Jason Boog over at the publishing spot (a really great resource for both aspiring and established writers) made this amazingly heartwarming video about Kate and me. It captures the pleasures of having a writing partner, as Kate and I basically wrote our books together last year. Check out Jason’s brilliant film editing! He interviewed us last week at the Crucial Minutiae cocktail gathering in the East Village.
Sounds creepy, right? Don’t be scared. This is no genetic engineering feat, no cloning craziness, no attempt to brand and sell personalities. It is simply a catalog. A friend of mine forwarded the website www.wefeelfine.org. I was skeptical at first. Am I being made fun of for being an emotive person? But, I allowed the website to draw me right on in–not an easy task for someone generally weary of time-sucking technologies. Within seconds, I was trying to sort out what exactly women between the ages of 20-29 in the Czech Republic have felt on cloudy days. Yes, you can be that specific; though, you may not get a lot of hits being so precise. So, noticing that I felt blue after a morning conundrum, I looked up who in New York has felt sad….You mean, I’m not alone?! Two young savvy computer scientists conceived of this web concept. Every few hours, it scours blogs; anything with the phrase “I feel” is snatched and logged, along with the sex and age of that person, location, weather at the time, and day. You can look at the feelings organized in graphs, a running tab, or small dots flying all over the screen blinking Pick me, pick me. Read more…
Sitting outside at a restaurant on Sunday night, my incredibly chill husband suddenly flung his arm over our table and pointed at a couple walking down the sidewalk. “Look who that is!” Stunned, I looked up and thought, what’s Courtney’s brother doing in Kansas City? And then I thought, wait a second. It’s the incredibly talented singer/songwriter from The Frames and the film ONCE, who looks like Courtney’s brother. And he’s with the incredibly talented singer/pianist from ONCE, who is now his girlfriend and partner in crime in the Swell Season– which Jennifer lovingly wrote about here back in November. How can this be? Are they playing here?!?
“Put down your margarita!” I screamed. “We already paid. Let’s go!” Joe was game. But then I couldn’t leave half of a frozen marg to waste and gulped down his drink before we chased after our targets.
“I bet they’re going to O’Dowds,” says Joe. “It’s Irish!” We were hot on their trail.
Last night, I was watching the Real World. This year’s cast is infinitely more interesting than in the past few years—there’s a body-builder alcoholic, a women’s studies major, a sorority girl, a hip hop producer, and a recovered meth addict stripper—but still, I found myself longing for the days of Puck and Pedro, when the show was about more than drinking profuse amounts of alcohol and hooking up under the covers.
In one scene in last night’s episode, they show Sarah (the women’s studies major) lying in her bed, which has a bookshelf for a headboard. And on the bookshelf, I noticed a book with an acid green spine. “I know that book,” I thought. So I paused and went frame-by-frame, and sure enough, it was Courtney’s Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters. I took a photo to prove it.
Courtney herself watched the episode and didn’t notice this. But here’s hoping that the subtle product placement leads to lots of MTV viewers picking up the book.
This video is amazing. Point blank.
Speaking of immigration, my column this week is about undocumented undergrads and the DREAM Act, a fascinating slice of the much larger immigration debate. In short, for this first time in history we have a sizable population of young people who have essentially grown up in America (most of them came over with their parents at very young ages), but aren’t technically residents.
Kimberlee Auerbach
- Kimmi was just named “Teacher of the Year” from Liberty LEADS at Bank Street College for her classwork there with 8th grade girls. Congratulations, Kimmi!
Courtney Martin
- “The Undocumented American Dream” at The American Prospect
Kate Torgovnick
- This Friday, May 9th, watch the premiere of E! True Hollywood Story Investigates Cheerleading, featuring interviews with Kate as well as with Ashley Picard, one of the cheerleaders whose life story is told in CHEER!.
Thanks to everyone who came out last night for the festivities! I imagine it was the beginning of many friendships, torrid love affairs, and literary hijinks. Or something like that.
Stay tuned for what promises to be a whole slew of embarrassing photos from Miss. Felice Belle.
