25.Jan.12 in Bitchy + Music {2 comments}

Mashed potatoes & crunchy guitars

Bah. I’ve had a bad day. Okay it probably hasn’t been so much bad as annoying and cranky-making. I don’t want to use the badge bad day on this kind of day. You have to save bad for a day worthy of it. Work and money anxiety paired with a stupid mistake made on a client project is hardly bad, right?

But I’m cranky. I’m cranky and I’m blogging, as Christa would say, like it’s 2001. Yeah, back in the olden days people blogged all the time about their shitty days. And lunch. And masturbation. We’re fucking Puritans now in the 2012. Boring.

Back to my cranky day. I wish I was the kind of peson who could shake off an annoying, anxious day. Just toss my hair and smile big and thinks, well that stinks but I’m on to the next thing. I am not that person. I am a wallower. I’m a cryer of tears salted with self-pity*. I’m a sincere singer of bad songs about the painfulness of being the most, tender unique snowflake that ever fluttered to Earth. Yes, when I have a crappy day I’m fifteen years old.

I wallowed the crap out of this afternoon. I ate instant mashed potatoes for lunch while watching two episodes of Dawson’s Creek (shut up, it’s part of my personal artifacts project). In case you are wondering, I don’t think instant mashed potatoes actually contain anything that ever resembled a potato at any point in time. However, when you’re busy getting your wallow on you hardly have time to make real mashed potatoes. Who can peel a potato when they’re wallowing? Not me.

After I was done with the Pacey and the potatoes, I put on some headphones, closed my eyes, and listened to Matthew Sweet’s “Altered Beast.” I may or may not have sang out loud in really dramatic fashion, “Someone to Pull the Trigger” which for reasons I cannot yet find the words for is my favorite Matthew Sweet song.

I need someone to pull the trigger, cause there’s a hole in my heart getting bigger, and everything I’ll ever be I’ve been. And I need someone to pull the trigger. So if you’re what I think you’ll be, if you’re who I think I see. . . shoot.

While I might have been singing Matthew Sweet I was definitely thinking about how I’ve been trying since. . . let me check. . . January 19th to write about this album, “Altered Beast,” and why I’d choose it over all the other Matthew Sweet albums to go in my basket of personal artifacts.

But I’m stuck. I’m stuck because, well I’m just stuck. I told you about how I’ve started 827 posts the past few weeks and not published a single one, right? Well, I have.

So I was thinking about writing about music and what a shitty record reviewer I was in the 90s and how I’m probably shitty record review reader, because half the time I have no idea what the fuck those men who write most of the record reviews are talking.

Like, for instance, in the 90s people often wrote about crunchy guitars. Crunchy guitars. What the fuck is that? I don’t know. Wait, I’ll Google it. I still don’t know exactly. It has something to do with either a lot of distortion or just a little bit of distortion and can be heard on perhaps Metallica’s “The Four Horsemen” or Generation X’s “Dancing With Myself” or Joan Jett’s first album.

I’m convinced crunchy guitars is something some music dude invented so he would have something to say because writing about music is hard and crunchy is a fun word.

I’m still cranky and I have nothing else to say. This is how we blogged in 2001. We just stopped without endings.

*incidentally, I did not cry today. Well, I cried but not about my work-anxiety. I cried because I watched some Gabrielle Giffords stuff.

By Jodi Chromey {2 comments}

22.Jan.12 in TV {5 comments}

It’s like 2006 in here all the time

When I cut the cable back in September, I quit the Real Housewives cold turkey. It’s a little known fact that I had quite the Real Housewives addiction. It always befuddled my friend Kari who would shake her head and say, “You’re such a snob about everything, I can’t believe you watch that.”

But we all have our mind-numbing weaknesses, right? For some people it’s wine, for others it’s football, and for me it was Real Housewives for Someplace Else. In fact, I never met a housewife I didn’t love to hate.

So when cutting the cable, I worried about the Housewives and how I would get my fix. I comforted myself with the idea that I’d just buy the episodes on Amazon or something. It would be fine, I told me.

But when faced with shelling out money each week, when seeing how much the Housewives would actually cost when not lumped together with my ridiculous Comcast bill, the Housewives didn’t seem so necessary anymore. Giving up the bitchy, melodramatic women was much easier than I thought it would be.

