Another NYC Blog

2012-01-08T18:26:00.001-05:00

Oh man. I'm pretty sure that this ellen page video is post-ironic, but also she is so cute and setting my gaydar off like crazy. Just saying.

2012-01-07T18:21:00.000-05:00

Okay, I now have almost 100 percent confidence in my gaydar.
http://www.autostraddle.com/kristy-mcnichol-is-gay-former-child-star-and-super-cute-tomboy-comes-out-127269/

2012-01-06T14:34:00.001-05:00

http://gawker.com/5873476/the-secrets-gay-men-dont-want-straight-people-to-know

Haha, these things are all so true.

2011-12-23T09:01:00.003-05:00

Does anyone else feel like sometimes the Dalai Lama can be a little heavy on the platitudes?

2011-12-22T10:24:00.000-05:00

"Marriage, in dire crisis just a generation ago, has moved into its imperialist stage."

http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/essays/working-arrangement.php?page=all

Oof, that's good.

2011-12-21T23:06:00.001-05:00

Aw, the little boy in dolphin tale is so gay.

2011-12-21T20:22:00.001-05:00

Team Bella, yo.

2011-12-18T22:43:00.002-05:00

Little known fact- the Coppertone girl does not have a bathingsuit top on because Jodie Foster is a HUGE LESBIAN

2011-12-16T09:35:00.002-05:00

Okay the tone of my last couple posts was maybe a bit negative, which I blame on end of semester stress. But the end is almost in sight, so I hope you enjoy this video (start at 3 minutes in)

2011-12-10T12:53:00.003-05:00

Societal discourse can be interesting. As Foucault describes in History of Sexuality, medical discourses about the body, gender, and sexuality led to a notion of homosexuality as a perversion, and "the homosexual" as an outsider in society. As work that goes beyond discourse analysis has shown, however, (and this is one of the major contributions of the field of history), this discourse does not adequately represent the experiences of people in same-sex relationships during this period. Which is reassuring, to know that people do not blindly accept any discourse that flows their way, if it does not confirm to their actual experience regarding something. But it can also be disappointing. For instance, we live in a time when acceptance of gays is all the rage. Storylines on shows like Glee claim that anyone who bullies a gay person is probably homophobic because they are actually gay themselves. It also represents the narrative that if you come out, everyone will be wonderful and accepting. And I'd just like to say that, as a gay person, unfortunately this discourse is as false as the one before it. Being gay is not like being straight, and even some of the most liberal of people will have a problem with it, although they may not acknowledge it, and to many people the way that you are different will not, in fact, be "no big deal." I would guess that perhaps, this experience has always been the same. There are people to whom this sort of thing is not important, and there are people who feel weird about it. I think that discourse may mediate these feelings, but it does not determine them. Certainly, I'd rather live in this latter time period, as it means that the vast majority of people that you interact with will at least have to pay lip service to the idea that you do not make them uncomfortable. And I do love the idea that hating gay people arises out of a fear that you yourself are gay, although I would guess that it is true only a portion of the time. But fundamentally, no, I do not think that these discourses can alter the people with whom a gay person can have a close relationship with, and those with whom we cannot.

2011-12-08T09:16:00.003-05:00

Both Facebook and Gawker are constantly trying to push through a change that, to me, underscores the fact that they seem to totally misunderstand the value of their own product. The features that I am referring to our Gawker's shift away from blog form, and Facebook's "Sort by Highlighted Stories First." Now, I love to spend time on both of these websites; they make a great study break. But it is really rare that either Facebok statuses or a Gawker post is actually interesting. The way the time of my study break is passed, in fact, is by scrolling through the mediocre offerings of both websites, looking for the rare interesting one. Therefore, if I'm able to go to either website and immediately see that there is nothing good, I will not use these websites for study breaks. The key to these websites, then, is in the mystery. Behind the mystery, is mostly nothing. I think this is something that both companies have misunderstood, thinking that the top Gawker posts or the "Highlighted Stories" will generally be of any value. Unfortunately, they are usually not. And if I lose the value of scrolling through these websites in the hope of coming across something interesting, I will lose my interest in visiting these websites. So, suggestion to these companies- think about HOW your site is used, not just what your site has to offer.

2011-12-07T10:42:00.002-05:00

Watch Liz Feldman's web show, she is awesome.

I can't figure out how to imbed a clip, but I've been watching Liz Feldman's web show lately (inspired by my appreciation for Two Broke Girls), and this episode was really on its game. Also, yay for the friendship between gay women and gay men. And, yay for the fact that Liz Feldman's sister wrote The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, which was a really good show. Awesome.

2011-11-21T21:36:00.003-05:00

Haha, I love how this guy lays out very clearly what sort of behavior is not acceptable from straight girls in gay guy bars, and then this idiot writing under the name Memily Bimble lives up to the stereotype in fine form.

"agreed with all of this 100% except the "No Bachelorette Party" rule. This kind of made me sad. What is wrong with wanting to catch a drag show at my local gay bar, and dance with my girl friends (and gay friends) without having to worry about being hit on/creeped out by some sweaty dude with a surprise in his pocket?"

[other commenter] "honey, if youre scared of sweat and boners---a gay bar isn't for you."
[this girl] "I'm not scared of the ones not directed at me!"

I don't have a jezebel account so I couldn't respond, but I just wanted all my readers to be aware of the kind of idiocy jaunting around on jezebel. A gay bar is a place where gay people go to try to meet each other. It is not a place for you to hide from penises! As the article emphasizes, of course straight people are not unwelcome at gay bars. But when a straight person is in a gay bar, they are not important. And they shouldn't be important. So I mean, something to keep in mind generally, but particularly seems pertinent in the case of a bachelorette party, which is by definition supposed to be about the bachelorette. So therefore, it should not be at a gay bar.

2011-11-14T19:24:00.001-05:00

This was what I was going to write a post about a while ago, but then I never did. Who is going to facilitate our movement through the space of the internet? Private companies? The government? This has the potential to be a huge question, and I think it will be.

2011-11-11T20:27:00.002-05:00

Um, what the hell is this article trying to argue? Clearly, Adam Davidson is an idiot. Somehow he discusses the income groups in America as the upper class, who earn more than a million dollars a year, and the middle class, who earns $30,000 to $200,000. First of all, how did he conveniently forget to discuss people who make $200,000- $1 million? Did he think we just wouldn't pick up on that? And second, how does he think that people with salaries ranging from $30,000 to $200,000 form a cohesive group? This man is either incredibly stupid or just blatantly trying to scam us by severely underestimating our intelligence, and the fact that the New York Times is running it on its digital front page goes to show that its managerial team obviously suffers from the same disabilities. I hope that everyone has the good sense not to pay attention to anything this man says, as he is clearly shilling for the rich.

2011-10-14T10:10:00.002-05:00

You know what I was thinking? What if the character of Ron on Parks and Recreation was an homage to Hemingway? Wouldn't that be great?

2011-09-28T10:27:00.000-05:00

Dave: But movies cost millions of dollars to make.

Bobby Bowfinger: That's after gross net deduction profit percentage...deferment ten percent of the nut. Cash? Every movie costs $2,184.

2011-09-28T00:52:00.003-05:00

i'm posting this so i don't forget it, but be prepared, (dear readers), for a much longer post about its significance. its gonna get real, you guys.

my response to dove ad running ad nauseum on nick at nite

2011-09-19T21:33:00.001-05:00

good news: men use soap.
bad news: men use soap that can dry out their skin.
good news: who cares.

2011-07-21T21:51:00.002-05:00

um. seriously?
http://movies.nytimes.com/2011/07/22/movies/justin-timberlake-in-friends-with-benefits-review.html?hpw
who was fellating manohla dargas while she wrote this review? i'm guessing it was mila kunis.

