An Exception for Bill Pullman

Despite my personal ban on the serial killer genre for viewing pleasure, I had to relax the rule for Bill Pullman in Jennifer Lynch's "Surveillance." The actor's floppy locks, as either a vaguely rockin' doctor or as the dude who gets buried alive always had a screen presence. It still holds true in this film, only now Pullman sports the bristle-brush G man cut that underscores his age and world-weary, affective poise. Casting agents need to wake the fuck up and book him already.

When "Surveillance" was released it was an occasion to revisit the controversy surrounding daughter Lynch's debut feature "Boxing Helena." I don't remember much of that other than in the general impression concerning Fenn's beauty and Julian Sands' deeply entrenched creep factor. At any rate, since the director was a mere 19 years old at the time, it seems unfair to write her off. Plus I'd wager there's no shortage of guys who do indeed fantasize about hacking up a pretty spouse so she could never leave. Shit, that's why the MRA set belly ache over women initiating over 70% of the divorces or who kill women who try to leave. We be their property as they maintain.

Anyway, "Surveillance" garnered flatline reviews even though it's packed with standout performances, tidy pacing, and a point of view split across multiple characters who lie without compunction. For most of the film, we're asked to consider the toss up between who's worse: the cops or the killers. This pitches just the right cinematic note for a lazy weekend.

Snobs are from Mars

Joe Queenan’s memoir “Closing Time” boasts shapely, finely crafted sentences, funny and biting characterizations of men and probably offers the definitive account of a childhood held ransom by an alcoholic father. Problem is, the author appears to gauge the rest of his life and memory as an act of revenge. While an angry young man may come attached with a lofty romanticism, if this lasts deep into middle age, it solidifies a bitter and joyless persona bent more on spite and cruelty than anything one would care to embrace. By the end of the book, Queenan appears as a repellant figure because he can’t seem to finally reconcile the ghosts from his father’s abuse and addiction, he’s a reactionary snob and women exist as little more than ciphers in his recollection. He tries to paint himself as one of those rebellious baby boomer hippies or counter-culture members, when really, he’s aligned with the conservative moral economy of his father’s so-called “greatest generation” more than his own. Honestly, what liberal man refers to women as “floozies” and other equally dismissively pejorative terms?

I’m not about to charge Queenan with being at fault for never forgiving his father. Fuck that, let him hold the grudge and then some towards the man who beat him with unfettered zeal from the time he was but a small boy and then drank the grocery money away. Yet the end of the memoir is far too close in tone and tenor to the beginning, with anecdotes shared about nice moments with his monster father that make the whole book feel as circuitous as a hamster in the wheel. The author devotes many pages to dissecting every possible motivation and explanation for his father’s behavior in order to decode the formula for his reign of terror. The truth is, there is no explanation for why men demonize their family outside of the recognition of privilege, a whole lot of it, and all the socially acceptable malarkey about a man being the king of his castle and the head of the family, which makes everyone inside his property. There’s no feminist epiphany remotely possible for this guy, his head is so deeply inured and invested in the Mars and Venus mythology. What a pity, because he’s able to isolate so many other bullshit narratives from the 1950s, but he can’t begin to theorize on gender politics when he’s all caught up in essential differences between men and women.

Queenan’s snobbery manifests itself in many forms, including in his eagerness to dismiss the “pedestrian” Philadelphian accent and everything about the city. He’s a Francophile on top of being convinced in Manhattan’s superiority. He’s one of many folks I’ve encountered who lay great claim and disquisition to their working class roots and then proceed to outline in great detail every aspect of how their taste sucks, how misguided and low brow they are. One naturally wonders if the point isn’t more honestly to show how they rose above the hoi polloi and all the adversities that tried and beset their talent and intellect. It’s a snob move, full stop. If the working class cause you so much chagrin, just pretend you were never one of them instead. Women get the worst of it again here in being called slatterns, sluts, floozies, common, coarse, profane and bear the brunt of his derision right behind his old man. I tired of all the pages he devotes to his education and reading lists, a part of the memoir genre that I normally relish, only here, Queenan illuminates less a joy of discovery than in his wish to get even and stand above.

