is the word 'diary' better than the word 'blog'? probably not.
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Good and Bad Carrie Bradshaw.
By the way, I�m totally over the current round of wishing I could afford things I can�t afford. Who knows where that came from, but it does happen sometimes, especially in NYC. But in the meantime the semester ended, and two things happened. One, I got some time to think about something beyond grading papers. Two, I conducted an extensive spring cleaning. And so I reminded myself that a) I have a good life that is not made better by overpriced consumer goods and b) wow, I do have a lot of nice consumer goods already. I should just wear THOSE instead of remaining in the rut I�ve been in without thinking about it. (It�s a rut called �Clothes for Teaching.�)
So I don�t want things I can�t afford. However, I do want to be able to afford the bare minimum, and I�m not quite there. Academic salary, meet debt-laden ex-graduate student living in New York City! For some chunk of foreseeable future I�m going to have to figure out some other way to solve the problem, because it�s not going away. But that�s a boring topic.
Also boring: trying to get a simple job when you have a PhD. People want to know why I would want to proofread their copy when I have a PhD. Perhaps they suspect that I may think I am too good for such things, or something. But I can�t exactly leave the academic qualifications OFF of my resume, because then my work history would look like I worked a month or so a year for the last fifteen years. Scylla, meet Charybdis.
Less boring! Steve�s art thing last night in the meatpacking district was really cool. Lots of different artists set up in Gansevoort Plaza and projected images in various formats on surrounding buildings and streets. I loved how it looked, and I loved that it was just something you could freely happen upon in public space. It was good to see Steve, too.
Man, the meatpacking district has changed. It so sad that Florent, the eatery where I have consumed many a 5am meal after a night of gallivanting, will be closing its doors due to the skyhigh rents in what is now a fashionable group of streets. It used to be that all you would see in that neighborhood were tranny prostitutes, seedy bars, with some music venues and galleries here and there. You might also see dump trucks dumping really disgusting animal body parts into huge containers, because it really was the MEATPACKING DISTRICT. Now it�s like the other side of South Street Seaport�s urban Disneyland. Or it�s like Carnaby Street in London. Or: It�s like someone took Carrie Bradshaw and threw her at a neighborhood, where she exploded on impact, shattering into thousands of shards, each of which grew into some sort of clone of some aspect of all the worst parts of Sex and the City. �.Earlier that evening I had made shrimp paella, which was really tasty but ended up leaving us hungry a few hours later in the way that rice-based meals often do. So we wanted to find a bar where we could sit outside, get some drinks and snacks, and hang out. But who wants to be on the set of what is bad about Sex and the City, and then pay for it? We wandered a few blocks down Hudson before choosing a bar.
But there is no escaping Bad Carrie Bradshaw anymore. At the bar we were sitting next to a table of five youngish females. I�m guessing they were in college? They had just seen the Sex and the City movie, and had mixed opinions about its success. Nothing very interesting was said, and I wasn�t really listening to them most of the time, because I had Gus with me, and he�s interesting� but all of a sudden (their volume increased with their rounds of drinks, as is the way with drunks) I realized they were talking about how pathetic it is that out of the four stars of the film only one of them has a husband in real life.
No joke. That is what they were discussing.
I could not stop laughing. I said to Gus, �They�re talking about how much they love that show, and it�s like they never even saw it!� He pointed out that, in the end, the show did send a marriage message. But I still think that the major thrust of the show was the lives of women lived well despite (or merely alongside) men, and female friendships withstanding the comings-and-goings of flaky problematic men. I�m right, aren�t I? That IS what that show was about?
But Oh. My. God. Can you BELIEVE that none of those actresses can even find a husband? And they�re, like, in their FORTIES! Total. Losers.
Recently at the gym (I haven�t joined a gym yet because, as you know from my tiresome repetitions, I have no money, but I�m still in physical therapy until the end of the week, so, at the gym recently) I was reading New York Magazine (which I love, and which comes to me weekly courtesy of a free subscription from Trip and Greg, yay) on the elliptical trainer, and there was an interview with Sarah Jessica Parker who, as you probably know, played Carrie Bradshaw lo! those many years. And in the article she laments the role she seems to have played in the NouveauRicheDisneyfication of lower Manhattan. (That�s my term, not hers.) She grew up dirt poor and happy, and still has fairly normal ideas about what matters in life, though she, like many of us, loves good shoes and dresses�. Anyway, I found it interesting. That she would say that in what is essentially a promo piece for the movie that shows the other side of it all.
I haven�t seen the movie yet, but I plan to. I don�t have high hopes, which probably means I won�t feel the need to write my own bad review of it. Enough of that has been done already, anyway!
For now, let�s just admit that there was so much about that show that was transformative of television, and of narratives of female friendship, in ways that were good, no matter what else the show might have spawned.
(This reminds me. At one point in the show�s run, I mentioned something about it to David Strauss, and he said to me: �Sex in the City. Harumph! What city? Those aren�t four female New Yorkers. They�re four gay male Canadians!� Like much of what Strauss says, within the hyperbole there is a funny and even devastatingly accurate kernel of truth.)
(Recently Strauss sent me a text message that said: �Why do people like Vampire Weekend? Because it makes it seem like slavery never happened?�)
4:34 p.m. - June 01, 2008
josiah leet - 2008-06-01 21:16:05
The "Sex in the..." movie is quite good, saw it last week. Nice clothes, nice shoes, nice story line...each character gets some choice bits etc. The biggest audience reaction was when the character Big shows Carrie a really, really huge...closet. I was one of, like, 8 dudes in the crowd...broad mix of ladies and gals in attendance...nice. Sure beats that Raiders of the Lost Whatever! cheers...
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