by emily

GRADE: for the episode, A

Okay guys, I KNOW that it’s borderline insane to mourn the death of someone who never existed in the first place, but I can’t help it. Oh, Ade. Why did you get in that car? You must have known. Why didn’t you just turn yourself in and spend the rest of your life in jail? I guess they probably would have found a way to kill you in jail anyway, and it’s sad to think of you without access to cosmetics or leopard-print accessories. So really you had no choice. But when did you know? Was it when Chrissy left for that highly questionable pack of cigarettes? Or were you astute enough to hear it in Tony’s voice on the phone (he’s such a bad liar!) Well, at least you didn’t attempt any of that bullshit dying-with-dignity stuff. I am glad you went to your grave whining and crying and begging for mercy because that’s exactly how I would have played it. Rage, rage against the dying of the light, Ade!

At first I was extra especially upset (even though, like most people who are aware of the existence of JOEY, I pretty much saw it coming) because, I reasoned, after the death of Adriana there is really no point in watching the Sopranos. But then I realized that the Sopranos is sort of like Days of Our Lives or The Bible in the sense that no one is ever really fully dead. It soothes my aching heart to imagine the many dream sequences and flashbacks that Adriana and her outfits will still be featured in. And plus now I have to watch in order to find out what happens to Christopher, that little shit. Nothing good, I’m guessing. God, that scene where Ade tells him that Danielle was an FBI agent! It’s almost like the words “Oh great now I have to kill her” are written in tiny letters inside his pupils.

Anyway, in the tradition of my previous poem about Ade and also the ancient Greeks, I have composed an Elegy.

Ode to Ade

No more mob, no more feds, no more IBS
Now you can rest
Safe in some sort of deceased-TV-character heaven with your dog Cosette
No more regret.

No more shame, no more pain, no one left to betray
No more trips to Bebe
No more hot pants and stiletto boots
No more platinum highlights and two-inch roots.

The world will seem empty without your lips, your hips
Your acrylic tips
Your eyes, your smile, your sandpaper-throated sass
Your phenomenal ass

Those left behind must take comfort, for we know
You’ve gone on to a better . . . ok, a more lucrative show
And that it’s just selfish of us to want you to remain in the HBO ghetto
But still, David C, why couldn’t you have whacked MEADOW????

By emily

GRADE: A

When I was in eighth grade they made us read this book called Time and Again. The book itself is kind of lame (I mean hello, the title?) but what’s cool about it is the method of TIME TRAVEL it espouses. No souped-up Delorean is necessary when you can go back in time just by convincing yourself that you have gone back in time! The main character simply rents an apartment in the Dakota overlooking Central Park, dresses in 1800s garb, and surrounds himself with 1800s newspapers and books and furniture. Then, he sits down and thinks really hard about the past. And it works! Suddenly he’s back in 18something, surrounded by House of Mirth extras, having adventures and maybe even solving some sort of mystery, I forget. But yeah, how cool is that? I don’t even have to tell you how many times I sat in class trying to think myself back to Olden Times. And now PBS has made a TV show that not only employs this conceit, but is also easily THE BEST REALITY SHOW EVER.

Colonial House is exactly what I wanted it to be: Real World meets Survivor meets COLONIAL. It features 26 strangers picked to live in four one-room wattle-and-daub cottages to find out what happens when people stop being polite . . . and start getting Historically Accurate. Although the cast isn’t exclusively trashily telegenic 20somethings, they do follow RW tradition by having The Gay One, The Sassy Ethnic Girl, The Beautiful Girl Who Only Loves Jesus, etc. No secret cutters yet but perhaps their tools are not sharp enough.

Definitely the best part of the show (besides the heavy-duty corseted and ruffled costumes that the players have to wear even while shoveling dung and milking goats) is the fact that, true to History, some of the CHers are indentured servants to the others. At first they are really casual about it, like “Oh, they said you had to be our servant but we’re all in this together, so let’s all be 21st century-style equals” but then a week or so into the hardscrabble 1628 lifestyle the masters start being like “Fetch me another bucket of water, servant!” I hardly need to point out that it is only one tiny step from this to full-on Plantation House. Feel free to steal this idea, PBS.

Like Bunim-Murray et al, the producers of CH seem to have selected a bunch of polar-opposite personality types in order to enhance the potential for bitchiness and conflict. But while the RWers traditionally get into shouting matches over stupid college-dorm bullshit, the CHers fight over how to ration their meager supply of dried peas so as to survive the winter, whether or not the Governor should be allowed to put someone in the stocks for being a Homosexual, that sort of thing. My favorite character is the sociology professor (one of those ladies who looks 100 times better in a corseted frock than in jeans. Kate Winslet is another) because she is constantly bemoaning the status of Wimmin in the Colonial community. She also had a great moment on Episode 2 where she whined that the cramped conditions had made it impossible for her to have good sex.

