April 2008 Archives

This amazing marketing campaign where you stick your face through one of those cut-out holes in the movie poster did not work on me because, despite my eagerness to get my picture taken as THE BRIDE, I just can't approve of a movie about a MALE maid of honor! Also I think "Made of Honor" is the worst and most insulting pun I've probably ever heard. Still, don't I look beautiful?!

PS Forgetting Sarah Marshall was pretty bad. 

Doree points out quite correctly in the Observer that Facebook's new "People You Might Know!" feature could just as easily be named "People You Might Hate!"  And although this is totally true, I also think grown people in Brooklyn need to lighten up about Facebook.  The following quote is surely half tongue-in-cheek, but as everyone now knows, the wall between serious and sarcastic has been pretty much demolished for ages, so no hiding behind cheap irony anymore!  (New rule I just made up.)  Anyway according to one anonymous 32-yo Brooklynite writer:

“[The People You Might Know feature] messes with the whole evolution of your social networking identity...There’s a period at the very beginning of your Facebook life, after you first sign up, when you’re madly friend-ing everyone in your address book. It’s the needy phase: You’re trying to establish and legitimize yourself as a user. Then you mature to a more placid state—you stop accepting application requests... But this new feature makes you feel needy all over again... Its infernal machine logic taunts you with people who could, theoretically, be your friends—but aren’t. Your page once served to document the extent of your social support network. Now it advertises the people you never connected to—the friends you don’t have.”

Because this person is anonymous I can't make fun of him/her too much.  It's probably someone I know!  But still.  It's just FACEBOOK.  It is not real.  Remember that everyone.  I don't really care about your status update either!  (I only change my own to amuse myself.)

Speaking of Facebook, I keep meaning to write something about this insane NY Magazine article about kids gone wild on Facebook at one of the poshest, Gossip Girliest private high schools here in Manhattan.  My feelings on the are too complicated to quickly articulate, but seems that I'm one of very few people who actually ended up siding with the kids.  Yes, they seem like disgusting, overprivileged jerk-offs, but the teachers come off as vile, babyish hypocrites.  Which is worse?  I'm going with the teachers because they are adults and should really know better.  I am curious to know if anyone agrees with me at all.

Oh, and just so you know, someone has already registered FECESBOOK.COM.  Can you believe it?  I was already mentally cashing the check from this great idea.

You have to admit that the Bangles' boyfriend's room DOES seem really fun. It is all fuschia and everything!

Don't watch this video if you're offended by amazing babies!

Pardon me but is it time to party like it's 1999 (or 1996) all over again?  I got home from working on my new book to a voice mail (no, I don't have a cellphone, deal with it!) from Emily eager to discuss the fact that Liz Phair has reviewed Dean Wareham's biography, BLACK POSTCARDS, in today's NYTBR.  I have not gotten around to reading the book yet even though Wareham's bands (Galaxie 500 and Luna) are some of my favorites ever.  So am I supposed to feel excited that the gum I like is coming back in style?  Or should I just feel OLD that the gum I like is now experiencing its retro period?

Maybe I can feel excited and old at the same time.  Here is a video of Dean and his new wife, Britta Phillips-- formerly known as Jem of Jem and the Holograms-- singing THE SUN IS STILL SUNNY.

Okay, I don't want this to turn into a music blog, but this news is potentially exciting.

From Billboard.com:

Liz Phair has signed a new record deal with ATO, the first fruit of which will be a reissue of her classic 1993 debut, "Exile in Guyville."

Due June 24, the set includes four previously unreleased audio tracks and a DVD with a documentary about the album's genesis. A new Phair studio album, her first since 2005's Capitol swan song "Somebody's Miracle," is penciled in for the fall...

At ATO, Phair joins a family of artists including Radiohead, My Morning Jacket and Underworld, as well as a team of executives who worked closely with her at Capitol.

Here's hoping Ms. Phair's escape from her evil corporate overlords portends a return to form.  Sometimes a dream is what makes you a slave...

If you and your friends are anything like me and mine, you are probably always having the argument of "Who is the best Canadian Lady (Besides Shania Twain)?"  Of course it always comes down to Margaret Atwood vs. Alice Munro.  Margaret Atwood is notorious for being grumpy and disagreeable, which is why I tend to come out on her side.  My judgment is only reinforced by this great Atwood essay from Saturday's Guardian "celebrating" the hundred-year anniversary of fellow Canadian Anne of Green Gables-- who is herself only disqualified from the great Canadian lady contest by the technicalities of being fictional and growing up to be really boring.

Of course, Margaret Atwood-- being Margaret Atwood-- is less interested in how Anne managed to melt the heart of mean old Marilla and win over Gilbert Blythe and more interested in why Anne was not a slatternly petrie dish for scary Victorian sex diseases:

"In my sourer moments, I confess to having imagined yet another Anne sequel, to be called Anne Goes on the Town. This would be a grim, Zolaesque epic that would chronicle the poor girl's enticement by means of puffed sleeves, then her sexual downfall and her subsequent brutal treatment at the hands of harsh male clients. Then would follow the pilfering of her ill-got though hard-earned gains by an evil madam, her dull despair self-medicated by alcohol and opium-smoking, and her sufferings from the ravages of an incurable STD. The final chapter would contain some Traviata-like coughing, her early and ugly death, and her burial in an unmarked grave, with nothing to mark the passing of this waif with a heart of gold but a volley of coarse jokes from her former customers. However, the presiding genius of Anne is not the gritty grey Angel of Realism, but the rainbow-coloured, dove-winged Godlet of the Heart's Desire."

Happy 100th birthday, Red Hair Anne!

The Guardian via Gwenda Bond.