Stuff I've Been Reading: All The Time Between Then and Now

I haven't done a Stuff I've Been Reading since December, when I covered what I'd read in August-->October. I'm no Nick Hornby, that's for sure! So this time it'll be:

November
December
January
February
March
Some of April
Oh boy!

If you've ever felt jealous of how much I read, this six-month period will quell your envy.

Howevs, it's occurred to me that since I read a ton of stuff online in addition to about 20 magazines cover-to-cover every month, it's not that I don't read enough, it's that I don't read enough books.

Probs I'm basically illiterate at this point. Where do I begin? I hope at least 2-3 people will read this blog post and maybe if just one comments I will feel good about life & literature. Hey have you seen Autostraddle? It's so cool! We had a team meeting on Sunday. It was awesome. Right now actually I'm reading Keeping You a Secret for a feature Green & I are working on about YA novels for lesbians.

Everyone's talking about this book Wetlands . It reminds me of how people talked about 100 Strokes of the Brush Before Bed , which was about a teenaged girl in Europe who has a lot of "erotic adventures." Wetlands is also the work of an anonymous European girl who talks explicitly about sex, but more explicitly about her bodily fluids, and my number one feeling Sam Anderson is leading a book club on the topic over at New York Mag . In fact Sam says you can participate without having read the book. Here's a slice:

"For those who have managed to steer clear of the hype, Wetlands is an international bazillion-seller about an 18-year-old girl named Helen who is obsessed, above all, with her sexuality and bodily fluids. It's hard to describe the full mind-blowing extent of its raunchiness: Helen puts, among many other things, dirty barbecue tongs, avocado pits, and a hard-boiled egg in her vagina; she leaves a used homemade tampon in an elevator; and once a week she gets her entire body shaved, with a straight razor, by a total stranger she met at a fruit cart."

Have you had your period? Had an orgasm? Experienced female ejaculation? Urinated? Wouldn't it be funny if I suddenly started talking about that stuff on here? Maybe? Anyhow participate!

Speaking of my book club, um, I will update you soon. Brooklyn Boy will be the first to know. Autumn & Brooklyn Boy have both already gotten the book I want to do (Reborn) so we will definitely do it. Possibly looking at a late May deadline.

---

In March, Tao Lin mailed me some books: eee eee eee (short stories), you are a little bit happier than i am (poems), and bed (novel) and Ellen Kennedy's sometimes my heart pushes my ribs . Before I got these books I liked the idea of Tao Lin and even said to facebook that I wanted to read all of Tao Lin's books but I hadn't made any steps towards doing so besides putting "eee eee eee" on my amazon wishlist which my Mother ignored and probably thought "what a strange name for a book, what is wrong with my daughter" which is actually a thought she has all the time so it's not a big deal. I saved the package in case I can sell it on ebay one day, thought 'i bet everyone does this when tao lin sends them packages' and then i 'felt like everyone else' and then I sat on my bed and stared at my hands until I fell asleep.

The voice got into my head and I felt I 'identified' with the 'loneliness and isolation,' also that they're inventing a 'new literary style' as the critics have said. Tao Lin feels very honest, but sometimes when you read stuff about him it's almost like he's daring you to dislike him. Also he googles himself all the time so he will read this. It's like when I said I stole prescription medication from my mother's medicine cabinet and she called me that very afternoon. I was kidding obvs/maybe.

Ellen Kennedy feels like Tao Lin, but also in a way that is not exactly like Tao Lin, but like the IRL acting out of "Better Together - Customers Also Purchased." After reading Tao Lin & Ellen Kennedy's poetry I felt like all my 'thoughts & feelings' were very important, including my g-chats and my meals.

Before I got these books from Tao Lin I was reading The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers. So I have about 25% of this book left to go. So far there has been a mute who I am pretty sure is gay. Actually I think they're all gay, and I am progressively confused when various characters turn out NOT to be gay.

Before starting The Heart is a Lonely Hunter I read On the Road: The Original Scroll by Jack Keroauc, which Crystal gave me for my birthday because I love her. Or because she loves me ... you decide.

On the Road TOS has about 100 pages of critical essays in the front. Because I'm obsessive about books like that (I don' t think you can say you've read a book when you've actually only read part of the book) I had to read all of them before I started but once I got past that stuff I was on a roll.

The first time I read this book I was 12, it was confusing, I remember only the part when he had sex with a Mexican girl and said he loved love and I thought one day I'd like someone to love me like that.

I read OTR again at 18. I was depressed cause the boy I was dating wanted to date someone else, and my BFF Ryan told me I was wasting valuable brainpower on such things and instead should be focusing on enlightenment. I could begin my journey, he said, by reading On the Road.

