Friday, February 26, 2010

In the other window is my paper

-19th C lumberjack chic and all that fun stuff done right, which is to say, reinterpreted rather than stitch-by-stitch imitated. Personally, I don't want them, but they'd look good on someone, I'm sure.

-Local-sustainable done wrong. OK, not so much done wrong as described wrong. Why was deli food "Jewish" when in Europe, but merely "American" in the US? Are Jewish and American mutually exclusive? Are we pretending latkes and the like have no non-Jewish Eastern European culinary roots? What I like about the article, however, is that after I (and, fine, a few other people as well) pointed out that Pollan's suggestion to eat what our great-grandmothers did is kind of ridiculous for many cuisines, here we are learning that shtetl food is, in fact, to be emulated, if only because back then they had less food and worse cuts of meat. (For full-on shtetl recreation on hipster terrain, this could take place in Williamsburg, what with neighboring Greenpoint...)

-I keep getting academic-list emails that catch my attention for the wrong reasons. One was about a conference quite literally on images of the penis, a conference no doubt designed as fodder. Another led to a site that looked quite interesting, but with an unfortunate link: "Click Here For Antisemitism." "Antisemitism" meaning, apparently, articles analyzing the phenomenon.

-I am suggestible, and have hair that should probably get some professional attention prior to this conference. Not the penis conference. A different one.

2 comments:

Matt said...

The boots look like they could be used for a somewhat more up-scale version of what I'd call the "granny Clampett" look if paired with the right skirt. It's a look I was quite fond of at one point in my life.

You're right, I think, about the deli article. I'm glad that they note that most people's idea of "authentic" stretches back a much shorter time than they realize. That's fine, in a way, because there's no inherent virtue in being "authentic" in this sense, but it would be better if people didn't overly value things that are not really old because they falsely believe they are "authentic".

PG said...

I just read this as "Clumberjack chic" and now think that "Clumberjack" should be the word for this fashion on men; "Cladyjack" on women. (The local college where I grew up had a Lumberjack mascot and the women's athletic teams were the Ladyjacks.)