Bread and Bread

Oh, Big Love , where did our love go? In seasons one through three you were so poignant—a perfect family drama times three families. But now (meaning about a year ago, since AK and I just finished watching season four on DVD) it’s like you’re running downhill and your body is moving faster than your legs. A similar thing happened in the final throes of The L Word , except whereas The L Word at best was a bad show with some good moments, you were once an amazing show (with a little more Juniper Creek than was sometimes necessary). On Facebook someone referred to season four jumping the shark , and at first I thought she must have meant the scene where Bill’s mom chops off Hollis Greene’s arm in B-movie glory down at the Mexican bird-smuggling compound. But after watching the season finale last night, I’m pretty sure she meant the plotline where JJ Walker, Nicki’s ex-husband/stepfather (‘cause that’s how Juniper Creek rolls), runs a secret eugenics program that involves impregnating wom...

I’m taking some sick time right now, but it’s the kind of sick where I can’t really get away with not checking my work email, and, clearly, I’m well enough to blog. There’s a big stack of books next to my bed, but mostly I’ve watched a lot of DVDs. Cyrus is a fascinating study of nice people with no boundaries. “They’re way too enmeshed” is how AK described the characters. Now that she’s a grad student in psychology, she has all sorts of diagnoses for our pop culture friends (and a few for our real ones…but not you, of course. You are 100 percent well adjusted). Easy A has an endearing cast and some funny moments, but Emma Stone is just too charming and confident to be believable as a victim of any high school rumor mill. The whole thing has that scrubbed, over-saturated quality of sitcoms; if it were just a little more absurd, it would be like an episode of Glee or Popular, and I’d be down with it, but the movie has just enough nods to realism to draw attention to its over...

Reading this post by Sizzle , which was a response to this post on The Stranger’s SLOG, got me thinking about the male gaze. It’s nothing new. It’s so not new that some feminists have refuted Laura Mulvey ’s original theory, or so the hippest feminist in my queer books class told me in grad school, when I thought I was pretty hip for bringing up Laura Mulvey in the first place. But damn, it’s still powerful. The other day Jamie and I were talking, as we do, about getting older, and how the world looks at you differently, especially if you happen to be a woman. Since giving birth, she’s been conscious of the ramifications of losing one’s looks (although she hasn’t lost her looks at all. She’s a textbook MILF, although not a mom I’d like to eff because, among other reasons, I’m her boss). But why should I have to add that she hasn’t lost her looks? Why does not being youthfully hot have to equal cultural damnation? I told her I’ve been noticing how women lose currency whe...

I think Robbie Q. Telfer has a kindred spirit in Reggie Watts , whom AK and I and our sisters saw open for Garfunkel & Oates at Largo last night. I mean, they’re totally different—Robbie Q. is a spoken word guy and Reggie Watts is an all-kinds-of-sounds guy, but they both defy categorization (though I realize I just categorized them) and get me thinking about what performance can be. Watts is a beat-boxer, looping machine guru, singer, piano player and comedian. I can’t begin to describe how he blends all of those talents, but he does, seamlessly yet schizophrenically. One minute he sounds like an old soul musician, the next he’s giving a nonsensical report on “tech futures” in a nerdy executive voice. He uses every part of his body, from his voice box to his doughy hips to his massive Afro and, well, is there such thing as a beard-fro? His hair shakes goofily, and at one point he seemed to be able to move it in slow motion. My sister leaned over and said, “I keep thinking of Ses...

I’ve been reading More Than It Hurts You by Darin Strauss, which I’m not quite done with, and thinking about innocence. One of the main characters, Josh, is this charming thirty-something ad salesman who tries to see the good in every person he meets. He’s not one of those smarmy used-car-type salesmen: Like all really good salespeople, he believes what he’s saying. He prides himself on noticing little details about people, a quality Strauss must share because he’s so good at documenting the minutia of human interactions that, in the time I’ve been reading the book, I feel like I’ve become a way better writer. It’s like Strauss’ prose is this electric current I can tap into. But whereas Strauss is interested in swinging his flashlight beam into the dark corners of our souls, Josh is not. Despite his keen observances, he also prides himself on knowing just enough to get by when it comes to many subjects and situations. The wrong kind of details muck up the smooth clockwork of life...