In one of the most galling sections of the book devoted to his search for father figures among his uncles, he describes a challenge to save up money for a bicycle. He’s called home to an unfamiliar scenario of having a pleasant surprise waiting. His uncle bought him a pricey and well-made bicycle. Queenan recalls what a luxury it was for him as a poor child and how much it meant to him to ride it throughout his childhood. He includes the observation from one of his three sisters as they discussed it as adults that it had been especially painful for the girls to act as mere spectators to his good fortune. There’s no effort at empathy or of an extended analysis of how even though he had it tough as a boy, his sisters fared much worse in an impoverished household. He got the bike because he was the boy while they got zilch. In all of Queenan’s list of privations, he demonstrates absolute ignorance of what his sisters experienced. Femininity is both compulsory and expensive, afterall.

The only woman who gets a lengthy description and reflection is a girlfriend in high school who had taught him all about classical music. The “useful” woman gets a nod. The rest of the women from his youth inhabit the margins of his memory and the page.

In a nutshell: Queenan’s a bitter snob and he’s blind to male privilege.

Avoid! Avoid!

The next time I'm casting around for an appropriate example of misogyny among gay men (in order to counter the misconception that they're really just girls with dicks as some of the ladies like to imagine) I'll not hesitate to point to one Sex and the City 2, helmed by Michael Patrick King. This dude is a serious woman hater. How could you come away with anything other than contempt for women, who in this film, are nothing but vapid, shallow, conniving, greedy, needy, whingy, bitches without a soul?

All I'm saying.

I admit to liking the series.

There were even a few scenes in this film that had me chuckle, such as the flashback shots of what they all looked like in the 80s. Or Liza Minnelli doing a gangbusters "Single Ladies" rendition. I even enjoyed the whole "are we enough" discussion between Carrie and Big.

The rest of it was not the fun romp they promised.

Instead it prompted me to feel guilty that I ever cared about any of these characters.

Sex and the City 2 is another version of the patriarchal wink.

It pretends to like women and then it takes a big shit on them.

Boo hiss.

Hollywood Treats a Ph.D. like a Party Favour

Last night Mr. M returned from delivering a presentation at a prestigious university.

He ate the pasta I made and we chatted about his work, the dogs, my movie date today.

Then we watched "How I Met Your Mother" to learn that you can totally get a teaching post from your shady rich buddy and call yourself a professor. As if a lectureship is as easy to get as working at a coffee shop. Hollywood, let me school you: you have to have a Ph.D. to earn the title, and even then, technically, you're an associate or assistant and not a full professor until you earn the position, which only happens after many years of work to establish yourself as a talented scholar in a particular field. While I myself lucked into a teaching gig that plucked me from the streets to stand in front of a classroom when I only had a bachelor's degree right before I entered grad school, I would have never made the ultra-douche move of calling myself a professor. The idea that Ted could waltz into the lecture hall at Columbia when no doubt a candidate pool of several hundred folks with a Ph.D. were clamouring for the position makes no sense. This narrative development trades on one of the oldest formulas in existence for male academics on film: they can totally pick up chicks!

Only scumbags date their students, Ted.

And at most universities nowadays, it'll get your ass shit-canned as well.

They make the suspension of disbelief impossible.

Delights of the Sea from Fishy Fishy

At the Captain's Table restaurant in the Acton Hotel, back in April 1996, I tasted monkfish for the first time. The dinner had been part of Kinsale's wish to brand themselves as a foodie destination. Those dreams have come to fruition with Fishy Fishy, which is just down the road from Acton's yet kilometers ahead in style and service.

Folks refer to monkfish as poor man's lobster, but that's really a misnomer, because there's nothing second rate about the most tender of fish. Hands down, I'd choose a well-prepared monkfish over lobster any day of the week. Lobster too often runs the peril of a chewy finish, as well as the risk that if it's not ultra fresh, shellfish reeks of iodine-like rot taint that old crustaceans develop. The result in that case reminds you of a death imprint on the delicate flesh. And who wants to pay 40 euro for a case of sad decay tossed in olive oil?