2011-06-26T03:22:00.002-05:00

as someone who doesn't know if i will ever get married, and who is not sure generally how i feel about the institution of marriage, the recent decision to legalize gay marriage doesn't have a particularly strong significance to me. i haven't spent my life dreaming about walking down the aisle, so i didn't feel particularly thwarted by the fact that my union would not be legally recognized. furthermore i do think that the institution of marriage is outdated, a condition highlighted by the exceedingly high divorce rate. i think civil unions would be a much more reasonable way to enjoy the legal benefits of partnership without involving religious or traditional notions of eternal commitment.
at the same time, reading that gay marriage was legalized made me feel wonderful. the reason, i think, is not something that non-gay people might consider. in 2008, my joy at the election of barack obama was severely mitigated by california's decision to pass Prop 8. i don't need to get married, and i certainly don't need to get married in california. but on hearing that people had gone to the polls and chosen to state that i should not be allowed to be married, i felt quite viscerally the widespread hatred or intolerance of homosexuality. a black man can be president, but i am still not a legitimate member of society. the masses should still be able to make decisions about the most meaningful events in my life. so at the same time that america made a giant leap forward, gay people got a nice reminder that we are not normal and should not expect a tolerant reception of our lifestyle.
the legalization of gay marriage in new york, then, provided the opposite sensation. for me, its not the legalization itself that makes me feel so great (although at some point in my life i may come to appreciate it more). what made me feel great was the knowledge that people care about us. our representatives think we are important, think our approval is important, and think that their other constituents think that we are important. in new york, at least, we are supported. it feels good.

RSA Animate - Changing Education Paradigms

2011-04-29T13:17:00.000-05:00

2011-04-29T13:15:00.002-05:00

http://youtu.be/zDZFcDGpL4U

2011-04-23T09:55:00.002-05:00

I wonder if it makes a difference in other countries' conceptions of us if they refer to our country as "the united states" or "america". random thoughts while i write my paper.

2011-04-22T21:49:00.001-05:00

shit, i gotta stop calling things fascinating. particularly when those things are orchestral versions of rebecca black songs.

2011-04-22T12:26:00.002-05:00

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2011/04/17/where_does_good_come_from/?page=full

Biology takes on the concept of "imagined communities" over genetics. fascinating.

2011-04-02T18:26:00.000-05:00

fascinating

2011-03-20T21:17:00.001-05:00

it is so fascinating to consider the variety of reactions one can have to a work of art. for instance, i just saw arcadia, which i truly loved. i mentioned to a friend that i had seen it, and he went into raptures about what a wonderful play it was. and then he me whether i had cried when i watched it. i was puzzled, and said that i did kind of feel like crying because i was so happy, and hugging all the actors and the playwright. but then i realized that he was talking about one of the main characters in the play, who we slowly realize will die in a fire at the age of sixteen, extinguishing a genius whose contributions will only be rediscovered after her journals come to light 200 years later. now honestly, i don't think i'm a cold person, but i had not considered the sadness of this event in the slightest. my enthusiastic reaction sprang primarily from the modern portion of the play, which follows three academics as they attempt to piece together and comprehend the lives of the inhabitants of a manor in the early nineteenth century. watching the process of searching, finding, and understanding that these people engaged in, i was truly moved by the historian's quest to demystify the puzzles of the past. i was literally on the edge of my seat as they slowly figured out the events that had transpired so long ago, and i honestly wanted to run to a library and start doing research as soon as the play was over. "it's the wanting to know that makes us matter." hooray for history!

2011-02-22T13:05:00.002-05:00

http://jezebel.com/#!5766318/if-were-born-gay-how-would-we-know

I think this website is incredibly interesting, in part for the reasons that the writer highlights, as I agree that the idea that people are born gay is a convenient fiction that gay people like to perpetuate in able to deflect criticism from conservatives. That is not to say that I believe that we can say for sure that people are not born gay, only that I think that it is equally possible that being gay is a result of childhood or pubescent socialization, or that it is completely a choice. Certainly, I know people for whom it is a choice.
To me, the most interesting facet of this blog is these individual's attempts to make a coherent narrative out of their lives. As the author of the Jezebel post points out, as kids are unaware of the taboos against certain behaviors, almost everyone probably has a picture in which they seem to be transgressing gender norms. I think that while the intention of the blog may be to make a political point about the genetic component of homosexuality, individually these people are simply attempting to write a story of their life that explains its later manifestations as a logical result of its beginnings. There is definitely a large rupture in the lives of homosexuals, who suddenly at the age of 15, 21, 30 announce that they will begin to live their lives in a radically different way. This can be very disconcerting to others, but particularly so to the person himself or herself. As such, one does not want to see their life heading in one direction and then taking a drastic and unexpected turn mid-way down the road. It is this desire for coherence that draws gay people back to their young lives, to try to construct the possibility of a future within earlier presentations of the self.

2011-01-04T01:03:00.002-05:00

i just watched a covergirl commercial in which ellen degeneres said "inner beauty is what counts. but outer beauty is what really counts" and then proceeded to describe a make up that can make you look younger. am i wrong to feel kind of betrayed?

2010-12-27T19:17:00.002-05:00

i was gay once... for a while... we all do it... it's okay.
stanley tucci in Easy A
(??)

2010-12-26T19:56:00.001-05:00

whoops, i seem to have mistaken zadie smith for someone who was not a crotchety old grandpa. NY Review of Books article

2010-12-25T22:04:00.001-05:00

Listen to me, I'm a doctor.

Of history! in what emergency would you be necessary, if someone wanted to know if the sixties were awesome or not?

They were!

2010-11-05T14:22:00.002-05:00

I have to say, this seems like yet another example of Democrats trying to take some sort of illusory high ground, in reality ceding further political ground to a not-so-conscientious Republican Party. I mean, come on! Fox news seems to have no qualms about allowing its Republican pundits to donate to their candidates of choice, so why should we deny our most avid supporters the right to financially support this cause? I mean really, its no mystery that he is a Democrat, he has always been very upfront about his leanings. I'm not saying that we should always sink to the level of Republicans, I'm all for sticking to factual information and not running campaigns based only on partisanship, but in matters like this, can we please relax a bit?

2010-10-22T06:50:00.003-05:00

It gets better, huh? Well are you going to start trying to help it get better, Mr. Most Powerful Man in the World? Talk is nice, but try backing it up.

2010-10-16T10:19:00.001-05:00

A 29-year-old mother stood outside a bodega, two blocks from the house where the attacks occurred, reading newspaper accounts of the arrests. She said she was horrified by the violence, but she acknowledged that gay people, including a man in her building, made her uncomfortable.

“It’s hard for me to handle,” said the woman, who declined to give her name for fear of gang reprisals. “It’s something that’s not normal in a household.”

Yet her feelings about homosexuality are conflicted, which gay advocates say is not unusual. “I watch a lot of gay porn,” she said. “It’s very intriguing to me. Why are they so interested? What pleasure do they get?”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/16/nyregion/16gays.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1

2010-10-07T22:19:00.002-05:00

Episodes of Futurama that make me cry-

1. The one where his brother Yancy named his son Philip and gave him Fry's lucky 7-leaf clover so that he could achieve Fry's dream of becoming an astronaut.
2. The one where Lela discovers that her parents are mutants and then there is a montage of all the times her parents surreptitiously helped her out while she was growing up in the orphanage.
3. The one where Fry is going to clone his beloved dog from the 20th century, but then he decides not to because the dog probably went on with his life. And then at the episode, you see that the dog waited for him for its whole life.

Wahhhhh

2010-07-27T08:04:00.001-05:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFDfl-YVmyA&feature=player_embedded#!

nuff said.

2010-07-26T10:50:00.002-05:00

where was all the joan? or more specifically, where was her sass? also whatever happened to that old roommate of hers? nice girl.

2010-07-25T05:11:00.001-05:00

the modern-day redemption of the vampire and its relationship to the mainstreaming of the homosexual lifestyle

2010-07-24T06:11:00.001-05:00

ugh, i spent all day working on my end of program speech for ICLP, only to find at the end that it was half the length that it needed to be, and i had absolutely nothing else to say on the topic. so, back to the drawing board.

2010-07-23T22:18:00.003-05:00

http://io9.com/5594080/why-does-michelle-rodriguez-always-get-killed-off-we-asked-her

Do you feel like there's a type of woman she's referencing, ever so obliquely, i don't know, the kind of woman who has been fated to die in various forms of entertainment since the victorian era and before? Fated to die, because of some type of forbidden love? Do i need to spell it out for her? All her characters are big 'ole lesbians.

2010-07-21T06:28:00.000-05:00

the stats for my blog aren't looking so hot.

