Posted in:
May 9, 2008 6:23 AM by Unknown | COMMENTS
THE PLOT: Pulitzer Prize–winning author Annie Dillard spins a
poetic love story about the seemingly perfect marriage of artsy
intellectuals Lou and Toby Maytree. Perfect, that is, until Toby takes
up with a woman named Deary and skips out on his wife and young son,
leaving the reader to ponder whether it’s really possible to love just
one person for life.
LAUREN (ARTICLES EDITOR): I had mixed feelings about this book. I liked the story but the
language was so off-putting. She writes these dense sentences like
“Deary threw their kicking pieces in a basin, drew out another crab by
its telson (Nausets used these for awls)….” And it’s like, Are you
trying to make me feel stupid?
YAEL (ASSOCIATE EDITOR) : And the vocabulary! She used words that I had never head of and which I
didn’t even feel dumb for never having heard them. Like thigmatropic or
epistomeliac.
LAUREN: Yeah, I don’t want to get a dictionary every other page. It takes the pleasure out of reading.
MARTY (DEPUTY EDITOR): I'm sort of two minds about the language. On one hand, I'm really glad
this book is in the world. But on the other, I wondered if it is just
out of date? Is it hard to access because you have to be older in order
to be quiet enough to want to accept the challenge of the book? Am I
just not trying hard enough? The language is so spare — so am I not
Puritan enough?
JIHAN (EDITORIAL ASSISTANT:) But you can still get the overall sense of the story without having to look up every word.
LAUREN: Well. Oftentimes, thank god, she used simple language during the important plot points.
READ MORE 
Posted in:
May 9, 2008 12:00 AM by Dorothy Allred Solomon | COMMENTS
What
a night! Standing room only at the grand ballroom of the Dixie
Convention Center in St. George, Utah. Big hitters—Attorneys General
Terry Goddard from Arizona and Mark Shurtleff from Utah along with
Arizona state representative David Lujan, Mojave Community College
president Don Timpson, and Safety Net founder Paul Murphy occupied the
dais. The people of southern Utah and northern Arizona mingled with
polygamists from every fundamentalist group as the media watched over
and recorded footage of everything. Palpable tension, even fear,
pervaded the room and I wondered if reassurances would be given, or if
all the good work done through the Safety Net Committee to build
bridges of understanding would be lost.
The most important thing I heard was from Mark Shurtleff who said, “We
[himself and Terry Goddard] do not plan a raid to end polygamy.” A
collective sigh of relief and thunderous applause followed this
statement. Shurtleff added that Utah does not have the resources to
break up thousands of plural families, requiring placement and
maintenance for tens of thousands of children in foster care, plus
prosecution and imprisonment of all those consenting adults. He and
his law enforcement team have chosen to prosecute specific crimes such
as child abuse, incest, and forced underage marriages. Asked if he
would succumb to pressure from media to prosecute polygamy, he said, “I
don’t care how many talking heads tell us to cowboy up, be like Texas,
and end polygamy. We aren’t going to do that.”
READ MORE
Posted in:
May 8, 2008 12:00 AM by Dorothy Allred Solomon | COMMENTS
I paid a visit to Colorado City today. I’ve been here a few times before, visiting the grave of my mother’s father in the Short Creek cemetery, or hoping to see one or two of my siblings who disappeared when their mother left our father and joined the FLDS. Things in Colorado City have changed. The vitiated air of oppression has lifted some, but fear spawned by the Texas raids makes people edgy.
A decades-old community split has created sectors in this dusty town beneath the magnificent Vermillion Cliffs: The old FLDS die-hards loyal to Rulon Jeffs—he turned his leadership over to the notorious Warren—have thinned out. Many moved to other FLDS settlements, particularly Texas. But in the General Store you’ll find the FLDS women still taking care of business in their long pastel dresses and braided hair, piety wafting from their pores. There’s another faction, of Centennial Park residents. This progressive group broke away from Jeffs in favor of a more democratic theocracy. (An oxymoron, I know.) A committee of men represent the community and make decisions together. Women in this group hold positions of power in education, business, and health care.