And while I thought when I gave up the Housewives I’d given up on hours of mindless TV, I was totally wrong. Instead I’ve replaced the Housewives with a variety of other more-realisitic and yet wholly fictional housewives specifically Tami Taylor and then Tara Gregson and currently Nancy Botwin.

Right now I’m in the thick of my “Weeds” addiction. I’ve managed to burn through about three seasons in three weeks. It’s fantastic. Funny and irreverent and then there’s Kevin Nealon who has earned a piece of my heart with his dope-smoking, banjo-playing, cross-stealing portrayal of City Councilman Doug.

So yeah, I have this addiction and its mostly a lot of fun, but I wish I had someone to share it with. When I tore through “Friday Night Lights” I had Christa by my virtual side. Having someone to bounce theories and OMGs and I cried so hard I hyperventilated off of made it that much more enjoyable. But now with Netflix and Hulu and the smorgasbord that is most TV watching has become is a little isolating and lonely.

I need a “Weeds” buddy. Or a 2006 TV buddy. Or I need to stop being such a Jodi-come-lately and start watching “Downtown Abby” right now so I can keep up with all the cool kids.

By Jodi Chromey {5 comments}

17.Jan.12 in Books + Re-evaluating Personal Artifacts {2 comments}

Some sign of my own

There was a span of time in the early to mid-aughts where I would buy every man I was romantically interested in a copy of An Invisible Sign of My Own by Aimee Bender. I probably hold the record for buying the most copies of this book. I could probably write a memoir called Books I Used to Unsuccessfully Woo Men in My Life. There must have been something about this compulsive book giving. Some sign of my own I was trying to show the men I wanted to love me, but I have no idea what it was.

Maybe it’s just that I really love this strange, quirky novel and I thought men who could appreciate it would be worthy? Who knows. The real question is, would An Invisible Sign of My Own hold up to further scrutiny, a re-reading nearly a decade after I first read it?

The answer is a resounding YES. I re-read Bender’s debut novel as part of my re-evaluation of personal artifacts project, and it really does hold up.

The story? Mona Gray is a twenty-year-old whose beloved dad was struck by a mystery illness that may or may not be real when she was ten. Dad’s sickness puts the fear of death into Mona and turns her into a serial quitter and knocker on wood. She quits everything she loves: piano, running, sex. She knocks on wood whenever she gets anxious, sometimes spending hours knocking until her knuckles bleed.

Mona’s kind of humdrumming it through life when she’s asked to become the math teacher to a group of second graders. Here Mona discovers she’s kind of good at teaching math but in an unusual way. She introduces the children to Numbers and Materials, where they find numbers out in the world. One girl brings in an IV tube from her near-death mother’s hospital room as a zero. Another kid brings in his dad’s severed arm as a seven.

Meanwhile Mona’s developing a thing for the new science and health teacher who intermittently intrigues and infuriates her. It’s good.

Oh and then there’s the mysterious neighbor who used to be Mona’s math teacher but instead goes into the hardware business. Mr. Jones is a wearer of necklaces. These necklaces are made of wax numbers and denote the day he’s having. An eight is not so great, a twenty is pretty damn good. Mona is, of course, obsessed with Mr. Jones and his numbering system, even though she’s kind of pissed at him for not taking any notice when her dad fell ill.

Okay, this probably sounds like entirely more quirk than one novel can sustain, but it’s not. In fact, in Bender’s sure hands it all rings emotionally honest and genuine. There isn’t a single point in the book where Mona’s tics seem forced or like some sort of affectation adopted for the sake of being unique. Instead, this is Mona’s reality and the novel follows her trying to figure it all out — her fear of death and her overwhelming anxiety and her need for love and companionship.

It’s such a beautiful book and I’m so glad that it has held up to a re-reading. I’m also pretty glad to keep on my list of most beloved personal pop cultural artifacts.