2010-07-11T00:28:00.007-05:00

All right, back to updating about my scooter trip (and avoiding studying).
So I woke up at 530 the next day, ready to drive over a mountain. unfortunately i needed to fill up my gas, and after driving about 45 minutes to the nearest gas station, i discovered that it didn't open till 8. so i had to hang around for about an hour, and it was at this point i realized that i was very, very cold. since i had only packed whatever would fit in the seat of my scooter, i hadn't brought anything other than tshirts. people had warned me that it would get cold up in the mountains, but i had some strange logic that when i was in lhasa, i had been at a higher altitude and had not gotten cold. so i'm driving along, driving along, and it is just getting colder and colder. it is a thin road, with a drastic drop on the side, and it is pretty hard to see when a car is coming in the other direction, but all i can think about is how cold i am. i focus on the road ahead of me, looking for every sunny spot so that i can get a moment of warmth. looking on the bright side, i think that i may have been scared shitless if not for the fact that my primary concern was not freezing to death. but on the other hand, when i reached the amazing top of the mountain i was still more excited about descending into a warmer climate. but here are the pics from the top of the mountain.

woo!
From there, i continued on down the mountain, into warmer and warmer temperatures, until i reached my next destination, sun moon lake. i got a little lost on the way, and ended up circling the grounds of a nearby resort for a while, but finally i found the lake. i think it is the largest freshwater lake in taiwan, and is basically right in the middle of the country. the water is this crazy bright blue.

now, when i got to sun moon lake, i was pretty damn tired. it was around 2 oclock, and i had been driving since six. i was really hoping to crash for a bit in a bed, so i headed straight over to the hostel where i was planning to stay. unfortunately, when i asked about the dorm rooms, the woman at the desk seemed really confused. "we don't have those," she said. and now i was confused, because i had looked at the hostel's website, and they had clearly listed dorm rooms. did they not have them, or did she mean that they were booked? either way, i wasn't getting anywhere. she said the regular rooms were 1500, and asked me if i wanted to book one. but 1500 NT is about $45, way over my budget. i said no, but didn't really know what the hell i was going to do now. the lady must have felt bad for me (i don't know why, because i was not very polite to her), but she let me stay in a room for 1000 NT. still over my budget, but i figured after the day i'd had, i could splurge. and it was totally awesome, a nice comfortable room with ac and a big bathtub, supercomfortable bed and even toothpaste and shampoo. (everyone get pumped, you're all getting little tubes of "whitemen" toothpaste as gifts.) i explored the lake, and made friends with some students who were there for a weekend trip. there were about 30 of them, and i felt like a rockstar when i ran into them later and had thirty people shouting "Amanda!" and smiling and waving.
the next day, the rain that i had been trying to beat finally caught up with me. but i figured, whatever, i'll just get a raincoat, and continued on my way. this day, i actually backtracked north a bit to go to this buddhist monastery that's supposed to have the best collection of buddhist art in the country. it really started to pour in earnest during the drive over, i mean literally buckets, but somehow i made it to the monastery. it was really expensive to get in though, so i just went to the free section.

my plan for this day was to drive down to a hot spring in the mountains, and chill for the evening. i was pretty cold from all the rain, so i imagined a hot spring would feel heavenly. the rain wasn't as bad as it had been earlier, so i continued on my way. i rode past a lot of vineyards, apparently taiwan has its own wine country in the center of the island. i drove along until i reached the turn-off for the town i was going to. just to be sure though, i stopped to ask a lady working at a restaurant off the road. "you can't go there," she said, surprised. "some big rocks fell." ah shoot, the rain must have caused some landslides. i was pretty bummed about this, as i was getting pretty tired and totally soaked through, but the place i had planned to spend the next night wasn't that far, maybe another hour, so i thought i'd keep going. i drove along, slowly rising to higher and higher elevations. i started to pass spots with lots of rocks on the road, more and more as i continued to drive. this really didn't seem like a good idea, but there was only one road in this area, so to turn around i would have to drive two hours back the way i came. the only way to go was forward. eventually, i reached a spot where the road was just totally blocked off. i didn't know what to do, so i went up to the guy guarding the road block. "there were some landslides," he said, "the road is closed." noooooo. i was now about three hours from where i had started, exhausted, soaked, and it was almost four oclock. not only would i have to drive this scary road in the rain, but it would be dark at the end. slowly i turned my scooter around, utterly defeated. i thought i'd take a break for a moment, and went to kick down my kickstand. but i was so tired, and my shoe was so slippery from being wet, that i sort of missed, and the whole scooter fell over, with me on it. that was definitely the low point of the trip. i just lay there for a moment, too tired to do anything.
the guard came over and helped me up, and i noticed a small building nearby. it had a signed that said something about a government building, so i thought i'd ask if they could help me. i hobbled down the steep hill to the building (had scraped up my knee and arm when i fell), and knocked on the door. a little man came out, and i asked, almost in tears, if they had any rooms that they rented out. he looked at me, and asked how early i was planning on leaving the next day. "very very early," i said. and he said okay, i could stay there if i left really early. phew. so i drove my scooter down the hill (at first it wouldn't start, and i was really scared that the fall had busted it, but the guard helped me get it started again). i walked inside the building, and the man told me to follow him to the room. as we walked, i asked him how much the room would be, knowing that however much it was, i didn't really have a choice. you don't have to pay, he said. just have some dinner with me, and make sure you leave early in the morning. i should point out now that he wasn't creepy, it was a nice old aboriginal man. he led me to the room, and i opened the door, expecting something like a storage closet. instead, the room looked like this.

it was probably the nicest room in the place, and it had an amazing view.

and a wonderful shower, where i took a long relaxing shower and finally got rid of the deep chills i'd had all day. the man cooked a delicious soup which we ate together, and then i went up to my room to figure out what to do next. obviously i wasn't going to be able to continue to the mountain villages i had planned on visiting, as clearly there had been massive landslides caused by the rain. i was going to have to backtrack, but as i looked at the map i realized this would give me a nice chance to see more of taiwan's west coast. i figured out the route to Changhua, a city near Taizhong (which lonely planet liked a lot better than Taizhong), and went to sleep. i was very nervous, as it was still raining and i knew the next day i would have to go back down the mountain i had just driven up, and that the weather could be even worse than it had been that day.
okay i'm tired, so i'll update more soon.

2010-07-06T11:52:00.001-05:00

RIP Party Down, you were one of the best shows ever.

I will write up the rest of my adventures soon, I promise.

2010-06-24T04:10:00.003-05:00

confession. when i think of the gulf war, i always picture the day i first learned about it, sitting on my grandparents terrace in florida looking out at a golf course. Golf. Gulf. i thought it was called the golf war for a long time.

2010-06-19T21:34:00.009-05:00

okay, this ridiculousness has gone on long enough. i've been worse about blogging than ever before, and all i can do is hang my head in shame. i'm up in taipei now, where i have been for almost two weeks. and my classes start tomorrow, after which i will try to minimize my english speaking. so i've finally gotten it together to write up the adventures of the travel period of my summer. initially, i didn't write about this because i was A) on the road, and B) didn't want my mom to find out that i had rented a scooter and was driving by myself all over the island. but now that it is complete and i still have all my limbs, etc, i will write about it.
so i left from kaohsiung the morning after the day of the worst hangover of my life. to celebrate getting into my asian studies masters program at columbia (yay!), i went out to a taiwanese all you can drink dance club. here i made the mistake of having a "let's go for it!" attitude, which never mixes well with incredibly low quality, free drinks. i did have a fun night though. i spent the entire next day throwing up, probably until around 6 or 7 in the evening. and the next day i awoke at 8 in the morning, and headed off on my trip.
my first stop was kenting national park, at the southern tip of taiwan. it is a really beautiful spot, with really awesome beaches. here i stayed at a hostel that was run by a taiwanese surfer, who at first i was intimidated by, but he ended up being really nice. i spent a couple of days just chilling on the beach watching the surfers, then i headed on to my next stop.

