Sarasota, Florida.

1. Do not attempt to rent a minivan from Budget's SRQ branch. Two bald men, one tall, one short, will deny you your van on the day you had planned to leave. You'll be hung-over, exhausted, and almost crying, but they will not care. Walk 50 feet toward bag check and see Jessie at Alamo-National. Jessie understands you.
2. Tell everyone you meet that you're moving across the country to get a Master of Fine Arts degree in poetry writing. This will get you more free drinks than you can imagine.
3. If you're trying to find Mrs. Wilkes' Boarding House in Savannah's Historic District, be advised that there are two West Jones Streets, one of which will take you to the Savannah College of Art and Design - a place which, despite having dated an alum, you have no desire to go.
4. Do break into the pool after hours at the Gateway Boulevard La Quinta. Do not have the fish and chips at the Ashland T.G.I. Friday's.
5. Guided By Voices' "Bee Thousand" will get you through Baltimore, but Wilco's "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" will only scare the shit out of you as you search for your exit off I-95 outside Richmond in the dark and the rain. Pack something sunnier for moments like this one.
6. There's no way in hell you'll find a parking space on your street when you arrive after seven. Park the rental illegally, double park it to unload, and park it illegally again overnight.
7. New York City cultivates an unsettling indifference to the scent of human urine. Are you the only one who notices? Seriously, it's everywhere. Especially your building's elevator.
8. Tell everyone you meet that you just moved across the country to get a Master of Fine Arts degree in poetry writing. This will get you more free drinks than you can imagine.
9. Avoid the food court, but spend as much time as possible at the American Museum of Natural History. Spend especially large amounts of time here.
10. Never buy milk from the Rite-Aid on 170th and Broadway.

So, okay. I'd be lying to you if I said this was my first blog; I've had a LiveJournal for years and I had an OpenDiary before El-Jay revolutionized our understanding of Sylvia Plath's effect on the modern American adolescent. There are definite elements of theatre and egocentrism that I enjoyed a lot when I was seventeen and make me cringe a little now. But seriously, if you're reading this that's awesome, because you probably know me and I probably miss you and it's about everything I do of which I wish you were a part. Please keep reading.

I nabbed the title from Yuri Olesha's Envy, and I like it because I think it sums up what I'm going through pretty well. I have numerous discussions with numerous people about feeling really provincial here, not just a country mouse but a water rat, someone for whom cutoff shorts are a fashion staple and Miller High Life really is the champagne of beers. No sense denying it: if you're a runner, run. If you're a bell, ring. It's not a new story - Southern kid tries to make good in the Big City while staying true to roots - but I guess it's mine now and no, I'm not prepared to comment yet on the much-analyzed City/Country dichotomy.

We'll just have to see how things develop.

Instead, for the moment I'm going to yield the floor, as I have on so many other important occasions in my life, to Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis: