You are currently browsing the Crucial Minutiae weblog archives for January, 2008.
Let’s say you’ve got 60 bucks burning a hole in your pocket, you were once enamored with Olivia Newton John and/or Grease, you were also at one time a Greek mythology geek, and your heart beats in time with 80s pop. Well, friend, then you must run, not walk– or even better, rollerskate– over to TKTS and get yourself a ticket to XANADU.
Xanadu is a place which is unattainably luxurious or beautiful. The show is not. Rather, it’s attainably hilarious. I went for research purposes. Following the first New York reading of my new musical this week, I’m trying to figure out how much farther we can push the comic envelope in song and story. I’ve never seen the film XANADU, but Douglas Carter Beane (ever seen To Wong Foo…?) adapted it for Broadway with Jeff Lynne of Electric Light Orchestra and John Farrar who produced “Physical” (as in “let’s get…”). So my collaborators and I sat there Tuesday night, determined to learn something. And what did I learn? That it feels so good to laugh. So good to be surprised and delighted. And even better to give over to the cheese.
I was going to write about the unbelievable homemade pizza that my friends and I made this weekend, but then I heard about some exciting news out of Sundance, via Women Make Movies:
Although only 25 percent of the films in the festival’s four feature-length Documentary and Dramatic competition categories were directed by women, they won 50 percent of the top prizes.
This is thrilling news from an industry that’s given us past statistics like:
- In 2005, 19 percent of films employed no women directors, executive producers, producers, writers, cinematographers or editors.
Mother Jones(one of my favorite magazines in the universe and beyond) has a great article this month on the new phenomenon of coworking spaces. Essentially they are offices that a bunch o’ consultants rent together so that they have the benefits of a formal work environment–the camraderie, the built-in separatation between work and life, the office supplies–with the informality of the freelance life–come and go as you please, only do work you are interested in (at least on some level), no B-O-S-S. Most often a freelancer throws down around $350 to belong to such a space.
You asked for it. Okay, some of you did. Some of you didn’t. But here’s my music video…
–
Cristina Pippa
www.myspace.com/orangealert
“In the understandably general yearning for “change” in the governing of our country, we might pause to reflect on just what is being changed, and by whom, and for whom.”
- Joan Didion, writing about the 1992 democratic convention
Part of the problem with trying to write anything interesting about a presidential election, is that by the time a layman part time political junkie gets around to actually putting thoughts to paper a) whatever thought generated the impulse to write has been so chewed over, digested and strewn over airwaves it feels like last year’s news, b) very little new seems possible to say and c) you are already so sick of the endless coverage and infuriating substance of that coverage that it seems unforgivable to add to the pile of commentary.
And yet, the current campaign for the democratic nomination is so fascinating and important – as far as what it says about our politics and our country – that it seems worth trying to retain some sort of interest and strive for some sort of clarity despite the fact that the non-stop coverage makes any additional commentary seem like so much more needless wanking.
Last night I was locked in a paddock between a bull and a cow, my heart pounding, “I have got to get out of here….” The steam from the bull’s nostrils puffed into an already misty evening and I knew he was gearing up to break at me. I also knew that, despite the country scene, I was in Paris. Then I woke up to the metal clanking of workmen outside my NYC apartment window. Awesome. I can’t get enough of what happens in the brain at night–when you are curled up in a bed, on the ground, in a tent, in someone’s arms, anywhere, your eyelids flapping with REM. When slumber forces us to abandon our spiky mental critic, we can actually be illuminating. I have a habit of informing people when they’ve made an appearance in my night dreams: co-workers, friends, family, and some very peripheral folks. Why not let them know? How did they get in there? Why are they there? I could analyze for hours.Year ago, an older woman told me that by writing her dreams down every morning, Read more…
When you get bored at work today, wrapping things up before the holiday weekend, check out the Library of Congress’ online photo collection over at Flickr.
They recently uploaded 3,100 photos from their collection of 1 million, and already there’s been a huge positive response. Flickr users are categorizing old photos with tags, commenting on them with additional information about the photos, and some are even geotagging the photos (tagging where they were taken, so that users can look at a map of the world and see all the photos on Flickr that were taken in specific places).
The coolest part about this project is that most of the pictures have no known copyright restrictions on them, so I’m sure that we’ll start to see people integrating them into their creative projects, online and off.
Enjoy!
Just finished a long day of auditioning students at the New World School in Miami for scholarships. By long, I mean that these actors/singers/playwrights were scheduled in five-minute slots back to back to back to back. But they were so talented that I didn’t even realize how long the day was until I had to run down their backpack-filled hallway to the bathroom and noticed that my blood sugar had sunk through the linoleum and the nine floors below. Not to be dramatic.
So here’s what surprises me– how quickly you can tell exactly what a performer brings to the table as tools and as pure, raw talent. Or on the other hand, what they don’t bring– like a knowledge of the unwritten rules of auditioning. 1. You don’t look at me (or yell at me) while delivering your monologue; you look a foot above my head so I don’t feel like I’m in physical danger. 2. You don’t need to shake my hand. Or kiss it. Yes, someone who was a dead ringer for Borat pulled that last weekend in another audition. 3. You don’t tell me in advance that I shouldn’t stop you before you’ve finished your song or monologue. Why? Because it only takes 10 seconds to decide if I want to hear more. And being forgiving, I allow at least 80. It’s not unlike the 10 pages they say that industry types give you to decide if they want to read on.
The days when all you needed to get into Harvard, Princeton or Yale was to have a father or grandfather or great-grandfather who went to Harvard, Princeton, or Yale are long gone, right?