It had looked like the drive to the next stop would be fairly easy, a little shorter than the three hour drive to my kenting. unfortunately the map didn't show that i had to drive through a mountain range, with lots of twists and turns. having 2 days of scooter driving experience under my belt, this was a challenge to say the least. the last hour of the ride was incredible though, right next to the pacific ocean, and the roads were wide and straight so i could just cruise. unfortunately, i hadn't written down the address of the hostel i wanted to stay at, nor did i have a phone to call them. i had assumed that somehow i would just be able to find them, but it turned out the hostel was about a half hour outside of the city (Taitung). Luckily I stopped at an italian b&b where they called the hostel owners, who told me where to meet them so they could take me to the hostel. at this point i had been driving for about six hours, and was so drained i pretty much fell asleep when i got there.
the next day i decided to backtrack a little and stay at another hostel in the area, so i could explore taitung. i stayed in a new hostel in fugang, a harbor city about 5 minutes from taitung. the owner of the hostel also runs trips to the nearby Green Island (greenislandadventures.com), and i mentioned that i was interested in going to the other island in the area, Lanyu. he said that the trip was too unpredictable for him to run tours there (not that i would have done a tour, that shit is expensive), that the ferries only ran occasionally and it was expensive to stay out there. i was discouraged, but then an hour later he said that a guy who worked for him was taking a vacation out there for a couple of days, and encouraged me to tag along. so, sweet! i got to go to Orchid Island, described by lonely planet as "off the beaten path," inhabited by a cool australo-asian aboriginal tribe. it was incredibly beautiful, and i had a good time hanging out with the aboriginals and also doing some snorkeling.

i returned to taitung, and then the next day i headed off for my next stop, hualian. this involved driving up most of the east coast, where i made an egregious error. there are two highways that go up the east coast, one along the ocean and the other through farming villages. it looked on the map as though i could drive half the way along one and then switch to the other. so i started on the farming villages, but honestly, i never saw a spot to get to the other highway. and i was looking. so, i dunno. so it turned out taitung was the last place i saw the ocean.

i had checked the weather forecast the day before, and seen that there was supposed to be one more day of sun, and then rain for a whole week. my plan was to hang out in hualian through the rain, because it is supposed to be a nice backpacker spot, and then go on when the rain had stopped. but on my way up to hualian, i had a thought. perhaps i should try to beat the rain instead, because i didn't really want to wait around for a week. i had only packed what would fit inside the scooter, and that wouldn't last for long. so instead of staying in hualian that night, i drove on through taroko gorge. taroko gorge is a marble gorge that was first popularized as a tourist site by the japanese (who ruled taiwan from 1895- 1944), and it is an incredible sight. i would say it most resembles the place where the elves live in lord of the rings, if you get the reference. there is a hostel in taroko gorge that is run by a nice catholic aboriginal guy, with whom i had a lovely conversation.

the next day i woke up at six prepared for a long day of driving. as the middle of taiwan is pretty much all mountain, i knew that i would need to drive over a mountain at some point to get back to the west coast.
okay, i meant to do this all in one go, but what with the pictures and everything, this is exhausting. so stay tuned for: abi drives over a mountain, abi gets caught in a rainstorm, abi drives the whole west coast in a day. exciting.

2010-05-07T23:02:00.002-05:00

Okay, I'm really going to try to be good about updating on this trip, especially during this month of traveling. So the last few days in hong kong were a lot of fun, I made a nice german friend and we did a lot of shopping together. well, she shopped and i watched, because i'm trying not to spend money. also we tried to go out dancing in the bar district, and after downing half a bottle of vodka (and discovering that my special coca cola shot glass is a fake), we made it all the way over to the expat drinking area and discovered that there was no dance club to be found. i think perhaps we went to the wrong bar area, this was mostly middle aged business people having a beer with their friends. not wild at all. or it could have been because it was a wednesday.
thursday we went to one of the nearby islands called Lamma during the day, which was nice and relaxed. except we happened to be there on some sort of a holiday where people dress up in dragon costumes and proceed through the streets, stopping at every restaurant, where the restaurant owners make an offering of lettuce and explode lots of fireworks. i'm not sure exactly what the significance was, but i guess its supposed to bring luck and success to the restaurants. they also had lots of roasted pig, and i had a delicious piece.
the last night i participated in the german girl's photo project, which was to take photographs of people in all the cities she traveled to, wearing white tshirts and sparkly masks. she invited lots of people from couchsurfers,and about five showed up. it was lots of fun, and i wished i'd met some locals earlier in the week, as it really brought the city to life. but oh well.
yesterday i flew to taiwan, to the southern city of kaohsiung.the hostel is really nice and chill, though everyone here seems to be long-term expats rather than backpackers. i guess i'm not surprised though, its kind of a random place to go if you're a backpacker, expensive to get to and doesn't really offer as wide of a range of experiences as mainland china. the expats are nice though, the kind of people who like to sit around chatting and drinking a beer all night, then sleep in the next day. this city has quite a relaxed feel, and i could see the days just kind of passing here. this is my second day, and i'm still just starting to get headed out to see the sights. i basically sat around all morning eating some cold noodles and watching the scooters drive by on the streets.
i'm also going to try to get serious about my chinese again, as i basically took the whole month of april off from studying. i met a really nice taiwanese girl last night who's friends with this canadian couple that just moved here to live permanently, and she said i could practice my chinese with her. so that's cool, and just being out in the streets ordering food etc gives me a chance to use my chinese. i'm rusty, but hopefully after a month i'll be better. okay, i should go explore now, off i go!

2010-05-03T02:48:00.002-05:00

Okay, so I just read over my last post, and i realized it was kind of a downer. Not a great way to start off a three-month trip. The two days since I wrote that entry have been a lot better. Yesterday I went over to an island called Peng Chau that is about a half an hour ferry from Hong Kong island, which was a nice trip in itself. The island was cute, it took about an hour to walk its circumference, and offered some pretty amazing views. The island reminded me a lot of southeast asia, as it had the same kind of vegetation including wild bananas, but also had a distinctly chinese feel. It was really relaxed, and couldn't have been more different from the urbanity of Hong Kong. On our return, we decided to check out a light show on the hong kong harbor (i spent the day with a girl i met in my hostel, who incidentally is on an 8-month travel fellowship, goddammit). On the way we noticed that there was a free concert being given by the Hong Kong symphony in the harbor, so we decided to watch that instead. It was pretty awesome, the orchestra was entirely composed of traditional chinese instruments, particularly a lot of erhus. We could also see the light show in the background, and it turned out it was kind of crap, so we were glad we didn't travel across the bay to kowloon just to see that.
Today I took the lonely planet's walking tour of a neighborhood all the way to the west, it was a really interesting look at hong kong's historic neighborhood. i could really envision the british colonial experience, and it made the history i've been studying come alive. Also i was browsing at an antique shop and dropped a bottle of something on my foot, which broke the bottle and also made my foot bleed. I decided, rather than telling the guy i broke the bottle i would just buy something else at the price he asked for it, so neither of us would get totally screwed over. So I got a little shot-sized coca cola glass from the 1960! it's really cool, and i payed 12 bucks for it, so i think everyone wins. also, a very nice woman in a coffee shop helped me clean my foot up, and put antibacterial on it and everything.
A lot more wandering ensued, though i can't really think of anything interesting enough to report about. Hong Kong is growing on me though, so maybe (hopefully) in the end i won't regret spending the time here. Over and out.

