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Summer Book Rec: How to Be Idle
I am reposting something from last year because it’s summer (in the northern hemisphere) and your minds are more easily prone to indoctrination by this manifesto. Free your soul!
“I have a dream. It is called love, anarchy, freedom. It is called being idle.”
-Tom Hodgkinson
Urban Book Club Rec: A Confederacy of Dunces
This one was found by C-mixto. Highly recommended for the cynical, the nerdy, the intelligent, the social outcast- this book is comical with a healthy dose of chaos. It also has a halo of tragedy.
Mickey is a X-Man Now?!
What rock was I under when it was announced that Disney bought Marvel Comics? Are you kidding me? Mickey and Donald will now be frolicking with Cyclops, Wolverine and Jean? What good can come of this? Female heroine breast size will be reduced, hero’s packages covered up with looser pants, and the illest villan that we’ll get from a distant future is a miserly Scrooge McDuck. Further evidence that Disney is trademarking all imagination of young minds. Soon everything you dream will have a copyright of two mouse ears.
Another man shares my bed
Part of Urban Confessions Week
…These are not the words you’d expect from someone married, partnered or involved… but it’s true! C-mixto finds me in bed with him every night like clockwork. He has come to recognize his voice when the covers block out his face, and rolls his eyes when he realizes that I am in bed with Craig Ferguson. Craig Ferguson! How I’ve developed quite an appetite to stay up late and watch you! How can it be avoided? You are truly a gifted comedian from what I see from your show, and the philosophic words of your theme song have convinced me that “tomorrow is” truly my “future yesterday” so I might as well stay up and be entertained.
You are one of the few celebrities I’ve actually taken an interest in learning more about, even buying your memoir (which sort of provoked this series, because I feel a little shame in this). It is probably your ability to keep my attention and evoke a sincere laugh from me that has spawned this regular habit of watching you. Your performance is fluid, jokes are spared the staleness often inherited from rehearsals. You are truly a one-man-act.
I have to say (does this constitute a double confession, one now to you?)… lately I have been watching your shows online the day after it airs at a time more convenient for me. It’s fun, but, sigh… not the same as the intimacy of sneaking off with you at 12:35am while others are asleep.
Nipples on the A train
Armani Exchange might be playing a trick on your eyes. I walked onto the subway car of the A train and while scanning for a seat my eyes were pulled to the sight of two nipples hoovering above my head. Double take. I see these two breasts glaring at me but then I’m able to see the torso it’s attached to: muscular and male. But still, something looks feminine about it and after a few moments I have concluded (with C-mixto concurring as a male) that the breasts seem too pendulous, the shading under them dark so as to shape them as circular as in curvaceous. The lighting on them looks enhanced too, so that they seem to bulge out softly (not hard like a muscle). So coupled with the fact that there is no head, I conclude that Armani is playing on using the female body, sex and hermaphroditism via photoshop in its ad. No surprise, just noting it struck me in this ad. You judge.
Further reading: Camile Paglia, Sexual Personae.
the messages we send: Home Girl
Please note: these comments are based on how this book is advertised in both its art and content, but not the content of the book itself (the writing and story) as I have not read it. The comments are meant to demonstrate the power of image and packaging, and point to a pattern industries recycle over and over again.
Had to share a moment in Barnes and Noble… a culture/race/class twilight zone moment that will strike you or not strike you, based on your life experiences and your placement in those three categories. Random House put out this book Home Girl by Judith Matloff. I was attracted to the happy colors and title enough to pick it up for a peak. Then I took a closer look and see that the colors radiate from a refurbished brownstone smack in between two dreary brown ones. Its windows are smiling with flowers that a dutiful husband in a tight black t-shirt is watering, a cherubic baby peeking out from one of the flower pots, and a diligent denim-clad thin woman sweeping the steps with altruistic determination and confidence that she is doing the right thing. All the inhabitants of that brownstone are Caucasian. So here is the title again: “Home Girl”. Here is the subtitle: “Building a Dream House on a Lawless Block.” The surrounding lawless block are the two dreary brownstones and its brown inhabitants: a sexy, curvaceous brown-something pushing what looks like a baby carriage (could be a shopping cart), a guy hanging out on her fence, and a suspicious character in a parked car.