By Jodi Chromey {2 comments}

16.Jan.12 in There is no five {2 comments}

I can’t make rice & other confessions

  • Awhile ago I bragged about what a divine soup maker I am (as opposed to being the Divine Thing the Soup Dragons sing about). I make great soup but I can’t make rice to save my life. I even have a cute teeny rice cooker and I still manage to screw that up. Whatever genetic material makes one a good maker of rice I am missing. This disappoints me to know end.
  • There’s been some iPhone procurement over at Sister #2′s house which left Max, my thirteen-y-ear-old nephew, the proud owner of Jaycie’s bent and jailbroken iPhone 3G (which was a replacement for her 3Gs some punkass bastard on the activity’s bus ripped off). Maxwell was beatific with his new phone for about 13 hours. Then he bricked the thing and because it’s so bent and beat I’m having a hard time unbricking it.
  • This is the part where I tell you that I have some obsessive aspects of my personality, especially when it comes to electronic things that don’t work. I won’t tell you how much restraint it’s taking to not continue working working working on the phone (which won’t even turn on at this point). I will tell you that the phone is all I’m thinking about.
  • Speaking of obsessive, I’ve been reading Hope: A Tragedy for like a week now. And each night I keep having very angry dreams about the Anti-Guilt Association (which is something my subconscious has made up). This is an Association designed to be against people feeling guilty about stuff (which does, in fact, tie in to the theme of the novel). I have yet to figure out why we’re all so angry about people feeling guilty. Perhaps the dreams will continue even though I’ll finish the book tonight.

By Jodi Chromey {2 comments}

11.Jan.12 in Books {6 comments}

Beg to differ: 9 literary siblings who are much more interesting than Franny & Zooey

When I spied this list of cool literary siblings on Largehearted Boy’s Facebook wall I was all, “hell yes I love arbitrary lists of the bookish variety. Pop Culture Nerds love nothing more than to argue about inconsequential things that are somehow vitally important to our sense of self.

So I perused the list where I was shocked and appalled that the best all time literary siblings ever were not on the list: Beezus & Ramona Quimby. Then I got to the point where they included third cousins who are not, obviously, siblings and I was all “this is total bullshit” and decided to make a much better list of my own.

Since “cool” is such a vague, weird thing to define. I went with interesting. Interesting is much easier to prove and, well, judge.

With that parameter in place, I will tell you right now that my list will not include Franny and Zooey. While Franny and Zooey are pretty cool, they can be kind of wind baggy and boring blowhards too. Besides, you have to admit that the entire Glass family should be on the list. And, well, frankly Franny & Zooey are an obvious choice. Besides if we’re going with Salinger sibs, I’d pick Holden & Phoebe anyway.

So here it is: 9 literary siblings who are much more interesting than Franny & Zooey

9. Peter & Farley “Fudge” Hatcher: Sure Fudge is kind of an asshole that eats Peter’s turtle and generally wrecks havoc wherever he goes, but that’s a little brother’s job is it not? Besides Peter’s totally chill and handles it all with tremendous grace. Plus he’s smart. So give it up for the Hatcher Boys.

8. Chris & Catherine Dollanganger: We’re now entering the incest part of our list. Chris & Cathy, along with their twin sibs Cory & Carrie were shoved into an attic by their greedy, whack-job mother after their father dies. They were stuck in the attic for years and they developed a completely creepy love affair that ended up with them spending their lives posing as husband and wife rather than brother and sister. It seemed romantic when I was 12, but is downright gross now. Still, when I was a kid Chris & Cathy were definitely the bomb digs.

7. Franny & John Beery: A Franny made the list, that has to count for something, right? Franny and John. . . oh Franny and John, the incestuous (at least for one very long day) middle children in The Hotel New Hampshire. Franny’s a rape-survivor, feminist, actress who eventually marries a high school sweetheart and John is the brother who loves Franny and eventually raises her child. They’re messed up and totally lovable.

6. Jessica & Elizabeth Wakefield: Probably the most famous literary twins of all time. Take that Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum.

5. Hal & Orin Incandenza: Does this need any explanation? If it does that means you haven’t read Infinite Jest yet and you should just get on that already.

4. Lux, Therese, Mary, Bonnie, and Cecilia Lisbon: The beautiful, doomed Lisbon sisters managed to capture the minds and hearts of all the boys that lived in their neighborhood. Oh delicate, ephemeral Lisbon sisters, we hardly knew ye in The Virgin Suicides and yet I think everyone who reads the book is a little in love with you.

3. Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy March: I admit I have a soft spot for the March girls. Growing up my sisters and I were always compared to the March girls. As a kid I was always Meg but I’m more of a Jo now. Sister #4 hates it that we always made her be Beth. Sucker.