So I walked to the Border's Bookstore from our apartment and bought it and read it and Ryan was right, I felt better right away and remembered that the stupid boy would never understand me anyway because he only read Tom Clancy books and had no sense of "IT."

It's one of the only books I've read more than once. The voice gets in your head. The original scroll is even better, and it has more gay raunch in it, and you feel crazy too, but in a good way. This time I read it as a Sancho story. I read it knowing Neal was manic, and wondering if he would've been better off on Depakote, wondering about the children and the wives and if they'd put up with that now, and then that made me think about how people like Neal would be on Depakote now, which is better for his potential wives and neglected children and other discarded children but not as good for literature, and how that's fucked up, and I couldn't really reach a definitive conclusion on that.

I don't know if other people spend time thinking about these kinds of things.

---

Before that I read AM Homes' This Book Will Save Your Life , which a. told me to read and I didn't really want to 'cause C. said she wasn't that into it, although I love AM Homes (fun fact: she wrote for the l word before it started to suck). At first I was bored like "oh, it's another book about a rich guy who suddenly has an epiphany etc etc --" you know like American Beauty and Fight Club.

But after the first 50 pages or so I just got into it. Like I started to like the guy in a real way, and care and turn the pages in excitement. I can't explain it really, it just became awfully lovely by the end. I read it on my way to Michigan and back on the airplane and stuff. The voice was good, 'cause it made me write good, like the best voices will do for you.

Just like Music for Torching, could've done for a better ending. But it's a good book, read it!

I also read Two or Three Things I Know For Sure by Dorothy Allison, which my brother gave me for Hannukah (I asked for it). It was short and full of goodness. Dorothy Allison is a very magical writer and I love everything she's ever written. Interesting w/r/t sexuality & storytelling & "honesty," three of my favorite topics.

Then Cool for You by Eileen Myles, 'cause she's my favorite poet and I think I ordered it off Amazon 'cause I needed to hear one of my favorite writers talk to me again. It was cool to read two tough lesbians back to back, with all their hard experience and coarse shell surrounding poems & near-insanities. Cool for You has a really embarrassing book cover so I had to hold it special on the subway so no-one would see. I quoted Cool for You when I wrote that letter for my Dad in December. About how not all of us are put here to work.

Before that I read The Best Nonrequired Reading of 2007 , edited by Dave Eggers. Again as per ushe I forced myself to read the entire anthology, and this was generally a rewarding experience. I felt smarter afterwards, and had read a lot of stuff about the Middle East.

Before that An Invisible Sign of my Own by Aimee Bender, which I picked up on a reader recommendation for inspirational books I could read during National Novel Writing Month (I wrote over 30K words, but as publishing began to collapse, I began losing steam on it) and though I did like the voice in a Lorrie-Mooreish way ... it seemed sort of small. Like I don't think it grasped anything larger outside itself. I liked it, I did, and I would recommend it to me too, but I've been thinking a lot about timelessness of literature -- like what of all this will last? What's been cast to the wayside from prior generations?

I don't know if other people think about those kinds of things.

Monday Monday Auto-FunDay 2.9.2009

The next Top Ten will be related somewhat to Girl Scout Badges. Seriously. Natalie and I had a big talk about it, we have lots of big talks 'cause our heads are overstuffed with nonsense. So I ordered the book from ebay and now I'm waiting. Clearly I'm very comfortable at the edge of my seat. That's where everything good is always just about to happen.

This is your last day to nominate me for The Lezzies. Haven't I been so lovely and not aggressive about it? Yes, yes I have. So please do nominate Autowin and/or Autostraddle for Best Personal Blog (or humor? or culture and entertainment? or the best overall?) and be sure to verify your vote by email. Don't stress if you don't know who to nominate for every category, just do the ones you know.

---

Quote: "I believed in a good home, in sane and sound living, in good food, good times, work, faith, and hope. I have allways believed in these things. It was with some amazement that I realized I was one of the few people in the world who really believed n these things without going arond making a dull middleclass philosophy out of it. I was suddeny left with nothing in my hands but a handful of crazy stars." (Jack Kerouac, On the Road: The Original Scroll)

---

Links:

• On "10 Days in the Life of a Tampon," et al -- Rebecca Traister investigates "Female writers getting graphic about the messiness of their bodies ," at Salon.

• Autostraddle:

- A Letter from Max to Ilene
- RECAP of The L Word Episode 604: Leaving Los Angeles .
- Sugar Rush: No Limits For Real

• "And so, when it finally happened, because it was bound to happen, we all knew it was only a matter of time, we felt, in the midst of our curiosity and terror, a certain calm, the calm of familiarity, we knew what was expected of us, at such a moment." - Steven Millhauser's "The Invasion from Outer Space " at The New Yorker.
• New York Magazine investigates How Tweet It Is: Are the Creators of Twitter Living in a dreamworld of possibilities ... and not making any money.
• Gawker points out that The Talking About the Talking about the 25 Things Thing is like so over for crying out loud.
• Will Obama's administration be more Sex-Positive: nerve.com looks at the future of teen pregnancy, abstinence education, HIV and STDs, Reproductive Rights and Queer Issues.
  
