The Rage Diaries

9021-oh joy!

Believe it or not, when I began college, I proudly decorated my dorm room door with a "KILL YOUR TELEVISION" bumper sticker. I was one of Them, the non-television-watchers, the people who liked to wonder aloud what other, more productive things you could be doing with the time you spent watching TV. And I remained one of Them, more or less, until my senior year of college.

Two things happened that year: I had to attend my school paper's regular editorial board meetings, and my friend Elliott -- whose will is as persistent and inexorable as the tides -- made all of us self-serious aspiring journos halt the meetings at eight p.m. on the dot so we could watch Beverly Hills 90210.

Within weeks, we were all addicted. The next year, when I was in graduate school, it became evident that the idiot box had claimed me as one of its own. Immediately after a rigorous mid-term examination on the comparative differences between post-structuralist and post-modern communication theories, I interrupted my brainiac classmates' postmortem of the exam with, "Whatever! 90210 is on."

That show and I corrupted the department: by the end of the year, we had a regular viewing posse. And within three more years, I was writing about television. Aaron Spelling, you wily peddler of cultural smack! I don't know whether to curse or bless you.

Anyhoodle, 90210 is one of the main reasons I am so passionate about media in general. And I am not ashamed to tell you that when I saw today's "When Teenage Angst Had Its Own ZIP Code," the NYT's oral history of 90210, I squealed in glee for about two minutes straight. Go read it and reminisce fondly about the days when sideburns and red lipstick ruled the airwaves.

My heart can't take much more of this drama

Seriously. This election season is tough on me.

So McCain picks Alaska governor Sarah Palin as his VP candidate. She may be the one to deliver that speech on gender that we haven't heard yet (and, as it turns out, could have been delivered were it not for the concerns of Clinton's senior feminist adviser). Palin's certainly the one to galvanize the anti-choice ranks.

With the reactions all over the place, the one that sticks with me thus far is the one from Slate, where Melinda Henneberger writes: "A naked grab for the Hillary vote? Yeah, and so what? Does progress ever happen for other-than-pragmatic reasons?"

I am not sure having someone in the office John Nance Garner once described as "not worth a bucket of warm piss" is necessarily progress if that someone backs an antichoice agenda and sells a presidency that's helmed by Mr. "Why Shouldn't Women Get Paid Less?" (Cheney's vice-presidency aside, the office isn't exactly known for being a change agent.) Perhaps the progress will come when someone figures out how to say that there is a difference between electing a woman and embracing women's issues. Perhaps the progress will come with people decide they're more than their gender, and vote according to their hearts and minds.

And now it's even funnier because it's true

This Mitchell & Webb sketch about two people writing a movie about something they know nothing about but "some people know quite a lot about" is quite funny.

And now, thanks to the news that someone is paying Aaron Sorkin to write a movie about the story of Facebook -- despite Sorkin never having actually been on Facebook -- well, it looks like Mitchell & Webb were soothsayers.

I think I shall turn to British comics for all my oracular needs. Perhaps there will be a massive yacht coming my way.

What do you think is awesome?

Let's face it: this is the last week of August, half of us are scheming to see whether we can waltz out of the office early on Friday "to get a jump on the Labor Day traffic" and we're so over the PUMAs after last night's most excellent HRC speech.

So let us direct our attention to pleasant diversions, in sort of a last-gasp-of-summer way. Sure, the Hold Steady's "Constructive Summer" was my personal road trip anthem this month, but I'm thinking we can wax lyrical about stuff that entertains us. I'll go first.

I will admit I was totally relieved to read "Preacher Series 'Dead at HBO.' " In my personal ranking of "Comics Series That Rule (Absolutely Over And Done Division)," Preacher is first, and I am convinced that any on-screen adaptation would not do Preacher justice.

If you haven't read Preacher, go out and do so. The Steve Dillon art is perhaps not, how you say, great, but it gets the job done and his overall consistency really helps you slide into the narrative because every issue (or TPB) always looks like a Preacher story should. Also, Garth Ennis's writing is some of the funniest, smartest, most soulful and sickest I have ever run across. Sure, the series may be about divine possession, but it's really a love letter to the American dream, and it kills me that it took an Irish guy to write it.

Anyway. Go read the series this weekend -- you'll find the trades at any self-respecting comics store or big chain bookstore. Or re-read it. Just don't lend it to your brother who lives 3000 miles away because you will never, ever see it again. Not that I'm sharing this advice with you thanks to bitter personal experience or anything ...

Also, while I'm raving ... if you're in the mood to blow money this weekend, you could do worse than to pick up Spaced. The good news: it's a British sitcom, so it's funny. The bad news: it's a British sitcom, so there's a whopping 14 episodes total. However, don't let that deter you -- it's Simon Pegg doing the 0.9b version of the guy he played in Shawn of the Dead, and Jessica Hynes as his roommate. And they have assorted adventures. And it's just so good that Phil and I  -- who are not big DVD watchers -- are embroiled in a heated, sustained debate over which one of us will give the complete series DVD to the other for Christmas.

