I'd like to receive home delivery of the New York Times...

...so I can get headlines like this one in print:

"Abercrombie & Fitch May Be Cool. But Cool Only Goes So Far."

Just how far does cool go? I didn't bother reading this article, so I'll never find out.

And really, if even trucker hats are past cool, then isn't Abercrombie even further away, having never even had a moment of Lower East Side glory?

Dilemma solved

I've just found the answer to the age-old question of what on earth am I going to do after college. It is contingent on Kerry winning the presidency. If that happens, I will apply to be a vice-presidential intern. Beret and everything.

Shopping: Where it all began

This past quarter I took a course on the year 1848 in France. A lot happened that year--class conflict, rise of the bourgeoisie, the beginning of a modern, technologically-advanced society--so much that there was not only an entire seminar devoted to it at Chicago, but also an exhibit at the Cooper Hewitt museum in New York. The show, "Faster, Cheaper, Newer, More: The Revolutions of 1848," focused on how design changed in the U.S. and in Europe. From rubber to daguerreotypes to buildings made largely of glass, 1848 and the years just before and after, the material world, like the political one, moved forward and started looking more or less like, well, now.

Shopping as an activity, whether buying or just looking, also began around 1848 with the advent of the department store. It turns out that the first department store in New York, coming onto the global shopping scene before even Paris's Bon Marche and Harrods in London, was the A.T. Stewart Store, located on Chambers Street, just a few blocks east of Stuyvesant High School.

Today, Stuyvesant students looking to check out department stores may head over to lower Broadway, to the Bloomingdales in the former Canal Jeans space or, better yet, world-famous Century 21, both within easy walking distance. Meanwhile, University of Chicago students may study the surprisingly fascinating history of shopping but may not, in fact, shop, for fear of seeming too much like, God forbid, Princeton students.

Location, location, location, part III

Will responds: "Thus, the argument goes, keeping Hyde Park's shopping scene dismal keeps at bay people to whom convenient blue jeans are more important than intellectual rigor-- not because Chicago students don't shop, but because Chicago wants people for whom shopping is of secondary importance."

Does that imply that, say, Princeton (or perhaps the Institute for Advanced Study), seeks people for whom shopping is of primary importance because there's a J. Crew and a Banana Republic within walking distance of the campus? No school exists entirely independent of its surroundings, and prospective students are correct in considering where various schools are located along with what the academic possibilities look like.

University of Chicago students may seek "intellectual rigor" but they are also drawn to the fact that the school's in (OK, near) a large city. A large city with bookstores, yes, but also cheesy bars, Vienna Beef places, and, yes, clothing stores, from H&M to Bloomingdales to, yes, the Gap.

A d-liteful encounter

For no particular reason I walked down Lexington to the Bloomingdales area today and was approached by a young woman who had chosen me, of all the many people on 62nd Street, to ask the following question:

"Are you from around here?"

Seemed fair. I am from the area, so the woman can't be faulted for being perceptive. So I answered in the affirmative.

"Do you know where I could get frozen yogurt?"

I pointed her to a candy and nuts shop that promised "frozen desserts."

"No," she said.

"No?"

"Tasti-d-lite."

"Oh, in that case, you could go to 77th and Lex, or about 70th and 3rd, but there might be one closer."

Without a word, she vanished into the crowd, with that determined look of a woman in search of fake iced cream.

My question is this: What exactly was it about me that made me, of all the people on that block, look like the sort of person who'd know where the nearest Tasti-d-lite was located?

Young woman serving Barbara Ehrenreich at Wendy's: not a girl, not yet a non-final appellate court judge

According to Crescat ringleader Will Baude, "Copy-editing is much like working in a non-final appellate court (or at least how I imagine it to be)."

Looking back on my own admittedly brief career, I can find similar parallels. Shelving books at the Reg, for example, was in fact remarkably similar to being a Japanese emperor.

I suppose there is something to be gained by imagining that one's tedious jobs (or tedious moments in one's otherwise fascinating jobs) resemble more complex and challenging ones. This would come as news to Barbara Ehrenreich, whose much-lauded book, Nickel and Dimed, is an account of one academic's experiment posing as a worker (i.e. working) at various low-paid jobs across America. While ostensibly an examination of whether it's possible to survive getting paid minimum wage, the book is also a discussion of how unpleasant it is for someone used to one way of life to adjust to another. She doesn't like getting fast food and working, well, tedious jobs, and is confused about why the "real" workers aren't more, well, worked up. She never quite separates what is a strong and much-needed point about the difficulties of this nation's working poor from her own personal distaste for situations unlike her own. I got the sense from Nickel and Dimed that Ehrenreich wouldn't be a huge fan of any tedious job, even one that paid, say, $50,000 a year.