Of course not. We all know that legacy preferences still exist at the upper echelon universities. And even though where your daddy went to school is not considered in admissions decisions in any other country, most Americans are willing to tolerate legacy preferences because colleges have opened their doors to students from all backgrounds in recent years. Women, Jews, African Americans, Latinos, poor kids etc. now have an opportunity to sit next to the Vanderbilts and Rockerfellers at Harvard and Yale. Right?
Not really. Ironically, just as college admission policies seem to moving away from the old school class-based approach, class ends up mattering more than ever.
I watch commercials with a mean critical eye. I’ve turned media literacy into a sport. My mom hates to watch TV with me because of all my smart-mouth comments about the underlying -isms so rampant in advertising (sexism, racism, classism, etc.).
But this commercial, and its predecessor, really stops me in my tracks. I know that the Hill | Holliday agency designed it to sell me insurance products. But the band Hem (whose songs are featured in the commercials) is so close to my heart, as is the message of the ad, so I really enjoy watching this one. I’ll take messages of joy, abundance, and goodness wherever I can get them — even commercials.
—–
Beauty in a Wicked World is a weekly column by Jennifer Gandin Le. It appears on Wednesdays.
I walked into yoga last Wednesday morning, as I do from time to time, eager to have an hour of–in theory–mindfulness and–in practice–at least some great stretching. I set up my mat near the front right of the room, as I always do. I sat down and got into cross-legged position.
And then I noticed a not so small whimper coming from behind me. A middle-aged black guy (note: not Laurence Fishburne, but equally intimidating), who looked to be in his late 30s or early 40s, wearing a tracksuit, sneakers, and bling everywhere (big rings, necklace etc.), appeared to be crying. Or maybe he was just sweating? I couldn’t tell for sure, but I thought it unlikely that this tough guy was visibly weeping.
I am still flabbergasted by the contents of an article written on January 3rd. Americans have become so savvy that we are now outsourcing wombs. Yes, that’s right,… OUTSOURCING WOMBS!
Your first geography is your mother’s womb. And if you have siblings, you’ve shared the very same womb, the same tender walls– life can’t get more magical than that, really. But now we’re growing babies in the wombs of Indian women who are stand-ins/surrogates and share not one smidge of the genetic material of the baby developing inside them. These women can make up to $10,000 (10-15 years salary) a pop to be pregnant and birth another woman’s baby. With that money, one woman said she could buy a house.
http://warner.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/03/outsourced-wombs/index.html
I’m curious on responses to this. Are you grossed out, horrified, or does this idea ride easy and simple for you? Both women do get what they want in the end. Would you want to be a child who had come into life this way? Most people believe that what a mother eats, feels, and does affects the fetus. Is it too sentimental to even consider that this first geography is important in shaping us?
“The only thing that will get us to stop contacting the family is if they call their congressman. Or maybe if the kid died, we’ll take them off our list.”
– Major Johannes Paraan, head U.S. Army recruiter for Vermont and northeastern New York.
Adding to all the persuasive power that recruiters can muster these days, No Child Left Behind has played a significant part in getting high school kids to sign up. Evidently the 670-page law (I haven’t read it) contains a provision for federal aid, requiring public high schools to allow military recruiters access to their schools and to… contact info for every student. Beyond that, they’re getting access to the kids’ myspace pages and to their family’s economic background. Yes, kids can opt out. But do they know that? At this point, they can’t even go to the movies without seeing a music video by Three Doors Down glorifying the National Guard.
Here’s something they might not see… This is my friend’s first documentary, and it’s definitely worth a look.
I’m really not a techie, but my friend, writer Maia Szalavitz, showed me the coolest computer ever yesterday. 
The EEE by Taiwanese company Asus, is a 2 lb laptop–yes two pounds–that basically does everything any traveling businesswoman needs. There’s word processing, internet, email etc. And at only $400, it’s almost a no-brainer purchase–especially for those of us who can write it off as a business expense.
I don’t have a blackberry cause I don’t necessarily want to be connected all the time. However, at the end of the day, when my back is aching from dragging around my heavy laptop, a 2 lb computer seems almost essential.
The AP wrote all about it here.
Happy shopping!
Ok, so this is like, so last year, but I did promise. These were my 40 favorite songs of 2007, soundtracking lots of packing and unpacking, runs through New York, Holland and Berlin, and my every home-cooked meal. No. 1 should come as no surprise.
(image stolen from the almighty popjustice.com) Read more…
Then watch this:
(I seem to be the only Crucial Minutiaeist who can’t figure out how to actually post you tube videos on this site–sorry!)
Please share your stories of good gone bad and bad gone good.
__
Kimmi
Therapy Thursdays
Latest travel piece for the Times, on the San Blas Islands of Panama where the culture remains relatively untouched:
Nearby Haven for Ancient Ways (Sunday Times Travel Section, 1/6/08)
What I didn’t mention in the article is that my family’s trip to San Blas was my First Trip Abroad. It was 1984 and I was three years old. We landed in Costa Rica first, which apparently threw me for quite a loop. My mom said I was all out of sorts until I drew a map. On it, I had put New York City and Costa Rica a few centimeters apart. I put it in my pocket and was fine from there on out.
Kate pointed me to this article about the increase in home offices. The bulk of it is on how people are choosing to organize and design such offices (not that interesting to me, but I’m not one of those people that make the ten bazillion design shows on cable so popular). The statistics, however, floored me:
By 2006, according to data collected by the Dieringer Research Group, a marketing research company in Brookfield, Wis., more than 28 million Americans were working from home at least part time — an increase of 10 percent from just the year before, and 40 percent from 2002.
I work from home (this is my desk and my new kitty on my desk) as so do so many New York “creatives,” but I didn’t realize that this was such a national trend.