• Dorothy Snarker calls TV out in Hollywood to Lesbians: We're Just Not That Into You .
• Interview with Michael Robbins at my bff the village voice. He's the perfect poet who wrote 'Alien Vs. Predator ' which I linked to also in auto-fun not so long ago.
• The Daily Beast's Peter Beinart says "Ignore the Republicans " because "if the economy is better off in four years, they lose."
• n+1 does a Britney Spears Symposium .

Merry Chanukkistmas! #2: If I'm Gonna Go Down, I'm Gonna Dehydrate with Style

Every year around mid-November, my Mother sends my brother Lewis and I an over-punctuated email requesting our Holiday Wish Lists ???????? and, consequently, she shares her & My Other Mother's wish lists with us, just in case we've become "people who think ahead" since last Hanukkah. Two years ago, my Moms' lists were ripe fodder for bloggetry comedy gold and included "queen size flannel sheets -- no flowers!", "Mac Word," "No-Batteries Flashlight," "Gas Card," 'Beading How-To/Starter Set," the uncharacteristically specific "Sharper Image Digital Dashboard Compass & Weather Station-CE352" and a Lawn Tractor, Snowblower and a Reciprocating Saw.

Last year, they failed me w/r/t providing comedy gold via wish-lists, possibly on purpose. Suddenly Mom #2 lost her zest for power tools (thusly eliminating a re-run of my favorite dyke-with-power-tools graphic) and wanted jewelery (?!?!), and my Mom shifted her passions from apocalypse survival gear to ... an electric toothbrush and a copy of a mix tape I made her in the 90's.

Not like it really matters what they ask for, it's a charade to me as I'm gonna go ahead and buy them books I think they should read instead, just like I do every year. I know my Mom thinks she wants a remote car starter, but who needs to start one's car remotely when all the adventure you need is right here in a wonderful work of LITERATURE? Right? RIGHT!

Anyhow imagine my delight when my Moms' Chanukkistis wish-lists arrived this year full of potential. Perhaps they think that after last year's "Riese being kicked out of the house and sent to a motel" incident, I wouldn't dare continue to lower my potential esteem in their eyes by making fun of them on my blog. Well I just so happen to like motels, so.

Also, "making fun of you on my blog" is the sincerest form of flattery in my world. Obvs look at my list of weirdos. And my other list of weirdos. Those ppl are all my friends. Even Tegan & Sara. I'm calling Tegan right now. She says what's up guys. I told her you said what's up.

So. The following is the wish list. With commentary.

[OH! BUT FIRST!

Look at the buttons !!!!! We got so many orders, you guys are Obvsing all over the place, keep ordering ... this product does not disappoint! I'll announce a new giveaway soon ... omg!

+++
Wish Lists.

My Mother:

Tickets for the Mandy Patikin & Patti LuPone concert in Detroit, 4/14/09-4/19/09.
Thanks for the deets on date & location, this'll ensure I don't accidentally pick up tickets for their engagement at the Key West retirement community the following week. Also we took my Mom to see Patti LuPone in Gypsy when she visited me in New York, what am I, a Patti LuPone machine. Patti LuPone doesn't grow on trees. Switch it up! It's not like I go see Uh Huh Her ten times in one year and four times in one week or anything.

Almost any other live theater/performance event (includes DSO and opera.)
Almost? See what she's doing here is expecting me to fill in the blanks. Just 'cause I came out of her womb doesn't mean I can read her mind. Even when I was in there I couldn't read her mind, so how could I possibly do that now, I'm not Magnito. Or maybe I could, 'cause she was a McDonald's manager while preggers with me, and now french fries are my favorite food.

Anyhow obviously I'm getting box seats for "Kwame a River: the Chroincles of Detroit's Hip Hop Mayer," it's at the Second City Detroit, family fun will ensue.

Or movie, or museum.
I can't afford to buy a whole movie so obvs I am going to buy my Mom The Ann Arbor Hands-on Museum (that's where budding lesbian moms take their daughters for early bird training, just look at the logo. Here's the hand, here's the hole, go to town) and request that next year that she give me the Giant Bubble or if possible any kind of human body part I can walk into, ideally a heart and barring that, another tunnel or cave where I can hide.

Actually though, um, I just went to their website and they're for real selling exhibits. I didn't know museums could do that? I could play with Ollie Oxygen, Holly Hydrogen, Wally Water and Mr. Catalyst forevs, I wouldn't even need Hav to vlog with me anymore. Also before I give it to her I'm gonna eat all the Astronaut Ice Cream.

