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In Paperback
Now! Thursday July 28th/Friday 29th: Tracy on BBC-5's Up All Night 9:30 pm Eastern USA/2:30 am GMT with Dr. Petra and Dotun Read an excerpt |
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| Monday, February 21, 2005 David Wallis is the founder of Featurewell and a survivor of the hype that undid so many -- mostly because he didn't believe it and chose instead to build something. As the off-spring of an Old School programming geek (and a grandchild of shopkeepers), I'm hardly surprised that Featurewell continues to grow while other web-based enterprises have either "vanished or were consolidated into enterprise streaming solutions." (According to Ken Layne who goes on to say that "every 404 Not Found tells a story.") So, Featurewell now works with 800 writers or so, which includes a number of accomplished columnists, streetwise news reporters and highbrow icons. I am something of a newbie by comparison but... prowling editors, take note! http://www.featurewell.com/?WID=5636 Wednesday, February 16, 2005 Quote of A Few Days Ago "We are all interested in talking and reading about that difficult process of living with another person," says Mary Bly in this savvy op-ed about genres and the readers who love/loathe/fear them. Thanks to my charming correspondent Lewis for bringing this to my attention! Like Bly, I became hooked on a genre as a kid. I was obsessed with boarding school stories, so much so that I may have Enid Blyton's Mallory Towers series to thank for... Nancy Chan. It sounds unlikely but it's true. If you are registered with the NYT, you can read this until Saturday: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/12/opinion/12bly.html Friday, February 11, 2005 Hung Up On A Blurb Friday afternoon A reader from Halifax shares this informative piece about sex toys, cell phones and "cam girls" in Wired News today. Thanks, David! I don't agree with the plug for this piece: Can technology replace men? For sex workers, let's hope so. It seems to miss the point. Most of us get along with men. We certainly don't want to replace them! Males are, um, integral to the sex industry. Maybe the assumption is that men who aren't paying us are all hooligans, extortionists and time-wasters? Wrong again. They come in all varieties, as do the men in other women's lives. And if the blurb intends to take a swipe at males who are in the management end of the sex trade, why should we single them out? Should women in other jobs also operate in a man-free zone, without male mentors, agents, managers or co-workers? The logic is mind-boggling. There is still too much prejudice against this industry. Now it gets projected onto the managerial class because it's uncool these days to say mean things about hookers. Most of the women I know in the sex trade prefer to be in love with, in bed with and having dinner with... a guy. That's just the way it is. So there's something counter-intuitive -- almost hateful! -- about that teaser. If we start to unpack it, we'll be here all day. That said, the piece itself (by Regina Lynn) turns out to be nuanced and engaging. I like this bit: Sex toys are like almonds... You can share almonds with others, or enjoy them on your own. But few people want to replace every meal with a bowl of almonds for the rest of their lives. http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,66565,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_2 Thong Cleavage Friday morning I just heard from Candi Lace, author of this prostitution piece in the current issue of a startling new magazine called Maisonneuve. New to me, startling because it's so innovative. I'm glad Candi chose to amplify the similarities between streetwalking and "callgirling." (Word I just sort of made up. Not a logical equivalent; it'll do for now.) http://www.maisonneuve.org/article.php?article_id=510&page=1 Also in Maisonneuve, a very funny first-person essay about The Public Thong as "collateral damage in the war between stylishness and functionality." One Jarret McNeill demands to know: When the hell did this become appropriate in the work place? As one who showed off a thong or two in her own workplace (without being viewed as transgressive -- I was just doing my job), I'm curious about those who do so to be edgy. Or fashionable. In the office. Or a restaurant. Like the author of the above piece, I have learned to stop telling people in public situations that their undies are showing. The first time I made this mistake, I was at The Salmagundi Club on lower Fifth Avenue, having drinks with some friends. I saw a pair of white panties protruding from a pair of jeans. I leaned over and informed the wearer of her predicament in a discreet mumble that nobody else could hear. The undie-baring culprette was very charming. She tucked her stuff in and smiled winningly... only a year later did it hit me that I had committed some sort of cultural faux pas. And she was nice enough not to point it out! Jarret McNeill reveals that it's much worse when a guy makes this error. A few months ago, The New York Times reported on Thong Fatigue. This is now in paid archives but I will try to find the link to the archived piece. So, are thongs over?? Or was that just a scare tactic? If I tell someone her undies are on display, will I now be pointing out that she's sporting yesterday's look? That would be out of the question. Because of thong cleavage and its moment in the sun we will never be able to point out stuff like that ever again... Exposed thongs have created an etiquette nightmare for the new century. Thursday, February 10, 2005 Cryptic Valentine If you're flipping through the Style section of the SF Chronicle this weekend, you might get lucky. If you do, please write and tell me what you found. Dragonflies, Elephants and... FINALLY! Thanks to the merciful intervention of