2010-05-01T09:42:00.004-05:00

Another NYC Blog is back, baby! Now that I am out of ny, i again have a reason to update this blog. So I'm currently in Hong Kong, where I'll be hanging out for the week before heading over to taiwan. I wasn't that excited about going to hong kong, as i think it is more of a city for living in than for visiting, but i had to leave a week between arriving in hong kong and going to taiwan in case my visa didn't work out. So far, its been pretty eh. I got in at around 2 yesterday (2 pm hong kong time, 2 am new york time). My flight had been awesome, and its actually the first time in about 5 years that i would consider using an airline for a second time. Cathay Pacific. They served a lot of meals, which were pretty tasty, and the movie and tv choices were amazing. I slept for most of the flight, because i only got an hour of sleep the night before, and the seats also had a cool way of reclining by sliding the bottom of the seat forward rather than tilting the back, which meant that i didn't have the seat in front of my in my face the whole time.
So I took the Airport Express from the airport to my hostel, and that all went very smoothly, which was nice because i was a bit anxious on arrival to hong kong, a moment of what the hell am i doing traveling by myself in a strange country where i don't know anyone. i was happy that it was still light out, and the shady hostel was much how i expected, even down to the fact that they told me i had to sleep on the floor, even though i had booked the hostel months in advance. That had actually also happened to me the last time i was in Hong Kong, so it almost seemed normal.
I went to sleep at around 9, and woke up at 630 ready for action. Unfortunately, Hong Kong isn't really that kind of city, so i waited around until 830 for another of my hostel mates to wake up, and then finally decided just to head out on my own. I walked all over the kowloon area where my hostel is, which mostly consisted of looking through lots of shops. I returned to my hostel around 11:30 excited to take a nap, as my excursion had thoroughly exhausted me. Unfortunately, the nap was not to be. They told me that I was upgraded to sleeping on one of the bunkbeds, and as I walked over to check it out, i notice a bed bug on the floor under the bed. I remembered that the girl who had been sleeping there had mentioned getting lots of bites on her feet, and although she had not thought it was bedbugs, i think she was wrong. So, bleh. I took the ferry and then the trolley over to the hostel i had booked for the remaining nights, to see if they had room for me tonight. They did, and so I took the trolley and the ferry back, picked up my stuff, tried to get my money refunded and failed, and then took the mta over to the new hostel.
The new hostel is not that much nicer, and it costs 20 a night instead of 7. As I was settling in, one of my roommates came in the room, and we started chatting. She said that she had stayed in the hostel for several nights, but this was only her second night in this room. When i asked why she had switched rooms, she said that she had bed bugs in the other room. Fuck! She said she hadn't been bitten last night though, so hopefully this room is okay. I am really regretting not giving myself a shorter turnover in hong kong; i'll be here till friday. but whatever, if you were never down, how would you know when you were up, right?

2010-03-01T19:58:00.003-05:00

I like how the plot of Ugly Betty sets us up to root for the playboy son of a wealthy magazine tycoon with no artistic or journalistic experience, over the black self-made woman who has both fashion and magazine experience.

2010-02-24T15:06:00.002-05:00

There should be an option on facebook status updates so if you want to write an update directly making fun of someone else's status update, you can block it from their newsfeed.

2010-02-23T23:28:00.001-05:00

http://jezebel.com/5478535/warning-you-may-have-nightmares

start at 4:10

or at the beginning if you're into dreamgirls.

2010-02-22T12:47:00.002-05:00

After I come up with a joke that I think is hilarious, I like to google it to see if anyone has come up with the joke before me. This is incredibly ego deflating, and has led me to the realization that everything I think I discover has already been discovered before. But the thing is, it's not that I heard these jokes somewhere else and copied them, there just happen to have been other people who had the same idea before me. It's interesting to think how in a pre-internet world, to a large extent it didn't matter that someone had come up with an idea before you (especially little jokes that didn't get much of a laugh in any incarnation). I could have been running around thinking I was the cleverest person in the world. But now I must suffer with the knowledge of my mediocrity, or at least my lack of outstandingness. Oh well.

2010-02-19T12:21:00.002-05:00

my interest in music tends to be marked by intense periods of listening to a single song/group of songs, spaced between long periods of total lack of interest. well, right now i'm in one of those intense periods, sorry to anyone who has to hang out with me over the next couple of weeks or so- i will require the following songs to be played on repeat.

"wavin' flag"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQtURJBsIFg

"take a minute"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIhm94a-8SE

Go K'naan!

2010-02-08T22:01:00.001-05:00

kissing jessica stein. like more straight women should be encouraged to use lesbians to raise their low self-esteem.

2010-02-05T20:44:00.001-05:00

i feel like in the 90's, it was much more common to sit backwards on your chair. i guess doing anything backwards was bigger in the 90's.

2010-01-08T17:12:00.001-05:00

I think that acting is our society's way of keeping very charming people from becoming dictators.

2009-11-30T12:51:00.003-05:00

I love Lady Gaga to death, but I just want to point out that whenever she is asked about a career decision/fashion decision, she says "we decided" etc etc. Just goes to prove my suspicion that her career is tightly counseled by a panel of brilliant gay men. Her videos, her clothes, her production are just too good, there's no way that one 20-something woman could be responsible for it. And that's no judgment on her, besides to say that she is making some really smart decisions. But I am inclined to say that the genius is a team effort.

2009-10-19T22:15:00.001-05:00

Is it just me? I mean, perhaps I am kind of a prude. But do friends really kiss each other on the lips? Is that something people are doing and no one told me? I need to get out more.

2009-08-13T17:45:00.002-05:00

http://gizmodo.com/5335942/an-insider-on-the-apple-tablet
OMFG, I think this is really exciting. It's exactly what I've just been saying, that if there was something like a kindle, but that is somewhere between an iphone and a computer....

2009-08-11T12:16:00.000-05:00

PRESS BRIEFING BY LARRY SPEAKES

October 15, 1982

The Briefing Room

12:45pm EDT

Q: Larry, does the President have any reaction to the announcement the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, that AIDS is now an epidemic and have over 600 cases?

MR. SPEAKES: What's AIDS?

Q: Over a third of them have died. It's known as "gay plague." (Laughter.) No, it is. I mean it's a pretty serious thing that one in every three people that get this have died. And I wondered if the President is aware of it?

MR. SPEAKES: I don't have it. Do you? (Laughter.)

Q: No, I don't.

MR. SPEAKES: You didn't answer my question.

Q: Well, I just wondered, does the President

MR. SPEAKES: How do you know? (Laughter.)

Q: In other words, the White House looks on this as a great joke?

MR. SPEAKES: No, I don't know anything about it, Lester.

Q: Does the President, does anyone in the White House know about this epidemic, Larry?

MR. SPEAKES: I don't think so. I don't think there's been any

Q: Nobody knows?

MR. SPEAKES: There has been no personal experience here, Lester.

Q: No, I mean, I thought you were keeping

MR. SPEAKES: I checked thoroughly with Dr. Ruge this morning and he's had no (laughter) no patients suffering from AIDS or whatever it is.

Q: The President doesn't have gay plague, is that what you're saying or what?

MR. SPEAKES: No, I didn't say that.

Q: Didn't say that?

MR. SPEAKES: I thought I heard you on the State Department over there. Why didn't you stay there? (Laughter.)

Q: Because I love you Larry, that's why (Laughter.)

MR. SPEAKES: Oh I see. Just don't put it in those terms, Lester. (Laughter.)

Q: Oh, I retract that.

MR. SPEAKES: I hope so.

Q: It's too late.

http://www.aegis.com/pubs/atn/2004/atn040607.html

2009-08-05T13:31:00.001-05:00

Robert Moses had the Central Park Zoo built for Al Smith--the former governor, and president of the Empire State Building--who lived near the park on the Upper East Side. Moses gave Smith a night key, and the elderly former king of Irish New York would go down to the Central Park Zoo by himself to talk to the animals. Smith loved to spend hours in the zoo after hours, "and he would switch on the lights as he entered each one, to the surprise of its occupants, and talk softly to them...And if one of the zoo’s less dangerous animals was sick or injured, Smith would enter its cage and stand for a while stroking its head and commiserating with it.” [Caro, 382]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Moses

2009-08-04T15:25:00.001-05:00

http://nymag.com/arts/tv/profiles/58170/
Christina Hendriiiicks.

2009-07-31T15:19:00.002-05:00

Hope you enjoyed that Chelsea Peretti clip, she's pretty funny huh?

Here's the trailer for Where the Wild Things Are

I think it looks really good! I'm not sure if it's because of the awesome choice of a song, or because of the scene where he's looking into the other room and sees his mom kissing someone, but it looks to me like its going to be one of those really poignant movies about growing up that's actually heartbreakingly portrayed from the point of view of a child.

Ep 4 Chelsea Peretti's All My Exes: Lowell

2009-07-30T14:40:00.001-05:00

2009-07-28T13:28:00.000-05:00

"What pushed me into this work," says Kamate, speaking softly in a mixture of Swahili and hesitant French, "is that I am also one who was raped." This happened a decade ago; the rapists were from the now-defunct militia of a local warlord backed by Uganda. "Their main purpose was to kill my husband. They took everything. They cut up his body like you would cut up meat, with knives. He was alive. They began cutting off his fingers. Then they cut off his sex. They opened his stomach and took out his intestines. When they poked his heart, he died. They were holding a gun to my head." She fought her captors, and shows a scar across the left side of her face that was the result. "They ordered me to collect all his body parts and to lie on top of them and there they raped me—twelve soldiers. I lost consciousness. Then I heard someone cry out in the next room and I realized they were raping my daughters."
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22956

I think this is literally the most horrible thing I have ever heard.