In her recent New York Times op-ed, "The New Cosby Kids," Ehrenreich botches yet another reasonable argument-that poor young blacks shouldn't be the nation's scapegoats.

Ehrenreich guarantees everyone from well-meaning liberals (and conservatives) to P.C. warriors will be sympathetic readers by choosing an argument with which few would feel comfortable disagreeing: that poor young blacks have it tough in America. Who is Ehrenreich going to find who will outright deny that? Sure, not everyone would agree with how she’d try to fix things, but she’s set up her op-ed as a fight between the people who acknowledge that poor young blacks tend to have difficult lives in this country and those who refuse to admit it.

When writing as if each sentence ought to end in an exclamation point, it’s difficult to make assertions that don’t occasionally conflict with one another. Ehrenreich uses, to back up her point, the fact that “only a minority of [welfare moms] were African-American.” She then asks, “what about the fact that a black baby has a 40 percent chance of being born into poverty?” Now, either she’s blaming Americans for wrongly assuming that many blacks are poor, or she’s trying to emphasize that blackness does correlate with poverty.

Racially-charged rhetoric, however, is the way Ehrenreich decides to take her piece, for better or worse. “It's time to start picking on a more up-to-date pariah group for the 21st century, and I'd like to nominate the elderly whites.” Ehrenreich feels the need to maintain the racial polarization of her op-ed throughout. Rather than picking on young blacks, we must pick on old whites. “The law-abiding old whites," she adds, oh so humorously, "are no prize either.” While Ehrenreich is being facetious, she could have done it in a way that didn’t keep reemphasizing black versus white, again and again. The comments Ehrenreich makes about the nation’s elderly—that often they require insulin and become bald—apply just as much to blacks as to whites.

Ehrenreich acknowledges, at the end of her article, that she is fact implicating “the elderly rich.” Are we to believe that, just “Arab” and “Muslim” can be used interchangeably, so can “elderly whites” and “elderly rich”? Are all overlapping categories to be collapsed for simplicity’s sake at the Times?

Drawing distinctions between the oppressors and the oppressed is not always so simple, but for Ehrenreich, dividing the country into poor, young, and black and rich, old, and white is as good a way as any of doing so. Seems she was served at Wendy’s (was this part of her Nickel and Dimed experiment requiring to eat fast food?) by a tired-looking black girl. As in Nickel and Dimed, Ehrenreich assumes that any job or life situation she herself wouldn’t want must be an objectively miserable existence. And plenty of people nationwide look—and are—tired, but Ehrenreich chooses not to notice the tired fashion models, investment bankers, and, ahem, professors and picks up on only the sleepiness of fast-food workers.

Rather than question her use of the world “girl” to refer to a young black women she encountered at Wendy’s (don’t want to mess too much with her liberal cred, tempting as that may be; but seriously, if Trent Lott called a young black man serving him at McDonalds a "boy" things might not go over so well), let’s say the person was in fact high-school age. Let’s say, crazy as this may sound, that this was her after-school job. “Contrary to the stereotype” (to borrow a stereotype-demolishing phrase from Ehrenreich’s own op-ed) some black teenagers really are high-school students. The young woman’s identity may not entirely be that of “fast-food worker” and she may well be moving on to things that Ehrenreich would approve of. She’s still just a girl, not yet a woman—how does Ehrenreich know that this Wendy’s job is it for her for life?

Then again, working at Wendy's is a lot like working in a non-final appellate court. Or so they tell me.

"They were my great-grandfather's," said the Chicago student of his Diesel jeans.

Will Baude has simultaneously contradicted me and caused my blog to get hits from a few people who are not close friends or family. I must now do a thorough fisking.

According to Will: "I think Phoebe confuses cause and effect. Hyde Park is devoid of Michigan Avenue's shopping opportunities not because people are afraid the GAP would destroy the young American Mind, but because UChicago (largely, but not exclusively) caters to folks who don't buy (or won't admit to buying) new pants so frequently that they want their blue jeans within walking distance."

Yet Will's point--that Chicago students are often the sort who won't admit to buying lots of clothing, implying that they do nevertheless buy it, just in secret, is precisely what I was getting at. The new clothing doesn't just appear randomly on many Chicago students' backs every few weeks; no, it is, as I pointed out, the result of furtive trips to Michigan Avenue. Or visits to bananarepublic.com from the Harper USITE while quickly switching to another, more respectable website (say, Arts and Letters Daily) whenever anyone might be looking.