The show’s only downside is that the narrator is very condescending, generally seeming to assume that you’ve never taken a history class while trying way too hard to make you feel proud to be an American. But in the plus column, it’s this very same PBSness that allows you to convince yourself that you’re watching something virtuous and educational while still indulging in a dirty, dirty Reality program. I’m so excited to watch more episodes of Colonial House. And I would totally go on it, too. B says he would not go on it because the past has no Digiorno pizzas, cheeseburgers, and coca-cola which would result in him starving to death because those are the only foods he eats. But I might actually apply to be on the next season. I like living in the past anyway.

By bmad

Grade: B- for overall film (individual ratings to follow)

In a way, TROY is a lot like THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT. You know how in that movie, it is all about this very scary witch, but you never actually see her? Well TROY is all about Brad Pitt’s ass, but you never see it full on. It is omnipresent in the frame, but there is never a shot that includes full crack. Talk about suspenseful.

I was okay with the fact that the movie is not really about the Trojan War. I have heard that story like a thousand times and I think it is pretty unrealistic. (“Hey, let’s drag this enormous, hastily constructed wooden horse into our unbreachable city walls!”) Instead, here is the plot of the movie version of the story: There are a bunch of guys in leather miniskirts and little else. They run around. Brad Pitt shows his butt and other body parts but no crack. Everyone dies. I think there are some brief battle sequences as well, but I was playing my cell phone game during those parts and cannot comment. Don’t you love SNAKE? One time I stayed up playing SNAKE on my ancient Nokia for an entire night.

Anyway, here is the rundown on the important parts of Troy:

BRAD PITT: A+
He looks great and you see his butt a lot in profile, which is definitely superhot. But no full-on butt shot. Also you basically see his pubes— or what would be pubic hair, except that he is obviously totally shorn. It looks good. At first I was disappointed by the lack of full frontal nudity, but Emily points out that since we have all already seen BP’s penis, and since it is not that impressive, it is no big loss that it was left out. Still, that is no excuse for no butt crack shot. I was so ready for this jelly. What happened?

ERIC BANA: B
This is the guy from the incredible hulk. He has an enormous, bordering on womanly chest, which stars in one very memorable scene. I was not that into him. I think that he looks a little bit like Rob Cesternino, SURVIVOR’s resident geek, and that is not hot, no matter how good the body. But I was overruled, because everyone besides me thought he was a total fox.

ORLANDO BLOOM: C
Okay, I hate to say this, but I think I might only like Orlando when he has his long, blonde TOPSY-TURVY ™ braid. And his elf ears. In his non-Legolas guise, you realize that his face is actually sort of busted! The costume designer for Troy does not help matters by outfitting him in clunky art-teacher jewelry and flowy, turquoise dresses that look like they came from OLIVIA NEWTON JOHN’S failed KOALA BLUE clothing line. However, the one scene at the beginning where you see his naked torso (waist up) is pretty good. My jaw dropped from surprise. After all, there was no nudity in Lord of the Rings. He has clearly been making time on the Soloflex. And you will be interested to know that Orlando, like Michael Pitt, has abnormally large areolas! (Mine, by the way are very tiny.)

BRAD PITT’S SECRET INCESTUOUS UNDERAGE BOYFRIEND: C+
I don’t remember the name of the character or the actor who plays him. But he is Brad Pitt’s cousin in the movie and they are very much in love. I think the character is supposed to be about sixteen, which adds another exciting element of illicitness. This guy is not so hot, but he wears his miniskirt well. And he is having gay, incest greek-style sex with Achilles! He gets a plus for that.

A lot of the other reviews of TROY have mentioned a character named Helen of Troy and whether she is hot. Personally, I did not notice whether she was in the movie or not, but Saffron Burrows, who played Eric Bana’s wife, is beautiful as fuck. She didn’t get naked because she was a more classy type of character. She does, however, clasp her bosom a lot because she is upset about something-or-other for most of the film. And she looks very good doing it.