2009-07-21T17:09:00.000-05:00

scary!

2009-07-17T13:41:00.001-05:00

Zhao Ziyang, you were the man! Power to the people!

"Students, we came too late. Sorry, students. Whatever you say and criticize about us is deserved. My purpose here now is not to ask for your forgiveness. I want to say that now, your bodies are very weak. You have been on a hunger strike for six days, and it's now the seventh day.... Now what is most important is to end this hunger strike. I know, you are doing this in the hope that the Party and the government will give a most satisfactory answer for what you are asking for. I feel, our channel for dialogue is open, and some problems need to be resolved through a process. You cannot continue to...insist on stopping only when you have a satisfactory answer."

2009-07-15T11:09:00.001-05:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/12/opinion/12kristof.html?scp=115&sq=autopsy&st=nyt

Why didn't they give this guy a bloody autopsy?

2009-07-02T13:26:00.001-05:00

clearly, someone has decided to use a column that they had saved for a rainy day.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/02/opinion/02kristof.html?em

2009-06-27T19:49:00.001-05:00

“The idea is that a gay friend will be more in tune to women and more likely to have female friends,” Professor Savin-Williams said. “And it’s a stereotype, but straight men also feel they can talk to gay men about fashion and ask them if they’re looking O.K.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/28/fashion/28friends.html?pagewanted=2&hpw

Oh come on. The only reason a straight man would be friends with a gay man is to ask for fashion tips? this is hugely offensive.

2009-06-23T09:26:00.002-05:00

I dunno, Malcolm Gladwell. I think I might be done. I thought "outliers" was way too riddled with inaccuracies, along with being a fundamentally flawed premise. For instance, I don't understand how he can tell the story of Bill Gates and try to argue that it was merely circumstances that allowed Bill Gates to become who he is today. For some reason he acts as though Gates was the only person with access to a computer at that time- although he has proved that it was a rare circumstance, there were say, at least a couple hundred other kids with the same opportunities. and that he can actually write into his book that Gates would sneak out from his house most nights in high school so he could use a computer lab at a nearby university that had an opening between 3 and 6 in the morning, and not notice that THAT takes a one in a billion person, blows my mind. He's ignoring facts that he has written into his own book.

Also, the book is ridiculously anecdotal. For instance, when he is talking about immigrant Jews who went into textiles, and whose kids then became lawyers. If he's going to argue that it was the circumstances not the person, then how come all of the Jews who immigrated to the Lower East Side didn't end up in the exact same position? What about the people who didn't start their own companies? The same reason they were left out of the Gates chapter- because if you include all the people in similar situations who didn't turn out the same, you destroy your fragile thesis.

By far the worst chapter, or the one that upset me the most, was about how Asian people are good at math because they worked in the rice paddies. Way to explain a stereotype with a very offensive stereotype. First of all, way to conflate all Asian people. Second of all, in any of those countries not all of the people, not even all of the peasants, are farmers! Like, what? I just don't even understand how he could publish this chapter. I'm sure there are so many other reasons that could serve as better explanations for why people in those Asian countries scored better on math tests. And then beyond that, he sticks with the American fearmongering idea that because Asian people tend to score better on math tests, they are smarter and more successful. He should have at least spoken to educators or critics of the education systems in these countries, who I'm sure would have pointed out that their education systems overemphasize number crunching, teaching few leadership or creative skills. Basically, i thought it was an unbelievably superficial explanation of a complex issue, not too mention reenforcing many of the stupidest American ideas about "Asia."

The book basically exemplified everything that is wrong with trying to understand deeply complex societal issues, especially regarding minorities, by coming up with glib answers that increase distance between different types of people, precluding the ability to understand another person as part of modern society.

2009-06-01T15:14:00.003-05:00

this is why i don't understand why internet advertising hasn't taken off. it seems to me to be a million times more clear who is buying into the ads. With tv and most other advertising, it's like throwing it into the abyss, and hoping that the right people will end up seeing, and then end up following through. on the internet, it's so much more direct- you know how many people have clicked on it, and it has taken them right to the website. you could probably even directly correlate the amount of money the person spends after going to the link. and then everyone can advertise- not just companies like Nike who can throw away the money advertising on tv. Smaller businesses are much more likely to purchase small internet ads when they can quickly chart how effective they are, and how much they are helping business. And I know that people got turned off by internet ads because of the massive pop ups of the early internet days. But now, for instance, when i have ads on my facebook, they actually often relate to things i'm interested in, and so i'll click on them. it's not a war between us and advertisers. advertisers are for getting the product to the client, and the internet really seems to be the best way to do this.

2009-05-26T09:31:00.001-05:00

the new york times continues its tirade against women. this literally will not end until women get back into the kitchen and shut up. Uggggggh!

2009-05-22T18:53:00.002-05:00

could anyone not tell that the economic writer who ended up near bankruptcy was a jerk who brought the problem on himself? are we not capable of reading between the lines, especially in a case when the writer is clearly trying to make himself look good? did we not notice that he admitted that they did pay like $4,000 for a summer vacation or something, and that they continued to splurge on designer goods? honestly, i wonder if they could have actually managed the mortgage guy's plan if they had just cut their spending down. this guy needs to learn not to be such an annoying yuppy, and that it doesn't make him better than other people- in fact, it makes him worse than other people because he is a selfish debtor. no, you do not deserve to live a better life than "poor" people. and your wife is a scam artist.
http://gawker.com/5265546/times-scribe-omits-vital-details-from-bookarticle

2009-05-22T18:24:00.002-05:00

Children on tv shows are blessed in that they all magically develop a talent for "painting" or "writing," but do not envy them. they must also suffer the curse of never being able to move out from under their parents' roofs.

2009-05-17T18:53:00.002-05:00

let's take a moment to appreciate my two favorite tv show opening credit songs-

1. She is literally the polaroid of perfection
She has everything and she'll give it to you in a second
Looks can deceive
She wears her heart on her sleeve
She'll steal you away
Not just for one day
Every day is an ordinary day
In her world she's an ordinary girl
- Clueless, the TV show

2. Look back down in a crowded hall
You see there's a beauty standing
Is she really everywhere or her reflection?
When the first calls out to you,
The other's shy and quiet
Could there be too different girls who look the same
At Sweet Valley, Sweet Valley high
- Sweet Valley High, the TV show

2009-05-14T09:23:00.002-05:00

I am so excited about this book!
Zhao Ziyang is my favorite favorite favorite! He was like (one of) the normal one, who was like, let's talk to these kids at Tian'anmen Square and see what they have to say. And then he got ousted, it was so sad.

2009-05-11T17:29:00.002-05:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/10/business/10women.html?em
I dunno about articles like this. It seems like really old fashioned out of date feminism, the idea that "shouldn't we all bond together as women?" Its not the 90s anymore. everything is not about what group we identify with. certainly, there is a time and a place for feminism, and we shouldn't call other women sluts and we shouldn't hold up thin idiots as our heroines. but like, the study found that 60 percent of the bullies were men. forgive me, but i don't really see what we are upset about. is it that no women should be bullies? why not?
I guess that's the problem that I have with this article. it assumes that a) women should be superior to men, and b) women should be quiet, meek and unbullyish. The article expresses a surprise that more of bullies were not men. has the author been living under a rock for his/her entire life? I find that women tend to be much bigger "bullies," because something in our socialization makes us focus on relationships between people rather than focusing on the achievement of a specific goal. In many ways, I would say that this is a smarter stance than men have. there is a grade curve for everything, and so rather than blindly focus on a score, mightn't we be more successful if we are aware of how others are scoring? I think it's interesting that the smarter stance is not the most successful, and I think that is what speaks to the vast inequalities between men and women in the workplace. men, no matter how they blunder their way through it, are more likely to succeed.
so yes, like the author of this article, i am concerned about women in the workplace. and I think the author raises an interesting point about the means to success- though he/she (sorry, the name is Mickey so I dunno) doesn't actually make the point. how do we succeed in a field where we do not run the show? We make our own field. Meece talks to many female "bullies" who have since started their own company. Maybe we should re-evaluate our female "bullies." Are they not perhaps women who should have made it to the top of the game, natural leaders, whose behavior was deemed unnatural because of their gender, and who couldn't crack that glass ceiling? Also, what about the 60 percent of bullies that are men. Why is the article not about how we can fix the majority of bullies, but instead how we can fix a minority?