2. Arty & Oly Binewski: Arty is the Aqua Boy who forms a cult, and Oly is the hunchbacked albino dwarf sister who adores the shit out of him. They’re two of the “freaks” created by their weirdo parents to perform in the family freak show. Oly seems to love her charismatic brother blindly, so much so that she manages to impregnate herself with his child. But when it comes down to it, Oly can see that Arty is a little off his rocker. If you haven’t read Geek Love by Katherine Dunn, you should. It’s one of my ten all-time favorite books.

1. Beezus & Ramona Quimby: This should not come as a surprise to anyone who has ever read this here website.

By Jodi Chromey {6 comments}

09.Jan.12 in Misc. {3 comments}

It means the Earth is dying

As I type this at 10:15 p.m. at night in front of Conan’s show, smug with the knowledge that I finally figured out this problem that has been plaguing me for a week, the little temperature widget on Enid’s dashboard says it is 37 degrees outside. It’s the second week of January and it’s 37 degrees in Minnesota.

As someone who refuses to drive while it snows out, you’d think this would thrill me beyond belief. As someone who lives the adage “the bigger they are the harder they fall” and moves like a snail over potentially icy sidewalks lest all 77 inches of me go crashing to the ground like they did that one time on Washington Avenue that I still can’t talk about without laughing and crying with embarrassment, you’d think I’d be kicking up my heels.

The weather is creeping me the fuck out. There’s no snow. None at all. This is infinitely creepier than last year when the snow was so high that it covered half of the downstairs windows.

The strangest thing about the weather is that it reminds me of a Douglas Coupland reading I went to back in 2003. It was a very warm night when he read, and he asked people if they liked the weather. If they were enjoying this balmy evening. Quite a few heads in the audience nodded their agreement about the wonderfulness of 50 degree weather in February.

“Enjoy it now,” he said.”BECAUSE IT MEANS THE EARTH IS DYING.”

So now whenever anyone says anything about the “awesome” weather happening (going on? weathering? what the hell does weather do?) right now inside my head I shout at them “IT MEANS THE EARTH IS DYING.”

By Jodi Chromey {3 comments}

06.Jan.12 in Misc. {15 comments}

This is really a post about soup

Before I get to the soup you should go listen to The Soup Dragons’ Divine Thing. My mind latched onto that song last night when I was making the soon-to-be-mentioned soup mostly because singing Sunken-Eyed Girl is really confusing right now. I recently finished reading The Book of Drugs and I’m in heavy Doughty Re-evaluation Mode. It’s not going well.

Also, I’m pissed at you all for not reminding me that Divine Thing is a ‘hips’ song. Thanks a lot. Even though you didn’t ask, the Hips Playlist is sitting at 49 songs.

I’ll get to the soup in a minute.

As a single woman who has spent all but six months (and they were sucky months) of the past thirteen years living alone, I have a very rainbows and unicorns view of people who live with other people. This view gets covered over with glitter and orgasms if the people who live together are romantically involved.

In this romantic view of cohabitation the person who cooks a meal is never the person who does the dishes afterwards. There’s someone who will scoop you a dish of ice cream and bring it to you while you watch re-runs of “The Big Bang Theory” and compliment you on preparing the coffee for the next morning. In this fairy-tale there’s someone who will say, “Hey, nice job!” when it comes to most things that grown ups to do to take care of themselves. Yes, I believe the mundanities of daily life should be recognized.

When you are single and live alone nobody is there to congratulate you when you do anything. It can make one a little bitter and crabby. “Nobody appreciates how I just dusted the shit out of the coffee table and made sure all the cupboard doors were shut so I didn’t bump my head. Hrmph!”

When you are single and live alone there’s nobody there to hold you accountable for anything, which makes it really easy to be very bad. And not lay on the couch and spend all afternoon masturbating kind of bad, but I’ve eaten nothing but Cheerios, mini-corndogs, and tator tots for a week kind of bad. I could eat mini-corndogs every day for a month and if I didn’t tell anyone nobody would ever know.

You know mini-corndogs are a gateway drug, right? One night it’s mini-corndogs and the next thing you know it’s two months later and you haven’t eaten any actual real food in two months. All your meals come from the freezer where the boxed-up, artificially-colored, processed food-type-stuff is kept and you can’t remember the last time you prepared a “meal” that didn’t involve a cookie sheet and preheating the oven to 425.