Troy manages to justify its length (3 hours!) by being very suspenseful. I was on the edge of my seat for practically the entire movie, waiting for the moment when we would get to see Brad’s full butt. When he died, I let out a long sigh. Because it seemed perfect! He is lying there on his side, all dead and sexy and everything, and you know you are finally going to get to see ass-crack. Like his skirt could fly up to reveal that he is not wearing underpants, and the final shot of the film would be Brad’s dead body’s perfect ass—all hard and smooth and rigor mortis-y! But no. That is not how it ended at all. I don’t even remember what the last shot was.

What is the point of suspense if there is no payoff? At least in THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT there is that scary scene where everyone dies-- which at least provides the viewer with some satisfaction, even if still no witch. In contrast, although the whole point of TROY is Brad Pitt’s butt, the last 25 minutes are wasted on some stupid subplot involving a wooden horse and everyone running around the city while it burns. Boring. If this movie had lived up to its implied promise of full rear nudity, it would have been a perfect A.

By B

Grade: C-

There is no greater Mag. Fields fan than I. Henry can attest to this because he has to listen to me playing “The Death of Ferdinand De Saussure” and “When You Were My Baby” over and over on the guitar into the wee hours of the night, every night. Unfortunately, as much as I have liked the previous efforts of Mr. Merritt and company, I think the new album really stinks. I don’t have a lot to say about it because I could barely bring myself to listen to it all the way through more than a few times. There are one or two great songs, and another one or two that are pretty good. The rest are really boring, pretentious, cold, and uncatchy. Where other MF albums have had themes-- Phil/Ronnie Spector, trains, love songs, etc.—this one just has a pointless, go-nowhere gimmick, which is that all of the songs begin with the letter I. I wonder if Stephin enjoys watching THE L WORD, where everything begins with the letter L? Lattes, lubrication, Lilliputians, lederhosen... Listen, this album sounds like what would happen if Emily and I sat down and decided to make an imitation of a Magnetic Fields album, but then didn’t have any synthesizers to use.

PS If you have tickets to see the Magnetic Fields on Friday and, for some reason, do not want to risk running into me, you should probably sell those tickets quickly.

By emily

GRADE: A

As the world’s leading expert Mean Girl par excellence summa cum laude forever, I have an expert opinion on this movie: it is good. I never laugh out loud at movies unless I am high, but this movie (which I was incredibly, incredibly sober for) made me giggle uncontrollably an average of once every five minutes. Awesome! I want to write Tina Fey a personal thank you note. In fact, maybe I will go ahead and do so:

Dear T.F.,
First off, I apologize for not recognizing you that time. In that red ski cap and without your glasses and makeup, you really looked kind of homeless. Um, sorry. Okay well clearly I am a member of the target audience for your new movie, Mean Girls. And, as such, I wanted to thank you for writing it. You really nailed a bunch of things about high school, about girls, and about meanness in general. But the only part of the movie that I wasn’t 100% down with was the preachy bit towards the end. I know from reading interviews with you that you are in favor of ladies gradually toning down their meanness as they age because what seems like charming sass at 25 makes you a bitter old cunt at 40. I really hope this is not true because I plan to be a bitter cunt forever, and I’ll explain why.

The thing about the movie is that it tries to have its cake and eat it too as far as the meanness issue is concerned. In Mean Girls, Lindsey Lohan winds up learning a valuable lesson about how bad it is to talk about people behind their backs. However, the cattiness and manipulative politicking that she engages in -- before realizing that it is Wrong and Bad to hurt people’s Feelings -- is absolutely the best and funniest thing about the movie. After LL figures out that niceness is better than meanness, she is clearly destined to have a boring rest of her entire life. So what do we really take away from the movie? Perhaps this is the real moral:

Meanness is funny and interesting.
Meanness keeps us interested in life. Without meanness, no one would really have any incentive to excel (because what use is success without someone’s face to shove it in?). Without meanness, no one would stay in boring jobs that are only made interesting by wild office politcs, and the economy would collapse. It’s not love or money that makes the world go round. It’s meanness, pure and simple. Meanness shouldn’t be quelled, it should be promoted. Let’s all strive to be a lot meaner.

Just not towards me, because I’m feeling really sensitive right now.

Love,
Emily

PS Lacey Chabert is fantastic. She has really expanded her range since Party of Five, not to mention her bosom size.

By Emily

GRADE: D-
(note: this is a review of the actual act of Moving Out, not the Billy Joel song or musical. But just for the record, anything BJ related gets an F-).