Fishy Fishy was packed with a long waiting list when we arrived. In less than ten minutes we somehow had a table. The problem was that it was full-on in the sun, and I wilt quicker than Eric's mentor Godric under the flame from the sky. Mercifully, a dapper gent (the owner?) led us inside away from the heliotropic pall just as our food arrived. I had ordered a cup of chowder and the monkfish with noodles in a soy and honey glaze and spring onion tempura. The food was so perfect that I was in part pained by my inability to eat it fast enough or savour it long enough. That monkfish was beyond comparison to any other I've had with snow white flesh that was sweet, delicate, firm. The chowder had bursts of coriander and thyme and a grilled aftertaste which reveals so many other versions as crude and fraudulent. Mr. M had the seafood salad with a mixed variety of creatures and charming golden parsnip chips. The guest had yellowfin tuna, something that I would never order. Still, everything on the table was an exercise in excellence.

Fishy Fishy is one of those places for the books, a meal that you will brag about over sighs until you annoy everyone around you.
This joint is a pescatarian's fantasy come true.

It's Like 1950 in My Vagina

We took the house guest to Kinsale for an overnight stay in order to try out Fishy Fishy.

What I could not have anticipated was that the town would be Tampax-free.
So I was forced to buy Lillets, those impossible bullet-shaped wads of cotton that unravel and mutate in your vagina.
And they don't have an applicator.
Most horrible.
Lillets are only a step removed from the menstrual belts and the shame laden on menses.
Not cool.

Captain Fucking Magic

There are few rituals sweeter than my post dinner party movie whilst curled up on the couch with leftovers and a cup of tea, and today's film was just perfect. I knew from the opening credits to "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" that I was to drool over every second of this neo noir.
My crush on Robert Downey has just exploded. Seriously, is there a cooler motherfucker on celluloid?
He's so slick and suave he's like the straight Cary Grant.

"This ain't good cop, bad cop. This is fag and New Yorker."
Loved every minute.

Women are Always the Punch Line

Men will swap sweat, clothes, food, fake hair, their pets, anything, but damn it, those silly bitches take it one too far with such femmed-out cocktails.
Why, a fella would be de-sacked if he even raised the glass to his lips.

Notice how over the top the drink is made, so that it fails to resemble anything on an actual drinks menu?
It looks like glittered sludge decorated with hunks of kiwi, just in case we missed the bit about how eye-rollingly ridiculous women are for the poor put upon man.

He Blinded Me with Science

"Whatever you serve on Friday could never top this" thus sayeth the husband.

Heston Blumenthal seems more like an alchemist than a simple chef, especially in creations such as the Cockentrice, a mythical beast composed of pig, lamb, chicken and goose for his Tudor themed menu.
Oh, and then he set it all on fire.
Brilliant.

Plenty of Dim Bulbs in Grad School

If not for the obvious near-decade difference in graduation dates, I would swear that the individual who sent this card to Post Secret had been in the same programme I was unfortunate enough to matriculate.

I bet she cried every week in the office as well.

Dope.

London Pics

Liz Lemon (Tina Fey) argued in a recent episode of 30 Rock that humanity shared the common dream to eat a good sandwich in peace. Instead of the carp po boy with extra chuckle she ordered in the bowels of Georgia, she should have availed herself of the multiple Pret A Manger sandwich shops in London. Sweet baby jeebus, what a boon this chain is for the weary traveller. Food is such a big issue for me on the road. You never know what you'll find or can stomach, and when you're walking all day, you can't skip a meal, at least not if you want to refrain from becoming a gorgon and terrorizing the husband. Pret A Manger has at least half a dozen vegetarian varieties, including a tasty falafel and hummus which brought a wee tear to my eye for its moist texture and zippy flavour. Then there was dinner at Le Caprice. As a devotee of A.A. Gill, I naturally jumped at the chance to book a table there. Everyone on staff was warm and gracious beyond measure--except for our waiter. It wasn't even that he was rude, more like we didn't exist. If we had been the only Americans or obvious tourists in the place (but we were well dressed. I wore my yellow Nanette Lepore dress from the Irish Blog Awards again) then perhaps I wouldn't have been so disappointed. The food was however pristine and immaculate. I'm going to rip off the recipe for their shrimp-fennel-avocado salad this week for my dinner party. My monkfish main was a gossamer slice of the sea while Mr. M's fish cake on a bed of wilted spinach was also flawless. The ambiance in Le Caprice seems timeless. I especially enjoyed the five framed sketches of James Joyce down the stairs to the ladies room.