My argument is simple: the shopping is happening, so it might as well be convenient and out in the open.

I find it striking that Will refers to the "American Mind," with the capital "m," which suggests that he's referring to the late Chicago professor Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind. If one is to accept that Saul Bellow's character "Ravelstein" was in fact based on his real-life friend Bloom, then Bloom himself was something of a shopaholic. Presumably Bloom's own American Mind remained intact while his American Body remained well-clad. In his honor, I say, what the hell, let's put a J. Crew on Ellis. (Ravelstein's tastes were a bit more high-end and not so bourgeois, but you've gotta start somewhere).

Will also notes: "(...she doesn't try to argue that Columbia's bookstores trump Powells and the Seminary Co-op)" (parentheses Baude's; not these parentheses, these are mine). Yes, I have committed the cardinal sin of the Chicago intellectual world: I've been caught putting value on things other than books. Oh Allan Bloom, oh Saul Bellow, oh...other such folk, I admit it! It's not all contemplating Plato, all the time, I confess! Oh, Fran Drescher, I have watched your show in reruns on Lifetime!

Scandalous: Middle-school girls invade Friendster

No, this isn't about the mysterious spots on Gwyneth's back. No, this scandal has more of a New York Magazine than New York Post feel to it.

It seems that Friendster has been overrun with 14-year-old private school girls. A number of young women, grinning in their photos with mouths full of metal, often surrounded by five or so middle-school clones, are claiming to be anywhere from 18 to far, far older (the most popular age they pick seems to be 21). Yet strangely they make reference to things like "Nightingale '08" and "Spence girls do it better." Their interests and testimonials are awfully heavy on the sleepaway camp references for a group of supposed 20-somethings.

They like Buckley boys, they make the sort of sexual innuendo people make after having maybe once gotten to second base (i.e. using said sort of terminology), they list their extracurricular activities; most importantly, they list their friends. Basically, they use Friendster as a clique-record-keeper. But Friendster does not just link them to fellow Interschool young women. There is, believe it or not, another possible audience for these sorts of profiles.

What exactly do these girls want with their "Serious Relationship and Dating, Men"? Think of the men who get off on girls with braces who like ballet, chillin' in the Hamptons, and horseback riding, and who can't wait till starting upper school at Riverdale. These girls are advertising themselves as wealthy jailbait, whether they like it or not.

While the online dating/networking/friend-linking service is ostensibly for those 18 and over, nothing stops people from claiming to be any legal age they feel like. Plenty of profiles have, say, a picture of Nikki Hilton, a claim that "Nikki" is 76 years old, that "her" occupation is U.S. senator, and so forth. In other words, surfer beware.

Amenities envy

Shopping possibilities can really make or break a university.

A walk on Broadway over by Columbia today revealed just how lacking the area around Chicago is when it comes to pleasant things to purchase. While they say that Morningside Heights is to New York what Hyde Park is to Chicago, the two neighborhoods aren't comparable. Columbia students can, after a day of grueling classes, head down from Oren's coffee on 112th, home of the tastiest and most caffeinated iced cappuccino in the city, and continue down to Club Monaco on 87th and the GAP and Banana Republic on 86th. Those with less princessy inclinations than yours truly may stop at various natural, hemp-linen-looking clothing stores (outfitters, it seems, to at least half the women in the neighborhood) and independent bookstores.

Many Chicago students have a sort of shopping phobia, assuming that proximity to a source of, say, new tee shirts would cause the University to lose its intellectual edge. Given that the school is perhaps most reknowned for a less-than-socialist economics department, it is not that Chicago students are especially anti-capitalist.

If a GAP were to open on 55th Street, goes the argument, people would forget about Hegel and Aristotle and spend weeks on end trying to decide which jeans best flatter their asses. This is absurd--as much as they hate to admit it, Chicago students, like mere mortals, buy new clothing and accessories from time to time. It would actually leave more time for important scholarly business if Chicago folk didn't have to sneak up to Michigan Avenue every time they wanted to buy pants.

Geez, if everyone who purchased clothing lacked intellectual credentials...perhaps the better option, then, would be for Chicago to become a nudist university. Sure, it gets cold in the winter, but what with all the passages between campus buildings, it might just work.

Moore fun than a trip to the mall

Like one or two other people across the nation, I saw "Fahrenheit 9/11". It was like "The Little Mermaid,"--a tear-jerker par excellence-- except that the theater was filled not with teary five-year-olds but with a horde of anti-Bush adults.