Judge all you want, Wapner. It’s an easy hole to fall into. You aren’t cooking for anyone else, nobody would appreciate it if you did. Plus, it’s really easy, ridiculously easy, especially if you don’t get home from work until later and you don’t have to worry about ingredients, justification, more justification, blah. And best of all, nobody would ever, ever know unless you told them. Ever. You don’t have any snitchy roommates or significant others to contend with. Corndog away my friend.

Long about the time I got laid off from The Nerdery and started freelancing fulltime, I got into actually cooking. I could always cook, but I was pretty one-note sticking to the things I knew how to make (usually learned from Mom or Dad or Grammu) or foods I could chop up and throw in the oven for an hour and then eat. But now that I had time, I was gonna experiment.

I grew up incredibly poor, raised by two parents who worked in the food service industry. When it came time for dinner preparing nutritious, well-balanced meals were not their priority. They liked food that was fast and cheap, which meant a lot of our meals growing up came from a McDonald’s bag. When my mom or dad would cook it was always a meat and potatoes kind of meal. The only vegetables they ever served were corn and creamed corn. There was the occasional can of peas.

It shames me more than a little that it took until I was in my thirties to realize that I could buy and prepare other kinds of vegetables all on my own. And, this was even more earth-shattering, if I didn’t like it I didn’t have to eat it. There was a lot of plate cleaning when I was growing up no matter how much you hated steak. When you are poor you are taught to eat what you are given and be thankful for it. Just this past summer I tried brussel sprouts for the first time ever. I loved them.

So last night I made pasta e fagioli soup. After subsisting on a mostly cheese-based diet during the holidays I needed something without cheese and/or cream and/or creamy cheese.

Darling Ones, this soup was the best thing I’ve put in my mouth since [insert crass blowjob joke here]. I wanted to sing love songs to this soup. This soup was so good it made me say mean things about the sausage and lentil stew I made a month ago and even the split pea soup I made right after Christmas.

This soup was so good that had I a co-habitator of the romantic persuasion he’d have done the dishes, scooped me ice cream, and I’d have gotten laid. It was that good.

This soup was so good it deserved to be discussed and talked about. This soup was so divine that I wanted to tell the Interent about it, but I wasn’t sure how. I know nobody cares about what I had for dinner. Really, I do. I’ve deleted enough turkey sandwich posts to last me a lifetime.

But this soup was good and it deserved recognition. But more than that, I made that soup and I took care of myself like a grownup should and damnit, I need some motherfucking acclaim up in this joint.

So this is my post about soup.

(P.S. tomorrow I’m going to try to make baked beans from scratch for Nolan’s birthday dinner where he requested brats and hot dogs on the grill)

By Jodi Chromey {15 comments}

05.Jan.12 in Books {No comments}

Something in red

Hilary Jordan’s novel When She Woke is a modern day mashup of The Scarlet Letter and The Handmaid’s Tale. In this futuristic United States abortion has been banned because some weird STD called The Scourge has left many women sterile and the birthrate around the world has plummeted. Apparently in the future we’ll have solved the problem of over-population so well that a nearly non-existent birthrate will be a huge cause for concern. Or maybe it’s just the platform super-conservative Christians were looking for to spread their anti-woman agenda. It’s never clearly addressed, but if you just go with it you’ll enjoy the book much more.

It opens with Hannah Payne waking in a Chrome ward, a shiny white and steel cube. She’s clad in only a paper gown, her actions are broadcast to viewers around the world, and her skin has been genetically modified to appear bright red. This chroming, as it’s called, is the punishment the government doles out to lawbreakers. The colors vary based on your crime, some people are yellow, some purple, and murderers are red.

Hannah was convicted and found guilty of murder. Her crime? Aborting her fetus. She’s given extra Chrome time because she refused to name the father, a super popular married preacher, Reverend Aidan Dale, and the person who performed her abortion.

The government is not messing around with this Chroming stuff and the author does a great job explaining it. Whenever the book spent time discussing Chroming, Chromes (those who have been Chromed), and their treatment in society I was in love with this book. I, the hater of details, wanted to know more and more and more about this terrifying United States and their new-fangled draconian laws.

So the concept and the structure supporting the story are top notch, where it kind of falls apart is, well, Hannah’s story.