The back cover parallels the brownstone owner’s story as the native daughter returning to her city New York after spending years in war torn areas of the world (like Sudan) only to find herself back (by the winds of gentrification) in scary Harlem, finally conquering the natives and bringing white order to a lawless world. the messages we send: Home Girl – continue reading …
Cities, and the people that make them
“The city, half-imagined (yet wholly real), begins and ends in us, roots lodged in our memory.”
-Lawrence Durrell, in Balthazar
More recommended books for urbanites (and anyone fond of beautiful prose) are those in the Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell. It is a collection of four books, set in the city of Alexandria on the eve of the second World War. You are there, inside the tangled lives of a handful of inhabitants of Alexandria, transported by fine prose and sensual details. Through the lives of the book’s characters you feel the pulse of the old, harsh city. Though clearly fixed in its time and place, it is also timeless-the Alexandria of these pages is a city of mixed religion, ethnicities, heavy with history, burdened with the entanglements of friends and lovers. I am still reading through the quartet, enjoying every word, every line.
Rambopoulos
I assure you readers not familiar with Greece: more things happen there other than protests, mobs and activism. But I’ve logged two years living there and these are the first ones coming to mind as good to share.
While odysseying through Greece, let’s talk elections-civic participation in democracy. Obama was the closest phenomenon I’ve witnessed and participated in here in the US that approached participatory democracy, which occurs in lots of other places, Greece included. (Actually, Alexis Stamatis, author of American Fuge might disagree with that statement). Greeks discuss their choices with vigor, vote with passion, and will continue to give you an earful after the fact. (My theory is Frappés help stimulate this charge).
My first days in Athens as a full time student landed me smack dead in the middle of a national election. PASOK versus Nea Demokratia, versus KKE the community party, versus… I loose count. Three is a stretch for someone used to a two party system. My neighborhood was thick with mobs of people draped in green and white, cheering as they blessed the streets with confetti. PASOK had won, their crew was happy, and they took their evening parade from neighborhood to neighborhood. Much like walking with with the anti-NATO, anti-Kosovo crowd, I got caught up in it, but this time more so by choice and peer pressure, and joined the tail end of the little green and white fog creeping through the streets of Athens. Rambopoulos – continue reading …
Dante’s Inferno, Ninth Circle: Archie
Archie was the fluff of my comic book library. The girl in me came out to balance my X-men, Excalibur, etc…
So word has it that Archie will propose to Veronica. And I say screw you Archie of Riverdale.
Let this be slightly off topic, but the fires of Dante’s called for Archie to be thrown in. Now this is just media hype- Archie’s gang will always be timeless, the gals forever stuck as sixteen year olds with some mean C cups and seventies fashion swagger. This might not all play out. But Archie, here is your life if you marry Veronica in my little crystal ball: you will be p*ssy-whipped with a father-in-law complex, you will scramble to make up for the money and class you will never have, Veronica will be f*cking her yacht boys as she vacations on her own in the Mediterranean. Betty will be scarred by lost love, will realize the time she wasted in chasing a man (never do this. never) and move on as a fierce woman who you’ll lust, long and lament for as you realize that you were bedazzled by an ice-queen.
Now I’m not hating on Veronica. She has sense to play the field. But she lost points by being a hater on Betty. Betty, get over carrot-top. Let it be stated how couples who the entire world rallies against sometimes create very beautiful lives that work for them. Archie and Veronica might make a lovely couple. One never knows. But…
Freeze with your neck up to ice in the ninth circle, Archie.
A Loafer’s Manifesto
“I have a dream. It is called love, anarchy, freedom. It is called being idle.”
-Tom Hodgkinson
That’s how this gem of a book ends, and it is faithful to its departing words. Most Urbanites would benefit from skimming though “How to Be Idle”. It is a true idler’s manifesto. Before you judge, let’s put give some more thought to that name, idler, that might turn you off. This little book called for me with its perfect blend of creative font, artwork and cool peach color. I saw the man sitting at his table with his frappé, cigarette and crossed leg and had a visceral reaction of my ideal day (I don’t smoke, but I can pretend I do). Inside its relaxed cover is a rallying charge from the heart, complete with historical context on the degradation of the human spirit through wage labor and prudery. A Loafer’s Manifesto – continue reading …