On the sunny day after leaving the National Gallery we munched Pret A Manger in Trafalgar Square.

Funny how men like their pictures taken in front of this.

My hair's now brown for reals and I HATE it. Looks like I rolled in a mud puddle. Light brown my ass.

Beach Blanket Pooches

Keep in mind that this clip captures a sliver of their second beach trip of the day.

Lap Cats and Mutes at Speaker's Corner

At first I felt a rush of excitement when we turned round Speaker's Corner in Hyde Park and noticed two women holding separate audiences among half a dozen shouty guys. I could hear the men warbling about sin and salvation as I passed in order to hear the women on the right.

Only my hopes were soon dashed.

In the space reserved for lively debate and free exchange of ideas, the two women holding court held no challenge to the status quo in public discourse.

Even worse, one was a facilitating mute and the other a crazy old bitch.

The young woman in a short skirt wore a shirt inviting you to tell her how to improve civic life in London. She stood on the portable staircase without ever uttering a word that I could catch. Instead, she just wrote down what all the men around her said. Naturally everyone was at ease with the feminine non-threatening assumption of a teeny slice of public space, certainly when she makes it all about the men. She could have held a set of pom poms just as easy as a clipboard to suck up to the crowd.

Bitch, I wanted to say, this is Hyde Park. Open your mouth and make a declarative statement.

"Tell me what to do" doesn't cut it.

The woman in the top shot appears to be a regular speaker.

She's no threat to anyone because she's part of the gender police as a lap cat of patriarchy.

Any woman who spouts that god and gender norms crap at other women should be publicly shamed.

When old blue eyes said that women in trousers were an abomination, a pair of twenty-something women took offence and contradicted the older woman's right to demean and un-sex them.

The speaker replied that they were filth, that the women were trapped inside the evil mindset of 20th century feminism.

To which a man on the side quickly retorted that instead, she herself was trapped in the 5th century.

The crowd exploded in laughter.

Part of me sickened at seeing an old woman subject to the collective derision.

But there's no other rational response to this kind of poisonous lap cat rhetoric.

It's not like I was expecting to hear a feminist manifesto recited, but holy shit, not one sensible statement from a woman on offer?

Beyonce Needs Feminism 101

See, Beyonce, it's like this: He Doesn't Love You Because You're Living Like a Doormat.

I can see that you're confused.
You've done all the things you're supposed to do as a woman.
You will spend hours in tedious occupations such as doing laundry by hand and making cookies from scratch, cleaning house and fixing the car.
Still all while remaining eminently pretty and textbook "fuckable."
Problem is that doing all these tasks renders you little more than a servant in the grand scheme of things. It sure as hell doesn't guarantee that some guy will love you.
You can paint some lipstick on submission and call it a pin-up fetish, except the dynamics of B.B. Homemaker's life come closer to resembling your real-life husband's observation that he may have 99 problems, but a bitch ain't one.
All the tears, smokes and martinis in the world won't change the retrograde status for women on parade in your video.

Chris Ofili at the Tate Britain

When folks talk about the Young British Artists who came of age in the 1990s, most reserve their praise and cash money for Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin, two vastly over rated artists. Hirst rates as a direct descendant of Andy Warhol, as another manufacturer of pop cultural gimmicks. There’s no sense of his mastery of form, technique, or vision beyond the moment. I find it hard to believe that he’ll be more than a footnote in art history 100 years from now. Tracey Emin’s work has a reputation for edginess that seems without merit. There may be a rumble of words on some canvas yet there’s no sense of articulate anger or purpose. She musters the safe sentiments of pseudo rebellion that won’t trouble none too much the wealthy folks who want one of her paintings over a sofa. Emin’s work fails to convey the sense that she has any real fire in the belly.