Michael Moore shows the Bushies getting made up for the camera--as has already been pointed out elsewhere, everyone looks creepy when getting made up for the camera--and also allows himself to be filmed, sporting the, err, natural look. No "Queer Eye" team exfoliated or plucked Moore before he faced his own cameras.

I found this aspect of the movie one of the most unfair--who, aside from those on reality tv shows, wants their beauty regimen caught on tape? Just because Michael Moore can pull off the low-maintenance look doesn't mean we all can look spiffy effortlessly.


The audience (at 19th and Broadway) reacted most negatively to Wolfowitz, above, using his own spit in place of hair gel. While I'd rather not be one of those people who looks for anti-Semitism everywhere, there's something sinister about the way in which, while all the other Bush folk are caught being made up, Wolfowitz is caught grooming himself like a beast. He's clearly doing it as a joke, playing to the camera, but Moore shoots it as though he's revealing a deep dark secret of how the man puts himself together each morning. Ugh.

"So what if I like pretty things"--Rufus Wainwright

The Democratic ticket just got a whole lot prettier:

Resistance

It's hot out, so I couldn't quite make it to the shoe repair place without stopping somewhere along the way. Barneys looked tempting and air conditioned, so I followed the surgically-altered hordes through the revolving doors on 61st and Madison.

First, since shoes were already on my mind, I went to the floor that promised to have them. There was a sale--many shoes once close to $1000 are now more like $300. While one would expect a student/magazine intern to buy designer shoes continuously, that is not the case. (Insert Carrie Bradshaw reference here--what is the connection between wanting to write for magazines and wanting nice shoes? Vicious cycle if there ever was one.)

I tried on the one pair that was least intimidatingly priced--a $140 pair of Robert Clergerie shoes that were something between a loafer and a clog, but with a back and a pointy toe. This looked as strange as it sounds, explaining how they ended up so reduced, but they fit and maybe Robert Clergerie knows something that I don't about how shoes should look. I felt like buying something ridiculous, I really did, but went with an iced cappuccino instead. This was probably the way to go.

The Confederacy retroactively integrates

It seems that the late Strom Thurmond's bi-racial daughter, Essie Mae Washington-Williams, is proud of all her ancestry: Ms. Washington-Williams "now wants to join the United Daughters of the Confederacy, an organization of descendants of soldiers who fought for the South in the Civil War."

"Ms. Washington-Williams is joining the Confederate organization not to honor the soldiers that fought for a Southern way of life dependent on slavery, but to explore her genealogy and heritage, her lawyer, Frank K. Wheaton, said yesterday," reports the New York Times.

Isn't it clear to Washington-Williams that these groups, though ostensibly created for the biological descendents of Southern racists, might just turn out to be ideological descendents of the Confederacy as well? Any person who chooses that particular aspect of his or her ancestry to embrace should be suspect.

Her lawyer refutes this, saying that her presence will in fact be one more step towards interracial understanding:

"Mr. Wheaton said it would be 'shortsighted' for anyone to regard Ms. Washington-Williams's application as supportive of racism or slavery. 'What her presence in these organizations does is continue to encourage the dialogue between black and white that would never otherwise take place, because they are exclusive,' he said."

What sort of dialogue would have to take place? I'm reminded of an episode of that classic sitcom, Designing Women, in which an all-white country club recruits a token black member* for the sake of appearances. Why wouldn't these Confederates want to admit the occasional black person ridiculous enough to want a part of their nonsense? It's unlikely that such an organization would ever be substantially integrated, because so few of the existing eligible (Confederacy-descended) blacks would ever want to join. These groups would continue to function as nearly-all-white social clubs, who are we kidding here?

The obvious question is, is this all basically civil rights activism through irony? Is Washington-Williams demanding admittance to an obviously racist institution with a straight face, claiming genuine interest in her heritage while actually using a loophole to point out that, haha, this absurdly racist club, despite its most racist intentions, has to admit blacks, after all, if it wishes to strictly follow its own exclusive admittance policies? Washington-Williams is making these groups look as silly as they are--or at least I sincerely hope that's what she intends to do, because that would be pretty awesome.

This story is a perfect example of why it's not such a good idea to have pride in one's ancestry, something out of one's control and thus not worth trying to take credit for. Washington-Williams is correct in acknowledging that she is descended from both black slaves and white racists, but are either of these facts really things to celebrate?

A professor interviewed for the Times piece "called Ms. Washington-Williams' quest to lay claim to her white roots 'novel.'" He added, "Most would be interested in following the roots that take them back to Africa." I can understand the interest in following one's roots, or even laying claim to them. In Washington-Williams' case in particular, laying claim to her most recent ancestry was crucial in that who her father was--a famous and powerful white racist--had been kept secret for so many years. I wish Washington-Williams the best of luck gaining admittance to the club, but hope she realizes there are better things to do with your time than hanging out with a whole bunch of people whose ancestors happened to know yours.

