Whip It: Girls Need to See This Movie

Someone once said they would go out tonight but they haven’t got a stitch to wear, and I’m feeling that way after watching Whip It: in need of clothes and a destination.
Having seen it, I’m predictably fascinated by roller derby, awed by Juliette Lewis, and delighted with Drew Barrymore and Kristin Wiig. I’m all-around pretty [...]

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The Remains of the Day

Raymond Chandler had a cameo in Double Indemnity. Nobody noticed for 65 years.

From the Wellcome Collection in London’s new exhibition, Exquisite Bodies, on Victorian representations of human anatomy, comes this pastoral depiction of placental extraction. (Will she eat it?)

At Significant Objects, authors are paired with weird objects and asked to write a story that [...]

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American Idle: How Fear and Anger Drive Us To Our Fallen Work

Dear CF,
[Opening insult framed in sexual terms that broadcasts author's failure to properly express anger:] Those radio guests can suck my boob.
[Agreement plus fake announcement of topic]: I’m with you: anger and fear, weirdly understood as alienating or paralyzing emotions, are no such thing—if anything, they’re over-activating. Without anger, fear and their cousins discomfort and [...]

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The Massive Continuity of Ducks

Dearest CF,
I enthusiastically second your nomination of Harriet Vane for Odd Saint, maybe the oddest of them all. This morning I’ve been thinking about Rereadings—that delicious readerly indulgence that Anne Fadiman explores in her book of the same name—and about the particular pleasures of rereading Gaudy Night.
Why does it  reward revisitings so richly?  For one [...]

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The Body and The Mind

Dear Millicent,
Forgive me as I continue talking about the divine Ms. Sayers and her great character, the divine Ms. Vane.  I was reading a section that hit on a conversation we have had at least once or twice.  You and I have discussed the magic of our younger and less boy-ridden days, where our mind [...]

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Oversharing

Dear CF ,
I’m incensed by the word “overshare,” so I only glanced at the Jezebel piece, which seemed concerned more with the graphic and anatomical variety of the phenomenon than with the stripping bare of a life. I’m firmly in favor of the former—felt, in fact, that Sadie’s approach to the subject was quite like [...]

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Beowulf and Marriage, Gifts and Work

Dear heart,
I have indeed been at sea, but miss you and am sipping Tippy Assam tea and staring in befuddlement at a lovely bouquet of flowers much like the one you left me last time you visited. I’ve been thinking about gifts, you see, and am feeling a little seasick as a result.
I did read [...]

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Le Marriage et Le Travaille

Dearest Millicent,
I think you are wandering in a forest somewhere. Perhaps in the fog or at the buffet in a boat-shaped restaurant? Wherever you are, I hope you return to us soon. Our cozy tearoom is lonely when all I have to chat with is the embroidered floral chair across the way (it’s next to [...]

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Odd Saint: Jean-Baptiste Lully

Actually, this fellow was the opposite of a saint.  He did a lot of ladies, and a lot of fellows, but libertine shmibertine! He had a weird death, and so I write of him today.
Born in 1632, he is responsible for bringing the grand edge of spectacle to French opera.  He was very into stage [...]

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Cafe Culture: “Working”

Carla Fran, tender churl,
I conducted an experiment in public solitude yesterday and thought I would acquaint you with the results. In some respects it resembles the challenge of looking “come-hithery” while learning the musculature of the belly-dance chest circle.
The goal: to try “working” at a “cafe” in “the city.” This is something people do. I [...]

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