shuffleboard

Sometimes I listen to my iPod on shuffle, to feebly try to recreate the joy that happens when a DJ plays a song I love. It doesn't really work, because the DJ-as-other is really an essential part of that whole deal. Anyway, as I was coming out of BART, Jeff Buckley's cover of "Hallelujah" shuffled forth. That song is definitely in my all time top five, although I don't know where it fits. But it's different to listen to something that moves me that much while I'm in transit mode, a mode usually reserved for something groovy and/or mindless or calming. Then I was starting to think about how my experience right then was being painted by the music, and that all of a sudden my life was taking on this filmic quality and I felt detached, and then the next song that got shuffled to me was "The Humpty Dance" by Digital Underground. Talk about killing the moment. I'm the one who said just grab 'em in the biscuits...

(warning: this is fairly graphic) Oh Jocelyn, where are you?

"Here are America's girls: on their knees." A rather shocking last line to this longass essay I just read in this month's Atlantic. It's a scattershot sort of piece that's firing at young adult lit, the current state of the Blowjob Nation, Monica Lewinsky, and hip hop, among other things. I don't doubt that there's a bit of hysteria about this "oral sex craze," but I know a few people working in public health, and I was a high school teacher, and I think the stats are there that do show a preponderance of girls casually administering fellatio to boys. It makes me miss Jocelyn Elders. While she was ousted as Surgeon General for her, in my view, extremely wise view that inviting masturbation into public dialogue might be a good thing (no one ever got pregnant/diseased from masturbation!), we instead are all about the abstinence. And subsequent shocking ignorance (Noah told me of a girl who believed she could get pregnant from oral sex because after all, she was swallowing sperm into her stomach where she's been told babies grow). And while oral sex isn't actually getting anyone pregnant and is certainly on the safer side of safer sex, I worry for the girls who are a part of the Blowjob Nation. Caitlin Flanagan, who wrote this article, put it very well: "What's most worrisome about this age of blasé blow jobs isn't what the girls might catch, it's what the girls are almost certainly missing: a healthy emotional connection to their own sexuality and their own desire."

This statement resonates because of a conversation I heard on the bus yesterday. Some kids from Marina Middle School (don't even get me started on their dead white guy edifice I have to look at while waiting for the bus: PLATO! HOMER! NEWTON! DANTE! MILTON! etc....seriously ...PASTEUR?...WAGNER?...) got on the bus and we talking ever so openly about sex, specifically cunnilingus, specifically which boys in their school would perform it. One girl offered up freely, casually in every sense of the word, like seriously she'd have had the same tone if she were reporting the boy loaned her a pen, that she knows firsthand of a boy who does it. The unanimous chorus that followed was startling. Both genders in the group found the boy disgusting for doing such a thing. As did the girl who had allegedly received the cunnilingus. From the girl's tone of voice/facial expressions/gestures (she was sitting facing me), she gave no indication that she knew the act was for her pleasure. I genuinely think she didn't know. Jocelyn Elders wouldn't have stood for that.

counterexample? please?

So last night was the Colin Meloy solo show at Great American. I have a deep love for the Decemberists, and I was stoked to see what Colin does solo. His rendition of "Grace Cathedral Hill" literally choked me up, and his in between song banter definitely rivals John Darnielle's in awesomeness--Colin's comment about having the dressing room to himself, not having to share anything, and being able to rub salsa all over his body was priceless. Patrick was thinking the Mountain Goats should play with the Decemberisits and the whole thing would be awesome banter. It would be more like "Colin Meloy and John Darnielle, in Conversation" than a show. Colin also sang us part of the "worst song" he's ever written, which was called "Dracula's Daughter." And yes, it was bad. It rhymed "bad" with "dad." But what was worse was this song about him inpregnating his sweetheart. So trite and sentimental, about hwo simultaneously weird and wonderful it is to have a baby. Ugh. He acknowledged that singing a song about a baby is wrong and only Stevie Wonder can do it. So why did he do it? Why did he have to add another line to the tally of people who get stupider after they have a baby? Thankfully there are a few people I know with babies who haven't lost their cool, but I'm worried for you, Colin.