2009-05-08T12:52:00.002-05:00

One student, Ryan Roger, 21, said the lockdown was a bad idea. “I don’t know if this is the vibration we really need at this point,” Mr. Roger said. “To keep these kids in fear and propagate the legitimacy of these threats is not what I want to see from the university.”
New York Times

2009-04-18T15:06:00.000-05:00

this woman named her daughters florence and harriet. yikes.

2009-04-10T19:44:00.001-05:00

Hell yeah I am excited about this movie!!!! http://areyouobsessed.com/

2009-04-09T19:46:00.002-05:00

http://tv.nytimes.com/2009/04/09/arts/television/09park.html?hpw
Amy Poehler, yes we can!
I'm so glad to read that Amy Poehler's show has gotten a good review, as I had been hearing some random negative buzz. I think that might have been coming from Gawker though, where the editors occasionally just say that they hear things are bad (Milk, anyone?) so that they will sound like insiders. I hope that this show will be awesome, I worry because I have found Amy Poehler to be a million times funnier in improv than in the tv shows I've seen her on (SNL, Upright Citizens Brigade,) but perhaps those shows were just not the right venue for her talents. So go girl, and I'll be watching. Except tonight, because I think tonight is the first night but I'm not at a house with a teeeveee. :(

2009-03-31T10:00:00.000-05:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/31/science/space/31mars.html?_r=1&8dpc
is everybody gonna go craaaazy?

2009-03-21T17:17:00.000-05:00

one month till my birthday!

2009-03-02T18:26:00.000-05:00

i havent' even watched this yet, but i have such a good feeling that i'm going to put it up.

2009-03-02T14:55:00.002-05:00

Here's an article about sitcoms that i didn't really get the point of. I mean, i guess the point is that the old style is still more popular, and you can't break with tradition. which is sort of in line with the entry i wrote about roseanne.
but here's the thing. i think that things are changing, and i don't really see the point of writing an article that isn't going to take any further of an attempt at theorizing about the state of modern television. judging a television show merely by its ratings is a thing of the past. the writer's strike last year was an indication that they see where the wind is blowing, that money isn't just coming from initial airings and syndication. tv shows are taking on a life of their own, and i think that is (or should be) putting an added emphasis on quality, and allowing true interest in a show to gain ground against what is merely on the network during prime time.
the three big factors that have changed tv shows' situation are dvd sales, the internet, and dvr/tivo. the major difference with these new factors is that they can be acquired on demand. this is great because it allows the viewer to watch exactly what they would like, and does not waste viewership on people who are not interested in watching. as media has become increasingly interactive, standard television, particularly broadcast television, grows increasingly out of touch. cable television is still more relevant i would say, because it is directed more toward niche audiences, and probably serves as a sort of branding that helps people to find shows they are interested in watching, ie a new comedy central show or a new TLC show.
but the point is, younger generations want to watch what they want, when they want. and that is most often not when it is aired. i, for instance, am an incredibly loyal tv show watcher; when i am into a show, i do not miss a single episode. but i almost never watch the show when it airs. either i dvr it, or i watch it on hulu or one of the illegal sites, or i'll just rent/buy the dvd of the entire show and watch it at once. and almost everyone my age seems to do this.
i think audience loyalty is very important; it gets people to purchase dvds of a tv show and to sit through boring and painful advertising without switching channels. more people might be watching two and a half men, but i doubt they are getting any of the extra income that flows into trendy shows like 30 rock and arrested development. i don't understand why people aren't thinking creatively about the new opportunities opening up, and i hope that someday these extra factors will be optimized. because it will help the networks/production companies if the true value of the shows are realized, and it will certainly encourage the production of higher quality shows. i know there's a way that everyone can win, and i hope it will happen soon.

2009-03-01T11:36:00.002-05:00

i think its fitting that this issue about network television. i mean obviously the way our country is hemorrhaging money raises questions about the massive amounts of money spent on shows like Lost at a time when advertising money is disappearing. but more than that, its about what's happening to, or what we are finally admitting about, the companies that are the backbone of our society. Ford, GE, etc, are finally being acknowledged as out of date money wasters, who have failed to keep up with the fantastic technological developments in our time, essentially as dinosaurs. And likewise, these network channels are dinosaurs of the television world, spending inflated sums to produce uncreative carbon copies. it's clear that there is no one left who is willing to take a risk on something that they judge to be high quality. Essentially, it seems like there is no judgment. That's why you see shows like Mad Men and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia showing up on cable. It seems like the network executives think something is only good if it costs a ton of money. They are a broken machine, and maybe they do deserve to be another victim of this economic crisis. Maybe we can get some great new creative thinking rising up out of the ashes.

2009-02-25T15:25:00.003-05:00

i've become obsessed with "he's just not that into you." not because i thought the movie was particularly good, or even that it was good at all. and i know it sounds stupid that it's a movie based on a book based on a single line on sex and the city, but despite all these claims to intense un-importantness, i think it manages to take a stab at dealing with a hugely complex, and in fact important issue.

first of all, i frankly do not understand people who cast aside shows like sex and the city with the criticism that they assumed that one's personal life is the most important thing in the world. people act as if this is being shallow, and that it implies that women are stupid for focusing on such an issue. but why? i think its ridiculous to act like we are above this; everybody wants to be fulfilled in their social life, wants to have people in their life who make them feel interesting and valuable. so why do we criticize shows or movies that make such a topic their focus?

i think the issue raised by "he's just not that into you" takes an important step beyond the simple initial stages of courtship. i think it acknowledges an idea not mentioned in teen magazines, in which he is into you or he is not. there are gradations of attraction between everyone, and i think the statement puts an added level of responsibility on you. specifically, what do you require from your lover? how "into you" do you require him to be? i think it asks you to look at your relationship objectively, to see if he is actually meeting your expectations of being "that" into you, which most likely means matching the level of how into him you are. and it requires you to set the breaking off point, not the other person. i think many people, especially women, who are generally socialized to focus on the feelings of the other person, do not see the need to set an active breaking off point. and i think that often causes the person to end up too embroiled in the emotions of the situation to see that they are compromising their self. by wanting to understand and forgive the other person's flaws, which is a completely honorable goal, something of the self is lost.

although it is objective, it is also an interestingly subjective commentary on an individual situation, based on what you are asking of someone. in a specific situation, "that" into you then takes on the specific meaning- you want to get married, you want to have a baby. is he "that" into you? the sentence itself is helping you to set your goals by providing a blank word that you can fill in as you, as an individual, see fit.

as for the movie generally, i was up and down throughout the whole thing about whether i approved, finally leaving with the conclusion that i was "simply confused." the opening scene won me over initially, by acknowledging that this insecurity was not any innate quality of women, but something that has been bred into us by society. that is like check one for me when talking about these things, because clearly its going to get offensive if you start blaming women; there are a lot of messed up things going on out there.

then there's Ginnifer Godwin's character Gigi, who is very over the top and depressing. i guess basically i was confused by whether the moviemakers made her like that on purpose to highlight and exaggerate these weaknesses in ourselves, or they just wanted us laugh at her. Drew Barrymore's character was pretty much the same, and confused me similarly. and because these two women are held up as the exaggerated example of what NOT to do, it was definitely odd to have them both end happily without learning a lesson. if those women can be as crazy as that and still get men, then clearly the movie has negated its own reason for existing.

the men seemed like reasonable people, and i thought the movie did a good job of not being man-hating. mostly the film suffered in that department by having useless actors; they were pretty fair to the man who cheats on his wife, except that he seemed like a robot and so we couldn't connect with him at all. i do not buy that ben affleck is a sensitive photographer who does not believe in marriage. justin long is a geeky nerd, not a playboy stud. i'm not opposed to challenging actors, but clearly this was not that kind of movie, so they really should have just used people who fit the bill.

i'm also not sure that scarlett johannsen was the best women to cast as the evil vixen who steals the man away. she was the only character who seemed halfway interesting, or who seemed to think for herself. she was the only one who seemed independent enough to decide that she wasn't "that into" somebody, rather than focusing on their level of into-it-ness. and she wanted to travel to india! clearly someone who sees that life is to be filled with experiences, not merely with a ring on your finger.

i thought that jennifer connelly gave the best performance hands down, though the reviews are right to say that it doesn't really belong in a romantic comedy. i think in a role that could have been the blind, blank woman being cheated on by her jerk husband, she instead played the emptiness as depression. it seemed clear that her vapid lines and nagging were the sign of a woman who doesn't really care what she's saying, and that she had internalized her husband's lack of attraction to her to the point that she was hardly occupying her body. when she breaks down with the revelation that they don't have sex any more, i think she really embodied the way that such a situation can crumble a woman's feelings of self-worth.

that's another situation where, going back to the beginning of this post, you could criticize such a woman if you wanted to. you could say, clearly she has an empty life and pretty weak self esteem if she cares that much about someone thinking she's attractive. but i've seen the same thing in some of my smartest friends. sexual attraction matters to all of us, and is capable of breaking a person. and couldn't we all stand to be a bit more objective and evaluative about our romantic situations?