Hannah’s a twenty-six-year-old seamstress who has an affair with the Reverend Aidan Dale, stays silent because she thinks she’s in love and sacrifices everything to keep their secret safe. Hannah comes from a super conservative religious family where women do what they’re told, honor and obey their parents, and generally exist without any minds of their own. I think Jordan uses this as a crutch for Hannah’s naivety and gullibility. As a reader, I’m not sure if I buy it, especially because by the end of the book Hannah’s gone through a huge change and it doesn’t feel as though she’s earned the wisdom she extolls.

Anyway, after Hannah’s let out of the Chrome ward her parents send her to a sort of religious repatriation camp, full of all kinds of wicked stereotypes you’ve come to expect from those sorts of situations — the soul-matey buddy, the weak-minded child, the cold, cruel mistress, the ass-kissing tattletale. Nothing surprising really happens here until Hannah decides to step off the path in defense of her soul-matey buddy, Kayla.

From there the two women start a weird, underground railroad sort of adventure filled with nefarious men and militant women. There’s danger everywhere, and it all feels a little bit predictable complete with wholly unnecessary lesbian sex scene, and at times ridiculously melodramatic.

And even with all those complaints, I’d still say this novel falls on the better side of okay. Read it for the very interesting take on what a post-Roe v. Wade America might look like. It’s chilling. Don’t read it for Hannah’s personal insights and growth because those seem to appear out of thin air and not because she earned them.

By Jodi Chromey {No comments}

04.Jan.12 in Books {No comments}

My Favorite Reads of 2011

Just like many pop culture nerds, I too like to impost arbitrary rules on any list I make. I think it imbibes the list with some significance, importance, or something else that lists of crap don’t have naturally. For this year’s list of Favorite Reads, I gave myself two rules. One, I couldn’t include books I’ve read before (The Giant’s House and An Invisible Sign of My Own). It’s just not fair to the books of 2011 to compare them to my all-time favorites.

Second, I decided not to include books by my friends. But I will say that I loved reading The Mostly True Story of Jack by Kelly Barnhill, Brooklyn, Burning by Steve Brezenoff, and The Tanglewood Terror by Kurtis Scaletta. I loved them not just because I know the authors but because they are smart, entertaining beautiful novels that people of any age would enjoy. You wouldn’t go wrong by reading any (or all) of these books.

So with those two arbitrary rules in place, I present to you the ten books I enjoyed reading the most this year (in no particular order) not all of which were published this year.

The Tragedy of Arthur by Arthur Phillips: I’m not even a Shakespeare person and yet this novel about the discovery of a long-lost Shakespeare play was totally captivating and fun and, as weird as it is to say, educational. I learned a lot about Shakespeare and the theories that revolve around his famous plays. Lest you think that sounds kinda snoozy, it’s not at all. In fact, it’s super engaging and keeps you turning pages to see what’s going to happen next. Plus, most of the book takes place in Minnesota and I love that kind of stuff. [review]

The Wilder Life by Wendy McClure: It was a banner year for non-fiction as far as my reading list is concerned. I hardly ever read non-fiction and this year, I’ll have three on the list. First is Wendy McClure’s memoir about her search for the “lost world of Little House on the Prairie.” But the book is about more than that, it’s about grieving a lost mother, a lost childhood, and accepting the fact that yes, indeed, things change when we grow up. Also, a ton of Little House trivia, and what I loved the most is that McClure tries to reconcile her modern-day sensibilities with some of the seamier sides of the Ingalls. Such a good book. [review]

Please Ignore Vera Dietz by A.S. King: This young adult novel has all the great things I look to in literature: humor, sadness, smart female characters, and beauty. Vera Dietz’s story about the death of her friend Charlie and how he haunts her is at times funny and heartbreaking. But perhaps what I loved the most about ‘Vera Dietz’ is that A.S. King so brilliant illustrates Vera’s “deal” with great writing and wonderful scenes without ever saying, “hey this is Vera’s problem.” So much love for this one. [review]

Stories I Only Tell My Friends by Rob Lowe: If you had told me 368 days ago that I’d be including a book by Rob Lowe on my favorites of the year list, I’d have given you a withering, condescending stare along with a snooty sniff and probably said something kind of assholey about not reading celebrity memoirs or not digging non-fiction. Well, here I am, and her’s Rob Lowe’s memoir on my list. I will offer one caveat, had I not listened to this book on audio read by Rob Lowe it might not make this list. But listening to Lowe tell his story complete with dead-on impersonations of the entire Brat Pack and a bunch of other celebrities captured my heart, just like Ponyboy Curtis did the first time I read the words “When I stepped out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house, I had only two things on my mind: Paul Newman and a ride home.” [review]