units

Just finishing up Jacquard's Web, a book about the history of computers (I first typed that as computars. Sounds like something Godzilla would fight. Com-pu-taaaaar!) as they developed from the punch-card programmed weaving loom made by Jacquard. At the end of the book the author talks about how things on modern computers, namely sizes of windows and whatnot, are traceable back to the standards set by punchcards. This reminded me of Ryan telling me about how measurements on the space shuttle are traceable to horse and buggies, which determined the widths of train tracks, and the measurements propagated all the way through to spacecraft. I'm now curious to know what other standards have been set arbitrarily by now obsolete technology. There's something almost adorable about the ways we resist reinventing the wheel.

check, check it out.

Five epistolary poems of mine (previously posted here) are readable online at sidebrow!

humor.

you know in poland they make jokes about how dumb americans are?

but i'm also blonde, so i present to you the best blonde joke ever.

International Rubik's Cube Competition

I was this close to registering. But to have to complete the cube five times in front of an audience who wants to see it beat in 11-25 seconds while I'm holding strong at about the 2-3 minute mark...the embarrassment outweighs the coolness, and I use that word in the loosest possible sense, of being able to say I competed in an international rubik's cube competition.

Anyway, it was awesome. A new world record was set (just a hair over 11 seconds), someone solved the cube blindfolded in about 2:09, there was much intensity, several cubes flew into bits during the speed solve. For all the spasticness of the people involved, when they were really in it, there was a very calm sort of focus that was nice to witness. I have great admiration for people whose brains can process all that stuff. I also have great admiration for people who don't behave like assholes when they compete. It makes me want to learn a new algorithm for solving so I can get a bit faster. But that'd be nerdy...

perpendicular? orthogonal? normal?

Knitting socks is making me realize just what a strange piece of anatomy the foot is. I'm knitting a pinched-off tube with a right angle in the middle of it. I'm sure if I ever knit gloves I'm sure going sit there baffled as to why our bodies branch like that.

Sexual Perveristy in Chicago was a good play. Which I saw last night. Makes me think you can't understand the opposite gender until you stop stereotying and hating them. My favorite line was "You are trying to understand women and I am confusing you with information!" Plus the dude in the leisure suit, over the top Chicago accent (think "Da Bears!"), and pornstache was a hoot.

Seems like my blog is turning into something resembling critical responses of what I watch/read/listen to, and the occasional poem. I guess that's better that sordid details of my life (Sordid I tell you!).

So this weekend's view was of Ballets Russes . Combine my nerdity for ballet with my nerdity for documentaries and you can see that the movie made me a happy camper. The movie strikes a great balance between recounting the tumultous history of ballet since the Russian Revolution and recounting the tales of crazy old ballet divas and divos. (When I taught male ballet dancers I really wanted to call them ballerinos. But that seems wrong? If any of them read this [unlikely but not impossible] what do you fellows call yourselves?)

There's something difficult to me about watching dance critically. Human bodies in extremely coordinated motion--be it sports or dance or even musical performance--are so compelling, it sometimes is difficult for me to see the larger scope and view it as a mode of communication and expression. I suspect the pathway in my brain is something like "Hello, reptile brain here....Ooh, pretty human in motion!...potential mate?....Nope?....Okay, we'll transfer this call to the smart part of your brain so you can be all analytical like you seem to enjoy so much." Some time is lost in that transaction.

Sometimes I worry that I'm actually an old lady in twenty five year old woman's body. I like going to bed fairly early. I like ballet. I like the fiber arts. At least I still like spicy food. And the youth of America don't scare me (maybe in an abstract sense?). So maybe I'm all right. Yeah, I'm all right.

fashion fashion fashion

Project Runway is a great television show. It shows that reality television isn't all depraved. The people who are on that show have real aspirations and real talent. I love fashion. Ever since I grew some self esteem--that was about senior year of college, if you haven't been with me for the ride--I started to understand the joy of expressing one's self through clothing. I'm going to be a knitwear designer at some point in the near-ish future. I'm in my "learning the rules so I know how to break them phase." Can't redesign a sock until I can turn the heel.