READ MORE
Posted in:
May 7, 2008 12:00 AM by Dorothy Allred Solomon | COMMENTS
Tonight I’m watching Nancy Grace, absorbing the latest development in the FLDS Eldorado, Texas raid: a newborn baby has been taken from its teen mother and placed in the custody of the state. Everyone on the show justifies this action; after all, the baby may grow to be an adolescent, sexually assaulted by a dirty old man who will also provide food, clothing, shelter and some measure of affection. Meanwhile, another announcement rolls across the screen: it seems that many of the Texas homes where FLDS children have been placed violate the foster care codes. My head aches a little as I attempt to reconcile this cognitive dissonance. It’s ok to take a baby from its mother because it might someday be abused, and it’s also ok to put children in the homes of strangers who don’t keep the state’s basic codes.
Now Nancy Grace is calling for other states to follow Texas’s suit—round up those plygie kids, take them away from their brainwashing mothers and their perverted fathers and allow the state to cradle them in its safe and maternal bosom. “Where will the next polygamous raid be?” the footer asks. Shades of my childhood in polygamy. The witch-hunt mentality of the McCarthy era returns.
READ MORE
Posted in:
May 7, 2008 12:00 AM by Sarah Z. Wexler | COMMENTS
Romany Malco, with the tough-guy cut arms and the shiny, meticulously maintained head (he shaves it daily), plays a drug dealer on Weeds and a cheatin’ babehound in The 40-Year-Old Virgin. He must be a badass in real life, right?
Try lovesick. Affianced. Totally ga-ga. “Having a significant other and potentially having your own family is much more exciting than 'What’s the next movie I’m gonna do?’” Malco says of his recent engagement. He proposed to his girlfriend, Taryn Dakha, last New Year’s so he could “start every year off celebrating something that matters to my soul.” Awww.
The couple met on the set of this month’s Mike Myers-with-a-mustache flick, The Love Guru, where Malco plays a hockey star who’s forced to see Myers’s wacky love doctor when his relationship troubles affect his game; Dakha, a pro skater, was costar Jessica Alba’s stunt double (yes, her body is . . . Alba-ish). Malco, who’d never laced up skates before the film’s daily 12-hour practices, now hits the ice twice a week.
Other than a love of hockey, what else developed? “A small crush on Justin Timberlake,” Malco confesses. (Timberlake plays a rival goalie.) Then there was Dakha. The couple’s first date was at the rink, “just like in The Cutting Edge,” he says. Um, the guy who made the Virgin line “You’re puttin’ the pussy on a pedestal” a catchphrase has seen The Cutting Edge? “I love that movie,” Malco says, going on to explain how he took things slow with Dakha. “She probably thought I was gay.” But no. In fact, Malco’s in so deep, he tells us, that he may even let her shave his head.
Posted in:
May 7, 2008 12:00 AM by Dorothy Allred Solomon | COMMENTS
The authorities who rounded up the Fundamentalist Latter-day Saint women and children and carted them away from the Yearning for Zion Ranch in vans probably fit the profile of do-gooders everywhere: at once sanctified and sanctimonious as they commandeer others’ lives and moved them in the right direction. “Success in Eldorado” shouted Texas headlines.
But this two-sided coin of virtue and self-righteousness also describes the FLDS psyche. These polygamists carry a history of persecution, and a predisposition toward suffering for their religious beliefs. In their minds—and here I speak from experience—persecution and prosecution validate their righteousness and prove their sainthood.
READ MORE
Posted in:
April 25, 2008 6:54 PM by Jessica Henderson | COMMENTS
Grey’s Anatomy is back. I was one of the millions glued to my set on Sunday nights, way back when. “Seriously?” has seriously become part of my daily vocab and there may have been no greater fan of the return of Patrick Dempsey. But instead of being giddy with Grey’s glee, I have to ask myself: Do I still care? Does anyone?