Remote car starter.
Why can't my Mom start her own car? wtf? Where does she want to start it from? A lot of questions about this. I think people should start cars up close and personal, like in the driver's seat.

Cooking/baking dish that can go on stovetop and in oven.
Why would you want to put a baking dish on the stovetop? Isn't that what the oven is for? Personally, I know the oven's where you stick your head if you wanna die a là Lady Lazurus, and also for chocolate chip cookies. Maybe she wants to cover the burners so I won't stick my hands on them like I did when I was a kid. I'll find new ways to re-direct the room's attention onto me, mother, don't worry.

Earrings, (gold, hoops, gemstones)
Who do you think I am, Haviland? Hello remember raising me "gender-netural." I am not Haviland. I am Riese. When I get angry, I like to break things. Speaking of ...

Fiestaware pieces to complete my sets: Purple dinner plate and mug, Tangerine dinner plate and mug, Cobalt Blue mug and 19 oz bowl, Heather dinner plate, 19 oz medium bowl, and mug, Ivory dinner plate, 19 oz medium bowl, and mug. (last time I looked, Linens and Things had a great on-line clearance sale)

This is the internet age, I need to be entertained constantly, and I was tuning out already at "plate." I re-attuned at "Heather," since I know lots of cute lesbos named Heather, but then I dropped out again at 19 oz.

Also I fully appreciate that she's given me permission to snag her front-row seats to "Steve Harvey's After Party" but has specified the size of her required tangerine mugs to the decimal.

What happened to the originals is what I want to know.

-Instruction and guidance, sans ridicule and teasing, on FaceBook, etc. usage. (stop giggling and rolling your eyes!)

1. Absolutely not.
2. Not without giggling and/or rolling my eyes. Actually I can do it without giggling, but I have to roll my eyes. What else are my eyes supposed to do? Look at my Mom's facebook profile? "Maureen has become a fan of Patti LuPone"? "Maureen threw a plate at you?" "Maureen would like to invite you to throw a snowball at her vampire environmental cause?"
3. If I srsly can do this and have it count as a gift, that means I'd save myself the price of a gift, which means I'd save myself the work of earning money to buy a gift, which means I can basically think of this as a job, which I would do.
4. Except I can't. I just can't do that absolutely not.

++

Before introducing you to my other mother's list, let me remind you that I am flying to Michigan from New York. Last year I drove. That turned out to be a bad idea, especially when I cut my finger open with a nail about an hour before departure time and consequently bled all over the steering wheel.

I cannot make fun of my Other Mother in-depth because she didn't give birth to me or adopt me and therefore her love is not unconditional. However, my Mom wrote out this list for her, so really again I am making fun of my Mom.

Food dehydrator (to make her own Beef Jerky) - though I admire the DIY spirit, I cannot admire beef jerky, and possibly would have considered this request were it not for this unnecessary detail. For example, on my:
,
I include The Cultural Resistance Reader. Innocuous enough, but what if in parens I added (to start a revolution, kill people, a là the SCUM MANIFESTO, which I expect in my stocking or pay the price). You know?

Kayak, (our stretch of AuSable River is too shallow for a conventional canoe.) - Right. Two years ago y'all wanted a canoe ["We're not getting a canoe, because then they're gonna want me to ride in it." -my brother], and now you want a kayak? Next year you'll be asking for a Moped (global warming has melted AuSable River entirely) and I'll wish I hadn't carted that effin' Kayak onto AN AIRPLANE.

Belt Sander - I don't know what this is. One time at band camp in the psych ward, my ex-girlfriend made me a belt in arts & crafts. Is this like that? I'm just trying to relate to you, bisexual-to-lesbian, it's like mano a mano but en engles.

A large/tall cactus plant and/or a Jade plant. -I'll leave "large/tall" alone, but I think cacti are Weapons of Mass Destruction, so praise Allah I will not bring it on an airplane, but you bet the first stop when I get into Michigan will be the Giant Cactus store to get one of these. Actually I'm quite serious, obvs this is what I'm getting, it's not every year you're actually asked to provide someone with a house plant.We can put it in our new Hands-on Museum.

Readers Digest subscription - The one portable item on this list has already been snagged by my Mom (see Mom, now you can't tell my Other Mom to read this, 'cause then you'll spoil it, like when Lewis told you that we got you a bike, which you no longer ride, good thing we didn't get that Canoe or it'd be collecting dust too, along with my ice skates from the 80's and all the books I try to force you to read).