I mean, fine, he leaves me on my own to The Cho Show and Primeval, but Spaced brings us together. When we're not squabbling over who will buy it for whom.

So what's entertaining you?

The thing that set me off today, part the second

My mistake was reading this on my morning communte:

Seneca Klassen, co-founder of Bittersweet Cafe in Oakland, and now in San Francisco and Danville, was given the touchy job of choosing the chocolate-makers who will be featured at the Taste Pavilions, a 50,000-square-foot food exhibition at Fort Mason. Only five made the cut - all from outside California.

Klassen said their products best met the Slow Food criteria of "good, clean and fair," meaning that the chocolate is not only delicious but is sustainably produced by workers who are fairly paid.

The chocolate also is expensive, about $50 to $60 a pound, Klassen said. But Shawn Askinosie, whose Askinosie Chocolate of Springfield, Mo., will be showcased at the pavilion, said he has no trouble selling his bars in the Bay Area. In fact, this is his best market.

-- "Slow Food Nation Opens Friday in SF," SFChron, Aug 26, 08

And -- shocker -- I am not at all exercised about the pricey chocolate.

The excerpt above is just a taste of the whole article, in which people who make a lot of money peddling slow-food products to people with a lot of money all express confusion at the idea that some folks might find the whole slow-food movement to be, oh, I don't know, a tad precious and pricey for the rest of us peasants.

Y'all know I am a big fan of eating local and farmer's markets. And last night, for dinner, we had a thyme-roasted chicken (I grew the thyme) and heirloom tomato salad (I grew that too). So, in theory, we're right in the demographic sweet spot for this festival.

Except I find this kind of pedigreed eating to be completely offputting and staggeringly ineffective from a strategic perspective. It is super-easy to be all "Rah rah local food!" when you live here in the Bubble, because we live someplace with A) great, year-round growing weather, B) a wide variety of arable landscapes, and C) decent animal protein sources nearby. But these people nattering on about the honest purity of chocolate zucchini bread in which you've grown the courgettes and milled the whole-grain flour yourself are completely missing the bigger issues. Namely, that America's a big freakin' nation and some of it has nasty weather or inhospitable soil.

Oh, I long for the day that slow food types stop thrilling to the idea that eating local makes you a more thoughtful person and start thrilling to the idea that maybe, it should include boring practical things. Things like figuring out how to build local demand and support for greenhouses in chilly climates, and how to build those structures so they work reliably and provide fresh produce in January at competitive prices. Or things like persuading people that canning and freezing are ubiquitous seasonal activities, on par with fireworks on July 4th or fantasy football drafts in August. Or things like figuring out how people will eat locally after their crops have been devastated by a hurricane or early frost.

When the slow-food types stop saying things like "We need to go to the red states to people who celebrate traditional values." (Actual quote from the article! I KNOW!) and start working to address the practical realities of how we eat across the country, maybe I'll stop foaming at the mouth whenever I read articles like the one above.

The thing that set me off today, part the first

Would you like to know why I'm cranky today? I listened to "Will Clinton Delegates Snub Obama For McCain?" on NPR.

I am not sure which irritates me more: the Hillary partisans who just cannot let it go, or the resurgence of the "Hillary Harridans" in the media. You just know that if McCain pulls it off in November, feminists are going to be blamed. I can already imagine the clucking op-eds about how mother-daughter conflicts in feminism ultimately tore the Dems apart.

There's not even a refuge on the comics page.

ETA: GAAAH! It was a total mistake to listen to "Clinton Delegates Wrestle with Moving On."

The air diet

Consider this a public service announcement made well in advance of the holiday season: if you're flying, prepare to pack a lunch.

Obviously, this will be an issue if you're on an all-liquid diet -- unless you're careful to pack your meal in several tiny 1-oz. bottles -- but for the rest of us, it makes financial sense. We all know that airport concessions are pricey. And most airlines are charging for food. Read "Hungry at 3000 Feet? Pay Up" (NYT, Aug 17, 08) and weep at the prospect of paying $10 for a sandwich and chips the next time you fly American to Hawai'i.

I am a little surprised that many personal finance blogs have not tackled the issue of eating well and cheaply while flying. In searching for airplane food alternatives, I found an article from Salon that seems positively quaint with its pre-9/11 assumptions ("Mile-High Meal," Sep 2, 97) and not at all budget-conscious. My own personal recommendations for eating whilst in the air are after the jump.

It's like "Sorority Boys" Meets "Stick It"

As someone with very little grasp on exactly how my body moves through space and time, I have nothing but respect for the kinesthetically talented, spatially gifted gymnast types among us. I think competitive gymnastics is sort of a bullshit racket with the subjective scoring, but I have mad respect for the crazy bendy gravity-defying stuff gymnasts themselves do.