2009-02-20T13:52:00.003-05:00

i read sex, drugs, and cocoa puffs recently; while i wasn't a huge fan, i am a fan of masturbatory discussion of minute television factoids, so readers prepare. as i cleaned my apartment the other day, i had a roseanne marathon on the tv. it was the last season, as any fan of roseanne knows (come on people, it's a good show!), the season where the show compleeetely jumped the shark. it reminded me of chuck klosterman's discussion of Puck on the Real World, who tried to change the nature of reality television through his open acknowledgment of its falseness. i think in a similar way, Roseanne tried to push the bounds of the sitcom television world, and failed as well. it is extremely difficult to break the accepted dimensions of tv show formats, and roseanne's failure showed that it is not just the corporate heads who restrict tv, but audiences as well.
let me explain. in its final season, the conner family wins the lottery. now the lottery is a very common storyline is sitcoms; I can think of episodes in Full House, Family Matters, and Step By Step where this issue arises. But inevitably, by the end of every episode, they discover that there has been some sort of a mixup, and life returns to normal. this is what is so fundamentally comfortable about sitcom life- it does not change. it is the same reason why sitcom children rarely move out of the house as they graduate high school, attend college and so on. it is also part of the idea of the everyfamily- we want to feel like the family on the screen could be our family, and we certainly don't want them to be lucky and get breaks that we aren't getting. i think the exception to this would be shows that are set up in a wish-come-true format like The Beverly Hillbillies and the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air- the very nature of these shows is to portray wish fulfillment, people like us somehow finding themselves in crazy different situations (mostly coming in to a lot of money). But once a show has settled on being a family just like you, they cannot break out of this format.
in the last season of roseanne, we go on to see the problems that the conner family would face having come into so much money. roseanne tries to mingle with a higher class of people, the neighbors become jealous, and ultimately it tears their family apart. but more importantly, it is not who the conners ARE. when we entered our relationship with the show, it was with the fundamental understanding that they are equal or lower than our family. they essentially tried to create a new show in the last season, and that was why it failed.
it failed so badly that in the last episode, it was revealed that the entire plotline was actually a dream, and that dan conner had in reality died. now that is some backpedaling if i've ever seen it. i think it was a great move, because it allowed them to erase that terrible mistake, and return the family to the down-to-earth gristle-and-bone family that we had spent so many years with. but it also shows that tv audiences don't want to be pushed, they can't even accept a show moving to another similar format. and its interesting, that's all i'm saying.

2009-02-06T10:05:00.000-05:00

Well at least there's one good thing about being less well paid than men.

2008-12-10T15:51:00.002-05:00

Okay, now maybe this is a crazy conspiracy theory, but here goes- I saw Milk yesterday, and it was great. All the stuff about the opposition to Prop 6 in the 80s make me want to go out and get active, fighting for gay rights. Now, if you were making a movie with a political message, it seems likely that you would have a political agenda. And if you care so passionately about such an issues as to make such a heartfelt and moving film, you would want it to affect people, to move them to action. So, you would think that you would want this movie released, say, before a similarly polarizing vote would take place in the very same state as Prop 6, right? Why on earth would you wait until immediately after such a historical vote took place to release your movie? This seems especially mysterious to me considering that the movie was reported to be finished a long time ago. I remember, back in October, reading a piece guessing that the already finished Milk was being delayed in its release due to its lack of quality. And yet, now it's released, and everyone loves it. So I don't think that was the reason. Honestly, it seems to me that there was some fishy business holding back the movie's release. If I were an investigative journalist with more tools in my control, I would find out what was going on there. Who didn't want people to see Milk before the Prop 8 vote???

2008-12-07T11:20:00.002-05:00

This times op-ed about prop 8 and blacks also makes me mad. I haven't heard as much of this lately, but it was the really big thing the day after the election, pundits talking about how it was the black voters in California who were responsible for passing Prop 8. And like, yeah I know that was a part of it. I see the numbers they're using, and it does look like black people were largely in support of Prop 8. But this is where we get to people using statistics to argue whatever the hell they want, which is just about my biggest pet peeve.
I remember on the day after the election, a panel of people on CNN were discussing this phenomenon. And of the four, one woman was like, "Yes I know that black voters seemed to have been a part of this support for prop 8, but I don't think that's the most important statistic to be looking at". She said, "If you divide it by an age demographic, the proposition was overwhelmingly supported by the older generation, while younger voters were not in support of an amendment. So we can at least take something positive from that, that when this younger generation is the primary voting group, things will be different."
I totally agree with that. We know that minority groups tend to be more conservative, and so it is not surprising that they wouldn't support gay marriage. It really feels to me that when people play up that statistical angle, they are trying to fight two minority groups against each other. I feel like someone's trying to make me a part of a chicken fight, so that the general white populace can be like "oh my, look at how these two groups hate each other, that's too bad that black people prevented gay people from having the right to get married." We don't need to focus any anger or hatred at the black community, they've got plenty problems of their own to worry about.
If I did want to be angry and hateful, I would direct it toward the Mormons, who devoted such an enormous amount of money to supporting the proposition, despite the fact that they are also a minority group with marriage preferences outside of the norm, and so you might think that they might feel a little sympathy, or at least support the idea "live and let live." And if I really wanted to get angry, it would be at all the ignorant people who bought their jargon, for instance fearing that teaching gay marriage would become a requirement in kindergarten, thus making people's children gay. Really people, let's get some goddamn education out there so we don't have members of our populace with fears like that.

2008-12-03T10:36:00.002-05:00

i am so sick of gawker's attitude that the gay community's support for No on Prop 8 came too little too late. don't they get that the whole tragedy of it is that all of these people were out there fighting their hardest to get Obama elected? it's not that people were lazy or something. the gay community is among the most active and passionate group out there. the problem is that, just like obama knows, you can't talk too much about gay stuff if you want to win a national election. so while there was a lot of energy for No on Prop 8, the majority went to getting the evil Republicans out of office. i find gawker's attitude really offensive and anti-gay. oh well, at least no one gives a shit what they say.

2008-11-21T18:21:00.000-05:00

Yessss.

http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

2008-11-21T15:38:00.002-05:00

From a New York Times letter-

"The tradition of marriage, the value of marriage to life and society, and a number of other factors not directly related to religion all stand against the idea of gay marriage."

Thanks for clearing that up. And, you know, not using vague generalities to make your point.
But wait, you're a supporter of other civil rights issues, isn't that hypocritical?

"Many of us who have been strong supporters of civil rights and the end of Jim Crow now find ourselves directly opposed to gay marriage. This issue really is different from other civil rights issues."

Oh, it REALLY is? that's good enough for me. thanks!

2008-11-21T12:00:00.001-05:00

Last month, a local official in charge of disaster relief hanged himself, Xinhua also reported. Dong Yufei, 40, had lost his 12-year-old son in the quake. In his suicide note, Dong wrote, “I feel too much pressure from life and work every day. I cannot hold on any further. And I just want a good rest.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/22/world/asia/22quake.html

2008-11-14T12:26:00.001-05:00

Pissed off about Prop 8? Join the impact. Yeah, I mean, I think I'm gonna go to this on Saturday, should be pretty cool.

2008-10-30T17:42:00.001-05:00

in case you wanted to heard chinese people say "obama" and "hilary" ;)