I shared my concerns w/Lewis re: the portability of other mother's list, and he told our Mom about these concerns, and Mom suggested that, pending security clearance of said cactus, we could get Other Mother a "recipe book to use with a food dehydrator." Or: "Socks, she can never have enough of them." Truer words were never spoken. I mean, who says "I have too many socks?" No one, right.

Lewis asked what my plan was and obvs I told him I will be getting a gigantic/significant cactus plant and he responded: "Now that you mention it, a giant Cactus would be pretty awesome to have around ... if you got space, why not fill it with the most dangerous plant known to man? I'm serious. Add that to my list too. I wonder what it would taste like dehydrated ..."

Clearly it's things like "food dehydrator" that get me going on a nonstop internet investigation. We need a word for that. "The act of investigating something on the internet like a crazy person all night long, prompted by something small and innocuous, convinced that JUST ONE MORE SEARCH WILL BRING THE GOLDEN TICKET."

Apparently, one can produce pretty much anything with a food dehydrator. E.g., "cosmetics, mushroom soup, sloppy joes, pesto and moist banana bread." MOIST banana bread! That's like the Cracker Barrel version of the band Limp Bisket.

What if I just got her a lifetime supply of beef jerky and cut out the middle man? This woman Mary Bell is like a Beef Jerky superhero, and her hairdresser called and says he thinks she's a gay. Whatever, she's still no Kwame a River. I bet she never even drinks water. She's just got no need for it you know. Give me that sandwich, let's dehydrate that stucker STAT.

++

My brother's wish lists remain similar in spirit over the years though specifics change. As he grows, he changes. Instead of A MILLION DOLLARS!!!! he asks for An American Express Gold Card.

He's also asked for "something that will make my honda ruckus go faster except for the nitro kit." It's like he speaks another language.

Furthermore he has requested a jetpack. With a link, in case we can't find one at Wal-Mart while Kayak-shopping.

He also asked for "anything from thinkgeek.com except the t-shirts," so I had to go look at thinkgeek.com, and I found this, which was special too, and I would get it for myself as a joke but it's too expensive. I also saw a "LIttle Einstien" bobble-head I wanted to get for A;ex, but then I forgot:

Luckily Lewis has learned to ask for "books Marie thinks I should read," so I can do what I was gonna do anyway without being asked "where's my kayak?"

Oh also, wanna see a dyke with power tools? She can sand my belt all day!

UPDATE: My Mother e-mailed, two days after sending us her wish list, with a mesage entitled "wish list addition" and the following request: "consistent weekly phone contact from each one of you. and at the very least, my phone calls returned w/in 24 hours, as you would expect from me." Obvs I called her back immediately, between that and the Facebook lessons this is shaping up to be a cheap Christmas/Hanukkah, I'll just get a cactus from the wild, done and done. No I can't do the Facebook thing. Gold gemstone hoop-has, here I come.

In two days I will be in Michigan.

Yup.

Why Doesn't Anyone Ever Know What I'm Talking About? I'm Hung Up On You.

I'm Hung Up On You: Live From My Portal

i.
Dr. C always asks me the same questions, so I always give the same answers. Then at the end, he'll laugh (nervously) and make some completely out-of-left-field comment that will totally knock my socks off. Today, not only did he ask me 'Do you have any additional superlatives for me?' after I'd responded to the quality of my moods, sleep, anxiety, overall health, living situation, job, etc. as "Super!" , "fantastic!", "never been better," "magical," and "mind-fuckingly-unbelievable!" but then he followed up that excellent execution of vocabulary with:

"Black nails, huh? So are you--goth?"

(note: he said this in almost the exact same tone he used to ask me if I was bi, except, due to content, it felt decidedly less like a nervous sexual advance and more like a quasi-adorable question from a-completely oblivious-to-pop-culture hippie father. If that father was not a hippie and wore only Banana Republic and said things like "millions of people take [medication name here]. It can't be bad for you, if millions of people take it.")

"Yeah," I answered. "Me and Lindsay Lohan. Thus the studded dog collar and the Hot Topic platform boots. And the attitude."

(Side note: black nail polish is totally "over' and in fact I think verging on saturation/uncool-ness, so I love it even more now. i'll like it 4-eva, just like chuck taylors.)

"What's Hot Topic?"

I was suddenly roped into providing definitions for: Hot Topic, Goth, Emo (which I sub-divided into "Seth Cohen emo" and "pop punk emo").