If anyone out there is thinking: “I just don’t have enough problems. Where oh where can I find some great big ones that will cause me undue stress in absolutely every area of my life?” then I suggest making this Lifestyle Choice yours. I suppose shopping for new real estate options can be a lark if you are, say, Will and Jada Pinkett-Smith, but for people like me and my roommates (aka the target audience for those late-night ads that shout “BAD CREDIT? NO CREDIT?”), there is no deeper circle of hell. Breakups, firings, diseases, deaths of minor relatives – all these problems pale in comparison to the ungodly plague that is: A. finding a new place to live B. convincing the landlord that it’s okay to let you live there and C. packing up all your stuff, bringing it to the new place, and then unpacking it again. Who invented this? I would really like to know, because it’s a very poor system. I have identified some specific horrors of the apartment hunt that I would really like to see addressed:

1.Can we please, please just lay down some basic guidelines about what is and is not a ‘bedroom?’ Here are some things that a bedroom is not: a hallway. A kitchen. A closet. A backyard.

2.“Newly renovated” : okay, I looked up this word (renovated) and here is what it means: “To restore to an earlier condition, as by repairing or remodeling.” Here is what it does not mean: “To splash a fresh coat of cheap paint onto.”

3.No, I am NOT going to give my cat to a shelter. Jesus Christ. You are lucky I’m being honest with you about having a cat in the first place. What, the cat is going to somehow ruin your already crapped-up cardboard-walled tenement? You’re lucky I don’t have eight cats and 30 Guatemalan relatives I’m not telling you about.

4.When you advertise an apartment as being “steps from the ______,” the number of steps should be low. It should not be in the hundreds, Definitely not in the thousands.

5.Just because we’re gentrifiers does not mean that we are actual members of the landed gentry. So I’d appreciate you not charging us $500 more in rent than anyone else in the building pays.

I know it’s kind of lame of me to use the Review as a means of doing this, but if anyone would like to help the UR find its new HQ, we are looking in the Manhattan Avenue part of Greenpoint (oh no, more ammo for the people who accuse us of being ‘hipsters’ who wear ‘trucker hats’ over our ‘trust-fund haircuts.’ Just for the record I have to say that neither one of us has a trucker hat, a trust fund, or even, really, a haircut. Thanks for playing.)

By emily

Grade: C?

I didn’t actually watch this, so if you’re looking for a biting, incisive play-by-play, you will have to look elsewhere. For all I know, the finale consisted of the Friends finally figuring out how to kill the voodoo priestess who cast the spell that makes the male Friends gain all the weight that the female Friends lose. However, I did catch the ongoing Friends postmortem this morning on the Today show, which now consists exclusively of ‘experts’ being asked questions about topics they are obviously WAY too biased to have valid opinions on (examples: former generals on the war in Iraq, US Weekly ed Janice Min on Jennifer Aniston’s career trajectory). Anyway, I learned from Matt and Katie that Ross and Rachel shocked the panties off America by ending up together. If only M and K would do the same. Sigh. As real as it may seem, it was only in my dream.

Now that we all have that song stuck in our head, I’ll get to the real meat (okay, more like Steakums) of the review. While Matt, Katie et al were watching Friends, I was watching famous actor/auteur/artiste Edgar Oliver scandalize the Astor Place Barnes and Noble by reading from his new book, THE MAN WHO LOVED PLANTS. Edgar is very hard to describe. I hope no one will be offended when I say that his accent is a mix of gay, Dracula, and Southern Belle. Edgar himself doesn’t worry about offending anybody, as evinced by his introduction: “I realized, when deciding which chapter to read, that this one reveals my desire to have a black mammy.” It was one of those moments where everyone looks around to see whether other people are going to laugh, then goes for it. The book itself is also impossible to describe, but it’s definitely not about a too-tightknit group of pals who live in improbably huge apartments. However, it will be there for you when the rain starts to fall.

By B

Grade: F for Fucktard

Man, what an asshole. What is the reason for the people who sit in the booth in the subway station? WHAT IS THE REASON? I guess the primary reason for them is to watch out for terrorism. But the other reason is to help you out when everything is fucked up. At least it should be. Unfortunately, too many of these people seem to think that their main and most important job is to remind you that you are a foolish, terrible person who does not deserve to ride the subway in the first place. The man in the booth at Bedford Avenue is the worst culprit of all. I am not going to describe him in detail, but God damn him. Or G-d damn him, as I would say if I were a real authentic Williamsburger.