*("Anthony," played by the ever-wonderful Meshach Taylor--the flamboyant but oh so, err, straight assistant to the otherwise white and female Sugarbakers interior decorating firm. Yes, I've watched a bit too much "Lifetime" in my day--a better use of time than fraternizing with racists, perhaps, but not necessarily more productive).

Wednesday's quote

"The sea was angry, my friends. Like an old man trying to send back soup at a deli."--George Costanza

The holy grail

Have you ever really wanted a hamburger?

Tonight I went to J.G. Melon, a neighborhood pub with incredible burgers and an atmosphere that could best be described as the total opposite of hip. This is a place you enter and think, wow, I am the person in this room least likely to vote Republican. You would think this even if you always voted Republican, that wouldn't make the slightest difference.

The sea of men in pink collared shirts and women with pearls suggests that one has not have left the 1980s, maybe even 1950s. But the clientele, these are a lot of young people, in their 20s and 30s, though you wouldn't know it from their habits, which are as far from macrobiotic or multicultural as can be. The food--lotsa meat--and the people give no signs of being in 2004 in Manhattan. Connecticut, Nantucket, a country club, sure, but 3rd Avenue? It just doesn't make sense.

The Upper East Side may once have been Manhattan's last holdout, resisting all that is multicultural or macrobiotic, but those days are behind us, or so I thought until the smell of delicious burgers lured me into J.G. Melon and that strange world of blond-on-pastel.

Does it make me an idealist if I dream of a world in which New Yorkers of all races, creeds, and degrees of preppiness (and hipsterness) would voluntarily come together to eat burgers and drink beer in harmony? How about a pub filled with faux-hawks and headbands, with upturned collars and spiked bondage collars? Where are the carnivorous progressives? The vegan neocons? Why can't we all just get along?

With "professional help," anything's possible

I apologize for that last post, which reeks of "Metropolitan Diary" but which nevertheless needed to be stated.

And now, a quote from television:

"She's a beautiful girl and I'm sure that, with professional help, she'll look great."--mother of woman getting made over on "What Not To Wear."

Overheard at a Battery Park City pizza place

"This is your dinner," a woman told her 4 year old daughter, late afternoon today, in reference to a nauseating-looking slice of broccoli pizza.

"I like fish eggs," responded the little girl.

Animals in urban settings

Walk around NYC at night, and you're sure to see a mouse or two, various insects, and, all told, quite the range of life forms. During the day, there are squirrels, dogs not much larger than said squirrels, and pigeons. But in art, unlike in life, there are sometimes more unusual species making their way through the city. Both F. Scott Fitzgerald and Rufus Wainwright pictured large mammals alongside the M4, the taxis, and the other, usual things one sees in Manhattan.

"We drove over to Fifth Avenue, so warm and soft, almost pastoral, on the summer Sunday afternoon that I wouldn't have been surprised to see a great flock of white sheep turn the corner."--F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

"Or a herd of bulls charging stoplights red."--Rufus Wainwright, "Danny Boy"

"So the day Noah's Ark floats down Park my eyes will be simply glazed over."--Rufus Wainwright, "Foolish Love"

If any sheep, bulls, or animal-filled boats ever were to make their way up Madison (they've already covered Fifth and Park, making Madison the obvious next choice) that would make my day.

Subtle Makeovers!!!!

I was just watching "Extreme Makeover" for the first time, and I now know more than I ever wanted to know about chin implants. Who (other than the surgeons who implant them) knew that they look like miniature breast implants?

It would be great if there could be a show called "Overly Subtle Makeover" in which participants go to the dentist for a regular cleaning, or maybe change from flats to high heels. It could be on IFC or Bravo, as an antidote to the other, more flashy show on ABC.

Here's an ethical dilemma posed by "Extreme Makeover," one entirely unrelated to the obviously controversial surgeries:

Let's say, like the chin-challenged woman on tonight's episode, you're at a restaurant with friends when suddenly someone comes to your table and announces that you're about to receive an Extreme Makeover. Isn't it at least a little bit rude if your friends start cheering, thrilled that you're finally going to be made less hideous? Sure, they're just happy for their friend who so wants a new nose/face/body, but such enthusiasm is simply uncalled-for.

What, then, is the appropriate response to finding out that one's friend is about to be made less ugly, on national television, no less? It seems there couldn't possibly be a correct response, given the ridiculousness of the situation, so maybe loud, enthusiastic encouragement really is the way to go.