These things mean nothing to me, but I know about them.

ii.
Which is what's so fucking weird about our world right now. We sit in front of identical machines that offer portals into absolutely everything. It's not our rapidly expanding ability to pursue niche interests or obsessions that interests me, but rather how there are things I can't even imagine avoiding on this machine--like Gawker, or like blogs in general---things that are SO CENTRAL to my universe and so completely out of the orbit for so many other people. We all know the media is sort of a circle-jerk, but you don't really realize the extent of that until, over the course of one week, you are met with a blank stare regarding the following topics: The James Frey debacle, "RENT" (the musical, the movie, the empire), NPR, Gloria Steinem, Raymond Carver, the Jim McGreevy scandal, the term "JAP" (Jewish American Princess), the "logo" television network, the Duke rape case, the concept of "independent" films, Jack Kerouac and "On the Road," Ted Haggard, the connection between the failures of our public education system and prison populations, and the political movement of people who think the Holocaust was a lie (it's encouraging, of course, that holocaust-deniers are not in the public eye as much as I imagined). Oh and also a clueless computer tech guy who, after M commented on her ravenous appetite this time of the month, actually asked if a period lasted ONE OR TWO DAYS. As in "One day? Two days?"

iii.
I was endeared recently to learn that there is at least one person in my universe who has never seen the music video for Madonna's 'Hung Up.' Living one's entire life without seeing Madonna gyrate in her pink leotard is super-tragic, though I'm not sure I would have been turned on to it were it not for melaina's blog and the gym. And I think I was working at nerve.com then, and we had our pulse on the finger of bare thighed women in popular music. Also I go to the gym and there are about 10,000 TV screens there. It's like Sears.

iv.
Also, until last week, though I claimed otherwise, I did not know what made a Nintendo Wii different from other Nintendos. I don't understand why they keep making new Nintendos. How could anything get better than MarioKart?

v.
Also I still don't know what "The Departed" is about, and, I realized, in conversation last week about why I don't like Russel Crowe, that I have not seen a single movie with Russel Crowe in it. Ever. No, not even Gladiator. Shove it.

vi.
I've accepted that there are many things that compose huge giant chunks of my consciousness, like literature, that don't matter to most people. I don't expect everyone in the world to know about Savage Inequalities (re: the American school system), the Jonathans (Safran Foer, Franzen, Lethem), Ani DiFranco, blogs, theater, The L Word, New York Magazine, Lorrie Moore or Christina Ricci.

vii.
But sometimes people really surprise me. Like not knowing about Freygate.

Or when I referenced the "George Bush doesn't care about black people" Hurricane Katrina "thing," and [redacted, because i was such an incredulous asshole about it at the time you probably wanted to flood my life with toxic water from the Hudson River] replied with a blank and curious stare and said they hadn't heard anything of it.

I guess because we are all sitting in front of the same machine, it's boggling how easy it is to bypass entire portions of it's content. Do we really have access to everything, or are these new filtering tools (like Google Reader, my playground lover) just enabling us to filter out everything, via tag, and increasing our limited knowledge of our limited world?

viii.
Also why doesn't my computer know the word "internet" yet?!! Stop highlighting "internet" every time I do a goddamn spell check. Waa.

ix.
I'm trying to work this stuff out.

In these cases, the "you" refers to the group of people who do not know about the chosen thing.


Gawker.com:
Why I Assume You Know This: If Gawker were a girl, she would never win homecoming queen but she'd sweep the yearbook hand-outs: "most popular," "most likely to succeed," "best style," and "best looking." Gawker would be really pretty, but like--interesting pretty. Gawker would be very popular but she would keep her loyalties few and select. When Gawker was in the room, you'd feel self-conscious. You'd feel simultaneously that Gawker was looking at you AND had no idea you even exist. You'd be afraid to talk to her because she might tell everyone what you said, or just judge you, silently, which would feel almost worse. She'd have a really distinct/enviable style and be known as mean and smart and cold and there'd be mysterious rumors about her home life (single mom? gay dad? raised by famous author? lives with punk rock headlining sister in a van down by the river?) that maintained your rapture though you knew/suspected it was all a lie. She would get into Brown but drop out after three years for a tempting job offer. Her crowd would be girls who had to copy each other to fit in, but she could just be intimidating and smarter than them and that would be enough to keep them at their heels. Every time she'd look at you, your heart would skip a beat, and you'd add it to your psychological sidebar. You'd kind of hate her though, underneath all that love and admiration, because she has all this power. And she actually deserves it sometimes.
Why you don't: You don't live in New York City and you don't like New York City or the media it produces and then congratulates itself for.
OR 1. You aren't in publishing or in the media. 2.You have a job that requires you to perform certain tasks in exchange for a salary and you can't spend the entire day blog-surfing and checking to see if they've put up the gold star motel yet.


Gloria Stienham:
Why I Assume You Know This: You are an educated human being in the 21st century. You have, at one time or another, heard a little snippet about feminism. NOT about women who throw paint on fur and think all sex is rape, but like, ACTUAL feminism. The kind you shouldn't be afraid of, unless you are Ted Nugent or a Morman.
Why You Don't: Because I don't know who played in the Super Bowl. And because of the patriarchy. Because of most of the points she's ever made.



