January 2010
29 posts
“The cards are stacked (quite properly, I imagine) against all professional...”
– Franny & Zooey. The fact that I was obsessed with this quote freshman year speaks fucking volumes about the life I used to think I was going to lead.
sleep tight, ya morons →
The first serious crush I developed at Yale was on this exceptionally blue-blooded New York prep school boy whose grandparents had provided him with a case of wine to get him through the first few weeks at school, until he could find a decent source of his own. He was appalled that I’d never read Franny and Zooey and so I picked myself up a copy and read it cover to cover while still in bed...
And by that I mean: if I have been sort of distracted from the internet lately, it is because I am going on this crazy semi-impromptu trip for the next three weeks and I’ve been busy wandering around LA and loving it intensely in that way that is easiest to do when you’re leaving a place. Also buying too many books for the train and thinking about how I need to do laundry and then not...
There are some (mostly from middle school) that I physically can’t bring myself to read. This is why I can’t keep a real diary anymore: in anticipation of the shame my future self will inevitably endure at its rediscovery.
celesterstallone:
there’s a special kind of humiliation reserved for reading old dairies in your childhood bedroom.
“I ordered a mini apple pie, a mini plum pie, two slices of the chocolate mousse...”
– The one and only Max Silvestri, everybody.
(But talk about burying the lede.)
(via alexblagg)
When a friend who was making me a care package asked her if I had any favorite snacks, M provided the following list:
candy corn
cadbury creme eggs
maple sugar candies
Which probably says everything...
“Food has, and always will, attract the obsessives.”
– Jonathan Gold. Saw him at a panel tonight on the history of Gourmet, accompanied by Ruth Reichl and Evan Kleinman. It wasn’t as funny as it might have been but was interesting and often touching. JG was obviously the best— told this story about finding a caterpillar in his salad at what...
This is what living in LA is like, actually: standing in the parking lot of a Korean day spa*, very clean and warm and starving, texting a friend on the westside who won’t come to Hollywood for dinner because of “the rain,” which is the lightest drizzle you could possibly still call by that name.
Ok also: wearing my decade-old Uggs to the Korean day spa because of “the...
once more, with feeling →
I cleaned up that angry thing I wrote about Caitlin Flanagan’s Atlantic piece for the YSFP blog. It is now slightly longer and way more coherent and no longer riddled with typos. (There were kind of a lot.)
Johnny Weir Promises To Destroy His Enemies
This is quickly becoming a catalog of my embarrassing, adolescent passions. But really:
“Weir: For me, it was very low. It’s hard for people to understand who don’t skate, who don’t know the politics behind closed doors. And I thought if they didn’t want to send me, they don’t need me. I was like okay, I’m done. What’s the next step? I’ll go...
The solution lies in an education that will propel... →
This piece is fascinatingly awful, a vitriolic screed founded on seemingly nothing but the author’s self-regard and immense irritation at the (admittedly irritating) granstanding of Alice Waters. It at least takes a sort of novel premise, reversing the usual claim that slow food is primarily interested in making everyone into a white yuppie. Instead, Flanagan insists that we are...
Mr. Good rolled his eyes. “He’s peacocking,” the... →
This is pretty fascinating/appalling, even if you don’t share my general interest in the making of tween pop sensations.
& if you need more proof: “So when an Atlanta-based hip-hop manager named Scooter Braun called nearly two years ago, Ms. Mallette was confused. “I prayed, ‘God, you don’t want this Jewish kid to be Justin’s man, do you?’ ” she recalled.”
She actually...
Tiny Moments of Varying Significance →
The only thing I miss about the 00’s so far is these Awl retrospectives, nearly all of which were great.
Also: Amy started at the YSFP just before I graduated; I was sorry not to get to know her better. In large part because I’m pretty sure that she has one of the most adorable babies in history.
'As it happened I did not grow up to be the kind... →
Yes, I know, “girls who quote Didion:” too easy. But I do like her (well, I love Slouching and am irritated by almost everything else) and I particularly like this essay and this line and it is my birthday and I will do what I want. (Which, soon: early bird special dinner, drinking a lot with friends.)
natashavc:
You do not reblog unless you read it! It is worth it and it is about...
Most of my childhood happened during a serious, prolonged LA drought: we watered our lawns after dark and flushed toilets at the end of the day. I seem to remember (though this of course cannot possibly be the case) that it only ever rained on my birthday; I thought this meant that rain was lucky for me.
On Wednesday it was raining and I was driving on the freeway and my car hydroplaned, spinning...
Culinary sibling rivalry, pre-Top Chef edition →
This is only interesting because of Jonathan Gold’s fairly acrid riposte in the comments. Though that may just be my serious love of the man himself talking.
The condoms that Matt buys in the first season of FNL are a brand called Inconceivable.