Some months I want to give everything I read a solid B. January was not one of those months. Here are my three fascinations (not counting The False Friend , which I loooved and already told you about) and one hate. Room by Emma Donoghue: You might think an entire book narrated by a five-year-old would be precious and grating, but Emma Donoghue pulls it off. She's also written a thriller with a simple premise: boy and mother trapped in a room; he's never known anything else, but she wants a realer life for both of them. It's completely addictive, suspenseful, sweet and funny, with lovely fairytale allusions that prove Donoghue hasn't abandoned her Kissing the Witch inspirations. Oh, and Room also manages to muse on the meanings of consciousness, reality and self-hood in a waaaay more interesting form than most of what I read in grad school. Impossible Motherhood by Irene Vilar: I read this on the heels of A Million Little Pieces , and I found it as opposite as a mem...

When we told our former neighbor Alyssa that we were going to Austin, she said, “Oh, you’re going to love it. You’re totally going to move there.” Work Cathy said, “I’ve never been to Austin, but when I hear the name, I just think: awesome. I know it’s going to be awesome. ” At the airport on the way home, passing T-shirts that said “Keep Austin Weird,” I asked AK, “Do you think it would be overly controversial to title my blog post ‘Austin: Not That Weird’?” Don’t get me wrong: Our trip was great, the city was fun, the people were friendly, billboards informed us you could buy a condo for $90,000, and AK’s Austin peeps showed us a good time…but there was also traffic and confusing street signage and long lines everywhere and plenty of Starbuckses and overpriced thrift stores. I couldn’t help but wonder if some of Austin’s stellar reputation came from the rest of the country’s condescendingly low expectations of Texas. The first night we Tex-Mexed it up at Chuy’s, a local ...

Usually AK is all, “Let’s get outta town! We never travel!” And I’m all, “Remember three weeks ago when we went to Denver because I had that conference and you got to chill out in our super nice hotel room? But I was kind of stressed out because I had to moderate that panel and you got lost looking for the baseball stadium, so I can see how it wasn’t totally a vacation. But still, travel is travel, and it’s not like the cats will understand if we just leave them again because our last trip wasn’t fun enough.” Well, this time we really haven’t traveled in six months. Not for work, not for pleasure. No airplane rides, no road trips. And the two very big trips we did over the summer, while lovely and magical in their own ways, were not exactly of the beach-and-umbrella-drink variety. So for once we both agree: We need a vacation. I’m getting one: three nights in Austin without a single meeting to run or reading to give or even any friends of my own to see (not that I don’t love visitin...

We finished up the Favorite Movie phase of movie club, so Maria decided we should just go see a movie, theme be damned. But The King’s Speech might be one of my new favorite movies, or at least a movie that should have made my 2010 top five . The premise sounded a little British-y and biopic-y—one of those movies where you’re supposed to care very much about something very small just because it’s a famous person doing it. But first and foremost it’s a movie about having strength without confidence. My ex used to idealize Strong Women in this way that was always baffling and eventually maddening to me. I got this feeling she wanted to date Angelina Jolie, which she probably did and who wouldn’t*, but not the anorexic, blood-drinking Angie, rather the hero of all her Tough Girl films. Strong Women might get very quiet and gaze off into the distance at times, but only to contemplate how they would immediately overcome adversity via plentiful ass-kicking. They certainly wouldn’t sni...

You know that William Carlos Williams poem, “This Is Just To Say” ? You probably read it in elementary or middle school, and may have been asked to write a riff on it. A couple of weekends ago, my organization sponsored a sort of mini retreat for people who lead writing workshops, and we got to write our own insincere apologies. Here’s mine, which AK did not find funny: This is just to say I cleaned up the plums you left half-eaten on the bedside table purple crime scene of stains beginning to set hairy seed beckoning flies. I know you were still enjoying them a momentary caesura in sensual abandon but if they were so delicious you should have finished them and washed the plate. Here’s another, by real poet Craig Santos Perez : Second Apology to the Lone Ethnographer I have eaten the preserved heads that were in the glassbox and which you were probably saving for science Forgive me they were mysterious so savage and so alone