I was going to call his supervisor. I got his badge number and everything. (He refused to give me his name. "Oh no," he cackled. "Oh no! I’m not telling you my name!") Then I realized that there is no point in calling anyone’s supervisor because the whole thing about supervisors is that they are just bigger asshole versions of the people whom they supervise. This is a lesson I learned from my years of working in retail. In general, it seems unworth it to bother with the MTA at all, because, aside from when they are illegally hiding money in order to raise fares, they seem to spend most of their time working at making my commute as miserable as possible. If I called to complain about this very discourteous man in the booth, I'm sure they would give him a commendation for Outstanding Fuckiness. Maybe they would promote him to supervisor!

So apparently my Metrocard is broken. It is damaged. It’s sort of ironic that it be damaged now, because for the longest time, with old ones, I would just shove them in my pocket, leave them on my floor, use them to pick my teeth, et cetera, and I never had any problem other than the fact that I was constantly losing them. However, about five months ago, I started making some changes in my life. The main one was that I began dutifully placing my card in my wallet after using it. This, I guess, is how it got to be broken. (Henry says it is from rubbing against the wallet every time I put it in and take it out.) But I didn’t know it was broken the other day when I tried to get on the train at Bedford Avenue. In fact, I had just used it to take the bus, and it had worked perfectly fine. Still, in the station, I swiped it and swiped it, and the turnstile just said "Please swipe card again. Swipe again at this turnstile." And like that.

So I went crawling to the man in the booth. I donned my best shit-eating, I’m sorry I’m such an idiot grin, because I have seen the way these exchanges go down and it is never pretty. The man in the booth glanced at my card in a cursory fashion and then tossed it back out at me, with a scowl. "It is damaged," he told me. "You have been using it inappropriately."

"Oh," I said, doing my best to be contrite, even though I knew that I had been using it very appropriately indeed. "Well, what can I do about that?"
Of course, my question remained unanswered. I love people who respond to an innocent, sensible question with a scornful demand.
"Can you see that it is damaged?" he snapped at me.
I looked at the card. I squinted at the magnetic strip. I was really taking it seriously. I wanted to understand! Unfortunately, it looked perfectly normal to me. No big gashes or chips. It looked like a magnetic strip. "Not really," I finally said. I wasn’t going to lie!

The man in the booth was starting to get agitated. "Can you see that it is damaged!?"
I looked again. Well, maybe it was a little bit browner than usual. Does that mean damaged?

"Maybe," I said. I was very unsure. I needed something to compare it to.

"There is no maybe about it! You either see that it is damaged or you don’t!" the man shouted. I am not exaggerating, he was really yelling. At me! If you’ve never met me, let me say that I am a very retiring person and don’t like to start trouble in public. "Now," he fumed, "do you see that it is damaged?!"

"I guess," I said. I was starting to feel badgered into making a statement that I did not believe in. I could not, in fact, tell that my card was damaged.

"You guess!? YOU GUESS?!" The guy was fucking pissed now. So I gave in.
"Yes! Yes!" I groveled. "I see that it is damaged!" I felt uncomfortable saying it, because it was a total lie. I should have stopped there, but I was really trying to get to the bottom of the problem. "But I just used it on the bus and it was fine…" I went on.

Oh no I did not. It was the wrong thing to say. I think he would have been less pissed if I had said that I was an associate of Osama Bin Laden and that I had a canister full of smallpox in my backpack. The guy looked like he was going to smash his head through the bulletproof glass and bite my face. "YOU USED IT ON THE BUS!? THEN GO TAKE THE BUS!!" he screamed.

There was someone standing behind me. I went and spent two dollars on a SingleRide, hoping that the $70 I’d already spent on the monthly wasn’t completely down the toilet.

I am so sick of these tiny, daily humiliations. I hate that there is nothing you can do about it except suck it up and buy your two dollar singleride. Or take a cab. And don’t tell me to have some sympathy because the poor guy sits in a booth all day so of course he’s in a bad mood. Guess what? I worked behind the register at the Gap for like 5 years and I was a jerk exactly one time, to a lady who deserved to be punched in the face.

Let me tell you, this guy has been a complete, unrepentant asshole more than once. How do I know? Because the very next day, coming home from Manhattan, I got off at Bedford Avenue. And as I pushed through the turnstile, I saw a small, pretty girl at the booth, holding out her hands in a pleading gesture. "YOU WANT TO GO SOMEWHERE ELSE?!" the guy was screeching at her. "THEN GO SOMEWHERE ELSE AND GET OUT OF MY FACE!" As I passed the girl, who was slinking off, defeated, to go buy a single ride, I gave her a sympathetic look.