A paradox on Oxygen

"As Martha would say, although she wouldn't say it, sex is a good thing."--Sue Johanson

Just say no, you're gonna make it after all

I was sitting in Midway Airport, watching the Reagan closing ceremony on a muted television overhead. I was a bit confused by one thing: Why was
Mary Tyler Moore there, and why was she of all people shown repeatedly, caressing the former president’s flag-covered casket? And why was she so much shorter than I remembered her being? Then it hit me, that’s not Mary Tyler Moore, it’s
Nancy Reagan. Ah yes, everything was starting to make sense. I maintain, however, that the resemblance is striking.

Hot is out. Here come the Olson twins!

The style section of the Times has declared sexy unfashionable. Used to illustrate this is a picture of the Olson twins.

Seems everyone, the fashion icons that are (icon that is?) the Olson twins included, has decided that the hot new look for summer is...long sleeves, long skirts, turtlenecks, pretty much anything required by the stricter religions, but now even the secular are covering up, just to look hip.

Summer sure is an obnoxious time for the fashion world to order its followers to abandon their miniskirts and tank tops in favor of Olson-esque kaftans, or whatever the twins usually wear. I really have no idea, but their caption reads: "Ashley Olsen and Mary-Kate Olsen were never ones for showing skin." How disappointed that must make so very many older men if it is in fact true.

"Like herpes at an all-girl's private school"

Gawker, the NYC gossip website, slanders the city's private-school girls:

"Now we're semi-sure that yesterday's ridiculous impending-terror email started with a young man at CNN. (Of course, you can never tell with these damn things -- they spread like herpes at an all-girl's private school.) "

Hey, the least they could do would be to also implicate the private-school boys or sleazy club-going men, etc.--not everyone is a lesbian at a girls' school, and the herpes had to come from somewhere. Maybe that's also the fault of some young man at CNN...

Ahh, to watch the sun rise...

...from the A-level of the Regenstein library. I hope to never, ever do this again.

TV-14, tailor-made for Stuyvesant freshmen!

A new, tamer (well, edited) version of Sex and the City is coming to TBS. And who does the NYT turn to as its man on the street? Who would know more about sex and the city than anyone else? None other than a Stuyvesant freshman:

"Nelly Mecklenburg, a 14-year-old freshman at Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan, said she could not believe it when she heard that 'Sex and the City,' one of her favorite shows, was moving to TBS. 'The idea was ridiculous and completely inappropriate,' she said. 'Then I heard it was going to be edited and figured that was even worse; it would be terrible.'

But when Ms. Mecklenburg saw advance tapes of several edited episodes, she was pleasantly surprised. 'I was very impressed,' she said. 'You couldn't tell when they edited certain words, and it actually still seemed like the same show.'

Still, she said, people who see only the cleaned-up versions will be missing something.

'HBO makes it special, because the show can be raunchy,' she said. "The language and sex aren't the most important part, but they add to it.'"

(Shouldn't she be doing bio homework or something?)

France is a complex nation...(updated post, now with more underwear info.)

This just might have something to do with why I'm a French major. Sure, there's the literature. That also no doubt has something to do with it. But just take a look. Mmm.

But then there's another side to the country, unrelated to cheese and books, that confuses me. The anti-advertising movement, which is all the rage in Paris, pretty much makes no sense. A group behind the movement, "Résistance à L'Agression Publicitaire," offers this as an explanation:

"Dans un souci permanent d'humanisme et de démocratie, elle vise enfin la sensibilisation du public, notamment celle des plus jeunes qui doivent pouvoir acquérir l'esprit critique nécessaire à leur futur rôle de citoyens autonomes."

In other, English, words: In the name of humanism, democracy, and all that is sacred (err, secular; it IS France, after all), the public must be made aware of how advertising is preventing them, especially the nation's impressionable youth, from becoming autonomous citizens.

But how? Are the things that are being advertised on the Metro, from department stores to underwear to, um, more underwear, supposed to no longer exist? Will all goods be produced communally, or may capitalism continue, just without the aid of those flashy posters?

UPDATE--link via Andrew Sullivan: Apparently underwear ads are not just a problem in France. At least the Brits have a reason--the ads might be offensive if near mosques. Sullivan calls this "p.c. hell." Wonder what he calls the French movement to get rid of underwear ads in general...

"I'm not gonna pay a lot for this Muffy"

A NYT article about Manhattan real-estate "bargains" notes the following:

"Right now, there is a 1,600-square-foot first floor maisonette for sale in one of Manhattan's fanciest buildings at 131 East 66th — Blaine and Robert Trump own an apartment here, shoulder-to-shoulder with a tenant roster right out of the Social Register. The apartment is $875,000. Incredible? Impossible?"