Chris Ofili’s work stands apart. He’s the artist from Manchester who managed to get Rudy Giuliani’s tightie whities in a bunch back in 1999 with the exhibition of his Madonna with the elephant dung at the Brooklyn Museum. Any artist who has a so-called hard cunt reaching for the smelling salts and fainting couch deserves attention. In the current retrospective of Ofili’s work at the Tate Britain, explanatory notes recognize the artist’s desire to ground his paintings with the dung appliqués. Ofili wanted the canvas to exist in an earthly dimension rather than be some sterile exercise on a gallery wall. The dung tempers his subjects with the messy business of the everyday and also lends a trickster element that Bakhtin would admire as a bid for the Rabelaisian carnivalesque. In other words, you can bring the high down low with a little poo.

Ofili’s vision of Mary fuses the omnipresence of the hoary Madonna/ Magdalene dichotomy for women. Surrounding the virgin figure are porn snaps of labia open for invitation. In patriarchy, the virgin and whore are interdependent; you can’t have one in place without the other, and Ofili’s canvas reminds us how closely intertwined women are in their perceived sexual availability. The placement of elephant dung on one breast emphasizes the Madonna’s connection to the natural world above the fairy talk about heaven. She was a mother like any other who had to deal with all the shit life has to offer when you raise a child. Only the most circumscribed imagination could take offence with this painting. Ofili denigrates culture and tradition in his work, not women.

Another painting “Pimpin’ Ain’t Easy” offers a similar protest at the social order. The best part is that in his collection of photographs of men assembled, Ofili includes Tiger Woods, whose squeaky clean image back in the 90s belied his inclusion on the canvas. Ofili either got lucky or he anticipated the revelations to come from another man with too much privilege and an unchecked sense of entitlement. I also enjoyed “Shit head,” a sculpture of poo, dreds and baby teeth. His early work bears such an emotive infusion of humour, anger and energy. The work on show graduates to a more controlled exploration of technique in his blue period series and synthesis of tribal aesthetic forms.

Ofili will no doubt remain a powerful force in art history.

Museums A Go-Go

The Tate Modern.

The Tate Britain.

The National Gallery.

The National Portrait Gallery.

When the end of days arrive, I'd like to hole up in the Tate Modern, just like Theo's brother Nigel (played by Clive Owen and Danny Huston, natch) in "Children of Men."

Hell yes.

Walking through these spaces was like touring the cover art for every one of the Great Books.

"Oh, look" I'd said, "there's the cover for Edith Wharton's "House of Mirth" and on it went.

In Chapter 7 of my novel, I had made reference to Caravaggio's "Salome with the head of St. John the Baptist" and then there it was in the National Gallery.

I had to wait a full half an hour in order to get to view Hogarth's "Marriage a la Mode" series, which I had shown to students when we read Dryden's play of the same name last year.

Fantastic work.

Moving through the best that humankind could muster (overlooking the rapey-rape stuff, the scenes of torture and subjection) you cannot help but feel enriched and charged with the elemental force of creation.

Makes you a better person, I am convinced.

Austen's 'Hood

Bath's a pretty little city, if a tad too expensive.

When the main course costs over 20 pounds you expect more than frozen fish and veggies.

Onefishtwofish had those crinkle cut carrots with wedges of cauliflower and other assorted grim looking vegetables from the icy gulag strain you find in plastic bags at discount markets.

Service there and at Clarke's was beyond slow and nowhere near friendly.

Skip the Jane Austen centre since there's not much there other than a few period style knock-offs on dummies in the basement.

The highlight of Bath was when Mr. M scored us tickets to a private wine reception at the Roman Baths.

As we sipped, he said that shrub never understood how to be a conqueror and leave a real legacy, such as the limpid green waters we stood around. No, I added, all he planned to leave were some fast food joints and busted oil riggs.

Misogyny--Not Just for Women

Out walking the dogs, a woman addressed Mr. M thusly:

"Is that a bitch or a dog?"

I watched the husband while he hesitated a full minute.

He had Kima on the lead.

Apparently, the female of the species cannot be a person or even a dog.

We're the other, the less than and male is the subject position.

At least he knew why I was fuming.

We are off to London today for a spell.

At this point we may be taking the ferry due to the Death Cloud of Ash.

Back next week.

Blast from the Past!

Yesterday was a strange day.

Strange in a good way.

It was filled with chatting online and then the phone with people from my past.

