Despite Patty's epic cold, we did make it to dinner with my parents and my cousin last night. I feel I should say how not hard it is to cook gluten-free: chicken strips dipped in egg and sesame seeds and fried; a salad with tomatoes, beets and goat cheese; homemade guacamole with corn chips; cookies made from eggs, cornstarch and cocoa powder. Meanwhile, tonight the two of us are off to Rosa Mexicana.
Patty started packing last night, which always makes things real and a bit intense for me. But as much as this can ever seem routine, we're about there.
The admittedly sometimes problematic Dan Savage has started a great project called It Gets Better aimed at helping queer teens who are facing bullying. If you're a QUILTBAG adult, you can help. All you really need to do is make a video telling your story and put in on YouTube. If you are queer and out, please contribute material to this project. If you are bisexual, a PoC, or trans, please please please contribute to this project -- this is a good opportunity and a necessary opportunity for our community to demonstrate and recognize its own diversity. (Yes, I'll be doing a video too.).
Despite the Senate refusing to discuss DADT (and a host of other important things connected with that bill), gay rights continues to advance in the courts. We will, eventually, win. We will, eventually, be equal. Homophobia will, eventually, be far more risky than being gay ever way.
I'm just 15 pages into Pam Cook's academic-ish book on Baz Luhrmann, and I'm enjoying the hell out of it. Now sure, it doesn't seem like she's going to look into some of the corners I'm really interested in (his writing collaborations, for example -- which were, on my end, the direct inspiration for why Kali and I started writing together), but her stuff on transnational and cosmopolitan cinema vs. nationally-identified cinema and how that plays out in Australia would have been ridiculously valuable reading back before I went to NIDA, because I wound up in that conversation about twice a day.
Additionally, she's giving way more focus to the construction of Luhrmann's persona than I would have imagined, which makes me jump up and down in an ex-marketing professional/miniature Internet personality way (also, you guys, it's a pretty good map of my own little routine in terms of the way I employ mythologization and nostalgia myself).
I'll be interested to see how she swims through all the material out there that has served to construct that image to examine it. She's already mentioned the contradictions in a lot of that material and how she seeks to set the record straight where possible, and that's really valuable, but perhaps particularly in a constructed life, there's no such thing as the truth -- just stories emanating from different source points. It's a nightmare for a researcher, even if it poses interesting questions for scholars and fans, and creates a situation in which satisfaction through said explorations is arguably never achieved. We'll see if she gets there. (It is also worth noting here that among the other filmmakers covered in this book series is Egoyan; it was from his Exotica I got a bit of dialogue I often quote to other people: "Why did you believe him?" "I made a choice." While I'm less fascinated with Egoyan's work, I may need to spend some time with that book as well if it engages truth and persona on any significant level).
Mostly though, I wish I had people around to discuss the book with, but those I know who care about Luhrmann's work don't necessarily have any interest in persona or taste for the academic approach and vice versa. So my brain is lonely on this, which means you all are going to have to hear it. Oh yeah, also? Travesty as an aesthetic concept seems likely to be a recurring theme -- you could point to the whole Internet with that, ne?
Me too - I also love the sounds of that salad. YUM. I've had a similar salad that added blood oranges and toasted almonds. It was a small plate of heaven.
Not to get all "wah, the acronyms!" but as cute as FABGLITTER is, I'm not pleased that "fetish" is both included and up front, nor that "allies" are next.
I thought QUILTBAG was kinda awesome actually when I parsed it. Then again, I had a supervisor at one point who could only remember GLBT by thinking of a BLT sandwich so for him it was always "BLTG," which made me shudder faintly but at least appreciate he was saying something at all.
We've been once before and enjoyed it a lot. It's not big gloppy Mexican like people think of. So if they want more refined or less beans or spice, those options are totally there.
In the interest of having a good arsenal of restaurants, there's a newish bistro on 58th where March used to be.
It is so good oh my god.
The menu is meat- and seafood-heavy, so you should be able to eat there without much trouble. If it's still warm enough, I also recommend their back garden.
I see that someone recommended AT&T's DECT phones over at newyorkers. We have Panasonic DECT phones. I love them. You can probably get them at Target with fewer add on phones --probably a base and two other phones. I'm sure whatever model you have will have the same features as our Panasonic. One feature that I like is that I can put phone numbers in the address book of one phone and send the entries to the other phones. You only need one phone line for the base and just electric outlets for the other phones. Our house was built in the 1950s with about 1 inch of plaster over sheet rock and I've never had a problem and I can even go out to our mailbox on the street (300 ft?) and not lose the signal.
I should have added that we've had our Panasonic DECT phones for 3 or 4 years and in the past year or two we added one more but I think we had to get it on used or on E-bay. Other than a charging problem with one phone which was solved by switching the charging base with another phone, I've had no other problems with these phones. I don't think I've had to change the rechargeable batteries yet.