Back in the day, I was devoted to my GA relationship. I tucked in with a glass of wine in the evening, eager for my (Mc)steamy date with the Seattle Grace crew: Meredith hadn’t become the crotchety commitment-phobe yet, Derek had that awesome mop of hair and a badass Airstream camper, Izzie and Krev had great sexual tension, Bailey was wonderfully acerbic, Sandra Oh’s Christina even more so, and George was adorably awkward. I welcomed ex-wife Addison and ex-friend McSteamy—hell, I even embraced the addition of the pleasantly plumper Callie (take that twig people!). But four seasons later, the constant on-and-off again Meredith and Derek bickering is bitterly worn out (can at least one of those two grow a set?), Bailey’s marital problems piss me off (oh right, a woman can’t be kick-ass at her job AND have a happy family life), the George and Izzie fauxmance is worse than their flop of a sex-life (BTW is it hospital policy that all the interns and residents must sleep with one another instead of—gasp!—dating outside the ER?). Plus, who can stand the one-note newbies: mean-old Hahn and whiney little sis Lexie? How dumb do the writers think they can make these characters behave before once-happy viewers pull the plug on the show? Paging Dr. Kevorkian.
Creator Shonda Rhimes has been telling every media outlet that will listen that Meredith and Derek will get back together for good this time (even though the broke up AGAIN in the last ep). And while I remain skeptical that Grey’s can sweep me off my feel like it used to (I’ve been burned too many times before), maybe our writer’s-strike break is just what our relationship needed. Maybe after a little space, we can renew that spark, to respect each other and realize what we had was special and work it out. If not, there’s always my first love, Lost. READ MORE
Posted in:
April 23, 2008 12:16 AM by Unknown | COMMENTS
A two-minute date with Cee-Lo Green, the hip-hop sage READ MORE
Posted in:
April 15, 2008 11:52 AM by Laura Dave (Viking) | COMMENTS
Dave dives headfirst into the scary notion of sharing your life with someone, warts and all: Meet Maggie, a former commitment-phobe about to tie the knot with Nate, the heir to billions, and so not the struggling chef she always thought he was. Adding to the surreal vibe, she’s introduced to his ‘rents at their posh divorce party. While Maggie and her future mother-in-law embark on dicey new beginnings, you’ll ponder whether even great loves are simply destined for failure.
READ MORE
Posted in:
April 15, 2008 11:24 AM by Lauren Iannotti | COMMENTS
Politicians and musicians aren’t so different. Both are putting on a show, creating a spectacle, entertaining/selling their vision. But when musicians get political, it can come off as preachy and annoying. As was the case at the Afro-beat show I caught in my neighborhood this week.
The band was Antibalas, a multi-culti, world-music mini-orchestra—which would generally horrify me, all that patchouli and hemp clothing. But this one was full of horns and merengue rhythms and spanish singing, like a funkified Buena Vista Social Club. Their sound was great.
Their politics were boring. They’re a protest group, griping about the usual military-industrial complex stuff. At one point they took a poll to see whom their audience would be voting for, as if it was any great mystery in that mostly twentysomething crowd—but I was the one of perhaps three lonely souls to give a “woo” for Hillary! And the trumpeter (who bore a striking resemblance to Borat as my friend Andy pointed out), beseeched the “change”-loving crowd that should “Hillary be the nominee, God forbid, please vote for her” because McCain would be much, much worse. Even worse than that was when the magnificent tenor sax player announced that in the case of Eliot Spitzer, the media made a huge deal out of something that so small... Two glasses of Sancerre and one Jameson’s into my evening I could not abide his ignorance, so I hollered, “IT WASN’T SMALL!!” Saxman responded over the crowd of three hundred in the little club, “Okay, right it wasn’t small, but nowhere near as big as what we're doing in Iraq...”
This horn-tooter’s moral relativism—well, yes, I like to curb-stomp homeless people for fun but at least I didn’t start a unilateral war that left an ancient country on the verge of anarchy—got me to thinking of other rockstars who’ve use the stadium stage as soapbox and looked great, or absurd, doing it.
READ MORE
Posted in:
April 13, 2008 1:52 PM by Lauren Iannotti | COMMENTS
This month, the MC book club gets into The Septembers of Shiraz, about one family's struggle to survive in the aftermath of the Iranian revolution. Time to crack the crisp, new paperback edition? First, see what we had to say about it. READ MORE
Posted in:
April 10, 2008 2:26 PM by Christiana Yiallourides | COMMENTS
I walked into the nightclub with my friends, and there in front of us, perched atop a velvet banquette in between a beautiful blonde girl and other glittering hangers-on, was Constantine Maroulis. Who?