Just Kids by Patti Smith: Two celebrity memoirs in a row? Yeah. I guess I’m just that kind of hypocrite. But come one, Smith’s at least won a National Book Award so I got that kind of cred to fall back on, right? Actually it doesn’t matter because I loved this memoir of Smith’s life with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe and I generally don’t love NBA-winning books. This book is steeped in misty-pink magic that will make you long to be really poor in the fairytale New York of the 70s that was filled with rich, famous people just aching to be your friend. Also, it will make you care a lot about a desk. [review]

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline: Like Christa so wonderfully depicted in her review, the 80s worshipped in Cline’s sci-fi-y paean to video games is not the 80s I grew up in, and yet I loved spending time in Cline’s 80s. Well, it’s not really the 80s. It’s really 2044 and the world spends all it’s time in the video game called the Oasis and their a search for the keys to a huge fortune. The book is the most fun you’ll have reading. Seriously. [review]

Orientation and Other Stories by Daniel Orozco: I’m fond of making really asinine proclamations along the lines of “Everyone should just quit writing about Vietnam because Tim O’Brien already wrote ‘The Things They Carried’.” It’s fun you should try it sometime. Anyway, after reading Orozco’s hotly-anticipated short story collection, I proclaimed that everyone should stop writing about office life in corporate America now, he’s done it. I stand by that assertion because Orozco seems to bring the humanity to the drab greyness of corporate life that so many other authors forget about. This is a great, great collection of stories. [review]

Blueprints for Building Better Girls by Elissa Schapell: This is a book filled with really great stories about really real women at different stages of their lives. All the stories are good. I want to emphasize that before I say the very last story, which is about the same character as the very first story, is so fucking good it’s worth the price of the book alone. For real. [review]

Swamplandia! by Karen Russell: This novel about an odd family in the swamps of Florida owes a lot of George Saunders (think about the stories “CivilWarland in Bad Decline” or “Sea Oak”) and Katherine Dunn (think Geek Love). Lucky for me I love Saunders and Dunn, and I really enjoyed Swamplandia! This is one those books where the journey is the reward because the ending kind of stinks. Still, totally read-worthy. [review]

The Family Fang by Kevin Wilson: This book about a strange family of performance artists surprised be at every turn. It never went where I thought it would go and I loved that. I would say more but I’m really tired of writing this list. [review]

By Jodi Chromey {No comments}

03.Jan.12 in Bitchy + There is no five {7 comments}

My New Year’s resolutions for the Internet: A bitchy list

My personal resolutions are vague and involve more: More naps, more leaving the house, more reading, more value for my own writing that isn’t being paid for by someone. I like vagueness, it’s harder to quantify and therefore harder to fail. 2012: vaguely setting myself up for success.

But Internet, oh Internet I have some specific resolutions for you (all of which I’ve done at some point in the past year or so).

  • Women (and unsexist men) of the Internet, we really have to quit linking to and celebrating any best of/most anticipated lists where women are not adequately represented. Seriously, it’s these kinds of lists that continue to glorify all that men create and do for the arts and ignore women. It’s one of a myriad reasons women in the arts are continually overlooked. When you pass on these lists without noting the sexism you are saying, “hey I’m totally fine with the fact that this listmaker was too lazy/ignorant to look for art outside their own limited world view and/or art made by people just like them! (read: white amd male).” (Aside: You can, of course, link to these one-sided, sexist lists if you are sure to point out the one-sidedness and sexism of the list).
  • Related to the last: let’s point out sexism/racism/homophobia wherever we see it this year. Be relentless. They will say you’re being annoying or pedantic or no fun, but that’s only because you’re making them uncomfortable and they’re uncomfortable because they know you’re right.
  • No more “THIS!” No more “that moment when. . .” No more “the awkward moment when. . .” No more “pro tip.” No more “Just sayin’.” Stop it. Right now.
  • Resolve to cite your sources. I see you on Facebook taking credit for a witty saying that’s been going around Twitter for two days. You know what? That makes you look like jackass. If your personal resolution is to look like a jackass, then carry on.
  • All the things people will list in the comments below that are way better than the four I listed here

By Jodi Chromey {7 comments}