That said, oh my God, how awesome would London 2012 be if we could only have something like this happen? Or this? I dare any nation to try it.

Good news, peasants -- you can now get chicer rags at the usual prices

Fortune's got a light little piece on J. Crew and CEO Mickey Drexler; I thought this was worth chewing over:

"Designer goods have become much too available, either through their own distribution or through logo counterfeiting. I see the world moving away from carrying a bag around with the designer's initials or designer's logo," says Drexler. "The more you see of anything, the less special it becomes. It's kind of like the first slice of pizza vs. the sixth. The first you're like, 'God, this is amazing!' The sixth you're like, 'Enough already.' So I think there's an opportunity for us to deliver stylish, quality goods like a woman's blazer for $350, compared with a designer one for $2,500."

-- "Retailing Icon Mickey Drexler Doubles Down," Aug 20, 08

The thing that amuses me about the above quote is how it contradicts erstwhile Critical Shopper Alex Kuczynski's contention of J. Crew's clothing that some pieces are simply unwearable because they mark you as aspirational:

The larger problem with such a distinctively patterned item is that everyone will know that you bought it at J. Crew, and this is where J. Crew occasionally runs afoul of itself: there's a big difference in having everyone know your jacket is from Prada and having everyone know it's from J. Crew.

For those of us who aren't terribly exercised when people correctly ID our LBD as the J. Crew Sophia model, Drexler's statement shows a refreshing grasp of reality. This is part of J. Crew positioning itself as an affordable luxury in these dire economic times. As Drexler commented in the NYT five months ago, "Price does not denote style." ("A CEO Sells the Store," Mar 1, 08)

However, the Fortune story correctly points out that it doesn't matter how ecstatic we humble off-the-rack shoppers are, because if the shareholders aren't happy, ain't nobody happy. J. Crew is currently facing pressure from Wall Street to expand more aggressively, and Drexler's pushing back. This is notable in that Drexler helmed Gap through a huge expansion period -- and was ousted after the chains got too big and their retail focus got too diluted.

This "J. Crew is the new afforable luxury!" tack is also situationally amusing with Banana Republic's recent launch of its Banana Republic Monogram line. The higher-end collection launched in March, and at the time, was perceived as the "less costly" version of J. Crew's so-called higher-end J. Crew Collection. Now, BRM might be perceived as a direct challenge to the J. Crew flagship's new positioning.

Gap is still struggling ("Will Limited Fall into the Next Gap?" WSJ, Aug 20, 08), as its same-store sales have been declining for ages. It'll be interesting to see how this fall's line will be received by shoppers. I think it's cute (I bought this coat), but if it's getting press like "The Second Coming of Khaki" (NYT, Aug 21, 08), will that really inspire cost-conscious shoppers to roll back into the stores?

Reading my neighbor to the north

Boring suburban thirtysomethings we may be, but every once in a while, Phil and I throw convention to the winds and say things like, "We're not celebrating our eighth wedding anniversary with bronze or pottery! Fie on ye, traditionalists! We're going to Vancouver instead."

And that's where I've been for the last four days. As someone coming from parched and flammable California, the green land and gentle rain felt downright exotic. And although we tried hard not to be Ugly 'Murricans -- making sure we had sufficient loonies and toonies, not openly gaping when encountering service workers who did not treat us with bored contempt -- it hit me as we were walking down Robson one night: my conception of Canadian history begins and ends with "Britain was a little tired after the unpleasantness of the late 1700s, France was over the whole empire-building phase, and, uh ... look, can I get points for being able to recite all ten provinces and three territories? How about being able to recite the 'Girl Drink Drunk' sketch from Kids in the Hall?"

It struck me that I knew more about British history during the Tudor period -- which, let us be frank, is no mental stretch if you've ever kept track of the plots on Melrose Place -- than I did about Canadian history. And that is an embarrassment I am determined to rectify.

So off I went to Chapters and I picked up a copy of Roy MacGregor's Canadians: A Portrait of a Country and Its People. My reasoning: a general journalistic survey of contemporary Canada might provide me with a general overview I could then use to narrow down subsequent reading selections.

I began reading Canadians immediately upon finishing Dick Meyer's Why We Hate Us, a polemic diagnosing America with a profound case of self-centered emptiness. Meyer's book is a good read -- I especially recommend it because the chapters talking about Americans' crying need to recognize the merits of "value pluralism" seem pertinent in this election year -- but it is especially poignant when contrasted against the ending of one of Canadians' chapters, which concludes that the history of the American west is one of co-opting, while that of the Canadian prairie is cooperation.

Am I any closer to being able to rattle off Canadian historical milestones yet? Not quite. But I do recommend the experience of reading about your own country and then seeing another country through a native's authorial eye. And if any of you can recommend books on Canada and Canadian history to me, I'd be much obliged.