Well, he was on American Idol three seasons ago, the one when Carrie Underwood ultimately won. He reached the top six by acquiring the persona of a hard rocker with long hair — no, not Bo Bice, the other long-haired rocker during Constantine’s season.
These days, only reality-TV junkies like me would recognize his pout and wavy locks, but if you find yourself in a similar situation, here are the top three things not to say to Constantine (or any other American Idol reject):
1. “When is your next album coming out?” They may not have a next album (if a first one was even released), so try to avoid this touchy subject.
2. “Is Simon really that mean?” Constantine was on Idol in 2005, which means he’s had three years of this question. Asking it again will not endear you to him.
3. “Do you still talk to Kelly/Ruben/Fantasia/Carrie...?” Because the answer is no. Idol rejects hug like besties during the finale, but you just know that they’re too competitive to keep in touch.
READ MORE
Posted in:
April 8, 2008 5:58 PM by Jihan Thompson | COMMENTS
Breaking up is always terrible. Being dumped over text message just makes it a whole lot worse. I’m guessing American Idol Carrie Underwood would agree. Turns out her Gossip Girl star boyfriend Chace Crawford (who plays Blair’s beau, Nate) doesn’t know how to pick up the phone and apparently (if the rumors are to be believed) dumped her via text message. Underwood claims it was “mutual,” but we all know someone had to send the first “its not u its me” text to set this electronic break-up in motion.
READ MORE
Posted in:
April 7, 2008 5:52 PM by Sarah Z. Wexler | COMMENTS
In a recent plotline for ABC’s soap All My Children, the character Kendall Hart wrote a book called Charm! It was concurrently released in real-life bookstores (with Hart’s name and photo on the cover, since the real author is being kept a secret). It went on to score the 13th slot on the New York Times best-seller list. Ridiculous? That’s what I thought. Here are a few other titles we’d like to see from characters with a story to tell.
READ MORE
Posted in:
April 4, 2008 3:01 PM by Sarah Z. Wexler | COMMENTS
With the Pennsylvania primary on the way this April 22, Hillary’s got to learn from her mistakes—and fast. Here, a cheat sheet on what didn’t work this week.
1.) Sniper-fire jokes.
It was not good when Clinton had to admit—after a video surfaced showing the contrary—that she’d misspoken about dodging “sniper fire” on a pretty tame trip she made to Bosnia while she was First Lady. She ‘fessed up, said she’d been exhausted when she said it, and we were ready to move on. But to go on Leno and make a joke about it (“I was so worried I wasn't going to make it. I was pinned down by sniper fire") is a lame way to seem like she’s laughing it off as if it doesn’t matter. And if her ultimate hope is to beat Barack and end up going head-to-head against McCain—a former POW—turning sniper fire into a joke, especially while we’re embroiled in Iraq, isn’t good strategy.
2.) Identifying with Rocky.
Yes, in the planning stages, it probably seemed like it’d be an incredibly dramatic gesture to give an “I’m a fighter”-type speech on those infamous Philly steps. But did anyone tell Hillary that the original Rocky, um, loses his big heavyweight fight?
3.) Creating a He-Said-She-Said Fray.
When former Clintonian Bill Richardson endorsed Obama instead of Hillary, reporters rushed to get Hillary’s side of the story. They asked if she’d ever told Richardson that Barack couldn’t win the general election. She responded with “That would be a no,” causing journalists like ABC News' George Stephanopoulos to think that meant she had said Barack couldn’t win; her aides later insisted that she did not mean it that way, and that her “no” meant she was declining to talk about that conversation. “I don't talk about private conversations but I have consistently made the case that I can win," she said in a later press conference. But if Clinton is already being criticized for going negative, why not just lay it out there, as plain as day, and publicly declare that she can win and her opponent can’t?
READ MORE
Print
Email
Kaboodle
Pop Sugar
Digg
Del.icio.us
Facebook
RSS