By B
Grade: A for Effort

This is a very untimely review because the new Liz Phair album, along with the new Liz Phair the person, came out a whole year ago. You have probably heard her first single, Complicated, about a trillion times by now, especially if you go to see a lot of movies starring Mandy Moore or the Olsen Twins. Also if you spend a lot of time perusing the aisles at Duane Reade, where it seems to be the only song on the shopping soundtrack.

Anyway, timely or not, I am going to review the new Liz Phair now because I saw her in real life last night, at the kickoff party for the Maybelline Cosmetics CHICKS WITH ATTITUDE TOUR. (The name gives you a basic idea of exactly what kind of a party this was.) Of course, I was late to the affair, so I missed Liz’s actual performance, which must have consisted of about two songs. Despite the over-ness of the show, she was still milling around on the stage when I arrived and I got to see her outfit, which is all I really cared about anyway.

Here is one nice thing I can say about the New Liz Phair. She is hot. Especially considering that she is a woman of a certain age. And she has taken to dressing like a total hooker, which I can completely respect. If I were a lady I would always dress like that, no matter how busted I was—and LP is definitely the total opposite of busted. I feel bad for her child, though, because between his mother’s so-short-she-needs-two-haircuts leather skirts and her song lyrics, ("I’m looking great and I’m feeling nice! Baby you’re the best magazine advice! Give me your hot white cum! Give me your hot white cum!") he will probably have mommy issues for his entire life.

The Maybelline party was fine. I was a little disappointed that I missed the performance, but I’m sure she just sang Complicated anyway, which I certainly didn’t need to hear again. The drinks were free and I was in very good company, so I ended up having fun. Because of the sponsor, there were cosmetics strewn about like candy at a Halloween party. Emily, are you a Maybelline fan? I hope so, because I have a little present for you! Tomorrow you are going to be so lashful!

I am pretty conflicted about the new Liz Phair. Obviously, her new(ish) album is terrible by virtue of being offensively, aggressively boring-- except for a few shining moments when it is just plain retarded. The retardation I don’t blame so much on Liz herself, because the really bad songs were co-written by the computer program that made up April Lavin, and I’m sure that lyrics like "Oh baby I know what you’re like! You’re like my favorite underpants!" are just some kind of computer error and are not Ms. Phair’s fault at all. Maybe there was some kind of snafu where the wires got crossed between the LP album and the Hanes Her Way commercial. But still. The boringness part is definitely Liz’s fault and that is really sad.

The album sounds a lot like Sheryl Crow lite, which is pretty pathetic because I always considered Sheryl Crow to be a more haggard, more facelifted, less talented version of Liz Phair. Guess what, though? I totally love that song about the first cut is the deepest when Sheryl Crow is galloping a magnificent steed around the desert. I wonder if the new Liz Phair would suck less if there were more equestrian activity in the video. I think maybe yes. I can say that I am genuinely moved every time I see the video for Simply the Best by Tina Turner, because, shit, she is riding that horse on the fucking moon! That is what I call awesome. Also, not to get off the subject here, but what about that Sisters With Voices video for I Get Weak, in which I think the ladies of SWV are grooming a horse. And they are indeed wearing those jodhpurs and everything, like real horse girls. Yes! I love that song and I’m going to learn how to play it on the guitar when I finish typing this. Emily, get ready for a performance when you come home.

If this review were being graded by my ninth grade English teacher, Ms. Caplan, I would get an F because I don’t think SWV has anything to do with my "topic sentence," regardless of the equestrian gear. So, Ms. Caplan, here is why the new Liz Phair has me sad. It is not because she sold out, because a lady needs to make her living. It is not because of the Dianne Warren caliber production values, because I am actually sort of a fan of that type of thing. It is not because of Ms. Phair’s completely insane letter to the New York Times. (And PS, talk about things with no "topic sentence!") It is because the new Liz Phair has me thinking about the nature of talent and it seems to be bad news.

The song Shatter, off of Exile in Guyville, makes me cry every time. Every time. Also, you know Fuck and Run gets me because of the whole slut issue. Liz Phair is talented. She just is. She is smart and funny and weird and also really really hot. I don’t think she has lost her talent, or even given up, exactly.

But what if good writing exists only in some magical intersection between talent and experience? I am thinking that maybe talent is like a penis. It has length and width. In Ms. P’s case, I think it is very, very long, but narrow as a pencil. She is incredibly, dazzlingly good at capturing the essence of being a bored, stoned 22 year-old who still lives with her parents and fucks a lot of dummies in rock and roll bands. Unfortunately, you can’t write about that when you are a 35 year-old mom who lives in LA and drives an Escalade. Maybe there is nothing you can do about it. When your narrow talent ceases to match the specifics of your life, maybe you have no choice but to get the April Lavine machine to program crappy underwear jingles on your behalf.