The James Frey Thing:
Why I Assume You Know This: You can either: 1. hear, 2. read, or at least you could last year. You like to use these senses to pick up newspapers or glance at television screens playing the news, or "surf the web" in search of additional news. You have conversations with people who read literary fiction or memoirs. You know about Oprah, for Christ's sake. Larry King. OPRAH?!!! Oprah. Everyone knows about Oprah. And if you don't, you are amazing, and I love you and forgive you.
Why You Don't: This story was more insulated to the world of publishing than I thought, I guess? I mean, I couldn't have avoided hearing about it thirty times a day, but then again, I missed The Olympics.


NPR:
Why I Assume You Know This: You are alive in the nation called America, and you've heard of a thing called "radio."
Why You Don't: I really don't know. I'm not saying I think you should listen to NPR, I'm just saying you should have HEARD of it. (pun intended) Because I am an elitist boho bastard with no connection to the American people? Because I grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and you grew up in Buttfuck, Nebraska? Actually, that would be hot, if there was a city called "buttfuck." And actually, then, I think, there would be NPR there. I don't know. I'm being honest, I think it is because I'm an elitist twat. That's fine. If it wasn't for Krista, I would have missed a lot of things that happened in politics. Now that she's in New Haven, I probably do.


Some Things I've Been Called Out For Knowing Absolutely Nothing About Recently:
"Lost" (TV), "American Idol" (TV), John McCain (i know a little. but not a lot), the i-phone, the aforementioned Nintendo Wii, any movies that have come out with guns in them, Pan's Labyrinth (?), football, some cop-shooting thing, "The Sopranos," pretty much every TV show on TV that's not on "The N" or on at the gym in the mid-afternoon or not "The L Word" or "The View," why Dean stopped running in 04...also, i didn't get that youtube thing until like, 10 years after the rest of y'all.
I never saw TV as a kid, too. Like Facts of Life (?), and um, whatever else was on that people keep talking about. A Different World, or Different Strokes, or Different something something. Whatever. Shows that were on between 1980-1992. Didn't see them. You Can't do that on television? Me neither.

Okay.

There's a lot of stuff I don't know anything about. A lot. So I'm just as uncool as all of you. Except for the "One Day? Two Days?" guy. I'm cooler than him. Also he asked "so do you just stick something up there when you think it's going to come?" (REMINDER: his convo, NOT mine, which I could not BELIEVE we were having), and I said "Uh, like a tampon?" and he said
"Yeah. You could call it that."

Oh ElleGirl, You're Such a Tease! No, really, stop it! Oh, I'm gonna LMAO! OMG now I'm crying. Fuck.

It's hard to be so forward-thinking and mega-trendy that everything I love gets canceled (it all began with a little television program known as My So-Called Life), but I manage to find and adore these sinking ships again and again---lately it's been happening with magazines. I adored Radar, and Radar closed after only three tantalizing issues. But I wasn't expecting a long-term relationship from Radar--it'd broken my heart before, so I'd never allowed myself to relax and get comfortable. I wasn't expecting Radar to be there for me in the morning. I didn't expect commitment from Radar. Radar was a "fun while it lasts" sort of thing. You know, like Rayanne Graff.

But ELLEgirl. Oh, ELLEgirl!! ELLEgirl had the backing of a mama mag that's managed to totally outlast it's own slide into an identity crisis and current irrelevance (Ashlee Simpson? Really?!) and I know high school girls love magazines, because when I was in high school, I would practically orgasm on the school bus in anticipation of my Seventeen waiting earnestly in my mailbox. (This was pre-digital age though, so I couldn't just go home and like, find a prom date on myspace or whatever it is kids do these days, and there was no AIM so I had to like, call my friends from my parents' phone and it wasn't even cordless) But I read it on Gawker: ElleGirl will be abandoning its print magazine after the June/July issue to "increase its investment with the brand's digital format."

Right. Last I checked, this "digital format" isn't exactly going to fit in the plastic book-holder-binder-thingie I put over the stairmaster to read magazines while I "work out" at New York Sports Club. NYSC did install those "sports network entertainment systems" in like, 2001, but the web browser didn't work then and it doesn't work now, not like I could click around while I'm working out so hard anyhow. (In fact, like an overgrown Putt-Putt course with depressed elves and moldy astroturf, the NYSC televisions have actually been degenerating with time--In addition to never reaching their alleged potential as a web browser/shopping screen/digital cable portal/personal trainer/or something, every TV has it's own special problem, be it "no volume" or, perhaps "all the channels below 14 are fuzzy" or "only shows Telemundo." Whatever. That's another complaint for another day.)

For now; let me tell you why ELLEgirl rocked my mag-lovin' world.

