Criticism-in-finity!
Posted in Replies & Rebuttals on Apr 25th, 2012
When I was coming up we only called it “gentrification” and even then it was code. What it stood for was first described in economic terms: growing property values, higher rents, rising food costs, and increases in local tax revenues. Then in terms of safety: drops in crime rates, arrests, and even reports of suspicious [...]
Posted in Replies & Rebuttals on Apr 18th, 2012
There were things people forgot to tell me. The retired minister would openly critique my breasts as I brought him food. No girls wanted to serve him. (Only girls worked there.) A local realtor was fascinated by his shoe, which he often thought was his pet, and more fascinated by counting by tens very quickly. [...]
Posted in Replies & Rebuttals on Apr 11th, 2012
Despite what some may tell you, a hipster invasion is generally a wonderful thing. When the hipsters arrive, property values skyrocket, charcuteries and cheese shops pop up and a tattoo-parlor scene develops. The bars in the neighborhood start selling an incredible selection of boutique local beers and have burlesque shows on weekends. Cupcake stores become [...]
Posted in Reviews on Apr 5th, 2012
It happens everywhere: at convenience stores, the cinema, or in the queue outside of pubs. Sometimes, the exclamation is innocent, flung from the lips of the offender before she has a chance to cover her mouth, “You don’t look a day over fourteen!” More often than not, though, it comes in the form of a [...]
Posted in Reviews on Apr 2nd, 2012
They tell me it is shape that broken hearts and octopus traps have in common. They tell me that until 2005, when this syndrome was given a name, it did not exist. They describe my pain in the language of scientific process’ with scientific words to boot. Tako-tsubo is the Japanese word for octopus traps. [...]
Posted in Reviews on Mar 27th, 2012
A post-menopausal teacher sits at the desk, more interested in her romance novel than the class. Boys sit on one side of the room, girls on the other. A self-imposed segregation, we steal glances across the room, still unsure how to cross that divide. We are supposed to learn typing from Mavis Beacon, but the [...]
Posted in Replies & Rebuttals on Mar 21st, 2012
#1: Music drifts from the clubhouse, pings carry from the driving range. Ahead, a strange landscape: wilderness that is not wilderness; everything leafy and beautifully green, everything manicured, cut, chopped. #2: This is not quite a park, not quite a garden. It is not quite a place to be discovered, not quite natural or unnatural, [...]
Posted in Reviews on Mar 15th, 2012
At around 53 minutes past the hour, a hair-dyed ex-basketball star slowly lumbers his way to the ring. Like all of the ring’s former heroes, he gets cheered for a minute before the crowd realizes exactly what they are cheering. After all, this man does what bad guys do: attack their heroes in order to [...]
Posted in Reviews on Mar 12th, 2012
In “Serial Seduction: Living in Other Worlds,” Ron Simon claims, “more than any other art form, the soap opera creates an alternative world, where the characters and their environment seem to exist in a parallel dimension.” Thirty-four years ago, when I first started watching my soap, I skipped French club and yearbook meetings on the [...]
Posted in Reviews on Mar 7th, 2012
Revered Roman statesman Cato the Elder urged that babies should be bathed in the warmed-up urine produced by an adult who had eaten cabbage. Cato, whose cognominal was sometimes suffixed “the wise,” was a notorious party pooper and not prone to frivolous micturatal larks otherwise, yet he must have got the idea from somewhere, right? [...]