People like John Updike are lucky, because his special skill is writing about being a bitter, adulterous old man, and that can last you for a good twenty years. In other words, his talent penis has a little more girth to it-- even if he is a pathetic, gayhating fool. Poor Liz. She’s just trying to make do. And I am in no position to hate on her. What will I do when I can no longer write about 17 year-old Ritalin fiends with eating disorders and bad dye-jobs? I am already getting a little old for that kind of thing. Maybe Courtney Love has the right idea: take a lot of Oxycontin and refuse to change your disgraceful lifestyle, even if it means that little Frances Bean gets confiscated by the authorities all the time. Liz Phair doesn’t seem willing to go that route, and God bless her for it. In interviews, she has pretty much admitted to sucking because she had to stop smoking marijuana after the birth of her child. That is just how it goes.

Liz, you made a couple brilliant albums. No one can take that away from you. Now go out and shake your sweet, ass for all it is worth.

By emily

Recently I started eating an 8 oz container of yogurt every day. This was around the same time that I started wearing clean, not-ripped clothes all the time, brushing my teeth after lunch, and being nice to people I don’t like. Clearly, I have become an adult. Also, an expert on yogurt.

Dannon: D
So easy. The yogurt of yogurt dilettantes. Too bad it has the consistency of paste and a sour, nasty aftertaste.
Stonyfield Farm: D-
Quite possibly the nastiest yogurt on the market. Sour and bitter. Can actually produce a shudder of revulsion in those with sensitive palates.
Brown Cow Cream Top: C+
Kind of a cross between yogurt and fruit-flavored cream cheese. The Brown Cow lowfat is nearly perfect and nearly impossible to find.
Total Greek Yogurt:B
The little separate compartment full of honey is so adorable. And it actually tastes good, if a little on the super-rich side. The Total with honey and walnuts is the winner.
French Yogurt with Grains: A-
Totally genius. Pear flavor especially.
Emmi Swiss Yogurt: C+
Too sweet.
Ronnybrook Farms Creamline Yogurt Coconut: Oh, that sounds good! I want to eat one right now! It looks appealing, with cute little chunks of coconut. And it’s . . . oh, wait, what is up with this consistency? It’s really thin, like totally liquidy almost. It tastes okay . . . maybe if I think of it as like an Indian lassi beverage? Wait, no . . oh, ew, I just realized that this tastes exactly like a BARFED UP PINA COLADA. F+

by emily

Grade: C
(adjusted for grade inflation)

Time tends to act as a natural memory cleanser. This is why ladies are able to give birth more than once: after a little bit of time has passed, it becomes nearly impossible to remember pain accurately. The downside of this adaptive trait is that sometimes we find ourselves feeling nostalgic about something that wasn’t very good in the first place. VH1’s tireless effort to eulogize every T’pau-level pop-cultural moment from the last 30 years is a great example of this phenomenon. But there’s another example I’m getting at here.

Spring is the only time I ever allow myself to feel this kind of deluded nostalgia about Kenyon. Kenyon, for those of you fortunate enough not to know, is a small, second-tier college in the blank, empty heartland of America. It does an admirable job of living up to every available stereotype about such places: ivy-covered stone, light slanting though centuries-old stained glass in the more impressive classrooms, et cetera. One glance down treelined Middle Path is enough to convince the Parents’ Weekenders that they’re totally getting their 40 grand’s worth. A fellow Kenyon quasialum once described it as “the Ivy League of the Midwest,” which I would amend to, “the school for Ivy League double-legacies who still couldn’t get into Yale and were forced to go to school in the Midwest.”

I spent two miserable years in a truly awful place, but I still miss it sometimes. Isn’t that weird? I have a hard time explaining it. I mean, maybe it’s because I led a very decadent lifestyle there – that’s the nice thing about being around a bunch of rich people in the middle of nowhere. There were lots of crazy parties and a steady stream of anesthetizing substances, lots of lying in a cornfield with a Nalgene bottle full of vodka on a warm spring day. But before I get too warm and fuzzy about College, I have to remind myself of what really went down.

I had been going to Kenyon for exactly one week when it happened for the first time. There was a knock at the door of my dorm room. My resident advisor, a Texan named Jana Joseph who bore an unfortunate resemblance to Weinerdog-era Heather Matarazzo barged in.

“So how is everything going for you?” she said, smiling robotically in the way that people with matching first and last initials sometimes do. I said something about liking my classes.