Dana Dragonfly I just managed to publish some posts that have been sitting here all weekend. They have been magically released by the blogging pixies. They weren't the most brilliant posts but they wanted publishing. Now that they're up, I can move on to other things. This weekend, I discovered this utterly scrumptious piece about Babar in a fairly recent ish of the NY Review of Books. It's too long to reproduce here. You have to register to read it, but here's why I think it's worth the procedure. First, a very nice footnote about: Babar's Yoga for Elephants (Abrams, 2002), a guidebook that has proved extremely popular for beginners. As one fan put it to me, "If an elephant can do it, so can I." But this is what pulled me right in: For over seventy years, Babar has been the most famous elephant in the world—and the most controversial. He has been praised as a benevolent monarch, an ideal parent, and a model of family affection, loyalty, justice, good manners, and civilized living. He has also been damned as ... an elitist, a colonialist, and a racist. It has even been proposed that he deserves to be burned alive... Yesss! As an anti-colonial monarchist, I was unable to resist "The Royal Family" by Alison Lurie. It can be found in Volume 51, Number 20 · December 16, 2004 http://www.nybooks.com/articles/17640 Sunday, February 06, 2005 I have been having the darndest time trying to post to this here blog. Let's see if this works! Saturday, February 05, 2005 http://adamash.blogspot.com/2005/02/books-or-men.html Adam Ash today poses a completely ridiculous question which I will attempt to answer once and for all: Books or Men?? Supposedly, "if you don't like what a book is saying, you can just close the damn thing. Try doing that with a man. And it's a hell of a lot easier to organize your books than to organize a man." I wouldn't dreeeeeam of trying to organize another human being. (Would I?!) But you can certainly organize your relationships with others in a way that is pleasing to all concerned. I cannot say the same of books. If you have any thoughts about this, I suggest you pop over to AdamAsh.blogspot.com Wednesday, February 02, 2005 From Barbie to Astro Turf I loved M.G. Lord's biography of Barbie (yes that Barbie) so much that I wrote two very different pieces about it. One piece appeared on Salon and the other...? Disappeared into some version of Internet Limbo. Occasionally I stumble across a shadow of its former existence. I still get email from people looking for the original which mysteriously vanished from Urban Desires. So, if anyone has a record of its existence, I'd love to see it! It also disappeared from my hard drive when I was switching computers... don't ask. I was less organized in those days. But that's not the point. MG has a new book out. This time it's about the fly me to the moon crowd whom, she says, could imagine setting up house on Mars but couldn't imagine women working alongside men at Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. I have heard that there is something about a sex cult at JPL which got mentioned in The Washington Post this weekend... Would somebody be kind enough to send me the review from Wash Post?? The combo of science and gossip is bound to intrigue my dad (a man of science who failed to pass on those particular genes to his daughter.) So he is getting a signed copy pronto... (I did inherit his fondness for salacious gossip.) MG is coming to New York! On Monday 2/14 at 7:30, she will be signing books and chatting with Dava Sobel at Hayden Planetarium on the Wild West Side -- the other side of the park. Can I pry myself away from the East Side and get to the Museum of Natural History? The problem is, getting a crosstown cab on St. Valentine's Day at 7:00 pm is a huge challenge. Have you noticed what a disastrous night that is for transportation? But I am looking into it. Anyway, this promises to be a very hot ticket, so book it NOW http://www.amnh.org/programs/hayden/?src=h_h Tuesday, February 01, 2005 Keeping Up With a Jones I have to admit, after this long hiatus, that I feel a bit silly. First of all, I know that the last thing I blogged about was Paulo's death. This looks mournful, I suppose, as if everything stopped in his honor. Well, it sort of did but it has also not stopped, for much the same reason. Every time I scroll through my inbox, messages from Paulo pop out at me. I suppose I should organize them since he won't be sending anymore, but I can't quite get around to it. Finishing my second novel was a hibernation process and the less said about it here the better. It being the writing process. Never let daylight in upon magic. I have seen the jacket -- love it -- and ... I'm working on freelance pieces again. Current venues are LA Times Book Review, South China Morning Post, and SF Chronicle. I'll post (where possible) links to new work but the fashion these days seems to be for subscriber-only newspaper sites so... good luck with that, kiddos. I sometimes cannot even read my own work when it's up. How satisfying to work on something which can be started and finished within the space of a week! And I've been busily updating this site in little ways... PLUS reading other blogs and feeling distinctly inferior. I just don't have what it takes to be a power blogger... like Belle de Jour who discusses her daily life in rather a lot of detail online. (I'm much too private to do that.) Or this Adam Ash who is constantly weighing in on the news (how does he manage? I don't think I have the stomach for most of what's in the news these days) AND he's publishing a novel in weekly installments... AND discussing his relationship issues ... plus uploading rude pictures which I don't know how to do. Well, take a look at his blog. http://adamash.blogspot.com/ It's this sort of thing which makes me realize I'm not really Blogger Material. Too reticent, I think. |