This is one of those moments when it would be really nice to have an iPhone, because I would love to take a picture of the mural across from me and post it with this post. I’m at McDonalds because Antigua, my chosen writing spot, was closed for plumbing repairs (not that paying $1.10 for coffee is such a terrible consolation prize). The mural next to the counter depicts a McDonalds with some people milling around outside. I know it’s supposed to be this McDonalds because there’s a lamppost with a banner that says “Highland Park Fall Fest,” as if the artist’s goal was to capture not only a specific place but a specific time as well. But here’s the weird thing: If I were standing outside this McDonalds, I’d see a Food4Less doing its best to imitate a California Bungalow, some sparsely leafed trees, a side street populated with crumbly actual California Bungalows and a few 1960s apartment buildings, and, in the background, low hills peeking up from the other side of the 110. The ...

Wurstkuche is a bar in Downtown L.A. that has beer and sausages. It also has an umlaut, but I'm not sure how to insert one, or how to pronounce "Wurstkuche." AK said, "I think the technical German pronunciation is 'worst coochie.'" We went on Saturday night. I did not have beer, because I had a cocktail called an Old Boy Friday night at Good Luck Bar with Nicole and friends and, somewhat embarrassingly, its effects lingered (I got happily drunk and subsequently sick from one drink --I am that much of a lightweight, and Good Luck Bar's drinks are that strong. At least I got my $10 worth). AK has a birthday this week, and the part of me that channels the Jewish great grandmother I never met believes that feeding people is the best way to show love. According to my dad, she was a phenomenal cook who never met a stick of butter she didn't want to melt in a saucepan. Me, my mantras are more along the lines of "I don't do pie crust" and ...

When my best friend Bonnie and I were in fourth or fifth grade, we got shuttled off campus for GATE once a week, a baffling but fun reward for having scored well on some mysterious test back in second grade. Our mutual friend (and my former BFF) Stephanie was not in GATE. So what did Bonnie and I do? We invented an awesome girl from another school whom we’d befriended at GATE. Chonnie (as in Cheryl + Bonnie) was an amalgam of all that was cool in our ten-year-old minds, meaning she probably crimped her hair and did a lot of babysitting. We talked about her all the time, just to let Stephanie know what she was missing out on. We also made lists of all the things we had in common with each other but not with Stephanie, so that we could casually drop such gems as: “Names with six letters are really the best. Nine letters is just too long.” These are the kind of mind games tween girls play with each other. Not all girls—AK spent her youth playing quietly with Star Wars action figures—but...

Historically, New Year’s Eve has not been my holiday. The early years were spent arguing over Scrabble with my sister in the motor home and eating a camping version of Hopping John, a dish my mom had read would bring good luck. The main ingredient was black-eyed peas, and the only good-tasting ingredient was sausage. Once my sister and I became vegetarians, New Year’s Eve sucked a little more. I spent NYE Y2K in San Francisco with my sort-of boyfriend Alex. It was a big deal because 1) I was in San Francisco and 2) I had a sort-of boyfriend for the first New Year’s Eve ever. My main memories of that evening are of thinking I might be trampled by my fellow celebrators at the Embarcadero, and of Alex yelling at a drunk guy he thought was being racist, and wondering if the fact that I was embarrassed by Alex made me a racist too. I was excited to ring in 2001 with the coworker I had a big crush on. I should add that he was gay and we were house- and pet-sitting for friends of his. At midn...

The nice thing about top-ten/-five lists is that they give you a chance to reassess your initial raves and pans. Sometimes what dazzles is not what sticks. There are still a lot of said-to-be-good 2010 movies I haven’t seen yet, which may be why my movie list is low on Oscar-bait releases. But I like to think I just have original tastes. Shutter Island was awesome, okay? Also, I may be avoiding Black Swan because, even though it was crazy in just the right way and expertly, physically depicted the implosive nature of perfectionism, I’m kind of pissed at Natalie Portman for getting pregnant despite having zero body fat and a fly-by-night boyfriend.* The first seven books on my book list are ones I indisputably loved—they said something big about the world, or they struck a nerve personally, or they were lushly textured, or they were more clever than I realized until the very end. The last three and my two honorable mentions are more or less interchangeable in terms of rank—all reall...