The idea being, for those unfamiliar with NYC real estate, that this is shockingly low.

Also for those not "in the know"--Blaine Trump is not Donald's drag persona but is in fact a socialite. Proximity to socialites raises the price of an apartment, but also lowers its hipster quotient, thus explaining why the Upper East Side, home to many a socialite, is not always the most expensive part of town.

School pride

As an avid Crescat reader and a former intern at the University of Chicago Magazine, the school's alumni magazine, I am obliged to point out that both David Brooks and Joseph Epstein, as of 11:19 pm Chicago time the subject of the 2 most recent Crescat posts, are both University of Chicago graduates.

I always enjoy reading about people who've attended the same schools that I have. This must be because it's quite the list. As WWPD readers well know, Gwyneth Paltrow and, if the Stuyvesant alumni association website is correct, Daniel Bell, are a Spence girl and a Stuyvesantian, respectively, the latter having taught at Chicago and the former having appeared in a movie shot on Chicago's campus.

The reason I find this interesting is that, if I play my cards right, my combination of degrees will lead to a career as a columnist-novelist-sex-symbol-sociologist. And who doesn't want to do something like that with his or her life?

At the intersection of nerd and socialite

One more post, before returning to the most happening place for miles:

In less than I week, I will return to New York where I may relax with my crew.

"What Would Phoebe Do? promises to improve tremendously when I once again have access to a certain stimulant. I think of tasti-d-lite as a sort of madeleine; at the first spoonful, I will instantly recall years and years of...small vanillas with rainbow sprinkles. I'm pretty sure Proust would have produced an entirely different, dare I say superior, work if his memory had been awoken by something more "tasti".

"I'm gonna be an actress, a ballerina, or secretary-general of the UN"

A Vanity Fair article on Mystic River's Emmy Possum notes that the 17-year-old actress attended Spence, which is identified as Gwenyth Paltrow's alma mater, through the 6th grade. Like Ms. Possum, I had the honor of attending that particular Manhattan girls' school, but was lured away not by the glamorous world of opera (as was Ms. Possum) but by the siren call of math, science, and nerdy boys.

The thing I remember about Spence, though, was that we had a fifth grade sleepover, an event everyone looked forward to immensely as it marked the end of Lower School, and thus the switch in uniforms from the green plaid jumper to the seersucker skort, the navy pleated skirt and, if I remember correctly, some other options as well. At this sleepover, which consisted of all the fifth graders sleeping over at the school, chaperoned by our teachers, said teachers told each student what they imagined she would be when she grew up. Despite years of feminism, most girls got things like "dancer" or "movie star"; I got, I believe, "United Nations Secretary-General," which at the time I took to mean that I should probably start brushing my hair.

There was a point to this...yes, here it is: Why must a school that is supposedly among the best in NYC be reknowned for the hotness of its graduates? Sure, it's not as if Vanity Fair ought to be talking about the school's math offerings... The more important question, however, and one I would very much like to have answered, is why girls look so much conventionally "hotter" coming from a girls' school than a co-ed one, where male attention (or lack thereof) might be something of an influence?

A devout dachshund!

Now that I've already made my point about hats and synagogues, here's a picture of what looks like a Jewish dachshund, if one is to believe the hat, in an old Gothamist post about dogs' coming-of-age ceremonies. New York being a city with both a large Jewish population and a Dachshund Oktoberfest, somehow it doesn't surprise me that the city's dachshunds are becoming men (and women).

Confidence is always good, but...

William Kristol has asserted, in a Weekly Standard article entitled "Yes, Bush Will Win," that yes, Bush will win. I understand that Kristol would like Bush to win, and that there are plenty of arguments (some that I agree with more than others) for why he should win and why he well might, but this is taking things a bit too far. Conservatives might as well declare that pink button-down shirts will come into fashion, that promiscuous teens won't be happy with themselves when they get older, etc. Sure, Kristol offers up some reasons why Bush might get a second term, but this sort of rhetoric just makes me think that yes, Bush will get William Kristol's vote.

One more thing about the hats

"I once read an apalling etiquette book that suggested bald men could wear baseball caps to church. No."--Will Baude, Crescat.

Might I suggest that these men attend something called "synagogue", where hats are, I believe, encouraged.

Reagan dies, I eat noodles with broccoli, and the world keeps on turning

Thanks to my newfound celebrity status, the E! channel has decided to profile me in their upcoming "Blog till you Drop" spring break miniseries.