In unrelated but exciting news: Med school, in its ridiculous hazing "sink or swim" culture, subscribes to the "see one, do one, teach one" philosophy of procedures. I am going to be the "teach one" part of that algorithm for my roommate. So far I'm learning to do surgical knots ambidextrously and one handedly. Good times. Can't wait to learn how to suture. As long as I can substitute eggplant for pig's foot.

that's some good old fashioned family racism!

To quote Peter Griffin, approximately. After seeing the original King Kong tonight at the Castro (Movie Theatre of all Movie Theatres. You get an organist before the movie, and this time, a Looney Toon! Could I ask for more?) and also making a recent trip to the Musée Mecanique, I wonder what the appropriate reaction is to blatant old fashioned racism/misogyny. I think the animatronic wonders housed at the MM are precious relics of a bygone era. I also think they're offensive. And I don't just think I'm being overly sensitive/PC. In King Kong, the racism is pretty visible. The Golden Woman is preferable to the natives as an offering to Kong, and of course, Kong is fascinated by her. Peter Jackson toned it down a little, included personalities in with the physicalities. But comparing his portrayal of natives to the original's, he actually wins the offensive award in my book. But what book do I have? I'm practically a Golden Woman myself.

For some reason I'm mentally comparing these experiences to visiting Auschwitz & Birkenau. You see what the past wrought, you're horrified, you realize the gravity, you're sobered. Etc. It's a good thing to do. You watch old King Kong. You see the old Chinese guy peeling potatoes and speaking broken English. You titter. Granted, it's not as horrifying as a room full of human hair (some of which had been woven into fabric), but there's something sinister there--in King Kong, at the Musée Mecanique-- that now has the gloss of irony over it. What to do, what to do. I suppose as long as it opens the dialogue it's a good thing. I heard people walking home from King Kong at the same time as me having a critical discussion about the western beauty ideal. So that's good. Something tells me you won't hear much of that at the Musée Mecanique?

happy new year, if you're into that whole western calendar thing...

New Year's resolutions are for suckers and communists, but I do like me some year end lists. I also am a fan of the kind that are just whatever the listmaker discovered in the year, not necessarily what was produced that year. in no particular order, and off the top of my head, so surely i'm forgetting things. Now begins the listfulness.

some movies (you can see i spent the year catching up on some things i really ought to have seen by now):
IT
me and you and everyone we know
in the realms of the unreal
some errol morris: gates of heaven, thin blue line, fast cheap and out of control
capote
some wong kar wai: 2046, in the mood for love, chungking express
some hitchcock: vertigo, north by northwest
some oldies but goodies: lawrence of arabia, casablanca, sunset boulevard
grizzly man
pride & prejudice
wallace & gromit
march of the penguins
others i'm sure i'm leaving out. it was a good year for me and film, despite the general state of box office woes.

some books/authors/poets:
elizabeth bishop
theresa hak kyung cha
great gatsby (a reread)
master & margarita
calvino: invisible cities and if on a winter's night a traveler
geraldine kim (!)
sarah gridley
huck finn (a reread)
derek kirk kim
pushkin
le ton bot de marot
aimee bender
deborah meadows
the knot book
pride & prejudice (yes, yes, after the movie)
understanding comics

records/bands/"recording artists"/shows (not a good year for music for me due to tragic harddrive & financial woes. 2k6 is sure to be better.):
magnetic fields (getting more into their old stuff)
sufjan stevens (that song about john waybe gacey is perhaps my song of the year)
joanna newsome
decemberists
final fantasy
fucking ocean (!)
the mall
mountain goats
village green preservation society
shostakovich
dolly parton
fiery furnaces
the lovemakers

some theater (theatre if you wanna play it that way):
the goat
the overcoat
donning cheadle (!)

some magazines/journals:
fourteen hills (duh)
jubilat
five fingers review
new issues of found
knitknit
fiber arts
interweave
new yorker (my own subsciption now!)

some websites i like looking at a lot:
boingboing
spamusement
homestar runner
memepool
fark
slate
salon
onion
straight dope
found magazine online

some addictions:
knitting
crocheting
new york times crossword puzzles
thinking about the most efficient route (it's how i know i'm a new yorker at heart)