It’s 1 a.m. and I’m awake right now, jacked up on adrenaline, because nine fire fighters just left our building. A fire started upstairs (note to all: candles and heaters shouldn’t mix), and I don’t want to think what would have happened if Alyssa and her friend hadn’t acted fast, if we hadn’t been home to lend our fire extinguisher and/or if there hadn’t been a fire station two minutes away. Thank you, tax dollars. All human and feline residents involved are safe, and there wasn’t much damage to the building. Ferdinand , who believes even the siren-free garbage truck is a dinosaur, hasn’t come out from under the bed. Our improvised evacuation plan was to shoo all the cats outside and let them take shelter where they could find it. It turns out that, when someone pounds on the front door after midnight, their instincts don’t tell them to head for the hills but instead for the least reachable place in the house. When the fire trucks arrived, I was unsuccessfully prodding an embedde...

Sometimes the metaphorical becomes literal: It rained for days. Then there was a ray of sun. Then it rained harder than ever, but everyone agreed it would stop again soon. A lot of nice people lent their umbrellas. Okay, that last part is still just metaphorical. I don’t need to borrow an umbrella because I have a couple I probably stole. I don’t want to know what the metaphorical implications of umbrella theft are. I like that Jesus was born in the dead of winter, and if it’s a story that evolved from pagan solstice traditions, that makes me like it even more. Every culture needs a birth-as-rebirth story. We got a card from our friends Una and Henry that said, “The Word became flesh and lived among us.” I tend to be a little wary of religious cards—as I mentioned, I find even Santa slightly suspicious —but it hit me what a lovely sentence that is. The “lived among us” part is my favorite. I like the idea that an idea could be so powerful it could come hang out with us. It seems very ...

“As Christmas icons go, I was never into Santa,” I told Work Cathy, explaining why I never bought Santa cards. “I’ll take a nice reindeer or snowman any day. But maybe that’s because my parents never told me that Santa was real, so I never had those magical associations with him. He was just some old fat man.” My parents’ rationale was that 1) they didn’t want to lie; they always expected honesty from me, so it was only fair, and 2) if there was a present they couldn’t afford to buy, they didn’t want me to think Santa had put me on his naughty list. My parents were/are very sincere people. When I was a teenager and wanted to be like my friends in every way, I resented them for depriving me of glowy childhood memories. Later I thought they made kind of a cool, nonconformist choice. But today I realized that I move through my adult life exactly as if not getting something I want means I’ve been bad. My parents never told me Santa was real because they wanted to create a fair world, one i...

I subscribe to the school of thought that says dream sequences can and should almost always be cut from novels and movies. Save that shit for your therapist, you know? Dreams work a little better in sitcoms, usually because they’re an excuse to act out a New Gidget version of A Christmas Carol or some such wackiness. I’m pretty sure dreams are not meant to be recounted in blogs either, but man, I’ve had some weird ones lately, so here’s a quick executive summary: 1. I was attacked by a puppy that looked like a cartoon sheep. Its mother was waiting in the wings, ready to get all mama-bear on me. AK rescued me from its scary-looking puppy talons. 2. I was babysitting Jamie and Lee-Roy’s baby , Kohana. We had a great day on the town; she laughed at all my jokes. But on the drive home I realized we had no car seat—Kohana was just sitting in my lap—and I was like, “Aaah! I’m Britney Spears!” 3. I was ordering some potato skins at some sort of food court and the checker suspected me of cr...

When Work Cathy walked into a meeting yesterday, a guy she didn’t know said, “Smile! Let’s see your dimples.” “I don’t have dimples,” she said. “Sure you do—right here.” He screwed his fingers into the corners of his mouth. Later, when a plate of cookies was making its way around the room, he passed it to her and said, “Here ya go, Dimples.” Today at lunch I was walking back from Hallmark, where I’d found myself looking at a card featuring a nativity scene and thinking, God, there’s another person who got pregnant without even trying. On the sidewalk, a greasy-looking guy in his thirties called out, “Smile! It’s a sunny day!” “Fuck you,” I said. Translation: 1) No one would ever tell a guy to smile. When guys brood, it’s considered sexy. 2) You don’t know me, asshole. Maybe my grandmother just died. Or maybe I was bummed that the bread in my sandwich was a little dried out. Either way, not your business. I feel sorry that I can’t deliver Cheery Holiday Greetings Cheryl to AK on a reg...