When you decide what kind of phone you want, consider posting a request to your local freecycle. So many people are dumping their landlines that these are generally available and claiming one of them will keep it out of the landfill.
I only managed to get a table at Rosa Mexicana once when I lived briefly in New York and hope to go again some day. I miss Mexican food, it's one cuisine hard to come by in England.
I look forward to reading your thoughts on Baz Luhrmann, the book sounds intriguing. I don't have a lot of background knowledge about him, but Strictly Ballroom is in my top 5 films of all time and I do find his films fascinating.
Oh, well thank god someone isn't going to be deeply irritated by the next two weeks of all-Luhrmann-all-the-time (reading this book, Paley Center event, etc).
We're going to Rosa Mexicana tonight precisely because of the scarcity of Mexican food in the UK.
I have finally, after years of half-hearted searching, found black beans in England. I don't know if Patty particularly likes them or cooks with them, but they're from Suma Organics and she could probably find them at a decent international foods store in Cardiff (it's where I found them in Liverpool).
I can only the imagine the Paley Center event has the potential to be a brilliant evening.
This may possibly be a regional thing, but I get black beans from perfectly normal supermarkets (Morrison's, Tesco's). I wasn't aware they were meant to be hard to come by.
I might not have been looking in the right section of Tesco when I first moved here, hence my belief they weren't available locally. I will look again next time I go, the local Tesco has improved its foreign food offerings recently. I reckon I could order them in our next Ocado delivery too.
Was it Viva Mexico, or something like that, on Cockburn Street? (one of the winding ones that connects the Royal Mile with Waverley Bridge) I think I've been there when I was a student in Edinburgh. There also used to be a good one called Mamma's near Pollock Halls, but I think that's been gone for a few years.
Trying to find good Mexican food in Britain is like trying to find good Indian food in the states, in my experience.
I can't comment in New Yorker Comm, so I'll say here: The 900 GHz are definitely worth paying for, in my experience. I'm in Texas, I know, but I've picked up trucker's chatter on phones with less; the lack of interference alone made the 900 GHz more than worth it.
The first gluten-free recipe I ever found was REALLY tasty: cookies made mostly from peanut butter, chickpea flour and maple syrup. YARM. From The Healthy Hedonist by Myra Kornfeld (which was mainly vegetarian in focus).
makes me jump up and down in an ex-marketing professional/miniature Internet personality
This gives me an image of you, in your suit, approximately three to four inches tall, on a mantle of other (stationary) figurines, jumping up and down and yelling excitedly about this. Why my brain insists you are in your suit for this I do not know, but you are.
It is really quite hilarious and I wish I could show it to you better.
I am so excited to hear more about your take on persona. I grew up with very strict ideas of honesty and it is only recently that I have begun exploring this persona idea. I await your musings on this excitedly!
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I'm all for making acronyms easier to deal with, but I am not any sort of bag, thankyouverymuch.
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And I think you are not the bag; I think it is that we are all in a fabulous purse, which is its own sort of creepy.
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"We are all in a fabulous purse" is the new "We have all been touched by its noodly appendage."
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I thought QUILTBAG was kinda awesome actually when I parsed it. Then again, I had a supervisor at one point who could only remember GLBT by thinking of a BLT sandwich so for him it was always "BLTG," which made me shudder faintly but at least appreciate he was saying something at all.
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Also, I think they did try it once, but long before I was born.
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It is so good oh my god.
The menu is meat- and seafood-heavy, so you should be able to eat there without much trouble. If it's still warm enough, I also recommend their back garden.
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*"Only" because I don't have particularly thick walls or interference from neighbors or suchlike.
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I wish I had fresh beets and goat cheese. I suspect there will be brief run to the store before dinner. Yup yup yup.
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I look forward to reading your thoughts on Baz Luhrmann, the book sounds intriguing. I don't have a lot of background knowledge about him, but Strictly Ballroom is in my top 5 films of all time and I do find his films fascinating.
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We're going to Rosa Mexicana tonight precisely because of the scarcity of Mexican food in the UK.
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I can only the imagine the Paley Center event has the potential to be a brilliant evening.
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If you're ever in Edinburgh, there is, or was, a *fabulous* authentic Mexican restaurant in the Old Town.
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Trying to find good Mexican food in Britain is like trying to find good Indian food in the states, in my experience.
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And yes, it takes some doing even in NYC to find *good* Indian food.
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http://disabledfeminists.com/2010/09/22/tell-the-discovery-network-that-their-transphobia-is-unacceptable/
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This gives me an image of you, in your suit, approximately three to four inches tall, on a mantle of other (stationary) figurines, jumping up and down and yelling excitedly about this. Why my brain insists you are in your suit for this I do not know, but you are.
It is really quite hilarious and I wish I could show it to you better.
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