1. I've never managed to sit through an entire episode of Gilmore Girls, but every EG cover-girl reminds me of Rory Gilmore. I mean, Emma Roberts? Emma Watson? Amanda Bynes? Who the hell are those girls? Hogwarts! I don't know, but I bet they had a debutante party, and she probably invited Mischa Barton, Nicole Richie, and all the other girls who smoke Newports and skip class. It's better than pink lemonade lip smackers! MMMM.


2. Okay, fo' real now: ElleGirl had seriously realistic trendy solid fashion advice. As a 24 year old livin' in the 11211 (which means that my style must reflect the "eternal youth" and "striking fashion foresight" of my hipster peers) I was way into their mildly-expensive (think Free People pants, Abercrombie top, H+M belt, Stuart Weitzman shoes and Cynthia Rowley necklace) and super-fun fashion layouts. The mag contained practical and affordable beauty advice for those of us who want to look like "ballsy chick rockers" or "mod, not punk." (e.g., me.) Some fashion pages, like this month's "Oz Fest" have cute lines like: "Girl knew the Yellow Brick Road was nothing but an endless catwalk." HOLLA!

3. This month--much like a boyfriend who cooks you a three-course meal the night before he moves to Bangladesh--ELLEgirl did three amazing things; They produced a fashion layout on how to "go tough and androgynous," featuring tomboy styles (aka Marie's Killa Sporty Spice Style) AND interviewed Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who was amazing in Mysterious Skin and I crushed on him hard-core in 3rd Rock from the Sun too AND this month's check-in with the four token girls of the "class of 2008" was titled: PIERCINGS AND BIRTH CONTROL. Eat that, North Dakota. Also Kelly, one of the girls, has an ex-boyfriend named "Ever."

4. Their little is-this-Avril-Lavigne's-diary-or-is-it-ELLEgirl cover quotes are nothing short of genuis. Scrawled in Authentic Teen Handwriting over a uni-toned body part of the cover girl, these quotes include gems like this one from Amanda Bynes: "There is nothing less attractive than a guy who is a jerk and has an ego." True dat, Mandy. But how about this, Dear Abby--I mean, Amanda--what if he smells, too? That's worse. Seriously. That's like, the ugly smelly icing on your unattractive cake.

5. It costs $1.99. I dare you to find a Starbucks that'll serve you hot water for less than a $1.99. It reminds me of when I was a kid--you know, ten years before Harry Potter's girlfriend was born--and a lot of things cost $1.99. Back then, ELLEgirl would've been like, $1.00, which is even cheaper.

6. Sometimes, like for example at editorial meetings at nerve.com, where I interned last fall, I would start a sentence with "I read in ELLEgirl that..." etc etc, and though some knowing souls would raise an eyebrow, I think some people thought I was saying L-Girl, which could be like, a hip lesbian magazine or something.

7. It's association with my former favorite show, America's Next Top Model. However, after Ty-Ty kicked Kim off the show, I would've cited the relationship to ANTM as a strike against ELLEgirl, but then they started running these amazing ads with the whole cast, including my girlfriend Kim.

8. It's like, if Jane and Sassy had a slightly less ironic cousin, she would be ELLEgirl.

9. According to their Kinsey-esque groundbreaking sex survey, 8% of readers are bisexual. You can easily double that (because they're kids, so you know, a lot are still in denial), which makes a lot of little bisexual cuties! Not to mention the 19% who've had a homosexual experience...which is like, right below the 30% who've had sex. So basically, most of the girls who are like, interested in sex at all, are already getting some girl-on-girl action. And you know what that means? Everyone is gay. Yay pride!

10. "Where did you Get That?", which is like "Look Book" High School Style, asks random girls on the street (I'm not sure how they do this, because they're stopping girls in like Texas, and L.A, and everywhere, so they probably have like, nationwide fashion spies, which is pretty intense, you know?) where they go their clothes. Sometimes, the girls go the extra step and define their style (as it is at the age of 15 or whatnot), which I think is really super awesome. here's some examples (you already know mine, see #3): "laid back but fun," "bohemian and chill," "the indie-rock boho look" and "pretty preppy."

All this self assurance!...and now we're getting...fucking ringtones? Weren't special ringtones deemed Officially Annoying in like, 2004? Or whenever the three millionth customer downloaded the Sex and the City theme song for when their "girlfriends" called? Ringtones! Ringtones.

Also, they had kinda good articles. G-d, it's just so cute, and it hurts to see something like that just fade away like dust in the wind, as they would say on the catwalk.

Okay, G-d? Check this out. These are my ten favorite magazines. Please don't cancel any of them.
New York Magazine, Marie Claire, Glamour, Allure, Bitch, Bust, Poets+Writers, Curve, Esquire, Women's Health.