She moved closer to me and lowered the tone of her obnoxious voice.
“Um. I just thought you should know. What people are saying about you.”

Uh-oh. “I just thought you should know” is right up there with “No offense, but” in the stupid bitch handbook.

“I mean,” she said, affecting a look of concern appropriate to her Residential Advisorness, “is it true that you slept with seven guys your first week here?”

I was dumbfounded. Um, for one thing, the white-hatted, beer-gutted boys of Kenyon would never in a million years have merited that level of overachieving sluttiness. And for another thing, um, NO? I was much too busy that first week trying to figure out where my classes were and negotiating the least embarrassing way to eat alone in the dining hall. Now, I have had my slatternly phases, and I don’t want to make it sound like I have anything against behaving like a little hooker. But at seventeen, the fact that an almost- total stranger could walk into my bedroom and spout such nasty lies– while somehow pretending to be looking out for me – was shocking and actually a little bit scary.

And that was how it was going to be for me at Kenyon.

This is what I soon found out: except for the mellow rich hippies, Kenyonites are basically two types of people: frat boys and girls who would be sorority girls if Kenyon had sororities, which it doesn’t, so they have to compensate by competing for the attentions of the fratboys and becoming their girlfriends, whereupon they form informal sororities that are probably worse than the real thing.

The school has a long, proud, rich, rich, rich history of Greek life. The kings of its Big Fat Greek System are the Delta Kappa Epsilons, or ‘Deeks.’ These guys have a reputation for being the richest and cokeheadiest of all the frats, with the most bizarre, morbid/homoerotic hazing rituals. Pop quiz: guess which current US president was a Deek? I know, it’s a hard one. Most of them probably wouldn’t get it. Most of them are probably investment bankers now. They’re probably having a nice dinner with a bulimic nineteen year old a few blocks away from here. Let’s not dwell on it.

The second most important frat is the Psi Upsilons, or ‘Psi Us’. Their girlfriends are referred to, especially by them, as the ‘Psi Uteruses.’

I don’t know why I didn’t repack my suitcases and move back in with my parents after that first week, but in some ways, I’m glad I didn’t. I suppose going to Kenyon for two years made me a stronger person or whatever. I know, two years is a long time, right? But I did like my classes. Also, it was pretty there – cornfields, cows, bonfires, The Amish, etc. Besides, I just thought that that was what college was like. I transferred to school in New York, so for all I know, that is what college is like.

This spring I ran into a guy I’d sort of known at Kenyon at a book party for America’s First Supermodel, Janice Dickerson. He was on his way to a Kenyon party downtown, and I was in a good mood and a good outfit so I went with him. I don’t know what I was thinking. I guess maybe I thought I could show them up, or just show them, look, you didn’t hurt me, this is me and I’m still alive and I have a job and really nice tattoos, I’m so cool, aren’t you sorry you were mean to me? Because the bad thing about being around small-minded bitches is, after a while you start to think like them, as a matter of self-defense. And then sometimes, year later, you still can’t stop.

Being at the party was kind of surreal. It was exactly like a thousand other parties I’d been to at Kenyon, except this one was in Chinatown and everyone looked old and tired, probably from being investment bankers. I compensated for the awkward fact that no one was speaking to me by getting deeply involved in my drinking.

After I left the party I should have just gotten into a cab and gone straight home, but I couldn’t. The streets of Chinatown were appealingly deserted, so I wandered past the noodle shop and the pagoda-style McDonald’s, past the perfume-drenched line waiting to get into a club and the new luxury condo. I didn’t know where I was walking. I didn’t feel drunk, just numb and kind of hysterically happy. The glistening streets and the tenements and the neon were all suddenly heartwrenchingly beautiful. Clearly, I was shitfaced.

Eventually I realized that I was on 3rd Street, standing in front of apartment building I’d lived in when I first moved to New York. The whole façade of the building was new. It was now white and sleek and trendily modern. The metaphor was so appallingly obvious that I started laughing. Here it is, in case you didn’t figure it out yourself:

Everything changes so quickly here: neighborhoods, buildings, people. Everything can reinvent itself as often as it wants to – this is the whole point of New York. But the past isn’t going anywhere. It’s lurking under the floorboards and behind the plaster, holding up the structure, maybe even determining the future. All we can do is keep trying to remember the bad things as well as the good. All we can do is look forward to more changes, better ones. We can look forward to the day when we’ll have something that proves once and for all that we’re different from all the people who have ever made us unhappy. Or maybe we can just look forward to the day when we’ll finally stop caring.