Way back.

Folks who knew me when I was 15-18 as I am pictured here with my boyfriend Vince and first roomie. And then I spoke with a friend from the awful Master's programme.

Todd, thanks for giving Lora my contacts.

You're a good man.

Lora, I have dreamt about you over the years, my sister. Thanks for the pics.

Robyn, thanks for helping me flesh out my novel with stories about crazy girl.

Yes, I was really this young once.

My moments. Her moments. The dog's moments.

Upon initial consideration, Michael Gambon seems too lumpen and fleshy to play Beckett’s titular figure in “Krapp’s Last Tape.” John Hurt in Atom Egoyan’s adaptation from 2000 was the perfect spare embodiment of the protagonist caught in a reel of his own regret. Hurt’s own physique echoes the bony cragginess of Beckett’s own deeply lived form.

Yet Gambon proves adept at the physical comedy in the play running at The Gate theatre. Beckett knew that even in decrepitude and despair, there’s a joke there somewhere. At the close of the production, the frozen look of abject loss that Gambon transmits as he listens to Krapp’s younger self speak about how he doesn’t mind losing the love of his life with the fire that he has inside him, well, it just made my stomach flip. You saw him look into the maw of death and nothingness. My shoulders are pulled up to my ears in the very recollection. He let the “girl in the shabby green coat” get away because in his youthful arrogance, he thought her love a trifle. During his last tape, Krapp finally realizes that she was his only hope for staving off the bleak void. Beckett reminds us that a man in love with the sound of his own voice has a lonely end in store.

How Do You Make a Comeback? Shit on Women. Duh.

Remember the scene in the Sopranos where the old guy Hesch talks about his uncanny ability to spot a chart topping song? He said he knew a hit when he heard one.
I’m going to forecast hit status for Hole’s new single despite the fact that it’s a horrible tune. “Skinny Little Bitch” will no doubt become a huge seller with constant play and show up as ring tones and what not for the mere fact that it allows folks to scream “Skinny Little Bitch,” and my oh my, who doesn’t want to jump at the chance to hate on some skinny bitches. The crowds will chant: “A woman’s saying it, so of course it’s okay for me to join in the misogyny!”
On behalf of skinny bitches everywhere, Ms. Love, we say shut your fucking hole.
Check out the lyrics:

Skinny Little Bitch Starin' at the mirror
In your desperation to disappear
And you would be oh so dumb to fuck with me
Cause baby you're much too young to end up with me
Your bedroom walls fallin' down
Everyone can see you now
Your bedroom walls suffer truth
Now you lie, you lie, you lie alone
You lie alone, you never sleep
How you never sleep
Ow!
Skinny Little Bitch praying to the lord
Praying for some salvation
Cause she's oh so bored
In my vile sex horror and cheap drugs hell
And all the things you'll never live to tell
And you will never see the light
You’re just obscure and out of spite
You're just a nasty piece of work
Come on, Come on, Come on baby
Come on baby let it burn
Oh baby does it hurt
Born, of foul creation
Born, of sour milk
Cocaine filth
You stepped your heels in broken glass
So I could kick your scrawny ass
And all the drugs and all the burns
What a nasty
What a nasty, nasty piece of work
Oh baby does it hurt
Oh baby just go slower
Oh baby just go lower”

Talk about a nasty piece of work.
Courtney Love’s brand of feminism is the same as Madonna’s and Lady Gaga’s. They holla for the almighty dollar and care fuck all about other women. Feminism doesn’t extend any further than their bank account and right to shit on women for money.
What a bore.

We are the goon squad and we're comin' to town

This ugly little romper dress is one of twenty featured at Cosmo coupled with approving quotes from guys. For this one, some 19 year old douche opines "The design will make her boobs look bigger."

I shit you not.

Wisdom for the ages, dear reader.

Yack-Inducing Food Trends

Some dishes should remain inviolate.
Salsa and guacamole with chips needs no improvement, thanks very much.
Looking around for recipes for this dinner I'm throwing later in the month, I found this recipe for tomato sorbet, in some bid for an update of chips and salsa.
Forty shades of wrong, folks.
No, I don't want to eat a tomato slushy.