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Kimmi
Therapy Thursdays
Word of the day: crazy
Today is a multi-holiday, so start celebrating. For one, it commemorates the labor movement’s efforts to secure an eight-hour work day. It’s also been dubbed “Law Day” by the American Bar Association, which based on my observation of recent law school grads pulling all-nighters at big firms to pay off student loans, completely flies in the face of any possibility of an eight-hour work day. May 1st has also been named National Day of Action in Defense of Immigrant Families, and marches have been organized across the country. Meanwhile, May Day has been celebrated for centuries as a release from winter with joyous rites of spring. Lilies of the Valley are given freely in France, Lei Day is enjoyed in Hawaii, and maypoles around the world are strung up with colorful ribbons by young women in white dresses.
Whatever your preference for the holiday, whether you’re marching or dancing, whether the blossoms make you sneeze or sigh, a new season means new chances. I’ve gotten the chance to help cuddle my sister’s newborn for the past couple of days while his daddy’s away on business, and there’s nothing like a two-week old to remind us what it’s like to see everything anew and to appreciate food, sleep, a warm bed, and a cool breeze.
I’m on vacation in California, so I’ve got some simple beauty for today.
And below the cut, video blogging about 31 Cent Scoop Night.
Every once in a while, there comes a time when society has to take step back and ask if its norms and laws really reflect the values of its citizens. After reading these startling statistics about our prison system in the New York Times and Washington Post, I can’t help but think that now is the time.
Did you know that:
*America has less than 5 percent of the global population but more than one quarter of the world’s prisoners;
*1 out of 100 American adults is now in jail;
*1 in 9 black men between the ages of 20 and 34 is behind bars;
*state governments shell out nearly $50 billion a year and the federal government pays $5 billion more to lock up our citizens
What the heck is our problem, people?
Is Hillary’s femaleness or Barack’s blackness a sole justification to vote for either leader? Absolutely not. Are the symbolic power of their respective identities incentive — in addition to their policy positions, their track records, and their values — to vote for them?
Of course.
As Katha Pollit put it so succinctly in The Nation, “It’s crucial not to get into an oppression sweepstakes.” We shouldn’t let the media pit us against one another so that we waste valuable energy defending our own victimhood. Instead, we should be doing the difficult work of coalition building, embracing multiple issues as critical to our collective liberal agenda to make America more just and equal on all fronts. We must focus on the more important question: is America ready to believe in its own power to overcome? If it’s either a white woman or a biracial man who walks into that White House, our country will never be the same. If McCain walks in, well that’s gonna just suck.
After the cut, check out this amazingly hilarious video from my boy Ramin’s show (aka The Daily Show).
Courtney Martin
- “More Than a Mother-Daughter Debate” at The American Prospect
- “Violence That Doesn’t Make the News” at Metro NY
Contrary to the sign held by a woman at a December 2006 rally, 50 shots + New York City cops does not equal murder. It equals not guilty.
I was sitting on JFK-bound Jetblue flight when I heard the verdict. The miniature TV screen streamed live footage from outside the court house, occasionally cutting to video of Nicole Paultre Bell’s car en route to Sean Bell’s gravesite.
Across the aisle, a balding man in khaki shorts was watching the same channel. He nodded affirmatively to his wife. Indicating that justice had been served.
Her name is Madeline. I didn’t expect to be writing about this, but it came up. I’ve spent the last 24 hours with her and today I watched her learn something new. I don’t have many growing babies in my life, but every so often I get to be Aunt to a friend’s new puppy. In this case, Madeline is a 12-week old St. Bernard dog, which means all fluff and paws. If you don’t know what these animals look like, look it up. I could be ga-ga-annoying about her cuteness, but I’d rather broach a simple topic–the importance of CONSTANT new challenges.
We just completed her first epic hike of 2 miles on a fairly steep uphill and then 2 miles back down. For a puppy, that’s a lot. On the way up, she refused to walk across the wooden plank over the rushing creek. She just shoved her rump into the ground–scared and un-budge-able. But hours later, on the way back down, she turned on the focus (her back legs quivering) and made it across the plank. Amazing. A hurdle. A confidence gained.