While that is sadly false, it is true that today, Reagan died ala James Dean or Kurt Cobain, I ate the same thing for the second night in a row at Snail (uninspiring pad see ew, if you're curious--hopefully this will not lead to premature death ala Reagan), and Republicans nationwide mourn the lackluster restaurant scene in Hyde Park.

Crescat: OK politics, misguided fashion sense

I've never been much of a fan of hats. They mess up your hair if you have hair, and a man in a hat always leaves people wondering if the hat is there for a reason, i.e. no hair. Better to just see the baldness from the get-go. Like tweed, elbow patches, and carrying around old books as accessories, hats are compensation devices for those who wish to be seen as intellectual but feel their credentials are lacking. As a response to all the inexcusable pro-hat propaganda on Crescat, here is a bit of dialogue from Seinfeld, in which hats are systematically demystified and deglamorized:

George: All bald people look good in hats.

Elaine: You should have lived in the twenties and thirties, you know men wore hats all the time then.

George: What a bald paradise that must have been. Nobody knew.

Elaine: Well, you can wear a hat all the time now. Who's stopping you?

George: No, I can't. What if I meet a woman? I'd always be worried about that first moment where I'd take it off and see that look of disappointment on her face.

(It remains to be seen if Mr. Baude of Crescat fame will consider this anti-hat post sufficient fodder for picking a fight. If not, libertarian-bashing will follow. Sadly I'm not entirely anti-libertarian, but vouchers, dude, that's a terrible, terrible idea.)

"France isn't so bad, I swear!"--NYT

(Let me preface this by saying that I like France, or at least many aspects of it, or at least enough to study French and go to France. Cheese and shoes. Other things, too, but really, the cheese and shoes are the hardest to track down elsewhere.)

Interesting op-ed by Felix G. Rohatyn, U.S. ambassador to France from 1997 to 2001. His point is basically that Americans are supposed to care about France, that the country still matters. This assumes, correctly, that many people have ceased to think it does. Anyway...

He begins by offering some vague praise of France, unlikely to convince anyone of anything: "I travel to France regularly and it is one of the most beautiful countries in the world — one that is inhabited by some of the most intelligent and, yes, complicated people in the world."

What country would the Times op-ed pages be willing to say was inhabited by some of the least intelligent people in the world. Just wondering.

Next come the references to what "they"--all French people--think about various matters, as opposed to what all Americans think--guess who comes out ahead?

"While there are, today, some Americans who like to think that the French don't remember D-Day, that is far from the truth; they do remember, and they are grateful...On the American side of the ocean, there is no such curiosity, much less anxiety. There is only a certain dismissiveness and this silent reproach: 'They don't remember.' That is both untrue and self-defeating."

I am under the impression that there's plenty of American curiosity about France--why else are Petit Bateau tee-shirts chosen over GAP ones? But seriously, to say that "the French" do this, whereas those idiotic Americans do the opposite, isn't going to make those same Americans like France any more.

"Although there will still be differences about Iraq and other issues, I know that France and America need each other strategically, economically, culturally."

Does this last part, about the cultural codependence, mean that the French don't just furtively and bitterly consume the jeans, popular music, and fast food with which we provide them? How many French people, in this ambassador's opinion, would freely admit to needing America culturally?

The "Why not me" generation

Philip Roth and Saul Bellow. The men profiled in "Arguing the World" (Irvings Howe and Kristol, Nathan Glazer, and Stuyvesant alum Daniel Bell). I picture them all on the Upper West Side, eating tuna salad sandwiches at some diner on Broadway and 78th while talking about things more important than blogs, whether to take the GRE or LSAT, who likes whom, and which type of diet coke (lemon, lime, vanilla, or original) is best. I imagine that it was all fascinating conversation, all the time, with these people, if indeed they all ever ate lunch together. Should I be harkening back to the days before the University of Chicago dining halls served 5 different kinds of pizza, edamame, and salads made to order (why do I suddenly feel queasy?) and when tweedy, ragged, drab-colored outfits were worn by even the unaffected? Should I simply embrace modern life, a fast-paced world of instant messager, online friend networks? Should I just finish this bottle of diet coke (original) and stop fantasizing about a world that may not have been all that different from my own?

Bizarro Phoebe

There's this girl at Harvard who has my name, writes an opinion column in the school paper, and worked at the school's alumni magazine. What should I do about this, there obviously can't be two of us. Somehow I think she wins this battle, in that she goes to Harvard and I...don't. But still, there really should be some sort of showdown.

Would Phoebe go downstairs and get a diet Pepsi?

Yes.