We should all be doing something daring every day. Why does this impulse fizzle when we hit adulthood? It doesn’t have to be crazy; you don’t have to spend your last nickel, get on a plane to the Congo and go trekking alone. I mean, you could decide to eat a banana even though you’ve hated them your entire life. You could be ballsy and say that thing you’ve always wanted to say to that person. You could pencil dive into that very high, icy cold gorge. It’s too easy to get on the train and coast. Let’s face it, the rut may be comfy, but wow it gets boring. Without some nerves (discomfort), we stop learning. Some people think sinking deep into the familiar is good. I don’t disagree. But I’ve always feel brighter after my heart races a bit.
Remember that joke from elementary school– “My dog ate my homework!” If only. My 175-pound dog has systematically destroyed my ibook. So you find me writing you here, from a library, with only 16 minutes left before I must relinquish my spot at a functioning computer. Long story short: Porter loves lattes. Perhaps more than I do. Which says a lot. And I left a latte unattended by my laptop, so I can go ahead and accept full responsibility. When I returned, the giant mug was empty and rocking on top of my keyboard. To add insult to injury, milky brown spots can be found splashed across the printer, the wireless mouse I just bought, my books, my notes, everything. It’s not the end of the world, but it does feel as though I might fade into obscurity as a writer without a computer in this tech age. That’s all I have this week, friends. Any sage advice for recovering computers or sanity would, of course, be most appreciated.
I love the wonderful way that I tend to discover new online voices — an intriguing post on one of my current RSS feeds sends me to a new blog, where I spend hours sifting through amazing new thoughts… then a click on a comment opens my world into another new direction… and suddenly my RSS folder is three times larger and I’m taking in entirely new brain-and-heart ecosystem.
In this case, my new reading has been both humbling and awe-inspiring. Despite having read and loved sites like Racialicious, Angry Asian Man, Kimchi Mamas, and Rice Daddies for several years now, in the past month, I realized that my regular blog-roll was blindingly white. I also realized that my perspective on, oh, pretty much everything was suffering for that homogeneity. Embarrassing, for sure, but it has been wonderfully fun and engaging to change my blog reading habits.
So today, I want to give some major link love to the new-to-me (mostly women) bloggers I’m enjoying: (alpha by site name, with their short bios)
The Angry Black Woman (which is actually a group blog of three women)
“Politics, Race, Gender, Sexuality, Anger”
***I cannot speak highly enough of their “Required Reading” page. Go there now.***
Somehow I’ve managed to insert myself at the center of a raucous intergenerational feminist debate in the last few days. I won’t bother you with the entire blow-by-blow, but if you want more info check out Jessica Valenti’s post on “my other group blog” (is that like “the other woman”), feministing.
Suffice it to say it’s got me thinking a lot about what it means to identify with a movement–something I’ve always felt quite comfortable and even comforted by doing. Feminism is a lens through which I can see myself and the world, a collective solution for personal pain, a legacy that I can inherit and build upon. It makes me feel like I “belong” somewhere, like I have a tribe, like there is a shorthand for my particular brand of outrage/intuition/wayofknowing.
But the flip side of that is the risk of subsuming one’s identity within a movement’s, the loss of complexity and nuance, caricature. Never has that been more apparent for me than during these last few days.
You knew that, eventually, I was going to write about this infamous YouTube video. By now, you’ve probably heard the story. About two weeks ago, eight Florida high-schoolers—several of them members of their schools’ cheerleading squad—lured a friend (also a cheerleader) over to a house and then proceeded to pummel her for half an hour. The friends were evidently pissed about comments the girl had made on her MySpace page, and orchestrated this beat-down to be filmed and posted on YouTube.
Do I think the making of this video had anything to do with the fact that some people involved were cheerleaders? Not at all. But I do think the fact that they were cheerleaders ensured that the story would blow up. Here are a few sample headlines:
